Every man in armor had access to the interLink; but I was the only officer in the field with the commandLink. I could look through any man’s visor, see the world as he saw it. Using optical commands, I created a window that let me look through Ritz’s helmet. I saw his world as he dropped back from our ranks, hiding behind trees, darting behind bushes.
He did not carry a mortar for this job, just a handheld RPG, a foot-long silver tube that he held in his right hand. He stuck to the shadows. I could hear his breathing over the audio. If we made it through this mission, I would have a word with him about his conditioning. He was breathing heavily, like a man who had just run two miles instead of a couple of hundred feet.
He scurried to a mound of leaves and logs, slid in behind it, and switched to his tactical view. Dark forest surrounded him.
“You guys back there?” he asked as he went back to night-for-day vision.
“Yes, sir.”
“Right behind you.”
“Just making sure,” Ritz told them.
He took one last scan of the landscape, then darted to a spot where three spindly trees grew out of the rotted trunk of a long-dead oak. He switched his visor back to night-for-day and spotted a Jackal a few hundred yards away and closing the distance.
His breathing slowed. “Yeah, I see you, specker,” he said to himself. “Yeah, that’s right, you just bring your fat ass this way. I got a present for you.” He switched his visor to tactical.
Seeing the world through the unenhanced tactical view, Ritz was surrounded by darkness. Looking through his visor using my commandLink, I could make out the trees he used for cover, but I saw them only as textures in the blackness. He held out the RPG. I could not see the tube, just the shape of his arm.
In the distance, the Jackal sped through the forest, dodging obstacles. It juked around trees and skipped over ditches, disappearing briefly behind a hill, then emerging not more than twenty yards from Ritz. He could have hopped out of his hiding hole and popped it. Instead, he waited, letting the vehicle approach.
“That’s right, darlin’. A little closer. A little specking closer.”
The kid was patient. The best Marines are patient.
He didn’t move. The Jackal came within thirty feet of him, dashed right past, and went by unmolested. It streaked away, offering him a clear shot at its tailpipe and turret.
Ritz stepped out from behind his blind and fired.
“Next time watch your ass, boys!” he yelled as he switched to night-for-day vision and sprinted for safety. He was screaming. He was whooping. He ran without breathing, then struggled for air, never looking back to see what his grenade had done. He jumped over a fallen log, cut to the left behind a clump of trees, and yelled, “Hell yeah!” as he scrambled up a small rise.
The Marines he took with him fired RPGs that sailed past him. Ritz did not turn to see what they were shooting at.
“Let’s get the speck out of here!” he screamed to his backup.
“What the speck does it take to kill that specking whorehumper?” asked one of the men.
“More than you’re packing,” Ritz said. He huffed and puffed as he ran, wheezing with each step.
The sound of high-caliber machine guns tore through the forest. A tree off to Ritz’s left splintered and split. He muttered, “Are you trying to shoot me in the back, you bastards?” He spun and fired another RPG without aiming. It hit a tree or a rock and exploded. Ritz turned and continued running into the woods.
The Jackal darted ahead of him, skidding around trees without coming to a stop. Fire flashed from the machine gun in the turret. He should have dived for cover, but Ritz fired another RPG instead, hitting the Jackal above the rear tires. Had it not been for the shields, the Jackal would have exploded. Even with the shields, the percussion of Ritz’s grenade knocked the Jackal for a loop. It spun like a dog chasing its own tail, slid down a rise, and disappeared into the shadows.
“That’s two up your ass,” Ritz screamed as he panted. Then, more quietly, he added, “I got more where that came from.”
He stumbled up a rise. As he ran down the other side, he was surrounded by Marines. He had rejoined us.
“General,” he said over the interLink, fighting to breathe, “General Harris.”
“Colonel,” I said. I did not want him to know I’d been spying on him, so I asked, “Were you able to locate a Jackal?”
“Yes, sir,” he said as he panted. “I took two men with me. We hit it three or four times.”
“Did you destroy it?”
“We couldn’t get past the shields,” he said.
“Good to know,” I said. “Thank you, Colonel.”
Their fighters could have annihilated us. We could not penetrate the shields on their light-armored vehicles. They were using us to test their equipment, and all that remained to be tested was their troops.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
We’d been on the ground for nearly four hours when we reached the municipal spaceport. We came out from the trees, and there it was—a chain-link-wrapped clearing that ran as far as I could see. It sat as flat as a pond and as wide as the plains.
The twenty-foot fence that ran its length posed no challenge. When one of my officers asked if I thought it was electrified, I answered, “Doesn’t matter.”
I pulled the particle-beam pistol from my belt, and shouted, “Stand clear” as I fired at the nearest post. The emerald green beam did not heat or burn the metal post, the beam disrupted it, leaving molten splinters in its place. I aimed at the chain link. It tore like a spiderweb.
Beyond the fence, the spaceport was a patchwork of shadows. The ground was black and smooth like a lake on a dark, still night. No light shone in the windows of the terminal building, but the reflection of the moonlight showed on the glass.
“They’re specking with us, aren’t they, sir?” Ritz asked.
“Colonel,” I said, “they are playing with us the way a misguided feline plays with a rabid mouse. They have no idea what we have in store for them.” I wanted to sound confident, but probably sounded deluded.
I switched frequencies, and said, “Ray, we’re just about at the end of the line here.”
Freeman said, “I was wondering when you’d call.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’ve set two of the detonators.”
“They never found them?” I asked. When Freeman didn’t answer, I mumbled the answer for him, “Apparently not.” Then I said, “I hope you get to the third one fast, the bastards have us bottled in a spaceport.”
Freeman said, “Shouldn’t be long.”
“Let me know,” I said.
“You’ll be the second person to know,” Freeman said, and he signed off. He meant that he would signal Don Cutter first.
The Unifieds had chosen a battlefield designed around our defense. We had long-range weapons, M27s, snipers, and grenadiers with rockets; but we needed cover. Their short-range weapons would not work until they reached the spaceport, a man-made butte in the middle of an asphalt desert. The spaceport was a massive building surrounded by runways, open fields, and parking lots. In that building, we’d have cover.
They would not switch on their shields until they strolled within range of our snipers. The Unifieds knew how long their batteries lasted. The power would spike every time we hit the shields. If we hit them with a steady stream of bullets, the armor might wear out in eight minutes; but that required continuous attack.
If we stalled their charge …if we could keep them from entering the spaceport for forty-five minutes, their armor would run out of power. The flechette guns on their armor were great short-range weapons; but once the
