The Terran Mandate (24 page)

"Whiskey Six, Bravo Six, those
enemy tanks are on our left flank."

"How many?"

The ground kicked up geysers of dirt as
he heard the thump of tank rounds hitting the ground where the missile launcher
had stood.

"All of them."

"Incoming!" somebody shouted.
Captain Douglas heard the rush of air from incoming mortar rounds slicing
through the sky. He ducked down behind the berm of his trench as he heard the
pop of canisters bursting open above their heads and then the rippling thump of
shrapnel hitting the ground. Then he heard the screams as shrapnel ripped into
his Marines huddled in their trenches.

He popped back up and leveled his field
glasses on the line of troops facing him. They still had not moved. They were
just beyond the effective range of all but his heavy machine guns, but they
weren't beyond the maximum range of the medium guns. And he knew that the
Terran rail guns had no chance of reaching him from that far away. The only
thing they could do was rain mortar fire down on him. Why were they waiting?

Behind him, another wail of screams rose
up from the mortar pits. He leapt out of his trench and ran to the center of the
compound to find Marines dragging each other out of the holes they had dug for
themselves and their weapons. Most of the tubes, still smoking from their near
continuous firing, were riddled with holes from the flak canisters the Terran
Guard had rained down on them.

"All stations, Whiskey Six, I want
every machine gun on the line to open fire now!"

The chatter of machine gun fire rose up
in a deafening chorus as every automatic weapon on the line opened up. He
didn't hear the next salvo of incoming mortar rounds. His only clue that they
had arrived was the bits of dirt that hopped up as more shrapnel peppered the
trenches and more screams announced the growing number of wounded and dead
Marines.

Another barrage of steel pellets ripped
through the trenches of Bravo company and the chorus of screams intensified.
Behind the heat waves, Captain Douglas saw the guns of Terran tanks moving on
the flank recoil. Moments later, the trenches of Bravo company were swept with
another hail of flak ejected from magnetic canisters fired by the tanks.

"They're enfilading us!" he
shouted. "Whiskey Six all stations, I want every missile flying left
against those tangos." He waited for the smoke trails to start snaking
their way towards the tanks, but nothing happened. He waited a moment more,
gritting his teeth. Still, none of the missile launchers fired.

"What's the hold up on those
missiles?"

"This is Bravo Six, we don't have
any mounted launchers left and they're standing off just outside the range of
our heavy portables."

Captain Douglas ran to the building on
the west side of the compound and bounded up the stairs to the roof where a
squad of Marines lay prone with their rifles pointed defiantly at tanks they
could not harm. The mounted missile launcher next to Alpha Company's flank
position loosed its charge, unwinding its solitary trail of smoke as it reached
out against two full platoons of enemy armor.

Two Marines hoisted the two heavy
portable missile tubes to their shoulders while two more shoved in the rounds.
Two more smoke trails snaked across the ground.

The tanks tracked across the horizon and
then turned towards them, angling their guns at the trenches guarding the left
flank. Two Terran tanks stopped cold as the missiles found their mark, popping
the turrets off like frying pans. Fire licked at the sky from inside their
shells, roasting them like dead animals. But they still had six tanks. His
stomach churned as he watched their guns recoil. The mounted missile launcher
blew apart and flak pushed Marines down into their trenches. He cringed at the
sound of ball bearings thumping into their bodies, breaking their backs,
crushing their skulls and tearing through their guts. This was no longer a
fight.

What had he done wrong?
  The tanks rolled in towards them now, enfilading the main line.
The companies still had their short range light anti-vehicle missiles, but
would any of them survive the storm of steel rain that pounded the trenches? 
Marines poured out of the trenches, some of them falling before they could run
a single step, as the company commanders gave the order to move to their
alternate positions.

The tanks stopped. Captain Douglas
stared at them through his binoculars, studying the tick marks and how they lay
against the sight picture. The tanks were about a kilometer away now. The light
missile launchers his Marines had left could only reach out to 500 meters. The
tanks fired again and there was nothing he could do to stop them.

Swinging his binoculars to the north, he
saw the main line of Terran Guard infantry moving towards his positions. Strung
out in a line as wide as his own frontage, they walked through the shimmering
heat waves, closing the distance between them and his Marines one step at a
time.

The sound of weapons fire from his own
positions was too thin. The machine gunners did their best to maintain fire
against the advancing line, but it was interrupted at clockwork intervals by
the screams marking another incoming barrage of steel pellets that were
whittling his Marines away. The machine guns kept at it, but their sound was
growing ever thinner.

On the right side of his main line,
Charlie company was faring better, but by the time the Terran infantry arrived,
Douglas knew they were going to be outnumbered. Through his binoculars, he could
see the smudged outline of Terran soldiers flicking away as fire from his
machine guns found a mark here and there, but the gaps were quickly filled back
up and they weren't making those gaps nearly fast enough.

They were one and a half kilometers away
and closing. At one kilometer, they would be in the range of his riflemen.
Until then, they had to wait. Another wave of screams wafted over him. The hand
on the giant clock struck the end of his hour. Every second now belonged to the
Terran Guard; they were theirs to give, and they were keeping them all.

He ran back to the trenches in the
center of the line and hunkered down, trying to think of a next move, but there
was nothing left to do except shoot back at an enemy that had already won.

The tanks started raking his lines with
their coaxial rail guns, their slugs digging into the dirt along the berms of
the trenches, with some finding their way to fly down the trenches and rip
through three and four Marines at a time. What Douglas hated most was he couldn't
hear the damn things. Their electromagnetic hum and clacking pistons didn't
reach him at this range. The only sound was that of men dying.

Captain Douglas unshouldered his own
rifle and placed braced it on the berm of his trench. "Runner!" he
yelled.

The private that had stood tall, waving
in the carriers for Lt. Simmons just hours before, crawled up to Douglas, his
face smeared with blood and a bandage wrapped over his left eye.

"Sir."

Captain Douglas blinked, unable to speak
as he realized the battalion was looking at him through the eyes of this one
Marine, now reduced to a crawling bloodied shadow of himself.

"Go tell the Colonel we're out of
time here. Tell him -" He looked away, settling in behind the sites of his
own rifle. "Tell him I'm sorry."

The Abandoned

"What's our status, here,
Sergeant?" Dekker asked.

Preston sat hunched over a gray plastic
box where he had mounted a circuit board. He tapped at a keyboard tethered to
the box by a coil of black wire. "Encoding oscillators, sir."

"How long?"

"About 10 minutes, sir."

Dekker arched a brow at Simmons.

"Then we'll be ready to go?"

"No sir, then we'll be ready to
establish the uplink."

Dekker let out a slow breath, fighting
back the tension that surged clear to his fingertips as Preston picked up a
soldering iron to attach more wiring from the circuit board to one of the
boards inside the panel. A monitor on the main console started scrolling with
lines of cryptic code that flashed by for several seconds before stopping with
a blinking cursor. Preston tapped a flurry of letters and numbers on the
keyboard mounted in the panel below the monitor. Another scroll flashed by.
Preston nodded. "That's the first one," he said. He picked up another
chip from a pile scattered across the bench in front of him and snapped it into
the circuit board.

"Can you tell us what you're doing
here?" Dekker asked. "And remember, I'm a combat officer."

"It's actually pretty simple, sir.
I just encoded the S-band oscillators. I'm working on Ka-band now. Ku-band after
that. Once we have them encoded, then we just need to try -" The words
faded away, but Preston seemed to work faster as he explained it, so Dekker let
him drone on.

He leaned over to Lt. Simmons and
whispered, "Do you understand any of this?"

"A little bit, sir. But the
important part will be when we try to establish the uplink."

Dekker let the words float past him,
trying to latch onto them to distract himself from what he knew was happening
outside, but the images of trenches filled with Marines buying the minutes
Preston needed with their lives pushed the words aside. Something in the back
of his mind realized that he hadn't heard the crack of the heavy mortar tubes
firing for some time now. The sound had been loud enough to make it through the
building's walls as a muffled thumping, but it was gone now. Then, something
the Sergeant was saying broke through.

"We're ready to try uplink."
The monitor finished another blurring scroll and stared at them with its
blinking cursor. All three stumbled as an explosion rocked the compound. They
eyed the hatch as screams bled through the bulkhead.

"Let's go, let's go," Dekker
said, trying to ignore the sounds. He knew what they meant. If it had been any
other time, they would have been barreling out of the building and diving into
trenches.

Preston typed more commands into the
keyboard. "First, we'll try an uplink on S-band." Machine gun fire
opened up from the compound just beyond the hatch, a chattering beast clawing
at the eyes of its tormentor. The battalion - or what was left of it, was
taking up final defensive fire from the mortar positions. They had fallen back
as far as they could. The indignant crack of rifle fire from R-51 long barrels
joined in, telling Dekker the fight was down to its last breath.

More arcane lines scrolled up the
monitor. The scroll stopped and Preston let out a sigh as the cursor once again
blinked at them, as if to say,
"Satellite?  What satellite? 
Where?"

"Ka next," he said, tapping in
another series of commands.

The sound outside changed. Dekker cocked
his ear and he could almost feel the hum from the electromagnetic coils of rail
guns as the Terran Guard made contact with the Marines standing the last bit of
ground between him and the end of all things. He forced himself to let go of
the voices straining to be heard - calls for shifting fire, contact reports on
the flanks and Douglas bellowing orders as he tried to maintain a cohesive
defense.

The monitor stopped scrolling again. The
cursor blinked away seconds they didn't have. "Man, I hope this
works," Preston said as he tapped in the final set of commands. The
monitor scrolled again and then stopped. Dekker's heart sank as he stared at
the blinking cursor. His Marines were dying for no reason other than chips and
wires that could not compel their last bastion of hope to hear them.

Then it stopped.

Dekker jerked his head when he heard the
grating hinges of the hatch being opened, followed by the scuffle of a Marine
being dragged inside. Breathing hard and holding his hand over a wound in his
chest, the Marine lay on the deck with his head propped up against the bulkhead
while the corpsman who had dragged him inside whipped out a roll of white
bandaging. The wounded Marine caught Dekker's eye and he thought of the young warrior
lying on the gurney just days before, now a lifetime ago. The Marine smiled at
him. The Marine knew they were beaten and that he was probably dead. He knew
that the battle had been a fool's errand to begin with. He knew, most of all,
that nobody had bothered to tell him why he had to die today. But the smile
told Dekker that the Marine accepted all of that on faith. The implied order
that came back to Dekker was never spoken and one that he could not refuse:
make that faith mean something.

Watching the corpsman bandage the
Marine's wound, Dekker asked, "How is he, Doc?"

Without looking back, the corpsman said,
"Just fine, sir. Soon as I get this splinter out of his pinkie, he'll be
back on the trigger." A sweat broke out on the Marine's forehead as the corpsman
worked the bandage.

The Marine grimaced and then nodded.
Grunting it out between breaths, he said, "Semper fi."

Preston let out a whoop and Dekker
turned to see the monitor spewing an endless stream of lines that scrolled up
the screen.

"What's that?" Dekker asked.

"That, sir, is an uplink,"
Preston said. "Ku-band. Guess I should have tried that first."

Dekker turned back to look at the
wounded Marine, but both he and the corpsman were gone.

"What now?" he asked.

Preston held up the circuit card Lt.
Simmons had given him earlier. "Now this," he said, snapping it into
a slot in his gray box. He punched more buttons on the box and typed more
commands into the keyboard underneath the monitor. "We send up the
override key and we should have control." He tapped the ENTER key. Dekker
held his breath.

Outside, the ring of the few remaining
smaller company mortar tubes stopped. The sporadic cracks from R-51 rifles
sounded as if they were inside the room as Marines took up a final defensive
firing line just outside the hatch. Unable to resist any longer, he tapped his
headset.

"Whiskey Six, Whiskey Six, Enforcer
Actual, over." He heard the chatter of Marines, but not the voice of his
weapons company commander. "Whiskey Six, Whiskey Six, Enforcer Actual, over,"
he said again. The chatter subsided and he heard a voice respond, yelling to be
heard over the blaze of rifle fire and the hum of electromagnetic coils.

"Enforcer Actual, sir, this is
Bravo Sierra One. Whiskey Six is down. We're Alamo, Colonel."

"How long can you hold?"

"Minutes -" The transmission
cut out. Dekker thought to call back, but it didn't matter. He had to leave him
behind. He had to leave them all behind.

Dekker studied the monitor, which now
displayed a series of lines with block letters and numbers changing next to
them. Strange words like RETRO, PRO, INC, APo and PERi told him that they were
talking to something important, and that was all he needed.

"This is raw data," Preston
said. "It's the best I can do. I don't have encoders to translate it all
into pretty pictures."

"Do you understand it?" Dekker
asked

"Most of of it, sir. We still have
some things to sort out."

A bullet snapped against the bulkhead.
Dekker turned to see four Marines now hunkered down inside the room.
"Secure that hatch," he yelled. Turning back to Preston, he said,
"We're out of time."

"First, the bird has some deltaV
left. That means we can move it. A little."

"Can we lower the orbit to save us
some time?" Simmons asked.

"No. The altitude is set according
to a bunch of stuff we don't want to mess with. All we can change is
inclination."

"Inclination?" Dekker asked.

"That means we can change its
track," Preston said.

"Where is it now?" Dekker
asked.

All three stared at the words and
numbers on the monitor, none of which told them where the track would go in any
way meaningful.

"Wait," Simmons said.
"Sir, do you have the STI grip?"

"Right here," Dekker said,
pulling it out of the bag slung over his shoulder. She grabbed the device and
handed it to Preston. "You should be able to - " she started to say.

"Of course," Preston said,
smacking his forehead. He grabbed the device and felt around the edge of the
screen on top until he found two small holes. He strung out two wires from his
gray box and jammed them into the STI grip. He punched a few more buttons on
the gray box and the tracking display flashed out and then shifted.
"This," he said, pointing at the screen on the STI, "should be
its current track."

"So I can watch the track from
here?" Dekker asked.

"No sir," Simmons said.
"We can see it now, but once it's disconnected, you'll lose it."

"More to it than that,"
Preston said. "We can see the track while the panel is hooked into the com
systems here. Once we move it, all we'll have is fire control."

"Dammit," Dekker said.
"Just give me the procedure."

"We need a landmark," Simmons
said. "We can give it a burn and we can tell how long it will take to get
to a specific point. All we need is a place."

She and Dekker looked at each other. In
unison, they said, "The Pyramid."

"Right," Preston said.
"Give me a minute." As he typed more commands into the keyboard, the
space filled with the sound of bullets smacking the bulkhead.

"We have to go, Sergeant,"
Dekker said.

"I'm uploading the burn data now. I
need to confirm the clock once it's accepted."

Dekker's headset crackled. A voice he
did not recognize yelled, "Broken arrow, broken arrow. Marines, fall back
to the com building now." An explosion rocked the building and Dekker had
to duck as a cable snapped from the ceiling and swung towards his face.

"Burn T plus six zero, Intersect T
plus nine eight. You have that, Lieutenant?" Preston asked.

"Six zero nine eight, got it,"
Simmons said. "Let's go!"

Preston yanked the leads from the STI
grip and thrust it back at Dekker as the display on the device reverted to a
large red X superimposed on the orbit track - lines Dekker vaguely understood
would have little meaning when the time came to fire the weapon. Preston
grabbed a pair of wire cutters from the console bench and cut the cables
holding the panel to the console and tucked it under his arm.

"What are you doing?" Dekker
asked as another explosion thumped against the wall.

"We still need this to relay the
fire command."

Dekker's eyes widened.

"We can use the Lieutenant's track.
It'll be fine," he said, raising his voice as more bullets slammed against
the wall.

Simmons flung open the hatch to the rear
of the building and the room filled with the sound of small arms fire. The
Marines from her squad laid down a steady stream of fire against the Terran
Guard troops trying to circle around to the rear of the building and her
carrier. The gunner in the cupola swung the .50 caliber machine gun and strafed
troops at the far end of the building. He then swung it around the other way
and fired at troops on the other end, sending them flying back as if he had
reached out and punched them in the chest with a sledge hammer.

"You've got about two minutes
before they start taking the hubcaps off your track," the gunner yelled.

Ducking down as bullets snapped through
the air around them, Dekker raised the carrier's rear hatch and clambered
inside.

Preston flipped over the panel and
pointed at the wires. "Lieutenant," he said, directing Simmons's
attention to the back of the panel. "Big one here," he said in a
voice that wanted to savor its last moments. "That's power," he said.
"28 volts." Simmons looked at him, her mouth agape. "And this
red one here, that's for receive. And this blue one over here, that's for
transmit. Run it through your air traffic coms system and get on the highest
ground you can find. Remember, no telemetry, no guidance, just fire
control." He handed her the panel and smiled.

"What are you doing, Marine?"
Dekker asked.

"Like I said, sir. I'm an expert
marksman." Before Dekker could grab his arm, Preston bounded away from the
carrier and picked up a weapon lying next to a fallen Marine.

Simmons climbed into the carrier and
strapped the panel to the bulkhead. She poked her head out and yelled,
"Bravo One Nine, it's time to mount up!" The Marines from her squad
kept firing as Terran Guard troops bounded closer along the rear of the
building. "Sergeant d'Vane!" she yelled. "Let's go!"