Side Show (25 page)

The Heggies started to look at one another, uncertainly perhaps. Then one of them started to bring up his rifle.

"Take 'em!" Dem shouted. "Now, now, now!"

From behind Dem, six zippers fired at the stalled truck and the Heggies around it. Two reccers got ready to lob grenades, into and over the truck, to take care of any Heggies they couldn't see. On the left side of the cab, Fredo had his rifle out the window firing. There wasn't time for any of them to fire a full spool before they were past the enemy truck. None of the Schlinal soldiers had much chance to return fire. Twenty meters past the stalled truck, Dem shouted, "Hold on!" and spun the wheel in a hard left turn. "Make sure they can't radio ahead."

He hit the brakes. Before the half-track came to a complete stop, Dem had grabbed his own rifle and was out the door shooting. Fredo was out on the other side. Three of the reccers in the back of the truck were on their feet, shooting over the cab, while the rest dismounted.

"Grenades," Dem said. "Plaster them." He pulled a fragmentation grenade from a pocket and popped it straight into the back of the other truck. That half-track shook at the explosion. Dem was certain there would be no one left in it to radio ahead that they were coming. Six reccers advanced carefully toward the downed Heggies, rifles ready but no longer being fired. The other three stayed high, in their truck, covering the rest.

All of the Heggies—there had been nine of them—had been hit. One very short burst of wire from Dem's appropriated Schlinal rifle put the truth to his summary: "No survivors."

None of the reccers questioned what their sergeant had done.

"Let's see what we can salvage," Nimz said. "And get back on the move."

—|—

"Ain't there
any
way to get us better dope, Lieutenant?" Gunnery Sergeant Ponks pleaded over the radio. Lieutenant Ritchey was somewhere in the area, about two kilometers from Basset two. "There's Novas around, somewhere. I'd sure like to know where they are before I've got a one-thirty-five shell coming up my butt."

"We'd all like better TA," Ritchey replied. "But we're getting everything CIC and the Wasps can get for us now. There's no more to be had. Just keep your eyes open. Anyone sees anything, they'll sing out so the rest of us know."

"Will you, please, at least
ask
if they can get us any more?" Ponks was on a private channel with Ritchey, so he wasn't worried about how his pleading might sound to his own crew or any of the other gun commanders. As long as the conversation was private, he would do anything he could to—maybe—get what he wanted.

"I've asked, I've begged," Ritchey said, exasperation creeping into his voice. "Just make do with what you have."

"Yes, sir." Eustace realized that he could go no further.

"We're still on our own," he said after switching back to his gun channel. "They can't get us any more eyes."

"The Wasps will be back in the air in a minute," Simon said. "We'll have them spotting for us again."

"Yeah." There was no joy in the word. "Jimmy, how we doing on ammo?"

"Still got six AP and three HE," Ysinde replied. "We'd best start looking for Rosey pretty quick." Rosey was Rositto Bianco, the crew chief for the support van that serviced them.

"Okay," Ponks said. "I'll give him a call, see if he's clear enough of the fighting to fill us up."

Since the support units had moved away from the fighting, as had the Havocs, it was just a matter of arranging a rendezvous and heading for it. Once the Schlinal armor had been driven off, the balance of risk and value had tilted against the Havocs. Infantrymen were poor targets, while the Havocs were easy pickings for any mudder with a rocket. Only once in a ten-minute drive was there a fire mission for the Fat Turtle. They altered course just long enough to shoot an armor-piercing round at a Nova that had been spotted by a Wasp.

A dozen men of the Havoc security detachment were posted in a loose perimeter around the support van before Basset two reached it. Jimmy and Karl popped their hatches and got out to help move ammunition from the truck into their ammo rack.

Eustace opened his hatch and stood but didn't get out. "Better top off our fuel tanks too, Rosey," Eustace called toward the crew chief. Bianco grimaced. Ponks had done his shouting into his microphone.

"You having any problems?" Rosey asked.

"Purring along. Growling whenever they find us something to growl at."

"Keep it that way," Rosey said as he waved two of his men toward the fuel lines. There were two tanks, one with hydrogen and the other with water. The H
₂
would provide immediate fuel. The H
₂
O would keep the Havoc's converter supplied, separating hydrogen from oxygen. "I'd hate to have to do anything more than patch a tread. Hard to fix these beasts on the move."

"I heard that," Ponks agreed.

By that time, the work was done. Jimmy and Karl buttoned up the rear hatches. Rosey's men were recoiling their fuel lines.

"Good hunting!" Rosey shouted as Eustace lowered himself back into his seat.

Safe
hunting, Eustace thought as he spun the lock on his hatch.

—|—

Zel hadn't
wanted
to watch his Wasp take off without him, but when the time came, he couldn't look away. The pilot who had been forced to eject from his own Wasp was flying Zel's now.

"We've got five pilots and four planes," Major Parks had explained. "In a way, that's a break. We can spell all of you flyguys, get you a little rest and still keep all our birds in the air."

Zel hadn't said anything. He knew why he was the first man being spelled. Everybody thought he was coming unglued.

Maybe I am,
he conceded after his Wasp disappeared from sight.
I certainly came close enough.
After it was over, his emotional outburst had troubled him. It was out of character. He wasn't surprised that he had worried Roo enough to send the crew chief looking for help.

If we'd had a spare pilot then, I'd probably have been grounded for the rest of the mission,
Zel thought. Now...

"Better get in the truck, Lieutenant," Roo said. "We've got to get moving again."

Zel nodded and climbed into the support van. Being an officer did earn him the spare seat in the cab. And Roo had decided to take over the driving to keep from being relegated to the back of the truck. He was a sergeant and the regular driver a corporal. Rank still had its privileges.

"Where to, Chief?" Zel asked once the truck was moving.

"East, that's all they tell me, Lieutenant," Roo replied. "We're supposed to keep out of the way of any Heggie mudders."

"Sounds like a good idea." Zel was holding a carbine between his legs now. He knew how to use it. Pilots had never been required to master the Armanoc, but after the 13th's last campaign, Zel, and most of the other flyers, had made a point of doing so, spending time on the firing range whenever they could. A number of them had been turned into temporary mudders on Porter when they ran short of planes and, eventually, out of ammunition. It could happen again.

"Always a good idea," Roo said. "An' we've got to stay handy for the birds."

Several minutes later, Zel said, "I
hate
having somebody else fly my bird."

Roo turned his head just enough to look at Zel out of the corner of his eye. "Why not try to get a little rest, sir? That's the whole point of this. Lieutenant Carney will take good care of her."

Zel closed his eyes, but he didn't sleep. He was too keyed up.

—|—

The men of Echo's 2nd platoon were boarding their APCs when they came under fire again. This time it was close. At least two squads of Schlinal infantry were within thirty meters. They had remained down when the Heyers arrived before the platoon. And they had waited until half of the men were inside the vehicles.

Joe Baerclau was standing next to the rear hatch on his Heyer, pushing men in, hurrying them along, when the shooting started. Carl Eames was between Joe and the shooters. Carl was hit, many times, and fell against Joe. Carl's weight almost carried the sergeant to the ground, but Joe managed to heave the private into the Heyer before he dove for what little cover there was available.

From the ground, Joe flipped the hatch closed. Wire ricocheting inside a mixer could be gruesome. Before he could get his own zipper into action, several of the splat guns were firing—two of the turrets and one forward gun. That cut down on the Heggie fire immediately. A grenade exploded in front of Joe's APC. A little dirt and debris showered down on him, but the Heyer's armor was enough to stop the shrapnel.

Then all three Heyers started to move. Joe and the other men who were still outside got behind them as the mixers headed toward the line of Heggies in the grass and trees off to the side. The rest of the splat guns on the vehicles started firing.

Joe looked from one side to the other to make sure that everyone was moving with the vehicles.

"Careful," Joe said. "Let's get this over with fast. You men in the mixers. Start coming out, one by one. We need your guns out here."

The APCs weren't moving fast enough to make that difficult. As the men emerged, Joe and the squad leaders directed them to places in the line. Not many had made it out before the Heyers reached the Schlinal line.

Most of the Heggies tried to run. Not many made it.

"Okay, turn it back," Joe ordered as soon as he saw that the firefight was over. "Medics, get to the casualties. Al, you've got one in here."

Joe got in and knelt next to Carl Eames. The big farm boy was conscious, but his net armor and fatigues had a lot of holes in them. Much of the camouflage pattern was hidden by the red of blood.

"Hang in there, kid," Joe whispered, but it didn't do any good.

Carl's eyes remained open, but he was dead before Al Bergon got to him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Disengagement was not simple for the 13th, and it was costly. Breaking away from the fight cost more men than all that had gone before in the series of skirmishes.

"Where did they come from?" Van Stossen asked his staff once the 13th was on the move.

"All we have are guesses," Bal replied. "Nobody saw them. Nobody reported another regiment missing from the lines facing the rest of our people. That means either we simply didn't spot them being pulled or they were never in the lines. I think that's the more likely answer."

"If intelligence missed one regiment, they may have missed more," Dezo pointed out.

"Hold on a second," Stossen said. "How confident are the two of you about calling this force a regiment?"

There was a long delay before Bal finally said, "Not at all confident, Colonel. We had no chance to get good numbers, except on the tanks. It seems certain that there were at least two battalions of tanks. In Schlinal TOs, that usually means a regiment of infantry." TO: table of organization, the bean counter's view of any military unit.

"We certainly didn't face
more
than a regiment," Teu said. "It might have been less. All small-unit engagements. A single infantry battalion could have handled that. Or two."

"Which means that even conceding that we faced a Schlinal regiment, we didn't face all of it," Kenneck said. "In their TO, a regiment usually has three battalions of heavy infantry, one of light—not quite comparable to our recon units, two or three battalions of armor, and whatever ancillary units they might have along, like engineers or special purpose troops."

"Often one more battalion of infantry," Dezo said. "A Heggie regiment can come close to double the manpower of an SAT."

"Without an air wing," Kenneck said. "Their Boems are organized separately."

"What you're telling me is that we might be heading into another ambush," Stossen said. "That there could be from one to three more battalions of infantry and another battalion of armor we haven't even seen yet."

"That's about the size of it," Kenneck admitted. "We're doing what we can to get more information. The fly-guys are doing what recon they can, but Schlinal thermal protection is very good for their Novas. If the tanks are lying doggo under tarps, there's little chance for us to find them unless we know exactly where to look."

"We lost more than an hour back there, closer to ninety minutes," Ingels said. "That puts all of the Heggie units we knew about that much closer. We have another holdup like this one and we're caught, maybe not instantly, but if we lose more time, that will give at least two of the other units a clear shot at intercepting us."

"With no place to run," Bal added.

"I know." Stossen hesitated. "I suppose the important question is can we get far enough to put us in range of Wasps operating from behind the main Accord lines?"

"Touch and go," Parks said after a moment's calculation. "It depends on where they hit us next and how much time we lose."

"The Heggies will know just how close we have to be to get extra air cover," Kenneck said. "They can calculate that almost to the meter."

"So can we," Ingels said. "There, I've just put the line on the mapboards."

Stossen looked at his. That line, a thin yellow arc, seemed an impossible distance away.

—|—

Corgi Battery rolled almost into the center of a battalion of Novas ten minutes later. Those tanks had been hidden under camouflaged thermal tarps, which gave the Havocs a few precious seconds' advantage. Gun commanders used their 200mm howitzers in ways they had never been designed for, firing point-blank at tanks that were less than five hundred meters away. Five Havocs got off one round and had their second ready to go before any of the Novas had a chance to respond.

At five hundred meters, the velocity of a Havoc 200mm round was still so great that it was almost possible for it to penetrate both sides of a Nova before it exploded. But the destruction it caused with a hit was complete.

Those guns that were able to get a second round aimed fired those and turned to race away from the Novas at full speed. They were still outnumbered by nearly three to one, and a Nova was much more capable at close-in fighting.