by Rick Shelley
“How do you propose to respond?” Crampton asked.
“Circle the force we’ve located so they can’t run away, then pound the hell out of them from air and ground until they surrender or can’t cause trouble,” Lon said. “Keep enough men in our current perimeter to make certain we’re ready for any surprises on this side of the ridge.”
“How many men do we send? All we have is a minimum on the enemy force, not a maximum. You don’t want to send too few to handle the situation.”
“We don’t have to outnumber them on the ground, Colonel. I’m going to have four Shrikes and three attack shuttles available to provide close-in cover and hit the raiders from the air. I figure we send two platoons of my men and one of your companies east, to get below the slope and the enemy force. Send the same numbers along the western slope, ready to bend around behind the enemy. Hold off until they get close enough for our perimeter to use men on it to complete the ring.”
“Okay,” Crampton said.
“Fifteen minutes give you enough time to get your companies alerted?” Lon asked. “I’ll make it enough.”
Lon selected two platoons from Bravo and two platoons from Delta. Crampton sent his 2nd and 3rd Companies. They rendezvoused and started moving twenty minutes after the conclusion of the short conference the colonels held with their company commanders.
Lon vetoed the idea of hitting the enemy force from the air prematurely. “I want them to keep coming,” he had told the commanders during their conference. “We start hitting them now, they might disappear again, and I want to take care of that force for good, all at once, while we’ve got the chance, not just chase them off.”
The enemy’s line of march was observed as closely as possible from the air. Three pilots were already on the job, staying high enough to avoid becoming targets, low enough to catch an occasional glimpse of men moving north along the slope of the line of hills. The men on the ground appeared to be taking no special precautions to stay out of sight.
That brought a frown to Lon’s face. “They’ve never been that careless before,” he confided to Tebba Girana. “Even if they were confident of surprise, you’d think they’d take elementary precautions to avoid detection. It’s as if they want to be found, want our attention focused on them.”
“If they’re only one part of a coordinated attack on us, they might want us to look just at them,” Tebba said. “Maybe draw all our people out of defensive positions. Maybe they want to end this game as badly as we do.”
“Makes you wonder, though, just how many more men they think they can concentrate against us,” Lon said. “Six shuttles, maybe three hundred men, wouldn’t be enough—even conceding that this force we’re watching might have as many as six hundred in it.”
“Maybe there are caves with more men in them, out past where we searched, but still close by,” Tebba said.
“I haven’t forgotten that,” Lon said. “There could be cave entrances within eighty or a hundred yards of the perimeter.”
“Or closer,” Tebba said. “I remember how well hid that one you found last time was. You said you damn near missed it from ten feet away.”
“That’s why we took so much time making sure there weren’t any holes inside our lines yesterday,” Lon said. “And why I had snoops put out so close to the perimeter.”
“How much time you figure we’ve got before they hit?”
“A couple of hours, at least,” Lon said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to manage anything before sunrise. They can bring their shuttles as close as possible under cover of the storms, put the men on the ground within five or six miles if they can—two hours’ march. Of course, those people might not hit the same time as the others. If there are men underground closer, we could get hit first by the ones we can see, then the troglodytes, and finally this supposed force coming in by shuttle.”
“Troglo-what?” Tebba asked.
Lon laughed. “Troglodytes, cave dwellers.”
“No words that big in the DMC Manual,” Tebba said.
Men ate breakfast while they could, scooping food in as if the attack might come any second. Dawn—a gloomy lightening of the night. The approaching storms were close enough that flashes of lightning were visible over the peaks of the next line of hills to the west. Thunder rumbled across the valley. Thunder or heavy artillery, Lon thought, they sound so much alike at a distance. That brought a memory of Earth and his days at The Springs, the military academy of the North American Union. During the summer after his third year, Lon had spent six weeks at the army’s primary artillery training facility in the South Plains District—in what had once been the state of Oklahoma. Lon and the two hundred other cadets had been exposed to every kind of artillery the NAU army possessed, all the way up to 255mm self-propelled howitzers and the various types of rocket artillery. The noise was the dominant memory, extreme even with high-tech ear protection.
The rain arrived, light, windblown squalls followed by the heavier, more persistent thunderstorms. Those seemed to come in waves, each more intense than its predecessor, with only brief easing of the rain and wind to mark the progression.
“The rain’s liable to continue all day,” Lon warned his company commanders. “Thunderstorms off and on. Maybe some hail now and then. And CIC says a couple of the storm cells are intense enough that there’s a possibility of tornadoes.”
“Tornadoes?” Captain Magnusson of Delta repeated. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“A possibility, Ron,” Lon said. “Only a possibility.”
“Yeah, but how do we deal with a tornado if one does hit?”
“Hunker down and ride it out,” Lon said. “Pick up the pieces afterward. There’s nothing we can do about the weather. It’s not going to stop the raiders, and we can’t let it stop us. Our Shrikes can operate in just about anything except a funnel cloud, and Shrikes have the speed and maneuverability to stay away from them without completely leaving the area. Don’t get sidetracked by the chance, and don’t spend your time staring at the sky looking for one. If a tornado does appear, we’ll have a little warning. The greater danger is lightning. This isn’t a training mission back on Dirigent, where we can cancel training to avoid an electrical storm.”
“We proceed according to plan in spite of the weather?” Tebba Girana said.
“Yes,” Lon confirmed. “The rain is going to be an inconvenience, but it hits the raiders the same as it hits us, and they might not be as well prepared as we are. Stay low, stay focused. Visibility is going to be minimal. We might have to go to our night-vision gear if it gets too bad.”
The units that had to move were on the way. The men who were remaining in the perimeter had shifted to cover the gaps left by the mercenaries and militiamen who were on their way to intercept the raiders coming north along the eastern slope of the ridge. Lon expected the first contact to come within the next ten or fifteen minutes.
The rain. Dirigenter battledress uniforms were designed to shed water rather than absorb it, but the protection was not quite total over extended exposure. In time, the fabric would begin to absorb water rather than repel it. And despite the best care, there could be some infiltration of water at the neck and wrists. But it was better than nothing. Dirigenter battle helmets shed most of the water that hit them past the neck. Faceplates were treated to prevent water from beading on them. An occasional wipe kept visibility from becoming impossible.
Mud was a problem only in the valley and on the lowest stretch of the slope, but the ground became soft and mushy wherever the rocky spine of the ridge had gathered soil.
CIC radioed Lon that the enemy ship was moving again, coming in toward the planet on a course similar to the one it had followed to deploy the shuttles. “We don’t anticipate them launching significant reinforcements,” Captain Roim of Long Snake said. “They shouldn’t have many more shuttles available, likely just enough for the crew.”
“Then why come in again at all?” Lon asked.
“It’s
possible that they might try to launch missiles at you,” Roim said, “but our best guess is that the ship is merely a decoy, trying to draw our attention away from the action at your location, maybe hoping to get us to divert Shrikes from close air support to chase the ship.”
Lon hesitated. “It would be nice to zap that ship, Captain, for a number of reasons.”
“I agree, but…it’s iffy at best, Colonel. Even if we pulled all our Shrikes and spread them to give us our best shot at intercepting, we couldn’t be certain of destroying or disabling that ship, and we’d rob you of most of your air cover.”
“We can’t go that far, Captain. Too many men on the ground here, but if we could move Taranto a little closer to the course that ship is on, maybe deploy four or six Shrikes, we might get lucky.”
“We’ll do what we can.”
Mercenaries and militiamen reached their positions around the raider force—which had slowed its advance. The ring around the enemy column was virtually complete. The best estimates from the officers on the scene was that the enemy force consisted of about three hundred men. Their point squad had stopped completely, and the rest of the column was adjusting its positions rather than continuing to march north along the slope. The point was still three hundred yards from the perimeter of the main DMC and BCM forces.
“I think they’re waiting for something,” Lieutenant Crampton reported, to both his father and Lon.
“Waiting for another group?” Colonel Crampton suggested. “Coordinating their attacks?”
“Could be,” Lon said. “Let’s spoil their timetable. Two minutes, Lieutenant. From now.” Lon noted the exact time. “I’ll notify the other commanders. I want everyone to hit them at once.”
Gunfire and grenade explosions. The coordination was better than Lon had allowed himself to hope. The two militia companies came in perfectly timed with the mercenary platoons. The difference in altitude among the various components helped minimize the danger of friendly-fire casualties—always a concern with an enemy force completely surrounded.
For thirty seconds the battle seemed completely one-sided. Lon could not distinguish the heavier sound of raider rifles. The only gunfire came from the Dirigenters and the Bancroft militia. Then, just as the encircled raiders started to return fire, gunfire sounded west of that fight, on the western slope of the ridge, south of the perimeter.
“They’ve come out of the caves!” At first Lon did not recognize the voice as Ron Magnusson’s. His company was the closest DMC unit. “At least two companies, Colonel, maybe a full battalion. Some are moving up the slope behind our people. The rest are coming straight at us.”
Lon did not have a chance to reply immediately. That was when the enemy shuttles struck from the west.
26
The enemy shuttles came in low and relatively slowly. By the time Lon heard the report that the shuttles had dropped three hundred men on rocket packs half a mile west of the perimeter, the shuttles’ multibarrel cannons were already firing, chewing paths through the forest and up the western slope of the ridge.
Two Shrikes had started strafing runs on the raiders on the eastern side of the ridgeline just before the enemy shuttles were spotted. The Shrikes were coming out of their shallow dives after hitting the raiders on the ground with cannon fire and rockets as the enemy shuttles approached the crest of the ridge, climbing and accelerating, directly toward the Shrikes.
In virtually any other circumstances, the boxy raider shuttles would have been no match for the Dirigenter fighters. Shrikes were faster, more maneuverable, and better protected. But chance more than design brought shuttles and Shrikes together when the DMC craft were most vulnerable.
All four raider shuttles launched missiles—two apiece—at the pair of Shrikes. There were too many missiles, too close, for the Shrikes to defeat them with electronic countermeasures or evasive maneuvers. Both were hit more than once and erupted in balls of fire. Neither pilot had a chance to eject.
The nearest Shrike exploded little more than three hundred yards from Lon’s position, less than a thousand feet above the crest of the ridge. Debris, much of it burning, showered down on the slopes. Luckily, most of the wreckage came down well away from the manned positions. None of it hit the few dozen men who were near the center. And with all the rain, the fires quickly burned out.
Lon took only minimal notice. There was too much happening all at once. The Shrikes had exploded. Their pilots had not ejected. He radioed that news to CIC, then turned his attention to the more critical problems on the ground.
The men caught in the middle of the two raider forces, high on the western slope, already knew that they were in the middle. The commanders were responding as best they could. On the perimeter, Captain Magnusson was doing what little he could to ease the pressure on the exposed mercenaries and militia without moving his remaining two platoons out of the perimeter to advance on the enemy force on the slope in front of his positions—a force that was also advancing toward him.
“Tebba, move your company south,” Lon said. The last wreckage from the Shrikes had scarcely hit the ground. “Push through behind our people on this side of the slope. Try not to lose contact with the perimeter, though. And remember, we’re suddenly short on air cover.” There were still two Shrikes supposedly on station, and the shuttles that Lon had put in the air, but the loss of two fighters was still of major significance…apart from the pilots killed.
Lon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The last force—so far as he knew—of raiders on the ground would need at least another seven or eight minutes before they could get close enough to the western perimeter to cause trouble, and the units closest to them knew they were coming. But the fact that there were raiders on that side kept Lon from pulling soldiers from there to help with the enemy on the south.
Do I dare strip men from the northern arc of the line? he wondered. North and northeast were the only sections of the perimeter not directly threatened by raider ground forces. After a few seconds, Lon decided not to attempt it. Yet. Not until the situation was a lot clearer…or more desperate.
Four raider shuttles came back for a second pass. This time the Dirigenter shuttles and Shrikes were ready. The final two Shrikes overhead came at the raider shuttles from ahead and above. The mercenaries’ attack shuttles came at them from the north. This time the results were more satisfying. None of the Dirigenter craft were hit, and two of the raiders shuttles went down hard. The other two reversed course and headed west, into the heart of the storm, at full acceleration.
The Dirigenters did not pursue. Instead, they turned to help the forces on the ground. The Shrikes took the lead, since they would have a better chance to avoid surface-to-air missiles.
There were plenty of those after the raider shuttles had cleared the area. Lon noted three, and heard reports of others. In all, at least a dozen SAMs were fired by the raiders—without effect.
The initial ambush that Lon had engineered had turned into a confused melee. There were four groups of soldiers more or less parallel, alternating, which left one combined force of mercenaries and militia between two enemy forces, and one raider unit also sandwiched. On the eastern side of the hill, the two DMC platoons from Bravo Company and the militia 2nd Company commanded by Lieutenant Crampton were trying to fight their way upslope to close with the enemy. That first raider column had been hit the hardest. The younger Crampton reported that the raiders looked to have suffered nearly 50 percent casualties, with the rest in considerable disarray. “We have fixed bayonets and are moving in for the kill,” the young commander said.
• • •
On the western side of the hill, Lon’s Alpha Company was moving through the perimeter, thrusting a wedge out toward the area between the other half of the initial ambushing force and the raiders who had come up from the south—presumably out of caves—to support it. Tebba was coordinating with Delta’s platoon leader and sergeants, and the two militia company commanders ahead of him, letting them
concentrate on the first raider force while he moved in on their flank.
That was when the final raider force joined the battle, firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades from the west. The final force that the defenders had been aware of.
A new source of incoming fire on the northern end of the perimeter came as a complete surprise to Lon. For a few seconds after Captain Carlin reported it, Lon was silent, startled. Then he found a possible explanation.
“That first batch, Brock, from the other day. They went north instead of south. They’ve been lying in wait out there, somewhere. That has to be it.”
“Maybe, Colonel, but I think there are more guns out there than the couple of platoons that went off that way could account for. This sounds like a full company or more,” Carlin replied. “Just how many raiders are there here? They must be hitting us with every man they’ve got.”
“Then let’s make sure we do the job we came here for,” Lon said. “Hang on while I get Sefer and Colonel Crampton in on this.” The pause was not long.
“We need to shrink our perimeter,” Lon said. “Pull back toward the ridge on the west and pull south toward my position on the north before we get too extended to deal with all this crap.”
“I’ve only got two of my platoons here, remember that,” Carlin said. “The rest are over on the other side of the ridge.”
“I remember,” Lon said. “Two of your platoons and two of Magnusson’s. As you move back, I want you to slide up higher on the slope. Sefer, your people will fill the gap as you get back toward the base of the hills. Can you get a platoon out without them being seen to give us a better idea how many men we’ve got coming in on the north?”