War To The Knife (6 page)

“Yes, Sir.” She hesitated. “May I come too, please, Sir? I haven’t been in the field yet.”

“Not this time. Your job is to take over Captain Vima’s agents and whip them into line as quickly as possible. When you’ve done that, we’ll see what can be arranged.”

“Yes, Sir.” She bit her lip to hide her disappointment.

He smiled as he watched her walk to the door. It had been a very satisfying week. He’d earned a profitable bribe in untraceable gold from an off-planet fur trader; he’d found a way to get rid of the execrable Captain Vima; and he was on the verge of recovering something the Security Service had been trying to retrieve for years, ever since that idiot Major-General Strato had so stupidly signed it. If he succeeded, it would guarantee him at least a letter of commendation from the Commissioner of the Security Service on Bactria, if not a medal for outstanding achievement. Life was indeed good.

March 1st 2850 GSC

IN THE WILDERNESS

Captain Tredegar held out his hand in greeting. “Good to see you again, Lieutenant – but I understand it’s Captain now?”

“Yes, as of yesterday. General Allred has major’s insignia waiting for you at HQ.” Dave grinned at his opposite number as he shook hands. The twilight was deepened by the tangled mass of brush, scrub and trees growing well above head height, making it prematurely gloomy on the narrow trail. He sneezed as dust thrown up by the airvans’ fans got into his nostrils.

“Looks like both of us are going up in the world. When did you get here?”

“We arrived at that hill just before dawn.” He gestured to its bulk low on the horizon. “We laagered up during the daylight hours under camouflage netting, then flew to meet you as soon as the sun set.”

“Good – then the Bactrians probably haven’t spotted you, or us. We’ve been moving very slowly and carefully so as not to raise dust or leave clearly visible tracks that would give away our position. How many are with you?”

“Two pilots for the airvans, plus two of the General’s security detachment who volunteered to come with me. I understand I’m to get more volunteers from you to make up the rest of my patrol.” He gestured to the small convoy of vehicles behind Tredegar, who grimaced.

“That’ll be difficult. More than half of us are wounded to a greater or lesser extent. We’re relying on our able-bodied personnel to get the rest of us through.”

“Were you hurt?” Dave asked with real concern.

“I was too close to an explosion. It blew me into a big rock and broke some ribs. Nothing time won’t heal, but it’s very painful. Deep breathing’s no fun at all.”

“I believe it! How about if I take just six of your people? I can offer them an airvan ride back to base instead of having to bump through the bush for another hundred kilometers.”

“That should be enough incentive to make
everyone
volunteer! I think we can spare half a dozen.”

“Thanks. We brought you as much in the way of medical supplies and rations as we could fit on top of and around our long-range fuel tanks. We need them to reach the Matopo Hills and return, but they take up a lot of space in our cargo compartment, I’m afraid.”

“Thanks very much. I’ll have my people help you load them into our vehicles, then we’ll eat before moving on to make camp for the night. We’ll talk later.”

They ate a hurried meal from ration packs, building small smokeless fires to boil water for coffee and fill vacuum flasks for later use; then they moved on several kilometers to make a dark, fireless camp in a grove of spindly trees. The vehicles were dispersed beneath camouflage netting while Tamsin took both airvans to a nearby hill and parked them in the shadows cast by several large boulders, also camouflaging them against observation.

Dave joined Tredegar inside his vehicle, a battered six-wheeled transport. “I’m surprised this thing’s made it so far through the bush,” he observed as he climbed into the rear compartment.

“I am too. We have one captured armored car that we’re using to break trail, to ease the load on the other transports. That helps.”

“Uh-huh. The General’s arranging airvan transport once you reach the Renosa River. He’ll have you leave these vehicles there, where the Bactrians aren’t likely to stumble across them. That way they won’t break a trail all the way to his headquarters. He doesn’t want any clues that might lead the enemy there.”

“Can’t say I blame him. Show me on the map.” Dave pointed out the rendezvous, and Tredegar nodded. “We’re no more than two days from there. I’ll be glad to get back to a decent bed and rest these ribs properly!”

“What can you tell me about the Matopo base? I’ve never been there.”

“It was a deep complex of natural caves in a hillside. Miners found it soon after Laredo was settled. They carved tunnels between the caves and further into the hillside looking for worthwhile minerals, but didn’t find much. We expanded it using laser cutters and made it our regional headquarters when we switched to guerrilla warfare. Trouble is, I don’t know how you’re going to get in. While we were waiting to escape we heard lots of explosions and felt the rock trembling. I think the Bactrians blew up everything.”

“Where were you? How did you get away?”

“We used a big cave with a small, well-hidden entrance as our transport pool. It was connected to the main base by a half-kilometer tunnel. We’d rigged the head of that tunnel with explosives to stop any enemy assault coming in from the transport cave. After the Bactrians came in through the front entrance, I took command of the survivors and evacuated them down to the transport pool as a back way out. I waited until the enemy was closing in, then blew the tunnel. I don’t think they knew about the transport cave – we never saw a sign of them anywhere near it. We waited there in silence for three days while they did whatever they were doing in the base, then headed out after they’d left.”

“That was a damn fine piece of work,” Dave congratulated him. “What about rations and medical supplies? You said you had a lot of wounded.”

“We made do with what we had. It wasn’t enough. We’ve buried nine people on the way here.” A shadow seemed to pass across the Captain’s weary face. “We were pretty hungry, too, except for what food we were able to hunt. Your cargo’s a Godsend to us! At least we can eat properly now, and regain our strength.” He reached for a vacuum flask. “Let me pour us some coffee, then I’ll show you on the map the location of the transport cave and the best approach to it. It’s well-hidden enough to keep your airvans out of sight while you try to find a way back into the base.”

“Sounds good to me.”

~ ~ ~

RESISTANCE HEADQUARTERS

Jake rapped on the wood frame around the entrance to the alcove. “You ready to eat?”

Marvin looked up from the camp cot on which he was sitting. “Now that you mention it, I’m pretty hungry. What’s for supper?” He rose to his feet, stretching.

“Whatever ration pack you choose, courtesy of the Bactrian Army. We’ve been feeding ourselves at their expense for a long time now.”

“Battlefield captures?” They set off down the connecting tunnel.

“Yes, and convoys we ambush, and corrupt quartermasters who’ll take a bribe to look the other way while we ransack their warehouses. All our equipment comes from the invaders now. We used up our own stocks during the initial battles.”

They arrived at the mess hall at the same time as General Allred. “This is my wife Gloria,” he introduced the woman at his side to Marvin. “She’s the only surviving Minister from Laredo’s pre-war Cabinet, and as such she’s the
de facto
President of the Council of the Resistance. Gloria, this is Marvin Ellis, the Vice-President’s emissary.”

“I was only a Deputy Minister, darling,” Gloria corrected, “and Vice-President Johns was also a Cabinet member.” She was short; Marvin thought she had probably been plump at one time, before the privations of three years of clandestine warfare had taken their toll. Her gray hair and tired, lined face bore witness to the strain. She held out her hand to him, and he took it respectfully.

“Yes,” her husband objected, “but she’s off-planet as head of our Government-in-Exile, so she can’t be a member of the Council.”

“Oh, well, if you want to be picky…” They all laughed. “Did Jake tell you the news from Caristo?” she asked Marvin.

“No – what news?”

“Let’s get some food before we talk. I’m starving!” She led the way towards a counter where boxes of ration packs were laid out, ready for diners to make their choice. Each of them selected a pack, heated its contents, and filled a cup with water or coffee; then they headed for an empty table. There were few others eating, all looking tired and subdued.

Once they’d settled down on the benches, Jake took up the narrative. “Last night the Bactrians flew in a new Captain to take over the garrison at Caristo. Sergeant-Major Garnati had a drink with Weems – one of my people – over lunch today. He says the new Captain doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. He reckons he must have upset someone senior, who sent him to Caristo to punish him; but he thinks he’ll be more of a punishment to the garrison, to add to their sorrows at being stuck out there at the ass-end of the planet. Also, there’s apparently a big parade scheduled in Banka at the end of the month. It hasn’t been officially announced yet and Garnati doesn’t know what it’s all about, but the new Captain says he does. According to him every garrison will have to send some of its troops to take part. Caristo will send one of its two platoons.”

“I’d pay good money to watch that,” the General said with a grin. “Like most of their remote garrisons in backwaters like Caristo, its soldiers are among the worst troops the Bactrians have got. It’s a punishment posting. If they’re going to be in the parade, they’re going to drag down everyone else. It’s going to be a disaster!”

“You know it,” Jake agreed. “What’s more, their equipment hasn’t been properly maintained in months. They’ve got to send two of their four assault shuttles to the parade; but two are hangar queens, one’s overdue for a major overhaul, and the only one in flying order can’t move because all their pilots are overdue for their annual check rides!”

The others laughed. “So I guess they won’t be going,” Marvin said.

Jake shook his head. “According to Garnati, if they don’t show up heads will roll. His new boss is terrified one of them might be his. Garnati says he’s got a buddy in the Military Governor’s office in Banka. He’s begged her to organize a maintenance team for him on the quiet, without anyone knowing. They’ll overhaul the shuttles, re-certify his pilots and bring supplies for his birds – they’re almost out of fuel cartridges, reaction mass, munitions and other supplies. She’s promised to get them there ASAP, along with a couple of drill instructors to pick the best-performing members of his garrison and smarten them up for the parade.”

“I wonder if we could steal some of those shuttle supplies?” the General mused.

“Why would you want shuttle supplies?” Marvin asked, puzzled.

“For our shuttles, of course – what else?”

“I didn’t know you had any.” He tasted his food, and grimaced. “What
is
this stuff? ‘Sausage, beans and rice’ sounded OK on the label, but it tastes weird!”

Gloria informed him, chuckling, “We call those sausages ‘Frankenweiners’. The best I can say about them is that they’re not actually poisonous, even though they sometimes taste like it. The Bactrians seem to like them, though, judging by the number we’ve captured from them.”

“They must have cast-iron stomachs. Oh, well, if it doesn’t kill them I daresay it won’t kill me. About those shuttles?”

Jake nodded. “We got them from the Bactrians too.” He took a mouthful of his chili stew, chewed it, and swallowed before continuing. “The day before they invaded, they sent an advance party on a commercial freighter that arrived in orbit claiming it was delivering cargo. The containers they sent to our Orbital Patrol and Customs space station were filled with Bactrian Marines instead of freight. They broke out and took it over as soon as the main landing force appeared, to prevent us using the station’s missiles to defend the planet. They were helped by four assault shuttles that launched from the freighter during the attack.”

He picked up his cup of water and drank. “Some of the station’s crew managed to hide in a cargo compartment near the docking bay. After the fighting died down and the Bactrians had relaxed, they sneaked into the bay and attacked the four Marines guarding the shuttles. When the smoke cleared, a few of our pilots were still alive. Two of them put our survivors aboard two assault shuttles and brought them planetside. Two others took the remaining shuttles at full throttle into head-on collisions with two of the eight Bactrian transports. Each was a tramp merchant freighter carrying a full regiment of troops with all their equipment and supplies.”

“Brave people,” Marvin observed, even as he mentally winced at the thought of the carnage that must have ensued. Most assault shuttles weighed fifty to eighty tons and could reach one-twentieth to one-tenth of light speed in space. Even lowly tramp merchant ships weighed one-quarter to three-quarters of a million tons and cruised at similar speeds. A head-on collision between two such masses at those velocities would have unleashed kinetic energy far greater than the power of a nuclear warhead. Survival would have been out of the question for anyone aboard.

“Very brave. The Bactrians sent in eight regiments in the first wave, but lost a quarter of their force before it even entered orbit. We bled the rest over the next six weeks until they brought in reinforcements and swamped us by sheer weight of numbers – even fully mobilized, we only had four regiments. We used what we learned from the captured shuttles to eavesdrop on their communications networks and jam their fire control systems and weapons. We also figured out how to disrupt their blind-flying systems, which cost them several dozen shuttles in collisions or crashes on their way to landing sites at night or in bad weather. That disrupted their assaults until they could regroup and bring in reinforcements. While they were disorganized we’d hit them and inflict a lot of casualties before they could fight back effectively. We also captured a lot of their heavy weaponry and turned it against them, as well as enough spares and supplies to keep our two captured shuttles flying until last year. If we could get our hands on more fuel, reaction mass and ammo for them, we might be able to use them for another operation.”