by Rick Shelley
“Fire suppression,” Joe whispered, belatedly checking to make sure that his transmitter was off. “With a vengeance.”
But then the transmitter had to go back on. He hit the platoon channel and told everyone at the same time, “Wait for the order,” he cautioned. “Soon as the bombardment starts zapping them, we go, full out.”
Joe looked back toward the west, wondering where the Wasps would come from. After a couple of seconds, he gritted his teeth. Not from that way, he thought. From north or south, so they can rake the enemy line.
He closed his eyes but scarcely longer than a slow blink. Rake ’em good, he thought–almost a prayer. He opened his eyes and checked the load on his Armanoc. Then he felt for the knife on his belt.
“We’re going all the way in, whatever it takes. That was what the captain had told him. There would be no stopping short of the enemy, not as long as a single man was able to move. “We’ve got to overwhelm them in a hurry, before they have a chance to regroup,” Keye had said. He hadn’t needed to add, It’s our only hope.
Joe looked along the line, a quick glance in either direction. My men, he thought. And then the Wasps were on their way in, from the south, totally silent until their guns started to fire and the first rockets were launched.
* * *
Dem had laid three magazines for his rifle at his side, where he could reach them in a hurry without looking. The test rifle did not shoot wire or rocket-assisted slugs. It shot 20-gram 7.75mm fléchette bullets, rounds with tiny, razor-sharp vanes that popped out in flight. The propulsive charge was an antigrav drive, the same sort as was used in the new Corey belts. The thrust was funneled into the rear of the rifle’s chamber, with enough power to give the bullet a muzzle velocity of neatly three hundred meters per second. Dem also had a neat little stack of five hand grenades, within easy reach. No matter what happened, he would find time to use those five grenades. Even if the squad had to abandon the rooftop in a hurry, he would find the few seconds it would take to throw those grenades.
A deep breath. Burning air. Dem had an instant to wonder whether there was more to the atmosphere than heat, too much carbon dioxide, and too little oxygen–whether there also might be toxic trace elements, enough to add a little chemical burn to the heat.
Too bad we don’t have planet-cookers, he thought. They just want all of theHeggie assets here destroyed. If we coulda done it from space, without landing . . . But that was an idle wish from pulp adventure videos, and then the Wasps arrived, and there was no more time for fantasy.
Rockets and cannons. The Wasps raked the perimeter of the Schlinal base. The first artillery rounds exploded at almost the same instant as the first rockets, an unusually precise coordination of assets. Flames and shrapnel, followed by showers of debris, hurtled into the air to fall back to the ground. Some of the detritus was human flesh.
Dem started firing instantly, raking one section of Heggie soldiers, giving them an entire thirty-two-round magazine. His test rifle’s cyclic rate wasn’t as great as some other automatic weapons he had used, but it was faster than squeezing off individual shots the way a cough gun required. Before he reloaded, he tossed two of his ready grenades, one as far to the left as he could, the other equally far to the right. Then he ejected the rifle’s empty magazine, stuck a fresh one in, and jacked a shell into the chamber.
The range wasn’t extreme, wouldn’t have been even for a zipper, but the results were still impressive. The vanes of the flechette rounds went through net armor as if it were thin cotton, spinning, chopping everything in their path. A concentration of bullets seemed virtually to puree flesh. Dem picked one man at random and put the entire second magazine into his back, stitching a line from side to side that cut the man completely in half. Dem’ s only interest was clinical. It was his job to test the rifle thoroughly.
Two more grenades went out before Dem loaded his third magazine.
The scene below was bloody chaos. The Heggies hadn’t had time to think about men behind them on the roofs of buildings that they thought sheltered them. But the Heggies did not simply die. They fought back, as well as they could, against the infantry charging toward them, and against the aircraft. Dozens of surface-to-air missiles were launched at the Wasps. Although Dem wasn’t paying attention to that phase of the fight, he did note three Wasps hit by those shoulder-fired rockets.
While Dem switched to the last of the magazines that he had laid out, he looked farther off for the first time to the line of men advancing toward the Heggie positions from the west.
“Watch where you’re shooting,” he told his men, an unnecessary bit of advice, perhaps, but one he could not restrain. “We’ve got friends moving in.”
* * *
The pace of the advance was slower than Joe Baerclau had anticipated. At least it felt slower with adrenaline pumping and the inevitable edge of fear behind it. It seemed that drill-field marching would have been faster. But the amount of enemy fire had fallen off to almost nothing as soon as the Wasps and Havocs opened up. The Heggie soldiers were far more concerned with staying alive. Secondarily, they tried to bring down the aircraft that were decimating their ranks. The line of advancing Freebie infantry was, for the moment at least, an exceedingly minor concern for most of the Heggies.
Joe kept both hands on his rifle to keep his shooting as accurate as possible. There were targets out there: a few Heggies who were shooting at the Accord infantry, and others who just exposed themselves to ground fire in their attempts to escape the air attack or to fight back against the Wasps. Twice, Joe warned his men to be careful of their fire, to pick targets while they had that luxury.
“Keep your heads. Make your wire count,” he urged.
Sixty meters. The line of chain-link and razor-wire fencing had been shredded by the earlier air and artillery attacks. It would not pose much of an obstacle in most spots, though–perversely enough–there were a few sections still standing undamaged.
One man in second squad went down. Within forty meters of the enemy line, Joe could spare no more than the briefest sidelong glance. A call on the radio told him that it was second squad’s medic who had been hit. Al Bergon hurried over to help. He only needed a second to check the man and report that he was dead.
Two men in fourth squad went down next, including Frank Symes, the squad leader. Fourth squad’s medic reported that both men were alive, not too badly hurt, and dragged them back to some slight cover.
Twenty meters. There was no more artillery fire coming in. The kill radius of a Havoc shell was twenty meters. The Wasps were pulling away from their last strafing run. For just an instant, there was relative quiet all along the perimeter.
Captain Keye shouted, “Charge!” over the company channel, a command that might not have been heard in combat for a thousand years. Not a man in Echo Company was confused by it, though. They knew what was needed. They were on their own now, and it wouldn’t take the Heggies long to turn their attention back to them now that the Wasps were gone.
They ran, straining lungs and muscles to the breaking point.
In first squad, Wiz Mackey went down to his knees. He dropped forward to support himself on all fours, and to present less of a target. “I’m okay,” he said on the squad channel. “Just . . . a . . . minute.”
Joe went down to one knee himself, fairly close to Wiz, providing covering fire. When he spared himself an instant for a glance, he could see that Wiz was gasping heavily, panting, out of air. Joe was gasping himself. Then Wiz took in one deep breath.
“I’m okay now,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound nearly as winded as it had before.
“Okay, let’s go,” Joe said. Talking hurt, interfered with breathing. Wiz and Joe were eight meters behind the rest of the line when they got up and started forward again. Bravo, Echo, and Fox companies were crossing the Schlinal perimeter, moving right into the first line of Heggies.
Armanoc carbines were not equipped with bayonets. Even after several years of warfare, Accord military thinking had not recognized that hand-to-hand combat might yet be something to provide for. Use wire as a bayonet blade, the SOP and training manuals urged. A quick burst of wire will cut better than any knife ever forged. Joe had used that line in training, but he had always had his doubts. Fifteen or twenty centimeters of cold steel on the front end of a rifle struck him as an exceptionally good idea.
From their positions just behind the line, Joe and Wiz–and perhaps twenty other men along the front–were able to continue providing covering fire for the men who were more closely engaged with the enemy. Many of the officers, and more than a few platoon sergeants, held back, on orders, until Alpha and Charley companies moved up into position and joined the closer battle.
Joe slipped a fresh spool of wire into his zipper. Whenever he saw a clear target–most no more than two or three meters away now–he let off a short burst, just enough to drop a man. Joe was down on one knee again, presenting as little target area to the enemy as possible. More Heggies came toward the fight, pouring out from between the buildings and coming out of doors. Now that the air and artillery attack had ended, the Heggie infantry was returning to the fray quickly. The Accord’s advantage faded.
Joe was changing spools again when a Heggie trooper got clear of the mess in front and leapt at Joe, his rifle held out in front of him in both hands, Joe got his own rifle up to counter the attack, but the force of the Heggie’s leap knocked Joe over backward. Both men went to the ground. A knee in the stomach forced the air from Joe’s lungs. For an instant, he was unable to do anything. He did manage to keep his grip on his rifle, kept that weapon between him and his assailant. The Heggie was equally reluctant to let go of his wire rifle. But neither man was able to bring a muzzle around to face his foe. Without wire in the chamber, it would have done Joe no good in any case.
As soon as he was able, Joe tried to roll the Heggie off of him, pushing upward with his right arm and drawing his left arm back, just a little. At the same time, he brought his right knee up. He didn’t connect with the Heggie’s groin, his target, but the shift of weight was enough to roll the two men to the side, though not enough to free Joe of his attacker.
The Heggie pushed back, trying to regain his position on top. The two men’s helmets butted together. Joe could make out the face of his opponent through the tinted visor of his helmet. Heggie infantry helmets were not routinely equipped with faceplates or the sophisticated electronic displays that Accord helmets had.
Again, Joe pushed, trying to roll his foe over. This time he moved toward the right. When the Heggie countered, Joe let go of his rifle’s pistol grip with his right hand and grabbed for his knife. Before the Heggie could adjust to the change in tactics, Joe had the blade in the man’ s side.
The Heggie stiffened, then went limp, collapsing on top of Joe.
His weight seemed intense. Joe made one attempt to push the body off of him, but the effort was too much. He couldn’t force in enough air. The light disappeared and Joe lost all awareness.
DEM NIMZ moved all of his men to the north wall. Fredo took half of the squad, and they jumped to the next roof on antigrav belts. The two halves of the squad combined their fire then, concentrating on the avenue between the two buildings. They managed to contribute to the fight without having a single round returned for another minute or more. It was apparent that no one on the ground had any idea where the fire was coming from.
Eventually, though, someone looked up. A shouted warning on the ground led to a sudden flurry of gunfire directed at first the one roof and then at both. Heggies moved for cover, to the east end of the buildings and into doorways. The reccers pulled back from the parapets for a moment.
“We move?” Fredo asked Dem.
“No,” Dem replied. “Spread out along the walls. On my count, everybody drop a grenade over the edge. Give them something to think about.”
One, two, three. The grenades went out. By another count of three, they exploded, twelve blasts that sounded as one. The reccers moved back, to the edges of their roofs and looked down, Just below them, there were no Heggies left on their feet. Forty or fifty bodies, few of them whole, were clustered together. Most of the Heggies had been moving toward the ends of the buildings. The pattern of bodies was almost an image of an hourglass.
The reccers brought their rifles up again, finding targets farther off, left and right. They had only another twenty seconds of clear shooting before more of the enemy took them under fire. A rocket-propelled grenade arched up toward the roof where Dem and his half of the squad were. It went high and hit fifteen meters behind the reccers, rolling farther away before it exploded. All of the reccers had time to drop to their stomachs before the explosion. The shrapnel arched over them.
“Now it’s time to move,” Dem said as he got back up to his knees. “Fredo, cross to the far side of your roof. See what’s there. The rest of us will go east, then north. On belts.”
Lateral movement was tricky with the belts. The only effective way that the reccers had found was to jump at an angle, switching the belts on as they jumped. The gyro stabilizers needed a second to force a man upright. Further manipulation of the drive units themselves took care of the rest.
No one spotted Dem and his companions as they made their first leap.
“Hold on. Let’s give those mudders our greeting card,” Dem said after they landed. There were clusters of Heggies in the lane they had just leapt over, clustered at the ends of the building the reccers had just left. A couple of the Heggies were firing down the lane toward the 13th. More were watching the roofs where the shooting had been coming from. The rest were waiting their turn–or waiting for an order to advance down the avenue where so many of their comrades had been killed.
Dem and his men started with a volley of grenades. Before those exploded, the six reccers all opened up with their rifles–one Dupuy cough gun, four Armanoc zippers, and Dem’s XAG-1 rifle.
“I think this thing is penetrating three layers of net armor,” Dem said. He had his link to Fredo open, but he was speaking more to himself. “Through both sides of one man and into the next.” Of course, that was at a range of no more than thirty or thirty-five meters. “We get everyone equipped with these and nobody’ll stand up to us.”
“One battle at a time,” Fredo said. “There’s a lot of work left here.”
The reccers had only a few seconds of grace before they were spotted this time, especially Dem’s group. Farther back from the front, the Heggies they attacked looked up more readily.
“Time to jump again,” Dem told the five men with him. There had still been no casualties in the squad.
“’Bout one more jump is all we have on these batteries,” one of the others said. “Let’s make it to someplace besides a roof.”
Dem hadn’t yet considered abandoning his rooftop strategy, but he hesitated long enough to think about the suggestion. “You’re right, it is time for us to get back to ground level,” he conceded. “But we’ll jump to that next roof east, then go down the stairs. It’s about time we made some big noises. Find something very explosive to touch off.” Then he switched channels again, to let Fredo know what they were going to do.
“You’re going to be on your own for a bit,” Dem said. “Work east and north. We’ll rendezvous as soon as we can.”
“Just let us know when you’re going to put a building into orbit,” Fredo said. “I don’t want to be on the roof when you do.”
“I’ve got your blips on my visor,” Dem said. Then he notified the other squads in his platoon, and the other recon platoon sergeants. All of them had also infiltrated the Heggie base by this time.
Several grenades tossed over the side of the building marked the farewell for Dem and his companions. While the explosives were going off in the lanes on the north and west side of the buildin
g, they ran across the roof and launched themselves toward the next building east. It was quite clear that this would be their last belt jump for at least four hours. Half of the team heard the low-power warning on their belts sound before they landed.
The door leading from the roof into this building was locked. Dem stuck a small chunk of plastic explosive over the lock and blew it. Inside, they found an open stairway leading down along the side wall. This warehouse seemed to be void of Heggies. At least, no one was visible from the stairs, and no one shot at the reccers. The building consisted of one large open space, fifteen meters by thirty and ten meters high. The lanes between stacks of supplies were two meters wide, enough to allow forklifts to maneuver. Two of those were parked at the end of adjacent aisle.
Halfway down the stairway, Dem paused to survey the interior. The other five men took up defensive positions, their weapons spread to cover the most likely avenues of Schlinal workers or soldiers.
The contents of several stacks were obvious: missiles for Boems and shells for Novas. The rest of the stacks consisted of crates, and there was no way for Dem to tell from a distance what was in them. The only legends on the crates were numbers.
“They do have tanks somewhere,” Dem whispered. “Where there’s shells, there’s guns.”
“How much of this stuff you figure we can cook off?” Coy Mueller asked.
“Let’s see what’s in the crates first,” Dem said. He started down the stairs again, moving quickly. At the bottom, Dem used hand signals to indicate where he wanted each of his men. “Pry open a few crates. Those numbers on the first line look to be part numbers. Identical crates, identical numbers–should have identical contents.”