Pointblank, p.30
Pointblank, page 30
Timony and two of his Marines joined fire at the base of the wall of the barracks behind the two dead sentries, where wood met the ferrocrete foundation. The plasma bolts burned through the wall, charring the wood; their combined heat set small flames licking about the hole they’d made. The bolts flew at an angle slightly above level and seared into the wood of the barracks floor from underneath, charring it and starting small fires. The four Marines shifted their fire, again concentrating on one spot. Then shifted again. Smoke from the burning wall and floor began percolating into the barracks rooms.
Seventh squad aimed at the wall of the next barracks and began a small fire at the bottom of its wall. They fired again and once more before raising their fire from the base of the wall and shooting independently through the walls, into the barracks rooms at an elevation calculated to hit standing or crouching men.
The assault gun sprayed slowly, side to side, along the wall of the barracks to the left until the wood suddenly whooshed into flame.
Along the main line, the west side, the squads fired at barracks.
“Keep your shots low!” Sergeant Bingh shouted to his Marines as he fired his first bolt at the bottom of the wood of a barracks wall. Three more bolts slammed into the wall in nearly the same place as his men fired at the spot. As soon as flames were licking up the wall, he had his men shift their fire higher, shooting blindly into the barracks rooms.
Less than a minute after the first shot, the streets between the barracks were filling with soldiers, most of them clad only in underwear. Only some of the soldiers from the now burning barracks had thought to grab their weapons in their mad dashes to get away from the fires. Many of the unarmed soldiers heard the blaster fire and ran deeper into the barracks area to get away from it; some were so panicked they simply ran away from the flames, some toward the firing Marines.
“Let them go!” Bingh shouted when Lance Corporal Wehrli sent a bolt through an unarmed soldier sprinting toward them. “Only shoot the armed ones!” Bingh looked into the interior of the barracks area and saw a man wearing an unbuttoned shirt, waving a sidearm as he shouted orders in an attempt to gain control over the panicked soldiers. Bingh shot him.
The flames in the nearby barracks were growing and crackling as the resin in the green wood used for the structures began expanding and exploding. But commanding voices were rising above the noise of the fires as sergeants went about organizing soldiers and getting ammunition to distribute among them. Some of the soldiers began returning fire in the direction of the Marines.
“Fire and move!” Bingh ordered. He snapped off a shot and rolled a few meters to the side. The Marines were invisible, but their plasma bolts flashed brilliant lines of fire that gave away their positions. Someone within the barracks had seen Bingh’s bolt and sent an accurate stream of fléchettes to the place he’d fired from. Bingh saw the glowing lines from several recently fired fléchette rifles on his infra. He sent a bolt into the red blob behind one of the lines and rolled in the opposite direction from before—just before another stream of fléchettes spattered into the space he’d vacated.
Damn, but he’s good, Bingh thought. He scooted back, into a slight hollow, and fired at another red blob, then ducked low with his head turned to the side. Almost immediately, a stream of fléchettes shot by, missing him by centimeters. It was enough for him to catch in infrared the direction the fire came from. Three times, the shooter had fired at the position Bingh had fired from, so the sergeant doubted the soldier was still aiming at his current position. He raised himself enough to see beyond the hollow and looked in the direction the fléchettes had come from.
There! He saw the moving trace of a fired rifle looking for another target—the line didn’t move far, the shooter was waiting for him to fire again. The soldier was in a good position, behind a stack of construction material, with only his rifle and part of his head and right shoulder exposed to Bingh’s view. The Marine took aim and saw the line of the barrel suddenly shift toward his position! He rushed his shot and ducked back down, just in time to be missed by the flechéttes that came from the shooter.
He must have infra! Bingh thought, and wondered how he knew how to spot the faint infrared signature of a Force Recon Marine.
Bingh popped up again for a quick look. He saw his shot had hit the construction materials rather than the soldier; but the strike had been close enough to make the man duck back. Bingh aimed at the corner of the materials and waited for his quarry to expose himself again—for all the soldier knew, the bolt that had almost hit him had been a random shot. At least, that’s what the Marine hoped.
The fléchette rifle snaked around the corner of the pile and Bingh took up the slack on his firing lever. Then the soldier’s head and shoulder popped up behind the rifle, and Bingh sent a bolt of plasma into the shooter’s head.
Then Bingh had to duck down again as several soldiers fired at the source of his bolt. He felt a ripping along the seat of his trousers and swore—he’d been hit.
Sergeant Kindy wasn’t happy about third squad having to face the housing complex; he doubted there would be any trouble from that direction and thought third squad would do more good firing into the barracks. Sure, the officers and senior noncommissioned officers lived in the housing area, but the troops were in the barracks, and that was where the fighting would be. The officers and senior NCOs would be fools to attempt an assault on the rear of the Marine line; such an attack would have them heading straight into the fire from their own soldiers. Still, orders were orders, so he kept watch into the housing complex.
Kindy jerked at an unexpected crack-sizzle twenty meters to his left where Corporal Jaschke was. He looked where the plasma bolt from Jaschke’s blaster went and saw an armed man flip backward.
I guess some of them are fools, he thought. Then his light gatherer showed him a man hunkered down behind a bush, speaking into a comm.
“People are coming our way,” Kindy said into his short-range squad circuit as he took aim on the talker. He fired a bolt and moved. When he looked again, the man he’d shot had crumpled behind the bush.
Grazing fire started coming at the covering Marines from within the housing complex. The fire wasn’t heavy, there weren’t enough officers and senior NCOs to bring heavy fire along a front as wide as the housing complex. Unfortunately, that also meant they were scattered and hard for the Marines in the two-squad screen to spot.
“Don’t fire unless you’ve got a target,” Kindy ordered his men. “Keep moving, that’ll give you a better chance to locate a target.” He followed his own instructions, and before long he spotted someone looking through a tube. Kindy didn’t know what the tube was, but knew it had to be some kind of imaging device. He aimed at the back of the tube, where it met the man’s face, and squeezed off a bolt—he wanted to both destroy the device and kill the officer. He rolled as soon as he fired. He found the officer—he had to be an officer to have special equipment like that viewer—and saw the man was down, unmoving. The tube was flung aside, but Kindy couldn’t tell if it was damaged.
He looked for another target as he listened to the occasional crack-sizzles of blaster fire from the two screening squads.
Three minutes into the battle, Sergeant Williams had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he felt that firing the barracks with soldiers in them was simple slaughter. On the other, those men were soldiers of the Coalition and as such were the enemy; in combat a Marine’s job is to kill the enemy and keep killing them until there aren’t any left or the survivors quit fighting.
His feelings didn’t stay mixed for long. The Coalition sergeants from the barracks started getting the troops organized and fighting back. Then it was shoot and move, shoot and move, and make sure his men were doing the same.
Crack-sizzle! Roll. “Belinski!”
“Shooting and moving,” Corporal Belinski answered.
Crack-sizzle! Roll. “Rudd!”
“Shooting and moving,” Lance Corporal Rudd answered.
Crack-sizzle! Roll. “Skripska!”
“Shooting and moving,” Lance Corporal Skripska reported.
Crack-sizzle! Move. Make sure his men were doing the same. Repeat.
The Coalition soldiers were building up a base of fire despite the casualties they were suffering. Some of them were even returning fire at individual Marines. Here and there within the barracks area, sergeants had squads advancing by fire and maneuver, threatening to gain a position from where they could jump up and charge their attackers. But the burning barracks between them and the Marines slowed their advance—it was simply too hot for them to advance far enough.
Captain Wainwright split his time between looking over the battleground through his light-gatherer and infra screens, and studying the string-of-pearls view of it. He gradually quit using his infra screen because the fire was so hot he could no longer make out the heat signatures of the soldiers. He switched the satellite view to a larger area and saw that the columned dots of the patrols to the northeast had stopped moving. At least they aren’t coming in, he thought. There were nearly as many soldiers patrolling the forest as he had Marines in the fight. If a courier was going to alert the Ninth Division to the assault, the defenders were even less prepared for action than he’d thought. If not…either way, he didn’t have to worry about it.
He suddenly got a report from one of the squad leaders that required immediate action.
On the northernmost end of the Marine line, Sergeant Kare saw soldiers sprinting out of the barracks area, toward his left.
“Kassel,” he shouted, “can you see where they’re going?” Crack-sizzle! Move.
“It looks like they’re grouping,” Corporal Kassel reported. He sighted in on one of the soldiers gathering seventy-five meters to his left front, fired, then rolled. Fléchette fire pelted the ground around what had been his position.
“How many are there?” Kare asked.
“Can’t tell. At least a platoon.” Kassel took another shot and changed position.
Kare swore; more soldiers were running through the barracks in the direction of his flank.
“Quinn, maintain fire into the barracks area,” he ordered. “Ilon, shift to the flank.” Kare moved himself, to help Kassel with the soldiers grouping to flank the Marines. He flipped back and forth between his light-gatherer and infra screens, attempting to get an idea of how many Coalition soldiers were there, and swore again. He toggled the platoon command circuit and reported to Lieutenant Rollings.
“We’ve got a reinforced platoon, maybe more, seventy-five meters to our left,” Kare told second platoon’s commander. “More are joining them. I believe they’re massing to roll up our flank.”
“What are you doing about it?” Rollings asked, as he toggled his comm to patch Captain Wainwright into the conversation.
“Three of us are firing at them, but more of them are coming.” Kare looked to his right front. “Looks like another platoon is headed out to join them.”
“That’ll make half a company?” Rollings asked.
“That’s affirmative. Maybe more.” Kare fired and rolled again.
“Do what you can to keep them from advancing. I’ll get back to you.” Rollings toggled off the platoon command circuit and spoke to Wainwright. “How much of that did you get, sir?”
“We’re about to be flanked by half a company or more?”
“That’s about it.”
“Time to commit the reaction force.” Wainwright zeroed his satellite feed to the north of the burning barracks. They were hard to spot in the glow from the burning buildings, but he could make out a mass of dots indicating a large number of soldiers a short distance from the Marines’ left flank. He toggled the task force command circuit and relayed the satellite view to Staff Sergeant Keen. “Reaction force,” he said, “the enemy is massing to hit our left flank. Two-two needs help. Get there ASAP.” Then he toggled the all-hands circuit. “Heads up. The reaction force is passing behind the main line at speed. Don’t anybody shoot them.”
Before Wainwright was finished giving the orders, Keen and his two squads were running north; it was five hundred meters, but they didn’t have time to pace themselves.
Still more troops were gathering to attack the Marines’ flank. Sergeant Kare quickly assessed the situation and decided on a change of tactics.
“Quinn, Ilon, try to pin down the people running to the north.” Kare fired at a group of soldiers running to join the reinforced platoon. When he came out of his roll, he saw that they were down and some were returning fire. Using his light-gatherer screen to see, he sighted in on one of the shooters. By the time he fired, he saw bolts from two other blasters hit targets in the pinned group.
“They’re coming!” Corporal Kassel shouted.
Kare looked and swore—forty or fifty soldiers were on their feet, racing toward his position, firing as they came. He fired three times in rapid succession, moving his aiming point with each shot, before he changed position. Between him and Kassel, they knocked down four of the charging soldiers. Kare fired three more shots and moved. Fewer soldiers were charging them now, but they were still coming and had cut the distance in half. He fired again.
Kare couldn’t see it, but Corporal Quinn and Lance Corporal Ilon were keeping the reinforcing group from joining the assault. But while second squad was dealing with the flanking movement, other soldiers were moving forward, between the burning buildings, holding their fire as they were getting into place to strike the end of the Marine line from the front. The only Marines in position to see their maneuver were too busy dealing with the flanking movement to notice them.
The steady, rapid fire from Kare and Kassel was taking a toll on the flanking assault. The Coalition soldiers didn’t break, or even slow down, but they saw their comrades dropping at their sides and heard the screams of soldiers with cauterized holes burned through their limbs and trunks. The attacking soldiers were nearing panic, and their fire became erratic, their fléchettes frequently going into the sky or into the dirt bare meters in front of them.
Still, more than thirty of them reached the four Marines who’d been struggling to beat them back.
The Marines couldn’t shoot, not at that range—there was too great a chance of hitting each other in the mêlée. And their main advantage was their invisibility, the fire from their bolts would tell the enemy where they were.
Sergeant Kare lunged to his feet and slammed the butt of his blaster into the nearest face. The struck soldier fell back, screaming, and Kare jumped away and spun, plunging the hot muzzle of his blaster into the stomach of another soldier, then butt-stroking him on his way down.
Corporal Quinn left his blaster on the ground and drew his fighting knife. A backhand slash ripped out the throat of a Coalition soldier. Quinn left the man gurgling through his open throat and turned in time to duck under a rifle butt swing by another soldier. He came up under the man’s rifle and thrust his blade upward, through the soldier’s solar plexus and into his heart. Quinn jumped back before much of the spurting blood could get on his chameleons.
Corporal Kassel held his blaster in one hand like a short lance and his fighting knife in the other. He flicked the knife at a head and took that soldier out of the fight with a face torn open and an eye sliced through. Kassel lunged forward, thrusting the muzzle of his blaster into the throat of another foe, crushing his larynx. Kassel twisted away, looking for another opponent.
Lance Corporal Ilon used his blaster as a club, swinging it back and forth as he waded into a knot of milling soldiers. He knocked three of them down before the others closed on him. Ilon dropped to the ground, curled into a ball, and, invisible, rolled away.
Freed from the fire that had kept them pinned to the ground, the two dozen or more soldiers who’d been trying to join the flanking unit to make its assault rose up and charged to join in the hand-to-hand combat.
Kare paused after hitting yet another soldier in the upper arm with a horizontal butt stroke to see if the man needed to be hit again to take him out of the fight. That pause was all a barreling body needed to slam into him and bear him to the ground. Kare twisted, to break away or to fight with his hands, but the soldier was yelling for help, and another body plummeted onto the Marine.
Quinn’s knife was all too visible—and so was the blood that splattered his chameleons. Soldiers holding their fléchette rifles as clubs or thrusting lances closed in on him from all sides.
A lucky swing with the butt of a rifle caught Kassel between the shoulder blades and knocked him to the ground, wheezing for air.
A groping hand connected with Ilon’s shoulder, followed by an arm that wrapped around his chest and a shrill shout of “I’ve got one of them!”
Everybody in the mêlée was abruptly jolted by the far-too-close buzz-saw sizzle of an assault gun—the reaction force had arrived, and the gun was spraying the two dozen reinforcements. Seven other Marines, huffing and grunting from their run, leapt into the fight with swinging blasters and fighting knives. Coalition soldiers, stunned by the unexpected whine of the assault gun from just a few meters away, began collapsing to the ground.
Not all of them fell because they were hit by the fighting Marines; a couple dropped prone and wrapped their arms around their heads. “Don’t kill me!” they screamed. “I surrender!”
The Coalition reinforcements, raked by the assault gun fire, buckled and collapsed. The few who lived through the rain of plasma fire dropped their weapons and crawled away.
Staff Sergeant Keen looked toward the barracks and saw more soldiers breaking out to join the fight. He turned the assault gun on them, and they fell back, dead, dying, or fleeing.
The fight was over in another moment. Most of the hundred or more soldiers who had attacked the Marine flank were dead. Eleven surrendered.
CHAPTER
* * *
