“Command, this is Alpha Six,” a voice crackled over one of the comm channels. “We need fire support up here! Target coordinates one-one-five by oh-nine-seven, square black two. Repeating . . .”
Chaffee checked the coordinates on his map display, going through the motions mechanically. The CO of Alpha Company was asking for a barrage across the path of the oncoming ANM troops.
Now the time for equivocation was over. And Chaffee knew what he had to do.
He would give the orders, just as Smith-Wentworth had dictated them.
The decision made, Chaffee couldn’t act quickly enough. He reached for his communications board, suddenly determined to act before pangs of conscience overtook him once more. That young lieutenant he had talked to up in the pass, so nervous, so eager to please . . . all the other men he had tried to take care of in his years as the regimental CO . . . ordering their deaths this way was the most difficult thing he’d ever been called upon to do. Yet he really had no choice in the matter. Probably all of them would die anyway, in the face of Deseret’s overwhelming military force. Maybe Chaffee’s treachery today would actually save some lives that would otherwise be lost in a hopeless stand against the odds. . . .
“Battery one, Command,” he rasped. “Fire mission. Coordinates one-one-seven by oh-nine-eight, square black one. Execute!”
“One-one-seven, oh-nine-eight, black one,” a voice answered promptly. “On the way!”
He shuddered as he heard the MMRL open fire, the thirty missiles streaking from their tubes in rapid succession. The coordinates he had given were a few hundred meters closer than the ones Alpha Company had fed him. The barrage would fall on the defenders, not in front of them.
Chaffee could hardly bear the thought of it. Those boys up there looked to him . . .
The renegade thrust the thought from his mind. “Battery four, Command,” he said, tension making his voice harsh. “Fire mission. Coordinates two-four-one by one-eight-three, square red six. Execute!”
“Red six?” a confused voice came back on the line. “That’s the base camp at Alto Blanco, sir!”
“New orders, Captain,” Chaffee said tightly. “We’re going to bring down the whole cliff side and block the pass so they can bring the Terran tank this way. Now carry out the mission, damn it, or I’ll have your ass in a sling!”
“Uh . . . two-four-one, one-eight-three, red six,” the voice quavered. “On . . . on the way!”
Chaffee leaned back in his chair, trying to close his ears to the confused babble erupting from the speakers. The die was cast. For good or ill . . . and Chaffee knew it was for ill. But it was too late for second thoughts now.
“Incoming! Incoming! Oh, God . . . look out!”
Explosions were blossoming all along the line. Major Alfred Kennedy watched in horror as a battered old Sierran APC carrying a handful of Mobile Infantry survivors back toward the safety of the rear erupted in a pillar of smoke and flame. Seemingly in slow motion, bits of armor and debris arced outward, a rain of shattered wreckage that pelted the nearest troops. He saw a seat, probably the gunner’s chair from the ruined turret, falling lazily a few meters away.
And still the missiles fell.
“Command! Command! Abort fire mission!” Kennedy screamed the message into his microphone, but he couldn’t tell if he was still transmitting. “Abort the fire mission! For God’s sake, you’re hitting us!”
He was still shouting when the final missile hit barely ten meters from his trench. A fragment sliced his body almost in half, and Major Alfred Kennedy died without ever knowing the fire mission had been no mistake . . .
“They’ve got the Major!” Lieutenant O’Brien could barely keep control of his voice. “God damn it, they got Major Kennedy!”
“Easy, sir,” Sergeant Jenson said. “Easy . . . If he’s down, and Captain Briggs . . . that makes you the man, Lieutenant.”
O’Brien clutched his battle rifle tight against his chest and tried to fight back the panic that rose somewhere deep in his gut. He had never expected the CANS to ever see real combat, not until the day the invaders had actually landed. And he had never pictured his first combat experience as anything like this horror. Old military trideos had depicted the chaos of battle, had suggested the dangers of “friendly fire,” but he had never really believed any of it.
All that had changed in seconds.
“What . . . what should I do, Jenson?”
Before the sergeant could reply, O’Brien’s command channel came alive. “Command to all units! Command to all units!” It was Colonel Chaffee’s voice, a welcome beacon in the middle of O’Brien’s terror. “Retreat! ~Retreat! Retreat! All units abandon positions and ~retreat! Get the hell out of there. . . .”
Disaster . . . utter, complete disaster. Something must have happened behind the lines to cause all this, something that was forcing Chaffee to completely abandon the pass.
“Alphas! This is O’Brien!” the lieutenant said, activating his own mike. “Orders from Command! Withdraw! On the double, withdraw!”
“Goddamn!” someone said over the line. “What’s ~going on back there?”
“Maybe that big tank went nuts or something,” someone else said. “Never trusted the thing . . .”
“Quiet on the line!” Jenson cut in. “Retreat! Carry out your orders!”
Lieutenant O’Brien scrambled from the trench and ran for the nearest cover to the rear, still clutching the rifle. So far, in his first battle, he hadn’t fired a shot.
“What the hell is going on out there?”
Like the other officers in the command center, David Fife couldn’t answer Coordinator Wilson. Everything had been going so smoothly. Then, in an instant, everything was transformed, but so far no one knew just what was happening out there.
“Coordinator,” General Kyle said formally, looking up from a communications panel. “We can’t raise anyone at Second Montana’s regimental command. They’re off the air. But I’m getting reports from Hot Springs Pass . . . a Captain Holmes who claims he’s taken command of the Mobile Infantry. There are reports the Bolo has fired on Hot Springs Pass. . . .”
“Nonsense!” Fife snapped. “There’s no way . . .”
“Silence!” Wilson said harshly. “Kyle, can you get those people to dig in somehow? If they run, we’re wide open. . . .”
“Without Chaffee to get his people in order, it’s ~going to take more time than we have, Coordinator,” Kyle told him. “Trying to get control over individual tactical units from here. . . .”
Fife shut out the by-play, thinking furiously. Jason couldn’t have been responsible . . .
He crossed to another console. “Command to Unit JSN,” he said quickly. This particular comm circuit was configured to duplicate the functions of the portable communications link in his quarters. It was specifically designed for contact with the Bolo, converting his spoken words into high-speed coded signals only the robotic brain on board the tank could process. “File an immediate VSR! Override priority!”
My Commander’s orders come as missiles fall on my position, and for a period of .0018 seconds my survival center refuses to acknowledge the priority override while I attempt to deal with the unexpected attack. ~Using my Firefinder counterbattery radar system to project the ballistic paths of the incoming warheads back to their launch point, I realize I have been fired upon by batteries identified by IFF signals as friendly units. Is it some trick of the enemy? Or merely an ~accident? Such an error should be impossible, but my files tell me that so-called friendly fire has been a factor in countless battles from earliest history right up to the present.
My responses seem unduly sluggish today. I finally resolve the internal conflict in favor of accepting the Commander’s instructions, knowing that he may be able to explain the situation.
“Unit JSN of the Line filing VSR,” I transmit. “Under attack by apparent friendly fire. Requesting instructions.”
As I finish my transmission I am aware of a mass of rock subsiding from the cliffs above my position, piling up on my deck and turret without inflicting significant damage. The four missiles that have ~impacted close to my position have done only minimal harm to my ablative outer armor, and a quick systems check reveals that I remain at an operating capacity of 99.65 percent. But the sudden change in the tactical situation concerns me.
“Unit JSN of the Line filing VSR,” I repeat 0.015 seconds later. “Under attack by apparent friendly fire. Requesting instructions.”
More missiles fall, and more rock and rubble collapse upon me. And still my Commander doesn’t respond. . . .
Captain David Fife struggled in the grip of two burly Sierran guards as the Bolo’s transmission was ~repeated for the third time. “Damn it, I’ve got to ~answer that!” he said harshly.