Des Grieux chewed a ration bar in the cupola of his tank.The Sincanmos made their fire by soaking a bucket of sand in motor fuel and lighting it. The flames were low and red and quivered with frustrated anger, much like Des Grieux's thoughts. There was going to be a battle very soon. In days, maybe hours.
But not here. If Colonel Hammer had expected significant enemy forces to cross the Knifeblade Escarpment through the Notch, he wouldn't have sent Hotel Company's 3d Platoon with the blocking force. The platoon had been virtually reconstituted after a tough time on Mainstream during the previous contract. In a few years, some of these bloody newbies would be halfway decent soldiers. The ones who survived that long.
"Booster," Des Grieux muttered. "Ninety degree pan, half visor."
H271's artificial intelligence obediently threw a high-angle view of the terrain which Task Force Kuykendall guarded, onto the left side of Des Grieux's visor. The nameless sandstone butte behind the blocking force was useless as a defensive position in itself, because the only way for military equipment to get up or down its sheer faces was by crane. The mass of rock would confuse the enemy's passive sensors—at least the sensors of the Thunderbolt Division; Broglie's hardware certainly had the discrimination to pick out tanks, combat cars, and the Sincanmo 4x4s, even though the vehicles were defiladed and backed by a 500-meter curtain of stone.
The butte also provided a useful pole on which to hang the Slammers' remote sensors, transmitting their multispectral information down jam-free, undetectable fiber-optic cables. Des Grieux at ground level had as good a vantage point as that of the Hashemite outpost in the Notch; and because the image fed to the tanker's helmet was light enhanced and computer sharpened, Des Grieux saw infinitely more.
Not that there was any bloody thing to see. Gullies cut by the infrequent downpours meandered across the plain. They were shallow as well as direction-less, because the land didn't really drain. Rain sluiced from the buttes and the Escarpment flooded the whole landscaper—and evaporated.
Winds had scoured away the topsoils to redeposit them thousands of kilometers away as loess. The clay substrates which remained were virtually impervious to water.
Seen from Des Grieux's high angle, the gullies were dark smears of gray-green vegetation against the lighter yellow-gray soil. Low shrubs with hard, waxy leaves grew every few meters along the gully floors, where they were protected from wind and sustained by the memory of moisture. The plants were scarcely noticeable at ground level, but they were the plain's only feature.
The butte was a dark mass at Des Grieux's back. In front of him, two kilometers to the south, was the Knifeblade Escarpment: a sheer wall of sandstone for a hundred kays east and west, except for the Notch carved by meltwater from a retreating glacier thirty millions of years in the past. A one in five slope led from the Notch to the plain below. It was barely negotiable by vehicles; but it was negotiable.
South of the Escarpment, the Hashemites and their mercenaries faced the Sincanmo main force—and Hammer's Slammers. Task Force Kuykendall was emplaced to prevent the enemy from skirting the Knifeblade to the north and falling on the Slammers' flank and rear.
The Hashemites themselves would never think of that maneuver; the Thunderbolt Division could not possibly carry out such a plan in the time available. But Broglie was smart enough, and his troops were good enough . . . if he were willing to split his already outgunned force.
Alois Hammer wasn't willing to bet that Broglie wouldn't do what Hammer himself would do if the situation were desperate enough.
But neither did Hammer expect a real fight north of the Escarpment. All odds were that Task Force Kuykendall, two platoons of armor and 600-800 Sincanmo irregulars, would wait in bored silence while their fellows chewed on Hashemites until the Brotherhood surrendered unconditionally.
Thunder rumbled far beyond the distant horizon. In this climate, a storm was less likely than the Lord coming down to appoint Slick Des Grieux as master of the universe.
No, it was artillery promising imminent action. For other people.
The most recent bite of ration bar was a leaden mass in Des Grieux's mouth. He spat it into the darkness, then tossed the remainder of the bar away, also.
"Booster," he said. "Close-up of the Notch."
A view of flamelit rock replaced the panorama before the last syllable was out of the tanker's mouth. The Hashemites were as feckless and unconcerned as their planetary enemies; and unlike the Sincanmos, the Hashemites didn't have the Slammers' logistics personnel to dispense an acre of camouflage film which would conceal equipment, personnel, and campfires from—hostile eyes.
Of course, the Hashemites didn't think there were any hostile eyes. They had stationed an outpost here to prevent the Sincanmos from using the Notch as a back door for attack, but the force was a nominal one of a few hundred indig troops with no leavening of mercenaries. The real defenses were the centrally controlled mines placed in an arc as much as a kilometer north of the Notch.
The outpost hadn't seen Task Force Kuykendall move into position in the dark hours this morning. In a few hours or days, when the main battle ground to a conclusion, they would still be ignorant of the enemy watching them from the north.
The troops of the outpost probably thanked their Lord that they were safely out of the action . . . and they were.
Des Grieux swore softly.
The outpost had a pair of heavy weapons, truck-mounted railguns capable of pecking a hole in tank armor in twenty seconds or so. Des Grieux wouldn't give them twenty seconds, of course, but while he dealt with the railguns, the remainder of the Hashemites would loose a barrage of missiles at H271. And then there were the mines to cross . . . .
If the platoon's oilier three tanks were good for anything—if one of the crews was good for anything—it'd be possible to pick through the minefields with clearance charges, sonics, and ground-penetrating radar. Trusting this lot of newbies to provide covering fire would be like trusting another trooper with your girl and your bottle for the evening.
Kuykendall's platoon was of veterans, but she had orders to keep a low profile unless the enemy sallied out. Kuykendall took orders real good. She'd do fine with Colonel Bloody Broglie . . . .
Hashemites drank and played a game with dice and markers around fuel-oil campfires on the Notch. The sensor pack high on the mesa gave Des Grieux a beautiful view of the enemy, but they were beyond the line of-sight range of his guns.
A salvo of artillery ricocheting from the sandstone walls would grind the towel-heads to hamburger, but the shells would first have to get through the artillery defenses south of the Escarpment. Des Grieux remembered being told the first thing Broglie had done after taking command was to fit every armored vehicle in the Legion with a tribarrel capable of automatic artillery defense.