Side Show (32 page)

It was an hour short of midnight when the fighting on Echo's front suddenly increased in fury. A half dozen tank shells burst in front of the lines, a couple of them within twenty meters, causing some casualties in third and fourth platoons. Several Schlinal splat guns opened up, the first time in this fight that the Heggies had used the heavier crew-served weapons on Echo. Several rockets came in, targeted against the APCs, destroying one and putting another out of commission.

At the same time, the volume of rifle fire increased dramatically. To Joe it seemed as if there were suddenly four times as many rifles firing, and firing longer bursts.

"Watch out," he warned the platoon. "Sounds like they're getting ready to move on us."

RPGs came in next, poorly aimed but close enough to make men duck deeper into their foxholes to avoid shrapnel. Almost simultaneously, two of the mines that second platoon had planted went off.

"Eighty meters out," Joe reminded his men. "Time to use some wire."

A distance, a line. Enemies close enough for wire to do real damage. And movement. The Heggies were coming forward now, squad by squad.

Another mine went off. This time, Joe saw one of the bodies being hurled away from the explosion. Accord grenades went out, hand- and rocket-propelled. And wire from every rifle on the line. Another salvo of 135mm shells landed, these behind the lines. Three Heyers were hit, though one of them kept firing.

Joe ducked down for a moment and looked back toward the center of the 13th's ground. There were more than a dozen fires that he could see. Two of them were fierce, as if fuel tanks had been ruptured. Those fires burned down quickly though, even as they spread to damp grass and brush.

It seemed forever before friendly artillery rounds started landing out beyond the Accord lines, as the Havocs got targeting data. The 200mm shells came in in volleys of three. That had to be apparent to almost anyone. The suspended plasma HE rounds chopped the forest apart. To a radius of fifteen meters from impact, all but the thickest of trees would be felled by the blast. Trees fell, some taking smaller neighbors down with them. Branches were quicker to fall. Fires started, hot enough to incinerate even wet wood and leaves. Or human flesh.

For a moment, the Schlinal wire stopped coming in at Echo. The heat of fires gave the Heggies better camouflage than the night and their uniforms, blotting out half of the night-vision gear of the Accord soldiers. Behind the fires, men could advance or retreat.

"Hold off," Joe ordered, shouting over the radio, against the noise of another volley of Havoc rounds. "Let's see if that's taken the fight out of them."

The Havoc fire moved off to the right, from Echo's front to Fox's, still coming in three rounds at a time, eighty to a hundred meters out. To the left, somewhat more distant, Joe noticed more rounds exploding out beyond the perimeter. He couldn't be certain because of the distance, but he thought that those were coming in pairs.

I wonder how many Havocs we have left?
He blinked several times. There was no way he could know, and speculation was wasted energy. He looked back out directly in front of him. There was still no enemy wire coming from beyond where the barrage had fallen. The enemy, if they hadn't fled, at least hadn't regrouped enough to resume the attack.

"Lieutenant?" Joe asked over his private channel to Keye. He waited, and when there was no reply, he repeated the call. When there was still no answer, he switched channels.

"Izzy, Baerclau. Where's the lieutenant?"

"Out of action," Walker replied. "Had his helmet blown clear off."

"Dead?"

"Naw. Medic's still working on him but says he'll be okay. Concussion most like."

"We have no enemy activity at all in front of us right now," Joe reported.

"Yeah, those Havocs gave 'em something to think about. Keep your eyes open and your heads down. No sign that they're pulling out."

—|—

Dem Nimz and the survivors of two recon platoons had abandoned their commandeered truck an hour before, as soon as they saw the flashes of the battle going on northeast of them. As a parting thought, Fredo Gariston had wired an explosive charge so that anyone opening either of the truck's doors would be greeted by two kilograms of explosives and white phosphorus.

"Long as it's not us," Dem whispered. He had his visor up. The other men were around him, waiting for orders.

"While we're out here, we might as well do some good. We'll split into two squads. I'll take one and Fredo the other. Circle round, left and right. We're reccers, so let's do some reconnoitering. Find out how many Heggies there are, where they're at, and locate any armor they've got with them. You all know the drill. We've got about four hours till first light. Use that time. We'll try to meet on the far side by dawn."

"Who goes which way?" Fredo asked.

"You go north, then east, round on the river side. We'll take the south," Dem said.

With no more than that, the two men separated, each gesturing to those he would be leading. They moved apart without a look back. No one complained about the orders. They
were
reccers. They would do the job as long as one of them was left alive.

—|—

Bal Kenneck had blood on his neck. An eardrum had been damaged by concussion on one of his periodic trips out of the command bunker. Blood had flowed out of the ear for several minutes before he came back inside and someone else saw it and called a medic.

"We've got a fight in the air now too," Bal reported while the medic was still working on him. Kenneck shouted because he couldn't hear himself speak. "Six, maybe eight, Boems came in and engaged our Wasps."

"Results?" Van Stossen asked.

"Not good," Kenneck shouted, "but not as bad as it might have been. I think we've lost the last of our Wasps, but they accounted for four, maybe five, Boems first. The rest tore out as quick as they could then."

Stossen turned away. The last of the Wasps. No air cover at all left. But he quickly turned back to Kenneck. "What about the pilots? Did any of them make it out safely?"

"I don't..." Kenneck didn't finish the sentence. He passed out.

Stossen moved closer. He could see that Kenneck was still breathing, and he waited while the medic went through a flurry of activity before he asked, "How is he?"

"Pretty rough, sir," the medic said. "He should be okay, but I'm going to have to keep him out to let the nanobugs do their work."

"How long?"

"Four hours minimum, sir. I won't know beyond that until then. If it still matters four hours from now."

Once more, Stossen turned away, this time from the medic's brief glance.
If it still matters four hours from now.
There was that. Almost anything could happen in four hours. Not quite to sunrise.

"Just take care of him the best you can, lad," Stossen said. "If we're still here in the morning, we'll need him."

"Yes, sir." The medic's voice was blank. He didn't even bother to show resentment that the colonel might think he would do any less than his best for anyone.

—|—

The first serious attempt to breach the 13th's lines came at the junction between Echo and Fox companies. There was another flurry of RPGs—but no tank rounds—followed immediately by the assault. A full company of Schlinal infantry made the advance, laying down considerable wire as they moved.

At first, the action was too far away for Joe's platoon to have any real part in it. The angle across the front, and the Heggies' distance from the line, put them out of reach of any of the platoon's weapons except for the Dupuy cough guns. The snipers armed with those were able to contribute in a minor way, but even though the rocket-assisted guns were accurate to ranges over four-and-a-half kilometers, it was difficult to hit a moving target at even a tenth of that distance.

"Stay put," the first sergeant told Baerclau. "Keep your men watching their own front in case this broadens."

Joe leaned the barrel of his rifle against the mound of dirt in front of him. Just for a second, he took both hands from the zipper and flexed his fingers. They were stiff.

"We're watching," he told Walker. "The Heggies are too far away for us to do much good anyway."

A protracted blink helped Joe clear his mind of anything but what was right in front of him, his men and the section of forest they were responsible for. He had wanted to ask about Lieutenant Keye again, but this wasn't the time. Izzy would be too busy for anything but the immediately essential.

Joe looked at the power indicator on his rifle. It was down to 50 percent—still an hour of firing time left. Too soon to replace it. Once more he checked the location of all of the things he had stowed on the ledges of his foxhole—wire spools, canteens, rations. Everything was where it belonged, ready for him whenever he might reach for it.

Let's get it on,
he thought. The sudden burst of impatience surprised him. Too much waiting. The earlier skirmish hadn't been enough.

Joe pulled back into his hole.
Am I getting to
like
it?
he wondered. The possibility was frightening. He had seen men who thrived on combat before, men who only seemed to be happy in the middle of a fight, the bigger and bloodier the better. Men like that scared him.

He glanced toward Olly's hole. Wytten was next to Ezra, some meters away. Only the back of the new man's helmet was visible. Olly was good at all of the skills of a soldier. Maybe he was too intense. Combat hadn't changed him noticeably. He went about his business with quiet efficiency.

Maybe he likes it too much,
Joe thought, unconsciously adding another
too
.

Too much thinking. Joe took a new grip on his rifle, consciously keeping his hands loose on the stock and pistol grip. One hand at a time, he pulled loose again, flexing, trying to keep the fingers limber. It was too easy to tighten up.

Waiting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"I like it," Eustace Ponks said. He was grinning in satisfaction. "This is the way we were meant to fight." He transferred another series of coordinates to Karl's targeting computer, straight from the reccers who were out in the middle of the Heggies. They weren't even going through CIC or the 13th's headquarters now. This information was accurate right up to the second that the Fat Turtle received it, without any delays at all. What made it even better was that there was no sign of Novas or Heggie infantry close enough to be a threat.

"Locked on," Karl said from the rear compartment.

"Fire," Eustace said, already concentrating on the next set of numbers.

The big gun shuddered in its suspension. Simon started moving the vehicle again. Jimmy ejected the spent shell casing and slid the next one into place. By the time Simon had eased onto the new target vector, Karl was ready to shoot again... and Eustace had three more targets for them.

"That last one was right on target," Eustace reported to his crew. Actually, he was talking two shots back, but it didn't matter. With accurate, and current, sightings, they were doing pinpoint shooting—all of the Havocs operating outside the 13th's perimeter.

Forty minutes earlier, the Fat Turtle had rendezvoused with its support van to replenish the Havoc's supply of ammunition. That transfer had taken fifteen minutes, with most of both crews out in a perimeter of their own, just in case. There weren't many Novas left to the opposition, for all appearances. Those that were seemed to be operating on the far end of the engagement, out of range. But there was no way to be certain that there were no Heggie mudders around.

The big worry for the gun crews was that the enemy might send in more Boems.

"This rate, we'll have to stock up on ammo again before long," Simon said.

"Already laid on, my boy," Eustace replied, in rare good spirits. "Another forty minutes."

"Cutting it close, aren't we?" Simon asked. "The way we're pumping it out, we could run dry long before that."

"We'll be taking a break in a minute. Two more sets of targets. The reccers are on the move again, looking for more targets. We've already done for the ones they've seen so far."

The silence that followed after the last shell was out left a hollow ringing in the ears of all four crewmen. Working artillery was like that. Between campaigns, they would all have to take time out for medical treatment of their hearing. If they made it off of Jordan.

—|—

Dem Nimz wasn't grinning. He had watched the systematic destruction of an enemy infantry battalion with considerable satisfaction, but it wasn't something he could smile about. A few words of praise for the accuracy of the Havoc fire, a promise to get back on the line with the three Havocs he was personally directing as soon as he had new targets for them.

Then it was back on the move, gliding through the night, absolutely silent. Reccers liked to boast that they could move within fifty meters of any enemy even during the day without giving any evidence of their passage. Dem and the three men with him were doing everything they could to stay farther away than fifty meters. The forest area wasn't dense enough to give them any real feeling of security. And although Accord battle dress provided some thermal concealment, it wasn't enough. They would be visible to infrared snoopers, a lot farther out than fifty meters. The enemy might have a picket line out on this side, even though they had to think that virtually all Accord strength was on the other side, penned up neatly by four Heggie regiments.

Dem would have had posts out on the back side, even if he were absolutely convinced that there was nothing to worry about there. He was surprised that they hadn't found any Heggie sentries yet. And a little worried.

Although Dem communicated by radio with the Havocs, he still limited himself to hand signs with the men right with him. The habit of silence was strong, to be broken only at absolute need.

The four men moved in line. As far as possible, each man stepped precisely in the same places as the man before. If this was done right, and reccers on campaign almost always did it right, the enemy would be unable to guess how many of them had passed. One man or fifty.