Steel Gauntlet (4 page)

“Well, Madame President, um, ah, we have, in our inventory, right now, that is,” Admiral Perry mumbled, “I believe, eleven.”

CHAPTER 3

He stood shivering in the rain-soaked field, not so much from the exhaustion of the last ten days’ march through the French countryside or the damp chill in the morning air, as from the sight of the French host, drawn up no more than 250 yards from where Henry’s army had finally taken up its battle lines. This was it. They would fight it out here at last, vastly outnumbered. His heart began to race, the chill and exhaustion forgotten.

At a spoken command from Vinetar Fletcher, the twenty men under his command pounded their wooden stakes into the ground before them. The other archers in Henry’s army were doing the same.

The field echoed hollowly with the sound of mallets pounding on wood, and then the chips flew everywhere as each man quickly sharpened the protruding end of his stake with the small hatchet he carried at his side. Hopefully, the stakes would impale the French cavalry.

“Lay your arrows,” Fletcher commanded. Quickly, expertly, he disposed of his arrows, two sheaves of twenty-four chisel-nosed cloth-yard killers, each of which could penetrate one inch of solid oak at a hundred yards. He struck them points down into the ground within easy reach. Earlier, Sir Thomas Erpingham had given orders to the cenetars, each of whom commanded one hundred archers, to have the vinetars assure that each man’s bow was strung before the army marched into line.

He stood behind his stake now, and notched an arrow onto his bowstring. Each man looked to Fletcher, who looked to the cenetar sitting on his horse. Evan Cooper, standing just to his right, said something, and when he looked over, Evan grinned ferociously, exposing the conspicuous gaps in his front teeth.

Incongruously, Fletcher was reminded of the old wives’ tale that a gap-toothed person was sexually insatiable. Well, that was true enough in Evan’s case, but the grin was reassuring just now. He grinned back.

“Draw!” Fletcher shouted, taking his command from the cenetar, who had also seen the signal to draw bows: huge bright flags that had just been raised from where King Henry and his entourage calmly sat on their warhorses. “Two hundred and fifty yards, lads!” Fletcher shouted. “Put ‘em in there!” The flags went down. “Loose arrows!” the vinetars screamed, and thousands of archers simultaneously let their arrows fly. The flags came up again. He bent and notched another arrow and drew his bow as the first volley arced one hundred feet into the air and then descended toward the French battle line. He lost sight of his own projectile almost instantly as it blended into the cloud that swarmed out to fall upon the waiting Frenchmen. The flags went down again. “Loose!” the vinetars screamed, and the second volley sped away from Henry’s archers with the sound of huge, whirring wings.

Standing in the second row of his cenetar, he could see clearly and hear the arrows impacting upon the Frenchmen. The sound of thudding and spanging echoed across the wide field. Horses screamed in agony as the descending volleys found unprotected backs and flanks. Some men-at-arms were unseated as their mounts plunged madly, but protected by their steel helmets and body armor, few were disabled at that range. King Henry was hoping the volleys would goad them into charging, get them close enough so massed aimed volleys could knock them off.

And then they did charge, one thousand armored horsemen rumbling across the field. The ground beneath Henry’s archers began to shake. As one, the archers stepped back six paces from the stakes to give themselves plenty of room to draw their bows once the cavalry was in range. Fletcher was very calm now, totally absorbed in what he was doing, oblivious to the destruction thundering down upon King Henry’s army.

“Shoot straight, me lads!” Fletcher shouted. “Send the goddamned frogs to hell!” Professor Jere Benjamin, dean of the M’Jumba University History Department, was suddenly and painfully called back to the twenty-fifth century by the insistent shrilling of his communications console and a sharp burning sensation in his right thigh. “Yipe!” He brushed furiously at the glowing cigar ash that had burned still another hole in his trousers.

“Jere?” Kevin Fike’s face appeared on the vidscreen. “Jere, are you there? Anything wrong?” Fike’s normally flushed face was even redder that morning, almost matching the color of his hair. When his face got that flushed, Benjamin knew that the president of M’Jumba University was dealing with something out of the ordinary.

“Uh, okay, Kev,” Benjamin muttered, massaging the hot spot on his thigh. Carefully, he marked his place in the book he had been reading and closed its covers. “I’m fine. What’s up?”

“Jere, something very important. Can you come over to my office right away?” Two men sat in President Fike’s office, one a white-haired, distinguished-looking gentleman in civilian clothes and the other a heavyset, grim-faced man in the dress red uniform of the Confederation Marine Corps assistant commandant. Professor Benjamin stood in the doorway transfixed with surprise. The civilian looked vaguely familiar.

“Come in, Jere, do come in,” President Fike said, rising from behind his desk. “I’d like you to meet Secretary Berentus, whom you know by reputation, and General Boxer, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. General Boxer is also chief of R and D for the Marines. Please, come in and sit down.” Slowly, Benjamin crossed the room and shook hands with the Confederation Secretary of War and the Marine assistant commandant. “Evan Boxer,” the general said, shaking Benjamin’s hand. He smiled, revealing conspicuous gaps in his front teeth. Evan? For a moment Benjamin did not know when he was.

“Something wrong, Professor?” Boxer asked.

Benjamin just stood there for an awkward moment, staring at the officer. “Uh, no, no,” he replied quickly, recovering himself.

“You look vaguely familiar, is all,” he explained, his face reddening. Then to himself: I’ve got to stop living in the past so much.

“Cigars?” President Fike asked brightly, offering a humidor. The cigars were imported from Old Earth, where the tobacco was grown and then hand-rolled according to an ancient technique. The several cigars in the humidor cost President Fike about a week’s salary. “Fidels,” he said proudly as each man gratefully took one and bit off its end.

Secretary Berentus produced a lighter and they all leaned toward him to catch the flame. As he took the light and drew on his cigar, Professor Benjamin self-consciously placed his elbow to cover the recent burn spot on his trousers. For several long moments the four were silent as they savored the delicious texture and aroma of the wonderfully expensive cigars.

“Ahhh!” Boxer sighed. “A cigar is a cigar, but a Fidel is a smoke.” The others laughed comfortably, enjoying their own Fidels enormously. “Professor,” the Marine asked after several more moments, “what do you know about tank warfare?”

“Ah! Yes! Ahem. Well,” Benjamin began, his nervousness gone—he was in his element. “As you know,” he continued, assuming his classroom manner, “the last major tank battle in history was fought in 2052 at Lake Mistassini, in Canada, on Old Earth, and involved the 1st and 7th Armored Divisions of the United States Army against the lightly armored forces of the Chibougamou League. The Americans fielded the M1D7 Abrams main battle tank and the Canadians destroyed almost all of them. It was the worst defeat of an armored force since the battle of Kursk, in Russia, in World War Two, where—”

“The Canadians used the Straight Arrow antitank rocket, didn’t they, Professor?” Secretary Berentus interrupted.

“Oh, yes. Indeed, sir. The Straight Arrow. The introduction of that weapon at Lake Mistassini virtually ended the use of tanks on the battlefield.” Benjamin leaned back in his chair and smiled confidently at the others. “Uh, why do you ask?”

“Professor,” General Boxer said, ignoring the question, “I understand you have a complete set of the technical manuals for the Straight Arrow.”

“Yessir,” Benjamin answered proudly. “They’re all original twenty-first-century editions. I also have the U.S. Army field manuals and training manuals for the entire weapons system, the launcher, the projectile, everything. Why, I even have ballistic tables—”

“Could you fire one of those things?” the Marine asked.

“Oh, yes, I believe I could!” Benjamin answered. The other three men looked at one another. “Uh, why do you ask?” Benjamin asked, repeating the question.

The Secretary of War looked at Boxer, who leaned forward in his chair. “Professor, after Mistassini, we kept the Straight Arrow in our inventory for over a hundred years, just in case somebody decided to use heavy armor somewhere again. Eventually the council”—he made an apologetic gesture toward Secretary Berentus—“decided their maintenance was too expensive, considering the unlikely event we’d really need them again, so they were all destroyed two hundred years ago. Now we are planning to build as many of them as quickly as we can. We suddenly need a lot of them. We managed to locate eleven in museums, and our weapons technicians are fabricating exact replicas right now. Your technical manuals would be invaluable to us. We could just ask for a loan and I’m sure you’d give them to us. But nobody alive knows how to fire the damned things properly or how to use them tactically against heavy—really heavy—armor. Except you. We hope.”

“Jere,” President Fike said, “they were very impressed with your book, The Employment of Armor in Land Warfare in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Secretary Berentus has requested the loan of your services for a while. I have agreed. There will be some travel involved. Can you hand over your department to Dr. Toppings?”

“Trish? Yes, yes, I believe she can handle things. How long would you need me?” He looked at Secretary Berentus, who nodded at the assistant commandant.

“Oh, two, three months, maybe,” Boxer said. “We’ll need you to help train our men in their use and then oversee the weapons’ deployment in the, uh, active theater. We plan to gather on Arsenault a select group of officers and NCOs from the strike teams that’ll be making the initial assault landing. Arsenault’s the Confederation Armed Forces’ training world. You and a task force of technicians will train them there in the use of the Straight Arrow, and you, Professor, will teach them what you know about armored warfare tactics.”

“Somebody’s using tanks?” Benjamin asked, as if the thought had only just struck him. It had. “Who?

Where? It’s unbelievable!”

“Somebody is, Professor, but I can’t tell you who or where just now,” Boxer replied. “We need you to help train our men. And, Professor? Every word of this conversation is classified top secret. I’m sure you understand.”

Benjamin looked bewildered. “But why me, gentlemen? I’m not the only expert in this field. Why, Dr.

Post over at the University of Nammuoi is fully as qualified as me to—”

“Because, Professor, you are available, and the fewer people involved in this operation the better,” Boxer growled. “Besides,” he added, “we’ve all read your books.”

“Professor,” Secretary Berentus said, leaning forward and touching Benjamin lightly on his right knee,

“if you can’t oblige us, we will understand, but let me assure you, your help is vital and we are begging for it. Hundreds, thousands, of our Marines and soldiers will die if we don’t do this right. We do not have the time to go to Dr. Post and convince him to help us. We need your decision right now.” Professor Benjamin stared silently at the others. Then he sighed. “Very well, gentlemen. You can count on me. When do I leave?”

Secretary Berentus rose from his chair and pumped Benjamin’s hand vigorously. “This afternoon, Professor,” he replied.

Benjamin stood, slightly bemused, absentmindedly shaking the Secretary’s hand. Then he turned to General Boxer. “Sir, I have studied war all my life, but I have never even held a weapon in my hands.

Will I see these weapons used in real combat?”

The Marine shifted nervously in his chair before answering. “Yes, Professor, there’s, uh, a good chance you might. But,” he added quickly, “there’d never be any danger to you personally, I can assure you of that.”

Yes, Professor Benjamin thought, his pulse quickening, I bet: no more danger than Henry’s archers faced at Agincourt.

The flight to Arsenault on the
CNSS Sergeant Frank Crean
took thirty days, standard. During that time Professor Benjamin was accorded flag-rank treatment.

“Your mission,” Assistant Commandant Boxer explained before he left, “is to train Marine officers and NCOs in the use of the Straight Arrow and in antiarmor tactics. They, in turn, will spread out to the units scheduled to make the assault and train the men who will go up against St. Cyr’s forces. You may be required to accompany a follow-on assault element, just to be on hand if the task force commander needs any advice after the initial landing. For sure, we want you to be on the Fleet Admiral’s flagship during the preliminary invasion, in case your expertise is needed. You’ll go as a civilian adviser to the Fleet commander.”

While on board the
Crean
, Benjamin received a full intelligence briefing on the Diamundian situation, especially concerning what was known about the armored force St. Cyr had managed to assemble.

Unfortunately, St. Cyr had closed down all communication and commerce with the outside world once he seized power on Diamunde, so not many details were known about conditions there. Analysts believed he was consolidating his power and would soon ask for formal recognition from the Confederation. The Council of Worlds had concluded, after a heated debate, not to deal with the usurper, but to invade and oust him with military force. This was done over the strenuous objections of many Council members, particularly those afraid their financial interests on Diamunde would be threatened if the Confederation invaded.

“He’ll be ready for us,” the briefing officer had said, “but what he doesn’t know is that we’ll be ready for him.” Professor Benjamin said nothing, but he hoped the briefer’s optimism was justified. But as a historian who had studied many military campaigns in past wars, he was fully aware that in battle nothing ever went as expected.