Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01]

by A Small Colonial War (epub)

  “Utilizing a few extra referees, I trust. And what of the other battalions? What missions have they?” Major Kolomeitsev inquired with calm grace.

  “Lieutenant-Colonel Kimura’s battalion is going to take the spaceport for us and head south to pacify the riverport and the rancher country,” Harjalo said, tapping his fingers. “Kimura’s inept. His battalion is intended as a permanent garrison, and they’re no better than you’d expect. Lieutenant-Colonel Higuchi has a provisional battalion out of the Thirteenth Rifles. Two of his companies will be available out of brigade reserve on Landing Day plus one. The heavy stuff, Lieutenant-Colonel Ebyl’s light attack battalion, isn’t scheduled to come down until after we won’t need it any more. For fire support we have the four warships for two days to shoot up aircraft and interdict communications.”

  Vereshchagin interrupted. "Matti will be working fire coordination, the usual thing. Go on, Matti.”

  “One thing I didn’t say, buildings are stone or cement with steel reinforcement. There’s no hardwood, and cement is cheap. Remind everybody about ricochet casualties. As far as tactics, reaction category four. We don’t want bodies. When that changes, we’ll be sure to mention it.”

  " So who are we shooting? ’ ’ Henke asked with some asperity.

  If he’d had epicanthic folds and the ability to hold his opinions to himself, Matti Harjalo would have been at least a colonel. “Dear me, the admiral must have forgot to mention that. I don’t know. Acting Major Rettaglia, the task group intelligence officer, doesn’t know. Admiral Lee declined intelligence gathering prior to landing to preserve strategic and tactical surprise, which is supposed to be our most priceless asset. A few people down there don’t like USS or each other. They may not like us. The admiral doesn’t expect to see anyone shoot at us, but his data is falsified or stale. The paper says we establish an Imperial pres-, ence. Beyond that, your guess as to what we’re supposed to do is better than mine, Paul, yes?”

  The Hangman desisted.

  “One thing more,” Harjalo said. “They tell me it’s September down there.” The ship’s calendar read January. Time for colonial battalions was idiosyncratic; it commenced with L-day—Landing Day—-of Week 1.

  Haijalo twisted around. “Anton, it’s your turn. They know what we want. Tell them how we want it.”

  The key objective was Complex, which, essentially, made everything the planet used. Vereshchagin bent to lay a plan.

  Lieutenant Yevtushenko would insert as soon as Kimura’s first echelon secured the spaceport. Complex had several hectares of flat roof. A couple of ultralight Sparrow aircraft could put a team in place to cut through the roof and greet the USS planetary director when he arrived for work.

  “We’ll ask His Excellency for the time of day and whatever else comes to mind,” Yevtushenko observed.

  “Ja, take your little toy planes and go play while the rest of us are working,” Haijalo said, which drew a laugh and failed to obscure the fact that having the director under lock and key during the landing might be an exceedingly desirable thing.

  Lead elements of the battalion would shuttle down and split into assault groups, one for the ocean tap and a second to move by road to Complex.

  Vereshchagin preferred to drop a rifle company on top of Complex in the middle of the graveyard shift, but Admiral Lee had ruled that out. Vereshchagin would have also liked a few main battle tanks as road-openers, but that was a purer fantasy. For reasons of cost, there was not a single main battle tank available to the task group or, indeed, on any of the colonial worlds.

  With logistical cost factored in, for each main battle tank, two companies of light infantry or two light attack platoons could be transported and supported. Given the amount of money the Diet was willing to authorize and the nature of wars fought against colonial insurgents, units actually sent to fight colonial wars bore an unsurprising resemblance to old-style paratroop formations.

  The spaceport had a single shuttle runway. Constrained by this, Vereshchagin based his plan on speed and surprise. No. 14 light attack platoon from Major Henke’s D Company and No. 9 rifle platoon from Captain Sanmartin’s C Company would form the lead element for the assault on the Complex, Raul Sanmartin leading the combined battlegroup. No. 3 platoon from Major Kolomeitsev’s A Company would buccaneer down the Blood River on rigid assault craft to seize the ocean tap.

  A second light attack platoon, No. 15, and the remaining platoons from A and C Companies would follow, bit by bit. Overnight, if all went well, Captain Yoshida’s B Company, the battalion reserve, would be landed.

  Vereshchagin did not intend to waste sleep over imponderables. “Raul, Piotr, you two decide what you want to do. Then the rest of us will knock holes in it.”

  As they recessed, he gathered up his battalion sergeant.

  “Yuri, the spaceport will be sticky. We’ll be alternating trips with Kimura’s soldiers. The brigade commander, Colonel Lynch, has a few flower boys officiating. None of them have done a combat landing and they do not seem to know what is combat loaded and what is not.” The schedule the flower boys had contrived was preposterous. Lieutenant-Colonel Kimura’s companies would be fortunate to off-load in twice the time allotted, and the shuttle crews were green as well. “I suspect we shall have to improvise a bit.”

  Sanmartin paused at the door to listen. In a few hours, the intermingled companies would link arms in the gymnasium-before the focus narrowed to a single instant in time and the men who could provide covering fire—to listen to the Variag say things he had said before, in a quiet voice from atop an ammunition box. Vereshchagin was a talisman, their icon perhaps.

  Whenever Raul Sanmartin stepped outside himself to look back in, he was awed by the Variag’s merry men, himself included. So long as they thought they could take on the known universe and win, they might very well be right.

  Quiddities(l)

  Although no birds flew below its firmament, it was on the morning of the sixth day of Genesis that man came to that world he later named Suid-Afrika.

  Despite its potential, it did not initially appear that the planet, then called Musashi, would ever be colonized. Even with the devastation of the crack-up, Earth is a rich planet. For its few needs, better planets were closer.

  The laws of supply and demand being what they are, gold, silver and precious gems scattered like sand on a beach would not bring men so far into space. Rare earth metals like gadolinium and dysprosium are not rare; the demand for these is easily filled from terrestrial sources. The platinum group metals—platinum, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, and iridium— are essential tools of the metallurgist in catalysts and alloys. Yet the thought of occupying Musashi/Suid-Afrika solely to supply them was ludicrous, and the notion of mining chip metals such as germanium and indium there no less so.

  Only the least common of the industrial metals, the fusion group metals, could drive men to open up a virgin colony nine months ship-time into space. Because it absorbs neutrons readily, hafnium is necessary as a flux-suppressor; zirconium is invaluable because it has a low neutron cross-section and does not. The refractory metals, niobium and tantalum, are even more irreplaceable in space applications. In a rare jest by an unknown god, the only Earthlike planet where these metals were discovered in relative abundance was Musashi/Suid-Afrika, the irony being that the need for these metals is slight apart from their use in fusion bottles and other space technology. Man needed fusion metals to leap into space and needed to leap into space to acquire fusion metals, which is an interesting application of the principle illustrated by the dilemma of the chicken and the egg.

  Sunday(l)

  Obscured by thickets of head-high false club mosses, Fripp gave Sanmartin a quick thumb and let his weapon swing free. Fripp had traded in his assault rifle for a scatterchoked shotgun. His partner, de Kantzow, had not, retaining his own battered piece with forty rounds visible in the clear magazine and a forty-first chambered.

  Moisture pouring down the sides of his neck,
Sanmartin nodded and double-pumped his arm to speed them up, not trusting himself to speak. The rest of No. 9 platoon’s second section trailed. Miinalainen moved behind him effortlessly, the big 88mm recoilless gun hooked to his belt with a shotgun round chambered and flimsy plastic wrap over the openings at either end to keep out the drizzle. Kirponos hovered at Miinalainen’s heels like a big bird, sweltering under the weight of twenty rounds for the 88, his submachine gun, two throwaway rockets, and enough water to drown a small horse.

  The remainder of the main body—Section Sergeant Beregov, the general purpose machine gun team, and three riflemen— was well behind, partly because good soldiers don’t bunch and partly because nobody in Ms right mind wanted to be behind the venturi if Miinalainen cut loose. Beregov himself carried an s-mortar with one round chambered and five more in the magazine under the firing tube; on either flank and to the rear he had paired riflemen with light machine gunners festooned with fet coils of caseless 5mm x 40mm ammunition in plastic pouches.

  The spaceport had presented no difficulty. Lieutenant-Colonel Kimura’s lead company had met with no resistance and managed to organize sufficiently to get out of Sanmartin’s way. Either the corvettes tasked to degrade communications had done their work well or the inhabitants had kept their gunmen well away; Kimura had gotten involved in a pitched battle, with a half company in rancher livery, which was turning Kaapstad riverport into ashes.

  The immediate objective for the second of No. 9 was the alcohol farm at Complex, which had to be taken before the other two sections of No. 9 cracked open the main works. The other two sections were waiting where Sanmartin had left them, perched on Sergei Okladnikov’s four overarmed type 97 cadillac armored cars and a “school bus”—a massive eight-whee1160mm mortar carrier from Henke’s mechanized mortar platoon—proudly painted with the white gallows insignia that the Hangman affected not to notice.

  Scattered in pairs on the roads north and south, Lieutenant Okladnikov also had four well-armed slicks, two-man scout vehicles with noses and sides acutely angled to enhance thin protective armor. Okladnikov had been waiting nearly an hour.

  Sanmartin halted to twitch a signal to GrafSpee overhead to assure their position, since an error in navigation would likely disrupt the operation beyond redemption. The confirmation placed them less than a hundred meters from where they thought they were. Sanmartin sucked his lungs full, flashed four fingers to Fripp, and willed his rubbery legs forward. Fripp caught the gesture and screwed up the pace.

  The battalion sergeant was busy straightening up the confusion at the port so as to bring in No. 15 light attack platoon. No. 3 rifle and Major Kolomeitsev were on their way to the ocean tap. Coldewe and Vereshchagin were pushing pieces of No. 11 up the road in freight trucks to link with Okladnikov before Colonel Lynch, the brigade commander, tired of meddling with the firelight in Kaapstad. Everything else was piling up in orbit.

  In Okladnikov’s words, never have so few been led by so many.

  A WIDE SWING PAST THE GATE BROUGHT THEM ALONG THE thin fringe of scrub separating the cleared area on the high ground from a precipitous drop into the coastal marshes. Twenty or thirty local Boer militiamen were nervously manning a check point at the factory gates while the rest of the workers who had shown up for shift were off trying to organize themselves. Sanmartin intended to sugar their tea, but the alcohol farm came first.

  According to Lev Yevtushenko, who had a recon team sitting in the director’s office with the director smoking the director’s cigars, confusion was something close to total.

  Three hundred meters from the first line of storage tanks, Sanmartin pulled up to contact Okladnikov. “Nine point one zero one. Break, ’ ’ he said, hitting the contact on his wrist mount. “Sergei, we’re ready to start. Is number eleven up?”

  The radio synchronized itself with the other radios it was speaking to, “shook hands,” and shifted wavelengths every few hundredths of a second. Okladnikov’s reply crept up Sanmartin’s back and under his cap before registering through the bone induction plates over his temples. “Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin extends his compliments and wishes to know what kept you.”

  “There was the small matter of a forested swamp approximately ten hectares in size, to which maps and words do no justice. Give us seven minutes. Let Lev know. What’s in the building that isn’t on the plat?”

  “Lev said it’s two hectares of die, stamping, molding, and imaging equipment. We take it out, the populace had best start chipping hand axes. I wonder if anyone on Earth knows it’s here. Luck to you.”

  “I wonder if anyone on Earth knows we’re here. The same, Sergei. Out.”

  The high, featureless reinforced concrete face of the alcohol farm loomed like a castle wall. Beyond it was the main building, its smooth surface marred by a single door.

  Sanmartin touched the contact and squeezed his fingers together. “Nine two point Akita. Break. We’re set. Fix bayonets so they’ll know we’re not selling brushes. The door’s out front, you can see the path leading from the main building, so that’s where we go. Remember, don’t shoot unless you see a weapon and can hit what you’re shooting at. The last tiling we want is a few thousand liters of alcohol spilled on the floor. Who’s in charge of prisoners?” His slight nervousness was mostly hidden.

  “Fripp and DeKe,” the section sergeant replied with commendable patience.

  “Aksel, you drop off with the gp as we go in. Cover the main building and be ready to move up. Don’t blow anybody away unless you have to. Any suggestions? Is there anything I left out?”

  If there was, they failed to mention it. Like wraiths, they moved into position in front of the door to the alcohol plant. Sanmartin poised his foot to kick it in.

  Section Sergeant Beregov halted him with a hand signal.

  He turned the knob and walked in. Sanmartin slowed just enough to get trampled.

  Beregov fanned four men out on either side among the vast yeast tanks. Two more stayed to watch the door. Feeling slightly useless, Sanmartin watched Roy de Kantzow, Filthy DeKe, grab the only man in sight by the shoulder and slam him to the floor, flipping him neatly on to his stomach.

  ‘ 'Goede morgen. Wij zijn keizerlijk soldaaten, ’ ’ de Kantzow emphasized in what was evidently intended to be the bastard Dutch they’d learned aboard ship. He was holding his bayonet lightly against the side of the man’s head. It was the longest continuous sequence of clean words Sanmartin had heard from the Deacon’s mouth.

  Fripp picked up the man’s clipboard and patted him down. “The Deacon is not a linguist. He does better with the ladies when he uses sign language,” Fripp explained sagely.

  Sanmartin, no better linguist than the Deacon, watched the little robots scuttle about on their appointed rounds. “Where’s everybody else?” he asked the fellow on the floor.

  “In the cafeteria,” the bearded Boer blurted out in strongly accented English.

  “Where’s the cafeteria?”

  The man looked up at de Kantzow and pointed out the door toward the section of the main building where sugarcane bagasse was converted into paper. Beregov appeared from behind one of the massive cane presses with a light machine gunner and half a dozen prisoners in tow.

  “Berry, give me Fripp’s team while I run next door. I’ll take Miinalainen and the gp. If you find a window, cover me,” Sanmartin said, knowing Fripp to be the superior private Beregov trusted most to keep his company commander out of trouble.

  Beregov tugged on his mustache and nodded.

  Running out the door with Fripp at his heels, Sanmartin pointed to the entrance for Miinalainen and the gp machine gun to shift fire lanes. He reached the door. Waving up the 88 and the gp, he put an ear to listen.

  He couldn’t hear a thing.

  He thumbed his radio. “C for Chiba point two. Break. Sanmartin. Hans, what is your progress?” he asked his executive officer.

  “Raul. What kept you? We’re almost through cleaning up the north side.”

&
nbsp; Sanmartin fought down an urge to blaspheme. “We’re just outside what I think is the cafeteria. The workers are supposed to be concentrating there.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt. Check with Lev. Shall I send someone by to give you a hand?”

  “Miserable lump.”

  Coldewe laughed and closed the circuit. Sanmartin tapped out another.

  “Recon point one. Break. Sanmartin. Lev? We’re outside the main door on the southwest side. Is that the entrance to the cafeteria?”

  Two clicks, which meant yes. It also meant Yevtushenko was too close to someone unfriendly to speak aloud.

  “Are all the workers gathered there?”

  Three clicks, which meant, “who knows?”

  ‘‘I’m going in. In thirty seconds, I want you on the loudspeakers. Can you do it?”

  Two more clicks. Sanmartin turned and nodded. “I’m first,

  Fripp, DeKe, the light, then the gp. Aksel, you’re last, set?” he said, fingering the wooden singlestick he had tucked into his webbing. “Now.”

  Fripp shrugged. He flung open the door and adrenaline pushed Sanmaitin through. He found himself behind someone who was shouting from a tabletop and gave the man a helpful shove. De Kantzow lightly butt-stroked a very short man carelessly holding a rifle. The rifle hit the floor first. The light and the gp moved to cover the crowd from either side.

  Sanmartin said the first thing that came into his head. “His Imperial Majesty sent us. You can all go home for lunch.”

  At the other end of the cafeteria, a knock sounded on the interior door. It opened, and Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin steppted in followed by a half section out of the first of No. 9.