The Tejano Conflict (23 page)

Tracer rounds burned a path over her head as Kay flipped over the low adobe wall for cover. She landed, felt something give under her foot—

Jebati!

She froze.

“Jo, I have a problem here.”

“Go ahead.”

“I'm standing on an AP mine trigger.”

“On my way. Don't, uh . . . move.”

Kay whickered.

She looked down. Rules for the engagement set the devices to go inert and biodegrade within specified time limits, so they wouldn't be a danger to someone a few weeks down the line, but it didn't help her now.

She crouched, working to hold still.

Too hard. Relax.

A bead of sweat rolled down her back. Even she wasn't faster than this machine.

A large buzzing insect flew by and landed on her leg. She watched it crawling around, searching for something, doing whatever bugs did when they landed. In the moment, the colors of its body seemed vibrant and full of life. Would it be a surprise to the bug if the mine went off? Did it have enough brain to care?

Ahead, one of the enemy popped over the top of the wall.

She didn't move, but she figured she could raise her weapon and, if he looked this way, shoot without blowing herself up. She brought her carbine up . . .

There was a crack from behind her and the trooper on the wall fell back, shot through the head. She didn't need to look to know:

Jo Captain had arrived.

Jo moved to where Kay was, her own carbine held ready.

“You aren't supposed to step on those, didn't you get the memo?”

A fusillade of small-arms fire zipped overhead; more than a few of the bullets smacked harmlessly into the wall. Could have been worse; the mine could have been on the other side, where the guns were talking.

“I must have misplaced it. I'll get to it as soon as I can.”

Jo bent down, removed a canister from her belt. Inside, under pressure, was liquid nitrogen, carried for just such occasions.

“Let's see can we cool things off a little . . .”

– – – – – –

The grenade flew toward Gunny as if it were in slow motion, a high, lazy arc.

All the years of training told her where it was going to land:
Too fucking close!

Without thought, her gun appeared in her hand, and she fired—

– – – – – –

“You're gonna have to move, Wink,” came Gramps's voice. “You're about to become the front.”

As if to punctuate his words, there was an explosion outside, and the walls of the crawler rattled.

“Monitors! Where the fuck are you? Dammit!

“Get us rolling,” Wink said to the driver. “And I'm in the middle of surgery here, don't hit any bumps—”

– – – – – –

“Go north!” came Gramps's voice. “North!”

“Tell it to the driver, I'm busy—”

– – – – – –

Cutter stared at the readouts, watching red and green triangles, squares, and circles intersect and change colors as his side met the enemy.

He listened to various channels and snippets of conversation, key phrases tied to the different shapes on the screen:

“South side of Well Two, suppressing fire—”

“Inbound armor coming from the west—”

“I need air support! Got two drones pinning us in the creek bed south of Well Three—”

Cutter punched buttons, redirecting troops and machines. This part still had to be done even though time was running out—

Sixty-eight minutes . . .

– – – – – –

Gunny's pistol slugs hammered the grenade,
one-two-three-four
, enough to deflect it. It fell short and to one side, exploded—

—bits of shrapnel blew her way, but not much, and none of it hurt her though something bounced off her shoulder armor.

Where is the shooter—?

There—a blurry outline—a shiftsuit. She toggled her magazine switch to AP, fired twice—

Gotcha!

– – – – – –

“I can slow it down, but the inbuilt heater will compensate pretty quick—we'll have maybe three-quarters of a second.”

“Ready,” Kay said.

Jo sprayed the liquid nitrogen. Kay felt cold splash up to bathe her foot.

“Three . . . two . . . one—
go!
”

Kay sprang over the wall—

Jo landed beside her. The wall stopped the blast.

They exchanged glances.

Kay nodded.

Jo nodded back.

No time for more.

Both fems brought their carbines up and began firing—

– – – – – –

Sixty-three minutes . . .

Formentara looked over at Cutter. “Here it comes,” zhe said.

He knew, he was listening, but he nodded.

They had Vim's opchan:

“—scooter approaching, coordinates—”

“—the fuck did it come from? Where's the hole in the line—?”

“—Blue Squad, can you get a cam on that—?”

“—how the fuck did it get through—?”

“—Drone Operations, you got anything in the air close enough to intercept—?”

“—sir, but it will be right on your doorstep by the time I can shoot—”

Cutter listened, knowing what he knew, as Vim's troops tried to deal with something that didn't look particularly threatening but might well be.

How had the enemy found a spot to sneak this through? Well, it was easier if you were sneaking through your own lines and you knew where that was possible.

The fog of war. The uncertainty that came with bullets and bombs and enemies charging or retreating, You could never be sure exactly what was happening on the battlefield, no matter how many eyes and ears you had watching and listening. Never.

“—it's not on our list, Colonel—”

Vim's voice: “Okay, somebody needs to punch a hole in it, where is the recoilless thirty?”

Cutter said, “Okay. Now.”

Formentara didn't speak, just waved hir hands over the board. “Sent.”

Okay. Let's hope Vim's people are as good as he wishes they are.

Come on . . . come on . . .

“—R-30mm is lined up. Should I send a round and knock it down?”

Come on . . . Come on . . .

It seemed like hours passed in the next couple of seconds.

“Hold up, hold up! Don't shoot! This is Forward Sensors, Colonel, we have a radiation trail out there!”

“What kind of radiation trail?”

“Sir, it's transuranic . . . it's plutonium's sig. Some Lithium 6, maybe . . .”

“Say again, FS.”

“Sir, we have a weapons-grade-fissionable-material reading at these coordinates.” He rattled off a series of numbers.

“Is it that scooter?”

There was a long pause.

“Sensors? Don't dick around here!”

“Sir, I-I can't be sure. The sig and the scooter are in approximately the same location. Nothing else there. Got to be.”

“Shit!”

Cutter could appreciate Vim's predicament. There weren't any nukes allowed in this engagement,
absolutely not
!

Tactical nuclear bombs had been used only a few times legally in corporate dustups, and those on mostly empty moons in the middle of nowhere. The idea that there was one on Earth? Rolling toward his position?

Inconceivable!

But: If it
was
a little nuke in that rolling box? Holy
fuck
!

“Colonel, I have a bead on it, I can spike it—”

“—Negative, negative, Thirty, do
not
fire! Nobody shoots nothin'!”

Cutter nodded to himself. Same thing he would have said. A standard box nuke, you could blast it, because it wasn't going to go off unless the trigger clicked. Yeah, you'd spread radioactive material all over the place and you'd have to clean that up, but punching a hole in a nuke wouldn't light it. Unless . . .

. . . unless the scooter was rigged with an impact switch. There were all kinds of timers fast enough to detonate the bomb between the time the AP round touched the armor and it punched through.

If the box was rigged that way, and you hit it hard?

Boom . . .

“Somebody call the Monitors, right fucking now! How far?”

“Seven hundred meters from the main wellhead.”

“Fuck, fuck,
fuck
!”

Cutter felt for Vim. In this situation, there wasn't any good response.

“Out, now! Everybody, retreat, fall back to Beta Staging, now, right fucking
now
!”

It's what he wanted, but Cutter had mixed feelings about it.

Colonel Buckley had no choice. He had to assume the worst, that the bomb was there, that it was protected, that if it got close enough to the wellhead—and it might already be—it would detonate. Even a low-yield pocket nuke at ground level in this scenario would wipe out the wellheads and anybody in the open for a few blocks in any direction.

Troops under your command would die in a war, but to lose them all this way? That was futile, and no commander worth his own piss would allow that.

Of course, there wasn't any nuke, it was fake, the signature picked up by the sensors a clever implant Formentara had built, and that sig would disappear in a few minutes, no way to trace it to its source. Everybody would assume UMex and Dycon had come up with the ruse, but nobody would blame Vim because anybody with command experience and a couple of working brain cells would make the same choice. As long as there wasn't any actual nuke on the field, there wasn't a lot the Monitors could do about it afterward.

We thought it was a nuke!

And you were wrong. No rule against outsmarting you. Too bad.

It was a house of cards, but Vim couldn't risk his command. Cutter would have pulled his people out, given the same choice.

“Get to the choke point,” Cutter said. “Now all we have to do is keep Dycon away for a while.”

Forty-seven minutes . . .

The fake bomb was the easy part. Now, with less than a short company, Cutter had to hold off at least twice that many Dycon troops. Normally, they would get support, but given the bomb scenario, nobody would be in a hurry to move into the potential blast zone, at least nobody on their side.

For the plan to work, General Wood's monitoring crew had to know what Colonel Buckley's troops had done, and why, so she couldn't send her people in.

Dycon, not having a clue about the nuke they supposedly sent, would see Vim's troops pulling out faster than a teenaged sailor on shore leave. After a few minutes of wondering what the fuck was going on, they'd realize they could walk in and capture the objective, and they'd hurry to do that. Even if they suspected a trap, how could they pass it up? All they needed to do was be in physical control of the wellheads when the horn sounded, and they'd win.

The trick was to attack Dycon before they were through wondering what was going on.

“Colonel Cutter, this is General Wood. Where are you going?”

She knew full well, but this was for the record, and it had to stand up to what would likely be intense scrutiny.

“Colonel Buckley has lost his fucking mind! He's retreated from his position, the wellheads are unguarded! CFI is going to cut off Dycon's advance at the crossroads just north of here.”

“Negative. You need to stay away from the area surrounding the wellheads.”

“Say what?”

“Colonel, we have intel that indicates Dycon has a robotic nuclear device on the field. We don't know the yield of the weapon, we need the area cleared for a minimum of two kilometers.”

“A nuke? That can't be! The Monitors will crucify them! They'd all spend the rest of their lives in court!”

“Undoubtedly, but if the device ignites, we don't want our people there. Back off.”

“If it's a DC, outside a half kilometer is safe.”

“And what if it's bigger than a DC? You can't do it, Rags. You need to stand down.”

“It smells wrong, Zoree. It's got to be a fake.”

“Maybe. Probably. We can't take the chance.”

“Even if it is a tactical nuke, as long as we stay outside a klick, we're probably good. We head them off that far out; otherwise, they just waltz in and take it!”

“Too risky.”

“What are the Monitors doing about it?”

“They are investigating.”

“By the time they figure out what's going on, we will have lost the fucking war. Sorting it out later might take forever.”

“I'm sorry, nobody wants to win more than I do, but that is the situation.”

He let that lie.

“Rags? You there?”

“My com is acting up,” he said. “Say again?”

“Don't do it!”

“General Wood? I can't read you. Must be the damned trees. We are almost in position and well outside tactical-nuclear-blast radius. General Wood?”

“Dammit, Colonel, do
not
—”

That should be enough for the record.

He shut off his link.

“Okay, people, let's get set. Company is coming, and we need to make sure they don't get past us.”

Forty minutes . . .

– – – – – –

Kay caught a glimpse of Grey as the enemy troops approached, in vehicles and on foot. He was running fast, he was too far away, and then he was lost in the dust before she could get her sights lined up on him. At this juncture, in a frontal assault, she'd have plenty of other targets. No finesse in this situation, it was going to come down to who shot better, who was steadier, who was willing to hold or give ground.

– – – – – –

Jo stood by the medical crawler with Wink, watching the dust as the opposing army approached. “Stay inside the crawler,” she said.

“Sure,” Wink said. “Absolutely. Biggest target on the field, first thing the assholes shoot at, every time.”

“A live doctor is useful,” she said. “A dead one, not so much. Although in your case it might be six to one, half a dozen to the other. And don't say, ‘You wound me.'”

He grinned. “Well, you do, you know. Be safe, Jo.”

“I'll try.”

Twenty-six minutes . . .