Paying the Piper

by David Drake

  Foghorn slid out of sight among the trees. Learoyd brought Fencing Master up, following thirty meters behind the lead car. That was a greater interval than they'd maintain when the task force had reached a constant speed.

  "Highball Six, this is Rocker One-six," Basingstoke said. "I've passed on your congratulations to my gunners." After a pause he added, "I'm glad we were able to perform to the standard the infantry and your combat car crews have demonstrated in order to get us this far. Rocker One-six out."

  Huber looked up at branches whipping past against a dark sky. He grinned faintly. "Thank you, Rocker One-six," he said. "Six out."

  He wondered how much farther Task Force Huber was going to get. Who knows? Maybe all the way.

  And then what? Huber added to himself; but that was a problem for another day.

  * * *

  Huber awakened from a doze. He'd been hunched into the back corner of the fighting compartment, held upright by ammo boxes and a carton of rations. Fields of dark green soybeans rolled to either horizon beyond the iridium walls, punctuated by stretches of native vegetation.

  According to the briefing cubes, Solace was several times as populous as all the Outer States put together. Those people were heavily concentrated in the center of the country around Bezant and Port Plattner, however, with the remainder of the country given over to the collective farms which produced food for the entire planet.

  Huber frowned as he thought about the rations. He'd swallowed a tube of something a little after dawn as they negotiated the foothills of the Solace Highlands, but he'd had nothing since. He didn't feel hungry but supposed he ought to eat something.

  It was an effort to get anything down because he was so fatigued by the constant vibration. Besides, the poppers made food taste like it'd been scraped from the bottom of a latrine. That wasn't much of a change from what ration tubes ordinarily tasted like, of course.

  He jolted alert, suddenly aware of why he'd awakened. Padova'd been on duty with the C&C display while he rested. She was trained but she didn't have the sixth sense for what wasn't right that'd come with a year or two of combat operations.

  "I've got the watch," Huber said. He took the controller from Padova's hand as he spoke, lurching upright. She jumped aside, startled and maybe a little snappish at the lack of ceremony. The reaction passed before it got to her tongue, which was just as well.

  As Huber adjusted the display to make explicit what instinct already told him, he said, "Highball, we're going to have to adjust course to the left by thirty degrees. There's a monorail line eighteen klicks ahead, and if we continue as planned we'll be spotted by a train headed southward. We'll—"

  He stopped because he'd caught the fine overtone to the sensor data, the descant he'd ignored for the moment while he focused on the electronic signature of a six-car train heading south at 120 kph. Task Force Huber could avoid observation from a train at ground level, but—

  "Bloody Hell!" Huber snarled, interrupting himself. "This is going to take a moment, troopers. There's aircars scouting for the train and they'll spot us sure!"

  "Six, this is Two-six," Lieutenant Messeman said on the command channel. "I suggest it's a troop train and the aircars are escorts. Over."

  "Roger," said Huber, because it couldn't be anything else once Messeman had stated the obvious. He shook his head angrily. He must still be waking up. He couldn't afford to miss cues; he couldn't, and the troopers who were his responsibility couldn't afford him missing them either.

  "Roger," Huber repeated, but with a note of decision. There was nothing wrong with his tactical appreciation once he got his mind in gear. "Highball, we can't avoid them so we'll engage and keep moving. Fox will attack on a company front—"

  That was a bit of an overstatement, given that the Fox elements under Huber's command were two understrength platoons, but it'd do.

  "—from point Echo Michael Four-two, Six-one. X-Ray elements continue in march order. Fox elements form to the right on Three-six in line abreast with five, I repeat five, meter intervals. Execute! Six out."

  Padova looked at him wonderingly. It was too bad Learoyd wasn't on the right gun, but the newbie was going to have to get her feet wet some time. This was probably as safe a place to do it as any.

  "Crew," Huber said, switching his helmet to intercom. Foghorn was moving up on their right with the other cars of F-3 slanted farther back as they drove through the soybeans to their stations. Lieutenant Messeman's platoon would take longer to join from the middle and rear of the column, but it'd be in line by the time it needed to be. "Frenchie, set our guns to take out the scouts when we're sure of getting them both."

  The aircars were keeping station to either side of the track, five hundred meters up and a kilometer ahead of the train. They were looking for trouble on the line rather than scouting more generally, but even so from their altitude they were bound to notice the Slammers' vehicles.

  Deseau keyed the command into the pad on his tribarrel's receiver. Instead of executing immediately he said, "You don't think it'll warn them, El-Tee?"

  "It's a train," Huber snapped. "They're not going to turn around, they won't even be able to slow down."

  Deseau grimaced and pushed execute. Fencing Master's tribarrels slewed to the right and elevated under the control of the gunnery computer.

  "The C&C box'll divide our fire so that the whole train's covered," Huber continued, deliberately speaking to his whole crew over the intercom rather than embarrassing Padova by singling her out for the explanation. "We'll shoot it up on the fly, not because that'll damage the enemy but—"

  Fencing Master's tribarrels fired, six-round bursts from the paired wing guns and about ten from Deseau's as it destroyed an aircar by itself. Padova jumped, instinct telling her that the gun'd gone off by accident. She blushed and scowled when she realized what had happened.

  Above the horizon to the north, a cottony puff bloomed and threw out glittering sparks. The flash of the explosion had been lost in the distance, even to Huber who'd been looking for it.

  "—because if we don't, we'll have whatever military force is aboard that train chasing us," Huber continued, giving no sign that he'd noticed Padova's mistake. "We're going to have enough to do worrying about what's in front without somebody catching us from behind."

  The gunnery computer returned the tribarrels to their previous alignment. Huber and Deseau touched their grips, swiveling their weapons slightly to make sure that a circuitry glitch hadn't locked them; Padova quickly copied the veterans. Yeah, she'll do.

  A column of black smoke twisted skyward near where the white puff had appeared in the sky. The second Solace scout hadn't blown up in the air, but its wreckage had ignited the brush when it hit the ground.

  "Six, this is Two-six," Messeman said. "I'll take my Two-zero car out of central control to cut the rail in front of the train. All right? Over."

  "Roger, Two-six," Huber said. He thought Messeman was being overcautious, but that still left seven combat cars to deal with a six-car train.

  Sunlight gleamed on the elevated rail and the line of pylons supporting it across the dark green fields. The train itself wasn't in sight yet, but at their closing speed it wouldn't be long. Huber settled behind his gun, staring into the holographic sight picture.

  Fencing Master came over a rise too slight to notice on a contour map but all the difference in the world when you were using line-of-sight weapons. The train, a jointed tube of plastic and light metal, shimmered into view, slung beneath the elevated track.

  "Open fire," Huber said calmly. His thumbs squeezed the butterfly trigger.

  Padova's bolts were high—meters high, well above even the rail—but Huber and Deseau were both dead on the final car from their first rounds. Huber traversed his gun clockwise from the back of the target forward. Frenchie simply let the train's own forward motion carry it through his three-second burst so that his bolts crossed with his lieutenant's in the middle of the target. By that time Padova correcte
d her aim by sawing her muzzles downward.

  The car fell apart, metal frame and thermoplastic paneling alike blazing at the touch of fifty separate hits, each a torch of plasma. The Solace mercenaries on the train carried grenades and ammunition, but those sparkling secondary explosions did little to increase the destruction which the powerguns had caused directly.

  The second car back had something more impressive in it, perhaps a pallet of anti-armor missiles. When it detonated, the shockwave destroyed the whole front half of the train in a red flash so vivid that even daylight blanched. The low pressure that followed the initial wave front sucked topsoil into a dense black mushroom through which the rear cars cascaded as blazing debris.

  "Cease fire!" Huber ordered. "Don't waste ammo, troopers, we've worked ourselves out of a job."

  He took a deep breath; his nose filters released now that the air was fit to breathe again. Plasma bolts burned oxygen to ozone, and the matrix holding the copper atoms in alignment broke down into unpleasant compounds when the energy was released. Huber's faceshield had blocked the direct intensity of the bolts to save his retinas, but enough cyan light had reflected into the corners of his eyes that shimmers of purple and orange filtered his vision.

  "Reform in march order," Huber concluded hoarsely. "Six out."

  "They didn't have a chance," Padova said. She sounded as though she was on the verge of collapse. "They couldn't shoot back, they were helpless!"

  "It's better when they don't shoot back," Learoyd said from the front compartment. He'd buttoned up before they went into action; now the hatch opened and the driver's seat rose on its hydraulic jack, lifting his head back into the open. "They might've got lucky, even at this range."

  "Some a' them caught us with our pants down when we landed here," Frenchie Deseau said harshly. "We weren't so fucking helpless! Ain't that so, El-Tee?"

  Huber flipped up his faceshield and rubbed his eyes, remembering unwillingly the ratfuck when a Solace commando ambushed F-3 disembarking from the starship that had just brought them to Plattner's World. A buzzbomb trailing gray exhaust smoke as it curved for Arne Huber's head . . .

  And afterwards, the windrow of bodies scythed down by a touch of Huber's thumb to the close-in defense system.

  "No," he said in a husky whisper. "We weren't helpless. We're Hammer's Slammers."

  Task Force Huber continued to slice its way north, moving at an even hundred kph across the treeless fields.

  * * *

  "Highball Six, this is Flasher Six," the voice said faintly. The signal wobbled and was so attenuated that Huber could barely make out the words. "Do you copy, over?"

  Ionization track transmissions could carry video under the proper circumstances, but communications between moving vehicles were another matter. Huber would've said it was impossible without a precise location for the recipient, but apparently that wasn't quite true.

  "Flasher Six, this is Highball Six," he said, shutting his mind to the present circumstances though his eyes remained open. Deseau and Learoyd glanced over when he replied to the transmission, then returned to their guns with the extra alertness of men who know something unseen is likely to affect them. "Go ahead, over."

  Huber had no idea of who Flasher Six was nor what he commanded. The AI could probably tell him, but right now Huber had too little brain to clutter it up with needless detail.

  Fencing Master's sending unit had the reference signal from the original transmission to go on, so Huber could reasonably expect his reply to get through. It must have done so, because a moment later the much clearer voice responded, "Highball, you're in position to anchor a Solace artillery regiment. I need you to adjust your course to follow the Masterton River, a few degrees east of the original plot. I'm downloading the course data—"

  A pause. An icon blinked in the lower left corner of Huber's faceshield, then became solid green when the AI determined that the transmission was complete and intelligible.

  "—now. Central delegated control to me because they haven't been able to get through to you directly. Flasher over."

  Task Force Huber was winding through slopes too steep and rocky to be easily cultivated. Shrubs and twisted trees with small leaves were the only vegetation they'd seen for ten kilometers. That was why they'd been routed this way, of course: the chance of somebody accurately reporting their location and course to Solace Command was very slight.

  Huber was behind schedule, and the notion of further delay irritated him more than it might've done if he hadn't been so tired. He glared at the transmitted course he'd projected onto a terrain overlay and said, "Flasher, what is it that you want us to do? We're to attack an artillery regiment? Highball over."

  "Negative, Highball, negative!" Flasher Six snapped. "These are the Firelords! There's an eight-gun battery of calliopes with each battalion and they'd cut you to pieces. Your revised course will take you through a town with a guardpost that'll alert Solace Command. That'll give the Firelords enough warning to block the head of the valley with their calliopes and take you under fire with their rockets. We'll handle it from there. Over."

  Huber called up the Firelords from Fencing Master's data bank; his frown grew deeper. They were one of several regiments fielded from the Hackabe Cluster. Their truck-mounted bombardment rockets were relatively unsophisticated and short ranged but they could put down a huge volume of fire in a short time.

  "Flasher," Huber said, switching his faceshield back to the course display, "the Firelords'll be able to saturate our defenses if they try hard enough. I'll have to put all my tribarrels on air defense, and even then it's going to be close. Are you sure about this? Over."

  "Roger, Highball!" Flasher said in a tone of obvious irritation. "Your infantry component will have to handle local security. Are you able to comply, over?"

  "Roger, Flasher," Huber said. It wasn't the first time he'd gotten orders he didn't like. It wouldn't be the last, either—if he survived this one. "Highball Six out."

  He paused a moment to collect his mind. The AI was laying out courses and plotting fields of fire; doing its job, as happy as a machine could be. And Arne Huber was a soldier, so he'd do his job also. If it didn't make him happy, sometimes, he and all the other troopers in the Regiment had decided—if only by default—that it made them happier than other lines of work.

  "Trouble, El-Tee?" Deseau asked without looking up from his sight picture. He'd been covering the left front while Huber was getting their orders.

  "Hey, we're alive, Frenchie," Huber said. "That's something, right?"

  He looked at the new plot on the C&C display, took a deep breath, and said over the briefing channel, "Highball, this is Six. There's been a change of plan. We're to proceed up the valley of the Masterton River, through a place called Millhouse Crossing. There's a Militia guardpost there."

  In briefing mode, the unit commanders could respond directly and lower-ranking personnel could caret Huber's display for permission to speak. Nobody said anything for the moment.

  He continued, "We'll shoot up the post on the move, but be aware that they may shoot back. We'll continue another fifteen klicks to where the road drops down into the plains around Hundred Hectare Lake. We'll halt short of there because an artillery regiment is set up beside the lake, the Firelords. We're to keep their attention while a friendly unit takes care of them. Any questions? Over."

  "If they're so fucking friendly," Deseau said over Fencing Master's intercom, "then let them draw fire and we'll shoot up the redlegs. How about that?"

  There was a pause as the rest of the task force stared at the transmitted map; at least the unit commanders would also check out the Firelords. The first response was from Lieutenant Basingstoke, saying, "Highball Six, this is Rocker One-six. The Firelords can launch nearly fifteen hundred fifteen-centimeter rockets within five seconds. You can't—the task force cannot, I believe—defend against a barrage like that. Over."

  Huber sighed, though he supposed it was just as well that somebody'
d raised the point directly. "One-six," he said, "I agree with your calculations, but we have our orders. We're going to do our best and hope that the Firelords don't think it's worth emptying their racks all in one go. Over."

  Somebody swore softly. It could've been any of the platoon leaders. Blood and Martyrs, it could've been Huber himself muttering the words that were dancing through his mind.

  "All right, troopers," Huber said to the fraught silence. "You've got your orders. We've all got our orders. Car Three-six leads from here till we're through this. Highball Six out."

  Padova obediently increased speed by five kph, pulling around Foghorn as Sergeant Nagano's driver swung to the left in obedience to the directions from the C&C box. As soon as they were into the broader part of the valley, they'd form with the combat cars in line abreast by platoons at the front and rear of the task force. The X-Ray vehicles would crowd as tightly together between the cars as movement safety would allow.

  Bombardment rockets had a wide footprint but they weren't individually accurate, so reducing the target made the tribarrels' task of defense easier. Not easy, but an old soldier was one who'd learned to take every advantage there was.

  Padova took them up a swale cutting into the ridge to the right. Deseau looked at the landscape. By crossing the ridge, they'd enter a better-watered valley where the data bank said the locals grew crops on terraces.

  "Ever want to be a farmer, Bert?" Deseau asked.

  "No, Frenchie," Learoyd said.

  Deseau shrugged. "Yeah, me neither," he said. "Besides, I like shooting people."

  He laughed, but Huber wasn't sure he was joking.

  Fencing Master nosed through the spike-leafed trees straggling along the crest. They were similar to giants Huber'd seen in the lowland forests, but here the tallest were only ten meters high and their leaves had a grayish cast.

  Limestone scraped beneath Fencing Master's skirts as they started down the eastern slope. The landscape immediately became greener, and after less than a minute they'd snorted out of wasteland into a peanut field.