Outside her open window, black night had scarcely been tinged by dawn when Tain pulled on her field uniform. It was a strange-feeling morning, as if she'd awakened in a different time, in a world where the things that happened, and how they felt, were subtly different than she was used to. The birds sounded tentative, chirped instead of sang, as if unsure of the coming day.
Dressed, she went downstairs to a quick breakfast with the referee teams that would stand the day shift together: two T'swa Majors, Duk and Git-Ran, and two army colonels, Vornkabel and Dorsee. They did not speak to her; their name patches were all the introduction she received. Nor did the teams exchange greetings. The two T'swa murmured occasional quiet Tyspi; the two white colonels spoke to each other even less—quietly, tersely, the content obscure.
She did not look forward to her day.
After breakfast, they walked to the floater pad through an overcast dawn that was chill and breezy, like autumn ahead of time. She was glad to climb inside the referees' floater.
She found it surprisingly comfortable. There were three large window bulges on each side, for 180 observation; six swivel seats, contoured and padded; monitor screens that just now were black except for cryptic combinations of letters and numbers glowing patiently blue; and a small stainless steel restroom, sparklingly clean, which nonetheless she did not look forward to using. There was also a kitchenette, and two army orderlies, one for each team, to use it.
One of the orderlies had been assigned to orient her, which he did quietly and concisely. Each seat had a terminal; she was not to use hers. And there was a speaker over which relevant umpire traffic would be received; also a headset for each referee and one for her, that made them privy to the command traffic of both forces.
They took seats and the floater lifted. Apparently someone called for a situation update. The monitors lit up, rolling for them the events of an evening and night which had had little to report. As if, she thought, the opposing forces had recessed for darkness and gone home to bed.
In minutes their floater parked over the approximate center of the maneuver area, then the floater with the nightshift bobbed a salute and left for the compound. Somewhere down there, she told herself, was F Company, and what was left of 3rd Platoon. Taking out her mapbook, she called up the largest-scale quadrangle she was sure applied, locating landmarks she could see on the ground—ponds, a stream, small scattered bogs, a grove of dark and particularly lofty koorsas towering above the canopy of broad-leafed trees—and from these approximated her present position. From her window she could see two army recon floaters some distance off, parked at a similar altitude, no doubt with instruments and possibly eyes watching for movement below. She suspected that two more were visible from the windows on the opposite side.
There wasn't a lot of command traffic yet from either force, and what there was was mostly army. The regiment's command channel had traffic only now and then. The army's dealt mainly with troops moving on the road, and gunship reports. As best she could, Tain related these to her map and to what she could see from her window, and with her electronic pocket stylus, began to add to the map the army's designations for different roads. Before long the radio traffic began to make more sense to her.
Something else began to take shape as the morning and the traffic went on. "Little A" was regimental headquarters, Artus Romlar commanding. "Big C" was 1st Battalion headquarters under Coyn Carrmak, "Big J" was 2nd Battalion under Jillard Brossling, and "Big K" was the 3rd. These she knew from her pre-maneuver briefing by Colonel Voker's secretary. But though there was occasional command traffic to Big C, Big C neither replied nor acknowledged. While Big K not only didn't send anything, regiment never sent anything to it! Tain found that exceedingly interesting. She knew that transmittal locations could be read by instrument, and it seemed to her they must be keeping radio silence to prevent brigade from determining where they were. Big J, on the other hand, did broadcast occasionally, presumably on the move to avoid the resulting gunship attacks on its points of transmittal.
Brigade headquarters plotted the two sources of mere command traffic and found them moving on more or less parallel courses. The major source baffled them. It tended to stay in one place till attacked by gunships. Then somehow it would show up somewhere else. After a bit, and to Tain inexplicably, an order came from brigade headquarters to discontinue gunship attacks on sources of mere command traffic.
Except for the early gunship attacks on regimental transmitter locations, almost the only action was attacks by "mercs" on hover trucks—hit and run affairs by platoons of 2nd Battalion—and gunship attacks on 2nd Battalion. Gunships responded rather quickly to ambushes on road traffic, hosing the woods in the vicinity. But having spent a day with F Company, she suspected the gunship responses weren't very productive; after a brief strike, the squads would have separated, loping off like wolves, and been well away from the ambush sites before the gunships arrived.
By 0820, vehicles on certain roads were being convoyed by gunships. Ambushes diminished, and what there were produced fewer casualties, as if made by squads or fire teams—half squads. At the same time, the ambushes having tied up gunships, gunship attacks on targets of opportunity were fewer than they'd been.
The more serious gunship attacks, more productive of merc casualties, were on targets of opportunity—mercs sighted from the air. The sightings were brief but the responses immediate; invariably they were followed by radio traffic between umpires on the gunships and those with the trainees on the ground, deciding on casualties. Twice it was decided that a gunship had been shot down, and twice more that one had been damaged. There was an appeal to the referees concerning one claimed "shot down." The referees compromised. It was badly damaged, they decided, but not shot down. It returned to its base and was henceforth out of action.
On Tain's map, and on the army's too she supposed, the sightings and ambushes built a clear picture of mercs moving westward. The line of march, or more properly the broad avenue of march, was centered on a creek and bounded by parallel roads two miles apart. But judging from the mercs' occasional, descrambled radio calls, this movement was apparently all by 2nd Battalion, something the army of course would not be aware of.
It occurred to her to wonder if squads of 2nd Battalion were letting themselves be seen, the way 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon had that first day.
On the holographic photomap, she thought she could see where the regiment—2nd Battalion anyway—was headed: If it kept going—big if—by evening it would come to an extensive swamp forest, much of it fairly dense, some of it sparsely timbered but thick with tall brush. Here and there were pools and small round ponds, looking black and bottomless on the map, though she suspected the water was shallow and only the muck beneath it bottomless. Frequent densely wooded humps marked low islands in the swamp, and there were no roads at all. It seemed to her that a woods-wise force would be almost impossible to root out.
But they'd have to cross two roads to get there. The first road was narrow, minimal, a straight, twenty-foot-wide track through the trees. They'd reach it in early afternoon, say 1300 hours, at their present rate of movement, which seemed to her uncharacteristically slow and cautious. The army would no doubt make a crossing expensive. The second road they might reach that evening. It was somewhat wider, and bordered almost continuously by the bare sites of old log decks, making it much more exposed.
About the time she'd put the picture together for herself, army radio traffic began to increase. Armored assault vehicles—hover vehicles—were being dispatched. Troops began clearing fields of fire along the two roads the mercs would have to cross. Tain began to have nervous stomach; emotionally she was definitely committed to the regiment.
At the same time, attacks of opportunity ceased entirely, and so did ambushes along the flanking roads. Second Battalion's radio traffic ceased too. Army command, concerned now that the mercs might change direction and break out across one of the flanking roads, intensified gunship patrols along them. It seemed to Tain, though, that her mercs would hardly make such a move. It would only put them in a different box. The obvious move, the one with most promise, was across the narrow road ahead of it to the west.
Under the circumstances, she forgot all about 1st and 3rd Battalions.
At 1215, hopefully with many of the army's people sitting or squatting with mess gear on their laps, eating lunch, 2nd Battalion made its move to break across the narrow road. The attack was abrupt and intense, the racket of blank ammunition audible even in the referee floater a mile from the firefight. Umpire traffic was just as intense. Gunships swooped and circled like angry hornets. The major merc force—initially it was thought to be the entire force—was attacking one short segment of the road, but minutes later there were swift thrusts at two other points almost at the flanking roads, thrusts so quick, and by that time unexpected, that gunships didn't get there in time to play a role.
By 1235 it was over; 2nd Battalion was across at a cost of "201 killed and 42 wounded, out of action," including those "hit" by gunships after crossing. Tain found herself relieved that the cost wasn't greater, though 243 seemed a lot from one battalion. If it was just one battalion. Two hundred and forty-three "dead," really, assuming the WOAs would be abandoned. The army had lost 48 killed and 71 WOA on the ground, plus three gunships destroyed with their crews, and four severely damaged. All in all it clearly suggested that elite training did not balance off fire power, air support, and position.
She wondered how she'd feel if the losses had been real instead of hypothetical. Or if she'd been on the ground with F Company. Things seemed different, sitting in a referees' floater 4,000 feet above the ground.
Her thoughts went on to 1st Battalion. And 3rd. First had at least gotten some cryptic orders, even if it hadn't replied to them. Third had gotten none, at least by radio. Could the 3rd be operating with the 2nd, to make it more convincing in its apparent role as the entire regiment? Perhaps they'd both crossed the road. Or was it with the 1st, wherever the 1st was?
As far as she could see, the army had no way of knowing that Big C and Big K weren't on the air, unless they'd broken the merc's scrambler system. And it seemed to her that Little A must be using 2nd Battalion to mislead the enemy and occupy his attention, while the rest of his force escaped, perhaps dispersed, trying to sneak free under cover. Second Battalion would have to fight its way free, or try to. The regiment's objective definitely seemed to be escape. In fact, it seemed all they could hope to accomplish.
Not long afterward, Shiller himself was on the radio, demanding faster progress. Progress on what? Tain wondered. Probably on fortifying the final road, and maybe the flanking roads.
The referees' floater moved, circling at 2,000 feet the road-framed block of forest where 2nd Battalion was now. This block differed from the previous one. Not only was it quite a bit smaller; the land rose gradually from east to west, and the creek occupied a deeper valley, with side slopes that grew higher and steeper farther west.
The north road ran along the top of the slope, and near its west end was what seemed to be an army field command center. A dozen hover modules were parked along the road there, with trucks and armored assault vehicles. For half a mile, in the strip between road and rim, men and reaction dozers were finishing defensive positions overlooking the slope. Behind it were truck-mounted heavy lobbers, and many light lobbers. Flanking this line were lesser defensive positions all along the road. Shiller had something specific in mind for all this, Tain was sure, and had to remind herself that these were maneuvers, the ammunition blank.
After circling the block, the floater parked over the middle of it at 4,000 feet—centering itself among the four army recon floaters parked at the same altitude. Tain was glad to see them there. If she was right about Little A's plans, this meant they'd succeeded to the extent that Shiller was investing his full attention on Big J. Or seemed to be.
Brigadier Barnell "Barney" Shiller sat in his command module, his field operations center, which his troops referred to wryly as "the brain case." He was watching a battery of monitors. And not seeing much—mostly treetops from 4,000 feet, the input of his recon floaters. Damn mercs aren't bad, he admitted grimly. What sightings there were were momentary, and scattered widely enough that it seemed the mercs must have dispersed across almost the width of the block. Damn poor targets.
He was also impressed at how little the mercs used their radios. Their main transmittal source, presumably their regimental headquarters, obviously used narrow beam signals, hitting relays that converted them to 360 degrees. That took foresight, and superb performance by whoever was placing the relays. Their regimental commander could be sitting miles away if he wanted.
It was the accurate relay placement that most impressed Shiller and gained his grudging admiration.
And at the breakout, merc point men had worked their way between hose outposts almost to the road itself without being seen. They were only discovered when they began shooting up the outposts from behind. He'd expected a lot higher bag than the umpires' tally of 240. Five hundred would have been a lot harder on merc morale, and made it less likely that a significant number would break out of the sack he had them in now.
He cheered himself, though, with the thought that the final road they'd have to cross was wider, and his people more fully prepared there. He'd wanted the mercs to get across the first one; he'd simply intended that they pay a higher price for it. And they would have if he'd known when and where they'd attack.
Actually he'd rather expected them to wait till dark and try infiltrating across. His people had pretty much finished digging in by lunch, but they'd been less than ready mentally. Which was why the outposts had been hit from behind, he told himself.
But that was all water over the dam; he had them in his sack. Work was far along on clearing fields of fire along the west road. A mine layer was busy there, and the electronics were already being emplaced—a bit thinly perhaps, but Storker had assured him they'd do the job. And Storker was clever. Not smart, but clever. Setting a security field was the sort of thing you could trust him to do very well.
Things could always go wrong, of course. If he hadn't learned anything else in his fifty-seven years, he'd learned that. But you did your best, kept options open when you could, and moved with due speed once you'd made a decision. When it was clear that the mercs intended to try for the wild country, he'd known at once what to do.
And had left them with damned poor options. To try crossing any road would cost them. All his gunships were assigned now to road coverage. The least costly road to cross would be the flanking road on the south. But if the mercs decided to cross it, which would cost them, they'd be in a strip only three-quarters of a mile wide, backed up against the reservation's boundary with the Blue Forest Wildlife Preserve. Which was strictly off limits to them, a restriction the umpires would enforce adamantly. And westward on that narrow strip they'd be hemmed in by open bog impossible to cross without being chewed up from the air. As for crossing the north road— His eyes narrowed. He hoped they'd try. That would be the quickest and most satisfying.
Mentally he rehearsed scenarios. The mercs would scout the west road and discover his preparations. They'd probably try infiltrating it first, at night; then, after taking enough casualties, give up on it and try an assault. If they pressed it long enough, he'd butcher them. If they backed off, he still had them in his sack. If they tried the north road, they'd find out what real trouble was. Crossing the south road would be practical but costly, and then where were they? Between the hammer and the anvil.
And if they stayed inside his sack, they'd soon be hungry. Any time they let themselves be seen, his recon floaters and scouts would give the coordinates, and he'd lay lobber fire on them. Sooner or later they'd either surrender or commit themselves to a west road crossing. A few would probably make it into the wild district, but they wouldn't be a regiment or even a battalion any longer. The referees would call the game finished, and he'd have shown the Crown that T'swa-type forces were no match for well-led regulars, that they'd built their reputation on fringe planets—trade worlds and gook worlds—fighting ducal armies, militias, and untrained rebels.
And the general staff would notice who'd demonstrated it. When he retired, in two and a half years, maybe it would be as a major general instead of a brigadier.
"Corporal," said Tain Faronya, "how can I talk to Colonel Voker at the compound?"
"Ma'am?"
"From here, that is. He's a referee on the next shift."
"Yes ma'am, I know." The orderly stepped to the back wall of the compartment and touched a small grid. There was a small screen above it and a slanted keypad below. "Right here. I'll key it for you, if you'd like."
He tapped keys as she stepped over, and when the screen lit up, she found herself looking at another army corporal, presumably at the compound. He put her through to Voker's secretary, who, after a short wait, connected her to Voker.
"Colonel," she said, "I'd like to be out here with the next shift of referees. This afternoon that is. But— Is there any way I can? I suppose you'll be on station up here before we leave."
"Yes, there's a way." He paused, examining her. "Why do you want to put in a sixteen-hour day?"
The question took her off guard. "Sir, I don't know. It just . . ." She shrugged. "How can I do it?"
Voker smiled slightly. "Each referee floater has a hatch in the top and one in the floor, in the utility locker. When we've picked a gee coordinate and parked there, if your pilot will let down to a foot or two above us, I'll have the top hatch open. You can climb out onto the top of our floater and get inside through the hatch."
He observed her expression. "It's safe enough, if you're not overly afraid of heights and if the wind's not blowing too hard."
She didn't answer for a half dozen seconds. "It sounds—scary, but if you'll have that top hatch open . . ."
"Fine. I'll see you in about an hour. Is that all?"
She nodded. "Yes sir."
"Good," Voker said, and disconnected.
She stood there for a minute, composing herself. Maybe the pilot would be unwilling, and she wouldn't have to do it. But she knew that if he refused, she'd give him an argument.
Jillard Brossling lay on his belly, peering through the branches of a fallen tree at the hill sloping up in front of him. He believed in looking things over personally when he could. The trees on it had been painted with orange rings at chest height, in lieu of actually cutting them down. Those of any size were marked with double rings, indicating they'd been dragged away as well. Standard war games procedure. Farther up the slope he glimpsed reaction dozers maneuvering their way uphill, pretending to drag away imaginary logs.
The army was thorough, or tried to be, Brossling told himself. That was for sure. Carefully he began working his way backward to rejoin his troops, half of whom should be napping.
It was dusk, edging into twilight. In charge of 2nd Platoon, A Company, Jerym Alsnor crouched in the woods, waiting. He'd never in his life felt this much responsibility.
The overcast had broken that afternoon, the liberated sun expelling remnant clouds. Seeren, more than half full, would light the first part of the night, which would help, even given the enhanced night vision provided by their helmet visors.
Jerym ignored the mosquitoes. Several times in early summer, the T'swa had left the trainees out all night without repellent fields. Repellent fields ran down in time, and while the trainees had been injected with antivenin so they wouldn't swell, they'd needed to develop a psychological indifference to being hummed around and bitten.
The T'swa had interesting ideas about psychological toughness. Once the regiment had been flown in to a slaughterhouse, company by company, and had had to crawl around in guts, roll in them, smear blood and slime on their faces. They wouldn't need that tonight of course, but if this were for real . . .
Jerym heard leaves rustle overhead—a bird perhaps, or an oroval. Now and then an evening rast trilled, like whistling down a tube with a pea in it, but somehow with a delicious sweetness. At school they'd said bird calls were challenges; this sounded like an invitation.
Pretty soon there'd be plenty of noise; enough to cover any sounds they'd make moving up. Even with all the practice the regiment had had that summer, it was hard to move around in the woods with no noise at all, especially after dark.
The dusk thickened. Then he heard the first shots from the enemy positions ahead, shots that quickly escalated into a racket of rifle and hose fire that drowned out the thumps of small caliber lobbers. Supposedly aimed the other way. To 2nd Platoon it was the signal to move forward, alert for pickets whom they needed to get past without disturbance.
Jerym started forward through the twilight, half crouched. Covering the hundred or so yards took several minutes that seemed longer, but finally, through the tress, he saw an opening. There were vehicles parked there. Apparently he'd hit close to their target; the vehicle park was supposed to be opposite the command center. Not half a mile ahead, the army poured gunfire down the hill in the direction of 2nd Battalion. Jerym turned down the exterior sensitivity of his headset and kept moving.
He didn't know if they'd bypassed any pickets or whether there simply were none. Romlar had said there might not be, a statement that had left Jerym skeptical. Reconnaissance had been sketchy, a walk-through by two guys in army uniforms stripped from soldiers jumped the day before. The soldiers still were held handcuffed—the only prisoners the regiment had taken, though technically they were dead.
To Jerym, the most impressive thing was that Romlar had known in advance what the enemy would do. Seemingly before the enemy himself could have known. It had been convincing enough when Romlar had gone over it two evenings earlier, giving the rationale, but to stake so much on it . . .
Standing, Jerym walked among the vehicles to the road. From there he could see no sign of defenses facing north, which fitted the report by the two scouts.
He scanned the other side of the road. There were several command modules down off their AGs, apparently resting on timbers to keep them level. One, the operations control center, was his personal target, but from where he stood, it was hard to tell which module that was. The scouts had said it was approximately in the middle, which would make it a hundred feet or so to his left.
They'd navigated it nicely, with Warden's guidance. Warden had come up with Romlar's talent for intuitive orienteering—for "going without knowing," as Esenrok had dubbed it. To Warden's amusement, Jerym had kept track of their progress on his mapbook, using compass and landmarks, just in case.
He hadn't broken radio silence for two days, nor did he now. After pivoting his visor to the top of his helmet, he stepped into the road and began walking eastward till he was opposite his target. There he stopped. The roar of gunfire was extreme, even damped by the headset control.
A guard stood outside the operations control center, watching him, an anomaly in the scene. Jerym took out a pocket lamp, lit it, and waved its light conspicuously, signalling his men. Then he repocketed the lamp and began walking briskly toward the module.
The guard watched him approach through the twilight. Jerym seemed innocuous: He wore only side arms—knife and pistol—and behaved as if he belonged there. He was within five feet of the guard before the man began a double take, perhaps waking to the camouflage pattern on his field clothes, or the different, visored helmet. Abruptly Jerym's right fist struck him in the breastbone, the trauma paralyzing him, then struck him hard on the neck with a side hand. As the man slumped, Jerym supported him to the ground, then rolled him under the module.
No one had seen. Drawing his pistol, Jerym opened the door and stepped inside. Shiller, who'd been watching his monitors, pivoted on his chair to see who had entered. He started to rise, opening his mouth to yell, and the heel of Jerym's hand slammed him between the eyes. The chair went over backward, the brigadier hitting the floor like a bag of sand. His aide, a captain, grabbed for his own pistol, then froze his hand as Jerym's pointed at his face.
"I don't know what yours is loaded with," Jerym said, "but the blanks in mine would give you a bad burn. Might even blind you."
The army's umpire stared in consternation. The T'swi raised his eyebrows slightly. "Consider that I just shot them both to death," Jerym added, then gestured at the unconscious Shiller. "I couldn't have him raising an alarm. Just a minute; I've got another dead one outside." He stepped out and dragged the sentry in.
"This one we'll say I knifed," he told them. "Quieter that way." Not, he added to himself, that it would make any difference out there in all that racket.
"Very well," said the T'swi, "all three are dead. But—" he pointed at the radio. "The microphone is open. The shots might have been heard."
"Got it." Jerym was skeptical that they would have, but he raised his pistol and fired two blank rounds at the ceiling, then took an object from his thigh pocket. "This is a blast grenade. I'm about to cripple this place." He shut off the power to the computer-communication central, armed the dummy grenade, pushed its plunger, and laid it on the console, then ducked back out the door and under the module. The grenade should be going 'pop' about now, he thought, and to the umpires that's as good as a boom. He swiveled his mike to his mouth, then reached into a pocket and switched his radio to the regimental command channel; the need for radio silence was over.
"Little A, Little A," he said, "this is 2nd Platoon, A Company, Alsnor commanding. The enemy's commanding brigadier and his aide are dead. Their operations control center is crippled; I've destroyed their computer and comm central. Oh, and we encountered no pickets."
Acknowledgement was prompt. Then feet ran up to the center, hesitated for a minute outside the door. Someone opened it and stepped in, the other one following. Jerym rolled out and to his feet, and went in after them, gun in hand again, firing more blanks at the ceiling. "Two more dead!" he snapped, and turning, was gone again. One of the last two had been a full colonel; and he suspected he'd "killed" the brigade exec. Now it was time to steal some armored assault vehicles.
First Battalion, with G Company of the 3rd, moved through the woods as fast as feasible in the dark, toward the rear of the hilltop containment line. Shiller had taken no precautions at all against such a possibility. And in the noise and flash of their own gunfire, it never occurred to the brigade to look backward.
Meanwhile men from 2nd Platoon started a number of armored assault vehicles and sped down the north road a mile to its end, their two umpires following in a borrowed command car. The assault vehicles turned onto the west road, their heavy caliber hoses spewing blast slugs. They'd gone half a mile before the troops dug in there realized what was happening and began to shoot back. When finally they did though, their fire was heavy. The umpire channels were alive with traffic.
The augmented 1st Battalion didn't start shooting till they hit the north road, striking the brigade's forces from behind, "shooting hell out of 'em and taking no prisoners." Then some of them too started assault vehicles and headed west.
In the woods below the hill, 2nd Battalion's attack had never been more than a diversion. One company, thinly spread but guns blazing, had made a feint, then drawn back with heavy casualties. It had been enough to start Shiller's entire line firing downhill into the woods. Whenever the brigade's gunnery slackened a bit, a few remnant merc squads would start firing again, showing their muzzle blasts, and brigade gunnery took new life.
Then Little A informed 2nd Battalion that 1st Battalion had begun its attack, and also that the west road line had been shot up and disorganized near the northwest corner. With that, Brossling pulled his men back, and they started westward at a lope to make their breakout.
In the referees' floater, Tain Faronya, switching between command traffic and a buffet of umpire traffic, found it hard to keep from cheering.