The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“They all around you?”

“May be.”

“Stand by one.”

“Hartley here,” a voice said. “You’re sure?”

“Sure enough.”

“Call it off.”

“Fire mission. Offset three hundred forty, bearing two-niner-five, moving. Offset four hundred forty-five, bearing one-seven-five, stationary. More to come.”

“On the way.”

A long pause, then a flare of light somewhere off toward battalion. A big rocket flashed high, arced toward them.

“Comin’ in, peg ’em.”

Miscowsky scanned the area below him. “Goddam,” he muttered. There were fifty men closing in. “It’s a bloody damned race,” he said.

“Think they got us located?” Owassee asked.

“Maybe not.” Miscowsky began setting in ranges and offset bearings on his sleeve console. “Gonna be close—ah.” A timer glowed softly on his sleeve. Fifty-five seconds. Fifty-four. “Impact in fifty seconds. Estimate where they’ll be when the balloon goes up.” He grinned wolfishly.

* * *

“Kicker Six,” the voice said softly in Lysander’s ear. “Third Platoon here. We found a mine.”

“Halt,” Lysander said, on the unit push. “Perimeter, defensive.” The first thing but foot and hoofprints they had found in three days’ march.

Ahead of him and to either side, men stopped and melted into invisibility. Behind fallen logs, in the shadow of bushes, simply sinking into snow until only their eyes and the white-painted muzzles of their weapons showed. There was very little noise; the odd crunching sound, a few clicks as the team-served weapons set up. He and Harv went to one knee, waiting until the guide from Third Platoon came. The trooper gave a hand-signal from twenty meters; they followed him in silence, from cover to cover. The last three hundred meters they did on their bellies.

“Sir,” the junior lieutenant breathed as they crawled into the lee of a big beech; the snow was thin here, high on the other side of the tree where the prevailing east wind piled it. Ice hung from the thick branches in stalactites, legacy of what had probably been the last thaw of the year, up here in the hills.

“Monitor Andriotti spotted it.”

Andriotti was a Legionnaire, a man with a dark face and scars that ran down it into the neckline of his parka. Forty years old, perhaps fifty. Alert, but with a phlegmatic resignation that went deeper than words could reach.

“Zur,” he said; there was a thick accent to his words, but it was of no particular place. The accent of a man who has spent his adult life speaking Anglic as a lingua franca with others also not born to it. “Tere. Snow is just off the tripwire between t’ose trees.”

Lysander cycled his faceplate to IR; nothing, the booby trap was at ambient, which meant it had been here for a while. He risked a brief burst of ultrasound, then froze the image. A curved plate resting on a low tripod in a clump of leafless thorny bush, impossible to spot with the naked eye. The wire ran at ankle-height, in a triangle secured at the corners to two trees five meters apart by plastic eyebolts screwed into the bark. The gap was the obvious route for anyone who didn’t want to crash through brush, and anyone who had would have been shredded by thousands of fléchettes.

“All units,” he said. “Remain in place and look for mines. I don’t have to tell you to be careful. Dig in. Full perimeter defence.” Never a mistake to dig, if you had to stop. The books said minefields and other obstacles were primarily useful to pin a force so that it could be attacked.

“Com, patch me through to Command.”

* * *

“How many?” Peter Owensford asked as Mace finished. Contact. This is it.

“Sir, Miscowsky and his team are under attack by at least a company. Team Z-2 doesn’t report. A-1 and A-2 report all nominal. Something coming in—Deighton’s under attack. And Laramie.”

“Deighton, Laramie and Miscowsky. And Katz doesn’t report. Bingo,” Owensford said. “Well, we sent them out to find something.”

Find it and kill it. Each of the SAS teams carried directional beaming equipment that could feed the team’s coordinates, plus an offset, to incoming Thoth missiles. Thoth was normally launched by aircraft kept just at the team’s horizon, but in this case there weren’t any airplanes for that, so the birds were lofted by solid rockets. That could be expensive if the birds went out and there were no targets, but Peter didn’t think that would be the problem here.

“Jamming. We’re getting jammed,” Mace said.

“Jamming,” Owensford acknowledged. “Well, we expected it after the Spartosky. Loft the anti-radiation missiles. And keep lofting Thoth support.” Thoth missiles depended on a direct line of sight communication, and employed an autocorrelation system that was nearly impossible to jam, even with brute force.

“Aye aye.”

Owensford studied the map. Miscowsky was Z-1, ranging in ahead of the column of Royal troops heading north from the Rhyndakos, Katz with Z-2 likewise. T-l and T-2 were with the central column, punching in directly west from a convenient bend in the Eurotas. A-1 and A-2 with the northern force, pressing southeast from Olynthos.

“They knew where to look,” Peter said aloud. He thought about the implications of that. There was only one way they could have known that well. He turned to his adjutant, Andy Lahr. “Andy, they knew where to look. You agree?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jericho. Get the word out, all units, Jericho.”

“Roger.”

Peter picked up the microphone. “Mace, broadcast to all of your units. Code Jericho. Repeat, Code Jericho. Got that?”

“Roger. Code Jericho.”

* * *

“Message, Captain.” Communications Sergeant Masterson spoke urgently.

Lysander frowned. “I need to talk to headquarters—”

“They’re broadcasting, sir. Jericho. Code Jericho.”

“Jericho.”

“Yes, sir. I got special orders on that one—”

“I know,” Lysander said. “All right. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledge Jericho,” the comm sergeant said. “I say again, we acknowledge Jericho. All units Task Force Candle Four, command override, your word is Jericho, Code Jericho. I say again, Code Jericho.”

Jericho, Lysander thought. Assume that all transmissions are monitored by enemy. Assume that all ciphers and encryptions are compromised. All communication in future to be by code book, or in clear with enemy presumed listening.

“We’re getting another,” Masterson said. “This one’s just for us. Kicker Six, Code Dove Hill. Code Dove Hill.”

“Right. Thank you.” Lysander touched his sleeve console and typed rapidly. “DOVE HILL.”

“ASSUME ENEMY IN GREATER STRENGTH THAN ANTICIPATED.” “Bennington,” Masterson said. “Wait a second, that’s not for us. Here’s ours. Saratoga. Tiger. I say again, saratoga, tiger.”

“SARATOGA,” Lysander typed.

“DIG IN AND PUNISH THE ENEMY. UNLIMITED FIRE SUPPORT AUTHORIZED.”

“TIGER,” he typed.

“GOD BLESS US, THERE’S NONE LIKE US.”

* * *

“All right,” Owensford said. “Code books from here on.” And thank God for a suspicious mind. Codes were not convenient. You couldn’t say anything you hadn’t thought of in advance and put in the code book—or personal data base, as the case might be—but they did have the advantage of being unbreakable. You’d have to capture a pocket computer intact, and even that wouldn’t help for long, since the code word meanings changed from day to day and unit to unit.

“Code this,” Owensford told Andy Lahr. “Teams A-1 and A-2 are to shift position and maintain radio silence unless attacked. Their primary mission is to get home alive. Relay message to Task Force Till Eulengenspiegel—” the central column “—entrench in place, stand by to call in Thoth, and hurt the enemy.”

That wouldn’t take long, since the central column was a feint, a company-strength unit making enough radio noise for a battalion. Of course a feint backed by enough callable firepower was more trap than feint . . .

“Task Force Wingate is to shift to fallback communications and maintain nominal transmission. Maximum alert; reduce movement, prepare for meeting engagement.”

“Righto.”

The interlock chimed, and the com technical looked up from his board at the rear of the command-car’s hull.

“Sir, priority report from Captain Collins.”

“Put him through. Kicker Six, you understand Jericho?”

“Roger Jericho, sir. Sir, I’ve got multiple detection sensor and tripwire-detonated mine sightings all along my line of advance here.”

“Merry times.” Owensford looked down at his map; wheeled vehicles could advance through this section of the southern Dales, only about four-tenths of the ground was under forest, but if you counted that and very broken terrain it channeled an attack quite nicely. Channeled it down to about four alternative angles of approach within the fifty klicks on either side of the arms sighting that had started this whole affair.

“Check for command-detonated devices within your perimeter, Lynn,” he said.

“Shit, I never thought—sorry.”

“Quite all right,” Owensford said with a bleak smile. “We’re only four klicks south. You have your orders, Kicker Six. Stand by one.” He turned. “Andy, how do I say ‘Use explosives to clear mines. Conserve troops.’?”

“GLOSSARY. HILDEBRAND.”

“Got it. Captain, your codes are Glossary, I say again Glossary. Hildebrand. I say again Hildebrand.”