by Chris Bunch
Jasmine, as she made her farewells and cut off, noted that von Baldur looked drawn, worried.
• • •
The Shaoki tried again, but this time Grok was ready for them.
His ship was ‘casting in all directions, on all of the frequencies used by the Shaoki, carefully noted by Grok during Star Risk’s time with them. Commands, sightings, reports, all were lost in a cascade of static that did everything from buzz to yodel.
In addition, Grok was ‘casting to all Khelat ships close to III signals to rebroadcast that turned radar, real-time screens, and even hyperspace com to garbled hash.
The Shaoki retired in bafflement.
Grok, even though he didn’t believe anyone could pick him up in his cozy, was cautious, and had the ship moved to a new, hidden location.
Three days later, the Shaoki made their major counterattack.
M’chel’s second lifter had been destroyed — she didn’t remember how — and she was in her third. Her first gunner, who thought of Riss as a lucky charm, came along.
M’chel was thinking the same of him.
• • •
Khelat intercept teams had been recording an excess of chatter prior to the attack. Star Risk had a pretty good idea what was being talked about, having some familiarity with previous Shaoki codes.
Von Baldur had been appalled at the lack of security. But he was quietly appalled.
Jasmine ran the rough decrypts through a not-terribly-sophisticated computer, and Star Risk had the Shaoki codes, complete.
That, von Baldur thought, was a good, easy way to impress the client and assist in getting the final bonus they wanted.
King Saleph offered a plan for a counterattack.
But Star Risk had their own plan.
Goodnight took elements of his two battalions out just before dawn.
The troops were broken down into four-man groups: gunner, ammo bearer, and two gun guards.
They crept out, through the lines, found holes to hide in, and waited.
At dawn, the Shaoki attacked, sending heavy lifters in front of their infantry.
The lifters were met with a very nasty surprise — or, rather, many little surprises.
Goodnight’s shock troops were armed with ground-to-air missiles, rather primitively brained.
But they didn’t need much in the way of brains.
A gunner would take a Shaoki lifter in his sights, launch and forget the missile, his loader stuffing another rocket in the tube.
From the Shaoki side, it looked like more than a hundred sudden small spurts of fire, and then their sensors clanged into life.
The lifters had four choices: crash land, in which case they stood a chance that the missiles would go over them; go high and get hit with a belly-strike; maintain course and die; or pray.
This was a day when the gods weren’t listening to prayers.
Lifters exploded, spun in, smashed into the rocky field.
Inchcape and six destroyers swept back and forth, parallel with and just behind the Khelat lines. They had the height advantage, and salvoed air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.
They were just out of range of the Maulers’ AA batteries, back of the Shaoki lines. A few fired, and their missiles were either taken out by countermissiles or the sites themselves were attacked with longer-ranged operator-guided missiles.
The Shaoki infantry went to ground, their assault stopped cold.
Prince Wahfer, seeing a chance for glory, broke orders and brought half a dozen cruisers in, holding at about ten thousand meters. It was too high for a proper attack, but the crashing bombardment didn’t do the Khelat cause any harm at all.
Again, the Shaoki began to retreat.
Then the rest of Goodnight’s battalions attacked, picking up their surviving rocket gunners and their escorts.
From cover, Riss’s regiment of lifters rose to the attack.
They’d been badly hit in previous days, but there were still enough of them to turn the retreat into a rout.
Following orders bellowed by Riss, they ignored the running infantrymen and attacked over them, at the Mauler positions.
The Maulers, confused by the intermingle of Shaoki and Khelat forces, also fell back, but in an orderly fashion.
Khelat lifters came in on Riss’s heels, hitting hard at their enemies.
Riss’s own lifter commanders wanted to go after the Shaoki infantry, but she swore as she’d never sworn before, yammering at the lifter noncoms and officers.
More afraid of her than the enemy, they obeyed, and her regiment held firm to its goal: the now ruined mine, which had been the Maulers’ and Shaoki defenders’ base.
But the Maulers had pulled back, and the collapsed buildings were abandoned. The Shaoki had moved back into the mountains, into prepared positions.
The Khelat had the base.
But III was still held by the Shaoki. There were more than enough missiles to keep the planet from being developed into a stepping stone.
Riss had a good idea that either the Maulers or the Shaoki had air plants in their positions. Or else they could slip in enough ships to resupply.
The long, bloody day was a nice, meaningless victory.
Now the siege would begin.
FORTY-THREE
The Maulers and the Shaoki were well dug in. Their lifters were turned into pillboxes — revetments were cut into the rock; the lifters would set down in them. Only the launch tubes and gun turrets stuck out, and these were camouflaged.
The Shaoki had a main base in the center of a broad mountain valley, and two large outposts to the east and west, guarding the valley’s entrances.
The Khelat attacked twice, suicidal frontal assaults.
Riss lost another lifter and its crew, although her amulet-gunner survived.
Then, in the time haze, there was a request from von Baldur to her regimental commander that she be allowed to “conference” with him aboard the Pride.
Riss shuddered at making “conference” into a verb, but was very glad to get off of III for even a short time.
She was able to shed her suit and uniform and luxuriate in a zero-G shower, globules of water floating about her.
The suit went in for reconditioning; the uniform was burnt.
She ate food, real food, and immediately her bowels growled at her, unused to anything but the constipatory field rations.
M’chel eyed the luxurious-looking cot in her cabin, decided she’d better go see Freddie before she allowed herself to lapse into unconsciousness.
Riss put on a pair of workout sweats, thought them the finest, most comfortable clothes she’d ever seen, and headed for the bridge.
An officer directed her to the admiral’s suite. It was very luxurious, but she was most interested in seeing Chas Goodnight.
If M’chel looked as drawn and exhausted as Chas, she decided, it was time for major plastic surgery.
He was nursing a drink, and, unbidden, went to a bar and mixed her a brandy and soda, strong on the brandy.
“Hell of a way to make a living,” he said.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Riss agreed.
“If we ate this combat shit up,” Goodnight said, “we should’ve stayed with the Alliance and their shitty pay.”
Riss nodded, sucked down brandy, as von Baldur came out.
He looked at the bar, visibly decided against a drink, and sat down, heaving a heavy sigh.
“I hate, hearing what you were saying as I came in, to be even more of a morale depressor, but I have to admit that this contract has me grinding my teeth,” he said.
“Every idea I have seems to get stymied by fate. I do not like our current situation, even though Alliance Credit is most pleased with our bank balance.”
“Income doesn’t do us good if we’re dead,” Goodnight said.
“So far, that has not happened,” Friedrich said. “I called the two of you up here because, since you are at the sharp end of the stick, you might have some idea
s on what could be done, remembering that we only break a contract if the money stops, the client loses or wins or goes after us.”
Silence for a few minutes.
“We could just pull out, and the hell with our reputation,” Riss said. “But we’re supposedly winning. If we were losing, now, that might look better on the old résumé. But as it is …” Her voice trailed off.
Goodnight just shook his head.
“So I guess there is no other course but to continue,” von Baldur said. “I suppose we can rationalize this nightmare by thinking of all the out-of-work soldiery we are employing.”
“Or, in the rest of the universe’s view,” Goodnight put in, “the number of thugs we’re keeping off the streets at night.”
The three exchanged looks, and, without ado, left the suite.
Riss slept around the clock, then went back to war, feeling a little guilty about having taken one of rank’s privileges.
• • •
No one still knew if the Shaoki/Maulers had an enormous store of ammunition and air or if they were getting secretly resupplied, but they showed no signs of running dry.
None of Inchcape’s destroyers or patrolling Khelat ships found any signs of a supply convoy.
And the siege dragged on.
• • •
Sappers and some of Technician Ells’s people came to III and put some of the abandoned mining machinery into life, added spatter shields and armor.
The sappers set to work, digging trenches that zigzagged forward toward the eastern outpost.
The Shaoki brought in artillery, rockets, but the sappers kept digging.
Since the diggers were mining machinery, the trenches weren’t the usual narrow workings but almost wide enough to accommodate one of M’chel’s lifters.
Mostly Riss kept her lifters in revetments, since the Maulers, or somebody over there, were too damned accurate with their mortars and gun tubes.
Lifters, both heavy and scout, had an additional mission — taking air, ammo, and food to the forward lines.
That was another way for soldiers to die — lifter crews blasted out of existence, line soldiers by mortar if they dared group up for meals.
Everyone complained, but not very loudly unless they were line soldiers.
Now, those bastards, everyone agreed, had it really rough….
• • •
Grok faithfully kept providing spoofery for raids, either aerial or on the ground.
Everyone knew it was getting bad — no one ever heard the alien complain.
Off-watch, he buried himself in abstruse philosophical works, and the gods help the poor crew member who bothered him with trivial matters like the war.
• • •
One thing working against Riss’s personal morale was the combat armor everyone wore. The suits had been taken out of Alliance service a long time ago, and almost everyone figured it was just a matter of them being obsolete.
Riss knew better, having seen some of the suits in an armory once, and a gunnery sergeant who was slightly older than god told her why they weren’t issued anymore.
The suits had been designed for combat, and were fitted with four “triage” units at the shoulder and hip. If someone was hit in an extremity, the triage units, which were unsightly lumps, came to life. They sealed the suit from atmosphere loss, automated jets injected opiates, and small laser units razored the limb off.
The casualty wouldn’t burn his lungs out in a vacuum or human-hostile atmosphere, and medics could quickly medevac the wounded.
Of course, the shock of first the wound and then the amputation might cause death, but that was part of the price.
The triage units were guaranteed failure-proof.
The gunny sergeant had said the operative word was almost failure-proof, which is why they were taken out of service. Every once in a while, something went wonky in the units and an uninjured soldier would lose an arm or a leg.
The suits were now at least twenty years old, and Riss could never look at the bulge on her arms or legs without shuddering and expecting the worst.
• • •
Large freighters were commandeered by the government and brought in, far behind the lines, after having been hastily modified as troop-support centers.
The idea was Prince Wahfer’s.
At first, mainly rear-area soldiers took advantage of the chance to shower, draw fresh uniforms, have a meal, and sleep in one of the holds, fitted with wall-to-wall mattresses.
The Prince heard about that, and sent in military police squads to make sure the first soldiers served came from the front.
His stock rose considerably.
Goodnight heard a rumor that he’d also wanted brothels established, but the puritanical king had vetoed the idea. Besides, as one of Chas’s sergeant majors said, it’d be hell if some poor infantry type had encountered his wife, girlfriend, mother as one of the volunteers.
• • •
The battlefield was chewed up by artillery and destroyed ships and lifters.
Scattered here and there were the desiccated corpses of Khelat, Shaoki, or mercenaries that no one had time to pick up, or else the bodies lay in the open, with snipers around them.
At least there wasn’t the usual corpse stink of rotting flesh.
• • •
The main trench was less than a hundred meters from the eastern outpost when Goodnight called, in code, to ask a favor.
Riss was happy to oblige.
She had her lifters register targets inside the outpost then waited a day.
Before dawn, she ordered all of her tubes unmasked, and barrage fire opened.
Rockets and shells rained down on the outpost as Goodnight’s two battalions, now at half-strength, came out of the trenches and trudged forward. They were spotted within twenty meters of the trench, but it was too late.
The shock troops tumbled into the trench, blasters raving.
The Shaoki fought back hard, and then the weapons were knives, shovels, and even portable diggers.
Goodnight pushed them steadily back, and by noon the outpost had fallen to the Khelat.
But there was no sign of surrender.
• • •
There were, Riss thought, three levels of personal smell in combat.
The first was when the battle first began, and no one wanted to take his helmet off or let anyone realize how stinky he was.
The second was after a few weeks had passed and everyone smelled worse, and didn’t care who knew it.
The third, and M’chel hoped this was terminal, was when a soldier wanted to hunt down some real echelon muhff, and open his suit under his or her nose.
Maybe this was one area where the infantry had a bit of an advantage over the lifter crews. You couldn’t smell yourself after a while, so you stank in peace.
But in a heavy lifter, the crew compartment was about five meters by five meters by two meters, with various weapons and devices intruding. The four- or five-person crew could, when they weren’t in combat, chance taking off their helmets and breathing compartment air.
And the smells that went with it: sweat, what was called ozoned air from the various instruments, urine, excrement, blood, halitosis, missile exhaust, burnt propellant decaying food, machine oil.
Riss thought about the glamour of it all, realized if it weren’t for her big mouth she could be sitting up on the bridge of the Pride or somewhere safer and less smelly.
• • •
M’chel discovered another danger of fighting in a vacuum — the silence.
An incoming artillery round, unless it was very, very close, could only be felt by the shock of its impact and explosion.
A round that missed you, missed you, and unless someone pointed out what had happened, you might not even be aware you’d been shot at.
That reduced combat fatigue — but it also made troops careless about their safety.
Riss had moved her regiment to cover the conquered outpost whi
le it was reinforced, and the positions’ firing ports were turned through 180 degrees.
Somewhere out there, she’d been told, someone, probably a Mauler, was using a sniper rifle. A big projectile sniper rifle, with 13-mm shells, probably recoilless.
After seeing a round splatter on rock or lifter armor, most soldiers developed a posture problem, walking hunched over and hastily waddling from cover to cover.
But still people were hit.
One of them was M’chel’s “lucky” gunner.
He’d gotten out of the lifter through the cupola hatch and was stretching, glad to be in the open for an instant.
The round almost missed him, tearing past his leg, taking a chunk of suit and meat with it.
Then the triage unit went on, and Riss could hear the man squall as his leg was neatly, cleanly, cut off.
Then the man jerked, stiffened, and was dead.
Riss never thought she’d ever cry for any Khelat, let alone one who called her “ma’am,” and whose last name she barely remembered.
But she did.
Then she found someone who’d seen a puff of dust knocked up when the sniper’s weapon recoiled … and who had taken a compass reading on the location.
Riss could have leveled the area with a missile or shell fire.
But that wasn’t personal enough.
Instead, that night, her blaster sheathed, she went through the lines with a knife in her hand.
FORTY-FOUR
M’chel followed the compass heading inexactly. She would feel like a damned fool, not to mention being dead, if she was so intent on the swinging disc that she wandered into the sniper’s lair.
So she hung a dogleg course north for a number of paces, then south for the same number, zigging across the heading, taking a great deal of time to consider the terrain in front of her.
She moved very slowly, one hundred meters in an hour, keeping her breathing quiet. Before she moved, she used a small available-light monocular to make sure no one was lying in ambush.
It was getting near dawn when she came on a small rock nest that she would have chosen as a post if she’d been a sniper.
Riss examined the ground carefully, saw, by the dim moonlight, some bipod-sized scrapes in the soft rock.
