School of Fire

by David Sherman

  None of the other men in the squad had any comment to make.

  "All right," Hyakowa said. "You all know what we're going to be doing. If there are no other questions, join your units. We'll run a comm check as soon as you're in place." He looked at each of his men. Only one or two looked back at him. Mostly, they looked at the Wanderjahrians they were about to take into the hills. Each of the six shifts would be taking a different route, but they'd be close enough to support each other if any of them ran into a situation they couldn't handle alone. If they could keep up with each other, that was. If the Marines could handle them properly and keep the FPs from getting hopelessly lost. Hyakowa shuddered at the thought of the many things that could go wrong. He knew the Wanderjahrians were also unhappy with what they were doing. Most of them found the very idea of patrolling the woods without being in their normal formation frightening almost to the point of terror.

  Dornhofer was the first to move. "Let's do this thing," he said, and stepped off toward the first platoon's command element.

  Almost as though that were a parade ground command, everyone began descending the hill toward their platoons and shifts. Hyakowa stood calmly watching them. Doyle was the last to leave the hill, so he was there when Hyakowa got a transmission.

  "Random One-six, this is Random Six-five. Over."

  "One-six. Go, Six-five," Hyakowa said, using field-expedient communications rather than textbook procedure. He was clearly excited as he listened to Acting Battalion Executive Officer Charlie Bass, call sign Random Six-five. He whistled softly at the end of Bass's message, then said, "Roger, Six-five, I'll pass it. Over." He nibbled on his lower lip and looked pensively out into nowhere as Bass signed off.

  Doyle had no idea what the message was, but if the normally impassive Hyakowa reacted to it that way, it had to be bad news for the men of third platoon. Bad news? It had to be terrible news. Hey, he, Corporal Doyle, was the company's senior clerk. He had no business going into a situation where he'd be facing a large force of guerrillas—especially not with a company of partly trained rural policemen who barely knew which end of their blasters was the hot one. So it had to be bad. The string-of-pearls had detected an overwhelming force of guerrillas closing on them while they stood here waiting. No, that couldn't be it. If guerrillas were approaching, Hyakowa would be giving orders, getting everybody ready to fight right now. So what was it? He quaked as he imagined what could be worse yet: The guerrillas had attacked the spaceport outside Brosigville and wiped out the FIST headquarters! They were left with no way off-planet! They were stuck here, a few Marines on some backwater world that even Captain Conorado hadn't ever heard of! How long would it be before anybody noticed that the FIST wasn't making its reports? It was how far, three weeks, to the nearest civilized planet? That was the fastest a message could travel from here to there. Then it would be more weeks or months until Fleet headquarters was informed that 34th FIST missed a report. And Fleet wouldn't do anything over one missed message, they'd wait for two or three reports to go missing. How often were messages sent to Fleet headquarters, once a week? Less often? Then weeks, maybe months—probably months—after Fleet realized something must be wrong, a rescue mission would finally be mounted. Jesus Muhammad, it would be a year longer than that, more than a year, a year and a half—before anybody got to Wanderjahr to pull the survivors out! If there were any survivors! Doyle's knees shook so badly he felt like he was about to collapse.

  "You know where Morgenluft is?" Hyakowa asked into the absolute silence that had descended around Doyle.

  Morgenluft? What did that have to do with the spaceport getting taken out and them being stranded here? Doyle's throat was too constricted for him to speak. He simply nodded.

  "Brigadier Sturgeon was visiting Oligarch Keutgens's home earlier today," Hyakowa said slowly.

  Doyle looked at him oddly. This didn't seem to have anything to do with the predicament he imagined they were in.

  "Guerrillas pulled a raid on it." He looked at Doyle. "Dean and Claypoole were with the brigadier." He shook his head slowly. "Somehow, they managed to beat off the guerrillas."

  All the tension flowed out of Doyle. Well, that wasn't so bad. A raid on a whole different continent. Hey, that didn't affect him, it didn't put him into any danger at all! Everything was all right here. The sun was shining, there was a nice breeze wafting by, and third platoon was about to go for a walk in the woods with a few hundred local guys. God was in his heaven, Muhammad in Paradise, and Odin was probably getting drunk again in Valhalla. No problem.

  Doyle was so euphoric at his unexpected reprieve from catastrophe that he didn't think of any of the implications of a guerrilla raid on a continent that didn't have a guerrilla problem. Nor was he at all concerned that the raid just happened to take place at the very time the FIST commander was on the scene. It didn't even register on him that Dean and Claypoole were in the fight.

  "Oh, yeah, well..." Doyle couldn't think of a thing to say.

  "The brigadier got out, all right," Hyakowa continued, looking back down the hill toward the Marines and FPs who were waiting for him to tell them to do something. "No word on Dean and Claypoole, but there were casualties."

  That got through. "Dean, Claypoole? Casualties?" he squeaked. He knew those guys. Dean and Claypoole were good Marines—no, great Marines. They were almost friends of his. He'd been to hell and back with them! And they were casualties? No! They couldn't be!

  Hyakowa almost decided this was a bad time to pass the word to the rest of his men. Then he glanced at Doyle and realized they'd find out from him anyway, and most likely get a garbled version of the story. He flicked on the all-hands channel on his radio and used Bass's message for his comm check. Everybody got the straight scoop. Except Doyle, who convinced himself that Dean and Claypoole were dead.

  Hyakowa gave the order and Company A, 257th Feldpolizei, headed into the hills for its combat/training patrol.

  "Commander," the scout, Fighter Quetlal, gasped as soon as he was admitted to the half-finished chamber that served as Commander Hing's office. Quetlal was out of breath from running the last fifteen-kilometer leg of the communications route between the 257th precinct headquarters and the headquarters of the Che Loi Brigade.

  Hing waved a hand to tell the scout to sit on one of the stools that squatted on the duckboard flooring of his office. "Relax, Fighter Quetlal, catch your breath," he said more calmly than he felt. It was frustrating to have to rely on runners for most of his information, but the Confederation's string-of-pearls surveillance satellites prevented using radios for communication with the scouts. "You have run far, refresh yourself." He gestured at his clerk to give Quetlal a bottle of beer. "When you can speak without wheezing, give me the message."

  "Yes, Commander," Quetlal gasped. Gratefully, he accepted the bottle of cold brew and gulped half of it down immediately. That was one of the benefits of delivering a message to the commander from a great distance—Hing always gave the messenger a bottle of beer. If the message was long enough, or could be made long enough, he often got a second bottle.

  Hing waited with patience he didn't feel. Quetlal brought news of what was happening with the 257th Feldpolizei, information that he badly wanted. But he knew that the 257th GSB was far enough away that the information could wait a moment or two while his messenger composed himself. Besides, the kind treatment only served to enhance his reputation among the men.

  Hing was seated at a small field desk, though the chamber was large enough for a full-size desk. He thought it was better for a guerrilla commander to present an image of austerity. A counter and shelves along one wall of the chamber contained banks of communications equipment, mostly unmanned now that the guerrillas had to restrict their radio use. A small, low bed lay on the opposite side of the chamber; Hing slept where he worked, to be available at all times. Mounting both 3-D and flatvid viewers, a low table stood out from the wall behind and to the side of Hing's desk. The largest piece of furniture in the chamber
was a conference table that took up most of its middle. Several officers were seated around it. The chamber was illuminated by rows of glowballs anchored to the unfinished rock ceiling.

  Lieutenant Sokum Pincote had sprung to her feet the instant Quetlal was admitted to the chamber, and now stood tensely, almost vibrating like a bowed violin string. Her lips were drawn sharply back, exposing her pointed teeth. Hing knew she wouldn't have given Quetlal time to catch his breath, she would already have his message and be pressing him for additional details. And, Hing knew, that was why she would never be the commander of any unit larger than a sixty-man company; she didn't know how to treat the fighters so they respected her and willingly obeyed her orders. The fighters under her command obeyed out of fear, and soldiers frightened of their own commanders weren't always the best fighters.

  Confederation Marines had arrived a week earlier at the 257th GSB to train the Feldpolizei, that much Hing already knew. That, and that the Marines had assumed command positions within the battalion. What kind of success they were having, what the Marines were training the Feldpolizei to do, and what their training schedule was, those things he did not know. He hoped that Quetlal's message would tell him some of those things.

  Quetlal took another gulp of beer, wiped a dirty arm across his mouth, and began.

  "Commander, the Marines at the 257th are teaching the Feldpolizei real tactics. I have a vid of their training." He reached into a pouch on his belt and handed over a capsule.

  Hing kept his face expressionless; the man should have given this to him to look at while he caught his breath. There would be no second bottle of beer for Quetlal, no matter how long this debriefing took. Hing tossed the capsule to his clerk, who immediately put it in the viewer. An image formed almost instantly. Despite its three dimensions, the image was fuzzy and slightly blurred; its colors were off, and there were areas of glare in which the eye could make out no detail. Obviously, the recording had been done into bright light from deep shadow, and a telescopic lens had been used because of the distance.

  The few Marines in the vid were difficult to see because of their dull-green uniforms, but the Feldpolizei stood out clearly in their orange and blue. There were two training sessions on the vid. Hing chuckled as he watched the Marines attempting to teach the lackeys of the Feldpolizei how to use aimed fire with their blasters. He laughed aloud at how confused the troopers were on the parade ground when they were being instructed on how to move without being in straight lines, and then stumbled in the forest when they tried to move through it in other than a column on a road. If this, which was nothing, was all the Marines had managed to accomplish in a week, perhaps the Liberation could be won before the Feldpolizei became a force that had to be reckoned with.

  Then he noticed the date stamped into a corner of the vid—it had been made six days earlier. He grimaced. It was almost worthless, it gave him no information on what they could do today. Well, he thought, one week isn't long enough to uproot bad habits formed over many years. And it did give him one piece of usable information—the Marines would be as hard to see in the forest as his own fighters.

  "Do you have any newer information?" Hing asked when the vid had run its course.

  "Yes, Commander. The Marines and two companies of the 257th have gone out on patrols in the vicinity of the GSB headquarters."

  "Two companies? How many Marines are with them?"

  "It looked to be two squads."

  "Two squads," Hing repeated pensively. The Marines used ten-man squads. That meant twenty Confederation Marines were in the field with the Feldpolizei. The Marines had a reputation as ferocious fighters, but could twenty of them stand up to his entire brigade? No matter. Even if they could, they would be too busy trying to lead the incompetents of the Feldpolizei to do any fighting of their own.

  Quetlal bobbed his head. "It was difficult to tell for certain how many were Marines, Commander. The Feldpolizei were wearing the same green uniforms as they. Even their own officers were dressed in green."

  Hing stared at Quetlal for a long moment. This could cause a serious problem, if his fighters couldn't distinguish between the Marines and the Feldpolizei. "How were they moving? Were they in columns like usual?"

  "No, Commander. They were in route march formation." Route march formation. Spread out and staggered, rather than in a neatly aligned, tight column. Weapons ready rather than right-shouldered. Eyes watching their surroundings rather than straight ahead. The Marines had taught the Feldpolizei a great deal in only one week.

  "How far are the patrols going?"

  "I was told they are on two-day patrols."

  Hing glanced around the room. His entire staff was present. "Fighter, you brought important information. You may rest now."

  Fighter Quetlal understood that he was being dismissed, and he scampered from the chamber.

  "Two days," Hing mused as soon as the scout had left. "We can do nothing to them this time, it would take too long for our fighters to get into position. But now that we know what the Marines are teaching the Feldpolizei, we can prepare for the next time they go out. Here is what I want you to start planning..."

  Route march, that's how the scouts told Commander Hing the Feldpolizei were moving. Well, there was route march, and then there was route march.

  As practiced by good soldiers, such as the fighters of the Che Loi Brigade, it was a spread-out formation in which one burst from a gun could not hit more than a few men, one small chemical-reaction explosive couldn't take down more than one or two. More than that, it meant to be alert and perhaps to move stealthily or silently, ready to shift at an instant's notice into a fighting formation, whether offensive or defensive.

  As done by true professionals, such as the Confederation Marines, route march was spread out, but it accomplished more. When the Marines were on route march, they were almost completely silent and nearly invisible—even when wearing garrison utilities rather than chameleons. For the Marines, route march was a fighting formation from which they could attack or defend in any direction with virtually no notice.

  When attempted by amateurs, which the 257th Battalion of the Wanderjahrian Feldpolizei certainly qualified as, well... Did "gaggle of geese" mean anything?

  * * *

  The tip of MacIlargie's tongue peeked out from between his lips. He could hardly believe what his widened eyes were showing him. Quickly, he shifted his focus from near to far and turned in a circle to see if anyone was watching—or close enough to see if he looked. The area he and his shift were moving through was barely thick enough to be called forest. It was studded with the giants the Wanderjahrians called hochbaums, bunched with the fat, skirted palms known as grospalms, and had randomly placed spikers, trees a little taller than the grospalms, which had spiky leaves that stuck straight up out of their horizontal branches. On the ground in between were scattered bushes that vaguely resembled ferns. But the forest was thick enough that MacIlargie couldn't see more than a hundred meters in any direction. Even using his infras, he couldn't spot anyone other than the men of his own shift. But there were others nearby; he could hear them. Somewhere to the north he heard Schultz bellow his displeasure at some hapless trooper who wasn't moving to his satisfaction. Nearer, but still out of sight to the south, he heard bodies crashing through underbrush, and a muffled thud and yelp as someone tripped and fell.

  MacIlargie returned his attention to his own shift. His fifteen men were slowly, inexorably, scattering. Every one of them was watching where he was stepping none kept an eye on anyone else in the formation, so they were drifting slowly apart from each other. Not a one ever seemed to spare a glance at the surrounding flora or terrain to look for any enemy who might be approaching—or lying in ambush.

  "I've seen little children move better than this on a picnic outing," he told himself.

  Silently, feeling his way with feet accustomed to seeking for trips and traps and finding their own way, he moved away from his shift. At thirty meters he turned and wa
lked parallel to them—as parallel as he could to men who were drifting away from each other in all directions. He wondered how long it would take for any of them to notice that he wasn't in the formation anymore. He wondered how long it would take before any of them could spot him once they realized he wasn't there anymore. He wondered what kind of joke he would pull on them when they couldn't find him.

  Godenov was dismayed. Not to mention scared. His shift was on one flank of the spread-out company formation, one of the positions most likely to first encounter guerrillas. Unlike MacIlargie's shift, the members of Godenov's shift were looking outward. They were also bunched up so tightly they were constantly blocking each other's view and bumping into each other. If they walked into an ambush, one burst from a gun would kill most of them. And then where would he be? Godenov wondered. Dead, that's where. He had to get them to spread out, had to get them to be aware of where they were relative to each other. And still keep close watch on their surroundings. Was that possible? Godenov shivered.

  Chan helped another trooper who had tripped over some unseen obstacle back to his feet. While Chan's expression was placid to a casual glance, worry was there to see for anyone who knew what to look for. The men of his shift were properly spaced and staggered; he'd managed to teach them that much in the few days he'd had to train them. And each divided his attention between the man he was behind, to maintain contact and distance, and the flanks—he hoped when they looked off to the sides, they were actually looking for people who shouldn't be there, and not just seeing trees and bushes. The problem they were having was, they didn't seem to be able to look around without ignoring where their feet went. So far only two had fallen, but whether he looked ahead from his position near the middle of the ragged line or to the rear, he always saw at least one trooper tripping or stumbling over some obstruction he hadn't noticed.

  He had to do something about the situation before something seriously bad happened. While he was alert for any sign of an enemy, and ready to take instant action if they came across any, he didn't expect this patrol to encounter any of the guerrillas. His main concern was that one of his men might break an arm or leg in a fall—or worse, impale himself on a branch upthrust from one of the fallen trees that lay about. He was concerned not only because he'd have trouble forgiving himself if one of his charges was injured, but also because he knew if one of them suffered a serious injury, that would make the FPs even more reluctant to learn what he was trying to teach them.