"Fine, Colonel," said Cletus. "I just wanted to tell you to expect to get your feet wet. You might also warn the civilians in town to gather in the higher buildings of the warehouse district above the second floor."
"Oh? Thunderstorm coming?"
"We're not that lucky, I'm afraid," said Cletus. A good heavy rainstorm would have been all to the advantage of the well-trained Dorsai, both the jump troops and those in fixed positions in the city. "The weather forecast is for hot and clear. But the river's going to rise. I'm told you'll have four to six feet of water in the streets there."
"I see. I'll take care of it - with the troops and civilians too - " Eachan broke off. "Are we getting reinforcements here in the town?"
"I'm afraid I can't spare you any," Cletus said. "But with luck, it'll be over one way or the other before the Neulanders are really on top of you. Do the best you can with the men you have."
"Understood," said Eachan. "That's all from this end then, Colonel."
"That's all from my end for the moment, too, Colonel," replied Cletus. "Good luck."
He broke the light-beam contact and ordered the transport ship back to Bakhalla for a new load of jump troops. Now that it was open daylight over Two Rivers and there was no more secrecy to be gained by operating at low altitudes in the shadows below the peaks above the town, Cletus accompanied the next wave of jump troops riding in a courier craft, which he set to circling above the reach of hand-weapon fire from the ground.
The second wave of Dorsai troops to go down on their jump belts were harassed, but ineffectively so, by angled fire from the Neulander troops downriver.
"Good enough," commented Marc Dodds, who had accompanied Cletus in the courier ship, leaving Major David Ap Morgan to take charge of getting off the last two remaining waves and accompanying the last as its commanding officer. "They'll have aircraft hitting our next wave, though. I don't know why they haven't had Neulander ships in the air over here before now."
"Another instance of the too imaginative mind," said Cletus. Marc glanced at him inquiringly, and Cletus went on to explain. "I was telling Eachan last night that too much subtlety could lead to mistakes. The Neulanders know that the Alliance has supplied the Exotics with many more and better air-combat craft than the Coalition supplied them. So automatically they've drawn the wrong conclusion. They think our lack of air cover is only apparent - bait to trap them into putting their own ships up so our superior air power can knock them down. Also, they know that only the Dorsais were jump-training, and they'll be suspecting that the Dorsais are the only ones who're being sent against them for that reason. They know they outnumber us two or three to one on the ground, which would tend to make them complacent."
The third wave came in and jumped to the jungle below. True to Cletus' assessment of the situation, there was no appearance of Neuland aircraft to oppose the jump. Nor was there with the fourth and final wave. With all four waves of Dorsai jump troops now down on the ground, the pattern of Cletus' battle plan began to make itself felt. He had set his Dorsais down in the jungle on the top of the bluffs on either side of both rivers upstream from the concentration of Neulander troops. Now, spread out in skirmish lines, the Dorsais began to open up on the rear of the Neulander troops. The Neulanders fought back, but withdrew steadily, as their force began to move down into the river valleys toward the town. They showed no tendency to turn and fight and no panic at being caught by small-arms fire from their rear. Up in their circling aircraft, Cletus and Marc kept in touch with their units on the ground by line-of-sight light-beam voice transmission.
"We aren't even slowing them down," said Marc, his mouth a straight line as he observed the scene below in the multiple reconnaissance screens set up before them.
"They'll be slowed up later," replied Cletus.
He was very busy plotting the movements of the running battle below on the reconnaissance screen, even as he issued a steady stream of orders to individual small units of the Dorsai troops.
Marc fell silent and turned back to examining the situation on the reconnaissance screens as it was developing under the impetus of Cletus' orders. Before him the two main elements of the Neulander forces were like large fat caterpillars crawling down the inner edge of the valley troughs of the two rivers, converging as the rivers converged toward the single point that was the town of Two Rivers. Behind, and inland from the rivers, the Dorsai troops, like thin lines of tiny ants, assailed these two caterpillars from the rear and the inland sides. Not that all this was visible to the naked eye below the thick screen of jungle cover. But the instruments and Cletus' plotting on the chart revealed it clearly. Under attack the caterpillars humped their rearward ends closer toward their front, bunching up under the attacks of the ants, but otherwise were undisturbed in their progress.
Meanwhile, Cletus was extending his pursuing Dorsai troops forward along the inland side of each enemy force until the farthest extended units were almost level with the foremost troops of the enemy units they harassed. Occasionally they dented the Neulander lines they faced. But in case of trouble the Neulanders merely withdrew over the edge of the steeply sloping bluff and fought the Dorsai back over, what was in effect, a natural parapet. Not merely that, but more and more their forward-moving units were dropping below the edge of the bluff with a skirmish line along its edge to protect their march - so that fully 80 per cent of the enemy force was beyond the reach of the Dorsai weapons in any case.
Cletus broke off abruptly from his work on the screens and turned to Marc.
"They're less than two miles from the upper edge of the town," he said. "I want you to take over here and keep those Neulander forces contained all along their lines. Make them get down below the bluff and stay there, but don't expose men any more than you have to. Contain them, but hold your troops back until you get word from me."
"Where're you going, sir?" Marc asked, frowning.
"Down," said Cletus, tersely. He reached for one of the extra jump belts with which the aircraft was supplied and began strapping it on. "Put half a company of men on each river over on their jump belts and send them down the opposite side. They're to fire back across the river into any exposed elements of the enemy as they go, but they are not to stop to do it. They're to keep traveling fast until they rendezvous with me down here."
He turned and tapped with his fingernail on the bend in the river below the town beyond which Wefer and his three Mark V's were at work. "How soon do you estimate they can meet me down there?" he asked.
"With luck, an hour," answered Marc. "What're you planning to do, sir - if you don't mind my asking?"
"I'm going to try to make it look as though we've got reinforcements into that town," Cletus said. He turned and called up to the pilot in the front of the reconnaissance ship. "Cease circling. Take me down to just beyond the bend in the main river there - point H29 and R7 on the grid."
The aircraft wheeled away from its post above the battle and began to circle down toward the river bend. Cletus moved over to the emergency escape hatch and put his hand on the eject button. Marc followed him.
"Sir," he said, "if you haven't used a jump belt in a long time - "
"I know," Cletus interrupted him cheerfully, "it's a trick to keep your feet down and your head up, particularly when you're coming in for a landing. Don't worry - " He turned his head to shout to the pilot up front. "That patch of jungle just inside the bend of the river. Call 'Jump' for me."
"Yes, sir," the pilot called back. There was a moment's pause and then he shouted, "Jump." "Jump," echoed Cletus.
He punched the eject button. The emergency door flipped open before him and the section of decking beneath his feet flipped him abruptly clear of the aircraft. He found himself falling toward the tops of the jungle treetops, six hundred feet below.