Honor of the Legion

by Leo Champion

  “See if the colonel and Hadfield want anything first,” said Faden.

  A moment later Hadfield came back out, a pad in his hand.

  “They’ve found us a flight,” he said happily. “Resupply run to the East Vasimir fortified area where Delta is!”

  “So I take it you don’t want pizza,” Rhee said.

  Hadfield grinned at him.

  “Good luck, guys,” the senior lieutenant said. “If there is anything Delta Company can do to help…”

  “Yeah,” said Faden.

  Doom came out after the lieutenant. Faden had taken his feet off the desk when the commander had first appeared. Now he leaned forwards and stood up.

  “Sir? Anything new?”

  Doom shook his head.

  “Nothing yet. I’m working on a plan. Actually, you and Rhee come in here. There actually has been a development you may as well know about. Broder can mind your desk for a while.”

  “Yessir,” said Faden.

  The battalion commander’s office was decently large – as befit the first-rate housings the battalion had been given in the Administrative Zone – but sparse, to Faden. Of course that was because Doom had just moved in, but a single cardboard box in one corner seemed to be the limit of what he’d brought from his old office. That office had been impersonal, too.

  “Take seats,” Doom gestured at the chairs facing each other in one corner. “Pizza should be arriving in a minute, too.”

  Doom firmly closed the door and sat down opposite Faden, who after a moment sat himself.

  “A development I may as well know about, sir?” Faden asked.

  “On the first day of the siege, Bravo Company – the acting first sergeant, as Croft reported – killed a man who was almost certainly an agent of the Department. I thought it was possible they’d take an interest in the situation there, because of that.”

  Faden and Rhee nodded.

  “We’ve learned the name of that agent, Andre Lavasseur. Little brother of one of the top Department officers on Dinqing. Bravo Company didn’t just kill any Department agent – they killed, technically under a white flag, the younger brother of Colonel Arlene Lavasseur.

  “It’s no longer possible that Kandin-dak has the Department’s attention. It is definite that we have their attention. At the highest levels.”

  “That… doesn’t seem like a good thing. But to have hacked our communications – so soon? Is the Department really that good?”

  “I don’t think they have the computing resources on this planet to brute-force the codes,” said Doom, “although they’ll try, and put every computer they can spare to work on it. But they could have already had them.”

  “Sir, why don’t you just switch to new codes? You don’t seem to mind the Euros listening at all; you don’t even want most of the battalion to know they’re listening. Sir,” asked Faden, realizing the insanity of this, “how do you know they’re even likely to be listening?”

  “They’re listening. They have the codes and they’re listening,” said Doom. “We know they’re listening, but they don’t know we know they are.”

  It took Faden a moment to figure that one out.

  “So we can give them false information?”

  “Exactly, Captain.”

  “But what’s the actual chance they’re listening? Compromising the entire battalion just for a… five percent chance they have the codes or are about to get them? Ten, fifteen? Sir?”

  “A hundred percent,” Doom said.

  “Sir, with respect, you know they do? How are you so certain?”

  Doom smiled. “Because I just gave them to them.”

  “You – gave the Euros our codes?” He must have misheard that.

  “Sold them, actually. For an amount in the low five-figures.”

  Faden froze himself, because his instinctive move was to reach for his sidearm and arrest the traitor who was so coolly confessing to him. Arrest, and shoot if he resisted.

  “You sold out your battalion for a few grand?” he couldn’t help asking in disbelief, the first words to come to his lips.

  Doom was smiling.

  “More like twenty, but yes. The Department now definitely knows our codes. They will be acting on that knowledge; we know that. Because they have no idea that we know they’re listening.”

  “To what, sir? What do you plan to do for my men – have you come up with anything, sir?” The question he’d been burning to ask.

  “Yes, Captain. I’m going to organize a relief column out of the Vasimir Way.”

  “Sir?” Surely the assets couldn’t be spared for that, not with the Chongdin Empire being overrun.

  “Yes. I’m first going to talk with Bravo Company, because” – Doom looked up toward a clock on the wall – “they’re going to have satellite coverage in about fifteen minutes. I imagine you might want to listen in.”

  “Yes sir!” Faden hadn’t realized there was going to be more satellite coverage going forwards. But if Doom could adjust one orbit, he could probably adjust others. The colonel was slippery, but you expected that kind of thing from career Intelligence people. Maybe he’d be able to pull other things a regular lieutenant-colonel couldn’t…

  “I’m going to show them the maps,” Doom said, “and tell them there’s a column being organized if they can only hold on another few days.”

  “You want the Euros to know we have the maps?” Because if the Department was now listening in, they’d learn. And Croft had sent the maps; of course he already had them.

  “And about the relief column,” said Doom. “I particularly want Arlene Lavasseur to know a relief force is on the way.”

  * * *

  “Their satellite should be due to make contact in five minutes now, ma’am,” the tech in Arlene Lavasseur’s office reported. He was a slim Italian senior technician first class with a vibe of solid competence in his voice and his movements.

  “The codes have been confirmed,” Lavasseur said to her aide. It wasn’t a question.

  “Ma’am, yes,” Major Bujold said. “One hundred percent.”

  Fourth Battalion’s frequencies and their decryption keys had come to her office a couple of hours ago from the planetary dark web, where – alongside exabytes of child pornography, illicit-drug delivery services and pirated media – the major and lesser powers posted, under front organizations that were mostly either fake or owned by government intelligence agencies, want-lists for information, sometimes want-lists for destruction. Military radio frequencies were on everyone’s want-list.

  The dark web fronts were persistent entities, and the ones the Department ran had positive reputation for paying, in US dollars or the equivalent in QuantCoin, up on their bounties.

  Source EAP-14 had provided tidbits before, over the last year or so, that had been either immediately provable or later confirmed. He or she, based on the information they had provided the Department so far, worked somewhere in military administration and appeared to be motivated by money.

  These codes had worked. Lavasseur hadn’t paid the standard ten thousand dollars given for code access to a unit known to have elements engaged in the field; the Department had sent EAP-14 the QuantCoin equivalent of twice that, with a request for more information about the battalion if possible.

  EAP-14 had replied saying that the unit’s previous commander had been killed in combat on a certain bridge, which was connected to other data the Department had learned from another source, that a Legion battalion commander had been killed. There were six battalions operating on Dinqing, plus penal elements and independent companies.

  Which also suggested an explanation for how the source had gotten the communications codes right now to begin with; things did sometimes slip when they were transferred.

  “Just the fact that they rereouted a satellite now, and the one before, to cover the fort at a relevant altitude tells us something,” Lavasseur explained to Bujold, the two other staff in the room with her and the pair of techs. �
�That someone cares enough to talk with them.”

  “Too bad we can’t get what they were saying to each other earlier,” said Bujold.

  It had been known the fort had been transmitting, but multiple-frequency-hopping encrypted communications were by definition impossible to record, let alone understand, without their frequency and encryption codes.

  “Help us, help us, help us,” Lavasseur said. “What would you say in their place?”

  “One minute, Madam Colonel,” said the Italian technician.

  “Voiceprint analysis is online, Madam Colonel,” said the other one, a Dane with the rank of lead technician. Both men were relatively high-ranking to be doing work this basic, but the section heads would have sent her their best.

  “Thank you,” said Lavasseur, leaning forward at her desk.

  The Department had an extensive library of names, faces and voice samples gained by long-range directional microphone, and it was entirely likely that they’d have at least a name and photo for whoever the new battalion commander was.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  * * *

  “Sir, we have a data connection,” said MacGallagher to Croft, who sat at a terminal with a handset. Speakers were set up for the others in the signals room. This time it was Dunwell’s turn to mind the walls; Lieutenants Henry and Kirby, the senior nurse, were crowded in with Atkinson, Williams, Ortega and Master Sergeant Koppel.

  “New commander, sir,” MacGallagher said a moment later. “Battalion text, he says strict communications protocols and those will be enforced.”

  “Got it,” said Croft.

  He raised the handset:

  “Gambler, this is Bravo Six,” he said.

  “Bravo Six,” came a new voice, an unfamiliar one. “This is Gambler Six. Stand by for Gambler Six Actual.”

  The new battalion commander personally. That couldn’t be a bad thing!

  “This is Gambler Six Actual,” came a voice that to Croft seemed older than the first. Is Faden around? he wondered.

  “Just to confirm, you received message regarding the strict observation of communications protocols. This will be enforced; I intend to run a clean house. Copy that, Bravo Six?”

  “Copy that,” said Croft.

  “Good. Also, no idle chatter. Do not, repeat do not, initiate communications unless there is something to report. That goes for all Bravo units, got that?”

  He means Mullins by ‘all Bravo units’, Croft thought, but he didn’t want to say so. When lieutenant-colonels told junior lieutenants to do something, junior lieutenants didn’t question them. The new CO clearly meant the Mullins-Hill-Lennon group; he was telling them to maintain radio silence unless there was a good reason.

  “Copy that, Gambler Six,” Croft replied.

  “Good. Now, some good news. A group of your company’s men made it to the Vasimir Way. Along the way they found something very interesting. This group seemed to have scored us some maps, including of your area. Captain Southard” – 1/4/4’s S-2, the battalion intelligence officer – “has deemed them relevant to you.”

  The terminal lit up as two incoming files appeared over the battalion’s field network. Unusual to send that kind of thing over the digital radio network when you had a perfectly good email and general network connection for the moment, but the colonel probably had a reason.

  “Open them and take a look,” Six Actual said.

  Croft was aware of people leaning over his shoulder as he opened the first file and found—

  One of the maps the Mullins-Hill-Lennon group had sent him. That had come from the fort to begin with. Had this guy been fully briefed on the situation he’d inherited?

  He checked the other file. It was, as he’d expected, the other map.

  “Nice to have,” he said. “Uh, thank you.”

  Sergeant Robinson, following the conversation and the maps from the computer on his own desk, had been frantically scribbling something. Now he passed a bit of paper over to Williams to give to Croft.

  ‘We are being listened to’, the field intelligence specialist had scrawled, ‘by the enemy’.

  ‘Enemy’ had been underlined twice.

  Or at least, Croft thought, battalion command thinks we might be being listened to.

  And headquarters, for whatever reason, didn’t want those listeners to know the fort had an outside element. He’d play along; there’d been training in intelligence at West Point, by instruction officers who had always struck Croft as having a vaguely amoral vibe.

  “We know they’re not much use to you at the moment, but things change,” the battalion commander said. “Now, we estimate the hostiles as between seven and eight thousand, from number of tents and fires. You said you concurred?”

  “Yes,” said Croft, who had emailed in a report an estimate of twelve to fifteen thousand nomads. “I’d say closer to eight than seven thousand, but concur.”

  “But you do still have upwards of five hundred rounds of ammunition per man, correct?”

  “Yessir,” Croft lied more readily now he knew the game that they were playing for an audience. Overestimate their strength, underestimate what they thought the enemy were, fake confidence. “And about a hundred and sixty effectives.” The reality was barely a hundred, half of them Black Gangers.

  “Very good,” said the battalion commander. “Is one of them an Army combat engineer lance-corporal named McMahon? Eric McMahon? What is Lance McMahon’s status, please advise immediately.”

  Absurd question, although in the last two weeks Croft had come to know the medical staff, MPs, Black Gangers and Army in the fort mostly by sight. He recognized the name, but he turned up to look at Atkinson.

  “He’s hurt but fine,” the engineer platoon sergeant said. “On the wall.”

  “Lance McMahon is alive, sir,” said Croft. Why?

  “His buddies aren’t going to like this – he’s not gonna like this – but you’re to take him off the wall immediately. Put him somewhere safe and make sure he stays there.”

  That was an absurd order, whether they were being listened to or not. Besides:

  “Sir, there is nowhere safe in the fort.”

  “Take him off the walls and put him somewhere relatively safe,” the battalion commander ordered. “We’re working on a plan to get you guys out, and that kid happens to have a relative someone owes a big favor to.”

  “You’re working on a plan to get us out?” Croft asked eagerly.

  “Yes. That kid in particular. If it was just Legion there it might be different, but there’s Army and Air Force elements with you. You’re four hundred miles from the Vasimir Way; it’s going to take a couple of days to get a task force ready. But it is being prepared, Bravo Six. We are going to get you and your people out of there, understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “You can hold on just a couple more days, right?”

  Croft was going to say he was confident in holding on at least a week, but it occurred to him at the last moment that it wouldn’t convey a positive impression of the fort’s strength if any listeners, who’d know the situation from the outside, thought the commander was an idiot.

  “Six Actual, we are good for more than that. They’ve assaulted us three times and we’ve held. I expect to hold when they try a fourth time.”

  “It won’t be long, Bravo Six. Godfrey holds.”

  “Godfrey holds, sir.”

  “We’re about to lose satellite coverage, but there’ll be more in future. Army Lance Eric McMahon, get him off the wall. By force if need be. Gambler Six Actual out.”

  “Out,” said Croft to dead air.

  He put the handset back on its rest and looked at the note Robinson had passed him.

  “How sure are you that we’re being listened to?” he asked the field intelligence sergeant.

  “I have no idea,” Robinson said. “But the new CO thinks we are, definitely. Why else would he have sent us the maps, knowing we already had them? Because New CO wants any u
nauthorized listeners to think they came from elsewhere. New CO doesn’t want the Euros, the Department of Security most likely if it’s anyone, knowing we’ve got an outside group.”

  “Bad for their health if those riders outside knew to hunt them down,” Koppel agreed.

  “And that direction about radio protocol clinches it,” finished Robinson. “It would have made sense normally, but in this context it’s definitely telling us to keep any stray talk off the network.”

  “A relief force, though,” Atkinson breathed. “McMahon, huh? Last kid in the platoon I’d have guessed as having relatives in high places. I’m going to get him off the wall. Assign him to the medical station. If you don’t mind, sir?” A look at the man in charge of that.

  Lieutenant Kirby shook his head.

  “I could use another man. Thank you.”

  Atkinson left.

  “Any guesses as to who the new CO might be?” Henry asked. There were only six Legion battalions, and a brigade headquarters, on Dinqing. Not so many available options.

  Croft shrugged: “I didn’t recognize the voice, but I don’t know every lieutenant-colonel on the planet. Could even be Army or Marines.”

  “They should have left Ramos in charge.”

  That had surprised Croft a little too, since Ramos had been acting commander before. That had been during recovery and transit, though. Perhaps the higher-ups wanted an actively-engaged battalion under the charge of someone a little more experienced.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But this guy has the pull to organize a relief force.” That was the important thing about the call: “Help is on the way. We’re actually going to get help.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Doom put the handset down and removed the small voice modulator from the mouthpiece, where it had been fastened for the conversation.

  “They sounded happy with the news,” said Faden. “Who’s that Army Engineer’s relative, anyway, sir?”

  “The kid I wanted them to take care of? He had the most respectable-looking file photo,” said Doom.