Jump Pay

by Rick Shelley

  Echo Company was in a second line, fifty meters behind the first. It was not necessary for the Accord to draw a complete perimeter around the enemy complex. By this time it was certain that there were only three exits. Men were arrayed in arcs facing those, with only occasional listening posts scattered around the rest of the area. Besides, this show would belong to the big guns and the flyers. Unless something truly unforeseen happened, the infantry would have nothing to do until the fight was completely over.

  "Spectators," Mort Jaiffer said. He was on a private link to the Bear. "You know what kind of hell this is going to be for the men down in that hole, don't you?"

  "I know," Baerclau replied. His throat was tight. For all of the years he had spent fighting the Heggies, he could find no joy in the prospect. Three, maybe four, thousand men had to be down there, and unless they showed a white flag very soon, they were going to be subjected to the most intense bombardment anyone had experienced in the war. Even if most of them were deep enough that they would be safe from the rockets and shells, they would suffer. Shell shock. It had never been anything more than two words to Joe. Now he was beginning to imagine what it might really be like.

  —|—

  The evening remained silent, right up to the expiration of General Dacik's deadline. Ten minutes before the half hour was up, word went out to all units, advising them when the action was to begin. West of the captured aboveground base, the Wasps of the 5th and 8th SATs, and the 17th IAW, began taking off and assembling into their individual flights. Each flight leader had his objectives and had decided how he wanted his men to proceed. The rockets that Wasps carried had one large advantage over artillery shells: they could be guided by the pilot right up until the instant of impact, by video. Once the massive gates sheltering the entrances to the underground complex were breached, missiles could be directed inside—just as far as they had a relatively straight path to follow.

  From his rooftop vantage point, Dacik continued to stare into the growing darkness. He kept the visor of his battle helmet down now. The time line kept him apprised of how close his deadline was. At need, he could flash overlays on the visor that showed where each of the units getting ready for the coming battle were. He had reports from the air and artillery commanders. Their units were all ready for his signal. The infantry was in place, for whatever residual role they might have when this action was begun. Or ended.

  Come on, start something! Dacik urged silently. But there was no response from the Heggies.

  Ninety seconds before the expiration of the thirty minutes he had stipulated, Dacik asked, "Anything from the listening posts?"

  "Not a hint, General," Major Olsen replied. "I don't think they intend to come out."

  "Ru, give the air and artillery people the sixty-second alert," Dacik said. Colonel Ruman had been waiting for that. He already had the regimental, air, and artillery commanders on link.

  After that, there was silence again on the rooftop. Dacik watched the seconds tick off on his helmet time line. Around him, the members of his staff were all doing the same, lost in whatever personal thoughts they might have. Only Ruman watched the general more than his own visor display.

  Exactly as the last second passed, Dacik said, "Go," softly and Colonel Ruman repeated it on his link to the commanders.

  —|—

  The gates leading into the underground Schlinal base each consisted of two large doors, four meters wide and five high. Constructed of the best steel and resin composites known, the doors were seventy-five centimeters thick, reinforced on the inside by six girders. The doors and their frames were as secure as any bank vault's door.

  Each gate was hit by six 205mm armor-piercing rounds. The Accord targeting systems were accurate enough at eleven kilometers that each round hit within fifty centimeters of its target point. Two doors to a gateway: each door was hit high, middle, and low, slightly closer to the center than the hinge sides. In no case was the elapsing time between first and sixth round hitting a gate greater than nine one-hundredths of a second.

  The Accord gunners did not wait to see how their first rounds had scored. Before the first volleys hit, the guns had all been reloaded, with high explosive rounds this time. The targeting points were the same. With the doors gone—and no one in any of the Havocs had any doubt that the doors would be gone—these rounds would travel inside the underground complex to explode there, spreading shrapnel—and death—to any Heggies within reach.

  As soon as the second artillery volley had been fired, there was a flight of Wasps making a run toward each of those gates, low, no more than fifty meters above the ground. Each aircraft launched four rockets, the most that a pilot could track and guide effectively. At the entrance on the southeast side of the complex, a missile collided with an artillery shell along the ramp, twenty meters short of the now open doors, but other than that, every missile and shell exploded inside the entrance to the underground complex. Most of the missiles reached in a hundred meters or more before they were allowed to impact.

  Balls of flame erupted from each gate, rolling up the ramps and climbing into the sky. Sheets of fire brightened the night, but only for a moment.

  —|—

  "A lot depends on the way that place was constructed," Olsen said, an offhand comment. He had been thinking of the kind of engineering that would have been needed for such an extensive underground facility. The blasts were on the horizon, visible a noticeable instant before the sound arrived. "Unless it's all just one open chamber, we might pound away all night without completely disabling the units down there."

  Dacik turned and stared at his intelligence chief for a moment without saying anything. Then he turned back to watch the distant battle. He let the bombardment continue for another hour before he finally called a halt to it.

  Dacik turned to his staff, lifted the visor on his helmet, and said, "Let's see what we've got in there. Probe all three entrances."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There would be no more surprises from mines popping off of the ground to explode in the faces of the infantry that moved in to investigate the underground complex. Engineers had come up and cleared lanes to the sides of each ramp, using fifty-meter lengths of explosive cable. Small mortars fired the end of the rope. Once it was stretched out on the ground, the cable was detonated with enough force to clear a path several meters wide. Even if the mines couldn't be detected with the naked eye, they responded to explosive persuasion. At least twenty were detonated.

  Delta and Echo companies of the 13th were given the task of probing the western entrance to the underground complex. They were accompanied by 3rd recon and a platoon of engineers. Gene Abru and two of his SI men went along. He only had the two left fit for duty. Another was still in the field hospital. The rest had been killed in the earlier mine blast.

  The patrols moved toward either side of the ramp, Delta on the left, Echo on the right, each with half of the reccers. The engineers came up behind. Their job wouldn't begin until the line platoons had secured working areas for them.

  If there was any work left for the engineers to do.

  Echo's second platoon eventually found itself over the far end of the ramp, thirty meters above the pavement. Joe Baerclau slid forward on his stomach to look over into the trench. Gene Abru and Dem Nimz—Dem just out of the hospital in time to join this patrol—flanked him.

  There was no mistaking the stench rising from the entrance. Burnt flesh.

  "Literal Hell," Joe whispered. He was on a channel that linked him with the two men who flanked him and also with Captain Keye.

  "You hear any sounds of life?" Keye asked. He was along the side of the trench, some thirty meters from the gutted doorway. Men lined both sides of the ramp up above.

  "All I hear is fire sounds," Joe replied, "and not much of that. If there's anybody left alive in there, they must be a long way from this gate."

  "We're going to have to go in," Keye said after a pause. "You men up above the gate, drop down on y
our belts. You get in place, the rest of us will come down the ramp. Any firing, get out the same way, full blast. Soon as you're out of the line of fire, we'll open up."

  "Lot of good that'll do us," Dem muttered after raising his visor to avoid broadcasting the complaint.

  "Don't worry about it," Gene said. "Baerclau was right. Anybody left alive in there, they sure as hell aren't going to be sitting near the gate waiting for us. Any trouble will come farther in."

  It took a couple of minutes to get everyone ready. The first and second platoons of Echo, plus the reccers and SI men with them, would go over the side together.

  "Jump off backwards," Abru advised. "That way you'll be facing into the cave as you go down." Abru was an old hand with antigrav belts. SI had used the previous model extensively in the war. They had also done most of the early testing of the new Corey belt.

  "Have your weapons ready," Joe added. "We don't expect any trouble at the door, but no chances. You even imagine you hear or see anything, shoot it fast."

  When his feet hit the surface of the stone ramp, Joe cut the power to his belt drives and went flat on his face, rifle out in front of him. There was still no indication of enemy activity inside. The only evidence that there were—or had been—people inside continued to be the stink of burned meat. That was even stronger at the bottom of the ramp.

  "Move on in, Joe," Captain Keye said. "The rest of us will be coming in behind you. Keep this channel open and tell me what you're seeing."

  "By squads," Joe told his platoon. He moved in first, with first squad. Abru stayed at his side. They stopped in the doorway and let the first squad of Nimz's recon platoon move past them. For the time being, the reccers were under Joe's command.

  There was a confused pile of twisted wreckage in and just beyond the gateway, the remnants of the doors and, possibly, whatever had been nearest to them. The floor, walls, and ceiling had all been pitted by the bombardment. Some of the craters were more than a meter deep and two or three in diameter. The metal of the smashed doors was hot enough to burn skin. Heat signatures inside nearly overloaded the infrared sensors in Joe's visor night-vision system. Contrast was terrible. If it hadn't been for the second system, which worked by concentrating available light, the visors would have been useless.

  "About what you'd expect from a confined space where so many explosives went off," Joe told the captain. "It's a miracle the ceiling didn't fall in, more than it did, but I don't see any structural damage from here, nothing obvious other than the smashed doors. We're looking down what appears to be a tunnel, just a little wider and higher than the doorway. I can see what appear to be gaps on either side, other tunnels, I suppose, or doors leading into chambers. There is no, repeat no, sign of anyone moving in there."

  Keye told Joe to wait. When he returned to the channel, he said, "We go on in, as far as necessary. The general wants to know what is, or was, in there. Map it out. The whole works."

  "That means us," Dem said. Some of the reccer helmets had one additional system that the standard infantry issue didn't: tiny video cameras that could link directly to CIC's computers. The SI men were similarly equipped. In the line companies, only officers' helmets had the extra system.

  "Divide your men among second platoon's squads, Nimz," Keye said. "We want a good look at everything. Any heavy work comes up, let my people handle it."

  In most circumstances, Dem would have argued those orders, but there didn't seem to be enough chance of meeting opposition to make the argument worthwhile.

  "Yes, sir," he said, more meekly than anyone who knew him would have suspected possible.

  Joe got to his feet and motioned his men forward. First squad hugged the left side of the tunnel, second squad the right, taking full advantage of the cover available. Fourth squad came up behind, half on either side. Not even the inclusion of the reccers made up for the missing third squad and the other casualties that the platoon had already suffered on Tamkailo.

  The entrance tunnel, which went on straight for more than three hundred meters before splitting into two tunnels, which branched off to northeast and southeast, was littered with debris. Parts of the doors had been blown more than a hundred meters down the corridor. Joe wasn't certain where all of the metal and other debris had come from. Bits of stone had been blasted from roof, walls, and floor, but that hardly seemed to account for all of it that littered the corridor. The men had to go around and, in many cases over, obstructions. It wasn't until Joe reached the first of the openings along the sides of the main passage that he saw any sign of the men or equipment that had been in the complex. Looking to the right, there was a five-meter-long side tunnel that opened up into a large chamber. Another ramp led down to the floor of this chamber—a room that was easily eighty meters square and ten high.

  "How the hell did that happen?" Joe asked, turning to look at Dem Nimz. "None of our shells or missiles could have made a ninety-degree turn to get down there."

  Dem shrugged. He was too busy scanning the garage area—obviously what the large chamber was—to get a complete video record of it.

  On the other side of the entrance, Abru spoke. "They must have had flammables stored up here, munitions or fuel. Probably hydrogen tanks. Flash fire. Secondary explosions. Something down there caught and caused the rest of the damage."

  Dem moved away from the wall and stepped out into the middle of the ramp leading down into the parking area. There seemed to be no danger in that move. There was no sign of anyone alive in the chamber below. Dem held his rifle loosely at his side, pointed more at the ground than into the garage. Dem had seen a lot in his life, and not just as a soldier. There was no precedent for this. After a couple of minutes, he started walking slowly down the ramp.

  Gene and Joe followed. Behind them, their men tagged along. Engineers came in and set up two small but powerful searchlights at the entrance and got them playing back and forth across the scene below.

  As if seeing it through night-vision gear wasn't bad enough.

  Joe did try to estimate the number of vehicles in the room, part of his running commentary to Captain Keye. Forty-eight Nova tanks, a half dozen armored personnel carriers, and four other vehicles, crowded together, with little room between vehicles in each row, and less room between the rows. It would have taken considerable time—and no small amount of skill on the part of the drivers—to get those vehicles out of the garage and up the ramp. All of the vehicles were scorched. At least a dozen of the tanks had had their turrets blown off. Ammunition and fuel in the tanks had apparently gone up as a result of the flash fires caused by the assault above. The walls and ceiling of the chamber were also scorched black.

  The three sergeants were nearly to the bottom of the ramp before they saw any human bodies, though: two figures crouched next to the treads of one of the tanks—figures that had been incinerated in that position, unable even to fall flat in death. They remained like charcoal sculptures, perhaps fused to the metal of the tank by the flames.

  More bodies were discovered. Some groups, it was impossible to tell exactly how many bodies there were. Men next to their tanks, men in their tanks, or in their APCs.

  "Not enough of them here," Gene Abru said after the Accord group had worked its way from one end of the garage to the other. "They weren't mounted up ready to roll."

  "There must be barracks rooms somewhere else down here," Dem said. There were a half dozen doorways leading out of the garage on its level.

  "We're going to have to break up to explore all of these exits," Joe said, not just to his companions, but also to Captain Keye, who was still up in the main tunnel. Other platoons were exploring the other side passages off of that. Two more large parking areas had already been discovered. Both showed the same sort of damage that Joe and his companions had seen.

  "There's still a chance we'll find live Heggies down here... somewhere," Dem said. "Even if they didn't have fireproof doors between here and the living areas."

  Joe listened to Captain
Keye for a moment, then reported to the others. "The orders are nothing smaller than a squad. Any hint of opposition, withdraw and wait for orders." He hesitated, then added, "That comes straight from General Dacik."

  For a second, Joe thought that Gene Abru was still going to argue the order. It was clear that the SI team leader had his own ideas about exploring the installation. But Abru closed his mouth again and said nothing.

  —|—

  Echo didn't find any surviving Schlinal soldiers, but one of the platoons from Delta, exploring off of one of the other garages, did. And so did some of the men exploring off of the other two entrances to the complex. Altogether, almost four hundred men had survived the explosions and fires. The rest, more than three thousand, had died. Not all had burned. Many had died from smoke inhalation. Others had merely suffocated when all of the oxygen was sucked out of chambers where they were hiding.

  The night was more than half gone when everyone but the engineers and SI men made their way back out of the underground complex. The engineers were there to finish the work of destroying the physical complex, planting massive charges at strategic locations, to be detonated after everyone was out. The SI men were there to discover whatever they could of what the Heggies might have been up to under so much rock.

  Echo Company waited outside the western entrance to the complex.

  "We wait for the SI men and the engineers, then we get back on the shuttles," Joe told his men.

  "How long, any idea?" Sauv Degtree asked.

  "Not more than a half hour," Joe replied.

  A little apart from the rest of the platoon, Mort Jaiffer stood, looking back down the ramp. He just stared, without a conscious thought in his head. Eventually, he lifted his visor. Both of Tamkailo's moons were up now. He could see well enough, better than he really wanted to, without his night-vision systems.

  Eventually, Mort became aware that tears were running down his cheeks. He had a notion to wipe them away, in case anyone might notice, but the effort needed was just more than he could muster. One hand came up, just a little, then fell back to his side. His stomach was knotted up, a tight pain that intruded more and more on his awareness.