Steel Gauntlet (23 page)

“Thank you, Admiral,” Wimbush said somberly. He still refused to look at the Marine commanders.

“General Han, how are your landing preparations proceeding?” Admiral Johannes sat greatly relieved at not being asked about the origin of those four additional divisions.

The army commander rose to his feet and stepped to the front of the room. The intelligence screw-ups weren’t his fault, he didn’t need to be afraid to face the Marines. “Sir, I have every expectation that at dawn on the day after tomorrow, Third Corps will have its first elements on the ground. By the end of the day, Third Corps will be driving the four—” He looked at Johannes. “It’s four now, isn’t that right? Third Corps will be pushing the four divisions now closing on Oppalia back into the hinterlands. Or I should say the remnants of those four divisions. Between Benny’s squadrons and my soldiers, four divisions will have a very short life expectancy. Two days later, Ninth Corps will be on the ground. If Third Corps hasn’t had the opportunity to do it by then, Ninth Corps will destroy the Second Armored Division and occupy New Kimberly. I believe that should end this war.”

“So nothing has changed in your plans or preparations?” Wimbush asked hopefully.

“Nothing, sir. Everything is proceeding as expected.”

“Thank you, General.” General Han resumed his seat.

Admiral Wimbush could no longer avoid looking at the Marines. “General Aguinaldo, the seaport and spaceport have been secured, is that correct?”

General Aguinaldo stood and marched to the front of the room; Major General Daly marched with him. The Marines assumed positions of parade rest, feet spread, hands clasped behind their backs.

Aguinaldo fixed the assembled admirals and generals with the kind of look that general officers normally only use on incompetent subordinates who they are about to relieve of command.

“Sir,” Aguinaldo began, “the 13th and 34th FISTs have occupied the spaceport. The 19th and 225th FISTs have the seaport.”

“Thank you, General—” Admiral Wimbush began, but Aguinaldo spoke over him and continued.

“Admiral Johannes, get your people on the stick!” he snapped. The intelligence commander jerked as though struck, and his face turned a deep red. “The First Armored Division is neither weaker than previously believed nor did it leave part of its strength in the Tourmaline mining complex. The First Tank Brigade of the First Armored Division is in Oppalia. It greeted the first wave of my landing force. The four FISTs on the ground are fully engaged with a superior force of enemy armor.” He looked at General Han. “My Marines haven’t had a chance to break out their golf clubs yet.” Han had the grace to blush.

“Ge-General, we—” Admiral Wimbush tried to interrupt. Aguinaldo shot him a look that shut up the top commander. Wimbush looked thoroughly flustered.

“My Marines have been planetside for ten and a half hours. They have suffered nearly fifteen percent casualties.” He looked at Admiral Clark; nobody could tell if he was looking for confirmation or defying the Fleet surgeon to dispute his figure.

“That’s right,” Clark said.

Aguinaldo nodded at him. “At this point, the Diamundean forces have suffered worse casualties, but that’s only to be expected when anyone goes up against Marines. Our best intelligence, not my FIST

commanders’ initial reports”—he looked pointedly at Admiral Havens, who flinched—“indicate we have destroyed 103 of the First Tank Brigade’s tanks. However, that leaves about three hundred more that my Marines are facing. The problem we have is, the assault waves went ashore with only 240 Straight Arrows. The four FISTs planetside only have ninety-seven S.A.’s remaining—not quite enough to kill one-third of the remaining tanks they’re sharing the city with.

“If Major General Daly commits his remaining two FISTs, and I commit my Straight Arrow reserve, that will give the Marines planetside enough power to kill all but about thirty-five or forty of the remaining tanks—provided every shot scores a kill. Which leaves the landing force with nothing other than antipersonnel weapons with which to face the Diamundean armor that gets past Admiral Havens’s eight squadrons.

“Gentlemen...” The way he said the word clearly indicated he thought they were anything but. “There is no way eight squadrons can stop three armored divisions—let alone however many more there may be that we don’t know about.” He glared at Johannes.

“Now, at this moment, the Diamundean forces have broken off. We suspect they don’t realize how lightly armed my Marines are. But if they do sally forth, the infantry and Raptors of the four FISTs can probably defeat them, albeit with heavy losses. If they remain in hiding, I don’t have enough strength to dig them out, so the FISTs must remain in position waiting for the enemy to move. While they are waiting, the enemy gets reinforced. Those reinforcements will be powerful enough before D plus three for them to mount an attack, even if they think every Marine on the ground is carrying a tank-killing rocket. If that happens, I dare say Third Corps will be unable to make its landing.

“We,” he dipped his head toward Daly, “are open to suggestions as to how to proceed.” None of the admirals or generals had any suggestions other than for the Marines to hang in there for another two days. But before the meeting was over, Rear Admiral Havens agreed to commit twelve of his sixteen squadrons to slowing down the advance of the three known divisions. General Han, believing they wouldn’t be needed later, offered to strip five hundred Straight Arrows from the IX Corps and give them to the Marines. “In a straight-up trade for golf clubs,” he added in what sounded entirely too much like gallows humor. Those promises secured, the Marines marched out without waiting for Admiral Wimbush to dismiss them.

At sixteen hours the resupply of Straight Arrows reached 34th FIST. It took less than half an hour for the new rockets to be distributed to the infantry units. By then, third platoon was whole again, and Sergeant Hyakowa and the two squads with him had rejoined the company an hour earlier.

Ensign Vanden Hoyt shook his head after he took delivery of sixteen tank killers. “Typical. They don’t give us enough to do the job until after we need them the most.”

“And even then they don’t give us enough to finish the job,” Gunnery Sergeant Bass grumbled. Still, he was pleased by the delivery. Third platoon had only used four of its initial issue of twelve rockets. The platoon was down to twenty-eight men, including the two of them, after losing Corporal Lonsdorf and Lance Corporal Van Impe. Bass took one Straight Arrow for himself. The command element should be too busy with running the platoon to actively engage enemy tanks, he decided. Still, it was always possible they’d find themselves in a situation where they wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. “How do you want to distribute them?”

Vanden Hoyt didn’t comment on the S.A. that Bass appropriated for himself. “The gun squad has the most to carry with its own weapons,” he said. “And it’s short a man. They still have one, right?” Bass nodded

“Give guns to two of them. That way every man except the squad leader and the gunners will have one. Split the others between the blaster squads.”

“Leaves us an extra.”

“Who’s the best shot with them?”

Bass thought for a moment. “Probably Dean and Claypoole.”

“They’re in different squads. Give it to Eagle’s Cry, he hasn’t lost any men, right?” Bass nodded and spoke into the squad leaders’ circuit. “Squad leaders up. Hyakowa and Eagle’s Cry, bring a pack animal.”

In a few moments the three squad leaders joined them. Hyakowa’s and Eagle’s Cry’s eyes lit up when they saw the stack of new rockets.

“Now we get them!” Eagle’s Cry exclaimed. “Life would’ve been a lot easier earlier today if we had them to begin with.” He was both relieved and glad of the resupply.

“Yeah,” Sergeant Kelly said dully. The death of Corporal Lonsdorf was weighing on him, even though he knew that having more Straight Arrows earlier probably wouldn’t have saved his life.

Hyakowa was fully business. “How many do we each get?” He noticed that Bass had laid one at his side.

“First squad, take six. Second squad gets seven,” Vanden Hoyt told them. “Guns gets two.”

“Guns is the platoon’s heavy weapons,” Kelly snapped, suddenly angry. “How come we only get two? That gives me only three rockets for six men.”

“Because you’ve got the guns,” Bass said calmly. “You’re already carrying extra firepower and weight.”

“I’ve got four men who aren’t carrying the guns.” Kelly quickly scanned the stack of rockets and saw the odd number. “The guns are only good against tanks if they’re unbuttoned. There’s an extra. Let me have it.”

Vanden Hoyt and Bass looked at each other. Bass gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“You’ve got it,” Vanden Hoyt said.

Kelly’s anger dissipated as quickly as it had overcome him. “Thanks,” he said.

“That gives me eight rockets for my nine men,” Hyakowa said “Who doesn’t get one?” Bass fixed an eye on him. “If you don’t know your men well enough to decide that yourself, maybe I should make Leach the squad leader.”

Hyakowa returned the look. “I know my men well enough,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t made up my mind for me.”

Bass laughed.

Eagle’s Cry turned to Godenov, the man he’d brought with him. “Now you know why I needed a faithful gun bearer,” he told the PFC. “Pick up a load and let’s get back to the squad.” Godenov’s face twisted in a sour expression. Six Straight Arrows weighed more than fifty kilos. It wasn’t fair of Eagle’s Cry to expect him to carry all of that. But when he got to the pile of rockets and started to pick them up, Eagle’s Cry hefted three to carry himself. Godenov’s sour expression went away; his squad leader was an all-right guy.

Twenty minutes later Vanden Hoyt was on the all-hands circuit giving the platoon the orders he’d just received. Thirty-fourth FIST was moving out. Now that they had enough tank killers to do the job, they were going to find where the 552nd Tank Battalion was hiding and kill it.

CHAPTER 18

Company B, 261st Tank Battalion, sped across the plain west of Rourke’s Hills, avoiding the highways and roads Captain Hormujh believed the Confederation Navy Raptors were searching. The forty operable tanks that remained in the company after the air attack in the pass would reach Oppalia in three-quarters of an hour. Every tank that had the capability—only seven of them—was searching the sky for aircraft, paying special attention to the swatch of sky directly overhead. Hormujh grew furious at the memory of that unexpected attack. Who would have suspected that anyone could strike that way?

He wondered how many times a Raptor could survive the stresses of that maneuver before it began to fall apart. Enough, he decided—enough times to destroy his company.

His tank’s communications man and that of his executive officer scanned the frequencies, searching for messages that would tell him what was going on elsewhere. He was particularly interested in the movement of the rest of the First Armored Division as it made its way through Rourke’s Hills. That movement was not orderly. He learned that the squadron that hit his company had moved off to attack the main body, and that squadron was relieved by two more squadrons. Many tanks—security concerns kept anyone from giving out numbers over the air—were killed by the attacking aircraft. Progress was piecemeal. Individual small units—battered companies, even platoons—made it into the pass and continued west, but the bulk of the two brigades was scattered east of the mountains, doing their best to evade fire from the attacking Raptors. A battalion or two had made it back to the base at Tourmaline and taken cover in the mines. Elsewhere, the Fourth and Ninth armored divisions were also having problems with Confederation Raptors. Only the Third Armored Division, slipping carefully along the west face of Rourke’s Hills, was moving unmolested. Somehow, Third Armor hadn’t yet been detected. Hormujh wondered how long that would last.

He wondered why there was so little activity in Oppalia. Yes, the First Tank Brigade had suffered heavy losses, but the invasion force had landed with only a few thousand men. Surely those few thousand had suffered heavy losses as well. The brigade should be fighting, but the communications he was able to intercept indicated otherwise.

He checked the time. In half an hour or a little more, his company would join the fight against the invaders at Oppalia. Then they’ll see how real tankers fight infantry, he thought.

General Aguinaldo glared at the situation map in the air command center as though by sheer force of will he could make it change what it was showing.

This map, unlike the one in Admiral Wimbush’s briefing room, was a real-time projection from the string-of-pearls. The computer that ran the map held a trid view of all the land in the theater of operations. Any part or all of the landscape could be shown in an overhead view or from nearly any angle. The computer overlaid tank icons onto the map. The icons were modified according to the best estimate of the condition of the tanks represented. Other flickering icons showed the Raptors that were attacking the tanks. On a small scale map that showed a large area, the icons were oversized. On a larger scale map, where a smaller area was shown, the icons could be to scale.

The current map showed Raptors attacking the Fourth Armored Division south of Oppalia. More than fifty tank icons smoldered red, indicating they’d been killed. The rest of the tank icons, more than eleven hundred, were scattered over an area larger than the two thousand square kilometers shown on the map—and all the icons were moving north. Aguinaldo glanced at the inset in the lower right corner of the map that showed where the main view was within the theater of operations. He estimated the tanks would reach Oppalia in four hours. He looked back at the main map in time to see two more icons turn red.

“Admiral Havens,” he said with cold calmness to the air commander, “your boys seem to be doing well.”

“Thank you, General,” Havens replied grimly. He didn’t want the Marine in his command center. Even though a full general of Marines was a lower rank than an army general, a Marine general outranked a rear admiral. Still, Havens could have banished the Marine from the center, but he didn’t want to face the embarrassment of the general disobeying him. And Aguinaldo had already demonstrated his ability to cow Admiral Wimbush, who outranked him, so he couldn’t expect any support from that direction if he tried to exclude Aguinaldo and failed.