by David Drake
Des Grieux didn't care about the logistics vehicles, whether indigenous or the Slammers' own. His business was with things that shot, things that fought. If he had a weapon, the form it took didn't matter.A tank like the one he commanded now was best; but if Des Grieux had been an infantryman with nothing but a semiautomatic powergun, he'd have faced a tank and not worried about the disparity in equipment. So long as he had a chance to fight . . . .
The convoy contained a Han mechanized brigade, the Black Banner Guards: the main indig striking force on the Western Wing. The tanks of Hammer's H Company were spread at intervals along the order of march to provide air and artillery defense.
Out of sight of the convoy, two companies of combat cars and another of infantry screened the force's front and flanks. Hammer's air-cushion vehicles were much more nimble on the boggy lowlands than the wheeled and track-laying equivalents with which the indigs made do.
No doubt the locals would rather have built their ownACVs,but the technology of miniaturized fusion powerplants was beyond the manufacturing capacity of any but the most sophisticated handful of human worlds. Without individual fusion bottles, air-cushion vehicles lacked the range and weight of weapons and armor necessary for frontline combat units.
So they hired specialists, the Han and Hindis both. If one side in a conflict mortgaged its future to hire off-planet talent, the other side either matched the ante—or forfeited that future.
The rice on the terraces had a bluish tinge that Des Grieux didn't remember having seen before, though he'd fought on half a dozen rice-growing worlds over the years . . . .
His eyes narrowed. An air-cushion jeep sped up the road from the back of the column. It passed trucks every time the graded surface widened and gunned directly up-slope at switchbacks to cut corners. Des Grieux thought he recognized the squat figure in the passenger seat.
He looked deliberately away.
Des Grieux's tank was nearing the last switchback before the crest. The vehicle ahead began to blat through open exhaust pipes again, though its engine note didn't change. Han trucks used hydraulic torque converters instead of geared transmissions, so their diesels always stayed within the powerband. Lousy troops, but good equipment . . . .
Des Grieux imagined the jeep passing his tank—spinning a little in the high-pressure air vented beneath the tank's skirts—sliding under the wheels of the Han truck and then, as Captain Broglie screamed,being reduced to a millimeter's thick streak as the tank overran the wreckage despite all Pesco did to avoid the obstacle.
Des Grieux caught himself. He was shaking. He didn't know what his face looked like, but he suddenly realized that the soldiers in the truck ahead had ducked for cover again.
The truck turned hard left and dropped down the other side of the ridge. Brakelights glowed. The disadvantage of a torque coverter was that it didn't permit compression braking . . . .
From the crest, Des Grieux could see three more ridgelines furrowing the horizon to the west. The last was in Hindi territory. Three centuries ago, this planet had been named Friendship and colonized by the Pan-Asian Cooperative Settlement Authority. The organizers' plans had worked out about as well as most notions that depended on the Brotherhood of Man.
More business for Hammer's Slammers. More chances for Slick Des Grieux to do what he did better than anybody else . . . .
Pesco pivoted the tank, changing its attitude to follow the road before sliding off the crest. As the huge vehicle paused, the jeep came up along the port side. Des Grieux expected the jeep to pass them. Instead, the passenger—Broglie, as Des Grieux had known from the first glimpse—gripped the mounting handholds welded to the tank's skirts and pulled himself aboard.
The jeep dropped back. For a moment, Des Grieux could see nothing of his new company commander except shoulders and the top of his head as Broglie found the steps behind their spring-loaded coverplates. If he slipped now—
Broglie lifted himself onto the tank's deck. Unless Pesco was using a panoramic display—which he shouldn't be,not when the road ahead was more than enough to occupy anybody driving a vehicle of the tank's bulk—he didn't know what was going on behind him. The driver would have kittens when he learned, since at least half the blame would land on him if something went wrong.
Des Grieux would have taken his share of the trouble willingly, just to see the red smear where that human being had been ground into the gravel.
Broglie braced one foot on a turret foothold and leaned toward the cupola. "Hello, Slick," he said. He shouted to be heard over the rush of air into the fan intakes."Since we're going to be working together again,I figured I'd come and chat with you. Without going through the commo net and whoever might be listening in."
Des Grieux looked at his new company commander. The skin of Broglie's face was red. Des Grieux remembered that the other man never seemed to tan, just weathered. He looked older, too; but Via, they all did.
"I didn't know you were going to be here when I took the transfer to Hotel," Des Grieux blurted.He hadn't planned to say that; hadn't planned to say anything, but the words came out when he looked into Broglie's eyes and remembered how much he hated the man.
"Figured that," said Broglie, nodding. He looked toward the horizon, then added,"You belong in tanks,Slick.They're the greatest force multiplier there is. A man who can use weapons like you ought to have the best weapons."
It wasn't flattery; just cold truth, the way Des Grieux had admitted that Broglie was a dead shot. It occurred to Des Grieux that his personal feelings about Brogue were mutual and always had been.
He said nothing aloud. If the company commander had come to talk, the company commander could talk.
"What's your tank's name, Slick?" Broglie asked.
Des Grieux shrugged. "I didn't name her," he said. "The guy I replaced did. I don't care cop about her name."
"That's not what I asked," Broglie said. "Sergeant."
"Right," said Des Grieux. His eyes were straight ahead, toward the horizon in which the far wall of the valley rose. "The name's Gangbuster. Gangbuster II, since you care so much. Sir."
"Glad to be back in tanks?" Broglie asked. His voice was neutral, but it left no doubt that he expected answers, whether or not Des Grieux saw any point in giving them.
"Any place is fine," Des Grieux said, turning abruptly toward Broglie again. "Just so long as they let me do my job."
The anger in Des Grieux's tone surprised even him. He added more mildly, "Yeah, sure, I like tanks. And if you mean it's been five years—don't worry about it. I haven't forgotten where the controls are."
"I don't worry about you knowing how to handle any bloody weapon there is, Slick," Broglie said. They stared into one another's eyes, guarded but under control. "I might worry about the way you took orders, though."
Des Grieux swallowed. A billow of dust rose around Gangbuster's bow skirts and drifted back as Pesco slowed to avoid running over the truck ahead.
Des Grieux let the grit settle behind them before he said,"Nobody has to worry about me doing my job, Captain."
"A soldier's job is to obey orders, Slick," Broglie said flatly. "The time when heroes put on their armor and went off to single combat, that ended four thousand years ago. D'ye understand me?"
Des Grieux fumbled within the hatch and brought up his water bottle. The refrigerated liquid washed dust from his mouth but left the sour taste of bile. He stared at the horizon. It rotated sideways as Pesco negotiated a switchback.
"Do you understand me, Slick?" Captain Broglie repeated.
"I understand," Des Grieux said.
"I'm glad to hear it," Broglie said.
Des Grieux felt the company commander step away from the turret and signal to the driver of his jeep. All Des Grieux could see was the red throb of the veins behind his own eyes.
Ten kilometers to the west, the Han and Hindi outpost lines slashed at one another in a crackling barely audible through the darkness.
"These are the calculated enemy p
ositions,"said Captain Broglie. The portable projector spread a holographic panorama in red for Broglie and the three tank commanders of H Company, 2nd Platoon.
Ghosts of the coherent light glowed on the walls of the tent. The polarizing fabric gave the Slammers within privacy but allowed them to see and hear the world outside.
"And here's Baffin's Legion," Broglie continued.
A set of orange symbols appeared to the left, map west, of the red images. The Legion, a combined-arms force of battalion strength, made a relatively minor showing on the map, but none of the Slammers were deceived. Almost any mercenary unit was better than almost any local force; and Baffin's Legion was better than almost any other mercenaries. Almost.
"Remember,"Broglie warned,"Baffin can move just as fast as we can. In fifteen minutes, he could be driving straight through the friendly lines."
A battery of the Slammers' rocket howitzers was attached to the Strike Force. The hogs chose this moment to send a single round apiece into the night. The white glare of their simultaneous muzzle flashes vanished as suddenly as it occurred, but after image from the shells' sustainer motors flickered purple and yellow across the retinas of anyone without eye protection who had been looking in the direction of those brilliant streaks.
"Are they shelling Morobad?" asked Platoon Sergeant Peres.Peres had been in command of 2nd Platoon ever since the former platoon leader vanished in an explosion on New Aberdeen that left a fifty-foot crater where his tank had been. She gestured toward the built-up area just west of the major canal that the map displayed. Morobad was the only community in the region that was more than mud houses and a central street.
Hundreds of Han soldiers started shooting as though the artillery signalled a major attack. Small arms, crew-served weapons, and even the soul-searing throb of heavy lasers ripped out from the perimeter. Flashes and the dull glow of self-sustaining brushfires marked the innocent targets downrange.
"Stupid bastards," Des Grieux muttered, his tone too flat to be sneering. "If they're shooting at anything, it's their own people."
"You got that right, Slick," Broglie agreed as he stared for a moment through the pervious walls of the tent. His face was bleak; not angry, but as determined as a storm cloud.
Han officers sped toward the sources of gunfire on three-wheeled scooters, crying orders and blowing oddly tuned whistles. Some of the shooting came from well within the camp.
A rifle bullet zinged through the air close enough to the Slammers' tent that the fabric echoed the ballistic crack. Medrassi, the veteran commander of Dar es Salaam—House of Peace—swore and hunched his head lower on his narrow shoulders.
"What we oughta do,"Des Grieux said coldly,"is leave these dumb clucks here and handle the job ourself. That way there's only half the people around likely t' shoot us."
Cyan streaks quivered over the horizon to the west. The light wasn't impressive until you remembered it came from ten kilometers away. Shells burst in puffs of distant orange.
Broglie lifted his thumb toward the western horizon."I think that's what they were after, Perry," he said to Sergeant Peres. "Just checking on how far forward Baffin's artillery defenses were."
"Calliopes?" Medrassi asked.
Firing from the Han positions slackened. In the relative silence, Des Grieux heard the pop-pop-pop of shells, half a minute after powergun bolts had detonated them.
"Baffin uses twin-barrel 3cmrigs,"Broglie explained."They're really light antitank guns converted to artillery defense. He's got about eight of them. They're slow firing, but they pack enough punch that a single bolt can do the job."
He smiled starkly. "And they still retain their anti-tank function, of course."
Des Grieux spit on the ground.
"The reason that we're not going to leave our brave allies parked here out of the way, Slick,"Broglie continued,"is that we're going to need all the help we can get. Indigenous forces may include an entire armored brigade. The Hindis are tough opponents in their own right—don't judge them by the Han we're saddled with.And Baffin's Legion by itself would be a pretty respectable opponent—even for a Slammers' battalion combat team."
"Great," Peres said, kneading savagely at the scar on the back of her left hand. "Let's do it the other way, then. We keep the hell outa the way while our indig buddies mix it with Baffin and get all this wild shooting outa their system."
"What we're going to do," Broglie said, taking charge of the discussion again, "is turn a sow's ear into a . . . nice synthetic purse, let's say. Second Platoon is going to do that."
He looked at his subordinates. "And I am, because I'm going to be with you tomorrow."
The holographic display responded to Broglie's gestures. Blue arrows labeled as units of the Black Banner Guards wedged their way across the map toward the Hindi lines. Four gray dots, individual Slammers tanks, advanced beyond the arrows like pearls on a velvet tray.
"The terrain is pretty much what we've seen in each of the valleys we crossed on the Han side of the boundary," Broglie said. "Dikes between one and two meters high. Some of them broad enough to carry a tank but don't count on it. Mostly the dikes are planted with hedges that give good cover, and Hindi troops are dug into the mud of the banks. At least Hindi troops—Baffin may be stiffening them."
"Morobad's not the same," Medrassi said through the hedge of his dark, gnarled fingers. "Fighting in a city's not the same as nothing. 'Cept maybe fighting in Hell."
"Don't worry," said Broglie dismissively. "Nobody's going anywhere near that far."
He looked at his tank commanders."What the Strike Force is going to do,guys," he said. "You, me, and the Black Banner Guards . . . is move up—" blue arrows came in contact with the red symbols"—hit 'em—" the arrows flattened "—and retreat in good order, Lord willing and we all do our jobs."
"We'll do our jobs," Sergeant Peres grunted, "but where the hell's the rest of H Company?"
She raised her eyes from the horrid fascination of the holographic display, where blue symbols retreated eastward across terrain markers and red bars formed into arrows to pursue. "Where the hell is the rest of the battalion, Echo, Foxtrot, and Golf?"
The blue arrows on the display had attacked ahead of the gray tank symbols. As the Han forces began to pull back, the tanks provided the bearing surface on which the advancing Hindis ground in an increasingly desperate attempt to reach their planetary enemies.
"Fair question," Broglie said, but he didn't cue the holographic display. Symbolic events proceeded at their own pace.
Outside the Slammers' shelter, a multi-barreled machine gun broke the near silence by firing skyward. Loops of mauve tracers rose until the marking mixture burned out two thousand meters above the camp. Han officers went off again in their furious charade of authority.
Des Grieux sneered at the lethal fireworks on the other side of the one-way fabric. The bullets would be invisible when they fell; but they were going to fall, in or bloody close to the Han lines. Broglie was a fool if he thought this lot was going to do the Slammers' fighting for them.
Red arrows forced their way forward over holographic rice paddies. The counterattack spread sideways as Han symbols accelerated their retreat. The gray pearls of the four tanks shifted back more quickly under threat of being overrun on both flanks. Orange arrows joined the red when the computer model estimated that Baffin would commit his far-more-mobile forces to exploit the Hindi victory.
"The rest of our people are here," Broglie said as lines and bars of gray light sprang into place to the north,south,and east of the enemy salient. "Waiting in low-observables mode until Baffin's got too much on his plate to worry about fine tuning his sensor data. Waiting to slam the door."
On either flank of the red-and-orange thrust was a four-tank platoon from H Company and a full company of combat cars. Gray arrows curving eastward indicated combat cars racing across rice paddies in columns of muddy froth, moving to rake the choke point just east of Morobad where enemy vehicles bunched as reinforcemen
ts collided with units attempting a panicked retreat.
The dug-in infantry of the Slammers' Echo Company blocked the Hindi eastward advance.On the holographic display, blue Han symbols halted their retreat, then moved again to attack their trapped opponents in concert with Hammer's infantry and the tanks of 2nd Platoon.
The display still showed 2nd to have four vehicles. Everybody in the shelter knew that rear-guard actions always meant casualties—and didn't always mean survivors.
Medrassi grunted into his hands.
"The hogs'll provide maximum effort when the time comes," Broglie said. "The locals have about thirty self-propelled guns, also, but their fire direction may leave something to be desired."
"It's not," Peres said, "going t' be a lot of fun. Until the rest of our people come in."
"The battle depends on 2nd Platoon," Broglie said flatly. "You're all highly experienced, and mostly your drivers are as well. Slick, how do you feel about your driver, Pesco? He's the new man."
Des Grieux shrugged. "He'll do," he said. Des Grieux was looking at nothing in particular through the side of the tent.
Broglie stared at Des Grieux for a moment without expression. Then he resumed, "Colonel Hammer put Major Chesney in command of this operation, but it's not going to work unless 2nd does its job. That's why I'm here with you. We've got to convince the Hindis—and particularly Baffin—that the attack is real and being heavily supported by the Slammers. After the locals pull back—"
He looked grimly at the display, though its image—enemy forces trapped in a pocket while artillery hammered them into surrender—was cheerful enough for Pollyanna.
"After the Han pull back," the captain continued softly, "it's up to us to keep the planned withdrawal from turning into a genuine rout. Echo can't hold by itself if Baffin's Legion slams into them full tilt . . . and if that happens—"
