David Weber - Old Soldiers

"What if it opts to retreat back down Axis Two, sir? In that case, it could reach the blocking position ahead of either of us."

"True, but it won't," Ka-Frahkan said with bleak confidence. "It could beat us back, but if it did, our mechs would be able to bring their missile batteries into range of the militia position before it could engage us. The intervening terrain would cover our approach too well for it to prevent us from firing, and none of its infantry supports would survive that sort of fire." He flattened his ears in negation. "No. It will come after at least one of our columns, Jesmahr."

Na-Salth considered for a moment, then flipped his ears in agreement, and the general continued.

"If it decides to go after Uran first, it won't be able to turn around afterward and catch Ka-Somal the same way, though. Even if it took no mobility damage at all against First Armored—and it most certainly would— the delay would make it impossible for it to move back and intercept Ka-Somal before his units get past the landslide it induced, and it couldn't possibly get through that obstruction itself to follow him down Axis One. So if it doesn't go after Ka-Somal now, it won't be able to prevent him from getting to grips with the infantry in its blocking position whatever it does to First Armored.

"If it does decide to pursue and overtake Ka-Somal, it will undoubtedly destroy his infantry,"

Ka-Frahkan went on unflinchingly. "In the process, however, it may take damage of its own. It will certainly expend ammunition, and if Ka-Somal makes skillful use of his nuclear demolition charges, he may well succeed in inflicting significant damage, which might give Uran a decisive advantage when he finally engages it. Given the limited utility of our infantry in an armored engagement, we won't lose that much effective capability whatever happens to Ka-Somal. If he can wear it down a little, give Uran the edge he needs, the sacrifice will be well worth it. In either case, whether Ka-Somal can damage it or not, simply pursuing his infantry will delay it, possibly long enough—depending on how long it takes it to destroy Ka-Somal—for Uran to reach the blocking position and destroy its infantry before it can intervene. And if Uran can punch out the militia quickly, his Fenrises, at least, would probably have the speed to reach the colony before the Bolo could prevent them from doing so.

Na-Salth said nothing for a moment. Ka-Frahkan hadn't asked his approval for the plan, after all. But that wasn't what kept him silent. What the general had said about the survivability of infantry in a battle between heavy armored units was self-evidently true, yet expending Ka-Somal's infantry in an engagement which offered at least the possibility of decreasing the Bolo's combat capability before the decisive engagement against Na-Lythan made sense in the cold-blooded calculus of war. And the one way to insure that the infantry had the opportunity to damage the Bolo was to keep the entire force together, compel the Bolo to confront the infantry before it could reach the armored units.

But Ka-Somal's two intact battalions represented over eighty-five percent of their total surviving personnel. If they died, there would be far too few of the People left in the star system for the general's cherished plan to establish an imperial colony here.

Na-Salth looked into his commander's eyes for another moment, then raised his ears in acceptance.

"Yes, sir," he said, and began issuing orders.

Maneka/Lazarus watched the Enemy force split up.

"I didn't expect that," her/their Maneka half said as she/they continued to advance rapidly towards the point at which the Enemy had fallen into two columns.

"Nor did I. Analysis of standard Enemy tactics and the decisions to date of this Enemy commander suggested a probability of 87.031 percent that he would maintain concentration of his forces," her/their Lazarus half replied.

"Makes sense, though, I suppose," Maneka said. "Their infantry won't be much help in a standup fight with their armor."

"Probability of Enemy infantry inflicting significant damage upon this unit under those circumstances does not exceed 15.02 percent," Lazarus agreed. "However, probability of an Enemy infantry screen in hasty defensive positions in this terrain inflicting significant, though not incapacitating, damage before its destruction prior to the armored engagement approaches 62.47 percent."

"Then why didn't he stay concentrated? He could easily have deployed an infantry screen at any number of points along the route of advance he's following. At the least, that would have forced us to fight our way through it just to get to his mechs. At the best, it might have delayed us long enough for the mechs to overrun the Fourth before we could intervene."

"Indeed. Which was the reason I assigned a probability of only 14.969 percent that he would fail to do so. I have no explanation for his actual decision, aside from the obvious fact that it compels us to decide which force to pursue."

Times and distances, movement rates, and weapons capabilities flickered through her/their shared awareness at psychotronic speed. The decision was self-evident. The Enemy's remaining armored battalion represented the only true threat to the colony, regardless of what happened to Mary Lou Atwater's command. The destruction of the Surturs and their supporting Fenrises took absolute priority, and if she/they went after the infantry first, there was a chance, however minor, that it might degrade her/their combat capability before the decisive engagement.

"So we're going after the armor," Maneka Trevor's image said from the small com display window opened in the corner of Major Atwater's visor HUD. "We may've taken out their Betas' missiles, but we've got to keep the missile batteries on their remaining Fenrises at least eighty kilometers from your position, and that means killing them well short of that point. Which, I'm afraid, also means their infantry is going to reach your perimeter before we can get back to you. But with a little luck, at least you won't have their armored units shooting at you at the same time."

"Understood," Atwater said, hoping she sounded more cheerful than she felt. Two battalions of Dog Boy infantry, especially with a half-dozen Heimdalls and a hundred or so air cav mounts along to help them out, was going to be pretty stiff odds for her single battalion, despite the superiority of its individual weapons and the advantage of its prepared positions. The numerical odds would be almost four-to-one, and Melconian infantry carried a lot of man-portable antiarmor weapons in partial compensation for its lack of powered combat armor.

On the other hand, she thought grimly, our chances against their infantry are going to be one hell of a lot better than our chances against their armor would be. Or than her chances against their armor will be.

"Good luck, Mary Lou," Maneka said.

"And to you," Atwater replied. She managed a taut smile. "Drop by when you get a chance. We'll still be here."

So it's still following us.

Theslask Ka-Frahkan watched the Bolo's icon reach the point where Axis Two and Axis Three diverged. Instead of continuing further west along Axis Two to reach Axis One, it had turned south to come speeding after Na-Lythan's surviving mechs, and a strange, singing calmness seemed to flow through him.

The Bolo's decision wasn't really a surprise. He'd never truly expected the Human machine to give his own armor what amounted to a free run into missile range of the militia blocking position. The tactician in him rather regretted that it hadn't, but truth to tell, deep inside, he was almost glad. Whatever he might have chosen to tell Na-Salth, he'd known all along that this was the most probable outcome of his decision to divide his forces. Which, of course, was the reason his command vehicle was accompanying First Armored instead of Colonel Ka-Somal's column.