by David Drake
Des Grieux chewed a ration bar in the cupola of his tank.The Sincanmos made their fire by soaking a bucket of sand in motor fuel and lighting it. The flames were low and red and quivered with frustrated anger, much like Des Grieux's thoughts. There was going to be a battle very soon. In days, maybe hours.
But not here. If Colonel Hammer had expected significant enemy forces to cross the Knifeblade Escarpment through the Notch, he wouldn't have sent Hotel Company's 3d Platoon with the blocking force. The platoon had been virtually reconstituted after a tough time on Mainstream during the previous contract. In a few years, some of these bloody newbies would be halfway decent soldiers. The ones who survived that long.
"Booster," Des Grieux muttered. "Ninety degree pan, half visor."
H271's artificial intelligence obediently threw a high-angle view of the terrain which Task Force Kuykendall guarded, onto the left side of Des Grieux's visor. The nameless sandstone butte behind the blocking force was useless as a defensive position in itself, because the only way for military equipment to get up or down its sheer faces was by crane. The mass of rock would confuse the enemy's passive sensors—at least the sensors of the Thunderbolt Division; Broglie's hardware certainly had the discrimination to pick out tanks, combat cars, and the Sincanmo 4x4s, even though the vehicles were defiladed and backed by a 500-meter curtain of stone.
The butte also provided a useful pole on which to hang the Slammers' remote sensors, transmitting their multispectral information down jam-free, undetectable fiber-optic cables. Des Grieux at ground level had as good a vantage point as that of the Hashemite outpost in the Notch; and because the image fed to the tanker's helmet was light enhanced and computer sharpened, Des Grieux saw infinitely more.
Not that there was any bloody thing to see. Gullies cut by the infrequent downpours meandered across the plain. They were shallow as well as direction-less, because the land didn't really drain. Rain sluiced from the buttes and the Escarpment flooded the whole landscaper—and evaporated.
Winds had scoured away the topsoils to redeposit them thousands of kilometers away as loess. The clay substrates which remained were virtually impervious to water.
Seen from Des Grieux's high angle, the gullies were dark smears of gray-green vegetation against the lighter yellow-gray soil. Low shrubs with hard, waxy leaves grew every few meters along the gully floors, where they were protected from wind and sustained by the memory of moisture. The plants were scarcely noticeable at ground level, but they were the plain's only feature.
The butte was a dark mass at Des Grieux's back. In front of him, two kilometers to the south, was the Knifeblade Escarpment: a sheer wall of sandstone for a hundred kays east and west, except for the Notch carved by meltwater from a retreating glacier thirty millions of years in the past. A one in five slope led from the Notch to the plain below. It was barely negotiable by vehicles; but it was negotiable.
South of the Escarpment, the Hashemites and their mercenaries faced the Sincanmo main force—and Hammer's Slammers. Task Force Kuykendall was emplaced to prevent the enemy from skirting the Knifeblade to the north and falling on the Slammers' flank and rear.
The Hashemites themselves would never think of that maneuver; the Thunderbolt Division could not possibly carry out such a plan in the time available. But Broglie was smart enough, and his troops were good enough . . . if he were willing to split his already outgunned force.
Alois Hammer wasn't willing to bet that Broglie wouldn't do what Hammer himself would do if the situation were desperate enough.
But neither did Hammer expect a real fight north of the Escarpment. All odds were that Task Force Kuykendall, two platoons of armor and 600-800 Sincanmo irregulars, would wait in bored silence while their fellows chewed on Hashemites until the Brotherhood surrendered unconditionally.
Thunder rumbled far beyond the distant horizon. In this climate, a storm was less likely than the Lord coming down to appoint Slick Des Grieux as master of the universe.
No, it was artillery promising imminent action. For other people.
The most recent bite of ration bar was a leaden mass in Des Grieux's mouth. He spat it into the darkness, then tossed the remainder of the bar away, also.
"Booster," he said. "Close-up of the Notch."
A view of flamelit rock replaced the panorama before the last syllable was out of the tanker's mouth. The Hashemites were as feckless and unconcerned as their planetary enemies; and unlike the Sincanmos, the Hashemites didn't have the Slammers' logistics personnel to dispense an acre of camouflage film which would conceal equipment, personnel, and campfires from—hostile eyes.
Of course, the Hashemites didn't think there were any hostile eyes. They had stationed an outpost here to prevent the Sincanmos from using the Notch as a back door for attack, but the force was a nominal one of a few hundred indig troops with no leavening of mercenaries. The real defenses were the centrally controlled mines placed in an arc as much as a kilometer north of the Notch.
The outpost hadn't seen Task Force Kuykendall move into position in the dark hours this morning. In a few hours or days, when the main battle ground to a conclusion, they would still be ignorant of the enemy watching them from the north.
The troops of the outpost probably thanked their Lord that they were safely out of the action . . . and they were.
Des Grieux swore softly.
The outpost had a pair of heavy weapons, truck-mounted railguns capable of pecking a hole in tank armor in twenty seconds or so. Des Grieux wouldn't give them twenty seconds, of course, but while he dealt with the railguns, the remainder of the Hashemites would loose a barrage of missiles at H271. And then there were the mines to cross . . . .
If the platoon's oilier three tanks were good for anything—if one of the crews was good for anything—it'd be possible to pick through the minefields with clearance charges, sonics, and ground-penetrating radar. Trusting this lot of newbies to provide covering fire would be like trusting another trooper with your girl and your bottle for the evening.
Kuykendall's platoon was of veterans, but she had orders to keep a low profile unless the enemy sallied out. Kuykendall took orders real good. She'd do fine with Colonel Bloody Broglie . . . .
Hashemites drank and played a game with dice and markers around fuel-oil campfires on the Notch. The sensor pack high on the mesa gave Des Grieux a beautiful view of the enemy, but they were beyond the line of-sight range of his guns.
A salvo of artillery ricocheting from the sandstone walls would grind the towel-heads to hamburger, but the shells would first have to get through the artillery defenses south of the Escarpment. Des Grieux remembered being told the first thing Broglie had done after taking command was to fit every armored vehicle in the Legion with a tribarrel capable of automatic artillery defense.
Guns muttered far to the south. When Des Grieux listened very carefully, he could distinguish the hiss-crack reports of big-bore powerguns. Tanks and tank destroyers were beginning to mix it—twenty kilometers away.
Des Grieux shivered and cursed; and after a time, he began to pray to a personal God of Battles . . . .
"Sir?"said Trooper Flowers from the narrow duct joining his station to H271's fighting compartment. The driver's shoulders were a tight fit in the passage."I'm ready to take my watch, sir. Do you want me in the cupola, or . . .?"
Des Grieux adjusted a vernier control on Screen #1, dimming the topographic display fractionally."I'm not'sir,'"he said. He didn't bother to look toward Flowers through the cut-out sides of the turret basket."And I'll worry about keeping watch till I tell you different."
He returned his attention to Screen #3 on the right side of the fighting compartment. It was live but blank in pearly lustrousness; Des Grieux was missing a necessary link in the feed he wanted to arrange.
"Ah, S-sergeant?" the driver said. The only light in the fighting compartment was scatter from the holographic screens. Flowers' face appeared to be slightly flushed. "Sergeant Des Grieux? What do you want
me to do?"
On the right—astern—edge of the topo screen, a company of Slammers infantry supported by combat cars moved up the range of broken hills held by the Thunderbolt Division. The advance seemed slow, particularly because the map scale was shrunk to encompass a ten-kilometer battle area; but it was as certain and regular as a gear train.
If navigational data passed to the map display, then there had to be a route for—
"Sir?" said Flowers.
"Go play with yourself!" Des Grieux snarled. He glared angrily at his driver.
As Des Grieux's mind refocused to deal with the interruption, the answer to the main problem flashed before him. The information he wanted wasn't passing on the command channels he'd been tapping out of the Regiment's rear echelon back in Sanga: it was in the machine-to-machine data links, untouched by human consciousness . . . .
"Right," Des Grieux said mildly. "Look, just stick close to the tank, okay, kid? Do anything you please."
Flowers ducked away, surprised at the tank commanders sudden change of temper. His boots scuffled hollowly as he backed through the internal hatch to the driver's compartment.
"Booster,"Des Grieux ordered the tank's artificial intelligence, "switch to Utility Feed One and synthesize on Screen Three."
The opalescent ready status on the right-hand screen dissolved into multicolored garbage. Whatever data was coming through UF1 didn't lend itself to visual presentation.
"Via!" Des Grieux snarled."Utility Feed Two."He heard boots on H271's hull, but he ignored them because Screen #3 was abruptly live with what appeared to be a live-action view through the gunnery screen of another tank. The orange circle of the main-gun pipper steadied on a slab of rock kilometers away. There was no visible target—
Until the point of aim disintegrated in a gout of white-hot glass under the impact of the 20cm powergun of another tank. The ledge cracked from heat shock. Half of it slid away to the left in a single piece, while the remainder crumbled into gravel.
Iridium armor gleamed beneath the pipper. Des Grieux's boot trod reflexively on his foot-trip, but the safety interlock still disengaged his guns.
The real gunner, kilometers away, was only a fraction of a second slower. The image blurred with the recoil of the sending tank's main gun, and the target—a Legion tank destroyer—erupted at the heart of the cyan bolt.
"Sergeant Des Grieux?" said a voice from the open cupola hatch. "I'm just checking how all my people are—good Lord!"
Des Grieux looked up. Lieutenant Carbury, 3d Platoon's commanding officer and almost as new to the business of war as Des Grieux's driver, stared at the images of Screen #3.
"What on earth is that?" Carbury begged/demanded as he turned to scramble backward into the fighting compartment of H271. "Is it happening now?"
"More or less," the veteran replied, deliberately vague. He pretended to ignore the lieutenant's intrusion by concentrating on the screen.His AI had switched the image feed to that from a gun camera on a combat car. Mortar rounds flashed in a series of white pulses from behind the hillcrest a hundred meters away.
The images were not full-spectrum transmissions. Each vehicle's artificial intelligence broadcast its positional and sensory data to the command vehicle of the unit to which it was attached. Part of the command vehicle's communications suite was responsible for routing necessary information—including sensory data stripped to digital shorthand to the central data banks at the Slammers' rear-area logistical headquarters.
The route was likely to be long and poor, because communications satellites were the first casualties of war. Here on Meridienne, the Regiment depended on a chain of laser transponders strung butte to butte along the line of march. When sandstorms disrupted the chain of coherent light, commo techs made do with signals bounced from whichever of Meridienne's moons were in a suitable location.
The signals did get through to the rear, though.
Des Grieux had set his tank's artificial intelligence to enter Central through Task Force Kuykendall's own long data link. The AI sorted out gunnery feeds, then synthesized the minimal squibs of information into three-dimensional holograms.
On Screen #3, fuel blazed from a vehicle struck by the probing mortar shells. A moment later a light truck accelerated up the forward slope of the next hill beyond. A dozen Hashemite irregulars clung to the truck. Their long robes flapped with the speed of their flight.
Des Grieux expected the camera through which he watched to record a stream of cyan bolts ripping the vehicle. Nothing happened. The Hashemite truck ducked over the crest to more distant cover again.
Three half-tracked APCs of the Thunderbolt Division grunted up the forward slope, following the Hashemite vehicle. Their steel-cleated treads sparked wildly on the stony surface.
The tribarrel through which Des Grieux watched and those of the combat car's two wing gunners poured a converging fire into the center APC. It exploded, flinging out the fiery bodies of Thunderbolt infantrymen. The rest of the combat car platoon concentrated on the other two carriers. Their thin armor collapsed with similar results.
Slammers infantry on one-man skimmers slid forward to consolidate the new position just as Des Grieux's AI cut to a new viewpoint.
"How do you do that?" asked Lieutenant Carbury as he stared at the vivid scenes.
The platoon leader was as slim as Des Grieux and considerably shorter, but the fighting compartment of a line tank had not been designed for two-person occupancy. Des Grieux could have provided a little more room by folding his seat against the bulkhead, but he pointedly failed to do so.
"Prob'ly the same way they showed you at the Academy,"Des Grieux said. They didn't teach cadets how to use a tank's artificial intelligence to break into Central, but Via! they were fully compatible systems. "Sir."
The sound of real gunfire whispered through the night.
"Wow," said Carbury. He was sucking in his belly so that he could lean toward Screen #3 without pressing the veteran's shoulder. "Exactly what is it that's happening, Sergeant? They, ah, they aren't updating me very regularly."
Des Grieux rotated his chair counterclockwise. The back squeezed Carbury against the turret basket until the lieutenant managed to slip aside.
"It's all right there," Des Grieux said, pointing toward the map display on Screen #1."He's got Broglie held on the left—"orange symbols toward the western edge of the display "—but that's just sniping,no way they're gonna push Broglie out of ground that rugged."
He gathered spit in his mouth, then swallowed it. "The bastard's good," the veteran muttered to himself. "I give him that."
"Right," said Carbury firmly in a conscious attempt to assert himself. Strategy was a major part of the syllabus of the Frisian Military Academy."So instead he's putting pressure on the right flank where the terrain's easier—"
Not a lot easier, but at least the hills didn't channel tanks and combat cars into a handful of choke points.
"—and there's only the Thunderbolt Division to worry about." Carbury frowned. "Besides the Hashemites themselves, of course."
"You worry about the towel-heads," Des Grieux said acidly. He glared at the long arc of yellow symbols marking elements of the Thunderbolt Division.
Though the enemy's eastern flank was anchored on hills rising to join the Knifeblade Escarpment well beyond the limits of the display, the center of the long line stretched across terrain similar to that in which Task Force Kuykendall waited. Gullies; scattered shrubs; hard, windswept ground that rolled more gently than a calm sea.
Perfect country for a headlong armored assault.
"That's what he ought to do," Des Grieux said, more to himself than to the intruding officer. He formed three fingers of his left hand into a pitchfork and stabbed them upward past the line of yellow symbols.
On Screen #3 at the corner of his eye, an image flashed into a cyan dazzle as another main-gun bolt struck home.
"Umm," said Carbury judiciously. "It's not really that simple, Sergeant." His manicur
ed index finger bobbed toward the left, then the right edge of the display. "They'd be enfiladed by fire from the Legion, and even the Thunderbolts have anti-tank weapons. You wouldn't want to do that."
Des Grieux turned and stared up at the lieutenant. "Try me," he said. The tone was unemotional, but Carbury's head jerked back from the impact of the veteran's eyes.
Screen #3 showed a distant landscape through the sights of a combat-car tribarrel. The image expanded suddenly as the gunner dialed up times forty magnification. The target was a—
Des Grieux's attention clicked instantly to the display. Freed from the veteran's glare, Carbury blinked and focused on the distant scene also.
The target was a Thunderbolt calliope, shooting upward from a pit that protected the eight-barreled weapon while it knocked incoming artillery shells from the air. The high ground which the combat car had gained gave its tribarrels a slanting view down at the calliope four kilometers away.
The line-straight bolts from a powergun cared nothing for distance, so long as no solid object intervened. A five-round burst from the viewpoint tribarrel raked the gun pit, reducing half the joined barrels and the crew to ions.
That would have been enough, but the calliope was in action when the bolts struck it. One of the weapon's own high-intensity 3cm rounds discharged in a barrel which the Slammers' fire had already welded shut.
A blue-white explosion blew open the multiple breeches. That was only the momentary prelude to the simultaneous detonation of the contents of an ammunition drum. Plasma scooped out the sides of the gun pit and reflected pitilessly from rockfaces several kilometers away.
As if an echo, three more of the Thunderbolt Division's protective calliopes exploded with equal fury.
The Slammers' toehold on the eastern hills wasn't the overture to further slogging advances on the same flank: it was a vantage point from which to destroy at long range the artillery defenses of the entire hostile center.
