But there was no real attack; consequently, Santana ordered his troops to withhold their fire, or risk revealing both the unit’s strength and its various positions.
The Tro Wa knew the off-worlders were present, the officer felt sure of that, but having no previous experience were unlikely to understand what they were up against. That’s what the legionnaire hoped anyway—because the odds were that the intermission was about to end. Darkness would fall soon, and when it did, enemy scouts would reinfiltrate the area and the main force would move forward shortly thereafter.
Conscious of the fact that sunset was only a few hours away, Santana left the river and pursued a meandering course that allowed him to inspect the platoon’s defenses without revealing exactly where the carefully camouflaged positions were.
Feedback if any could be provided by radio using call signs and military jargon that LaNorian eavesdroppers would find almost impossible to understand. Time passed and darkness started to fall.
But Santana wasn’t the only individual who wanted to examine the battlefield before the sun dipped over the horizon. The terrain that lay between the village of Nah Ree and the point where the off-worlders continued to pollute the land was irredeemably flat. That meant that if Taa See wanted to get a look at the enemy objective prior to nightfall some ingenuity would be required.
The stilts were the tallest such members that any in the village had ever seen or that the regional commander had ever walked around on. Never in his wildest dreams had the Tro Wa leader imagined that he would one day use a childhood skill to scout an enemy position.
By ordering the village carpenter to paint the stilts green, and hanging them with all manner of vegetation, Taa See hoped to blend in with the background as he stumped up over a rise and paused on the forward slope. Then, having paused to ensure his balance, the Claw brought the off-world viewer up to his eyes.
Everything leaped close, so close that the rebel leader felt he was actually among the converts, helping them haul dirt out onto some sort of jetty. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that it had something to do with the logging activities taking place upstream. The devils were up to something all right, something that it was his responsibility to stop.
Then, scanning from right to left, the Tro Wa leader took a long hard look at the camp’s defenses. Having just arrived, and not having participated in the previous attacks, he had no personal experience to rely on.
Still, anyone could see that the moat and the berm that lay beyond it, were considerable obstacles indeed. Of course every lock has a key and Taa See had brought his along with him. Even now a contingent of fresh troops, some two thousand in all, were marching into Nah Ree.
Having used a pair of hot irons as the means to jog the previous commander’s memory, Taa See knew that only his predecessor’s squeamishness had enabled the off-worlders to live this long, and resolved to make no such mistake himself.
But even as the rebel leader spied on his enemy they spied on him. Private Bok Horo-Ba snuggled the .50 caliber sniper’s rifle against an enormous shoulder and peered into the 10X scope. The stilt-mounted LaNorian was about 950 yards out—well within the weapon’s 1,100-yard range. His voice was little more than a whisper. “I own the bastard, Sarge, over.”
Cvanivich watched through her binoculars as the Tro Wa lowered his binoculars and allowed them to dangle from a strap. “That’s a negative, Two Eight. You know the orders. Get some rest . . . You’ll have more targets than you know what to do with tonight. Over.”
The Hudathan knew better than to argue, pressed his transmit button twice, and fell back into his hide. It was homey, as homey as he wanted it to be, with a shelf for his spare magazines, a crate to sit on, and a reasonably dry floor.
Another just like it was located at the far end of the perimeter where Private Joan Fandel was busy taking a nap. Between them the entire sweep of the battlefield would be subject to fire from the long guns. The Hudathan smiled. Yao Che, who had volunteered to reload the legionnaire’s empty magazines, shivered.
It had been dark for little more than an hour. Conscious of the tactics his predecessor had employed, and determined to utilize the element of surprise, Taa See gave no warning that he was about to attack.
There were no drums, no lanterns, and no fireworks to announce their coming as the Tro Wa crept forward. Just the whisper of fabric, the click of loose stones, and the sound of muffled whimpers as two hundred gagged noncombatants were prodded into motion and forced to precede the actual soldiers. Hands bound behind them, and fully aware of the manner in which their bodies were about to be used, the conscripts waited to die.
The cyborgs “saw” the vast smear of heat long before the Claw were within range and notified Santana who ordered everyone to hold their fire.
Having been sent out at dusk, the crab mines had established their fields of fire, dug themselves in, and gone to standby. Now, as the lead elements of the oncoming force entered the vicinity the mines awoke. There weren’t that many, only fifty since a force the size of Santana’s could not afford to carry more, but they were effective.
The officer broke radio silence. “Bravo Six to team—shut your eyes. Over.”
The legionnaires knew what was about to happen and understood how it could impact their night vision. They closed their eyes.
Santana pulled the remote out of his pocket, punched the safety code into the keypad, and mashed the red button.
The officer could see the flashes through his eyelids. The explosions came in such quick succession that they merged into one gigantic roar. The ground shook as the conscripts plus the first rank of Tro Wa were torn to shreds.
Private Lars Hadley and two other members of Sergeant Cvanivich’s squad occupied a fire pit at the forward edge of the curving moat. He felt something warm splatter onto his uniform, thought it was water, then realized the truth: It was raining blood.
Hundreds of yards south, toward the rear of the Claw troops, Taa See gave a grunt of disappointment. Not only had the attack been detected—the off-worlders had unleashed some sort of devil weapon.
What had become the front rank of the assault force paused. The second rank ran into them, as did the third. Taa See felt the shiver run back through his troops and raised the long thin razbul whip. It made a cracking sound as it touched a butcher four ranks forward. The meat cutter swore, lurched forward, and carried others with him.
Other leaders, all armed with whips, flogged the troops in front of them until the entire mass surged forward.
Santana slipped the first remote into his pocket and withdrew another. He entered a different code and sent another message. “One One to team . . . Snipers will fire at will—everyone else hold as long as you can. Over.”
The officer pressed the red button and the RAVs opened fire. Located a hundred yards apart, and positioned so they would have overlapping fields of fire, the machines were equivalent to two crew-served weapons. Both robots had been dug in to provide them with as much protection as possible. Though not capable of independent thought, they were equipped with sensor arrays which could track movement and heat. The weapons mounted in their nose turrets operated with machinelike efficiency. The machine guns fired alternating bursts and the grenade launchers chugged as HE rounds arced out to explode in the midst of the oncoming mob.
Platoon Sergeant Hillrun ordered Private Kimura to fire a couple of illumination rounds. They arced into the air, made a popping sound, and drifted toward the ground.
Entire rows of LaNorians fell as the RAVs harvested them like wheat. The slaughter was horrendous and Santana felt sick to his stomach as the Tro Wa marched into his guns. But there was nothing the legionnaire could do except continue to fight, and judging from the fact that the Claw was teetering on the edge of the moat, he need to kill more of them not less.
Santana sighed. “You’re up Five One, over.” Snyder had been waiting for the order. The cyborg rose out of the moat like some sort of mythical monster, roared a
primordial challenge, and opened fire. Scores of attackers fell as her bullets and energy bolts ripped them apart.
Santana watched in grim satisfaction as the enemy assault stalled once again. It would have been nice to have Zook defending the compound as well but the other cyborg was upstream where he and members of Via’s squad were guarding the newly completed rafts.
Meanwhile, Horo-Ba stared into his light-intensifying scope and surveyed the possible targets. Santana had told both him and Fandel to search the rear ranks for the equivalent of officers, and sure enough they were using whips to drive their troops forward. Horo-Ba, who wasn’t overly fond of officers, anybody’s officers, licked his hard thin lips. Starting from left to right he took them one at a time. The process was simple: Lead the target, squeeze the trigger, and feel the recoil as the muzzle brake served to dissipate some of the gases, the bolt mechanism flew back, the casing was ejected, and a new one was fed into its place.
Thanks to the accuracy of the sixty-one-inch barrel and the power inherent in a .50 caliber round, the Hudathan could reach targets a thousand yards away. The sniper had fired eleven times, and killed ten enemy soldiers, before he was forced to release the first box-style magazine and seat another.
Yao Che, conscious of his duty as a loader, used loose rounds to reload the magazine and place it on the firing shelf.
With the exception of Fandel, who was working with Horo-Ba to thin the enemy’s officer corps, Cvanivich and her squad hadn’t yet fired a single round. But now, such was the pressure exerted by the officers at the rear of the oncoming mob that it bent out and around Snyder, threatening to flank her. The points were like two forward-thrusting horns. The RAVs beat at the horns, trying to break them, but lacked sufficient firepower to do so.
Then, as a mechanical malfunction took one of the robots off-line, the Tro Wa surged forward. Some of the oncoming LaNorians crossed the moats on planks passed forward from the rear, others found places where bodies bridged the gap, and still others made use of long sticks to pole-vault across. An innovation that made it possible for the Claw to leap the ditch at multiple locations. They screamed their bloodlust as they landed on the berm, fired down into the defenders, and jumped into the fray.
The legionnaires pushed up and out of their firing pits, leveled their assault rifles, and opened fire. The Claw were so close by then that the strobelike flashes produced by Cvanivich’s weapon served to illuminate their faces.
That was when Frank Busso, along with three hundred armed converts, rushed forward to engage the enemy hand to hand. Knives flashed, axes bit into flesh, and clubs thumped into heads. There was a scream as Private Dilley took an arrow through the neck and fell.
Corporal “Dice” Dietrich swore as his CA-10 carbine cycled empty, drew his sidearm, and rammed it into a LaNorian gut. The Tro Wa jerked as the noncom fired two bullets into his belly and fell away.
Doc Hixon shot one of the Tro Wa in the face, felt something pluck at her arm, and knew she’d been hit. Someone shouted “Medic!” and she ran toward the sound.
It had been difficult, but the off-worlders were going to die, and Taa See could feel it. The farmers, bakers, and tailors who comprised his army could feel it too and they surged toward the river.
The Claw leader gave an exultant shout, dropped the whip, and drew his sword. “Follow me! Victory is ours!”
Aghast at what was happening, but determined to carry out the task he had been given, Horo-Ba fired. The heavy slug whipped across the battlefield, passed through a schoolteacher’s skull, and slammed into Taa See’s chest. The rebel leader fell, was trampled by those around him, and buried in the mud.
That was when the Tro Wa paused. Not because of Taa See’s death, but because the snipers had accounted for more than 60 percent of their leaders by then, and the only thing pushing most of them forward was their own momentum.
Santana sensed the hesitation and yelled into his radio. “First platoon! Advance!”
It was an ancient order that harkened back to the days of bayonets and muskets, an absurd order, but one the legionnaires understood. They shouted the name of the desperate battle that Danjou and his men had fought hundreds of years before, boiled up out of their muddy pits, and fired from the hip.
Then, with Snyder holding the center, and the snipers firing from both flanks, they pushed the enemy back across the moat. Moments later, as the right RAV came back on-line, the rebels turned and ran. It was no easy task given the shadows cast by the flares, the bodies that lay in drifts, and the blood-slicked mud over which they were forced to travel but many of them made it.
The moment he was sure that the attack had been broken, and that the Tro Wa were unlikely to return, Santana ordered his troops to cease fire.
Two new flares popped into existence and floated toward the bloodstained ground as Frank Busso appeared at the officer’s side. The civilian was bleeding from a scalp laceration but seemed unaware of it. He shook his head in sorrow. “What a waste. I feel sorry for them.”
There were wounded on both sides and they began to moan. Santana searched inside himself for some kind of emotion but came up empty. There was no feeling of sorrow, no feeling of exultation, just a vast emptiness. Perhaps later there would be time to think, time to react, but war was his job. It wouldn’t do to say that however so he nodded, said, “So do I,” and went back to work.
11
* * *
Anyone who has ever led a small force behind enemy lines has been tested in ways that others can never understand.
Mylo Nurlon-Da
The Life of a Warrior
Standard year 1703
* * *
THE FOREIGN CITY OF MYS, ON THE INDEPENDENT PLANET OF LANOR
In spite of the fact that Empress Shi Huu’s troops had lobbed cannonballs into Mys during the night, half the native quarter had been burned to the ground, and a Claw assassin had murdered a Thraki merchant in his sleep, it was a fine morning indeed.
That’s the way Major Homer Miraby saw it anyway as he and an entourage that included Captain Drik Seeba-Ka, Prince Mee Mas, and a LaNorian whose job it was to carry the noble’s recently acquired sword climbed the stairs that led up to the west wall. The reason that Miraby felt so good, and paused at the top of the stairway to inhale the coal- and woodsmoke-tinged air, was that he had been in combat.
The blessed event had taken place the day before when the Imperials attacked the city’s North Gate. Immediately on hearing the news Miraby rushed to the top of the north wall, where he took over from Captain Seebo and assumed responsibility for his first battle. And it was from his vantage point over the gate that the legionnaire urged the Clones to do their utmost, emptied his sidearm into the oncoming mob below, and heard bullets whiz past his head.
Wonderfully, almost miraculously, there hadn’t been the slightest trace of fear, only a sense of exultation as the attackers washed up against the gate and died by the dozen. Here, after all the years of sitting behind a desk was his real purpose, the moment for which he had been born. Never again would he be forced to sit silently by while others spoke of battles on distant worlds. Now he would have a tale to tell and an interesting one at that. Because somehow Miraby felt sure that when the siege was lifted, when the reinforcements finally arrived, it was he who would come forth to greet them. Bloodied perhaps (nothing too uncomfortable), but unbowed.
The fantasy vanished as Seeba-Ka touched his arm. “You might want to keep your head down, sir. Some of the Tro Wa snipers are good shots.”
A parapet ran all the way around the top of the rampart, but it was only five and a half feet tall. A firing step provided shorter troops with a place to stand. Loop-shaped apertures, each located at four-foot intervals, provided defenders with the means to fire on the surrounding countryside without exposing more than an eye to enemy sharpshooters.
Miraby, who was more than six feet tall, gave a snort of derision. “Good god, Captain, we can’t be shy can we? What on Earth will the troops thin
k? Well, come on, time to show the flag.”
The Hudathan and the LaNorians followed as Miraby began his morning inspection. A bullet chipped the top of the parapet and was followed by the sound of a solitary gunshot as the officer turned and began his tour.
Since Santana was gone, and Miraby was in command, Mee Mas had decided to model himself on the major. That being the case he marched along the rampart fully erect until Seeba-Ka, who was careful to keep his head below the top of the wall, turned to glare at him. “What the major does is his business. But you stick your head up one more time and I will take it off.”
Mee Mas started to object, saw the look in the Hudathan’s eyes, and thought better of it. He turned to his single retainer. “You heard the captain . . . keep your head down.” The youth, a former scribe by the name of Non Noo, nodded meekly. He believed in Mee Mas and already thought of him as the Emperor.
Satisfied that the noble would obey Seeba-Ka turned and hurried to catch up.
Miraby had flirted with the notion of integrating all of the off-world military forces à la the Legion but quickly gave up on the idea as both politically and functionally impossible. Not only would the various diplomats oppose it . . . but so would his fellow officers. Therefore, each government having military forces on LaNor had been given one or more sections of wall to defend.
The Legion was responsible for the southern half of the west wall and all of the south wall. The assignment was dictated to a large extent by the fact that Ramanthians refused to defend anything other than the section of perimeter to the rear of their embassy.
For More Than Glory Page 34