Colonel (UC)

by Rick Shelley

  "I'm alone, Bob. Something wrong?" Lon asked. He sat at his desk to get his face on the same level as Hayley's.

  "Not wrong, just something I can't remember if I mentioned to you before." Hayley hesitated. Lon thought that he looked troubled. "From right now until this contract is concluded, one way or the other, you and I stay as far apart physically as we can. No face-to-face meetings, nothing that might let the enemy get lucky and take us both out at once. I know we've both got capable execs who can take over, but… just the same. Keeping the top commanders separated is sound practice."

  "Sure, Bob. I've got no argument with that," Lon said, thinking, No, you didn't mention it before, and why do you think it has to be brought up now? Keeping top commanders, or a commander and his second-in-command apart whenever possible on a combat contract was a standard precaution, something that shouldn't have needed this sort of special mention.

  "We stay in contact by complink or radio. My staff and CIC will route everything to your staff. That way, if something happens to me, you can take over at the double, not waste time getting up to speed." Hayley glanced away, then back.

  "No need to borrow trouble, Bob," Lon said. "Sure, we're up against professionals, but we've got the numbers on them—two to one or thereabouts, not counting the Elysian Defense Force, and if the Elysians have been able to stand up against New Spartans for a month, they've got something on the ball, even if the Spartans weren't given orders to conquer Elysium outright."

  "Just covering all the possibilities, Lon," Hayley said, attempting to pass it off lightly. But his face didn't agree with the words. "If our intelligence is right, a New Spartan regiment is about twenty percent larger than one of ours, but you're probably right. No reason not to think that the landings and initial deployment will go smoothly. I just don't want to forget anything that might prove important later."

  "Yeah, I know how it goes. We worry about it every contract," Lon said, going along with Hayley's rationalization. "Worry so much we don't get enough sleep. My SMO nags me about it all the time." I do understand, Lon thought. It could be me. It has been me, many times. He blinked. Have I ever looked that nervous to the people around me? He was afraid that the answer was yes, many times.

  "So does mine. One other thing. You get any brilliant ideas, don't wait to be asked. Hit me with them right away."

  "The only brilliant idea I've had lately is for us to keep our heads and butts down so they don't get shot off," Lon said.

  Bob Hayley managed a weak laugh. It was a good note to end the talk on.

  Supper the last night aboard ship was shared with Lon's staff officers. Although Lon kept trying to direct the conversation elsewhere, the talk kept coming back to the contract, and the combat landings scheduled to take place before dawn. There were traces of jitters, but no more than usual, Lon thought, and everyone was trying to cover their nervousness—with more or less success. That was normal, something Lon saw every time he was leading men into a combat contract.

  Men ate past what they were comfortable with, until they couldn't force another bite. That, too, was standard. Eat when you can; you never know where the next meal is coming from once you're in combat. Each time, each contract, Lon recalled the way everyone had seemed preoccupied with making him stuff himself, as if he might have been in danger of starvation, even in garrison. Even those who finished eating early did not leave the table. They waited. Lon knew what was expected.

  "As long as everyone keeps on their toes and does their job, we should make out all right on Elysium," he said when it was clear that the few who were still eating were just waiting for him to speak. "We've got the manpower advantage, even if the New Spartans are as good as we are, man for man, and we don't know that they are." That elicited a few nervous laughs.

  "They've been on the ground more than a month, doing pretty much what they want, terrorizing civilians and swatting at the Elysian Defense Force. Until we popped out of Q-space they probably had no idea they might have

  IN

  to face the hardest opposition they've ever seen. Now they've had two and a half days to worry about that, to wonder just what they've gotten themselves into." Two and a half days to plan what they're going to hit us with when we get in reach, Lon thought. "Their commander is probably looking hard at his contract, trying to find an honorable loophole to let him get his people out relatively intact."

  "They want to run for home, we let them?" Torrey Berger asked, drawing a bigger laugh than Lon had received.

  "In a second," Lon said. "But don't count on that. They might not have been cautious enough getting escape clauses in their contract."

  "Man's gotta have a few dreams, Colonel," Berger said.

  "You give up dreaming about women, Torrey?" someone asked from farther down the table.

  "Even asleep they slap his face," someone else contributed. "He can't stand the rejection anymore."

  Lon smiled and nodded. He couldn't answer for the line battalions, but his headquarters people were as ready as they were ever going to get.

  Lon sat on the edge of his bed. The only light in the cabin came from his complink screen, and that was blank, a dark blue, except for the red numerals of the timeline. Eight hours remained until the scheduled call to board the attack shuttles. Reveille would be in five hours, to give everyone time for one final meal aboard ship. Lon knew he should already be asleep—long since. He had undressed two hours ago. He had a four-hour sleep patch handy. He suspected that he would be forced to use it if he were to get any sleep. Soon… but not quite yet.

  They—the New Spartans—could have run as soon as they could make out how many of us there are, he thought. They could have been on their way out-system quickly enough that we couldn't have caught them. They chose to stay, even though they must realize that they're outnumbered. Why? That question, rather than personal worries or obsessions, was the one that had kept him awake. This time. He had made his preparations for sleep in plenty of time to allow him eight hours. He had laid out his gear for the morning, recorded additions to his latest letter to Sara and Angie. He had gone back through the main points of the assault plan a couple of times. It was that process that had brought the question to the fore, forcefully. It had come up, in passing, a couple of times during the planning conferences. Staff members had proffered a dozen possible reasons for the New Spartans to remain in place, ready to face a superior force. The simplest and least satisfactory was, "They're too damned cocky. They think they're twice as good as we are." The more likely, and more disturbing, were variations on two related themes. "They know they have heavy reinforcement coming in, soon, and figure they can hold out long enough."

  "They have a hole card, some weapon or system we're not allowing for, something they figure either evens the odds or tilts them in their favor."

  They must hope to be able to knock out a lot of our shuttles before we get on the ground, Lon thought. He did not rule out other possibilities, but that seemed to be the most likely. Knock off as many of us as possible before we can get out of the box. That was the way Lon and his men thought about a combat landing in a shuttle. While they were in the box, the shuttle, they could not defend themselves. A rocket or heavy cannon fire could knock out a shuttle… and everyone inside.

  We plan to land far enough from their men on the ground to eliminate—as far as we can—the danger from shoulder-fired SAMs, Lon reminded himself. The plan of attack called for the shuttles to follow routes that kept them away from the lines New Sparta had established around the Elysian capital, coming in well away from the ships in orbit, getting low and following the terrain in, grounding miles from known enemy positions. That would also, theoretically, minimize the danger from enemy aerospace fighters, if they were sent after the landing craft instead of being held to defend the New Spartan ships.

  What else is there? What are we missing? Lon asked himself. If anything. He blinked as the timeline on his complink ticked over from one minute to the next. We know how many ships they hav
e, how many men they could possibly have on the ground, how many fighters their weapons platforms can carry. All of the enemy ships would have some armament—missiles and heavy-duty energy weapons, beamers—but those were more defensive than offensive, especially on the transports.

  "At least the way we use them," Lon whispered. The New Spartans had not moved their transports out of harm's way. They were still in orbit over Elysium, not quite directly above University City. "That may be it." Lon turned to the complink and typed in a short message to CIC aboard Peregrine, with a copy to Bob Hay ley.

  "Suggest watching enemy transports closely in case they use their energy and projectile weapons to target our shuttles."

  "It might be a long shot," Lon whispered as the message was acknowledged by CIC, "but it might be the answer, at least part of it." This landing could be hairier than any of us wants, he thought as he blanked the complink screen again. We may have to use Shrikes to cover the shuttles regardless of how the enemy uses his fighters.

  Lon lay down, finally, but he stared at the overhead for several minutes, hardly blinking, trying to think of any additional steps they might be able to take to protect the troops on their way in. Eventually he shook his head. It was too late, and reveille would come too early. He applied the sleep patch to his neck and barely had time for a prayer before he fell asleep.

  Please don't let me fail my men.

  Reveille sounded before the nightmares had time to build after the patch wore off. Lon had just started to sweat in his sleep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  There was no indication of chaos in the morning—actually, the middle of the night—as ten thousand men woke and prepared for the landing. Breakfast was served. The men who were to take part in the initial landing ate as heartily as they could, then returned to the troop bays aboard their transports to give helmets and field gear one final check before putting them on. Helmet electronics were put through diagnostic routines; radio channels were checked. By squad, platoon, and company, the men went to armories to draw weapons and ammunition. Squad leaders inspected their men. Platoon sergeants inspected squad leaders. Company lead sergeants inspected platoon sergeants and officers. Lead sergeants were checked by their commanders. No one would board a shuttle until he had thoroughly inspected his own gear and weapons, and had his judgment confirmed by someone else.

  On nine ships, men were ordered to their shuttles. Roll was taken at the hangar door and again once everyone was in their shuttles. The men found their seats and fastened their safety harnesses, each man's rifle clipped securely to the front of the seat between his legs.

  Lon found the routine comforting. The normal demands of launching a combat assault kept him too busy for mental roving. He thought about his family only in passing, instants marked by a quick stab of longing. There was no time for more. Of his men on Golden Eagle, only a few would not be going down in the first wave. Tefford Ives and one platoon from headquarters company would remain behind, with half a dozen technicians who would not be needed at once, to be deployed with the Heavy-Weapons Battalion or 4th Battalion, whichever came first.

  He also kept a radio channel open to CIC once he had his battle helmet on. The battlecruisers Agamemnon and Odysseus had each launched half of their Shrike II fighters to engage the enemy's capital ships and aerospace fighters, holding the rest until the enemy's reaction could be gauged. They also had started direct fire on the enemy ships with missiles and heavy beamers. The New Spartans were returning fire. They launched two dozen fighters to intercept the Shrike Us. Both sides had their antimissile defenses ready.

  Lon was the last man to board his command shuttle, the last man in 7th Regiment—of those going down in the first wave—to board a shuttle. He did not choose to ride in the cockpit this time. That was not exclusively because he didn't want to have the most vertiginous view possible as the shuttle accelerated toward the surface of Elysium, then skimmed the ground reaching for its landing zone. When the shuttle landed, Lon and his men would need to exit the craft as quickly as possible—get out of "the box" before it came under enemy fire. And a speedy exit was far more difficult from the cockpit.

  Two shuttles were required for each full line company. That meant eight landers for a battalion, plus a command shuttle. There were seven battalions in the first wave—sixty-three shuttles—plus four shuttles from Golden Eagle and four from Peregrine. The shuttles from each ship were launched and rendezvoused several miles from the ship. The various groups moved toward their landing vectors, courses spread to make it extremely difficult for the enemy to intercept all of them, or to target them effectively at long range. Each battalion's shuttles started their descent to time the landing so that all of the troops would hit the ground at the same time.

  The landing zones had been chosen and assigned. Each pilot knew exactly where he was supposed to touch down.

  Especially near the end of the flight, many of the shuttles would be in close proximity, landing only a few dozen yards apart, close enough to let the troops emerge and set up an initial defensive perimeter the way they practiced every month in training on Dirigent. Throughout the flight, each battalion's shuttles would remain as close together as practical, allowing them to mass their firepower—rockets and multibarrel cannons—if they were attacked by aerospace fighters.

  Please don't let me fail my men. Lon repeated his prayer as he felt the first acceleration of his command shuttle as it dove toward the atmosphere of Elysium. Shuttles had no artificial gravity, but the acceleration pushed Lon back into his seat with more than the equivalent of one g, and the push grew stronger. The shuttle appeared to be diving directly toward the center of the planet, intent on self-destruction. Monitors spaced around the passenger compartment ensured that everyone could see where they were going. Many of the men around Lon closed their eyes, or did everything they could to avoid seeing the images. This was the point where those who were subject to motion sickness were most likely to vomit.

  "We're being tracked by hostile radar," the shuttle pilot told Lon. "Looks as if they're trying to target all the boats, from their transports as well as the big ships."

  "What about their fighters?" Lon asked on the same channel.

  "They don't seem to be moving to pursuit vectors," Felconi reported. "Still worried about our Shrikes, I guess, defending their ships. But the roundabout way we're going in, they'll be able to come after us even if they don't start for another nine minutes. It'll be almost as long before we can be sure we're out of reach of rockets launched from their transports."

  "Keep your eyes open for anything, Art. I've got a hunch they have something extra to hit us with, and I don't know what."

  Most of the shuttles were still more than forty miles high when the New Spartans started to hit. A few enemy fighters had been diverted to the chase, but most of the counterstrike came from the transports—rockets and guns. Shuttle pilots maneuvered and used electronic counter-measures against the missiles. Crew chiefs rotated the high-speed cannons as a last line of defense against missiles.

  Lon had started to sweat almost as soon as he heard that the enemy had targeted the landing force. He listened to the conversations among the shuttle pilots and the Dirigenter ships, heard the first reports of hits. At times the talk was hard to follow because there were so many men talking at once, but it was clear that the Dirigenters were taking casualties… losing men by the hundreds. Each attack shuttle carried about one hundred men, soldiers and crew.

  The surviving shuttles hit atmosphere at more than three times the speed of sound, braking at the last possible minute—reversing thrust, at full throttle—as the pilots adjusted their angle of approach. By that time, Lon was certain that at least three shuttles had been lost, the chance of anyone aboard those landers surviving infinitesimal. The stress on the men aboard the shuttle was greater than it was on the craft. Lon and the rest were thrown against their safety harnesses. Lon felt blood rushing to his face, as if looking for any available exit. If there were no ex
plosion aboard, a Dirigenter shuttle might be salvageable after plunging headfirst into ground at a thousand miles per hour… after the remains of its unlucky passengers were hosed out.

  When the shuttles leveled out, three hundred feet above ground level, they were traveling a thousand miles per hour, braking more gradually now, relying more on air brakes deployed from the fuselages than on reverse thrust from the engines, reducing the pressures on passengers and crew. Breathing became simpler. The few men who had suffered nosebleeds were able to tend to them. Up and down had a more normal feel.

  "Lock and load," Lon ordered. He slipped a full magazine into his rifle, then ran the bolt to insert the first cartridge into the firing chamber. He took the rifle from its clips on the front of his seat and moved the safety to the "off position, the selector switch to "automatic."

  Art Felconi warned his passengers that thirty seconds remained until landing. They passed quickly. The shuttle's engines reached maximum again, reverse thrust, as it braked and slid into the final glide toward the LZ.

  The shuttles of 7th Regiment had the safer landing zones, outside the ring of New Spartan mercenaries around Elysium's capital—a change in assignment Bob Hayley had ordered, to put his full regiment between the New Spartans and the Elysian capital. Only one of 7th's shuttles had been hit coming in. Fifteenth Regiment had lost two shuttles, and it lost three more as they crossed enemy lines to land inside the ring. The rockets the New Spartans launched were not the shoulder-fired variety, but longer and heavier, fired from at least six different locations on the ground—mobile rocket artillery.

  Lon did not have time to realize that those rocket launchers were one item that the planning had not allowed for. By the time he heard a pilot comment on them, Lon's shuttle was skidding to a stop in an open field, in the middle of the shuttles of his 2nd Battalion. As soon as it came to rest, Lon shouted "Up and out!" on the radio channel that connected him to all his people in the command shuttle. At the same time, he slapped the quick release on his safety harness and lurched to his feet. By that time the two exits were swinging open. It took less than thirty seconds to get everyone out of the shuttle.