Until Relieved (27 page)

It didn't matter. Five minutes later, Basset two had successfully made the last turn and was moving away from the edge of the escarpment. Even if the drive wheel gave out now, it would only mean a short walk. There would be no fall in their metal cage.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In a few hours, the 13th Spaceborne Assault Team would have been on Porter for eleven days. The days, and nights, were getting no easier for the strike force west of the capital city or for the bulk of the 13th on the plateau. The Schlinal garrison had not attempted any additional full-scale attacks on either element of the invading force, but there were almost continuous harassing attacks against one or the other.

The strike force consisting of Echo and George companies and the 1st and 3rd recon platoons was on the march again, moving northwest, away from Porter City—but without getting closer to the territory controlled by the rest of the 13th. A second shuttle had managed to get in just before sunset the previous afternoon. That lander had taken off several more wounded and had brought in two cases of wire—the last ammunition available for the strike force. At that, it had amounted to only two spools per carbine. That would not last long in a serious fight.

Joe Baerclau put one foot in front of the other. Thinking beyond that was becoming difficult. He scarcely recalled the previous step or imagined a future that held the next one. From time to time, as he happened to think about it, he did look around to see how the platoon was moving, or to tell the squad leaders to keep close track of their men, but the most routine duties had become infinitely complicated for a mind numbed by too many days of little sleep, short rations, and long hikes. Movements were leaden, tortured. Even the occasional moments of attack no longer excited the men. They went through the defensive routines with all the life of zombies. They tried to eliminate the attackers, or stalemate them, and the march would go on.

And on.

Kam Goff had taken on the duties of squad medic after Al Bergon was wounded. Al had been evacuated to the hospital ship. Kam was scarcely qualified to act as medic. He had only the same cursory training in first aid that all recruits went through, but he could doctor blisters, and that was the main call on his services. Beyond that, he could bandage a wound, or wrap a knee or ankle in a soaker... and direct the injured man to Doc Eddies.

The new duties appeared to have helped settle Kam's anxieties. They gave him something to think about besides his fear, and the way that combat paralyzed his mind. When he was going to help a buddy, or working with a wounded man, he did not have the reaction he had had to walking up and seeing the dead or wounded before. There was a little color back in his face, and only the exhaustion he shared with everyone else seemed to dull his reactions.

"We'll take fifteen here."

Captain Ingels's voice over the noncoms' circuit startled Joe. He passed the word to the platoon and blinked rapidly several times, as if just waking from a vivid dream.
I must have been asleep on my feet,
he thought. He stood motionless, his body swaying as if he were about to fall.

That would be the easiest way to get to the ground.
Even that idle thought couldn't bring a smile to his face.

"Take a little care for your positions," he told the platoon. "Don't get caught with your butts in the air. We can't tell when we'll get another attack."

Then, at last, Joe sank to the ground. For a moment he just let his head sag, the chin strap of his helmet on his chest. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, on the verge of falling asleep. But there was no time for sleep. Fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes.
Not long enough to sleep. Too long to stay awake.

"Joe?"

"Yes, Lieutenant?" Joe had to shake his head to get his mind working again.

"One more hour. That's what the captain says. Then we find a place to stay put for at least four, maybe all day." Lieutenant Keye sounded as tired as Joe felt.

Joe looked around, trying to spot where Keye was. He had lost track of the platoon leader, and that was a bad sign. Everything seemed to be a bad sign lately.

"Another hour's going to be rough on everyone, Lieutenant, including you and me."

"I know, but it's going to take that long to reach a place that'll give us some security. And space for pickup, just in case. No, there's no word yet, either on relief or on a ride back to the plateau." He paused. "At least, no word
we've
been told about." Keye cursed himself silently for rambling. He might be as tired as his men, but it was still bad form to show it so clearly.

"Better be soon, Lieutenant. Another day and we'll be out of food as well as everything else."

"They're getting short on the plateau too, Joe. We're going to organize a couple of hunting parties, if we can, after we bivouac for the night. Maybe after we've all had time to get a little sleep."

"Hunting parties?"

"Recon will handle that. Most of those snipes have been hunters since they learned how to walk."

Fresh meat would be a treat,
Joe thought. "Take a lot of meat to feed everybody," he said.

"Every little bit helps," Keye said. "How's Goff holding up?"

"Pretty good now, sir. We're still keeping watch on him, but there's been no sign of trouble since he started handling the blister detail."

"Remember that," Keye said before he signed off.

—|—

"Can't help you this time, Lieutenant," Roo Vernon told Zel Paitcher. "That entire port drive has to be replaced, and I can't do that here. Not now, at least. That's a three-man job, and we'd have to bring the replacement drive down from the ships. Even if the colonel okayed that, it'd take three, four hours of work once we got the parts. And without a clean room to work in..." He shook his head. "Be better just to slide the bird into one of the heavy transport lifters and do the work back in the hangar, on the ship. And we can't get one of
those
down here without more security than we've got. Sorry, sir."

Zel wanted to scream his rage, his frustration, but he didn't. If the bird couldn't be repaired, it couldn't, and no amount of shouting would change that. Still, for a long moment, he could do nothing but stare at Roo, his body trembling with pent-up emotion. Then the emotion seemed to drain away, suddenly, and his body went rather limp. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I know you've done your best, Chief," Zel said. Under his breath, an intense "Damn!" slid out.

"We've got one other bird in the same shape out of Red flight," Roo offered. "Short as we are, maybe the colonel will authorize bringing down the repair parts. I'm sure he wants as many of them flying as possible."

"But you don't think it's a good idea to try the repairs here."

"Not the best, no, sir. I wouldn't guarantee the work for more than ten hours of flying time 'less we do it in a clean room. An'
that's
pushing it. Get dust and organic molecules in there, fouling things up. The control circuits can be mighty touchy about that. You saw what happened before, sir. We got something in your bird and it shut right down. You were lucky, sir. It happened on the ground last time. This might be worse. A little speck of dust caught in the wrong connection can raise the heat 20 degrees in no time at all. Use the bird hard and you can go right on by the safety limits, not even know what's happened until you get drive failure. Temperature fault like that, you couldn't even count on 'jecting safely." Roo paused for a moment, trying to come up with some way to make the lieutenant feel better about his plight.

" 'Nother day or two, likely everybody be grounded," was the best he could find. "We're down to the scrapin's on munitions now. Won't any of it last much longer. Your plane, sir, I'll have to get in and strip what ammo you're carrying so we can keep another bird flyin' that much longer." Privately, Roo doubted that the ammunition would last even one more full day. If the Heggies made one more determined assault on the 13th, the remaining Wasps would run dry in short order.

Zel looked at the ground. He was out of the air, probably for the duration of the campaign—unless a couple of other pilots had to be grounded with planes that were still airworthy, and that was highly unlikely.

"I guess that makes me a mudder," Zel said eventually.

" 'Fraid so, sir," Roo said, sympathy in his voice. "Other pilots who lost their birds, colonel's took 'em right into the HQ detachment." Roo failed to suppress a chuckle then. "He's got the highest ranked rifle squad ever, I think."

Zel looked up then.

"Sorry, sir," Roo said quickly. "I just couldn't help myself."

Zel was slow to say, "That's okay, Chief. If it wasn't me, I'd probably be making the same sort of comments." He
had
made the same sort of comments, talking to Slee about the three other pilots who had lost their planes but remained healthy themselves.

"This campaign can't last much longer," Roo said, trying to be conciliatory. "Relief be here soon, maybe afore the day's gone."

"I'll believe it when I see it," Zel said. He shook his head. "Talk to you later, Chief. I'd best go report to the colonel. If I can find him."

"Last I heard, sir, HQ was still up by Bravo Company," Roo offered.

—|—

The Schlinal commander on Porter had not bothered to return a garrison to the city of Maison. There would be time for that later. After the Accord troops were destroyed, the people of Maison would be next on his list of
Things To Do
. They had to have helped the invaders. At a minimum, they had permitted the Accord to attack and destroy or capture the troops stationed there. He did not know yet which was the case. Either way, it really did not matter. In any case, the punishment for Maison would be severe, and extended. But... later. After the burr of the Accord had been eliminated from Porter, he would think about punishment for Maison. Anticipation was half the fun. The Accord: the Schlinal commander did not assume that they had merely killed all prisoners out of hand, as he might easily have done in similar circumstances. After all, they had turned loose the prisoners they had captured in Porter City. Without weapons, helmets, boots, or
clothes
, true, but they had not harmed anyone after capture.

"It's not as if I actually
need
the men they left in Maison," he reasoned.

He still had more than sufficient troops for the job. It was just a question of bringing everything together in just the right way at just the right time. Soon, the Accord would be low on ammunition and food. Even with all of his satellites out of commission, the commander could still tell how many enemy ships were over his planet. There had been no reinforcements, no additional stores of ammunition coming in-system. Or food. The invaders would be easy pickings when they got hungry and short of wire. The Schlinal commander had no delusions about the quality of his troops. They would not have been assigned to garrison duty on a world like Porter if they had been first-rate combat soldiers. Most were conscripts. Many were too old and out of shape for the front lines. But they had the numbers, they had the weapons, and they had more than enough ammunition to deal with the enemy. After all, no more than two thousand or so could have landed, and they
had
taken casualties. The Schlinal commander had no idea how many casualties, but that there were
some
was obvious.

Soon,
the commander promised himself. Eleven days was too long as it was. If he let this incursion go on much longer, his superiors would ask too many uncomfortable questions. In the Schlinal military,
questions
could be hazardous to an officer's career... not to mention his health. The delay meant that he would need a "glorious" victory. He would have to completely obliterate the enemy. That way, he could always rationalize the time by saying that he had merely been toying with them, experimenting with methods, preparing himself and his troops for future engagements.

He smiled. Yes, that would go over well with the field marshal, and the baron.

Tomorrow night,
he decided with a self-satisfied nod. After another thirty-six hours of softening up, the enemy should be in just the shape he wanted. His troops ought to be able to simply walk over them. Both units, the one in the valley, and the larger one up on the plateau. The smaller force, the one that had raided the capital, was nearly to that point now, from appearances. They had been reported using captured weapons, and abandoning them once they were empty.

"Easy pickings indeed," the commander whispered.

With that decided, he rang for his batman, and for breakfast. He had a good appetite this morning.

—|—

Six Havocs made the trip back to Maison under cover of darkness. Thirty men from the 2nd recon platoon met the howitzers outside the city and confirmed that the Heggies had not returned. After that, it was a matter of an hour's work to load the weapons and ammunition that had been left for the residents of Maison. The locals also provided more than a ton of foodstuffs, mostly vegetables and fruit, after they learned that the 13th was low on rations.

"We're in this together," the acting mayor of Maison told the senior officer. The acting mayor was under no delusions as to what the fate of Maison would be if the 13th was destroyed. The reason he was
acting
mayor was that his elected predecessor had been hung in the town square as an example, for some unexplained infraction of Schlinal rules. "We'll do whatever we can."

—|—

"Damn delivery truck," Eustace Ponks mumbled under his breath. "Spend a day and a half repairing the ole girl and they turn her into a
delivery
truck."

Simon pretended not to hear. That was better than rekindling the tirade that had started within seconds after they received their orders to be part of the mission to Maison.