The Forlorn Hope

by David Drake

  If the guards in the bunker opened fire, somebody had to lob grenades through each of the gunslits. No one in the Company could be trusted to do that at night except Hussein ben Mehdi.

  Everyone in Fasolini's Company was armed with a real weapon, even the nominal 'lieutenant' who had been signed on as a negotiating tool. Most people thought that ben Mehdi had chosen the grenade launcher over an armor-piercing squeeze-bore because the former was relatively light. That was not the case. The recoil of the squeeze-bore made it almost impossible to fire from a prone position, hugging the ground with the greatest surface of your vulnerable flesh. By contrast, ben Mehdi could launch gas-propelled concussion grenades all day and never have to lift himself in the face of fire.

  And he had gotten very good, against the day that the Colonel might decide that his five grenadiers were superfluous to a company of tank busters and should be reequipped. The Lieutenant had wanted to be able to prove that his skill, at least, was too great to be discarded.

  That skill had just set him at the Windy Corner.

  Sergeant Mboko reached the bunker and flattened himself against the face of it, between a pair of gun-slits. He waved back at the troopers waiting to follow if he made the run himself without tripping the alarm. Quickly but in single file, the five mercenaries scrambled to obey the summons. Further back in the darkness, the remainder of the Company lay tense but immobile until the leading team had cleared the bunker.

  Lieutenant ben Mehdi was the last man in the file, but he got to his feet without hesitation. Him in a shock commando—him!

  And the strangest thing of all was that, as Allah willed, the situation did not seem to be bothering him the way it should have.

  * * * *

  The bunker was dug halfway below surface. Its roof was only a meter above ground level. Sergeant Mboko braced his left hand on the top and sprang up, directly onto the soldier sleeping there.

  The Cecach soldier started up with a cry which would have been louder if much of the breath had not been driven out by the mercenary's hips. For the Sergeant, it was like stepping onto a platform that was not really there. The irregular, sand-bagged surface had hidden the guard in the darkness. Mboko had kept his face-shield up because depth perception was more important to him than light-gathering while he sprinted toward the bunker.

  Now Mboko swung wildly at the cry in the same instinctive horror with which he might have brushed a spider from his eyelid. The knife jarred and twisted in his hand despite its keen edge. The human bulk beneath him kicked while its throat made clucking noises. The Sergeant had not slashed through the neck as he had intended; he had buried ten centimeters of his blade in the soldier's temple.

  Mboko could hear the troopers of his section running toward the bunker. With a desperate fury, the Sergeant tugged his weapon clear. The soldier's heels were drumming on the sandbags. It seemed impossible that the guards within the bunker would not awaken at the perfect time to slaughter the five men. Mboko braced his left hand on the Cecach soldier's chest.

  The soldier had been a woman. Her breasts lay like gelatine over muscles which were going rigid in death.

  The knife came free. There was no sound from inside the bunker.

  The first of Mboko's troopers vaulted to the top of the position as the Sergeant waved them on.

  * * * *

  It was not a neat operation, but they were not in a business where neat bought any groceries. The six mercenaries poised at the narrow doorway. That many men would be in each other's way inside. Ben Mehdi and another trooper knelt, facing the Complex proper. Mboko counted with his raised fingers for the others. As the Sergeant dipped his hand the third time, Dubose launched himself into the bunker. He carried a knife in his right hand and a light-wand in his left. The Leading Trooper flicked on the wand, silhouetting Mboko against a background of dull yellow as the Sergeant plunged through the doorway himself. The other two of the entry team were a step and a step behind.

  There were three Cecach soldiers inside. One was up on his elbow, awakened by the scuffling above him. The guard had time to shout and raise a hand before Dubose landed on his chest. The mercenary tossed the light-wand aside reflexively as he grappled, striking twice at his victim's throat. Three of the dying soldier's fingers came off as his hand convulsed on the blade it had clutched in desperation.

  The light-wand was necessary for speed and safety, but its saffron glow awakened the other two guards as well. The section leader ignored them. He jumped past Dubose to the alarm monitor in a corner. Mboko put the toe of his boot through the screen. The alarm disconnected with a pop and a stench mingled of ozone and arcing components. Only then did Mboko turn to find that his men had handled their tasks with the necessary competence.

  Butter Platt was cursing. He had tripped on a foot-locker and cut his own left hand badly. That had not prevented him from ripping his target all the way from belly to collarbone. He had kept the blade of his knife to the right of his victim's sternum, where the ends of the ribs are still cartilaginous in a young man. The opened body cavity gaped like a run spreading in a stocking. The point had not nicked a bowel, so the bunker filled with a smell like that of blood on turned earth. When the curly-haired mercenary looked from his own wound to the damage he had caused, he began to smile. His uniform developed a bulge where it covered his groin.

  Chen did not care for knives. Because of the bunker's low ceiling, he could not swing his entrenching tool properly. Instead, he stabbed down as if the short-handled shovel were a fishing spear. Its sharpened edge bit, but the Cecach soldier somehow managed to scream until the shovel had chopped him three more times.

  The light-wand had rolled under one of the cots. Sergeant Mboko picked it up. In its yellow light, the four mercenaries appeared to be smeared with a black that glistened on their skins and molded their uniforms stickily to their bodies. The section leader took a deep, shuddering breath. "OK," he said, "that's it."

  The troopers began to file out. Mboko called after them, "Dubose, get a dressing on Platt's hand."

  "Christ, Butter," Dubose muttered as he glanced from the cut to Platt's face, "you're a real sicko. You really like hurting people, don't you?"

  "Hey," said the other trooper as he stepped into the night, "do I talk about you and your little girls?"

  Mboko switched off the wand. He held it in one of the sand-bagged firing slits and flicked three pulses toward the darkness and the rest of the Company. They were keeping strict radio silence now that the ridge no longer shielded their transmission from the receivers in the Complex itself. All clear. No problems.

  God, what a way to make a living.

  The Sergeant stepped out of the bunker and drew another deep breath. The fresh night air flushed the abattoir reek from his lungs, but nothing could clear his mind.

  * * * *

  There were no guards posted outside the Katyn Forest. The bridge scuttle was retracted and all three cargo holds were clam-shelled shut. Nothing could be done about the rent in the hull where the bomb had punched through, however. The handholds meant for operation in a vacuum gave access of a sort up the curve of the hull. It was not access which would have done Albrecht Waldstejn much good without Trooper Hoybrin above, hauling him up by rope to the point the cylindrical hull began to curve in again, however.

  Panting, the Captain reached the hole on which they depended for entrance. Sergeant Hummel and three Black Section troopers were already there. Waldstejn, with his familiar face and uniform, had to be the first inside.

  Necessarily, they had made a great deal of noise on the hull. The lights visible within the Power Room meant nothing—in that location, the glow strips were probably permanently charged. Waldstejn braced his hands on the impressed lips of the bomb puncture and let his legs dangle. Maria. If a squad of Republican guards were waiting for the first man through the hole . . . well, it would be quick.

  Churchie Dwyer gave him a thumbs-up signal and a stainless steel grin. Waldstejn grimaced, then dropped to
the deck with a clang.

  He was facing the muzzle of a rifle. The bearded First Officer—Captain Ortschugin— watched him over the sights. His eye was as cold as that of any of the Company's gunmen.

  Albrecht Waldstejn picked himself up carefully. He raised his hands, but he smiled. "Vladimir," he said to the grim-faced spacer, "we need to talk, and I'll take a drink if you've got something handy. I think we're each other's tickets home."

  Chapter Twelve

  Thorn was running through the pre-flight check with other spacers in the stern compartments. Except for that, Ortschugin was alone on the bridge with Waldstejn. The Cecach officer felt cramped, especially after the days he had just spent without a roof over him.

  "I don't mean I'm not in this," the spacer said. "These—fanatics, it is not possible for normal people to live around them. Only by staying sealed off in the ship can we survive here, and if they carry us back to Budweis, well. . . . But we have no chance, not really. Just crossing the whole compound—" he spat tobacco juice into a can—"pft!"

  Waldstejn grinned. "You haven't been with these meres," he said. "I—in garrison, there wasn't much to choose between them and the 522nd, you know? Soldiers with nothing to do but raise hell. But out there, Vladimir, Mary and the Saints. . . ." The Cecach officer shook his head. "Nothing's sure. But I'm as sure as I can be that we'll get clear of here without a problem. For the rest, well—Bittman talked big, but their front-line tanks are going to have more to worry about than just us. We'll have to trust some to luck and your hull plating, sure, but ... if it doesn't work, they'll believe you were hijacked at gunpoint. And for the rest of us, there's no other chance anyway."

  A mercenary with drooping moustaches and a look of unexpected enthusiasm came clashing along the corridor from the holds. "Captain," he said as he burst into the bridge, "Guns says to tell you the old girl herself's back there! And the ammo!"

  "Your cannon?" Waldstejn translated uncertainly. He glanced at Ortschugin. "What's the cannon doing here?"

  The Swobodan nodded. "All your gear," he said. "Their gear, I mean, the meres. Next week, when the pylons are laid to here, we carry it back to Budweis with ourselves and the copper—all spoils, useless here but of value to the Return, you see."

  Thorn turned from his controls. He said something to his captain which Waldstejn thought was a report that they were ready to go.

  Ortschugin confirmed that. "Whenever you want," he said to the Cecach officer in English. "Thorn says the board's green."

  Albrecht Waldstejn stood. "I'll check with the others," he said. "There's still three hours to dawn, no need to lift before everything's locked down tight." He grinned at Cooper, the mercenary who had brought the report, then looked back at Captain Ortschugin. "Hell, Vladimir," he said, "I know it doesn't matter a damn whether their gear's aboard or not, not for getting to Praha. But doesn't it make you think that—well, keep a crucifix handy, hey?"

  The young officer was laughing as he strode off down the echoing corridor. He had changed in a very few days, thought Vladimir Ortschugin. An impressive man, now. A pity that he was going to die so young.

  * * * *

  "Hold Three, ready," said the intercom in Sergeant Mboko's voice.

  "Hold Two ready," it immediately added as Sergeant Hummel.

  Sergeant-Gunner Jensen nodded to Albrecht Waldstejn across the dim interior of Hold One. "Hold One ready, sir," the blond man said.

  "Waldstejn to bridge," the Cecach officer said to the intercom on the bulkhead beside him. "Raise the hatches."

  When the mercenaries first filed aboard the Katyn Forest, there had been no copper stored in Hold One. Now the length of the hatches on both sides were lined with a waist-high breastwork of ingots shifted from the other two holds. The mercenaries who knelt along the breastworks stiffened as machinery began to squeal. The metal-to-metal seals of the six great doors broke. The Company had boarded by the narrow bridge scuttle because of the noise entailed in opening one of the holds. Now there was no choice. Gray light spread in Hold One as the top-hinged hatches swung up along the full length of both sides. All lights within the holds proper had been doused, though in One and Three there was a slight scatter from the bow and stern compartments. The noise of the hatches rising might not itself provoke a reaction from the garrison, but it would certainly awaken everyone in Smiricky #4 and focus a fair number of eyes on the starship. Ideally, they would have waited until they were under way, but the auxilliary power unit could not winch up the hatches and raise the ship simultaneously.

  One after another, the hatches squealed to a halt. Their lower edges hung a meter above the hold's decking. Every member of the Company able-bodied enough to shoot now knelt behind the inner barriers of copper. The four seriously-wounded troopers were in the crew's quarters, while all the personnel of the freighter itself were at their stations.

  Albrecht Waldstejn squinted into the night. His hands trembled violently on the assault rifle he had never before fired. Any time now, he thought. Any time.

  The intercom crackled in Russian. A moment later, Captain Ortschugin repeated his laconic statement in English: "Lifting ship."

  Its lift engines driven by the full power of the overloaded auxilliary power unit, the Katyn Forest began to lurch toward the lines of pylons and the havoc sure to come.

  * * * *

  A twenty-kilo ingot of copper clanged to the deck before the drive steadied. Alone of the troopers in Hold One, Del Hoybrin did not wonder what would happen if the whole bulwark shifted in on them.

  The vibration bothered Del because it kept him from aiming steadily. They were supposed to open fire as soon as anyone shot at them, though not before. The way the ship was bucking, however, Hoybrin was afraid that he would not be able to hit much. He hoped nobody would shout at him if he messed up.

  The Katyn Forest accelerated too slowly on its lift engines for the effect to be felt. Now that static inertia had been overcome, however, the buildings of the Complex had begun to slide by at a fast walk. None of them were lighted. The vibration damped itself to an acceptable level, and Del began to study things through the holographic gun-sight.

  The ship was passing the truck park. The hole cut in the chain-link fencing had been sutured with a web of steel tape. A pair of soldiers in mottled fatigues leaped to their feet. As the starship passed twenty meters away, one of the guards threw his rifle to his shoulder.

  Del killed both of them with a short burst. The Cecach soldiers flopped back against the fence as all the guns on the port side slammed into action. Trucks beyond the dead men lighted with pinpoint flashes as projectiles ripped along them.

  The Katyn Forest was swinging around the west corner of the park. There was a hesitation as Captain Ortschugin attempted the unfamiliar business of locking their jury-rigged antenna onto the broadcast power system. There were more guards at the gate. It was closed now by an ore carrier parked across the ragged opening. Del fired the rest of his magazine into the men. Because of the angle, dust sprang up ten meters beyond the soldiers like a line of surf on a strand. An instant after the big trooper had squeezed off, the parked truck and the men falling beside it caught the full force of the twenty port-side gunners. Grenades burst amid gravel fountains which the high-velocity projectiles had already sprayed up.

  * * * *

  Del Hoybrin reloaded with the perfect economy with which he did everything that had become instinctive. He was worried. He wished desperately that he could talk to Churchie beside him. There was no time now, and it was too noisy to be heard over the gunfire anyway. The troopers on the starboard side of the ship were engaging the bunkers while those on the port ripped the buildings of the Complex proper.

  Del had not waited for the Rubes to shoot first. Instead, he had squeezed off reflexively just because a guard was aiming a rifle at him.

  He was afraid he was in trouble again.

  * * * *

  Rosa Brionca was as nervous as the watch officer in the communications building
. The phone only burped her call sign once before her hand stabbed from the blanket roll to snatch it. "Mole One to Victor," she said, not yet awake. "Go ahead."

  The Council of Deacons did not enlist women into armed formations, even into rear echelon units the way the Federals did. General Yorck had honored his agreement to enroll the 522nd, however, men and women alike. It may have been that from Yorck's strait viewpoint, the males of the turncoat battalion were already degraded to the level of females.

  The Republicans had given a choice to the officers of the 522nd. They could be reduced to the rank of Private and assigned to rifle companies, or they could keep their commands as provisional officers, Ensigns, in the Lord's Host . . . under the tutelage of the Chaplain who would be assigned to direct the moral welfare of the unit. Rank hath its privileges, Captain Brionca assumed as she took the latter option and the command that went with it.

  The main privilege rank brought to those who had defected to the Lord's Host was the privilege of failing while Chaplain Ladislas Bittman watched. Brionca had realized what that meant even before two platoon leaders were hanged beside Major Lichtenstein. Their units had not been transferring mercenary stores to the Katyn Forest with the alacrity which the Chaplain expected.

  "Three of the bunkers are reporting noise from the starship," the watch officer said. Brionca could not remember who had the duty tonight, her mind was too fuzzy. "Ah, I heard it too."

  "Right," the nominal commanding officer mumbled. She thrust her feet into her boots. Brionca had begun sleeping in her uniform on the floor of her office. That way, whatever happened she could at least make a show of dealing with it before Bittman arrived. The night before, two soldiers had drunk glycol coolant and gone off their heads.

  Brionca had ordered them shot.

  "Get on the horn," she decided abruptly. "Get their captain over here to my—no, get them all over to my office, fast." She hooked her equipment belt, juggling the handset between shoulder and jaw. "And—"