Until Relieved (7 page)

"In other words, intelligence wants us to think that we at least outnumber the Heggies stationed up here on the plateau," Parks said.

"As if that matters," Banyon replied. "We came into this assuming a total enemy garrison of at least ten thousand on Porter, nearly five times what we have. They may have a lot more than that. Even if they were all stationed in Porter City, five-hundred klicks from us, they could probably move the whole circus to the plateau by midnight."

"They may not go that far, but there is enemy movement," Parks said. "Two convoys have started out from Porter City. They've got too much active anti-air with them for the Wasps to take them on, in daylight anyway. I ordered our planes out of range after a couple of preliminary strikes against the advance party for one of the columns. They'll continue to monitor the movement. The Wasps and CIC."

Stossen nodded. That was something that had been decided well in advance. It would be foolish to waste the Wasps in a daylight attempt to stop a major troop movement when the fighters made such easy targets. If it did become necessary to expose the Wasps to that level of danger, it had better be for a more critical advantage.

"If they're moving on the ground instead of in the air, it may mean that they don't have the transport. Or it might mean nothing more than a lack of any intelligence on our numbers yet," Stossen said. "As soon as we can tell which route up the escarpment they'll take, we'll dispatch a few Wasps and Havocs to contest the climb. Soon as it's full dark, we can sneak a couple of Wasps in for hit-and-run strikes as well."

"There aren't many decent routes up, for vehicles, at least," Parks observed. "We can pretty much deny them those without too much danger to our people."

"Only temporarily," Stossen said. "We'll slow them down, of course, maybe force them to use air transport instead of ground, but we
want
engagement, remember."
Limited
engagement, if possible. "And we want to be able to cover their approach without spreading ourselves all over ten thousand square kilometers of this plateau. If they decide we're isolated up here, their warlords might pull some of them off to back up the defense on Devon."

"We do need to be able to get down into the valley ourselves," Banyon added.

"We're not here to liberate Porter, Terry," Stossen said. "Just to give them some hope."
But how will they feel knowing that we've come and gone, abandoning them to the enemy again?
He didn't share that thought with the others.

—|—

"Tighten your straps, lads," Gunnery Sergeant Eustace Ponks told his crew. "We're finally going to get moving." As usual, Ponks spoke louder than he needed to. His hearing had been moderately affected by his years of work in Havocs. Broad across the shoulders, and with a bulky torso, Ponks had found a home in the Havoc self-propelled artillery. With short, bowlegged legs, he looked taller sitting down than he did standing up.

" 'Bout time," Simon Kilgore, his driver, said. "Hair's been standing on the back o' my neck since we landed."

"Course is zero-two-seven, Sy," Ponks said. "It looks like we'll get to see that patch we blasted the hell out of."

At a range of ten kilometers, the 200mm howitzer of a Havoc could drop a round within a shell's length of its aiming point, even if the Havoc was moving at its sixty-kilometer-per-hour maximum speed. Extend the range to twenty kilometers, and it could still be accurate to within three meters—ninety percent of the time. Since the suspended plasma of its munitions had a primary blast radius of ten meters, that was usually more than sufficient.

The Havoc was self-propelled artillery, not a tank. The barrel could be elevated or depressed, but the entire machine had to be pointed roughly at the target. To minimize the vehicle's height, the gun barrel could only be rotated six and one half degrees to either side of the center line. The Havoc was nine meters long, three wide, and (except for the muzzle of the barrel at full elevation) no more than two meters high. Its treads were powered by separate engines. The engines and the tanks and converters for the hydrogen fuel occupied most of the front half of the carriage. The gun commander and driver sat almost precisely at the midpoint of the vehicle's length, one on either side of the barrel, at the front of the low turret. The other two members of the crew, gunner and loader, had positions much closer to the rear, and lower. Above and behind them was the ammunition bay.

"When do we get something real to shoot at?" Karl Mennem, the gunner, asked. "I'd feel better knowing."

"I think we're just going out to plow a few hectares of prairie this time. Just be glad there's nothing close enough to shoot back," Ponks said as the Havoc rolled away from its support van. "We get this baby shot out from under us and we're
mudders
for the rest of the campaign, and if you were good enough to hit anything with a rifle, they wouldn't have you ridin' around on your ass."

Karl grumbled at the flagrant canard. He was a sharpshooter. It did not matter if he was firing a 200mm cannon or a slingshot. He quickly achieved deadly accuracy with any aimed weapon that he picked up.

It was not at all true that a ride in a Havoc could scramble an egg that the hen hadn't laid yet. The suspension in the gun carriage was almost perfect, especially for the gun itself, which was gyroscopically stabilized. To hit a target at a distance while the gun was moving at speed, that was essential. While the men did not rate the same level of accommodation, they were not jostled about so much that they could not do their jobs efficiently—and for long periods. There was even a certain amount of sound insulation between the men and the engines. A 200mm cannon could not be muffled, but the constant engine noise would have been harder on ears. The men still had to communicate through helmet radios, and after a time, more than two thirds of all men assigned to the big guns suffered some hearing loss, at least in certain frequencies.

The men who rode the guns preferred to be moving when there was any chance that an enemy might be shooting. Counterbattery fire would be at least as accurate as the fire the Havocs loosed. The guns had to keep on the move or become wasted hulks, like clamshells lying open on the sand.

Five other Havocs moved away from the staging area with Ponks's "Fat Turtle"—the name written on the side of the turret next to the commander's hatch. Within the defensive perimeter that the 13th had established, the six guns moved in single file, but as soon as they passed through the infantry line, the Havocs fanned out, giving themselves as much maneuvering room as possible. The six gun commanders worked hard to avoid showing any sort of regular formation, any
pattern
to their spacing or movement. Pattern was the most deadly trap of all. Once they were well out from the rest of the 13th, the six Havocs put as much as a kilometer between themselves and their closest neighbors. There was no need for the guns of a battery to stay close together for fire missions.

"Talk to me, Control," Ponks muttered once they were beyond the perimeter. The Havoc was just a gun. Its targets were always out of sight of the crew. They needed others to provide target data, spotters on the ground or in Wasps, or information provided directly from the Combat Information Center on the flagship in orbit.

"You're doing fine, Basset two," the voice in his headset replied. The Havoc batteries all had the names of dog breeds, a pun that went back nearly three and a half millennia: "Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war."

"Nobody ever tells us nothin'," Ponks complained after switching off his transmitter link to CIC for a moment. When he got back on the channel, he asked, "Is there any sign at all of enemy artillery or armor on this plateau?"

"That's a negative, Basset two, no tube artillery or tanks. If they're around, they're staying under cover." He didn't need to add that a Havoc could fall victim to any infantryman with an antitank rocket. The Havoc carriages were only armored enough to stop small-arms fire. To try and put enough armor on them to stop anything more powerful, the Havocs' speed would have been compromised. They used speed as their first line of defense.

With luck, it would take time for the Schlinal garrison to draw antitank weapons from their armories. Rockets probably would not be in much demand in their normal routines as occupation force.

—|—

Joe Baerclau sucked on a peppermint-flavored stimtab and marveled at the smiling face of luck. None of his men had been injured badly enough to take them out of action, even temporarily. Ezra's wounds had been the most serious, and even he had nothing more than badly flayed skin on the back of his left hand and a dozen small, though admittedly painful, bruises and tiny cuts. The medics had even ruled out the possibility of cracked ribs, though they had feared initially that there might be several. Ezra had been dosed with a systemic analgesic and the bruises and abrasions had been smeared with a salve larded with medical nanobots to hurry along the healing process.

The pilot they had rescued was another matter, but he would live. Joe and his men had hung around the first aid station long enough to hear that. Now, the flyer was being evacuated to the hospital ward in one of the troop ships in orbit. The campaign was over for him—and perhaps his flying days as well.

Might be a bit of luck at that,
Joe thought. He was under no delusion that this campaign would be easy. While it had not been bruited about that they were merely a diversion, Joe—and most of the other senior noncoms (and even some junior officers)—had guessed that they were considered expendable to assist the main action on some other world.

Joe sat hunched up on the ground, arms clasped around his knees. His helmet was on the ground at his side, upended so he would hear any call on the radio. He had stripped off his web belt and backpack. The loss of all of that weight made him feel almost as if he would float away. He had eaten a meal pack and drunk half a canteen of water. He felt rested now, at ease. He sat with his eyes closed, but he did not sleep. He already felt the exhaustion that combat always brought, but it was not an exhaustion that brought sleep. Not for Joe. Soon enough, it would be back to the lines and whatever might come next, but Lieutenant Keye had okayed a short break. Joe's squad had gone through some of the morning's heaviest action, and there was no immediate need for them to hurry back to the grind. For the moment, nearly the entire perimeter was quiet. The 13th had faced nothing but small unit actions so far, no enemy units larger than platoon strength.

"Sarge?"

Joe opened his eyes slowly and lifted his head. Kam Goff stood a meter away, helmet in hand, waiting to see if he would respond.

"What is it, kid?"

Kam squatted next to Joe before he spoke. "I was scared before."

"We were all scared. That's what combat is all about. The drill is to do your job anyhow. Don't freeze up and don't go berserk." Joe hardly had to think to spout a full load of cliches. Each phrase had become trite because it was accurate. And cliches were easier for a stressed-out mind to accept than novel ways of saying the same thing.

"I never saw anybody dead before today, and sure not all chopped to shit like that. I just ain't used to it."

"You ever
do
get used to it, it ever gets to where it
don't
bother you, you don't belong in my squad."

That seemed to stump Goff for a moment. His mouth opened, but he didn't speak for a moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. "I see. I get to like it, I wouldn't want me around either."

"Just keep on, keep up on yourself. It may get worse—probably will. This morning wasn't nothing. But the first time, well, you don't know what to expect. Now you do. More of the same. Maybe a lot more of the same, now and then."

Once more, Goff hesitated for a long time before he spoke. "I don't know if any of that makes me feel better or not, Sarge."

There was no humor in Joe's laugh. "Just don't think it to death. Come on. It's about time to be getting back. Maycroft will be lookin' for us."

When Joe put his helmet on, the other members of the squad, all sitting around the grove, got the message. They stood and put their gear back on. It was time to go back to the war.

CHAPTER FIVE

The new spy satellites that the Accord fleet had deployed gave the Havoc gun commanders real-time video of their target, along with the hard data they needed to lay their rounds where they wanted them. The intelligence analysts of CIC had decided that they had identified the main barracks of the Hegemony troops in the town of Maison. The six guns of Basset Battery were scattered through heavy forest between eleven and sixteen kilometers from those buildings. Their support vehicles stayed farther away, but close enough to the guns to replenish ammunition stocks, just in case the battery should get that busy.

In Basset two, Eustace Ponks could see only one of the other guns, and it was a kilometer away, across one of the clearings that dotted the forest.

"Okay, Karl, give me an extra fifty meters this time," Ponks said after watching their first shot strike well short of the wall surrounding the target buildings.

"Jimmy says he'll goose it personal," Mennem replied. Jimmy was Jimmy Ysinde, the crew's loader.

"Jimmy'd goose anything that stood still for him," Ponks said. "Just get the round over that wall. You shot this bad on the range, the lieutenant would have you scrubbing latrines for a month."

"Must be the atmosphere, Sarge, or maybe the go-juice." Karl was cursing inwardly. He had never missed any target that badly. The Havoc's fire-control computers took everything into account, including atmospheric pressure and humidity, anything that might affect the flight of a round. And with exact positions being calculated through the assistance of target acquisition satellites, missing a target by fifty meters was inexcusable.

Before Ponks could answer, the second round had been fired. In the crew compartment, there was incredible noise, but little noticeable recoil. The gun's gyroscopic stabilizing system absorbed virtually all of the shock of firing.