Iron Gray Sea: Destroyermen (23 page)

The river formed an impassable barrier on the south side of the gap, snug against the sheer cliff it had carved through the ages. The gap on the north side of the river was strewn with great, undermined boulders but was reasonably wide, enough that the troops could negotiate most of it in a series of block formations instead of long columns. Against the Grik, massed firepower was still the only defense. Any open-order advance was suicide. The rise in elevation was significant, but fairly consistent. There was good visibility to the front and behind, at least where the road was straight, and though it couldn’t guarantee there were no Grik on the high, forested ridges, the Air Corps assured them they would face no artillery.

As usual, it was a hot, grueling day, and the rough, rocky, uphill passage made transporting their wagons and artillery difficult. Paalkas had hooves, but they weren’t hardened against this type of terrain, and many were lamed. Those too far gone to heal quickly were butchered for the cavalry. Others moaned and squealed in pain loud enough to be heard over the tumbling water, but labored on as if they somehow knew what awaited them if they gave up. Even the cavalry’s me-naaks weren’t immune to injury. None were lamed, but they did grow testy.

Pairs of Nancys occasionally rumbled by overhead, sometimes low enough to drop weighted messages with streamers attached. These would be carried back to Division HQ, but the pilots rightly thought Flynn needed the results of their forward observations first. Some of the messages disturbed him. Apparently, once they’d been told what to look for, the Air Corps had increasingly begun to notice odd clearings in the forest. Where before pilots might have been content to report that no Grik were seen, now they reported the clearings as possible corrals, whether dino-cows were present or not. Flynn was compiling his own mental map of the sightings and the picture practically confirmed, if he was right, that there were a
lot
of Grik in the area.

Nothing of the enemy had been seen on the more-open plain beyond the pass, but the patrol patterns the Nancys flew didn’t allow them to scout more than about twenty or thirty miles ahead. Twice Flynn sent requests for special flights to scout beyond that, hopefully as far as the Corps’ next objective. More planes eventually flew by, and he hoped they’d gotten the word.

Hours passed in the thick, humid heat within what was quickly becoming known as Rocky Gap, before advance scouts reported they were nearing the western end of the pass.

“Captain Saachic!” Flynn shouted. “Take your company forward, if you please, and scout the flanks as they broaden out. Then find us and the Sularans a couple of good places to park. You know what to look for. Remember, it may take a couple days for the entire corps to move up, so high ground would be nice. Feel free to detail a couple of platoons to begin laying out the position.”

“Yes, Colonel,” Saachic replied, whirling his mount. His orderly, mounted beside him, blew a series of shrill calls with his whistle.

The gap gradually widened, and the daylong tension caused by the confining passage began to ebb. A breeze stirred the regimental flags for the first time that day, and even if it was hot, it was welcome. Flynn didn’t know what he’d expected to find beyond the pass—maybe some kind of prairie, the way it had been described. It
was
a grassland, but the trees hadn’t surrendered to it entirely. They stood singly or in clumps amid and atop gently rolling hills. They didn’t look much different from the trees in the forest below, but the tall, straight trunks were bare much higher up and were topped with bright green leaves several shades lighter than the dark, thick grass. A line of denser trees followed the river that receded in the distance. In Flynn’s mind, it was beautiful country.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Bekiaa admitted beside him. “Maybe north Saylon is kind of the same, but the trees are different. Only at sea have I ever felt the world was so . . . big.”

“Yeah,” Flynn agreed. “There’s an awful lot of sky up there, and these craggy, hilly, mountainy things we passed through turn into real mountains to the south. See?” He pointed.

One of Saachic’s troopers galloped up and halted, his me-naak blowing. “Caap’n pick two hills,” he said, pointing north, then south. Flynn looked. Both were about the same size, but were a little farther apart than he would have preferred. As the rest of the corps moved up it would fill the space in between and have two solid anchors, however. When they advanced again, the leapfrogging would no longer be necessary. They should be able to rely on conventional scouting in the relatively open land ahead.

“Okay. We’ll take the northern position, as usual. Ride back until you meet the next company of the Sixth and lead it up. You can show ’em where to go. The First Sular won’t be far behind us.” He paused, looking out at the lovely landscape.
Pretty land. Two perfect hills just a
little
too far apart.
 . . . He shook his head.
Getting paranoid
. He knew he’d faced this new Grik general before, and the bastard was sneaky. He hated his guts but had to admire him too, compared to other Grik generals they’d faced. He rubbed his bristly chin, introspective. He wasn’t
really
a colonel, after all. His only infantry experience prior to this was as a corporal a quarter century ago.
Maybe I should’ve stayed with Mr. Laumer and that goddamn sub
, he thought.

He shook his head again.
No, that Grik honcho may be sneaky, but taking advantage of this would take subtlety—and a lot better understanding of strategy and tactics than any Grik has ever shown
. Flynn often based his decisions on what human—or ’Cat—opponents were likely to do and then threw in a double handful of “wild-ass Grik” to compensate for the unpredictable nature of the enemy, but he supposed he usually gave the Grik, and even their new leader, too much credit. Better safe than sorry. Right now he suspected he was giving the enemy way too much credit. He looked at the cav ’Cat. “Well, get on with it.”

“Yes, sur!” cried the ’Cat, and jangled away, back in the direction they’d come. Like all the cav, he held his shortened, carbine-length Baalkpan Arsenal musketoon tight against the sling that kept him from dropping it—but also let it beat the crap out of him if he didn’t hold it that way when his mount was moving quickly. Flynn thought the cav was probably the only Allied force in the west to retain the old smoothbores. His Marines had the Allin-Silva.50-80 breechloaders and soon the whole army should, but the cav liked the ability to fire heavy loads of buckshot at close range.

The Rangers reached the summit of the low, broad hill and began digging in and throwing up breastworks around the perimeter. Axes
thocked
against the trees that stood fairly dense atop the hill, and the trunks and brush joined the defensive structure. Two batteries of artillery—a full dozen of the much-improved twelve-pounders—and carts of supplies loaded with food, ammunition, water butts, even the field transmitter/receiver joined them. The comm ’Cats in charge of the wireless set began to assemble the apparatus and prepared to string an aerial in the remaining trees. The 1st Battalion of the 2nd Marines maintained a rear guard back to the pass with their quick-firing breechloaders and another battery of guns, until the leading elements of the 1st Sular pushed out of the gap and headed toward their own position about seven hundred tails away. The Marines remained in place until the first Sularan companies began to establish themselves. Then they limbered their guns and pulled back toward the northern hill. By then, as the sun crept closer to the western horizon, two more companies of the 6th Cavalry had deployed in the mouth of the gap, screening the advance of the rest of the corps.

“That went very well,” a satisfied Bekiaa said to Flynn. “Though it has been a long day,” she amended. Everyone was tired, but Flynn had been limping slightly for most of the long march. In his forties, he’d spent most of his life in submarines. Those had been dangerous years, but they’d left him ill prepared for a return to infantry life and he ached from his back to his toes all the time, it seemed. Even his shoulder ached from carrying his ’03 Springfield. Sometimes in the past he rode a paalka to give his ankles a rest, but that day he’d refused.

“Mmm,” Flynn replied, listening. “Say, I think our long-range recon is coming back.”

The breeze was laying with the late afternoon, and soon the distinctive sound of Nancy engines was plain. “There they are!” someone cried as the planes grew against the evening sun. One plane banked toward the north hill, the other to the south, and streamers fluttered down. A rider fetched the closest one and brought it to Flynn. He unwrapped the note from the small rock it was tied around and spread the sheet to read it:

MANNY MANNY GRIK AT CROSROADS AROWND RIVER BRIJ ABOUT 80–90 MILES WEST YOR POSISHIN. MOST COMING FROM WEST OF THER, BUT SOM NORTH. SAW LOTS OF DINO COWS.

“Damn it, I knew it!” Flynn said, waving the sheet at the planes as they disappeared east over the crags. “I wish somebody would teach those airedales how to make a report, though. ‘Many’ is awful vague, and what were they doing? Were they crossing the river or just plopped there? And where were the dino-cows? Orderly!” he shouted.

“Here, sur,” came a voice directly behind him.

“Tell those comm ’Cats to get a move on. I need comm!”

In the distance, beyond South Hill, a rumbling, roaring horn suddenly sounded, and all conversation stopped. A second horn joined the first, then another. In seconds, the air was filled with the bone-chilling and utterly unmistakable bellows-powered calls that signaled a general Grik charge! The slopes beyond South Hill, so still and peaceful just moments before, erupted with movement as seemingly dozens of shapes burst from beneath every tree and joined the growing, howling swarm flowing down toward the narrow plain below the Sularan position.

“My God,” Flynn exclaimed. “That lizardy son of a skuggik really did it this time! He Custered us! Drummers, sound ‘Stand To’!”

“What does that mean, Colonel?” Bekiaa shouted over the thundering drums that suddenly competed with the horns. “What’s ‘Custered’? You said something like that in the highland pass on Ceylon, before the battle there.”

“General Halik, or whatever the hell his name is, figured out where we were going, how we were moving, then let us stick our necks through that damn, rocky noose! There
were
Grik all over those damn heights on our flanks all day, just waiting for this! He tried the same stunt in the highlands, but this time it worked—and
I
let it!”

“But their guns! The planes saw no artillery, and no way they could get any up there!”

“Don’t you get it? They don’t
need
artillery, not yet. They aren’t going after the whole corps right now, just us! They can keep General Maraan bottled up in the Rocky Gap while they eat us alive. Between us, the Marines, the Sularans, and the Cav, that’s around thirty-five hundred troops, and a fair-size chunk of Second Corps!”

A gun flashed on South Hill, downward and away, the vent jet stabbing at the sky. Then another fired. Both reports were drowned by the growing, snarling, hissing shriek of thousands of Grik charging down out of the hills, where they must have remained hidden to crossing aircraft.

“What have we got coming at us here?” Flynn demanded when a ’Cat lieutenant raced up from the west side of the hill.

“Nothing yet. They seem all go at First Sular, yonder. They lots still not to top of hill. No dig in.”

The sun had touched the horizon at last, and the long shadows would soon be replaced by a very long night. Musket flashes and more cannon firelit the distant hill.

“They mean to take us one at a time,” Flynn decided. “My guess is they’ve probably got a lot more out there than are even coming off the hills. Probably have some guns stashed too. If they wipe us out, or even if they don’t, they can keep Second Corps stopped up in that gap until that ‘many’ force gets here from the east. After that, it’s all attack, attack. Their kind of fight.”

“But even they get us, Second Corps get away!” the lieutenant said, blinking furiously.

“Boy, have you even been
with
us the last couple of days? Remember the dino-cows? They didn’t cook this up on the fly. I guarantee they’re hittin’ Second Corps from behind and in the flanks right damn
now
! They’ll cork General Maraan in that lousy gap from both sides!”

“But . . . well, what
we
do?” the young officer almost wailed.

“You’re relieved, Lieutenant,” Flynn said, almost gently. “At least until you pull yourself together.” He looked at those who’d gathered around him. “
All
of us better do that right quick, or we’ve had it. Saachic!”

“Sur?”

“Take all the cav and scoop up both companies of the Sixth in the gap. Whoever’s behind ’em will have to take the load when it lands. After that, haul ass to South Hill. If it looks like they can hold off the first shove, help them do it, then tell them to run, not walk, the hell over
here
.”

“Yes, sur . . . but what if they not holding?”

Flynn took a breath. “Then spike what guns you can and get everybody out who can climb in the saddle with you. We’ll cover your run back here.”