"An Ah dinnae ken wh'll be trainit' them," Alex continued suspiciously. "Ffillips? Trainit th' lads ae commandos? Th' nae be't time f'r thae."
"Possibly Vosberh," Sten said, keeping his face straight.
"Nae, nae. Tha' be't e'en more silly."
Sten grinned at him. "Then we have the answer."
Alex was aghast. "Me," he said, thumping a meaty thumb into his chest. "Y'nae be't suggestin' ae Kilgour wae y'?"
"I thought it was your idea."
Sten handed Alex a fiche. "Now, I was thinking, Red Rory of the Advertisements, you should begin their training with..."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ALEX KEYED HIS throat-mike. "Ye'll be awake noo an' be lookit across yon field."
Fifty of Mathias' Companions were dug in across the military crest of a wooded hill. Most of them looked puzzled, having no idea what the purpose of the exercise was.
It wae, Alex thought to himself, a wee bit ae argument against heroism. He tucked behind a bush as, far across the brush-covered field, another fifty of the Companions came into sight, weapons ready. They were spread out in standard Guard-type probe formation.
He yawned and scratched, waiting for the soldiers to come closer. They did. A Companion next to Alex lifted his rifle, and Alex back-handed him on his shrapnel helmet. The Companion thudded down, unconscious, and Alex reminded himself yet again that the wee light-grav folk had to be treated with ae gentleness.
Wait... wait... wait... and then Alex hit the airhorn's button. The blast rang down the hill, and the entrenched Companions opened fire.
With blanks.
Down on the flats, some of the Companions dove for cover, others began howling and charged.
The firing doubled in volume. Alex let it continue for six seconds, then bounded up and down into the open. With his mike open.
"Cease fire, y'bloodthirsty reeks! Cease FIRE!"
The popping died away. On the flats, the probing Companions, following instructions, froze in place—in the exact positions they were stopped in when Alex gave the ceasefire signal.
Alex waved the other fifty out of their hidey-holes and down onto the fields. They trailed out and assembled in two-platoon formation. Each man carried a plas target. The plan was to replace the real men with the targets. After that, Alex chuckled to himself, the real fun would begin.
Alex walked around the attacking formation. A Companion who'd sensibly found cover was replaced with one type of target—if the cover he'd found would withstand projectile fire, the target was only part of a man's head. But if, on the other hand, he'd ducked behind a bush (which worked fine in the livies), a full head-and-shoulders replaced him.
The slow-to-react or stupid, who'd merely flattened on the ground or, still worse, stayed erect when the airhorn went off, had man-size silhouettes in their place.
Finally, the howlers-and-chargers had oversize targets— targets that were half again the size of a normal man.
By now the entire company of Companions was standing at the hill's base. Alex motioned them back up into the defensive line and had them take firing positions.
Companion squad leaders now passed out live ammunition.
"Lock an' load ae mag'zine," Alex bellowed. "On command, begin... firing!"
The hillside rocked to the thunder of weapons. This time Alex waited until all trainees had fired their weapons dry (the projectile weapons used by the Companions and mercs had fifty-round banana magazines, nowhere near the capacity of the unobtainable Imperial willyguns with their 1400-round AM2 tube mags).
Then he brought the Companions out of their holes, checked to make sure all weapons were unloaded, and went back down the hill. If God gae us tha gift ta see ourselves as others see us, came a misquote from Alex's overly poetic backbrain. He led the hundred men from target to target.
"Noo, y'ken wha' happens whae ae mon dinna find shelter encounterin' ae enemy," he explained. "Yama lad, y'dinna find naught to hide behind. Ah' y'see whae would've recked wi' ye?"
The trainee looked at the riddled silhouette, gulped, and nodded.
Alex saved the charging fanatics for last and then gently tapped one of "them" on his shredded plas.
"Ae dinna be knockit heroes," he said. "But a wee hero who's dead afore he closes wi' the enemy be naught but ae fool, Ah think."
The Companions, who'd now had a chance to see exactly what an enemy unit could do to them—and had done it to themselves—were very thoughtful on the run back to the training camp.
A fortieth-century explosive mine looked like nothing much in particular except possibly a chunk of meteorite. It would float innocuously until a ship of the proper size came within range. It then ceased to be innocuous.
The problem with mines, as always, was remembering where they'd been planted and being able to recover them after the war ended. For Sten's mercenaries, however, who had no intention of hanging around the Wolf Cluster for one nanosecond after payday, it didn't matter.
A combined platoon of Vosberh's and Ffillips' men had scattered half a hundred of such chunks of rubble, in orbital patterns that Egan's computer boys had suggested, near one of the Jann main patrol satellites. Then they'd withdrawn on the Bhor ship, as silently and unobtrusively as they'd arrived.
The first mine didn't detonate for almost a week. It was fortunate for Sten's purposes that the first one happened to ignite when a full fuel ship was making its approach to the satellite. The small nuke not only took out the fuel ship but its two escorts and the pilot vessel from the satellite.
Mines, properly laid, are extremely cost-effective weapons.
It was nae thae the Companions sang everywhere they went, Alex decided. It was thae they had such bloody awful taste in their music: doleful hymns; chants describing how wonderful it would be to meet death killing Jann.
Ah, well, he realized. Wi' m'own race's history. Ah dinnae hae a lot to complain aboot.
"Seventy seconds," one of Ffillips' lieutenants said. Egan and his bustling computer people paid no attention.
The twelve of them, with two teams of Ffillips' specialists for security, had taken over one of the Jann observation satellites. The three Jann manning the post had been disposed of, and Egan and his men had gone to work.
Wires, relays, laser-transmitters, and fiberoptic cables littered the satellite's electronics room, and now the Lycee people waited while Egan caressed keys on a meter-wide board he'd lugged onto the satellite. He tapped a final key then pulled his board out of circuit. "Very fine," he said. "Let's blow it."
Ffillips' lieutenant saluted and his men began planting demo charges.
The Lycee gang had used the terminal on the satellite to patch straight into the Jann battle computer. They'd lifted all logs of the mercenary actions from the computer records.
That, Egan thought to himself, will make it a bit hard for the bad guys to get any kind of tac analysis. A good day's work, he realized, as he headed for the Bhor ship hanging just beyond the lock.
He didn't bother to tell anyone that he'd also removed any mention of the Lycee people or Egan himself from the records, and added a FORGET IT command just in case any entry was made. A soldier, after all, has to protect his back—and there was no guarantee that the good guys would necessarily win.
And so the raids continued. A suddenly vanished Jann patrol ship here or a Jann outpost that broadcast pleas for reinforcement before signals shut down. Merchant ships that failed to arrive at their planetfalls. A few "removals" of Jann administrators.
A man is much larger than a mosquito—and Sten's entire force was less than one-millionth the strength of the Jann. But a mosquito can drive a man to distraction and, given enough time, bleed him dry.