L13TH 03 Jump Pay

by Rick Shelley

  “Take care on landing,” Joe warned the platoon. “We’re going to be aiming for rooftops. Watch the edges. Give yourself as much leeway as possible, away from the sides. You get too far over to marieuver safely to the roof, go for the ground and jump up, if you’ve got the juice in your batteries. If not, attach yourself to whatever platoon you’re near until we can get you back.” On the buildings and in between them. The 13th hoped to have so many men in the middle of the base that the Heggies would be unable even to begin any significant defense. They hoped that there would be no real battle at all at Site Bravo.

  “Unstrap!” the jumpmaster said over a radio channel that reached everyone in the troop bay. Men hit the releases on their safety harnesses. Down was below their feet now. The gee-level was high, but declining.

  “Stand in the doors!” was the next command. Every man knew which of the four exits he was to head toward.

  “Thirty seconds!” This jump master shouted everything, although that was totally unnecessary. For all practical purposes, he was speaking directly into the ears of every man aboard.

  Second platoon would jump through the left rear hatch in two columns. First and second squads would go out together, left and right. Fourth squad filled out both lines behind them.

  When the hatch opened, Joe Baerclau and Sergeant Low Gerrent, second squad’s leader, would be the first men out. At the right front exit, Captain Keye and First Sergeant Walker would be first out.

  “Opening up!” the jumpmaster announced, and as soon as the hatches were up, he shouted, “Go!” even Iouder than his earlier commands.

  Joe Baerclau took a deep breath and jumped out into the slipstream.

  * * *

  “This is going to be tricky,” Zel Paitcher whispered to himself. He had said that to the squadron commander during the preflight briefing, had repeated it to his men as they moved to their hangar and their Wasps. It was something they had never practiced, even in simulators–taking close ground support to what Zel hoped would not prove to be its reduction to absurdity.

  “We need to get our licks in against the Heggies at Site Bravo, but we don’t want to give them a second more of warning that we’re coming than we absolutely have to,” Major Tarkel had told the 13th’s pilots. “And since the mudders are going to be jumping in on belts, right on top of the enemy, we’re going to have to get under them and make one quick pass just seconds before they ground. Between the jumpers and the rooftops.”

  “And let them fry in the explosions of our missiles?” one of the pilots from Yellow Flight asked.

  “That’s where timing comes in,” the Goose said. “Missiles first, then cannon. Judging from our efforts at Site Alpha, you’re unlikely to start any secondary explosions. The construction at Site Bravo is just as solid, thick stone and concrete. Just get in and out, crack open doors, break windows, give the mudders entry points and confuse the hell out of the Heggies.”

  That was the point where Zel had cleared his throat and said, “This is going to be tricky,” for the first time.

  The more he thought about it, the trickier it looked. The only bright spot was that there was no evidence that the Heggies had any fighter planes stationed to protect Site Bravo.

  The 13th’s Wasps followed the troop shuttles down, staying close enough so they would be able to dive past and make their runs ahead of the jumpers. The landers carrying the artillery and all of the support equipment–as well as regimental headquarters–veered away from the rest early on, aiming for a landing zone some dozen kilometers from the Schlinal base. Two Wasps from Yellow Flight went along to provide air cover for them. It would take a little time for the Havocs to get out and ready to lend their long-range support to the mudders, though. By that time, the Wasps would be looking for a chance to land and replace batteries and munitions. The descent from orbit took a lot of power, even this descent with the pilots holding back, staying with the shuttles instead of accelerating past them.

  As shuttles approached their drop altitude, three hundred meters, they shifted formation. That was the signal that Zel and the other Wasp flight leaders had been waiting for.

  “Time to get into position,” Zel told Blue Flight. “Follow me in.”

  He took a slow, looping curve to the left, losing two hundred meters of altitude in the process as he lined up to make an east-to-west run across the base. The other five planes of his flight (spares had been brought out for the two pilots who had lost their planes at Site Alpha) spread out to either side of their leader. Blue, Yellow, and Red: the three flights would crisscross one another’s path over the enemy base, hitting it from three directions. That would leave only one side of each building free from attack. Major Tarkel had ruled out splitting the three flights four ways. “This is complicated enough as it is,” he had said. “Three sides will have to do.”

  At least the SchlinaI base was laid out on a perfectly rectangular grid. There were nine primary buildings, three by three, with four smaller buildings in a separate row along the western side. The avenues between buildings were a uniform fifteen meters wide. At this site, the Heggies had even foregone the customary fences. It was too obvious, even to them, that there was no escape for anyone confined to the location. The spyeyes had only pinpointed ten guard posts: bunkers at the corners of the rectangle, two additional bunkers along either of the long sides, and one in the center of each of the short sides. Bunkers: low, stone structures that seemed to be contained more underground than above. They also appeared to be connected by tunnels to the buildings. The Wasps planned to ignore those bunkers. With the mudders landing inside the perimeter, they would be tactically irrelevant.

  “Remember, if those bunkers are connected underground, it’s likely that all of the buildings are connected the same way.” The pilots had been told that during the briefing. It seemed to be a logical conclusion, even though there had been nothing of the kind at Site Alpha. “The Heggies know they can’t venture outside during the daylight hours.”

  Neither can we, Zel thought as he waited for word to come from the shuttles that the mudders were about to jump. We’ve got no more than nine hours to wrap up this operation to give us time to get off before sunrise.

  Zel was listening to the jumpmaster in the lead shuttle, the man who would set the timing for the entire flotilla of landers. Thirty seconds. Ten.

  “Here we go,” Zel warned his flight while he mentally counted off those last ten seconds. “Into position.”

  With their antigrav drives, the Wasps could hover in place, waiting for just the right instant, then loose their missiles from that position or accelerate into the attack. With no enemy aircraft, and no sign of ground fire, they did just that. In the dark, it was virtually certain that they wouldn’t be sighted before they switched on their target acquisition systems, if then. If they were spotted, it would take the Heggie forces time to get that word to men with surface-to-air missiles. The Wasps represented the pinnacle of more than three millennia of technology designed to make aircraft as nearly invisible to enemies as possible.

  Infantrymen started jumping out of their shuttles. In the first second or two, the men were blown by the landers’ slipstreams. As they fell clear of those, the antigrav belts took hold. Some men swayed like pendulums until their stabilizers locked them in proper attitude.

  Blue Flight moved under then, across the Heggie base, firing rockets and cannon, trying to open ways into each building–as many ways as possible. There was absolutely no return fire. Like a practice run on the range back home, Zel thought, delighted at the lack of enemy fire–but worried just the same. It wasn’t like the Schlinal military to take without giving back full measure.

  “Okay, now we go cover the LZ,” Zel told his men after they, and the other two flights, had completed their one run across the target area. “Make sure we’ve got someplace safe to land.”

  * * *

  Joe Baerclau felt an in
stant of panic after jumping out of the shuttle, worse than he had experienced since the first time he had done a practice jump with an antigrav belt. In that moment he managed to bite through his lower lip and draw blood. He seemed to swing back and forth for an impossibly long time, enough to start him worrying that the gyro stabilizers on his belt had failed. Only slowly did the pendulum motion dampen and stop: Joe worked at his belt controls, slowing his descent to fifteen meters per second. Jump altitude had been three hundred meters. He had fallen fifty meters before he got his drives adjusted. He had a couple of seconds before he would have to slow his descent again.

  The Bear swallowed hard and looked around for his men. They were where they belonged, most a little higher than he was. No one was falling out of control. Once assured of that, Joe looked down. He didn’t see the Wasps streak by beneath him, except as shadows that eclipsed the ground and the buildings, but he did see rockets explode, the flashes coming back out of door and window openings along the sides of buildings.

  Joe slowed his descent again. Two more seconds passed as be made certain that he and his men were over the building they were supposed to hit.

  “I don’t see any sign of Heggies on the roof,” he said over the platoon channel. “No ground fire coming up at us.”

  After that he had to devote nearly all of his attention to manipulating his belt controls. He was rather too near the western side of the roof. He reached down and twisted the thruster on the left side of his belt to move him a meter or so farther in, then slowed his descent to come in for a smooth landing.

  Baerclau was the first man on that roof. The rest of his platoon was no more than two seconds behind him, though, landing with rifles at the ready.

  “First squad to the door,” he ordered. As on the buildings at Site Alpha, there was a small kiosk with a door leading to interior stairs. “Second squad behind them. Fourth, spread out around the perimeter until we go in.” The men were already moving when he gave the orders. The prejump briefing had covered this much of the operation. After that, it would be a little more ad lib. Get inside. Get down the stairs. Deal with whatever you come across. Link up with the units covering the outside.

  Even though it was two hours past sunset and there was a breeze off of the ocean, the air on the rooftop was stiflingly hot. The stone-and-concrete roof radiated heat. After one deep breath, Joe started to breathe more shallowly, as if that might minimize the discomfort. Got to be close to 40 degrees even now, he thought. That gave new urgency to the order that they had to finish their work before first light.

  Joe went over to first squad. Sauv Degtree had already tried the door. “It’s not locked,” he reported.

  Joe looked around. All of the rifles of first and second squad were pointed at the door. The.men were down on one knee or flat all their stomachs in an arc facing the door.

  “Yank it,” Joe said, getting down himself.

  Sauv pulled the door open and moved to the side, out of the way. There was no one on the landing inside. No gunfire came out. Joe waved second squad through, onto the stairway. One fire team stayed on the landing at the top. The other went down far enough to see into the interior of the building.

  It was empty.

  “All the way to the bottom,” Joe ordered. “Second squad, then first. Cover the exits. Look for anything leading underground especially.”

  Second squad moved down the steel metal stairs as quickly as they could. First squad was no more than ten steps behind. Before Joe followed first squad in, he called fourth squad over to follow them. There was no need to leave men to guard the roof behind them.

  Primed for a fight, Joe worried at the lack of any opposition at all. The muscles in his forearms were knotted tight. He had to consciously hold himself back on the stairs. He kept trying to speed up. The press of men in front of him made that impossible. But the greatest danger at the moment seemed to be of falling.

  There were two doorways leading outside at ground level. One had been blown in by a rocket. The other hadn’t been touched. At first, Joe had trouble spotting the door leading to the suspected underground tunnel system. It was in a corner of the building, a doorway next to a pair of doors leading to rest rooms in a small cubical protrusion.

  The door Ieading underground was markedly different from the doors leading outside. It was solid metal, set in a frame that looked as if the door had been designed to resist being forced–a smaller version of the vaultlike doors that had led to the underground complex near Site Alpha.

  “Check those crates. See what’s in them,” Joe ordered fourth squad. “Look for anything we can use.” Then he switched channels to talk to Captain Keye, “We’ve secured this building and located the door leading below, sir.”

  “Hold tight for a few minutes, Joe,” Keye replied. “I haven’t heard from everybody yet.”

  “Any resistance at all, sir?”

  “George Company’s had a little shooting. That’s all I’ve heard of. Now let me deal with the other platoons. I’ll get back to you.”

  “First squad, I want every eye on that door leading down. Second, you watch the ground-level doors.” Joe looked around to make sure that he wasn’t missing anything obvious. The warehouse was nearly empty. None of the stacks of crates were more than head-high, and there was a lot of empty room between them.

  Joe moved to one of the stacks. One crate had been dragged off and the lid pried open. A coil of fence wire. He moved to the next stack. Bedding.

  “Anybody find any munitions?” he asked on fourth squad’s channel. He received a chorus of negatives. “Keep looking. Weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, anything like that.”

  Within five minutes, he knew that there were none of any of those items in this particular building. There wasn’t even any food.

  Joe went over to the door that had been blasted open by the Wasps. There seemed to be no activity anywhere near it. After listening for a moment and hearing nothing but a few distant zipper sounds, Joe moved into the doorway.The wall looked to be nearly a meter-and-a-half thick. The passage was two meters wide, wide enough for a work vehicle to get in and out.

  Careful to expose as little of himself as possible, Joe looked each way. There were Accord troops at either end of the warehouse, covering the intersections. Neither group had encountered any Heggies, civilian or military. Neither had come under fire.

  “They must all be underground,” Joe said over his noncoms’ circuit when he moved back inside.

  “Oh, no,” Mort whispered. He sounded as if he were in pain. “Not again.”

  I know what you mean, Joe thought, but he couldn’t say that. “I don’t think it’ll be the same” was what he did say on a private link to Jaiffer. “This time, we’ll have to go down and get them.” That might be a bloody mess, but it would be easier to take than the other–what had happened at the end of the operation at Site Alpha. Joe didn’t have time to get any further in his musing. Captain Keye was back on the line.

  “We’re going to try to break into the tunnel system at two points. Alpha and Fox companies have the honors. The rest of us are just to keep the other exits guarded, stop any Heggies who try to break from them.”

  “Stop them in the doorway or let them come out and surrender?” Joe asked.

  “If they want to surrender, Iet them.”

  Glad to hear that, Joe thought. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Joe passed the news to his platoon and arranged everyone so that they were all watching the door leading below ground.

  “They come out shooting, I want a half dozen grenades and a kilometer of wire in the doorway in the first second,” Joe instructed. “If they don’t shoot, we don’t. That’s straight from the captain. We’re just supposed to contain them. Somebody else got the short end of the stick this time.”

  After that, it was simply a matter of waiting. Very rarely, Captain Keye or First Sergeant
Walker would provide a few words about the progress of the fight. Two entrances to the tunnel system were blown open. The 13th fought its way underground. The Heggies fought back.

  For a time.

  Then, for no discernible reason, they couldn’t surrender fast enough. The rest of the exits were opened and Heggies came out, hands raised. There were far fewer of them than CIC and intelligence had suspected, no more than six hundred altogether, and two-thirds of them were civilians.

  “Get rid of their helmets,” Joe instructed his platoon. Forty Heggie soldiers had come out of the door 2nd platoon was watching. “Frisk ’em to make sure nobody’s carrying any weapons or spare communication gear. We’ve got to march them to the LZ, ship ’em up the fleet. The rest of this is up to SI and the reccers.”

  THE SCHLINAL base designated Site Charley by the Accord was located on the northernmost point of land on Tamkailo. It was situated near the far end of an eighteen-kilometer-long peninsula that was ten kilometers wide at the base, tapering to four kilometers at its northern end. Over their decades of occupation, the Heggies had blasted a canal through the rock, turning the peninsula into an island. The channel was twenty meters wide, with sides from six to nearly fifteen meters above water level, and steep. The cut was deep enough to put more than five meters of water through. The canal was crossed in two places by truss bridges constructed of steel and composite beams and paved with concrete and stone slabs. The northern ends of each bridge were fortified with gates and guard posts. The gun emplacements were aimed north, though. Their purpose was to keep people in, not to keep invaders out. The southernmost kilometer of each side of the peninsula was also equipped with barriers and guard posts. Site Charley was still, at heart, a prison, like the other two bases on the world. Lengths of razorwire and other obstacles lined both sides of the canal though that was hardly necessary. A man in the water could scarcely hope to climb the steep southern wall of the canal, even if there were any place to run to, any place where survival was even remotely possible.