Vanguard

by Jack Campbell

Two days later, a visit from Val Tanaka interrupted another training session. “Your boy Spurlick is officially missing.”

  “Any clues?” Mele asked.

  “Pretty big clues, actually. He volunteered to assist a team recovering an automated weather station along the coast about fifty kilometers south of where Scatha set up shop. When it came time to leave, he was nowhere to be found. I’d tipped off the team leader that might happen, so they didn’t panic, and after a decent search to make sure he really had run, they reported it and came on back.”

  “Thanks, Val. You keep bringing me good news.” Mele grinned. “You know, it’s getting so I’m actually looking forward to seeing a police officer coming to talk to me.”

  Val Tanaka shook her head at Mele. “I know an act when I see one, Sergeant Darcy. You’re not a bad girl. You just like testing limits. And right now, you’ve got a job that is testing your own limits in a good way. Let’s keep it like that.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Mele said. “By the way, if you need to pass on anything else in the next twelve hours or so, just get ahold of Grant Duncan. I’m going to be busy.”

  Val raised her eyebrows at Mele. “Out of town?”

  “Way out.”

  “Be careful. Do you need a ride to the WinG station?”

  Mele nodded. “In about half an hour.”

  “It’s a quiet day. I can wait. You’re less likely to be noticed if you’re scrunched down in my ride.”

  • • •

  Unlike the hard but smoother grass of the area around the city, the scrub underneath Mele had sharp, small needles on tiny, stubby branches. Mele breathed a silent curse as she acquired cuts on exposed flesh while she wormed her way high enough to see over the rise. The plants gave off a slightly spicy, slightly musky scent that threatened to make her sneeze. Overhead, stars shone in patterns that still felt unfamiliar. The silence of the night around her was broken by occasional clicks and cheeps from unseen insects. Glenlyon didn’t seem to have evolved anything like snakes, but there were a variety of small weasel-like creatures that could be trouble if their nests were disturbed, so Mele kept a careful watch as she crawled forward.

  Scatha liked lights, it seemed. The base was brightly lit, with floods shining both inward and outward along the edges. Mele narrowed her eyelids to keep from losing all of her night vision, then eased back down and hauled out the drone a team of engineers had modified to be as stealthy as could be managed. The engineers had had so much fun with it that Mele had found it hard to “borrow” for the time needed to get her task done.

  Loading passive signal collectors each the size of her thumb onto the drone, Mele breathed a short prayer before cautiously activating the drone and letting it rise less than a meter above the scrub. The signal collectors, at first pale against the darker drone, quickly shaded to match their surroundings, becoming very hard to see.

  If the drone had sent out signals, or if Mele had transmitted commands to it, Scatha’s sensors would have picked them up and alerted the defenders. Instead, a nearly invisible and very hard to break fiber-optic cord connected to Mele’s controller unspooled from the drone as it slid toward Scatha’s base. Each signal collector was linked to the cord as well, so that together they formed a network that could transmit whatever they overheard back along the cord to a relay transmitter out of sight of Scatha’s sensors.

  Mele had to estimate where to drop each sensor so that the long pin on the bottom would plunge into the topsoil and hold the sensor upright in place. One, two, three . . .

  A spotlight mounted on a sensor pole came to life, playing over the sensor field in the general area where the drone was. Something must have spotted the movement of the drone. Mele dropped the last two pickups, then made the drone zig and zag wildly a couple of times before ordering it back up the slope at a fast clip, then dropping it low and slow. A sensor tech wanting to impress her had told Mele about that trick, which would lead anything detecting that movement to conclude a small animal had tripped the sensors.

  She waited, tense, as the light flicked back and forth, but it never settled on the drone.

  She got the drone back, carefully deactivated it, then slid down the back slope, out of sight of the base. Planting the relay unit didn’t take long. Mele plugged in the fiber-optic link to the pickups, touched the link commands, and within a minute got the confirmation signals from the satellite overhead and the signal collection pickups. The relay would compress everything the signal collectors picked up and send it in second-long bursts up to the satellite, which would send the material on to Ninja.

  Mele took the risk of crawling up the rise again to study what could be seen of Scatha’s base. After several minutes of lying unmoving, she spotted what she had been looking for, the distant shapes of two soldiers patrolling the inner edge of the sensor field. She watched them intently, getting a personal feel for how those soldiers were moving and acting. As far as she could tell, Scatha’s soldiers weren’t looking around as they trudged along their patrol route, instead depending on their armors’ sensors to alert them to any dangers that they clearly did not think threatened. They had probably heard that Glenlyon lacked any ground forces or military equipment, and nothing had happened since they arrived to cause them to think that Glenlyon would do anything but complain about their presence.

  Mele wondered whether Spurlick had already made it to Scatha’s base. Probably not. Spurlick hadn’t looked like he could cover that much ground that fast. Still, she was glad that her best route to plant the pickups had been on the north side of Scatha’s camp while Spurlick would be coming in from the south. There wasn’t any chance of his stumbling across her.

  Finally, Mele slid back down the rise and, keeping low, ran along the back side of the terrain until she reached the place where WinG Bravo rested behind a higher slope. She paused long enough to let the people inside the WinG identify her, then gratefully climbed into the personnel hatch that opened on the side.

  “How was it?” one of the pilots asked, as the other gently brought the WinG up and around.

  “Piece of cake,” Mele said, gratefully drinking from the water bulb offered by the pilot.

  “How come you’re sweating so much, then?”

  “Gland condition,” Mele said.

  The pilot laughed as WinG Bravo accelerated along the ground, over the beach in a flash, and swung south to avoid being spotted by Scatha’s base.

  Chapter 10

  “How’s it look?” Mele asked, leaning to gaze at some of the displays wrapped in front of Ninja’s desk.

  “Very nice,” Ninja said, her eyes on the displays as her hands and fingers moved around controls and inputs. “You didn’t plant the listening array perfectly, but pretty close.”

  “It wasn’t under ideal conditions,” Mele said dryly.

  “You got to crawl around in the mud and get dirt in your teeth, Marine,” Ninja said. “I bet you loved it. Sorry there aren’t any snakes to eat on this planet.”

  “Yeah, it’s that far short of paradise,” Mele agreed.

  “Ah, lookee here,” Ninja said. “I recognize that. And hit with this and . . . yeah. I’ll be able to get in. What exactly are you going to need me to do?”

  Mele pondered the question for a moment, thinking back to Gunny Chopra again. “Are you a scientist or an engineer?”

  Ninja grinned. “I am a sorcerer. High priestess of the Temple of Lovelace. Practitioner of the High Code and Breaker of Firewalls. And also Grand Deceiver of the SysAdmins.”

  “In that case,” Mele said, laughing, “I need to be able to be invisible to Scatha’s sensors, including their battle armor internals.”

  “Uh-huh. What else?”

  Mele’s laughter faded as she looked incredulously at Ninja. “I need their full security layout, patrol schedules, entry codes, and lock overrides.”

  “Yeah, of course.” N
inja nodded and sat back, smiling at Mele. “When do you need it, Marine?”

  “Whenever you can get it, Sorcerer. You know what my timeline is.”

  “Yeah,” Ninja repeated. “So you also need their planned date for finishing work on the antiorbital system and activating it, and updates on whether they are keeping to schedule, right?”

  “Right.” Mele leaned against the wall, crossing her arms and grinning at Ninja. “Where have you been all my life?”

  Ninja looked upward and sighed. “Trying to figure out how to hack the heart of Lieutenant Rob Geary. The rest of this stuff is easy by comparison.”

  “Maybe I can help nudge him your way,” Mele said. “Something subtle like a kick in the butt. That usually gets a guy’s attention.”

  “Thanks for the Marine romance tip, but I’d rather you focused on not getting killed. Even if I give you everything you want and need, this is still going to be dangerous as hell, right?”

  Mele weighed possible responses, finally deciding on the simplest one. “Right.”

  • • •

  She had been called on the carpet enough during her time in Franklin’s Marines that Mele wasn’t too intimidated to be standing before the three council members who made up Glenlyon’s Defense Subcouncil. Not that she liked the experience.

  It helped that Leigh Camagan was the chair of the subcouncil. Mele had quickly sized up Camagan as someone you played straight with because if you did, she would return the favor. Council Member Kim was a usually reliable ally except that he had exaggerated ideas of his own ability to understand real-world military operations. Council Member Odom, on the other hand, had been put on the subcouncil to represent the dovish sentiments in the colony, which meant he spent most of his time trying to second-guess, undermine, and block Mele. Not that that was entirely a bad thing. She had learned the importance of having oversight that made her question her own assumptions.

  “When do you intend doing something about Scatha’s intrusion on this planet?” Kim demanded. “They’ve almost finished work on setting up their antiorbital defense system! What are you waiting for?”

  Mele spoke with calm certainty. “Aside from the need to get in as much training as possible and make the necessary preparations, I’m planning on hitting them the night after they make that system operational. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

  Kim stared in wordless amazement. Odom gave Mele a suspicious look. Leigh Camagan rested her chin on the palm of one hand. “Why?” she asked.

  Trust Camagan to ask for an explanation before making up her mind. Mele gestured in the general direction of Scatha’s encampment. “Three reasons. First, I don’t want to alert them that we’re a danger. They’ve been sitting on this planet for a few weeks, and we haven’t done anything except mouth at them.”

  “We have attempted to negotiate their departure and expressed our intentions to not accept their illegal actions,” Odom corrected in a severe tone.

  “Yes, sir,” Mele said. “The point is, right now, those ground apes from Scatha are thinking we’re all talk and no trouble. They’ve relaxed their guard. I was able to check them out from ground level when planting our surveillance pickups, and those apes are not staying sharp.

  “Second, when they get that antiorbital cannon online, they’re going to relax even more because they’re going to feel really safe with that big gun working. They’ll celebrate, they’ll feel protected by the big gun, and they’ll take it a little easier. That’ll be the best time to strike.”

  Mele smiled, but this time it was a hard smile, with little humor to it. “And, third, because after feeling so safe and relaxed, having that system destroyed right under their noses is going to hit them all the harder. They’re going to go from overconfident to extra-spooked, and once we have them scared, we can keep pushing with smaller moves that will wear away their morale and set them up to fold without a tough fight. If we have enough time for that. It’s just like in a one-on-one fight. If you get the other guy scared, off-balance, then you can keep them that way, and they’ll be that much easier to beat.”

  “I see.” Leigh Camagan nodded toward each of her fellow members. “That sounds like excellent reasoning.”

  “Where did an enlisted Marine pick up that kind of thinking?” Odom demanded.

  Mele smiled at him even though she wanted to make a very rude gesture in reply. Alas, part of being in command meant that she couldn’t give in to that kind of temptation anymore. “Listening to my officers talk tactics and strategy. And reading. There’s this guy named Sun Tzu. Real old Old Earth. Part of what he talks about is beating the enemy before you start fighting by laying the right groundwork.”

  “That’s good,” Kim said. Having seen Odom’s hostility, he was throwing himself fully into support of Mele. “That’s very good.”

  “She’s working from theory,” Odom said.

  “She is trying to achieve victory by causing as few deaths among the enemy as possible,” Leigh Camagan said. “That is your intention, is it not?” she asked Mele.

  “Yes, it is,” Mele confirmed. “In particular, to avoid any casualties at all among the civilians Scatha brought.”

  “That is surely what we want, isn’t it?” Leigh Camagan asked Odom.

  Odom hesitated, then nodded with a sour expression. “Yes.”

  “Then, having heard Major Darcy’s explanation of her strategy, I move that we endorse it.”

  Mele ran the last sentence through her head again, wondering if she had heard right. No. She must have misheard part of it.

  “I’m still concerned,” Odom said. “We’ve seen the data our pickups are gathering. You say that Scatha’s soldiers are complacent,” he told Mele, “yet our pickups are detecting usually two or three weapon discharges a night by sentries.”

  Mele nodded. “That’s one of the reasons I know they’re slacking off,” she explained. “Sentries and patrols get bored if nothing happens, and when they get bored, there’s a real strong temptation to let off a shot just for fun. Usually, you claim that you saw something move and thought it might be danger. Back on Franklin, we called popping off a shot like that for fun huntin’ wabbits.”

  “I’ve heard the expression,” Kim said. “But that was from a former soldier from Brahma, who also emphasized it was not rabbit but wabbit. What is a wabbit?”

  “I don’t know,” Mele said. “Maybe the saying originated on Earth, and they have wabbits there, so that’s why everybody uses it. The thing is, a tight outfit, one that’s well disciplined, doesn’t tolerate that. Any sentry who shoots at wabbits gets hammered.” She didn’t bother adding that she knew that from personal experience. “So it doesn’t happen very often. The fact that Scatha’s grunts are popping off shots two or three times a night every night means they’re not being hauled up short for it, which means their leadership is sloppy, which is good for us.”

  “Are you worried about being mistaken for a wabbit by those sentries?” Leigh Camagan asked.

  “Ninja is working on our being able to break into their net and substitute our own data for whatever the sensors really see,” Mele said. “She’s confident she can do that, and when that happens, we can look like whatever we want to look like to the sensors, or we’ll be invisible to anyone who doesn’t actually see us with unaided eyes.”

  “Won’t they do that?” Odom asked, frowning. “Look around with their own eyes?”

  “No, sir. The sloppier an outfit is, the more they depend exclusively on their sensors. And these guys are sloppy. I’m betting my life on it. Not figuratively. Literally.”

  Odom grimaced. “I don’t want to minimize that. You are running serious risks. I’d prefer that we also don’t suffer any losses.”

  He meant it, Mele realized. She nodded respectfully to him. “Thank you, sir. I assure you that I am highly motivated to come back from this mission alive and in one pie
ce.”

  “She’s clearly thought this out,” Kim said. “I move that we endorse Major Darcy’s actions and plans.”

  There it was again. No doubt this time.

  After a few seconds, Odom reluctantly nodded in agreement.

  After the other two had left, Mele stopped Leigh Camagan. “Major Darcy? Two of you called me major.”

  “Yes. You’ve been promoted,” Leigh Camagan said matter-of-factly.

  “When did that happen?”

  “This morning.”

  “Thank you for informing me of that,” Mele said. “I’ve heard of sergeant-majors, but I never heard of anyone being promoted direct from sergeant to major,” Mele said.

  “These are exceptional circumstances. Don’t you think you can handle it?”

  “One of these days, you’re going to ask me that, and I’m going to say no, I can’t,” Mele threatened.

  “I don’t think so,” Leigh Camagan said, smiling slightly. “I make a habit of finding out what people are really like, so I know how to deal with them, and I try to be certain of my own motives and thoughts as well. ‘Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.’”

  It was Mele’s turn to stare in surprise. “You’ve read Sun Tzu?”

  “Of course. War is an extension of politics, as Clausewitz said.”

  “I haven’t read that Clausewitz. Should I?”

  “When you have the time,” Leigh Camagan said. “To be honest, you seem to already know a lot of what he says. You were bored a lot as an enlisted Marine for Franklin, weren’t you? That’s why you got in trouble from time to time.”

  “There’s truth to that,” Mele admitted.

  “I have good news for you. You won’t have to worry about getting into trouble anymore because you are not going to have any opportunities in the future to be bored, Major Darcy.” Leigh Camagan smiled at her, then left.

  Mele stared after her, wondering what her last outfit would think if they heard that she was now a major. There had been one sergeant that she would absolutely love to see right now. And that snooty lieutenant.