by David Drake
The first charge bulged the sides of the cargo box. Margulies ducked in time, before the shock wave compressed the mass of burning propellants and detonated them. A blast hugely greater than that of the guerrilla mine flattened vegetation in a hundred-meter radius and sent tonnes of excavated soil skyward on an orange fireball.
The surface waggled, flipping Margulies like a pancake. She hit the ground again and bounced onto her back, stunned but no more severely injured than the mine had left her. Dirt rained down for tens of seconds.
All the shooting from the left side of the roadway ceased. A guerrilla, stark naked and bleeding from nose and ears, ran out of the trees. A tribarrel on the combat car roaring forward from the rear of the convoy cut the man in half.
The Frisian vehicle swung around the bogged second road train, ripping the right treeline with its full firepower. The guerrillas on that side were already disengaging. Hoses of cyan plasma devoured the few snipers trying to provide a rear guard for the main body.
Artillery shells began to land on both treelines. They were late as Margulies had feared, but at least they were accurate.
She saw a Brigantian carbine, dropped or flung on the ash ten meters from the crater. She crawled toward the weapon, ignoring the pain in her legs.
Halfway between her and the smoking gap in the treeline, a man in Frisian khaki rose on one arm and waved his muddy pistol at Margulies. Her eyes filled with tears of joy, but she continued to crawl.
Nieuw Friesland
The door opened and a full colonel stepped unexpectedly into the anteroom. Sten Moden rose to his feet and saluted crisply.
“Captain Moden?” the colonel said. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”
Which, when asked down a gradient of three steps in rank, was a rhetorical question if Moden had ever heard one.
“Yes sir,” Moden said, sounding as alert and ready as he knew how. His tailored dress uniform was brand new; he’d had his hair cut that morning—he’d showered afterward to wash away the clippings; and for the first time in his military career he was wearing all—all but one—of the medal ribbons to which he was entitled.
Not even for this purpose would Sten Moden wear the most recent citation for bravery. That would be too much like drinking the blood of his own troops.
Moden followed the colonel, Dascenzo according to his name tape but not somebody Moden knew or knew of, into a comfortable office. One wall was a holographic seascape. Waves surged from horizon to horizon without a hint of land.
The view could have been from Dascenzo’s home-world. Moden’s suspicion was that the view was intended as a soothing backdrop for interviews by an officer with a medical rather than personnel specialty.
Moden wasn’t worried about his physical profile. If that was the only determining factor, the Frisian Defense Forces would give him a new assignment with no difficulty. The fact that he was talking to a colonel instead of an enlisted clerk proved what Moden was afraid of: there was a problem with his psychiatric evaluation.
“Please, sit down,” Colonel Dascenzo said. He gestured toward a contour-adapting chair. “This isn’t anything formal, Captain. I’d just like to chat with you.”
The chair into which Moden lowered himself was the only piece of furniture in the office, save for Dascenzo’s own console with integral seat. Moden wondered how many sensors were built into the chair or focused on its user from the surrounding walls.
Captain Sten Moden had given the Frisian Defense Forces valued, even heroic, service, so no invasive methods would be used on him. Apart from that, however—
The FDF would recompense its veterans for past service, but the organization had to look to the future as well.
“I’ve gone over your file, of course, Captain,” Dascenzo said. “I must say I’m impressed by it.”
Moden decided a slight smile was appropriate. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “All I’m looking for now is a chance to continue serving Col-C-President Hammer for the foreseeable future.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to check with you about,” Dascenzo said. He looked serious, though he wasn’t scowling. His expression was probably as calculated as Moden’s own. “You do realize that you qualify for a pension at one hundred percent pay?”
“Yes sir,” Moden agreed with a measured nod, “and I very much appreciate the honor implicit in that offer. But I’m still able to provide the FDF with useful service, and I’d like to stay on the active list for as long as that’s true.”
“The extent of your injuries …” Dascenzo said, letting his expression darken into a frown. His voice trailed off, forcing the captain to decide what the question really was.
Moden decided to take a chance. He rose slowly to his full enormous height. “Sir,” he said as he gripped the arm of the heavy chair with his right hand, “my injuries were extensive. What remains of me, however—”
Moden’s biceps muscles flexed, threatening the weave of his uniform jacket. He pulled with the inexorable strength of a chain hoist.
“—is more than you’ll find filling most of the slots in the FDF!”
The chair jerked upward with the sound of ripping metal. Only then did Moden realize that he’d been tugging against the conduits serving hard-wired sensors rather than merely gravity.
“Sorry, sir,” he said ruefully, looking at the wreckage of a piece of very expensive equipment in his hand. He’d made the point he was trying to make. If he’d blown his psych profile off the map, then he may as well hung for a sheep as a lamb. “But strong and stupid has a place in an army too.”
“Bloody hell, man,” Colonel Dascenzo murmured. “Look, put that thing down before you drop it on your foot and do yourself some real damage.”
His expression softened as Moden obeyed him. The chair balanced awkwardly on the ends of tubes which had stretched and twisted before they broke. “You really do want to stay in the service, don’t you?” Dascenzo said softly.
“Yes sir,” Moden said, standing formally at ease. “I really do.”
“There’s a team being formed to survey a planet called Cantilucca,” Dascenzo said. “They’ll need an officer with a logistics background. Do you want the slot?”
“Yes sir,” Moden said. “I’d like that very much.” He heard his voice tremble with the relief he felt.
“You’ve got it,” Dascenzo said matter-of-factly. He touched the keyboard of his console. “Assignment orders will be waiting for you in your quarters.”
The colonel threw another switch, then looked up at Moden again. “Captain,” he said, “you don’t have to believe me, but I just turned off all the recording devices. Would you answer me a question, just for my personal interest?”
“Yes sir,” Moden said. He flexed his right hand behind his back. Now that it was over, he too was surprised at the amount of force his body had been able to deliver to the task he had set it.
“Why do you want to stay in uniform so badly?” Dascenzo asked.
Moden smiled, amused at himself. “Because I screwed up,” he said. “I therefore owe a debt. For a while I thought I should kill myself—I suppose you know that?”
Dascenzo nodded, tapping the data-gorged console without taking his eyes off Moden’s.
Moden nodded also. “I decided that wouldn’t pay anybody back,” he continued. “I don’t know who I owe, you see, but that wouldn’t help anybody. I—I believe that if I’m given duties to perform, then someday I’ll be able to …balance the account.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Does that make me crazy, Colonel?” he asked.
“Captain Moden,” Dascenzo said, “‘crazy’ isn’t a term I like to use when discussing professional soldiers. What I do know, however, is that if all you want is a chance to do your duty—I’d be a traitor to Nieuw Friesland if I took you out of her service. You’re dismissed, Captain.”
Dascenzo rose and extended his right hand across the desk to shake Moden’s hand. The psychiatrist was smiling sadly.
Earlier: Trin
ity
The sound dived into the night of his mind, twisting deeper like a toothed whale hunting squid in the darkness a thousand fathoms down. It found him, gripped him, and tore him back to surface consciousness from the black gage coma in which he slept.
He didn’t know his name. He didn’t know where he was. But the whine of the base unit to which he’d plugged his commo helmet was the call of duty, and not even the half-dozen stim cones of the past evening could deny his duty.
He stabbed the speaker button, cueing the unit to continuous operation. “Go ahead,” he croaked.
He couldn’t see anything. Existence was a white throb shattered by jagged bands of darkness.
“Cap’n, it’s Filkerson,” a man said, his voice pitched high and staccato. “That load of local-manufacture pyrotechnics that arrived today, I can hear the crates, they’re chirping, and I don’t like it a bit!”
Shards of light spun. They reformed suddenly into present surroundings and the past life leading up to them:
He was Captain Sten Moden, Base Supply Officer serving the regimental field force of Frisian troops on Trinity. He was in semi-detached quarters, three rooms and a bath connected by a dogtrot to the Base Intelligence Officer’s suite.
The earthen berm surrounding Trinity Base’s ammo dump was 400 meters to the west of the officers’ lines. Filkerson was sergeant of the dump’s guard detachment tonight, which meant this was a real problem.
“Right,” Moden said. “Alert the emergency team. Start dousing the crates now, don’t take any chances. Are they in a bunker?”
Spasms wracked his muscles, but the aftereffects of the gage would pass shortly. It was like being dropped into ice water while soundly asleep. Why in hell did a crisis have to blow up the one night out of a hundred that he overdid it on stim cones?
“Blow up” wasn’t the most fortunate thought just now.
“No sir, there wasn’t time!” Filkerson said with an accusatory tone in his voice. “This is the batch that came in after hours, and you told us to accept it anyway!”
“I know what I did,” Moden said flatly. He’d donned his trousers and tunic while talking. Now he pulled on his boots and sealed their seams. He didn’t bother with the strap-and-buckle failsafe closure. “Handle your end, Sergeant. I’ll be with you as soon as I make a call. Out.”
He broke the contact by lifting his commo helmet from the base unit. He settled the helmet on his head with one hand as he switched the base to local and keyed a pre-set.
As he waited for the connection, Moden shook himself to rid his muscles of the last of the gage tremors. He was coldly furious, with Loie Leonard and more particularly with himself because of what he’d let Loie talk him into doing.
“Yes, what is it?” a woman said. She sounded irritated—as anybody would be, awakened two hours before dawn—but also guarded, because very few people had this number.
“Loie,” Moden said, “it’s Sten. I need you here at the base soonest with manufacturing records for everything in that load of flares and marking grenades you just sent us. There’s a problem, and part of it’s your problem.”
He squeezed the desk support hard so that the rage wouldn’t come out in his voice. Tendons rippled over the bones of his hands. Moden was a big man, so tall that almost anybody else would have claimed the finger’s breadth he lacked of two meters. He had difficulty finding boots to fit him, though now that he was in logistics, it was a lot easier than it had been with a line command.
“Sten, I’m at home in bed,” Loie said in irritation. “I don’t have any records here, and I don’t see what there is that couldn’t wait for dayli—”
“Soonest, Loie!” Moden said. “Soonest, and I mean it!”
He switched off the base unit so violently that the stand overset. He ignored the mess and started for the door.
Sten Moden had held his present position for thirteen standard months. Most of the field force’s munitions were shipped from Nieuw Friesland. The expense was considerable, but powergun ammunition and self-guided shells for the regiment’s rocket howitzers had to be manufactured to the closest tolerances if they were to function properly.
Supplies of other material were available cheaper and at satisfactory quality on Trinity. Because the local government had hired the Frisians at a monthly flat rate, cost cutting had a direct, one-toone effect on President Hammer’s profit margin. Sten Moden was responsible for procuring food, bedding, soft-skinned vehicles, and hundreds of other items on the local economy.
Trip flares and smoke grenades were high usage items for the field force. Forges de Milhaud had underbid other suppliers on the past three contracts. In the course of his duties, Moden had gotten
to know Loie Leonard, the woman who owned the company.
Know her very well.
Moden didn’t have a vehicle at his quarters, and he didn’t want to waste time summoning one from the motor pool. He began to jog toward the munitions dump, letting his long arms flap instead of pumping them as he ran. The floodlights illuminating the fourmeter-high berm emphasized the yellow-green cast of the local soil.
This afternoon Forges de Milhaud had delivered a load of pyrotechnics after working hours. Indig labor crews had to be off-post at sundown, so deliveries couldn’t be properly sorted and inspected for quality.
According to standard operating procedure, Moden should have refused to accept the load until the next working day when it could be processed properly. This was an 8th Night, so delivery would take place after the weekend.
In normal circumstances, Moden might or might not have followed SOP. He didn’t like red tape, but it was a fact of life in any complex organization. The field force had a twelve-day supply of flares and grenades on hand, so there was no duty-related reason for the supply officer to cut corners.
But Loie called him, explaining that she needed acceptance now in order to meet her payroll. Moden had called Filkerson, telling him to let the drivers dump their cargo where it could be sorted in the morning of 1st Night.
And Moden had visited Loie at a hotel near the Forges offices. Later she went home to her family, and Captain Sten Moden, exalted by gage, returned to Trinity Base.
“Sir! Sir!” Filkerson screeched over the helmet earphones. “We’ve got a fire, a real fire, in the center of the pile. We can’t get to it with the hoses!”
Moden broke into a full run. He switched his helmet to override the carriers of all his subordinates. “Supply Six to all personnel in the dump area. Get outside the berm now! Run for it! There’s nothing inside the berm that’s worth your life!”
He wasn’t sure whether the emergency team was on the same channel or not. He hoped so, or at least that they’d have sense enough to follow the dump staff when the latter started running for the entrance.
Still running, Moden keyed his helmet to a general Trinity Base push. “Supply Six to Base Operations!” he said. He was gasping with fear and exertion. “General alarm! We have an emergency situation at the ammo dump. If it blows, debris may injure personnel anywhere in the compound and start fires! Over!”
Moden was twenty meters from the separate outwork shielding the entrance to the dump. A burp of orange flame flashed momentarily above the berm. The ground shuddered, and Filkerson screamed over the unit channel.
A firetruck on a hovercraft chassis howled through the dump entrance, slid up on the outwork as it made the necessary ninety-degree turn, and accelerated down the branch through which Moden was entering the dump.
Moden leaped sideways to save himself. The panicked driver hadn’t noticed him. Four firefighters with airpacks and flame-resistant garments, and three of Moden’s khaki-clad guard detachment, clung to side-rails of the speeding vehicle.
The siren on the headquarters building began to wail. The floodlights around the dump flickered.
There was another explosion, much brighter and louder than the first. Shells and rocket motors emerged in sparkling parabolas from the fireball, screaming like
banshees. The ground shock staggered Moden, though the berm protected him from whizzing fragments like those that sprayed overhead.
The entrance gate, cyclone fencing on a tubular framework, was torn askew. Two khaki figures ran out as Moden entered. The troopers clung to one another, though neither man appeared to be injured.
Moden grabbed them both in his huge arms. “Where’s Sergeant Filkerson?” he demanded.
“Via, he’s back there!” one of the troopers screamed. “The shack came down on him and we couldn’t get him out!”
Moden flung the pair out toward safety. He’d thought of ordering them to help him, but they didn’t look to be in shape to do that or anything else just now.
The guard shack had been to the immediate right of the dump entrance. It was constructed of dirt, stabilized with a plasticizer and compacted.
The locally made pyrotechnics had been off-loaded adjacent to the shack, as good a place as any since they couldn’t be processed at the moment. When the pile exploded, the shock wave shattered the near wall of the building and collapsed the rest onto Filkerson, inside using the radio. It was hard to believe that anybody beneath the heavy slabs could be alive, but Filkerson’s voice still moaned through the commo helmet. The sergeant had been—in a manner of speaking—lucky.
The floodlights went out. The dump glowed red in a dozen locations, bunkers where further material had been ignited by the previous blasts. Moden thumbed his helmet visor to light-amplification mode and began shifting the ruin of the guard shack, chunk by chunk.
The choice was speed or caution, and under the present conditions speed won going away. Moving the mass of shattered walls was much like playing pick-up sticks. There was always a chance that when Moden’s huge muscles bunched to hurl a block clear, the remaining slabs would shift and crush Filkerson like a caterpillar on the highway; but if Moden waited for specialized rescue equipment, blast shocks were going to make the pile settle anyway.
