Colonel

by Rick Shelley

  The terrain the Dirigenters were crossing was tame, farm fields and orchards, country lanes, with occasional stands of “wild” trees. What fencing there had been had all been knocked down by the New Spartans during the weeks in which they had surrounded University City and raised havoc in the farming districts. There were no civilians around, and no intact houses or barns. No livestock, and not even much wildlife, Lon thought as his headquarters group crossed what had been a farmyard. The ruins of house and barn had already been checked to make certain they harbored neither enemy nor booby traps.

  The last of the night’s stars had been occulted by the encroaching clouds. Lon heard talk over the radio that the men in the rear guard had already started to see rain, moving faster than the column, so he was not surprised when the first drops spattered against his faceplate. At first the drops were large but few. It was another ten minutes before the tempo increased significantly. Lon tightened the collar of his battledress blouse to ensure that no water would run off his helmet and down his back. The camouflage battledress was water-resistant. It would take a lot of heavy rain to soak through the fabric. Helmet and faceplate shed water so efficiently that there was scarcely any beading to obscure vision, rarely a need to wipe water away. And Corps boots were almost totally waterproof, so the rain should not prove too much of an inconvenience.

  Another distraction, Lon thought, but at the moment minor distractions were welcome. Lon stopped, stepping out of the line of march to watch men move past. Each glanced his way in passing, but no one said anything. Jeremy Howell dropped out of line as well, to stay near his boss. There was nothing unusual about that. Lon sometimes thought of Howell as “my shadow.” Nothing was said just then, and after a few minutes Lon moved back into the line of march and Jeremy followed him.

  “Almost wouldn’t know we were on contract if it didn’t rain,” Howell said once they were walking again. He had a private channel connecting him with Lon, one that was shared only by members of the headquarters staff. “The eternal foot soldier, rain above and mud below. I think there’s something in the manual says that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Lon smiled. “Don’t give up your day job just yet, Jerry. You’re not ready to take the stage as a comic. But get used to the rain. The forecast says it will probably continue through most of the morning. When we stop for a long break, we’ll be sleeping under the faucet.”

  “That won’t bother me, Colonel,” Howell replied, “but one of these times Frank Dorcetti is liable to drown in his sleep. He sleeps with his mouth open, and his snoring through a mouthful of water is purely god-awful, if you know what I mean.”

  This time Lon did chuckle. “I know what you mean. Lead Sergeant Steesen used to be the same way.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He did feel better. It would be easier now to resist the urge to call the medtechs to ask about Junior. They’ll let me know when there’s something to say.

  It was just past 0430 hours when both Jaz Taiters and Parker Watson called to report hearing a series of explosions. In each case the blasts were some distance away and not directed at their men. By comparing the direction given by the two men, Lon was able to pinpoint an area on his mapboard. A minute later, CIC confirmed the location of the explosions.

  “They’re using surface-to-air missiles against civilian targets,” Lon reported to his battalion commanders and Fal Jensen. “Buildings not being used by the Elysian Defense Force. I don’t know if it’s random or not. Yet. I don’t even know if there were any civilians in any of those buildings.”

  “You think they’re trying to divert our attention?” Jensen asked. “Make us siphon off resources to firefighting and rescue work?”

  “If that’s their intent, it won’t work,” Lon said. “The Elysians will have to attend to that. We’ll have a better idea what the New Spartans are up to once we find out if they’re hitting random targets to cover their withdrawal or specific factories, maybe munitions facilities or something similar.” He scarcely hesitated before he said, “I know we all need a chance to get a few hours’ sleep, but that has to wait. We have to keep pushing to get that one detachment of enemy soldiers away from other civilian targets first. That doesn’t apply to the men you’ve got near the enemy main force, Fal. Let your men get what rest they can. You’re going to have to be ready if those New Spartans try something.”

  “I’ve already got those men on half-and-half watches,” Jensen said. “When the main force settled in, I figured we’d have to be able to match them in the morning, whatever they decide to do next. Any good estimates on what that might be?”

  “I’m beginning to think they must expect massive reinforcement from New Sparta,” Lon said. “How soon that might be, I can’t even guess, but the longer they go without trying to go on the offensive, the more likely it is. What I’m looking for now is, mainly, what the enemy main force does this morning. If they start moving farther away from University City and not directly toward one of the other urban centers, we should have a pretty good indication.”

  “If that’s what they do, will you advise Dirigent to send out our reinforcements?” Jensen asked, almost hesitantly.

  “I’m not going to make a decision on that yet, Fal,” Lon said. “I’m leaning that way, but I want more information before I blow the panic horn. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the New Spartans do have reinforcements on the way, we’ll be a lot better off if we can force the issue on the ground before more players join the cast. By the way, Peregrine says Colonel Hayley is definitely out of danger now. He will recover.”

  “That’s good to know,” Jensen said. “He’s a good man.”

  A good man who’ll never be the same, Lon thought. A man who’ll never be able to remember just how good he was. There are still some things a trauma tube can’t fix.

  “We’ll talk again later, Fal. You’d better try to get some sleep. I’ll let you know if anything comes up, and we’ll talk before I decide whether to ask for another regiment.”

  Elements of 1st Battalion managed to close with the New Spartans moving east across the northern edge of University City just before sunrise. The firefight lasted twenty minutes before the New Spartans were able to disengage, still moving east. This time they had no assistance from their rocket artillery. Either we got all of them, or they just don’t have the missiles to spare, Lon thought. He would gladly accept either option.

  Second Battalion had settled in for a few hours’ sleep earlier. Lon had decided to stop the pursuit of the small New Spartan force to the north, leaving just a few patrols to make certain he would not lose contact with them. Ten minutes after the end of the latest clash on the outskirts of the Elysian capital, Lon gave the order for the rest of 7th Regiment to find good defensive positions and settle in. “I hope to make it for at least four hours,” he told the battalion commanders, “but no guarantees.”

  Set up a perimeter. Dig minimal slit trenches. Put out patrols, electronic snoops, and a few land mines—just to keep the enemy on his toes. In each squad, one fire team would try to sleep while the other remained on watch against possible enemy activity. Make routine communications checks. Lon spoke with each battalion commander and with CIC. There was nothing urgent. Finally Lon yawned and lay back in the slit trench Howell and Dorcetti had fixed for him, with the camouflage tarp propped over it, arranged to catch the slight breeze from the northwest while keeping most of the continuing rain off.

  The rain had been almost constant since it had started, never heavy, sometimes little more than a mist. For the most part, Lon had been able to ignore it. The ground he had been walking over drained well. There had been few patches of mud, even after several hundred men had crossed. It was only when he lay down that Lon really thought about the rain, watching it. He was careful where he lay his rifle, keeping it close to his body, the muzzle propped up close to the tarp.

  Sleep, Lon told himself. He was exhausted enough that sleep would come without a patch. He had allowed himse
lf thirty seconds to call the medtechs to check on his son. Junior was out of the trauma tube and back with his unit, so Lon had given himself another thirty seconds to talk directly to him. He sounded a little unsteady, Lon thought, but that’s to be expected. It was his first time hurt. “Don’t dwell on it,” Lon had advised. “I know that’s not easy, but it’s the best way.”

  Sleep came, the deep void that permitted no dreams, no nightmares. Sleep that consuming was rare on a combat contract, almost unprecedented, a dangerous luxury. The only problem was that it did not—could not—last long enough. Lon had left instructions. After three hours, Jeremy Howell woke him.

  “I really hated to do it, Colonel,” Howell said. “Seems like nothing’s happening. Another couple of hours would do you a world of good, sir. Lead Sergeant Steesen has reports from every battalion and company in the regiment, and he talked with 15th’s lead sergeant, too. Things are quiet everywhere.”

  “Another couple of hours would be nice,” Lon agreed after a long and satisfying yawn, “but it will have to wait.” He tilted his faceplate up and rubbed at his face and eyes with both hands for a moment. “I need to talk to CIC, Colonel Jensen, and our battalion commanders first. We have any coffee packs handy by any chance? I could use a good caffeine jolt.”

  “Ten seconds, Colonel,” Howell said. “I got the water poured. Just need to put the coffee crystals in.” He started doing that while he talked. He ripped open the plastic packet and dumped the coffee in, then shook the field cup gently to help mix it up. The ten seconds were what the heating catalyst in the pack would need to bring the water up to drinking temperature.

  As soon as the coffee was hot, Lon started to drink, taking down half the beverage before he took the cup away from his lips the first time. He watched Howell pull the heating strip on a meal pack—which also opened the container. Lon took one more sip of coffee, then set the cup down carefully and took the meal that his aide offered him. “You eaten yet, Jerry?” Lon asked before he took his first bite of the ham, eggs, and hard biscuit.

  Howell nodded. “Two packs. I was hungry. You gonna want a second pack, sir?”

  Lon smiled. “Probably, but not right away. I’ll get this down, then make the calls I need to make.” He concentrated on his eating, taking no more than three minutes to finish the battle rations—two thousand calories enriched with vitamins, minerals, high in protein and carbohydrates. One meal pack—breakfast or lunch/supper—was supposed to include all the necessary nutrition to get a man through twenty-four hours. “They put in everything but good taste,” was the usual reaction of men forced to live on them for any length of time.

  As soon as he finished his breakfast and coffee, Lon started making his calls. CIC informed him that the remaining New Spartan transports had continued to withdraw. They were now eight hours out from Elysium, moving in an elliptical orbit with a period of slightly more than three days. The capital ships were much closer, staying near enough to use their fighters to support their troops on the ground in a crisis.

  On the ground, the New Spartans were continuing a general move toward the east-northeast, away from University City, and apparently not toward any of the other major concentrations of inhabitants. “It looks as if you were right,” Fal Jensen said when Lon talked with him. “They’re going to stooge around in the wild so they must expect help, but probably not too soon or they wouldn’t go far.”

  “Unless we’re overlooking something we shouldn’t,” Lon said. “I need your honest opinion on something, Fal. Do you think I should ask for another regiment now or hold off until we know something more definite?”

  Jensen did not hesitate. “I think we should ask for it while we can. We don’t know if we’ll be able to finish operations against the enemy we have on the ground now, how long we’ll have before the New Spartans bring in more people, how long we might have to hold out against their reinforcements before ours can arrive. The time lag could be a killer, since we have to figure thirty days before our people can get here.”

  “I agree,” Lon said. “If it comes down to a chance of us looking foolishly overcautious or unnecessarily risking our men, we have to opt for the former. In our first MR I said that I’d try to get my recommendations off within forty-eight hours, but I don’t see any point in waiting that long. Get your reports ready for transmission as quickly as you can and we’ll get the MR off within the hour. Will that give you enough time?”

  “I’ll get everything transmitted to CIC in thirty minutes,” Jensen promised. “The sooner we get that MR off, the better I’m going to feel. This thing is giving me an itch I can’t scratch.”

  Lon decided to move his 1st and 3rd Battalions another mile and a half east, to cut down on the distance to the main New Spartan force and to have better defensive positions in case the enemy doubled back to attack. The move and getting settled into the new perimeter took nearly two hours, and Lon told his commanders that—if possible—they would stay put at least until nightfall, perhaps longer. The last New Spartans were away from University City by then, with all of them moving east and northeast, apparently intent on a rendezvous. Lon held back the units chasing the enemy. “Let them rendezvous,” he told the concerned battalion commanders. “If they’re all in one place it’ll be easier for us to keep track of them.”

  Lon took forty minutes to tour the new perimeter himself, at least the eastern half of it, where trouble was most likely to come. The line on that side was established at the top of the slope leading down to a creek and its now-dry floodplain. The creek was no more than four feet deep now, in midsummer, but from the extent of the floodplain on the eastern side, in the spring it might be extensive. There was another creek near the far side of the plain—a mile away—but it hadn’t slowed the New Spartans at all, so it couldn’t be very deep either.

  Before noon, Peregrine reported that the MR was far enough out that the New Spartans could not intercept it. A New Spartan MR had been launched by one of their transports forty minutes before Peregrine launched its message rocket. Because of the position of the transport, there had been no chance for the Dirigenter ships to intercept or destroy that courier packet.

  At least we know we’re going to have help coming, Lon thought. Or someone to pick up the pieces if we’ve got the short end of the stick.

  18

  Melvin Rogers had been president of Elysium for six years. Throughout his term of office, he had continued to teach at the university, primarily graduate physics courses in Quantum-Space Dynamics. Nearly eighty years of age, he wore his curly strawberry blond hair shoulder-length, and tended to wear simple jumpsuits in primary colors. He came to Lon’s headquarters by floater just before sunset, accompanied by Chancellor Berlino and four bodyguards from the Elysian Defense Force.

  “Sorry I can’t offer anything appropriate in the way of amenities, Mr. President,” Lon said after the introductions were completed, “but, as you can see, our resources are rather meager at present.” Lon’s command post was in a grove of pear trees. The little fruit that had been left by the New Spartans was on the ground, rotting. Several of the trees had been banded, the bark cut completely around the trunk to kill them.

  “That’s of no concern, I assure you, Colonel,” President Rogers said. “I tend to teach my seminar course out on the lawn when the weather is amenable. I wanted to speak with you, face-to-face, at the earliest possible moment, and this seemed appropriate.” He sat on a tarp that several of Lon’s men had spread after kicking away a few of the rotten pears. Rogers gestured, and Lon sat across from him, not too far away. Berlino also sat, forming the third point of an equilateral triangle with the other two men.

  “It is a tremendous relief to have you and your men here, Colonel,” Rogers said. “I understand that you lost quite a few men making your landings. I give you my personal regrets and condolences, as well as those of the government and people of Elysium. I wish there had been some way that we could have made your arrival less painful, less costly in human term
s, but, unfortunately, that was beyond our power.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President,” Lon said, nodding.

  “Thankfully, your arrival has already had some salutary effect on the situation. The siege of University City has ended. The New Spartans have suffered heavy losses as well and have withdrawn most of their forces into the hinterland.”

  “I doubt that your troubles with them are over, Mr. President,” Lon said. “I don’t know what your analysts have forecast, but my senior advisers and I are convinced that the New Spartans expect significant reinforcements, that they have withdrawn to preserve their current forces on-planet until those reinforcements arrive. Although that might happen at any time, we suspect that we have at least several days, perhaps a week or even two, before they are likely to arrive in-system. But we have no hard intelligence, so all we can say for certain is that those reinforcements have not arrived in-system yet, so we know we’ll have at least three days to try to degrade the New Spartan assets already here before help arrives for them.”

  “My military advisers have suggested that we have to prepare for possible New Spartan reinforcements,” Rogers said. “They have given it a seventy percent probability rating. The invaders did not fully exercise their potential in the weeks they had on Elysium before you and your men arrived. They could have overrun our defense forces with little difficulty, though it pains me to say that. Instead, they toyed with us, put their siege around our capital, destroyed homes and crops, and the rest. In some ways that was more … humiliating than had they defeated our full army in battle. But they never gave us the opportunity for that, and merely flicked off such raids as we were able to mount the way a man might wave at a fly buzzing his head.” Rogers’ face clearly showed the humiliation he felt. “They toyed with us, Colonel Nolan, as if we were of no account at all.”