by Rolf Nelson
“Sure we can. In fact, I think your odds go up considerably. So do ours.”
“Look, mister conscript, you are ORDERED to return control to ground station immediately!”
“So you didn’t see us come aboard?”
“Excuse me?”
“You think your ship was commandeered by mere random conscripts already aboard? Really?”
“Well, I-”
“Or do you think some unemployed programmer behind in child-support and a chop-shop dark-sider could hack your whole precious system? Your ship surveillance is slipping, Major. Either you need to be collecting some scalps over this, or you should be looking out for your own.”
“You are ordered to stand down, NOW, or I’ll have you shot down!”
“Bad PR, that. I’m sure General Hammond would not approve. You should expect a memo from him any time. But it would be nice if you’d send up the latest version of the contract so we know for sure what we can do to avoid a level breach and bring down an enforcement action against the other units in the field. Hate to be on the receiving end of level seven if we’re restricted to level five and no radios.”
The major fumed for a long minute, tapping away on his keyboard. Noticing another problem on his screens, he asked about it. “The rifles. I’m not seeing anything from them.”
“Oh, yeah, we took care of those days ago. They function check just fine now. Not much ammo, though.”
“But they should have been activated only two hours ago to enable familiarization under instruction! You have no authorization!”
“We authorized ourselves. We’ll bill you for our time later.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Want to bet on that? And your training videos are rather dated, just like your rifles.”
Harbin nodded to him when the contract showed up on the screen in front of him. He scanned it while Helton piloted and the major fumed. Harbin shook his head and pointed to a paragraph for Helton to read.
“Wonderful,” Helton told the major. “You agreed to tell them when you’d land in your area ahead of time… Guess we’ll have to be landing in enemy terrain. Better and better.”
“If you’d just follow the plan-”
“You can see where we’ll be landing in about fifteen. We’ll head inland under radio silence, circle around behind their major encampments, and strike from the north tomorrow at dawn. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a ship to land.” Helton went back to focusing on the ship while Harbin continued to scan the contract, Nesbit tried to get more information about ground formations and deployments from the sensors, the major’s continuous stream of objections, threats, and complaints were ignored, and Kaminski just enjoyed the ride, quietly praying they didn’t need Taj’s armor during the impending landing.
The command bunker was busy, with officers, techs, and non-coms busy with last minute preparations before the expected day’s actions. Lieutenant-Colonel Marks looked over the map, confident in his deployments.
The radar tech interrupted his musing with a question. “Are we expecting reinforcements, sir?”
“No. What have you got?”
“Inbound ship, no transponder. Reflections look like one of the orbital conscript transports.”
“They might be landing as many as four, but those are not due for more than an hour.”
“No sir, this one is headed inside our lines. One ship, course should put them about three-five kilometers east of here.”
“Not ours. Shoot it down.”
The lawyer in the corner interrupted. “With what? An unarmed transport landing inside our position lines is not a breach. You may not use guided weapons to engage.” The LtC, too experienced with the lawfare officers to object directly, swore under his breath and rapidly considered his options, discarding each in turn as impossible, impractical, risky, or expensive. Evaluating the distances and possibilities, he started issuing orders.
“Targeting, calculate a time-to-range-altitude firing solution for batteries one and four. Signals, alert observers to watch for it visually. Coms, alert battery commanders one and four, prepare to fire altimeter-fused HE frag rounds in volley, three rounds each, elevation and azimuth to be notified shortly, aimed roughly southwest, about two-one-zero degrees. S2, get brigade on the line to report and see what they know. Civil, let the city know things might be starting early in town, not sure what’s up.” With each crisply delivered order a small flurry of activity exploded with a different group of people around the bunker as they made calculations, passed orders, and got others up to speed on what needed to be done.
Lieutenant Colonel Marks watched it with satisfaction, but such an uncharacteristic and unexpected event left him feeling unsettled. It didn’t represent an obvious threat that he could see if it was an ordinary conscript scow, even if his long-shot flak gamble did nothing. They’d be coming down far from the expected battle area, and with no motorized movement of conscript infantry according to the agreement, it would be over before any typical conscript could show up. He smiled. It wasn’t planned, but if it turned out to be an enemy mistake, then he was not only going to get a good show but perhaps an actual win. An odd start, but the day was looking better and better the more he thought about it.
The ground shook and the dust danced as the two batteries fired their first volley with near perfect simultaneity. Two point eight seconds later the second volley leapt skyward, almost as evenly. His smile grew wider. The third volley thundered out, its shock waves making the dust in the bunker bounce and roil even though the multiple sandbagged angles it had to pass around to enter, noticeably more ragged. It was followed nearly a full second later by a single round going off, not as loudly as the shots in the volley immediately before it. He winced and looked at the com sergeant. A few long moments later, the sergeant reported. “Battery four, gun eight, Sir.” Another round went off, its diminished volume surprising everyone in the bunker. They knew what their guns should sound like. “Battery four, gun eight again, Sir. Hangfire being reported.” The LtC sighed. A middling-good gun crew, but even the best crews can have bad days, and they were using an old lot of ammo. But they still earned two days KP, and likely would be the butt of no end of jokes for weeks to come. The targeting team, though, looked to have just earned a forty-eight hour pass when things quieted down.
On the bridge, alarms started screaming. Helton jerked the controls hard, putting them into a steeper dive and banking sharply, while Harbin and Kaminski did what they could to follow what was happening and track incoming rounds and likely landing spots as their vector changed constantly. Suddenly a black splatter of evil-looking smoke appeared out the side viewing port, followed rapidly by several more. More warnings flashed and screamed as shards of shrapnel tore through the relatively thin skin of the transport. “Hull breach!” a shrill alarm voice alerted him, quite unnecessarily. They could hear the air whistling through the new perforations and feel in their ears the falling air-pressure. Diving toward ground fire was not what Helton wanted to do, but diving for thicker air was a necessity, and any change of course made them harder to hit. Another batch of evil little clouds of black smoke erupted thunderously, bringing renewed alarms as more holes appeared on the starboard side. Fighting the controls, Helton got the ship back on usable course, pitched more steeply down. Focusing on what he had to do, he didn’t even notice the third volley going off as he dove.
The ship was jarred as the late round scored a direct hit, passing clear through without detonating, taking out one drive core and part of the cooling system, leaving a hole in the middle deck side, clear though the side of the cargo bay decking. The ship lurched wildly with the sudden loss of support on one side, and the acceleration compensators failed utterly, letting the men be tossed about like so many rag dolls with the violent maneuvering. The conscripts in back hung on for dear life, praying they made the right choice in following the maniacs now in control on the bridge.
The command bunker was silent and tense. Fligh
t time to a target at that range was more than twelve seconds, but it still seemed like forever. The signals sergeant perked up. “Airbursts seen. Very close… Smoke streams trailing, Sir! Rapid dive and maneuvering… a lot more smoke. Definitely a smoke trail, Sir! Still some drive glow, but descending rapidly….” Smiles broke out all around the room, and a more than a few of the men present slapped one another silently on the backs, high-fived, and quietly pumped their arms in the air, still waiting for any final word being reported from the observers. “Out of sight in the hills to the west, clearly trailing smoke.” A Lieutenant gave Marks an informal but earnest thumbs up. “A big fireball and lots of black smoke reported, Sir. Looks like a clean shoot-down so far,” the sergeant reported a minute later, while a proud smile split his face.
A good way to start a battle.
Marching
Helton and the rest scrambled away from the burning wreckage that was recently an orbital troop transport, and into the sparse pine woods surrounding it, carrying whatever gear they could. The scar left by the ship’s final approach was short and obvious, with snapped-off trees and furrowed earth testifying to the rapid and violent deceleration. An explosion rocked the ship’s battered and bent carcass, sending another black cloud roiling up into the sky as the fire raged and spread, popping and hissing wickedly. It was hard to tell how many of the holes in the skin were from flack rather than the ground impact, but it’s obvious there would not be much to recover from it one way or the other.
Standing silently, watching it burn for a moment, Harbin quietly said “Nope.” Helton raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Yours doesn’t listen to me either.”
Helton chuckled. “Look at the bright side…. Landings are improving. No one broke any bones this time.”
Harbin’s grunt admitted that it may be true, but it’s only a small improvement. “Time to form up, count heads to make sure you’re right, and get a move on.” Taking a deep breath to be heard over the noise of the burning lander, he bellowed “FALL IN!”
Five minutes later, everyone was accounted for and walking carefully south more or less in formation, except for the conscript who had been taken out of the robo-doc tank only a few hours earlier. He was still woozy and unable to remember anything, or even walk straight. They left him behind with some water, figuring someone would come to check out the wreck in a couple of days at the most. Everyone had a rifle and field pack, but the limited supply of ammunition provided had given them only about fifty rounds each.
“Less weight means moving faster, longer, right?” Nesbit observed and he jumped from one rock to another one, receiving a favorable nod from Kaminski.
“Right enough. Positive attitude is good.” The sergeant watched him move for a ways. “Stepping rock-to-rock like that is smart. Doesn’t disturb the plants.”
“That what I was thinking. They’ll do a flyover eventually, so we should be careful for a ways.”
The sergeant nodded approval. “We’ll make a soldier of you yet, Nesbit! A good choice picking you.”
Two hours of traveling through the pine forest later, with only one brief scare where they were forced to hide from fliers passing overhead, they encountered a road headed nearly due east. Helton looked at it dubiously while the companies rested, scattered out in the wood. “Speed or cover?”
Harbin chewed a piece of grass absently, looking up and down the road, ruler-straight for a kilometer or more in each direction before curving around a hill or some other unseen obstruction. Looking back over his shoulder at the men’s attempts to hide from aerial observation among the widely spaced trees and scattered brush, it looked like a tossup. “Roads lead to towns.”
“But we have to cross the river to get east of there to Sigma.”
“Still rather walk the beach in the dark and take the lowest bridge” Harbin countered, continuing their running debate on how best to cross sixty kilometers or more of contested territory, with a city’s bridges the only obvious way to cross an intervening river, hopefully as close to the city’s edge as possible. But with many more units ranging to the north, going to the coast seemed wiser at the time.
“The more I see of their fitness level, I’m thinking an overland hike to the coast, then even further on beach sand, isn’t a good idea,” Kaminski said, noting a couple of them taking boots off of their already sore feet to air them out.
“Risky.”
“Time is the biggest problem. The longer we’re here, the greater the chance of being spotted and shot at. And we don’t have a lot of food, either.”
“A formation on the road sort of stands out, you know.”
“So we hide out in the open. Move fast like we are supposed to be here. Pocket the flags, no-one can identify us.”
Harbin exhaled slowly, controlled breathing through flared nostrils, before he nodded. “Give ‘em five more minutes to powder their feet and get boots back on, pass the word to remove shoulder patches, then we hit the road marching. About two meter intervals. Two pairs of scouts, five hundred and a thousand meters out.”
Helton peered through the binoculars, trying to make sense of what could be seen in town. He was lying under low-hanging branches on top a hill, not far from where the road wended its way around a dome of dirt, and behind him the two companies were stretched out and off to one side, nearly invisible in the woodland brush, their dusty camo blending in well.
The city had the well-defined limits and evenly spaced structures and roads that strict central planning always produced, with well-manicured yards and parks, buildings of the same height, and a creepy uniformity. Outside the city edge were croplands, tilled in perfect twenty hectare rectangular plots, alternating furrow direction and color of crop to make a pleasing appearance.
But the surrounding lands were bereft of people, as were the parks and periphery of the city. It was weirdly motionless and silent, except for a winding strip of roadway passing through several of the main roads, going up one side of the city and crossing a bridge before working its way south on the far side, ending at a large and ornate building complex that sprawled not very far from the beach on the southeast corner of town. The path was lined with bunting and decorations, and there seemed to be a great deal of activity in the southwest corner of town, near another building complex with simple several sports fields around it.
“A parade. Middle of a war zone getting hot, fresh smoke on the horizon, and they are having a parade.” Kaminski’s voice was tinged with disbelief.
“War might be hell... but these people are just plain nuts,” Harbin agreed.
A smile started growing on Helton’s face as he watched what was shaping up under the twenty-power glass. “Gentlemen, you keep saying we have to work with what we have. Right now, we have John Phillips Souza. Looks like we have about four klicks to master some fancy footwork and another cadence or two.”
The formation marched smartly down the road toward the city a half-kilometer distant, belting out a bawdy cadence with confidence, lead by an outstanding baritone who had demonstrated an uncanny ability to make things up that everyone could follow and call the reply on. Harbin was to the right of the middle where he could pass a subtle hand signal to the cadence caller near the back when he needed to call marching directions. Kaminski led in the front right corner, and Helton brought up the very rear. As they approached a military checkpoint, where a lone private stood bravely at port arms in the middle of the road, the cadence calling ended and Harbin bellowed out “Counter-column… HARCH!”
The whole front rank of the column turned inward and filed back past the others, reversing direction smoothly, nearly as well as if they’d been practicing on the parade ground for weeks instead of mere days. Three steps after they got completely turned around, Harbin turned them around again. “Column left, HARCH! Column left, HARCH!” and quick as that they were bearing down on the sentry on the other side of the road. The maneuver left Harbin near the front of the formation, and by taking longer than regulation strides he was at the
front by the time they got close, while the cadence caller kept a lively stream of phrases on the wind so they kept in step. A few beats passed in silence but for the rhythmic beat of booted feet as Harbin held up his hand. “Company, mark-time, MARK! Company, HALT!” He left-faced crisply. “Company… Stand AT… EASE! Have some water and take five in place!”
Proper commands with nearly parade-ground precision.
Harbin walked briskly up to the private. “You can tell him we’re late, but considering some numb-nut at air defense nearly killed every one of us, he should be thankful we are here at all.” His tone and command presence positively reek of authority and barely suppressed anger. His still swollen face and bloodshot eyes lend him a hellish, almost demonic look. The checkpoint private, smooth chinned and trying to grow a mustache that hadn’t really made an appearance yet on his nineteen year old face, looked at his totally absent rank insignia and conscript camouflage uniform positively straining over taut muscles, was not sure what to think.
“Call who, S-sir?”
“Whoever is in charge of this misbegotten and long forgotten backwater of a miserable excuse for a battalion!” Harbin roared, leaning forward slightly and glaring with fierce eyes. “And you had BETTER know who that is!”
“B-b-but I was told no one can cross,” the private replied, eyes wide but standing his ground, rifle at port arms but starting to vibrate slightly.
“You were told…. Good GOD man, do you have any idea what sort of unicorn farts we had to fly through to get here? ANY IDEA?” The private shook his head slightly, all but cringing as Harbin dug deep and dredged up his inner drama queen. “After being in the field for months, we finally get a two dozen green replacements and a one-week furlough. Turn in all your gear for cleaning and maintenance or replacement, they said. Have fun and relax, they said. We hadn’t even taken our socks off when General Hammond bundles us up onto a freighter and ships us out the gate to some other bloody bit of boondocks with nothing but the uniforms on our backs.” Harbin started to pace, voice alternately raging and deadly soft, filled with sarcastic disdain. “Then they turn around and ship us back on a stripped shuttle to a different garrison on Beta, and we get charged for commissary civvies while they clean our uniforms. It would be so simple to stay there, but nooooo. Before they can finish the laundry we get frag-ordered back by Admiral Stark on the only outbound ship available, because it was highest priority he said. It was a messed up conscript scow with the wrong uniforms, a broken transponder, and almost no gear. Does THIS look like the right name to YOU?!” He hooked a thumb at his name tape on his chest, where the shaking private looked, wide-eyed.
