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

Chapter Six

The radioed summons had been to Ensign Brionca's office at the 522nd Headquarters building. Vladimir Ortschugin noticed immediately, however, that the real power there lay with the Republican chaplain. The holes punched during the fighting thirty-six hours before had been patched with plastic sheeting, but the building still smelled of burnt insulation.

For that matter, the Swobodan spaceman caught a whiff of Major Lichtenstein's body also. It hung as an object lesson from the boom of a crane parked just outside. The Major's neck had stretched so that his right boot drew little circles in the dust as his body twisted. Formally, the Republicans had executed Lichtenstein for failing to prevent the loss of much of the mercenaries' valuable equipment. Personally, Ortschugin wondered whether the Re publicans would have deemed the offense punishable by death if they had been able to imagine any other use for the fat, drunken Major.

Ortschugin strolled into what had been the Major's office. He bowed and said, "Excellency, I am Acting Captain Vladimir Ortschugin, a free citizen of Novaya Swoboda. I am at your service."

Ortschugin had gained a few hours observation of the men who had conquered Smiricky #4. The Swobodan was aware now that his assumption of 'business as usual' had been seriously in error. Perhaps the very highest officers thought in terms of political and economic realities. Most Rubes, however, were on a mission for their Lord.

The slim, dark Republican officer did not speak. He rose from his chair instead and walked over to the spacer. The Republican uniform was taupe colored, a shade too dull even to be called black. Perhaps at base it was a yellow of infinite drabhess, like a mole's hide. The Republican wore no insignia of rank, but Ortschugin did not need Captain Brionca's obvious terror to recognize the man's authority.

The Republican touched the chain which was barely visible at the throat of the Swobodan's tunic. He tugged out the small crucifix attached to it, still without speaking. With a single jerk of his hand, the Republican broke the chain and dropped the little icon on the floor. As his boot ground the silver against the tile, the Republican said, "On Cecach we no longer worship a dead god, Captain. We worship the OneWho is Risen. This will be your only warning." He returned to his chair.

The back of Ortschugin's neck was stinging, but he was not sure whether the drops crawling down his vertebrae were sweat or blood. He swallowed to be able to say, "Yes, Excellency, I understand."

"You know your ship has been confiscated for trading with idolators," the Republican said as if he really did assume that would be obvious to the Swobodan. "What will be required to fly it back to Budweis?"

"Well, Excellency-" Ortschugin began.

"I am not an 'Excellency', foreigner!" the Republican officer broke in. "Only our Lord is excellent. You may refer to me as Chaplain Bittman, if you desire."

Ortschugin nodded obsequiously. What hedesired… But if he were to survive the next minutes, much less lift again from thisdamnable planet… "Yes, Chaplain Bittman," he said aloud. "The hull damage will not prevent us from operating in an atmosphere, though of course we could not, ah, go off-planet under such circumstances." That was a lie-they could work ship in pressure suits if they ever got a powerplant. The discomfort would be a damned cheap price for a return to Swoboda. "But we still need a main fusion bottle. We can't lift on the auxilliary power unit, and we couldn't stay up for more than a few minutes on it alone if we did lift." And that was almost the truth, more was the pity, or theKatyn Forest would have been long gone.

"What about the broadcast antenna you rigged?" asked Captain-Ensign, now-Brionca unexpectedly.

The two men looked at her-Bittman in cool surprise, Ortschugin with an expression he prayed did not reflect his horror at the question. "Yes, tell us about that," prodded the Chaplain. "You have fitted an antenna to take you to Praha along the truck pylons?"

"We had, ah, considered, doing that, yes," the spaceman answered carefully. He decided that only the simple truth was going to work. That bitch Brionca was staring at him sullenly. Her uniform looked as if she had slept in it. Her eyes looked as if she had not slept for a week. "The power hook-up proved possible-" they could check the ship and see that- "but there are delays in the alignment controls. The program is simple compared to our ordinary navigational work, of course, but it's very different…" Ortschugin let his voice trail off. Sweat from his forehead made his eyes sting, but he was afraid to raise his hand to wipe them. Saint Nicolasbe with us now!

Bittman stood again. He was showing the first signs of real interest since his eyes had stopped measuring Ortschugin for a rope. No one had suggested that the spaceman sit down. His knees were beginning to quiver with the unaccustomed brace in which tension was holding him. "You mean that your whole huge starship can run on broadcast power in good truth?" the Chaplain demanded.

"We, ah, thought perhaps so," the Swobodan agreed. "We didn't test it before the Complex, ah-"

"Yes, was liberated," Chaplain Bittman finished for Ortschugin. He added, in a voice which had no more expression or mercy than the clack of a trap closing, "I advise you not to 'test' the system now, either, Captain. The idolators are attempting to make a stand along the line between here and Praha-they know how important it will be to the future of the Return to God. Elements of the three armored regiments are pushing them back. Major elements." Bittman permitted himself a smile at something he probably thought was funny. "What do you suppose the concentrated fire of, say, four Terra-built tanks would do to the hull even of your starship, Captain?"

"We're at your service, E-Chaplain Bittman," the spacer said through dry lips, "but the pylons do lead only west from here."

"For the moment!" the Chaplain retorted with a zeal that shone across his slim, swarthy face. "Do you know why this line is crucial to the Lord's work, Captain?" he demanded rhetorically. "Because the fusion plant here, for the mining and smelting operations, was more than big enough to energize a broadcast system as well. That means that when we complete a temporary link from our own system east of Bradova, we have a channel for the heaviest, bulkiest supplies straight to the idolators' capital! Our armor is the head of the spear plunging into the heart of schism and idolatry!"

For the moment, Ortschugin's mind made of him an engineer again and not merely a victim. He understood the situation perfectly. Pylons were easy enough to raise and align. They were, after all, little more than lattices with two pairs of antennas. The lower alignments beamed power to whatever vehicle was equipped to receive it, while the upper alignments charged the system itself. Cutting a pylon would prevent vehicles from proceeding until the gap was repaired, but the other parts of the system would continue to function.

Ifit were energized from both sides of the gap.

Republicans and Federalists both had crisscrossed their sides of the Front with branch lines to supply their troops. The power and load capacity of the branches was limited, however. The working, full-scale fusion plant of Smiricky #4 could very well tip the scales. The next Republican thrust would not outrun its supplies and so be contained, the way previous victories had been.

Ensign Brionca understood also. She was looking at her hands, interlaced on the desk in front of her. Her fingers were not moving, but each nail left a bloodless white halo on the back of the hand where it rested. For the first time, Captain Ortschugin felt a twinge of sympathy for her.

"Well, that's good news-that we'll be able to repair your vessel," the Republican chaplain was continuing briskly. "But that was only one of the things we needed to discuss with you." He sat down. His voice was cool again, his face composed. Bittman had become a human being who no longer wore the mantle of the Lord. "I am informed that you had personal contact with the mercenaries who were stationed here and with the-" He paused, with his mouth quirked in irritation.

"The Supply Officer," Ensign Brionca said. She did not look up. "Lieutenant Waldstejn. Albrecht Waldstejn."

"Yes, the Supply Officer," the Republican agreed with a sharp glance at Brionca. He turned his attention to the spaceman. "What do you know about their intentions, where they planned to go?"

Ortschugin's face went blank in surprise. "Go?" he repeated. "Well, Praha, I suppose… But good Christ, you don't mean that-"

"Never curse again on the soil of Cecach!" Bittman said.

Ortschugin nodded and swallowed."Yes, Ex-C-Chaplain. I, ah, I was very surprised that any of the-of them had survived. We watched the trucks being blasted on our screens, you see."

"There was no one in the wreckage," the Ensign said dully. "No sign of anything human, not even a driver. They all walked out while we were shooting at empty trucks."

"Yes," said the Chaplain with another look of appraisal, "we may have executed Major Lichten-stein more painlessly than his actions deserved. But as for you, Captain Ortschugin-" the voice was the voice of a computer, balancing accounts for the Lord- "I would not have you think that this is a minor matter, a few heretics. Wewill find these-persons, with the Lord's help. Even now we are searching their most likely hiding place. If you can help us, well and good."

Like a yo-yo, Ortschugin thought as the Chaplain rose again, but there was no humor on the spacer's face or even on the surface of his mind.

"If you know something of their intentions and you do not tell us," Bittman continued, his face like wood and his voice like steel, "then be assured that the prisoners we take will speak, will tell us everything they know before they die. If you have hidden anything from us, you will join those you tried to protect."

"I know nothing of their plans," the Swobodan said. He cleared his throat. "I didn't know theyhad plans, and I thought they were all dead." He paused. Then he added, "I suppose that was right, wasn't it? They are dead, Waldstejn and the rest. They just don't know it yet."

"Christ, what a place to be buried," muttered Churchie Dwyer.

"I didn't think there'd be whores," Del Hoybrin agreed sadly. Even his long-time comrade had to turn to be sure that the big man was serious.

Before the outbreak of fighting, ore from Pit 4B had been rich enough to employ eighty to a hundred miners. A branch line connected the pit with the truck route between Praha and Smiricky #4. A line directly to the smelter complex would have been shorter, but there were two severe ridges in the way. Loaded trucks did not like hills. Neither did Churchie, but nobody was asking him… The muscles of the veteran's shins burned with climbing as badly as if they and not his back had been broiled two days before.

The pylons leading south-west toward the main line flared their bract-like antennas not far above the scrub which had recovered most of the area. "The old man was really pissed when they dumped the truck here," Pavel Hodicky remarked shyly. "I can see why, now. Even if everybody in the convoy was asleep, they should've heard the branches hitting the trucks, shouldn't they?"

Dwyer grunted as the trooper ahead of him released one of those branches. "Hell," he said, "Lichtenstein was always pissed. Pissed on brandy." His voice changed, taking on a reverential note which was blasphemous when applied to the images Churchie polished in his mind. "I know just how to sweat that brandy out of him, too. Sweat the marrow right out of his bones, for what he did to us."

"Ah, I meant the Lieutenant," Hodicky explained."He was our boss." He squeezed Quade's shoulder, trying to bring the black-haired man into the conversation.

The four of them, two veterans and two deserters, had been together since the escape. By the time Sergeant Hummel's commando had stumbled back to theOperationsCenter, the 522nd's aimed fire was concentrated on the truck line westward. All a rear guardcould do then would be to draw the indigs' attention to the real escape route. Del and Churchie had joined their section leader unharmed. A rocket had sailed over them to demolish the front of the shelter, however. The Company's cone-bore weapons had no true muzzle flash because the propellant was fully consumed in the barrel. After continuous fire, though, a miasma of faintly-glowing sabot material had drifted in front of their position. It was that which had marked them for a Federal rocketeer who was a damned sight better than belonged in the 522nd.

Well, so were Quade and Hodicky in their ways, though that black-haired runt gave Churchie the creeps when their eyes met.

The company was straggling down to the overturned truck. It loomed out of the brush like a fish cast up with other flotsam by a high tide. Troopers were clambering over the vehicle. At its side stood the new command group. Sergeant Jensen was already leading his small section toward the buildings at the pit head. The Federal lieutenant was obvious for his sand-mottled fatigues among the woody blurs of the mercenaries around him. A bloody supply officer. Well, Mrs. Dwyer hadn't raised her sons to get their heads blown off like generally happened to leaders in this business. Churchie didn't give a hoot in Hell who was in charge, as long as they knew what they were doing. Officers who put men and bullets in the same category of fungible goods did not last long in mercenary units.

One of them had not lasted through his first firefight when he commanded Churchie Dwyer.

"Suppose there's anything worth having in the buildings?" the veteran asked, nodding through a gap in the brush.

"Doubt it," Hodicky said, glancing to the side also. He was enough shorter than Dwyer that he could not see the pit head at the moment. From the hilltop, six grueling hours before, however, they had all gotten a glimpse of the shaft cover and the paired barracks. While the mine was in use, the valley was defoliated periodically just like that in which Smiricky #4 lay. Now from an angle, a sea of brush lapped the roofs. The regrowth of the brush was taller though still less dense than some of what the Company had just marched through miserably.

Between lyceum English and the blend of Slavic languages Dwyer had picked up during a life of slaughter and chicanery, the two men could communicate fairly well. Hodicky was pathetically grateful for the attention. The chance to actually give the veteran useful information was a delight. "The place was abandoned two, three years ago," he explained. "There was still ore, but they couldn't keep workers. They'd bug out over the next ridge where there's a big farm, ride back to Praha in produce trucks. Or if they were Rubes, and a lot of them are sentenced to the mines instead of-well, sentenced to the mines.. . some of them would try to slip across the Front."

The little man grimaced. He had known a few Reformed Brethren in school, though his home neighborhood had been almost solidly Catholic. The Rubes were all crazy, besides going to Hell for sure when they died. "They stationed troops around the Complex," Hodicky continued, "that's what we were doing there. But it wasn't worth it for the outlyingpits, it'd take too many guards for how much they were getting out of them."

Waldstejn had often lectured his two subordinates in the warehouse for lack of anyone else in the 522nd for him to talk to. Hodicky, nearly as lonely himself, had listened to his present benefit.

They were close enough to the truck now that the press of troops standing around it hid more of the vehicle than the foliage did. The stream down the middle of the valley could be heard just beyond. "Well," said Churchie Dwyer, "there might at least be some booze in there, right? Only fair, after this goddam hike that we ride back-"

And then, with reflexes that not even the thought of liquor had dulled, Dwyer was clearing his weapon.

"Well, nothing structurally wrong," Lieutenant Waldstejn said. The drive fans rotated freely under the impulse of Sergeant Mboko's hand.

The convoy had been reversing manually in the dark, and one of the vehicles had managed to slip its skirt over the skirt of the next ahead. Because the branch to 4B had less than half the available power of the main line, the fans had not responded as the driver had expected when he tried to correct the tilt. The whole business had demonstrated an ineptitude striking even for the Transport Service.

Now, though, as dusk blurred the far slope to | gray suede, there was a chance that the accident would save everybody in the Smiricky garrison who deserved saving.

"What's it loaded with?" asked Lieutenantben Mehdi. The voices of troopers echoed from the j back of the vehicle.

"Hey, everybody out!" ben Mehdi added. "I don't j want people screwing around when it may be stuff | we need. Bastien-" he waved to a Leading Trooper in Mboko's section- "get your team together and start off-loading the cargo."

"It was all supplies for the Complex, so I wasn't i really concerned," said Waldstejn, walking toward\ the back himself. Sergeant Jensen had gone off to find a cable to right the truck. The other three mercenary leaders appeared to drift with him. "From the codes on the manifest, it wasn't food,^; ^ dammit. Probably drill bits for-"

"Jesus Christ, watch that!" screamed Sergeant Hummel as two soldiers swung a case from the truck to the ground. "That's explosives!"

The packing case was banded with gray plastic, iIt hung from the fingertips of the men who had just released it. All their efforts could do was to drag them after the case. It hit the ground with a thump and a spurt of dust. There was dead silence around the vehicle.

"Well," said Lieutenant Waldstejn testily, "I don't know what the problem is. They weren't going to pack detonators in with the explosives, after all." Tense faces loosened as the Cecach officer stepped to the case and rubbed grit from its warning label with his open palm.

Johanna Hummel looked a little embarrassed also. Without hesitation, however, she said, "Lieutenant, I've been places where they tried to stabilize nitrogylcerin with mica. When I saw the red star-" she nodded at the label-"I didn't wait around."

"Well, on Cecach we use plastic explosives," Waldstejn retorted defensively. "We're civilized, even if we don't have all the high tech electronics-" He stopped and turned back to Hummel. "Forgive me, Sergeant," he said. "You were obviously right. And if we're civilized, then the way we've treated you and the Company gives little enough proof of it."

"Well, we still need to get it the hell out of the truck, don't we?" remarked Sergeant Mboko. "It's going to be a bitch to right anyway." In a louder voice he ordered, "Carry on, Bastien, but make a chain, will you? Don't just toss the stuff around like so many sand bags."

"Ah, Sergeant Hummel," Waldstejn said, "startyour troops cutting brush on the far side of the truck." The Cecach officer forced himself to face Hummel. He felt awkward about giving orders to any of the mercenaries, but it had to be done-for all their sakes. Hussein ben Mehdi and the two male sergeants made it easy with an acceptance that met him more than half way.

Jo Hummel made nothing easy. Herattitude was a challenge, while her sex-and her apparent sexual preference-aggravated Waldstejn's discomfort. Now she said, "Look, Lieutenant, I hope to God you don't think you can turn this low crap-" she waved a hand- "into levers to help pry the truck up with. Mysection's tired. Sincethere's no straight branches as long as your dick, I don't see-"

"I believe, Sergeant," Waldstejn interrupted, grasping the nettle, "that we can wedge a mat of brush under the side as soon as we get it off the ground. That way if the cable slips, we don't start over from the beginning. Now, if you'll give that order, I want to talk with you in private." He jerked a thumb to the side, away from the vehicle and the troops around it.

Hummel pursed her lips. Beside her, Trooper Powers squatted on the ground. She had taken off her helmet and was kneading her temples wearily through her bright blond hair. "Yes sir," Hummel said. She raised a finger to key the radio.

The reconnaissance drone, jinking around brush scarcely three meters above the ground, sailed over them like the first of the shells it surely presaged.

Trooper Herzenberg's light-wand trembled, throwing the shadow of the mine elevator over the far wall in a quivering circle. She was exhausted with the long march. Sight of the cable they had been sent for brought no elation, only a shudder at the new job it presented. "Guns," she called, "here's one that's still up. Want me to climb out and cut loose the cage?"

There were three shafts at the pit head for reasons which no one in Jensen's section could fathom. All three were covered by a single high, sheet-metal building over fifty meters long. Two of the elevator cages were at or near the bottom of their shafts. The third, which Herzenberg had been sent to check, had a winding drum full of cable. The newly-recruited trooper still found the difficulties attending the mass of braided steel to be insoluble.

Guiterez strolled over to her before Sergeant Jensen himself arrived. The big building was un-lighted except for what entered through rust holes and the pairs of windows high in either roof gable. To eyes adapted to the daylight outside, the small patches of brightness were more dazzling than useful. Guiterez took the dim light as an invitation to lay his hand on Herzenberg's solid hip. The gesture was more of a caress than a pat. The female trooper was almost too tired to bat him away, but she twisted and the butt of her slung weapon cracked Guiterez across the knuckles.

"Hell, honey," said the veteran, ignoring the rebuff, "you don't need to risk that sweet little ass of yours." He knelt, resting his gun barrel on the shaft railing.

"Hold up, Tilly," Jensen replied on the radio. "I'll take a look at it." The whisper of his words followed their radio shadow through the air of the big room.

Guiterez flipped the holographic sight picture up to full magnification. The braided elevator cable shimmered at an apparent fifteen centimeters from his right pupil. Four orange lines rayed from the center. The greatest advantage of the electronic sight over an optical one was that there was no tube for heavy recoil to slam against the shooter's brow ridge.

The cable quivered across the field of view despite Guiterez' attempts to steady it. The picture slowed as he took a deep breath.

"Look," Herzenberg said, "Guns says-"

The shot blasted. There was a momentary fluorescent tremble of sabot material and a flash from the cable. The needle-slim projectile was far too small to sever a one-centimeter cable. Instead, it drilled a neat hole which made no significant difference in the strength of the multiple, redundant strands.

"Goddamn it, Dog," one of the approaching crewmen shouted, "will you stop clowning around?"

"Well, I thought-" Guiterez said, standing up sheepishly. He lowered his weapon and massaged his shoulder.

"If you'd thought," said Sergeant Jensen harshly, "you'd have known we could do without the last-" he eyed the angle of cable from the take-up drum, through the support pulley, and down again to the elevator itself- "four meters with what there is on the drum." The tall section leader reached up with his cutting bar. He positioned it carefully on the highest part of the cable he could reach with his hip supported by the guard rail. Then he slashed downward and parted the cable with a single stroke. The short end of the cable flew up with a twang of released tension. The cage dropped a centimeter or so before its automatic braking system locked it to the guide rails with a horrible scrunch.

"That," said the Sergeant-Gunner, "is what you'd have done if you'd thought." He was taking quick breaths which belied the apparent ease of what he had just done. Almost anyone else in the unit would have needed several strokes to cut the braided steel. "Now," Jensen continued, "you and Herzen-berg cut through the axle on both sides." He tapped the drum. It rocked a little now that its ratchet no longer supported the weight of the elevator. "We'll roll the bastard down the hill and save ourselves the trouble of dragging the cable."

There was a shot, then a crackling volley from outside the shed. The veterans slipped their weapons into their hands. Herzenberg followed suit a moment later.

"Guns to White One," Jensen called on the command push. "Give me a sitrep."

Instead of the requested situation report, there wasan crackle of static and a few words in what might have been Sergeant Mboko's voice.

The Gunner looked around at the sheet metal and dim tracery of girders surrounding them. "We've got to get outside to hear anything," he said. "You two-" he pointed to Guiterez and the newbie- "get cracking. We may need the truck ready yesterday if somebody's caught us." With the other two members of the gun crew at his heels, Jensen began sprinting for the distant door.

Herzenberg and Guiterez looked at one another. Swallowing, they laid down their guns and undipped their cutting bars. As their blades rasped against the axle in distinct rhythms, the firing beyond the walls ceased.

The first trooper to fire at the reconnaissance drone missed by a country mile. The drone had a three-meter wingspan and a speed of less than a hundred kph-but it was as unexpected as a bomb in a flower basket. Satellite recce was impossible amidst laser cannon and stratosphere-launched penetrators. Satellites became orbital junk within minutes of starting their first pass over hostile territory. High altitude aircraft were in an even worse plight.

But a vehicle which whirred along near the ground, tacking often and randomly as it ran its programmedcourse, was preserved by terrain irregularities from the weapons that wrecked its higher-flying brethren.

The drone was powered by an almost silent high-bypass turbofan. The intake cowling looked large above the slim, armored cigar carrying the fuel and instrument package, but the engine had been deliberatedly understressed in the expectation that it would pick up trash and bullets in the normal course of its existence. Still, the drone was slow enough that almost anyone in the Company could have demolished it, despite its twitching changes of direction, if there had been a clear field of view. The trooper who glanced up to see the rotor sailing toward his face at a hundred klicks went straight over on his back. For navigational purposes, the drone treated the soldiers as if they were bushes. The drone lifted to clear the truck behind him as it would have cleared the man himself-by a meter. His shot was scarcely into the same sector of sky as the fog-gray wings that flashed above him.

"Maria!" Waldstejn blurted as the drone flicked overhead. Around him more experienced troopers were snatching at weapons whose slings were entangled with the straps of cast-off packs. Shots thrashed the brush as the drone skipped away downstream. Then somebody planted a boot in the small of Waldstejn's back and thrust him out of the way without ceremony.

Private Quade, fifty meters away with the last of the Company, had more warning than the soldiers around the truck, and his assault rifle could spray rounds toward what seemed a hopeless target for aimed fire. The right wing lifted as the drone banked left, its body out of sight below mounds of coarse scrub. The gray-brown camouflage mottling of the upper surface was suddenly puckered by three bright specks-holes punched by Quade's offhand burst. The right wingtip dropped and the left one rose, further away as the drone threaded its way out of the shot-spitting pocket. It was effectively undamaged, and no further shots could be expected to A gun went off directly above Albrecht Waldstejn's head. He twisted on the ground to curse the shooter who was both wasting ammunition and threatening to deafen him. Out of the corner of his eye, Waldstejn saw the drone again. It was flipping skyward, end over end, in a spray of sparks and fuel which then ignited in an orange flash. A projectile had coursed the cylindrical body the long way, taking no more account of the armor than it had the brush through which it had drilled to reach its target. The drone spun, shedding its wings as it did so. Open-mouthed, the Cecach lieutenant watched Iris Powers put a needless second round through the center of the fireball. The drone blew up on the ground, another flash above the scrub and a pillar of black smoke.

Powers began to switch magazines. She had braced her trim buttocks against the top of the truck's plenum chamber when she shot. By leaning forward at the waist, she had avoided having her shoulder broken between the recoil and the immobile mass of the truck.

"How in the hell did you do that?" Waldstejn demanded as he got to his feet. "It was out ofsight -the body of it, I mean."

The section leaders were still shouting into their radios to stop troopers from firing toward the! smoke.

Powers blushed. A wisp of blond hair curled from beneath her helmet and across her cheek. "From where the wing was, the body had to be-! where I aimed," she said. She spoke so quietly that Waldstejn had almost to read her lips since! the shooting had partly deafened him.

"Goddam good work, Bunny," said Sergeants Hummel as she hugged her friend. Powers was! slipping two loose rounds into the magazine shes had just taken from her weapon. "I think we're I clear, Lieutenant," Hummel continued. Her tone! was businesslike but no longer hostile. "We're low I enough here-" she gestured in the direction of the stream and the fuming remains of the drone-j "that it can't have been in radio contact with its base when Bu-Trooper Powers hit it." Hummel and Waldstejn exchanged tight smiles. "So they don't know we're here."

"Well, we may not be so lucky the next time," Waldstejn said. "Pick the six best shots in the Company and put them on look-out until we get moving." He smiled again, his lips as taut as his guts. "And Private Quade, he should be among them. Mboko, let's get moving on this truck. We need-"

Waldstejn fell silent. Soldiers were throwing themselves down. And after surviving the bombs that had hit Smiricky #4, even an ex-Supply Officer could guess the meaning of the howling from the western sky.

Horobin had time to slip the glossy pornography under a stack of log books when Director Piccolomini opened the door. He did not, however, have time to scan his instruments before his superior could do so. "Everything normal, sir," said the Reconnaissance Technician, taking a chance that would have paid off nineteen times out of twenty. His blood in his ears roared against the purr of the score of monitors in the room with the two men.

Director Piccolomini's face darkened to a shade in ugly contrast with his taupe uniform. He pointed at the inked tape curling from one of the top row of monitors. Peaks jabbed at five minutes intervals against the pre-printed time scale along the edge. There was no peak during the latest six minutes. As the Director of Reconnaissance and his subordinate watched, the tape continued to crawl out of the monitor with only the flat line that indicated no signal had been received from the drone keyed to that machine. "What do you meannormal, Technician Horobin?" Piccolomini demanded.

"I-" Horobin stammered. His skin prickled with sweat, as if Piccolomini were a furnace and not a short, balding man.

"Well, do yourjob, you fool!" Piccolomini shouted. "You only have two drones out. Surely you know what to do if there's an anomaly on one of them!"

Horobin had not bothered to read the glassine-covered Special Procedures sheets when he took over the watch. Normally the trailer housing the monitors was the quietest, most private place in General Yorck's headquarters. Now the Technician fumbled for the sheet marked Monitor 7, feeling as if he were about to melt away and wishing to the crucified Lord that he could. He turned to his superior. "Itsay -" he began.

"Don't tellme, you idiot!" Piccolomini cried. "Do it! Do it!"

The handset slipped from Horobin's fingers when he picked it up, but on the second try he managed to punch the correct combination into the key pad. Reading the data through the glassine and the blur of perspiration clouding his eyes, the Technician said, "Echo to Landseer."

"Go ahead, Echo," replied the artillery controller through a burst of intervening static.

"One of our drones has failed to report in segment Apache," Horobin continued. "That is, ah- yeah, Apache. Execute Apache soonest."

"Roger, execute Fire Order Apache," buzzed the controller's voice in apparent disinterest."Landseer to Echo, out." The speaker clicked and went dead.

"Well, aren't you going to log it in, Technician Horobin?" Piccolomini asked. "One of your drones has disappeared while flying a high-riskpattern, hasn't it? Do I have to tell youall your duties, man?"

Dear God, if you'll only get him out of here, the Technician thought, I'll make it up to you. Iswear it. And he slid out the log book, having forgotten completely what he had hidden beneath it only seconds before. The photographs flopped to the floor, glossy side up. The blonde woman of the top one appeared to be smiling, though it was difficult to tell since most of her mouth was hidden by the labiae of her brunette companion.

Piccolomini looked from Horobin to the photographs. The Director's face momentarily relaxed from anger to puzzlement. His mind was struggling to find a present referent for the picture, as if it were an enlargement of the internal structure of a molecule.

The expression that replaced puzzlement would have been suitable for someone who had stumbled upon a pack of dogs devouring an infant.

Technician Horobin felt faint. He was holding himself in a tight brace and vainly willing an end to his vital functions. The trailer shuddered under the hoarse blasts of the alarm the Director had pressed to summon a squad of the interior guard. "Is this how you serve your Lord?" Director Piccolomini shouted. "Swilling the foulest poisons of the adversary while the enemies of the Lord's Church sweep clear of his vengeance? Do you know what this means, Horobin? It means death! Death!"

The tape from Monitor 7 was still flat. A series of peaks sprang up on the other working monitor, however. It was keyed to a drone with the column advancing toward Praha. It had picked up the first salvo of the battery executing Fire Order Apache. Six twenty-centimeter shells were in flight toward what Republican analysts had determined to be the most probable hiding place along the segment of its path where the drone had disappeared.

"Death!"Piccolomini repeated.

The bars sang against the axle. It was awkward cutting up from the bottom, but otherwise the weight of the reel bound the notches against even the ultra-slick sides of the bars. Between strokes, Guiterez panted, "I don't know where you get off on this high and mighty crap. Don't Ihelped you? Girl, you don't know shit when you came here. Me and the boys, we save your ass a lotta times, a lotta times. So what's the harm you give us the time, huh? You give us the time, we give you the time."

Herzenberg had closed her eyes, as if that would somehow lessen the effort of sawing. Her breath burned her throat, and her voice caught the first time she tried to speak. "The only time I want from you," she said, "is time tomyself. Goddammit, Dog, if I was looking for a dick I'd have-"

"Christ Jesus, get clear!" blasted Sergeant Jensen's voice from their radios.

Both troopers dropped their cutting bars and turned. The tall section leader stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the outside light. Jensen's face was hidden. His voice held the horror of his realization that Guiterez and Herzenberg would not have been able to hear the sound of incoming shells as those outside could.

A rosette opened in the roof of the great shed. For a microsecond, the interior blazed with six clean shafts of sunlight. Then the salvo detonated.

Without specific reconnaissance-the data the drone would have broadcast if Trooper Powers had not shot it down-Republican intelligence units had no way of knowing about the overturned truck and the troops clustered around it. They did have pre-war maps and imagery from the last minutes before the satellites spilled down in gouts of fire, however. From these materials, spurred by the chill, righteous fury of General Yorck, they had plotted likely escape routes for the mercenaries; suitable search patterns for the drones whichwould track them down like the beasts they were; and probable shelters from which the pursued might ambush a drone before it could report them.

Pit 4B had been one of those shelters.

The shell that went off in an air burst on the ridge girder perversely saved Trooper Herzenberg's life. The high-capacity shell ripped its casing intoa sleet of fragments that seemed hideously dense; but the pattern was spherical and Herzenberg, fifteen meters beneath its heart, was missed by any shrapnel large enough to be lethal. The shock wave flung her down in a red blur-the flash of high explosive and the blood surging in the capillaries of her eyes.

The shell that lanced into the ground beside the mine shaft did not, as a result, cut the trooper in half on its way.

Earth and steel gouted across the huge mine shed, red flashes and the reeking black smoke of combustion products swaddling the fires that gave them birth. The shell that knocked Herzenberg to safety rolled back the roof in a thirty-meter ulcer. Bare girders sagged with the ends of the ridge pole, saved from collapse by the fact that their burden had been stripped away from them.

Someone was screaming. After an instant of disorientation, Herzenberg became sure it was not herself. She opened her eyes.

The cavity in the roof was no bar to the sunlight, but smoke and dust swirled surreally over the skeletal girders. It blurred and scattered the twisted scene below. The elevator cage was warped. The shaft on which it stood had lost all definition on two sides to a shell crater, but the tubular frame of the cage had not offered much purchase to the blast. The flat, heavy ends of the cable reel had caught the force squarely, however.

When the shock wave hit it, the reel had torqued and snapped the axle where the troopers' cuts had weakened it. It now lay up-ended across both of Guiterez' legs.

Herzenberg wobbled to her screaming companion. She was obscurely troubled to find herself five meters from where she had been during the last moment she could remember. Nothing was clear in her mind or her vision. Grit and long-chain molecules racked her lungs even more than the sawing had.

Upright, the drum was as tall as the stocky woman. It was tilted by the flesh it crushed beneath it. Herzenberg strained to tip it clear, bloodying her hands on frayed strands of the cable. The reel shuddered. Guiterez' mouth closed and his eyeballs rolled up as he fainted. Weeping with frustration, Herzenberg looked for a lever. She found her companion's weapon. She thrust the barrel under the drum and pried with the stock. The light barrel shroud crumpled onto the diamond core.

"Get out of here!" someone shouted. "Christ Jesus, get out!"

Herzenberg did not look around. Tears of rage and effort blinded her. Her brain was not capable at the moment of processing further information anyway. Sergeant Jensen surged around her. He gripped the gun butt with one hand. With the other, he plucked the woman away for all her hysterical determination could do to hold her to the lever.

The trooper fell backward as her sergeant straightened. His hair was a sun-struck halo rimming the gray metal of his helmet. The dense plastic gun-stock sheared with a crack like nearby lightning. The reel began to topple away from the man it imprisoned.

The roaring in Herzenberg's ears was not blood but the second incoming salvo.

The last image that Herzenberg's eyes carried with her into blackness was that of flame fountain-ing from a shell burst. At the apex of one red tendril, silhouetted against the sky, was a ball which had recently been a human head.

"Fucking A," muttered Marco Bertinelli as he started to run up-slope. The pit head buildings were in tatters. The end of one barracks was ablaze, and a sooty pall rippled turgidly over the shed covering the shafts. Someone in the gun crew was screaming over the radio for a medic, though.

"Team One to me," Sergeant Mboko ordered, jumping up as well. "We're going to get them out and get our own butts out of there too." He began to stride after the Corpsman. His gun was in his hand instead of being slung.

"Black Section, off and on," said Jo Hummel. The high points of her bandolier had been frayed and dirt-smeared by the speed with which she had hit the ground moments before. "We'll take up a cover position on the next ridge and wait for White. Move it!"

Fire Order Apache had been a simple Battery Three-three shells from each tube of the battery, with no delays or follow-up shellings scheduled. But no one in the Company knew that. Every move had to be made in the gut-crawling awareness that Rube artillery had the area targeted.

"Wait, dammit!" said Albrecht Waldstejn desperately."Mboko! Cancel that, we need the truck clear now!"

The black sergeant ignored the call. Half his section was beginning to follow him as ordered. The troopers glanced at one another and the smouldering impact zone.

"Forget it, Lieutenant," Sergeant Hummel said off-handedly. She was checking the response of her own troops and not bothering to look at Waldstejn. "It was a good idea, but if the Rubes've got us taped, there'll be a ground patrol along any time. That thing-" she turned to wave at the truck- "can't outrun a tank, and we can't fight a goddam tank either, not with what we got on our backs. Comeon, Black Section!"

"Hold up, I said!" shouted Waldstejn. The troops nearest him looked back in concern, but they continued to file off after the section leaders familiar to them. The Cecach officer's voice was only a murmur without authority in the brush a few meters away.

Sookie Foyle's helmet was flexed to a five-kilogram backpack. The plump-looking Communicator undipped the microphone from that pack and threw its red toggle switch. At once, the sending units of every commo helmet in the Company were locked out, keeping all channels clear for the command set. In a clear, dispassionate voice Foyle announced, "Max units, freeze in place for orders from C-captain Waldstejn." She handed the mike to the startled officer. Through a half-smile she whispered, "Should I have made you a colonel?"

"All right, people," said Albrecht Waldstejn with the appearance of calm. "Those shells came from the west of us. We're already surrounded, so we're not going to run after all."

He paused. Troopers had halted in place, startled by the command but too unsure of the situation not to obey. Their uniforms shimmered in shades of gray and brown as the fabric picked up nuances of its immediate vicinity.

"You goddamned stupid hunkie!" roared Sergeant Hummel, furious most of all at the realization that only Waldstejn had access to the radio net now. She strode back toward the officer, holding her weapon muzzle-high as if a banner fluttered from it. "We're not going to surrendernow, they'll feed us ourballs if we do!"

The young Cecach officer had the disorienting feeling that he was standing on a chess board and that a giant version of his own hand was reaching for him. His face was as still as chiseled steel. Into the microphone he said, "We're going to fight our way out, people. We're going to give the immediate pursuit a bloody nose to buy us some time, and then we're going to ride home in style. I swear by the blessed Virgin!"

Hummel had stopped in her tracks. She sucked in on her lips as part of an expression which was not wholly a frown.

As Waldstejn paused the second time, he caught the eye of one of the mercenaries-Dwyer, the gangling fellow who appeared to have taken Hodicky and Quade under his wing, thank God. The trooper grinned knowingly and shook his head in mock exasperation.

"First," Waldstejn said loudly, "White Section empties that truck, and I meanfast. Sergeant Mboko, report to me when you've got that organized. Second-"

As he continued to thump out orders with the unhurried aplomb of a drop forge, Waldstejn found himself noting the warmth of the Communicator standing close with the command set. He did not let himself look directly at her, though. Not yet.

Gunner Jensen's face and hands were black. His torso was white and unmarked though the tunic had been blown completely away from it.

Cooper and Pavlovich knew their section leader too well to bother arguing with him. They slashed at the springy brush with their cutting bars, clearing a path downhill to the truck as Jensen had ordered. They grunted with exertion. The faster they worked, the further away they would be when the follow-up salvo arrived.

Marco Bertinelli hopped beside the Sergeant. The Corpsman carried only the two extra helmets and his own medical pack, but he still had difficulty keeping up with the burdened Jensen. "Guns," Bertinelli pleaded, "for God's sake, let me check you out, will you? We can get a stretcher party up here and-"

"Said I'd do it and I'll do it," the blond man repeated flatly. He cradled the still form of Trooper Herzenberg. Her right arm and leg were bare except for splints and mauve patches of Skin-Seal over the abrasions. They had set the femur first. Jensen had extended her thigh muscles with as much force as was necessary to bring the ends of the fractured bone back into alignment. Herzenberg had been mercifully unconscious when they set the broken humerus a moment later.

"Shouldn't have forgotten they couldn't hear incoming, working inside like that," Jensen said. There were cracks across the surface of his scorched lips, but he had not let the Corpsman treat even' those. "Can't help Dog, but I won't leave her up there for the next round."

They were nearing the frantic activity around the overturned truck. Pairs of soldiers were dragging cases of explosives into the brush. Some of them carried their pack-shovels already extended in the hand that did not grip the case. "They'll learn Dog didn't come cheap," the Gunner said. "A lot of them'll learn that."