Steel Gauntlet (31 page)

“Sir, I inspected the 10th myself. They’re ready.”

“Except they only have one Straight Arrow per squad”

Sommers swallowed. “That’s right, sir. The heavy equipment still hasn’t arrived, but we have Straight Arrows.”

“Third Corps has enough S.A.’s to arm every man in the 10th Light, and every one of my Marines.

Isn’t that right?”

“Yessir.” Sommers swallowed again and thought quickly. He knew the Marine would accept nothing less than instant action. “Sir, I have palletized S.A.’s that can be boarded on Essays immediately for distribution planetside.” Sommers saw Aguinaldo’s face darken, and hastily continued. “Sir, another one or two S.A.’s can be issued to each squad in the 10th as they board their landing craft. This can be done without slowing them down.”

“Then do it. I want the first echelon of the 10th Light Infantry Division planetside in one hour.” Aguinaldo turned to Daly to give him further orders.

Sommers saw he was dismissed and rushed from the command room to issue a communiqué to the commanding general of the 10th Light. The army was going to come through for the Marines. He didn’t know how, but he knew a major general who would hang if the 10th didn’t begin landing on time.

Schultz and Dean watched the still city for an hour and a half, reporting in at twenty-minute intervals.

None of the other combination observation post/spotter teams had any more activity to report than they did. The only elements of the six FISTs that made contact were the reconnaissance teams that prowled the city looking for the hiding places of the First Tank Brigade. Recon’s job was exactly that—they found the tanks. It was someone else’s job to fix them and kill them. None of the tankers had any idea they were found.

By nineteen hours enough reports had made it back to Marine headquarters for General Aguinaldo to be reasonably sure he knew where enough of the tanks were for him to kill the First Tank Brigade. He issued orders. Marine artillery would open fire on all known hiding places. Then the six FISTs would advance into those places and take the survivors prisoner—or kill them if they tried to fight. The 10th Light Infantry would follow the Marines and clean up anyone they missed—which should be just about no one. In another hour the entire city would be in the hands of Confederation forces.

But the best made plans never do survive the first shot. Marine artillery opened fire on schedule and was answered by counterbattery fire, not from the First Tank Brigade, but from the lead elements of the Third Armored Division. Because of the continuing gap in the string-of-pearls satellites, no one saw the Third Armor racing from the foot of Rourke’s Hills to the city.

“What? I’m awake,” Dean said when Schultz poked him sharply with an elbow. He looked where Schultz pointed. “Ohmygawd.” Through a gap between buildings a couple of kilometers to the northeast, he saw a line of tanks flitting in a direction that would take them across the front of their position. The only question he had was would the line of tanks intersect the boulevard they watched over. “We’ve got to report this.”

“Report what?”

“The tanks.”

“What are you going to say, we see tanks? How many, where are they going? We don’t report until we know.” Schultz slid his magnifier screen into place and the gap suddenly looked like it was a hundred meters away. “You look there.” He pointed to the other end of the boulevard.

Casting glances toward the gap, Dean watched the boulevard. “How many are there?” he asked when he didn’t see any more tanks.

“I counted fifty,” Schultz said. He didn’t add that fifty didn’t include the number that passed before he started counting.

“Where are they going?”

Schultz didn’t know, so he didn’t answer.

A moment later they knew. The lead tanks turned onto the boulevard a few blocks from the far end.

At that same moment, the artillery opened fire on the known hiding places of the First Tank Brigade.

The Third Armored Division was armed with a weapon the Marines hadn’t seen on tanks before—rockets. One tank in every squad of the battalion turning onto the boulevard in front of Dean and Schultz had a launcher that could send rockets straight up. Each platoon had a tank with a guidance system that could direct the rockets to their targets. Each company had one tank with a radar that could detect shells passing through the air and track them back to their origin. The one company of the battalion that was on the boulevard quickly deployed to begin counterbattery fire.

Schultz made his report as soon as the first tanks came into view in front of them: “More than fifty tanks, maybe a whole battalion. Range of lead tanks, seven hundred meters. Azimuth eighty-seven degrees. Speed sixty kph. Coming directly toward me.”

“Keep them in sight, we’ll get back to you,” was the response.

“What are they doing?” Dean asked when the company stopped and deployed.

Schultz shook his head. He hesitated about making another report without knowing. Then he saw the radar and launch tubes rise from the tanks and, as unexpected as it was, knew what the tanks were doing.

“Lima Six, break, break,” he shouted into his radio, interrupting someone else’s report of new activity.

“Tanks in sight are readying counterbattery fire. Over.”

“Counterbattery fire?” asked Corporal MacLeash, who was manning the op radio. “Are you sure?” Only artillery was supposed to be able to conduct counterbattery fire. He’d never heard of tanks firing counterbattery at artillery.

“They’ve got rockets,” Schultz said. “Counterbattery.”

“Wait one,” MacLeash said.

While they waited, the command tank’s computer made its calculations and transmitted them to the guidance systems. There were nine bellows of smoke and blasts of noise, and nine rockets lifted into the air. Five hundred meters up they turned from their vertical flight and arced to the west.

“Tell artillery they’ve got incoming on the way,” Schultz said into the radio, totally ignoring proper procedure.

Just out of sight, around the corner from the company they could see, nine more rockets shot upward.

CHAPTER 24

Two salvos of nine rockets each crashed down on 13th FIST’s artillery battery. The six guns were dispersed; a hundred meters between them and revetments gave them some protection, but not as much as they needed. In the first salvo, one rocket landed directly on the breech of a gun, destroying it and killing its entire six-man crew. A second rocket struck the top of a revetment, staggering the gun as shrapnel shredded four of its crew. Two other rockets struck between revetments and caused little damage, another shot long and missed everything, and one was a dud. One missile rocket landed next to the fire control center, killing everyone in it. But the rocket that caused the most damage landed on an ammunition carrier. The massive secondary explosion toppled one gun, bent the tube of a second and jammed it into the breech, and killed twelve of the battery’s Marines. The second salvo finished the job.

Thirteenth FIST’s battery was left with one usable gun and just fifteen of its seventy-one men still alive and functioning.

By then 34th FIST battery had adjusted its aim and fired its first salvo at the counterbattery, tanks.

The 19th and 21st FIST batteries were aimed and loading.

From the top of their building, Schultz and Dean watched as the tankers readied another salvo. Then the artillery struck. The first six-round salvo was fused for contact and did limited damage except for one round that hit the tread cover of a tank, disabling it. Shrapnel from another round tore the guidance system off the top of a tank, and fragments from a third round damaged the tracking radar on the command tank. Three tankers who didn’t button up quickly enough were hit by flying fragments. Then the second two salvos hit, one immediately after the other, and they were more effective, as they were fused for air bursts and destroyed or disabled the rest of the rocketry control systems mounted on the tanks. They also set off four rockets sitting in their launchers and killed those four tanks.

Then another tank company, one out of sight of the two Marines, launched a salvo. When the roar of the rockets died down, Dean and Schultz heard the rumbling of many engines as the tanks displaced—those tanks weren’t going to be caught by another counterbattery barrage.

The tanks withdrew directly into the path of the infantry battalion of the 36th FIST, most of whose Marines were carrying Straight Arrows. It was a brief, bloody, and thoroughly one-sided encounter: just ten of the eighty-five tanks got away. Thirty-sixth FIST suffered seven fatalities and fourteen wounded.

Farther to the north, the 225th FISTs infantry ran into another battalion of the Third Armored Division and scored an even more lopsided rout. The Marines of the 13th FIST, seeking vengeance for their artillery, advanced in the middle and pinned down a regiment from the Third, held it in position and whittled it down until massed fire from the remaining artillery zeroed in on it and reduced the tanks to rubble.

General Aguinaldo, seeing the victories the Marines were achieving over the newly arrived Diamundean division, scrapped his earlier plan and quickly devised a new one.

“All FISTs will advance on line,” he told his assembled staff and his combat element commanders.

“General Daly, don’t let anyone get ahead of the rest. I want all available air assets with tank-killing capability flying over the infantry.”

He turned to the commanding general of the 10th Light Infantry Division. “General Ott, I want you to put one reinforced battalion behind each FIST to reinforce them in the event my Marines find a weakness to exploit—or to give them a hand if they encounter heavy resistance. Your battalions will be under the command of the FIST commanders. Your remaining battalions will be in reserve.” Ott grimaced; army commanders always hate the idea of soldiers being under the command of Marines. But he himself was under the direct command of a Marine, so his subordinates were as well.

“Yessir, we’ll do that.”

Aguinaldo noticed the grimace. “Don’t worry, General. The army’s distrust of Marine fighting abilities is returned in spades. My FIST commanders won’t throw your soldiers’ lives away—they wouldn’t trust them to do it right.”

Ott’s face turned deep red. But he wisely held back the retort he wanted to make.

Aguinaldo turned to the Navy Air commander on the ground, “Captain Sprance, Navy Air has suffered severe losses, but you still have more aircraft than I do. You will have half of your squadrons flying outside Oppalia to stop or slow down any additional tank divisions attempting to follow the Third Division. Distribute the remainder of your squadrons to the FISTs to supplement their remaining aircraft.

They’ll be under the command of the FIST squadrons.”

Captain Sprance looked even more pained than General Ott had. Marine Air was supposed to supplement Navy Air, not the other way around. But General Aguinaldo was in full command of the planetside operations and he had to obey. “Aye aye, sir.”

“Good. Do it. We commence in thirty minutes.”

The senior commanders scrambled to get back to their commands, talking on their radios as they went, issuing preliminary orders to subordinates.

Less than twenty-five minutes later, half the navy squadrons lifted off for their screening patrols.

Twenty-eight minutes after the order, Marine aircraft and the remaining navy squadrons took off to cover the FISTs. On the dot of thirty minutes, the Marines began their advance with the 10th Light Infantry Division moving sharply in trace. Thirty-one minutes after the order was given, a radio call came in from a navy squadron flying to the southeast:

“There’s one hell of a sandstorm coming your way. We’re at angels twenty-two and we aren’t above it. It seems to go all the way to the ground, and it gets thicker lower down. It’s bad enough that I don’t think we can make it back to Oppalia and land safely before it hits.” Lieutenant Colonel Namur gazed out the observer’s port of his command vehicle. A very bad sandstorm was coming. He didn’t need the weather reports to know that. All Diamundeans in this hemisphere were used to these storms. What was bothering him now was not the weather but the dispatch he’d just received from General Headquarters:

GHO/PZKFWI24C4Iz/2o45L

TO MY BRAVE FIGHTING MEN AT OPPALIA:

YOU HAVE RESISTED THE INVADERS

HEROICALLY. THEY MUST NOT, REPEAT, MUST

NOT BE ALLOWED TO BREAK OUT OF THE

CORDON YOU HAVE SO VALIANTLY

ESTABLISHED. YOU MUST FIGHT TO THE LAST

MAN TO ASSURE THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN. ANY

MAN WHO SHOWS THE LEAST DEGREE OF

RELUCTANCE TO FIGHT ON IS TO BE SHOT. ANY

COMMANDER WHO GIVES UP EVEN ONE METER

OF OUR SACRED SOIL AT OPPALIA WILL BE

EXECUTED.

/s/ St. Cyr

Official: Stauffer, Col., GS, Chief of Staff

Is St. Cyr insane? Namur asked himself. In his mind, the question was entirely rhetorical. What kind of an order is this? he wondered. Execute his men? We should have stopped him when he attacked the embassy. How could we have ever expected to win a war against the Confederation? Now he has committed us to this fight without proper support and he wants us all to die here? For what?

No! Namur pounded his fist onto the computer console. His driver looked up in alarm. “Everything okay, Colonel?” he asked.

Startled out of his mutinous reverie, Namur glanced guiltily at the enlisted man. “Everything is fine, Scithers.” He recovered his composure and punched a code into the communications console to access a secure net to Third Armored Division headquarters and Colonel Irvin Rummel, the division commander.

The image of the division chief of staff, a major whose name Namur could never remember, popped onto the vidscreen.

“The colonel’s not available right now,” the major informed Namur at once.

“When will he be?”

“In an hour or less, sir.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s discussing General St. Cyr’s latest order with his staff right now, sir.” Namur nodded. Everyone in the army was probably studying that order just then. “Get him, Major.”