Her opinion of Taggert went up a little. He was green, but he’d stayed cool after a nasty battle at knife range.
Raney straightened—there was no reason to keep low now—and gasped with pain. Her left hip felt like she’d been bumped by a tank. When the satchel of buzzbombs went off, she must’ve hit the ground harder than she’d realized. She ought to replace the sub-machine gun barrel while she was at it.
“Sarge,” called Blessing, bending over a trooper lying on the ground. “I got Sparky’s weapon and ammo. What do we do with the body?”
“Leave him,” said Wetsam through helmet commo. “We’ll police him up after things quiet down, or anyway somebody will. How about his helmet, over?”
“He took a round front to back through the forehead,” Blessing said, switching to commo. Though Raney was part of the squad’s net, her helmet wasn’t synched with medical readouts like those of the rest of the squad. “It’s no more use now than Sparky is. Out.”
“Roger,” said Wetsam. He started for the farmhouse and the parked skimmers.
If I’d taken one through the head, none of them might have noticed. Not that I’d be caring then either.
A Bessie APC raced up the road. A tire was rubbing; it sounded like a long wail of terror. Raney wondered if the driver had bothered to reboard his troops before driving away and whether any of the troops from that vehicle had survived.
She thought of what she could do if she’d had her gun jeep. And she thought about the chance that had fired a slug through Sparky’s skull and not her own . . . because that’s all it was, chance, when the Bessies had replied to the ambush with a blind fusillade.
The puppy was running around, barking in terror. Raney hadn’t thought about the civilians since the shooting started. She felt a stab of guilt for forgetting the little girl, but what the hell was she supposed to have done?
The glass was gone from the two front windows. A few holes scarred the panel of the open door, but it was still on its hinges. The blast that knocked down Raney and part of the farmyard wall had probably cleared the window casements.
Slugs had chewed the roof, leaving a score of gaps where broken slates had fallen in bits. The ground beneath the eaves was a ridge of rubble, and more must have dropped inside.
They’ll be all right if they stayed low. The cursed dog is all right.
“Hell, we’re screwed!” Blessing snarled from around the back corner of the house.
“No, it’ll be all right,” Wetsam said. “We may have to double up, that’s all.”
Raney said nothing as she walked forward. Her face was blank. She gripped her sub-machine gun firmly, but that was a reflexive response to tension.
Slugs had passed through the front and hit the back of the roof from below. The whole back half had lost integrity and slid down in a slate avalanche, covering the ground behind the house. Wetsam and his troopers were scrambling to clear the skimmers from a pile of broken rock.
The dog got out. Then, The dog had been out.
The pile of slate dipped in the center where much of it had poured into the open cellar. If the Slammers hadn’t removed the door, Celie and her grandfather would’ve been trapped inside, beyond saving in the time the squad had available. Instead, the wave of slate might have crushed—
Raney looked down. The child was still huddling against the old man. They were wedged into the back edge of the hide, where they’d been when the troopers ran out to their fighting positions. The cascade had stopped just short of the girl’s feet.
“Celie, get up here now!” Raney said. If she went down to fetch the girl, her weight would trigger a further rush of stone. Celie might be able to scramble high enough to grab the sling of Raney’s weapon, though.
Celie looked up, then began blubbering. She buried her face in the old man’s chest again.
“Raney!” Wetsam called in much the same tone that Raney had used to the girl. “Give us a hand here! We’ve gotta get out. You want to get us all killed?”
He was right. Bringing more fire down on the farmhouse from the withdrawing Bessies wasn’t going to help the civilians. Raney slung her sub-machine gun and began tossing broken slates out into the yard.
Her crappy skimmer had been on the end of the line where it wasn’t hit by the falling slates. That was pretty typical of the way things had been going on this deployment.
The steering yoke of Wetsam’s skimmer was badly bent, and the left side of Kenner’s plenum chamber had been bashed in badly enough to prevent the rear fan from swiveling properly. Nonetheless with a second trooper riding pillion behind Blessing, the squad made it back into Mormont without further drama.
Raney didn’t worry about her skimmer the way she had on the way out. She had a splitting headache and the inside of her throat felt as though somebody had scoured it with barbed wire. The chance of having to walk back to Mormont had dropped well down on her list of concerns.
Now and again she thought about the kid as she guided her skimmer through the woods, but even those feelings were grayed out by the battle at the farmhouse. Serious emotions would’ve taken more energy than she had left.
Wetsam had to detour twice after they got into Mormont proper. The fieldstone buildings were solid, but a heavy enough shock turned their walls into loads of riprap.
Direct fire from the gun vehicles had brought down a number of buildings, and a few Bessie rockets had gotten through. The spilled rocks were barriers that most of the squad’s skimmers couldn’t climb in their present state.
They were in the central plaza before Raney was aware of it; she had been following Blessing’s skimmer instead of noting what was around her. Part of her knew that she’d taken more of a knock from the explosion than she’d thought at the time, but even the aware part didn’t care very much.
Both combat cars had survived, but the fighting compartment of Taggert’s had been penetrated just behind the right wing gun. The tribarrel hadn’t been damaged—it was back in air defense mode now—but Raney didn’t suppose the gunner had been so lucky.
One of the Bessie gun vehicles had made it to the edge of the plaza. An arm protruded from a turret hatch.
The vehicle’s tires were still burning, but a light breeze from the south carried most of the smoke away. There were several other fires in the northern part of the town. Guardsmen in gray uniforms had gathered upwind, peering at the wreck.
Taggert stood with Krotcha beside Camptown. He raised his face-shield as Wetsam pulled up beside him. The lieutenant had aged twenty years since Raney last saw him. The lower edge of his face-shield had the mirror-bright sheen of iridium, vaporized from tribarrel bores and redeposited on the synthetic crystal.
“Sarge,” Taggert said, “the Bessies are going to hit us again in three hours. They’ve got reinforcements, infantry and armor. The infantry’s conscript and they don’t have APCs, but the armor’s heavies that’d been hung up behind the artillery train.”
“Hell,” said Wetsam. There was no emotion in the word. “Can we hold ‘em?”
“Not if we wait for them to hit us,” Taggert said. “The Guards lost most of their anti-tank guns and they’re low on buzzbombs. I’m going to take the cars and a squad of infantry in a sweep around the east and then hit ‘em while they’re still forming up. Krotcha—”
He nodded to the infantry platoon leader. Krotcha hadn’t spoken since the outpost returned.
“—says you’re the right man to lead the infantry since he’ll be in charge of the defense back here. You in shape for it?”
“I guess,” Wetsam said. “Beats getting it in the neck. We’ll need skimmers, though. We had damage, and Raney’s here was crap from the start.”
“You can pick your skimmers,” Taggert said. “Raney’s with me, though.”
The El-Tee glanced at her. His eye sockets looked like pits, partly because he’d rubbed them with hands covered in redeposited metal.
“Sergeant, can you handle that tribarrel?” Taggert said, thumbing t
oward the wing gun above him.
“Sure,” Raney said. She knew she didn’t sound enthusiastic. She wondered if she had a concussion.
She focused on the weapon, tilted northward against the sky. “Do we have time to change barrels? Those look shot out.”
“Get at it,” Taggert said. “We’re moving out in ten minutes.”
The combat car had a ladder at the back, but Raney boarded in the usual fashion for veterans: onto the step in the plenum chamber, to the top of the plenum chamber, to the cab slope while grasping the fighting compartment bulkhead, and then swinging her legs into the fighting compartment. She’d never been assigned as crew to a combat car before, but anybody who’d been in the field for a few deployments had ridden them.
The interior was cramped as usual, packed with coolers, ammo crates, and personal gear. Raney hadn’t expected to find a trooper on his hands and knees, mopping at the bloodstains with what seemed to be a tunic.
The fellow looked up when Raney’s boots banged down. He was young and bumped sideways in surprise at her presence.
The uniform fabric wasn’t absorbing much blood, but it was obviously important to the trooper to do something. Blood had painted his own back and side, but it didn’t seem the time to mention that.
She said, “I’m Raney,” and gave him as broad a smile as she could manage. She probably looked like death warmed over herself. “I guess I’m your new right gunner.” The trooper looked horrified. Does he think I’m a newbie?
“I usually crew a jeep, but it’s deadlined for now,” Raney added, just in case. She took the gun out of air-defense mode and swung the rack with spare barrels out from the bulkhead. There were three, so she could change the whole set. “Ah, that looks to be like a job for a steam hose.”
The trooper stood up. “I’m Meese,” he said. Raney was deliberately bending over the gun so that Meese didn’t have to decide whether or not to offer his bloody hand. “Ah, yeah, but the hose went west when the bustle rack caught it. I thought I ought to do, you know, what I could.”
“I know what you mean,” Raney said. She hit the barrel wrench with the heel of her hand to break the threads loose. “I never got used to it either, and I’ve been out on a lot of deployments. As soon as we’re back from this run, we’ll borrow a hose or cobble something together, right?”
That was more of a lie than not: even as a newbie, Raney’s emotions had shut down at things like the way the gunner died. She drank more than she maybe ought to between deployments, but that was nobody’s business but her own.
They needed a left gunner, though. Meese was better than an infantryman who hadn’t been trained on tribarrels, so it was worth coddling him a little.
Raney traded the worn barrel for a glistening new one from the rack, then replaced the second and third as well. They were in better shape than she’d thought from the ground, but a mission like the one Taggert had outlined deserved the best preparation she could give it.
She took the handgrips of the tribarrel and swung it lock to lock. It gimbaled smoothly. It felt good to be back behind the big weapon; she seemed to have lost the headache, and her vision was sharper again too.
Taggert climbed aboard, his face-shield still up. He looked alert but worn. He nodded to Raney and Meese, then switched the bow gun back on manual.
Something flopped to the deck of the fighting compartment. It was a hand, still wearing a Slammer’s issue glove. It had been caught in the elevation mechanism.
The lieutenant didn’t seem to know what the object was. Meese stared transfixed.
Raney took the last reload drum out of an ammo canister and hooked it on the end of the barrel rack the way she usually did. She picked up the hand and dropped it into the canister, then locked the lid down again.
“We’ll bury it with the rest of the body when we get back,” she said.
Taggert blinked. “Right,” he said and dropped his face-shield. Over the general push he said, “All right, Taggert Force, saddle up. Wetsam, send the scouts out. Troops, follow in plotted order. Out.”
Two skimmers moved south, deeper into the town. Taggert’s combat car lifted from the cobblestones, rotated in its length, and followed at a fast walk. The El-Tee wasn’t heading east by the route the outpost had come home by, probably because of the collapsed houses.
The two scouts were out of sight before Camptown began to move. The combat car’s sensors were very good, but even the best electronics wouldn’t spot a Bessie crouching in a spider hole with a buzzbomb.
The scouts’ eyesight wouldn’t spot that either, but the chances were good that the sound of the skimmers would bring the hostile out early. It was better to lose a single trooper than the lead car.
That was a logic Raney had understood since her first deployment. She grinned slightly. This was the first time she remembered finding it comforting, though.
The other three infantry followed Camptown, closely for the moment; they would space out beyond town. The second car, Cormorant, was the rear guard.
It had begun to snow again, a scattering of big flakes at first. Gusts of small flakes arrived on a cold wind before the task force turned northwest again on a narrow lane. The drifts were already high enough to hide landmarks, but the region had been mapped in detail before the satellites had gone down.
Raney could have followed Taggert Force’s progress on her face-shield, but instead she surveyed her half of the immediate terrain. That took concentration, because in a gun jeep she was usually responsible only to the front. The wing gun pivoted 180o, though she would have to push the El-Tee out of the way if she needed to light up a target who’d waited till the car had passed.
Raney grinned again. She’d had officers she would willingly have knocked down, given half an excuse, but she didn’t have any complaint about Taggert thus far.
Her face-shield was on thermal imaging again. The terrain was a blur of vague shapes, as though she was viewing a reef from under water. A human, even insulated by thick clothing, would show up like a flare on a clear night, however.
“El-Tee, we’ve got a problem,” Wetsam said. He was using the command net rather than the general push. “Amorato’s batteries are losing power. I can replace him at scout, but what about him? Because we can’t leave him here alone. Over.”
Taggert swore. “A skimmer carrying double can’t hold forty-plus kph we need for the timing,” he said, “and the cars don’t have room for four.”
Raney smiled at that. Cramming a fourth trooper in body armor into the fighting compartment—certainly into Camptown now, but realistically with any car in the field—would crowd it dangerously when the shooting started. On route marches, it was just miserably uncomfortable.
“All right, Wetsam,” Taggert said after a pause. “Tell Amorato to come alongside. I’ll stop and take him aboard. We’ll dump the skimmer, over.”
“Sir, this is Raney,” she said. She was on the command net by sufferance, but she was here regardless and she had something to say. “We can couple the skimmer’s charging cable and keep on moving. Over.”
“That’s against regs, sergeant,” Taggert said. “Besides, this is broken country and we’re going into action. It’s not safe. We’ll take him aboard, over.”
“El-Tee, she’s right,” said Wetsam. “Sir, we do it all the time in the field. Somebody’s batteries always crap out. Over.”
And if you’re worried about being safe . . . , Raney thought, but the words didn’t reach her lips. Then you’re in the wrong line of work.
“And I’m a newbie on my first deployment and don’t know squat, eh?” Taggert said.
Neither sergeant spoke. Raney kept her eyes on the brush outside the car.
Taggert unexpectedly laughed. “Well, that’s true enough. Wetsam, bring your man alongside and show me the way to couple him and still move, so that I’ll know how to do it myself next time. Taggert out.”
Cormorant had an overlength—three-meter—cable in its equipment locker, so the
y used that rather than the two-meter cables aboard Camptown. Amorato would be able to slip behind the combat car in tight terrain but move to the left out of the worst of the big vehicle’s wash most of the time. The coupled trooper would have to mind his driving so that he didn’t wind up with the car for a hood ornament, but he didn’t complain.
Raney checked the skimmer’s diagnostics through her helmet. It was charging, rather than running directly off Camptown. She’d been afraid the skimmer might have a dead short, which would make Amorato a pedestrian as soon as he uncoupled. There was obviously a problem, but it wouldn’t become acute until after the battle that was certainly coming in the near future.
“Taggert Force, hold at the marked locations, over,” the El-Tee ordered. It didn’t affect Raney and the other gunners, but a map appeared on the displays of the infantry and the drivers of the combat cars.
Camptown slowed, then wallowed to a halt. The fans idled, spinning just fast enough to keep positive pressure in the plenum chamber. They were still loud.
They had reached a streambed, visible only as a clear track—snow-covered ice—lined by frozen reeds. It meandered through brush. Ahead was a heavily forested slope which made Raney frown.
Woods like that would be a bitch to squeeze through in a gun jeep, and a combat car was much wider. The car had the power to bull through all but well-grown trees with boles of fifteen or twenty centimeters, but that would make as much racket as road construction. They had to hope that the Bessies weren’t keeping a good watch to their flanks and rear.
That was likely enough: the Bessies were convinced that they were the attackers and that all they had to worry about were the Mormont defenses. The Slammers had to take a chance if they were going to save the route to the spaceport.
This was a hell of a chance, granted; but if the port was captured, Taggert Force didn’t have anywhere to run to anyway.
Onward, Drake! - eARC Page 29