The Forlorn Hope by David Drake Page B

mercs pinned down for the day or less until the Rube tanks arrived. Strojnowski did not like the deal, but he liked it better than he liked having his ass shot away.
    â€œCome on, Breisach,” the officer ordered. “We’ll crawl to my bunker and I’ll use your squad as a reserve.” The rest of the battalion officers could stay inside a targeted building if they wanted. Strojnowski only wished that he could intercept the mercenary communications as they almost certainly were intercepting those of the 522nd.
    To the surprise of the infantry captain, the young lieutenant was crawling along beside him. It was probably a lack of any other direction. “But why aren’t we shelling?” the artilleryman demanded. “Why?”
    â€œBecause we aren’t soldiers, we’re goddam prison guards!” the older man snapped back. “We’re here to keep the contract laborers from breaking out, not to fight a war. The 522nd doesn’t have a Heavy Weapons Company. No mortars, no heavy machine guns … Hell, the mercs were supposed to be our heavy weapons!”
    The whole area was studded with bits of smelter slag. It passed unnoticed in the coarse grass, but it gouged at the knees and bare palms of a man trying to crawl across three hundred meters of it. Grunting, balancing discomfort against the risk of a bullet if he stood, Strojnowski said, “I felt sorry for them, getting the shaft that way. But if the Rubes need help executing them now, I’ll shoot every off-planet SOB myself!”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Two more mercenaries in battle dress scurried to the Operations Center from the east. They were hunched over with caution and the weight of their equipment. Lieutenant ben Mehdi leaned from the shelter to observe them in helmeted neutrality. “Team?” he called in a low voice.
    â€œBlack Twelve,” one of them panted back. Both troopers knelt, keeping the hump of the OC between them and the distant Complex.
    Ben Mehdi nodded agreement. “Right. We’re forming up fifty meters north—” he pointed— “in a defile. Mboko’s in charge there.” He touched his helmet and ordered, “Black One, leapfrog your odd teams. Twelve is in.” From the west, the Lieutenant could see two troopers from White Section already scuttling toward the OC.
    Ben Mehdi’s words echoed within the shelter because the external speaker of the console was live. Albrecht Waldstejn was not on the Company net. He could no more listen to the necessary crosstalk as the escape plan went forward than could any other member of the 522nd.
    And the escape plan was his, almost in its entirety.
    â€œThat’s forty-two ready to jump,” Waldstejn said, “plus us.”
    â€œMotion around the truck park,” Trooper Dwyer reported from the back arch. “Somebody ought to spray them, one of the shelters do it when the team leap-frogs out.”
    â€œWhite Two,” crackled the speaker, “leap-frog your odd teams. Twelve is in.”
    â€œThat’s it,” said Sergeant Jensen. “Just the section leaders left. Time for the old girl to keep some heads down.”
    â€œGood luck, Sergeant,” the Cecach officer said. “Ah, Communicator?” he went on.
    Jensen was crawling out of the back arch of the shelter. Churchie Dwyer was there, watching the Complex with his huge partner. He nodded to the Gunner. It was a nasty job. Jensen could have told off one of his crewmen to do it. But by the White Christ of his ancestors, he was the Gunner in Fasolini’s Company.
    Communicator Foyle looked at Waldstejn with a flashing smile. “Sookie, sir,” she said.
    Waldstejn smiled back, tight as an E-string inside and furious with himself to be thinking what he was thinking about the plump brunette. Not now, Mother of God! “Right, Sookie. Time for you to leave too.” Switching to Czech as the Communicator rose, the