Some two hundred miles northeast, Jerym Alsnor crouched in the forest, waiting and listening. It was night. The mosquitoes swarmed in clouds; he didn't notice. He led two platoons on this mission: his own rifle platoon, and a mortar platoon. The rifle platoon carried no rifles this night; they carried light machine guns for reach and firepower, and submachine guns for close work.
They'd been moving slowly. The word was that since the night of the Great Raids, the Komarsi ran strong security patrols in the vicinity of their brigade bases. It was very doubtful that they moved in the forest at night, but they might well leave outposts at strategic locations—platoons or even companies—their guards listening nervously in the dark, with fingers on triggers.
It was difficult enough for his men in the forest at night. If they'd had the night vision of the T'swa, Homo tyssiensis, it would have been different. Or if it had been a Level 2 War, where they could use night visors. But at Level 3 they had to make do with their unaugmented human eyesight.
Three things made it feasible. One, under T'swa training, the troopers had developed the latent talent of "going without knowing." That is, if they knew a location, they could go there crosscountry without map or guide. Not easily perhaps, if there were obstacles for instance, but they could find it. It was difficult to disorient them, and nearly impossible to keep them disoriented. Two, the major moon was riding high. And three, their route took them through a tract logged selectively two years earlier, leaving the forest roof with enough openings to let significant moonlight through. That same logging, however, had left branches, tops, and cull logs lying on the ground, too often hidden in shadow, waiting for someone to trip on them.
What Jerym waited for now were the scouts he'd sent ahead. He'd come to the major skidway, a sleigh road through the woods, broad enough for sleighs eight feet wide. It was a logical place for the Komarsi to cover. If it was safe, it would take them to a preplanned firing position, a position from which they could fire for effect without first firing ranging rounds. He'd scaled it off precisely on a detailed forestry map before he'd left Shelf Falls.
There was a hiss ahead of him, a pattern of them, and dimly he made out a figure waving. He hissed back, then moved ahead, the others following: his two platoons plus a dozen Smoleni noncoms along for the experience. And Kelmer Faronya, wearing his helmet camera. Its visor made him the only one of them who could see decently. Each of them, in the mortar platoon and the rifle platoon, carried a .37 caliber pistol and a trench knife. The men in the mortar platoon also went burdened with a mortar tube or baseplate, or a packframe loaded with 66 mm mortar bombs, plus propellant horseshoes.
The way was clear, and on the skidway they made better speed. In less than an hour, the mortars were set up on the abandoned log landing where the skidway met the gravel road. On the other side of the road were fields and pastures. Beyond them lay a Komarsi brigade base, barely more than a mile from where they crouched. The village was on the forestry map, rows of tiny symbols for buildings. Added to this, Fossur's local agent had sketched in the QM dump, the ordnance dump, the motor pool, and other military additions. He'd even circled the more important buildings. At that range, even T'swa-trained mortar men couldn't expect to pinpoint buildings they couldn't see, but they should be able to do a lot of damage.
His machine gunners left then, each with his twenty-pound weapon ready, an ammunition belt in the metal box he carried. Jerym gave them time to take positions, beginning some two hundred yards up the road, counting off the necessary seconds in his mind. Meanwhile his mortar men had set up their weapons, set their phosphorescent sights, and snapped on the propellant horseshoes. He gave the low whistled signal to fire. If the map was accurate, things were about to get exciting in the brigade base. After that, things could get pretty exciting here, too, depending on the Komarsi response.
Kelmer listened to the thumps of mortar rounds being launched, a salvo of eight to begin with, targeted hopefully on the truck park. The next salvo was a bit ragged. After that the firing was non-synchronous. He stared; it was as if nothing had been fired, or as if the rounds had been swallowed into hyperspace. Surely, though, the Komarsi had seen the muzzle flashes. With the machine gun towers they'd built, they could hardly avoid it. And they'd have artillery.
Then he saw the flashes of the mortar rounds landing, and moments later heard the explosions. After that, the explosions were more or less continuous.
He didn't feel particularly fearful yet, it was all so far away. But he watched for possible flashes of artillery. If they saw any, the mortar crews were to disassemble the mortars at once—a business of short seconds—and run back up the skidway. Wait out the barrage and return to expend their mortar rounds. He, on the other hand, was to run along the road to the machine gunners, to record whatever developed there.
The mortar men had expended most of their rounds before they saw a response: A long row of muzzle flashes, virtually simultaneous, flared from the base. For a long moment Kelmer crouched transfixed, forgetting his order. Then the mortar crews were running past him onto the skidway. Remembering, he dashed onto the road, and along it northward. Now he saw something else alarming: a line of trucks moving out of the base, with headlights on unhooded! He heard the incoming rounds rumbling through the night air, and they began to fall in the field behind him, fifty or sixty yards short of the road. There were a lot of them, and their crashing roars lent speed to his feet.
Inside a minute he was with the machine gunners, who were spaced along the road, among the edge trees. His heart pounded wildly. When the trucks arrived, they'd be less than forty feet away. Kelmer realized he couldn't see well from where he crouched, and what he couldn't see, he couldn't record visually, so he crept out a few feet, to kneel on the back bank of the ditch.
Southward down the road, the next salvo of shells roared into the forest with terrific crashes, producing a long rain of branches and larger pieces of trees, invisible in the night. A third salvo landed still farther back, and the fourth mostly on and along the road. Clearly the Komarsi artillery observers didn't know whether they were long or short; they kept changing the range, plowing the pasture, the forest edge, the roadsides.
The lead truck turned onto the north-south road, and Kelmer scrambled back into the woods to avoid being caught in the headlights. A minute later, the machine guns began firing point-blank into the trucks, which were spaced much too closely. Some braked; some went into the ditches, some of these tipping onto their side; more crashed into trucks ahead of them. Tracers chewed canvas canopies, metal hoods, windows. Soldiers spilled out, spilled running. Many fell wounded or dead. More took shelter behind the trucks, or dispersed into the pasture. There was surprisingly little return fire at first, as if they were content to take cover.
Northward, a number of trucks had stopped short of the machine guns and unloaded their troops too. Some of these dispersed into the woods. With any leadership at all, they'd move to flank the machine gunners. Return fire began to increase, as the Komarsi recovered from their surprise and shock. Closer at hand, some began throwing grenades.
The troopers were heavily outnumbered, and the balance was shifting. Someone whistled a shrill retreat order, and the troopers rose almost as one, moving back into the woods. Kelmer got up too—and saw something land on the ground in front of him. Grenade! his mind shrieked, and with a hoarse cry he turned, starting into the forest, where he promptly stumbled and fell on some logging debris, not because he couldn't see—he could—but because he didn't see. His heart thuttered wildly, and he lay wide-eyed for a moment. The grenade had not exploded! At the same time, he realized that his rectum had spasmed, had sprayed his shorts.
Shaking, Kelmer got to his feet again. Then a row of shells exploded in the field not much short of the road, some in the farside ditch, on line with where he was, knocking him down again. As if some Komarsi officer had panicked, and radioed for artillery support, bringing the shells down on his own men. Kelmer and the others realized where the next salvo was likely to land, and despite the trees and shadow-hidden logging slash, they ran, hard. More crashes rent the night behind them, some of the shells bursting in the treetops, spraying the woods with steel and splintered wood. Kelmer, with his visor-given vision, outran the others until a fallen branch tripped him and he fell heavily, the breath knocked out of him.
A moment later, someone stopped beside him. "You all right?" the trooper asked.
"I think so."
"Good. Stay with me."
He recognized me, Kelmer thought. He doesn't want me to get lost. He followed gratefully.
They came to the skidway again and followed it. When they came to its end, they kept going, if more slowly. Soon afterward they reached the end of the cutting. The denser forest behind it was much darker. They groped their way into it perhaps twenty or thirty yards, then Jerym stopped them and posted sentries. The rest lay on the ground to sleep.
Hidden by darkness, Kelmer went a few yards apart, took out the packet of toilet paper he carried in a shirt pocket, lowered his pants and tidied up as best he could, then fastened them again. Lying beside a moss-grown log, he reviewed the experience. All in all, it seemed to him he'd done well. Or if not exactly well, he at least hadn't humiliated himself. He'd done what he was supposed to do, and had stood to the last.
If I just hadn't fouled my pants, he thought. It hadn't been too bad though—a spray—and he didn't stink. Perhaps no one would notice. He couldn't know till it got daylight again.
He was drifting off to sleep when it first occurred to him to wonder how many troopers had died. When he slept, he dreamed they had come to him, jollying him gently about his pants, and it didn't bother him at all.
When he woke up, he remembered the dream. He'd remember it as long as he lived.