The Forlorn Hope (6 page)

“Ah, sir,” said Private Hodicky from behind the counter. “I can handle the computer, if that's what you want. We had the same unit in my lyceum.”

The little man had not intended to admit his competence with the system. As short-handed as the Supply Section was, he would probably wind up with his previous duties as well as work on the computer. For another thing, it was the lyceum computer which had gotten him sent down with six months active and a forced enlistment for the duration of the war. Hodicky had broken into the school office at night and used its terminal to transfer funds to his own bank account. The transaction had been flawless from a technical viewpoint; but the branch manager had known perfectly well that a seventeen year old slum kid should not have been able to withdraw thirty thousand crowns. Using common sense instead of what the terminal told him, the manager had called the police.

But Hodicky had not expected to be serving under an officer like Lieutenant Waldstejn, either.…

“I don't mind waiting,” said Vladimir Ortschugin. He massaged the heel of the hand with which he had been pounding. “But I need to talk to you as soon as you're free, Albrecht.”

“Sure,” the Lieutenant said, “just a second.” He had tossed a few glasses with the spaceman in company with the two mercenary officers. He could not have remembered Ortschugin's last name for a free trip to Elysion III, however. Switching back to Czech, Waldstejn exclaimed, “You can really work that bitch, Hodicky?” The Private nodded. “Well, you're one up on me,” Waldstejn continued. “They're in the middle of a staff meeting and somebody decided they had to know everything about arms, ammunition, and ration stocks. Not just
our
stores, mind, but unit stocks as well. That means we've got to run platoon and section accounts, issued and expended, for the whole six months to get the bottom line. You can really handle that?”

“Yes,
sir,
” the little man said. He turned and trotted back toward Waldstejn's alcove.

“That's a silver lining I didn't expect,” the tall officer muttered in English. He led Ortschugin into the counter area where there were a pair of tube-frame chairs. They left the outer door open. After struggling with the accounts for two hours, it would be relaxing to handle the sort of oddball supply requests that might come up at this time of night.

“I apologize,” Ortschugin said. “I know you must be busy, but—” he took a leather-covered flask out of his breast pocket and uncapped it— “we know now what we must have, and it is crucial that we learn as soon as possible who we must see to get it.” He handed the flask to Waldstejn, shifting his cud of tobacco to his right cheek in preparation for the liquor's return. “We must have a truck power receptor so that we can fly to Praha on broadcast power.”

Waldstejn choked on his sip of what seemed to be industrial-strength ethanol. “What?” he said through his coughing. It was not that the request was wholly impossible, but it certainly had not been anything the local man had expected.

The Spacer drank deeply from his own flask and belched. He stared gloomily upward before he resumed speaking. Several of the brighter stars were tremblingly visible through the plastic sheets. “Our powerplant is gone, kaput,” the bearded man said at last. “Replacement and patching the hull, those are dockyard jobs. We
can
fly, using the APU to drive the landing thrusters—but minutes, you see, ten, twenty at most before the little bottle ruptures also under load and we make fireworks as pretty as those this morning, yes?” He swigged again, then remembered and offered the flask to Waldstejn—who waved it away. “So we are still sitting when your Republicans take over, yes?” Ortschugin concluded with a wave of his hand.

The Swobodan's flat certainty that the battalion would be overrun chilled Waldstejn. “That may be, I suppose,” the local officer said carefully, “but—well, from what you said that night with Fasolini, that you just shuttled cargo, you didn't mess with politics.… I wouldn't think it would make much difference to you. The Rubes don't have much time for mercenaries, I'm told, but like you say,
you
just drive a truck.”

Ortschugin did not at first answer. He began craning his neck, trying to look all around him without getting up from his chair. Waldstejn, guessing the ostensible reason for the other's pause, hooked a wastebasket from under the counter. The spaceman spat into it.

The delay had permitted Ortschugin to consider the blunt question at length. He found he had no better response to it than the truth. “You are right, of course. The problem is not—” he gestured with both hands and grimaced— “patriotism, it is mechanics. We can use the broadcast power line to fly to a dockyard—
if
we have a tuned receiver, and
if
the dockyard is in Praha. Budweis has an adequate dock, surely; but there is no pylon system to Budweis. We must leave now, and for Praha, if the
Katyn Forest
is not to lie here until she rusts away … and ourselves, perhaps, with her. I—”

The Swobodan paused again. He made no effort this time to hide his embarrassment at how to proceed. At last he blurted, “We—Pyaneta Lines—can pay you. To save the vessel, they will pay well, only name it. But there are troops guarding the trucks still in camp, and the officer in charge will not deal with me. You are our last hope.”

Waldstejn stood and walked idly to the terminal on the counter. He cut it on. “Diedrichson won't deal with you?” he remarked. “Wonder what got into him. It wasn't honesty, that I'm sure of.” He began tapping in a request, using one finger and wondering how Hodicky was doing on the other terminal. “Diedrichson and the Major are close as
that,
” the Supply Officer concluded, crossing his left index and middle fingers and holding them up. A massive silver ring winked on the middle finger. A crucifix was cast onto the top in place of a stone setting.

The local officer turned again to his visitor. “So,” he said in a tone as precise as a headmaster's, “because you couldn't bribe the fellow in charge of the vehicles themselves, you decided to bribe the Supply Officer. Right? Figured I'd be an easier mark than Diedrichson because we'd had a few drinks together? That
is
right, isn't it, Lieutenant … you know, I've forgotten your last name?”

Ortschugin set the flask down with a thump on a shelf beside him. He did not meet Waldstejn's eyes. “Albrecht,” he said quietly, “I came to you because I know of nowhere else to go. I am no longer First Officer—” he raised his bearded face—“I am Captain. Her Excellency died in the attack.”

The spaceman stood and his voice took on a fierce resonance. “The vessel, the four crewmen who remain, they are
my
responsibility. If I must steal to save them, if I must bribe—I
will
save them.” He slammed his broad, pale hand down on the counter to punctuate his statement.

Lieutenant Waldstejn's icy distaste melted. He reached out and laid his hand on the back of the spaceman's, squeezing it. “Hell, I'm sorry, Vladimir,” he said. “I'm just pissed because you're getting out of this hole and I probably won't.” He drew a deep breath. “There's an antenna in stock; we're set up for some transport maintenance here, you were right. You can have it.” Then, “Got anything left in your flask?”

Ortschugin bellowed with delight. He embraced the slighter man. “But of course you can come out with us,” he said. “This base, this Smiricky Complex—in days it will be in Republican hands. Who will know?”

The tall Supply Officer snorted bitterly. “I don't think you give the Morale Section all the credit it deserves,” he said. “They've saved the Rubes a lot of trouble by shooting people they decide are deserters.”

“You are afraid of that?” the spaceman exclaimed. He stepped back and handed Waldstejn the liquor. “No problem. We'll hide you aboard and take you off-planet when we're repaired.”

Waldstejn drank, choked, and gave Ortschugin a wry smile. When he could speak again, he said, “Seems to be my night for making speeches. Look, Vladimir, I'm no hero … but I took this job, and I guess I'll stick with everybody else.” He shook his head. “Hell, I don't know…,” he added, but he did not make his subject clear.

Business-like again, the Lieutenant continued, “I'm doing this for one simple reason, my friend. I want your cargo to be shipped from Praha, not Budweis. And I'm not giving you an antenna, I don't have any authority to alienate government property.”

Ortschugin frowned, but he waited for the rest of the explanation.

“I
do
have authority,” the Supply Officer went on with a grin, “to hire transport in an emergency. I think we can justify the emergency—” he waved at what was left of the roof above them—“and so I'm hiring you to transport one power-beam antenna, surplus to local needs, back to Central Stores in Praha. Now, get your crew here with a wagon. I'd as soon it happened while it's still dark and the folks who might ask questions are in Headquarters.”

Ortschugin whooped again. He went out the door, bawling snatches of a song which sounded bawdy even in a language Waldstejn could not guess at.

Someone cleared his throat at the inner doorway. The Lieutenant looked up. Both his subordinates stood there. Hodicky held a long coil of twenty-centimeter computer tape. “Oh,” Albrecht Waldstejn said. “He'll be back—the crew of the freighter—to pick up the truck power antenna in a few minutes. Here, I'll okay it right now.” He found a request form and began to fill it out, checking the unit number from the terminal display.

“We'll take care of it, sir,” Hodicky said. “I've got the figures—” He waved the tape so that it rustled. “Want me to feed it to Headquarters?”

Waldstejn gave the request to Quade and took the tape. “Four bottles, Private,” he said after a glance at the print-out. “And a morning off if I can swing it.” He looked up. “No, I'll carry it over as hard copy. They didn't splice the land-lines cut by the bombs yet, just ran commo wire point to point. Their terminal isn't connected—” the young officer glanced around to see that no one outside was listening—“not that anybody there could be trusted to push the right button for a print-out anyway. Hold the fort, boys,” he added as he walked out of the warehouse.

Waldstejn sobered as he walked toward the concrete Headquarters building. Dimly on the eastern horizon were the flickers and rumbling of others trying to hold forts in grim truth.

And failing.

*   *   *

“Ouch, you butcher!” cried Churchie Dwyer. “Did you learn to use that in a stockyard?”

“You'd bitch if they hanged you with a new rope,” Bertinelli replied calmly. Bertinelli was a Corpsman. He carried a gun like everybody else, but he ranked with the sergeants for pay division. He was secure both in the light touch he knew he had and in the fact that nobody else in the Company could handle the medical tasks as well. “It's just like I told you, I learned in a morgue on Banares, putting accident victims back in shape for open cremation. Now, lie back—” he gestured with the debriding glove with which he was cleaning Dwyer's burns— “or I don't answer for what it's going to feel like.”

“They sure are doing a lot of talking,” said Del Hoybrin. Bertinelli had recleaned the big man's sores first. Now Del knelt with his triceps on the lip of the bunker, staring up at the transponder. The communications gear hung from a balloon tethered a hundred meters over the 522nd's radio shack. Through the night visor of his helmet, the minuscule heating of the transponder's circuits as it broadcast was a yellow glow. Satellite communications had died in showers of space junk at the beginning of the war, but there were other ways to boost tight-beam communications over useful distances.

“Well, you might at least give me something for the pain,” Churchie grumbled. He lowered himself again onto the cot that doubled as an operating table.

“I'm
going
to give you something,” Bertinelli said. “I'm going to give you a square meter less skin if you don't shut up and lie still.” He touched the deep burn over Dwyer's right shoulder blade. The mesh of sensors and tiny hooks in the glove's pad began to purr. Under the control of a microprocessor in the wristlet, the glove was lifting off dead tissue to prepare the area for antiseptic and a covering of spray skin. In the same mild voice, the Corpsman added, “I can see the bombs starting fires and blowing the trash into your shelter. But I'm
damned
if I see why you thought you had to lie in it. And I'd like to know what you found to bathe in that had such a pong, too.”

“Do you suppose we'll get paid again before we move, Churchie?” Del asked. “I'd like to—for the girls again, you know. Usually there aren't girls where we go.” There was a troupe of prostitutes at Smiricky #4, intended for the contract miners but available to the garrison as well.

“Think we'll be pulling back soon, then?” Bertinelli asked with just a hint of tension. He lifted the glove and began to spray the debrided area.

“Sometimes,” Del said in a neutral voice. “They're doing a lot of talking.”

Churchie snorted. He continued to lie flat with his eyes closed. “Happen to notice which direction the transponder dish was pointed, baby?” he asked.

Del turned to his companions. The featureless visor was a stage beyond even the big man's usual moon-faced innocence. “East, Churchie,” he said.

“Right, my dear,” Churchie agreed. “And does that tell you anything?”

The Corpsman had stiffened, but after a moment he went on with his work in silence.

“No, Churchie,” said Del.

“Right again, sweetheart,” Churchie bantered with his eyes closed. “Well, it might mean that they're talking to the Federal commander at the Front, that's true … but they haven't any business doing that, we're not under Second Army control, we're handled by Central from Praha.… And Praha's west of here, unless they moved it since last night. So, and seeing how high they lifted that balloon before they started to jaw … I'd put pretty good money that our local friends have opened negotiations with the other side.”