by Rick Shelley
Girana gave no indication that he was aware of Nolan. The corporal had enough to do, his own firing and running, and keeping track of the squad while he received updates on the advance of B Company. But Lon worked hard to stay where he was supposed to be.
The enemy gunfire was wildly inaccurate. Despite the closing range, no one else in the squad was hit during the advance. They moved to within eighty yards of the nearest muzzle flashes before Girana told his men to find the best cover they could and stay down. At that range, it was incredible that more men had not been brought down.
“We just need to keep them in contact now,” he said. “Bravo has a platoon moving in on the left. Watch for the blips of their helmets. And keep your heads down.”
Lon had already spotted the four dozen bright green dots on his head-up display. Green for friendly forces. If any enemy electronics had been spotted, they would have shown as red blips. A few seconds later, the other platoon started firing on the enemy. Then their first volley of rifle grenades started to explode. There were a half dozen or more, the sounds of their blasts too close together for Lon to be certain how many there were. The enemy gunfire dropped to almost nothing, quickly.
“Okay, let’s go!” Tebba shouted, pushing himself to his feet. “Suppression fire.”
“Suppression fire” meant to spray the enemy positions with automatic rifle fire. The concern was not so much to inflict additional casualties on the enemy as to keep them from shooting back—if there were any of them left to shoot.
Lon continued to trigger short bursts—the ideal was to fire off three shots at a time—moving his rifle’s muzzle from side to side, while the rest of the squad did the same. At first the platoon from B Company also continued to pour rifle fire into the enemy’s last known positions, but as Lon’s squad got close, the other platoon quit firing, to avoid inflicting casualties on friendly forces.
There was dense undergrowth around where the Norbanker rebels had been, ground cover growing along the bank of a small creek. Much of that had been blasted loose by the grenades. And the trees and bushes that remained had shredded leaves near where the grenades had exploded. Trunks were pitted with shrapnel wounds. The smell of explosives remained. Little else did.
Girana came to a halt, gesturing for his men to circle the site and keep watch to make certain that no other rebels were near. Lon saw two bodies that had been mutilated by the explosions, missing extremities, one almost torn in half. He stopped, and swallowed against the rise of bile in his throat. Then he saw more bodies.
“Belzer, Ericks, Steesen, move across the creek and set up to make sure they don’t come back,” Girana said. “Keep on your toes. We sure didn’t kill all of them.”
Tebba moved slowly through the area, counting bodies, checking to make certain that there were no living left among the dead. Lon stayed close to the corporal, watching for both of them. He had fitted a new magazine to his rifle, and ran the bolt to put a round in the firing chamber.
“Eight dead,” Girana said when he finished counting. “There were at least a dozen rifles firing, maybe half again that many.”
“They couldn’t have expected that few men to stop us,” Lon said. “Did we just happen on a patrol, or were they scouting for a larger force?”
Girana grunted. “You’ve got the right question, but I don’t know the answer any more than you do. Hang on a minute.”
Lon waited, guessing that the corporal had to change channels to answer a call. It lasted for thirty seconds.
“We’re off the point,” Tebba said when he returned to the private channel with Lon. “As soon as Bravo’s people get here, we go back to pick up the men we left behind and let fourth platoon send out its point squad.”
“Any word on Raiz yet?” Lon asked.
“He’ll live. Dav says it looks like the shoulder is busted, maybe the collarbone as well, so Raiz is going to be out of action for a while.”
“They gonna take him back up to the ship?”
Tebba shrugged. “If possible. For now, I guess they’re going to have to put him in one of the portable trauma tubes, leave a few men with him.”
“Us?”
“No. The medics with battalion will take care of him. And one man from Bravo Company who was hit as well.”
Lon felt that it was strange to be moving in the opposite direction to the rest of the battalion, withdrawing while others were advancing. The men Lon’s squad passed turned their heads to look. Lon noticed, but did not dwell on the curiosity. He had an itch in the middle of his back. He did not like the withdrawal for the simple reason that he did not like facing away from where the danger had been. There were still Norbanker rebels out there, somewhere— behind him for certain, maybe all around.
Frank Raiz had already been removed by the medics. Dav Grott and Harvey Fehr rejoined the squad. “He’ll be okay,” Grott assured the others. “They’ve already got him in a tube.”
The trauma tube was the mainstay of medical help, the crowning success of nanotechnology combined with the latest gross life support equipment. If a wounded man could get into a tube alive, he had more than a 98 percent chance of surviving even the most extensive damage. After just three minutes in a tube, the odds improved to virtually 100 percent. While life support machinery maintained the injured or sick individual, the body was flooded with organic repair units, molecule-sized factories that compared what they found with what they should find, correcting anything that did not match the template. Four to six hours would correct most problems, even compound fractures and deep bullet wounds. Only neurological damage—to the brain or spinal cord especially—could take more tube time. And only that and regrowing amputated limbs would keep a victim out of action more than eight hours. The collapsible portable units that troops could carry into the field with them were not as elaborate—or elegant—as hospital units, but they could still do the job properly.
The rest of A Company’s third platoon cycled to the rear of the column. Its second squad took a break, waiting for them. Phip sat next to Lon and lifted his faceplate. “Well?” he asked.
Lon shrugged, not knowing how to put his feelings into words. “Now I’ve been there,” he said, his voice flat. He had not started to think back over the experience. There was no hope of making any sense of his feelings yet. The question had opened a jumble of images and impressions, none coherent, none ready to gel. “I don’t know what to think,” he added after a long pause. Maybe that’s best, he decided. Don’t analyze it to death. Just let the experience be.
“You ever figure it out, let me know,” Phip said, getting to his feet. “I’ve been through twenty firefights, some a lot bigger and worse than this one. I still don’t know what to think. It’s just, well, every once in a while, I get to thinking that it’s a hell of a way for a man to make a living.”
By choice, no less, Lon thought. One of his hands was trembling. He held it out and stared at it until he could force the shaking to stop. I wasn’t afraid, he told himself. Not while it was happening. There was no time for fear then. No use in letting it start now, after it’s done. But the trembling was slow to recede, and even after it was gone, there was a hollow feeling in his stomach—a feeling that had nothing to do with hunger.
“You did good,” Corporal Girana said, just behind Nolan. Tebba had his helmet visor up. He was not speaking over the radio. His voice startled Lon.
“I didn’t hear you coming,” he said, lifting his faceplate as he turned and looked up.
Girana squatted next to Nolan. “It’s okay, kid,” he said. “I’ve been at this nearly half my life and I still get the shakes afterward, almost every time.”
Lon shook his head. “It didn’t seem, well, real until I saw the bodies of the men we killed. I heard bullets whizzing past. I knew about Frank getting hit, but … ”
“I know. Don’t beat yourself over the head with it,” Tebba said. “We’re in the business of killing. Kill or be killed.”
“And trust that we’re o
n the right side?” Lon asked.
“Trust that we’re on the right side,” Tebba agreed.
“At The Springs, I had patriotism to give me all the reason I needed. The NAU, right or wrong, was my country. I expected to defend my country. What are we defending, the right to make money, to take the best offer we can get for using our guns?”
“We fight for Dirigent, for the Corps, for our mates,” Tebba said. “Don’t get too hung up on the word mercenary, kid. We fight because we’re Dirigent’s stock in trade, important to the survival of our world. We’re serving our world, the same way you would have been serving your country if you had made it to the Army back home. We fight because we’re Dirigenters. It doesn’t matter if you’re born here or immigrated. You’re as much a Dirigenter as any of us, even those whose families have been here since the world was first settled.”
Lon nodded, slowly.
“And now it’s time to get moving again, before the rear guard walks over us.”
They got to their feet. The rest of the squad was waiting, some standing, some still sitting. But as soon as Girana gestured to the others, everyone was up and ready to move. They moved back into their two columns with the rest of third platoon, and hurried until they had closed the gap that had opened up between them and the rest of the company.
Lon resumed his post near Girana. Lon worked hard at concentrating on the terrain around them, trying not to let his focus fade because they were—supposedly—in the most secure spot in the line of march, at the rear of the center column, with a sizable rear guard behind them. Keep your eyes and ears open, Lon told himself. You’ve got to stay alert.
It was only a few seconds later that Tebba was on the squad channel telling everyone the same thing. Stay alert. Keep your eyes moving. Don’t assume that we won’t be the first to contact the enemy, even where we are.
The battalion was within two miles of where surveillance had placed the rebel lines facing Norbank City when the next attack came. This attack was in more strength, and came against the column on the right, C Company. The rebels hit behind the first platoon, staging along the flank. Somehow C’s flanking patrol had missed the rebels. They had gone right past the ambush without seeing anything.
Lon could not guess how many rebels were in this attack. It sounded as if hundreds of rifles started firing before C Company could respond. But Lon did notice something that he had not in the earlier ambush. The battalion’s rifles sounded different from the rebel guns. The report of one of the Corps’ 7mm rifles was higher in pitch and shorter in duration.
“Let’s go,” Sergeant Dendrow said on the platoon channel. “We’ve got to try to box in these rebels.”
The unexpected call sent a flutter—almost of excitement—through Lon. He got back to his feet. Everyone had gone down at the first sound of gunfire. Now it was time to move. Trotting off toward the tail end of C Company, Lon was able to reason out why the rear platoon in the center column would be chosen for the job. Charlie Company was pinned down by the attack. Bravo had the other flank to protect. Delta had to hold the rear, and the rest of Alpha had the front, along the line of march. This might not be the only enemy force in position to attack. So Alpha’s third platoon was the logical choice.
I guess, Lon thought. His mind was brought back to more immediate concerns by several explosions. They were not DMC grenades exploding in the rebel positions. These sounds were louder, closer, and deeper, somewhere along Charlie Company’s front. The rebels had grenades, or rockets, of their own.
“We go out around the end of Charlie, then turn the corner once we get a hundred yards out,” Dendrow said on a circuit that included Lon as well as the platoon’s noncoms. “Turn the rebel flank and put the squeeze on.”
Nice plan, Lon thought. I hope it works. Plans always looked good going in. It was so simple to chart movement and assume results. But all too often it seemed that the success of a plan depended on the enemy being compliant.
Sergeant Dendrow was heading well to the right, through the gap between Charlie and Delta, trying to give the rebels a wide berth. But it did not work. As soon as the first squad approached the line that Charlie Company was defending, the entire platoon came under fire. The rebels had apparently anticipated the movement.
Dendrow’s shout of “Cover!” was scarcely needed.
Now what do we do? Lon wondered once he was down and had his rifle pointed in the right direction. The rebel gunfire had stopped as the platoon went to cover—the rebels who were facing this one platoon at least; the rest continued to fire on C Company. Send the rear guard around even wider? The decision was not Lon’s, but he could hardly help but think what he might do if it were. He was in training to be an officer. Someday he might be faced with a similar situation. No, he decided. That wouldn’t be my first choice at least. If they expected us, they might expect that as well. I’d try to get air support in to make a run along the enemy lines, rockets and guns, thin them out and pin them down, soften them up first. Then move in to clean up.
“Stay down and return fire when you’ve got a target,” Girana said over the squad channel. “Don’t waste ammo.”
The men knew the drill—basic operations tactics. Even Lon could respond automatically to the conditions. He remembered that most night fire tends to be high, so he lowered his point of aim to compensate. Even a bullet hitting the ground in front of the enemy had a chance to do damage—by ricocheting or kicking up bits of rock or wood—while rounds sent way over the enemies’ heads could do nothing.
Several minutes passed before there was any news. “One of the shuttles is coming in to make a pass over the enemy,” Girana relayed to his men. “Another four minutes.”
Lon glanced at the time line on his visor. This could be a long four minutes, he thought. He wondered how many casualties the battalion was taking in the meantime.
He felt fear, but it was inconsequential because he was too busy to worry about it. There was a knot in his stomach, a passing awareness that he might die and not even know it—or worse, that there could be minutes of horrible suffering before death came. But he watched his front, firing when he spotted muzzle flashes or anything that seemed to be movement out in the distance, where the enemy was. His hands were steady, his aim true. Although he could not see targets going down, he was certain that he must be scoring at least an occasional hit.
The attack shuttle, coming in at supersonic speed, arrived ahead of its sound, screaming as it came out of a power dive, throttling back and deploying its braking flaps to avoid overrunning its own bullets and rockets and to give itself a little longer time over the target. Lon glanced up, but there was no chance of seeing the shuttle. Even its heat signature was masked by the forest canopy between them.
Lon did hear the first missiles that the shuttle launched, and then the exploding chain sound of its two Gatling guns spewing bullets as it strafed the rebel position. Each six-barreled gun could fire eighteen hundred 12mm rounds a minute. Rockets exploded. Bullets chewed gaping lanes through the canopy, and through everything they encountered below. The din was almost physically painful, pressing against eardrums and brains. When it ended, there was a hollowness to the remaining sounds, the insignificant-by-comparison noise of rifles firing on the ground.
Then there was a screech from the air as the shuttle pilot tortured his craft through a tight turn to return and make a second run, from the opposite direction. The metal complaining that too much is being asked of it, Lon thought.
He had to resist the urge to put his hands over his ears. With a helmet on, the gesture would have been futile.
The second run by the shuttle was as painfully loud as the first. When it ended, there was an order for the platoon to move forward again. Three of C Company’s four platoons were advancing as well. A frontal attack was not the preferred method of dealing with the situation, but after the assist from the shuttle, it might not be too costly.
Fire and maneuver: It was the most basic of tactics, one that the
soldiers drilled in every week in garrison. The platoon moved by squads, two advancing while the other two laid down suppressing fire. There was still shooting coming from the rebel positions, but much less than before, and less organized. The rebels had obviously been seriously damaged by the air attack.
This time, though, the surviving rebels did not retreat, did not abandon the battlefield, as the first ambushers had. They stood and fought. At the end, it came down to hand-to-hand combat, hands and knives as well as guns.
Lon saw a figure rise from the ground, just in front of him. The man wore a helmet, but it had no faceplate, nothing to disguise the look of naked hatred on the face. The man held his rifle in his left hand, like a shield. His right hand held a machete. Lon could not get his rifle around in time to shoot the rebel. He swung at the arm holding the knife and moved in closer, trying to bring his rifle up to use the butt against the man’s head. But they collided and went down together. Lon found himself on the bottom, his rifle out of his hands, holding onto the wrists of his assailant—who had also lost or discarded his rifle. The man still had the long knife, though, and was doing everything he could to use it against Lon.
After a moment of struggling in which neither of them seemed to get anywhere, Lon got his feet under him, knees bent, and propelled the rebel up and over his head. Lon rolled to his left, reaching for his pistol at the same time. The rebel was up and scrambling for him again, still holding the machete, swinging for Nolan’s neck. Lon pushed himself farther to the side as he brought his handgun up and fired, twice. The first bullet staggered the rebel. The second caused him to fold up and fall, half against Lon, their faces only inches apart.
For just an instant, Lon stared into the open eyes of the dead man, smelled his sweat—and death. Although the look seemed to stretch on endlessly, he knew that it could only have been a couple of seconds. Then he pushed the man off, turned, looked for his rifle, and retrieved it. The first thing he did was glance at the muzzle, looking for any sign that dirt might be plugged in it. He saw nothing, but without a more thorough check, he could not be certain, and a plugged barrel could be deadly.