by David Drake
“Pull off—” Coke began. Margulies swung the wheel and braked before he got to: “—the road, Mary.”
Coke was out the door before the vehicle had come to a complete halt. The immediate area had been cleared around a shack now tumbled to moss and ruin. The van’s other doors opened as suddenly as Coke’s, the guns of his team facing the chance of attack. Even Margulies was scarcely a heartbeat slower than her commander in jumping from the vehicle she drove.
“—FDF Cantilucca. Over,” as Coke switched on the transmission from orbit again.
“Survey team commander to FDF vessel Obadiah,” Coke said. “We’re glad to hear from you, boys, because we’ve got the Heliodorus Regiment looking for our scalps. Can you drop a boat to pick us up? The Heliodorans have secured the spaceport. Over.”
Margulies had shut down the diesel when she stopped. Either she didn’t choose to run further, or she was more optimistic about chances of restarting the beast in a hurry than Coke was. Metal pinged as the engine cooled.
“Obadiah to FDF Cantilucca,” the helmet responded. “You bet we’ll drop a boat. Hold what you’ve got, troopers. Help is coming in figures one-five minutes. Obadiah out.”
“Well I’ll be hanged!” Niko Daun said in pleased amazement.
“That depends on whether the extraction boat reaches us before Madame Yarnell does, kid,” Moden said, but the big logistics officer was smiling also as he pointed his missile launcher back down the road toward dawn and the Heliodorus Regiment.
“Thirteen point six,” Bob Barbour said with satisfaction. “Minutes, that is.”
The intelligence officer’s hearing must have been that much better than that of his commander, because it was another five or six seconds before Coke heard the first whisper of the vessel’s landing motors.
Pilar stood beside him, a hand on his hip beneath the edge of his body armor. She didn’t have armor of her own. Via, he should have grabbed Vierziger’s suit for her since the sergeant wasn’t using it. They brought every other cursed thing from Hathaway House when they—
Niko Daun looked up, toward the sound of the incoming boat. Coke, suddenly fearful that Pilar would follow the direction of Daun’s gaze, shot his hand over her unprotected eyes. “His visor will darken automatically,” Coke said.
Pilar pulled his hand down with a firm motion. “I’ve worked in spaceports for twelve years, Matthew,” she said. “I know that plasma exhausts can be dangerous to my eyesight.”
In a slightly sharper tone she added, “And I’m not fragile.”
She squeezed him to take the edge off the rebuke. He remembered that in previous times of crisis she clutched her crucifix. She no longer wore that symbol.
“Sorry,” he muttered, meaning more than his conscious mind really wanted to dwell on.
“Blood and martyrs, sir!” Niko said. “It’s not a boat, it’s the whole ship! They’re coming straight in and there’s no port here!”
“Class III?” Coke snapped to Vierziger as the penny dropped.
The little gunman smiled, though his eyes continued their ceaseless quest for a threat—or a target, it was all the same thing. He was holding a sub-machine gun now.
“That’s right, Matthew,” Vierziger agreed. “The Obadiah’s a battalion-capacity combat lander. She’s got pontoon outriggers, so she doesn’t require a stabilized surface to set down. And armor, in case the landing zone’s hot.”
The transport swept overhead at a steep angle. The roar and glare of her engines were mind-numbing,. Foliage at the tips of trees beneath her track curled and yellowed.
The vessel’s exhaust was a rainbow flag waved at Madame Yarnell and the Heliodorans, some ten klicks to the west. Either the Obadiah’s commander expected to lift again before anyone could react, or—
Or the commander didn’t care what a regiment of light infantry might attempt. The Obadiah was coming in with her landing doors open. The troops she carried were ready to un-ass the vessel as soon as the skids touched, or maybe a hair sooner.
“Bloody hell!” Mary Margulies shouted over the landing roar.
“She’s coming in loaded! She’s coming in with troops!”
The Obadiah landed a hundred meters away, like a bomb going off in the forest. Her exhaust and armored belly plates cleared their own LZ. Dirt and shattered trees flew away from the shock. Coke caressed Pilar’s head closer to his chest to protect her from the falling debris.
Lift fans howled through the shutdown sizzle of the landing engines. The rounded prow of a combat car burst through the fringe of forest which remained between the survey team and the LZ. The vehicle’s wing tribarrels covered the sides, but the commander’s weapon forward pointed straight at the van.
Coke stepped clear of the others, waving his sub-machine gun butt-upward. The combat car dropped to idle a meter from his feet. The legend on its scarred bow read Cutting Edge.
More vehicles deployed through the forest to either side. They were accompanied by squads of infantry riding one-man skimmers.
The commander of the leading car tilted up his tribarrel and raised his visor so that he could face Coke directly. “I’m Captain Garmin,” he announced, “with my C Troop, First of the First and L Troop, Third of the First for infantry. I’m in acting command, but I’m supposed to turn the force over to Major Coke if he hasn’t been incapacitated when we land. Are you Coke?”
You’re supposed to fucking what?
Aloud Coke said, “I’m Coke, but what are you doing here?” With a company of combat cars and a company of FDF infantry!
Garmin grinned broadly. Coke remembered him vaguely from back in the days of the Slammers, a non-com who’d gotten a field commission.
“The colonel took your initial reports and cut a deal with the Marvelan Confederacy,” Garmin explained. “We’re to clean a couple gangs off Cantilucca for them. Orders didn’t say anything about the Heliodorus Regiment, but I don’t guess that’ll change anything important.”
“I’ll be …” Coke muttered. He didn’t finish the thought because he didn’t know what the finish should be. “You’ve got just the two companies?”
“Yessir, but we’re not cadre and trainees,” Garmin said. “Most everybody in both troops wears the pin.”
The captain tapped the left side of his breast with an index finger. His clamshell armor didn’t show citations, but his meaning was clear: the expeditionary force was made up of Slammers veterans and soldiers with whom the veterans felt comfortable to serve. That was still true for much of the 1st Brigade of the Frisian Defense Forces.
“Right,” said Coke as the next sequence of actions cascaded through his mind. “Your troopers are ready to go, Captain?”
“My troopers are gone, Major,” Garmin corrected with justifiable pride. “Both troops have completed disembarking.”
He coughed and added, “The Obadiah is armed and has her own security element, sir. I’d figured to get to work with my entire force—if you hadn’t been around.”
“Right, hit them before they get organized,” Coke agreed. “Bob, set up in—”
He looked to his side. The intelligence officer had already re-erected his console, backing it against the parked van.
Barbour glanced up from a display of the Potosi area including the spaceport. Mauve icons denoted the Heliodoran forces. A platoon-sized Heliodoran detachment was probing Potosi, but the bulk of the regiment milled around the vessels on which it had landed.
“This’ll do, sir,” Barbour said. “I’m already patching data to the main com room of the ship. You can access it from there.”
He nodded up to Captain Garmin. “We’ve got sensors throughout the area of operations,” Barbour explained to the newcomer. “I’ll hand you targets on a plate.”
Garmin blinked in surprise. The officer who’d unloaded two troops inside of three minutes could appreciate professionalism in another man too.
“Niko, stay with Bob as security and a gofer,” Coke ordered. “The rest of us’ll nee
d a car.”
Who ever heard of running central intel from a shade tree? But Barbour was right, so long as he had a link to the nearby ship, it was as good a place as the next. “You others—”
“I’ll drive,” said Johann Vierziger. “It’s not my favorite slot, but I’m good enough at it.”
“I’ll give you my XO’s command car,” Captain Garmin said. “It’s—”
“Negative, Captain,” Coke interrupted. “You will give me a combat car. The one you’re in will do fine. If you want to ride into a firefight closed up in a can, be my guest—but I don’t.”
Coke hopped onto the skirts of Cutting Edge. “ASAP, Captain!” he prodded. Moden and Margulies were beside him—the logistics officer still shouldering his brace of heavy missiles. Vierziger mounted the bow slope and thumbed out the car’s surprised driver.
“I—” Garmin began, then swallowed a protest that he knew wasn’t going to do the least bit of good. “Yes sir,” he said as he swung over the far side of the fighting compartment. He took with him only his personal weapon—a grenade launcher—and an AWOL bag of possessions.
A good man. And willing to be a good subordinate.
Niko Daun looked up in disappointment as the team’s combat veterans crewed their new vehicle. Somebody had to keep an eye on the immediate surroundings while Barbour concentrated on his console. The sensor tech was the right person for the job …but he’d rather have been going along.
Coke checked the action of his tribarrel. It moved slickly on its gimbals, and the multifunction display beside it already glowed with enemy dispositions as reported by the survey team’s sensor array. The Heliodorans flat wouldn’t know what hit them.
Coke used the attached light pen to sketch the plan of action onto the display screen, from which it was echoed to every vehicle and helmet visor in his command. “C Troop, First and Second Platoons, north of Potosi. Flank speed, you’ll hit the port from the east. Third Platoon and HQ element, south of the town to the south side of the port. Bypass the town! We don’t want fighting there.”
He was setting up a dynamic version of an L-shaped ambush, in which the attacking elements moved against a static target. Fields of fire shouldn’t endanger friendly troops …much.
Coke rubbed his forehead before he continued. The only way to do this was headlong. If the Heliodorans had time to spread, it’d be the devil’s own job winkling out each squad with their buzzbombs and explosive bullets. He was afraid to think beyond the level of reflex, so he’d go with reflex.
“Infantry commander”—Coke didn’t even know that officer’s name—“leave a squad in blocking position at either end of town on the east-west road. Remainder of your forces, conform to the movements of their opposite numbers in C Troop. Captain Garmin, take operational control of the eastern element. I’ll handle the south.”
Via, he didn’t even have a callsign!
“Team One, that’s Tony One, over.”
“Charlie One, confirm, out,” said Garmin’s voice. Coke wondered where the cars’ CO had taken himself. Another combat car, he supposed.
“Lima One, confirm,” said a female stranger. “Do you want the mortars here, where the ship provides a base of fire, or shall I put them on line? Over.”
Bloody good question.
“Bring them along, Lima,” Coke decided aloud. Ten klicks was within the effective range of the troop’s pair of 10-cm automatic mortars, but he might want to use shellfire to prevent the Heliodorans from displacing west when the nutcracker of powergun bolts started to close. He’d best keep them near the target area. “Team out.”
He looked around at the vehicles and mounted infantry already in line with his car. “Let’s roll!” he ordered—
And noticed that Pilar Ortega squatted against the bulkhead of the fighting compartment, between Coke and Moden who manned the starboard tribarrel.
Vierziger poured power to the fans. He had as certain a touch with the fifty-tonne combat car as he did with a pistol’s trigger.
“Not you, Pilar!” Coke said. “Blood and martyrs, not you!”
“Me,” the auburn-haired woman said coolly. “I won’t stay behind, Matthew.”
She was holding a sub-machine gun, one of those Moden had brought aboard. She’d proved in Potosi that she could use one, would pull the trigger at least …
C Troop’s Headquarters Squad—Cutting Edge and the XO’s enclosed command car which carried additional commo in place of weapons and munitions—fell into line behind the five cars of 3d Platoon. Ten-man squads of infantry, each accompanied by a two-place gun jeep mounting a tribarrel, followed as the armor blazed a path through the scrub forest. Map data downloaded from the orbital scans provided a course for the lead driver, and the sensors Barbour monitored kept close watch on the Heliodorans.
“Bloody hell,” Coke repeated. He couldn’t very well throw her over the side of the car, could he?
Garmin’s crew had left two suits of back-and-breast armor behind when they evacuated the car so suddenly. Coke sighed.
“Sten, show her how to get into her armor,” he said, and he went back to planning the imminent battle.
The port’s facilities—maintenance sheds and the terminal buildings; thank the Lord Pilar had gotten herself clear—were on the north side of the fenced reservation. The south was unobstructed, though there were twelve ships scattered over the ground in addition to the five from which the Heliodorus Regiment was slowly disembarking.
Coke had put the weight of his main thrust on the side toward which the newly landed regiment was moving, but the shock of ten combat cars and two infantry platoons was likely to drive the Heliodorans back. When they realized their south flank was being raked by a lesser force, they’d fight like raging hell to blow a way clear.
It was going to be interesting.
Coke’s helmet AI filtered out all but Priority 1 messages. Margulies leaned close to him and said, loudly enough to be heard if her commander wanted to, “Barbour’s told Madame Yarnell that the Obadiah’s a freighter that lost gyro control during normal set-down.”
“She’s not going to believe that, is she?” Coke said in surprise.
“Via, no!” Margulies agreed. Overlays projected across the inner surface of the security lieutenant’s visor distorted her hard smile. “From what they’re saying through the bugs in the terminal building, they’re sure we’re smugglers who picked a bad time to land and try to undercut the Delos cartel. Yarnell figures to take care of us smugglers just as soon as she’s got Potosi secured.”
Matthew Coke’s mind flamed with blood and cyan light. He laughed. The sound made Pilar’s face go blank in an expression closely akin to fear.
The south column burst from scrub into bottom land planted with gage. The leading car boosted its speed to 60 kph, three times the rate at which it had picked its way through the heavy growth. The combat cars were capable of doubling that in open terrain, but the infantry wouldn’t have been able to keep up.
The gage crop was a month or so short of harvest. The reedy stems were a full meter tall, but the heads where the drug concentrated hadn’t taken on the orangish tinge of full ripeness.
At Captain Garmin’s orders, the cars spread from line-ahead formation to line abreast. As directed, Vierziger placed Cutting Edge on the left of the formation while the platoon leader took the right. There was an officer in position if the force had to displace suddenly toward either flank, and Coke was at the hinge of the attack.
“There’s shooting in town,” Margulies murmured, relaying data from the intelligence officer. “The Heliodorans ran into a couple dozen Astras who’d gone to ground and came out as the patrol arrived. The Astras just want to surrender to somebody, but the patrol leader’s calling for heavy backup.”
“I’d as soon,” Sten Moden said, “if there wasn’t fighting in Potosi. Civilians are bound to get hurt.”
“When we take the main force,” Coke said, “the rest—Heliodorans and syndicate both—the rest�
��ll die on the vine.”
Civilians weren’t his concern at the moment. His task was to defeat hostile troops….
The column blasted by a dozen farmers’ huts in fenced courtyards. Occasionally a shiver of movement indicated someone watching through the palings or from a shuttered window.
A squad of infantry dropped off to cover the community until the force was safely clear, but there was no real threat. A syndicate garrison might still occupy the loopholed stone building, but the flag was gone from the pole on the roof peak. Surviving gunmen didn’t want to be identified with either of the losing parties.
“If there’s ever to be peace on Cantilucca,” said Pilar Ortega with a harshness at variance with the soldiers’ professional calm, “it’ll come the way you’re bringing it. No other way.”
Coke’s eyes danced from the actual terrain to dots crawling across the combiner screen of his multifunction display. “Team One to Team elements,” he ordered. “Take preliminary attack positions with at least five meters of screening between you and the perimeter fence. Out.”
The south column was back in brush again, uncultivated country that was too dry to raise healthy gage. Vierziger slowed their car and pulled it off the general line of advance. The spaceport perimeter and all the structures within it were directly north of them but out of sight.
The local vegetation averaged three meters tall. A few trees rose half again as high before they flared out like golf tees. The trees had whippy, thin trunks, but their crowns were of straw-colored foliage which provided a complete visual screen. Someone in the spaceport tower could conceivably notice that the vegetation waved with the passage of the armored vehicles, but the chance of anybody being that alert was vanishingly slight.
Besides, the Frisians weren’t going to be waiting very long.
A squad of infantry dropped off its skimmers and wormed its individual way into the scrub. The infantry could get much closer to the start line than the combat cars without risk of being observed. The squad’s air-cushion gun jeep halted back with the cars.
The mortars were jeep-mounted also. By themselves they could keep up with the infantry easily, but the jeeps carried only two 4-round ammo chargers. The remainder of the ammunition supply rode in a wheeled caisson behind each jeep.
