"The Forlorn Hope" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

Chapter Five

Two more mercenaries in battle dress scurried to theOperationsCenter from the east. They were hunched over with caution and the weight of their equipment. Lieutenant ben Mehdi leaned from the shelter to observe them in helmeted neutrality. "Team?" he called in a low voice.

"Black Twelve," one of them panted back. Both troopers knelt, keeping the hump of the OC between them and the distant Complex.

Ben Mehdi nodded agreement."Right. We're forming up fifty meters north-" he pointed- "in a defile. Mboko's in charge there." He touched his helmet and ordered, "Black One, leapfrog your odd teams. Twelve is in." From the west, the Lieutenant could see two troopers from White Section already scuttling toward the OC.

Ben Mehdi's words echoed within the shelter because the external speaker of the console was live. Albrecht Waldstejn was not on the Company net. He could no more listen to the necessary crosstalk as the escape plan went forward than could any other member of the 522nd.

And the escape plan was his, almost in its entirety.

"That's forty-two ready to jump," Waldstejn said, "plus us."

"Motion around the truck park," Trooper Dwyer reported from the back arch. "Somebody ought to spray them, one of the shelters do it when the team leap-frogs out."

"White Two," crackled the speaker, "leap-frog your odd teams. Twelve is in."

"That's it," said Sergeant Jensen. "Just the section leaders left. Time for the old girl to keep some heads down."

"Good luck, Sergeant," the Cecach officer said. "Ah, Communicator?" he went on.

Jensen was crawling out of the back arch of the shelter. Churchie Dwyer was there, watching the Complex with his huge partner. He nodded to the Gunner. It was a nasty job. Jensen could have told off one of his crewmen to do it. But by the White Christ of his ancestors, he was the Gunner in Fasolini's Company.

Communicator Foyle looked at Waldstejn with a flashing smile. "Sookie, sir," she said.

Waldstejn smiledback, tight as an E-string inside and furious with himself to be thinking what he was thinking about the plump brunette. Notnow, Mother of God! "Right, Sookie. Time for you to leave too." Switching to Czech as the Communicator rose, the Lieutenant added, "Hodicky, you and Quade follow her. I'll be along in a minute or two."

"We better stay with you, sir," said Hodicky. He looked like a wren caught in a thunderstorm, huddled and miserable. "Not knowing the language and all, you know, sir."

Hodicky did actually have more than a smattering of English, but his friend did not. Private Quade had just finished stuffing a pair of mercenary cross-belt bandoliers with ammunition he and Hodicky had dragged from the warehouse. Ammunition for the assault rifles was packed in the form of loaded plastic magazines. When emptied, the clips were simply discarded like ration envelopes. The pockets of the cross-belts comfortably held pairs of Cecach magazines in place of the individual chargers of the mercenaries' own heavier ammunition. "There you go, Pavel," the black-haired private said. He proudly held out a bandolier to his friend.

A mercenary slid into theOperationCenter past Lieutenantben Mehdi. She flipped up her visor. Waldstejn had not met her before, so far as he knew, but he recognized the Sergeant's voice when she rasped, "I'm Hummel, Black One. You're in charge now?"

"Yeah, I guess I am, Sergeant," the young lieutenant agreed. His muscles were tensing involuntarily. Hussein ben Mehdi cleared his throat and shifted as if moving out of the line of fire. "And until we get our butts out of here, this isn't a democracy." Mother of God! how he wished that Sergeant Jensen were still in the shelter.

"Democracy?"Hummel repeated. "It's about to be a bloody morgue, isn't it? What's going to happen when we're half-way up the ridge-" she gestured; Hussein ben Mehdi flinched back- "and they start popping rockets at us? Think they won't? We need a diversion so they're not searching the north ridge till we're over it and gone!"

"Quade, cool it!" Waldstejn snapped. The little man had set down the bandolier and was watching Sergeant Hummel with a fixed expression. "Let's us cool it too," Waldstejn said to Hummel in a voice that was mild but which trembled. "We're all tight."

The mercenary non-com eyed Quade. Hodicky was gripping his friend's arm and whispering into his ear. Hummel grinned wryly. "I got enough Czech to manage," she said. "It'll keep the pins in if everybody understands."

Waldstejn swallowed. "Right," he said. "We've got a diversion. Sergeant Jensen's going to set his gun to sweep the Complex on continuous fire."

Hummel shrugged. "Won't work," she said. Another trooper stooped at the arch behind her, anonymous behind a lowered visor. Ben Mehdi edged even further away. "They'll volley rockets at the muzzle flashes-some-body will. Take all of ten seconds-all right, maybe a minute. How far do we get in a minute?"

"Gun ready," said the console.

"Column ready," it immediately echoed itself in Sergeant Mboko's voice.

Del Hoybrin turned. With his partner and Jensen, he was the rear guard. "You're going now?" the big man said, making a little shoving gestureWith his left hand.

"Shut up, Del," Trooper Dwyer muttered. He was veteran enough to guess his chances of coming through the next minutes alive. Despite that, he wanted to get it over with.

Dwyer also wanted to piss; and that, at least, he could do something about. Unsealing his fly, the gangling man began to urinate loudly on a trunk of Fasolini's in the corner of the shelter.

"Lieutenant?" said Private Hodicky. His voice caught in his throat. He cleared it and said, "Q and me've got the uniforms. We could get in and get a couple trucks moving." He nodded back in the general direction of the truck park, north of the Complex proper. "They'd think we were going out that way in-" he swallowed- "instead of like we are."

"That won't work either," interjected Lieutenantben Mehdi. The console spoke again, but no one in theOperationsCenter paid attention to it. "The uniform might work if they got close before they were seen, but they'll be tracked all the way from here. Once they're in range, all hell breaks loose."

"Flares!"Lieutenant Waldstejn whooped in sudden delight. Everyone else in the shelter jumped. "Our night goggles! They get overloaded. We set off a ton of flares, all at once, and everybody watching is blinded. By the time they've got their sight back, we're in the truck park!"

"We don't carry flares," Hummel pointed out. "Don't need them with-"

"Goddamn it!" Waldstejn snapped, as suddenly furious as he had been elated. He poked at the communications console, looking for the Send button. "Guns?" he demanded."Guns? Do you read me?"

"Guns to Red One, ' Sergeant Jensen replied. "I read you. I'm ready to crank up. Aren't you ready?"

"You'll be given your orders when it's time, Sergeant!" Waldstejn responded in a tone that surprised him more than it did the others around him. Hodicky smiled wanly. "Ah, Guns," the Lieutenant went on, "do you have any illuminating rounds? Flares, you know? We can blind anybody watching through goggles if we can get a light bright enough."

There was a moment's pause on the other end of the connection. Then Sergeant Jensen said thoughtfully, "Flares, no sir. Butlight, now

… I can make the whole compound bright as day if that's what you need."

"On the command, then," Waldstejn said. "Pointer Two-One, out." He had used his Cecach callsign without realizing it. It served as well as another.

Waldstejn swallowed. He turned to face the others in the shelter as well as he might and said."All right. Privates Dwyer and Hoybrin-" he remembered the names; Del Hoybrin had resumed his search of the night and did not acknowledge the compliment, however- "you will act as the rear guard. Lieutenant, Sergeant Hummel-" nodding to them crisply- "you will proceed to the defile. Be ready to move as soon as the shootingstarts, just make sure you've left a guide for the rest of us. My men and I will set out now for the truck park. I'll tell Sergeant Jensen to give us light as soon as the-as someone opens fire on us."

"Bullshit," said Jo Hummel.

Everyone looked at her. The non-com gave a lopsided smile and went on, "I speak Czech, remember? Trooper Powers andme'll cover your boys." She glanced at the Federal privates with more appraisal than affection. "You'll go take charge of the Company. Like we all decided," Hummel added. She gave a snort.

"Your uniforms won't pass," Waldstejn objected sharply.

"I saidcover, didn't I?" the Sergeant replied. "If it works, two's plenty to get a few trucks rolling. We got Gun's push-" she tapped her helmet- "and we got something that'll do some good when the shooting starts." She gestured in disdain at Waldstejn's slung assault rifle."Which you sure as hell don't."

"Talk's cheap, lady," said Private Quade. His right hand was caressing the grip of his own rifle. Hummel turned to him. "Then let's get a goddam move on, trooper!" she said. "Come on, Bunny." Sergeant Hummel began to stride toward the back arch, as squat and as powerful as the weapon she cradled.

Waldstejn caught her by the shoulder. "It'smy place," he said quietly.

Hummel's anger was fueled by fear of the task she had just undertaken. "Do / know the way to this abandoned truck?" she demanded. "Yourplace, Lieutenant, is with your troops. And they're out there goddam waiting for you!"

Waldstejn released her. Del and Churchie backed away to let the three volunteers out to join Trooper Powers. The night covered them from bare eyes in seconds.

"Right," Albrecht Waldstejn said to no one in particular. "We'd better get out to the others, hadn't we?

Lieutenant Stoessel sprinted the last twenty meters to the tunnel entrance of Gun Pit East. Since the lasers were sited at opposite ends of the compound while battalion headquarters was in the middle, it had been a toss-up which of his guns Stoessel made for when the meeting broke up in slaughter. The camouflage pattern of his tunic front was smeared with sweat and real dirt. The right sleeve was dark also, with the blood and wastes of the murdered Colonel.

The gun pit was a figure-eight, partly dug down and partly raised by a berm of the soil lifted from the interior. The back lobe of the pit was the fusion bottle itself. It was connected to the gun platform in the larger front lobe by cables which were virtually bus bars in their construction. At rest, as now, the laser cannon lay flat beneath the lip of the berm. Because the energy beam was recoilless, the tube could be quickly raised and rotated at any angle through a 360° arc.

The whole crew was present when Stoessel burst in on them, but none of the gunners showed signs of wanting to aim the weapon anywhere it did not point already.

"Abel!" the Lieutenant said to his crouching gun captain. "I radioed you to open fire on the e-enemy cannon. You haven't even unlatched the tube!"

Yeoman Abel looked at his commanding officer sullenly. "We've got power up," he said. The other five enlisted men stopped talking and eyed each other or the ground between their boots. That way they could ignore the laser. "They did a bug-out before you called us, sir," Able went on. "Besides, I figure three seconds after that tube-" he gestured with a jerk of his bearded chin- "lifts over the berm, it takes a round. If she's charged when that happens, there's gonna be shit flying all over here."

"I gave you a direct-" Stoessel began. He paused, then said, "What do you mean, they did a bug-out? They abandoned their cannon?"

"Naw, drove off with it," put in one of the crewmen who was glad of the change of subject. "We heard it."

"You can see for yourself, sir," the Yeoman agreed. "But I think I'd want to keep my head down. We're pretty well off, here- if we don't stir things up," he finished pointedly.

The Lieutenant scowled, first at his men and then at the laser in their midst. The automatic cannon had been emplaced only two hundred meters from Gun Pit East. Hecould take a look and perhaps have something to report to the Major.

Lieutenant Stoessel stepped again to the tunnel which sloped up through the berm. Distant sounds crackled. As Stoessel reached the outer tunnel mouth, he could see muzzle flashes winking near the Complex center. "There's shooting at the truck park," he remarked idly. "I wonder what's happeningthere? "

He might have chosen his words more carefully if he had known they were going to be his last.

Pavel Hodicky was desperately afraid that he was going to have to kill somebody in the next few minutes.

A little animal peeped and sprang away between the Private's feet. That frightened him back to immediacy. The four-man commando-properly a unit and not an individual designation-was spread in a line fifty meters across. The two Federal privates were in the middle. The mercenaries provided the end posts, checking the alignment and giving brief, angry whistles when one of the indigs straggled.

Face it; when Hodicky straggled, Q seemed to keep station instinctively, since his formal training had been as cursory as Hodicky's own.

They walked in a crouch, almost waddling. None of the four of them was up to crawling four hundred meters, but nature made them hunch over in anticipation of the shots that were certain to come. Hummel had been nonchalant in her brief instructions. The guards would shoot while their targets were well out of range, she had said. Hodicky's brief squint through his night goggles had shown him that the mercenaries were as bent over as the locals they escorted, however.

For the most part, Quade and Hodicky advanced with their goggles up over their foreheads. The promised illumination would otherwise blind them as well as the Federal guards. Afterwards, the deserters could dash forward, mingling with the guard detachment and getting among the trucks in the confusion.

The buildings of the Complex looked a single mass of geological proportions. Only the mercenaries' signals proved to the Private that he was really heading for the truck park. At its fence, he knew, were his comrades of a few hours before- watching his advance in rosy detail through the lenses of goggles he might have issued them himself.

Well, Hodicky couldn't complain. It had beenhis own idea, hadn't it?

Only Mary and theSaints, let him not have to kill The muzzle flashes ahead of him could have been the courting dance of a firefly. The bullets that snapped about his head had nothing of the same innocence. Pavel Hodicky threw himself down, knowing that at least one of his former comrades lacked his own unwillingness to kill.

The shots were Sergeant Jensen's signal. Hum-mel's call for "Light!" blatted over the radio as the blond man was already swinging onto the gunner's seat.

He had lain beside the automatic cannon lest premature motion bring a volley of fire on him before the commando was in position. The indigs had been willing to let a sleeping dog lie; now they would feel its teeth despite their forbearance.

Right and left pedals controlled the gun's traverse and elevation. Jensen worked them simultaneously while his left thumb flipped the sighting screen to its wide-field, acquisition mode.

The electric motors training the gun whined a friendly, familiar note to the Gunner. The slim barrel dipped only a degree under the lightest of left toe pressure, but the signal from Jensen's right heel aimed it back toward its previous position at the east face of the compound.

Toward, not to. The traversing pedalbraked the muzzle to a halt as the mounded berm of Gun Pit East slewed across the sights.

Someone in the mass of buildings to Jensen's right had noted movement at the automatic cannon. An assault rifle began to spit at him from a window of the Complex. At this range, the gunfire was pointless; but the first anti-tank rocket could be only seconds away.

Sergeant Jensen had taken a professional interest in the laser cannon when his own weapon had been sited near it. Now he was betting a number of lives, his own included, that he remembered the lay-out correctly. The protective berm around the gun pit was a full two meters thick at its base. The earth comprising it was loose, however, heaped up by the digging blade and only cursorily stabilized. That would stop fragments and even normal shell fire; but what Jensen had in mind was something else again-or Saint Ultrudasave them!

The sight screen zoomed to battle magnification, a three-meter field at this range. The central orange dot was at the base of the rear lobe of the pit. Hoybrin and someone else were now shooting from theOperationsCenter nearby. Hoybrin for certain, because the weapon was firing bursts. They were trying to suppress Federal gunmen from the Complex who were slashing at Jensen's life.

That did not matter now. All that mattered to the Gunner were the traverse pedal and the red switch under his right thumb. He pressed them together.

The blip of a rocket's sighting flare arched from the Complex toward the mercenaries' lines. Lieutenant Stoessel had just enough time to wonder what had set off the firefight when the sheaf of osmium projectiles plowed the dirt to his left.

The automatic cannon had neither tracers nor need for them. As with the laser itself, what you saw in the sights was what you got. Jensen's burst gouged the berm at a flat angle and at velocities that made the earth itself a fluid. Jets of dirt were spurting skyward even as the rounds clanged against the fusion bottle which the berm had been intended to protect.

The casing was heavy, even in comparison to the sudden blows it received; but a hairline fracture caused a ripple in the magnetic flux within. The astronomical pressures did the rest.

The blast was in theory not a nuclear explosion, only a jet of plasma from a relatively small fusion chamber. The matter of the bottle, the inner surface of the berm, and everything else within either lobe of Gun Pit East were stripped to ions. They shot upward like a minor solar flare. Ravaged atoms gushed up the access tunnel. Lieutenant Stoessel's body did not so much burn as sublime at their impact.

Bright as day, Roland Jensen had promised the new lieutenant. The Gunner was grinning like a skull as he threw the drive in gear. He cramped the wheel hard, then jumped out of the saddle. The self-propelled gun lurched noisily into what had been the medical station. It crumpled the shelter roof as it passed. Jensen felt that he had to at least jerk the old girl away from where she had been targeted, even though he would abandon her then.

Bright as bloody day!

Jirik Quade was up and running while the ground still rocked from the explosion. Hodicky scrambled up to follow, pulling his goggles down with his right hand. He was cursing his friend because the curses were a normal thing, a frequent thing to hear, and everything else around him was out of the Hell of his Grandmother's lectures.

The plume of charged vapor still hung over Gun Pit East, far to the left, but it was no longer a blinding flare. Night breezes were cooling and dispersing the pink glow. It was at once the pyre of seven soldiers and the only tombstone they would ever have.

Most of the platoon guarding the park was at the main gate on the west side. There were a number of troops on the north face of the woven-wire enclosure, however, much closer to the mercenary positions. These were the men who had been firing at the commando. One of them continued to do so. His blinded companions huddled at the base of the fence, where even amplified light could not separate them from the humps of earth and rank grass. A single soldier stood erect, screaming and spraying his personal darkness with an assault rifle. The muzzle was pointed up at almost a 45° angle.

The two mercenaries had stayed flat when Quade and Hodicky rose for the final dash. Now their guns cracked in unison. The limbs of the man at the fence splayed as if he had been electrocuted. There was a tiny fleck of light behind him as a projectile clipped a fence wire which was also in its path. The figure crumpled. There was no further sound or movement at the fence.

Quade reached the truck park before his friend did. Hodicky's body had moved at its best pace despite the terror filling his mind, but his lungs burned with exertion. The loaded bandolier was an anchor across both collarbones.

There was more to the operation, however, than the strength and stamina in which Quade excelled most of the other men in the compound regardless of size. He had the cutting bar out when he reached the fence. Instead of using it to slash an opening in the wire, the black-haired deserter waved it in his left hand like a saber. His right hand prodded the night with the rifle he held by its pistol grip, while his eyes searched for someone to kill. The moonless sky provided Quade's goggles with only a blur of pinks and shadows. It had no targets for his frustration.

The goggles affected depth perception seriously. Hodicky bounced against the webbing of the fence an instant before he had expected to reach it. "It's me, Q-Pavel!" he shouted instinctively as he saw his friend spin to face the sound. Someone atop the main powerplant was volleying rockets. The flare pots left pinkish trails across the sky over the truck park. Pulverized concrete spewed across the launching site as a mercenary replied.

Hodicky deliberately dropped his rifle in order to unsling his own cutting bar. Like much of the mercenaries' equipment, the principle behind the tool was very simple. It was a light, narrow saw with a blade fifty centimeters long. It cut on the draw stroke, and its teeth coarsened gradually from the hilt to the tip. The fact that the teeth were razor thin and almost permanently sharp made the bar effective whether one needed to cut tissue or tank armor. The ten-gauge wire of the fence was more a pressure against the blade than a real obstacle to it.

The little private slashed down, then across and down again in an arc. Wires quivered discordantly as a section of fence fell inward. "Come on, Q!" Hodicky said as he hunched through the opening.

His sleeve snagged and tore unnoticed on a sharp end.

Quade threw down his cutting bar and reached for his partner's weapon. "You forgot-" he said.

From the darkness, someone whispered, "Janos? Is that-?"

The black-haired deserter turned and fired in a single motion. There was a horrible scream, above even the muzzle blasts. As if in echo of the initial burst, a soldier fifty meters away began shooting at Quade's back.

Reflex snatched Pavel Hodicky's hand to his rifle. Instinct froze it there while bullets cracked and sang in parting wires. The Federal soldier was flat on his belly along the fence line, an almost impossible target for Hummel and Powers. They were also prone and two hundred meters away. The mercenaries tried anyway. Truck bodies boomed as they were hit by projectiles that had passed over their intended target.

The Federal gunman was shooting high as well. It was the flash of one of his bullets hitting a post above Quade that snapped the deserter from his revery of slaughter. He whirled away from the screams which a second burst had not silenced. Still firing from the hip, Quade walked his shots into the opposing muzzle flashes. Again he fired until his rifle spat out its empty magazine.

"Comeon, Q!" Hodicky cried. He ran to the cab of the nearest truck, still clutching his rifle. His trousers were slimed with feces.

"Forty-one," whispered the trooper as she reached Lieutenant Waldstejn. His slap on the shoulder sent her out to join the others who had preceded her, snaking single file behind Sergeant Mboko. This much was easy, though every step chanced a rocket or the fury of the remaining laser. At the ridge line, the risk of fire from the compound ceased, but a false step would shatter both legs on an air-sewn mine.

There were two cleared tracks through the mine belt surrounding the valley: west along the pylons, to permit the trucks to enter and leave the compound; and this one which Colonel Fasolini had decided to clear in case he needed a bolt-hole. The Colonel had not expected the 522nd to turn on his men; but neither had he expected the battalion to hold against a Republican attack. The truck route would become a killing ground for the locals rushing into it-and that, with luck, would have permitted the Company to slip out the side door and regroup.

It is impossible to foresee everything, especially during a war. Troops whose commanders try to provide for the dangers theydo foresee, however, often are around afterwards to bury the less fortunate.

"That's the last," whispered Lieutenantben Mehdi. The officer followed the trooper Waldstejn had just clapped forward by rote. "I'll stay and pick up the rear guard."

A rocket corkscrewed overhead, then plunged into the ground a hundred meters away. The white ball of the explosion was momentary but so intense that the shock wave a third of a second later seemed to be an echo. The near impact was chance. The federal soldier who launched the missile had lost control of it either through lack of training or because one of the mercenary rear guard had put a roundclose enough to the rocketeer to make him drop his controls.

Muzzle flashes lighted the face of the Complex and most of the Garrison Battalion's bunkers. Occasionally a soldier threw the switch on each assault rifle magazine which ignited the bullet jackets in a stream of blue-green tracers from the muzzle. That was rare, however, because it was certain to draw fire from one or a score of his ill-trained comrades. It was impossible to be sure what was going on at the truck park almost a kilometer away.

"Waldstejn?" ben Mehdi said, trying to prompt a response from the Cecach lieutenant.

Albrecht Waldstejn blinked beneath his goggles. Grit scooped from the ground by the near miss was drifting across the men. "Right," Waldstejn said. "Keep your head down." He scrambled off to join the last of the troopers following Sergeant Mboko.

Hussein ben Mehdi watched the firefight, trying to detach his mind from what was going on within the compound. When a stray bulletbrred overhead, his hand tightened on the sweaty grip of his own grenade launcher. In general, the Lieutenant could pretend that it was a game, a light show.

He risked a quick glance up the way the other had gone. By daylight, they should all be clear, thanks be to Allah… and to the path that Fasolini's instincts had provided. "Allahreceive you, Guido." the mercenary muttered. "If you were not a saint, then at least at the end you gave as much for your people as the Christ did for his."

Hodicky reached for the truck. Something cracked like a heart breaking on the side of it. That was surely a stray round, but the little private hunched over and ran to the next vehicle anyway.

Although the cargo bay of the ore hauler loomed high and wide behind it, the cab was only a step from the ground while the vehicle rested on its skirts. Visibility from the cab was not a factor since most of the time the vehicle tracked automatically across a line of pylons. For maneuvering in close quarters like the truck park, there were TV cameras at each corner of the cargo bay.

The cab lay-out was simple. Hodicky flipped on the battery switch to energize the controls and instruments. He did not turn on the lights. His goggles and the instrument glow let him see what he was doing well enough without drawing fire. Hodicky had driven induction-powered trucks before-never this big, and never in a lot so tight. But no one was going to complain about scraped metal tonight, the Virgin knew.

The little private twisted the joy stick to align the receiving antenna with the broadcast pylon at the gate. The cab door sprang open. Hodicky screamed and lurched around with his arms thrown up.

"You all right, Pavel?" asked Private Quade. His nose wrinkled. "Jesus Christ, what is it stinks in here?"

Hodicky licked his lips. "Go start the next one, Q," he said. "I'll have this moving in a bit." He could worry about clean trousers some other time.

"Hell, I never drove anything, Pavel," Quade admitted. He turned his head away. "I just came because… you couldof got hurt."

"I-" Hodicky said. "Keep an eye out." He turned back to the antenna control, making a final adjustment and then pressing the switch that should transfer the vehicle to external power. There was a lurch as the drive fans beneath the bay came on line automatically. The blades began to sing as they ran up to idle speed. "Watch it now, Q," Hodicky warned. He twisted the knob which should increase the power and bite angle of the fans.

The air cushion which the fans built under the skirts lifted the huge vehicle a few millimeters off the ground. It skidded forward, not yet in perfect balance. The left side almost at once scraped down the next vehicle over. Metal screamed.

The would-be driver swore and twisted at the wheel while he fed in more power. He over-corrected and Quade, on the ground, had barely enough time to throw himself out of the way as the right side dragged.

If the wheel were released, the truck would swing itself onto the pylon corridor. It would ignore obstacles in doing so, however, and it would have locked itself against the adjacent vehicles. Hodicky twisted savagely at the wheel again, wondering if the auto-pilot could possibly have done a worse job than he was managing himself.

Part of the distant rear of the cargo bay tore free. The truck lurched ahead. Hodicky released the wheel and felt the vehicle swing with glassy smoothness. The windshield was fogged by acid grime from the smelter, but through it he could see the closed gate a hundred meters away. The rifle of one of the guards there flashed. The entire panel of the truck window disintegrated, spraying the cab with fragments of pin-head size and smaller.

Hodicky threw himself out the cab door. His toe caught on the coaming. The Private tripped and rolled with a skill he could not have managed deliberately. The fans of the truck blasted dust in his face as it slid past. Weeping, Hodicky scrambled to his feet and ran for the shelter of the remaining vehicles. His rifle and bandolier pounded at the bruises they had left when he hit the ground.

No one shot at him as he ran. Quade was hosing the gate guards with bright cyan streaks of tracer, knowing that would keep their heads down-and that it would concentrate what interest remained on him instead of his friend.

A rocket from the Complex hit the rear of the careening truck. There was a white flash that silhouetted the vehicle. The jet of gas and gaseous metal spurted across the empty cargo bay and out the other side in a dazzling spike. The ore hauler shuddered, but its drive units were untouched. The gyro stabilizer had brought the truck back on an even keel when the cab plowed through the gate.

Even empty, the big ore carrier weighed over twenty tonnes. The chain-link fencing was intended to keep humans out, not vehicles in. The guards were caught between Quade's snapping tracers and the onrushing truck. Some of those who thought they had scrambled clear at the last instant were killed by the gate itself. The hinges gave before the locking chain on the other side. The whole construct of steel wires and stiffening bars sprang away from the cab like a huge flail.

The truck staggered, but it surged on through. The right skirt was trailing and a drive fan screamed as it wrapped itself in wire.

Quade fumbled for a third magazine. He paused with his hand in an empty pouch of his bandolier. He looked around for his friend as he resumed the process of reloading, this time consciously. The door of the next truck in the line was open.

The black-haired man ran to the open cab. The truck bay was creased where Hodicky's first decoy had scraped along it. Soldiers in bunkers over a kilometer away were firing rockets into the truck park, acting more from instinct than awareness. Those which were aimed well enough to hit the broad target detonated with hollow booms. That drew additional fire.

"Pavel, come on, for God's sake!" Quade shouted into the truck cab. His left palm rested on the door jamb. He could feel the vehicle quiver as its fans came on. "One was enough! Come on, they're shelling us!"

"Get out of the way!" Hodicky cried. The truck slid forward as he spoke. The gap in the line beside him let the truck swing even as its drive nudged it into motion. Hodicky could not see for his tears, and his mind was filled with the intake roar of the fans.

The side of the ore hauler slapped Quade as he tried to jump away from it. Its pitted surface of steel and paint flakes bit and spun the little man, dropping him in the vehicle's wake. Hodicky, oblivious to that as he was to almost everything else, threw himself out of the cab as the truck picked up speed. As he did so, a pair of rockets from the gate slammed head-on into the cab. Both doors sailed away like bats startled from a cave. The sheet-metal front of the cab ripped upward, tangling the power antenna in shreds.

Only the back-up human controls had been destroyed. The vehicle did not stop. The detuned antenna dropped its power beneath the setting and the vehicle slowed to a trot. As it glided through the gap torn by the first truck, the sides of the ore hauler sparkled like a display. Federal soldiers were firing their assault rifles point-blank into the cargo bay. The disintegrating bullets blasted holes in the sides as they hit.

Hodicky picked himself up. He had scraped his left palm badly on the ground. That pain seemed to be all he could focus on as he staggered back to the remaining trucks.

Jirik Quade lay crumpled on the gravel in front of him. The right sleeve of his uniform had been shredded from shoulder to wrist along with the skin beneath. Quade's hand was still locked on the grip of his rifle.

Hodicky's scrapes and dizziness washed away in a rush of glacial fear. All external sounds sank to a murmur as blood roared in the little man's eardrums. He knelt and gripped his friend's shoulders in order to turn him face up. "Mother of God, Q," he whispered."Mother of God!"

"Goddam, that truck hit me," Quade muttered back. He opened his eyes with a start. "Christ, Pavel," he said, trying to raise his torso and finding that his right arm did not work. "How long've I been-Christwatch it!"

A Federal soldier had run toward them from the wreckage at the gate. He had lost his helmet of ceramic-impregnated thermoplastic, but his rifle waved at arm's length as he strode. "Hansel!" he cried, "areyou all right?"

Hodicky twisted as he knelt, unslinging his own weapon. The chill had returned. The Federal soldier was within ten meters."Hans\" the man called again, skidding to a halt.

Hodicky raised his rifle. He froze. Behind him, Quade was trying to reach his rifle with his left hand. The sling was caught under Hodicky's knee.

"You bastard, you killed him!" shrieked the Federal. The muzzle flash of his rifle flared magenta in Hodicky's goggles. An impact sledged the little private backward over Quade.

The Federal's cheeks and eyes bulged momentarily. There was a tiny hole in the bridge of his nose and another, perfectly matching, in the back as he pitched forward.

"You sons ofbitches coming or you going to wait for a private car?" roared Jo Hummel as she jerked Quade to his feet. Firing was still general now, but it seemed to be concentrated on the moving vehicles rather than on the truck parkitself. Trooper Powers hunched in the angle of a truck body and cab. Her weapon was shouldered and ready for another target.

"Christ, Pavel," the black-haired man cried.

Sergeant Hummel knew that the three of them were in the open. Shots could rip lethally from the darkness before Bunny had a prayer of reacting to the gunners. But Hummel knew also that the deserters had saved the necks of troops they did not know when they started the truck careening westward. The Sergeant reached past Quade to lay her palm on Hodicky's chest. "Hell," she said, "the pump's fine and I don't see any blood. Gimme a hand and I'll carry him."

Quade was too battered to protest as the Sergeant raised his friend for a packstrap carry. Hodicky's left cross-belt flapped around his knees. Powers stepped to them. She slashed the whole bandolier away with a knife she slid from Hummel's boot sheath. A bullet had struck the bandolier over the deserter's left shoulder. It had disintegrated on and with the two loaded magazines in the pouch. The loaded ammunition was electrically primed. It was as little affected by heat or shock as so much clay. The impact had ripped the tough fabric of the bandolier, however, and it had stunned the man wearing it.

"Well, we bought them some time," Hummel muttered as she handed her burden through the fence to Private Quade. Hodicky was beginning to drool, but he had not yet regained consciousness. "I only hope they know how to use it up there."

The three soldiers looked instinctively toward the northern ridgeline. Its dark silence was the best proof they had that their mission had succeeded.

"The Lieutenant says the lead team's through the mines, sir," Sergeant Mboko reported to Albrecht Waldstejn.

The Cecach officer gave a bleak smile. They were all accepting" his leadership as if he had a real rank among them; and as if he knew what the hell he was doing. But one thing the tall officer had learned even before he was conscripted was that crises were best handled by people who were willing to make decisions. Fasolini's mercenaries might have gained only a day of life; but they did have that day over what staying in their shelters would have given them.

Sergeant Mboko was thinking along the same lines. Aloud he said, "I wanted to take a truck. The

Colonel said it'd be suicide. He was right a lot of the time."

After a moment, the mercenary said, "The background on Cecach looked pretty clean. Stalemate at the Front, that's not so bad. Real wackos on the other side, but the Federals who wanted to hire us about as decent as anybody in the middle of a war."

"Old data," said Waldstejn softly.

"Yeah," Mboko agreed, "about a year old. The Rubes got heavy armor, the Front went to hell. And the folks running things in Praha seem to have figured that if they're crazier bastards than the Rubes, then they'llbeat the Rubes. Wrong both times, I guess…"

From the modest height of the ridge, the two men had an excellent view of what was happening in the valley. There were a few riflemen firing uselessly from the Complex and outlying bunkers. Most of the garrison seemed to be concentrating on lobbing rockets into the two trucks. Both vehicles were beyond the westernmost bunkers of the compound, but only the first was still moving. The damaged second ore hauler had skidded and overturned when a rocket destroyed all the drive fans on its right side. Rounds continued to crash into it one or two a minute, now that it was immobilized. The white flashes reached the watchers in false synchronous with the booming of earlier warheads.

No one could have survived in the riddled cargo bay of the first truck, but Waldstejn thought for a moment that the vehicle itself might drift out of sight along the diminishing pylons. Then there was a hiss unlike anything else that had savaged the valley that night. The laser cannon had lifted from Gun Pit West, and its tube was cherry red.

Mboko cursed and shouldered his weapon. It was a long shot, but a large target and a fragile one.

The Cecach deserter touched Mboko's arm. "Let them," he said. "We're all dead, remember?"

"You know," said the Sergeant, "most times you get a really nasty war, it's planets that a couple different nations colonized together, different planets. You people here- one foundation, everybody Czech.. .. But you managed the job pretty well, didn't you?"

The laser drew a pale line across the night. The beam was pulsed so that metal subliming from the target would not scatter it in a reflecting fog, but the modulations were at too high a rate for human retinas to respond to them. Twenty-five square centimeters of the truck's plating flashed from red to white to black as the metal vaporized and the apparatus within the plenum chamber took the beam directly. Steel burned when severed cables shorted input from the receiving antenna into the hull. The gun continued to play on the glowing wreckage.

"You better go, sir," Mboko said without looking away from the spectacle. "I'll bring in the rear guard, never fear."

As Waldstejn started to move off, he heard the Sergeant say, "Colonel was right a lot of the time. But he still hired us out to these Federal sons of bitches."