We were in a synchronous...o...b..t above the uninhabited side of the one planet-sized chunk in the ring of detritus that circled the cold black pit of Yod-4. From the other side of the frozen cinder, the Tauran base acknowledged our presence by periodically tossing bubble missiles at the Anniversary. We knew how to handle those from the last time. Just touch them with a laser.
Since our attack plans, for what they were worth, were set up requiring four platoons, they took Ching"s squad from my platoon and Al-Sadat"s from the second platoon. They promoted Ching to prime-sergeant and put him in charge. Gave us four platoons of about thirteen people each.
We were all packed into the a.s.sembly area: Cortez came through the door and picked his way to the podium.
"All right, if you all want to shut up . . . quiet!" Cortez had been phenomenally ugly when we first met him, a year ago-or ten!-back on Charon. He didn"t improve with age: grotesquely scarred, bald, little white beard, skin the texture of old leather; strong and tough and fast and always in control; hard and intelligent and very cruel in a calculating way. He had fought in the two last wars on Earth, before the United Nations broke down and reformed. He had been a soldier for almost forty years.
Now the computer ".
s going to show you a graphical picture of our path, the way we"re going to approach the enemy base." He gestured, and we turned to watch the holograph screen at the opposite end of the room. It showed a conventional picture of a sphere with lines of lat.i.tude and longitude, slowly rotating. The Anniversary was a tiny model up in one corner.
"We"ve stepped up the time rate by a factor of a hundred. Now watch." A bunch of little lights popped out of the Anniversary and dropped slowly to the planet, weaving around in a complex random pattern. "The four red lights are the scoutships, one for each platoon. The rest"-about twenty white lights-"are programmed decoys, like last time."
The attack plan was pretty simple. We"d drop almost to the surface, on the side of the planet opposite the enemy base. Then we"d fan out and approach the base from all different directions, maneuvering erratically but in a coordinated way, so we"d all hit the base at the same time. The ships would be pre-programmed; no manual control at all (that didn"t sit too well).
"Now here"s the best recon picture we have." The globe disappeared and an aerial holograph took its place. "Many of these features should look familiar to you, from last time. Of course, we know a little more about their functions now."
A moving arrow pointed to the structures as Cortez talked about them. "The Flower. This is the first target; you remember, it"s where the bubbles come from. We better get this out before the ground attack.
"Almost as important, here, these lines of white silo things, the ships. No Taurans are getting away alive this time, except as prisoners.
"These are the targets your scoutships-and the decoys-are programmed to knock out, before you land. Every ship has twenty missiles, Cla.s.s Three tachs. The attack is coordinated so that every ship will release half its missiles at once, timed for all two hundred and fifty to converge on the base simultaneously.
"If this destroys the Flower and the ships, you"ll land immediately and attack. If not, the decoys will continue to seek targets of opportunity while your scoutships concentrate on staying in one piece.
"Each ship also has a gigawatt laser, but we don"t know whether we"ll be able to maintain one bearing for long enough to burn anything. We"ll see."
He rubbed his beard and smiled that funny little smile of his. "If the aerial attack isn"t successful, and I have a hunch it won"t be, we have to get in there with our launchers and lasers and do the job on foot. Same priority: first knock out the ships and the Flower.
"It"s going to be a fast and furious attack. We won"t have more than thirty seconds from the time we let loose our bombs to the time we roll out on the ground. Be only two or three seconds if the initial salvo gets its targets."
He gripped the podium and said, almost in a whisper, "I will have to have absolute, unconditional blind obedience. I swear to G.o.d I"ll burn anybody who doesn"t follow my orders just like a robot.
"We still have to take a prisoner. Once we have one of the Taurans to interrogate and examine, maybe we"ll be able to stop going in on foot. Maybe. The Commodore is sure that he could destroy that base completely, with the Anniversary"s armament .
. . but that remains to be seen.
"All right. We knock out the Flower and the ships and then, ladies and gentlemen, we go hunting. Once we get a live Tauran, I can whistle up the ships, we withdraw, and the Commodore will see whether he can knock out the base. a.s.suming the Tau- rans will sit there and let us leave."
He pulled down the drawing sheet behind him, shook it to randomize the charge, then smoothed it against its backing. He drew a lopsided circle. "This is the base," he said, and drew in symbols showing where the various installations were. It looked like this: "Now, this dead rock doesn"t have a magnetic field, so your inertial compa.s.ses will be set pointing toward the geometric "north" of the planet. From the orientation of the base, it"s obvious that the Taurans use the same system.
"First and fourth platoons will roll out about five hundred meters east-northeast of this line of ships at the top. Private Herz!"
"Sir?"
"You will be issued the heavy rocket launcher that belonged to the old fourth platoon. The instant you roll out of that scoutship, check whether any of the enemy ships are still standing. If they are, knock them out.
"After Herz has taken care of that, odd-numbered squads in both platoons advance about a hundred meters while the even-numbered squads lay down covering fire.
Then evens come up and pa.s.s them while odds cover. Herz, when you get within range of the Flower, kill it."
He pointed to the two Salamis. "We know from Aleph that these structures are living quarters. Don"t fire on them unless you have to. Not until I say to.
"Second and third platoons, you"ll be doing about the same thing. Who"s got the heavy launcher in third?"
"Right here." Corporal Conte.
"While you"re taking care of the ships on your side, knock out their communications dome. They may have forces elsewhere on the planet, though it seems unlikely. Still, we don"t want them to be able to call for reinforcements.
"Once we knock out the Flower, first and fourth a.s.semble near the east Salami; second and third take the west. Don"t bunch up; everybody just get within good striking range and try to find cover and wait for my orders.
Questions?
"Lieutenant," I asked, "all this seems to a.s.sume that their defensive setup is the same here as it was on Aleph, but Aleph was a jungle world-"
"-and this one is hard-frozen stone. Sergeant, you know there"s no answer to that.
Aleph is all we have to go on. The structures look similar, and we have to a.s.sume they serve similar functions. It"s all guesswork until we attack.
"It"s possible that our biggest danger won"t be from the Taurans but from the planet itself. Charon and Stargate are similar worlds, of course, and we"ve done hundreds of maneuvers on them . . . but never against a live, unpredictable enemy. You all know what happens if you stumble into a pool of helium two or touch a cold rock with the fins of your heat exchanger. n.o.body"s suspending the laws of physics just to help you concentrate on the enemy."
Somehow I"d managed not to think about that too much. When we left Stargate the second time, the total number of people killed in training exercises-all three strike forces-was forty-one. That"s under controlled conditions, where a hundred people are ready to drop everything and help you. Most of them were heat-exchanger detonations, though; nothing you can do to help in those cases.
"You platoon leaders and squad leaders get together with your people and make sure they know exactly what they have to do. We"ll have full gear inspection tonight at 1900, after chop. Unless there are any gross deficiencies, we"ll be on ready status from then on."
"Sir," Kamehameha asked, "do you have any idea when the attack is going to be?"
Anybody else, he would have chewed out. "If I knew, I"d have told you," he said mildly. "Within a couple of days, I suspect. Depends on the logistic computer.
Anybody else?" No response. "Dismissed."
Then the litany.
5.
I was up in the NCO lounge, trying to concentrate on a game of O"wari with Al- Sadat, when we got the word. Everybody had been on edge for the past three days.
The speaker crackled and Al-Sadat looked up at it, letting his handful of pebbles trickle to the floor. We both knew the game was over.
"Attention all personnel. Planetside operations will commence in exactly one hour.
All infantry and active support units report at once to your scoutship bays. Attention all personnel. Planetside operations will ..."
My stomach flipped twice and, getting out of the chair, I had to swallow back nervous bile. I"d felt about the same, every time the speaker had crackled in the two days since the first muster. It wasn"t simply fear of going into combat-that was bad enough-but also the terrifying uncertainty of the whole thing. This could be a milk run or a suicide mission or anything in between. Al-Sadat and I ran down the corridor and jumped into the lift, hoping to beat our squads to the scoutships.
Marygay was already there and getting into her suit when I slipped through the lock. I had one glimpse of Marygay"s white flesh before she closed the front plate and dogged it. I stripped and backed into my own suit, and while I was making the at- tachments it occurred to me that that one flash might have been the last time I"d see her alive. She meant more to me than anybody else on this ship, probably more than anybody on Earth, but all I felt was a dulling, empty better you than me, dear. I hated myself for thinking it, but it was true.
The relief tubes went on all right, but the biometrical monitors wouldn"t stay put on my sweat-drenched skin. I could just reach my tunic without getting out of the suit; managed to dry the spots sufficiently for the silver chloride electrodes to stick. The first platoon was coming through the lock by twos and threes by the time I got everything hitched up and put my arms in the suit"s arms and closed up the front. The babble of conversation stopped and then continued, muted, sound conduction through the metal floor. I chinned Marygay"s frequency.
"Ready, dear?"
"William? I guess, I-no, I"m not. Why couldn"t they have given us more warning?
I was so nervous anyhow, to have it come all of a sudden like that ..."
"I know. Maybe it"s better, though, rather than worry about it for days."
"All right get a move on let"s go G.o.ddammit!" Cortez on the general frequency.
Must have been on external monitor, too; all the people getting into their suits turned to look at him. "Let me have Sergeants Rogers and Mandella and Corporal Potter on my freak."
Cortez began a second after I chinned his frequency: "I"ll be riding down with your platoon but, Rogers, remember that you"re in charge, don"t look my way for any kind of help. I"ve got three other platoons to worry about, and yours is supposed to be the best. And you others, listen up. If Ching gets it, one of you has to take over the fourth platoon. Mandella first, Potter if Mandella gets it. Understood?" We roger"d, but why the h.e.l.l hadn"t he told us sooner?
He clicked back to the general frequency. "Platoon leaders sound off." One at a time: Rogers, Akwasi, Bohrs, Ching. "All right, I"ll give it to you and you can pa.s.s it on to your platoons after they"re all dressed. We attack at 1131-that is, at 1131 we rip over the horizon and let loose all those good bombs. That means we"ve got to drop out of orbit in . . . exactly nine minutes, twenty seconds. So make your people move."
I couldn"t control my shakes, so before I cut in the waldo circuits I swallowed a trank. Otherwise, trembling, I might have broken something. After the trank calmed me down, I took a stimtab to fire the old carca.s.s back up to fighting order, activated my arms and legs, and began walking down the scoutship.
It seemed so big. The Anniversary itself was two kilometers long, but you could only visualize it in an abstract way. A scoutship was nearly a hundred meters of gleaming black metal, and inside the bay you never got far enough away that perspective didn"t deform the streamlined shape and make it seem even longer.
Rogers waited back at the a.s.sembly area to make sure everybody got their suits and weapons in order. Marygay and Cortez and I entered the ship and strapped in and, speaking for myself, tried to relax a little.
After a few minutes, everybody was strapped down and waiting. Through the skin of the ship you could hear a high-pitched, fading whistle as they evacuated air from the bay. Then a slight b.u.mp and, through the porthole by my shoulder, I could see the struts and catwalks slide away and we were in s.p.a.ce. It was 1027.
The descent to the surface, which had looked so smooth and graceful on Cortez"s simulation, was a bone-wrenching ordeal as the ship twisted and swooped in the predetermined evasive pattern. There was a swabbie pilot up front, but he never touched the controls.
Skimming along the surface was a little easier to take. But the enemy must have been keeping pretty close tabs on our position, because six or seven times the laser flared out at a bubble. You couldn"t see it happen, of course; just a green flicker on the tortured landscape rushing below and static electricity making your hair rustle.
1130: "Filters down. Prepare to disembark." Cortez"s voice was flat with just a trace of controlled eagerness. He actually liked this c.r.a.p.
Then a series of quick shudders as the bombs took off toward the enemy. I saw one streak to the horizon and explode in a glare so bright it hurt the eyes, even with the filter. It must have run into a bubble; the bombs didn"t have the capabilities for defense and evasion that a scoutship had.
I turned on the pink light on the back of my suit that would identify me as a squad leader and tried to prepare myself mentally for the ejection. The trank was still holding pretty well; the fear was there, but it seemed detached, a memory. I wanted a smoke in the worst way.
Suddenly the base rolled over the horizon and I could see rubble strewn all over the plain; our ships, no way to tell whether they were drones-the Flower was still intact, spewing out bubbles. Ten or twelve ships flared by in different directions.
Only two enemy ships were standing.
We decelerated to zero abruptly and my buckles unsnapped themselves, the side of the ship slid away, and I was falling free, less than ten meters from the ground. I was still falling when the ship flared and jumped away.
I landed kind of sloppily on hands and knees and chinned the squad frequency.
"First squad sound off."
"One." Tate.
"Two." Yukawa.
"Three." Shockley.
"Four." Hofstadter.
"Five." Rabi.
"Six." Mulroy.
Rogers: "Mandella, get your people on line; your squad goes up first."
"First squad line up on me." They were almost in position already. "Shockley, you"re too close to Yukawa. Move this way about ten meters."
In the few seconds we had before advancing, I tried to figure out who was winning. Hard to tell. One of the standing enemy ships exploded as I watched, but the Flower was still bubbling away.
Something looked different about the bubbles-at first I thought it was just a trick of perspective, but then I saw that some of them were actually rolling along the ground! They"d been enough trouble on Aleph, where you just had to keep your head down to avoid them. Cortez shouted over the general frequency for everybody to watch out for the G.o.ddam bubbles, they were coming in low.
I supposed there was a chance that they had thought that up independently, but most likely it meant that they had been in contact with the one Aleph survivor. By inference, that meant they"d probably be capable of infighting, if it came to that.
Herz and the other heavy launcher fired round after round at the Flower, without success. The bubbles were too thick and maneuverable that near their source.
Bubbles kept rolling toward us, but-the same as on Aleph one brush with a laser would pop them.
Somebody managed to destroy the last ship. At least none of them would be getting away. Would any of us?
Cortez came on the general frequency in the middle of a sentence. "-the casualty report for later, I don"t have time-listen once, everybody! We can"t reach the Flower with the heavies. Have to move in, move in fast to grenade range, and saturate the area. Second platoon, can you salvage the gigawatt ship?" So at least one scoutship was down.
"All right, forget it. Odd-numbered squads, move out!"
I got up and started to jog, the rest of my squad spread out in a shallow V- formation behind me. Covering laser fire lanced around us, stopping bubbles-good thing; it"s almost impossible to use a laser finger while you"re moving. You"re liable to hit almost anything except what you"re aiming at.
After thirty or forty meters, we went to ground. The second squad advanced and slipped through us while we did target practice on the bubbles.
Then Bergman got it. He topped a small rise and there was a bubble, so close that his body shielded it from our fire. He fired one wild burst and then the lower half of his body dissolved into crimson spray and Marygay screamed. Even with explosive decompression, he didn"t die right away but hopped a dozen meters, his death tremors magnified by the suit"s waldo circuits. The bubble rolled on, glowing more brightly with its grisly fuel, until Tate recovered and popped it. I was dazed but kept covering my sector automatically.
Second squad went down and we advanced again, trying to ignore the splash of dark-red crystal where Bergman had died. We were within about four hundred meters of the Flower and Cortez cut in: "All right, everybody hold your positions; grenadiers, open fire on the Flower.
Everybody else cover."
Pretty soon we didn"t have any bubbles to shoot at, up close. With eight grenadiers firing at once, it was all the Flower could do to protect itself. We walked forward without any resistance and started using our lasers on the building. They were attenuated considerably by the distance, but we managed to pop a few bubbles even that far away. That may have been what made the difference-four microton grenades. .h.i.t the Flower simultaneously, each one a bright flash and a spray of debris.