Выбрать главу

The flank force had pursued the three retreating enemy troopers, picking one off as they ran for the cover of the nearest building. The two survivors sought refuge in a small, concrete structure that looked like some kind of warehouse.

Sergeant Harris’ voice barked over the comlink. “All troops, cease firing. Kleiner, take that building out.”

With no fire coming from the broken CAC forces the rest was child’s play. Kleiner moved down the trench about 10 meters to get a clean line of sight to the building. Once in place she braced herself against the walls of the trench and selected a high explosive, short range rocket (we were way too close to use the normal charge, and an armor piercing round would blast right through a small building). She yelled, “Clear!” and pulled the trigger. Behind her there was a meter long blast of fire from the rocket’s backwash. Less than half a second later the area of the building was engulfed in fire, smoke, and shattered concrete.

A couple seconds later the sergeant said, “Flanking force, advance north. Fire team A, advance east. Leapfrog house to house with at least two men covering each move. Fire team B, stand by in reserve in the trench.”

The sergeant’s orders may have seemed a little overly cautious, but they were strictly by the book. I think we all agreed that there were no more live enemies in the town, but there was no percentage in betting anyone’s life on that assumption.

It took about half an hour to complete the house to house searches. As expected, the town was deserted. Intel had reported that the locals had all been removed to a central holding area and, from what we could see, that info seemed accurate.

From their insignia we determined that the six CAC troopers killed in our attack were the remnants of a single squad. If so, they had already suffered losses of 50%+ in the campaign (CAC squads have 13 men). It looked like the militia had put up one helluva fight.

We spent the next four hours fortifying the eastern and northern approaches to the town. Our armor made each of us a miniature backhoe, and in a few short hours of work we had extended the trench along the entire northern and eastern perimeters of the town.

We moved the CAC auto gun and set up a real strongpoint at the corner of the northern and eastern sections of trench. We had plenty of ammo for the gun – one of the buildings held crates full of extra ordnance.

By nightfall we were ready for any attack. We had detection devices positioned out about five klicks; they wouldn’t take us by surprise. We even managed to grab a few hours of sleep in shifts. We were ready for the counterattack. But it never came.

Later I managed to piece together what had happened. Apparently the plan was working perfectly. The enemy had sent an entire platoon supported by two light support vehicles to deal with us and retake the town. That would have put us knee deep in it, but would also have fatally weakened the northern perimeter where the main attack was coming.

Our attacking forces were supposed to wait until dark to give the enemy time to divert his forces. Unfortunately, one of the planetary militia units ran into an enemy patrol, and the local commander panicked and sent his men in five hours early.

Without the coordinating attacks along their flanks, the militia was in big trouble from the start. The regulars could either hold back and watch the militia get chewed to pieces, or attack now, hours ahead of schedule. The captain had no choice.

Realizing that a major attack was developing in the north before the force heading south toward us was engaged, the enemy commander recalled these troops to strengthen the main defensive line. He left a small force to delay any thrust we might make out of the town, but the rest of the diverted forces were recalled in time.

With no way of knowing that the forces we expected to attack us had withdrawn, we remained in our defensive positions all night. By the time we got the order to advance it was just about over.

The firefight had raged throughout the night, but just about an hour before dawn the enemy lines were broken in two places. After that it was just a question of mopping up.

On our way north we ran into a few enemy troops who tried to surrender. They must have known what to expect since they'd used gas on the locals, but they tried anyway. They were more fortunate, at least, then the ones who fell into the hands of the militia. That is if the stories I heard later were true…and I have no doubt they were.

The reconquest of Carson’s World was complete. The tactical plan had been excellent and would have worked perfectly except for the failure of one militia officer to follow orders. But such is the friction of war, and few battle plans survive the start of combat unmodified.

After the battle the captain made some noise about bringing the responsible officer up on charges, but it didn’t get very far. I suspect if the battle had been lost instead of won, there would have been more of an appetite for an investigation, but with the planet back in our hands, the attitude seemed to be that no harm was done.

We felt differently, of course. The company lost almost 20% of its strength, and most of the casualties occurred in the heavy fighting on the northern perimeter. How many of those losses were caused by the foul up? No way to tell.

Our squad had one killed and one wounded. Ferguson’s wound turned out to be a single clean shot through the left leg. He’d be back in the line before our next assault.

The rest of the squad – the entire company, actually – remained on the planet as garrison for six weeks. This kind of duty is usually pretty slow, but not this time. We were busy as hell the entire time. We rebuilt and expanded the ground fortifications, digging trenches and building bunkers everywhere. We provided the strong backs for the engineer platoon that arrived a week later with a freighter full of ground-to-air defense systems. These were emplaced not only around the developed area, but also near what looked like an entrance to a large mine, where we built a veritable fortress.

By the time the relieving force arrived, every one of us was exhausted, and we were in line and ready the morning the shuttles from the Guadalcanal landed. While waiting for the order to board, I watched the new garrison troops unloading and forming up. They were marines, not assault troops, but marines nonetheless. And there were a lot of them. From where I was I couldn’t see all of them, but they landed in at least a dozen ships and there were a good 300 already formed up in the center of the landing area. I guessed there must have been seven or eight hundred in all.

Extensive prepared defenses and a reinforced battalion as a garrison? It seemed like a lot of effort to defend a small, relatively insignificant mining colony. Of course, that was up to the high command and they didn’t ask my opinion. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have understood, but at the time I had no idea. One thing was certain – if the CAC wanted to take this planet again they were going to need one hell of a bigger force than they sent the first time.

A few minutes later we boarded the three transport shuttles and headed back to the Guadalcanal in a considerably more comfortable and leisurely fashion than we'd departed six weeks before. The ships were designed to evac a full platoon plus wounded, medical personnel, and equipment, so there was plenty of room for the 28 of us.

After docking we had to hang around the landing bay until we got checked out by the doc. There were two other newbies in the company. We'd actually landed with five, but one was killed and the other evac’ed with a partially severed spine. The three of us were last, so I had about three hours to kill. We’d been in the field for six weeks, so the captain gave us a break and cut back on the discipline. We were pretty much had the time to ourselves. I played a game of chess with Vergren, the platoon's sniper, but he was really good, and I lost pretty quickly.