Starfist: Firestorm (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Second squad had an easier time going down West Street than first squad had advancing along Center Street; most of the residents of Gilbert’s Corners who lived on the west side had fled to the imagined safety of the 819th Regiment’s encampment as soon as they realized an attack was under way.

A massive firefight was raging to the southwest of Gilbert’s Corners when second squad reached the south end of the village. Sergeant Kerr didn’t like it, but orders were orders, so he held the squad in place when they reached the village’s southern edge.

“What’s happening, honcho?” Corporal Chan asked on the squad’s command circuit. As the squad’s senior fire team leader, it was his place to ask the question.

“We’re waiting for orders,” Kerr replied.

“We’ve got Marines in a fight over there,” Corporal Claypoole said. “We should go and help them out.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Kerr answered drily. “But
my
honcho said we’re to hold in place until further orders. When
my
honcho gives me orders, I obey them.”

“Ah, right. Okay, we wait.”

“You got that right.” Kerr waited, and so did his Marines.

Lieutenant General Kyr Godalgonz didn’t much like what he saw. Alpha Company, on the right flank, had slowed the advance of the regiment coming from its southeast, and Bravo Company was beginning to roll up the flank of the force pinning down Charlie Company. But Bravo wasn’t rolling the flank up fast enough to free up Charlie to go to the aid of Alpha. It was going to be touch and go whether 29th FIST would reach the battle area soon enough to help Alpha. Thirty-fourth FIST was just finishing its sweep and search of Gilbert’s Corners, but none of its companies was close enough to help Alpha, either. Thirty-fourth had to go by foot. Godalgonz wasn’t about to waste any time or energy wishing he had some Dragons. He didn’t have the armored amphibians, so he simply had to make do without.

To make matters worse, he didn’t know where the regiment to the northeast was now; he’d barely found it on his UPUD when the enemy started knocking out the string-of-pearls satellites and he lost his overview of the battlefield. So he took what action he could.

“Viper, this is Killer.”

“Killer, Viper. Go,” Brigadier Sturgeon answered immediately. He’d been listening in on Godalgonz’s command circuit and was waiting for the call.

“Do you see where Alpha 17 is?”

“That’s affirmative, Killer.”

“Send Kilo to help them roll that flank. I need to free Bravo 17.” Kilo Company was on 34th FIST’s right flank, the closest to 17th FIST’s action.

“Roger, Killer. They’re on their way.”

Commander Usner, 34th FIST’s operations officer, stood close enough to Sturgeon that he was able to overhear the conversation. Sturgeon, helmet and gloves off, looked at him and gave a hand signal. Usner, also without helmet or gloves, returned a thumbs-up, and went to his own comm to call Captain Terris, Kilo Company’s commanding officer, to pass the order.

“More news, Viper,” Godalgonz continued. A force of probable regiment size is approaching from the northeast. Here’s where they were.” He transmitted a screenshot of his UPUD display made just before the string-of-pearls went down. “I don’t know where they are now.”

“Received, Killer,” Sturgeon said as he looked at the image Godalgonz downloaded to his UPUD. “I understand your lack of current intelligence.” The satellite communications of his UPUD had gone dead when the Coalition’s satellite-killer guns had gone into action, the same as it had for the general. “We’ll stop them.”

“Killer out.” Godalgonz, still pinned down, took a quick look around the edge of the debris pile and returned his attention to his personal problem.

“Any ideas on how we can get out of here?” he asked Ensign Rynchus.

Rynchus grinned at him. “What do you mean, ‘we,’ paleface?” he asked. Then, timing his movement, he sprang up and dashed at the strongpoint that held the automatic weapon system that held Godalgonz in place.

Sergeant Kerr listened carefully to Captain Conorado’s squad leaders’ briefing, and just as carefully examined the map the company commander had transmitted to the squad leaders via their platoon commanders. The briefing wasn’t as good as it would have been had Conorado gathered the squad leaders, but time was of the essence.

“We move out in zero two.” Conorado ended his briefing.

Kerr, like all the other squad leaders in Company L, took advantage of those two minutes to brief his men. He had so little to tell them, two minutes was more than he needed. Seconds after the two minutes had passed, word came over the company net to move out.

“Up and at ’em, people,” Kerr said. “Second fire team, first, third. Remember, we’re the company’s right flank.”

Lance Corporal Schultz grunted and headed to the head of the squad column. Everybody knew that third platoon’s second squad had the company’s right flank because of him. Schultz always took the most vulnerable position in movement or defense; he didn’t trust anybody else to spot the enemy as quickly as he did. Nobody would ever dare argue the point with him.

“Let me know what’s happening, Hammer,” Kerr said as soon as the squad was formed and in motion.

Schultz’s answering grunt conveyed “No shit.”

In moments, the company was outside the narrow confines of Gilbert’s Corners, on a line of squad columns, and headed across fields of low-growing legumes. Soon the rumble and
whir
of military vehicles became audible ahead of them.

Minutes later, Schultz spoke for the first time. “Bad guys, foot, five hundred, crossing.” Enemy infantry, five hundred meters distant, moving across the squad’s front. Schultz didn’t bother mentioning that the enemy soldiers hadn’t noticed the Marines approaching from their flank; he wasn’t one to use unnecessary words. Kerr immediately passed the word to Ensign Bass on the off chance Bass hadn’t heard Schultz’s report; Bass had and was already relaying it to Captain Conorado.

“Company L, all elements hold in place,” Conorado ordered the company as soon as he got Bass’s report. Then, on the third platoon command circuit, “Give me some numbers and disposition.”

Bass was examining the enemy force through his light-gatherer and magnifier screens. “Looks like two companies, moving in columns abreast. Their lead elements are already out of the forest. I hear vehicles, but don’t see any yet. They sound like they’re much deeper in the woods.”

Conorado glanced at his UPUD, wishing that the string-of-pearls was still functioning, but he didn’t waste time on it. “Are you in a position to pin them?” he asked.

Bass snorted. “We’re in position to do anything we want to them.”

“Wait one.” Conorado transferred to the battalion command circuit.

Commander van Winkle had been listening in and didn’t need to be filled in on the situation. “Have that platoon take them out,” he said. “Reinforce them with half of your assault platoon to make it go down faster. I don’t need to tell you how to deploy the rest of your company to block reinforcements or a counterattack. Now do it.”

“Aye aye,” Conorado said, then switched back to the company command circuit and began giving orders to his platoon commanders. Then he ordered his UAV team to put their birds in the air, to recon the vehicles he could hear in the trees. He needed to know how far away they were, and how many of what types in case he had to defend against them.

The company was in a line of squads in column, with third platoon on the right, a section of the assault platoon between it and second platoon, to third platoon’s left. So it only took a moment for the assault section to position itself with third platoon.

Charlie Bass, using his infra screen, looked side to side at the Marines lying in the field, awaiting his command to open fire on the enemy soldiers crossing the Marine front five hundred meters distant, oblivious to the immediate and deadly danger they were in. He raised his infra and looked at the distant men and felt a fleeting sorrow that so many of them would so soon be dead. But when men go to war, men die.
His
job wasn’t to feel sorry for the soldiers in the sights of his Marines, but rather to make sure that more of the enemy soldiers died than of his own men; try to see to it that enough of the soldiers on the other side died quickly enough that none of his own men paid with their lives.

Bass quickly checked with Staff Sergeant Hyakowa to make sure the squads and guns had their targets and fields of fire, then said on the platoon circuit, “You know what to do. On my mark, kill them. One. Two.
Fire!
”

As one, the blasters, guns, and assault guns of third platoon and the attached assault section opened fire on the moving column of Coalition soldiers. The targets—at five hundred meters they appeared less like walking, breathing human beings than animated targets—began falling, many with holes burned through limbs, torsos, or heads, some dropping to find cover from the horrible balls and streams of plasma that sizzled past at waist height. Gut-wrenching, soul-rending screams came from men in agony from the instantly cauterized wounds bored through limbs and guts by the crackling, sizzling plasma bolts that burned through bone, flesh, and gristle; but the
CRACK-sizzle
was all the Marines could hear from the world outside their helmets.

Less than ten seconds from when Charlie Bass gave the command to open fire, more than a quarter of the two-hundred-plus Coalition soldiers that third platoon shot at were dead or wounded. The rest were squeezing themselves against the ground, scraping hollows in the dirt to get even farther below the plasma bolts that streamed above them. Many of them fired wildly, paying no attention to the direction the bolts pinning them down came from. Only a few raised their heads above the vegetation to locate targets. Those few were hit if they didn’t duck back down fast enough; even when they did, fire quickly blasted through the concealing vegetation in quest for them.

Charlie Bass saw that the enemy soldiers had gone to ground, that there were only briefly visible targets for his Marines to shoot at, and ordered a change in their firing pattern. “Third platoon,” he ordered on the platoon circuit, “on my command, volley fire, four-seven-five.” Everyone fire at a line on the ground, four hundred and seventy-five meters distant. “Three, two, one,
fire
!”

The blasters and guns of third platoon stopped their individual, questing fire and sent their bolts downrange to strike the ground on a line short of where the enemy soldiers lay. The bolts hit the ground and glanced off it. Some of the bolts ricocheted high into the air, but most of them skimmed the ground, as close to the dirt as a prone man.

“Left five,
fire
!” Bass ordered, and all the weapons fired again, each Marine aiming along the same line but five meters to the left of his previous shot. “Left five,
fire
!” Again, the aiming point shifted to the left. “Right ten,
fire
!” The Marines fired again, close to their original aiming points. “Right five,
fire
!” Once more, the plasma bolts shifted their strikes to the right.

The two companies of Coalition soldiers had to be suffering such heavy casualties that it was only a matter of time before the survivors would have to surrender. But where were the vehicles the Marines had heard deeper in the forest?

Sergeant Flett and Corporal MacLeash wasted no time getting their unmanned aerial vehicles aloft, even though Flett grimaced at not camouflaging them before launch. All living planets had fliers; giant insectoids, avians, reptilians, mammalian,
something
. The Marine UAVs could be disguised as almost any flier of the right size—and almost always were. The camouflage mimicked not only the outer appearance of the selected fliers, but aped their movements as well, and even their infrared signatures. Flett didn’t know why Company L’s UAV team hadn’t been issued camouflage kits for the raid, possibly because higher-higher didn’t think the FISTs on the raid would be on location long enough to need them. Whatever the reason, the kits hadn’t been issued. So he and MacLeash launched their UAVs without camouflage.

The UAVs were battle cruiser gray, about half a meter nose to tail, with slightly mobile wings a few centimeters longer than their fuselages. The two UAVs lifted on command and headed toward the forest along divergent paths until they were a hundred meters apart. When they reached the trees, UAV 2, guided by MacLeash, flew a hundred meters above the canopy, high enough to look down into the trees in both visual and infrared, to see through all breaks in the overhead. Flett flew UAV 1 low over the canopy. The UAV team leader watched not only his own monitors, but those for UAV 2 as well, looking for places where UAV 1 could duck beneath the canopy to investigate more closely and then come back up. Less than a minute after launch, the two UAVs were over the forest, moving in the direction of the vehicle noise. Seen from above, the canopy was dense, but spottily broken. Flett ordered MacLeash into a search pattern to the right of the midline of the sounds and raised his own altitude by fifty meters to run a search pattern left of the center line.