L13TH 03 Jump Pay

by Rick Shelley

  A squad of Heggies was coming down the lane, hugging the wall of the building across from the hospital. Joe stopped at the outer edge of the entryway and started shooting, getting his zipper into action as quickly as Mort did in the middle of the street. The rest of 2nd and 4th platoons were not much behind getting into action. Some of the men were shooting before they truly saw the enemy. They simply started firing as soon as they saw someone else shooting, aiming in the same general direction.

  The Heggie patrol was slow to react–slow by no more than a fraction of a second–but that was all of the edge that the 13th’s men needed. And there was very little cover for the Heggies. They might as easily have been standing against a wall for execution by firing squad.

  The result was about the same.

  Altogether, this firefight lasted less than twenty seconds. A dozen Heggies were down, dead or wounded. Joe moved away from the edge of the doorway, advancing slowly toward the Heggies, his zipper pointed at the men on the ground. He had gone only four steps when another group of Heggies started shooting from the next intersection, forty meters away.

  Joe dropped to the ground as quickly as if someone had knocked his legs out from under him. A fraction of a second’s warning had been enough. The first burst of enemy wire went over his head. Twenty Armanoc zippers answered immediately. Second platoon continued shooting. Dieter moved his men forward along both sides of the lane.

  More shooting came from off to the left of the Heggies, and some of them got up, moving away from a threat that seemed closer than the two platoons of Freebies in the avenue.

  * * *

  Dem led his men into the fight. He had managed to get another ten magazines of cartridges for his rifle during his hours in the base. Several support vans were carrying them. He went through two magazines in a hurry now. There appeared to be a full company of Heggies trying to infiltrate the base. The sound of the Havoc explosion had drawn Dem like a magnet. His men had turned the corner from the next avenue and seen what was happening.

  The new rifle continued to prove its worth. Dem kept a light finger on the trigger, firing two or three shot bursts, moving the gun from side to side, sweeping Heggies away with a facility that no zipper could match. He didn’t even bother to go down low. Wire came his way, but Dem scarcely paid attention–other than to target the guns that were aimed his way. He felt impregnable. He felt stinging pricks against both arms, then against his legs. Wire hits. Dem registered that fact but hardly felt the wounds. Not until after he had emptied a second magazine did he bother to drop to the ground for cover.

  When he had a full magazine in his rifle again, he tried to raise himself up to get a better angle of fire–and discovered that his legs would no longer support him.

  He did not allow that to keep him from shooting. The rifle was still a new toy, his pride and joy. Dem smiled. Wire dinged off his helmet and bit into his left arm–again.

  This time the arm went completely numb, useless. It still didn’t matter. He could fire the rifle just as accurately with one hand.

  His finger was still pulling the trigger up to the instant when he finally lost consciousness from the loss of blood.

  * * *

  Echo’s 2nd and 4th, platoons moved forward together. Twenty-five zippers kept firing into the Heggies at the southern edge of the base. Fire and maneuver: one platoon covered the other as it moved forward, then they reversed roles. When they reached the corners of the two buildings, they were within thirty meters of the largest concentration of Heggie infantrymen–who were also under fire from their left.

  Three minutes more and the shooting stopped. A half dozen Heggies dropped their weapons and stood with their hands raised. Perhaps another twenty Heggies were wounded, unable to get up.

  “Sauv, Mort, separate those men from their weapons,” Joe said. Mort had taken over the second squad after Low’s death. “AI, check our people first.” Joe looked back the way they had come. There were a half dozen men from the two platoons down, though all were still moving enough to show that they were still alive.

  Then Joe looked down along the edge of the building at the other group of men who had joined in the fight. Most of them were still in firing position, their guns trained steadily on the Heggies who had surrendered.

  Joe walked over that way. Three of the Accord uniforms were down and motionless. When Joe saw the new rifle, he knew that one of the downed men was Dem Nimz. Reccers. Another of them had turned Dem over on his back and was working to stop the bleeding. Joe knelt next to them.

  “How bad is it?” he asked. Nimz seemed to be covered in blood from his shoulders to the tops of his boots.

  “Damn fool didn’t even try to get down,” the other reccer said. “Anyone else in the platoon did that, he’da knocked his legs out from under him.” He gestured at Dem’s legs. “Heggies did it for him. We’ve got to get him to the hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Here, I’ll give you a hand.” Joe slung his rifle and helped pick Nimz up. “Hospital’s just around the corner.”

  * * *

  More casualties were what the hospital needed least, Two reccers were dead. Nimz was the most seriously hurt of the wounded–from the recon patrol or from Echo’s two platoons. There were three other men who needed treatment, but Al Bergon was able to handle those. The Heggie wounded would have to wait. They were carried up the lane, near the entrance to the hospital and left under guard. The survivors of Nimz’s patrol guarded them and provided what first aid they could.

  Echo’s two platoons started south again. Captain Keye wanted them back, as quickly as they could make it. The fighting farther down the peninsula was getting rough. The sounds of Havoc firing had resumed, a constant background noise, and the distant sounds of explosions as their shells reached their targets.

  Mort was on point for 2nd platoon, even though his new position as squad leader should have moved him farther back. “The point’s my place,” he had told Joe. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable anyplace else.”

  The two platoons moved west, then turned south when they got to the shore, hoping to avoid any contact with Heggies until they rejoined the rest of Echo Company. There was not a single man in either platoon who did not hope–fervently–that the fighting would be over before they arrived. If Mort moved a little more slowly than he usually did on point, no one faulted him for it, not even his platoon sergeant.

  Although the sun had been up for less than an hour, the morning was already stiflingly hot. The night breeze had disappeared, and there wasn’t even a hint of shade on the beach.

  When they passed the line of Heggie bodies left from the start of the attack, the two platoons moved back inland. Then Joe called Captain Keye. “Where do we go from here?” he asked after reporting their position. He could see the near end of the Accord line ahead, still perhaps two kilometers away.

  Keye gave him instructions. “Head southwest from where you’re at. We should be the first unit you come across, right at the corner. We’ve turned them away from the shore on this side . . . mostly. Now we’re trying to keep them from breaking through in the center and consolidating.”

  The two platoons started moving on a compass heading. The ground sloped down toward the sea on their left and up toward the central ridge of the peninsula at their right. They were within five hundred meters of the rest of Echo Company when the Heggies sprung the ambush. The shooting came from the right, from higher ground. The Heggies were between sixty and eighty meters from the two platoons, close enough for wire to be fully effective. The initial bursts hit 4th platoon harder than 2nd, but both had men go down hit.

  At first, Joe Baerclau wasn’t even aware that he had been wounded again. His legs went out from under him and he fell, but he had just started to react to the ambush. His mind had already sent his body the command to drop. Before the impulse could reach his muscles, though, he was hit. A grenade went off fairl
y near and he could hear wire zipping past him. Some of the wire, he was vaguely aware, did not go past.

  There was a little cover for the men of the two platoons once they went flat. They were pinned down, but the Heggies couldn’t get at them without exposing themselves. For several minutes the groups exchanged desultory fire, neither side doing much additional damage.

  That was all of the time that this group of Heggies had, though. Artillery rounds started dropping along the ridge where they were, five explosions just seconds apart. And the rest of Echo was responding to a call from help from Dieter Franzo, moving south, firing on the Heggies from the other side.

  Joe Baerclau had lost interest in the fighting, though. He didn’t feel any pain at all. He was conscious. His thoughts seemed to be coherent, but they weren’t the proper thoughts, He needed nearly a minute to realize that he was looking up at the sky, that he was on his back rather than on his stomach. To remember where he was.

  He blinked several times, slowly. The sounds of fighting were there, but they hardly impinged on his awareness. After a long delay, Joe finally realized that he had been wounded.

  Pretty bad this time, I guess, he thought. Another very slow blink. There was no pain, anywhere. When he tried to move, he had difficulty, but still no pain. But he could move. He managed to turn over a Iittle,partly onto his left shoulder, and he was able to lift his head. Eventually. He looked down along his body, as much of it as he could see, looking for blood–the evidence of his injuries.

  His inspection went only as far as his thighs, though. For a very good reason. Both legs were gone above the knee.

  ECHO COMPANY’S 2nd platoon walked away from the ambush as a single squad of nine men. Sauv was in command. Mort took the point again, for the few minutes that the platoon was moving in column order. But then the entire company moved into a skirmish line and turned south again. The company’s 5th platoon made the trip back to the base with the seriously wounded this time–5th platoon with one addition.

  The Heggie counterattack down the center of the peninsula had failed. The pocket on the east side was rapidly collapsing. Half of the 13th was moving across the neck of land to add their numbers to the fight on the west side.

  Another two hours of combat saw an end to any unified resistance by the Schlinal troops on Tamkailo, but mopping up operations took most of the rest of the day.

  * * *

  Joe Baerclau managed to think that it was peculiar that he had not lost consciousness at any point, despite the shock and loss of blood. Al had been at his side before Joe was even fully aware of what had happened, tying tourniquets around the stumps of his legs and applying large medpatches over the open wounds, to stop the bleeding and prevent the destruction of more tissue. An analgesic patch over Joe’s spine ensured that he would feel no pain.

  Then there was the long haul back to the hospital for Joe and three other serious casualties. On belts. That proved to be a tricky business for the man guiding Joe. With both legs gone above the knee, the Bear was top heavy. The stabilizers had to work constantly to keep him vertical–which meant that he swayed back and forth quite a bit.

  Al Bergon made the trip, the one healthy addition to 5th platoon. He took Joe in tow personally. He talked the entire way, but the words made no impression on Joe. The words went in and through without pausing long enough for him to bother really to listen to them. He was too busy looking at the sky, absorbed by that. Even thinking about his wounds–and the months that recovery, regeneration, and rehabilitation would take–was too much bother. The sky was so blue, without even a hint of a cloud anywhere in sight.

  A peaceful sky.

  * * *

  Major General KIeffer Dacik walked back into the warehouse he had turned into his headquarters and took off his helmet. He simply let it drop to the floor. It was two hours past noon. There was no longer the slightest doubt about the outcome of the Tamkailo campaign. There were still some few Heggies fighting, but they could no longer hope to reverse the outcome. Then there were munitions and other supplies to destroy–or remove. Grunt work. Nothing would be left for the Heggies on Tamkailo except for empty buildings and the bodies of their dead.

  “General, CIC says that the Heggie fleet is gone. They just made the jump to hyperspace,” Jorgen Olsen reported. There had been two additional skirmishes between the fleets after the first battle, but the later clashes had been minor. The only losses had been to Bats and Boem S3s.

  Dacik sat heavily on a crate of uniforms. He stared at Olsen and, after a moment, nodded slowly. The general had just come from the field hospital. Seeing the carnage left to repair, and getting updated reports on the numbers of dead and wounded from his subordinate commanders, had taken too much from Dacik for him to feel even relief at this latest evidence that the battle for Tamkailo had been won.

  The cost.

  “Sir, Admiral Kitchener wants to know when you plan to start moving the men back up to the ships,” Colonel Ruman said.

  That caught enough of Dacik’s attention for him to look up.

  “He wants to start making plans for retrieval,” Ruman added when the general didn’t speak.

  Dacik shook his head, a minimal gesture, then hauled in enough breath to talk. It required an unprecedented effort.

  “I’m not sure yet. Certainly not before sunset for the bulk of the troops and equipment.” He hesitated, then said, “Make arrangements to start moving the wounded up as soon as possible. They’ll get better treatment aboard ship.”

  “Shuttles are already on their way down for the wounded, along with an extra surgical team. The field hospital’s already been on to the admiral about that.”

  Dacik got to his feet again, moving as if he were three times his age. Movement hurt. “Tell the admiral that I’ll get on to him as soon as I know what’s going on. I’ll try to start cycling units up by local sunset. The rest . . .” He made a vague gesture with both arms. “The rest depends on how long it takes us to account for the last of the enemy and destroy their supplies. With any luck at all, we’ll be ready to lift everyone off by midnight.”

  Then the general walked away from his staff. Only Captain Lorenz, his aide, went with him, and Lorenz knew not to get too close to the general now unless invited. Dacik went to a corner and stood there staring at the intersection of two walls. It was several minutes before he turned halfway and gestured for Lorenz to come closer.

  “Hof, there’s only one thing that could possibly begin to make our losses here justifiable.”

  “Sir?” Lorenz prompted when the general went silent again.

  “The thing that Mizatle and Hobarth kept harping on when they dumped this campaign in my lap. They said they thought that if we did a thorough job on Tamkailo, the Hegemony wouldn’t be able to mount another offensive against us for a year or more, that it might well be enough to end the war between us.”

  “You think that’Il happen, General?” Hof was genuinely curious about the answer to that question.

  “I don’t know.” Dacik shook his head. ‘’I want to believe that it will, but . . .”

  There was absolutely no need for him to finish that thought.

  THERE WAS never any formal cease-fire between the Accord of Free Worlds and the Schlinal Hegemony. There were no official diplomatic contacts of any sort. But as the result of a number of unofficial “non-meetings” a tacit understanding developed of the “You don’t attack us and we won’t attack you” variety.

  No one in the Accord government counted on the understanding remaining understood one minute longer than the Hegemony thought they needed it.

  * * *

  Shortly after the return of the fleet from Tamkailo, KIeffer Dacik was awarded a cluster of medals, promoted to lieutenant general, and quietly transferred to a post at Headquarters, Accord Ministry of Defense. Although nothing was ever committed to writing, it was clearly understood that Dacik w
ould never again be permitted to command troops in combat.

  His victories were too expensive.

  eventhorizonpg.com

  Visit our website and online bookstore at eventhorizonpg.com

  Visit our new Facebook Store!

  Our Imprints —

  Check out our Imprint Facebook Pages for the

  latest news about our books and authors:

  Event Horizon EBooks

  DarkStar Books

  Lone Star Publishing

  Starbase Phoenix Publishing