Orphan Brigade

by Henry V. O'Neil

  “Your standard A Company is the power in most battalions even when they’re not all that good, and your standard C Company is usually competing to knock them off the top of the mountain. That leaves your standard B Company in the unenviable position of either competing with C Company just for the honor of competing with A Company, or saying ‘Fuck it’ and doing their own thing.”

  Zacker stopped when they reached a large central room with big windows. Stairs led down to the building’s front doors and up to its second story, and Mortas saw a group of offices through a door to his left.

  “The thing is, our B Company is neither. They don’t compete with the other two companies, but they don’t say ‘Fuck it’ either. They’re tough, they’re tactically sound, and they don’t much care what anybody else thinks. Me, I think ol’ B Company . . . competes with B Company. And I think that’s outstanding.”

  The sergeant major walked through the side door into what turned out to be the adjutant’s office. Three other offices led off from there, and in time Mortas would learn one belonged to Zacker while the other two belonged to the battalion executive officer and the battalion’s commander, Colonel Beekrek Alden. The adjutant, a captain in rumpled fatigues, exchanged greetings with Mortas so quickly that the new lieutenant didn’t catch his name. He rose and entered the colonel’s office to announce him, and Mortas was preparing to meet his boss’s boss when Zacker spoke again.

  “Your company commander’s relatively new to the brigade, but he has an excellent war record. Your company first sergeant is very strong even though he’s too banged up to deploy with us. Don’t be afraid to go to either of them with questions, but I’d recommend talking to your platoon sergeant first. Good habit to get into.”

  The adjutant walked past them and returned to his desk, so the sergeant major took Mortas by the arm and steered him toward the colonel’s office.

  “Once you’re settled into your job, come on by and shoot the shit with me. I’d like to hear about that bad ol’ alien you met on Roanum.”

  Mortas was just turning to enter the battalion commander’s office when the man appeared in front of him. Colonel Alden was stocky like Colonel Watt, and short hair was obviously standard among the Orphans.

  Alden shook Mortas’s hand and turned him in the opposite direction. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant. I’m sorry to cut this short, but I was just called to brigade. Walk with me.”

  They headed for the back steps that Mortas had ascended only moments earlier. Alden spoke while donning a camouflaged soft cap.

  “I read the report of your experience on Roanum, and I feel you performed quite well there. You still haven’t had any actual combat experience, so your company commander will be putting you through a crash course on what you need to know to lead your platoon in the real thing—­everything from casualty evacuation to resupply operations.”

  Alden stopped once they were outside, and Mortas did as well.

  “The most important skill for you to master is supporting arms. This brigade is designed to be moved on a moment’s notice, so we lack some of the organic firepower of a normal Force brigade. As a result, every now and then we end up outgunned. We make up that difference by maximizing all available assets, from orbital bombardment to drone fighters and gunships.”

  A wheeled vehicle rolled around the corner of the building and stopped in front of them, obviously the colonel’s ride.

  “Which brings me to something I believe very strongly. Every successful organization makes the most of its resources, and the resource with the greatest potential payoff is the human resource. You, me, and every man in this battalion has a brain and a desire to survive, and I want to get everything that combination can give us.

  “In this outfit we let every man do his job, then we push him to do some things that aren’t his job. Do that effectively, and you’ll create a valuable asset. Someone who’s always thinking, shows initiative in the absence of orders, and is ready to offer sound advice. Listen to that advice, Lieutenant.”

  Alden climbed into the front seat of the camouflaged vehicle.

  “Remember that good units walk a thin line between indiscipline and ineffectiveness. Ignore the rules too often and you’ve got a mob, but enforce the rules too strictly and you’ve got a herd. Any questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay then.” He signaled the driver to go ahead, and Mortas took a step back. Just as the vehicle began to roll, Alden pointed a finger at him. “You need to learn to talk more.”

  He gave Mortas a wink, and then he was gone.

  Looking around, Mortas noticed that he was in the exact same spot where he’d met the sergeant major minutes earlier. The two soldiers with the radio were there, still unable to communicate, and he decided to take a short walk. He probably should have reentered the headquarters to see the adjutant, but he needed time to digest the information and advice that had been thrown at him in the last hour.

  Walking around the side of the building, he looked up the hill to see more lush greenery and a row of military-­style housing that was probably reserved for the senior officers. There was a lot of it, too much for even a brigade’s worth of majors and colonels, but it appeared well maintained and he wondered who lived there.

  The road in front of the battalion headquarters was long and intermittently lined with a curious type of tall tree. It reminded him of palm trees on Earth, except the bare stalk rose up to a chaotic tangle of vine-­like branches where he would have expected droopy fronds. A brightly colored bird was singing inside the tree nearest to him, and for a moment he was back on Roanum, walking with a column of exhausted Sim troops who didn’t realize he and Trent and Gorman were human. The Sims, unable to form the vowels and consonants of human speech, communicated with sounds that resembled the chirping of birds.

  A male voice sounded from down the street, and Mortas turned to see a squad of soldiers shuffling toward him. They were in a tight column, moving in a fashion that was somewhere between a fast walk and a trot. Bareheaded, they wore the green T-­shirts and black shorts that he now believed was the brigade’s PT uniform, but every man was also wearing the torso armor of the walking infantry.

  Human Defense Force body protection was modular, and the armless torso armor was its most basic element. It could be augmented with a set of shoulder armor that had always reminded Mortas of his lacrosse pads, separate pieces for the upper and lower arms, and similar wraparounds for the shins, knees, and thighs. An armored groin protector was also available, but it was decidedly uncomfortable for anyone who had to march anywhere, so it was seldom seen in the walking infantry.

  He briefly thought of the Banshee commander he’d met at Glory Main, the one who had saved Cranther’s fighting knife for him. The Banshees were all-­female fighting units who went into combat in powered suits of armor that were too expensive to be issued to the entire Force. The alien pretending to be Amelia Trent had told Mortas that the Banshees painted breasts and vaginas on their armor before going into battle, to let the all-­male Sim fighting units know who they were up against. According to the alien, the Banshees refused to end the practice no matter how harshly Command punished them for it.

  The torso armor for the walking infantry was flat black because it would be covered by camouflage fabric. Like the chest protection itself, the camouflage covers were two pieces, front and back. The rear section snapped onto the armor and was left bare to make room for a rucksack, except for a row of slots at the bottom where canteens were usually attached. The front half was likewise affixed to the armor, and the majority of a soldier’s ammunition was carried there. The chest camouflage could be opened down the center so the wearer could lie prone or crawl across the ground, and a strap at its top went over the wearer’s head to rest behind the neck. In a tough fight, the ammunition of the fallen could be removed with a good sharp tug on the strap and carried to the rest of the fighters, whi
le still leaving a wounded man with body protection and water.

  The male voice sounded again, closer now, and he saw an NCO who was shuffling along outside the rapidly approaching column. Despite his shorn head, the sergeant was clearly much older than the others. He was speaking to a thin soldier in the center of the hustling line who appeared to be having difficulty with the exercise.

  “You think this is tough? Wait until you’re loaded up with a weapon, ammo, water, rations, and whatever else they decide to make us carry.” The voice wasn’t a shout, but it didn’t have to be. A quick look at the other faces showed that they ran the gamut from calm to queasy, and Mortas decided that the straining members of the squad were new men. “You’re gonna be dreaming of the days when this was all you were hauling.”

  The squad went by, boots crunching on the pavement, but Mortas was suddenly struck by the number of scars on the exposed limbs. Some linear, some curled, some whitened with time while others were red or purple. Having grown up in the war he was no stranger to wounded veterans, but he’d never seen so much scar tissue in one place before.

  As they passed, the sergeant gave him a knowing leer that blossomed into a grin that could have been mirth or malice. He was well up the road before Mortas was sure that the inch-­wide red scar just above the man’s left knee went all the way around his cruelly muscled leg.

  “You must have command philosophy coming out of your ears by now.” The huge man walking next to Mortas was Major Hatton, First Battalion’s executive officer. He’d collected him from the front of the headquarters just after the squad in torso armor had disappeared, suggesting that they go to the mess hall for lunch.

  “Honestly, sir, I’m having a hard time just remembering all the names.”

  Hatton wore the same style fatigues as Mortas and had donned the brimmed soft cap as well. Three inches over Mortas’s six feet, he moved like a bear as they went down the walkway toward the mess hall. The long buildings Mortas had seen earlier turned out to be four in number, one for each of the companies and another for the chow hall and the personnel from the battalion headquarters company.

  “Don’t sweat it. It’s like that with every new unit. The first few days you can barely find your way around, and you can’t tell whether the latest guy you’re talking to is the village idiot or the corps commander. Although”—­he gave Mortas a quick glance—­“sometimes that’s the same guy.”

  That last comment caught Mortas off guard, and he chuckled. They passed between two barracks, and when they rounded the corner a short line of soldiers was waiting to enter the mess hall. Hatton continued, once they’d joined the queue.

  “The whole brigade’s on a bit of a stand-­down right now. They had us doing a major cleanup on this one Hab, a search-­and-­destroy in this really brutal terrain, and it went longer than it was supposed to. Lots of nickel-­and-­dime with the remnants of this Sim battalion that was hiding out in this mountain chain.”

  A soldier in line in front of them, also dressed in the woodland fatigues but wearing no rank, turned and smiled at Hatton. “What a motherfucker that was. How many of them did we finally bag, sir?”

  “Confirmed, about a hundred. Counted ’em myself and reported the same. Somebody on high bumped it to two hundred.”

  The soldier shook his head, smiling ruefully, then turned away when the line began to move. Hatton lowered his voice.

  “Believe it or not, that doctored report was what got us out of that hellhole. The intel estimate said there were only a hundred to a hundred fifty enemy in the area, so when we topped that it probably embarrassed somebody important. Besides, by then the boys were pretty worn-­out from all that patrolling. Lots of sniper fire, shoot ’n’ scoot, every now and then a full-­blooded ambush, and the weather went to shit on us too.

  “We got a bunch of replacements a ­couple of weeks ago, but we’ll still be understrength even when the veterans all get back from the hospitals.” He winked. “Some of them take the long way home, if you get my meaning.”

  They passed inside, and an unidentified NCO in fatigues approached the executive officer. They began discussing a logistical issue that had apparently come undone, but Mortas was unable to understand much of the terminology. The line kept moving, first along a windowed wall and then through the serving area, and Mortas took the opportunity to get a look at the soldiers of the command.

  The mess hall was large enough to seat two hundred men, but most of it was empty. Clutches of troops were spaced out around the tables, dressed in fatigues or PT clothing. Once again Mortas was surprised to notice just how young many of them looked. Shuffling along in the line, he caught snatches of conversation, some boisterous and some not, but all indicative of long association.

  “You can’t be serious. I told you about her in confidence!”

  “What can I say? They sent me to the same ward you were in, and she seemed to fit the description.”

  “And you used my line? The exact same words?”

  “Yeah, and she didn’t seem to notice. Honestly, she isn’t all that bright . . .”

  Mortas looked out the window to hide his smile, and the moving column soon took him toward another discussion.

  “They were gonna fit him with a replacement leg, grown right there, just like new, but there was something missing.”

  “No shit there was something missing. His leg. I tied him off myself.”

  “No, no, something medical. Something only the doctors would understand. Cells in the replacement wouldn’t match up with what was left of the old leg for some reason. So they’re sending him back to a regeneration hospital.”

  “A regen? That takes months. Lying there with all those little DNA bots crawlin’ over the stump.”

  “Yeah, but when it’s done it’ll be all him. Wonder if they’ll send him back here.”

  A stack of trays appeared in front of Mortas, and he was through the line and following Hatton to a seat only moments later. They joined a small group, all in fatigues, one of them sporting pin-­on rank and branch insignia on his collars. Mortas looked more closely as he sat down, recognizing the man as a captain and the branch as military intelligence.

  “Hey, this is our newest officer, Lieutenant Mortas. I know you’ve all heard of him.” Hatton spoke as if in an afterthought, sorting through the utensils on his tray. Mortas cringed at the introduction, but the others gave him an assortment of friendly waves. He recognized the adjutant from the battalion headquarters, and decided these were officers from the battalion staff. Their conversation confirmed this soon enough.

  “Sir, we got another inquiry about Captain Pappas.” The adjutant spoke across the table at Hatton. “His previous owners don’t seem to understand he’s not coming back.”

  “What did you tell them this time?” The captain with the military intelligence insignia asked in a wary voice. His short hair was blond, and even though he was seated, Mortas could tell he was tall and lean.

  “I had to start recycling the older stories. You’re quarantined again.”

  “What did I catch?”

  “You got Thorn Worm from a prostitute.”

  “My wife’s not gonna be happy if she hears this one.”

  “Aw, come on. She’s bound to like it better than when we reported you were missing.”

  “But that one was true. I was actually missing at the time.”

  The adjutant gave him a look of surprise. “Really?”

  Hatton stopped eating long enough to explain the discussion. “Captain Pappas here was sent with us on a mission a year or so ago. Technically he’s still assigned to some high-­level staff somewhere, but we lost our intelligence officer and decided to keep him. He’s head and shoulders above most of the intel types at our level; he can read and write and speak in complete sentences. Every now and then his old outfit asks about him.”

  “Erlon Pappas.” The
captain extended his hand, and Mortas shook it. “I can get out of here anytime I want, but it’s an interesting anthropological study, interacting with the infantry. I’m thinking of writing a paper on it . . . wait a minute.” He turned to the adjutant. “You can’t catch Thorn Worm from a prostitute.”

  “I know. Sometimes I include a screwy detail like that, just to see if they’re seriously trying to get you back or only going through the motions.”

  Hatton leaned across the group and spoke to the man next to Pappas. “Drew, you haven’t touched your food. Bad sign from the guy who orders our chow.”

  Drew looked up with a dazed expression that he immediately replaced with a forced smile. Mortas noted the way his fatigue top hung, as if there was nothing but an empty rib cage holding it up. His own recent experience with radical weight loss came rushing back, but he and the other maroons had never looked as bad as this scarecrow figure. A set of watery eyes darted his way, then went back to Hatton.

  “Oh, I’m all right, sir.” The voice was soft. “Just remembered something I forgot to do back at the office. Excuse me.”

  He rose and carried his tray toward a refuse chute set in a nearby wall. Mortas watched as the slim man stopped, then turned in almost a complete circle while his eyes searched the nearest tables. Drew then set off, cutting through the rows until reaching a group of seated soldiers who greeted him in a friendly manner. Mortas couldn’t make out the words, but one of the troops at the table accepted the full tray.

  “Eat hearty, men,” the scarecrow said, and headed for the door. The soldiers he’d addressed watched him go, some with pursed lips that Mortas mistook for bottled mirth. Once he was gone, eyebrow raises were exchanged and one man made a finger gesture that Mortas took to indicate a reluctant suspicion of insanity.