Until Relieved (16 page)

The Havoc was far from a racer, but there was the same sort of feel to it. Eustace loved racing, of any sort. He didn't even need to have a bet down on the outcome. People, animals, wheeled or winged vehicles, boats—anything that could be pitted one against the other in a contest of speed and talent—Eustace loved to watch, loved to cheer on a personal favorite.

His favorite in this race was his all-time personal favorite, himself. With fewer responsibilities, he might have chosen to boost himself up to keep his head out in the wind constantly, but he couldn't permit himself that foolish indulgence. His controls and warning systems were all inside the turret. He had the vehicle's radar and IR screens to watch as well as the real-time relay of data being sent down from the spyeye satellites and the ships of the fleet. There weren't enough men in a Havoc crew to let the commander dope off.

"Put antigrav drives on this baby and she'd
really
fly," Simon said, looking across the gun barrel at Ponks. Simon Kilgore knew how much his sergeant enjoyed racing, both as participant and spectator.

"Be a mean mother, all right," Ponks conceded with a grin. It was an old topic. The possibility of an antigrav gun platform was a perennial in the artillery. But the size power plant that would be needed would make the platform much too easy a target.

Maybe someday.

According to the latest satellite intelligence, updated since the battery of Havocs had descended to the floor of the valley, there was no enemy armor anywhere between the escarpment and the capital. There were also no known concentrations of enemy foot soldiers, though that information was far less certain than the other. There were enough spyeyes overhead to cover the entire area between the scarp and Porter City every twenty minutes, at the best resolution of the imaging computers. It took about three additional minutes for CIC to process the data and transmit the necessary information and coded map overlays to the forces on the surface. Worst case, the information Ponks and the other Havoc commanders were looking at should never be more than twenty-three minutes old, generally less than half of that. That was still long enough for a lot to happen.

"This mission strike you as just a little bit crazy?" Simon asked a few minutes later.

Eustace laughed, loud and long. "Just a little," he conceded. "That's what makes it so exciting."

"Brother, you and I have different ideas about excitement," Kilgore said. "Ranging off five-hundred klicks from the rest of the team, heading straight for maybe twenty or thirty thousand enemy soldiers and God only knows how much armor and air, and how many thousands of rockets.
And
not knowing how much longer we're even going to
be
here before we get some help, or a ticket off."

"You want certainty, you're in the wrong business," Ponks said. "You should have been a preacher or something."

"We don't have preachers, we have rabbis," Kilgore said. "And they don't have all that much certainty either. I know. My father is one."

"No kiddin'? Hey, I didn't know that, and how long we been together?"

"Too long, I think. You keepin' your eyes on our TA?"

Ponks took a quick look at the target acquisition monitor, then nodded. "I'm keeping my eyes where they belong. Just don't run us into something we can't get out of."

CHAPTER TEN

Captain Teu Ingels of Echo Company was in overall tactical command of the strike force. Lieutenant Vic Vickers, the commanding officer of George, was second in command even though there were two lieutenants in Echo who were senior to him in rank. Ingels was the senior company commander within the 13th. Within six to nine months, perhaps sooner, he would be promoted to major and a job on Colonel Stossen's staff. With the death of Lieutenant Colonel Banyon, that promotion and reassignment were perhaps more imminent, though it would not come until after the 13th finished its job on Porter—if the 13th ever got off-planet.

The recon platoons ranged out ahead and to either side of Echo and George. It was their job to find a quick, safe route to the objective as well as to scout for any enemy positions or telltales that might lie across that route. The men who made it into the recon platoons were chosen specifically for their abilities. The fifteen Spaceborne Assault Teams were seen as an elite within the Accord Defense Forces, and the recon platoons were an elite within the SATs.

There was little chat among the men on the march this night. The pace that the companies had to maintain made spare wind for even whispered asides scarce. Joe Baerclau smiled at the thought. It took a lot to drive any comment at all from his men. At least, if they didn't talk, he didn't have to waste his own breath telling them not to.

Joe stepped out of the line for a moment and turned to watch as his men filed past. At the moment, 2nd platoon was in the middle of the line of march, in the left-hand column. George Company was a couple of hundred meters to the right, following the next indentation in the landscape.

Hardly a level spot around,
Joe thought. He shook his head. He had paid little attention before to the description of this valley as a
rift
valley. The word simply had slid past without sinking in. Joe had heard the term before, but had never given it much thought. Mort had filled him in during their time along the escarpment, giving him a quick briefing on tectonics, an explanation of why the ground was so uneven, so rocky. "It's not old enough for erosion to have smoothed it all out yet," Mort had concluded, but it had taken this closer experience for Joe to really feel the meaning of that explanation.

This night march was little longer than the one Echo had made to Maison, but it was much more draining because of the terrain. Good boots eased the load on feet, but there was still the constant pull at leg muscles strained first one way and then the other. After five hours, Joe wondered if he could possibly keep going. The calves of his legs felt as if they had been bound in piano wire, and the wire was contracting, cutting into skin and muscle.

He was walking on a modest side slope, a layer of shale tilted by less than twenty degrees and strewn with igneous rocks that had fallen from another stratum, when his left foot slid out from under him. Joe's right foot caught against a rock for an instant, and he nearly tumbled headfirst down a three-meter embankment. His right ankle twisted as that foot came free, and he went down on his hip. After sliding halfway to the bottom of the gully, he managed to stop himself. For a moment, he could do no more than that. He let his head drop back against the rock and sucked in air.

His foot. No, not the foot. The ankle.

"You hurt, Sarge?" Al Bergon asked, sliding more carefully down the slope to come to a stop next to Joe.

"Right ankle," Joe replied. "I don't think it's sprained. I just twisted it."

"Better let me have a look."

"No time."

"No time is what it'll take," Al said. "You aggravate it and it's more than you think,
then
we have trouble."

Bergon didn't wait for his sergeant to agree. In his function as squad medic, he did have a certain amount of authority, authority that Platoon Sergeant Maycroft and Lieutenant Keye would support in an instant. While Al talked, he started taking off Joe's boot and sock. His hands moved around the ankle and along the muscles above it.

"Just a little swelling," Al said. "That may be just from the walk, not from the twist. I'll wrap a soaker around it and you should be fine."

He was already peeling the wrapper from the medicated bandage, and he got it secured around Baerclau's ankle in seconds. The analgesic in the soak started to work instantly, though the nanobots that would do any real repair work would take somewhat longer to do their job. Joe could feel the hot tingle of the bandage. He closed his eyes for a moment. The ankle had pained him more than he had really been aware, judging from the relief he felt as the pain started to abate. By the time his sock and boot were back on, the ache was scarcely a dull throb—bearable.

"I'll be able to walk on that," Joe said. He flexed the ankle several times. Despite an initial stab of renewed pain, that actually seemed to make the ankle feel better.

"And the soak will take care of any muscle pulls or such," Al said. "But be careful the next hour or so. If there's more wrong there than I think you'll know that soon."
Probably within the first ten minutes,
Al thought. In the field like this, he was limited to what he could see and feel for his diagnosis.

"You okay down there?"

Joe looked up, even though the voice had come over his radio. Max Maycroft was standing at the top of the gully, looking down at him. Joe clicked his transmitter over to the noncoms' channel.

"I will be, Max. Slight twist. My own damn fault. Careless. But it's all taken care of now."

To demonstrate that, Joe got to his feet and started to scramble up the slope. Before he could object, Al Bergon was at his side, one hand half supporting him. Joe felt an irrational flush of anger, but squelched it before it could show in his face, or in the way he moved.

"Thanks, Al," he said when they were both off of the slope.

"Don't feel bad," Maycroft said, standing with his feet braced wide even though he was on nearly level ground. "We've had twenty people do that, that I know of. Some of them were hurt worse than you are. Best boot treads in the galaxy, and they're still not secure on a slippery bit of shale."

"I just got too careless, Max," Joe said, feeling more embarrassed than hurt at the moment. "Five, six hours of this shit. It was just getting to me, and it shouldn't have."

"I know what you mean. But now that you're back on your feet, you might as well get off them again. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Captain's decided that we all need a breather. Our orders have been changed, in any case. Once we get to our positions, the idea now is we sit doggo until sunset, unless we're discovered. Hide. Recon lads will do a little work of their own. And the Havocs, but not us. Now, grab a quick bite, a little water." He paused a second before he added, "Maybe a stimtab as well. That'll help clear your mind."

Joe nodded slowly. "I should have thought of that myself, Max. Gotta watch it. I get a little tired, and I'm getting careless. That can get people killed, and not just me."

"Don't read anything into what I said but what I said," Max told him. "That wasn't a chewing out. It was just a suggestion."

Joe shrugged. "Whatever you say, Max." He didn't see the humor in his words. When Maycroft laughed, Joe looked up quickly, caught completely unaware.

"That's the spirit," Max said. "Now, on your butt. Give that soaker a chance to do its work."

—|—

Zel Paitcher stood behind his Wasp and watched Tech Sergeant Roo Vernon work. Zel was cold, despite the flight suit that was supposed to be adequate protection against any temperature down to minus twenty degrees Celsius. There was a decidedly chilly breeze blowing across the plateau, close to 25 kilometers per hour, but the temperature was closer to 20 above than 20 below.

All in your head,
Zel told himself. The breeze could only touch his face and hands. He wouldn't feel so irrationally cold if he were in the cockpit, where he belonged. He wouldn't feel so cold if he weren't worrying that there might be something seriously wrong with Blue four, something that might keep him out of the air. As tiring as the long hours in the sky were getting to be, Zel knew that he preferred that to sitting on the ground and being nothing more than a spectator.

Zel had his arms folded tightly against his chest. He moved around a lot, stamping first one foot and then the other. The sense of cold was no less real merely because he knew that it was an illusion, a trick of his mind.

Roo worked in silence, his head up in the portside drive compartment of Blue four. Warnings had flashed on every monitor in the cockpit when Zel tried to power on. The Wasp's self-diagnostic routines were thorough, but they were almost instantaneous. Each of the computers that minded the circuits in the aircraft was dedicated to servicing just a small portion of the works. The system had shut itself down before Zel could get his hand to the switch.

Zel never even considered going over to Roo to offer his help. Though he had a basic understanding of the theoretical workings of the antigrav drives, he had virtually no mechanical competence—not with those drives. Even if he had been relatively competent, Roo would have turned down the offer. Blue three and four were
his
Wasps. He knew them better than their designer, or so he would claim. He knew the idiosyncrasies of each one. He knew what they could do, what they would do. And he had
The Touch
with them.

Slee was sitting in the cockpit of Blue three, waiting. The squadron commander had vetoed the idea of Slee going off without a backup, or with a wingman he was unused to, unless that became urgently necessary. Instead, the next pair of flyers in the rotation had been wakened and sent aloft.

Roo finally came out from under the Wasp. "She should be all right now, sir," he said. "Heat problem. Somehow got some dust caked in where it oughtn't to have been, and that like to baked a coupla circuits." He looked around. "Small wonder, I guess. But she's fine now."

"We're ready to go?"

"Two minutes. We'll put a new battery in on that side, just to make sure." The Wasps that had gone up in place of Slee and Zel were almost due to land again anyway. The rotation would, probably, remain changed.

"Thanks, Chief," Zel said. "Put another beer on the tab I owe you when we get back to base."

Roo grinned. "I think this is a two-beer tally, sir. I really do."

"Okay, two beers."

"Just bring her back in one piece, sir."

"I'll do my best."

Climbing into the cockpit and strapping himself in felt strangely liberating to Zel. The cold was instantly forgotten. Getting into his Wasp was almost like coming home. Soon, he would be back in the air, where he belonged. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.