“Good. Okay, now make a wider sweep. I don’t want to find out there’s an artillery battery registered on our landing area.”
“Sir.”
“Sergeant Major,” I said.
“Sir.”
“You can take the hovercraft in to occupy the landing area. Treat the welcoming committee politely, but keep an eye on them. When the area’s secure, we’ll all go ashore.”
“Sir.”
I looked up at the stars. There was no moon. About five hours to dawn. With any luck we’d be deployed and ready for combat by first light. “Okay, Deane, you’re in charge,” I said. “Hartz, you stay with him.”
“If the lieutenant orders it.”
“Damn it, I did order it. Belay that. All right, come with me.”
We went to the deck level. The river was less than a meter below us. It wasn’t a river to swim in; there are aquatic snakes on Arrarat, and their poison will finish off anything that has protein in it. It acts as a catalyst to coagulate cell bodies. I had no real desire to be a hard rubber lump.
We had one canoe on board. I’d already found troopers who knew something about handling them. We had a dozen men familiar with the screwy watercraft, which didn’t surprise me. The story is that you can find any skill in a Line Marine regiment, and it seems to be true. In my own company I had two master masons, an artist, a couple of electronic techs (possibly engineers, but they weren’t saying), at least one disbarred lawyer, a drunken psychiatrist, and a chap the men claimed was a defrocked preacher.
Corporal Anuraro showed me how to get into the canoe without swamping it. We don’t have those things in Arizona. As they paddled me ashore, I thought about how silly the situation was. I was being paddled in a canoe, a device invented at least ten thousand years ago. I was carrying a pair of light-amplifying field glasses based on a principle not discovered until after I was born. Behind me was a steamboat that might have been moving up the Missouri River at the time of Custer’s last stand, and I got to this planet in a starship.
The current was swift, and I was glad to have experienced men at the paddles. The water flowed smoothly alongside. Sometimes an unseen creature made riffles in it. Over on the shore the hovercraft had already landed, and someone was signaling us with a light. When we got to the bank I was glad to be on dry land.
“Where are our visitors, Roszak?” I asked.
“Over here, sir.”
Two men, both ranchers or farmers. One was Oriental. They looked to be about fifty years old. As agreed, they weren’t armed.
“I’m Lieutenant Slater,” I said.
The Oriental answered. “I am Wan Loo. This is Harry Seeton.”
“I’ve heard of you. Kathryn says you helped her, once.”
“Yes. To escape from a cage,” Wan Loo said.
“You’re supposed to prove something,” I said.
Wan Loo smiled softly. “You have a scar on your left arm. It is shaped like a scimitar. When you were a boy you had a favorite horse named Candybar.”
“You’ve seen Kathryn,” I said. “Where is she?”
“South of Allansport. She is trying to raise a force of ranchers to reinforce Captain Falkenberg. We were sent here to assist you.”
“We’ve done pretty well,” Harry Seeton added. “A lot of ranchers will fight if you can furnish weapons. But there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“Please do not think we are not grateful,” Wan Loo said. “But you must understand. We have fought for years, and we cannot fight any longer. We have an uneasy peace in this valley. It is the peace of submission, and we do not care for it, but we will not throw it away simply to help you. If you have not come to stay, please take your soldiers, rescue your Governor, and go away without involving us.”
“That’s blunt enough,” I said.
“We have to be blunt,” Harry Seeton said. “Wan Loo isn’t talking for us. We’re outlaws, anyway. We’re with you no matter what happens. But we can’t go ask our friends to join if you people don’t mean it when you say you’ll stay and protect them.”
“It is an old story,” Wan Loo said. “You cannot blame the farmers. They would rather have you than the Association, but if you are here only for a little while, and the Association is here forever, what can they do? My ancestors were faced with the same problem on Earth. They chose to support the West, and when the Americans, who had little stake in the war, withdrew their forces, my great-grandfather gave up land his family had held for a thousand years to go with them. He had no choice. Do you think he would have chosen the American side if he had known that would happen?”
“The CoDominium has extended protection to this valley,” I said.
“Governments have no honor,” Wan Loo said. “Many people have none, either, but at least it is possible for a man to have honor. It is not possible for a government. Do you pledge that you will not abandon our friends if we arouse them for you?”
“Yes.”
“Then we have your word. Kathryn says you are an honorable man. If you will help us with transportation and radio, by noon tomorrow I believe we will have five hundred people to assist you.”
“And God help ’em if we lose,” Seeton said. “God help ’em.”
“We won’t lose,” I said.
“A battle is not a war,” Wan Loo said. “And wars are not won by weapons, but by the will to win them. We will go now.”
XV
It is a basic military maxim that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy, but by noon it looked as if this operation would be an exception. Falkenberg’s combat team—two platoons of B Company, brought down by Skyhook after we were aboard our barges—struck at the passes just before dawn and in three hours of sharp fighting had taken them over. He brought up two companies of militia to dig in and hold them.
Meanwhile, the ranchers in the south were armed and turned out on command to block any southward retreat. I had only scattered reports from that sector, but all seemed under control. Kathryn had raised a force of nearly five hundred, which ought to be enough to hold the southern defensive line.
Then it was my turn. Two hours after dawn I had a skirmish line stretching eight kilometers into the valley. My left flank was anchored on the river. There’d be no problem there. The right flank was a different story.
“It bothers me,” I told Falkenberg when I reported by radio. “My right flank is hanging in thin air. The only thing protecting us is Wan Loo’s ranchers, and there’s no more than three hundred of them—if that many.” Wan Loo hadn’t been as successful as Kathryn had been. Of course, he’d had a lot less time.
“And just what do you expect to hit you in the flank?” Falkenberg asked.
“I don’t know. I just don’t like it when we have to depend on other people—and on the enemy doing what we want them to do.”
“Neither do I, but do you have an alternative to suggest?”
“No, sir.”
“Then carry out your orders, Mr. Slater. Advance on Allansport.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
* * *
It wasn’t an easy battle line to control. I had units strung all across the valley, with the major strength on the left wing that advanced along the river. The terrain was open, gently rolling hills with lines of hedges and eucalyptus trees planted as windbreaks. The fields were recently harvested, and swine had been turned loose in the wheat stubble. The fields were muddy, but spread as we were, we didn’t churn them up much.
The farmhouses were scattered at wide intervals. These had been huge farm holdings. The smallest were over a kilometer square, and some were much larger. A lot of the land was unworked. The houses were stone and earth, partly underground, built like miniature fortresses. Some had sections of wall blown out by explosives.
Harry Seeton was with me in my ground-effects caravan. When we came to a farmhouse, he’d try to persuade the owner and his children and relatives to join us. If they agreed, he’d send them off to join the growing number on our right wing.
“Something bothers me,” I told Seeton. “Sure, you have big families and everybody works, but how did you cultivate all this land? That last place was at least five hundred hectares.”
“Rainfall here’s tricky,” Seeton said. “Half the time we’ve got swamp, and the other half we have drought. The only fertilizer is manure. We’ve got to leave a lot of the land fallow, or planted in legumes to be plowed under.”
“It still seems like a lot of work for just one family.”