Until Relieved

by Rick Shelley

  It was ninety minutes past sunset when Stossen received the call from CIC.

  "Colonel, we have the relief fleet in-system. They just emerged from hyperspace, not ninety seconds ago."

  At first, Stossen didn't reply. He couldn't. The thought of help coming, just hours too late, was too much for him. He bit at his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. Too damn much!

  "Colonel? Are you there?"

  "I'm here," Stossen replied. The taste of blood in his mouth was a surprise. He found it difficult to speak over the growing feeling of emptiness in his gut. So close. So far. He wanted to cry, but knew that he would not. Could not.

  "They're in-system. Can you hold until they get to you?"

  Stossen looked at Dezo Parks, who was also listening to the conversation. Parks shook his head. He held up a hand with four fingers extended. Four hours. And both men knew that even that was an overly optimistic estimate.

  "Negative, CIC," Stossen said. "We'll be lucky if we can hold out another four hours. I wouldn't lay odds on it. We're too close to dry on ammunition, and we're facing a major enemy offensive at this moment. If the Heggies press it, we could be gone in two hours. Or less."

  "I'll pass that information on to the relief fleet, Colonel. Hold on, sir. We're all with you."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Van Stossen hesitated for nearly five minutes before he broadcast the news of the relief fleet's arrival to the rest of the 13th. Through most of that five minutes, Stossen and Parks merely stared at each other. At one point, Dezo said, "You can't hold back that information, sir. Knowing that help is coming might make the difference." He didn't really believe that, but it was a Chance, more chance than they had otherwise.

  "It's more likely to destroy their spirit completely when they realize how just-out-of-reach help is," Stossen suggested. When Parks started to reply, the colonel waved him silent. "I know, Dezo. I'll make the broadcast. But I also know what the news has done to me. As if I'd just been sucked dry and hung in a museum in an exhibit called 'They Almost Made It.'"

  "We're not dead yet," Parks pointed out. "You know the heart our boys have. As long as they know help is coming, at least some of the 13th might survive. Hold an LZ for the relief. Nobody's going to just lay down and die. Even if we can't hold the lines, some of our lads might get away, hide until help gets here."

  "It might come to that. Is there anything left we can do that we haven't done already?" Stossen asked, suppressing a sigh with difficulty. "Any way to give us those extra hours?"

  "I don't know. We shortened the lines. We've got a second line of resistance prepared for when we have to abandon the first, even shorter. That helps concentrate what firepower we have left. Mines, out in front of the primary LOR, and on that line as well. I think some of the men have prepared a few more, ah, primitive surprises for the Heggies as well." Dezo paused, and cocked his head to the side. "You want to consider something really insane?"

  "Right now, I'd even consider witchcraft."

  "Something just came to me. We could bring down a half-dozen shuttles, not to escape in, but to form one last barricade, a final redoubt."

  "One last place to fall back to?"

  "Something like that. Granted, we'd probably lose most, maybe all, of the shuttles we use, but—just maybe—they might buy us a little extra time."

  "Let me think about it for a minute." While he was thinking, Stossen broadcast the news of the arrival of the fleet to his troops—just that the fleet was there and moving toward their aid as quickly as possible.

  "Hold on, men," he concluded, his words almost a prayer.

  "Why do I feel like a fraud?" Stossen asked when he lifted his visor and turned to face Parks again. Before Dezo could think of a reply, there was another call from CIC.

  "Colonel, the admiral says he's going to try something to get to you quicker. If it works, you'll have Wasps over your position in three hours, troops forty minutes after that."

  "How?" Stossen demanded.

  The watch officer in CIC hesitated before he answered. "I know this is going to sound crazy, Colonel, but this is what I was told. Part of the relief fleet is going to make another hyperspace jump, coming out near our position up here."

  "Can they do that?" Stossen asked, his eyes going wide.

  "I don't know. The manual says it can't. I don't think it's ever been tried, but honest to God, Colonel, that's what the admiral himself told me, personally. I asked him to repeat what he said, and it came out the same both times."

  "Can they do that?" Stossen asked Parks after unlinking from CIC.

  Dezo shrugged. "I don't know any more than they do. I'm not all that current on that sort of thing. But what I'm thinking is that the admiral's more likely to lose ships and men. Still, maybe it does offer a little hope."

  "I don't know much about flying a starship either," Stossen said. "What I do remember is that both ends of a hyperspace transfer have to be so far away from any planetary mass or ships get ripped apart, all the way down to their constituent atoms."

  "With a massive release of energy," Parks added, nodding as much to himself as to the colonel. "Comparable to a fair-sized matter-antimatter annihilation. That's what the texts say. I have no idea at all what the safety margin is."

  Both men were silent for a moment. Then Stossen said, "Either way, I think we can forget about bringing down those shuttles."

  Parks let out a sigh. "Yeah. Probably wasn't such a good idea anyway. Most of them probably would have been shot down before they landed anyway. Wouldn't do us much good that way, and we might lose men on the ground as well."

  "Let's just hope we last until they get here," Stossen said. Silently, he added, If they get here, unaware that his executive officer was thinking the same thing.

  "Three hours," Parks said. "That's sure better than eight."

  —|—

  The Schlinal troops brought up their own sniper rifles. Though the attackers did not have the benefit of prepared positions, the heavier slug-throwers did make life a little more chancy for the 13th.

  If a battle absolutely has to be fought, most soldiers prefer it to be at night. The green glow of objects in infrared sights comes to look as normal as the bright lights of day. A different set of sensory responses are needed. Light and shadow take on distinct meanings related more to hot and cold. The overlay of two night-vision systems in the optics of Accord helmets could, at its most extreme, resemble an activity that people from thousands of years in the past might have recognized—watching a primitive 3-D film without the special filter glasses that brought the images together. But experience made that double vision more helpful than any practical amalgam.

  Shortly after the men of the 13th received the news that the relief fleet had finally come in-system, the Schlinal forces made their first straight-up assaults on the Accord lines. Those early attempts were tentative, probing attacks made on various sectors by small units and quickly abandoned when they met stiff answering fire. Echo Company beat back one of those probes without taking any casualties.

  "Mind your wire," Joe said over his platoon circuit as soon as it was clear that the Heggies were withdrawing. The colonel's second message, that the relief fleet might actually get to Porter sooner than expected, came during the fighting. It was enough to make everyone take notice, if only for a fraction of a second.

  "Don't go shooting at their backs," Joe said. That was no gesture of civilized sportsmanship, it was necessary frugality. New hope brought new worries. Every additional second that the wire lasted brought them one more second closer to help. That thought came and came again, quickly obsessing Joe and many others on the line.

  "Squad leaders, check ammunition," was Joe's next transmission. Check and recheck; do everything possible to drive home the continued need to be as sparing of wire as possible.

  Tod Chorbek and Wiz Mackey had devised their own private system for stretching their ammunition. They took turns firing, never both at the same time. Though it was not
something they had ever drilled at—neither had ever suspected that it might someday be necessary—the two young men knew each other so well that they fell into an easy rhythm and hardly needed to look at each other or talk about the changeovers to make it work. From the beginning, their alternation went smoothly.

  Kam Goff kept his head down, mostly, or looked around to see if there were any casualties who needed his help. He no longer needed to see death to feel the reactions he had experienced during his first views of violence on the battlefield. Each burst of wire, from either side, reimprinted the pictures in his memory. His stomach twisted and lurched, but did not expel its contents. He was far beyond that.

  Why does it do this to me? He had asked himself that question hundreds of times since coming to Porter. He still didn't have the slightest clue. No one else in the platoon reacted the way he did. As far as he could see, no one in the entire 13th did.

  Why me? He did make an effort, one last attempt to assert some measure of self-worth. Two different times, he put his eye to the sights on his zipper and fired off short bursts. There were no living targets in his sight picture either time, but there was enemy activity "out there," and no one who wasn't looking through his eyes could know that he was shooting at nothing. He was shooting. He actually managed to make his finger squeeze the trigger and then release it. He did not freeze up. The first time, he was so astounded that he had to do it again just to convince himself that he had actually done it.

  Mort Jaiffer looked to his left when he heard Goff's zipper fire. For a moment he simply stared, also surprised that Kam was actually taking part in the fray. Looking past Goff, Mort saw that Ezra had also noticed. On a private channel, Mort reported the event to Joe Baerclau. "Maybe he's gonna make it after all," Mort said.

  "Let's hope so," Joe replied. For his sake, if nothing else. With relief on its way, maybe the 13th would survive the night. If it did, if Goff did, perhaps he would be able to hold his head up again. If he didn't, at least he would go out knowing that he had learned to handle his fear.

  Joe had no time to waste thinking about Goff though. Nor could he really afford to waste time on the other thoughts that kept nagging at him. The relief fleet is here, but they can't get to us in time. The irony of it all left a sour feeling in Joe's stomach. To fight, perchance to die. That was always the lot of the soldier, and Joe had no illusions left about that. But to fall hours, maybe only minutes, before help arrived... that was hard to accept.

  Maybe. That one word became a sort of shorthand for thoughts that there simply was no time to think through in detail. Maybe we'll fall, but maybe we can hold out. Maybe they'll get here in time after all. The colonel had come back on to tell them that the admiral in charge of the relief fleet was going to try something that might get them to Porter sooner than The Book said they could. Maybe that—whatever "that" was—would work; maybe it would not.

  "And maybe pigs will fly," Joe mumbled as he raised his rifle. A Schlinal helmet had just come into view.

  —|—

  Slee Reston was the last Wasp pilot in the air. During his last two flights, he had been wingman to Red three. They had been forced to defend themselves against Schlinal Boems while trying to get in as many strikes as they could against the infantry and armor closing in on the 13th. After Red three shot off his last rockets and emptied the magazines on his cannons, Slee had covered him while he made his run back to the LZ. But Slee still had ammunition—rounds for his cannons, at least—and he was not about to land with ammunition still aboard, not where there would be no more flights on Porter.

  As soon as Red three was on the ground, Slee swivelled Blue three and headed for the nearest point on the line where there was currently heavy fighting, in the northwest sector. Slee talked directly to the company commanders along the area he was headed for, looking for targets. Everyone had targets they wanted him to hit. As soon as Slee had a fix on friendly positions, and distances to the nearest Heggies, he banked right and made his run parallel to the front, spraying the trees that mostly hid the enemy from him.

  If I get one Heggie for every hundred rounds... He didn't expect any better than that—couldn't really expect that level of performance. Even with the enemy clearly visible, formed up in ranks on a drill field, he would scarcely expect to get one hit for every hundred rounds. In actual combat, one kill for a thousand rounds was more realistic. But realism was too hard to bear just now.

  A blinking red light told him that he had less than five seconds worth of ammunition left. He took his finger off of the trigger and started to make a 180-degree turn to run back along the front. He was halfway through the turn when another warning light came on, this one to warn him that a missile had locked on to the Wasp.

  Slee turned to race away from the missile, dropping the last of the chaff his Wasp carried. There were no decoy drones left. Slee ducked past the missile and resumed his strafing run, but a second missile locked on. This time, Slee was too low to have any chance to evade the rocket. His guns were dry, so he couldn't even attempt to shoot it down.

  There was no need for hesitation. Slee banked back toward the 13th's lines. One hand lifted the lid on a panel and armed the ejection controls. Another panel slid open and Slee hit the red button. The escape pod had scarcely cleared before the missile hit Blue three. The force of the explosion boosted the ejector pod a few additional meters. Slee blacked out momentarily. By the time he came to, the pod's parasail had been deployed and he was drifting behind Accord lines, with enemy small-arms fire dinging off of the pod.

  —|—

  The remaining Havocs flitted from deep cover to deep cover. With the reduced area that the 13th was defending, there was less maneuvering room than any of the gun crews liked, but at least the Schlinal force had still shown no use of long-range counterbattery fire, and the Havocs were still far enough from the front that there was little danger from infantry rockets. The crews of the Havocs were most concerned about not attracting enemy aircraft. They moved after each round, but they did not move as far or as fast as they would have if the enemy had brought up an artillery battalion.

  There were no massed artillery barrages in this fight. Each gun crew hoarded their few remaining rounds as long as they could. Fire missions called in from the 13th's command post or from the line companies were handled with single-shot responses—if they were handled at all. As long as the coordinates provided were accurate, one high explosive plasma round could be sufficient. Against a Nova tank, one hit was all that was needed. The Nova's armor was nowhere near sufficient to stop the bite of a Havoc.

  "We've got one frag and two HE left," Jimmy Ysinde reminded the others in Basset two.

  "I know," Eustace replied. "And we've got a mission for the frag now." He watched his controls while Jimmy loaded and Karl Mennem dialed in the coordinates and adjusted the elevation of the gun.

  "We've got missions for the last two HE too," Eustace announced while the others got ready to fire off the last fragmentation round.

  "Locked in," Karl announced.

  "Fire!"

  Simon had Basset two moving before the last echoes of the shot abated.

  "Take us closer to the lines," Eustace told him.

  In the rear compartment, Jimmy and Karl worked to ready the next shot. It went just like a drill. The crew of Basset two had some of the best times of any artillery crew in the fifteen SATs. Simon brought the Havoc to its new heading. Karl locked in the target, and Eustace gave the command to fire. After this round. Simon merely moved the Havoc forward 120 meters.

  "Fire!"

  The last round went out.

  After the last echoes of it faded from inside the crew compartments, Simon stared across the gun barrel to Eustace. Eustace stared back.

  "Infantry time?" Simon asked. The Havoc was moving. Even though they had no more ammunition, they had to move the gun away from its last firing position.

  Eustace growled under his breath. He knew what they were supposed to do, but he didn't li
ke it any better now than he had when the order was given.

  "We can at least ride a little closer to the lines," he said. "Slowly."

  —|—

  "No new word on the relief fleet yet?" Dezo Parks asked. He had been away from the CP for nearly a quarter hour, taking a look himself at one sector of the fighting.

  Van Stossen shook his head. "No. They haven't emerged from this last jump yet. If they have, they haven't made contact with us or CIC." The ships could all be lost by now, on whatever the admiral thought he could do. He didn't bother to add that.

  "I didn't think so," Parks said, knowing that the question had been unnecessary in the first place. Stossen would have cut him in on the call, or relayed the news as soon as it was over.

  "What's it like out there?" Stossen knew what he was hearing from the various company commanders, but that was never the same as a firsthand look. A report from his second in command was as close as he was going to come though.

  "As tight as you'd imagine," Parks replied. "We're still holding the outer line, all the way around, but we can't do that much longer. I'd advise bringing the men back to the secondaries now."

  Stossen nodded. Better to do it voluntarily, before there were any breakthroughs. "I've been waiting for you to get back before I gave the order." He hesitated, then said, "This is going to be one of the hairy spots."

  It was Parks's turn to nod. Taking men from prepared positions, ordering them to fall back to a second line of resistance in the face of enemy pressure, could bring disaster if the Schlinal troops were prepared to take full advantage of the opportunity.

  "We can't avoid it," Parks said.

  Stossen gave the order. Then he closed his eyes and prayed.

  —|—

  Most of the men in the 13th had been anticipating the order to pull back. The actual timing was a matter of some local control. No company wanted to be left out in front of the units on their flanks, so they coordinated—as best they could—with the companies to either side to insure an orderly withdrawal.