The Forlorn Hope

by David Drake

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

  What the hell do you think you're up to. 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 bloody Sedalia too," the Colonel shouted suddenly. "I don't care 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 mothers— there 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 chit I'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's talk 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 the Katyn 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. The Katyn Forest 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."

  The Katyn Forest 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. Hold One, 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 the bombing'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 the Katyn Forest 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 the Katyn 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 the Katyn Forest 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 her own 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. The Katyn Forest 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.

  The Katyn Forest 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 good God 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's skill, 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?"