by Rick Shelley
Would I even see trained soldiers? Doug wondered. The doubt raised his level of nervousness. He made a wide, slow circuit of the rendezvous area before he moved in to meet the others.
“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show,” Gil whispered when Doug arrived.
“I wanted to make sure you hadn’t been followed,” Doug replied.
He looked around the group. Everyone had nightvision goggles like his own. They were common on Buchanan; any hunter would have a pair. Doug recognized most of the men immediately, and the rest as soon as they talked. Gil and the Evander twins, Ronald and Robert, were wearing coveralls that looked as if they had been fashioned from thermalseal tarps. They would give as much protection from infrared detection as Doug’s hippobary hide, and wouldn’t weigh a tenth as much. The others all wore ponchos that would give some protection—but not nearly enough. Albert Greer was probably the oldest of the group, near sixty. That would be nothing on a more civilized world, but Buchanan was too small and isolated to possess the latest medtech organisms and devices; Greer was grizzled in appearance and had taken to shaving only rarely. The Evander twins, not yet twenty, were the youngest. The others were George Hatchfield, Marc Bollinger, Timothy Connors, and Ash Benez. Despite the individual differences among them, all of the men showed some similarities. All were used to hard work out of doors. They all farmed, at least parttime. Even the twins had weathered and tanned faces. And they all were accustomed to firearms. On Buchanan, all of the men hunted.
“I had to be careful talking to folks,” Gil said. “I probably could have got more men, but I figured it was best to be cautious.”
Doug nodded. “By far. Let’s get under cover before anything else. I feel naked as hell out here.”
“Where we goin’?” Albert asked.
“The first caves south of the bend,” Doug said. “I’ve been using the larger to sleep in, and the other for smoking hippobary.” He thumped his hand softly on the hide he was wearing. “It doesn’t look like much, and it may smell awful rank, but it’ll help hide you from snoopers. Better than that poncho, Albert.”
Greer nodded, a jerky gesture the way he did it. “I thought of hippobary, but I didn’t have any hide to hand and wasn’t sure there’d be time to cure one before tonight.”
“I’ve got enough for three of you,” Doug said. “Let’s get moving. Stay loose, stay alert, and keep some distance between. If anybody brought a complink or anything else that puts out any sort of energy, leave it here. We can’t use electronics without giving away our position.”
He didn’t wait for acknowledgements or questions, simply turned and started walking toward the caves.
This time, he held a course as straight as he could manage without maps or compass.
‘I wish I knew more about soldiering, Doug thought after they had been moving for a quarter hour. ‘I wonder how many mistakes we’ve made already.
By the time the group reached the caves, Doug felt as if he were three hours short on breathing. Several times during the march he had realized that he was holding his breath and had to remind himself to start again. It accentuated his already considerable exhaustion, making him ready to collapse by the time he crawled into the big cave.
Gil Howard switched on a small battery lantern. The sudden light made Doug jump, but before he could yell, he saw that Gil had shielded the lantern, and Albert was already draping a poncho across the low entrance to the chamber.
“Be more dangerous to have people shouting ‘ouch’ all the time,” Gil said when he saw the way Doug was looking at him.
Doug pulled in a deep breath. “I guess you’re right. I’ve just been going without anything so long that…
well, you know.”
Gil nodded.
“I appreciate that you all came,” Doug said, looking around the group. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.” A couple of them nodded. They all looked serious.
“There’s plenty of jerky hanging there.” Doug pointed. “Help yourselves. I hope you all brought canteens or water bags. Be more efficient if a couple of you take them all over to the river to fill them.”
The Evander twins started collecting containers immediately. Both of the twins had jetblack hair and eyes that seemed undecided whether to be brown or hazel.
“As much as possible, we need to get everything done outside before dawn,” Doug said before the twins left. “Night and thermal shields are the only protection we’ve got outside.”
Albert Greer started chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” Doug asked.
“Just thought you might like to know,” Albert said. “I brought thirty pounds of explosives. Thought we might find a use.”
Doug smiled. “We can sure as hell try. You have detonators too?”
“Stuck ‘em in Gil’s pack when he weren’t lookin’. I know better than to keep caps and plastic together.”
Gil looked startled. He picked up the knapsack he had so cavalierly dropped and went through the outside pockets until he found the small box with eight detonators in it.
“There’s another box,” Albert warned him, and Gil pulled that one out as well.
“Only one target worth using that much boomputty on,” Ash Benez said. “The shuttles the Federation troops came down in. There’s three of them sitting at the port.”
“Something to think about,” Doug said. “If we can figure a way to get at them. They must have guards posted.”
“They do, at least part of the time,” Benez said, “but I haven’t seen more than three pacing around at a time.” In peaceful times, Ash was one of the locals who worked the spaceport, on those rare occasions when there was any work to do there. He had paid special attention to it since the invasion.
“Let’s sleep on it,” Doug said. “We can’t do anything before tomorrow night in any case.”
By late morning, when everyone was back up, no one had any better target to offer than the shuttles at the spaceport.
“It’s so perfect, I wish I had thought of it,” Albert said. “What better symbol?” He didn’t get any argument.
While the rest of the force turned to making the caves into a better bivouac, Doug, Gil, and Albert tried to find a lowrisk way to strike at the shuttles. Late in the afternoon, Doug briefed the rest of his “troops,” and just after sunset, all nine men started toward the spaceport.
There were clouds far out to the west, low on the horizon. They wouldn’t complicate this mission, but there might be rain before noon the next day. Doug turned his gaze from the sky to the four men with him.
Gil and three others were taking a route several miles to the west, with half of the explosives and detonators. Doug and the rest were following the river. They would move through the greenbelt between Sam and Max out to the spaceport. If one team were destroyed or delayed, the other team could still attempt the strike.
Doug’s team was spread out, ten yards between men as they hiked along the river, almost in the riverbed.
The land at their left sloped up to the level of their shoulders. There were dozens of hippobary visible, and the men gave the animals the right of way, standing motionless whenever one of the beasts came close. So soon after sunset, the hippobary were intent on getting to their grazing grounds. As long as they perceived no immediate threat from the humans, they would concentrate on feeding.
Hippobary will be the least of our worries before the night’s over, Doug thought. All of the day’s planning had skirted several important issues, like casualties and Federation reaction to the raid. No one wanted to talk about friends being killed or wounded. No one had any idea how the soldiers might respond. “All we can do is take it all one step at a time,” Albert had said. “None of us know enough about this business to do anything else.”
Ash Benez was on point when Doug’s group reached the greenbelt between Sam and Max. The narrow strip had been set aside when the colony was founded. It was simply “the Park” and remained undeveloped, a
statement of optimism: “Someday we’ll be so populous that we’ll need to have special areas set aside to remind us what this world was like before we changed it.”
“Let’s take a breather,” Doug whispered when his team moved into the Park. “If there’s any enemy activity, maybe we’ll get lucky and spot them before they spot us.”
Like most of the residents of Buchanan, Doug was intimately familiar with the Park. Its many small, secluded clearings were popular with courting couples—not that there were likely to be any young lovers to interrupt now.
Doug crawled ten yards ahead of the others and settled himself on his stomach to watch. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t completely shut out his fear. ‘I don’t want to get the lot of us killed. If this attack resulted in disaster, would anyone else ever take up the campaign?
That afternoon, Doug had spent two hours questioning his men about the activities of the Federation troops, gathering as much intelligence as he could. Soldiers patrolled the towns, but not with any great frequency or numbers. Patrols consisted of three or four men in battle kit, but they didn’t bother the local residents for the most part. There was no catalog of atrocities or outrages. The soldiers carried a variety of weapons, including beamers, needle guns, and slug throwers. Doug was just as worried about the combat helmets the soldiers wore—certain to be replete with sophisticated electronics, targeting capabilities, communications links, augmented sight and hearing.
Twice during the passage between Sam and Max, Doug signalled for his men to take cover. The first time, he decided that he really hadn’t seen anything. After a few minutes, he cautiously moved forward, then signalled for the others to follow.
The second time, there was excellent reason for taking cover. The Buchananers dropped to the ground and remained motionless while a Federation patrol passed no more than twenty yards in front of them—four men walking single file on the main path from Max toward Sam. Doug and his companions lay motionless, hardly daring to breathe. Doug felt as if his body had gone completely rigid. He worried that the sound of his heartbeat might be loud enough to give them away. He had thought that he had known what fear was before, especially after setting off the MR the night of the invasion, but this was a numbing terror beyond anything he could even have imagined before.
The Federation patrol moved slowly past, the men looking casually around. It would not take much to give away the fact that there were locals hiding—armed locals. After the soldiers passed, Doug waited ten minutes before he gave his people the signal to get up and move on. Even then, he had to force himself to move. He was trembling with poorly suppressed fright.
Three minutes later, Albert came up to Doug and whispered against his ear. “We should be clear, at least until we get close to the port. I don’t think they run more’n one patrol at a time. They’ll go through Sam, then head back to their camp out by the port.”
Doug nodded. It might have been better if there were more patrols out, more men away from the main encampment at the port. That might have made the job of getting in and out easier. There were platoonsized detachments camped near each of the settlements, but most of the troops were held out at the port. Where they could protect the shuttles.
The shuttles. Doug and his men lay in the grass near the edge of Buchanan’s rudimentary spaceport. A single plascrete runway stretched north and south. A small terminal and one large, now empty, hangar were the only permanent buildings. A cupola above the terminal provided Buchanan’s only air traffic control. Antennas on the dome connected the colony to communications satellites overhead and gave incoming ships a link to the colony.
A year that saw two ships arrive was one that would be remembered for decades. Like the Park, the port was more a statement of the colony’s faith in its future than a necessity for the present.
The port buildings were on the near side of the field, between the runway and the two towns. The main camp of Federation troops was to the north, on the terminal side. The three shuttles were parked in front of the hangar, facing the runway. The hangar was open on both ends. There were no lights or soldiers visible in the building. But Doug could see the tail end of the center shuttle, and that was the target.
“Tail’s probably the only place those birds are vulnerable,” Albert had said that afternoon while they were planning the operation. “The skin’s got to be reinforced past all belief. All the stretchboom I brought probably wouldn’t even char it. All we can do is cram all that shit up the tailpipe and set it off.”
“Come on,” Gil had protested. “The temperatures and stresses those must be built to take?”.
Albert had chuckled nastily. “Think, boy,” he said. “They’re built to funnel all that energy one way, out the back. We put a blast headin’ the other way, we ought to be able to raise hell with the valves, vanes, whatever the hell they use to direct the exhaust.”
“I don’t suppose they’d be so considerate as to leave the doors open so we could blow up the cockpits,”
Doug had said.
“Not likely,” Albert said. “The only other way I can see that we might do some damage would be to blow away the nose gears, and it probably wouldn’t take much for them to fix that. But if we can screw up the fire boxes, it might slow them down a mite longer.”
Not too much longer, Doug had thought at the time. He had no grandiose delusions. Even if there was only one troop ship in orbit, it had to carry more than three shuttles. The only certain result of this raid would be the grounding of more troops, and probably an aggressive search for the raiders. But they had to try.
“We’ll never blow an opening between the firing chamber and the fuel tanks,” Doug had said. “That would be pretty. Set off a hydrogen tank and the whole thing would go. One blast, on the middle shuttle, might take all three of them, if they’re parked close enough together.”
“Probably aren’t,” Albert replied, “and unless you’ve got some brilliant way to get at the tanks, it’s all a dream anyhow.”
‘ ‘If only we had some way to find out about the shuttles, plans, schematics, something.”
“Wish for a dreadnought while you’re at it” was Albert’s reply to that.
After fifteen minutes, Doug hadn’t seen any sign of guards posted around the buildings or shuttles. There were two men farther away, but they stayed by the tents. There
must be guards, Doug thought, unless their electronics are so effective that human sentries aren’t needed. That possibility didn’t cheer him at all. Human sentries might be evaded, or silenced. Electronics would give their warning long before they could be silenced.
“Let’s go,” Doug whispered, afraid that if he waited much longer he would loose his nerve completely.
“Be on the watch for anything.”
The last twohundred yards seemed to take forever. Doug and his men didn’t crawl, but they stayed low, crouched over, moving only when the sentry on the near side of the army camp was walking away from them, going to ground before he reached the end of his post, waiting until he made the return trip and turned again before they rose to move on.
Doug aimed toward the southern corner of the hangar, planning to go along the outside of that building.
With the huge doors open on both ends, going through the hanger was far too tempting to chance. It was almost as if those doors had been left open as an invitation… a trap.
Of course, the whole setup might be a trap, Doug thought during one of the intervals while he and his men were flat on their faces waiting for the distant sentry to turn away again. For the first time, Doug realized, ‘I might die here tonight, any minute, even without warning. It was that, more than the physical exertion, that had him panting for breath.
When they reached the hangar, Doug leaned against the wall to slow his breathing. His fear was almost strong enough to touch—almost enough to strangle him. Still, he edged along the building, moving slowly, stopping before he got to the far corner. He wasn’t about to stick his nose out on that side
, not more than a few inches above the ground.
Once he was on his stomach, Doug slithered to the corner and stuck his head out far enough to look around. The shuttles were smaller than he had expected. From nose to exhausts, they were barely 140 feet long, hulking shapes that seemed to hug the ground. No more than three feet of tire showed below each shuttle. The tops of the wheels were hidden by wells in the belly of the shuttles. The wings stretched out to the sides, low extensions of the flat belly.
After more minutes of silent watching, Doug slid back from his exposed position and got up. “This is impossible,” he whispered. “You’d think they’d have more cover on their shuttles even if they were on one of their own worlds, in the middle of one of their own bases.”
“A trap?” Albert asked.
“It smells like it,” Doug conceded. “I can’t believe that they have so little doubt of their security that they wouldn’t set up defenses.”
“Hey, we’re just ignorant farmers,” Ash Benez said. “Maybe they figure we wouldn’t even think about attacking them.”
“There’s been nothing in any of the new governor’s orders on the net,” Albert said. “They haven’t even told us to turn in weapons.”
We can’t turn back, Doug thought, though there was nothing he wanted more at that moment. The other team would be coming in from the far side of the port, and there was no way to communicate with them.
After a hesitation that couldn’t have been half as long as it seemed, Doug nodded.
“We’ll change their minds tonight.”
It was another ten minutes before Doug spotted movement on the far side of the runway. He pointed so his companions would see.
“Okay, Albert,” Doug whispered. “Let’s go visit that middle shuttle. You start preparing the tail while the rest of us look for anything else that might be vulnerable.”
Doug led the way out onto the apron in front of the hangar, his rifle up, ready to return any fire. The others spread out in a loose wedge behind him. Albert took his half of the explosives directly to one of the two exhaust nozzles, stuck a small flashlight up into the tube, and started looking for control surfaces that might be vulnerable. Doug crouched behind one of the main landing gear, keeping watch, his attention focused in the direction of the tents. The others did a quick survey of the accessible portions of the fuselage, looking for panels that might give a better explosive path into the interior.
