Mortas looked up the file again, recognizing that the militia member he’d killed had been one of them and feeling guilty until the combat smocks of the Sim infantry reminded him of the fight in the gully. The sheer panic, the wave of enemy troops, the utter confusion, the weight of the bodies tumbling on top of him, the tumult that had followed, the soldier who had tried so hard to kill him. The feel of his own hands crushing the Sim’s throat as if it were nothing more solid than a loaf of bread.
He shook his head, trying to rid it of the visions as well as the wadded cotton that had crept in to fill it. He was so tired . . . no wonder they were fitting in so well with this parade of corpses. They actually belonged with them. He frowned when he saw that they had more in common with this particular group of the enemy than they’d had with the humans they’d encountered. And that these stubborn, trudging forms had more in common with them than with the reinforcements who were now stalking the stragglers from a battle that was long over.
They topped the low ridge near the spot where the cofferdams had deposited the assault force, and he was able to look down on the field of wrecks again. But this was different. He almost woke up when he saw the level of activity below, and he paused as if adjusting his harness in order to take it in. Trent and Gorman moved up next to him, and the troops walking behind them passed without a chirp.
Enormous divots had sprouted on the plain where armored vehicles had once been snared. Several earthmovers were at work among the many remaining hulks, and individual Sims operating jackhammer-like devices were breaking the ground that hugged treads and wheels. At the far end of the plain, large movers were towing away the machines that had already been freed, and the answer to their dilemma almost jumped up at him. Mortas fixed the other two with a meaningful look, and their mute responses showed they’d been thinking along similar lines.
Why walk when you can ride?
They waited until the very end of the formation passed before rejoining it and heading down toward the field of wreckage.
Up close and seen in the daylight, the disaster was even harder to contemplate. Dozens of armored vehicles were sunk into the hard terrain, and they passed close to the personnel carrier that had provided them the life-giving rations. Mortas could feel his stomach contracting again at the memory, and not for the first time did he consider leading the others out of the formation and trying to hide in one of the wrecks.
The Sims were clearly salvaging them, which was not a new development in the war, and it made sense to expect the vehicles to end up inside the settlement’s perimeter. Even plunked down outside the wire, they would still be close enough to survey the layout of the enemy’s defenses. Given the novel munitions the Sims had employed to trap the armored mastodons, there was a strong chance that the engines on some of them still functioned. He allowed himself to enjoy a brief fantasy of driving one of the tanks through the enemy defensive obstacles, creating sufficient havoc for them to then steal a ship, before rejecting the concept for the folly that it truly was.
Even so, it didn’t completely drive the idea from his head. His feet hurt, his wounded leg hurt, his brain hurt, and the notion of finally moving by means of something other than his own boots was deliciously appealing. The thought of that comfortable ride, rocking back and forth, safely enjoying the darkened innards of a modern Trojan horse, was almost more than he could resist. There was even a chance they might get lucky and pick a vehicle with food hidden onboard.
It was a powerful lure, and Mortas shook it off with great difficulty. He still hadn’t solved the problem of their approaching rendezvous with alert enemy sentries at the settlement gates, and it seemed likely they could detach themselves from the column with little trouble right there and then. Despite all that, he knew they would be betting everything on a single roll of the die if they hid themselves in one of the hulks before it was towed away. Unable to speak the enemy’s language or even form its syllables, they would have no response discovered and challenged. Mortas made himself imagine that scenario all the way through to its ugly conclusion, and dismissed the idea with a shudder.
They continued straight through the center of the battlefield, studying the flatness of the soil that Sim ingenuity had turned into mud and then reconstituted. At the far end, the high-water mark of the doomed assault, they were able to see that several of the abandoned fighting vehicles had been freed already. A mix of wheeled scout cars and tracked carriers stood in a scratched-up row as if this barren spot were some kind of motor pool. Sim mechanics, unarmed and dressed in dirty coveralls, were busily attaching tow bars or climbing all over the captured equipment. A convoy of enemy movers now rolled into sight, and the infantry column reacted poorly when the large machines began backing up to the wheeled vehicles among the wrecks.
They don’t like being reminded that there weren’t any movers to give them a ride home, but there were plenty to haul away battlefield debris. Can’t say I blame them.
The muttered chirps had an effect on the Sim commander, who signaled a halt and walked over to one of the more senior mechanics who was directing the work. He was obviously asking for a ride, and this act caused Mortas to feel genuine respect for him. He was on the verge of making a mental note to imitate the Sim leader if he was ever in a similar position with troops of his own when the enemy officer turned and gave a human-like wave to the column. He was actually smiling.
A chorus of relieved, thankful trills greeted this signal, and the Sim soldiers began limping toward the row of vehicles. The three humans held back without making a sound, following at a distance until they could identify an unclaimed wreck that they could ride by themselves. The only one that presented itself was a narrow scout vehicle with slanted armor that would make it an uncomfortable perch, but at least they’d be able to talk again. Mortas looked around as he helped Gorman and then Trent to mount the hard exterior, fighting the sensation of unreality. The feeling went beyond the simple disbelief that their ploy was working so well; what he found truly incredible was that they were finally going to stop walking. He accepted the outstretched hands that pulled him up, and just a few moments later heard the roar as the towing mover came to life.
The captured hulks rolled out of line one at a time, and as the personnel carrier next to their scout car started forward with a lurch, one of the Sims on top of it gave Mortas a grin.
As wonderful as the ride might be, the ability to talk again was a greater relief. Seated atop the scout vehicle’s nose and tethered to the mover in front of them, they could yell all they wanted and no Sim in the convoy would be able to hear them. They alternately laughed and shouted, their exclamations of enjoyment mixed with astonished references to the walk just completed and their close brush with the Sim reinforcements. It was several minutes before they settled down.
The recon car’s front was pointed like the bow of a ship to ease its passage through water, and its carapace was likewise canted in order to deflect enemy rounds like a boxer slipping punches. They sat side by side with their buttocks pressed against the sinister slits of the front viewports, but there was little room there, and after a few good lurches Mortas put his arms around the others to make sure they didn’t slide off. Gorman wore an expression that combined astonishment with ecstasy, and Mortas chalked that up to the temporary suspension of the pacifist’s long ordeal with his blisters. As for Trent, her grime-streaked face was set in a look of deep concentration while her eyes kept on the move, scanning everything in front of her.
“We’ve got to be ready to react if they’re on their toes at the gate!” Mortas called out, unsure of just what to do if the Sims were actually checking to make sure no humans sneaked in. “We’ll need to watch when the first car gets inspected. If they make the infantry dismount, we’ll slide off without waiting to be told. We’ll go over to the others and try to get in the middle of the group. If I start walking, no matter where I’m going, just go with me.”
All three of them took an abrupt breath when they crested the last of the foothills, because the settlement that they’d so long sought was finally laid out before them. The colony was massive, with domed structures spotted along well laid out roads inside an all-encompassing circle of defenses. From that distance it was impossible to make out the coils of reactive wire, but the low silhouettes of combat bunkers dotted the perimeter as far as the eye could see. Just before their ride dropped from the high ground, Mortas spotted the spacedrome on the far side, curved hangars and towers, fuel dumps, and flat runways. The orange dirt surrounding the drome was covered with newly arrived space vehicles, ranging from cargo transports to troop carriers and recon birds. Major Shalley had been right in his guess that the place would be a scene of chaos.
Movers and other vehicles rolled in every direction, work crews and formations of soldiers were marching to and fro, and an enemy scout screamed down to land even as they watched. Cargo carriers with lowered ramps disgorged barrels and crates in a seemingly endless supply, and mountains of both were being built on every available space. Just before losing sight of the drome, Mortas believed he spotted at least one of the Wren-style shuttles that they would need to steal.
The colony’s defensive perimeter followed the layout he’d been taught in officer training, with a wide cement ditch as the first obstacle. Area denial had become such a mainstay of war on the Hab planets that both sides could lay a minefield in a matter of minutes and so the ground outside the ditch would have been sewn with man-killers shortly after the initial attack. Inside the ditch was a double wall of defensive wire, but this was no standard cattle fence.
This barbed wire was reactive, attracted by the electricity in armored vehicles, fighting suits, and even the naked human form. Some of it was stationary, some of it was loose, but its tendrils could reach out and snag anything with an electric field that came near it. Trying to blow it down with rocket fire or bombs was pretty pointless, as even severed segments were known to snake across the ground in search of electrons. Once they’d found and ensnared a vehicle or an individual, the reactive wire strands had one more trick to them. They would emit a signal calling the fire of larger Sim weapons, or glow hotly to attract the attention of spotters and infantry relying on the naked eye. It was bad enough that the fiendish stuff would trap its victim, but it was pure hell that it would then basically scream, “Over here! Shoot over here!” for every weapon in range.
Mortas felt his muscles tensing up as they crossed the open ground, his eyes taking in the irregular holes where different types of mines had either detonated outright or sprung into action. Like the reactive wire, some of these were static and others diabolically active. Detecting the same electric field as the wire, one variety would fly up in the air and explode while another actually rolled across the ground to effect maximum damage on whatever had attracted it. He didn’t see any debris or body parts, and so he wondered if the Sims had detonated the devices themselves when the reinforcements arrived. Looking down at the captured recon vehicle that was now his ride, he experienced a sinking thrill at the thought that they might have overlooked one of the explosives and left it live.
Trent leaned in close to shout over the engine. “Look ahead! Maybe Shalley should have let us do a recon for him after all!”
Mortas pulled his eyes off of the ground and felt them widen in disbelief. As they neared the enemy settlement, details of the initial bombardment from space began to come into focus. Clearly the place had taken an awful beating before the attack had been called off, and the first sign of this was the absolute wreck of the ditch. Precision fire, most likely from attack craft launched from orbit, had blasted the steep sides until the waterless moat was nothing more than a gentle depression as far as the eye could see.
Likewise, the reactive wire was practically all gone. Mortas spotted several burnt-out barrels scattered on the settlement side of the moat, wrapped with scorched segments of enemy wire, and recognized them as human countermeasures. The war had been going on for a long time, and the reactive wire was not a recent development. The barrels used the wire’s obsession with electric fields to its disadvantage, and a variety of delivery systems could drop these canisters right into the obstacle belt. Shorting out any strands that reached them, and spinning in place to pull down the static coils, they could denude an enemy defensive wall in only a few minutes if left to work unopposed. As they got closer, he was able to make out the holes that Sim gunners had shot into the barrels, no doubt firing directly at the glowing, thrashing tendrils engaged in the mechanical life-or-death struggle with the rolling canisters.
“These guys got caught with their pants down!” He yelled, pulling Trent and Gorman closer so they could both hear. “Our people seriously worked them over before they got their reaction going!”
“Maybe.” Gorman wasn’t shouting, but his words were loud enough. “Or maybe they wanted the assault force to come straight at them. They had that new ordnance to try out, and they wouldn’t need anything else if it worked.”
The lead vehicles were reaching the ditch now, and they all squinted into the raised dust as the movers downshifted and then crossed the depression. A small formation of Sim armored carriers was moving out to their right, and there was also some kind of vehicular traffic to their front, so it was almost impossible to see what kind of guard force was waiting for them. The grit flew up into his eyes, but Mortas kept his arms around Gorman and Trent, turning his head this way and that in a vain effort to avoid the dirt. The others used their free hands to shield themselves, and he finally couldn’t take it anymore.
“What do you see? What do you see? Who’s guarding the gate? How are they arranged?”
Gorman began laughing out loud at that point, and Trent soon joined in. She was still laughing when she rested her head on his shoulder and spoke as if preparing to fall into a deep sleep. “What guards? There’s nobody there. The place is wide open.”
The mirth was short-lived. They next rolled past a concrete bunker holding a heavy weapon of some kind, but they hardly noticed the massive barrel or the ghostly defenders seated around it. The Sim gun crew was even worse off than the infantry riding by; they sat with their backs against the chipped, sloping stone of the fighting position showing hollow eyes that barely registered life.
The humans didn’t look at the exhausted enemy for too long. With their obstacle belt destroyed in the first bombardment they’d erected temporary defenses closer to the emplacement. Mortas had seen footage of these primitive devices, basically girders cut into long segments and welded together to form a metal tumbleweed. Reactive wire was strung between and among the tumbleweeds, and the ends of the girders were festooned with explosives that would detonate upon contact with a vehicle or upon command if human infantry clustered around it for cover.
Even the deadly bombs on the spokes of the tumbleweeds didn’t hold their attention, however, as it was soon clear that a remnant of the walking infantry company from the initial assault had met its end right there. Different spots on the flat ground near the bunker were littered with burnt-out coils of the reactive wire, and closer inspection showed that many of them were wrapped around the remains of human troops.
Some of these were so badly shot or burned that they could only be identified by their mangled body armor or ruined weapons.
Closer to the bunker, the bodies of several humans had been spread-eagled on the enemy obstacles. Their armor and weapons were gone, many of them had been dismembered, and all of them showed ugly wounds and dark smears of blood on what was left of their uniforms. Whether they were meant to serve as trophies announcing victory or scarecrows warding off further attack was unclear.
As they passed the Sim emplacement, Mortas noted the marks of a close assault on the angled rock that protected the heavy weapon. Chips had been knocked out in numerous places, and one entire corner of the bunker was gone. Fragments of stone were ranged on the ground in front of the fracture, which showed black smudges radiating from most of its edges. The human infantry had come close to taking this particular position, as the missing corner had been a rounded firing slit before someone had managed to stuff an explosive inside. To do that, the attackers would have had to maneuver right up to it, most likely under cover of darkness, and with almost no chance of retreat if they failed to capture the emplacement.
His own experience at crossing so many miles of this planet, sometimes in the canyons and other times crawling on his belly, painted the picture for him. He saw a dozen or more humans, hungry and filthy and tired, rigged out in the shoulder-and-torso armor of the walking infantry, sliding forward across the open toward the silent enemy position in the middle of the night. Guts tight with the fear of being spotted and the knowledge that their only warning would be the enemy weapons opening up on them. Different teams carrying the explosive bags, creeping all the way up to the grim walls while the others waited a short distance away, ready to provide covering fire or to charge into the breach if the bombs did their work.
Now we know why they were so bent on filling in the ravines.
Glory Main Page 20