Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 027

The notification faded, and in its place came something else: a quiet replay of the last several hours, tactical decisions and their outcomes cycling through his memory with a clarity they hadn't had in the moment. The concepts that had been instinct during the fighting were settling now into something he could name and examine. He hadn't studied command. He'd learned it the hard way, in real time, with real consequences, and apparently that was enough to register.

Level one. He'd take it.

He pulled up the achievement panel as he descended the spiral staircase.

[Total Wipeout: 48/100. Sharpshooter: 30/30. Undying: 3/5.]

The Sharpshooter achievement had completed without him noticing. He thought about it for a moment and understood why. Every time he dropped a target, he'd put a follow-up round into the head as a matter of habit, a confirmation kill. Apparently the Career Instance counted that. He filed it away and kept moving.

The small square at the center of Tullane Township had become a staging area. Soldiers were moving captured weapons and ammunition into organized piles, and Caleb was in the middle of it all with the focused energy of a man who had just discovered he enjoyed winning.

"Snyder, perfect timing." Caleb crossed the square toward him, gesturing at the inventory spread across the ground. "Seven Chauchat M1915 light machine guns, two German MG08 heavy machine guns, over forty grenades, and rifle ammunition in good supply across all calibers. We can hold this position until the reinforcements arrive, no question."

"We're not done yet," Soren said.

Caleb's expression shifted. "You think they'll come back."

"The soldiers who ran went somewhere. When they find their main force and report what happened here, someone is going to want this town back. We need to be ready before that happens."

Caleb exhaled. "The men are exhausted. This fight took everything out of them."

"I know. That's why we set up the defense first and let them rest in rotation." Soren looked across the square as Thomas came jogging over, slightly out of breath.

"Fifteen uninjured, ten light wounded, four serious, sixteen dead," Thomas reported. "Fisher is organizing food. Give us an hour and the able-bodied will be ready."

"Good." Soren turned back to Caleb. "Here's how I want to set up. Thomas, take the light machine g*n teams to the eastern buildings, second and third floor windows, two men per g*n, keep them spread across the northeast approaches. The two MG08 positions go at the northeast entrances of the crossroads, four men each, sandbags and timber for cover. All serious wounded go to the clock tower second floor. Everyone else, including you and me, takes the third floor with rifles."

He looked at Caleb. "How's your shooting?"

Caleb straightened slightly. "I trained on it. Inside a hundred meters, I'd say eight out of ten under normal conditions."

"Then you're with me on the third floor. One more thing: light machine g*n teams rotate positions every few minutes. Don't stay at the same window. The MG08 crews don't move without direct orders from one of us."

"Understood," Caleb said, with the tone of someone who was genuinely following rather than just agreeing.

"Everyone eats, everyone gets an hour of rest in shifts. I want it all done before dark." Soren looked at the sky. "They'll come tonight. Count on it."

________________________________________

Several hours later, the clock tower ground floor had been barricaded with furniture and debris, the door braced from the inside until it would take a determined effort to shift. Thomas came up to the second floor to find Caleb finishing the last of the wound dressings on the serious casualties, working with a calm efficiency that didn't match his earlier performance in the field.

"Didn't know you had that in you," Thomas said, passing over a roll of bandaging.

Caleb tied off the splint on a soldier's broken leg and sat back. "I wanted to be a surgeon before the war. Didn't much care for the fighting side of things." He gave a short, rueful laugh. "Funny how that works out."

"Maybe it's not all bad. Snyder seems to be changing for the better."

Caleb considered that. "He's a different man than the one I thought I knew. Better, I think." He paused. "Considerably better."

On the floor above, Soren sat at the window with the G98 Mauser rifle across his knees, cleaning the action by feel, watching the tree line. The table beside him held two ammunition boxes, roughly a hundred and twenty rounds counted and sorted, four M1915 stick grenades, and a loaded spare rifle within arm's reach. He worked the bolt handle, chambered a round, and settled the stock against his shoulder, aligning the sights on the distant tree line. Three points in line, front sight, rear sight, target. Everything clean.

He lowered the rifle and waited.

The tree line moved about fifteen minutes later. The same force that had retreated earlier, working their way back through the dark, emerging at the edge of the forest and spreading out along the approaches to the crossroads. They held at the tree line for a long time, watching the town, looking for lights, looking for movement. Soren had ordered every lamp extinguished except in the second floor where the wounded were, and even that was shuttered on the side facing the field.

He pulled a chair over and sat down. He could wait as long as they could.

Eventually they moved. They came in two columns, pushing toward the northeast entrances of the crossroads from both sides, spreading across the open ground in the way infantry does when it expects resistance but hasn't located it yet.

When they crossed the line Soren had marked in his mind, he put the whistle to his lips and blew.

The light machine guns opened up from the upper-floor windows simultaneously, four guns pouring overlapping fire across both approach lanes. The effect was immediate and severe. The Ivory Army soldiers had no cover on the open ground and no warning. Soren put his first round through the head of a soldier at the front of the left column before the echo of the whistle had finished, worked the bolt handle, and shifted to the next target.

"Hit the machine g*n carriers and anyone throwing grenades," he said to Caleb beside him.

Caleb fired without answering. The shot dropped a soldier who had been raising a machine g*n to his hip. "I see them," he said, working his own bolt, already tracking the next target. There was nothing tentative about it. The man was genuinely competent with a rifle, and the elevation gave both of them clean angles on targets the ground-level machine gunners couldn't reach.

The Ivory Army tried to push through it. They tried twice, losing men each time, and then the officer at the rear made the decision that was probably overdue. The withdrawal was fast and not entirely orderly, the soldiers pulling back toward the tree line under continuing fire, leaving more than thirty dead on the approaches.

Soren put one last round downrange as the last of them disappeared into the trees, then checked the panel.

[Total Wipeout: 57/100.]

"Pity," he said.

Caleb lowered his rifle with the expression of a man who had just discovered something unexpected about himself. "I've never fought a battle that went that smoothly."

"It won't go that way next time. They know our positions now. They'll change their approach." Soren reloaded methodically. "The light machine g*n teams need to rotate to new windows before the next contact. The MG08 positions stay where they are for now. We still haven't shown them everything."

Caleb nodded and went to pass the order.

________________________________________

Dawn came grey and cold. Soren had dozed in the chair for two hours and was back at the window when the tree line began moving again. He watched the emerging shapes with the detached attention of someone running a calculation, and the calculation came back wrong.

They were coming from the same direction.

He'd expected a different approach after the previous night's losses. The fact that they were repeating the same axis of advance meant either poor planning or something he hadn't accounted for. He was still working out which when Caleb stiffened beside him.

"Something's wrong. Do you hear that?"

Soren heard it a moment later. An engine. Low, heavy, rhythmic, growing steadily louder through the morning air. Not a truck. The sound was too deep, too deliberate, the ground carrying a faint vibration that a wheeled vehicle wouldn't produce.

A Saint-Chamond tank rolled out of the tree line onto the dirt track leading to the town, its hull moving with the slow, inexorable momentum of something that didn't need to hurry. Behind it and on both flanks, Ivory Army infantry advanced in formation, using the tank as a moving wall.

"I knew it wouldn't be simple," Soren said, and blew the whistle before the thought was fully finished.

The light machine guns opened up immediately, rounds hammering the tank's hull and accomplishing nothing except sparks. The infantry on the flanks took casualties, but the Saint-Chamond kept coming, its pace unchanged, the machine g*n fire against its armor no more meaningful than rain.

Caleb was already moving. "Thomas! Grenade bundle, now!" He turned to Soren. "We need to give him a clear run at it."

Soren blew the whistle again, two long and one short. The light machine g*n teams pulled back from their windows and began moving toward the town center, clearing the forward buildings before the tank's 75mm cannon could bracket them.

The cannon fired.

The second floor of the nearest building on the eastern approach disintegrated in a single blast, masonry spraying across the street. The concussion reached the clock tower a half-second later as a pressure wave through the walls.

Thomas was already downstairs with the grenade bundle, several M1915 stick grenades bound together with their cords twisted into a single pull. He went out the ground floor at a run, moving toward the tank along the building faces while the infantry on the flanks tried to reorient toward the new threat.

Soren put a round through a soldier raising his rifle toward Thomas, worked the bolt, and dropped another who was reaching for a grenade. Caleb was firing beside him, steady and accurate, picking targets on the right flank.

Two Ivory Army soldiers with light machine guns found the clock tower windows and opened up. The stonework above Soren's head came apart in a spray of fragments. He and Caleb dropped to the floor and crawled toward the staircase, coming up at the second floor windows instead, catching the two gunners from an unexpected angle and putting them down before they could adjust.

But more fire was converging on the tower now, rounds coming from three directions, and the second floor was already becoming untenable. Soren reloaded, checked the street below for Thomas, and made the assessment quickly.

The clock tower had served its purpose. It was time to move.