by John F. Carr
“What are you after boy, arguing with the Brigadier?” a voice snapped behind Cummings.
“Let him speak, John,” Cummings said without turning. Major Hamilton was proving to be technically competent at his new job of chief of staff. At handling people instead of problems, though, Anton Leung was worth four of him. Hamilton had spent half his life disobeying orders and the other half blindly obeying them. Somewhere along the line—like a number of other hereditary nobles Cummings had known—John had stopped paying attention to the people he was dealing with.
“Are your people planning on setting up a local resistance?” Cummings asked.
“I—well, Pop wouldn’t tell me if he was. But I don’t think so.” Eric frowned. “It’s more like the bandits. A couple of times we joined with them. Once we won, but both times they took all the loot and ran off. The second time the Saurons came... That’s when my sister and her little girl disappeared—we saw signs that the Saurons took them.”
“You can’t fight the Saurons by yourselves without more of that happening. My men can help, but we need to know what’s going on. The next time, the Saurons might level your village and kill everyone in it.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But there’s not many Saurons. There are lots of bandits, and Redfielders and gray shirts, and all kinds of people who say they take what they need to fight the Saurons. But like my father says maybe they just take it for themselves.”
The cynicism of a middle-aged man in a boy of fifteen made Cummings wince. On Haven, people always grew up fast, or they didn’t grow up at all. Yet, before the Saurons came, they hadn’t grown into intriguers before their voice broke.
Another debt for the Saurons to pay in blood.
“All right, Eric. Drink some more water, then wait until the messengers leave. Go back to your father with them.”
“Brigadier—”
“That order you will obey, or you’ll find I’m not too old or too high-ranking to spank you!”
He heard Top Sergeant Slater’s laugh.
Eric saluted, then nearly fell on his nose trying to click his heels. “Yes, sir!”
As soon as Eric was out of hearing, Hamilton came up and handed Cummings the three outgoing messages for the next stage of the battle. Cummings remembered when a fight involving one-fourth this many soldiers would have involved ten times the communications load. But that was before they had Saurons listening and these blasted mountains causing interference.
The Major stood awkwardly at attention as if he had something on his mind.
“Yes, John?”
“What about having the messengers—ah, hold on to Eric, at least till the fighting is over? He’s just a boy; I really don’t think he knows what he’s up against.”
“Maybe you’d like to tell the boy that in person? By his own admission, he’s been in at least three firefights since the Saurons landed. Who knows how many before?”
“He’s still a boy—”
“Would you like to compare battle records?”
Hamilton managed to stay at attention, but he swallowed and his face turned pale.
“Good. While you’ve been living safe and secure behind Whitehall’s walls, these people have been fighting and dying. Eric may yet be a lad, but he’s still a soldier. Let’s try and not take that from him along with everything else.”
From the stricken look on John’s face, he knew he’d overdone it again. Hamilton had seen a fair amount of combat, beginning with the Battle of Whitehall against the self-declared King of Haven, David Steele.
Bloody hell, I am getting too old for breaking in new officers!
Hamilton’s face was turning to its normal tan coloration as he turned away. Cummings sat down and began checking the orders mechanically. Hamilton wouldn’t have made any serious errors in detail; he was too well trained by his grandfather for that, thank God.
Other kinds of errors: Is Haven in a race? A race between the Saurons killing her defenders and the defenders turning into Saurons themselves? Or worse, into people like Enoch Redfield—using the Saurons to fuel their own ambitions.
Who would win?
Mere generals, Cummings decided, were not on God’s need-to-know list for the answer to that one.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I
To Fourth Rank Boyle’s right, the almost meticulous rattle of Sauron suppressive fire echoed around the hillside. Straight ahead, the last of Sargun’s flanking movement was vanishing up a ravine.
He tried to wish himself smaller or the boulder shielding him larger and more firmly seated. It rocked if he sneezed, and a nearby explosion could send it rolling over on top of him. Unfortunately, the only other position where he could find cover was directly down slope.
Other than that, he was having the time of his life. While growing up he had believed that being a tech meant that he could not be a good soldier; now he was finding out that was not true. No, he was not, nor was he ever going to be, a Super Soldier, but even Sargun was granting him a grudging respect.
He had to complete this mission with honor. One thing for sure, working the comm board would never be the same after his time in the field.
One of the Soldiers going up the ravine bellowed like a muskylope twice. That meant they were at the halfway point.
Boyle scanned the slope, to both left and right, then resigned himself to staying put. He had tried his best to convince Sargun to avoid the ravine. While it was the quickest way to the crest, it was also the most obvious site for an ambush.
So Boyle had done the next best thing: he had set up his command post where he could keep track of events in the ravine. Sargun and his squad might need either reinforcing or rescuing on very short notice.
A bullet whnnnggged off the boulder, making it quiver but not roll. At least one militiaman lurked on the ridge. He just hoped it was an isolated detachment. He wanted to find General Cummings, but after that he had to live to report what he had found.
He was looking for a target to shoot at, when a good-sized rock suddenly began to move—toward him. A second look showed it was a land gator looking for a meal. He moved his assault rifle, without conscious thought, and fired a single shot right into one of the land gator’s eyes. It kept coming anyway; Haven’s indigenous lifeforms were tough.
A quick burst of gunfire from his rifle shredded the gator into steaming chunks of protoplasm in the frigid air. Two shots followed from above, one striking the rock he was hiding behind close enough to splatter debris into his eyes. He closed one eye, and fired back; then he saw a man fall backwards before toppling down the ravine.
“Got a count of our friends up there?” he asked the Patrol Leader working the IR detector.
The Soldier shrugged. “The rock’s warming up along the crest. If they can find cover in the sunny patches, they may not give an IR pulse.” He rested a hand on the detector. “Besides, this fellow’s due for an overhaul.”
For which there are no spare parts within fifty light-years, Boyle thought.
The Soldier began to make another scan of the crest. This involved exposing himself to possible enemy fire, but none came. Maybe the squad’s base of fire was doing some good in return for all the ammunition expended. They were scheduled to meet one of the helicopters at hill 2582 to pick up more ammunition and some reinforcements. Now, if they could just get to this hill—
Somewhere above the ravine, the hillside vomited smoke and rocks. The explosion slammed across Boyle’s ears, drowning out the firing. Then the rolling echoes of the explosion were swallowed up, as the roar of a landslide swept across the hill.
The dust cloud completely obscured the ravine and the hillside for fifty meters on either side. However, the particles didn’t hide the strong IR pulse.
“The cattle are moving, going to hit our people before they recover,” the Patrol Leader shouted.
“Coordinates?”
They came; Boyle cupped his hands and shouted them out. He heard them relayed, then saw the red flare o
f the rocket launcher.
Two rounds burst, squarely among the militiamen trying to rush the Soldiers before they recovered from the landslide. This was no wishful thinking: Roger actually saw bodies flying.
He also saw dust spurting around the rock, and the Patrol Leader’s head explode as a ricocheting bullet smashed into the base of his skull, just below the rim of his helmet. A little up, a little to the right or the left, and it would have been no more than a headache. But the bullet had struck dead center, where a Soldier was as vulnerable as any cattle.
Boyle shouted and signaled for suppressive fire on the crest, then realized the squad was already generating it. Three generations of warfare had created Soldiers who automatically used tactics based on squad-level initiative. Just as they used the doctrine of engaging with fire first, then movement. On Haven, the Soldiers’ superior weapons and marksmanship coupled with inferior numbers reinforced doctrine.
When he was certain the Haveners were either dead or pinned down, he sprinted for the foot of the ravine. He’d covered a hundred meters before the crest of the hill came to life again, and the remaining hundred before they got his range. Meanwhile, his squad was hosing the crest with their cover fire.
The survivors of the flanking squads appeared stunned, incapable of either thought or movement. All of them were covered with dust and some of them, including Sargun, oozed blood. Sargun’s wound had stripped half the scalp and part of his skull off the right side of his head, and his eyes were barely focused.
“Form up!” Boyle shouted. “Follow me back up the ravine. We need to clear the head, then bring up the other squad and dig out our comrades.”
One of the medical ratings was busy patching up the Cyborg’s wound with a quick-drying permabone graft. His skull would be better than new, or at least stronger, within the hour. How the brains underneath the injury had fared was another question entirely.
“Dig—?” someone said, his voice creaking like a rusty gate.
“Of course, dig. It takes more than a few rocks to kill Soldiers.”
This was true enough, but neither cattle nor Soldier could survive being buried under half-ton boulders. Plus, anyone too badly hurt to walk was going to present a problem; they were already at the limit of the number of wounded they could carry without abandoning their heavy weapons. Without those, they would be stobor bait.
Boyle looked back down the ridge at the Soldiers again. Words would not reach them; only actions would register. He slammed a fresh magazine into his assault rifle and shouted, “FOLLOW ME!”
He went up the ravine at a rush, adrenalin-pumping, slipping and sliding on the loose rubble but somehow keeping his balance. He also managed not to look back to see if anyone was following him. If they weren’t, then tripping and falling because he missed his footing wouldn’t help bring them along.
He was halfway up the ravine before a militiaman survivor took a shot at him. He returned fire, a five-round burst, and heard a cry.
He also heard more bursts from behind him, as well as Sauron war cries. The dusty air seemed to pour into his lungs and blow him up like a balloon, until his feet skimmed the rocks.
He reached the head of the ravine, only to find a man with a shattered arm crouched over a body. No, a boy, fair-haired and no more than sixteen T-years old. The boy turned and brought up a hunting rifle in his good hand and attempted to fire it one-handed.
Boyle and one of the Soldiers, who had caught up with him in his race up the ravine, fired together. The boy jerked as the bullets stitched their way up his body, then slumped over the dead man.
The Soldier, he saw to his annoyance, was Sargun. He’d somehow managed to use a piece of his tunic as an improvised bandage, although oozing blood was already turning it red. If he knew the Cyborg, as soon as the permabone had been implanted, he had refused anymore treatment. In his opinion, that was only asking for problems.
“Well done, Fourth Rank,” Sargun said. The words set off a coughing fit, and he saw the Cyborg wince at the pain shooting through his skull. But within moments, Sargun had composed his face and straightened up.
“That should teach the cattle how little they can gain, by using cowards’ weapons. Now let’s search the ravine for any salvageable weapons.”
Boyle and the other Soldiers looked past Sargun at one another. ‘Has he forgotten the Soldiers buried under the rocks?’ was in everybody’s eyes.
Boyle shook his head slightly. As long as Sargun was capable of standing and giving orders, removing him from command—even with Diettinger’s memo—would be risky, not to mention dangerous. The conflict might not stay at the verbal level, and by himself Boyle was no match for even a dazed and wounded Cyborg.
As for enlisting help—if Sargun did the same, it would mean a civil war within their small command, deep in enemy territory, perhaps in the presence of the enemy.
“As you order, Cyborg. If we find any of our comrades, though, could you lend your strength to helping them?”
“Of course.”
If Sargun saved anybody’s life, it would strengthen his authority all over again. But Boyle would have whistled up a pride of Sauron nightfangs, if he’d thought they would save his men.
More Soldiers had come up the ravine now. He spread the eleven men in a line across the ravine, with himself just out in front of the center and Sargun just to the rear.
“Follow me.”
II
General Cummings stooped as he entered the camouflaged tent. Major Hamilton was sitting by the sleeping bag where the last survivor of the patrol lay dying.
“You didn’t…need—” the man began, then shook his head. “Thanks, sir.”
“I should thank you. Major Hamilton says you did a good job.”
“Wish—we could have got more…but we…we counted their filthy corpses. Six of the bastards. And, I think they took…some wounded with them, sir.”
That was likely enough. Not that Sauron wounded were as much of a liability as ordinary wounded, but they still slowed down a marching column. A marching column deep in hostile territory, with the countryside up in arms around them.
Or at least ready to rise, if Cummings gave the order. These Saurons would find out that the Haven Volunteers had a few sharp teeth yet.
Cummings took Hamilton’s notes and read them over. The patrol had gone to check the Sauron graves and give the battlefield a once-over-lightly for any useable equipment that either side might have left. Seven men, mounted but lightly armed, with orders to disengage from any Sauron opposition.
They’d reached the ravine, counted the Sauron graves, then discovered the Saurons had left a rearguard. At least one machine gun, plus assault rifles and the usual excellent Sauron marksmanship.
Caught in open ground, the patrol hardly had a prayer. The last man survived only because he played dead, and the Saurons didn’t make a close inspection.
He might not be dying now, except that the firing had stampeded the ponies. Also, he’d used up a good deal of his strength moving the bodies.
“I don’t understand why he’d do such a stupid thing,” Hamilton said. “If this is going to become a habit—”
“Major,” Cummings said with deceptive gentleness, then looked down at the dying man. His breathing had already faded to where he could no longer talk, but his eyes were open. To Cummings, it seemed that all of his dead looked out from those glassy eyes.
So it wasn’t just to John Hamilton that he spoke, when he said, “He didn’t want our dead to lie near the Sauron graves. He couldn’t bury them, but he had to move them. Any more questions?”
“No, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I
Cyborg Rank Zold turned back to look down at the valley below: there he saw the motley caravan of trucks, armored personnel carriers, automobiles, wagons and even a few carts all loaded with female cattle and the supplies they needed for their journey to the Citadel. Even from near the top, he could hear the braying of mules and the
caterwauling of muskylopes. He estimated their number at five or six thousand captive female breeders.
The woman running toward the cliff edge wore only blood, bruises and her hair. Idly, Cyborg Rank Zold watched her dodge the Soldiers’ arms reaching out for her. The Soldiers were playing with her, he knew. Sooner or later one of them would stop playing, grip hard, and throw her down to the ground again. She’d be dead by the time he reached the ridge top.
Suddenly she stopped at the very edge of the cliff and knelt. He sensed some gathering emotion, but crowding Soldiers threw off her scent—he couldn’t read her. Some religious nonsense, no doubt, which she expected to save her. He made a mental wager that she wouldn’t even be allowed to finish it.
He won the bet. An auburn-haired Soldier darted forward, then went to a crouch. The woman raised her hands to the sky as he approached. The Soldier stood looking down at her.
As quick as a thought, she slammed both hands into the Soldier’s groin. He doubled over with a cry; she must have had a hidden rock or knife in those hands. As the Soldier doubled over, she gripped him by both knees and flung herself backward over the edge of the cliff.
Zold pushed the momentary burst of anger aside: Any Soldier that careless got what he deserved. No Cyborg would have been caught so unprepared. It was too bad the breeder had died; she had the traits of good stock.
He ran to the edge of the cliff in time to see both bodies smash on the rocks two hundred meters below.
In the bitterly cold wind whipping the Citadel’s mountain, the puffs of dust were gone almost before they rose.
“How often, has this happened?” asked a familiar voice behind him.
The Cyborg whirled so swiftly that the Soldiers around him sprang back, to give him fighting room. He was in combat stance before he could correct himself.
“How often has what happened?” Zold asked, miffed at the improper address.
“One of the female cattle has been driven to destroy herself, and a Soldier with her?”