Death Orbit (14 page)

Oddly still, artillery and rockets were landing among these armed men as well as in front and behind them. Many were being killed by this wildly-inaccurate fire. But those still able kept plunging through the difficult terrain, hell bent on getting into the barbed wire and to the second defense line beyond.

Now some UA artillery shells were falling among the attackers, too. Fired from beyond Four-Four, the fragmentation shells were bursting just above the heads of the invaders, slaying dozens of them with every explosion. Combined with the shells and rockets coming from the opposite direction, a horrible toll was being taken on the army of attackers. But still they kept coming.

The Neptune was now in its assigned position, its two gunners continuing to add their own fire to the fray. Then, from above the battle scene, a new sound was heard. High-pitched. Searing.
Frightening.
It was the unmistakable whine of a Galaxy gunship.

Kurjan heard the C-5 coming.

Instantly, he knew what it was, knew what it meant.

He and his men—what was left of them—were locked in battle just behind the second wire. Kurjan had ordered the line abandoned due to the sheer force of the onslaught. Fifty yards ahead of him, the mysterious attackers were swarming all over the barbed-wire barriers, plunging through holes left by artillery fire from both sides, and in some grisly instances, running up the backs of comrades who had thrown themselves onto the razor-sharp concertina and were alternately being bled and stomped to death.

Kurjan’s men were simply firing into this mass. Up, down, this way and that, aiming was not a necessity in this battle. Any projectile fired in the general direction of the attackers hit somebody or something. The gunfire was so fierce, the barrels of some of the defense force’s weapons, notably the pair of .50-caliber mgs mounted on their Humvees, were glowing white hot and were actually beginning to melt around the muzzles.

Kurjan’s sapper unit had just set off a row of time-delayed mines when he heard the C-5 approach. There was no time to dawdle now. Kurjan grabbed the nearest three guys and ordered them to run down the line to the right flank and tell the UA forces to retreat. Then he grabbed two more men and ran to the left himself. Soon they were all screaming at the top of their lungs for the UA troops to fall back, beyond the Three Line and even behind Four-Four. Kurjan had seen many times what an attack by a C-5 gunship could do. He didn’t want to be anywhere near this one once it began.

Though some of the enemy soldiers were just 200 feet away now, the UA retreat was as orderly as could be expected. The Neptune lightship was still maintaining its position, directing many of its beams to the rear and aiding the defense forces to pick their way through the marshy riverlets and concrete obstructions. The attackers’ artillery was now falling all around them, but the thick, soggy ground, and many misfused shells, held casualties down to a minimum. Kurjan picked up one trooper struck in the leg by shell fragments, slung him over his shoulder, and began running. In his ears the sound of the huge C-5 gunship was growing louder with each second.

Out of the corner of one eye, Kurjan could see that his right flank was now entirely cleared back to the beyond Four-Four. On his left, the retreating defense forces were just scrambling over the larger bunkers of Line Three. Inside thirty seconds, they’d all be out of harm’s way and the approaching C-5 could do its job.

He readjusted the guy on his shoulder. He had just one more riverlet to cross, and then…

Whump!

The next thing Kurjan knew, he was flying through the air—upside down. It was an odd sensation, one that lasted but a second, though it seemed more like a minute. While he was inverted and airborne, he saw many things: the horde of attackers charging over the Third Wire. The Neptune lightship, flying much lower than he’d thought possible. The small stream in which he’d just been wading when whatever happened to him happened. The guy who he’d been carrying on his back was now spinning through the air right next to him. Above it all, he saw the ominous shadow of the C-5 gunship, getting closer.

Kurjan landed on his left shoulder, the perilous fall cushioned by a clump of soggy eelweed, but not by much. He came down with so much force, his utility belt snapped itself off and his M-16 fired an unguided three-round burst. The guy he’d been carrying landed on top of him in a heap not a second later. His face buried in the mud and weed up to his ears, Kurjan nevertheless heard a distinctive huff when the trooper hit the ground. Kurjan pulled his own face out of the muck and then turned the man over. He was headless. His left arm and leg were gone, too. Their empty sockets were still smoking, as was the man’s uniform.

Only then did Kurjan realize what had happened. An artillery shell—one of theirs, most likely—had come down right on top of him. If he hadn’t been carrying the guy with the leg wound, he, too, would now be without his head. This ghastly realization sank in damn quickly. Kurjan kicked the corpse away from him; it fell like a doll into the muddy water below. He grabbed his M-16 by the muzzle, burning his hand severely, and began climbing up the stream’s slimy bank. There was still gunfire all around him. The night was filled with tracers going in both directions. The clanking of the P-2’s engines was now rising in his ears. Why was that damn plane flying so damn low? he wondered, as if such a thing should be a concern to him now.

He somehow reached the top of the bank—and only then did he stop to check that he had all his fingers and toes. He was covered with mud, blood and for some reason, motor oil, but he was still intact. At least for the moment.

Catching his breath, the reality of the situation began to take hold. Kurjan looked to the south, back toward the complex, and saw the last of his soldiers just reaching the Four-Four line, now about 500 yards from him. He looked to his right and left and saw nothing but smoking shell holes and dead bodies. Then he looked over his shoulder, and at that instant he was aware of a tremendous roar filling his eardrums.

Not 25 feet away, on the other side of the bank of the stream he’d just sailed over, were several thousand armed, wild-eyed attackers.

They were heading right for him.

The
Bozo 2
gunship took up station over the battlefield at exactly 12:17 AM.

It had been a short, bumpy ride from the improvised air strip to the scene of the fighting. Vogel, the pilot, needed no FAC information to locate the trouble area. A fiery glow caused by the savage fighting was lighting up the entire northern horizon.

Still strapped tightly into his co-pilot’s seat, Yaz was craning his neck to see the battlefield over the Galaxy’s bulbous nose. Even with this obstructed view, his jaw hit his chest. There were swarms of armed men below them—clearly they’d already overrun the first two defense lines and were quickly approaching the third. At their present rate of advance, they would very soon be onto the fourth.

“Jeezus, who the hell are these guys?” Yaz exclaimed involuntarily. “There’s so many of them. Where did they come from?”

If Vogel had a guess, he didn’t offer it. He was too busy yanking the huge gunship around the battlefield to get it into its proper firing profile.

“Christ, these A-holes will be in our pants in five minutes,” the pilot cursed, watching the steady progression of the horde. He flipped a radio switch which connected him to the VAB main command bunker.

“Is the fire zone clear of friendlies?” he screamed into his microphone.

“Thy wrath will set a hundred fires to burning…” came the unexpected reply. “And these fires will consume your friends…”

“Who the
fuck
is that?” Vogel and Yaz yelled at once.

“Main CP!” Yaz now began calling. “Is fire zone clear? Come on!”

“Fire Zone clear…” came the calm if tense voice of an unseen comm tech back at the VAB bunker.

That’s all Vogel needed. He’d maneuvered the huge gunship over the center of the Three Line, now covered by thousands of the attackers illuminated by the Neptune lightship flying directly across from the C-5 in a complementary orbit.

“Are they ready back there?” Vogel yelled over to Yaz, as he put the big gunship further on its left wing.

Yaz punched in the internal intercom radio.

“Gunnery officer, what’s your situation?”

“We’re up to eighty percent,” came the crisp reply. This meant about 16 of the Galaxy’s 21 weapons were ready to fire. “Everything will be on line in about thirty seconds…”

“We ain’t got thirty seconds,” Vogel yelled into his intercom mic. “We’re going in now.”

With that, he yanked the huge airplane nearly over completely on the left wing. Yaz was suddenly thankful for his tight seat harness.

“How’s the electrical?” Vogel yelled. Nothing would work if they didn’t have enough juice.

“One hundred and ten percent,” Yaz yelled back, reading the numbers of the airplane’s fire control display. “Can’t get better.”

“OK,” Vogel said, flipping the microphone away from his face. “Here we go…”

The way it was supposed to work was that the smaller weapons sticking out of the C-5—the Gatling guns—would fire off first. Then, gradually, as the main fire control computer began absorbing information, the larger weapons would start discharging, all the way up to the huge Israeli rocket launcher. This incremental process could take anywhere between 15 and 30 seconds.

But Vogel knew they had no time to go by the book—and Yaz agreed. The attacking force 1000 feet below them looked like a swarm of bugs—dark, massive, unstoppable, and intent on getting into the inner reaches of the space complex. If that happened, it would be all over very quickly for the UA side.

“We’re going with everything,” the pilot yelled to Yaz. “Right… now!”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Yaz hit all 10 fire control buttons at once. There was a frightening roar; it was so loud it drowned out the scream of the C-5’s four massive engines. A huge ball of flame and smoke enveloped the left side of the airplane—Yaz was certain the left wing had been blown off. Then the huge plane began vibrating so badly, Yaz’s seat-harness snapped off. He managed to turn himself to the left and saw the tremendous broadside of bullets, rockets, and AA shells pouring out of the side of the airplane and down onto the attackers below. It looked like nothing less than a fiery waterfall. It was so bright, it dwarfed the Neptune lightship’s halogen array many times over.

“Jeezus Christ!” Yaz yelled, jaw still agape at the frightening display. “No one will live through that!”

“That’s the main idea,” Vogel replied grimly.

Donn Kurjan was in hell.

All around him was fire. And smoke. And bodies. And in his ears were screams, and the sound of flesh crackling, blood boiling, and bones vaporizing.

The narrow stream in front of him was sizzling now; it looked like a long ribbon of liquid fire. Flowing rapidly by were the remains of the dead and dying. The attackers, their hair and beards on fire, many missing arms and legs, some cut in two yet somehow still alive, they were all tumbling down the suddenly violent river as the tremendous wall of fire continued to rain down upon them. Even their swords and guns and helmets were melting, so intense was the heat. Their mouths were open in gut screams that sounded too much like laughter. Above it all, the shadow of death, the one everyone always talked about, flew in the shape of a C-5 Galaxy gunship. It was like a huge bird, vomiting fire and brimstone. This was death, Kurjan knew. This was Azael. The King of Terrors. The Dissolution.

Smoke. Fire. Screams. Kurjan could hear and see them all. Right above him, a second monstrous shadow: another gigantic gunship, spewing terror and death from its body, was flying overhead, and another was right behind it. The streaks of light coming from the three gunships went round and round in a carousel of death. Smaller airplanes roared by, adding dozens of fire bombs to the conflagration. Helicopters appeared, their blades coughing as they chopped through the smoke to drop thousands of sparklets of fire. It went on like this forever. Smoke. Fire. Screams. Death.

No one could live through this…

No one except a guy nicknamed Lazarus.

They found him the next morning.

He was lying in a pool of brackish water, tinged to pink with blood, beneath a thick layer of low fog. All around him were human remains. Not bodies; they could not be accurately described as that. These were skeletons, and in some cases, simply lines of ash laid out in the form of what was once a human being.

There were swords and helmets and rifles and axes and pieces of body armor lying around him, too. Much of it had melted into the soft earth; some of it was still sizzling and hot to the touch. In his right hand, his rifle had melted into the ground. The rubber had melted off his boots. The starburst major’s pin had melted through his lapel and into the skin of his neck, permanently scarring him.

But he was alive. When the soldiers found him lying in the bloody water, he looked up at them and blinked and joked that they certainly didn’t look like angels, but that they didn’t look like devils, either. They eased him onto a stretcher, astonished that he had somehow made it through the nightmarish battle, and carried him to a waiting helicopter. This flew him the two miles back to the center of the space complex, the field hospital, where the doctors and nurses and his fellow officers and friends marveled that he had somehow beaten the odds again.

When General Dave Jones arrived, accompanied by Yaz and the pilot Vogel, the UA commander-in-chief was almost overcome with emotion.

“What’s the secret?” he asked Kurjan, who was still sore, still singed, and still slightly in shock. “Why does this always happen to you?”

Kurjan could only look up at the CIC; he felt tears well in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But maybe it’s time I found out.”

The morning mist which had obscured most of the battlefield finally lifted about an hour after dawn.

Only then did the true scope of what had happened become apparent. A division-strength force of about 12,000 men, apparently hidden in the swamplands north of the space complex, had attacked the UA defense lines. They’d been armed with light weapons and some artillery and Katyusha rockets. They’d rushed the defense line at exactly midnight. Not one of them made it beyond Four-Four or into the space base itself. The combined attack from the three C-5 gunships and the smaller UA aircraft had seen to that.