"That's all right, Colonel," Lambsblood said with a barely concealed sigh. "It's not your fault. Keep me informed."
After the colonel had left, Lambsblood turned to his aide. "Maintenance and spare parts, the lack of them is killing this army, Devi. We have got to get the Confederation to kick in so we can replenish our depots. Having all the army's maneuver elements in the field at the same time is wearing us down. By the time we're through with this wild goose chase, the Army of the Lord will have broken its back."
"You don't think there are any of the demons left, sir?"
Lambsblood shook his head. "Even if there are, they can't be much of a threat, and we don't need the whole army in the field to deal with them. No, Major, there's only one reason we're out here, and that's so we'll be out of the way."
"You think...?" Devi lowered his voice to a whisper.
"I'm dead meat, Major. You too, our whole command staff. Do you think that bauble our Great Leader gave me at the ceremony actually means anything?" Lambsblood sighed and hung his head in his hands for a long time. "I have been a fool," he whispered sadly. "And a coward."
"Sir, I don't think—"
"No, no, Major," Lambsblood said. "I can admit that now. I actually resented Sturgeon's presence here during the war with the Skinks. God, do I wish the man and his lovely Marines were still with us!" He leaned back in his chair. "And I stood by meekly when that man murdered our legal government. Stood by. Too scared to do anything, and God forgive me, consumed with ambition." He paused again, then leaned forward before he spoke. "Major Devi, I appreciate your loyalty. I am afraid that loyalty will soon be put to a severe test."
"What can we do, sir?" Devi asked. He was frightened that General Lambsblood himself had given words to what he had been thinking privately for some time.
Lambsblood shook his head in resignation and said, "Give me that overlay, the one that shows our dispositions in the vicinity of Haven." The general unrolled the overlay and studied it for a moment. "Major Devi, as soon as they have an aircraft available, I want you to fly to Army Group B HQ—no message traffic on this, purely person-to-person—and have a top secret meeting with General Bhoddavista. You are authorized to tell him—and him only, no staff should be in on this—that his very life depends on secrecy and speed." He put a forefinger on the overlay.
Major Devi leaned over and looked at it. The finger rested squarely on the military map symbol for an armored infantry battalion.
"I want him to move that battalion to the maintenance depot in the outskirts of Haven, you know the one, and stay there on full alert until I personally give them the order to stand down or deploy." He straightened up and looked Devi right in the eye. "The future of our world may depend on this move. And I want you to make sure those men in that battalion are alert and combat ready. You stay with them, as my personal representative. If we have to call on them, they must be ready to fight the Special Group." He whispered the last words into Devi's ear.
"Sir? General Banks has offered us help."
"So has Ambassador Spears. I'll meet with him when I get back."
"Sir? What are we doing?" Devi whispered.
General Lambsblood leaned very close to his aide and whispered directly into his ear: "That oath we took to that madman? It's worthless and illegal. We are planning a coup."
Major Devi stepped back a pace, then grinned and saluted. "Yessir!" he said.
As soon as the sound of the aircraft had faded into the distance, Bass jumped to his feet. Dupont! He remembered now! Dupont was a Marine and he'd been killed in an attack, the same attack that had wounded him and caused him to be taken prisoner. Was he a Marine? He'd been told the Marines had left Kingdom a long time ago. They left him behind! How could that have happened? The Marines didn't leave their own behind—he'd always heard that. Well, no time for that now. "Spencer!" he shouted. "To the caves! Quick!"
To Bass's utter dismay, he found the strong points unmanned. The people of New Salem were clustered about behind the barricades, some weeping, others shouting in rage.
Even Zechariah was beside himself. "Our homes, our farms! Destroyed, destroyed!" he shouted over and over, clenching and unclenching his fists in frustration and rage.
"Goddamnit!" Bass bellowed. "You people get a grip on yourselves!" He began seizing the men who were supposed to be manning the barricades and shoving them into their positions, none too gently either. "The rest of you people, get your asses into the caves! Come on! Get moving! There'll be a ground probe anytime now! Move, move, move!"
Those not assigned to the barricades headed slowly toward the caves. Behind them, huge clouds of smoke billowed up from the burning buildings.
"Look!" someone shouted. "The meetinghouse is still standing! The Lord has protected it. So are some other buildings. Zechariah, your house is untouched!"
"Damnit, get under cover!" Bass shouted. "You can't rebuild New Salem if you're dead!"
"Charles is right," Zechariah said, getting a grip on himself. His assignment was to remain with the people in the caves; Charles would command the defense.
"Before anybody goes," Bass said, "I remember the rest of my name. Charlie Bass. I was in the Confederation military," he said excitedly.
Zechariah nodded sagely. "I knew you were military, Charles. Do you remember anything else?"
"I remember the attack where I got wounded and captured. There was a Confederation Marine with me. He got killed."
"Were you a Marine?"
Bass's face screwed up in pain as he tried to remember. "I don't know," he finally croaked. "Maybe. I was with a Marine."
"You must have been a Marine, Charles. The Marines were here, but not the army."
"The navy has people with the Marines," Colleen interjected.
"They do?" Bass asked, surprised at the thought that he might have been a squid—where had that word come from?—in the navy. "Maybe I was," he admitted. "I don't know."
Zechariah clapped him on the shoulder. "It is good that you are remembering, Charles. You will remember more."
"Yes." Bass nodded. "It's good." He looked at the burning village. "But we don't have time for that now. Anyone who has a position to take, get to it. Everyone else, back to the caves. Now!"
The people scattered and Bass took up his position behind the first barricade. "You men keep down," he told the two villagers beside him. The men were armed with shot rifles. If the position was discovered, the men would fire one magazine each and, Charlie hoped, lure the enemy into the defile. Then they would abandon that position. Meanwhile, Bass and two men armed with acid guns would take them under fire from concealed positions above as they tried to break through the earth and rock barricade. If there were too many of them or if they had armor, it'd be all over for the defenders, but Zechariah and the surviving villagers would have time to flee into the caves.
"Okay." Bass patted each man on the back. "You know what to do. Can you hold here?"
The two faces coursed in perspiration nodded grimly.
"Fire your four rounds and get out of here. If they try to come through, I'll get them from topside. It'll be dark in a few hours, and if they don't come by then we'll be all right. They may never find us down here."
"Pray God you're right, Charles," one of the men said. He grinned briefly through the sweaty dirt on his face.
"You look and talk like a Marine," Bass said with a grin. He ran back behind the barricades and picked up his men with the acid guns. "Come on, we've got to get up there and under cover before they come back."
"H-How long will we be up there, Charles?" one of the men asked.
"Until dark. Let's go."
They ran back down the ravine, sloshing in and out of the muddy stream as they went. One of the men lost his footing and fell on his bottom into the mud. Bass reached down, pulled him to his feet, and they continued on almost to the river, where the walls weren't so steep. They scrambled up and ran back up the ravine to their positions above the first barricade, Bass and
one rifleman on one side, the other alone across from them.
Panting from the run, they checked their weapons. The acid tanks were at least half full. The hand-blaster he'd gotten from Zechariah had a full charge. "Now we wait," he said, loud enough for the man across the ravine to hear him. "You men relax. I'll keep watch." He lay prone beneath some branches camouflaging his position and looked back at New Salem. He had selected the position and sited the barricades below it because from there he had excellent observation. In the distance, the buildings continued to burn. If anyone came toward them, he would see them in plenty of time.
He stiffened. Damnit! The trails! The trails they'd used to go back and forth snaked down from the outskirts of the village like huge fingers pointing straight at them! They hadn't appeared that way before now. Bass snorted. Jesus, typical goddamned military screw up—if something could go wrong, it sure would! If a recon patrol got to the near edge of the village, they'd see the trails for sure. Well, can't do anything about that now. So come on, you dirty bastards, come on!, he said to himself, We aren't some poor unarmed tribesmen! We are gonna kick your asses!
She had to get out of this place! First it was the Earthmen tossing things at her, and just now one of them had actually stepped on her back! It hurt where the Earthman's filthy foot had fallen on her. She'd almost lost her child, the shock was so great. But they hadn't discovered her! What a miracle!
The Earthmen were having a war among themselves, she realized, so they weren't too interested just then in what lay underfoot. Good! She'd heard the aircraft and then the explosions. She knew they weren't her own people come back to take their revenge. She'd heard the Earthmen's aircraft often enough to know the difference. Good! Maybe they would all kill themselves. But she couldn't stay there any longer. She was almost due, and when the baby did come, she'd be helpless to protect it in that altogether too-well-traveled spot. She cursed the ill luck that had brought her to that place.
As soon as night fell she would ease out into the river. If the baby came while she was in deep water, she'd have to manage as best she could, until she could find a safe place to burrow in.
Her only thought was to preserve the life inside her. She had been bred to serve unquestioningly and never to dishonor herself or the True People. She had been privileged to serve warriors all her life, and she hoped the child inside her was a male so it too could be a warrior. If it hadn't been for the child, she would have committed suicide already rather than live abandoned among the Earthmen. But a primal instinct drove her, overriding years of training and discipline.
Her people called her Chichi.
Chapter 18
It was nearly dusk by the time the reconnaissance platoon reached the hills overlooking New Salem. Lieutenant Ben Loman parked his vehicle just behind the crest of a ridge and crawled carefully to the top. Most of the buildings that had been hit by the Avenging Angels were still smoldering, even though the attack occurred several hours earlier. The ridge sloped down to an open field about half a kilometer from the outlying structures of New Salem. Sergeant Raipur crawled up beside him. They focused on the village through their optics.
"Doesn't look like anything could be alive down there," the sergeant muttered.
Ben Loman only grunted in response. Raipur shrugged. He was getting used to the officer's cold shoulder. He hadn't exchanged more than a few words with his lieutenant since the raid on the savages. For his part, Loman was incensed that the company commander hadn't yet reassigned the sergeant. He had expected the NCO to file charges against him for what had happened during the raid on the Pilipili Magna, and was surprised that Raipur evidently hadn't yet said anything to Captain Dieter. In anticipation, he was quietly collecting statements from the other men to show that he had conducted himself properly during the attack.
Raipur, meanwhile, knew about the statements the officer was collecting; he just didn't care. He wasn't going to file charges. He was only interested in keeping himself in one piece and away from a courtmartial until they were out of the field and he could assume the duties of Captain Dieter's operations sergeant. It amused him that the lieutenant was going to all that trouble to defend himself against a charge that would never be filed.
"I suggest one vehicle, Lieutenant, in case there's an ambush waiting for us down there. The rest of us can support from up here or reinforce if the probe runs into trouble. We can't be reinforced until tomorrow sometime. We're on our own until then."
"I know all that. Do you think I'm an idiot? Get the vehicles on line behind this ridge. We're going in all at the same time."
"Lieutenant, this isn't a bunch of primitives here! Surveillance and Battalion think it may be demons! We go charging in there across that field, and whoever's under cover in there can pick us all off. They shot down the Fly, sir. Whoever they are, they're armed. Besides, I heard the order from Battalion not to engage."
"We're better armed, and Battalion is not here—I am. Now get the vehicles on line, Sergeant!"
Raipur switched to the command net and ordered the drivers to pull up beside the lieutenant's scout vehicle. All he got was static. He tried several times with the same result. He switched to the frequency assigned to his own vehicle. Nothing but static.
"Lieutenant, my communicator is on the fritz. I'll have to go back down and tell them in person." He scuttled backward, then thought better of it. "Sir, can you raise them on your set?"
Loman cast a look of total exasperation at his sergeant, but he tried and couldn't raise the rest of his platoon either. "Nothing in this army works anymore," he muttered, slapping his helmet with the palm of his hand. That only caused the static to get worse. He tried raising the company CP. Nothing! What the hell...? Was someone blocking his tactical frequencies? Probably not. It was not the first time their comm had failed recently. Loman suppressed a pang of fear. They would be out of touch until the reinforcements arrived or until they could laager up somewhere and tinker with the radios. Well, if anybody was down in that village, he was going to kick their asses good, radios or no radios.
"Sir, we go in there without tactical comm and—"
"Get the vehicles on line!" Ben Loman shouted, "I will not tell you again. We'll communicate through hand signals!"
Hand signals? Raipur gritted his teeth. "Lieutenant, I protest! I swear to you now and by all the gods of my fathers, if this goes bad you will take the blame for it." The two glared at each other for an instant, then Raipur obediently scuttled back down the ridge to the vehicles.
Each recon platoon consisted of five scout cars carrying a driver, a commander, and a gunner. The cars were designed for optimum off-road performance and could go almost anywhere. When they could go at all. They were very old models and spare parts were hard to find, their high-performance engines generating minimal heat signatures, rendering them virtually silent. They had covered the forty kilometers from their last position, some of it over improved road, to be sure, in less than thirty minutes. So far none had broken down. Raipur prayed that none would now.
The Scout cars rolled slowly into line. Raipur glanced at the sun and estimated they had forty-five minutes of good daylight left. If they met no resistance, they could be in and out in that time. But if something went wrong...
Bass scanned the ridge on the far side of the village. The main road to Haven ran down from there, and that was the most likely direction any probe would come from.
"Why are they doing this to us, Charles?" young Nehemiah Sewall whispered beside Bass.
Bass shrugged. "I don't know. This is really your world, Nehemiah, not mine. I'm convinced of that now. From what I've been told about the way things work here, even in good times everyone hates everyone else. But I think they sent those aircraft because they're scared stiff the devils might be here. And for all we know, they're still around and the war with them is still going on. Uh-oh."
Atop the ridge, five low-silhouette vehicles were rolling into sight. They paused in a line and sat there for some moment
s. Taking stock, Bass thought. "They're here," he called down to the men in the ravine. "Five reconnaissance vehicles. Everyone remain calm and under cover. We'll let you know if they come this way." As if thinking out loud, he whispered, "They'll send one of those vehicles down into the village while the others cover it from the ridge. No sweat, Nehemiah, they'll never spot us here. The commander of that vehicle will want to get in and out of New Salem as quickly as possible."
Bass waved his hand at young Levi Stoughton on the opposite side of the ravine. "Okay over there?" Levi nodded. "Follow my lead, Levi."
Beside Bass, Nehemiah stiffened. "They're all coming!" he shouted.
"Aw, hell!" Bass groaned.
Ben Loman stood in the cupola of his command car. "All right, men! There's our objective! At my command, proceed at speed! Numbers one and five, you drive around the outskirts right and left. The rest of us will go straight through and meet you on the other side. Open fire on anything that moves! Men, we have a chance here to avenge our comrades, let's not fail them now! We are the cutting edge of the Lord's sword! Are you ready?"
He was answered by an affirming chorus of shouts.
He raised his right arm and held it above his head so all could see it, then pointed his hand at the village. "Forward!"
Bass and his two companions watched them from cover. The vehicles made no noise as they rushed forward, though they left long clouds of dust behind them. Two broke off from the other three and circled around the village, while the remaining trio headed straight into New Salem. Then, clearly heard on the cooling evening air, came the sound of gunfire, the high-pitched whine of hypersonic fléchette guns punctuated by the distinctive bang-hiss of the individual soldiers' fléchette rifles.
"What are they shooting at?" Nehemiah asked.
"Ghosts, shadows, maybe some of your loose cattle. All right, men," Bass shouted, "get ready! They'll be through the village and on our side very soon now. Hold steady."
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