Until Relieved (20 page)

Trusting more to hand signs than even the secure radio links they shared, Joe showed the others what he wanted to do.

"No use waiting for sunrise," Joe muttered finally. He sucked in a deep breath. "Now!"

Joe yanked the door open and used it to shelter his body, hoping that he was right about the strength of its construction. As soon as there was an opening, Mort started shooting out into the corridor, Kam tossed out a grenade, aiming it in the other direction, then pulled back. Joe pushed against the door, putting his weight against the power of the hydraulic rod that was intended to close the door slowly.

When the grenade exploded, the shock pushed the door back against Joe, but not with enough force to do any harm. He yanked on the knob again, opening it wide this time. Mort moved forward, dropping to his hands and knees as he threw himself out into the corridor. He dropped and rolled across the floor and came into a prone firing position as if that were the most natural maneuver in the galaxy.

Kam was more awkward going out to cover the corridor in the other direction. He slipped and fell forward hard, but he caught himself on his forearms and hands and was only a fraction of a second slower than Mort in getting his rifle up into firing position. Both men sprayed short bursts toward their respective ends of the hallway, and while they were firing, Joe and Al moved out into the corridor with them, going only to their knees. Joe was behind Kam, and Al was behind Mort. With four rifles, they could hope to meet any weapon that might come out of any of the doorways that lined the hall in both directions.

Ezra brought his men up and out then. Joe assigned one fire team to move in each direction. There were eight doorways, other than the one that led to the stairs, on that level. They had to check every room,
clear
every room.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Eustace Ponks was beginning to feel almost comfortable slithering along on his belly. He was nearly able to forget that this was a deadly serious affair. Almost. Nearly. A continuing pressure against his temples and the hollow ringing in his ears helped to isolate his thoughts. Childhood memories touched at the edge of his awareness, games played with his two brothers and with the other children who lived in the neighborhood—neighborhood: an area perhaps as much as three kilometers in radius; homesteads had been somewhat isolated where Eustace grew up. Eustace and his friends and brothers had played at soldier quite frequently. Both brothers were also in the Accord Defense Forces. Ellis was a navigator aboard a transport. Ekko was an electronics technician, maintaining computers at one of the home ports of the fleet. Playing soldier as kids, the greatest triumph of all had been to sneak up on one of his mates and "count coup," get close enough to be able to claim a "kill," or just to scare the daylights out of the victim. Everyone—everyone
else
—would get a tremendous laugh out of that.

Now, he couldn't just yell "Boo!" or go "Zap! Zap! You're dead." This was real. The winner would live. The loser would die.

It must be just one Heggie,
Ponks told himself. It made no sense, but he hoped there was only one, some luckless sap who somehow had managed to get separated from his unit. A man who could do that might get careless at the wrong time, like now. Although Eustace was looking for reassurance, he didn't take his own thoughts too seriously. He would not close off options, would not assume that it
had
to be merely one man. There might be a dozen of them. But no matter how farfetched it sounded, or how many times he warned himself to expect the worse, he came back to thinking that there must only be one man—two at the most. If there were more Heggies, they would be bolder, he thought. They would be on the prowl, looking to finish the job they had started when they disabled Basset two.

Eustace stopped moving and lay in what was as close to absolute silence as he could get. He held his breath for as long as he could, and even closed his eyes for a moment, as if that might sharpen his hearing. The ringing in his ears was no longer a strident blanket over all other sound, but there was still... almost a hollowness, a void that might conceal the minimal sounds he might need in order to find the enemy—before they found him. Eustace had no night-vision visor to his helmet. Seeing: that advantage would belong to the Heggie. Eustace had to look for
his
edge with the other extended sense, hearing... and his hearing remained questionable. Eustace's hearing was far from perfect under the best of conditions. In certain frequencies, he was more than half deaf from his years in the artillery. Background noise would blank those frequencies out completely. Against silence, it was never that bad. Still, after that explosion... he couldn't be sure yet what additional damage his hearing had suffered. The sounds he was listening for might be there, and he might not be able to hear them.

He strained against the moment when he would finally have to suck in air, hoping to get some clue to the position of his enemy first. Now that he had had some time to think, Eustace did have some idea where his own crewmen had to be. Though he had no helmet display to draw on, he thought that he had worked out approximately where they would be found. He could see the outline of the Fat Turtle in his mind. He knew where the other hatches were, and the most likely angle for each man to run as he got down. They had done quite a few evacuation drills in training, and everyone got into habits, patterns.

Finally, Eustace could hold his breath no longer. It was almost impossible to take a breath quietly after holding it for so long, but he did the best he could. Then he took two more breaths, less frantic. Then he held it again. Maybe this time he would hear something. With every minute that passed, his hearing
should
be improving, recovering from the transitory effects of the blast.

At first, he still heard nothing that was not obviously natural. Then, almost at the point when he would have to take another breath, there was just the lightest rustle. If he had been concentrating any less, Eustace might not even have noticed it, or might have written it off without thought as a normal background noise. But there was that slight rustle, not of grass or leaves in the wind, but more of cloth against cloth.

And he had the direction, or thought he did. The sound had come from farther away from the Havoc, far from where any of his own men might be.

I guess I've got some hearing left after all,
Eustace thought.

He started crawling again, more slowly than ever. He stopped to listen after each twenty or thirty centimeters, waiting for a repeat of the sound. After creeping a total of about three meters, he went absolutely still again, looking in the direction of the slight noise he had heard—perhaps ten minutes before.

This time, the wait was shorter. Again, he heard no more than the slightest noise—a breath this time, too much air sucked in at once, close enough that Eustace was able to tell almost precisely where it had come from, distance as well as direction. There was a lump on the low horizon, just in front of him. The soldier lying there—not five meters away—was looking off toward Eustace's right, at an angle.

Now, is it an enemy or one of my own men?
Eustace asked himself. Though he thought that the figure had to be a Heggie, the question was inescapable. A mistake was unthinkable.

The helmet?
Eustace stared, trying to determine if the figure on the ground in front of him wore an Accord gunner's helmet or an infantry helmet. The only sure way to tell that in the dark would be to spot a visor—which artillery helmets did not have in the ADF—and that would be difficult if Schlinal helmets were as nonreflective as those the Accord infantry used.

Move, you bastard!
Eustace thought, trying to force the figure to move by sheer willpower. But the figure on the ground did not lift his head or turn it enough to give Eustace a better view of the front of the helmet.

Eustace was too near to risk calling his crew over his helmet radio. This near a potential enemy, even a whisper would give him away. A millimeter at a time, he brought his pistol into position, ready for a shot the instant he was certain of his target. The matte-black finish of the gun would not reflect anything. There would be no way anyone would see the gun until the flash of a shot.

How's your patience?
Eustace only thought the question he directed toward the figure lying on the ground in front of him.
I bet I can outwait you.

He had to.

It might have taken another ten minutes. Eustace could not check the time and he did not trust the estimates his mind waffled over. Something just short of eternity. There was simply no way to be objective about that under the circumstances.

But the head did move eventually. It raised up, no more than five centimeters. That was enough. The silhouette Eustace saw was a helmet with a face visor, and that meant that it was not Simon, Karl, or Jimmy. Anyone else had to be an enemy.

Eustace fired once, at the line where the helmet met the body. The noise of the shot startled Eustace, even though he was expecting it. But the shot was accurate. The figure in the dark jerked back and up as the RA projectile hit bone and exploded. Eustace had already fired again by then. The figure jerked once more, twisting halfway to its left. The entire head seemed to fly off of the shoulders. Then the body fell flat again and was still.

"Eustace?"

"Yeah, Simon," Ponks replied. "I got one. I think that's all there is, but there's no way to be sure. Karl? Jimmy? You both there?"

He was relieved to hear both men reply.

"You see the gun flash?" Eustace asked next. "Move toward it. Be careful though, just in case there's more of 'em. I'll double-check the Heggie I got and make sure he's really done for." There was little question about that. Without a head, the man had to be dead.

—|—

Kam Goff was in a corner of the room, puking again. He had started retching so hard that he was unable to stay on his feet even. He was down on his knees, the top of his head pressed against the corner. There was no longer anything to come out, but he couldn't control the heaving spasms. Joe Baerclau stood by the door, not looking at Goff, but staying close. The rest of the squad was elsewhere on the second floor of the building, away from this scene. The room Joe and Kam were in was on the far side of the building from the continuing action. Joe was not particularly concerned with stray fire. That would have a lot of concrete and stone to go through to get to them.

I don't think you're gonna last in this business, kid,
Joe thought. The shake of his head was almost unnoticeable. He could picture a variety of sequels. Goff might make a foolish move and get himself killed. He might simply go to pieces and have to be invalided out for mental problems. Or he might swallow his zipper—kill himself.

Until Goff could be moved back up to the ships, Joe knew that he would have to continue to pay special attention to the rookie, just to keep him alive until he could get help. The therapists that the ADF had were supposed to be good.

The building was secure. The rest of the buildings in the kaserne would soon be taken or destroyed. The heavy weapons squads of the two companies were pouring rocket and grenade fire into the three remaining buildings now. There would be no more room-to-room hunts. Twenty prisoners had been taken in this one building, and another thirty Heggies killed, in a barracks that appeared to have been home to more than three hundred. Prisoners were a problem on a mission like this one. They could not simply be killed out of hand, but they would be an impossible handicap once the strike force left the city and tried to remain undercover, intact, in the broken country west of town.

Joe thought that he could guess what Captain Ingels would do. The prisoners had all been disarmed and had their radios and body armor removed already. Once George and Echo companies got far enough away from the city, the prisoners would be turned loose to make their way back to their own people the best they could. The captain might even be creative enough to have their boots taken from them to slow them down. With any luck, that would keep them out of action for several days—finding their way home, and then recovering from a long hike with little water and no food.

It might be stretching decency, but it was more humane than shooting them.

"Take it easy, Kam," Joe said when Goff's retching eased off for a minute. "Take a couple of deep breaths, then wash your mouth out. It's over for now."

"Won't nothin' take the taste of this away, Sarge," Goff said, his voice weak. He did not turn to look at Joe, but he did lift his head up off of the wall. Joe watched while Goff followed his instructions. Kam rinsed his mouth out and spat the water on the floor. Twice. Then he took a short swallow.

"Time to get up and get a move on," Joe said. "Sounds like the fight's over outside. We'll be moving out soon." There was no harshness in his voice. This was too serious for drill instructor tactics. Joe rather liked Goff. It was too bad that the rookie seemed to be totally unfit for this work—too bad for Goff as well as for the squad, the platoon. But some people simply had no business being soldiers.

Goff got to his feet slowly, using his carbine as a crutch.

"I've turned out to be a total waste," Goff said when he finally turned around. His face was so pale that Joe wondered, briefly, if he might pass out. Kam did not lift his eyes to meet Baerclau's gaze. He bent over to reach for his helmet. It had rolled away from him, and away from the pool of thin vomit in the corner.

"I just can't hack it, Sarge. I try, but..."

"Some people can't," Joe said. He couldn't lie, not about that. "There's no shame in it. Let's just get through this mission, kid. You'll be okay then. They got folks to help people, back up on the ship."

"I should live so long." Now, finally, Goff raised his head so he was looking straight at the sergeant.

"Don't give up on yourself. You'll make it if you just hang in there. Remember, it's never until
after
the shit is over that you react. Not until it's
over
. That's all that's important."