David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

The trooper fell backward as her sergeant straightened. His hair was a sun-struck halo rimming the gray metal of his helmet. The dense plastic gun-stock sheared with a crack like nearby lightning. The reel began to topple away from the man it imprisoned.

The roaring in Herzenberg's ears was not blood but the second incoming salvo.

The last image that Herzenberg's eyes carried with her into blackness was that of flame fountain-ing from a shell burst. At the apex of one red tendril, silhouetted against the sky, was a ball which had recently been a human head.

"Fucking A," muttered Marco Bertinelli as he started to run up-slope. The pit head buildings were in tatters. The end of one barracks was ablaze, and a sooty pall rippled turgidly over the shed covering the shafts. Someone in the gun crew was screaming over the radio for a medic, though.

"Team One to me," Sergeant Mboko ordered, jumping up as well. "We're going to get them out and get our own butts out of there too." He began to stride after the Corpsman. His gun was in his hand instead of being slung.

"Black Section, off and on," said Jo Hummel. The high points of her bandolier had been frayed and dirt-smeared by the speed with which she had hit the ground moments before. "We'll take up a cover position on the next ridge and wait for White. Move it!"

Fire Order Apache had been a simple Battery Three-three shells from each tube of the battery, with no delays or follow-up shellings scheduled. But no one in the Company knew that. Every move had to be made in the gut-crawling awareness that Rube artillery had the area targeted.

"Wait, dammit!" said Albrecht Waldstejn desperately."Mboko! Cancel that, we need the truck clear now!"

The black sergeant ignored the call. Half his section was beginning to follow him as ordered. The troopers glanced at one another and the smouldering impact zone.

"Forget it, Lieutenant," Sergeant Hummel said off-handedly. She was checking the response of her own troops and not bothering to look at Waldstejn. "It was a good idea, but if the Rubes've got us taped, there'll be a ground patrol along any time. That thing-" she turned to wave at the truck- "can't outrun a tank, and we can't fight a goddam tank either, not with what we got on our backs. Comeon, Black Section!"

"Hold up, I said!" shouted Waldstejn. The troops nearest him looked back in concern, but they continued to file off after the section leaders familiar to them. The Cecach officer's voice was only a murmur without authority in the brush a few meters away.

Sookie Foyle's helmet was flexed to a five-kilogram backpack. The plump-looking Communicator undipped the microphone from that pack and threw its red toggle switch. At once, the sending units of every commo helmet in the Company were locked out, keeping all channels clear for the command set. In a clear, dispassionate voice Foyle announced, "Max units, freeze in place for orders from C-captain Waldstejn." She handed the mike to the startled officer. Through a half-smile she whispered, "Should I have made you a colonel?"

"All right, people," said Albrecht Waldstejn with the appearance of calm. "Those shells came from the west of us. We're already surrounded, so we're not going to run after all."

He paused. Troopers had halted in place, startled by the command but too unsure of the situation not to obey. Their uniforms shimmered in shades of gray and brown as the fabric picked up nuances of its immediate vicinity.

"You goddamned stupid hunkie!" roared Sergeant Hummel, furious most of all at the realization that only Waldstejn had access to the radio net now. She strode back toward the officer, holding her weapon muzzle-high as if a banner fluttered from it. "We're not going to surrendernow, they'll feed us ourballs if we do!"

The young Cecach officer had the disorienting feeling that he was standing on a chess board and that a giant version of his own hand was reaching for him. His face was as still as chiseled steel. Into the microphone he said, "We're going to fight our way out, people. We're going to give the immediate pursuit a bloody nose to buy us some time, and then we're going to ride home in style. I swear by the blessed Virgin!"

Hummel had stopped in her tracks. She sucked in on her lips as part of an expression which was not wholly a frown.

As Waldstejn paused the second time, he caught the eye of one of the mercenaries-Dwyer, the gangling fellow who appeared to have taken Hodicky and Quade under his wing, thank God. The trooper grinned knowingly and shook his head in mock exasperation.

"First," Waldstejn said loudly, "White Section empties that truck, and I meanfast. Sergeant Mboko, report to me when you've got that organized. Second-"

As he continued to thump out orders with the unhurried aplomb of a drop forge, Waldstejn found himself noting the warmth of the Communicator standing close with the command set. He did not let himself look directly at her, though. Not yet.

Gunner Jensen's face and hands were black. His torso was white and unmarked though the tunic had been blown completely away from it.

Cooper and Pavlovich knew their section leader too well to bother arguing with him. They slashed at the springy brush with their cutting bars, clearing a path downhill to the truck as Jensen had ordered. They grunted with exertion. The faster they worked, the further away they would be when the follow-up salvo arrived.

Marco Bertinelli hopped beside the Sergeant. The Corpsman carried only the two extra helmets and his own medical pack, but he still had difficulty keeping up with the burdened Jensen. "Guns," Bertinelli pleaded, "for God's sake, let me check you out, will you? We can get a stretcher party up here and-"

"Said I'd do it and I'll do it," the blond man repeated flatly. He cradled the still form of Trooper Herzenberg. Her right arm and leg were bare except for splints and mauve patches of Skin-Seal over the abrasions. They had set the femur first. Jensen had extended her thigh muscles with as much force as was necessary to bring the ends of the fractured bone back into alignment. Herzenberg had been mercifully unconscious when they set the broken humerus a moment later.

"Shouldn't have forgotten they couldn't hear incoming, working inside like that," Jensen said. There were cracks across the surface of his scorched lips, but he had not let the Corpsman treat even' those. "Can't help Dog, but I won't leave her up there for the next round."

They were nearing the frantic activity around the overturned truck. Pairs of soldiers were dragging cases of explosives into the brush. Some of them carried their pack-shovels already extended in the hand that did not grip the case. "They'll learn Dog didn't come cheap," the Gunner said. "A lot of them'll learn that."

"You got a rummy team checking you out, Captain," whispered what had been Guiterez' radio helmet. "Smile for the camera."

The warning meant that therewere a pair of drones this time: low-ball on the deck, high-ball a kilometer behind and three hundred meters in the air. Instead of transmitting its information in bursts when it lifted higher into the air, the low-ball drone had a constant link with its companion. The higher bird transmitted the data to Army HQ for processing. It was safe from small arms because of the distance it trailed the lead unit. It was still cold meat for more sophisticated air defenses, but the system was a good one for pin-pointing hot spots in a generally cool environment.

"All right, it's working," said Albrecht Waldstejn to the two privates who had escaped with him.

They stood carefully on top of the truck box, resisting the impulse to leap up in an access of nervous energy. Waldstejn began to wave. From their vantage point, four meters plus their own height, the trio of Cecach soldiers had a good view over the top of the scrub. There was a ragged path down which the reel of cable had been rolled. At the other end of the path, the pit head oozed a thick smudge. The dust lifted by the shellbursts had settled out of suspension, but fires still burned there and among the brush piles ignited by the mercenaries.