by Rick Shelley
* * *
Joe Baerclau watched the Havocs and support vans roll past. The deep-throated roar of engines and the clanking of treads on rock were reassuring, despite word that fresh Heggie troops had landed just a few kilometers away. The vehicles moved past the 13th’s line and into the streets of the captured Schlinal base. Moving to the defensive, Joe thought. Laagering up.
“Anybody know what the hell’s going on?” Mort asked.
Joe turned, shaking his head. “I sure don’t,” he admitted. Echo Company was on a half-and-half watch, one fire team from each squad manning the line facing south, the other resting or eating–or standing around worrying. Inactivity was draining Joe. The heat, too little sleep, and all of the fights that had already taken place–it was finally getting to him. It felt almost as if that exhaustion were a real, physical presence, a blanket trying to smother him.
“I’m going over to talk to the first sergeant,” Joe said after a moment. Then he lowered his visor to tell Sauv and Low the same thing.
Echo’s command post was some hundred meters west. Captain Keye and First Sergeant Walker had set up behind a jumble of the wreckage of three of the large umbrella-shaped “trees.” The woody pulp of the fungi would certainly stop wire, perhaps even a slug fired from short range. When Joe arrived, Keye was sleeping, snoring softly, his head back on the trunk of one of the plants. Walker was sitting several meters away, his head hanging forward.
“Izzy?” Joe said softly.
The first sergeant lifted his head slowly. He raised a hand–half in greeting, half to tell Joe to wait. Walker got to his feet in what seemed to be slow motion. Once he was up, he gestured for Joe to follow him. They went several paces farther from the CP.
“Captain’s about dead on his feet,” Walker explained in a whisper. Both men had their visors up. “I guess I’m not in much better shape. Captain and me, we’re too old for this crap. The heat is just too much.”
“You got any idea what’s going on?” Joe asked.
“Not much. I had a chat with Friz Duke about fifteen minutes ago.” As a rule, the 13th’s command sergeant major knew as much about what was going on as Colonel Stossen did, sometimes more. “All he knew for sure was that the Heggies have landed more men, on both sides of the peninsula, They brought more Boems in with them. Seems to be some new tanks as well.”
“Any numbers?” Joe asked.
“Probably more than one regiment and less than two,” Izzy said. “That’s the best estimate CIC has. Plus whatever was left of the Heggies who were already out there.” He gestured vaguely toward the south. Then he looked up. “I guess the Boems have already had to land for new batteries.”
“We just gonna sit still and wait for them to come to us?”
“We’re waiting to find that out now. Friz said that the colonel’s been on link with the general and the other regimental commanders most of the last half hour trying to decide what to do.”
“Sun’s gonna be up soon.” Joe turned to look east. There was, perhaps, the slightest hint of light on the horizon, out over the ocean . . . or, perhaps, it was all his imagination. “It’s been a long night.”
“It’s been a long night,” Izzy agreed, “and it’s Iike to be a longer day.” He shook his head. “We started out with five regiments when we landed. I doubt we could muster two full regiments now, putting everybody that’s fit to move together. Heggies got at least that many to face us, what with the reinforcements, and the new guys will be fresh from just getting in.”
“Day gets hot . . . men with no sleep.” Joe shook his head violently. It was already hot–still hot–after more than ten hours of darkness, clear skies, and a moderate breeze. At the coolest time of the night, the temperature was still near 34 degrees. And it would start getting hotter as soon as the sun came above the horizon. Men who hadn’t had much, or any, sleep would find it almost impossible to function at anything vaguely approaching normal. The few hours sleep that the 13th had had the day before–only the day before?–hadn’t been enough to make up for what they had lost. And it had been followed by another dozen hours of work. And fear.
“Brass hats gotta know all that, Joe,” Izzy said. “I were you, I’d have my guys ready to get moving on about ten seconds’ notice. When they decide what we’re gonna do, they’ll probably want it done immediately.”
“It never changes, does it?” Joe asked.
“What?’’
“Hurry up and wait.”
The two men looked at each other for a few seconds more, then Joe turned and started back toward his platoon. Izzy watched him for a moment, then went back to where he had been sitting before. Even five minutes of good sleep, he thought. I’d sell my soul for five minutes.
* * *
Even on the general’s large mapboard, the situation didn’t look anything but confused. Accord positions were marked in blue, the units labeled where possible. Known Schlinal positions were marked in red. Suspected Schlinal positions were in a blinking pink. There were two primary concentrations of Heggies about halfway along the peninsula, anchored on either shore. But there were also several smaller groupings, scattered randomly almost from the 13th’s line just south of the captured base to south of the line that the Heggies had been defending prior to the new landings. There might be other units that hadn’t been spotted. And there were certainly Heggies below the base at the northern end of the peninsula–men who might, or might not, be trapped behind the metal doors that had been welded shut.
“The one thing we know for certain is that the Heggies can’t retreat into the sea,” Dacik said after staring at the chart in silence for several minutes.
“Only about half of the shuttles made it back off the ground,” Major Olsen said. “That limits retreat upward for them as well.”
“Our Havocs did a good job on the shuttles once they were on the ground,” Colonel Ruman said. “Not to mention the Novas that were unloaded. The reports I’ve had suggest that half of the new tanks were knocked out before they could even think about shooting.”
Dacik grunted. “Half? Figure maybe ten percent if our luck’s running good. How many Wasps did we lose against the landings?”
Ruman hesitated before he said, “Three before the Heggies grounded, six more after they were down. Altogether, we’re down to twenty-four Wasps that can still fly.”
“Twenty-four out of the hundred eighteen we started with, plus more than two dozen spares that were pressed into service after the first go-around. That’s more than eighty percent losses and we’re not done yet. And some of our ground units have been hit just as hard. It’s the worst pounding any Accord force has ever taken.”
“Pilot losses aren’t quite that extreme,” Ruman said softly. “Bad enough, certainly. We’ve lost seventy-three pilots. A dozen who survived the loss of their planes will need extensive time in trauma tubes, even regeneration leaves. Some will need months before they’re fit to get in a cockpit again.”
“I wish we had a few more spare Wasps, enough for the pilots who are still healthy enough to fly,’’ Dacik said. I also wish I had a couple of fresh regiments to send against the Heggies, he thought. He closed his eyes for a moment.
“The two main Heggie enclaves are too close together for us to hit one and Ieave the second until afterward,” Dacik said when he opened his eyes again. “Novas in one can support the other side without any difficulty. Far as that goes, they’ve got infantry rockets that can reach as weIl.” He sighed. “That means we’ve pretty much got to go after both sections at once.”
“We’ve also got to keep them from pushing in toward the center of the peninsula and uniting,” Napier Foss said over the radio. “We let them get together and we’Il have even bigger trouble.”
“I know,” Dacik said. It was difficult to think straight. His mind wanted to shut down and get some sleep, with or without his cooperation. It wanted to abdicate
responsibility for a time, if only for an hour or two.
Dispositions. The general stared at his mapboard again, trying to force a higher level of alertness. The 8th was in the center of the peninsula, linked to the 13th in the north, holding two-thirds of the perimeter against the Heggies along the west coast. The 97th had the rest of that and stretched east to where they met the 34th, which completed the Iine across the peninsula and hemmed in the southern half of the eastern Heggie foothold. The 5th, the regiment that had been hurt worst during the campaign on Tamkailo, had the rest of the eastern perimeter. They hadn’t linked up with the 13th, though. They didn’t have the men to extend their line north. Nowhere was the line around the Heggies as tight, as strong, as Dacik would have liked.
He Iifted his visor Iong enough to rub vigorously at his eyes. They were burning from lack of sleep.
“We’ll bring the 13th south to help the 5th and 34th,” Dacik announced after he lowered his visor again. “The 8th and 97th will have to do for themselves on the west, at least for a time. We may have to attack both concentrations at once, but we’re going to put our emphasis on the eastern bloc of Heggies first. If we can get that under control, we’ll try to siphon units over to the west as quickly as we can free them up.”
With the major decisions made, it took only a few more minutes to put together the details and timing.
* * *
Joe Baerclau had finally sat down and leaned back: He might not be able to sleep, but he did sort of drift in and out of a void that was almost sleep. He could hear sounds around him, but those did not intrude on his trancelike state. Since he hadn’t noticed the time before he closed his eyes, he wasn’t certain how much . . . rest he had managed before the call came from Izzy Walker.
“Mount ’em up, Joe,” the first sergeant said. “We’re off to help the 5th on the east side. Echo will be third company from the rear on the move. Get your men in behind Delta as it forms up on the road.” Alpha and Bravo were west of Echo on the line, as well as the remnant of the 13th’s four recon platoons. “The reccers are staying behind,” Walker continued. “Security for the Havocs and support people, and to cover anything that happens up this way.”
Joe got the platoon up, then told the squad leaders and their assistants what was coming. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get into position, but unless something happens in one hell of a hurry, we’re going to be fighting under the sun again,” he added.
Under almost any circumstances, an infantryman preferred to fight at night, when darkness would give him some little measure of extra security. On Tamkailo, that preference bordered on obsession.
Rather to Joe’s surprise, the 13th formed up and started moving quite rapidly. Less than ten minutes passed between the first sergeant’s initial call and Echo’s turn to move into Iine behind Delta Company. The column moved south for less than five hundred meters before it turned east toward the sea. On the march, there was another briefing for platoon leaders and platoon sergeants.
“We’re going to try to roll the Heggies in from north to south,” Captain Keye said. “The 5th and 34th will step up the pressure around the rest of the perimeter. We’ll force the corner and tighten the noose around them.”
“Everybody, check your weapons,” Joe said on his platoon circuit after the captain’s briefing. “I want fresh power packs and spools in all the tippers. RPGs and rockets in launchers, ready to go.” Let’s get this over as fast as we can, he thought. One way or the other. Joe was too tired to think in terms of victory or defeat. All that mattered was that the campaign should end, that they escape from Tamkailo’s oppressive heat and heavy air.
The 5th SAT’s recon platoons were holding down the north end of the line. The 5th only had twenty reccers left. They were to be the link between the 13th and the rest of the 5th.
The men of the 13th had a few minutes to rest after they moved into position for the attack. Fox, George, and Howard companies would be the first in. The rest of the 13th would follow, attempting to widen the front. Alpha and, Bravo would go right to the seashore, trying to turn the semicircle of the Heggie perimeter into a complete circle–a noose that could be tightened until the Heggies could no longer breathe.
Only a relative calm fell over the peninsula. The fighting never really stopped. But there seemed to be a lull as the 13th moved into position for its attack. Thirty seconds, perhaps a minute. Then the comparative silence ended as the Havocs opened up against both pockets of Heggies.
Their first targets had to be the Nova tanks. On both sides of the peninsula, the Novas came under concentrated artillery fire. They returned that fire while they could, but the Novas had too little room to maneuver in to successfully evade the artillery for long. The Accord had too many eyes spotting for their Havocs, on the ground and above, Wasp pilots and spyeye satellites.
Less than three minutes after the start of the barrage, part of the Accord artillery was switched to infantry targets in the eastern pocket. As soon as the Heggie infantry came under attack, the 13th started advancing toward them.
The three companies that spearheaded the assault moved forward easily at first, the men hunched over and walking quickly while the artillery laid down a walking barrage in front of them. Only very scattered Heggie fire was directed at them in the first minutes. Must of the Schlinal soldiers were doing whatever they could to protect themselves from the lethal artillery fire, and from passes made by the Accord’s remaining Wasps. Some stayed and died. Others got up and ran. Some of those survived.
As soon as the first wave was a hundred meters out, the next group of companies was up and moving.
Second platoon was near the western edge of the advance. Only the 1st platoon of Echo Company was farther west. On the other side of 1st platoon the 5th’s reccers started up from their positions as well, keeping the link between 8th and 13th.
Joe hesitated for a second before he crossed what had been the Heggie perimeter just a few minutes before. There was a line of bodies, and parts of bodies, left by the barrage that had moved ahead of the first companies of the 13th. Joe looked to both sides. He didn’t see any Heggies still alive along the line–no wounded, just the dead, more than he had any thought of counting.
He stepped over the torso of one soldier. There was no sign of the man’s Iegs, arms, or head in the immediate vicinity of the body. Of the parts strewn farther off, it would be difficult to guess which belonged to which body.
The sound of a man retching came over the platoon channel, then ended quickly. Joe looked to his left and saw someone lifting his visor and leaning over to puke. Joe wasn’t certain who it was, and that bothered him more than the man’s reaction. Someone in Low Gerrent’s squad. But the man stopped for just the few seconds he absolutely needed. Then the faceplate came back down and the man hurried forward to regain his place in the line.
Echo had moved fifty meters beyond the original Heggie line, and had started to move at an angle off to the right, broadening the 13th’s front, before they came under fire. A spray of wire and slugs came from ahead and to the right. The first Heggie troops had been trapped in a salient, a bubble nearly closed off by the 13th’s advance.
No one needed orders to drop to the ground and find cover.
“You see where that came from?” Captain Keye asked Joe over their private link.
“Just vaguely, sir,” Joe replied. “I think we can get to them.”
“Just keep them busy,” Keye said. “The 5th’s reccers are moving in. We’re already starting to roll back that side of the pocket.”
“Roger.” Joe switched to his platoon channel. “Make ’em keep their heads down but watch your fire. We’ve got friendlies coming in behind them to do the work.”
Although the ground sloped gently toward the sea, with only very low irregularities–a soft, rolling sort of terrain, like a very modest sea swell–the artillery barrage had left plenty of cr
aters. The artillery fire was no longer coming in. The 8th and 97th needed all of the support they could get from the big guns to keep their Heggies from breaking out of the western pocket and moving across the peninsula to unite with the other concentration.
Wiz Mackey and a man from second squad managed to drop rocket-propelled grenades right on top of the Heggies machine gun position. A few seconds later, men in Accord camouflage ran forward and into the Heggie position. They only needed a few seconds to complete the work there.
But as soon as Echo got up to resume their advance, Heggies started firing all along the 13th’s front–now five companies wide. Wire and slug-throwing rifles, the 12mm Schlinal machine guns, grenades, and rockets all came into action at once.
Low Gerrent and the men on either side of him were killed before they could get down. Several other men in 2nd platoon were wounded. Mort had a shoulder wound. A burst of wire had nearly ripped the sleeve off of his shirt, wire coming from so close that the net armor woven into the cloth had no effect at all. Joe felt wire ricocheting off of his visor and helmet. The bits of wire hit and rebounded too quickly for him to see them, but the visor was scratched right in front of his eyes.
Joe rolled when he hit the ground, then slid backwards to get a little cover. Everyone who could move was doing the same, getting under whatever cover he could find–and dragging those who were hurt too badly to move on their own. Joe pulled Wiz back into a shell crater. Mackey had a serious chest wound. Joe put a bandage over it and told AI that he was needed quickly. “Sucking chest wound,” Joe reported.