Riding the Red Horse (12 page)

“We don't even have the rifles.”

“You'll get those. Meantime, relax. You've told Brigade your men aren't ready to fight. You've asked for weapons and more Nemourlon. You've complained about Stromand. You've done it all, now shut up before you get yourself shot as a defeatist. That's an order, Pete.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You'll get your war soon enough.”

The trucks came back to Tarazona a week later. They carried coffin-shaped boxes full of rifles and bayonets from New Aberdeen, Thurstone's largest city. The rifles were covered with grease, and there wasn't any solvent to clean them with. Most were copies of Remington 2045 model automatic, but there were some Krupps and Skodas. Most of the men didn't know which ammunition fit their rifles.

“Not bad gear,” Barton remarked. He turned one of the rifles over and over in his hands. “We've had worse.”

“But I don't have much training in rifle tactics,” Peter said.

Barton shrugged. “No power supplies, no maintenance ships, no base to support anything more complicated than chemical slug-throwers, Peter. Forget the rest of the crap you learned and remember that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Whistles blew, and someone shouted from the trucks. “Get your gear and get aboard!”

“But—” Owensford turned helplessly to Barton. “Get aboard for where?”

Barton shrugged. “I'd better get back to my area. Maybe they're moving the whole battalion up while we've got the trucks.”

They were. The men who had armor put it on, and everyone dressed in combat synthileather. Most had helmets, ugly hemispheric models with a stiff spine over the most vulnerable areas. A few men had lost theirs, and they boarded the trucks without them.

The convoy rolled across the plains and into a greener farm area; then it got dark, and the night air chilled fast under clear, cloudless skies. The drivers pushed on, too fast without lights, and Peter sat in the back of the lead truck, his knees clamped tightly together, his teeth unconsciously beating out a rhythm he'd learned years before. No one talked.

At dawn they were in another valley. Trampled crops lay all around them, drying dead plants with green stalks.

“Good land,” Private Lunster said. He lifted a clod and crumbled it between his fingers. “Very good land.”

Somehow that made Peter feel better. He formed the men into ranks and made sure each knew how to load his weapon. Then he had each fire at a crumbling adobe wall, choosing a large target so that they wouldn't fail to hit it. More trucks pulled in and unloaded heavy generators and antitank lasers. When Owensford's men tried to get close to the heavy weapons the gunners shouted them away. It seemed to Peter that the gunners were familiar with the gear, and that was encouraging.

Everyone spoke softly, and when anyone raised his voice it was like a shout. Stromand tried to get the men to sing, but they wouldn't.

“Not long now, eh?” Sergeant Roach asked.

“I expect you're right,” Peter told him, but he didn't know, and went oft to find the commissary truck. He wanted to be sure the men got a good meal that evening.

They moved them up during the night. A guide came to Peter and whispered to follow him, and they moved out across the unfamiliar land. Somewhere out there were the Dons with their army of peasant conscripts and mercenaries and family retainers. When they had gone fifty meters, they passed an old tree and someone whispered to them.

“Everything will be fine,” Stromand's voice said from the shadows under the tree. “All of the enemy are politically immature. Their vacqueros will run away, and their peasant conscripts will throw away their weapons. They have no reason to be loyal.”

“Why the hell has the war gone on three years?” someone whispered behind Peter.

He waited until they were long past the tree. “Roach, that wasn't smart. Stromand will have you shot for defeatism.”

“He'll play hell doing it, Lieutenant. You, man, pick up your feet. Want to fall down that gully?”

“Quiet,” the guide whispered urgently. They went on through the dark night, down a slope, then up another, past men dug into the hillside. They didn't speak to them.

Peter found himself walking along the remains of a railroad, with the ties partly gone and all the rails removed. Eventually the guide halted. “Dig in here,” he whispered. “Long live freedom.”

“
No pasarán!
” Stromand answered loudly.

“Please be quiet,” the guide urged. “We are within earshot of the enemy.”

“Ah,” Stromand answered. The guide turned away and the political officer began to follow him.

“Where are you going?” Corporal Grant asked in a loud whisper.

“To report to Major Harris,” Stromand answered.

“The battalion commander ought to know where we are.”

“So should we,” a voice said.

“Who was that?” Stromand demanded. The only answer with a juicy raspberry.

“That bastard's got no right,” a voice said close to Peter.

“Who's there?”

“Rotwasser, sir.” Rotwasser was company runner. The job gave him the nominal rank of monitor but he had no maniple to command. Instead he carried complaints from the men to Owensford.

“I can spare the PO better than anyone else,” Peter whispered. “I'll need you here, not back at battalion. Now start digging us in.”

It was cold on the hillside, but digging kept the men warm enough. Dawn came slowly at first, a gradually brightening light without warmth. Peter took out his light-amplifying binoculars and cautiously looked out ahead. The binoculars were a present from his mother and the only good optical equipment in the company.

The countryside was cut into small, steep-sided ridges and valley. Allan Roach lay beside Owensford and when it became light enough to see, the sergeant whistled softly. “We take that ridge in front of us, there's another just like it after that. And another. Nobody's goin' to win this war that way....”

Owensford nodded silently. There were trees in the valley below, oranges and dates imported from Earth mixed in with native fruit trees as if a giant had spilled seeds across the ground. A whitewashed adobe peasant house stood gutted by fire, the roof gone.

Zing! Something that might have been a hornet but wasn't buzzed angrily over Peter's head. There was a flat crack from across the valley, then more of the angry buzzes. Dust puffs sprouted from the earthworks they'd thrown up during the night.

“Down!” Peter ordered.

“What are they trying to do, kill us?” Allan Roach shouted. There was a chorus of laughs. “Sir, why didn't they use IR on us in the dark? We should have stood out in this cold—”

Peter shrugged. “Maybe they don't have any. We don't.”

The men who'd skimped on their holes dug in deeper, throwing the dirt out onto the ramparts in front of them, laughing as they did. It was very poor technique, and Peter worried about artillery, but nothing happened. The enemy was about four hundred meters away, across the valley and stretched out along a ridge identical to the one Peter held. No infantry that ever lived could have taken a position by charging across that valley. Both sides were safe until something heavier was brought up.

One large-caliber gun was trained on their position. It fired on anything that moved. There was also a laser, with several mirrors that could be moved about between flashes. The laser itself was safe, and the mirrors probably were also because the monarchists never fired twice from the same position.

The men shot at the guns and at where they thought the mirror was anyway until Peter made them quit wasting ammunition. It wasn't good for morale to lie there and not fight back, though.

“I bet I can locate that goddam gun,” Corporal Bassinger told Peter. “I got the best eyesight in the company.”

Peter mentally called up Bassinger's records. Two ex-wives and an acknowledged child by each. Volunteered after being an insurance man in Brooklyn for years. “You can't spot that thing.”

“Sure I can, Lieutenant. Loan me your glasses, I'll spot it sure.”

“All right. Be careful, they're shooting at anything they can see.”

“I'm careful.”

“Let me see, man!” somebody shouted. Three men clustered in the trench around Bassinger. “Let us look!” “Don't be a hog, we want to see too.” “Comrade, let us look—”

“Get away from here,” Bassinger shouted. “You heard the lieutenant, it's dangerous to look over the ramparts.”

“What about you?”

“I'm an observer. Besides, I'm careful.” He crawled into position and looked out through a little slot he'd cut away in the dirt in front of him. “See, it's safe enough. I think I see—”

Bassinger was thrown back into the trench. The shattered glasses fell on top of him, and he had already ceased breathing when they heard the shot that hit him in the eye.

By the next morning two men had toes shot off and had to be evacuated.

They lay on the hill for a week. Each night they lost a few more men to minor casualties that could not possibly have been inflicted by the enemy; then Stromand had two men with foot injuries shot by a squad of military police he brought up from staff headquarters.

The injuries ceased, and the men lay sullenly in the trenches until the company was relieved.

They had two days in a small town near the front, then the officers were called to a meeting. The briefing officer had a thick accent, but it was German, not Spanish. The briefing was for the Americans and it was held in English.

“Ve vill have a full assault, vith all International volunteers to move out at once. Ve vill use infiltration tactics.”

“What does that mean?” Captain Barton demanded.

The staff officer looked pained. “Ven you break through their lines, go straight to their technical areas and disrupt them. Ven that is done, the var is over.”

“Where are their technical corpsmen?”

“You vill be told after you have broken through their lines.”

The rest of the briefing made no more sense to Peter. He walked out with Barton after they were dismissed. “Looked at your section of the line?” Barton asked.

“As much as I can,” Peter answered. “Do you have a decent map?”

“No. Old CD orbital photographs, and some sketches. No better than what you have.”

“What I did see looks bad,” Peter said. “There's an olive grove, then a hollow I can't see into. Is there cover in there?”

“You better patrol and find out.”

“You will ask the battalion commander for permission to conduct patrols,” a stern voice said from behind them.

“You better watch that habit of walking up on people, Stromand,” Barton said. “One of these days somebody's not going to realize it's you.” He gave Peter a pained looked. “Better ask.”

Major Harris told Peter that Brigade had forbidden patrols. They might alert the enemy of the coming attack and surprise was needed.

As he walked back to his company area, Peter reflected that Harris had been an attorney for the Liberation Party before he volunteered to go to Santiago. They were to move out the next morning.

The night was long. The men were very quiet, polishing weapons and talking in whispers, drawing meaningless diagrams in the mud of the dugouts. About halfway through the night forty new volunteers joined the company. They had no equipment beyond rifles, and they had left the port city only two days before. Most came from Churchill, but because they spoke English and the trucks were coming to this section, they had been sent along.

Major Harris called the officers together at dawn. “The Xanadu techs have managed to assemble some rockets,” he told them. “They'll drop them on the Dons before we move out. Owensford, you will move out last. You will shoot any man who hasn't gone before you do.”

“That's my job,” Stromand protested.

“You will be needed to lead the men,” Harris said. “The bombardment will come at 0815 hours. Do you all have proper timepieces?”

“No, sir,” Peter said. “I've only got a watch that counts Earth time.”

“Hell,” Harris muttered. “Okay, Thurstone's hours are 1.08 Earth hours long. You'll have to work it out from that….” He looked confused.

“No problem,” Peter assured him.

“Oh, good. Back to your areas, then.”

Zero hour went past with no signals. Another hour passed. Then a Republican brigade to the north began firing, and a few moved out of their dugouts and across the valley floor.

A ripple of fire and flashing mirrors colored the ridge beyond as the enemy began firing. The Republican troops were cut down, and the few not hit scurried back into their shelters.

“Fire support!” Harris shouted. Owensford's squawk box made unintelligible sounds, effectively jammed as were all electronics Peter had seen on Santiago, but he heard the order passed down the line. His company fired at the enemy, and the monarchists returned it.

Within minutes it was clear that the enemy had total dominance in the area. A few large rockets rose from somewhere behind the enemy lines and crashed randomly into the Republican positions. There were more flashes across the sky as the Xanadu technicians backtracked the enemy rockets and returned counterfire. Eventually the shooting stopped for lack of targets.

It was 1100 by Peter's watch when a series of explosions lit the lip of the monarchist ramparts. Another wave of rockets fell among the enemy, and the Republicans to the north began to charge forward.

“Ready to move out!” Peter shouted. He waited for orders.

There was nearly a minute of silence. No more rockets fell on the enemy. Then the ridge opposite rippled with fire again, and the Republicans began to go down or scramble back to their positions.

The alert tone sounded on Peter's squawk box and he lifted it to his ear. Amazingly, he could hear intelligible speech. Someone at headquarters was speaking to Major Harris.

“The Republicans have already advanced half a kilometer. They are being slaughtered because you have not moved your precious Americans in support.”

“Bullshit!” Harris's voice had no tones in the tiny speaker. “The Republicans are already back in their dugouts. The attack has failed.”

“It has not failed. You must show what high morale can do. Your men are all volunteers. Many Republicans are conscripts. Set an example for them.”