It was easier when everybody around you was an enemy. Then it was just a matter of who was quicker on the trigger. Des Grieux never minded playing that game.
"Alpha One-six to Oyster Two commander," said a cold, bored voice in Des Grieux's helmet."Dismount and report to the CP as soon as you're through the minefields. Over."
"Oyster Two to One-six,"Des Grieux replied. Alpha One-six was the call sign of Major Joachim Steuben, Colonel Hammer's bodyguard. Steuben had no business being here, "Roger, as soon as we've parked the tank. Over."
"Alpha One-six to Oyster Two commander," the cold voice said. "I'll provide your driver with ground guides for parking, Sergeant. I suggest that this time, you obey orders. One-six out."
Des Grieux swallowed. He wasn't afraid of Steuben, exactly; any more than he was afraid of a spider. But he didn't like spiders either.
"Driver," he said aloud. "Pull up when you get through the minefield. Somebody'll tell you where they want Warrior parked."
"You bet," said Kuykendall in a distant voice.
Federal troops drew back at the tank's approach. They'd been examining what remained of the perimeter defenses, and dragging bodies cautiously from the wire. There were thousands of unexploded mines scattered across the slope.
Nobody wanted to be the last casualty of a successful battle.
Successful because of what Des Grieux had done. Something about the Feds seemed odd.After a moment, Des Grieux realized that it was their uniforms. The fabric was green—not clean, exactly, but not completely stained by the sandy red soil of Hill 541 North either. These were troops from the relieving force.
A few men of the original garrison watched from the bunker line. It was funny to see that many troops in the open sunlight; not scuttling, not cowering from snipers and shellfire.
The bunkers were ruins. Sappers had grenaded them during the assault.When the Federals counterattacked, Reps sheltered in the captured positions until tribarrels and point-blank shellfire blew them out. The roofs had collapsed. Wisps of smoke still curled from among the ruptured sandbags.
A Slammers' combat car—unnamed, with fender number 116—squatted in an overwatch position on the bunker line. The three tribarrels were manned, covering the troops in the wire. Bullet scars dented the side of the fighting compartment. A bright swatch of Spray Seal covered the left wing gunner's shoulder.
A figure was painted on the car's bow slope, just in front of the driver's hatch: a realistically drawn white mouse with pink eyes, nose, and tail.
The White Mice—the troops of Alpha Company, Hammer's Regiment—weren't ordinary line soldiers.
Nobody ever said they couldn't fight but they, under their CO, Major Steuben, acted as Hammer's field police and in other internal security operations.
A dozen anti-personnel mines went off under Warrior's skirts as the tank slid through the perimeter defenses. Kuykendall tried to follow a track Rep sappers blew the night before, but Warrior overhung the cleared area on both sides.
The surface-scattered mines were harmless, except to a man who stepped on one. Even so, after the third bang! one of the Feds watching from the bunker line put his hands over his face and began to cry uncontrollably.
Three troopers wearing Slammers khaki and commo helmets waited at the defensive perimeter. One of them was a woman. They carried submachine-guns in patrol slings that kept the muzzles forward and the grips close to their gunhands.
They'd been sitting on the hillside when Des Grieux first noticed them. They stood as Warrior approached.
"Driver," Des Grieux said, "you can pull up here."
"I figured to,"Kuykendall replied without emotion. Dust puffed forward, then drifted downhill as she shifted nacelles to brake Warrior's slow pace.
Des Grieux climbed from the turret and poised for a moment on the back deck. The artillery shell that bounced from Warrior on Hill 661 had dished in a patch of plating a meter wide. Number seven intake grating ought to be replaced as well . . . .
Des Grieux hopped to the ground. One of the White Mice sat on Warrior's bow slope and gestured directions to the driver. The tank accelerated toward the encampment.
"Come on, Sunshine,"said the female trooper. Her features were blank behind her reflective visor. "The Man wants to see you."
She jerked her thumb uphill.
Des Grieux fell in between the White Mice. His legs were unsteady. He hadn't wanted to eat anything with his throat feeling as though it had been reamed with a steel-bore brush.
"Am I under arrest?" he demanded.
"Major Steuben didn't say anything about that," the male escort replied. He chuckled.
"Naw,"added the woman."Hejust saidthat if you give us any crap,we should shoot you. And save him the trouble."
"Then we all know where we stand," said Des Grieux. Soreness and aches dissolved in his body's resumed production of adrenaline.
The encampment on Hill 541 North had always been a wasteland, so Des Grieux didn't expect to notice a change now.
He was wrong. It was much worse, and the forty-odd bodies laid in rows in their zipped-up sleeping bags were only part of it.
The smell overlaid the scene. Explosives had peculiar odors. They blended uneasily with ozone and high-temperature fusion products formed when bolts from the powerguns hit.
The main component of the stench was death. Bunkers had been blown closed, but the rubble of timber and sandbags didn't form a tight seal over the shredded flesh within. The morning sun was already hot. In a week or two, a lot of wives and parents were going to receive a coffin sealed over seventy kilos of sand.
That wasn't Des Grieux's problem,though; and without him, there would have been plenty more corpses swelling in Federal uniforms.
General Wycherly's command post had taken a direct hit from a heavy shell.A high-sided truck with multiple antennas parked beside the smoldering wreckage. Federal troops in clean uniforms stepped briskly in and out of the vehicle.
The real authorities on 541N wore Slammers khaki. Major Joachim Steuben was short, slim, and so fine-featured that he looked like a girl in a perfectly-tailored uniform among Sergeant Broglie and several Alpha Company officers. They looked up as Des Grieux approached.
Steuben's command group stood under a tarpaulin slung between a combat car and Lieutenant Lindgren's tank. The roof of Lindgren's bunker was broken-backed from the fighting, but his tank looked all right at first glance.
At a second look—
"Via!" Des Grieux said. "What happened to Queen City?"
There were telltale soot stains all around the tank's deck, and the turret rested slightly askew on its ring. Queen City was a corpse, as sure as any of the staringeyed Reps out there in the wire.