Until Relieved by Rick Shelley

Author:Rick Shelley [Shelley, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Military art and science, General, Space warfare, Fiction
ISBN: 9780441000197
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1994-03-01T06:00:00+00:00

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By four o'clock that afternoon, Joe Baerclau could almost forget that he had hurt his ankle the night before. There was no pain left, not even when he flexed the ankle as vigorously as he could. He even felt rested, for the first time since landing on Porter. Doc Eddies had hit him with a sleep patch, without telling Joe what it was. That sleep had lasted for four hours, but Joe had slept on naturally, for two more hours. He hadn't even remonstrated with Ezra very strongly for not being wakened sooner.

"I guess I did need the sleep," he conceded. "How about the others? And you?"

"We've all had our share," Ezra assured him. "Captain put us all on one man on duty from each fire team. I guess we're all in better shape than we've been since the first morning here."

Joe nodded, still not fully alert. "We'll probably need that before this night's over."

He got up and stretched, then sat back down and ate a meal pack. When he was finished with that, he walked farther along the gully to where Max Maycroft was sitting.

"How's the ankle?" Max asked.

"Good as new. I miss anything important while I was out?"

Max shook his head. "We'll be moving shortly after sunset. I don't think we're going to wait for full dark. Have a seat and pull out your mapboard, and I'll show you the current plan."

Joe sat and pulled the map computer from the long pocket on the right leg of his uniform. Max took it out and unfolded it. He dialed up their current coordinates a little more quickly than Joe would have been able to. Max had done it several times already.

"This is all assuming that the Heggies don't find out where we are and attack before we can get moving," Max said while he was adjusting the field of view on Joe's mapboard.

"First recon is out on their own. They left three hours ago. Just about full dark, they're supposed to hit the power-collecting station here." Max pointed at a spot near the westernmost reaches of Porter City. Recon types claimed that they did not need darkness to cover their movements.

"Their objective is to cause just enough damage to put the center off-line. Can't really tell about them though. They might get too eager. We don't want to bash it so bad as to inconvenience the legal residents for any great length of time. I suppose that means that the Heggies will have it working again in a few hours." He made a gesture of dismissal with one hand. The strikes that the Wasps had made against the capital's power stations the morning of the landing had not kept those stations off-line very long.

"Not our concern. The idea is to get the Heggies looking that way. As soon as we get word that the reccers have done their job, we'll attack these barracks here. Supposed to be no more than six-hundred Heggies left in that kaserne. The rest were part of the force that they moved out of the city.

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