Free Until Relieved by Rick Shelley Page A

Maison. The enemy fighters proved to be as radar-neutral as the Wasp, and they appeared to match the Accord's premier fighter in speed and maneuverability as well. The Wasps were caught by surprise. The first hint that some of them had of enemy aircraft was when they found that their planes were on the wrong end of a target lock.
    The aircraft fought at distances as great as eight kilometers. Still, the maneuvering as pilots sought to line up on an enemy—or tried to get free of a hostile target lock—was as frantic as any dogfight fought in the infancy of atmospheric flight, but at much greater speeds. Those Accord pilots who were running low on power for their antigrav drives had to move fast or risk being destroyed when they landed to replace batteries.
    Two Wasps were dispatched to provide cover for the battery of Havocs that had come under attack. Four Schlinal Boem fighters pursued them. That spread the aerial battle over a lot more of Porter's sky.
    Though the brunt of the initial Hegemony counterattack fell on the Havocs and Wasps, the infantry was not spared. Enemy fighters made strafing and bombing runs, cycling from one target to another. But the 13th fought back. The heavy weapons squads brought their Vrerch missiles into play almost instantly. The television-guided Vrerch could be used surface to surface, or surface to air. On the ground, the missiles were fitted with armor-piercing warheads to penetrate enemy armor. But there were also explosive warheads that were more than sufficient to blow a fighter out of the air.
    This first air engagement did not last long. It was over, for all practical purposes, in less than five minutes. After making their strikes, the Schlinal fighters veered away. Accord Wasps followed in pursuit, for a time, then returned to the landing zones to replenish power and munitions while they could. Four Hegemony Boems were downed, either by Wasps or by ground-fired Vrerchs. But three Wasps were also lost in the encounter, bringing the 13th's total losses for the first three hours to four—out of twenty-four.
    On the ground...
    —|—
    Joe Baerclau and his men had not reached their positions on the perimeter by the time the Schlinal air attack started. The squad's first warning of the enemy attack came over their helmet radios, an anonymously screamed alert over the "all-hands" channel, while they were crossing the densest part of the forest. The canopy overhead was so thick that they could see little more than an occasional hint of sky.
    Even though they could neither see nor hear any approaching enemy planes, the seven men went down immediately, each of them sheltering next to the ground cone of a large tree. The basic problem with that tactic was that they had no sure way to know which side of the tree to hide behind, which direction the enemy might come from.
    —Until they saw a pattern of bullets erupt through the trees and throw up spatters of moss and dirt. The sound of gunfire followed the bullets. There was no engine noise, not from an antigravity drive airplane. Leaves and small branches fell as the slugs raced from west to east. Those men who had taken cover on the wrong side of the cones scurried to correct their mistake. Several of them raised their rifles, looking for something to shoot at, but the forest canopy was too heavy. A zipper would not have brought down a fighter in any case, save by the wildest luck, and none of the men in Joe's squad were armed with Vrerch missile launchers.
    What the hell do we do now? Joe asked himself. If they could not fight back, and hiding didn't look like much of an option, what could they do?
    "Lieutenant?" he asked on his link to Keye.
    "Where are you and what's your condition?" Keye replied.
    "About two-hundred meters from you, I think. So far, nobody's been hit, but something strafed right on past us a few seconds ago."
    "Get back as best you can. The Heggies finally came out."
    "Mudders too?" Joe asked.
    "Not yet."
    Joe switched to