Chapter Six
The goal of a Legionnaire is the supreme adventure of combat at the end of which is either victory or death.
—Colonel Pierre Jeanpierre,
French Foreign Legion, 1958
“Grid coordinates five-seven by one-zero-nine,” Fraser said, reading the display underneath the video monitor that was relaying the view from the surveillance drone. “Six targets. Computer IDs them as one-twenty-one mike-mike field guns. Recognition named Hellhound.”
“Five-seven by one-zero-niner,” Trent’s voice answered over the comm channel. “Six targets, ID Hellhound. Copy.”
“Confirmed,” Fraser said. “Pound ’em flat, Gunny.”
“Count on it, L-T,” the sergeant responded. “Count on it.”
“All right, Zak,” Trent shouted. “Let ’em have it!”
Trent thought he could hear the distant crump of the hannie guns loosing a full barrage now that they had their target bracketed. He was crouched beside the Sabertooth parked in the gap in the north wall. The sounds of fire from the trenches were slacking as the defenders pulled back. If those guns weren’t silenced fast.…
Beside him the Sabertooth seemed to vibrate as one of the two Grendel missiles left its launch rack with an ear-splitting roar. The second Grendel followed moments later, riding a column of smoke and fire.
Trent hit his comm switch. “Fafnirs … lock target profiles and fire!”
Corporal Toshiro Ikeda nodded and aimed his Fafnir rocket launcher skyward. “You heard the man,” he said. His fingers danced over the tiny keyboard that controlled the rig, programming in silhouette and IR signature data. “Ready …”
The corporal stabbed the launch button savagely, and the missile leapt from the tube with a roar like a wounded beast. Moments later, three more missiles followed. The man-portable Fafnir rocket launchers used programmable guidance computers to recognize preselected targets. They were ideal for tracking down unseen enemies, though their warheads were smaller than the vehicle-mounted Grendels.
“Missiles running … running …” Legionnaire Ignaczak’s voice droned in Trent’s earphones. His two Grendels, unlike the Fafnirs, were set for controlled tele-guided flight; after the Fafnirs found their targets, the Grendels could smash whatever was left of the hannie battery. “I’ve got one … two hits. Three. Three down, Sarge! Sending in the big boys now!”
“Fafnirs!” Trent called. “Fire another spread … just to make sure.”
As the missiles leapt into the air Trent allowed himself a smile. The hannies wouldn’t be trying that little trick again!
O O O
The explosion erupted less than ten meters away. Slick staggered under the force of the shock wave, dropping his FEK in the mud at the bottom of the trench. His helmet protected his ears from the force of the blast, but he could feel blood trickling from his nose. Sluggishly, he pulled himself up, surprised to find that he was still in one piece.
“Childers is down!” Rostov yelled.
“Help him, nube,” Strauss ordered harshly. “The rest of you keep firing!”
Shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears, Slick started to clamber out of the trench. The ground seemed to be swaying under his feet. Then he saw Childers.
The armored legionnaire was sprawled on the ground a few meters away, close to the shell crater. The man’s left leg was twisted around at an impossible angle, broken.
Blood spurted from the stump of his right leg. The legionnaire’s foot, still sheathed in plasteel, lay nearby. Slick stared at the sight, unable to move, unable even to look away. Nausea twisted inside him.
“Help him, kid!” Rostov’s voice sounded far away.
Slick sank to his knees, clawing at his helmet, and pulled it free barely in time. Vomit clogged his nose and throat.
“Goddamned nube!” he heard Strauss curse. “Vrurrth, help Childers. Rostov, get the nube out of here!”
Gasping for air, Slick saw the big Gwyrran crouch next to the fallen onager gunner. Vrurrth’s massive fingers were surprisingly deft as he stripped away plasteel leg armor and tied off a tourniquet above the man’s wound. Gently, he lifted Childers, armor, weapon, and all, hoisting the fallen legionnaire over one huge shoulder and sprinting for the cover of the fort.
“Come on, kid, move it!” Rostov said, pulling Slick to his feet and shoving him in the same direction. There was a far-off scream of more incoming shells as the rest of the legionnaires retreated, firing back to discourage the hannies from pursuing too close. Rostov caught Slick as he tripped and staggered, urging him on again. Nearby, another legionnaire fell, his back ripped open by a hannie rocket.
Slick closed his eyes, trying to block out the scene, but the horror wouldn’t go away.
O O O
The warning light on the computer-generated battle map strobed urgently. Fraser stared down at it in sinking despair. Not now, damn it! he thought. Panic threatened to overwhelm him. Not there!
He fought for control. The light indicated that something had set off the fort’s remote sensors on the east side of the compound. As he watched, the computer identified the intruders and displayed symbols on the map … native infantry and armor pushing over the rough terrain toward the east wall.
And the lighter was only minutes away from landing on that side of the fort … the place he’d pronounced safe. Damn those hannie bastards!
“Garcia!” he snapped. “Get Ganymede on the line. Instruct her not to land until she gets confirmation.” Without waiting for her acknowledgement Fraser keyed in his private line to Trent. “Gunny, there’s trouble on the east side of the fort. Computer says we’ve got at least a company of monkey infantry with eight tanks coming up. Get some men over there and turn those bastards back. We’ve got to secure the area for the transport to land.”
Trent’s reply was calm and measured. “I’ll take care of it, L-T.” Was there a rebuke in his voice? “Permission to use Bashar’s Sabertooth?”
“Anything you need, Gunny,” Fraser told him, trying to suppress his uncertainty. “Just clear that area!”
“Lieutenant!”
“What is it, Garcia?” He tried to sound calm, in control.
“Ganymede reports a flight of primmie aircraft. Bearing three-four-seven. Heavy stuff … bombers, maybe.”
As if we didn’t have enough trouble! Fraser nodded wearily. “Acknowledge.”
Artillery, flanking columns, bombers … what next? And when would Bravo Company finally run out of resources to deal with whatever the hannies were going to come up with?
Fraser stared down at the map. It looked like the legionnaires were running out of time … and luck.
O O O
“It’s huge, Asjyai! Huge!”
Zyzyiig’s neck ruff stirred in anger. The offworlders and their demon technology! First they had crippled the artillery battery the troops had hauled so laboriously over mud-choked roads to support their attack. Now, it seemed, one of their huge air vessels was in the sky over their fort. If this craft mounted weapons like the ones their soldiers used.…
“Be not so ready to give in to defeat, Asjyai,” Shavvataaars whispered behind him. It was as if the Semti was reading his mind. The thought sent a chill up Zyzyiig’s spine. Perhaps the legends were true.…
“The vessel your soldiers describe is of the type the demons refer to as Camerone-class,” the Semti continued. “It is a transport, unarmed, ill-armored. They never intended such craft for operations in a combat area.”
“Then …” Hope was rekindling in kys heart.
“The vessel is no threat to your soldiers,” Shavvataaars confirmed the unspoken statement. “They need not fear. The Cleansing may continue unhindered.”
Zyzyiig smiled, reaching for kys radio. Perhaps there was time after all.
O O O
The wall burst inward in a roiling cloud of smoke and splintered masonry. Sergeant Trent fired a spray of grenades into the opening before the dust could settle. “Pour it on, boys! Let ’em know you’re here!”
Beside him, Legionnaire Fiorello squeezed off a plasma bolt from his onager. The flare as it found a target backlit the smoke, giving the scene an eerie, hellish quality. Other legionnaires of Third Platoon added in their firepower, and hannie screams testified to their accuracy.
A tank gun barked, sending a shell whistling through the opening. It struck the back of a supply hut thirty meters behind Trent. Machine guns hammered.
The first hannie tank rumbled through the new gap in the east wall, firing again as it came. This time, the shell found its mark, an MEK gunner crouched behind an improvised barricade of upturned cargomods. Fiorello’s onager flashed again, tearing a hole in the tank’s front chassis armor. The vehicle ground forward, followed by another. Hannie troops charged out of the smoke firing rockets and screaming defiance.
With a whine of strained turbofans a Legion Sandray shot past, slewing sideways in front of Trent’s position. The APC’s gun chattered, spraying death. Natives scrambled for cover or fell, torn by dozens of needle shards. The lead tank fired again, but the Sandray’s composite-laminate armor absorbed the impact easily. A second Sandray appeared from the left of Trent’s defensive line, pumping high-volume autofire into the hannies. The gap in the east wall was a seething cauldron no infantry soldier could survive.
Farther down the line, a second explosion opened a new hole. As another hannie tank crashed through the debris, Corporal Bashar’s Sabertooth opened fire. The turret-mounted plasma cannon illuminated the battlefield like a brief, false dawn. Superheated metal smashed into the hannie tank, vaporizing the vehicle’s gun mount and leaving the chassis a twisted, smoking hulk.
“Score one for the cavalry!” someone shouted.
Fiorello’s third shot exploded right over the lead tank’s engine compartment, tearing a hole through armor plating and complex machinery. The vehicle rolled to a stop as smoke poured from the gash, a thick, oil-blackened cloud. The second tank smashed into it, pushing the cripple aside.
Bashar’s Sabertooth pivoted on its fans, ready to make the kill.…
“Sabertooth One, this is Alice One. Break off and await new orders!” Garcia’s voice sounded urgent over Trent’s headphones.
“Confirmed,” Bashar replied blandly. The FSV continued its turn without firing.
“Goddamn it!” Trent roared. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Garcia?”
“Lieutenant’s orders,” Garcia replied. “He wants the Sabertooth redeployed.”
Trent thought about overriding the order. With the FSV on the east wall, there was no way the enemy would manage a breakthrough. Without it … well, the onagers would still keep their tanks at bay. But Fraser had promised him the Sabertooth for support.…
“We’ve got enemy aircraft inbound, Sarge,” Garcia said quietly. She seemed to be reading his mind. “And Sabertooth Two’s got troubles on the north wall. We need Bashar for anti-air.”
“Right,” Trent said at last. “We’ll make do here.”
He raised his FEK to fire another burst of grenades.
We’ll make do … unless they’ve got more surprises for us.…
O O O
“Six bogies, bearing now three-three-niner, speed five hundred, altitude five-five-zero, range nine hundred, closing.” The lieutenant’s voice sounded tinny in Legionnaire Spiro Karatsolis’s ear. “Tentative ID is native propeller-driven bombers, recognition code Boomerang. Repeat this is a tentative ID only.”
“Roger, Alice One,” Karatsolis replied. He ran his fingers over his tracking board, slaving his computer to the feed from the command van. Data readouts flashed confirmation of Fraser’s verbal information. “Receiving your input. Ready to fire.”
“Just be goddamned careful of the transport!” Fraser snapped.
Corporal Bashar glanced up and back from the Sabertooth’s controls. “Sounds like the lieutenant’s getting jumpy, huh?”
“That’s what they pay him for, Bashar,” the gunner responded with a grin. “Officers worry … we just pull the trigger and collect the bounty.”
As Bashar guided the FSV past the barracks, Karatsolis programmed the two Grendels. “Fire on the rail!” he warned, hitting the launch buttons in quick succession. Bashar compensated for the recoil so smoothly that the Sabertooth barely rocked.
Monitors flashed on above the Grendel control console, giving Karatsolis a warhead’s eye view of the missiles’ flight paths. The Ganymede filled the two screens as it circled to the northwest of the fort. Karatsolis smiled and gripped a joystick. Those hannie bombers would get the surprise of a lifetime, and thanks to the transport they’d barely have time to see it coming.
The view on the screens lurched and plunged as the two missiles dived together, dropping under the lighter, then up … up … Karatsolis disengaged the teleguidance and switched to heat-seeking mode, making sure the transport’s IFF code was registering. The lead Grendel locked on an enemy bomber. The second started to follow, but the legionnaire overrode and the missile selected the second highest signature to home in on. An instant later, the two screens flared and went blank almost as one. Two of the six targets went dead on the Sabertooth’s fire-control board.
“Two down!” he yelled.
“Two for the goatherd,” Bashar agreed. “Kind of reminds me of that time on Ossian. Remember?”
Karatsolis swung his chair to operate the turret controls. “Tracking!” he shouted, ignoring Bashar’s comment. The turret rotated smoothly. In front of him, another monitor lit up to display sighting data for the Sabertooth’s powerful onager cannon. The legionnaire raised the plasma gun skyward, probing for targets. His left hand called up the feed from Fraser’s computers and superimposed the information on the aiming display.
The bombers had split up. One pair was dropping low, while the others climbed, angling behind and over Ganymede. The transport lighter screened the second pair.…
He dropped the barrel so that one of the low-flying bombers was centered in the video monitor. A few quick keystrokes locked the target image into the computer and slaved the turret to the aircraft’s motion. “Clear!” he called, and Bashar fired up the turbofans again. The turret swung under computer control as the Sabertooth moved, keeping the image of the aircraft locked on the screen. Seconds later, crosshairs lit up over the target in red, and Karatsolis squeezed the trigger that fired the onager cannon.
The noise was deafening, the heat almost unbearable as the cannon fired, flinging a packet of raw plasma at the target. The superheated metal lanced toward the airplane like summer lightning, and in an instant the target was gone, vaporized.
“Tracking!” he repeated, and even before Bashar had halted the vehicle he was already starting to line up for the second shot. This bomber had no more chance than the other. The plasma bolt found its mark and destroyed the aircraft before the crew knew what had hit them.
But where were the other two…?
“Bashar! Move around … give me a better angle!” The last two aircraft were still masked by the lighter. They’d be close enough to drop their loads soon.…
Damn! Ganymede was still in the way. Damn! Damn!
O O O
Wyzzeer Gyeddiig pulled back on the yoke and pushed all four throttles forward, feeling the Fwyryeel bomber shudder as its nose came up and the four props revved to three-quarters power. So far the demons below hadn’t fired on kys plane, but it was only a matter of time. If their lightning weapons didn’t find a mark, their tame servant-rockets would. Ky had watched four of the six aircraft in Flight Predator knocked out of the sky by the devil weapons. So far only luck had protected the two survivors … luck, and the screening bulk of the demon skycraft lumbering in a slow circle above the Demon Plateau.
Zeeraij Dreeyg, kys copilot, pointed downward. The ground battle was still raging around the demon fort. Flight Predator was supposed to deliver the knockout blow that would break the offworlders, but with two aircraft left and certain destruction awaiting them if they ventured too close, how could they hope to carry out the mission? Without a powerful strike, and soon, the ground attack was sure to fail. Those demon weapons were as deadly on the ground as they were to aircraft.…
Lightning leapt from ground to sky, engulfing the other bomber in fire. Gyeddiig fought the controls to keep the aircraft stable as the shock wave buffeted them. They were alone now.
“We’re not going to make it,” Dreeyg said softly. “Even if we turn back and get clear, the Asjyai will have our ruffs.”
“Not that there’s much hope of getting clear,” Gyeddiig commented. Ky banked the aircraft. The huge bulk of the alien air ship loomed ahead.
The Asjyai had told them these demon craft were powerless, unarmed, and so far this one certainly hadn’t fired. It was moving slowly, like a dirigible but without visible propellers. Would it be as vulnerable as a dirigible?
If they couldn’t strike a blow against the demons on the ground, couldn’t they at least damage the sky vessel? Its fall might discourage the demons, disrupt their defense of the fort below.…
Grimly, Gyeddiig adjusted the bomber’s course and switched on the intercom. “Bombardier … arm all weapons.”
Dreeyg was looking at the pilot with wide, horrified eyes. “You’re not—?”
“Bombs armed, Wyzzeer,” the bombardier reported. Gyeddiig pushed the throttles to full. “Ancients and Eternal Mists!” ky shouted. The bomber plunged toward its helpless target.