Knox's Irregulars Page 4

  Major Tarrington came on the Battalion ComNet. "Delta Company, move forward to augment the line."

  Delta was his people, the armored infantry. "It's our turn. Follow me and keep close."

  The team slid down the hillside to the trench line. "Sanchez, Kimathi and Tavish take the first hole to the left. Rogers and Mireault stay with me." Up and down the line he noticed more men than he'd expected were up and at their posts.

  The dense smoke made optics nearly useless. He switched the view screen to thermal, his world changing to a strange landscape of vibrant, shifting colors. The smoke was no longer a problem, though burning debris on the battlefield was confusing. He'd have to be sure to only shoot the bright spots that moved.

  The late autumn ground was still solidly frozen, spreading out monochrome blue in his viewscreen. The Abkhenazi hill shifted to orange as tens of thousands of men poured over the ridgeline. At that distance it was impossible to discern individuals. Randal was given the unsettling impression of a red-orange blob oozing toward him.

  His brain was too numb to muster a prayer, so he made the words of a long-memorized Psalm his own. "O Lord, my God, in you I put my trust; save me from all those who persecute me; and deliver me lest they tear me like a lion."

  All his life people told him the safest place to be was the center of God's will. Watching the oncoming tide, he knew that to be the purest bunk. Sometimes God's will was martyrdom. There was no doubt in his mind that he and his men were doing the right thing, defending the defenseless. But there would be no place of safety that day. Taking a deep breath, he prepared himself to die.

  For several minutes nothing had come across the comset but static. Abkhenazi jamming equipment was decades behind New Geneva's, but if you built jammers big enough and made enough of them, they had an effect.

  The garbled voice of Lieutenant Kenshiro came through the comset, distorted by static. "All teams move out on my mark. Work in binary teams and engage the enemy from within their formation."

  Randal smiled grimly. Finally he'd get to mix it up in close, no more back-benching. This thought was cut short as a shell burst in front of his position, sending him flying. Slammed into a tree trunk, he slumped down stunned.

  By the time his vision cleared the Abkhenazi were nearly upon them. The audio cutouts had dampened the blast, but there was still a persistent ringing in his ears. Kimathi's voice sounded distant and tinny as the man shook him. "Are you alright, Corporal?"

  Randal took stock. His suit was pocked with shrapnel, but nothing had penetrated. "Bruised but not broken, thanks." Scrambling to his feet, he groaned, muscles protesting.

  Ariane lay sprawled out nearby. Kneeling next to her, Randal popped the panel on her breastplate. Switching to optics, he read the series of green and red bar graphs displayed beneath it. Good. Suit integrity was nominal, respiration and pulse steady. From her lack of movement, consciousness seemed minimal.

  Then came the Lieutenant's order and there was no time left to worry about her. "Armored infantry, move out!"

  Randal pulled the medic down into the foxhole and then hooked up with Rogers, the other half of his binary team. The two kicked in their jets, launching into the tide of enemy troops. Along the line the rest of Delta Company was doing the same. He landed atop a hapless Abkhenazi infantryman, nearly losing his footing.

  He and the others began laying about with light machine guns. It was impossible to miss. Enemy troops dropped in scads.

  Repeatedly he felt the impact of small-arms fire against his suit. He was thankful the Abkhenazi armed their men with archaic rifles rather than flechette-firing weapons. The soft metal of their projectiles might as well have been pebbles tossed against the layered ceramic, ballistic polymer and titanium-alloy mesh of the suit's armor.

  Rather than trying to hold back the enemy, the men of Delta Company waded deeper into them. Abkhenazi soldiers milled around Randal and Rogers, trying to bring down the two dervishes whirling among them. He imagined it was the same all down the line; twenty eddies in the never-ending river of men and equipment flowing toward the NGDF positions.

  Though Randal was careful to shoot in disciplined bursts, a flashing icon on his HUD warned of critically low ammo. Not wanting to be caught empty, he changed tactics. Extending the climbing spikes housed in both the wrists and feet of his suit, he began slashing at the surrounding troops. There was nothing subtle about killing with the spikes. It made Randal want to retch. A queasy giddiness fought against a barbarous rush inside him as he fought.

  Over the heads of his enemies Randal spotted a trio of open-topped hovercraft moving quickly towards him — Razors. Though flush with adrenaline, Randal's mind was sane enough to recognize the danger the hovercraft posed.

  On the back of each Razor was a twin-barreled gun on a swivel-mount. One half of the weapon was a high-powered microwave projector, the other an ultra-fast firing chaingun. To Randal it was the most fearsome thing on the battlefield. "Rogers! To your Nine — Razor!"

  His warning came too late.

  The gunner fired a stream of concentrated microwaves at Rogers, invisible in flight but obvious in effect. Roger's suit froze in mid-kick, internal circuitry fried by the burst.

  Even above the din of battle Randal could hear the Razor's chain gun open up, demonstrating how the vehicle got its name. The heavy rounds sliced straight through his friend, blowing a huge exit hole out the rear of his suit. The knockback carried Rogers several meters.

  Randal's fury didn't allow for speech, not even epithets. Instead he drained the remainder of his autocannon rounds, ripping apart two of the hovercraft. The rotary barrels were still spinning long after the last of the ammunition had cycled through.

  He turned on the third Razor and leaped at the craft a bare second before the ground around him was torn apart by chain gun fire.

  With a clang he landed on its open back, his momentum shifting the hovercraft enough to knock the gunner overboard. Reaching behind he seized the pilot, hauling him out and tossing him viciously aside. He jumped from the now-unpiloted craft, breaking his fall with a combat roll as the hovercraft collided with an armored personnel carrier.

  A new voice broke through the jamming on his comset. "...is acting commander Zhao... dead. Fall back to final defensive line. This is..." The rest was lost in a burst of static.

  The order could only mean the line was breaking. He called his team, but only white noise came back. He turned and muscled through the press of Abkhenazi, legs churning. Engaging his boosters he jumped the final few meters to the tree line.

  Everyone was dead. Already the Abkhenazi foot soldiers were securing the hard-won terrain. Dashing past them, Randal searched frantically for the hole where he'd hidden Ariane.

  There it was. A team of Abkhenazi had stationed a heavy machine gun inside. Several others were dragging the unconscious medic away, apparently assuming she was dead.

  The machine gun opened up on him. Acting instinctively, Randal used his boosters, angling them sharply. The thrust jetted him sideways. Most of the long burst pitted the ground where he stood a blink before, but the last caught him in the arm.

  The angle of deflection saved him, but not before the round scored a deep furrow in his armor. The force of the projectile spun him, flinging him to the ground. Randal rolled to the side, snapping off an LMG burst to distract them. He pushed off from the ground and rushed the nest. Once inside the hole, he made short work of the three-man gun team.

  He saw Ariane lying nearby and alone. Evidently the ones dragging her had decided not to tangle with him.

  After scooping the girl up in a fireman's carry, he sprinted for the final defensive line. The Abkhenazi were intent on reorganizing their formation, so it wasn't difficult to outpace them, slipping out of sight amid the broken terrain of the mountainside.

  After several minutes he reached the final defensive line, a saddle between two hilltops. The few remaining defenders were centered on a pair of surviving hovertanks. These we
re hull-down behind embankments prepared earlier by engineering vehicles. This allowed them to fire railguns over the bank without exposing their hulls.

  One Platoon Support Vehicle remained. Randal was pleased to see from the skimmer's markings that it was Jeni Cho. Many of the surviving troops wore the scout armor of the Seventh Dragoons. They'd pulled strategic reserve duty and had only been used to plug holes in the line.

  Passing by a tripod-mounted autocannon, he gave an acknowledging nod to the ashen-faced man behind it. The soldier's uniform was dark with blood. Given the situation, even the walking wounded were needed up front. Ariane was just starting to stir as he laid her behind a boulder. He took his place on the line.

  Ariane walked unsteadily into view after several minutes, and set to treating the wounded autocanoneer. Once she'd cut the cloth away, Randal could see the angry, irregular gash where shrapnel had lodged in the man's shoulder. The medic spread a compress over the wound and pressed what Randal assumed was a stimulant patch to his neck.

  A heavy hand rested on Randal's shoulder; he turned to find a friend. "It's been good to serve with you, Corporal," Kimathi said, taking a knee. "We will talk about today when I see you in Heaven tonight."

  Randal followed suit, shaking his head. "I'm hoping we won't remember these things in Heaven. You and I can talk about cricket batsmen and boxing, like usual."

  "Sawa kabisa. I will enjoy that."

  Both laughed with a mirth neither felt, determined to keep up a good front until the end. Then there was nothing else to say, only to wait in silence for that end to come.

  When the Abkhenazi assaulted, they came as a victorious army, making no pretense of subtlety. They knew victory was theirs. But even demoralized and beaten, the NGDF troops never broke - they were simply consumed, dying in place.

  Acting Commander Zhao's final order sounded over the comset. "Retreat to Rally Point Zeta. The Dragoons will rearguard the withdrawal."

  Randal fired the last of his LMG ammo and began a zigzag sprint for the rear, sparing a last glance for Kimathi. An incoming rocket had taken his friend from him.

  The volume of fire was intense. Everything was obscured with smoke. Entering a momentarily clear patch, Randal spotted Ariane. Several foot soldiers were trying to bear her down with sheer weight of numbers.

  She dropped one with an armored knee somewhere soft, but was losing the fight to keep her balance. Vaulting a demolished hoversled, Randal plowed into the knot of troops surrounding the girl, crushing one between them and sending the others flying.

  Behind them the Dragoons of the scout company made a last, gallant foray at the enemy, slowing the Abkhenazi advance for a short while before being ripped to shreds.

  Randal and Ariane caught up with the fleeing caravan of supply crawlers and command vehicles taking the main road southward. Here and there ran a surviving armored infantryman. Another flight of Banshees soared into view overhead. Randal cringed inwardly, bracing for whatever was about to drop on him. Instead the weapons pods detached well ahead of the survivors, scattering small objects over a wide area.

  It took him a second to catch on. At first he assumed they were cluster bombs ranging wide of their target. When none exploded he realized they were ADMs — Air Deployable Minefields. The vehicles were boxed in. "This way," he yelled to Ariane, pulling her from the path the others were taking. "Those were mines!"

  He and Ariane clambered up the steep bank to the east of the road. Looking back, he witnessed the final moments of the battalion as hovering gunships finished what the Banshees had begun, shredding the vehicles with chain gun fire. In seconds each was a burning shell.

  The two of them didn't stop running for several kilometers. Randal finally called a halt to catch their breath. Scanning behind for any sign of pursuit, he took in the skyline. It was blanketed with dark pillars of smoke.

  A passage from his Greek lessons surfaced in his mind; it was the inscription over the graves at Thermopylae: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie..."

  CHAPTER 4

  Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches.

  Let's go inland and be killed.

  —General Norman Cota: D-Day, 1944

  No sign of movement. Randal frowned, lowering the magnification on the viewscreen. "It looks like we're the first to the rally point, Mireault," he said, motioning for her to follow. Left unspoken was, "Hopefully we're not the last."

  The rally point was a hillock with a craggy north face that made it a tenable defensive position. When battalion command had chosen it, the idea was to have a place to reform for a counterattack if the NGDF should be driven back from the border. That turned out to be a sick joke, thought Randal. We'd be lucky to organize a Christmas crèche, let alone a counterattack. He assumed whoever showed up to take charge would guide them south until they found friendly troops.

  At the top of the hillock was a dense stand of aspen. Their canopy would provide decent overhead concealment. It was unlikely the bloodied Abkhenazi ground troops would press forward until the following day, but if he were marshaling the enemy troops he'd be sending out Banshees to harass any NGDF stragglers.

  The two of them rested, both too drained to speak. He stretched out prone, turning his sensors all the way up to listen for movement.

  In the quiet moment his thoughts turned inward, as always. His reaction to the whole thing surprised him; primarily that he had no strong reaction at all. The morning's nightmare was a long blur of confused images, their chronology undefined. In a detached way he knew he should be horrified, that acting natural was scarily unnatural. But thoughts came hazily, and his head and stomach had a hollow, buzzing feeling.

  He heard a rustle.

  It didn't come from Ariane; the girl had not stirred since they arrived.

  Another crackle of footsteps — faint, but there. The pace increased, and it seemed to him a second or even third set could be discerned crunching through the autumn leaves.

  This is not good, he thought, glancing over the lip of the hilltop. If the footsteps belonged to an Abkhenazi patrol he wasn't sure what he would do. Given his total lack of ammunition, he'd have little more than caustic remarks with which to stop them.

  Three figures emerged from the dry creek bed they were following for cover. Seeing LANCER suits on the trio, Randal let himself breathe again. They were friendlies. Hesitant to send a comset message in case the Abkhenazi were direction-finding, he raised a hand, waving it until they acknowledged with one of their own.

  The three troopers joined them on the hill. As they pushed back their helmets he was cheered to spot a friend. "Jack Van Loon. I knew they couldn't kill you," he said, pulling him into an embrace.

  "Glad to see you made it out, Randal. Who's in charge?"

  "You are, I suppose."

  "Not likely, me auld. You pinned those hard stripes on first."

  Randal scowled, knowing Van Loon was right. When two troops had the same rank the deciding factor was their date of promotion. "Just until a sergeant gets here."

  Looking the other two over, he felt a flash of disappointment that both belonged to other fire teams. He'd held out a slim hope that Tavish or Sanchez might have made it out. He didn't know either of the survivors well; both had transferred into the battalion recently from the Huguenot Division.

  The older one, Sergei Lebedev, looked as out of place in the infantry as a socialist at a Founder's Party convention. He had a nervous, almost fawning way about him that made Randal jumpy. It was said around the barracks that on Terra he'd actually been a scientist of some kind. More than his education, his appearance made him stick out. There was a perpetual jaundiced cast to his skin and his oversized nose always seemed stuffed up. The little Belarusian might have stood 1.6 meters in his boots.

  The other, David Pyatt, was a virtual unknown to him, though it was said he had some off-kilter religious views. Regardless, Randal was glad to see him.

  Late in the afternoo
n the group was surprised by the arrival of a PSV. It settled down by the copse of aspen, the cockpit sliding open. Setting Pyatt on sentry duty, he and Van Loon went to greet the arrival. Jeni Cho left her harness, climbing out on the craft's stubby wing. Plopping down, she dangled her feet over the side.

  "You made it," Randal said, settling for the obvious. Words were still coming slowly to him.

  Jeni jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "We'd have been here two hours ago, but Johnny's been playing hide and seek with Abkhenazi interceptors."

  "More like tag," the pilot chimed in. "They quit playing once I tagged a couple with smart missiles." Considering the source, Randal thought it a lucky thing that at least the missiles were smart.

  "Jeni, we need to get word to the rear about the breakthrough. The last thing the main body needs is thirty-thousand Abkhenazi popping up unexpectedly on their flank."

  "Already thought of that, Randy," she said, using his least favorite of her nicknames for him. Climbing back into the cockpit, she donned a shiny black helmet with plum blossoms airbrushed on the sides. It had an opaque silver visor Randal knew to be a viewscreen.

  "With the satellites down, I'll need to use the commo drone. I can send an encrypted LR burst. It'll have the range we need, plus it's a bouncer. The bad guys will have a bugger of a time DFing us."

  The canopy slid smoothly back into place and small bay doors opened on top of the skimmer. A meter-wide drone lifted out with a whir, ascending rapidly until Randal lost it for the tree canopy. It was a newer model, made in the spherical form designers were favoring in recent years. A wide assortment of communications and electronic warfare gear was stuffed inside, but the engineers had maintained a smooth, molded exterior. A drone that looked like a flying barn on a targeting screen was a dead drone.

  Several minutes later the young woman guided the drone back to its berth, popped the canopy and set aside the helmet. "I let them know," she said with a shrug. "For security reasons they couldn't say much, but the gist is that the main army is on the retreat too. The good news is they're still intact, and withdrawing in an orderly manner. We're supposed to rendezvous with them north of Providence."