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.He fumbled for his dog tags. I signed the agreement. Sorry, soldier, the Terran medic said, but you re going to live and be goodas new in the body you ve got. Don t matter.With so many worlds to run the Wyzhñyñy off, this war s goingto last a long time.So I m bound to get killed sooner or later.I mightbetter get my iron suit now.The more bots we have, the sooner we ll get itover with.And that way, who knows: I just might come through it all alive.His chuckle was a weak, dry sound. Spend my old age rusting in the sun. Take it up with the doc, the medic told him, then patted his shoulder andwent on.Esau had watched, listening.The painkiller had taken hold; things seemed abit remote and disjointed.But one thing was clear: there was a lot of hurtinggoing on.All of it because some Wyzhñyñy decided to take away other folksworlds.He d known that much all along.He just hadn t realized everythingthat went with it.Speaker Farnham had it right, he thought, or the book did.A lot of the time Esau hadn t been sure when a speaker was speaking his ownwords, and when they were the Lord s, or some prophet s, or Elder Hofer s.Butwhat it amounted to was, when we have a task, we need to carry it through thebest we can, and trust in the Lord.And it seemed to Esau that was the situation the army was in.Shortly he felt the medivac settling downward.A minute later they were on theground, and the rear doors opened.More medics came aboard, and within a fewminutes, all the wounded had been unloaded.Esau and Jael were among thelast the least wounded and walked to reception.Brigadier Consuela Hagopian clicked her video control, and the wall screenwent blank.Despite her salt-and-pepper hair and the lines in her face, to Chang Lung-Chi she looked more thansmart and confident.She looked -Page 222ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlcombat-trained and fit. As you see, she said, it was an informative night.We are very pleased withthe performance of our Jerrie troops, their auxiliaries, corps command.all of them.Less happily, we re also impressed with the toughness of theWyzhñyñy troops.But General Pak suspects our experience has been very largelywith the Wyzhñyñy main force, their regulars, and he s probably right.I hopeso, because they have lots of soldiers.Most of them second string, we think.Call them reserves.We suspect their entire adult population is armed andtrained.What she says matches what Olausson says, Chang thought.And Kulikov hadspoken well of her.But what impressed Chang as much as anything was the wayshe pointed out errors and uncertainties without being slippery. After the Battle of the First Days, she went on, both sides have used theirarmor and air squadrons cautiously.We seem to have an advantage in the air,so we ve been a little bolder with our air units.TheWyzhñyñy have been bolder with their tanks, but with the destruction of thebattalion in the tank park, that may change. Meanwhile they have a large advantage in troop numbers.And a lot ofartillery, while we.had to make difficult resource decisions inpreparing for the ground war.And decided to rely on airpower as our mainbombardment force.We intended our initial softening-up phase to largelydestroy the Wyzhñyñy armor and air units, but we d overlooked something.Ourprincipal colonized region on New Jerusalem, now the Wyzhñyñy colonizedregion, has areas of karst terrain.With caves something we d overlooked.Wyzhñyñy command was foresighted; they modified some of them to shelter armorand air squadrons, and for backup base installations.She gestured a shrug, a graceful movement. One might wonder that they feltthe need to, but unfortunately they did. So, said Foster Peixoto, what is the upshot of all this? I m getting to that, sir.But first I want to point out our advantages there.Our surveillance buoys above allno pun intended.And our concealment screen seems to be quite effectiveagainst Wyzhñyñy aerial observation.Thus we know a lot about what they re doing, and they know rather less aboutwhat we re doing.In fact, in our own domain, our troops have the forest tocover their movements, while Wyzhñyñy aerial reconnaissance is harassed,hurried, and costly. The Wyzhñyñy have penetrated our concealment area with what appear to havebeen two-man ground recon teams, that in the forest tend to be missed by ourbuoys.But that hasn t seriously compromised our concealment. Another long-term Wyzhñyñy disadvantage is supplies.They ve been dependingon supplies they brought with them, of course, and seemingly had been usingthe supply ships for storage.Though we don t know how much they may havetransferred into cave storage.The two supply ships we caught on or near theground, we destroyed.Others escaped into warpspace. Are you suggesting we can starve them out? I doubt it will come to that.We believe the Wyzhñyñy will take desperatemeasures to avoid it. Suicide attacks? In time, perhaps.But we expect the Wyzhñyñy force in warpspace to makeefforts to supply their people on the ground.Though the odds of theirsucceeding aren t good.Our offplanet flotilla is alert to possible emergencesby Wyzhñyñy ships.Also we have Dragons and a marine mother ship standing byin near-space, for critical onworld emergencies.She stopped expectantly.For long seconds the prime minister gazedthoughtfully at her before speaking. Itake it, then, that we need feel no concern about events on New Jerusalem, atleast for the time being. I wouldn t go that far.The Wyzhñyñy remain a potent force there, but oursuccesses so far are encouraging.Page 223ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlNow the president spoke. Brigadier, you said nothing about Wyzhñyñyprisoners. Marshal Kulikov brought that up with General Pak this morning, when theydiscussed Pak s report.Pak had hoped to capture some live Wyzhñyñy prisonersin conjunction with other missions, but Wyzhñyñy do not surrender.Threatenedwith capture, their wounded suicide, preferably with a grenade, taking some ofour people with them.Seemingly unconscious Wyzhñyñy are apt to be shamming,hoping to entice someone close enough
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