by Rick Shelley
Not much chance the Westers will forget we 're here, Lon thought, but no need to remind them where we are in case they're scoping our electronic emissions. There had been no formal order for electronic silence, but the squad leaders had clamped down on loose talk early on, without any prodding from above.
The hours of waiting had exhausted Lon's memory, something of a blessing. There was a numbing quality to lying inactive under a blazing sun, sweating constantly but gaining little cooling from its almost immediate evaporation. Even the deep worries that might otherwise have
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blossomed into fear had been put to sleep, bored comatose. The afternoon had given new vigor to the ancient military maxim of Hurry up and wait.
There seemed little difference between wakefulness and sleep except when there was talk on the radio. Lon had drifted in and out of a restless slumber. In other circumstances such a lazy afternoon might have been welcome, even with the swelter—perhaps with flies buzzing around, adding a pleasant drone to somnolence. But there were no flies, nor anything resembling them.
Tropical heat had apparently spread its lassitude over Hope and its environs. Lon had heard no gunfire in three hours, on the ground or in the air. Reports from the other companies of 2nd Battalion supported his conclusion. No fighting was going on. West's army had dug hurried positions as well and showed every inclination to wait for the dark and cool of night.
Sunset came at last, the sun touching the horizon and easing itself below it. A slight breeze, the first of the day, seemed to start when Aldrin's sun was about a third of the way below the almost flat western horizon.
"We've got Shrikes coming down to strike the Westers in the mountains," a voice—one of the battalion headquarters staff—said on a channel that connected all of the officers in 2nd Battalion. "Shuttles will be waiting to come in on ten minutes' notice if it's safe."
/ hope it works, Lon thought. It would be nice to have another battalion on hand for the night's action against the troops West had brought south. Or more. But Lon did not expect miracles.
The rest of 7th Regiment was engaged. They would be lucky to spring one battalion safely.
Enough to hold us until 12th Regiment comes in tomorrow, Lon decided.
"Well, Tebba," Lon said, switching to his platoon sergeants' channel. "Get with your squad leaders. We'd best do some limbering up. If things go right, we might be moving before long. I don't want anyone staggering along like they're a hundred years old and drunk. And make
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sure everyone's getting plenty of fluids. We don't want a lot of leg cramps."
Both sergeants acknowledged the orders. Lon lifted his faceplate to rub at his cheeks and eyes, the first step toward forcing full alertness. He took his helmet off long enough to scratch at his scalp and let a breath of air circulate around his head. Once his helmet was back in place—he dared not leave it off long—he started a more thorough set of limbering-up exercises, stretching arms and legs as well as he could in the shelter of his shallow hole. When he had finished the routine, ten minutes of methodical work, he took several small sips of water, rolling the liquid around in his mouth each time before swallowing, taking maximum benefit from minimal moisture.
The approach of twilight seemed to drop the temperature more than the six degrees that Lon's helmet sensor indicated. The setting of the sun helped, psychologically as well as physically.
An hour, maybe more, Lon thought, considering how long it might be before orders would come to start moving. With all the heat, he had taken less time than usual at the junior officer exercise of war-gaming, trying to guess what his superiors might order and why. But he had done some. There did not seem to be many alternatives. The primary variable was whether 2nd Battalion had to operate alone or had reinforcements from one of the other battalions.
The latter would make things easier. Land the reinforcements beyond the Westers and drive them against Hope. Move 2nd Battalion the same way, try to force the enemy between two forces, make them fight in unfavorable circumstances or surrender. Hammer-and-anvil tactics.
If West started something sooner, it would throw his calculations out of whack. He waited for word on the progress of the fight in the mountains to the northeast. But for quite some time there was nothing, not even routine updates.
The tropical dusk seemed truncated to Lon. The sky went from twilight to dark too quickly.
The first stars were
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visible in the east within minutes of sunset, and the celestial carpet unrolled rapidly.
"Any minute now," Lon mumbled to himself. It was dark enough that Shrikes would be visible only as they occulted stars, and that would not give a man with a SAM launcher time to get a preliminary target fix. And the Wester commander might start moving his men against Hope just as quickly, now that night had been draped across the area.
"Captain?" Lon whispered after clicking his radio to the channel that connected him to Orlis.
"Anything happening yet?"
"I was just about to call you," Orlis replied, also speaking in a whisper. "We're going to start moving, but slowly. We stay low and close the distance between us and the Westers. I mean low, on stomachs. The idea is not to let the enemy know that we're moving. When something starts, that might give us a little extra advantage. The compass heading is one hundred degrees. On my mark. We move in about three minutes."
"Right, Captain," Lon replied. While Lon passed the orders to his noncoms, he thought about the course. The right end of the line would get closer to the outskirts of Hope on the move, but never near enough to come within easy rifle range of the garrison there. I wonder if the others are going to be moving closer to the enemy as well. Lon shrugged. If it had been important, Captain Orlis would have told him.
Moving stealthily was basic drill for Dirigenters— taught a mercenary's first week in recruit
training, and every unit practiced the techniques regularly. The boast that a veteran Dirigenter could sneak within twenty feet of an enemy, across open ground, without being spotted was not far from the truth. "Ghost-in-the-night stuff," another cadet had suggested to Lon when they went through training. It had seemed spooky to Lon, even when the cadre had demonstrated just how good they were— even when their trainees knew they were coming.
It was something like a ballet played out in ultraslow
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motion, the crablike scuttling forward, with frequent pauses, no one ever getting his stomach more than an inch or two off the ground, propelling himself forward with arms and legs, rifle balanced on forearms. Breathing was controlled, slow and kept in rhythm with motion. Men glanced to either side to make certain they remained at proper distances from their neighbors.
In some ways it was more taxing than running. Muscles cramped. Knees and elbows ached from scrapes and the constant pressure on them. Frequent stops helped, often after no more than twenty or thirty yards of crawling. But it was all done in almost perfect silence.
Slow movement helped squelch the crackle of dry grain stubble the men crawled over.
Radio traffic was kept to an absolute minimum; any talking that was required was conducted sub-vocally. The insulation of DMC battle helmets kept any hint of sound from escaping.
News filtered in slowly from regiment. The fight in the mountains was continuing. Lon had been crawling for thirty minutes before word arrived that the other battalions had secured an area large enough—and far enough from the enemy—for shuttles to come in. Third Battalion was boarding now, and would be arriving within a half hour.
"We're all going to open up on the enemy just before the shuttles arrive," Captain Orlis explained to Lon and the platoon sergeants. "Keep the enemy distracted, make sure they don't have a chance to interfere with the landings. Those are going to be spaced around Hope to let 3rd Battalion close with the enemy as qu
ickly as possible. We push the Westers against the town and press until they have to surrender to avoid destruction. Our role will be to cut off escape on this end of the pocket."
We could end up with a lot of panicky enemy soldiers charging straight through us to get away from a worse situation, Lon thought. The tactic was not unexpected, but if the main enemy force east of Hope tried to escape northward, through Alpha, the Westers might have immediate tactical odds of four to one in their favor. It would be a question of just how discipline and desperation bal-242
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anced in the stampede. And, so far, the Westers had shown themselves to be very highly disciplined troops.
One flight of Shrikes was to the north, making certain that Wester interceptors could not contest 3rd Battalion's landings. A second flight of Shrikes would be coming in to cover the landings directly, to add their fury to the assault against the Wester troops. Major Esterling had been notified of the schedule so his garrison could take part in the diversionary strike.
Hope's soldiers would be at extreme range from the enemy concentrations, but they could add to the sound and fury, and compound the enemy's confusion ... and fear.
Lon and his men moved forward one slow yard at a time. The more ground they covered before the attack, the less they would have to cover under fire. The ache in elbows and knees, the protest of cramping muscles, all started to fade, partly a response of a body's natural and nano-boosted defenses, but more from mental accommodation. They were almost "normal" sensations now, and the men focused on what was coming. The only remaining question was whether the Westers would remain in place for the next twenty-odd minutes, or start to execute whatever plans their commander had cooked up for the night before the Shrikes and 3rd Battalion arrived.
They have to have heard about the shuttles taking off by now, Lon decided. They 'II either
start moving or dig in deeper and try to hold out. After only a few seconds of thought he decided that the most likely course would be for West to attack Hope now, from all sides, hoping to break through the defenses before more mercenaries arrived. If the Westers were successful at that, it would limit the response the Dirigenters could make. They would have to take care to minimize civilian casualties in Hope, try to get in before the enemy could do too much damage or establish themselves in the defensive positions Esterling's garrison had created. We don't want to have to destroy Hope to free it, Lon told himself.
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When the Westers east and south of Lon started to move, ten minutes remained before the scheduled start of the diversionary attack on them. The timetable had to be thrown out. Lon was not surprised when the order came.
"Hit them before they get too far from their positions. Start the beamers firing now," Captain Orlis said.
Lon's men were too far from the enemy for slug throwers to be useful, but the men with beamers could find targets, linking their helmets' night-vision systems to the sights of their weapons. The Dirigenters did not wait for the enemy to notice that they had come under fire.
Thirty seconds after Captain Ortis passed along the command to start the beamers, he was back on line. "Up and at 'em. We move full out until we get to within four hundred yards, then down and slow." Orlis gave Lon time to relay those orders, then gave the final "Go!"
As Lon scrambled to his feet, he felt a moment of instability. Both knees started to buckle.
He had been flat on the ground for so long, lying in a trench through much of the day, then crawling, that his body resisted getting vertical. He used his rifle as a crutch to get up.
Looking ahead and around, he saw that more than a few of the men in his platoons were having the same kind of trouble.
"Captain?"
"I know," Orlis replied before Lon could explain why he was calling. "We're going to have to take ten seconds to get the kinks out. Just do it quickly."
It was a nervous ten seconds. Standing exposed, even far enough away that most rifle fire would be only minimally hazardous, made everyone want to move forward as soon as legs would support them. Many men limped as they started forward, a slow walk building only slowly to an awkward jog. Neither Lon nor Orlis tried to slow the charge. All they did was call noncoms to keep the skirmish line dressed as best they could.
Alpha Company was eight hundred yards from the nearest enemy positions when they came under heavy rifle fire. The Westers had given up their attempt to move toward Hope and had returned to the minimal defenses they
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had dug during the day to meet this attack. At eight hundred yards, rifle fire was only minimally accurate. Even with Westers firing short bursts of automatic fire, they caused few casualties.
The run forward was finally reined in. The men moved to a more normal walking pace, crouched over, rifles up and at the ready. Only the men with beamers had permission to fire.
The rest held back, not wasting ammunition at long range. Lon felt the temptation, though.
He wondered how much a determined volley of automatic rifle fire from the entire company might intimidate the Westers. Not enough, he decided. / guess we do need to wait until we
're close enough to do some real good.
At six hundred yards, Captain Orlis gave the order for a brief response. Men stopped to take the best aim possible and loosed short bursts at the enemy. Then they moved forward, stopping after another fifty yards to fire again.
If those volleys had any effect at all on the Westers, it was too slight for Lon to notice. As Alpha came within five hundred yards of the enemy, it started to suffer casualties. Medtechs moved up to care for the wounded. Lon monitored the radio channel the medics used. Two
men were dead in fourth platoon. There were at least half a dozen wounded in each of his platoons; several of those would need trauma tubes as quickly as they could be transported to them.
But the shuttles carrying 3rd Battalion were landing.
Lon had not noticed the first passes by the Shrikes that had come in to cover the landings.
He had been too intent on his men and the hazards directly in front of them. Alpha Company reached the five-hundred-yard mark, and Captain Orlis gave the order for the men to get down. They would continue to advance, but it was back to slithering along on stomachs, one squad in each platoon moving while the other three squads laid down covering fire.
As Lon went into a prone firing position, he finally noticed that his lungs were aching with the effort of breathing. He was almost gasping for air. He had to hold CAPTAIN
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off on shooting until his panting would not interfere with his aim.
The first squads had already moved forward. The second squads in each platoon followed.
The trailing squads moved closer, getting themselves open fire zones. This, too, was a maneuver they drilled in regularly, basic unit movement.
Alpha did not get significantly closer to the enemy before the Westers started to move. The Westers on the east side of town started moving toward Hope again, across the front presented by Alpha.
"Dress the line and hold it," Captain Orlis ordered, speaking to the three platoon sergeants as well as to Lon. "We're still here to hold the flank. Bravo will chase this lot in." A second later he added, "Our turn will come."
Across open sanna and harvested fields, Lon had a good view of what was happening. The Wester force between Hope and Bravo Company moved toward the town in a shallow wedge, using tire and maneuver tactics. Its mortars were moved after every few rounds, brought closer until the trajectory of their bombs was almost straight up and down and any additional movement would put the near side of Hope's defenses out of their reach. It was a highly disciplined attack, squads and platoons leapfrogging each other with practiced precision. Lon shivered at the idea of a frontal assault, the most deadly type of combat for attacking soldiers. Even the cover of darkness was not enough to make it a decent proposition. Unless the alternatives are worse,
Lon conceded. He was not sure whether that was the case this time, or if West's determination to take Hope from the Eastmen was simply too strong for logic to be part of the calculation.
Firing from carefully constructed defenses, the garrison and militia of Hope met the attack with equal discipline. Lon wished mat they were on the same communications net so he could listen to the talk inside the town. News did come over the battalion's information circuit that the other Wester forces were also attacking Hope, and the Dirigenters were in position to start attacking the Westers from behind and the flanks.
Bravo Company moved forward, rifles and beamers striking the Westers from behind, forcing them to take aotke. The attack against Hope did not stop, but part of the attacking force had to turn to try to fend off the mer-247
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cenaries while their comrades continued to move forward.
"If they get inside the town, it's a whole 'nother kettle of fish," Tebba Girana whispered to Lon over their private circuit.
"They're not inside yet," Lon whispered back. "Here come the Shrikes again."
Two Shrikes made another pass at the Westers, with rockets and cannons, raking the soldiers from north to south, then returning to repeat the maneuver south to north. The Westers launched missiles at the Shrikes. Lon closed his eyes against the glare as one found its target.
"Maybe we should be hitting them, too," Tebba suggested. "Hit 'em from every side at once.
They'd have to surrender."
' 'Maybe,'' Lon said. And maybe not. It seemed possible that nothing would make this enemy surrender. They might have to be destroyed. "The orders are for us to wait," he reminded Girana. "We're to keep them contained if they try a breakout."