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chance.
Meanwhile the Earth mercenaries, never very steady troops at best, called for
quarter; many had not fired a shot. The camp defenders fought as disorganized
groups against a disciplined force whose communications worked perfectly.
At the fortress headquarters building the alarms woke Commandant Albert
Morris. He listened in disbelief to the sounds of battle, and although he
rushed out half-dressed, he was too late. His
command was engulfed by nearly four thousand screaming men. Morris stood a
moment in indecision, torn by the desire to run to the nearest barracks and
rally what forces he could, but he decided his duty was in the communications
room. The Capital must be told. Desperately he ran to the radio shack.
Everything seemed normal inside, and he shouted orders to the duty sergeant
before he realized he had never seen the man before. He turned to face a squad
of leveled rifles. A bright light stabbed from a darker corner of the room.
"Good morning, sir," an even voice said.
Commandant Morris blinked, then carefully raised his hands in surrender. "I've
no sidearms.
Who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Colonel John Christian Falkenberg, at your service. Will you surrender this
base and save your men?"
Morris nodded grimly. He'd seen enough outside to know the battle was
hopeless. His career was finished too, no matter what he did, and there was no
point in letting the Friedlanders be slaughtered. "Surrender to whom?"
The light flicked off and Morris saw Falkenberg. There was a grim smile on the
Colonel's lips.
"Why, to the Great Jehovah and the Free States of Washington, Commandant. ..."
Albert Morris, who was no historian, did not understand the reference. He took
the public address mike the grim troopers handed him. Fortress Astoria had
fallen.
Twenty-three hundred kilometers to the west at Allansport, Sergeant Sherman
White slapped the keys to launch three small solid rockets. They weren't very
powerful birds, but they could be set up quickly, and they had the ability to
loft a hundred kilos of tiny steel cubes to 140
kilometers. White had very good information on the Confederate satellite's
ephemeris; he'd observed it for its past twenty orbits.
The target was invisible over the horizon when Sergeant White launched his
interceptors. As it came overhead the small rockets had climbed to meet it.
Their radar fuses sought the precise moment, then they exploded in a cloud of
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shot that rose as it spread. It continued to climb, halted, and began to fall
back toward the ground. The satellite detected the attack and beeped alarms to
its masters. Then it passed through the cloud at fourteen hundred meters per
second relative to the shot. Four of the steel cubes were in its path.
XVII
FALKENBERG STUDIED THE manuals on the equipment in the Confederate command car
as it raced northward along the Columbia Valley road toward Doak's Ferry.
Captain Frazer's scouts were somewhere ahead with the captured cavalry
equipment and behind Falkenberg the regiment was strung out piecemeal. There
were men on motorcycles, in private trucks, horse-
drawn wagons, and on foot.
There'd be more walking soon. The captured cavalry gear was a lucky break, but
the Columbia
Valley wasn't technologically developed. Most local transport was by animal
power, and the farmers relied on the river to ship produce to the deepwater
port at Astoria. The river boats and motor fuel were the key to the operation.
There wasn't enough of either.
Glenda Ruth Horton had surprised Falkenberg by not arguing about the need for
haste, and her ranchers were converging on all the river ports, taking heavy
casualties in order to seize boats and fuel before the scattered Confederate
occupation forces could destroy them. Meanwhile
Falkenberg had recklessly flung the regiment northward.
"Firefight ahead," his driver said. "Another of them one battery posts."
"Right." Falkenberg fiddled with the unfamiliar controls until the map came
into sharper focus, then activated the comm circuit.
"Sir," Captain Frazer answered. "They've got a battery of 105's and an MG
Company in there.
More than I can handle."
"Right, pass it by. Let Miss Horton's ranchers keep it under siege. Found any
more fuel?"
Frazer laughed unpleasantly. "Colonel, you can adjust the carburetors in these
things to handle a lot, but Christ, they bloody well won't run on paraffin.
There's not even farm machinery out here! We're running on fumes now, and
damned low-grade fumes at that."
"Yeah." The Confederates were getting smarter. For the first hundred
kilometers they took fueling stations intact, but now, unless the patriots
were already in control, the fuel was torched before Frazer's fast-moving
scouts arrived. "Keep going as best you can, Captain."
"Sir. Out."
"We got some reserve fuel with the guns," Sergeant Major Calvin reminded him.
The big
RSM sat in the turret of the command caravan and at frequent intervals fondled
the thirty-mm cannon there. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it had been a long
time since the RSM was gunner in an armored vehicle. He was hoping to get in
some fighting.
"No. Those guns have to move east to the passes. They're sure to send a
reaction force from the capital, Top Soldier."
But would they? Falkenberg wondered. Instead of moving northwest from the
capital to reinforce the fortress at Doak's Ferry, they might send troops by
sea to retake Astoria. It would be a stupid move, and Falkenberg counted on
the Confederates acting intelligently. As far as anyone knew, the Astoria
Fortress guns dominated the river mouth.
A detachment of Weapons Battalion remained there with antiaircraft rockets to
keep reconnaissance at a distance, but otherwise Astoria was held only by a
hastily raised Patriot force stiffened with a handful of mercenaries. The
Friedlander guns had been taken out at night.
If Falkenberg's plan worked, by the time the Confederates knew what they
faced, Astoria would be strongly held by Valley Patriot armies, and other
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Patriot forces would have crossed the water to hold Allansport. It was a risky
battle plan, but it had one merit: it was the only one that could succeed.
Leading elements of the regiment covered half the six hundred kilometers north
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