The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

That changed even as he watched. The APCs halted and spilled their eight-man crews to begin setting up the heavy weapons. Shovels and the ‘dozer blade of the engineering vehicle began preparing firing positions for the mortars, well spaced out and downslope from the crest. Still further down, the Headquarters troops were digging in as well, spider-holes and pits for their heavy machine guns and perimeter gatlings.

“Sir, Senior Lieutenant Fissop.” The commander of the HQ company. “He requests permission to blow standing timber for entrenchment purposes.”

“By all means,” Owensford said, studying his map again.

Assume there’s a blocking force near that minefield, he thought. Can’t be too large. Now, what avenues of attack are there . . . ahh.

“Message to Third Brotherhood. Close up to two klicks west of us and advance using this ridge”—his light-pencil traced it—”having his mortars ready for support”—mule-born l25mms—”and begin a probe here.” That ought to put them right behind whoever was waiting for him to swing around the mines.

“Twenty-Second is to maintain distance on the Third’s left, ready to move in support. Eighteenth is to close up to within five klicks to our rear, and Fifty-first to deploy in place for the moment on the right.” A good well-rounded position, ready to attack, retreat or switch front at need, and capable of interdicting the low covered ground on all sides.

“Sir, CO Task Force Wingate.”

“Patch.”

“Slater here,” a familiar voice said.

“Copy, George,” Owensford said.

“I’ve run into a spot of trouble.”

“Details?”

“Mines, snipers and teams of rocket launchers infiltrating between my columns. Lost two armored cars and about fifteen casualties; we’ve counted about five times that in enemy dead. They’re willing to take casualties to hurt us.”

“Interesting.”

“Isn’t it? Also, two of my forward support bases along the route back report harassing fire from mortars. One twenty-five millimeter stuff, shoot-and-scoot, they’re working counterbombardment.”

With locally made counterbattery radars; Owensford had no special confidence in them. SingIe-frequency, and the innards were positively neolithic, hand-assembled transistors and chipboards salvaged from imported consumer electronics.

“Stand by for orders.” He looked up “Conserve Ammunition” and “Fire if target under observation and located.” “Code HAWKWOOD. Repeat Hawkwood. Code ARAGON. Repeat Aragon.”

“HAWKWOQD. ARAGON. Roger.”

“Stand by one.”

“Roger.”

“Intelligence. What’s on Elint?” Electronic traffic interception.

“Nothing, sir.”

There were ways to handle movement without any radio traffic at all, but not many. One way was to move everything according to a prearranged plan. Like terrorists. That would be interesting. He switched back to the commander of the northern column.

“We’ll know more in a bit. Hop to it.”

“Roger. Wingate, out.”

“Come on, birdie,” Owensford murmured to himself. “Because here I sit, bloody blind.”

* * *

“Senior Group Leader,” the communications tech said, “Base One reports there was a three-minute lapse in enemy satellite-link commo immediately after the SAS teams were attacked. They are now using alternates, and code book.”

“Thank you,” Geoffrey Niles said. “Results?”

“Heavy casualties, sir. The SAS teams are calling down some sort of smart weapon bombardment, and they’re all well dug-in. They’ve shredded our people, some have already cut and run.” He touched the earphone of his headset. “The consultants say the weapons are being lofted by short-range rockets from the main enemy columns. Antiradiation missiles are giving our jamming serious problems.”

“Damn.” He frowned; overrunning the SAS teams would have been a significant blow to the enemy’s capacities. Skilly’s orders had been quite specific, though. “Break off the attacks. They’ll probably try to send someone to pull the scouts out. Have the attack teams set ambushes on the likely approach paths. Otherwise, stay out of visual observation range and harass with mortar fire.”

“Counterbattery hits our mortar people every time they fire.”

“Poor babies.” Niles looked at his chronometer; 0200. “Time to surveillance satellite overpass?”

“One hour twenty-seven minutes, sir.” A pause. “Sir, Base One reports two enemy aircraft are lifting off-schedule from Olynthos and Dodona.” They had agents in place in both towns. All you needed was someone with binoculars, and a zeroed-in laser transponder aimed at a spot in the hills to the west and south. A negligible chance of someone having detection gear in the path of a tight beam during the few seconds it was in use.

“Tiltrotors. Looks like they’re heading for the rear zones to do Elint and remote-sensor interpretation.” The pickups would be forward. “ETA forty minutes.”

“Very good,” he said with a fierce grin, looking back at the map. The enemy were quick on the uptake, but there were still things they didn’t know. “I’m moving forward to take personal command of the blocking force. Sutchukil,” he continued to his adjutant, “keep me notified of the status of the aircraft.”

“Sir,” the Thai transportee said; he was a short stocky man with a grin that never reached his eyes, an aristocrat and would-be artist shopped to BuReloc in some local power struggle.

Outside the tarp shelter it was growing rapidly colder in the gully under the light of the sinking moon; Niles stopped for a second to pull on his thin insulated gloves and fasten the top of his parka. Breath puffed white as the headquarters section fell in around him; there was little other movement in the rocky draw where they had left the vehicles. Those were simple frameworks of wood on skis, holding little but a light airship engine with rear-mounted propeller and a fuel tank. The troops’ skis and the sleds that carried heavy equipment were stacked nearby, several layers thick against the rough limestone of the cliff wall.

“La joue commence,” he murmured to himself.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Crofton’s Essays and Lectures in Military History (2nd Edition)

Professor John Christian Falkenberg II:

Delivered at Sandhurst, August 22nd, 2087

The nature of the societies which raise armies, the economic resources available to the state, and the nature and aims of the wars which the state wishes to, or fears it must, wage, are all mutually dependent.

Thus for the last two centuries of its existence, the Roman Republic kept an average of ten percent of its total free citizen population under arms, or half or more its adult males. This was an unprecedented accomplishment, made possible in a preindustrial world only by mass plunder of the whole Mediterranean world—directly, by tribute, and through the importation of slave forced labor—and a very high degree of social cohesion. When Hannibal was at the gates of Rome and fifty thousand of Italy’s soldiers lay dead on the field of Cannae, the Republic never even thought of yielding. New armies sprang up as if from the very earth, fueled by the bottomless well of patriotic citizen-yeomen. By contrast, under the Empire a mere three hundred thousand long-service professionals served to guard the frontiers of a defensive-minded state. No longer could the provinces be plundered to support a total-mobilization war effort, and it was precisely the aim of the Principate to depoliticize—and hence demilitarize—the citizenry. By the fifth century, relatively tiny barbarian armies of a few score thousands were wandering at will through the Imperial heartlands.

Eighteenth-century Europe saw another turn of the cycle. The “absolute” monarchies of the period brought limited wars, with limited means for limited aims. They had neither the power nor the wish to tax heavily or conscript; their armies were recruited from the economically marginal—aristocrats and gutter dregs—and waged war in a formalized, ritual minuet. A few years later the French Republic proclaimed the levee en masse, and the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars involved nearly a million men. The cycle repeated itself with a vengence in the next century; in 1840 the combined armies of Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck and the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg numbered some three thousand men. In 1914, those same territories contributed in excess of thirty thousand men to the forces of Imperial Germany, and replaced them several times over in the holocaust that followed.

Yet the wheel of history continues to turn. The CoDominium, ruling all Earth and at one time or another over one hundred colonized planets, never had more than five hundred thousand men under arms; during its rule, most national armies on Earth declined to the status of ceremonial guards or glorified riot police. Once more, stagnant oligarchies have nothing to gain by arming the masses; small, professional armies operating according to the Laws of War conduct limited conflicts to maintain a delicate sociopolitical balance. In the colonies and ex-colonies, important campaigns are decided by tiny forces of well-trained mercenaries or professional soldiers; a regiment here, a brigade there.

And now another turn of the wheel seems to be beginning.

* * *

If your officer’s dead and the sergeants look white,

Remember it’s ruin to run from a fight,

So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,

And wait for supports like a soldier.

* * *

“Task Force Wingate. Slater here.” A buzzing in the background; scrambling, and Ace’s people had rerouted the link though a newly laid cable up the riverbed to Olynthos. Everything through Legion equipment.