Hero

by Joel Rosenberg

  Paulo Stuarti lay snoring in his tent, a carefully corked bottle cradled in one arm, the other flung over his eyes to ward out the mottled daylight. He was a tall man, his thin, mustache several shades darker than his sun-bleached hair.

  Dov, as per Ari's orders, had procured a bucket of water.

  "Do it."

  Dov dumped the pail over the Casa's torso and tossed the bucket aside.

  Stuarti straightened with a jerk. "Basta—" he was reaching for his pistol belt when Dov caught his hand with a meaty thunk.

  Stuarti sputtered and coughed as Dov jerked him to his feet.

  "Get control of yourself, asshole," Ari said. "My name is Ari Hanavi, I'm your new commanding officer, and you've got one hour to report to the mess tent, looking like a good imitation of this company's exec." He spun on the balls of his feet and stalked away.

  The NCO meeting broke up slowly, sullenly, until Matteotti cleared his throat, cueing the rest of the sergeants to get out.

  Ari jerked his head at Lieutenant Stuarti. "You may as well go sleep it off," he said, letting disgust drip from his voice. "I'm not going to replace you as exec; I wouldn't know what to do with you if I did—"

  Stuarti started to smile, relieved at getting off so easily.

  "—except turn you over to the Distacamento de la Fedeltà."

  That wiped the smile off Stuarti's face.

  "Which," Ari finished, "I'm not going to do. One thing, though. You're not leading Bet Party; I'm giving that to Romano. You're going to be right up front, by my side."

  Paulo Stuarti started to open his mouth, then closed it. Officially, the Casalinguese army had strong penalties for drinking on duty, and even an exec who is only acting as CO is always on duty. Facing Ari's disapproval wasn't quite the same thing as facing a DF hangman.

  "Now get the hell out of my sight." Ari turned his back on him, watching Dov watch him go. He beckoned to Tetsuo, who had been taking it all in.

  "So." Tetsuo quirked a smile at Ari. "You want to know how you did, eh?"

  "Yes. Both at the officers' call and with the NCOs."

  "You did well, I think."

  "I hear a 'but'?"

  "You're right to play it hard because you don't have any other choice, not with an assault tomorrow." Tetsuo looked from him to Dov. "But I think you'd best not let this go to your head, Captain."

  "True. Particularly since I've got a favor to ask. I'd like a nice quiet recon of Anchorville, with special attention to its southern perimeter. Tonight."

  Tetsuo started to look from side to side, then caught himself.

  "Relax, Tetsuo, nobody else is going to know. I've got me and Dov on Post Three from midnight to two. You can slip out just after dark; that'll give you plenty of time to make like a ghost and give you a nice wide re-entry window, without anyone being the wiser."

  "If you think it's so easy, would you like to come along?"

  It was starting to look like Tetsuo was going to do it; Ari forced himself not to let out a sigh of relief. "No, I don't think it's so easy. As Galil was kind enough to point out to me, I'm a clumsy asshole. Even forgetting that I'm the CO, I couldn't go." He shook his head. "I wouldn't be any good."

  "That's true," Tetsuo pulled a tabstick out of his pocket, puffed it to life and exhaled a deep cloud of blue smoke before answering. "Why not?"

  Ari leaned on the side of the trench, looking out at how the field spread out under the stars. He was still vaguely disappointed by the sky; he had been hoping that he would see a world with a real moon before he died. The Sergeant used to talk about standing out in the light of a real moon at night, how special it was.

  But there were only stars. Nueva Terra had three moons, but they were tiny, with a low albedo. Occasionally you could see lights moving in the sky at night, but those were as likely to be TW observation sats as they were the natural satellites. There was nothing romantic about either.

  It was too dark, Ari decided. A guard post was different than an observation post: it was like being a hunted animal, not a hunter.

  Sometimes Ari really liked the Thousand Worlds Commerce Department's restrictions on the importation of military tech, particularly on worlds of lower tech levels than Nueva. The restrictions were always on weaponry and support—but medical supplies weren't ever considered support, and communication gear usually wasn't.

  Idiots. Everything has a military application, or implication.

  If a Metzadan took a jecty arrow in the belly, he wasn't in the same position that a gut-wounded medieval peasant would have been. Not only would he be unlikely to die, but the battlefield medicians would have his bowel resected and patched and have him up on his feet and back in combat in less than a hundred hours.

  Sometimes the rules favored the soldier. A set of night goggles would have been awfully handy, and never mind that the pack to carry them around weighed better than thirty kilos. But they were expensive pieces of equipment, and were not available to a line company in bad odor at Divisione HQ.

  So he swept his eyes across the night. It didn't merely require wearing a blindfold before guard duty. He had to adapt to a whole different way of seeing. The area of the retina used for central vision was heavily laden with cone—color—cells, which needed plenty of light to function. At night, a watchman had to depend on the rod cells of his peripheral vision—he had to look without quite looking.

  Ari kept his eyes moving constantly, in short, quick, jerky movements, hoping to pick up any strange shape or movement with his peripheral vision, and hoping that there wasn't anything there.

  "Captain," Dov hissed, his voice pitched to carry a couple of meters, no further. "I see him."

  "Close an eye." Ari checked to see that there was a round in the flaregun he carried—at close range, they were a not-bad substitute for a rocket pistol, and would temporarily blind any open eye—and thumbed the safety off.

  "Ari," a voice whispered from off to his left, "if you shoot me dead, I'll tell our mothers on you."

  Dov made a patting motion. "It's him. Only him, Captain."

  Wearing mottled fatigues, soft shoes and carrying nothing that resembled a weapon, Tetsuo stepped out of the darkness as if he were stepping out from behind a curtain. Ari didn't really know how he did that, but the black bundle he was arranging under his arm probably had something to do with it. There was a lot about his brother Ari didn't understand, and didn't want to know.

  Without being asked, Dov pulled the canteen from his belt and tossed it to Tetsuo, who unscrewed the top and took a long pull.

  "That cuts the dust," Tetsuo said. "I have a little good news and a lot of bad news. The bad news is that they've strung commo wire all over the place—even from the autogun emplacements." He shook his head. "Typical Frei discipline: even though they've got beaten fire zones as nice as I've ever seen, they've set up range cards for the guns. With their comm setup, unless you overrun them damn fast, they'll be able to walk artillery fire all over the place, using the autogun nests as forward observers. Spot for effect, eh?"

  "What?"

  "Old, bad artilleryman's joke. They're using white phosphorus rounds for spotting."

  "So? Everybody does."

  "Yeah. So the joke goes, if you've got a target that's mainly infantry, and you don't want to just kill them, you don't call in a load of frag—you call for the whole battery to fire the white phosphorus rounds, at three rounds a minute. Spot for effect."

  Ari had seen the burn victims hauled out of the buses after the ambush. Horrible sight, and a worse smell. There was a sickly sweet odor that almost made him gag, even just remembering. He tried to change the subject. "What do you figure it'd take to neutralize the town?"

  "Artillery?" Tetsuo shrugged. "Five hundred tons, minimum. Possibly a thousand. You're authorized around—"

  "Ten tons. Eight battery threes. Just enough for harassment, and maybe a spot of interdiction—and then the battery's going to pull out. Meanwhile, they'll be able to call in whatever they want, and
put it wherever they want."

  "Perhaps," Tetsuo said. He broke into a crooked smile as he pulled a black plastic box out of his bundle. "Unless, of course, right before you assault, you were to flip up this guard and press this button. There are strong Commerce Department sanctions against the import of certain kinds of devices to some worlds. Of course, those sanctions apply if and only if you're caught."

  Ari took the box and tucked it into a pocket. "And if I were to do that?"

  "Well, the first thing I'd suggest is that you get rid of the box; it'll self-destruct about ten minutes after. Don't forget, now, you might get distracted—because as soon as you press the button, a small explosion will have taken out the Freiheimer central commo office. They've got it in the basement of the old church."

  "That was the good news, I take it."

  He shook his head. "Not really. I don't think it'll make much difference. They can still call in a barrage with a green flare, no? The last of the good news is that the Freiheimers are as tired-looking a bunch of soldiers as I've ever seen." Tetsuo sighed. "Almost as bad as your own, but only almost." He raised an eyebrow. "You want to argue for a change of plans? We've got about twenty-four hours until H-hour."

  "No," Ari said, still wondering if he could do it. "We go."

  Tetsuo raised the canteen. " 'Everybody comes back,' " he said, pronouncing the words the way they're supposed to be pronounced: matter-of-factly.

  It was called the Mercenary's Toast. It was just a wish, an ambition, not a prediction, and certainly no promise.

  Ari took the canteen.

  "Fat fucking chance." He drank, but only a little.

  "Beggin' your pardon, Captain, but it isn't going to work that way," First Sergeant Matteotti said. "I'm not in the habit of bringing up the rear." If anything, Matteotti looked more harmless than usual in full combat get-up—his bulky plastic body-armor parka and leggings made him look inflated. On the chance that he wouldn't want to keep his helmet on, he'd streaked camouflage paint on his forehead, all the way up and into his receding hairline.

  "What are you saying, Sergeant?"

  "You've assigned me to Bet Party, sir. And that isn't going to happen. Sir." He beckoned to a bulky, tired-looking private, almost Dov's height and weight, who was shouldering an autogun.

  "Salute the Captain, Sbezzeguti," Matteotti said, shaking his head at the half-hearted response from the soldier. "Back before I got all the stripes, sir, I was a damn good assistant gunner. And you're going to need a damn good assistant gunner on your right flank. Sir."

  Ari started to open his mouth to say no, but stopped himself. Why was he tempted to overrule Matteotti? Because he didn't need a good man on his flank, laying down an autogun barrage to close down the western exit from the town and divert attention from the main charge? No. He wanted to overrule him because he didn't want Matteotti see him turn coward when the shooting started. Ari hitched at the box of flares hanging from the left side of his belt. To hell with it.

  "You've got it, First." He glanced at his thumbnail—0137—and up at the night sky. "Pass the word down: Aleph Party's moving out."

  It's dangerous to leave an outline against a sky, even a night sky, so they crossed the crest of Hill 201 on their bellies and then rose into a crouch as they moved through the tall grasses.

  The wind rose from the north, caressing his face, whispering vague threats and imprecations. Spread out on his right, Matteotti, Sbezzeguti, Stuarti and a pair of fireteams from the First Platoon plodded slowly, like men walking toward the gallows. They moved silently, except for the quiet swish of boots in the grass, and the occasional half-grunt as someone came close to stumbling into a shell crater.

  The field had been well-chewed by artillery. Whether it was Freiheimer defensive barrages or Casalinguese prep fire didn't matter; it still looked like a wasteland. Five hundred meters out, he signaled for everyone to drop down. The grasses were starting to thin out and the detachment had to make the rest of the way low.

  The repeated artillery barrages had left the ground heavily cratered, but the craters made decent cover. They slipped from one shell crater to another, working their way up until they were a little more than a hundred meters from the nearest autogun emplacement.

  Almost losing his footing, Ari staggered into a crater, Dov and three Casalinguese following him.

  He turned to look at them: Rienzi, and the rest of his fireteam. Ari took off his helmet and ruffled his hair—helmets have sharp outlines—and raised his head over the edge of the crater. Ten meters away, in a giant of a crater, Matteotti and his autogunner had a whole crowd with them, including Lieutenant Stuarti. Ari was wondering if that was a coincidence, if Matteotti didn't have a dual purpose, one he should have picked up. He wanted to be sure that, if things went to hell, Stuarti didn't end up in charge.

  Paulo, looks like you and I have something in common.

  He closed his eyes and listened. While he couldn't make out the words, off in the distance he could hear voices. Close enough. He pulled the black box out of his pocket and flipped the cover off the button. He rested his thumb on it. The demolition of the Freiheimer comm shack would do fine as a start signal. . . .

  But he just couldn't press the button. His thumb wouldn't move.

  Again. I'm doing it again.

  He beckoned to the First Platoon communicator—a skinny kid, even younger than him, and gestured for the headset. The kid carefully paid out more comm line, and handed Ari the set.

  He slipped it on. "F-six," he whispered, trying to force some calmness into his voice. "Give me Big Brother."

  Tetsuo was on in a couple of seconds. "I'm here, Ari. You calling about the support barrage?"

  His heart was pounding so loudly that he was sure the soldiers in the crater with him would hear it, if not the Freiheimers.

  But he couldn't tell him. He couldn't do it.

  "Yes," he whispered, trying to get some moisture in his cotton-dry mouth. "Yes. I'm calling about the barrage."

  "Do you want me to launch the flare for it?"

  Ari just didn't know; he couldn't think. He knew that he was in the wrong place, the wrong person to be doing this. He couldn't press the button; he couldn't answer. He couldn't stay there, he couldn't make the others just stay and wait, but he couldn't go on. He was supposed to set up the line of departure from twenty meters away from the line of Freiheimer autogun emplacements, but here they were fifty meters out and he didn't know if he could do it and with four sets of round eyes looking at him he was freezing. Again.

  "Brother," Tetsuo said. "I'm sorry. Here it comes."

  From the crest of Hill 201, a signal rocket screamed into the night and exploded overhead in a green shower.

  What? It wasn't the red flare, calling for support fire—it was a green flare, the Freiheimer signal for a defensive barrage.

  Around him, three soldiers, their faces white under the camouflage paint, stared wide-eyed at him, their eyes seeking Ari's for some sort of reassurance, some sort of explanation.

  He didn't have anything to give them.

  "What are you doing?" he shrilled, his thumb coming down on the button, rewarded by a crump! from the town.

  "Run for the town, Ari, take the town. It's your only chance. There's a Freiheimer barrage on its way. If you can't find it in you, brother, fake it."

  Ari tossed the plastic box aside and tore the headset off as he leaped to his feet.

  He wasn't a soldier, he wasn't a commander, he was a fraud. That wasn't just his problem—it was his secret, his solution.

  In the green light of the flares, he rose to his feet, the way a real commander would, and shouted, the way a real commander would have.

  "Run for the town," he shouted as the bright lines of tracers drew their way through the night, clawing toward him. "It's our only chance."

  He wasn't a soldier, not anymore—they weren't soldiers, they were screaming madmen. And as shells roared down from the sky, a reinforced platoon of screaming ma
dmen sprinted for the town, overrunning the Freiheimer autogun emplacements and sending the survivors running for their lives.

  Few could stand against such madmen.

  Those who stood, died.

  CHAPTER 17

  Company C Assault

  Caporel Dominic Rienzi:

  No shit, there I was, running like a rabbit, with incoming screaming at me. The Boche autogunners must have been too busy jerking each other off or something—by the time the bugger finally opened up, my squad is mebbe thirty, forty meters away, each of us running like we have rockets stuck up our asses, screaming like we was crazy.

  We probably was. I know I was.

  I'm not sure what I was aiming at—and I don't remember reloading my piece, not until later. Aw, to hell with it—truth to tell, I don't think I did, at least not until I reached the pit. Asshole that I am, I'd probably fired off the first clip, and was running and shouting, not stopping to reload.

  Well, come to think of it, it was probably just as well I didn't stop to reload, 'cause then I hear the fart of one mortar, and then another, and then the whole sky lights up with ilium rounds coming from shit knows where, and it's practically daytime. I mean, I could have whipped out a book and fucking read, you get the idea?

  You know that funny hissing sound wire makes when it gets close to you, the way the wires scream higher, like a trumpeter on a sweet riff, then drops off? Well, I musta lucked out, 'cause the loudest, wildest, jazziest scream cuts off just as something chews through de Sanctis, armor and all, and then rips my right ear off. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, and I wasn't exactly going to ask him—he was too busy drowning in his own blood, you know?

  My ear still hurts like a sonofabitch, by the way—yeah, yeah, I mean the ear itself. I know plastic isn't supposed to—well, never mind.

  Well, Gambetta's ahead of me, at least in the initial deploy, but I'm the first one in, with what was left of my squad right behind me—six of us.