Star Risk - 03 The Doublecross Program (14 page)

"Now," Suiyahr said, "the council has decided that, since we have our forces in position, we will attack."

"At night?" von Baldur asked.

"We will have artillery illumination," Suiyahr said. "Plus the lighting from the ships overhead."

"Don't you think it wise to wait until dawn, after we've hopefully taken out the Khelat air?"

"Later is maybe," Suiyahr said impatiently. "Now is for sure."

Von Baldur was about to protest more, saw the look on Suiyahr's face, kept silent.

Goodnight and his two men clambered up through the wrecked apartment building as high as they could go.

Below and beyond them was the park, very poorly blacked out. He could identify two�no, three�landed ships with his naked eyeballs.

What a strange image, he thought. Whoever saw an eyeball in formal dress?

He unslung the laser designator, turned it on, but didn't "fire" the device. Instead he swept the area, making sure no one was waiting in ambush with his own pickup.

Nothing.

Very good.

He flipped the sensor on, and target heaven spread below him.

Now all he needed was a Device of Ruination.

He flipped on his com and heard nothing but confusion and unfamiliar signs.

Goodnight sent a com back to the commando unit, got no answer. He tried again, and got nothing but overriding chatter.

I suppose they went out for a glass of tea, he thought.

The fog of war was settling fast this night.

"Up," officers shouted. "For Shaoki we die!"

The line troops weren't either commando or night trained.

They reluctantly came out of their nice, safe hideouts, driven by warrants and officers.

There was�had to be�safety in numbers, and in spite of the ravings of their commanders, they unconsciously moved closer together, three long ragged lines of more than a thousand soldiers, advancing into Thur.

The Khelat awaiting them weren't much better trained, but they had the advantage of the day's victory behind them, and were fighting from cover.

They saw movement in front, hesitated, then artillery flares bloomed overhead and the attacking Shaoki were silhouetted.

Rather than freeze, they dove for cover, or started to, and that was enough for the Khelat to open fire.

A few Khelat had targets, the rest practiced the old infantry tactic of point, pray, and shoot.

The first line of Shaoki hesitated, and another volley slammed into them.

Khelat rockets and mortars dropped down around them, and the pavement of Thur gave little shelter.

"Fall back," someone shouted�no one ever confessed�and then there were other shouts of "Retreat."

The Shaoki line broke, moving back first at a walk, then a trot.

Their noncoms and officers were shouting at them to stop, then the panic caught them, too, and they broke and ran, crashing into the second wave. It, too, began a disorderly retreat.

The night attack had made it only a few hundred meters when it shattered.

The Shaoki fell back through their old positions and kept going. Some, but not many, of the soldiers kept their weapons. Others threw them away, along with their weapons harnesses and even uniforms.

Riss was sitting in the gunner's hatch of the lead armored lifter when she heard shouting, screams, even over the drive whine and the noise of shell fire and explosions.

She grabbed a pair of binocs, swept the area in front of the column of lifters, and gaped.

Riss had heard of units breaking under fire, but it had been her good fortune to never have it happen to her. She knew any unit can panic, no matter how experienced, but that green units were more likely to break.

She also knew the book solution, had hoped not to ever use it. But here it was, in front of her.

She reached down inside the lifter, grabbed two blast carbines from their rack, tossed one to the Shaoki commander.

"Come on," she said. "Ground this pig, unass the lifter, and play hero."

Riss was sliding down from the turret as it landed on the torn pavement.

Evidently, the commander knew the drill, as well, because he was talking into his throat mike, and the other lifters behind them grounded, too.

Riss didn't need amplified light to see the men and women running toward her.

She fed a magazine into her blaster and sent bolts shattering into the roadway in front of her. Her fire was echoed by the Shaoki lifter commander.

That stopped them.

For an instant.

Then someone shouted that the Khelat were just behind them, pushed through, ran toward Riss. The mob started to roll forward again.

She took a deep breath and cut him down.

That stopped them again� for more than an instant.

Riss jumped back on the lifter, was behind a crew-served blaster, and ran half a magazine into the emptiness between the rabble.

"You men," and she needed no loudspeaker to be heard. "Get back to where you belong."

"They're comin'," someone shouted.

"Then don't get shot in the back," Riss called. "Come on. We're going forward." She motioned to the lifter commander, who gave orders.

The column of massive assault lifters took off, just centimeters off the ground, and moved forward slowly.

The broken unit had to get out of the way. They crowded off the road as the column bulled its way toward the Khelat. The pause had given some of them time to think, take a breath, and, rather shamefacedly, find arms of one sort or another.

Less then a third of the soldiers who'd broken kept retreating. Riss thought that was very good, and felt proud of herself.

She didn't allow herself to think about the unarmed man who lay sprawled, dead in the road, that she'd shot.

***

"You had best get reinforcements in a hurry," von Baldur "suggested" to Suiyahr.

The woman looked away.

"Yes, yes," she said. "In good time. They are assembling even as we speak."

Von Baldur had the grave suspicion that no Shaoki commanders were willing to get near what looked to becoming a serious debacle.

It figured.

Goodnight kept himself from swearing. Here, under his thumb�or laser, at any rate�was one of the fattest targets ever.

The only problem was, was nobody seemed to be interested in talking to him.

He decided on desperation, clicked his com on. "Any station able to ID Goodnight's eye color, please respond."

He knew there had to be spoofers out there, but who knew about eyes?

His two cohorts looked at him oddly but said nothing.

Goodnight made another �cast.

Jasmine King was listening to a com sweep while she watched the shift change around the com sets. Boring was the mildest description she was thinking.

Something caught her:

"�Goodnight's eye color, please respond."

She grinned, listened to the �cast again.

Jasmine wondered if she should respond. Knowing somebody might have Chas tied to a chair and pulling his fingernails out, she decided to take the chance.

"Unknown station, this is Jasmine. Over."

"This is Goodnight." came back at her. "Gimme an ID."

"Rude bastard," King said. "You give me one, Brown Eyes."

"You used to work for the dog from hell."

Jasmine laughed out loud. That was, indeed, Cerberus.

"It is you. What do you need?"

"I need some bangsticks. Big ones," the �cast came back. "Also, if there's anything in the air, I'd like them to do a fast flyover over the beeg park downtown, with bangs on the pad and laser pickups on."

"I've got both," King said. "Hold on."

She remembered the call sign of the artillery unit Grok was piggybacking, commed it.

Grok got on the other end.

"We have laser-targeting capability," he said. "Give me a launch time. Over."

"Stand by. Over."

She motioned to a tech, who handed her another microphone.

"Star Risk Inchcape, this is Star Risk Control."

"Star Risk Inchcape here. Over."

"Can you put your ships over that park in city center? I have someone in place with a laser painter. Over."

"On the way. Inchcape out."

"This is Star Risk Vian. Monitored your last. Do you want me to do the same?"

"That's affirmative," King said, feeling very much like a general.

Eat your heart out, Grok.

Speaking of whom�

"This is Star Risk Control," she �cast on Grok's frequency. "Stand by with your fire mission until air incoming clears your space."

"Standing by."

The starships whistled in. A few missiles came up, but the Khelat gunners either weren't trained or didn't have night sights, and they missed badly.

Chas Goodnight "painted" the obvious C&C ship with his laser designator.

High above, Inchcape's weapon's officer saw the target, "told" a missile where to strike, sent it on its way, then locked it.

Goodnight's designator beeped, and he switched to another target. Again, after an instant, his designator beeped, telling him the target was acquired.

He wasn't aware that he was grinning as he aimed at a third ship.

"The air is clear," Grok reported as the ships passed. "Fire mission!"

The tubes chugged on full auto.

Now, this, he thought, would be a killing.

Rated�

He remembered a word he'd read in some ancient book, thought it fit.

Frabjous.

Yes, frabjous.

Riss ignored protocol, ignored the unit commander, and took it upon herself to order the lifters forward.

No one objected, and the monsters lifted and went toward the flaming wreckage of the park.

Khelat were coming out of their hasty positions with improvised white flags. Riss ordered the column on, not to stop for prisoners. She hoped the soldiers in the lifters didn't misunderstand her commands.

A hasty com told Grok to raise his artillery fire as the lifters, infantry running behind them, entered the park, or its wreckage.

There wasn't much more than a sniper here and there, and crew-served weapons took care of them, as well as whatever building they'd taken cover in.

One of Goodnight's commandos, seeing the lifters, got up and started cheering and waving.

Chas knocked him down, lay across him as somebody sent a burst just over their heads.

"It's dumb to get killed," he hissed into the man's ear. "It's even dumber if it's your own side doing the killing."

At dawn, the reinforcements arrived. But there weren't many Khelat soldiers to worry about. It was, as they say, a famous victory.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWENTY-ONE � ^ � Colonel Suiyahr tried a smile, found it didn't suit her, and looked at Friedrich von Baldur as if he were a subaltern who'd been found embezzling the mess funds.

If it was intended to quail Friedrich, it didn't work. She wasn't the first to put on that expression to Freddie, nor the most justified.

"Of course, we're impressed with the way Star Risk helped us win the great victory on Shaoki II," she said, as if by rote. "And we hope there are many more in the future."

"So what is the problem, then?" von Baldur asked.

"Frankly, it is the fees you're charging us," Suiyahr said.

"Oh? I was about to inquire about the possibility of a bonus, given our performance on Shaoki II, which certainly was not of a sort specified in our contract."

"You jest, of course," she said. "We of the council feel that your rates are quite exorbitant, and having done some research, feel that the contract should be revised to be more in keeping with what other firms elsewhere in the galaxy charge for equivalent or even superior service."

"Might I ask what firms you've contacted to get such figures?"

"That isn't the point," Suiyahr said. "What is the point is that the council leads the Shaoki worlds, and considers itself responsible for the financial welfare of the people."

Von Baldur sighed. He could have mentioned the luxuries the council members lavished on themselves, knew better. As it was, it was shaping to be a very long afternoon.

The adjutant of Hore's battalion recognized Jasmine King.

"I'm honored," she said, a bit sarcastically. "I'm trying to contact one of your troopers� an artilleryman named Llaros," Jasmine said. "He's been having trouble with his pay. It appears the Shaoki are at fault."

"Hold on," the adjutant said, turned to a computer keyboard, hit keys.

"Right," she said. "Here he is. But I'll have to take a message. His whole battery is on a detail."

"Who'd they get on the wrong side of?" King asked incuriously.

"Nobody," the adjutant said. "We're just setting up our own armory. And I see there's an entry on him in the unit diary, said everything's straightened out."

"Good," King said. "But leave a message that I got back to him. We don't want anyone thinking we're turning into a bureaucracy. King, out."

Jasmine frowned for an instant, then lost the thought just as Vian came into the suite.

"You said something about wanting to learn how to drive a starship," he said with a smile. "I volunteered. You want to make a swift run over to Khelat II and raise a little hell, strafing? A day or so gone."

Jasmine did, but wasn't sure she should. She glanced at her assistant, who held out his hands.

"We can manage without you," he said, with a bit of hauteur.

"Then we're on our way," King said, standing and reaching for her combat harness hanging on the wall behind her.

"You won't need that," Vian said. "We're the clean-fingernails sort, not hand-to-hand."

Jasmine started to replace the rig, caught herself, remembering Riss, who supposedly took her showers with her harness on.

"The only time you won't wear it," M'chel had said, her tones those of a high priestess, "is the one time it could have saved your ass."

Jasmine shrugged into the harness.

"I'd be lost without it."

Vian didn't argue, just grinned.

"I am thinking," von Baldur said to Goodnight and Grok, "after that snooty little interview with Her Ever So Arrogant Liaison with the Council, that we had best come up with a nice, spectacular target to keep the checks rolling in."