Steel Gauntlet

by David Sherman

  Schultz made his report as soon as the first tanks came into view in front of them: “More than fifty tanks, maybe a whole battalion. Range of lead tanks, seven hundred meters. Azimuth eighty-seven degrees. Speed sixty kph. Coming directly toward me.”

  “Keep them in sight, we’ll get back to you,” was the response.

  “What are they doing?” Dean asked when the company stopped and deployed.

  Schultz shook his head. He hesitated about making another report without knowing. Then he saw the radar and launch tubes rise from the tanks and, as unexpected as it was, knew what the tanks were doing.

  “Lima Six, break, break,” he shouted into his radio, interrupting someone else’s report of new activity. “Tanks in sight are readying counterbattery fire. Over.”

  “Counterbattery fire?” asked Corporal MacLeash, who was manning the op radio. “Are you sure?” Only artillery was supposed to be able to conduct counterbattery fire. He’d never heard of tanks firing counterbattery at artillery.

  “They’ve got rockets,” Schultz said. “Counterbattery.”

  “Wait one,” MacLeash said.

  While they waited, the command tank’s computer made its calculations and transmitted them to the guidance systems. There were nine bellows of smoke and blasts of noise, and nine rockets lifted into the air. Five hundred meters up they turned from their vertical flight and arced to the west.

  “Tell artillery they’ve got incoming on the way,” Schultz said into the radio, totally ignoring proper procedure.

  Just out of sight, around the corner from the company they could see, nine more rockets shot upward.

  Chapter 24

  Two salvos of nine rockets each crashed down on 13th FIST’s artillery battery. The six guns were dispersed; a hundred meters between them and revetments gave them some protection, but not as much as they needed. In the first salvo, one rocket landed directly on the breech of a gun, destroying it and killing its entire six-man crew. A second rocket struck the top of a revetment, staggering the gun as shrapnel shredded four of its crew. Two other rockets struck between revetments and caused little damage, another shot long and missed everything, and one was a dud. One missile rocket landed next to the fire control center, killing everyone in it. But the rocket that caused the most damage landed on an ammunition carrier. The massive secondary explosion toppled one gun, bent the tube of a second and jammed it into the breech, and killed twelve of the battery’s Marines. The second salvo finished the job. Thirteenth FIST’s battery was left with one usable gun and just fifteen of its seventy-one men still alive and functioning.

  By then 34th FIST battery had adjusted its aim and fired its first salvo at the counterbattery, tanks. The 19th and 21st FIST batteries were aimed and loading.

  From the top of their building, Schultz and Dean watched as the tankers readied another salvo. Then the artillery struck. The first six-round salvo was fused for contact and did limited damage except for one round that hit the tread cover of a tank, disabling it. Shrapnel from another round tore the guidance system off the top of a tank, and fragments from a third round damaged the tracking radar on the command tank. Three tankers who didn’t button up quickly enough were hit by flying fragments. Then the second two salvos hit, one immediately after the other, and they were more effective, as they were fused for air bursts and destroyed or disabled the rest of the rocketry control systems mounted on the tanks. They also set off four rockets sitting in their launchers and killed those four tanks.

  Then another tank company, one out of sight of the two Marines, launched a salvo. When the roar of the rockets died down, Dean and Schultz heard the rumbling of many engines as the tanks displaced—those tanks weren’t going to be caught by another counterbattery barrage.

  The tanks withdrew directly into the path of the infantry battalion of the 36th FIST, most of whose Marines were carrying Straight Arrows. It was a brief, bloody, and thoroughly one-sided encounter: just ten of the eighty-five tanks got away. Thirty-sixth FIST suffered seven fatalities and fourteen wounded. Farther to the north, the 225th FISTs infantry ran into another battalion of the Third Armored Division and scored an even more lopsided rout. The Marines of the 13th FIST, seeking vengeance for their artillery, advanced in the middle and pinned down a regiment from the Third, held it in position and whittled it down until massed fire from the remaining artillery zeroed in on it and reduced the tanks to rubble.

  General Aguinaldo, seeing the victories the Marines were achieving over the newly arrived Diamundean division, scrapped his earlier plan and quickly devised a new one.

  “All FISTs will advance on line,” he told his assembled staff and his combat element commanders. “General Daly, don’t let anyone get ahead of the rest. I want all available air assets with tank-killing capability flying over the infantry.”

  He turned to the commanding general of the 10th Light Infantry Division. “General Ott, I want you to put one reinforced battalion behind each FIST to reinforce them in the event my Marines find a weakness to exploit—or to give them a hand if they encounter heavy resistance. Your battalions will be under the command of the FIST commanders. Your remaining battalions will be in reserve.”

  Ott grimaced; army commanders always hate the idea of soldiers being under the command of Marines. But he himself was under the direct command of a Marine, so his subordinates were as well. “Yessir, we’ll do that.”

  Aguinaldo noticed the grimace. “Don’t worry, General. The army’s distrust of Marine fighting abilities is returned in spades. My FIST commanders won’t throw your soldiers’ lives away—they wouldn’t trust them to do it right.”

  Ott’s face turned deep red. But he wisely held back the retort he wanted to make.

  Aguinaldo turned to the Navy Air commander on the ground, “Captain Sprance, Navy Air has suffered severe losses, but you still have more aircraft than I do. You will have half of your squadrons flying outside Oppalia to stop or slow down any additional tank divisions attempting to follow the Third Division. Distribute the remainder of your squadrons to the FISTs to supplement their remaining aircraft. They’ll be under the command of the FIST squadrons.”

  Captain Sprance looked even more pained than General Ott had. Marine Air was supposed to supplement Navy Air, not the other way around. But General Aguinaldo was in full command of the planetside operations and he had to obey. “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Good. Do it. We commence in thirty minutes.”

  The senior commanders scrambled to get back to their commands, talking on their radios as they went, issuing preliminary orders to subordinates.

  Less than twenty-five minutes later, half the navy squadrons lifted off for their screening patrols. Twenty-eight minutes after the order, Marine aircraft and the remaining navy squadrons took off to cover the FISTs. On the dot of thirty minutes, the Marines began their advance with the 10th Light Infantry Division moving sharply in trace. Thirty-one minutes after the order was given, a radio call came in from a navy squadron flying to the southeast:

  “There’s one hell of a sandstorm coming your way. We’re at angels twenty-two and we aren’t above it. It seems to go all the way to the ground, and it gets thicker lower down. It’s bad enough that I don’t think we can make it back to Oppalia and land safely before it hits.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Namur gazed out the observer’s port of his command vehicle. A very bad sandstorm was coming. He didn’t need the weather reports to know that. All Diamundeans in this hemisphere were used to these storms. What was bothering him now was not the weather but the dispatch he’d just received from General Headquarters:

  GHO/PZKFWI24C4Iz/2o45L

  TO MY BRAVE FIGHTING MEN AT OPPALIA:

  YOU HAVE RESISTED THE INVADERS HEROICALLY. THEY MUST NOT, REPEAT, MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO BREAK OUT OF THE CORDON YOU HAVE SO VALIANTLY ESTABLISHED. YOU MUST FIGHT TO THE LAST MAN TO ASSURE THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN. ANY MAN WHO SHOWS THE LEAST DEGREE OF RELUCTANCE TO FIGHT ON IS TO BE SHOT. ANY COMMANDER WHO GIVES UP EVEN ON
E METER OF OUR SACRED SOIL AT OPPALIA WILL BE EXECUTED.

  /s/ St. Cyr

  Official: Stauffer, Col.

  GS, Chief of Staff

  Is St. Cyr insane? Namur asked himself. In his mind, the question was entirely rhetorical. What kind of an order is this? he wondered. Execute his men? We should have stopped him when he attacked the embassy. How could we have ever expected to win a war against the Confederation? Now he has committed us to this fight without proper support and he wants us all to die here? For what?

  No! Namur pounded his fist onto the computer console. His driver looked up in alarm. “Everything okay, Colonel?” he asked.

  Startled out of his mutinous reverie, Namur glanced guiltily at the enlisted man. “Everything is fine, Scithers.” He recovered his composure and punched a code into the communications console to access a secure net to Third Armored Division headquarters and Colonel Irvin Rummel, the division commander. The image of the division chief of staff, a major whose name Namur could never remember, popped onto the vidscreen.

  “The colonel’s not available right now,” the major informed Namur at once.

  “When will he be?”

  “In an hour or less, sir.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s discussing General St. Cyr’s latest order with his staff right now, sir.”

  Namur nodded. Everyone in the army was probably studying that order just then. “Get him, Major.”

  “But sir, he’s in with his staff—”

  “I don’t care. Get him. Now.”

  The major hesitated only an instant, and then the screen went blank. Outside, the wind had picked up, visibility quickly decreasing. It was going to be a major storm. Good, Namur thought. Just what we need.

  While he waited for Colonel Rummel to come up on the net, Namur commanded the onboard computer to plot the most direct course from Oppalia to a coordinate in Rourke’s Hills. The computer gave him two routes based on the difficulty of the terrain and weather conditions that were expected to prevail throughout the area during the next twenty-four hours. It also calculated the probability of detection based on what it knew of the brigade’s available electronic countermeasures suites and the enemy’s surveillance and detection capabilities.

  The computer gave Namur two projections: (1) A default displayed every five minutes whenever the computer was in use. At the present rate of combat intensity at the continued fuel and ammunition consumption levels, and presuming there were no more casualties, the brigade could sustain its presence in Oppalia for two more days. (2) Using either route, the brigade could reach the designated coordinates in the hills in two to three hours with zero possibility of being discovered by reconnaissance or surveillance aircraft.

  Colonel Rummel came on the screen. “Nase, what is it? Are you under attack?” The colonel looked old and tired and there was a note of alarm in his voice. The fact that he addressed Namur by his first name indicated just how quickly the artificial protocols of a peacetime army evaporated under actual combat conditions. Namur had always liked the old colonel, even though privately he thought he’d have made a better division commander than Rummel. Rummel had started life as a private in an infantry company. Like most shavetails, he’d never forgotten what it was like to be enlisted, so he always tried to take care of his troops. Namur respected him for that. But Rummel was not the kind of commander to buck GHQ on his own authority. “General St. Cyr’s order—”

  “Ah, yes, Nase, we’re discussing that right now—”

  “Sir, I am withdrawing my unit to Rourke’s Hills,” Namur announced. Colonel Rummel said nothing, but he did not look surprised. “We can hold out here two more days after the storm lifts, providing the Marines don’t attack,” he continued. “Once in the hills, we can refit and fight on. But I am not going to sacrifice my command. I am not throwing any more lives away.” Scithers looked at his commander sharply.

  “You know what that means, Colonel?” the division commander asked. “Look,” he continued quickly, “we’ve just about agreed to do the same thing. Once my staff supports a withdrawal move, I’ll get the other brigade commanders to see it that way. I think we can get Corps to go along, and then army headquarters. Hell, Nase, with all of us in on it, St. Cyr’ll find his hands tied. He can’t execute everyone!”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Namur replied. “But I don’t have time to wait for you to get the others on board. The storm will reach its highest intensity a little after dark. I’m moving then.” He punched a button on his console. “I have just forwarded to you the coordinates of our new position in the hills. I’ll see you there.” With that, Namur broke the connection. He crumpled up St. Cyr’s order and threw it to the floor. Ignoring the insistent beeping on the communications console, a warning that a high-priority message was coming through—no doubt Rummel trying to reestablish the connection—Namur began contacting his battalion commanders.

  It grew very quiet in the command module. Outside, the wind screamed as the storm closed in on Oppalia and the command vehicle, buffeted by the violent gusts, rocked gently back and forth on its suspension.

  Scithers, his face bathed in the green light from the driver’s console, grinned. Boy, he knew the old man had balls, but this... This almost made it worthwhile, being in this goddamned army.

  “Break off your patrols,” General Aguinaldo ordered when Captain Sprance reported the storm. “Have them find a place to land.” Then he realized he was talking to an intimidated sailor, and amplified, something he wouldn’t have done with a Marine. “Someplace where there aren’t enemy divisions, and have them establish security patrols.”

  He didn’t bother telling Major General Daly to get his aircraft to safety; the Marine would already be doing it. Aguinaldo focused his attention on what to do with the ground forces. The winds and the particulates being blown about would make the artillery next to useless, so the guns had to batten down until the storm abated. On the other hand, the storm could give the Marines and the 10th Light Infantry enough cover to slip right up to the Diamundean positions without being detected—even though the soldiers were wearing urban camouflage uniforms instead of chameleons like his Marines. Get right on top of the tankers, even inside the buildings most of them were hiding in. Possibly capture most of the tanks, instead of killing all of them. It was a tempting thought, but not tempting enough. According to the meteorological reports, Diamundean sandstorms raged at wind speeds of up to 150 kilometers per hour. Gusts could double that. There wasn’t only the sand in the storm, which clogged breath, to worry about—the winds were strong enough to throw about sizable objects, and even men could be carried away. No, he didn’t think his Marines would function very well in the storm, it would subject them to too much hazard. And if his Marines would have trouble functioning in the storm, he damn well knew the 10th Light couldn’t manage either. He turned to Daly and Ott.

  “Have your men take cover from the storm.” He added for Ott, “Inside sturdy buildings.” After the fiasco with III Corps, he distrusted the army even more than before.

  The storm raged for three days. Long enough for the infantrymen to run out of rations. Fortunately, many had holed up in private homes and fairly well depleted the larders in those homes. A few found themselves in food stores and were able to eat their fill of whatever they wanted. Those unlucky enough to have had access to only the rations they carried were famished by the time the storm abated. No one had to worry about water, though—the waterworks still ran properly.

  After three days, the winds abruptly dropped to mild zephyrs. The Marines and soldiers slowly, cautiously, stepped into the clear air. Their ears felt odd, hollow and stuffed at the same time, from the lack of wind-roar. They shook their heads and popped their ears, trying to balance pressure on their eardrums. As long as they didn’t look down at the ten or fifteen centimeters of dirt, dust, and sand still settling on the pavement and piled in drifts against building sides, everything looked sparkling clean. The air itself seemed to glo
w.

  A mechanical clanking and ratcheting spun Dean and Schultz to their right. A metal monster was rolling out of a building fifty meters away.

  Dean didn’t hesitate; he glanced to his rear to make sure his backblast area was clear, propped his Straight Arrow on his shoulder, aimed, and killed the monster.

  “Wasn’t a tank,” Schultz said laconically.

  Dean looked at him quizzically. “Then what was...” He looked at the beast he’d just killed. There was no gun-spouting turret on top of it. There were no observation slits, or visible crew hatches. It had big tires, no treads. Forward of the tires were round tubes half a meter in diameter, pointing down on both the front and sides. A pliable, bubblelike canopy, shredded by fragments from the explosion, filled its upper rear quadrant. As he examined the monster he saw another one bump into its rear, back off, then again bump gently forward.

  “What?” Dean asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Check it out,” Sergeant Hyakowa said. He had run out of the building just after Dean fired and was standing behind him and Schultz.

  Schultz began sloshing through the loose, ankle-deep covering on the pavement. Dean followed. The second monster stopped bumping against the one he’d killed and sat waiting.

  “And hurry,” Hyakowa called after them. “We don’t have all day.”

  Schultz paused at the side of the monster and looked down, then clambered onto it. He found many access hatches, but nothing a man would use to enter a crew compartment. He dropped back to the ground.

  Dean edged through the huge doorway while Schultz was examining the monster. The interior of the garage, he guessed it was, was lit, but he didn’t see any people inside. What he did see was a dozen vehicles like the one he killed, all of them rocking gently on their wheels, waiting for whatever signal would set them in motion. Other than their size, nothing about them seemed threatening.