by Rick Shelley
“They’ve heard about our landings at the far end of the peninsula,” Jorgen Olsen guessed. “They’re pulling the Novas back to dislodge the 13th.”
“I want every effort made to be sure that they pull back all of the armor;” Dacik said. “Get Wasps in as close as possible to hurry them along. We’ll give them a few more minutes, then hit both bridges with everything we’ve got. We’ve got to force our crossing quickly now, get north before the Heggies have time to neutralize Stossen’s command.” Neutralize: that was the polite staff word for “destroy.”
“We’ve got all of our ground assets poised,” Colonel Ruman said quickly. “Just waiting for the word to go.”
With the Heggie armor pulling north in a hurry, the bridge crossings might be a little less costly than they would have been otherwise, but if the Heggie infantry continued to defend the bridges with as much determination as they had so far, it would still be a bloody engagement.
“As soon as the tanks are twelve klicks north of the canal, and Jorgen can tell me that they’ve all gone north,” Dacik said, “That’s when we go.”
Olsen was already busy on his radio links to CIC and to the Wasp flight leaders. He broke away from a radio conversation long enough to say, “It should be about nine minutes until all of the tanks we know about are past that twelve-klick line. So far, it looks as if they’re all going north. Still checking.” It would be impossible to know for certain, but nothing in combat is ever certain.
Dacik pulled his visor down just long enough to glance at the time-line on the display. Nine minutes.
“Ru, get on link and notify Kane, Foss, Bones, and LaRieu that we jump in ten minutes.” Lieutenant Colonel Saf LaRieu had assumed command of the 34th LJR the first day of the attack against Site Charley, when the regiment’s previous commander was killed.
Dacik’ s plan for the breakthrough, such as it was, had been finalized only forty-live minutes earlier. The regimental commanders all knew what was expected of them. The 5th and 8th SATs would spearhead the attempts to cross the two bridges. The 34th LIR would continue to support the 5th SAT. The 97th would back up the 8th. The two light infantry regiments were to maintain pressure along the canal first to prevent the Heggies from moving all of their assets to the bridges. Once the SATs established a bridgehead on the peninsula, the light infantry would cross behind them and move to the flanks, to clear Heggie opposition along the canal.
The 5th and 8th would drive north as fast as the opposition permitted. After covering the breakthrough from almost point-blank range, the Havocs of all three SATs would cross the canal as soon as the Heggies were far enough from the bridges to be out of rocket range of the artillery.
* * *
The 13th’s 3rd recon platoon was pinned, down on its rooftop. After disposing of the Heggies who had been there when they arrived, the reccers were taken under fire by more Heggie infantry–men on the ground and on roofs that hadn’t been directly assaulted by air.
“Good thing we jumped with our locators on this time,” Fredo Gariston told Dem. “We can tell who’s who.” Fredo was flat on his back, his left arm and hand bloody. Dem was wrapping medicated soakers over a dozen wire cuts.
“Try making a fist,” Dem said after he had the last patch secured.
Both men stared at Fredo’s left hand. The fingers twitched, but did not close. Dem shook his head.
“I was afraid of that. Doesn’t feel like any broken bones, but you’ve got serious muscle damage in that arm, maybe even nerves cut.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a trauma tube in your back pocket,” Fredo said. He was able to joke. The med patches had numbed the pain almost instantly. He didn’t feel a thing in his left arm now.
“No, and I don’t know how long it’s gonna be before we can get you to one.”
“No problem. I can fire a zipper one-handed. And reload it too. Just don’t expect speed records.”
“Never mind that. You just keep your ass, and your head, down,” Dem ordered. “’Less the Heggies get right on this roof with us again, you’re out of it.”
“They were waiting for us,” Fredo said, his voice starting to go dreamy. It had taken three soakers to cover all of the wounds on his arm. The heavy dose of analgesics was starting to make him drowsy. It wouldn’t be enough to put him out, but it did take his mind several steps away from full alertness.
“They were waiting for us,” Dem agreed, pondering whether or not to hit his friend with a sleep patch as well. Fredo’s left arm was in very bad shape. The wire had torn away a lot of meat, and Fredo had lost considerable blood before Dem got to him. Dem decided against the sleeper. Between loss of blood and the soakers, Fredo would almost certainly lose consciousness on his own soon enough.
“How many?” Fredo asked, fighting a losing battle to stay awake.
“Couple hundred on the roofs,” Dem said, speaking slowly, softly, watching Fredo’s eyes now. They were barely open. “More on the ground.”
“Watch . . . the . . . door,” Fredo said. The last word was almost unintelligible as he finally went into limbo.
Watch what? Dem thought before that last word penetrated. Door. He turned to look at the door leading in from the roof. It was shut. Two reccers were kneeling beside the kiosk, using it for additional shelter, but they weren’t watching the door.
“Good thinking, Fredo,” Dem whispered, knowing that Fredo could no longer hear him. “They could blast us good there.” Quickly, he put two men to watch the door. “Keep your zippers light on it. It opens, don’t wait to see who’s there. Start shooting, then toss grenades in.”
The rooftop fight was a cat-and-mouse game that showed no promise of ending quickly. Pick your moment. Get up just high enough to aim a rifle at the next roof. Spray a few meters of wire and duck before an enemy popped up to spray you. It worked the same for Heggie and Freebie. The most either side could hope to do was to keep the enemies’ heads down.
Men guessed wrong, on both sides. They raised up to spray and got sprayed. If they were lucky, all they had exposed was a helmeted head. Accord helmets and faceplates would stop wire even at short range. Schlinal helmets did not have visors. That made them more vulnerable.
Twenty minutes after hitting the roof, Dem’s platoon was down to nineteen effectives. There were three men hurt too badly to continue fighting. The rest were dead.
Dem looked up at the sky. I hope the line companies get to us in a hurry, he thought. Then he got on the radio and started asking about timetables. “We can’t hold out long,” he told Major Parks.
NEAR BOTH bridges, Wasp maintenance teams had used aircraft ordnance to create ground weapons, the innovation that had gained a commission for Roo Vernon. Everyone had heard about his novel use for aircraft cannons and rockets. Now he had explained to his counterparts in the other two SATs on Tamkailo what his men had done on Jordan. All that General Dacik was interested in was the cannon mounts. The 25mm five-barreled cannons were set on tripods made from repair parts that the Wasp ground crews could assemble. Loaded with fragmenting anti-personnel rounds, a single gun’s five barrels could spray fifteen hundred metal needles per second.
Four guns had been assembled and hauled into place near each of the bridges. One minute before the two SATs were to begin their assault, the makeshift guns opened up, playing back and forth along the Heggie lines near the north ends of the bridges. Those cannons, added to the rest of the weaponry that four regiments could bring to bear, suppressed most of the Heggie fire. The 10mm-long metal shards that the 25mm round separated into could cut through any body armor.
The 5th and 8th ran for the bridges, massed charges. They had narrow approach lanes. The bridge deck itself was not being fired on by the Accord. Fire zones on either side left a triangle that was safe from friendly fire. On the Heggie side of the canal only men with RPGs were getting in much work. Grenades could be launched from behind cover
, sent out in arcs across the canal–or onto bridges. By the time the first Accord troops reached the bridges, something new was added. Tank rounds started exploding. At least a few Novas had not gone north with the rest, or they had turned around and come back within range of the canal.
Then the Heggies turned loose their remaining Boems for one last attack.
* * *
Zel Paitcher had been unable to get rid of a hollow feeling in his gut. It wasn’t hunger, It wasn’t even fear . . . exactly. “Just a nasty little itch,” he had whispered to Gerry Easton the last time they had been on the ground for new batteries and ammunition. A nasty little itch that tells me this is my last campaign was the fun thought, but he hadn’t shared the rest of it with his wingman.
The 13th’s Blue Flight was down to four planes now. Four planes and four pilots. Zel and Gerry. Ilsen Kwillen and Will Tarkel. The rest of the 13th’s flights were in similar condition. The 8th and 17th had been hurt, but not quite as badly. The 5ths air wing had been chopped to pieces in the early fighting, when they were the only Wasps at Site Charley. Only five of its twenty-four Wasps had still been intact when the 17th lAW arrived. And two of those five had been shot down since.
Like the rest of the Accord forces south of the canal, the Wasps had a part to play in the general’s desperate assault against the bridges. The Wasps were primarily assigned ground support missions, flying along the Heggie lines north of the canal, trying to put as many of them out of action as possible. Part of the 17th was higher, its mission to keep Schlinal Boems away.
They weren’t entirely successful.
The 13th’s ten remaining Wasps were concentrated on the Heggie positions guarding the western bridge. They came in from farther west. Prior to the attack they had rendezvoused over the ocean, twenty kilometers away, and only twenty meters above the water.
“We’ll stay down as long as we can,” Zel told his men while they waited for the signal to start their attack. “Low and fast. Until we get close to the bridge, stick with cannon. We’Il use both rockets and cannon approaching and leaving the area of the bridge. We run dry, we turn straight south and beat it, just high enough off of the ground to stay out of the way of artillery shells.”
Zel led his flight in, climbing as they reached the shoreline, maintaining their relative altitude as the ground rose. The targeting diagram on Zel’s head-up display had been keyed to show the line of Heggie defenses in green. Zel cut back on his forward speed. When the ground-speed indicator dipped to 500 kph, he locked it in.
And gave the first touch to his trigger. Three hundred meters ahead, the metal slivers fired from five barrels converged on an area no more than two meters wide. The long diameter of the elliptical pattern was right along the main Heggie trench. No body armor could stand up to the hypersonic assault of that much sharp metal.
Zel kept his bursts short until the bridge came into easy range of his missiles. He emptied his racks quickly, aiming not at the bridge itself but at the defenses at its northern end, across the roadway and to either side. Then he switched back to cannons and kept his finger on the trigger as he flew over rocket explosions and past the bridge. When his forward cannons fell silent–out of ammunition–he accelerated sideways and up. The antigrav drive meant that there was no need to turn the Wasp in order to change direction, and Zel didn’t waste the time to turn until he was far enough out of range of a ground-launched missile to afford it,
Only three planes from Blue Flight made it away from the canal. Ilsen Kwillen’s Wasp was hit by a rocket while it was north of the canal. It broke into three main pieces. The escape module did separate, but the parachute failed to deploy.
Kwillen’s escape pod slammed into the rock wall of the canal’s south bank at more than four hundred kilometers per hour.
* * *
There were two roads leading from the hangars and landing strip to the main Heggie base at the north end of the peninsula. Although they had not been paved, the routes did show that tracked vehicles had moved along them. In a couple of places, irregularities in the ground had been leveled out.
Echo Company was given the road at the south end of the hangars. Howard Company had the other road. Fox and George were in the middle, spread out in a loose skirmish line to make certain that no Heggies were missed, left to take them from behind. On the north, Howard could keep a watch on its flank all of the way to the water. Echo could not be nearly as certain of its exposed flank. The rough terrain ran all the way south to the canal. Entire battalions of Heggies might be hidden there.
“Nothing we can do about it,” Izzy Walker told Joe Baerclau, “Keep an eye on what you can see. We’ve got to get to the base as quickly as we can. We know there are Heggies there, and our reccers need help fast.”
One Boem had tried to land at the airfield before the 13th left the hangars. It had been hit by three Vrerchs when it was no more than twenty meters off of the ground. There had been no need to look for the pilot.
Joe’s platoon was moving forward in a column on the left side of the road. First platoon was forty meters ahead of them. Fourth platoon was level with second, on the other side of the road. Third platoon was in front of them. The rest of the company, fifth and sixth platoons, came farther back.
Echo was under half strength now. Joe had already reorganized again; two squads instead of four, or the three that the platoon had been functioning with since the end of the first battle on Tamkailo. Sauv Degtree still had first squad. Low Gerrent had second, the squad he had led for more than a year. The survivors of fourth squad had been divided up between them.
“Let the guys up ahead worry about what’s in front of us,” Joe told his men. “I’m more worried about our left flank. The rest of our people are nearly twenty kilometers away.” Then he switched channels to speak privately with Mort, who had the point for the platoon, as usual. “You worry about what’s in front of you, Professor. Don’t take it for granted that first platoon will spot any mines or booby traps. You heard about those bouncers that the reccers couldn’t spot in daylight on bare rock.”
“I heard. I’m watching,” Mort replied.
Despite his own advice, Joe couldn’t completely ignore what was in front of Echo–far in front. The signs of fighting at the main Heggie base were all too evident. Wire at a distance produced a sound almost like that of a mosquito whizzing close by. But there were the explosions of grenades to punctuate that, easily audible over the couple of kilometers of open ground that separated Echo from the fighting. And the buildings of the main base were on higher ground.
Despite the need for haste, the pace of the 13th’s advance was relatively slow. The companies on the roads might easily have moved faster, but they held back even with the companies moving cross-country in the center. And, occasionally, the line encountered a pocket of Heggie riflemen.
Although the temperature was still above 34 degrees Celsius, it felt . . . almost cool. Every now and then Joe lifted his visor for a moment to get a touch of the breeze coming from the northwest. That dried sweat quickly. The slow pace of the advance helped as well. Carrying full combat kit was hard work regardless of the temperature.
The four companies had only covered two-thirds of a kilometer before they ran into more determined opposition. There was a flurry of gunfire from wire rifles and slug-throwing machine guns, and the blasts of several grenades.
“Hit the dirt!” Joe shouted over his platoon channel–a needless order since most of the men had already dropped.
“Roadblock,” Captain Keye announced over the noncoms’ channel. Then he switched channels. “Joe, take your platoon around to the left. The Heggies are two hundred meters in front of you–two machine guns, maybe a dozen zippers. Fourth platoon will be moving up on the right so be careful where your people are shooting.”
“On the way,” Joe replied. He used his platoon channel to pass along the orders. “Sauv, Low, we’ll do an el.
Take a forty-five-degree heading from the road. We’ll go out a hundred and twenty meters, then make the right angle. Column on the first leg. Skirmish line when we make the turn.”
Second platoon started forward, running low, the men crouched over to minimize their exposure. They might be too far from the enemy for wire to do much damage, but the bullets fired by Schlinal crew-served automatic weapons could take a man out at a lot more than two hundred meters.
Joe maintained his position between the squads. Mort was still on point. Sauv Degtree had needed no lessons on the Professor’s value at the front. Once away from the road, the platoon was able to take some advantage of terrain. For most of the first leg of their flanking maneuver, they were able to keep a low ridge between them and the enemy roadblock.
There was no thought of heat or cooling breeze now. Joe’s mind was entirely on the problem of getting around into position on the enemy’s flank, and keeping his men as safe as possible in the process.
“Don’t assume that the one batch is all of the Heggies waiting,” he reminded Mort on a private link. “They have to know that we’ll try to flank them.”
“You think you can handle this better than I can, you’re welcome to it,” Mort replied–an uncharacteristically testy response.
Mort took five minutes to cover the first leg, moving enough beyond the 120-meter mark to center 2nd platoon on that distance, Joe took a second to confirm the bearing on the enemy guns before he signaled for the platoon to start heading directly for it. Then he called 4th’s platoon sergeant.
“We gonna hit ’em together?” Joe asked.
“Sounds good to me,” Dieter Franzo replied. Franzo had been a squad Ieader when the 13th first dropped on Tamkailo, and not even the senior squad leader in his platoon. He had become 4th platoon’s third platoon sergeant in three days. “Just say when. We’re about one hundred twenty meters out from them now, and maybe fifty meters north of the road.”