Steel Gauntlet (33 page)

Namur had been sitting quietly for over an hour just outside the door to St. Cyr’s command bunker.

Harried staff officers kept coming and going throughout that time, glancing surreptitiously at the haggard brigade commander as he sat there in his filthy uniform. They couldn’t help noticing the burns and lacerations on Namur’s hands, folded in his lap, and the large ugly scar healing on the left side of his neck. Worst of all was his expression, bloodshot eyes, vacant and fixed as if staring at some far-off object. As they passed by the battle-scarred colonel they turned their eyes away quickly and guiltily.

They should have been at the front too, but instead, in the command bunker, were safe from everything but the rising tide of vituperation that seemed by then to characterize St. Cyr’s staff meetings.

From far above where he sat came the roar of plasma bolts scourging the earth’s surface as Admiral Wimbush’s battle cruisers probed for a weakness in St. Cyr’s defenses. Suddenly there was a huge crash and the solid rock shook underneath Namur’s chair. Alarms shrilled and men ran and shouted in the corridors outside the war room suite. The sharp odor of ozone and molten rock filled the room.

Evidently, a stray bolt had found one of the camouflaged entrance shafts and bored its way into the complex. The staff officers coming and going blanched and swallowed nervously, but Namur’s battle-scarred face only twitched in a tight smile. Close just didn’t count for him anymore.

Namur started as someone laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You can go in now, Colonel,” an aide said gently. Namur glanced up at the man. He wore the insignia of a full colonel, and Namur recognized him as Clouse Stauffer, the former security chief St. Cyr had elevated to chief of staff. Stauffer looked haggard and drawn himself. A good sign, Namur thought, when staff officers begin to experience the hardships of war. With an effort, Namur rose to his feet and entered St. Cyr’s inner sanctum.

St. Cyr looked smaller than the colonel remembered him from only a few weeks ago. He sat quietly behind his desk and regarded the brigade commander through half-closed eyelids. Namur advanced to within six paces of St. Cyr’s desk, came to rigid attention and saluted smartly. “Lieutenant Colonel Naseby Namur, commanding First Brigade, First Armored Division, reporting as directed, sir!” St. Cyr returned the salute with a perfunctory gesture, and Namur snapped his right arm back to his side. He stood there for a full minute before St. Cyr said anything.

“You were one of my best officers, Colonel,” St. Cyr began. “I did not give you a divisional or Corps command, because I wanted you on the front line, facing the enemy, where you could do me the most good. Now you have disobeyed my order.” St. Cyr sounded more disappointed than angry.

“Sir—”

St. Cyr waved him into silence. “It is essential that all commands hold, Colonel. I am preparing a counterstroke, but I need time to get my forces together. Only you can buy me that time, Colonel.” Namur made no reply. For the moment, he couldn’t make any. He was surprised at how the interview was going.

“Colonel, you can buy me that time. Will you do it?” St. Cyr asked quietly. His expression turned almost imploring as he looked up at Namur standing rigidly in front of his desk. “I have the assurances of your division and Corps commanders that they will do their best, but that will not be good enough unless officers like you lead our men with conviction. Can you do it?” When he turned on the charisma, Marston St. Cyr was irresistible. “Yes sir,” Namur said without hesitation.

St. Cyr nodded curtly. “Very good. You are now a full colonel. Return to your unit. You are dismissed.”

“Clouse,” St. Cyr said to his chief of staff after Namur had departed, “can we get a hyperspace drone through to Cinque Luna?”

“We’ll probably have to try several, but I think we can get one through the blockade, sir.” Cinque Luna was one of St. Cyr’s staunchest allies. “It is time now for them to introduce a resolution in the Confederation Congress to sue for peace,” St. Cyr said. The war was lost, he knew that. The time commanders like Namur would buy for him would not be used to mount any kind of counterattack—St.

Cyr had no weapons or reserves for that—but to engineer his escape. Val Carney, Cinque Luna’s representative at the Confederation Congress, could get the votes needed to stop the war. He was one of Tubalcain’s most prominent stockholders, and the livelihoods of many other members of the Congress were also tied to Tubalcain’s fortunes.

Since only the Congress could declare war, a resolution to sue for peace would be binding on the Council. St. Cyr was confident his allies could get the resolution passed. Those members who were not tied to Tubalcain and St. Cyr would be on the fence anyway. The Confederation’s campaign against Diamunde was proving very costly in terms of treasure and lives. In any democracy there are always those who are not willing to pay the price for victory. St. Cyr was counting on their support.

From far above where they sat, came the faint roar of another barrage from the Fleet’s heavy plasma weapons, still searching for a weak spot in the headquarters’ defenses.

“Clouse, summon the commander of my Lifeguard Battalion,” St. Cyr ordered. He had deliberately sequestered a battalion of Teufelpanzers in the mountains. Their very existence was a closely held secret.

When the negotiations were concluded, he would have some work for them to do. Marston St. Cyr smiled. It’s never over till it’s over, he thought, and leaned back in his chair.

Slowly, Colonel Namur’s driver guided his heavily armored landcar across the desert. It used an infra system to navigate, and used a fuel-cell power pack that left virtually no heat signature; the armor plate would insulate even the occupants’ body signatures from sensors, further insurance that they could not be detected by sensitive infrared surveillance systems. He drove cautiously because the terrain was extremely rough. They could not use the main roads, even in the violent sandstorm raging across the waste through the night, because the Confederation Fleet subjected the road networks to intermittent interdiction fires all night long in every kind of weather. So they were forced to travel cross-country all the way.

Namur’s driver, Corporal Scithers, was stoic, a quiet young man when others were around, but when alone with his commander he could rattle on endlessly about weapons and vehicles and other military matters. Scithers had been driving Namur’s command car when it was hit in the opening fight of the battle at Oppalia—how many days ago was that?—and he had escaped with severe burns on his legs, which had only begun to heal and were still very painful. But in the last days he had had his fill of combat, and fatigue hung heavily about him too, so now he was uncharacteristically quiet as he paid close attention to his driving.

“The war will be over soon,” Namur said, just to be saying something.

“Good,” Scithers answered. He cursed as he swerved to avoid a rock outcropping and then shifted the vehicle into its lowest gear to climb a thirty-degree slope.

“We might even win,” Namur added.

“Good,” Scithers grunted. The car crested the slope. Through his infras Scithers saw a stretch of flat tableland expanding before him. He glanced at his map console. Sixteen kilometers to the northwest lay the brigade and reasonable if only temporary safety. Scithers relaxed a little. “Well, sir—” A plasma bolt streaked by the passenger’s side of the car like a flash of supercharged lightning, followed almost instantly by a second bolt that smashed into the car’s engine compartment. The vehicle slewed crazily to a full stop then burst into flames.

His clothes on fire, Namur wrenched his door open and threw himself onto the desert floor. He rolled in the sand and smothered the flames. The landcar burned furiously behind him; the corporal was still inside the burning vehicle!

“Scithers!” Namur screamed. He jumped to his feet and ran back toward the car. Scithers was still strapped into the driver’s console, fruitlessly beating at the flames that engulfed him. His flesh was on fire and every time he raised an arm to beat at the flames around his head, shreds of burning skin sloughed off his hands.

“Help me! Help me!” the corporal screamed. His hair blazed brightly. He twisted his head about violently, as if looking for his commander, but the fire had already burned away his eyelids and cooked his eyeballs, and with each tortured breath he sucked flames into his lungs. “Eeeeeee!” the human torch shrieked.

In one part of Namur’s mind the thought registered that it was a wonder the corporal was still alive in there, but Namur was not thinking now, he was acting on instinct—he staggered back several meters, drew his side arm and shot Scithers in the head. He stood there breathing heavily for a time, staring at the ground, afraid to look back at Scithers’s funeral pyre, before holstering his weapon and starting off wearily in the direction of his brigade. Far above the howling wind he could clearly hear the roar of the Raptor that had attacked them, circling its kill.

How could they have spotted them in this storm and the darkness? he wondered. If the Confederation naval forces had systems that could guide pilots through this stuff... Namur paused. He shook his head. A sudden thought struck him: Where was St. Cyr going to get the forces to mount the counter-attack that he and his men were to buy the time for with their lives? Namur knew his army’s order of battle thoroughly, had committed it to memory. All available forces were engaged. He stumbled along a few more paces and then stopped dead in his tracks. There was no reserve left. All combat forces were engaged. If St. Cyr even tried to consolidate any frontline units into a significant assault force, those goddamned Raptors would destroy it before it could strike. St. Cyr could never mount any counterattack. Then what...?

“Fuck you!” Colonel Namur shouted into the sky, and he wasn’t talking to the Raptor.

CHAPTER 26

By the time the storm broke over Oppalia, the First Tank Brigade and Third Armored Division were hidden in badlands a hundred kilometers southeast of Rourke’s Hills. The Fourth and Ninth armored divisions had also withdrawn, the Fourth to a densely canopied forest south of the badlands, the Ninth into its mountain redoubt north of First Division’s Tourmaline home. The Fifteenth Heavy Division was hunkered down in hardened positions around New Kimberly, along with the Second Armored Division.

Technical problems continued to plague the string-of-pearls, so there was still no satellite surveillance over the area of operations. General Aguinaldo was going to have to rely on aircraft and the FIST’s unmanned aerial vehicles for intelligence, but the UAVs wouldn’t do much good until he had some idea where to send them—their range was too short and the area to be surveilled too vast for them to be sent out on effective random patrols.

The infantry moved out of the city. General Aguinaldo put the Marines to the east, the direction he suspected held the greatest threat. He divided the ten thousand men of the 10th Light into three parts: he put one regiment south of the city and a second to the north, and kept the third in reserve.

Major General Ott argued against dividing his division but couldn’t refuse the direct order Aguinaldo gave him. He suspected that if he tried to refuse, the Marine would relieve him and put a Marine in command of his division. Probably a brigadier, an officer who had no experience or training in the command of a division. Even divided, the 10th Light Infantry was better off with an army general in command.

Aguinaldo champed at the delay but couldn’t send six FISTs and one light infantry division after the armored divisions, not even once the Raptors located them. In order to have any chance of victory against the tanks in the hiding places they’d chosen, he’d have to send all of his strength after one division. That would leave Oppalia and its vital spaceport vulnerable to the other enemy divisions. He had to wait until the rest of III Corps came down. Then he’d have the strength to go after the Diamundeans and still defend the city.

The day after the storm broke, the 37th Division began landing. A medium infantry division, the 37th had armored personnel carriers similar to the Marine Dragons, and each battalion had an organic heavy-weapons company with weapons powerful enough to destroy medium tanks with one hit. Other infantrymen were armed with TP1-killing Straight Arrows. It took the 37th two days to fully assemble planetside. Aguinaldo briefly considered sending his Marines and the 37th after the Fourth Armored Division because he knew their combined strength could defeat the Diamundeans hiding under the forest canopy. But if the Third Armor launched a lightning strike from the badlands to aid the Fourth, the resultant casualties would likely be greater than he was willing to absorb. Besides, the 10th Light couldn’t defend against anything heavier than a two-brigade attack, and Aguinaldo knew two complete tank divisions and a heavy division were within striking distance of Oppalia. Allah and the Nine Buddhas only knew how many more divisions might be out there. Besides, it had taken the 37th so long to move from orbit to surface, he doubted its combat readiness.

The 106th Heavy Infantry Division was ready to begin landing when the last of the 37th touched down. It landed faster—much faster. The ass-chewing that Aguinaldo had directed at the commanders of the 37th Infantry Division was a potent spur to speed. The never-spoken but always present threat of being relieved and replaced by Marines was an even greater spur. Moreover, there was a matter of pride for the major general commanding the 106th and the colonels commanding the division’s brigades. They knew full well how army and Corps command had screwed up. They were determined to show fighting Marines that all army leadership ranks weren’t filled with incompetents. The five infantry battalions, three hopper squadrons, and four artillery battalions of the 106th were all planetside less than twenty-four hours after the last of the 37th touched down.

The following day the 2nd Infantry Division, a medium division like the 37th, landed quickly and efficiently.

Finally, five days after the storm that allowed the First Tank Brigade and the Third Armored Division to escape, General Aguinaldo had enough strength on hand to take the battle to the enemy. He assigned the defense of Oppalia to the 106th and 37th divisions. He’d need their strength later for the assault against New Kimberly. And he’d think about what to do with IX Corps when, and if, it was able to land.