by John F. Carr
“At least the grasses are still high,” Sergei shouted over the thunder of charging horses. “They’ll have to get close for clear shots at us; we’ll be able to shoot down on them from horseback.”
Yarmoloff was on Sergei’s left side, carrying a shortened paratrooper’s carbine fitted with an absurdly large snail drum magazine. He raised it to his shoulder and shot a burst, the weapon barely moving as the body of the horse below rocked in gallop. “Horseback’s not much of an advantage against Saurons,” Yarmoloff shouted back.
Sergei leveled his pistol at a wake in the grass ahead, moving incredibly fast. Firing, he saw the wake first shift direction—even as he squeezed the trigger—then cut back on a course aimed right at him a split-second later. Mother of God, he prayed, I’ll take any advantage I can get.
Chapter Eleven
I
Over-Assault Leader Bohren’s rotor-wing pulled up and back, giving him a clear view of the battlefield. Not much of a battle, he decided, but the match-up of infantry and archaic cavalry had always intrigued him. Too bad the equation will change once the helicopters begin providing fire support runs. The plan he had effected under Deathmaster Quilland’s approval was proceeding with an efficiency that might have seemed dull to anyone but the Sauron Soldiers whose lives now depended upon it.
Bohren’s expertise lay in organizational control. As one of the Groundmasters for the initial invasion of Haven, he had been a paragon of efficiency. And, like all Saurons, he was a soldier of the first magnitude; as a command ranker he was expected to be—and was—competent enough for leading assault actions against cattle. His only weakness lay in the fallibility of pure organization as a technique for combat.
Bohren would have been amused to learn that the human norms used to say: “No battle plan ever survives contact with a Sauron.” Had Bohren been a bit more imaginative, he might have been less amused by appreciating that phrase within the context of the conditions under which Saurons now lived, since it implied a potential for disaster beyond any powers of organization to withstand.
II
“Natalya!” Lavrenti shouted, steering the yurt toward the three others which had reached the center of the herd. “On your right, in the grass—”
“I see them!” The nearby tall silvergrass had been trampled and flattened by the horses and tires of the yurts, but less than thirty meters away the tall steppe grasses waved in the wind like a yellow sea. And on the shores of that sea, Natalya saw figures emerging, leveling weapons at the riders as they circled and fired into the grass.
The Cossacks were as brilliant horsemen as ever their ancestors had been and their generations on Haven had turned them into warriors of the finest stripe. This kept their casualties low, but nothing could prevent death when facing Saurons. Each second, she saw another rider tumble from his mount.
Natalya waited until Gospodin Buyalev passed, then swept an arc with her machine gun, firing low bursts against the grass behind him. The vegetation was scythed down for meters in all directions and a Sauron in dull-gray battle dress went down with it.
“Aya!” she shrieked, Lavrenti cheering behind her. Natalya could feel her nipples tighten against the fabric of her undergarment; she felt an incongruous relief that she was wearing a heavy coat, preventing her brother from seeing her arousal. She quickly dismissed the errant thought; she was pretty sure that Lavrenti was just as excited in his own way as she was in hers.
“N’asha, helicopter!”
The fighters’ gauss weapons were virtually silent, but the helicopters mounted conventional Havener weapons; more primitive, but no less effective at these ranges. The gunship swept over their yurt from behind, rotary cannons roaring as they sliced the horse-hair-felt and wooden framework into a collapsing wreck. The chopper went by and banked to pass in front of them, turning to bring its cannons bearing on Natalya and Lavrenti. As it came about, Saurons emerged from the steppe grasses beneath it, advancing in the wake of its fire.
Swinging the machine gun, she kicked open the tent flap at her feet, shouting, “Now!”
Beneath her and to her right, explosive bolts detonated, sending a quarter panel of the yurt’s side flying out and away to land smoking in the grass. Two dozen men dressed in the butternut camouflage of the Haven Volunteers boiled out of the opening, supported by another heavy machine gun within. The same things were happening throughout the rolling mass of yurts. Wherever a Sauron troop carrier was dislodging a squad, a company was leaping out of a yurt to ambush them.
Of course, not even these soldiers—among Haven’s finest—would even the odds. The Haveners knew that, but Kettler had promised them Cummings’ support and any survivors would pass the word that it had been provided.
Supraorbital fighters were one thing, but Natalya had dealt with helicopters before. It was no accident that she operated the heavy machine gun, while her brother covered her with a mere assault rifle.
She focused her vision on the gunship’s forward canopy—though armored, it still was the aircraft’s only weak spot—and keeping the sights over the gunner’s position there, she fired a steady burst into the transparent armor.
III
In the rear pilot seat of the gunship, Fighter Rank Amar almost smiled. More cattle troops meant more prey for the ground forces. As for himself, having had a great deal of experience with the futility of chemically-fired projectiles against the canopies of Sauron fighters, he ignored the pretty little cattle girl’s fire and flew straight at her. Only as his gunner, Fourth Rank Hsien, was about to fire the helicopter’s forward weaponry, was Amar reminded that this time he was not flying a Sauron fighter.
The transparent panel in Hsien’s forward canopy abruptly crystalized, then blew inward in a flood of glass granules and tungsten-cored slugs, passing through Hsien’s head and into the lower torso of Fighter Rank Amar seated above and behind him. Ending only as it tore through the engine and fuel cells beyond.
The helicopter exploded, dropping directly on Saurons who had been advancing beneath it in perfect, if not imprudent, combat procedure.
The blast lifted Natalya and Lavrenti from the seat of the yurt and threw them almost a dozen meters beyond. Fuel and ammunition ignited the grasses all around the burning helicopter. The wind quickly began whipping the flames south and east into the tall silvergrass.
Natalya sat up, her ears ringing. She could smell hair burning and turned to find her brother senseless beside her on the ground, his coat and shapka afire. Putting out the flames, she felt something red-hot pierce the flesh of her hand. She removed Lavrenti’s fur cap to expose a long sliver of smoking metal embedded in his skull. Too angry for tears, she groped about, finding her brother’s assault rifle. Taking a fresh clip from his belt, she began crawling toward the burning yurt. All around her, the militiamen from the Haven Volunteers were falling, but the survivors continued to lay down a withering fire as they advanced into the grasses, where the battle would ultimately end in hand-to-hand combat.
IV
A sudden flash of light made Sargun start. “They’ve lost one of the rotary-wing aircraft.”
“Were there troops aboard?” Cyborg Rank Stern asked.
“Unknown. One was caught beneath when it fell.”
Stern decided to test the waters. “The human norms have more advanced weaponry than we suspected and far more troops. They could inflict serious casualties on our forces.”
Sargun turned to him. “Indeed. But we are forbidden to intervene in any military actions. By order of the First Citizen himself.”
Cyborg Rank Stern nodded. “Were we to move to a better observation point, we might at least provide long-range fire support, without actually engaging the cattle.”
Sargun turned to look back at the figures spread about in the grass behind him. One wore the bulky harness of a Mark VII manpack fusion gun. The weapon had been released from stores after his insistence that it might prove necessary for cutting up samples of debris from the Fomoria should any be found
. Had it been needed for such work, the Mark VII was up to the job. No human norm could even lift the weapon, and even Sauron norms wore a powered hydraulic harness when taking one into battle—Cyborg Rank Philomon wore the weapon casually slung over one shoulder.
The Mark VII generated a contained fusion reaction, then released energy in a directed pulse. It was extremely destructive, but precisely contained. Designed to destroy with surgical precision, the Mark VII’s contained fusion effect did not even generate fatal doses of X-rays or gamma rays. Not fatal, that is, to Saurons.
Nothing was wasted and everything went into the weapon’s blast sphere. The resulting swath of destruction was rivaled only by heavy artillery. Imperial Marines who had faced Mark VII-armed Saurons on the streets of contested worlds had nicknamed it the ‘blockbuster.’
Sargun secured the OpEn unit. “Your point is well-taken. We cannot make an informed decision from this distance.” He gestured to the remainder of the squad behind him: Forward; remain concealed; maintain fire discipline.
Cyborg Rank Stern was pleased. Sargun seemed to be the sort of leader he and his men had been waiting for.
V
“Urrah!” cried a man on Sergei’s left, who had seen the helicopter gunship explode and stood in his saddle to raise his fist in triumph.
Before Sergei could motion him to keep down, his head suddenly blew apart and he fell back across his horse’s rump, arms splayed to the sides.
Yarmoloff poured fire into the burning grass; the blaze had spread rapidly and the smoke was making it difficult to breathe, let alone see the enemy.
“Bastards!” Yarmoloff screamed out, his horse wheeling. As it turned, a shadow flew from the tall grass, then another, then three more. The last three simply ran by without seeming to pay them any notice, but one dark blur slowed enough to grab Yarmoloff’s reins, dragging his horse to the ground and spilling the harness maker from his saddle. The Sauron raised one foot and crushed Yarmoloff’s skull with a single blow, then released the horse to stagger to its feet and run wild.
Meanwhile, one of the other Saurons had closed on Sergei, who wheeled his mount and held his sabre out before him with his other hand behind his back, out of sight. The Sauron glanced at the sabre and stopped, raised his rifle and aimed it at Sergei’s head; the Cossack looked directly into the Sauron’s eyes. Beneath him, his horse continued her graceful pivot, bringing Sergei’s other hand around and exposing the automatic he held in it. The weapon barked twice and the Sauron fell dead with two bullets in his brain.
Kicking Anya into a gallop, Sergei charged the Sauron who had killed Yarmoloff, firing with the pistol and extending the sabre in the edge-up position for a killing run-through.
But this Sauron was the type to act, not react. He too charged, running toward Sergei and keeping himself behind Anya’s head and out of Sergei’s field of fire.
Cagey bastard, Sergei cursed. Let’s just see how he likes getting trampled.
Anya was a Cossack’s horse and had long since been trained out of any reluctance she might have held in regards to running a man down. She weighed well over a half a ton and bored down on the Sauron like a juggernaut, rearing up to put him under the hooves she had trampled a tamerlane with only a year before.
With an eerie grace, the Sauron sidestepped the charging horse and, after dropping his weapon, reached out and grabbed Anya’s front right leg as she passed. Jerking it upward and outward, he threw the horse and rider to the ground with a single pull. Screaming, Anya rolled onto her side, flailing all four legs before her.
The Sauron bent over to pick up his rifle and, as he rose, he turned toward Sergei. An impossibly large hole suddenly opened in his cheek; Sergei could literally see daylight through the Sauron, who fell over dead with a look of utter astonishment.
Nikolai galloped up on his horse, the massive revolver still smoking in his hand. He looked down briefly at the dead Sauron. “Huh. So perhaps they only have one heart after all, Papa.”
Sergei scrambled over to Anya, who had struggled to her feet and looked at him almost in embarrassment.
“Is she lamed?” his son asked, keeping his horse wheeling, while his eyes searched through the swirling smoke for the next Sauron.
“Nyet!” Sergei shouted in relief, jumping into the saddle. “Bad girl,” he grunted at Anya, “getting surprised like that.”
He called out to Nikolai, “Where’s the Headman?”
“Dead. We are falling back to the center. It looks like the end, Otez. We’ve lost at least fifty men already.”
Sergei leaned down and swept up the Sauron’s weapons as he rode by. Rising and settling into the saddle, he bit back a curse. “Christus, fifty men? Are you sure?”
Nikolai nodded. The lad was utterly without fear, Sergei knew, but he looked shaken. “They killed almost all of the militiamen, although their heavy weaponry killed some Saurons. These Saurons, Papa. They are like nothing I have ever seen. And I have never seen so many at once.”
There was a roll of thunder as the explosion of another gunship reached them. Serge and his son spurred their horses and headed for the center of the shrinking circle that had been their community.
Chapter Twelve
I
Over-Assault Leader Bohren was worried. Reports indicated that his forces had killed some sixty to seventy of the male cattle and another thirty to forty of their females—every one of whom had been armed and extremely effective with her weapon—and over a hundred of the ambush troops wearing the butternut uniform of the militia. Yet the cattle showed no sign of breaking. Am I fighting the legendary Brigadier Cummings, himself?
He had lost one helicopter gunship to a girl with a machine gun and another had crashed when one of the cattle on horseback had thrown a lance into its tail rotors. A lance! At least, there had been no casualties from that one.
“What are the casualty figures?” Bohren addressed the Communications rank seated beside him.
“Seven soldiers have been killed, Over-Assault Leader. Signals indicate that a further nine have activated their rescue telemetry and can no longer be counted as combat effectives.”
Bohren was aghast. Sixteen casualties? And seven of those dead? He had brought a force of one hundred Soldiers to make a simple raid on cattle, and so far his operation was suffering the highest exchange rate since the Sauron landing on Haven! Diettinger’s assessment of Sergei’s people as being a very strong community had been accurate; if anything—as Bohren was now learning, the Saurons had seriously underestimated the Don Cossacks.
Operationally, things were not all that bad. If Bohren’s troopers had been any other race but Saurons, his losses thus far would have been considered acceptable. But for Sauron Soldiers, with their finite population of combat-capable troops—it was a disaster.
“Recall Fighter rank Stahler’s squadron,” he ordered. “Instruct units engaged in the field to pull back and mount suppressive fire to contain the cattle. We’ll allow the fighters and gunships to finish them off.”
“Acknowledged, Over-Assault Leader. New information from Survey ranks.”
“Speak.”
“Environmental sensors show a massive storm front coming in from the north.”
Bohren frowned. “Relevance?”
“Storm front is due to arrive in this area in twenty-six minutes. Winds estimated at fifty knots, with heavy rain and strong electrical phenomena.”
Saurons were not an expressive people, but at that news Bohren’s jaw dropped. “Meteorology ranks said that storm front was continuing out to sea.”
The Communications Ranker nodded. “Yes, Over-Assault Leader. But weather patterns on this moon have not been fully codified by the Met ranks, yet. The gas giant adds an unpredictable variable.”
“Very well. Proceed with revised orders and inform the helicopter gunships to press the attack for fifteen minutes, then break off, land and secure for storm,” Bohren raised his hand to his brow, wondering if anything else could go wrong today.
/>
II
Sergei and Nikolai had rounded up several dozen other Cossacks and ten survivors of the Haven Volunteers, the later armed with rotary grenade launchers. Together they had begun a sweeping skirmish action against the major Sauron assault force. The Saurons had pinned down the Cossack forces on three sides with fire teams concealed in the tall grasses. Meanwhile, the helicopter gunships made their circular passes, raking the yurts and horsemen with their wing-cannons.
Along the fourth side of the defender’s position, the line of militiamen held, but only because every remaining yurt was there and each one sported at least one heavy machine gun—one even carried a rocket launcher. Women and children were spread around the surface of every yurt; every one of them capable of firing a weapon was doing so. Combined with the completely unexpected firepower provided by the Haven militia, the Sauron attack was beginning to bog down.
Kettler radioed Brigadier Cummings, saying, “The Saurons will still win any attack they make against these Cossacks, Brigadier; nothing can prevent that. But I guarantee they won’t enjoy it very much.”
The grass fires were spreading, whipped up by the steadily freshening winds from the north. Behind those winds, a towering storm front bore down on the battlefield, coming closer with each passing minute.
“Papa!” Nikolai shouted, pointing. “Chopper coming up on the right!”
Sergei turned in his saddle, wheeling Anya about into a hard right turn, directly into the path of the approaching gunships. The horsemen were only staying alive by constant motion, keeping the Saurons from pinning them down, forcing the Soldiers to fire at moving targets and closing with the gunships to give them as little time in their sights as possible. Each Sauron whose position could be ascertained by his fire was met with a hail of heavy weapons fire from the remaining militia units, if they could be called that any longer. Even so, the Haveners were doing very little damage to the attackers, and Cossack after Cossack fell from his horse to the bloody grasses below.