Starfist: FlashFire (25 page)

“Yessir,” Sturgeon said, stone-faced. He turned to his chief of staff, who had been listening intently from his own station, only a couple of meters away. “Colonel Ramadan, you heard the general’s orders. Instruct Commander van Winkle to disengage immediately and return to the perimeter.”

“Aye aye, sir. And air?”

Sturgeon paused for half a beat to decide, then said, “The aircraft that are already airborne are to discharge their munitions on Hill 161 and any nearby ground forces, then return to base. Aircraft currently on the ground will launch and provide air cover for the infantry as they withdraw.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Ramadan turned to his station and transmitted Sturgeon’s orders to van Winkle. He took his time about contacting Commander Wolfe with the new orders for the squadron; he knew the squadron’s aircraft were all on the ground, and wanted to give them time to launch again before giving the new order to the squadron commander. By the time he turned to report to his commander that the orders had been given, General Billie had left the bunker.

“I’ve heard ‘hurry up and wait’ so many times it seems like ‘hurry up’
means
‘wait,’ ” Lance Corporal MacIlargie grumbled. “And I’ve had to dig a hole and fill it up again so many times that I know that a hole is only temporary, no matter how important it was to dig it in the first place. But break contact and withdraw? When we were doing some serious ass-kicking? I ask you, Rock, what fucking sense does that make?” MacIlargie may have been disgruntled about having to trudge back to the trench-andtunnel complex on Bataan, but he wasn’t so upset that he didn’t make sure his complaining was on the fire team circuit, where only Corporal Claypoole could hear him.

“Damned if I know, Wolfman,” Claypoole grumbled back. “I’m just a fire team leader, I don’t even know how everybody else in the squad was doing. For all I know, the rest of the battalion was getting
its
ass kicked. Or maybe the bad guys are breaking through the perimeter someplace else and we have to go and plug another hole in the line.”

They went on for several more paces while Claypoole thought over what he’d just said, then he picked it up again. “Nah. If they needed us to close another breakthrough, they’d be hustling us, maybe even send the Dragons to pick us up. And no way do I believe the rest of the battalion was getting its ass kicked.”

“So why’d we have to break contact and pull back to the trenches?”

“You’ll have to ask the Brigadier that one.”

“When we get back, I think I’ll look him up and do just that,” MacIlargie said. He snorted. “Right, just drop in on him, ‘Hey, Ted, ole buddy, howcome-for-why you made us pull back when we were putting a serious hurting on them rebels? If you’d let us go, we could of ended this war by morning chow tomorrow.’ Yeah, sure I will.”

Claypoole grunted. He didn’t think they were as close to winning the war as MacIlargie said, but he
did
believe that they were seriously screwing up the Coalition army’s plans—until they got called back, that is.

“Aargh!” MacIlargie growled. “This war was all army until we showed up. The Brigadier has to report to that doggie general, what’s his name. You know how the army is. They get in a jam, the Marines go in to save their sorry asses, and they get their noses all out of joint about us making them look bad.”

“Don’t think so,” Claypoole said back. “The doggie general in command here is that Cazombi guy, you know, the one who ran the operation on Avionia, the one where we had to catch the smugglers with the birdmen. He’s the kind of general who’s wasted on the doggies; he’s good enough to be a Marine.”

Claypoole and MacIlargie only thought their conversation was private; they’d forgotten that squad leaders could listen in on their fire teams’ circuits and break into anything that was being said on them —this was to aid the squad leaders in monitoring and controlling their fire teams. Sergeant Linsman
had
been listening in, and he chose this point to break in.

“You’re wrong, Rock,” he said, making both Claypoole and MacIlargie jump. “General Cazombi’s here, but I guess you were sleeping at the end of the Skipper’s briefing. Cazombi’s not in command anymore. The Combined Chiefs sent a general from the Heptagon to take command of this operation.”

“From the Heptagon?” Claypoole squawked. “What did he do there?” “What I heard was, he was a staff officer.” “What about before?” MacIlargie asked with a note of uncertainty in his voice. “A staff officer someplace else.” “His entire career?” Claypoole asked, unbelievingly. “That’s what I heard.” Claypoole and MacIlargie could hear the shrug in Linsman’s voice. “Buddha’s blue balls!” Claypoole swore. “A fucking pogue in charge of a war? Wolfman, I’ve got this

real bad feeling that we’re in deep shit now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Years before the war broke out on Ravenette, that area of Fort Seymour known as the Peninsula had been used as a storage depot. Engineers had constructed deep bunkers connected by tunnels that General Cazombi was easily able to convert into troop and headquarters complexes; power and sewage treatment facilities were upgraded by the engineer battalion General Sorca had loaned him and they also built fighting positions and bunkers to protect the underground facilities. By the time it became necessary for General Sorca’s troops to retreat onto the Peninsula it was fully ready to withstand a prolonged siege.

Barring the use of thermonuclear devices, the Coalition forces did not have weapons powerful enough to penetrate into the heart of the underground complex, some of which was as much as forty meters deep.

There were certain drawbacks to the defensive positions, however. Those portions of the redoubt closest to Pohick Bay, which surrounded the Peninsula, were subject to water seepage through the porous rock and soil, making drainage a problem. Even worse, after troops moved into the redoubt it became a source of food and shelter for a certain bipedal rodent-like creature native to Ravenette,
Castor cleaverii.
These were noisome creatures something like a sewer rat mated with a snake. With their strong forelegs and powerful jaws, they could eat or burrow through almost any natural substance and it did not take long for them to construct burrows in the complex. They fed off the troops’ food supplies, unattended dead, raw sewage, and one another. Those that survived on such provender grew fat and sassy.

The troops called the creatures “slimies” because the fine scales that covered their reptilian bodies resembled the pelts of wet sewer rats. Exhausted by long watches and short rations, it was not uncommon for a man to awaken from a deep sleep to discover a slimy gnawing away some body part. The bigger slimies could grow to twenty centimeters and weigh up to two kilos, and a pack of them could kill a helpless man. So the troops conducted “slimy hunts” when there was a lull in the fighting, and units vied with one another to see which could kill the most.

But as rations grew very short, the slimies became a badly needed source of protein. “If you can get past the smell,” the men joked about eating slimy meat, “it don’t taste so bad.”

Platoon Sergeant Herb Carman’s third platoon, Charlie Company, which was down to only fifteen effectives by the time it reached the Peninsula, drew one of the least desirable posts in the redoubt, a series of two-man observation posts situated in the southwest extreme of the complex, overlooking the bay. Because of their proximity to the water that area was not subjected to as many bombardments and probes as the more landward positions, but the positions were always damp and cold—and infested by slimies.

Carman’s mission was to observe the waters of the bay around the clock, apprise his battalion command post of any attempted landings, and engage any infantry assault units. The shoreline below his observation posts was honeycombed with mines and obstacles designed to impale or destroy landing craft. In the event of an actual assault, Carman’s men would oppose the enemy long enough to give the garrison commander a chance to shift forces to the threatened sector, and then, if they could, retreat into the bunkers and tunnels to join the defending forces.

Sergeant Carman constantly worked his way through communications trenches that connected the observation posts, making sure his men were alert and that they rotated into the underground bunkers at four-hour intervals to take advantage of the warmth and security. During the hours of darkness he required everyone to be on their toes, but during daylight he allowed men to sleep in shifts right in their positions. Carman slept when he could. And if a slimy crawling across a man’s face wasn’t enough to make sleep in the posts difficult, a Coalition corvette stationed just on the horizon frequently bombarded the shore with harassing fire. General Cazombi did not have the ammunition or the guns to spare for return fire, but so far none of Carman’s observation posts had been hit by the naval gunfire.

“Ahhhh,” PFC Raglan “Rags” Mesola exulted, hoisting the squirming slimy on his fighting knife, “lunch!” The slimy squealed piteously, clawing at the knife blade stuck into its guts. Mesola laughed. “Shut up, lunchie,” he admonished the creature.

“Unggh,” Private Haran “Happy” Hannover snorted, but his stomach rumbled at the thought of roasted slimy meat.

“This sucker must weigh a kilo, Happy.” Mesola chuckled as he deftly broke the animal’s neck. He sliced off its head, limbs and tail, skinned it expertly, and gutted the carcass. He tossed the offal out through a firing slit, then wiped his hands on his battle dress trousers. The stench of the slimy’s insides mixed with the miasma of unwashed bodies, fecal matter (the men relieved themselves into tin cans and tossed the effluvia onto the beach through the firing slits), and dead fish, producing a fetid atmosphere nobody noticed anymore; the air was only a little less disgusting back in the underground bunkers.

“Shall we boil him or roast him?” Mesola asked as he boned the carcass. When he was done he had a respectable pile of white, stringy meat.

“Boil.”

“Okay, you know the drill.”

Mesola produced a two-liter fruit can, long, long, ago emptied of its delicious contents, and urinated into it. He passed the can to Hannover, who did the same, shaking it to see if there was enough fluid to bring to a respectable boil. Judiciously, he added a little precious drinking water from his canteen to “cut” the liquid. From a pocket he withdrew a little packet of salt, which he emptied into the can.

Hannover groaned. “I never thought I’d live long enough to live like this,” he said.

“You call this living?” Mesola chuckled. He put the can on a makeshift grill, produced a whitish lump of material from a cargo pocket, stuck it under the grill and lighted it. The material instantly flared into a bright, white flame that brought the concoction almost immediately to a boil.

Hannover stirred the contents with his knife. “Ready in a minute. Too bad we don’t have no bread or crackers to go with it.”

“We’ll get all the crackers we want when we reenlist,” Mesola grunted. They both laughed.

“And just what in the hell is going on in here?” Sergeant Carman’s voice boomed from the entrance.

“Mary’s knockers!” Mesola exclaimed, almost knocking over the fruit can, “you scared the living daylights out of me!”

Carman ducked through the entrance and nodded at the fire. “Tell me that’s not semiprytex you’re using to cook that shit.”

“No! No!” both men exclaimed. Semiprytex was the explosive used to detonate antipersonnel mines. In small amounts it could also serve as an excellent source of heat to cook rations. Dismantling mines and stealing semiprytex was easy, but if a man took too much of the stuff the charge left in the mine would be too small to set off the mine’s main charge.

“That is a court-martial offense,” Carman said. He sat wearily on the observation step.

“Well, there’s millions of those mines out there, Sarge,” Hannover protested, “and we only took one.”

“I don’t suppose you fellows have had any time today to watch things out in the bay, have you?”

“We was just breaking for lunch, Sarge,” Mesola said. “Besides, sunshiny day like this, nothing’s going on out there.”

“Have you guys heard the news?”

“No, Sarge, what is it? The war’s been declared illegal?” Hannover chuckled.

“Better than that. Our new CG has just arrived, a genuine four-star named, uh, I forget his name right now, but he’s brought big reinforcements.”

“I hope he brought some crackers,” Mesola grunted, stirring the contents of the fruit can. He lifted a steaming fragment of meat on his knife blade. “Crackers and slimy—haute cuisine.”

“You got enough for three in there?” Carman asked.

The bunker that served as Charlie Company’s headquarters and billets was a good twenty meters beneath the ground. It was reached by a complex of communications trenches and tunnels and relatively safe from the enemy’s gunfire, not that the men of Charlie Company were allowed to spend much time in there. At least in the observation posts there was a constant flow of fresh air; in the bunker the overworked ventilation system did little to dispel the stench of dozens of unwashed bodies in such a confined space. The one latrine available, a hastily constructed affair, was constantly in use and only contributed to the disgusting smell that pervaded the place. The water used to flush the thing was piped in from Pohick Bay and carried with it the distinctive aroma of dead sealife. But the men of Charlie Company worked and slept there, took their meals there, such as they were, and over time came to accept the conditions as normal.

When Sergeant Carman slept, which was neither very often nor for very long, he slept like a dead man, the dreamless unconsciousness of the extremely exhausted. But on that particular day he was dreaming of home. More important, he was dreaming of Quettana, the love of his life, as remote from him then as the chance he would be promoted to the rank of General.

“Herb! Herb! Get up, goddamnit!” Someone was shaking him, none too gently either. Carman pried his eyes open with effort. It was Captain Jasper Walker, Charlie Company’s commander. “Come on, shake a leg, Sarge, we’ve got visitors.”

Carman swung his legs to the floor and stood up. “Visitors?”

An enlisted man stuck his head in from the tunnel and whispered, “Here they come!”

“Ten-HUT!” Captain Walker commanded as General Billie, followed by Lieutenant General Cazombi, Major General Sorca, and Lieutenant Colonel Radford Epperly, Walker’s battalion commander, ducked through the doorway. Captain Chester Woo, Billie’s aide-de-camp, clipboard importantly in hand, brought up the rear.

“At ease,” Billie ordered, wrinkling his nose. “By Allah’s pointed teeth, Alistair, this place smells like an open latrine! Chester, make a note we’ve got to do something about ventilation in this complex!”

“Not much that can be done, sir,” Cazombi interjected, “the system is overloaded as it is, and when your reinforcements arrive it’ll get even worse.”

“Well, General,” Billie grinned slightly, “all the more reason to break out and maneuver against the enemy, eh?” Billie casually returned Captain Walker’s salute as he reported Charlie Company ready for inspection. “No inspection, Captain, I just want to see what conditions you and your men are operating under. How many men do you have in Charlie Company?”

“Seventy-three, sir. One sergeant and the rest all junior enlisted men. I’m the only officer left.”

Billie raised his eyebrows and glanced at Sorca, “No officers, man? How do you run a company, even reduced in numbers, without any officers?”

“I use my noncom, sir, and when he and I are not around, the men know what to do.”

“We don’t have any other choice, sir,” Colonel Epperly said, “and as it is, the system works well. These men have done a fine job, sir, and I’ve recommended many of them for commendations.”

Billie shook his head and put a handkerchief over his nose. “Enlisted men running a company!” he snorted. “How in the hell does anyone survive in this stink? Don’t these people ever wash?” he asked Cazombi.

“You get used to it, sir,” Captain Walker volunteered, grinning slightly. “We don’t have enough water to drink, sir, much less wash ourselves. And the reason I have to use EM to help me run my company is because all my officers are dead, as are most of the men who came to this shithole with me in the first place.” Billie frowned and in that instant Walker sensed his days as a company commander were numbered.

Walker silently regarded the officers. Cazombi and Colonel Epperly, haggard, hollow-cheeked skeletons, their uniforms hanging on their bodies like rags, resembled Walker himself. Even Major General Sorca, who had thus far kept himself well out of harm’s way, looked the worse for wear, but Billie stood there before him, uniform immaculate, four silver stars gleaming on his collars, a snow-white handkerchief fastidiously held to his nose. The ubiquitous Captain Woo, overweight, skin smooth and face well-shaved, nose wrinkled in disgust, stood self-importantly surveying the men, ready to take down his master’s orders. Those men, badly fed, unshaven, unwashed, their uniforms in rags, interrupted by this visit during the only rest they ever got in this sewer, stood respectfully at attention. It occurred to Walker that what he was experiencing now was the height of military insanity. No fighting man deserved to be commanded by such a popinjay.