By comparison, Jerrie casualties were moderate: seven died on the ground, and five more on the medivac or in the hospital. Only eight wounded survived, five of them bot cases. The high ratio of killed to wounded was normal for energy weapons, and in this fight, projectile weapons were not involved.

Two Jerries were injured when struck on the head by bolas being twirled or thrown by others.

Captain Zenawi made sure that all the stuffbags were evacuated with the troops. Hopefully the Wyzhnyny would never know how this incursion was made.

Wyzhnyny Offensive

Before the Jerries had even arrived at Terra, War House had pretty much decided on the basic features of the New Jerusalem liberation campaign. It assumed that the Wyzhnyny occupation force would be larger than any liberation force they could afford to send. If not, all the better, but the assumption was appropriate. They also assumed that the Wyzhnyny would make an all-out effort to crush the newly-arrived Jerries.

So with work under way on the Wilderness Base, Pak had sent his fortifications chief, with two officers from the Luneburger engineers, to plan quick but effective defenses in the forest. The Battle of the First Days had just begun when the three set out on grav scooters, armed with packets of photos provided by the surveillance buoys, and large scale, prewar topographic/vegetation maps.

Construction began two days later. There wasn't time to plan in detail. Half the Luneburger engineering regiment was committed to the work. No forts were built, not even bunkers. Instead they adapted modern tools to 16th and 17th century Scandinavian strategies. They should do nicely, if the Wyzhnyny air support units were adequately suppressed.

The Battle of the First Days had taught the gosthodar that attacking the humans across open fields was unpromising and terribly costly. The Tank Park Raid established that the humans were aggressive and daring. The human surveillance buoys made stealth operations impractical, and the destruction of his heavy howitzer battalion limited the punishment he could inflict on the humans without closing with them.

Then had come the night of the Pecan Orchard Raid, and everything changed. Not because of the raid itself. Though insulting and mystifying, it had not been very damaging. But because of what else happened that night.

Commodore Xarsku had sent scouts into F-space to exchange radio messages with the gosthodar, who used the opportunity to describe his problems. He wanted-according to him, he needed-the destruction of the humans' wilderness base. And given the base's concealment screen, and the human surveillance buoys, he insisted that this required powerful intervention from space.

Xarsku didn't know as much as he'd have liked about the human space force remaining in the system, but he did know it was substantially more powerful than his own. Nonetheless, his function was to support the colony, so he'd scripted an attack. A bombard would approach the planet in warpdrive, and emerge in F-space some twenty miles out. Using triangulation, and data from Jilchuk, it would then pound the entire blind area-an action that would take about half an hour. At the same time, two marine hunter craft would take out the surveillance buoys. Meanwhile, two supply ships were to emerge as near to Jilchuk's main underground supply base as they dared, unload cargo as rapidly as possible, and leave.

Xarsku had no illusions; the supply ships would probably be destroyed before they finished unloading. But even so, they could easily make the difference between survival and starvation.

To cover these actions, Xarsku's planetary guard was to engage its alien opponent, holding its collective attention.

Jilchuk knew little about space warfare, so he'd awaited the action optimistically. His Intelligence section monitored Xarsku's radio communications throughout the action, and Jilchuk had followed it play by play.

Xarsku's plan was simple, and there was something to be said for simple plans. But this one had been predicted, so Kereenyaga was prepared. Even so, setting the place and time of engagement gave Xarsku an initial advantage, which cost the humans a cruiser and two corvettes. The gosthodar felt a swell of exultation. But the humans' greater numbers and firepower soon drove Xarsku back into warpspace.

Meanwhile, near the planetary surface, Xarsku's hunters had destroyed the two human surveillance buoys. His bombard, on the other hand, lay broken and smoking on a forest ridge. It had never gotten into position. Designed for punishing, not fighting, it had been attacked by four of Kereenyaga's corvettes, whose simultaneous torpedo salvos had disrupted its force shield, destroying generator and drives.

As if in retribution, the hunters that had destroyed the buoys then scorched two swaths across the blind area before Kereenyaga's corvettes could engage them. One escaped into warpspace. The other, crippled, careened into the forest miles away, and blew up.

The corvettes then caught the cargo ships in the act of unloading, and slammed torpedos into each of them before heading back into near-space.

When it was over, Jilchuk found solace in the destruction of the buoys. Also, substantial supplies had been transferred before the supply ships were attacked, and more after their fires had been controlled.

But the enemy on the ground had not been destroyed. Damaged, wounded, but not destroyed. Their destruction remained up to him. Move quickly! he thought. Quickly and powerfully! He'd told himself that before, he realized, but this time nothing would turn him. There'd be no hesitation, and no backing off. And with the buoys gone, the enemy couldn't know or predict his actions as they had before.

General Pak watched Wyzhnyny infantry-a very long column of fours-trotting easily down the road toward the forest. The bulk of their equipment and supplies were carried by AG trucks, and their speed of foot was sobering. He'd realized before he'd left Terra that this life-form would run faster than humans, but actually watching them… they and their guardian flakwagons, of which the Wyzhnyny seemed to have an endless supply.

At least he could watch them. Presumably the Wyzhnyny didn't know that Kereenyaga had replaced the lost buoys with another. The Jerries had promptly nicknamed it "Lonesome Moses," which surprised the general when he heard about it. It seemed irreverent for troops with their background.

Lonesome Moses provided less detail, less perspective, and had far less versatility than the buoys the Wyzhnyny had destroyed, but it was infinitely better than no buoy at all. Immediately after the fighting on the First Day, Xarsku had sent a single daring Hunter to shoot down the first two. Kereenyaga had quickly deployed his reserve pair, and ordered his engineering section to cobble together a backup. Shipsmind had provided the basic information, and his engineers and technicians had provided parts and ingenuity. And with it now in place, they'd begun on still another, just in case.

Equally important was Colonel Schrager's Burger engineers, building defenses in the wilderness. The engineers and the Jerries. The colonel had suggested that progress would be faster with help, and that a battalion of resourceful backwoods infantry would be just the ticket. Pak had complied. A Jerrie battalion had pitched in with beam saws, AG sleds, and strong backs, felling trees and throwing up breastworks. Pak had visited the work in progress, and been impressed by the strength, energy and cheerfulness of the Jerries at work. They treated it like a holiday, hard though it was.

And urgent now, because Wyzhnyny command was moving troops into the forest at two points, one division eighteen miles west of the howitzer cemetery, another thirty miles east of it. And strong reserves had been moved to several locations, with APFs. Obviously the Wyzhnyny commander intended to attack at unpredictable points simultaneously. As soon as he'd made a breakthrough, his reserves would exploit it.