by Rick Shelley
There was a good clearing for the platoon to jump into. They scarcely needed the ropes. The shuttle hovered within ten feet of the ground, rock and scrub grass under them. If it hadn’t been for the rocks, perhaps a third of the men would have jumped. Adrenaline and the shockabsorbing abilities of their boots and field skins would have sufficed for that distance. But not over rocks.
Alfie Edwards was the first man on the ground. He moved out from under the shuttle and went to ground, taking the best position he could and aiming his needier in the general direction of the distant enemy. He was ready for instant action, even though the needle gun’s effective range was only a hundred yards and the known enemy positions were a mile and a half away. His throat was dry, but he had seen enough action to pay that no mind. Our bodies are smarter than we are, an instructor had once told a group that Alfie was in. They know full well the folly of combat, the possible outcome. But you can— you will— learn how to override your body’s signals when you have to.
“An’ it’s even worse just comin’ out of hospital,” Alfie told himself as his eyes searched the terrain in front of him. He was only vaguely aware of his mates coming down and moving into position, forming a defensive circle around the drop zone. This was a basic maneuver. Even Doug Weintraub found his place in the ring without any difficulty, right next to Alfie.
“Nobody told me about shinny ing down ropes,” Doug said when he took his place on the ground. His visor was up. Alfie reached over and slapped it down, none too gently, the way a drill instructor would have done it in boot camp.
“Keep that down unless you see me or the sergeant with ours up,” Alfie said, clicking off his radio and speaking loudly enough for his words to carry to Doug. “An’ even then you’re better off askin’ first.”
By the time the shuttle pulled away from the drop zone, David had his squad leaders together, looking over the same mapboard while they talked over their private complink frequency.
“We know exactly where the enemy is, but not how they’re deployed. Assume it’s an efficient defensive position. We’re going to have to go for maximum quiet moving in. We don’t have dark to cover us.” He looked around at the others. The visors left their faces in shadow, vague.
“We’ll put the horns on them.” David held his right hand out with the index and little fingers extended.
“First and third squads on the flanks, second and fourth coming up the middle. We’ll do it the easy way, stop a hundred yards out—sooner if we come under fire—and put grenades in on top of them. As soon as the action starts, the shuttle will move back in to keep track of any Feddies who try to duck out, and the Spacehawk will be on tap if we need it.” David looked around at the squad leaders again. “And remember, we’ve still got a novice with us.”
The squad leaders moved to gather their men. While the flanking squads moved off to the sides and started to pick their way into the forest, the others provided cover, then got up and started north between the horns, spreading out into a skirmish line as they advanced.
“Stay close and stay quiet,” David told Doug, breaking in on a private channel. “This could get touchy if they hear us coming.”
Doug nodded. David nodded back and kept going.
The forest was different here than it was close to the towns and river. The soil was loose, sandy. Trees were farther apart, allowing for patches of scrub brush and irregular clearings. The animal paths were less clearly defined, but there was less need for them in the more open terrain. The Marines had no trouble maintaining a coherent skirmish line across the base of their formation, and the horns had little difficulty maintaining their positions to either side.
When the terrain didn’t close up, David revised his initial plan. “We stop at a hundred fifty yards,” he advised the other squad leaders. The horns were moved farther out to the sides. The base held up for a couple of minutes, then spread out to cover the wider gap.
The Marines crawled the last fifty yards, then snaked their way into position on their stomachs, using every possible bit of cover. David squirmed down into the loose soil when he finally stopped the platoon’s advance. There was just a little give to the sandy dirt, enough to allow him a little extra security.
“All grenadiers,” he whispered on the platoon frequency. “Five rounds apiece into the enemy position.
On command.” He hesitated long enough to give the eight men who carried the grenade launchers time to get the weapons into position.
“Fire!” David raised his voice but didn’t shout. Then he pressed himself into the ground with all the force he could muster. Less than six seconds passed before the mayhem erupted.
The first eight grenades all exploded within a tenth of a second. In less than twelve seconds, all forty of the ordered grenades had burst within the same hundredfoot circle. The blasts blended into one continuous assault of sound. As the explosions ended, the Marines could hear the lesser sounds of trees falling and the crackle of flames.
“On your feet!” David shouted over the platoon frequency. “At the double. Close the gap.”
David moved as he gave the order, running toward the positions of the Federation soldiers. He had the safety off on his rifle, and his finger was on the trigger, ready to spray any hint of movement. The smoke of the grenade explosions lifted. Before he got to the circle of complete destruction, David slowed his run… and then stopped. There was no hurry, not now.
“Check the perimeter,” he ordered over the radio. He forced himself to walk forward again. Doug stayed right with him, his rifle lowered until the barrel was pointed at the ground by his side.
“Oh, my God!” Doug said. His hand came up to lift his visor before he remembered what Alfie had said.
But the warning meant nothing to him just then. He had to lift the visor, quickly. He had scarcely gotten it up before he had to lean over and vomit—at considerable length.
It was difficult to differentiate among the individual bodies in the newly created clearing, impossible to get a quick count on the Federation dead. Bits and pieces had been blown off and mixed like chunks of ham in the tossed salad of the shredded circle of forest.
David forced himself to look. “That’s the easy way,” he mumbled, before realizing that he had the platoon frequency open on his complink. Several of the men turned to look his way, but no one replied. One way or another, every one of them shared the same thought.
It could have been us.
Part 7
31
Frigates of the Second Commonwealth’s Essex class, like Repulse and Lancer, were the smallest naval vessels equipped with Nilssen generators sufficient to make Qspace transits on their own. Essex class frigates were designed as fast, maneuverable weapons platforms, their primary mission to protect the Royal Navy’s larger vessels. Among the designated secondary missions were battlefield preparation and raiding enemy fleets, facilities, or bases. While the mere arrival of a Commonwealth frigate overhead had occasionally been enough to end a colonial dispute, none of them had ever actually been employed as solitary raiders prior to the start of the war with the Federation.
Captain Arias Rivero was well aware that he would earn a line or two in the history of naval tactics as Lancer prepared to make its final jump en route from Buchanan to Union. Only the nature of that entry remained to be determined. The first two jumps had gone without a hitch, even though Rivero had permitted only a twohour delay between them. He wanted to save as much time as possible for the interval between the second and third transits, the last before jumping into the Union system.
During that final interval before jumping into enemy space, Rivero gathered all of his department heads in Lancer’s wardroom.
“You’ve all had plenty of time to come up with practical objections to our mission,” Rivero said. “Forget them. Don’t bother telling me that we can’t do this for one reason or another. We have our orders. We will carry them out. Come up with workarounds if you have to.” He didn’t give anyone a chance to
interrupt before he went on to specifics.
“Navigation, I want the preliminary program for the jump out of Union space in the computers before we jump into that space. You’ll have exactly ninety seconds turnaround in order to make any necessary corrections. Remember that figure, ninety seconds, not one second more. At that point, we reenter Qspace, ready or not, and if we have to waste time finding out where we are after that jump, your neck is on the chopping block, right next to mine.
“Weapons. Those ninety seconds in Union space are yours. I expect to see munitions being expended during eightyeight of those seconds. That means everything you can put on any target within range. Start with the first available targets, regardless of what they are. Maximize target selection as quickly as you can. As possible, get missiles out toward the surface targets the admiral indicated. You will also be our snowplow. Blast anything out of our path. I don’t care if its a comsat, or their main construction docks.
We won’t have time to detour around obstacles. Use whatever you need to open the way.”
The weapons officer nodded, but weakly. He hoped, most fervently, that there wouldn’t be anything even onetenth the size of a construction dock in the path of Lancer. A concerted volley of all of the ship’s weaponry might not suffice to open a lane large enough for Lancer to clear it at speed. For the rest… it would be hectic, but he was only being asked for a volume of fire, not highly effective, coordinated assaults on specific targets. Spectacular results would be a bonus. Lancer wouldn’t be insystem long enough for textbook engagements, or for damage assessment.
“Damage control,” Rivero continued. “We shouldn’t be in normalspace long enough for Federation forces to take us under fire, but be ready. We might pop up in front of a dreadnought starting target practice. Remember, we have one imperative. Get out of normalspace exactly ninety seconds after we enter. Unless our Nilssens are gone, any other repairs will have to wait until we jump back to Qspace.
“Engineering. Make bloody certain that the Nilssens don’t go south. I want a thorough inspection and diagnostics performed now. You’ve got the next six hours to find and correct anything that might conceivably go bad in two more jumps. The same thing goes for life support systems. Do whatever you have to do now to make sure they don’t give us difficulties at the wrong time later.” Rivero paused and looked around at his officers.
““I don’t want anyone coming to me while we’re in Union space and saying, ‘We can’t jump out on schedule,’ for any reason. If we don’t make that transit, we’re all dead. Period.
“Questions?” The belligerent tone Rivero used for the word insured that there would be none. “Very well.
Get busy. Get us ready for Union.”
Arias Rivero retreated to his cabin after leaving the wardroom. The tension that had gripped him when Admiral Truscott gave him his orders hadn’t eased. It was more a result of Truscott’s unwarranted insinuation that he might not be equal to the assignment than the risks of the mission itself.
What did I ever da to earn such a slur? Rivero asked himself again. It still stung enough to warm his cheeks. Nothing! The admiral must be losing his grip to snap so quickly, so unjustly. That didn’t ease his embarrassment, his anger. And anger was no better a mate to take into combat than tension.
Rivero sat on his bunk and leaned back against the bulkhead. He stared at the room’s single decoration, a framed letter on the opposite wall. After a time, his tension started to ease. Eventually, he managed to smile. That letter was a commendation from the governor of Dorado, his homeworld, for being its first citizen to be accepted for the Commonwealth Naval Academy on Buckingham. At the ripe old age of eighteen, Arias Rivero had been the celebrity of the moment on Dorado. His photograph had been in the news, there had been interviews, public affairs, enough to turn the head of anyone, let alone the rather naive son of a systems technician in a nanotech factory. Five years later, when Ensign Rivero came home on his graduation leave, there had been a similar todo. Our whole world is proud of you, he had been told—repeatedly. The welcome could hardly have been greater if he had just been named first lord of the Admiralty. But by that time, Arias was much less naive. His years on Buchanan had shown him just how provincial Dorado was. The celebration on his return was almost embarrassing, a distraction from the real purpose for his visit, to marry his adolescent sweetheart and take her back to Buckingham. They had only been home twice in the seventeen years since. But that first letter of commendation was still his most prized possession.
Feeling the first bit of relaxation he had known in the hours since his conference with Admiral Truscott, Arias stretched out on his bunk. He took a series of deep breaths and focused his mind on the image of his wife, an image that remained as fresh as that of the letter on the wall. Teresa and their four children, one son and three daughters.
Thirty minutes, Arias thought. I can afford to sleep for thirty minutes. Within seconds, he was asleep, certain that he would wake on his own when the half hour was up.
• • •
Every position on the bridge was manned before the call to quarters. The corresponding backup positions in the secondary command station were also manned, ready to take over in an instant if that became necessary. Rivero sat in his chair overlooking the bridge stations and looked around—nervous, but satisfied that Lancer was as prepared as she could be. A few minutes earlier, Rivero had broadcast a message to the crew, laying out for them exactly what they were going to do, giving such reassurances as he could. “Naval warfare will never be the same after today,” he had told them. “What we are about to do will set the standards that other ships and crews will seek to match in the months and years ahead.”
A message rocket had been launched just before that, aimed back to Admiral Truscott, programmed to make the journey in two jumps, ending up three hours’ normalspace travel from the flagship. The entire message was:
WE ARE ABOUT TO TRANSIT TO UNION. LANCER
Give the old bastard something to think about, Arias had thought—with more than a little satisfaction—when he keyed in the message.
“All stations report ready for Qspace transit, ready for jombat,” the first officer reported.
Rivero nodded. “Set the countdown for Qspace insertion.”
Thirty seconds. The standard announcement sounded. Arias focused his attention on the countdown numbers on nis complink screen. He was breathing shallowly, already keyed up for combat. There would be little time to relax until after the engagement was over… one way or the other. The rapidly elapsing seconds now, perhaps three minutes in Qspace, and then the hectic ninety seconds over Union. After that? Arias scarcely dared to think past that point. If all went well, they would be back in Qspace, feeling a need to celebrate. If things didn’t go well, they might not feel anything at all.
At least give us a clean ending, Arias thought, scarcely recognizing that he was praying.
“Qspace insertion,” the navigator announced. The exterior monitors showed a featureless gray replacing the starspeckled blackness of normalspace.
“All systems nominal,” the first officer reported. “Nilssen generators show no strain. All departments report ready for action.”
“Navigator?” Rivero asked.
“Exit Qspace in seventythree seconds. The plot for the next transit is already laid in. I’ll key it as an action command the instant we enter Union’s space. We’ll have any necessary updates integrated within fortyfive seconds… provided we’re within a million miles of where we’re supposed to be off Union.”
“I want exterior recorders up and running now, before we exit Qspace,” Rivero said. We’ll have something to show the admiral, if we make it back to Buchanan, he told himself. I hope he enjoys the show.
The thirtysecond countdown started. “On your toes,” Rivero said over the allship channel. “Remember, when we come out over Union, we only have ninety seconds to do our damage. Good hunting.”
Once Lancer emerged in Union space, Aria
s found himself effectively no more than a spectator on his own bridge. He watched the monitors. He listened to the reports of his bridge officers. He sweated. The ninetysecond limit meant that there was little he could do to affect the operation of his ship during that time. There would be no relaying of target sightings for him to pick and choose and then direct the weapons officer as to which he should aim at. There were no navigational commands, no firing of attitude rockets to improve the ship’s course. Nothing.
Lancer emerged from Qspace almost precisely on target. The main construction docks were ahead, above, and slightly to the left of the ship. There were four ships, one Cutter class troopship, two dreadnoughts, and one frigate docked in line aft—west—of the docks. There were a few small craft visible as well, but none were particularly close, or directly in Lancer’s path.
The decks and bulkheads of Lancer started to vibrate as the weapons stations began unloading munitions as rapidly as they could aim and fire. A time line on every complink screen clicked down the time remaining before the escape transit. The bridge lights dimmed by 10 percent, briefly, as the ship’s generators took up the strain of maintaining maximum fire rates.
Captain Rivero tried to keep track of the rateoffire indicators on his command console, but the numbers cycled too rapidly. At the same time, there was really little of interest to see on the exterior monitors. Through most of the ninety seconds, only energy weapons—those that raced through the vacuum at the speed of light—were engaging enemy targets, and military targets were especially hardened against that sort of weapon. It was only in the last few seconds that Lancer’s missiles started meeting defensive weapons, and targets.
There was one magnificent blast, from a ship in the center of the construction docks, that started to blossom in the last three seconds before Lancer poked its way back into Qspace.
Arias could hardly keep from joining in on the cheers that sounded on Lancer’s bridge. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for an instant as the reassuring gray of Qspace surrounded his ship.
