by Chris Bunch
"Keep checking," the battalion commander, overhead in his Grierson, ordered. "We have positive intelligence about this village."
One Cooke dived low, the second close behind.
"Maybe there'll be something up that draw?" the commander of the first Cooke suggested on the between-ship channel.
"On your tail," the other responded.
The first entered the ravine, hovered around a bend and thick, hand-woven nets rose up before, behind. The gunner on the first ship pulled the triggers on his autocannon, and shells slammed uselessly through the holes in the net. Another net came up, trapping the second Cooke. The commander of the ACV shouted a warning, just as six 'Raum, each with a captured Squad Support Weapon, rose from spider holes and bullets yammered into the scout vehicles.
———«»———«»———«»———
"Relax," Comstock Brien said quietly. "Does it not always come this route?"
"It does," the young man said. "But it'd just be my luck—"
"Don't talk of luck," Brien ordered. "The greater your decision, the harder you work, the better your luck shall always be."
The young man sniffed in skepticism. The third man leaning against a crude frame said nothing.
A few minutes later, the first man stiffened. "I hear it."
Moments later, the drive-whine was audible to Brien's older ears, and, a hundred meters below, a Zhukov nosed into view, following the overgrown road as it curved below the cliffs. The young man and his partner tore away the concealing foliage, pushed the wooden frame with a Shrike lashed to it to the edge of the bluff. The missile had misfired during an air-support operation two weeks ago, been recovered by the 'Raum, fuel only half-expended. Its firing mechanism was replaced with a simple contact detonator, and the missile carried far down-island.
The second man moved away from the launcher and watched the Zhukov close on a peculiarly shaped bush the three men atop the hill had designated as a firing marker, while the third ran back a few meters and picked up a small switch that was wired to the missile's rear.
"Wait . . . wait . . . wait . .. wait . . . NOW!" the second man ordered, and the third closed the switch. The Shrike hissed, then heat waves flared from its exhaust. The rack bucked, and the missile launched, almost straight down toward the Zhukov. It struck the attack ship just behind the main turret. The Shrike's primary charge exploded, and a jet of incandescent gas seared through the armor. The main charge, a gaseous explosive, sprayed into the Zhukov's crew space and detonated. The Zhukov exploded, pin-wheeling into the jungle, thrashing like a dying beast.
The three men allowed themselves a moment of exultation, then trotted away.
———«»———«»———«»———
"How the hell did those bastards manage to kill a Zhukov!" Caud Williams raved.
"As I said, sir, from above," Mil Rao said. "Armor's a few centimeters thinner there. And nobody expects to be hit from topside unless they're in space."
"What was that goddamned vehicle commander doing that low, anyway?"
"Doing as he'd been ordered, sir. Closely patrolling the old highway toward the Highlands, looking for enemy sign."
"Very well," Williams said. "Very well. We'll have to . . ." His voice trailed off.
Rao waited. "Yes, sir?" he said after a time.
"Give me a moment," Williams said. "I'm trying to figure what we'll do next."
———«»———«»———«»———
There were five Cookes, flying west, fast, about a hundred meters above the jungle. The bluffs leading to the Highlands were to their left.
Three times one or another of the combat lifters dipped into a clearing, hovered for an instant, then climbed back to the formation. The fourth time was almost like the others, except that the diving Cooke hovered long enough for eleven men to drop off the sides, and double into the thick brush around the clearing, crouching in a perimeter.
The eleven were Gamma Team, First Troop, I&R Company plus Alt Jon Hedley. They wore dark green-and-black camouflage matching the jungle, their faces and hands were blackened, and they carried heavy packs. They waited, weapons ready, for five minutes. The jungle was silent, except for the drip of rain. A wind stirred. A howler called from a distance.
Then a gunshot blasted from somewhere, dull, dead, muffled by the undergrowth. A moment later, another shot came, from some distance, then a third and a fourth, each blast fainter than the last.
"Shit!" Petr said, standing. "They made us."
The team stayed in a crouch, except for Hedley, who slid to the team leader. "Now what happens?"
"We evac," Petr said, "or else there'll be thirty or more of 'em coming in on us. A man could get hurt sticking around an insertion zone these days."
"Every time?"
"Just about," Petr said. "They seem to be able to tell whether it's a phony insert or for real. Looks like the bastards have every clearing either bugged . . . although we can't find any telltales . . . or under visual. This is my fourth patrol this week that's been blown." He motioned to the team's com man, took the microphone: "Sibyl One Control, this is Sibyl One Gamma. Outski. Eyeballed. Clear."
"This is Sibyl Control," the voice came. "Nice short visit. Stand by. Pickup inbound."
"See what I mean, boss?" Petr said.
"I do," Hedley said. "I know you're good, and I know the other insert teams are good. The flipping problem seems to be flipping simple. The flipping villains are flipping winning."
Chapter 29
Caud Williams was glooming over a glass of sherry—his last case from Centrum, which made his mood worse—in his quarters when someone tapped.
"Enter."
Jon Hedley opened the door. "A word, sir?"
"Come in, Alt."
Hedley obeyed.
"A drink?" Williams asked. "There's almost anything you could want behind the false bookshelves."
"Nossir," Hedley said. "I'd like to ask a favor."
———«»———«»———«»———
"Petr, Monique," Hedley said genially. "Grab a cup and drag up a chair. I'm looking for flipping volunteers."
"Boss," Kipchak said, "I'll be honest. You've got me for anything that's better than this dumbshit stumbling around like we've been doing."
"I'm in, too," Lir said.
"I'm not just looking for single volunteers," Hedley said. "I want two flipping teams, one as the main operators, one as support."
"You've got Gamma," Kipchak said.
"And Beta," Monique said.
"You're not going to check?"
"Don't need to," Lir said. "I speak for everybody. If I don't . . . they can go back to ground ponding with the line-slime." Kipchak nodded agreement.
"I had a little chat with God," Hedley said. "Caud Williams listened, said it was worth a try. He sounded pretty beat-up by the course of flipping events."
"No offense to ossifers and like that," Kipchak said, "but he damned well ought to. This Operation Clean Sweep's a goddamned joke."
"With any luck, things'll get serious now," Hedley said. "Here's the drill. We're going to put one patrol out on a hot scent . . . I've figured out a way to get on the ground without being snooped, I hope . . . and they're going to stay flipping out there until we bag the lot of 'em."
"How long?"
"If necessary," Hedley said, "until everybody's dead, retired or their enlistment's up."
"What about resupply?"
"You'll lug ultraconcentrates, and won't get anything more until you're starving," Hedley said. "Then we'll do it with some kind of masked airdrops."
"What about commo?" Lir said. "Nice to be runnin' through the jungle, all sneaky-like, with half a dozen goddamned Command and Control dicks ten meters upstairs."
"That's part of the deal Williams bought," Hedley said. "I run things from insert until it gets serious and you call for the big dogs. Nobody hangs over you."
"Let's go back to this bagging lot," Petr said. "How's that going to work?"
> "The insert team stays after the villains," Hedley explained, "and follows 'em to where they're going. If it's a raid, the patrol either wipes 'em out or gets them to surrender. If things get too big, I've got authorization to call in all kinds of flipping support."
"How much is all kinds of flipping?"
"The whole flipping Force, if that's what it takes," Hedley said.
Lir whistled soundlessly. "What did you do? Catch Williams in bed with a dead woman or a live kid?"
"Oh ye of little faith. He merely listened to my wisdom, then began salaaming."
"Yeh," Lir said. "Right."
"Go get your teams ready," Hedley said. "I've got some coms to make . . . there'll be a little augmentation made before you tromp the turf."
———«»———«»———«»———
"Asshole Ben is looking for volunteers again," Dill said. "With I&R one more time . . . except this time it's for real. Trying something new, new being classified."
"Why not?" Kang said. Dill looked at the other two, got nods.
"I'm not sure how it's different, but we're going to be part of the immediate. And Garvin . . . we're backing up your chingo Yoshitaro with Gamma Team."
"This might be really real, then," Garvin said.
"I surely hope so," Kang said, a little wistfully. "I'd really like to kill somebody who's not a computer sim before I get too old to gloat."
———«»———«»———«»———
Caud Williams watched the fifty soldiers file into the hangar and find seats on the floor. He waited until security specialists closed the doors. "Good afternoon," he said. "I'll make this short. This operation is being directed by Alt Jon Hedley of Intelligence and Reconnaissance, and it's all his show. All I have to say is the Force has always thought of itself as a team. You half hundred are going to prove we are. That's it."
Hedley saluted, he returned the salute, then, surprisingly, sat cross-legged on the concrete as if he were no more than a striker.
"A team," Hedley began. "That's as good an image as any other. From now on, I want all of you to lose any idea about who's better, scouts, armor, commo or whatever. We all have the same job: Kill or capture 'Raum dissidents."
"That's what we're going out to do. Not take territory, not make friends with villagers, not look good in holos. We're also not going to kill anybody who isn't flipping trying to kill us. Nobody's going to call in a target they 'think' might be goblins, nor are we going to launch because we 'think' a village might have 'Raum. There's been enough of that nonsense."
"We want the goblins and only the goblins, either dead or in our hands, singing like little dicky birds about their friends. Once we've nailed them, good and hard, two things'll happen: First is the little guys in the jungle will start wondering if they're on the right side; and the bigger guys will think about going back to the mines or whatever they were doing before they started messing with the wrong people. And there'll be no rest for us until we're done."
———«»———«»———«»———
It was a bit like basic training, Njangu thought, but not much. Their instructor was Petr, and the entire team was trainees. "The first order of business is Contact Reaction," Petr said. "We'll go through it until it's pure muscle response, and your brain is still playing diddly-do-wah and it's all over."
Reaction—when hit, everyone jumped to the side, first man left, second man right, and so forth. Turn in the direction of the fire, first man sprayed a burst of ten rounds, runs back, second man did the same, and so on until the patrol was back far enough to break contact and retreat or find a better fighting position. Again and again they went through it, marching up and down through the comparatively safe jungles of Chance Island, always with live ammunition. There wasn't any punishment for error, just Petr's sad eyes and a slow shake of the head; but somehow, probably because things would get very real in the next few days, that was a worse penalty than anything Lir could've devised.
Monique was doing the same with her team, over and over again. Slow walking, step by step, utter silence, toe coming down first, then heel, then rest, then another step forward. Knowing where everyone carried everything—spare ammo in the lower pouches of the vest, any personal medication in upper-left shirt pocket, snacks in upper-right pocket, med-pouch on right hip, and so on and so forth. Any team member could find anything she . . . or the possible casualty . . . needed on anyone else by day or night, whether the other was conscious or bleeding.
"Well," Petr announced one day, "we're not ready, but I don't think there's anything more to be gained by farting around out here. I think it's time to go play in the forest."
———«»———«»———«»———
"Got a min?"
"Sure," Njangu said. He eyed Erik Penwyth carefully, wondering what was coming—his tentativeness suggested Penwyth was about to confess to some great sin, and Yoshitaro wasn't in the mood to play confessor.
"Uh . . . did you hear about Angie?"
"Nope. Been too busy trying to figure out what I'm gonna carry to the field."
"She's gone."
"What?"
"Yeh. Bought herself out two days ago."
"Where'd she get the credits?" Njangu wondered. "She would've had, what, two years, maybe three left on her hitch? Going rate for a bare-bones crunchy is a thousand credits per year, plus I'd guess I&R adds more to that. Say another five hundred? That's a pot of money for a striker."
"Her family's got money," Erik said.
"I thought she wasn't on speaking terms with them."
"You saw some of their stores got burned out?"
"Saw it on the holos. I was going to ask," Njangu said. "But we're not exactly on speaking terms these days."
Erik didn't go back to his bunk. Njangu put on a bland, waiting expression. "Uh . . . there's something else. She and I . . . well, we had a thing a couple of weeks ago. The last time they gave us a pass."
"So? She told me to pack my ass with salt and piddle up a rope two months or more ago," Njangu said. "And even so, we weren't in love. I'm not crying up my sleeve over her . . . at least, not as far as I know."
"We weren't talking love, either," Erik said. "But something weird happened . . . maybe you can tell me what it means."
"I don't think, knowing what I don't know about Angie, I can tell you squat."
"We ended up at my folks' place," Erik said. "And, well, sort of vanished for the weekend. I've got my own apartments with my own entrance and so forth. I asked her if she wanted to meet my parents, maybe go out to a party or something. Since she's kind of wild, I thought she'd get along 'kay with some of my rowdier friends. She said she wanted to go out . . . then changed her mind. She sounded a little angry when she said that. So all we did was, well, be together."
"Angie was like that with me, too," Njangu said.
"It was, well, I guess I'd call it a little exotic," Erik said. "But don't think I'm bragging or anything, just trying to explain. Then, the night we had to come back, she told me to whack off, and if I said anything to anybody about what happened, about the things we did, she'd dry-gulch me."
"That's just about exactly what happened to me," Njangu said.
"What did I do wrong?" Erik said. "I mean, we weren't in love, or anything. But she was 'kay, and I thought we were getting along. And then . . . whambo."
Njangu shook his head. "Sorry, my friend. I haven't a clue."
"Weird," Erik said. "Just plain weird."
———«»———«»———«»———
Four days later, yet another sweep went out, two companies from Second Regiment. Plus ten extra men, who, except for outsize packs for their Squad Support Weapons, looked no different from the others. There were other, less obvious differences—they'd bathed in chemical potions the Force's IV Section—Logistics—said would mask their scent from sniffers, either animal or mechanical; and their uniforms were coated to mask heat radiation.
The two companies laborio
usly moved through the flatlands below the bluffs, then swept a village reported to be 'Raum-controlled. They checked identity cards, asked for cooperation with the government, promised great rewards for any 'Raum who turned himself or anyone else in, and left with negative contact, negative results. At dusk, Griersons lifted them back to Chance Island.
No one had noticed the ten men and women—Gamma Team, I&R Company—who'd dropped away into thick brush a kilometer outside the village. The recon team formed a defensive perimeter, took whisper coms from their packs, fitted them, and Kipchak made a commo check.
An hour after the companies crashed away into silence, three women, loudly and ostentatiously calling for an escaped giptel, came past.
Kipchak glanced at Njangu, grinned tightly. No one spoke—the team's coms were set on a frequency between the normal military channels, but there wasn't any point in being sloppy. The 'Raum's three scouts had missed them.
Half of the team ate, while the rest kept watch. Their rations were high-concentrate protein bars, four thousand calories per meal, and each soldier carried two dozen paks. They could travel long and far on these, with their only worry being the notorious side effect of the bars clamping their bowels shut for perpetuity. "At least," Kipchak had said, "that keeps us from exposing our flanks."
It rained at dusk. They were glad of it—the drizzle, the dwindle of the rainy season, would hide any noise they made when moving. An hour later, Kipchak signaled. They crept to the trail and went back to the village. There were lights on in the buildings, and the common building was occupied.
Petr held one hand out, an the team went into cover. He shed his pack, pointed toward Heckmyer, and the two slithered forward. Kipchak took night glasses from a pouch on his combat vest and swept the village and the crowd outside the common building. Ho, ho, ho, he thought. Where did all those hale hearty yongkers come from? They sure weren't around when the troopies were. And they're all carrying guns. Tsk. Perhaps these kiddies don't mean to bring happiness and health on honest soldiery.
There was a meeting going on, but Kipchak was too far away to make out any words. He thought of getting a shotgun pickup from one of the team, but decided not. Revolutionary cant was revolutionary cant. He keyed his whisper mike. "Go back for the others," he told Heckmyer. The man slid away, came back with the team. Again, Petr touched his com. "'Raum in the village," he said, waited for the team to survey the situation. "I count seventeen."