First Casualty

by Mike Moscoe

  Needles stitched the other side of the rill's wall. Dumont ducked before they got him. Needles ricocheted all over the place, but none hit him.

  “Du, what is it?”

  “Hon, if you want to live, you got to kill 'em. It's us or them time. Tina, can you stand up a bit more and see what's coming up behind me?”

  Trembling, she did.

  “See anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good girl. Now, something's coming up the rill behind you. Don't turn around. I'm gonna get 'em.” He edged his gun out a bit. The vid on it relayed the sight picture to his heads-up. Nothing. He pushed the gun a bit more. There was someone, down a ways, hiding behind a twist in the rill. Not much to aim at. He held the gun with both hands and pulled the trigger. His target fell, kicking and trying to slap his wounds. Dumont put two rounds through his helmet. He didn't move anymore.

  Using his gun camera for a sweep, Dumont spotted nothing more at either end of the rill. Lying on his back, he pushed out—hoping the whole time his suit would hook on something and keep him in his hole. Nothing. Crouching, he risked a peek above the wall of the rill. Four dudes hopped forward, firing at the old ladies in the holes behind him. Without thought, Dumont swung his gun over the four, trigger finger locked down. They folded over backward. He felt Tina's hand on his shoulder. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Cover my back. I'll take care of our front.” One of the four bodies rolled over, grabbing for the gun nearby. Dumont shot him through the soles of his feet.

  * * * *

  Captain Tran blinked. First and second platoons were gone. Just gone. He needed artillery before he'd order another assault. He crawled to the crest of the pass to get a line-of-sight on artillery. Climbing up on his knees, he got a signal from the artillery net—and a needle in the back.

  It went right through him, leaving a tiny hole that bubbled blood into vacuum. He grabbed for a patch even as he fell. Front hole covered, he wondered how he'd handle the back. Two troopers crawled up behind him. One slapped his back. The pressure in his helmet quit dropping.

  “Don't worry, sir, we'll get you back.” They grabbed him by the shoulders and hustled him over the crest and down the other side, past blown mines and body parts. He glanced around. There were lots of wounded being helped by one or two friends, all headed back. Here and there a single soldier, no wound visible, no wounded comrade apparent, drifted back. The battle was over for B and C companies. D and E would have to take the pass.

  Tran glanced up. D and E were rolling forward, maybe three or four more klicks out. D and E would do it.

  * * * *

  Mary studied her display. The platoon had held against two hundred. Now another two hundred were coming up. It was time to do something—or surrender.

  She'd watched Dumont 's squad hunker in their holes, trying to make their own separate peace. Half of them were dead for that. Surrender was no option today.

  “Lieutenant, Rodrigo here. I want missile release.”

  “How many, Sergeant?”

  “All you got.”

  There was a pause . . . while the LT thought. No, the background of the pause carried the ping, ping, ping of a rifle. He was breathless when he came back on. “They're yours, Mary. We're too busy. Use 'em well.”

  Mary counted her targets. Twenty carriers, half of them tracked—that meant armored—raised dust plumes as they raced toward her. She had to get them. But there were laser rifles on several of them. These missiles would have to fight their way in. Okay, flood them, like they flooded us. Then there was the artillery. She'd heard the platoon whimper under its merciless, impersonal pounding. She'd also heard the screams as they died. Artillery is gonna pay. And that big square box owes me. Owes me big time.

  The WP stuff was settling. Maybe they'd run out. Mary would not take that chance. She fed solid coordinates into the four SS-12's, offsetting their course so they'd be a deflection shot until the last second. The rigs were different; coming in fast, they kept their intervals. That made them predictable. She assigned the SS-3's areas to search if they lost laser lock.

  All the missiles were rigged to one launch button. She shouted, “Fire in the hole!” and pushed it. Behind her, in two salvos, they leaped from their canisters. Twisting into immediate turns, they cleared the ridge by maybe one hundred meters, hungry for targets. Mary lit off every designator she had. This was it. But she didn't just play them on targets. She'd learned; these guys must have some kind of warning system. Those first two had taken off dodging as soon as she'd illuminated them. She programmed the lasers to play around the targets, ten meters to the right or left. Close enough so the missiles would know where to fly. Not so close the rigs didn't keep racing forward unwarned.

  Here and there, a laser bolt shot upward, but the missiles were not coming head-on. Making a deflection shot at this rate of closure, jostling in the speeding carriers, nobody scored.

  Ten seconds to impact, Mary had the lasers light up their targets. Rigs began to twist. They were going too fast. Two bolts took missiles head-on, but that close, the wreckage of the missile was just as deadly as an undamaged one.

  As a cheer went up on the platoon net, Mary concentrated on the four remaining missiles. The SS-12's reached out to the plain. Two for rockets, one for guns. One for... No, I can't commit one missile to just that command rig. But it looks soft enough. Maybe if I target the gun closest to it?

  Mary grinned and set her designators.

  * * * *

  “Major, missiles in the air,” sensors shouted.

  “Artillery, give me WP now, and plenty of it.”

  “Don't got any. Carrier just pulled in. We're offloading it straight to a tube. Damn, we needed it ten minutes ago.”

  “Get it out there.” Ray turned back to the battle. Assault rigs still ran arrow straight across the broken terrain. Dumb. “Sensors, did you pass the missile alert to them?”

  “Didn't want to juggle their elbow, Major. They've got their own warning system beeping in their ears.”

  “Don't look like it. Tell 'em for me.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was a pause. When sensors came back, his voice was low, like a man who'd bet his wife and lost. “Sir, the beepers went off as I started talking.”

  On the plain before him, speeding carriers started to turn. Laser rifles fired. From where Longknife stood he would see the twisty way the missiles came in, making the gunners' job damn near impossible. Carriers started exploding. Here a missile went wide. There a rig dodged. One slid sideways into a boulder. The missile smashed against the rock. Troopers poured out of the demolished carrier, some running, too many crawling. Unable to look away, the major watched in disbelief as sixteen of his troop carriers met the missiles head-on. Nothing survived the collision. But those carriers each had ten of my troops!

  “Major, Tran here. Request permission to withdraw B and C companies.” There was a tremble in the officer's voice. He was hit, or had just watched D and E companies die—or both.

  “Permission granted. Get back here any way you can. We'll lay artillery on their positions.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “I'll try to get some transport out there for you.”

  “Don't bother, sir. We'd rather walk.”

  “Major, we got four more missiles incoming,” sensors squeaked.

  “To where?” The major came heads-up.

  “Us!”

  Longknife swung himself out of the van. No damn Earth platoon had missiles with that range. What was he facing? Why hadn't they used them sooner? Was this the start of a counterattack? The missiles were above him. Jets of fire pushing them over, plunging them down. No laser bolts rose to meet them. All the rifles went with D and E. After all, they were going in harm's way. We were sitting back here safe and sound.

  “Duck, you idiot,” somebody called.

  Whether to the major or some other idiot, Ray didn't know. But Ray hadn't ducked and he was an idiot. He ducked, shouting, “Staff, bail
out. Take cover.” In the low gravity of this moon, ducking took a while. He was only halfway down when the rockets hit.

  Strange how you fall slowly in low gravity, but explosions move just as fast. To his left, a rocket launcher was halfway through reloading when the missile hit. With its own rockets not yet in the armored launch canister, not one but nine rockets blew. Fuel, flechettes, and jagged chunks of wreckage flew, consuming another launcher, stripping a gun mount of its crew. White phosphorus blew in all directions, taking out a second gun.

  As if awed by that spectacle, the next two hits were hardly noticeable. One rocket hit one launcher. Another rocket demolished a gun. Then the fourth missile hit. It had the major's name, rank, and serial number on it.

  Landing between two guns, its shower of flechettes wiped out half their crews. That covered two-thirds of the perimeter of expanding gas and plastic. The major and the command van took the rest. Pain came from a half dozen pinpricks. Worse, they threw him against the bumper of the van. Something crunched, and he quit hurting. I don't want to quit hurting. For the moment, he had no choice.

  It seemed like a year before people started hopping around among the fire and debris. Two found him. “You hurt, Major?”

  “Mind patching these holes? My arms aren't working and my ears are popping.” They pulled goo out of the med pouch on his belt; his air quit getting thinner. As they lifted him off the bumper and settled him on a stretcher, he got a glance at the inside of the van. He'd only caught the low edge of the explosion. His staff, still at their stations, had taken the full force. They were pinned to the front wall like the targets at some fairground knife-throwing show.

  The knife-thrower had made a lot of mistakes.

  “Can you help my team?”

  “Yes sir,” the private answered. Through his faceplate, Longknife saw the sergeant just shake his head.

  Longknife could still chin his mike. “Artillery, I want fire on their position to cover our troops' withdrawal.”

  No answer.

  “Artillery? Is anybody on net? Who's in charge?”

  “I guess I am, sir. Second Lieutenant Divoba. I can lay sixty-four missiles on them right now, but we need a minute to get a tube manned.”

  “Hold your missiles, son. We're not trying to win a battle, we just want to keep their heads down while we walk away.

  Use your tube artillery, and back your rockets off ten klicks. Now do it, son.”

  The pain was coming back.

  “You want a shot, sir?”

  “Not 'til I'm on ship.”

  “We can get you on one of the carriers heading out now, sir,” the sergeant offered.

  “I ride the last one, Sergeant. You want to take an earlier one?”

  “No sir.” It was nice to see a sergeant smile the way they did when they found an officer doing what an officer should. Longknife hoped that smile wouldn't cost him his life.

  “Private, you want to take an early ride?”

  “No sir.” His voice broke, but he got the word out. Poor kid. Stuck with two seniors playing it out by the code. Ray knew he ought to order the kid out, but he might need him to carry him. A cannon shell arched over the major's line of sight. Usually he would have felt the ground shake. I must be real bad. The sergeant twisted around to follow the shell for a moment. He got a good view of the troops struggling back from the pass. “Looks pretty bad, sir.”

  “We've been in some tough ones. We always come through.”

  Then it got worse.

  * * * *

  “Captain Andy,” Umboto chortled, “I got six missiles ready to have a go at those transports. I had to teach them their numbers on pencil and paper. I've tucked them in at night and booted them out of bed for the last eternity, but they are ready Permission to launch, sir.”

  “You may launch when ready, Commander.” Captain Anderson glanced around his HQ. It had gone from a morgue to damn near looking like a winning celebration on election night—one of those rare ones where they beat the polls. On his display, the captain watched six dots leave the crater and march slowly toward the enemy's grounded transports. With them gone, the enemy troop would have but two choices: fight on with air getting stale, or surrender.

  From the reports he'd been getting back from the first platoon of A company, the colonials were just about fought out.

  * * * *

  “Everybody, get your head down,” Mary shouted. “We got incoming on the way. The bastards are running like shit downhill, but somebody's tossing artillery our way to keep us out of their way. I vote we let them run, and dig deep.”

  There were a lot of cheers for that one. Even the lieutenant breathed a hearty “Amen.” Then the net squawked again. “First platoon, don't pull your heads out of your holes for this, but if you can look up, those missiles going by are on their way to the transports. Now we got the bastards between a rock and a hard place. Yeehaa.”

  “Who is that?” one of Dumont 's kids asked.

  “That crazy woman who was on net a while back,” Cassie answered. “I didn't get no name.”

  “She's Commander Umboto, brigade XO,” the lieutenant answered. “And those big missiles sure do look good going over. Mary, can you catch them on a vid?”

  “No, sir, not till they come down a bit.”

  “They sure look pretty.”

  “Lieutenant, shouldn't you get your head down?”

  “It is down, Mary. Don't worry about me.”

  The barrage was light, but steady. Every minute or so another shell would wander their way. Mary kept up a running commentary—on the enemy running and on the general direction of the next incoming round. Most rounds went right into the gap. Once in a while, one would go long.

  “Oh, God, I'm hit!” came the lieutenant's scream. Mary focused a vid where the lieutenant's hole was. A new and bigger one was right next to it. Rocks and debris were still falling.

  “Lieutenant, you okay?” Cassie called.

  No answer.

  Mary took her system out of combat mode and into troop status. The lieutenant's suit was still on net, but it glowed a yellow-red. “He's alive, but we're losing him.”

  “Okay, crew, let's dig him out,” Lek sighed on net. On the vid, first one, then three, finally six people were out of their holes, headed for the lieutenant's.

  “Mary, you call the incoming artillery,” Cassie said. “Try to get a good read on where* it'll fall.”

  “Yeah,” Dumont muttered. “I ain't never done somethin' this stupid before. Hate to get killed the first time I try it.”

  More were out of their holes. Mary doubted they'd do any good. “Six is enough. If we need more, I'll call. Don't need anyone standing around watching others dig.”

  “You bet nobody's gonna watch me dig,” Dumont snarled, but the bite was gone. His usual snap drew a laugh. Mary divided her display, half on those digging, half on the artillery. A gun puffed. Mary used her radar sensors for the first time to plot its fall. “Shell's headed for the crest of the gap. No sweat.”

  The diggers didn't even pause when the shell exploded. Second shot was no worse. “We've found him,” Cassie yelped.

  Across the plain, the gun carriage bucked. Mary did the numbers. “Oh, shit. You got incoming, and it's gonna be close.”

  Most of the diggers flattened themselves in the shell crater. Two didn't, huddling together just outside the crater, covering something—someone. Mary forgot to breathe as she counted seconds. “Hail Mary, full of grace” came from one suit. “Our Father, who art in heaven” from another. “Sweet Jesus, help the fuck us” was balanced by someone's prayer mantra.

  Mary just counted down: “Four, three, two, one.”

  A dust plume sprouted twenty meters from the first crater. Again rocks and shell fragments cut their lazy arcs through the vacuum. Mary could only watch as it showered down.

  Dumont yelped. “Goddamn it, somebody pull that hot hunk of metal out of my ass.” On vid, one of the two figures that had stayed exposed
to cover someone else reached over with a gob of goo and started rubbing it on the other's rear.

  “Now, does that feel better?” Cassie cooed.

  “Yes, Mother. You gonna kiss it, make it well?”

  “Only in your dreams, kid. Okay, crew. Give me a hand. Lieutenant's still breathing, but he's out cold. Everybody keep goo handy. I don't know how bad his suit's holed.”

  “Lek,” Mary ordered, “bring the bubble.” Mine disasters could hole a suit in too many places for goo—too many places to even find. The bubble could keep you alive for an hour. Longer if they found more air. The next three shells stayed out of the way while they cared for their officer.

  “How bad is he?” Mary asked on Lek's private line.

  “He don't look none too good. There's a lot broken and we got no way to take a peek at him through all this damn armor.”

  Mary switched to battalion. “Major Henderson. We got a bad hurt lieutenant here. You don't get us help fast, he's dead.”

  “Nearest set of wheels is yours.” The voice wasn't the major's. Commander Umboto was back on the line. “Load the lieutenant on whatever shows up. We'll have an ambulance with a med team meet them ASAP.”

  “Thank you, ma'am,” Mary answered.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. You put up a damn good fight. The Spartans couldn't have done better. No use losing someone who won the battle just before they get it over with. Umboto out.”

  Mary put a vid on long-distance search. “I think I see a dust cloud coming our way.”

  “Looks so,” Lek agreed.

  “Who the Spartans?” Dumont wanted to know. Mary let them talk, but the commander's words had hit her. They had won their battle, but could still die under one of these random shots. It didn't seem fair, to win a battle and get killed before it was over. Miners bitched about owners and their twisted idea of fair. War seemed to have no idea of fair. No idea at all.

  * * * *