Starfist: Firestorm by David Sherman & Dan Cragg Page A

through it again in slo-mo, comparing it with what he saw in his and MacLeash’s infrared views. What he found made him swear softly: more than a hundred vehicles were heading toward Company L’s position. Half of them were troop-carrying lorries. The other half were armored combat vehicles. The infrared views from the orbiting UAVs showed even more vehicles behind them.

CHAPTER TEN

    Captain Conorado glanced at the brief visual UAV 1 had acquired under the canopy, and at the infrared feeds from the orbiting UAVs, juddering as the UAVs maneuvered to avoid the streams of fléchettes that speared out of the canopy. The armored vehicles he saw were smaller than the Teufelpanzers 34th FIST had faced on Diamunde, and had no main gun turrets. Instead, their fronts sloped sharply backward to a flat top; their sides also sloped, though less sharply. Three weapons poked out of the front glasis: a small-bore cannon and two fléchette guns, all on flexible mounts that allowed them a great range of fire. Another fléchette gun was gimbal-mounted on the top; most of the vehicles had a soldier standing in a hatch on top, manning the gimbal-mounted fléchette guns. Conorado almost instantaneously saw the implications of the display.
    “Lima One, Lima Two, this is Lima Six Actual,” he said into the company command circuit. “Look alive. Bad guys, six hundred meters into the trees. Lima Three, the bad guys are headed toward your flank, shift squads as necessary to repel. All Lima Actuals, patch into UAV feed.” Then he reported the vehicular movement to battalion headquarters.
    “It looks like you’ve done everything you can to prepare with what you’ve got,” Commander van Winkle said when he got Conorado’s report. “If I decide you need it, I’ll try to divert a platoon from either Kilo or Mike to reinforce you. In the meanwhile, I’ll contact FIST and request air support.” He didn’t mention that he wished the three FISTs had brought along their artillery batteries and Dragons. But then, nobody had expected the amount of force the Coalition was bringing against the Marine raid-in-force. What he did say was, “The prisoners are being boarded on hoppers for transit to the landing beach. As soon as the hoppers return, we’ll be able to begin withdrawal.” He signed off.
    Commander van Winkle hadn’t had to mention the lack of artillery or Dragons to Captain Conorado; the Company L commander was fully aware of the lack, and the sound reason for leaving the heavy equipment behind. The raid was supposed to be a quick in-and-out, and artillery—even towed by the Dragons—would have slowed things down. Conorado also knew that Kilo Company was helping 17th FIST, and thought Mike Company was fully involved with evacuating the captured members of the Coalition government and other prisoners. So, unless some of the Raptors of the FISTs’ air squadrons could be diverted from their current operations, Company L was on its own against the rapidly approaching vehicles and the infantry half of them carried. He wished he knew what kind of armor the fighting vehicles had; his company didn’t have any armor-killer weapons. If the armor wasn’t too heavy, the guns of the company’s assault platoon, even the guns of the blaster platoons, should be able to kill them. If the armor was light enough, the blasters could do the job—not quickly and cleanly, but they’d kill the beasts nonetheless.
             
    Lance Corporal Schultz listened intently on the platoon circuit when Ensign Charlie Bass gave orders for the platoon to redeploy to meet the new threat. Schultz didn’t bother to nod or give any other sign that he agreed with Bass’s repositioning of the squads and the attached assault gun section; he knew Bass would shift second squad to meet the threat—just as he knew that Sergeant Kerr would arrange second squad so that he, Schultz, would be on the end of the squad’s line. As far as Schultz was concerned, that was