He waded through the mire, concentrating on not falling down again. Cannon rounds splattered nearby, and Heebner ate dirt.
Not dirt, he corrected himself. He was lying against metal. But no one was shooting at him. And there were no cascades of mud falling on him from exploding shells.
Heebner took stock—and moaned in horror. Somehow he had gotten turned around. Instead of finding his way back to his own lines, the Tahn private was lying on the low mound that was the Imperial fort. Next to him was the shiny, if dented, barrel of a gun turret. Heebner considered prayer. But there were no bullets slashing at him. He was lying next to the unmanned antipersonnel turret, the one that the monitor's seventh round had blown open.
Very well. He could just wait here until night and then escape. And then he remembered that great spaceship somewhere up there. One of those shells would spread him like oil over the fort's carapace. Another realization—he could see a gap between the four muzzles sticking out of the turret and the turret itself. He crawled toward it. The blast had bent back the guns' bullet shield.
Sheer panic impelled Heebner to take the next step. He slid through and thunked down onto concrete. As he landed, his brain began working again. You just entered this fort. Where there are Imperials who probably have fangs the size of pruning hooks?
And then another round from the monitor slammed in, and Heebner was out for close to an hour.
He came fuzzily awake, surprised that he was still alive and not resident in one of the Empire's cooking pots. Heebner, like most of the uneducated Tahn soldiers, believed that the Imperial troops ceremonially ate their enemies.
But he was alive. Uninjured.
And thirsty. He drank from his canteen.
He was hungry, too. His company had attacked carrying only ammunition.
Heebner looked around the inside of the turret. There were lockers against the turret. He explored them. Gas suits... radiation suits... and emergency rations. Heebner fumbled a pak open and sampled. He smiled. Meat. It was something that a Tahn of his class would be permitted only once or twice a year. The next pak was also meat. It joined its brother in his stomach. The third was beans. Heebner sniffed at them, then set the pak aside. Other cans went into his combat pack.
What now?
More of his brain, possibly stimulated by the beef, woke up. They told us this fort was full of soldiers. Why, then, is this position not manned? Was it hit?
There were no signs of damage to the walls.
Heebner found that he had two choices—either he could remain where he was, or he could flee. If he stayed in the turret, eventually that monstrous cannon would kill him.
If he fled back toward the Tahn lines, there would be questions. Why was he the only survivor of his squad? Had he hid? Had he avoided the attack? The penalties for cowardice under fire were most barbaric.
Wait. If he came back with some valuable information, they might not punish him. Such as?
Of course. Fellow soldiers could use this gap in the turret to take the fort! But wait. If all you return with is a way into the fort, won't your officers expect you to guide the assault formation?
Heebner grimaced. That could be an excellent way to become dead. He brightened. If he returned with some very interesting piece of information, they would send him up to higher headquarters with it, while other unfortunates made the attack.
What could he bring back?
The hatchway leading down into the bowels of the fort was nearby. Heebner undogged it and climbed downward.
The ladder ended in a large room with bunks. Heebner looked wistfully at one of them. Even though it smelled, it was still better than anything he had slept on since he had landed on Cavite.
A large room with bunks... a large, deserted room? How many Imperials are in this fort, he wondered? He found the courage to investigate.
Heebner went out of the ready room into a central passageway. Seconds later, another shell from the monitor earthquaked down. It must have missed by a considerable distance. Heebner heard the clatter of feet and peered out. A group of Imperials ran out of another ready room and climbed up into one of the main turrets. Heebner counted. Only ten? How many people were there, anyway?
Was it possible that there were only a handful of Imperials holding back the Tahn? So it would appear.
That was enough for Heebner. This would be valuable information. Enough to keep him from being sent forward again. The intelligence might be valuable enough, he hoped, for him to report to company headquarters instead of to his platoon leader. If his company commander still lived. This could be an excellent way to stay out of the assault.
Superior Private Heebner made his way out of the fort, made the nightmare journey back to his own lines, and reported.
And found himself standing in front of Lady Atago, more terrified than he had been inside the fort. He was not required to make the final assault on Strongpoint Sh'aarl't. Instead, he was promoted to fire team leader, given a medal, and reassigned to the rear.
Heebner was safe. That was enough. It did not matter to him that he wasn't mentioned in the livies trumpeting the reduction of the Imperial fort.
That honor went to Tahn Assault Captain Santol, a far more heroic-looking Tahn. And if it was an honor, he earned it.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Sten wondered what would come next when the monitors' shellfire stopped. He wondered if they would run out of projectiles but rather dully hoped that both ships had chamber explosions.
Worry about what comes next when it comes next, he said, and ordered dinner—breakfast? lunch?—up for his people. He rotated a third of the crews down to the mess hall to eat. After everyone was fed, he planned to go to fifty percent alert and let at least some of his sailors sleep.
It didn't work that way.
Contreras stepped off the ladder from the command level to the ready room and burped. A full belly led her to consider other luxuries. Sleep... a bath... a clean uniform... hell, she told herself, why not wish for everything. Like a discharge, spending her accumulated pay on a tourist world where the most primitive machine was a bicycle, and falling in love with a handsome officer. Officer? She caught herself. Too long in the service, woman. Clot the military. A rich civilian.
A smile crept across her lips just as the Tahn projectile blew most of her chest away.
The Tahn assault teams had managed to approach the fort without being seen. Since the fort's computer still showed the jammed antipersonnel carrier as being housed, the warning sensors showed no movement in that sector. Actually the beams were being returned—bouncing—off the turret, returning to the transmitter and being automatically disregarded as part of ground clutter.
Lady Atago's analysis from Private Heebner's report was very correct, giving about an eighty-five percent chance that the area beyond that jammed turret would be in a dead zone.
Captain Santol's navigation had been exact—the assault elements closed in on the fort along that sector, no more than two abreast. Between the shifts for eating and the sailors' exhaustion, the Tahn weren't noticed on any of the visual screens still active.
Once inside the turret, Captain Santol put two trusted sergeants in front, armed with riot weapons. Behind them were grenadiers and one tripod-mounted heavy projectile weapon, and then Captain Santol and his senior sergeant behind them.
Contreras wasn't the first to die—two sailors had been jumped from the rear and garrotted. But she was the first to be shot.
The explosion clanged down the corridors of the fort.
Sten bolted up, and his plate spattered beans and beef across the deck. Accidental discharge... like hell, he realized, as he saw Tahn soldiers scuttling forward on one of the command center's internal screens.