First to Fight (29 page)

“Let’s get them,” Rodriguez shouted, still aiming his gun at the point where the Siad disappeared.

Bwantu hit the accelerator to chase after the Siad and was yanked out of the driver’s seat by Baccacio, who screamed, “Belay that! We aren’t going after them. They ran too easily, they were winning. That’s probably a ruse to lead us into an ambush.” Manakshi didn’t agree, but he looked into the ensign’s near-panicked eyes and decided not to argue. He used his opticals to scan the battlefield. “They weren’t winning,” he said softly. “It looks like we killed half of them. They’re running away.”

“I’m not sure Kerr will pull through,” the corpsman told Hyakowa and Eagle’s Cry as he closed a stasis unit on Ratliff. Kerr was already sealed in one. “He has massive internal trauma. I think one bullet sent something into his heart. I know it tore all hell out of one of his lungs. Ratliff’ll live, but it’ll be a long time before he goes into the field again. That bayonet severed his spinal column and did other damage to internal organs. He could be bleeding to death internally.” The stasis units would hold the wounded until they reached a surgical team.

The two most severely wounded Marines attended to, Hough turned to Goudanis. He had to heavily sedate him because of the pain, but was able to stop the bleeding and secure the shattered bones of his shoulder so they wouldn’t cause any more damage.

“Raise Bass,” Baccacio ordered Dupont, his communications man. “Find out where he is and how soon he can get back here.” Then he ran to where Hough was treating the lesser casualties.

“How much longer is this going to take?” he demanded.

Hough looked around at the waiting wounded men. “Half an hour, I don’t know. Doesn’t look like anybody else is bad off. The civilians, though, that’s a different matter. I need a whole damn field hospital to deal with them.”

Baccacio merely grunted. He abruptly turned and went back to Dupont.

“I can’t raise him, sir,” Dupont reported. “No reply of any kind.”

Shocked, Baccacio looked north. “There’s more of them out there,” he murmured. “They caught Bass’s patrol and killed them,” he said with finality. “Squad leaders up!” he shouted, turning in a circle, scanning the horizon, looking for the Siad to return any moment.

“I also called for medical evacuation,” Dupont said. “They said it’ll take at least a half an hour to get a hopper here, maybe longer. We should put any serious casualties in stasis units.”

Hyakowa and Kelly trotted over before Baccacio could reply to Dupont. Hyakowa had a field bandage on his arm. Eagle’s Cry was slower coming because he was limping from a leg wound.

“They caught Bass,” Baccacio said as soon as the three reached him. Hyakowa thought he heard a hint of satisfaction in the ensign’s voice. “There’s only us left, and we’re hurt. Get everybody into the Dragon now, we’re heading back.”

The order stunned the squad leaders.

“We can’t go,” Hyakowa protested. “McNeal’s missing. We can’t leave without him. Besides, we’re supposed to be protecting these people. If we go, the Siad will come back and slaughter them.”

“McNeal’s dead,” Baccacio snapped. ‘’I saw him go down. The Siad swarmed allover him.”

“How do you know Staff Sergeant Bass is dead?” Eagle’s Cry asked. He did not believe the platoon sergeant was dead. The Skipper, he could be dead, and so could the Brigadier, but not Bass.

“They’re dead! They’re all dead!” Baccacio shouted. “The Siad already slaughtered them! If we hadn’t been here, this wouldn’t have happened.” The squad leaders couldn’t tell whether he meant Bass and the men with him, or the villagers. But they clearly heard the panic in the ensign’s voice.

“But—”

“No buts, Sergeant. Get the men aboard the Dragon now.”

Hyakowa couldn’t believe this was happening. Marines never left their men behind and they never withdrew while they could still fight, and the sergeant was still full of fight.

“Goddamn you, Mr. Baccacio!” he shouted. The veins stood out in Hyakowa’s neck and spittle flew from his lips. Now, like a man getting rid of a bad meal that had been too long in his stomach, the sergeant blew up. “You fucking worthless piece of shit! You goddamned coward!” As he shouted, one part of Hyakowa’s mind could see himself standing there, the words roaring out of his mouth like unleashed demons. At the same time, a small voice inside his head seemed to be telling him calmly and very clearly that he had gone too far, now he was finished, a court-martial and the brig were the next stop for him. But the curses kept coming, and despite the fact that Sergeant Hyakowa knew the small voice was right, that he would soon face charges of mutiny and would wind up in one of the Confederation’s penal colonies, he had never felt more satisfied about anything in his life than he did at this disastrous moment.

Baccacio’s face went white and his eyes bulged. Slowly, almost calmly, he drew his weapon and leveled it at Hyakowa. The sergeant stopped at that moment, but only because he was out of breath. Perspiration poured off his face.

Kelly and Eagle’s Cry, who had been standing open-mouthed, rooted to the earth as Hyakowa screamed at the ensign, came to life now and stood between the two men. Kelly grabbed Hyakowa by the arms and shoulders and roughly pushed him toward the Dragon, while Eagle’s Cry stood in front of Baccacio—he didn’t think the ensign would try to shoot Hyakowa through him. Hyakowa went without resistance, totally drained now.

Baccacio stood there, breathing heavily, staring after Hyakowa. The other Marines who had witnessed the scene shifted their feet uneasily. Doc Hough said something. “What?’ Baccacio demanded as he spun around.

“I said I’m staying behind with the wounded civilians,” Hough repeated. He fixed Baccacio’s eyes with his own until the ensign was forced to drop his gaze.

“You’ve got wounded Marines to care for. You do that in the Dragon on the way. I mean it,” he added, and gestured menacingly with his weapon. Doc Hough knew enough to realize that Ensign Baccacio was dangerously close to going over the edge. Reluctantly, he started for the Dragon, and the others followed him.

In two minutes the Marines were aboard the Dragon, heading for FIST headquarters, north of New Obbia, 240 kilometers away.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

Schultz considered the broken UPUD Mark II, then wordlessly offered his blaster to Bass.

Bass shook his head, looking at the line of smoke that still dribbled from the UPUD. “We’re taking it back. I want whoever was responsible to know that damn thing malfunctioned. Then I want them to find out why and fix it.” He looked at the group. “The Mark One cost the lives of a lot of Marines I was with when its flaw was revealed, and I reacted strongly—some say too strongly. We just found a flaw in the Mark Two. It didn’t hurt anybody. Well . . .” He glanced at Doyle, who was just regaining consciousness. “It didn’t seriously hurt anyone. That damn thing is coming into the Fleet Marine Force whether I like it or not. So we need to make sure it doesn’t have any flaws that will get more Marines killed. Or we have to know every flaw it does have so that our ignorance doesn’t get Marines killed.”

Doyle was still a bit groggy, but it didn’t sound to him as if he was being blamed for the malfunction. He sat up without assistance and wiped the perspiration away from his eyes.

Bass looked at Doyle and solicitously asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Doyle said, “but I’ll get over it.” The other Marines looked at him with surprise. This was the first time they’d heard him talk like an infantryman.

“Good. Glad to hear it. Now, aren’t you glad I made you carry a regular radio? Get it out and raise Tulak Yar so we can find out what happened.”

Doyle blanched. “I don’t have it,” he said weakly.

Bass looked at him as though waiting for him to continue. The others edged back; this wasn’t a good sign.

“You didn’t bring the radio, is that what you said?” Bass blinked, then wiped at a line of sweat that dribbled past his eye. “After I specifically told you to bring a radio in case that damn thing didn’t work?”

Doyle hung his head and mumbled something into his chest.

“I can’t hear you, Doyle,” Bass said with forced patience. “What did you say?”

Doyle raised his head and looked at Bass defiantly. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t have the radio. “Ensign Baccacio told me not to bring it. He saw me when I was putting it in my pack and took it away from me.”

Bass looked away from Doyle. His face darkened and his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I’m going to have that man busted back down to private,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’m going to have him court-martialed and kicked out of my Marine Corps.” He turned back to Doyle. “And you, Corporal, are going to be my star witness.”

Doyle swallowed.

“All right.” Bass shook himself and calmed down with visible effort. “Here’s the situation. Eight of us are out here in the middle of, of . . .” He paused, then began again. “We’re eighteen kilometers from the nearest friendly forces. Those forces, the rest of our platoon, have just been attacked by enemy air, and probably by ground forces as well, but we have no way of knowing for sure. Because we don’t have any communications. Eighteen kilometers doesn’t sound like much. Even in terrain like this, we could cover that distance in three hours or so. But we have to assume that there are hostile forces between us and Tulak Yar, so we’ll go slow and figure on reaching Tulak Yar tomorrow morning.”

He looked at his somber men for a few seconds, then asked, “Did anybody bring a motion detector?” They shook their heads. Bass hadn’t thought anybody did—the motion detector was squad leader’s equipment, and if they had one, it would have been his responsibility to bring it, but he hadn’t suspected they’d have any need for one.

“We have no communications, no motion detector, no infras—I don’t imagine anybody brought their infras.” He paused for confirmation. Nobody had infras. “Marines, we have just become a low-tech deep reconnaissance patrol. At least I have my GPL. We won’t get lost.”

“And we have water. Everybody did bring water, didn’t you?”

“One day’s worth,” Dornhofer said.

Bass nodded. One day’s worth. That was more than he thought they would need. Now they might need more.

“Water discipline is in effect now. One mouthful every hour. Move out. Schultz, take point.”

As the afternoon wore on, the heat rose and the sweat evaporated from their bodies as fast as it popped up.

Two hours later they heard the clop-clop of horses’ hooves. Bass snapped his fingers to get everybody’s attention, then waved his arm in the signal to get down and take cover.

They were in a dry watercourse too broad to be a mere erosion gully. The dirt was a crumbly, light grayish-tan studded by the occasional boulder that was washed down- stream during floods. The only vegetation in it was an occasional sprig of something that didn’t grow high, or a low-lying wash of green. Here and there, where the most recent torrent had undercut the bank, large clots of dirt had fallen from the bank two and a half meters above. Some of the clots had space behind them. Those spaces and behind boulders were where the Marines went to ground.

Bass listened carefully to the echoes for a few moments and realized the echoes were all he heard, there were no clops or voices that sounded clear, as they would if the horses or men were very close. He glanced up and down the arroyo to make sure his men were all hiding, then eased deeper into the half-concealed split in the bank he was hiding in and found hand- and footholds to climb near its back end. He kept glancing to his rear as he climbed toward the other side of the arroyo, but saw no movement in that direction.

A small, spreading bush grew at the top; its roots kept the split from expanding. Bass used the bush as concealment while he eased his head up high enough to see over the lip of the arroyo. Little more than a hundred meters away he saw a line of hills. Between the hills and the arroyo in which the Marines hid was a score of horsemen with a small herd of replacement mounts. The riders were armed with projectile weapons. They were headed north, away from Tulak Yar, and frequently turned to search the sky to the south. They bantered among themselves and cried out victory whoops. A couple of times while he watched, one of them prodded a large sack flung over the back of one of the few horses used as pack animals. “The horsemen shook their rifles at the sky and swung them in wide, horizontal arcs.

Bass couldn’t understand any of the guttural words the horsemen yelled out, but he could guess their meaning. The horsemen were telling each other they’d won their fight, this land was theirs uncontested.

These men had to be from the force that had attacked Tulak Yar, Bass thought. He wondered how men who had reverted to such a primitive state could have Raptors. Surely they were allied with the aircraft the UPUD Mark II had shown attacking Tulak Yar, if they—or their commander—didn’t actually own the attack aircraft.

They were a score of horsemen armed with rifles, nearly a hundred meters away. Bass had seven Marines with him. At that range, with the element of surprise, he and his men could easily take these Siad warriors. He considered the situation for a long moment; race a hundred meters back up the dry watercourse and get into an ambush position. Then blast away when the horsemen came abreast. It could be done; he and his men could wipe them out before they were able to respond and hurt anyone in the Marine patrol. But these men couldn’t be the only Siad survivors of the fight. They were too happy, acting too victorious. Where were the rest of them? He slowly looked around a complete 360 degrees and saw no one else. That was the problem.

Bass stayed where he was, watching the horsemen pass by and recede into the distance. A fight would make noise and other Siad would hear it and come. Maybe, probably, too many for the Marines to deal with. It was best to let these go. When the horsemen were out of sight around a low hill, Bass slid to the bottom of the split and stepped out into the open.

“They’re gone,” he called out softly, but loud enough for all his men to hear. Briskly, he went from Claypoole, at the rear of the patrol, to Schultz, leading off to tell them what he’d seen.

Schultz looked at him accusingly. “We could have taken them.”

“You looked?’

“I looked. We could have taken them. Easy.”

Bass nodded. “You’re right, we could have taken those few. But where are the rest of them? How fast would the others have gotten here? How soon would there be so many of them here we wouldn’t have had a chance? What if they called those Raptors back to strike us?”

A comer of Schultz’s mouth twitched, the only acknowledgment he would make that Bass was right. He turned away and led the patrol south.

During the next two hours they had to stop three more times to hide from Siad war parties. Their pace continued to slow. At dusk they settled in for what turned out to be a very cold night. Bass set a twenty-five-percent watch.

It took time in the morning for them to work the stiffness out of joints that had spent too many hours in too cold air lying on too cold ground. As softly as they could, they hawked and spat the night phlegm from their chests, those who didn’t have the last watch. They wordlessly excused themselves for whatever momentary privacy they could find in cracks or behind scraggly bushes to void themselves; they worked saliva about their mouths and wiped at fuzzy teeth with dirty fingers. It was the kind of morning they’d all been through before.

Bass checked his GPL while Schultz and Claypoole scouted for sign of overnight enemy activity in their vicinity—or current enemy presence. When the two came back to report all clear, Bass gathered the men around him.

“We’re still six kilometers from Tulak Yar,” he began. “My guess is the Siad who attacked aren’t there anymore. Probably they’ve all left this area. But we don’t know that for sure, there might still be a few of them around, maybe observers to report to Shabeli about the Confederation response to the attack, maybe a reaction force to take on targets of opportunity. And we don’t know what kind of communications they’ve got. If they have watchers with radios, and those watchers see us, we could have a Raptor flight on our asses.” He paused to look at his men. They understood what having Raptors on them meant. “We’ll move the way we did yesterday. We’re not out of it yet. Order of march will be the same; Schultz on point, Clarke, me, Doyle, Dornhofer, Dean, Neru, and Claypoole bringing up the rear. Slow and easy. Water discipline is still in force. Chow down now, but eat lightly; these rations have to last longer than we expected. Maybe a lot longer. Questions?”

Nobody asked any. Bass signaled Dornhofer and Schultz to sit with him while they ate. He gave Schultz the GPL to study so he’d have an idea of how to proceed when they started moving.

After fifteen minutes he stood and said, “Saddle up, we’re moving out.”

Two minutes later they were on the move. They left no trash to mark their passing. They went slower than they had the day before, and frequently stopped to look and listen for any sign of other people. They heard nothing but the cries of wind and wild animals.

Bass paused on a low ridge facing forward on their line of march and spat out the small pebble he’d had under his tongue to induce the flow of saliva in his mouth. The others stopped and dropped into security positions, facing outward, weapons at the ready. They panted in the intense heat. Down on one knee, Bass checked his GPL heading again, then looked back to the south. He tried to ignore the carrion-eaters he saw wafting in the sky beyond the ridge, tried to tell himself they were crows being kept aloft by village children guarding the fields.

“Recognize this place?” he asked the others. Bass busied himself for a moment selecting another pebble and popped it into his mouth. The others followed his example.

“Big Barb’s and a schooner of beer must be just over that ridge,” Claypoole joked, pointing to the south with a grimy forefinger.

Bass smiled briefly. He knew that if Marines could joke, they still had fight left in them. “Just over that far ridge there,” he said, “is Tulak Yar and the river.”

“Omigod!” Dean whispered as he staggered forward.

Bass held out a restraining arm. “Not so fast, Marine. We aren’t home yet. Until we know different, we will assume the village is occupied by the Siad, and we’re going to approach it just like any other unknown position.”

The Marines said nothing, just stared at him. Then Claypoole nodded. Bass was right; rushing toward the village without knowing what was waiting could mean death. “Dean, you come with me. The rest of you cover up here and watch us. We’ll signal if everything is okay.”

The sun was well beyond the meridian when the pair at last crawled to the crest of the ridge beyond which lay the river valley and the village of Tulak Yar. On the way, Dean could think only of Mas Fardeed and his snug little hut and the happy hours the platoon had spent there during their stay in the village.

Cautiously, Bass crawled behind a clump of desert grass and, using the vegetation as cover, peered over the ridge. The village was just a burned-out ruin on the lip of the bluff about five hundred meters from the ridge. The few buildings still standing were deeply scorched. Nothing moved down there but dust devils and minor debris blown about by vagrant breezes. And the carrion-eaters that hopped ungainly from spot to spot, tearing at lumps on the ground. He wondered where the Dragon was, whether its not being there meant some of the others got away, or if he now had to worry about the Siad having an armored vehicle. Then he put the Dragon and the rest of the platoon out of his mind.