A Scrimmage at a Border Station

"The fuck they did," Groves interjected. "The Hoovin sell the stuff we give them to the drug-runners as fast as it's issued. Fuckers."

"Less talk and more sweat," the lieutenant said, using the rangefinder on his carbine to measure the distance to the mountain's shoulder. It would make a number-one observation post, they could watch most of the pass from the heights, in case the guerillas used the storm to put in sapper teams. "We're recon, lets reek."

They were just over halfway up when the mortars hit. Artillery-alarms screamed in their ears, and they were on their bellies before their brains caught up with their reflexes. Even the newbie, fresh from his Advanced On Planet, was only a tenth of a second behind the veterans. The Marines wiggled toward cover.

Shots from above echoed off the rocky cliffs. An explosive round struck the sergeant, bulging his thermal suit like an over-inflated inner tube before the sealed fabric gave way. Blood and flesh painted a snowdrift with a red blossom.

It was too much for the newbie. The others heard a terrified scream in their com units as he got up and ran back down trail. Shots zipped through the air around him, but fear gave the retreating figure wings.

"Chickenshit bastard," Groves said. Another mortar round exploded, sending chips of rock tunneling through the snow. "Least he drew fire."

Huong scanned the ground above, reading small-arms trajectories on his eyescreen.

"Try to get com," the lieutenant said in their earpieces. "My link's hosed and I --" His voice buzzed out as a mortar explosion flung him into a drift.

Huong brought up his autorifle. It hissed like a viper as it spat rocket-flechettes into a snowdrift two hundred meters above. A shaggy-haired arm shot up out of the drift, yellow Pilaxsian blood leaking from the severed end.

"Goddamit! I'm jammed," Groves yelled, gun pointed impotently at another source of small-arms fire.

A Fuzzy's voice echoed from the mountainside, sounding like a Viking horn. The Marines' blood froze as they heard it call a death-charge.

#

The lieutenant's head throbbed. His body felt mummified, as if the Liliputians had found him among the rocks and snow and bound him in a thousand shoelaces. Even his heart seemed weary of the struggle to keep blood flowing. It would be so easy to just stay and?

"Quitter? No sir, I ain't a quitter," the scared kid inside him said, as if in response to a DI leaning over him, screaming abuse in his ear. The scared kid was gutsy enough to try to get up, why wasn't he?

He remembered an old barrack joke about the differences between the Empire's peace services. In the Army they teach ?em that if you get knocked down, they should get up and knock the other guy down. In Fleet they learn that if they get knocked down, they should go get twenty buddies and knock the other guy down. In Orbital Marines you learn that you can't be knocked down. But Star Command is taught that if you're knocked down, stay there, because very few men will kick a man when he's down.

He'd been knocked down alright. But good. He tried to drain the sludge from his brain by talking to himself. "Focus, lieutenant. You're the best OM's got, it's your job to be an example."