I turned to Shimon. "You want in on this?"
He shook his head. "Not my cup of tea. I'll stay here and play G-3 for Yonni. I want to work out some of the details on the dispersal."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Port Marne
Alsace, Northern Continent
Near Port Marne
03/20/44, 1102 local time
I caught a ride into Port Marne on a supply wagon, one of ten going into town; it's amazing how much food a regiment can go through.
The horses were fresh and the wagons were empty going in; the trip only took us about two hours.
Port Marne was a sprawl of whitewashed wooden buildings, radiating out from the TW Preserve at the center. There's a certain sameness to reasonably young colony towns on frontier worlds, particularly in how they smell. Part of it is economics: wood is cheaper to build with than stone, at least until you get a good power technology going. Streets can be paved later, except for the main thoroughfares. When it's muddy, wheeled vehicles can slog their way through, pulled by horses; when it's very muddy, wheeled vehicles can stay off the side streets.
You find a lot of horses on young worlds. While turbine engines may churn out tens of thousands of horsepower, they don't manufacture baby turbine engines. A mare is a very good device for manufacturing horses—and horses always produce a lot of manure, which is why the streets smell so bad.
"Expecting trouble?" I asked my driver, a fortyish senior private whose name was Bar Giora. He had a flintlock carbine across his lap, and he rode with his eyes more on the greenery to the side of the road than the road itself, which unnerved me. I'm not used to horses—they can keep themselves from going over the side of the road.
"Nah," he said. "But we had couple of Dutch infiltrators here a couple of weeks back. Pays to be careful. Don't worry, Inspector-General, we'll get you into town nice and safe."
"Tetsuo," I said.
"Avram," he said, and then was silent for awhile. "You mind answering a question?"
"Go ahead."
"That's was really the Shimon Bar-El? Shimon the Traitor?"
"That's him. My uncle. Why?" I lit a tabstick and offered him one, but he shook his head.
"Never got the habit. 'Why?' Because I find it hard to believe that Yonni is taking his advice, after he sold out on Oroga."
I didn't answer for a while. "He sold out once. Maybe. Doesn't make him any less than what he is."
"And what's that? Meaning no offense."
"None taken." I didn't have an answer, so I just let the question hang in the air. "How long until we're there?"
"Military warehouse is on the outside of town. It'll be another fifteen minutes walk for you to get to Government House."
" 'Best efforts' clause be damned." Phillipe Montenier's eyes flashed. "Three million quid a year for this merde? You little piece of Jew filth—if the Dutch swine don't pay my taxes—my taxes, I say—then you will make them pay. Is that clearly understood? You will not allow them to raid our farms."
He paced across the stone floor of the high-ceilinged salon as though he were a caged beast waiting for dinner—whoever that might be. Shakespeare might have been both an anti-
Semitic bastard and a sodomite who favored little boys, but he was right in having one of his characters be wary of the lean and hungry look.
If Montenier's generals had had that same look, we might have been in a different situation, but the three of them, sitting on a couch like the Three Monkeys, were fat and beribboned. The French have always passed out medals like my Aunt Rivka does her tasteless baked goods.
Just sitting still and staying wary took a little effort; even both together, Montenier's two retainers/bodyguards wouldn't have been more than a moment's work, and I've been taught that a decently-trained soldier should be able to go through ten times his weight of Frenchmen like a hot knife through butter.
I know it's just prejudice, but as my Uncle Shimon says, "There's only three things in the universe I utterly despise: frogs, krauts, and bigots."
I didn't like being called a little piece of Jew filth, and I didn't much like Montenier. In other circumstances, I would have enjoyed feeding him his favorite eyeball—after all, I'm only officially a noncombatant.
However, this was neither the time nor the place, and I wasn't likely to find one, and what you'd rather do has little to do with what you can do or what you have to do, not in this life.
Raising an eyebrow, I looked over at Celia. "Would you like to give the peace-pitch now, Inspector? May as well get it over with."
She spent a good half-second swallowing a retort, then launched into the saccharine you-really-ought-to-be-good-boys routine that someone with a strong stomach must teach them at Commerce Department bureaucrat school.
I tuned it out. It wouldn't work. It never works.
Finally, well-oiled machine through she was, Celia ran down. Too many sandy Montenier objections in the gears.
"Enough." I held up a hand. "Seems to me that we're getting nowhere. Monsieur Montenier?"
"Yes?"
"Am I to believe that you doubt that the Eighteenth Regiment is adhering to the best efforts clause?"
For a moment, Gallic temperament threatened to burst a blood vessel, but then, sensing that I wanted him to blow his stack, he forced himself to calm down.
"Yes," he hissed. "Your . . . regiment is doing nothing. They are not engaging the Dutch—"
I punched for my command voice. "Shut up." Surprisingly, the flow of sound ceased. "We aren't engaging the Dutch," I went on, "because any movement upriver would leave Marne open to an assault by the Dutch irregulars, and because a Dutch company could carve its way through what you idiots call a defense." Not that a Dutch confederate force could destroy the launcher—the peacemakers protecting it wouldn't let them, and the Dutch wouldn't even if they could—or even maintain control of it for long—but a decent-sized Dutch force could leave Port Marne burning.
Which would tend to take the spirit out of the French.
The fattest of the three French generals started to take exception to what I'd said, but I shut him up with a glare.
"So," Montenier said, following the word with another sniff, "you intend to try to fulfill the best efforts clause by having your regiment sit on your hands, protecting Port Marne? I'll have your bond forfeit, I swear I will."
I snickered. "Read your contract, Montenier. Forgetting the fact that you can't afford to pay interest on our bond while waiting three, maybe four standard years for a court-date—paragraph twenty-seven, 'Forfeiture of Performance Bond,' subparagraph (j)—the moment you move to seize the bond, the Eighteenth pulls up and heads for home—subparagraph (1)."
Celia smiled slyly. So, she probably thought, that was really what we really were after: pushing Montenier into slapping a lien on the performance bond so that the Eighteenth could withdraw without losing much face.
Not a bad guess, I thought. Just wrong.
Montenier apparently decided the same thing Celia had. "So," he said. "There will be no best efforts payment made, General Hanavi—"
"Inspector-General."
"—and I'll have papers prepared ordering the regiment into combat against the Dutch. They are to assault the Dutch regiment stationed at—"
I shook my head. "Read the contract again. Tactical decisions are General Davis's prerogative, not yours. If you want the Dutch attacked, you'll get it, but—"
"When—and where?"
"—General Davis will decide. The regiment will move out in two days, to give you time to arrange a better defense. As to when and where we'll attack, it's none of your damn business. I'll expect to see written orders or notice of a lien by nightfall."
I turned and walked away, my heels clicking on the stone.
Celia's words echoed after me: "Is this what you do for your money, Tetsuo Hanavi?" And, unspoken, Do you kill for someone like Montenier?
No, Celia. Never.
Yonni Davis was in his tent playi
ng bridge with Shimon, a major, and his message runner when I got back to the encampment.
"Well?" Yonni asked.
"Ease up, General. Give the boy time to catch his breath," Shimon said.
"Still babying me, Uncle?" I chuckled. "Orders will be on their way shortly, Yonni. Can you have the Eighteenth ready to move out in two days?"
He nodded. "It can be arranged. Or sooner, if need be."
"Don't rush," Shimon said. "To begin with, you're going to have to break them down to companies, maybe down to platoons, then have everyone sneak upriver about five, six hundred klicks, running a further dispersal all the way. And that's going to take a good forty days, what with slipping through Dutch lines and all."
"They can do it in thirty," he said. "Only question is the provisions caches. I don't like the idea of trusting the captain of the Bolivar."
Shimon smiled. "So, you use dried, and you requisition some horses to carry provisions for you. Keep them and the hostlers far enough from the river and your quartermasters won't be spotted." He pulled a map from his pocket and handed it to Yonni.
"Maybe we should try to feel out the captain of the Bolivar, instead? I mean—"
"Asshole." Shimon looked at him as though he'd just failed the test. "Whose plan is this? Yours?" He shook his head. "No. It's one of my fixes. I've run into a total of four campaigns, in my whole life, where there was a fix available. You've lucked into one." He'd started to work himself up. "And what does it cost Metzada? An offworld ticket for me?"
"On Thellonee, it cost us Tzvi Hanavi, Yehoshua Bernstein, and Yehudah Nakamura," I said quietly. "It cost us Zev here."
For a moment, his face softened. But just for a moment. "Start thinking like a general. You can always spend one life if it saves two. Three of those lives hardly count, not militarily. Tzvi was only an average teacher; Bernstein and Nakamura were just filling in time, waiting until they died."
He swallowed once, hard. "But they pulled me out of that mess, and if that has any military significance at all for Metzada, it's because I've got a way to shorten this campaign here, to save some lives. So you just shut up and do what you're told, and I'll have a hell of a lot of the new Eighteenth home alive, instead of buried here, dead. End of diatribe." He shrugged. "Over to you two."
Yonni's face was grave. "Very well. Now, what's next?"
"What's next is you get the Eighteenth ready to sneak upriver. Can they do it in forty days?" Shimon unfolded the map. "Trick here is that population is all along the river, near the hempwood. You swing half your regiment east here, half west, have them push maybe fifteen, thirty klicks away from the river itself. They can move north fast—without fear of being spotted—as long as you don't do anything silly. Just send in detachments to pick up supplies."
Yonni nodded. "How about the French?"
"I talked to your G-2. They're on the spots indicated on the map. Keep your skirmishers out in front and you should be able to sneak by."
Yonni looked at it for a long time, then raised his head. "We can do it in thirty days."
"Take forty. The river will be fully swollen in forty days."
"Right." Yonni smiled. "Tetsuo?"
I nodded. "Sounds fair." I rose. "I'm going to go see my son. I won't have another chance, unless you're going to send me out with his company."
"Negative," Yonni said. "I'll want you and Shimon to stay with HQ com—" he caught himself, and smiled. "Make that HQ squad."
I found Benyamin over at his company's campsite, squatting by the fire, checking over his fire team's flindocks, bows and arrows. The four privates in his fire team, ranging in age from about Benyamin's seventeen to a senior private in his forties, were all watching him more with tolerance than irritation.
His face broke into a smile when he saw me.
It staggered me for a moment. It wasn't his smile. It was the other Benyamin's smile, it was my brother's smile. It wasn't friendly or unfriendly; it was a report: All is well; I'll take care of everything, it said.
"Corporal Hanavi," I said, "all's well at home." There is a special spot in hell reserved for people who let others worry for a second longer than necessary.
"Be with you in a moment," he said, as he finished checking the blades of a razorhead arrow, then slipped it back into the quiver, handing the quiver to the bowman it belonged to. "Not bad. Now, if the rest of you get your arrows that sharp, we'll be in better shape next time."
Two of the privates nodded; a third pursed his lips with irritation at the lecture.
The last one, the senior private, said, "Yes, Corporal," and as Benyamin turned away, smiled and nodded at me, his eyes twinkling.
I gripped my son's hand firmly, although I wanted to take him in my arms and hug him the way I used to do when he was younger. But not in front of his fire team.
He hugged me. "It's so good to see you," he said as he pulled away. "Some problem?"
I shook my head. "Just a surprise visit. Your Great-Uncle Shimon wanted to give some information to Yonni."
"That's what we heard," one of the privates called out from around the fire. "He got a fix for us?"
"Shut up. If Yonni wants us to know something he'll tell us," the senior said. "Sorry, Inspector-General," he said, rising and beckoning the others away. "It's getting time for us to be turning in, if that's okay, Corporal."
Benyamin nodded. "Just fine, Yitzhak."
The privates moved away.
"Good men," Benyamin said, then shook his head as though to clear it. "Any news from home?"
I shook my head. "All fine, with one exception. Your Great-Uncle Tzvi died, on Thellonee."
There are limits to our self-control, but we must go beyond those limits. I know that doesn't make sense, but what I did was make quiet chitchat with my son for another few minutes, then I bid him a goodnight and made my way to my own tent, and lay down.
And cried like a baby.
The Sergeant was dead, and I hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye to him.
In the morning we moved out, moving north. Forty days later, we were in position.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Simple Solutions
Alsace, Northern Continent
Somewhere on the Neu Hunse
04/02/44, 2321 local time
Yonni Davis was no Shimon Bar-El; my uncle's kind of genius is rare. Still, he impressed me. There's a reason why generals who are authorized to run low-tech operations on worlds like Alsace, Rand and Indess are generally considered the elite of the elite. On high-tech worlds, reasonably sophisticated comm gear can let a commanding general shortcut down to running a regiment by company, sometimes by platoon, the rest of the chain of command listening in, ready to take over if the enemy takes out either the communication system, or the general.
With sound intelligence and good troops, running a hightech battle is relatively easy—when you compare it to what Yonni Davis was up against on Alsace. On low-tech worlds, C3I is never easy. Even in a set-piece meeting engagement, a general has to give up almost all tactical control for everything beyond HQ company—and, more often than not, he has to run most of HQ company as a formation, not a tactical unit; even a loud voice can only carry so far.
And here, Yonni had had to break the Eighteenth down to loosely-linked sections of even more loosely-linked platoons, the whole regiment spread out along hundreds of klicks of riverbank, trusting to his officers and senior enlisted to keep everything quiet and do everything right on the numbers. Particularly the withdrawal. Granted, the Dutch irregular force would soon evaporate, but there was sure to be at least one assault through to Port Marne. The Eighteenth would have to be back, and well dug-in.
All of which explains why I was impressed with the way Yonni's round face was unworried as it gleamed, sweaty in the moonlight. The moon was almost full tonight, and so bright I could have read by its light.
He rubbed at the small of his back as he leaned on his shovel.
His headquarters section was spread out al
ong the bank of the rising river and into the woods, three bowmen posted to watch for any sign of the movement from the farmers in the house less than half a klick away, out on the promontory.
The other thing that stretched out into the woods was a narrow ditch, perhaps a meter wide and half as deep, that cut all the way across the peninsula of the Haugen plantation. Working hard, twenty men could each dig through ten meters of the soft riverside dirt per hour, and we had been at it since just after dark.
One foot in the water, one foot out, I pitched another shovelful onto the waist-high earth dam that was already melting away into the swirling river.
A low whistle was picked up in the distance and echoed, each echo louder and closer.
"Fine," Yonni said. "Signal back: move out. We've got another one to do before morning." He turned to Shimon. "I think you should do the honors."
It only took Shimon a couple of minutes to clear away the dam. The water quietly rushed into the ditch, the newly-made stream rolling off into the night, pulling little morsels of dirt from the edge of the ditch. It almost seemed to grow as we watched. By noon, the rising river would have established the cut-off as a wide wound, growing wider.
Yonni shook his head in amazement. "Are you sure they won't be able to do anything about it?"
Shimon shrugged. "We've been through this before. Nothing."
The Haugens, who lived out on the peninsula that would soon become an island, wouldn't necessarily think that their inland neighbors did it, although perhaps they might suspect them. It wouldn't matter. The news would fly to the Dutch forces in the south. Any of the Haugen sons in the Dutch irregulars would find it hard to fight on behalf of their formerly inland cousins. The inland cousins would find defending their newly-valuable plantation more pressing than fighting the French.
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