All along the line, most of the soldiers scooped up their weapons and hauled them away, heading towards the second set of trenches. A handful remained, brave volunteers; Robinson would have liked nothing better than to stay with them, but he knew his duty. He ran from the trenches as something changed in the air pressure… and then a mighty series of explosions blew him to his knees. The Russians had fired heavy guns, aiming them directly onto their positions; shrapnel and cluster bombs, even small mines, flew everywhere. Robinson kept his head down and watched his feet carefully; here and there, a soldier screamed as a tiny mine detonated, blowing off their legs and crippling them for life. It was easy to see why people had wanted such weapons to be banned, but in the end… the Russians had cared nothing for the ban.
A British MLRS rapid-fired a stream of rockets in reply, arcing over his head as the soldiers stumbled and crawled to the second set of trenches. It seemed like a nightmare, or something out of the First World War; the looming presence of a Russian tank, trying to flank them, underlined the strange nature of war in the new world. Inglehart blasted it with a Knife before the Russian could do more than fire a long burst of machine gun bullets at the fleeing soldiers; the Russian tank exploded into fire and died rapidly. Russian gunners were trying to target the MLRS; Robinson prayed that the crew had managed to move their vehicle before it was too late. The sound of shouts in Russian could only mean one thing; the Russians were in hot pursuit.
“Get into position, you worthless bastards,” Inglehart was shouting, as the soldiers scrambled to obey. A handful of wounded were being carted away by medics, trying to get them to one of the evacuation ships before the Russians caught them; several more were refusing to leave and were preparing to join the final stand. “I want you to kill every god-damned Russian who pokes his dick over that crest, got that?”
The sky seemed to be lit up with rockets and aircraft, hunting for targets. Robinson looked for signs that someone else was mounting a defence, fighting the Russians in the air, but there was no sign of any British aircraft at all. The noise was strange; he could hear sonic booms and the thunder of bombs, and then there would be moments when it was almost quiet and peaceful. The shape of a Russian tank lumbered into view and they braced themselves as an infantryman took arm with an RPG, striking the Russian tank and destroying its treads. A second shot sent tankers boiling out of it; the British mowed them down before the flames consumed the tank and detonated its ammunition.
“There,” Inglehart muttered. Robinson saw them briefly; a line of Russian infantrymen, preparing themselves to move forward. “I think that’s our cue…”
The Russian shells landed.
“Hit,” someone was shouting, as explosions raged through the British trench lines. Colonel Boris Akhmedovich Aliyev wasn't so sure; the shells had actually fallen short, digging themselves into the mud and probably alarming the British, but not killing many of them. “We killed them all!”
“Onwards,” Aliyev shouted, as he hefted his own assault rifle. The British would be stunned and that wouldn’t last long; the British had held out stubbornly long enough to convince him that it would be the greatest fight of his career. He was almost relieved to be a mere infantryman again; no choices, no serious responsibility… just the urge to kill the enemy until they were all dead. It had been his reward; a soldier who accomplished much in the Russian Army would be forgiven much… and no one would complain about him wanting to enter the fight. The paratroops had been badly mauled by the fighting near Dover; Aliyev would have one last major battle before he was sent back to Russia to start the long hard task of rebuilding the paratroopers into a new force. “Advance against the British!”
The remainder of his paratroops moved forward with blinding speed, running up towards the British positions and preparing for the final lunge. The shells had disrupted the British; only a handful fired back as the paratroopers assaulted the position, moving from covering positions to wild desperate charges as they threw grenades and faced the British in close-quarter combat for the final time. The entire scene was beautifully chaotic; he loved it as the position disintegrated into a hundred tiny battles, even hand-to-hand combat between soldiers. He couldn’t have been happier…
A British officer slammed into him and they went down, fighting a desperate struggle to kill each other before it was too late; Aliyev went for the neck and felt his tormenter’s struggles die before he pulled himself out from under the body… and saw a rifle pointed at him from very near range. His hand lanced down to the fragmentation grenades at his belt; he just managed to pull the pin before the British soldier fired once, sending Aliyev howling into a nightmare of fire and death.
Robinson saw the Captain, a young studious officer who had handled his unit well, if without inspiration, go down on top of a Russian officer and screamed in outrage. The Russian broke the Captain’s neck with a single quick moment and slipped out; Robinson knew that he was too dangerous a fighter to risk a hand-to-hand fight, no matter how much he wanted one; he lifted his assault rifle and fired in one quick motion.
“Oh, you son of a bitch,” he said, as he saw what the Russian had done. Instincts took over and he threw himself backwards as the grenades detonated; screaming red hot pain cascaded through him as the fragments of shrapnel burned through his legs and chest. He couldn’t feel his legs; the pain was too great to allow him even to think; the sense that someone was talking to him, someone very close, was confusing his mind. He couldn’t even focus enough to rally and kill Russians…
“Hazel,” he said, or thought he said, and blacked out.
Inglehart saw Robinson fall and cursed the Russians as he wounded one with a gut-shot, blowing the Russian’s head off with a second shot. He had liked Robinson; he had known him since he was a nervous common soldier, to becoming a commissioned officer, to becoming a competent Captain… and then the man who had saved all of their lives. He threw a grenade at a nearby group of Russians and knelt by his Captain — he could never think of him as a Colonel — examining the wounds; they were bad. The ruined legs alone would cripple him for the rest of his life…
The choice wasn't hard to make. The Russians had fallen back; Inglehart knew what that meant, a bombardment. He shouted orders to two of the medics, ordering them to carry the Captain out of the battlezone, and turned back to face the advancing Russians. He owed Robinson his life; he could have fled, but in the end… he had accepted the price of duty a long time ago, when he had first taken service in the army, a long time before Robinson had ever joined himself.
Inglehart was proud of Robinson; he was proud to be a Sergeant in the greatest army in the world. It had been a long career, watching the army rise and fall, seeing newer officers prove themselves or fail under the supreme test of combat. It had been a good life, all in all; wine — or rather beer — women and song, all spent with the finest bunch of bastards on the face of the planet. He wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Inglehart kept fighting until they overwhelmed him. He died surrounded by the bodies of his foes.
“They’re punching through the main defence line,” the aide reported. Langford could hear a hint of panic in her voice; they were on the verge of being trapped in the HQ if the Russian advance was not checked. “They’re moving to outflank Dorking itself.”
Langford scowled. The Russians had managed the penetration quicker than he had expected; he had anticipated the bombardment of Dorking, but not the almost suicidal tactics the Russians had used to break through. Time was on their side; was there some reason why they had forced the issue as much as they had, apart from sheer bloody-mindedness?