Steel Gauntlet (22 page)

There they were! Ragrun spotted the company of speeding tanks as he made the next turn. All the tank commanders were standing in their turrets. He wished the pass went straight long enough for him to dare breaking Mach; the sonic boom would rattle the cages of those tank commanders. Probably wreak havoc in the interiors of the tanks as well.

Ragrun and Brush flew on past the column of tanks. Part of Ragrun’s mind wondered where the rest of the First Armored Division was. Maybe the First Armored had changed its direction since the report he’d gotten, maybe this one company was all that was using this pass. But most of his mind was examining the pass itself, learning its twists and turns and analyzing how to attack the tanks in it. If his planes came in low for strafing runs, they’d have to fly very slowly in order to give themselves maneuvering room to avoid hitting the walls. The only other choice was the attack they called the

“screaming meemie,” which was hard on both the planes and the pilots. But the damn jarheads used the screaming meemie. On one of the few occasions during the voyage to Diamunde that Marine Raptor drivers were allowed in the Hellcats’ wardroom, some of those damn jarheads had laughed about how much fun the screaming meemie was!

Well, Ragrun resolved, no pilot worth his salt was going to let any jarheads claim they enjoyed doing something navy pilots wouldn’t do. At least with the screaming meemie they wouldn’t have to worry about hitting the walls. But where were the rest of the tanks?

Captain Hormujh didn’t duck when the Raptor flight zoomed overhead. He merely glared up at them until they disappeared around the next bend. If they came after his tanks again, they were in for a big surprise. If the Raptors were going to attack in this section of the pass, they’d have to fly very slowly. He spoke a few words into his communicator, then looked to his rear and had the satisfaction of seeing five of his tank commanders lifting assault guns from the interiors of their tanks and mounting them on top of their turrets. He faced front again and saw two more tank commanders already had their assault guns mounted. He was very pleased with his foresight. He suspected he was the only company commander in the entire division, perhaps the entire army, who realized the value of top-mounted, free-swiveling guns for antiair defense. Other tank commanders of all levels, from company to division and maybe higher, probably believed the propaganda that said the planes would fly too fast for the guns to hit them without extensive radar and computer guidance systems, and that the tanks’ armor was strong enough to defeat the weapons carried by the Raptors anyway. Here, certainly, any man who knew how to press a firing lever could hit an aircraft. And Hormujh didn’t believe the Confederation pilots would bother attacking a target they couldn’t damage.

Yes, those navy pilots would be in for a surprise if they dared come back at Company B of the 261st.

Where was the rest of the division? The question wouldn’t leave Ragrun alone during the short flight back to the orbiting squadron. It almost interfered with his ability to mark his tacmap. But “almost” didn’t count, and the tacmap was ready when he and Brush resumed their positions in the formation. All business now, he briefed his squadron.

“Hellcat Two, take Division Four east and find the rest of those tanks. We only have one company down there, our orders are to go after the division.”

“Roger, Hellcat Lead,” Lieutenant Cehawk said. “Division Four, on me. Let’s go get ‘em.” Four Raptors peeled out of orbit and flew east, gaining altitude and speed as they went.

Ragrun didn’t say anything to Cehawk, he continued issuing orders to the rest of his squadron.

“Divisions One, Two, and Three, stand by to receive tacmap.” He pressed the button that transmitted the tacmap. He continued without waiting for receipt acknowledgments. “You can see where we are and where they are. It’s narrow in there. I don’t want to risk losing anybody because his speed was just a little too high or he was aiming too carefully and wound up running a wall. We’re doing screaming meemies, by flight in division waves.”

He was interrupted by a few groans. “I hate screaming meemies,” Ensign Franks moaned.

“Belay that, people. It’s the only reasonable way. First Division will be the first wave. Flight One will hit the head of the column while Flight Two hits the rear. Then Division Two. Flight Three will hit just behind the head of the column while Flight Four hits the center on a ten-second delay. Division Three will do the same for the back end of the column. Fifteen seconds between divisions. With any luck, we can kill that entire column in three passes. On my mark, break orbit, angels ten. Three, two, one. Mark!” The twelve remaining Raptors angled away from each other out of the orbiting formation, then powered up for a steep climb. When they reached angels ten, they were almost directly above the tanks in the pass.

“Remember,” Ragrun gave his final orders, “fifteen seconds between divisions. Division One, tally ho!” The four Raptors of Division One heeled over and screamed almost straight down toward the tanks in the bottom of the pass.

At angels four Brush swiveled away from his flight leader and twisted in a 180-degree turn so they flew head-to-head.

At angels two, Ragrun locked his sights on the lead tank and pressed his cannon trigger. The cannon spat out seven plasma bolts before the dive pullout took over and cut the main engine and fired the vernier jets in the Raptor’s nose. The jets stopped the aircraft’s nose-groundward plunge and allowed momentum to carry the tail down. When the Raptor was pointed up almost vertical, the main engines flashed back on and it shot upward. To the untrained eye it looked like the Raptor hit an unseen wall not far above the heights above the pass and bounced. Twenty-five meters away Brush went through the same fire-and-bounce maneuver.

Nearly a kilometer away Flight Two used the same maneuver to hit the column’s rear tank. Fifteen seconds later Flight Three struck the second tank and bounced upward. Seconds after that Flight Four hit a tank in the middle of the column. Then Division Four came down and hit two more tanks.

When the lead tank was hit by the cannon fire, Captain Hormujh was too shocked to react for an instant, but only for an instant. Then anger took over. Intelligence had failed to give warning of this tactic.

Someone would pay for that failure. If he couldn’t force the issue officially, he’d deal personally with whichever intelligence officer was responsible—and he didn’t care how much rank that officer had. He looked up and saw four specks that rapidly grew in size, obviously four more Raptors coming down for another strike. Before he could speak into his communicator to warn his tankers, the sonic shock wave from the first Raptors hit and staggered him. In the front and end of the column, tanks swerved out of control as the shock wave slammed inside the tanks and shocked the drivers. The force of the blow put out the fires licking from the two damaged tanks.

Before Hormujh could recover, the shock wave from the second flight hit, and hit him even harder.

This time tanks in the middle of the column went out of control. The column was in total disarray after the Third Division struck. Despite the rumbling of engines and clanking of treads, the pass sounded eerily silent after the third shock wave passed.

Hormujh recovered and looked up. High above he saw tiny dots as the Confederation Navy Raptors orbited to regroup for another strike.

“Report,” he snapped into his communicator. In seconds he knew the worst. Four tanks were destroyed. Two others were severely damaged, most members of their crews killed.

“Assault gunners, aim up. We’ll try to discourage them when they come down again.” He didn’t know at what altitude the Raptors opened fire, he hadn’t even seen how low they got before they stopped their plummet. He suspected it was beyond the effective range of the assault guns. Still, seeing fire coming at them might make the pilots lose concentration on their aiming and cause them to miss. One might even lose control and crash.

He saw the Raptors break orbit.

“There, that didn’t hurt, did it?” Lieutenant Commander Ragrun asked when all of his Raptors were orbiting. “Any educated guesses as to how many we killed?”

“I think we got them all,” Ensign Prowel said.

“I don’t know. They’re awful tough,” Ensign Franks said. “They’ll probably be ready next time and flame some of us.”

Ragrun gritted his teeth. He really should relieve that Franks, he thought. But a man deserved every possible chance. So far he hadn’t allowed any bad guys to get away. Ragrun was about to give the order to make another strike when Lieutenant Cehawk’s voice broke into the circuit.

“Hellcat Leader, this is Hellcat Two. We found the main body. They’re approaching the east entrance to the pass.”

Ragrun thought for all of a second. Their orders were to hit the division’s van. Well, they’d done that.

One damaged company wasn’t going to be much threat to the Marines at Oppalia. They could hurt the enemy more by striking the main body. If the main body was close enough to the entrance of the pass, they might be able to destroy enough of the front tanks to block the entrance, and that would do the most good.

“Hellcats,” Ragrun ordered, “break orbit and form on me east. We’re going after the main body.”
CHAPTER 17

The admirals and generals assembled at fourteen hours for an updated situation report.

“Benny,” Admiral Wimbush said to Rear Admiral Benton Havens, the Fleet Air Arm commander,

“your Raptors went in first, so you begin. What have your attack planes done, what are they doing now?” Wimbush carefully avoided looking at the Marine generals; he didn’t want to face the glares they were giving him.

“Thank you, sir,” Benton said. He stood and walked to the map display. “As you can see”—he pressed buttons on the display’s console, and a map appeared showing the 420,000-square-kilometer theater of conflict—“we effectively destroyed the Diamundean air forces during the two-day air campaign prior to the amphibious landing.” A chart appeared on the right side of the display. It showed an hour-by-hour tally of contacts between navy Raptors and Diamundean aircraft and the results of those contacts. The numbers were impressive. In two days of conflict, Fleet Air claimed 230 contacts that resulted in 539 Diamundean aircraft shot down against the loss of only six navy Raptors. Equally telling was the frequency and spacing of contacts—they were most frequent during the middle of the first day, then declined until there weren’t any at all during the last ten hours before the Marines landed. Havens pressed more buttons, and symbols appeared on the map. Yellow dots indicated contacts that resulted in no kills; red and yellow flames showed enemy aircraft shot down; red X’s showed navy Raptors that were knocked out of the air. There were almost as few yellow dots as there were red X’s.

“Well, Benny, it certainly looks like your people have done their job.” The grinding of General Aguinaldo’s teeth was quite audible in the briefing room.

“What are they doing now?” Wimbush continued, as though he hadn’t heard Aguinaldo’s teeth.

“Sir, I have eight squadrons on combat air patrols looking for any Diamundean aircraft foolish enough to take to the air.” He pressed more buttons. The contact symbols disappeared and eight curving lines representing the combat air patrols took their place. “The CAPS aren’t having any luck, so they’re being diverted to attack Diamundean armored columns whenever one is spotted moving toward Oppalia.” He pressed another button and seven red and yellow flames appeared. “That’s where we made interceptions.”

“How many tanks have your Raptors killed?” Wimbush asked eagerly.

Havens paused before replying. Should he give the possibly inflated numbers his squadron commanders reported, or should he give the probably more realistic numbers his intelligence chief developed? He decided to look good. “Sir, my squadron commanders report 157 tanks killed, mostly TP1s. “ He paused again, this time for dramatic effect. “Gentlemen, that’s an entire battalion of armor destroyed from the air before it could get into position to engage our Marines.”

“And they’re still hitting the tanks?”

“When I left my command center to come to this meeting, three of my squadrons were engaging enemy armor. I did not include those engagements or their results in the report I just gave.” Admiral Wimbush nodded. “Impressive numbers, Admiral. Thank you.” He sighed with relief. At least Air was doing its job. He turned to Rear Admiral David Johannes, the Fleet intelligence officer.

“Admiral Johannes, can you give us an update, please.”

Davey Jones Johannes cleared his throat and touched a finger to his collar as though he meant to loosen it, but changed his mind at the last instant. He stood up facing Wimbush, but didn’t step to the front of the room to operate the map display console or look at the admirals and generals while he give his report.

“Sir, the First Armored Division at the Tourmaline mining complex has come out as we suspected it might. But either it is weaker than we thought or it didn’t sally in full force. It seems to have only two brigades instead of the three we expected.” He flinched when Major General Daly, the Marine assault commander, snorted, but went on. “The Second Armored Division has not moved from its defensive positions around New Kimberly. Another unit, which we have tentatively identified as the Fourth Armored Division—” Professor Benjamin barked a laugh. Johannes flicked his eyes in his direction but didn’t turn his head far enough to see him. “—has moved from its concealed positions in abandoned mines in the Crankshaft sector and is moving toward Oppalia. It is currently stalled 250 kilometers south of the landing beaches, where two of Admiral Havens’s squadrons are engaging it. What we think is the Ninth Armored Division is rounding the north end of Rourke’s Hills and is about six hours from Oppalia.

I believe Admiral Havens has a squadron on its way to intercept that division.” He looked at the air commander, who nodded. “The 15th Heavy Division, which is comprised of tanks and self-propelled artillery units, is moving into position to intercept any forces that land at Debeers Drift.” He stopped talking and waited uncomfortably for a question.