Colonel

by Rick Shelley

  “Naturally, we will have to wait to see what we find when we emerge from our final Q-space transit in Elysium’s system before we can settle on a final deployment plan. The information we have will be more than a month out of date by then and the situation on the ground could be … just about anything. One thing we know is that we are going to be facing professionals, mercenaries from New Sparta, and twenty days ago they had a regiment or more on the ground, with all of the backup from aerospace fighters that we would use in similar circumstances. We need to keep that in mind. We’re not going to be facing amateurs, but well-equipped, well-trained career soldiers.

  “The contract is open-ended, but if it lasts more than six months, 7th and 15th can expect to be relieved by other units.” Except in the most extraordinary circumstances, the Corps tried to limit a unit’s continuous contract time to six months—seven months, including the transit time in each direction. “Because of the opposition, I think we had better all hope that the contract does not last that long.

  “You will find detailed information and maps of Elysium in the briefing files, but I’ll give you a few basics.” This was the point where Lon had to start referring to his notes. “The planet is slightly smaller than either Dirigent or Earth, surface gravity .956 Earth Standard, not enough less to be significant. The total population is about fifteen million, of whom approximately three hundred thousand are students drawn from perhaps a hundred different worlds. The largest concentration of people is in and around University City, which is the planetary capital in addition to being the location of the main campus of Elysium University. The population of the metropolitan area is roughly three million. There are two other metro areas with populations topping one million, a half dozen with at least half a million. The rest of the populace is spread out in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.

  “There are three primary continents. Eighty percent of the inhabitants live on Athens. Most of the remainder live on Rome, with just a few scattered research outposts on the continent the Elysians call Carthage.

  “Athens, and more particularly University City, is the focus of the New Spartan attack, or—to be more accurate—was the focus as of the time the Elysian delegation left on its way here. University City has to be the focus of any attack. Essentially, whoever controls it controls the world. The government is there, the university, the center of its communications nets, and more than thirty percent of the planet’s industrial capacity, including several of its primary research and development laboratories.

  “University City is located near the west coast of Athens, about sixty miles from the ocean, primarily on the north shore of the river the initial colonists called the Styx, an allusion to classical mythology for those of you who might not have encountered it before. There are two bridges across the river serving University City and the few sections and suburbs on the south shore, which may or may not still be intact. The Elysians were debating whether to blow the bridges when the chancellor and his party left. The New Spartans landed forces on both sides of the river, outside the metropolitan area.”

  Lon talked for another ten minutes, then dismissed his officers. The briefing would move down the ranks, with company commanders telling their platoon leaders and senior noncoms. Except for those men who might have already left base for their three free days before deployment, everyone in the regiment would know the basics of the contract within an hour. A few officers stayed to ask questions afterward, but those were related to preparing for departure, not about the mission itself. Lon passed the questions to his executive officer, Tefford Ives, and retreated to his office across the hall.

  Alone, finally, Lon noticed that his hands were trembling. He had started sweating halfway through the briefing, and the temperature in the conference room could not have been the cause. He stood just inside his office, leaning back against the door, taking deep breaths, trying to relax.

  It’s too soon to get tied in knots over this contract, he told himself. The nightmares had started coming after him Friday night, as soon as it was apparent that this would be a two-regiment contract, that he—and his son—would be going. Finally, he had resorted to sleep patches to keep the dreams from surfacing and disturbing his nights … but nothing could keep the thoughts away when he was awake.

  I’ve been away from action too long. The last time I came under fire was … the second Bancroft contract, before I made colonel. He took a deep breath and moved to his desk. He sat, but not for long. After less than a minute he got up and went to look out the window. There’s no reason to think you’ll come under enemy fire this time. Not yet. But Junior would be a lot closer to action. As a platoon leader, he would likely be on the front line of any combat. That was the real source of Lon’s nightmares now.

  How could I come home and tell Sara and Angie that Junior had been killed? In all the nightmares—asleep and awake—he had never found an answer to that question.

  The general Corps policy that everyone should have seventy-two hours’ leave prior to shipping out on a contract could not apply to a regimental commander. When a battalion shipped out, the necessary preparatory work could be conducted by regiment. When the entire regiment was going, only so much of the preparation could be handled by the civilian staff, the people who would not be going, and by Corps headquarters. Lon and his senior staff officers had to be available to make decisions, to see that necessary steps were taken, to make sure there were no snags that could delay the departure. The ships and supplies. Additional information about the contract. One afternoon was not long enough for all of the conferences. Lon did not leave his office until after five o’clock Monday afternoon, and planned to be back at eight the next morning.

  “A contract this big is a logistics nightmare,” Lon told Sara at supper that evening. He winced a little over the final word. “Dirigent is going to be short on ships and soldiers until units get back from some of the current contracts. A couple of battalions of men who should still be on training routine are going to have to move to planetary defense assignments early to cover the gaps.” He gave a laughing snort. “This is one of those rare times when we’ve got as many men off on contract as we like to have. Even a little more once our two regiments leave. For the next couple of weeks, at least, we won’t be able to send out more than a single battalion on contract, and even that would strain our resources.”

  “Anything else in the offing right now?” Sara asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then it doesn’t make much difference, does it? You all must have taken that into account when the Council accepted the contract.”

  “Yes. But if the situation is bad on Elysium when we get there and we have to call in a third regiment, it could be damned hard to find ships to move them. We’re going to have to be awfully picky about accepting any other contracts until we know what the situation is on Elysium and get the word back here.”

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” Sara said, knowing that her words would have no effect. “It’ll be a month before you get there and have time to send a message rocket back. There must be enough contracts over or nearly over to get the situation in hand.”

  “Theoretically.” Lon shrugged and pushed his plate away, even though he had eaten almost nothing. He had started with little appetite and had lost that. “If everyone gets back on schedule. If none of the units got torn up too bad. If, if.”

  “The Corps isn’t going to leave anyone hanging, Lon. You know that.”

  He sighed. “I’ve got five thousand men I’m responsible for, Sara, lives and well-being as well as how they perform. I’ve got to think about anything that might possibly go wrong, look for ways to deal with … whatever happens.”

  A million details to keep track of. Ten million things that could go wrong. Lon sat in front of the complink in his home study—the study was one of the perks of the house he rated as a full colonel. It was past eleven o’clock Monday night, and Lon was tired. He had been smothering yawns for an hour. Sara had jus
t gone to bed. Angie had gone to bed hours earlier.

  Bed. That’s where I should be, Lon told himself, but he did not move. It wasn’t just that he still had a lot of data he needed—or at least wanted—to review. Nor was it the inertia of a tired man. Bed. Sleep. Nightmares. Lon did not like to rely on sleep patches all the time, but he knew a patch would be the only way to keep the nightmares away, the only way to get restful sleep with a combat contract coming up.

  More than once this night he had thought, I don’t have to go to Elysium. I could retire now and that would be that. There would be talk, but my record is good. But that would not end the nightmares. Junior would still be going on this contract. There was no way to talk him out of staying in the Corps. For now. Two combat contracts had taken the fantasy out of soldiering for Junior but had not robbed him of his desire to be a soldier … to continue being a soldier, and he seemed excited by the size of the Elysium contract.

  He’s good, probably better than I was at his age, Lon conceded, but he had seen too many good soldiers die to take any comfort from that. Circumstances and conditions. One brief lapse of judgment. Bad luck.

  I have to believe Junior has a better chance with me in command than with anyone else running the regiment. In the end, it came down to that. No matter who might get the regiment next, Tefford Ives or one of the battalion commanders, Lon still thought he could do a better job.

  Lon squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then blinked several times and tried to focus on the complink screen. He clicked the NEXT tab and stared at the first screen of the next file on his queue: “Flora and Fauna of the Western District of Athens, Elysium,” a thesis on the ecology of the area, including the impact of imported Terran species. The Corps had unusually detailed and up-to-date information on the world of Elysium, most of it highly reliable. There were fairly frequent contacts between the two worlds—as a result of students going to study at the most renowned university off-Earth, as well as industrial deals with Elysium’s R&D corporations. And Chancellor Berlino had brought along extensive database updates that had been integrated into the data the Corps already had.

  He only scanned this file, looking for key words such as “toxic,” “dangerous,” and “predator”—plants and animals that might pose a hazard to people—glancing quickly at photographs. Key entries could be studied in more depth later, on the journey to Elysium. There were no snakes—one of his routine checks—but there were several carnivorous lizards, two poisonous species and one that was larger than the extinct Komodo dragons of Earth. The Olympic Dragon, the name of the Elysian variety, was warm-blooded and known to reach as many as eighteen feet in length and more than two tons in weight. The entry said that they were “rare” in the vicinity of University City but did not quantify their numbers. Lon flagged the entry so his officers and noncoms would be sure to see it. He shook his head. That’s all we need, lizards big enough to eat a man in one gulp.

  Trees whose bark could produce a nasty rash; a flowering plant that triggered allergic reactions in 3 percent of humans exposed to it, and anaphylactic shock in 1 ½ percent of those who were sensitive to it. Lon keyed that entry to the regiment’s senior medical officer. In transit, the health maintenance systems of every man would have to be upgraded to deal with the threat.

  Lon continued to scroll through the file until he started to doze, nodding off as the lines of print climbed the complink screen. He jerked his head up and blinked rapidly several times, then yawned—his eyes watering.

  “I can’t do much more tonight,” he said softly, then yawned again. But he stretched and turned his attention to the screen once more. He rubbed his eyes and tried to focus, scrolling back a hundred lines to make certain he had missed nothing important. Twenty minutes later he dozed off a second time and didn’t awake until his chin hit his chest. He stared at the screen then, hardly aware that there were words on it.

  After several minutes he pushed his chair back and stood, not even bothering to put the complink console in standby mode. The room lights went out when he left. There was no help for it: He had to go to bed, and sleep.

  The last thing Lon did before he lay down was to stick a four-hour sleep patch on his neck. It was well past one o’clock, so he could not afford to use a longer-duration patch. The medication worked quickly, and knocked him out before he had time to start a new round of futile worrying. For four hours he slept deep and dreamless, but as soon as the patch wore off, the dreams started to intrude. At first, his sleeping mind was troubled only by vague images, a growing sense of foreboding. Soon, however, the nightmare that had been dominant the past couple of nights forced itself forward. He saw himself kneeling on some unidentifiable battlefield, holding the broken and dead body of his son, the boy’s blood covering both of them. Dream sobs seemed to bring real physical discomfort, but the nightmare progressed. Lon felt himself being riddled with bullets, feeling each impact, seeing each wound and the blood spurting from it. But Lon did not die in his nightmares. He was denied that escape. He saw himself looking out of a trauma tube still—somehow—holding his dead son. He would not be able to escape his final excruciating duty, that of going home to tell his wife and daughter that he had failed to keep Junior alive. It’s your fault! Your fault! his mind screamed at him, over and over, louder and louder.

  No! NO! “NO!” The screamed denials in his nightmare finally escaped his lips … at their loudest. Lon woke almost as quickly as Sara did.

  “It’s just a dream,” she said, leaning over him, one hand on his shoulder, gripping firmly. She could feel the way Lon was shaking, almost out of control, the way he might have with an extremely high fever. He was also sweating profusely. “Just a dream.” Sara was used to Lon’s troubled nights, though he almost never shared his nightmares with her. They came—most often when a contract was near, or expected, or in the first nights after he returned from a combat contract—and then they went away … until the next time. She kept her hand on his arm until the trembling faded and some semblance of recognition appeared in Lon’s eyes. He was gulping in air, his eyes open in a wide stare, only slowly able to focus on Sara.

  “A bad one?” Sara asked, her voice barely a whisper next to his ear. Lon closed his eyes, then opened them again. His heart started to slow toward normal, but he continued to breathe deeply, greedily, for another minute before he was able to reply.

  “A bad one.” He took in one controlled deep breath, then rolled onto his back, looking up at Sara. “What time is it?”

  She glanced at the clock. “A few minutes to six.”

  Once more, he closed his eyes briefly, working to control his body. When he opened his eyes, he said, “Time for me to get up, anyway. I need to get to the office as early as I can today. There’s still a lot to do before we leave.”

  “The work will get done even if you’re a little late. You’re pushing yourself too hard. You’ve got a good staff. Ease up a little before …” She couldn’t find a way to finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. Lon could put a variety of endings to it.

  “I’m responsible for my regiment. I can’t delegate that. It goes with the pips.” Lon sat up, then stood. That was easier than continuing the conversation.

  A driver from 8th Regiment picked Lon up and took him to his office. To allow all of 7th’s enlisted personnel and junior officers their allotted three days off before the contract, a dozen people had been borrowed from 8th. That was a routine courtesy in the Corps.

  Regimental headquarters was busy, but not nearly as busy as it would have been without the pending contract. Most of Lon’s senior staff officers were in before he arrived Tuesday morning. They had the civilian staff and temporary help from 8th hard at work well before the usual start of the workday at 0800 hours.

  Lon went straight to his office. With Jeremy Howell off, Lon had to brew his own coffee. While that was in the works, Lon turned his complink on and scrolled through the list of messages that had been logged in since he had last checked from home the nig
ht before. There were half a dozen he would have to read right away, so he sat down and started … tried to start. Halfway through the first message, though, he pushed away from his desk, stood, and walked to the window.

  He stared out at the regimental parade ground—virtually deserted. There would be no formations until it was time to muster the regiment for the ride across Dirigent City to the spaceport Thursday afternoon. Elysium. Contract. Fighting. Professionals. The words clicked in Lon’s head, but there was no continuity, no expansion. His mind felt numb, rejecting work. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force concentration. It didn’t help. Minutes passed before he realized that his coffee had finished brewing. He poured himself a cup and drank it black, so hot it nearly scalded his tongue.

  After he emptied the cup, Lon set it down and went back to his complink. Instead of continuing to work at the overnight messages, he made a call.

  “Doc, you have a few minutes for me this morning?” he asked when a face appeared on the screen.

  There was only a brief hesitation before the man on the other end of the call nodded. “I’ll be right there, Colonel.”

  Major Dan Norman had been 7th Regiment’s SMO, senior medical officer, for a dozen years. Despite the sophistication of nanotech health maintenance implants and the efficiency of trauma tubes, the long-standing predictions that highly trained physicians would “soon” be redundant had not come true. The computerized equipment that dealt with physical problems had to be updated periodically, especially since new worlds were being opened up every year with new toxins and diseases. There were rare cases, mostly neurological, where HMSes and trauma tubes were not entirely sufficient without guidance from a human specialist. And every physician was now, by definition, an expert in treating psychiatric disorders, particularly those that were not caused by chemical imbalances.