IT WAS AS MUCH A MATTER OF TRUST AS NECESSITY that squad leaders were not required to report when they reached their initial attack positions. A single click of a transmitter would have done it and been almost impossible for the enemy to pinpoint; two direction finders would have to be aimed perfectly at just the right split second. The transmission, even if only for a tenth of a second, would have been received by CIC and mapped to within inches, which would tell Captain Fusik and the whole chain of command which unit was reporting. But we wouldn’t take the one-in-many-millions longshot of having even a single transmitter click intercepted. No news is good news. The only reason for a squad leader to break electronic silence before the attacks started would be that his men were in trouble.
That didn’t happen. The activity was all on the CIC update channel, one-way coming from the flagship. The only significant news on the CIC channel concerning our mission was when the enemy battalion took a long rest break, starting ten minutes after I got my men up and going again.
I didn’t waste much thought on the enemy taking short breaks. They had to do that periodically, just like we did. No species can keep going indefinitely without rest, and while tonatin might be a bit hardier than some of the races, they too had limits. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen, I figured the halt would last, what we would take in similar circumstances. When CIC hadn’t reported the enemy formation moving again after twenty minutes, I still wasn’t concerned. Maybe it was supper time.
After twenty-five minutes, I halted my squad again. We were in danger of getting close to the enemy too soon. We should wait until they start moving again, I told myself, until CIC tells us they’re on the go and still on course. The catch was that CIC might not pick up on the resumption of movement immediately. The area was heavily forested. If the enemy battalion chose to go to total electronic silence and changed course when they started moving again, we might suddenly find ourselves either exposed or too far out of position to intercept them quickly.
We have to be watching them too closely for that. Nine hundred men have to leave some trace even if they’re being extraordinarily careful; they have to have a decent infrared fingerprint even if we can’t see them under the trees. I was trying to convince myself that this lengthy stop by the enemy wasn’t necessarily the prelude to something sneaky, that it wasn’t time for us to throw out the plan we had started with and start improvising.
You have to improvise when necessary, but I don’t think I wasted more than a minute deciding that we would stick with the plan, move a little farther to make certain we weren’t late. We would just have to be even more careful than we usually are about stealth. I started the squad moving again, using hand signals for that and to remind everyone to be careful.
There were twenty-seven minutes left until the first of our spec ops squads was due to take a nibble of the enemy battalion. That was if that battalion didn’t just sit where it was instead of moving on to where we had expected it to be … and even that would only delay the start of our operation by a couple of minutes. Probably.
• • •
THE ENEMY BATTALION DID THE ONE THING I NEVER would have expected. It simply made no sense that I could see … which might be why the enemy commander did it. The tonatin battalion turned around and started hiking back over the route they had been following, after going in the other direction for more than three hours. They were on the move for several minutes before CIC noticed and passed the word to us on the ground.
Maybe that battalion commander was smarter than anyone has a right to be … or he was simply luckier. We had knocked out all of the tonatin satellites over Olviat, so they didn’t have that source of intelligence to tell him we were closing in. While one or two squads might have come close enough to an enemy snoop without noticing it, it was highly unlikely that more squads had. There was no reason to suspect that the tonatin had scattered that many snoops in the first place. Before we arrived they hadn’t had any need, and afterward they would have had difficulty doing it undetected.
However the move came about, our carefully scripted plan was dead. The first squads had been set to attack the front of the enemy formation, to slow them down and give them a couple of equally likely options for changing direction. The next few attacks were supposed to limit those options and start maneuvering the IFers in the direction we wanted them to go. But with the direct reversal of course, those first squads were going to be too far away to strike on schedule.
I had my map out and open, looking for plausible alternatives, when Captain Fusik came on the squad leaders’ channel with new instructions. The two squads nearest what was now the van of the enemy battalion were to hit as quickly as they could to try to make the enemy commander think that we had a force that had been trailing him. Two other spec ops squads would hurry to get into position to hit the tonatin battalion if they didn’t reverse course again.
For the time being, only those four squads would move to intercept the enemy column on its new course. The rest of us would make more minor adjustments until we knew whether we were going to be able to turn the enemy around again. My squad, along with our platoon’s second squad, was to cross the old line of march to get into position east of the tonatin battalion, to try to turn them west if they did another flip-flop and resumed their original course … which is what we wanted them to do. If they didn’t turn, we would be a bit closer and able to move to get in and take our licks sooner than we would have been able to had we stayed put. It sounds more complicated than it really was.
I brought my men together to whisper a report on what had happened and to pass along our new orders, then we started off as quickly as we could. I had my fire team in the lead, with Ilyi on point on the ground. Kiervauna was next. I followed him. Toniyi was behind me, then Claw. I didn’t pay as close attention to the way that Souvana had his fire team lined up, except to note that Souvana was two spots behind me and Oyo was the rear guard, also on the ground.
We had to cover eight-tenths of a mile to get to the position Captain Fusik had marked for us, and I wanted to get there before the first squad hit the enemy. I estimated that would be in approximately seventeen minutes. It wasn’t impossible, but with the need to watch for enemy patrols, snoops, and land mines, we weren’t going to have time to spare.
Although the temperature was fifty degrees Fahrenheit after the storms, I was sweating within minutes from the combination of exertion and tension. My breathing was more labored than the hurried hike could account for, even with the seventy-odd pounds of gear I was carrying. I had carried heavier loads at a faster pace often enough in training. But this was the real thing, and the last time out, I had nearly not made it back in. Yes, I thought about that, but never to the point of distraction.
I watched the forest, scanning constantly. I had to remind myself to trust the men with me and not try to be the eyes for every position. At the same time I was listening to the feed from CIC, wondering when the next update would come in about the course and position of the enemy battalion. And I had to watch where I put my feet, of course, to make sure I didn’t snag a boot on a vine or exposed root. Taking a tumble would have been inconvenient and slightly humiliating.
There was the weird sensation of time moving too fast and standing still at the same time. You focus too hard, or try to do too many things at once, and you lose track of time. That’s the speed part of it. But at the same time your mind goes through so many things that you feel as if much more time ought to have passed. That’s the standing still. The problem is that neither sensation is correct. You have to trust the time line on your display … and try to remain coherent and sane.
We crossed the path the enemy would have followed had they not reversed direction. I held the squad up for a few seconds while Ilyi and Oyo slid through the woods a hundred yards south to make sure that the tonatin commander hadn’t left mines or booby traps, or part of his force. I didn’t want us to walk into a trap blindly assuming there was no enemy close. We had to start thinking that the enemy battalion commander might be a lot smarter than we had been giving him credit for.
Once the biraunta came back and signaled that there were no enemy troops waiting to catch us, I moved the squad across the path quickly and we changed direction to aim directly at the point where the captain wanted us. When we got there, I was just settling into my position after seeing that my men were where I wanted them, when I heard the first shots. The first spec ops squad had snapped their first mosquito bite on the enemy column.
Those first shots were a long way off—more than a mile. If I hadn’t had my external audio pickups set at maximum gain, and had one pointed in precisely the right direction, purely by chance, I might not have heard anything.
Damp, heavy air and all the intervening trees worked to deaden the transmission of sound. But the noises weren’t my imagination. The attacking squad leader radioed, “Good hit,” on the tactical frequency. Then his squad would have withdrawn, pulling back before the enemy could respond. The next squad was to strike thirty seconds later, from the other side.
I didn’t hear any shots from the second attack, but I heard the squad leader’s report. There was a gap of four minutes before another squad took a nibble, this time adding a couple of grenades to the mix, and that attack was close enough to hear. After that, most of our squads were in position and the bites came with some regularity, spaced out along the length of the enemy column and coming from both sides, concentrating on the southern half. The only angle left completely untouched was the north end of the column. We wanted them to turn around again, to do another about-face and head back the way they originally were.
If that happened, my squad and three others would be in position to start turning the enemy west. That would give other squads time to move to their next positions. The plan could go wrong at almost any point. All the enemy commander had to do was make the right—for him—choice at every turn, either because he was so damned smart or because he was luckier than anyone has a right to be. But when the choices have to be made instantly and frequently, under fire, there is every chance that any commander will make an occasional mistake, no matter how damned brilliant he is, and we planned to be in position to take advantage of any mistakes.
It was fifteen minutes after the first ambush before we received word that the tonatin battalion had reversed course again, coming in our direction. I warned my men to get ready. When our turn came we were going to hit harder than the others had, using RPGs as well as bullets freely, maybe even a rocket if the opportunity arose. We were on the east side of the track the enemy was following. We wanted the IFers to turn away from us.
Ten minutes passed. The IFers were moving slowly, taking cover every time one of our squads hit them, and fighting back, sizing up the opposition before the bulk of the force started moving again while leaving enough strength in place to handle our attacks. That strung the column out over more distance than before, making them more vulnerable to our hit-and-run tactics. I started to hear reports that the enemy commander had detached a couple of platoon-sized patrols to attempt to engage the ambushers up close. There wasn’t much chance of that happening, and the enemy commander must have realized that. He recalled his patrols, set them to covering the flanks of the battalion, and did what he could to draw his force together.
Claw was the first man in my squad to spot the enemy’s point squad. The enemy squad was a hundred yards south and eighty yards to the west. I gestured for my people to get lower and remain motionless. We were going to let the point squad move past us without challenge and, we hoped, without them spotting us. After we opened up on the van of the main force, the other squad that had crossed the line of march with us would do what they could to take out the point squad.
That point squad, twelve men, moved past us, rifles covering both sides of the trail as well as the route ahead. Heads were turning methodically, scanning. Those men obviously knew their jobs, and the series of ambushes had made them particularly nervous. I wished them a merry trip to hell, then turned my attention to the trace behind them, waiting for the first company of the enemy’s main column to come into sight.
Another four minutes. I focused so completely that I didn’t have room in my head for any thoughts about the last mission I had been on. It wasn’t until much later, after things calmed down, that I thought back to this moment and decided that I had passed the first test. I hadn’t lost my nerve.
Finally, the tonatin battalion came into sight. The soldiers at the head of the column were well spaced out, minimizing the damage a single grenade or burst of rifle fire would do. They were obviously expecting trouble, pushing the pace a little more than was wise. Speed and vigilance take their toll on each other. The faster those soldiers moved the less able they were to spot the minimal signs an ambushing force might give. The tonatin were obviously anxious to get wherever they were going, and however much they might worry about trouble along the way, their commander was only willing to compromise so far.
I could understand that. But I was sure as hell going to do everything I could to take advantage of the situation.
Wait! The lead element drew even with our positions, eighty yards to the west. At that range, a blind man could scarcely miss hitting soldiers who were on their feet. I could see the tonatin quite well—camouflage uniforms, helmets, weapons, and the gear hung from backs and shoulders. I could see the strange hands gripping rifles. Tonatin hands had four fingers, all about the same size, thick and long, set two opposite two, making the hands function something like the mechanical claws in those arcade scams where you put your coin in with the mostly futile hope of grabbing a prize. Tonatin were adapted to use those claws as efficiently as humans use the arrangement we have; there was no awkwardness about it.
I counted silently as pairs of tonatin passed me, one on the near side of the enemy formation, the other on the far side. I had decided that once forty tonatin—about a platoon—had crossed my field of fire, I would start the attack. That would leave the patrol covering the flank still some distance south of us, too far away to close and interfere before we could do our damage and withdraw.
Thirty-eight. Forty. I simply opened fire, moving my aim across my field of fire and holding the trigger of my rifle long enough to spray twenty or thirty rounds. We wanted to make it harder for the enemy to decide that there were just a few of us, make it that much more difficult for their commander to decide whether to put all his men down to meet what might be a major attack or try to keep us occupied with a platoon or two while the rest of his people kept going.
Keep them guessing as long as possible is almost always tactically sound. I reported our attack while I was firing, the minimal number of words. Altogether, the attack lasted well under a minute. We popped off a few RPGs, expended close to a magazine of ammunition for each rifle, then started pulling back, east, under cover of hot-smoke hand grenades that would blur both visible light and infrared detection. We used standard fire-and-maneuver tactics with one fire team covering the other, leapfrogging each other ten or fifteen yards at a time. We stayed low and worked to keep as many tree trunks as possible between us and the enemy close enough to target us.
Breaking contact took longer than the ambush had, and no surprise—some of the enemy soldiers were still firing toward where we had been a minute or more after we had vacated those positions. Once we were out of immediate danger and I had ordered an end to any shooting by us, we stopped long enough to make certain that I had all my men, and that no one had any incapacitating wounds. Then we moved. We had to get farther from the enemy before they put out a force to neutralize us, and we had our next ambush spot to reach before the IFers did.
HIT AND RUN, THEN HIT AGAIN. COMPANY B KEPT at it without any major problems for several hours. It was nearly midnight before one of our squads got caught between two tonatin platoons and paid the full price. No one from that squad survived. There were a few casualties in other squads—killed and wounded—but there was no precise count given while the operation was under way. The wounded were treated as best they could, though there was no chance to evacuate anyone, or get them to more sophisticated treatment … which probably cost a couple more men their lives.
At least my squad had its luck running again. In four ambushes, we had two inconsequential injuries. Souvana had a thin strip of fur burned on the back of one hand from a bullet that had grazed without penetrating. Fang got a two-inch-long splinter of wood—chipped off when a bullet hit a tree next to him—in the shoulder. St. John pulled the splinter out. Neither Souvana nor Fang was inconvenienced enough to mention it.
Somewhere along the line, the tonatin battalion commander must have deduced what we were trying to do, and he did everything in his power to thwart our design. He started turning his people into the attacking spec ops squads instead of away from them. That’s how we lost the one squad. But we had Captain Fusik—and the full staff of CIC, with their computers—working to counter every counter the tonatin leader came up with.
I can’t answer for any of the other squads, but my men and I must have covered eight miles in five hours, even allowing for the time we waited for the enemy to get to us at each ambush. After our third strike I told my men to start being careful with ammunition expenditure. I couldn’t see an end to the operation, how long it might be before we could get more ammunition, and if we ran dry, we would be useless.
In those five hours, we moved that tonatin battalion a quarter of the way to where we wanted them, but in the last two hours I think we lost more ground than we gained. I was getting tired, and I figured that most of my men had to be as well. We weren’t to the point of collapse, but we were no longer at our peak efficiency. Even lying in wait at a time like that is a rather intense experience, not restful. You’re waiting for danger, waiting for an exchange of fire that could bring a bullet—or grenade—carrying your obituary. The ebb and flow of adrenaline from anticipation and fear has to take its course, even though the medical nanoagents in our bodies are programmed to counter that to some degree. Offset our … deterioration in capability with the knowledge that the enemy couldn’t be anywhere near peak efficiency either. They had been on the move considerably longer without more than twenty or twenty-five minutes rest at a time.
No, that didn’t make me feel any better. It never does. Even now, thinking back, the simple memory of what it was like starts to knot my stomach up a little.
IT WAS AROUND MIDNIGHT WHEN CAPTAIN FUSIK started doing what he could to give each squad a little time to rest, but the more time he gave us, the more time he gave the enemy, so there were limits. I could sympathize with his dilemma, but that didn’t give me a real chance to climb down from the extended adrenaline high. I was so tense that the muscles in my forearms were as tight as vacuum-welded steel. I remember thinking that if they tightened up much more, no bullet would be able to penetrate—a ridiculous notion.
Another three hours passed. We—my squad—had staged seven ambushes altogether. I was down to two. full magazines for my rifle and maybe half a magazine in the weapon, about 250 rounds altogether. Most of my people had to be as low, which had me more than a little concerned. If we got into a firefight that we couldn’t withdraw from quickly, we might be in serious trouble. Mention it the next time you report a hit, I reminded myself. I had to consciously remind myself of everything by then, almost as if I were still in boot training trying to keep my drill instructor happy. There’s a reason why that is virtually impossible.
I caught myself yawning while we were lying in wait for our eighth ambush. I couldn’t stop; the more I tried, the wider I yawned. My body wanted sleep, no matter what the price. I had to lift my faceplate to rub at my eyes and face, trying to massage myself back to full alertness. From the latest report I had, the enemy column was at least ten minutes away. I worried that I might fall asleep waiting for the enemy, and that would have been … unacceptable.
The tonatin battalion was still five minutes from us when I heard a call from Captain Fusik to all squad leaders. Our Company A was being moved into position to help us. Company A had been hurt as badly as B Company, so they had also reorganized into three platoons. The plan was for them to hit as one unit rather than break into squads. B Company’s squads would move together and form into larger teams as well. It would be at least an hour before Alpha would be in position.
“The estimate is that we’ve inflicted between 10 and 15 percent casualties on the IFer battalion,” Captain Fusik said. “Since we haven’t been able to herd them where we want them, CIC has decided to attempt to increase the attrition.”
He didn’t say anything about ammunition getting too short for us to pin eight hundred enemy soldiers very long, and we were too close to the van of the tonatin battalion for me to break electronic silence to remind him. I barely had time to whisper the essentials of the news to the rest of the squad.