“I’ll drive,” said Johann Vierziger. “It’s not my favorite slot, but I’m good enough at it.”
“I’ll give you my XO’s command car,” Captain Garmin said. “It’s—”
“Negative, Captain,” Coke interrupted. “You will give me a combat car. The one you’re in will do fine. If you want to ride into a firefight closed up in a can, be my guest—but I don’t.”
Coke hopped onto the skirts of Cutting Edge. “ASAP, Captain!” he prodded. Moden and Margulies were beside him—the logistics officer still shouldering his brace of heavy missiles. Vierziger mounted the bow slope and thumbed out the car’s surprised driver.
“I—” Garmin began, then swallowed a protest that he knew wasn’t going to do the least bit of good. “Yes sir,” he said as he swung over the far side of the fighting compartment. He took with him only his personal weapon—a grenade launcher—and an AWOL bag of possessions.
A good man. And willing to be a good subordinate.
Niko Daun looked up in disappointment as the team’s combat veterans crewed their new vehicle. Somebody had to keep an eye on the immediate surroundings while Barbour concentrated on his console. The sensor tech was the right person for the job …but he’d rather have been going along.
Coke checked the action of his tribarrel. It moved slickly on its gimbals, and the multifunction display beside it already glowed with enemy dispositions as reported by the survey team’s sensor array. The Heliodorans flat wouldn’t know what hit them.
Coke used the attached light pen to sketch the plan of action onto the display screen, from which it was echoed to every vehicle and helmet visor in his command. “C Troop, First and Second Platoons, north of Potosi. Flank speed, you’ll hit the port from the east. Third Platoon and HQ element, south of the town to the south side of the port. Bypass the town! We don’t want fighting there.”
He was setting up a dynamic version of an L-shaped ambush, in which the attacking elements moved against a static target. Fields of fire shouldn’t endanger friendly troops …much.
Coke rubbed his forehead before he continued. The only way to do this was headlong. If the Heliodorans had time to spread, it’d be the devil’s own job winkling out each squad with their buzzbombs and explosive bullets. He was afraid to think beyond the level of reflex, so he’d go with reflex.
“Infantry commander”—Coke didn’t even know that officer’s name—“leave a squad in blocking position at either end of town on the east-west road. Remainder of your forces, conform to the movements of their opposite numbers in C Troop. Captain Garmin, take operational control of the eastern element. I’ll handle the south.”
Via, he didn’t even have a callsign!
“Team One, that’s Tony One, over.”
“Charlie One, confirm, out,” said Garmin’s voice. Coke wondered where the cars’ CO had taken himself. Another combat car, he supposed.
“Lima One, confirm,” said a female stranger. “Do you want the mortars here, where the ship provides a base of fire, or shall I put them on line? Over.”
Bloody good question.
“Bring them along, Lima,” Coke decided aloud. Ten klicks was within the effective range of the troop’s pair of 10-cm automatic mortars, but he might want to use shellfire to prevent the Heliodorans from displacing west when the nutcracker of powergun bolts started to close. He’d best keep them near the target area. “Team out.”
He looked around at the vehicles and mounted infantry already in line with his car. “Let’s roll!” he ordered—
And noticed that Pilar Ortega squatted against the bulkhead of the fighting compartment, between Coke and Moden who manned the starboard tribarrel.
Vierziger poured power to the fans. He had as certain a touch with the fifty-tonne combat car as he did with a pistol’s trigger.
“Not you, Pilar!” Coke said. “Blood and martyrs, not you!”
“Me,” the auburn-haired woman said coolly. “I won’t stay behind, Matthew.”
She was holding a sub-machine gun, one of those Moden had brought aboard. She’d proved in Potosi that she could use one, would pull the trigger at least …
C Troop’s Headquarters Squad—Cutting Edge and the XO’s enclosed command car which carried additional commo in place of weapons and munitions—fell into line behind the five cars of 3d Platoon. Ten-man squads of infantry, each accompanied by a two-place gun jeep mounting a tribarrel, followed as the armor blazed a path through the scrub forest. Map data downloaded from the orbital scans provided a course for the lead driver, and the sensors Barbour monitored kept close watch on the Heliodorans.
“Bloody hell,” Coke repeated. He couldn’t very well throw her over the side of the car, could he?
Garmin’s crew had left two suits of back-and-breast armor behind when they evacuated the car so suddenly. Coke sighed.
“Sten, show her how to get into her armor,” he said, and he went back to planning the imminent battle.
The port’s facilities—maintenance sheds and the terminal buildings; thank the Lord Pilar had gotten herself clear—were on the north side of the fenced reservation. The south was unobstructed, though there were twelve ships scattered over the ground in addition to the five from which the Heliodorus Regiment was slowly disembarking.
Coke had put the weight of his main thrust on the side toward which the newly landed regiment was moving, but the shock of ten combat cars and two infantry platoons was likely to drive the Heliodorans back. When they realized their south flank was being raked by a lesser force, they’d fight like raging hell to blow a way clear.
It was going to be interesting.
Coke’s helmet AI filtered out all but Priority 1 messages. Margulies leaned close to him and said, loudly enough to be heard if her commander wanted to, “Barbour’s told Madame Yarnell that the Obadiah’s a freighter that lost gyro control during normal set-down.”
“She’s not going to believe that, is she?” Coke said in surprise.
“Via, no!” Margulies agreed. Overlays projected across the inner surface of the security lieutenant’s visor distorted her hard smile. “From what they’re saying through the bugs in the terminal building, they’re sure we’re smugglers who picked a bad time to land and try to undercut the Delos cartel. Yarnell figures to take care of us smugglers just as soon as she’s got Potosi secured.”
Matthew Coke’s mind flamed with blood and cyan light. He laughed. The sound made Pilar’s face go blank in an expression closely akin to fear.
The south column burst from scrub into bottom land planted with gage. The leading car boosted its speed to 60 kph, three times the rate at which it had picked its way through the heavy growth. The combat cars were capable of doubling that in open terrain, but the infantry wouldn’t have been able to keep up.
The gage crop was a month or so short of harvest. The reedy stems were a full meter tall, but the heads where the drug concentrated hadn’t taken on the orangish tinge of full ripeness.
At Captain Garmin’s orders, the cars spread from line-ahead formation to line abreast. As directed, Vierziger placed Cutting Edge on the left of the formation while the platoon leader took the right. There was an officer in position if the force had to displace suddenly toward either flank, and Coke was at the hinge of the attack.
“There’s shooting in town,” Margulies murmured, relaying data from the intelligence officer. “The Heliodorans ran into a couple dozen Astras who’d gone to ground and came out as the patrol arrived. The Astras just want to surrender to somebody, but the patrol leader’s calling for heavy backup.”
“I’d as soon,” Sten Moden said, “if there wasn’t fighting in Potosi. Civilians are bound to get hurt.”
“When we take the main force,” Coke said, “the rest—Heliodorans and syndicate both—the rest’ll die on the vine.”