Brrrrrt. They were shouting out there, or screaming or something. Trying to crawl closer. Closer to him and Leo, closer to Antigone and mom. Brrrrrrrt.
Leonidas. Megistias. Dieneces. The heroes of Thermopylae, he’d been a little bored learning that in school. I suppose they didn’t want to die either, he thought with a sudden cold lucidity; his knees felt weaker, and the corners of his mouth were leaking. Alpheus. Maro. Eurytus.
Another burst. Another, swinging wide to cover the full arc of the bunker’s semicircular firing slit, there ought to be a couple of automatic riflemen in support. More rebels down, others trying to crawl backward, some dragging their wounded.
Demaratus the lesser, Deonates—
* * *
Skida slumped to the ground, panting. The ground under her heaved slightly as the satchel charge they had thrown into the last bunker went off; flame shot out the firing slits all around.
“OK,” she croaked, as much to herself as to the survivors, and used her rifle to push herself up to her knees; the wound in the leg was not too bad, just a gouge out of the muscle really. Bullets were cracking by overhead, so she crawled to the edge of the sandbags, rolled over onto the ground.
That put her next to Platoon Leader Swaggart; on an impulse she reached out to close his eyes, then surprised herself even more by bending to kiss his brow.
Shit, she thought. Maybe Skilly should have stayed in hidehunting and hijacking.
“Intercept one,” she said, paused to swill out her mouth from her canteen. “Field Prime here. Report.”
“They got past us.”
“What?”
“They had a fucking six-tube rocket launcher under tarps on all the hovertruck roofs, Field Prime! As soon as we opened up they all turned and let us have it, my company is dead and we lost both the recoillesses! I got maybe ten effectives left.”
“OK,” Skida said. Think, bitch. She looked down at the base. “Shit again,” she mumbled.
The wedge below was a sheet of fire, white phosophorus and blown bunkers. They weren’t going to overrun the Brotherhood artillery positions. Some of the other penetrations had made progress, but even as she looked tiny figures surged out of the headquarters bunkers and struck the extending flank.
Why? Traitors, it had to be. Someone back at headquarters, knowing she was coming in here, someone who wanted her dead, someone who wanted to take over the Movement, that must be it, and now the Royals were moving. Shit, pretty soon they trap us all! It was hard to think.
“OK, Intercept One, pull back to rendevous.” At the firebase they had overrun, the first one north of here.
“Pull back with what? To what? Dis de Revolution! Fuck the Revolution!”
Her phones went dead.
She changed channels. “Field Two.”
“Field Two’s down,” a voice answered her. “Senior Group Leader Mendoza here. Orders, ma’am?” Mendoza sounded so tired he had almost stopped caring. For a moment Skida did as well.
“He dead?” she cried, voice almost shrill. Two-knife?
“No, hit pretty bad. We’re carrying him.” Desperation. “Orders please.”
No one to talk to. Can’t tell this one it’s over, time to bug. Skida raised a fist and hammered it into the wound on her leg, using the savage pain to drive her mind back into action.
“Right,” she said coolly. “Consolidate, throw back that counterattack. Dig in, put in supressing fire, get your wounded out. I gives fire-control over to you. Sanjuki, got that? Including you special stuff. And get those mortars hopping. All assault leaders,” she continued. “Anyone about to break through?”
Silence.
“OK, Plan Beta, prepare. The relief force made it and they going be here soon.” About ten minutes. That fast thinking, those rockets. Skilly must see that officer has an accident. “All elements on the east side of the perimeter, Field Prime authorize tactical withdrawal.” Bug out.
Run. Live to fight another day. “Time to talk.”
She touched a preselected sequence on her helmet, one that would blur her voice.
* * *
“Colonel, I have a message,” Andy Lahr said. “Claims to be the Helot supreme commander.”
“Hah.” His command caravan was hull-down, two klicks from the former position of the Eighteenth. Forty-kilo shells from the heavy mortars were passed overhead and fell into the Helot positions. The armored cars were coming up in support.
The only thing they have left is their artillery, and they’re pretty well out of rockets for that. “Where’s the signal coming from?”
“Up on the ridge, where they overran the Brotherhood outpost.”
“Hah. Get me Mace.”
“Scouts, Captain Mace.”
“Jamey, have a hard look at Ridge 503. Figure out how you’d retreat from there toward the enemy artillery base. Put one of your best SAS teams in a good position, and stand by weapons. I think theyll have targets to designate soon enough. And watch for vehicles, someone claiming to be their top leader is up there and they may send something for him.”
“You got it.”
“Andy, when we put the rebel commander on, I want you to listen. Patch Barton in too. Private comments to me if indicated.”
“Yes, sir. Helot field commander, I have the Colonel. Go ahead.”
A woman’s voice answered, astonishingly enough. Blurred by an antivoiceprint device, otherwise a clear contralto with a lilting Caribbean accent.
“This Spartan Liberation Army Field Prime, proposin’ a mutual withdrawal under terms, with temporary armistice,” she said.
Owensford felt his lips turn in a snarl. “Interesting. What are you offering in exchange for letting you get away?”
A laugh, cool and amused. “You can’t stop us, merc. We get out of here when we want. Look, up there, we gots threes north and south of you. You attack one way, we come the other.”
“I see.” Peter thumbed the command set. “Get a good fix on that position, and tell Jamey to get his scouts moving.”
“And you come both north and south, and we bugs out,” she said reasonably. “One part of the Dales just about like another to us, mon. We got enough firepower left to keep you heads down while we be going, too. And you notice something? All your mules be dead, mon. No transport, nohows; hell, you goan have to hunt for the pot. You got visual from your river base?”
“Yes,” he said, switching on a screen with an overhead view.
“Watch this. See the second mortar on the right?”
A few seconds later something like a very quick firefly darted into the spyeye’s view, did a double loop and slammed neatly into the steel cover over the mortar’s hatch.
“These things got a range of better than thirty klicks,” the voice went on. “So you relief force not going to land here. Gots to land downstream, fight they way through thick woods we holding and have mined, by the time they get here we gone. You want to chase us through the woods, booby traps and ambush for a thousand klicks? All right with me, mon. No satellites for you, now, either.”
“Thank you,” Sastri said on the private channel. “We have located the source of that rocket. Out of our range, I fear. I will notify Captain Mace.”
“Another thing,” the rebel leader said. “We got, oh, two-fifty prisoners up there, another eighty-so in your Firebase One we overrun, and here at the river. You don’t agree, we kill them all.”
“Typical,” Jesus Alana said. Hah, Owensford thought. Andy must have the entire staff listening to this. Good.
“Typical terrorists,” Alana continued. “When things go wrong they threaten hostages.”
“I will hold you personally responsible for any violation of the Laws of War,” Peter Owensford said.
Laughter “Responsible? Mon, me head in a noose already if we lose! What you do, hang me twice? This no gentlemon war, dis de Revolution. All or nothing.
“Too, we figure you got maybe fifteen percent casualties, lots of gas-wounded what die if they doan get regenn soon. We run away, you kill a few more of us, but not much left of pretty-mon army, hey?”
“I’m listening.”
“You talk sensible, we let you fly them out.”
That could be crucial; the time between injury and treatment was the single most important factor in survival rates. Particularly for the ones with lungs burned by the desiccants.
“Field Prime moves a company or so out into the open, they hostages. Doan expect you to trust we. You wounded, they me hostages.”
Owensford changed channels. “Get me Kicker Six. Fast.” He switched back. “I don’t have authority to make deals with you. I’ll have to get a political leader.”
“Mon you damn well better hurry doin’ it.”
“That’s as may be,” Owensford said. “But until I get political authorization, the answer to your request is no.”
“How long it take?”
“Depends on my communications,” Owensford said.
“I give you fifteen minutes. Then no deal. I call you back.”
* * *
“Headquarters calling, Prince,” Harv said. He held out the handset.