Tactics of Mistake by Gordon R. Dickson Page B

off a couple of these mines and began firing again.
    The results were gratifying. The guerrillas opened up all along their front. Not only that, but, fortunately, the men he had left at the crossing, spooked by the guerrilla firing, began instinctively returning it with their cone rifles. The result, as far as the ear could tell, was a very good impression of two fair-sized groups in a fire-fight.
    There was only one thing wrong with these additional sound effects Cletus was getting from his own men. One of the heavily whistling guns belonged to Jarnki; and evidently, from the sounds of it, the corporal was on the ground within fifteen meters of the front guerrilla lines—up where the exchange of shots could well prove lethal to him.
    Cletus was tempted to swear, but stifled the urge. He pulsed a sharp message over his throat mike communicator to Jarnki to fall back. There was no response, and Jarnki’s weapon went on speaking. This time Cletus did swear. Dropping his electric horse to just above the ground, he threaded the vehicle through the jungle cover up to right behind the corporal’s position, led to it easily by the sound of Jarnki’s firing.
    The young soldier was lying in the prone position, legs spread out, his rifle barrel resting upon a rotting tree trunk, firing steadily. His face was as pale as the face of a man who has already lost half the blood in his body, but there was not a mark on him. Cletus had to dismount from the horse and shake the narrow shoulder above the whistling rifle before Jarnki would wake to the fact that anyone was beside him.
    When he did become conscious of Cletus’s presence, the convulsive reaction sent him scrambling to get to his feet like a startled cat. Cletus held him down against the ground with one hand and jerked the thumb of the other toward the crossing behind them.
    â€œFall back!” whispered Cletus harshly.
    Jarnki stared, nodded, turned about and began to scramble on hands and legs toward the crossing. Cletus remounted the electric horse. Swinging wide again, he approached the guerrillas from their opposite side to ascertain their reaction to these unexpected sounds of opposition.
    He was forced, in the end, to dismount from the electric horse and wriggle forward on his stomach after all, for perhaps ten meters, to get close enough to understand some of what was being said. Happily, what he heard was what he had hoped to hear. This group, like the group farthest downriver, had decided to stop and talk over these sounds of an unexpected opposition.
    Painfully, Cletus wriggled back to the electric horse, mounted it and flew a wide curve once more back to the crossing itself. He reached it just as Jarnki, by this time back on his feet, also reached it. Jarnki had recovered some of his color, but he looked at Cletus apprehensively, as if expecting a tongue-lashing. Instead, Cletus grinned at him.
    â€œYou’re a brave man, Corporal,” Cletus said. “You just have to remember that we like to keep our brave men alive, if possible. They’re more useful that way.”
    Jarnki blinked. He grinned uncertainly.
    Cletus turned back to the electric horse and took one of his boxes of singleton mines. He handed it to Jarnki.
    â€œPlant these between fifty and eighty meters out,” Cletus said. “Just be sure you don’t take any chances on getting shot while you’re doing it. Then hang back in front of those Neulanders as they advance, and keep them busy, both with the mines and with your weapon. Your job is to slow those Neulanders down until I can get back up here to help you. At a guess, that’s going to be anywhere from another forty-five minutes to an hour and a half. Do you think you can do it?”
    â€œWe’ll do it,” said Jarnki.
    â€œI’ll leave it to you, then,” said Cletus.
    He mounted the electric horse, swung out over the river and headed down to make contact with the group of guerrillas