David Drake
The Forlorn Hope

Chapter One

The starship came out of its envelope just long enough to unload the first rack of bombs. It flashed yellow, then it was gone-hypersonic and untouchable by anything not also in a star-drive envelope. The ship's hull, heated by its microsecond exposure to atmospheric friction, left a lambent afterimage above Smiricky #4.

The flash meant nothing to Lieutenant Albrecht Waldstejn, Supply Officer of the 522nd Garrison Battalion. Above the western end of the valley where the flash had appeared, the sky now danced with sparks that grew as they tumbled closer. The sonic boom had not arrived. The bomb clusters which shed velocity and their ablative shells in balls of fire were only an unexpected light phenomenon to the young Federal officer.

His companion, Colonel Guido Fasolini, had seen thirty years of war on almost as many planets. Bombing from a starship was a difficult technique to master, but the mercenary colonel had seen it before. He did not deny his senses by insisting that the Republicans here on Cecach could not possibly be doing it also. In the long run, that meant that Fasolini had probably hired his Company on with the wrong side again.

In the short run, it meant that he had about fifteen seconds to get his ass under cover.

"Come on!" Fasolini roared to his companion. Waldstejn was still staring in bemusement at the sky. The younger man turned to see the mercenary sprinting for the nearest shelter as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him. There would be time to get the details later, Waldstejn thought as he ran after the Colonel.

They were at the lip of the shelter when the first shock hurled them in.

It was the sonic boom rather than the stick of bombs hitting. The over-pressure of a three-kilo-tonne starship at Mach 5 was colossal. It flattened everyone in the compound who had not already ducked. Dust shuddered and rose among the dry grasses of the valley. The pall spread in a broad wake to mark the spacer's track on the ground beneath.

"Are they shelling us?" Lieutenant Waldstejn demanded. "They can't be-that's from the west!"

Colonel Fasolini snorted. "When you've lived as long as I have," he said, "you'll learn your own artillery's just as dangerous as the other bastard's. But that was a spacer, and it's bombing us."

The two men were a contrast in more than age. Waldstejn was well above standard height, but he was willow thin. His brown hair was cropped short enough that the blond roots were visible, and he was inordinately proud of the narrow moustache which was within a hair's margin of being the width of his upper lip. Waldstejn's uniform was crisply new; he was Supply Officer, after all. He wore the garment with the brown-beige-gray pattern out, as being more suitable for the present surroundings than the brown-green-black camouflage to which it could be reversed. In his belt were holstered a two-way radio and a small pistol which he had never fired.

Waldstejn could have posed for a recruiting poster. Guido Fasolini, on the other hand, looked as grim as a gun barrel, even in his present rear-echelon billet. In the dim light seeping through the beryllium-filament roof, the mercenary's uniform looked muddy black. Under the direct sun it had been the same ragged mixture of buff and gray as the dust and dry vegetation of the immediate landscape. On a glacier, the fabric would have the hue of dirty ice. It would never look sharp, and it would never call attention to the man or woman who wore it.

Fasolini himself was stocky. Middle age had brought him a paunch on which only the harshest campaigning could make inroads. But the Colonel did not-could not-looksoft. His hair was black and greasy. It spilled from beneath his armored cap. His radio was built into the fibers of that helmet, leaving his crossbelt free for its load of grenades and a pistol-stocked launcher which no one could mistake as being only for show. Fasolini was clean-shaven, but his whiskers were a black shadow against the swarthy skin of his jaw.

The siren above the 522nd's Headquarters began to howl. There was a brief blat of sound as well from a klaxon on theKatynForest, the starship which was loading pigs of copper at thefar east end of the large compound. The warning signals froze the civilians in the mining and smelting operations above ground. They also did more harm than good to the inexperienced garrison battalion. What frightened the mercenaries, however, and causedthem to bury their faces deeper in the floor of their shelters was a simpler sound. Barely audible over the siren were the pop-pop-pops of clusters bursting to rain tens of thousands of bomblets across the target area.

"For what we are about to receive," Colonel Fasolini muttered, "Lord make us thankful."

"What do you-" began Albrecht Waldstejn. Then the anti-personnel bombs began to go off in a crackling rush that swept down the valley like a crown fire.

"Yeah, coming along just fine," said Churchie Dwyer. He squinted at the bed of coals with a brew-master's eye. The gangling mercenary patted the reactor vessel. It was a proprietary gesture like that of a sailor introducing a floozie to his companions.

Dwyer and Del Hoybrin were using a huge 500-liter fuel tank from an ore-hauler. Probably the tank had been dismounted years before when the broadcast power grid was extended to the mining complex in the valley over the ridge. The tank was rusty and still had a varnish of fuel additives, but that would not make a hell of a lot of difference to the quality of the final product. The mash itself had been culled from what was available which would ferment. When it came time to distill the result into high-proof slash, it would be cooled in a radiator scrapped from a lithium refrigeration system.

They were going to get rich from this one, they were. All those miners without access even to the weak beer issued to the garrison battalion-beautiful.

"Should I put on some more wood, Churchie?" the other mercenary asked. Del Hoybrin was built on the same cylindrical lines as the fuel tank. Alongside Churchie, he looked almost as big as the tank as well. For that matter, he did not seem a great deal smarter than the vessel.

"Del, Del, don't be in such a hurry," Dwyer chided. He patted the ground beside him. "Sit back and relax, my friend. All we're doing now is keeping the little darling warm so our beer ferments. Think of her as a beautiful woman. You wouldn't expect to go up to a beautiful woman and-" Churchie gestured at the billet of brush-wood his companion held-"just stick your log in, would you?"

Delfrowned. "I don't know what you mean, Churchie," he said. He tossed the wood back on the tangle he had cut the day before.

Both men leaned back with their legs splayed, staring at the shimmer of coals in the long trench. Cecach brush would barely sustain combustion. It was perfect for a slow fire. "Sure, this is the life," Dwyer murmured. "And when we get back to a liberty port with what we've made from this Gig…"

Their post was on the ridge line, three hundred meters away and just out of sight behind the swell of the hill. The main purpose of the garrison was to keep the civilian contract workers at their posts despite rumors and Republican propaganda. The vast Smiricky Complex provided a significant proportion of the Federal government's foreign exchange. The authorities in Praha could not permit its workers to stream away as had the agricultural laborers of the nearby latifundia.

There was, however, the threat of a quick thrust by Rube infiltrators or spacer-inserted commandos. It was against that possibility that the indigenous garrison had been stiffened by what was, despite Fasolini's self-conferred colonelcy, a mercenary company of about fifty effectives. The 522nd had neither the training nor the political reliability to be steady under attack. The two laser cannon were the only battalion weapons which could be depended on to stop even light armor at a distance. Nobody really expected the 522nd to stand and volley hand-launched anti-tank rockets at point-blank range.

"Should we be getting back, Churchie?"Del asked nervously.

Dwyer started. He had been visualizing himself and-thus far-five women. Despite his revery, the gangling mercenary's hand snatched up his gun when his companion spoke. A moment later, after his eyes had scanned the horizon and his brain had sorted the words for content, Churchie set the heavy weapon back down. "Lover," he said in irritation, "I sure wish you wouldn't do that."

The bigger man blinked. His own gun was slung. Its weight was too insignificant to him to call itself to his attention, even when he was resting.

Delwas the only man in the Company who fired bursts of full-charge loads as a matter of course. He blinked in surprise when observers asked him if he didn't mind the recoil.

Churchie sighed. "Look," he said patiently, "if they want us, they'll call us, right?" He tapped his beryllium cap where it covered his right ear.

Delstared. His left hand began as if of its own volition to scratch his ribs beneath a bandolier.

"And if just maybe Hummel comes out to check in person-and why the hell would she?" Churchie continued, "why, we're out making a dangerous reconnaissance through our own minefields, right? Doing our job with a smile." He smirked, broadly enough to prove that dentists of Hister made bridges from stainless steel. "What weknowis, that she's not going to crawl out to get us when she doesn't even know there's a path through the mines."

"If you say so, Churchie," the big man said after further consideration. He stared up the slope behind them. Del had done most of the heavy work involved in the project, digging the trench and manhandling the fuel tank into position. Churchie alone had chosen the path through the belt of air-sown mines that ringed the ridge, though. "I just…,"Del said. "Well, aren't we a long way from the shelter if somebody attacks?"

"Attacks!" his companion repeated incredulously."Attacks?" He waved his long, dirty fingers in an arc across the horizon of brush, grass, and silence. "Do you see an attack? Do you see anything? You've been listening to the radio, haven't you?" Dwyer pointed accusingly atDel 's chest. "Seven years in this business and you don't know that whatany government says is a lie? Look, when there's going\ to be an attack, I'll tell-"

High overhead to the west, they caught the flash of the starship starting its bombing run.

Del Hoybrin was dumb as a post, but he was; experienced and his reflexes had kept him alive before. The big man jumped up, heading for their shelter, and Churchie Dwyer tackled him before those reflexes could get his friend killed.

Delcame down on his face with a thump and a squawk. "Not there!" Churchie screamed, "here!" He began to slap madly at the coals with the butt of his gun. Some of them scattered into the brush. The rest stirred into bright orange life.

"Huh?" saidDel.

The big man might just have been able to bound three hundred meters uphill in the time available, Churchie knew. WhatDel could not have done, no way in hell, was to run full-tilt up the crooked path without stumbling into a mine. That left one choice, a bad one, but better than no shelter at all when the shrapnel sleeted in. Furiously, Churchie Dwyer tried to brush the coals out of the trench. After a moment, Del began to help. He was used to doing things which he did not understand.

They were veterans. They ignored the sonic boom, ignored also the siren that panicked the indigenous troops in the compound. When the clusters began to separate in the sky overhead, however, Del paused and looked at his companion. "Churchie?" he said.

Dwyer reversed his gun again and jerked its charging handle with his left hand. The stabilized plastic stock was now mottled with gray blisters. It was hot enough to singe cloth. Churchie spaced five fast shots down the length of the makeshift reactor. Mash and half-fermented beer sprayed from each entrance and exit hole, sizzling on the coals beneath.

Fasolini's troopers carried cone-bore weapons. They squeezed down their projectiles at pressures which only barrels of synthetic diamond, grown as a single molecular unit, could withstand. At the muzzle, an osmium needle was expelled at over three thousand meters per second. The fluorocarbon sabot which had acted as a gas check in the bore was gaseous itself by the time it spurted out behind the needle. The weapons were specialized; but it benefitted mercenary soldiers, like whores, to be able to provide specialized services for their customers. The gun was meant to bust armor and brick walls. It opened the fuel tank like one of Jack the Ripper's girlfriends.

Churchie flung the weapon aside. "Come on!" he shrieked at his companion. He rolled into the trench. Del blinked, then obeyed.

The edge of the cloud of bomblets swept over the brew vessel in its fury. The two mercenaries were already screaming.

Sergeant-Gunner Roland Jensen clacked down the loading gate of the automatic cannon which was both his duty and his darling. "There, Herzen-berg," he said to the plump trainee,"that's how you insert a fresh can. Now, I want you to line up five more cans for continuous feeding."

Trooper Tilly Herzenberg looked doubtful, but there was nothing in the section leader's blond arrogance to suggest that he was not serious. Putting her back in it, she slid a second drum of ammunition across the base plate to align with the drum Jensen had just loaded. Cooper, Pavlovich, and Guiterez, the veteran crewmen, watched and stuck knives in the dirt.

The automatic cannonwas the only crew-served weapon in Fasolini's Company. It was the apotheosis of the shoulder weapons which most of the troopers carried. What the individual guns could do to light armor, Jensen's cannon could do to most tanks.

The cannon had a single barrel which was a trifle over three meters long. The bore at the muzzle was seven millimeters. Through it blasted a five-hundred gram osmium pencil which had with its sabot a diameter of twenty millimeters when it was slammed into the breech.

The relationship of projectile to recoil impulse was a constant before an ape man threw a rock and fell backwards off his branch. Nothing armorers have done in succeeding ages has changed that relationship in the least. The diamond bore and modern propellants made it possible to push the cannon shot to literally astronomical velocities, but the base and receiver had to be massive to slow the recoil to the point its pounding did not shatter the gun. The cannon mount had its own treads and motor. It served as well to draw a caisson of ammunition. Sergeant Jensen drove from the little saddle forward; and the rest of the crew hoofed it or foundtheir own transport on a move.

Guiterez jumped up. "Sarge," he said, "what was that in the sky?"

Cooper and Pavlovich had been onSedalia when Imperial spacers had free run above them. They dived for the shelter. Guiterez recognized an answer even when it was not verbal. He threw himself in with his buddies.

Roland Jensen glanced up at the thin, icteric track the starship had drawn across the heavens. His eyes were as pale as the sky. "Right, Herzen-berg," he said in a mild voice, "I'll take over now. I want you to raise the muzzle to 45°." Ammo drums weighed sixty kilos loaded; Jensen slid one of them into position with either hand. "Use the gauge like I showed you."

"S-sarge," the trainee said, looking at the shelter opening. When she had enlisted three months before on Beauty, she was unaware that Fasolini had already contracted with the Federalists on Cecach, thirty-seven light years from her home. In fact, the Company had enrolled her-without any particular qualification of strength or skill-solely to make up the contract Table of Organization in a hurry.

She dropped into the gunner's seat and punched the gun live. Then she heeled up the rocker switch to elevate the muzzle as directed.

Sergeant Jensen was snapping the feed lips of each ammunition drum into the female connector of the drum ahead of it. Rigging them this way increased the chance of malfunction, but neither he nor any of his crewwere going to pop up to feed a fresh can in normal fashion.

"Sarge, I'm ready," said the trainee in a voice raised two octaves by the sonic boom a moment before.

Jensen locked the last can in place and leaped to the gun. Leaning across Herzenberg to get a sight line, he rotated the cannon mount 10° to the right to eyeball it in line with the track down which the starship had disappeared. The gun had electronic sights that would spike a gnat at a kilometer, but at this instant there was neither time nor a hard target for them.

With his right hand, Jensen threw the Continuous Fire toggle. His left hand grasped Trooper Herzenberg by the collar, and he lunged for the shelter. The muzzle blasts of the cannon were so loud that the rain of bombs was a flickering white light, not a sound, to the cowering gun crew.

Warned by the flash, Trooper Iris Powers grabbed her boots and jumped into her shelter. Lieutenant Hussein ben Mehdi was right behind her.

The shelters were half-cylinders, each grown from a single crystal of beryllium. The shelters would not stop a shell or even a bullet at any normal range, but they were generally proof against the tiny splinters spraying from overhead bursts. That was the threat against which foot-soldiers since the Napoleonic Wars had been least able to protect themselves.

Shelters were light, but they did not fold up like the canvas tents for which they substituted. The rigid bulk of thirty curved plates, three meters long by two across, required as much transport as the Company's ammunition did. Like self-camouflaging uniforms and a considerable allowance for target practice during stand-downs, the expense and administrative hassle of the shelters was simply a matter of plant maintenance. Fasolini's plant was not hardware but the Company itself, the trained, effective troops who could command top dollar and could be expected to survive for another lucrative contract.

Turning the curved roof of a shelter imo real living quarters required considerable effort. The ground had to be ditched out at least deep enough that its occupants could lie flat below the shrapnel ol nearby ground bursts. In addition, those who failed to raise coamings around their shelters could expect to be swimming the next time it rained. At Smiricky #4, most of the troopers had paid civilian miners to dig them in. Powers and Sergeant Hummel had chosen to do the job themselves. The walls of their dug-out were as deep and plumb as those of Colonel Fasolini'sOperationsCenter.

That did not make the shelter spacious, a fact which suited ben Mehdi very well indeed at the moment. The Lieutenant was of middle height with a wrestler's build and a smooth, dark complexion. He was the only other 'officer' in Fasolini's Company, but he was not really the Colonel's second in command. His rank was due neither to his military prowess nor to his administrative ability. Fasolini had an accountant's brain under his coarse exterior, but that exterior itself could be a handicap in negotiations. The Colonel used ben Mehdi, his 'Executive Officer', as a suave front in conference rooms where polish and a raised eyebrow were worth more money than all the bluster in the world.

Hussein ben Mehdi had no general distaste for garrison duty, but Smiricky #4 was three hundred kilometers from even a decent brothel. The Lieutenant was bored, and the attack seemed to have been arranged precisely to help with the project by which he hoped to improve his time. He moved fast enough to be inside Powers' shelter when the sonic boom rattled it, but he was careful not to brush dirt on his uniform either.

"Oh!" said Trooper Powers. She had just taken off her left sock. Her toe-nails were varnished a deep scarlet. In confusion, the blonde trooper twisted the bare foot under her and picked up one of her boots.

"Any port in a storm, hey Powers?" said Lieutenantben Mehdi with a warm smile. "Hope you don't mind the intrusion." He reached out to grip between his thumb and forefinger the boot which Powers held. Ben Mehdi's fingers were long, their nails perfectly shaped. There was enough strength in them to pluck "the boot away from someone much huskier than the petite blonde who faced him now.

The shelter roof was translucent. It filtered light heavily toward the blue end of the spectrum. That alien tinge heightened Powers' look of tension as she huddled toward the corner of the dug-out. The two bed-rolls, hers and Sergeant Hummel's, were parallel with a narrow aisle between them. They were on wooden frames which kept them off the floor. The frames were lowenough, however, that the dug-out's occupants could sit up without risking their heads to shrapnel through the unprotected ends of the shelter. Hussein ben Mehdi leaned forward as he sat on the bunk beside Powers. She gasped as the Lieutenant dropped the boot he had taken from her and hooked her right sock with an index finger. "Lieutenant?" the Trooper said. His left arm slid behind her shoulders despite her efforts to press herself tighter against the wall of the dug-out.

The anti-personnel bombs lashed down like the wind-driven edge of a hail storm. Each bomblet was about the size of a man's thumb, a tiny segment of a cylinder, more or less the same as the tens of thousands of others released from the same cluster. They armed on impact and detonated a half second later, generally when they had bounced a meter or two back into the air. They spreada sleet of tiny shrapnel which stripped trees and killed all unprotected animals in the target area. After an attack, hundreds of bomblets which had failed to go off the first time lay in the grass, ready to shatter the leg of anyone walking carelessly.

Inside the shelter, the flashes lighted the mussed bedrolls with savage brilliance. The crackling detonations merged into a single prolonged roar. One large fragment sailed through both plastic end-sheets with a buzz that vibrated on the back of ben Mehdi's neck rather than in his ears.

"They'll be making another couple passes, of course," the Lieutenant said as he reached for the zipper at the throat of Powers' tunic. The vicious crack of the automatic cannon a kilometer away was an irritation now that the bomblets were only occasional thumps delayed by a freak of chemistry. "It won't be safe for anyone to leave their shelters for, well, plenty of time," ben Mehdi went on. He brushed aside the hand Powersraised to block his. He began to unzip her. "You know," he said, "you're a very attractive woman, Iris."

The little blond whipped her left fist around at Hussein's face. The blade of her spring knife was no longer than a finger, but that would have taken it to the Lieutenant's brain if he had not been expecting the attack.

Ben Mehdi caught Powers' wrist with his right hand while his left still clamped her other arm to her body. She tried to twist the knife to cut the sinews across the back of the officer's hand, but her weapon was a spike with no real edge. Hussein ben Mehdi increased the pressure of his grip until his thumb stood out in a pool of white skin on the woman's wrist. Then he gave a quick snap as if casting with a fly rod. The knife skittered out of her numb fingers.

"Now that's a friendly way to treat a guest, is it?" the Lieutenant said. His face still smiled, but his lips were drawn as hard as his teeth. "Now, Hummel's in the OC, so we're going to be alone till the All Clear sounds. And Iknow you like men, baby, because Isaw you last night with one of the zoomies from theKatynForest. That's what light amplifiers are for, right? Now, I'm a man, and just to prove it-"

Ben Mehdi lowered Powers' hand toward his fly with the same ease with which he had disarmed her. The little blonde spit in his eye.

The bombing had both blown trash onto the shelter roof and studded the beryllium mesh with needles of glass shrapnel which conducted light. Within, the effect turned the blue ambience into mottled shadows and points as bright as jewels by contrast. Iris Powers' upturned face was bestial and hideous as a result. The Lieutenant's face, as he slapped the woman with the full strength of his open hand, was as horrible with no lighting to augment it.

Power's head bounced against the dug-out wall. She lolled back, stunned. Her eyes were glassy. The outline of long, strong fingers was already swelling up in red on her cheek. The light flickered again from the east as the starship rolled out for its second pass.

"I tell you, bitch!" the Lieutenant shouted. "I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to show you just how good it can be with a man so you won't have to-"

The end flaps shook with the sonic boom and the entrance of Sergeant Johanna Hummel.

The Lieutenant jumped as if the non-com were one of the second stick of bombs herself. In some ways, he might have preferred that to what he got. Jo Hummel hit the floor feet first, but she let her momentum carry her onto the occupied bunk. The point of her left shoulder took ben Mehdi in the middle of the back. He slammed forward again, pinned against the earthen wall as easily as he had pinned Powers an instant before. The blonde trooper flopped sideways when the Lieutenant released her.

It sounded as if the sky were tearing apart. A sun-bright streak glared through the filter of the roof.

"Close quarters, Lieutenant," said Sergeant Hummel. She was wheezing with rage and the distance she had run, but her words were loud enough to be distinct even against the background."Fucking close quarters, hey?"

Hummel was as tall as the Lieutenant, with the same blocky, powerful torso. She had felled men larger than herself with sucker punches, but in any simple test of strength, ben Mehdi could have bested her. They were both in excellent physical condition. However, all other things being equal, a male's greater percentage of muscle to total weight would have told.

All other things were not equal. Hummel s gun was socketed in the Lieutenant's right ear.

"Sergeant," snapped ben Mehdi, "watch what you're doing! I won't tell you twice!"

"Real cramped in here, ain't it?" Sergeant Hummel said. She twisted her weapon to force ben Mehdi's head back against the dirt. The steel barrel shroud had been dented. The corner of it tore a ragged gash in the officer's ear. His mouth, open to shout another order, instead passed a high-pitched whimper.

In a voice as close to gentle as the surrounding noise permitted, Sergeant Hummel said, "Bunny? Are you all right?"

Trooper Powers sat up again, levering herself with a hand on the back wall. Hussein ben Mehdi's weight still anchored her thigh to the bunk. She braced her free foot to tug herself away. The handprint on her cheek was a flag.

Hummel made a sound at the back of her throat like millstones rubbing. She stood, gripping the unresisting lieutenant by the shoulder and raising him with her. She held her gun by the pistol grip, the butt cradled in the crook of her right elbow. Her index finger was on the trigger. The muzzle moved with ben Mehdi's head, anticipating each of the man's cautious attempts to duck away. Outside, the bombs were sailing in with calliope shrieks. This run, there were no high-altitude pops as clusters separated.

"What's the matter, Lieutenant?" Hummel rasped. "Worried maybe my gun's pointing a little close to you, what with all of us shoe-horned into this little dug-out? Don't you worry, sir. I've killed lots of people, but I never killed one when, Ididn't mean to." She spun ben Mehdi and gave him a hard shove.

The Lieutenant sagged against the dirt coaming. His breath made the end flap tremble. He turned his head fearfully. Hummel's gun was no longer touching his ear, but the tiny hole in its muzzle was aimed to take out his left pupil without touching the surrounding sclera.

The earth shuddered and a bomb went off with a muffled roar.

"Since the accommodations don't suit you, Lieutenant," the Sergeant said, "maybe you'd better leave, don't you think? You'd be best off at theOperationsCenter. And I think you ought to start now."

Three more bombs detonated. Two were below ground. The third hit something heavy and metallic. It rang like a bell even before the shattering explosion.

"Jo, Allah!" the Lieutenant pleaded."Notnow – not during incoming!"

Debris from the first bomb, pebbles and the heavier clods, pattered on the shelter roof. Hummel smiled and gripped the shroud of her weapon to emphasize rather than to steady it. "This stick's armor piercing," she said. "Just keep your head down and you'll be fine. Oh-and don't step on anything left over from the first pass, hey? But that's the sort of chance we gotta take when there's someplace we need to go."

Ben Mehdi tensed. Behind the Sergeant, Powers was pulling on her boots with apparently total concentration. The ground shook under the impact of more bombs.

"Your choice," said Hummel. Her index finger tightened.

Hussein ben Mehdi bolted from the dug-out, into the haze of dust and combustion gases. His car had dripped a bright streak of blood onto his shoulder.

Sergeant Hummel waited only until she was sure that the Lieutenant would not burst back in behind the muzzle of his grenade launcher. Then she whirled, tossing the gun onto her own bunk to free both hands. She clasped Powers. The blonde woman began to sob in a mixture of relief and fury. "There, there, Bunny," the Sergeant said, stroking the other woman's silky hair. "There, there."

When the fusillade of fragmentation bombs sputtered away, Lieutenant Waldstejn rose and started to climb out of the shelter. Colonel Fasolini grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him back down. "What the hell's your hurry?" the mercenary asked. "We've got a long afternoon ahead of us. They aren't done, not by a long shot."

The Lieutenant settled back on his haunches uncertainly.

Albrecht Waldstejn had a commission as a result of the two years of law school he had completed before being conscripted. His posting as a supply officer of a garrison battalion resulted from negative attributes rather than a demonstrated genius for administration, however. Waldstejn's parents had been forceful enough in opposing Federal war policies that the couple was taken into preventative detention. Their deaths were almost certainly the transport accident the government claimed-but the government still thought it wise to put the son under military discipline. After the four-week curriculum to which officer training had been reduced, the young man had been shunted into a slot where he was unlikely to cause trouble.

Waldstejn's initial mistake with the 522nd was to reorganize the mess his predecessor had left. The young officer broke for fraud all three of his underlings, including the quartermaster sergeant who had run the section while previous supply officers drank themselves insensible.

That left Waldstejn with no non-commissioned officers, two privates dumped on his need because nobody else in the battalion wanted them, and the smouldering hatred of his commanding officer. Major Lichtenstein had been receiving his rake-off on goods sold illegally from the battalion stores in the past.

Waldstejn got along rather better with Colonel Fasolini. The mercenary leader had a tendency to look for the easiest way to get the job done, but at least his notion of what the jobwas had similarities to Waldstejn's conception. Major Lichtenstein commanded a battalion of screw-ups and criminals, with no promotion to be expected this side of the grave. Lichtenstein's priorities were not those of the government in Praha, and they were shared by most of the officers and men in his command.

"Why are you so sure the bomber won't be shot down?" Lieutenant Waldstejn asked. He craned his neck out of the shelter but kept Fasolini in the corner of his eye. The whole floor of the valley swirled like mist from a lake at sunrise. Bomblets which had been flung wide left ragged clots of dust up to the ridge lines and beyond. The explosions had started a few grass fires, now blurred in with the dust pall but sure soon to replace it. "Matter of fact, I'm surprised I don't hear the lasers firing by now."

Fasolini settled himself against a wall. The shelter was unassigned. It had been set up between the Colonel'sOperationsCenter on the compound perimeter and the building of the Complex which housed the 522nd's HQ. The Colonel was a cautious man. He had provided for just the sort of eventuality which had occurred-an attack sudden enough to catch people between the headquarters. Hunching his shoulders to keep the X of his crossbelt from biting him, the mercenary said, "They aren't firing because they don't have a target. And the bomber won't be shot down because it's not a bomber, it's a starship. Only time they need toworry's when they're out of their hyperspace envelope to fire-" he snapped a thumb and finger for emphasis, loud as a pistol shot- "or when somebody goes after them in another spacer. You know how long it takes to get a starship programmed to operate this close to a planet. They must've spent weeks, and it'll be weeks before your side puts anything up to stop them." The older man frowned. "Not that I think they'll hang aroundthat long," he concluded.

"But why here?" Waldstejn said, aloud but more to himself than to his companion. They were speaking in English, the tongue of convenience throughout the human universe. Fasolini had a smattering of a score of languages. He could ask for directions or a woman on most planets. Waldstejn, however, had only his native Czech and business-course English. A month as acting liaison with the mercenaries had sharpened his English into a fluency equalled only by the multi-lingual curses he had picked up in the same school.

"Why the hell's that gun firing?" the Colonel said, frowning toward the northeast corner of the compound. Waldstejn knew the automatic cannonwas emplaced there, toward the most probable channel for armor but almost a kilometer away from the nearest mercenary position. The plan in Praha had been to seed pairs of mercenaries every four hundred meters or so along the perimeter. Fasolini had agreed to man observation posts on both ridge lines-the mercenaries' electronics were an order of magnitude better than Cecach manufactures. Further, Fasolini had agreed to put the cannon at least temporarily where it was most potentially useful. But after taking a good look at the 522nd Garrison Battalion, the Colonel had told Major Lichtenstein that he had no intention of putting his whole force out in packets which would be left with their asses swinging as soon as something popped. You cannot stiffen gelatine with B-Bs; and you could not keep cannon fodder from running just because there was one team still firing within earshot. Most of the Company was therefore bivouacked on a short segment of the northern perimeter.

That meant the cannon was far enough away that Lieutenant Waldstejn had forgotten it. The distance had also thickened the sharp muzzle blasts into something quite different from what he had heard-painfully-during a demonstration firing when the Company first arrived. Waldstejn's lips pursed in speculation.

Fasolini touched the wear-polished spot on his helmet that keyed the radio. He said, "Top to Guns.

What thehell do you think you're upto. Roland? Shut her down before our whole fee goes up the spout!"

The mercenary listened a moment. To Waldstejn, out of the net, the reply was only a tinny burr like that of a distant cicada. The gun continued to fire its eight shots a second, regular as a chronometer.

"Listen, I was on bloodySedalia too," the Colonel shouted suddenly. "I don'tcare what you figured, I'm not having ammo / buy pissed down a- Waldstejn touched the older man on the shoulder. "I'll clear it, Guido," he said. "I'll get an acquisition request off today."

"Hold on!" Fasolini snapped. He took his fingertip from the communicator control. "What do you mean, you'll clear it?" he demanded."You don't have authority to supply one of those mothersthere isn't a unit like it in the whole bloody Federal army."

"And by the time somebody in Military Accounts has figured that out," the local man said reasonably, "we'll both have long white beards. Look, the noise'll make a few of them-" he waved. The breeze carried a burden of faint moans, people too slow or too ignorant to get under cover before the bombs hit- "think they're in a battle, not an abattoir. Requests from independent commands have an automatic clearance up to fifteen thousand crowns-and believe me, the Major knows better than to flag a chitI've approved." The pride in Waldstejn's voice was as obvious as it was justified.

Fasolini squinted at the younger man. Instead of replying directly, the mercenary keyed his communicator again. "Top to Guns," he said. "All right, you've got clearance, Roland. But it's still a bloody waste." To Waldstejn alone he added, "Damned fool thinks they'll be programmed to whip-saw back and forth on the same track, so if he keeps enough crap in the air they'll fly right into-"

The sky flashed a yellow that went white and terrible in the same instant. Fasolini's mouth froze in shocked surmise. Both men leaped up to stare skyward, even though they knew the bombs were soon to follow.

Sergeants Breisach and Ondru were shrieking in the bare lobby of the warehouse where the wave of anti-personnel bombs had caught them. The sheet-metal roof was in scraps and tatters that writhed with by-products of the explosions. Sunlight poured through the dozen meter-diameter holes and the myriads of pinheads stabbed by fragments. The metal had stopped most of the glass-fiber shrapnel itself, but blast-melted droplets of the roof had sprayed down on the lobby.

The sergeants had timed their visit to be sure that the Supply Officer himself was absent. They had a proposal to which they had expected the two privates on duty would agree without argument. Instead, they had received flat refusals. Now neither of the non-coms was seriously injured, but the shower of molten iron had not improved tempers which opposition had already frayed.

Private Hodicky rose gingerly from behind the counter. He boosted himself to the top of it. Hodicky was only a meter fifty-six in height. He could not have seen the floor simply by craning his neck over the broad counter. A splash of metal the size of a thumbnail crackled from a request form on the counter. It left a brown discoloration on the paper. "Are you guys all right?" the Private asked nervously.

Behind Hodicky stood Jirik Quade-dark and scowling and quite obviously regretful that both sergeants were able to get to their feet under their own power. Quade ran a hand through his hair, trying to comb out the flecks shaken from the walls and ceiling by the bombing.

The warehouse personnel had been protected by the counter-top itself. In the lobby, Sergeant Ondru's uniform looked as if he had been dragged through barbed wire on his back, and the tear in Breisach's scalp was no less bloody for being superficial. Breisach's obscenities were uncontrolled and unintelligible, but Ondru retained enough rationality to pick a scapegoat.

Ondru leaped to the counter. He was tall enough to look Hodicky straight in the eye, even before he gripped the Private by the collar and dragged him forward.

"Now Sarge-" the little private cried, scrabbling at the back edge of the counter to avoid being pulled onto the lobby floor. "Now Sarge, we didn't-"

"You little bastard!"Ondru shrieked. "You kept the gate closed so we eouldn't get in under cover, didn't you? Hoped we'd be killed! Well, you little prick, I'll show you killed!"

Smiricky #4 was on permanent Yellow Alert. Officers and non-coms were required by regulations to go armed at all times. Ondru carried his assault rifle in a patrol sling that cradled it muzzle-forward at his waist. Like the Intruder patch he had bought from a drunk in Praha, the sling was the affectation of a man who had not seen combat in the seven years of bitter war that had wracked Cecach. Now it put the grip of the rifle in place for the Sergeant's right hand. He raised the muzzle at the same time as his other hand dragged Hodicky's face down to meet the weapon.

Private Quade hit Ondru across the temple with the edge of a metal-covered receipt book.

Ondru dropped as if his legs had been sawed off at the knees. There was a pressure cut through his blond hair, as clean as anything a knife could have left. The book flew out of Quade's hand and flapped into a lobby wall. Hodicky lurched back when the Sergeant released him, but his companion had already started to vault the counter and finish the job. Quade s mouth was open but soundless, and his eyes held no expression at all.

"Mary and Joseph!"Hodicky cried. He grabbed Quade by the waistband and jerked him to a halt. "Q, boys," he said, "let'stalk this over!"

Private Quade was no taller than Hodicky, but for an instant as he twisted he towered over his companion like the angel with the flaming sword. Then Quade's expression cleared. His hand, raised to strike though he had no weapon to fill it, lowered as Hodicky watched transfixed. "Jeez, Pavel," the black-haired man mumbled, "you know not to touch me when I get, get, you know…"

Then the loudest noise in the warehouse was a click. Sergeant Breisach had recovered enough to draw back the charging handle of his own rifle.

"You little faggots," the non-com said in a quavering voice. At his feet, Ondru moaned. The side of the fallen man's head was a sticky mat of blood. "I ought to shoot you both, but I'd rather see you hang. And you will, by God, don't think your prick of a lieutenant's going to save your asses this time."

Quade turned slowly. At this range, the light projectiles of the assault rifle would shred the plywood counter and the men behind it. The little man's eyes were going blank again. His muscles braced for an action which was quickly slipping out of conscious control.

"Sergeant, hell, what're you talking about?" Hodicky babbled brightly. His companion frightened him worse than the man with the gun did. Breisach might or might not be ready to kill; Quade was beyond doubt ready, though Hodicky hoped he alone of the spectators knew that. "We're partners, right, Sergeant Breisach? Just like you say-we slip you booze out of the stores and you boys split the profits with us after you move it. Sure, we're all friends here." Hodicky's right hand was resting on Quade's waistband again.

Sergeant Ondru had risen to his hands and knees. Breisach swallowed and took a step backward. His hands were relaxing minusculey on his pointing rifle. The Sergeant's body was beginning to quiver with the pain of his own injuries. His mind was not wholly able to absorb the return to the subject which he and Ondru had come to the warehouse to discuss.

"Say," Hodicky rattled on, "you boys'll need uniforms too, won't you? Q, go on back and get a-large-long and a large-medium, right, Sarge? Go on, Q, the boys won't want to wait."

Quade shook himself like a dog coming out of the water. "W-what did you say, Pavel?" he asked thickly.

"Go get a couple uniforms," Hodicky repeated in a low voice."Large-long, large-medium. Quick, Q, it's what the Lieutenant would want."

Nodding, not really aware of what he was doing, the black-haired private walked through the door to the back. With a smile too stiff to be wholly engaging, Hodicky said, "Now, Sarge, maybe you could point that thing some other way? Don't want any accidents that'll screw up profits, do we?"

Briesach grunted, fumbling for the safety catch. Blood seeping from his shrapnel wound glued his collar to his neck. "If you bastards think you're going to try something cute when this is over-" he began. He did not finish the threat. The sonic boom of the follow-up run sent all of them, even the logy Ondru, scrambling for cover again.

From the sensor screens within the massive hull of theKatyn Forest, the shower of anti-personnel bombs was merely an intriguing spectacle. First Officer Vladimir Ortschugin spat into the bucket and watched the show. Idly, he reached for the stick of tobacco in a thigh pocket of his coveralls. TheKatynForest was a freighter, not a warship, and her home planet, Novaya Swoboda, was quite neutral in the struggle taking place on Cecach. The starship was at Smiricky #4 to load cargo at double rates for the hazard allowance. Nothing that had happened thus far justified the bonus.

The bombs swept the broad valley like surf on a dun beach. Pin-prick flashes flattened nearby grass and lifted rings of dust from the soil. Then, while the after-image of the opening still clung to the brain, the main body of the cluster overran it in undulant glares of white light. The wave rushed past the buildings of the Complex and the bunkers set out five hundred meters in a perimeter. One miner stood in the open. He blinked at the sight until it washed over him and left him liquid and as formless as yesterday's sand castle.

Ortschugin watched unmoved, letting the sensors distance him and save his sanity.

The bridge was dancing with the bright chaos of the screens. The Power Room communicator shrilled, "Ortschugin! When are those idiots going to shut off the conveyor? Don't they know we can't secure the ship until they do?"

The First Officer raised his eyes to Thorn, the other crewman on the bridge, and then to heaven. "Excellency," he said, "I can't raise anyone in Central Warehousing. I'm sure they've gone to cover." The ones with common sense, at least. "Why don't we just-" relax would be the wrong word- "wait it out. The most these little bombs will do is scratch the finish of the hull. For that, it doesn't really matter whether the holds are closed or not."

TheKatynForest was a hundred and fifty meter cigar. Her bridge and hyperdrive inverter were forward; her engines were astern. Most of the ship's length was given over to her holds amidships. HoldOne, forward, already held several carboys of mercury, a by-product of the smelting process. The remaining cargo volume was being filled with copper ingots by the Complex's automated loading system. The conveyor belt was not in the least affected by the fact that Captain Kawalec and the crewmen stowing the copper under her direction had bolted into the Power Room. The great cargo doors could not be closed while the conveyor was hooked up; and the conveyor could not be disconnected so long as hundreds of tons of ingots continued to roll up it and spill into Hold Two.

Not, as Ortschugin had said, that it made any real difference to the freighter.

"The Front has collapsed, then," said Thorn, fingering his beard as he watched the screen. "I hope that doesn't mean we'll be overrun here."

"Ortschugin!" the Captain demanded. "See if you can get those cretins now that thebombing's stopped. I want to raise ship and get the hell out of here! Full holds be damned, I'm not paid to be shot at!"

"I'll try again, Excellency," Ortschugin replied. He carefully turned off his sending unit after he had spoken. "Don't get your bowels in an uproar, bitch," he muttered before he made another perfunctory call to Central on the land line. No one answered, of course.

The lower curve of the freighter's hull rested a meter and a half deep in the ground. Normally theKatynForest would have docked at a proper spaceport like the one at Praha. Copper would be carried from the smelter to the port on ground-effect trucks which hissed down the line of broadcast power pylons. Increased pressure on the Front thirty kilometers to the east had brought a modification. A starship would be landed directly at the mine and refinery complex to eliminate the slow process of transferring the cargo and to free scarce transport to carry materials to the Front.

From what the crew had seen when theKatyn Forest popped out of hyperspace on her landing run, the Federal side of the Front needed more help than it was likely to get.

Everyone else in the Smiricky compound had to depend on government news. The Federal and Republican governments had in common with each other-and with most human governments over the millennia and light years-the fact that they lied as a matter of course when reality did not suit their purposes. A navigational template had been computer-generated on the screens of theKatynForest from data a week old. It showed disquieting contrasts from the present scene. North and south of Smiricky #4, the Front-limned on the darkness by shell bursts-had bulged inward through the net of Federal strongpoints. If the bulges became penetrations, as they were almost certain to do, it would be kitty bar the door to Praha itself.

The rumble of ingots being dumped amidships was joined by a series of slower, hull-shaking clangs. Kawalec was trying to clear the vessel's own cargo-shifting apparatus in order to straighten the recent jumble. Ortschugin frowned and touched the communicator. "Excellency," he said, "they'll probably make another pass. It might be best to keep yourself and the crew under cover until this has all blown over."

The response came on the Power Room line. Nadia Kawalec had not risked herown life among possible live ordnance. "Don't act stupider than you already are, Ortschugin," she snapped. "They're bombing here just to scatter the locals and keep them from blowing the place up. Well, that may work, but they're not going to catch us too!"

Why the hell not? the First Officer wondered silently. The copper would not be paid for until it was delivered on Novaya Swoboda. The Rubes would be just as glad of that golden egg as the Federals had been. TheKatynForest and her crew had little to fear on that score.

He looked at the screens. The dazzling flash of the starship blowing up chilled Ortschugin as it would have chilled any spaceman who saw it.

The starship in fact destroyed itself. It had been adapted to a job for which it was not intended in the belief that its hyperspace envelope and its high real-space velocity would be adequate protection. Starships were not armored in the technical sense, but their hulls were of braced steel a hand's breadth thick. That was needed to withstand the torque of hyperspace inversion. The momentary friction of Mach 5 in an atmosphere made the attacking vessel's nose glow, but it was intended that the ship be back in her envelope before any structural damage occurred.

A single osmium shot from Jensen's cannon met the starship in the instant it dumped its second stick of bombs. The projectile had started to tumble as it ripped an exit hole through the top of the spacer's hull amidships. During the instant of its glowing passage, the round tore through the power boards of the hyperspace inverter. At the speed of a slow comet, with its cargo bay open to destroy even the semblance of streamlining, the vessel tried to plow through a planetary atmosphere. Its fragments burned white as they tumbled across the sky.

The debris held Ortschugin transfixed for long seconds. At last he glanced down at the glowing tracks of the bombs which the spacer had released before it dissolved. Cursing, incredulous, the First Officer grabbed for the intercom again.

TheKatynForest was in the war after all.

Churchie Dwyer did not bother to look around. He thrust himself out of the trench with his eyes still screwed shut against the pain. "All right, Del," he said in a squeaky voice. "We're all right." He turned, crouching on all fours, and slitted his lids enough to permit him to examine the brew vat.

Their side of the ridge had not been part of the intended target. It was well within the scatter range of the clusters, however. The air was sharp with residues of the explosives. The two bomblets which had gone off directly over the tank had opened ragged holes in the upper sheet steel.

None of the shrapnel had penetrated the bottom of the fuel tank. Del and Churchie were unmarked- by the bombs themselves.

The trench hissed and steamed with the half-cured mash still dripping onto the coals. The mercenaries' uniforms were of tough material, but not all the coals had been quenched when the men threw themselves down. Churchie could feel the cracking of fabric that had melted into the flesh of his shoulders and buttocks. His hands and scalp had not been exposed to the coals directly, but the steaming brew had parboiled all his bare skin.

The vat, the brew, and Churchie's dreams of wealth beyond a vault-blower's were ruined utterly.

Rising, the lanky soldier kicked the tank. It thumped, but it would not ring. Screaming with rage, he kicked it again.

"Churchie, I'm burned," said Del Hoybrin, and goodGod he was! The big man had crawled into the trench face down, as if it were not a fire-pit. He had saved his bollocks at hideous cost to his knees and elbows.

Dwyer drew his wrist knife. The nickel steel of its blade had been collapsed to crystals of four times their natural density. It was a day's work on a diamond sharpener to give it shaving edges, but it would hold those edges even if it were punched through body armor. Short-gripping the blade, Churchie began to separate the bigger man's flesh from his uniform. He worked with a surgeon'sskill, oblivious to what had moments before been the ungodly pain of his own burns. Under his breath Dwyer muttered, "Shouldn't have sold our goddam wound cream to those hick miners who thought they could get high on it… But don't worry, baby, we'll get you relieved and fixed up down the hill, just as soon as-" the sky flashed-"got the bastard!"

The starship's lengthy disintegration brightened the heavens and Churchie's stainless-steel smile. He watched with practiced eyes as the bomb load separated into eight fireballs on parallel trajectories. He sheathed his knife with the care its point demanded, then grabbed his companion by the arm. "Come on, Del," he said, "let's get the hell back to where we're supposed to be so we can call for a relief." He picked up both guns by their slings.

"Churchie, there's bombs," said Trooper Hoybrin. He pointed at the fireballs with an index finger as thick as a broom-handle. "Shouldn't we-you know?"

The gangling veteran clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Come on, sweetheart," he said. "The first load was for us, keep our heads down. These aren't clusters. I'd suspect those bastards in the buildings and the spacer are going to have something to do besides laugh at us in a little bit!"

When it was too late, Vladimir Ortschugin realized the point that he had missed. The Republicans might have been willing to deal with theKatynForest on normal business terms if she had landed in their territory. Since she had not done so, however, it was well worth their time to see that the starship stayed on the ground until they captured it. The Smiricky Complex itself was not the target-it could not fly away from the onrush-ing Republican columns.

All eight armor-piercing bombs of the second stick were aimed at the grounded starship.

Ortschugin and Thorn could watch the missiles swell on the screens, but they could do nothing to stop them. The crewman had fumbled out a golden crucifix at the end of a rosary. Tobacco juice, unnoticed, was drooling from the corner of the First Officer's mouth.

The first bomb landed a hundred meters short. The earth quivered, then shot up in a steep, black geyser from the buried explosion. Almost simultaneously, one of the nexttrio hit theKatynForest astern. The vessel pitched like a canoe in the rapids. Both men on the bridge were thrown to the deck.

The impact of the bomb was followed by its slamming detonation within the Power Room. Dissonant vibrations made the thick hull slither. They drove the surviving crew to shrieks of pain. In Hold Two, a cargo grab whipped. The rotary teeth which had been hooking ingots into the feed pipe snatched a crewman's leg. She screamed, but the operator was unconscious and there was no one to prevent her from being hauled all the way up the twenty-five centimeter pipe.

No one else died in the hold. Captain Kawalec was alone in the Power Room when the bomb exploded on the main fusion unit.

On the ground, theKatynForest supplied its internal needs from the auxilliary power unit forward. The main bottle was cold when it fractured. That saved the ship and most of Smiricky #4. It would not have mattered one way or the other to the Captain, who must have been within touching distance of the bomb when its two-hundred kilo charge went off. The five survivors of the crew shed more tears for the main drive than they ever thought of doing for Her Excellency Nadia Kawalec, however.

Ortschugin rose to his feet. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. The instruments worked perfectly. The emergency tell-tales pulsing for the Power Room hull and the main fusion unit left no doubt as to what the damage had been. The bearded First Officer pushed the general address system. "Shut off all equipment and report," he croaked to the crew. "Thebombing's over for now, you don't have to worry." After a moment he keyed the system again and added, "This is Ortschugin speaking, the Acting Captain."