Star Risk - 03 The Doublecross Program (24 page)

A missile came back at Riss, and the second gunner managed to drop it with a countermissile.

"Zig left! Now!" Riss ordered. She spattered a burst at the oncoming lifter, saw bolts explode harmlessly on its compound armor.

To kill it would take a missile or a hit by Riss's secondary cannon.

"Back� now! Drop down into that ravine!" she ordered.

They were below ground level, as a second missile blew just above them.

Riss's com scrambled, went dead.

"Right down it, then back out when it shallows."

She heard a whimper from someone on her suit com, paid no attention.

Her lifter came out of the ravine, and in the few seconds she'd been blind, four�correction, five�of her unit's lifters had been hit, smoke coiling or oxygen gouting for an instant.

Then there were two slams against her own craft, and it skewed, grounded.

An instrument panel began smoking, then air hissed out of the lifter, and the smoke stopped.

Another missile hit her, rocking the lifter up, almost on its side.

"Come on," she shouted, dropped out of the cupola.

"They've got us!"

She was at the rear of the lifter, smashed a gauntlet against the emergency button. Nothing happened, and M'chel had an instant to think of being trapped in this lifter while it was shot up, then the hatch dropped away.

Her second gunner pushed past her, ran into the open, and was cut down by a chatter of blaster bolts.

The first gunner was pulling at the second driver, who lolled, motionless.

The man's helmet�and head�came away, and the gunner was staring at the gore. Riss grabbed him, almost threw him toward the escape hatch.

The first driver stumbled up, and Riss saw, through his faceplate, a mask of blood. He sagged, and Riss had him over her shoulder, and had both their anti-grav units turned to high. It surely did not matter if they were observed or picked up on some Shaoki screen now.

She made it out of the lifter crouched, still carrying the driver.

The three survivors staggered away from the lifter just as two artillery shells crashed into the ruined vehicle.

They made it to a boulder, let blaster bolts crash around them.

The Maulers forgot about them, switched to other targets, and Riss pushed her men back, away from the battlefield, as other Khelat men and women began retreating.

A few had courage enough to fire, almost blindly, rounds back at the lifters and now visible Shaoki infantry.

There were bodies, smoking lifters, overturned SP guns, and then a line of soldiers, shaky but still holding, and they had antiarmor missiles.

The Maulers maneuvered around what was now their battlefield, took a couple of hits, then pulled back to cover.

They didn't have�quite�the firepower or aerial supremacy to drive the invaders back into space.

The Khelat may have held the original landing ground, but not much more.

Riss took her wounded driver to an aide station, reported in to her regimental commander, was told to take command of another lifter and assume command of a lifter battalion.

The battle would go on.

Riss's new lifter had only one drawback�it had taken a nice, neat hit through the spray shield that exploded just behind the late commander.

Blood and intestines had sprayed, instantly dried on the deck, bulkheads, and overhead.

Riss's new crew refused to reenter the lifter. She got her first gunner from her old lifter, and they set to cleaning. By midnight, they had most of the dried, caked mess cleaned up, and the old crew grudgingly moved back in.

***

Riss remembered the second day of the invasion because that was when the Shaoki first hit them from the air� or rather vacuum.

They managed to slip in ten�or maybe the number was twenty�patrol craft that swept across the battlefield, missiling everything in sight. Which included a formation of their own lifters, unfortunately not the Maulers.

Riss had cozied her new lifter up next to a very large boulder, and, unlike the Khelat, did not instantly return fire on the Shaoki ships.

They banked, made another sweep across the battleground, then vanished into space.

Fifteen minutes later, the Khelat air support arrived.

Just a little late.

"How is it going?" Jasmine asked.

The hyperspace com hummed and hissed.

"I assume you are scrambling," von Baldur said.

"Of course."

"Lousy," Friedrich said. "I want you to contact Hal Maffer on Seth V and find out if he can hire, right now, a half dozen or more antiaircraft batteries. We seem to have come a little short.

"Also, anyone who is interested in fighting can get a most attractive contract from us."

Jasmine, as she made her farewells and cut off, noted that von Baldur looked drawn, worried.

The Shaoki tried again, but this time Grok was ready for them.

His ship was �casting in all directions, on all of the frequencies used by the Shaoki, carefully noted by Grok during Star Risk's time with them. Commands, sightings, reports, all were lost in a cascade of static that did everything from buzz to yodel.

In addition, Grok was �casting to all Khelat ships close to III signals to rebroadcast that turned radar, real-time screens, and even hyperspace com to garbled hash.

The Shaoki retired in bafflement.

Grok, even though he didn't believe anyone could pick him up in his cozy, was cautious, and had the ship moved to a new, hidden location.

Three days later, the Shaoki made their major counterattack.

M'chel's second lifter had been destroyed�she didn't remember how�and she was in her third. Her first gunner, who thought of Riss as a lucky charm, came along.

M'chel was thinking the same of him.

Khelat intercept teams had been recording an excess of chatter prior to the attack. Star Risk had a pretty good idea what was being talked about, having some familiarity with previous Shaoki codes.

Von Baldur had been appalled at the lack of security. But he was quietly appalled.

Jasmine ran the rough decrypts through a not-terribly-sophisticated computer, and Star Risk had the Shaoki codes, complete.

That, von Baldur thought, was a good, easy way to impress the client and assist in getting the final bonus they wanted.

King Saleph offered a plan for a counterattack.

But Star Risk had their own plan.

Goodnight took elements of his two battalions out just before dawn.

The troops were broken down into four-man groups: gunner, ammo bearer, and two gun guards.

They crept out, through the lines, found holes to hide in, and waited.

At dawn, the Shaoki attacked, sending heavy lifters in front of their infantry.

The lifters were met with a very nasty surprise�or, rather, many little surprises.

Goodnight's shock troops were armed with ground-to-air missiles, rather primitively brained.

But they didn't need much in the way of brains.

A gunner would take a Shaoki lifter in his sights, launch and forget the missile, his loader stuffing another rocket in the tube.

From the Shaoki side, it looked like more than a hundred sudden small spurts of fire, and then their sensors clanged into life.

The lifters had four choices: crash land, in which case they stood a chance that the missiles would go over them; go high and get hit with a belly-strike; maintain course and die; or pray.

This was a day when the gods weren't listening to prayers.

Lifters exploded, spun in, smashed into the rocky field.

Inchcape and six destroyers swept back and forth, parallel with and just behind the Khelat lines. They had the height advantage, and salvoed air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.

They were just out of range of the Maulers' AA batteries, back of the Shaoki lines. A few fired, and their missiles were either taken out by countermissiles or the sites themselves were attacked with longer-ranged operator-guided missiles.

The Shaoki infantry went to ground, their assault stopped cold.

Prince Wahfer, seeing a chance for glory, broke orders and brought half a dozen cruisers in, holding at about ten thousand meters. It was too high for a proper attack, but the crashing bombardment didn't do the Khelat cause any harm at all.

Again, the Shaoki began to retreat.

Then the rest of Goodnight's battalions attacked, picking up their surviving rocket gunners and their escorts.

From cover, Riss's regiment of lifters rose to the attack.

They'd been badly hit in previous days, but there were still enough of them to turn the retreat into a rout.

Following orders bellowed by Riss, they ignored the running infantrymen and attacked over them, at the Mauler positions.

The Maulers, confused by the intermingle of Shaoki and Khelat forces, also fell back, but in an orderly fashion.

Khelat lifters came in on Riss's heels, hitting hard at their enemies.

Riss's own lifter commanders wanted to go after the Shaoki infantry, but she swore as she'd never sworn before, yammering at the lifter noncoms and officers.

More afraid of her than the enemy, they obeyed, and her regiment held firm to its goal: the now ruined mine, which had been the Maulers' and Shaoki defenders' base.

But the Maulers had pulled back, and the collapsed buildings were abandoned. The Shaoki had moved back into the mountains, into prepared positions.

The Khelat had the base.

But III was still held by the Shaoki. There were more than enough missiles to keep the planet from being developed into a stepping stone.

Riss had a good idea that either the Maulers or the Shaoki had air plants in their positions. Or else they could slip in enough ships to resupply.

The long, bloody day was a nice, meaningless victory.

Now the siege would begin

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FORTY-THREE � ^ � The Maulers and the Shaoki were well dug in. Their lifters were turned into pillboxes�revetments were cut into the rock; the lifters would set down in them. Only the launch tubes and gun turrets stuck out, and these were camouflaged.

The Shaoki had a main base in the center of a broad mountain valley, and two large outposts to the east and west, guarding the valley's entrances.

The Khelat attacked twice, suicidal frontal assaults.

Riss lost another lifter and its crew, although her amulet-gunner survived.

Then, in the time haze, there was a request from von Baldur to her regimental commander that she be allowed to "conference" with him aboard the Pride.

Riss shuddered at making "conference" into a verb, but was very glad to get off of III for even a short time.

She was able to shed her suit and uniform and luxuriate in a zero-G shower, globules of water floating about her.

The suit went in for reconditioning; the uniform was burnt.

She ate food, real food, and immediately her bowels growled at her, unused to anything but the constipatory field rations.

M'chel eyed the luxurious-looking cot in her cabin, decided she'd better go see Freddie before she allowed herself to lapse into unconsciousness.

Riss put on a pair of workout sweats, thought them the finest, most comfortable clothes she'd ever seen, and headed for the bridge.

An officer directed her to the admiral's suite. It was very luxurious, but she was most interested in seeing Chas Goodnight.

If M'chel looked as drawn and exhausted as Chas, she decided, it was time for major plastic surgery.

He was nursing a drink, and, unbidden, went to a bar and mixed her a brandy and soda, strong on the brandy.

"Hell of a way to make a living," he said.

"Ain't that the truth," Riss agreed.

"If we ate this combat shit up," Goodnight said, "we should've stayed with the Alliance and their shitty pay."

Riss nodded, sucked down brandy, as von Baldur came out.

He looked at the bar, visibly decided against a drink, and sat down, heaving a heavy sigh.

"I hate, hearing what you were saying as I came in, to be even more of a morale depressor, but I have to admit that this contract has me grinding my teeth," he said.

"Every idea I have seems to get stymied by fate. I do not like our current situation, even though Alliance Credit is most pleased with our bank balance."

"Income doesn't do us good if we're dead," Goodnight said.

"So far, that has not happened," Friedrich said. "I called the two of you up here because, since you are at the sharp end of the stick, you might have some ideas on what could be done, remembering that we only break a contract if the money stops, the client loses or wins or goes after us."

Silence for a few minutes.

"We could just pull out, and the hell with our reputation," Riss said. "But we're supposedly winning. If we were losing, now, that might look better on the old resume. But as it is�" Her voice trailed off.

Goodnight just shook his head.

"So I guess there is no other course but to continue," von Baldur said. "I suppose we can rationalize this nightmare by thinking of all the out-of-work soldiery we are employing."

"Or, in the rest of the universe's view," Goodnight put in, "the number of thugs we're keeping off the streets at night."

The three exchanged looks, and, without ado, left the suite.

Riss slept around the clock, then went back to war, feeling a little guilty about having taken one of rank's privileges.

No one still knew if the Shaoki/Maulers had an enormous store of ammunition and air or if they were getting secretly resupplied, but they showed no signs of running dry.

None of Inchcape's destroyers or patrolling Khelat ships found any signs of a supply convoy.

And the siege dragged on.

Sappers and some of Technician Ells's people came to III and put some of the abandoned mining machinery into life, added spatter shields and armor.

The sappers set to work, digging trenches that zigzagged forward toward the eastern outpost.

The Shaoki brought in artillery, rockets, but the sappers kept digging.

Since the diggers were mining machinery, the trenches weren't the usual narrow workings but almost wide enough to accommodate one of M'chel's lifters.