by Rick Shelley
Around on the south side of the compound, 2nd platoon had not come directly under fire yet. The early Heggie response was all directed toward the main part of George Company, advancing through the gap where the main gate had been. Second platoon was no longer running. The men moved forward by squads now, one covering the other. Mostly, the men walked in a crouch, ready to dive for cover when the enemy finally noticed them.
Joe no longer thought of the danger. He focused completely on each move, and on keeping track of his men and their situations. There was simply no room left for personal fear. He did remain mindful of all the urgings to be sparing of ammunition, but Joe Baerclau was always somewhat stingy of wire. His bursts were generally little more than a quarter second in duration, a light touch. Years of practice had given him an excellent feel for that, and he tried to restrain himself to shooting at visible targets. Wire carbines showed no muzzle flashes for an enemy to aim at. Joe had to look for people, or for their heat signatures in infrared. With rockets and grenades exploding on both sides, that became more difficult as the firefight progressed.
Part of the facade of the building that 2nd platoon was moving toward exploded outward. Bricks flew dozens of meters. Smaller bits of debris showered down on the approach soldiers. Then the rest of the wall seemed to bend outward, warping slowly. It finally twisted with a loud wrenching noise before it came down in apparent slow motion. Flames were rising inside the building, soaring from ground level through the roof. The Schlinal soldiers who had been inside were starkly illuminated, silhouettes against the dull orange and red flames. More than a few of the men were on fire. Those who could, jumped. The building was only two stories high. A soldier would know that he stood a better chance of surviving jumping from a height of seven or eight meters than staying inside to be roasted.
Weapons were dropped. Few of the men tried to jump clutching their rifles. The ones who were on fire obviously had other things on their minds, but even those who jumped before the flames reached them tended to jettison their rifles first, to give them both hands free for their landing.
"Come on, let's go!" Max Maycroft shouted in his helmet, which gave an almost deafening volume to the men of 2nd platoon.
Joe gestured the rest of his squad on.
The shouting intensified, almost at that moment. There was a fusillade from the largest building in the barracks compound, returned by 2nd platoon and the other Accord men with line of sight to that building. Men fell, on both sides.
Several Schlinal rocket grenades exploded nearly at once in the open. Joe happened to be looking past Max Maycroft when the platoon sergeant was hit by one of the rockets, right about on his left collarbone. The grenade exploded.
And so, in effect, did the platoon sergeant.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The five remaining Havocs of Basset Battery had all refueled before dawn. Their support vehicles—normally, one unarmored truck carried supplies, principally ammunition and fuel, for two guns, as well as mechanics and their tools—had moved with them. Now, the support vehicles, and the security detachment who rode with them, were all concealed at some distance from the Havocs, farther from Porter City, ready to either move forward to replenish the guns again, or to cut and run if that became necessary. The trucks, unburdened by armor or the weight of the large guns, were capable of speeds nearly double those of the Havocs.
Naturally, the maintenance vehicles were on the same radio net as the Havocs. Most of the crews listened primarily to "their" two guns. Familiarity made that an almost unconscious process of selection. The technical support crews came to recognize the voices of the men in their Havocs, even under the most extreme conditions. Once the shelling of Porter City started, engines were left running in the vans. The crews were in place, and the troops whose job it was to defend them were close enough to hop aboard in case a hasty move became necessary—in either direction.
They had a lot to listen to.
—|—
"Get us out of here. Quick!" Gunnery Sergeant Ponks shouted. "Course two-six-five."
Simon Kilgore didn't wait for an explanation. Basset two veered sharply left, accelerating before the turn was complete. Two saplings were crushed by the right tread. Inside the gun carriage, the trees went unnoticed. Basset two was too far from Porter City to be in range of any enemy Nova tanks, but there was incoming fire.
"Must be a fighter," Ponks said, still shouting into his microphone. "Two rockets."
No one questioned how they had managed to escape being hit by one, let alone two missiles. If they had truly been spotted by an enemy plane, only the wildest luck could have saved them. No one counted on that luck holding through the next launch of rockets.
"Why ain't it on the scope?" Simon demanded. "Not a hint." Up close, within easy missile range, the stealth capabilities of a fighter—Accord or Hegemony—wouldn't be enough to hide the plane completely.
"What was the angle?" Karl Mennem asked, shouting as loudly as the others. "Maybe it was a mudder."
"Looked high, but I'm not positive," Ponks admitted. "Mudder, that'd explain the misses, maybe." Even a wire-controlled rocket could be aimed badly. Ponks hit the scan control on the outside cameras, wishing that there were more eyes. Something in the air, or someone on the ground? On the ground, a man with a rocket tube would need to be a lot closer to have a good shot. In the air...
"Incoming!" Kilgore shouted as he reversed direction on one tread to slew the tank around to the right.
There could have been no more than one and a half seconds warning, but it was long enough for each man in the Havoc to note several distinct events—the jerk of the vehicle as it continued to twist around, the sharp tink, tink, tink of a small piece of metal bouncing around in the forward compartment, and then the realization of what was about to happen—before the crushing sounds of metal and explosives erupted as the wire-guided rocket slammed into the thin fender over the sprocketed drive wheel on the rear right of the Havoc. The Havoc tilted up, away from the blast. The noise inside the crew compartments was beyond deafening. For an instant stretching toward infinity by echoes, the din was paralytic.
Eustace screeched, "Bail out!" but none of the others could hear him. He couldn't hear himself even. It would be a long while before any of them would hear normally again, if they survived.
No one really needed the order in any case. As soon as the crewmen found some return of coordination, their hands reached for the latches that would give them an escape route. Though rational thought was nearly impossible, their training had been thorough enough for each man to know what to do. If they could get out of the Havoc quickly, they might have a chance. The rocket had exploded low, but near the ammunition stores. The wall between ammunition and crew was armored better than any other part of the Havoc, and the compartment was designed so that the bulk of any explosion there would vent up and back, away from the crew. But if the gun's ammunition rack did explode, there still might be a fireball within the compartments, and if that happened, none of them would escape, or leave remains that could be identified.
Simon did think to kill the engines. That too was reflex, honed by hundreds of hours of drill.
The four men scrambled out of the hatches. Luckily, and because of exemplary engineering and construction, none of the hatches had been jammed by the blast. The men scarcely breathed as they scurried to escape. Each mind held an image of the fireball it expected. A second, two seconds: there might be no more time than that. The men jumped from the deck of the Havoc and ran straight away from it, not taking any thought to where the others might be headed, ready to dive forward at the first hint of light from the next explosion.
That second explosion did not come.
Forty meters from Basset two, Eustace finally collapsed, too out of breath to go another step. He fell forward, gasping for air. There was a delay before his mind was able to start thinking rationally. There had been no secondary explosion. The ammunition rack had not gone up. But somewhere, perhaps very cl
ose, there was at least one Schlinal soldier, perhaps many of them.
Ponks forced his mouth shut and worked to keep his labored breath muted. The danger was far from over. It might only be beginning. He rolled to the side, anxious to move from where he had been. He started looking for cover, or for any hint of an enemy approaching to finish him off.
He could see very little. Havoc crewmen didn't wear the same battle helmets that their infantry comrades did, helmets with built-in night-vision systems. The Havocs' optics took care of that. Nestled inside their metal and composite compartments, the crew used periscopes and video cameras to do their seeing for them, with greater acuity in any light than mere eyes could ever know. The helmet that the crewmen wore was more for sound insulation than for protection or for data readouts. It had radios, but no fancy optics at all.
Eustace lifted his head slowly, a few millimeters at a time, scanning as far as he could to either side, looking for any hint of movement. There was little residual fire to aid vision. The Havoc itself scarcely looked damaged in the starlight. The crumpled rear fender was all that Ponks could see from his position.
"Simon? Karl? Jimmy?" Ponks whispered the names, hoping that his helmet radio still worked.
One by one, and quite slowly, each of the others replied. At first, each spoke on a single word, his own name, just to let the chief know he was alive. Besides, no one had spare breath left for anything beyond a single word. At least, the responses sounded like whispers to Eustace, almost lost amid the ringing he felt in his ears.
Ponks crawled farther away from where he had first dropped, moving very cautiously, concerned more to keep his silence than to make any great distance. He went only a couple of body lengths before he stopped and whispered into his microphone again.
"Stay quiet, and stay down. There's got to be Heggies around." He paused, trying to hear something in the night besides the ringing in his ears. That was less severe than it had been before, but he knew that it would be impossible for him to hear very small sounds around him—for an indefinite time. Too long. "Anyone hurt bad?"
There was no answer, no claim of injuries.
"Anyone see any Heggies, any sign at all?" Ponks asked next. "That must have been a shoulder-fired rocket that got us."
"I don't see anything," Kilgore said. His whisper sounded particularly raspy. "Don't hear anything that sounds like people either."
The others added their own negatives, more tersely.
"Don't look like the old girl's hurt too bad," Simon said a moment later.
"No time to worry about that now," Ponks replied. "We might still have company. Everybody stay put until we get help in."
With hardly a pause, Ponks said, "Rosey? You copying any of this?" Rosey—Technical Sergeant Rositto Bianco—was the chief of their support crew.
"We've got a lock on your position, Gunny," Rosey replied. "We're already highballin' it your way."
"Be careful, bogeys around," Ponks said.
"So I gathered. Just don't get your butts shot off till we get there. We've got six zippers and a splat gun. We'll take care of anything we find. And if we can't, there's a pair of Wasps almost on top of you now. You see anything 'fore we get there, give the sky-guys a shout."
"Looks like the gun might be salvageable," Ponks said, a little doubtful. He couldn't see enough of Basset two to say that with any confidence. Still, it hadn't been destroyed outright, and under garrison conditions it might easily be repairable... but in the field, far from most of the 13th? He doubted that they would have time to do much work. The damage under the bent skirt might be too extensive for anything less than a full shop.
"I'll eyeball it when we get there," Rosey said. "Just remember, a gun can be replaced a lot easier than a head. So keep it down."
Damn right, I'll keep it down, Ponks thought. He reached down along his side and slid his pistol from its holster. There was no room for Armanoc zippers in a Havoc. The only personal weapon that a gun bunny carried was a Depliht Mark VII RA semiautomatic pistol. The RA stood for rocket-assisted. The Mark VII fired a 7mm projectile on a 12.5mm base, a shorter version of the round that the Dupuy cough gun used. As soon as the slug cleared the barrel, the rocket ignited and burned long enough to double the muzzle velocity—about the time it took to travel ten meters. Since most pistol work took place at less than ten meters, the explosive, needle-nosed projectile would usually still be accelerating when it hit its target. That close, body armor did not prevent deep penetration. Any torso hit had a good chance of being lethal.
Ponks looked around with different objectives now, trying to estimate where the rocket that had stopped the Fat Turtle had come from. After a moment he had to concede that he had absolutely no idea. The way that Simon had slewed the Havoc around in his futile attempt to avoid the rocket, and the way Eustace had run and rolled escaping, made it impossible for him to even hazard a guess. The enemy who had stopped Basset two might be anywhere.
An itch started on the back of Ponks's neck. He resisted the urge to make a sudden move, but he had to look behind him. He slid slowly, crabbing around to look all of the way behind him, pausing after every move, scanning the night with eyes and ears. He kept his head down, the chin strap of his helmet touching the ground. With his eyes no more than fifteen centimeters off of the dirt, his view was extremely limited, and there was still a slight sense of a hollow ringing in his ears, uncomfortable, and enough to blanket all but the most blatant of sounds.
Where are you? he asked silently. I want you before you get me or any of my men.
—|—
For the moment the only shooting was coming from the Accord forces surrounding the barracks buildings. Joe looked around quickly, surprised. They can't all be dead in there, he told himself. No ammunition? Or are they just waiting to sucker us in?
"Cease fire!" The order came directly from Captain Ingels, over the all-hands circuit. "Save your wire until you can see a target."
The silence that came was not complete. The fires started by the rockets were making crackling noises. Part of the one building was still afire. Something inside—most likely a rocket, or a crate of them—cooked off with a noisy bang. There was still no shooting from inside any of the buildings.
Joe looked over toward where Max Maycroft had died. He didn't go to him. Even from a distance, it seemed clear that there would be nothing recognizable left—nothing Joe wanted to see. Max was gone. Joe's jaw worked, as if by its own volition. Max gone? It was impossible, yet, to think of life without Max.
Joe blinked several times, then took a deep breath and looked toward the building again, at the hole where the wall had exploded outward. Even after that, there had been shooting coming from the upper story. That had stopped quickly enough though as the men in there had jumped for whatever chance of safety they saw. The next building over, a mate to the one that had burned, had a smaller hole in the wall. There still had to be enemy soldiers in that barracks.
"Baerclau."
"Yes, Lieutenant?" Joe replied over the same channel.
"You're platoon sergeant now," Lieutenant Keye said.
Joe hesitated before he said, "Yes, sir." He hadn't progressed to thinking about that yet. He was the senior squad leader in 2nd platoon, so the shift in duties was automatic. But the job might not last for long. Keye didn't have the authority to make a permanent promotion, and Captain Ingels might decide to shuffle someone in from one of the other platoons, but even if he did, that would not happen in the middle of a fight, probably not until they got back to the rest of the 13th, up on the plateau—or even back on the ships.
"Lieutenant?" Joe said after another pause.
"What?"
"There are still Heggies in those buildings."
"I know. Captain hasn't decided how we're going to handle this yet."
"A few Vrerchs to tidy things up?" Joe suggested.
"I doubt it, but then, it's not my call," Keye said. After a short pause, he said, "Spooky, isn't it?"
; "Maybe they're trying to find a channel to surrender over."
"Or they're hoping for reinforcements. Keep your eyes peeled. I've got to talk to the captain."
Tanks or infantry? Joe wondered. Or air? The Schlinal garrison ought to have plenty of all three available, and not very far away, Joe thought. He didn't have long to ponder the possibilities. Keye was back on the channel too quickly.
"Let's move, Joe," Keye said. "We get up and start forward again, for the building on the right. See what kind of reaction we get."
"You mean see if we get our asses shot off?" Joe said as he stuck a full spool of wire into his carbine. He saved the old spool. There were still a few meters of wire on that, and every centimeter of wire might be important before this campaign ended.
"Better not be your ass they get," Keye said.
Joe switched to the platoon command channel and ordered the men up. More from habit than anything else, Joe led the way with first squad. Lieutenant Keye had joined them by that time. He did not suggest any different alignment, and he stayed with the squad.
Hilo Keye was old for a lieutenant. In garrison, he often drew stares from officers and men who did not know his history. Past thirty when he joined the Accord Defense Force as an enlisted man, he had served in the ranks for nearly three years before being tapped for officer candidate school. He knew the work from both ends. He would not stay a junior lieutenant for long. It was an open secret in the 13th that Hilo Keye was slated for the fast track. He had the rare combination of extreme intelligence, a remarkable knack for the work, and well-placed relatives. He would rise at least as far as major before his lack of a military academy degree might slow his progress. If he lived that long. The doubt there had nothing to do with his age, just with the fact of the war. Away from the risks of combat, a man could look forward to reaching, or surpassing, the age of 140.
Second platoon advanced nearly half the remaining distance to the building next to the burned-out shell before the Schlinal forces started firing again. This time, the gunfire was sporadic, uncoordinated.