Under the Yoke

by S. M. Stirling

  "Ready?" Arvid said.

  "Ready," the American replied- "Motor-transport?" he added, jerking his chin toward the other vehicles disappearing among the tall pine-trees.

  "A little. Get the heavier supplies and the wounded well into the woods before the snakes get here. A lot of it can be sunk in the swamp and retrieved later, tinned food and sealed boxes. You can go five, ten kilometers easy if you know the way; then we pack it out. This one's for your missile launchers, when we need to move fast"

  Another pair of the ex-German, ex-Draka Opels passed them. "We got some useful booty, too. Snake rocket-guns." Kustaa nodded; those were shoulder-fired recoilless weapons, a light charge throwing a rocket shell out twenty meters before the sustainer-motor cut in. Very effective antiarmor weapons and good bunker-busters. "Good to get something out of this."

  He offered the American agent a package of cigarettes. Janissary army-issue, in a plain khaki-colored package. Kustaa inhaled gratefully; they were good, nice light mild flavor.

  "You killed a fair number of them," he said.

  Arvid lit one himself and sat on the running board, heedless of the sticky remains of the driver still pooling there.

  "We lost thirty dead, killed maybe that many Janissaries," he said with the flat almost-hostility that Kustaa had grown accustomed to. "It takes them, what, six to eight months to train a Janissary, from induction to posting. Replacements with this convoy, they were mostly Europeans. Germans, Czechs, Croats, some Swiss. The Janissaries are volunteers, you know? They get more than they need. We destroyed some equipment, too." He nodded to the Dragon; four trees had fallen across it, and the crew had chosen to burn alive inside rather than emerge to face the guerrilla bullets. The turret had peeled open along the lines of its welds when the ammunition blew, but the armored cabs were outwardly intact save for scorchmarks. The screams had stopped long ago.

  "They have their own industry and all Europe, all Asia to replace that. As easy for them as replacing the drivers and whores."

  "Those are people you're talking about," Kustaa said quietly. "Have you thought of asking them if they want to join you?"

  The guerrilla smiled without humor. "The snake secret police would just love that, an opportunity to get agents among us. We've had enough problems with that, American; my family killed themselves so they couldn't be used as levers against me."

  Fanatic, Kustaa thought, chilled. Then: And who's to blame him? He tried to imagine Aino giving Maila a cyanide pill crushed into her milk, raising one to her mouth with a shaking hand and tears runneling down her cheeks, pictured them lying together cold and twisted with blue froth on their lips…

  That's what I'm here to prevent, he thought. The guerrilla was speaking again.

  "… probably killed one, two Citizens at most. And a couple of Janissary senior NCO's, they're harder to replace than the cannon-fodder." He glanced up. "The survivors got a message through to their HQ, the aircraft should be here any minute." Most of the guerrillas were already fading back into the woods, to let the counterstrike fall on empty ground. "It's up to you to make this worthwhile, American."

  A faint thupthupthup came blatting over the trees from the west, louder than the crackling roar of the forest fire. And a turbine howl, growing.

  "Helicopters," Arvid said bitterly. "Damnation, I was hoping for jets…"

  They ducked beneath the chest-high canvas with its load of shoveled pine-duff, crowded with the angular metal tubing of the launcher and the half-dozen guerrillas who would help him operate it. Arvid's field-glasses went up, and Kustaa followed suit. Three droop-nosed shapes coming in low, two thousand feet, narrow bodies and long canopies tilted down under the blur of the rotors.

  "Gunboats," Kustaa muttered. He was tired, with the swift adrenaline-flush exhaustion of combat; the sound flogged him back to maximum alertness. The Alliance hadn't put as much effort into helicopters as the Draka, and the Domination had captured most of the German research effort as well. A question of priorities: gunboats and assault-transports were more useful for antipartisan work, and the Alliance had little of that, thank God. Their choppers were mostly for casualty-evacuation and naval antisubmarine…

  "Damn, air cavalry as well," Arvid said. A broad wedge of troop-transports followed the ground-support craft, but behind and much further up, tiny dark boxy shapes. "Can you take the transports?"

  "No. Not unless they come a lot closer and lower. The operational ceiling's four thousand, and—" The transports broke east and south, sweeping in a long curve that took them away from the missiles waiting crouched by the road. Arvid's eyes followed them.

  "Must be trying to get behind us at the lake, bottle us up," he said quietly. "Most of us will get through, they don't know that area as well as they think. A pity they're not coming here, ten Draka in every one of them. The gunboats have Citizen pilots too, of course. Don't miss."

  "I don't intend to," Kustaa replied, and turned to the crews. The missile launchers were spaced ten yards apart, for safety's sake; the reloads well back, in case of a misfire. "Ready," he said. "Remember, second team waits until I've fired. These things track thermally, we don't want them chasing each other. Fire from behind the target only, you have to get the exhausts. Do not fire until the lock-on light comes on and the signal chimes. Then fire immediately." Repetition, but never wasted. "Now, get the tarps unlaced, and be ready to pull them off fast."

  A flare rose from the north end of the convoy, popped into a blossom of red smoke. The gunboats circled over the dug-in Janissaries, then peeled off to run straight down the road at nearly treetop height. Whapwhap-whapwhap echoed back from the forest; the blades drove huge circles of smoke and ash billowing into the forest, fanned the embers on charred trunks into new flickers of open flame. Kustaa buried his mouth in the crook of his arm to breathe through the cloth, blinking pain-tears from his eyes and keeping the helicopters in view. They had their chin-turrets deployed to either side, firing the gatlings in brief brap-brap-brap bursts; one sawed across the wet ground in front of his position, the sandy mud spattering across the camouflage tarpaulin. Machine-guns spat at them from the ground, carefully grouped away from the rockets to attract the Draka gunners' attention.

  The firing ceased as they swept south past the head of the convoy and banked, turning 180 degrees like a roller-skater grabbing a lamppost. Kustaa worked his tongue inside a dry mouth and reflected that even without insignia it would be obvious to anyone watching that the craft were Draka-crewed, the hard arrogant snap of the piloting was unmistakable. They were nearly back level with him—

  "Now!" he shouted, sliding into the gunner's seat. Strong hands flipped the tarp back, pumped at the hydraulic reservoir to maintain pressure, and the launch-rail swung smoothly erect. The helicopters were going by in line, six hundred feet up; they wouldn't notice, not with the smoke… Ring-sight up, just a gimbal-mounted concentric wire circle, adjust for range, there they were past, lay the wires on the two exhaust-ports of the last gunboat's turbines, clench left hand. The electronics whined and his feet played across the pedals, keeping the whole frame centered on the blackened circles and heat-shimmer of the exhausts.

  Come on, come on, he thought. God, not a vacuum tube failure, he'd tested every component individually when they assembled them, when were they going to get everything solid state, the Draka had to notice any second, even with the launchers behind them—

  Ping. Pingpingping—the idiot-savant sensor in the rocket's nose announced it had seen the thousand-degree heat source moving away from it. Someday they would have something smaller, more reliable, but for now…

  "Clear, firing!" he shouted, and his right hand clenched down on the release. The solid-fuel booster of the missile ignited with a giant ssssssSSHHHHH and a flare that flash-blinded him even from the side; that they were going to notice for sure. No need to shout for a reload, the crew were heaving the long cylinder onto the rail. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that one of them had a jacket shredded and sm
oldering. He had told them to stand clear of the backblast.

  But his focus stayed on the line of white fire streaking away from him, across the dazzled, spotted field his abused retinas were drawing on the sky. Spear-straight, one second, two, and the flight-lines of the helicopter and the rocket intersected. The explosion was an undramatic thump—the warhead was smaller than a field mortar—but the result was spectacular enough to satisfy the most demanding taste. The tail-boom of the last gunboat vanished, and the shock-wave of the detonation slapped the rotors from behind. Unbalanced, the helicopter flipped nose-down, and the blades acted like a giant air brake, killing its forward momentum. Killing more than that. For a fractional second it seemed to hang suspended, and then it slid two hundred yards straight down into the road.

  Vision ended in a hundred-foot fireball, as fuel and munitions burned. The shock-wave struck hard enough to rock the launcher on its outspread pads, drying his eyeballs with a slap from a soft hot invisible hand.

  "Wait, wait!" he barked to the other team, as the orange fire-globe cleared; the next helicopter was pitching and yawing across the sky as the pilot fought to regain control. Even as he shouted, the dragon-hiss of the other launcher sounded. Kustaa watched with angry fatalism as the missile arced neatly toward its target, dipped, and crashed itself into the burning wreckage of the one he had downed; that was hotter than the exhausts, and more consistent.

  "Ready," the reload team gasped, and he felt a hand slap his boot.

  "Keep the pressure up," he rasped, working with heel and toe to control elevation. The second helicopter was traveling straight and level again, impressive piloting to regain control after getting tumbled flying low and fast like that. Extreme range, two thousand yards, dark fuselage against the black smoke of the forest fire…

  Ping. This time he scarcely noticed the heat of launch, too focused on slitting his eyes to follow the flare. Four seconds to impact, three, Christ, I hope they don't have rearview mirrors, two—

  "Shit," he said. The Draka helicopter waited until the last possible instant, then pulled up in a vertical climb that turned into a soaring loop. Less agile, the missile overshot and began to climb; then the sensor picked up the unvarying heat of the burning trees and began its unliving kamikaze dive. "They learn fast."

  The seat almost jerked out from underneath him as the Finns hurled themselves at the frame, ten strong backs lifting it in a bend-snatch heave that clashed it down on the bed of the truck with a vigor that brought a wince to Kustaa's face; electronics were just too sensitive for that sort of treatment. Suddenly he was conscious of Arvid pounding him on the back, the hard grins of the others.

  "Not bad, American!" The Finn's face was black with soot and dried blood, a gargoyle mask for white teeth and the tourmaline blue eyes. "One hit for three shots, a gunboat and two snake Citizens dead!"

  Kustaa grinned in reply and fisted the guerrilla on the shoulder. "Where've the other two gone, that's what I'd like to know," he replied. Neither helicopter was in view. Run away? he thought. Quite sensible, in the face of a new weapon of unknown qualities, but unlikely. If the Domination's elite warriors had a military fault, it was an excess of personal aggression. Nothing in the smoke-streaked blue of the sky ahead and to either side; he shook his head against the ringing in his ears and concentrated. Yes, the thuttering of helicopter blades and engine noise… getting louder, but where? The Finnish crew were taut and ready by the four outrigger legs of the second launcher, the snub nose of the missile tracking a little as the gunner's toes touched the pedals.

  Not worth the disruption to go and take over, he thought.

  Arvid tensed and broke into a sprint. "Behind you!" he called to the missile team, running toward them, pointing frantically back into the forest. Kustaa had just enough time to twist and see the shadow of the gunboat flicker through the trees as it dove toward the ground at a near-vertical angle. It ripplefired its rocket pods nearly above his head, and the blast as they impacted on the waiting missile was behind him. He felt it as pressure, first on his back and then as if his eyeballs were bulging, pushed from within his skull; the impact as he struck the tailgate of the truck came as a surprise, something distant in the red-shot blackness.

  Vision cleared almost at once; Kustaa could see as the Finns hauled him in beside the frame of the launcher. See clearly, as if through the wrong end of a telescope, things small and sharp and far away, too far away to be worth the effort needed to move a body turned warm and liquid. There was a crater, scattered about with bits of twisted metal and softer things; the treetrunks and rocks that had absorbed much of the force, still settling and smoking. And a figure was probably Arvid, that had to be Arvid, though it was difficult to tell since it was burning. The man-thing took a step, two, fell forward; its back was open, and things moved in there, pink and gray-cooked and charred. Then the far-off scene was vanishing, into shadows and movement and somewhere the sound of weeping.

  The bodies moved. Both the Special Tasks gunmen had their pistols cleared and slapped three rounds each into the topmost corpse before Andrew could react, swinging in to put themselves between Sannie and the stirring in the jumbled pile of wood and flesh.

  "Wait," the Merarch said; the staff Strategos echoed it, and soldiers all along the line of smoldering wrecks that had been a convoy came out of their instinctive crouches. There was still firing from the southeast, an occasional popping and the crackle of Draka assault-rifles as the Janissaries mopped up the guerrilla rearguard. Here the loudest sound was the protesting whine of engines as the recovery vehicles dragged wreckage to the side of the road; mine-clearance teams were sweeping the verges with infinite caution, marking their progress with fluttering banners of white tape. The burial details were busy too, an excavator digging a mass trench for the dead drivers and other auxiliaries, prefab coffins for the Janissary casualties.

  I hope the ceremonial does them some good, wherever, Andrew thought wryly. Actually, the flags and banners at the Legion's homebase cemetery served the same purpose as any funeral, to comfort the living and remind them that the community lived even when its members died.

  He hooked off the top layer of dead partisans with his boot; their heads would decorate stakes around the firebase, after somebody collected the ears. There were flies already; he looked up, noticing almost with surprise that the sun was still bright on a summer's afternoon, still high above a horizon that had darkened no further than twilight. A haze of smoke obscured it, and that was the smell; smoke from burning wood, metal, fuel, explosive, rubber, bodies. At least it covered the usual stink of death, stunning his nose so that he could barely smell the liquid feces that streaked the uniforms.

  There was another stirring; he reached down and grabbed a jacket, heaved.

  "Take him," he snapped, and two troopers grabbed the Finn, pinned his arms and searched him with rough efficiency. Andrew resumed his measured pacing along the line of burnt-out trucks and armored vehicles. A cutting torch dropped sparks amid the tangle of alloy plate that had been an APC; melted fat was pooled beneath it, overlaid with the iridescent sheen of petroleum distillate.

  Corey Hartmann was walking towards them from the head of the convoy. "That's where the whatever-it-was was located," he said, pointing east to a crater just beyond the cleared firezone that edged the road. "I've got my people cataloging and bagging the fragments, but the gunboat didn't leave much."

  "Can't say's I blame him," Andrew said dryly, taking a look back at the much larger crater where one of the helicopters had crashed.

  "There were two of them, we're thinkin'," Hartmann said as they turned through the burnt grass. "Seems they got the othah 'way in a steamtruck."

  "Interestin'," Sannie van Reenan mused, narrowing her eyes. "They must've backpacked it in; we didn't think they could build 'em that light an' portable."

  "They? The Yankees?" Andrew asked sharply.

  "Who else? Fo' sure, the bushmen didn't cobble it together in their caves. We couldn't make somethin'
that small an' capable, but the Alliance is ahead of us on miniature stuff."

  They came to another line of bodies in the black stubble; scattered women with gunshot wounds or the flesh-tattering multiple punctures of directional mines. One of the females lay sprawled beside a dead Janissary, her hands still gripping his harness. Young, Andrew thought, studying her face. Probably quite attractive too, before her hair burned. Another of the women sat beside her, cradling her head in her lap and rocking back and forth with a low ceaseless moaning; the live girl's hands were swelling with their burns, skin cracked and glistening with lymphatic fluids.

  "Medic, we need a medic ovah here!" he called sharply.

  "Comin', comin'!" the nearest called; a Citizen doctor, overseeing the auxiliaries who were inserting a plasma-drip in a Janissary whose legs were mostly gone below the tourniquets. She stood as they eased him onto a stretcher. "Priorities heah, yo' knows."

  Andrew wheeled sharply, lighting a cigarette with a needlessly aggressive snap of the Ronson. "Corey," he said flatly. "These were the replacements fo' the Comfort Station, weren't they?"

  The Cohortarch nodded. "Out of luck, po' bitches," he said, glancing up from a clipboard someone had handed him.

  "Well, soon's our wounded're out, have 'em lifted to Legion HQ as well an' tell the duty officer to find somethin' for them to do when they're patched up," he said. The other Draka nodded again.

  "Only fittin', seein' as we were supposed to be guardin' them," he said with a grimace.

  Andrew flicked the half-smoked cigarette to the ground, lit another. "Yo'… Sergeant Dickson, right?"

  A young Janissary with junior NCO's stripes made an effort to straighten to attention; it was difficult to see his expression, since half his face was bandaged.