Empire of Man

by David Weber

  “Let’s hope it goes that way,” the subchief said gloomily, “but so far, the iron heads have been doing much better out of this than we have.”

  “Listen up!” Bistem Kar’s powerful voice boomed over the gathered infantry division. “So far, this whole war has been going for the Boman, but we’re taking it to them now. The only thing that stands between us and victory is that the cavalry is trapped in there.”

  He gestured over his shoulder to the deep woods.

  “We’re going to go in there and find them. It won’t be hard.” There was an uneasy chuckle at that, for the crackle of gunfire was clear in the distance. “Then we’re going to open up a hole and let them out. Then we march back to the city.

  “I won’t kid you; this is going to be a tough fight. But we can do it. All you have to do is aim low and obey your officers. Now, let’s go give the Boman a little taste of what war with K’Vaern’s Cove means!”

  “Lieutenant Fain,” the battalion CO said, “we’ve been tasked with putting out a company of skirmishers. Do you know the difference between skirmishing and regular fighting?”

  Light was just beginning to filter through the trees, but there still wasn’t enough to see your hand in front of your face, much less distinguish a white thread from a black. The entire march from the city had been made in inky darkness, and only the sheer insanity of it had prevented complete disaster. After all, the Boman had known no one would be crazy enough to try it, so why bother to set up ambushes along the route? Now, with dawn approaching, the infantry was arrayed to pry the cavalry out of its trap. If it could.

  “Skirmishing means to spread out and move slow,” the Diaspran said in reply to the question. “Move from cover to cover. You’re trying to find the enemy force. When you do, you engage them at maximum range from cover. You try to slow them up and figure out how they’re deployed, but you can’t let yourself get pinned down by them, or they’ll kill you.”

  Major Ni sighed.

  “As I suspected, you know far more about it than my other company commanders. Congratulations, you just volunteered.”

  “Sir, this isn’t a skirmisher unit,” the Diaspran protested. “You use woodsmen for skirmishers. Or trained forces. It’s a job for . . . crack shots and experts!”

  “Nonetheless,” Ni said with a gesture of command. “Get out in front.”

  Fain went trudging back to his new company, wondering how to pass on the word.

  “Straighten up,” Pol said. “Don’t let them see you slime.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Fain asked. It was more words than Pol usually used in a week.

  “Sergeant Julian,” was the only reply.

  Fain started to think about that. How would Julian handle the situation? Well, first of all the sergeant would be hard as nails. No protests would be allowed. Julian would explain what they were going to do in a way that made clear he was a past master of the technique . . . whether he’d ever heard of it before in his life or not.

  Fain had trained with the Marton Regiment, so he knew, in general, who were the crack shots. There were quite a few who were good in Delta Company, and that was important with skirmishers.

  Before the recently promoted lieutenant knew it, he’d practically walked into his formation.

  “All right, you yard birds!” he snapped. “We’ve been detailed as skirmishers. And we’re going to show the rest of these shit-for-brains what that means . . . !”

  Roger had just taken a sip of water from his camel bag when the skirmishers pelted back from their sentry posts.

  “Here they come!” one of them shouted as he tumbled over the hastily constructed wall.

  The former laborers of the New Model Army had worked hard through the night, and the fortifications were as well constructed as anyone could have done in the time available to them. They consisted of a shallow wall and a trench behind the stream, all covered by a thin line of infantry pickets. Most of the cavalry had made it back and was forming up at the rear, and as soon as Pri pronounced them ready, they would head for the flanks to reinforce the Marines.

  Cases of spare ammunition and rations from the pack turom were spaced along the wall, runners had been assigned, and most of the pack animals—including a recalcitrant Patty—had been sent to the rear, up the road towards Sindi, to clear the fighting position.

  All that was left to do was fight.

  “Captain Pahner, Roger here,” Roger said into his radio, considerably more lightly than he actually felt. “We’re about to engage an estimated two to three thousand screaming barbarians. I have, as usual, created numerous bricks without straw. And might I say once more how incredibly much fun this whole Mardukan Tour has been. We really must try it again sometime.”

  Despite himself, Pahner chuckled, but the chuckle had a grim note.

  “Just finish them off and sit tight,” he said, “because it doesn’t look like I’m going to have anyone to send you for a while. The north bank is heating up.”

  One of the skirmishers paused, raised a hand, and made the sign for lots of good guys. Then he corrected it to bad guys.

  Krindi Fain grunted and motioned for the spread-out company to move over to the left. The Marines had a term for the movement he wanted, but at the moment, he couldn’t think what it was. The idea, though, was clear. When they opened fire, the Boman would know they were being attacked, and if the skirmishers attacked from right in front of their own main force, the Boman would know where their enemies were and where to counterattack. But if the skirmishers moved over to the side, the Boman might be suckered into attacking in the wrong direction.

  In which case, they were basik on toast.

  Most of the lead scouts, all people who’d at least been in the woods a couple of times, started making signals that they were seeing Boman, and Fain waved the rest of the company to a halt. Clearly the enemy was concentrating on the cavalry, but sooner or later they were bound to notice the force at their back. It was time to get it stuck in, so he grabbed a messenger and scribbled a note.

  “Verbal to the Major. Tell him we’re engaging . . . enfilading the Boman from the west flank.”

  “Enfil . . . enfol . . .”

  “Never mind. Just tell him we’re hitting them from the west. Get going.”

  The messenger disappeared into the undergrowth, and Fain looked around. He caught the company’s sergeant’s eye and made a gesture across his throat, followed by a complicated and terribly rude one.

  Time to get it stuck in.

  Honal looked up at the sudden sound of a light crackle of riflery from the south.

  “About time,” he grunted.

  The Boman had gotten increasingly aggressive even as windrows of their dead built up around the perimeter. The undergrowth beyond the crude abattis was now so shot torn that the jungle forest had been opened up from the ground to about five meters up, and it was all swarming with Boman.

  “Just in the nick,” Rastar agreed, tightening a bandage around one of Honal’s upper arms. “Spread the word to get ready to move out. When we do, I want the sick, the halt, the lame, and the dead on saddles. And we need to be ready to cover the retreat. These bastards are going to be really irritated to see us leaving, and it isn’t going to be easy to convince them to say goodbye.”

  Fain looked to both sides. The Boman in front had gone to ground under the hail of fire from the skirmishers, but more were probing around the flanks.

  “Tell First Platoon to fall back and south,” he said, and turned to Erkum Pol. “Get the reserve to the south and make sure our way home stays open. Don’t let them run, and make sure they shoot low.”

  “Okay,” the private said, and loped off.

  “Come on, Major,” the newly promoted company commander whispered. “Where’s the rest of the pocking army?”

  “Colonel,” Bistem Kar growled, “what seems to be the problem?”

  “I’m ordering my lines, General,” the Marton Regiment’s commander said. “It will ta
ke a bit more time.”

  The officers of the regiment were in a huddle by the side of the Therdan-Sindi trail, and it was apparent from their expressions that the K’Vaernian commander had appeared in the midst of an argument. A heated one, from the looks of things, and that was never good news in a combat zone.

  “Ask me for anything but time,” he muttered. Unfortunately, Colonel Rahln, the regimental commander, like too many of Kar’s senior officers, was not one of his long-term Guard officers.

  The field army had been organized into five divisions, each of three regiments, plus the attached League cavalry. Each regiment consisted of one four-hundred-man rifle battalion, two four-hundred-man pike battalions, and two hundred-man companies of assegai-armed spearmen for flank protection. That meant each regiment represented almost a third of the entire prewar Guard’s manpower, and there were fifteen of them in the army. Kar had kept command of the First Division for himself, and he and Pahner had at least managed to ensure that all of the other divisional commanders were Guard regulars. But despite everything they’d been able to do, all too many of the regimental commands had gone to political cronies of influential councilors or merchants, and Sohna Rahln, the Marton Regiment’s CO, was one of them. Prior to the war, Rahln had been a merchant involved in several businesses, notably shipyards, but not a sailor . . . and definitely not a soldier. The appointment had been a sop designed to persuade him to support the operation, and now it was endangering it.

  “Colonel Rahln, could I speak to you for a moment in private?” the general rumbled.

  “I have no secrets from my officers,” the former merchant said loftily, and Kar gritted his teeth. One thing he particularly disliked about Rahln was that, like many of the wealthy political appointees scattered through the force, he could never quite seem to forget his prewar contempt for the Guard. After all, if the Guardsmen hadn’t been stupid—or lazy—they would have gotten real jobs during peacetime, wouldn’t they? “You can have your say here.”

  “All right,” Kar said. “If that’s the way you want it. We have skirmishers out there, from your regiment, who are in contact with the enemy and need your support. We have cavalry trapped out there that needs to be relieved. You have the point regiment, and you are personally responsible for the movement of your units. You will begin the assault in the next ten minutes, or I’ll have you shot.”

  “You can’t do that!” Rahln snapped. “I’ll have you broken for even suggesting it!”

  The K’Vaernian general reached out and lifted the lighter officer into the air by his leather harness. The colonel squawked in shock at the totally unexpected assault, but his shock turned to terror as the Guard officer flipped him over a hip and then slammed him onto the ground on his back so hard that everyone within three meters actually heard the air driven from his lungs.

  Kar dropped to one knee and took the colonel by the throat with one false-hand.

  “I could squash you like a bug,” he hissed, “and nobody would care. Not here. Not in K’Vaern’s Cove. Now get a spine, and let your officers—who, unlike you, know what they’re doing—get to work!

  “Nine minutes,” he added, with a shake of the throat.

  “Are you sure that was a good idea?” his aide asked as they headed back to the command post.

  “The only problem with it was getting that cretin’s foul slime on my clean harness,” the general snorted. “His battalion commanders are professionals. If he leaves them alone, he’ll make the deadline. But cut orders to replace him with Ni if he continues to fuck up. And send a team of Guards . . . with revolvers and a watch.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Fain looked around. The remnants of his company were gathered by the side of another of the numerous streams found in the Sindi Valley. They’d managed to pull out of the developing pocket, but they’d left some bodies behind. Pol was here, though, with the reserve which had hammered the Boman trying to flank them from the south. The company had found it necessary to watch its footing on the way out to avoid tripping over the bodies of dead barbarians.

  The brass, naturally, had failed to provide a map, so Fain had only the vaguest notion of where they were. He did know, however, that the Boman had pulled back for the moment. They were maintaining their perimeter around the trapped cavalry, and they appeared to think the skirmishers were the only threat. That was nice, since it presumably also meant that the barbs still didn’t have a clue where the real threat was coming from, which was precisely what Fain had hoped he and his people would accomplish.

  The only problem was that they weren’t skirmishing anymore. He needed to keep the Boman aware of Delta Company’s presence if he wanted to keep them from figuring out where the rest of the relief force was, and he knew it. But he also knew that, ultimately, raiding on the flanks like this didn’t do any good, however much it confused the enemy, unless there was an immediate follow on assault, and an assault was exactly what had failed to materialize. It was obvious that if the company went back, the Boman would be on them like atul on a stray turom, but unless the rest of the regiment got its head out of its ass and actually moved when he headed back in, it would only get his people killed without even doing any good.

  It wasn’t supposed to work this way. There should have been an assault. The Major had said there would be an assault, not just his single company thrown out here in the middle of nowhere without support.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way, and he hoped it was going better elsewhere.

  “Captain Pahner, Roger here.”

  The voice sounded in the captain’s mastoid implant, and he keyed his helmet.

  “Ah, Prince Roger! Still alive, according to the little chip in my brain which I suspect detonates if you die.”

  “I see everyone is in a good mood,” the prince said. In the background, Pahner could hear continuous and heavy rifle fire. “I’d like to revise that previous estimate of mine. Make that three thousand-plus Boman.”

  “I really love this business,” Pahner said conversationally. “I know that no plan survives contact with the enemy, but have any plans ever gone this awry?”

  “I’m sure they must have,” Roger said in an encouraging sort of way. “Somewhere. But I digress. I don’t suppose you have anything resembling a reserve back there?”

  “Actually, I did,” Pahner said. “I’d detached half the laborers back to combat duties. But I just sent them north of the river to back up Bistem. It would take at least a couple of hours just to get them back to this bank, much less to your position. Why?”

  “Just wondering,” Roger said, and Pahner heard the distinct sound of a bead pistol firing. “We got a bit flanked here.”

  “Roger,” Pahner said in a very calm voice, “are you surrounded?”

  “I prefer to call it a target-rich environment,” the prince replied. “But the good news is that they seem bound and determined to wipe us out rather than bypass us and head for the city or the D’Sley road. So we’re succeeding in our mission, aren’t we?”

  “But I’m not,” Pahner said calmly, very calmly. “I’m pulling the rest of the infantry off of the stores.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t bother on our account,” Roger said. “You couldn’t get infantry here for hours, and this is gonna be over, one way or the other, in another thirty minutes.”

  Roger ducked as Despreaux fired over his head. Particles of black powder stung the back of his neck, the muzzle flash singed his ponytail, and only his helmet kept him from being permanently deafened.

  “Careful there, honey!” he said. “I’ve always wondered what a toot looks like, but I don’t want to look at my own.”

  “Screw you, Your Highness,” the sergeant said as a rifle volley hammered the latest charge into offal. “That one was too close.”

  “Not so bad,” Bes said, sticking his head out of the slit trench they’d gouged out of the muddy earth behind their original positions. “Would have been nice if we’d been able to hold the original line, but th
is one isn’t bad, except on the flanks.”

  “Speaking of which,” Despreaux said. “Reneb, check in. Everybody still here?”

  “Still here,” the team leader confirmed. “No casualties in the team so far, and we’re piling them up.”

  “Same here,” Roger said, looking out of the slit trench.

  There were only twelve humans in the entire force, but each of them had begun the day with thirty ten-round magazines for their new rifles. They were conserving that ammunition as much as they could, letting the Mardukans’ single-shot rifles carry most of the fight at long range. But whenever the barbarians began another charge, the sheer volume of fire from those magazine-fed rifles and the cavalry’s revolvers wreaked dreadful carnage.

  The ground on both sides of the trench for as far as Roger could see into the jungles was littered with Boman bodies. The barbarians had learned that the only way to get into ax range was to charge forward blindly, seeking to break through the fire zone by sheer weight of numbers. A few times, it had gotten down to hand-to-hand, but even there the Carnan Battalion and the Basik’s Own had managed to hold their own, and the assaults had been repulsed.

  “Here they come again!” Bes shouted, closing his rifle breech and firing at the first of the charging Boman.

  This time the barbarians had managed to coordinate their attacks, which made things tougher. They came from both sides, but not directly at the flanks, which probably would have rolled up Roger’s entire embattled position. The prince looked to the nominal “rear” and shook his head as the aiming reticle appeared in his vision. He tossed his magnum to Cord, who’d become quite a respectable rifle shot himself, drew his bead pistol once more, took up a two-handed stance, and began a timed fire sequence. One shot per second cracked out for each of the fourteen seconds it took the Boman line to reach the trench, and each shot took out a barbarian.