Intrepid (22 page)

36

Cortez scowled. He’d watched that loving tableau of battlefield mercy through his binoculars. A moment earlier he’d watched as half a Guard platoon had been wiped out by hidden fire. Thus ended Cortez’s planned envelopment of what he’d mistaken as a limited position.

“This is not a small force,” Cortez muttered to himself.

“It must be at least battalion size,” Major Zhukov said. “Maybe bigger.”

“But how many of them are those damn Marines?” Cortez asked, chewing his lower lip.

“If we can trust this scandal mag,” Captain Sawyer said, unfolding the cheap newspaper he’d confiscated from a trooper, “all the Longknife girl has is what’s left of an embassy Marine company that she didn’t get killed in her last escapade.”

“She’s had time to return to Wardhaven, to be reinforced,” Zhukov pointed out.

“Enough!” Cortez snapped. “We’re here to boot her out. Quit talking and start booting. She’s spread shooters wide to cover this whole front. She can’t be strong everywhere. And if most of her firepower is these damn farmers, I’ll bet you my eagles she can’t get them to move an Earth inch under fire.”

Cortez gauged the reaction of his subordinates. Sawyer’s face was a wolf’s grin. And a hungry one at that. Zhukov’s eyes had narrowed. He was holding his judgment. A good XO.

“Sawyer, your company is nearly full strength. Take it wide around the swamp side. Stay low on the far side of the farthest-out dike. Zhukov, send along a squad of the Guard.”

“It will be done, sir,” Zhukov said, sprouting a tiger grin.

“You there,” Cortez said, signaling to the youngest captain from the psalm singers. “Take what’s left of your company and climb those hills on our right. I want you to set up fire lanes down both valleys, the one where our Guard squads got hit and the next one over. Don’t let them come around our flank. Don’t let her move troops from one hill to the other without knocking some daylight into them. You understand?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“And don’t just sit on your hands. Probe those two hills. I don’t want you launching a full-fledged assault, but don’t let them ignore you, either. Probe for firing positions. Are they isolated spider holes or connected by tunnels? If they are connected, send me a runner and carefully, boy, carefully work at getting some of your shooters into their tunnels. I wouldn’t mind at all if you broke them. Not at all.”

“Yes, Colonel.” The kid looked scared and excited. Cortez would keep an eye on his left flank. He didn’t intend for him to do much more than hold Longknife’s troops there in place, but the kid might surprise him.

Good surprise or bad surprise?

“Zhukov, you go with Sawyer. I’ll take the rest of the Guard and psalm singers and advance in the center. Not too far. Not too fast.” Cortez eyed the ground before him. The trees along the edge of the swamp were the only solid cover he had to approach the farmstead. The hilly side showed some cover, even an orchard here and there, but nothing solid.

He turned to the Guard captain. “Afonin, advance what I haven’t given away of your Guard to that orchard. Looks like peaches. Set up fire lanes to cover that first hill. I’ll take the last of the Jerusalem Rifles and set them up in the woods beside the swamp. Our job is to keep enough fire on the hill that they don’t dare reinforce whatever they’ve got in those rice paddies. I think the dikes are hollow. Not sure how much they’ve got there. Zhukov, Sawyer, you will clean them out of the rice paddies and close on the hill. We’ll roll them up from right to left,” Cortez finished. That was the way to go. Roll them up a piece at a time. He had all the time he needed.

As soon as Longknife tried to maneuver a bunch of farmhands under fire, they’d break and run. Yes, this would do the trick.

“Any questions?” he asked.

There were none.

Kris got a call up to the
Wasp
while things stayed quiet.

“I see you and them are at each other’s throats,” Drago said when he came on. The tight-beam aimed straight up cut through the jamming. The
Wasp
was now trailing right behind Thorpe. Drago came on no more than a minute after the other passed below the horizon. “Do you need anything from me?” he asked.

“Not now. Thorpe doesn’t dare fire at us while we’re this close. Can you tell us anything about what they’re doing?”

“I can show you where his troops are for the next minute or so. I don’t have any idea what he’s up to.”

True to his word, Drago and his magic eyes above did give Kris a good view of what was happening in the woods two miles from where she huddled underground. Cortez wasn’t running. No, he was clearly ordering his men for another attack, adjusting his forces, sending some to her left to take another go at Jack, another group to her right to have a go at Gunny’s crew.

And there were plenty left to move up the middle.

An attack all along the line?

Cortez wasn’t that dumb.

The force headed for Gunny’s hill looked to be the smallest. Was that a feint?

But if they were the best he had, that could be his main thrust. If Gunny lost the back door, things could come unhinged in a hurry. Kris shook her head; this was the problem with overhead imagery. It let you count noses. What those noses were attached to, how good they were, and what they intended didn’t show in a picture from nearly three hundred klicks up.

Kris picked up the phone. “Jack, Gunny, did you get the pictures from the
Wasp
?” They had. “You see a need to change anything around?”

“Sure looks like he’s coming for us,” Jack said. “Not sure which of us he’s after first.”

“Me neither,” Gunny said.

“Then I suggest we see what we can do with what we’ve got,” Kris said. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

Leaving Penny to send a runner if anything interesting started to develop, Kris ambled off to review her troops.

Close to her OP, volunteers had gotten the word not to shoot. They were none too happy to have missed out on the first volley, but they liked what they saw. Plenty of white shirts lay in the dust. A few called for help; most just snored.

“Could we send someone out to help their wounded?” an older woman asked. Kris saw in her eyes a grandma who’d worried many a young’un through a tough situation. Kris allowed that she and a couple of other volunteer women could.

Kris followed them down to the cold room, the large storage area that got the digging started on this hill. They even had ice left over from last winter. They might be pioneers, but that didn’t mean they expected to rough it. Three women with buckets of water and ladles led the way out the cold room’s thick door.

And got shot at from the homestead.

They ducked back. Kris found a broom, a white rag, and tried it again. “You got wounded lying out in the sun,” she shouted. “We got water and bandages. You gonna let us take care of them?”

“No guns,” the sergeant shouted on his bullhorn. “And you go back in the door you came out. One of my men
thinks
you’re making a break, and you’ll get a bullet for it.”

“Can we bring your wounded in out of the sun?” the gray hair shouted over Kris’s shoulder.

Hmm, not a bad idea,
Kris thought. If they got a few wounded under the hill, troops might be more careful about tossing grenades into holes. Which must have been apparent to the sergeant. There was plenty of time for an argument before he shouted. “Okay, but only the bleeding. Leave sleepers there.”

Which meant that as soon as one of them woke up, he was expected to join in the shooting. Maybe Kris hadn’t been as smart as she thought. Sleepy bullets had only recently come into the inventory and data was scarce on long, drawn-out battles with the stuff.

NELLY, NEXT TIME THE FIRING STARTS, REMIND ME TO ORDER SOME MARINES TO REDART THE GUYS WHO ARE DOWN.

YES, MA’AM. I’M SEARCHING THE SOURCE MATERIAL. THERE’S NOTHING IN THE GENERALLY AVAILABLE LITERATURE ABOUT HOW MANY SHOTS A PERSON CAN TAKE, ONE AFTER THE OTHER.

Which wasn’t to say that the tests hadn’t been made, only that the results had been kept out of the public records.
Sometimes you just couldn’t do a good deed for all your trying.

The six women slipped out and started their work. No one took a shot at them. A second group, this time including a couple of strapping young boys, and two equally big girls, slipped out to lug the bleeding into the cool room.

No one objected from down the road where the main hostile camp was. Apparently, while they redeployed into their next attack, there was room for humanitarian care.

Or maybe they were just too busy to notice.

Five went into the valley between the hills to help wounded troops in armor. From these Guard Fusiliers there was gratitude for water, and help bandaging wounds, but no takers on being evacuated. They clutched their rifles and lay ready to do what their orders called for once the shooting started again.

NELLY, REMIND ME TO PASS THAT ALONG TO GUNNY.

YES, MA’AM. HARD CASES FOR HARD CASES, judged the computer.

The judgment struck Kris as obvious. That her computer felt compelled to make it, and did, struck Kris as another reason to talk to Auntie Tru.

Once the rescue operations had the bugs worked out, Kris continued her walk back inside the caves. Here and there, fifty-pound bags of rice half blocked or provided cover in the tunnels. Someone was thinking ahead for when the cave openings got breached. Kris shivered in the cool dark. If it came to fighting in here, the blood would be ankle deep. But if it came to fighting in here, would she throw in the sponge?

A woman came along with a wheelbarrow, pushing one of the fifty-pound rice bags. She seemed to know the caves very well. After looking around for a minute to get her bearings, she upended the barrow and dumped the sack. “That ought to cover that entire end of the cave. No religious nut is going to tell my daughter what she can be. If Amy wants to be a doctor or a dancer, she’s gonna be what she wants to be.”

Kris nodded. There wasn’t much room for compromise here. Maybe she didn’t need to worry so much about these folks running.

Still, the worst bloodbaths happened when neither side saw any reason to retreat.

Princess, you better come up with some good reason for Cortez to throw in the towel. It doesn’t look like these folks even want a towel handy.

A skinny redheaded gal galloped up to Kris. “Penny says stuff’s happening you want to see.” Kris followed her at a fast jog back to HQ. A glance out told her it was time.

“Get me Gunny and Jack on the line,” Kris ordered.

37

Jack stood clear as a hulking farm boy wielded the five-kilo sledgehammer. His girlfriend held the rod in place. The guy was very careful. The first two swings had not done much more than chip the hardened dirt.

The third swing drove the iron rod down as far as it would go. The kid dropped the sledge and, with the girl’s help, worked the rod around in widening circles, creating more room for a rifle without widening the fire port. When they pulled the rod out, Jack shoved his rifle into place and nodded.

“It fits fine,” he told his eager hands.

The boy hefted the hammer, the girl the bar, and they headed a couple of meters down the narrow cave, ready to do it again.

Jack put his eye to the notch and studied the swamp in the distance. Close in, a small kid was sweeping into the muddy water the dirt the rod had driven out of the firing hole.

It wouldn’t do to make it any easier for Cortez’s shooters to spot where the fire was coming from. So a ten-year-old kid was hanging out there. Sooner or later, Cortez would get his act together, and his troops would move up. Jack did not want to find that out by having that kid shot off the dike.

Jack headed down the cave, bent over but moving at a trot. Tommy Tzu told him they had only recently dug out this dike. “We figured we had enough space between the house and the new paddies, but the little beggars ran all the way out here and ate an entire field clean in one night. So we dug.”

“Glad you did,” was all Jack could say.

He stood up as he entered a cross cave with more headroom. A freckled gal attentively watched his commline. “Nothing from Lieutenant Longknife, Captain,” she reported.

“You keep listening. I’m going outside.”

“I’ll tell you what I told my brother. Keep your head down, or Mama’s gonna be real mad. You do have a mama, don’t you?”

“Despite what my men may tell you,” Jack said, eyeing a young Marine who had attached himself to the phone. . . or the girl at the phone, “I was not hatched. I have a mama.”

“I told you,” the girl said, sticking her tongue out.

“You gonna take his word or mine?” the private shot back.

“Why don’t you follow me, Marine,” Jack said.

None too happy to be distanced from the comm girl, the Marine followed. They’d cut an exit from the tunnel and covered it with a reed mat. Jack rolled through it and landed, feet-first, in muddy water. Rifle in hand, he waded a couple of meters before raising his helmeted head.

When the Marine did the same, Jack snapped, “Get your head down.” The Marine did.

Jack brought binoculars up to study the tree line across glass-smooth, brown water. Not a breath of wind disturbed the water or cooled the sweat popping out on him as the sun warmed his armor.

Sergeant Bruce, who led the squad Jack had at that end of the dikes, low walked up to him, then settled into two feet of water, his back to the dike.

“Anything over there?” Jack asked, still moving his glasses slowly up and down the tree line.

“I’m willing to bet they’re there, but I ain’t seen them. You’d think I’d catch sight of a white shirt in all those trees.”

“Unless someone dunked them in the first mud hole they came to,” the private said.

Jack raised an eyebrow. Low rank didn’t mean low smarts.

Turning, Jack surveyed the deployment here. About half of the sergeant’s squad was strung out along the dike, keeping their heads down and rifles out of the water. Along with them were over a dozen farmers. Jack wanted these folks out of the dike caves just in case he needed fire put on someplace not covered by one of the loopholes that the couple were knocking.

Whoever ran that last assault had assumed Kris lacked the troops to cover a wide front. They wouldn’t make that mistake again. Sergeant Bruce had watched some half-decent heavy infantry surface from an underwater approach march when they attacked the dugouts this morning.

Jack had a tall youngster from the farmers wade out to see how deep the water was here. It was a good kilometer before he found any kind of channel. Between here and those trees, the water was mostly knee deep. Whoever assaulted the position would come through shallow water.

Jack blinked. A moment ago there had been nothing in the tree line. Now a line of men, a few in full armor, a whole lot more in filthy shirts and pants, were wading into the water not a half klick from Jack. They moved like silent brown ghosts. The more of that muddy water they covered before they were noticed, the better off they were.

Jack dropped his binoculars and reached for his rifle.

“Oh boy.” Sergeant Bruce grinned and stood, signaling for his troops to do likewise.

“For what they are about to receive, may they be truly grateful,” Jack’s private said as he sighted his rifle in.

“Sleepy darts or live ammo, sir?” Bruce asked.

“Sleepy darts, but use a double dollop of propellant,” Jack said. “There may be no wind, but that’s a long half klick.”

Selectors clicked along the line.

“Sir,” the freckled comm runner said, sticking her cute nose through the mat. “Your lady friend wants to talk to you.”

“This ought to tell her all she needs to know,” Jack said, and fired the first shot of what had to be Panda’s last battle.

“Lieutenant,” said Gunny, “I’ve got a thin foam of light infantry spread along my front. No one too close to anyone, but they are coming down your ridge, mine, and one behind me.”

“Then I think we better tell them to stop,” Kris said. “The longer it takes them to get here under fire, the more of them ought to be laid out somewhere on the grass.”

“My opinion exactly. How’s the captain’s front?”

“I don’t know. I’m still waiting for him to come online” was answered by a volley of M-6s popping off sleepy darts and hunting rifles doing their thing.

“That says it all,” Kris said. “Shoot ’em if you got ’em,” Kris shouted, both for the phone and the rifles around her.

The hill came alive with fire.

Out beyond the peach orchard, a couple of the armored infantry stumbled and fell as they took hit after hit. Still, most of them picked themselves up and ran to catch up with the carts that were now being pushed at a run. Hunting ammunition didn’t do a lot against serious military-grade armor.

Kris commanded here, but she also had one of the few M-6s in her hill. She frowned to herself, deciding between just watching, like the book said a good commander did, or doing something about those folks galloping her way with bloody intent.

Kris hefted her M-6. Trotting a couple of galleries down, she found four riflemen who were holding their fire.

“No use wasting shot and powder on hide that thick at this distance,” the elder one told her, as if she might disagree.

“You might pass that message along to the folks up and down here,” she said, and got a smile from him. He sent two of his younger charges trotting out with that word from the Longknife, but stayed to watch as Kris unlimbered her military-issue rifle.

Kris got a good range readout, fed it into the sight, then clicked the ammo selector to seriously deadly and flipped the propellant selector to its highest setting.

“You’re gonna feel that kick tomorrow,” the old fellow said.

Reminded, Kris fitted the rifle solidly into her shoulder, then squinted into the sights. Out in the sun, a sergeant was shouting orders to those pushing a couple of carts.

Kris breathed out, timed her pulse, then gently squeezed off a round between beats.

The sergeant took the hit square in the back. He flew a good three meters before going down in a long slide that left a track of dust in the air.

“Good Lord,” the old man whispered.

“Help us,” his younger sidekick finished. And struggled with his ears. “You could have warned us about the noise.”

“Would you believe I’ve never actually fired this thing on full power,” Kris said, and jiggled her own ear.

“Think you could get that barrel a tad more out of here?” the younger one asked.

“But not too far,” the oldster suggested. “If they spot the barrel, we’ll have every rifle out there aimed at us.”

“I’d just move on to another firing position,” Kris said, with an impish grin.

“And we would, too,” the youngster said, grinning right back.

While they joked, Kris settled into a more forward firing position. Three shots later, and two targets down, she noticed their little crack in the hill was taking serious fire. After the second bullet made it through the port, Kris headed elsewhere. The older fellow followed her, leaving the younger to keep an eye on their hole from well back.

Kris dropped two more of the armored infantry before they made it to the peach orchard. There, they did a good job of disappearing among the trees, behind upended wagons, or by digging in. They also laid down a serious base of fire on Kris’s hill.

As Kris trotted along the main cave, she saw shooters in gallery after gallery stuff rocks into their fire ports. Kris tapped the elder who’d been walking with her since she started. “We’ve got to keep up our own base of fire. If we go all silent, they’ll charge us.”

“I hear you,” the old man said, “but you got to understand, we only have so much ammunition. It’s not like we fight a war every year or so. Brass is hard to come by. It’s easy to reload.” The guy flinched. He must have just realized reloading was not an option at the moment.

Kris kicked herself; she hadn’t taken an inventory of how much ammo her shooters had brought to this fight. The old guy had a good point. But if they didn’t keep up their side of the shoot, Cortez and his boys would walk right in and start shooting them up close and personal.

Note to self, next fight bring a logistician
.

“Tell everyone to conserve their ammo,” Kris said, “but we have to keep up our base of fire. That’s all that’s keeping them out there and not in here.”

The elder nodded and headed back up the main cave.

Back at her observation post, even with no shots coming from her little hole in the mountain, there was so much lead flying that no one was getting too close to the lookout.

“They are seriously pissed at us,” Red said.

“We ain’t exactly been kind to them,” Gamma Polska agreed.

“You invade folks’ home planet,” Penny said, “you can’t expect to win a popularity contest.”

“Are we good?” the leader of the Polska clan asked Kris.

“That depends on how much ammo they brought,” Kris said. “If they shoot themselves dry, they are in a world of hurt. Then, of course, we could shoot ourselves dry first.”

“I was wondering when someone might think of that,” Red said, maybe just now realizing what he’d never thought of before. Supplies matter in a fight.

Kris considered her options. She could hunker down and wait to see who ran out of ammo first, or. . . Actually she didn’t have any other option. This was a battle she hadn’t planned on, against a colonel who never expected her to show. It would be decided by who had the last round in the magazine.

Unless. . .

Kris needed to change her thinking. Elevate her thinking.

Oh. Right. That might do it.

Then again, Captain Drago and the
Wasp
’s crew might not appreciate her dropping this hot potato into their laps. Well, they’d signed on with her. They couldn’t expect it to be boring.

NELLY, WHEN DOES THE
WASP
COME OVER?

THORPE IS OVER US JUST NOW. THE
WASP
SHOULD BE ALONG RIGHT AFTER HIM.

“Comm, I’ll need you to punch me a link through to the
Wasp
just as soon as you can.”

“Yes, ma’am.”