* * *
The next day they gave Peter Owensford 107 new men fresh from Earth. A week later Peter found Ace Barton at his favorite table in the bistro.
Barton poured a glass of wine as Peter sat down. “You look like you need a drink. I thought you were ordered to stay on nights to train the troops.”
Peter drank. “Same story, Ace. Speeches. More speeches. I walked out. It was obvious I wasn’t going to have anything to do.”
“Risky,” Barton said. They sat in silence as Barton looked thoughtful. Finally he spoke. “Ever think you’re not needed, Pete?”
“They act that way, but I’m still the only man in the company with any military training.”
“So what? The Republic doesn’t need your troops. Not the way you think. The main purpose of the volunteers is to see the right party stays in control.”
Peter sat stiffly silent. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t react quickly to anything Barton said. “I can’t believe that,” he said finally. “The volunteers come from everywhere. They’re not fighting to help any political party, they’re here to set people free.”
Barton said nothing. A red toothpick danced across his face, and a sly grin broke across his square features.
“See, you don’t even believe it yourself,” Peter said.
“Could be. Pete, you ever think how much money they raise back in the States? Money from people who feel guilty about not volunteerin’?”
“No. There’s no money here. You’ve seen that.”
“There’s money, but it goes to the techs,” Barton said. “That at least makes sense. Xanadu isn’t sending their sharp boys for nothing, and without them, what’s the use of mudcrawlers like us?”
Peter leaned back. “Then we’ve got pretty good technical support. . . .”
“About as good as the Dons have. Which means neither side has a goddamn thing. Either group gets a real edge that way, the war’s over, right? But nobody’s going to get past the CD quarantine, so all the Dons and the Republicans can do is kill each other with rifles and knives and grenades. Not very damn many grenades, either.”
“We don’t even have rifles.”
“You’ll get them. Meantime, relax. You’ve told Brigade your men aren’t ready to fight. You’ve asked for weapons and more Nemourlon. You’ve complained about Stromand. You’ve done it all. Now shut up before they shoot you for a defeatist. That’s an order, Pete.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
The trucks came back to Tarazona a week later. They carried coffin-shaped boxes full of rifles and bayonets from New Aberdeen, Thurstone’s largest city. The rifles were covered with grease, and there wasn’t any solvent to clean them with. Most were copies of Remington 2045 model automatics, but there were some Krupps and Skodas. Most of the men didn’t know which ammunition fit their rifles.
“Not bad gear.” Barton turned one of the rifles over in his hands. “We’ve had worse.”
“But I don’t have much training in rifle tactics,” Peter said.
Barton shrugged. “No power supplies, no maintenance ships. Damn few mortars and rockets. No fancy munitions. There’s no base to support anything more complicated than chemical slug-throwers, Peter. Forget the rest of the crap you learned and remember that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Whistles blew, and someone shouted from the trucks. “Get your gear and get aboard!”
“What?” Owensford turned to Barton. “Get aboard for where?”
Barton shrugged. “I’d better get back to my area. Maybe they’re moving the whole battalion up while we’ve got the trucks.”
They were. Men who had armor put it on, and everyone dressed in combat synthileather. Most had helmets, ugly hemispheric models with a stiff spine over the most vulnerable areas. A few men had lost theirs, and they boarded the trucks without them.
The convoy rolled across the plains and into a greener farm area. After dark the air chilled fast under clear, cloudless sides. The drivers pushed on, driving too fast without lights. Peter sat in the back of the lead truck, his knees clamped tightly together, his teeth unconsciously beating out a rhythm he’d learned years before. No one talked.
At dawn they unloaded in another valley. Trampled crops lay all around them.
“Good land,” Private Lunster said. He lifted a clod and crumbled it between his fingers. “Very good land.”
Somehow that made Peter feel better. He formed the men into ranks and made sure each knew how to load his weapon. Then he had each of them fire at a crumbling adobe wall. He chose a large target that they couldn’t miss. More trucks pulled in and unloaded heavy generators and antitank lasers. When Owensford’s men tried to get close to the heavy weapons the gunners shouted them away. The gunners seemed familiar with their equipment, and that was encouraging.
Everyone spoke softly, and when anyone raised his voice it was like a shout. Stromand tried to get the men to sing, but they wouldn’t.
“Not long now, eh?” Sergeant Roach said.
“I expect not,” Peter told him, but he didn’t know, and went off to find the commissary truck. He wanted to be sure the men got a good meal that evening.
Orders to move up came during the night. A guide whispered to Peter to follow him, and they moved out across the unfamiliar land. Somewhere out there were the Dons with their army of peasant conscripts and mercenaries and family retainers. Peter and his company hadn’t gone fifty meters before they passed an old tree and someone whispered to them.
“Everything will be fine,” Stromand’s voice said from the shadows. “All of the enemy are politically immature. Their vaqueros will run away and their peasant conscripts will throw away their weapons. They have no reason to be loyal.”
“Why the hell has the war gone on three years?” someone whispered behind Peter.
He waited until they were long past the tree. “Roach, that wasn’t smart. Stromand will have you shot for defeatism.”
“He’ll play hell doing it, lieutenant. You, man, pick up your feet. Want to fall down that gully?”
“Quiet,” the guide whispered urgently. They went on through the dark night, down a slope, then up another, past men dug into the hillside. No one spoke.
Peter found himself walking along the remains of a railroad. Most of the ties were gone, and the rails had been taken away. Eventually his guide halted. “Dig in here,” he whispered. “Long live freedom.”
“No pasaran!” Stromand answered.
“Please be quiet,” the guide urged. “We are within earshot of the enemy.”
“Ah,” Stromand answered. The guide turned away and the political officer began to follow him.
“Where are you going?” Corporal Grant asked in a loud whisper.
“To report to Major Harris,” Stromand answered. “The battalion commander ought to know where we are.”
“So should we,” a voice said.
“Who was that?” Stromand demanded. The only answer was a juicy raspberry.
“That bastard’s got no right,” a voice said close to Peter.
“Who’s there?”
“Rotwasser, sir.” Rotwasser was the company runner. The job gave him the nominal rank of monitor but he had no maniple to command. Instead he carried complaints from the men to Owensford.
“I can spare the P.O. better than anyone else,” Peter whispered. “I’ll need you here, not back at battalion. Now start digging us in.”
It was cold on the hillside, but digging kept the men warm. Dawn came slowly and brought no warmth. Peter took out his light-amplifying binoculars and cautiously looked out ahead. The binoculars had been a present from his mother, and were the only good optical equipment in the company.
The countryside was cut into small, steep-sided ridges and valleys. Allan Roach lay beside Owensford and whistled softly. “We take that ridge in front of us, there’s another just like it after that. And another. Nobody’s goin’ to win this war that way. . . .”
Owensford nodded silently. There were trees in the valley below, oranges and dates imported from Earth mixed in with native fruit trees as if a giant had spilled seeds across the ground. The fire-gutted remains of a whitewashed adobe peasant house stood among the trees.
Zing! Something that might have been a hornet but wasn’t buzzed angrily over Peter’s head. There was a flat crack from across the valley, then more angry buzzes. Dust puffs sprouted from the earthworks.
“Down!” Peter ordered.
“What are they trying to do, kill us?” Allan Roach shouted. There was a chorus of laughs. “Sir, why didn’t they use IR on us in the dark? We should have stood out in this cold—”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe they don’t have any. We don’t.”
The men who’d skimped on their holes dug in deeper, throwing the dirt out onto the ramparts in front of them. They laughed as they worked. It was very poor technique, and Peter worried about artillery, but nothing happened. The enemy was about four hundred meters away, across the valley, stretched out along a ridge identical to the one Peter held. No infantry that ever lived could have taken either ridge by charging across the valley. Both sides were safe until something heavier was brought up.