The Forlorn Hope Read online

  As Allah willed, but might he not will so terrible a thing! prayed Hussein ben Mehdi. Beside him in the trench lay the bundle of five, broomstick-slim anti-aircraft missiles. To fire them accurately, he would have to stand with the bundle extended on its launching staff. He would be as obvious as if he were waving a Federation flag. Ben Mehdi had both the experience and the imagination to picture how the Republican gunners would react.

  Allah preserve him!

  * * * *

  The lead tank came to a quivering halt twenty meters from the waiting truck. Behind the tank, the six vehicles which had followed it down from the ridge formed a hedgehog. Each armored personnel carrier pulled close to the vehicle ahead of it, then rotated 30° to one side or the other. That way the heavier bow armor and the turret weapon faced attacks from the flank, but the troops within the rear compartment could still use their weapons through the firing ports provided for them. The tank at the rear did a slow 180° turn on its axis so that its heavy laser covered the track the vehicles had just ripped through the scrub.

  "Too far," muttered Quade, kneading his thighs with hands that left sweaty patches on the fabric. "Goddam, won't get neither of them."

  "We'll work something out," said Albrecht Waldstejn. Moving sideways so that he continued to face the armored vehicles, the Cecach officer stepped down to the roof of the cab. He used the edge of the microwave dish as a handhold. It was warm with use. The truck had a live feel though it was motionless in any gross sense. Hodicky had run the fans up to speed and then locked them flat while the trio mounted the truck. That way they could be seen. The fans were still spinning without load, ready to boost the vehicle on its air cushion as soon as someone dialed up their angle of attack.

  There was presumably a radio discussion going on among the officers of the Republican patrol. No sign of it reached Waldstejn as he clambered down. He stepped on the driver's seat, then to the ground.

  The armored vehicles had no external loudspeakers, and it was quite obvious that their crews were not anxious to unbutton until they better understood the situation. The tank's main gun followed Waldstejn on silent gimbals with the same precision that it would have tracked a target worthy of its ravening power. The automatic weapon on the bow slope occasionally moved. It was clearly ready to sluice the truck body with a stream of explosive bullets.

  The patrol was halted, but all the vehicles still hovered a finger's width above the ground. A fire that had smouldered near to death now quickened with a gush of sparks. The draft beneath the skirts of the lead tank bathed the Federal troops with smoke and dust blown across the stubble of cut brush. The fans roared as they sucked air through protective gratings to replace leakage around the skirts. Because it was omnipresent, Waldstejn did not realize how loud the noise was until Hodicky tried to speak over it. The little private had followed Waldstejn to the ground, but he still had to shout to ask, "How close, sir? You see it now. How close?"

  Staring at the dark bow of the tank did not put Waldstejn any nearer to being able to judge how thick its armor was. Too damned thick, almost surely.

  The mass of the tank was an aura about it, and its three-meter height was no longer a statistic but a lowering presence. It was not the armor that mattered now, just the angle, and that number was not changed by Waldstejn's fear of the reality whose laser glared at him like the path to Hell. "Half this," he said to his subordinate, "or a little less if you can, but—don't startle them whatever." The tall officer began to walk toward the tank. His hands were in plain sight and his body was so tense that he was near to fainting.

  Hodicky yelped at the change in plans, but it had taken Waldstejn's action to break the silent deadlock. There was a swish and a clang as a side-panel of the lead personnel carrier hinged down. The section of troops which the vehicle held moved nervously onto the ground. They blinked in the sunlight with their rifles pointed in various directions.

  The real value of armored personnel carriers lies in the troops they carry. From their inception, however, there has been a tendency to use them as fighting vehicles rather than as infantry transporters. Even brave men hesitate to leave their dark cocoon for natural terrain searched by an enemy's fire. Rationally they may know that the metal box encasing them is more a magnet for fire than a protection in a hot engagement; but reason dies when the first bullets rake the field.

  Republican designers had developed a simple solution for the problem. The troop commanders could throw switches and drop either or both side panels of their APCs. The thin armor-plating became a ramp which neither hindered the troops' deployment nor encouraged them to stay with their vehicle. Most of the present unit knelt, coughing at the smoke in the air. Six of the soldiers trotted toward Waldstejn. One of them was an officer marked by a pistol and a belt-slung radio. "Hold it right there!" he ordered Waldstejn.

  Someone came to a decision. There was a change in the medley of the drive fans. Republican infantrymen turned in alarm. Waldstejn's own heart leaped in fear of the unexpected modification. Then the background noise died away as all the vehicles settled to the ground. Their fans slowed to idle on descending notes. The difference was as abrupt as that of walking out of a stadium where amplified music was being performed.

  "Thank God you've found us, sir!" Lieutenant Waldstejn cried to forestall the Republican officer. The troops in dark uniforms clustered about their captive. Others from the group still near their vehicle moved uncertainly toward the two Federal privates. "My men and I were kidnapped from Smiricky #4 by a band of bloodthirsty cut-throats—off-planet dregs, every man of them and their whores too! Now that you're hot on their trail, we have a chance to get revenge. Why, you can see how the beasts used us."

  Waldstejn waved back toward the Privates. Quade and Hodicky certainly looked the hang-dog remnants of brutal torture. Quade's uniform had one sleeve. The scabs on his arm had opened again when he climbed from the truck. Red cracks seamed the dried blood. They looked to be one stage removed from amputation, though the scrapes were trivial compared to the bruising Quade had received at the same time.

  For his part, Hodicky had washed his trousers at the first spring they came to. He had then marched in them wet. Dust had fused to mud that seeped into the fabric as indelibly as the original dye. That, together with gares ripped in the cloth by the brush and an expression of stark terror, made Pavel Hodicky look as battered a victim as his black-haired friend.

  "But where—" the Republican officer began. His radio broke in on him. Its demand was a buzzing snarl, audible in full only through his earpiece but easy enough for Waldstejn to reconstruct from his own experience with anxious superiors. "Sir, they say they were capture—" the Republican tried to explain.

  "Is your commanding officer in the tank, Major?" asked Lieutenant Waldstejn pleasantly. He could not identify Republican rank tabs. If he could have, he would have bumped the harried officer two grades for certain rather than by estimate. "Here, it'll be simpler to do this directly, won't it? I understand, I'll keep my hands where everyone can see them." As he spoke, the Federal officer began to walk forward at an easy pace. He was striking for the right side of the tank that faced him squarely. He held his hands at shoulder height, their bare palms forward.

  "No!" shouted the Republican officer as his radio buzzed again. "No sir, I didn't—"

  "That's all right, boys, keep me covered and we'll all be safer," said Waldstejn to the two infantrymen who seemed ready to block him without direct orders. Retaining his calm smile, Waldstejn nodded in the direction he was moving. The tank laser and the automatic cannon of the nearest APC were both trained on him—and on the Republican troops around him. One of them leaped back with a look of horror and an oath.

  From what Waldstejn had heard, swearing like that in the Rube forces was good for six months solitary—or death, if your Unit chaplain was hard-nosed. Even so, the Federal officer thought the oath was a reasonable response to the imminent likelihood of being blasted by friendly weapons.

  And Al
brecht Waldstejn was well able to empathize with that concern at the moment.

  * * * *

  "Ah, none of you guys'd have some water, would you?" asked Private Hodicky. He gave the Republican soldiers a nervous smile. The Federal private had learned years before that bullies found his smile a good reason to kick him. That was fine. These troops could like him or despise him, it was all the same. What they had better not do was fear him and watch him closely.

  "Ah, back in the can," one of the Republicans muttered with a gesture toward the personnel carrier. There was the usual tendency of troops being moved by vehicle to strip gear from themselves. Packs and web gear prodded uncomfortably when you were one of eighteen or twenty men being jounced in a cramped troop compartment. Of course, that meant that when something happened, your gear was in a tangle out of reach. None of the six men clustered around the Federal captives carried a canteen. Only two of them had slung belts of ammunition before spilling out of the vehicle.

  Not that that mattered. Two shots would be quite enough for Hodicky and Q. Their hands were as bare as Waldstejn's.

  "This your truck?" one of the Rubes asked. He nodded. The taupe-clad men were uncertain. Their covert glances toward the rear showed it was not action by their prisoners that they particularly feared. The 522nd Garrison Battalion had been typical of second-line Federal units in having little or no discipline. Its officers were for the most part despicable; certainly they were despised by the troops they nominally commanded.

  The situation in the Republican forces was wholly different. Rigid control was exerted downward from all levels. Breaches of discipline were corrected with a rigor which seemed harsh even by comparison with the standards set for civilians by the theocrats of Budweis. There was a basic flaw, howler, in Frederick the Great's dictum that soldiers should fear their officers more than they feared the enemy. That stifles initiative and causes men to look up the chain of command instead of themselves taking even the simplest measures.

  Measures like deciding what to do with a pair of Federal privates they had been told to watch.

  "We fixed it," croaked Jirik Quade. He gave the skirt of the supply truck a thump with his hand. The contact felt good. He hit the metal again. "When, when we got away from the, yeah, the guys who, ah. . . ." Quade thumped the vehicle a third time and watched it carefully. He had not made eye contact with any of the Rubes since they approached the truck. He was going to screw up, he was going to get Pavel and the Lieutenant killed, and he did not even have a gun!

  "Right," said Hodicky with enthusiasm. Lieutenant Waldstejn was walking toward the tank, now. He seemed to be drawing with him a cluster of Rubes including the protesting infantry officer. "We fixed it up, but then we waited for you guys. You know, we tried to j-join the Lord's forces be—"

  Waldstejn turned. He looked worn and lonely amidst the taupe uniforms. "Private Hodicky," he called in a clear voice, "show the Major how the truck works. Just back it up a little."

  "But sir]" the little private cried.

  Waldstejn ignored him. The tall, slim officer stepped around the bow of the tank, out of Hodicky's sight.

  "One of you guys want to get in with me?" asked Hodicky. His mind was neatly calculating, chosing words that clicked out engagingly through his fixed smile. He climbed the step, then slid into the cab through the door that they had left open. "Not that we could run anywhere," the Private's mouth pattered on, "jeez no, think what that—waving at the armored bow, thirty steps away— "would do!"

  "Hey, hold on," said a dark-clad soldier. "I don't think. . . ." His assault rifle was of a pattern different from those issued to Federal troops, but it had the same sort of hole in the muzzle end. More or less without thinking, the Republican began to point the weapon for emphasis.

  Private Quade undid his fly.

  The dark-haired private was supposed to call attention away from Hodicky by counterfeiting an epileptic fit. He couldn't do that, could not act any better than he could have flown a starship. But there had been no one else to use, because Quade could not drive the truck, either. . ..

  "Hey, watch that!" a soldier cried as he leaped away.

  Quade's urine splashed audibly from the skirt of the truck, gouging away at the grime on the steel. As Hodicky boosted the power, air squirted out beneath the skirts. The side-draft caught the urine and atomized it across Quade's boots and those of the Republicans on the ground with him. "Whoops, should've looked for the lee rail," the little man cried happily over the intake whine. The others cursed.

  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's over!"

  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 to either 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 left a 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 armo
r, 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, "are you a complete idiot? And what is that truck 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's overl" 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're dragging 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.