Orphan Brigade (25 page)

Mortas blinked hard, cursing the grit that had slipped past the goggles, and in his mind he saw the enemy foot patrol that had passed directly in front of them the previous night. The armored cars that had followed them. The solid ground that still existed along the ridges to the east and to the south.

“Hey, ASSL.”

“Yeah?”

“If they send armor at us, who's going to shoot that minefield onto the plain?”

“Right now we're covered by the artillery of the armored division that's waiting for the lane to be cleared. Don't worry; I gave them detailed coordinates for a mixed obstacle belt right after we got here. They could shoot it blindfolded.”

“When are you authorized to put that in place?”

“Only if we see Sim armor.”

“Right. That's what's got me worried. An engineer lieutenant told me our tankers are all fired up to run the pass when the lanes are cleared, but it's taking longer than planned. What do you think they'll do, that armored division with the artillery that's supposed to deliver our minefield, if they hear enemy tanks are out on this plain while the pass is still blocked?”

Daederus didn't reply for almost a minute, and Mortas began to wonder if the ASSL's brain was getting as foggy as his own. To his right, Smashy began to fidget as if the conversation were giving him a rash. Finally Daederus responded.

“You got a good point. Our tankers will want to get out onto this ground right here, to fight Sam's tankers. Even if their artillery wanted to shoot that minefield, their commander might countermand them.”

“They're stacked up waiting to run the passes, so it would take them a while to get down here. We could get overrun before that happened if they didn't shoot that obstacle belt into position.”

Daederus began muttering over the radio again, a hurried conversation that quickly got heated. “Don't tell me they'll lay the field before they move out! As soon as they know there are tanks out here, we lose them as our priority support! And you wouldn't know this because you're not down here, but the dust is so thick that nothing is going to fly in to help us.”

A pause.

“Thanks bunches. You're all heart.” Daederus turned grime-­covered goggles in his direction. “Command says we've still got orbital rocket priority if things get rough.”

“What do you think of that?”

“Not much. When it's there it's the best thing to have, but I usually have the drones and artillery as backup. I don't like relying on one system, not in a spot like this. And we still don't know what happened to that scout team.” His chin dropped, then came back up. “Fuck it. I'm gonna seed those mines right now.”

“Really?” Mortas almost laughed out loud, as if the ASSL were performing some kind of harmless prank.

“Yes. What are they gonna do? Take away my wings and make me walk with the infantry?” He focused his attention on the dark plain, and began calling in the code that would start the heavy guns miles behind them firing antiarmor and antipersonnel mines across the company front. Mortas flipped to the fire control net, certain that the request would be denied, and he wasn't disappointed.

“Wait wait wait wait wait.” A bored voice broke in. “What are you seeing? Why are you calling this mission?”

Daederus reached up and pulled his grimy filter mask aside just long enough to show Mortas a huge smile. The lieutenant was about to ask the reason for his mirth when the fire control net jumped with communications from the rest of the battalion's ASSLs. The same code message was repeated over and over, some voices speaking softly while others were shouting. He had just noticed that no one had claimed to have seen the enemy when the bored voice came back with urgency.

“Understood! Mission cleared!”

Mortas flipped back to the platoon frequency. “Get ready! The artillery is going to shoot the minefield in front of us!”

He heard Berland and Dak respond in the affirmative just as several burps sounded from behind him. Far back, on the other side of the high ground that held the passes, the massive tubes of the field artillery were already firing the mission.

Mortas turned his attention to the dark expanse, remembering the original dimensions of the planned obstacle belt and wondering just how many of the munitions would land in the newly collapsed mud field. It wouldn't matter because the crater was its own obstacle, but in his mind he saw the heavy projectiles arching through the dust cloud, passing overhead before nosing over and hurtling toward the deck.

More burps from behind him, then the first impacts. The projectiles carrying the different mines were hot from the launch, and he could pick them out even in the dust cloud. They started seeding the ground a thousand yards out, then moved so close to the opposing ridgeline that he actually saw one of the falling canisters bounce off the far cliffs. Dirt and dust swirling as more and more of the rounds plummeted from the sky, the ASSL sending words of encouragement, and the guns finding a rhythm.

The first row of glowing canisters reached across the solid ground and found the muddy bog, the shining orbs dropping and disappearing. The ASSL let the mission continue, marking the estimated dimensions of the mud field and discussing the adjustment with the artillery's fire control personnel. More and more burps, heated metal falling like meteors through the grayness, and the belt started anew to the west, in front of A Company.

Watching the light fade as the first projectiles cooled, Mortas began to feel a lightness entering his body. In no time at all they would have an extensive obstacle belt in place, shielding them from enemy armor approaching from the plain. The Sims were adept at breaching minefields, but the belt would slow them down, and orbital rockets would take over from there. Drowsiness began tugging at his brain, and he was drifting pleasantly when it all came to an end.

Directly behind them, close to the pass, a massive explosion leapt out of the darkness. The shock wave went right through his chest armor where it rested on the ground, and the floating dust jumped as if startled.

“Short round! Short round!” An unidentified voice screamed over the radio. Another concussion, farther out, slapping the air over their heads where the three men pressed themselves into the dirt.

“Those aren't ours! That's enemy!” Daederus's voice sounded incredibly distant even though he was so close to Mortas that their sleeves were touching.

The sound dampers in his helmet kept the next explosions from deafening him, but Mortas was forced to endure the rest. High-­explosive rounds landed only yards behind them, heart-­stopping in their suddenness, the blast traveling through the rock like an electrical charge, stone splinters flying over them, dirt and stones landing on their legs and helmets and chest armor, one explosion after another until they were being yanked back and forth by the concussions.

Pressing into the stone for all he was worth, his hands up under his jaw, his rifle forgotten next to him, every flying pebble the hard finger of the Reaper, tapping on his armor. The shock waves fluttering his fatigue pants, imagining a chunk of steel shooting straight for his unprotected groin, sensing the slope ahead of him and wanting to madly crawl down it, down and away, below the lethal, flailing, unseen claws, but too afraid to move.

Voices in his ears, remarkably clear because of the dampers.

“Hold your positions! Hunker down!”

“Watch the plain! Anybody seeing anything?”

“Shit goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch will somebody
make it stop
!”

The last words scaring him past the terror of the shelling because for a moment he thought the voice might be his own. His hands coming up over his mask, but it wasn't him because the screaming continued and then was muffled as if someone had landed on the screamer. Someone or something.

“Lieutenant? You there?” Berland's voice, shouting but calm. He pulled his hands away, desperate to answer.

“Yes! Yes! Still here! What's going on?”

A pause that seemed to last for days.

“I think they're shelling us. I could be wrong.”

Another blast, not so close this time, but more dirt and stones bouncing over his helmet. Unable to process his platoon sergeant's words, frightened for a moment that Berland had lost his mind, then understanding. His own words were the ones that didn't make sense. Mortas let out a shaky laugh, then forced his head up just enough to see out over the plain.

“I'm not seeing anything to my front. How about you?”

“Nothing so far. But they're coming. Too much artillery for it to be anything else.”

The explosions mercifully shifted back, toward the pass, and he tried not to think about how easily they could return. Looking at the ASSL, who was now peering out from under his helmet, studying the open ground.

A voice Mortas knew but couldn't place, calm, confident. It was a moment before he recognized it as the brigade commander, talking to every Orphan facing the plain.

“They're going to follow this up with armor. ASSLs, kill the tanks. Orphans, protect the ASSLs.”

The glowing orbs reappeared, dropping through the mist and continuing to lay the minefield. Behind them, a pulsating succession of blasts made the stone shake, and continued.

Dak's voice, vibrating, from the platoon's position closest to the mouth of the pass. “They're throwing concussion rounds at the lane! Airbursts! They're trying to open the pass from this end!”

Similar reports came in then, confirmation from Second and Third Battalion that the same kind of ordnance was landing on lanes Two and Three. The concussion rounds were meant to set off the mines that choked the passes without creating the debris that would have been generated by high explosives.

Mortas felt his sphincter clench, and a coldness invaded his entrails. It all fell into place perfectly, and for an instant he was miles over the battlefield, seeing it all for the first time. Command wasn't the only entity that had seen an advantage in the mud field's continued growth to the south. Although the Sims had initially tried to slip past the steadily enlarging obstacle on ground that would give them room to run, they had also taken note of the passes through the southernmost tip of the mountain chain to the north. They'd shifted forces in a way that had avoided detection, one of their specialties, and now they were going to force the passes.

Somewhere across the flat, massed inside the dust cloud, would be thousands of Sim soldiers in tanks and armored personnel carriers. They'd managed to kill one of the brigade's scout teams on their side of the open ground, but when the humans had started to seed the minefield they'd been forced to move.

Daederus grabbed his arm. His words rattled with the continued vibration of the ground. “Tell your ­people to be ready with the dragonflies, and to take over for me if anything happens.”

Mortas almost asked why the ASSL hadn't told him, an officer, to take over directing the aerial fire. But then he realized that anything that happened to Daederus would probably happen to the men right around him. He relayed the instructions and received terse acknowledgment from Berland and the squad leaders, who as veterans were no doubt ready to assume the role without being reminded.

The blasts behind them took on a hollow sound, and the rock beneath them shook even more. The Sim concussion rounds were landing directly in the pass, and Mortas pulled his eyes away from the plain to look back up the slope. No air assets were able to fly in the dust, and the Sims had no ships in orbit, so how could be their fire be so accurate?

Sergeant Dak answered the question. “Everybody watch out! Sammy's got somebody adjusting his fire!”

Infiltrators. Somehow, perhaps coming all the way through the brigade's undermanned sector from the north as Dassa had predicted, Sim soldiers had gotten into position where they could observe the lanes. They wouldn't be alone, and the priority of the infantry with them would be the removal of ASSLs and any human outposts in a position to direct fires onto the plain. It was time to put Dassa's plan into action, but he needed to pull his security teams in to do that.

“Jute! Jute! Do you hear me?”

Nothing. He called the second pair of Orphans manning the tiny perimeter around his observation point, and Ladaglia answered. Mortas ordered him and Corporal Arrow to move to the depression, then scrambled backward, down the incline, coming to a crouch, slapping the dirt off his Scorpion, and moving quickly to the depression that had been their sleeping area. Hunt was there, waiting for the security men to join him, prone behind a large rock and covering the rear with his Scorpion.

“I'm going to go see what happened to Jute's position.”

“You're not going alone, Lieutenant.” Hunt was on his feet, bent over and clutching a grenade in the hand that wasn't holding his rifle. A sack of the deadly missiles hung over his shoulder, and Mortas simply nodded before heading out through the rocks. Unable to see more than a few yards because of the broken terrain and the eddying cloud. Fearing the worst for Jute and the other man with him, dreading the artillery that could start landing on them at any moment. Hearing the other observation points adjusting, pulling their security teams back. Hunt's voice, terse words.

“Slow down, sir.”

Forcing himself to pause, dropping to a knee in the now-­familiar cut that would take them to the silent security position. Dirty goggles sweeping the looming hillside and the nearest boulders, all of it so close, so confining.

“Jute. Jute. Do you hear me?” Waiting, then glancing momentarily in Hunt's direction. “You know the name of the troop who was with him?”

“One of the new guys, didn't talk much. I dunno.”

“Okay. They're not much farther.” Just beginning to rise when Hunt's hand seized him by the shoulder armor and pulled him backward, falling to a sitting position, the Scorpion banging against the rock with a loud crack.