Steel Gauntlet (24 page)

“There are about twelve hundred tanks in a Diamundean division, isn’t that right?” Aguinaldo asked Havens nodded.

“And you have three squadrons attacking the Fourth Division?” Havens nodded again, reluctantly. He had an idea where this was going, and he didn’t like it.

“It’s been some time since I studied mathematics,” Aguinaldo said almost conversationally, “but I think that works out to a ratio of twenty-five tanks to one Raptor. Am I right?”

“Your ability to do ratios doesn’t seem to have suffered,” Havens said tightly.

“How long do you think it would take one Raptor to kill twenty-five tanks?” The muscles in Havens’s jaw bunched. He could read the activity on the sitmap as well as Aguinaldo.

There were too many tanks and not enough Raptors to stop them. It was evident that many of the Raptor attacks were missing their targets. He didn’t answer.

As the two flag officers watched the map, a Raptor icon turned red and disappeared.

“What are your losses?”

Havens closed his eyes for a moment. “Seven,” he said, so softly the Marine almost missed the word.

“Against the Fourth Division?” Aguinaldo asked, a hint of sympathy in his voice.

“Yes,” Havens said softly.

“Similar against the others?”

Havens could only nod.

Sympathy came clear in Aguinaldo’s voice now; he knew too well what it was like to lose men. “Air power alone has never won a war. Never will. All it can do is soften up the enemy so the infantry doesn’t suffer as much when it goes in to make the final kill. Admiral, soften up those tanks so my Marines have a chance against them.” He almost added, “please.” He turned and left the command center. The weight of many Marines’ lives pressed on his shoulders but failed to bow them.

Oppalia was both a major transportation hub and a mining and industrial center. Its million inhabitants worked hard, and then they played just as hard to work off the stresses and exhaustion of work. At that hour, well after the whistle signaled the end of the workday for most of the city’s people, the streets in the entertainment and dining district through which Company L maneuvered should have been teeming with throngs of diners and revelers. Instead, the streets were empty and an eerie quiet ruled. Sidewalk tables in front of bistros sat vacant and unattended. Nightclubs, through whose open doors the sound of music and gaiety should have blared, squatted shuttered and dark. Theaters that normally had lines of people at their box offices stood abandoned. Stores and boutiques filled with the most fashionable goods imported from scores of planets should have been awash with shoppers; instead they stared, seemingly despondent, onto the empty streets. The half light of dusk, filtered through the atmospheric effluvia of mining and industry, gave the place a surreal appearance.

“Where are they?” Claypoole asked nervously when he joined Lance Corporal Linsman in a recessed doorway. Linsman had become his acting fire team leader, with Corporal Keto’s death.

Linsman shook his head. He had no idea where the people who lived here were; he hadn’t seen any more sign of them than Dean had. The city being so thoroughly abandoned made him shiver.

“What are we doing here?”

Again, Linsman shook his head. Nobody had told him what they were looking for or why anybody would think the Marines should search through a dining and entertainment district for tanks. “Maybe this is where their infantry is hiding.” Like most of the Marines, he found it very difficult to believe that anybody would make an army without infantry.

“How sure are you they’ve got any infantry?” he asked.

Linsman shrugged; he wasn’t sure of anything.

“Third fire team...” Eagle’s Cry’s voice came over their helmet radios. “Second fire team reports there’s an alley twenty meters ahead of you, your side of the street. They see what looks like an open door in the alley. Check it out.”

“Roger,” Linsman replied. Second fire team was on the other side of the street. First fire team was fifty meters ahead and hadn’t seen an open door when they went by. “Let’s go,” he said to Claypoole.

They slipped out of the recessed entryway and crept forward, almost touching the front of the building.

Even though their chameleons made them effectively invisible to the naked eye, neither wanted to take the chance there wasn’t anybody out there with infras who could spot their heat signatures. The fronts of the buildings were still warm from the sun that had shined on them recently; maybe they were warm enough to mask the Marines’ heat signatures. A sign announced the building across the alley was the Barzoom Theater, “Presenting a One Minute Play Festival.” Linsman peered into the alley when they reached it.

Thirty meters down it he saw a wedge of shadow, probably a half-open door at the side of the theater.

The alley was about two meters wide, too narrow for most vehicular traffic. The door must have been for cast and crew, rather than deliveries. Maybe it was an exit from the auditorium. With a light touch, he summoned Claypoole to follow him. Linsman slipped along the wall opposite the door, Claypoole following five meters behind him along the wall with the door. That way they could both fire at the door with minimum risk of Claypoole hitting Linsman.

Halfway to the door Linsman whispered, “Hold it.” He thought he heard voices. He listened carefully.

There seemed to be something just on the verge of audibility, but he wasn’t positive. It sounded like it was coming through the doorway—if he was actually hearing anything at all. He took a couple of steps back, closer to Claypoole.

Speaking as quietly as he could, knowing Claypoole’s helmet radio would amplify his words so the other Marine could hear him, he said, “Move to three meters from the door. I’m going to move forward and see if I can spot anything inside. If I haven’t seen anything by the time I get past the door, I’ll tell you what to do next.”

“What if you do see something?”

“I’ll tell you. Now move.”

Stepping lightly, Claypoole eased forward. When he was three meters from the half-open door, he stopped and looked across the way. His infras showed him a red, man-size splotch four meters beyond the door. He smelled urine and glanced down. A fading red glow showed him where someone had emptied his bladder. Why didn’t he go inside? Claypoole wondered. Surely there are facilities inside the theater. Then he stopped worrying about it. He looked back at Linsman and saw his red splotch shrink downward as Linsman dropped into a crouch, then moved closer as he came back. He saw an arm come out of the red and reach across to touch him. He followed Linsman back to the mouth of the alley.

“Birdie,” Linsman said into his radio when they reached the street. “There’s four tanks in there.”

“How’d they do that?” Eagle’s Cry sounded incredulous.

“Damfino. Looks like they drove over the seating and crushed it, though.”

“What do they have, Rat?”

“Two TP1s, definitely. I think the other two are mediums. I only saw a few people. I think maybe most of the crews are in the tanks.”

“Any other doors on the side of the theater?”

“Negative. Maybe around back.”

“Wait one.”

They waited until the squad leader made a report to the platoon commander.

In a couple of moments Eagle’s Cry’s voice came back.. “Second squad, we got some bad guys in the Barzoom Theater. Okay, listen up. I reported. The boss wants us to see if we can get clean shots at them. First fire team, go around back, see what’s there. I’ll check the front doors.” It was a small block. First fire team was back in little more than five minutes. “There’s a vehicle entrance in the back,” Corporal Bladon reported. “Looks big enough for a TP1. There’s also a personnel hatch. Both are closed. I didn’t want to alert anybody, so I didn’t try the doors to see if they’re locked.”

“That’s okay, we probably can’t go in that way anyhow,” Eagle’s Cry said. “Wait one.” They waited while he reported the new findings. The next voice they heard was Bass’s.

“Second squad, listen up. Birdie, send a fire team to cover the back and kill any tank that comes out.

Have a fire team cover the side door with blasters in case any crewmen try to get out that way. Bring the rest of the squad, we’re going in the front door.”

“You heard the man, people,” Eagle’s Cry said. “First fire team, did you see a position where you can cover the back door and have enough room to fire your Straight Arrows?”

“Affirmative,” Bladon replied.

“Go. Let me know when you’re in position. Third fire team, cover the side exit. Second fire team. On me.”

Linsman signaled Claypoole with a light touch, and the two took positions at the mouth of the alleyway, Linsman on the left and Claypoole on the right. They lay prone, their blasters pointing at the door. Claypoole made a disgusted face; he had to put his blaster to his left shoulder, and he was a right-handed shot. Then he put his discomfort aside. The corner of the building gave him cover from fire from the alleyway.

A moment later Corporal Bladon reported that first fire team was in position behind the theater.

“First fire team, Third fire team,” Eagle’s Cry said, “maintain positions. Second fire team, let’s go inside.”

Claypoole wondered where Gunny Bass was, why he wasn’t giving the orders. He thought, from the directions Bass gave a few minutes earlier, that the platoon sergeant had joined them. Shouldn’t he be giving the orders now? He gave a mental shrug. Maybe Bass was letting Eagle’s Cry run the squad; maybe Bass was doing something different. He stopped thinking about it and concentrated on the side door. After a few moments he began concentrating on staying alert. What was it now, sixteen, seventeen hours since the Essays 34th FIST rode down from orbit were launched from the
Tripoli
? He suddenly realized he’d been awake for twenty hours or longer, and most of that time was under stress: first was the final preparations for landing, then the launch and hitting the beach and the fight on the beach; then finding the rest of the company—and evading the enemy when they could. During the afternoon lull, when they still expected to be counter-attacked at any moment, he’d eaten a meal. As near as he could recall, that was all he’d eaten since morning chow back on the
Tripoli
. He blinked a few times, gave a jaw-stretching yawn. He rolled his shoulders, bunched and relaxed muscle groups all up and down his body in the exercises he’d been taught to maintain alertness. He looked back into the street in both directions to make sure nobody was coming up behind him and Linsman. Then he settled back to blast anyone who came out the side door. His consciousness faded and drifted.

The sudden crackle and sizzle of blasters from inside the theater snapped him back to full awareness.

Abruptly, Claypoole’s earphones, which had been silent since Eagle’s Cry gave the order for the second fire team to follow him into the theater, were filled with the shouts of men in deadly battle. “Did you get him?” Corporal Saleski called

“I’m pretty sure,” Lance Corporal Watson called back. Blaster fire drowned out any follow-up Saleski might have asked.

“Over there, get him before he gets away,” Eagle’s Cry shouted.

“They’re going for the tanks, stop them!” Bass said, his voice booming. The blaster fire intensified.

“Look alive, Third team,” Eagle’s Cry shrieked.

Someone burst out of the side door.

The sudden firefight that he could hear but not see inside the theater tightened Claypoole’s nerves so taut he didn’t need the warning. His hand closed on the firing lever before his conscious mind knew he had a target. His plasma ball hit the Diamundean tanker a split second before Linsman’s did, and the man flashed briefly into flame from the double hit. His charred corpse crumpled to the pavement. A second tanker tripped on the body and almost fell, sending Claypoole’s second shot over him. The tanker looked wide-eyed at the mouth of the alleyway, his mouth gaping open in terror. Even in the dimness, Claypoole could see the whites of the man’s eyes. He didn’t hesitate, he lowered his aim and shot again.

But the man was back up and trying to run away, the bolt blasting through his thigh. He shrieked and pitched forward, clutching at the limb. Claypoole hadn’t seen a weapon. He didn’t bother to shoot the man again, instead looked back to the door for someone else to come through it.

“Good shooting,” he heard from Linsman. “If he lives long enough, maybe he can tell us where some of the others are hiding.”

“First fire team, get ready!” Eagle’s Cry shouted, and Claypoole became aware of the engine noise that had begun while he and Linsman were shooting at the two tankers who came out of the door they were guarding.

“Take cover!” Bass called.

Over the rumbling of the tank, Claypoole heard the staccato crackling and whoosh of a plasma gun firing a long burst. None of the Marines in the building had an assault gun. Claypoole knew someone had to be firing a plasma gun on a tank. The engine noise changed pitch and the sound of gears grinding and treads turning echoed from the theater. The rising pitch of the engine became a roar, followed by a crash as the tank drove through the doors at the back of the building. That crash was followed almost immediately by the blast of an antitank rocket and an explosion when the Straight Arrow hit the tank.

That was followed a second later by an even louder explosion when the tank’s ammunition was set off.

Debris clattered loudly, then the ground shook when the tank’s turret thudded to the ground. More debris rained down in the back street. Then there was a moment’s silence.

“Eagle’s Cry, report,” Bass said, breaking the silence.

“Second squad, report by fire teams,” Eagle’s Cry ordered.

“First team, we’re all okay,” Bladon reported.

“Second fire team, everybody’s all right,” Saleski said, relief clear in his voice.

“Third is fine,” Linsman said. “We’ve got a prisoner, if he’s still alive.”

“Get him,” Bass said. Then added, “All right, people, we’ve got a fire starting in here. I think we should move to a safer position. Anybody know how to drive a tank?” As the squad assembled in front of the theater, Bass reported to Vanden Hoyt. He used the circuit that allowed all the members of the squad to listen in.