Side Show (31 page)

Withdrawing under fire was always dangerous. No matter how well trained the troops were, there was confusion as men tried to move in one direction while firing in another, and trying to avoid being hit themselves.

The first thirty meters, most of the men moved flat, on their stomachs, one fire team in each squad moving while the other kept popping away at the Heggies with wire and RPGs. The Schlinal troops were starting to get a few RPGs out themselves.

The rest of the platoon moved through third squad as the latest Vrerchs exploded among the Schlinal positions. Second platoon had a half dozen wounded men being helped along by their buddies now. Two men wouldn't be making the trip back at all. Their bodies had to be left behind. If the 13th somehow managed to survive this fight and there was a later, the dead would be retrieved. Attempting to bring them back now could only cause more casualties.

"Up and out of here," Joe said, getting to his feet and spraying wire toward the enemy. He was close to 120 meters from the Heggies now, out of the greatest danger zone from enemy wire. "Third, you've still got rear guard. We'll stop and cover you from another thirty meters back."

The platoon moved faster now. Men ducked around trees, trying to keep as much wood as possible between them and the enemy. Three squads covered thirty meters and stopped to let the remaining squad rejoin them. Third had one wounded man of its own to deal with now.

"I want the rest of the RPGs out," Joe said. "We've got to keep them from following us too soon." Carrying wounded, they would be too easy for any pursuit to catch.

Third squad moved past as the men with the grenade launchers started firing as quickly as they could load. Four at a time, over and over.

"First, we'll take the rear now," Joe said. He sent the other squads on after third and stayed back with third. Pit Tymphe, the only wounded man in first, was still firing wire as rapidly as he could load new spools.

Joe waited until the rest of the platoon had covered twenty meters before he started to pull first squad back. "Let's start it out slow," he said. "Keep 'em occupied."

There was no sign of any Heggies coming out from their lines to pursue. Yet. That was good news, but there was always a chance—a good chance—that the enemy commander would be doing whatever he could to get troops in from one side or another, circling around to ambush the Freebies while they retreated.

Joe put himself right in the center of the first squad's line. Ezra Frain anchored one end, Mort Jaiffer the other. Those three set the pace, and they kept it dead slow until the rest of the platoon was nearly back to where they had to turn for the final kilometer-long leg back to the 13th's lines.

After checking with the other squad leaders, Joe said, "Okay, let's beat it," on first squad's channel. The six men turned and ran through the woods, making for the rest of the platoon.

First squad had nearly reached the turn before there was any sign of pursuit by the Schlinal unit they had attacked. Joe and the others could hear men running through the underbrush, beneath the trees. It was a surprise to hear fire coming from up ahead also, on the other side of the path leading back to the rest of the 13th. Heavy fire.

"It's not coming at us," Sauv Degtree reported. "They're shooting at the main lines. Looks like the Heggies are finally getting around to attacking our sector."

That's all we need,
Joe thought. He switched channels. "Lieutenant, we're coming in, right down the path we followed going out. There's Heggie activity on both sides of us."

"We're monitoring you, Baerclau," Lieutenant Keye said. "The men know you're coming."

Just so they don't get trigger happy anyway,
Joe thought. He took a deep breath and started running again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Reports came in from every company of the 13th.
We're under attack.
Van Stossen and Dezo Parks both took calls, talked to company commanders. There was no change in orders.
Do what you can. Hold at all costs. We don't have anywhere to go.

With very little time to work, the headquarters security detachment had dug and built a solid command bunker for the colonel and his staff, well camouflaged and as solid as possible working only with the materials at hand. There were two separate sections, secure enough that even a direct hit might take out only one of the two. Stossen was in one. Parks was in the other. The rest of the staff circulated between the two as needed. Some thought was given to keeping approximately half of headquarters apart from the other half to insure some sort of continuity even in a disaster.

Around the command bunker was a last line of defense, a place for the security detachment and other headquarters personnel to make a last stand, if—or when—it came to that. There were splat guns and men with Vrerchs and RPGs.

Even Colonel Stossen kept a loaded rifle close at hand. He had a full bandolier of wire spools and power packs slung over a shoulder, and several hand grenades hanging from his tunic and web belt. He looked very little like a regimental commander now, except perhaps for the harried look on his face.

Bal Kenneck came over to the colonel, waited until Stossen finished a call and nodded to him, then said, "The last of our patrols is back in. We've just lost another Wasp." Kenneck shook his head. "On the ground. Hit by a tank round, I think. The pilot's okay."

"Three planes left," Stossen said. It wasn't a question.

"They're all back up, freshly charged. There's still no hint of shortages for them, either batteries or munitions, but if the assault gets much heavier, we might have trouble getting them in and out safely."

"Has that crew chief, Vernon, got his weapons ready for us?"

"They're being humped into place now, fast as he puts them together. I wouldn't put too much faith in them, Colonel. Eyeball-aimed rockets, and those cannons. The guns are made to be held securely under a Wasp. Makeshift tripods aren't going to give them the stable platform they need. They start shooting those, there won't be any safe places to hide."

Stossen smiled for the first time since Roo Vernon had made his proposal. "Don't sell the chief short, Bal. If Vernon says they'll work, two will get you five they do."

"I hope so."

"Anything new from General Dacik?"

"Not a thing, for nearly an hour now. Nothing anyone can make sense of. The general's mixer was hit. They've got headquarters back up and running, after a fashion, but no one seems to know what's going on. They've got it even more hectic than we do."

"Small comfort in knowing other folks got worse problems than we do," Stossen said. "What about our Havocs?"

"We've lost three of the ones we kept within the perimeter. The ones roaming free seem to be intact so far."

"I more than half wish I'd turned 'em all loose," Stossen muttered, more to himself than to Kenneck. "Should have. Too late to do anything about that. Keep them moving around as much as possible."

"Yes, sir. They're doing that already. The ones outside. Basset is engaging this latest batch of Novas now."

—|—

"Right twenty degrees!" Eustace Ponks shouted. "Turn us
right
!"

"I am!" Simon shouted back.

For the last five minutes, the crew of the Fat Turtle had been moving so fast that they were all getting a little confused. Simon had started to turn left instead of right, but he was already correcting his error before Eustace shouted.

"Karl, you got those coordinates punched up?"

"Ready." Karl sounded relatively calm.

"Keep laying it in. We're not likely to get any updates for several minutes. The Wasps all had to land."

"Doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense shooting at old ghosts," Karl said. "Be a lot better off to save it for when we know where they are."

"We're coming up on the firing vector now. Soon as you can get us aimed, get another AP off. Then we put some distance between here and the next place."

The turret slid two degrees to the right. Karl hit the firing switch, and the sound of the shot was the only thing audible in the Havoc for a moment. Before Simon could hear the order, he had already swerved the Fat Turtle another 20 degrees right and he had the throttles all of the way to the spots. Although it was speedy enough once it got moving, a Havoc didn't accelerate with any particular haste.

"Five minutes," Eustace told him. "Three Wasps are just now taking off."

"Three? We lost another?" Simon asked.

"I guess, one way or another."

—|—

Zel Paitcher wandered around the center of the 13th in a daze. A medic had treated the minor injuries Zel had received when his Wasp was overturned by a near miss. The plane was wrecked beyond any hope of repair in the field. Zel had been lucky. He had lost consciousness for only a few seconds after striking his head against the side of his canopy. There were a couple of muscle strains. His right wrist was sprained—not severely. The medic had needed no more than five minutes to treat the obvious injuries.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked Zel, watching the pilot's eyes closely. "Get yourself back to the field hospital, over by the colonel's bunker. I'll tell the doc to expect you."

Zel had nodded, and had even managed to repeat the instructions before the medic left to treat another casualty, one hurt worse than Zel. For several minutes then, Zel had merely sat on the ground where he had been, scarcely aware of anything going on around him. No one else paid any attention to him. They were busy, or looking for deeper holes to crawl into to escape any additional shelling.

Finally, Zel stood up. He held himself erect, as if he were at attention on the drill field. He turned through a complete circle, in slow steps, stopping after every one to survey the area. It was dark and he didn't have an infantry helmet on. At the moment, he didn't have any helmet at all. His vision was severely compromised by that. But not as much as it might have been. The sky was clear. There were plenty of stars in the sky. And there were a number of minor fires around. There was
some
light, certainly enough to let Zel find his way to the field hospital.

For a time, though, he completely forgot about that. He was hardly aware of where he was, what had happened. He started walking around, casually, hands in his pockets, with no thought of the fighting that was going on. Every once in a while, he stopped and called out.

"Slee?" He would wait for an answer. When none came, he shouted again, "Slee, where
are
you? Enough is enough. The game is over." And, just once, he sang out, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."

He had been wandering in circles for thirty minutes before he noticed the flash of intense white light in front of him. But he didn't hear the explosion of the shell that went off some forty meters from him, didn't feel the shrapnel that hit.

There was light, and then there was darkness as he lost consciousness, bleeding from a dozen small wounds.

—|—

So far, there had been no wild charges. The Schlinal troops had been content to work themselves as close as they could with reasonable safety, exchanging wire with the 13th while they gradually tightened the ring around the Freebies. Here and there, a Heggie squad or platoon would find an avenue that let them sneak close enough to do real damage for a few minutes. There were plenty of trees to give cover. The 13th hadn't been able to pick the best defensive terrain ever seen. And there had been no time to prepare extensive artificial enhances out beyond the lines of foxholes.

Sometimes, the lines of bugs did give early warning, but not always. The sensors could not cover every meter of the perimeter. The same could be said for the lines of mines laid closer in. Some exploded when a Heggie tripped a wire. Others were spotted and disarmed. And still others weren't meant to be tripped in that manner. They were controlled by men of the 13th, to be triggered when the infantrymen had good reason to think that there might be Heggies in the kill zone.

Echo's second platoon got back to their foxholes just ahead of one of the fiercest of the exchanges. The Heggies had started advancing toward Echo's section of the perimeter while 2nd platoon was on its patrol. Only luck had kept them apart.

The dead had been noted. The wounded received treatment. Those who could still function were back in their foxholes. There could be no "excused duty" for a wounded man who could still pull the trigger on an Armanoc.

"Take it easy on wire," Joe reminded the platoon. It was an almost unconscious litany. There was no immediate worry of running out of wire for the zippers, but the experience of Porter had made Joe's personal habit of being stingy with wire something of a mania that he tried to enforce on the entire platoon.

Although there was no way for human eyes to see the tiny snippets of wire coming, it
was
sometimes possible to estimate where a flow of wire was coming from, particularly when it was cutting greenery. And, sometimes, a Heggie got close enough, and exposed enough, to show up as a clear image on night-vision gear. Joe saved his wire for those occasions. Behind him, the splat guns on the APCs were putting out more than enough to hold the enemy down. The mudders in their holes could wait for better targets.

Some of them could.

Pit Tymphe was using a lot of wire. He felt no pain from the wound he had received. A soaker had taken care of that. But he
remembered
the pain.
The guy who shot me might be somewhere out there,
he told himself. Twice, Ezra told him to slack off, then gave up. His shouting never held Pit back for more than a couple of minutes.

Olly Wytten, the other new man left in first squad, was very stingy of his wire. He waited with cold determination for targets, then squeezed off only the shortest effective bursts. If he had thought it possible, he would have tried to zap each enemy with a single cut of wire. When he
did
shoot, his fire was accurate. Even at distances up to 150 meters, he would aim for the weak spots in a mudder's defenses—neck, hands, and wrists—and at places where net armor tended to weaken due to flexing, such as the elbows and knees. Most of those sites were unlikely to produce fatal wounds, but anything that cut down on the number of Heggies shooting back was worthwhile.