'Now that,' Sadotra said, squinting at her microvid screen, 'is First Battalion, 115th NRA. I recognize that ugly sonofabitch on point.'
Michael smiled. The smile did not stay in place long. As the 115th closed, their faces became clear. Even in his neuronics-boosted night vision, the exhaustion was unmistakable, faces stretched tight with fatigue and stress, every second trooper wounded, some limping badly, a handful carried on makeshift stretchers. Michael knew he should not be surprised; these troopers had been fighting, much of it hand to hand, for hours now against an enemy force that outnumbered and outgunned them. That they had been able to disengage and withdraw in such good order was nothing short of a miracle; clearly, the Hammers' command and control had fallen in a heap, shocked into confusion by the sudden violence of 12 Brigade's attack.
Michael put them out of his mind, his attention focused on the narrow wedge of ground in front of his position. He and the rest of the battalion would know what they were up against once Mokhine's staff had debriefed the new arrivals and updated the tactical plot. It did not take them long; Michael breathed out as he scanned the plot, a long hiss of dismay. The 115th had been badly mauled, its losses heavy. It was followed by a grab bag of detachments drawn from almost every unit attached to 12 Brigade, shattered remnants of once-proud units spun off by the chaotic, unpredictable violence of combat.
Now the duty of rear guard fell to the only regiment capable of operating as a unit, the 201st. They and the 115th had punched right through the Hammers, their attack so sudden, so brutal, so violent that they had been able to crush what little organized resistance the marines had been able to offer. Unable to use landers or artillery, the Hammers had wilted in the face of the NRA's ferocious assault until the 115th and 201st emerged into clear air, the shattered, disorganized, and demoralized remnants of a Hammer brigade left bleeding in their wake.
As the 201st disengaged and started its run for safety, the Hammers were slow to recover at first, but they were recovering. Slowly they emerged from a nightmare of death and violence, a nightmare that had stupefied them into uncertainty, into immobility, into a mob of indecisive fools.
Now the Hammers were no longer a rabble; the tide had begun to turn, and the battle was slipping out of the NRA's grasp.
Transfixed, Michael patched his neuronics into the feed from one of the 2/83rd's recon drones as it tracked the 201st's fighting withdrawal, according to Anna the most difficult maneuver any unit could perform. At first, only a handful of Hammer ground units pressed them and the 201st maintained its cohesion, forward elements in contact stalling the enemy advance until the next line of resistance had been established before disengaging to fall back. Time after time, the 201st repeated the maneuver, the gap between them and the waiting 2/83rd closing with agonizing slowness.
At last Hammer armor joined the fight, and the 201st could hold them back no longer, their defense disintegrating into small groups standing to fight when they could, running when they could not. The 201st fell back in a desperate scramble for safety, pursued by Aqaba main battle tanks supported by ground troops, light armor, and attack drones, the whole ghastly performance coordinated by an unseen Hammer commander taking his battlefield data from a swarm of recon drones. The 201st had only one thing to be thankful for: There was no sign of Hammer ground-attack landers… yet. No, Michael realized, make that two things. The Hammers were moving slowly, almost reluctantly, as if their commanders were still struggling to recover from the shock of the NRA attack.
But, slow or not, the Hammers were hurting the 201st.
Their tanks had opened out into a shallow crescent formation across the valley floor to start the bloody business of chopping the 201st to pieces, the bark of guns and the crack of lasers rising to a crescendo, only one NRA antiarmor missile squad brave-or suicidal-enough to hang back to take out a pair of Aqabas that had strayed from the main body of the attack. When they passed the squad, the Sampan missile leaped out of cover, blown out of its launch tube by a low-power first-stage motor before the second-stage rocket motor kicked in, a plume of red-gold fire driving the missile up and then down onto its target, the range so close that the leading tank's defensive lasers, distracted by a hail of rifle and machine gun fire, did not have time to deal with the sudden threat. The missile smashed into the tank's lightly armored upper skin, and the stricken machine lurched to a halt, its two-man crew bailing out seconds before the tank exploded in a spectacular ball of flame.
A second missile followed, then a third and a fourth; two made it past the trailing tank's defenses, and a second Aqaba died. Michael flinched as the tank's fusion plant lost containment, the sky overhead scoured clean of Hammer drones by the hellish blast of energy. Breaking cover, the Sampan crew ran hard, but they were too exposed. One by one, they died, picked off by laser fire from a pair of newly arrived attack drones.
'Any minute now,' Sadotra said as the first of the 201st crested the slope and into view, a trickle of troopers that fast turned into a disorganized flood pouring downhill in a frantic race to safety. 'Any minute now.'
Only a few minutes after the last of the 201st cleared the ridgeline overlooking the battalion's positions, the first Aqaba appeared, its bulk a black cutout against a flame-lit sky. It eased its way forward cautiously, thumping down onto its tracks as it cleared the ridge. It paused, turret swinging as it hunted its next target before moving again, off the ridge and down toward the killing zone. Two more tanks followed; behind them came the blurred shapes of dismounted infantry screened by light armor, then yet more tanks, halting hull-down short of the ridge.
Michael gripped his rifle, waiting until his neuronics found a target. A red icon popped into view, but still he waited. Mokhine's orders had been emphatic: Wait! Engaging at long range only invited the Hammer's ground- attack landers to join the fight. The battalion had to hold fire until the Hammers were too close for the landers to operate without taking out their own people, so Michael waited.
Cautiously, the trio of Hammer tanks moved down the slope, the air overhead filled with the whine of recon drones scouring the ground ahead for mines. Michael knew they were wasting their time; the mines were too well concealed by radar-absorbent matting. But if he knew that, so did the Hammer commander.
'Incoming!' Sadotra shouted as attack drones screamed over the killing zone, unloading patterns of bomblets to clear the tanks' path. An instant later Michael's world turned inside out, shock waves in a rippling wave tearing the air apart and shaking the ground, mines exploding in sympathy, plumes of dirt climbing skyward before raining down on the 2/83rd's positions.
Still nobody fired.
The Hammers ignored the 201st now, almost as if they sensed the greater threat ahead. Michael could hardly breathe as the nearest Hammer tank crept forward until it was so close that he could see every dent, every scrape, every blemish on its ceramsteel armor. The red target icon picked one marine out of a group following in the tank's tracks, his neuronics steadying on the vulnerable gap between the man's helmet and body armor, a pale gray line, clearly visible, opened up by sloppy chromaflage discipline. Michael's finger twitched on the trigger of his assault rifle.
'For chrissakes,' he muttered. 'Get on with it.'
Nobody fired.
The lead tank paused as if sniffing the air for the scent of danger, then moved off. It advanced a hundred meters down the slope before it hit one of the mines that had survived the drones' clearance run. An instant later, two more mines took out the lead tank's flankers, the Aqabas thrown up and back with casual ease, pillars of smoke climbing into the night from their flaming corpses.
'You morons, you should know by now,' Sadotra said to the unseen Hammers, her voice withering with scorn, 'that it takes more than a few bomblets to clear a minefield.'
'Hey, Corp,' Michael said, 'how much-'
'Now!' Anna's voice cut him off, and Michael opened fire. As he dropped his first target, Stabber missiles lanced out to smash into the next two tanks to cross the ridgeline. It was a wasted effort; the Aqabas' defensive lasers hacked the missiles out of the air, but the tanks had had enough. Accelerating hard back over the ridge, they retreated to safety. Michael paid them no attention, his neuronics probing in a systematic hunt for any marine careless or moving fast enough to show himself, the crack… crack… crack of his rifle punching through the tearing rip of machine guns as they fired on the advancing enemy.
The Hammers started to fight back. The Aqabas that had stopped short of the ridgeline joined the battle in earnest, their guns pounding the battalion's positions, 95-millimeter hypervelocity rounds chewing away at the battalion's positions with murderous, clinical efficiency. Their assault was backed up by laser fire and fuel-air bomblets from attack drones and cannon fire from light armor, all overlaid by rifle fire and microgrenades from the advancing marines.
