Star Risk - 03 The Doublecross Program (25 page)

Mostly Riss kept her lifters in revetments, since the Maulers, or somebody over there, were too damned accurate with their mortars and gun tubes.

Lifters, both heavy and scout, had an additional mission�taking air, ammo, and food to the forward lines.

That was another way for soldiers to die�lifter crews blasted out of existence, line soldiers by mortar if they dared group up for meals.

Everyone complained, but not very loudly unless they were line soldiers.

Now, those bastards, everyone agreed, had it really rough�

Grok faithfully kept providing spoofery for raids, either aerial or on the ground.

Everyone knew it was getting bad�no one ever heard the alien complain.

Off-watch, he buried himself in abstruse philosophical works, and the gods help the poor crew member who bothered him with trivial matters like the war.

One thing working against Riss's personal morale was the combat armor everyone wore. The suits had been taken out of Alliance service a long time ago, and almost everyone figured it was just a matter of them being obsolete.

Riss knew better, having seen some of the suits in an armory once, and a gunnery sergeant who was slightly older than god told her why they weren't issued anymore.

The suits had been designed for combat, and were fitted with four "triage" units at the shoulder and hip. If someone was hit in an extremity, the triage units, which were unsightly lumps, came to life. They sealed the suit from atmosphere loss, automated jets injected opiates, and small laser units razored the limb off.

The casualty wouldn't burn his lungs out in a vacuum or human-hostile atmosphere, and medics could quickly medevac the wounded.

Of course, the shock of first the wound and then the amputation might cause death, but that was part of the price.

The triage units were guaranteed failure-proof.

The gunny sergeant had said the operative word was almost failure-proof, which is why they were taken out of service. Every once in a while, something went wonky in the units and an uninjured soldier would lose an arm or a leg.

The suits were now at least twenty years old, and Riss could never look at the bulge on her arms or legs without shuddering and expecting the worst.

Large freighters were commandeered by the government and brought in, far behind the lines, after having been hastily modified as troop-support centers.

The idea was Prince Wahfer's.

At first, mainly rear-area soldiers took advantage of the chance to shower, draw fresh uniforms, have a meal, and sleep in one of the holds, fitted with wall-to-wall mattresses.

The Prince heard about that, and sent in military police squads to make sure the first soldiers served came from the front.

His stock rose considerably.

Goodnight heard a rumor that he'd also wanted brothels established, but the puritanical king had vetoed the idea. Besides, as one of Chas's sergeant majors said, it'd be hell if some poor infantry type had encountered his wife, girlfriend, mother as one of the volunteers.

The battlefield was chewed up by artillery and destroyed ships and lifters.

Scattered here and there were the desiccated corpses of Khelat, Shaoki, or mercenaries that no one had time to pick up, or else the bodies lay in the open, with snipers around them.

At least there wasn't the usual corpse stink of rotting flesh.

The main trench was less than a hundred meters from the eastern outpost when Goodnight called, in code, to ask a favor.

Riss was happy to oblige.

She had her lifters register targets inside the outpost then waited a day.

Before dawn, she ordered all of her tubes unmasked, and barrage fire opened.

Rockets and shells rained down on the outpost as Goodnight's two battalions, now at half-strength, came out of the trenches and trudged forward. They were spotted within twenty meters of the trench, but it was too late.

The shock troops tumbled into the trench, blasters raving.

The Shaoki fought back hard, and then the weapons were knives, shovels, and even portable diggers.

Goodnight pushed them steadily back, and by noon the outpost had fallen to the Khelat. But there was no sign of surrender.

There were, Riss thought, three levels of personal smell in combat.

The first was when the battle first began, and no one wanted to take his helmet off or let anyone realize how stinky he was.

The second was after a few weeks had passed and everyone smelled worse, and didn't care who knew it.

The third, and M'chel hoped this was terminal, was when a soldier wanted to hunt down some real echelon muhff, and open his suit under his or her nose.

Maybe this was one area where the infantry had a bit of an advantage over the lifter crews. You couldn't smell yourself after a while, so you stank in peace.

But in a heavy lifter, the crew compartment was about five meters by five meters by two meters, with various weapons and devices intruding. The four- or five-person crew could, when they weren't in combat, chance taking off their helmets and breathing compartment air.

And the smells that went with it: sweat, what was called ozoned air from the various instruments, urine, excrement, blood, halitosis, missile exhaust, burnt propellant, decaying food, machine oil.

Riss thought about the glamour of it all, realized if it weren't for her big mouth she could be sitting up on the bridge of the Pride or somewhere safer and less smelly.

M'chel discovered another danger of fighting in a vacuum�the silence.

An incoming artillery round, unless it was very, very close, could only be felt by the shock of its impact and explosion.

A round that missed you, missed you, and unless someone pointed out what had happened, you might not even be aware you'd been shot at.

That reduced combat fatigue�but it also made troops careless about their safety.

Riss had moved her regiment to cover the conquered outpost while it was reinforced, and the positions' firing ports were turned through 180 degrees.

Somewhere out there, she'd been told, someone, probably a Mauler, was using a sniper rifle. A big projectile sniper rifle, with 13-mm shells, probably recoilless.

After seeing a round splatter on rock or lifter armor, most soldiers developed a posture problem, walking hunched over and hastily waddling from cover to cover.

But still people were hit.

One of them was M'chel's "lucky" gunner.

He'd gotten out of the lifter through the cupola hatch and was stretching, glad to be in the open for an instant.

The round almost missed him, tearing past his leg, taking a chunk of suit and meat with it.

Then the triage unit went on, and Riss could hear the man squall as his leg was neatly, cleanly, cut off.

Then the man jerked, stiffened, and was dead.

Riss never thought she'd ever cry for any Khelat, let alone one who called her "ma'am," and whose last name she barely remembered.

But she did.

Then she found someone who'd seen a puff of dust knocked up when the sniper's weapon recoiled� and who had taken a compass reading on the location.

Riss could have leveled the area with a missile or shell fire.

But that wasn't personal enough.

Instead, that night, her blaster sheathed, she went through the lines with a knife in her hand.

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FORTY-FOUR � ^ � M'chel followed the compass heading inexactly. She would feel like a damned fool, not to mention being dead, if she was so intent on the swinging disc that she wandered into the sniper's lair.

So she hung a dogleg course north for a number of paces, then south for the same number, zigging across the heading, taking a great deal of time to consider the terrain in front of her.

She moved very slowly, one hundred meters in an hour, keeping her breathing quiet. Before she moved, she used a small available-light monocular to make sure no one was lying in ambush.

It was getting near dawn when she came on a small rock nest that she would have chosen as a post if she'd been a sniper.

Riss examined the ground carefully, saw, by the dim moonlight, some bipod-sized scrapes in the soft rock.

Very good.

She found a hide a few meters from the nest, laying her blaster on the rock in front of her.

If the sniper was really good, he�or she�would never return to this position.

Riss was counting the shooter wasn't perfect.

She was right.

Crouched low, just before first light, she saw four space suits moving toward her from enemy positions.

She puzzled, then realized one would be the triggerman, one would be backup cover, one would be a spotter, and the fourth would be, considering the weight of a 13-mm rifle and its rounds, the ammo bearer.

She hoped.

M'chel was utterly motionless as the men found a position, and she saw the long rifle being put together, and its bipod and monopod positioned.

She braced for her rush.

A very large, probably multiple-vision telescopic sight went on top of the rifle, and Riss had seen enough.

Her blaster came up, and she shot the cover man, then the spotter.

The ammo bearer was looking about wildly, and she put a bolt through his faceplate.

The sniper himself had forgotten about the blaster holstered at his waist, was trying to get the big gun around.

M'chel dropped the gun, came across the ground between them in a waddling attack.

She brushed the rifle aside and dove on top of the sniper. Her knife went under his helmet, into the expansion-contraction joint, and through into softness.

The sniper jerked, his heels thrashed twice, and he was dead.

Riss wanted to gloat over the body, wished she was primitive enough to collect ears, instead went back to her position, feeling a great deal better about the world.

A transport landed, and its passengers and crew were bustled to positions about two kilometers behind the Khelat front lines.

Star Risk now was truly in debt to Hal Maffer.

Somewhere he'd found an entire 200 mm multiple-launch rocket battery, and enlisted it. There were ten launchers in the battery, and a full complement of rocket men.

They went into action that first day, firing ten rockets at a time per launcher.

The rockets were simple solid-fuel devices and had no guidance after they left the tube. They weren't terribly accurate, but ten of them landing in approximately the same place at a time was impressive. Not to mention lethal if you or your lifter or your pillbox happened to be in that same place.

The ground rocked under the rockets' impact, and obliterated positions.

Little by little, the Shaoki lines were being driven in.

The next victory went to Grok.

He and his technicians had been trying to decode whatever secrets were hidden in a burst of what appeared to be static, but failed utterly.

Then Grok rethought the matter.

He had Freddie detail him a couple of destroyers. Against practice, considering Grok knew far too much to be allowed in combat beyond what was utterly necessary, they picked him up and lurked on a position just beyond the atmosphere, trying to get a fix on where that static burst was coming from.

It took two tries, but then they homed in on the signal and found a pair of Shaoki transports nestled snugly into the broad mouth of a cavern, almost impossible to see unless you were right on it.

Grok now knew why the Khelat had been unable to figure out how the Shaoki were able to resupply. The transports would have jumped to a nav point very close to III, picked up the transmission, perhaps triggered by a com on one of their ships, and darted for the surface before they could be detected.

There were antiaircraft missiles around the site, but the destroyers spoofed and then toppled them.

Two barrages of rockets went into the cavern, and, later, four of Wahfer's cruisers were put in synchronous orbit over the mine's remains.

That was that for Shaoki resupply.

"If these Maulers had any brains," Goodnight said, "they would be starting to think about the virtues of a good, honest white flag."

Some had brains.

One section did find white, or rather whitish, flags, and began waving them about.

The shot was patched through to the king's command ship.

Three lifters went out to accept the surrender.

The Maulers�about twelve of them�clambered out of their semiwrecked lifter, hands held high. When they were all in the open, the two Khelat lifters opened fire.

They killed all twelve.

In the shriek of self-congratulations, Friedrich made sure his people had seen the footage.

"Nice," Goodnight said. "Very nice, indeed."

Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

"It certainly is," Riss agreed from her position with the tracks. "It'll be a cold day in hell before anyone else thinks of a little sensible cowardice."

"Are you humans entirely mad?" Grok wondered.

"No," van Baldur said. "Just our leaders."

"Shit!" Riss said, and that ended the conference.

***

Goodnight didn't need to trigger his battle analysis to know what the Shaoki would do next.

There were only two options: to abandon VI/III and its soldiers and mercenaries, or attempt to reinforce or relieve them.

Intercepted holo-casts from the Shaoki worlds said what that would be: reinforcement.

Shaoki ships swarmed off Irdis, ready for the Grand Fleet Action.

King Saleph said that he was prepared for battle, and told his ships to englobe VI/III.

It was to be a battle of total destruction.

Friedrich von Baldur gently tore his hair, then asked the king for his permission for a "spoiling attack, just in case."

Saleph, busy moving model fleets in the air around his control room, gave his assent.

Von Baldur asked if he could use his mercenary ships, and possibly Prince Wahfer's cruiser squadron.

The king was glad to give up the latter for what he was very sure would be a no-action piece of foolery by the mercenaries.