Colonel (UC)

by Rick Shelley

  Lon took his canteen out again, seeking the distraction of routine activity to try to rein in his thoughts. He took a mouthful of water, sloshed it around his mouth, then spit it out, over the front of his slit trench, too noisily. Then he took a slow drink and swallowed before he put the canteen back on his belt, focusing on each action. A few feet away, Phip shifted position, as if he had been disturbed by the activity.

  Is he trying to sleep or just faking it to keep me satisfied? Lon wondered. Again: reality or pretense? There's so much of that, masks over masks. Even if Phip were asleep, it would not take much to rouse him, not in a combat zone—even though the enemy was a couple of miles away. Either way, I can give him another five minutes, Lon thought. He glanced at the timeline on his helmet display. He had told the commanders that the order to begin the assault would come at 0455 hours, and that was only fifteen minutes away. Already, the Shrike II fighters and the shuttles would be well away from their ships, more than halfway through their run in toward the ground.

  Fifteen minutes. Lon closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again. It would take a few minutes for the battle to be fully joined after that; die inertia of waiting would have to be overcome. Around the New Spartans, the Dirigenters with beamers—energy rifles—would be the first to open fire, invisible and silent death if there were any targets visible… if any of the New Spartans were the least bit careless about staying down. The time for die slug-throwing rifles and grenade launchers would come next, perhaps not until the New Spartans realized that they were under attack. When the first pair of Shrike Us started strafing and firing rockets into their positions, there would be no doubt left.

  There won't be many RPGs at the beginning, Lon thought. We don't have that many units close enough for grenades to be effective. The Book listed the maximum effective range for the grenade launchers at two hundred yards, and recommended that they be used at targets within one hundred sixty yards. From experience, Lon

  knew that a good grenadier could hit a target with a ten-foot diameter four times out of five from two hundred thirty yards, slightly more if the terrain and wind were to his advantage—and with a kill radius of twenty-five yards for fragmentation grenades, that was more target than a grenadier needed. But a sharpshooter could put a rifle bullet into a man-size target at near a mile's distance under optimal conditions, and a beamer could—theoretically—hit the same target at up to five miles before atmospheric dispersal of the twelve-millimeter beam rendered it ineffective.

  "Okay, Phip, time to rise and shine," Lon said, the visor of his helmet up just a little. He did not speak loudly, but Phip rolled over immediately and raised up on his right elbow.

  Phip groaned softly. "We're both getting too old for this crap, Lon. I wish I hadn't tried to sleep. I felt pretty good before. Now I ache in every joint."

  "It's all in your head," Lon said. "If you're going to grab a bite to eat, you'd better get right to it. Another eight minutes or so and I give the word to start the assault. The first flight of Shrikes will hit about two minutes after that."

  "I'm not hungry," Phip said, a rare statement for him. "I don't even want to think about food. You know something?" he added after a short pause. "War makes a lousy spectator sport. I hate sitting back and watching what's going on more than I hate being up close and having buzzards shooting at me." He got to his knees and looked over the dirt parapet in front of him, then reached for the binoculars and put them to his face. "Sometimes it feels like there's something vaguely obscene about this longdistance watching, a damned peep show. Makes me feel dirty."

  "Well, your griping is back up to speed, so you must be just about recovered from your injuries," Lon said, fighting to hold back a chuckle. Phip had always been a masterful complainer. "I guess I can stop worrying about you."

  "Now if I could stop worrying about you," Phip said.

  "You've never stopped worrying about anything in your life, once you get a bee in your bonnet," Lon's mother had told him—a year or two before, during a discussion about Junior's decision to join the Corps, a talk that had inescapably turned to Lon's childhood. "You were like that even when you were five or six years old, and I swear it got worse every year after that. If you didn't have something real to worry about, you manufactured something and fretted at that until something better came along."

  The memory was obtrusive and the timing bad. Only four minutes remained until the time Lon had scheduled for the beginning of what he hoped would be the final battle of the Elysian contract. Maybe I have worried too much about some things, he conceded to himself. But worrying about a problem is the first step toward solving it. You don't worry about a problem, you don't go looking for solutions. Even if they don't exist.

  The Shrike II fighters were on their way in, on schedule, already inside the atmosphere. Lon had an open radio channel to Fal Jensen and all of the battalion commanders in both regiments on the ground. Everyone was ready, waiting for the word. Lon watched the seconds tick off on his head-up display's timeline. Unless the New Spartans preempted him, he would give the order exactly on schedule… then watch what happened.

  I know what Phip was talking about—war as a spectator sport. It's worse when you're the one who has to give the orders, knowing that people are going to die because of those orders. Lon swallowed hard, feeling a knot grow in his stomach. There was a different fear associated with giving the orders than there was in receiving them and going head-to-head with an enemy. Fear of dying versus the fear of making a mistake and causing too many of his men to die. And the latter was worse, in many ways. Dying was all too easy.

  Two minutes. Lon took another drink from his canteen, more from nervousness than thirst. The waiting made his mouth dry, but he didn't want his voice to crack when he gave the order. That might show his fear to others, and that was something a commander needed to avoid at almost any cost. One drink. A second. The canteen was more than half empty now, and Lon had only one more on his belt.

  Lord, don't let me fail my men. The prayer was old. Lon had used it every time he had led—or ordered—his men into combat.

  Time! Lon clicked his transmitter open. He gave the order. "Go!"

  The order was repeated, from battalion to company to platoon and squad. Men brought their weapons to their shoulders. Those with energy rifles started looking for targets, if they hadn't already been watching through the gunsights. In a few carefully chosen locations—determined by the lay of the land and the course the Shrikes would follow coming in for their first attack runs—squads started inching closer to the enemy lines, their goal to get their grenadiers within range.

  Defenders had serious advantages in a tactical situation like this, and a thousand years of history to reassure themselves with. They were dug in. The attackers had to move, expose themselves, cross open ground, and those were invitations to casualties on an unacceptable scale. Lon hoped that the aircraft coming in would help negate the defenders' advantages. Men would move closer to the enemy while the Shrike II fighters forced the New Spartans to keep their heads down. If the fight went on long enough, the Dirigenter artillery would have a chance to get the ammunition being brought in by the shuttles, move close enough to get into range, and pound the New Spartan positions until they were untenable—if their commander let the fight continue that long.

  The sound of gunfire reached Lon and Phip then. "They know they're under attack," Phip said. "That was coming out of the New Spartan positions. Our beamer boys must have hit something."

  "Someone," Lon corrected, almost a whisper, a correction more for his own benefit than Phip's. The targets were human beings, not silhouettes on a firing range.

  The first few scattered shots soon escalated into complete engagement all the way around the New Spartan perimeter, coming and going. Muzzle flashes winked like chains of Christmas lights. The noise built on itself, audible even over the two miles that separated Lon and Phip from the fighting, but at this distance it sounded more like a holiday fireworks disp
lay than what it really was. Lon saw the flashes of the first grenades that exploded before he heard their distinctive report. He glanced skyward, though he could see nothing through the leaves of the trees that sheltered his command post. It was time for the first pair of Shrikes to hit. One of the pilots had reported that they were within fifteen seconds of their initial points for the run.

  Rockets first. Leaning forward, Lon saw the fiery trails of four missiles, though he could not—and would not—be able to see the fuselages and wings of the black aerospace fighters, or the rockets themselves. After the missiles—tipped with explosives and tightly wound coils of depleted uranium wire for fragmentation—were away, the pilots would start to pull out of their dives, braking to allow themselves perhaps a second and a half to strafe with their Gatling-style cannons. Once they were across the target area, they would climb and go to full power, to get out of danger—away from any shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles the New Spartans might have.

  The first run would be the easy one—comparatively speaking. The enemy might not have SAM launchers ready, or they might not be looking in the right direction; they would have little time for corrections once the aircraft started shooting. The second time through, they would be waiting. The Shrikes would come in from a different direction the second time, and they would not come as low, or slow down quite as much, and they would be ready to deploy electronic countermeasures the instant their instruments reported that they were being targeted by SAM launchers. The pilots would be nervous but focused—as long as possible. They knew that they had less than two minutes before New Spartan Javelin fighters would catch up with them. CIC had been tracking the progress of a pair of the enemy aerospacecraft.

  Four explosions, spaced along the New Spartan perimeter. The chatter of the Shrikes' cannon, a much deeper sound than that made by rifles. Lon could not see Dirigenters on the ground rushing forward in the seconds of maximum impact on the enemy positions, but he knew that hundreds of men would have taken the chance to get a little closer to the enemy. The men of the Corps were well trained, and obeyed orders as long as it was humanly possible.

  The dying has started, Lon thought. He looked away from the battle—just for an instant—and shook his head, trying to force destructive thoughts out of his mind, and trying to settle his stomach, which was threatening to rebel. Don't go morbid, idiot! he told himself, feeling anger at the distraction. You know what this business is all about, and you know what will happen if this attack doesn't succeed. He forced himself to look back at the scene, scanning the front through his binoculars. Even with them, there was not a lot of detail he could see.

  "It could hardly look less real if it was an old action vid on the entertainment nets," Phip said, talking over their private radio channel now. "Not even a whiff of gunpowder." He sounded angry, as if the lack of odor were somehow an insult.

  Lon did not bother to reply. The first pair of Shrike IIs made their second run and burned for orbit. The second pair was about three minutes away. Lon scanned radio channels, stopping to listen whenever he heard anything from the men who were up close. The runs of the Shrikes had decreased the amount of fire the New Spartans could put out, but only briefly. Once the fighters were climbing away, the volume picked up again—increased, even, according to the report of one lieutenant to his company commander.

  There were calls for medtechs, and reports of men killed. A little ground had been gained. In three different areas the grenadiers were finally close enough to go to work, dropping their loads of shrapnel in and around the foxholes and slit trenches of the enemy. If the New Spartans were short of ammunition, there was no sign of it in the early fighting. They were not stinting.

  The New Spartan aerospace fighters came in, making one pass across the Dirigenter lines west of the perimeter, then climbing, rushing to meet the second pair of Shrike II fighters as they came in. Lon switched channels to monitor the Shrike pilots, to make certain they knew that trouble was heading for them. The talk between the two pilots assured Lon that they knew what was coming and were ready to meet it. They were receiving constant updates from their control room aboard Odysseus. The four fighters passed each other without anyone hitting anyone else with rockets or cannon fire. The time it took for the various craft to maneuver at high speed meant that the Shrikes were able to make their first pass at the New Spartans on the ground before they had to worry about the enemy fighters coming after them again.

  When the competing pairs of fighters approached each other the second time, the situation was different. They were not moving head-on toward each other until the last couple of seconds. The planes launched missiles at each other and followed up with cannon fire. In an explosion that lit up the predawn sky like a premature sunrise, two of the fighters collided. There was clearly no chance that either pilot survived. The other fighters veered away, but both were caught by debris from the explosion. Lon listened as the pilot of the second Shrike II informed his controller that he was going to have to eject. The remaining Javelin was corkscrewing away, out of control.

  "Get someone moving to make pickup on that pilot," Lon told Fal Jensen. "Your people are closest."

  Lon lost most of Fal's reply because Lieutenant Colonel Ted Syscy broke in with an urgent report. "Colonel, we've got men to the enemy line, right on the northeast section. My Delta Company has closed in and the fighting is hand-to-hand."

  That's Junior's company! boomed in Lon's head, almost overriding his reply to Syscy. "Push everyone you've got in after them, Ted. Try to widen the break. I'll get help to you as quickly as possible."

  Lon immediately called Vel Osterman and Ben Dark to inform them of the breakthrough and to order them to push as hard as they could, sliding the companies they had flanking 1st Battalion in to follow the units that had reached the enemy perimeter. Then he keyed in the radio channel that the officers of 1st Battalion would use among themselves—simply to listen, hoping to hear his son's voice.

  Then all he could do was wait, dreading every interminable second.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Ten minutes. Twenty. Lon found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything but listening for his son's voice, or some indication that he was still alive and well. Hand-to-hand fighting. Anything can happen once it gets that close, he worried. Ability isn't always enough. Blind chaos, and no one can guarantee your luck, your survival. Lon had been in that kind of situation more than once in his career, but the incident that came to mind was the first combat contract he had been on, still an officer cadet, on a colony world called Norbank. That was where his mentor, Arlan Takers, had died, in hand-to-hand combat on a wilderness hilltop.

  The fear of uncertainty was almost paralyzing. Lon scarcely noticed the flashes of gunfire or the first attack by the next pair of Shrikes that came down—this pair from Agamemnon. Watch yourself, Junior! Lon urged silently, projecting his thoughts to where his body could not go, as if willpower could perform some extrasensory miracle. His mind drew images from memory, populating a grassy slope with men in slightly different patterns of camouflage fighting with bayonets and fists, bullets and knees, in an impossible confusion—a waking dream… or nightmare that refused to release Lon from its grasp.

  Reports came through. Lon managed to acknowledge most of them, though he continued to find it difficult to spare attention for anything but the fear that was gripping him, so real it became a physical pain in his gut, so severe it was all he could do to keep from doubling over in agony. I can't let this stop me, he told himself. He sucked in a deep breath and straightened up, forcing himself to confront the pain and… slowly, ignore it. He consciously straightened up without exposing too much of himself. Another deep breath. He lifted his faceplate long enough to wipe the sweat from his face. A quick sip of water. Do your job!

  Two companies of Elysian troops, starting with three hundred eighty men, forced a second breach of the New Spartan lines, but at the cost of seventy men dead and another hundred wounded. Lon warned away the n
ext flight of Shrikes. They could no longer be certain of a clear field of fire, and Lon did not want to risk friendly-fire casualties.

  Dawn—a rising line of light in the eastern sky—brought a reddish glow to the horizon as precursor to the appearance of Elysium's sun. A dirty yellow haze hung over and around the oval territory—less than a mile long and three-tenths of a mile deep—that the New Spartans were defending, dirty air from gunpowder and the blasts of grenades and rockets.

  Lon heard a voice—no more than two words—and strained at the memory. Was that Junior? He wasn't certain, and nearly called back on the channel to ask. Nearly. He did not, though the effort caused him to bite his lower lip, drawing blood. He leaned against the dirt piled up in front of his foxhole and searched the battlefield through his binoculars, as if he might somehow be able to pick out his son from the hundreds of other soldiers wearing identical helmets and battledress… at a distance of two miles.

  "Colonel?"

  How long can the fighting go on now? Lon asked himself. We've been inside their lines for more than half an hour, pouring more men in every minute. Don't they know they've lost? Why don't they give it up?

  "Colonel Nolan?"

  Lon blinked rapidly and shook his head a little. "What is it?" he asked, not even certain who had called him. There was something… Lon blinked again and raised up a little more. He couldn't hear gunfire any longer.

  "Colonel, this is Ted Syscy."

  Oh, no! Lon thought; his heart started to pound almost out of control at the fear that Syscy was calling to say that Junior had been killed. His vision dimmed, almost as if he were ready to black out.