The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Get your goddam foot out of my eye!”

“Shut up, Traeger.”

Finally everyone had his armor on and his fatigues packed away. The troopers sat quietly now. Even the old hands weren’t joking. There’s something about combat armor that makes everything seem real.

They looked dangerous in their bulky leathers and armor, and they were. The armor alone gave us a big edge on anything we’d meet here. It also gives a feeling of safety, and that can be dangerous. Nemourlon will stop most fragments and even pistol bullets, but it won’t stop a high-velocity rifle slug.

“How you doing down there?” Louis’s voice in my phones startled me for a moment.

“We’re all armored up,” I told him. “You still think you know where you’re going?”

“Nope. But the computer does. Got a radar check five minutes ago. Forking stream that shows on the map. We’re right on the button.”

“What’s our ETA?” I asked.

“About twenty minutes. Wind’s nice and steady, not too strong. Piece of cake.”

“Fuel supply?” I asked.

“We’re hip-deep in spare cans. Not exactly a surplus, but there’s enough. Quit worrying.”

“Yeah.”

“You know,” Louis said, “I never flew a chopper with one of those things hanging off it.”

“Now you tell me.”

“Nothing to it,” Louis said. “Handles a bit funny, but I got used to it.”

“You’d better have.”

“Just leave the driving to us. Out.”

The next twenty minutes seemed like a week. I guarantee one way to stretch time is to sit on an open platform at thirty-three hundred meters and watch the night sky while you wait to command your first combat mission. I tried to think of something cheerful to say, but I couldn’t, and I thought it was better just to be quiet. The more I talked, the more chance I’d show some kind of strain in my voice.

“Your job is to look confident,” Falkenberg had told me. I hoped I was doing that.

* * *

“Okay, you can get your first look now,” Louis said.

“Rojj.” I got my night glasses from Hartz. They were better than issue equipment, a pair of ten-cm Leica light-amplifying glasses I bought myself when I left the Academy. A lot of officers do, because Leica makes a special offer for graduating cadets. I clipped them onto my helmet and scanned the hillside. The landing zone was the top of a peak which was the highest point on a ridge leading from the river. I turned the glasses to full power and examined the area carefully.

It looked deserted. There was some kind of scrubby chaparral growing all over it, and it didn’t look as if anybody had ever been to the peak.

“Looks good to me,” I told Louis. “What do you have?”

“Nothing on IR, nothing on low-light TV,” he said. “Nothing barring a few small animals and some birds roosting in the trees. I like that. If there’re animals and birds, there’s probably no people.”

“Yeah—”

“Okay, that’s passive sensors. Should I take a sweep with K-band?”

I thought about it. If there were anyone down there, and that theoretical someone had a radar receiver, the chopper would give itself away with the first pulse. Maybe that would be better. “Yes.”

“Rojj,” Louis said. He was silent a moment. “Hal, I get nothing. If there’s anybody down there, he’s dug in good and expecting us.”

“Let’s go in,” I said.

And now, I thought, I’m committed.

IX

“Over the side!” Ardwain shouted. “Get those tethers planted! First squad take perimeter guard! Move, damn you!”

The men scrambled off the platform. Some of them had tether stakes, big aluminum corkscrews, which they planted in the ground. Others lashed the platform to the stakes. The first squad, two maniples, fanned out around the area with their rifles ready.

There wasn’t much wind, but that big gas bag had a lot of surface area, and I was worried about it. I got off and moved away to look at it. It didn’t seem to be too much strain on the tether stakes. The hillside was quiet and dark. We’d set down on top of some low bushes with stiff branches. The leaves felt greasy when they were crushed. I listened, then turned my surveillance amplifier to high gain. Still nothing, not even a bird. Nothing but my own troops moving about. I switched to general command frequency. “Freeze,” I said.

The noise stopped. There was silence except for the low “whump!” of the chopper blades, and a fainter sound from Number Two out there somewhere.

“Carry on,” I said.

Ardwain came up to me. “Nobody here, sir. Area secure.”

“Thank you.” I thumbed my command set onto the chopper’s frequency. “You can cut yourself loose, and bring in Number Two.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Louis said.

We began pulling gear off the platform. After a few moments, Number Two chopper came in. We couldn’t see the helicopter at all, only the huge gas bag with its platform dangling below it. The Skyhook settled onto the chaparral and men bailed out with tether stakes. Centurion Lieberman watched until he was sure the platform was secure, then ran over to me.

“All’s well?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir.” His tone made it obvious he’d wanted to say “of course.”

“Get ’em saddled up,” I said. “We’re moving out.”

“Aye, aye, sir. I still think Ardwain would be all right here, sir.”

“No. I’ll want an experienced man in case something happens. If we don’t send for the heavy equipment, or if something happens to me, call Falkenberg for instructions.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”‘ He still didn’t like it. He wanted to come with us. For that matter, I wanted him along, but I had to leave a crew with the Skyhooks and choppers. If the wind came up so tethers wouldn’t hold, those things had to get airborne fast, and the rest of us would be without packs and supplies. There were all kinds of contingencies, and I wanted a reliable man I could trust to deal with them.

“We’re ready, sir,” Ardwain said.

“Right. Let’s move out.” I switched channels. “Here we go, Louis.”

“I’ll be ready,” Bonneyman said.

“Thanks. Out.” I moved up toward the head of the column. Ardwain had already gone up. “Let’s get rolling,” I said.

“Sir. Question, sir,” Ardwain said.

“Yeah?”

“Men would rather take their packs, sir. Don’t like to leave their gear behind.”

“Sergeant, we’ve got eight kilometers to cover in less than three hours. No way.”

“Yes, sir. Could we take our cloaks? Gets cold without ’em—”

“Sergeant Ardwain, we’re leaving Centurion Lieberman and four maniples of troops here. Just what’s going to happen to your gear? Get them marching.”

“Sir. All right, you bastards, move out.”

I could hear grumbling as they started along the ridge. Crazy, I thought. They want to carry packs in this.

The brush was thick, and we weren’t making any progress at all. Then the scouts found a dry stream bed, and we moved into that. It was filled with boulders the size of a desk, and we hopped from one to another, moving slightly downhill. It was pitch-black, the boulders no more than shapes I could barely see. This wasn’t going to work. I was already terrified.

But thank God for all that exercise in high gravity, I thought. We’ll make it, but we’ve got to have light. I turned my set to low-power command frequency. “NCOs turn on lowest-power infrared illumination,” I said. “No visible light.”

I pulled the IR screen down in front of my eyes and snapped on my own IR helmet light. The boulders became pale green shapes in front of me, and I could just see them well enough to hop from one to another. Ahead of me the screen showed bright green moving splotches, my scouts and NCOs with their illuminators.

I didn’t think anybody would be watching this hill with IR equipment. It didn’t seem likely, and we were far from the fort where the only equipment would be—if the River Pack had any to begin with. I told myself it would take extremely good gear to spot us from farther than a klick.

Eight klicks to go and three hours to do it. Shouldn’t be hard. Men are in good condition, no packs—damned fools wanted to carry them!—only rifles and ammunition. And the weapons troops, of course. They’d be slowest. Mortarmen with twenty-two kilos each to carry, and the recoilless riflemen with twenty-four.

We were sweating in no time. I opened all the vents in my armor and leathers and wondered if I ought to tell the troops to do the same. Don’t be stupid, I told myself. Most of them have done this a dozen times. I can’t tell them anything they don’t know.

But it’s my command, I kept thinking. Anything goes wrong, it’s your responsibility, Hal Slater. You asked for it, too, when you took the commission.