by Rick Shelley
But this time Alfie simply acknowledged the message and asked, “So what do we do?” without the sarcasm that Tory half expected.
“Come out of the smoke behind them. The second they start shooting, we go to ground and play sharpshooter. Put all that training His Majesty’s Government have paid for to good use. And we keep our eyes open all around; don’t let them sneak up on us while we think we’re sneaking up on them.”
“Put out a squad on the wing?” Alfie suggested.
“You volunteering your fire team?”
“At least I’ll know it’s being done right that way.”
Tory checked with Lieutenant Nuchol before he answered Alfie. “Work around to the right, but don’t get in the middle of things. Mind where you’re at, and keep in contact. This could get dicey in a hurry.”
“I always know where I’m at. It’s the why that gives me trouble now and then.”
“You’d best start your flanking maneuver now, before we get close enough for the Feddies to watch you waltzing.”
Alfie motioned to the three privates of his fire team, and took the point. Behind him, the others fell into their usual order—Willie Hathaway, John McGregor, and Eugene Wegener. It never bothered them when others laughed and said that they didn’t know any better than to do things alphabetically. It worked for them. Wegener, as silent as a sleeping ghost, was the perfect rear guard. The Hat was audacious enough to spring to Alfie’s assistance at need, and McGregor was the steady pivot in the middle, able to pay attention to what was going on behind as well as in front.
Alfie wanted plenty of room, so he went well wide of the Feddies before he turned south again. The fire team had plenty of cover between it and the enemy, even one building that had not been burned and blown up yet. In good cover, under a pair of trees and behind a thick hedge, Alfie brought his men together and lifted his helmet visor.
“Let’s see if we can get inside that building. Find windowswe can open to have decent shots at the Feddies.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Wegener asked. “Such as what it might feel like to be in that building when the Feddies put the burn and bang to it?”
“They’re using flamethrowers to set the fires. Since they’ve got no artillery that we know of, they must be planting explosives by hand. That means they’d have to get right in our faces. Our rifles can keep even the flamethrowers out of reach. I’m not about to sit still and let them cook me without a fight.”
“If we’re sneaking in the back when they torch the front, what good can we do?” the Hat asked.
“We don’t visit the loo first,” Alfie said. “Once we’re inside, we get into position fast enough they can’t catch us by surprise. Any other objections?” His tone made it clear that there had better not be.
“Let’s move.” Alfie slapped his visor down and started forward, staying low, and doing what he could to keep some cover between him and the gaps on either side of the building, where enemy troops seemed most likely to appear. When they reached the building, a square three-story structure that appeared to be designed for offices, the I&R men flattened themselves against the outside wall on either side of the entrance.
Alfie signaled for Wegener and Hathaway to check the nearest windows on either side of the doorway. It was a stretch for both men, but they chinned themselves on the sills and pulled themselves high enough to see inside. Both shook their heads when they dropped to the ground: no one visible inside.
If we weren’t on the hush-hush, proper drill would be to toss in a couple of grenades first, Alfie thought. Proper drill. The RM had a proper drill for almost any situation a Marine might conceivably find himself in.
“Okay, lads, in and down behind me. Be ready for anything.”
It never would have occurred to Alfie to lead from behind and send one of the others in first. That might be “proper drill,” but it was not Alfie Edwards’s way. He took a deepbreath and slid closer to the door. He reached for the handle as if it were a venomous snake, and hesitated before he grasped it in his left hand. Then he took another deep breath and let it out.
One, two, three. He counted silently, then twisted the handle and pushed the door open as rapidly as he could. He hit the door with his shoulder as he brought both hands to his rifle and dived through the doorway and off to the left. He slid along a polished tile floor and had his rifle in firing position before he realized that there were no targets in sight. The corridor spanned the building to a similar entrance on the far side.
Alfie got back to his feet quickly after the rest of the fire team came in. The muzzle of his rifle tracked back and forth from one side of the corridor to the other. There were three doorways on the right, two on the left. All were closed.
No time to check them all, Alfie thought. Within minutes, the rest of the two I&R platoons would start shooting at the Feddies to keep them preoccupied.
“We’ll go into the last rooms on either side,” Alfie told the other three. “Two and two. Wait for my signal to do anything, and be careful about showing yourselves. We want to see what’s going on out there, but we don’t want to be seen.”
Alfie took Wegener to the left. Hathaway and McGregor took the other side.
The room Alfie entered had three desks and chairs. But there was nothing else, no complinks or office machines. It looked as if everything but the furniture had been moved. There had been no sign on the door to indicate what the office had been used for. It did have two windows looking out on the side of the building where Alfie expected to find Federation soldiers.
“Careful now,” Alfie whispered. “Stay down. You take that window. I take the other. We wait until both of us are in position before anyone takes a peek.”
It was only then that Alfie thought to check that the windows could actually be opened. Nearly stepped in it there, he chided himself when he saw that they could be. On someworlds, that would have been unlikely. And, anywhere, it was doubtful that small arms fire would shatter window-panes. Even on primitive colony worlds, window “glass” as strong as plate steel would be available, formed by nanotech assemblers.
Alfie moved to the side of the window and raised up slowly, his back against the wall, allowing himself just a glimpse at a sharp angle across the terrain east of the building. At first, he didn’t see anyone. It was only when he moved closer that he spotted people, a hundred yards away. Some of them were near an assemblage of items that had to have been removed from this building and the others around the area.
“Civilians,” he said. He radioed Lieutenant Nuchol to report where they were. “We’ve got Feddies in sight, but we’ve also got civvies out here. Looks like they’ve been cleared out of the next few buildings. They’re just standing around, with a few Feddies who seem to be guarding them.”
“Hang on,” Nuchol said. “Don’t start anything until you get the go-ahead from me. If you’re attacked, defend yourselves, but be as careful as you can about hitting civilians.”
Alfie passed those orders on to the others in his fire team, then settled in to wait. He spotted Federation soldiers drilling holes at strategic places around the base of one of the other undamaged buildings. Getting ready to plant the explosives, he guessed. Then: They must already have them planted on this one. That started an itch at the back of his neck. He told the others. “Any Feddies head in this direction, we may have to get the hell out in a hurry.”
“How about right now?” McGregor asked. “Seems they don’t need to head this way to set off any packets they’ve already placed. Wouldn’t want to come too close, now, would they?”
“Just keep your eyes open,” Alfie said. “If we can, we’ll stay put at least until we hear back from the lieutenant.”
It was nearly five minutes before Nuchol came back on line. “We still have to do our job, Edwards. The word is to be as careful as possible to avoid hitting civilians, but we have to stop the Feddies. You understand that?”
“Aye, sir. We do our job, taking what care we can to
avoid civilian casualties. One thing, sir. It seems likely that this building we’re in has already been prepared for demolition. The civvies and Feddies are well away from here, and we can see them planting the explosives on the next structure.”
“Use your own judgement. If you think it’s too dangerous to stay where you are, and you can find an acceptable alternative position, go ahead.”
“I think we’ll try sticking with this, at least for now, sir. It’s a rare good spot for what we need to do.”
“Fine. Just remember that you’re no good to the RM dead. The rest of the platoon is just about ready to start the attack. Ninety seconds.”
I’m no good to myself dead, either, Alfie thought as he turned his full attention to the situation outside his window.
“Just a minute now, lads,” he told the fire team. “As soon as the rest of the platoon starts shooting, so do we. The object is to hit Feddies but not the local blokes. Do your best, but the order is we do our job.” If there were a full firefight, civilians would die. There was little hope of avoiding that, especially once the rest of the two battalions joined the fray.
Maybe the Feddies will surrender quick-like. He did not put much faith in that hope. Odds are better I could flap my arms and fly.
The news that there were civilians close to the Federation soldiers had occasioned a quick realignment of the two I&R platoons. Frank Nuchol took the rest of his platoon more to the left, hoping to get a better angle on the enemy, one that would put as many of the Coventrians as possible off to the side, at least partially out of the direct line of fire.
“Mind what you’re shooting at,” Tory told the platoon. “No careless spraying.” He had never been in a situation where civilians might be in the way. It made him think of his wife and son on Buckingham. The war goes poorly, they could be in the same position someday. That brought such a knot to his stomach that he grimaced in real discomfort.
The enemy troops came in sight. So did the civilians. The I&R platoon crawled into position, trying to stay undetected for as long as possible, looking for the best cover for the coming fight. There were no trenches or foxholes, no ready-made barricades they could shelter behind.
“We’re in position,” Nuchol reported to Captain McAuliffe.
The captain paused just long enough to make certain that Second Battalion’s I&R platoon was also in position before he gave the order. “Fire.”
10
While the two I&R platoons engaged the Federation soldiers, three companies from each of the two battalions moved to envelop the enemy. First Battalion’s companies moved around the right flank. Second’s moved on the left. In the center, the remainder of the two H&S companies reinforced their I&R platoons. The rest of the two battalions moved close enough to join in the fight if necessary, but would remain in reserve unless needed.
After seventeen months as company lead sergeant, David Spencer was no longer as leery of the combat qualifications of the clerks, cooks, and others in H&S Company as he had been when he got the job. At least they were no longer hazards to themselves in combat. Once they could hear gunfire, the men of H&S moved with extreme caution, with none of the grumbling that had marked much of their training.
David directed the platoons into position, guided by radio. Tory Kepner had looked over the terrain and made suggestions. Spencer accepted them without question. He himself moved toward Kepner and Lieutenant Nuchol, and dropped to the ground between them, closer to Tory.
“What have you got, Kep?” David asked.
“From what Alfie said, there might only be about a hundred and twenty Feddies up ahead, but close to that many civilians as well.” Tory didn’t take his eye from his gunsight. “Alfie’s fire team is in that building to the right, on the ground floor.”
“Lieutenant?” Spencer turned his head toward Nuchol, who was twenty yards away. He kept his helmet radio on achannel that would keep Tory in the conversation as well. As company lead sergeant, Spencer’s relations with the junior officers sometimes became very ambiguous. The position required extreme diplomacy. The lieutenants outranked him, but Spencer most often spoke with the authority of Captain McAuliffe behind him.
“We’re ready,” Nuchol said.
“Now that the rest of us are here, the captain wants you to slide the rest of your platoon off toward Alfie’s fire team. Cover the angle between here and there. The rest of the troops are moving wide, going to try to get beyond, up past that building. You get set, have Alfie pull out and rejoin you as soon as possible. I heard what he said, that the building is probably packed with explosives.”
Nuchol nodded.
“I know I wouldn’t want to be sitting in there,” Tory said.
For two minutes, Alfie’s fire team might almost have been on the firing range on Buckingham, only a few miles from the pubs and pool halls of Cheapside, popping silhouette targets. With the rest of the platoon firing from Alfie’s left, the Federation troops didn’t notice that some of the incoming fire was coming from their flank, and from a considerably shorter range. Alfie’s men were able to pick their targets and make sure of them.
Alfie saw the Feddie who spotted them. The man pointed, just before he became a casualty. An entire squad of Feddies turned their rifles toward the building, and the four Marines had to be more cautious.
“Get ready to move,” Alfie said as he pulled away from the window, off to the side. Maybe we should have gone higher to start with. We’d have had a better angle from the top floor. But he quickly dismissed the idea. Going higher would not have been smart in a building that was likely set with explosives.
He flipped the selector switch on his rifle to automatic, then moved back to the edge of the window to spray a short burst toward the Feddies. Then he pulled back again.
“Let’s not push our luck,” he told his team. “We’ll duck out the way we came in.”
There was time for one more burst, from the opposite side of the window. The Marines met in the central corridor and ran for the door on the west side of the building. They went through the doorway at full speed, jumping from the small terrace to the ground, rolling away in case any of the enemy had managed to move around and get them in his sights. But Alfie didn’t notice any shots whizzing past. The gunfire all seemed to be on the other side of the building yet.
“Time to get back to the rest of our blokes,” Alfie said after Tory gave him new orders.
They did not move in a straight line toward the rendezvous. That would have exposed them to enemy fire at too close a range. Alfie instead led his fire team toward a clump of trees eighty yards off of the direct line, farther from the Feddies.
“We’ll park it here for a few minutes,” he told the others. “This puts us back in the fight.” They could see Feddies, but at a range of more than two hundred yards. That wasn’t excessive for a good marksman. Only the needle gun was past its limits. But the angle meant that they had to be more cautious than ever with their shots. From this angle, the civilians were behind the Feddies, but flat on the ground now.
“Keep your shots in the dirt at the faces of the Feddies if you can, away from the civilians,” Alfie said. “We keep their heads down, we’re doing our job proper. Let the others finish them off.”
The building they had been in exploded. At least four separate blasts, perhaps more, cut too many structural members at the base for the building to continue to stand. It collapsed into itself, spreading a dense cloud of dust and debris. The Marines could see nothing of the Federation soldiers through it.
“Let’s move again,” Alfie said as soon as the first rain of debris had fallen. “We can’t see them, they can’t see us.”
They were on their feet and moving when the second setof explosions came, from farther off, apparently in the building they had seen the Feddies working on. Then there was a smaller blast, close. Wegener went down hard. The others all felt the sting of shrapnel that had traveled beyond its killing radius.
“Down!” Alfie shouted, an unn
ecessary order because he and the others were already on the ground. Visibility was still poor. The smoke and dust of the larger explosions had not completely settled out. Alfie touched his arm and side, where he had felt the stings. His fingers came away bloody.
“Willie, Mac—what shape you in?” Alfie asked. He was already crawling toward Wegener, who had stopped moving and was lying on his side.
“Just scratches, I think,” Willie said through clenched teeth. “I think I’ve got a bit of metal left inside. It burns.”
“I’m okay,” McGregor said. “Where’d that come from?”
“Either Wegener tripped a mine or somebody set it off by remote and got lucky,” Alfie said. “Slap med-patches on your cuts.” He turned Wegener onto his back. Eugene’s vital signs were still showing on the readout on the head-up display of Alfie’s faceplate, but they were depressed.
“It hurts,” Wegener said as Alfie turned him. “Dear God, it hurts.” There were tears rolling down his cheeks. “Don’t let me die. Please don’t let me die.”
“Just lie easy, lad,” Alfie said softly. He tried to evaluate Wegener’s wounds. He had taken at least a dozen pieces of shrapnel. Pools of blood had merged on his battledress top, making it impossible to determine exactly how many separate wounds there were. Alfie pulled Wegener’s helmet off, then slapped an analgesic patch on his neck, right over the artery. Then he started slapping patches over the entrance wounds, ripping the uniform and field skin away as needed. When he could spare the time, he called Tory to let him know what had happened.
“We’ll have help there in a minute or two,” Alfie told Wegener. “You’ll be fine. You won’t even be ‘excused duty’ for more than a few hours.” He wasn’t nearly as confident of that as he tried to sound. There was no telling how much internal damage the shrapnel might have done. Wegener might be in worse condition than he looked. But if he stayed alive until he reached a trauma tube, he would almost certainly survive.