The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 (61 page)

“Task Force Sangrela’s going to prove Grayle’s wrong,” he said. “You’re going to run from here straight to the Point and be in the capital, Midway, before any civilians even know you’re coming.”

His grin tightened fractionally. “I wish I could say the same about the Solace military,” he added, “but their surveillance equipment’s better than that. We’re all leaving the satellites up because our employers need them. We can hope they won’t have time to mount a real counter to the move, though.”

“Blood and Martyrs!” Lieutenant Myers muttered.

“How’s my infantry supposed to keep up?” asked Captain Sangrela in a more reasoned version of what was probably the same concern. “That’s fourteen hundred kilometers by the shortest practical route—”

Either he’d cued his helmet AI with the question, or he was a better off-the-cuff estimator than Huber ever thought of being.

“—and we’re not going to do that in skimmers without taking breaks the cars ’n panzers won’t need.”

Slammers infantry could travel long distances on their skimmers, recharging their batteries on the move by hooking up to the fusion bottles of the armored fighting vehicles. What they couldn’t do was change off drivers the way their heavy brethren would.

Pritchard nodded. “The recovery vehicles that just arrived will go along with you on the run,” he said. “Off-duty troops’ll ride in the boxes the A Company infantry arrived in. There’ll be a convoy of wheeled trucks here tomorrow for the prisoners; the White Mice will ride back in them as guards and escort.”

Huber frowned. “What happens if a car’s too badly damaged to move under its own power, though?” he asked. Battle damage wasn’t the only thing that could cripple a vehicle on a long run over rough country, but a montage of explosions and dazzling flashes danced through Huber’s memory as he spoke the words. “The wrenchmobiles can’t carry twenty troops and a car besides.”

“If a car’s damaged that bad,” Pritchard said, “you blow her in place, report a combat loss, and move on.”

He turned to Mitzi Trogon and continued, “You do the same thing if it’s a tank. No hauling cripples along, no leaving other units behind to guard the ones that have to drop out. This mission is more important than the hardware. Understood?”

Everybody nodded grimly.

What Arne Huber understood was that on a mission of this priority, the troops involved were items of hardware also. Colonel Hammer wouldn’t throw them away, but their personal wellbeing and survival weren’t his first concern either.

“My people plotted a route for you,” the S-3 resumed. The electronics projected a yellow line—more jagged than snaky—across the holographic continent. More than a third of the route was within the russet central block of Solace territory, though that probably didn’t matter: the task force was going to be a target anywhere the enemy could catch it, whether or not that was in theoretically neutral territory.

Captain Sangrela’s face went even bleaker than it’d been a moment before. Pritchard saw the expression and grinned reassuringly. “No, you’re not required to follow it,” he said. “I know as well as the next guy that what looks like a good idea from satellite imagery isn’t necessarily something I want to drive a tank over. Make any modifications you see fit to—but this is a starting point, in more ways than one.”

Sangrela nodded, relaxing noticeably. Huber did too, though he was only fully conscious of the momentary knot in his guts when it released. It was good to know that despite the political importance of this mission, the troops on the ground wouldn’t have Regimental Command trying to run things from Base Alpha. That’d have been a sure way to get killed.

Mind, if Solace reacted as quickly as the Slammers themselves would respond to a similar opportunity, the mission was still a recipe for disaster.

“What’re we going to find when we get to the Point?” Lieutenant Myers asked. “You say there’s opposition in the backwoods. Are we going to have to look out for local snipers when we get to—”

He grinned harshly.

“—friendly territory?”

“I’ll let our guest field that one,” Pritchard said with a tip of his hand toward the woman in the jumpsuit beside him. “Troops, this is Captain Mauricia Orichos of the Point Gendarmery, their army. Captain Orichos?”

“We’re not an army,” Orichos said. Her pleasant, throaty voice complemented her cheerfully cynical smile. “The job of the Gendarmery is primarily to prevent outsiders from harvesting our Moss. Without paying taxes on it, that is.”

She let that sink in for a moment, then continued, “My own job is a little different, however. You might say that I’m head of the state security section. I contacted my opposite number in your regiment—”

Which means Joachim Steuben. Huber hoped he kept his reaction from reaching his facial muscles.

“—and asked for help. The situation is beyond what the Gendarmery, what the Point, can handle by itself.”

The map had vanished when Orichos began to speak. Now in its place the car projected first the close-up of Melinda Grayle speaking, then drew back to an image of her audience—a long plaza holding several thousand people: mostly male, mostly armed. Mostly drunk as well, or Huber missed his bet.

“Generally,” Orichos continued, “Grayle’s supporters—they call themselves the Freedom Party—have stayed in the backlands. They’ve got a base and supposedly stores of heavy weapons on Bulstrode Bay—”

The map returned briefly, this time with a caret noting an indentation on the west coast of the peninsula, near the tip.

“—which is completely illegal, of course, but we—the government— weren’t in any position to investigate it thoroughly.” Her smile quirked again. “It seemed to me that most members of the government were concerned that we’d find the rumors were true and they wouldn’t be able to stick their heads in the sand anymore.”

Huber and the other Slammers smiled back at her. Cynicism about official cowardice was cheap, but mercenary soldiers gathered more supporting evidence for the belief than many people did.

The image of Grayle appeared again, but this time the point of view drew back even farther than before. The crowd itself shrank to the center of the field. On all sides were the two- and three-story buildings typical of Plattner’s World, set within a forest which had been thinned but not cleared. This was a city. It was larger by far than Benjamin, the administrative capital of the UC.

“Two weeks ago,” Orichos said, “Grayle ordered her followers to join her in Midway—and come armed. Her Freedom Party has its headquarters directly across the Axis, Midway’s central boulevard, from the Assembly Building. They’ve been holding rallies every day in the street. This was the first, but they’ve gotten bigger.”

“And you can’t stop them?” Captain Sangrela asked. He tried to keep his voice neutral, but Huber could hear the tone of disapproval.

Orichos had probably heard it also, because she replied with noticeable sharpness, “Apart from the ordinary members of the Freedom Party, Captain, there are some ten thousand so-called Volunteers who train in military tactics and who’re considerably better armed than the Gendarmery—as well as outnumbering us two to one. I am doing something about them: I’m calling in your Regiment to aid the Point with a show of force.”

“Captain Sangrela was merely curious, Mauricia,” Pritchard said mildly, though his smile wasn’t so much mild as dismissive of anything as trivial as status and honor. “Task Force Sangrela’s arrival in Midway will prove Mistress Grayle was wrong about the Slammers being unable to reach the Point in a hurry . . . and if a more robust show turns out to be necessary, that’s possible as well.”

The imagery vanished. Pritchard looked across the arc of officers, his eyes meeting those of each in turn. In that moment he reminded Huber of a bird of prey.

“Troopers,” he said, “route and intelligence assessments have been downloaded to all members of your force. The resupply convoy brought a full maintenance platoon; they’ll be working on your equipment overnight so you can get some sleep. I recommend you brief your personnel and turn in immediately. You’ve got quite a run ahead of you starting tomorrow.”

“Blood and Martyrs!” Lieutenant Myers repeated. “That’s not half the truth!”

Huber waited for Sangrela and Myers to clear the doorway, then started out. Offering politely to let Mitzi precede him would’ve at best been a joke—at worst she’d have kicked him in the balls—and he didn’t feel much like joking.

“Lieutenant Huber?” Pritchard called. He turned his head. “Walk with me for a moment, will you?”

“Sir,” Huber said in muted agreement. He stepped down the ramp and put his clamshell on as he waited for the major to follow Mitzi out of the command car. For a moment his eyes started to adapt to darkness; then the first of several banks of lights lit the Night Defensive Position. The scarred iridium hulls reflected ghostly shadows in all directions.

Huber didn’t know why the S-3 wanted to talk to him out of Captain Orichos’ hearing; the thought made him uncomfortable. Things a soldier doesn’t know are very likely to kill him.

Pritchard gestured them into the passage between his command car and Mitzi’s tank, Dinkybob. He didn’t speak till they were past the bows of the outward-facing blowers. A crew was already at work on Fencing Master; across the laager, a recovery vehicle had winched Foghorn’s bow up at a thirty-degree angle so that a squad of mechanics could start switching out the several damaged nacelles for new ones. Power wrenches and occasionally a diamond saw tore the night like sonic lightning.

“Two things, Lieutenant,” Pritchard said when they were beyond the bright pool from the floodlights. He faced the night, his back to the NDP. “First, I was surprised to see you were back with F-3. I had the impression that you’d applied for a transfer?”

Ah. “No sir,” Huber said, looking toward the horizon instead of turning toward the major. “Major Steuben offered me a position in A Company. I considered it, but I decided to turn him down.”

“I see,” said Pritchard. “May I ask why? Because I’ll tell you frankly, I don’t know of a single case in which Joachim offered an officer’s slot to someone who didn’t prove capable of doing the job.”

“I’m not surprised, sir,” Huber said, smiling faintly. “It was because I was pretty sure I could handle the work that I passed. I decided that I didn’t want to live with the person I’d be then.”

Pritchard laughed. “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that, Huber,” he said. “What are your ambitions then? Because I’ve looked at your record—”

He faced Huber, drawing the younger man’s eyes toward him. They couldn’t see one another’s expressions in the darkness, but the gesture was significant.

“—and I don’t believe you’re not ambitious.”

“Sir . . .” Huber said. He was willing to tell the truth, but right in this moment he wasn’t sure what the truth was. “Sir, I figure to stay with F-3 and do a good job until a captaincy opens up in one of the line companies. Or I buy the farm, of course. And after that, we’ll see.”

Pritchard laughed again. Huber thought there was wistfulness in the sound along with the humor, but he didn’t know the S-3 well enough to judge his moods. “Let’s go back to your car and get you settled in,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Huber said, turning obediently. “But you said there were two things, sir?”

“Hey, there you are, El-Tee!” Sergeant Deseau bellowed as he saw Huber reentering the haze of light. “Come look what the cat dragged in! It’s Tranter, and he says he’s back with us for the operation!”

“I saw from the after-action review that you were going to need a replacement driver,” Pritchard said in a low voice. “You’ve worked with Sergeant Tranter before and I believe you found him a satisfactory driver—”

“Frenchie says he’s the best driver he ever served with,” Huber said. “I say that too, but Frenchie’s got a hell of a lot more experience than I do.”

“—so I had him transferred from Logistics Section to F-3.”

Huber strode forward to greet the red-haired sergeant he knew from his brief stint in Log Section. Suddenly remembering where he was—and who he’d just turned his back on—he stopped and faced the major again.

“Sorry, sir,” he muttered. “I—I mean, I’ve been sweating making the run tomorrow short a crewman, and there was no way I was going to have Costunna on my car or in my platoon. I was . . . Well, thank you, I really appreciate it.”

“Colonel Hammer and I are asking you and the rest of the task force to do a difficult job, Lieutenant,” Major Danny Pritchard said. This time his smile was simple and genuine. “I hope you can depend on us to do whatever we can to help you.”

He clasped Huber’s right hand and added, “Now, go give your troopers a pep talk and then get some rest. It’s going to be your last chance to do that for a bloody long time.”

Unless I buy the farm, Huber repeated mentally; but he didn’t worry near as much about dying as he had about carrying out tomorrow’s operation with his car a crewman short.

The Command and Control module housed in the box welded to Huber’s gun mount projected ten holographic beads above Fencing Master’s fighting compartment. Call-Sign Sierra—the four tanks, four combat cars, and two recovery vehicles of Task Force Sangrela—was ready to roll.

If Huber’d wanted to go up an increment, the display would’ve added separate dots for the vehicle crews, the infantry platoon, and the air-cushion jeep carrying the task force commander with additional signals and sensor equipment. He didn’t need that now, though he’d raise the sensitivity when the scout section—one car and a fire-team of infantry on skimmers—moved out ahead.

Huber gestured to the display and said over the two-way link he’d set with Captain Orichos’ borrowed commo helmet, “We’re on track, Captain. Another two minutes.”

Sergeant Tranter ran up his fans, keeping the blade incidence fine so that they didn’t develop any lift. Huber heard the note change minusculely as the driver adjusted settings, bringing the replacement nacelle into perfect balance with the other seven.

Sergeant Deseau nodded approvingly, chopping the lip of the armor with his hand and then pointing forward to indicate the driver’s compartment. Trooper Learoyd didn’t react. He usually didn’t react, except to do his job; which he did very well, though Huber had met cocker spaniels he guessed had greater intellectual capacity than Learoyd.