Until Relieved (31 page)

"They figure they got all the time they need now, sir," Joe told Lieutenant Keye after relaying that information.

"Maybe they do, Joe."

"If they've got as many troops out there as we've been told, they could run over us in minutes. Not like the Heggies to be so careful of their mudders."

"They're just waiting for us to run out of wire. That has to be it. The Heggie C.O. wants a real walkover." Keye made no attempt to hide the bitterness he felt. So long a road to end like this.

"Sir?" Joe hesitated before he continued. "What do you figure happened that they didn't come back for us?"

Lieutenant Keye stared at Joe for a minute, then shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe the main task force got beat bad, or bogged down. I hate to think that they abandoned us, for
any
reason, but—even more than that—I hate to think that we might miss pickup by no more than a matter of days, or hours."

"You think they're still coming?"

Keye nodded. "They'll come, soon as they can."
Even if it's too late to help us.

—|—

First squad had been reorganized as a single fire team during the shuttle ride back from the valley. With Al Bergon wounded and evacuated, and Joe Baerclau serving as platoon sergeant, there were only five men left in the squad—really only four effectives. Kam Goff found himself sandwiched between Mort and Ezra, with less space on either side of him than normal. Kam doubted that the arrangement was as accidental as it was made to appear. There had been no relaxation in his mates' observation of him. He had never had a moment to himself. Even a latrine trip was never made alone.

They know I'm useless for fighting.
Kam took no offense at that, and he was beyond sorrow or self-pity. He knew he was useless. His comrades obviously worried that he might try to kill himself. At least, everyone did make a pretense, not saying or doing anything openly to make the situation more painful than it was for Kam. He had the spool of wire in his rifle, but no spares. Those had been distributed, on the sly, to the others in the squad. Ezra had taken care of that, personally.

At least I don't have to worry about finding a way to end it anymore,
Kam thought. A wry smile found its way to his face. He was glad for the visor on his helmet. No one else could see his expression.
The way this is shaping up, the Heggies will do me the favor soon enough.

—|—

Basset two still had eleven rounds of ammunition. After that, it would be useless, except to protect its crew against enemy wire. Wire was about all that the armor would stop. At the same time, the gun was a magnet for heavier enemy munitions. Once Basset two ran out of ammunition, the crew would be safer abandoning their ride and taking their chances with enemy wire. Each of the four men had an infantry helmet close at hand now. With all the casualties the 13th had taken in its twelve-plus days on-planet, there were plenty of spare helmets.

Eustace had virtually stopped talking since the Havocs had returned from Maison with the captured enemy weaponry. He broke his silence only when it was absolutely essential, and then he kept his words to a minimum. Simon had never seen Eustace like that before. He didn't seem to be angry, at least not at anyone in particular. Angry at life in general... or at the way it might end soon... was the way that Simon interpreted it, with a shrug. There was always the chance of death in combat. Havoc crews had the odds against them. But that was different. Either death came or it didn't. Here, on Porter, death seemed to be waiting for all of them. They would run out of ammunition. The infantry would run out of ammunition. Inevitably. Then the Heggies would do whatever they damn well pleased.

Simon had a fatalistic appraisal of what that would be. He had already made his peace.

—|—

For the most part, the shooting coming from the 13th was limited to the men with Dupuy RA rifles. They were the only ones who still had a—relative—abundance of ammunition. In the line companies, two Dupuys were assigned to each platoon, one for every fifteen men. The recon platoons were rather more heavily equipped with the sniper rifles, two for each twelve-man squad. The Dupuy could not fire on full automatic, which cut down on its rate of fire, but at ranges under three hundred meters, the rocket-assisted slugs could penetrate any body armor in the galaxy, or shatter a helmet—and the skull beneath it. Striking before their rocket assist ended, the slugs might be still accelerating when they hit. The men chosen to use the Dupuys were usually the best marksmen in each platoon. Their efforts helped to keep the Schlinal advance slow. With little need to worry about distance or windage, they needed very little in the way of a target, and as soon as one of them caught a Schlinal mudder in his laser sights, the trigger went back.

The Dupuys made a distinctive sound. Back in his bunker, Colonel Stossen paused to listen to them. He had been critical of the Dupuys in the past, touted as a long-range weapon—unlikely ranges for the most part. But they were finding a better purpose now.

It was ninety minutes past sunset when Stossen received the call from CIC.

"Colonel, we have the relief fleet in-system. They just emerged from hyperspace, not ninety seconds ago."

At first, Stossen didn't reply. He couldn't. The thought of help coming, just hours too late, was too much for him. He bit at his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood.
Too damn much!

"Colonel? Are you there?"

"I'm here," Stossen replied. The taste of blood in his mouth was a surprise. He found it difficult to speak over the growing feeling of emptiness in his gut.
So close. So far.
He wanted to cry, but knew that he would not. Could not.

"They're in-system. Can you hold until they get to you?"

Stossen looked at Dezo Parks, who was also listening to the conversation. Parks shook his head. He held up a hand with four fingers extended.
Four hours.
And both men knew that even that was an overly optimistic estimate.

"Negative, CIC," Stossen said. "We'll be lucky if we can hold out another four hours. I wouldn't lay odds on it. We're too close to dry on ammunition, and we're facing a major enemy offensive at this moment. If the Heggies press it, we could be gone in two hours. Or less."

"I'll pass that information on to the relief fleet, Colonel. Hold on, sir. We're all with you."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Van Stossen hesitated for nearly five minutes before he broadcast the news of the relief fleet's arrival to the rest of the 13th. Through most of that five minutes, Stossen and Parks merely stared at each other. At one point, Dezo said, "You can't hold back that information, sir. Knowing that help is coming might make the difference." He didn't really
believe
that, but it was a Chance, more chance than they had otherwise.

"It's more likely to destroy their spirit completely when they realize how just-out-of-reach help is," Stossen suggested. When Parks started to reply, the colonel waved him silent. "I know, Dezo. I'll make the broadcast. But I also know what the news has done to me. As if I'd just been sucked dry and hung in a museum in an exhibit called 'They Almost Made It.'"

"We're not dead yet," Parks pointed out. "You know the heart our boys have. As long as they know help is coming, at least some of the 13th might survive. Hold an LZ for the relief. Nobody's going to just lay down and die. Even if we can't hold the lines, some of our lads might get away, hide until help gets here."

"It might come to that. Is there anything left we can do that we haven't done already?" Stossen asked, suppressing a sigh with difficulty. "Any way to give us those extra hours?"

"I don't know. We shortened the lines. We've got a second line of resistance prepared for when we have to abandon the first, even shorter. That helps concentrate what firepower we have left. Mines, out in front of the primary LOR, and on that line as well. I think some of the men have prepared a few more, ah, primitive surprises for the Heggies as well." Dezo paused, and cocked his head to the side. "You want to consider something
really
insane?"

"Right now, I'd even consider witchcraft."

"Something just came to me. We could bring down a half-dozen shuttles, not to escape in, but to form one last barricade, a final redoubt."

"One last place to fall back to?"

"Something like that. Granted, we'd probably lose most, maybe all, of the shuttles we use, but—
just maybe
—they might buy us a little extra time."

"Let me think about it for a minute." While he was thinking, Stossen broadcast the news of the arrival of the fleet to his troops—just that the fleet was there and moving toward their aid as quickly as possible.

"Hold on, men," he concluded, his words almost a prayer.

"Why do I feel like a fraud?" Stossen asked when he lifted his visor and turned to face Parks again. Before Dezo could think of a reply, there was another call from CIC.

"Colonel, the admiral says he's going to try something to get to you quicker. If it works, you'll have Wasps over your position in three hours, troops forty minutes after that."

"
How?
" Stossen demanded.

The watch officer in CIC hesitated before he answered. "I know this is going to sound crazy, Colonel, but this is what I was told. Part of the relief fleet is going to make another hyperspace jump, coming out near our position up here."

"Can they do that?" Stossen asked, his eyes going wide.

"I don't know. The manual says it can't. I don't think it's ever been tried, but honest to God, Colonel, that's what the admiral himself told me, personally. I asked him to repeat what he said, and it came out the same both times."

"Can they do that?" Stossen asked Parks after unlinking from CIC.

Dezo shrugged. "I don't know any more than they do. I'm not all that current on that sort of thing. But what I'm thinking is that the admiral's more likely to lose ships and men. Still, maybe it does offer a little hope."

"I don't know much about flying a starship either," Stossen said. "What I
do
remember is that both ends of a hyperspace transfer have to be so far away from any planetary mass or ships get ripped apart, all the way down to their constituent atoms."

"With a massive release of energy," Parks added, nodding as much to himself as to the colonel. "Comparable to a fair-sized matter-antimatter annihilation. That's what the texts say. I have no idea at all what the safety margin is."

Both men were silent for a moment. Then Stossen said, "Either way, I think we can forget about bringing down those shuttles."

Parks let out a sigh. "Yeah. Probably wasn't such a good idea anyway. Most of them probably would have been shot down before they landed anyway. Wouldn't do us much good that way, and we might lose men on the ground as well."

"Let's just hope we last until they get here," Stossen said. Silently, he added,
If they get here,
unaware that his executive officer was thinking the same thing.

"Three hours," Parks said. "That's sure better than eight."

—|—

The Schlinal troops brought up their own sniper rifles. Though the attackers did not have the benefit of prepared positions, the heavier slug-throwers did make life a little more chancy for the 13th.

If a battle absolutely has to be fought, most soldiers prefer it to be at night. The green glow of objects in infrared sights comes to look as normal as the bright lights of day. A different set of sensory responses are needed. Light and shadow take on distinct meanings related more to hot and cold. The overlay of two night-vision systems in the optics of Accord helmets could, at its most extreme, resemble an activity that people from thousands of years in the past might have recognized—watching a primitive 3-D film without the special filter glasses that brought the images together. But experience made that double vision more helpful than any practical amalgam.

Shortly after the men of the 13th received the news that the relief fleet had finally come in-system, the Schlinal forces made their first straight-up assaults on the Accord lines. Those early attempts were tentative, probing attacks made on various sectors by small units and quickly abandoned when they met stiff answering fire. Echo Company beat back one of those probes without taking any casualties.

"Mind your wire," Joe said over his platoon circuit as soon as it was clear that the Heggies were withdrawing. The colonel's second message, that the relief fleet might actually get to Porter sooner than expected, came during the fighting. It was enough to make everyone take notice, if only for a fraction of a second.

"Don't go shooting at their backs," Joe said. That was no gesture of civilized sportsmanship, it was necessary frugality. New hope brought new worries. Every additional second that the wire lasted brought them one more second closer to help. That thought came and came again, quickly obsessing Joe and many others on the line.

"Squad leaders, check ammunition," was Joe's next transmission. Check and recheck; do everything possible to drive home the continued need to be as sparing of wire as possible.

Tod Chorbek and Wiz Mackey had devised their own private system for stretching their ammunition. They took turns firing, never both at the same time. Though it was not something they had ever drilled at—neither had ever suspected that it might someday be necessary—the two young men knew each other so well that they fell into an easy rhythm and hardly needed to look at each other or talk about the changeovers to make it work. From the beginning, their alternation went smoothly.

Kam Goff kept his head down, mostly, or looked around to see if there were any casualties who needed his help. He no longer needed to see death to feel the reactions he had experienced during his first views of violence on the battlefield. Each burst of wire, from either side, reimprinted the pictures in his memory. His stomach twisted and lurched, but did not expel its contents. He was far beyond that.