A man burst through the door of the operations control center. He was hastily buckling on armor. “General alert, Karen. General, we’re sure glad you’re here.”
“My husband and partner,” Karen said.
“Karl Olafson, general co-manager and Major of the 22nd Brotherhood, for my sins. Alan, can you give me a relay?”
“Here.”
This time the screen split. “Captain Solarez here, Major Timmins is down.” The new figure was crouched in a shallow hole behind a rock, with a wounded communications tech lying beside him and operating the pickup. Small-arms and explosions sounded from the background.
“Report, Captain,” the militia Major said.
“I’ve got thirty dead, sixty wounded and three hundred effectives, that counts the walking wounded. We had to leave most of our heavy weapons with the transport. The enemy have us under visual observation and they’re sending us heavy fire, medium mortars, 84 and 105mm recoilless rifles, heavy machine guns. Nothing fancy but they’ve got plenty of it. We’ve beaten off one attack already, in company strength.”
A map of the militia position came up; squares indicated possible enemy dispositions. The Brotherhood fighters held a dome-shaped rise, as high as anything in the vicinity; the road wound past it, following the low ground up from the shores of the lake. The gap into the sedimentary basin that held the Torrey estate was still two kilometers north and west, but the picture-pickup showed columns of smoke from that direction.
“Major, I can hold here but not forever,” the captain went on. “We’ve no water except the canteens, very little in the way of other supplies, and I’m taking steady losses. Either someone tries to pull us out, or we’ll have to fight our way through to the Torreys’. This is obviously bigger than we thought.”
“Hold,” Karl Olafson said. “We’ll come get you.”
Ace Barton spoke. “What do you have on hand, Major?” he asked.
“Our security battalion, Brigadier,” the miner replied. “There’s another Brotherhood reaction-force battalion here, mobilizing now, I’ll leave those. We’ve got a little surprise, a six-gun battery of 155mm gun-howitzers, just up from the von Alderheim plant in Olynthos. And plenty of trucks, we’ll take the mine vehicles. Pick up more infantry at the rally-point at Danniels Mill, and mounted scouts to cover our flanks.”
Barton picked his words with care; interfering in the local chain of command was not something to be done lightly. “This isn’t going to be anything you can handle,” he said. “They’re risking too much for just a raid. They’ve got something much bigger in mind. The mine itself, for a guess. You go out there and they’ll ambush you just like they did the original relief force.”
Major Olafson nodded. “We’ll be careful. And counting the second-line people and the perimeter guardposts, that still leaves the equivalent of a complete rifle-regiment here. It’s a chance, sir,” he said. “But one we’ve got to take.”
Barton signed agreement; that instant concern was a weakness of these friends-and-neighbors militia outfits, as well as a strength.
“Hell,” the militia officer went on, “with nearly a thousand men and artillery, I don’t think we’ll have much trouble chewing up anything they send at us.”
Barton had been writing on a pad of engineering paper. He handed that to Olafson. DON’T REPLY TO THIS. THIS ROOM IS BUGGED. GO FIND MAJOR HONISTU AND PAY ATTENTION TO HIM. “I expect you’re right,” Barton said aloud. He tapped the paper again. “Not much can happen to a force that size. Godspeed, then. Who’ll hold operational command here?”
“I was hoping you would, sir.”
“Right.” Barton wrote quickly. VITAL YOU SEE HONISTU. He watched Olafson leave and turned back to the console. Bad luck. Not enough time to make a real plan. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.
* * *
“Good,” Skida murmured to herself.
Her face-shield was showing the input from a pickup three kilometers south. An armored car led out the gate between two pillboxes, trailed by a huge boxy mine-clearing vehicle. Trucks followed it, 6×6 models crowded with infantry in mottled-white winter camouflage and Nemourlon armor; they towed heavy mortars or two-wheel carts with ammunition and supplies. A string of them, and then two of the big ore trucks. Those pulled cannon, medium jobs with the long barrels turned and clamped over the trails, riding on four-wheeled carriages. More trucks . . .
She turned to the Meijians clustered around their equipment. “This had better work,” she grated.
One of them looked up and bowed slightly. “We are downloading into the enemy mainframe even now, Field Prime,” he said politely. “There will be too little time for the enemy to react.”
As was explained before, went unspoken. The Legion techs were doing random sweeps of the more vital Royal Army machines, of which the Stora Mine was one. No way to leave the pirate taps in for any length of time.
She grunted assent and turned to a display table showing an overview of the mine and town. Too much here depended on the Meijians; too much on the NCLF’s secret apparat. Neither the technoninjas nor Croser’s people had ever failed her seriously before . . . but this was the first time so large a Helot force had depended on them so totally.
And we not just fighting the hicks. Barton. Barton suspected something. What was he doing here? How much could he know? She tried to remember what she’d been told about Brigadier Barton. Older than Owensford but subordinate, could something be made of that? Bad sign he here. Shouldn’t be here. Not now, not when things critical.
Even in the Dales battle there had always been the option of pulling back; they had never been so deeply committed that the enemy could have destroyed them all, although it had been necessary to sacrifice the better part of two battalions to get the leadership cadre out. Now they had to attack, attack an immensely strong defensive position with forces that were barely superior to the Royalists even with the diversion drawing off some of their strength.
No way Skilly can win a straight fight here, she thought. She would need five times the troops and more equipment for that. But if they lost this time, the Movement’s edge would be blunted, perhaps forever. The thought of losing the instrument she had worked so long and hard to forge made her stomach feel tight and sour; with an effort of will, she made her hand stop its instinctive desire to rub soothingly. . . . Armor would stop it anyway.
Niles gave her a grin and a thumbs-up; he looked better now that combat was near and there was no time to brood. That was another anxiety, she had serious doubts whether the Englishman had thought through the implications of her orders.
He toughen up a lot, she thought. Now we see if it enough.
* * *
Where’s Fatima, Eddie?”
The mechanic jerked at the voice and rolled his trolley out from under the truck. The sirens were still wailing across the maintenance compound parking-lot.
“Ah, she’s sick,” he said, looking up and wiping his hands on an oily rag. “I came down to see the vehicle park was ready.”
Christ, I hope I didn’t hit her too hard, he thought. She was a good boss, and no more a Citizen than he was. Had been the one to get him the assistant maintenance chief’s job, too. But you didn’t retire from the Movement, and when it gave you the word you obeyed. Or died, and your family with you, wherever you tried to hide.
Christ, how did I ever get into this? Shit, shit, shit. I don’t want to kill anybody. Not even the Cits, hell the ones here haven’t been so bad—
The man in militia uniform looked around; fifteen 4x4s, another ten 6x6s. Stora Mine was lavishly equipped with mechanical transport by Spartan standards, since you couldn’t haul ore by horse-drawn wagon; even with the mobile Brotherhood force gone, there were still scores of trucks and vans in the settlement, a fair number of private cars as well. The emergency plan called for his two ready companies to billet here, able to reinforce anywhere in the sprawling complex.
“They OK?” the Citizen-soldier said, jerking his head toward the transports.
“Sure, sir. Ticking over normal, but I just wanted to check. You know what’s happening?”
“Goddam rebels’ve attacked a ranch, the boss took some people out to put them down,” the militiaman said.
More militia were coming up, and at a wave from the commander began loading prepositioned packs of weapons and equipment on the trucks.
“Nothing wrong here?” the mechanic asked; a man with a wife and a new baby had a right to sound worried.
Why did I listen to that bastard Sverdropov? First it had been little things, turning a blind eye to a crate on a run down to the lake, passing messages, just more union work Sverdropov said, and he’d been sore-headed back then after the last outfit he was with broke a strike with scabs. The Movement had gotten him his first job here . . . Then bigger things, and when he baulked they threatened to turn him in, then it was hanging offenses and he had to keep going.