trenches and the last of the cables that
had lain across the river. Soon the Germans would discover that they
had been cut, but it would not be soon enough for them to do very much
about it. We hoped.
Then we came to the parts of the city that lay along the river. The main
sections of the city had grown up to the east, away from the river,
and that is where Beaugency's industry had been and that is where the
Imperial forces were camped most thickly and that is where the bombs fell.
I had halfway expected to see refugees streaming toward the river, trying
to cross the bridges or perhaps swimming the river itself, but there were
none. Maybe there were no civilians left in Beaugency and the Germans
who retreated from the battle -- that would only be the wounded now --
would be going north, not west. Kar-hinter had known pretty well what
he was doing when he sent us up the river.
The first bridge showed no sign of damage, though about all I could
really see were the two guardhouses on either end of the bridge and the
two sentries who paced back and forth between them and threw occasional,
disinterested glances down into the water. I doubt that they could see
a thing in the blackness that surrounded us.
We passed the bridge without incident and came to the second about half
a mile up the river, the one that the aerial photographs had indicated
might be damaged. It was.
At one time a blast had struck the bridge on its extreme right, blowing
it completely apart. The spans of twisted, rusted metal drooped down to
the water and rested on the river bottom. Half the river was blocked to
navigation. We were forced to cross over to the left bank and proceed
there along the side.
There were no guards visible there. The Germans must have been fairly
confident that no one would get this far up the river without being
detected, I thought.
Soon the center of the city was behind us and even the glare in the sky
was falling off to our right rear. We were well behind the Imperial lines
-- and without detection.
Funny, I should have known by then that the time to be most careful in war
is when you feel sure that you've accomplished something. That's when you
get careless and when the enemy is most likely to do something deadly.
It came suddenly, without warning.
A light flashed above us from the riverbank. An instant later a second
light came from the other bank. The two beams met on our lead boat. And
a German machine gun opened up on it.
For an instant I was tempted to switch my body to full combat augmentation,
to speed up my actions and reflexes to five times their normal speed --
for that had been built into me too -- but I did not. Full combat
augmentation, though it makes a man the most deadly fighting machine in
all the known universes, also drains a man's metabolism at an astonishing
rate. And I knew that I would need all my strength when we reached the
villa. I did not will those electrobiological circuits into operation.
One of the men in the lead boat came to his feet, a tommy gun in his
hands, aimed toward the nearest of the spotlights. The tommy began to
chatter within a second of the barking of the German gun, and its first
slug must have hit the spotlight's lens. But even as the light was going
out, the British soldier's body was cut in half by the machine gun's
rain of bullets.
Then the boat seemed to come apart, two more bodies tumbling out as
rifles from both sides of the river began to fire.
I grabbed up the rifle that lay in the boat beside me, swung it up, and
pulled off a shot at the second spotlight. I heard another Enfield crack
in unison with mine, off to my rear. Tracy had been just as quick as I.
The other German spotlight went out.
We dropped our rifles, all of us in the three remaining boats, grabbed
our paddles and began paddling like mad up the river. We had only a few
minutes of darkness, at best, before the Imperials brought up another
light. We all knew
had lain across the river. Soon the Germans would discover that they
had been cut, but it would not be soon enough for them to do very much
about it. We hoped.
Then we came to the parts of the city that lay along the river. The main
sections of the city had grown up to the east, away from the river,
and that is where Beaugency's industry had been and that is where the
Imperial forces were camped most thickly and that is where the bombs fell.
I had halfway expected to see refugees streaming toward the river, trying
to cross the bridges or perhaps swimming the river itself, but there were
none. Maybe there were no civilians left in Beaugency and the Germans
who retreated from the battle -- that would only be the wounded now --
would be going north, not west. Kar-hinter had known pretty well what
he was doing when he sent us up the river.
The first bridge showed no sign of damage, though about all I could
really see were the two guardhouses on either end of the bridge and the
two sentries who paced back and forth between them and threw occasional,
disinterested glances down into the water. I doubt that they could see
a thing in the blackness that surrounded us.
We passed the bridge without incident and came to the second about half
a mile up the river, the one that the aerial photographs had indicated
might be damaged. It was.
At one time a blast had struck the bridge on its extreme right, blowing
it completely apart. The spans of twisted, rusted metal drooped down to
the water and rested on the river bottom. Half the river was blocked to
navigation. We were forced to cross over to the left bank and proceed
there along the side.
There were no guards visible there. The Germans must have been fairly
confident that no one would get this far up the river without being
detected, I thought.
Soon the center of the city was behind us and even the glare in the sky
was falling off to our right rear. We were well behind the Imperial lines
-- and without detection.
Funny, I should have known by then that the time to be most careful in war
is when you feel sure that you've accomplished something. That's when you
get careless and when the enemy is most likely to do something deadly.
It came suddenly, without warning.
A light flashed above us from the riverbank. An instant later a second
light came from the other bank. The two beams met on our lead boat. And
a German machine gun opened up on it.
For an instant I was tempted to switch my body to full combat augmentation,
to speed up my actions and reflexes to five times their normal speed --
for that had been built into me too -- but I did not. Full combat
augmentation, though it makes a man the most deadly fighting machine in
all the known universes, also drains a man's metabolism at an astonishing
rate. And I knew that I would need all my strength when we reached the
villa. I did not will those electrobiological circuits into operation.
One of the men in the lead boat came to his feet, a tommy gun in his
hands, aimed toward the nearest of the spotlights. The tommy began to
chatter within a second of the barking of the German gun, and its first
slug must have hit the spotlight's lens. But even as the light was going
out, the British soldier's body was cut in half by the machine gun's
rain of bullets.
Then the boat seemed to come apart, two more bodies tumbling out as
rifles from both sides of the river began to fire.
I grabbed up the rifle that lay in the boat beside me, swung it up, and
pulled off a shot at the second spotlight. I heard another Enfield crack
in unison with mine, off to my rear. Tracy had been just as quick as I.
The other German spotlight went out.
We dropped our rifles, all of us in the three remaining boats, grabbed
our paddles and began paddling like mad up the river. We had only a few
minutes of darkness, at best, before the Imperials brought up another
light. We all knew
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