But there were still too damn many tanks.
Corporal Dean didn’t take all of his fire team’s Straight Arrows for himself, he kept his own three and left Godenov with his three. The two fired their blasters, or set them aside in favor of the tank killers when they had a good shot. Between them they killed five tanks and damaged another. Dean had no idea how many soldiers they’d accounted for. But there were so many of the rebels coming at them. It was impossible for one platoon to hold out for very long against the combined force they were facing. Even if they’d had enough Straight Arrows to kill the entire tank battalion, the enemy had too short a distance to cover when the battle began for the Marines to win the fight.
Well, Dean, for one, was going to sell his life dearly. He ignored the cries of “Corpsman Up” and snapped off another bolt; yet another rebel would never rise again.
An unexpected aerial screaming made him duck into a fetal ball before he realized what it was. He looked up and couldn’t hold back a scream of glee.
Sunlight glinted off four dots high above and growing fast as they dropped—Raptors! Marine air finally showed up! The Raptors began firing plasma cannons while they were still high. The ground in front of third platoon gouted and erupted with the plasma strikes. Infantrymen where the bolts hit were incinerated, out a few meters from the strikes, their uniforms ignited into torches. Tanks that were hit erupted massively. Tanks a few meters behind a strike rolled into the steaming craters blasted out by the bolt, and not all of them climbed back out.
By the time the Raptors reached the bottom of their dives and bounced back, the infantry was in full rout, and the surviving tanks were turning to run as well. The Marines of third platoon stood up and fired their remaining Straight Arrows, then used their blasters on the running soldiers until Ensign Bass ordered them to cease fire. They’d won.
But how high was the butcher’s bill?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
* * *
The corpsmen patched up the casualties and loaded them all onto one Dragon, which sped them back into the tunnel system, where the wounded were transferred to a logistics truck, which trundled them off to the battalion aid station.
“Damn, I hope I’m not making a habit of this,” Corporal Pasquin grumbled. He was on a gurney at the battalion aid station while HM1 Horner tweezed bits of shrapnel out of the back of his body from shoulder to calf.
“What habit is that?” Horner asked, twisting a fifteen-millimeter fragment that resisted simple plucking.
Pasquin gasped, then gritted his teeth and said, “Getting wounded. This is the second consecutive deployment I’ve been wounded on.”
The shard clinked when Horner dropped it into the pan he was collecting the fragments in. “Stop your complaining, Marine,” he said as he daubed at the blood oozing from the wound and applied a touch of synthskin to the cut, “or I’ll write you up for a wound stripe for every one of these booboos.”
“Please don’t do that, Doc! I’ve got enough dumb-stripes on my sleeve now.” The movement of the tweezers changed as Horner shrugged, sending a spasm through Pasquin’s back.
“Then how about if I write you up only for the ones in your ass?”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Why not? You’re not the first Marine who got shot in the ass . . .” he paused while he did a quick count of the wounds in Pasquin’s posterior, “. . . twenty times.” He paused again, then amended, “Or maybe you are. I think the current record for ass-wound-stripes is seventeen, held by some staff sergeant in 11th FIST who pissed off the corpsman who was cleaning shrapnel out of his ass.”
“Doc, don’t do that to me. I promise, I’ll be a model patient. What do you want me to do?”
“Just lie quietly and let me do my job. And if we ever find ourselves in the same card game, let me win a hand or two.”
“You got it, Doc.”
Corporal Pasquin wasn’t the only casualty in third platoon. Fortunately, none of the Marines were killed. The most serious injury was to first squad’s Lance Corporal Zumwald, who had taken a laser beam through the shoulder. The planetside navy medical unit didn’t have the facilities to regenerate the muscle and bone that were vaporized by the laser, and he had to be evacuated to the Lance Corporal Keith Lopez in orbit. Other wounds were lesser, and those Marines could be returned to duty immediately if necessary, in two or three days if there was time for them to recuperate.
Unfortunately, the Coalition forces didn’t give the wounded the convalescence time. They launched another attack.
Ensign Charlie Bass listened to the message from Captain Conorado, then spoke into his all-hands circuit, “Third platoon, saddle up! Assemble on your squad leaders. Now!” He turned to Staff Sergeant Hyakowa. “Go to the BAS and bring back any of our people who are fit for duty. Bad guys are in the tunnels, and we have to go and kick them out.”
“Aye, aye,” Hyakowa said, and took off at a run for the battalion aid station, only a couple of hundred meters away in an adjoining tunnel.
“When you’ve got your people,” Bass said into the squad leaders’ circuit, “bring them to my location.” He busied himself with the schematic of the tunnels, figuring out where to most effectively intercept the rebels and drive them back out.
Only a few of the Marines of third platoon had their helmets on when Bass’s all-hands went out, but everyone’s helmet was close by, and they all heard the message. They grabbed their gear and weapons and scrambled.
“What’s up, Sergeant Ratliff?” Corporal Dean asked when he and Godenov reached their squad leader.
Ratliff didn’t look at Dean. “Something. The boss didn’t confide in me.” He was annoyed that he had to prepare his squad for immediate action and didn’t know for what. “Shut up,” he said to Corporal Dornhofer when his first fire team leader arrived seconds later.
Dornhofer looked at him, startled; he hadn’t said anything. He looked at Dean, who shrugged and shook his head.
Ratliff looked his squad over and wasn’t happy with what he saw. Four of his Marines, including one fire team leader, were in sickbay, at the BAS, or back aboard ship. “Dorny,” he said to his first fire team leader, “you take Longfellow for now. Dean, you and Izzy stick with me. Let’s go.” He led the way at a trot to the platoon command post. The two blaster squads and the gun squad arrived within seconds of each other and formed up in front of Bass, who showed no expression when he saw how small his platoon had become in just two actions.
“Stand by,” Bass said before anybody could ask any questions. He looked in the direction of the BAS and saw a utility vehicle coming at speed.
The utility vehicle screeched to a stop meters away and Staff Sergeant Hyakowa jumped off, followed by eight other Marines.
Bass shot them a glare and snapped, “Pasquin, Schultz, what are you doing here? The medical officer told me you wouldn’t be fit for duty for several days.”
Pasquin gave him a crooked grin and said, “I can’t let my people go into a fight without papa there to make sure they don’t get into trouble.”
Schultz merely grunted; he wasn’t going to let Corporal Claypoole and Lance Corporal MacIlargie get into a situation where they needed help and not be there to give it to them.
“You two are too badly injured to be here,” Bass said harshly. Then his voice eased. “But I’m glad to see you. Take it easy, and don’t aggravate your injuries.”
“No sweat, boss,” Pasquin said as he took his place with first squad.
Ratliff looked relieved at getting back two of his injured men. Lance Corporal Zumwald and PFC Quick, both aboard the Keith Lopez for regeneration of bone tissue, were the only Marines of third platoon not present. Ratliff told Longfellow to rejoin his own fire team.
When his Marines were assembled, Bass told them, “Bad guys have gotten into the tunnels. We’re going to let them know their presence isn’t appreciated.” He looked to his left, where he heard the growing noise of a motor, and saw vehicles approaching to pick t
hem up. “I don’t have any details yet, not even how many bad guys there are. I’ll fill you in when I know more. Now mount up and let’s move out.”
Third platoon climbed aboard the three utility trucks that had just reached them. The trucks drove them into the unknown.
Ensign Bass listened intently to the information coming over his helmet radio. While Company L had been fighting off the tanks, and both of the battalion’s other companies were dealing with armor attacks elsewhere around the perimeter, a brigade-size infantry unit had infiltrated through an area the Marines weren’t dealing with and overcome the army “cooks and bakers,” rear echelon soldiers, manning that sector of the outer tunnels. More than half the soldiers were dead, wounded, or captured in the fierce fighting, but they’d sold their positions dearly; little less than a battalion of rebel soldiers had made its way into the tunnel complex, and a somewhat smaller number were holding position where the perimeter was breached—presumably to allow follow-on forces to enter the tunnels. More cooks and bakers were fighting a desperate holding action—and losing ground.
The sounds of battle echoed distantly, gradually intruding through the whine of the wheels bearing third platoon to the fight. The sounds got louder as Bass downloaded the latest overlays of where the fighting was, and louder still while he fixed the overlays on his schematic of the tunnels and added routes and symbols to the overlays.
When they were still several hundred meters and a few turns from the fighting, Bass stopped his small convoy and called, “Squad leaders up.” He raised an arm and let his sleeve slide down it so his squad leaders could pick him out among the other heat signatures their infras would pick up.
“Receive,” Bass said as soon as the three squad leaders, their faces exposed inside their helmets for him to see, arrived, and transmitted the overlays to them. The squad leaders brought up the schematics on their heads-up-displays and examined the overlays with the symbols and routes.
“That’s as of five minutes ago,” Bass said, transmitting a you-are-here to them. “As you can hear, the intelligence is out of date already.” The you-are-here put them a couple of hundred meters closer to the sounds of battle than the overlay showed.
Sergeant Ratliff whistled softly.
Sergeant Linsman said, “They’re moving fast.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Sergeant Kelly muttered.
“The speed of their advance gives us a major advantage,” Bass said, ignoring the remarks. “When a fast-moving object runs into a bigger object moving even faster, it rebounds. Basic physics. We’re going here,” he sent a signal that made his symbols and routes pulse on the squad leaders’ HUDs, “and smack them back so hard they’re liable to find themselves back on the surface before they stop rebounding.”
The section of schematic the squad leaders examined showed two major corridors. A five-meter-wide corridor made many turns on its inbound journey from the outer tunnel ring; strongpoints had been erected at each turning. The Coalition battalion was advancing along that tunnel. The other major corridor, seven meters wide, that formed an irregular ring inside the outer perimeter, crossed it. Two smaller corridors paralleled the inbound corridor and terminated at the ring-tunnel, only fifty meters to the sides of the intersection. Rooms filled the spaces between the inbound and parallel corridors. There weren’t any strongpoints noted on the ring or the smaller tunnels.
The routes and symbols Bass had overlaid on the schematic directed one gun team to set up at a turning of the inbound tunnel where it could fire straight down it past the ring-tunnel. The other gun team went down the left-hand parallel corridor to set up a crossfire along the ring-tunnel. First squad was to set up inside the rooms to the right of the inbound tunnel, and second squad in the rooms to its left. According to still 2-D images Bass had of the tunnel, the rooms had doors into the inbound tunnel that would allow his Marines to fire down the tunnel while retaining a fair amount of cover.
But, as was often the case, the Marines’ best protection from enemy fire was the virtual invisibility provided by their chameleon uniforms.
The symbols Bass drew showing where fire teams and the gun teams went didn’t indicate which teams went where. He left those decisions up to the squad leaders.
“Any questions?” he asked when he thought the squad leaders had enough time to examine the schematic.
“How many did you say were coming this way?” Kelly asked.
“An understrength battalion.”
No one said anything for a moment, then Ratliff softly said, “They’re in a tunnel. They won’t be able to advance more than two fire teams at a time. Hound, one of your guns could hold them up until they ran out of men—or your gun ran out of power.”
“Barring lucky hits,” Staff Sergeant Hyakowa said, speaking for the first time.
“These tunnel walls are pretty rough cut,” Bass added, “there aren’t any polished surfaces for lasers to reflect off of.”
Kelly glanced at him, then looked at the other two squad leaders. “I’m putting Barber’s gun there. You just worry about keeping your people’s heads out of his line of fire.”
Bass cocked his head, the sounds of fighting were much closer. “Let’s do this thing,” he said, and snapped his chameleon screen into place. His face vanished.
The sound of pounding footsteps and yells made Lance Corporal Tischler, behind the gun pointed down the inbound tunnel, tense. Next to him, PFC Yi got ready to feed the gun. The whine of laser shots punctuated the noises.
“Easy, easy,” Corporal Barber said. “Don’t fire until I say to.” Listening to the laser fire, he was glad of the lack of reflective surfaces in the tunnel.
The yells, out of sight beyond the bend past the cross tunnel, grew louder, and individual voices became discernible; many of them were screaming.
“Wait for my order.” The calmness of Barber’s voice didn’t show the tenseness he felt.
Suddenly, a running man burst into sight at the bend, seventy-five meters distant.
“Hold it, hold it,” Barber murmured.
Tischler’s grip tightened on the gun’s firing lever.
“Don’t shoot! Hold your fire!” Barber said sharply as more running, screaming men turned the bend. “They’re ours.”
Ensign Bass’s voice giving the same command almost drowned Barber out in the helmet radios of first gun team.
Soldiers of the 27th Division, more than half of them weaponless, pelted wide-eyed along the tunnel, fleeing the advancing Coalition rebels. Some of the running soldiers turned right or left onto the ring-tunnel, but most kept going straight.
“Buddha’s Balls!” Barber swore—the soldiers were coming straight at his team, and they couldn’t see the Marines in their chameleons. “Get out of their way!” He shoved Tischler to his left, to the inside of the bend. The gun fell over with a clatter because Tischler was caught off guard by Barber’s shove. Yi barely made it to the wall behind the gunner before the other hit the wall.
Barber swore again and reached for the gun to yank it in close. He wasn’t fast enough. The first soldier to reach the bend banked hard off the wall on the outside of the bend, but the second soldier skittered to slow down to take the corner and tripped over the gun, knocking it away from Barber’s reaching hand. The third soldier tripped over the spinning weapon and sprawled onto the second. In seconds, an entire squad’s worth of soldiers had tripped on the gun, soldiers who had fallen before them, or over Barber, who was trying desparately to get the gun out of the way—one of them kicked Barber’s head hard enough to partly dislodge his helmet, dazing him.
None of the soldiers seemed aware of the Marines; they scrambled to their feet as fast as they could and took off again. The last of them almost didn’t make it—a laser beam bored through the lower part of the soldier’s left calf. He didn’t seem to notice the injury.
Other soldiers sped through, but there were fewer of them now, and they were more widely spaced. Barber finally got hold of the gun and passed it to Ti
schler. Then he scooted forward on his belly to look around the corner.
The bodies of several soldiers littered the tunnel floor; some of the bodies were still moving, and one or two of them were weakly crawling toward the corner where the Marine gun team waited. There was nothing Barber could do for them—maybe the blastermen in the rooms along the corridor could drag them to safety—he had to deal with what he saw beyond the casualties.
Rebel soldiers were advancing along the sides of the tunnel. One man would dash forward, then drop to a prone position with his weapon pointed forward, and another would rise up behind him and dash forward. The enemy soldiers leap-frogged like that on both sides, visible in the middle of the tunnel only at the far end where, one by one, half of them darted across to the opposite wall. The closest of them were almost at the intersection.
“Tischler, get your gun set up next to the corner,” he ordered, urgency in his tone. “Fire a burst straight down the wall, then spray the opposite wall beyond the intersection.” He could tell by the sounds that Tischler already had the gun back on its tripod and when it was in position.
“What about our people?” Tischler asked.
“Don’t worry, they’re inside the rooms,” Barber said. He shook his head trying to clear it.
“Whatever you say,” Tischler replied, and fired a short burst of plasma pulses along the wall.
The invisibility conferred by the chameleons was an optical illusion; Barber couldn’t see through his gunner and the gun, he had to scoot farther out in order to see to direct the gun’s fire.
It looked like the first, short burst had taken out or knocked down every rebel soldier along the near wall, though more were coming around the far bend and returning fire. Barber watched as Tischler shifted his aim to the other side of the tunnel, spraying up and down to get the soldiers who lay prone as well as those who jumped up to dart forward. He got most of them before they reached the cross tunnel and turned into it. Barber didn’t worry about them, Corporal Taylor’s second gun team was in position to take them out. As though in answer to Barber’s thought, plasma started streaming across his sight from the other gun.
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