David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

Delresumed his observation of the transponder balloon. "What does that mean, Churchie?" he asked.

His friend snorted again. All the humor was gone from his voice as hereplied, "Wish to hell I knew, darling. Wish to hell. What I'm afraid it means is that Fasolini's Company is deep in shit."

The only light in theOperationsCenter was the green glow of the phosphor screen. It emphasized the wrinkled anger of Colonel Fasolini's face as he said, "Gibberish! Goddamgibberish!"

Sookie Foyle snapped her fingers in frustration. "Look, Colonel," she said, "I'm a Communicator, not a magician. You get me a copy of the code pad the indigs are using, and I'll let you know what they've got to say. Otherwise it's garbage-" she waved at the groups of meaningless letters which continued to crawl across the screen-"and it's going to stay garbage."

The three sergeants-Mboko, Hummel, and Jensen-stirred restively in the darkness. They were the tacticians of the Company, but the present situation was too amorphous for their skills to be of any use. Lieutenant ben Mehdi bent forward and said, "We don't have to read the transmissions to know what they're saying, do we, Guido? The only thing we don't know is the exact terms the Major's holding out for-and that doesn't matter to us, because we ought to be making terms with the Republicans for ourselves, right now, before it all hits the fan. Otherwise, we wind up taking whatever we're offered."

There was silence again in the OC. The Communicator looked at Fasolini. The skin at the corners of her eyes was tracked with sudden crow's feet. She did not speak.

"If it's the contract you're worried about," ben Mehdi went on, "theforce majeure provision clearly-"

"Shut up!"the Colonel snapped. His subordinates froze. "Sorry, Hussein," Fasolini went on in a tired voice. He rubbed his face with his palms. "You see, I tried that before I called you in, bounced a signal to the Rube CinC, Yorck, on his internal push." The stocky man managed a smile and squeezed Foyle's shoulder. The Communicator beamed.

"They won't deal," Fasolini went on, "not on any terms we can take. They don't like meres, they don't use them themselves… and they like us even less than most."

"They wouldn't deal onany terms?" ben Mehdi pressed with a frown.

Colonel Fasolini looked up. After a moment, he said, "No terms we can take. They're real unhappy about their starship this morning." The only sound in the OC was the sigh of the fan in the communications terminal. "They know it was us that did it. They want the whole gun crew-" Fasolini neither raised his voice nor looked at Sergeant Jensen- "and every tenth man at random from the rest of the Company. The others they'll give passage off-planet without guns or equipment." He shrugged. "I told Yorck if he showed himself within a klick of the compound, I'd personally blow him a new asshole."

"O-kay," said Sergeant Hummel. She appeared to be looking at nothing in particular, certainly not the Sergeant-Gunner beside her. "Let's don't wait around. Two trucks'll hold the personnel, the equipment we ditch and put in a claim for it at Praha."

"Lichtenstein's got a guard on the trucks," objected Sergeant Mboko. The sheen of his smooth, black face stood out above the absorptive cloth of his uniform.

"So he's got a bloody guard!" Hummel snapped. "They're the least of our problems. We grease themquiet, load the trucks, andbam! we're out of the compound and heading west before the indigs know what hit them. They can't shut off the power, because the pylons are energized from both ends of the line."

"Theguards may not be a problem," retorted Sergeant Mboko, "but the bunkers on the perimeter are. There's a straight line of sight right down the pylons for what-three kilometers? Every bunker's got anti-tank rockets. Do you really think even the indigs are going to miss straight no-deflection shots with wire-guided missiles?"

Sergeant Jensen cleared his throat and spoke for the first time since Fasolini had dropped his bombshell. "It was not the crew who shot down their ship, Colonel," said the big blond. "It was me alone. Perhaps if you offer me, General Yorck will- will be…" Jensen's voice caught.

"Shut the hell up, Roland," Lieutenantben Mehdi muttered.

"Well, all this may be a lot of fuss over nothing," said Colonel Fasolini. "It's just a matter of dealing with Lichtenstein when he gets the bottom line himself. And Lichtenstein willdeal, no trouble there. I just thought you all had better know how the land lies in case we need to move fast."

The Colonel stood up. He was by a decade the oldest person in the shelter. Just now, as he shrugged his crossbelts out of the creases their weight drew over his collar bones, he felt his age. "Wish to all the saints that we knew how thereal land lies," he said bleakly. "Waldstejn, their Supply Officer, he was complaining the other day that one of his convoys had managed to route itself to some old working thirty klicks from here. They had one truck go off when they were turning around and they just left it there. Now, if we could findthat and get it on track again… But we've got jack-shit for a bearing, and I don't see wandering around Cecach till the Rubes find time to round us up and shoot us. I guess we wait."

"Colonel," said Communicator Foyle. She pointed toward the terminal. "Distant input-must be Yorck."

Garbled characters were crawling across the bottom of the screen again, leaving phosphor ghosts of themselves as each line shifted up to make room for the next.

"Better get to my section," Sergeant Hummel said. She picked up her weapon, carrying it at the balance instead of slinging it.

"Yeah," said Colonel Fasolini. "Maybe we don't wait too long."

The doors and curtains of the Headquarters building were closed, but the bombing had stripped the black-out shutters from one of the front windows. Waldstejn had not bothered to pick up night goggles when he left the warehouse. Enough light still shone through the curtains within to show him the squad on guard. There were two non-coms present, Sergeants Breisach and Ondru, though presumably only one of them had the duty officially. They had approached him with an offer shortly after he took over as Supply Officer. Waldstejn was not sure whether the pair of themwere genuinely dim-witted, or, more likely, that they were so crooked that they made the rest of the 522nd look good. Under that assumption, the Sergeants thought that Waldstejn had cleaned house on his subordinates in order to have all the graft for himself.

Albrecht Waldstejn had disabused them in a tirade which he believed had impressed even that pair.

At the moment, Sergeant Ondru was having a loud argument with one of the Signals staff. Rather, Ondru and his men were grinning as a signalman shouted and waved the envelope he carried. "Sorry," the non-com said, "I've got orders not to pass anybody. Major wouldn't like it. Now, maybe if you'd giveme this important message you're so hot to deliver, I could decide if it's really important enough to disturb the brass."

"Why don't you start doing your job, Ondru," the tall officer said as he joined the group, "and stop poking your nose into things that are none of your business."

The infantry squad stiffened. One man even stood up. Sullenly, Sergeant Ondru said, "I've got my orders."

"I've got my orders, sir!" Waldstejn snapped back.

"I've got my orders sir," the non-com parroted. He stepped aside. Either he had been told to pass the Supply Officer, or he had decided not to make an issue of it. At best, there were too many ways that the young officer could make life unpleasant for the soldiers who drew their supplies from him. At worst-well, nobody really thought that Waldstejn would be trying to crash a staff meeting to which he had not been summoned.