Side Show (11 page)

The pace that 1st platoon set would have been trying for such tired men even on the flat. On a 20-degree side slope, it required concentration just to keep from falling behind, or falling. There were no recognizable paths, just rocks and moss and overhanging branches. At least there was little real underbrush. In the rocky soil of the slope, trees managed to hog most of the soil and nutrients. They permitted little competition.

"Ez, make sure you don't lose sight of 1st platoon," Joe warned after twenty minutes.

"Just at the edge," Ezra replied. "We don't want to get too close to them either. They might pick up the pace."

In and out,
Joe thought.
Just let us get in and out in one piece.
That was about as close as he came to prayer. He wasn't overly religious, though he did not
dis
believe in a God. As long as he was a soldier, in a war, he would not rule out any possibility of help. Even divine.

It's gone too easy so far,
he worried.
For us.
If the platoon had been rushing from one firefight to the next, dodging enemies right on their heels the whole time, he wouldn't have had time for such thoughts. In a way, he would have been more comfortable avoiding them. A long march gave him too much time. Think or fall asleep on your feet. The latter was unthinkable, so the former had to be endured.

Memories came. Joe remembered playing soldiers as a child on Bancroft. As often as not, his gun had been a tree limb scavenged from the woods near his home. There was little in the way of a toy industry on Bancroft. Back then, at least, he qualified with a smile. And his war games had often been anachronistic by thousands of years. Mankind might have spread far from Earth, but he carried old histories, old legends and myths, along with him. As often as not, the war games on Bancroft had been Cowboys and Indians, and Joe had been Sitting Bull directing the attack on Custer at Little Big Horn.

The alternative had been Space Jockeys, running around pretending he had a compact space fighter under his control, laser guns blasting alien creatures out of the universe—bug-eyed monsters with mouths large enough to eat a small human in two bites.

But there were no intelligent aliens, or any alien races that might qualify as BEMs. At least, none had ever been found, in all of the hundreds of star systems that humans had explored. No intelligent aliens, no artifacts of defunct alien civilizations. Life was found in abundance, plant and animal, but none of it smart enough to rival man.

That had always made Joe sad, when he was young, to think that humans were all alone in the galaxy. When he was young, and now—but only at times like this, when he had too much time to think.

One foot in front of the other.

—|—

Van Stossen walked with his men. He was, he knew, far too close to the front of the column, trailing along behind Echo Company with his headquarters security detachment. Dezo Parks was across the valley. The rest of the staff was divided between the two columns.

The colonel had more than enough to keep his mind occupied, off of the slogging along. He was on the radio more than he was off of it, checking with company commanders, and trying to get some idea of what that Heggie reinforced regiment was up to. First and third recon were only in occasional contact with them. After Afghan Battery was cut up, the reccers had had little choice but to play their mission as coyly as possible, darting in and out, moving quickly and in what they hoped would be unexpected directions.

The Heggies
were
on the move. They knew where the convoy of APCs was. Twice, flights of Boems had attacked the empty Heyers, destroying a few more each time. But there had been no ground combat. No Heggies had been able to look inside the wreckage of a Heyer and discover that it wasn't loaded with troops.

A few more hours,
Stossen thought, his own wish for the night.
Give us a chance to at least get those people.
He didn't want to think too hard on what might have to come then. He would carry out the extreme option if he had to—even if he had to kill the researchers personally. But he hoped for a way to avoid that. That occupied more than half of his radio time, as he talked with Bal, Dezo, and Teu. Even on the move, he had them working on their mapboards and on the radio with CIC, plotting possible escape routes. Get in and out—
away
from this valley. Find some way to avoid interception. Worry about getting back to the lines later. Much later if necessary. And possible.

This mountain range continued almost forever, it seemed. The chain went on for nearly two thousand kilometers, with a few breaks. At one point, the chain was eight-hundred kilometers wide. Much of that land was completely unsettled, unexplored. The Accord settlers hadn't found it necessary to go traipsing through much of that, and the Schlinal occupying force certainly hadn't bothered. They were only interested in what had already been found and exploited. The 13th could move into areas that were out of reach of Schlinal air power, to terrain far too rugged for tracked vehicles to approach. That might mean abandoning the Havocs and all of the support vans, but it could be done. It would preserve most of the 13th. But that would only work, in the long run, if the Accord somehow held on and won the campaign for Jordan. If the rest of the invasion force were destroyed or forced to evacuate, all the 13th would be able to do was postpone their own capture or destruction. For months, perhaps, but certainly not long enough for the Accord to mount another, even more powerful, invasion force.

And that would mean the loss of whatever research those people had been doing inside Telchuk Mountain.

CHAPTER NINE

Zel Paitcher
had
slept, for nearly five hours. The sleep patch might not have been necessary, but the wing medtech had insisted. Zel hadn't been in very good shape when he and Irv Albans returned from their last mission of the evening.

Slee was dead. Zel had battered himself with that throughout the remainder of the flight. His mind had replayed Slee's last seconds over and over. They had been wingmen for nearly a year, but more than that, they had been friends, closer than brothers. Zel had brothers, and he knew that he had never been as tight with them as he had been with Slee.

An explosion. There wouldn't be enough of Slee left to make a pickup, if pickup ever proved possible on Jordan. Zel had, of course, logged the exact position. When the time for such things came, if it ever did, people would go out there to retrieve whatever remains they might find. It probably would not be much, but Slee Reston would be brought "home"—back to some common burial ground for fallen soldiers on Jordan if not back to his own homeworld.

A sleep patch with its four hours of guaranteed oblivion. Almost another hour of natural sleep. But even that had ended.

Zel woke lying on his back under his Wasp. Camouflaged thermal tarps covered everything. What remained of Blue Flight—three Wasps of the original eight—was down, at least for the remainder of the night. After that...

For just an instant after he woke, Zel's mind remained blissfully blank of memory. He was staring up at the underside of his Wasp. In the dark, the contours of the black fighter were invisible. Black on black, almost impossible to see even from no more than eighty centimeters away. The Wasp hid the sky and sheltered Zel from the continuing rain, now no more than a persistent drizzle.

The smell of wet earth, rich and sweet, caught Zel's attention. The novelty brought just an instant's amusement. Zel had been born and raised in the largest town on his homeworld. "Wild" smells had never touched him before as this one did. It was a welcome distraction until Zel realized that that was all it was—a distraction, something to keep his thoughts from returning immediately to his loss.

"Slee." He whispered the name so softly that no one could possibly have heard, but it was a whisper, more than a thought. This wasn't the first time that he had lost comrades in combat. It had happened before even here on Jordan. It had happened on Porter... and even back in training. But those losses could not compare to this one.

Memory brought back the emptiness, the ache. Tears rose in Zel's eyes. He brushed at them, slowly, then took a deep breath and rolled toward the front of his plane. There was no time for a proper period of mourning. There was still a war to be fought, and what remained of Blue Flight would soon be sent back up to take its part in the battle.

Zel didn't roll completely out from under his Wasp right away. It was still dark, and raining. He took a moment to orient himself. Then he scooted out, stood up, and made a quick dash over to where the support van was parked. Its outline was just barely visible at twenty meters.

Irv Albans and Jase Wilmer, the other two remaining pilots of Blue Flight, were standing together under an awning—a thermal tarp—draped off the side of the van. Jase's Wasp had been the one grounded by mechanical failure. It had been, somehow, repaired in the field, and was ready to go again.

"Get some coffee into you, Zel," Irv said. "Then call Major Tarkel." Goz Tarkel was the commander of the 13th's air wing, the only senior officer who had remained behind.

"What's the Goose want with me?" Zel asked as Jase handed him a mug of steaming coffee—prepared right there in the support van.

Irv hesitated before he said, "You're Blue one now," very softly.

That brought Zel to a full stop for a moment. The knot in his stomach seemed to double in size. Finally, he took a too-long drink of the hot coffee. It scalded his mouth but did serve to get him thinking again.

"Sorry, Zel," Irv said. "I know how close you were." Irv had been with Blue Flight since before Porter. Jase had joined the 13th after that campaign—replacing another dead pilot.

"Yeah." Zel couldn't think of anything else to say. He took a more cautious sip of coffee. Somehow, the crew chiefs always managed to find real coffee to brew when the rest of the 13th had to make do with the reproductions that molecular replicators came up with. Nanofactured food and drink was
supposed
to be identical to its "natural" prototypes, but, somehow, that never worked with coffee. Zel could always tell the difference.

He took time to enjoy at least the first half of his coffee before he put on his helmet and called the major. Pilots' helmets weren't as heavily equipped with radio channels as mudder helmets—the Wasps carried the bulk of their communications gear—but there were a few channels available.

"You got that sleep patch worked out of your system?" Major Tarkel asked. The Goose sounded as if he were still more than half-asleep.

"Yes, sir."

"Good. You're Blue Flight commander now. You've got... twenty-seven minutes. Blue Flight is going out to the 13th. You'll operate from there for the time being. Major Parks will be your immediate boss while you're out there. He'll tell you what they need."

"Yes sir."

"Good luck, Zel."

Good luck.
We'll need it,
Zel thought as he took his helmet back off. He glanced at his watch, as he had when the major gave him twenty-seven minutes. Twenty-six now. He told the others what they had to look forward to.

"Sounds hairy," Jase said.

"You can bet on it," Zel said, draining his mug. Irv took the mug and refilled it. "Slee and I talked about it before..." That brought an awkward pause. To cover it, Zel waited for the second cup of coffee and his first sip from it. "When we heard that some of the support crews would be out there. We'll play hell getting even fifteen minutes to sleep if we've got to keep hopping around with the mudders. The only time we'll be able to count on staying down longer than it takes to service the Wasps is when—if—they settle down, and even then only if there's no immediate threat that needs us in the air. I hope both of you managed to get some sleep tonight."

"We did," Irv said. "After you were out, the major told us to sack out as long as we could, that we wouldn't be going up before morning." He looked at the sky. "I guess this is as close to morning as we get." Dawn was still nearly an hour away.

Zel moved to the edge of the awning. The rain was slackening off even more. It was hardly more than a heavy dew now. At least the sky was heavy enough to keep any sounds of war at a distance. The pilots were far enough from the front lines that they couldn't hear any small arms fire, and even after listening closely for a couple of minutes, Zel didn't hear anything heavier than that.

"Heard anything about the fighting here?" he asked.

"Nothing close," Irv said. "For the rest..." He shook his head. There was just barely enough illumination in the night sky for Zel to see the gesture. "All we get is rumors, confusing and contradictory."

"Nothing very good," Jase said. "The big talk is that we might have to evacuate Jordan."

"Give up?" Zel asked.

"Give up," Irv confirmed. All of the pilots knew that the invasion had not gone according to plan. By now, there was supposed to be nothing left to do but finish mopping up any last pockets of enemy resistance. It was a sour joke, when there was time for jokes.

"If you haven't eaten, now's the time," Zel said after a minute. It was hard for him to start thinking like a flight leader. Ever since joining the 13th, he had been Slee Reston's wingman. Slee had made the decisions for both of them, back when they were Blue three and Blue four, and then Slee had gained the entire wing when he became Blue one and Zel became Blue two.

Zel didn't want to be Blue one. It wasn't just that he didn't want to be succeeding his best friend; he simply didn't want to be responsible for other pilots.

"We ate once," Irv said. "We were waiting for you to get up before we had another breakfast. You'd better get a couple of meals in you while you've got the chance. Mealtimes might be few and far between once we're out hopping around with the mudders."

Zel nodded, absently. He moved around to the rear of the van. There was a case of meal packs there. He picked two and pulled the self-heating strip on one of them. Appetite or not, he had to eat.