Just now the road ahead was clear. He stopped in a riverine woods, to let his men get out of their armored boxes, move around a bit, and relieve themselves. It was undesirable to enter action with a full bladder or colon.
According to his HUD he had just 1800 yards to go. Quietly he radioed orders. The column slowed, then deployed just behind the brow of a low rise, and a new HUD replaced the others all along the line. Just across the brow the ground dipped mildly, then rose again, becoming a steep ridge 1200 yards ahead. Less than 300 yards from where the tanks sat, forest began.
His tankers knew what to do. "On my count," the major said, then paused. "Ten, nine, eight…"
At zero the night flared. Penetration pulses slammed deeply into rock, and for the first few salvos it felt really good. Then the rug was pulled from beneath the major's feet. Prior to the arrival of the Liberation Corps, the Wyzhnyny had cut gun emplacements into the bluff. And after a very brief delay-the crews had been sleeping-they'd returned fire. Lots of heavy fire. He lost thirteen of his forty-one tanks and four of his flakwagons before he reached the riverine woods again. In their cover he stopped, to throw off the enemy gunners' timing, and reorganize. And open his turret hatch again. His HUDs suggested it was safe for the moment, and he didn't like the stink of sweaty fear.
Pat, he told himself, you really kicked the hornets' nest that time. Still, his heavy trashers had sent tons of rock crashing down on the road-and presumably onto the entry to the Wyzhnyny cavern complex. Pak, from surveillance information, had concluded it was the Wyzhnyny headquarters base. Actually it wasn't. It was an important Wyzhnyny supply base.
From the riverine woods, Major Phayakapong traveled mostly westward, targeted from time to time by Wyzhnyny attack floaters, but unmolested by ground forces. The floater attacks were hit and run, directed mainly at his flakwagons, which gave as good as they got. And vice versa. He lost another tank, had two more with problems, and was down to two flakwagons. Then a flight of good guys arrived, and chased the bogies off. Shortly afterward his battered battalion reached the Mickle's, and turning north, crossed on the first bridge they came to. They continued mainly west then, jogging north from time to time at crossroads.
Shortly before dawn they reached the relative safety of the forest, well away from any Wyzhnyny. There the tankers paused to heat and eat field rations. Then they lay down on their fart sacks and slept in the open air. They could hear distant fighting, back in the forest, but it didn't keep them awake.
The woods were thick with the devil's music: the rapid popping of blasters and slammers, the crackling of pulses creating miniature vacuums through the air, the hard sound of pulses striking trees.
Ensign Rrokic spotted a source-humans behind a breastwork of logs. "Up there!" he shouted, then sheltered as well as he could behind a thick trunk. He hated to gesture; it attracted enemy fire. "Don't just lie there!" he snapped into his helmet mike. "Shoot, damn it! And don't bunch up!"
Ensign Rrokic was a nanny-as large as some warriors, almost as strong-and protective. Genetically, protection meant care and guarding of the young, but the master and warrior genders massaged the nanny protective instinct and extended it to cover defense of the species. The purpose being to turn nannies into surrogate warriors when necessary. In fact, the nanny gender provided many reserve unit noncoms.
Gender manipulation and noncom training worked about as well with Rrokic as it did with any nanny. He yelled well, and could manhandle his troops when necessary. But the hard authority of the warrior gender was never really duplicated.
What was compelling was his rank, and the sense his orders made. His platoon took cover as best it could, behind tree trunks, or in the visual cover provided by the tops of trees the humans had felled. From there they fought back.
All day they'd been moving slowly through the damnedest mess Rrokic had ever seen. The humans had felled thousands on thousands of trees, in unpatterned bands through the forest. Usually with the upper parts in your face. The barriers weren't everywhere; that wouldn't have been practical. They'd been located to extend or connect natural terrain features, crowding the advancing Wyzhnyny into whatever situations the humans wanted them. Or simply pinched the advance off, so they had to turn back to find a way around. Typically the barriers led into cleared fields of fire, and there was little anyone could do about it. Little by little we advance, Rrokic told himself, yet it seems we're always on the defensive.
Now as before, when his platoon had taken what cover they could, the fight turned into a grenade exchange, delivered mostly by launchers. And his people were more exposed.
So he called for a flamethrower again.
Near one flank of C Company's position, Captain Freddie Bibesco Singh crouched in his command post, scanning with his small camouflaged periscope. His blastermen, slammermen and grenadiers were reaping well. As before, the Wyzhnyny had moved into the visual cover of the abatis. Now they'd no doubt call in a flamethrower. Meanwhile, the Wyzhnyny grenadiers and mortarmen were using timed fuses to produce airbursts, exploding above his troopers' improvised shelters.
It was time to deliver his new surprise. Setting his mike, he voiced the ignition command. Barely hidden by old leaves, ground vegetation, and the outermost foliage of the abatis, explosions erupted like a string of giant ladyfingers, as camouflaged shot-mines blew along a line of detcord. Debris rose, and cries of pain. Meanwhile, his people kept firing.
From where he crouched, he couldn't see the Wyzhnyny flamethrower being brought up, but from treetops a little distance off, his camouflaged snipers could. They'd already been making things hot for Wyzhnyny mortar crews. Though they paid; the Wyzhnyny had learned that this enemy climbed.
A sniper spotted the flamethrower and felled the Wyzhnyny carrying it, but another picked it up. Then some Wyzhnyny threw smoke grenades, concealing both flamethrower and mortars. "B Company pull out!" Bibesco ordered. His own smoke bombs popped and billowed, his blastermen and grenadiers got to their feet, his snipers lowered themselves on ropes, and they all pulled back. Concealed a short distance to the rear, out of sight of the Wyzhnyny, were their squad-size APCs. These would take them to their next ambush position much more quickly than they could manage on foot, and they needed to set up before the Wyzhnyny arrived.
Not all of C Company would ride with their squad. The medics loaded some of them out to the hospital, or to the "bot shop," or simply to Graves Registration.
It was noon before Major Phayakapong ordered his crews back into their tanks. General Pak had given him his next assignment. Three battalions of Wyzhnyny armored howitzers were on the move, four batteries in each. With tank escorts. It looked as if they planned to establish fire bases-probably three of them. It was unlikely they knew about Lonesome Moses, and Pak didn't want them to, so he hadn't started molesting them yet. Phayakapong was to continue westward, and be ready to hit them after nightfall.
The major decided to pick his way through the forest for a while. It would keep him out of sight. He hadn't mentioned that he now had only twenty-five battle-worthy tanks and two flakwagons. The general would already know that, or close enough, from Lonesome Moses, and anyway there was nothing to be done about it.
Normally, in the evening, Esau heard all the sounds of the forest. Fell asleep listening to the chirping of crickets, the peeping of tree lizards, the occasional grunting basso of a bull owl, or the warbling alto of a mouse owl. Even, barely audible, woodborers chewing tunnels inside a nearby fallen tree. And best of all, from above the trees, the thin piercing whistle of night hawks catching insects.