CHAPTER 11

Hoffman paused on top of the mound of rocks to look up at the approaching helicopter. It had taken the COG HQ at Lakar an hour to get a bird in the air, but at least it was one of the new Ravens. Hoffman knew he was going to spend a lot of his career looking up at the undercarriage of one of those.

It circled for a while before the pilot came back on the radio.

“Yes, you’re up shit creek,” she said. “This is going to take more than a shovel and a bucket.”

“I’m glad you came all this way to tell us the goddamn obvious.” Hoffman didn’t like the way the rubble under his boots shifted from time to time. “No signs of any infiltration out there?”

“Negative. It’s like the end of the world between here and the next city—just scrub and goats. Do you need any immediate assistance? Any casualties?”

“Don’t let me keep you. Our phones are out and we can’t move vehicles, but apart from that it’s a goddamn vacation.”

“Sorry, but it’s going tits up at Shavad. They need every helicopter they can get. If Shavad falls, you’re going to get pretty lonely out here.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for the heavy engineering boys.”

We just have to sit here and blow away anything that comes from the south. And that’s what we’ll have to do until the road’s open.

The Raven banked away and vanished. Carlile, the combat engineer, was making his own plans to clear the gorge. He clambered over the stone and then gestured to Hoffman to climb back down. It was scarier than being shelled. Every handhold felt like grabbing thin air, and the constant rumbling and clicking threatened another collapse. When Hoffman’s boots hit the road, he was more than relieved.

“Is anyone under that?” he asked.

Carlile studied the dam of rocks, fists on hips. “If they are, then we won’t know for a while. We need one of the big obstruction-clearance vehicles to even start to shift that. A Behemoth.”

Hoffman visualized the map, and the lowlands that ran the width of Kashkur like the mountains’ skirt.

“That’s got to come across from Lakar. A bit close to Shavad for my tastes.”

“Yeah.” Carlile caught his breath. Sweat dripped off his chin. “That’s going to take four days, maybe five. I’ll get on it.”

Hoffman had put his priorities in immediate order. The first worry was security—who was out there, whether this was the first attack of many, and whether there were casualties. Gears had set up machine-gun positions on the fort walls to handle any close-in defense. So far—apart from the landslide—there was no sign of enemy activity, but Hoffman couldn’t imagine any enemy going to the trouble of altering the landscape and leaving it at that.

So being cut off wasn’t top of the list at the moment. Anvegad—both the city and the garrison—had two weeks’ supplies at any one time. People here, civilian and military, were used to being stranded by the weather or just not getting supplies on the day they were expected. It was nothing to shit bricks over yet.

Why now, and what’s coming next?

“This would have taken them some time to set up.”

“Oh, definitely, sir,” Carlile said. “It’s thousands of kilos of explosives. And to ship that in without being spotted, they’d have to do it on foot over the hills a load at a time. Then they’ve got to bore holes and set the charges. It’s a long job.”

“UIR spec ops pros, or local sympathizers?”

“Hard to tell. It’s the level of blasting skill that civvies in the mining industry have.”

Hoffman had to assume the road had been cut for a reason, not just because it was as close as the bastards could get to the garrison.

No point relying on Intel for help. We’ll have to go look for these assholes ourselves. If they’re not already back across the UIR borders by now, of course.

“Well, we won’t get any assistance from Vasgar, so we’re stuck here until this road’s open again.” Hoffman kept a wary eye on the craggy slopes above as he moved back to the ATV. Pad Salton was perched high on the rocks with his sniper rifle, providing over-watch. “I’m just waiting for the next incident.”

“Look on the bright side, sir. If we can’t get anything south to the fort, the Indies can’t get anything through going north.”

“I’ll cling to that small mercy, Carlile. Thanks.”

Hoffman walked back up the access road, stopping every so often to look back at the landslide. He’d always been security conscious, even for a Gear, but now he was fixated on who might be out there watching.

We’ll need tighter security now. The locals won’t mind being stopped and searched when they go in and out.

As he walked past the sentries at the city gate, crowds milled around trying to get a look at the destruction. The air was hazy with rock dust. A line of Gears and the local constabulary was stopping anyone from going outside the walls, on Captain Sander’s orders, but there was nowhere worthwhile to go anyway. Outside was definitely not the safest place to be.

Sander called to him from across the square. The captain was talking to a couple of the councilmen, no doubt doing his we’ve-got-it-all-under-control act. He was good at civilian liaison. Hoffman felt a little ashamed for thinking of Sander as a soft college kid who was more interested in painting than being a soldier, because he was actually proving to be a reassuring and steady presence for everyone.

And he had the sense to stock up to the rafters on supplies. Smart guy. Clairvoyant, even.

Sander exuded concerned calm as Hoffman approached the group. “Lieutenant, Alderman Casani is making sure all the residents are accounted for. What’s the update on the road?”

“The sappers say it can be cleared with a specialist excavation vehicle,” Hoffman said, remembering to start with the can-do part of the news. Civilians need to hear that. “It’ll take a few days to get earth-moving equipment down from Lakar, that’s all. The phone lines might take longer, but we’ve got radio comms.”

Casani was a sober-looking, thin guy in his forties who looked like he should have been running an investment bank rather than this lonely outpost. “People will be sensible,” he said. “This is no different from being snowed in.”

“Snow doesn’t set out to kill you, Alderman.” Hoffman didn’t want these people to get complacent. “We’re on a war footing now. People have to take precautions, however well-defended this city is. Anyone who can close the road can do a hell of a lot worse if they put their minds to it.”

Sander’s fixed calm flickered a little. “We’ll step up patrols, Alderman. But I have to ask you to activate the civil emergency procedures. Restrictions on movement, management of resources, cooperation with our security measures. Purely as a precaution.”

“But when the road is open again,” said Casani, “there will still be the UIR on our doorstep and the need to watch our neighbor suspiciously.”

“Yes, things have changed,” Sander said. “They changed the minute the UIR sent forces across the Vasgar border. We’ll all have to live with that.”

Casani did a little nod, as if the reminder of the invasion south of this border was an explanation for everything. Maybe the reality hadn’t sunk in. “This city understands its responsibilities, Captain. You will always have our full cooperation.”

Hoffman and Sander made their way back to the garrison. Most of Anvegad’s five thousand inhabitants seemed to have taken to the streets to try to get a glimpse of the damage or chat about it. Every damn surface was covered in a layer of dust. It was starting to settle, crunching under their boots like a dusting of dry, gritty snow.

“Usually,” Sander said, “civvies get a little wobbly when a big bomb goes off next door. These people just seem curious.”

“Anvegad’s never been captured. Makes folks feel bulletproof.”

“That’s preferable to panic at the moment.” Sander was in the process of moving operations from the main admin block to the gun emplacement itself. One of the engineer corporals was busy unplugging a radio kit when Hoffman got to the top of the stairs. “I’m sending out a forward controller just in case. Damn bad timing to piss off the Vasgari while we still need to move around out there.” He started taking stuff down from the walls. “Give me a hand with the maps, Victor.”

If Hoffman was going to nitpick, Anvil Gate wasn’t the best garrison for a modern army. It was all narrow passages and steep stairs, five floors built entirely around those huge guns, like a keep in the center of an ancient castle. Anvegad itself was the castle grounds, just as narrow and crowded, a city built when the idea of fuel-driven vehicles was witchcraft. But the guns—big artillery didn’t change much. That was why Anvil Gate remained.

A hundred Gears could hold it. A bigger force would logjam itself trying to move around.

“Very cozy ops room, sir.” Sergeant Byrne squeezed past him in the passage on the ground floor, scraping his rifle along the stone walls. “The maps are a nice touch. Makes a man feel at home. Maybe some cushions, though.”

“You’re nest-building,” Hoffman growled. “You sure it’s Sheraya who’s pregnant?”

“I suppose this postpones the wedding.”

“The hell it does, Sergeant. Do it today.” Hoffman didn’t mean it to sound ominous. It wasn’t. He just knew how army life got in the way of everything else, and why it mattered to grab these things when you could. “When you get a lady knocked up, you don’t keep her waiting for the ring. Okay? That’s an order.”

“The aldermen are going to be too busy, sir.”

“I’ll see that they find you one with ten minutes to spare for a ceremony. You can save the celebrations for when we’re not spitting dust everywhere.”

Sander must have heard the exchange. He looked up from the desk, radio in one hand, as Hoffman came in.

“You’re a sentimental man after all, Victor.”

“I want his mind on the job. It’s one less thing for him to worry about.”

“I know the feeling. If you want to send a message to Margaret, by the way, you might want to take your own advice about sooner rather than later.”

Hoffman’s reflex reaction beat his private wishes to the punch. “If the men can’t send personal messages via operational channels, sir, then I won’t, either.”

Sander just blinked for a moment as if he’d taken that as a rebuke. It wasn’t. Hoffman decided not to dig a deeper hole by explaining that.

Margaret will understand.

“Okay, all we can do is wait, then. We’ll run patrols along the Vasgar line, but not across it—yet.” Sander turned to look at the sector map behind him, a maze of tightly packed contour lines. “It’s at times like this that a man needs a Pesang detachment. Those little chaps can get to places even the damn goats can’t.”

“It won’t be long, sir. A week.”

“You think the Indies are going to wait that long?”

“They sound pretty busy at Shavad.”

“Maybe so.” Sander looked around the room that now resembled a frontline trench on the Ostri front thirty years ago. The air smelled of musty canvas and wool, and almost every centimeter of the planked walls was covered with charts, lists, and—yes, Byrne was right—paintings of the fort. “But we’ll see them coming, that much we do know.”

Hoffman was used to the waiting game. He grabbed some rations, stuffed every spare pocket with ammo, and went up to the gun floor to sit at the back of the chamber. A couple of ammo crates and a few folded blankets with that dusty, flat smell of graphite lubricating grease—that was all he needed to get his head down and have a short nap when he needed to.

“Captain kicked you out, sir?” the artillery sergeant asked.

“Can’t bear sitting on my ass and listening to a game on the radio, Evan.” Hoffman took his notepad out of his belt and flipped over a clean page. He’d write that letter to Margaret. “Got to watch the action.”

“It’ll be way over there. Even if they’re not going to give us forward air control, we can still manage direct fire. We can see for ten or fifteen klicks easy enough if the visibility’s okay.”

There were ten gunners on this crew. All except Sergeant Evan had ear defenders parked around their necks like ancient torc necklaces. Hoffman had never been this close to guns this big. He started scribbling.

Margaret, if I don’t come back from this deaf, I’ll be damned lucky … but this is if I don’t come back at all.

It never felt real, that line. However many times he’d written that last good-bye to anyone, it always felt theoretical. He wondered if one day it would seem solid and inevitable, and then he’d know that somehow fate was giving him a big hint that this was it.

Hunting around for the right words took more time than he expected. He didn’t look up until the radio—his and everyone else’s—changed from routine voice traffic to something more urgent.

“KR-Five-Three-Zero to control … four Indie artillery units and an infantry company moving north out of Porra, fast. Five-Three-Zero out.”

Porra was a hundred kilometers south of Anvegad. The Indies didn’t need many men to take the refinery, and it was the first target anyone would secure. Hoffman decided he’d have treated it as a priority if he’d been in their position in case the staff or the garrison tried to sabotage it.

“Here we go,” Evan said. He looked at his watch. “I give them two hours, max. Now, with the right wind, we could probably hit the refinery from here. Just about.”

Sander’s voice cut in. “Let’s keep Anvegad’s unbroken record, Gears. All garrison personnel, go to REDCON One.”

The garrison sirens were tested every month, and every crisis had its own voice. REDCON One started like a deep intake of breath and then rose up the scale to a series of ear-busting blasts.

“Adrenaline’s brown,” said Jarrold, the gunner in charge of the shell hoist. He was Pad Salton’s age, maybe eighteen, maybe nineteen, but looked a lot younger to Hoffman. The shells were monsters that made the munitions for the smaller guns that Hoffman had seen earlier—the “One-Fifties”—look like Lancer rounds. It all added to the impression of Jarrold as a child playing with oversized adult things. “But ours is bigger than theirs.”

“Remember that if they get close in, Private, ours are going to be all pretty well the same size.”

That was the point of the big guns—to stop the enemy from getting too close. Guns had a minimum range as well as a maximum. Under a certain distance, they’d have to rely on close-in weapons. But the Indies were coming for the refinery. Hoffman knew it.

“It’s five hundred meters, sir,” Jarrold said. “And at that range, we could just as easily stroll out and punch them in the face.”

“What is?”

“Minimum range.”

It was still surprising how fast arty trucks could move on an open road, especially when they met no opposition along the way. Hoffman put away his letter and stood at the observation platform, focusing the range-finder binoculars on a point far beyond the refinery.

“Make the most of it, sir,” Even said. “Because once we’ve got something to shoot at, we’ll be needing those.”

It was mid-afternoon when a message was passed from Battalion HQ to alert Anvil Gate that the UIR column would reach the refinery in two hours.

At least Hoffman had a good idea now of why the Indies had put so much effort into blocking a route that conventional military wisdom said they needed.

They couldn’t take the garrison. But they probably didn’t want COG reinforcements diverted east through Kashkur and down through the pass to close in on them in a pincer movement. They wanted to concentrate on Shavad and keep a single front.

That way, they could work their way through Kashkur to the imulsion fields, and eventually Anvegad would be irrelevant. They were playing a more patient game than Hoffman had thought. He stared into the distance at the point he expected to see the UIR appear.

But he could be patient, too. And, after centuries of standing guard at the gates of Kashkur, so could Anvegad.

If the war ever reached Ephyra, then it would look like this, Adam realized.

Shavad had the same elegant, tree-lined avenues and fountain-filled squares as the Tyran capital, the same colonnaded public buildings. The style was more oriental and exotic, but the city was the heart of a modern province where people liked shopping and theaters and clean trains that ran on time. The people were just like Tyrans.

Yes, it would be just like this. And that scared him.

He tried his radio again. This time the channel was working. “Gold Nine to Control, we requested casevac an hour ago. I’ve got Gears down, a lot of them Tango-One—they can’t wait for you to finish your coffee break. What’s happening?”

It took a few moments for the controller to respond. Adam counted three incoming shells in that time, one so close that he felt the brick dust sting his eyes a few seconds later as the blast washed down the road.

“Control to Gold Nine, you’re not the only company taking heavy casualties.” The controller sounded fraught. “We’ve lost five Terns to ground fire during attempted extractions—you suppress the Indies behind the lines, and maybe we’ll have something left flying to send you.”

They seemed to be everywhere. It wasn’t just the artillery, tanks, and missiles from across the river that were tearing the guts out of the Shavad defenses. On the north side, the fragile front line of the city itself, COG ground forces were getting hit in the back from snipers and mortar fire. Adam could only think that the UIR had been slipping special forces into Kashkur for months ahead of Vasgar’s collapse.

And I bet they engineered the end of the Vasgari government as well.

“Control, we need some routes cleared, too. We can’t get the ATVs out to the north.”

“Roger that, Gold Nine. I can divert a Behemoth for you. One hour, maybe two. It’s leaving Lakar soon.”

Adam took off his gloves and spat on his fingers to try to wipe the grit from his eyes. He always hated wearing goggles, but now he was going to make a point of finding a complete helmet. His eyeballs felt scoured; his mouth was caked with dust and grit.

It had now taken him half an hour to move less than a hundred meters down the road. Every time he tried to make a dash for the next available cover—a doorway, basement steps, a burned-out truck—a hail of fire drove him back. A mortar blew tiles off a nearby roof, raining shards on him. The Indie barrage had changed the landmarks of the area so much in the last couple of hours that he had to check his compass to make sure he was still heading the right way. He didn’t recognize a single major building along the river now.

But he had to move. He couldn’t cower here all day. He took a deep breath to steady himself and then ran for it, moving in short sprints from cover to cover. Eventually he reached the end of the street and crouched by the corner of a building to peer around it.

He could see the river that wound through the center of the city—promenades along the banks, elegant stone balustrades now smashed to rubble, polished brass flower troughs that had been ripped apart like paper. The waterfront walk was now a shooting gallery. Nothing could move along that route.

Adam couldn’t see if all the road bridges across the river had been blown or not. The COG was relying on sporadic intercepts of the UIR comm net to work out where the Indies could and could not go. Three bridges seemed to be impassable, but the fourth, the one closest to him, was stubbornly refusing to collapse into the water. Two of the Sherriths’ tanks had been pounding it for a couple of hours with little success, although the barrage was forcing the UIR advance to try elsewhere. Their infantry had been forced to trickle across a narrow pedestrian bridge five kilometers west.

But they kept coming. It was like trying to stop a leak, watching the water rising, and every time one crack was plugged another opened. Adam took a breath and slipped back into the shadow of a collapsed hotel awning.

How can it be this hard to move across one block?

He retuned his radio to call Helena. “Lieutenant, any luck?”

“No, sir. Looks like they’ve got a couple of guys up in the museum—I can’t think of another building where they could put a forward observer. I swear there’s sniper fire coming from there, too.”

“No joy on the casevac, either.”

“Why the hell do we spend so much budget on those things?” Helena sounded as if she was choking back an expletive. “Casevac’s going to be impossible anyway until we take out some of the Indie positions on this side of the river. Can we get around to the back of the museum via the promenade?”

“No, the Indies are lined up along the south bank like they’re waiting for the regatta to start. Ideas?”

She paused. Adam could hear the steady rattle of fire in the background and a lot of shouting about applying pressure. It was the combat medics trying to give Gears first-aid instructions while they were tied up on other casualties.

“I think we can get into the museum at third-story level,” she said.

“How?”

“The gap between the exterior walls is four meters.”

“And you think we can breach it without being seen.”

“Ladder, smoke grenade, speed.”

Adam thought of all the lectures he’d attended at the academy, all the strategy theories and lessons from history played out with wooden blocks on table-sized maps. In the end, battles came down to solutions held together with string and individuals snatching flimsy opportunities.

“Okay, I’m heading back. We’ve got one chance at this.”

“Teale’s dead, by the way, sir. Sorry.”

That made twenty-two KIAs out of a company of ninety men and women. Adam had lost Gears before, but not in those numbers and not in a matter of days. He added Sergeant Teale to the list of personal letters he’d have to write as soon as this was over. Maybe he’d phone the families instead, if the lines weren’t down. His father had always told him that he had to be man enough to do that, or he wasn’t fit to be an officer.

“Okay. I’m working my way back now. Don’t start without me.”

As he moved down the street, he felt like the last human being left on Sera. He couldn’t see another Gear out there. The explosions and gunfire were just disembodied sounds not related to the people who were making them.

Where are the civilians? Where are the people who live here? Where do they go?

They’d melted away before the COG moved in, or so it seemed. He wanted to believe that the Kashkuri forces had evacuated everybody, but you could never completely clear a capital like that. In the basements and hidden places, terrified families huddled and waited. He knew it.

But there was nothing he could do about it, so, just as his father had taught him—by advice and example—he simply shut it out of his mind and focused on the next task.

The building they’d taken over on the southwest corner of the square had turned out to be a dental surgery. Adam thought that was a wonderful stroke of luck at first, as good as finding a ready-made first-aid post, but apart from a cupboard stacked with local anesthetics, hypodermics, and dressings, it was short of most of the things they needed for emergencies. It was still better than treating badly injured Gears in filthy streets, though. He did a discreet head count as he went around from room to room at the back of the building, and it wasn’t encouraging; there were more than twenty wounded. The medic had moved them into groups according to their severity, waiting for the helicopters. Anyone who wasn’t T-1 or T-2 and could hold a rifle was back fighting.

Down to half a company. God …

He had to get them casevacked, if only to free up the Gears taking care of them.

Corporal Collins was in the upstairs office with a light machine gun resting on the windowsill. He’d pushed filing cabinets across the windows, leaving himself small gaps to fire through like crenellations.

“Rough out there, sir,” he said. “There’s as many of the bastards behind us as there are in front of us.”

Adam edged to the window with his back to the wall and studied the reflection in the framed dental school diploma above the desk on the opposite side. The museum was on the northeast corner of the square, five floors and a lot of windows that gave whoever was in there a complete view of anything that moved below or out on the road.

“Top floor, roof?” he asked.

“I think so. I’m sure I caught muzzle flash. There’s a sniper there if nothing else. But I’m betting the FO’s up there too. Look at the skyline. The only high building that hasn’t been creamed.”

Adam imagined long, case-lined galleries in the museum, thousands of years’ worth of artifacts and history. It was irrelevant. It would break his heart, but it was a case of saving objects or lives. He did what he had to and got on the radio.

“Gold Nine to Green FDC.” For a moment, he couldn’t believe the next words would ever escape his mouth. But they did. “Can you target the National Museum?”

The Sherriths’ fire direction control could have been anywhere now. “FDC here, what do you need?”

“We think they’ve put their observer on the museum roof.”

“Shit, half the Indie army must be inside Kashkur. Let me get a range on that and warn off aircraft. Wait one.”

Every sword had another edge. Adam despaired of ever getting a Tern or a Raven to land. But the observer had to be put out of business.

“They’re a liability,” he said.

“Sorry, sir?”

“One for the mess over a beer when we get back, Collins.” Adam was fascinated by the theory of warfare, but the reality depressed him, not because it was violent but because it was executed so badly. It didn’t have to be this primitive, this wasteful of life and property. “I’m going to find Lieutenant Stroud. Keep your head down, Corporal.”

“Always do, sir.”

Helena had a plan by the time Adam caught up with her, one that involved an extending metal ladder. She was standing in what had been the waiting room of the surgery, bracing the lowest rung on her knees and seeing how far she could push it out single-handed. At the far end of the long room, Sergeant Fraisen was trying to guide the other end onto the edge of a table. Adam could guess what Helena was planning.

“Are you going to use that to bridge the gap between the buildings?”

She put the end of the ladder on a low table. “I am. Like this.”

The ladder was stretched out like a gantry now, resting on two solid supports. Helena stood on it and walked across unsteadily like a tightrope walker in need of more rehearsal.

“You won’t be able to do that ten or fifteen meters off the ground,” Adam said.

“I used to do it on a log over water in basic training, sir. But I can crawl, too.”

“Well, you won’t be crawling anywhere yet. I’ve asked the Sherriths if they can hit the museum roof. I’m waiting on their response.”

“And if that fails?”

“Then we can try your lunatic idea. Put a credible plan together and convince me.”

Adam realized he’d fallen instantly into accepting that she was going to breach the building if push came to shove. That was Helena all over. She wanted things done, and she wanted them done now. And she never seemed to trust anyone to carry out her plans without her personal supervision.

Adam had a certain sympathy for her impatience. His own frustration was a lack of intel; there was no aerial recon worth a damn. Helicopters, even the expensive new Ravens, were vulnerable overflying infantry and armor. All Adam knew was what he could see with his own eyes, and what he was told over the radio by other commanders who had as limited a view as he did.

There had to be a smarter way to do this after sixty years. His grandfather would have recognized most of the doctrines, and probably even some of the technology.

Whoomp.

The building shook and plaster snowed from the ceiling. For a moment he thought it was an Indie special forces team breaching the building, but it was a mortar, and he felt ludicrous relief. Just a mortar. Good God, man. There were still piles of old-fashioned sandbags out on the street, five deep and twelve high, doing nothing much of use. When it got dark, he’d retrieve those and try to reinforce the surgery position as best he could.

He was only supposed to hold the Indies off until the big guns and even bigger guns came down from the north. It wasn’t meant to drag on like this. He wasn’t supposed to be surrounded. He ran his palm over his face, forehead to chin, and his hand came away with a thin streak of blood.

Nobody told me I was bleeding, either.

Helena crouched beside him. “Sir, we can move along the alley at the back of this block, come out in the northwest corner at the theater, and enter its basement via the scene dock doors. Then we go to the top floor and traverse the gap to the museum. That brings us out on the third floor. From there, we go up the stairs to the roof. How does that sound?”

“If we need to.”

“Okay, if we need to.”

Helena exuded confidence. She always did. It wasn’t cocky bravado; she simply seemed to know that she was going to succeed, and the possibility of failing wasn’t an issue for her. Where Adam would have looked at the downside, she seemed to see only the up.

Outside, the sporadic thump of shells sounded like a very slow racketball game in progress, the slight variation in pitch creating an impression of something being batted back and forth across the river. The automatic fire barely seemed to pause to draw breath. Adam went to check on the wounded.

“Vallory isn’t looking too good, sir,” said Kinnear, one of the medics. She was repacking the man’s leg wound, a deep shredded hole just above the knee. “He needs blood. Look, I’m willing to call in an ATV and try driving him out of here.”

“You won’t get a hundred meters,” Adam said. Kinnear would have to drive west along the river without the cover of buildings, in full view of the Indie tanks lined up on the other side. “Can you hang on until we’ve shut down the FO on that roof?”

“Can do, sir.” She didn’t sound convinced. Adam got the feeling he’d have another death to explain to a wife before the day was out. I’m sorry we lost your husband, ma’am. We were just waging war the way our fathers did. “Anyone found some morphine yet?”

We’ve just grown too used to this. Satellite recon and targeting, that’s what we need. Fast fighters to deliver payloads accurately. Better still—satellite weapons platforms that can take out a single building without Gears needing to storm it like a damned castle.

Adam had the ideas. He knew he could make them work. He just had to survive long enough. He certainly had the incentive now.

His radio popped. “Green FDC to Gold Nine.”

“Go ahead, FDC.”

“One nasty surprise coming up for the museum,” he said. “Duck and cover, just in case … all call signs, clear Gorlian Square, repeat, clear Gorlian Square.”

The sniper had already made sure there was nobody near the museum, but Adam didn’t have the disposition of all his Gears at any given time, only the squad or platoon leaders. He radioed them anyway.

Helena flattened herself by the window to watch. “I hope their insurance covers this, sir.”

There was no replacement value for unique cultural treasures. Adam had joined the ranks of history’s despoilers, the thoughtless vandals he once so despised, and the ease with which he’d done it appalled him.

“I’ve just given the order to wipe out three thousand years of culture,” he said.

Helena huffed to herself. “I worry more about the orphans of Gears than a few old vases.”

Adam took it as a deserved rebuke, said nothing, and crawled outside the front door behind the cover of a retaining wall to observe. He didn’t even hear the first shell. But he saw it, all right; it landed on the elegant steps that ran the whole width of the museum frontage, bringing the lower half of them down like an avalanche.

“That’s his ranging shot, I hope,” Helena said.

The next shell took out a row of windows on the second floor.

“Well, I think our chum probably knows we’ve pinged him now,” Adam said. “He’ll move, at least.”

“Maybe he won’t, sir. And we won’t know unless the Indies suddenly keep missing.”

“What about the sniper?”

“We’ve got helicopters inbound. We’ll find out the hard way.”

The artillery shells carried on biting chunks out of the museum. Helena was right; it was just stuff, things, inanimate objects. And the steady chatter of Tern rotors was getting closer. He’d done what he had to do.

“If you were them,” Captain Sander said, “what would you do?”

Hoffman braced his elbows on the sill of the observation post window and tried to steady the binoculars. The Indie column was visible only by the distant plume of dust it kicked up into the still air like a curl of smoke.

“Depends how they think it’s going at Shavad. If they overrun Kashkur, they’ll be more concerned with stopping us from sabotaging the refinery as we retreat.”

“Didn’t think the Unvanquished did that.”

The 26th Royal Tyran Infantry had never retreated or surrendered; the motto on its cap badge—Unvanquished—had to be maintained. Hoffman left definitions of victory to the historians.

“We’re not the only regiment in this fight,” he said.

“I asked Choi if we could take out the refinery now. It’s in range. He said no.”

There were a couple of thousand workers at the refinery. It was almost as much of a city as Anvegad was. Hoffman found himself calculating the speed of the Indie advance against the time it would take for the staff to evacuate the refinery.

“The refinery’s probably not going to put up a fight,” he said.

“Would you, if you were sitting on millions of liters of fuel? Even if they’ve piped most of the stores out by now, it’s still a bomb waiting to go off.”

“Of course, they might even be pleased to see the Indies.”

“So where’s the damn aerial recon?” Sander got on the radio again. “Just one Tern. Is that too much to ask?”

“Yes,” Hoffman said. “It probably is right now.”

“Okay, we wait.” Sander had a channel open to Battalion Command, keeping up as best he could with the situation in Shavad. “And we’ll be doing this without air support.”

Hoffman listened in for a while. Every helicopter in the region was being pulled in to support 26 RTI and the Sherriths, half of them on casevac. Given the shit the Royal Tyrans were in, Hoffman couldn’t feel shortchanged. Frustration was starting to get to him. He’d never been used to sitting on his ass and listening to a battle he wasn’t actually taking part in.

And those are my buddies out there. I’m going to have a lot of funerals to attend.

Kashkur was just one theater in a war that spanned most of Sera. If he listened to the international radio stations, Shavad wouldn’t even be in the top-ten news stories today, so Anvegad—a choke point that no commander in his right mind would ever try to attack—was one of those stories that would never be told.

“Sir, I’m going to get back to the platoon.” Hoffman adjusted his cap. “Shake out a patrol and find some better observation points.”

“Mountain men,” Sander said. “You really need mountain men. I’m going to request some Pesang support if this looks like it’s going to drag on.”

Hoffman made do with what he had and sent Byrne out with a squad to set up observation points five kilometers south, where the terrain was still rocky enough to enable men to move between cover. An hour later, the gunners and Byrne’s patrol got on their radios almost simultaneously to say they’d spotted the first UIR vehicles.

“Definitely heading for the refinery, sir,” Byrne said. “Six self-propelled guns, a dozen tanks, some APCs, and some big unarmored supply trucks. Oh, and a low-loader with tarps all over it. Maybe that’s carrying a track-laying vehicle. Bit thin on the ground for a serious attempt to break through the pass, actually.”

“Not banking on the refinery fighting to the last man, then.”

“If the rest of Vasgar rolled over, then why should they die in a ditch for a few cans of fuel? They’re only civvies.”

The wait-and-see was getting to Hoffman. But there was no point doing anything else. If the Indies showed signs of moving north of the refinery, then the vintage guns would see them off. Hoffman did his rounds again, checking on the machine gun and antiaircraft positions and noting how few civvies were on the streets.

It was hard to draw a line to mark where the garrison ended and the city began, other than the security checkpoint on the gates of the vehicle compound.

“Lieutenant.” Sheraya Olencu stepped out from between the columns of the council building as he passed and walked along with him. “Is there anything else you need me to do?”

Hoffman thought of Sheraya only in terms of dealing with local procurement, handling the traders and drivers who kept the garrison fed and supplied. Then it struck him that she might well want to be around Byrne if the shooting started. She was pregnant. He had no idea how that was affecting her, but it made sense to him that she’d be anxious about separation at a time like this.

“Did Sergeant Byrne do as I ordered and get the alderman to marry you two?”

“Yes.” Sheraya lowered her eyes. “He always follows orders.”

“Thank God for that,” Hoffman said. “Look, I’m going to risk the captain’s wrath and say this—I’m giving you permission to stay within the garrison if you feel the need. Special circumstances.”

She slowed her pace a little. “You’re a considerate man, Lieutenant. Is it because you miss your own wife?”

Hoffman hadn’t thought of himself as considerate or even sentimental, but he certainly missed Margaret. “When there’s a war on, I don’t believe anyone should put anything off longer than necessary.”

“There’s always been a war on. Even my grandfather can barely recall a time when Sera was at peace.”

“Well, the war’s right here, right now.” Hoffman wished he hadn’t put it that way. “Or as close as it’ll get for Anvegad. Come on. You can sit in the mess until Sam’s off duty.”

Sander wouldn’t mind. There’d been a time when Hoffman would have objected to having wives inside the garrison other than in designated married quarters, but he couldn’t work up any outrage at the bending of regulations these days. He was starting to feel agitated about the road being blocked. It was the same feeling he got when he had to sit down with his back to a door. He wanted to turn around and face it.

He stopped Carlile on the way through the vehicle compound. “How are we doing on the bulldozer, Sapper?”

“It’s not left Lakar yet. Shavad might need it for the next two days, apparently.” Carlile looked irked. “Fucking typical if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”

“Well, we’ve got two weeks before we need to resort to cannibalism,” Hoffman said. “I need to get up to speed with what’s happening there.”

“That’s your regiment, isn’t it, sir? Two-Six RTI.”

“Yes. It is.”

“The engineers out there say the Indies put special forces behind the lines into Kashkur before they invaded Vasgar, judging by the amount of sabotage the lads are dealing with. Apparently they’ve got snipers all over Shavad.”

“You hear more than I do.”

“That’s only because I’ve been stuck on the radio trying to get Lakar moving.”

Hoffman climbed back to the gun floor and looked out over the plain again from the observation position. Sander stood on the opposite side of the chamber, field glasses pressed to his eyes.

“Frustrating,” he said. “They’re just in range. But I can wait.”

“Cheer up, sir. They didn’t get their hands on the imulsion supply.”

“It’s only a matter of time before the power stations start running out of fuel. That’s going to put some pressure on them.” Sander lowered the glasses and glanced across at Hoffman. “No word from Lakar?”

“They haven’t dispatched the bulldozer yet. Carlile says it’s had to divert to Shavad. Like the Ravens.”

“Damn. We’re not a priority, are we?” Sander took out a small pad and started sketching. “I’ll have an entire mural done before they pull their finger out and get around to us.”

It was late afternoon, all long shadows and a blue haze on the mountains, before the knot of UIR vehicles around the refinery showed signs of movement. Hoffman watched, noted, and calculated.

Evan slapped the part of the gun barrel he could reach like he was patting the neck of a racehorse.

“They say that an Indie guard post and a COG one faced each other across a border for ten years and didn’t so much as exchange a shot,” he said absently. “I forget where it was. I bet they did, too.”

Sander had been leaning against the wall. He pushed himself away and stretched his back. “Just going to put a call into Brigade Command about the Behemoth,” he said. “If we lose Shavad, they’ll need this route open one way or another.”

He turned toward the steel door that led down the stairs. As he got halfway across the gun floor, Hoffman heard a shout from the ramparts.

“What the hell’s that?” Sander said casually, looking out. “Oh, shit—”

The gun floor was engulfed instantly in a blinding yellow light. Hoffman heard the whoosh of a backdraft, two loud bangs like a car crash, and the air around him exploded. Something hit the back of his head; his mouth was filled with a searing pain, he could taste blood, and he suddenly felt the cold stone floor under his cheek. He couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t move. He was sure he was flailing his arms, trying to get up, but he wasn’t moving at all. Then the sound rushed back in and all he could hear was the garrison siren, panting screams, and a strange, gonglike sound. Everything else was just muffled underwater noises.

But he could see. Now he was looking up into Evan’s face, a mass of blood and pale gray dust. The gunner was leaning over him.

“Sir! Come on, get up! Fucking rocket—they’re behind us! They’re fucking well behind us!”

Someone pulled him upright. He felt like he was spinning on a fixed point, about to keel over again. He fell against Evan. As he looked around, trying to work out what the hell had happened, he saw the mess all around him—blast marks, blood, an armor backplate, black fabric. Someone had been hit.

“He’s dead,” Evan said. “Captain’s dead, sir. Come on. Out.”

Hoffman knew he was concussed because he kept wondering why nobody had fired the guns. Evan pushed him through the door and he nearly fell over Jarrold on the way down the stairs. He ended up sitting on the step, distantly aware of yelling and noise wafting in from the city.

“Hit my head,” he said. Sander’s gone. Shit, he’s gone. He’s dead. “What the hell was that?”

“Someone out on the rocks,” Jarrold said. “This side of the city. Some bastard put an RPG through the observation window. Shit, sir, it’s a miracle we got out alive.”

Hoffman found his mouth was working even though he didn’t feel it was connected to his brain. Rocket attack in confined space. Yeah. Why am I still alive?

“Are we still under attack?”

“Dunno, sir.”

Hoffman tried to press the button on his headset, but missed. It took him two stabs with his finger to activate his radio.

“This is Lieutenant Hoffman,” he said. “Byrne, Salton—get out there and find who fired that. Gunners—I need a crew to check the main guns, now. And somebody monitor the refinery, because I can’t see straight.”

It wasn’t even his voice. It was drill, and ten years of taking incoming fire, and the instinct that said if he didn’t get a grip of this then nobody else would. He knew he was hurt; he knew Sander was dead. He just needed the autopilot Hoffman to carry on while he tried to reconnect all the torn, loose, and terrified parts of himself.

Two things preoccupied him for the next few minutes, and neither was urgent, he knew.

One was that the glass of his watch was broken, and he couldn’t see the second hand. The other was that he had no idea what he was going to say to Ranald Sander’s pregnant widow.