The Forlorn Hope by David Drake Page A

soldier enough to risk it, but he was more interested in rolling outside to learn what was going on. The squad on guard was from his own Third Company.
    Lieutenant Dyk was cowering under the table with the rest of the officers in Lichtenstein’s office. The young man leaped up with a cry and slapped at the light switch. Then he stumbled over a chair, scrambled to his feet again, and reached the panel in the outer office just as another volley of projectiles ripped through the building. The overhead lights flickered out as a gush of blue sparks exploded from the shorted wiring. Dyk spun, screaming. An osmium projectile punched a neat hole in the partition wall behind him, having shattered bone on its path the length of the Lieutenant’s outstretched arm.
    Lime dust from pulverized concrete roiled in the air within the building. Papers were burning on a secretarial desk. Shorted equipment or a spray of metal ignited by friction had started the fire, the only illumination remaining in the Headquarters building. The Federal soldier’s return fire had ceased also. Either the damned fool had emptied his rifle or he had realized that he did not have a snowball’s chance in Hell of hitting anything at the range.
    The good lord knew why the mercs had stopped shooting, though.
    â€œOndru, report,” the company commander growled.
    â€œWe got him,” Sergeant Breisach’s voice responded from the darkness. With his goggles on, Strojnowski could just make out the forms of the guards hugging the ground as he was doing himself. Radios within the building were sizzling with unanswered questions from the perimeter bunkers. “Then, blooie!” Breisach went on. “Look, we can’t handle them at the range. You gotta bring in arty or something, Captain.”
    As if summoned, the artillery lieutenant scurried through the door in a low crouch. “What happened?” he blurted. “Did you get—” The young officer tripped over Strojnowski’s outstretched feet. He pitched forward and screamed. The hand he had thrown forward to break his fall had splashed in what was left of Colonel Fasolini’s thorax. The mercenary had worn body armor that might have saved him at a hundred meters. When the muzzle flashes were close enough to burn his uniform, the high velocity sprays had turned fragments of the backplate into missiles themselves. The air stank with the effluvium of ripped intestines.
    From inside, Captain Brionca rasped orders slightly out of synch with her words over Strojnowski’s belt radio. “All Boxer units!” she was saying. “All Boxer units! Fire at will at any off-planet troops you see. Do not leave your positions. Repeat, do not—”
    An assault rifle stuttered briefly, pointlessly, near the eastern interface between Federal and mercenary positions. The bunkers were too widely spaced for the Federal weapons to be really effective. White flashes from the bunker, two guns and then a third, continued for several seconds. The shooting ended in a momentary orange ball in the midst of the muzzle flashes. The thump of the tube-launched mercenary grenade provided a coda to the chattering gunfire.
    The artilleryman was trying to wipe his hand in the dirt. “Mortars,” he was saying, “high explosives. We’ll blast them out from a distance!”
    Strojnowski punched his company push. “Ranger Six,” he said, identifying himself to his troops, “to max Ranger units. Cease fire! Repeat, cease fire. Unless you’ve got a target in range and coming at you.” The infantry captain paused to let that sink in. Then he added, “If you’re fired at by mercs, reply with anti-tank rockets. Don’t use your rifles, use rockets and wait till you’ve got something to aim at.”
    Screw Brionca and her stupid orders. The 522nd did not have to worry about a job they were not equipped for. All they had to do was to keep the