"Put your weapons on your shoulders. Close your off eye. Look at the front sight through the rear sight."
Acting Shift Sergeant MacIlargie tried to keep his face blank as he scanned the shift he was assigned to, but he couldn't keep the tip of his tongue from poking out of the corner of his mouth when he looked at the former shift sergeant, Acting Assistant Shift Sergeant Nafciel. Ordering around a bunch of FPs, telling them to do things their regular shift sergeant would never tell them to do, was going to be more fun than he ever thought he'd have as a Marine. And giving the former shift sergeant the same orders, and making him do the same things, was going to be even better. Him, ordering a sergeant around! Oh yes. MacIlargie could hardly keep from bouncing with glee.
"All right," MacIlargie began. He had to clear his throat to keep the laughter out of his voice. "The first thing we're going to work on is movement through wooded terrain." He looked at their uniforms and shook his head. "Of course, it doesn't matter how you move; dressed like that, a blind man could see you in the middle of the night. One good thing, it'll make it easier for me to see what you're doing so I can correct your mistakes. Not that I need your bright uniforms to be able to see you, you understand."
This time he couldn't help himself; he laughed and shook his head at how much fun this was going to be.
"Okay, listen up. Imagine there's a squad of guerrillas moving through the woods there." He pointed to the nearby trees. "They don't know you're here. You need to sneak up on them and catch them and set an ambush for them to walk into. Understand?" He nodded yes for them. "Okay, let me see you do it." He stepped off to the side to watch the shift snoop and poop through the woods.
The FPs looked at each other, then aligned themselves and started into the woods. MacIlargie's jaw dropped. They were marching erect, their blasters held at port arms.
They can't keep this up, he thought. Just give them until they reach the trees, then they'll break formation and start sneaking.
The FPs ran into trouble as soon as they reached the trees. The woods weren't thick enough to keep them from carrying their weapons at port arms, but there was enough undergrowth that they couldn't maintain their straight-line dress. They spent more time looking to their sides, trying to maintain their positions on line, than they did watching where they were going. Their feet kept getting caught by vines and low-lying branches. After the third one fell, MacIlargie called them back.
The troopers couldn't help but look embarrassed when they reassembled in front of the Marine. None of them met his eyes, which was just as well, because this time he didn't even try to keep amusement off his face.
"Okay, that's the way you used to do it," MacIlargie finally said. "But there's other things you know how to do that will be useful in this training. It just depends on why you're doing something. Look at it this way: you're not in formation, going against the enemy. It's Seventh Day night and you want to go into town, but your shift sergeant is pissed off at you and said you have to stay in the barracks and clean your bright-work. Go back into the woods and show me how you'd keep from being spotted by your shift sergeant."
The FPs looked at each other, shocked by MacIlargie's instructions. The former shift sergeant stared at him with mixed hatred and horror.
Then one of the troopers said, "This is the way we'd do that."
MacIlargie grinned.
"Adel yer lep, yer ri', yer lep!" Godenov's voice rang across the parade ground. "Lep, ri', lep! Column left, HARCH!" The Marine marched in place while the double column of the second platoon's second shift smartly executed his command and turned in front of him. As the last two men began their pivots to march in the new direction, Godenov pivoted himself and stepped out to maintain his position to the left of the marching FPs. "Adel yer lep, yer ri', yer lep!" They made an incongruous sight, the Marine in his dull-green garrison utilities putting the orange-and-blue-clad Feldpolizei shift through parade ground close order drill. "Right flank, HARCH!" The FPs pivoted as a unit and marched on-line rather than in-line.
Godenov marveled. He'd never seen a unit that size march so sharply. And more marvelously, they were doing it to his command! His eyes shined and his face glowed with joy and pride.
Fifty meters away. Sergeant Wang Hyakowa's eyes didn't shine, neither did his face glow. Hyakowa's eyes were slitted and his face hard-set. Rather than showing joy and pride at how one of his most junior men was so sharply putting the Wanderjahrians through their paces, his face projected anger and danger. He waited until Godenov's maneuvers had the PFC facing him, then made a hand signal that said, "Come here."
"Acting Assistant Shift Sergeant Lahrmann," Godenov commanded, "break rank and take command."
The temporarily displaced shift sergeant stepped sharply out of his position at the head of the column and marched at its side. "Loup, rahp, loup," he picked up, calling the cadence.
Spine erect, shoulders back, head high, Godenov marched to Hyakowa. The joy and pride in his eyes blocked the image of his squad leader's anger and dangerousness from his vision.
"What are you doing?" Hyakowa asked in an ominously soft voice when Godenov reached him.
"Drilling my shift. Sergeant Hyakowa." Godenov positively beamed.
Hyakowa closed his eyes for a second. When he reopened them. he tried again. "Specifically, in what are you drilling them?"
"Close order drill." Hyakowa's expression still didn't register on Godenov, who wondered what the point of the question was.
"Parade ground close order drill."
"That's right."
"Something they already know how to do."
Godenov nodded eagerly.
"Why are you teaching them something they already know how to do?"
Godenov blinked rapidly several times. The question was unexpected, and for the first time he realized that his squad leader might not exactly be happy with what he was doing. He thought quickly. "I'm having them do something they already know how to do," he explained, "in order to teach them something they don't know."
It was Hyakowa's turn to be surprised. "And what is that?"
"I'm training them to take orders from me."
Hyakowa blinked. His expression eased as he thought about Godenov's explanation for drilling the shift in something they were already expert at. It made sense of a sort. Certainly it was a better explanation than what he 'd thought—he'd thought that Godenov was putting the shift through close order drill because he had no idea how to teach them fieldcraft or marksmanship. He nodded once, briskly. "Carry on, Godenov," he said. "Just make sure they learn that lesson fast. We'll be taking them on patrols in a few days, and then they'll have to know a lot more than how to march in formation."
"Aye aye. Sergeant." Godenov about-faced, located his shift, and began marching in its direction to resume the close order drill. When he got a few paces away he breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there, he'd been afraid that Hyakowa was going to guess the truth—he was marching his shift because he had no idea how to teach them anything they didn't already know.
Chapter Eight
The suborbital flight to Oligarch Keutgens's Morgenluft took about an hour. Brigadier Sturgeon announced without warning that Commander Peters would accompany him on the trip. "And bring your two assistants," he said, nodding at Dean and Claypoole, who were busy creating a database on a computer terminal.
"But, sir, they're working up a very important informant database Chief Long's sharing with us. The sooner we get that information—"
Brigadier Sturgeon shook his head and held up a hand. Although he had the highest respect for Commander Peters as an officer on his staff, he had the infantryman's profound disdain for military intelligence types. Over the years, military intelligence had never given him much help in tactical matters, and he hadn't forgotten that in the recent scrape on Elneal, the entire fleet intelligence apparatus failed to discover that the Siad war chief, Wad Shabeli, had gotten his hands on Raptor attack aircraft.
"The database
'll keep," Brigadier Sturgeon said. "I ain't going anywhere on this planet without some fire support, and right now your two are the only men I can spare from headquarters duty to go along with me. This'll be an overnighter, so bring some personal gear and your dress uniforms, we'll be expected to look pretty at dinner down there. And extra energy packs for your weapons. Saddle up, Marines, we leave in twenty minutes."
Dean grinned at Claypoole and they both jumped eagerly to their feet.
" 'It'll keep,' " Commander Peters mimicked Brigadier Sturgeon after he had departed. "Nobody appreciates the work I do around here," he muttered.
"Cheer up, sir," Claypoole said from the doorway. "Maybe you'll find true love on this trip. Commander." He darted into the hallway before the officer could respond.
Morgenluft lay in the tropical zone, but Schmahldorf, Keutgens's capital city, was situated in the higher elevations of her northernmost lands in the foothills of the Gaiser Mountains, so it did not suffer from the high humidity that plagued the lowlands.
Schmahldorf, named after Karl Schmahl, a missionary martyred in the witchcraft hysteria that swept the region two centuries before—the one episode of civil unrest to mar the planet's history before the rebel movement took root—was a beautiful city of about 100,000 inhabitants. Since Keutgens's people made their living mainly from agriculture—thule was their major cash crop—Schmahldorf's only industries were small and light, the kind that support an agricultural economy. The pace of life in Schmahldorf was very slow compared to that of Wanderjahr's other Staats. While the city had long since outgrown the physical and social dimensions of the farming village it had once been, Lorelei and her forebears had insisted on calling the place Schmahl's Village, dorf in German. This not only kept alive the memory of the courageous missionary, but helped preserve the bucolic outlook of the capital's residents.
The people's appreciation of the arts and their love of education reflected Lorelei Keutgens's own interests, and the intellectual life of the citizens of Schmahldorf was the most vigorous on the planet. So was their interest in politics. Morgenluft was the only Staat on Wanderjahr where the citizens freely elected the local governments. The guerrillas had the least influence in Morgenluft, and the prosperous and independent lifestyle of Lorelei's people was a source of annoyance to some of the other oligarchs, who feared what would happen in their own Staats if her ideas on political and economic democracy ever took root there.
Lorelei and her family were present to meet the Marine commander as he and his small party emerged from the landing port.
"Brigadier Sturgeon!" she exclaimed warmly. "How very pleasant to see you again!" She extended her hand, which the brigadier took and lifted briefly to his lips.
"You know Commander Peters, madame," the brigadier said, "and these two stalwart Marines are Privates First Class Dean and Claypoole." Dean and Claypoole came to attention.
"My, Brigadier, they are heavily armed! Do you expect trouble during your visit?" Her eyes flashed laughingly.
"No, ma'am, of course not. But if there is trouble, they can handle it. You're fighting a war on this planet, and if I'm to be a target, I plan to shoot back."
Lorelei Keutgens nodded briefly. "Well, we've had no trouble from the bandits here. Brigadier, and I don't expect any—from them, anyway. May I introduce my family? Here is my oldest granddaughter, Hway." She gestured toward a very pretty, dark-haired woman of about twenty, who smiled and curtsied at the Marines. The remaining three children, two boys, one nine and the other twelve, and a girl of fifteen, smiled self-consciously at their grandmother's guests. All seemed to have inherited Lorelei's finely chiseled facial features, but not her light complexion or blond hair.
"My villa is about twenty kilometers outside the city," Lorelei said after the introductions were made. "I have arranged transportation for us—you didn't bring one of your Dragons with you too, did you. Brigadier?" She laughed. All the Marines laughed too. "How long can you stay?"
"We've got to be back in Brosigville tomorrow, I'm afraid," Brigadier Sturgeon replied.
"What a shame! And by the way, gentlemen," she announced, shaking a forefinger at all four of the Marines, "the next man to call me 'ma'am' or 'madame' goes to bed without any supper tonight! From now on I am 'Lori.' "
Brigadier Sturgeon was not a man who put much store in rank and titles. While he would never tolerate a subordinate's calling him by his first name, he judged everyone, especially his men, by what they could do, not by the devices and badges of their rank. Lorelei Keutgens was the equivalent of a head of state, and as a matter of diplomatic protocol, far outranked even the commandant of the Confederation Marine Corps, much less a brigadier of Marines, even one with the special powers Brigadier Sturgeon had been given for this mission. Besides, Lorelei Keutgens was probably the most intelligent and capable leader on the planet, at least in the brigadier's estimation.
"Well, Lori," Brigadier Sturgeon bowed politely, "my first name is Theodosius and you may call me Ted." With that, she wrapped her arm around Brigadier Sturgeon's and led the party to meet her cabinet ministers and the waiting transportation.
A rotund, red-faced man with longish red hair, a functionary for one of Keutgens's ministers, stood in the rear of the small party of dignitaries she had summoned to greet Brigadier Sturgeon. "Zitze's guests have arrived," the fat man said into a handheld communicator.
"Are they who we were told they would be?" the disembodied voice on the other end of the transmission asked.
"Herr Ludendorf," the caller responded. "Herr Ludendorf" was a code name for Brigadier Sturgeon. "Zitze" was a code name for Lorelei Keutgens.
"Damn!" the man on the other end exclaimed. There was a slight pause. "Hmm. A slight complication. Very well. Proceed with your welcoming party. The more the merrier." The instrument went dead.
Far above Wanderjahr on board the Denver, every electronic transmission from anywhere on the planet was being monitored by an intercept officer. Her computer was programmed to identify key words, phrases, and names, and alert her to them. If the name of any Marine appeared in a transmission, for instance, a warning would flash on her screens and that message would be read and analyzed. Any transmission mentioning weapons, explosives, even military tactics, was instantly flagged for analysis, and all suspicious circumstances were quickly reported to the Feldpolizei or the Stadtpolizei for investigation. Programs were available to translate messages in any human language, and the computer constantly searched for words and strings of text in all of them, in case someone was using a little-known dialect to pass coded instructions to recipients; there was no cryptographic system known to the Confederation that the Denver's computers couldn't break.
The intercept officer and her assistants normally reviewed hundreds of messages every day. The names Ludendorf and Zitze meant nothing to the analyst's computer, and no one on board the Denver was at all interested in parties on Wanderjahr.
Unlike Chairman Arschmann's estate outside Brosigville, Lori's home was modest. Nevertheless, it was still a palace compared to anything Dean had ever seen on Earth. After the men were shown their rooms, everyone gathered on a spacious patio behind the main building for refreshments.
"Hway, would you take the children and show our guests," she gestured at Dean and Claypoole, "about the house and gardens, while the Brigadier and I get better acquainted? Dinner," she included everyone, "is at sundown."
"Take your weapons with you," Brigadier Sturgeon said, "and check with me every ten minutes when you're outside the house." Lori made as if to protest, but Brigadier Sturgeon held up a hand. "We're Marines, Lori, and as long as we are on this planet we're all under arms."
After Lorelei's grandchildren had escorted Dean and Claypoole back into the house, the oligarch turned to Commander Peters. "Your brigadier is just as stubborn as my late husband." She smiled. Peters, who could neither agree nor disagree, cleared his throat nervously and sipped his wine.
"How long has he been gone?" Commander Peters as
ked, realizing too late that he'd brought up what could be an unpleasant topic.
"Oh, five years. My dear Tran died in an aircraft crash that also killed my son, who was my only child, and his wife. Thank God the grandchildren were with me that day or I'd have lost everyone in this world who is dear to me."
"Tran? Your husband was..."
"Vietnamese, Ralph."
"Yes, hmmm." Peters rubbed his chin. That was unusual on Wanderjahr, a woman of one of the ruling German clans marrying outside her own ethnic group.
"Yes, Tran's father was one of my father's most trusted overseers. The Trans virtually grew up in my house. Young Tran and I spent a lot of time together when we were children. That was permitted. When we married, I kept my maiden name, of course. To have taken my husband's name would've been taboo in Wanderjahrian society, me being from a German family, and he—was not. I was an only child. My mother died when I was eight. My father would've opposed our marriage had he lived, but he died—of cancer, something unknown in your world anymore, gentlemen—when I was nineteen, and left me his estates. Tran and I managed them as we managed our marriage, with love and attention and infinite patience." She laughed. "But what of you, gentlemen? Tell me about yourselves."
Sturgeon shrugged. "We are what you see. Two broken-down old Marines. We go where our orders send us and we carry them out when we get there."
Lori regarded the Marines frankly for a long moment. She was wearing a silken one-piece dress that hung in folds from her neck to her feet. Its sleeves fell back from her elbows, revealing strong tanned forearms slightly dappled with tiny golden hairs. "Have you never wanted to marry, raise a family, Ted? A man is not complete until he has a family."
"I always thought a man wasn't complete until he got a battalion command," Sturgeon answered facetiously. When Lori failed to pick up on the joke, he continued quickly, "Well, maybe someday. I just haven't had time to cultivate relationships. And in many ways, Lori, my command is my family."
School of Fire Page 13
