Hero

by Joel Rosenberg

  Shimon Bar-El shrugged. "Way I figure it, it's a morale problem. If we give them a magic Metzadan miracle-worker to lead them, they just might be able to take the town. Or, at the very least, give the Freiheimer defenders reason to panic and divert, say, a battalion of reinforcements.

  "Then again, maybe not. Maybe they'll just blow him and that ratty-ass Casa company into bloody little chunks."

  He handed Ari a sheaf of flimsies. "So . . . instead of kicking your ass out of the Metzadan Mercenary Corps, we're brevetting it up to captain. Do a good job, and I'll see what I can do for you. Now, all we have to do is sell the idea to the Casas—including that asshole Zuchelli."

  He patted Ari on the shoulder. "As of tomorrow, you're an officer. For tonight, you'd better get some sleep, boy. You're going to need it."

  The reassembled Kelev One didn't have any formal assignment, not yet, but they had been billeted in the basement of the house next to the operations center. By some standards it was crowded, but it didn't feel that way: Ari had a gloriously roomy three-by one-meter sleeping area on the concrete floor all to himself, a soft, firm, sleeping pad underneath him—and no rocks to torture him.

  But he couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was that Freiheimer's face in front of him, and he couldn't shoot, he couldn't pull the trigger.

  Buck fever, they called it. Just another form of cowardice.

  He heard Benyamin turn over.

  "Can't sleep?" Benyamin whispered.

  "No."

  Lavon turned over and glared at the two of them, but then went back to sleep.

  "Here." Smiling, Benyamin held out a white tablet. "Take this."

  "What is it?" Ari asked. It looked like—

  "Morphine. Just a sleepy dose—I'll stick a naloxone needle in you in the morning if you're still groggy." Benyamin shrugged. "Worked for me in the OP."

  "I—never mind." Ari had asked Galil, and had been ordered not to take drugs. To hell with it. He swallowed the tablet dry.

  Benyamin's whispered chuckle was warm in the dark. "I know: you asked Galil if you could. I didn't. Like the Sergeant says, it's always easier to get forgiven than to get permission. 'Night, little brother. Do us proud."

  Sleep was a long, black, warm thing, punctuated and terminated by the prick of a needle.

  CHAPTER 14

  Assignment

  Hanging by the neck from the improvised gallows, the captain's corpse turned slowly in the early morning breeze. It wasn't a pretty sight, and it wasn't a pleasant smell. His fatigues hadn't been spotless to begin with; his sphincters, in his last moments, had relaxed in the mindless reflex that tries to make all animals less tasty to the predators that bring them down.

  Ari doubted that the particular predators who had brought the captain down cared much about how tasty he was. The Casalinguese army's Loyalty Detachment was cannibalistic, but only metaphorically.

  As they passed the gallows, General Shimon Bar-El paused at the steps of the former schoolhouse that High Colonel Giacometti was using as his brigade command post. He gestured at Major Zuchelli, Tetsuo, Dov and Ari to precede him, pointedly ignoring both Elena D'Ancona and Zuchelli's two Distacamento Fedeltà sergeants.

  Ari had hoped to get a few moments alone with Elena, but that hadn't happened, and wasn't likely to. She had nodded pointedly at his bars, and when Shimon had mentioned that Ari's captaincy was a brevet, she had smiled broadly enough to earn a glare from Zuchelli.

  Halfway up the steps, Shimon stopped and turned to stare at the body for a moment before he turned to Ari, a momentary frown quirking across his leathery lips.

  His eyes always bothered Ari. Not because he had the epicanthic folds that should go with a Nipponese name like Tetsuo's. The problem was that Shimon's eyes saw too much. Right now, they were looking at a seventeen-year-old boy pretending to be something he wasn't, a phony in more ways than the obvious one of wearing the triple bars of a captain on his shoulders.

  But that wasn't special. Anybody could have seen that Ari was just playing officer, that he was a coward, a failure.

  "Ari, do you know what bothers me about death?" Shimon Bar-El asked, his eyes searching Ari's, maybe for a sign that this time Ari wouldn't fuck up, that somehow he would find the inner resources to do the right thing, or at least get himself killed trying to do the right thing.

  Ari didn't say anything at first; he couldn't answer the unasked question, and the spoken one didn't matter. Then he decided that it couldn't hurt to answer: Shimon Bar-El was always tolerant of subordinates misunderstanding him; he said that it was his fault, not theirs.

  "No, sir," Ari said.

  Shimon clicked his tongue against his teeth. "It's undignified, death is," he said. "Horribly, dreadfully, uncontrollably undignified." He shook his head sadly. "What do you think, Ari? Do you think that Captain Tommasino has learned his lesson?"

  "Tommasino?" Ari's voice almost broke.

  Shimon jerked a thumb at the gallows. "Tommasino. He commanded F Company. Until yesterday, Captain Hanavi." His uncle smiled genially at the brand new triple bars on Ari's shoulders. "Correct, Zuchelli?"

  "Major Zuchelli." The Casalinguese scowled, touching at his bristly mustache; the DF officer had a face like a ferret. "And you seem to disapprove, General Bar-El."

  "I do, at that."

  "Captain Tommasino declined to order his company to attack the enemy, General," Zuchelli said, raising his voice. "Is pusillanimous conduct in the face of the enemy encouraged in the Metzada Mercenary Corps?"

  Shimon didn't answer the Distacamento de la Fedeltà officer as he dipped two fingers into a pocket of his khakis, coming out with a brown, half-crumpled tabstick. He flicked it to life with his thumb and stuck it between his lips.

  "No," he finally said, watching the body dangle. "No, it isn't encouraged, at that." He turned to Tetsuo. "What do you think, Tetsuo?"

  "About the hanging? I think it's a good idea to hang a man for refusing to make a worn-out company engage in a futile attack." Tetsuo nodded soberly. "A wonderful idea, sir. I am sure that Tommasino will never do it again."

  "Dov?"

  "I agree, Uncle Shimon." Master Private Dov Ginsberg didn't bother to keep a twisted grin off his ugly face. "That will teach him."

  "Pour encourager les autres," Elena D'Ancona put in, very seriously, even though her voice seemed to tremble at the edges. "Orders must be obeyed."

  "Or is the concept unfamiliar to you?" Zuchelli asked. The Distacamento de la Fedeltà major hitched one thumb under his glossy leather belt and stroked at his three-day beard with his free hand. The scraggly beard was clearly an affectation: Zuchelli's mustache was neatly trimmed, and his nails were recently manicured.

  Tetsuo shrugged. "I don't understand. Why did he decline to attack? Just to give the DF pigs practice in hanging someone? Not that they did a decent job." He spat, more in contemplation than in disgust. "See how straight the head is? If you hang them right, the drop is supposed to snap the neck; this one was strangled. Very sloppy."

  Zuchelli and his baby-faced junior bodyguard glared at him, but neither of them said anything. Zuchelli's senior bodyguard, a fortyish sergeant with a well-scarred face, suppressed a smile; not all Distacamento de la Fedeltà personnel are Distacamento de la Fedeltà types.

  Elena caught Tetsuo's grin and, perhaps deciding that he was just kidding, returned his smile.

  "Maybe," Shimon said, "he just got tired of seeing men die for nothing, watching them carved into bloody pulp by autogun fire and artillery barrages."

  The MPs at the table just inside the archway at the top of the steps had been eyeing them and each other.

  Ari figured the private was debating with himself whether or not offworld officers' uniforms necessitated a salute. The MP's immediate superior, a corporal with a DF brassard on his left arm to balance the MP one on his right, smiled in self-satisfaction and took out his notebook as though he was going to make a note to report the private for insubordination i
f he didn't salute or for suspected disloyalty if he did.

  When he saw Zuchelli's DF brassard, the private almost voided himself in relief. He snapped a salute at Zuchelli; the DF corporal followed suit, visibly irritated at being unable to come up with grounds for complaint. "Sir."

  "Major Zuchelli and a party of five to see the Colonel. Send a runner, and tell him to get his ass out of bed and into his office."

  "Major, I've had about enough of you," Shimon said. "Repeat after me: 'Private, you will please convey the following message to High Colonel Giacometti:

  Major Zuchelli's respects to the high colonel. Major Zuchelli, General Shimon Bar-El, Captain Tetsuo Hanavi and Captain Ari Hanavi urgently but respectfully request an audience with the colonel, at his earliest convenience. Thank you, Private.' "

  Tetsuo didn't make a move toward unslinging his rifle; he just took three slow steps away from Shimon's side until he was within reach of both of the MPs, his hands open and relaxed, his weight on the balls of his feet.

  "Stand very easy, if you please," Tetsuo said.

  Ari's brother may have spent his career as a staff officer, but there wasn't any trace of a staff officer's tentativeness in his manner now.

  Zuchelli looked from Shimon to Dov to Tetsuo to Ari, which was sort of flattering; at least Zuchelli included Ari as a real Metzadan.

  The senior of Zuchelli's bodyguards shook his head minutely.

  If you ignored his size, Dov didn't seem particularly threatening; he just stood there, flatfooted, a vaguely bored expression on his face. He wasn't even looking directly at Zuchelli's bodyguards, although he could have reached either with a back-kick. He just faced the junior MP, looking at him as if the boy had crosshairs painted on his forehead.

  Not that they were wrong to leave Ari out of it. Not that somebody who froze, the first time he heard a shot fired in anger, who couldn't even come close to a 200-meter head shot—not that somebody like that would be a big help in an intimate firefight.

  Ari was useless. But, in front of a pretty girl, Ari could fake being something that he wasn't. He tried to mimic Tetsuo, and gave Zuchelli his best I'm-baring-these-teeth-to-bite-out-your-jugular smile.

  "Well, Major?" Shimon asked.

  Numbly, Zuchelli echoed Shimon's words while Tetsuo nodded approvingly at Ari. Dov just looked bored.

  Ari didn't understand it, not at all. He didn't know why Shimon had forced a showdown with the Distacamento de la Fedeltà major—

  —until he saw the left breast of Giacometti's uniform blouse.

  The lettering on the open door of the inner read direttore. When this had been a school, it had been the principal's private office. Books, papers and other detritus were strewn to one side of the desk, beneath the black-curtained window.

  In contrast to the brightness and airiness of the operations center beyond the busy outer office, the inner office was stuffy and dark, the only illumination provided by a hissing lantern on the desk and two others mounted high on the walls. A slick cable snaked in through the open door from the outer offices, running to the printer and commo box on the gray desk where Giacometti sat.

  High Colonel Vittorio Giacometti was a funereally thin man. From the pinched face and the loose uniform, Ari decided that he had once been rotund.

  "Shimon," Giacometti said. "I didn't expect you in person." He rose slowly, carefully to his feet, looking not at all like a man grabbing at a life preserver as he clasped Shimon's hand.

  That was when Ari spotted it: among a scattering of local ribbons that he didn't recognize there was the blue-and-white decoration that represented the Two Swords, with three of the unauthorized red stitches that Shimon Bar-El always put on the ribbons he awarded. The Two Swords was the only medal that Metzada gave out—campaign ribbons, qualification badges, specialty warrants and such aren't medals—and was given only to foreign soldiers serving under Metzadan officers.

  While it could be awarded at the discretion of senior field-grade officers and generals, Shimon had never been known for passing out the Two Swords for ordinary efficiency, or even for tactical or logistics genius.

  It was a blood award.

  Which began to explain why Shimon had volunteered to lend an officer to the Casas. He was taking care of his own: Giacometti.

  For that matter, in a different sort of way, it explained Ari. After all, there are all sorts of ways of taking care of your own. One of the things they teach you in school is not to tell battle-hot troops to "take care of" captured prisoners, or you'll likely end up with a war crime on your hands.

  "Vittorio," Shimon said, smiling like a Buddha. "It's good to see you again. What's left of you."

  "Colonel," Zuchelli said, nodding briskly.

  "You didn't salute, Major," Shimon said out of the side of his mouth.

  Zuchelli didn't answer. "Get it over with," he said.

  Shimon smiled tolerantly. "Very well," he said softly. "As you like."

  Ari hadn't heard that note in Shimon's voice before, not even when Shimon had taken him aside to pin the captain's bars on his shoulder. Tetsuo returned his look blankly.

  "Enough ceremony, Vittorio." Shimon waved Giacometti back to his seat, taking another one for himself. "I need to trade favors with you."

  "Ah, good." Giacometti's smile was weak. "You have a deal." He raised an eyebrow. "May one inquire as to what the deal is?"

  "Divisione is stripping me of my tank company as of 1300. I had Chiabrera on the line all yesterday, but I can't get anybody to even consider leaving me a platoon. I don't need the whole company, but I could use a few rolling pillboxes for clearing the town. Can you get to somebody?"

  Giacometti nodded. "I have a cousin in Divisione Gl. I'll see what I can do." He spread his hands widely. "I make no promises, except for my effort."

  "Fine. Now, as to your problem, can you give me a quick tac briefing, please?" he asked, as though it were more of an order than a request—although, technically, there was no chain-of-command authority between a Metzadan general of a regiment under contract to the Casalinguese General Staff and a Casalinguese Regular Army high colonel.

  On the other hand, Shimon was wearing stars on his shoulders, while Giacometti had only four gold bars. More importantly, he was Shimon Bar-El. Ari figured that was enough.

  "It's bad, Shimon," Giacometti said, ignoring the way Zuchelli scowled and began writing something in the black leather notebook he always carried.

  Tetsuo leaned over to Dov and said in a stage whisper, "I guess in the Casalinguese army, you're not supposed to notice when the situation sucks."

  "We're stretched just about as far as we can take it," Giacometti went on.

  "So I hear," Shimon said. "And this Second Battalion of yours sound like a bunch of losers. Where did you get this battalion commander, anyway?"

  "It is not Verone's fault. The Second was engaged for three solid weeks, with no rest—"

  "And no success." There was no trace of accusation in that tone; Shimon was just pointing out a fact.

  "—and when they were moved back to Divisione reserve, all the supposed rest they got was trying to sleep through artillery fire. The TO shows them at about eighty percent strength, but a lot of them are green replacements whose only experience under fire is being hit by artillery."

  That sounded bad. Infantrymen hate and fear artillery most. You can outshoot or outplan infantry; you can avoid or trap armor; but the only thing you can do with artillery is outluck it. Too much artillery fire can turn good troops sour. It said so in all the textbooks.

  It didn't say in the textbooks what it was supposed to do to soldiers like Ari.

  "We have to take Anchorville," Giacometti said. "I don't know if the whole battalion could do it, and how the hell can I do it if Divisione won't give me permission to use the battalion? All I'm allowed is a company."

  "You're not looking at it from Generale Prezzolini's perspective." Shimon shook his head. "The real final push is going to be over on the other flank,
just to the south of Trainville—but he can't have the herrenvolk figuring that out, not if you're going to end up with a decent border when the Commerce Department closes you down in a couple weeks. So he's got to keep them busy on this flank, but he's still got to keep something in reserve for their final push.

  "I'm no Montgomery, but tidying up the lines is the order of the day—and it's better to tidy forward. Besides, the Freiheimers in Anchorville are probably just as tired as your men are. Tetsuo?"

  "If that's so," Ari's brother said, "a company might be able to take the town."

  "Casualties?"

  "I don't know," Tetsuo said. "Looking at the map, if that company is going to do it at all, they're going to do it as some sort of frontal attack. A banzai charge, and you know what that means."

  Ari knew from his schooling that the casualties could be anywhere from negligible to total. If a charge quickly turned into a rout for the defenders, it wouldn't cost the assault force much blood. But if the defenders held firm, if their discipline was decent, their autoguns would carve the attackers into bloody pulp.

  "You're not worried about Freiheimer reinforcements?" Shimon asked, a teacher looking for the missing steps in a logic problem. "Do you think that the herrenvolk won't care if we stomp on some of their own?"

  "General, Freiheimer commo is as bad as Casalinguese. It'd be all over—either way—before any in-person relief arrives, although they can call in artillery with a signal rocket." Tetsuo shrugged. "You might be able to outrun the artillery, if you surprise them."

  "Wait." Giacometti lowered his voice. "What do you think they'll do when we throw in our own artillery prep? Do you perhaps think they won't notice?"

  "There is that," Shimon said. "There is that. So perhaps we'll do without prep fire." He turned and looked Ari in the eye. "Well, Ari, are you ready to take command of F Company?"