"Mmmm, 'fraid not. Sorry."
She shrugged; it was no great matter. Anyway, should be able to wangle a visit with Edward when we're pulled back into Army Corps reserve.
"I suppose we should push a patrol or two a little north, it's part of the built-up area an' our responsibility." She blew a smoke-ring.
"On the othah hand, the jungleboys seem to be fresh an' full of beans," she added, looking to the noise and light from the bridging team a thousand meters upstream to the east. They were combat engineers from the VII Janissary; the prefabricated steel sections were in place, but the sappers were shoring and reinforcing even as the bulk of the legion pounded across. Welding torches blinked, trailing blue-white sparks, concrete mixers growled, a low tracked shape dug its 'dozer blade into the earth and bellowed. The combat elements were pouring over the river, a metallic stream of headlights snaking up from the south, speed more important than the unlikely chance of a Fritz air raid; there were antiaircraft cannon dug in around the bridge, but that was just doctrine. Six-wheeled Peltast APC's full of serf riflemen, or towing heavy mortars and 155mm gun-howitzers with the barrels rotated back and clamped over the trails.
"Bettah them than us," she said. The other officer nodded; any fighting north of here for the next few weeks would be a toe-to-toe slugging match, absorbing the Fritz counterattack. High casualty work: artillery was the greatest killer on any battlefield, and positional warfare made you a fixed target for the howitzers to grind up. Just the sort of thing the serf legions were recruited for…
As if to point the thought, the sky growled behind them to the south. Soldier reflex tensed muscles, sent a few of the troopers working on vehicle maintenance or just strolling flat on their bellies. Then training identified it, outgoing fire from the Guard's own heavy-support batteries, keeping the enemy occupied while the Janissaries pushed forward and dug in. Bombardment rocket, a single long streak of white-orange fire across the bowl of the sky and a lightning-flicker northward where it impacted.
"Ranging round," her companion said.
A Citizen Force armored legion included fifty mobile launchers, each an eight-tube box on a modified tank chassis firing a 200mm round. One or two to establish the fall of shot, and then… The sky above them lit, a rippling magenta curtain that howled like the Wild Hunt, a huge moaning that drowned all other sound and left retinas blinking with streaked afterimages. Thirty seconds of it, as four hundred rockets ripple-fired at quarter-second intervals. Then the northern skyline lit with the impacts, a strobing flicker that threw lurid orange shadows on the smoke-plumes, and a bitter chemical scent drifting downward.
"There must be some natural law that war has to smell bad," Tanya said, when the ringing had died a little from her ears. "And damage yo' hearin'. Those yours, Johnny?"
She nodded toward three figures walking toward them through the parked vehicles. The Tetrarch peered and nodded.
"Must've got the rest of the locals rounded up an' penned," he said. To the troopers, as they came to the scarred skirt-plates of the Baalbeck Belle: "All done?"
The woman of the pair nodded. "Ya. Sent those Tetrarchy D types back to they mommas, 'n corraled the last lot a' the meat ourselfs. No problems."
The man prodded the figure in the tattered nun's habit forward. "Thissun got a present fo' yo', suh. Somethin' in the way of fresh food."
Tanya puffed a smoke ring, and John de la Roche snorted amusement; these Europeans never seemed to learn that they had nothing to bribe their conquerors with, since all they had including themselves belonged to the Draka anyway. Still, it would be welcome. Out here at the sharp edge not even the Domination's armed forces could maintain a luxurious ration-scale; there was plenty of transport but the roads imposed an absolute limitation. Ammunition first, then fuel, then food and medical supplies, that was the priority; the food was standardized ration-bars mostly, unless they could plug into the local economy.
The nun stepped closer, offering the bundle with a curious archaic gesture, one hand beneath and one in the shadowed basketwork. The infantry officer leaned down to take it, handed it up to Tanya where she lay beside the commander's hatch. "Here, yo' artists need to keep up yo' strength."
"Excuse me, please, respected sirs?" The Draka turned to look at the Polish nun, and she braced herself visibly under the cool carnivore eyes. "Please, what is to happen to my… to the people of this village?"
Well, this one has spirit, at least, Tanya thought. There was a small pivot-mounted searchlight by the hatch; she toed the switch and turned the light down onto the other's face with her foot. The bright acintic light washed the flat square Slav face, and a hand flung up to guard her eyes from the hurting brilliance. The delicate colors vanished from its cone, left black and white and gray stark and absolute. Might as well answer, the Draka mused. Impertinence to ask, instead of silently awaiting orders, but it would be unfair to expect a Pole to know serf etiquette. Yet.
"That depends, wench," Tanya said. She rummaged in the basket; the nun tensed, then relaxed as a length of sausage emerged. "If the front moves on quick, they'll probably be left to work the land fo' a while; saves on transport space an' such. Until the Security people arrive, an' the serf-traders an' settlers, after the war. Does the fightin' last long, the able-bodied'll be rounded up fo' work on 'trenchments an' such, the rest culled an' killed, saves feedin' 'em." A bite at the kielbasa. "They aren't yo' concern, wench; put yo' mind to y'own fate. Life, most like, short of interpreters's we are."
The other's hand dropped as she slitted her eyes against the searchlight and glared back at the Draka. Tanya knew the nun could see nothing, nothing but a black outline rimmed in hazed white. And the hulking scarred steel presence of the tank, so much more massive than its mere size, intimidating as few other things on earth were. Yet there was little fear in the slow nod, more as if the Pole were confirming something to herself. The trooper beside her started to call to his officer, and then the sky lit again with the whistling howl of dead metal racing to bring death to living men, an agony impersonal and remote, touching everything beneath with a limning outline of orange fire.
"—She's useful, Horn-dog, so doan' do anythin' permanent," the Tetrarch was chuckling when she could hear again.
"Hey, give me a hand, Meatmaker, hey?" the soldier said, an ugly panting rasp in his voice.
The other trooper laughed indulgently. "Well, y'saved mah life just last week, an' I swore I'd pay yo' back," she said, and gripped the nun, spun her around, tossed her staggering back to the man.
Tanya drew meditatively on her cigarette as she watched the two Draka toss the Polish woman back and forth through the puddle of the searchlight's beam. Another bite of the kielbasa, tough and stringy and heavy with garlic; she dug at a fragment stuck between her teeth with a fingernail. Still not panicking, she thought with interest; openly afraid now, but fighting to stay on her feet and dodging for what she thought were openings, her cries involuntary gasps of effort and not screams. Meatmaker's face, halfway between boredom and a cruel laughter directed as much at her companion as their victim. The man's… his mouth caught the light, open and wet, teeth shining liquid. Curling with the same dreadful sidelong desire that left no thought behind his eyes, flat and hot and sick, the eyes of a rutting dog.
Satyriasis, Tanya thought. Godawful thing to be stuck with. Although she remembered reading somewhere that most males were like that for the initial year or so after puberty set in, hormones five or six times an adult's level. And of course a few never got over that thirteen-year-old's first wild realization that they were in a world of serf women who could not tell them no, fantasy become reality. Of course, even then, most households wouldn't tolerate this sort of crude field-expedient, a certain degree of privacy was expected… A scream, short and breathless; the two troopers had the nun's habit up around her neck and over her head in a floppy black bag, pinning her arms; Meatmaker was whirling her like a top, while the other's hands tore at the odd clumsy undergarments with scrabbli
ng haste.
And most wenches back in the Domination didn't kick up this sort of fuss, either; willing to please, or meekly submissive. She remembered walking into her father's study once, looking for a book; it had been a rainy October's morning, the water pattering down the long windows in streaks that blurred the tapping of branches. The housegirl's giggles and sighs scarcely louder than the crackling of the burning cedarwood in the fireplace; they had been standing in front of it. Pa behind her with his face in the angle of her neck and shoulder, and his hands just lifting her breasts out of her blouse. He had not seen her, but the wench had. Smiled at her as she stroked the master's thinning blond hair, and Tanya had backed out soundlessly, humiliatingly conscious of her burning cheeks.
Odd, how the memory seems so shocking, she thought. Still, I was twelve, girls get flighty and fanciful around that age.
Down in the churned dirt by the treads of the tank Horn-dog put his hand between the nun's shoulderblades and pushed. She lurched, stumbled, fell forward and caught herself on her shrouded hands; Meatmaker stepped forward and planted a boot on the bundle of cloth, pinning it to the earth.
"C'mon, wench," she said, and leaned forward. "My friend's got somethin' fo' yo'." Her hands closed on the other's waist and jerked her forward, leaving the Pole standing bent double with her hands between her feet.
"All right, Horn-dog, can't no friend do better for yo' than that," she continued jovially, with a slap-pat on Marya's buttocks. "Go to it."
Tanya folded her arms and flicked ash off her cigarette, moving the searchlight with her toe to cover the two soldiers. Thick legs, she thought idly. Broad bottomed, as well, peasant build. The genitals were rather pretty, unstretched and neatly formed like a teenager's, nestled in curling dark-blond hair.
"Best-lookin' part of the human anatomy," de la Roche said, as if to echo her thought.
Below her she could hear the clink and rustle as the infantryman undid the clasps of his webbing belt; and hear his breathing, hoarse and rapid. What an absolutely impoverished erotic imagination he must have, she thought with mild contempt. Pursuing a little dry friction and a few seconds of second-rate pleasure as if it were the Grail… Freya knows, men tend to be creatures of reflex, but this one is a caricature. Thank the nonexistent gods I was born the right gender.
He stepped up behind the nun and opened her vulva with a brutal drive of paired thumbs; she screamed then, a shrill sound loud enough to hear through the muffling cloth. An exquisitely uncomfortable ten minutes ahead for you, wench, Tanya thought. Wasteful way to treat a serf, of course. Raw brutality was a crude tool of domination, only occasionally useful unless you were planning to destroy the individuals in question. Besides… how had Pa put it? "The whip is more effective as a threat than a reality; and don't forget, using it changes you, too." She bent to pick up the basket, rummaging for the bottle of vodka; a drink would do no harm, even though they were not far enough into rear-echelon to risk getting drunk. A pity, it would be good to completely relax. There was a click and buzz from the radio within as she stooped over the hatch, a ticking—
Ticking?
"Down, down, everybody down!" she shouted, as her hand swept the wicker container forward over the north-pointing prow of the tank. Dropped flat as it left her fingers, ignoring the projections that gouged and bit, to hug herself close to the steel, gloved fingers scrabbling. De la Roche shouted as it whipped past his ear, turning fast enough to blur in the beginning of the leap that would take him to the ground, infantry reflex to seek the safety of soft earth. Tanya's eyes followed the arching parabola of the bomb, glaring and helpless; her grip on the handle had been light, no time to firm it up… the basket turned slowly as it flew, shedding bread and sausages, wedges of cheese and a square bottle. Hesitated at the top of its arc, dropped. Down, accelerating, dropping below the slope of the Belle's glacis plate and—
WHUMP.
A huge, soft sound, then an invisible hand lifted her and slammed her down again on the unyielding metal, bouncing, the adrenaline-rush slowing the involuntary movement of her head until she could feel the movement of her neck swinging up, flexing down again, impact and the sagging pull on muscle and skin as inertia tried to strip them from her skull and spread the soft tissues like a pancake. Watching de la Roche caught in midair by the blast, the pillow of compressed air slapping the precise leopard-curve of his jump into a thrashing fall that ended in a landing with one arm bent beneath him at an angle that made her mind wince even then. There was a moment of sliding, as if time were a film that had slipped the sprockets of the projector and now it was catching again.
De la Roche forcing himself to his knees, to his feet, hand clamping an upper arm where bone-fragments pushed through his uniform, white about the mouth. Horn-dog rolling on the ground, clutching at genitals his fall had driven into the dirt. The other trooper lying on her back, blood showing glistening in her hair where skull had met track-link. Tanya blinked, and felt particles of grit turning under the lids where the explosion had sandblasted them into her eyeballs. Saw the nun moving north in a desperate blind scrabbling crawl, up on her hands and knees as her head emerged from the cocoon of fabric, then running with the skirts around her waist and white legs twinkling in the dark.
"Alive!" she shouted; the reaction-squad was already pounding up, and one had swept his Holbars to his shoulder. "Alive, I want answers, alive." They dashed forward, skirmish-spread, overhauling the fugitive as if she was standing still. Then muzzle-flashes low to the ground, the flickers of light showing figures rising from concealed rifle-pits, dirt cascading off the covers. One of the Draka infantry stopped as if she had run into an invisible wall, flopped boneless to the ground. The others clove to earth and returned fire, and the turret whirred and began to turn under her.
CRACK as the world broke away from the axis of the main gun, afterimages strobing across her retinas. Her hand stabbed through the hatch, jerked the microphone free of its clamps; she spat blood from tooth-cut lips.
"Two an' three, move forward in support; all other units, no firin' except on confirmed targets." Too many other Draka units moving around, it would set Loki himself to laughing if they started shooting each other up now. Her thumb pressed the hold-button down, and she raised her head to shout to the infantry. "Wait for support, no chargin' off into the dark!"
Tanya hawked and spat blood, felt the iodine taste and stream pouring from her nose. She keyed the mike again: "Senior Decurion Smythe, report to me immediately."
"… dead meat by the time we got "em," the monitor said, and kicked the body of the Pole at his feet; bone snapped with a moist muffled crunching. "Never saw hide r hair of the penguin."
Tanya grunted; it was less painful than speaking. A starshell went off overhead with a slight pop and bathed the cohort's laager with its blue-white metallic glare; the Senior Decurion looked away to preserve her night vision. Tetrarch de la Roche was leaning against the Belle as a medic set the fractured humerus of his arm; his eyes were closed, face expressionless as fat drops of sweat trickled down his face.
Meatmaker raised her bandaged head from her knees, where she sat before the body of her squadmate. "Yo" wants a patrol, search the houses, maybe-so get a few ears fo' Horn-dog?" she said, in a hopefulness muffled by gauze.
Tanya inserted a cigarette between her lips with care and glanced northward herself, shaking her head. Pointless, she thought, forcing down a sudden rage that left a twist of nausea in her gut. Pointless to risk Citizen lives in this sort of scuffle. Reprisals pointless; it would be nothing but killing to soothe her injured self-esteem, and a von Shrakenberg did not lie to herself that way. Likewise interrogation of the villagers—the Guard was not trained for it, the only language they had in common with the remaining peasants was mangled fragments of German… waste. Let the specialists do it. Frustration tasted like vomit at the back of her throat.
"Senior Decurion," she began, forcing the words clear and crisp through the pain of torn lips.
"Cohortarch?"
"At first light, put in a tetrarchy with support to flush those buildings to the north."
"Yes, Cohortarch."
"Notify all troops: no natives within the perimeter an' nobody but assigned guards outside durin' darkness. No group smaller than five in daylight, fully armed."
"At once, Cohortarch."
"An" get on the blower to Legion. To Centurion De Witt. Security Centurion, Antipartisan liaison section. My compliments to the Centurion, an' tell him"—she threw the cigarette to the dirt, ground it out with a savage twist of her bootheel, looked around—"that Sector VI-b may now be considered… active."
"Are you all right, Sister?" the partisan whispered anxiously.
Marya nodded, one hand covering her mouth and the other gripping the bark of the tree beside her. She nodded, heaved, stumbled around the tree and fell to her hands and knees. Vomit spattered out of her mouth, thin and sour from an empty stomach; she coughed, spat, wiped her mouth and spat again, clung to the rough surface of the tree as another spasm gripped her. The nun pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her habit and wiped at her face, conscious of the sick-sweet stink of the vomitus spattering the ground. Another smell added to the sweat and dirt and fluids ground in from days spent crouching in the cellar and tending the sick… The thought of a bath beckoned like salvation.
Seconds, she thought, trying to control the cold shaking in her arms and legs. A few seconds earlier and she would have died, torn to tatters of raw bone and meat by the explosive charge. Fresh pain lanced up from her crotch as she dragged herself erect along the trunk of the pine, and she could feel hot wetness trickling down the insides of her thighs from her ruptured hymen. A few seconds later and she would have died with the Draka pumping inside her, lubricated with blood, bent double and blinded in the stifling tent of her habit.
Marya recalled the man's eyes as he had torn at her clothing, the blank shallowness of them, like chips of blue tile. To die like that, a thing used by a thing, a knothole and an animal… her body heaved again. Then she found herself gripping the wood hard enough that blood and feeling left her fingers, glad of the distraction. Hate was a different nausea, shrill-sick and twisting under the ribs, making her head throb. Visions from the Inferno and Hieronymus Bosch moved behind her eyelids, eternal torment for the evildoer, burning, flaying, rotted with insects crawling through immortal diseased flesh—