"Second Section. We're transport. Something about getting them all to a pass west of here. Let's go! I've got two more drops to make today!"
"Rotted Gods, man, I just got here!" Sinklar bellowed. In desperation he turned and waved at MacRuder. "Mac, get some of those goons hopping! Clear those barracks of our people and let's get loaded. Detail some of those guys to find the other Groups. Let's go!" And with his new pack on his back and his assault rifle hooked into his armor, he scrambled up the ramp. Was that what command was all about? Just make it up as you go?
Sinklar stowed his gear, wondering what to do next, and went down to see if he could orchestrate the growing confusion. One by one, he directed the raw recruits to crash benches.
He glanced out of the LC and saw her as she came up the ramp, following an armored rabble which evidently made up
A Group. Sink's breath caught in his throat. Gretta's hair hung around her shoulder, a swinging mahogany brown wave behind her too-well formed features. Her blue eyes caught his and held. She stopped, slim body silhouetted in the afternoon light.
Sink started forward, mouth oddly dry. "Gretta?"
She smiled, eyes lighting. "You're all right? Oh, Sinklar, how I worried about you." Then she stepped into his arms, hugging him tightly.
"Sergeant Fist?" Came a call from the flight tech.
"Guess that's me."
"We'll talk when this is all settled." She winked at him and pushed him forward.
Sink sighed and followed the man back to engage in a paperwork nightmare.
Sink didn't meet his other corporals until the LCs had lifted. Mac introduced him to Hauws, First for C Group;
Ayms for D; Kap was first for E; and Shiksta for heavy ordnance. Of them all, only he, Gretta and Mac, had seen combat experience. The rest, including the privates, were totally green, fresh draftees from various parts of the Empire. Some didn't even speak Regan.
"All right," Sink told them as he leaned back against the crash webbing. "Mac, you and Gretta go out first. We'll assume we're not landing in an ambush. Pray to the Rotted Gods intelligence is better than that. I looked at the map. We're being set down in the pass. Off to the right is a rocky knoll. I want a thin perimeter laid out around that knoll as best you can organize it. Groups C, D, and E will fill in the gaps. Shiksta, I want the heavy stuff set up where you can give covering fire to any part of the perimeter. Understood? Good, let's hope nobody shoots at us."
They all nodded assent.
"Now, the first thing you do is dig in. Get your people down in the dirt."
Hauws asked, "What about regulations on health and exposure to foreign soils? I mean, I was a health inspector on Ashtan and you'd be surprised at the organisms that grow in Targan soil."
Sinklar blinked. "And you'd be surprised at how a human body looks when a pulse gun explodes it. Dig or die. You make the choice. Any other questions, Corporal?"
Hauws swallowed. "No, sir."
"Uh, sir?" Kap asked. "From what you lined out, how do we justify quick mobility
as stipulated in the attack command manual?"
"What do we attack?" Sinklar asked dryly.
"Their assault columns, sir." Kap's red face screwed up with concern, as he struggled to remember. "It says in the manual that assault columns can be disrupted by rapid hit and run tactics. Such actions depend on rapid deployment and quick mobility." He jerked his head, as if satisfied he'd gotten the rote right.
Sinklar pursed his lips. "I read the manual Corporal Kap. That manual killed exactly ninety-seven percent of the Second Section in Kaspa. This is not an assault on a planet. This is a different kind of war — one the manuals don't talk about."
He looked into their suddenly nervous eyes. Mouths worked silently. They waited, jittery at the thought of hearing more heresy. Ayms was wringing his hands. Shiksta tapped his foot energetically, eyes lowered.
Sink nodded at their disquiet. "Yeah, I know. No one has fought a war like this for a long time. They call it social revolution. In the old times, it was called a guerrilla war. You wil rarely see the people shooting at you. They won't come in assault columns. They'll fire out of the dark, hit when you least expect it, where you least suspect it."
"But that's in violation of Imperial honor," Hauws declared indignantly. "That's savage!"
"And terribly human. It's the oldest form of war, one someone either reinvented, or dug out of the history books." And at that he frowned. "I wonder."
Mac cocked his head. "Boys, you better pry the wax out of your ears. Gretta and I told you. We been there. What are you onto, Sink?"
"Just thinking. Two hundred years ago, at the start of the Imperial period, the governments had an interplanetary conference on war and the manner of its conduct. At the time, comprehensive and sophisticated programs of military education swept Free Space. That's where the concepts of honor in war were founded. I wonder, could it have been a political attempt to alienate the people from guerrilla war? Social programming by the political elite?"
"Got me" Mac told him. "I never heard the term before."
Sinklar nodded. "Yeah, well, like I said, it's old. I wonder if the Empire has any idea what it's up against?"
"So, if it gets too bad, the Star Butcher will show up and the Targans will melt!" Ayms grinned and looked back and forth.
"Perhaps," Sinklar mumbled, lost in his thoughts. "Or perhaps the masterminds behind this revolt have dug something out of the past to handle the Butcher, too."
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the LCs dipped and decelerated at five gs. Idly, Sinklar wondered if they ever slowed gradually.
He got one wish. No one shot at them as they unloaded. He even got his perimeter established in the rocky ground and all the ordnance set up with good covering fire. One thing about green troops, they let him make an innovative deployment without arguing the rule book with him.
They didn't get hit until dark. Sink got to test his strategy first hand. From that moment on Second Section learned what war was all about — but they only took eleven casualties: three dead and eight wounded by the time dawn reddened the eastern sky.
Skyla had never considered the impact Staffa had made on her life; He'd always been there. She chewed her lip, feeling uneasy. She found herself lonely with him gone.
He'd been worried about her. That thought stuck as she leaned back from the console in her small bridge. Tapping a stylus, she studied the vector on which the CV should have returned to Ashtan. In her plush personal cruiser, she mapped the radiation spike and pinpointed the direction in which the highly dissipated reaction was moving. The acute sensors picked up positron dancing out of the past to annihilate themselves. Fro the frequency, her superior instruments calculated half-life possibility and tied the origin to Staffa's acceleration.
No, he hadn't returned to Ashtan. Instead, he'd laid his tracks straight for Etaria, and what? One of those Priestesses? He had the choice of how many women in the Itreatic
Asteroids? Or the pick of women from any of the conquered worlds, for that matter. No, this was Staff a being clever. Etaria remained on open port.
From there, he could lose his trail.
The computer locked a line-of-sight laser onto receive in the Itreatic Asteroids. Tasha's anxious face formed in the monitor. "You've got a fix?" he asked.
"Etaria," she told him. "I'm off. I'll holler if I find anything. Be ready."
"Affirmative. and good luck."
She killed the connection and studied the course plot, the worry-cap easy on her head. To hesitate is to lose the trail. Damn you, Staffa, why are you putting me through this?
Skyla laid in the course and settled into her cushioned command chair. No matter what Staffa might think, he didn't have the skills to be turned loose among civilized people. He might be a brilliant tactician and a superb mercenary, but what did he know about the vipers out there? Especially ones like she had grown up around?