Chapter 7

At last! We had finally been spotted by the Bustols. Their security was so lousy that I almost thought we would have to send them an engraved invitation to the fight. I could only assume that their contempt for the local Inglets was such that they expected never to be attacked.

We had stopped in a campsite about 20 klicks from the enemy camp. That morning we formed up into our loose groups of 34 men and women, each. We were not in the conventional military order, but standing in almost social groups as the officers and sergeants made sure that everybody had the necessary equipment and ammunition. That only took about 15 minutes, since we were all so keyed up for our second battle as an army, and the first battle for many of our people.

We moved out, but left our artillery and air support behind. We didn't want to scare the enemy with a show of too much military prowess, since our ultimate plan depended on them having enough confidence to chase us as soon as we "lost" the battle.

The day before, we had pushed some scouts far enough ahead to be seen by the enemy patrols, hoping that they would use the warning to good advantage. I really did wish that I had some way to know what went on in their commander's office when our presence was finally reported. I hoped that there was no panic, but, rather, a calm acceptance of the opportunity presented to them. The more confident they were, the better chance that my plan would work.

It took us about four hours to get all of our people into position for our attack. As a signal to begin the operation, I fired off an 8-round box magazine of slugs from my AA-12. I wasn't trying to kill anybody in particular, I just fired at the little guard shack at the entry gate. If anybody was in the guard shack, I surely must have killed him. Those .75 caliber slugs ripped the place to pieces, reducing it to no more than kindling in a few seconds.

The sound of my shooting caused everybody else to open fire, whether or not they had an immediate target. They were firing mostly FRAG-12 explosive rounds into the sides of buildings, starting a number of fires. I was disgusted when it took nearly three minutes before any answering fire came back at us. Hell, my troops would have done better if they had been caught completely by surprise!

We continued to shoot into the camp, but mostly with slugs, as if our explosive rounds had all been used up. Ah, at last, some mortar fire began to fall close to my troops. The troops had orders not to enter the camp, even if the wire had been breached. In several places, the worst damage done by the mortar rounds was to the fence, so the temptation was there. I was glad that the order had been issued. Of course, a few individuals had not been able to restrain themselves and had entered the camp through the gaps in the wire. Of course, they were killed, and there was really nothing that we could do about it. Oh, well, we would recover their bodies later.

I was surprised when I heard very little machine gun fire directed at my people. Either the Bustols did not have as many machine guns as we had assumed, or we had been unreasonably successful in destroying them in our first unaimed assault. Dammit, the incompetent bastards were playing hell with my plan by being so easy to defeat!

OK, time for a radical change in plan! I radioed for the artillery and air force to join in the attack. That was welcome news to them, since they were sure that there would be nothing left for them to shoot at, and they would miss all of the fun.

The Eagles showed up approximately 15 minutes later, and I ordered them to hit any buildings still standing and any troop concentrations with HEAP fire. It was impressive to see the Eagles sweep in at about 75 KPH and splatter destruction at anything that looked like a useful target. The artillery arrived before the Eagles had completed their second strafing pass.

At the end of the second strafing run, I ordered the planes to hold off and give the ground folks a chance at the camp. The infantry went in with the mobile artillery mounted on their small truck chassis. The artillery had very little to shoot at, since the AA-12 explosive rounds did such a good job of starting fires.

There were still islands of resistance long after the main part of the base had been destroyed. The infantry had shifted to HEAP rounds, exclusively, so one or two shots by the Bofors look-alike was enough to clean out the major points of resistance, and a few HEAP rounds fired in afterwards did a good job of killing the last bit of resistance.

When it was all over, my troops were actually disappointed at how easy the victory had been. I wasn't so much disappointed as I was surprised. Who were we fighting? They seemed to have no idea how to mount a proper defense. The Bustols seemed to have even less training than my guerrillas had. I swear, this looked to me like a very poorly run training exercise!

We went through the wreckage of the base as carefully as we could, looking for all of the clues that we could find as to who and what we were fighting. Unfortunately, most of the paperwork burned when the buildings did, and their computers survived no better. They went in heavily for plastic disks and tape storage, neither one of which could withstand the heat of a fire. The only bit of useful paper we found was the fragment of a map which showed the existence of two other bases that we assumed were like this one.

At least, their trucks and other vehicles survived the fighting in reasonably usable condition. This stuff was stored outside, so it was not burned when the buildings did, and the Eagles had orders not to damage vehicles any more than they could help. We found almost no rifles or machine guns in usable condition. What was not in actual use was stored inside buildings, and they were destroyed when the buildings were.

The machine guns we did find were mangled beyond salvage, and the parts were not interchangeable! With a lot of hand work, we might have salvaged one or two machine guns if we had been willing to spend hundreds of hours with files and emery paper. It just was not worth the trouble, so we junked the machine guns. The rifles were so outdated that we had no use for them; I doubt that any of them would have made a decent hunting rifle.

Then an idea occurred to me: could this be a private operation done with military surplus equipment? Hasup and Ansa (my pilot) assured me that all operations in other time lines were done against Bustols with much more modern equipment. The more I thought about the situation, the more convinced I became that the Bustol government had nothing to do with this sex slavery operation. I was willing to bet that it was an operation mounted by crooks, and the Bustol government might not know anything about it.

When we got back to Karak-a-bolva, I asked Hasup to find out how long it would be before we could get another crack at that transporter detection equipment. She reported that they were still having trouble with getting it down in size and still operating reliably. It seemed that the problem was with the large loop of wire they used as a direction finder. It functioned much like the old fashioned radio direction finding loop antenna. I had her send a message suggesting that they break the loop down into modules that could be plugged together when the loop was in use, but would break down to a small size when it was being stored or transported. Then some things came up, and I forgot about it.

We were in the process of training some more troops and getting organized with enough drivers for the trucks that we had captured. Between the Arklet and the Bustol trucks, we had 37 usable trucks, and that was enough to transport our little army any place we wanted to go, provided that the ground was smooth and level enough.

Three weeks after my comment about modularizing the loop on the transporter finder, we got a message asking if we still had use for one. We jumped at it, and voila!, we had a unit delivered with a technician to teach us how to use it. Yes, it still used a monster loop antenna, but the loop had been redesigned so that it could be broken down to make it practical to transport. It still amazed me that a loop of wire 12 feet in diameter cost just as much to transport as a disk of lead 12 feet in diameter. Oh, well, I never was an expert in highschool physics, much less, in anything more advanced.