Chapter 15

This was going to be kind of a catch-as-catch-can sort of war, since we planned to depend as much as possible on the local people to do the fighting. Since we could move anywhere we wanted to by means of the TWT transporter gates, it made no real difference where we started from. Therefore, we just made Hillora, the town where Allor Insrullor came from, as our main base. This town happened to be about 100 klicks from the ocean, so it was not an obvious place for an invasion to start. This fact seemed to confuse the Bustols no end, so it turned out to be a very good choice for our primary base.

We had spent a month recruiting on the new continent, and we had no trouble attracting recruits. The Bustols were uniformly hated, and for good reason, so we practically had people standing in line to join us. Initially, we moved everybody to our base at Karak for sorting and preliminary training, but most of the non-belligerents moved on to other towns as the population pressure built up.

By the end of the first month, we had 1,272 fully trained soldiers, and another 3,792 nearly ready to enter combat for the first time. Fortunately, our kind of army is easy to train. All the incentive the soldiers needed was already there and reinforced by years of maltreatment by the Bustols. We just showed them how to shoot the AA-12 and taught them how to follow a few simple orders. The Bustol invaders were such inept soldiers that the rest was easy!

The one new problem we faced was that the Bustols had a semblance of an air force, so we had to be aware of that. They used planes that were roughly equivalent to our Hurricanes, but they did not have many of them. We vastly outnumbered the Bustols with our Hawks and Eagles, and our superior tactics made up for the discrepancies in airplane capabilities.

The Hurricanes now carried both AA-12s and machine guns, so we had both a long range and a short range destructive capability. Our Hurricane pilots were literally fearless, so woe betide a bogey that showed up in their airspace. All of our air crews now carried parachutes, and they could be snatched out of the air by a transporter before they could be shot by an enemy, so they really did have very little to fear.

I went over possible strategies with my staff and Gen. Isrult's staff back on Arklet, and the consensus was to drive for the ocean at first. There was no point in remaining surrounded any longer than necessary. The Bustols still didn't quite know what to make of us, so we could expect light resistance at first, until they could get their minds set around the idea that they were meeting serious resistance.

We set out for the coast in our homemade APCs. We carried a squad of eight men in each APC, along with a driver and a gunner. At this stage, the squad leader also acted as APC commander. I knew that would have to change later on, but I didn't want to spare the men for the job right now. We used Eagles flying low cover and Hawks up high. The Hurricanes were left to fly top cover over our base at Hillora just to make sure that we didn't get blindsided.

I couldn't resist, and I caught a lot of static for my foolishness, but I just had to be the lead APC commander. Who ever heard of a general acting as a squad leader, but the troops loved it. I had plenty of communications equipment handy, so I was able to direct the overall attack as needed. I trusted my squad leaders, so I didn't have much in the way of details to worry about.

We advanced about 10 klicks before we ran into our first action. A Hawk that was scouting ahead reported that there was a column of Bustol trucks headed our way, and they did not seem to be aware of us. This looked like the perfect chance for an ambush, and we might be able to salvage some trucks from the encounter.

I ordered the APC drivers to move off the road into the trees on our left. I didn't want APCs on both sides of the road because I was afraid of injuries from friendly fire in this first action. I also ordered everybody to switch over to rounds with buckshot, since I wanted to do as little damage as possible to the trucks.

There were 12 trucks in the Bustol convoy, so they would be completely within our ambush before the lead truck ever got to the end of our ambush line. Oh, well, some people would just have to be disappointed and wait for another chance to find somebody to shoot at. Once we were in position, I ordered half of each squad to dismount and fight from under the APC, with the rest shooting through the ports in the side armor. Now, all we could do was wait.

It took 30 minutes for those lazy Bustols to get to us. I couldn't imagine what was taking them so long. As soon as the last truck got even with my APC, I ordered the shooting to start. The machine gunner went after the gunner and driver in the truck opposite him. Meanwhile, the troops with their AA-12s poured fire into the open beds of the trucks where Bustols were sitting as if they did not have a care in the world.

The attack was a total surprise! One or two machine gunners managed to get off a few rounds, but the steel walls of the APCs easily stopped the bullets. The enemy machine gunners did not have time to realize that there were men under the APCs who would have been their best targets. The machine gun bullets from our APCs ripped the Bustols in the truck cab to shreds, and the buckshot did the same for the unprotected men on the truck beds.

The entire firefight, such as it was, lasted only two minutes or so. The damage to the trucks consisted mostly of broken glass and holes punched through the thin metal. The machine gunners had listened to orders and had taken care not to shoot up the truck motor, transmission, etc. The only damage to the vehicles was caused by the slow speed wrecks when the drivers lost control.

Each of our APC squads had at least one man who had learned to drive, so 12 drivers and helpers were told off to drive the captured trucks to Hillora. A single APC was sent along to protect them and to provide any help that was necessary.

We were a bit euphoric from this easy victory, but I hoped that the men realized that this was an unusual circumstance, and they could not always expect such easy victories. Oh, well, the morale took a big jump up, so I couldn't complain about that.

The scout plane reported a roadblock ahead, so I sent a couple of Eagles to remove it. Five minutes later, I received word that the roadblock had ceased to exist. The Bustols were still ignoring our presence, I suppose because of how effectively we had eliminated the enemy so far. However, I knew that this bliss couldn't last; I was wondering how long before the other shoe dropped.

Just after we passed the destroyed roadblock, a Bustol plane flew over. Two Hawks took out after it, but it was too fast for them. I should have done it sooner, but I finally got around to asking for two Hurricanes to join us as top cover. They showed up within 15 minutes, and I felt better about the whole thing.

We stayed bottled up in our APCs, so when the tables were turned and we were ambushed, we were not in serious trouble. I ordered everybody to speed up to get through the ambush as quickly as possible, figuring to regroup and return the favor as soon as we had all cleared the worst of the shooting. We accelerated to 60 KPH, and everybody got through fine, except for a few bumps and bruises from a rough ride. That armor, thin as it was, was doing an excellent job of protecting our asses.

I formed us into echelon, and we swept back on the ambush. It was almost funny. The Bustols were caught completely by surprise by our attack. They had never had anybody do anything but run from their guns, especially the machine guns, so they had made no provision for holding off a counterattack.

They had machine gun emplacements and riflemen, but they were dug in with the expectation of never facing an enemy except from the road. We rolled right over them. Our only APC casualty was the one that had all of its tires punctured on one side by an imaginative machine gunner. This stopped the APC, but caused its machine gun and rifle squad to concentrate its fire right on top of the luckless machine gunner. By the time my people had stopped shooting at that position, the gunner and his weapon had ceased to exist.