Star Risk - 03 The Doublecross Program (30 page)

The landing ground had been well fired up by the rockets and chainguns of the transports.

The city�Riss didn't even remember its name�had a large spaceport on its outskirts. The city center was on flatland, and then the land rose to a minor peak.

Here, a few of the colonels on the Shaoki Council lived. There were also the sensors for the port's antiaircraft system, a com center, and so forth.

The Shaoki might have been expecting the port to be hit.

Instead, Goodnight put his troops down on the crest of the hill, with orders to ruin anything and anyone they came across.

The AA systems below were useless, and the mercenaries set up precision short-range rockets, and destroyed ships, hangars, and control towers.

Within two hours, the alert came: The Shaoki reaction force was lifting off from its various bases to come after them.

Moving fast, but without haste, the mercenaries re-boarded their transports and the ships lifted away.

Below them was a city in flames.

They'd taken less than two dozen casualties, most of them wounded.

"Now this," Goodnight said, "is the way to fight a frigging war, not padoodling around on some vacuum-packed nowhere!"

Riss couldn't argue with that.

Other raiders were hitting in various places around Irdis, and Wahfer's cruisers were smashing orbital stations.

All this was intended to confuse the Shaoki, and Grok judged, from his monitors, that it was succeeding very well.

Riss and Goodnight's second target was the seaport city of Nonat.

Again they used indirection.

Rather than attack the port itself, which would have meant coming in from the seaward side of the city, where most of its aerial defenses were located, the raiders came in from the landward side.

Their landing ground wasn't the spaceport near the city, but directly in the warehouse section that reached for kilometers.

The soldiers' orders were simple: Burn what you can, smash the rest. And don't worry about the Shaoki unless they put up a good fight.

They didn't.

Most of them were what Grok had deduced, from SIGnal INTelligence, to be reservists, and rather sullen ones at that.

They fled, when they could, and the mercenaries set to work with the torch.

The full warehouses went up with roars, and the soldiers were forced to pull back.

The Shaoki aerial units were closer, and managed to attack just as Riss's and Goodnight's units were heading back to their transports.

But waiting overhead were two flights of Star Risk patrol boats that slashed down into the attack.

Riss watched one boat blast a wallowing Shaoki destroyer out of the air to smash down in the center of the city. She wondered, as the p-boat flashed overhead, if Redon Spada was at the controls.

That's the problem with having gonads, she thought. You start worrying about people who have proven capable of taking very good care of themselves.

She put that, and Spada, out of her mind, and concentrated on chivvying her troops into their ships.

This time, there were less than twenty casualties.

"I think," Friedrich von Baldur said from the bridge of his ship to King Saleph, "we have the Shaoki sufficiently confused. If you wish, Your Majesty, you may land the landing force."

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FIFTY-ONE � ^ � Khelat's invasion fleet was stacked over Irdis. At the lowest level, within Irdis's atmosphere, keeping at about ten thousand meters, were the assault craft, hammering away at the ground defenses.

Some were huge monitors with tubes firing monstrous missiles one at a time. Others were darting small ships, almost as small as Spada's patrol craft, hitting targets here and there. Over them were the Command and Control ships, vectoring the small ships to ground targets or the Shaoki aerial formations.

The troop transports were the next in the layer, escorted by Inchcape's destroyers, in holding patterns until ground fire was suppressed.

Some of the Khelat generals, seeing the patterned hell being leveled against Irdis's surface, thought they might make an unopposed landing and began to act cheerful. None of the mercenaries with any experience who overheard this cheeriness bothered to argue with them.

The generals would find out in due course.

Beyond the destroyers was the main battle fleet, including Wahfer's cruiser squadron. Among them were the supply ships, hospital ships, maintenance craft.

Further out were light escorts, making sure no off-world Shaoki reliefs or attackers got through to the fleet or the transports.

King Saleph, from his battleship just outside Irdis's atmosphere, gave the landing order, and the transports swooped in.

Now all of the Khelat and mercenary attack ships were striking anything that resembled a target. Shaoki AA missiles launched, and were acquired, diverted by the electronic countermeasure ships, and destroyed.

Then the sites themselves became targets�small ships dove on them before they could reload and salted the sites with small antipersonnel missiles and even dumb bombs. Even the handful of Shaoki mobile launch sites were hit as they hastily packed up launchers and guidance trailers.

The first wave of transports zigged toward their landing grounds. Wahfer brought his cruisers low, savaging the Shaoki infantry and lifter units, backed by Inchcape's destroyers.

Here and there a transport streamed fire, smoke, and dove toward the ground. Then the first wave was down, and Khelat infantry swarmed out, their lifters close behind them.

And, from the ruins, Shaoki infantry fought back. The soldiers may have been badly led, indifferently trained. But they knew how to die.

The battles were fierce and bloody.

"I have an intercept," Grok announced, "that one of my underlings sent on to the Pride of Khelat. Actually, it's a series of intercepts."

It was the second day of battle, and the ground attack was going trudgingly well. There'd been five landings, and all of them had at least found a foothold.

The four other members of Star Risk waited, knowing whatever Grok had wouldn't be commonplace.

"Shaoki Command keeps querying its intel where are the foreign mercenary commanders, and ordering any station who has data to report with the highest priority. With, of course, no responses."

Jasmine King accepted another cup of coffee from Goodnight.

"This is coupled with rather panicky requests for reinforcements from various ground units," Grok continued. "Invariably, the reply is that without reporting the presence of the mercenaries, Shaoki Command assumes that all of the landings are nothing but feints, and until we foreigners are reported, none of the reserves will be released."

Goodnight lifted his cup in a toast to Friedrich.

"It is nice to belong to a unit so feared that its very absence wins victories."

"So far," von Baldur said, a bit cynically.

The first wave of Khelat infantrymen had been not the bravest of the Khelat, but deliberately chosen sacrificial and penal units. They were hit hard, and were beginning to fall back.

King Saleph landed the second wave, his regulars.

Now there were no more suicidal, frontal attacks.

Saleph had learned from the catastrophe on VI/III, and landed his soldiers here, there, and ordered their officers to always look for the flanks and attack there.

"Never send a man where you can send a bullet� or missile," was one of his standing orders, which had been given him by Riss, and hardly original with her.

The Khelat secured their footholds and began spreading out.

***

"I have a somewhat jubilant message here," King said. "Two of the invasion points have just linked up."

"Progress," Riss said. "I wonder what the casualty count is."

"Who cares," Goodnight said. "As long as it isn't one of us."

Friedrich stood, stretched.

"I suppose we might as well involve ourselves in the vulgar fray," he said.

"Might as well," Goodnight agreed. "We do need to look heroic, so there won't be any argument over the victory bonus."

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FIFTY-TWO � ^ � Star Risk was loading its gear for what it hoped was the final offensive.

Jasmine King, always being efficient, had her ditty bag already aboard von Baldur's Pride of Khelat.

She was ready to roll� but two things nagged at her. First was what Riss had said Prince Wahfer had messaged; and the second was the still unexplained word that Anya Davenport, their lobbyist, question mark former, was headed toward the Khelat System for some unknown reason.

Jasmine had figured out, long ago, that unanswered questions tended to turn around and bite freelancers in the butt. So she accessed a series of computer commands that Grok and she had prepared, set them in motion.

If not canceled, the program would query her in a week, on a daily basis. If the reply was not what had been set, or if anyone else tried to access the program, it would take instant action.

And both Jasmine and Grok doubted any third party could either stop it or figure out what its end use was.

"Are you coming out to play?" Riss asked, sticking her head into Jasmine's room.

"On the way," King said. "Just setting up some backdoor investment opportunities."

"We are proposing to support your landing, at�" Friedrich flipped three coins, considered the result. "�at Point X-Ray Tardis."

"Excellent," King Saleph enthused. "You have picked one of my weakest areas, that could desperately use your reinforcements."

"Attacking now," von Baldur said, nodding at the watch officer.

The Pride of Khelat cut its speed, used steering jets to drop out of its orbit around Irdis.

The great cruiser was heavily escorted with Inchcape's destroyers and half of Spada's p-boats.

What the king didn't know is von Baldur had specifically used a coded channel that Grok knew had been broken and was monitored by the Shaoki. Now their council would know Star Risk was in the picture, and commit its reserves accordingly.

"I went and said it very clear/I went and muttered in their ear," Friedrich muttered.

"Pardon, sir?" the watch officer asked.

"Nothing."

Von Baldur planned to make one sweep over the contested area, then divert to a second landing zone.

He smiled, thinking of all the lovely confusion he would be wreaking below.

Reinforcements boiled out of the small transport. One of them was Grok. He'd transshipped from the Pride on the way down, wanting a more immediate experience than just strafing and missiling.

Soldiers goggled at him, not knowing what to make.

The gigantic alien had puzzled on how to keep from being a blue-on-blue casualty by his own men, decided to have a shirt made out of the Khelat flag. That should slow any attackers down so that he could either reason with them or kill them if they didn't listen to logic.

"Come on," he bellowed. "For Khelat and freedom!"

Officers looked at each other.

The stranger seemed to know what he was doing�which he did. He'd been studying this particular city, and the problems the Khelat were having, since the landings began.

"In the name of God and the Continental Congress," he shouted, having no idea what that meant, but thinking it sounded martial as all hell.

The Khelat came out of their positions and followed him.

Grok spotted an entrenched crew-served weapon, dug a grenade off his harness, and lobbed it an impossible distance to land just under the horrified gunner's nose.

Not waiting for the explosion, Grok ran on, looking for another target.

Within the hour, the Shaoki defense had broken and begun falling back.

"Spada One this is Star Risk Two," Riss said, peering over the commander's hatch at the twisted landscape in front of her. "I have a target."

"This is One. Go," came back.

"On the map� from Helet, down one zero left two five."

"I read back, from Helet down one zero left two five."

"Target, cluster of bunkers, with some light artillery hiding behind it."

"This is One. We're coming in."

Riss involuntarily ducked as a flight of three Pyrrhus boats crashed down at her, pulled out bare meters from the ground, and rockets shot from their exterior tubes.

The rockets slammed home, and the ground roiled and became even more surrealistic.

"That's on it, One," Riss �cast. "Stand by for another mission."

Goodnight's mercenaries debouched from their lifters.

The road was quiet, and only a few craters pockmarked the low hills around it.

On the other side of the hills, about five kilometers, were the outskirts of the capital.

The men came off their transport with their blasters at port arms, and without needing to shout a lot, formed up in platoon formations and trotted toward the city.

Goodnight and his command group were just back of the point company. Chas, to his embarrassment, found himself breathing hard after only a couple of kilometers. I gotta keep remembering to work out, he thought.

Then a scatter of mortar rounds crashed into the side of the road, and he forgot about being tired.

Grok allowed himself to pose nobly atop the hill, looked about for more Shaoki to kill.

He didn't see any.

The Khelat were busy looting the bunkers or making sure all Shaoki casualties were corpses.

That didn't bother Grok�he always thought the human fetish for prisoners to be absurd.

***

Three Shaoki ships, large destroyers, came out of a canyon toward the Pride.

"Target acquired," a weapons officer reported.

Friedrich nodded. "Stand by for launch, on my command�"

All three Shaoki exploded, one wheeling down into the ground.

"What the�" Friedrich managed.

A speaker blared.

"This is Inchcape One. Thanks for the setup."

Von Baldur allowed his pique to pass.

"You know," he said to the watch officer, "I think this war might be just about over."