Until Relieved (26 page)

"Couple of hours? You'd better hope we have at least eighteen hours before you have to start walking again. That knee's in bad shape. You may have torn cartilage or muscle. I can't tell for certain. Right now, we've got to get you to Doc Eddies. Maybe he can come up with something more than I can."

"I'll be all right," Ezra insisted.

"Don't try to hand me that load of crap, Corp. If we had an evac shuttle coming in, you'd be on it. No shit. Doc Eddies would back me up in a second, and the lieutenant wouldn't try to stop it. And don't even
think
about putting any weight on that leg. I'll get a couple of guys and we'll carry you to the doc. You just wait where you are."

Bergon stood, but did not actually have to go anywhere. He called for Mort and Kam, and the three of them moved Ezra to where Doc Eddies had set up shop. Mort headed straight back to the rest of the squad. Al stayed with Ezra so he would have a chance to tell Eddies what he had found. Kam started to leave, but stopped a few meters away. He looked back toward Al.

"Okay, Kam. I'll be with you in a minute," Bergon said.

The whole squad knew that Goff was having trouble, though they tried not to let him see that they knew. Al, Mort, and Ezra had been sharing the duty of watching over Kam, and it really did not matter if one of them happened to be occupied for a few minutes; the rest of the squad was also watching. Kam hadn't realized that he was never out of sight of at least one of the others. They never called it a
suicide
watch, did not even think of it in those terms, but they knew that Goff was in danger, and they were determined to do what they could to help him through it. He was part of the squad.

Al briefed Doc Eddies on Ezra Frain's condition, then hurried over to Goff.

"Something I can do for you?" Al asked as casually as he could manage.

"I don't know." Kam had his visor up, and he whispered so softly that Al had to pay particular attention to be certain that he heard what Kam said. "I'm not sure there's anything anybody can do."

"Let's take a walk." There was too little room in the patch of woods to get out of sight of everyone, but they could manage a little privacy.

"Talk to me," Al said when they were finally out of earshot of the men around the dispensary.

Al sat, and gestured for Kam to get down as well. Goff hesitated, then more or less collapsed onto his rump. His head hung forward for a moment. Al waited without moving.

"I was wondering if Doc Eddies might have something to help me," Goff managed after a minute.

"Help you how?" Bergon asked.

"Deal with all this." Kam made a wild gesture with one hand. "You know what it's been like for me. I see somebody dead, see a little blood, and all of a sudden I'm puking my guts out. But that's not the worst part. I'm scared crazy. I can't sleep. I hardly dare close my eyes for all the terrible things I see. I don't know how much longer I can take it." More softly yet, he added, "I really don't."

"I can give you a sleep patch," Al said, speaking slowly while he tried to think what else he might be able to do. "That puts you so deep you won't dream."
Or won't remember what you dream if you do,
he qualified silently. "Just getting some undisturbed sleep should help. The human mind can do a lot for itself, if it gets a chance. A mild tranquilizer to help the other. But it can't be too much, Kam, you know that. We're stuck out here. You've got to be able to march with the rest of us. I know it's rough, but you
are
making it. You're doing your duty. You're doing the best you can, and that's all anyone can ask."

Kam shook his head. "I'm just going through the motions. I couldn't—
couldn't
—actually shoot
at
someone. Not anymore. I'm just making noises with my zipper. I think Sarge knows."

Probably,
Al thought. "Don't worry about that. If it was ticking the Bear off, he'd let you know fast. Let's get back to the squad. I'll give you a patch so you can get some sleep before we hit the road again."

—|—

The next attack started with a dozen Schlinal snipers sneaking close enough to work on the strike force. The Heggie shooters had all managed to get past the thin cordon of sensors that the strike force had planted without setting off any warning. There had been too few of the remote bugs to adequately cover the perimeter, and the men of the strike force had been too tired to do their best work in any event. Sudden gunfire two hours before dawn woke everyone immediately—except for the two men who were struck by the first volley of fire, and those men who had required sleep patches for one reason or another.

Al Bergon came awake instantly. He rolled onto his stomach in the slit trench and lifted his head just enough to see over the dirt he had piled up around his hole. Though someone else had started it while he was treating the injured, Al had widened the hole and made it deeper, to give himself room for a patient.

Kam Goff was in a trench three meters away—with a sleep patch on his neck. No shooting in the galaxy was likely to wake him until the patch had run through its six-hour dose, or until it had been removed. Asleep, Goff had no way to defend himself, nor would he be able to respond to orders.

Al rolled out of his foxhole and crawled to Goff. Keeping himself pressed as close to the ground as possible, Al reached in and ripped the sleep patch from Kam's neck. Goff would still need time to wake, but yanking the patch was the first step. A stimulant patch was the next. Before Al could bring his arm back to his side to reach for the new patch, he was hit in the elbow by a slug.

The pain was so intense that he was even unable to scream. Then, there was a brief numbness, an instant of relief as Al's nervous system overloaded on pain and he came close to passing out. Then the pain was back, growing, and blood welled out of the shattered arm.

"Sarge, I'm hit," Al reported. He sounded almost calm. "At Goff's hole." Then he did faint.

Tod Chorbek and Wiz Mackey spoke at the same time. Wiz finally took over. "We can get him, Sarge. We're not all that far off."

Joe's instinct was to tell them to stay put, but he didn't. They could not—would not—leave their medic out in the open. He would have gone after any of them, no matter the risk.

"Be careful," Joe told the volunteers. "Stay flat. Drag him back to his hole."

Wiz and Tod scuttled across the ground as if they were trying to break speed records. Neither man had his rifle or pack harness, so they weren't slowed by gear. When they reached Bergon, each man grabbed a leg and they dragged him back to his own foxhole. Twice Joe saw dirt kick up within centimeters of one of the men as bullets struck—heavy slugs, not wire.

"Can't anybody see who's doing that shooting?" Joe demanded, frustration pulling his voice up a half octave. "Give them some covering fire."

After a few more rounds had hit, Joe thought he had an idea of the direction the shooting was coming from. He fired two short bursts, and told the rest of first squad to use his vector to guide their own. "Put some wire out there!" he shouted into his radio. He was on the platoon channel though and it was the whole platoon that started shooting into the trees.

They might not have hit the sniper—a slug-thrower had a much greater range than a wire gun—but there were no more incoming rounds while Wiz and Tod were dragging the medic in.

"His elbow's been shattered, and he's lost a lot of blood," Tod reported. "Our medic needs a medic, like
now
."

The medic from third squad, the only other one left in the platoon, got on the radio to say that he was on his way.

"Stop wasting wire!" Captain Ingels said on his all-hands channel. "Third and 4th platoons. Left and right. We've got maybe a dozen snipers out there. First recon on the south. Let's get them fast."

—|—

"Kill the engines," Eustace Ponks ordered. Simon hit the switches. Basset two was at the base of the road that climbed the escarpment.

"We've got less than an hour till first light," Simon reminded the gun chief after the engines fell silent. "The way we've been going, that's just barely enough."

"I've got to look at that tread," Eustace said. "That vibration is driving me crazy. I keep thinking we're going to lose the drive wheel any second. That happens at a bad place on this road, we go right off the side. You want to chance that?"

The climb would be dangerous enough as it was. The people of Porter had never anticipated that heavy artillery pieces would be using their road from rift valley to plateau. The route had been blasted out of the stone. Some of the switchbacks were cut back into the side of the escarpment, and most had little room to spare for a vehicle the size of a Havoc self-propelled howitzer. The weight of the vehicle meant that there was also a danger that it would crack off part of the roadway... and fall to the base of the wall with the rock.

"You lookin' at it ain't gonna stop the vibration," Simon said. "There sure ain't no time to do any more
work
on it. We either make it or we don't. We either drive the old gal up this road, or we walk it. Either way, don't make no sense to stop and stare at that damn wheel again."

Eustace felt a flash of anger, but he bit back any immediate retort. He looked across the gun barrel at Simon for a moment, knowing that the driver was right—and hating that.

"Okay, let's go. But
slow
. Maybe you got your wings polished, but I don't."

Simon laughed and started the engines again. He adjusted the idle until he was satisfied with the sound, then eased both treads into gear. The Havoc edged forward. Simon rotated the throttles forward, slowly.

"I'll get us to the top," he said. "Hell, this ole gal survived a direct hit from a rocket. Ain't nothin' gonna stop her now."

Rosey had already started the support truck up the road. Near the first switchback, he had stopped, waiting to see what Eustace was going to do with the howitzer. Once the gun started moving again, the truck also resumed its progress. The truck went first: that was in case something did go wrong. The gun would not take out the truck on its way down.

"Some guarantee you give us," Eustace had mumbled, but the trucks had all gone up ahead of their guns—the rest of the battery was already on the plateau—and they had followed the Havocs down the other day.

The rough road never climbed at more than a 27-degree angle. A Havoc in good condition would scarcely have balked at 45 degrees, up or down, but climbing a steep slope with a jury-rigged drive wheel might be asking for too much trouble. The extra burden on that axle... Eustace shook his head.
I wouldn't even think about trying anything more than 30 degrees,
he lied to himself.

Before long, Eustace found himself holding his breath again, as if that might make it easier for Basset two to make it up the narrow road. He kept his eyes on the outside monitors, jerking away from them only long enough to look out directly through one of his periscopes. He had two of those, fore and aft, each capable of turning through 210 degrees, providing overlapping fields of view.

The first switchback was only twenty meters above the floor of the rift valley, two-hundred meters from the start of the slope. The builders had taken advantage of a natural ledge that angled gently up to the first switchback.

Simon had to reverse the right tread for the turn. There was not enough room to go around the curve simply shifting the transmission for that tread into neutral. Eustace held his breath again. The turns were the most likely places for the drive wheel or tread to come off, or for the axle to snap.

Basset two made the turn without difficulty. Eustace detected no change in the vibration coming from the drive wheel. But he didn't relax after the gun was moving straight again. Each subsequent turn would be higher, some at a steeper grade.

Sweat started to form on Eustace's forehead. By the time Basset two was halfway up the escarpment, the sweat was flowing into his eyes, stinging, but he didn't wipe it away. When he didn't have anything else to do with his hands, he held on to the arms of his seat as if he were afraid of falling out.

Where the road reached its steepest grade, the pitch of the vibration from the right tread increased in pitch and volume. The shaking became gross, not subtle, as if the drive assembly were tearing itself apart. Yet again, Eustace held his breath, trying to hold the repairs together by willpower.

"Slow it down, just a mite," he told Simon, softly, his voice strained.

Simon didn't bother trying to change Ponks's mind. Obediently, he eased off on the throttles, just a hair, slowing the gun by perhaps no more than a half kilometer per hour. The gun was already barely creeping. The slope had eaten most of the power the engines were putting out on the reduced throttle settings he had been using before.

"Planes on the scope," Eustace announced a moment later, followed almost instantly by, "Wasps. I've got the recognition signal."

"Hope you're sending our RS too," Simon said under his breath.

"Loud and clear," Eustace said.
Be hell to get shot off this wall by our own birds.
There was enough danger in the climb without that.

The Wasps flew on until their signal was hidden by the lip of the plateau.

"They didn't seem to be in any particular hurry," Eustace said. "Must not be any Heggies close by."

For the next twenty minutes, the men rode in silence. Then, "Last switchback coming up, boss," Simon reported. "After that, it's smooth sailing. The road bends back and gets almost level."

Eustace didn't need the travelogue, but Simon couldn't hold back.

"Don't relax yet, Simon," Eustace said. "We're near the top, sure, but that just means we've got farther to fall if something goes wrong."

"You want to get out and walk?" Simon demanded, his temper finally beginning to frazzle. "You can get out and I'll chase you the rest of the way to camp, goose you with the gun every time you slow down."

"Simmer down, and keep your mind on your driving." Eustace regretted his own show of temper almost instantly, as did Simon. But as was usually the way between them, both men simply went silent. For the rest of this ride, there would be no conversation that was not absolutely required.