Five tubes firing, he thought, remembering to leave his mouth slightly open so the overpressure would not damage eardrums. The sixth must be deadlined for maintenance, about par for the course. The artillery barrage halted, an echoing silence broken by the squeal of bearings as the self-propelled guns shifted targets. Off on the horizon to the north light flickered, lighter weapons firing. Owensford tapped into the battalion push as he walked toward the command table set up at the rear of an APC. Sastri had just acknowledged a request for counterbattery fire; as they walked up he could see a spyeye or RPV surveillance camera view of the target, two batteries of heavy mortars firing from within a narrow erosion-cut gully in the limestone rock. Sastri’s singsong voice murmured as the little Krishnan bent over the table.
Muzzle flashes came from the enemy 160s. The table was Legion-standard equipment, either what they had brought to Sparta or one of the shipments of Friedlander battle electronics just coming in; looking down was like being suspended in an aircraft observing the Helot battery. The silence was eerie, you expected to hear the CRUMP and whistle of heavy mortars . . . giddy-making, as the viewpoint shifted. Definitely an RPV about a kilometer to one side. The muzzles of the mortars dipped as the hydraulics lowered them into loading position.
“Fire mission. HE and anti-personnel equal measures,” Major Sastri said. He touched controls and a grid sprang out on the table-screen, and then a red dot centered on the enemy position. “Bearing and range, mark.”
Another voice sounded, calm and flat, the battery commander. “Received and locked.” Clangs and rattles from the guns as the autoloaders cycled. “Loaded basebleed HE standard. Gun one, ranging fire. Mark. Shoot.”
A short massive sound, slapping dirt and grit across the firebase in a hot puff as the first gun fired and gas shot out of the twin-baffle muzzle brakes. The gun recoiled, and the vehicle rocked back on its treads slightly, digging the spades at the rear of the chassis deeper into the dirt. A sound like heavy cloth tearing faded across the sky to the north. The mortars on the screen were firing when the shell exploded eleven seconds later, on the lip of the crevasse in which they were emplaced and directly above them.
“Correction,” Sastri said. He read off numbers from the map table. “Execute fire mission, battery, fire for effect,” Sastri said.
Almost on the heels of the words the other guns of the battery opened up, cycling out the heavy shells at one every seven seconds. On the screen the narrow slit in the earth vanished; most of the 155mm rounds dropped neatly through it, to gout back out in white-light flashes. Several struck the rock lips on either side and penetrated before exploding, sending multitone cascades of chalky rubble down into the depths of the canyon. Smoke and dust billowed back, silent and dreadful; then the ammunition with the mortars detonated in a string of secondary explosions that lifted the whole hillside up in a crackle-finished dome of smoke.
The image jiggled. An operator spoke:
“Acquisition on the drone. Tracking. Evasive action.” The surface rushed up and the viewpoint was jinking down a valley. Suddenly camouflage nets showed between the trees, IR-sensor enhancement. Owensford leaned forward in sharp curiosity, and then the screen went to pearly-gray blankness.
“Battery, fire mission,” Sastri said thoughtfully. “Three rounds. Penetrator and impact-fuse, mark.” His fingers touched a portable keyboard. “Whatever was under that net is deserving a tickle.”
He looked up and saluted. “With you in a moment, sir. Captain Liu, take over. This way.”
They walked downslope and south, speaking quietly; the helmet earphones filtered the huge thudding noise of the guns.
“Not having much trouble?” Owensford said.
“No indeed, sir. The preliminary artillery duel went as expected, and now they have nothing with the range to reach us, while we can hit them as we please. The drones provide good observation, and the Spartan scouts are proving very effective as well. This is a very one-sided battle, and so long as we have ammunition it will continue to be.”
“Just the kind I like,” Owensford said. “Well done.”
“Thank you, sir. Ah, here we are.” The secondary laager was a little apart from the regimental artillery battery; one vehicle was a trailer, from which a tent had been unfolded.
They ducked inside the tent, flipping up the visors of their helmets. There were four men inside; George Slater, commander of 1st Brigade, the spearpoint force of the Royal Army columns heading north into the Dales. The Royal Army colonel commanding the 2nd Mechanized Regiment . . . Morrentes, Owensford remembered, he’d been a Brotherhood militia officer last year, transferred to the Field Force shortly after the first Dales campaign. A Royal Army interrogator, a sergeant; tall, wiry-slender, beak-nosed and thin-faced, with steady dark eyes. And a Helot, in the dentist-style chair, his head and limbs immobilized by clamps; his face had the glazed, wandering look of someone under questioning drugs.
Not really truth drugs, the mercenary reminded himself. All they really did was make you not give a damn, and feel very, very chatty. Individual reactions varied widely, as well, unless you had time and facilities to do up a batch adjusted to the subject’s personal biochemistry. Spartan biochemists had the knowledge to do that, but the proper equipment was rare outside the University.
“Carry on,” Owensford said. He caught the sergeant’s eye. “Important prisoner?”
“Equivalent of colonel, sir,” the interrogator said. “I’ve got a transcript . . .” He bent to the captive’s ear. “Is it your fault, Perrez?”
“No,” the man muttered, his eyes roving the room without seeing the faces around them.
For a moment he tailed off in a mutter of Spanish. Spanglish, actually; Owensford recognized the dialect, common in the tier of states south of the Rio Grande which had once been part of Mexico. The sergeant’s gentle urging brought him back to something more generally comprehensible.
“That maricon kraut von Reuter, he no pull back fast enough. If Skilly were here, no esta problema, the Cits wouldn’t comprende where we were. Little shits, sneaking through the trees and spying, Skilly would get them. Two-knife would. Reuter doesn’t have half the cojones Skilly does.” He giggled, speculating obscenely on where she kept them.
“So where is Skilly?”
“She run off, she and Two-knife both. Gone. Bug out, baby.”
“Leaving you behind with von Reuter.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“She got a plan, that one.”
“She didn’t tell you the plan, did she? Ran off, leaving you behind. How do you know there was a plan, that she wasn’t just saving her own skin?”
“Naw, she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t!”
“What do your troops think about the plan?”
“They don’t believe no plan. They think what you say, she run off, save hide. Hey man, you got any agua?”
“Sure. Here you go. Where did you say Skilly went?”
“Didn’t say. You trying to fool me! But I didn’t say because I don’ know where she went. Bugged out, that one, say she got a plan, and off she goes. With that Jap.”
“What Jap?”
“Crazy one. Murasaki-san. Nothing working the way he expect, not any more. He go off mad, that one.” The prisoner began to sing obscenely.
The sergeant got up and came over to them. “Probably not a lot more today,” he said. “That stuff tires them out fast.”
“Is this one guilty of atrocities?” Owensford asked.
“Not that I know of,” the sergeant said. “He wasn’t at Stora at all. Want me to work on atrocity stories?”
“Actually, no,” Owensford said. “If he’s not obviously guilty of a hanging offense I’d as soon keep it that way. Tell you what, Sergeant, you see what else you can get, then wrap him up good and turn him over to my headquarters people. I’ll take him back to Sparta City. Sort of a present for His Majesty.”
“Yes, sir.”
Owensford led the way out of the tent. Outside he turned to Morrentes. “So we’re not going to catch their leaders.”
Morrentes shook his head. “This is independent corroboration,” he said. “Most of the Helot high command just aren’t here. Nobody’s seen them in days.”
“That must upset the hell out of their troops,” Owensford said.
“Well, yes, sir, I’d say so, because when we advance we find abandoned equipment, weapons even, and whole platoons ready to surrender.”
“Good. Keep pushing,” Owensford said. “And we may even have a surprise for you. A pleasant one.”
“Sir?”
“It looks like Prince Lysander has talked the CD into making sure our next satellite stays intact.”
“Now that’s good news.”
Owensford stood for a time listening to the artillery bombardment. What the hell plan has Skilly got this time? Whatever it is, we can see she pays like hell for it. “Good work, Morrentes. Very good work indeed. Carry on, and Godspeed.”