So far, the pattern was not obvious, for there were decoys and feints along with the more harmful assaults. All attention was focused on the disruption and the UN officers reacted to it as best they could. None had yet deduced that the attack was focused on communication and control paths.
Nor was anyone making the observation that the majority of the enemy was located on the planet, not out in the depths of interplanetary space. So far, this had been fought as a technological war, with the ground troops supported by massive artillery, air power and orbital strikes, all controlled from satellite and space-based assets.
Below on Grainne, along the Drifting River, several dikes rumbled as deeply placed charges damaged the structure. Previously compacted dirt, now loosened, collapsed and was swept away by the current. The berms heeled over into the water, slumping until waves spilled over the top. Trickles became streams, then raging torrents.
The artillery shells had been launched precisely; high angle for the first shot, sequentially decreasing charges and angles for the subsequent ones. There were few tubes, but they tossed a huge salvo upward in a few seconds.
Three vertols lifted out of the hills. They'd been hidden in caves, and slipped out of the trees unseen for now. Accelerating brutally, they angled toward the beginning carnage. One of the three was actually a cargo lifter with hastily improvised launch racks and munitions. It dragged slightly behind the other two, engines straining. It dropped lower for cover as the two Hatchets rose for tactical advantage.
"What the hell?" The UN satellite commo tech jerked upright from his slouch. The data on-screen made no sense. He shoved his coffee and food aside and began pulling data.
"What do you have, Will?" Colonel Upper Grade Andropos asked from across the aisle as he snatched a headset and comm to get into the loop.
"Nothing," Will answered. "Something's screwed up. Give me a few moments."
"What's nothing?" Andropos probed again.
"Just vej and fucking wait, okay? This doesn't make sense."
A disciplined soldier would have reported the inconsistency immediately. A disciplined soldier would not have spoken to an officer in that fashion. But the commo tech was very protective of what he considered proprietary information. It was seconds later when he finally and reluctantly admitted his findings.
"I've lost satellite feed, that's all. Gotta be something fucked up somewhere."
Andropos spun and asked, "
All
the feeds?" He punched through channels and confirmed that as correct.
"Yeah. Damn piece of shit system," Will groused.
The ground rumbled and shook slightly. There was the sound of distant thunder and a flicker of power.
"They've killed the satellites!" Andropos shouted, suddenly aware of the danger.
"It's just a system glitch, okay?" Will replied, turning. "I'll fix the fucking thing if you just back the fuck off!"
A salvo of shells landed within milliseconds of each other. The concussions from the explosions shattered equipment, slapped the technicians into the sides of the vehicle and destroyed gear. There came the howl of low-flying aircraft and the rattle of small arms.
Andropos tried to access tactical data, map data, any kind of data. His technological tools had been obliterated and his command technology had taken a dive almost five hundred years backward, to when line-of-sight radios and observers provided intelligence. He had no observers in place and a garbled roar came through his speakers. He was effectively blind. A second salvo slammed into the ground and he rode the shock wave, unable to regain his feet. He waited impatiently for the shakes to stop, then struggled upright. A small but close explosion tore the door off the hinges and heavy bootsteps clunked through.
"FREEHOLD MILITARY FORCES. SURRENDER OR DIE!"
Up on the ridge, the snipers and support weapon crews unloaded ordnance at a furious rate. Their targets were across the river, but were still within range. The snipers were focusing on crews for the weapons below, the hardened projectiles from their long, heavy fifteen millimeter rifles punching through bodies and armor and destroying gear. The shooters had literally been buried alive over the past three days, scanty rations at hand, lying silently in carefully dug positions or where necessary, camouflaged on the surface and waiting in their own filth, barely breathing. The strain would have been visible on their faces, were anyone close enough to see. It did not affect their marksmanship. Every time a UN soldier tried to mount a piece of equipment, that soldier died. The machinegun and missile crews jumped into preplanned position and aimed at only the few crewed vehicles and massed troops. Mortar crews sighted in on defiladed positions. To the south, Blazer teams crept forward from the river and the trees.
The Combat Air Control team called coordinates to the two Hatchets and scouts drew further artillery down on selected equipment. Their first priority was the UN armor. No armor could stand against modern firepower, but it was virtually unstoppable by lightly armed civilians. Tanks were great tools of oppression. Also a threat were the particle beam guns that could claw artillery shells from the sky. They could not be allowed to start shooting.
The cargo lifter dropped into the melee and furious supporting fire stirred the ground around it. Rob brought his Hatchet down in a twisting, rolling dive and chewed the area around it to plowed mud, every shell in a ten-meter-wide band, ten meters out from the vertol. He pulled into an Immelman and dusted an antiaircraft crew as he powered away. The fire lifted as the aircraft did, leaving more Blazers and Mobile Assault troops behind. Peeling off in twos and threes, they got behind the enemy and cut them down. A handful of lunatics drove combat buggies across the bottom of the ridge Kendra and the other infantry were to hold. Their light vehicles were loaded with deployable mines that spread across the ground to make an additional obstacle. Kendra and her unit had already set several thousand kilograms of explosives in the trees.
The UN headquarters was in utter disarray. All feeds were down and all wavelengths jammed so even coded and scrambled signals were garbled. There were fragmentary reports from nearby observers, but the reports did not make sense.
General Meyer, the UN 7th Division commander, spent several minutes assembling marginal data into some semblance of order and by then it was too late. He concluded it was an attack, but surely the rebels didn't have enough force to take his divisional position?
"Where the hell is that water coming from?" he demanded.
"The levees upriver have been destroyed, General," an operator told him, drawing in data.
"That's ridiculous," he objected. Or was it? Higher ground was to the east and the water couldn't rise fast enough to be a credible threat. And there were regular patrols through the bluffs. There was no way the enemy had more than a squad or two of observers up there.
"Have all sensitive equipment moved above the flood line. Then come back for everything else. Send three platoons up to Beta Five, and Seventh Squadron. That should hold against any rebel harassment. Send out an extra sweep of this area—" he indicated on the map "—and double all perimeter watches until we get the feed back. Looks like they're trying to scare us. We're going to get a bit of excitement," he concluded.
"Two Sentinels orbiting to the south," someone reported.
"That's odd. Why would the Jefferson AO be in our airspace?"
"Don't know. They're heading this way, though," was the shrugged response.
"Ask them for a data dump and have them wait. We might need the air support." The Sentinel was not an ideal close-support platform, but it would do.
"Change targets, change targets," Naumann ordered. There had been minimal casualties so far, but that was about to change. His command vehicle was loaded and he hopped in. Strapping down, he plugged into the comm and ordered his driver to advance.
The UN was retreating above the high-water line and his support weapons would hit from the south. There was no retreat north, with the river arcing in a huge bend and now flooding, which left the bluffs to the east, unless they simply rolled over him. They could, and he wouldn't be able to stop them. Hopefully, it would not occur to them as possible.
Cowboy landed in a hurry, unstrapped and sprinted to the waiting UN Guardian, nodding at the replacement pilot for the cargo lifter. The Guardian was not as well armed as a Hatchet, but it had excellent flight characteristics. And it was what was available. The Blazers already had it idling for him and set the stolen UN IFF transponder. "Coded," the sergeant in charge advised him as she saluted with a grin and sprinted for the cargo craft.
Eight Guardians had been captured intact and flight capable, with munitions for ground support already loaded. Some of the instruments were out—victims of smash-and-replace programming to override security protocols. He bypassed as much as possible, did a quick battlefield check and lifted. Rob McKay was orbiting waiting, and he joined him. The rest of their merry band was aloft in moments and they headed north, low and slow. The two "Sentinels" were simply stolen IFF transponders mounted on Hatchets. Had anyone bothered to look beyond the signal, they would have noticed that the flight characteristics were wrong. Rob and his wing had been sweating about that, but Naumann had been correct again; the enemy was generally incapable of thinking beyond the expected. It would be almost impossible for any UN automatic system to target them now. Manual weapons, of course, were still a threat.
The artillery salvo that hit near UNHQ was larger, if less precise and uniform than the initial shoot. The Freehold tubes had been joined by captured UN pieces and some undriveable but shootable armor. More than three hundred shells dropped howling from the stratosphere and without satellite support, local counterbattery fire only accounted for a fifth of them. A second salvo landed slightly farther north, then a third. It turned into a moving swath of death, driving the UN troops ahead of it.
Naumann didn't like what he saw. There weren't nearly as many artillery rounds available as he had predicted. Only eight Guardians had been captured, rather than the twelve he'd expected—one of the missile teams had gotten a bit too enthusiastic. He pulled the seven less experienced pilots out and sent them to threat assessment. The eight pilots he did use were perhaps the best close-support pilots in the FMF. That would help. "Cut half the tubes on the next five volleys, advance as planned, then cut to thirty-five percent fire after that. Keep them rotating to save force and make every fifth tube counterbattery. How is CAC coming?"
"CAC reports they will be designating targets in six segs," support control reported.
"Understood. Take care of the arty and armor first, then get them on the bluff," he ordered. He keyed his mike and said, "Infantry. Naumann. Air support will be there soonest. Hold position."
General Meyer was having problems of his own. The rebels couldn't have enough explosives and auto systems to keep this up for long, but he was taking serious casualties. There was nowhere to retreat, with the river on two sides and artillery rolling up from the south. He couldn't fight artillery without air support or modern counterfire. He
could
fight the rebel ground forces. But how many casualties would it take? He kept pushing his troops, trying to sound confident. Would they hold long enough to fight their way through? There was no contact of any kind with Jefferson, so he had to assume the airbase had its own problems. He ordered his remaining light mortars and vehicle cannon to target the hillside from the bottom. That should clear a hole through the mines and hopefully take out the troops behind them, too. He sent a wave of drones up, risking their loss to get intelligence. He had to know what was up there. He demanded intel from every unit, camera and vehicle, and tried to lay out a counterattack.
Buried in her hasty position, Kendra heard Naumann's advisory.
Hold how long
? she thought. There were a
lot
of UN troops down there, with a lot of vehicles. Most of those had served weapons. It would turn into a bloodbath if it became supported infantry attacking a numerically inferior force of grunt infantry.
She watched from her position. It was a hollow dug in the earth, a web of netting and twigs over a woven polymer mat and a layer of sandbags as rests and cover. The tiny portable monitors showed the automatic weapons arming. The first echelon detonated, sending out hypervelocity shrapnel in an arc like a circular saw. Bodies cut in half collapsed in heaps, some wriggling in brief agony before finally dying. The UN forces momentarily stopped, then spread out to flow around her. "Station Three, this is One. Data sent," she advised as she dumped the video into the net. Incoming intelligence from other stations showed a huge force massing. There were far more enemy than anyone had anticipated and they had no air or arty support yet. She frowned and overrode automatic for the second echelon. She triggered the mines from outside in, to channel the dismounted troops for greater casualties. Gouts of mud erupted skyward and UN soldiers ran to avoid the carnage. Her reinforcing squad took aim at any vehicle and she ordered them to choose targets toward the outside first. "This is One. Engage automatics from the outside, say again, engage toward the middle of your position. Cut them into as many bits as possible," she ordered her other two squads. This was going to be unbelievably bloody.
She chose now to launch her three drones, laying a bisected V across the zone. The drones dropped sensor mines that armed on impact and split the approaching force into two pinned groups and two small groups of stragglers. She directed automatic fire and the drones over them. The drones sought movement and targeted. When they exhausted, they detonated, adding more bodies to the toll.
The forward elements hit her first perimeter, well up the slope and in the trees, and the M-67 Hellstorm system tore them to pieces. Fragmentation mines, direction-seeking concussion, and anti-armor mines blasted across the landscape in a dark gray pall of mindless death. On one of her monitors she saw an Octopus mine trigger, leaping through the air, sensacles waving until it brushed a horrified, retreating soldier and detonated. The screen went blank as the camera was destroyed by the blast. It cut to the second perimeter camera. "Left support, drop your loads and retreat to Line Two," she ordered. There was a flicker of confirming indicators and of charges arming, then her attention swung back. "Reserves reinforce the right," she ordered as she switched frequencies and continued. "This is One. Go to manual and do as much damage as you can, then switch back to automatic. Prepare to engage on ground. Hold positions as long as you can. We will retreat toward the east and south as necessary."