Lieutenant, page 26
part #2 of Dirigent Mercenary Corps Series
Fourth platoon was moving past when Captain Orlis passed along the order to fix bayonets. Lon pulled his bayonet from its sheath and attached it to the muzzle of his rifle. The operation took little more than a second.
The nearest enemy-held positions were still a hundred yards away. There was some rifle fire coming from the buildings and from the makeshift ramparts between them, but too little to stop the battalion, and too ineffective to cause the extreme casualties that a stalwart defense would have inflicted.
Let’s get it over with! Lon thought, glancing in the general direction of Captain Orlis. Get up and get in.
“The Calypsans have broken through on the east side,” Orlis said a few seconds later. “They’re reporting a complete breach, but with heavy fighting continuing.”
It was another minute, another round of crawling forward for third platoon, before Orlis returned with the order that Lon had been anticipating. “On your feet! Let’s go. At the double.”
Lon was on his feet almost before the order was out, glancing to either side to make certain that his men were getting up. Then Alpha moved forward at a jog, a disciplined, slow run. The pace was designed to let a man fire his weapon with some effectiveness at targets within a hundred yards, and the enemy was within that range now. As soon as the Dirigenters were on their feet, the volume of fire from the enemy compound increased dramatically. It was not just that the same men started firing more rapidly. Lon was certain that there were more of the enemy shooting than before. They’ve been waiting for this, he thought, feeling his face flush, as if he had embarrassed himself. Waiting for us to give them easy targets.
But the enemy had to present a target in order to go after one. Lon shot at each hint of a Belletiener, spraying freely, no longer holding to the discipline of a three-shot burst. He changed magazines on his rifle; he was fifty yards from the enemy.
There was a doorway in front of Lon. The double doors had been blown out earlier. Pieces of them were visible. Lon aimed directly for that opening, ready to charge in and face whatever he might find. For the moment, he had forgotten the demands of leadership. All he could think of was getting out of the open and closing with the enemy as quickly as possible. His pace increased. He did a lot of running in garrison. As a teenager on Earth, he had thought that he might have championship talent. He very nearly broke into an all-out sprint over the last forty yards.
At the last moment, Phip veered just enough to make Lon break step and slow down. Janno and Dean moved ahead of them, going through the doorway first. One man turned to each side. Lon saw the flaring of muzzle blasts as they scoured the entryway, shooting first. There would be no need to ask questions later.
It was no more than an entryway, sixteen feet wide and twenty long, with doors to either side and a narrow corridor extending to the other side of the building. There were stairs and elevators near the rear. Janno and Dean moved toward the stairs as the rest of their squad came in the doorway behind Lon. They had only a fraction of a second’s warning as a hand grenade bounced down the stairway from the second floor.
“Grenade!” Janno shouted as he and Dean both dived to the side. The rest of the Dirigenters in the foyer also went down—the only recourse any of them had.
The grenade exploded as it hit the fourth step, and that was perhaps all that let anyone in the foyer survive. Most of the shrapnel went up or straight out to the side. The men on the floor were below most of it.
Most of it.
Lon felt hot metal lance his back, through his pack or burrowing under it from the side. The burning sensation was all he felt at first. When debris stopped raining down on him after the blast, he looked around, already starting to get to his feet. A few of his men were quicker, firing rifles up toward the landing on the second floor.
Not everyone was able to get up. Janno remained down. So did Dean. Dav Grott, the acting squad leader, got to his knees, then fell forward again, barely catching himself before his face could hit the floor.
“Phip, take the rest of the squad. Get whoever’s up there,” Lon said. “I’ll be with you as soon as I check on the others.”
Only six men were able to follow Phip up the stairway to the second floor. Lon called the other squad leaders, to check on their situations, and to find one squad to come in immediately to help second. “This is where access to the upper stories is,” he said. “This is where we’ve got to go up.”
There was hand-to-hand combat in the rooms on the first floor that Lon’s men had broken into. A few Belletieners had turned and run when it was clear that their line was about to be overrun. But more stayed and continued to fight.
In the foyer, Lon was amazed that none of his men had been killed by the grenade. Three men—Dav, Janno, and Dean—would need time in a trauma tube—soon. Everyone else had minor wounds. As soon as Lon had helped staunch the bleeding on the seriously wounded, he went on up the stairs. Phip and the rest of the squad were fighting on the second floor.
Lon called the other squad leaders again and told them to hurry. There were enemy soldiers on the upper floors of the building, and second squad needed help.
The squad had not managed to get off the landing on the second floor. One man stood at the stairwell, making certain that no one could drop a grenade from the top story of the building. The others were at doors. They had thrown their own grenades into the adjoining rooms, but there were Belletieners waiting, returning fire—and coming out, ready to engage.
Bayonets and fists. Lon moved into the fray. A few seconds later, part of first squad came up the stairs, and the fight moved from the foyer into a large room at the side. Lon faced off against one soldier—a faceless figure behind a tinted faceplate. The maneuvering was too quick to be thought out in advance. This was where training, and scores of hours drilling the standard tactics of bayonet fighting, paid off. The adversaries thrust and parried, working for the advantage that would mean survival. Lon gritted his teeth and pressed his foe as hard as he could, his goal being to kill, and kill quickly.
The fight ended when Lon’s opponent, taking a step backward, slid on blood and went off balance. Lon reacted instantly, parrying the man’s rifle up and out of line, then thrusting forward, burying his own bayonet in the man’s chest. Lon twisted his rifle as the blade went in, and kept twisting as he pulled it back. He had to drop the man to the floor and put his foot on him to free the bayonet. The man was dead by then.
Another Belletiener moved toward Lon, lowering his rifle as if to fire. But he did not get a shot off. Lon brought his rifle up and pulled the trigger, stopping the enemy soldier and dropping him with at least four hits.
Lon looked around. Phip was still fighting. Lon clicked to Steesen’s radio channel and said, “Drop!” Phip collapsed immediately, and Lon shot his opponent. One shot was all that took, which was fortunate for Phip, because Lon’s magazine was now empty.
The fight on the second floor was over. Lon went out to the hallway. Third and fourth squads had moved to the top floor. They reported that the fighting was over there as well.
For Lon and his men, the second Battle of Oceanview had ended.
26
By noon the fighting was over in both Oceanview and The Cliffs. More than four thousand Belletiener prisoners were taken to a location northwest of the Calypsan capital and forced to build their own POW camp under heavily armed supervision. The Calypsans and Belletieners buried their dead. The mercenaries who had died were taken up to their ships to be returned home for burial. The wounded were treated. The remaining soldiers of the 7th Regiment rested.
Four days later, after the government of Belletiene continued to refuse to acknowledge any radio transmissions from Calypso, Colonel Arnold Gaffney took the Dirigenter fleet to Belletiene’s territorial space and put the ships in a parking orbit over the world’s major population centers.
From three hundred miles directly above the capital of Belletiene, Gaffney broadcast his ultimatums. Key to forcing a response was his threat to bombard that city and destroy any Belletiener spacecraft in the system. Gaffney’s message required the Belletiener government to send delegates with plenipotentiary authority to conclude a treaty of peace with Calypso. Gaffney went beyond his authority when he threatened Belletiene with the unlimited use of the Dirigent Mercenary Corps to force compliance and insure that Belletiene adhered to the treaty that he was ready to dictate.
“I was beyond caring about such delicacies,” Gaffney said in his final report on the Calypso contract. “Seventh Regiment had suffered a total of more than four hundred men killed on Calypso, with an additional one hundred and twenty-seven men injured severely enough to require lengthy regeneration and rehabilitation periods. While I accept my share of responsibility for the extent of our casualties, my state of mind at the time was such that I could think of little beyond the fact that it was the worst casualty count that any regiment of the Corps has suffered since the Wellman debacle—and the unmistakable necessity of insuring that Belletiene would not attempt a third invasion of Calypso while my men were still on that world.”
By the time 2nd Regiment arrived to reinforce 7th, the treaty between Calypso and Belletiene had been signed, all prisoners had been repatriated, and Belletiene had made the first installment on a staggering reparations bill that Colonel Gaffney had insisted upon. That payment included the funds to pay off Calypso’s full contract with the Corps—which Gaffney promptly accepted and transferred to his ship.
Three days after the arrival of 2nd Regiment, Gaffney and his men returned to their transports and started for home. Before they left, Gaffney sent an MR ahead, informing the Council of Regiments of their expected date of arrival … and included his resignation from the Corps—to avoid the embarrassment of being forced to resign when a court of inquiry or court-martial finished examining his decisions on Calypso.
Rick Shelley, Lieutenant
