First to Fight (23 page)

“Negev, Bass,” Baccacio repeated. “He didn’t say anything about prisoners this time. He said Negev. We fry them.”

Bass kept his eyes fixed on the ensign’s as he flicked on the company command circuit. “Question for Six Actual, this is Three Four. Do you still want a prisoner?”

Conorado’s voice came back immediately. “Capture all of them if you can, but don’t hesitate to kill as many of them as you have to. I want at least one prisoner. I say again, I want at least one prisoner.”

“I hail them,” Bass said after signing off.

Baccacio glared at him.

The Marines within hearing studiously avoided looking at them.

The chemical reaction explosions from the gunfire the Bos Kashi were directing toward the Marine observation post that had them pinned down, combined with the crackling of shattered masonry from the Marines’ blasters, kept them from noticing the noise of the approaching Dragons, so the vehicles were able to get as close as Bass wanted. When Foxtrot Six radioed that it was in position, Bass gave the order to dismount. “Squad leaders, you know what to do,” he added.

The squad leaders did know, and in fifteen seconds the men of third platoon were under cover and deployed, facing the Bos Kashi who were still pinned down by OP Golfs fire.

As soon as Bass assured himself that his men were in position, he filled his lungs and bellowed, “Bos Kashi, you are surrounded by Confederation Marines. Surrender and you will live.”

“We are Bos Kashi,” shouted back a defiant voice. “We do not surrender. We kill!” More gunfire erupted from the Bos Kashi, but Bass’s voice had echoed off the walls, so they couldn’t tell where he was and their bullets went wild. Bass was about to order one fire team in each position to return fire when more gunfire broke out behind his other unit, and he heard Eagle’s Cry over the radio:

“We’re being hit from the rear by a force of unknown size. I am redeploying to face it.”

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

“Kerr, can you move?” Eagle’s Cry asked his first fire team leader as soon as he finished his report.

“I think so,” Kerr answered, but he didn’t sound certain. He’d faced projectile weapons before, but this was the first time he’d faced lead bullets without wearing body armor. “They don’t seem to be hitting near us.” They weren’t. The Bos Kashi attacking from the rear were concentrating their fire on the rear guard from second platoon.

“Stay low,” Eagle’s Cry told him. “Get to that building to your left, then go around it and see if you can flank them. We’ve got Recon Two. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything from them.”

“On our way.” Ken signaled to his men, Schultz and McNeal, and started crawling on his belly toward the house to his side.

McNeal looked across the rubble-littered pavement toward the building they were headed for, saw it was only twenty meters distant, then flattened himself on the ground and began following Schultz’s inchworming body. No sooner had he started than a bullet cracked over his head. He’d thought he was already flat on the ground, but the nearness of the projectile made him somehow hug it even closer. He crawled and crawled, scraping his face so close to the pavement he thought he might never have to shave again. He pressed his chest, belly, and thighs so tightly to the ground he was certain he was fraying the material of his uniform right off his body.

When he felt that he’d gone far enough to be well behind the building, he raised his head to look for Kerr and Schultz. Kerr was on his feet, hunched over, looking around the building’s far comer. Schultz was a few meters behind the fire team leader, on one knee, looking back and grinning at McNeal.

Schultz pumped one fist up and down in the “Hurry up” signal. “You taking a nap back there, McNeal?’ he called. “Get a move on.”

McNeal groaned—he had covered only half the distance.

The crack and sizzle of Marine blasters was louder than the bang and zing of Bos Kashi bullets, building blocks cracking thunderously from being hit by Marine fire almost completely drowning out the whine of projectile ricochets. The sounds told McNeal that the Marines had the upper hand in this firefight. They had to, didn’t they? Didn’t they? Still, he felt more naked than he ever had in his life. Without thinking about what he was doing, he surged to his feet and reached the cover of the building in three rapid strides.

Still grinning, Schultz shook his head. “Good going, bright eyes. You just told them where we are.”

Hyperventilating as he was, McNeal barely heard Schultz’s words, but still managed to understand them. “But . . .” he gasped, “how did you . . . ?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Schultz said. “You get caught in the open like that another time or two, you’ll learn how to crawl fast.” He turned his head toward Kerr and added in a lower voice, “If you live that long.”

Kerr pulled back from the corner of the building and faced his men. He studied McNeal a brief moment, then decided the young man’s expression indicated anxiety and not panic. He was sure McNeal could work his way through the anxiety, and that it wouldn’t affect his ability to function. He gestured for McNeal and Schultz to come closer. Quickly, he shifted pebbles, chunks of masonry, and bits of wood to make a three-dimensional map.

“This is OP Golf.” He plunked down a broken brick. “These are the buildings lining the street, running away from it.” He laid out two parallel strips of scrap wood with one end at the brick. “This is first squad.” A scattering of pebbles went behind the far end of one of the wood scraps. “This is second squad.” Another scattering of pebbles behind the far end of the other scrap. “This is our building.” He touched the building they huddled against with one hand while the other placed a small chunk of masonry to the left rear of the second-squad pebbles. “Here’s the fire team from second platoon.” Three pebbles went into place farther from the strips of wood indicating the street; another scrap placed at an acute angle across their front showed the far side of the street the second platoon fire team was blocking; a chunk of masonry to the right front of the one indicating the building they were behind showed the next building over. “I couldn’t see anything around the building, but Recon Two reports there’s a squad of Bos Kashi here.” He scattered a few pebbles just beyond the second masonry chunk. “Recon Two doesn’t see anyone else, so we go here.” He used his finger to line a route behind their building and the next one to their right front. “Is that clear?”

Schultz leaned back from where he squatted to look beyond the building. He saw the next building, and how to get from here to there. “Got it,” he said.

McNeal also looked, and nodded.

“They have us outnumbered two or three to one,” Kerr continued without expression. “They have projectile weapons. We do not have body armor. No prisoners; we fry them. They are dead. Do you understand?” He looked directly at McNeal as he spoke.

McNeal wanted to answer yes, but his throat was too dry. He tried to swallow so he could speak, but his mouth was even drier than his throat. He simply nodded. His hands gripped his blaster so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Let’s go.” Kerr stood bent at the hips and sprinted toward the far end of the next building. Schultz gave McNeal a push to get him going and brought up the rear.

The Bos Kashi gunfire was much louder and clearer here. Kerr had Schultz and McNeal stay in place while he slithered farther to precisely locate their target. He was back in a minute.

“They’re right over there,” Kerr said, pointing. “There’s eight of them. We can get behind that wall,” he indicated a low, masonry wall with breaks in it, “and have a clear view of their flank. Hammer, you see the break in the middle of the wall?” Schultz nodded. “That’s where I want you. McNeal, you see the break five meters to the right of that break?” McNeal looked at the wall and nodded also. “That’s your position. I’ve got the next break. When we get in position, the closest one of them will be less than twenty-five meters away. They’re bunched up in a short line. Hammer, you start with the near one and work your way to the middle. McNeal, you start in the middle and hit anything that moves. I’ll start at the far end of their line. When we open up on them, it’ll be like a bomb hitting in their middle. They should all go down in a hurry. Nobody shoots until I do. Any questions?”

“What are we waiting for?” Schultz asked.

McNeal merely shook his head.

“Me first, Hammer, and McNeal. Let’s go.” Kerr lowered himself to the ground and scrambled on elbows and knees. He reached the break in the middle of the wall in seconds and paused to make sure Schultz knew this was his position. Then he went five meters farther and placed McNeal, then moved on to his own position. He looked through the break in the wall and saw the Bos Kashi were still where they had been, then back to make sure his men were ready. Schultz was watching him for a signal to open fire. McNeal was sighting along his blaster toward the Bos Kashi. Kerr motioned to Schultz to take aim, then sighted in on his own first target.

McNeal had seen violence and death growing up on the streets of New Rochester. He’d seen death going through Boot Camp on Arsenault. But he’d never witnessed a killing, and had largely avoided the violence around him while he was growing up. The deaths on Arsenault were a suicide and an accident. This was the first time he’d ever set out to deliberately kill anyone, and the prospect made him tremble in horror. A weakness pervaded his body. His breath became rapid and shallow. His vision tunneled down until he could see nothing beyond the sights of his blaster and the hairy, fierce face of the man he stared at through them. It appeared to McNeal that the face was that of a man who had no fear, who had no respect for anyone but himself and his companions. A man who didn’t know what mercy was and gave no thought to those weaker than himself.

Abruptly, McNeal’s horror of killing was replaced by fear—fear of the man he was about to kill. What if he missed? What if his first shot didn’t kill that man? Surely, the Bos Kashi would turn on him and kill him, and his companions would slaughter Kerr and Schultz. He had to do this right, he had to, had to had to. And when this first man was dead, he had to kill the next man and the next man and the man after that. If he didn’t, he would be dead himself, and Kerr and Schultz would be dead and it would be all his fault.

McNeal was so tightly engrossed in these thoughts that he almost missed Kerr’s command through his helmet comm unit, “Fire!” It seemed to him that a long time passed between the order to open up and the time he could order his own fingers to press the firing lever and send a bolt of deadly plasma toward his target, but actually, he fired before the bolts from Kerr and Schultz reached their targets.

Instantly, he shifted his aim to the next man and blasted him, and then the next one and the next one and the one after that, and he kept firing and looking for more targets until suddenly his blaster was yanked out of his hands. He twisted his body, rolled away from his firing position, and reached for his knife as he leaped to his feet. He expected to see a bearded face, a skirted man attacking, and was instantly ready to defend himself.

“They’re all fried, McNeal, you can stop now, there’s no one left to shoot at.”

It took a moment for McNeal’s eyes to focus on the source of the voice, but its familiarity made him hesitate long enough to see it was Kerr. Then he collapsed against the wall and slid down it, to sag into a sitting position, wide-eyed and panting, feeling too weak to move. Did they do it? Did they actually do it? He was still alive—he thought he was, he was pretty sure he was. Did he do well enough that the Bos Kashi weren’t able to kill any of the Marines? Kerr was standing there and didn’t seem to be bleeding, so he was all right. But what about Schultz? Had his slowness in responding to the command to fire given the Bos Kashi enough time to kill Schultz? McNeal jerked and twisted to his right, terrified that he would see Schultz’s broken, bleeding body.

“We’re so good.” Schultz stood casually, looking over the carnage. “They were fried before they knew we were here.” He blew on the fingernails of his left hand and buffed them on his shin. His eyes narrowed to slits and he said harshly, “Nobody messes with Marines. Nobody.” He spun and started walking back toward the rest of the squad.

Kerr held a hand out to help McNeal to his feet. “You did good, Marine.”

McNeal accepted the hand. Standing, he took several slow, deep breaths to calm himself in the quiet sunlight. Suddenly, he cocked his head, listening. He didn’t hear any gunfire, no blasters going off.

“It’s over,” Kerr told him. “A whole platoon of Bos Kashi is either dead or captured.”

While McNeal was getting his baptism of fire in the flanking maneuver against the Bos Kashi attacking the rest of second squad, Dean and Claypoole got theirs against the Bos pinned down by OP Golf. They too were outnumbered by the Bos Kashi, but not by nearly three to one, and there were many more Marines surrounding them. They hadn’t felt the weight of the fight as heavily as McNeal had, and they stopped firing on their own when their part of the small battle was over. Still, they’d all fought in their first action, acquitted themselves well, and survived.

Then the shooting was over and Doc Hough, the medical corpsman assigned to the platoon, was doing his best to save the one wounded Bos Kashi who survived the one-sided fight.

Chan stood and looked over the carnage. “Claypoole, Dean,” he said, seeing their pale faces. “It was a good fight and you did good.” He looked back at the slaughtered Bos Kashi and softly added, “Anytime you survive a firefight and the bad guys don’t, it’s a good fight and you did good.”

Staff Sergeant Bass, supervising collection of the bodies and weapons a few feet away, was close enough to overhear. He knew better. He’d been in fights where he survived and the bad guys didn’t that he couldn’t call good fights and say he’d done good. His feeling was that a leader does good only when he brings all of his own men back, alive and uninjured. Casually, he took in Chan and the others. Dean and Claypoole were looking intently at Chan, absorbing his words. What the lance corporal had to say seemed to hearten them. Bass nodded to himself and said nothing as he turned back to the killing zone and returned his attention to policing the bodies and weapons. Chan wasn’t quite right in what he’d said, but Bass knew that anything that helped a man make it through the aftermath of killing was right and good.

Elsewhere, at the same time third platoon went to the aid of OP Golf, a section from the assault platoon leveled two buildings in support of OP Delta. So far as anyone could tell, all the Bos Kashi in them were killed. Flett and MacLeash located the mortar team that had opened the fighting, and a navy Raptor attached to Admiral Willis’s provisional FIST struck from the sky, killing it and its crew.

On the outskirts of the city a platoon from the provisional FIST that consisted of technicians and clerks was attacked by a company-size group of Bos Kashi. The “cooks and bakers” platoon handled them easily and suffered only three casualties of their own—one dead—in breaking the attack. The fleeing Bos Kashi were caught in the open by a flight of Raptors and wiped out. Less than a half hour after its main body landed on Elneal, elements of Company L had maneuvered, faced, and killed more than thirty enemy soldiers while suffering no casualties of their own. They also took one prisoner, whose wounds might even let him live long to tell the Marines why the Bos Kashi had made the suicidal attack.