The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

Jesus God, that’ll blow the steam pipe! he thought, returning fire, looking at the brick of plastic explosive. The whole floor would be flooded with superheated water from the boreholes that slanted down into the magma.

More bullets, and feet were moving off on the floor somewhere.

Two of them, he thought, snapping a new magazine into the pistol and scuttling backward. The pulse hammered in his ear, but there was no time to be dazed. Got to report.

There was five meters of open space between the turbine he was using as cover and the control room. The supervisor took a deep breath and leapt, rolling the last two meters. Lead flicked pits from the concrete at his back, and shattered through the windows as he sprawled through the door of the control room and slammed the metal portal behind him. Glass starred and shifted above him as he crawled to the communicator console and reached up from below; fragments cascaded over him when he reached it, as one of the attackers put another clip through the windows. He shielded his face with his gun arm and keyed the unit.

“Mine Central, Power house One, rebel attack, rebel attack!”

“I am sorry, your call cannot be completed as sent. Please indicate your call direction and try again.”

“God damn you!” Panic button. The Legion guys had put in a panic button. It was just over there. His legs didn’t want to work, but he could still drag himself across the floor to the desk, reach up and slap the button.

Alarms hooted. Somewhere off in the distance he heard shouts.

“Move, damn you!”

“God damn it, there wasn’t ‘sposed to be any mother fucking alarms,” someone shouted. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“Hey you, shithead, get your ass back here—”

“Fuck off.”

“Who’s there? Sergeant, what the hell, get the Old Man! There’s rebels in here. Officer of the Guard! Powerhouse!”

There were shots, and more people shouting, and it all faded away.

* * *

It was a thousand meters of rocky open field from the bunker’s lip to the beginning of the woods. Brotherhood Lieutenant Hargroves squinted through the IR scanner and frowned in puzzlement.

“Brother Private Diego, you sure the audio sensors don’t pick up anything? I got stuff moving around out there. What’s on the visuals?”

“Nothing, sir. Birds, deer . . . big herd of deer. Sound and sight.”

“Yeah, that might be it, but I’m not counting on it. Anything from the patrol?”

“Regular check-in blips, sir.”

“Get me Central.”

He picked up the microphone. “Central, this is Lieutenant Hargroves. I’ve got some funny readings on my direct view sensors but they don’t match with the stuff through you. Could you check it? And I’d like to send out another patrol.”

“Report acknowledged,” a voice said. Captain Olafson, right enough, the militiaman thought.

“Yes, ma’am, but can I send out the patrol?”

“I’m sure you can handle it, Lieutenant?”

He frowned, uncertain. “But the patrol, ma’am?”

“I have full confidence in you, Lieutenant. Remember to maintain radio communications silence under all circumstances.” A click.

Bullshit. There’s something damned wrong here. “Hell—get me the Captain.”

“No answer, sir. It’s ringing through but nobody’s picking it up.”

“The hell you say!” Nobody answering in the company command bunker? “Fire up the radar! Get the damned lights on!”

“Sir, standing orders—”

“Do it, Diego! Everybody, stand to your guns. Markham, get on the minefield circuit.”

“Shit! Sir, multiple metal contacts within three thousand meters. Multiple!”

He keyed the helmet radio. “Captain, are you there?”

“Hargroves, what the hell are you doing calling me on the hailing frequency again?”

“Captain, I didn’t— Sir, the landlink’s down and I’ve got radar traces—”

“Down? You reported in on it not five minutes ago!”

The desperate voice of the communications tech broke in. “Sir, we’re being targeted, designator lasers and—”

Something blinked out of the sky at them behind a trail of fire. There was an explosion on the roof of the bunker that threw them all to the floor, loud enough to jar the senses.

“Radar’s gone, radar’s gone!”

Hargroves leapt up and to the observation slit. Men were coming out of the woods. Rocket trails slammed down out of the sky to his left and right, and more from positions among the trees. The bunker shook under repeated impacts, and he could hear screaming in the background.

“Open—”

Another streak of fire. He had time to drop down and wrap his arms around his head, before there was a slamming impact and a violet light loud enough to show through his clenched eyelids. Powdered concrete made him choke and gag, while savage heat washed across the backs of his hands. Blast bounced him back and forth in the right-angle of wall and floor. When he opened his eyes a single tear-blurred glance showed that there was nobody else alive in this chamber. He staggered erect, head and shoulders out of the gaping semicircle that something had bitten through the observation slit of the bunker, and keyed the helmet radio again.

“Perimeter six, under rocket attack! Answer me, somebody, please, they’re through the wire—”

A high-pitched jamming squeal drove into his eardrums. Armed men were swarming out of the woods; a long blade of flame showed as a recoiless rifle fired, and the bunker shook again. None of the gatlings was firing. Bangalore torpedoes erupted beneath the coils of razor wire, and the enemy poured through as the earth was still falling back. They came running, screaming.

Hargroves slapped the audio intake of his helmet to zero, leaving the mike open as he wiped at the blood running down from his nose. “Minefields inoperative,” he shouted, bringing up his rifle. Aim low. Fire. One down. “Perimeter five and four not supporting.” A saw-edged brrrrrrt. brrrrrt. came from his left, then ceased. “Correction, five still maintaining fire. Enemy is in at least battalion strength. The mine fields are inoperative. I have no reaction for—”

CHAPTER NINE

If one has never personally experienced war, one cannot understand why a commander should need any brilliance and exceptional ability. Everything looks simple. Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable. Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal.

—Clausewitz, On Strategy

* * *

“Field Prime, Attack Force one here. Bunker secured,” Niles said.

And I’m glad, he thought fervently. Running forward across a minefield that might be activated any moment had not been one of the more pleasant experiences of his life, with only a piece of intrusive software between him and being shredded into a dozen pieces.

The bunker listed as six on his map was more of a tangled depression of earth and crumbled ferroconcrete now, the sappers had made sure with a cratering charge centered right on the twisted wreckage of the radar pickups. There were more thumping crashes behind him, as they laid strip charges to clear real as well as virtual paths through the mines.

“This Field Prime. Proceed with Phase Two.”

Niles stood, waved his hand in a circle around his head and chopped it south; the jamming that bolixed the enemy’s small-unit push was unfortunately affecting their own, as well. The off-world helmetcom systems could filter it, but there were only enough of those for senior commanders. Squads rose and dashed by him, heading into the open parkland that separated the perimeter bunkers from the interior villages of the Stora Mine. The men were bowed under their burdens, bundles of Friedlander target-seeker missiles, satchel charges, flamethrowers. Others were swinging right and left, lugging machine guns and portable gatlings, setting up blocking positions to prevent the intact bunkers from sortieing and closing the quarter-arc wedge the Helots had driven into the north face of the mine’s defenses.

“Am advancing. Phase Two in progress,” he said. The headquarters company had formed about him. “Follow me!”

* * *

“Broadband jamming, sir,” Legion Signal Corps Corporal Hiram Klingstauffer said cooly, hands dancing across his controls. “I can filter it.”

“Right,” Barton said. Breath in. Breath out. Surprise is an event that takes place in the mind of a commander. No antiradiation missiles available to him up here, though. The replacement shipments for the ones lost in the Dales were still on their way. The enemy’s logistics seemed to operate much faster . . .

He strode over to the window and used a chair to smash out the thick double panes; cold air flooded in, and the sound of explosions and small-arms fire. Most loudly from the north, but there were flashes and crumping sounds from all around the perimeter, and that was the most accurate information he was likely to get for a while. Lights flashed and died over the mine-works south of the town as the 24-hour arclamps went off. Barton wheeled and looked at the computer displays.