“Take them down!” Dean screamed. He started snapping shots off, shifting his point of aim with each press of his blaster’s firing lever. To his sides, he heard Godenov and Quick also firing rapidly, but was so intent on what he and his men were doing that he wasn’t even aware of the heavy fire coming from the rest of the platoon. Most of the bolts from the Marines’ blasters hit enemy soldiers—there were too many of them for level shots to miss—but there were so many of them, and they were so close, that most of them reached the trench.
Dean thrust his blaster between the legs of a soldier just as the man began to jump into the trench, he barely had time to see the look of surprise on the rebel’s face at not seeing anybody in the trench when his expression changed to horror at his abrupt loss of balance. The soldier fell forward, flipping over, and hit the bottom of the trench face first with a sickening
snap.
But Dean didn’t have any time to deal with the fallen soldier; another jumping body clipped his back, jolting him and knocking him into the face of the trench. Dean spun around to his right and slammed the butt of his blaster into the back of the head of the rebel, who was off-balance from clipping someone he hadn’t seen. The man flew forward into the other side of the trench.
Confused by not finding anybody in the trench, terrified at being struck by invisible forces, yelling and gesticulating rebels milled about. Many of them began firing wildly—but the Marines held their fire at such close quarters so they wouldn’t accidentally shoot each other. Instead, the Marines used their blasters as quarterstaffs, the way they’d been taught in Boot Camp but most had never had to do in combat. Some dropped their blasters in favor of their knives.
Before the last of the rebel soldiers reached the trench, their officers and sergeants realized that instead of the disorganized and demoralized soldiers they expected to close with, they were up against Confederation Marines in chameleon uniforms. They began to shout orders, changing the assault tactics and easing their troops back from the edge of panic. The soldiers stopped their wild fire and paired off, standing back to back, using their rifles in the same manner the Marines were using theirs—they too had trained with pugil sticks.
But the Marines could see their targets, the Coalition troops could only see an occasional splotch of blood or gob of mud bobbing or twisting in the air—and their numbers had been severely reduced during the long minutes before their officers and soldiers began to restore order.
Dean held his blaster with his left hand behind the handgrip and the right on the forestock. Two soldiers jumped back to back before him, neither facing him directly. Dean leveled his blaster and threw his entire weight into a thrust, striking one soldier in the middle of his face, between nose and cheek, with the muzzle of his blaster. He followed through by swinging the butt of the blaster around to slam into the side of the second man’s head, just behind and below the ear, under the edge of his helmet. Both men dropped hard, and Dean ignored them to viciously slam another soldier off his feet.
Two meters away, Godenov ducked under an undirected cross-butt stroke and dug the point of his knife up under the man’s sternum, through his diaphram, and into his heart. Godenov jerked the blade out as the soldier fell away, slashing up and to the side at the neck of the man’s partner, who was turning to see why they’d lost contact. That soldier dropped his weapon and gurgled as his hands tried to stanch the blood spurting from his opened throat.
In the opposite direction from Godenov, Quick was staggered and knocked over by a wild swing from a rebel behind him. Quick turned his fall into a somersault and rolled to the side when he came out of it, just in time to miss three rifle butts that slammed into the floor of the trench where he’d just been. He jumped to his feet, but he’d lost his blaster. He hopped back from the three rifle butts that were swinging wildly in hope of hitting him, drew his knife, and dove under the three soldiers, thrusting up. One of the soldiers shrieked and fell away as the knife tore into his groin, but the force of his fall tore the knife from Quick’s hand. Quick rolled hard, away from the wounded man and into the legs of one of the others, spilling him onto his face. But his uniform picked up enough dust from the trench floor to make him hazily visible. The third soldier saw the spectral image and hammered the butt of his rifle into it. Quick screamed when his right humerus shattered under the blow. The soldier flipped his rifle around and pointed the muzzle down, to shoot the fallen Marine—
But Dean heard Quick’s scream, saw what was happening, and shot first. The rebel soldier folded over with a hole burned through his chest.
“Izzy, to me!” Dean called on his comm. “Use your infra.” He reached Quick in two strides and stood over him, his blaster held ready to strike with either end, or to fire if he had a good target.
“Here I am,” Godenov said an instant before his back made contact with Dean’s.
The two fended off other rebel soldiers, who spotted Quick’s ghostly, writhing body and thought he would be an easy kill.
But it had taken the attackers too long to realize who they were fighting and adjust their tactics, and the fight was already winding down. It was only a couple of minutes more before the surviving rebel soldiers threw down their weapons and surrendered to the men they couldn’t see.
First squad’s fight in the trench was over, but the battle still raged. After trussing their prisoners with wrist ties, they returned their attention to the soldiers advancing by fire and maneuver, now not much more than a hundred meters distant. The first of the direct fire guns reached position and opened fire.
Seventy-five meters to the left, second squad’s fire changed from individual shots at targets of opportunity to volley fire directed by Sergeant Linsman.
“Grazing fire, ninety meters,” Linsman calmly ordered. “Fire!”
Ten blasters
crack-sizzled
and ten bolts of plasma skimmed low over the ground to strike ninety meters downrange. The angle at which they hit glanced them upward to chest-height at a hundred meters, and the impact itself dispersed them, widening their hitting areas, so that instead of ten tiny bits of killing star-stuff, they were ten scythes of murderous plasma—their casualty-producing range was increased from points along a thirty-meter-wide swath to cover half of the swath, a better than fifty-fifty chance of hitting anyone standing along the line.
“Shift left ten meters, the same,” Linsman ordered. “Fire!” The Marines fired again, their aiming points ten meters left of where they’d fired the first volley.
“Right, twenty meters, the same,” Linsman called. “Fire!” The third volley hit beginning ten meters to the right of the first.
Then the direct fire guns opened up and the ground shook with the impact of their high-explosive rounds. Debris showered down on the Marines, and dust clouds enveloped them.
“Casualties, report!” Linsman ordered.
“Hammer, Wolfman, sound off!” Corporal Claypoole shouted.
Lance Corporal Schultz grunted, and fired off a bolt to show he was all right.
“I’m okay,” MacIlargie answered. “I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?” Claypoole demanded.
“A lot of shit just landed on me, that’s what I mean,” MacIlargie snapped back.
“Are you hurt?” Claypoole barked. “No.” “Dumbass, that’s what I asked.” Claypoole reported, “Third fire team, no one’s hurt.” First and second
fire teams had already reported; second squad had no casualties.
“Count off from the left,” Linsman said. “Even numbers, use light gatherers, odds use infras. Count now.” “One,” PFC Summers counted. “Two,” Corporal Kerr said. “Th-three,” Corporal Doyle stammered. “Four,” from Lance Corporal Fisher. And so on, through Lance Corporal Schultz at ten. “Individual fire,” Linsman ordered, “pick your targets.” Until the dust cleared, they wouldn’t be able to
see an aiming line for effective volley fire. Second squad’s fire picked up, and became much heavier when the gun squad’s second team joined them, spewing out hundred-bolt bursts from side to side. But the fire wasn’t equal from all blasters.
Schultz swore under his breath; he was number ten, using his light-gathering screen. The light gatherer did a poor job of penetrating the dust clouds and he couldn’t pick out targets to fire at as effectively as he’d like. He slipped his infra into place and began picking off the red blotches that appeared in his view. After four bolts, he switched back to the light gatherer. The dust clouds were thinning, and he was able to see maneuvering soldiers—and shoot them.
Then the direct fire guns fired again. More debris rained into the trench and more dust clouds billowed up. With a roar of tortured, snapping metal, the bunker a few meters to Schultz’s right exploded. An inch-thick sheet of fractured plasteel armor plate was wrenched off its foundation and crashed onto Schultz.
The impact of the armor plate and debris it threw out battered Claypoole and almost knocked him over. “Hammer, sound off,” he shouted. Silence from that side. “Come on, Hammer. Grunt or something. Let me know you’re all right!”
Still no reply. “Hammer!” Claypoole sidled to Schultz’s position. Through his infra, he saw a hand splayed out from under the plasteel. He grabbed it and gave it a tug. “Hammer, speak to me!”
No response.
Claypoole gripped the edge of the sheet of armor and heaved. It
cracked
and bent ominously in the middle. “Oh, shit,” Claypoole murmured and eased the plasteel back into place—the place the sheet bent was
right where he thought Schultz’s back was; if it broke there the jagged edge might tear into Schultz’s spine, and he might die before he could be extracted.
If he wasn’t dead already. “Corpsman up!” Claypoole called on the fire team leaders’ circuit. Then to Linsman, “Hammer’s pinned under a sheet of plasteel. I can’t move it without it breaking on him.”
“Get back to your position, I’ll check it out,” Linsman said. “Doc, you on your way?”
“I’m almost there,” Hospital Mate Third Class Hough replied. “I see you.”
“Help’s coming, Hammer. Hang in there.” Reluctantly, Claypoole backed away from Schultz and resumed his position on the firing step. He swore when he looked over the lip of the trench, the maneuvering enemy soldiers were only seventy-five meters away. He resumed fire.
Doc Hough reached Schultz right after Linsman did. The squad leader was examining the plasteel armor that held Schultz pinned to the wall of the trench. It was definitely too heavy for him to move by himself, because of the crack in its middle, probably too heavy for even two men to move without risk of the jagged edge of the fracture doing severe damage to the man under it.
He told that to Hough while the corpsman snaked his telltales under the sheet’s edge. Hough merely grunted, and focused on his display. After a few seconds, graph lines juttered up and down on the display. Hough grunted.
“He’s alive but unconscious. There’s nothing immediately life threatening, but we have to get that armor off him—it’s compressing his chest and he isn’t able to breathe freely.” Hough lifted his chameleon screen so Linsman could see his face. Linsman did the same.
Screaming overhead made them look up—a division of Raptors was diving for the ground.
“Shit!” Hough swore. “Grab the other side and hold it in place.”
Linsman swore and scuttled to the far side of Schultz. The two gripped the sheet firmly, one hand above and the other below the fracture. The air shook with the sonic boom from the four aircraft, almost wrenching the armor from their grip. The sheet fractured farther, but held.
Then the Raptors fired their cannons, and the ground bucked from plasma strikes.
The ground slammed upward on the plasteel and the air pushed back on the sheet’s top. The armor plate snapped.
“Away!” Hough shouted, and pushed both halves of the now broken plasteel plate away from Schultz. Linsman did the same. The bottom half fell away, but the top half was too heavy, and slid down the inner face of the bottom; its ragged top tore along Schultz’s back.
Schultz’s body arched and a
huff
of agony burst from his mouth. The back of his chameleons began turning red.
Hough didn’t hesitate, he shoved an arm under Schultz’s chest and grabbed him under the arms to lower him face down to the floor of the trench. The big man’s weight staggered him and his grip began to slip. Then it eased when Linsman reached in and helped. Together, they lay Schultz on his stomach. The corpsman tore the back of Schultz’s shirt, but couldn’t examine the wounds because the blood was flowing too copiously. He quickly stuffed packing where the blood seemed to be heaviest, then applied synthskin over Schultz’s entire back.
“I’m not sure this’ll stop the bleeding,” Hough told Linsman. “I need to do something more radical.” He reached into his medkit as he talked and pulled out a black block. He opened it and shook it out; it was a stasis bag. With the squad leader’s help, he rolled Schultz into the bag and closed it. The bag’s whirring was almost inaudible when he turned it on. In seconds, the stasis bag would put Schultz into a state of suspended animation that would maintain him in his current condition until he reached a hospital.
“Gotta go,” Hough said, closing his medkit and rising to his feet. “Got another call.” He ran toward first platoon’s position, saying, “Tell me what to expect,” into his comm.
Corporal Dean injected a nerve blocker into PFC Quick’s right shoulder as soon as the surviving
Coalition soldiers surrendered. The blocker did its job quickly, and Quick stopped whimpering. “Corpsman up,” Dean called. “Quick’s down with a broken arm,” he said when Doc Hough ran up. “I’ve got him settled, but his arm needs attention before the broken bones start cutting tissue and blood vessels.”
“Any sign of bleeding?” Hough asked. “Not external. At least his chameleons aren’t turning red.” “What did you use on him?” “Nerve blocker in his shoulder.” “Where’s the break?” “Upper arm.” “Cut through the material from shoulder to elbow. Let me see your arm.” Dean reached for his knife with one hand and held the other high over his head to let the sleeve slide
down, exposing his arm. “I see you.” Dean had almost finished cutting Quick’s sleeve open when Hough dropped down next to him. “Out of my way,” the corpsman said and gave the injury a quick visual examination before gently
probing it with his fingertips. Quick’s arm was deeply bruised and swollen from elbow to shoulder, and bone fragments moved freely under Hough’s gentle probing. He turned to open his medkit. “Don’t you have a firefight to deal with?” he asked, and pulled out a fracture stabilizing kit.
“Ah, yeah,” Dean said. For a moment he’d forgotten about the battle raging around them. “Is he going
to be all right?” “Barring complications, he’ll be back to duty in a week. Won’t you, Quick?” He finished applying the stabilizer and peeled Quick’s eyelids back, checking for signs of shock.
Quick gave a weak chuckle. “I’m a badass Marine, Doc. Maybe sooner.” “Sure you will.” More Raptors screamed overhead. Hough looked up to see two pairs of Raptors plummeting straight
down. He watched as they fired their cannons then bounced almost 180 degrees to climb back to altitude. He put his hands on Quick’s arm above and below the fracture to keep it stable when the shockwaves from the plasma bolts reached them.
“What’s happening out there?” Hough asked. “They’re running!” Dean shouted. “We did it, we stopped them!” “Us and a Raptor squadron,” Hough said softly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN