Jump Pay (23 page)

The 5th and 8th ran for the bridges, massed charges. They had narrow approach lanes. The bridge deck itself was not being fired on by the Accord. Fire zones on either side left a triangle that was safe from friendly fire. On the Heggie side of the canal only men with RPGs were getting in much work. Grenades could be launched from behind cover, sent out in arcs across the canal—or onto bridges. By the time the first Accord troops reached the bridges, something new was added. Tank rounds started exploding. At least a few Novas had not gone north with the rest, or they had turned around and come back within range of the canal.

Then the Heggies turned loose their remaining Boems for one last attack.

—|—

Zel Paitcher had been unable to get rid of a hollow feeling in his gut. It wasn't hunger. It wasn't even fear... exactly. "Just a nasty little itch," he had whispered to Gerry Easton the last time they had been on the ground for new batteries and ammunition.
A nasty little itch that tells me this is my last campaign
was the full thought, but he hadn't shared the rest of it with his wingman.

The 13th's Blue Flight was down to four planes now. Four planes and four pilots. Zel and Gerry. Ilsen Kwillen and Will Tarkel. The rest of the 13th's flights were in similar condition. The 8th and 17th had been hurt, but not quite as badly. The 5th's air wing had been chopped to pieces in the early fighting, when they were the only Wasps at Site Charley. Only five of its twenty-four Wasps had still been intact when the 17th IAW arrived. And two of those five had been shot down since.

Like the rest of the Accord forces south of the canal, the Wasps had a part to play in the general's desperate assault against the bridges. The Wasps were primarily assigned ground support missions, flying along the Heggie lines north of the canal, trying to put as many of them out of action as possible. Part of the 17th was higher, its mission to keep Schlinal Boems away.

They weren't entirely successful.

The 13th's ten remaining Wasps were concentrated on the Heggie positions guarding the western bridge. They came in from farther west. Prior to the attack they had rendezvoused over the ocean, twenty kilometers away, and only twenty meters above the water.

"We'll stay down as long as we can," Zel told his men while they waited for the signal to start their attack. "Low and fast. Until we get close to the bridge, stick with cannon. We'll use both rockets and cannon approaching and leaving the area of the bridge. We run dry, we turn straight south and beat it, just high enough off of the ground to stay out of the way of artillery shells."

Zel led his flight in, climbing as they reached the shoreline, maintaining their relative altitude as the ground rose. The targeting diagram on Zel's heads-up display had been keyed to show the line of Heggie defenses in green. Zel cut back on his forward speed. When the ground-speed indicator dipped to 500 kph, he locked it in.

And gave the first touch to his trigger. Three hundred meters ahead, the metal slivers fired from five barrels converged on an area no more than two meters wide. The long diameter of the elliptical pattern was right along the main Heggie trench. No body armor could stand up to the hypersonic assault of that much sharp metal.

Zel kept his bursts short until the bridge came into easy range of his missiles. He emptied his racks quickly, aiming not at the bridge itself but at the defenses at its northern end, across the roadway and to either side. Then he switched back to cannons and kept his finger on the trigger as he flew over rocket explosions and past the bridge. When his forward cannons fell silent—out of ammunition—he accelerated sideways and up. The antigrav drive meant that there was no need to
turn
the Wasp in order to change direction, and Zel didn't waste the time to turn until he was far enough out of range of a ground-launched missile to afford it.

Only three planes from Blue Flight made it away from the canal. Ilsen Kwillen's Wasp was hit by a rocket while it was north of the canal. It broke into three main pieces. The escape module did separate, but the parachute failed to deploy.

Kwillen's escape pod slammed into the rock wall of the canal's south bank at more than four hundred kilometers per hour.

—|—

There were two roads leading from the hangars and landing strip to the main Heggie base at the north end of the peninsula. Although they had not been paved, the routes did show that tracked vehicles had moved along them. In a couple of places, irregularities in the ground had been leveled out.

Echo Company was given the road at the south end of the hangars. Howard Company had the other road. Fox and George were in the middle, spread out in a loose skirmish line to make certain that no Heggies were missed, left to take them from behind. On the north, Howard could keep a watch on its flank all of the way to the water. Echo could not be nearly as certain of
its
exposed flank. The rough terrain ran all the way south to the canal. Entire battalions of Heggies might be hidden there.

"Nothing we can do about it," Izzy Walker told Joe Baerclau. "Keep an eye on what you can see. We've got to get to the base as quickly as we can. We
know
there are Heggies there, and our reccers need help fast."

One Boem had tried to land at the airfield before the 13th left the hangars. It had been hit by three Vrerchs when it was no more than twenty meters off of the ground. There had been no need to look for the pilot.

Joe's platoon was moving forward in a column on the left side of the road. First platoon was forty meters ahead of them. Fourth platoon was level with second, on the other side of the road. Third platoon was in front of them. The rest of the company, fifth and sixth platoons, came farther back.

Echo was under half strength now. Joe had already reorganized again: two squads instead of four, or the three that the platoon had been functioning with since the end of the first battle on Tamkailo. Sauv Degtree still had first squad. Low Gerrent had second, the squad he had led for more than a year. The survivors of fourth squad had been divided up between them.

"Let the guys up ahead worry about what's in front of us," Joe told his men. "I'm more worried about our left flank. The rest of our people are nearly twenty kilometers away." Then he switched channels to speak privately with Mort, who had the point for the platoon, as usual. "
You
worry about what's in front of you, Professor. Don't take it for granted that first platoon will spot any mines or booby traps. You heard about those bouncers that the reccers couldn't spot in daylight on bare rock."

"I heard. I'm watching," Mort replied.

Despite his own advice, Joe couldn't completely ignore what was in front of Echo—far in front. The signs of fighting at the main Heggie base were all too evident. Wire at a distance produced a sound almost like that of a mosquito whizzing close by. But there were the explosions of grenades to punctuate that, easily audible over the couple of kilometers of open ground that separated Echo from the fighting. And the buildings of the main base were on higher ground.

Despite the need for haste, the pace of the 13th's advance was relatively slow. The companies on the roads might easily have moved faster, but they held back even with the companies moving cross-country in the center. And, occasionally, the line encountered a pocket of Heggie riflemen.

Although the temperature was still above 34 degrees Celsius, it felt... almost cool. Every now and then Joe lifted his visor for a moment to get a touch of the breeze coming from the northwest. That dried sweat quickly. The slow pace of the advance helped as well. Carrying full combat kit was hard work regardless of the temperature.

The four companies had only covered two-thirds of a kilometer before they ran into more determined opposition. There was a flurry of gunfire from wire rifles and slug-throwing machine guns, and the blasts of several grenades.

"Hit the dirt!" Joe shouted over his platoon channel—a needless order since most of the men had already dropped.

"Roadblock," Captain Keye announced over the noncoms' channel. Then he switched channels. "Joe, take your platoon around to the left. The Heggies are two hundred meters in front of you—two machine guns, maybe a dozen zippers. Fourth platoon will be moving up on the right so be careful where your people are shooting."

"On the way," Joe replied. He used his platoon channel to pass along the orders. "Sauv, Low, we'll do an el. Take a forty-five-degree heading from the road. We'll go out a hundred and twenty meters, then make the right angle. Column on the first leg. Skirmish line when we make the turn."

Second platoon started forward, running low, the men crouched over to minimize their exposure. They might be too far from the enemy for wire to do much damage, but the bullets fired by Schlinal crew-served automatic weapons could take a man out at a lot more than two hundred meters.

Joe maintained his position between the squads. Mort was still on point. Sauv Degtree had needed no lessons on the Professor's value at the front. Once away from the road, the platoon was able to take some advantage of terrain. For most of the first leg of their flanking maneuver, they were able to keep a low ridge between them and the enemy roadblock.

There was no thought of heat or cooling breeze now. Joe's mind was entirely on the problem of getting around into position on the enemy's flank, and keeping his men as safe as possible in the process.

"Don't assume that the one batch is all of the Heggies waiting," he reminded Mort on a private link. "They have to know that we'll try to flank them."

"You think you can handle this better than I can, you're welcome to it," Mort replied—an uncharacteristically testy response.

Mort took five minutes to cover the first leg, moving enough beyond the 120-meter mark to center 2nd platoon on that distance. Joe took a second to confirm the bearing on the enemy guns before he signaled for the platoon to start heading directly for it. Then he called 4th's platoon sergeant.

"We gonna hit 'em together?" Joe asked.

"Sounds good to me," Dieter Franzo replied. Franzo had been a squad leader when the 13th first dropped on Tamkailo, and not even the senior squad leader in his platoon. He had become 4th platoon's third platoon sergeant in three days. "Just say when. We're about one hundred twenty meters out from them now, and maybe fifty meters north of the road."

"We're a little closer to them and farther from the road," Joe said. "They haven't spotted us. At least, they haven't started shooting at us. Hang on a second." He changed channels long enough to get his men down. Just over a hundred meters from the enemy, they were close enough to be vulnerable even to wire if the enemy spotted them.

"Let me know when you get within a hundred meters," Joe said when he returned to the link with Dieter. "We'll go in together then. I'll let the captain know what we're up to."

"I heard it, Joe," Captain Keye said, demonstrating that he had been monitoring the channel. "As soon as you two start firing, we'll move forward on the road as well, hit them with everything we've got."

"Everything" included three Vrerchs targeted against the two Schlinal machine guns as well as a dozen RPGs, and rifle fire from the half of Echo Company that could bring their weapons to bear.

The firefight ended quickly. Echo started moving forward again.

"Joe, you stay out there on the flank," Captain Keye said. But he had to bring 4th platoon back to the road. They were in front of the rest of the skirmish line.

—|—

The 5th and 8th SATs moved across the bridges. Despite all of the supporting fire on the ground and in the air, the toll was still expensive. The Heggies defending the canal line fought as if they were long-term professionals rather than conscripts. The Accord's dead were left where they fell on the bridges. Bodies could be recovered later, when—if—it was safe. Medics worked on the wounded. Other men worked to carry those wounded back to the south side of the canal, to the relative safety of the fixed positions there.

But the two SATs did make it to the north end of the bridges. Hundreds of men rushed into the narrow bridgeheads and fought to expand them. The Schlinal force continued to resist. More Novas came close enough to bring their main guns to bear on the bridgeheads. From the south, Havocs continued to duel with the Schlinal armor.

Both bridges took hits from the Novas, but the bridges had been built too well to collapse without massive damage. Holes were blown in the decks. Sections of the low ramparts along the sides were knocked into the canal. Truss sections were bent and warped. More men were killed making the crossing.

"Start moving the 34th and 97th across," Dacik ordered as soon as all of the SAT infantry companies had made it to the north side. "We've got to free up the SATs to move north. Start moving the Havocs into position in case we need to move them across the canal." Theoretically, the Havocs could cover the entire peninsula from positions near the south bank of the canal, but in combat, their accuracy did increase as ranges decreased.

—|—

The recon platoons on the rooftops noticed when the enemy fire directed their way fell off to almost nothing. Those few reccers who were left alive on the roofs. After more than thirty minutes of heavy fire the enemy had, apparently, decided to abandon them, at least for the moment.

"I think they're moving away," Nimz reported. "They've just left enough marksmen to keep us pinned down."

Dezo Parks took the report. "Probably moving to intercept the line companies," he told Dem. "We've got men advancing from both directions. The companies coming from the airfield should be within about five hundred meters of your position by now. If you get a chance, give them a hand, but don't take extreme chances. We'll get to you soon enough."

"We're in pretty good shape for now," Dem replied. "As long as the heat stays off. But if the Heggies want us bad enough, they could take us in two minutes. I don't have many men left here, and the other platoons are at least as bad off as we are."