—And clicked over to officers’ circuit. “Captain! Captain Blackstone! Urgent!”
“Slow down, Johnnie. Report.”
“‘Frying bacon’ sounds, sir,” I answered, trying desperately to keep my voice steady. “Post twelve at co-ordinates Easter Nine, Square Black One.”
“Easter Nine,” he agreed. “Decibels?”
I looked hastily at the meter on the pickup. “I don’t know, Captain. Off the scale at the max end. It sounds like they’re right under my feet!”
“Good!” He applauded—and I wondered how he could feel that way. “Best news we’ve had today! Now listen, son. Get your lads awake—”
“They are, sir!”
“Very well. Pull back two listeners, have them spot-check around post twelve. Try to figure where the Bugs are going to break out. And stay away from that spot! Understand me?”
“I hear you, sir,” I said carefully. “But I do not understand.”
He sighed. “Johnnie, you’ll turn my hair gray yet. Look, son, we want them to come out, the more the better. You don’t have the firepower to handle them other than by blowing up their tunnel as they reach the surface—and that is the one thing you must not do! If they come out in force, a regiment can’t handle them. But that’s just what the General wants, and he’s got a brigade of heavy weapons in orbit, waiting for it. So you spot that breakthrough, fall back and keep it under observation. If you are lucky enough to have a major breakthrough in your area, your reconnaissance will be patched through all the way to the top. So stay lucky and stay alive! Got it?”
“Yes, sir. Spot the breakthrough. Fall back and avoid contact. Observe and report.”
“Get on it!”
I pulled back listeners nine and ten from the middle stretch of “Bug Boulevard” and had them close in on co-ordinates Easter Nine from right and left, stopping every half mile to listen for “frying bacon.” At the same time I lifted post twelve and moved it toward our rear, while checking for a dying away of the sound.
In the meantime my platoon sergeant was regrouping the platoon in the forward area between the Bug settlement and the crater—all but twelve men who were ground-listening. Since we were under orders not to attack, we both worried over the prospect of having the platoon spread too widely for mutual support. So he rearranged them in a compact line five miles long, with Brumby’s section on the left, nearer the Bug settlement. This placed the men less than three hundred yards apart (almost shoulder to shoulder for cap troopers), and put nine of the men still on listening stations within support distance of one flank or the other. Only the three listeners working with me were out of reach of ready help.
I told Bayonne of the Wolverines and Do Campo of the Head Hunters that I was no longer patrolling and why, and I reported our regrouping to Captain Blackstone.
He grunted. “Suit yourself. Got a prediction on that breakthrough?”
“It seems to center about Easter Ten, Captain, but it is hard to pin down. The sounds are very loud in an area about three miles across—and it seems to get wider. I’m trying to circle it at an intensity level just barely on scale.” I added, “Could they be driving a new horizontal tunnel just under the surface?”
He seemed surprised. “That’s possible. I hope not—we want them to come up.” He added, “Let me know if the center of the noise moves. Check on it.”
“Yes, sir. Captain—”
“Huh? Speak up.”
“You told us not to attack when they break out. If they break out. What are we to do? Are we just spectators?”
There was a longish delay, fifteen or twenty seconds, and he may have consulted “upstairs.” At last he said, “Mr. Rico, you are not to attack at or near Easter Ten. Anywhere else—the idea is to hunt Bugs.”
“Yes, sir,” I agreed happily. “We hunt Bugs.”
“Johnnie!” he said sharply. “If you go hunting medals instead of Bugs—and I find out—you’re going to have a mighty sad-looking Form Thirty-One!”
“Captain,” I said earnestly. “I don’t ever want to win a medal. The idea is to hunt Bugs.”
“Right. Now quit bothering me.”
I called my platoon sergeant, explained the new limits under which we would work, told him to pass the word along and to make sure that each man’s suit was freshly charged, air and power.
“We’ve just finished that, sir. I suggest that we relieve the men with you.” He named three reliefs.
That was reasonable, as my ground listeners had had no time to recharge. But the reliefs he named were all scouts.
Silently I cussed myself for utter stupidity. A scout’s suit is as fast as a command suit, twice the speed of a marauder. I had been having a nagging feeling of something left undone, and had checked it off to the nervousness I always feel around Bugs.
Now I knew. Here I was, ten miles away from my platoon with a party of three men—each in a marauder suit. When the Bugs broke through, I was going to be faced with an impossible decision…unless the men with me could rejoin as fast as I could. “That’s good,” I agreed, “but I no longer need three men. Send Hughes, right away. Have him relieve Nyberg. Use the other three scouts to relieve the listening posts farthest forward.”
“Just Hughes?” he said doubtfully.
“Hughes is enough. I’m going to man one listener myself. Two of us can straddle the area; we know where they are now.” I added, “Get Hughes down here on the bounce.”
For the next thirty-seven minutes nothing happened. Hughes and I swung back and forth along the forward and rear arcs of the area around Easter Ten, listening five seconds at a time, then moving on. It was no longer necessary to seat the microphone in rock; it was enough to touch it to the ground to get the sound of “frying bacon” strong and clear. The noise area expanded but its center did not change. Once I called Captain Blackstone to tell him the sound had abruptly stopped, and again three minutes later to tell him it had resumed; otherwise I used the scouts’ circuit and let my platoon sergeant take care of the platoon and the listening posts near the platoon.
At the end of this time everything happened at once.
A voice called out on the scouts’ circuit, “‘Bacon Fry’! Albert Two!”
I clicked over and called out, “Captain! ‘Bacon Fry’ at Albert Two, Black One!”—clicked over to liaison with the platoons surrounding me: “Liaison flash! ‘Bacon frying’ at Albert Two, Square Black One”—and immediately heard Do Campo reporting: “‘Frying bacon’ sounds at Adolf Three, Green Twelve.”
I relayed that to Blackie and cut back to my own scouts’ circuit, heard: “Bugs! Bugs! HELP!”
“Where?”
No answer. I clicked over. “Sarge! Who reported Bugs?”
He rapped back, “Coming up out of their town—about Bangkok Six.”
“Hit ’em!” I clicked over to Blackie. “Bugs at Bangkok Six, Black One—I am attacking!”
“I heard you order it,” he answered calmly. “How about Easter Ten?”
“Easter Ten is—” The ground fell away under me and I was engulfed in Bugs.
I didn’t know what had happened to me. I wasn’t hurt; it was a bit like falling into the branches of a tree—but those branches were alive and kept jostling me while my gyros complained and tried to keep me upright. I fell ten or fifteen feet, deep enough to be out of the daylight.
Then a surge of living monsters carried me back up into the light—and training paid off; I landed on my feet, talking and fighting: “Breakthrough at Easter Ten—no, Easter Eleven, where I am now. Big hole and they’re pouring up. Hundreds. More than that.” I had a hand flamer in each hand and was burning them down as I reported.
“Get out of there, Johnnie!”
“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 undetermined 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?I
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 in 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 floor.
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 10 per cent of my force at each intersection, mighty soon I would be ten-percented to death.
I decided to keep us together…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.”