Chapter 29

Jer picked himself off the ground and looked around in confusion. He was lost in a fog. Fog? There hadn't been any fog… A gray-white mist was all around him. No, wait, it wasn't a mist; it was a cloud of … of dust. A fine dust, fine as talc. It was slowly settling, coating everything, turning the world white.

What the hell happened?

They'd just gotten the order to fall back and then… something. A moment of buzz-saw pain in his head and then he'd been knocked down and now this. Voices began to arise over his com circuits, most of them vocalizing the questions he'd been asking himself silently. What was happening?

He called up his tactical display and cursed when he saw that it was just a hash of colored confetti. Damn, if he'd lost his TAC, he was going to be crippled. But no, wait, it was settling down now; the image firmed up and blue and red icons started winking back on. He sighed in relief.

Except…

Something was still wrong. Off to the right, a whole group of icons were missing. Was there some screw-up with the sensor downloads? That could happen with all the jamming going on, but all in one area? He looked over that way, his sensors cycling through wavelengths until they found one that could penetrate the dust cloud.

"Holy shit…"

The hill… it was gone. The top of it had been sliced off as if by a giant knife. The grav lance… it must have been the MPDC's grav lance…

The babble of voices on his com was abruptly cut off by stern orders from Major Waski to fall back. "Everyone pull back to Position D—it's on your maps. And stay to the low ground in case that bloody thing fires again!"

Jer shook his head and blinked. Okay, okay, he had orders. Fall back. Now where were his men? He keyed his suit to highlight his own platoon and display their status. At a glance it appeared that he still had everyone he'd had before the… the whatever it was had struck. He was down to a single mass driver and eighteen men. Part of him desperately wanted to know how many of the men he'd detached to the other companies were still alive, but all morning he had forced himself to not check on them. They were not his responsibility today and he couldn't afford to distract himself with something he wasn't responsible for. Eighteen men, himself and… and…

"Oh My God…"

The hill.

His militia company had been on the hill.

"Flora! Flora, answer me!"

Nothing. No response.

He called again, but there was still no answer and the chilling realization was growing in his gut that there never would be any answer. Ever. His militia company, along with some support forces, had been sent to that hilltop during their last pull-back. And they were all gone. Every one of them. A gravitic imploder lance caused an enormous gravitation shear. Hundreds of thousands of Gees of force would shred anything it touched, ripping objects apart, literally molecule by molecule, reducing them to…

… dust.

He looked again at the slowly settling cloud. The white powder on the ground, on his suit… He tried to brush it off and then was nearly retching. Flora, the others…

"Lieutenant! We gotta move!" It was Shusterman. His platoon sergeant came up to him and took him by the arm. "We can mourn 'em later sir. Gotta stay alive to do that."

"Y-yeah, you're right, Sergeant," choked Jer. "Let's get out of here." He took one last look at what was left of Hill 219 and then turned and followed his sergeant.

[Scene Break]

Anny gasped in relief when the tactical display came back to life and she spotted Jer's signal. He was still alive! She'd known he was over on the right and when that hill had been destroyed and she couldn't pick up his signal, she'd feared the worst. But there he was!

Even so, her relief was tempered by the knowledge that he was still in terrible danger. The enemy MPDC had blown a hole right through the line and the flank was collapsing. Swarms of other enemy troops were surging forward to take advantage of it. Get out of there, Love, as fast as you can!

She had to get moving, too. The whole regiment was falling back again to a new position. They were sucking in the right flank, shortening the line, trying to put some high ground between themselves and the EnBee war machine. But they were starting to run out of room. They were only a half-dozen clicks from the outskirts of Milagres now. Beyond that was the ocean.

C Company was down to about eighty effectives, even including the men attached from the weapons company, and far too many of them had minor injuries and plasma mirrors that were out or nearly so. Her own mirror was around 30% and she was probably better off than most. She gave the order to move to her troops and then watched to make sure it was done properly. In spite of her determination to not interfere with her subordinates, she was finding that more and more she had to step in. Too many key people were gone, too many squads were down to just a couple of privates. They weren't going to break because of their casualties, but it was inevitable that they were going to lose some of their effectiveness.

They fell back through a shattered olive grove, took cover briefly behind a stone wall which surrounded a farmstead, and then fell back again. As they moved, the blinding glare of a heavy-duty plasma arc swept through the area. Trees flamed up like torches and the farmhouse exploded. Anny's plasma mirror flared as it deflected the edge of the beam, as did many others among the men. Two troopers, caught more fully in the arc, went down as their mirrors failed. The whole company flung themselves flat on the ground.

"God!" cried Ensign Vorstuban. "That didn't come from any tank! What was it?"

"It would appear that the MPCD has more weapons than just that grav lance," replied Anny as calmly as she could manage. "Come on, people, move! Let's get back and find some defilade from it." They picked up their fallen comrades, although both were beyond any help, even cryo freezing, and scrambled out of the line of sight of the enemy machine. Along gullies, through decapitated woodlots, past shattered houses, they fell back, carrying their equipment, their wounded and their dead. The other EnBee forces, apparently encouraged by the arrival of their behemoth, were attacking with renewed vigor and were close on their heels when they reached their new position. This one was, again, on the reverse slope of a line of low hills. Anny and her men quickly found cover and prepared to be hit. But the MPDC did not seem to be able to move very fast and they gained a respite from its fire.

The enemy didn't grasp the fact that the 61st wasn't a defeated force. They were in pursuit mode now, but the 61st had stopped running. "All right," said Anny, "Let 'em have it!"

Fire lashed out from all along the line, catching many of the EnBees in the open. They had taken out a lot of the troop carriers earlier so many of the infantry were riding on the tops of the ones that remained. They were completely exposed and suffered heavily before they could dismount. Anny led her troopers out in a brief counterattack that sent the enemy reeling back over the hill. She dared not follow far and soon returned to cover, leaving a field filled with burning vehicles and dead EnBees. Similar scenes were taking place all along the new line.

"Guess that'll teach them to keep their distance!" exulted Vorstuban. The rest of the men were voicing similar sentiments until Sergeant Nikolaidis ordered them to shut up. But the enemy did appear to have been taught a lesson and they did keep their distance for quite a while—until the MPDC loomed into view again.

From that point it just got worse.

The MPDC didn't seem to be able to depress its grav lance far enough to hit them in the low ground they now occupied. At first, Anny wondered why it didn't use its anti-gravs to tilt the whole machine up so that it could bring its primary weapon to bear again. But from time to time the whole vehicle flared brightly as something powerful hit its shields. And they learned that the Alliance warships in orbit were now playing a deadly game with the MPDC. They'd briefly pop-up above the horizon and take a shot and then duck back down again before the enemy grav lance could shred them. The warships' fire couldn't do much other then drain the enemy's shields a bit, but since they could pop-up anywhere around the whole horizon, the EnBee commander clearly didn't want to risk exposing the machine's undersides to fire by tilting it too far.

And they had plenty of other weapons to use against the 61st.

The monster looked to mount at least four capital-grade plasma arcs plus numerous smaller ones along with mass-drivers and missile launchers. Against the battered and depleted Barrayarans, it was more than enough. Casualties began to mount alarmingly and there wasn't anything they could really do to hurt it in return. Most of their heavy weapons were gone and their plasma fire just got reflected back at them.

Meter by meter the MPDC ground forward and the 61st was forced to fall back again. Anny's company had lost another dozen men before the order to retreat was given. Ensign Vorgard was one of them and Anny decided to consolidate C Company down to two platoons, one under Vorstuban and one under Milroy. They had practiced this sort of thing and it was done without confusion. Damn, she had good men! And I'm probably going to lose all of them today. She thought back to the parade ground at the Academy, a conversation with Lord Vorkosigan… Do your job. Do your job as best you can —and pray the price doesn't get too high. Anny was praying—but the price was already far too high.

By mid-afternoon they had been pushed back to the edge of Milagres. Anny was surprised when they found themselves fighting around the burning remains of C Company's base. She could hardly recognize it now. Some of the personnel modules had been torn open, others spewed thick clouds of black smoke as they burned. A small tan shape caught her eye. Lulubelle. The little vella had been thriving on Novo Paveo, but no more. Private Stubinski would have been heartbroken—except he was already dead.

"Anny? Anny!" It was Bernard Vorstuban.

"Yeah?"

"How much longer is this going to go on? I mean… I mean how much more can we take? We stay much longer and there's not going to be any regiment left!" She glanced to make sure he was using a private circuit and he was.

"I don't know. We stay until the Colonel tells us otherwise. What the hell else can we do?"

"We could fall back! Try to save something!"

"Fall back where? The town would give us more cover, but it wouldn't help much against that thing. And there are all the civilian there… Plus our field hospital!" The thought materialized in her head out of nowhere. All their wounded! There couldn't have been any evacuations from the island. And the medical staff… Chris Tropio… What would the EnBees do if they got that far? We can't let them get that far!

"Maybe… maybe we can swing wide to the east. Draw them after us that way. We'd still be delaying them, keep them away from Araxa like we're supposed to."

"Sounds like a fine plan, Ensign. Why don't you suggest it to Colonel Fetherbay?"

Vorstuban sputtered. "Anny! I'm serious!"

"So am I."

"He's not going to listen to me!"

"And you think he'll listen to me?"

"He might!"

"You really think it's that bad?" Stupid question. We both know it's that bad.

"Don't you?"

"We're buying time…"

"For what? For who? The fleet is two days away! You think we can hold for two more days?"

No. We can't hold for two more hours.

"We hold until we're told to do something else."

"Anny!"

"Bernard, shut up and do your job. It's a job you practically begged for, as I recall. Get a medal or two to spruce up your record? Anyone who's alive after this should have a basketful. Now cut the chit-chat. We've got work to do."

There was a long pause and then: "Yes sir."

[Scene Break]

"They're getting the hell beat out of them."

Ivan wasn't sure who among the watching officers had made the comment, but there was no denying the truth of the statement. The 61st Regiment of Imperial Infantry was on the verge of annihilation. They'd fought well, fought incredibly well. The EnBee brigade that had attacked them had been reduced to little more than a reinforced battalion, with most of its vehicles and heavy weapons destroyed. But the 61st was at less than battalion strength itself and even at full strength Ivan couldn't see what it could hope to do against that MPDC. The thing had the firepower, shields and armor of a dreadnought.

We need some dreadnoughts of our own!

But the closest one was still thirty-six hours away. The ships that were in the vicinity of Novo Paveo were doing their best to help out. Their fire support was helping smash the other EnBee forces who had revealed themselves elsewhere on the planet, and they were even taking daring shots at the MPDC. But would that be enough? The Alliance ground forces were rushing toward Araxa as quickly as they could disengage from the unexpected battles in which they'd found themselves; some were arriving even now.

"The 4th Keegark Fencibles are unloading, General. Where do you want them to go?" A staff officer was pointing at a display where a blue icon was winking at the Araxa landing field. It was a Polian unit. General Vordanov, who had been given overall command of the situation (although with considerable grumbling by the Cetagandan contingent) shook his head.

"Just light infantry. Have them dig in next to that Escobaran engineer battalion in Sector 9. Damnation, what we really need is some heavy armor!" He turned to one of the Earth officers; a man wearing a black uniform as if he was a naval officer, but with oddly incongruous pink piping and a beret. "Brigadier, what the hell is the problem with the 21st Panzer Regiment? It hasn't budged since this began and we need their tanks!"

"Sorry General, they have been immobilized," he replied in a thick accent that Ivan couldn't quite place. "By sabotage if the reports I'm getting are to be believed."

"Sabotage! How?"

"Well, as you know, heavy armor hasn't been much use in the sort of anti-insurgency work we've been doing here. So we sent the 21st to an area that had been pacified." The man shook his head sadly and looked embarrassed. "Apparently it wasn't quite as pacified as we'd been led to believe."

Vordanov cursed and turned away again and stared at the main display. Looking for inspiration? Ivan wished him luck. He'd been staring at it himself for hours and nothing had come to him, either. Over the years he'd spent in Ops he'd observed countless battle exercises. And he hadn't just slept through them; he'd absorbed a thing or two about tactics and strategy and managing a battle, even though he had no ambition to ever command one himself.

But he couldn't see what could be done here.

Forces were arriving at Araxa. The 61st , Anny Payne, (and himself) had bought some time for that. Another hour or two and they would have enough here to put up a real fight when the EnBees arrived. Maybe even enough to stop them. But that won't help the 61st. They're screwed. With the MPDC's ability to interdict air transport, there was no way to reinforce the Barrayarans on the island, nor to evacuate them. Will they surrender? Scatter? Fight to the last? He thought back to that dinner at their regimental mess the night before he was kidnapped. The men he'd met there didn't seem the sort to surrender or run. How many of them are still alive right now?

A commotion among the officers dragged Ivan's attention over to the display showing the orbital situation. One of the ships that had been playing hide-and-seek with the MPDC had taken a glancing blow from the machine's grav lance and been heavily damaged. Fortunately, it had already changed its vector enough to drop below the horizon before the EnBees could hit it again. Another ship was moving in to tow it to safety.

Shortly after that, an argument broke out between two groups of staff officers. As near as he could make out, one group was suggesting that they just let the MPDC come on and then attack it when it tried to cross the narrow strait between Tamborete and the mainland. Hit it from underneath while it's over the water! But the other group was claiming that they had sensor readings showing possible enemy submersible vessels gathered around those straits. Had the Alliance thought to bring any submarines along? No? Well that's too bad, isn't it?

"Ivan Xav?"

He looked to where Tej was sitting. Her face was twisted in concern. "What's going to happen?" she asked.

"Well, we've got reinforcements coming in from all over. The EnBees can't be here for at least a few more hours and we ought to have enough stuff here to deal with them by then. If we can hold them off until the fleet arrives then we can…"

"No," she interrupted and pointed up at the display. "I meant what's going to happen to them? Those Barrayarans on the island. That nice Anny Payne?"

"They…" He tried to form a lie, a nice comforting lie, but it died on his lips in the face of his wife's searching eyes. "They're in a lot of trouble."

"But surely they'll give up before it's too late, won't they? Make a deal? They can make a deal and we can get them back again later, can't we?"

Ivan stared back at her and then his eyes dropped.

"This isn't Jackson's Whole, love. There aren't going to be any deals."

[Scene Break]

"Got anything?" demanded Alby as Rad approached his desk.

"Just some more sensor read-outs. I doubt there's anything new. Have you got anything?"

"No, damn it! I can't find a single clue about where that bloody thing came from!"

"The EnBees may have built it themselves, then. In that case you won't find anything. And even if you do manage to track down its origins and even its builders' specifications, what are the chances any of that information will be of use? I seriously doubt that the design has an unnoticed 'hit-here-to-destroy-me' flaw in it that you'll find."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he snapped in frustration, paging through the new data supplied by Rad at the same time. The Cetagandan was probably right; he wasn't going to find anything useful. But what else could he do? He couldn't get back to the fight and none of the bevy of generals in the situation room were going to pay any attention to any brilliant suggestions he might come up with—not that he had any. But to do nothing just wasn't an option. Not with his friends in danger!

He flipped his comconsole over to the tactical display from the situation room, as he'd been doing more and more frequently to check on the battle. Things looked really bad. The Regiment had started out in a long line, now it was contracting into a blob on the edge of the town of Milagres. The enemy MPDC was on a hill above them, pounding and pounding. At least most of the remaining EnBee troops seemed to be holding back, hiding behind their colossus rather than risk more losses from the stubborn 61st. Get out of there, dammit! Run!

"Alby, this isn't doing any good," said Rad.

"I know, I know." He switched back to the previous screen and continued to flip through the new sensor data. It was just more of the same: readings that various drones and ships and direct links from the power armor in the 61st had been gathering right along. Nothing… nothing…

"Wait a second…"

"What?"

"See here?" He pointed at his display. "When that thing fires its grav lance, the distortions screws up all the local sensors."

"Yes, that's a well-known side effect of the grav lance. So?"

"But it looks as though it's also screwing up the MPDC's own dampening field."

"The sensor dampening field?"

"Yeah! You know that every ship carries one to keep enemy sensors from getting a good look inside them during battle. Even big ground vehicles carry them."

"Of course. It's standard practice. But you're saying the enemy's field goes down when it fires its main weapon?"

"Looks like! The sensor readings from some of the distant ships and drones suddenly get through for a few seconds before the field comes back again. If I take a closer look at some of these… yes! Got it!"

"Got what?"

"A clear read on the emissions from its fusion plant! A lot of manufacturer's fusion plants have a distinctive signature. If I can run a comparison… Yeah!"

"What?"

"Bingo! That thing's fusion plant was built on Earth! Skodawerks in the European Union, to be exact."

"The name sounds familiar…"

"It should! They're a major builder of ships, including warships and a lot of other military hardware." He did a new inquiry and the screen filled with information on Skodawerks.

"Perhaps the EnBees bought the fusion plant from them," suggested Rad.

"Why would they need to do that? They can build their own fusion plants. I'm betting that if the fusion plant came from Skodawerks, then a lot more of that thing did, too!" His fingers flew over the keyboard and the screens flashed by faster and faster. Several minutes went by as he dug deeper and deeper into the intelligence databases of both the Barrayaran Expeditionary Forces and those of several of the other Alliance contingents that he'd managed to break into during his search for Anny. The forces had brought along almost everything in their vast archives—just in case they might need them. Some had information going back a long, long time… He suddenly stopped. "There! Look at that!"

On the screen appeared a picture of a hemispherical vehicle that looked almost exactly like the one the EnBees were using. If it weren't for the teeny tiny people standing next to it, it might have been a ground car of a style that was popular a few decades earlier on Barrayar. Alby brought up a pic of the one they were fighting and set it alongside. "Looks like we have a match."

"Yes," agreed Rad. "But… this is a news article from over eighty years ago!"

"Damn, you're right. But let's see what it says about it… 'Skodawerks completes its newest Riesenpanzerlandkreuzer'… what the hell is that? 'Constructed for the Free Texas Republic'… never heard of 'em… 'at a cost of'… etcetera, etcetera. Huh, look, here's some specs on it, but they're clearly out of date. It doesn't have a grav lance…"

"That long ago they hadn't been invented yet. Nor plasma mirrors."

"True, so it's been refitted. But let's see what else we can find about this sucker." He started typing in new searches and now that they had a starting point it wasn't hard at all to track the MPDC. "Christened San Jacinto by Free Republic… mothballed… reactivated during border dispute… mothballed again… sold to… Hey! Look at this! They sold the damn thing to Escobar!"

"Shortly after you Barrayarans tried to invade them," noted Rad.

"Yeah, you're right. But damn, the thing was sitting on Escobar for twenty years! Why the hell haven't any of the Escobaran here with us mentioned that? For that matter why isn't it in any of our intelligence briefs? We must have known that they had the thing!" He typed again and paused. "Oh… we did know. Look at this intel report from thirty years ago. Damn." Yes, there it was again. The photo attached to the report looked to be the same exact one in the original news article.

"Probably no one here—Escobaran or Barrayaran—had any direct involvement," said Rad. "I remember my father mentioning that an entire battlecruiser had been misplaced for over five years before they discovered it had been decommissioned and scrapped. An unfortunate bureaucratic oversight, he described it."

"A typical bureaucratic foul up! But at least this report seems to have some more up to date information on it. Look , there's the grav lance. But how did it get from Escobar to here?" More typing. "Decommissioned in… sold to… okay, here it is! Sold to Galactic Salvage Corporation, supposedly for scrap. But where did they…? Oho! Look at this! Galactic Salvage was owned by Material Interstelar, a big corporation that just happens to be based on…"

"Nuevo Brasilia."

"…at which point the trail ends. The MPDC was supposedly broken up for scrap. There's no further mention of it anywhere."

"Clearly they took it home in secret and kept it there until they decided to commit it here. It doesn't appear that they did any significant upgrades since they bought it," observed Rad. "The last specifications we have from when Escobar owned it are a close match to what our sensor readings here are telling us."

"Yeah," said Alby looking them over. "It's a hell of a beast, isn't it? Well, let's get this info up to the front where maybe it can do some good!" He copied the specifications to a data chip and headed for the situation room.

General Vordanov was busy, of course, but Alby bulled his way through and presented his findings to him. There was an awkward moment when he got to the part about who had owned the MPDC before the EnBees had gotten it. Vordanov glared at the ranking Escobaran officer, who just shrugged and looked sullen. But Vordanov took the chip and handed it to an aide.

"Let's get this to all our ships. And to the 61st, of course. Good work Vorsworth."

"Thank you, sir."

But will it do any good? Alby looked at the main display. The blue icons on Tamborete were getting mighty scarce and the big red icon marched on inexorably.

[Scene Break]

The Regiment was dying.

They had fought all day long; they had fallen back, halted, fought, and fallen back again and again, leaving a trail of enemy and their own dead as markers. Burning vehicles and burning villages smudged the afternoon sky with black smears. Night was coming, but it wouldn't provide any cover or any relief. Word filtering forward from the BEF HQ in Araxa told them they had done a great job, a heroic job, delaying the enemy long enough to let reinforcements assemble to meet this surprise attack. But none of the messages said anything about help coming to the 61st. Their orders were still to hold the line. Hold the line.

But there wasn't any line left. Just clumps of men desperately trying to find some spot that the enemy war machine couldn't blast. Anny's company was down to a few dozen effectives. And even some of the 'effectives' were badly wounded. The neural interfaces in the armor allowed the wearers to do remarkable things. Men who had lost arms, even legs, could sometimes keep fighting; the interface blocking pain and shock and letting them move their remaining limbs. Battered and torn, C Company kept fighting. Technically, it wasn't even her company anymore, it belonged to Bernard Vorstuban. She was now the acting battalion commander, but there was no battalion left to command. Too many officers were down, too many NCOs; the chain of command was broken in too many spots. A and B Companies didn't have any officers left at all. The men hadn't broken yet, but the Regiment was in pieces. Bleeding to death, one man at a time.

Anny crouched in a crater and tried to make sense of what her displays were telling her. What was left of the 61st was clustered in what had once been a tidy suburb of Milagres, but which now was just evenly spaced piles of rubble. She was exhausted, despite another dose of Dynatrim. Her fatigue dulled her fear, even dulled the rage; all that was left was a numbing sense of sadness: the Regiment was dying.

According to her sensors, Jer was still alive, although she wasn't sure if she believed them. He was only a few hundred meters away, off to her right, the closest they'd been since the fight started. The line, which had been ten kilometers long, had shrunk to a blob less than a klick in diameter.

The enemy war machine was squatting on a low hill about 800 meters away from her. Fire continued to lash out from it, claiming more victims from time to time. The other enemy troops were still hanging back, even though there was nothing to prevent them from moving around the flanks into Milagres and surrounding them. I guess we put the fear of God into them. It was true, they had hurt the enemy badly. Very badly. The brigade that the EnBee commander had shown to them so proudly was a shattered collection of survivors rather than a real combat force. Just like us.

But the MPDC was still unharmed. Her sensors told her that the sniping fire from the warships and what fire the 61st could put at it had drained its shields and its plasma mirror, but they were still far too strong for any weapon they had left to get through. If they could just close with it, get inside the screens, but several attempts had failed with heavy casualties. One of those attempts was why she was now the battalion commander. About an hour earlier they'd gotten a download of information on the machine, but it hadn't done any good that she could see. It just told them what they already knew: it was an incredibly powerful device. Assault troopers were effective against all sorts of opponents, but this wasn't one of them. What the hell could they do?

Someone thudded into the crater next to her and she saw that it was Vorstuban. "So what do you think?" he gasped. The 'visor-up' feature on her display showed her his face. He looked tired and scared—probably just like she did.

"About what? The weather? The Vorbarra Sultana social scene?"

"Anny! We cannot stay here! We can still slip out to the east! Someone needs to give the order!"

Two hours ago he'd said the same thing and she'd told him to shut up. But now… now… He's right. Dying here isn't going to gain us anything more. But what could she do? She wasn't the ranking officer, there were still others left here and there. She couldn't decide to order a retreat on her own.

"Anny, we need to… oh hell, look at that."

Anny peered above the lip of the crater. What had Vorstuban seen? Oh God… A hundred meters to her front, closer to the enemy, someone was waving the regimental banner. The red and gold and blue gleamed in the setting sun. There were holes in it and the edges were ragged and torn, but it was still mostly intact. Unlike us. She stared at it, unbelieving.

Then the inevitable happened. There was a blast of searing light and an explosion. When the smoke cleared there was nothing to be seen but a new crater. "Damn…"

"Yeah," sighed Vorstuban. "Wait, who the hell is that? Oh no!"

Anny looked again. Someone was moving toward the crater. She double-checked her tactical display. "Fetherbay!" Her colonel was moving to pick up the flag of his regiment.

"The bloody fool!" cried Vorstuban.

Anny's armored fingers dug into the edge of the crater as she watched helplessly. Fetherbay dodged from cover to cover and then flung himself into the crater. A moment passed and then he rose to his feet, holding the banner, even more battered and torn than before. Just as he did so, another trooper, seemingly from nowhere, jumped into the crater with him. The man tried to pull the staff away from Fetherbay, but he didn't let go.

"They're arguing over it!" sobbed Vorstuban.

Anny felt hot tears on her cheeks. This was insane.

Then another blast of energy briefly silhouetted the pair and they were gone, too. Anny zoomed in her vision pick-up, but all she could see was some speck of red and gold lying amidst the smoldering earth. Damn! Damn! Damn! A rage surged up in her that even her fatigue couldn't dampen.

She stared for a moment longer and then started climbing out of her own crater.

Something grabbed her and yanked her back down. It was Vorstuban, his eyes wide in shock. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Anny jerked her head toward the enemy. Toward the banner.

"Are you out of your mind? You'll be killed!"

She pulled loose from his grasp.

"It's my turn now."

"Anny!"

She ignored him and started forward, driven by some force she couldn't explain. She scrambled onward, crouching, half-crawling. An explosion tumbled her into a hole, but she cleared her head and lurched forward again. Voices were calling over her com, but she ignored them, too. Her sight was focused on that speck of color.

She reached the crater and paused on the edge. The top of the flagstaff with the brass imperial eagle had been sheared off; there was a pronounced dent about halfway down from there. The banner had been reduced to tatters. The fist of Colonel Fetherbay still clutched the pole. Nothing else of her colonel remained.

Anny Payne reached down and gently pried Fetherbay loose.

Her hand closed around the staff.

[Scene Break]

Jer clung to the earth and tried to get even lower. The air above him seemed filled with flames. To try to stand would mean certain death. He'd never imagined anything like this. Not in his worst nightmare. His platoon was gone, both mass drivers, most of the men, gone. One or two were on the ground nearby, like him, and Sergeant Shusterman was still there next to him, but everything else was gone. What the hell were they supposed to do? The enemy MPDC was impervious to anything they had left. Their plasma weapons were worse than useless and everything else was gone. He was clutching one of the anti-tank mines; he had no clue of where he'd gotten it from. If he could get close enough to attach it to the hull of the machine, it might be able to do something, but there was no way to get close. He'd seen what had happened to those who had tried.

They had to get out of here! To stay was to die. He needed to find Anny and drag her away—before it was too late. They had done their duty, done everything expected of them and more. No need for everyone to die. He'd never felt so afraid. The fear was like a hand clutching his throat. Yes, they had to run! He had to find Anny and run! No one would blame them, the situation was hopeless.

"Sir?"

He called up his tactical display. He had to find Anny. She couldn't be that far…

"Sir?" It was Shusterman. There was a babble of voices on the general com channel that made him hard to hear. Voices shouting. Shouting at someone to get down…

"Sir!"

"What?"

"I… I think you should see this." A hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him up. Shusterman was right next to him, pointing. He looked along Shusterman's arm. There was a figure a few hundred meters away. His tactical display was overlaid on the image and there was a blinking icon right there on that figure.

"Anny!"

He zoomed in and there she was, crouching over something. Plasma bolts seared past her on either side.

"Get down!"

But she didn't get down.

Instead she got up. She hoisted something in one hand over her head. It was a long pole; shreds of blue, red and gold fabric fluttered from it. Her other hand clutched the haft of her war hammer. He could see her face clearly and it was the most terrifying and glorious thing he'd ever seen; her eyes fairly blazing. Her mouth opened…

"Come on, Sixty-first! Give them the cold steel!"

Her voice echoed over the general circuit.

Then she waved the flag and turned, running toward the enemy.

There was a roaring in his ears; a growling, animal snarl. Some of it was coming from his own throat, but there seemed to be hundreds of other voices adding to it. The entire landscape was tinted red.

And then he was up, out of his hole, sprinting forward. After his girl, after the flag, toward the foe. All around him men were rising up out of the ground, like the dead leaving their graves. But they weren't dead, not yet. Some were missing arms, a few even were missing legs, hopping along obscenely, the men of the 61st Regiment of Imperial Infantry rose up and followed their flag. Hundreds of them, charging forward. Blasts of energy swatted some of them down, but the rest kept going, screaming their battle cries.

The neural interface of Jer's armor interpreted his scrambled thoughts correctly and the armor ran forward at maximum speed, closing the distance in what seemed an instant. The machine loomed enormous in front of him, belching fire from a dozen spots. An incredible rage filled him. That thing! They had to kill that thing!

He reached the edge of its force screen and dove for the ground, crawling, rolling scrambling. A coruscating halo of energy surrounded him for a moment and the last of his own screens were stripped away, but he was through! The metal sides of the MPDC towered over him, but he was past its shields!

But where was Anny? He looked around frantically—there she was! Lieutenant Andreanne Payne stood atop one of the machine's massive treads, the flag still clutched in one hand. The pointed end of her hammer flashed down and smashed through the snout of one of the plasma arc projectors that studded the vehicle's side. It exploded in a shower of sparks. All around him more men were joining the assault, climbing or leaping up onto their tormentor. Hacking, chopping, blasting at the thing that had killed so many of their comrades; some were hammering on it with nothing but their armored fists.

But the beast was fighting back. It had dozens of secondary plasma arcs and none of the troopers attacking it had plasma mirrors anymore. Bolts flashed out and men were falling fast. Jer hefted the mine he was still carrying. Maybe it could do some real damage… But even as he looked, another trooper placed a mine on the upper hull. It exploded spectacularly, but only made a small gouge in the thing's massive armor.

"Underneath, sir!" It was Shusterman. "If we can get underneath, maybe you can hit it where it hurts!"

"All right! Let's go!" They darted toward the gap beneath the front of the hull, between the massive caterpillar tracks. But the designers, knowing that this was a weak spot, had mounted a bank of plasma arcs to cover it. The ground exploded in front of Jer and he was blown backwards, his armor scorched, but not pierced. He scrambled to his feet among a half-dozen fallen troopers. But there was Shusterman! He had made it up to where the plasma arcs were mounted. He swung his vicious axe and smashed one of them. Then another. As he took out a third, a beam sliced him in half and he fell.

Jer cried out in rage, but he could see that there was now a blind spot in the coverage. He dashed forward and was suddenly underneath the machine. Now, where to place the mine? He'd briefly looked at the schematics they'd received earlier, now he called them up again. The fusion reactor would be the best bet, but no, it was in almost the exact center of the vehicle, too far from the skin for his mine to have a chance to reach. What else? The shield generator? Maybe, that was back aft. He started moving that way, alongside the huge bogies for the tracks. But hell, they were already past the damn shields! Taking it out might help the navy or the troops around Araxa, but he wanted something to help right now! Hell, there had to be something!

As he moved, he scanned the surface of the hull. If he could find a hatch or other opening, maybe he could get the mine inside where it would do more damage. Wait, what was that? Several capped off pipes penetrated the hull just above him. What were they? Waste disposal? Cooling intakes? He zoomed in the schematics on that area… Auxiliary Fuel Supply. Yes! Any large vehicle with a fusion plant would have a back-up generator to supply power during maintenance shut-downs and to provide the power to start up the reactor. But what did this thing use? He looked closer at the pipes and saw the universal symbol for flammables. All right! According to the schematics there was a large fuel tank right above him! Making his decision, he slapped the mine against the hull and activated the timer.

Then he ran.

Five seconds later the explosion slammed him to the ground. The mine had a directional charge and nearly all the explosion would be directed up into the machine, but enough still reached him to knock him down. He looked back and saw that a raging fire had erupted. Then a moment later there was another explosion, followed by an enormous creaking groan. To his elation—and horror—he saw the tracks on either side of him start to sink into the ground.

The anti-gravs have failed!

And the vehicle was very heavy.

It began settling rapidly, and the patch of daylight at the aft end of the vehicle was getting narrow—fast. Jer leaped forward. Within seconds he only had room to crawl as the hull came down to crush him. He squirmed free with just centimeters to spare. Holy shit, that was too close!

He stood up, trying to catch his breath—and then a large panel on the back of the machine blew out and a shower of flaming liquid splashed down all over him. The whole rear end of the MPDC was engulfed in flames.

He retreated quickly to get out of the inferno. Dozens of other flame-covered troopers did likewise. Fortunately, their armor was built to take abuse like this. As long as they didn't stand around in the fire, they would be okay. He looked back at the MPDC; it was burning and no weapons were firing anymore. Was the beast dead? Sure looked like it. Another explosion ripped through the thing, sending bits of it skyward. But Anny, where was Anny? He consulted his display and there she was just a few dozen meters away. He walked over to join her. She was looking north. Jer looked, too and caught his breath.

The rest of the EnBee troops were still there.

Hundreds of red specks filled his tactical display. And there weren't very many blue ones left at all.

"Not enough," murmured Anny. "Not enough."

But as the remnants of the 61st gathered around their standard, many of the troopers still covered with burning fuel, the enemy began to back away. Some of them dropped their weapons. Some of them put their hands up. Some of them started running.

Within seconds they were all running. Running north. Back the way they had come.

"Do you want to order the pursuit, sir?"

Jer twitched and then grinned to see Patric Mederov come up beside them. He was still alive!

Anny turned and smiled, too. "No, ensign, I don't think so. We've got control of the air again now and help is on the way. I think we can leave the mop-up to someone else."

"Yes sir!"

Anny was still holding the flagstaff. Just a few strands of fabric were left now. But she seemed to have lost her war hammer…

…and the arm that had been holding it.

"Anny! Your arm!"

"Uh, yeah, I misplaced it back there somewhere. Don't worry, they can grow me a new one. Doesn't even hurt with all the drugs my suit's pumped me full of."

"Anny!" He took hold of her. The suit's arm was torn off at the shoulder, but some sort of foam was filling the hole. He knew there was an auto-tourniquet that would keep Anny from bleeding to death.

"Maybe you should sit down," said Patric.

"Yeah… yeah, a fine idea." There was a very strange expression on her face and Jer realized she was going into shock, despite what the suit could do. They eased her down to a sitting position. Patric commed for a medical shuttle and was assured that there was now a fleet of them on their way.

A gentle smile grew on Anny's face and her eyelids began to flutter. Jer anxiously checked her medical readouts and was relieved to see she was in no danger. Just hurt and worn out. "Take a nap, love."

"Yeah, another fine idea."

"That was a hell of a thing, Anny," said Patric. "A hell of a thing."

Her eyes closed and she whispered: "We gave 'em the cold steel."

[Historical note: The part with Anny and the Colonel and the flag may seem a little over the top, but I stole this incident wholesale from real history. On July 1, 1863 north of the town of Gettysburg, the 26th North Carolina Regiment found itself in a desperate close-range fight with the Union Iron Brigade. In the space of about 20 minutes, the 26th lost over 700 men, the greatest numerical loss of any regiment in the entire war for a single engagement. The whole 9-man color guard was shot down and the regiment's colonel did, indeed, get into an argument with another man about who should carry the flag next—before they were both shot. And another officer calmly announced that it was 'his turn' before he, too, was hit. In all, seventeen men were killed or wounded trying to keep the regiment's colors flying.]

[Author's note: I sometimes find that certain scenes I write have specific musical backgrounds. That is true with this chapter. The entire sequence from the death of Colonel Fetherbay to the 61st's charge is musically described by the 1st movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphony #1 from about time mark 7:00 to 7:50.]