Chapter Twenty-four

Like your ancients, you will serve with all the force of your soul, and if necessary up to the supreme sacrifice. This LEGION is your FATHERLAND …

—Momento du Legionnaire,
Recruiting Pamphlet,
French Foreign Legion, 1938

“Delta One, this is Kessel Command. Wait one.” The voice was thin against the static, and Wolf had to strain to hear it. The commlink Voskovich had cobbled together from damaged gear and her helmet system left a lot to be desired. It hissed and crackled like frying bacon, and the signal was apt to fade without warning or reason, but it worked. Fort Kessel had answered his desperate calls at last.

He only hoped it wasn’t too late.

Wolf drummed his fingers on the lowest girder of the antenna assembly in growing exasperation. We don’t have time for this waiting! he thought bitterly. Voskovich had finished in just under five hours instead of the six she’d promised, but in that time the rebels would have covered a lot of ground. He had already repeated his story three times, to three different people on the other end of the commlink, and it was starting to seem like he would never convince them of the danger in time.

“Delta One, this is Ogre,” Gunnery Sergeant Ortega’s voice suddenly crackled over the commlink. Despite his anxieties, or maybe even because of them, Wolf had to fight back the urge to laugh at the drill instructor’s use of his training company nickname as a call sign. “Wolf, if this is some kind of stunt …”

“Everything in the report is accurate, Sergeant,” he said, irritated. “Corporal Gallagher passed most of it on to us … before he died. An hour ago.”

There was a short silence. “Gallagher … we were on Gwyn together.” The gunnery sergeant, usually so gruff, sounded genuinely disturbed. But the moment passed. “We’ve confirmed parts of your report, Delta One. We diverted a Pegasus when your call came in, and we’ve spotted your rebels. Commandant Czernak has already started coordinating an operational plan to deal with them.”

Wolf breathed out a relieved sigh. “Thank God. I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to get through in time.”

“Don’t bring God into it just yet, Delta One,” the sergeant told him. “Not until you hear what’s in store for you next. The commandant’s plan requires a unit to block the rebel retreat route up the Sinueux, and you’re the only ones in position. It won’t be easy, Wolf, but we need you.…”

He listened in growing horror as Ortega began spelling out the plan.

* * *

“Fight? That’s a laugh. Every rebel in this district is out there, Wolf. How are we supposed to fight them all?”

Wolf studied Katrina Voskovich for a long moment, then shrugged. “They’ve left it to us,” he said. “If we can’t do anything, we’re to head up into the hills and try to avoid contact. But if that happens, the rebels will just escape. If we could do something to slow them down, maybe the people who died here won’t have died completely in vain.”

He wasn’t convinced himself, so there wasn’t much reason to expect as much from the other four recruits gathered around the base of the antenna array. Ortega and Commandant Czernak had outlined a plan to counter the rebel attack, but it sounded like nothing short of suicide for Delta Lance.

Czernak was calling in all the patrols and as many recruits as they could assemble to bolster the strength at Fort Kessel, while a fast-moving rapid response force would drive north from Fort Hunter to catch the rebels in a pincer. It was a classic military operation, lacking only one thing to make it foolproof.

The missing ingredient was a way to slam the back door on them. Right now Delta Lance was the only group in a position to even try. Ortega had promised to send more men into Checkpoint Tatiana as soon as possible, but it still might take hours. Those men were needed everywhere, and prying enough legionnaires and equipment loose in time to do any good was easier to promise than to deliver.

And Wolf knew as well as Ortega did that it was poor policy to reinforce a forlorn hope when other forces needed the manpower more.…

It reminded Wolf all too vividly of Erich Neubeck’s orders on Telok. Wolf was supposed to hold the enemy as long as possible, with a vague promise of help to sustain him. In the fight with the Ubrenfars he had tried to hold, but superior numbers had quickly overcome his ramshackle outfit. The reinforcements had never arrived, and good men had died before he had the chance to extricate the handful of survivors from disaster.

His initial reaction to Czernak’s plan had been a mixture of horror and disbelief. He couldn’t face a replay of Telok. And he couldn’t try to lead his lance to certain death. These people were his comrades … his friends. Their deaths would hurt even worse than the ones he’d caused on Telok that day.

But he had listened to Ortega without comment, and gravely promised to see if there was any action Delta Lance could take to block the retreat route, at least for a few hours. On the surface it sounded impossible, but the situation Wolfgang Alaric Hauser would have found impossible, Karl Wolf, soldier of the Fifth Foreign Legion, was willing to examine. He couldn’t do less.

For too long Wolf had been on the run. He had failed at Telok and run. That had led him to the duel with Neubeck, and he had run again, his honor further stained. He had nearly run from the Legion when the going got tough, but Lisa Scott and the woman called Aunt Mandy had convinced him to stick it out.

He had discovered something these past weeks with the Legion. Honor, reputation, even life itself weren’t worth anything unless they were backed up by a genuine commitment. It could be to family or to country or to some cause, but without commitment there was nothing else.

It had taken him a long time to find what a legionnaire was committed to, but Wolf thought he understood it now. Legio Patria Nostra … the Legion is our Fatherland. They had sounded like empty words before, but he knew better now. A legionnaire was committed to the most important cause, the greatest of fatherlands … the Legion itself.

Wolfgang Hauser had failed to uphold his honor, his family, his reputation, and his planet, and that failure had led him from aristocracy to this last asylum of misfortune. But Karl Wolf wasn’t going to fail again.

“I’m not much on suicide missions, boyo,” Kern said, managing to sound cheerful. “Just because we’re on Devereaux ’tis no good reason to do a Devereaux like our esteemed predecessor, Commandant Hunter. At least not for an empty gesture. Do they really think five people can make a difference against a few hundred?”

“If the minefields could still be switched to active, the rebels wouldn’t have much chance of getting away,” Lisa Scott observed. “But with the command bunker smashed …”

He looked across at Voskovich. “You were able to rig the commlink. What about the mines?”

She looked thoughtful. “It might be done. But anything we rig will be vulnerable. I can’t keep them from shutting everything down if they get to the controls we rig here.”

“That means defending the place,” Kern said slowly. “It still leaves us with the original problem. Five against hundreds …”

“Corporal Gallagher told me there was a hidden ammo stock under one of the huts that the rebels didn’t get,” Scott said. “The sergeant in charge didn’t like keeping all his eggs in one basket. That gives us something better than our exercise load to play with.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Kern said with a grin. The recruits were carrying FEKs, but the only ammo they had been issued consisted of riot control munitions, smoke grenades, and anesthetic needle rounds. With some real ammunition they had a chance.

“We’ll have the edge on them in firepower,” Wolf said. “Except for what they looted here, they probably aren’t all that well equipped, and they won’t be all that familiar with what they have picked up.”

“Don’t make the mistake of underestimating them,” Myaighee warned. “Some of them have been fighting for a long time.”

“And a club can kill you just as dead as a grenade if you don’t watch out,” Kern added. “But I’ll agree with you on this much, boyo. We can make the bastards know we’re here.”

“It’s damned slim,” Wolf said. “If you want to opt out, now’s the time. I know you can’t run a military unit like a democracy, but I’m not going to decide for the rest of you. Anyone who wants to run for the hills has my blessing. And Gunny Ogre’s, too, if that makes any difference. He said to make sure you know this is strictly for volunteers.”

“Well,” Katrina Voskovich said. “You aren’t going to get those mines back on line unless I stay. So I guess I’d better get to work. What about you, Myaighee?”

The hannie’s neck ruff twitched. “I let everyone down before, at Savary’s. I will not do so again.”

“Good enough,” the woman said. “What say we tackle the job together, then? With your permission, oh great lance leader …”

“Ah.…” Wolf hesitated. It was hard to bring himself to actually speak the words he needed to say now. “Myaighee, you’re still a Legionnaire Third Class, not just a recruit like the rest of us. You’ve had more experience in real combat situations. I think … I think you should take back command of Delta Lance for the duration.”

Myaighee crossed his arms, the hannie gesture of denial. “No. No, I was not suited to leadership. I am content to take your orders, Wolf.” He paused. “But thank you. This was … a gesture I will not forget.”

Wolf looked away, uncomfortably aware of the new respect, not just in Myaighee’s eyes but in Voskovich and Kern’s as well. The hannie and the electronics expert stood up and turned toward the command bunker, already starting to talk over ideas.

“What about you, Tom?” Wolf asked.

The big redhead didn’t answer right away. When he finally spoke, his look was focused far away, and he might have been talking to himself. “I joined the Legion because there was nothing for me in civilian life,” he said softly. “I ruined a good career with the Marines. Killed a recruit by accident, then skipped out instead of taking my term in the penal battalions. But I didn’t fit in anywhere, Wolf. The only life I was any good at was the Service. So I decided I’d finish out in the Legion. I intend to die fighting, and whether it’s today or ten years down the line … well, it doesn’t really matter that much. I’ve got no reason to run.”

He stood up. “I’ll walk the perimeter, make sure everything’s in order.” Then he was gone.

Wolf looked across at Scott. She cut him off before he could say anything. “Let me ask the question,” she said. “What are you planning? Once upon a time you didn’t think Legion traditions meant anything. It must be strange for you, thinking about the oldest tradition of all.”

“I’ll fight,” he said. “Not because of any Legion tradition about lost causes, though. Because we really can make a difference here. And we might be able to give some meaning to the sacrifice the garrison already made. I won’t believe Gallagher held on all that time, gave us that information, to no purpose at all.”

“Noblesse oblige?” she asked with a faint smile.

He shook his head. “The Legion takes care of its own.”

* * *

Karl Wolf peered over the top of the low berm and studied the valley below Checkpoint Tatiana with growing dismay. The longer he waited and watched, the more his doubts gnawed away within. How could five Legion recruits even consider stirring up a hornet’s nest of over two hundred armed rebels? The odds against them were more than just numeric. These Wynsarrysa were tough, fanatic outlaws, well used to fighting as a way of life. Like the Ubrenfars who had overwhelmed his troops on Telok.…

He tried to ignore the memory and concentrate on the problem at hand, but it was hard to separate past and present.

Dawn would be breaking over the mountains soon. They had spent a long night getting ready, but now the time for waiting was almost at an end. Somehow Katrina Voskovich had managed to rig up a control for the Galahads, using a mine recovered from the field by Myaighee, components from her wristpiece computer, and odds and ends scavenged from damaged equipment in the bunker. The mines were no longer on standby. From here on out, anything the size of a man that moved through a minefield would set off the devices.

In fact, they had already seen them working. The rebels had started drifting back up the river valley soon after planetary midnight. Evidently the assault had run into the first Commonwealth resistance, and this unexpected loss of surprise had been enough to persuade some of the fainthearted to turn in search of a retreat route. A small party had run straight into a minefield. None of them had survived.

But the next group had spotted the casualties and guessed the truth. Wolf had tried to confuse them by having the recruits launch some of their stock of smoke grenades into the woods on the other side of the refugees. Some, apparently convinced the Legion was close at hand, tried to break through the mines, with the same results as their late friends. The rest withdrew back down the valley in haste.

That had been an hour back. Since then the rebels had been gathering in the valley, gradually marshaling themselves for a concerted effort. Someone down there, perhaps one of the human separatists, had realized that the key to escape lay in retaking the outpost and shutting down those mines. Otherwise the Wynsarrysa wouldn’t win free before the main body of legionnaires caught up with them. The Galahads had been carefully positioned over many years by legionnaires thoroughly familiar with their business, and the antipersonnel mines were designed to flip an explosive charge into the air each time the device was triggered. With multiple warheads, Galahads could be lethal again and again before they finally ran dry, and that made them doubly effective at barring escape through any of the narrow valleys that opened up around Tatiana.

So the only way out for the rebels lay through the heart of the outpost. And five would-be legionnaires stood ready to defend the position.

Movement caught his eye. The LI setting on his faceplate showed the rebel force clearly even in the predawn darkness. He zoomed in on the enemy and studied them for a moment.

“They’re coming!” he shouted, bracing his FEK on the wall of the berm. The wall would have been a substantial barrier if the power cells in the central bunker hadn’t been thoroughly wrecked by the explosion there. Topped with electrified wires, the berm could have held up an assault for a long time if the defenders had been able to tap into a generator, but they’d have to do without that defense now.

Kern dropped to one knee at the other end of the east wall, his own weapon held at the ready. This time they had full combat loads, grenades and needle rounds. The other three recruits were posted behind Wolf and Kern, defending a slit trench the redhead had dug overnight. It made the ideal fallback position, halfway between wall and bunker. Wolf expected the three of them to be quite a surprise for the rebels to meet once they overcame the wall itself.

They waited. Slowly, the enemy advance gathered strength, surging up the valley. Wolf estimated there were forty or fifty of them, waving an assortment of weapons and shouting hoarse cries exhorting one another to glory.

The two recruits opened up.

With no restrictions on their fields of fire, they used their 1 cm minigrenades first. Explosion after explosion burst amid the enemy force, and even those that did little damage contributed to the morale loss of the Wynsarrysa vanguard. After less than a minute of sustained fire the rebels wavered, crumbled.

And the waiting began again.

* * *

Lisa Scott and Legionnaire Myaighee were on the firing line when the second serious attack developed. Kern and Wolf had run through nearly half of their meager stock of live minigrenades, so the fresh magazines had been moved forward. Kneeling at the berm with the enemy main body in the crosshairs of her faceplate target display, Scott wondered what Senator Abercrombie would think if he knew what his daughter was doing. For years he had treated her like a possession, not a person. Now she felt free for the first time.…

Perhaps it would also be the last.

The rangefinder showed they were coming close enough to be hit hard, and Scott began firing. Across the compound, at his post overlooking the riverbank, Myaighee lid the same.

It was just as Wolf had described it, more like a dreamchip game than a real battle. She fired, and kept firing as long as there were targets in her sights. As before, the rebels broke long before they were a threat to the berm, and there was little return fire.

Maybe, she told herself, the odds weren’t as overwhelming as they had seemed after all.…

“Fafnir! Fafnir to the front! Hurry!” Myaighee’s shout was almost gibberish, but somehow the words penetrated her brain and Lisa Scott cut back the magnification on her image intensifiers to get a panoramic view of the battlefield.

That was when she saw them. A pair of flattened turtle shapes, hovering a few scant centimeters off the ground with the morning sun glinting off gleaming armor. She blanked her mind to access her computer implant, and almost instantly her mind was filled with the information she had asked for. They were Sandrat APCs, the predecessors of the Legion’s Sandrays. Many had found their way into civilian use after being phased out of the Legion … and it seemed that these two, at least, were still doing duty with an army after all these years.

Two armored magrep vehicles, even if they didn’t mount any heavy firepower, would be proof against the firepower available to the recruit defenders. Except, of course, for the Fafnir. The missile launcher was an easy match for any APC.

But the hidden military stores at Checkpoint Tatiana had contained only one missile for the launcher, and there were two enemy vehicles out there.

* * *

“Go! Go!” Wolf shouted the order and practically lifted Katrina Voskovich out of the trench. The dark-haired, stocky woman sprinted for the berm, clutching the Fafnir tight in her hands.

He had considered taking the weapon himself. Through most of the training he had been assigned as the Fafnir gunner for heavy weapons drills, and he’d slowly developed an affinity for it. But Voskovich had scored better marks with the launcher … and a gunner rarely had the luxury to oversee a whole battle the way an ordinary rifleman could. That was why the typical lance in the Fifth Foreign Legion didn’t burden the lance leader with any specialty work, though of course there were frequent exceptions.

She ran for the berm, and Wolf cursed under his breath. He hadn’t expected vehicles. Most of the Wynsarrysa were primmies, living from hand to mouth, unable to survive except on what they scavenged. Who would have thought they could have kept the APCs in working order?

Wolf vowed not to underestimate his opponents again. If he lived to profit from the lesson.…

Voskovich reached the wall and steadied the Fafnir. An instant later, the APC was on top of them, turbofans whining as it picked up speed. At that moment something flashed from the top of the vehicle. For a moment Wolf thought they were using a weapon mounted in a small remote turret, but then he realized it was a Gwyrran with a heavy rocket launcher lying on top of the vehicle.

The rocket streaked toward the wall. Toward Voskovich.

The explosion tore a hole in the berm twice the width of the vehicle, sending chunks of duracrete spinning in all directions. Wolf saw Voskovich fall, the unfired Fafnir rolling from her arms as she clutched at her stomach.

He was out of the trench in an instant, racing toward the discarded launcher. Wolf barely had time to throw himself sideways and scoop it up as the armored monster drifted almost casually, arrogantly, through the gap. The rocket gunner was sitting up now. So was another rebel, this one with a heavy machine pistol.

The second one was raising his massive weapon slowly, training it on Karl Wolf.…