"Hey?"said Cooter. He lifted his commo helmet slightly with one hand so that he could knuckle the line of his sweat-darkened auburn hair."Major? What the hell's happening, anyway? Is this all over?"
Danny Pritchard smiled a great deal; usually it was a pleasant expression.
Not this smile.
"They hit the three firebases and all but one of the line companies," the major said."We told everybody hold what they got; and then the hogs—"Pritchard nodded;a howitzer slashed the sky again from beyond the field of view"—scratched everybody's back with firecracker rounds. Each unit swept its circuit before the dust settled from the shellbursts."
The smile hardened still further."Kinda nice of them to concentrate that way for us."
Ranson nodded, visualizing the white flare of precisely directed cluster bomb-lets going off. The interlocking fields of fire from Firebases Red, Blue, and Purple covered the entire Strip. Guerrillas rising in panic, to be hosed down by the tribarrels in the armored vehicles . . . .
"Yeah,"said Sergeant Wylde in a husky whisper. The wounded man's face didn't move and his eyes weren't focused on the hologram. "But how about the Yokels? Or is this a private fight fer us 'n the Consies?"
"Right," said Pritchard with something more than agreement in his tone of voice. "Hold one, Junebug."
The sound cut off abruptly as somebody hit the muting switch of the console at HQ. Major Pritchard turned his head. Ranson could see Pritchard's lips moving in profile as he talked to someone out of the projection field. She was in a dream, watching the bust of a man who spoke silently . . . .
What's your present strength in vehicles and trained crews?
Junebug?
Captain Ranson?
Ranson snapped alert. Cooter had put his big arm around her shoulders to give her a shake.
"Right," she said, feeling the red prickly flush cover her, as though she'd just fainted and come around. She couldn't remember where she was, but in her dream somebody had been asking—
"We've got—" Cooter said.
"We're down a blower," Ranson said, facing Pritchard's worried expression calmly. "A combat car."
"Mine,"said Wylde to his bandaged hands. Ranson wasn't sure whether or not the sergeant was within the hologram pickup.
"My crews,two dead,"Ranson continued. "Three out for seven days or more. Sergeant Wylde, my section leader, he's out."
"Oh-yew-tee," Wylde muttered. "Out."
"Can you pick anybody up from the Blue side?" Pritchard asked.
"There's the three panzers," Ranson said. "Only one's got a trained crew, but they came through like gangbusters last night."
She frowned, trying to concentrate. "Personnel, though . . . Look, you know, we're talking newbies and people who're rear echelon for a reason."
People even farther out of it than Captain June Ranson, who nodded off while debriefing to Central . . . .
"Look, sir," Cooter interjected."We shot the cop outa the Consies. I don't know about no' five thousand dead' cop, But if they'd had more available, they'da used it last night. They bloody sure don't have enough left to try anytime soon."
"I believe you, Lieutenant," Pritchard said wearily. "But that's not the only problem." He rubbed the palms of his hands together firmly. "Hold one," he repeated as he got up from the console.
Colonel Alois Hammer sat down in Pritchard's place.
The hologram was as clear as if Hammer were in the TOC with Ranson. The colonel was madder than hell; so mad that his hand kept stabbing upward to brush away the tic at the corner of his left eye.
"Captain . . ."Hammer said.He fumbled with the latches of his clams hell armor to give himself time to form words—or at least to delay the point at which he had to speak them.
He glared at June Ranson. "We kicked the Consies up one side and down the other. The National Army had problems."
"That's why they hired us, sir,"Ranson said. She was very calm. Thick glass was beginning to form between her and the image of the regimental commander.
"Yeah, that's why they did, all right," Hammer said. He ground at his left eye.
He lowered his hand. "Captain, you saw what happened to the structure of Camp Progress during the attack?"
"What structure?" Cooter muttered bitterly.
Ranson shivered. The glass wall shivered also, falling away as shards of color that coalesced into Hammer's face.
"Sir, the Consies were only a battalion,"Ranson said."They could've done a lot of damage—they did. But it was just a spoiling attack, they couldn't 've captured the base in the strength they were."
"They can capture Kohang, Captain," Hammer said. "And if they capture a district capital, the National Government is gone. The people who pay us."
Ranson blinked, trying to assimilate the information.
It didn't make any sense. The Consies were beat—beaten good. Multiply what her teams had done at Camp Progress by the full weight of the Regiment—with artillery and perfect artillery targets for a change—and the Conservative Action Movement on Prosperity didn't have enough living members to bury its dead . . . .
"Nobody was expecting it, Captain Ranson," Hammer said. The whiskers on his chin and jowls were white, though the close-cropped hair on the colonel's head was still a sandy brown. "The National Government wasn't, we weren't. It'd been so quiet the past three months that we—"
His eye twitched. "Via!" he cursed. "I thought, and if anybody'd told me different I'd 've laughed at them. I thought the Consies were about to pack it in. And instead they were getting ready for the biggest attack of the war."
"But Colonel,"Cooter said.His voice sounded desperate."They lost. They got their butts kicked."
"Tell that to a bunch of civilians," Hammer said bitterly. "Tell that to your Colonel Banyussuf—the bloody fool!"
Somebody at Central must have spoken to Hammer from out of pickup range, because the colonel half-turned and snarled, "Then deal with it! Shoot 'em all in the neck if you want!"
He faced around again. For an instant, Ranson stared into eyes as bleak and merciless as the scarp of a glacier. Then Hammer blinked, and the expression was gone; replaced with one of anger and concern. Human emotions, not forces of nature.
"Captain Ranson," he resumed with a formality that would have been frightening to the junior officer were she not drifting again into glassy isolation. "In a week, it'll all be over for the Consies. They'll have to make their peace on any terms they can get—even if that means surrendering for internment by the National Government. But if a district capital falls, there won't be a National Government in a week. All they see—"