by Rick Shelley
Gene Abru stayed close to Philippa Corey, as he had from the beginning. She was digging with great vigor, if little skill.
Quite a head on her shoulders, for a civilian, Gene thought. She hadn't questioned his orders to get out and start digging. Most civilians seemed to think that any armored vehicle, even a Heyer, represented the ultimate in protection, instead of being merely a flimsy shell that drew heavy enemy munitions. Once, during the ride, she had even taken time to reinforce the orders that Colonel Stossen had given Abru.
"No matter what it takes, you can't let us fall into enemy hands, and you can't let them get the data cubes we're carrying." Holding his eyes with her own, she had repeated, "No matter what it takes."
"Those are my orders, Doctor," he had assured her, "and I always obey orders." The latter was, to say the least, an exaggeration. In the field, an SI team leader had extraordinary discretion about formalities like orders. But this order he would obey without hesitation. If it came to that point, it would almost certainly be the last order he would ever have to obey.
—|—
"How many are there?" Stossen asked. This conference was over the radio. With the 13th under fire, the colonel wouldn't cluster his staff together where a single shell or rocket could take them all out.
"Absolute minimum, call it two battalions of tanks, probably three, and at least one battalion of infantry, more likely an entire regiment," Bal said. "Not any of the groups we knew about. Either the Heggies managed to sneak more troops away from the lines than the general knew about or these were reserves, close enough to get here without being noticed."
"As far as we can tell, they're all east and south of us," Dezo said. "The patrols on the north have seen nothing, and the enemy infantry is just not getting in range of the rear guard, from the south."
"Trying to encircle us?" Stossen asked.
"Doesn't look as if they're up to anything that coordinated yet," Kenneck said. "Just trying to get us tied down until they get reinforcements. We stay in one place, we could be tied down permanently in another four hours."
"So if we want to keep some distance, we have to deal with this batch, however many they are, in two hours or less," Stossen said.
"Once we get a better idea what we're facing, we'll know what we can do," Ingels said.
"We'd better be able to do whatever it takes to bust loose, and soon," Stossen said.
"Takes more than that," Parks said. "It won't matter if we're on the move again if we've got all those Novas chopping us up."
"Our artillery is on them now," Ingels said after a hurried conference with the battery commanders. "The Wasps are finally getting them good targeting data. We've got patrols out, trying to circle around to give us good numbers on the infantry."
"We can't wait forever," Stossen said. "As soon as the tanks are fully engaged by our Havocs, we'll wade into them, infantry and Heyers. We'll get some use out of the splat guns on the mixers, use the rest to give the men what protection they can."
"East and south?" Parks asked.
"Right. The patrols that are out on foot now, tell them to keep at what they're doing. We'll pick them up as we can."
—|—
Moving east, Echo's 2nd platoon adjusted its formation, putting two point men out. Mort continued to hold the post for first squad. Twenty meters south, third squad had another man out front. He and Mort communicated directly. Behind them, the rest of their respective fire teams followed, and behind them, the rest of the platoon in a skirmish line.
Joe moved with Ezra's fire team, in communication with both point men. They weren't always visible. The platoon was in dense forest, a narrow band that paralleled the river but didn't extend right to the bank. In the floodplain immediately adjacent to the river, there was only tall, reedy grass mixed with a few stunted trees. The band of larger trees, a mixture of evergreen and deciduous varieties, was between three and eight kilometers wide, giving way to more open prairie broken only by occasional stands of trees. The 13th had been rolling through that more open ground. In the trees, the vehicles would have been reduced to a crawl and it would have been impossible to keep any sort of coherent formation.
Open ground was for vehicles. The woods were made for mudders.
Joe heard the 13th's new orders from Izzy Walker and passed them on to his squad leaders. Continue the operation. They'll pick us up. Be alert for any Heggies trying to get around to this side of the formation.
Once the 13th jumped fully into the fight, almost anything could happen. Joe had been in uniform long enough to know that.
We're away from the fighting again, he thought, but not with any particular relief. Combat was deadly. Battle took something out of a man, even if his side won and he wasn't hurt. But to miss a fight... sometimes, that could take just as much out of him, particularly if his mates came out on the short end.
There had been a lot of short ends for the Accord on Jordan.
The sounds of Heyer engines on the move finally reached the patrol. In an almost unconscious response, the two point men picked up their pace. Joe noticed, but didn't stop them. The sooner we get our job done the better, he thought.
As he could, Joe checked with Lieutenant Keye and the first sergeant, trying to keep informed. The reports were brief and usually covered no more than what the two men could see personally—not a lot. The Heyers advanced on the ambushing Schlinal troops, with the infantry in skirmish lines alongside and behind the mixers. The artillery was ranging about, shooting whenever they had targets. The Wasps—four left now—were in the air, also attacking when and as possible.
"Peel your eyes back a little more," Joe advised over his platoon channel. "Things might start popping any second." It had been five minutes since the Heyers had started leading the 13th's counterattack.
Once more, Joe glanced at the power indicator on his rifle. It was still at 100 percent, and Joe knew that he had a full spool of wire in.
"Hold up," Joe told the point men after another five minutes. "We must be close. Let's bring this back into a proper skirmish line. No sense leaving you two out to dry in front now."
The point men went down behind the best near cover and waited for the rest of the platoon to catch up. Joe pulled fourth squad back to serve as rear guard and reserve. They could be moved wherever they might be needed once any shooting started. If it did. Joe took up a position for himself just behind the skirmishers, in the center.
"Okay, let's get going again. Carefully now. We must be nearly even with where the point of the column was when the Heggies triggered the ambush."
For an instant, Joe flirted with the idea of having the platoon go to ground and wait for Heggies to come to them, a small counter-ambush. The idea was tempting. It would give the platoon a little edge, the defense waiting for the other side to come into range. Let the Heggies expose themselves first. But, reluctantly, Joe set that scenario aside. He couldn't fit it into the orders he had received.
Joe brought his rifle up a little more, at the ready, not quite at drill field port arms. The muzzle was too much to the front, a fraction of a second from being able to come to bear on an enemy... "out there"—in front.
The platoon was moving very slowly now, with hesitations after every step as the men looked for possible targets—and good cover. There would be little warning when—if—they did stumble upon an enemy that was down and waiting for them. Any clues would likely be subtle, easy to miss. The men moved at a crouch, rifles pointed more and more to the front.
The veterans in the platoon provided stability, both by example and by advice. By this point in the Jordan campaign, even the new men had some seasoning. People reacted differently to this kind of stress. Even when their overt actions were identical, drilled in over many long training sessions, inwardly each man had his personal response. Some, like Mort Jaiffer and Ezra Frain, became exceptionally calm, so totally methodical in thought and observation that they might almost have been programmed by rather primitive computers. Others,
like Wiz Mackey, became extremely tense, ready to erupt into action like a spring suddenly released from tight bonds. Of the new men in first squad, Pit Tymphe seemed, so far, most like Wiz in his response to the stress. Carl Eames was already almost as calm about the business as the squad's two noncoms. Olly Wytten fell somewhere in between, to the surprise of the veterans. Mort had tagged him as another of the overwound spring types.
The platoon did get lucky. The last man on the right end of the skirmish line spotted a Heggie patrol perhaps a tenth of a second before he was spotted by them. He had time to call out a warning over the platoon frequency and start his dive to cover before the nearest of the Heggies—he saw three of them on his way down—could open fire. By that time, most of third squad was already shooting.
"Ezra, take your squad out and see if you can get around them," Joe said. "It doesn't sound like there's too many of them. Only a squad, or less. There's no way to tell yet."
Joe reported back to Lieutenant Keye and First Sergeant Walker that they had made contact and that a firefight was in progress.
"Push on as best you can," Keye replied. "We're a little busy here ourselves right now." He hadn't even stopped firing his splat gun during the short conversation. The 13th's advance into the ambushing Schlinal troops was turning into a real melee, confused small actions moving around one another.
"Trying to flank them now," Joe said before he switched channels. "Frank, take your squad around to the right. Try to cut them off there." Sergeant Frank Symes was fourth squad leader. "You run into any more of them, get down until we have some idea what we're up against."
"On our way," Symes replied.
Staying low—on hands and knees when he thought he had decent cover, slithering along on his belly when he didn't—Joe started to move toward where third squad was engaged. It still sounded as if there might be no more than a half dozen Schlinal wire rifles firing. The standard Schlinal weapon made a different sound than the Accord Armanoc. After very little exposure to both, a soldier could tell which was which.
Joe was still twenty meters from Sauv Degtree's position when new firing started, on the right, where fourth squad was moving.
"What is it, Frank?" Joe asked.
"Don't know yet. One of my men thought he saw something. No return fire yet. We're checking it out."
Joe waited for several seconds before he resumed his own movement. He was staying very low now. There was wire whizzing by overhead—not far enough overhead for comfort.
"They're pulling back," Degtree said when he noticed Joe. "That way." He pointed southeast.
"Frank, moving across your front from the left. The Heggies who've been doing the shooting," Joe said, relaying the information before he said anything to Degtree.
"I see them," Symes said. "We're taking them under fire."
The Schlinal soldiers went down. Although there was no immediate return fire from them, no one assumed that they had all been killed—or even wounded.
"Move in carefully," Joe told both squad leaders. "Second squad, move around up here. Don't let first get too far away."
Joe waited until second squad was moving before he made his next call. "Ezra, you found anything yet?"
"Not a sniff. You want us to bend around behind those Heggies you've got?"
"No. Wait until you link up with second. Then both of you echelon around. Unless something else happens first."
"Roger." There was a pause before Ezra said, "We're down and waiting. Where's second?"
"Low" Gerrent, second squad's leader, broke in to say, "I've already got you in sight. Ten seconds and we'll be ready."
That was when the shooting started on the left, from beyond the north end of first squad's line.
—|—
Mort felt wire pelting his helmet as he dove for cover. It wasn't the first time he had been dinged that way. The first time, after that fight was over, he had described it in almost whimsical terms. "Like getting hit with rice at a wedding," he told the rookies who joined the squad when the 13th got back to base. "Rice with a bad attitude."
He didn't waste energy on thoughts like that while he was being pelted with wire. He went flat, head toward the incoming fire. He waited for pain to come, the pain that would tell him that he had other hits, wire that had penetrated his net armor or found one of the gaps. When no pain came, he brought his rifle into position and fired off a couple of short bursts. He knew there was little chance that he would hit anyone. What he wanted now was either to draw more fire or suppress it. Either would help. If more wire came in, he might get a better idea where to aim. If no more came, that carried its own, more obvious reward.
"Anybody see where that came from?" Ezra asked.
There were no affirmative answers, and the squad was too well trained to waste air on negatives.
Joe redirected his attention to the left, where the heavier Schlinal fire was. First squad had gone to cover seventy or eighty meters from where Joe was. He heard the news that third and fourth squad had zeroed in on the lone squad that had started the firefight. There was another heavy burst of Armanoc fire over there, and then Sauv reported that the enemy squad had all been accounted for.
"Looks like we're facing at least a platoon," Ezra told Joe a minute later. "I think they were moving, trying to get around on the river side."
"You have any casualties?" Joe asked.
"Negative. The Professor may need a new bonnet, but he's okay."
"Keep 'em busy. I'll get help to you as quick as possible."
Joe pulled third squad back to go with him, around the left to get in front of the new Heggie contact. He sent fourth squad the other way, to try to get behind them.
The squads moved as quickly as reasonable, by fire team. Joe moved with third squad's second fire team. The groups leapfrogged one another. During the first several cycles, they didn't draw any Heggie fire. When wire did start coming their way, it was light, perhaps no more than two or three rifles aimed at them, and too far away for the wire to be especially dangerous.
Joe turned the squad more to the northwest, trying to keep the enemy far enough away to let them move quickly without taking serious hits. Then they bent back toward the east. As they closed in on where the enemy seemed to be, the fire team that was moving let loose with suppressing fire while they ran.
And drew more enemy fire in return.
Time seemed to speed up for Joe. Up and run, down and cover. Even the slight breeze seemed to double its velocity. Joe recognized the feeling of being pumped up as he moved toward danger. The sound of enemy wire flying past made the hair on his arms stand on end. First and second squads were firing into the enemy from cover to Joe's right. Somewhere beyond, fourth squad was still trying to get around to cover the third side of the enemy force.
Second platoon started to take casualties. Joe heard calls for medics from both first and second squad. He saw a man in third squad go down and called for that squad's medic himself.
But the enemy fire was diminishing at the same time.
"They're on the run!" Ezra reported.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"It's like trying to catch rain in a net," Dezo Parks complained. "I've never seen Heggies play this game, breaking into small units and turning guerrilla."
There was little enemy armor still firing, but Parks was certain that no more than half of the Novas had been destroyed. At least a dozen were racing away from the 13th at the best speed they could make. Perhaps a few more were hiding, close, shut down, under thermal tarps. The Wasps all needed to land to rearm. None had any rockets left; only one or two had rounds for their forward cannons.
"No help for it," Van Stossen replied. "Let's make as much of a mark as we can in the next fifteen or twenty minutes. We'll try to disengage then, get the men mounted again."
"We haven't seen any trucks to haul these troops," Dezo admitted. "With their armor on the run, we might have a chance to put some real distance between us. Until the tanks come back."
&
nbsp; "Start the Wasp support units moving now, with their security detachment. We've got to get them clear first. Those planes haven't got more than another twenty or thirty minutes of juice left."
"I've already alerted them. All of the support vans, Wasp and Havoc."
"What line company can we mount up fastest to cover them?"
"Howard. We've kept them close to their mixers and the trucks."
"Okay, they go along. Start them now. They'll need to get a good ten klicks to give them time to get the Wasps down and back up."
—|—
Echo's second platoon moved forward again, a little faster now with an enemy in retreat, but still not carelessly. They knew that there were still a lot of Heggies, somewhere close, and no one wanted to dash headlong into something too big for them to handle.
"Turn the corner," Joe ordered after five minutes. "We've gone too far east now." Their job wasn't pursuit of one small enemy unit. They needed to get behind whatever enemy was engaged with the rest of the 13th. If they could.
They didn't make much progress south before new orders came. Joe whistled over the platoon frequency. "Hold up. We've got to get back to our mixers." He had already given directions for the Heyers, through Lieutenant Keye. All the platoon had to do now was make it to the rendezvous.
"Back right over the path we took coming out," Joe told the squad leaders. "Don't let your men dope off just because they've seen it before."
Going out, Joe had stayed close to the point squad. On the way back, he lingered just in front of the rear guard. Where trouble was most likely. The conscious part of the decision was to avoid getting too close. As platoon sergeant, he wasn't supposed to be the first one involved in any fighting. He had broader duties.
Joe didn't walk backward, but he spent so much time looking over his shoulder that his neck started to ache. He had a nasty itch in his mind, an itch that worried that the Heggies would ambush them one more time before they could get to their Heyers.
This time, the itch was wrong.