First to Fight Read Free

Nobody could be alive in that area. But bandits were strung out over another three hundred meters before the slag that was being created at the far end of the ambush by the fire from the Marines’ left flank. From the slackened fire to the left, Bass could tell that Kruzhilov’s section had also taken casualties.
    “Bass, to me!” Procescu’s voice said in his helmet. Bass scuttled to the Bravo commander. “There’s too damn many of them,” the lieutenant said when Bass reached him. “We need help, and we need it now. Take LeFarge back and find a high place you can climb to. See if you can raise anybody.” He looked into the intended kill zone of the ambush. “If I can get those men under cover back here, that’ll help.”
    “Good idea,” Bass responded. “Try to move them one at a time.” He turned to LeFarge. “Let’s go.”
    The volume of outgoing fire from the Marines’ right flank slackened abruptly as one of the assault gunners was crisped and his weapon stopped firing.
    Bass remembered a place 150 meters back down the gorge where a rock wall had left a slope of scree less steep than the gorge sides. If it wasn’t too loose, he and LeFarge might be able to climb high enough to contact the rest of the company via line-of-sight transmission.
    The rock wasn’t too loose to climb, but it stopped at a cliff face they couldn’t scale. Fifty meters to their left, however, the cliff ended in a cut or a gentler slope—Bass couldn’t tell from where they were. “Think you can make it across there?”
    “No problem, Gunny.” LeFarge put his words into action and led the way across the steep slope.
    The shallow roots of the bushes were spread wide enough to hold the weight of the two men as they stepped on their stems and grabbed hold of the branches. It took only a few minutes for them to negotiate the slope. They found a gentle rise to a notch in the ridge side another hundred meters up and clambered into it, breathing heavily from the exertion.
    “See if you can raise anybody,” Bass said. When he left the platoon, he had turned off the all-hands channel so he could concentrate on finding a way up the ridge. Now he flipped it back on while LeFarge set up the UPUD and started talking into it. But the steep-sided valley wound from side to side, and they had taken a couple of turns following it—there was too much rock between him and the platoon for clear communications. Bass heard enough to know that two or three more Marines were down and that only a few of the men in the open had managed to get back and join the fight. Most of the others, including the gun team, were still pinned in the open, unable to engage the bandits. He cursed silently as he fought his rising anger and frustration.
    “I’ve got Battalion!” LeFarge exclaimed.
    Bass shook his head. Battalion headquarters was more than a hundred kilometers away. How could they raise them but not get the company command unit, which was just a ridge or two away? “Let me talk to them.”
    LeFarge said something into the UPUD and handed it to him.
    “Red Roof, this is Purple Rover Bravo Five,” Bass said into the UPUD, giving the battalion call sign and identifying himself as the senior enlisted man of a group split off from Company I. “We are at,” he rattled off their map coordinates, “in contact with more than two-zero-zero bandits. Bandits are wearing chameleons and have blasters. We are taking heavy casualties. We need air support. Over.”
    “Purple Rover Bravo Five, that is not where your UPUD says you are.”
    “Red Roof, UPUD malfunctioning. Visual confirms our location. Over.”
    “Ay, Pancho, you think you’re smart, don’t you?” the battalion communications man said, and laughed. “You’re not going to lure us into a trap that easily.”
    Bass’s jaws clenched. The battalion comm man thought he was a bandit who’d managed to break into the net and was trying to get a mission launched to lead some of the FIST’s