"Running." Vic repeated the word as if she'd never heard it before and couldn't grasp the meaning. "Oh, God," she added in a whisper as the squads to either side of the abandoned bunker also left their positions.
"Over there, too," Stark observed through a tight jaw. "In another company's area. The line's crumbling." More symbology moved as soldiers broke from their defensive positions, heading toward the rear in ragged groups as the red markers of enemy soldiers began following, the enemy advance almost tentative, as if they feared ambush.
"What's going on?" Vic wondered, whispering the question, then glaring at Stark. "Why are they running?" She slammed her fist against the console before her. "Why the hell are they running?"
"I dunno. Let's ask again." Stark pulled up the ID on one of the Sergeants involved in the growing rout. "Srijata. What's going on? Why did you abandon your bunker?"
The wild disorder of combat only dimly echoed in Srijata's reply. "I don't know! Everybody just jumped up and started running!"
"Why'd
you
run?"
"I can't hold a bunker by myself! I could see the bunkers on either side going, too!"
Stark shifted comms. "Private Shanahan. Hold your position."
"Negative. Negative. Too hot. Can't hold."
"You're not under pressure right now. Take a stand."
"Why? I'm not gonna die for nothing!"
Vic stared directly into Stark's eyes for a moment, then called a soldier herself. "Corporal Delgado. Report in." Silence. "I know you've got comms, Delgado."
"Go to hell!" Delgado panted back.
"Hold your position, Delgado. There's soldiers depending on you."
"Nobody's risking their ass to save me, are they? They're all running, too."
Stark focused back on the Command Center, suddenly aware of every eye on him.
Yeah. Like being a squad leader, but with one helluva big squad.
He keyed the general circuit, linking it to every soldier in the threatened sector. "Everybody listen up. This is Stark. Hold your positions. There's nothing coming at you we can't handle. I've got reserves moving up. Hold your positions," he repeated. Some of the symbology seemed to hesitate, but the breach in the front kept widening as more positions were abandoned and more units began running. The dam had broken, its individual pieces falling away under pressure, the enemy flood shoving at the ragged edges of the break to sheer away more defenses in an ever-widening rout.
Stark became aware of Sergeant Jill Tanaka, in charge of the headquarters staff, standing near. "How far will this spread?" she wondered, voice despairing. "Is the whole front going to go?"
"I'll tell you as soon as I know." Odd. To have so much power at his fingertips, yet to have so little ability to influence events.
"Dammit," Vic swore, punching another circuit to life.
"Where the hell's my brain. Artillery. Grace? We got problems. We need you to stop a penetration."
Far from the main headquarters complex, ensconced in a room where rested control of the big cannons, which infantry had feared for centuries, Sergeant Grace spoke carefully, spacing his words. "I see it. I can lay down barrages to slow the enemy a bit, but I can't stop them without ground troops forming a line."
"We'll form a line. We got reserves moving up. Start dropping shells on those enemy troops."
"Okay. I'll slow some of them down, like I said, but I can't hit the ones farthest forward without risking our own people. They're too intermingled."
Vic stared at the display, then at Stark. He nodded slowly. "Do your best, Grace. You're the expert."
"You don't wanna see my firing plan and sign off on it first?"
"Hell, no. What're you talking about?"
"Standard procedure," Grace explained, speaking rapidly now. "I develop a plan, then send it up the chain of command so every officer along the line can sign off on it and fiddle with exactly what target which cannon shoots at when. Then I get it back."
"After the damn battle's over?"
"Hey, I didn't make the system. You want to see my plan?"
"No," Stark declared forcefully. "Grace, you'll forget more about employment of heavy artillery than I'll never know. You do your job and if I see a problem from here, I'll talk to you about it."
"Command by negation?" Grace questioned. "Stark, you're my kind of wild-eyed radical. There'll be shells going out in a few minutes."
"Thanks." Stark glanced at Vic. "What the hell is 'command by negation'?"
Reynolds grinned, the expression rendered slightly unnerving by her tension. "That means you tell somebody to do a job, then just watch them do it. You don't interfere unless you see something you think needs done differently."
"Common sense," Stark muttered. "How the hell else can you—?" He stiffened, staring at the left flank of the collapse. "It's stopped on that side. There. Look, they're holding. Tanaka, get on with that bunker and hold their hands personal. Make sure they stay."
"Why there?" Vic wondered as Tanaka rushed to a terminal to link in. "Oh, hell, look at the terrain. They're on an elevation with a steep depression in front and rocks in front of that."
"Yeah." Stark smiled crookedly in recognition. "The Castle. We never got stationed there. Best bunker assignment on the perimeter. The enemy's being channeled away from them by the terrain so they're under no pressure at all." He shifted to gaze to the other side of the penetration, where a cluster of friendly symbols stood fixed on a piece of terrain shaped like a lopsided oval. "Vic, somebody's holding on this side, too. Thank God."
"Yes," she confirmed. "Mango Hill's holding."
"But that's just a low elevation. The enemy's gotta be pushing them."
"Ethan, look at the unit ID." Vic snapped the suggestion as if she knew he wouldn't like the information it provided.
He didn't. "Oh, Christ." Third Squad. First Platoon. Bravo Company. Second Battalion. First Brigade. His old Squad. The twelve soldiers he'd personally trained and led for years. His Squad until decades of poor leadership by their officers, culminating in the unthinking slaughter ordered during General Meecham's ill-considered offensive, had led the senior enlisted to finally mutiny; until those senior enlisted had elected Sergeant Ethan Stark to command them, so that he had to leave the Squad where his heart still lay. That same Squad, those same soldiers, had rotated back onto the line in the last few days and were now holding a position that had become the linchpin of the American line. Holding where the enemy was certain to hurl full force in an attempt to continue the unraveling of the American front. "Anita," he called.
"Sí, Sargento."
Corporal Gomez sounded absurdly cheerful.
Scanning her display, Stark could see the bunker combat systems shifting in a rapid blur to slam rounds at enemy targets as fast as they winked into existence on the local sensor net. A lot of targets probing, pushing, trying to work their way close enough to the bunker to pinpoint its sensors and weapon hard points. In one corner of the view from Gomez's command seat, Stark could see Private Mendoza hunched forward at his control station, an occasional quick gesture changing the bunker system priorities to concentrate on different targets or sectors. "You've gotta hold," Stark stated. "Right there. I can't trust anybody else to stand and fight right now."
"We gonna fight,
Sargento.
No
problema."
"
They're gonna hit you, hit you bad, but you gotta hold," Stark repeated.
"
Sí
'. Nobody's leaving this hill. They're pushing us now, but we're pushing back plenty hard. You see? We ain't gonna run like those Earthworms." Stark called up a different direct vid feed, seeing through the eyes of another one of his old Squad members as Private Chen fired from a pit outside the bunker. Shadowy shapes moved among the scattered rocks, flickers of motion amid the solid black shadows and glaring white light overlying the dead gray of the lunar landscape. Chen fired coolly, steadily, as his Tac pinpointed target kill-points. His Heads-Up Display jittered as enemy jamming tried to confuse aiming and detection of targets, the symbology altering in a constant wild jig as combat systems tried to sort out real targets from false. Minor vibrations jarred the Tac display as a nearby chain-gun mount pumped out staccato streams of shells. So easy to be there, focusing on the moment, on one target at a time in the familiar routine of a leader responsible for one small group of soldiers. So hard to be back here, instead, worrying about thousands.
"Let me know if it gets too hot," Stark ordered, breaking the link to resurface in the Command Center.
Vic was watching him, eyes hard. "Ethan, they're going to catch hell."
"I know that. They're gonna catch hell because I can count on them to stand there and take it. That's the way it works, right? The ones who can take it and do the job, no matter how rough, always end up getting handed that job." He ran one hand through his hair, staring at the sector display once again where enemy forces were pushing deeper inside the American lines. "That's a big flippin' hole." New symbols appeared, heavy shells arcing in from the American rear to burst within the area where enemy forces were thrusting forward. "Grace is right. The artillery's not gonna stop them."
"That's not Grace's fault. He has to guess where the enemy will be and where our own troops will be. He's always going to be behind the curve unless you tell him to drop his stuff on our own people."
"Which we ain't gonna do. So how we gonna plug that damn hole, Vic?"
"I've got the two on-call companies." She waved at the display. "At least I don't have to wonder where to deploy them anymore. Delta's off to the left a long ways. I'm sending them in behind the Castle to hit the enemy flank," Vic advised, her fingers flying over the command console to transmit orders straight to Delta Company's Tactical systems. "The other company is almost dead behind the hole in the line. Maybe they can stop the enemy advance." She paused. "Okay?"
"What?" Stark questioned irritably.
Oh, right. I'm the boss.
"Yeah. Good moves. Do it."
"They won't be good enough, Ethan. Damn fine thing you ordered those extra battalions activated." Vic bit her lower lip so hard that a bright bead of ruby blood appeared. "Charlie Company. I need you in place fast." Even as she spoke, Vic rapidly updated positions to feed Charlie Company's Tacs. "Establish a defensive line."
"You want us to hold that alone?" Charlie Company's acting commander questioned incredulously. Another Sergeant with a lot more soldiers and a lot more responsibility than a few days before. "There's a lot of crap coming down that way." The enemy, caution evaporating, had begun chasing the retreating American forces, hurling more and more troops into the hole in the American line despite the artillery falling in their path.
"Negative," Vic soothed. "Delaying action. Don't try to hold firm until we get more people there. We've got two battalions on the way. Understand? You're not alone."
"Okay." The doubt behind the acknowledgment rang clear even through the distance of the comm circuit.
Stark fidgeted, unable to act for the moment, his available forces committed. The line of symbols representing Charlie Company seemed far too small compared with the mass of friendly and enemy soldiers rushing down at it.
The thin line of Charlie Company had barely taken up position when the first scattered symbols representing fleeing Americans began to stream past and through them. More symbols came, moving rapidly toward the rear in singles and small clusters, like debris in a river rushing against the small dam that was Charlie Company. "Ethan . . ." Vic began.
"I see it." Some of the Charlie Company soldiers had begun falling back as well, swept up in the retreat as another wave of panic-stricken troops hit their line. First the edges of the company line began peeling away, then segments of the center eroded, then the rest simply collapsed, joining in the rout. "We got big problems, Vic. Holding the flanks won't help if the center ain't there."
There's too much going on all at once. How do you decide anything with all this data in front of you and stuff happening faster than you can think?
Indecision ate at him, allied with a growing fear.
What do we do? Tell people what to shoot at like the officers did? That won't accomplish anything. Maybe there's nothing I can do. Nothing but watch and hope something happens to salvage this mess.
A vision of bloodied grass suddenly mocked him, jeering at his inaction. Just like Stark's commanders had once waited indecisively at Patterson's Knoll as their troops died around them; until their options were all foreclosed.
Good Lord. Am I becoming my own worst enemy?
Memories tumbled out, as if thinking of the hopeless battle on the Knoll had been a key to a locked door. One steadied, forming a vision of soldiers sitting around a glowing heat lamp somewhere near a nameless battlefield, the veterans swapping war stories while newer personnel watched and listened in something approaching awe. One of those inexperienced soldiers, then-Private Ethan Stark, venting his frustration.
It can't be done. There ain't no damned way to accomplish this mission.
Corporal Kate Stein, his self-appointed "big sister," had grinned back.
Lemme tell you something kid. When you've tried everything you can think of, and nothing's worked, try something else.
What?
Stark complained.
You just said I'd already tried everything.
No, I didn't. I said you'd tried everything you could think of. Think of something else.
Stark rapped his faceshield with an armored fist, drawing a surprised look from Vic. "What was that for?" she wondered.
"Me. Trying to shake a few brain cells loose."
"I hope it helps." Vic hung her head for a moment, both hands supporting her above the command console, then raised again to look at Stark. "Ethan, I don't know how to stop this. I don't even know why it's happening."
"I think I do." He knew it, now, somewhere down deep.
Some people fight for God, some for glory, some for country. Which of those are left for these guys right now, right here? But that's a long-range problem. Gotta save everybody's asses first.
Too much happening, too big a disaster in the making, and too many responsibilities on his shoulders, yet Stark felt oddly calm.
Think of something else.
He stood directly before the map display, pointing toward it. "We've been trying to deal with this penetration by throwing stuff straight at the enemy."