EPThttp://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=377267
"Greyhound Leader, this is Greyhound Six. Incoming enemy artillery on my position. Drone strikes have disabled one infantry vehicle. Current strength, platoon-minus. Forward observer has spotted enemy troops assembling in the valley below--approximately one company of mechanized infantry. We are setting up delaying positions along the road between the crossroads and valley plain."
Wu Yibing realized that he might get away with his decision to support his recon patrol as long as he proved successful in holding onto the crossroads. After all, that conformed to the essential mission. But if the crossroads was lost and he had no results for going against the word of the orders, he would pay.
"Greyhound Six, this is Greyhound Leader. We approve setting up the delaying positions. We are en route to your position, ETA ten minutes. Do you see enemy armor in the valley below?"
Then, the radio suddenly erupted with the high-pitched whine of electronic jamming.
Yibing knew that the odds were stacked against his young lieutenant. If he didn't hurry, or if he even did, it was likely the advance platoon would all be dead or dying by the time the rest of the company got there. But Yibing knew if the enemy unit was halfway through clearing a narrow mountain road when his element deployed on the ridge above them, it would a fairly one-sided battle.
Yibing nuzzled his mike, ordering his element on as fast as it could go. He felt oddly lucky now that he had lost his engineers, since the big tank-launched bridge would never have been able to keep up with the increased speed of the march column. When one of his vehicles broke down, he left it for the division's lead regiment to collect. The tanks set the pace, gripping the wet asphalt road with their whirring tracks.
At a mountain grotto, they raced by a bewildered enemy military policeman. The soldier emptied his submachinegun in the direction of the flying column, then ran for the trees. A bit further along, a medical clearing and vehicle repair station had been set up in the courtyard of a farm, obviously intended to take care of the enemy's covering troops. Yibing ordered his element to leave the site undisturbed. He sensed that the enemy had lost control of his forward battle plan now, and that his own location was not known to them. He wondered if, perhaps, his element had already penetrated the Korean corps' main defense zone.
He tried the mike again. More strange whistles and warbles. It was impossible to tell, of course. Unlike the exercises to which Yibing was accustumed, where you knew generally how it was all laid out and usually recieved tip-off information so the unit would look good, real war seemed ridiculously confusing. Yibing had expected battle to have more formality to it, for combat to be more structured and to make better sense.
The road twisted, a hard bend that revealed an apple orchard nestled in the rocky folds. When they saw an enemy mobile rocket launch battery under drooping camouflage nets at the edge of the trees, Yibing ordered his column to shoot it up from the march without slowing down, like a drive-by shooting in an American gangster movie, except with tank cannons and heavy machine-gun fire. It was critical not to lose speed.
The column crested a low ridge, and Yibing was faced with a wrecked bridge over a rapidly coursing stream. As he gingerly eased his track over knee-deep water, the mountains opened up to his right. Four hundred meters ahead of them was the crossroads, a T-junction; the stream became a waterfall that became a series of rapids parallel to the leg of the T, which extended down into the valley below.
Right above the waterfall, a stout, walled watermill provided an obvious focus for the efforts of both sides. By the watermill, a single Chinese infantry fighting vehicle covered the branching road. On the road, a trio of burnt-out hulks marked the site of an initial skirmish that seemed to have gone badly for the enemy. Below that, the valley opened up into a broad plain.
Yibing stopped his command track past the bridge, and hastily called his artillery captain while climbing onto the rain-slicked deck of the vehicle.
"Spruce Two, you are to deploy in the open hollow on the near bank of the river. Range the mouth of the valley below and be prepared to fire on my command." His boot caught on a stow-box, and he tripped off the hull's edge, falling face-first into the mud. Without missing a beat, he spoke again. "Spruce Three, get your drones in the air. One drone in overwatch, as high as it'll go, the rest behind the ridges below us, hidden from the enemy on the valley floor. Third platoon, leave half your unit on near bank and protect the guns and drone operators. Everyone else, follow me to the far side."
As he finished his transmissions, the enemy artillery came again. The rounds exploded along the ridges and hollows to the north of them. The patrol's vehicles were well-concealed; it appeared as though the enemy was simply delivering area fires to flush the Chinese scouts into the open.
In the watery field beside the road, the bodies of four enemy soldiers had been laid in a row. A senior sergeant guarding the rear of the position greeted Yibing, wincing at the still-distant artillery blasts.
"Comrade Captain," he shouted, "the lieutenant's up in the watermill building."
Yibing took off at a sprint, spitting words into his mike. "Tank platoon to the ridgeline in the hills northeast of the crossroads. Second rifle platoon, join them. Third platoon, set up positions in the low ground by the creek. All three platoons, establish a crossfire zone on the road. Stop. Antitank platoon, deploy further down the road from third platoon and prepare to ambush enemy armor from the rear. All other vehicles shelter in the trees or behind the watermill buildings. Quickly, please. End message."
Through the random of earth-and-fire eruptions of incoming artillery, Yibing could now see two fighting vehicles past the mill's walls. One had tucked in behind a fertilizer mound, the other had found a sunken position between two apple trees. Yibing could feel the wash of the artillery rounds as the enemy gunners reached towards the crossroads itself.
Inside the courtyard, a blasted enemy fighting vehicle lay like a carcass where it had been taken by surprise. A surprised rifleman lowered his weapon at Yibing, then suddenly pulled it back up.
"In here, Comrade Captain. Up the stairs."
Yibing vaulted through the doorway. The hallway of the watermill was littered with glass and smashed plaster, the aftermath of the nearby artillery. He jumped the stairs two at a time.
A lieutenant knelt low behind a broken-out window on a landing just below the second floor. He gazed through a pair of binoculars, long-range radio at his side with the antenna angled out through the window frame. He looked around suddenly.
"Comrade Captain, you're here!"
The boy's voice sounded as if Yibing's arrival meant salvation, an end to all troubles. Yet Yibing could only feel how little combat power he had brought to the scene. Now they would need to hold out until the advance guard of the division arrived. If they were coming.
"Look," the lieutenant said. "You can see them across the valley, by those far woods. Orient on the lone house. They're getting ready to come at us." He held out the binoculars to Yibing.
Tanks. Big, boxy-looking, Western tanks, about forty in total, moving into battle formation approximately four thousand meters off. Behind them were infantry fighting vehicles, too numerous to count, scuttling about like ants on a kitchen floor. Then the artillery came back, shaking the watermill. Yibing ducked back down.
"They spotted us maybe twenty minutes ago," the lieutenant shouted. "An advance element came marching up the road like they were on parade. We had to open up to keep them away from the intersection. A few minutes after that, the artillery started."
Yibing looked at the baby-faced lieutenant. Somebody's sweetheart, too. He touched the boy on the shoulder. "Good work. Good work, my friend. Now let me see what I can do about those tanks."
Yibing called up the artillery commander, ordering him to come up and act as a forward observer the way he was supposed to, or send someone in his stead. He was prepared for another argument, but the artillery officer's attitude had undergone a distinct change. He was excited now, too--he'd contacted division, reporting that Yibing's element had reached the crossroads. The group army's chief of missile troops and artillery had personally informed the division commander. Both had approved Yibing's decision, and the advance guard from Yibing's regiment was on its way.
"How far back?" Yibing asked.
"Didn't say."
"Find out. We have enemy tanks coming for a visit. They want us out of here." He passed the grid where the enemy tanks were forming up. Then Then he hastened to the control van the air force officer shared with the drone controllers. The hatches were sealed, and Yibing had to bang on the metal with the stock of his assault rifle.
Lin, the forward air controller, opened the hatch one-handed, holding an open rations tin in the other.
"Taking a break," he told Yibing.
Yibing was dumbstruck. His stomach gave a lurch; he had eaten nothing since the previous night.
"Have you informed your control post about our situation?" Yibing demanded. The air force officer nodded, forking up a hunk of canned pork so strong-smelling that its garlic-and-scallions smell even penetrated the smoky stink of nearby artillery blasts.
"Listen," Yibing said, "we're going to need air support. If you want to be alive at breakfast, you'd better get some ground-attack boys or gunships in here. The valley just beyond the ridge is filled with enemy tanks," Yibing continued, gesturing to the lone boy fiddling around a set of joysticks in the back of the van, "and those four drones you have up in the air won't be enough."
Lin finished chewing and swallowed. "I'll see what I can do. But if they can't give me something that's going up now, it won't help."
"Try. And get out where you can see what's going on. Up there by the apple trees. Anywhere but here."
Yibing jumped back down off the vehicle, splashing in the mud. His camouflage uniform had been soaking wet since before dawn, and his trousers had rubbed his crotch raw. But the discomfort had disappeared in his current excitement. He raced for the tank platoon, instinctively running low, even though the enemy artillery had lifted for the moment.
The tank platoon had a problem. The commander could not find any suitable firing positions along the ridgeline. In order to sufficiently decline their gun tubes to engage an approaching enemy, they would need to expose themselves to observations and fires.
"All right," Yibing said. "I have a better idea. Pull back onto that low hill over there, just north of the road we took to come up here. There." He pointed to a hill that shielded the artillery battery. "See it? Hide where you can watch anything that drives into the antitank platoon's kill zone. Counterattack any armor they have trouble with. Don't wait for orders--just hit them. We'll try to hold around the watermill. Do your best."
The lieutenant of tank troops saluted and immediately began talking into his microphone. The diesels belched into readiness.
Yibing hurried back to his own vehicle, but before he was halfway there, the sounds of combat came back, changed. His infantry fighting vehicles and wheeled antitank vehicles were engaging. The enemy was on the way.
Yibing looked back towards the open hollow. Still no sign of activity. He cursed the artillery officer, wondering what was keeping him. He needed someone to call fires. Otherwise, they would be overrun before the guns did any good.
One of the antitank vehicles had profiled too high on the ridgeline. Now it caught a round in the bow and lifted over on its back, throwing scaps of flaming metal upward and outward in a fountain. Yibing felt a sting on his shoulder, as though he had been bitten by an oversized insect. He almost tripped but managed to keep running.
The nearest platoon of mechanized infantry had dismounted to protect the watermill, but their officer had not properly positioned them. They were simply lying prone in a close line on an oblique angle towards the road, protected only by the small irregularities of the ground.
Yibing shouted at the platoon leader: "Are you crazy? Get those men into the buildings. It's too late to do anything else now. Hurry."
The lieutenant stared back blankly and said nothing. Yibing went cold inside at the thought of what the situation was probably like in the platoon that had lost its lieutenant in the minefield. He felt overwhelmed by the need to do everything himself. He ignored the lieutenant now, grabbing the first soldier he could reach, a machine gunner.
"You. Get inside the buildings. Take your pals. Fight from there."
Yibing ran along the line. Where the lieutenant had positioned the men, they would have been not only hopelessly vulnerable, but useless. They had no fields of fire. In the distance, he saw two of his own drones spray forth a volley of anti-armor submunitions into the advancing enemy column. They appeared to have no effect.
"All of you. Get up," he shouted, rasping to be heard above the chaos of battle. One of the machine gunners had opened fire, and firing began to spread along the line, although some soldiers simply lay still on the ground. "Stop it. Stop. They're still out of range." Even on his feet, Yibing could not see the enemy from the position of the firing soldiers. "Get into the buildings and get ready to fight. This isn't a country outing. Cease fire!"
Then he saw more attack drones. Approaching from the wrong side.
"Come on," he shouted, voice cracking. He ran for the cover of the buildings, the mechanized infantry finally following him. Behind them, the infantry fighting vehicle in the apple orchard sent off a pair of antitank missiles a split second before exploding.
"Where's the air defense team?" Yibing wondered out loud.
The drones throbbed over the trees, ugly, bulbous creatures with dark weaponry on their mounts and white stars on the fuselages. The markings confused Yibing, who was sure he was still in the Korean sector. He stopped to fire his assault rifle at the aircraft, and a few others fired as well.
The drones, four of them, churned overhead without firing. Yibing felt relief at their passing, until he heard the hiss of missiles coming off launch rails.
The artillery, Yibing remembered. The battery was naked. Yibing watched helplessly as the enemy attack drones banked playfully above the landscape, teasing the desperate gunners on the ground, destroying the self-propelled pieces one after the other.
In less than a minute, the drones peeled off to the east, leaving the wrecked battery in a veil of smoke pierced now and then by the flash of secondary explosions.
Yibing made a hurried stop at his own vehicle. It had moved nearer to the crest, and its main gun fired an anti-tank rocket into the distance, the white trail disappearing into the murk. He leaned into the turret, grabbing the gunner by the sleeve, shouting to be heard.
"Back into the courtyard. Get her behind the walls. I need the long-range radio set alive."
The gunner stared up at him. "Comrade Captain. You're... bleeding." Yibing followed the gunner's eyes down to his right shoulder, then over to his chest and sleeve. Much of the uniform was dark, much darker than the rain alone could have made it. At the sight, Yibing felt a momentary faintness.
"Hurry up," he said, almost gagging. "Get into the courtyard." But he suddenly felt weaker, as if being aware of the wound had unleashed the wound's effect. He remembered the little sting. It seemed impossible that it could have done this. He was not even aware of any pain.
He trotted beside his vehicle, guiding it through the gates as the direct-fire battle increased in intensity. But the forward air-control vehicle had blocked the entrance. Yibing ran to make the air force officer move out of the way just as the artillery came thumping back.
The maintenance shed's roof collapsed. The concussion of the blast knocked several of the men in the courtyard to the ground. The first one of them to stand up had blood draining from his ears, and Yibing felt deafened. But he still had enough hearing to recognize the sound of a tank gun closer than expected. In the misery of the courtyard, soldiers screamed for aid and choked on their blood and the dust of the smashed shed. Then the rain abruptly increased in intensity, as if the enemy controlled that, too.
"Everybody into the buildings," Yibing shouted. "Don't just stand around." But the soldiers were hesitant. After watching the roof of the shed cave in, Yibing could hardly blame them. Nevertheless, the remaining buildings provided better protection than the open yard, and it was impossible for the men to fight effectively from the courtyard. "Move, damn you."
But they were already scrambling to obey him. It was only that they had been stunned into a slowed reaction by the confusion that seemed to worsen every minute. Now those who didn't understand Yibing's Mandarin simply followed their peers.
The sounds of moving tanks crowded in with the noises of missile back-blasts and automatic weapons. Yibing bounded back into the house and up the stairs, crunching an even thicker layer of glass underfoot. The lieutenant remained at his post, but he didn't need his binoculars anymore.
"Those tanks," he told Yibing, "at least a company. Sneaking up along those ridgelines. We got two of them."
A round smashed into the wall of the mill, shaking it to its foundation. But the building was old and strong, built of reinforced concrete. The lieutenant noticed Yibing's bloody tunic. Yibing held up a hand. "No real damage done," he said, hoping he was correct. He couldn't understand where the pain was hiding. His right arm still worked, if stiffly.
"One of the officers went up on the roof with a radio," the lieutenant said. "He looked like an air force guy."
"Where is he?"
"On the roof. There's an access stairway that leads to a catwalk back there. Any of those three doors up there works."
The enemy tanks had closed to within a thousand meters. Yibing watched them for a moment through the lieutenant's window, catching a glimpse of dark metal now and then through the local smokescreens the vehicles had laid down. Their movement struck him as very clever, very disciplined, but slow. They seemed to move in cautious bounds. Yibing watched one of his own antitank missiles stream towards the enemy tanks, then spring out of control, soaring briefly into the empty sky, then plunging into a meadow with a useless plop. He turned away in disgust.
He followed the directions toward the roof. Going up the narrow stairs, he felt unusually light, yet extremely clumsy, as if his torso could fly but his feet were weighted down with chains. When he reached the catwalk, he looked through the first opened door and found Captain Lin sprawled on his belly behind a roof vent, talking into a radio set, with a nylon backpack of gear open beside him.
The noise level was incredible, maddening, giving the air a tangible thickness, as though you could stir it with your hand. Yibing could not understand a single word the air force officer said.
He tugged at Lin's leg. The air force officer held up a finger. "Wait." Then he rolled onto his back, scanning the pre-dawn, charcoal sky.
Yibing followed Lin's line of sight but could see nothing. Nonetheless, Lin reached into his backpack, retrieving a flare pistol and two orange smoke grenades. He spoke one word into his microphone, "Green!", then rose to his knees on the slick roof tiles, just high enough to peer over vent.
With a sure motion, Lin threw a smoke canister to the right, then quickly hurled another to the left, marking the line of friendly troops. He fumbled briefly at the flare pistol, then fired two green flares in succession at the direction of the enemy. Then he threw his backpack at Yibing, knocking him back inside. The air force officer followed the bag, quick as a mouse, dragging his long-range radio dish after himself. Without even a look at Yibing, Lin flattened onto the floor, hands over his ears. Yibing swiftly imitated him.
A powerful rush of jet engines seemed to pass right through the room, rattling the walls even more powerfully than the artillery blasts. The passage was closely followed by small pak-pak blasts, then by enormous booms that seemed to tear several seconds out of their lives. Yibing's lungs grew tight, as the air around him seemed to disappear. Then it rushed back, a forceful gale that flung chips of glass and plaster into the walls like hail in a thunderstorm.
When he had caught his breath, the air force officer sat up and peered over the roof. "Fuel air explosives," Lin shouted. "Mix that shit with anti-armor bomblets and it's like a fucking nuke."
Yibing followed his gaze. The valley had filled with dark, oily smoke. Every single vehicle on the mountain road was dead in its tracks. Most were on fire and quite a few of the smaller armored vehicles were flipped over. The creek itself burned, a line of water lit up with floating gasoline. "Good work," Yibing shouted back. "How did you get the sorties?"
Lin looked at him with a stupid grin. "Group Army staff just gave us top priority. I've got more on the way, plus fighter cover to swat everything that isn't ours out of the sky." Then he began to methodically gather his spilled tools, checking his radio--a technician of the sky. Lost in his own little world of airplanes, Lin had not noticed Yibing's wound. But the infantry captain felt changes coming over his body now. Everything seemed slower around him. The colored fog fizzling out of the canisters seemed a dull gray even though Yibing knew the smoke was flourescent orange.
He slowly raised himself and worked his way back down the stairs to the lieutenant's observation post. The boy lay face down. At first, he thought the lieutenant had been knocked unconscious by the blast. But when he flipped the body over, a shattered eyeball popped out of a bloody socket, and pink froth dripped from the boy's lips. Yibing let go.
Then, from close, very close, the roar of a tank gun. Yibing peered out of the battered window frame. The airstrike had missed at least a platoon. Four enemy tanks came over the crest, one after another. Two trailed fire off their decks, resembling mythical dragons. They drove beside the mill complex, leaving Yibing's field of vision.
He stumbled down the steps, one hand on the balustrade, the other on his assault rifle's strap. At the foot of the stairs, Yibing ducked as his own vehicle attempted to pull off, only to explode in the entrance gateway. The heat of the blast reached into the lobby of the mill, rinsing Yibing with a wave of unnatural warmth.
Above the billows of resultant smoke, he saw two more drones appear. But these were from his side--hornets, heavy attack drones loaded with weaponry. They looped around in an orientation pass, then began to methodically pick off targets with bursts of 23mm autocannon fire and guided missiles.
Yibing heard assault rifle fire, very close. He unslung his rifle from his shoulder and edged around the corner of a hole that had been blasted into the wall. Outside, a black and orange curtain had descended over the mountain road. Numerous muzzle flashes erupted from the ruined mill complex and the charred remains of the apple orchard. The amount of firing seemed incredible to Yibing, because, first, he thought all of the ammunition should have been used up already, and, second, because it was hard to believe so many of company still survived.
He heard the beat of the attack drones returning. And the battle noises revealed a point-blank tank fight going on somewhere behind the watermill. Growing weaker and dizzy almost to nausea, Yibing edged along the wall of the ruin complex, weapon ready, seeking a view back towards the crossroads and the bridge. He came up against a chunk of reinforced concrete, and, taking a chance, he raised his head.
The finest, most welcome sight of his life awaited him. Both the bridge and the other approach to the crossroads streamed with Chinese vehicles. Attack drones and fighter jets swarmed overhead, and self-propelled guns bristled their tubes at the sky. On the other side of the mill, the enemy tanks that had penetrated Yibing's thin line burned away like lamps to light the rainy morning.
As Yibing stood there, knees trembling, over a hundred Chinese tanks roared down the mountain road, racing past him, blooming out into a long, beautiful, wedge-shaped battle line in the valley floor below.
Yibing collapsed against the wall of the mill, letting go at last.
CONTINUED IN THIS THREAD
