David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

The truck slid away at a slow, non-threatening pace. Hodicky was backing and turning simultaneously so that the open tail-gate of the truck swung toward the bow of the tank.

"Hey!" shouted a Republican. He fired for emphasis. His bullet cratered the door of the cab.

Hodicky chopped the fans, grounding the truck. "Hey, guys!"he cried, raising both hands to his startled face. "Hey, it'sover!"

He was going to have to wash out his trousers again, he thought sickly. If he survived.

From the foreshortening of her sights, it looked to Sookie Foyle as if the supply truck had been swung into direct contact with the lead tank. Despite the optical exaggeration, that meant that the deserters from the 522nd had done their job well.

That left Foyle with her own problem.

There had been almost four tonnes of explosive aboard the overturned truck. The mercenaries had buried it in a rough hundred-meter circle about the truck. That meant there were five meters or more between each thirty-kilogram case and the cases toeither side of it… and the second tank was still outside the daisy-chain entirely.

"Control to Guns," Foyle whispered into the mike. "They're halted out of position. Don't do anything-" God, she shouldn't have started this, Jensen didn't need to be told by a Communicator to follow the plan set down ahead of time-"when the truck goes off. C-control out."

There was no reply. Well, Guns would tear a strip off her when it was all over, and she deserved that or worse.

The daisy-chain was for the moment only a construct of Foyle's memory. The individual mines had not been marked. They were merely covered with friable soil from the holes in which they were laid. Excess dirt had been scattered in the brush where the breeze picked it up and mingled it with dust from kilometers away. There was little chance that the Republicans would notice the explosives, even if they dismounted. More possibly, someone might stumble over the chain of det cord which connected the cases of plastique, but the thin cord blended well with the yellow-gray soil.

Sookie Foyle had to read the daisy-chain like the dial of an invisible clock. It was flattering that the Company's command team-ben Mehdi and the sergeants with whom she had worked for years-had assigned her the task without hesitation. That flattery was small recompense for the horror into which a screw-up would plunge her.

Foyle had spread her sight picture to survey the whole Republican column. Now she tightened the magnification again, focusing on Albrecht Wald-stejn. His head was visible above the fender of the lead tank. Nothing would happen for some seconds, at least. The trench which would protect the Cecach soldiers was twenty meters from where the Captain now stood. It had been hidden beneath the cab of the supply truck until the vehicle moved. The charge would surely not be fired before Wald-stejn too could reach a place of safety.

The Federal officer turned from the Republican tanker to whom he had been speaking. Waldstejn's face had in the past days lost a garrison softness that could never have been called fat. He had deliberately lefta stubble of whiskers which suggested privation. Now he was shouting something back toward the truck. His face smiled as he stood waiting, but his blue eyes were closed.

Republican soldiers began running. They were crying things unheard as Foyle furiously traded magnification for field of view.

Then the blast blotted out everything in the center of her sight picture.

A hatch, invisible beyond the facets of armor, opened on top of the turret. A furious Republican officer looked out. He had to bend forward to see Waldstejn. "Ensign Farrago," the tanker shouted to the officer from the APC, "areyou a complete idiot? And what is thattruck doing?"

"Sir, I-" the infantry officer said yet again.

There was a shot. Waldstejn's heart leapt but he did not turn. From where he stood, close to the side of the tank, the truck and his two companions were hidden by the massive armor.

"Hey, it'soverl" Hodicky cried.

He was alive, thank God, and Waldstejn's smile never slipped as he said to the tanker, "Sir, it was only an earnest of our good intentions, I assure you."

"Lieutenantl"Hodicky cried, "they'redragging me-"

"Go. ahead!" Waldstejn shouted over the steel and sapphire barrier between him and his men, between him and the trench that was to have been his shelter from the blast.

Men were shouting. He rested his left hand on the armored flank. Waldstejn was in the dead zone, so close to the Republican tank that its laser could not be depressed enough to hit him. The builders had cured that problem very simply by embedding a line of anti-personnel charges in the armor at waist height. By throwing a switch, the tank crew could spray the ground outside their vehicle with shrapnel that a mouse could not hope to hop through.

Ensign Farrago gripped Waldstejn by the shoulder, bellowing something unintelligible. There was a burst of shots nearby.

Waldstejn's eyes were closed. "Dies irae," he whispered through smiling lips. Not the hymn for itself but as a return to childhood and the problems of a choirboy. "Dies illa-"

And perhaps as a prophecy.

"Solvet saeclum in favilla-"

Day of wrath, this day that rips the ages into ash.

He did not hear the explosion. The shock wave had already stunned him before his brain could have perceived it as noise.

Their eyes had followed Pavel and the moving truck. For the moment, at least, none of the Republican infantrymen seemed interested in the deep trench which had just been revealed beside Jirik Quade. The black-haired private closed his fly. For the first time since he had heard the Lieutenant's plan, Quade was at peace. His duties were complete. He was too pleased with the success of his own improvisation to notice anything else which might be occurring.

There was a shout and a shot. All the world moved in a gunsight as the Private turned. His mouth and eyes were open and his mind was searching for a target. In the air hung thecrackl of a high-velocity bullet exploding on metal, sharper than the muzzle blast that spawned it.

"Hey, it'soverl" Pavel blurted, white-faced in the cab.

Quade grunted with relief. The Rube nearest him had stepped back in shock as the little private turned. Now the guard, too, relaxed; but he did not lower the rifle he had aimed at Quade when the Federal spun like a breech closing.

The Rube who had fired pointed his rifle in the air and turned half away from the vehicle. He looked embarrassed. Two of his companions pushed past him to the truck. "Hey, out of there," one of them demanded. A taupe-clad tanker was now leaning from the tank and shouting toward men hidden by the tank's own bulk.

Hodicky had rotated the supply truck around an axis just in front of its cab. He was only three meters from where he had started, but the truck was closer by its full length to the tank. A Rube reached into the cab and caught Hodicky's ankle. The dark-clad soldier slanted his rifle up in his free hand, a threat in fact if not by deliberation.

Everything was according to plan, except that the Lieutenant was squarely in the line of fire.

"Listen, you idolator!" said the Rube holding Hodicky, "I said to getoutl" He jerked at the ankle he held. Pavel gripped the door jamb and the steering wheel. The gun muzzle jabbed at his ribs.

"Lieutenant]"the Private cried, "they're dragging me-"

"Go ahead!"

"I'm coming," Hodicky gasped to the soldier who held him. The other's finger twitched toward the trigger of his rifle. Quade, two jumps away, was a weapon himself now, but the guard nearest him was watching the drama at the truck instead.

Hodicky released the steering wheel and lethimself be pulled down from the driver's seat. Hi§ right hand reached under the dashboard as the guard hauled him forward. Only Quade understood what his friend had just done.