The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  “Lay down your weapons, lads,” he told his men. He was the first to stand, with his arms raised to show that he was unarmed.

  Six of Captain Stanley’s men were dead. A dozen were wounded. His missing scouts were brought in, both conscious but groggy, both suffering from concussion. The Federation soldiers gave the wounded first aid. Then all of the survivors were searched. They had already been stripped of weapons and helmets. Now they were left with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. Afterward, they were herded together, out in the open, away from any cover. Each had been marked on the forehead with a small device that left what appeared to be a tattoo—or a brand—of a stylized F. Federation soldiers stood around them, watching, their weapons held at the ready. Only three of the invading soldiers had been wounded, and none killed, in the fight.

  Company A, First Battalion, South York Rifles were left to brood for an hour or more, not allowed to talk amongthemselves. Then a Federation officer came and gestured for Captain Stanley to approach him.

  “Go home while you can,” the officer said. “If you try any more foolish stunts, you will be killed. You have been marked. Any of our troops will know that you have already received a first warning. There will be no second chance.”

  The officer formed up his men and marched them away, leaving the South York Rifles with their dead—and with a feeling of humiliation that would fade more slowly than the marks on their foreheads. They might be part-time soldiers, little more than amateurs, but it hurt to lose so quickly—and to be dismissed so cavalierly.

  3

  The men of the Second Regiment of Royal Marines marched from their barracks on the main Combined Space Forces base on the outskirts of Westminster, Buckingham, to the shuttles that were waiting to carry them up to their transport, HMS Victoria. The regiment’s baggage as well as the equipment of the engineers and the heavy weapons battalion had already been loaded.

  For the first time in memory, the regiment was almost at full strength, with only a handful of slots in its table of organization remaining vacant. Five months of garrison duty and hard training had given time for replacements to arrive and be assimilated. Even though the men of the Second knew that they were heading for combat, many of them were relieved to be escaping the discipline and work of their training regimen.

  Only the most senior officers in the regiment knew the name of the world they were scheduled to go to. But the training had been very specific. Even the rawest recruit could draw some conclusions about the type of campaign expected—including building-to-building urban fighting, the most deadly kind for an infantryman. “And every Marine is an infantryman, first, last, and at every point in between,” a drill instructor might have thundered. “Every Marine from the regimental commander down to the cooks’ helpers carries a rifle and has to qualify with it every year.”

  Parading the regiment was mostly for the benefit of the civilian population of Buckingham, and the rest of the Second Commonwealth. Cameras recorded the event. Westminster’s public complink net carried the proceedings live, along with vague announcements that the Marines were leaving to carry the war to the enemy. There was, of course, no announcement of the Second Regiment’s destination, nothing that might provide even a vague hint in the unlikely event that the Confederation of Human Worlds had espionage devices near Buckingham that could get intelligence to the Federation capital on Union in time to do them any good.

  Headquarters and Service (H&S) Company of the First Battalion was one of the first units to reach its shuttles. The men formed up in ranks twenty yards away to wait for the rest of the regiment. There would be one last parade formation before the order to board shuttles was given. Noncoms and officers would go through the routine reports. This time it would be “All present,” not “All present or accounted for.” No one was staying behind.

  After Captain McAuliffe put H&S Company at ease, Lead Sergeant David Spencer walked along the front rank, behind the junior officers—platoon leaders—who stood in front of their men. The tour was only partly a casual inspection. David kept up a soft monologue, general remarks mostly. Only a couple of his observations were targeted toward individuals.

  “We’re just putting on a show for the people. The colonel wants us to look sharp for the cameras, so see that you do.” Spencer was a career Marine, with nearly seventeen years in uniform. He was one of the smallest men in the company. Having come out of the intelligence and reconnaissance (I&R) platoon, which normally drew most of the small men in any Marine battalion, he seemed almost tiny against many of the others. But he could hold his own against any of them in unarmed combat drills. He worked hard at his own conditioning, holding himself to even higher standards than he did the young recruits and the almost-as-young veterans of the regiment’s previous campaigns.

  “You lot know the drill. Hurry up and wait. Stand out here in the sun and bake. It gives you something to remember while we’re locked in aboard ship going to wherever they’re sending us this time.” Spencer could rattle off that sort of talk in an endless monotone, scarcely thinking about what he was saying. But while he walked and talked, his eyes remained busy, looking at every man in the company, inventorying, comparing what he saw now with what he had seen on other occasions, assuring himself that there were no new problems that he might have to deal with. A company lead sergeant in the Royal Marines did not spend all of his time behind a desk processing bureaucratic fodder. Even in H&S Company he took an active part in the routine training of garrison life—as did every officer. Especially since the start of the war with the Confederation of Human Worlds some three and a half years earlier.

  David Spencer knew every man in his company, their strengths and weaknesses. He even knew a lot about the officers. That could be as important as anything else. Now he looked over the lieutenants as closely as he did the other ranks. After he finished his tour, Spencer went to where the captain was standing.

  “They’re all ready to go, sir,” he reported softly. “We’re in good shape, better than we’ve been since before the war.”

  Captain Hector McAuliffe nodded very slightly. “You’ve done a good job with them, Spencer.” The two men had served together, in various capacities, for more than eight years. McAuliffe had been a green lieutenant when he first came to the company, and Spencer had been a squad leader. Promotion had come slowly in the peacetime Royal Marines. It wasn’t like that now, with a war on, and casualties to open up slots in the table of organization. This might well be McAuliffe’s last tour as company commander. He would likely be promoted to major, and move to a staff position, soon after this mission ended.

  “They might have at least brought around a couple of tea carts,” Spencer said. The captain almost laughed at the jest.

  “It won’t be long now, David. We’re just waiting on the engineers again.”

  Spencer turned to look at the last units forming up. The engineering battalion was something of a sour joke to the rest of the regiment—except when they were desperately needed. “This war goes on long enough, sir, we might actuallyturn some of them into proper Marines.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Not me, sir.” David nodded toward the left. “Looks like we’re about due. The colonel and his staff are coming out.”

  “Right. Best get into position, Sergeant.” The use of rank informed Spencer that the informal interlude was over. It was time for both of them to get back to duty.

  A full regimental formation could last anywhere between five minutes and two or more hours. The expectation this day was for a moderately short ordeal. Once the inevitable manpower reports were demanded and delivered, the colonel was expected to have a few remarks prior to embarkation—a pep talk full of clichés that many of the men could anticipate before they were delivered.

  The regiment was called to attention. The ritual of reporting was performed. The order, “Report!” went down the tree from Colonel Arkady Laplace, the regimental commander, and the reply, “All present, sir!�
�� came back up it—the age-old military glissando. But the order to “Stand easy” did not follow, as it would have if the colonel were going to address the men. Instead, orders were given to embark, “At the double.”

  There were no sidelong glances in ranks. The men of the Second Regiment were too disciplined for that. The commanders of each battalion and company relayed the command and started their units toward their assigned shuttles.

  “Lively, now,” Spencer said as his men trotted up the ramps into their shuttles. A company required three shuttles, fitting two platoons into each. Spencer rode with the service and I&R platoons. Captain McAuliffe was with the headquarters and supply people, and the executive officer rode in the third shuttle.

  “We’ll be taking off straightaway,” the shuttle’s pilot informed Spencer over a private radio link. The Marines were wearing battle helmets, with the wealth of communications channels those provided. “Get your lads strapped in.” Not even the two lieutenants in the passenger bay questioned the fact that the pilot had relayed the message through Lead Sergeant Spencer rather than through them.

  “Will do,” Spencer replied. He switched to the channel that put him in the ear of everyone in the two platoons. “Get to your seats and strap in. We’re going straight out.”

  The ramp was already coming up. No sooner did it stop moving when Spencer felt the slight vibration under foot that told him that the shuttle’s engines had fired up. He moved to his seat, the one nearest the ramp, and sat as soon as he saw that everyone else was in position and working at their lap straps—including the officers. There was no artificial gravity in a shuttle, nor did they have Q-space capability. A Nilssen generator, necessary for both, would have been a foolish luxury in a combat shuttle.

  “We’re ready back here,” Spencer told the pilot.

  “We’ll be off in less than a minute, right behind regimental HQ,” the pilot said. “We’re going up in a flock, like a combat landing in reverse.”

  David raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply. It took ninety shuttles, passenger and equipment, to move the regiment—seventy-five just to move the men. Victoria had gone through a major refit that had added more hangars and facilities to handle that many craft at once. Before, a regimental move would have been a more leisurely affair, with fewer shuttles making several round trips to get everyone moved. Even though Victoria now had the capacity to move the entire regiment simultaneously, throwing the whole lot up at once was unusual, irregular … and almost peculiar. It created traffic problems at both ends of the short flights.

  The shuttle was in the air pulling more than two g’s before Spencer decided that he would learn soon enough what the rush was. High acceleration was also unusual for a lift up from home port. The Navy was normally more cost-conscious.

  Some sort of drill? Spencer wondered as he felt his apparent weight increase even more. The pilot was really pushing the engines. There had to be some reason.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Tory Kepner, the I&R platoon sergeant, asked Spencer. “Where’s the bloody fire?”

  “Nobody’s told me anything, Kep.” Kepner had been anassistant squad leader while Spencer was I&R platoon sergeant, and had moved into the top position in the platoon when David made company lead sergeant. “Maybe it’s just part of the show for the civvies.”

  “Makes me nervous with the whole lot in the air at once. Got no control over anything.” Just twenty-four years old, Kepner had made sergeant in less than half the time it had taken Spencer. That was the difference war made.

  “I’ll tell the colonel you’re unhappy with the travel arrangements if you like,” David offered, smiling.

  Tory just snorted.

  Video monitors along the shuttle bulkheads showed Victoria as the fleet of landers approached their ship. Victoria was five miles long, and as much as 800 yards in diameter in places. The ship was constructed of tubular segments, five of them bundled together, with the main drive pod and its Nilssen generators at the rear. Multiple gastight hulls were a safety measure. Each tube had independent life-support systems and several gastight divisions. Survivability had been a major concern in the design and construction of the troop ship and its sisters. It was armed as well, with particle and light beam weapons, and with missiles that could be targeted against enemy fighters or missiles. Troop ships were almost always accompanied by other ships, frigates and battlecruisers, to provide even more defensive—and offensive—power.

  Fifteen shuttles could dock at once, moving into hangars that were spaced along and around Victoria. The ship needed a minimum of three minutes between each set of dockings, forcing shuttles to maintain station and move in by turn. The men in the first shuttles taken aboard had to wait inside their landers until the process was complete. Not until the last craft had been secured and the hangars pressurized could the ramps be lowered to allow the men to move through to their barracks bays.

  Forty-five hundred men disembarked and started to march toward their assigned compartments. It was not nearly as chaotic as it might have been, or as it might have appeared.

  Each platoon was always assigned the same compartment, and Victoria was the ship of the Second Regiment. Many of the men had made other voyages aboard her, and everyone had studied plans of the ship, and gone through embarkation and debarkation drills since the ship’s overhaul. No one got misplaced during the maneuver.

  “Okay, lads, get your kits sorted out and find your bunks,” Spencer said as the company reached its compartments. The men’s field bags had been delivered in advance. Each platoon’s bags were piled in the center of its living area. “Get squared away as quickly as you can, before they sound ‘mess call.’ “

  Spencer left the men to their platoon sergeants and squad leaders. He went down the corridor to his stateroom. Lead sergeants and above were quartered two to a room, while platoon, staff, and squad sergeants were put in four to a room.

  David’s duffel bag was on the floor between the room’s two bunks, along with the bag of Hal Avriel, Alpha Company’s lead sergeant. It was the work of no more than three minutes for David to transfer his things from the bag to the cupboard and footlocker. The bag itself was folded with Spencer’s name and service number showing, and placed in the bottom of the cupboard, ready for an inspection that would probably never come.

  “Some good from the quicker trips now,” David mumbled, smiling. A trip out used to take as many as fourteen days—five days in normal space before the ship made its first Q-space transit, three days after each of the three transits necessary to get from one star system to another. The war had changed that. Now, it rarely took more than three days, and on occasion, less than one, depending on how urgent the mission was.

  The door opened and Hal Avriel came in. “I don’t think I’m going to bother to unpack,” he said as David turned toward him. “I wouldn’t even count on getting to use the bunk.”

  “What are you blithering about?” David asked. “We’re supposed to have close to three days, last I heard.”

  “I just saw Colonel Zacharia running up a passageway,” Hal said. Lt. Colonel Zacharia was the battalion commander. “He said something about a meeting with Laplace as he went by. I guess my jaw had dropped when I saw him moving at the double.”

  “So?”

  “What’s the big hurry? Why the race up here with all of the gnats swarming at once? Why was Zacharia running like a recruit in his first week of training camp? There’s something out of the ordinary afoot, I think.”

  “I think you’ve let your imagination go racing too far from your brain, is what I think. This lark has been laid on for at least five months, hasn’t it? You don’t spend that much time training for a mission, then have to run around at the last minute to find out which leg to stick in your knickers first.”

  Avriel shook his head. “I tell you, something’s up that wasn’t on the schedule. I’ve got an itch that … I don’t know. Just something.”

  “Maybe the First lord of the Admiralty deci
ded to come up to wish them well.” David sat on his bunk and leaned back against the bulkhead. Baiting Hal Avriel was one of David’s minor pleasures, in garrison or aboard ship.

  “You’re proper hopeless, you are.” Avriel shoved his field bag into his clothes cupboard without unpacking, as he had said.

  “You’d best hope we don’t get an inspection. Fine example you’re setting for your lads,” David said.

  “Bilge, as the Navy chaps say. Tell you what. I’ll bet you a night’s ale that we’re not aboard Old Vic more than twenty-four hours.”

  David grinned. “I’ll take that bet. And I’ll make sure I’m proper thirsty when I collect.”

  Alfie Edwards wore his corporal’s chevrons lightly. He had received them a year before, and had come close to losing them a half dozen times. “They’re not sewn on, just held in place with sticky tape,” he was wont to tell hiscomrades in the I&R platoon. “That way I can take them off in a hurry when the time comes I get busted back to private.” His hair was a rusty color, and he wore it cut nearly to the scalp. The shortest man in first squad, he was the assistant squad leader, heading the squad’s second fire team. Each squad was divided into two four-man fire teams, able to operate as part of the squad or independently.

  Leadership did not come easily to Alfie. Leadership meant responsibility for other men, and being responsible just for himself had always been a difficult chore. As a private he had only needed to follow orders and be the best fighter he could be. He had taken the fighting part of that role seriously, though following orders had not always come easily in garrison. Even before enlisting in the Royal Marines he had been a dangerous fighter. In the neighborhood he had grown up in, that had been an essential survival skill. The Marines had honed his skills and given him more self-discipline. But his leadership duties still required conscious thought. He tried to be conscientious, and worked hard to get everything right. Mostly, he succeeded.