by Rick Shelley
“We assume anyone we stumble over is the enemy?”
“Unless you can see differently. Now shove the rest of that meal down your throat and get moving. You’ll go out on the east, where you came in this afternoon.”
The platoon crossed the perimeter one fire team at a time. Once they were all outside, Tory started them counterclockwise around the perimeter, moving farther out before they turned west. Tory kept first squad up front, intending to do most of the surveying personally. Second squad followed fifty yards back as a covering force. Third and fourth squads were put out on the wing. They would lay most of the land mines and set a few additional booby traps if they could.
“Time to play ghosts,” Tory whispered over the platoon channel. “We want to see any Feddies, but we don’t wantthem to see us. If we cause a ruckus, it’ll spoil the captain’s sleep.”
First squad’s fire teams moved single file along parallel tracks about twenty yards apart. When they moved from the wild growth back into the parklike woods, the paths disappeared, but the fire teams maintained their separation. Alfie Edwards’s fire team was on the outside of Tory’s going around the circle, trying to move just a little faster so that they would stay roughly even with the other team.
The order was for radio silence, for minimal use of any electronics. Even though the communications channels were secure against eavesdroppers, transmissions scrambled so that they would sound like random noise to anyone not equipped with the proper codes, the fact of transmission could be detected. Two angles could give an exact location. Commonwealth detectors could determine position to within eighteen inches. The Marines assumed that the enemy’s capabilities would be roughly comparable. Being pinpointed that closely by the enemy was not healthy.
Squad and fire team leaders maintained passive scans for enemy electronics, helmets and any snoops that might have been planted to give warning of Commonwealth movements. Moving slowly might give the I&R men time to avoid setting off a snoop’s alarm.
Not spotting any enemy snoops, mines, or other surprises made both Tory and Alfie nervous. They rested their men for a couple of minutes before starting to loop around to the southwest. The platoon had been out for an hour and had covered slightly more than a mile of ground without detecting a single enemy snoop or mine.
They can’t be that careless, and I know we’re not, Alfie thought. Unless they’re shorter on supplies than we are, they should have taken routine precautions. That the Feddies might be critically low on supplies sounded plausible, but Alfie determined to be even more careful, to be absolutely certain that he was not missing anything.
Alfie looked around, spotting his men. Just because the team was taking a break did not mean that they had clustered together or let down their guard. Everyone was looking out, covering all directions, rifles at the ready as they squatted or sat, each man next to a tree trunk, exposing as little of himself as possible. At night, they were not easy to spot. Field skins and helmets minimized any infrared signature. Unless they moved, they were very nearly invisible, even at fairly short range.
The night-vision elements in Commonwealth battle helmets painted the darkness in shades of green and gray. The infrared half of the system assigned brighter greens to warmer objects. The available-light half gave no false colors but was not as precise in definition. Blending two systems gave the wearer a better view than either system would alone, but at a cost. The hybrid images took time to get used to: the eyes had to learn how to bring the composite into sharp focus, and the brain had to be trained to interpret the images correctly. Still, once a Marine had experience using the systems, the combination gave him an advantage over Federation gear, which used only a single system.
Any advantage in combat meant fewer casualties.
Alfie did not give his men long to rest. It wouldn’t do to get too far behind the others. He signaled his men up, then started off in a low crouch again. Each step was a deliberate process. He looked at the ground and the space just above it before he placed his foot, scanning for trip wires or any hint of a land mine or snoop. Then he looked around, his gaze higher, searching the forest for movement. The pace was slow, but not impossibly so. Even with all of his caution, Alfie could travel more than a mile in an hour, sometimes considerably more. Occasional periods of standing still, or squatting, broke the rhythm of the movement, made it less likely that an enemy would spot the motion and detect the patrol. Break the pattern as often as possible was drilled into recruits from the start.
A soft whistle on the radio stopped the platoon. The men froze in position, then slowly lowered themselves to the ground to wait for additional information or a signal to move again.
Tory must have found Feddies to count, Alfie thought. There was neither gunfire nor sentry challenge. The platoonwas moving south now, about halfway through their circuit. It’s about time we found Feddies. Alfie scanned the woods around him again. Where the devil are they all? he wondered. We should be doing everything but tripping over the bastards.
“Alfie.” Even over the radio it was the barest whisper.
“Yeah?”
“Hold where you are. We may have a problem.”
“You mean like where are the Feddies?”
“Yes. All I’ve seen are a few pickets, a thin line watching our blokes. Not more than a platoon altogether.”
They can’t have pulled out, Alfie thought. A rear guard would be making noise to keep us from figuring it out.
“Where do we look for them?” Alfie asked. The rest of the Federation troops, perhaps as much as a battalion of them, had to be somewhere in the vicinity, undoubtedly up to no good.
“I’m sending Will’s squad farther out on the flank. The rest of us will wait where we are until they get in position.”
“Just tell us when to start moving again.”
Alfie used hand signs to tell the others in his fire team to find cover and wait. Their formation looked like a four-point star, the muzzle of a rifle marking each apex. Forty yards away, Kepner’s fire team settled into a similar formation. They were close enough to see the nearest of the Federation pickets that were watching the rest of the Commonwealth Marines.
Lying doggo and waiting again, Geoffrey Dayle thought with something akin to disgust. I could kill three of those Feddies before they even knew where I was coming from. He was looking through his sights with an assist from his helmet electronics. The crosshairs were on the neck of one of the three Federation soldiers he could see, just below the rear lip of the man’s helmet. Dayle was certain that he could at least sever the man’s spinal cord with a single shot. At the slight angle available, the bullet might even bore up into his brain.
Be a crime to let these bastards go, Dayle thought, itching to pull the trigger. Even a four-man ambush might beenough to rout this lot, those who didn’t fall in the first volleys. They’d be looking the wrong way at first, and pretty soon, the rest of our blokes would have to join in from the other side. That would tell us where the rest of the Feddie bastards are hiding, in one big hurry. The smile that spread over his face was grim, teeth bared, almost a death’s-head look.
Let’s take them, Kep. He projected the suggestion as if he believed that he might get Kepner to issue the order by telepathy. But Dayle knew better than to say anything, to actually mention it.
Sergeant Will Cordamon had hesitated before leading his squad out on the detour that Kepner had ordered, trying to puzzle out where the Feddies were most likely to be hiding. There was a limit to how much ground his squad could cover without holding up the rest of the patrol too long. He looked at his mapboard and held a brief, whispered conversation with his assistant squad leader. But the decision still came down to something not much more reasoned than a mental toss of a coin. It was all guesswork, with virtually nothing to suggest that they were even vaguely “intelligent” guesses. Odds and evens.
He looked at his assistant, shrugged, then pointed. The squad’s fire teams separated, but stayed close enough to see—and support—each oth
er. Cordamon’s guess was that the bulk of the enemy might be camped near the next set of buildings that had not yet been destroyed. Maybe the officers want a roof over their heads for the night, was how he reasoned it.
He led his men to the edge of the clearing where the earlier fight had been, staying back in the trees.
“Bingo!” he whispered. He moved more behind a tree trunk. The Federation soldiers had moved rubble to form a low rampart between two of the buildings. Perhaps there was a similar barricade on the far side. He couldn’t be certain. “Kep, we’ve got them. They’ve set up a defensive perimeter of their own. Spot my location on your mapboard, then look south-southwest, about 120 yards from us. Twobuildings, maybe a third, with low ramparts set up connecting them. I can’t see people, but they must be inside.”
“Hang on while I check with the captain,” Tory said. It took two minutes before he came back on the channel. “Plant your calling cards around the edge of the clearing, back toward our lines. We’ll finish the circuit and make certain that there aren’t any other surprises, then finish our job.”
Tory led his fire team well south, beyond the last Federation pickets, before they resumed their movement around the circle. The squads came closer together once they turned east, hurrying now that the main concentration of enemy troops had been spotted, but still careful, wary of the chance that there might be other outposts around. By the time they crossed the gully that held part of their own lines—the near end of the Commonwealth positions almost a half mile north of them—they had been out for nearly four hours. It was time for a rest.
“When we start up again, we’ll strike off east-southeast,” Tory told his noncoms. “We’ll go out a mile or so and find a place to hide until we’re needed. We’ll look for a place where we can get a little sleep while we’re waiting.”
“Sounds good to me,” Alfie said. “Did the captain say what we’re going to do about the Feddies?”
Tory shook his head. “Until they get things straight skyside, let’s just hope that they’re content to let well enough be, on both sides.”
Second and third squads moved along the flanks when the platoon started moving again. Tory kept first squad in the lead. Fourth squad pulled rearguard duty. But Tory kept the squads closer together than he had before.
Alfie was on point, just in front of the others from his fire team. The platoon was back in wild growth, following animal trails through forest that sometimes closed in on both sides with tangled vines under trees whose lowest branches drooped near head level. After going about seven hundred yards, Alfie stopped suddenly and whistled softly over the platoon channel, freezing the rest of the men in position.
“Tory, I see a small fire up ahead. Looks like a campfire.”
“Hang on. I’m coming up for a look.”
Alfie melted into the underbrush off to his side. He kept the point of fire under observation. Distance was difficult to gauge without some reference point. He thought that it might be a hundred yards off, perhaps a little farther. After a minute, Tory slid into position next to Alfie, a hand on the shoulder Edwards’s only warning.
“Not much of a fire,” Tory whispered.
“Like I said, it looks like a campfire.”
“Probably civilians, refugees.”
“It’s sure not something a pro would do around here,” Alfie said. “Not unless he was out of his flippin’ mind.”
“Or he had a good reason to draw somebody’s attention.”
“A trap?”
“The Feddies have tried just about everything else,” Tory said. “Why not start a small fire to draw in any curious folks like us? They could pop us off out of the dark around it.”
“So we don’t just walk up and ask for a spot of tea. We wouldn’t have done in any case.”
“I’ll send third and fourth squads around for a look-see while we wait here.”
“At least we’ve got plenty of dark to work with,” Alfie said after Tory had given the other squads their new orders. “Two, close to three hours.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to use it all here. I want us bundled up for the day well before first light.”
The two men went silent, watching while third and fourth squads moved to flank the light and investigate. It was another thirty minutes before Tory received a call from Will Cordamon. The two squads had met on the far side of the fire.
“Civilians,” Will reported. “No more than two or three families. Looks as if they’ve been here since the beginning. They’ve got a single sentry out. He’s not very good.”
“Stay where you are. We’ll go in from this side first, gradually. Wait for me to call you in. And stay put if I don’t call,” Tory said. He turned to Alfie. “I figure two of us go in first to make sure that their sentry doesn’t panic and start shooting. Once we’ve had a chance to talk with them, we’ll know whether or not to bring in the rest of the platoon.”
“You and me?”
Tory hesitated—that would not be proper procedure—but then he nodded. “You might get your chance to ask about that spot of tea after all.”
Alfie’s frown was invisible, but the change in his voice was obvious. “More likely, they’ll be asking what we can spare.”
Eric woke Reggie, then went straight to bed, exhausted. None of them had managed much sleep all night, even though the sounds of battle had faded away well before sunset. Salvation was finally near, if the Commonwealth forces won.
Reggie came out of the shelter stretching and yawning. He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all, which was not too far from the truth. He seldom slept while Al was on watch, and now that Ted Brix was taking part in the rotation, Reggie seldom slept while Brix was their sentry either. Ted seemed to be completely out of his element, and neither Reggie nor Eric trusted the other man’s ability to stand a watch without panicking unnecessarily, or missing something important. He tried, but simply did not have it in him.
After rubbing vigorously at his face for a time, Reggie felt as if he were at least halfway alert. He continued to stretch, walking around, trying to ease sore muscles and stiff joints. Gradually, he worked his way out farther from the small fire.
The fire had been a matter of debate the evening before. The group had kept at least one small fire alight continuously since first setting up camp, but they had considered dousing it the night before. With fighting going on little more than a mile away, they doubted the wisdom of drawing attention to themselves in such a bold manner. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have the means to light another fire after thedanger went away. The fire, however, had become an important symbol to them. After a discussion that lasted for more than an hour, they had decided to keep it going. Reggie and Eric had been uncomfortable with that decision, but had given in to the rest.
How much longer? Reggie wondered as he moved out of the circle of firelight. He was on the south side of the camp, in the shadow of the rock outcropping and the shelters. He leaned back against the rock. He knew that their problems would not disappear magically just because the Commonwealth won the fight—if they did. There would be months, perhaps even years, of hardship and difficulty getting everything back to normal in Hawthorne, on Coventry. None of that seemed particularly critical at the moment.
When the Commonwealth wins was what Reggie thought of as crossing the major hurdle. Then they could move back home, back to where their homes had been, and start rebuilding. There might be a little left in the rubble that they could salvage. They could clear away the debris and start to build new homes. Surely the Commonwealth would help. They must have some kind of disaster relief program in place, or being put together. And once the government of Coventry was back in operation, they too should have ways to help, ways to help people help themselves.
He refused to consider the possibility that the Commonwealth might lose the fight for Coventry. If this lot can’t do the job, the king will send more men next time—more men, more ships, more weapons. Sooner or later they would succeed. Coventry
was too near the center of the Second Commonwealth for any alternative to success.
Reggie rested his head on the stone behind him. I’m so bloody tired, he thought, closing his eyes for just an instant. The sooner this nightmare is over, the better it will be for all of us. He took a deep breath, then suddenly opened his eyes and stood up, moving away from the stone. It would be far too easy to fall asleep that way, and it would be criminally foolish to fall asleep on watch now, with two armies so close.
Get up, move around. Stir your stumps. Go splash some water in your face. Reggie growled at himself and walked to the little creek that supplied them with water. He knelt next to it and lay his shotgun aside, then started to splash water against his face with both hands. The water was frigid, but so much the better; it would keep him awake that much longer. Reggie shivered, then started to get back up.
He didn’t make it to his feet. A knee was thrust into the middle of his back and a hand clamped itself over his mouth, pulling his head back so roughly that Reggie feared that his neck might snap. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark boot step on the barrel of his shotgun, and he saw the muzzle of a rifle move toward his face.
19
Reggie Bailey felt an instant of utter terror that seemed to last for ages. Afterward, he told himself that it couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds, but while it was happening, time had stretched out unbelievably for him. He was unable to move, scarcely able to breathe. His heart raced. It was not until that first moment of shock passed that he realized that there were two men, one behind him and another in front, off to the side. The second man, the one who had stepped on Reggie’s shotgun, shifted position. He leaned closer. Reggie saw the blank mask of a helmet visor.
“It’s okay,” the anonymous face whispered. “We’re Royal Marines.” The pressure on Reggie’s neck and back eased. The hand came away from his mouth. The weight came off of his back. The man standing behind even helped Reggie to his feet.