“What is it?” the lieutenant shouted. He had to say it again to be heard over the roar of the motors. “What is the cargo?”
“Damned if I know,” the driver said cheerfully. “Says on the manifest ‘Astoria Fortress, attention supply officer.’ Look, Lieutenant, we got to be moving. If the captain don’t catch the tide he can’t cross the harbor bar tonight and he’ll skin me for squawk bait! Where’s the supply officer?”
The lieutenant looked at his watch. After retreat the men dispersed rapidly and supply officers kept short hours. “There’s nobody to offload,” he shouted.
“Got a crane and crew here,” the driver said. “Look, just show me where to put this stuff. We got to sail at slack water.”
“Put it out here,” the lieutenant said.
“Right. You’ll have a hell of a job moving it though.” He turned to his companion in the cab. “O.K., Charlie, dump it!”
The lieutenant thought of what the supply officer would say when he found he’d have to move the ten-by-five-meter containers. He climbed into the bed of the cargo lighter. In the manifest pocket of each container was a ticket reading “COMMISSARY SUPPLIES.”
“Wait,” he ordered. “Private, open the gates. Driver, take this over there.” He indicated a warehouse near the center of the camp. “Offload at the big doors.”
“Right. Hold it, Charlie,” Sergeant Major Calvin said cheerfully. “The lieutenant wants the stuff inside.” He gave his full attention to driving the ungainly GEM.
The lighter crew worked the crane efficiently, stacking the cargo containers by the warehouse doors. “Sign here,” the driver said.
“I-perhaps I better get someone to inventory the cargo-“
“Aw, for Christ’s sake,” the driver protested. “Look, you can see the seals ain’t broke-here, I’ll write it in. ‘Seals intact, but cargo not inspected by recip-‘ How you spell ‘recipient,’ Lieutenant?”
“Here, I’ll write it for you.” He did, and signed with his name and rank. “Have a good voyage?”
“Naw. Rough out there, and getting worse. We got to scoot, more cargo to offload.”
“Not for us!”
“Naw, for the town. Thanks, Lieutenant.” The GEM pivoted and roared away as the guard lieutenant shook his head. What a mess. He climbed into the tower to write the incident up in the day book. As he wrote he sighed. One hour to dark, and three until he was off duty. It had been a long, dull day.
Three hours before dawn the cargo containers silently opened, and Captain Ian Frazer led his scouts onto the darkened parade ground. Wordlessly they moved toward the revetted guns. One squad formed ranks and marched toward the gates, rifles at slope arms.
The sentries turned. “What the hell?” one said. “It’s not time for our relief, who’s there?”
“Can it,” the corporal of the squad said. “We got orders to go out on some goddam perimeter patrol. Didn’t you get the word?”
“Nobody tells me anythin’-uh.” The sentry grunted as the corporal struck him with a leather bag of shot. His companion turned quickly, but too late. The squad had already reached him.
Two men stood erect in the starlight at the posts abandoned by the sentries. Astoria was far over the horizon from Franklin, and only a faint red glow to the west indicated the companion planet.
The rest of the squad entered the guardhouse. They moved efficiently among the sleeping relief men, and when they finished the corporal took a communicator from his belt. “Laertes.”
On the other side of the parade ground, Captain Frazer led a group of picked men to the radar control center. There was a silent flurry of bayonets and rifle butts. When the brief struggle ended Ian spoke into his communicator. “Hamlet.”
There was no answer, but he hadn’t expected one.
Down in the city other cargo containers opened in darkened warehouses. Armed men formed into platoons and marched through the dockside streets. The few civilians who saw them scurried for cover; no one had much use for the Earthling mercenaries the Confederates employed.
A full company marched up the hill to the fort. On the other side, away from the city, the rest of the regiment crawled across plowed fields, heedless of radar alarms but careful of the sentries on the walls above. They passed the first line of capacitance wires and Major Savage held his breath. Ten seconds, twenty. He sighed in relief and motioned the troops to advance.
The marching company reached the gate. Sentries challenged them while others in guard towers watched in curiosity. When the gates swung open the tower guards relaxed. The officer of the watch must have had special orders...
The company moved into the armored car park. Across the parade ground a sentry peered into the night. Something out there? “Halt! Who’s there?” There was only silence.
“See something, Jack?” his companion asked.
“Dunno—look out there. By the bushes. Somethin’- My God, Harry! The field’s full of men! CORPORAL OF THE GUARD! Turn out the Guard!” He hesitated before taking the final step, but he was sure enough to risk his sergeant’s scathing displeasure. A stabbing finger hit the red alarm button, and lights blazed around the camp perimeter. The sirens hooted, and he had time to see a thousand men in the field near the camp; then a burst of fire caught him, and he fell.
The camp erupted into confusion. The Friedland gunners woke first. They wasted less than a minute before their officers realized the alarm was real. Then the gunners boiled out of the barracks to save their precious armor, but from each revetment, bursts of machine-gun fire cut into them. Gunners fell in heaps as the rest scurried for cover. Many had not brought personal weapons in their haste to serve the guns, and they lost time going back for them.
Major Savage’s men reached the walls and clambered over. Alternate sections kept the walls under a ripple of fire, and despite their heavy battle armor the men climbed easily in Washington’s lower gravity. Officers sent them to the parade ground where they added their fire to that of the men in the revetments. Hastily set machine guns isolated the artillery emplacements with a curtain of fire.
That artillery was the fort’s main defense. Once he was certain it was secure, Major Savage sent his invaders by waves into the camp barracks. They burst in with grenades and rifles ready, taking whole companies before their officers could arrive with the keys to their weapons racks. Savage took the Confederate Regulars that way, and only the Freidlanders had come out fighting; but then: efforts were directed toward their guns, and there they had no chance.
Meanwhile the Earth mercenaries, never very steady troops at best, called for quarter; many had not fired a shot. The camp defenders fought as disorganized groups against a disciplined force whose communications worked perfectly.
At the fortress headquarters building the alarms woke Commandant Albert Morris. He listened in disbelief to the sounds of battle, and although he rushed out half-dressed, he was too late. His command was engulfed by nearly four thousand screaming men. Morris stood a moment in indecision, torn by the desire to run to the nearest barracks and rally what forces he could, but he decided his duty was in the communications room. The Capital must be told. Desperately he ran to the radio shack.
Everything seemed normal inside, and he shouted orders to the duty sergeant before he realized he had never seen the man before. He turned to face a squad of leveled rifles. A bright light stabbed from a darker corner of the room.
“Good morning, sir,” an even voice said.
Commandant Morris blinked, then carefully raised his hands in surrender. “I’ve no sidearms. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Colonel John Christian Falkenberg, at your service. Will you surrender this base and save your men?”
Morris nodded grimly. He’d seen enough outside to know the battle was hopeless. His career was finished too, no matter what he did, and there was no point in letting the Friedlanders be slaughtered. “Surrender to whom?”
The light flicked off and Morris saw Falk
enberg. There was a grim smile on the Colonel’s lips. “Why, to the Great Jehovah and the Free States of Washington, Commandant. . ..”
Albert Morris, who was no historian, did not understand the reference. He took the public address mike the grim troopers handed him. Fortress Astoria had fallen.
Twenty-three hundred kilometers to the west at Allansport, Sergeant Sherman White slapped the keys to launch three small solid rockets. They weren’t very powerful birds, but they could be set up quickly, and they had the ability to loft a hundred kilos of tiny steel cubes to one hundred forty kilometers. White had very good information on the Confederate satellite’s ephemeris; he’d observed it for its past twenty orbits.
The target was invisible over the horizon when Sergeant White launched his interceptors. As it came overhead the small rockets had climbed to meet it. Their radar fuses sought the precise moment, then they exploded in a cloud of shot that rose as it spread. It continued to climb, halted, and began to fall back toward the ground. The satellite detected the attack and beeped alarms to its masters. Then it passed through the cloud at fourteen hundred meters per second relative to the shot. Four of the steel cubes were in its path.
XVII
Falkenberg studied the manuals on the equipment in the Confederate command car as it raced northward along the Columbia Valley road toward Doak’s Ferry. Captain Frazer’s scouts were somewhere ahead with the captured cavalry equipment and behind Falkenberg the regiment was strung out piecemeal. There were men on motorcycles, in private trucks, horse-drawn wagons, and on foot.
There’d be more walking soon. The captured cavalry gear was a lucky break, but the Columbia Valley wasn’t technologically developed. Most local transport was by animal power, and the farmers relied on the river to ship produce to the deepwater port at Astoria. The river boats and motor fuel were the key to the operation. There wasn’t enough of either.
Glenda Ruth Horton had surprised Falkenberg by not arguing about the need for haste, and her ranchers were converging on all the river ports, taking heavy casualties in order to seize boats and fuel before the scattered Confederate occupation forces could destroy them. Meanwhile Falkenberg had recklessly flung the regiment northward.
“Fire fight ahead,” his driver said. “Another of them one battery posts.”
“Right.” Falkenberg fiddled with the unfamiliar controls until the map came into sharper focus, then activated the comm circuit.
“Sir,” Captain Frazer answered. “They’ve got a battery of 105’s and an MG Company in there. More than I can handle.”
“Right. Pass it by. Let Miss Horton’s ranchers keep it under siege. Found any more fuel?”
Frazer laughed unpleasantly. “Colonel, you can adjust the carburetors in these things to handle a lot, but Christ, they bloody well won’t run on paraffin. There’s not even farm machinery out here! We’re running on fumes now, and damned low-grade fumes at that.”
“Yeah.” The Confederates were getting smarter. For the first hundred kilometers they took fueling stations intact, but now, unless the Patriots were already in control, the fuel was torched before Frazer’s fast-moving scouts arrived. “Keep going as best you can, Captain.”
“Sir. Out.”
“We got some reserve fuel with the guns,” Sergeant Major Calvin reminded him. The big RSM sat in the turret of the command caravan and at frequent intervals fondled the thirty-mm cannon there. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it had been a long time since the RSM was gunner in an armored vehicle. He was hoping to get in some fighting.
“No. Those guns have to move east to the passes. They’re sure to send a reaction force from the capital, Top Soldier.”
But would they? Falkenberg wondered. Instead of moving northwest from the capital to reinforce the fortress at Doak’s Ferry, they might send troops by sea to retake Astoria. It would be a stupid move, and Falkenberg counted on the Confederates acting intelligently. As far as anyone knew, the Astoria Fortress guns dominated the river mouth.
A detachment of Weapons Battalion remained there with antiaircraft rockets to keep reconnaissance at a distance, but otherwise Astoria was held only by a hastily raised Patriot force stiffened with a handful of mercenaries. The Friedlander guns had been taken out at night.
If Falkenberg’s plan worked, by the time the Confederates knew what they faced, Astoria would be strongly held by Valley Patriot armies, and other Patriot forces would have crossed the water to hold Allansport. It was a risky battle plan, but it had one merit: it was the only one that could succeed.
Leading elements of the regiment covered half the six hundred kilometers north to Doak’s Ferry in ten hours. Behind Falkenberg’s racing lead groups the main body of the regiment moved more ponderously, pausing to blast out pockets of resistance where that could be quickly done, otherwise bypassing them for the Patriot irregulars to starve into submission. The whole Valley was rising, and the further north Falkenberg went the greater the number of Patriots he encountered. When they reached the four-hundred-kilometer point, he sent Glenda Ruth Horton eastward toward the passes to join Major Savage and the Friedland artillery. Like the regiment, the ranchers moved by a variety of means: helicopters, GEM’s, trucks, mules, and on foot.
“Real boot straps,” Hiram Black said. Black was a short, wind-browned rancher commissioned colonel by the Free States Council and sent with Falkenberg to aid in controlling rebel forces. Falkenberg liked the man’s dry humor and hard realism. “General Falkenberg, we got the damnedest collection in the history of warfare.”
“Yes.” There was nothing more to say. In addition to the confused transport situation, there was no standardization of weapons: they had hunting pieces, weapons taken from the enemy, the regiment’s own equipment, and stockpiles of arms smuggled in by the Free States before Falkenberg’s arrival. “That’s what computers are for,” Falkenberg said.
“Crossroad coming up,” the driver warned. “Hang on.” The crossing was probably registered by the guns of an untaken post eight kilometers ahead. Frazer’s cavalry had blinded its hilltop observation radars before passing it by, but the battery would have had brief sights of the command car.
The driver suddenly halted. There was a sharp whistle, and an explosion rocked the caravan. Shrapnel rattled off the armored sides. The car bounded into life and accelerated.
“Ten credits you owe me, Sergeant Major,” the driver said. “Told you they’d expect me to speed up.” -
‘Think I wanted to win the bet, Carpenter?” Calvin asked.
They drove through rolling hills covered with the golden tassels of corn plants. Genetic engineering had made New Washington’s native grain one of the most valuable food crops in space. Superficially similar to Earth maize, this corn had a growing cycle of two local years. Toward the end of the cycle hydrostatic pressures built up until it exploded, but if harvested in the dry period New Washington corn was high-protein dehydrated food energy, palatable when cooked in water, and good fodder for animals as well.
“Ought to be getting past the opposition now,” Hiram Black said. “Expect the Feddies’ll be pulling back to the fort at Doak’s Ferry from here on.”
His estimate was confirmed a half hour later when Falkenberg’s comm set squawked into action. “We’re in a little town called Madselin, Colonel,” Frazer said. “Used to be a garrison here, but they’re running up the road. There’s a citizen’s committee to welcome us.”
“To hell with the citizen’s committee,” Falkenberg snapped. “Pursue the enemy!”
“Colonel, I’d be very pleased to do so, but I’ve no petrol at all.”
Falkenberg nodded grimly. “Captain Frazer, I want the scouts as far north as they can get. Isn’t there any transport?”
There was a long silence. “Well, sir, there are bicycles ...”
“Then use bicycles, by God! Use whatever you have to, Captain, but until you are stopped by the enemy you will continue the advance, bypassing concentrations. Snap at their h
eels. Ian, they’re scared. They don’t know what’s chasing them, and if you keep the pressure on they won’t stop to find out. Keep going, laddie. I’ll bail you out if you get in trouble.”
“Aye, aye, Colonel. See you in Doak’s Ferry.”
“Correct. Out.”
“Can you keep that promise, General?” Hiram Black asked.
Falkenberg’s pale blue eyes stared through the rancher. “That depends on how reliable your Glenda Ruth Horton is, Colonel Black. Your ranchers are supposed to be gathering along the Valley. With that threat to their flanks the Confederates will not dare form a defense line south of Doak’s Ferry. If your Patriots don’t show up then it’s another story entirely.” He shrugged. Behind him the Regiment was strung out along three hundred kilometers of roads, its only flank protection its speed and the enemy’s uncertainties. “It’s up to her in more ways than one,” Falkenberg continued. “She said the main body of Friedland armor was in the capital area.”
Hiram Black sucked his teeth in a very unmilitary way. “General, if Glenda Ruth’s sure of something, you can damn well count on it.”
Sergeant Major Calvin grunted. The noise spoke his thoughts better than words. It was a hell of a thing when the life of the Forty-second had to depend on a young colonial girl.
“How did she come to command the Valley ranchers, anyway?” Falkenberg asked.
“Inherited it,” Black answered. “Her father was one hell of a man, General. Got himself killed in the last battle of the first revolution. She’d been his chief of staff. Old Josh trusted her more’n he did most of his officers. So would I, if I was you, General.”
“I already do.” To Falkenberg the regiment was more than a mercenary force. Like any work of art, it was an instrument perfectly forged-its existence and perfection its own reason for existence.
But unlike any work of art, because the regiment was a military unit, it had to fight battles and take casualties. The men who died in battle were mourned. They weren’t the regiment, though, and it would exist when every man now in it was dead. The Forty-second had faced defeat before and might find it again-but this time the regiment itself was at hazard. Falkenberg was gambling not merely their lives, but the Forty-second itself.
The Mercenary Page 18