There was no stopping the preparations for descent to the surface. Ships without landing capabilities began transferring their people and equipment to ships with those capabilities. Yet as those preparations increased, Frye’s protests diminished.
Because of the Verfen.
Wasn’t this what he wanted, the Verfen kept asking? Wasn’t peace the thing he had sought? Wasn’t peace the thing he needed most in the galaxy? Total and utter peace?
The more they spoke, the more Frye agreed with them and the more difficult it became for him to resist. It was almost as though the Verfen’s first attack on his mind had pushed him off balance, and no matter how hard he struggled he could never right himself. Around him, everyone else, including Melliman, went about the business of preparing for landings.
Finally, after twenty hours of their inescapable questioning, Frye disapprovingly watched himself yield to their pressure and begin directing the preparations for setting up a permanent base on Alexvieux V.
Over the ships’ transceiver the lilting Verfen voices praised his actions. But part of Frye’s soul seethed in defiance, and he knew that as soon as he regained his mental balance, these aliens would no longer be praising him.
35
HENLEY AWOKE WITH A START as the company slowly came to its feet with a faint rattling of equipment. A quick check of his chronometer showed he’d been asleep less than thirty minutes. At least we’re still going downhill, he thought as he stood up and fell in again behind Delta company’s First Platoon.
His relief was short-lived. The platoon turned uphill after only a few hundred meters. For the next three hours it was all Henley could do to put one foot in front of the other over tree roots and rocks as he and the four thousand troops of Ingrivia’s task force snaked in long lines through the forest toward their objective.
When the slow pale dawn spread through Yakusan’s skies, the task force settled into hundreds of small bivouacs well inside the forest. Without thinking, Henley shook off his equipment with the rest of First Platoon and sat down. After ten local days – almost eighteen Standard days – of trudging across Yakusan’s hilly terrain, his body no longer ached. It was numb with fatigue.
As carefully as he could in the pale light, he poured and drank a small cupful of his precious water, wishing there were some way he could bathe and sleep for a few quiet days in a clean bunk. Then he lay back, thinking about a bath and within seconds was asleep.
When he awoke, he quickly ate some battle rations drank a little water, and went looking in the dim forest for Ingrivia. He found her in a lean-to eating a cold meal with Denoro and the commanders of the ten Z-companies and six heavy weapons companies that made up her task force. “Did I get here in time for the briefing?” he asked.
“That you did, Chief. The Colonel was just about to start,”
Denoro said. “Want something to eat?”
“No, but I’d take some water if you have any extra.”
“Sorry. Everyone’s short. We have some teams out looking, but they haven’t found anything yet.”
“Here’s the update,” Rasha’kean said, setting down her mess kit. “Brigadier Elgin and the rest of the legion reached Syberal City at dusk yesterday. He began evacuatin’ our people at first light. That means he wi’not be available to support us directly. However, he believes he will be able to supply limited air support by midnight.”
“In other words,” one of the commanders said, “don’t plan on us gettin’ any help.”
“Correct, Bryant. But according to recon, we wi’not need it if we can catch the Ukes by surprise. As soon as it’s fully dark, we move out in three columns. I’ll take the first column along the top of the heights. Captain Virzi will lead the second column to the west of the summit. Colonel Davmichele will follow with the reserve in support.” As she assigned units to each commander, Rasha’kean felt strong confidence in the plan she and Denoro had developed and a sense of satisfaction that she was gaining some measure of revenge for the death of her father in a Uke prison.
Henley watched her with great interest, marveling at how much stronger she had grown since he first met her. There was an air of assurance and authority about her that was hard to ignore. No wonder Elgin had put her in command of the task force.
“Now, if you have no questions about your commands, I’ll let the X.O. give you the information Delta and Axle Recon obtained.”
Denoro nodded. “Thank you, Colonel. Our two Recon platoons added a great deal of detail to our satscan maps, and as you can see from the additions we’ve made on your copies there are several important factors we didn’t know about before. The first is that this town which we’ve given the code name Bilewood to is exposed to attack from the north, and that happens to be where the prison is located.”
Rasha’kean listened with pleasure as Denoro laid out the attack plan. Virzi’s column would move as quickly as possible to reach the north end of Bilewood while her column neutralized the Ukes on the west side of the valley. Davmichele was responsible for keeping their line of retreat open and supplying reinforcements if and when they were needed. It’s a good plan, she thought as she looked up and caught Stanmorton staring at her.
Henley met her questioning gaze with a smile and a nod. Later he would tell her how impressed he was.
“Any questions?” Denoro asked.
There were always questions, and this time was no exception. He took advantage of the time to stand up and stretch his tired body by walking around. When the command meeting finally ended, he approached Ingrivia. “Colonel? I d like to ask a favor of you. I want to be with you at the head of the column.”
Rasha’kean gave him a quiet smile. “Already planned on it, Chief. Figured you’d want to. Did you stick with Delta First?” When he nodded, she continued, “Then you’re already in the right place. Delta and Axle Recon platoons will lead the way, but Delta First will head the column. Be ready to move out as soon as it gets dark.”
“Thanks, Colonel,” he said with a nod. “See you later.”
Later came much sooner than either of them expected.
A Uke patrol made contact with Echo Company. The Ukes were quickly repulsed in a brief firefight, but Rasha’kean decided to begin the attack early. Since the Ukes already knew they were in the forest, there was no sense in waiting for a renewed attack.
Yakusan’s sun had barely slipped over the horizon when the recon platoons led the way out of the forest. Close behind them in the bright twilight came the first column with Denoro Henley, and Rasha’kean in the middle of First Platoon. ‘
The route recon had chosen was just over the crest of the heights from the summit. Denoro had placed Haultcour’s platoon on the high flank. The column had only moved a kilometer when the Ukes began sporadic firing up the slope from their emplacements. Haultcour was smart and refused to return fire and give his platoon’s position away, but the Ukes kept sniping away at his troops whenever they moved.
Rasha’kean checked her map, and then turned to Denoro. “Five full kilometers to Bilewood. We ca’not afford to let them hold us up here. One-C-Three,” she said into her communicator, “this is One-C-One. We need two platoons of reinforcements to suppress fire at coordinates X-ray seven seven-nine, Yo-yo three-two-eight, over.”
“One-C-Three copies,” Colonel Davmichele’s voice said quietly in her earpiece. “Recommend one weapons platoon and one Z-platoon.”
“Recommendation accepted. One-C-One, out.” Rasha’kean switched channels. “Haultcour, two helpers on the way.”
“Copy, One. Thanks.”
To Henley the five kilometers to Bilewood seemed like fifty. Every couple of hundred meters the head of the column was stopped by heavy fire from the Ukes. Longrivia had dispersed all but Delta Company and half of heavy weapons company H-Fifteen in concentrated pockets along the summit. They were pouring fire down on the Ukes, but receiving almost as good as they got. Davmichele was sending Spur Company and two more heavy weapons platoons from H-Nine, b
ut they had not arrived yet.
Below lngrivia’s column on the west side of the summit
Captain Virzi’s column had moved slower than planned, but now Virzi reported his companies in position north of Bilewood. Rasha’kean checked her red-lit chronometer. “Give us forty Virzi, then initiate Operation Freedom.” “Copy One-C-One. One-C-Two, out.”
It seemed less than forty minutes when the firing started north of the city. As Henley peered from behind the rocky wall Denoro had designated for him, Delta First and the weapons platoons opened fire on Bilewood’s southern defenses. Within seconds the night was bright with firing. Yellow, red, and white tracers snaked like living snakes through the darkness. Flares lit the sky and ground with garish brightness. Explosions rocked both ends of the city and the summit of the heights.
Fragments of rock and metal rained down on top of Henley. Beside him a rifler screamed and fell across his legs with an ugly thud. He carefully rolled her over and knew immediately that she was dead. The smell told him.
In the shock of anger and fear he picked up her rifle and took her place between the rocks. Muzzle flashes made tar gets easy to find, and he was quickly returning Uke fire, caught up in the intensity of the battle.
Rasha’kean huddled in the narrow defile that had become her command post. Virzi reported light resistance from the Ukes, who were falling back into the city. Bullets whined over Rasha’kean’s head. Stones rattled down on her helmet.
She huddled deeper, trying to make herself as small as possible as she listened to Captain Bryant’s voice in her ear.
“This is Echo-One. We’ve just demolished the prison gates. The guards have several automatic weapons but we can take them.”
“Reinforcements!” Denoro shouted. “I’ll place them.” She left the defile to position them to reinforce Delta.
“One-C-Two, what’s your status?” Rasha’kean said into her communicator.
“Flanks holding. Fire and Echo now inside.”
“This is Echo One. We’ve found them, Colonel, but they don t look good – worse than the last ones. We’ll need help getting them all out.”
“Copy, Echo One,” Rasha’kean said, but where was she going to get help? She had already spread the task force as thinly as she dared. “One-C-Two, can you assist?”
“Can do, C-One if you can cover our rear.”
“Negative.” A close explosion momentarily deafened her. “Hold one,” Rasha’kean shouted as Denoro jumped back into the defile. “How are the Ukes holding’ out?”
“Not too well,” Denoro shouted back.
“Think Virzi could bust through them from behind if we gave him enough covering fire?”
“If he takes that main road that leads up this way.”
“Good.” Rasha’kean made the only decision that made sense to her. Uke rounds still sang over her head, and she dared not stretch her column any thinner, but she could provide covering fire for Virzi and the freed prisoners.
“One-C-Two, mass your units around our people and fight toward us through to the southwest corner of the city. There’s a road that leads from there to here. We’ll pour in on them from the front. You attack them from behind. Got that?”
“Copy, C-One. Give’em hell.”
Henley was looking for more ammunition when he found lngrivia and Denoro in the defile.
“What the tensheiss are you doing here?” Denoro yelled over the racket of weapons.
“Looking for ammo. My platoon’s running short.”
“Your platoon?”
“Dinsmore is dead, Colonel. I just sort of took over. Gave our position to a platoon from Spur Company and came looking for ammunition.”
“They’ve been relieved?”
“That’s right, Denoro.”
Rasha’kean handed her communicator to Denoro and turned to Stanmorton. “There’s ammo up ahead, Chief. Get your platoon and come with me. Denoro, you’re the C.P. I’m goin’ to try to get closer to give Virzi more support.”
“But Colonel, you shouldn’t be doing that. What if-”
“D’not tell me what I should and shoul’not be doin’. Just hold down the Command Post. Tell Davmichele to keep callin’ for air support, and get me that recon sergeant, Bledsoe.”
“Aye, Colonel.”
Henley followed Rasha’kean from the defile to where his weary platoon was waiting. When the troops saw that lngrivia
Was going to lead them, their spirits brightened immediately. As they filled their pouches with ammunition, Sergeant Bledsoe joined them and led them to the forward elements of the company at the head of the road that cut down the slope into Bilewood.
“Everything from here down to that bridge is exposed, Colonel,” Bledsoe said, pointing through the pale light of a small moon toward where the road crossed the dry riverbed.
“Then we’ll be settin’ up on the other side of the bridge. Look, you can see from the firin’ where Virzi’s troops are fightin’ toward us. Let’s go.”
The Uke gunners didn’t spot them until the platoon had almost reached the bridge. By then it was too late to stop them. Led by Ingrivia on one side of the bridge and Henley on the other, they ran down the near bank, across the dry, sandy bed and placed themselves just below the top of the bank on the other side.
Bledsoe fired an arching flare up over the outskirts of the city. When the flare reached its zenith, Delta First opened fire on the Uke positions less than one hundred meters in front of them. Henley was filled with an exhilarating fear as he carefully sent one shot after another into the enemy.
The Ukes returned fire for several minutes. Then a series of explosions ripped their positions apart.
Virzi was breaking through!
Rasha’kean immediately moved Delta First up over the bank. In low crouching runs they formed up with their backs at an angle to the road as they provided covering fire. She marveled at the sight of Virzi’s column firing its way out of the city with the ex-prisoners hurrying as best they could down the road between the lines of soldiers who protected them. They moved like a sluggish, phosphorescent liquid, but they moved!
Faster than she thought possible, Virzi’s rear guard left the last of the city buildings behind. “Prepare to withdraw” Rasha’kean shouted.
Henley waved in acknowledgment and passed the word through his half of the platoon. They fell back across the bridge with Virzi’s rear guard, still firing at the Ukes and still taking casualties of their own.
Rasha’kean was halfway up the summit, moving backward With Delta First, when a flight of fightercraft roared up the valley. Their thundering cannons ripped the earth in front of them, filling the air with a deafening rain of rubble and bodies. She paused to admire them, feeling at once relieved and happy.
Something exploded directly in front of her. A brief, painful roar frightened her from the inside out. For an aching moment the scene before Rasha’kean froze in a bizarre buzzing pattern of lights. Then darkness overwhelmed her as she fell to the ground.
For Henley the next thirty minutes were like moving through congealed time. Everything and everyone moved with agonizing slowness.
As soon as he reached Ingrivia, he knew she was badly hurt. Blood was coming from both her ears. The front of her uniform steamed with dark gurgling froth.
He screamed for a medic as he dropped his rifle and lifted her into his arms, surprised by how heavy she was. Others came to help. A stretcher appeared, then Denoro. They were running with her to cover, to safety. Tears ran down Henley’s face.
Two medics huddled over her working frantically to seal her sucking chest wound as she rested in Denoro’s lap. Finally, one of them looked up and shook his head.
As though on cue, Rasha’kean opened her eyes and found herself looking at Stanmorton. She felt surrounded by a quiet calm. “Tell me…my mother,” she whispered.
“Your mother was the bravest person I’ve ever known,” Henley said in a voice shaking with emotion. “You’re just like her.”
&
nbsp; “Thanks…thanks, Chief. Denoro?”
“I’m here, Colonel.”
“I ken this hill’s too hard to bust.” Rasha’kean did not have the energy to say anything else. She closed her eyes and drifted off into the peaceful warmth of sleep.
Henley was never sure about the sequence of events that followed. Sometime before dawn the fighting stopped. Colonel Davmichele passed on a message from Brigadier Elgin that the war was officially over. The Ukes had announced surrenders at Yakusan and Gensha. Then another message came, something meaningless about peace and the arrival of the alien Verfen.
None of it mattered much to Henley or Denoro. The two of them stayed with Longrivia long after the medics had moved on to the wounded whose lives could be saved. Somewhere in the midst of all those events they said their silent goodbyes and placed her body aboard a morgueship.
By then they knew that Colonel Rasha’kean Ingrivia had been killed by a rocket fired short of its target by one of Sondak’s own fightercraft.
HENLEY WENT TO THE TROOPERS CLUB aboard the Menard well before he was supposed to meet Mica. He knew he needed some time to prepare himself for seeing her again.
36
It had been a long time since their brief hours on the Walker, a time when he had again seen too much pain and dying to be sure of his personal emotions. Her choice of the Troopers Club for a meeting place told him she was being cautious but told him nothing more. He didn’t mind her caution. He felt his own sense of reserve about facing her – a reserve that made him afraid to hope for too much between them and told him he had already let his hopes get out of hand.
When he arrived, the place was half full. As he made his way through the tables along the perimeter, Sergeant Denoro waved to him in invitation to sit at her table. She was alone but as he joined her, Henley noticed a certain resigned presence about her that he understood without trying to explain it. It was a presence that came from battle experience and nothing else – the experience they had shared with Rasha’kean Ingrivia.
Double Spiral War Trilogy Page 82