by Rick Partlow
The good news was, most of them already knew how to shoot. The bad news was, I was the only one with any experience shooting Gauss rifles, and the only one with any small unit tactics knowledge. Which meant I wasn't just burning the candle at both ends, I was throwing the candle into a bonfire then pouring gasoline on top.
I ran through the line of shooters one more time, then grabbed Tom McCrey and put him in charge of it while I sprinted down the game trail around the other side of a gentle hill to the draw where another group was going through squad drills. Rachel and Isaac were leading them, using the little I'd been able to teach them in the two weeks since my scouting trip to Harristown.
There hadn't been much time, since half that had been occupied with moving our base of operations from the caves to the New Forest over fifteen kilometers away. The forest was a forty-year-old experiment to determine how well the genetically altered flora would adapt to conditions on Canaan, and there was almost enough room in the old research buildings for all the people training for the assault to sleep inside. In shifts.
They'd carried their gear on their backs and anything heavier had been stuck on one of the mules, and it had still taken some twenty hours to get everyone there and then days more to get the inside of the old buildings cleaned up. There were five hundred of them in all; even though we'd had guns for eight hundred, we hadn't had enough night vision to go around and I wanted to make sure everyone had enough ammo for training. So we'd left the others back in the caves and walked under the cover of a storm with the best of the best we had.
I was still trying to get a handle on organizing and leading five hundred people when I'd never led anything bigger than a squad before, and I had to trust Isaac and Rachel's judgment for who to set up as squad and platoon leaders and just hope they wouldn't fall apart when the shit hit the fan. I'd spent the time while the buildings were being cleaned out trying to teach the leaders and now they were trying to pass those few hours of instruction on to others.
I got to the closest training field just in time to see a squad-on-squad exercise in progress; the attackers were assaulting a fortified position occupied by the defenders, all of them armed with Gauss rifles which I had switched to training mode and keyed to my own personal security code to make sure no one accidentally switched them back to live. In training mode, when someone touched the trigger, the gun's electronic sights would record where the round would have gone, and broadcast it to the network I'd set up, and then display it in the lenses of the night vision goggles each person wore.
The assault squad had split up into fire teams and, as I slowed to a jog fifty meters away, the right-hand team was bounding forward while the left-hand group was laying down covering fire from the shelter of a cluster of rocks. I reflected for a second how strange it felt to be outside this much during the Night. We usually spent most of the Long Night indoors and made up for sleep lost during the Day, and I couldn’t ever remember being out more than a kilometer or two from home at Night.
The assault team took the position, but lost about half the squad in the process. I headed down into the midst of them and was about to help the half-trained trainer give them an After-Action Report when I saw Isaac approaching from the next clearing. His face looked grim, but then it always seemed to look grim.
“What’s up?” I asked him. “Problems?”
He motioned me away from the others and I followed him down the trail until we were out of their earshot. Mud tugged at my boots and I felt thankful it had at least stopped raining for the last few hours.
“Do you think they’re going to be ready in time?” He asked me quietly. “We’ve got less than a week now.”
“They don’t have to beat the Tahni forces,” I reminded him, “just keep them occupied.” I felt my gut clench even as I said it, remembering what had happened on Demeter.
This is a simple plan, I argued in my head. It’ll work.
“A lot of us are going to die keeping them occupied, Caleb,” he put words to my fears. “I just got a report from the scouts we’ve had watching Harristown. There’s been a shipment: a heavy lift cargo lander came in.”
“What was on it?” I asked, suddenly feeling like I wouldn’t like the answer.
“They don’t know what to call it,” he told me, pulling off his night vision goggles and rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “But it’s about ten meters tall and it walked off the ship.”
“Fuck,” I hissed involuntarily, kicking at a clod of mud in frustration. “It’s a mecha.”
At his blank look, I went on. “It’s a heavily armored walking artillery battery, basically. They put them at their remote outposts sometimes. They’re vulnerable to assault shuttles and orbital bombardment, but they’re great at suppressing infantry.”
“Which is all we have,” he finished sourly. “So, what do we do?”
I didn’t answer immediately, mostly because I didn’t know if there was anything else we could do. We didn’t have anything that would touch that mecha. We’d just have to distract it, somehow.
“I need some time to think about it,” I told him. “I’ll have something by the mission brief.” I hope. Jesus, I’m twenty-five years old! How the hell am I supposed to lead all these people?
“Think fast,” he told me, shrugging. “I’m going to go get some sleep. Maybe you should do the same.”
I nodded absently, still thinking about the mecha. I barely noticed when he walked off; I just paced away from the squad training site, not really sure where I was heading. When I looked up, I found myself over at one of the small storage buildings from the original research station, where Rachel was running a squad through the drills I’d shown her for tactical entry.
“No, dammit!” She was barking at a young team-leader who’d been about to head in through the door they’d just breached. “Remember what I told you! You don’t hesitate in a doorway! You go in fast and find cover fast! If you stand in a doorway in an occupied building and try to think about what you’re going to do next, the Tahni son of a bitch inside’s going to put a round right through your head!”
“Yes, ma’am,” the team-leader mumbled, eyes cast downward. I tried not to laugh. She was maybe four years older than him and he was calling her “ma’am.” It was even funnier because I’d given her that same lesson not even two weeks ago, and used just about the same phrasing.
“Get back to your starting positions,” Rachel told the younger man, patting him on the shoulder. “And this time, everyone get through that door fast, like your life depends on it.”
It was simple, and probably not enough, but it was all we had time for. I felt a fresh roil of guilt in my stomach, but I shook it off. We did what we had to do. I stepped up behind Rachel, watching her watch them storm the building. Her face was intense and her eyes were focused beneath the lenses of her night vision goggles; she looked transformed, not just from the teenager I’d fallen in love with years ago, but from the woman I’d encountered just three weeks ago.
“Much better, much better,” she enthused as the squad finished the entry drill and filed back out, some of them panting and holding their Gauss rifles by the carry handles. “Okay, everyone take an hour, get something to eat from the food tent, then move on to the live fire range. Leave your weapons here for the next group; you’ll get activated rifles at the range.”
We were doing it that way so I didn’t have to be constantly deactivating and reactivating rifles. There were a half dozen people whose job it was to make sure that no one carried a live weapon away from the shooting lanes. I waited until the squad had finished stacking their rifles and shuffled off towards the temporary chow tent we’d set up before I moved on over to where Rachel had sagged against the damp buildfoam of the old storehouse.
“You look tired,” I said, slipping an arm around her and letting her lean into me.
“We’re all tired,” she said. Then she grinned crookedly up at me. “Except you, of course, Captain Commando.”
“I’
m tired as hell,” I assured her. “I can cheat for a while, but the bill comes due eventually. I have a hundred things I need to strategize about and my brain is fried. You want to find someplace quiet and get some sleep?”
She took my arm and tugged me along with her by way of answer.
“You know,” she reflected as we headed back towards the structures of the old research station, “we never actually slept together before you came back. One or both of us always had to sneak off back home.”
“I was deathly afraid that I’d fall asleep,” I confessed to her, “and your mom and dad would find us.”
“I wanted them to,” she said, only a flat tone in her voice betraying any loss she felt. “Then they couldn’t have kept us apart. Mom would have had to let us get married.”
“The Tahni have a mecha,” I told her, not caring that I was abruptly changing tracks. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“That’s bad, I assume,” she said with a shrug. “What the hell’s a mecha?”
I explained it to her and she frowned thoughtfully. “How does this thing affect your plan?” She asked me.
“It could kill a lot of us,” I said, thinking that was fairly obvious. “I’m going to have to switch things up, try to find some way to deal with it.”
“Do we have anything that can take it out?” She pressed.
I shook my head. “Even my plasma gun wouldn’t do more than scratch its damn paint. The most we’ll be able to do is distract it. And whoever I send to do that is most likely committing suicide.”
“You’d do it yourself if you didn’t have to be inside the Control Station for this to work,” she said. It wasn’t a question and I didn’t have to answer. She squeezed my arm, rested her head on my shoulder for a moment as we walked. “We all know what’s at stake here, and we all know what it’s going to cost. Do what you have to do.”
***
Do what you have to do. That’s what Rachel had said. I looked out at the faces of the thirty men and women clustered around me under the overhang of the old garage and wondered if I could. Isaac was there, and Rachel, and Tom McCrey, along with a few I recognized from before I’d left and others I’d only known for a few weeks now. Most were fairly young, none older than Isaac, and most looked at me with an incredibly uncomfortable tinge of hero-worship. And I was going to get a lot of them killed.
The dilapidated, algae-coated hulk of an old tractor squatted silently in one corner, but the rest of the detritus left behind by the Commonwealth botanists had been cleared out to make room for scrounged chairs and stools, and for the presentation board someone had found tucked into a storage closet. Miraculously, it still worked, and the glow from its screen was the only light in the shadowy confines of the garage. I felt stray raindrops hit my cheek, blown in from the yawning double doors.
“Everyone should be taking notes,” I said without preamble. “You’re going to need to pass this briefing on to your squad-leaders, and instruct them to pass it on to every single member of their squads.” I sought their eyes, making sure everyone got the implications of this. “Any member of your company or platoon should be able to take over any leadership position at need and still carry out this mission. That is fucking essential, ladies and gentlemen. Do you all understand what I’m saying?”
I received a chorus of nods and mumbled acknowledgements and a few who hadn’t already had tablets or ‘links ready took them out and prepared to record. I pointed to an archived orbital photo of Harristown I’d found and cast to the board a few hours ago, indicating the gate on the inland side of the city.
“Alpha, Bravo and Charlie companies will be hitting the west gate, taking out the weapons turrets first. Once they’re decisively engaged, Delta and Echo will move around the city on foot and head for the road junction.” I indicated where the road to the spaceport branched off from the path to the Control Station. “Echo will drop off and set up a perimeter at the junction to block forces from the spaceport garrison from reinforcing the Control Station, while I accompany Delta to the Control Station. There, we have to penetrate the main control building and I’ll insert a worm code that will shut down the defense systems and disable the lasers and the satellites.”
I paused, still pointing at the screen, tried to work some moisture into my mouth.
“Our scouts have reported that the Tahni have shipped in a mecha, and it’s stationed at the edge of the spaceport.” I pulled up an image of a Tahni mecha that I’d had in my headcomp and transferred to the board. There was some wide-eyed muttering and a low whistle. “If that mecha engages us before we infiltrate the Control Station, we’re done; game over, we may as well retreat while we can still salvage something.”
I looked over at Isaac. “You’re in command of Echo. I need you to separate a squad to keep that mecha occupied long enough for us to gain access to the main control building. They’ll be issued both the missile launchers I brought with me.” I swallowed hard. “Unfortunately, the warheads of those missiles most likely aren’t going to be able to penetrate the machine’s defenses. If they get lucky, they might be able to overwhelm its anti-missile systems and slip one through, but it’s unlikely.”
“So.” Isaac’s voice was soft, contemplative. “This squad, they’re a distraction.”
“Yes, they are,” I admitted. “But they have to be steady troops and well led. They have to keep the mecha engaged and keep it away from the Control Station as long as possible.” I tried not to grimace. “I’d suggest asking for volunteers, but make sure you pick a leader you can trust.”
“I’ll be leading the squad myself,” Isaac declared flatly.
I felt a cold tightness in my chest. I wanted to argue with him, but I knew I couldn’t. If I overruled him, it would look like I was trying to spare my own kin from a suicide mission, and that would kill morale and lose me any trust I had from these people.
“All right,” I rasped. I had to clear my throat. “You all know that we aren’t certain if help from the Commonwealth is going to arrive in time, if at all. That’s why this attack has a second objective: while Alpha and Bravo companies tie down the Tahni in the city, Charlie is going to be actively trying to free our friends and family and fellow citizens from the work camps.”
I nodded towards Rachel and she shot me a smile. She’d insisted on taking the mission and I hadn’t argued too much; at least this way, with the lives of the civilians to think about, I knew she’d be less likely to be reckless.
“The rest of the details, including rally points and No Later Than times, have been disseminated already and you should all have a copy of the operations order on your ‘links or tablets. Make sure all these items are memorized; don’t count on having time to look them up once the rounds start flying.”
I regarded them with what I hoped was cool assurance. “Are there any questions?”
There were, of course, and it took nearly an hour to answer them all and send out messages to correct minor problems. Once things had died down, and everything was addressed, I waved them to silence once again.
“I know I’m asking a lot of all of you. You’ve all proven yourselves fighters, but none of you are trained soldiers. I hope it’ll help to know that most of the Tahni troops here aren’t their best trained or highest quality, either. The High Guard troopers are, of course, but there’s only a single squad of them and they can’t be everywhere. We can do this.”
“And what if the Commonwealth military doesn’t come?”
That question had come from a girl a year or so younger than me, the grown daughter of Elder Endicott. She was a Platoon leader for Alpha Company and she’d seemed steady and resolute during training, but I could sense some doubt in her hazel gaze.
“The worst-case scenario is that we’re left to hang out to dry with no support,” I told her with brutal frankness. “In that case, we stick to our rally points, get any people we rescue back to the caves and set up a covering force to allow them to reach it.”
I saw
the doubt still there and sighed. May as well lay it on the line. “I won’t bullshit you; in that scenario, we’re likely to lose more than half our effective force and all their weapons. The Tahni’ll consider you insurgents, not civilians; you won’t be given a chance to surrender. It’ll mean constant warfare and attrition till the end of the war. War to the knife is what my commanding officer calls it.”
“What will you do if that happens?” Young Endicott wanted to know. She sounded scared.
“If I live through this operation,” I told her, not giving myself long odds for that, “I’ll be right here, doing my best to defend my home.” I grinned, not a friendly expression, more a baring of teeth.
“And if it’s a war to the knife, well…” I flexed my wrists out, tucking in my hands, and extended all four talons with a thought. There were a few sharp intakes of breath as I held them in front of my face. “I suppose I’m overqualified.”
Chapter Thirty
Sheets of rain lashed at me, driven by forty-kilometer-an-hour winds that howled through the funnel of the surrounding hills and scraped across the valley like a grader. Thunder echoed from every direction, only remotely connected to the forks of coruscating white crossing the sky. I knew of the lightning and I understood the thunder, but they were as distant from my thoughts as the moons of Mars.
I stood motionless in the tempest and waited by the side of the road, willing my chameleon camouflage to blend itself into the dark striations of the trees behind me. My hands were free at my sides and my mind was blank, readying itself. I had a vague awareness of the men and women lined up behind me under the cover of the trees, but mostly I was listening for the sounds of engines.
