The Forlorn Hope (5 page)

None of the shrapnel had penetrated the bottom of the fuel tank. Del and Churchie were unmarked—by the bombs themselves.

The trench hissed and steamed with the half-cured mash still dripping onto the coals. The mercenaries' uniforms were of tough material, but not all the coals had been quenched when the men threw themselves down. Churchie could feel the cracking of fabric that had melted into the flesh of his shoulders and buttocks. His hands and scalp had not been exposed to the coals directly, but the steaming brew had parboiled all his bare skin.

The vat, the brew, and Churchie's dreams of wealth beyond a vault-blower's were ruined utterly.

Rising, the lanky soldier kicked the tank. It thumped, but it would not ring. Screaming with rage, he kicked it again.

“Churchie, I'm burned,” said Del Hoybrin, and good
God
he was! The big man had crawled into the trench face down, as if it were not a fire-pit. He had saved his bollocks at hideous cost to his knees and elbows.

Dwyer drew his wrist knife. The nickel steel of its blade had been collapsed to crystals of four times their natural density. It was a day's work on a diamond sharpener to give it shaving edges, but it would hold those edges even if it were punched through body armor. Short-gripping the blade, Churchie began to separate the bigger man's flesh from his uniform. He worked with a surgeon's skill, oblivious to what had moments before been the ungodly pain of his own burns. Under his breath Dwyer muttered, “Shouldn't have sold our goddam wound cream to those hick miners who thought they could get high on it.… But don't worry, baby, we'll get you relieved and fixed up down the hill, just as soon as—” the sky flashed—“
got
the bastard!”

The starship's lengthy disintegration brightened the heavens and Churchie's stainless-steel smile. He watched with practiced eyes as the bomb load separated into eight fireballs on parallel trajectories. He sheathed his knife with the care its point demanded, then grabbed his companion by the arm. “Come on, Del,” he said, “let's get the hell back to where we're supposed to be so we can call for a relief.” He picked up both guns by their slings.

“Churchie, there's bombs,” said Trooper Hoybrin. He pointed at the fireballs with an index finger as thick as a broom-handle. “Shouldn't we—you know?”

The gangling veteran clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said. “The first load was for us, keep our heads down. These aren't clusters. I'd suspect those bastards in the buildings and the spacer are going to have something to do besides laugh at us in a little bit!”

*   *   *

When it was too late, Vladimir Ortschugin realized the point that he had missed. The Republicans might have been willing to deal with the
Katyn Forest
on normal business terms if she had landed in their territory. Since she had not done so, however, it was well worth their time to see that the starship stayed on the ground until they captured it. The Smiricky Complex itself was not the target—it could not fly away from the onrushing Republican columns.

All eight armor-piercing bombs of the second stick were aimed at the grounded starship.

Ortschugin and Thorn could watch the missiles swell on the screens, but they could do nothing to stop them. The crewman had fumbled out a golden crucifix at the end of a rosary. Tobacco juice, unnoticed, was drooling from the corner of the First Officer's mouth.

The first bomb landed a hundred meters short. The earth quivered, then shot up in a steep, black geyser from the buried explosion. Almost simultaneously, one of the next trio hit the
Katyn Forest
astern. The vessel pitched like a canoe in the rapids. Both men on the bridge were thrown to the deck.

The impact of the bomb was followed by its slamming detonation within the Power Room. Dissonant vibrations made the thick hull slither. They drove the surviving crew to shrieks of pain. In Hold Two, a cargo grab whipped. The rotary teeth which had been hooking ingots into the feed pipe snatched a crewman's leg. She screamed, but the operator was unconscious and there was no one to prevent her from being hauled all the way up the twenty-five centimeter pipe.

No one else died in the hold. Captain Kawalec was alone in the Power Room when the bomb exploded on the main fusion unit.

On the ground, the
Katyn Forest
supplied its internal needs from the auxilliary power unit forward. The main bottle was cold when it fractured. That saved the ship and most of Smiricky #4. It would not have mattered one way or the other to the Captain, who must have been within touching distance of the bomb when its two-hundred kilo charge went off. The five survivors of the crew shed more tears for the main drive than they ever thought of doing for Her Excellency Nadia Kawalec, however.

Ortschugin rose to his feet. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. The instruments worked perfectly. The emergency tell-tales pulsing for the Power Room hull and the main fusion unit left no doubt as to what the damage had been. The bearded First Officer pushed the general address system. “Shut off all equipment and report,” he croaked to the crew. “The bombing's over for now, you don't have to worry.” After a moment he keyed the system again and added, “This is Ortschugin speaking, the Acting Captain.”

CHAPTER TWO

The lobby and counter area of the warehouse were silent except for the scraping of the front door which Albrecht Waldstejn had unlocked to enter. Enclosed, the fumes of the explosives were more noticeable than they had been outside. The Lieutenant's stomach roiled, not only at the odor. There were splashes of blood on the lobby floor.

He stepped forward. “Hodicky!” he shouted. “Quade! Where the hell are you?”

Hodicky popped out of the main storeroom so abruptly that Waldstejn cursed despite his relief. “Private Quade all right too?” he asked in his next breath.

“Oh, yes sir,” the little enlisted man said. “Q's up on the roof, checking the part we can't get to from below because of the racks. If it's all like this—” he waved at the lobby roof with its bright splotches of sky—“just the sheeting and not the beams, we'll have a quick fix done before dark.”

Somebody finally shut off the siren at Headquarters. Waldstejn had not realized how irritating its distant throb had been until it ceased. “How do you plan to fix that?” the officer asked, duplicating Hodicky's upward wave. Maybe, he was thinking, they could set a fan in the front doorway blowing out to vent some of that damned sweetish stench.

“Well, sir,” Private Hodicky said brightly, “the plastic sheeting for waterproofing the insides of dug-outs came in yesterday. We'll use it ourselves instead of issuing it. And I just checked stores. There's thirty liters of spray epoxy, that'll be plenty to tack the sheets down with.” He frowned. “Now, we're not talking blast-proof, but a quick fix to keep out most of the rain—that we can have up while it's still daylight.”

“Well, I'll be damned,” Waldstejn said. He nodded his head in agreement. “Just the two of you, though? You don't need some more bodies?”

Hodicky snorted. “You think they're—” he thumbed in the general direction of Headquarters—“going to assign more men because
you
ask them, sir? No, Q and I'll handle things, don't you worry.”

The Private glanced upward. The roof quivered thinly to the touch of boot soles. “Ah, sir,” Hodicky said as he eyed the roof, “you wouldn't mind if a couple bottles of gin evaporated from the booze locker, would you?” Immediately within the main storehouse were two large steel cabinets. One held small arms and ammunition, the other held the battalion's medical supplies and the officers' liquor rations. Their hasp locks would open to Waldstejn's thumbprint alone. “There was a lot of stuff flying around a few minutes ago. Some it it probably busted a bottle or two, don't you think?” Hodicky hopefully met his superior's eyes.

“I think,” said Lieutenant Waldstejn very carefully, “that if anything evaporates from that locker, you will get the same three years in the glasshouse that Quartermaster Stanlas got when I caught him.”

The silence was broken only by the measured pad of Quade's boots, coming nearer along the ridge line. “However,” the Supply Officer continued, “I will very cheerfully withdraw two bottles of gin from my own ration as a present for you and Private Quade when you've finished with the roof.”

“Mary, you scared me, sir!” Hodicky gasped through his smile. “We'll get right on it.” He turned to dart back into the store room. But as the little man did so, he paused and turned again. “Sir,” he said, “I ought to just keep my mouth shut, I know, but.… Look, it's just as much against regs to issue your own booze to enlisted men as it is to let a couple bottles disappear. What's the deal?”

Waldstejn smiled, more at himself than at the question. “Look, Hodicky,” he said, “if you get caught and my ass comes up on charges as a result—fine. I trusted somebody I shouldn't have and I got burned for it like I deserved. I never swore to anybody I'd make sure enlisted men got pissed on beer and officers on spirits. But my accounts are going to be straight because
I
say they will, not for some damned regulation. Now, go fix the roof while I take a look at what's happened inside.” He walked toward the counter's gate.

“It's like you said, Pavel,” Private Quade called from above. His head was silhouetted against one of the larger rips in the lobby ceiling.

“Come on down and help me carry,” Hodicky shouted back. “We're in a hurry.”

Hodicky waved the Lieutenant through into the stores area and followed him. In a low voice—though there was no one nearer than Quade, whose rapid footsteps were slanting toward the ladder at the back of the building—the Private said, “Ah, sir, I noticed lots more rat droppings than we'd thought when I was checking things out a moment ago. The shipment of warfarin hasn't come in—” it had, but Hodicky had checked the invoice himself—“and you know how they give Q the creeps. While you're in the locker, why don't you withdraw some digitalis from medical stores. I'll lace some flour with that and put it out for Q, you know. I don't like it when he gets upset.”

The holes in the roof now lighted the warehouse more than the glow strips did. Waldstejn frowned at his subordinate in puzzlement. If Hodicky knew that digitalis was poisonous, then he did not have some wild-hare idea of using it to get high on. The officer sighed. “All right,” he said, “but be careful. You two are the only staff I'll get from the Major, and I don't need you keeling over with heart attacks.”

“Thank you, sir,” the Private said. He began to walk briskly down the aisles toward the back door of the building.

“If this bombing means what I'm afraid it does,” Waldstejn called after him, “I guess we're going to have worse problems than rats in a little bit.”

Maybe you will, Pavel Hodicky thought as he jogged between racks of boots and uniforms. For the Privates, though, a couple of rats named Breisach and Ondru were the number one problem. If Hodicky did not take care of it fast with spiked gin, Q was going to do it his own way. At the moment, Hodicky was still uncertain which result frightened him more.

CHAPTER THREE

The pounding on the door was audible over the gnat-swarm keen of the computer terminal. Private Quade wore a taut expression as he returned to Waldstejn from the front lobby. “I shouted through the door like you say,” the Private explained. “He won't go away. You let me—” Quade drew a trembling breath—“and I'll get him to leave.”

“No, wait here,” the Lieutenant said. His desk beside the terminal was littered with computer tape and hand-written notes. It was a rush job and he was a long way from finishing it. Quade's condition, however, indicated that Waldstejn had better take care of the problem fast. In many ways, Jirik Quade was an ideal subordinate. He was dogged, and he would accomplish without complaint any task within his capacity. Quade seemed honest; he was as strong as men half again his size; and his utter loyalty to Waldstejn, the first commanding officer who had treated him like a human being, was embarrassing.

Still, you do not ignore your guard dog when it starts to growl at children; and Waldstejn did not intend to ignore Private Quade when he started to shake with frustration and rage. The Major could wait for his figures.

The Supply Officer did not bother to close his tunic front, but he did snatch up the equipment belt which he had looped over a drawer pull. He carried it in his left hand. The weight of the radio and holstered pistol made it swing as he strode.

There was a rustle from the other end of the warehouse. Private Hodicky was scrambling out of his sleeping quarters at the back. This was Quade's night for late duty, but Hodicky could hear the knocking and shouts; and he could extrapolate an outcome as well as his Lieutenant could. Waldstejn decided to handle the problem himself anyway. His rank and his assurance that he was acting on instructions of the battalion commander might quiet someone determined to get supplies on the orders of some lower officer.

Besides, it would give Waldstejn a chance to unload some of the frustration which he owed properly to the Major's request.

The knocking, paced but determined, continued as the Lieutenant strode through the lobby. When the call from Headquarters came through, Waldstejn had ordered Quade to letter a sign for the front door: CLOSED BY ORDER OF BATTALION COMMANDER. NO REQUESTS ACCEPTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Now as Waldstejn threw open the door he shouted, “What's the matter with you? Can't you read the bloody sign?” Then he blinked. Switching to English and a subdued tone, he said, “Oh, ah, Vladimir. Look, I've got another fifteen, thirty minutes work for my CO and there's nobody else here who can run the computer. I really can't even talk to you now.”