David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

"That," said the Sergeant-Gunner, "is what you'd have done if you'd thought." He was taking quick breaths which belied the apparent ease of what he had just done. Almost anyone else in the unit would have needed several strokes to cut the braided steel. "Now," Jensen continued, "you and Herzen-berg cut through the axle on both sides." He tapped the drum. It rocked a little now that its ratchet no longer supported the weight of the elevator. "We'll roll the bastard down the hill and save ourselves the trouble of dragging the cable."

There was a shot, then a crackling volley from outside the shed. The veterans slipped their weapons into their hands. Herzenberg followed suit a moment later.

"Guns to White One," Jensen called on the command push. "Give me a sitrep."

Instead of the requested situation report, there wasan crackle of static and a few words in what might have been Sergeant Mboko's voice.

The Gunner looked around at the sheet metal and dim tracery of girders surrounding them. "We've got to get outside to hear anything," he said. "You two-" he pointed to Guiterez and the newbie- "get cracking. We may need the truck ready yesterday if somebody's caught us." With the other two members of the gun crew at his heels, Jensen began sprinting for the distant door.

Herzenberg and Guiterez looked at one another. Swallowing, they laid down their guns and undipped their cutting bars. As their blades rasped against the axle in distinct rhythms, the firing beyond the walls ceased.

The first trooper to fire at the reconnaissance drone missed by a country mile. The drone had a three-meter wingspan and a speed of less than a hundred kph-but it was as unexpected as a bomb in a flower basket. Satellite recce was impossible amidst laser cannon and stratosphere-launched penetrators. Satellites became orbital junk within minutes of starting their first pass over hostile territory. High altitude aircraft were in an even worse plight.

But a vehicle which whirred along near the ground, tacking often and randomly as it ran its programmedcourse, was preserved by terrain irregularities from the weapons that wrecked its higher-flying brethren.

The drone was powered by an almost silent high-bypass turbofan. The intake cowling looked large above the slim, armored cigar carrying the fuel and instrument package, but the engine had been deliberatedly understressed in the expectation that it would pick up trash and bullets in the normal course of its existence. Still, the drone was slow enough that almost anyone in the Company could have demolished it, despite its twitching changes of direction, if there had been a clear field of view. The trooper who glanced up to see the rotor sailing toward his face at a hundred klicks went straight over on his back. For navigational purposes, the drone treated the soldiers as if they were bushes. The drone lifted to clear the truck behind him as it would have cleared the man himself-by a meter. His shot was scarcely into the same sector of sky as the fog-gray wings that flashed above him.

"Maria!" Waldstejn blurted as the drone flicked overhead. Around him more experienced troopers were snatching at weapons whose slings were entangled with the straps of cast-off packs. Shots thrashed the brush as the drone skipped away downstream. Then somebody planted a boot in the small of Waldstejn's back and thrust him out of the way without ceremony.

Private Quade, fifty meters away with the last of the Company, had more warning than the soldiers around the truck, and his assault rifle could spray rounds toward what seemed a hopeless target for aimed fire. The right wing lifted as the drone banked left, its body out of sight below mounds of coarse scrub. The gray-brown camouflage mottling of the upper surface was suddenly puckered by three bright specks-holes punched by Quade's offhand burst. The right wingtip dropped and the left one rose, further away as the drone threaded its way out of the shot-spitting pocket. It was effectively undamaged, and no further shots could be expected to A gun went off directly above Albrecht Waldstejn's head. He twisted on the ground to curse the shooter who was both wasting ammunition and threatening to deafen him. Out of the corner of his eye, Waldstejn saw the drone again. It was flipping skyward, end over end, in a spray of sparks and fuel which then ignited in an orange flash. A projectile had coursed the cylindrical body the long way, taking no more account of the armor than it had the brush through which it had drilled to reach its target. The drone spun, shedding its wings as it did so. Open-mouthed, the Cecach lieutenant watched Iris Powers put a needless second round through the center of the fireball. The drone blew up on the ground, another flash above the scrub and a pillar of black smoke.

Powers began to switch magazines. She had braced her trim buttocks against the top of the truck's plenum chamber when she shot. By leaning forward at the waist, she had avoided having her shoulder broken between the recoil and the immobile mass of the truck.

"How in the hell did you do that?" Waldstejn demanded as he got to his feet. "It was out ofsight -the body of it, I mean."

The section leaders were still shouting into their radios to stop troopers from firing toward the! smoke.

Powers blushed. A wisp of blond hair curled from beneath her helmet and across her cheek. "From where the wing was, the body had to be-! where I aimed," she said. She spoke so quietly that Waldstejn had almost to read her lips since! the shooting had partly deafened him.

"Goddam good work, Bunny," said Sergeants Hummel as she hugged her friend. Powers was! slipping two loose rounds into the magazine shes had just taken from her weapon. "I think we're I clear, Lieutenant," Hummel continued. Her tone! was businesslike but no longer hostile. "We're low I enough here-" she gestured in the direction of the stream and the fuming remains of the drone-j "that it can't have been in radio contact with its base when Bu-Trooper Powers hit it." Hummel and Waldstejn exchanged tight smiles. "So they don't know we're here."

"Well, we may not be so lucky the next time," Waldstejn said. "Pick the six best shots in the Company and put them on look-out until we get moving." He smiled again, his lips as taut as his guts. "And Private Quade, he should be among them. Mboko, let's get moving on this truck. We need-"

Waldstejn fell silent. Soldiers were throwing themselves down. And after surviving the bombs that had hit Smiricky #4, even an ex-Supply Officer could guess the meaning of the howling from the western sky.

Horobin had time to slip the glossy pornography under a stack of log books when Director Piccolomini opened the door. He did not, however, have time to scan his instruments before his superior could do so. "Everything normal, sir," said the Reconnaissance Technician, taking a chance that would have paid off nineteen times out of twenty. His blood in his ears roared against the purr of the score of monitors in the room with the two men.

Director Piccolomini's face darkened to a shade in ugly contrast with his taupe uniform. He pointed at the inked tape curling from one of the top row of monitors. Peaks jabbed at five minutes intervals against the pre-printed time scale along the edge. There was no peak during the latest six minutes. As the Director of Reconnaissance and his subordinate watched, the tape continued to crawl out of the monitor with only the flat line that indicated no signal had been received from the drone keyed to that machine. "What do you meannormal, Technician Horobin?" Piccolomini demanded.

"I-" Horobin stammered. His skin prickled with sweat, as if Piccolomini were a furnace and not a short, balding man.

"Well, do yourjob, you fool!" Piccolomini shouted. "You only have two drones out. Surely you know what to do if there's an anomaly on one of them!"