“We damned well have to,” I said.
“Not so bad, sir. Most of our casualties came from recoilless and mortars. They’ve stopped using them. Probably low on ammunition.”
“Let’s hope they stay that way.” I had another problem. The main defense for the roadblock was mortar fire from the fort. Up above they were running low on mortar shells. In another day we’d be on our own. No point in worrying about it, I decided. We’ll just have to do the best we can.
The next day was the sixth we’d been in the fort. We were low on rations. Down at the roadblock we had nothing to eat but a dried meat that the men called “monkey.” It didn’t taste bad, but it had the peculiar property of expanding when you chewed it, so that after a while it seemed as if you had a mouthful of rubber bands. It was said that Line Marines could march a thousand kilometers if they had coffee, wine, and monkey.
We reached Falkenberg by radio at noon. He was still forty kilometers away, and facing the hardest fighting yet. They had to go through villages practically house by house.
“Can you hold?” he asked me.
“The rest of today and tonight, easily. By noon tomorrow we’ll be out of mortar shells. Sooner, maybe. When that happens, our outpost down at the roadblock will be without support.” I hadn’t told him where I was.
“Can you hold until 1500 hours tomorrow?” he asked.
“The fort will hold. Don’t know about the roadblock.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Falkenberg said. “Good luck.”
“Christian Johnny’ll get us out,” Brady said.
“You know him?”
“Yes, sir. He’ll get us out.”
I wished I was as sure as he was.
* * *
They tried infiltrating during the night. I don’t know how many crept up along the riverbank, but there were a lot of them. Some went on past us. The others moved in on our bunkers. The fighting was hand to hand, with knives and bayonets and grenades doing most of the work, until we got our foxholes clear and I was able to order the men down into them. Then I had Lieberman drop mortar fire in on our own positions for ten minutes. When it lifted, we went out to clear the area.
When morning came we had three more dead, and every man in the section was wounded. I’d got a grenade fragment in my left upper arm just below where the armor left off. It was painful, but nothing to worry about.
There were twenty dead in our area, and bloody trails were leading off where more enemies had crawled away.
An hour after dawn they rushed us again. The fort had few mortar shells left. We called each one in carefully. They couldn’t spare us too much attention, though, because there was a general attack on the fort, as well. When there were moments of quiet in the firing around Fort Beersheba, we could hear more distant sounds to the east. Falkenberg’s column was blasting its way through another village.
Ardwain got it just at noon. A rifle bullet in the neck. It looked bad. Brady dragged him into the main bunker and put a compress on. Ardwain’s breath rattled in his throat, and his mouth oozed blood. That left Roff and Brady as NCOs, and Roff was immobile, with fragments through his left leg.
At 1230 hours we had four effectives, and no fire support from the fort. We’d lost the troops down by the riverbank, and we could hear movement there.
“They’re getting past us, damn it!” I shouted. “All this for nothing! Hartz, get me Lieberman.”
“Zur.” Hartz was working one-handed. His right arm was in shreds. He insisted on staying with me, but I didn’t count him as one of my effectives.
“Sergeant Roszak,” the radio said.
“Where’s Lieberman?”
“Dead, sir. I’m senior NCO.”
“What mortar ammunition have you?”
“Fourteen rounds, sir.”
“Drop three onto the riverbank just beyond us, and stand by to use more.”
“Aye, aye, sir. One moment. There was silence. Then he said, “On the way.”
“How is it up there?”
“We’re fighting at the walls, sir. We’ve lost the north section, but the bunkers are covering that area.”
“Christ. You’ll need the mortars to hold the fort. But there’s no point in holding that fort if the roadblock goes. Stand by to use the last mortar rounds at my command.”
“Aye, aye, sir. We can hold.”
“Sure you can.” Sure.
I looked out through the bunker’s firing slit. There were men coming up the road. Dozens of them. I had one clip left in my rifle, and I began trying to pick them off with slow fire. Hartz used his rifle with his left hand, firing one shot every two seconds, slow, aimed fire.
There were more shots from off to my left. Corporal Brady was in a bunker over there, but his radio wasn’t working. Attackers moved toward his position. I couldn’t hear any others of my command.
Suddenly Brady’s trumpet sounded. The brassy notes cut through the battle noises. He played “To Arms!,” then settled into the Line Marine march. “We’ve left blood in the dirt of twenty-five worlds—”
There was a movement in the bunker. Recruit Dietz, hit twice in the stomach, had dragged himself over to Sergeant Ardwain and found Ardwain’s pistol. He crawled up to the firing slit and began shooting. He coughed blood with each round. Another trooper staggered out of the bush. He reeled like a drunk as he lurched toward the road. He carried a rack of grenades strung around his neck and threw them mechanically, staggering forward and throwing grenades. He had only one arm. He was hit a dozen times and fell, but his arm moved to throw the last grenade before he died.
More attackers moved toward Brady’s bunker. The trumpet call wavered for a moment as Brady fired, and then the notes came as clear as ever.
“Roszak! I’ve got a fire mission,” I said.
“Sir.”
“Let me describe the situation down here.” I gave him the positions of my CP, Brady’s bunker, and the only other one I thought might have any of our troops in it. “Everyplace else is full of hostiles, and they’re getting past us along the riverbank. I want you to drop a couple of mortar rounds forty meters down the road from the CP, just north of the road, but not too far north. Corporal Brady’s in there and it would be a shame to spoil his concert.”
“We hear him up here, sir. Wait one.” There was silence. “On the way.”
The mortar shells came in seconds later. Brady was still playing. I remembered his name now. It was ten years ago on Earth. He’d been a famous man until he dropped out of sight. Roszak had left his mike open, and in the background I could hear the men in the fort cheering wildly.
Roszak’s voice came in my ears. “General order from battalion headquarters, sir. You’re to stay in your bunkers. No one to expose himself. Urgent general order, sir.”
I wondered what the hell Falkenberg was doing giving me general orders, but I used my command set to pass them along. I doubted if anyone heard, but it didn’t matter. No one was going anywhere.
Suddenly the road exploded. The whole distance from fifty meters away down as far as I could see vanished in a line of explosions. They kept coming, pounding the road; then the riverbank was lifted in great clods of mud. The road ahead was torn to bits; then the pieces were lifted by another salvo, and another. I drove into the bottom of the bunker and held my ears while shells dropped all around me.
Finally it lifted. I could hear noises in my phones, but my ears were ringing, and I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t Roszak’s voice. Finally it came through. “Do you need more fire support, Mr. Slater?”
“No. Lord, what shooting—”
“I’ll tell the gunners that,” Falkenberg said. “Hang on, Hal. We’ll be another hour, but you’ll have fire support from now on.”
Outside, Brady’s trumpet sang out another march.
XII
They sent me back to Garrison to get my arm fixed. There’s a fungus infection on Arrarat that makes even minor wounds dangerous. I spent a week in surgery getting chunks cut out of my arm, then another week in regeneration stimulation. I wanted to get back to my outfit, but the surgeon wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted me around to check up on the regrowth.
Sergeant Ardwain was in the next bay. It was going to take a while to get him back together, but he’d be all right. With Lieberman dead, Ardwain would be up for a Centurion’s badges.
It drove me crazy to be in Garrison while my company, minus its only officer and both its senior NCOs, was out at Fort Beersheba. The day they let me out of sick bay I was ready to mutiny, but there wasn’t any transportation, and Major Lorca made it clear that I was to stay in Garrison until the surgeon released me. I went to my quarters in a blue funk.