by Rick Shelley
The early successes had been heady. The crews of Sheffield and Repulse had been ready to take on the galaxy, certain they could beat any odds. Then the Federation ships started to play by Truscott’s new rules. There hadn’t been any exchange of fire in fourteen hours. The sides played hideandseek, retreating to Qspace as soon as the enemy showed up, jumping to new positions, coming out over Buchanan just often enough to keep each other from fully supporting their ground forces.
Sunrise was approaching the settlements again.
Truscott rubbed his face with both hands. His ships were far out in the Buchanan system, over the far side of the system’s outer gas giant. The planet’s electromagnetic signatures completely masked the ships’. They were nearly as invisible as they would be in Qspace. They were also almost as isolated as they would be there. The images they could see of Buchanan were too old to have any tactical value—ancient history for all practical purposes.
The hours of relative inaction had served some needs. The ships had been able to repair some battle damage. Thames had replenished the munitions stores of the other ships. There had been time to do extended checks on Nilssen generators and other essential equipment. But now…
“Alonzo, how do we draw them into combat on our terms?” Truscott asked, breaking several minutes of utter silence on the flag bridge.
“Put a couple of flights of Spacehawks out to go after their ground troops,” Rinaldi said after a moment.
“That means risking the fighters and maybe putting ourselves in a vulnerable position. If they come at us during launch or recovery, we’re in a poor position to defend ourselves. Ties us down until we finish the operation and takes at least twenty percent of our weapons out of action.”
“Any other ideas?”
“That’s all I’ve been able to come up with so far.”
“Put one flight of the alert squadron in their cockpits,” Truscott said after two minutes of tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘ ‘We’ll jump in and gang launch them. As soon as they’re beyond the bubble radius, we return to Qspace and come out on the tail of Boulder, ready to jump back in when and if the Federation ships stand to against the fighters.”
“Yes, sir,” Rinaldi said. “How soon?”
“Twenty minutes. That’ll make it light over all of the Federation troops on the ground. We want them to see our birds this time. If they’re in radio contact with their ships, I want them to be able to call for help.”
Josef groaned as he woke. Sleep had been a long time coming the night before, and it had been disturbed frequently. His flight suit hadn’t been designed as camping gear.
“It’ll get worse,” one of the Marines had assured him the evening before. “Tomorrow afternoon, when it gets hotter than hell and you can’t use your suit’s air conditioning because of the electronics blackout.”
The Marine had disturbed Josefs first attempt to sleep. He had a present for the pilot, the rifle that had belonged to one of the Marines who had been killed in the last ambush. The Marine took time to give Josef basic instructions. You put the magazine in here; pull this bolt back to load the chamber and cock it; squeeze the trigger; remove the empty magazine; start all over. He had ignored Josefs protests that he knew how to handle a rifle. The Marine’s instructions had been to give the flyer a lesson, and that was what he was going to do.
Josef used the rifle to help him get to his feet when he woke in the predawn twilight. His joints were stiff, and his flight suit felt as if it had doubled its mass overnight. He stretched and groaned again, thinking how wonderful a cup of hot coffee would go down, how much he would like to have his berth back on Sheffield to crawl into for some real sleep… not to mention how much he would like a full, hot breakfast in place of barely edible field rations… and, most of all, Kate. But he couldn’t think about her now. To think would be to worry.
Josef looked around. Marines were working on the open side of the bivouac, cutting down trees, trimming branches, building a barricade. Everyone else seemed to be digging holes, or enlarging holes they had started the evening before.
“Should I be digging too?” he asked himself. The night before, he had just found himself a place to sleep near the command bunker. He didn’t have a shovel in any case, and no one had come around to give him one.
One of the Marine sergeants came up to Josef then and held out a breakfast pack. “I’m David Spencer.”
Josef nodded and took the meal pack. No matter how the food tasted, it was food. ‘ ‘What the hell am I supposed to be doing?” Josef asked. “Should I be digging myself a hole, or what?”
“I’ll have one of the men dig you a pit, sir. That’ll be faster. There’s quite a force of Feddies heading our way. Two different groups, coming from the west and from the north. The ones to our west were just a little slower reaching your location yesterday than we were.”
“You mean they still want me?”
A smile found its way onto David’s face. “I wouldn’t take is so personal, sir. I’d say they want all of us, dead or captured, preferably dead. Prisoners are such a nuisance.”
“They obviously know where we are,” Ian told Ewing, “So there’s not one bloody reason why we shouldn’t use all the advantages we have.”
“Maybe they don’t know our exact position,” Ewing countered. “We’ve kept everything on the hush all night. Maybe they’ll assume we’ve moved.”
“We need the mapboard to track them. And I want to contact Sheffield about air support, and to find out whether we still have ships up there. It makes a difference,” Ian said.
“We can still minimize our exposure for now, sir,” Ewing pressed. “There’s no need to switch on everything. I’d best put the NCOs on full electronics to watch for incoming signals, but we can hold off on the rest until the Feddies are on top of us.”
Ian nodded. ‘ ‘Yes, no reason to give them a head count. Get your sergeants notified. I’ll wait till you get back before I switch on the mapboard and try to contact Sheffield.”
After Ewing left, Ian turned to the prince. “I didn’t hear you offering opinions.”
“Couldn’t decide which I preferred. I can see both sides. Besides, it might have given the wrong impression if I’d come out in favor of contacting Sheffield for help. Might have looked as if I were simply trying to get myself out of a jam.”
Ian shook his head slowly. “I haven’t noticed you doing a lot of talking with Weintraub either.”
“He’s on the line with the Marines,” William countered. “We did natter for a time last evening. Of course, most of the chat seemed to be of the ‘If we get out of this alive’ sort.”
“Yes, there is that.” Ian picked up his needle rifle and checked the safety.
“Hardly the place for a senior naval officer to make his last stand, is it?” the prince asked softly.
“Or a king’s brother?” Ian replied.
William shrugged. “Who can tell? I might serve the Commonwealth more by dying in battle than I can do alive. Symbolism is important.”
“That lot north of us is moving.” Bandar Jawad pointed at the mapboard. Josef had joined Prince William, Ian Shrikes, Asa Ewing, and Sergeants Spencer and Avriel around Bandar.
“If they’re in communication, the other lot will be moving within the next few minutes,” David said.
“That’ll give them almost identical distances to cover to get to us.”
“We’re going to get some help,” Ian told the others.
“I’ve been on to Sheffield.” He had needed three tries before he got an answer. The flagship had been off in Qspace. “They’re launching a flight of Spacehawks to harass the enemy. Besides giving us a hand, they hope to draw in the rest of the Feddie fleet.”
“One flight?” Josef asked, just joining the group. “Then the only real purpose is for them to be a lure for the enemy fleet. Any help they actually give us will be incidental.”
“The fight up there is more important than anything we might fac
e down here,” Prince William said. “If we lose our ships, or if they can’t do anything because of the Federation fleet, it doesn’t matter how much havoc we wreak on the ground troops. They can wait us out or come in and hunt us down the way we were hunting them.”
“We’ll do what we can, sir,” David said.
“England expects every man to do his duty,” William quoted.
“What’s that, sir?” David asked.
The prince shook his head. “Ancient history. What Admiral Nelson said to his men before the battle of Trafalgar.”
It was David’s turn to shake his head. “I didn’t know that, sir, but, begging your pardon, we’re all talking as if we were already dead. It wouldn’t do for the lads to hear us talking this way.” It’s not doing me any good either, he thought.
The distant explosions were clearly audible to the Marines, but there were no cheers. Instead, the men got more alert, bringing weapons to the ready, looking off into the forest as if the enemy might appear that very second.
“Be an hour at least before they get here,” David called out to the men on one stretch of the ridge. He headed back down to the command bunker. Lieutenant Ewing was shaking his head as David approached.
“Not near as much as we hoped for,” Ewing said. ‘ ‘They left too much of a gap between their scouts and the main body. We only lost six red blips.”
David shrugged. “Six less for us to face later. It should slow the rest a trifle. If those fighters take care of a few more, we’ll be in fairly decent shape—least as far as these two groups are concerned.”
“Yes, Spencer, I know. They don’t outnumber us any more than three to two now and we’ve got the high ground and defensive positions. You will let me worry about the space fight, won’t you?”
Six Spacehawks made runs against the Federation forces. The fighters came in two at a time and alternated between the two enemy columns. The newly landed Federation troops were more prepared for air defense than the ones who had been surprised on the ground by the arrival of the Commonwealth fleet. They had more than a few surfacetoair missiles. Two Spacehawks were destroyed in the first five minutes of the air raid. Another fighter was damaged. Its pilot pulled up and away, looking for altitude and a healthier neighborhood to eject in.
After that, the remaining three fighters were more cautious in their attacks, keeping more altitude and distance as they launched their missiles and made their strafing runs. The Federation troops blanked their electronics and moved under cover of the forest. Then the last three fighters went to full power and made a bum to orbit.
“The Feddie ships came out,” Ian whispered to Prince William. “Down to allornothing time.”
David’s platoon held the center of the main ridge. Alpha Company of the First Battalion was to their left, holding the south end of the ridge and stretching around to the flank and half of the rear. Delta of the Fourth completed the perimeter on the north—ridge, flank, and rear. The few remaining Marines from Sheffield were in a trench around the command bunker, with the VIPs, the wounded, and the flyer.
Doug Weintraub was on the ridge, his foxhole between those of David Spencer and Alfie Edwards.
The first attack came in the form of a few longrange rifle shots, unnervingly close for their length—over four hundred yards. Doug saw one bullet kick up dirt less than two feet from his foxhole. Slugthrowers were the only rifles with that sort of range.
A couple of minutes later, there were two explosions out in the forest, some distance and seconds apart.
David nodded slightly. The explosions placed the enemy precisely for him. They had reached the first line of landmines I&R platoon had spread across the approaches to the firebase the night before, 250
yards out. There was one more line of mines, plus a few extras scattered at random to make the enemy think that the routes were more heavily mined than they actually were.
“Hold your fire,” David told his men over the platoon circuit. “Squad leaders, make sure everyone’s switched on.” The first shots were meant to be the signal for that.
There was another explosion, off to the north, in front of the other group of advancing Federation troops, then a spate of firing as they opened up on Delta Company. Bandar Jawad’s men held their fire.
Lieutenant Ewing had given no command to return fire. The plan was to wait until the Federation troops were within one hundred yards. The Marines had no way to know how long their ammunition would have to last, and their reserves were finite, not to be wasted on futile sound effects at long range.
David had his mapboard open and on. The red blips that represented the enemy drew steadily nearer, nearing the second line of mines. David looked up as the first of those mines went off. Then there was a period of silence, followed by a number of rifle shots—that were, in turn, followed by a number of mine explosions as the Federation troops located and cleared the obstacles.
Too fast and too many, David thought, and he realized that it meant that the Federation must have superior mine detectors.
It doesn’t matter. They don’t outnumber us by more than three to two, and that’s not enough to make up for position, David assured himself. But he was looking at his mapboard when the number of red blips almost doubled as more Federation helmets were turned on.
Alfie had his needle rifle at his side, but he held his grenade launcher. He would need that long before it was time to start spraying needles. He took long, slow breaths, focusing completely on the forest. Alfie had marked his kill zone, and knew its limits intimately. What lay to either side was of little concern.
Other Marines would watch those zones, overlapping the edge of his. Once the fighting started, casualties would mean redefining zones of fire… but it was all part of the drill.
Don’t kid yourself, Alfie boy. This is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. These aren’t colonials who don’t know right from left. These are professional soldiers, or conscripts trained by longterm pros. They’ll know the drill as well as you do.
Alfie blinked three times quickly after staring for too long. Too long. The silence had lasted too long as well. He glanced over toward Sergeant Spencer, who was intent on the forest below. Alfie looked the other way. Everyone was watching, waiting. He moved his right hand away from his rifle long enough to wipe the sweat off on his trousers. The waiting.
• • •
The first volley of grenades, the first sustained shooting, came from the south, where there were no red blips at all. The grenades looped in over the dugin Marines, scattering shrapnel and white phosphorus over half the clearing. The phosphorus burned and set fire to whatever ground cover it touched.
David glanced to his left, but only for an instant. He knew he had to mind his own front, not worry about the flank. The largest concentrations of Federation troops had to be to the west and north. That shouldn’t be more than a single patrol, he told himself, sneaking around without their helmets on.
But he worried about how many more of the enemy might still be out there without electronics. They’re too damn willing to use that trick.
Then it was time for the men on the ridge to duck. A dozen grenades exploded within a second or two.
Most hit the west face of the ridge, but before the Marines could lift their heads after the last blast, Federation rifle fire raked their positions.
“Return fire when you have targets,” Ewing ordered over the allhands channel.
David smiled thinly as he brought his rifle up. There were no Feddies visible yet. But by linking his sights with his helmet’s electronics, he could lock onto the enemy’s helmets—as long as the marked positions weren’t hopelessly obsolete by the time he fired. That depended on how recently the positions had been updated, how far away the ships of the Commonwealth fleet were. But David didn’t demand perfection.
He fired short bursts, moving from blip to blip on the headup display on his visor, scattering each burst over a narrow range to make up for random movements in the seconds, or
minutes, since the projection’s last update. Along the ridge, other Marines were firing as well. Closest to David, Doug held back. He didn’t know how to link his rifle to his helmet, and it was too late to teach him.
“Just hold on, Doug,” David told him over a private channel. “We’re using our helmets for target acquisition. Wait until you see movement. Don’t waste ammunition.”
“Right,” Doug answered, his voice tight.
David switched channels to talk to Bandar. “You showing any activity over there yet?”
“Just a few stray shots,” Bandar said. “The bulk of this group seems to be trying to slide around to the east. The way they’re going, you’d think they didn’t know we can trace their helmets.”
“Doesn’t wash,” David said. “They’ve spent too much effort hiding their electronics when it suited them.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Bandar said. “The movement of helmets must be a feint. They want us to concentrate on them.”
“Keep your arse down,” David advised. “It’s too inviting a target.”
The first sustained assault came against the northeast corner of the firebase. With heavy supporting fire from grenades and rifles on the other sides, a company of Federation soldiers advanced against the shoulder of the low hill on the north side of the firebase, where the hill dropped to meet the makeshift barricades stretched across the east.
There was no mad charge of screaming warriors. The Federation soldiers were too professional. They knew the utter futility of such an antiquated tactic. A handful of needlers could wipe out battalions of running soldiers, even without the backup of beamers, slug throwers, and grenade launchers, and any modern army would have all four sorts of weapons, and soldiers trained to use them.
Instead, the assault was made by men crawling and firing, using every inch of available cover to cut down on the targets they offered, and using their weapons to minimize incoming fire. The covering fire poured into the Commonwealth positions by other Federation troops was just as important.