CHAPTER 13 4 страница

" Wilco! " —and I started to jump.

And stopped. Checked the jump in time, stopped flaming, and really looked—for I suddenly realized that I ought to be dead. " Correction, " I said, looking and hardly believing. " Breakthrough at Easter Eleven is a feint. No warriors. "

" Repeat. "

" Easter Eleven, Black One. Breakthrough here is entirely by workers so far. No warriors. I am surrounded by Bugs and they are still pouring out, but not a one of them is armed and those nearest me all have typical worker features. I have not been attacked. " I added, " Captain, do you think this could be just a diversion? With their real breakthrough to come somewhere else? "

" Could be, " he admitted. " Your report is patched through right to Division, so let them do the thinking. Stir around and check what you've reported. Don't assume that they are all workers -- you may find out the hard way. "

" Right, Captain. " I jumped high and wide, intending to get outside that mass of harmless but loathsome monsters.

That rocky plain was covered with crawly black shapes in all directions. I overrode my jet controls and increased the jump, calling out, " Hughes! Report! "

" Bugs, Mr. Rico! Zillions of ‘em! I'm a-burnin' ‘em down! "

" Hughes, take a close look at those Bugs. Any of them fighting back? Aren't they all workers? "

" Uh—" I hit the ground and bounced again. He went on, " Hey! You're right, sir! How did you know? "

" Rejoin your squad, Hughes. " I clicked over. " Captain, several thousand Bugs have exited near here from an unestimated number of holes. I have not been attacked. Repeat, I have not been attacked at all. If there are any warriors among them, they must be holding their fire and using workers as camouflage. "

He did not answer.

There was an extremely brilliant flash far off to my left, followed at once by one just like it but farther away to my right front; automatically I noted time and bearings. " Captain Blackstone answer! " At the top of my jump I tried to pick out his beacon, but that horizon was cluttered by low hills in Square Black Two.

I clicked over and called out, " Sarge! Can you relay to the Captain for me? "

At that very instant my platoon sergeant's beacon blinked out.

I headed on that bearing as fast as I could push my suit. I had not been watching my display closely; my platoon sergeant had the platoon and I had been busy, first with ground-listening and, most lately, with a few hundred Bugs. I had suppressed all but the non-com's beacons to allow me to see better.

I studied the skeleton display, picked out Brumby and Cunha, their squad leaders and section chasers. " Cunha! Where's the platoon sergeant? "

" He's reconnoitering a hole, sir. "

" Tell him I'm on my way, rejoining. " I shifted circuits without waiting. " First platoon Blackguards to second platoon—answer! "

" What do you want? " Lieutenant Khoroshen growled.

" I can't raise the Captain. "

" You won't, he's out. "

" Dead? "

" No. But he's lost power—so he's out. "

" Oh. Then you're company commander? "

" All right, all right, so what? Do you want help? "

" Uh... no. No, sir. "

" Then shut up, " Khoroshen told me, " until you do need help. We've got more than we can handle here. "

" Okay. " I suddenly found that I had more than I could handle. While reporting to Khoroshen, I shifted to full display and short range, as I was almost closed with my platoon—and now I saw my first section disappear one by one, Brumby's beacon disappearing first.

" Cunha! What's happening to the first section? "

His voice sounded strained. " They are following the platoon sergeant down. "

If there's anything in the book that covers this, I don't know what it is. Had Brumby acted without orders? Or had he been given orders I hadn't heard? Look, the man was already down a Bug hole, out of sight and hearing -- is this a time to go legal? We would sort such things out tomorrow. If any of us had a tomorrow—

" Very well, " I said. " I'm back now. Report. " My last jump brought me among them; I saw a Bug off to my right and I got him before I hit. No worker, this—it had been firing as it moved.

" I've lost three men, " Cunha answered, gasping. " I don't know what Brumby lost. They broke out three places at once—that's when we took the casualties. But we're mopping them—"

A tremendous shock wave slammed me just as I bounced again, slapped me sideways. Three minutes thirty-seven seconds -- call it thirty miles. Was that our sappers " putting down their corks"? " First section! Brace yourselves for another shock wave! " I landed sloppily, almost on top of a group of three or four Bugs. They weren't dead but they weren't fighting; they just twitched. I donated them a grenade and bounced again. " Hit ‘em now! " I called out. " They're groggy. And mind that next—"

The second blast hit as I was saying it. It wasn't as violent. " Cunha! Call off your section. And everybody stay on the bounce and mop up. "

The call-off was ragged and slow—too many missing files as I could see from my physicals display. But the mop-up was precise and fast. I ranged around the edge and got half a dozen Bugs myself—the last of them suddenly became active just before I flamed it. Why did concussion daze them more than it did us? Because they were unarmored? Or was it their brain Bug, somewhere down below, that was dazed?

The call-off showed nineteen effectives, plus two dead, two hurt, and three out of action through suit failure—and two of these latter Navarre was repairing by vandalizing power units from suits of dead and wounded. The third suit failure was in radio & radar and could not be repaired, so Navarre assigned the man to guard the wounded, the nearest thing to pickup we could manage until we were relieved.

In the meantime I was inspecting, with Sergeant Cunha, the three places where the Bugs had broken through from their nest below. Comparison with the sub map showed, as one could have guessed, that they had cut exits at the places where their tunnels were closest to the surface.

One hole had closed; it was a heap of loose rock. The second one did not show Bug activity; I told Cunha to post a lance and a private there with orders to kill single Bugs, close the hole with a bomb if they started to pour out it's all very well for the Sky Marshal to sit up there and decide that holes must not be closed, but I had a situation, not a theory.

Then I looked at the third hole, the one that had swallowed up my platoon sergeant and half my platoon.

Here a Bug corridor came within twenty feet of the surface and they had simply removed the roof for about fifty feet. Where the rock went, what caused that " frying bacon" noise while they did it, I could not say. The rocky roof was gone and the sides of the hole were sloped and grooved. The map showed what must have happened; the other two holes came up from small side tunnels, this tunnel was part of their main labyrinth -- so the other two had been diversions and their main attack had come from here.

Can those Bugs see through solid rock?

Nothing was in sight down that hole, neither Bug nor human. Cunha pointed out the direction the second section had gone. It had been seven minutes and forty seconds since the platoon sergeant had gone down, slightly over seven since Brumby had gone after him. I peered into the darkness, gulped and swallowed my stomach. " Sergeant, take charge of your section, " I said, trying to make it sound cheerful. " If you need help, call Lieutenant Khoroshen. "

" Orders, sir? "

" None. Unless some come down from above. I'm going down and find the second section -- so I may be out of touch for a while. " Then I jumped down into the hole at once, because my nerve was slipping.

Behind me I heard: " Section! "

" First squad! " —" Second squad! " —" Third squad! "

" By squads! Follow me! " —and Cunha jumped down, too.

It's not nearly so lonely that way.

I had Cunha leave two men at the hole to cover our rear, one on the floor of the tunnel, one at surface level. Then I led them down the tunnel the second section had followed, moving as fast as possible—which wasn't fast as the roof of the tunnel was right over our heads. A man can move in sort of a skating motion in a powered suit without lifting his feet, but it is neither easy nor natural; we could have trotted without armor faster.

Snoopers were needed at once—whereupon we confirmed something that had been theorized: Bugs see by infrared. That dark tunnel was well lighted when seen by snoopers. So far it had no special features, simply glazed rock walls arching over a smooth, level door.

We came to a tunnel crossing the one we were in and I stopped short of it. There are doctrines for how you should dispose a strike force underground -- but what good are they? The only certainty was that the man who had written the doctrines had never himself tried them... because, before Operation Royalty, nobody had come back up to tell what had worked and what had not.

One doctrine called for guarding every intersection such as this one. But I had already used two men to guard our escape hole; if I left l0 per cent of my force at each intersection, mighty soon I would be ten-percented to death.

I decided to keep us together... and decided, too, that none of us would be captured. Not by Bugs. Far better a nice, clean real estate deal... and with that decision a load was lifted from my mind and I was no longer worried.

I peered cautiously into the intersection, looked both ways. No Bugs.

So I called out over the non-coms' circuit: " Brumby! "

The result was startling. You hardly hear your own voice when using suit radio, as you are shielded from your output. But here, underground in a network of smooth corridors, my output came back to me as if the whole complex were one enormous wave guide:

" BRRRRUMMBY! "

My ears rang with it.

And then rang again: " MR. RRRICCCO! "

" Not so loud, " I said, trying to talk very softly myself. " Where are you? "

Brumby answered, not quite so deafeningly, " Sir, I don't know. We're lost. "

" Well, take it easy. We're coming to get you. You can't be far away. Is the platoon sergeant with you? "

" No, sir. We never—"

" Hold it. " I clicked in my private circuit. " Sarge—"

" I read you, sir. " His voice sounded calm and he was holding the volume down. " Brumby and I are in radio contact but we have not been able to make rendezvous. "

" Where are you? "

He hesitated slightly. " Sir, my advice is to make rendezvous with Brumby's section—then return to the surface. "

" Answer my question. "

" Mr. Rico, you could spend a week down here and not find me... and I am not able to move. You must—"

" Cut it, Sarge! Are you wounded? "

" No, sir, but—"

" Then why can't you move? Bug trouble? "

" Lots of it. They can't reach me now... but I can't come out. So I think you had better—"

" Sarge, you're wasting time! I am certain you know exactly what turns you took. Now tell me, while I look at the map. And give me a vernier reading on your D. R. tracer. That's a direct order. Report. "

He did so, precisely and concisely. I switched on my head lamp, flipped up the snoopers, and followed it on the map. " All right, " I said presently.

" You're almost directly under us and two levels down -- and I know what turns to take. We'll be there as soon as we pick up the second section. Hang on. " I clicked over. " Brumby—"

" Here, sir. "

" When you came to the first tunnel intersection, did you go right, left, or straight ahead? "

" Straight ahead, sir. "

" Okay. Cunha, bring ‘em along. Brumby, have you got Bug trouble? "

" Not now, sir. But that's how we got lost. We tangled with a bunch of them... and when it was over, we were turned around. "

I started to ask about casualties, then decided that bad news could wait; I wanted to get my platoon together and get out of there. A Bug town with no Bugs in sight was somehow more upsetting than the Bugs we had expected to encounter. Brumby coached us through the next two choices and I tossed tanglefoot bombs down each corridor we did not use. " Tanglefoot" is a derivative of the nerve gas we had been using on Bugs in the past—instead of killing, it gives any Bug that trots through it a sort of shaking palsy. We had been equipped with it for this one operation, and I would have swapped a ton of it for a few pounds of the real stuff. Still, it might protect our flanks.

In one long stretch of tunnel I lost touch with Brumby -- some oddity in reflection of radio waves, I guess, for I picked him up at the next intersection.

But there he could not tell me which way to turn. This was the place, or near the place, where the Bugs had hit them.

And here the Bugs hit us.

I don't know where they came from. One instant everything was quiet.

Then I heard the cry of " Bugs! Bugs! " from back of me in the column, I turned -- and suddenly Bugs were everywhere. I suspect that those smooth walls are not as solid as they look; that's the only way I can account for the way they were suddenly all around us and among us.

We couldn't use flamers, we couldn't use bombs; we were too likely to hit each other. But the Bugs didn't have any such compunctions among themselves if they could get one of us. But we had hands and we had feet—

It couldn't have lasted more than a minute, then there were no more Bugs, just broken pieces of them on the door... and four cap troopers down.

One was Sergeant Brumby, dead. During the ruckus the second section had rejoined. They had been not far away, sticking together to keep from getting further lost in that maze, and had heard the fight. Hearing it, they had been able to trace it by sound, where they had not been able to locate us by radio.

Cunha and I made certain that our casualties were actually dead, then consolidated the two sections into one of four squads and down we went -- and found the Bugs that had our platoon sergeant besieged.

That fight didn't last any time at all, because he had warned me what to expect. He had captured a brain Bug and was using its bloated body as a shield. He could not get out, but they could not attack him without (quite literally) committing suicide by hitting their own brain.

We were under no such handicap; we hit them from behind.

Then I was looking at the horrid thing he was holding and I was feeling exultant despite our losses, when suddenly I heard close up that " frying bacon" noise. A big piece of roof fell on me and Operation Royalty was over as far as I was concerned.

I woke up in bed and thought that I was back at O. C. S. and had just had a particularly long and complicated Bug nightmare. But I was not at O. C. S.; I was in a temporary sickbay of the transport Argonne, and I really had had a platoon of my own for nearly twelve hours.

But now I was just one more patient, suffering from nitrous oxide poisoning and overexposure to radiation through being out of armor for over an hour before being retrieved, plus broken ribs and a knock in the head which had put me out of action.

It was a long time before I got everything straight about Operation Royalty and some of it I'll never know. Why Brumby took his section underground, for example. Brumby is dead and Naidi bought the farm next to his and I'm simply glad that they both got their chevrons and were wearing them that day on Planet P when nothing went according to plan.

I did learn, eventually, why my platoon sergeant decided to go down into that Bug town. He had heard my report to Captain Blackstone that the " major breakthrough" was actually a feint, made with workers sent up to be slaughtered. When real warrior Bugs broke out where he was, he had concluded (correctly and minutes sooner than Staff reached the same conclusion) that the Bugs were making a desperation push, or they would not expend their workers simply to draw our fire.

He saw that their counterattack made from Bug town was not in sufficient force, and concluded that the enemy did not have many reserves— and decided that, at this one golden moment, one man acting alone might have a chance of raiding, finding " royalty" and capturing it. Remember, that was the whole purpose of the operation; we had plenty of force simply to sterilize Planet P, but our object was to capture royalty castes and to learn how to go down in. So he tried it, snatched that one moment—and succeeded on both counts.

It made it " mission accomplished" for the First Platoon of the Blackguards. Not very many other platoons, out of many, many hundreds, could say that; no queens were captured (the Bugs killed them first) and only six brains. None of the six were ever exchanged, they didn't live long enough. But the Psych Warfare boys did get live specimens, so I suppose Operation Royalty was a success.

My platoon sergeant got a field commission. I was not offered one (and would not have accepted) -- but I was not surprised when I learned that he had been commissioned. Cap'n Blackie had told me that I was getting " the best sergeant in the fleet" and I had never had any doubt that Blackie's opinion was correct. I had met my platoon sergeant before. I don't think any other Blackguard knew this—not from me and certainly not from him. I doubt if Blackie himself knew it. But I had known my platoon sergeant since my first day as a boot.

His name is Zim.

My part in Operation Royalty did not seem a success to me. I was in the Argonne more than a month, first as a patient, then as an unattached casual, before they got around to delivering me and a few dozen others to Sanctuary; it gave me too much time to think—mostly about casualties, and what a generally messed-up job I had made of my one short time on the ground as platoon leader. I knew I hadn't kept everything juggled the way the Lieutenant used to why, I hadn't even managed to get wounded still swinging;

I had let a chunk of rock fall on me.

And casualties—I didn't know how many there were; I just knew that when I closed ranks there were only four squads where I had started with six. I didn't know how many more there might have been before Zim got them to the surface, before the Blackguards were relieved and retrieved.

I didn't even know whether Captain Blackstone was still alive (he was in fact he was back in command about the time I went underground) and I had no idea what the procedure was if a candidate was alive and his examiner was dead. But I felt that my Form Thirty-One was sure to make me a buck sergeant again. It really didn't seem important that my math books were in another ship.

Nevertheless, when I was let out of bed the first week I was in the Argonne, after loafing and brooding a day I borrowed some books from one of the junior officers and got to work. Math is hard work and it occupies your mind—and it doesn't hurt to learn all you can of it, no matter what rank you are; everything of any importance is founded on mathematics.

When I finally checked in at O. C. S. and turned in my pips, I learned that I was a cadet again instead of a sergeant. I guess Blackie gave me the benefit of the doubt.

My roommate, Angel, was in our room with his feet on the desk—and in front of his feet was a package, my math books. He looked up and looked surprised. " Hi, Juan! We thought you had bought it! "

" Me? The Bugs don't like me that well. When do you go out? "

" Why, I've been out, " Angel protested. " Left the day after you did, made three drops and been back a week. What took you so long? "

" Took the long way home. Spent a month as a passenger. "

" Some people are lucky. What drops did you make? "

" Didn't make any, " I admitted.

He stared. " Some people have all the luck! "

Perhaps Angel was right; eventually I graduated. But he supplied some of the luck himself, in patient tutoring. I guess my " luck" has usually been people—Angel and Jelly and the Lieutenant and Carl and Lieutenant Colonel Dubois, yes and my father, and Blackie... and Brumby... and Ace—and always Sergeant Zim. Brevet Captain Zim, now, with permanent rank of First Lieutenant. It wouldn't have been right for me to have wound up senior to him.

Bennie Montez, a classmate of mine, and I were at the Fleet landing field the day after graduation, waiting to go up to our ships. We were still such brand-new second lieutenants that being saluted made us nervous and I was covering it by reading the list of ships in orbit around Sanctuary—a list so long that it was clear that something big was stirring, even though they hadn't seen fit to mention it to me. I felt excited. I had my two dearest wishes, in one package—posted to my old outfit and while my father was still there, too. And now this, whatever it was, meant that I was about to have the polish put on me by " makee-learnee" under Lieutenant Jelal, with some important drop coming up.

I was so full of it all that I couldn't talk about it, so I studied the lists. Whew, what a lot of ships! They were posted by types, too many to locate otherwise. I started reading off the troop carriers, the only ones that matter to an M. I.

There was the Mennerheim! Any chance of seeing Carmen? Probably not, but I could send a dispatch and find out.

Big ships -- the new Valley Forge and the new Ypres, Merathon, El Alamein, Iwo, Gallipoli, Leyte, Marne, Tours, Gettysburg, Hastings, Alamo, Waterloo—all places where mud feet had made their names to shine.

Little ships, the ones named for foot sloggers: Horatius, Alvin York, Swamp Fox, the Rog herself, bless her heart, Colonel Bowie, Devereux, Vercingetorix, Sandino, Aubrey Cousens, Kamehameha, Audie Murphy, Xenophon, Aguinaldo—

I said, " There ought to be one named Magsaysay. "

Bennie said, " What? "

" Ramon Magsaysay, " I explained. " Great man, great soldier – probably be chief of psychological warfare if he were alive today. Didn't you ever study any history? "

" Well, " admitted Bennie, " I learned that Simon Bolivar built the Pyramids, licked the Armada, and made the first trip to the Moon. "

" You left out marrying Cleopatra. "

" Oh, that. Yup. Well, I guess every country has its own version of history. "

" I'm sure of it. " I added something to myself and Bennie said, " What did you say? "

" Sorry, Bernardo. Just an old saying in my own language. I suppose you could translate it, more or less, as: ‘Home is where the heart is. ' "

" But what language was it? "

" Tagalog. My native language. "

" Don't they talk Standard English where you come from? "

" Oh, certainly. For business and school and so forth. We just talk the old speech around home a little. Traditions. You know. "

" Yeah, I know. My folks chatter in Espanol the same way. But where do you—" The speaker started playing " Meadowland"; Bennie broke into a grin. " Got a date with a ship! Watch yourself, fellow! See you. "

" Mind the Bugs. " I turned back and went on reading ships' names: Pal Maleter, Montgomery, Tchaka, Geronimo—

Then came the sweetest sound in the world: " —shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young! "

I grabbed my kit and hurried. " Home is where the heart is" —I was going home.