David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

Brionca's pistol had been buried in dust and grit. She thought it would jam after the first shot. To her surprise, the gun instead functioned perfectly nine more times.

The warhead sent a sizzling white line across the interior of Hold One. The shaped charge had penetrated the hundred millimeters of hull plating and sent the metal spurting as an ionized stream to gouge the far bulkhead. Molten steel splashed back over most of the dozen mercenaries in the compartment.

High-velocity shrapnel would have done more real damage, but the dazzling spray caused momentary havoc. "Shoot or by Christ youwill burn!" roared Sergeant Jensen. He fired twice into the night without a specific target, just to drive home the order. A thumb-sized welt was rising on his own cheek, but he knew that the Company's only chance was to keep the garrison down by sheer volume of fire.

Jensen found his target in the fluid shimmering that characterized light enhancement. The curving berm, the lattice-strengthened tube, visible from the angle he overlooked it. He fired, his sights a useless blur beyond the intervening face-shield. When he flipped the shield out of the way, the holographic reproduction still quivered too badly from the unsteady drive effects for Jensen to make the difficult shot.

The blond man howled a curse. He was furious now that Waldstejn had not allowed him time to set up the automatic cannon. Its dampers could have kept it steady despite the vibration, accepting input only from the controls. Sure, it might have taken an hour longer to weld the outriggers to the deck since there was no dirt for the spades to bite in. But an hour would be cheap if the choice was Jensen fired a three-shot burst. Strong as he was, the recoil punished him. The gun barrel jumped as the stock hammered Jensen's shoulder back and down. Riflemen were firing from the bunkers toward which the ship hurtled. The mercenaries around the Sergeant-Gunner were angling forward to blast away at those active targets. The worst someone with an assault rifle could do was to kill a few of the troopers lining the holds. The laser cannon, if it were still operable when theKatynForest cleared it, would burn them to slag as surely as it had the decoying trucks four nights before.

Jensen ripped out another burst. He tried desperately to anchor the fore-end but failed because the problem was not with the barrel but with the shoulder supporting the stock. They were hissing by the gun pit, now, eighty meters away and ignored in its stillness. Jensen's gun slammed and ejected its empty clip. He might have hit the laser… but he was sure he had not. Bullets spanged on the hull and the copper breastworks. Mercenaries ducked, as if thatmattered a damn if the laser were not destroyed.

Jensen turned. His normally-pale face was suffused with rage and frustration. His big hands were fumbling with a fresh magazine, but this shoulder-bobbing toy was not a real gun, was nothis gun. "Lieutenant!" the Sergeant-Gunner screamed to the third man down the firing line from him, "forGod's sake, the laser!"

Hussein ben Mehdi turned momentarily toward the cry. His face was that of a reflective balloon. A face-shield was no handicap to a man who shot by instinct and not through his sights. The Lieutenant wheeled. His right hand was on the pistol grip, his left on the barrel which he lifted with the precision of an aiming screw. The grenade launcher jumped three times. The slap of its gas discharges were inaudible against the background of high-velocity fire ringing through the hold.

TheKatynForest lurched as it took the line that would speed it out the west end of the valley. Gunfire ceased abruptly. They were out of the bunkered compound, and the mercenaries' guns no longer had targets they could bear on.

Roland Jensen's hands suddenly remembered the pattern. They reloaded his gun while the big man blurted, "Did-did you hit it, sir?"

Hussein ben Mehdi raised his face-shield. He could not remember the last time a Company non-com had called him 'sir' and sounded as if he meant it. "Well, we'll know in a few seconds, won't we, Guns?" he said with a deliberate cruelty of which he was at once ashamed. His own fear was personal. Roland Jensen's fear was for his section and the Company, not for himself. "As Allah wills, Sergeant," ben Mehdi added in an apologetic voice, "but-yes, I think it pleased Him to guide my arm.

In Smiricky #4, some survivors were blasting useless rounds after the ground-hugging starship. Few of the bullets would hit as the range continued to open. None would do more than fleck the hull.

Other Cecach soldiers were tending the wounded or staring in shock at their dead. In Gun Pit West, there were moans, but no one remained to give aid. The crew, huddled behind their berm, had been saved from the carnage to the very last. Then, as the ship pulled past and heads lifted in relief, three grenades had turned the laser above them into deadly shrapnel.

TheKatynForest's bulk blotted the last visible pylon. Then the pylon reappeared and the starship vanished forever from Smiricky #4.

"Idon'tcare whose fault it is," Colonel Kadar snarled to his Communications Officer. "I need to get through to Headquarters. If the Smiricky link isn't working, find another one!"

Except for the road, the plain had been a single giant wheatfield stretching as far as the eye could see. The wheat still remained, its stalks green and the heads just beginning to be tinged with gold. It was no longer part of a farm, though. Farms, even latifundia, are human things. There was no longer human interest in the plain as a place where food grew.

The road remained important, and it grew death and wreckage.

The vehicles of Tank Regiment Seven lay in a defensive star. The tanks and personnel carriers faced outward like the segments of a watch face while the support vehicles clustered together at the hub. There should have been twice Kadar's present total of fighting vehicles, six APCs and a pair of tanks. The second element had left Budweis only twelve hours behind the first and should have joined Kadar by now. Instead, only the support vehicles had caught up with him. All the Captain in charge of them could say was that the armor had been diverted two days earlier on secret orders.

And now, however he fiddled with the triple-braced antenna, the Communications Officer could not make the tight-beam contact with Sector Command.

Dismounted soldiers chewed on wheat stems as they waited. The swathes the vehicles had cut across the wheat were a green darker than their tawny surroundings. Kadar's eyes wandered from one blank stare to the next. The most powerful unit in the Lord's Host-except that half of it was missing and the rest was stalled while its commander tried to find out what in theLord's name Headquarters was thinking of! Kadar slammed his fist against the turret of his tank.

The command frequency snarled back at him so suddenly that Kadar froze. Subconsciously he feared that the blow had set something off. The dished antenna on the commo van was finally receiving signals, routed to the huge Henschel tank by a scrambled transponder. An aircraft was replacing the balloon relay at the captured mining complex… but the content of General Yorck's furious message gave Kadar no time to wonder why.

The Colonel signaled an acknowledgment. The transmission snapped off as curtly as it had begun. Its message was stored in the tank's memory, available either on screen or as hard copy if the commander required it.

Kadar did not need a repetition. The orders were as simple as their accomplishment should be.

A ripple of interest was running through the troops who a moment before had been waiting in bored lethargy. They knew a signal had been received, but only Colonel Kadar knew what the message was. Exulting in the power of secret knowledge, Kadar himself swung the turret of his tank. His gunner peered up at him, as much at a loss as were the infantrymen outside.