Until Relieved (14 page)

The men of 2nd platoon were spread out, five to ten meters apart, close enough to cover each other and make certain that no one slipped through this net. They moved slowly. Each man kept his head and eyes moving, looking for any hint of movement in the long shadows of early morning. There was no good cover, no place to hide. That worked more for 2nd platoon than against it. The Heggies were the ones looking for places to hide. Tree trunks without any stands of bushes or tall grass would give them little help. Visibility was too good. Those Heggies cut off inside the lines had few choices after their tanks deserted them for the other hunt. Some dropped their weapons, raised their arms, and surrendered. Others decided to obey their orders and went down fighting. There were not many of the latter.

Chal Tomer in third squad was killed by one of the Heggies who would not surrender. Two men in second squad were wounded by a grenade. None of the Heggies involved in those incidents survived.

—|—

The breakthrough on Howard Company's front and the subsequent death of Terry Banyon was not the worst news of the morning for Colonel Stossen. Only minutes after the death of his executive officer, Stossen had a call from CIC on the flagship. The 13th's relief was not in-system. Only a message drone had come.

"Hold until relieved or recalled. Covering force for your evacuation has been delayed."

CHAPTER NINE

Van Stossen refused to let himself feel grief, even though he had served with Terry Banyon for years. Their association, their
friendship
, went back long before the founding of the Accord's fifteen Spaceborne Assault Teams. They had been close, professionally and personally. They were friends and their wives were friends. Their children had played together since infancy. But Van and Terry were both professional soldiers, and death was part of their profession.

"We'll have to get a burial detail," Stossen told Dezo Parks when they stood together next to Banyon's mangled body. The last of the Schlinal tanks had been accounted for, finally. Van turned away. He could not look at his dead friend past that first glance.

"I'll take care of it," Parks said. He called for men to help.

Stossen moved away, back toward the command post. He had more urgent worries now. His two thousand men depended on him for leadership. Later, when the campaign was over and the 13th was back in garrison, or perhaps just in transit to the next battle, there would be time for reflection. If the 13th went back to garrison—as they would almost certainly do, at least long enough to replenish supplies and train replacements—Van would raise a toast to his friend. He would take the news to Terry's widow personally. There could be no thought of just making a compsole call or sending the official letter of notification. That his own wife would accompany him would not make it easier, but he would never even think of evading that final obligation to his friend.

"We've knocked out all six of the enemy tanks," Major Parks reported softly after a detail of enlisted men had started digging a grave for the executive officer.

"Sorry about Terry." Parks had seen Terry Banyon killed. He had directed a medical orderly to him before it was clear that Banyon was beyond any possible field repairs. Dezo's visor was up now, and his face was grimy. He watched the colonel closely. He knew how close Stossen and Banyon had been.

Stossen shrugged.
It happens.
"You're exec now, Dezo." If his voice was less firm than usual, neither he nor Parks gave any sign. It was something that would never be mentioned.

"I don't think this raid was just a throwaway," Parks said after a moment. He was operations officer for the 13th, but intelligence analysis was always part of that job. "It wasn't strong enough to be a serious attempt to dislodge us, but it was too strong to be just something to keep us occupied."

"A diversion?" Stossen asked.

"Has to be. It seems fairly clear that the Heggies have been moving large numbers of troops out of Porter City at night. And they're moving them
away
from us, as near as we've been able to tell. Out of range of our Wasps. How they've routed them from there is anybody's guess, but mine is that they're staging for a major attempt on us. I don't see it simply as a retreat, keeping out of our way. That would mean that they knew—beyond a doubt—that we're here merely to keep them in place. Without that knowledge, no Schlinal warlord would dare retreat and ignore us. Even without the overwhelming advantage in numbers they have, that would be a capital offense in the Schlinal military. So they
must
be staging for an attack."

"How long do you think we have?"

"Unless their concealment measures are a lot better than we think they are, they must still be more than a hundred klicks away from the perimeter, most likely a
lot
farther. Our observation out to a hundred klicks is simply too tight to miss significant numbers. We're patrolling that much area with regularity, and that's also the primary focus for the sensing from the fleet and the spyeyes we launched. But if the Heggies have shuttles ready to move their men, that still might not give us a lot of warning before the attack comes." Even if the enemy launched a fleet of shuttles three-hundred kilometers away from the perimeter, the men on the ground might be lucky to receive ten minutes warning.

"Come at us from somewhere up on the plateau, not up either of the access roads to the valley?" Stossen had his own opinion, but he wanted to hear what Parks had to say.

Parks shook his head. "I don't think they'd dare try to come up from below, not in any real force. They have to know that we can hold either of those routes against anything they can throw at us. Easier than the three-hundred Spartans." Even after nearly six thousand years, that stand was recalled by career military officers. It was studied in nearly every military academy in the Terran Cluster.

Stossen pulled out his mapboard and clicked it back to a broader view of the entire plateau region.

"Most of the area within three hundred klicks is heavily forested. For that matter, most of the plateau is. Trees and occasional regions of prairie." And most of it was unsettled, even after centuries of human presence on the world. The staff had gone over maps of all of the regions of Porter that might have any bearing on their planned operations. Stossen was a careful thinker though, and he preferred to have his maps open and in front of him at a time like this. It helped him to keep his thinking straight if he went over everything as if it were completely new to him.

"The clearings here, more around Maison." Stossen pointed to areas north and northwest of the town. "Rocky areas here." He pointed off to the east and northeast.

"Too open," Parks offered. "No cover, visual or IR, and too much chance of the movement being spotted by someone in Maison. The Heggies have to figure that we left people there, spotters, or at least radios for the locals to call us." A number of radios
had
been left in the town, and instructions on how to report anything of interest. The Special Intelligence men from the Maison team were also still in the town, undercover now.

"Maybe the Heggies could hide a few hundred men for a time in the crevices and gullies in the rocky areas, but not for any significant amount of time. And you can't throw a heat shield over several thousand men and all their equipment in either area. You'd get leakage no matter what." Parks had no hard data to back up that assertion, but he had no doubt about it, and Stossen merely nodded agreement. That many men, there would be
some
sign.

"If they're going to stage on the plateau, I'd suggest that either of these places is more likely." Parks pointed out two other areas, both farther away from the 13th and from Maison. Both areas offered thick forest with small clearings that were large enough for VTOL shuttles to get in and out quickly.

"We can get a look at them," Stossen conceded. "Of course, there's nothing that says there's any limit on the places they
might
be. Or even that they have to stage on the plateau. Assuming they have sufficient lift capability, they could pick just about any place they like, anywhere on the continent." Porter's sole continent stretched from the north polar zone to latitude 60 south, as much as nine-thousand kilometers wide in places.

"We can't watch the whole continent that closely," Parks said. "We can get coverage—do get coverage—but not the intensive sort we'd need to find them. Not without launching a lot more spyeyes, and it would take a day or two to get them all in position, assuming that the ships are carrying enough to do the job. We could increase the diameter of the inner zones..."

Photo and video surveillance of the planet was based on distance from the regiment's landing zones. Out to a radius of one-hundred kilometers, the coverage was most intense, virtually continuous. From one hundred to two hundred kilometers out, there was at least hourly observation of each section, though at somewhat lower resolution. From two-hundred to five-hundred kilometers, the frequency of coverage was still less, as little as once in four hours for some areas. Farther out than that, an area might be eyeballed from orbit as infrequently as once a day.

Stossen shook his head. "Even that would take more satellites, and we can't tell if we have time for it." He took a deep breath.

"You know," he said more softly, "there's no way to know how long we'll be here now. Pickup delayed. Hold until relieved or recalled. No matter how long it is, we'll have to make do with what we have, here and aboard the ships." He didn't want to think about what might have caused the delay. Once he started doing that, it would be far too easy to let his imagination run away with him, dreaming up all sorts of disasters.

"Food and ammunition." Parks nodded. "Food may be less of a problem. We can always do a little foraging. There is game around here, and nothing native is supposed to be toxic to humans. No reported problems anyway. Porter's been settled long enough for any incompatibilities to show up. We can check with some of the locals about edible plants."

"Game means cooking fires." Stossen shrugged. "Well, they know we're here. The men will have to be careful about it though. Just in daylight, early enough so the ashes are cold before sunset. That sort of thing."

"But ammunition," Parks said. "What do we do, pull in and stick with strictly defensive fire? Maybe collect some of the weapons and ammo we left in Maison?"

Stossen was quiet for a minute before he replied. He thought of the Havoc barrage he had loosed the first morning, just to ease the way for one company that was having a little too much difficulty reaching their objective. There was no helping that prodigality now. Those rounds were gone. "No, we won't go back to Maison unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Hunker down and wait?" He shook his head. "I don't think so. The Heggies get the idea that something's wrong, they'll really be all over us. Or ignore us and send part of the garrison off to Devon, and that's what we're here to prevent."

"Continue with our original harassment?"

Stossen let a smile spread across his face. He did not spend a lot of time mulling over the idea that had just come to him. It
felt
right. "No. Let's really go for it."

"You mean take Porter back all by ourselves?" Parks returned the smile.

"Maybe not, but maybe we can make the Heggies rethink their own plans. When our pickup does come, it will be easier if we don't have Heggies stacked up around our perimeter here."

"Head for Porter City?"

"There's no other suitable target, is there?" Stossen asked, his voice mild, with a touch of humor. He continued to turn the idea over in his mind. There were risks, serious risks, but that was true of any possible course. They were on their own. For how long, neither of them could even guess. Doing everything possible to keep the Schlinal garrison reacting instead of acting had to help. He hoped.

"How strong an effort?" Parks asked, his mind switching over to tactics.

Stossen took time to consider that. "We want the effort to be strong enough for the Heggies to take notice, but not so strong that we're a pushover here. Say, the same sort of effort we directed at Maison—two line companies, two recon platoons, one Havoc battery. We'll give them as much Wasp cover as we can, as needed."

"The Havocs could range about a bit," Parks said. "We can't hold them back to the speed of men on foot."

"But Havocs need infantry support. You saw how long the Novas lasted once they got away from their support."

Parks nodded, conceding the point.

"You think we can afford to use shuttles to put the strike force closer to their target?" Parks asked. "Going full out, it would take six days for them to walk the whole distance to Porter City. That gives the Heggies too much time to chop them up. And we don't know how many days we've got."

"That'll take six landers, five with a little overcrowding." Stossen didn't hesitate now. If this move was going to have any effect at all, it would have to be done quickly, with panache, before the Schlinal forces could mount whatever attack they were preparing. Stossen grinned, then nodded.

"Get them into five shuttles. Set it up so the landers are down fifteen minutes before sunset. We'll load up and get them moving as soon as it's dark. The Havocs and their support vehicles will have to go on their own. They can catch up, rendezvous near Porter City."

"How close do we set the infantry down?"

"Let's look at the map and see what we've got," Stossen said.

—|—

"Why us again?" Wiz Mackey asked as Echo Company gathered at the LZ. "We had our fun. Shouldn't one of the other companies draw this gig?"

"We shouldn't have done such a good job," Mort Jaiffer said. "They must think we're the experts, the aces. We're going to get all the impossible jobs now."

Joe let the men talk. He stayed out of the general grousing though.

"They're not just going to leave us here, are they, Sarge?" Kam Goff asked.