Steel Gauntlet (17 page)

“Lieutenant Day, sir.” It was the brigade staff duty officer. Irritated, Namur asked what it was.

“General St. Cyr, sir. He wants all commanders to sit in on a secure videoconference in five minutes.” Namur swung his feet heavily to the floor and walked slowly to his command post, where his staff had already assembled. They stood when he entered. “Seats,” he commanded. They had just returned to their chairs when St. Cyr’s image appeared on the huge vidscreen set up at one end of the storage room that had been converted into the brigade command post. Everyone jumped to attention.

“At ease, gentlemen.” St. Cyr’s voice boomed over the audio system. He was sitting at a desk, wearing an ordinary soldier’s battle dress uniform. His only badge of rank were two silver stars on a bracelet he wore around his right wrist. “A Confederation Navy amphibious assault fleet has arrived in orbit around Diamunde,” he announced. “We are already under attack here in New Kimberly. Our intelligence service estimates a force of at least 120,000 troops will be landed somewhere on Diamunde within the next seventy-two hours.” The men in the command post looked at one another nervously.

“I am addressing all my commanders at once on this net because we are not sure just where the invasion force will land. As of right now you will put all your commands on one-hundred-percent combat alert. Stay in constant touch with my headquarters. Hold the invading forces if you can, delay them if you can’t. You will be reinforced. That is all.” The screen went blank.

For several seconds nobody stirred. Then Namur was on his feet. “Battalion commanders! Issue live ammunition to every man. I want fifty percent of our tanks manned, engines running at all times; two shifts, twelve hours each. S-4, get down to the spaceport, I want command-detonated mines everywhere down there. Sergeant Major, get me the mine operator on the horn right now—we’re closing the goddamned thing down.”

Awakened from a deep sleep by the insistent shrilling of the communications console beside his bed, Gregory Gurselfanks, operator of the Oppalia mining complex, answered sleepily.

“Namur here, sir. The Noncombatant Evacuation Order is now in effect. Get your people to safety at once. Enemy attack is imminent.” The connection went dead; Namur had said all that needed to be said.

Weeks before his staff had worked out an evacuation plan with Gurselfanks. Food supplies had been prepositioned deep within the mines, enough for the 3,000 miners and their families to survive for two weeks. Overland evacuation routes and transportation had been arranged for those civilians who might want to flee to New Kimberly or some other refuge.

Gurselfanks, wide awake by that time, bounded out of bed. Within minutes he had assembled his staff and his people were gathering their few personal belongings. One thousand of them opted to flee Oppalia for a small village in Rourke’s Hills. Weeks later their remains were found inside their burned-out vehicles halfway there. Flying 2,000 meters above the desert at a speed in excess of Mach 3, Admiral Wimbush’s Raptors had mistaken them for a fleeing enemy column.

The next few hours were controlled pandemonium. Finally Namur was able to find a moment to sit down. He asked a sergeant to bring him a cup of coffee. He glanced at his watch: already past three hours, and dark as pitch outside. He hoped in a few minutes he might be able to get some sleep, although it would have to be right here, in his command post. He was just putting the coffee cup to his lips when his wrist communicator bleeped. It was St. Cyr himself, broadcasting in the clear.

“Colonel Namur. The invasion force will land in your area!” A tremendous explosion shook the building, and Namur spilled the hot coffee on his legs. He never noticed. “General,” he shouted, “they’re already here!” and was out the door.

CHAPTER 13

“Shore’s in sight,” Corporal Duguid, the Dragon crew chief, said into the squad leader circuit in his comm unit. “Everybody get ready. We’re going feet dry in three minutes.”

“Roger,” Hyakowa and Eagle’s Cry said simultaneously.

“Look alive,” Hyakowa said into his all-hands circuit. “Less than three minutes.” The Marines ran through the checklist for hitting the beach. They checked their webbing, no longer in the horizontal acceleration attitude but in the vertical surface-transit mode. Each man made sure his weapon was on safe and had a battery in the well. They checked the rest of their gear, then flipped down the infra screens on their helmets. Instantly the view inside the Dragon changed. The dim red lights that were the only illumination in the vehicle had shown twenty barely seen faces hovering at intervals along the two sides of the troop compartment. Through the infras, twenty ill-formed, bulky bodies glowed red.

The Dragons maneuvered to change their formation from one line twenty abreast to two lines ten abreast. They couldn’t go ashore in the harbor proper, it was too heavily built up with wharves, piers, and seawalls, so there was no place low enough for the Dragons to climb over. To the north and south of the bay were points of land. The point to the south was smooth, gently sloping beach, ideal for coming ashore. The Dragons headed toward the north point, which was boulder-strewn and sloped upward at nearly thirty degrees. General Aguinaldo and his staff had chosen that as the landing spot because they thought—hoped—it wouldn’t be as well-defended as the southern point.

“Stand by for rough road,” Corporal Duguid said, but not all the Dragon crew chiefs alerted their Marines. The Dragons cut their speed from full to one-quarter so suddenly that the Marines were thrown toward the front of their vehicles. Only the webbing kept them from being dashed against the front wall of the troop compartments. The Dragons lurched and yawed violently as they abruptly transitioned from level travel on smooth sea to climbing over the rocks. The undercarriages screamed and clanged from striking boulders as the uneven surface ripped tufts of air cushion from underneath. The Dragons rocked and rolled their way up the slope, clattering so loudly no one inside them could hear the hoppers that whooshed by overhead or the Raptors that screamed in above the hoppers.

Fifty meters beyond the water line, the top of the slope abruptly turned level. The Dragon drivers increased vertical air pressure to maximum as they topped the slope. Still, as the Dragons shot up over the lip of the slope they lost enough cushion that the front ends of the vehicles slammed against the ground, rattling everyone aboard. But the cushions puffed back up almost immediately, and the drivers prodded the Dragons back up to over one hundred kpm.

The sudden increase in speed was the only thing that saved them.

In response to Lieutenant Colonel Namur’s abrupt command, Company C of the 552nd Battalion, First Tank Brigade—forty-five TP1s strong—raced to its shore defensive positions at the north point overlooking the harbor entrance. The tanks were taking their places among the half-dozen ferrocrete bunkers, which should have been enough to successfully defend that rocky slope, when the first wave of ten Dragons roared over the slope’s edge and picked up speed.

The gunners in the bunkers knew the Marines were coming, they’d watched through their infra scopes as the amphibians reformed into two ranks and turned north. Namur’s men knew the Dragons would have to drop speed to negotiate the slope. They thought they’d have time to take careful aim as the Dragons topped the slope, and be able to blow their targets away before they were level again. They hadn’t counted on the speed of the Marine vehicles. Only four of the six bunker guns got shots off before the Dragons were too close for them to shift their aim. Only one of the four hit a Dragon with a high explosive round.

Overhead, the hopper flight carrying Company K continued toward its landing zone. Above the hoppers five of the ten attack craft in the flight of Raptors continued with them. The other five peeled out of formation and flew an aiming run over the defenses before circling around to come back with their cannons belching fire.

The nine surviving Dragons opened fire with their guns, firing as much to confuse the enemy as to hit targets. In seconds they were passing through the still moving TP1s. The tanks slewed about, tried to bring guns to bear on the rapidly moving targets. But the Marines were too mixed up with the tanks and bunkers; none of the tankers could find a target where a miss wouldn’t hit one of their own. The tanks slewed more, attempting to find open targets. Drivers responding to their tank commanders’ excited orders yanked and twisted steering yokes and stomped on accelerators in attempts to ram the Dragons.

But the Dragons were faster and more agile and managed to avoid the tanks as they sped through them and headed for the safety of the twisting roads through the nearby industrial area.

By then, guns blazing, the second wave of Dragons had topped the slope and was roaring toward the defenders. The Marines weren’t concerned about hitting friendly targets—they were using plasma weapons; the Dragons had their shields up, they wouldn’t be hurt by a shot from one of their own. Of course, the plasma guns wouldn’t do a lot of damage to the tanks either, but they could blind the tanks, burn off their antennas and sensors, fracture their periscope glass and camera lenses. And the plasma could get inside the bunkers. The second wave killed two of the bunkers, then was among them and the tanks, following the first wave inland. The second wave of Dragons barely missed the Marines who piled out of the one Dragon that was hit. And two of the tanks, trying to ram Dragons, collided with a thunderclap.

The shaped-charge round that had hit the Dragon was designed to take out medium tanks. It blew through the relatively light armor of the left front of the Dragon, burst through the thin panel separating the crew cab from the troop compartment, cut a diagonal across the right forward corner of the troop compartment, and detonated when it impacted the starboard wall of the vehicle. Most of its explosive blast and the molten metal it spewed forth went beyond the Dragon to spend itself harmlessly in the open.

But the shell didn’t pass through harmlessly. A flying chunk of shrapnel ripped a chunk out of the base of the driver’s neck, and another piece gouged a deep furrow in Corporal Duguid’s arm. More shrapnel tore into the control panel and disabled the vehicle. Four infantrymen in the troop compartment were injured, and Corporal John Keto was killed outright when the round plunged through his chest on its way to the starboard wall.

“Find a target and kill it,” Duguid snapped at the unharmed gunner as he slapped a field bandage onto his wounded arm. He then turned to try to save the life of his driver.

“Everybody out!” Hyakowa knew the Dragon was dead as soon as he felt the way it swerved when it was hit. He pounded the heel of his hand against the panic button at the side of the closed exit ramp to open it and was out before the ramp hit the ground. The uninjured Marines and one of the wounded were right behind him.

“Spread out!” Hyakowa shouted. As soon as he saw they were following his orders, he looked beyond the downed Dragon to the line of defenders and swallowed. The second line of Dragons was speeding through the bunkers and tanks, the first wave disappearing down the streets and around the corners of the nearby industrial section of the city. A quick glance told him that two of the bunkers were dead. But he saw far too many tanks, none of which looked any worse than inconvenienced by the damage inflicted by the Marine light armor. As he watched, the Dragon he’d come ashore in killed a third bunker. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. He knew that was going to bring fire. “Over the edge,” he commanded on his comm unit. Glances to his sides showed man-sized splotches of red flowing toward the top of the slope and the cover it offered. He dashed back to the Dragon to check for wounded and get any survivors out.

PFC MacIlargie, though wounded himself, was half carrying Lance Corporal Van Impe out. “Keto’s dead,” MacIlargie gasped “Everybody else is out. I patched Van Impe up.”

“What about the crew?”

MacIlargie shook his head.

Hyakowa looked into the Dragon. “Get him to cover,” he ordered. He ran forward.

“We’re fighting,” Duguid snarled at him. He didn’t think his driver was going to make it. “Get out of here, mud-Marine.”

Hyakowa backed off and headed for his men.

Behind him another shaped-charge round slammed into the Dragon. Its gun stopped firing.

Then the five Raptors swooped back down, cannons flaring.

Five bolts from one cannon, so close together that they looked like a stream of fire, struck the top of the engine compartment of one tank. The force of the impact knocked the turret loose and tipped it forward like a jauntily worn cap. Then their heat enveloped the ammunition compartment and set off the sixty-odd rounds in it. The heavy vehicle burst apart, chunks of armor flung about like papier-mâché. The multiton turret tumbled into the air and crashed down on top of another tank, bending its cannon out of shape.

The second Raptor melted a hole through the side of a tank. The acrid smell of molten metal was joined by the stench of burnt flesh from the crewmen who didn’t live long enough to realize they were being burned to death. Three more tanks died in flames before the Raptors began to orbit for another run.

Five tanks were dead, a sixth helpless with the loss of its cannon barrel, and two others were damaged from their collision. The company commander knew that his mission had failed, the Dragons had gotten through. He also knew that if his tanks stayed in the open, another run from the Raptors would kill more of his tanks—and his tank commanders couldn’t take the chance of standing out of their turrets to use their antiaircraft weapons. He ordered a retreat with all speed. The tanks were back among the industrial buildings before the Raptors could hit them again. The Raptor commander called off the second firing run before all of his birds had fired at the bunkers. The Raptors had another mission: defend the Dragons.

They flew off to complete that mission.

Hyakowa listened to the departing Raptors, then cautiously raised his head to look above the lip of the slope. Four of the bunkers were obviously dead. The other two were just as obviously still alive. He slid back down before any of the remaining defenders could spot him through their infra scopes. Quickly, he took stock. He had nineteen Marines including himself. Three were wounded, one too badly to fight, maybe too badly injured to move. The rest of the company had moved inland. The next wave of Marines was half an hour off, if it even came ashore at this point. The two remaining bunkers were too strong for his Marines to assault—unless he wanted to kill them with Straight Arrows. But the two squads only had six of the rockets, and firing them would surely bring unwanted company—and he needed to preserve the six antitank weapons for use against tanks, not against bunkers that could be bypassed. He had no choice—no matter how badly Van Impe was injured, they had to move, they had to rejoin the company on their own.