Hill 1647, 0608 hours, 13/2/461 AC
Twice the guns had lifted and twice Ali al Tikriti had ordered his battalion back into their trenches. Twice the guns had resumed fire with as much fury as before.
During the first lull in fire the Sumeri troops had moved briskly enough under the lashing tongues of their officers. The hill had come under heavy machine-gun fire but, moving below ground level, no men were hit as they took up their positions. Then, instead of the expected ground attack, after five minutes of steady machine gunning, the artillery had reopened. A number of men were hit before reaching the safety of the dugouts. The Sumeris carried their wounded back with them.
Caught in the forward trench, Ali hadn't made it to his own bunker, but took shelter in one of the common ones.
A full thirty minutes further bombardment followed. Some of Ali's troops began a trembling that became uncontrollable whenever a shell landed close enough to rock the bunker. During the next break in fire the Sumeris hadn't moved quite so readily to the trenches. Many staggered as if drunk.
Ali and his officers and noncoms had to physically push some of them out of the bunkers.
When again the shells came in and the men had to run for shelter they did not bring their wounded back with them. Ali did see two men stop to pick up a bleeding man. They seemed to lack the strength to lift him and so he was left behind. The Sumeri lieutenant colonel was too busy running to a shelter himself to order them back. The wounded soldier lay where he fell, crying to his comrades not to leave him.
On the third lull, Ali's men wouldn't, couldn't, follow his order to man the trenches. Helpless and hopeless he sat with his back to the wall and waited for the shell that would kill them all. A shot rang out inside the bunker. Ali summoned the strength to turn his head. In the far corner of the bunker, by the light leaking in from the enemy's illumination shells, he saw a Sumeri sergeant with his rifle in his mouth. The back of his head was missing.
Forward trench outside Stollen Number Three,
0611 hours, 13/2/461 AC
'Call for you, sir,' Soult said. 'The Ia wants to move up the time for the assault. He says the RPVs showed no movement on the objective during the last lull.'
Carrera considered. 'Tell him no.'
Soult looked questioningly.
'Like I said, I'm training them, Jamey. I want to teach the Sumeris a lesson, and establish a precedent. I don't want a massacre. If they are not pounded senseless the Sumeris will fight back; individually they're a tough and brave people. If they fight back to any effect, then the troops will kill damned near everything on the hill when they go in. That's the part they never teach in the law of land warfare courses: prisoners are almost never taken in a fiercely contested assault. On the other hand, if they don't resist, if they're too badly knocked around to resist, the boys will take prisoners.'
'How bad is it up there, really?' Soult asked.
By way of indirect answer Carrera replied, 'One or two percent of them will blow their own brains out rather than endure another minute of it. I'd call that bad enough.'
'You figured this out on your own, Boss?'
'No… an artilleryman on Old Earth did… name of Bruechmueller.'
Multichucha Ridge, 0700 hours, 13/2/461 AC
A three-man forward observer team equipped with a laser range finder cum target designator looked over the smoke-shrouded ridgeline to the north. The shells had stopped falling while the gun crews took some rest and allowed the barrels to cool. The mortars, light, medium and heavy, had extra barrels for the bombardment. These the crews changed, dropping the hot ones in the snow to cool down. This was also a longer than normal delay to ensure that the Sumeri leadership on the ridge would be able to beat and drive their men back to their bunkers. To aid the enemy in that, there were some armored vehicles, tanks and Ocelots both, moving into position on the valley floor.
'Poor bastards,' said the sergeant in charge of the team, watching the Sumeris listlessly move back to position.
The sergeant was old line; the private new. They had somewhat different attitudes. The sergeant was more cop than killer; the soldier more- much more-killer than cop.
'Fuck 'em, Sarge,' answered the private, looking through the eyepiece of the designator.
'You got target?' asked the sergeant.
'Easy. Let me know when to illuminate.'
The sergeant took the radio microphone from the third, and junior, member of the team. 'Zulu Five Whiskey Six Seven this is Zulu Five Whiskey Two Three, over.'
The call was answered instantly. 'Two Three this is Six Seven, go.'
'Fire for effect, High Explosive Delay with Daredevil fuse. Target Alpha Oscar Zero Two One.'
Again the radio crackled. 'Roger. HEDD. Alpha Oscar Zero Two One. Stand by to illuminate… time of flight is thirty-nine, I repeat thirty-nine, seconds… shot, over.'
The sergeant consulted his watch, counting off the time. When he reached thirty-three seconds he said, 'Flash!' The private squeezed a trigger to send a narrow laser beam right at the bunker nearest the highway, continuing to hold the trigger down and the laser on the target until…
Hill 1647, 0701 hours, 13/2/461 AC
It was Robles who saved Ali's life.
The mukkaddam had been moving low along the trench when one of the heavy machine gun bunkers behind him simply disintegrated, tossing sandbags, wood, machinery, bodies and parts of bodies high into the air.
The blast had knocked Ali down, sending him rolling end over end before slamming him into one wall of the octagonal trace trench.
Groggy and panicked, he'd risen and begun running as fast as he could through the zigzags his men had carved into the earth and rocks of the hill. He'd been heading, without really thinking about it, for the next bunker. There'd been a blinding flash of some kind of unseen light that stunned him further and left spots floating before his eyes. Thus he hadn't seen the Balboan bodies stretched out strangled and lifeless on the trench floor. He'd tripped over one and gone sprawling face-first down to the floor. At that precise moment another shell had struck the bunker, penetrating before exploding. The resultant demolition had ripped the bunker apart, sending- among other things-a large and jagged piece of construction steel whirring through the spot Ali had occupied just before he fell.
Now even more stunned, Ali looked up and into the rictus-smiling face of Sergeant Emmanuel Robles, late of the Legio del Cid. The sergeant's open eyes seemed to be staring at Ali with deepest disapproval.
Stumbling and screaming, Ali turned around once again. Halfway back to the first destroyed bunker he came to a communication trench. He recognized it as one he could use to return to his own bunker. He took the turn.
After becoming lost only once on the way, and this was understandable as the bombardment had changed the geography of the fortress more than a little, Ali found the door to his personal shelter. He opened the thick, hinged door and entered, leaving the door open behind him in his haste and his terror.
A whining, wailing sound came from under Ali's bunk. He looked to see his thirteen-year-old recreation boy cowering under the bed in absolute fright. The commander ignored the boy for the moment, rummaging around instead for a bottle of State-distilled whiskey. Finding it, he grasped the whiskey in one hand, then reached under the bed to pull the boy out by the hair with the other. He slapped the boy several times across the face, hard, to put an end to his sniveling.
Ali had lost control. Wanting something, anything, to make the terror go away, Ali broke open the whiskey bottle and took a long pull, followed by another. That helped but not quite enough. He needed to hurt something, to dominate something, since he and his command were being so thoroughly dominated by their attackers.
He put one hand on the boy's shoulder to force him down. Instead of dropping though, the wide-eyed child just shook his head, pleading. Ali was having none of that. He backhanded the boy across the bunker then followed him, reaching down to pull him up to his knees. Then he dragged the boy, still on his knees, across the bunker to his chair. Ali sat down and took another pull of his bottle before setting it down. Then he opened his belt to let his penis spring out at a forty-five degree angle. He pointed to show his boy what he wanted done but the boy just shook his head again in panicked refusal. Again, this time holding him by the hair so he wouldn't escape, Ali slapped
