Wearing white winter field uniforms, A Company worked quickly in the bitter, midwinter dawn. They'd eaten breakfast—cold field rations—in their sleeping bags. Afterward each man stuffed his bag in the small sack provided for it, and each pair struck their tough if fragile-looking two-man winter tent, separating its velcroed halves and stowing them in their packsacks. They did more with their mittens on than looked possible, taking them off almost not at all. Their winter equipment, of recent issue, was designed with mittens in mind.
When their packs were ready and their snowshoes clamped on, they donned their new helmets. The optical visors, face shields were pivoted into the up position, headphones snug over ears, microphone tucked out of the way. Every man could hear his platoon leader and sergeant, and talk to them if necessary. Sounds from the environment—squad mates, wind, the hiss and occasional clack of snowshoes—were also mediated electronically, could be amplified by a simple finger adjustment or reduced in the din of combat. But they took some getting used to, and some of the trainees still felt cut off by them. The visors none of them much liked yet. They weren't supposed to ice up or fog, but on days like this they did when they were down, even if lowered only to the end of the nose.
They'd just spent their second night in the field; this would be their third day on this exercise, in thirty-two inches of snow. The first two days had been on the march, on snowshoes, at first making as much speed as conditions allowed. It was undesirable to sweat heavily; there was a limit to what the gills in their winter uniforms could vent.
On most of the second day they'd kept to the most difficult and unlikely terrain: a series of steep, timbered recessional moraines; burned-off swamp forest, thickly brushy; fens where the snow, supported by sedge and heath, had not settled but lay more than forty inches deep, so that even wearing snowshoes, the scouts and lead men sank to their knees.
(Covert troop movement was often feasible for mercenaries. A substantial part of the mercenary market was on resource worlds, the so-called "gook worlds," where off-surface equipment, including reconnaissance aircraft, were generally prohibited for military use by the Confederation. This was true even when the combatants were, or more often had the support of, rival Confederation commercial interests. It was one of the strictures installed more than seven centuries earlier by Pertunis, in the Charter of Confederation, to reduce the ravages of war. While on the trade worlds, the national governments had planetary compacts, though they were not always strictly adhered to, which prohibited the use of aircraft in one or more military roles.)
The T'swa had begun assigning trainees as acting officers and noncoms, with the cadre observing and coaching. Mostly Carrmak had served as A Company commander, although others had worn the hat. On this exercise it was Romlar, who no longer feared to lead, and who, as acting squad leader and platoon leader, had discovered both taste and talent for leadership.
The exercise was to attack an enemy encampment, hopefully by surprise. Of course, there was no assurance that the camp would still be where the map showed it, nor that the enemy wouldn't have learned of their coming and have an ambush set. Enemy patrols could be expected. Certainly pickets would be posted, and presumably fields of fire would have been cleared.
The map was in part a fiction: It showed things that weren't there in reality, but for the sake of the exercise must be treated as if they were. The first two days the company had followed a marked route with no other rationale than to give them a variety of difficult terrains. However, for this third day the map showed no marked route; the commander was to find his own. Using his map, and information from his scouts, Romlar moved his company out. The men were free to talk as they went, but softly, and there wasn't much talking. They'd done plenty of drills on scouting, picket duty, and reconnaissance, training each man to stay highly aware of his surroundings, so their attention was mostly outward.
Romlar's orders were to be in position to attack by midday. Supposedly another company was to approach by a different route and attack at the same time: 1200 hours. Romlar suspected it was an imaginary company, pretended for the purpose of the exercise. If it wasn't there, A Company was to attack by itself. After the enemy was destroyed, Romlar was to march his company to a rendezvous by 1530 hours.
For the most part he followed the crest of a broad ridge that ran for miles, generally about fifty or sixty feet above the country flanking it. Which on the map was marked liberally with wetland symbols, much of it with the subsymbol for brush, and also with occasional small round ponds that suggested fen pools, roofed thickly with ice in this season.
It seemed apparent to Romlar that the planners intended him to stay on the ridge crest. The required time of arrival seemed to demand it. The side slopes would be much more difficult, and slower, to snowshoe on, and on them he'd have been more vulnerable to attack, though less to detection. While if he traveled through the adjacent brushy flats, with their real and imaginary fens, he'd arrive too late to make the attack.
It was a design for ambush, and on a hunch, he marched the company faster than he might have, sweat or not.
After more than two hours, the point radioed back that they'd come to a stringlike fen not shown on their map. All the map showed was the creek that flowed through it. Romlar ordered the company to stay put, and with Jerym, his trainee first sergeant, moved up to see for himself. Lieutenant Toma followed, observing, saying nothing.
The scouts lay back a bit from the fen, close enough to observe it but keeping back among the trees and behind the sapling fringe. They were nearly invisible in the snow, white hoods hiding their helmets; even their rifles were white. Romlar took off his snowshoes, then crawling, slipped slowly forward between his scouts and down to the edge of the fen, where he could see better. Jerym followed, and Lieutenant Toma.
Jerym judged the fen to be 250 to 300 yards across, with no visual cover except for isolated patches of tattered cane grass, head tall, dead leaves fluttering and rustling in a light breeze. The nearest way around was a mile to their right, where the fen ended in evergreen forest. He watched Romlar scan the woods on the opposite side with white binoculars.
Toma spoke while Romlar scanned. "What will you do?"
Romlar didn't answer till he'd put his binoculars away. "Go around," he said.
"How near are you to the enemy encampment?"
"According to the map, two and a half miles plus a little bit, if we cross here."
"Going around will add considerable distance and take additional time. Consider whether you'll be in position to attack by midday."
Romlar didn't even glance at Toma. He's not interested in advice, Jerym told himself.
"I allowed for the time," Romlar said. "There's no cover in the fen, and if we were attacked there, we couldn't move fast in the loose snow. We'll go around."
The T'swi said no more, and the three of them backed away into the woods, to their snowshoes. Back with the company, Romlar changed its course. In something less than half an hour they'd flanked the fen and were at the creek. There was sag ice on it, something they'd run into before and learned about the hard way. It had frozen over in autumn, then the ice had gotten snow-covered. Afterward the creek had fallen, leaving an air space beneath the ice, which had sagged. Insulated by the thick snow atop the ice, the new water surface had probably not frozen thickly enough to carry a man. It looked like a good place to fall through and soak your feet, maybe even lose a snowshoe—serious incidents on a day of minus fifteen or twenty Fahrenheit and with snow up to your ass.
Romlar had scouts cross, moving carefully. When they'd checked the forest on the other side, he had the company advance, spread out, a few at a time, not crossing in bunches. It slowed them, but not critically.
After they'd crossed, Romlar had them form a column of twos again, Toma not questioning, letting him function, and they moved out once more, angling now to regain their old line of travel.
Romlar spoke quietly into his throat mike. "Rear guard, be alert and keep well back. Flankers on the left, stay wide. I suspect there was an ambush laid at the fen, across our old line of march."
"Yes sir."
He moved them fast. Thirty minutes later they hit snowshoe tracks headed from the encampment toward the fen, and Romlar adjusted their direction of march, following the trail toward the encampment. After a bit they heard rifle fire not far ahead. His scouts reported contact with pickets. Romlar ordered 1st and 2nd Platoons into a skirmish line and sent them forward, leaving immediate tactics to their platoon leaders. Shortly the volume of fire increased, now including blast hoses. The T'swi with the enemy pickets reported that the pickets all were casualties. The T'swi with Romlar's scouts reported light casualties. First Platoon reported sighting the encampment in a meadow. A minute later, 4th Platoon's lobbers could be heard thumping. The rocket launchers weren't loud enough to hear.
Romlar had ordered 3rd Platoon to backtrack down their trail aways, to form a crescent facing their would-be ambushers from the fen, who'd probably be coming at a run. Ahead, an imaginary force at the encampment was counterattacking 1st and 2nd Platoons, and the T'swa informed him that the company which should have been helping in the attack on the encampment seemed not to have arrived. Romlar wasn't surprised. He had 4th Platoon concentrate their fire, lobbers and rockets both, on "the counterattack" instead of on the encampment. Minutes later the T'swa reported the counterattack broken, with heavy enemy casualties. Fourth Platoon then began bombarding the encampment again.
Romlar then called 2nd Platoon back and ordered them to join 3rd Platoon, to move toward the fen in a broad crescent, horns forward. The T'swa with 2nd Platoon had tagged twelve of its people dead or disabled, including Carrmak as platoon leader. Esenrok, as platoon sergeant, was unwounded and took command. Overall command of the two platoons fell to 3rd Platoon's leader, a trainee named Kurlmar.
About nine hundred yards back, Kurlmar stopped his advance at the top of a mild slope, the steepest locally available. The assumption was that the enemy, pressed for time, would follow his old, straight-line snowshoe trails, rather than detour and break new ones. Nonetheless, Kurlmar separated two squads from each end of his line, half his force, and sent them well to the sides, with orders to send scouts out farther, just in case.
Six minutes later he saw enemy movement in the forest to his front, and gave the order to fire. The enemy began to advance, moving from tree to tree as much as possible. Blank ammunition from rifles and blast hoses ripped the forest with their racket.
It was quickly apparent that the force they faced was a full company. Kurlmar's outlying squads too began firing; enemy troops were moving to flank him. He was tempted to withdraw, but instead called for reinforcements.
By the time Romlar arrived with 1st Platoon, most of the 2nd and 3rd had been tagged by their T'swa as casualties, but the enemy had suffered substantial casualties too. (Fourth Platoon had been left to watch for an attack by whatever [imaginary] enemy might have survived at the encampment.) A few minutes later the T'swa called the fighting off, and everyone, dead, disabled, and operational, mushed to the enemy encampment. There the cadre took command and led them all on a forced snowshoe march back toward the compound, fifteen miles away on snowburied roads.