"Every five minutes," said Hawes, the fourth man in the bunker and by far the greenest. This was the first time Hawes had been under prolonged bombardment. The way he twitched every time a gun fired indicated how little he liked the experience. "I wish they'd—"
Lieutenant Lindgren's tank, Queen City, fired a five-round burst. Cyan light shuddered through the bunker's dog leg entrance.A pair of shells,probably fired from the Republican batteries on Hill 661 to the northeast, crumped well short of their target.
"Via , Lieutenant!"Des Grieux said in a desperate voice. He stared at his hands, because he was afraid of what he might blurt if he looked straight at the young officer."Look,I oughta be back on Warrior. Anything you gotta say, you can say over the commo, it's secure. And—"
He couldn't help it. His face came up. His voice grew as hard as his cold blue eyes, and he continued. "Besides, we're not here to talk. We oughta be kicking
ass. That's what we're here for."
"We're here—" Lindgren began.
"We're the Federals' artillery defense,Slick,"Broglie said,smiling at Des Grieux. Broglie didn't shout,but his voice flattened the lieutenant's words anyway."And their backbone. We're doing our job, so no sweat, hey?"
"Our job . . ." said Des Grieux softly. Warrior fired three short bursts, blasting a salvo inbound from the Republicans on Hill 504. Des Grieux ignored the sound and its implications. " . . . is to fight. Not to hide in holes. Hey, Luke?"
Broglie was four centimeters shorter than Des Grieux and about that much broader across the shoulders. He wasn't afraid of Des Grieux . . . which interested Des Grieux because it was unusual, though it didn't bother him in the least.
Des Grieux wasn't afraid of anyone or anything.
"We're here to see that Hill 541 North holds out till the relieving force arrives," said Lindgren.
He'd taken Broglie's interruption as a chance to get his emotions under control. The lieutenant was almost as nervous as Hawes, but he was a Slammers officer and determined to act like one. "The AAD in the vehicles does that as well as we could sitting in the turrets, Slick," he continued, "and unit meetings are important to remind us that we're a platoon, not four separate tanks stuck off in West Bumfuck."
"North Bumfuck fiver-four-one,"Broglie chuckled.Broglie's face held its quizzical smile, but the low sound of his laughter was drowned by incoming shells and the tanks' response to them. This was a sustained pounding from all three Republican gun positions: Hills 504 and 661 to the north, and Hill 541 South, ten kilometers southeast of the Federal base.
The Reps fired thirty or forty shells in less than a minute. Under the tribarrels' lash, the explosions merged into a drumming roar—punctuated by the sharp crash of the round that got through.
The bunker rocked. Dust drifted down from the sandbagged roof. Hawes rubbed his hollow eyes and pretended not to have heard the blast.
The sound of the salvoes died away. One of the Federal garrison screamed nearby. Des Grieux wasn't sure whether the man was wounded or simply broken by the constant hammering. The unanswered shelling got to him, too; but it made him want to go out and kill, not hide in a bunker and scream.
"Lieutenant," Des Grieux said in the same measured, deadly voice as before. "We oughta go out and nail the bastards. That's how we can save these Federal pussies."
"The relieving force—"Lindgren said.
"The relieving force hasn't gotten here in three weeks, so they aren't exactly burning up the road, now, are they?" Des Grieux said. "Look—"
"They'll get here," said Broglie. "They've got Major Howes and three of our companies with 'em, so they'll get here.And we'll wait it out, because that's what Colonel Hammer ordered us to do."
Lindgren opened his mouth to speak, but he closed it again and let the tank commanders argue the question. Des Grieux didn't even pretend to care what a newbie lieutenant thought. As for Broglie—
Sergeant Lucas Broglie was more polite, and Broglie appreciated the value of Lindgren's education from the Military Academy of Nieuw Friesland.But Broglie didn't much care what a newbie lieutenant thought, either.
"I didn't say we ought to bug out," Des Grieux said. His eyes were as open and empty as a cannon's bore. "I said we could win this instead of sitting on our butts."
Open and empty and deadly . . . .
"Four tanks can't take on twenty thousand Reps," Broglie said. His smile was an equivalent of Des Grieux's blank stare: the way Broglie's face formed itself when the mind beneath was under stress.
He swept an arc with his thumb.The bunker was too strait to allow him to make a full-arm gesture. "That's what they got out there. Twenty thousand of them."
The ground shook from another shell that got through the tribarrels' defensive web. Des Grieux was so concentrated on Broglie that his mind had tuned out the ripping bursts that normally would have focused him utterly.
"It's not just us 'n them,"Des Grieux said. Lindgren and Hawes, sitting on ammunition boxes on opposite sides of the bunker, swivelled their heads from one veteran to the other like spectators at a tennis match. "There's five, six thousand Federals on this crap pile with us, and they can't like it much better than I do."
"They're not—" Lieutenant Lindgren began. Cyan light flickered through the bunker entrance. A Republican sniper, not one of the Slammers' weapons. The Reps had a few powerguns, and Hill 661 was high enough that a marksman could slant his bolts into the Federal position.
The snap! of the bolt impacting made Lindgren twitch. Des Grieux's lips drew back in a snarl, because if he'd been in his tank he just might have put paid to the bastard.
"Not line soldiers," the lieutenant concluded in an artificially calm tone.
"They'd fight if they had somebody to lead them," Des Grieux said. "Via , anything's better'n being wrapped up here and used for Rep target practice."
"They've got a leader,"Broglie replied, "and it's General Wycherly,not us.For what he's worth."
Des Grieux grimaced as though he'd been kicked. Even Hawes snorted.
"I don't believe you appreciate the constraints that General Wycherly operates under," Lindgren said in a thin voice.
Lindgren knew how little his authority was worth to the veterans. That, as well as a real awareness of the Federal commander's difficulties, injected a note of anger into his tone."He's outnumbered three or four to one,"he went on."Ten to one, if you count just the real combat troops under his command. But he's holding his position as ordered. And that's just what we're going to help him do."
"We're pieces of a puzzle,Slick,"said Broglie.Here laxed enough to rub his lips, massaging them out of the rictus into which the discussion had cramped them. "Wycherly's job is to keep from getting overrun; our job's to help him; and our people with the relieving force 're going to kick the cop outa the Reps if we just hold 'em a few days more."