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waited until the last of the debris had fallen before he lifted his head enough to look over the tree cone just in front of him. The visor on the Accord battle helmet was alleged to be able to stop anything short of a full burst from a splat gun at close range, but Joe Baerclau had not survived two previous campaigns by taking any unnecessary risks.
    The forest floor was only a blur in infrared now. Joe switched off that part of his helmet sensors.
    "Anyone get a look at where that came from?" he asked, knowing that it was a futile question. There were no replies from the squad. His men knew better than to clutter up the channel with unnecessary negatives.
    Joe looked to either side. The rest of the platoon was to his right. Third platoon, the one squad of it that Joe could see, was also down, waiting to see if there would be more than the single grenade.
    "Okay, Ez," Joe said after three minutes had passed without more incoming fire. "Move 'em out. Carefully."
    There was little need for that warning. Ezra and his fire team moved forward in a crouch, keeping their heads down and their rifles up, ready for instant use. Joe's fire team was ready to lay down covering fire if they got any clue as to where the enemy was. Ezra's fire team was just passing the line of Joe's team when two more RPGs came in. These both exploded behind the lines, back near where Ezra's team had been just seconds before. The men went flat and brought their unprotected hands in under their bodies as the grenades exploded. The blasts were far enough away that their net armor and helmets were able to absorb the force of the shrapnel without difficulty. But two men had the wind momentarily knocked out of them by the impact.
    "Crap!" an anonymous voice said over the squad frequency.
    Before Joe could call for silence, the squad was under direct fire. Bursts of wire whizzed by, too close to be ignored. Joe turned his head to the side, hoping to see some clue as to the direction the fire was coming from.
    "Stay put," Sergeant Maycroft told Joe over the radio. "Delta is moving around behind. They have a fix on the Heggies who have us under fire."
    It's good to have someone else do the work for a change, Joe thought. "Don't shoot unless you have a clear target," he warned his men. "We're going to have friendlies moving in behind them. I don't want us to ace any of our own people."
    There was one short flurry of fire from third squad, accurate enough to slow down the incoming for a few seconds. Still, nearly five minutes passed before Joe heard heavy fire from Mark VI zippers out in front and the unseen enemy soldiers turned their fire away from 2nd platoon.
    "Okay, let's go," Joe told the squad after he had his orders from Maycroft.
    This time they moved with their carbines firing, scattering short bursts ahead of them, aiming deliberately low. The men of Delta Company showed up as blue blips on visor displays. The men called those blips DSUs, for "Don't shoot us!"
    Joe finally saw his first enemy of the campaign. There was movement eighty meters out, just slightly to Joe's left. At first, he only noticed the movement, camouflage that shifted quickly enough that it could not be natural. Joe directed his fire that way and the figure went down. Joe did not assume that that meant a kill. At eighty meters, the wire rounds of his zipper might have penetrated battle armor. Or they might not. As quickly as Joe had shot, there was even a chance that he had missed his target completely.
    "Down!" Joe ordered, leading by example. "Keep moving, but down." Forward movement slowed considerably when it varied between crawling on hands and knees and slithering flat from cone to cone. Joe worked to keep as many of the soil buttresses between him and the spot where he had seen the enemy battle uniform go down.
    There was a sudden explosion of gunfire from that area, from both Accord and Schlinal weapons, perhaps forty seconds of confusion. There was little, if any, truly aimed