House Ma-Tzu Kai was on the move. They must have pooled a large force, making The Republic desperate enough to call in all available personnel. The journey to the given coordinates wouldn’t take long, but it would force them to cross mountains and make a steep descent into the wide valley protecting the House troops.
After months of waiting, constantly wondering when they would be asked to do something, Jonah’s troops were hesitant. When you’re being asked to throw yourself at a larger, better-armed, and better-trained force, boredom suddenly doesn’t look that bad. The drill to break camp, which they’d gone over at least fifty times, proceeded slowly and clumsily.
Jonah, angry with his whole unit, vented at the first person he found, who happened to be Turk.
“What the hell are they doing out there? When orders say ‘immediately,’ they don’t mean ‘immediately, or, if not, as soon as you can get yourself together.’ We should be halfway to the blasted meeting point by now!”
Turk let Jonah vent, then met his anger with calm. “Have you walked through camp?”
“Walked through camp? No! I’ve been doing my part, prepping the Stinger. There’s not supposed to be a camp any more.”
“Just walk through. Don’t yell, at least not yet. See how things are going. Just take a quick walk, okay?”
Jonah was about to retort that the last thing his company needed was one more person wasting time, but it was Turk he was talking to. It wouldn’t hurt to trust him on this.
The fear in camp was palpable. A drill prepares you for real combat about as much as your first kiss prepares you to be married. The real situation is a whole lot more complicated than the practice.
The soldiers, Jonah saw, were trying to get their work done, trying to focus, but mental pictures of their own looming death kept wiping everything else away. They weren’t ready.
Jonah had no idea how to help them. They were right to be scared. He was scared, too, but had managed to bury his fear under the call of duty. He didn’t think he could bury the fear of an entire company.
He walked through the camp, and his soldiers watched him pass. His mind may have been whirling, reaching for something, anything to help his soldiers, but his face remained calm. Resolute. And as he passed, his troops found another image they could place in their head, one that finally pushed away the hundred images of death. Their commander was calm, and they followed him.
Within minutes of the completion of his tour of the camp, Echo Company was ready to move.
31
Prospect Hill, Kurragin
17 September 3110
For Jonah Levin, the active part of the campaign on Kurragin ended soon after it began, on a bright autumn day on a wooded hilltop, amid a stand of hardwoods glorious in their red-and-orange autumn foliage. The air, quiet and unmoving before the start of battle, carried the faint sounds of movement from far away. Somewhere downslope, amid the low brush, waited the troopers of House Ma-Tzu Kai.
Back in The Republic, Devlin Stone had made a ringing speech about the efforts to recover the lost troops, saying no world or individual that had sworn to The Republic of the Sphere need fear abandonment, but should trust The Republic and its member worlds to send aid. Transcripts of the speech eventually trickled their way to Kurrigan, and, reading it, Jonah was both stirred and worried. If the situation turned out well, it would be proof that Stone could back up his desire to watch over every single citizen of The Republic. If it failed, it could show that The Republic was overextended and unable to protect those willing to lay down the most for it. It would be a sign of weakness in a time demanding strength.
Echo Company had been cut off on its way to the rendezvous. To the north were the other regiments that had accompanied them to Kurragin. To the south were the tired, bedraggled troops they’d come to rescue. In between, and cutting off Jonah from either group, was House Ma-Tzu Kai. And when House Ma-Tzu Kai decided to move, it sure as hell wasn’t going to go against either of the larger groups. It had its eyes set on Prospect Hill, currently occupied by Echo Company.
Their new orders had come through this morning.
HOUSE MOVING WEST TOWARD HIGH GROUND OF PROSPECT HILL. HOLD HILL UNTIL BODY OF ARMY MOVES IN. HOLD AT ALL COSTS.
Jonah turned his attention from the slope outside to the sensor scan in the cockpit of his secondhand Stinger, wishing that his opposition shared his equipment problems. The recon reports, though, showed a well-armed, well-supplied force ahead of them. They had ammunition dumps scattered near Prospect Hill, while Jonah’s Echo Company had only what it carried. If House Ma-Tzu Kai figured out how paper-thin was the opposition they faced on the hill, Jonah and his soldiers were done for.
Jonah tried to coax a reading out of his ’Mech’s bare-bones display that might give him some idea of the nearby forces, but the Stinger wasn’t helping much; the probability curve on known and unknown units looked bad, and the heads-up display in his ’Mech’s cockpit windows hadn’t been updated recently. Available information on the opposing units was sliding from known green to unknown red all along his section of the line.
“Dammit,” he muttered. Even the reports from his own troops were fading to pink, then going red as the time-since-update deteriorated. He glanced away from the heads-up display to check again on the real-world terrain outside.
The view showed him nothing that he hadn’t seen a few minutes before. He stood on a gently wooded hillside. He could make out a mortar section to his right, tubes implanted in hastily dug pits. To his left, an armored trooper with a shoulder-mounted flamethrower leaned against a tree while another soldier worked on the man’s jump jets.
The spread of the valley below was entirely within Jonah’s field of vision. A well-equipped battalion would be able to hold this spot indefinitely, controlling the entire valley below. That was what House Ma-Tzu Kai intended. That was what Jonah was supposed to stop. If he could hold them off long enough, a door might open for the troops to get past the House battalion and finally get off planet.
If he failed, Devlin Stone’s promises to The Republic would ring hollow. Tenuous threads holding some prefectures together could snap. If Jonah failed, the dream of The Republic might fail as well.
On the plus side, Jonah thought, if I fail it’s because I’m dead, so I won’t have to witness the aftermath.
He flicked his comm switch to put something in his mind besides gloom.
“Sergeant Turk. Any sign of the main army?”
“Yes, sir!” Relief flooded over Jonah, but Turk’s next words took away that relief. “They’re mired at the river. They’re trying to catch Ma-Tzu Kai’s rear, but they’re not going to make it. Ma-Tzu Kai will get here first.”
“Roger.” Jonah flicked off the switch.
He allowed himself one breath—a single intake of air—to feel sorrow. Then he chased it away. This was his hill, he told himself. He would hold. He would bend, he would dodge, he would scamper all over the hilltop, but he would hold.
His right foot almost started tapping, and Jonah couldn’t tell if it was nerves or excitement. He stilled it and waited.
Static hissed over his ’Mech’s command circuit, and white fuzz ate at the edge of his position-plotting scopes. Wonderful, he thought. They’ve set up jammers. It can’t be long now.
His cockpit suddenly grew ten degrees warmer, and he told himself it was from a splash of sunlight creeping over his ’Mech. His palms grew slick, but the grips of the ’Mech’s controls held them in place. Sweat trickled down his forehead, down his neck, down his chest and legs. He cleared his throat, and it cracked with dryness.