The Forlorn Hope Read online

  "Get out of the way!" Hodicky cried. The truck slid forward as he spoke. The gap in the line beside him let the truck swing even as its drive nudged it into motion. Hodicky could not see for his tears, and his mind was filled with the intake roar of the fans.

  The side of the ore hauler slapped Quade as he tried to jump away from it. Its pitted surface of steel and paint flakes bit and spun the little man, dropping him in the vehicle's wake. Hodicky, oblivious to that as he was to almost everything else, threw himself out of the cab as the truck picked up speed. As he did so, a pair of rockets from the gate slammed head-on into the cab. Both doors sailed away like bats startled from a cave. The sheet-metal front of the cab ripped upward, tangling the power antenna in shreds.

  Only the back-up human controls had been destroyed. The vehicle did not stop. The detuned antenna dropped its power beneath the setting and the vehicle slowed to a trot. As it glided through the gap torn by the first truck, the sides of the ore hauler sparkled like a display. Federal soldiers were firing their assault rifles point-blank into the cargo bay. The disintegrating bullets blasted holes in the sides as they hit.

  Hodicky picked himself up. He had scraped his left palm badly on the ground. That pain seemed to be all he could focus on as he staggered back to the remaining trucks.

  Jirik Quade lay crumpled on the gravel in front of him. The right sleeve of his uniform had been shredded from shoulder to wrist along with the skin beneath. Quade's hand was still locked on the grip of his rifle.

  Hodicky's scrapes and dizziness washed away in a rush of glacial fear. All external sounds sank to a murmur as blood roared in the little man's eardrums. He knelt and gripped his friend's shoulders in order to turn him face up. "Mother of God, Q," he whispered. "Mother of God!"

  "Goddam, that truck hit me," Quade muttered back. He opened his eyes with a start. "Christ, Pavel," he said, trying to raise his torso and finding that his right arm did not work. "How long've I been—Christ watch it!"

  A Federal soldier had run toward them from the wreckage at the gate. He had lost his helmet of ceramic-impregnated thermoplastic, but his rifle waved at arm's length as he strode. "Hansel!" he cried, "are you all right?"

  Hodicky twisted as he knelt, unslinging his own weapon. The chill had returned. The Federal soldier was within ten meters. "Hans" the man called again, skidding to a halt.

  Hodicky raised his rifle. He froze. Behind him, Quade was trying to reach his rifle with his left hand. The sling was caught under Hodicky's knee.

  "You bastard, you killed him!" shrieked the Federal. The muzzle flash of his rifle flared magenta in Hodicky's goggles. An impact sledged the little private backward over Quade.

  The Federal's cheeks and eyes bulged momentarily. There was a tiny hole in the bridge of his nose and another, perfectly matching, in the back as he pitched forward.

  "You sons of bitches coming or you going to wait for a private car?" roared Jo Hummel as she jerked Quade to his feet. Firing was still general now, but it seemed to be concentrated on the moving vehicles rather than on the truck park itself. Trooper Powers hunched in the angle of a truck body and cab. Her weapon was shouldered and ready for another target.

  "Christ, Pavel," the black-haired man cried.

  Sergeant Hummel knew that the three of them were in the open. Shots could rip lethally from the darkness before Bunny had a prayer of reacting to the gunners. But Hummel knew also that the deserters had saved the necks of troops they did not know when they started the truck careening westward. The Sergeant reached past Quade to lay her palm on Hodicky's chest. "Hell," she said, "the pump's fine and I don't see any blood. Gimme a hand and I'll carry him."

  Quade was too battered to protest as the Sergeant raised his friend for a packstrap carry. Hodicky's left cross-belt flapped around his knees. Powers stepped to them. She slashed the whole bandolier away with a knife she slid from Hummel's boot sheath. A bullet had struck the bandolier over the deserter's left shoulder. It had disintegrated on and with the two loaded magazines in the pouch. The loaded ammunition was electrically primed. It was as little affected by heat or shock as so much clay. The impact had ripped the tough fabric of the bandolier, however, and it had stunned the man wearing it.

  "Well, we bought them some time," Hummel muttered as she handed her burden through the fence to Private Quade. Hodicky was beginning to drool, but he had not yet regained consciousness. "I only hope they know how to use it up there."

  The three soldiers looked instinctively toward the northern ridgeline. Its dark silence was the best proof they had that their mission had succeeded.

  * * * *

  "The Lieutenant says the lead team's through the mines, sir," Sergeant Mboko reported to Albrecht Waldstejn.

  The Cecach officer gave a bleak smile. They were all accepting" his leadership as if he had a real rank among them; and as if he knew what the hell he was doing. But one thing the tall officer had learned even before he was conscripted was that crises were best handled by people who were willing to make decisions. Fasolini's mercenaries might have gained only a day of life; but they did have that day over what staying in their shelters would have given them.

  Sergeant Mboko was thinking along the same lines. Aloud he said, "I wanted to take a truck. The

  Colonel said it'd be suicide. He was right a lot of the time."

  After a moment, the mercenary said, "The background on Cecach looked pretty clean. Stalemate at the Front, that's not so bad. Real wackos on the other side, but the Federals who wanted to hire us about as decent as anybody in the middle of a war."

  "Old data," said Waldstejn softly.

  "Yeah," Mboko agreed, "about a year old. The Rubes got heavy armor, the Front went to hell. And the folks running things in Praha seem to have figured that if they're crazier bastards than the Rubes, then they'll beat the Rubes. Wrong both times, I guess. . . ."

  From the modest height of the ridge, the two men had an excellent view of what was happening in the valley. There were a few riflemen firing uselessly from the Complex and outlying bunkers. Most of the garrison seemed to be concentrating on lobbing rockets into the two trucks. Both vehicles were beyond the westernmost bunkers of the compound, but only the first was still moving. The damaged second ore hauler had skidded and overturned when a rocket destroyed all the drive fans on its right side. Rounds continued to crash into it one or two a minute, now that it was immobilized. The white flashes reached the watchers in false synchronous with the booming of earlier warheads.

  No one could have survived in the riddled cargo bay of the first truck, but Waldstejn thought for a moment that the vehicle itself might drift out of sight along the diminishing pylons. Then there was a hiss unlike anything else that had savaged the valley that night. The laser cannon had lifted from Gun Pit West, and its tube was cherry red.

  Mboko cursed and shouldered his weapon. It was a long shot, but a large target and a fragile one.

  The Cecach deserter touched Mboko's arm. "Let them," he said. "We're all dead, remember?"

  "You know," said the Sergeant, "most times you get a really nasty war, it's planets that a couple different nations colonized together, different planets. You people here— one foundation, everybody Czech. . . . But you managed the job pretty well, didn't you?"

  The laser drew a pale line across the night. The beam was pulsed so that metal subliming from the target would not scatter it in a reflecting fog, but the modulations were at too high a rate for human retinas to respond to them. Twenty-five square centimeters of the truck's plating flashed from red to white to black as the metal vaporized and the apparatus within the plenum chamber took the beam directly. Steel burned when severed cables shorted input from the receiving antenna into the hull. The gun continued to play on the glowing wreckage.

  "You better go, sir," Mboko said without looking away from the spectacle. "I'll bring in the rear guard, never fear."

  As Waldstejn started to move off, he heard the Sergeant say, "Colonel was right a lot of th
e time. But he still hired us out to these Federal sons of bitches."

  Chapter Six

  The radioed summons had been to Ensign Brionca's office at the 522nd Headquarters building. Vladimir Ortschugin noticed immediately, however, that the real power there lay with the Republican chaplain. The holes punched during the fighting thirty-six hours before had been patched with plastic sheeting, but the building still smelled of burnt insulation.

  For that matter, the Swobodan spaceman caught a whiff of Major Lichtenstein's body also. It hung as an object lesson from the boom of a crane parked just outside. The Major's neck had stretched so that his right boot drew little circles in the dust as his body twisted. Formally, the Republicans had executed Lichtenstein for failing to prevent the loss of much of the mercenaries' valuable equipment. Personally, Ortschugin wondered whether the Re publicans would have deemed the offense punishable by death if they had been able to imagine any other use for the fat, drunken Major.

  Ortschugin strolled into what had been the Major's office. He bowed and said, "Excellency, I am Acting Captain Vladimir Ortschugin, a free citizen of Novaya Swoboda. I am at your service."

  Ortschugin had gained a few hours observation of the men who had conquered Smiricky #4. The Swobodan was aware now that his assumption of 'business as usual' had been seriously in error. Perhaps the very highest officers thought in terms of political and economic realities. Most Rubes, however, were on a mission for their Lord.

  The slim, dark Republican officer did not speak. He rose from his chair instead and walked over to the spacer. The Republican uniform was taupe colored, a shade too dull even to be called black. Perhaps at base it was a yellow of infinite drabhess, like a mole's hide. The Republican wore no insignia of rank, but Ortschugin did not need Captain Brionca's obvious terror to recognize the man's authority.

  The Republican touched the chain which was barely visible at the throat of the Swobodan's tunic. He tugged out the small crucifix attached to it, still without speaking. With a single jerk of his hand, the Republican broke the chain and dropped the little icon on the floor. As his boot ground the silver against the tile, the Republican said, "On Cecach we no longer worship a dead god, Captain. We worship the One Who is Risen. This will be your only warning." He returned to his chair.

  The back of Ortschugin's neck was stinging, but he was not sure whether the drops crawling down his vertebrae were sweat or blood. He swallowed to be able to say, "Yes, Excellency, I understand."

  "You know your ship has been confiscated for trading with idolators," the Republican said as if he really did assume that would be obvious to the Swobodan. "What will be required to fly it back to Budweis?"

  "Well, Excellency—" Ortschugin began.

  "I am not an 'Excellency', foreigner!" the Republican officer broke in. "Only our Lord is excellent. You may refer to me as Chaplain Bittman, if you desire."

  Ortschugin nodded obsequiously. What he desired. . . . But if he were to survive the next minutes, much less lift again from this damnable planet.. .. "Yes, Chaplain Bittman," he said aloud. "The hull damage will not prevent us from operating in an atmosphere, though of course we could not, ah, go off-planet under such circumstances." That was a lie—they could work ship in pressure suits if they ever got a powerplant. The discomfort would be a damned cheap price for a return to Swoboda. "But we still need a main fusion bottle. We can't lift on the auxilliary power unit, and we couldn't stay up for more than a few minutes on it alone if we did lift." And that was almost the truth, more was the pity, or the Katyn Forest would have been long gone.

  "What about the broadcast antenna you rigged?" asked Captain—Ensign, now—Brionca unexpectedly.

  The two men looked at her—Bittman in cool surprise, Ortschugin with an expression he prayed did not reflect his horror at the question. "Yes, tell us about that," prodded the Chaplain. "You have fitted an antenna to take you to Praha along the truck pylons?"

  "We had, ah, considered, doing that, yes," the spaceman answered carefully. He decided that only the simple truth was going to work. That bitch Brionca was staring at him sullenly. Her uniform looked as if she had slept in it. Her eyes looked as if she had not slept for a week. "The power hook-up proved possible—" they could check the ship and see that— "but there are delays in the alignment controls. The program is simple compared to our ordinary navigational work, of course, but it's very different. ..." Ortschugin let his voice trail off. Sweat from his forehead made his eyes sting, but he was afraid to raise his hand to wipe them. Saint Nicolas be with us now!

  Bittman stood again. He was showing the first signs of real interest since his eyes had stopped measuring Ortschugin for a rope. No one had suggested that the spaceman sit down. His knees were beginning to quiver with the unaccustomed brace in which tension was holding him. "You mean that your whole huge starship can run on broadcast power in good truth?" the Chaplain demanded.

  "We, ah, thought perhaps so," the Swobodan agreed. "We didn't test it before the Complex, ah—"

  "Yes, was liberated," Chaplain Bittman finished for Ortschugin. He added, in a voice which had no more expression or mercy than the clack of a trap closing, "I advise you not to 'test' the system now, either, Captain. The idolators are attempting to make a stand along the line between here and Praha—they know how important it will be to the future of the Return to God. Elements of the three armored regiments are pushing them back. Major elements." Bittman permitted himself a smile at something he probably thought was funny. "What do you suppose the concentrated fire of, say, four Terra-built tanks would do to the hull even of your starship, Captain?"

  "We're at your service, E-Chaplain Bittman," the spacer said through dry lips, "but the pylons do lead only west from here."

  "For the moment!" the Chaplain retorted with a zeal that shone across his slim, swarthy face. "Do you know why this line is crucial to the Lord's work, Captain?" he demanded rhetorically. "Because the fusion plant here, for the mining and smelting operations, was more than big enough to energize a broadcast system as well. That means that when we complete a temporary link from our own system east of Bradova, we have a channel for the heaviest, bulkiest supplies straight to the idolators' capital! Our armor is the head of the spear plunging into the heart of schism and idolatry!"

  For the moment, Ortschugin's mind made of him an engineer again and not merely a victim. He understood the situation perfectly. Pylons were easy enough to raise and align. They were, after all, little more than lattices with two pairs of antennas. The lower alignments beamed power to whatever vehicle was equipped to receive it, while the upper alignments charged the system itself. Cutting a pylon would prevent vehicles from proceeding until the gap was repaired, but the other parts of the system would continue to function.

  If it were energized from both sides of the gap.

  Republicans and Federalists both had crisscrossed their sides of the Front with branch lines to supply their troops. The power and load capacity of the branches was limited, however. The working, full-scale fusion plant of Smiricky #4 could very well tip the scales. The next Republican thrust would not outrun its supplies and so be contained, the way previous victories had been.

  Ensign Brionca understood also. She was looking at her hands, interlaced on the desk in front of her. Her fingers were not moving, but each nail left a bloodless white halo on the back of the hand where it rested. For the first time, Captain Ortschugin felt a twinge of sympathy for her.

  "Well, that's good news—that we'll be able to repair your vessel," the Republican chaplain was continuing briskly. "But that was only one of the things we needed to discuss with you." He sat down. His voice was cool again, his face composed. Bittman had become a human being who no longer wore the mantle of the Lord. "I am informed that you had personal contact with the mercenaries who were stationed here and with the—" He paused, with his mouth quirked in irritation.

  "The Supply Officer," Ensign Brionca said. She did not look up. "Lieutenant Waldstejn. Albrecht Waldste
jn."

  "Yes, the Supply Officer," the Republican agreed with a sharp glance at Brionca. He turned his attention to the spaceman. "What do you know about their intentions, where they planned to go?"

  Ortschugin's face went blank in surprise. "Go?" he repeated. "Well, Praha, I suppose. . . . But good Christ, you don't mean that—"

  "Never curse again on the soil of Cecach!" Bittman said.

  Ortschugin nodded and swallowed. "Yes, Ex-C-Chaplain. I, ah, I was very surprised that any of the—of them had survived. We watched the trucks being blasted on our screens, you see."

  "There was no one in the wreckage," the Ensign said dully. "No sign of anything human, not even a driver. They all walked out while we were shooting at empty trucks."

  "Yes," said the Chaplain with another look of appraisal, "we may have executed Major Lichten-stein more painlessly than his actions deserved. But as for you, Captain Ortschugin—" the voice was the voice of a computer, balancing accounts for the Lord— "I would not have you think that this is a minor matter, a few heretics. We will find these—persons, with the Lord's help. Even now we are searching their most likely hiding place. If you can help us, well and good."

  Like a yo-yo, Ortschugin thought as the Chaplain rose again, but there was no humor on the spacer's face or even on the surface of his mind.

  "If you know something of their intentions and you do not tell us," Bittman continued, his face like wood and his voice like steel, "then be assured that the prisoners we take will speak, will tell us everything they know before they die. If you have hidden anything from us, you will join those you tried to protect."

  "I know nothing of their plans," the Swobodan said. He cleared his throat. "I didn't know they had plans, and I thought they were all dead." He paused. Then he added, "I suppose that was right, wasn't it? They are dead, Waldstejn and the rest. They just don't know it yet."

  * * * *

  "Christ, what a place to be buried," muttered Churchie Dwyer.