Colonel

by Rick Shelley

  Lon was the last man to board his command shuttle, the last man in 7th Regiment—of those going down in the first wave—to board a shuttle. He did not choose to ride in the cockpit this time. That was not exclusively because he didn’t want to have the most vertiginous view possible as the shuttle accelerated toward the surface of Elysium, then skimmed the ground reaching for its landing zone. When the shuttle landed, Lon and his men would need to exit the craft as quickly as possible—get out of “the box” before it came under enemy fire. And a speedy exit was far more difficult from the cockpit.

  Two shuttles were required for each full line company. That meant eight landers for a battalion, plus a command shuttle. There were seven battalions in the first wave—sixty-three shuttles—plus four shuttles from Golden Eagle and four from Peregrine. The shuttles from each ship were launched and rendezvoused several miles from the ship. The various groups moved toward their landing vectors, courses spread to make it extremely difficult for the enemy to intercept all of them, or to target them effectively at long range. Each battalion’s shuttles started their descent to time the landing so that all of the troops would hit the ground at the same time.

  The landing zones had been chosen and assigned. Each pilot knew exactly where he was supposed to touch down. Especially near the end of the flight, many of the shuttles would be in close proximity, landing only a few dozen yards apart, close enough to let the troops emerge and set up an initial defensive perimeter the way they practiced every month in training on Dirigent. Throughout the flight, each battalion’s shuttles would remain as close together as practical, allowing them to mass their firepower—rockets and multibarrel cannons—if they were attacked by aerospace fighters.

  Please don’t let me fail my men. Lon repeated his prayer as he felt the first acceleration of his command shuttle as it dove toward the atmosphere of Elysium. Shuttles had no artificial gravity, but the acceleration pushed Lon back into his seat with more than the equivalent of one g, and the push grew stronger. The shuttle appeared to be diving directly toward the center of the planet, intent on self-destruction. Monitors spaced around the passenger compartment ensured that everyone could see where they were going. Many of the men around Lon closed their eyes, or did everything they could to avoid seeing the images. This was the point where those who were subject to motion sickness were most likely to vomit.

  “We’re being tracked by hostile radar,” the shuttle pilot told Lon. “Looks as if they’re trying to target all the boats, from their transports as well as the big ships.”

  “What about their fighters?” Lon asked on the same channel.

  “They don’t seem to be moving to pursuit vectors,” Felconi reported. “Still worried about our Shrikes, I guess, defending their ships. But the roundabout way we’re going in, they’ll be able to come after us even if they don’t start for another nine minutes. It’ll be almost as long before we can be sure we’re out of reach of rockets launched from their transports.”

  “Keep your eyes open for anything, Art. I’ve got a hunch they have something extra to hit us with, and I don’t know what.”

  Most of the shuttles were still more than forty miles high when the New Spartans started to hit. A few enemy fighters had been diverted to the chase, but most of the counterstrike came from the transports—rockets and guns. Shuttle pilots maneuvered and used electronic countermeasures against the missiles. Crew chiefs rotated the high-speed cannons as a last line of defense against missiles.

  Lon had started to sweat almost as soon as he heard that the enemy had targeted the landing force. He listened to the conversations among the shuttle pilots and the Dirigenter ships, heard the first reports of hits. At times the talk was hard to follow because there were so many men talking at once, but it was clear that the Dirigenters were taking casualties … losing men by the hundreds. Each attack shuttle carried about one hundred men, soldiers and crew.

  The surviving shuttles hit atmosphere at more than three times the speed of sound, braking at the last possible minute—reversing thrust, at full throttle—as the pilots adjusted their angle of approach. By that time, Lon was certain that at least three shuttles had been lost, the chance of anyone aboard those landers surviving infinitesimal. The stress on the men aboard the shuttle was greater than it was on the craft. Lon and the rest were thrown against their safety harnesses. Lon felt blood rushing to his face, as if looking for any available exit. If there were no explosion aboard, a Dirigenter shuttle might be salvageable after plunging headfirst into ground at a thousand miles per hour … after the remains of its unlucky passengers were hosed out.

  When the shuttles leveled out, three hundred feet above ground level, they were traveling a thousand miles per hour, braking more gradually now, relying more on air brakes deployed from the fuselages than on reverse thrust from the engines, reducing the pressures on passengers and crew. Breathing became simpler. The few men who had suffered nosebleeds were able to tend to them. Up and down had a more normal feel.

  “Lock and load,” Lon ordered. He slipped a full magazine into his rifle, then ran the bolt to insert the first cartridge into the firing chamber. He took the rifle from its clips on the front of his seat and moved the safety to the “off” position, the selector switch to “automatic.”

  Art Felconi warned his passengers that thirty seconds remained until landing. They passed quickly. The shuttle’s engines reached maximum again, reverse thrust, as it braked and slid into the final glide toward the LZ.

  The shuttles of 7th Regiment had the safer landing zones, outside the ring of New Spartan mercenaries around Elysium’s capital—a change in assignment Bob Hayley had ordered, to put his full regiment between the New Spartans and the Elysian capital. Only one of 7th’s shuttles had been hit coming in. Fifteenth Regiment had lost two shuttles, and it lost three more as they crossed enemy lines to land inside the ring. The rockets the New Spartans launched were not the shoulder-fired variety, but longer and heavier, fired from at least six different locations on the ground—mobile rocket artillery.

  Lon did not have time to realize that those rocket laynchers were one item that the planning had not allowed for. By the time he heard a pilot comment on them, Lon’s shuttle was skidding to a stop in an open field, in the middle of the shuttles of his 2nd Battalion. As soon as it came to rest, Lon shouted “Up and out!” on the radio channel that connected him to all his people in the command shuttle. At the same time, he slapped the quick release on his safety harness and lurched to his feet. By that time the two exits were swinging open. It took less than thirty seconds to get everyone out of the shuttle.

  In less than another minute, all but two of the shuttles were back in the air, burning for orbit. Lon had intended to keep his command shuttle on the ground, but the crew remained aboard, ready to use its weapons or try to escape if enemy fighters targeted it. One shuttle from 1st Battalion’s Delta Company had experienced trouble landing, being flipped on its side when it skidded and hit a rock. No one aboard was seriously injured, but they were slow getting out of the box. By that time, 2nd Battalion and regimental headquarters had moved into their initial defensive posture, ready for any enemy attack on the ground or from the air. Lon was receiving reports from his three battalion commanders. All had hit their designated LZs north of University City. The lost shuttle had carried half of 3rd Battalion’s Bravo Company, including the company commander and one of its two lieutenants.

  Reports from CIC indicated that the enemy fighters that had come after the Dirigenter shuttles had broken off the pursuit. Instead of going after the empty landers heading back toward their ships, the New Spartan fighters were racing to protect their own ships. One of the New Spartan transports had been severely damaged by rockets fired from Shrike II fighters. The attacking pilots reported that one of the transport’s Nilssen generator pods had been blown off the ship, meaning that it would be unable to jump to Q-space.

  Three minutes after he had left his shuttle, Lon contacted Colonel Hayle
y. “We’re on the ground, in position exactly where we’re supposed to be, Bob. I lost one shuttle and the men it was carrying, one other shuttle damaged on the ground, no one lost from it. We’ve set up our initial perimeter and are not, repeat not, under attack. My 3rd Battalion reports that they can hear gunfire at a distance, closer to University City, but they’re not part of it.”

  “I expect they’re hearing the Elysian Defense Force. The EDF was to mount diversionary attacks to cover our landing,” Hayley replied. “You were lucky, losing only one shuttle. Five of mine didn’t make it in. That’s more than half a battalion. Between us we’ve lost three companies before the fight even started. I’ve lost two company commanders and Tony Falworth.” Falworth, the newest lieutenant colonel in 15th Regiment, had commanded its 2nd Battalion. “But we’re on the ground, also in position, and not under attack. I’m going to need fifteen or twenty minutes to get the holes in our deployment covered, then we’ll proceed as planned, start moving against them while we bring in the heavy-weapons people.” Hayley hesitated. “And your 4th Battalion to make up for some of the losses.”

  The plan was for the two regiments to move in concert, toward each other, attempting to pincer the New Spartans, fragment their line, cutting as many holes as possible through the center. Seven battalions were to move toward the line of New Spartans, meshing like the teeth of a zipper.

  “If this goes as planned,” Lon told Phip Steesen, “the New Spartans won’t have many options, and none of them good. If they try to withdraw one way or the other, we’ve still got them cut in two and can take our time rolling up their lines. If they bring men in from the sections we’re not attacking, they still don’t have the people to even the odds, and they leave themselves open to an easy flanking movement.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to fall in with our script,” Phip replied. “They’ve made it clear they’re not going to just roll over for us. That rocket artillery, they might start aiming it at us anytime if it’s dual-purpose stuff, and I’d bet a month’s pay it is.”

  “They can’t keep it hidden while it’s firing,” Lon said. CIC had located the batteries that had fired at the incoming shuttles, but those batteries had gone silent, cutting all electronic emissions, as soon as they had launched. Undoubtedly they had started moving as well. Fire and move, or fire while moving, then cut emissions to make tracking more difficult—standard maneuvers. “And once we get our heavy weapons on the ground, we’ll negate their advantage.”

  “If we get our guns and rockets in soon enough,” Phip said.

  They didn’t. Two minutes later, CIC broadcast a warning that enemy rocket launchers were active. Lon warned his people to stay down, but none of the rocket fire came toward 7th Regiment. A heavy bombardment was directed entirely at 15th, located between the New Spartans and University City.

  “At least six launchers involved,” Lon told his battalion commanders, relaying word from CIC on Peregrine. “Looks like four-rack self-propelled carriages, and they’re popping missiles out as fast as they can. So far 15th is catching all the hell, but don’t let anyone get careless. The enemy might switch targets any minute. Be ready for anything. We might have to go looking for them.”

  Heavy artillery fire, either rockets or shells, was something that Lon had never been on the wrong end of. The closest he had come was mortar fire, so long ago that he had nearly forgotten that the incident had ever happened. Was it on Calypso or Aldrin? he asked himself. It was inconsequential at the moment, but he could not avoid thinking about it. Aldrin, I think. In between two colonies fighting to dominate the world.

  Men were scraping out shallow trenches and piling the dirt around the edges. They worked quickly, knowing that every inch down they could go improved their chances of survival if their turn did come at the receiving end of enemy artillery fire.

  Lon kept glancing at the timeline on his helmet’s head-up display, waiting to hear that the order had been given to launch the shuttles carrying the HW battalions and 4th Battalion of 7th Regiment. I thought Bob was going to order them in right away, he thought, but he waited, not wanting to interrupt Hayley while his people were under bombardment. He won’t forget. But as the minutes ticked past, Lon grew more concerned. The faster we get our guns on the ground, the faster we can go after those rocket launchers.

  “Colonel Nolan?” The voice was a shout in Lon’s ears, someone almost screaming into his radio transmitter. “Colonel Nolan, are you there?”

  “I’m here. Who is this?”

  “Fal Jensen, XO of 15th. Our regimental headquarters took a direct hit from one of those rockets, maybe two. We’re still trying to get to the casualties. Colonel Hayley is down. I’m not getting any signal from his helmet, not even vital signs. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive, but it looks like you’re in command now, at least until … whenever.” Jensen’s report came out in one long burst, ending when he had to gasp for air.

  “Okay, Fal. Take it easy,” Lon said. “I’ll link to CIC and get things going again. You take care of 15th. Let your battalion commanders know what’s going on. Find out what shape Bob Hayley and his people are in and get back to me when you know something definite. I’ll keep you in the loop, fast as I get things sorted out.”

  Lon heard the sound of someone gulping air before Lieutenant Colonel Jensen replied. “Yes, sir. I’ve got my sergeant talking to the battalion commanders now. The regimental lead sergeant is down, too, with Bob Hayley. I don’t know how many others. I think two rockets must have hit pretty close together. Knocked out a lot of helmet electronics. That’s why I can’t be sure who’s dead and who’s alive. We’ve been hit hard, Colonel.”

  “Listen, Fal, I’m going to postpone the start of our offensive, give you more time to get set, but we can’t wait too long. Twenty minutes from now, we move as planned. Give the enemy something to think about besides plinking us where we sit.”

  “Yes, sir, twenty minutes,” Jensen said. Lon squeezed his eyes shut. Jensen still did not sound as if he were totally in control of himself. That could be a major problem.

  12

  A deep breath, let out slowly. Lon opened his eyes and looked around, a quick scan. I wasn’t ready for this could not be an excuse, only a confession. He had to deal with the situation he had inherited, whether he was ready or not. Lon passed along the new timetable to his battalion commanders, then linked through to CIC aboard Peregrine. Four Shrike II fighters had already been vectored in to try to knock out the enemy’s rocket artillery. Lon gave the order for the rest of the troops—and the weapons of the two heavy-weapons battalions—to be launched as quickly as escorts could be assembled. The tanks and self-propelled artillery were already loaded aboard their shuttles on Patton and Rommel. Their crews, and the men of 7th Regiment’s remaining battalion, were moving toward the shuttles. It would be fifty minutes before they were all on the ground, and the heavy-weapons people would need five minutes to get their vehicles out of the shuttles and ready for action.

  Call it an hour before everyone’s on the ground and ready, Lon thought. The heavy-weapons battalions would be landed west of University City, thirty miles from the nearest enemy units. At that distance, only the rocket batteries—ten vehicles in each battalion—would be able to take the enemy under fire immediately. The self-propelled howitzers needed to get within twenty miles, and the tanks’ 125mm cannons had a maximum range of nine miles. Each heavy-weapons battalion had six 225mm howitzers and eight tanks mounting 125mm cannons.

  Fourth Battalion of Lon’s regiment would be put on the ground to link up with the regiment’s right flank, not quite directly in front of the heavy weapons but close enough to be able to move south to keep the New Spartans from attempting to intercept the big guns on the ground.

  By the time we get the rest of our people down, the fight should be fully involved, he thought. The New Spartans should be too damned busy to be able to do anything about our heavy weapons. That was the hope, anyway. The shuttles carrying the big gun
s were slower and less maneuverable—more vulnerable than the attack shuttles that brought in the infantry.

  For ten minutes Lon was continuously on the radio, going from one channel to another, receiving reports and giving orders, occasionally involved in two conversations simultaneously. Then Lieutenant Colonel Jensen came back on line.

  “Colonel Hayley is alive,” Jensen reported, sounding only marginally more in control than he had ten minutes earlier. “But the medtechs aren’t sure he’s going to make it, even though they’re putting him in a trauma tube right now. If he does survive, he’ll be out of action for weeks, maybe months. On top of everything else, he has massive head trauma that’s going to need extensive time for regeneration of brain tissue.”

  “Get him and the rest of your most seriously wounded men ready for evacuation to Peregrine,” Lon said. “Use whatever shuttle you can get them aboard, fast. We’ve got Shrikes coming in to target the enemy rocket artillery, and our best bet is to get the shuttle off while you’ve got that cover. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Jensen said. “We’ll move the colonel as soon as he’s in the portable trauma tube. As many of the others as we can manage, too. How long do we have until the Shrikes get here?”

  “Three minutes.”

  “We can’t be ready that fast.”

  “I know, Fal, but the Shrikes will stay on station as long as they can, until they run short on munitions. Get that shuttle loaded and ready for takeoff as quickly as you can. Try to have them ready before we launch our attack.” Lon glanced at his timeline. “That leaves just over eight minutes.”