Jump Pay (16 page)

The patrols moved toward either side of the ramp, Delta on the left, Echo on the right, each with half of the reccers. The engineers came up behind. Their job wouldn't begin until the line platoons had secured working areas for them.

If there was any work left for the engineers to do.

Echo's second platoon eventually found itself over the far end of the ramp, thirty meters above the pavement. Joe Baerclau slid forward on his stomach to look over into the trench. Gene Abru and Dem Nimz—Dem just out of the hospital in time to join this patrol—flanked him.

There was no mistaking the stench rising from the entrance. Burnt flesh.

"Literal Hell," Joe whispered. He was on a channel that linked him with the two men who flanked him and also with Captain Keye.

"You hear any sounds of life?" Keye asked. He was along the side of the trench, some thirty meters from the gutted doorway. Men lined both sides of the ramp up above.

"All I hear is fire sounds," Joe replied, "and not much of that. If there's anybody left alive in there, they must be a long way from this gate."

"We're going to have to go in," Keye said after a pause. "You men up above the gate, drop down on your belts. You get in place, the rest of us will come down the ramp. Any firing, get out the same way, full blast. Soon as you're out of the line of fire, we'll open up."

"Lot of good that'll do us," Dem muttered after raising his visor to avoid broadcasting the complaint.

"Don't worry about it," Gene said. "Baerclau was right. Anybody left alive in there, they sure as hell aren't going to be sitting near the gate waiting for us. Any trouble will come farther in."

It took a couple of minutes to get everyone ready. The first and second platoons of Echo, plus the reccers and SI men with them, would go over the side together.

"Jump off backwards," Abru advised. "That way you'll be facing into the cave as you go down." Abru was an old hand with antigrav belts. SI had used the previous model extensively in the war. They had also done most of the early testing of the new Corey belt.

"Have your weapons ready," Joe added. "We don't expect any trouble at the door, but no chances. You even
imagine
you hear or see anything, shoot it fast."

When his feet hit the surface of the stone ramp, Joe cut the power to his belt drives and went flat on his face, rifle out in front of him. There was still no indication of enemy activity inside. The only evidence that there were—or had been—people inside continued to be the stink of burned meat. That was even stronger at the bottom of the ramp.

"Move on in, Joe," Captain Keye said. "The rest of us will be coming in behind you. Keep this channel open and tell me what you're seeing."

"By squads," Joe told his platoon. He moved in first, with first squad. Abru stayed at his side. They stopped in the doorway and let the first squad of Nimz's recon platoon move past them. For the time being, the reccers were under Joe's command.

There was a confused pile of twisted wreckage in and just beyond the gateway, the remnants of the doors and, possibly, whatever had been nearest to them. The floor, walls, and ceiling had all been pitted by the bombardment. Some of the craters were more than a meter deep and two or three in diameter. The metal of the smashed doors was hot enough to burn skin. Heat signatures inside nearly overloaded the infrared sensors in Joe's visor night-vision system. Contrast was terrible. If it hadn't been for the second system, which worked by concentrating available light, the visors would have been useless.

"About what you'd expect from a confined space where so many explosives went off," Joe told the captain. "It's a miracle the ceiling didn't fall in, more than it did, but I don't see any structural damage from here, nothing obvious other than the smashed doors. We're looking down what appears to be a tunnel, just a little wider and higher than the doorway. I can see what appear to be gaps on either side, other tunnels, I suppose, or doors leading into chambers. There is no, repeat no, sign of anyone moving in there."

Keye told Joe to wait. When he returned to the channel, he said, "We go on in, as far as necessary. The general wants to know what is, or was, in there. Map it out. The whole works."

"That means us," Dem said. Some of the reccer helmets had one additional system that the standard infantry issue didn't: tiny video cameras that could link directly to CIC's computers. The SI men were similarly equipped. In the line companies, only officers' helmets had the extra system.

"Divide your men among second platoon's squads, Nimz," Keye said. "We want a good look at everything. Any heavy work comes up, let my people handle it."

In most circumstances, Dem would have argued those orders, but there didn't seem to be enough chance of meeting opposition to make the argument worthwhile.

"Yes, sir," he said, more meekly than anyone who knew him would have suspected possible.

Joe got to his feet and motioned his men forward. First squad hugged the left side of the tunnel, second squad the right, taking full advantage of the cover available. Fourth squad came up behind, half on either side. Not even the inclusion of the reccers made up for the missing third squad and the other casualties that the platoon had already suffered on Tamkailo.

The entrance tunnel, which went on straight for more than three hundred meters before splitting into two tunnels, which branched off to northeast and southeast, was littered with debris. Parts of the doors had been blown more than a hundred meters down the corridor. Joe wasn't certain where all of the metal and other debris had come from. Bits of stone had been blasted from roof, walls, and floor, but that hardly seemed to account for all of it that littered the corridor. The men had to go around and, in many cases over, obstructions. It wasn't until Joe reached the first of the openings along the sides of the main passage that he saw any sign of the men or equipment that had been in the complex. Looking to the right, there was a five-meter-long side tunnel that opened up into a large chamber. Another ramp led down to the floor of this chamber—a room that was easily eighty meters square and ten high.

"How the hell did
that
happen?" Joe asked, turning to look at Dem Nimz. "None of our shells or missiles could have made a ninety-degree turn to get down there."

Dem shrugged. He was too busy scanning the garage area—obviously what the large chamber was—to get a complete video record of it.

On the other side of the entrance, Abru spoke. "They must have had flammables stored up here, munitions or fuel. Probably hydrogen tanks. Flash fire. Secondary explosions. Something down there caught and caused the rest of the damage."

Dem moved away from the wall and stepped out into the middle of the ramp leading down into the parking area. There seemed to be no danger in that move. There was no sign of anyone alive in the chamber below. Dem held his rifle loosely at his side, pointed more at the ground than into the garage. Dem had seen a lot in his life, and not just as a soldier. There was no precedent for this. After a couple of minutes, he started walking slowly down the ramp.

Gene and Joe followed. Behind them, their men tagged along. Engineers came in and set up two small but powerful searchlights at the entrance and got them playing back and forth across the scene below.

As if seeing it through night-vision gear wasn't bad enough.

Joe did try to estimate the number of vehicles in the room, part of his running commentary to Captain Keye. Forty-eight Nova tanks, a half dozen armored personnel carriers, and four other vehicles, crowded together, with little room between vehicles in each row, and less room between the rows. It would have taken considerable time—and no small amount of skill on the part of the drivers—to get those vehicles out of the garage and up the ramp. All of the vehicles were scorched. At least a dozen of the tanks had had their turrets blown off. Ammunition and fuel in the tanks had apparently gone up as a result of the flash fires caused by the assault above. The walls and ceiling of the chamber were also scorched black.

The three sergeants were nearly to the bottom of the ramp before they saw any human bodies, though: two figures crouched next to the treads of one of the tanks—figures that had been incinerated in that position, unable even to fall flat in death. They remained like charcoal sculptures, perhaps fused to the metal of the tank by the flames.

More bodies were discovered. Some groups, it was impossible to tell exactly how many bodies there were. Men next to their tanks, men in their tanks, or in their APCs.

"Not enough of them here," Gene Abru said after the Accord group had worked its way from one end of the garage to the other. "They weren't mounted up ready to roll."

"There must be barracks rooms somewhere else down here," Dem said. There were a half dozen doorways leading out of the garage on its level.

"We're going to have to break up to explore all of these exits," Joe said, not just to his companions, but also to Captain Keye, who was still up in the main tunnel. Other platoons were exploring the other side passages off of that. Two more large parking areas had already been discovered. Both showed the same sort of damage that Joe and his companions had seen.

"There's still a chance we'll find live Heggies down here... somewhere," Dem said. "Even if they didn't have fireproof doors between here and the living areas."

Joe listened to Captain Keye for a moment, then reported to the others. "The orders are nothing smaller than a squad. Any hint of opposition, withdraw and wait for orders." He hesitated, then added, "That comes straight from General Dacik."

For a second, Joe thought that Gene Abru was still going to argue the order. It was clear that the SI team leader had his own ideas about exploring the installation. But Abru closed his mouth again and said nothing.

—|—

Echo didn't find any surviving Schlinal soldiers, but one of the platoons from Delta, exploring off of one of the other garages, did. And so did some of the men exploring off of the other two entrances to the complex. Altogether, almost four hundred men had survived the explosions and fires. The rest, more than three thousand, had died. Not all had burned. Many had died from smoke inhalation. Others had merely suffocated when all of the oxygen was sucked out of chambers where they were hiding.

The night was more than half gone when everyone but the engineers and SI men made their way back out of the underground complex. The engineers were there to finish the work of destroying the physical complex, planting massive charges at strategic locations, to be detonated after everyone was out. The SI men were there to discover whatever they could of what the Heggies might have been up to under so much rock.

Echo Company waited outside the western entrance to the complex.

"We wait for the SI men and the engineers, then we get back on the shuttles," Joe told his men.

"How long, any idea?" Sauv Degtree asked.

"Not more than a half hour," Joe replied.

A little apart from the rest of the platoon, Mort Jaiffer stood, looking back down the ramp. He just stared, without a conscious thought in his head. Eventually, he lifted his visor. Both of Tamkailo's moons were up now. He could see well enough, better than he really wanted to, without his night-vision systems.

Eventually, Mort became aware that tears were running down his cheeks. He had a notion to wipe them away, in case anyone might notice, but the effort needed was just more than he could muster. One hand came up, just a little, then fell back to his side. His stomach was knotted up, a tight pain that intruded more and more on his awareness.

After a time he could not measure, one conscious thought finally forced itself on his attention:
What the hell are we doing here?

He sat down and continued to stare down the ramp. The tears continued to fall.

CHAPTER TWELVE

General Dacik ordered nearly all of the troops that had taken part in the southern landing on Tamkailo back to the transports rather than keep them on the ground through another full day or move them directly to the Heggie base that the attack plan designated as Site Bravo. Nine hours aboard ship might not be much of a reward, but it was appreciated. Simply being moved off of the sweltering planet was important. The men would remain aboard ship until it was near sunset on the west coast of the southern continent. The only exception was the 17th IAW. Their Wasps boosted back to the fleet in orbit, and then, immediately after receiving fresh batteries, they were dropped to go to the support of the 5th SAT and the 34th LIR at Site Charley on the other continent. Their support group was loaded aboard shuttles and transported directly to the other action from Site Alpha. The 5th and 34th needed help. The 5th's air wing had already lost half of its Wasps.

"Thirty minutes until chow call," Joe Baerclau told his platoon as they filed into their compartment aboard ship. "Get yourselves cleaned up. We get back from chow, I want weapons cleaned, gear cleaned and checked. Squad leaders, inspect your men. Find out what's missing, what's damaged. We'll get everything repaired or replaced before we drop again. I want everybody ready to go before I hear the first snore. And while we're up here, I want everyone to do a
lot
of drinking—water, juices, coffee." There was no alcohol aboard ship, except for medical stores. "We're all short on body fluids. Get them replaced before we jump again."

Joe moved through the troop bay to the corner that was reserved for the platoon's sergeants. A head-high partition walled off that section. Joe's bunk was the lower in the far corner. As ranking noncom, he had had the first choice. By the time he got to his bunk, he had already stripped off his combat gear and was half out of his fatigues. The fatigues would go into a recycler. Even though the net armor in the battle clothes hadn't come near its full week of service, no one would go back into combat in the same kit.

Ezra Frain had slept in the bunk above Joe. Stripped to bare skin, Joe stood next to the bunks and looked at the one that would have no one in it going home. There would be a lot of empty bunks, but for the moment, this was the only one that seemed to matter. Joe and Ezra had been close friends. While Joe was first squad's leader, Ezra had been his assistant. When Joe became platoon sergeant, Ezra got his third stripe and became squad leader. They had worked together, played together, laughed together.