by Rick Shelley
I could sure use a pint of Geoff's best lager right now, Lon thought, startled by the intrusion of memories of his father-in-law and the pub he ran on Dirigent. He could almost taste the beer, feel the muggy warmth of the pub. Maybe it is time to retire and move to Bascombe East. Spend the next few decades tending bar. Be around to see at least one child grow up, not miss almost every birthday and Christmas the way I have with Junior and Angle.
He blinked furiously for several seconds and looked at his timeline. This was not the time to think of home and the baby whom Sara was carrying. Any time now, he told himself. Phip and Frank have had time enough to get the word out. He stared at the head-up display on his visor, looking for the appearance of friendly blips along the line that the two noncoms had followed. Phip's would be the first to show. The rest should appear almost instantly after that.
Now! Lon saw the blips appear. In a ragged line they started moving forward. Some went out, then reappeared a few yards farther on in staggered sequence—the sort of display that might result from officers and noncoms giving orders and taking reports as their battalions started a broad advance. Lon switched to an all-hands channel that would connect him to every man in 7th Regiment. He spoke one word: "Down!" The men Phip and Frank had enlisted knew the command did not apply to them.
Lon got under one of the trees, squirming to get as much of his body touching the ground as possible. Now we wait, he told himself. Again. And find out how foolish Vm going to look.
The wait was not as long as he had feared. Little more than ninety seconds passed before the entire western slope of the hill seemed to explode at once.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
First, there were two thin strips of dirty orange-red light, roughly parallel to each other on the slope, approximately following the lines of slit trenches and foxholes that the New Spartans had dug earlier. The orange-red glow drew Lon's eyes. He lifted his head—just a couple of inches—to see what was happening, an instinctive motion that might better have been suppressed. The sound of the explosions and the concussion wave swept down the slope and across his position as the line of light stretched into the sky—bulging, blossoming as it raised smoke, dirt, and heavier debris. It cast rock and soil up and out, broke off heavier chunks, and started them rolling down the slope, beginning a prolonged rockslide. Lon could feel the ground shaking beneath him, even after it had stopped. The initial concussion had knocked the air out of him, and recovery seemed infinitely prolonged. He could hear nothing but echoes of the explosion for most of a minute, and his ears continued to ring after that.
Lon, like most of the troops of the two waiting battalions, was far enough back that the heaviest debris fell far short of where he lay trying to cover himself as the sky fell, but dirt and small stones pelted him and the others, some of the objects with enough force to be painful. A shower of very small bits of rock and dirt rained on Lon's helmet, a staccato rattle that temporarily obscured the ringing in his ears.
The assault from above seemed eternal, but lasted less than a minute. The rockslide lasted longer, only gradually coming to a halt. The smoke above the slope dissipated, lifting, thinning, dispersing. The dust settled. Lon found that he was holding his breath and released it quickly, then inhaled deeply. The smells of explosives and dirt were almost overpowering, choking. He coughed several times, then shook his head to dislodge the grit and dust that had collected on his helmet. Finally, he cautiously lifted himself to his elbows to look out through a gap in the trees he had sheltered behind and below.
He looked up at the slope of the hill. There were a few small fires—grass and low shrubbery burning along the lines of the explosions—and the infrared display of his nightvision system showed alternating bands of hot and cool spots on the hillside—hot where the blasts had originated, cool where deeper layers of rock and soil were now exposed on the surface.
Only slowly did Lon become aware of talk on the radio, faint, almost unable to compete with the volume of the tinnitus that remained from the concussive force of the explosions. He adjusted the volume on his receiver until the voices were louder than his inner-ear static. There was still a jumble of sound, too many voices trying to talk at once, electronic silence forgotten. Still, Lon needed nearly a minute before he was able to respond, to say, "Can the chatter" on his all-hands channel.
It spoke well for the training of his men that silence came to the troop channels immediately. Lon switched frequencies. "Phip, are you there?" he asked on the channel that connected them directly. "Phip?" Lon held his breath while he waited for a reply, switching his head-up display to show vital signs. There was no indication of any signs for Phip. Lon looked for Frank Dorcetti's vital signs then. Something flickered across his display then, and vanished. It hadn't been a proper readout, simply static.
Damage to the electronics, Lon thought, fighting down the fear that he might have lost another friend—the closest he had ever had. We'll probably have a lot of that, after a blast that strong. That did not totally erase the agitated thumping of his heart, the edge of fear. He switched channels again. "We need medtechs and several squads to help them find the men we had out front," he said, speaking to the battalion and company commanders in 1st and 3rd Battalions. "Lead Sergeant Steesen and Sergeant Dorcetti were leading them. We'll have to find them to find out just how many people they had with them."
Lon got to his feet, leaning against one of the fallen trees that had sheltered him. He rested his gun across the trunk, the muzzle pointed vaguely up the slope. It was, perhaps, reckless to expose himself, but that never even crossed his mind. In the wake of such massive explosions, any other danger seemed unreal. His eyes scanned the terrain, which certainly looked like a war zone now, as stark as some of the old battlefield photographs he had seen at The Springs on Earth, images from the two global conflicts of the twentieth century. Several bands of low-lying smoke or dust clung to the hillside, slowly descending, only slowly being torn apart by the light breeze.
His men were out there, and two of them counted as friends. Resisting the urge to look for them personally was the most Lon could manage. He stood and watched as squads of searchers moved forward, weapons at the ready, eyes glancing nervously up the hillside, as if in anticipation of more explosions. A medtech moved with each squad, his medical bag over his shoulder, a folded stretcher on his backpack. But each medtech also carried a rifle and held it ready for instant use.
Lon called the commanders of 1st and 3rd Battalions. "Get a check from your companies. Make sure we don't have any other casualties from the blast. Then get ready to move out before the New Spartans have time to figure out that they didn't decimate us. We're going to the top of the hill. And beyond. I want us ready to start in five minutes." Five long minutes. Lon had been tempted to order an immediate advance. That was what he wanted to do, almost desperately. Cover the ground. Close with the enemy. Force the fight… and take some payback. But he could not order some mad charge. This had to be done properly, in military order.
Lieutenant Colonels Syscy and Dark acknowledged the order—indicating that they had already started checking for casualties among their men. Their voices seemed distant, hollow, to Lon, though the ringing in his ears had declined considerably. He shook his head, gently, trying to rid himself of the remnants, but it was not that simple. It would take time for the effect to end. This was something Lon had experienced before.
"I think our deception worked," he said, still on a link with the two battalion commanders. "Those blasts were meant to catch us all on the slope, in the kill zone. We got lucky."
"It would have done a number on us if we had all been moving, that's for sure," Dark said. "But I wouldn't call it all luck. That was fancy thinking, setting up decoys that way."
A little bit of occupational paranoia, maybe, Lon thought as the word "decoys" tied his stomach in new knots. Decoys were meant to be sacrificed to draw out the enemy. How many men did I send to their deaths this time? Lon closed his eyes for an instant. It'
s time I start getting reports on that. The first report came within seconds. Six men were dead. Twenty were wounded, half of them seriously enough to need time in trauma tubes. Frank Dorcetti was among the dead. Phip Steesen…
"His left shoulder is in pretty bad shape, Colonel," the medtech who examined Phip said, "but I don't think he'll lose the arm." Hesitation. "It's going to be close, though. The shoulder and upper arm were crushed, the joint pretty well shattered. I can't tell how much nerve damage there is—some, certainly. We've minimized the bleeding and got him on a stretcher. He'll be in a tube in three minutes. He's not completely conscious."
Lon called Lieutenant Colonel Dark to arrange for a security detail to stay with the medtechs and their charges when the battalions moved on. Then Lon gave the order to advance. He climbed over the fallen tree in front of him as the men of his security detail started forward in a ragged line. As always, Jeremy Howell was too close, a couple of steps to Lon's left.
Dorcetti's dead, Lon told himself as he put one foot in front of the other. Frank had been his driver since Lon had taken command of 7th Regiment. Lon had never felt quite as close to Dorcetti as he felt toward Jeremy Howell, but still, Frank had been there every day, always with a joke and a grin to help Lon along. Not always good jokes, Lon thought, but he tried. He always tried.
Lon tried to fight through the empty moment, the void of loss. The time for grief would come later, after the fighting was over and they were on the way home. For now, Frank was simply one man among many who had died on this contract. It was always the same, difficult to be that abstract about the inevitable cost of battle. The hundreds of men who had been killed in their shuttles trying to land on Elysium were less important—at this minute—than one man who had died a few hundred yards from Lon.
But even thinking about Frank served mostly as a shield to help Lon avoid worrying about Phip's condition. A full session in a trauma tube, maybe more, even if the medtech had not underestimated the extent of Phip's injuries. If there was serious nerve damage in the injured shoulder and arm, Phip might be out of action for weeks. Left shoulder crushed, Lon thought. A few inches to the right and it would have been his head, and he might have been beyond help. Lon stumbled as he closed his eyes against that thought.
The advance slowed as the lead companies started to cross the debris field at the base of the slope. Men had to pick their way over or around obstacles, and often a footstep started the man-made scree sliding again. Turn big rocks into little rocks swept through Lon's mind when he reached the raw gravel and dirt himself. There were sizable boulders among the debris, but most of it was smaller, loose. The footing could scarcely have been more treacherous if the men had been climbing an icy slope against a strong headwind. More than once Lon had a foot slide out from under him, forcing him to catch his balance awkwardly. Each time, Jeremy Howell moved closer, ready to help, moving back when Lon gestured at him.
It took twenty-five minutes before Lon reached the line of the first New Spartan defense perimeter, the site of the lower series of explosions. The fronts of the slit trenches had been blown forward, leaving raw gashes in the dirt and rock, reaching down to the heartstone of the hill in places. Behind, sharp rises of up to three or four feet that had to be clambered over.
Lon started paying attention to reports from Fal Jensen and CIC as well as from his battalion commanders. The smaller group of New Spartans was still being kept from moving north to rendezvous with their main force, which was establishing defensive positions on the next ridge. They were being harassed by Lon's 2nd and 4th Battalions and by most of what remained of 15th Regiment.
The New Spartans were still fighting as smart as they could under the circumstances—keeping good order, not allowing the Dirigenters to roll over or around them, and husbanding their ammunition, relying on accuracy more than volume. They still think they can hold out until those ships get in with their reinforcements, Lon thought. It was a discouraging notion. They might have good reason for their optimism. What more can they do? Lon wondered, but his mind was too numb to explore the possibilities. Just hope they've run out of surprises, he thought. They have to, sooner or later. That might be more wishful thinking than logical deduction, though, and Lon knew it.
The slope steepened above the line of the first explosions—more than Lon had realized from looking at the hillside from a distance. The blasts and landslides had taken the slope down to rock, stripping the thin covering of soil, and in many places the rock itself bore the scars of new fractures, areas where rock had broken loose and fallen. Much of the loose stone that had gathered in the few relatively level areas was sharp-edged.
The muscles in Lon's calves and thighs started to tighten. The advance slowed more. Lon stopped moving forward for nearly two minutes, rationalizing that he was getting too close to the van, closer than he should be. Jeremy Howell looked toward him, an unasked question about Lon's well-being clear in the tilt of his head. The rest of the squad charged with protecting the regimental commander took their positions around him, looking up and outward, vigilant… and nervous.
We Jre almost five miles from the enemy, Lon thought, noting the disposition of the men around him. After those explosions, there can't very well be anything left to go off close. But he did not say anything. His men were doing their job, and would continue to do so despite any protests he might make. All the more now that the regimental lead sergeant was out of action.
As he started moving up the hill again, Lon got on the channel that connected him to everyone in his security detail. "We'll take five just before we reach the ridge, give the rest time to get farther ahead of us." The squad leader voiced his acknowledgment. Lon saw a couple of heads nod, in either acknowledgment or relief. They'd all feel a lot better if I never got within twenty miles of any fighting, he thought, and not because it would keep them that far from danger. He shook his head in amazement.
By the time he got near the ridgeline, Lon was glad he had decided to halt there. The climb had him breathing hard, and he had slipped once, bruising his right knee badly, with a two-inch gash at the center of the bruise. The knee hurt, and had already started to swell. Once he settled to the ground, Lon pulled up the trouser leg and put a medpatch over the cut and bruise; that would help his body's health implants speed through the work of repairing the damage, and kill the pain.
The two battalions with Lon kept moving, scouts checking the eastern slopes for mines and booby traps. There were only a few, and even fewer electronic snoops. Apparently the New Spartans had concentrated their available explosives on the western slope, in what they had hoped would be a coup de main. I hope they used everything they had, Lon thought after hearing a report from one of the point patrols.
He glanced at the timeline on his visor display, then tilted his faceplate up and looked into the sky. There were still a couple of hours of darkness left, and the sky remained heavily overcast even though the rain had ended. There were no stars visible, nor any light from Elysium's moon. Lon couldn't even see a glow from lights in University City, off to the southwest. It would be great if we were up against an enemy without nightvision systems, Lon thought, but the New Spartans had gear as advanced as that of the Dirigenters.
"Colonel, why don't you have a meal pack as long as we're going to be here a few minutes," Jeremy Howell said. He knelt next to Lon and lifted his faceplate. "Got to give the body fuel to work, sir." When Lon chuckled, it startled Howell. He drew back a little.
"Sorry, Jerry, I wasn't laughing at you," Lon said. "You just triggered a flashback. Back in prehistoric times, when I was a cadet, everyone in the company seemed infernally preoccupied with making sure I shoved calories down my throat every time I opened my mouth. They weren't happy unless I was as stuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey." He hesitated. "Yes, I'd better have a little food while we're stopped. A nap for an old man would be nice, too, but that'll have to wait." Maybe a long time, he thought as he accepted the meal pack Howell handed him.
The New S
partan main force did not stay long in their positions on the next ridge, hardly long enough to dig minimal slit trenches, eat, and—perhaps—get a little rest. Once they saw the Dirigenters advancing again—obviously not destroyed or seriously weakened by the explosions left to catch them—they abandoned their new holes and started east again. According to the nearest Dirigenters, the New Spartans appeared to be moving slowly. They had been under constant observation this time, and it seemed clear that they had not booby-trapped those positions as thoroughly as they had the earlier lines.
North of the New Spartans, the Dirigenter 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment was pushing east as rapidly as the men could—faster, perhaps, than was prudent. On the south, 4th of the 7th and half of 15th Regiment also were pushing east quickly, though not quite at the same pace as Vel Osterman's battalion. Osterman had his lead company as far east as the van of New Spartans, with the advance patrols starting to curve south, attempting to slow the enemy until the rest of the battalion could get in place to hold them. The rest of 15th Regiment was still engaging the smaller New Spartan force near the Styx. The New Spartans were finding it increasingly difficult to keep moving toward a hoped-for rendezvous with their main force.
"We've still got two days to bring this to resolution," Lon said, conferring with Fal Jensen and the battalion commanders from both regiments, "but we don't want to use every minute until those new ships get close enough to launch troops and fighters against us. We get that close to the end and there's little chance the New Spartan commander on the ground will surrender. They'll try to keep us occupied right up until the new force can get into the act. And if that happens, we're in big trouble."
'They can't have any rocket artillery left, not close enough to hit us," Fal Jensen noted. "Our tanks have driven the few launchers they had left out of range. If they had anything closer, they would have hit us by now. And our Shrikes are keeping them from using their fighters for close air support."
