Hero (21 page)

When he saw Zuchelli's DF brassard, the private almost voided himself in relief. He snapped a salute at Zuchelli; the DF corporal followed suit, visibly irritated at being unable to come up with grounds for complaint.
"Sir."

"Major Zuchelli and a party of five to see the Colonel. Send a runner, and tell him to get his ass out of bed and into his office."

"Major, I've had about enough of you," Shimon said. "Repeat after me: 'Private, you will please convey the following message to High Colonel Giacometti:

Major Zuchelli's respects to the high colonel. Major Zuchelli, General Shimon Bar-El, Captain Tetsuo Hanavi and Captain Ari Hanavi urgently but respectfully request an audience with the colonel, at his earliest convenience. Thank you, Private.' "

Tetsuo didn't make a move toward unslinging his rifle; he just took three slow steps away from Shimon's side until he was within reach of both of the MPs, his hands open and relaxed, his weight on the balls of his feet.

"Stand very easy, if you please," Tetsuo said.

Ari's brother may have spent his career as a staff officer, but there wasn't any trace of a staff officer's tentativeness in his manner now.

Zuchelli looked from Shimon to Dov to Tetsuo to Ari, which was sort of flattering; at least Zuchelli included Ari as a real Metzadan.

The senior of Zuchelli's bodyguards shook his head minutely.

If you ignored his size, Dov didn't seem particularly threatening; he just stood there, flatfooted, a vaguely bored expression on his face. He wasn't even looking directly at Zuchelli's bodyguards, although he could have reached either with a back-kick. He just faced the junior MP, looking at him as if the boy had crosshairs painted on his forehead.

Not that they were wrong to leave Ari out of it. Not that somebody who froze, the first time he heard a shot fired in anger, who couldn't even come close to a 200-meter head shot—not that somebody like that would be a big help in an intimate firefight.

Ari was useless. But, in front of a pretty girl, Ari could fake being something that he wasn't. He tried to mimic Tetsuo, and gave Zuchelli his best I'm-baring-these-teeth-to-bite-out-your-jugular smile.

"Well, Major?" Shimon asked.

Numbly, Zuchelli echoed Shimon's words while Tetsuo nodded approvingly at Ari. Dov just looked bored.

Ari didn't understand it, not at all. He didn't know why Shimon had forced a showdown with the Distacamento de la Fedeltà major—

—until he saw the left breast of Giacometti's uniform blouse.

The lettering on the open door of the inner read direttore
.
When this had been a school, it had been the principal's private office. Books, papers and other detritus were strewn to one side of the desk, beneath the black-curtained window.

In contrast to the brightness and airiness of the operations center beyond the busy outer office, the inner office was stuffy and dark, the only illumination provided by a hissing lantern on the desk and two others mounted high on the walls. A slick cable snaked in through the open door from the outer offices, running to the printer and commo box on the gray desk where Giacometti sat.

High Colonel Vittorio Giacometti was a funereally thin man. From the pinched face and the loose uniform, Ari decided that he had once been rotund.

"Shimon," Giacometti said. "I didn't expect you in person." He rose slowly, carefully to his feet, looking not at all like a man grabbing at a life preserver as he clasped Shimon's hand.

That was when Ari spotted it: among a scattering of local ribbons that he didn't recognize there was the blue-and-white decoration that represented the Two Swords, with three of the unauthorized red stitches that Shimon Bar-El always put on the ribbons he awarded. The Two Swords was the only medal that Metzada gave out—campaign ribbons, qualification badges, specialty warrants and such aren't medals—and was given only to foreign soldiers serving under Metzadan officers.

While it could be awarded at the discretion of senior field-grade officers and generals, Shimon had never been known for passing out the Two Swords for ordinary efficiency, or even for tactical or logistics genius.

It was a blood award.

Which began to explain why Shimon had volunteered to lend an officer to the Casas. He was taking care of his own: Giacometti.

For that matter, in a different sort of way, it explained Ari. After all, there are all sorts of ways of taking care of your own. One of the things they teach you in school is not to tell battle-hot troops to "take care of" captured prisoners, or you'll likely end up with a war crime on your hands.

"Vittorio," Shimon said, smiling like a Buddha. "It's good to see you again. What's left of you."

"Colonel," Zuchelli said, nodding briskly.

"You didn't salute, Major," Shimon said out of the side of his mouth.

Zuchelli didn't answer. "Get it over with," he said.

Shimon smiled tolerantly. "Very well," he said softly. "As you like."

Ari hadn't heard that note in Shimon's voice before, not even when Shimon had taken him aside to pin the captain's bars on his shoulder. Tetsuo returned his look blankly.

"Enough ceremony, Vittorio." Shimon waved Giacometti back to his seat, taking another one for himself. "I need to trade favors with you."

"Ah, good." Giacometti's smile was weak. "You have a deal." He raised an eyebrow. "May one inquire as to what the deal is?"

"Divisione is stripping me of my tank company as of 1300. I had Chiabrera on the line all yesterday, but I can't get anybody to even consider leaving me a platoon. I don't need the whole company, but I could use a few rolling pillboxes for clearing the town. Can you get to somebody?"

Giacometti nodded. "I have a cousin in Divisione Gl. I'll see what I can do." He spread his hands widely. "I make no promises, except for my effort."

"Fine. Now, as to your problem, can you give me a quick tac briefing, please?" he asked, as though it were more of an order than a request—although, technically, there was no chain-of-command authority between a Metzadan general of a regiment under contract to the Casalinguese General Staff and a Casalinguese Regular Army high colonel.

On the other hand, Shimon was wearing stars on his shoulders, while Giacometti had only four gold bars. More importantly, he was Shimon Bar-El. Ari figured that was enough.

"It's bad, Shimon," Giacometti said, ignoring the way Zuchelli scowled and began writing something in the black leather notebook he always carried.

Tetsuo leaned over to Dov and said in a stage whisper, "I guess in the Casalinguese army, you're not supposed to notice when the situation sucks."

"We're stretched just about as far as we can take it," Giacometti went on.

"So I hear," Shimon said. "And this Second Battalion of yours sound like a bunch of losers. Where did you get this battalion commander, anyway?"

"It is not Verone's fault. The Second was engaged for three solid weeks, with no rest—"

"And no success." There was no trace of accusation in that tone; Shimon was just pointing out a fact.

"—and when they were moved back to Divisione reserve, all the supposed rest they got was trying to sleep through artillery fire. The TO shows them at about eighty percent strength, but a lot of them are green replacements whose only experience under fire is being hit by artillery."

That sounded bad. Infantrymen hate and fear artillery most. You can outshoot or outplan infantry; you can avoid or trap armor; but the only thing you can do with artillery is outluck it. Too much artillery fire can turn good troops sour. It said so in all the textbooks.

It didn't say in the textbooks what it was supposed to do to soldiers like Ari.

"We have to take Anchorville," Giacometti said. "I don't know if the whole battalion could do it, and how the hell can I do it if Divisione won't give me permission to use the battalion? All I'm allowed is a company."

"You're not looking at it from Generale Prezzolini's perspective." Shimon shook his head. "The real final push is going to be over on the other flank, just to the south of Trainville—but he can't have the herrenvolk figuring that out, not if you're going to end up with a decent border when the Commerce Department closes you down in a couple weeks. So he's got to keep them busy on this flank, but he's still got to keep something in reserve for their final push.

"I'm no Montgomery, but tidying up the lines is the order of the day—and it's better to tidy forward. Besides, the Freiheimers in Anchorville are probably just as tired as your men are. Tetsuo?"

"If that's so," Ari's brother said, "a company might be able to take the town."

"Casualties?"

"I don't know," Tetsuo said. "Looking at the map, if that company is going to do it at all, they're going to do it as some sort of frontal attack. A banzai charge, and you know what that means."

Ari knew from his schooling that the casualties could be anywhere from negligible to total. If a charge quickly turned into a rout for the defenders, it wouldn't cost the assault force much blood. But if the defenders held firm, if their discipline was decent, their autoguns would carve the attackers into bloody pulp.

"You're not worried about Freiheimer reinforcements?" Shimon asked, a teacher looking for the missing steps in a logic problem. "Do you think that the herrenvolk won't care if we stomp on some of their own?"

"General, Freiheimer commo is as bad as Casalinguese. It'd be all over—either way—before any in-person relief arrives, although they can call in artillery with a signal rocket." Tetsuo shrugged. "You might be able to outrun the artillery, if you surprise them."

"Wait."
Giacometti lowered his voice. "What do you think they'll do when we throw in our own artillery prep? Do you perhaps think they won't notice?"

"There is that," Shimon said. "There is that. So perhaps we'll do without prep fire." He turned and looked Ari in the eye. "Well, Ari, are you ready to take command of F Company?"

He wasn't, of course. A seventeen-year-old, offplanet for the first time, shouldn't have been offered any kind of command at all. Unless he were an exceptional soldier, and under exceptional circumstances.

This was exceptional, but not in the good sense. Offworlders tend to overplay the influence of Metzada's Nipponese heritage. There had only been a few Bushidists transported to Metzada, along with the Children of Israel, and their influence is more apparent than real: his uncle's epicanthic folds, his brother's name. But sometimes the influence is there.

There was a time when his Nipponese ancestors belted some of their young men into stubby-winged gliders called bakus, each with a half ton of explosives in its nose. When they did, their faces may have looked like Shimon's did as he asked again:

"Well, Ari? Are you ready?"

Ari drew himself up straight. "Yes, sir," he said slowly, "I'm ready."

"We'll see how you do," Zuchelli sneered. "We'll see about that when you're under Distacamento de la Fedeltà discipline—"

"Wrong." Shimon shook his head. "We're not attaching him to F Company. Just the other way around. I'm not going to see my nephew swinging from your gallows if the attack fails and he's lucky enough to survive."

"Eh?"

"It's simple, Major. You don't have authority over my men; you do over CPE forces. So instead of loaning Jocko a company commander, I'm having him loan me a company." Shimon Bar-El smiled. "Which puts paid to your meddling, doesn't it?" He pulled a sheaf of flimsies out from his breast pocket and slammed them down on Giacometti's desk. "Sign this, Vittorio. It attaches F Company to my Thirtieth—"

"Mm." Giacometti smiled. "Putting Casalinguese forces under Metzadan control?" he asked, toying with the idea.

Shimon shrugged. "Those are the terms. Those are
my
terms. How's your comm to Divisione?"

"At the moment? Land lines are up; soon as you get out of here, I am going to use one to call up my cousin in Gl. It's all I have: radio truck got hit by a cruise two days ago, and plexlase went down last week. Any spare 'tronics techs handy?"

"Sorry. All the fancy electronics looked so nice in the showroom, didn't it?"

"Very pretty, indeed." Giacometti almost smiled. "Ah, well. That still doesn't solve the problem."

Bar-El snorted. "So get off the pot and get your general on the line. If you don't think you have the authority to detach a company," Shimon said, smiling to take the sting out of the reproach.

Zuchelli had been holding his peace impatiently. "I object," he said. "I refuse to permit any operation that involves separating our forces from the watch of Distacamento de la Fedeltà troops."

"Shit, Major," Tetsuo said, "in another couple of weeks the whole damn war is going to be over—the TW is shoving a cease-fire up your ass, remember? Why not just grease the way a bit and make it easier on yourself, eh?"

"Gracious as always, Tetsuo," Shimon said. "Still, Major, his point stands."

Zuchelli tented his fingers in front of his face. "If we had known about the cease-fire, I hardly think that your regiment would have been hired."

"So? You offering us two weeks off, with combat pay?"

"Don't be silly. I don't have that kind of authority."

"So shut up." Shimon Bar-El turned to Giacometti. "Decide, now."

Giacometti looked from Shimon to Zuchelli, and then back to Shimon. Giacometti would have to live with the Distacamento de la Fedeltà for the rest of the war, and well into the scapegoat-hunting period of the truce. Right here and now, Zuchelli couldn't overrule him directly. But he might be able to see that Giacometti was hanged later.

"You want to go with them, Major?" Giacometti asked.

"Of course."

Giacometti pursed his lips. "I'll give you the company, Shimon. But you'll have to take Major Zuchelli and a Distacamento de la Fedeltà squad, too."

"That seems a reasonable compromise." Zuchelli turned to Ari and nodded. "We'll help you chivvy them along in the attack."

"No." Shimon pulled out a tabstick. "You can bring up the rear, Major. But not Ari." He looked at Ari. "This will be my nephew's command, Major Zuchelli. Tell him, Ari."