Lieutenant Colonel

by Rick Shelley

  “We will respond to any alert, and keep our sentries and patrols working around this base. Apart from those duties, we keep the men eating and resting as much as possible, maintain the highest level of readiness. If the need arises, I want to be able to put the entire battalion in the field, anywhere on Bancroft, as quickly as transportation gets down here from Long Snake. Questions?”

  “I’ve got one,” Tebba Girana said. “We know the raiders are using active electronics this time out, helmets as sophisticated as ours. Did any of our ships or aerial patrols pick up anything last night, during the time when the attack on Three Peaks must have happened?”

  “Almost,” Lon said, and he paused for a beat before he explained. “Nothing identifiable was noticed at the time. Neither the computers nor the men monitoring the feed picked up anything more than a little static, not localized enough to be a helmet or portable complink, not strong enough to be a combination of emissions from a shuttle. After the fact, CIC put men going back over the recordings. The last word I had was that they’re ‘ninety percent certain’ that there were signals, just too well protected for us to intercept. Their ability to mask emissions is better than our ability to detect.”

  “Ouch,” Tebba whispered.

  “CIC is trying to fine-tune our gear. We might be able to do a little better now that we know the problem, or at least once they figure out just what adjustments to make. That might take time…like everything else on this contract.”

  It had been a long day. Lon was exhausted by the end of the meeting. He went to his quarters and sat on the bed, his mind caught between the need for sleep and a sense of urgency—the need to find a key to allow him to move his men against the raiders as soon as possible. He had seen some of the newsnet coverage of the massacre at Three Peaks, sampled some of the responses posted on Bancroft’s public nets. There was anger, and not all of it was directed at the raiders. Some was being vented against the government and the mercenaries brought in—”at tremendous cost,” one respondent noted—to prevent such disasters from happening.

  I can’t do anything useful now, Lon thought, suppressing a yawn. My mind has turned to mush. I need sleep. Hopefully, a full night’s sleep. Maybe the answer will come to me in a dream. I’ll wake up in the morning and know what we have to do. He shook his head and nearly laughed at the absurdity of those thoughts—dream up an answer when his conscious mind could not provide one.

  He glanced at the timeline across the top of his complink screen. It wasn’t eight-thirty—2030 hours—yet. He shook his head slowly, then leaned over to open his boots and take them off. That was as far as he bothered to go with undressing. He turned off the room lights and flopped over on the bed, asleep almost before the bed’s springs stopped vibrating. Deep sleep, void of troubling dreams—the sort of sleep only monumental exhaustion can bring.

  It lasted less than four hours. His complink buzzed loudly, the volume increasing until he woke and hit the accept key.

  Colonel Crampton was on the line. “More trouble, Colonel.”

  Lon came completely awake.

  15

  “A mining camp called Erskeine, almost three hundred miles due north,” Crampton said. “One of our newer work sites. It’s scheduled to be evacuated in the morning. Twenty minutes ago, the lieutenant commanding the militia detachment shot one of his own men who was attempting to deactivate the snoops. With the changed codes, he didn’t have any luck. I notified your duty officer and alerted my own people. My aide has a line open to the commander in Erskeine. There’s been no attack yet, but we expect it…soon. The men on the scene are as ready as they can be, militia and miners.”

  “My alert company will be in the air in ten minutes,” Lon said. “I’ll have a second company ready to go fifteen minutes after that. Maybe we can turn the tables tonight.”

  “I hope so,” Crampton said, then cut the link.

  Lon rang the officer of the day. “Who’s alert company?”

  “Charlie, Colonel. They’re heading for the shuttles now.” Harley Stossberg from Alpha had the duty.

  “Turn them around quick. I want them carrying their rocket packs. We’ll put them on the ground behind the raiders, have the shuttles circle overhead if they arrive before the enemy does.” Rocket packs let soldiers jump in wherever they might be needed. If the shuttle didn’t land, the troops weren’t limited to setting down in the nearest clearing, which might be miles from where the men were needed. It was a tactic used sparingly in the DMC. Only one company in each battalion trained routinely in the equipment and tactics. “Get the next company on the list moving. I want them out as fast as possible. They’ll go in at the landing strip at this place—Erskeine. You have that located on your map?”

  “On the complink and on my mapboard, Colonel. I phoned it in while Colonel Crampton was still telling me about it.”

  “Right. Wake Major Osterman and Captain Berger. Have them meet me in my office in ten minutes. Then get on to Long Snake and tell Captain Roim that I want the rest of our shuttles ready to head in on five minutes’ notice. I’ll contact Taranto myself to have them get Shrikes in for the attack.”

  “Yes, sir.” Harley quickly repeated his instructions. “Anything else?”

  “Not yet, Harley. I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  Lon made the call to Taranto, held that to thirty seconds, then pulled his boots on—grateful that he hadn’t bothered to get completely undressed before going to bed. The uniform was battledress, so the lack of sharp creases was unimportant. He got up—hearing the roar of shuttle engines powering up for takeoff—and hurried down to his office. Lieutenant Stossberg was sitting at Lon’s desk, but got up as soon as the door opened.

  “What’s the weather like at Erskeine?” Lon demanded as soon as he came through the doorway.

  “Heavy cloud cover, snow flurries. Ceiling sixteen hundred feet, just above the hilltops. Temperature hovering right around freezing as of ten minutes ago,” Harley said quickly. “The snow flurries should end within the next hour. No accumulation. Erskeine had less rain than Three Peaks. Ought to be ground soft but firm enough to hold prints if there’s any dirt between the rocks. Of course, a couple of inches of snow would be better. We could damn sure track the raiders then.”

  Vel Osterman entered the office then, without knocking, and Torry Berger, the battalion’s adjutant and third-in-command, was right behind him, with Phip Steesen right on his heels.

  “You heard?” Lon asked, turning to face the new arrivals. All three men nodded.

  “We put maximum effort into this. Charlie on the rocket packs. Delta going in at the camp’s landing strip. I’ve got Long Snake on alert to send the rest of the shuttles down on short notice to move Alpha and Bravo if there’s any need, but I hope we’ll be able to hold at least one of them as a reserve—and a hedge in case the raiders stage a second strike while we’re handling Erskeine. Maybe we caught the break we need. With a little luck we might nab a few prisoners who haven’t been wounded. Maybe we can’t use drugs on them, but there are other ways. Old ways.”

  “You going in right away?” Osterman asked.

  Lon shook his head. “Not this time. I want to be here to coordinate everything. Once we get the first response out and know that the raiders actually are hitting the camp, you take off in the command shuttle. Take Phip with you. I’ll keep Torrey here. I’ll use you to handle things on the scene, our people and the Bancrofters. Crampton has two companies on the way, and I’ll have him ready to reinforce them if necessary.”

  Only then did Lon bother to go around to sit behind his desk. He felt better than he had since hearing about Three Peaks. Maybe this is the break we need, he thought, leaning back in his chair. I’ve got a feeling.

  Lon’s anticipation grew quickly in the next few minutes. He had his mapboard open on the desk, the zone of coverage narrowed to an area with a two-mile radius around the mining camp at Erskeine. On the desk complink he had several communications channels open, to allow him t
o monitor anything that might be relevant…and to give commands when—if—necessary.

  The first important message came from CIC aboard Long Snake. “Colonel Nolan, we’re picking up the same kind of static we did during the attack on Three Peaks, about three thousand yards from Erskeine, northwest.”

  “How narrow can you focus on that static?” Lon asked.

  “We’re working on that now, Colonel. So far, we show static over an elliptical area a hundred yards long and sixty wide.”

  “Moving?”

  “I’ll be able to give you a better read on that in a few minutes, Colonel. We’ve just picked this up. If there is movement, it’s slow.”

  “Can you highlight the area on the mapboard circuit for me?” Lon asked, pulling his mapboard closer.

  A yellow oval appeared on the screen, drawn in roughly. “Right at the edge of a fairly large clearing, Colonel,” the duty officer in CIC reported. “Easily large enough for a shuttle to land and take off from. It doesn’t seem to be moving. Stationary. Hold on, Colonel, Captain Roim is here.”

  “Colonel Nolan, we’ve got as good a fix on this static as we’re likely to get tonight. This is all on the edge of what we can get out of our instruments right now. We can’t tell if this is men or maybe a shuttle. Should I vector Shrikes in to saturate the contact before they can get to the miners?”

  Lon hesitated for nearly half a minute before he said, “Not yet, Captain, not without knowing what the target is. Have the Shrikes within range, high enough that they won’t be heard, but hold off on any attack. I’ve got a company moving in with rocket packs. We’ll jump them in behind the raiders. Have the Shrikes hit that clearing just before my boys jump. I’ll have Captain Kai link directly to you to coordinate the strike. Okay?”

  “We’ll butter the bread, Colonel.”

  “We’ll use the noise of your attack to put shuttles in at the landing strip in Erskeine as well,” Lon said. “That’ll give us a full company on either side of the raiders—whatever your Shrikes leave for us. Give me a minute, Captain, while I pass the orders on to my company commanders.”

  Lon linked through to Sefer Kai and Ron Magnusson together and gave them the orders for Charlie and Delta companies, and put them on an open link to CIC in Long Snake. After he switched back to Captain Roim and confirmed orders, it was time to sit back and wait. Again.

  “I wouldn’t count too much on getting prisoners out of this,” Captain Berger said. He had remained with Lon after Vel Osterman left to get ready to take the command shuttle into the area. “Those Shrikes might not leave a hell of a lot.”

  “They’ll leave enough, I think—if it’s men on the ground Long Snake is picking up, and not a shuttle. No matter how heavy the attack, some men will survive. Big trees and rocks. We’re not going to fry that entire valley. Remember, Torry, we don’t even know how many raiders we’re talking about.”

  “What if it is a shuttle?”

  “The Shrike pilots know what to look for…and what to look out for. In a fight, our Shrikes have it all over the shuttles the raiders use.”

  “Those they used nine years ago,” Berger said. “We haven’t actually seen what they have this time, now have we?”

  “Nope,” Lon agreed.

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “As close a search as possible in the area behind the presumed raider party. If the contact Long Snake has isn’t a shuttle, the raiders might still have one sitting on the ground somewhere in the vicinity, unless the men on the ground have been walking forever. Or a shuttle might be in the air, somewhere in or under the cloud cover, waiting for them to do the job so they can drop in and pick up the raiders and their loot.”

  Lon nodded. “Good point.” He called Long Snake again and passed the suggestion on. Captain Roim was still in CIC.

  “We’re already working on that, Colonel,” Roim said. “All three ships as well as the Shrikes and shuttles in the air. That offers the hope of triangulation and gives us the chance of putting together a full-dimensional picture of whatever is down there, if anything. We haven’t turned up anything yet, but I’ll keep you posted.”

  “I almost wish I’d kept Vel here and gone myself,” Lon said after ending that conversation. “This all comes off smooth, it could be quite a show.”

  “Ought to ease the pressure the government is under,” Berger said. “If we hit the raiders as hard as they hit Three Peaks.”

  “Better if we can pull a prisoner in one piece, but, yes, it will help,” Lon said.

  “If we hit the raiders before they reach the snoops—and learn they haven’t been shut down—it should confuse the raiders. If nothing else.” Berger shrugged. “Give them something to think about. If they get the word back to their headquarters on planet. Even more if these raiders simply disappear and they don’t know what the hell happened to them.”

  “They’ll find out something, eventually,” Lon said. “We have to assume they have contacts among the immigrant population here, and almost certainly some way to get information quickly.”

  “And we can’t keep it a secret that we hit them,” Berger said.

  “I don’t think so,” Lon confirmed. “The governor is going to want to show his people we’re earning our pay.”

  Charlie and Delta Companies were in position. The area of static had faded so much that none of the Dirigenter gear could detect it. Four Shrikes were ready to swoop in to saturate the area between the clearing and the mining camp with rockets and cannon fire.

  Lon remained a spectator. He had given the orders. Now he could only wait to see how the fight progressed. If there was a fight. “I’ve never been fond of waiting, Torry,” he said softly, his attention on the complink and mapboard.

  Torry Berger did not respond.

  Four Shrikes began their attacks, going in one at a time, launching rockets first, then braking to give them more than a fraction of a second to use their rapid-fire cannons. Charlie Company started to jump, the men trusting their lives to metal and composite packs strapped to their backs, sixty-four seconds of rocket propulsion to get them safely to the ground. Delta Company’s two shuttles started to make their hot landings seconds apart, leaving no room for error for either pilot. Get down, get the men out of the boxes, get back off, out of the way as quickly as possible.

  “You ever jump in on fire cans?” Berger asked.

  Lon shook his head. “Not on contract. Made the necessary practice jumps back home.” He hesitated, then added, “And hated every single one. Worse than parachutes.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone who likes the cans,” Berger said. “It’s a miracle we’ve still got them in inventory.”

  Video of the Shrike attacks started to come in over Lon’s complink—infrared-enhanced to show as much detail as possible in the dark.

  “There!” Lon jabbed a finger toward the complink screen. “Men moving. They’re in there, Torry. They’re in there.”

  The scene on the screen changed abruptly. Lon saw a tail of fire coming up from the ground, and the Shrike’s pilot started maneuvering violently to come out of his dive and climb away from the surface-to-air missile. The feed to Lon’s screen changed, coming from one of the other Shrikes. The fighters were shooting at the SAM, then at three missiles as more were launched by the raiders on the ground.

  One SAM exploded, low, before it came near any of the Shrikes. One missile suddenly veered sideways and ran into the hillside, destroying nothing but trees…and any wildlife unlucky enough to be in the kill zone. The third small missile kept coming. The pilot of the Shrike whose video Lon was watching pulled out of his dive and accelerated, at such speed that Lon suspected the pilot might have blacked out, at least momentarily. Lon was slightly dizzy just from staring intently at the changing view on his screen.

  “Charlie Company’s on the ground!”

  Lon scarcely noticed that call, or the one ten seconds later that told him that Delta Company�
��s shuttles were landing. The video he was watching shook violently. Light seemed to flash forward from behind the camera out into the field of vision.

  “I’ve been hit!”

  Lon did not recognize the voice of the pilot, but did not expect to. He knew few of the Shrike fliers well. The frame rotated through more than 360 degrees, then dipped. Lon found himself gripping the arms of his chair. He leaned forward, unaware of the way his body was moving in response to the view.

  “I’m losing fuel. Can’t tell how much damage to the bird yet,” the pilot said, his voice sounding much calmer than Lon felt. “Vibrations, getting heavier. I’m going to have to look for a place to set down. Can’t make it back to Taranto.”

  Get out while you can, Lon urged silently. Get down in one piece. We’ll pick you up.

  “Have Taranto send pickup, or do we do it?” Captain Berger asked—loudly, to make sure that Lon heard him.

  Lon blinked and looked away from the screen. “See if Vel is close enough to track him in. If the command shuttle can’t get to the site quickly enough…hell, that’ll still be faster than waiting for Taranto or Long Snake to send a shuttle. Make the call.”

  Seconds. Minutes. Lon focused on the Shrike, listening to its pilot talking almost constantly—matter-of-factly—as the condition of his fighter deteriorated, seemingly by the second.

  “Controls are getting flaky,” the pilot said. “Can’t be certain of landing safely. I’m going to have to eject.”

  “We’ve got pickup on the way,” Lon said, hitting the transmit switch on his complink. “We’re tracking you.”

  “Thanks, whoever you are. I see a clearing ahead, to my left. I’ll come down as close to that as I can. Here I go.”

  Lon heard a muted explosion, then the rush of wind as the Shrike pilot blew his ejection capsule from the wounded fighter. The wind noise ended quickly as the pilot cleared the fuselage. The ejection capsule was gas-tight. There were times when a pilot might have to eject in vacuum.