The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

The guerrilla commander flipped down her face shield and plugged the jack into her helmet. A view of the field outside sprang into being on the inner surface of the shield’s complex materials. The Brotherhood fortress had taken advantage of the proximity of the big open-pit mine a kilometer further south; nothing showed of the main bunker but a low mound of turf set in a dozen hectares of landscaped park. The plans Intelligence had stolen—Movement Intelligence and the Meijians both—showed an underground wedding cake, fibrocrete and steel running down six stories; generators, air-filtration systems, the works. The Spartans had always known it was a dangerous universe. The bunkers radiating out from it were newer, but also knitted into the park’s contours, from the little gatling-pillboxes to the round covered gunpits. As she watched a hatch slid open and the barrel of a light gun appeared, a 155mm with a double-baffle muzzle brake. It fired, a pale orange flash against the noon sun, and the hatch was closed again in smooth coordination with the recoil of the cannon.

“Slick,” she said.

About a second all-told, the hatch must be keyed to the lanyard of the cannon, not a practical interval to hit it with a PGM. Somebody had gotten lucky; one of the gunpits was a crater blasted open to the sky, but they could peck at them all day and not do that again, and now the Helot army was taking losses.

A van exploded, taking with it two trucks and some motorcycles, tossing men and loot in all directions. Something else exploded.

“Stop that bunching up!” Skilly screamed.

Niles looked at her, then away.

Getting hot, here, not quite like what Skilly expected. She had hoped for better results, hoped the Brotherhood gunners weren’t quite that good. If they could have knocked out the bunkers and gun emplacements, a Helot force squatting on the armory roof would have eleven hundred civilians under its boots. The Royalists talked a good line about not bargaining for hostages, and held to it fairly strongly when it came to their own men . . . but it was another thing to say “go ahead” when someone had a gun in your child’s ear.

She was aware that Niles was saying something.

” . . . and a lot of our people are still in there inside the perimeter.”

“Pull them out.”

“As I just told you, the Royals have managed to activate a number of their mine fields, and their artillery is highly accurate. We can’t pull out. Much of our force is pinned down.” Niles waved behind them, at the trucks going by. “I hope that loot is good, because we paid a heavy price for it.”

She was still studying the gun emplacements. She seemed distracted. Then she touched a button on the side of her helmet. “Anything from Olynthos?”

“Two choppers rode out, down river.”

Down river. Away from the action, and away from her missile emplacements. Where could they be going? “Nothing else? Nothing? All right. We’ll make them come here. Now we use the Mjollnir.”

Niles frowned. “Well, that will take out one of the gun emplacements—”

“Do the big central bunker pretty good, though.”

“No military targets in the central bunker. Just noncombatants.”

“You thinking like a rabbiblanco again, Jeffi.” He frowned, a little insulted. I’ve gotten beyond the naive stage, I think, he told himself. “What do you mean?” he said stiffly.

“Noncombatants. Am no such, just enemies with gun and enemies without gun. Get that Mjollnir ready.”

“Sk—Field Prime, they’ve got close to four hundred women and—well, nearly a thousand children in there, and—”

“Get me the fort, Jeffi. They get just one chance, like everybody.”

“You can’t—”

She was standing between him and the others in the room, whose eyes were on the windows or the corridor in any case. Geoffrey Niles froze as the muzzle of her Walther jabbed like a blunt steel finger into his left side, exactly where the armor latched under his armpit. Her face leaned closer to his, and she flipped up the shield; there was tension in the green-flecked brown eyes, and her voice was pitched soft.

So that nobody else will see or hear, he knew with a distant corner of his mind. For my sake, if it comes out right. If he passed what he suddenly realized was a carefully contrived test.

“Jeffi, Skilly want you with her when we win. But Skilly going to win, Jeffi my sweet.” A slight smile, tender. “Welcome to Skilly’s world, my mon, where she live all her life. This the real world, and it like this everyday.” The high-cheeked brown face went utterly cold. “I doan give me order twice, mon.”

He was already one over the limit.

* * *

“Jesus Christ, what’s going on back there!” Karl Olafson barked. “We’ve been out of com link for better than half an hour!”

“Major,” Barton began, “please listen closely.” He waited for a second, until the man in the screen nodded.

“The enemy partially penetrated our security systems, used them to disorganize the defenses, and launched a major attack on Stora Mine in conjunction with internal sabotage. They’ve overrun substantial areas of the settlement. They have taken heavy losses, and we’ve stopped them, but they’re still out there.”

Emotion rippled across the square blond-bearded face, fear, rage, astonishment. Then nothing but business; Barton nodded in chill approval. There was no time for anything else.

“We’ve relieved the Torreys, but they’ve abandoned the attacks. And thanks to your warnings we found the bombs in our trucks.”

“Glad you got that message,” Barton said. “Wasn’t sure you had.”

“Just heard part of it, something about sabotage, decided to look into the trucks. Thank God. All right. We’re 120 klicks from you. I can be back there in two hours, three at most.”

“No you can’t,” Barton said. “The road’s mined, and I’m sure there are ambushes set up all along it.”

There was a long pause. “Our families are back there, in the armory bunker.”

“I know. It won’t do them a bit of good for you to get killed, though.”

“All right, what do you want?”

“They’re beginning to realize they can’t hold here,” Barton said. “They’ll start to retreat—and they don’t have all that much choice about the route they’ll take if they want to get away with the loot they’ve been scooping up. They have truckloads of stuff they’ve stolen.”

“Christ. From where? Our homes?”

“Probably,” Barton said. “Keep hold of yourself. The best thing that can happen right now is for them to load up with loot they won’t want to give up. Loot will slow them down as much as all the mines they’ve been scattering. I don’t know this area all that well, but from the map it sure looks like you can cut across the ridge line and show them that two can play this ambush game.”

“Christ Almighty! Harry, give me that map. Who knows this area? Yeah, get him—General, I think you have something. Davis? What’s this ridge like? How long would it take to get over to here—”

Another voice. “No road, but there’s good trails. Let’s see, maybe fifteen klicks. Four hours? Three for those in real good shape.”

“They may be past by then, but maybe not,” Barton said. “I don’t think they quite appreciate how hard a retreat under fire can be. Get over there and see what you can do,” Barton said. “Be careful, you’re not trying to stop them, just punish them as they go out, and that’s all you do. Don’t try pursuit. Don’t try anything fancy. Just get where you can see them, dig in and hurt them, no need to close with them.”

“Roger. OK, we’re on the way.”

* * *

“It’s the Royalist commander,” Geoffrey Niles said hoarsely.

Skilly touched her helmet. “This Field Prime, Spartan People’s Liberation Army.”

“Major Bitterman here.” A woman’s voice. The central armory would be held by administrative troops. “What do you want?”

“You getting one chance to surrender, or we crack you like the egg,” Skilly said flatly.

“You haven’t been doing much cracking as yet, rebel.” There was confidence in her voice; the armory bunker would withstand most things, short of a nuclear weapon.

“So far, Field Prime be nice. Major, de kids and all in there you responsibility. You put them in military zone. Better you left them out, nobody out here get hurt who not fighting. Last chance.”

“I’ve seen what you did to our homes,” Bitterman said. “And this is not a military zone. There is no military force here. This is a hospital and bomb shelter.”

“Well, too bad,” Skilly said. “‘Cause it military to me.”

“What do you want?”

“You surrender.”

“You know what you ask is impossible. I don’t have the authority. I tell you this is a hospital and shelter. There are no military units here.”

“They all around you out there.”