Colonel

by Rick Shelley

  “We’ll hold on,” Osterman said.

  Well, I’ve got him convinced, Lon thought. Now, if I can just convince myself. The trouble is, we can’t use our mobility yet, not without unpinning the New Spartans in the process.

  The heavy-weapons battalions would come in first. Lon’s final battalion would land a few minutes later. There would be four Shrike IIs in for those few minutes as well, to protect the shuttles and make a few passes at the New Spartan defenses. With a little luck they might knock out one or two more of the enemy’s rocket artillery launchers.

  We’ve had one break. The New Spartans haven’t been able to bring any fighters down to hassle us, Lon thought, glancing skyward. He had received several updates on the continuing struggle in orbit. Both sides were moving ships, trying to stay out of each other’s way, taking stabs at the other as best they could. The one New Spartan transport that had been damaged was moving farther from Elysium, under only partial power. Since it would be unable to jump to Q-space, it could only hope to escape further damage—or destruction—by putting as much normal space between it and danger as possible.

  Don’t let this settle into a long-term static front, Lon reminded himself. The first side to get truly mobile should have the advantage. He had already decided how he wanted to use his 4th Battalion and the heavy-weapons units. The artillery—howitzer and rocket—would take the enemy under fire as quickly as possible. Lon would aim the tanks and his 4th Battalion at the enemy line, just south of where the units already in place faced each other. Punch a hole in the line and turn up the middle, like closing a zipper. It sounded good.

  The last three Dirigenter battalions made it safely to the ground. No shuttles or men were lost. The New Spartans launched rockets toward the LZs, but by the time those rockets arrived, the men and vehicles were out and the shuttles were back in the air, burning for orbit. Separately, one shuttle was coming in with equipment to get the lander that had tipped over upright. Those shuttles could then both be used to evacuate wounded.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that the opposing fleets had moved far enough apart that the New Spartans had aerospace fighters heading in to provide close air support for their troops. And they would arrive a couple of minutes ahead of the Shrike II fighters that Agamemnon and Odysseus were dispatching to counter them. Lon’s rocket artillery and the shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles would have to hold the enemy fighters off until help arrived.

  “Well, Colonel, we’ve got holes to flop in at least,” Jeremy Howell said, lifting his helmet visor partway so he wouldn’t need to use his radio to talk with Lon. Howell and two privates from Lon’s security squad had been “fixing up” the area behind the rock outcropping for Lon’s command post—mostly digging slit trenches, piling the dirt up around them.

  “Thanks, Jerry,” Lon said, looking around and nodding. “Let’s hope we don’t need it for long.” Everyone was on the ground. The Dirigenter rocket artillery had joined the fray. In another three or four minutes the howitzers would be in range. It would take nearly an hour before the tanks could join in, and after that it would only be a few minutes before the tanks and 7th Regiment’s 4th Battalion would hit the enemy line.

  “I don’t know about you, Colonel, but I’d feel better if we could get under this rock,” Howell said. “Those rockets are more’n I bargained for. This is beginning to look like one of those old wars from Earth, whole armies on both sides.”

  “It’s not that big, Jerry, but I know what you mean. This is the biggest fracas I’ve seen.” Too big, he thought. A battle this size isn’t always decided by which side has the better leader. It’s the men up front, junior officers, noncoms, and men in the ranks who can make the difference. But it was the commander who would take the blame for any defeat, or for losing too many men in a victory. Too many ways to lose, not nearly enough ways to win, Lon thought, shaking his head.

  “We lost too many men coming in, Jerry,” Lon said. “Nothing can make up for that.” There had been years in which the entire Corps had not suffered as many contract deaths as 7th and 15th Regiments had taken during the initial landings. Even a resounding victory would not balance the books. Almost as bad—the addition of insult to injury—it would probably be impossible to return the bodies of most of those dead to Dirigent. The shuttles that were blown apart in space would leave few remains to recover.

  “This is Jensen.” Lon held a hand up to keep Howell from replying so he could concentrate on the radio call. “Go ahead, Fal,” Lon said.

  “The New Spartans are attempting to break through my lines on the left, toward University City. I guess they’ve been told about our new landings. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to hold them. If I move more men in front of this thrust, it’ll just open the way for a breakthrough somewhere else.”

  “Do what you can, Fal,” Lon said, relieved that Jensen’s voice sounded firmer now, more under control. Lon scrolled the view on his mapboard to show the center of this newest fighting. “We don’t want to let them into the city. That’ll make it a lot harder to take care of them, and we risk friendly civilian casualties. Don’t forget, they’re going to have fighter cover. Those aircraft will be on station in less than two minutes now.”

  “We’re doing what we can, Lon. Can you redirect some of our heavy-weapons fire into the van of this thrust?”

  “You’ve got it. I’ll switch over and give the order now. The self-propelled howitzers should be just coming in range. We’ll give you as much help as we can.”

  Even at a distance, the rumble of the artillery shells as they exploded was unmistakable, the sound of thunder but far too regular for nature. For a few minutes Lon kept his mapboard open, watching the pattern of explosions on a visual overlay. The targeting, using data fed from CIC and directly from 15th Regiment, was deadly accurate, hitting the point of the wedge that the New Spartans were trying to push through 15th Regiment’s line. At first the New Spartans kept pushing forward, but soon the advance stalled and, finally, they pulled back into the positions they had held before.

  “We’ll keep an eye on them, Fal,” Lon said when he called Jensen back. “For now, I’m going to redirect our fire to support our attempt to roll them up. Our heavy weapons have to do some fancy moving, staying out of the way of the enemy’s air cover.”

  The New Spartans had sent in six aerospace fighters, Javelins. One was brought down by 15th Regiment’s rocket artillery on its initial approach, before it had a chance to fire any of its own munitions. A second Javelin was blown out of the sky by a shoulder-fired rocket launched from 7th Regiment’s 4th Battalion. After that, the enemy fighters tried to stay above ten thousand feet, to give them a chance to outrun anything else fired at them from the ground, which limited their effectiveness. And then the Shrike IIs were on them, and the aerial fight moved away from the ground forces, drifting quickly to the east.

  I feel so damned useless, Lon thought as the last aircraft moved beyond University City. I’m not contributing anything. He had spent too many years fighting on the front lines, in direct contact with the enemy of the moment. This doesn’t feel as real as the arcade games Junior used to spend hours playing.

  Reports and requests kept coming in. Questions and replies went out. Lon switched among more than a dozen radio channels, talking with others and trying to plot what he learned against what his mapboard showed him. CIC tried to coordinate as much of the raw data as it could for him. His own staff put together individual pieces of it.

  He tried to monitor his 4th Battalion’s attack on the New Spartan line most closely. As soon as they managed a breakthrough, if they did, things would heat up all along the lines. Lon had everyone alerted to put as much pressure on the enemy as possible. “Don’t let them reinforce their people in front of 4th Battalion,” Lon told all of the other line battalion commanders. “As soon as the tanks and 4th turn the corner, we’re going to hit them with everything we’ve got, all along the line, try to end this quickly.”

/>   Even while planning for that, Lon kept asking himself, What will the enemy do to stop us? They must have some plan, some ace still up their sleeve. It can’t be this easy, not against pros.

  The answer came just as Lieutenant Colonel Parker Watson was reporting that 4th Battalion had cracked the enemy line and was starting to feed men to the left, while leaving one company in place to keep the New Spartans from hitting their flank from the south. Lon’s mapboard showed the sudden appearance of more enemy electronics, well to the north of 7th Regiment—behind them. Twenty seconds later, CIC reported that a considerable number of rockets had been launched from the newly revealed enemy position.

  “Everyone down!” Lon said on the channel that connected him to all his battalion and company commanders. “Incoming!” He took what cover he could himself, scanning the headquarters area on his way down to make certain that everyone else also was taking cover.

  The distance was not extreme. The first enemy rockets started to fall within seconds after the warning. The New Spartans had obviously pinpointed the location of virtually all the Dirigenter infantry units. Rockets were fired as quickly as launchers could be reloaded. The New Spartan batteries that had been identified earlier also joined in. As many as a dozen enemy rockets at a time might be in the air.

  For three minutes, the rocket fire was primarily New Spartan. The Dirigenter units had to move before they could start firing back—counterbattery fire, targeting the enemy launchers while trying to avoid being targeted themselves. As the artillery units dueled, the New Spartan infantry gained a breather, and Parker Watson’s battalion had to dig in where they were instead of starting to roll up the enemy line.

  At the same time, the New Spartans did move. Those trapped between 7th and 15th Regiments slid clockwise around the semicircle, running the gauntlet. The New Spartans in the southwestern portion of the line surrounding University City moved toward the Elysian capital, pushing aside two companies of the local defense force that were rushing to block them.

  As soon as Lon received those reports, he called Watson. “Parker, you’re going to have to turn your battalion the other way. I want you to overtake the New Spartans before they get into the city, if you can; at least don’t give them a chance to set up solid defensive positions. Forget about trying to close the zipper. The New Spartans there are moving away from you. As soon as I can get a few Shrikes in, I’ll set them against the enemy van in front of you, to slow them down. Keep 7th Regiment’s tanks with you. I’m going to direct 15th Regiment’s tanks across the arc to try to hit the New Spartans’ main force.”

  Watson’s acknowledgment was lost in the blast of an enemy rocket that impacted eighty yards from Lon. Lon felt the ground shake violently. Rock, dirt, and other debris rained down on him for nearly a minute following the blast. The ringing in his ears was even slower to fade. When he was able to lift his head past the ridge of dirt surrounding his trench, he saw that many of the trees that had sheltered regimental headquarters had been broken or knocked over.

  It looks like a war zone at last, seemed to echo through Lon’s head. Then casualty reports started to come in.

  From both ends of the semicircle the New Spartans moved toward University City. Parker Watson’s men weren’t able to stop the units moving from the western flank of their initial line, and those on the eastern flank had no opposition at all. But the New Spartans who had been on the northern arc of the perimeter had to move east, away from the city; that meant about 60 percent of their strength …their known strength, Lon reminded himself—known strength north of the River Styx. CIC was no longer certain how many men the New Spartans might have south of the river. The bridges across it had been blown, cutting them off from the main fight. CIC was also no longer certain what the total number of New Spartans on the world might be. The exposure of more rocket artillery units had been a complete surprise. There might be significantly more infantrymen as well.

  “There’s a good chance they’re going to be short on rockets,” Lon said on a conference call that included Colonel Jensen and battalion commanders from both regiments. “They’ve used one hell of a lot, and their supplies can’t be infinite. If we can keep them from resupplying the rocket batteries, we’ll save ourselves a lot of grief later on. Agamemnon and Odysseus are on alert for that, to intercept any enemy shuttles. I don’t know if the New Spartans have any resupply setup like ours, but even if they do, I doubt that it’s set up to handle anything as large as rockets for those launchers.” The resupply rockets the Dirigenters used were not identical to those Lon’s company had tested more than twenty years before, but they were direct descendants. These rockets could be launched by shuttle, Shrike, or directly from a ship in orbit, with the final stage of their descent guided by a man on the ground. A trained operator could soft-land a rocket within ten feet of a mark, close enough to retrieve its cargo—up to five thousand rounds of rifle ammunition or two cases of rocket-propelled grenades—controlling the landing through his helmet radio. Everyone received some training in the operation, and at least two men in every line squad drilled enough to be considered experts.

  “We don’t know how many they stockpiled before we got here,” Tefford Ives pointed out. “They might have more rockets for their artillery than we do, on the ground.”

  “Possible, but unless they knew we were coming it wouldn’t have made much sense, and they didn’t put a lot of shuttles on the ground after we appeared in-system,” Vel Osterman said.

  “We can’t underestimate the possibility,” Fal Jensen said. “They had the launchers on the ground. They had to plan for enough firepower to handle the armor and artillery the Elysians have. If the New Spartans are anywhere near as thorough as we are, they would have included enough and to spare for that.”

  “Whatever,” Lon said. “CIC says they’ve used a hundred rockets this morning, and the two launchers we’re sure we’ve destroyed might each have had eight to ten left onboard. The estimate is that each of their launchers can carry two dozen, plus whatever their attendant supply trucks carry.”

  “Either way, it could be difficult for either of us to resupply our heavy weapons,” Ives said. “They’re sure to go after our shuttles, and I assume we’ll go after any they launch.”

  “Both of us have to use our fighters to defend our ships, ahead of anything else,” Lon said. “That gives both sides room to maneuver, to get things in and out. Maybe we have a slight advantage, since our shuttles are armed and theirs aren’t. Whatever the situation, we’ll deal with it.

  “Right now, there’s one other thing. I’m going to send an MR to Dirigent within the next hour or so. Link your reports through to CIC on Peregrine, anything that needs to go out, casualties and operational status, and any personal mail that might have collected.” Lon shrugged. “There shouldn’t be much of that, since we sent mail back just ahead of the landing.

  “Fal, I’ll give them the news on Colonel Hayley, that he’s going to need extensive time for regeneration and rehabilitation, that I’ve taken over command of the contract, and that you have assumed command of 15th Regiment. As soon as I finish my report, the MR will be launched, so don’t dally. Get your men reorganized—fed if there’s time. Figure we’ll be moving in an hour or so. I’ll give you detailed deployments shortly, but we’re going to have to operate in two main sections again now that the New Spartans have split up. We have to deal with the units moving into University City and those we forced out into the wild.”

  An hour, Lon thought after he had acknowledgments from all the others. I have to finish my report on what’s happened so far. And I have to decide whether or not to ask for another regiment. The easy decision would be to opt for requesting help. But reinforcement will require a month. We’d still have to hold out that long. Lon shook his head. He worried over the question until that was the only item left to add to his report, taking every minute he could before he dictated the last sentences. Asking for reinforcement if it wasn’t absolutely necessary would be a
lmost as bad as not asking for it if it was. Almost.

  “It is a close call. We have really not been able to fully assess the situation yet, or to determine exactly how many men the New Spartans have deployed on Elysium. Reinforcement might be necessary, it is perhaps even extremely likely, but I think I should take more time before making that decision. I would suggest alerting the troops for possible deployment, subject to my next report. I will try to get that out within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”

  Not very satisfactory, Lon thought, putting off the decision that way. Wishy-washy. But he didn’t change it. Peregrine launched the message rocket two minutes later.

  14

  The senior medical officer of 15th Regiment had been killed by the rocket that had wounded Colonel Hayley. Six other men had been killed by the same explosion. The only thing that had saved Hayley was that a portable trauma tube had been close and had—somehow—avoided serious damage. The medtech who had treated the colonel told Lon that it had been a miracle that Hayley had survived. “I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that if we’d been five seconds slower getting him into the tube he wouldn’t have made it. I didn’t think he was going to make it as it was.” Listening to the detailed listing of Hayley’s injuries had been almost enough to make Lon physically ill.

  The back of Bob Hayley’s head had been literally blown off, along with a significant percentage of his brain. That was the injury that mattered. The fractures and shrapnel penetrations were minor by comparison. Hayley would require three weeks for the physical regeneration of lost brain tissue and the missing section of his skull, most of that time sealed in a trauma tube. After that there would be months of rehabilitation. The SMO on the flagship said that Hayley would have to learn how to walk and talk again, and the odds were strong that he would never regain much memory of his life before the injury. “I don’t think there’s one chance in a million he’ll be able to continue in the Corps,” the ship’s SMO said. “But he will survive.”