by Leo Champion
“Do it on your command, Mathieu,” said Lavasseur. “Your H-bombs are ready?”
“Oui, madame.”
* * *
“So what the hell do we do now?” Kennedy asked. They were gathered around the grave and Dr. Cramer, with a knife someone had given her, was finishing an inscription on a flat rock.
“We get back to Hubris,” said Lennon.
“We get back to Kandin-dak,” said Newbauer firmly. “And you will all show me the damn respect due to a lieutenant-colonel. You got that, you Legion riffraff?”
“Got that,” said the Goldneck corporal, a clean-shaven copper-skinned man named Alvarez. He gave Newbauer a smart salute.
Newbauer glared around.
“We got it,” said Senechal followed a second later by his co-pilot, who’d been nursing a banged knee from the crash. “Sir.”
Cramer glared back at the colonel and didn’t salute. Fuckwit, she thought.
“I’m taking you lot back to Kandin-dak and safety,” Newbauer repeated.
Mullins looked at Jorgenson.
I wonder how they’re doing back at Hubris, he thought.
Chapter Eleven
“Where the hell is Senior Lieutenant Gardner?” Croft demanded of big black Master Sergeant Ortega from the top of the Fort Hubris blockhouse. Heavy weapons surrounded them – mortars, .50 machine-guns and that brutal 40mm belt-fed grenade launcher, looking out across the turrets.
Army combat engineers had disassembled the hundreds of yards of razor wire surrounding the former Black Gangers’ enclosure, were re-emplacing it around the walls of the fort, near the top just under the parapet. The – two hundred, so far – Black Gangers who’d been brought home on trucks and the big double-rotored chopper, had been employed digging a ditch around the fort, at the base of its walls.
“No idea, sir,” said Ortega.
“Get MacGallagher. Wait – there’s nothing useful for me to do around here.” Pacing the ramparts, watching skilled men do what they’d been trained to do. They had Dunwell and Atkinson to supervise, they didn’t need him. “I’ll go to him.”
“Sir, Sergeant Garza reports,” said Ortega, listening through an earbud.
Second Squad, his own platoon, A truck must have brought him, Team Garza, and their Black Gang already back.
“Good,” said Croft absently.
More men were showing up, returning. Croft headed down the stairway past Hubris’ high watchtower, down into the in-the-walls room where the company communications section were re-setting themselves up.
“MacGallagher.”
The bearded company signals chief stood and gave a salute. Around him, other men – Croft recognized Sergeant Robinson – were configuring their communications gear.
“At ease and back to whatever you were doing. Do we have any word from Gardner yet?”
“No sir, but Lieutenant Henry says he’s almost back.”
“Get me Mullins then. He’s with Lieutenant-Colonel Newbauer, they should be flying back.”
“Sir. You want the headset?”
A moment later there was a response.
“Bravo Home, this is Bravo Three.” Mullins’ voice.
“Three,” said Croft. “Three Actual. Status?”
“Bad news, sir. We were shot out of the sky and may have to walk home. We’re getting ready to walk for now, any ass— bzzzt.”
The connection became a bzzzt.
“Sir,” said MacGallagher. “Broad-spectrum jamming, we has it. Someone just engaged jamming. And blew the satellites. We are totally out of communication with everyone beyond line of sight.”
* * *
“Corporal Hill,” said Mandvi, holding up the pager. “We’ve got a situation. Fort messaged us with a red alert.”
Hill took the device. The field communications devices were capable of reception but not transmission, with the exception of a one-shot emergency satellite burst that would burn out a capacitor designed for that purpose.
“Nomads now hostile,” the message said. “Abandon work and head for fort. Red One.”
Corporal Hill spat on the ground to give himself a moment of thought.
“Well shit,” he said. “Janja! Check this out.”
The lance-corporal went over and did.
“Well, Corp,” Janja said. “Looks like we’re in the shit.”
“What do we do?” the squad leader asked. “We’re over two hundred miles from Hubris.”
“We walk,” said Janja. “We walk, and we thank God there are those wells between here and there.”
“What are we going to do for food?” Hill asked.
“Hey,” said Sergeant Greene. “I’m in charge here and don’t you forget it.”
“So what do you think we should do, Sergeant Greene?” Janja asked sarcastically.
Big MP Sergeant Greene shrugged.
“I dunno. What you guys were saying, I guess. But don’t forget I’m in charge.”
“Of course you are,” said Janja.
* * *
A couple of minutes earlier…
“We are cleared to go,” said the European Federation Navy lieutenant-commander in orbit above Dinqing. “All of our vessels are free.”
Arlene Lavasseur nodded.
“Go, then.”
“Timers set… ejecting…”
“Thirty… twenty-nine… twenty-eight…”
“Two… three… one!”
* * *
Four multiple-megaton nuclear bombs exploded at equally-spaced locations high in planetary orbit. That was fine for the European infrastructure, which had been prepared for this; European ships had left into A-space and the essential orbital infrastructure had been replicated already by ground links.
Not so much for the American and independent satellites around Dinqing. The massive bombs’ actual explosions were trivial in space, but the high-powered electromagnetic shockwaves they also blasted out – not so much.
Some military electronics survived, hardened against this kind of thing. But most of the American and independent electronics, including the civilian-spec systems the Legion depended largely upon in the outer field, were fried.
At the same time as the relay points for the digital network in the wastelands were blown, broad-spectrum jammers that had been set in place lit up. They produced thick jamming noise across a rotating variety of wavelengths, essentially making communications in the wastelands impossible.
For both sides, admittedly; you couldn’t set jamming to avoid given frequencies without your enemy soon learning what those frequencies were and switching to them for their own communication. You had to block all usable wavelengths.
But, thought Colonel Arlene Lavasseur, we have a plan. We don’t need so much coordination. They will, and we’ve just wiped out their communications.
Her father and her big brother would be proud of her.
She wondered how Andre was doing, out in the wastelands. Little brother’s first mission, but the start of a long and glorious career like the rest of the family.
* * *
“Sir,” the communications tech reported to Major Andre Lavasseur, who rode next to Tenzhen son of Venzhen at the head of the Anzing Hills horde. Behind them were thousands, the tens of thousands of nomads of the horde, sending a trail of brown dust a mile high into the sky.
It felt like all the nomads in the wastelands, although Andre knew his section was only a tiny part of the millions that were moving east, to disrupt and destroy the American client-state of the Chongdin Empire.
He envisaged glorious and heroic cavalry charges, stingers blowing away airborne counterattacks. He envisioned slashing with his cavalry saber and firing with his submachinegun, finally engaging in the action he’d been groomed for.
He envisioned glory.
But now he turned to the tech, a Swiss named Monier. The Swiss were fine techs, although they lacked much in leadership. A mongrel race themselves like the Yanks, but a pure mongrel race; clean mongrels with
a place of respect among the steep European hierarchy.
“Report.”
“Sir, communications are blown. Satellites blasted and ground jamming enabled.”
“So we’re on our own ahead of schedule,” said cynical Captain von Kallweit, Lavasseur’s right-hand man – and, he was intelligent enough to realize, check. The experienced von Kallweit was here to make sure Andre, on his first mission, didn’t do anything too dangerous or impulsive.
Well, Andre would listen to the experienced man. But he was a Lavasseur, a member of that legendary family. His family’s gut instinct rang true; it had served the European Federation well for a hundred-plus years.
“We’re going to attack,” he decided – it sounded more decisive if he said he was deciding it now, although it had been in the plan all along – Fort Kandin-dak, known locally as ‘Hubris’. We will take it! Then we will assault and overwhelm the Vasimir and Anhak passes, rightful property of this horde!”
He raised his loudspeaker and translated those words to the eastern Qing eastern interland. There was a resounding – resounding – shout, echoing from horde nomads past his line of sight.
God damn, field operations were awesome. Why had his family stuck him protectively in staff and non-operational duties for his eight years since graduating from Advanced Officer Academy? von Kallweit wasn’t much older than him and von Kallweit had fought on six worlds. He, Andre Lavasseur, the legend-to-be from a family of legends, was ready to do his duty!
And his duty was thrilling.
“We’re going to attack Kandin-dak,” he declared proudly.. “And then we will move on to savage the Vasimir and Anhak passes and commence wreckage upon the Chongdin Empire! We will not rule – but we will destroy!”
Cheers resounded around him.
* * *
Senior Lieutenant Gardner cursed.
“Get that Mutt running again!”
The hood of the open-backed four man vehicle was open. Lance-Corporal Borchardt and Corporal Arwen, whose field jobs included driving the boss, or acting boss, around, were dithering around inside the engine of the broken-down vehicle. But they were a clerk and a radio man; Arwen knew how to drive but he didn’t know engines.
Radio was dead, Borchardt had said. And the last truck, carrying a load of Black Gangers and their escorts, had headed off into the west toward Hubris with its rear wheels kicking up a flume of dust, minutes ago.
It would be back, hopefully. Maybe the driver or his offsider would know how to fix whatever had gone wrong with his jeep.
He didn’t know.
What he knew was that as the acting commander of Bravo Company, he had to get back to his men!
“Fix it, damn you!”
* * *
Billy Kaggs had watched out of the corner of his eye. Something bad coming over the team comm that their guards had held. He, Longneck Simon and some of the others had exchanged glances. This could be their opportunity.
Quietly he gestured at men and assigned targets. There were only about a dozen men in the crew he could really count on; the rest would do what he said but only out of fear, which you couldn’t rely on.
He used Legion hand-gestures. One benefit to working with trained fighting men was that unlike civilian convicts, you had the same nonverbal shorthand. Many of them had shivs; everyone had picks and shovels. Those had been sharpened from hard work and might do worse than the makeshift blades.
“Uh,” said Corporal Ciampa, “guys.”
“Guys,” said the MP overseeer, a corporal himself. A big man with a blond goatee. “Down your tools and listen the fuck up. We’ve got an incident.
“Yeah,” muttered Kaggs under his breath as he palmed his shiv. “You have got an incident. Coming to you.”
“For reasons you fucks aren’t authorized to know, we’ve been told to march east to Kandin-dak as fast as we can. Keep tools, because if the nomads attack then we’re going to have to defend ourselves.”
Longneck Simon raised a hand like a schoolchild, but it worked.
“Yeah, you.” The MP pointed at him.
“What’s happening, Mr. Policeman?”
“We’ve got an incident, convict. We get moving west. That’s all you need to know.”
Simon was edging quietly forward. Simon’s designation was the cop, who held a submachinegun; the other men had M-25s, which would take momentarily more time to bring into action and thus were less of a threat.
“Go,” Kaggs gestured, and snarled that word under his breath instinctively.
Men charged forwards, overwhelming the guards and the overseer.
Kaggs, whose target was the team leader – Corporal Ciampa – sank his shiv into the bastard’s throat, stabbing and pounding and brutally stabbing until the man’s throat was a red mess and the man was slumped and limp.
Now that his man was dead, Kaggs looked over the rest of the scene. Taken by surprise, it looked like their overseer crew had successfully been beaten and stabbed to death, without getting so much as a single shot off.
His men were looting weapons and ammo off their men, who’d all been dogpiled like this Ciampa had been. To make this certain, Kaggs took Ciampa’s M-25 and un-clipped the ammo belt.
“So we’re free,” he announced, while his right hand hunted for the hideout gun each man was going to have, all these fuckers or most of them being Legion veterans. “Now to free some others. And prove ourselves as bandits!”
There was a cheer. Free again!
* * *
“Ma’am,” said Tribolo to Governor Evanston.
That woman glared at her chief of staff. From the screens in front of her, this situation was rapidly devolving from crisis-bad to disaster-worse.
And it was on her watch. Despite what a shock it had been, despite how nobody – other than that punk-ass Legion officer Doom, fuck his deceptive ways – had warned her of it, she was going to be the one blamed for it. This was going to mean the end of her career unless things reversed fast.
She didn’t want to be Governor of Dinqing. It was a necessary step to take in her political career – voters tended not to trust you with a major state if you didn’t have executive experience in a colony first – but the job she wanted was Governor of Illinois.
That itself was something she wanted, but it would also set up for the Presidential run she hoped to make four years from now. This was going to look bad on her record back home, and it – “presided over the troubles in Dinqing,” she could just hear one of her more likely primary opponents saying – would not help in a national race.
This was going to make her look bad.
Bad.
Damn. It.
“Yes,” she said to Tribolo.
“Satellites have been blown in orbit. They’ve wiped our extraplanetary communications capacity. Ma’am. At the same time, they’ve engaged broad-spectrum ground-side radio jamming all across the Wastelands. Ma’am.”
“So we’ve lost communications with the Wastelands,” Governor Evanston surmised.
“And beyond. Everywhere we lack hardwired connections.”
“Well shit.”
* * *
“Communications blown,” the aide reported to Arlene Lavasseur. “Our envoy in Vazhao should currently be reporting our most sincere apologies for the unfortunate accident. Accidents.”
“Four ten-megaton explosions in orbit at once, while all of our ships are out-system,” scoffed Lavasseur’s personal assistant Major Bujold. “Accident!”
Ships did occasionally have explosive drive problems, very very occasionally. One, once, would have been plausible, although not really in the context of major trouble groundside. Interstellar travel was hardly a hundred percent safe, and occasionally you did get a catastrophic-level disaster.
Four simultaneously, that explosively, explosions in space would be a reach, Lavasseur knew. But the mongrel Yanks would pretend to believe it, for the same reason Paris accepted Washington’s transparent lies. Nobody wanted open war.
Yet.
* * *
Mullins put down the radio headpiece and cursed under his breath.
“Well what, Private?” Newbauer demanded.
“Sir, we’ve been cut off from communications. With everywhere. Looks like they’ve employed broad-spectrum jamming.”
There came a few muttered other curses from others in the party, Lennon and Jorgenson particularly.
“The good news, sir –I can isolate the source of the jamming. Just the direction, but that’s good enough. We can go there and shut it down.”
“It say where?”
“No sir. Just the direction. West.”
“West is Hub— Kandin-dak,” said Newbauer. “We’re going to Diamond North, then Kandin-dak and safety. Got that?”
“Sir,” said Mullins. “Yes sir.”
You are one dangerous idiot, he thought.
But the compass indicators said the nearest major jamming source wasn’t likely to be far from Diamond North.
Hmm.
* * *
“Sir,” said Williams to Croft.
“Tell me you got Gardner on the line.” Because Croft did not want this responsibility. People, in trucks and Mutts, were coming into Kandin-dak. Most of Third Platoon was home already – aside from First Squad, which was far out, extended past Diamond North.
“No, sir,” said Williams. He pointed over the wall of the fort. “Look.”
Croft followed the platoon sergeant’s finger, east. A mighty plume of dust was rising in the east.
“That’s not what it looks like,” Croft muttered under his breath.
“Bet it is, sir. Looks like we’ve got company coming. Lots of them.”
* * *
The pair of loaded trucks sped across the wasteland, and Corporal Giovanni-Paolo Pantaleo really did not appreciate the situation they’d found themselves in.
