Xarsku's plan was simple, and there was something to be said for simple plans. But this one had been predicted, so Kereenyaga was prepared. Even so, setting the place and time of engagement gave Xarsku an initial advantage, which cost the humans a cruiser and two corvettes. The gosthodar felt a swell of exultation. But the humans' greater numbers and firepower soon drove Xarsku back into warpspace.
Meanwhile, near the planetary surface, Xarsku's hunters had destroyed the two human surveillance buoys. His bombard, on the other hand, lay broken and smoking on a forest ridge. It had never gotten into position. Designed for punishing, not fighting, it had been attacked by four of Kereenyaga's corvettes, whose simultaneous torpedo salvos had disrupted its force shield, destroying generator and drives.
As if in retribution, the hunters that had destroyed the buoys then scorched two swaths across the blind area before Kereenyaga's corvettes could engage them. One escaped into warpspace. The other, crippled, careened into the forest miles away, and blew up.
The corvettes then caught the cargo ships in the act of unloading, and slammed torpedos into each of them before heading back into near-space.
When it was over, Jilchuk found solace in the destruction of the buoys. Also, substantial supplies had been transferred before the supply ships were attacked, and more after their fires had been controlled.
But the enemy on the ground had not been destroyed. Damaged, wounded, but not destroyed. Their destruction remained up to him. Move quickly! he thought. Quickly and powerfully! He'd told himself that before, he realized, but this time nothing would turn him. There'd be no hesitation, and no backing off. And with the buoys gone, the enemy couldn't know or predict his actions as they had before.
General Pak watched Wyzhnyny infantry-a very long column of fours-trotting easily down the road toward the forest. The bulk of their equipment and supplies were carried by AG trucks, and their speed of foot was sobering. He'd realized before he'd left Terra that this life-form would run faster than humans, but actually watching them… they and their guardian flakwagons, of which the Wyzhnyny seemed to have an endless supply.
At least he could watch them. Presumably the Wyzhnyny didn't know that Kereenyaga had replaced the lost buoys with another. The Jerries had promptly nicknamed it "Lonesome Moses," which surprised the general when he heard about it. It seemed irreverent for troops with their background.
Lonesome Moses provided less detail, less perspective, and had far less versatility than the buoys the Wyzhnyny had destroyed, but it was infinitely better than no buoy at all. Immediately after the fighting on the First Day, Xarsku had sent a single daring Hunter to shoot down the first two. Kereenyaga had quickly deployed his reserve pair, and ordered his engineering section to cobble together a backup. Shipsmind had provided the basic information, and his engineers and technicians had provided parts and ingenuity. And with it now in place, they'd begun on still another, just in case.
Equally important was Colonel Schrager's Burger engineers, building defenses in the wilderness. The engineers and the Jerries. The colonel had suggested that progress would be faster with help, and that a battalion of resourceful backwoods infantry would be just the ticket. Pak had complied. A Jerrie battalion had pitched in with beam saws, AG sleds, and strong backs, felling trees and throwing up breastworks. Pak had visited the work in progress, and been impressed by the strength, energy and cheerfulness of the Jerries at work. They treated it like a holiday, hard though it was.
And urgent now, because Wyzhnyny command was moving troops into the forest at two points, one division eighteen miles west of the howitzer cemetery, another thirty miles east of it. And strong reserves had been moved to several locations, with APFs. Obviously the Wyzhnyny commander intended to attack at unpredictable points simultaneously. As soon as he'd made a breakthrough, his reserves would exploit it.
What Pak didn't know was, the key reserves were "reds"-what was left of the Wyzhnyny warrior brigade.
Meanwhile Wyzhnyny batteries were also on the roads, apparently detached from their infantry brigades. He wasn't sure what plans Wyzhnyny command had for them, but he was sure he wouldn't like them. Lonesome Moses couldn't identify the caliber, but they seemed smaller than those destroyed by the marines. Five or six-inch bores, he guessed. They should have enough range to lay fire on the Wilderness Base, and on much of the defenses the Burgers had been building. It wouldn't be remotely comparable to what the Wyzhnyny bombard would have done, but he was glad he'd moved his hospital and "bot shop" to the backup site, thirty-five miles north.
And the artillery were accompanied by tanks and flakwagons. Perhaps all the tanks the Wyzhnyny had left. A simple count showed that the enemy had more tanks than he had. What was building here, he did not doubt, was a decisive showdown.
We'll see, Pak thought, what Major Phayakapong accomplishes with our own modest project.
Despite more than seven centuries of Commonwealth peace, the lineage of Major Patrick Feliks Phayakapong had kept and nourished a long military tradition. Privately for the most part. Eleven centuries earlier, an ancestor named McClintock had fought in the North American War of Secession. He'd been a private in J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry at the First Battle of Manassas, a sergeant at South Mountain, a lieutenant at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, and finally a captain at Yellow Tavern. Where he lost his general to a Yankee bullet, and his shattered left leg to a surgeon's saw.
His experiences, pride, and storytelling began the tradition. Almost as far back, in various tributaries of the family line, others fought in the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Boer War, the Moro Resistance, the European Great War… but either they were not storytellers, or their stories were lost. Members of the family had compiled histories of their ancestors' units and campaigns, but those weren't the same as personal accounts.
Then a McClintock great-grandson fought in the Hitler War, serving as an armor officer under the fabled George Patton. A decade later he served as a senior officer under Walton Walker and Matthew Ridgeway in the Korean War. And described it all in his published memoirs, giving the tradition new life. Another forebear served as a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps in the Southeast Asian War, and another as an airborne ranger. The marine said he'd never have told his story if his grandfather hadn't passed his along. The ranger kept his memories to himself, but a buddy in his squad, in his memoirs, often referred to "Sergeant Walking Coyote," calling him a warrior's warrior.
All of this built and enriched the tradition. In yet another branch of the family, a British special forces officer had served throughout the difficult years of the guerrilla war in Malaysia. He'd shared none of it with his children, but a daughter assembled the basics from official sources, and interviewed aging veterans of her grandfather's unit. Another forebear fought, survived and escaped as a Shan guerrilla in the ill-fated Myanmar Revolution. His children recorded his reminiscences which, written down and translated, added fundamentally different material to the family lore.
Shortly before the Troubles, the core of the family went as colonists to Indi Prime, the first deep-space colony-one of only two sponsored by the government. During the Troubles, the deep-space colonies were lost track of. But after reconnection, in every generation some family member returned to Terra to join the fleet (such as it was), or its marines, or the Terran Planetary Defense Force, and kept the tradition alive. Despite the long centuries of low public esteem, little opportunity for advancement, and limited meaningful function beyond study, brainstorming, virtual warfare, and weapons design. They kept the faith. And when they retired, it was usually to Indi Prime, often bringing with them a wife and child, or children. Twice from families with a military tradition of their own.