“The Volunteers are gathering at their base on Bulstrode Bay on the northern coast,” said Danny Pritchard’s holographic image. “They call it Fort Freedom, and it’s going to be a tough nut to crack.”
Aircars spun and swooped overhead, often with sirens blaring. The drivers were as excited and as generally drunk as the people in the street. Huber had seen two collisions and heard a worse one that sent a car crashing to the ground on the other side of the Mound.
“Why us, sir?” Captain Sangrela asked. His voice was calm, but the way his hands tightly gripped the opposite elbows indicated his tension.
“Because you can, Captain,” Pritchard said simply. “Because we can’t leave ten thousand armed enemies in a state whose support we need. And because the locals can’t do it themselves—”
He grinned harshly.
“—which is generally why people hire the Slammers, right?”
The Gendarmery had been conspicuous by its absence during the events of the afternoon. Now the Point’s gray-uniformed police were out in force, though they seemed more to be showing themselves than making an effort to control the good-natured partying that was going on. The Gendarmes on foot patrol carried only pistols; those in the cruising aircars may have had carbines but they weren’t showing them.
“Ten thousand of ’em, sir?” said C-1’s platoon sergeant, a rangy man named Dunsterville. He sounded incredulous rather than afraid at what he’d heard. “You mean the guys with red sweatbands?”
“The Volunteers, yes,” Pritchard agreed with a grim nod. “You won’t have to deal with all of them—indeed, that’s why we’ve decided to move on Fort Freedom immediately. We expect that at least half of Grayle’s Volunteers will decide to stay home in the woods if they know that joining her means facing tanks. If we withdraw from the Point and the Volunteers don’t have anybody to worry about except the locals, then they’ll everyone of them march back into Midway and this time loot the place.”
When Pritchard said “we’ve decided,” he meant Colonel Hammer and his Regimental Command group. The “we” who’d be carrying out the operation meant Call-Sign Sierra, ten vehicles and less than a hundred troopers under Captain Sangrela. Huber was a volunteer, and he knew that the senior officers had all been at the sharp end in their day too …but Via! Fifty to one was curst long odds!
“Here’s a plan of Fort Freedom,” Pritchard continued. The image of his body disappeared, leaving his head hovering above a sharply circular embayment viewed from the south at an apparent downward angle of forty-five degrees. The sea had cut away the northern third of the rock walls and filled the interior. “Bulstrode Bay’s an ancient volcano. The walls average a hundred meters high and are about that thick at the base. There’s normal housing inside of the crater, but the Volunteers have also tunneled extensively into the walls.”
“Have they got artillery?” Huber asked. He was still trying to get his head around the notion of going up against five thousand armed hostiles …or maybe ten thousand after all, because staff estimates were just that, estimates, and Sierra would be facing real guns.
“The Volunteers don’t have an indirect fire capacity so far as we can tell,” Pritchard said, nodding at a good question. “Not even mortars. What they do have—”
The holographic image transformed itself into a gun carriage mounting eight stubby iridium barrels locked together in two banks; each tube had its own ammo feed. The chassis was on two wheels with a trail for towing the weapon rather than being self-powered.
“—are calliopes. We’ve traced a lot of twenty purchased by Grayle’s agents nine months ago, and it’s possible that there’ve been others besides.”
Calliopes, multi-barreled 2-or 3-cm powerguns, provided many mercenary units with the air defense that the Slammers handled through their own armored vehicles. The weapons were extremely effective against ground targets as well. A short burst from a calliope could shred a combat car and turn its crew into cat’s meat….
Pritchard’s full figure replaced the image of the calliope. “I’m not making light of the job you face,” he said. “But I do want to emphasize that the Volunteers are not soldiers. Most of them have only small arms, they aren’t disciplined, and they’ve never faced real firepower. If you hit them hard and fast they’ll break, troopers. You’ll break them to pieces.”
“Calliopes cost money,” Mitzi Trogon said. “More money than I’d expect from a bunch of hicks in the sticks.”
Pritchard nodded again. “Whatever you think of the documents the Point security police found,” he said with a grin, “we have evidence that the government of Solace is indeed supporting the Freedom Party.”
Solace would be insane not to, Huber thought. Arming the internal enemies of a hostile government was about the cheapest way to reduce its threat.
In the street and sky, the citizens of Midway danced and sang. They were the rulers, the people who split among themselves the wealth and the status and the political power of the Point. They were right to fear Melinda Grayle, a demagogue who’d united the Moss rangers against the urban elite who lorded it over them.
Captain Sangrela rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re going cross-country, I suppose?” he said. “There isn’t much but cross-country on this bloody planet.”
“Not exactly,” Pritchard said as the image of a terrain map replaced that of his body. “The direct route’d take you through ancient forest. The trees are too thick and grow too densely for your vehicles to push through or maneuver through either one. We’ve plotted you a course down the valley of the River Fiorno. It won’t be fast, but the vegetation there’s thin enough that even the cars can break trail.”
The red line of the planned course dotted its way along the solid blue of a watercourse. Not far from the coast, the red diverged straight northward for some fifty kilometers to reach Bulstrode Bay.
“The last part of the route, we’ll clear for you with incendiary rounds. We estimate it’ll take you nearly two days to reach the point you’ll leave the Fiorno. The fire should’ve burned itself out by then, so you can make the last part of your run relatively quickly.”
Pritchard smiled again. “The fire should also limit the risk of ambush,” he said; then he sobered and added, “But that’ll be a very real possibility while you’re following the river. We’ll do what we can from Base Alpha, but you’ll have to proceed with scouts and a full sensor watch the same as you did on the way here.”
Pritchard’s image looked around the gathering. “Any questions?” he asked.
“I don’t like to complain, Major …” said Sergeant Jellicoe, lacing her fingers in front of her. “But do you suppose after this, somebody else in the bloody regiment can get a little action too?”
Everybody laughed; but everybody, Pritchard included, knew that the comment hadn’t entirely been a joke. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
On the fiddler’s platform below, the woman dancing had stripped off her panties as well. Huber glanced down at her …and turned his head away.
He was going to need his rest. The next part of the operation sounded like it was going to be even rougher than what it’d taken to get Task Force Sangrela this far.
Huber called up a remote from Flame Farter, on the move with White Section for the past ten minutes. The Fiorno River was only thirty meters wide and almost shallow enough to wade where it curved around the north and east of Midway. The scouts’ skimmers danced in rainbows of spray out in the channel to avoid the reeds along the margins; the combat car was chuffing down the bank, spewing mud and fragments of soft vegetation from beneath her skirts.