Into the Maelstrom

by David Drake

  The damaged merchantmen wouldn’t slow down deployment all that much. In the Brasilian’s shoes, Allenson would just blow open the hulls where necessary to create new unloading hatches.

  He decided to stick to the plan and wait for the Brasilians to attack Trent’s fortifications. His raw troops would perform much better in fortified positions. The thought reminded him of something, the Buller Line across the Douglas Hundreds faced the wrong way, but did the line matter anyway?

  He resisted the urge to send Buller a “told you so” message. Allenson had approved the defense layouts, which made them his responsibility irrespective of their originator.

  “There’s something wrong,” Ling said.

  He had been rerunning the video clip and checking it against maps and picture of the archipelago.

  “Colonel Buller was convinced that the Brasilians would land on the mainland rather than the Douglas Hundreds because they would be trapped in the peninsula in a maze of canals, right?”

  “Yes,” Allenson replied.

  “But surely all those issues still apply to their landing zone only with polished knobs on. Have a look at that island chain.”

  Ling keyed up a picture.

  “It’s a mass of shallow low-lying coral reefs separated by deep water channels. It’s going to be a nightmare to transport troops across. Those reefs have never been surveyed so the Brasilians won’t be able to use anything much bigger than a shallow-draft lighter. They’ll be moving in penny packets and then only onto the Douglas Hundreds. Only a maniac would try to cross the mouth of Trent Bay in a lighter. One ocean storm and . . .”

  Ling made the gesture with his hand of a knife cutting a throat.

  “We can send light troops by frame down into the Hundreds to intercept each landing party as they come ashore. With locally superior numbers we can cut them to ribbons and defeat them in detail.”

  Ling’s voice rose in excitement. Someone in the control room started to cheer and then thought better of it.

  Allenson’s mind raced.

  “But why are they doing this? The Brasilian military are not stupid. Okay, inexperienced about conditions this side of the Bight, but they know a great deal about positional warfare, including defended landings. What are we missing?”

  Ling said. “Perhaps it’s simply that they underestimate us.”

  “Perhaps, but after Oxford I would have thought they might do us the curtesy of taking the Stream Army seriously . . .” Allenson’s voice trailed off.

  They called this the loneliness of command. Staff propose but only the general can dispose. For good or ill, only the general has the responsibility. Allenson scanned and rescanned the map of the area, searching for inspiration and eventually he came to a decision.

  “You see this area here,” he said to Ling, pointing to a compound about two thirds of the way down the Hundreds.

  “Slapton,” Ling confirmed.

  “The ground seems to be drier.”

  “That’s why the warehouses are there. It’s somewhat higher than the rest of the peninsula.”

  “Excellent. We’ll dig in a couple of line regiments. It’ll take the Brasilians some time to get that far and we’ll have plenty of warning of their approach. Let’s see if we can trap them in the south of the Hundreds. Use First Brigade, our most reliable troops.”

  “Very good, General, but First Brigade is currently manning the Buller Line.”

  Allenson thought about it.

  “Unfortunately those fortifications face the wrong way. Let’s not abandon them at this stage in case this is part of some colossal feint and they’re going to make a second landing on the mainland. It’s probably a waste of time, but we have the manpower just sitting around in Port Trent. Marching will keep them out of trouble.”

  “How about the Eleventh then? They’re mostly new recruits.”

  “Why not, some regular soldiering experience will do them no harm. Get them moving immediately.”

  Ling grinned.

  “Hurry up and wait. That’s the army way.”

  Ling busied himself at his console, patching through a secure call to Colonel Kaspary.

  Allenson flicked through the holograms again. The doubt worm insisted that he had missed something. His decision was a compromise. All books on military strategy warned against compromise as delivering the worst of all worlds, but it was damn easy for an academic to urge bold strokes from the comfort of an armchair. Allenson lacked the luxury of hindsight to guide him.

  Every military disaster that ever happened started as a bold decision that looked like a good idea to someone somewhere. You never won big from a compromise but you rarely fecked up on a grand scale either. He comforted himself by the thought that strategically he didn’t have to win but survive. It was the Brasilians who needed a tactical victory. Let their commander stake all on a bold thrust while Allenson awaited events.

  He smiled at his own torturous thought processes.

  Hurry up and wait, that was the army way, but mostly one merely waited.

  And Allenson waited—and waited—and waited. The mills of the Home World military might grind fine but by God they ground exceedingly slow. The Brasilian commander continued his ponderous build up and preparations. It seemed likely to Allenson that the enemy would move slowly and deliberately reef by reef onto the Hundreds.

  He imagined that the Brasilian infantry would move forward, keeping all the while under the umbrella of their point defense cannon and dig in. The cannon would then be brought forward to the new position and the whole grisly process repeated.

  Step by step like an invalid on crutches they would advance to the Hundreds and there was not a damn thing he could do about it. The Brasilian commander probably prayed each night that the rebel forces would be desperate enough or rash enough to strike at his line and be fried by the lasers.

  The problem was that the Brasilian strategy made no logical sense when you factored in logistical requirements. They desperately needed to capture a port to resupply their army. It may have been a small force by Home World standards but their men still had to eat and their equipment would need fuel and spares.

  They couldn’t have carried enough materiel in their ragbag improvised fleet to keep them going for more than a few weeks, maybe two months at most, which meant they would need resupply. How many tramp ships could the Brasilians seize to cast ashore on the Hundreds’ treacherous barrier reefs? Damn few of the vessels would survive a single trip, let alone half a dozen, and by now the word would have gone out among the merchant skippers. Many ships would disappear before they could be requisitioned. Bad news was the only thing that traveled faster than light.

  What kept Allenson awake was that he had no idea what the Brasilians intended. In the small hours when his confidence was at its minimum he imagined ever more unlikely and fabulous fiendish tricks from the enemy. He desperately needed information.

  Hawthorn’s spy network drew a blank because the Brasilian forces were fresh in from across the Bight. He hadn’t had time to infiltrate them or subvert anyone. Morton volunteered to personally lead reconnaissance intrusions into the Brasilian landing zone but their security was superb. The Canaries lost so many men without useful result that Allenson forbade further missions. They had no more luck with drones. The police and civilian models available in Port Trent were utterly incapable of penetrating an assault ship’s automated countermeasures.

  So Allenson waited and worried. The only good thing that could be said about the delay was that it gave plenty of time for Kaspery’s First Brigade to dig in at Slapton. He now had defense in depth throughout the Douglas Hundreds based on two solid defensive lines. He ordered continuous and aggressive patrolling to control the dead ground.

  This was imperative in the case of the First. They had to locate and eliminate each Brasilian beachhead when it came ashore before the enemy could dig in and reinforce. In the case of the Eleventh it was really just a case of live ammunition training, as they were safe
ly behind the fortifications manned by the First. He just hoped that the soldiers of the Eleventh didn’t shoot each other too often.

  Allenson had been in bed about two hours when his pad chimed on the emergency line. He struggled up from sleep, having taken a knock-out before retiring. He sat up, slapped the pad to turn off the alarm and stared bleary eyed at the screen. He had three goes at touching the communication key before making contact.

  Trina stirred beside him.

  “What is it?”

  “Go back to sleep. It’s just Ling.”

  “Does he know what time it is?” Trina asked, consulting a clock sculpted to resemble a mythical snake-beast attached to her side of the bed.

  “I’m sure he does. Go back to sleep.”

  “Fat chance if you’re going to hold a conference in the bedroom.”

  Trina swung her legs out of bed and reached down for her robe. Pulling it on, she disappeared out of the bedroom door.

  “Sorry to disturb you, General,” Ling said, clearly embarrassed. He had obviously overheard the matrimonial exchange.

  “I’m sure you have a good reason,” Allenson replied, his tone implying that Ling had better come up with a good reason.

  “Well,” Ling began uncertainly. “It may not be significant but Kaspary reports that he has lost contact with one of his patrols.”

  “Where?” Allenson asked.

  “Down in the southern tip of the Hundreds.”

  Allenson could have wept. There could be a million reasons why a patrol had gone off the air, starting with communication failure and ending with the possibility that the bastards had found a comfortable spot and were taking a kip. He was so tempted to bite off Ling’s head but what stopped him was the possibility, a faint possibility but a finite one nonetheless, that some subterfuge of the enemy was responsible. He didn’t want to become the type of commander whose staff concealed matters to avoid a bollocking.

  He took a deep breath.

  “You were right to inform me immediately but as you say it probably isn’t significant. Let me know if there are any—”

  Allenson stopped because Ling clearly wasn’t listening. He had his head turned away from his panel and was conversing with someone off-screen out beyond the sound isolators around his ’phone.

  He waited until Ling turned back.

  “Sorry, General, another report from Kaspary’s headquarters. The forward patrol base has also gone off air.”

  A cold chill flowed over Allenson as if he had walked under a liquid nitrogen shower. The officer of the watch in the forward patrol base would have been chosen because he could be guaranteed to stay awake. He would have multiple communication devices at his disposal. They couldn’t all have failed.

  “Where is Kaspary now?”

  There was another pause before Ling replied.

  “He’s leading a reconnaissance in force down to the coast.”

  Allenson nodded. Kaspary was a good man, which was why he was in charge of the First, but in this case Allenson wished Kaspary had sent a subordinate and stayed on the line. A mind worm sneered at him for hypocrisy as Allenson would have done exactly the same in Kaspary’s place.

  Trina marched back into the bedroom, holding a mug in each hand. White vapor trailed out into the chilly night air. Allenson smeled the complex herbal aroma of tea.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said, pulling himself from the bed.

  He pulled open the drawer of his bedside table and held a Nightlife capsule against his wrist. Trina pursed her lips, but mercifully she did not comment.

  The stimulant shot through his bloodstream, erasing all hint of tiredness. He felt alert and keyed up. Only the overbright edge to the colors in the softly lit room and the tinny harshness of every slight sound hinted that his body was being tuned beyond normal operating limits.

  “Drink this before you leave. It will do you more good than those damned chemicals,” she said, holding out a mug.

  Allenson took it. He didn’t want a drink, but it was a minor enough concession to matrimonial harmony. He gulped down the hot tea, scalding his tongue and throat. The wide-awake made it taste like copper sulphate, but to his surprise he did feel better after a few more sips. After a few more sips it even began to taste like tea.

  “Don’t you ever sleep, Ling?” Allenson asked, sliding into the chair beside his chief of staff.

  “Sleep, right, I remember that luxury. These days I live on wide-awakes.”

  “Those things are only a short-term solution,” Allenson replied disapprovingly. “You can’t rely on them for any length of time.”

  “No, General,” Ling replied, face devoid of expression.

  “So what’ve we got?”

  “Our communications are being screwed by saturation interference, but I’ve got intermittent contact with Colonel Kaspary. He’s taken a whole regiment with him . . .” Ling checked his pad, “the Greenbelts, and is moving by frame low level and part phased down the center of the peninsula.”

  Ling keyed up a hologram map with a moving red line showing Kaspary’s projected path.

  Allenson nodded. “Good man, Kaspary, he won’t full phase in case the Brasilians have a trap set up in the Continuum.”

  “Yes, sir, but of course that restricts his speed.”

  “You said we’d lost contact with some of our people. Has it been reestablished?”

  Ling shook his head. “No, sir, in fact the problem is spreading.”

  Ling touched the console and overlaid the silent zone over the map. It formed an amorphous orange shape that ran across the bottom of the peninsula and up the coast, facing the mainland like a twisted amoeba. The zone curled around the red line representing Kaspary’s forces as if the metaphorical amoeba was reacting to a needle probe.

  Allenson found the graphic extremely disturbing.

  “Contact Kaspary and order him to withdraw back to the Slapton Line. Do it now.”

  “One moment, General, we have to keep jumping frequencies to sidestep the interference. It’s a bit hit or miss,” said a young woman’s voice behind him.

  “Lieutenant Fendlaigh,” Ling whispered in Allenson’s ear. “Our communications geek.”

  She hunched over a console, long pale brown hair hanging from below a green cap displaying the badge of the army’s engineering section. Hard brown eyes peered through a gap in hair like a child’s pet hamster gazing out of its straw nest. Her fingers danced on her console like a concert pianist in the middle of a solo.

  Thirty years ago Allenson would have dedicated a poem to her, probably a very bad one if past experience was any guide.

  “Got him,” she said triumphantly, pushing back her hair with her left hand while she fine-tuned something with her right.

  “Kaspary,” Allenson said, forgetting her. “Report please.”

  Kaspary’s head appeared above his console. The man’s eyes were wide and he’d lost his helmet.

  “We’ve contacted the enemy. They seem to be raiding in some force.”

  The hologram flashed white and Kaspary ducked momentarily.

  “I’ve ordered A Company to debus from their frames and take up ambush positions to pin the Brasilians. B and C Companies are still mounted and I’ve sent them to probe wide out to the left and right. I’m going to try to turn the Brasilian flanks and pocket them.”

  Kaspary’s head disappeared. A gently flashing soft green light on the blank hologram indicated that they still had communications contact. Kaspary had turned off the feed at his end.

  Allenson resisted the urge to call him back. The colonel was busy. He hardly needed some old fool of a commanding officer nattering on in his hear distractingly when he was trying to fight a battle.

  “I’ve patched into helmet feeds,” the communications officer cut in.

  She really was first class. Allenson made a mental note to remember her name and to mark her down for advancement.

  “Put them up,” he ordered.

  New holograms opened
above the command console. The quality was patchy and the images winked in and out as she made and lost connections. The troops were on night vision, so the images were in shades of blue. Synthetic colors could be overlaid but they added little to resolution and could be positively misleading.

  White streaks marked out incoming laser fire, a burst like a time lapse photograph of a meteor shower marking a heavy weapon. The hologram winked out. Allenson hoped that was because the feed was lost when the trooper threw himself face down rather than the other obvious explanation, that the soldier’s head had been blown off.

  Heavy weapons with a raiding force implied vehicles of some sort. Allenson’s paranoia went up a notch.

  “Find me a feed showing the Brasilians,” he ordered the communications officer.

  “All the engagements on the feeds are at long distance,” she said, voice shrill with excitement. “But the range is closing, hang on.”

  Her fingers danced across the console and a hologram popped up.

  It looked like a giant bathtub on wide tracks, the front square and sloping forward. The tank moved slowly over the muddy surface, gaining just one meter forward for every two meters of track wound underneath the hull.

  The helmet camera was attached to the helmet of a trooper lying in ambush behind a canal. The waterway was not particularly broad, but had syncrete-supported banks suggesting depth. The tank tipped into the canal with a splash and floated. Its tracks churned the water to foam as it swam the few meters to the other side.

  The forward-sloping tracks gripped the syncrete and the machine pulled itself from the water. Its tracks bit and slipped in succession, making the hull judder like a dog shaking itself after a swim.

  “They’ve got amphibious armor,” Allenson said. “The water’s no protection at all.”