"But I will not authorize a Dragon. Not now. A visit by a Dragon is like an act of the old Hebrew deity, Yahweh: a force beyond human will-or Wyzhnyny will-to resist. Early on, the Wyzhnyny probably wondered what had happened to the Dragons that hit them initially, but by now they've more or less convinced themselves they'll never see them again.
"If I send it now, and it leaves after simply destroying an artillery battalion, it will seem to the Wyzhnyny we're toying with them. It would break their will, and what we learned after that wouldn't be worth much.
"The wolf packs are a much lower order of deity. The flakwagons will bring down some of them, and some of the artillery will escape. A trade-off that will favor us, but still a trade-off. And they'll assume we don't use them more than we do because we don't like the losses. Which we don't.
"Any questions or comments?"
"One comment, sir. The sun is low here now: about thirty degrees above the horizon. If the wolf packs get here soon enough, and attack from the northwest, the flak gunners will have the sun in their eyes."
"I'll tell them. And, Pyong, this request hasn't hurt your reputation here. You've been doing a fine job, and we respect your opinions." Kulikov paused. "Just don't overdraw your account. Now I've got to end this session and get those squadrons on their way. Kulikov out."
Pak stared at the box on a cart. "Thank you, Marshal. Pak out."
He looked at the clock readout on the screen. The marines, it seemed to him, would make it in time.
Pak put the evacuation on hold as soon as the wolf packs entered the atmosphere. Then he watched the attack. It was he who'd brought the marine crews into harm's way; the least he could do was watch and root for them.
The Wyzhnyny hadn't anticipated them, and the marines took full advantage of the sun, and surprise. Their first sweep focused on the flakwagons, and they destroyed about half of them. But given the volume of fire, a number of howitzers were also hit, some with hatches open. There were some splendid explosions. The second sweep followed closely, benefiting from the confusion. They killed three of the remaining flakwagons.
Before the third sweep hit, the remaining howitzers were fleeing for the refuge of the forest a mile away, drawing the Dire Wolves like magnets draw ball bearings. The howitzers' AA slammers were too light to mean much. Only ten howitzers made it to the trees. Not one was undamaged, and there were no operational flakwagons left at all. Three of the armored AG caissons were disabled. The fourth, despite the very heavy armor, had blown sky high, taking the battalion command wagon with it.
The field looked like an armor cemetery.
Briefly the marines hung around, dumping HE on the howitzers their sensors found beneath the forest roof. By then Wyzhnyny fighters were arriving, and per mission orders, the marines left. Six of the large-bore behemoths never left the forest. The remaining four limped for home.
A traumatized Jilchuk took heart from two facts. The first was hard to understand: He'd had a complete heavy infantry division only a few miles away, ready to move into the forest during the shelling, and attack the human base soon afterward. The human attack craft had ignored it, as if they'd failed to see it.
And five of the attack craft had been destroyed. Five of the twenty-four; he'd made the humans pay. Perhaps the remaining nineteen were all there were. He wasn't about to take it for granted, but he could hope.
Pak, on the other hand, knew. He also knew that three other Dire Wolves had been damaged, though they remained spaceworthy. Everything considered, that was a bargain, but it wasn't one he rejoiced over.
Briefly he considered sending a squadron of his own fighters to harass the withdrawing infantry, but thought better of it. After the marine heavyweights, his craft would be a weak anticlimax. Not the right note to close on.
The evacuated units en route to the backup base location were ordered to return. News of the marine raid and the destruction of the howitzer battalion more than made up for the rush and hard work of packing and unpacking gear.
Chapter 54
The Pecan Orchard
Pak stood in his somewhat crowded briefing room, speaking. In a dual role: as Liberation Corps commander, and chief of airborne planning. His listeners were his general staff; several officers of B Company, 2nd Regiment; and the leaders of three platoons belonging to other companies. The wall screen showed a map, and Pak held a pointer in his hand, moving an arrow on the screen.
"The buoys gave us several candidate targets," he was saying. "The one I've chosen is a harvest camp, in a cultivated lacustrine plain fifty-six miles east-southeast of here. The crop resembles grain, and since most of their harvest machinery was destroyed, they have a large crew harvesting with hand tools. It's one of a number of such operations scattered around the colony."
The window changed from a map to a live view from 360 miles up, greatly enlarged. It showed a large field centered on an orchard. Lines of minute figures could be discerned, advancing slowly. The arrow pointed, and magnification jumped, showing a segment of one line, with Wyzhnyny swinging harvest implements. In front of them, the crop stood higher than their withers. Behind them lay swaths of cut grain, with another line of Wyzhnyny wielding what had to be large, long-tined rakes. "A count shows two hundred twenty workers, almost surely soldiers," Pak said.
Again the picture changed. Now the orchard occupied most of the screen. "Notice the three openings where trees have been removed. The object in the center opening is a rather small floater, parked, and almost certainly serves as the command center. The other two hold what seem to be mess tents." Again the magnification jumped, and the arrow pointed. "If you look carefully, you can discern what appear to be smaller tents beneath the trees, probably squad tents and latrines."
The focus and magnification changed. Around the orchard was a band of stubble field where the grain had been cut. The arrow pointed again, and again. "These are two flakwagons, two hundred feet from the orchard, one at each of two diagonally opposite corners. They can target any air attack-or ground attack-from any side. But you will notice"-the focus moved to one of the flakwagons and enlarged it-"that they are not presently manned. Presumably their crews have duties within the orchard, perhaps in the kitchen-somewhere from which they can run to their guns quickly.
"Presumably the work crew has weapons, but they do not carry them in the field. Probably they're kept in their tents. But you've seen Wyzhnyny run. Even in New Jerusalem's gravity, they can be armed and fighting within a minute or so.
"They muster each morning at 0911 hours to begin cutting." He gestured at his science officer. "Major Pelletier suggests the lateness is to let the sun dry the dew off the grain before they start cutting it. At 1308 they take a fifty-minute meal break, then return to the field and work until 1722. After another meal, most of them work until 2107."
Pak looked his people over. "That's a long day, and the work is clearly hard labor. They should sleep heavily."
He paused. "You're all aware that there are three different Wyzhnyny physical types, one larger, with blue fur, another reddish-brown and not so large, and a smaller, dun-colored type." The blues were few, and apparently high-ranking, while the reds seemed to be elite troops. Though experience showed reds in formations of the duns, perhaps as officers.
He went on. "Major Naguib says he hasn't spotted any blues with the harvest crews, but he can distinguish both reds and duns down there. They're on separate work crews. There are somewhat fewer reds, and they don't work after supper. It's been asked why elite troops would be assigned to a harvest crew. They don't appear to be a punishment detail; their hours are shorter, and their work supervisors go unarmed. They may simply be undergoing reconditioning, after wounds or other injuries, or illness.