MAYBE I EXPECTED TONATIN CIVILIANS TO REACT the way human civilians on Earth might—running out to stand around and gawk at the fire, or try to put it out. I certainly didn’t expect organized response, not right away. The divotect civilians on Dintsen had mostly remained in their houses until the fighting was over during our campaign there. I didn’t know how civilians of other species might react to this sort of trouble.
When the power station blew, the town lost lights and communications. I moved my squad toward the location I had picked out, away from the town, but close enough to move toward the building in the center without much delay. Once all the civilians were either doing civilian things like running around asking each other what the hell had happened or hiding in their apartment buildings, we could sneak in close enough to launch our last rockets at their town hall, then make a hasty withdrawal.
For a minute or two, it looked as if my assessment might be correct. A few tonatin did head toward the power station, and I heard a few shouts—too far away for my audio pickups to tell what the words were. I gestured for Iyi and Oyo to start moving, then looked back toward the town.
I had a narrow field of vision through the trees, but I had chosen my position to give me a clear look down one broad street, flanked by apartment houses. As far out as we were, nearly three hundred yards from the nearest building, I couldn’t see a lot of detail, but I could see more tonatin coming out of their buildings. Some were carrying weapons.
Civilians or soldiers? I wondered. I decided that they were probably civilians, if only because they were making no effort to be silent and were milling around in the open as no trained soldier would in these circumstances. These tonatin were certainly not noncombatants, not with weapons in their hands. If we had been closer, we could have listened in on whatever they were talking about … or planning, since our translator buttons were equipped for both primary tonatin languages.
“Don’t trip over the civilians,” I whispered. “Let’s move.” Us tripping over them, or them tripping over us: that was the only way civilians were going to find us at night. The civilians didn’t have night-vision or fancy communications gear. If they tried to use flashlights, all that would do is make them clearer targets, or easier to avoid.
We moved, changing course once to stay away from five armed civilians who had ventured a short distance down a grassy lane cut into the forest. Inside the town, the streets were paved, but not even the main road leading toward the capital was more than a cleared grassy lane, suitable mostly for air-cushioned ground effect vehicles. The civilians moved fifty yards beyond the last building on the south side of town and stood in a tight group. One man could have mowed them all down with a single burst from his rifle.
The only defense I have for what happened next was that we were paying too much attention to that one group. Iyi and Oyo had gone ahead of the rest of the squad, as usual, and—like the rest of us—Robbie, the next man in line, was spending as much time looking over his shoulder toward those five tonatin as he was looking where he was going. He didn’t quite literally trip over the two tonatin who had come into the forest without a light, but it was almost that bad. Before Robbie and the tonatin spotted each other, it was too late to avoid them.
Somehow, one of the tonatin got off the first shots—startled reflex maybe. He missed Robbie, the only one he could have seen, and the rest of us. Even Robbie could have been little more than a silhouette. Robbie returned fire. Nuyi, next in line, also fired when he saw the targets. Those two tonatin both went down, undoubtedly riddled with bullets, but with all the ruckus, the other civilians started firing in our direction.
“Hoof it!” I ordered over the squad channel. We were running before I added, “Let’s get all the way around to the east side of town and try to hit the town hall from there.”
That meant going nearly two miles. I had Iyi and Oyo angle farther south, so we would be less likely to trip over more civilians, before we got back on course. Once we were three hundred yards from the shooting, I slowed the pace. We went back to stealth instead of simply crashing through the underbrush to put distance between us and those armed civilians.
Yes, we had run from untrained civilians. It wasn’t our job to fight them unless we had to. Armed civilians were fair game, but I wasn’t going to push that if I didn’t have to. I didn’t give a damn what the brass might say, only what the voice in my head would say if I did things any other way.
HALF AN HOUR, THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES: I WASN’T exactly sure how long it had been since the shootings. We hadn’t seen any more civilians and had moved to within two hundred yards of the east side of the town. I could see the building that was our second target. Tonatin might group together in apartment buildings, but they left plenty of open space between buildings. The last glow of the fires our first explosions had started had faded. We hadn’t started a major forest fire—something of a surprise, almost a disappointment, to me. A nice wildfire might have distracted the locals nicely, given them something they might have considered more urgent than us.
“We’re not going any closer than we have to,” I whispered once I had gathered the squad close enough for everyone to hear. “The two of you with the launchers line up your shots, get them off, and be ready to beat it in a hurry.” Fang and Nuyi had the rocket launchers, though each was down to his last two rockets. We would use all four rockets, then make tracks.
We were more careful now. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened before. Fang and Nuyi edged closer to the town, but moved away from each other to get two different angles on the target. The open plan of the town made that easy. The rest of us set ourselves in position to cover them. I had told Nuyi and Fang to coordinate the attack between them—to start firing at the same time. The rest of us waited and watched. I tried very hard not to look at the men with the launchers, but at the forest around us, especially in the direction of the town.
The sound of the rockets igniting in the tubes seemed so loud it startled me. Fifteen seconds later—as the first two were exploding, on target—the last pair of rockets was launched. We didn’t stick around for the rest of the show. Fang and Nuyi pulled back and we started moving due east, wanting to put as much distance as possible between us and those civilians, as the last pair of rockets exploded. After hitting these tonatin twice, they might come after us in enough numbers to cause us problems.
THERE HAD BEEN NO NEED FOR ME TO REPORT the results of our two strikes against the town. The cameras and other sensors in the ships overhead would have seen the explosions, and it would not take the computers very many seconds to match that data with our orders. CIC would know we were available for further assignment. That information would be passed through the mill and at some point new orders would be issued for us.
None of that had to distract me from putting distance between us and the town. My responsibility was to keep my command intact, ready for whatever came next. Once we had a decent headstart on any pursuit, I slowed the pace. We changed course several times, generally to avoid crossing farm fields where there was no cover, always moving away from the town … and doing our best not to get too near the next tonatin community, four miles southeast of where we had hit.
After an hour, I called for a rest. We moved away from the animal trace we had been following, and arranged ourselves in a loose circle—so we could watch for anyone who might get near. I was breathing a little too heavily. Exertion and nerves. It felt good to get off my feet, but I couldn’t relax too much. If nothing else, there was always the burden of leadership, seeing to my men and setting a good example.
Not everyone had his faceplate up to get a drink of water at once. Without anyone telling them, they spaced it out so that there were always eyes looking out through night-vision gear. Rifles were pointed outward, ready for action. A good bunch, I thought, nodding. Maybe the best squad I had ever had. Behind the concealment of my faceplate, I smiled, recalling how dismally pessimistic I had been about the combined regiment project in the beginning. There were still rough edges in our relationships within the squad, but I guess it’s like that in the best families—not that I have any firsthand knowledge of the best families.
Family. I had been in the army a lot of years before I could say or think that word without feeling bile rising in my throat. Mine had disowned me when I joined the army, and my parents had ruined every relationship I had had with a girl before that. Girls. Chrissie. I had been doing a good job of not thinking about her, but she chose that moment to intrude. If I was the marrying type …. I shook my head and forced myself to look around; anything to avoid thinking about Chrissie. I didn’t need distractions, especially not that kind.
“Meal break,” I whispered, loud enough for the others to hear. “Take turns so we’ve always got eyes watching.” Nuyi was closest to me in our little perimeter. I told him to eat while I took care of the looking. For a couple of minutes I was able to concentrate without difficulty. Then, just when my mind was starting to wander again, Nuyi said he had finished and pulled his faceplate back down. My turn to eat.
Army field rations are nourishing and not too tasteless, but it’s best to shovel the food in without dwelling on it. I ate, but I started thinking about Chrissie again, telling myself to forget about her. Permanently. If I got back safely to Earth—if the army shipped us back to Fort Campbell, and there was no guarantee of that—just stay away from her. There were plenty of other bars. If we resumed, it wouldn’t be long before she started thinking of something more permanent. That scared me more than a tonatin army. I didn’t think I could handle it.
BY THE TIME WE HAD BEEN LYING AROUND FOR forty-five minutes, I was getting concerned about the lack of communications. I had gone back to listening to the reports from CIC, but there was nothing about our little piece of the action, and no orders came from Lieutenant Taivana, Captain Fusik, or anyone higher on the chain of command. It wasn’t rational, but I started thinking, What if they’ve forgotten about us? I toyed idly with the idea of breaking electronic silence to ask if there were any orders for us, but I did not do that—and wouldn’t unless a lot of hours went by without contact. Then I debated whether we ought to simply stay where we were or move on. I could have left that decision to the flip of a coin, but didn’t. On balance, we were probably as well-off staying where we were.
“Unless something comes up, I think we’ll stay here until command decides what to do with us,” I told the others. “Try to get a little sleep. Half-and-half watches, by fire team. Souvana, your people take the first sleep. I’ll wake you in an hour.” I rearranged my fire team so we could watch all the way around our position more easily while second fire team settled in to grab an hour’s sleep.
My brain was too active for sleep, so giving Souvana’s team the first go hadn’t been altruistic. For a time, I kept my concentration where it belonged, watching the forest. But there had been no hint of locals within a hundred yards—and we would have seen or heard any tonatin civilians who came within that range. We could have planted snoops, but I didn’t see any pressing need, not without evidence that there were enemy soldiers in the vicinity.
Family. The word came to my head again, but I wasn’t thinking of my childhood on Earth. These guys around me were the only family that counted now. Wherever they had come from, whatever their ancestry. We’ve made it, I think, I decided. Despite all the prejudices, the fighting, and everything else, we’ve finally made it. We’re a team. We’re family.
That made me feel pretty damned good. All I had left to do was get us off Olviat alive. I didn’t want to lose any more … relatives.
IT WAS NEARLY DAWN BEFORE I GOT A CALL FROM battalion operations—from Major Wellman, no less, sent over from regimental headquarters for some unspecified reason. He kept his voice businesslike. For once, there was no sneer in it when he talked to me. “The tonatin are moving two companies of soldiers toward the town you hit. Move your squad along a heading of two-seven-five degrees to intercept and harass them.” He had me open up my map and linked through the enemy unit’s coordinates. We would have to push it to get to them before they reached that town and got close enough for its civilian residents to get into the act.
The only acknowledgment I gave Wellman was a single click of my transmitter—call it half a second’s exposure if the enemy was searching for electronic emissions in our area. I roused the men who were sleeping, and got the squad up and moving. Everyone was relieved at the change, even though the object was to get close enough to attack maybe four hundred enemy soldiers in broad daylight. Souvana might have relished the prospect. He’s one of those gung ho, damn-the-odds types you see in phony adventure vids. He liked to fight, never mind the reasons or odds.
We hadn’t traveled far before I noticed that the sky was starting to lighten. The darkness wasn’t quite so complete. When I flipped up my faceplate there were more shades of gray visible. Birds were moving in the trees. It wouldn’t be long before we lost the advantage darkness gives us. Even civilians without night-vision systems would be able to spot us.
Our first concern was to get past the town without getting too close. Armed civilians might be out in the woods trying to defend their homes. I set our course to keep us a mile and a half from the town, hoping those civilians wouldn’t patrol that far out.
It took just under an hour to reach a point due south of the town. We moved from tree to tree, doing our best imitations of ghosts. Even in the shadowy half-light early in the day, we can do a fair job of that. I dropped out of the line of march long enough to pull out my map to check on the latest known position of the tonatin detachment. They were still four miles away, and the same distance from the town. It was time to change direction—and pick up the pace.
I got Iyi and Oyo pointed on the new course, angling to intercept the enemy two and a quarter miles from the power station we had blown, and took thirty seconds to let everyone know that we were going to hit the nearest flank of the enemy detachment, then circle to the east, between those soldiers and the town. That might be trickier than the initial ambush.
The demands of moving fast and silent kept my focus where it belonged. There wasn’t time to worry about whatmight happen to me in the fight, and certainly no time to worry about anything extraneous. The only breaks in my concentration came when I stopped to check my map. The blips representing the enemy force had moved. They were either not being too picky about electronic silence or they were visible to the cameras on one of our ships. It’s hard to move four hundred infantrymen without showing some sign, even in the moderate sort of forest this part of Olviat was covered in.
Closer. When I figured that we were fifteen minutes from contact, I stopped the squad. We would take two minutes to catch our breath and calm down from the forced march. It’s hard to hold a target if your breathing and heartrate are bounding, I went over what I wanted from everyone again, quickly. I didn’t need many words to make sure my men knew what I expected.
I sent Oyo and Iyi out to scout the enemy detachment, locate the point and flanking squads, and so forth. I had Fang and Claw plant four land mines where the shrapnel would saturate a section of the logical path for a unit of four hundred men—the broad, grassy lane that connected the capital and the town we had attacked. The rest of us moved toward what looked like a good spot for an ambush—an area with ground cover, bushes, and vines, to conceal while we attacked … and give us a chance to break off the firefight before we could get tied down by a force that outnumbered us by forty to one.
Fang and Claw finished their work and took up positions along the line we had established. Then Iyi and Oyo returned. The enemy detachment was less than two minutes away.