Orphan Brigade (23 page)

Imagining the human troops all along the high ground, watching the vehicles, pressing themselves down into the rock to avoid showing up on the enemy's scopes. The humming was loud now, mixed with the crunching as the huge tires rolled across the hard, flat terrain. Only his helmet and the very top of his goggles above the level of the grass and the dirt and the stone, the nonarmored parts of his body feeling a part of the very soil.

The three armored cars rolled by quickly, aware that they were offering their profiles to high ground that had not been scouted. As soon as they passed, all three men wriggled back up to the edge and looked out. The heat from the rear engines showed up almost white in the goggles, and when Mortas turned to look back out on the plain it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. There was nothing there.

Again, the question of how long it would take for whatever was following the scout cars to get there. It was largely academic, given the situation, because the Sims inside the vehicles could be reporting that the ground was fit for foot soldiers and scout cars but not armor. They might also be sensibly advising against sending a major force until the forbidding high ground had been cleared.

Or they might be radioing back that they were traveling with no opposition at all and that significant forces should follow as soon as possible.

Daederus, once again speaking to his partners and bosses on the fire control net, stopped talking with a sudden turning of his head. His goggles stared into Mortas's, and he seemed to be listening to something the lieutenant could not yet hear. In the gray-­green world, he raised a hand and wiggled all five fingers before pressing it into the dirt. Mortas followed suit, his eyes widening in amazement at the sensation in his palm.

The ground was trembling, a vibration he remembered from Roanum when gigantic Sim earthmovers had approached the ravine where he and the others had been hidden. He looked back out over the plain, expecting to see the lumbering silhouettes of many Sim tanks, but at the same time wondering how they could be rattling the dirt beneath him from so far away.

“Oh boy.” Sergeant Smashy sounded worried, and Mortas soon understood why. There was no longer a need to touch the ground to feel the tremors, which now passed through his armor. Voices came up on the net, tumbling over each other, asking if anyone else was feeling that and did anyone know what it was.

“It's a fucking
earthquake
!” Daederus shouted, but his words were barely audible above a series of booming crashes from the distant mud field. Mortas was reminded of thunder, the instantaneous explosion of a bolt that was practically on top of the hearer, then of the waves from a tropical storm he'd once witnessed, slamming into the rocks of an oceanside cliff.

The vibration beneath him was interrupted by what felt like a kick to his armor, a subterranean burp that was followed by a long, ripping sound far out on the plain. The dust cloud was the first indication of what had happened, as it lost its serene spinning and suddenly flattened as if struck by a typhoon wind from above. Its outer edges bulged and the whole cloud shrank, covering the plain in an instant. One moment the open ground was visible for hundreds of yards and the next it was hidden inside the fog.

Mortas felt the breeze on the edges of his mask and goggles, the sting of tiny dirt specks moving at great speed, then the breeze was a wind and the wind was a storm and the flecks were pebbles and he got his head down just in time. Pulling his hands down under his throat, the pebbles rattling against the top of his helmet and his shoulder armor like hail on a metal roof.

Though astounded by the event, he still remembered his platoon and how many of them weren't facing the low ground.

“Get your heads down, there's all sorts of junk flying around!”

A chorus of voices acknowledged his message with variations of “No shit!” and, despite the stone rain, Mortas found himself laughing. He lifted his head just enough to look at Daederus, and saw that the ASSL was convulsed with giggles as well. Shielding his goggles with one hand, Mortas turned to look outward and saw that the fog was almost on them, billowing, driven by unseen forces, laden with dust and dirt and rock that flew past him.

The rock rain ceased without warning, and the others looked up in time to see the fog recede, rushing back like the tide, then even farther, as if being sucked down into a mighty hole.

They were exchanging looks of wonder when the plain erupted, thunderclap after thunderclap, blowing a dirty gray mushroom miles into the atmosphere.

“Y
eah, it kinda sucks to be right about something like this.” Captain Pappas spoke to Colonel Alden, Captain Noonan, and Lieutenant Mortas in a rocky depression inside the First Platoon sector. The battalion commander had come down to see the devastation for himself, but to little avail; the dust cloud had engulfed much of the brigade's zone and was particularly dense in A and B Companies' area.

Colonel Alden, inspecting Third Platoon's positions, had been appalled to discover that Lieutenant Kitrick's unhealed wound had rendered him unable to walk. Kitrick had suffered through the march to his platoon zone, but was barely able to stand when the battalion commander arrived. Over Kitrick's express objection, the seasoned platoon leader had been evacuated. This left First Platoon as the only platoon with an officer, and so Captain Noonan had announced he would be shifting his small command group between Second and Third Platoons.

The air was eerily still, and the ashen fog drifted like smoke all around them. The observation points had gone from being able to see thousands of yards out to only a hundred, and sometimes less. The goggles allowed the humans to see into the cloud, and the ships in orbit were allegedly scanning for Sim movement as well, but the cloak that had descended on them had put most of the Orphans in a jittery mood.

Intermittent breaks in the vapor told the story that Pappas had predicted: the mud field had collapsed into an enormous sinkhole that was getting deeper and wider. It had spewed forth such a volume of dirt and cinders that the battle to its south had simply ended. Both sides had withdrawn to defensive positions because the noisome air had begun to choke any engine that was exposed to it for too long.

“Command sees this as a big opportunity.” Colonel Alden spoke from behind goggles that were already covered in dust and a face mask that looked like it had been used to strain muddy water. “They were starting to come away from the northern counterattack idea, because they figured the Sims would be able to shut the passes back down by simple bombardment. But with this cloud all over us, there's no way to conduct aerobot reconnaissance—­theirs or ours. The dust up here's not as thick as it is in the south, so they figure we can push a lot of armor through here before the Sammies get wise.”

“How far along is the clearance effort, sir?” Noonan asked.

“Just under halfway on our corridor, one-­third of the way on Corridors Two and Three. They've encountered reactive mines in all three lanes, some of which still have enough power to detect a human electrical field. The sappers have been forced to wear the dampening suits, and it's really slowed them down.”

“I only asked because we're spread awfully thin out here. And with the visibility as it is, if Sam wants to come up here and have a look around, he's not gonna have a lot of trouble doing it.”

“I understand. Captain Pappas?”

“Our air reconnaissance has been affected the same way Sam's has, and of course we weren't flying much of it in this area anyway. Orbital recon hasn't detected any enemy movement in this direction. The Sims' earlier attack, combined with the long fight down south, seems to have exhausted them. They're digging in on the ground they took from us.”

“If that's true, what was that bunch we killed last night?” The six enemy foot soldiers who'd crossed First Platoon's area had been gunned down by A Company while running for the apparent safety of the rocks when the ground had started to give way. The three fleeing scout cars had been destroyed by rocket teams from B Company's Second and Third Platoons, and the Sims who had bailed out had been cut down by rifle and grenade fire.

“The dismounts were obviously checking the ground to see if it was safe for vehicles, but it might just have been for the scout cars that came later. Command believes it was a long-­range patrol of some kind. So far, orbital recon hasn't seen anything that would suggest Sam had anything waiting to follow them.”

“These orbital eyes and ears you keep mentioning. They didn't see those armored cars coming at us.”

“They should have. Our area is their priority because we've got nothing else watching over us. I asked what happened, and they basically said we should be able to handle three scout cars on our own.”

“So they missed it.”

“Yes.”

Colonel Alden broke in. “I discussed that with the brigade commander, and he forcefully took it up with higher. We've been assured it won't happen again, but Colonel Watt is skeptical and so am I. It is vital that we keep our own eyes and ears open, so even though we're shorthanded, every platoon has to continue patrolling in its sector. As an added set of eyes, the brigade's scouts have been inserted in the mountains across from us.”

Alden let that sink in. The long-­range reconnaissance teams at brigade level were extremely good, but the distance between them and the rest of the Orphans was excessive. Separated from their fellows by miles of open plain, they would have to rely on aerial support fire and shuttle evacuation if they ran into trouble.

A straining motor sounded from down the rocky path, and the four men looked into the grayness to see what it was. The eddying fog seemed to slip away as a four-­wheeled motorcart rolled up. Its driver was caked in gray dirt, wearing a bulbous set of driving goggles over his electronic eyes. He shut the engine down and dismounted, and when the driver began scrubbing away at the outer goggles with a filthy rag Mortas recognized him as Captain Dassa.

“Good timing, Emile.” Colonel Alden walked toward the cart, and the others followed. The back of the low vehicle was filled with canvas sacks. “Hand grenades and dragonflies, gentlemen. We're going to keep pushing these forward, along with lots of boomer rounds, extra water, and replacement masks until this operation is completed.”

He hefted one of the cylindrical explosives.

“Let's hope we'll all get hernias carrying every bit of this back out again when this is all over.”

C
olonel Alden departed with Noonan and Pappas, and Mortas stayed with Dassa to wait for the men from his platoon who would carry the supplies to the different positions. Mortas examined the smaller version of the Armadillos that had been running up and down the company sector.

“Never seen one of these before. Or even heard of them.”

“Yeah, Sergeant Major got four of them from the engineers clearing the lane. Not enough 'dillos to get the job done.” Dassa looked around. “I don't know what Sam's doing down south, but that patrol last night tells me he's at least thinking about coming back up here. And if he does that, he'll use this cloud to get infantry up onto this ground.”

“We've got the plain under observation, and even with this shit in the air, we'll be able to pick up the heat signatures.”

“Sam won't come across the open like that. He'll infiltrate from the north, where there's all those trees. Even at full strength we wouldn't be able to stop him from sneaking through the brigade's sector, not with all the folds in the ground, and we're nowhere near full strength.”

A stab of doubt passed through Mortas, and he felt the need to get Berland in the conversation. He was just about to call the platoon sergeant when Dassa spoke again.

“You already walked your whole sector?”

“Yes.”

“Marked the spots where infiltrators could hole up, like this depression here? Got chonks sighted in on them?”

“Yeah, my guys did that without being told.”

“That's what I figured. Let me show you something that might be helpful.” Dassa took out his handheld, and Mortas switched his goggles over to the map of First Battalion's area. A and B Companies' observation points on the ground south of Lane One formed a line that resembled an archer's bow, with Lane One representing the bowstring. B Company formed the eastern half of the bow, and First Platoon's positions curved up almost to the pass itself.

Depressions in the platoon sector were marked with target designations for the grenade launchers, so that anyone receiving fire from the rear would be able to call in the location for the chonks. This technique grew less effective farther north, where the trees were thicker. Dassa continued giving advice.

“I see you've got your machine guns covering the plain. Pretty useless, really.” Mortas felt his cheeks burning inside his mask. “So much open ground that's beyond their range, and whatever might come at us from that direction would be armored. Here's something I've done in the past.” Dassa drew a line on the handheld that appeared on the map in front of Mortas's eyes. “It's unconventional, and most units can't handle it, but it fits here because we haven't got a lot of guys and the ground's mostly covered in bushes.”

Mortas's eyes widened as Dassa sketched a narrow, fan-­shaped field of fire for the machine gun team at Dak's position. Instead of firing out over the plain, it would be shooting to the rear, into the platoon's zone. One side of the fan followed the edge of Lane One, and the other side of the acute angle came up behind Mecklinger's position on the western edge of the platoon's area.

“I know it looks like you'll be shooting into Second Platoon, but the rising ground is going to block that.”

“It's going to do that well short of Second Platoon. My machine guns won't be able to fire more than a ­couple of hundred yards facing this direction, and the ricochets will be flying all over the place,” Mortas replied.