The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

* * *

The militia battalion commanders of Operation Scrub Brush, Task Force Erwin, were gathered around the command caravan with their staffs and the RSI officers; Owensford was using its internal map-projector on the dropped rear ramp of the converted APC.

“And you’ll need observation posts here, here and here,” he said to Morrentes, the major in charge of the stayback force at the bridgehead, pointing to positions on the map in a semicircle about the landing stage. High ground for calling in fire.

It was nightfall on the Rhyndakos, but there were arc-lights playing on the improvised landing stage, as men surged off the barges and manhandled equipment through roots and mud and onto firm ground; mules were being led down ramps, and their mournful braying echoed along the silent banks of the river. Empty barges were lashed together into makeshift docks covered with planking brought along for the purpose, and in the middle of the hundred-meter width of the river steamboats were maneuvering to bring their strings to the outermost links. Wheels and hooves trundled thunder-hollow as the Brotherhood Citizen-soldiers poured onto the banks. There was an occasional sharp crack as someone felled a tree with a string of detcord around the base, and the snarl of chainsaws. Two militia infantry battalions were digging in around the bridgehead; cleared fire zones, trenches, log-and-dirt bunkers, machine gun nests and revetments for their mortars, minefields and wire. A corduroy road had been laid down from the bluff to the water’s edge, and the last of the marching column’s equipment was being trundled up and loaded onto the waiting mules.

“I’ll run a practice-fire program,” the Brotherhood officer said thoughtfully. “We’ll do some selective felling and booby-trapping out a klick or so from our perimeter.”

Behind him a Legion technician squeezed a small plastic bulb. It inflated into a neutral-colored sphere the size of two beachballs; he slung a piece of plastic machinery beneath it, fastened it to a spool of wire the size of thread and let it unreel as the balloon rose.

“That’ll give you real-time overhead surveillance,” Owensford continued. A small camera-pickup, with the optical processor relatively safe down at the bottom; hence the balloon units were so cheap you could use them prodigally. “Lace the woods around here with communications thread and cameras, it’ll make your perimeter security more redundant. We’re going to spike camouflaged laser-relays to the trees, so we’ll have a way of talking to you without breaking radio silence. This base is absolutely crucial. Keep the drones ready, but don’t use them unless you have to.”

Major Morrentes was a rancher, a man of medium height with a weathered tan and the bouncy rounded muscularity that second-and third-generation Spartans seemed to have.

“Still wish I was going with you, Colonel,” he said ruefully. His lips lost what appeared to be a habitual smile. “My spread’s just down from Dodona; they killed two of my vaqueros, good men and Phraetrie brothers, last spring. Not to mention the stock run off and stolen or equipment destroyed, and the convicts who took my boat and came here, I think.”

“You may see some action, Major,” Owensford said. It was a little disturbing, the sullen anger the Brotherhood soldiers felt toward their opponents. You’ve been a mercenary too long, he thought. Remember what a grudge-fight is like. “Just don’t forget that your primary tasking here is to keep the river open behind us.”

“Sir.”

“Now, the rest of us are advancing by battalion columns.”

The lead element would be a battalion of the First RSI, heavily reinforced. Twelve of the von Alderheim armored cars, and two dozen of the APCs. Not carrying infantry, but towing heavy mortars, fuel, counterbattery radar and communications gear from the Legion stocks. A command car on the same model, with his staff and gear. Then the rest of the First Battalion, First RSI; eight hundred men, more or less, with their supplies on pack-mules. Six more battalions of first-line militia, seven to nine hundred men each. Enough distance between to give each other room and cover a reasonable amount of space, close enough for immediate mutual support if—when—they ran into something.

“Every half-day’s march”—fifteen kilometers, more or less—”we’ll drop off one company and two mortar batteries on these locations.” Hilltops with good fields of fire, available water, and favorable placing to act as patrol bases. “With rocket-assist, the heavy mortars will give overlapping fields of fire all along the route. As reinforcements come in upriver, we feed them up the line and relieve the dropoff units to rejoin their battalions. Task Forces Wingate and Till Eulengenspiegel will be doing likewise.”

“By the time we reach here”—he placed a spot of light about three hundred and twenty kilometers north—”the enemy’ll have to either fight or run; in either case, our satellite observation will spot them as soon as they’re forced to move substantial units and we can reconcentrate and either destroy them or chase them west into the Drakon Range foothills. They’ve evidently got excellent overhead surveillance security, but the fact they haven’t been spotted much puts an upper limit on possible numbers.”

Unlikely that the Royalist force would be able to catch the guerrillas, if the insurgents abandoned their heavy equipment, although he had brought enough horses to equip a substantial force of mounted infantry in that event. But of course if they captured or destroyed the enemy equipment, the exercise would be a success no matter what else was accomplished.

“That done, we can convert some of our firebases into permanent patrol outposts, rotate the militia garrisons as needed, and move the First and the other Field Force regiments in to clean more territory.” Guerrillas would still be able to infiltrate, but it would be infinitely more difficult and dangerous once they had to start from bases further away from the Eurotas. “Any questions?”

“Sir.” Captain Prince Lysander, code name Kicker Six, who would be leading the scout element. “It’s unlikely we have tactical or strategic surprise.” Impossible, with troops steaming up the river from Sparta City and militia being mobilized all through this part of the Middle Valley. “Why haven’t the rebels done anything yet?”

“I don’t know, Captain. I expect we will find out presently.”

* * *

“We are facing a three-pronged attack,” von Reuter said, in accented Anglic with the slightly pedantic twist of a CD veteran. “North, center and south, as vas indicated by our preliminary intelligence. Probably due to our disinformation, the main schwerepunkt is in the south, with the northerly force acting as a mobile anvil and the central pozzibly as a strike reserve.”

His pointer moved from opposite Olynthos in the north to the middle Rhyndakos in the south, stopping on the way to tap at the box-figures representing the Royalist forces’ central landing on the right bank of the Eurotas. “Mobilized militia units are standing by on t’Eurotas to act as blocking forces and general reserve, with mobile mechanized reserves in Olynthos and Dodona.

“Zis attack vill take the form of a closing concentric ring, attempting to constrict our movements. The elements are widely spaced—distances of several hundred kilometers—and t’ enemy is relying on superior communications and reconnaissance to immobilize us and prevent our timely concentration against any of his columns, and superior artillery and command and control to overpower zose units of our forces he does encounter. Current intelligence indicates the spearheads of each enemy column are composed of troops of Falkenberg’s Legion and the First RSI, wit’ substantial numbers of Brotherhood militia in support. Total enemy attack forces are in the range of fourteen to seventeen battalions.”

He clicked heels and handed the pointer to Skilly. Niles felt a tightly controlled excitement as she leaned forward into the light that shone over the map table; beyond her the caves of Base One were a kicked anthill of activity as the Helots prepared to go to war.

“Thank you, Senior Group Leader,” she said seriously. “OK. We know more than the Royalists think we know; they haven’t changed their battle plan much and we going implement the first contingency for Triphammer.”

The pointer skipped south. “This column under Owensford is most important one. They coming through pretty thick country, not too many ways they can go. Group Leader Niles, you take the fast reaction force and stop their lead elements here.” She stabbed the pointer into a spot about five days march from the Rhyndakos. “Day before that, they have to commit to one of three alternative pathways, you got twenty hours or so to get ready. That get them good and far from base; when they hot and bothered dealing with you, Skilly will swing in with the forces from the bases along the route, the Base One elements, and the prepositioned equipment.

“Von Reuter, you has the northern wing. They got more mechanized stuff there and the ground more open, but looks like heavy weather. We wants them in good and deep so we can delay them once the southern column is disposed with. You—”