Lon Nolan was just a few paces to the right of Corporal Nace as the squad started up the slope. The pitch was not steep enough to cause any difficulties, but it was enough to put a strain on the muscles of calf and thigh, even though the line stopped after almost every step forward to search for the enemy, and for any mines or booby traps he might have planted. In some ways, the slope was a help. Eyes were closer to ground level, nearer to where any booby traps were likely to be set, nearer to any sign of men who had traveled the route recently. And if the Dirigenters had to dive for cover, the ground was that little much closer.
The crest was silhouetted by the brightening glow of dawn, a sharp line above the mantle of shadow that the mercenaries climbed through. The upper reaches of the trees on the hillside were already in sunlight.
Climbing toward morning, Lon thought. As the skirmish line got closer to the light, he crouched forward a little farther, subconsciously delaying the time when he would lose the cover of the shade and failing night. Many of the other soldiers reacted similarly, and well before the line reached the summit, the men were virtually crawling toward it.
“Down!” Nace ordered his squad when they were still six feet below the crest. “That next hill is higher than this one. Slide up into position carefully.”
The soil near the top of the hill was thin, fighting to hold scrub growth in among the rocky mass of the extrusion. The ridge itself was nearly devoid of vegetation, a naked spine of rotting limestone. As Lon slid up against it and took his first careful peek over, he found himself looking through the upper branches of trees growing along the opposite slope of the ridge. Farther off, across the next valley, another ridge—forested rather than bare—ran parallel to this one. From a distance, it looked to be more than the twenty to thirty feet higher that the charts said it was. Lon pulled back from the edge, feeling too exposed for comfort.
Within seconds, things began to go wrong. Lon heard gunfire far off to his right. With the hills creating echoes, he could not be positive, but he suspected that the gunfire came from where the Norbanker militia was—or was supposed to be. At first there were only a few scattered shots, but the volume built up. It took no more than a minute or two before it had crescendoed into a major firefight.
“What is that?” he asked Lieutenant Taiters.
“I don’t know. Keep your mind on your own area.”
Lon edged up to the crest again to look at the next hill. There was no trace of activity there, even when he switched his faceplate to maximum magnification and scanned the opposite ridge slowly. He saw no sign of any rebel positions, not even a sentry. We wouldn’t be visible, he thought, or not very. But that’s with good equipment and better training. If these rebels are amateurs …
“Lieutenant, I don’t think the rebels are over there, at least not many of them. I think they’ve moved again.”
This time Taiters did not answer immediately. He left Nolan hanging while he made a number of calls that he did not include the cadet in. When he finally returned to his channel with Lon he said, “You may be right. No one’s spotted any activity there since we got in position. Keep your eyes open. The colonel is checking with CIC before he decides what we do next.” The lieutenant paused, then said, “That shooting you hear is at the rear of the militia. A company or more of rebels hit them from behind. Delta Company is moving to relieve them.”
Lon raised himself a little higher, but not enough to offer a good target in case he was wrong—if there were rebels across the way. He wanted a look at the eastern slope of the hill he was on, and at the floor of the valley. If the rebels were not behind that next ridge, they might be anywhere, including right under the noses of Lon and the other Dirigenters.
The firefight to the south abruptly decreased in intensity. Lon glanced that way. One side or the other managed to disengage, he thought, the best guess. The rebels must have pulled back before Delta got to them was more of a stretch, but reasonable. The remaining fire finally stopped altogether.
Almost simultaneously there was a new locus of gunfire, behind and below Lon, and slightly to the north. His own company was under attack. He slid away from the summit and turned, bringing his rifle to bear, and scanning for targets. He saw no muzzle flashes, and there did not seem to be very many guns in the attack, off near the end of the company’s defensive perimeter.
“It’s just a patrol,” one of the squad leaders said over the noncoms’ channel. “First platoon is dealing with them. Mind your own fronts.”
Lon was already moving back to the ridge before Corporal Nace passed that order along to the squad. “Stay on this side of the ridge,” Nace added, “just in case this is a trick to try to get us to expose ourselves to a larger force on the other side.”
I guess amateurs might try something like that, Lon thought. He scanned the slopes and valley floor east of him, with an occasional glance behind him. The action was some distance away, but gunfire in back of him was difficult to ignore. Why don’t they get that put down? he wondered. A small patrol shouldn’t be hard to handle, even if they’re playing hide-and-seek.
The gunfire seemed to get more distant before it stopped. In the silence, Lon could hear the echoes of far more distant shooting, bounced around so much that he was not even certain where the original sound was coming from.
“Mount up. We’re moving out,” Captain Orlis said on the company noncoms’ channel. “Pull your squads back from the ridge and get ready to head southwest.”
Lon stayed back with Wil Nace, following the rest of first squad back down the slope at an angle. Without the need to discuss it between them, they divided zones of responsibility, each watching half of a circle around them.
Once all of the company had reached the bottom of the slope, Captain Orlis wasted no time getting his men moving back the way they had come. Third platoon was in front, with fourth behind it. Lieutenant Taiters was with fourth’s first squad, in the middle of his two platoons. He called Lon up to him.
“It looks like the rebels want to play cat and mouse,” he told Lon on their private channel.
“Either they’ve learned fast or there’s somebody different calling the shots than there was when we first landed,” Lon said.
“It does seem awfully obvious,” Taiters admitted. “It’s got battalion and CIC thinking in circles, wondering what’s next.”
“You think maybe there’s an outsider running things for the rebels now?” Lon asked.
“Someone who’s had professional training, at least.”
They moved in silence for a couple of minutes after that, watching the flanks. Taiters ran checks with his platoon sergeants and squad leaders.
“You know, if it were me calling the shots on the other side, I think I’d do what I could to draw us away from the capital, then hit it with everything I could cobble together, try for a coup de main to overthrow the government,” Lon said. “Hope that would be enough to get us out of the action.”
“Present us with a fait accompli, no one to pay the bills,” Arlan said, nodding. “If they were feeling generous, they’d offer to let us leave peacefully, save themselves some grief.” He shrugged. “If not … we could have one hell of a problem getting out safely.”
“You don’t think it will come to that, do you?” Lon asked.
“Probably not,” the lieutenant said, almost too quickly. “If nothing else, we could pull back into defensive positions and wait for relief from Dirigent. Between our weapons and the assistance we can get from the shuttles, it should be possible to hold on for the four weeks or so it would take.”
“You ever been on a contract that hairy?”
“No, and I don’t expect this one to go that far, either. We’ve got the numbers to force the issue, if we have to.” The unspoken qualification, I hope, was understood. “There’s another possibility,” Taiters said. “The rebels might be trying to convince us to retreat into the city with the militia so they can renew the siege, keep us all bottled up for however long it takes them to finish us off or convince the government to seek terms. I imagine that the local authorities are already pressing the colonel to defend their capital.”
Fat chance, Lon thought. The DMC was light infantry, meant to be mobile, not a static defense force. Whatever the circumstances, the preferred response would almost certainly be to keep the battalion out where it could maneuver freely.
“The government might pull all of its militia back into the city,” Lon said. “That might even be to our advantage.”
Over the next hour and a half, while the battalion rendezvoused with the three companies of militia, the rebels continued a series of harassing attacks—striking, then retreating before they could be trapped, or destroyed by the mercenaries. There never seemed to be more than a short-handed squad—eight to ten men—involved in the attacks, and they disappeared into the forest as soon as they had fired a few rounds. The rebels did not inflict many casuallies; only one Dirigenter was killed, but there were a few wounded, with no immediate chance to bring in a shuttle to evacuate them. The risk was too great. All that could be done was to get the wounded into portable trauma tubes and take them back to Norbank City under strong guard.
Doesn’t make us look very good, Lon thought after one attack came close to Alpha Company. It’s like we’re the amateurs and they’re running rings around us.
On several occasions, the sounds of shuttles passing overhead came through. The landers were staying high, out of harm’s way, as they searched for the main enemy force—hidden somewhere in the forested hills, according to the best estimates that CIC could arrive at. The morning had dawned clear, but clouds had started moving in from the west almost immediately after sunrise. Two hours later there was about 80 percent cloud cover, a heavy layer that bottomed out at about four thousand feet. The shuttles did not come below the clouds, which eliminated any chance that their crews might see anything useful, and the more technical gear—infrared cameras, radar, and radios—remained only marginally effective.
As soon as Colonel Flowers had gathered his forces, he sent out a number of patrols, hunting the snipers who were continuing their nuisance attacks. In thirty minutes there were three more small engagements as Dirigenters caught rebels and forced fights.
Alpha Company was pulled from the perimeter, into the center of the region that the battalion and the three militia companies had formed. “We’ve got work,” Captain Orlis told his platoon leaders and platoon sergeants. “Get ready to move. I’ll let you know what’s up as soon as the colonel gives me our orders.”
It was only four minutes before the captain came back on the channel. “We’re moving east. The idea is to send one platoon with a company of militia on a course aimed directly at the rebel capital at Fremont. The colonel expects that that sort of threat will force the rebels to respond. When that happens, the rest of the company will move in to keep the rebels engaged until we can bring more people in to help—if we can’t handle it ourselves. Third platoon will go with the militia. Taiters, you stick with third, and keep Nolan with you.”
The militia company showed more organization than it had when the platoon had escorted it out to get weapons several days earlier. The company commander was introduced as Captain Eustace Molroney. His four platoon leaders were all designated as lieutenants, and they had platoon sergeants at their sides. What they did not have was uniforms or insignia of rank. The militiamen were dressed in whatever outdoor clothing each had available.
When the combined unit moved away from the perimeter, the militia showed that they had learned the basics. They moved in good order, keeping proper intervals and paying attention to their flanks. The mercenary platoon provided point, rear guard, and flankers—one squad for each. Taiters, Nolan, and Platoon Sergeant Dendrow remained with the Norbanker militiamen, sticking close to Captain Molroney.
The militia captain appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, although—in a colony at the basic level that Norbank was—he might have been no older than Lon. Unlike some of the men under his command, Molroney appeared to be fit, and used to outdoor life. He was tall and well muscled; his face and arms were deeply tanned, as if he routinely spent much of his day outside. The important quality, though, was that he appeared to inspire respect and obedience in the men under his command.
“They’ll do what I tell them,” he told Lieutenant Taiters before the group marched through the perimeter. “Even if they don’t agree, they’ll do it, and save the arguments for later, when it’s safe.”
I hope so, Lon thought, not totally convinced, but all that Taiters and Dendrow did was nod their heads, accepting— or appearing to accept—what Molroney said at face value.
Taiters went to some pains to make certain that the militia captain understood the mission precisely. “We head in the direction of the rebel homeland. We’re supposed to be a magnet, a threat they can’t ignore. Once we draw the rebels against us, we hold on until help gets to us, first the rest of our company, and then whatever other forces we need.”
“Suits me,” Molroney said. “Far as that goes, I’d just as soon march all the way to Fremont and finish the job right. With all the men they’ve shipped this way, they can’t have left all that many to home.”
“Even Governor Norbank isn’t ready to try anything that ambitious,” Taiters reminded the captain. “We don’t have the manpower or equipment, and the governor doesn’t want to leave Norbank City undefended.”
“I know, I know,” Molroney said, making an impatient gesture with the hand that held his rifle. “I was just saying what I’d like, not what I think we should do. There is a difference.”
There is indeed, Lon thought, hiding a grin.
“Anyway,” Molroney continued, “the sooner we get going, the sooner we’ll get finished, don’t you think?”
And so they had started moving east—not directly, but as the lay of the land allowed. In the hilly country, no choice of route was completely satisfactory. It was not just that none of the easy physical routes went precisely in the right direction. Taking the ridgelines would expose troops to enemy observation, often from a long distance. Following the valley floors would put the men at a tactical disadvantage in any fight, conceding the high ground to the enemy. And the compromise, following a contour along the slope, had its own problems, including additional strain on legs and backs. But, for the most part, it was the least objectionable choice.
To some extent, the route was chosen by Molroney. He knew the area, the most direct (or least indirect) paths to take them where they wanted to go. The choice of a hillside path was Taiters’s, the uncomfortable compromise. He kept his flanking squads out as far as possible, on one side as near the ridge of the hill the rest of the troops were on as possible without having them silhouetted against the skyline, on the other side sometimes also near the top of the opposite ridge. And the point squad was typically two hundred yards in front of the main body.
“We’re looking for enemy contact, but I want to know about them as early as possible,” Taiters explained. “And I need to know how many there are. If it’s a patrol, we don’t laager up and wait for the cavalry, we deal with them and keep going. If it’s a larger unit, I want some choice in the ground we defend.”
In the first two hours, there was no contact at all, not even with one of the roving patrols that had been hitting the mercenaries and the local allies earlier in the day.
“They must have seen us leave,” Lon said to the lieutenant during a brief rest. “We didn’t try to sneak out.” They had traversed one valley, heading toward the northeast, then turned and were going almost southwest on the next declivity over, aiming for a pass that would allow them a more direct route east.
“They’re watching us,” Taiters said, an affirmation he could offer no evidence for. “They may be staying clear, but they have to be watching.”
“Just keeping track of us?” As long as the two spoke softly and used their radio gear, they could exclude Molroney from the conversation without being noticed.
“Whatever. We haven’t gone far enough for them to get the idea that we’re headed for Fremont. So far, it might just look as if we’re out hunting, or trying to get behind them. A couple more hours and they should get the message. By nightfall, at least. Then we wait for the fun to start.” There was grim seriousness in the lieutenant’s voice.
“A night attack? Without night-vision gear?”
“They’ve done that before,” Taiters reminded Nolan. “In any case, people fought at night for thousands of years before anyone came up with anything to help them see better in the dark. But maybe a dawn attack is more likely. A lot depends on how long it takes them to move troops to intercept us, and maybe even on whether or not the sky stays overcast. We’ll go on for as long as we can after sunset, then settle down in the best defensive position we can find, just in case.”
A few minutes later, Captain Orlis relayed news that the colonel had ordered a few shuttle flights toward the rebel homeland—not quite a pointing finger in the sky, but a help. “Even if the rebels can’t see the shuttles, they’ll hear them well enough,” Taiters said. “It should look as if we’re reconnoitering toward Fremont.”
“Why not just radio the rebels and say, ‘Unless you give up now, we’ll destroy your homes and farms’?” Lon said. Arlan did not bother to answer.
The overcast thickened and the cloud deck settled lower in the last hours of daylight, bringing an early twilight to the forest. A light mist started to fall just before sunset.
“I’ve told second squad to look for a place for us to camp,” Taiters told Nolan. “There’s no point to stumbling on in this if we can find some ground we can hold.”
“If it hampers our militia, it hampers the rebels as well,” Lon pointed out. “They won’t be able to see any better, and they don’t have guides with night-vision gear.”
“If they want to move, they’ll move, no matter the difficulties,” Arlan said. “Never underestimate your enemy.”
We seem to have done a lot of that here. Lon kept that thought to himself.
Fifteen minutes later, Tebba radioed that they had found a good location to stop, a broad hill crest with something of a swayback, a shallow depression that would give them high ground and ways to cover every possible approach. “There’s no trees or water,” Tebba added, “‘cept the water that’s falling from the sky, but it has everything else we could want.”
“Stay there,” Taiters told him. “We’ll join you.” He lifted his faceplate to tell Captain Molroney about the place.
Molroney nodded. “That’d be Jeffrey Bald,” he said. “If I’d knowed what you were looking for, I’d have mentioned it. Only place like it for miles around.”
“Any problem with using that as a defensive position?” Taiters asked. “Any blind avenues up, anything like that?”
Molroney considered the questions before he shook his head. “I never looked at it as a military place before, but I’d say it’s about the best natural site you could find within twenty miles. As long as the ammunition and water last, no way the rebels could drive us off, or get to us, ‘less they were prepared to sacrifice a lot of men to do it.”
“We’re not interested in staging a ‘last stand,’” Taiters said dryly. “All we want is a safe place to spend the night, and maybe part of tomorrow. If the rebels don’t hit us by shortly after dawn, we’ll move on.” Molroney nodded.
“Maybe it’s time to start thinking about other places we can use tomorrow,” Taiters said. “Once we get situated, you and I can check out the mapboard and see if we can keep a good defensive position within reach during the march.”
“Sure thing,” Molroney said, nodding. “But I’ll tell you up front, won’t any of them be half as good as Jeffrey Bald.”