by David Drake
It would have been too damned dangerous to fly directly over the line. No matter what identification signals were used some idiot would be bound to panic and open fire, triggering a free for all.
Todd approached the north fort circumspectly, making sure he had contact and clearance before moving slowly into the ditch behind the counterscarp. He parked amongst a variety of requisitioned civilian frame transports. A trooper gestured to them from an opening cut into the scarp opposite. Allenson, Hawthorn and Todd followed the guide along a trench into the fort.
Trenches zig-zagged off confusingly. The twists and turns confused Allenson’s sense of direction. Corners were protected by fire positions from which defenders could rake adjacent lengths of trench. The trooper led them unfailingly to the roofed bunker that served as Kaspary’s headquarters.
Colonel Kaspary was a thin man with a goatee beard. He had the habit of stroking it when he concentrated. He dressed in a deep blue dress uniform that must have been smart when crisply pressed. Now it was creased and stained.
Allenson shook the man’s hand.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here, General,” Kaspary said, lifting an eyebrow questioningly. “I assure you we are quite ready to attack.”
“I have no fear of that. The Fighting First is my best brigade,” Allenson raised his voice so that his words could be heard by all the surrounding soldiers.
“With your permission, Colonel, I hoped to accompany you if I won’t get in your way.”
“Of course you can and welcome,” Kaspary replied, even managing to look as if he meant it.
No other answer was possible but Allenson knew that the arrival of one’s superior just before combat was the very last thing any commander needed. He shouldn’t be here but he just had to come. It would be intolerable to wait back in the control room while people fought and died following his orders. He needed to reassure Kaspary.
“You are still in complete charge, of course.”
It might have been Allenson’s imagination but Kaspary seemed to relax slightly.
He sat behind Kaspary at his console watching events unfold. The first batch of Brasilian troopers bailed out of their vehicles and dug in on the east bank while the amphibs recrossed the river to pick up a second lift. It took thirty minutes for the tanks to make the round trip and heave themselves out of the water.
“So what are they going to do now?” Allenson asked. “Go back for a third lift or press on through?”
The barrage ceased and the Brasilians did—nothing. The amphibs waited on the east bank, their troops still embarked.
“They seem to be waiting. I wonder what for?” Kaspary asked, stroking his chin.
“Maybe they want to see how we will react. Our apparent passivity must be puzzling,” Allenson said.
“I’ll expect we’ll soon find out.”
Kaspary was right. But the answer came in a wholly unexpected way and from a wholly unexpected source.
“Colonel,” a voice said from a console in the corner.
“Hmm?”
“Urgent priority contact from Colonel Ling.”
“Well, put it on.”
A hologram opened by Kaspary showing Ling’s head.
“Colonel Kaspary, do you have General Allenson with you?”
“Here,” Allenson replied, leaning forward so he would be within the reception zone visible to Ling.
“South Fort is under attack,” Ling said.
“What, how?” Allenson asked.
South Fort was way down the line alongside the Bay.
“We don’t know,” Ling replied. He sounded tired. “There was no preparatory bombardment or warning of frame activity. Just a message that Brasilian commandos were storming the counterscarp.”
“Right, I’ll deal with it.”
The link snapped off.
“Colonel I’ll need one of your regiments and some transports,” Allenson said. “We can’t afford to lose South Fort.”
“Take the Cinnerans; they’re the closest to establishment strength. Do you still want me to try to ambush the Brasilians?”
“Not unless you get an unmissable opportunity. You’ll have to decide as the situation warrants.”
“Very good, sir,” Kaspary said seemingly unruffled by the loss of one third of his force. He showed the nerve that had made him the only man to keep his head in the Douglas Hundreds’ debacle.
Allenson shot out of the bunker without further conversation. He pointed to the trooper who had been their guide. The man leaned casualy against the side of the trench. He gazed in astonishment at a general who ran. A running general was an offense against the natural order of things, his expression seemed to say, akin to a talking animal or water flowing uphill.
“You! Take me back to my barge. At the double man, what are you waiting for?”
The trooper took off and Allenson’s entourage followed. The strange procession ran through the trenches, leaping over boxes and other obstacles. When they reached the barge, transports in the ditch were already filling with soldiers in combat uniforms with purple facings and lapels. These must be the Cinnerans.
Allenson embussed and waited impatiently, tapping his fingers against the ceramic hull. After a geological aeon, his pad lit up with a face in a combat helmet.
“Major Shong, sir, commander of the Cinneran Regiment awaiting your orders.”
“Lift now, Major, and follow me.”
Allenson made an up gesture to Todd and the barge part took off. One by one, a disparate collection of transport frames followed, weaving around one another. Miraculously, none collided.
“Have you been briefed?” Allenson asked Shong over his pad.
“Sort of, sir. I understand there’s been some sort of attack on the most southerly fort of the line and I’m to place myself under your command.”
“You know as much as I do, then.”
“I don’t under how Brasilians could just pop up by the Bay like that,” Shong said.
“Nor do I, Major, but I know where they’re going. You and I are going to evict them.”
The shortest route south took them across the chord of the Trent Line on the city side of the defenses. Garbled reports from Bay Fort indicated that it had not yet fallen but that heavy fighting was ongoing. Panic stricken calls from junior officers manning bunkers insisted that a large Brasilian force was already inside the complex.
Despite her best efforts Fendlaigh was unable to establish a coms link with the fort’s command bunker. This was not a good sign. The few videos she managed to capture showed confused firefights although she did manage to isolate an image of a heavily armed Brasilian commando in body armor using a grenade launcher.
Hawthorn handed Allenson a multishot laser carbine.
“Keep it on auto and even you should be able to hit something with this. Just try to avoid making it me,” Hawthorn said lugubriously.
“You’re all heart,” Allenson replied.
“Do you intend us to fly straight into the fort?”
Allenson shook his head.
“It’s tempting but we have no idea what’s there. Just a couple of Brasilian point defense cannon would cause carnage.”
“We could make a short Continuum hop and surprise them,” Fendlaigh ventured.
“If I was the Brasilian commander I would anticipate such a move. I’d have a unit of gun frames waiting in ambush in the Continuum. No, we’ll swing round to the south, come in low over the sea and land on the coast. Hopefully they’ll not notice the frame activity in the confusion. Even if they do we’ll be below the line of sight horizon for all but the last few seconds.”
Allenson’s barge led the frame convoy in the loop over the sea despite Shong’s protests. A single rifle shot glanced off the bottom of the hull indicated that they had stumbled across the enemy. The woman on the port gun returned fire with a series of short bursts from her tribarrel. Something exploded with a flash that gave rise to a column of boiling black smoke.
> The Streamer frames raced through a convoy of gray-green assault boats.
“So that’s how they crossed the Bay,” Allenson said to himself. “How could I have been so recklessly stupid as to assume that amphibious tanks were their only water transport asset?”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Hawthorn said firing a snapshot from his rifle at a fleeting target. “It was a reasonable assumption given that they didn’t use them in the attack on the Hundreds.”
Further laserfire, explosions and smoke marked the passage of the Cinnerans through the Brasilian flotilla. The assault boats were soon left behind and the frames grounded on a gravel beach. Troopers poured out and Allenson jog-trotted up the slope onto a plain of dry scrub. He used his datapad to examine Bay Fort which was only five hundred meters away. Little showed above ground—but that was to be expected.
Gaps had been punched in the razorwire around the fort. Scorch marks indicated the use of some sort of thermic lance or charge. An explosion in the fort vented a cloud of greasy orange smoke.
As soon as the last Cinnerans had made it up the slope, Allenson gave the order to move out at a fast walk. Hawthorn and his Special Project troopers formed a ring around Allenson and his aides. They passed through the wire, using the holes in the razorwire so thoughtfully provided by the Brasilian commandos.
The first small arm shots lit up the scrub. Allenson kept the advance to a walk. He wanted his troops to be still capable of fighting when they reached the scarp. A handful of Cinnerans fell but the loss rate was acceptable. He suppressed any emotion about the fact that soldiers were dying because of his orders. That was what happened in war: people died. No loss rate was acceptable to the families and friends of the victims but how could it be otherwise?
A flicker in the sky caught his attention. It turned into a puff of gray smoke about three meters above the ground forty or fifty meters in front of him. He heard the sharp crack of an exploding grenade. Another one soared over his head to explode amongst his troops. Three Cinnerans folded in on themselves and collapsed.
“Spread out,” Shong ordered, circling his hand over his head for emphasis.
“Charge,” Allenson added.
Walking was no longer an option. Now that they were within grenade range, losses would rapidly become unacceptable. Allenson put his head down and concentrated on running over the uneven ground. More cracks followed and something tugged at his sleeve. The security trooper alongside him pitched face down. The back of his head was missing.
Allenson ran up the slope of the fort counterscarp holding his carbine out in front in both hands for balance. He pitched over the edge into the ditch, landing hard and rolling. A Brasilian commando leaned over a wall of sandbags and fired a burst of searing white laser pulses from his carbine.
Theoretically laser shots were invisible unless aimed right at your eyes, in which case they were only visible for a microsecond before your optic nerves, retinas and brain cooked in rapid sequence. In practice dust and water vapor in the air degraded the beams scattering high intensity light. That was very visible, especially at minimum range.
Allenson had no idea where the laser pulses went. They didn’t hit him, which was good enough for the moment. He rolled onto one knee and fired back from the hip, holding down the trigger of his carbine.
Laser pulse hits lit up the sandbags and stabilized walls of the scarp face. Sand fused in blue flashes of ionized silica, and brown puffs of soil spurted from the wall. The Brasilian commando ducked. Allenson held down the trigger, only releasing it when an amber hologram showed that his gun was in danger of meltdown.
The commando popped back up as soon as Allenson stopped firing. A jet of red steam sparkling with an orange-yellow twinkle of burning ceramics shot out of a hole in his armor. This time he went down and stayed down. Hawthorn moved carefully past Allenson. His hunting rifle whined as it recharged its capacitors.
Hawthorn gestured with his left hand and two security troopers took up a position each side of the tunnel entrance behind the sandbags. One of them signaled one-two-three with his fingers and they tossed grenades into the tunnel simultaneously before flattening themselves against the wall. Two explosions sounded and a blast of dust shot out of the tunnel entrance. The troopers ran inside, carbines at the ready, before the dust settled.
Allenson followed but the tunnel was empty. It emerged into deep zig-zag trenches that made up the fort proper. Allenson pinged Shong on his datapad.
“Sir?”
“Situation report, if you please, Major.”
“All sections report that they are in with light casualties. We’ve encountered only a handful of defenders. A couple of sections are held up by defensive fire from bunkers so I’ve ordered my men to spread out and try to outflank. My leading units are reporting explosions to the north.”
“Very good.”
Allenson cut the connection and indicated the advance to continue. Hawthorn led, putting his datapad around each sharp turn first to check for surprises before venturing around the corner. Eventually he stopped and held up a hand and Allenson moved through the troopers to join him.
“There’s a bunker at the end of this section,” Hawthorn said.
“Manned?” Allenson asked.
Hawthorn shrugged.
“We won’t know unless someone sticks their head around the corner and waves,” Hawthorn said. “Any volunteers, No?”
He smiled grimly.
“Shrenk, Brown, get out of the trench and crawl across the top to the bunker. See if you can drop a charge through the fire slit but stay low.”
One trooper made a stirrup out of his hands. The second put his boot in and was propelled upwards. His head had barely cleared the parapet when a heavy laser pulse exploded on the lip of the trench spraying molten soil into his face. The trooper fell back into the trench, breath bubbling through roasted and swollen lips.
Hawthorn flipped an inoculator out of a pouch and shot the trooper full of sedative.
“See if you can stabilize him, Frensa.”
A trooper took off the wounded man’s helmet and sprayed analgesic artificial skin onto his face.
“Looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Hawthorn said. He leaned his rifle against the side of the trench and turned to Allenson. “Lend me your carbine.”
Allenson passed it over.
“What have you in mind?”
Hawthorn ignored him.
“Shrenk, I’ll keep their heads down while you carry the charge down the trench and lob it into the bunker. Stay on the right-hand side to give me a fire lane.”
The trooper called Shrenk swallowed hard but unclipped the charge from his webbing without comment. Hawthorn flattened himself by the corner with his back to the rest of them.
“On the count of three,” he said, putting his left hand behind his back
He extended one finger at a time.
Allenson relieved Shrenk of the charge. The man looked surprised but offered no resistance. On the third finger Hawthorn leapt across the trench to the far side of the turn and opened fire in short bursts. Allenson ran like a man avoiding his creditors, holding the charge against his chest like a football. He’d been good at sports at college. He trusted that he hadn’t lost the knack but each footfall seemed to take forever.
Laser pulses flashed across the bunker’s firing slit in one second bursts as Hawthorn nursed the carbine. For a vital second nothing happened then laser streaks lit up the left side of the trench. The defender in the bunker automatically targeted Hawthorn as the greatest threat but he’d had shot too quickly.
Hawthorn fired again, peppering the fire slit and eliciting streaks of return fire from the bunker. Again they passed by Allenson’s left shoulder but this time Hawthorn failed to return fire.
A voice shouted from inside the bunker and Allenson saw a flash of light reflect off the barrel of the gun turning in his direction. He threw himself headlong as if he was going for a touchdown. Something
burnt a line down his back then he was sliding along the ground face first under the arc of fire. He rolled over until his back was against the wall and pulled his ion pistol out of its holster.
Officers carried pistols as a mark of rank and occasionally for disciplinary purposes. One never expected to actually use the things in combat. A carbine held horizontally in one hand slid out of the bunker’s firing slit. The hand tried to angle it downwards to sweep the dead ground in front of the bunker with fire.
Allenson took very careful aim. He was a lousy shot but at this range he could almost touch the target with the pistol’s muzzle. He fired at the hand and smeled the sweet tang of roasting flesh. There was a cry and a curse from inside the bunker.
The carbine clattered to the ground as the hand withdrew. Allenson discharged the pistol once more in the general direction of the firing slit to discourage further attempts on his life.
He pulled the safety cap off the charge and gripped the cord that uncoiled from the fuse. It then occurred to him that he hadn’t asked the length of time the fuse was set for. If it was too long the bunker’s residents would have time to push it back out. This would be most unfortunate for one General Allenson. Too short and it would go off in his hands, also not a desirable outcome.
Three seconds was usual. He gambled on Shrenk being a creature of habit. Soldiers tended to be, particularly when dealing with lethal devices. He pulled the chord and counted: one thousand, two thousand, then he thrust the charge through the firing slit and dropped back to the ground.
He got to three thou . . . when the air smacked him against the trench floor, which retaliated by pushing back hard. There was a loud bang and a cloud of dust emerged from the firing slit.
Troopers piled down the trench at the run. The first one to reach Allenson’s prone body stood on him to get into a suitable fire position. The trooper unloaded his carbine into the bunker in long bursts, sweeping his gun from side to side.
Allenson didn’t complain. He doubted that anyone had survived the blast in that confined space but it never ever hurt to make sure.