The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Next. I want as many of your scouts as you can organize set up and ready to run in amongst them when they break. This battle is by God going to end with pursuit.”

“Right on. I’ll see what I can get ready.”

* * *

“Andy, what communications are secure?”

“Everything local. If it’s not on a fiber line, you’ll hear the warning wail.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“And D Company reports contact.”

Owensford nodded. That was the blocking force down in the ravine to the west, and now he would learn for sure why the enemy seemed bent on committing suicide.

“Put McLaren on.” Another secure channel. The signals people all deserved medals.

* * *

“Captain McLaren here,” a thickly accented voice said; from New Newfoundland, the island settlement in the Oinos Gulf. “There’s a force of at least three companies comin’ doon the valley at me, Colonel. They’re carrying heavy weapons, but they’ll nae get past if we get fire support.”

“On its way, Captain,” Owensford said. “Are you ready for chemical attack?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. The lads that hae the gear ha’ put it oon, the rest hae moved back to hasty shelters.”

“That ought to do it. We don’t know what they have, or how much, but with luck it can’t be that much.”

“Luck goes both ways, Colonel. We’re warned noo, the lads know which side of the turf goes up.”

“Right. Captain, I don’t mind if they get past you.”

“Sir?”

“I want them to think they fought past you, but I don’t want you taking casualties. When they move in, probably under cover of that gas attack, punish them as they go past, but mostly fall back on your reserves, regroup, and wait for the signal to counter attack. They’re putting themselves into the bag, Captain, and I wouldn’t want to stop them.”

“I see. We’ll be ready, then.”

“Incoming,” Sastri’s voice said on the Heavy Weapons line. “New pattern. Incoming on all positions, single batteries to each of our battalions. Impact in thirty seconds.”

“Looks like this is it, Captain. Godspeed.”

* * *

“Sir, Morrentes calling, urgent.”

“Owensford here.” There was a faint but unmistakable background sound, a rising and falling wail: the line was radio line of sight, possibly secure, possibly not.

“Colonel, FAIROAK.” Owensford whistled silently; radars inoperative due to enemy antiradiation missiles. “Ditto Firebase One, we’ve got movement all around. I’m lofting some of the Thoths, but there isn’t enough target data to—”

“Gas!” An automatic alarm squeal, and then Sastri’s voice screaming on the override push: “GAS! ALL UNITS ARE UNDER GAS ATTACK, PROTECTIVE MEASURES IMMEDIATELY GAS GAS GAS!”

“Morrentes here, the camp’s under gas attack.”

“Loft your birds high, then drop them onto your old camp, sector fiver,” Owensford said. “That’s where they’ll be coming in.”

“GAS, GAS, GAS . . .”

A long chilling scream from someone, that ended in retching coughs. Owensford’s hands were moving in drilled reflex, as a ring of plastic popped loose around the base of his Legion-issue helmet. Open the armor at the neck strip it back pull the tab; a sudden hiss as the seal inflated tight to his skin and the lower rim of his faceplate. Strip the hypnospray out of its pocket in the fabric of his sleeve and press it to the neck below the seal; antidote, if it was a nerve agent.

But the Brotherhood troops and the RSI don’t have Legion equipment. Except the Prince Royal’s Own. And everyone has masks. It was still in the training. One reason gas wasn’t used much. They have the masks, if they didn’t ditch them as useless weight. Think of that as a way to weed out stupid troops. We had warning, not enough, but why am I surprised that terrorists use terror weapons? One thing for sure, they haven’t any more experience with war gasses than we do.

“Command override,” he said. That put him on the universal push. There was no emotion now; everything felt ice-clear. “All units, gas counter-measures.” He turned to Captain Lahr. “OK, that’s their big move. Stop them now, and we’ve won. Andy, make sure we preserve records of this. Make damned sure of that. I want evidence that will stand up in every hearing room from here to the Grand Senate.”

* * *

“Now,” Skilly said, looking at her watch. 0420. Her hand stabbed down, one finger extended.

The Meijian touched a control. The antiradiation missiles lept skyward and looped over down toward the Royalist river-base.

“Now,” Skilly repeated. A second finger.

The sky lit with violet as the bombardment rockets drew their streaks across the sky. Two hundred meters above the earth they burst, and a colorless, odorless liquid volatized into gas and floated downward.

“Now.” A third time. Nothing visible here, but hundreds of kilometers to the north another of Murasaki’s technoninjas touched the controls before him. Two solid-fuel rockets leaped aloft and arched west as they rose; they were not capable of reaching orbital velocity, but they had more than enough power to spew their loads of ballbearings into the path of the observation satellite. The steel would meet the orbiter at a combined velocity of better than sixteen thousand meters per second.

“Now.” Fourth and last. From all around the Royalist base, men rose and rushed forward, even as the alarm klaxons wailed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Crofton’s Essays and Lectures in Military History

(2nd Edition)

Herr Doktor Professor Hans Dieter von und zu Holbach:

Delivered at the Kriegsakademie, Konigsberg

Planetary Republic of Friedland, October 2nd, 2090.

War among the interstellar colonies is a relatively new phenomenon, although civil disturbance is not. Only since the emergence of strongly independent planetary states in the 2060s has a new balance of power begun to manifest itself, with the traditional accompanying features: armaments races, offensive and defensive alliances, puppet governments and spheres of influence. This process is still incomplete, as the significant powers—Dayan, our own Friedland, Meiji, Xanadu—are still somewhat deterred by the enormous although declining and semi-paralytic power of Earth’s CoDominium Fleet. Space combat remains an almost exclusively theoretical exercise. Ground warfare has been limited, with intervention in the disputes of worlds without unified planetary governments, or undergoing civil war, the characteristic form. The independent planets seek to defray the costs of raising armies and to gain combat experience by following the example of the autonomous mercenary formations and hiring out their elite troops; political influence often follows automatically, as in, for example, the close links now existing between the Republic of Friedland and the restored Carlist monarchy of Santiago on Thurstone.

As one consequence of this pattern, the significant armies have continued to be small and usually based on voluntary recruitment, intended for deployment outside their native systems. The strong, industrialized and unified worlds have no use for mass armies, and the planets which need such have not the resources to maintain them. Thus reserves of trained manpower, and still more the organizational and social structures needed to support universal mobilization, have become virtually nonexistent. Some planets, of which Sparta is an excellent example, have attempted to raise well-trained and widely based militia systems. The primary weakness of this approach is the lack of standing forces, and hence of the infrastructure of higher command and administration; also, the lack of fighting experience, the only true method of testing the efficiency of a military system. . . .

* * *

We was rotten ‘for we started—

we was never disciplined;

We made it out a favor if an order was obeyed.

Yes, every little drummer ‘ad ‘is

rights and wrongs to mind,

So we had to pay for teachin’—an’ we paid!

There was thirty dead and wounded

on the ground we wouldn’t keep—

No, there wasn’t more than twenty

when the front began to go—

But Christ! Along the line o’ flight they

cut us up like sheep,

An’ that was all we gained by doin’ so!

* * *

“Faster!” Niles hissed at the two guerillas who were supporting him on either side.

“Niles.” Skilly’s voice.

“Getting into position,” he gasped. “Will be there.”

“You’d better.”

He could move, but there were limits on how fast a man with a hairline rib fracture could run. The hypnospray was beginning to take effect, pain receding and the band around his chest loosening.

They had caught up with the bulk of the Icepick column; men were crouched next to their loads of explosive death, looking forward to the firing ahead at the enemy infantry’s blocking position, or up to where the forty-kilo loads of the Royalist heavy mortars would drop on their heads from only three thousand meters away.

We’re here. The cost had been high. All of his headquarters and special guards, dead or left behind to block that hard-nosed Spartan bastard who wouldn’t parley. Can’t blame him, but it was worth a try.

“Drill A, Drill A!” Niles gasped, over the command push. Maximum gain. “DRILL A!” His escort stopped, and he pulled open the throat of his own armor to seal the ring around his neck; the Helot senior commanders had offworld helmets with all the trimmings, for obvious reasons.