Yet the wheel of history continues to turn. The CoDominium, ruling all Earth and at one time or another over one hundred colonized planets, never had more than five hundred thousand men under arms; during its rule, most national armies on Earth declined to the status of ceremonial guards or glorified riot police. Once more, stagnant oligarchies have nothing to gain by arming the masses; small, professional armies operating according to the Laws of War conduct limited conflicts to maintain a delicate sociopolitical balance. In the colonies and ex-colonies, important campaigns are decided by tiny forces of well-trained mercenaries or professional soldiers; a regiment here, a brigade there.
And now another turn of the wheel seems to be beginning.
If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight,
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
"Task Force Wingate. Slater here." A buzzing in the background; scrambling, and Ace's people had rerouted the link though a newly laid cable up the riverbed to Olynthos. Everything through Legion equipment.
"Owensford here. What's the story, George?"
"A bit of a dog's breakfast, I'm afraid," the commander of the northern column said; Peter Owensford could hear a dull crump . . . crump in the background, and small-arms fire.
Dog's breakfast, he thought. One of Major Jeremy Savage's expressions. And I wish he and Christian Johnny were in charge here instead of twenty light years away.
"My central element ran into an infantry screen," Slater said. "Well placed; we had to deploy and put in a full attack, couldn't just brush them aside. Gave us a stiff fight and then moved back sharpish. We cut them up nicely, but then I went forward to try and keep them from breaking contact and we got caught by a mortar and bombardment rocket attack."
"Rockets?"
"One-twenty-seven mm's, the same type the Royals use." A six-tube launcher, in batteries of three. "Four batteries, widely spaced. Proximity fused, time-on-target with the mortars, and cursed well placed. Then the ones we'd been chasing came back at us, right on the heels of it, grenade and bayonet work for a while."
Owensford winced; that was a bad sign, that the enemy had troops willing to take casualties from their own artillery to push in an assault while the fire kept the defenders' heads down.
"Pretty much the same thing happened to the Forty-First Brotherhood." The militia unit on the far left flank of Task Force Wingate.
"They pursued until they were out of reach of the battalion on their right, with more enthusiasm than sense"-Owensford nodded; you wanted aggression, but only experience could temper it with caution-"and now they're leaguered and under attack from all sides. The enemy is trying to infiltrate squad-sized units and recoilless teams down the wooded vales between my units, and it's sopping up my riflemen to stop them, turning into a bloody dog-fight down there. Plus constant harassing fire from eighty-two mm's"-platoon level mortars-"and snipers behind every bush. I'm moving the Seventeenth Brotherhood up from reserve to help pull the Forty-first out of its hole and back to the main body, and putting the Tenth"-the unit on his immediate right-"into the low ground to work their way around the flank of the people ahead of me, while the Seventh drops back and covers us both on the right."
"Appraisal of the enemy?"
"Too damned good for comfort; not up to Legion standards, but good. Their equipment's about the same as the Royals, except their radar and radar countermeasures, which are better, probably as good as ours. Off-planet stuff. Chaff and jamming, so I'm returning the favor; they've got more visual observation right now, I'm working on it."
A gatling six-barrel went off somewhere near to the mike, a savage brrrrrrrt-brrrrrrt sound, a hail of bullets that would saw through trees.
"They know how to use their weapons, they've got discipline and good small-unit tactics," Slater continued. A wounded man screamed, a high endless sound suddenly cut off as if with a knife. "Not bothered by armor, either; they've got plenty of light recoilless stuff and unguided antitank rockets, and they're not afraid to get in close and try to use it. I've taken damned few unwounded prisoners."
A pause. "The Brotherhood people don't seem to have taken any prisoners at all, by the way."
Damn, damn, don't they understand it'll make the enemy fight harder? Owensford thought. He would have to do something about that.
"And whoever's in charge knows his hand from a hacksaw too. I'd swear there's a CoDominium Academy mind behind that fire mission."
"How many of them?"
"Difficult to say; they keep shooting down my spyeye balloons as fast as I put them up. At least a thousand, no more than two." Task Force Wingate would outnumber them by at least fifteen hundred men, possibly by twice that.
"I could fight through what's facing me," Slater continued, echoing Owensford's thoughts. "Why don't I think this is a good idea?"
"It's what they want you to do, of course. Bugger that. We're better set for a battle of attrition than they are. The one thing I haven't noticed in all this is logistics troops. They may be able to make infantrymen out of those street gangs, but they seem to be a bit short on supply clerks.
"Consolidate as soon as you've pulled the Forty-first out of its hole, and dig in. The mission's changed, George. To hell with moving across ground. The objective is to kill their cadres. Troops as good as those can't be all that plentiful, not to terrorists, so dig in and break their teeth. Before we're finished they'll have their battalion commanders out fighting like riflemen. And make them use up their munitions. This has just become a logistics war."
"Suppose they won't come at us?"
"They will. 'Enemy advance, we retreat. Enemy halt, we harass.' They'll think you're slowing down because you're beaten just like the Brotherhood troops," Peter said. "Let's encourage that thought. They've got some kind of complicated battle plan, and just for the moment I'd as soon they thought it was working. I particularly don't want them to think that either you or the Brotherhoods can mount an attack. And they'll think they have to attack before they run out of supplies. Or just to get ours."
"Gotcha."
"You're an anvil. Be a good one. When I've got recon I'll put some mobility back in this battle. For now they expect you to advance, so digging in will be a surprise. But be ready to advance again when I need you."
"Understood."
"Godspeed. Out."
"There, Senior Group Leader," the platoon leader of the guerilla advance element said, making a tiny hand motion through the improvised blind of thorny brush. "The rest of them are a thousand meters back, digging in."
Niles slipped up his nightsight goggles and used the glasses instead, switched to x10 magnification and light-enhancement. The hundred-meter gap between the minefield and the steeper slope down to the valley was an expanse of snow stippled with the dry yellow stalks of summer's grass. A few small trees were scattered across it, and the odd bush. Nothing moved but the wind, scudding a thin mist of ice crystals along the surface of the ground. Then a man rose to one knee, motionless with a white-painted rifle across his chest. A full minute's silence, then he made a hand signal; half a dozen others rose out of concealment and moved forward twenty paces, sank to the earth again. Another six rose from behind the lead element's position and passed through, went to ground ten or twenty meters in advance.
Good fieldcraft, Niles thought. Aloud: "Open fire!"
Muzzle-flashes lit the night, twinkling like malignant orange fireflies. Men flopped, screamed, were still; a stitch of tracers curved out toward the Helot positions, and the Royalist riflemen opened return fire as well. Bullets went by over Niles's head with an ugly flat whack sound, and bark fell on his helmet and the backs of his gloves. He raised his own rifle and settled the translucent pointer of the optical sight on a suspicious gray rock that jutted up out of the snow.
A head and arms snaked around it, a long finned oval on the muzzle of the weapon they carried; ri
fle grenade. Niles stroked the trigger gently. Crack. The recoil was a surprise, sign of a good shot. The head dropped back and the rifle slipped back into view and landed in the snow.
God, Niles thought as a surge of excitement flowed from throat to gut. He touched the side of his helmet.
"Status of element Icepick."
"Moving out," his adjutant said.
"Execute fire mission Alpha," Niles ordered. "I'll join Icepick with the Headquarters squad. Switch to local band relay." They were moving now. Communications weren't so good. So what? No commanding from the rear! Get out where the troops could know you weren't afraid.
"On your own, platoon leader," Niles continued, beginning to worm his way backward. Then the sky overhead glared a violet almost as bright as day.
"Incoming. Able Company position." Owensford watched the battle screen change again.
"Lysander's scouts," Captain Lahr said.
In the background Captain Sastri, the artillery chief, spoke in a monotone. "Multiple incoming. Tracking." Light flickered across the northern horizon. "Computing positions. Preparing for counterbattery shoot . . . countermeasures. Chaff and broad-frequency jamming, decoys."
Peter nodded in satisfaction. "Andy, be sure we record all this for analysis."
"Roger," the adjutant said. "The bad guys are expending a hell of a lot of ordnance, Colonel."
"Yeah. Sort of makes you wonder who paid for it all. Andy, what do you make of this?"
"Well, they had a hell of a lot more gear than we expected. It hasn't been used all that effectively."
"Not too surprising. Most of their training had to be map exercises. Dry fire."
"Yes, sir. Just as well."
"They jumped the gun, too," Peter mused. "They should have waited until we got in deeper."
"Probably scared we'd find their base."
"Could be. I still think there's some kind of plan at work here. Something complicated. Main thing is, keep them using up their heavy stuff until they notice they're running short."
Behind him the 160mm mortars flashed as Sastri sent in anti-radar and counterbattery fire. Crump. Crump. Crump. Twelve times repeated, and then the brief winking of rocket-assist at the high points of the shell's trajectories, thousands of meters overhead. The muzzles disappeared behind their raw-earth revetments, as the hydraulics in the recoil-system automatically lowered them to loading position; the bitter smell of burnt propellant settled across the hilltop. Inside the gunpits the two loaders would be dropping the forty-kilo bombs down the barrels . . . the tubes showed again, ten seconds to load and alter the aiming point both. Crump. Crump. Crump.
A rumble through the ground, and an edge of satisfaction in Sastri's voice:
"Secondary explosions. Scratch one rocket battery."
Rockets hissed skyward, arcing northward.
"Jamming antennae down. One. Two . . . Active jamming off. Chaff continuing."
"Sir, Second Platoon, we're under fire." A bit superfluous, Lysander thought, since they could all hear the crackling two thousand meters to their left.
"Where's Lieutenant Doorn, sergeant?"
"Dead, sir. Three dead, five wounded. Heavy automatic-weapons fire. Maybe a whole company come after us, we'd have been dead if we hadn't dug in."
Lysander could hear the relief, and more, in the sergeant's voice.
"Incoming!"
Lysander ducked lower into the hole. At least everyone is dug in. Explosions all along the line, but a lot fell into the minefield, setting off more mines. They thought we'd be in there. . . .
"Alexi's hit, medic, medic!" somebody shouted.
Then the sky screamed, globes of violet light raking through the cloud towards them. The Collins prince dropped to the bottom of his spider pit and tucked his limbs in, standard drill to let the thicker torso armor protect you. A flicker of silence, and then the world came apart in a surf-roar of white noise. The rocket warheads burst apart thirty meters up, showering their rain of hundreds of grenade-sized bomblets to bounce and explode and fill the air with a rain of notched steel wire. The sound was distant as the helmet clamped down on audio input that would have damaged his ears, like a movie on Tri-V in another room of the house, and it seemed to go on forever. Something struck him below the right shoulderblade with sledgehammer force, driving a grunt out between clenched teeth.
Fragment, but the armor had stopped it. If a bomblet fell into the hole with him, well, Sparta would just need another heir to the Collins throne. He felt sick, a little lightheaded; part of him not believing this was real, a deeper part knowing it was and wanting to run away. Had it been this bad, swimming underwater to hijack the shuttle on Tanith? No, he decided. Then he had had one definite task to do, and Falkenberg waiting, and that had been very comforting. Peter's a good man, he told himself. Good soldier. And now there are people looking for you to be their rock.
A lot of the incoming barrage had fallen into the minefield. The enemy had expected to catch troops out in the open, not down in holes.
The rocket fire lifted, to be replaced almost instantly by the whistle of mortar shells; continuous bombardments were luxuries for rich worlds with abundant mechanical transport. Lysander raised his head, automatically sorting through the messages passing through the audio circuits of his helmet. Casualties, more than he liked, but nothing like what there could have been if they'd been out there in the open.
"Shift the wounded to perimeter defense," he said on the company push. Schoop. A mortar firing, it might be up to a klick away. Whunk. A fountain of snow and vegetation and wet old earth bloomed ahead of him, in among the minefield. Well that's one way to clear a field. Let the enemy pound it. Bloody good thing we stopped the advance.
Schoop. Schoop. Whunk. Whunk. The three eighty-two mm's of his own weapons platoon were back in action, firing to the direction of the Second's observers over to the left.
"Fire central," he said, switching to the interunit frequency. "I'm taking medium mortar fire. Counterfire needed."
Far above, points of light winked briefly; heavy mortar shells getting an extra kick at the top arch of their trajectory. Seconds later a heavy crump . . . crump echoed from the hills, mingling with the noise of explosions eight or ten thousand meters to the north, wherever the computers thought the rockets had come from.
"Sastri here." The battalion heavy-weapons company CO. "Can you observe the fall of shot?"
"That's negative, Fire Central."
"Not much point, then," the artillery officer said. "With passive sensors, there just isn't enough backtrack on mediums. If you can get drones over the target, let me know." A hint of impatience; the battalion heavy weapons were working hard to supress the enemy's area-bombardment weapons.
Schoop. Schoop. Schoop.
Lysander looked again to his left. "Patch to Colonel Owensford."
"Owensford here."
"Sir. Code JOSHUA, repeat Joshua." Owensford did not have to look up the meaning: "Permission to continue attack."
"Negative. DOVE HILL continues."
"Then give me some fire support! Some of those Thoth missiles-"
"Who's asking?"
"Kicker Six, sir, this is-"
"So long as it's not the Prince Royal, shut up and soldier. We'll know more in a few minutes."
"Aye aye, sir. Out."
Dig in. Dig in and wait, while they drop stuff on our heads. They're out there, Lysander thought. They're out there, those terrorist bastards, they're out there killing my brothers, and we could go kill them. Let me go get them, dammit. Next time, by God, you just might be talking to the Prince Royal. . . .
Lieutenant Deborah Lefkowitz frowned at the satellite photo as the engines of the tiltrotor transport built to their humming whirr. There was plenty of room inside, even with the sidescan radar and IR sensors and analysis computers the Legion had installed; this class of craft was originally designed as troop-transports for the CoDominium Marines, capable of carrying a full platoon a thousand kilometers in two ho
urs. Room enough for the six equipment operators and her, and even a cot and coffee machine so that they could take turns on a long trip. The smell of burnt kerosene from the ceramic turbines gave an underlying tang to the warm ozone-tinted air.
That is an odd snow formation, she thought, calling up a close-range 3-D screen of the picture. Down a ridgeline bare of trees, through a shallow valley where it vanished under forest cover, then starting up again three hundred meters south. Multiple sharp depressions the width of a man's hand and many meters long, running in pairs. It could be a trick of lighting, shadow played odd games when you were taking optical data through an atmosphere under high magnification. . . . She began to play with gain, then froze the image and rotated it.
Her round heavy-featured face frowned in puzzlement. Mark it and send it back to the interpreters. But-
Deborah Lefkowitz had been born on Dayan, a gentle world of many islands in warm seas. She had trained in photointerpretation as part of her National Service, and followed her husband into the Legion when he grew bored with peacetime soldiering on a planet too shrewd and too feared to have many enemies; he was on New Washington now, commanding an infantry company. Massaging computers was a good second-income job for her, perfectly compatible with looking after two young children. But these odd shapes in the snow tugged at some childhood memory. . . .
The aircraft was rolling forward, no reason for a fuel-expensive vertical lift here. As the wheels left the ground, Lefkowitz touched the communicator. There was a slight pause as the seeker locked on to the relay station in Dodona, and then the status light turned green.
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