Jay Allan - Tombstone

Now we were on day two of the battle, though we’d fought more or less continuously, and the second day notation had more importance for record-keeping than any real tactical significance. You’d want it to be correctly noted what day of the battle you were killed on, after all.

I was only a private, barely a rung above the lowly position of “new guy,” so keeping track of planetwide resources wasn’t something I spent much time on. But to my knowledge, our total strength on Tombstone was approximately three battalions. The enemy had more, but only marginally so – about two and a half of their tac-forces – the rough equivalent of four battalions. Now they’d deployed what appeared to be an entire tac-force against us, which was an unprecedented troop concentration on Tombstone. A ten-year struggle between widely-dispersed patrols and platoons was seeing its first pitched battle.

We’d been taken by surprise by the enemy build-up, but the colonel responded quickly, shifting forces from all over to reinforce our position. It’s amazing how minutes can drag into eternity when you’re outnumbered 5-1 and waiting for reserves that are “almost there.”

I hadn’t moved more than 50 meters in the last 24 hours. I was behind the rocky crest of the ridge when the attacks started, with a good field of fire on the broad plain in front of us. Just to my right there was a spur of the outcropping that ran perpendicular out from our location. Any attack on our position forced the enemy to either split his forces or concentrate on one side or the other.

The first attack came right at me, with all the strength to the left of the rocky spine. We hit them hard with fire on the way in, but there were a lot of them, and it looked like they might overrun us. But they’d made a mistake in ignoring the other side of the rock spine. The lieutenant swung around with one of our squads, firing at the enemy flank from the cover of the line of rock. Faced with heavy fire from two directions they withdrew with heavy casualties.

The lieutenant pulled back the advanced squad before they were exposed to the resumption of enemy long-ranged fire. The Caliphate forces had suffered at least 40 casualties; we’d lost 3, and two of those were wounded. We got them both patched up and stabilized before Tombstone finished them off. The enemy casualties were mostly KIA, either from the initial hit or the consequences of their suits being breached.

The second time they didn’t make the same mistake; they split their forces evenly on the two sides of the spur, but the lack of force concentration did them in. The two groups, unable to support each other, were both beaten back, again with heavy losses.

There was a brief lull, probably while they brought a fresh unit up to attack. When they had reinforced they charged us again, and the last two assaults came close to taking our position. The enemy commander sent a small group against the left side of the spur, just enough to demonstrate and prevent a repetition of the lieutenant’s flanking maneuver while the main force concentrated against the right. They came at us twice that way, but our lines barely held, reinforced at the last minute by arriving reserves fed in squad by squad.

Things quieted down for a few hours, giving us the “night” respite between our Earth days. We had more troops arriving all the time, and we finally got the orders to pull back. The entire company was being rotated to the reserve to rest, replaced by a fresh unit that had just marched up.

I was positioned between Corporal Vincennes, my team leader, and Harden and Quincy with the SAW. Harden had been the team’s lead SAW operator since before I got to Tombstone, and he’d been through four partners since then. It was considered something of a jinx posting, but I escaped because of my marksmanship ratings in training. I hadn’t gone through sniper school, but the lieutenant wanted me as an informal sharpshooter rather than managing Harden’s ammo feed. So I stayed in the line on a standing order to try and target enemy officers and non-coms if I could identify them.

“Hey, Sam, how’s it going over there?” Harden and I had become pretty good friends. Most commanders probably would have forbidden this type of chatting over the com, but the lieutenant believed the unit was a living organism. As long as it didn’t interfere with vital communications, he encouraged limited banter.”

“Not too bad. I’d say we held pretty damned well.” He paused, and I could hear him taking a deep breath. Not a bad use of a couple million rounds of ammo.” Harden was a little bloodthirsty; he’d lost a brother in the service and I don’t even know how many partners. I didn’t know it then, mostly because I’d had no one close to me since my dad died, but you get that way if you lose enough people. We’re professionals, but that only goes so far…enough pain will make any of us into vengeful sadists howling for blood.

“Yeah, we did ok.” I was a little more circumspect. I wasn’t all that comfortable with the killing yet, and I found it hard to rejoice as he did in the enemy dead. After all, most of them were just conscripts with no choice in the matter. The Caliphate was pretty rough with its recruiting; it was a theocracy and a dictatorship that made the Alliance look like a big happy family. Its recruiters could pressgang just about anyone except the clergy and the nobility.

“Just ok? It was a shooting gallery, baby!” Harden was overstating things. We did give the enemy a bloody nose, but it was hardly a walkover. We were pulling back with 31 troops; we’d gotten here at full strength with 50. I couldn’t get over the losses, even if we did inflict almost ten times that on the enemy.

“We lost a lot of friends today, Sam.” My voice was soft; I was trying hard not to sound like I was scolding him.

“Yes, we did.” His spoke more slowly, his tone darker. I think he got the point. “But it could have been a lot worse…a lot worse. If we’d been overrun, the whole unit could have been wiped.” He paused, and sighed. “But we did pay the price.”

“Yes, we paid the price.” The last of our wounded had been evac’d, but we were leaving seven dead on the field. I thought quietly to myself for a few seconds then I shifted my mind to more relevant things, with the soldier’s knack for mourning the dead one minute and focusing on duty the next. “You need help packing up that thing?”

“Nah, let the newb handle it.” The light auto-cannon really wasn’t all that large, just a bit unwieldy. Still, I had a twinge of sympathy for Quincy. It wasn’t that long ago I was the newb.

I climbed down carefully from the perch I’d occupied for the last twenty hours. Keep your head down, I thought. Although the fighting was in a lull, the sporadic sniper fire had never stopped. What a stupid way to get killed, losing focus on your way to the rear to rest. I took one last look out over the field, thinking the worst of it was over. I was wrong.

We pulled back about five klicks, just behind the next ridge. We were well within range of enemy mortars and other ordnance, and we wanted some cover. On a more hospitable world we might have popped our helmets and actually eaten some solid food, but that wasn’t an option on a planet like Tombstone. So I enjoyed the epicurean delight of another shot of high-energy intravenous nutritional formula, kindly served by my suit’s AI. It wasn’t exactly a stick-to-your-ribs meal, but you could definitely feel the increased energy level.

Sleep was another issue. We’d been going for about 40 hours, the last 24 under combat conditions. I was tired. You could go for several days on stims injected through the armor’s medical maintenance system, but there was no substitute for actual rest…plus, the less you relied on the stims, the longer you could go on them before getting really strung out. The armor is more comfortable than anyone who hasn’t worn it would think, but it wasn’t built for taking a nap. The most comfortable position was sitting on the ground leaning against something. I staked out a fairly choice spot against a good-sized rock outcropping and closed my eyes. I fell asleep in a few minutes.