Paying the Piper

by David Drake

  "Hadn't really thought about it, Frenchie," Huber said. His eyes were on the dirigible, but he wasn't really thinking about that either. "I can't say I like the dust here in the highlands a lot better."

  "Hey, Learoyd?" Deseau called to the trooper in the fighting compartment. "Slide into the front, will you, and run up Port Two?"

  Learoyd didn't work in the plenum chamber unless he had to. He was too big for the hatches even when he was fit, and now his right arm was in a surface cast to keep him from rubbing off the medication that the Medicomp had applied when things settled down enough for the support equipment and personnel to arrive from Base Alpha. A fresh set of barrels for the 2-cm automatics had arrived, so Learoyd was working on the tribarrels while the other crewmen realigned the nacelle that'd taken a knock from the dense rootball of a tree Fencing Master had driven over.

  "I'll do it," said Padova, mounting the bow with a hop and a grab for the first handhold on the hull proper. Rita'd settled in during the run and the three days of quiet following Port Plattner; now she was a member of Fencing Master's crew, not just a skilled driver.

  "Any word about when we might be moving out, El-Tee?" Deseau asked, shielding his eyes with his hand as he looked up at Huber. "I mean, we're off the clock, right? Paying for our own time."

  A dotted line of dirigibles stretched to the southern horizon: Huber could see at least a dozen airships at once. There'd been a solid stream of airships transferring supplies and material from the UC ever since the Regiment pulled twenty kilometers back and set up three firebases equidistant from Port Plattner. They'd leave in a single giant transport from Port Plattner rather than in dribs and drabs from makeshift starports in the UC, so Huber supposed it made sense. Not that anybody cared what he thought.

  "So far as anybody's told me, Frenchie," he said, "we're going to stay here till we've all grown long white beards. I don't expect that's what'll happen, but your guess is as good as mine."

  Padova switched on the portside fans and ran them up together. Huber cocked his head, listening with a critical ear for any imbalance in the harmonics. So far as he could tell, the nacelles were tuned as sweetly as if they'd just been blueprinted in the factory.

  "El-Tee?" called Learoyd. He pointed to Fencing Master's port wing gun, slewing incrementally under the control of gunnery computer. "There's something coming."

  Huber looked south again, noticing this time that two enclosed aircars were approaching fast below the dirigibles. His eyes narrowed: the cars' IFF must have been responding correctly or else the tribarrels on air defense would've shot them out of the sky a minute ago, but the drivers were taking a chance anyway. Even with the war over . . .

  "Hey, what d'ye have?" Deseau said. He couldn't see what was happening from ground level, but he'd noticed Learoyd's and Huber's interest. Instead of immediately jumping onto the plenum chamber to see for himself, he first latched the access port closed so that Fencing Master would be able to maneuver again.

  The aircars came over the berm twenty meters up, braking to a hover with a slickness that showed the drivers were expert. They set down in front of the TOC, between two of Battery Alpha's dug-in howitzers; dust skittered, dancing away to the west.

  Huber jumped from the berm to the plenum chamber, his boots clanging. He climbed into the fighting compartment just as Deseau did; both men reflexively checked their tribarrels. Learoyd locked down the third barrel on his gun and slipped the adjustment wrench into its pouch on his belt.

  "What d'ye think, El-Tee?" Deseau asked. "Did that bastard Lindeyar have second thoughts about terminating our contract?"

  "None of them are Lindeyar," Learoyd said. "They're the other politicians' cars."

  Fencing Master's tribarrels couldn't bear on the aircars because they were straight behind them, and anyway you didn't point a gun across a firebase unless you wanted to lose your rank. Frenchie was holding his 2-cm weapon in the crook of his arm, and Learoyd unclipped his sub-machine gun from the bracket on the inside of the armor.

  The limousines' doors opened. Huber recognized Senator Graciano and his three colleagues, and the woman in battledress getting out of the front was Mistress Dozier. From the other aircar came President Rihorta and another member of the Solace delegation. The man accompanying those two was a stranger.

  Aloud Huber said, "I don't know who the tall guy is. He's off-planet, that's for sure. I've never seen a hat like that—"

  It was more of a turban; the stranger donned and adjusted it carefully before proceeding with the others toward the ramp down to the TOC.

  "—on Plattner's World before."

  "That's the Colonel waiting in the entrance for 'em," Deseau said. "I swear it is!"

  "What do we do now, El-Tee?" Learoyd said. He knew the situation'd changed. He wasn't worried, just looking for direction from somebody smarter than he was.

  "We wait for orders, trooper," Huber said. He pursed his lips, then added, "And while we're waiting, I think we've got room here to stow another case of tribarrel ammo. Let's see if the quartermaster can help us out."

  * * *

  Huber's mind registered motion—a streak of light across the purple-black sky. He opened his mouth to shout a warning over the squadron net, then realized it was a shooting star rather than incoming artillery.

  Padova stood on the plenum chamber where she could quickly slide down the driver's hatch. She looked into the fighting compartment and shook her head. "How can Frenchie sleep?" she muttered.

  "I'm on watch, Rita," Learoyd said. "Why shouldn't he sleep? The El-Tee's awake too."

  He blinked. "And you."

  "Frenchie's been here a lot of times, Rita," Huber said, using that formation instead of, "Frenchie's a veteran," which the driver might find insulting. "As soon as there's a reason, he'll be up and doing his job."

  He grinned with a kind of affection he felt only because he and Deseau were part of the same family. "Besides, if the job's killing, Frenchie could do that without waking up."

  Padova'd seen the elephant by now, that was for sure; but there was a difference between one hard run punctuated by firefights and the bone-deep awareness that this might be the last chance to sleep for days or longer. Frenchie's body understood that sleeping curled up on the floor of the fighting compartment was best present use of his time.

  "You think it's going to be fighting again, don't you?" Padova said angrily. "But who? The only people who could hire us is Nonesuch, and who would they need us to fight? They've got a fucking division on the ground, we saw them land it!"

  "We're going to fight Nonesuch, Rita," Learoyd said calmly. He withdrew the loading tube from his back-up sub-machine gun, wiped it with an oily cloth, and clicked it home in the receiver again. "We're going to take the port back."

  "And who the bloody hell is paying us to attack Nonesuch!" the driver snarled, balling her fists in frustration. "Are we going outlaw, is that what you mean?"

  "I don't know who's paying us," Learoyd said, bending to check the bearing in the pintle supporting his tribarrel. "But there's nobody else to fight here, so we're fighting Nonesuch."

  He shrugged. "The El-Tee knows we're getting ready to fight, we all know that. So it has to be Nonesuch."

  Huber looked at Learoyd's round, placid face; as calm as a custard, reddened as usual by sun and wind. None of them understood how the Regiment could be going into battle again on Plattner's World. Learoyd was the only one who wasn't bothered by ignorance: he didn't expect to understand things.

  "Yeah, Bert's right," Huber said. "Curst if I know how or why, but I can't say I'm sorry. I didn't like Lindeyar when I first met him, and he hasn't improved with time."

  Padova hugged herself in frustration. "If we're really going to fight," she said, looking in the direction of the TOC, "why hasn't Central signaled us to stand to?"

  "Do you see anybody in the base who isn't at his action station?" Huber said. "An alert might warn other people. Everybody's waiting for it, even Frenchie. Especially F
renchie."

  He brought up the F-3 stats again on the C&C display. They were still at four cars. Sergeant Bielsky was bringing a repaired vehicle up from Benjamin, but he wouldn't arrive for thirty hours. The four cars of the present complement had shaken down during the run and attack, even Gabinus' Three-eight—which now had Flamingo Girl painted in fluorescent blue on both sides of the fighting compartment. All the guns had been rebarreled, all the fans were running within seventy percent of optimum, and each car had a full crew.

  He glanced at Learoyd, his right arm in a stiff bend though the hand was free to grip with. Replacements had flown up from the UC in aircars, but there was no way in hell that Deseau—the car commander—or Huber wanted to go into battle with a trooper they didn't know in place of Learoyd with one arm. There were a couple more wounded crewmen in F-3 for the same reason; it wasn't ideal, but . . .

  Huber chuckled.

  "Sir?" Padova said, frowning at what she didn't understand.

  "Kind of an old joke," he said. "If everything was ideal, nobody'd be hiring mercenaries, would they?"

  He chuckled again; and as he did so, the alert signal pulsed red. Sergeant Deseau was on his feet, reaching for his tribarrel's grips before his eyes could focus.

  Colonel Hammer's voice rasped in their commo helmets, "Troopers, the United Cities and Republic of Solace in combination have hired us to wrest control of Port Plattner from the foreign invaders now holding it. Normally I don't discuss the financial details of the Regiment's contracts, but in this particular case I'll mention that our payment is guaranteed by a consortium of planets which in the past have purchased about half the Thalderol base produced on Plattner's World. They seem to feel it wouldn't be to their benefit if Nonesuch controlled access to the product."

  Deseau whooped and clapped his hands. Padova had already dropped into the driver's compartment. Huber switched the C&C box to display the download that would shortly arrive from Central.

  "Your assignments are on the way," Hammer continued. "Artillery prep will begin in three minutes, and the action elements will begin moving out of the firebases at the same time. Don't get overeager—we want plenty of time for the shells to soften 'em up. For this operation we won't enable the lockout on our guns. I'd rather take the risk of being shot by a friendly than having a software glitch keep me from nailing a hostile because there's a friendly on the other side of him. But remember, the terrain is dead flat and your gun'll shoot any bloody thing that you aim at."

  The Hogs of Battery Alpha elevated their launch tubes. They faced outward in a clock pattern centered on the TOC; now their turrets rotated so that the whole battery was aligned to the northwest, the direction of Port Plattner.

  "I don't want any of you to think this'll be easy," Hammer continued. "They've got a hundred and fifty tanks and their other vehicles mount tribarrels too. It doesn't matter how slow and clumsy they are, because they aren't coming to us—we have to go to them. But troopers—we've faced worse. Get out there now and help me show people what happens when you try to cheat the Slammers! Six out."

  The satellites were up again; some satellites, anyhow. The download had full real-time coverage of the port. Approaches, lines of sight, threats and targets—the initial targets being the threats, of course—shimmered onto the holographic display in standard color overlays, as familiar to Huber as the grips of his tribarrel.

  Four Nonesuch tanks moved in echelon to join the twelve parked in front of the smoldering terminal building. Each was built around a centerline 25-cm powergun. Though the big weapons could only be adjusted a few degrees in azimuth, their bolts were powerful enough to penetrate even the thick plating of a starship.

  A line of dun-colored space-frame tents, sandbagged to the concrete, stood beside the vehicles. More tents—thousands of them—dotted the edges of the pad, most of them serving the infantry riding APCs. The latter, tracked like the tanks, had iridium armor and mounted a tribarrel in a one-man cupola.

  Nonesuch fatigue parties worked on the perimeter bunkers without heavy equipment. Soldiers were mixing concrete in hand troughs. Huber wondered whether Lindeyar and his cronies had tried to buy construction mixers from Solace and been refused, or if this was merely a stopgap until dedicated support units arrived aboard later vessels.

  Three ships, even such large ones, were barely enough to carry a division; the Nonesuch planners had concentrated wholly on combat personnel and equipment, accepting discomfort and inefficiency in order to frighten their possible opponents into quiescence. So far as the Solace Militia went, that may have been a good plan. . . .

  "Fox, this is Fox Six," Captain Gillig said. Her voice had a pleasant alto lilt even when she was giving battle orders. "Fox Three will trail on the approach, but we'll attack with all platoons in line. There's a tank company in our sector, but the panzers'll deal with it while we hit targets of opportunity. With a division to choose from, there shouldn't be any lack of those."

  Deseau turned to Huber and said, "Hey, El-Tee? I couldn't believe that bastard Lindeyar was going to get away with shafting us. Could you?"

  Huber thought for a moment. Given the delays in star travel, this coalition must have taken weeks or even months to put together. Hammer must have started planning it almost as soon as the Regiment arrived on Plattner's World.

  "I did believe it, Frenchie," he said. "But that's all right—I'm just a line lieutenant. So long as I do my job, I can leave the rest to the Colonel."

  The Hogs lit the night with flaring backblasts, beginning to shower 200-mm missiles on the enemy. The roar shook the ground. Moving as smoothly as water swirling down a drain, 1st Squadron's tanks and combat cars slid from the firebase, advancing toward Port Plattner twenty klicks away.

  * * *

  "Target!" said a machine voice in Huber's ear as Fencing Master led the rest of F-3 out of the angled passage through the berm. His faceshield gave him a vector.

  So far as Huber could tell, the careted point on the crest ten kilometers distant was a few meters of brush and low trees, no different from everything for a klick to either side, but you didn't argue when Central told you to shoot. He laid his tribarrel on, careful not to overcorrect as the stabilizer fought with the combat car's motion, and dialed up magnification as the sight picture slewed toward the target. Huber was using a false-color infrared display, so the caret was a black wedge thrusting down from the top of the image.

  He actually saw them in the instant his thumbs squeezed: three soldiers wearing drapes that almost erased their thermal signature, pointing a passive observation device toward Firebase One. They'd remained hidden till now, so they must have just attempted to send information back to Port Plattner.

  Huber grinned with fierce pride that the hiss/CRACK! of his tribarrel's first round preceded the sound of Fencing Master's other two guns by a fraction of a second. He didn't often beat Frenchie and Learoyd to the punch, and neither did anybody else.

  The eleven tanks of D Company—two more, deadlined for repairs but able to shoot, remained behind in the firebase for defense—had been first through the berm and were deploying across the wheat in line abreast. Colonel Hammer's combat car and that of the S-3—Huber wondered whether Major Pritchard was in it, as he certainly would choose to be, or if he'd been forced to remain in the TOC to coordinate the attack—followed, taking the right of the tanks along with two five-car platoons of G Company; the remaining platoon and the command cars of Regimental HQ Section remained behind as base defense. Captain Gillig and the sergeant major were next out, followed by F-1, F-2, and finally F-3.

  The engineers had sited the firebase on a low rise, so Fencing Master in the entrance was slightly above the vehicles already spreading out to the northwest. Central tasked Huber and his crew because they had the best line on the target. Huber'd chafed to wait for everybody else to get under weigh before his cars did, but it'd worked out after all.

  There's a lot of chance in life and especially in battle. Arne Huber just happened to be i
n the right place at the right time to send a burst of plasma bolts snapping straight as a plumb line into what till that instant was three enemy soldiers. His faceshield blocked their cyan core, but dazzle reflecting from the landscape quivered across his retinas.

  Huber's first round hit the observation device, probably a high-resolution thermal imager. It contained enough metal to erupt into a blaze of white and green sparks. After that it was hard to say who hit what, because the three tribarrels put ten or a dozen rounds apiece into the target.

  Huber switched his gunsight back to its normal seven-point-five-degree field. The freshly-lit fire on the ridgeline was only a quiver at this distance. In the magnified image Huber had seen an arm fly from an exploding torso and white-hot fragments blasted from the granite outcrop behind the scouts.

  His gunbarrels shimmered, sinking back from yellow heat. The cluster continued to spin, pulling air through the open breeches to cool the bores.

  Padova followed the course Captain Gillig's C&C box had programed. She didn't ask about the shooting. Huber supposed she was scared—as the good Lord knew he was himself—but she'd shaken down just fine. She'd be driving Fencing Master until she got a promotion, which at the rate she was going wouldn't be long.

  F-3 followed two hundred meters behind the first and second platoons on the left flank, a reserve not only for Fox Company but for the whole squadron. Despite satellite coverage and the Regiment's sensor suites, there was always risk of an attack from some direction other than straight ahead. Huber's cars stayed back to deal with it.

  "Good to burn in our guns like that," Deseau said as his cluster stopped rotating. "A few rounds to make sure the barrels're seated and there's no cracks in the castings."

  Cyan bolts streaked up from the northwest horizon, ending in yellow flashes made ragged by the smoke of the explosions. Despite the decoy missiles of the first salvos, the Nonesuch defenses—over eight hundred tribarrels on the APCs and tanks—were shooting down the firecracker rounds that followed. The Nonesuch command hadn't been caught napping, more's the pity. . . .