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ahead of me, while the Seventh drops back and covers us both on the right."
"Appraisal of the enemy?"
"Too damned good for comfort; not up to Legion standards, but good. Their
equipment's about the same as the Royals, except their radar and radar
countermeasures, which are better, probably as good as ours.
Off-planet stuff. Chaff and jamming, so I'm returning the favor; they've got
more visual observation right now, I'm working on it."
A gatling six-barrel went off somewhere near to the mike, a savage
brrrrrrrt-brrrrrrt sound, a hail of bullets that would saw through trees.
"They know how to use their weapons, they've got discipline and good
small-unit tactics," Slater continued. A wounded man screamed, a high endless
sound suddenly cut off as if with a knife. "Not bothered by armor, either;
they've got plenty of light recoilless stuff and unguided antitank rockets,
and they're not afraid to get in close and try to use it. I've taken damned
few unwounded prisoners."
A pause. "The Brotherhood people don't seem to have taken any prisoners at
all, by the way."
Damn, damn, don't they understand it'll make the enemy fight harder? Owensford
thought. He would have to do something about that.
"And whoever's in charge knows his hand from a hacksaw too. I'd swear there's
a CoDominium
Academy mind behind that fire mission."
"How many of them?"
"Difficult to say; they keep shooting down my spyeye balloons as fast as I put
them up. At least a thousand, no more than two." Task Force Wingate would
outnumber them by at least fifteen hundred men, possibly by twice that.
"I could fight through what's facing me," Slater continued, echoing
Owensford's thoughts. "Why don't I
think this is a good idea?"
"It's what they want you to do, of course. Bugger that. We're better set for a
battle of attrition than they are. The one thing I haven't noticed in all this
is logistics troops. They may be able to make infantrymen out of those street
gangs, but they seem to be a bit short on supply clerks.
"Consolidate as soon as you've pulled the Forty-first out of its hole, and dig
in. The mission's changed, George. To hell with moving across ground. The
objective is to kill their cadres. Troops as good as those
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plentiful, not to terrorists, so dig in and break their teeth. Before we're
finished they'll have their battalion commanders out fighting like riflemen.
And make them use up their munitions. This has just become a logistics war."
"Suppose they won't come at us?"
"They will. 'Enemy advance, we retreat. Enemy halt, we harass.' They'll think
you're slowing down because you're beaten just like the Brotherhood troops,"
Peter said. "Let's encourage that thought.
They've got some kind of complicated battle plan, and just for the moment I'd
as soon they thought it was working. I particularly don't want them to think
that either you or the Brotherhoods can mount an attack. And they'll think
they have to attack before they run out of supplies. Or just to get ours."
"Gotcha."
"You're an anvil. Be a good one. When I've got recon I'll put some mobility
back in this battle. For now they expect you to advance, so digging in will be
a surprise. But be ready to advance again when I need you."
"Understood."
"Godspeed. Out."
* * *
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"There, Senior Group Leader," the platoon leader of the guerilla advance
element said, making a tiny hand motion through the improvised blind of thorny
brush. "The rest of them are a thousand meters back, digging in."
Niles slipped up his nightsight goggles and used the glasses instead, switched
to x10 magnification and light-enhancement. The hundred-meter gap between the
minefield and the steeper slope down to the valley was an expanse of snow
stippled with the dry yellow stalks of summer's grass. A few small trees were
scattered across it, and the odd bush. Nothing moved but the wind, scudding a
thin mist of ice crystals along the surface of the ground. Then a man rose to
one knee, motionless with a white-painted rifle across his chest. A full
minute's silence, then he made a hand signal; half a dozen others rose out of
concealment and moved forward twenty paces, sank to the earth again. Another
six rose from behind the lead element's position and passed through, went to
ground ten or twenty meters in advance.
Good fieldcraft, Niles thought. Aloud: "Open fire!"
Muzzle-flashes lit the night, twinkling like malignant orange fireflies. Men
flopped, screamed, were still;
a stitch of tracers curved out toward the Helot positions, and the Royalist
riflemen opened return fire as well. Bullets went by over Niles's head with an
ugly flat whack sound, and bark fell on his helmet and the backs of his
gloves. He raised his own rifle and settled the translucent pointer of the
optical sight on a suspicious gray rock that jutted up out of the snow.
A head and arms snaked around it, a long finned oval on the muzzle of the
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