Tombstone (6 page)

A chorus of “no, sirs” flooded the com, and mine was as loud
as anybody’s.  We were ready, though I figured if the colonel was getting
involved, we were likely in for a rough ride.  I was right.

Tactically, the ridge was of limited value, not worth a
major fight to hold.  We could have pulled back and actually enhanced our
longer term positions.  We held most of the surrounding hills, and any enemy
penetration here would quickly become an exposed salient.  But what we didn’t
know…what we didn’t need to know…was under the ridge ran a rich vein of
trans-urianic element…not the fleeting scraps manufactured in labs that decayed
in nano-seconds, but naturally-occurring stable isotopes that were non-existent
on Earth and still not fully explained by physicists.  These strange substances
had been found on a small handful of worlds and, vital for high-yield spaceship
drives, they were priceless.  The deposits under the ridge were worth more than
all of our lives - at least to Alliance Gov - and while the Corps had a
different set of priorities, it followed orders.  Where we were told to fight,
we fought.  And right now that was on McCraw’s Ridge.  I was positioned almost
dead-center, along a spiny Y-shaped rock outcropping…a spot that would later be
known as the Cauldron.

They’d hit us five times the day before.  Of course, the
days were our own construct, existing largely on our suits’ chronometers. 
Tombstone took over sixty Earth hours to complete its rotation, and it was
never really dark, not even at night, thanks to the electrical activity and
chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere.  The eerie glowing clouds didn’t
give off the light the sun did, but it was enough to see by, especially with
your visor set to mag 2 or 3.

Now we were on day two of the battle, though we’d fought
more or less continuously, and the second day notation had more importance for
record-keeping than any real tactical significance.  You’d want it to be
correctly noted what day of the battle you were killed on, after all.

I was only a private, barely a rung above the lowly position
of “new guy,” so keeping track of planetwide resources wasn’t something I spent
much time on.  But to my knowledge, our total strength on Tombstone was
approximately three battalions.  The enemy had more, but only marginally so –
about two and a half of their tac-forces – the rough equivalent of four
battalions.  Now they’d deployed what appeared to be an entire tac-force
against us, which was an unprecedented troop concentration on Tombstone.  A
ten-year struggle between widely-dispersed patrols and platoons was seeing its
first pitched battle.

We’d been taken by surprise by the enemy build-up, but the
colonel responded quickly, shifting forces from all over to reinforce our
position.  It’s amazing how minutes can drag into eternity when you’re
outnumbered 5-1 and waiting for reserves that are “almost there.”

I hadn’t moved more than 50 meters in the last 24 hours.  I
was behind the rocky crest of the ridge when the attacks started, with a good
field of fire on the broad plain in front of us.  Just to my right there was a
spur of the outcropping that ran perpendicular out from our location.  Any
attack on our position forced the enemy to either split his forces or
concentrate on one side or the other.

The first attack came right at me, with all the strength to
the left of the rocky spine.  We hit them hard with fire on the way in, but
there were a lot of them, and it looked like they might overrun us.  But they’d
made a mistake in ignoring the other side of the rock spine.  The lieutenant
swung around with one of our squads, firing at the enemy flank from the cover
of the line of rock.  Faced with heavy fire from two directions they withdrew
with heavy casualties.

The lieutenant pulled back the advanced squad before they were
exposed to the resumption of enemy long-ranged fire.  The Caliphate forces had
suffered at least 40 casualties; we’d lost 3, and two of those were wounded. 
We got them both patched up and stabilized before Tombstone finished them off. 
The enemy casualties were mostly KIA, either from the initial hit or the
consequences of their suits being breached.

The second time they didn’t make the same mistake; they
split their forces evenly on the two sides of the spur, but the lack of force
concentration did them in.  The two groups, unable to support each other, were
both beaten back, again with heavy losses.

There was a brief lull, probably while they brought a fresh
unit up to attack.  When they had reinforced they charged us again, and the
last two assaults came close to taking our position.  The enemy commander sent
a small group against the left side of the spur, just enough to demonstrate and
prevent a repetition of the lieutenant’s flanking maneuver while the main force
concentrated against the right.  They came at us twice that way, but our lines
barely held, reinforced at the last minute by arriving reserves fed in squad by
squad.

Things quieted down for a few hours, giving us the “night”
respite between our Earth days.  We had more troops arriving all the time, and
we finally got the orders to pull back.  The entire company was being rotated
to the reserve to rest, replaced by a fresh unit that had just marched up.

I was positioned between Corporal Vincennes, my team leader,
and Harden and Quincy with the SAW.  Harden had been the team’s lead SAW
operator since before I got to Tombstone, and he’d been through four partners
since then.  It was considered something of a jinx posting, but I escaped
because of my marksmanship ratings in training.  I hadn’t gone through sniper
school, but the lieutenant wanted me as an informal sharpshooter rather than
managing Harden’s ammo feed.  So I stayed in the line on a standing order to
try and target enemy officers and non-coms if I could identify them.

“Hey, Sam, how’s it going over there?”  Harden and I had
become pretty good friends.  Most commanders probably would have forbidden this
type of chatting over the com, but the lieutenant believed the unit was a
living organism.  As long as it didn’t interfere with vital communications, he
encouraged limited banter.”

“Not too bad.  I’d say we held pretty damned well.”  He
paused, and I could hear him taking a deep breath.  Not a bad use of a couple
million rounds of ammo.”  Harden was a little bloodthirsty; he’d lost a brother
in the service and I don’t even know how many partners.  I didn’t know it then,
mostly because I’d had no one close to me since my dad died, but you get that
way if you lose enough people.  We’re professionals, but that only goes so
far…enough pain will make any of us into vengeful sadists howling for blood.

“Yeah, we did ok.”  I was a little more circumspect.  I
wasn’t all that comfortable with the killing yet, and I found it hard to
rejoice as he did in the enemy dead.  After all, most of them were just
conscripts with no choice in the matter.  The Caliphate was pretty rough with
its recruiting; it was a theocracy and a dictatorship that made the Alliance
look like a big happy family.  Its recruiters could pressgang just about anyone
except the clergy and the nobility.

“Just ok?  It was a shooting gallery, baby!”  Harden was
overstating things.  We did give the enemy a bloody nose, but it was hardly a
walkover.  We were pulling back with 31 troops; we’d gotten here at full
strength with 50.  I couldn’t get over the losses, even if we did inflict
almost ten times that on the enemy.

“We lost a lot of friends today, Sam.”  My voice was soft; I
was trying hard not to sound like I was scolding him.

“Yes, we did.”  His spoke more slowly, his tone darker.  I think
he got the point.  “But it could have been a lot worse…a lot worse.  If we’d
been overrun, the whole unit could have been wiped.”  He paused, and sighed. 
“But we did pay the price.”

“Yes, we paid the price.”  The last of our wounded had been
evac’d, but we were leaving seven dead on the field.  I thought quietly to
myself for a few seconds then I shifted my mind to more relevant things, with
the soldier’s knack for mourning the dead one minute and focusing on duty the
next.  “You need help packing up that thing?” 

“Nah, let the newb handle it.”  The light auto-cannon really
wasn’t all that large, just a bit unwieldy.  Still, I had a twinge of sympathy
for Quincy.  It wasn’t that long ago I was the newb.

I climbed down carefully from the perch I’d occupied for the
last twenty hours.  Keep your head down, I thought.  Although the fighting was
in a lull, the sporadic sniper fire had never stopped.  What a stupid way to
get killed, losing focus on your way to the rear to rest.  I took one last look
out over the field, thinking the worst of it was over.  I was wrong.

We pulled back about five klicks, just behind the next
ridge.  We were well within range of enemy mortars and other ordnance, and we
wanted some cover.  On a more hospitable world we might have popped our helmets
and actually eaten some solid food, but that wasn’t an option on a planet like
Tombstone.  So I enjoyed the epicurean delight of another shot of high-energy
intravenous nutritional formula, kindly served by my suit’s AI.  It wasn’t
exactly a stick-to-your-ribs meal, but you could definitely feel the increased
energy level.

Sleep was another issue.  We’d been going for about 40 hours,
the last 24 under combat conditions.  I was tired.  You could go for several
days on stims injected through the armor’s medical maintenance system, but
there was no substitute for actual rest…plus, the less you relied on the stims,
the longer you could go on them before getting really strung out.  The armor is
more comfortable than anyone who hasn’t worn it would think, but it wasn’t
built for taking a nap.  The most comfortable position was sitting on the
ground leaning against something.  I staked out a fairly choice spot against a
good-sized rock outcropping and closed my eyes.  I fell asleep in a few
minutes.

When I’d first gotten to Tombstone, a well-trained but
completely untried Marine, I found it very difficult to relax at all.  Even in
base when we sat around, waiting days, even weeks before getting the orders to
suit up, I was nervous as a cat, expecting the alarm to sound any minute and
scared to death about going outside, going into battle.  There are certain
clichés about soldiers, and I have found that many of them are true.  One of
these is the fact that we can sleep anywhere, and it wasn’t long before I’d
joined that club.  I was still scared to death whenever we fought; I still am
to this day, though I have since learned to more or less ignore it.  But even
back then, if the shooting stopped for a few minutes, I could take a nap.

We’re good scroungers too, another military stereotype that
turns out to be true.  Despite living in the most hostile environment
imaginable, cut off from virtually everything except official supply routes,
there was actually a fairly active black market in the firebase.  I never
understood how the most active participants got some of the items that did. 
Later I came to realize that the officer didn’t just look the other way – they
actually helped things along a little behind the scenes.  All of our officers
start as privates, and they knew very well that a posting on a place like
Tombstone was a cheerless enough existence.  As long as nothing degraded combat
readiness, it was helpful to boost morale any way possible.

I’d gotten maybe 45 minutes’ sleep when I woke up to a
jarring on my leg.  My visor automatically went transparent and I could see
Harden standing above me, kicking my leg.  It was a gesture best performed by
veterans; a little too much power behind the kick and the force amplification
system in his suit could have damaged my armor.  It was best done to a seasoned
Marine too…startle a sleeping newb and you may end up getting shot to pieces or
sliced in half with a molecular blade.

I was seasoned enough not to over-react.  “I was sleeping,
asshole.”  Not normal chatter for the comlink, but I was mildly annoyed, and my
tone conveyed it.

“What are you gonna do, sleep your life away?”  He was
always cheerful, which was surprisingly irritating sometimes.  This time,
though, it seemed like a facade.  Something was bothering him.

“Wouldn’t want to waste a minute of the Tombstone
experience, would we?”  I wanted to be pissed, but he was a good guy; he just
never shut up.  “I think it will be a big vacation spot once we’re done
fighting for it.”

He sat down next to me, leaning back against the rock wall. 
“I wonder how long we’ll be posted here.”  His upbeat tone was gradually
getting a little more somber.  Tombstone wore everyone down.  “The unit we
replaced had been here six months.  We’re almost there, but I haven’t heard
squat about us getting rotated out.”

Of course, I’d considered it too, but I wasn’t sure I should
tell him what I really thought.  It looked to me like both sides were
increasing the strength deployed here, and they were probably going to do it by
extending the tours.  “I think we’ll be here awhile.” What the hell, I
thought.  Tell him what you think.  “It’s obvious the expeditionary force here
is being increased.  If they increase the postings to a year they can bring in
the unit that was going to replace us as an incremental force.”

“Fuuuuck.”  He stretched the word out impressively.  “I
hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right.”  He paused for five or ten
seconds, both of us silent as we thought about that unpleasant prospect.  “Man,
I hate this shithole.”  He slapped his hand lightly against the ground as he
spoke.