"We're at the base of the big rock," Mac's voice came softly.
Sinklar checked the position. "Rebels are seventy-five meters ahead of you on the ridge. Can you see the flattopped pine from your position?"
"Roger."
"They're just on the other side of that. I make it five Rebels with a mortar. They have a rat hole there, so be careful."
"Roger."
"Gretta, continue your advance. Careful now. See if you can get your hands on that mortar and the rounds to go with it. Be fun to shoot some of their stuff back at them. Gods know, our side doesn't supply us half of what we need."
"You've got it Sink. It'll be our pleasure!"
A POP-BOOM! sounded from back in the direction of the perimeter. The nightly shelling came right on schedule.
Also according to plan, he could hear the muted kackakacka of Shiksta's ordnance returning fire and making a racket to cover the advance of Sinklar's attack.
More movement.
"Hold!" Sinklar called. "Rotted Gods! There's ten, twenty, no, make that fifty, hell, a hundred or more!"
"Where?" Mac demanded.
"Coming up the crest of the ridge. They must have been massing down there on the other side. Looks like just small arms. Wait, there's a four-man portable blaster with a genset. They're moving up. Looks like they're. Yeah, okay, they tied up with the mortar crew. I don't see any advance party out. They must think we're still back in camp hiding in our hoes."
Stunned, he watched the massing troops. What should they do? Pull back? The odds began stacking higher and higher against them. What did it mean? Why were there… A major strike! The Targans were going to make an attempt to overrun the pass. Experiencing tendrils of uncertainty, Sinklar made up his mind.
His voice went dry. "Hang tight, people. Let them advance. We've got surprise and position; they'll be skylined on the ridge."
"Roger," Gretta and Mac answered in unison.
Listen to the confidence in their voices. Rotted souls, they believe in me. All that trust. What if I'm wrong? What if I lose them through some foolish error. some arrogant decision?
Behind him the pops and bangs of the bombardment had grown in pace, enough to trigger that sense of something gone wrong. Sinklar opened his mike again. "Ayms, you been listening?"
"Roger."
"Be ready. I think you're about to take a major hit from the Rebels." He chewed his lower lip, considering the risks. "Ayms, can you and the troops hang on? If you can hold out for an hour, I think we can take this bunch, double back, and catch your assault from the rear. We can break these guys."
Silence stretched for a long minute before Ayms' voice came back. "Sink? We talked it over. We'll hold the fort. I think we could keep them out with half the men we've
got now. Hauws says the soil organisms here are making the troops meaner. We'l keep them from being bored. Keep in touch." "Thanks, Ayms."
Sinklar smiled into the night, checking on the advance of the Rebel strike force. "We can see them." Gretta sounded hoarse. "Hang on," Sinklar whispered, noting where Gretta's people waited in relation to the advancing Rebels. Fear made his bowels turn runny. How good was the Rebel night vision gear? Would they see Gretta's people hiding in the rocks?
"Got them Sink," Mac whispered. "We're spreading out. working up. We'll wait for Gretta to open the ball unless some guy walks down on top of us."
Sinklar's heart began to pound. Adrenaline rushed to make his arms feel light as he pulled his assault rifle up and squinted through the scope. There're too many of them. This is suicide! Checking the advance, they were no more than sixty meters from his position, well into the jaws of the trap. Too late. Can't pull out. They'll see us any second. "Hit them," he gritted into the mike, hating himself. "Fire!" He heard Gretta's order, terse and crisp. Sinklar triggered his blaster, lacing the advancing Rebels, heart in his throat.
Once green troops Second Section had turned deadly. A week of dirty battle had honed them and steeled their nerves. Blaster fire raked the advancing Rebels, catching them completely by surprise. At the same time, eyes dazzled by the brightness in the starlight scope, he could see three figures in combat armor sprinting for the mortar crew. His heart filled with warm pride. Gretta hadn't forgotten the mortar.
The Rebels were firing back ineffectually as they tried to compensate for their confusion and the havoc wreaked by Gretta's devastating fire. Sinklar almost whooped when the Rebels broke and ran — right down the throat of MacRuder's B Group. From there it turned into a massacre. "Ayms?" Sinklar called into the mike. "Are you there?" A long silence was punctuated by the sounds of violent combat from behind him.
His heart skipped when Ayms' voice finally answered, high-pitched; "Rotted Gods, Sink! There's a million of them out there! The rocks are literally too hot to touch — through battle armor no less. We're taking that much fire!"
"Are you holding?" Sinklar's belly churned and his breathing strained as sweat began to bead inside his helmet. "Can you hold, Ayms?"
"How the hell do I know? Hell, yes! I think. Barely. I didn't know we'd have
to fight off half of Targa! Get your ass back here!" A pause. "Uh, sir." It came contritely and Sinklar laughed, partially from hysterical relief.
"Advance and clean up," he ordered A and B Groups. "Ayms is in big trouble."
"Roger," Gretta called. "We're moving on the ridge now. Not much left. We're shooting the dead to make sure they stay that way. These guys have Regan blasters, so we're packing equipment as we go."
"Good thinking. Detail a team to bring that four-man gun along. Mac? How you doing?"
"We're moving up the ridge Sink. We got most of the final resistance. What we didn't get ran like rock-foxes. Shot most of them in the back in fact. They were covering and our guys just let them walk up and cut them down."
Sinklar nodded, suffering that curious elation of victory coupled with dread that his comand was dying behind him.
He shouldn't have worried. Either the Rebels knew less about war than the Regan army did, or else they got confused and botched the battle plan. Moving Groups A and B, Sinklar did the impossible that night. He managed to trap nearly a thousand Rebel troops between his fortified camp on one side, a cliff on the other, and the sheer mountain flank on the third. Placing his two crack Groups on a commanding ridge to fire into the defenseless Rebel rear, Sinklar blocked the exit. He cut them to pieces with a neatly coordinated assault from his camp while A and B held off three suicidal counterattacks by the frantic Rebels.
or long bloody hours, blaster bolts streaked violently through the blackness. The air hummed and jumped with pulse fire. Trees flamed in torches of yellow-orange while men and women screamed and died in macabre firelight. Fragments of hot rock and blasted dirt jumped and pattered
in the din. A brush fire raged through the fight to fry the wounded, their screams hideous in the night. To the? shocked combatants it would have been no surprise had they learned that the tortured hell of the Rotted Gods had I broken loose in the universe of men.
Chapter 12
So cold. So black. Veteran of a thousand battles, fear ran bright along Staffa's spine as he floated through the stygian sewer. His flaiing hand slipped off a rung as cold panic gripped him. Better to have let them kill him with the collar than to die in here. Something smooth and rubbery — like skin — slid against his chest and his face popped out into air. His head at the top of the bubble, sewage rippled around his chin. Not much room — and someone else was taking most of it.
"Scared hell out of me!" a woman's voice told him in the wretched air. She coughed. "Brak, that you?"