David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

That did not matter now. All that mattered to the Gunner were the traverse pedal and the red switch under his right thumb. He pressed them together.

The blip of a rocket's sighting flare arched from the Complex toward the mercenaries' lines. Lieutenant Stoessel had just enough time to wonder what had set off the firefight when the sheaf of osmium projectiles plowed the dirt to his left.

The automatic cannon had neither tracers nor need for them. As with the laser itself, what you saw in the sights was what you got. Jensen's burst gouged the berm at a flat angle and at velocities that made the earth itself a fluid. Jets of dirt were spurting skyward even as the rounds clanged against the fusion bottle which the berm had been intended to protect.

The casing was heavy, even in comparison to the sudden blows it received; but a hairline fracture caused a ripple in the magnetic flux within. The astronomical pressures did the rest.

The blast was in theory not a nuclear explosion, only a jet of plasma from a relatively small fusion chamber. The matter of the bottle, the inner surface of the berm, and everything else within either lobe of Gun Pit East were stripped to ions. They shot upward like a minor solar flare. Ravaged atoms gushed up the access tunnel. Lieutenant Stoessel's body did not so much burn as sublime at their impact.

Bright as day, Roland Jensen had promised the new lieutenant. The Gunner was grinning like a skull as he threw the drive in gear. He cramped the wheel hard, then jumped out of the saddle. The self-propelled gun lurched noisily into what had been the medical station. It crumpled the shelter roof as it passed. Jensen felt that he had to at least jerk the old girl away from where she had been targeted, even though he would abandon her then.

Bright as bloody day!

Jirik Quade was up and running while the ground still rocked from the explosion. Hodicky scrambled up to follow, pulling his goggles down with his right hand. He was cursing his friend because the curses were a normal thing, a frequent thing to hear, and everything else around him was out of the Hell of his Grandmother's lectures.

The plume of charged vapor still hung over Gun Pit East, far to the left, but it was no longer a blinding flare. Night breezes were cooling and dispersing the pink glow. It was at once the pyre of seven soldiers and the only tombstone they would ever have.

Most of the platoon guarding the park was at the main gate on the west side. There were a number of troops on the north face of the woven-wire enclosure, however, much closer to the mercenary positions. These were the men who had been firing at the commando. One of them continued to do so. His blinded companions huddled at the base of the fence, where even amplified light could not separate them from the humps of earth and rank grass. A single soldier stood erect, screaming and spraying his personal darkness with an assault rifle. The muzzle was pointed up at almost a 45° angle.

The two mercenaries had stayed flat when Quade and Hodicky rose for the final dash. Now their guns cracked in unison. The limbs of the man at the fence splayed as if he had been electrocuted. There was a tiny fleck of light behind him as a projectile clipped a fence wire which was also in its path. The figure crumpled. There was no further sound or movement at the fence.

Quade reached the truck park before his friend did. Hodicky's body had moved at its best pace despite the terror filling his mind, but his lungs burned with exertion. The loaded bandolier was an anchor across both collarbones.

There was more to the operation, however, than the strength and stamina in which Quade excelled most of the other men in the compound regardless of size. He had the cutting bar out when he reached the fence. Instead of using it to slash an opening in the wire, the black-haired deserter waved it in his left hand like a saber. His right hand prodded the night with the rifle he held by its pistol grip, while his eyes searched for someone to kill. The moonless sky provided Quade's goggles with only a blur of pinks and shadows. It had no targets for his frustration.

The goggles affected depth perception seriously. Hodicky bounced against the webbing of the fence an instant before he had expected to reach it. "It's me, Q-Pavel!" he shouted instinctively as he saw his friend spin to face the sound. Someone atop the main powerplant was volleying rockets. The flare pots left pinkish trails across the sky over the truck park. Pulverized concrete spewed across the launching site as a mercenary replied.

Hodicky deliberately dropped his rifle in order to unsling his own cutting bar. Like much of the mercenaries' equipment, the principle behind the tool was very simple. It was a light, narrow saw with a blade fifty centimeters long. It cut on the draw stroke, and its teeth coarsened gradually from the hilt to the tip. The fact that the teeth were razor thin and almost permanently sharp made the bar effective whether one needed to cut tissue or tank armor. The ten-gauge wire of the fence was more a pressure against the blade than a real obstacle to it.

The little private slashed down, then across and down again in an arc. Wires quivered discordantly as a section of fence fell inward. "Come on, Q!" Hodicky said as he hunched through the opening.

His sleeve snagged and tore unnoticed on a sharp end.

Quade threw down his cutting bar and reached for his partner's weapon. "You forgot-" he said.

From the darkness, someone whispered, "Janos? Is that-?"

The black-haired deserter turned and fired in a single motion. There was a horrible scream, above even the muzzle blasts. As if in echo of the initial burst, a soldier fifty meters away began shooting at Quade's back.

Reflex snatched Pavel Hodicky's hand to his rifle. Instinct froze it there while bullets cracked and sang in parting wires. The Federal soldier was flat on his belly along the fence line, an almost impossible target for Hummel and Powers. They were also prone and two hundred meters away. The mercenaries tried anyway. Truck bodies boomed as they were hit by projectiles that had passed over their intended target.

The Federal gunman was shooting high as well. It was the flash of one of his bullets hitting a post above Quade that snapped the deserter from his revery of slaughter. He whirled away from the screams which a second burst had not silenced. Still firing from the hip, Quade walked his shots into the opposing muzzle flashes. Again he fired until his rifle spat out its empty magazine.

"Comeon, Q!" Hodicky cried. He ran to the cab of the nearest truck, still clutching his rifle. His trousers were slimed with feces.

"Forty-one," whispered the trooper as she reached Lieutenant Waldstejn. His slap on the shoulder sent her out to join the others who had preceded her, snaking single file behind Sergeant Mboko. This much was easy, though every step chanced a rocket or the fury of the remaining laser. At the ridge line, the risk of fire from the compound ceased, but a false step would shatter both legs on an air-sewn mine.

There were two cleared tracks through the mine belt surrounding the valley: west along the pylons, to permit the trucks to enter and leave the compound; and this one which Colonel Fasolini had decided to clear in case he needed a bolt-hole. The Colonel had not expected the 522nd to turn on his men; but neither had he expected the battalion to hold against a Republican attack. The truck route would become a killing ground for the locals rushing into it-and that, with luck, would have permitted the Company to slip out the side door and regroup.

It is impossible to foresee everything, especially during a war. Troops whose commanders try to provide for the dangers theydo foresee, however, often are around afterwards to bury the less fortunate.