I SUPPOSE WE HAD ALL BEEN DISTRACTED BY ILYl’S death, even if only for a few seconds. The distraction was deadly. The first burst of enemy gunfire nearly took Fang’s head off. The rest of us dropped to the ground safely, but we weren’t well situated. After we got flat, we scrambled for what cover we could find and started to return fire.
The IFers had opened up from 150 yards away. Maybe someone on that side got a little overeager. If the IFers had waited until they were closer, they might have wiped out the entire squad. As it was, Fang was the only one killed in the initial salvo. No one else was hit.
I radioed Captain Fusik as soon as I could, to let him know we were under attack again, but I didn’t know how many of the enemy we had stumbled into, or how much difficulty we might have breaking loose. My guess was that we had run into more than a platoon of IFers, but I wasn’t sure how much more. The rest of Captain Fusik’s command was still engaged with the enemy, so there was no promise of quick help. Once more it was, “Do what you can.”
Yeah, right. I saved my snort of disgust for after I had turned off my transmitter.
My men had responded as well to the ambush as any could while I was on the radio. This was not the time to worry about conserving ammunition. We were putting out enough fire to make it difficult for the IFers to get close without taking heavy losses, but they were moving, trying to get around on our right. Souvana had his fire team concentrating on the soldiers who were trying to flank us, even getting off two rockets, before discarding the launcher because there were no more rounds for it.
Robbie had gathered what we could use from Fang—grenade launcher, his last clip of RPGs, and rifle ammunition—and started firing grenades at the enemy, pumping grenades through the launcher tube until he had none left. Kiervauna was more selective, stingier with his few remaining RPGs.
“I’m certain we’re facing at least two full platoons, perhaps an entire company,” Souvana told me over our private link. “There might be more flanking us out of sight. They could be coming on both sides to slip the horns of the bull around us.”
“I know, so it’s time we boogie out of here,” I said. I don’t know how Souvana’s translator button interpreted that, but he got the message. He agreed. “We’ll pull back straight north, then start east toward where the rest of the company is,” I said. “Right now we can’t do much by ourselves but lose more men without doing a hell of a lot of good.”
Souvana didn’t argue the point. I guess even porracci macho doesn’t necessarily extend to the absurdity of demanding a “last stand” against insane odds. Between us, we took ten seconds to decide on the method of withdrawal. We had to leave our dead—for later retrieval, if we had a later. My fire team made the first move, then took new positions and put down covering fire to let Souvana’s team pull back past us. The tonatin put up more fire than we did, so our moves had to be slow. This time, we weren’t able to make a couple of moves like that, then get up and run. The IFers were moving as quickly as we were so we weren’t able to break contact so handily. We had to stay down a lot longer, and that slows you considerably.
I was satisfied that we moved quickly and erratically enough to keep the enemy from accurately targeting us with RPGs. They didn’t try with many, so maybe they were extremely short.
We worked through four rotations of fire-and-maneuver, with the moving fire team staying almost belly-flat. I thought that we had gained maybe twenty yards on the IFers. That wasn’t enough to take us out of danger, and we were having difficulty maintaining that gain, let alone increasing it. We started bending east, which took us farther from some of the enemy but kept the rest at about the same distance.
The first time I got up and tried to do my moving running in a crouched-over position, a bullet hit the right side of my helmet, a glancing blow that set my ears ringing and twisted the helmet around—and also twisted my neck a little. I dropped flat and turned the helmet back the way it should be … then moved my head tentatively to make sure it still worked and wouldn’t fall off. I closed my eyes for an instant and tried to calm my heartrate.
My hearing took longer to return to something approaching normal, for the ringing noise to subside. Apparently Souvana had called my name several times before I responded, surprised that my radio was still working. “I’m okay,” I told him. “The bullet glanced off my helmet. Let’s get moving again.”
I took more care about staying low after that. If some cosmic bookkeeper was keeping a ledger on lucky breaks, I had to be close to overdrawing my account.
IT WAS A LONG FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER BEFORE we were finally able to break contact with the enemy. My guess was that they were still uncomfortably close, but we had lost sight of each other and stopped firing. It was time for us to do a little spirited jogging, to put more distance between us and those IFers.
There was a squad from A Company in contact with the enemy to the south. C Company was engaged on the west. The remainder of A and B companies were engaged on the east. At the moment, my squad was the only one in the area not in direct contact with the IFers we had been harassing. We had done our share and would undoubtedly be called upon to do more before long. I just wanted to get us a few minutes’ respite before going back in, time to get our heads back together and catch our breath.
Catching my breath also left time for my thoughts to catch up with me. I had lost two more men, Ilyi and Fang. Only half the original members of the squad remained. Who would be the next to die? Would any of us make it off Olviat?
I pulled out my map and folded it, trying to get a better idea of where everyone was—and trying to get my mind away from our losses. We were still a quarter mile from the bulk of A and B companies, and only about twice that distance from C Company; they were pushing east, driving against the enemy battalion. The squad on the south had moved toward C Company.
Indecision in combat has always been rare for me. You see what needs to be done and you do it, or you do what you’re ordered to do. This time … what I really wanted to do was to call Captain Fusik and ask for instructions, make him take the responsibility, but we were out of contact with the enemy and using the radio might do nothing more than give them a chance to get a fix on our position. So I had to take my thumb out and make the decision myself, and quickly, before the enemy tripped over us again. So decide, I told myself, trying to ignore the way my head ached from the glancing hit my helmet had taken, and the way my ears were still ringing softly. Then I sucked in a deep breath and made my decision.
“WE’VE GOT TO GO BACK IN,” I SAID AFTER GATHERING the squad close enough to talk to them without using the radio. “Try to hit those people who surprised us, turn the tables. If we head in going just west of south, we might catch them on the flank. We can’t let them think they’ve got a hole they can escape through on this side.”
That was the important thing. The three companies of rangers—what was left of us—had been assigned the task of handling the short enemy battalion. We hadn’t been able to steer them close enough to the main battle to force them into the perimeter with the rest of the IFers, so we had to make sure they couldn’t attack our people from behind. It was clear that we were considered expendable, as long as we got the job done. And if we couldn’t get the job done in fairly short order, the general was going to have to find another way to do it. We wouldn’t last forever.
“We don’t have all that much ammo left,” Robbie pointed out. “We’ve all used quite a bit here. Me, I’ve got one full clip and maybe twenty rounds in my weapon.”
“I know,” I said. “We still go in.” He stared at me for a few seconds, then nodded.
I only needed a minute to get the essentials of my plan across and make sure everyone knew what we were going to do. Then I took a drink of water and suggested that the others do the same. We all put fresh magazines in our rifles. For most of us, that meant our last full magazine. “Spend them wisely. Let’s get moving,” I said, then I took my fire team out first.
Each fire team was a man short. We moved in parallel columns, with enough spacing between men to make it difficult for a single enemy marksman to take out more than one with a single burst, and to give us a chance even if they started lobbing grenades. We moved slowly, cautiously, going from tree to tree, doing our best to blend in with the scenery. We had used up just about all of the night. The shadows were already a bit lighter, turning from black to gray as dawn approached. Sunrise was no more than twenty minutes away, and as soon as the sun cleared the horizon, visibility would increase dramatically, costing us what little advantage darkness gave.
Oyo was on point for Souvana’s team. I had Toniyi, our divotect, on point. His dark, leathery skin was well-suited for this forest, and he would offer virtually no infrared signature that enemy gear would be able to pick out from the background. I hadn’t had a chance yet to get to know him as well as I had known Nuyi, but he seemed competent, and maybe just a little stronger. He was less talkative as well—not that we had had much chance for idle chat since he joined the squad.
I didn’t expect that we would need long to reach the IFers again, and I was right. It was only six minutes after we started south again when Oyo halted Souvana’s team and my team stopped as well, waiting for some signal from Oyo to tell us why he had gone to cover. He got low, with a tree trunk behind him, and turned to make a complicated series of gestures. He had seen a squad of IFers a hundred yards off, at an angle of about thirty degrees to our line of march, on the right; southwest.
This was what we were waiting for. I moved my team a bit forward, then to the right, until both teams were facing the direction of the enemy. Oyo had spotted the IFer point squad. There were more troops behind them, moving with their weapons at the ready, anticipating trouble.
Trouble was what we intended to give them.
I wasn’t at all nervous. I felt almost unnaturally calm. Looking through my rifle sights I got my breathing slow and even. I waited, wanting some idea of just how many of the enemy we were about to engage—and wanting to get them spread out to give us as many targets in the first critical seconds of the firefight as possible. The opening volley is often the only chance you get to make a significant impact on the enemy in an ambush.
We were facing at least a company of the tonatin troops—a short company, with maybe only a hundred men, but that still gave them a minimum of a twelve-to-one advantage, and I had no way to know how close the rest of the enemy battalion might be. Kiervauna was the only one left in the squad with RPGs—the great equalizer—and his final clip was in the weapon. We were going to have to hit hard with what we had, then move before the IFers could mount a counterattack. This time we would move toward them instead of away … obliquely; weweren’t going to get up and charge directly at the enemy. I’ve never been that insane.
I took a breath and held it while I squeezed off a short burst from my rifle, spraying three enemy soldiers who were closer together than they should have been. I’m sure I caught all three. By the time they heard the sound of my rifle, the bullets were too close to give them a chance to duck. The rest of the squad was firing by then as well.
We were in position to spray an eighty-yard swath of the enemy, and we did a good job. Then, while the IFers were ducking and trying to spot where we had fired from, we were moving, southeast, at an angle to the tonatin line of march, a little farther from the positions of the enemy we had seen but closer to the bulk of what was left of the battalion that had been hung around our neck.
It was comforting to have the enemy’s return fire aimed toward where we had been instead of where we were. After we had moved eighty yards, we stopped and took another cut at the enemy from the new angle, then moved before they could adjust. The problem was we stayed on the same heading instead of changing direction.
We were on the move when two RPGs ripped through the forest canopy, from in front of us. We dropped to the ground, heading for the best cover within diving range, and waited for the grenades to explode. Thankfully, neither detonated near enough to cause casualties, and we were up and moving again as soon as the shrapnel had spent itself, heading in the direction the RPGs had come from, only a slight change.
I radioed what we were doing to Captain Fusik. He had us located on his map, and we were no longer so far apart that we couldn’t directly assist each other. The rest of our company was four hundred yards to the east, pressing west. Company C was within two hundred yards of the portion of the enemy we had just ambushed, and now had them under fire—so they couldn’t come after us. Comforting.
“Grab the best positions you can, Dragon,” Fusik told me. “Try to hold where you are. Keep the IFers from getting away from us. We’re moving in your direction.”
Well, the best positions available weren’t all that great, but there were enough trees with thick trunks to limit the directions from which we would be vulnerable. I got my men down in about a semicircle so we could cover the most likely avenues of assault. “Don’t get too spendthrift with your ammo,” I told my people as they found their lines of fire. “We don’t know how long this is gonna last.”
THERE WASN’T TIME TO IMPROVE OUR POSITIONS by scraping away dirt or moving deadwood to give us additional protection. We had enemy troops coming at us from the south, spread in two skirmish lines twenty yards apart, and they acted as if they knew almost exactly where we were—the direction if not the distance. We spotted the enemy 220 yards out, but I had my men stay down and hold their fire. Unless the IFers started using RPGs again, I wanted them close enough for our rifles to do maximum damage when we opened up. I used the rangefinder in my helmet optics to find a line 140 yards out. If possible, I would hold off until the first IFer skirmish line reached that mark before firing—the signal for the rest of the squad. If the tonatin didn’t spot us before that point—if they did only know the direction and not the distance—we might really cripple the unit coming toward us before they had a chance to do anything about it.
Of course, I wasn’t leaving us any wiggle room. Once we engaged, we wouldn’t have much chance of disengaging unless the IFers simply turned and ran away, and, with the way they outnumbered us, that didn’t seem much more likely than me getting a battlefield promotion to colonel. We were going to have to hold out until Captain Fusik got people close enough to force the IFers to turn their attention away from us.
The enemy skirmish lines were moving slowly, pausing often. Heads were turning from side to side, scanning.
Rifle muzzles were tracking back and forth like the noses of bloodhounds on the scent. They were 175 yards out. A minute or so later they were 160 yards out. I still couldn’t see any hint that they had spotted us. At that distance, they would hardly have continued walking slowly toward us if they knew where we were. They would have either gone to cover or started running.
Come on, another twenty yards, I thought. Get where we can wipe you all out at once. I was conscious of blinking once. The twenty or so tonatin we could see in the first skirmish line were the only ones who counted—immediately. Those farther to either side and those in the second skirmish line were a problem for a very short-term “later,” assuming we took care of the nearer ones. Spray the nearest enemies, then lift your fire a little and hope to get some of the men in the second line even though they would have time to drop to the ground before you targeted them.
The first skirmish line reached the mark I had noted—140 yards out. I started firing. It took only a small fraction of a second for the rest of my people to open up. Noise. Fury. Tonatin soldiers fell, hit. Others dove for cover, some wounded, some not. We continued to spray short bursts toward where we thought the enemy soldiers were, first in that nearer line, then toward where the soldiers of the second skirmish line had gone to cover. Kiervauna got off his last RPGs.
For nearly twenty seconds—longer than we deserved—it was all one way, with us on the right end of the gunfire, raining doom on the enemy. I don’t know why the IFers needed that long to start returning fire, and I didn’t have time to be properly grateful. We simply took every ounce of advantage we could from it, putting down as heavy a layer of fire as we dared while none of it was coming toward us. I emptied the magazine in my rifle and got the partial magazine that was all I had left loaded before any enemy fire started coming toward our positions.
Even then the enemy fire was sporadic, scattered, some of it obviously misdirected. It wasn’t coordinated … and it wasn’t nearly as heavy as what we were putting down. I was too busy to sort through the possibilities, but I had an instinctive feel. The first possibility was that we had hurt them far more badly than I thought, or at least crippled the command structure of the enemy right in front of us. The second was that there were fewer of the enemy than we had feared. The third was that they were as short on ammunition as we were.
Those were the good possibilities. There was one other, perhaps more likely—that they were intentionally limiting their fire in front of us because they were busy sending troops around to encircle us and finish us off properly, When I could, I scanned the area behind us. The chance of the IFers coming at us from behind was an itch I couldn’t scratch. We were committed, with no way out until more of our troops reached us.
My guess was that it would take at least fifteen minutes, and probably much longer, for anyone from the rest of B company or A Company to take the heat off. And I wouldn’t have bet that we had that much time left, no matter what odds I was offered.
Out beyond the right end of our short line, where one of the grenades had exploded, a small fire had started and was managing to grow rather than dying the way most of the other incidental fires had over the past couple of days. Maybe the rocket had hit dead wood or dry brush. It didn’t look as if it had much chance of becoming major, but it might rob the IFers of a little cover, force some of them to move. Or, if the fire got smoky, it might give them more cover.
There was movement in front of us again. The IFers were edging along on the ground under what covering fire their comrades managed to put down. I saw one tonatin 120 yards out. He got behind cover before I could shoot him. I had noticed one thing: He had a bayonet fixed to the business end of his rifle.
“Fix bayonets,” I ordered. “They mean to come right into our laps.” I got my bayonet in place while I kept an eye on the tree that one tonatin had moved behind. He couldn’t move at all without showing something. I wasn’t particular. If I could shoot a foot off, that would certainly slow him down.
The way it worked out, a foot was what he showed, and I put a single shot into it. The IFer jerked around a little, reflexive movement, and for just a second his left shoulder was exposed and I put another round into that. I didn’t think he was going to have much more to do with the firefight.
THE IFERS WERE GRADUALLY BROADENING THEIR advance against us. We had to spread our fire over a wider area as they came at us from either side, taking single, aimed shots when we could, trying to hold the time when we ran dry back as long as possible. There were several dozen IFers in the skirmish lines, but they weren’t putting out much more gunfire than we were. Farther off, we could see more moving in, but we couldn’t waste ammunition on distant targets when there were closer ones. I warned my men—again—to be careful with their ammunition.
Time had become almost meaningless. The timeline on my helmet display seemed to have slowed to almost nothing, but there was a lot going on outside my helmet. None of my men had been hit since the start of this latest firefight. We stayed flat, with only our weapons and the minimal amount of heads and arms showing. The trees that sheltered us were taking a beating. I had noticed wood splintering off the trunk next to me a couple of different times. The rattle of wood chipped away by the impact of a high-velocity bullet against a helmet will get your attention.
I took my pistol out of its holster and set it on the ground by my left hand where I could get to it quickly if I had to … without letting go of my rifle. If it got down to that, I could fire the pistol with my left hand and use the bayonet on my rifle with my right hand—the stereotypical two-fisted hero.
I hoped it wouldn’t come down to that. If it did, we would likely all be dead within seconds. The hero business has never been what they make it out to be in adventure vids.
When I could spare a fraction of my attention, I kept up a running commentary for Captain Fusik on the command frequency. A couple of times he gave me what were supposed to be encouraging remarks about how close help was and how we just had to hold out a little longer. My mind filtered out the bull … and most of it was bull. I could hear increasing gunfire to the left, which meant that the major part of this fight was getting closer, but at the moment it seemed that the pressure the platoons on that side were exerting was just forcing more IFers toward my squad. I couldn’t see that it would make much difference if we were overrun by retreating instead of advancing IFers. Dead is dead.
Fifty yards out, a half-dozen tonatin got up and started running toward us. They didn’t get far, but by the time the last of them had fallen, another group of the enemy was charging, thirty degrees around the arc. They got a little closer, and the fire team that got up and charged after them got even closer, to within forty yards. It might be costly for the enemy, but if they kept coming like that, it was only a matter of time—and not much time—before they would get to us.
The third and fourth enemy skirmish lines were both within 160 yards, firing at us from cover now, trying to keep us pinned down while the unlucky suckers up front ran forward until they were killed. I glanced at the gauge on the side of my magazine and saw that I was down to only a dozen rounds of ammunition. I was just settling back into a firing position when I felt a quick burning pain in the heel of my right foot. I glanced back and saw blood. A bullet had taken off part of the boot and creased my heel. I guess I hadn’t been careful enough.
Even if we could get up and run, I wouldn’t make it farlike that, but the blood wasn’t gushing, so I wasn’t going to pass out from that, and the pain … well, there was too much else going on for me to give much thought to the pain. If the IFers kept coming, a sore foot would be the least of my worries … before all worrying ended for me.
“Get ready,” I said on my squad channel. “The way they’re going, they’ll be in our laps soon. Let’s take as many of them with us as we can.” Yeah, that sounds hokey as hell, but there weren’t any critics lying there in the forest.
Fairly soon, we would have to get to our feet to meet the enemy. They were so close that lying on the ground wasn’t doing much to minimize our exposure. Once they could see us they could hit us. I guess I wasn’t the only one in the squad who had taken a minor hit, but no one was complaining or screaming.
The enemy was thirty yards out—the unlucky few whose turn to rush forward had come. Again, it was half a dozen men. This time, those men dropped to the ground before we could drop them, and I needed a second to realize why. The rest of companies A and B had arrived, and the leading squads were almost as close to the rushing IFers as we were.
The fight didn’t end instantly. In fact, it got considerably hotter for maybe ten minutes, a general firefight with most of what remained of the battalion of tonatin against three very shorthanded companies of Alliance rangers. C Company came in from the west thirty seconds after the other companies. The IFer battalion had been pushed in from three sides and hadn’t been able to escape over our dead bodies.
There was even, at the end, hand-to-hand combat—bayonets and fists, knees and heads. By then, my rifle was out of ammunition and I had used the clip in my pistol and had no chance to reload it.
Then the fight was over—suddenly. After the tonatin battalion commander was killed, his successor gave up. He had been seriously wounded as well and died minutes later, but not until after he had given his men the order to surrender.