by David Drake
"In a few minutes we'll head for Scepter Base," Jonas said in a reasonable tone. "I'll see if I can't keep us off perimeter watch for tonight. What's left of it."
The sergeant obviously didn't like the situation either, but his rank kept him from grumbling about orders. Ericssen would have probably acted the same as Jonas if their positions had been reversed. Mercenary soldiering had never been the easiest way to earn a living. People who didn't know that when they signed on with the Slammers learned it quick enough thereafter.
Hula Girl's intakes made the brush to either side wobble toward the vehicle. Gossamer fuzz as long as a man's fingers hung from the branches. The tendrils sucked moisture from the air at night when the relative humidity rose, though the vegetation only flowered after a rain.
It might not rain here for years.
"If they'd left the satellites up to begin with," Panchin said, "then one side or the other would've knocked them down when they thought that gave them an advantage. Maybe before an attack, when they had their people in position already. We'd still be out here."
War is a costly business. Importing mercenaries and their specialist equipment from off-planet is devastatingly expensive, but at least in the short run it costs less than losing. Both sides on Sulewesi had hired a few of the best and most expensive troops in the human universe. Hammer's Slammers were paid by the government, while the rebels had three comparable armored battalions from Brazil on Earth.
Four or five thousand soldiers, no matter how well equipped, weren't enough to fight a war across the whole surface of a planet; locally raised forces could only be trained as mechanized infantry because time was so short. To bridge the gap between the general mass and the highly paid cutting edge, the government and rebels both used less-sophisticated mercenaries. The midrange troops provided weapons and communications of a higher order than those produced on Sulewesi, but at a tenth the cost of outfits like the Slammers and the Brazilians.
A tenth as effective, too, the Slammers thought; but a pipe gun throwing a chunk of lead was still enough to splash your brains across the deck of a tank if you happened to be in the wrong place. War didn't stop being a dangerous business just because you were good at it.
Cortezar goosed the fans to take Hula Girl onto a ridge whose rocks had resisted the wind better than the light soil to either side. The skirts rubbed stones, clanking and throwing sparks. Ball-shaped vegetation flattened and shivered away from the gale that squirted under the plenum chamber.
Panchin held firmly onto the twin spade grips of his tribarrel as the deck slanted beneath his boots. "I don't see why they had to split the Regiment up this way," he said. "You can't blame Captain Stenhuber sending us out alone when all he's got to work with is seven combat cars and the G Company command vehicle."
"Yeah," Frosty agreed. "If we were all together we'd go through everything else on this planet like a spike through an eyeball."
"You bet we would," Jonas said in grim disapproval. "And while we were doing that, the rebels'd smash the rest of the government army, putting a platoon or two of Brazilian armor on point each time. The people who hired us want to win the war, not just one battle."
"The odometer says this is half a kilometer, Sarge," Cortezar said with an edge in her voice. Reg Panchin felt alone, but really he was elbow to elbow with two fellow troopers. Cortezar sat by herself in the driver's compartment, and she was a meter closer to the most likely direction for a first shot besides.
"Yeah, all right," Jonas agreed. "I make Scepter Base forty-two degrees from here, but we'll want to dodge—"
A hand flare popped against the heavens and drained back to the desert floor as a shower of silver droplets. Panchin wasn't an expert at judging distances at night, but he didn't imagine the signal could have been launched from more than half a kilometer away.
"Bloody hell," said Ericssen. "We found them after all."
Jonas tilted the muzzles of his tribarrel skyward and tapped out three spaced rounds on the butterfly trigger between the grips. Each bolt of copper plasma lit the night cyan. Heated air cracked shut behind each hissing discharge.
"Head for the flare, Rita," the sergeant ordered. "But take it easy—I want to raise them with the laser communicator before we go barreling in."
Frosty nodded. "There's no such thing as friendly fire," he agreed. "And if they're not trigger happy, they ought to be with as many rebels as there are operating in this sandbox."
Three flares and at least a dozen bursts of automatic gunfire lofted skyward from the previous location northeast of Hula Girl. Distance thinned the muzzle blasts to a nervous rustling, like brushes stroking a drumhead. The tracers were the white used by local forces and a strobing pink that Panchin hadn't seen before.
He switched through the UHF and VHF bands on his commo helmet but only picked up static. He couldn't tell whether the problem was the helmet—even intercom was scratchy; this desert, where mineral deposits and temperature inversions played hell with everything in the electro-optical spectrum—or most likely, that nobody in the missing column was transmitting on any push that Hula Girl's crew had been given for the operation.
The combat car ambled toward the flares as Sergeant Jonas bent over the multifunction display fixed to the bulkhead beside his tribarrel. Panchin echoed the display for a moment on his face shield but cut back quickly to light amplification of his normal viewpoint. If he'd been in the Tactical Operations Center at Scepter Base where he belonged, it might have been interesting to watch blurs resolve into icons against a terrain map as the car processed sensor data on the column Hula Girl was approaching. Out here it might mean that Reg Panchin, right wing gunner, didn't see the hostile who was aiming a buzzbomb at Hula Girl.
Ericssen must have been thinking the same thing. He touched a button on the tribarrel's pintle. The barrel group rotated a third of a turn; a flat 2cm disk clucked from the ejection slot. The disk was a polyurethane matrix holding an alignment of copper atoms which, when stripped in a powergun's chamber, streamed downrange as a ravening cyan plasma. Frosty was checking—again—to make sure that his weapon was loaded and ready.
There was nothing on Panchin's side of the car. Nothing but wind and desert.
"Hold here, Rita," Jonas ordered. He started to raise the communications mast even before Hula Girl settled on idling fans.
Panchin helped set the bracing wires of the telescoping five-meter mast; this was something he'd done before. Jonas used a joystick to align the transceiver head and began to speak into the separate microphone. The lens on top of the mast directed his words over the intervening brush and sand to the local column in the form of a modulated laser beam.
After a moment the sergeant straightened. "All right, they're expecting us," he said. "Take us in, Rita."
To save time he collapsed the mast without undoing the wires; they wound like spiderweb across the fighting compartment. Panchin coiled them quickly on their spools, smoothing kinks with his left hand.
Hula Girl wallowed over another crest. The column they'd been searching for was halted in the broad gully below. That was probably part of the reason they'd been out of communications for so long. Panchin had been a soldier too long to be surprised that nobody'd had sense enough to drive one of the working vehicles onto a ridge for a better signal.
There were four Sulewesi-built six-wheeled armored personnel carriers and a command vehicle that was similar but slightly larger than the APCs; it had four axles instead of three. The recovery/repair vehicle with a crane and parts lockers used the longer chassis as well.
Besides the locals, the column contained three medium tanks with caterpillar tracks, ceramic armor, and a long coil gun in the hull. The tanks' turbine engines whined, but power for the coil guns must come from another source—probably magneto-hydrodynamic generators. A small cupola offset on the hull contained an automatic weapon.
One tank towed another. The third tank was towing an APC. The recovery vehicle towed a second APC; and, judging by
the removed cover plates, the command vehicle had broken down also. Troops in a variety of uniforms stood around the vehicles. Some of them waved.
"Typical ratfuck," Jonas muttered. "Ninety klicks is too far for a change of base even when everybody knows what he's doing."
Hula Girl started down the slope. Cortezar deliberately broke away the gully rim to ease the angle. Sand and pebbles, some of them big enough to whang like bullets against the skirts, blasted ahead of the car in a spreading cloud.
"We going to be able to talk to these people?" Frosty asked. He had to use helmet intercom for Jonas to hear the question over the fan noise.
"The CO, Major Lebusan, spoke good Standard," Jonas said. "The rest of them, I dunno. Probably not."
Most rich people on Sulewesi were well educated and spoke Standard, the interstellar commercial language. Most rich people also managed to stay out of the military, at least the part of the military that might have to do some fighting. A few of the Slammers learned languages for fun, but nobody aboard Hula Girl knew more Malay than was necessary to ask for sex or a drink.
Cortezar slowed to a halt beside the command vehicle and cut the fans. A small man covered his face with a spotted bandanna until the dust had settled, then stepped forward. He wore a saucer hat with gold braid and his uniform was tailored; he'd probably been dapper some twenty hours earlier at the start of the march.
"I am Major Lebusan," the local said. "Can you fix my vehicle? That would be best."
"We're not mechanics, Major," Sergeant Jonas said. He swung a leg over the bulkhead.
"I've worked on diesels," Cortezar said as she climbed out of the driver's compartment.
"We'll take a look then," Jonas said. He jumped to the ground. "Frosty, you keep an eye on the sensors, will you?"
Panchin took that as clearance for him to leave Hula Girl also. The ground would feel good for a change, and it'd be nice to have more elbow room than there was in the fighting compartment.
A burly man with a full black beard walked over to Panchin. He wore a ripple-camouflaged uniform of a style Panchin hadn't seen before. The holster across the center of his chest held a heavy sidearm with a folding stock.
"I Dolgov," the man said, extending a big hand to Panchin. Panchin took it, expecting—correctly—that Dolgov would squeeze hard as they shook. "Zaporoskiye Brigade. Tanks!"
Dolgov pointed to the tank being towed. "Electrics all go out, poof! Kaput. These Sulewesi monkeys, they not real mechanics. Good for nothing monkeys!"
Panchin wondered how well the Zaporoskiye maintenance section would do with Hula Girl if she broke down. The range in sophistication was no greater. Of course, the locals didn't seem able to repair their own command vehicle. Aloud he said, "We'll guide you to the firebase. Somebody there can fix you up, right?"
"Yah, monkeys," Dolgov said, shaking his head morosely. He spat into the night.
Before Panchin could figure out whether that was a "yes" or a "no," Jonas called, "Hey Panchin! Get over here, will you?"
He nodded to Dolgov and joined the group around the command vehicle. Cortezar had stepped away and the locals were closing the engine compartment again. A gas lantern hanging from a cable hook on a fender threw white light across the ground and nearby personnel from their waists down.
"You double-checked the base coordinates, didn't you?" Jonas asked bluntly. "The major here says it's grid A27, 4-4-9, 1-3-0."
"Negative!" Panchin said, feeling cold inside. He had checked the coordinates in the TOC before Hula Girl left Trident Base, though. "A-2-7, that's a roger, but the block was 6-2-1, 5-2-5."
Major Lebusan took off his fancy hat and slapped it angrily against his thigh.
His uniform was green with a touch of mustard yellow. Though the major wore short-sleeved field kit except for the hat, an array of medal ribbons spilled from his left breast to his right.
"That is not right!" he said. "Look, I show you!"
He snapped his fingers. An aide handed him a clipboard holding a map covered in clear plastic. Panchin and the sergeant both bent to read it. The crayon markings on the plastic were in cursive Malay script, but the circle drawn over Knoll 45/13 on the printed map was clear enough.
"Sarge," Frosty said over the intercom, "I'll bet they're in one of the outlying companies. I never saw those tanks at any of the firebases we've operated out of."
"I'll bet he's right," Panchin said. He wasn't sure if Zaporoskiye was a place or just the name of a freelance unit raised on some Slavic planet.
Sergeant Jonas lifted his helmet and rubbed his bare scalp again. "All right," he said tiredly. "Scepter Base is ten klicks away. I wasn't willing to tow this pig—"
He nodded at the command vehicle.
"—that far. But I guess we can manage three. Panchin, give me a hand. We'll use our own towlines."
Under his breath to Panchin as they walked to Hula Girl, the sergeant added, "Because their bloody cables won't be worth any more than any of the other bloody equipment on this bloody planet!"
"And you will carry me in your tank, please," Major Lebusan called after them.
Major Lebusan's presence made Hula Girl's fighting compartment a little more cramped, but he was a small man and didn't wear body armor like the three Slammers. Panchin couldn't blame the major for riding with them. The broken-down command vehicle had no power for its communication devices, and Hula Girl's fans kicked a quite astounding amount of sand and dust over it besides.
The grip of the Sulewesan vehicle's wheels meant that sometimes it jerked Hula Girl unexpectedly, even though the combat car was heavier and had plenty of excess power for the tow. Friction with the soil was a more efficient means of braking than the vectored thrust of an air-cushion vehicle like Hula Girl.
For three kilometers it was bearable. There were rebels all over this stretch of desert. Abandoning a broken-down vehicle could mean making the other side a gift of it.
"Are there going to be any friendlies at this outpost?" Cortezar asked over the intercom. "Slammers, I mean."
"Negative," Panchin said. "I'd have handled their supply requests if there were."
That was his job: supply clerk for the 1st and 2nd Platoons of G Company, Hammer's Slammers; assigned to the government's Desert Dragons combat group, a motley assortment of locals and off-planet mercenaries in roughly regimental strength. The Slammers' combat cars had been perimeter security for the main body during the change of base. It was Hula Girl's bad luck that she was the nearest car to where the missing column was supposed to be; and Reg Panchin's bad luck that he happened to be riding her instead of another vehicle.
The column was echeloned back to the left of Hula Girl and her tow to avoid the worst of the dust. The personnel of broken-down vehicles were all packed onto others. A rebel ambush would mean a massacre; but again, Panchin understood why the weary locals wanted to escape choking discomfort even at the risk of their lives.
"Sarge, we ought to have a sight of them from the next rise," Cortezar said. Her compartment had a multi function display like the commander's, so she didn't have to echo the terrain map on her face shield as Panchin could have done.
"Right, I'm getting their signatures already," Jonas said. He sounded a little concerned. "Keep us hull down and I'll let the major talk us in on the laser. We don't have any of the codes for this laager."
Cortezar slowed Hula Girl carefully, then cut her steering yoke to the left so that the Sulewesan command vehicle didn't slam them from behind as it rolled off the last of its inertia. Flares were the only way to signal the remainder of the column, and Jonas wasn't willing to target Hula Girl that way. The other vehicles, local and Zaporoskiye alike, stopped anyway without command. Their crews didn't know how close the laager was, and they didn't want to be leading a trek through the desert. Both sides had troops scattered throughout the region.
Sergeant Jonas deployed the mast. Panchin stared at the desert, switching his face shield repeatedly from thermal viewing to light amplification a
nd back again. He thought one enhancement technique might disclose something that he'd missed using the other. Rebels could be lurking just outside the laager, their electromagnetic signatures hidden by those of the friendly vehicles; waiting to ambush late-comers like Hula Girl and the column she was shepherding in.
There was nothing but sand and bushes bending in the night wind. In the false-color thermal display, dew-gathering tendrils were a cool blue against the warmer orange of the branches from which they hung.
Major Lebusan talked animatedly on the communicator, waving his arms. Jonas watched the night ahead, his hands on his tribarrel's grip. The line troopers knew even better than a clerk like Panchin that this was a dangerous location.
Troops on the other halted vehicles called questions. When that brought no response, an officer in a less-ornate version of Lebusan's uniform jumped from the nearest APC and ran over to Hula Girl. He spoke in quick Malay beside the combat car. The skirts and bulkhead were so high that the small man close to the vehicle couldn't see the major in the fighting compartment.
Frosty Ericssen looked down from his gun. "We're talking to the laager, buddy," he said to the local in Standard. "Do you understand? Your friends are right over the hill there."
"Ah!" said the local. He ran back to the APC, chattering loudly.
Lebusan turned from the microphone fixed at the base of the mast. "Yes, yes, we're clear to enter," he said angrily to Jonas. "Where was I? they ask! They abandon me in the desert and they claim I'm at fault?"
Jonas telescoped the mast. Moving stresses would break the raised wand. Panchin helped the sergeant coil the braces as he had before.
An engine roared. The nearer APC started forward, spraying gravel from all six wheels. The remainder of the column followed a moment later. It was like watching the starting grid of a race. Two routes over the low ridge merged beyond a grove of shrubs with intertwined branches. Panchin expected to see a collision, but the recovery vehicle gave way at the last moment to the tank towing an APC.
