Pointblank, p.15
Pointblank, page 15
In that case, fourth squad would destroy the gun, retrieve their puddle jumpers, then try to find the vehicle again. With luck, they’d find and destroy it before they had to rendezvous with the AstroGhost to replace the rapidly decreasing fuel in their puddle jumpers.
Two hundred meters from the clearing, the Marines slowed down and spread out. They had to move silently if they wanted to catch their prey by surprise. Fifty meters from the clearing, they caught glimpses of it through the trees. They slowed even more, all senses alert, ready to respond with deadly force if they were somehow discovered.
Williams saw the emplacement vehicle but not the laser gun. Ominously, neither could he see or hear any members of the crew. Where were they? Were they resting somewhere out of sight, or were they—
A sudden high-speed whine and bark splinters spraying off a tree trunk next to him answered his questions.
Williams dove to the ground and rolled away from the tree that had just been hit by a burst from a fléchette gun. He dropped his infra screen into place and looked for the red blotch that would tell him where the gun or the man firing it was. Before he found it, another fléchette gun sent a spray of deadly darts through the forest, as did several small arms. So far, none of the Marines had returned fire.
Williams toggled on the open-band squad circuit and ordered, “Count off!”
“Belinski, check” came the first reply.
“Rudd, I’m okay.”
“Skripska. Where the hell are they?”
While the Marines were reporting in, Williams saw the glow of the second fléchette gun and swore—it was firing from a flexible mount on the armored front of the emplacement vehicle. They’d have to burn through the armor to get to the crew, and that would take enough time to give the soldiers outside plenty of opportunity to get to the Marines. So he decided on the next best thing.
Williams took careful aim with his blaster and fired three rapid plasma bolts at the stubby barrel of the fléchette gun. Without waiting to see the result of his fire, he rolled several meters to his right. And just in time—the other fléchette gun and at least two small arms tore up the ground where he’d just been. But he saw a target in the infrared and snapped off two quick bolts at it before rolling away again.
By then the other Marines had also found targets and were firing. Every time they did, they moved. They had to move, there was no way to shield the flame of a plasma bolt as it left a blaster and burned its way to its target. Even if the enemy soldiers couldn’t see the Marines, their blaster fire would give away their positions.
A cut-off scream from somewhere around the clearing told Williams that one of the enemy soldiers had been hit. He grinned grimly and looked for another target. There was one! He snapped two bolts at it and moved, rolling behind a tree. The remaining fléchette gun rat-a-tat-tatted the other side of the tree.
Damn, they know where I am! he thought. How?
Suddenly, the whirring of the gun stopped, and only two small arms continued firing at the Marines. Two of the Marines fired simultaneously. Williams saw their bolts converge, and one of the weapons went silent.
Then the other stopped shooting, and an oblong object flew from behind a boulder: a fléchette rifle.
“Don’t shoot, I surrender,” came a voice from behind the boulder. “I give up. Don’t shoot!” A pair of raised hands appeared, and a soldier slowly stood with his empty hands held high above his head.
“Is there anybody else?” Williams shouted at the soldier.
“No, you killed everybody else,” the soldier called back, his voice trembling.
“Belinski, keep him covered,” Williams ordered, speaking in the clear so the surviving Coalition soldiers could hear him. “Rudd, Skripska, cover me. There’s still somebody inside the vehicle. I’m going to get him out.” The three Marines acknowledged the orders. The prisoner looked around nervously, shaken by not being able to see the people he heard calling back and forth.
Williams cautiously rose to a crouch. When nobody shot at him, he dashed to the emplacement vehicle. The barrel of the fléchette gun tracked him, but the plasma bolts he’d fired at it had caused the barrel to soften and bend. He clambered to the top of the vehicle and aimed his blaster at a hatch. “Throw out any weapons you have and come out with your hands up,” he commanded.
“Come in and get me!” came the defiant response.
“I’m not going to do that,” Williams replied flatly. “You can come out empty-handed and surrender, or you can die in that vehicle when we blow it. Your choice.”
There was silence for a moment, then a hatch on the side of the vehicle slowly swung open and a sidearm flew out, followed by a knife.
“Do you have any other weapons?” Williams demanded.
“No” was the sullen reply.
“Then show me your hands and come out.”
A pair of hands appeared, followed by a gangly soldier, who climbed out to stand next to the vehicle, looking decidedly unhappy.
Williams didn’t give the man time to think about what to do; instead, he jumped on his back, knocking him to the ground and pinning him. In seconds, he had the soldier’s hands secured behind his back.
“You’re a brave man,” Williams told him as he stood. “It’s a good thing you didn’t stay stupid and get yourself killed.” Then to the side: “Belinski, secure the other prisoner.”
“Aye, aye, honcho.”
A few minutes later, the two prisoners were secured to trees far enough apart that they couldn’t talk privately, and the Marines had collected four bodies. Only then did Williams take stock of his men. Skripska was partly visible; fresh blood stained the side of his chameleons.
“How bad is it?” Williams asked as he opened Skripska’s shirt to look at the wound.
“Doesn’t hurt too much.” Skripska grimaced when Williams probed the wound; three fléchettes had torn through the muscle over his ribs, but the bleeding had almost stopped. “I don’t think any bones are cracked.”
“We’ll let a corpsman decide that when we get back aboard the AstroGhost.” Williams affixed a patch of synthskin over the wound. “In the meantime, I think you’ll live.”
“That’s reassuring.”
With Skripska’s wound taken care of, Williams sent Belinski to question the soldier who had surrendered first, and Rudd and Skripska to fix explosives to the emplacement vehicle and the laser gun the crew had set up. The vehicle still had three laser guns in its cargo compartment. Williams himself questioned the prisoner from inside the vehicle.
“Do you know who we are?” Williams asked his prisoner. He squatted and raised his helmet screens so the soldier could see his face.
“Yer Confederation scum,” the man spat.
Williams shrugged his eyebrows. “I guess some would say that. Especially after we’ve kicked their asses. We’re Marine Force Recon.” He waited, but the prisoner didn’t react to that information. Maybe he’d never heard of Force Recon. “You were ready for us,” Williams said. “How’d you know we were coming?”
The prisoner smirked. “Sergeant Grotoks, he saw somethin’ in the sky over yonder.” He jerked his head to the south. “Said he thunk it were one a them puddle jumper thangs what the Confederation sometimes uses. He thunk mebbe it was a scout, and he’d bring back troops t’ try an’ take us out.”
Williams silently cursed himself; evidently he’d been too careless when he reconned the clearing. But he didn’t let the prisoner know that. Instead, he asked, “If you thought someone was coming, why did you wait? You had to know you’d be outnumbered.”
The prisoner snorted. “We’s from Embata, that’s why. Embatans don’t run. We been wanting t’ fight, an’ this laser-gun shit din give us no chance t’ fight. So we got ready.”
“So you fought, and we kicked your asses.”
The prisoner shrugged; that they’d lost, that four of them were killed and the other two captured, mattered to him less than that they’d fought instead of running.
“You don’t have infras,” Williams said. “Even if you did, our infra signatures are damped down pretty far. Yet you seemed to know where we were. How’d you do that?”
The prisoner grinned. “Easy. Sergeant Grotoks thunk mebbe Marines would come, an’ Marines sometimes wear invisible suits.” He nodded at a part of Williams that he couldn’t see. “So he put out motion detectors and gave us all monitors so’s we’d know where you was.”
Williams nodded to himself. Yes, motion detectors were more of a threat to Force Recon Marines than infras.
Rudd interuppted the interrogation. “We got them wired, honcho.”
Williams rose from his squat. “All right,” he said into the squad circuit, “let’s saddle up. Hobble the prisoners so they can’t run. When we’re ready, Skripska has point. Me, the prisoners, Belinski, Rudd.” He gave Belinski a look. Belinski nodded—if the prisoners tried to run, he’d kill them.
The explosives went off, destroying the emplacement vehicle and its laser guns before the Marines got back to their puddle jumpers. As soon as Williams got his puddle jumper on, he hopped up and transmitted the report he’d prepared to the Kiowa, where Commander Obannion had moved his headquarters. They lashed each prisoner between a pair of Marines and headed to meet the AstroGhost at their pickup point.
The prisoner who had been so surly and defiant after the fight wet his pants from fear during the flight.
CHAPTER
* * *
SEVENTEEN
One Hundred Kilometers Due West of the Bataan Peninsula
Sergeant Kindy decided to wait until dusk, then lead his squad across the fields to the building complex. While they waited, he set Corporal Nomonon and Lance Corporal Ellis to provide security to their flanks and rear and assigned Corporal Jaschke to take a census of the compound. He himself watched the compound, trying to discern any patterns of movement or activity that might give him a hint to the location of the entrance to the underground complex.
Jaschke got out his ocular and connected it to his comp, then began methodically looking at the people visible in the fields and the compound, focusing on each face. He wouldn’t be able to get a complete record of everybody there, nor could the census tell what any of their positions were, but the census would give the Marines a minimum number of people present. At first, every face Jaschke focused on was new to his comp, so the numbers added up rapidly. But then he began recording faces a second and third time, and the count slowed down. This was also potentially valuable information, knowing which people moved around the most and where they came and went. Later, Jaschke would feed the data to Kindy, and Kindy might be able to see connections between the census data and his own observations.
When the sun was only a couple of diameters above the horizon, Kindy touched helmets with Jaschke and asked him for his data. By feel, they touched their comps together and Jaschke initiated contact transmission. Seconds later Kindy had all the census data and began studying it.
Jaschke had been right about Kindy’s being able to integrate the data with his own observations. Kindy quickly picked out three men from the data, men he’d particularly noticed while he was watching.
One was a young man, bare-headed, with a short haircut. Despite his civilian clothing, he looked every bit a junior enlisted man. He, more than anybody else in the compound, constantly went from place to place. According to Jaschke’s data, he visited more places than anybody else in the compound. But no matter how many times he went out, or how many locations at which he stopped, he always returned to the same place—the building Kindy had tentatively identified as the headquarters building. Kindy thought he must be a runner.
The second man of note was older and grizzled. He wore a hat and held himself ramrod straight; his gait was nearly a march. Just like the younger man looked like a junior enlisted man, this one had the look of a senior sergeant. He didn’t go out and about as often as the runner did, nor did he visit as many places. But whenever and wherever he went, he did so purposefully, and always returned to the headquarters building.
The third man who had caught Kindy’s eye left the possible headquarters building the least and went to the fewest other locations—actually only three others, one of which seemed to be a mess hall. He looked to be intermediate in age between the sergeant and the private, and his gait was likewise between the sergeant’s brisk march and the runner’s more casual gait. The most distinctive thing about him was his clothing. Even though he was dressed in the same basic farmworker style as everybody else in the compound, his appeared to be of a finer cut and more meticulously cleaned. To Kindy’s experienced eye, he looked like the senior officer of a small unit, a captain or perhaps a junior commander. Make that a major, Kindy thought—most of the armies of the Coalition forces had instituted the rank of major; majors normally held staff positions.
Kindy decided to think of the probable officer as a major. There was a joke he’d heard a couple of times: “The Confederation Marine Corps doesn’t have majors because a major is an officer fit only for staff duty, and the Marines only have officers who are fit for command.”
Of the other two locations the major visited, one looked to be his quarters. The other was a small, nondescript building that the sergeant and the runner also visited. That building had one odd feature—its roof bulged higher than one would expect of a building that took up so little ground. On reflection, Kindy thought the excess height could contain the workings of an elevator to the underground complex.
In all, the census had identified ninety-seven people in the compound, eighty-eight of whom were men. All but a few of those men—the ones operating equipment in the fields—had a clearly military air about them. Nobody wore a uniform, everybody was dressed as an agricultural worker, except for a few who were dressed in white, as though they were food service workers.
Ninety-seven people, eighty-eight of them men. Most of the men looked military. Kindy pondered the situation. Why would soldiers be going around their own compound in civilian clothes? Why would the military bury a complex underneath a farm?
The answer to the second question was obvious; the military complex was buried under the farm to hide it. But hide it from whom? Surely the Coalition wasn’t expecting Force Recon, which was the Confederation’s only military asset that could penetrate so deeply behind enemy lines. Didn’t they realize how effective they’d been at preventing the Confederation Navy from launching its string-of-pearls? Or did they expect the navy to be able to search and analyze the entire landmass from the orbiting warships? That must be it—the Coalition didn’t know the limits on the navy’s surveillance abilities.
Kindy began to think about how the squad could get into the elevator building, if that’s what the high-roofed, nondescript structure was, and take the elevator down without anybody noticing anything amiss.
The sun began sinking below the horizon and Kindy put his squad in motion.
Kindy prepared another report and uploaded it the next time the Kiowa was in range.
Inside a Farming Complex, One Hundred Kilometers Due West of the Bataan Peninsula
Sergeant Kindy started the squad moving when the bottom of the sun’s disk kissed the horizon beyond the farm building complex. They went single file at twenty-meter intervals, with Corporal Nomonon in the lead, followed by Kindy. Corporal Jaschke brought up the rear, with Lance Corporal Ellis between him and Kindy.
They took their time, there was no rush, they had eleven hours standard to get in, find what they were looking for, and get back out, before sunrise. Plenty of time. Besides, there was still a good deal of activity inside the complex, and they wouldn’t want any of the locals bumping into a Marine because they couldn’t see him.
Each of the Marines used most of his array of sensors during the movement across the fields. Nomonon had his ears turned up, and his motion detector and sniffer on. He used his light-gatherer screen to aid his vision. Kindy rotated through his infra, light-gatherer, and magnifier screens, and sometimes flicked on his UV finder. His ears were up and motion detector on. Ellis, the least experienced Marine in the squad, used only his infra and his motion detector. His ears were halfway up. Jaschke rotated between his infra and light-gatherer screens and had his motion detector and sniffer on. Like the others, his ears were turned up.
Third squad crossed the fields at a leisurely pace for anybody not a Force Recon Marine in hostile territory, but a fast pace for them. It took three hours for them to move the ten kilometers from their observation point to the building complex, the last hour of which was spent crossing the last kilometer.
Fewer people were out and about by then. Those who were, mostly went back and forth between the barracks structures or between a barracks and the mess hall. The headquarters and the small building that was the squad’s immediate objective were just about the only other buildings anybody went to. The grizzled sergeant was the most frequent visitor to the small building. Those two buildings were the only ones lit from inside—and the small building was only intermittently lit.
Kindy directed Nomonon to take a long route to the small building, passing by the headquarters and mess hall. He paused outside the heaquarters building and listened. All he heard was a low susurration of unhurried voices and the occasional ticking of office equipment. He stood a couple of meters away from a window and took a look inside. The only people he could see were the sergeant and two younger men. One of the young men looked like a company clerk, or duty NCO. The other, not quite as young, looked like a duty officer. Kindy wondered, if there is a duty officer and a duty NCO, where are the sentries? Except for the guard box at the far side of the complex, the Marines hadn’t seen any evidence of sentries.
