“Another brilliant flash, Centurion?” she said. He was looking very, well, alive now. Some men’s faces got that way in combat, but the Centurion’s just went more ice-mask when they were fighting. It was when he came up with something tricky that it lighted up, a half-smile and lights dancing behind the gray eyes. Damn, but you’re pretty when you think, she reflected wryly. Not something you could say out loud.
“Maybe. See if you can get me through to Logistics at division.” He waited for a moment for the patch relay; the first sound through the receiver was a blast of gunfire. Whoever held the speaker was firing one-handed as he acknowledged the call.
“Centurion von Shrakenberg here. Problems?”
“No,” the voice came back. “Not unless you count a goddamned Fritz counterattack and a third of my people shot up before they hit the fuckin’ ground—” The voice broke off: more faintly Eric could hear screams, a rocket-gun shell exploding, a shouted instruction, “They’re behind that bloody tank hulk—”
The quartermaster’s voice returned, slightly breathless: “But apart from that, all fine. What do you need, besides the assigned load?”
“Engineering supplies, if you have any—wire, explosives, hand tools, sandbags. More Broadsword directional mines if you can spare them, and any Fritz material available.” He paused. “Petrol—again, if there is any. We’re the farthest element south; unless we stop them, you’re going to be getting it right up the ass. Can do?”
“What are you going to do with all . . . never mind.” The Draka had a tradition of decentralized command, which meant trusting an officer to accomplish the assigned tasks in his own fashion. “Will if we can—as soon as the tactical situation here is under control. It depends on how much Fritz stuff gets captured intact . . . ”
Chapter Eight
VILLAGE ONE, OSSETIAN MILITARY HIGHWAY
APRIL 14, 1942: 0700 HOURS
CRACK went the bullet, then spang-winnng off the stone.
Reflexively, Dreiser froze as spalled-off microfragments of stone drove into his forehead. A hand grabbed him by the back of his webbing harness and yanked him down behind the ruined wall. He controlled his shaking with an effort, drawing in deep drafts of air that smelled of wet rock and barnyard, blinking sunlight out of his eyes. The closest he had come to the sharp end before was reporting on the German blitzkrieg through western Europe in 1940, but that had been done from the rear. Comfortable war reporting, with a car and an officer from the Propaganda section; interviews with generals, watching heavy artillery pounding away and ambulances bringing casualties back to the clearing stations. For that matter, it might be some of the same men shooting at him. He had followed the German Sixth Army through Belgium, and here he was meeting them again in Russia.
“Thanks,” he said shakily to the NCO.
“You was drawin’ fire,” the Draka decurion replied absently, crawling to a gap and cautiously glancing around, head down at knee-level, squinting against the young sun in the east.
Panting, the American put his back to the stones of the wall and watched the Draka. There were six: the other four members of the decurion’s stick and a rocket-gun team of two. They lay motionless on the slope of rubble—motionless except for their eyes, flicking ceaselessly over the buildings before them. Mottled uniforms and helmet covers blended into the mud-covered wreck of the ruined building. He had picked this stick as typical, to do a few human-interest stories. It was typical, near enough: four men and three women, average age nineteen and three-quarters. Average height and weight five-eleven and 175 pounds for the males, five-six and 140 for the females. A redhead, two blonds, the rest varying shades of brown.
He had spent much of the winter getting to know Century A: not easy, since Draka were xenophobes by habit and detested the United States and all its works in particular by hereditary tradition. It had helped that Eric and he got along well—the Centurion was a popular officer. Trying his best to keep up did more.
Although my best wasn’t very good, he admitted ruefully to himself, even though he was in the best condition he could remember. It was all a matter of priorities; the wealth and leisure to produce these soldiers had been wrung out of whole continents. He focused on one trooper . . .
Cindy, his mind prompted him. Cindy McAlistair. Although nobody called her anything but Tee-Hee.
Fox-colored hair, green eyes, a narrow, sharp-featured face—Scots-Irish, via the Carolina piedmont. Her grandfather had been a Confederate refugee in 1866, had escaped from Charleston in one of the last Draka blockade runners, those lean craft that had smuggled in so many repeating rifles and steam warcars. He had established a plantation in the rich lands north of Luanda, just being opened by railways and steam coaches for coffee and cotton.
His granddaughter rested easily, one knee crooked and a hand beneath her; it might have looked awkward, if Dreiser had not seen her do six hundred one-hand pushups in barracks once, on a bet. Sweat streaked the black war paint on her face, dark except for a slight gleam of teeth. The Holbars rested beside her, the assault sling over her neck; her hand held the pistol grip, resting amid a scatter of empty aluminum cartridge cases and pieces of belt link.
The dimpled bone hilt of a throwing knife showed behind her neck, from a sheath sewn into the field jacket, and she was wearing warsaps—fingerless leather gloves with black-metal insets over knuckles and palm edge—secured by straps up the forearms. For the rest, standard gear: lace-up boots with composition soles; thick tough cotton pants and jacket, with leather patches at knee and elbow and plenty of pockets; helmet with cloth cover; a harness of laced panels around the waist that reached nearly to the ribs, and supported padded loops over the shoulders. A half-dozen grenades, blast and fragmentation. Canteen, with messkit, entrenching tool, three conical drum magazines of ammunition, field dressing, ration bars, folding toolkit for maintenance, and a few oddments. Always including spare tampons: “If you don’t have ’em, sure as fate you gonna need ’em, then things get plain disgustin’.”
The whole outfit had the savage, stripped-down practicality he had come to associate with the Draka. This was an inhumanly functional civilization, not militarist in the sense of strutting, bemedaled generals and parades, but with a skilled appreciation of the business of conquest, honed by generations of experience and coldly unsentimental analysis.
The decurion completed his survey and withdrew his head with slow care; rapid movement attracted the eye.
“Snipah,” he said. “Bill-boy, Tee-Hee, McThing—”
The three troopers looked up. “You see him?”
Cindy giggled, the sound that had given her the nickname. “Cross t’ street, over that-there first building row a’ windows?”
“Ya. We’re gonna winkel him. You three, light out soon’s we lay down fire. Jo!” The rocket gunner raised his head. “Center window, can do?”
The man eased his eye to the scope sight and scanned. There was a laneway, then a cleared field of sorts, scrap-built hutments for odds and ends, blocks of stone and rubble. Then square-built stone houses, on the rubble pile; the second row of houses stood atop those but set back, leaving a terrace of rooftop. Distance about two hundred meters, and the windows were slits . . .
“No problem hittin’ roundabouts, can’t say’s I’ll get it in. Hey, dec, maybe more of ’em?”
“Na,” the NCO snapped. “Would’ve opened up on us ’fore we got to this-here wall. Just one, movin’ from window t’ window. Wants us to get close. Jenny, ready with t’ SAW. Now!”