In the Valley (30 page)

There was a low wall in front of Paul that he was about to step over when the antiarmor round detonated behind the two men. Z was thrown to the side;
Paul was thrown over or tripped over the wall; he wasn’t sure which. He cracked his head. Maybe he was out for a bit; maybe not. He jumped to his feet and kept moving forward.

He noticed Bashir was in front of him, kicking in the door to a house. Bashir was no fool; they needed to get into cover immediately. Right then, Paul noticed a streak of light out of the corner of his left eye. It was a tracer round, ricocheting off of the cliff to his left.

His halo was keeping a tally. Twenty-seven rounds 7.62 mm ball in your close proximity in the last thirty seconds, it said. The round count kept going up.

Paul and Z dived into the stone house after Bashir.

The house was built soundly; Bashir had made a good call. The gunfire and racket continued outside the house while Z and Paul hastily cleared it. It wouldn’t do for their new base of operations to have a few dissidents lurking in the corners. No one was home.

A few more Juneau soldiers came in—Z just about shot them. Fortunately, he caught himself just in time. Unbeknownst to Paul, however, they were about to have bigger problems.

Paul was getting ready to ping the colonel with a situational report (SITREP) when the loudest noise in the world and a huge blast grabbed the men in the house and shook them, like a dog shaking a dishtowel.

Paul didn’t remember much after that, except for looking into Z’s eyes and thinking, This is it—this is how we died. Dust and rocks fell from the ceiling, blanketing the two men. Paul waited for the structure to fall in on them.

But the stout building held. Paul stood up, shook himself, and helped Z up. More explosions sounded nearby, but after that last one, he barely noticed. In fact, he hardly heard them. Later, upon reflection, Paul decided that he lost a little of his hearing just then.

But for now, he still had a mission, and he had a colonel to call.

“Five…Five, this is Two-Three with a SITREP—over.”

The colonel popped up in his visual; he was looking at something other than Paul’s image, and rather intently at that.

“Go ahead, Two-three.” The colonel raised his rifle and fired it at something.

“Five, be advised: we are pinned down in a house on the hill; you have my coordinates.”

“Check, Two-Three, having some problems down here too—over.”

“Five, we have sustained some casualties coming up, unknown status—break. Lot of explosions in our immediate vicinity—over.”

“Roger, Two-Three, very busy right now; relay through One-Three Mike.” One-Three Mike was First Company’s medic, Stork.

Paul looked on his halo feed and saw that Stork was lying behind a low wall, somewhat in the vicinity of the colonel. Shit was really hitting the fan. Where the fuck were the shuttles? Paul decided to leave the house with Z-man and go forward to look for himself at what was happening.

They moved with haste through the doorway and into the shadow of another building, where some Juneau soldiers were covering down.

Right then, Paul was greeted with a sight he would never forget—a pair of shuttles moving through the valley so low that they were flying
beneath
Paul and Z. Hoorah, Paul thought, the cavalry is here.

Bashir joined them behind the building. “This shuttle—it will shoot the enemy?” For once, he dropped the honorifics and spoke plainly.

Paul looked at him. Bashir looked unruffled, as usual, but he did look intent. “I think that’s the idea, Bashir, my friend.”

Paul clicked off the halo’s projectile sensor. All it was doing was freaking him out. He decided to call Stork. “One-Three Mike, this is Two-Three.”

“Two-Three, go ahead.”

“Do you have any idea what the plan is with the shuttles, One-Three Mike?”

“Wait one, Two-Three.”

In the meantime, with a little poking and prodding, the Juneaus behind the building were persuaded to move out. The advance continued, and Z-man stayed busy. Paul answered halo calls and coordinated some of Bashir’s troop movements. The attack moved forward; the fire seemed to slacken off.

Stork came back up in Paul’s visual. “Two-Three, I have the plan from the colonel; he’s a little busy right now.”

“Understandable, One-Three Mike. Give it to me.”

“Roger. The colonel says the shuttles have dropped an AD bot in the valley behind the house. He says that, no matter what, you can’t let any of your men back there.”

An AD bot? Wow, the colonel must really want to kill these guys, Paul thought.

An AD bot was a really nasty weapon. Years ago, people had tried to replace live human soldiers on the battlefield; they really had. It turned out that robot soldiers were fine in situations where you really wanted to kill everything that moved with a weapon.

The problem with that was that many times the decision to pull a trigger required a massive amount of split-second decision making and huge amounts of discrimination. What if the guy with a weapon didn’t have an identifiable uniform? What if he was wearing a “friendly” uniform but was not really friendly? What if it was a kid or a pregnant woman defending her house?

There were a lot of variables involved in killing. Battle robots were fine for genocide, really, but they sucked in human conflicts. They just killed too much or not at all.

The AD bot had come from these attempts to replace human soldiers. It was an area-denial weapon—hence its nickname. The AD bot resembled a suit, but without a human operator. It had a strict set of protocols it operated under. Usually, its orders were to shoot to kill at anything armed unless whatever it was had force transponders.

In this case, the colonel had ordered the shuttles to deploy the AD bot as a readymade blocking force behind Maktar’s fortress. The guys up on the hill didn’t know it yet, but they were dead men walking.

Of course, if any Juneau soldiers got into the bot’s range fan before it was deactivated by the shuttles, they were dead too. Therefore, it was important that Third Battalion’s men did not get into range of the thing.

Nervously, Paul brought up his halo’s transponder icon. It was green. God be praised, thought Paul. When he passed along the info about the AD bot to Bashir, Bashir flashed a feral grin and pinged his men. No one was to be walking behind Maktar’s hill if they wanted to stay breathing.

The bad guy’s backdoor was now closed, but there were still an unknown number of assholes on the hill. And Second Company had to go up there.

Suddenly, an icon appeared in his visual. It was an overhead scan from the shuttles! They must have gone into a racetrack over the team’s heads and were
providing real-world feeds again. Paul breathed a sigh of relief; he was glad to be out of the Stone Age of infantry combat.

He looked at the feed and saw the team’s groundcars coming up the valley. Paul couldn’t remember anyone ordering them forward, but he was glad they were here. The feed flashed Crest’s info from earlier in the fight when Paul and company had been out of comms. The groundcars they had left behind had had quite a trip when they moved up to support. During the brief lull, Paul looked at what had happened through Crest’s eyes.

Sergeant Crest was pissed. There was no micro feed; he could hear lots of gunfire in the valley ahead, and he had been left behind to babysit what he saw as odds ‘n’ sods. His company, the first, was advancing into unknown dangers without him. He was fuming. And without decent halo comms or micro feed, he was blind as well as deaf.

So far, the topography of the Hesar Valley had more or less nullified the force’s vaunted technological superiority. The situation had been FUBAR ever since he had missed those assholes on the ridge, as far as he could see.

Suddenly, a halo transmission came across the net. There was no visual, but there was audio. It was garbled, to describe the transmission charitably, with lots of intermittent static: “Three…sustained casultie…pinned dow…over…Many explosions…vicinity—” The feed went out again.

It sounded to Crest like his brothers were in deep shit up ahead and needed help. Yeah, he had been ordered to sit tight and wait on the call, but what if the colonel had called, and Crest hadn’t heard it? It was time to make a decision.

“All stations this net, this is One-Four.”

Each force vehicle responded.

“Listen up, everybody; the guys up ahead are in heavy contact, and we have no comms. Three-Three, I say we move up to support,” he said, appealing directly to Crusty.

Birthday broke in. “One-Four, we have no authorization from Five.”

Crest rubbed his mustache and ground his teeth. “Birthday, we have no comms. They could have called a hundred times by now. You heard Thompson: they are taking casualties and are pinned down. I say we move up to support!”

Crusty threw in his two cents. “Right on, brother! Let’s move!” Without asking anyone else, Crusty threw his vehicle into drive and started up the miserable excuse for a road toward Kanaghat.

Crest figured, piss on Birthday; if he wanted to sit back by himself, than that was fine with him. He ordered his driver, a mechanic who had been seconded to the team, to move out, and they fell in behind Crusty.

Birthday, who really, really didn’t want to be left behind by himself, fell into trail.

Two kilometers down the road, Crest wished Birthday had stayed back at the ORP. The road was treacherous, filled with large stones and surrounded in places by low rock walls. It was just barely big enough to fit the groundcars. To make matters worse, the Hesar Creek, a fast-running and rocky body of water, bordered the western side. The groundcars threatened to fall into it at any number of locations.

The comms, as the groundcars neared the scene of the fighting, were becoming clearer. Crest’s call to come up and lend support by fire was starting to look like the correct one. At that point, while trying to negotiate a sharp upward bend and turn in the road, was when Birthday’s groundcar lost traction and slid halfway into the creek.

“Help me, guys; I’m stuck!” Birthday broadcasted. Crest swore. They were almost there, but yet they couldn’t leave Birthday’s groundcar all by itself, stuck halfway off the road and into the river.

The next half hour of Crest’s life was a nightmare of screaming men, pulling cables, gunfire, and malfunctioning equipment.

Finally, Crusty said, “Screw this! I’m driving this fuckin’ piece of shit through the river!” He dislodged Birthday, who had been driving, took over, and hauled ass down the creek, water lapping at his feet.

Crest watched the process in amazement. He observed with an open mouth as Crusty bounced through the river, found a low spot on the creek bank, and pulled the truck back up onto the road. It was an impressive piece of driving.

“Are you assholes coming?” Crusty said, with his usual degree of tact.

Crest saddled back up in his ride, and the three-ground-car convoy formed back up and rolled toward the sound of the guns. They proceeded to drive through buildings, hit walls, and climb steep banks to get to the fighting. The Juneaus on the road often had to scurry out of their way.

Finally, Crest had line of sight on the fortress. His halo flashed a threat warning onto his visual: an antiarmor rocket had been shot in their direction. It detonated harmlessly short of their position.

Fools, thought Crest. His halo had locked onto the rocket’s point of origin. His sighting visual dropped his red chevron right onto the target. Crest thought, “Fire!” and his guns spoke.
Bum bum bum
went the grenade launcher.
Crump, crumpcrump
went the sound of the explosions on the hill. With an overhead feed and halo accuracy, the dissidents in the fortress were about to learn a painful lesson, if any of them survived.

“One-Four, this is One-Three.” Mike was calling.

Crest answered, “Go ahead, One-Three.”

Mike’s face appeared on Crest’s visual. “Welcome to the party, assholes; eat a dick.” He wore a shit-eating grin and had his cat-eyes look. Mike was in his element.

His curiosity satisfied, Paul clicked off the feed. Second Company, after a painful pause under the fortresses’ guns, was moving forward again. It was time to take Maktar’s hill.

Crest’s automatic grenade launcher would tear those assholes up while Second Company moved under fire.

Paul did wonder why the shuttles hadn’t simply fired a Hadesfeuer into the fortress. He would find out the answer later, he guessed. For now, he had to help Bashir chivy some very unwilling Juneaus upwards and onwards. Most of the soldiers were like Bashir; recklessly courageous. But there were always some who needed some motivation.

“Move, asshole!” Paul directed a Juneau soldier toward the hill. The entire Second Company was swarming up the hill and converging on Maktar’s fortress. Paul and Z panted with the exertion of the climb. They had moved under the fire coming from above; the bottom of the hill provided cover for the assaulting company. Now, they just had to move fast to get to the top before Maktar’s men had the chance to react.

Brrrrop!
Paul’s blast-deadened ears picked up on a different-sounding burst of fire; it seemed to come from behind the hill.

Paul smiled and checked his shuttle feed. What he suspected was right. Maktar’s fighters had begun to flee the fortress and had run into the AD bot. He wondered how long it would take them to figure it out. Second Company had to move fast and get into the fortress before the bad guys could figure out there was no escape.

Paul and Z pushed toward the top. As they came into view of the fortress, only desultory fire came in their direction. The groundcars below had effectively suppressed the fires that had shot them up so badly an hour earlier.

Paul figured they were going to take this hill. He was straining to climb under the load he was carrying, but he kept pushing upward. Every now and then a burst of machine-gun fire would come their way, but the groundcars would target the fire immediately.

About three-quarters of the way up the hill, organized resistance from within the fortress seemed to stop. Every now and again, Paul would hear the high-pitched whine of a burst from behind the hill. The AD bot was doing its deadly work, blocking Maktar’s escape route.