David Drake: The Forlorn Hope

"Should we be getting back, Churchie?"Del asked nervously.

Dwyer started. He had been visualizing himself and-thus far-five women. Despite his revery, the gangling mercenary's hand snatched up his gun when his companion spoke. A moment later, after his eyes had scanned the horizon and his brain had sorted the words for content, Churchie set the heavy weapon back down. "Lover," he said in irritation, "I sure wish you wouldn't do that."

The bigger man blinked. His own gun was slung. Its weight was too insignificant to him to call itself to his attention, even when he was resting.

Delwas the only man in the Company who fired bursts of full-charge loads as a matter of course. He blinked in surprise when observers asked him if he didn't mind the recoil.

Churchie sighed. "Look," he said patiently, "if they want us, they'll call us, right?" He tapped his beryllium cap where it covered his right ear.

Delstared. His left hand began as if of its own volition to scratch his ribs beneath a bandolier.

"And if just maybe Hummel comes out to check in person-and why the hell would she?" Churchie continued, "why, we're out making a dangerous reconnaissance through our own minefields, right? Doing our job with a smile." He smirked, broadly enough to prove that dentists of Hister made bridges from stainless steel. "What weknowis, that she's not going to crawl out to get us when she doesn't even know there's a path through the mines."

"If you say so, Churchie," the big man said after further consideration. He stared up the slope behind them. Del had done most of the heavy work involved in the project, digging the trench and manhandling the fuel tank into position. Churchie alone had chosen the path through the belt of air-sown mines that ringed the ridge, though. "I just…,"Del said. "Well, aren't we a long way from the shelter if somebody attacks?"

"Attacks!" his companion repeated incredulously."Attacks?" He waved his long, dirty fingers in an arc across the horizon of brush, grass, and silence. "Do you see an attack? Do you see anything? You've been listening to the radio, haven't you?" Dwyer pointed accusingly atDel 's chest. "Seven years in this business and you don't know that whatany government says is a lie? Look, when there's going\ to be an attack, I'll tell-"

High overhead to the west, they caught the flash of the starship starting its bombing run.

Del Hoybrin was dumb as a post, but he was; experienced and his reflexes had kept him alive before. The big man jumped up, heading for their shelter, and Churchie Dwyer tackled him before those reflexes could get his friend killed.

Delcame down on his face with a thump and a squawk. "Not there!" Churchie screamed, "here!" He began to slap madly at the coals with the butt of his gun. Some of them scattered into the brush. The rest stirred into bright orange life.

"Huh?" saidDel.

The big man might just have been able to bound three hundred meters uphill in the time available, Churchie knew. WhatDel could not have done, no way in hell, was to run full-tilt up the crooked path without stumbling into a mine. That left one choice, a bad one, but better than no shelter at all when the shrapnel sleeted in. Furiously, Churchie Dwyer tried to brush the coals out of the trench. After a moment, Del began to help. He was used to doing things which he did not understand.

They were veterans. They ignored the sonic boom, ignored also the siren that panicked the indigenous troops in the compound. When the clusters began to separate in the sky overhead, however, Del paused and looked at his companion. "Churchie?" he said.

Dwyer reversed his gun again and jerked its charging handle with his left hand. The stabilized plastic stock was now mottled with gray blisters. It was hot enough to singe cloth. Churchie spaced five fast shots down the length of the makeshift reactor. Mash and half-fermented beer sprayed from each entrance and exit hole, sizzling on the coals beneath.

Fasolini's troopers carried cone-bore weapons. They squeezed down their projectiles at pressures which only barrels of synthetic diamond, grown as a single molecular unit, could withstand. At the muzzle, an osmium needle was expelled at over three thousand meters per second. The fluorocarbon sabot which had acted as a gas check in the bore was gaseous itself by the time it spurted out behind the needle. The weapons were specialized; but it benefitted mercenary soldiers, like whores, to be able to provide specialized services for their customers. The gun was meant to bust armor and brick walls. It opened the fuel tank like one of Jack the Ripper's girlfriends.

Churchie flung the weapon aside. "Come on!" he shrieked at his companion. He rolled into the trench. Del blinked, then obeyed.

The edge of the cloud of bomblets swept over the brew vessel in its fury. The two mercenaries were already screaming.

Sergeant-Gunner Roland Jensen clacked down the loading gate of the automatic cannon which was both his duty and his darling. "There, Herzen-berg," he said to the plump trainee,"that's how you insert a fresh can. Now, I want you to line up five more cans for continuous feeding."

Trooper Tilly Herzenberg looked doubtful, but there was nothing in the section leader's blond arrogance to suggest that he was not serious. Putting her back in it, she slid a second drum of ammunition across the base plate to align with the drum Jensen had just loaded. Cooper, Pavlovich, and Guiterez, the veteran crewmen, watched and stuck knives in the dirt.

The automatic cannonwas the only crew-served weapon in Fasolini's Company. It was the apotheosis of the shoulder weapons which most of the troopers carried. What the individual guns could do to light armor, Jensen's cannon could do to most tanks.

The cannon had a single barrel which was a trifle over three meters long. The bore at the muzzle was seven millimeters. Through it blasted a five-hundred gram osmium pencil which had with its sabot a diameter of twenty millimeters when it was slammed into the breech.

The relationship of projectile to recoil impulse was a constant before an ape man threw a rock and fell backwards off his branch. Nothing armorers have done in succeeding ages has changed that relationship in the least. The diamond bore and modern propellants made it possible to push the cannon shot to literally astronomical velocities, but the base and receiver had to be massive to slow the recoil to the point its pounding did not shatter the gun. The cannon mount had its own treads and motor. It served as well to draw a caisson of ammunition. Sergeant Jensen drove from the little saddle forward; and the rest of the crew hoofed it or foundtheir own transport on a move.

Guiterez jumped up. "Sarge," he said, "what was that in the sky?"

Cooper and Pavlovich had been onSedalia when Imperial spacers had free run above them. They dived for the shelter. Guiterez recognized an answer even when it was not verbal. He threw himself in with his buddies.

Roland Jensen glanced up at the thin, icteric track the starship had drawn across the heavens. His eyes were as pale as the sky. "Right, Herzen-berg," he said in a mild voice, "I'll take over now. I want you to raise the muzzle to 45°." Ammo drums weighed sixty kilos loaded; Jensen slid one of them into position with either hand. "Use the gauge like I showed you."

"S-sarge," the trainee said, looking at the shelter opening. When she had enlisted three months before on Beauty, she was unaware that Fasolini had already contracted with the Federalists on Cecach, thirty-seven light years from her home. In fact, the Company had enrolled her-without any particular qualification of strength or skill-solely to make up the contract Table of Organization in a hurry.

She dropped into the gunner's seat and punched the gun live. Then she heeled up the rocker switch to elevate the muzzle as directed.