Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship by Jean Johnson Page B

her temporary quarters. “In fact, a lot of people will be literally inconvenienced to death. Which is why I want to go look at the perimeter, so I know exactly what our combined troops will
actually
be facing, rather than just taking a fortune-cookie-based guess. Information is the biggest source of power I have for making sense out of what I foresee, and in getting the fortune untangled, off the paper, and out into the real universe, where it can do a lot of good.
    “Give me two minutes to grab my gear, Captain, and I’ll be ready to hook up with that patrol,” Ia promised.
    Looking only halfway convinced, Roghetti gestured for her to proceed.
    JUNE 6, 2498 T.S.
    The tuft of vegetation was just a little too bushy to be Terran grass, but it served its purpose: camouflage and cover on the crawl toward enemy lines. Reaching it, Ia peered cautiously through the branching blades. Not more than forty meters away, a mechsuited figure with long servo-limbs coiled around a bulky, stunner-like weapon stood watch. Half lying over her legs, Private Ch’zun of Roghetti’s Roughriders waited patiently for her to gauge the right moment to strike, as did his teammate, Private Pumipi.
    That moment would come when Ia heard the telltale sounds of D Company bombing in the distance. Until then, their orders were to get within striking distance of the frogs and wait. Most of her crew picked for this assault had been broken up and paired with an Army team. Mattox’s orders to this point had been for straightforward confrontations. She knew the TUPSF Army trained in maneuver-combat scenarios, but the Roughriders hadn’t had a lot of practice lately, hence the partnering. Spyder practiced and led his people in nothing but small-force maneuvers versus larger forces; pairing the two would help refresh the old training memories for the Roughriders.
    This approach was one such example. No matter how good modern surveillance gear was, it could always be fooled, particularly at a distance. By crawling in a slithering line three soldiers long and sticking to all the lowest points in the terrain, they could fool the Salik base sensors into thinking they were an allipede, a local, multilimbed cross between an Earth alligator and a very large insect in shape. Rather than using mechsuits, which bogged down in the muddy, soft soil, particularly near Salik encampments, Ia had ordered light armor to be worn under camouflage suits. The ceristeel plating would reflect infrared and sonar sweeps in ways similar to the thick-plated scales of the allipede, furthering the illusion.
    They might be able to get closer in the increasingly dim light of the falling night, but Ia did not intend to risk a premature discovery. The clump of Dabin reddish beige bushgrass was a good one. When the missile strikes began somewhere off to her right, she would take the time to crawl her team forward another twenty, maybe even thirty meters to take out that sentry.
    A well-thrown grenade would simulate a projectile strike in the confusion, adding further distraction. That would allow a second allipede-style team to crawl up to the base of the surveillance tower thirty meters beyond the sentry, where they would place a time-delayed bomb to take out the local node for lightwave communications. Other teams were scheduled to take out similar towers, plus listening posts, sentry stations, even projectile-gun bunkers.
    All of it had to be done up close and personal, as quietly as possible. It was of greater individual risk to pit Humans in light armor against Salik in mechanized battlesuits, but not an impossible feat. It did, however, require timing and trust. While the flanking units distracted the Salik’s main forces with a two-pronged, standard-seeming attack from B and D Companies, C Company and the Damned would run the greater risk of infiltration and sabotage. But she had the trust of Roghetti, and her Damned had the trust of the Roughriders. They would succeed.
    As soon as D