First to Fight (31 page)

“Why do you think it’s safe to wait a half an hour?” Clarke asked.

“They’re probably several kilometers away. Unless they want to make a long charge straight at us, it’ll take them a couple of hours—or longer—to get into a position to do anything.”

That explanation satisfied Clarke and everybody else. Even if it didn’t fully satisfy Bass himself.

Thirty-five minutes later, one by one, they slithered on their bellies from the shade into the gully. Then, bent over, they trotted the several hundred meters to the next outcropping. From there they had a very good view of where they had just been. Bass put two men in covered positions watching their back trail and another man watching their rear; the watches changed every two hours. He let the others sleep. He kept watch himself. The day passed uneventfully. At a half hour before sunset, Bass and Schultz were the only ones who hadn’t decided nobody was out there, so they were the only ones who weren’t surprised to see a dozen figures creeping up on their earlier position from the rear.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

A hopper sped Captain Conorado back to New Obbia. He looked in on the men of third platoon where they were temporarily billeted in one of the government building’s cafeterias, but didn’t enter the room. He didn’t have to count heads; the brief glance he took told him there weren’t nearly enough Marines in that cafeteria.

“Where are the rest of your men?’ he asked Ensign Baccacio.

Ensign Baccacio looked a bit green. He swallowed. “They’re gone, sir. The Siad . . .”

Conorado waited expectantly, but when the young officer didn’t continue he crooked a finger at him and led him to the room that was designated as his temporary office.

Conorado sat behind the desk in the room, but didn’t offer a seat to Baccacio. “Tell me about it,” he said.

Under Baccacio’s air of discomfort was a touch of something else. “There’s not much to tell,” he said. “During the afternoon all-hands, a flight of Raptors hit Tulak Yar.” Conorado blinked at Baccacio’s mention of the all-hands but didn’t interrupt. “The Raptors made several strafing passes over the village. They killed a lot of people and set off fires all over the place. Then several hundred Siad horsemen charged into the village and killed more people.” He shook his head. “We took our defensive positions as soon as we saw the Raptors coming. When the Siad attacked, we tried to fight them, but the way they were mingled among the people, it was hard to do much damage to them. When most of the villagers were dead and the rest fleeing, the Siad attacked our positions. We beat them off, then I ordered a withdrawal.”

Conorado drummed his fingers on the desktop for a moment, then said, “Tell me about your casualties.”

“Two men killed, three are in the infirmary—two of them had to be brought back in stasis units. There are other wounded, but they’re walking wounded. They’re with the rest of the platoon.’’

“Who was killed?”

“McNeal and Lanning.”

“Who’s hospitalized?”

“Kerr, Ratliff, and Goudanis.”

The only sign of Conorado’s mounting anger were his raised eyebrows. “Two dead and three serious casualties? I looked in that cafeteria. You’re missing a lot more than five men.” He held up his hand to stop Baccacio from saying anything and sat silently for a moment that stretched into several moments, watching his third platoon commander struggle to not fidget. Finally he said, “You let a bunch of savages straight out of the gunpowder era chase you off.” He shook his head. “Now. Tell me about the circumstances of your withdrawal.”

Baccacio’s discomfort vanished and what had only been hinted at below it came to the fore: confident arrogance. “We had been severely bloodied by the Siad. I had ten men dead, including the Bass patrol, three severely wounded, and many of the others were also wounded. The Siad feinted a retreat to lure us into an ambush where they could finish us off.” Conorado’s eyes widened slightly at the way Baccacio’s story was changing from what he had first said, but he didn’t interrupt. “The villagers were all either dead or scattered,” the young officer continued. “A medical evacuation hopper was at least half an hour away. Help was farther away. I ordered my men into the Dragon so we could get out of there before the Siad came back and finished what they started.”

Baccacio brought himself to an erect and rigid attention. “Sir, I wish to bring charges of willful disobedience of orders in the face of the enemy against Sergeant Wang Hyakowa. When I gave the order to withdraw, he opposed me. He swore at me and threatened me. I had to draw my side arm and place him under arrest before he could rally any of the men to his side.”

He had more to say, but Conorado interrupted him. “Let’s go back to your dead. You say you had two men killed at Tulak Yar. The battalion medical officer only has one body, Lanning. Where’s McNeal’s body?”

Baccacio didn’t even flinch. “Sir, we didn’t have time to collect it.”

“Then how do you know he’s dead?”

“I saw him in the open. A group of Siad horsemen trampled over him. I never saw him again.”

Conorado splayed his hands on the desktop for a moment and stared at them. When he looked up, he asked softly, “How do you know they didn’t take him prisoner?”

Baccacio swallowed but couldn’t find anything to say.

Conorado didn’t let a silence stretch this time. He immediately asked, “Then you said you had ten men dead, including the Bass patrol. Tell me about that.”

Baccacio grimaced. “Staff Sergeant Bass had a patrol out, testing the UPUD. I don’t know how they found them, but the Siad got to them.”

“How do you know that?”

“I tried to raise them on the radio and got no response.”

The captain’s neck muscles tightened and his jaw worked as he struggled to keep himself under control. When he spoke again, there was no mistaking his anger. “Mr. Baccacio, there are circumstances under which the UPUD Mark Two will fry its insides. One reason for that test was to see how likely it was to happen under actual field conditions.”

“Sir,” Baccacio blurted, “nobody told us that !”

Conorado nodded—a slow, rigidly controlled nod. “That’s right. The test wouldn’t have been valid if the testers knew about the potential problem.”

The company commander sat leaning back in his chair for a long moment, drumming his fingers on the desktop. “I’ve already read everybody else’s reports, Mr. Baccacio,” he suddenly said. “They’re all telling the same story, and their story is at variance with yours. The squad leaders, the surviving fire team leaders, and Corporal Manakshi all agree that the Siad had suffered about fifty percent casualties and were in full flight. Manakshi wanted to pursue, and you bodily removed his driver from the Dragon’s controls so he couldn’t. The villagers weren’t all dead or scattered, at least not according to Doc Hough. He said there were many civilians waiting for his attention. He even volunteered to stay behind to give aid to them, and you refused. According to everyone, there was ample time between the end of the fight and your withdrawal to retrieve McNeal’s body—if indeed it was there. Beyond one radio call, you made no attempt to contact or locate the Bass patrol.

“Mr. Baccacio, the way I read all the other reports, you fled in the face of a defeated enemy. You abandoned men in the field. There is no worse dereliction of duty that can be committed by a Marine officer. Rest assured, there will be a court of inquiry. Unless new evidence appears, I will urge that court of inquiry to recommend a general court-martial for you.” He stood abruptly. “Confine yourself to quarters, Mr. Baccacio,” he said as he stormed out of the office.

Ensign Baccacio stood rigid, his face blanched, his eyes wide and staring at nothing. He didn’t seem to be breathing.

“Wild Bill,” Conorado said, entering the command center, “bring in your UAVs and refuel. I’ve got a new mission for you.”

Sergeant Flett shook his head. “No can do, sir. We’re grounded.”

“What do you mean grounded?”

“Someone’s jamming us.”

Conorado looked at him incredulously. “Who could be jamming you here? This planet isn’t that technologically advanced.”

“That may be so, Skipper, but somebody’s using as sophisticated a jamming system as I’ve ever seen. I can’t control my birds in flight, much less get any images from them.” It was his turn to show incredulity. “It’s so sophisticated a jamming system, we aren’t even getting good resolution on our images from the string of pearls.”

Bass watched the Siad warriors and wondered if they were the only ones, or if there were more nearby. He bitterly wished he had a motion detector, or satellite communications, even his helmet with its infra goggles to get a better look at the landscape. If the Siad he could see were alone in this area, he and his Marines could take them out. If there were others nearby, though, it could easily be a different story. Of course, that would depend on how many there were. Or if any ran off to alert a larger group. This situation was too much like the first day, when the UPUD Mark II committed suicide and the first band of Siad came past. The best thing for them to do might be nothing, let these go their way as they had the horsemen, and then surreptitiously continue on without alerting anyone that they were there.

While Bass was thinking that, the Siad completed their approach to the outcropping. Suddenly, with war cries that were clearly audible even at more than three hundred meters, the Siad leaped to their feet and ran around to the north side of the outcrop, firing their projectile rifles in a wild and ragged fusillade that ended even more abruptly than it started. He watched as the Siad darted about, yelling. Some of them threw their arms into the air; a few fired shots at the sky.

“You’re slick, Staff Sergeant Bass,” Claypoole said. “We really faked them out.”

“What do we do now?’ Dean asked. “They’re in range and they’re just standing around. We can get them easy from here.”

“Where are their friends?’ Bass replied.

Schultz nodded. He wasn’t watching the Siad who attacked their earlier position, he was looking around for others.

Dornhofer saw the puzzled expression on Dean’s face and said, “Maybe that’s an isolated group. If it is, you’re right, we can take them. But if they’re out in force looking for us, shooting just tells them exactly where we are and all of them can come after us. Just like what would have happened two days ago if we’d shot the first horsemen we saw.”

Dean didn’t say anything to that.

“We wait and see what they do,” Bass said. “Then we decide what we do.” Seeing what the Siad did included watching for more of the nomads. He assigned men to a 360-degree watch; he kept watch on the ones he knew about.

“Do you think they’ll find our tracks and follow us?” Dean asked.

Bass slowly shook his head. “I kept an eye on the ground while we were following the gully. It looked pretty hard. I didn’t see any tracks left by the men ahead of me. Hammer, how about you?”

Schultz shook his head; he hadn’t seen any footprints either.

“But this is their land,” Bass cautioned. “They might see things we can’t.”

Just then one of the Siad gave out an excited cry. He pointed into the gully where it passed the outcropping, then dropped into it. The others raced to him.

“They can see things we can’t,’’ Bass murmured. “Neru, how many of them can you get with one burst?”

The gunner looked at the Siad. Nine or ten of them were standing bunched together next to the gully; the others were out of sight inside it. “Right now, maybe all of them.”

“Do it.”

“Aye aye. Clarke, spot for me.” Neru quickly set up his gun on its bipods and took aim. Clarke lay down next to him, an extra battery in his hand, ready to reload the gun if Neru expended the battery in it. “Wish I had a spare barrel,” Neru muttered.

Bass nodded wryly. No need to carry weight that they wouldn’t need, he’d thought. Well, he’d thought wrong and there was nothing to do for it now.

“Ready?” Bass asked the gunner.

“Ready.”

“Fire.’’

Neru pressed the firing lever and a stream of fiery bolts shot through the air in an elliptical cone. The bunched Siad collapsed. He released the lever.

They waited. After a few seconds a thin keening came toward them; at least one of the Siad was wounded, not killed.

Bass grimaced. A nonlethal hit at that range was a horrible wound; it left a man disfigured and crippled—if he didn’t die a lingering death from the injury, or go into convulsive shock and die from that.

A Siad jumped out of the gully and ran toward the wounded warrior. He didn’t make it. Schultz calmly took aim and shot him. “Only one or two left,” he said.

“Right,” Bass said dryly. “And we’ve got to take out that one or two so they don’t get back to others and set them all on us.”

“What if . . . what if there are more close enough that they heard the gunfire?” Dean asked.

“Then they’re already on their way.” Bass looked at his men. “Everybody, stay sharp. Watch all around. Dornhofer, you’re in charge. If anybody pops his head up, take him out. Hammer, you come with me. We’re going to get them.”

Schultz didn’t wait for further orders. He darted to the gully and into it.

Dornhofer realized that with Schultz already on his way, Bass didn’t have any time to spend on further preparations. “I’ve got everything under control, boss,” he said.

Bass took off after Schultz. He had to race to close the gap, and even running as fast as he could without exposing himself, they were halfway there before he caught up.

It was a wasted effort. The Siad survivor—or survivors—was gone.

“Look, there’s a track,” Schultz said, pointing. “We can follow him.”

Bass shook his head. “Probably not very far. Remember, neither you nor I saw the tracks we made. The Siad spotted them right off. This is their land. Their tracks will be harder to spot than ours. Let’s get out of here. We have to leave this place now, before he comes back with his friends.”

Schultz didn’t speak or nod, he just turned back.

“We’ll be harder to track at night,” Bass said. He wasn’t sure if he was telling Schultz or was trying to reassure himself.

When Bass and Schultz reached the rest of the patrol, the eight Marines set out as fast as they could without running. By nightfall they were two kilometers away from the scene of the fight. Bass looked back into the dying embers of the day. He couldn’t see any moving figures silhouetted against the setting sun. Darkness made them slow their pace, but they kept it as fast as they could manage.