Until Relieved (17 page)

"Just about ready, Slee," he said over the radio. "Soon as they button in a new battery."

"About time," Slee replied. "I was about to fall asleep." Then he regretted the statement as a gaping yawn forced its way out. Sleep.
What's that?
he wondered.

—|—

The last half hour of the night march was sheer misery for Joe Baerclau. It wasn't that his ankle continued to bother him. Indeed, his right ankle felt fairly good. But he had been trying to ease the burden on it, and
that
had put more strain on the rest of that leg, and the other, and walking unnaturally had caused his knees to stiffen up and brought a growing ache to his lower back. But Echo and George companies had finally reached the bivouac areas that the recon platoons had found for them, scattered through two deep gullies and a patch of thick scrub forest where the two gullies met. There was water, and there was cover, all that an infantryman could ask for. Back near the head of the longer ditch—it averaged about nine meters deep—there were several small caves. Captain Ingels had moved into one of them. It would be his headquarters through the day. Another was turned into a dispensary for the soldiers who had been injured on the march. At least the caves were dry and unoccupied. No local beasties had come charging out to voice their displeasure at company.

"Come on, Sarge," Al said once the squad was in position. "I want the doc to have a look at that ankle of yours. You been limping something awful the last couple of klicks."

"Don't mind me," Joe replied. "The ankle doesn't hurt. A couple hours of rest and I'll be good as new."

"I hope so, Sarge, but I'll feel better knowing for sure, and so will you."

Though his mind instinctively rebelled at the suggestion, Joe didn't resist. After two steps, he no longer even tried to shrug off Al's help in moving. It was not very far from where Joe's squad had settled in to the cave that was being used as a dispensary.

"Doc" Eddies, Echo Company's senior medtech, wasn't really a doctor, but his training had gone far beyond that of the medics in the various platoons. The Accord Defense Force had provided him with eighteen months of medical training, enough to qualify him as a licensed medtech in civilian life once he completed his contractual three years of service following training. The 13th only had two physicians, both surgeons, although there were additional medical personnel assigned to the fleet ships that carried the 13th. But Eddies was qualified to handle anything short of invasive surgery, and with the availability of portable trauma tubes, that was rarely needed.

There were three men ahead of Joe, men whose injuries appeared to be worse than his. Doc Eddies was working on another, a private from the heavy weapons squad whose knee had been injured in a fall. Al had a quick word with Eddies, then came back to where Baerclau was sitting, propped up against the rocks outside the cave.

"It'll be a few minutes, Sarge, but wait it out."

Joe nodded. By this time, he ached enough that he would wait, if only to get something to ease the pain in his legs and back. "Tell Ezra he's in charge till I get back," he said. Then he switched over to his noncoms' frequency and told Ezra the same thing directly. "Get everyone settled in. Tell them to get what sleep they can. One man alert at all times to pass on anything we need to know."

—|—

Colonel Stossen palmed the stimtab almost as skillfully as a magician, and used the excuse of covering a yawn to pop the lozenge in his mouth. Major Parks noticed but showed no reaction. Seeing Stossen take another reminded him of his own exhaustion. He had been sucking stimulants at least as often as his boss. Neither of them had managed twelve hours sleep total in the last hundred. Parks thought of taking another stimtab himself but decided to wait... for a few minutes at least. He was well beyond safe dosage already, and an extreme overdose could produce quite unpleasant side effects—physical and mental—though nothing critically dangerous to the body.

"I don't know whether I'm coming or going, Dezo," Stossen said after nearly a minute of silence. Exhaustion pressed on him like a weight, making even the simplest action more difficult. The two men were sitting facing each other, Stossen leaning back against a tree cone with his legs stretched out in front of him, Parks cross-legged, leaning forward just a little. "I know I need sleep, but..."

"We both do, and so do probably ninety percent of our men," Dezo said. "Well, maybe it's not quite that high now. Things have been quiet long enough to let a lot of them catch up." Somewhat. No one really found much rest in a combat zone, even when they had the time and the quiet. Minds simply refused to let go enough to allow deep sleep. "Why don't you take four hours now? I can hold on that long, and then maybe I can get a little shut-eye after you've rested."

Stossen hesitated for quite a time before he shook his head slowly. He was having trouble thinking through even the simplest statement.

"Not yet. I want to make sure that George and Echo aren't hit at dawn." As if he might be able to do anything if they were. Stossen looked up at the sky. The east was beginning to show a little light, even to bleary eyes. The strike force was farther west. Dawn would be nearly thirty minutes later for them than it would for the rest of the 13th. "And the Havocs. What's the latest from them?" Stossen grimaced mentally. He had completely forgotten the artillery that he had sent to rendezvous with George and Echo.

"They've all gone to cover for the day. According to Lieutenant Ritchey, they're in a wooded area, cover not as good as he'd like it, but probably adequate." No gunnery officer was ever satisfied with the available cover. "The guns are under heat tarps. No mechanical breakdowns, no sign that the guns were spotted at any time during their run."

"How far are they from Echo and George?" Stossen knew that he should remember that bit of data, but it just wouldn't come to mind.

"About twenty klicks," Parks said quickly. "Close enough to bring their guns to bear in a hurry in case the strike force is attacked."

"What are we missing, Dezo?"

Parks took a deep breath. "We still haven't located the troops that the Heggies moved out of Porter City. At least five thousand, maybe twice that number. They've gone to ground somewhere, but the spyeyes haven't been able to find them yet. Either they're somewhere we haven't looked, or they've got cover too good for the eyes to penetrate."

"In other words, they could hit us with almost no warning."

"It's possible. That's always been possible. But it's also possible that they're waiting to see what we do, just making sure that they don't have all their eggs in the same basket. If they haven't spotted either element of the strike force, they might keep on waiting. That could be either good news or bad."

"What's your best guess?"

Dezo shook his head. "I don't know that I have one. Just no data to build an intelligent guess on. Worst case, those troops could be sitting somewhere waiting for us to attack Porter City, waiting to pincer our strike force the way we did the Heggies from Maison. I think that's what I would do under the circumstances."

"Are we ready for that?"

It was Parks's turn to shrug. "With everything we have. Whether or not that will be enough is another question. It depends on how hard they hit and how much warning they give us. We get the Wasps in as quickly as possible. If it's just the infantry spotted, we also have the Havocs chime in. Then, if necessary, we can move another company or two of infantry down as quickly as we can get shuttles in and loaded—say, eighty minutes with a little luck." That was an overly optimistic estimate, depending on the ships being in perfect position for immediate deployment of the shuttles, but Colonel Stossen would know that as well as Parks did.

Stossen rubbed at his cheeks with both hands. He needed a shave. From the feel of it, it must have been two full days since his last one. He could not remember. For a moment, the idea of appearing less than ready for a parade distracted him, worried him.
Too many years as a garrison soldier,
he told himself.

"It's no good, Dezo," he said finally. "I have to have some sleep or I'll drop. Not knowing about our relief..." He never finished that thought. Even with a partially dissolved stimtab in his mouth, Van Stossen fell asleep. Parks propped a pack next to the colonel to keep him from falling over, then moved away. If only he could guarantee Stossen all the sleep he needed.

—|—

By four o'clock that afternoon, Joe Baerclau could almost forget that he had hurt his ankle the night before. There was no pain left, not even when he flexed the ankle as vigorously as he could. He even felt rested, for the first time since landing on Porter. Doc Eddies had hit him with a sleep patch, without telling Joe what it was. That sleep had lasted for four hours, but Joe had slept on naturally, for two more hours. He hadn't even remonstrated with Ezra very strongly for not being wakened sooner.

"I guess I did need the sleep," he conceded. "How about the others? And you?"

"We've all had our share," Ezra assured him. "Captain put us all on one man on duty from each fire team. I guess we're all in better shape than we've been since the first morning here."

Joe nodded, still not fully alert. "We'll probably need that before this night's over."

He got up and stretched, then sat back down and ate a meal pack. When he was finished with that, he walked farther along the gully to where Max Maycroft was sitting.

"How's the ankle?" Max asked.

"Good as new. I miss anything important while I was out?"

Max shook his head. "We'll be moving shortly after sunset. I don't think we're going to wait for full dark. Have a seat and pull out your mapboard, and I'll show you the current plan."

Joe sat and pulled the map computer from the long pocket on the right leg of his uniform. Max took it out and unfolded it. He dialed up their current coordinates a little more quickly than Joe would have been able to. Max had done it several times already.

"This is all assuming that the Heggies don't find out where we are and attack before we can get moving," Max said while he was adjusting the field of view on Joe's mapboard.

"First recon is out on their own. They left three hours ago. Just about full dark, they're supposed to hit the power-collecting station here." Max pointed at a spot near the westernmost reaches of Porter City. Recon types claimed that they did not need darkness to cover their movements.

"Their objective is to cause just enough damage to put the center off-line. Can't really tell about them though. They might get too eager. We don't want to bash it so bad as to inconvenience the legal residents for any great length of time. I suppose that means that the Heggies will have it working again in a few hours." He made a gesture of dismissal with one hand. The strikes that the Wasps had made against the capital's power stations the morning of the landing had not kept those stations off-line very long.

"Not our concern. The idea is to get the Heggies looking that way. As soon as we get word that the reccers have done their job, we'll attack these barracks here. Supposed to be no more than six-hundred Heggies left in that kaserne. The rest were part of the force that they moved out of the city. At the same time, the Havocs are going to target these buildings here, fairly close to the center of Porter City. CIC estimates that those buildings contain the Heggie headquarters for the entire planet. Maybe that's so. Maybe it isn't. And maybe there'll actually be a few brass hats around their headquarters late at night. The Wasps are going to hit several locations as well, hit and run."

"Sounds as if you're not real thrilled about this," Joe observed.

"Between you and me?"

Joe nodded.

"I'm not. There may still be twenty thousand or more Heggies in and around Porter City, and we don't know when we're going to get any relief. The rest of the regiment is up on the plateau, too far away to do us any good if we need help. We could find ourselves in one hell of a bind before morning, with no more ammo and supplies than we've carried with us."

"I almost wish you hadn't told me all that," Joe said softly. He looked at the ground between his feet for a moment. When he looked up at Max again, he said, "Well, they never told us it would be easy."

"We
do
get in and out in any kind of order, we move west, back into this miserable country," Max said. "From the maps, it looks as if what we walked through last night was easy compared to some of the rest. We draw off Heggies, fine. We're supposed to keep them busy, even if we have to run our asses off to do it."

"How long?"

"Far as I can tell, until our relief shows up to cover our evacuation from Porter. That's the only real provision the captain talked about. We have to keep an eye out for potential LZs in case we get the word to pull out in a hurry."

—|—

There were five buildings in the kaserne, all two stories high. Three were of stone or brick construction, the others had wood siding and appeared to be new, most likely built since the Schlinal takeover of Porter. With one building at the far end of the compound, and two buildings on either side, the remaining side of the rectangular compound, facing west, was open. The entire area was surrounded by razor wire, and there was only a single gate through the perimeter, on the north side of the kaserne.

The Schlinal occupying force appeared to be extremely lax in their security measures. There were no guard towers along the fence. Apparently, the wire was the only real defensive addition to the compound. There were no alarm systems planted on the approaches to the kaserne. A recon squad went over the area with their detectors and without finding a single bug that could give the garrison warning. Nor were there mines planted to wreak their own brand of havoc on intruders. There were only three guards posted to cover the two exposed flanks of the compound, with two more guards stationed at the gate. None of the guards seemed to be particularly alert. Joe watched with his power binoculars as the guards were taken out by specialists from the recon detachment, just as the Havoc bombardment started to hit other parts of Porter City.