First to Fight (33 page)

“That’s right.’’ Bass nodded. “Shooting, but not hitting. Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up if anything interesting happens.”

Bass gave them a couple of minutes to get settled, then dropped below the level of the basin rim and scuttled around to the men on watch to make sure they had the entire 360 degrees covered.

“How you doing, Doyle?” Bass asked when he flopped down next to him.

“Staff Sergeant Bass, I’m the goddamn company clerk,” Doyle said indignantly. “I’m not supposed to be doing this bad-ass stuff.” With several days’ worth of grime coating his uniform and his exposed skin, and thin streamers of drying blood on his face, Doyle didn’t look like a “goddamn company clerk.” He grinned nervously and his voice became serious. “But I’m probably as good here as a boot lance corporal.”

Bass clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, promote yourself to boot lance corporal, Doyle, you’re doing a good job.”

Doyle beamed at Bass as the platoon sergeant moved on.

“How long are they going to make us wait?’ Dean’s voice was rough; he had trouble controlling it.

“Until they’re ready, PFC, until they’re ready,” Bass said calmly.

“Instead of waiting, we should go get them.”

Bass thought he heard a touch of accusation in Dean’s harsh tone. “No we shouldn’t.” He had to restrain himself from snapping. “We don’t know how many of them there are or where they are. They might just be waiting for us to do something dumb like that and they’ll take us all out at once. What we should do is wait for them to do something we can do something about. Maybe they’ll make a mistake that we can take advantage of.”

“They’ve got a reputation as tough fighters. How likely do you think it is they’ll make a mistake?”

This time Bass did snap. “Their reputation is mostly from attacking and brutalizing unarmed civilians.” He took a deep breath to calm himself, then continued, “They’re probably a bit better than the Bos Kashi. You saw how many mistakes they made in New Obbia. If the Siad make only half as many mistakes, they’ll make one we can take advantage of.”

Dean grunted and kept his eyes sweeping his quadrant.

“I know you’re upset about McNeal, PFC. I am too. He wasn’t a friend, like he was with you, but he was one of my men, and it always bothers me to lose a man. Remember him, never let him go. He was a good man, and you were lucky to call him friend. When the Siad come after us—and they are going to come after us—remember to fire low so you don’t waste your shots over their heads. Pick your targets and make every bolt count. And kill them, PFC Dean. Kill some of them in revenge for your friend, if that’s what you have to do. But mostly kill them for the Marines who are alive here. We all depend on you to keep us alive. Every Marine depends on every other Marine. Understand?

“I understand.” His voice was thick.

Bass patted his shoulder and moved on.

Despite his protests, Clarke was snoring softly when Bass reached the position he shared with Neru.

“Sleeping Beauty’s going to be okay,” Neru said. He grinned at Bass. “Did you think you could sleep the first time you came under fire?’

Bass laughed ruefully. “On my first combat operation, I got so tired I slept right through a firefight.”

Neru gave him a disbelieving glance. “Sure you did,” he said, and returned his attention to his quadrant.

Bass returned to his position facing west. When the hour was up he woke the sleepers so he and the other three could grab an hour’s rest. That hour was almost up when Dornhofer woke him.

“I think they’re getting ready to do something,” the corporal said.

Bass looked up and saw the sun was more than halfway to the zenith. “What do you see?” He looked all around the horizon, but saw nothing moving.

Dornhofer shook his head. “I didn’t see anything; it’s what I heard. Someone’s to our west.”

Suddenly, a high-pitched ululating scream, the war cry of a Siad clansman, rent the day.

On the opposite side of the basin the cry woke Dean with a start. He listened and the cry came again, from a different direction. He had never heard anything so terrifying, yet at the same time so wildly exciting—that one lonely, soaring cry fully embodied the utter disdain of men who believed in their souls that a death in combat was the most glorious and magnificent death a man could achieve.

The war cries woke Claypoole, who shuddered at their sound. He understood now how Chinese bugles in the night and Scottish bagpipes coming over the hill in wars fought centuries ago could be so frightening to the men they were directed against.

Doyle’s eyes snapped open at the first cry and he slithered to his fighting position, blaster extended over the lip of the basin, eyes searching for enemy movement. “Someone’s going to pay for disturbing my sleep,” he growled at Schultz, who lay a couple of meters away.

Schultz looked at him and wondered what had got into the pogue. Maybe there was a real Marine underneath the clerk.

Bass finally saw movement. At 150 meters to the northwest, a single Siad warrior stood in the open. He shook his rifle at the sky and called out something in that same ululating voice; it sounded like a challenge. The Siad stopped yelling, brought his rifle down to his shoulder, and aimed toward the Marines. Before he could fire, he pitched backward with a blazing hole through his chest.

Bass looked to his right rear, where he’d heard the crack-sizzle of a blaster, and saw Schultz tick off a mark on the air with his finger.

Then he didn’t have any more time to look at his men. A hundred Siad warriors leaped to their feet from less than a hundred meters away and charged while screaming their ululating war cry.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

“Neru! Get your gun on them,” Bass shouted as he glanced at his men to make sure they were all wearing their body armor. Satisfied that the Marines had as much protection as they could, he sighted on one Siad and pressed the firing lever on his blaster. “Dean, get over here next to me. Claypoole, watch our rear,” he said, still giving orders. He was dropping a second attacker as Dean fell into position next to him and took aim at the onrushing Siad. “Dornhofer, Doyle, watch the flanks.” He didn’t bother telling Schultz what to do; Schultz was already flaming a Siad.

“Remember what I told you, Dean,” he said quietly to the man next to him. “Keep your shots low, make them count.”

“Roger that,” Dean said, and got off two quick shots at a Siad in the center of the line who seemed to be directing the others. The head of that Siad suddenly erupted in flames. His body ran on for a couple of steps before it staggered and fell.

Neru got his gun set up and hosed a line of fire from left to right at the line of Siad. Many of them fell with arms blasted off, leaving charred stumps in their place. Others dropped with holes burned through their torsos. But the mass of Siad was close and moving too fast for the gunner to get more than a portion of them. Bass, Schultz, and Dean accounted for more, but the gun and three blasters weren’t enough to convince the Siad to stop their suicidal charge. There were many fewer than had begun the charge, but they were only fifty meters away and closing.

“Everybody fire,” Bass bellowed. Dornhofer and Doyle turned from where they were watching their flanks to fire at the ends of the Siad line. The line shortened. Claypoole raced across the basin and dropped into position next to Bass, opposite Dean. His first shot went wild: his second took the leg off a screaming warrior.

The Siad were now only thirty meters away, close enough for Bass to make out their expressions. Their eyes were wide and manic, their mouths twisted grotesquely as they continued to scream out their wild war cries. Their shots flew less wildly at this shorter distance—one bullet smashed into the rock next to Bass and riddled his side with stone shards. Thank goodness for body armor, Bass thought.

But there were only thirty Siad left.

Neru suddenly bounded out of the basin, raced a few paces to his left, then spun and, holding his gun clamped tightly to his hip, sprayed fire across the front of the Marine position at the Siad. Three of the Siad shot at him, but their bullets barely staggered him as they pinged off his armor. With one long burst Neru took out the entire middle and one side of the Siad line. But eight of the attackers were left, and he was directly in their path.

“Neru, drop!” Bass screamed. He snapped off a shot and plasma bored through the chest of a Siad.

Neru dove away from the few remaining attackers and scuttled toward the safety of the basin. A bullet whanged off the rock inches away and sent a rock shard into his arm. He didn’t pause in his crawling.

Dean gut-shot a Siad who was trying to bayonet Neru’s unprotected neck. Schultz calmly stood up and fired over the crawling gunner, taking out two more. Claypoole hit one below the knee, tearing his leg off. Doyle fired three rapid shots and screamed, “I got one!” Dornhofer hit one in the neck, burning it half away. Clarke realized that without the gun to assist with, he could use his own blaster: he picked it up and drilled the last attacker still on his feet.

Sudden silence, except for the wailing of the Siad whose leg Claypoole had burned off, fell over the battlefield.

“Back to your positions,” Bass ordered after a few seconds.

“But—But we beat them,” Dean said. “It’s over.”

“No it’s not,” Bass snapped. He grimly scanned the surrounding landscape. “That was just the first wave. There’s more of them out there.”

“How do you know that? We killed everybody.’’

“No we didn’t. Not by a long shot.”

As if to punctuate Bass’s words, the legless Siad screamed shrilly, then grated something in the harsh tongue of the desert nomads. He groped about for his rifle, found it, and fumbled with it. If he was going to heaven in the next few minutes he was taking some of these infidels with him.

Schultz climbed out of the basin and walked over to the man. He drew his knife and leaned over to slit his throat. He was almost too late, the Siad had his rifle in his shoulder and was taking aim. His finger twitched spasmodically when Schultz killed him, and his rifle fired. The bullet whanged into the air and away.

Bass faced into the middle of the basin so he could see all of his men when he spoke to them. “Before that assault wave, we heard them screaming all around. They only came at us from one direction. There’s more of them out there. They’re going to come after us again. We don’t know what direction they’ll come from next, so we have to be ready for anything. That was just a test to see how we’d perform, what kind of fighters we are.” He didn’t say the other thing he thought: that the Siad commander must suspect they weren’t carrying many extra batteries for their blasters, and was spending the lives of some of his men to make the Marines expend power.

Dean looked to the west, shaking his head at the hundred bodies that littered the landscape. “They kept coming at us,” he said weakly. His dazed eyes hardly noticed the carrion-eaters that were already landing among the corpses, hopping from one to another to make sure they were dead and cooling before beginning their feast. “We were killing them and they kept coming. Why did they keep coming, how could they do that? They must have known they didn’t have a chance.”

Bass looked at Dean. “What would we have done if they had run when we started killing them?”

Dean didn’t say anything, simply kept shaking his head. Schultz spoke for him. “We would have shot them in the back.”

Bass nodded. “That’s right. If they had run, we would have killed them just the same. By continuing their charge, they had a chance, some of them, of reaching us. If enough of them made it, they might be able to overwhelm us in hand-to-hand combat. Once they reached a certain point, their only chance was to keep coming.” He looked at his gunner. “If Neru hadn’t done one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen a man do in a firefight and got so many of them in an enfilade, some of them would have reached us.”

Neru shrugged. “It wasn’t that dumb; I knew I could get most of them with one burst.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t get the ones closest to you.”

Schultz spat over the rim of the basin. “That was our job. Marines depend on each other. We got the ones closest to him.” He gave Neru an approving look.

A sudden cry had everyone looking outward. “MARINE, YOU DIE TODAY,” a harsh voice called.

“They speak English,” Dean gasped in surprise.

“YOUR LOVED ONES WILL WAIL,” another voice immediately yelled. The two voices were in different places.

Bass shook his head. “No they don’t. They’re just mouthing noises somebody taught them.”

“THE VULTURES WILL GET FAT EATING YOUR BODIES,” a third voice in yet another place called.

“It’s an old trick,” Bass continued. “Learn how to insult the other guy in his own language.” He grinned. “I’ve done it myself a few times.” He wondered if he’d have the chance to use any of the local insults he’d learned in Tulak Yar.

Schultz stood and shouted back, “COME AND GET US, WE’LL FEED YOU TO THE BUZZARDS!” He pointed his blaster upward. “LOOK UP! THEY’RE WAITING FOR YOU.’’ So many carrion-eaters were gathering in flocks drifting on the thermals, they seemed to darken the sky.

Clarke gaped at Schultz with disbelief. Claypoole grinned, wishing he’d shouted back an insult himself.

Dean looked at him with admiration. “Way to go, Hammer,” he said under his breath.

Bass simply shook his head. Schultz knew the odds against them. Bass knew that Schultz didn’t care. What he didn’t know was why the man was so willing to defy death, to take on any challenge.

The Siad answered Schultz’s taunt with a heavy fusillade of gunfire. Schultz dropped behind cover and giggled. “Show them who’s afraid of who,” he said. “Show them who’s got more.’’ He grabbed his crotch and gave it a quick jerk.

“Belay the johnwayne, Schultz,” Bass said.

“They’re real good at fighting farmers and women,” Schultz said back “This time they’re up against Marines.” He looked out; the Siad had stopped shooting.

“They took on third platoon at Tulak Yar,” Bass said. “Nobody’s at Tulak Yar anymore.” Schultz looked at him and opened his mouth to make a retort, but Bass cut him off. “Don’t say it, Schultz. Don’t say it. There were good Marines at Tulak Yar. We don’t know how it happened, all we know is they were driven off by the Siad.” He looked at the ground-cover bundle that contained McNeal’s corpse. “And we know they killed at least one good Marine.”

Schultz twisted his mouth in disgust, but didn’t say what he was going to about Ensign Baccacio’s leadership. Bass stared at him until the lance corporal turned around with a disgusted grunt and began watching outward.

The Siad resumed their taunting calls. Schultz yelled back at them, but stayed down.

Bass looked at his men. He had three Marines besides himself who were combat-hardened by several campaigns. Three others had seen their only previous combat action against the Bos Kashi in New Obbia. Today had been Doyle’s baptism of fire. Against them were arrayed hundreds, maybe thousands, of Siad warriors. He restrained himself from shaking his head. He wished Hyakowa or Eagle’s Cry was with him. And Goudanis, Lanning, and Chan—experienced men all, men he knew were! good in a fight.

But he didn’t have them. He had to make do with Claypoole, Dean, Clarke—and Doyle. And make do he would. They were Marines, the product of the best military training in the history of mankind. And every one of them had been blooded and acquitted himself well enough. Even Doyle. He glanced at the clerk again. He hadn’t gotten sick when he killed a man, he’d cried out in triumph. The thing Bass had to concern himself with wasn’t how they’d do when the shooting began again, but how they were dealing with this waiting. Once the shooting started, either you fought or you ran. None of these men had given any indication of wanting to run when the Siad made that suicidal charge. It was the waiting that could bring a brave man down.

“You’re probably wondering why they aren’t attacking again,” Bass said in a voice calculated to keep his men calm. Dornhofer, Schultz, and Neru kept watching outward. The others turned to look at him. “Keep watching,” Bass told them. “I’ll talk loud enough you won’t have to watch my lips to see what I’m saying.” The four turned outward. “They could attack again now. If all of them came at us at once, they’d overwhelm us with no problem; we wouldn’t stand a chance. But you saw what happened to the hundred of them who already assaulted. We killed them all. Well, the Siad saw that too. They know that even though they’d get all of us, we’d kill so many of them it would be a pyrrhic victory. So they’re playing a game with us. We’re trapped in the sun, there’s no shade here, no relief from the heat. They want that to work on us for a while, to wear us down. They want us strung out, tense. That way we won’t kill as many of them. They want us to get anxious, so that when they come again we’ll be so nervous our aim won’t be any good.

“None of that’s going to happen. We know what we can do to them—we can hurt them, we can hurt them bad. We’ve got plenty of water, so we aren’t going to get parched and dehydrated. And we’re going to keep calm, because we know what they’re doing and we won’t let it work.”

He was going to say more, but was interrupted by a shot from Schultz’s blaster, followed by a quick scream from out there. He scrambled to Schultz’s side.

“What?’ he asked, looking over the side.

“I saw one of them crawling between rocks and took him out.” Schultz pointed. “See that boulder, about fifty meters away there? It’s the one with the horizontal crack in it.”

“I see it.”

“Pile of rags ten meters to the left of it, that’s the bandit. He was crawling from a boulder farther out. I couldn’t see much of him, he must have been in a crease in the ground. The crease wasn’t as deep as he thought it was.”

A Siad moving to a boulder fifty meters away, that bothered Bass. It meant maybe the Siad were closing the distance between themselves and the Marines, keeping under cover all the way. If they managed that, then he and his men were truly done for.

“Has anybody else seen any movement?” Bass asked.

“I thought I did,” Dean said. “But it was so quick I wasn’t sure it was something real, or if it was a heat shimmer.”

Bass swore. “All right, people, I think they’re trying to slip up on us. Everybody, look sharp. Let me know if you see anything. Don’t, I say again, do not fire at any movement unless you’ve got a clear shot. Anybody else?” Nobody else had seen movement.

One Siad definitely approaching from the north, maybe one from the east. No movement seen anywhere else. Maybe the Siad weren’t closing. Maybe those two, if there were two, were just getting closer to snipe at them. But fifty meters was awfully close for sniping, too close. Unless the close-in snipers were supposed to keep the Marines’ heads down while another assault started. That might make sense.

A rifle shot cracked from the southwest, the bullet it announced zinging by low enough to hit any head in its path.

Claypoole snapped a shot back. His bolt shattered a small boulder sixty meters away and exposed a Siad who was hiding behind it.