Jump Pay (15 page)

"Yeah, yeah. How long we gonna have to wait here? The boredom's gonna get me long before the heat does."

"Once it gets full dark, I don't think the colonel will wait long, or the general," Eustace said.
I sure as hell wouldn't,
he thought. If worse came to worst, the Havocs might sit in front of the ramps and pour rounds in through the doorways until there was no chance of anyone inside surviving. The batteries could take turns, spelling each other so that no one would get
too
hot. It wouldn't be possible for all of the Havocs to get in line with the doors at once.

—|—

Dem Nimz had been talking to himself a lot. He wanted to be back out where the action was going to be, not sitting in a field hospital with a trauma tube locked around his left arm. Fredo had nearly had to coldcock him to get him to a medic in the first place. With his left arm hanging useless and bleeding from a dozen shrapnel wounds, Dem had still tried to help men who were hurt worse that he was. Five of his men had been killed by the mine, and two of the SI men as well. Nearly everyone else in both groups had been wounded. Dem wasn't certain, but he thought that Gene Abru might have been the only man not killed or wounded by the explosion.

Man's got more luck than anyone I ever saw,
Dem thought. Abru's battle fatigues hadn't even been touched.
I got his load as well as mine, I guess,
Dem decided. If he had been standing just a few centimeters to one side or the other, Abru would have been hit as well.

Dem tried to look around, but with the trauma tube anchored next to him and his arm held tightly by the device—all of the way to the shoulder—his mobility was limited. Fredo had been with him a few minutes before, but now he had gone off to talk to the other injured members of the squad. Two men, according to Fredo, had already been treated and sent back to the platoon. Fredo had scarcely been scratched himself. He had been at the far end of the line when the mine went off. Both of his hands had been cut up a little, but no shrapnel had been imbedded in the cuts. Small soakers had killed the pain and would heal the cuts soon enough.

Dem's helmet was sitting on the floor next to him, out of reach, so he couldn't even use the radio or see what the time was—how much longer he had to spend in the tube. Two hours, the surgeon had said, minimum. If the nanobots hadn't transported all of the bits of shrapnel to the surface by then, it might be twice as long.

"Fredo, you'd better take good care of my new rifle," Dem muttered. The experimental weapons couldn't be left lying around, even in a hospital. Dem couldn't protect it while he was being treated, so Fredo had it.

Dem's mind drifted back to the instant just before the explosion. He had been watching the ground closely. It was all bare rock. How had the Heggies managed to conceal a mine on that? He would have sworn that he could not have missed so much as a grain of sand on that surface. But he could see the mine pop up to waist level in his memory. There had been no warning at all, not a glimmer.

"We're not the only ones coming up with new gimmicks," he muttered. Then his system gave in to the medication being released in his bloodstream. He slid into an empty sleep.

—|—

Kleffer Dacik had dragged his staff to the roof nearest the enemy's underground complex.

"We should have gone in with the troops," he mumbled. The entrances weren't even visible from this distance. He couldn't even see the troops who were closest to the nearest ramp, at about twenty kilometers. Only Dacik's aide was close enough to hear.

"We'll have video from the Wasps once they get into it, sir, and more from the line companies," Hof Lorenz said. "Down there on the ground, we wouldn't have a much better view of the whole operation than we will from here."
Unless we got right down with the front-line mudders, we wouldn't see anything,
he thought. That wasn't something he was apt to say to the general. Dacik was much too likely to decide that he wanted to be that close. Lorenz had spent virtually his entire military career in staff positions. Every superior he had ever worked for had agreed that he had a particular knack for staff work. He worked hard to maintain that evaluation. Staff work brought him as much danger as he might ever desire. On Jordan, it had very nearly killed him.

Dacik pulled his visor down to take advantage of the night-vision systems built into it. The sun had finally set. Evening dusk was rapidly turning to full darkness. Already there was a vivid star field visible overhead, though neither of Tamkailo's two moons was out at the moment. One would rise in a half hour, the other not until nearly two hours later. The two moons combined did not have the surface area of Earth's one moon, and their albedo was slightly lower, but when they were combined with the thick star field around Tamkailo, the night could actually be slightly brighter than a clear full-moon night on Earth.

"Olsen, there any word yet on movement down any of those ramps?" Dacik asked.

"Not a glimmer, sir," Olsen replied. "We've got bugs in close enough to hear the slightest sound. No matter how silent those doors are, we'd hear residual sounds from inside. A big cave complex like that, the echoes of even a boot scraping on rock would carry if one of those doors opened."

"It'll still be a few minutes before the last of the dusk line fades from the west, sir," Lorenz said. "They'll probably want every bit of darkness they can get. I guess that means before the moons rise."
Poor bastards,
he thought. The Heggies waiting underground had to know that they had virtually no chance once they came out, and no better chance staying where they were—unless their comrades at one of the other sites on Tamkailo managed to stage a large rescue effort. That was, at best, highly improbable. "Maybe the conscripts will mutiny again."

Dacik glanced at his side.
They might,
he thought. Then he blinked several times, rapidly. Two regiments of prisoners? They'd be more trouble than they were worth. The prisoners they already had were a major inconvenience. Transporting them off planet would strain the fleet's resources. But they couldn't be left behind. Trained soldiers were a valuable military asset. This entire campaign was designed to deny the Schlinal warlords military assets. All of them on Tamkailo. The general recognized that the notion was primitive, almost inhuman, but it would be far more... expedient to finish this off militarily.

"We'll wait another thirty minutes," he said. "If they haven't surrendered or made their move by then, we'll do what we have to do." None of the men around him made any comment. And no one suggested that they try to establish radio contact with the Schlinal commander to demand a surrender.

"Thirty minutes," Dacik repeated.

—|—

The infantry established their perimeter two hundred meters from the nearest end of the ramps, and left wide avenues in front of those exits. There was little cover available, and the rock and hard clay of the terrain made it impossible to dig foxholes with hand tools.

Echo Company was in a second line, fifty meters behind the first. It was not necessary for the Accord to draw a complete perimeter around the enemy complex. By this time it was certain that there were only three exits. Men were arrayed in arcs facing those, with only occasional listening posts scattered around the rest of the area. Besides, this show would belong to the big guns and the flyers. Unless something truly unforeseen happened, the infantry would have nothing to do until the fight was completely over.

"Spectators," Mort Jaiffer said. He was on a private link to the Bear. "You know what kind of hell this is going to be for the men down in that hole, don't you?"

"I know," Baerclau replied. His throat was tight. For all of the years he had spent fighting the Heggies, he could find no joy in the prospect. Three, maybe four, thousand men had to be down there, and unless they showed a white flag very soon, they were going to be subjected to the most intense bombardment anyone had experienced in the war. Even if most of them were deep enough that they would be safe from the rockets and shells, they would suffer.
Shell shock.
It had never been anything more than two words to Joe. Now he was beginning to imagine what it might really be like.

—|—

The evening remained silent, right up to the expiration of General Dacik's deadline. Ten minutes before the half hour was up, word went out to all units, advising them when the action was to begin. West of the captured aboveground base, the Wasps of the 5th and 8th SATs, and the 17th IAW, began taking off and assembling into their individual flights. Each flight leader had his objectives and had decided how he wanted his men to proceed. The rockets that Wasps carried had one large advantage over artillery shells: they could be guided by the pilot right up until the instant of impact, by video. Once the massive gates sheltering the entrances to the underground complex were breached, missiles could be directed inside—just as far as they had a relatively straight path to follow.

From his rooftop vantage point, Dacik continued to stare into the growing darkness. He kept the visor of his battle helmet down now. The time line kept him apprised of how close his deadline was. At need, he could flash overlays on the visor that showed where each of the units getting ready for the coming battle were. He had reports from the air and artillery commanders. Their units were all ready for his signal. The infantry was in place, for whatever residual role they might have when this action was begun. Or ended.

Come on, start something!
Dacik urged silently. But there was no response from the Heggies.

Ninety seconds before the expiration of the thirty minutes he had stipulated, Dacik asked, "Anything from the listening posts?"

"Not a hint, General," Major Olsen replied. "I don't think they intend to come out."

"Ru, give the air and artillery people the sixty-second alert," Dacik said. Colonel Ruman had been waiting for that. He already had the regimental, air, and artillery commanders on link.

After that, there was silence again on the rooftop. Dacik watched the seconds tick off on his helmet time line. Around him, the members of his staff were all doing the same, lost in whatever personal thoughts they might have. Only Ruman watched the general more than his own visor display.

Exactly as the last second passed, Dacik said, "Go," softly and Colonel Ruman repeated it on his link to the commanders.

—|—

The gates leading into the underground Schlinal base each consisted of two large doors, four meters wide and five high. Constructed of the best steel and resin composites known, the doors were seventy-five centimeters thick, reinforced on the inside by six girders. The doors and their frames were as secure as any bank vault's door.

Each gate was hit by six 205mm armor-piercing rounds. The Accord targeting systems were accurate enough at eleven kilometers that each round hit within fifty centimeters of its target point. Two doors to a gateway: each door was hit high, middle, and low, slightly closer to the center than the hinge sides. In no case was the elapsing time between first and sixth round hitting a gate greater than nine one-hundredths of a second.

The Accord gunners did not wait to see how their first rounds had scored. Before the first volleys hit, the guns had all been reloaded, with high explosive rounds this time. The targeting points were the same. With the doors gone—and no one in any of the Havocs had any doubt that the doors would be gone—these rounds would travel inside the underground complex to explode there, spreading shrapnel—and death—to any Heggies within reach.

As soon as the second artillery volley had been fired, there was a flight of Wasps making a run toward each of those gates, low, no more than fifty meters above the ground. Each aircraft launched four rockets, the most that a pilot could track and guide effectively. At the entrance on the southeast side of the complex, a missile collided with an artillery shell along the ramp, twenty meters short of the now open doors, but other than that, every missile and shell exploded inside the entrance to the underground complex. Most of the missiles reached in a hundred meters or more before they were allowed to impact.

Balls of flame erupted from each gate, rolling up the ramps and climbing into the sky. Sheets of fire brightened the night, but only for a moment.

—|—

"A lot depends on the way that place was constructed," Olsen said, an offhand comment. He had been thinking of the kind of engineering that would have been needed for such an extensive underground facility. The blasts were on the horizon, visible a noticeable instant before the sound arrived. "Unless it's all just one open chamber, we might pound away all night without completely disabling the units down there."

Dacik turned and stared at his intelligence chief for a moment without saying anything. Then he turned back to watch the distant battle. He let the bombardment continue for another hour before he finally called a halt to it.

Dacik turned to his staff, lifted the visor on his helmet, and said, "Let's see what we've got in there. Probe all three entrances."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There would be no more surprises from mines popping off of the ground to explode in the faces of the infantry that moved in to investigate the underground complex. Engineers had come up and cleared lanes to the sides of each ramp, using fifty-meter lengths of explosive cable. Small mortars fired the end of the rope. Once it was stretched out on the ground, the cable was detonated with enough force to clear a path several meters wide. Even if the mines couldn't be detected with the naked eye, they responded to explosive persuasion. At least twenty were detonated.

Delta and Echo companies of the 13th were given the task of probing the western entrance to the underground complex. They were accompanied by 3rd recon and a platoon of engineers. Gene Abru and two of his SI men went along. He only had the two left fit for duty. Another was still in the field hospital. The rest had been killed in the earlier mine blast.