by Rick Shelley
Most importantly, do everything possible to avoid air battles. If enemy Boems are detected, run, even if that means aborting the ground attack mission.
Zel had mixed feeling about the orders. Part of his mind was glad to see the low-risk plan, but another part rebelled. It didn't seem right to cut and run. A Wasp could inflict a lot of damage on an enemy. To do anything less seemed almost indecent.
He watched all of his displays, wishing that he had an extra set of eyes so that he could keep a constant watch over everything. It was downright dangerous flying a Wasp at nearly the speed of sound this close to the ground, following every contour, cutting through forest clearings below treetop level, hopping up only to clear obstacles before dropping back. Quite often the digital readout on the altimeter flashed red with the collision warning—Zel had switched off the audible alert siren—when the numbers dropped below five meters. That was the farthest down the alert system could be set for. The default was thirty meters.
"Less than thirty seconds," Zel warned his wingmen. "If the tracking data is right," he added. The Heggies couldn't be too far from where the spyeyes had last located them, even though that data had to be at least five minutes old—and probably twice that. Most of the Heggie force was on foot now, and their armored support had been marking time to stay relatively close to the mudders.
Zel took a last look at his readouts, then adjusted his grip on the control yoke so that his left thumb was a little closer to the weapon selector switch. He wouldn't know whether he needed rockets or cannon until the last instant, until he saw whatever was in front of him when the enemy appeared.
Once he saw the Heggie force, Zel had no time to really notice the full disposition of their men—the three columns of infantry marching some scores of meters apart, the few trucks that were still with them, the flanking lines of tanks and scouts. There simply was not enough time over the target for observation of that sort, not for a human brain and senses. The cameras and other observation gear that the Wasps carried did record everything and transmit it to CIC, but Zel was not aware of most of it.
What he did see was a Schlinal Nova tank right in front of him—less than one degree off his initial heading. He made that adjustment, armed two rockets, and showed them the target. As soon as they had been launched, he switched to the forward cannons and started his strafing run, cutting across all three infantry columns. At the end, he switched back to rockets and launched another two at a Nova on the far side of the formation.
Then he was gone, before the Heggies could get even a single surface-to-air missile up after him.
A restrained whoop from Irv showed that he too had made it clear of the enemy. That was followed almost immediately by a quick call from Jase.
"They didn't know what hit 'em."
"Don't get carried away," Zel warned. "They may have Boems on call. Keep your eyes open. We'll do a large clockwise loop to come back at them. Twenty minutes, they'll still be nervous. We'll see SAMs next time."
It was a good skirmish, though. The three of them had accounted for at least four Novas, several of their remaining trucks, plus uncountable infantry—without even taking enemy fire. The number crunchers in analysis liked numbers like those.
—|—
The 13th's remaining Havocs had gone to ground. They were no more than eight kilometers from the rendezvous point, close enough to get there—or send in covering fire—in a hurry, but far enough away that they wouldn't tip the location to the enemy if they were discovered. In any case, they had better cover where they were than they would have had closer to the rendezvous point. They were in tall timber, engines off, thermal tarps spread over the gun carriages. The crews were out of their Havocs, away from them, trying to get a little rest.
The crew of Afghan four, the one gun that survived from that battery, was sitting with the crew of Basset two. The Afghan men had already told their horror story. Empty meal packs were scattered around the gunners, not yet collected and buried.
"Apt to happen to all of us," Simon Kilgore said. "That's what 'expendable' means. They don't figure any of us are likely to make it back from this one."
"Don't get off on that again," Eustace Ponks snapped. "Afghan just got the bad break. Rest of us haven't even had a taste yet. Just been a long ride."
"Won't be a free ride, though," Simon said, looking at his boss. "Those Heggies that hit Afghan and the reccers are still coming. With a gaggle of Novas."
"Novas, bah." Eustace hawked noisily and spat to the side. "We kin knock Novas out ten klicks before they get close enough to even shoot at us."
"If we know where they are," Simon reminded him. "This mess, that ain't likely."
"Colonel will find some way to give us targets," Eustace said. "Wasps or reccers if we can't count on spyeyes and CIC." Just as long as he doesn't block us in deep in these mountains, Eustace thought, looking up at the range that was already right on their flank. The rendezvous point was in there, past that first thousand-meter ridge. But Eustace was trying to sound positive, to counter Simon's pessimism. It wouldn't do to mention his own considerable worries.
"Hell, we've got almost a full load of ammo yet," Karl Mennem, the gunner, said. "We'll give a good showing. Ain't we always?"
"Course we have," Eustace said. Then he met the gaze of Afghan four's commander, and he had to look away. There was terror in those eyes.
—|—
Dem Nimz couldn't remember just when he had started limping. There had been too much else happening for him to think about that. The limp had started and grown gradually worse before he was even aware of it. His right knee was sore and slightly swollen. The muscles in the back of the leg had tightened up, cramping. At first, Dem had simply tried to favor that leg—as much as he could—but that effort had just brought stiffness to the other leg as well, and to his hips and back.
"We'd better take a break and give you time to put on a couple of soakers," Fredo said.
"Not yet."
"Yes," Fredo said, his voice getting firmer. "You might be in charge here, but unless you do something fast, you're not going to be able to walk at all before long, and we've got enough problems without carrying you."
Dem looked at him for a moment—still walking—then he nodded and stopped. Fredo passed the order to the others. Altogether, there were only ten of them left, out of the hundred who had begun the mission.
When Dem fell trying to ease himself to the ground, he had to concede (to himself at least) that Fredo had been right.
"Let me take a look," Fredo said.
Dem didn't protest. When Fredo asked, he described just what hurt. Fredo took nearly ten minutes making his examination and wrapping soakers.
"We're going to have to take a little more time," he said when he had the last in place. "You won't be able to navigate decently for at least thirty minutes. An hour's rest would be a lot better."
"Thirty minutes," Dem said. "That gives us all time to eat and get a little rest."
They had been moving hard for more than two hours since escaping the last firefight. Dem wasn't certain, but he thought that they must have covered at least sixteen kilometers of broken country in that time. That had included one touchy river ford, in water up to their necks. Cold water. It had been after that when Dem's leg had started to bother him enough to matter—something he recalled only sprawled out on his back with the analgesic in the soakers starting to relieve the pain.
"You keepin' track of our course?" Dem asked after a couple more minutes.
"I've had an eye on it," Fredo said. "By now, we must be at least a dozen klicks northeast of that Heggie force. And we're getting farther away from our own people as well."
"We'll angle back toward the southeast when we get started again," Dem said.
"You're not thinking of another ambush, are you?"
Dem hesitated before he shook his head. "No, I guess not." He had considered the possibility, but he had quickly dismissed the idea. Even if he were willing to attack a f
ull regiment with ten men—and he was—they simply did not have the ammunition to sustain an attack, to do enough damage to make the almost certain cost worthwhile.
"If we can, we'll rejoin the Team," he said. "If we can find them."
"We can find them," Fredo said. "We might have to turn mountain goat to get to them, but we can find them." Even the climbing wouldn't bother Fredo Gariston. Or any of the other reccers.
His voice little more than a whisper, Dem asked, "Where did we go wrong, Fredo? How did we manage to screw up so badly?"
"Who said we screwed up? Considering the odds we faced, we did damn good, us and the Havocs and the Wasps."
"With ninety percent casualties?"
"We still hurt the Heggies bad," Fredo said. "Their losses must be more'n twice ours. They just started out with twenty times as many men."
"We've taken hits before," Dem said. "Never this bad. Never. No reccer unit ever has." The soakers were starting to take effect. The relief was limited to the areas where they had been applied, but Dem seemed to feel a more general analgesic effect, almost as if his brain were growing numb as well. He let his head sag back against the ground. Within seconds, he was asleep.
Fredo stared at his friend for a moment. Just as well if he gets twenty minutes, he decided. Then he got up. While he was playing medic, he might as well make the rounds, see if anyone else needed help.
But he couldn't help thinking how welcome a little sleep of his own would be.
—|—
Echo Company had been cycled into the center of the formation, providing additional security for Colonel Stossen's headquarters detachment and the civilians that had been pulled from the mountain. This sort of rotation of duty was fairly common, when there was a chance. It gave a company time away from the greater stress of perimeter duty. Echo had been on point for one column for much of the night. They were due a little relief.
The new position gave everyone in 2nd platoon a chance to see the research team at relatively close quarters. Second platoon was right behind them on the march. Joe Baerclau had difficulty keeping down the extraneous chatter among the men in his platoon. He had to act the part of the Bear to do any good at all.
They're sure not cut out for this kind of hike, Joe thought as he watched the civilians trying to keep up. Several of them had gone limp, necessitating short stops while medics applied soakers and gave advice on how to minimize walking injuries. The 13th wasn't making anywhere near the time it could have made without the civilians. Rest stops were more frequent, and longer, than they would have been without the amateurs, and the pace on the march seemed to be off by about 10 percent.
Guess we can't expect more, Joe conceded. Nine civilians, four of them women, the youngest probably past thirty-five and none of them used to this kind of trek. They'll be better off once we can get them a ride.
Trucks, APCs. There would be rides for the civilians, at least, once they rejoined the rest of the Team. But where were the APCs that had been sent out as decoys? Joe hadn't heard any news of them. Even Lieutenant Keye claimed to have no word of their fate, or location. Nothing had come from headquarters.
—|—
Bal Kenneck was the one who got the first message from the APCs. They were coming under fire from enemy tanks. Several times during the past day, Boem fighters had made quick passes, but this was the first time that the Heyers had been attacked by Schlinal ground forces.
"Okay, they've done their job," Colonel Stossen said when Kenneck gave him the news. "Tell them to break off and run for it as far and as fast as they can. We'll worry about rendezvous later. If they have a later. Don't tell them that last part," he added, unnecessarily.
Kenneck switched channels to pass the orders. Stossen stared at him, his teeth clamped so tightly together that it seemed they must splinter. Sacrificial lambs. Stossen had known that when he sent them out. Heyer APCs had no defense against tanks or artillery, or air attack. Their splat guns might do some good against infantry, for a while, but their armor wasn't thick enough to stand up to the 135mm munitions that Novas could throw at them.
If half of them escaped, it would be a victory, but Stossen held little hope of that. He didn't allow himself to dream of that sort of miracle. All the APCs could do now was—perhaps—buy a few more minutes of time for the rest of the 13th... the way 1st and 3rd recon and Afghan Battery had.
"They're running due south," Kenneck said when he had finished talking to the leader of the Heyer formation. "They have about a ninety-minute straight run that way. The Heggies will have to decide whether or not to risk pursuing them with just their armor or letting them get away."
"They've sent armor off without infantry support before."
"But this force has already walked into several traps. They might be hesitant to risk it again," Kenneck said.
"I hope you're right. It's about the only chance those poor bastards in the mixers have."
Kenneck didn't try to counter that. "Assuming that at least a fair number of them escape, Colonel, what sort of routing should we give them? After they've made that ninety-minute run, they're going to face a couple of options."
"Dig out your mapboard. Let's take a look." Stossen shook his head, almost angrily. "I guess I'm going to have to decide what we're going to do before I know where to send them."
It was a decision he had been putting off. There didn't seem to be any particularly good choices. Two long conferences with General Dacik hadn't helped much. The general had left it up to him. "We'd like to have you back here to help," Dacik said, "but you are stirring up the enemy nicely the way you're going. Bottom line is, you still have to remember your primary mission. Do whatever seems to offer the best hope of getting your charges to safety."
Where in the name of all that's holy is there any safety on Jordan? Stossen asked himself. Not out here, more than a thousand kilometers from the rest of the Accord forces and support. Not back with them. The Accord was still outnumbered by at least three to two on Jordan, and the enemy seemed to have greater stores of munitions.
Bal adjusted the field of view on the mapboard to include all three elements of the 13th—the infantry, the armor and support vehicles, and the convoy of APCs. The first two groups were now no more than a dozen kilometers apart. The APCs were more than three-hundred kilometers away, and extending that distance slightly on their southward run.
"If we break due east, toward the coast," Kenneck suggested, moving his finger over the screen from their present position to the edge, "then south. That might give us the best chance of getting back to our lines. Eventually."
"Expand the view," Stossen said, and Kenneck did. At the new scale, there was little detail to be seen. "That's got to be, what, fifteen hundred klicks or more to the coast?"
Kenneck worked the controls. "Closer to seventeen hundred," he said. "One major river crossing. We'd have to make that here." He pointed. "It's the only place along that last eight hundred klicks of river that we could be sure of getting the Havocs and the other vehicles across."
"And if the Heggies see that that's where we're going?"
"They could catch us there and pretty much do what they want," Kenneck admitted. "But it's so obvious that maybe we can get away with it. Especially if General Dacik can arrange some sort of diversion at the same time. Maybe the same sort of effort he staged to let us break out at the start of this chase."
"On the other hand," Stossen said. "If we break east, then turn north." He showed Kenneck what he was thinking of on the board. "We could get so far from any Schlinal base that we'd be almost in the clear. That might make it possible for us to get landers in, at least to evacuate our guests."
Kenneck nodded. "That would put us well out of Boem range, at least any base we know of. But it would put us completely out of everything else here, Colonel. As far as either side was concerned, we'd be effectively out of existence. Total displacement. The Heggies could ignore us, and we wouldn't be helping our people. If that made the difference, they c
ould come after us later, whenever they felt like it, after they'd wiped out the rest of our forces. Maybe we can get off-world, but that won't help General Dacik, or the Accord."
"It would accomplish our primary mission," Stossen said softly.
"But?" Kenneck prompted, noting the hesitation in the colonel's voice.
"We might make the difference here. You've been through the same command schools I have. Tactical displacement. I'd hate to see the 13th rendered irrelevant." He stared at the mapboard. He knew what choice he had to make, but still he hesitated. Once he gave the orders, the 13th would be committed.
Finally, he nodded. "We'll go your way. Figure out the best place to bring us all back together and get the orders out to the APCs. I'm going to talk to Dr. Corey, let her know what we're going to try."
And then I'll have to convince the general that I know what I'm doing, Stossen thought. Despite the way that Dacik had left the decision to him, he still thought his orders might be overruled.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Blue Flight made three runs against the tank column that started chasing the Heyers. The first time, the Wasps were unopposed in the air and had only a few surface-to-air missiles to worry about. On that trip, the three Wasps accounted for six tanks without taking any losses themselves. The second time, they had only made their first run when a flight of six Boems appeared. The Wasps had turned and run, leading the Boems away from the APCs, playing cat and mouse with them until the planes on both sides had no choice but to return to base for fresh batteries. But that mission did give the Heyers a chance to put a little more distance between themselves and the Novas. The Schlinal tanks continued their pursuit of the Heyers, but—for the moment at least—they were too far away to do any damage to the APCs that had made it that far.