David Drake - The Forlorn Hope

The laser had been in ready position, zero deflection, zero elevation. Instead of aiming, Kadar kept his foot down on the traversing pedal as he squeezed the hand switch. The weapon drew a pale line across the daylight. The beam merely hissed until the turret rotated it through the nearest broadcast pylon. Steel latticework vaporized with a roar and a coruscant white glare. Larger, fluid gobbets spit from the supports and sparkled as they rained into the dust and stunted vegetation below.

The Republican soldiers were on their feet now. Heads twisted even from the commo van to watch the fireworks. The power-broadcasting antennas waved madly as their support toppled, taking them out of the circuit. Kadar continued to traverse his blade of pure energy. A pylon of the east-bound roadway collapsed as the beam slashed it also. There was now a one-kilometer gap in the Praha-Smiricky truck route. Both halves of the lines were still energized, but the receptor antenna of a vehicle could not align across the gap and leap it.

ROADWAY FROM SMIRICKY the message had read. WEAPONS CAPABLE OF

There had been a further direction. It had struck Colonel Kadar as an unnecessary one, given the bubbling Hell into which his lasers would convert the starship after they sliced through the outer hull. Still, General Yorck was known for spelling out requirements precisely. It was to be expected that he would close with TAKE NO

The truck cartwheeled off the line. It was an empty ore-carrier returning from the battle area to the temporary road-head at the Smiricky Complex. TheKatynForest had swung out slightly to bring her port side to bear on the unsuspecting vehicle on the other line. A three-shot burst from the automatic cannon had ripped low through the truck, demolishing half the drive fans and letting the vehicle scrape down at its full forward speed.

The effect was spectacular. Troopers cheered. Some of them, however, andall the command group, knew that it was going to be different if and when they met real fighting vehicles.

Jensen nodded to Pavlovich. The crewmen had been in the gunner's seat for what was, after all, no more than a training exercise. "Good," the section leader said."Damned good. I couldn't have done better myself." And if a target on a fixed course two hundred meters away was not a great test of skill, then the statement was still perfectly true, and it was made by a man whose praise counted. Pavlovich flushed with pleasure.

TheKatynForest continued to plow forward at a sluggish fifty KPH. Her lift engines were designed for maneuvering at maximum loads, not for high speed transit. Still, the Company was separated from safety by something more tangible than mere distance. Since the engines acted by direct impulse, there was no air cushion to smooth irregularities in the drive. The buzz and tiny lurchings were disquieting at any time and were quite impossible to deal with when multiplied by undamped gun-sights.

Albrecht Waldstejn rang a knuckle on the inner face of the hull. "How long if a laser hits it, Vladimir?" he asked soberly.

Captain Ortschugin was sitting on one of the carboys of mercury which shared Hold One with the mercenaries' stores and the automatic cannon. He shrugged and said, "Who knows?" But spacefaring was not a profession that encouraged question dodging. "Ten seconds?" the Swobodan amplified."Perhaps fifteen, perhaps more if their guns don't hold a target perfectly. I doubt that… And a few seconds more still before something vital is hit and we go like-that." He waved a morose hand sternward, where the wreckage of the shot-up truck had presumably strewed itself.

"Fine, the hull," said Sergeant Mboko, "and if we have any chance we got the doors open, right? So we can shoot back." He gestured. The hatches and breastworks were still up as they had been during the break-out. "What happens when a laser slides across that?" The black sergeant snapped his fingers with a power and a suddenness which startled even his listeners. "Not ten seconds, I tell you. Not one. I say we dismount now. We're just a target here."

"Maybe Stack's right," said Sergeant Jensen. He glanced at his cannon with sad affection. They had welded it solidly to the deck of Hold One. The barrel had a 360° traverse and a practical arc of fire of almost 90° to either broadside now. "Lasers aren't a good way to punch througharmor, I don't care what they say. Not when the metal itself fogs the beam when it burns away. But sure, they'll aim first at the openings. And I can't claim that the old girl has much chance to knock out a tank from the front."

Captain Waldstejn's face had gone blank in the midst of the Gunner's assessment. Sergeant Hummel, ignoring whatever the officer might have found of interest, snapped, "If we walk, we're dead for sure, Guns. You think they're going to roll into another ambush? Look, if we ground the ship as soon as we make contact we can try and shoot out the lasers again. I know, they're going to sweep the holds and a lot of us aren't going to be lucky, but at least-"

"Vladimir, how much will the pumps that evacuate the holds handle?" Albrecht Waldstejn interrupted. He rapped one of the deck gratings with his boot.

Ortschugin shrugged again. "We can empty the holds of water three hundred meters down in a one-g equivalent," the spaceman said. "Bulk cargos, grain, we discharge that way too. There are atmospheres that dense, some places we dock, you know."

The mercenary leaders looked in confusion from Waldstejn to the bearded, passive face of the ship's officer. "I think," said Waldstejn, "that we just might have an answer."

The idiom of the bridge displays differed from that of normal human optic nerves. If one knew what to look for, however, the displays gave a very clear picture of the world-including the drone which had been following theKatynForest for the past ten kilometers.

Vladimir Ortschugin pointed. "See, Albrecht," he said, "just above the horizon. Your friends could shoot it down, perhaps?"

To Waldstejn, the pip coasting through the shadows of the holographic analog was whatever the space captain said it was. He shrugged. "I suppose. If they've got one, they've got others, though." The Cecach officer swallowed. "No sign of-other vehicles?"

The spacer grinned like a demon at the euphemism for 'tanks'. He gestured toward the analog display. "We can't see through rocks, after all, and we've never had ionospheric radar fitted. Who can say? In-" the calculation process was natural to him, but the figures, surface speeds and distances, gave Ortschugin a pause- "one hundred and twelve seconds, then we should have a good view of the plain beyond."

The bright, metallic echoes of the pylons stretched at spaced intervals behind them on the shadowed landscape. There was still one sharp peak ahead, before the holographic display faded off into a land unknown to its radar primaries.

"They'll be waiting," Waldstejn said with the detached certainty of a man about to become part of an air crash. "Start the pumps. I want the starting load on the broadcast grid, not the APU."

Captain Ortschugin nodded. He threw a pair of yoked switches. Then he slid another control up through the gate, into the red zone on its face. "Full power from the auxilliary," he explained. He grinned again. "Seventeen seconds," he said.

"Who'll join me in a game of twenty-one?" asked Churchie Dwyer. He riffled his cards.

"Shut the hell up!" snapped Sookie Foyle. No one else in Hold Three spoke. Some of the soldiers did not even look up from the weapons which they held in front of them like flags at a service of honor.