Paying the Piper

by David Drake

  There was an obvious risk of further Solace units following close behind the initial company of Dragoons, but despite that Huber had a bad feeling about continuing on his plotted course to the southeast. He'd already asked his AI to assess alternate routes, but before he got the answers the C&C display threw sensor data across the terrain in a red emergency mask. It was worse than he'd feared.

  "Three-six to Fox Three," Huber said in a tone from which previous crises had burned all emotion. "Hostile hovertanks have gotten around us to the south. Fox Three-three—" Sergeant Jellicoe in Floosie "—leads on the new course at nine-seven degrees true. Three-six out. Break—"

  His voice caught. He thought for a moment that he was going to vomit over the inside of his faceshield, but the spasm passed. There'd been too much; too much stress and pain and stench, even for a veteran.

  "—Padova, throttle back so that we stay on the crest after the rest are clear. We may need the sensor range."

  The Solace commander had reacted fast by sending part of the Yeomanry around the Slammers' left flank at the same time as the mechanized company circled their right. Huber'd held F-3 too long as he waited for supports that never came, but there was still a chance. The crews of the hovertanks wouldn't be in a hurry to come to close quarters with the cars that had bloodied their vanguard so badly at the first shock.

  Fencing Master growled onto the ridge line. The rise would separate the combat cars from the units they'd already engaged, though the tanks approaching from the south were in the same shallow valley. The forest was somewhat of a shield for F-3, maybe enough of one.

  Learoyd was on the forward gun now, swaying as though the grips were all that kept him upright. Deseau scanned the trees to the right, the direction the tanks would come from. Undergrowth was sparse here, but the treeboles allowed only occasional glimpses of anything as much as a hundred meters away.

  F-3 was in line with the flanks echeloned back. The four cars in the center were across the ridge and proceeding downslope, but Jellicoe had slowed Floosie also. The additional ten seconds of sensor data hadn't brought any new surprises, so Huber said, "Padova, goose it and—"

  The clang of a slug penetrating iridium echoed through the forest. The icon for Fox Three-three went cross-hatched and stopped moving across the holographic terrain of the C&C display.

  "Padova, get us to Floosie soonest!" Huber shouted. "Break! Fox Three, follow the plotted course. Three-one, you're in charge till I rejoin with the crew of Three-five! Three-six out!"

  Huber hadn't thought, hadn't had time to think, but he knew as Padova jerked Fencing Master hard left that instinct had led him to the right decision. Though two other combat cars were nearer Floosie than Fencing Master was, they'd have to reverse and climb the slope to reach the disabled vehicle. Gravity was more of a handicap than an extra hundred meters on level ground when you were riding a thirty-tonne mass.

  Sergeant Nagano—Fox Three-one—was a few months junior in grade to Three-seven's Sergeant Mullion, but Nagano'd been in F-3 when Huber took command a year ago while Mullion had been posted into the platoon only a few days before. Mullion might turn out to be a real crackerjack, and if so Huber would apologize to him at a suitable time. Right now there was enough else going wrong that Huber wasn't about to trust his troopers to an unknown quantity besides.

  Fencing Master wove between the trunks of massive trees. Learoyd slid the fingers of his left hand under his helmet to rub his scalp and forehead, but his right never left the grip of his tribarrel. He seemed to be back to normal now, or anyway what passed as normal for a trooper in the middle of a firefight.

  Chatter filled the platoon push, but none of it came from Jellicoe and her crew. Huber tuned out the empty noise—anybody was likely to babble in the stress of a battle, no matter how well-trained and experienced they might be—and concentrated on what wasn't there.

  The icon for Three-three continued to pulse sullenly. Huber imported a remote image from Jellicoe's gunsight to the corner of his faceshield. He got only a motionless view of treetops, but at least that was better than the black emptiness of an open channel.

  "There's Floosie!" Learoyd said. "El-Tee, they been hit from your side!"

  Floosie was tilted against the west side of a huge tree, spun there by the first of the two rounds which'd hit her. The slug had struck the back of the fighting compartment and penetrated cleanly, angling slightly left to right and exiting above the driver's hatch.

  Floosie'd stalled at the impact. The second shot had slammed into the plenum chamber before the driver could restart his vehicle. That wasn't his fault: the combined shock of the slug and collision with a three-meter thick treebole was more any anybody could've shrugged off instantly, even protected by the automatic restraint system of the driver's compartment. The follow-up round had put paid to Floosie: there was a gaping hole in the skirts and at least half the fan nacelles would've been damaged or destroyed.

  The tank had that knocked out the combat car was sited on the high ground a kilometer to the west. The hostile gunner had been lucky to get a sight line through the trees, but he'd been bloody good to react to the unexpected target and then to punch out a second round to finish the job. With so many shots ripping through the forest, one of them was bound to connect with something. . . .

  "Padova, get us—" Huber said, but his driver was already slewing Fencing Master to the right, putting the tree and the bulk of the disabled car between them and the Solace gunner. The tank might've moved forward after it fired; but its commander just might have decided that he was better off where he was than he'd be if he came to close quarters with the Slammers' tribarrels.

  Deseau braced himself against the coaming beside Huber, cursing a blue streak. He'd grabbed Learoyd's backup 1-cm sub-machine gun from its sling on a tie-down beside the right tribarrel. It wasn't much of a weapon to threaten tanks with, but at least Deseau could point it toward the probable dangers.

  Fencing Master slewed around the tree and grounded hard, its port quarter almost in contact with Floosie's damaged bow skirt. The ragged exit hole was bigger than an access port.

  Jellicoe's driver climbed out of his hatch. He'd lost his helmet and his mouth hung open. A bitter haze of burned insulation lay over the fighting compartment, but as Fencing Master stopped, Huber saw a hand reach up to grip the coaming: Sergeant Jellicoe was still alive, if only just.

  "Get aboard!" Huber screamed to the driver. As he spoke, he lifted his right foot to the top of Fencing Master's armor and leaped into the disabled car. If anybody'd asked him a moment before, he'd have said he was so exhausted he had trouble just breathing. Deseau, continuing to curse, took over the left wing gun.

  Floosie's fighting compartment was an abattoir. The guns that hit her fired frangible shot that broke into a hypersonic spray on the other side of the penetration. Jellicoe had been manning the left wing gun and out of the direct blast, but the sleet of heavy-metal granules had splashed the thighs and torsos of her crewmen across the interior of the armor. Huber's boots slipped when they hit the floor.

  He fell with a dizzying shock. He was up again in a moment, but his right side was numb.

  He lifted Sergeant Jellicoe. She was a stocky woman, still wearing the body armor that'd saved her life. Huber didn't try to strip the ceramic clamshell off her now because he wasn't sure his fingers could manipulate the catches. He stepped back and bent, throwing Jellicoe's torso over his shoulders, then stumbled forward.

  Learoyd and Deseau fired past Huber to either side; his faceshield blacked out the vivid cyan of their bolts. Via! there was no way in hell he was going to get aboard Fencing Master. He couldn't carry Jellicoe and he sure couldn't throw her into—

  "Gotcha, El-Tee!" Frenchie said, bracing his left hand on the tribarrel's receiver as he prepared to cross to help. "We're golden!"

  Huber didn't hear the shot that struck Floosie's bow slope, but he felt the car buck upward in the middle of a white flash.

  Then he felt nothin
g. Nothing at all.

  * * *

  . . . he should be coming around very shortly . . . some part of the cosmos said to some other part of the cosmos.

  Awareness—not consciousness, not yet—returned with the awkward jerkiness of a butterfly opening its wings as it poises on the edge of its cocoon. My name is Arne Huber. I'm—

  Huber's eyes opened. He saw three faces, anxious despite their hard features. Then the pain hit him and he blacked out.

  He regained consciousness. The world was white, pulsing, and oven-hot—but he was alert, waiting for his vision to steady. He knew from experience that he hadn't been out long this time, but how long he'd been here, in the main infirmary at Base Alpha . . . He must've been hurt bad.

  "How's Jellicoe?" he said. Huber'd heard rusty hinges with better tone than he had now, but he got the words out. "How's my platoon sergeant?"

  The technician adjusted his controls, his attention on the display of his medical computer. He nodded in self-satisfaction. Huber felt a quivering numbness in all his nerve endings.

  The other men in the room were Major Danny Pritchard and—Blood and Martyrs—Colonel Hammer himself.

  "She didn't make it," Hammer said flatly. "If you hadn't had her over your back, you wouldn't have made it either. The shot that hit Three-three's bow slope splashed upward. The good part of it is that the impact pretty well threw you aboard your own car. Your people were able to bug out after the rest of the platoon with no further casualties."

  "It was quick for her," said Major Pritchard. He smiled wryly. "This time that's the truth."

  You always told civilian dependents that their trooper's death had been quick, even if you knew she'd been screaming in agony, unable to open a jammed hatch as her vehicle burned. You didn't lie to other troopers, though, because it was a waste of breath.

  Huber nodded. Pain washed over him; he closed his eyes. The technician muttered and made adjustments. Huber felt the pain vanish as though a series of switches were being tripped in sequence.

  The Slammers used pain drugs only as first aid. Once a trooper was removed to a central facility, direct neural stimulation provided analgesis without the negative side effects of chemicals. The Medicomp had kept Huber unconscious while he healed, exercising his muscles group by group to prevent atrophy and bed sores. He'd been awakened only when he should be able to walk on his own. The technician was smoothing out the vestiges of pain while Huber lay in a cocoon of induced inputs.

  Huber opened his eyes. His brain was still collecting itself; direct neural stimulation tended to separate memory into discrete facets which reintegrated jarringly as consciousness returned. Part of Arne Huber understood it was remarkable that the Regiment's commander and deputy commander stood beside his pallet, but everything was new and remarkable to him now.

  "How long's it been?" he said aloud, marvelling at the sound of his voice. "How long've I been out?"

  "Four days," Danny Pritchard said. "Going on five if you count the time before we got you back to Base Alpha by aircar."

  "Right," said Huber. "Well, I'm ready to go back to my platoon now. Are we still in the field?"

  As he spoke, he braced his hands on the edges of the pallet and with careful determination began to lever his torso up from the mattress. A spasm knotted his muscles; his vision went briefly monochrome. The technician clicked his tongue.

  "F-3 ought to be out of the line," Hammer said in a gravelly voice, "but we can't afford that luxury just now. We've assigned a car from Central Repair and personnel from the depot to bring them up to strength. I've put in a lieutenant named Algren as CO. He's green as grass, but he was top of his class at the Academy."

  "I'm the fucking CO of F-3!" Huber said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I can—"

  He lurched to his feet. His knees buckled. Hammer caught him expertly and lifted him onto the pallet. Huber gasped, hoping he wouldn't vomit. There was nothing in his stomach, but acid boiled against the back of his throat while the technician's fingers danced on his keypad.

  "No, you can't," Major Pritchard said. "We need the troopers we've got too badly to let you get a bunch of them killed to prove you're superman, which you're not. Besides, I want you in Operations."

  "Right," said Hammer. "Bad as things are in the field, just now I need experienced officers on my staff worse than I do line commanders. I might transfer you to Operations even if you were fit to go back to F-3."

  Huber glared at the Colonel, then let himself relax on the pallet. "Yeah, well," he said. "I'm not fit, you've got that right. But . . ."

  "But when you are," Hammer said, "then I guess you've earned your choice of assignments. You did a good job getting your people out of that ratfuck. I won't bother saying I'm sorry for the way you got left hanging, but sure—I owe you one."

  "For now you can do the most good to F-3 and the whole Regiment just by helping ride herd on what passes for the military forces of the United Cities," Pritchard said. "If we don't get them working together, it's going to be . . ."

  His voice trailed off. He shook his head, suddenly looking drawn and gray with despair.

  "The first thing you can help with," said Hammer, "is coming up with a platoon sergeant. I don't want to bring in somebody new, not with a newbie CO. I offered the job to your blower captain, Sergeant Deseau, and he turned it down; the others aren't seasoned enough on paper, and I don't know any of them personally."

  "Frenchie'd hate the job . . ." Huber said, his mind settling into professional mode instead of focusing on his body and its weakness. "He could do it, but . . ."

  "I can put the arm on him," the Colonel said. "Tell him it's take the job or out—and I wouldn't be bluffing."

  "No," said Huber. "There's a sergeant in Log Section now, Jack Tranter. He's worked with us before. He isn't a line trooper, but he's seen the elephant. He's got the rank and organizational skills, and he's got the judgment to balance some young fire-eater straight out of the Academy."

  "I remember him," said Pritchard with a frown. "He's a good man, but he's missing his right leg."

  "The way things are right at the moment, Danny," said the Colonel with a piercing look at his subordinate, "he could be stone blind and I'd give him a trial if Huber here vouched for him. We don't have a lot of margin, you know."

  Pritchard nodded with a grim smile. "Yeah," he said. "There's that."

  Hammer turned to Huber again. The movement was very slight, but his gaze had unexpected weight. Huber felt the sort of shock he would if he'd been playing soccer and caught a medicine ball instead.

  "So, Lieutenant?" he said. "Are you going to do what I tell you, or are you going to keep telling me what you'll do?"

  "Sir!" said Huber, sitting up. He didn't feel the waves of nausea and weakness that'd crumpled him moments before, but neither did he push his luck by swinging his feet over the side of the bed. "You're the Colonel. I'll do the best job I can wherever you put me."

  Hammer nodded, a lift of his chin as tiny as the smile that touched his thin lips. Huber wondered vaguely what would've happened if he'd been too bullheaded to face reality. Hard to tell, but the chances were he'd be looking for a civilian job when he got out of the infirmary instead of arguing about where he belonged in the Regimental Table of Organization.

  Danny Pritchard looked at the technician and said, "When'll he be able to move? Sit in front of a console in the Operations shop I mean, not humping through the boonies."

  The technician shrugged. "I can have him over there by jeep in maybe three hours. It's not how brave you are or how many pushups you can do, it's just the neural pathways reconnecting. D'ye want me to requisition a uniform or did his own gear come in with him?"

  All three men looked reflexively at Huber. Huber gulped out a laugh and felt better by an order of magnitude to have broken his own tension that way.

  "Hey, when I came here the only thing I had on my mind was my hair," he said. "Draw me a medium/regular and I'll worry about my field kit later
."

  "Roger that," said Hammer, ending the discussion. His glance toward Huber was shrouded by layers of concerns that had nothing to do with the man on the bed. "You'll report to Operations as soon as you can, Lieutenant, and Major Pritchard'll bring you up to speed."

  Hammer started out of the room. Pritchard put a hand on the Colonel's shoulder and said, "Sir? You might tell him about Ander."

  Hammer looked from his Operations Officer to Huber. "Yeah," he said, "I might do that. Lieutenant, the UC government ordered General Ander's arrest after his failure to execute their lawful orders. While he was in a cell pending his hearing before the Bonding Authority representative, he committed suicide."

  Huber frowned, trying to take in the information. "The UC arrested him?" he said. "Sir, how in hell did they do that? Ander's Legion may not be the best outfit on the planet, but the UC doesn't have anything more than a few forest guards with carbines."

  "I suggested they deputize a platoon of the White Mice for the job," Hammer said. "I believe Major Steuben chose to lead the team himself."

  "Ah," said Huber. He didn't say, "Why would Ander kill himself?" because obviously Ander hadn't killed himself. Huber'd turned down a chance to serve in the White Mice, the Regiment's field police and enforcers; but he understood why they existed, and this was one of the times he was glad they existed.

  "Right," he said. "Ah . . . thank you, sir, though I hadn't been going to ask. I know we're in a complicated situation here on Plattner's World."

  "You just think you know," said Pritchard over his shoulder as he followed the Colonel out of the room. "After a day in Operations, Lieutenant, you'll know bloody well."

  * * *

  Like every other line soldier throughout history, Arne Huber had cursed because his superiors expected him to follow orders without having a clue as to what was really going on. Transferred now to the operations staff, he found himself in a situation he liked even less: he knew the Big Picture, and the reality was much worse than he'd believed when he had only a platoon to worry about.