Paying the Piper

by David Drake

  The surviving Militiamen ducked to cover. Foghorn had stalled for a moment, but she was bucking forward again now. Huber cleared the terrain mask from his faceshield to let his eyes and the helmet AI concentrate on nearby motion, his potential targets. He didn't worry about the heavier weapons that might be locking in on Fencing Master from long range; that was the business of the tanks—and of the Gods, if you believed in them, which right at the moment Huber couldn't even pretend to do.

  A slug penetrated the plenum chamber on the right side of the bow, struck a nacelle inside—the fan howled momentarily, then died; blue sparks sprayed from a portside intake duct and the hair on Huber's arm stood up—and punched out from the left rear in a flash of burning steel. Costunna screamed, "Port three's out!"

  The air was sharp with ozone. Huber's nose filters kept the ions from searing his lungs, but the skin of his throat and wrists prickled.

  "Drive on!" Huber shouted.

  You didn't have to believe in Gods to believe in Hell.

  Instead of a square grid, Northern Star's canal system formed a honeycomb of hexagons three hundred meters across each flat. Fencing Master slid to where three canals joined and halted as planned. Costunna had adequate mechanical skills and took orders well enough, he just seemed to lack an instinct for what was important. Huber had a straight view down the length of the shallow trough slanting north-northeast from his side. Solace Militiamen—some of them dead, some of them hunching in terror; a few raising weapons to confront the howling monster that had driven down on them—were dark blurs against the white concrete and the trickle of sunbright water.

  Huber fired, his bolts shredding targets and glancing from the canal walls in white gouts. Deseau was firing also, and from Fencing Master's starboard wing Learoyd ripped the canal intersecting at a southeastern angle. Foghorn's left gun was raking that canal in the opposite direction.

  It was dangerous having two cars firing pretty much toward one another—if either of the gunners raised his muzzles too far, he'd blow divots out of the friendly vehicle—but this was a battle. If safety'd been the Slammers' first concern, they'd all have stayed in bed this morning.

  A bullet from the central complex ricocheted off Fencing Master's bow slope, denting the armor and impact-heating it to a shimmering rainbow. Further rounds clipped cornstalks and spewed up little geysers of black dirt.

  Sergeant Deseau shouted a curse and grabbed his right wrist momentarily, but he had his hands back on the tribarrel's spade grips before Huber could ask if he was all right. The slug that hit the bow had probably sprayed him with bits of white-hot iridium; nothing serious.

  The two automatic mortars accompanying the infantry chugged a salvo of white phosphorus from the swale where Fencing Master had waited among the knee-high corn. The Willy Pete lifted in ragged mushrooms above the courtyard building where the farm's workforce ate and gathered for social events.

  The roofs slanted down toward the interior; Militiamen with automatic weapons had been using the inner slopes as firing positions. The shellbursts trailed tendrils up, then downward. From a distance they had a glowing white beauty, but Huber knew what a rain of blazing phosphorous did where it landed. Bits continued burning all the way through a human body unless somebody picked them out of the flesh one at a time.

  Solace troops leaped to their feet, desperate to escape the shower of death. The other two-car section of Huber's platoon, Floosie and Flame Farter under Platoon Sergeant Jellicoe, were waiting to the south of the complex for those targets to appear. Their tribarrels lashed the Militiamen, killing most and completely breaking the survivors' will to resist.

  "Costunna, get us across the canal!" Huber ordered. He didn't feel the instant response he'd expected—the driver should've been tense on his throttles, ready to angle the car down this side of the channel and up the other with his fans on emergency power—so he added in a snarl, "Move it, man! Move it now!"

  The tanks were firing methodically, punching holes in the sides of buildings with each 20-cm bolt from their main guns. Walls blew up and inward at every cyan impact, leaving openings more than a meter in diameter. The tanks weren't trying to destroy the structures—a pile of broken concrete made a better nest for enemy snipers than a standing building—but they were providing entrances for infantry assault.

  The infantry, twenty-seven troopers under Captain Sangrela himself—the task force commander wasn't going to hang back when his own people were at the sharp end—were belly-down on their one-man skimmers, making the final rush toward the complex from the south,. A heavy laser lifted above the wall of a cow byre to the southeast and started to track them. Two D Company tanks on overwatch had been waiting for it. The laser vanished in a cyan crossfire before it could rake the infantry line.

  Costunna shoved his control yoke forward. Fencing Master scraped and sparked her skirts over the lip of the canal, then down into the watercourse, spraying water in a fog to either side. Instead of building speed and quickly angling up the opposite wall, the driver continued to roar along the main channel.

  "Costunna!" Huber screamed. He leaned forward, trying to see the man, but the driver's hatch was closed. "Via, man! Cut right! Get us up out of here!"

  Foghorn was stalled, unable to climb up from the canal. Her fans and skirts had taken a serious hammering while she advanced alone toward the Solace position. Fencing Master was nowhere near that badly damaged, but Costunna seemed unwilling or emotionally unable to turn back toward the guns that'd targeted him before.

  And until he did, neither of the cars in Huber's section could support the infantry at the moment they needed it most. The tribarrels were unable to shoot through the haze surrounding Fencing Master; the water droplets would absorb the bolts as surely as a brick wall or a meter of armor plate could do.

  Captain Sangrela was bellowing furious orders over the command channel, but Huber didn't need to be told there was a problem. He opened his mouth to shout at Costunna again because he couldn't think of anything else to do. Before he got the words out, Deseau snarled over the intercom, "Costunna, get us the fuck outa this ditch or I'll stick my gun up your ass before I pull the trigger!"

  Maybe it was the threat, maybe it was realizing that the car's bumping was its skirts hitting the bodies of Militiamen before smearing them into the concrete. Whatever the reason, Costunna twisted his yoke convulsively. Fencing Master lurched from the canal, her plenum chamber shrieking over the concrete coping.

  Three white flares burst over the central complex, a signal that the surviving mercenaries wanted to surrender. They were probably broadcasting on one of the general purpose frequencies as well, but you couldn't trust radio in a battle. Powerguns and drive fans both kicked out seas of RF trash, so even commands could be lost or distorted in the middle of a battle. A moment after the flares went up, four soldiers in mottled battledress came out of a smoldering barn with their hands in the air.

  "Fox Three elements cease fire!" Huber ordered. He didn't raise the muzzles of his tribarrel, but he took his hands off the grips. If some trooper got trigger happy now with those easy targets, it'd be the difference between peaceful surrender and a last-ditch defense that meant a lot more Slammers' casualties before it was over. "Stop shooting now! Three-six out."

  Captain Sangrela was shouting much the same thing over the common task force push also, and Huber figured Lieutenant Mitzi Trogon echoed the words to her four D Company tanks. A powergun snapped a single shot into the bright sky: an infantryman trying to put his weapon on safe while he steered his tiny skimmer had managed to shoot instead.

  No serious harm done: the rest of the mercenary company emerged from dugouts and the concrete buildings. They'd been armed with crew-served lasers, bulky weapons but effective even against tanks when they were close enough. Rather than bull straight in, Captain Sangrela had used F-3's combat cars to draw the lasers into sight where the tanks could vaporize them from a safe three kilometers away. Arne Huber understood the logic and he trusted t
he skill of Mitzi's gunners about as far as he trusted anybody, but he'd known who was going to catch it if something went wrong.

  "Costunna, pull around to the tramhead," he ordered, frowning. The main thing that'd gone wrong this time had been with Fencing Master's driver, and that was Arne Huber's responsibility.

  Most of the single continent of Plattner's World was accessible only by aircar or dirigible. The trees covering the coastal lowlands were parasitized by "Moss," a fungus which in turn was the source of an anti-aging drug. The forests were therefore more valuable than almost anything that would have replaced them on other planets, highways and railroads included.

  The exception was Solace, the state comprising the central highlands. There the soil supported Terran grains and produce, but native trees which grew in the drier climate were stunted and free of the Moss. Solace had become the granary of Plattner's World, and its bedrock supported the only starport on the planet which could accept the largest interstellar freighters.

  A network of monorail tramways connected Solace's collective farms with Bezant, the capital, from which giant dirigibles distributed food and manufactured goods to the Outer States. They brought back Moss, Pseudofistus thalopsis, which factories on Solace turned into Thalderol base and shipped off-planet for final processing.

  In theory one might have thought that the huge profits from Thalderol meant that the inhabitants of Plattner's World lived with one another in wealthy harmony. Mercenary soldiers, even Academy-trained officers like Arne Huber, learned about human nature in a practical school: the riches of Plattner's World just meant people could hire better talent to fight for them. When Solace raised port dues by five percent and the buyers refused to pay more for Thalderol base, the Outer States had hired Hammer's Slammers to reverse the increase.

  "Fox Three-six, this is Charlie Six!" Captain Sangrela called abruptly. "The mercs have surrendered but the locals are planning to break out to the north in their aircars. Cut 'em off, will you? I don't want a massacre, but I'm curst if I want to fight 'em again either! Six out."

  Sangrela was obviously using signals intelligence; it was probably forwarded to him as task force commander by Central, Slammers headquarters at Base Alpha far to the rear. The locals didn't understand what they were up against, of course. The tanks on high ground to the south could track and vaporize even fast-moving aircars at a greater distance than the eye could see: there was no escape from a battlefield they overwatched.

  But a volley of 20-cm bolts wasn't a threat, it was a massacre just as Sangrela had said. The Slammers took prisoners wherever possible: that encouraged their opponents to do the same. Needlessly converting several hundred locals into steam and carbonized bone, on the other hand, was likely to have a bad result the next time a trooper got in over his head and wanted to surrender.

  "Cancel that, Costunna!" Huber said, setting his faceshield left-handed to caret the electromagnetic signatures of aircar fans revving up. Two equipment sheds on the north side of the complex became a forest of red highlights as the AI obeyed. If they were as full of vehicles as the carets implied, there was a score of large aircars in each. "Get us around north of the buildings—but stay away from the canal, right? Goose it!"

  The sheds were aligned east-west and had overhead doors the length of both long sides. As Huber spoke, all twelve of the north-side doors began to rise.

  "Guns!" Huber shouted over the intercom to the men with him in the fighting compartment. "Aim low, don't kill anybody you don't have to! Costunna, get on it!"

  Fencing Master finally started to accelerate. The car was five hundred meters from the west sidewall of the nearer shed, almost twice that from the far end of the other one. The tribarrels were effective at many times that distance, but it was beyond the range at which you could expect delicate shooting from a moving vehicle. It'd be what it'd be.

  An aircar with room for twenty soldiers or two tonnes of cargo nosed out of the nearer shed. Huber laid his holographic sights on it, letting the aircar's forward motion pull it through his rope of vividly cyan bolts. The plastic quarterpanel exploded in a red fireball, flipping the car onto its right side in the path of the identical vehicle pulling out of the adjacent bay. They collided, and the second car also overturned.

  A third truck started from the near end of the shed and pitched nose-high as the driver tried to vault the line of powergun bolts. He didn't have enough speed. The bow slammed back into the ground, breaking the vehicle's frame and hurling passengers twenty meters from the wreck.

  If Costunna had known his job better, he'd have slewed Fencing Master so that her bow pointed thirty degrees to starboard of her axis of movement. Because he didn't—and Via! Sure he was a newbie but didn't he know any cursed thing?—Huber stopped firing when Sgt Deseau's gunshield masked his point of aim.

  Deseau and Learoyd didn't need help anyway. The gunners punched three-round bursts into each truck that showed its bow past the side of the sheds. Though the bolts couldn't penetrate even an aircar's light body, the energy they liberated vaporized the sheathing in blasts with the impact of falling anvils, slamming the targets in the opposite direction. Aircars skidded, bounced, and overturned. None of them got properly airborne.

  Huber swung his tribarrel onto the canal half a klick to the north, intending to cover the troops who'd been using it as a trench like their fellows in the stretch Huber's section had overrun. None of them showed themselves, let alone fired at Fencing Master.

  A pair of gleaming troughs reaching from the south to just short of the canal's inner lip indicated why: while Huber concentrated on the equipment sheds, two D Company tanks had warned the hidden Militiamen of what'd happen to them if they continued to make a fight of it. The main-gun bolts had converted all the silica in the ground they struck to molten glass, spraying it over those huddled in the canal. The flashes and concussion must have been enormous, but Huber hadn't been aware of it while it was happening.

  Huber glanced to his right, past the two gunners hunched over their tribarrels. The crown of red markers on his faceshield collapsed as he looked. The surviving vehicles were shutting down; the only fan motors still racing were in the wrecks whose drivers weren't able to obey the order to switch off.

  Deseau fired into the bow of a motionless truck, visible now because Fencing Master was crossing the front of the nearer shed. The molded plastic flared red, blooming into a meters-wide bubble that hung shimmering for several seconds in front of the building.

  "Guns, cease fire!" Huber ordered. "They're surrendering, boys. Cease fire!"

  Via! He hoped he was right because there was the Lord's own plenty of locals, coming out of the equipment sheds and rising from the canals on the other side of Fencing Master. The troops in the sheds must've been the crews for the howitzers dug into pits in the center of the complex. There the guns were safe from the sniping tanks, but they hadn't been able to threaten the assault force with direct fire either. The commander must have pulled the crews under cover, knowing the artillerymen would've been no better than targets if he'd tried to use them as infantry against the oncoming mercenaries.

  The nearest friendly unit was Foghorn, just managing to work out of the channel where she'd been stuck. Maybe some of Captain Sangrela's troopers were still advancing from the south, but Huber guessed most of those figured to let Fencing Master learn what the locals intended before putting themselves in the middle of things. Huber couldn't say he blamed them.

  Costunna slowed the car, then brought it to a halt with the fans idling. Huber'd been about to order him to do that, but the driver shouldn't have made the decision on his own. Well, Costunna was business for another time—though the time was going to come pretty cursed soon.

  A middle-aged man limped toward Fencing Master with his helmet in his left hand. He looked haggard, and the left side of his face and shoulder were covered with soot. A younger man hovered at his side. The glowing muzzles of Learoyd's tribarrel terrified the aide, but the older officer didn't appear t
o notice the gun aimed point blank at them.

  "I am Colonel Apollonio Priamedes," he said. His voice was raw with emotion and the mix of ozone and combustion products that fouled the atmosphere; the Solace Militia didn't have nose filters or gas masks that Huber could see. "I was in command here. I have ordered my men to lay down their weapons and surrender. May I expect that we will be treated honorably as prisoners of war?"

  Huber raised his faceshield. His fingers were claws, cramping from their grip on his tribarrel.

  "Yes sir," Huber said, "you sure can."

  And the Solace colonel couldn't possibly be more relieved by the end of this business than Lieutenant Arne Huber was.

  * * *

  When the resupply and maintenance convoy radioed, they'd estimated they were still fifteen minutes out from Northern Star. If they'd get on the stick they could cut their arrival time by two-thirds. Huber supposed the commander was afraid stragglers from the garrison would ambush his mostly soft-skinned vehicles. That was a reasonable concern—if you hadn't seen how completely the assault had broken the Solace Militiamen.

  When the convoy arrived Task Force Sangrela could stand down and let the newcomers take care of security, but right now everybody was on alert. The eight combat vehicles were just west of the building complex, laagered bows-outward so that their weapons threatened all points of the compass. The jeep-mounted mortars were dug in at the center. Two infantry squads were in pits between the vehicles, while the remainder of the platoon was spread in fire teams around the two relatively-undamaged buildings into which the prisoners had been herded.

  Sangrela had ordered each car to send a man to help guard the prisoners. Normally Huber would've complained—F-3 had carried out the assault pretty much by itself, after all—but he was just as glad for an excuse to send Costunna off. Learoyd was in the driver's compartment now with the fans on idle. The squat, balding trooper wasn't the Regiment's best driver, but you never had to worry about his instincts in a firefight.