by Rick Shelley
Sleep came, the deep void that permitted no dreams, no nightmares. Sleep that consuming was rare on a combat contract, almost unprecedented, a dangerous luxury. The only problem was that it did not—could not—last long enough. Lon had left instructions. After three hours, Jeremy Howell woke him.
"I really hated to do it, Colonel," Howell said. "Seems like nothing's happening. Another couple of hours would do you a world of good, sir. Lead Sergeant Steesen has reports from every battalion and company in the regiment, and he talked with 15th's lead sergeant, too. Things are quiet everywhere."
"Another couple of hours would be nice," Lon agreed after a long and satisfying yawn, "but it will have to wait." He tilted his faceplate up and rubbed at his face and eyes with both hands for a moment. "I need to talk to CIC, Colonel Jensen, and our battalion commanders first. We have any coffee packs handy by any chance? I could use a good caffeine jolt."
"Ten seconds, Colonel," Howell said. "I got the water poured. Just need to put the coffee crystals in." He started doing that while he talked. He ripped open the plastic packet and dumped the coffee in, then shook the field cup gently to help mix it up. The ten seconds were what the heating catalyst in the pack would need to bring the water up to drinking temperature.
As soon as the coffee was hot, Lon started to drink, taking down half the beverage before he took the cup away from his lips the first time. He watched Howell pull the heating strip on a meal pack—which also opened the container. Lon took one more sip of coffee, then set the cup down carefully and took the meal that his aide offered him. "You eaten yet, Jerry?" Lon asked before he took his first bite of the ham, eggs, and hard biscuit.
Howell nodded. "Two packs. I was hungry. You gonna want a second pack, sir?"
Lon smiled. "Probably, but not right away. I'll get this down, then make the calls I need to make." He concentrated on his eating, taking no more than three minutes to finish the battle rations—two thousand calories enriched with vitamins, minerals, high in protein and carbohydrates. One meal pack—breakfast or lunch/supper—was supposed to include all the necessary nutrition to get a man through twenty-four hours. "They put in everything but good taste," was the usual reaction of men forced to live on them for any length of time.
As soon as he finished his breakfast and coffee, Lon started making his calls. CIC informed him that the remaining New Spartan transports had continued to withdraw. They were now eight hours out from Elysium, moving in an elliptical orbit with a period of slightly more than three days. The capital ships were much closer, staying near enough to use their fighters to support their troops on the ground in a crisis.
On the ground, the New Spartans were continuing a general move toward the east-northeast, away from University City, and apparently not toward any of the other major concentrations of inhabitants. "It looks as if you were right," Fal Jensen said when Lon talked with him. "They're going to stooge around in the wild so they must expect help, but probably not too soon or they wouldn't go far."
"Unless we're overlooking something we shouldn't," Lon said. "I need your honest opinion on something, Fal. Do you think I should ask for another regiment now or hold off until we know something more definite?"
Jensen did not hesitate. "I think we should ask for it while we can. We don't know if we'll be able to finish operations against the enemy we have on the ground now, how long we'll have before the New Spartans bring in more people, how long we might have to hold out against their reinforcements before ours can arrive. The time lag could be a killer, since we have to figure thirty days before our people can get here."
"I agree," Lon said. "If it comes down to a chance of us looking foolishly overcautious or unnecessarily risking our men, we have to opt for the former. In our first MR I said that I'd try to get my recommendations off within forty-eight hours, but I don't see any point in waiting that long. Get your reports ready for transmission as quickly as you can and we'll get the MR off within the hour. Will that give you enough time?"
"I'll get everything transmitted to CIC in thirty minutes," Jensen promised. "The sooner we get that MR off, the better I'm going to feel. This thing is giving me an itch I can't scratch."
Lon decided to move his 1st and 3rd Battalions another mile and a half east, to cut down on the distance to the main New Spartan force and to have better defensive positions in case the enemy doubled back to attack. The move and getting settled into the new perimeter took nearly two hours, and Lon told his commanders that—if possible—they would stay put at least until nightfall, perhaps longer. The last New Spartans were away from University City by then, with all of them moving east and northeast, apparently intent on a rendezvous. Lon held back the units chasing the enemy. "Let them rendezvous," he told the concerned battalion commanders. "If they're all in one place it'll be easier for us to keep track of them."
Lon took forty minutes to tour the new perimeter himself, at least the eastern half of it, where trouble was most likely to come. The line on that side was established at the top of the slope leading down to a creek and its now-dry floodplain. The creek was no more than four feet deep now, in midsummer, but from the extent of the floodplain on the eastern side, in the spring it might be extensive. There was another creek near the far side of the plain—a mile away—but it hadn't slowed the New Spartans at all, so it couldn't be very deep either.
Before noon, Peregrine reported that the MR was far enough out that the New Spartans could not intercept it. A New Spartan MR had been launched by one of their transports forty minutes before Peregrine launched its message rocket. Because of the position of the transport, there had been no chance for the Dirigenter ships to intercept or destroy that courier packet.
At least we know we're going to have help coming, Lon thought. Or someone to pick up the pieces if we've got the short end of the stick.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Melvin Rogers had been president of Elysium for six years. Throughout his term of office, he had continued to teach at the university, primarily graduate physics courses in Quantum-Space Dynamics. Nearly eighty years of age, he wore his curly strawberry blond hair shoulder-length, and tended to wear simple jumpsuits in primary colors. He came to Lon's headquarters by floater just before sunset, accompanied by Chancellor Berlino and four bodyguards from the Elysian Defense Force.
"Sorry I can't offer anything appropriate in the way of amenities, Mr. President," Lon said after the introductions were completed, "but, as you can see, our resources are rather meager at present." Lon's command post was in a grove of pear trees. The little fruit that had been left by the New Spartans was on the ground, rotting. Several of the trees had been banded, the bark cut completely around the trunk to kill them.
"That's of no concern, I assure you, Colonel," President Rogers said. "I tend to teach my seminar course out on the lawn when the weather is amenable. I wanted to speak with you, face-to-face, at the earliest possible moment, and this seemed appropriate." He sat on a tarp that several of Lon's men had spread after kicking away a few of the rotten pears. Rogers gestured, and Lon sat across from him, not too far away. Berlino also sat, forming the third point of an equilateral triangle with the other two men.
"It is a tremendous relief to have you and your men here, Colonel," Rogers said. "I understand that you lost quite a few men making your landings. I give you my personal regrets and condolences, as well as those of the government and people of Elysium. I wish there had been some way that we could have made your arrival less painful, less costly in human terms, but, unfortunately, that was beyond our power."
"Thank you, Mr. President," Lon said, nodding.
"Thankfully, your arrival has already had some salutary effect on the situation. The siege of University City has ended. The New Spartans have suffered heavy losses as well and have withdrawn most of their forces into the hinterland."
"I doubt that your troubles with them are over, Mr. President," Lon said. "I don't know what your analysts have forecast, but my senior advisers and I
are convinced that the New Spartans expect significant reinforcements, that they have withdrawn to preserve their current forces on-planet until those reinforcements arrive. Although that might happen at any time, we suspect that we have at least several days, perhaps a week or even two, before they are likely to arrive in-system. But we have no hard intelligence, so all we can say for certain is that those reinforcements have not arrived in-system yet, so we know we'll have at least three days to try to degrade the New Spartan assets already here before help arrives for them."
"My military advisers have suggested that we have to prepare for possible New Spartan reinforcements," Rogers said. "They have given it a seventy percent probability rating. The invaders did not fully exercise their potential in the weeks they had on Elysium before you and your men arrived. They could have overrun our defense forces with little difficulty, though it pains me to say that. Instead, they toyed with us, put their siege around our capital, destroyed homes and crops, and the rest. In some ways that was more… humiliating than had they defeated our full army in battle. But they never gave us the opportunity for that, and merely flicked off such raids as we were able to mount the way a man might wave at a fly buzzing his head." Rogers' face clearly showed the humiliation he felt. "They toyed with us, Colonel Nolan, as if we were of no account at all."
"Had their contract called for them to conquer Elysium, no doubt they would have acted differently," Lon said. "If their contract was, as we suspect, merely to force you to submit to the overlordship of the Confederation of Human Worlds, then their actions are perfectly understandable. Their job was to frighten you, or embarrass you into accepting the CHW, and the Confederation would have less use for an Elysium devastated by extreme rules of engagement."
"We will never accept the Confederation," Rogers said. "We were not so inclined before and, after what we have been through in the last weeks, we would not submit as long as one Elysian remained alive to contest the issue. We sincerely hope that your people will be enough to convince the Confederation to forget about Elysium. If not, though, we will still not accept them. Should all else fail, we will seek membership in the Second Commonwealth, though we would prefer not to."
"There is one matter that we need to bring to your attention now, Colonel," Chancellor Berlino said after a glance at the president indicated that Rogers was done speaking. "It's something that may have slipped the attention of your staff. The New Spartans do still have approximately six hundred men south of the Styx. Since both bridges across the river were destroyed early, those men have been of less concern, but we have reports that they are moving upstream, most likely looking for a place they can cross to the north shore."
"We haven't forgotten them," Lon said. "Our ships have been keeping track as best they can. Those companies have been minimizing electronic emissions, but every time they use active electronics, we update our fix on their positions, and we occasionally get a visual sighting as well. As I understand it, there are no other bridges across the Styx, and they will have to go forty miles east of University City before they can find a place where the river can be forded, correct?"
"Correct," Berlino said, and Rogers nodded. "Just slightly less than forty miles right now, because of the season. That is about twenty-six miles from their current position… as of fifty minutes ago."
"Are there boats on the south shore they could commandeer to make the crossing before that point? Or a place where they could use ground effect vehicles?" Lon asked.
"Not in sufficient numbers," Berlino said. "They might find half a dozen small rowboats and possibly twice that number of floaters. There are several places where the banks slope gently enough on both sides for floaters to get in and out of the water, but even if they used all of the floaters and rowboats they might find, they could hardly move sixty men at a time. But there are plenty of trees. I would think that they could assemble enough rafts to cross in short order. Or simply fell trees and let their men paddle across using them."
Lon's smile was minimal and quickly gone. "It's always good to see all of the possibilities, but I suspect that paddling rafts or logs across rates rather low on the scale. The crossing would take too long, and there would be far too great a chance that their preparations would be observed and we would be waiting to pounce as soon as they got in the water. An infantry commander would prefer to keep his men dry as long as possible, then make the most rapid crossing possible. If there aren't enough boats or floaters, they'll almost certainly wait until they get far enough upstream to ford the river." Lon shrugged. "If it were a matter of getting a patrol across to strike a specific target, it might be different."
"You do think they will attempt to cross at some point, though, don't you, Colonel?" Berlino asked.
"It seems likely. They appear to be drawing all their forces together. We'll be watching, though, and once those six hundred men get in the water, we'll use our rocket artillery to make the crossing expensive for them. In the meantime, we leave them strictly alone. If they think we've forgotten about them, so much the better. It might make them careless when they do make their crossing."
"And their main force?" President Rogers asked. "You do plan to move against them soon?"
Lon smiled. "Very soon, Mr. President."
The Elysians left, under strong escort. Lon's command post was relocated, half a mile farther east, and much of 7th Regiment shifted position as well, more to the north and east. Shortly after dark, elements of 15th Regiment started a series of harassing attacks against the perimeter of the New Spartan main force, never in more than company strength—with the men in each raiding patrol maintaining electronic silence as long as possible—in what Lon hoped would appear to be a totally random fashion. Similarly, the Dirigenter rocket artillery launched an occasional missile at the New Spartan positions. Lon knew he had to be sparing with his use of the artillery. There might not be a chance to land more rockets or howitzer shells, and Lon did not want to run out at a critical point. Keep them off guard and guessing. Make it impossible for them to get any sleep. Frazzle their nerves.
There was nothing radical to the plan Lon had laid out, but harassing tactics could never settle the main issue. All he wanted was to degrade enemy capabilities—psychologically and physically—while he moved his forces into position for what he hoped would be the final engagement of the contract. At the earliest, that would not begin for another twenty-four hours… unless the New Spartans forced the issue sooner. And that seemed particularly unlikely.
"They may turn and fight at some point," Lon had told Phip Steesen a little earlier, "but only when their commander decides it's the only viable option left. I expect the first thing he'll try, once he decides they can't just sit and absorb the punishment, is a further withdrawal, maybe more to the north, where the land gets rougher, try to find ground to his liking for the next fight, or just try to postpone the battle until he gets reinforcements."
"And we don't want to give him that much time because that will reverse our relative positions and put us on the short end of the stick," Phip had noted.
"Exactly."
The New Spartans had brought together all of their forces north of the River Styx… save, perhaps, for patrols that might have been left out for reconnaissance purposes, or to stage ambushes as the Dirigenters moved after the main force. South of the Styx, the approximately six hundred New Spartans there—the equivalent of three companies, a short battalion—were still moving east. It appeared as though they might reach the first ford slightly before first light—if they pressed—but it seemed more likely that they would not try to cross before dark the next night.
Lon spent twenty minutes conferring with Fal Jensen and the battalion commanders from both regiments. "It's too soon to start claiming victory," Lon told them, "but the situation looks fairly favorable. They can't have much rocket artillery left, maybe four or five launchers, but probably few or no rockets left for them to fire. Our own supply of artillery munitions is limited, but not near exhaustio
n. If we can't get new supplies of those in, we can at least keep the enemy from getting resupply. We definitely have at least a slight numeric advantage in troops, six-to-five, maybe even seven-to-five, even including the short battalion they have on the other side of the river."
"We are set up to get resupply of small-arms ammunition, aren't we?" Fal Jensen asked.
"We are," Lon confirmed. "I hope to bring in fresh supplies during daylight tomorrow, before we force battle with the New Spartans, at least for those companies that have had the greatest expenditure of ammunition so far."
The distribution had been uneven; some units had scarcely fired a single shot, while others had been through several intense firefights. "Assume that will mean using resupply rockets to bring it in, since it's not likely we'll be able to use shuttles safely."
At ten-thirty—2230 hours—7th Regiment started moving east, angling a little north. As they got close to the enemy, 15th Regiment would slide around the perimeter to the south, so that the Dirigenters would have the New Spartans pincered. The heavy-weapons battalions were also moving, on both sides, staying far enough away to be out of the reach of the New Spartans, but close enough to take part in the fight… when it came.
The day's rest had been welcome and needed, but Lon felt relieved to be on the move again. He walked with his headquarters detachment, near the middle of the two battalions with him. Second Battalion was to the north, moving toward a rendezvous with 1st and 3rd Battalions before dawn. Fourth Battalion was still to the south, and farther east than the rest of 7th Regiment. Closer to the enemy, 15th Regiment continued harassing the New Spartan perimeter, giving them no rest. The two heavy-weapons battalions were also on the move—almost a constant for them in the field; standing still was an invitation to disaster. The rocket launchers could cover the main New Spartan force and the short battalion on the south side of the river.
Lon felt as relaxed as he ever had during a combat contract when battle was in the offing, even though it did not seem imminent. It was almost a peaceful feeling, ironic though that might be. Junior had come by for a short talk during the afternoon. Father and son had spent thirty minutes together. Junior showed no obvious aftereffects of his wounds. In fact, Junior had seemed more concerned with his father's reaction than with what had happened to him. They had parted, their final words to each other the same: "Be careful." Junior had grinned and flipped his father a casual salute. Lon had returned it, his face serious, almost somber. Be careful.
