"He hasn't been anywhere, hasn't done anything," PFC Rowe whispered to his fire team leader, Lance Corporal Chang. "He's only wearing two ribbons!"
"Yeah, I see," Chang whispered back. "Now take another look at them."
Rowe looked at the general's chest again and his jaw dropped. One was a star-speckled dark blue ribbon—it was the Army Medal of Heroism. Rowe hadn't been in the Corps for long, but he'd been in long enough to know that rear echelon officers in a combat zone sometimes awarded one another medals just for showing up every day, but you really had to do something to get the Medal of Heroism. Not everyone recognized the second ribbon, but for those who did, their opinion of the general went up even higher. The Army Good Conduct Medal was awarded only to enlisted men. Unlike the army, which commissioned its officers without requiring enlisted service, all Marine officers were commissioned from the ranks. The Marines thought their way was better because it virtually guaranteed that a new officer had a working knowledge of what he was doing.
Major General Cazombi casually stood next to the dais and looked at the Marines for a long moment, watching as their expressions changed from scowls to wonder to readiness to accept him.
"Good afternoon, Marines," he said, and paused for them to reply. "As Dr. Hoxey said, I'm the military commander here. I am here at the express command of the Chairman of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. My primary job regarding you is to enforce the Rules of Engagement the Combined Chiefs have drawn up for this operation. I'll brief you on them later. The ROE are stringent; the Confederation is quite adamant about no contact between humans and Avionians. But hear this: I've been where you are; I will look out for your interests."
Dr. Hoxey's head snapped toward him and she shot him a furious look which he ignored as he returned to his place. So she glared out at the Marines as though they were the cause of her displeasure and said, "Now Dr. Omer Abraham, our Chief Scientist, will tell you about the indigenous population."
Apparently lost in thought, Dr. Abraham stood and walked slowly to the dais. Unlike the others, who had simply introduced themselves to the Marines, he was about to deliver a detailed lecture. He still hadn't decided exactly how to begin it. He reached the dais and faced the 120 men looking at him. Oh yes, this might well be much harder than presenting a paper to a scientific conclave. Few of these men had advanced degrees, and they were apt to be practical in ways he couldn't conceive. How was he going to get through to them? Then he had it. These men were fighters. The Cheereek were fighters. He'd tell them about that.
"I'm sure you've all taken a survey course in the history of Earth. In it you probably heard of an ancient leader by the name of Temujin. He came out of nowhere to conquer almost all of Asia, a goodly part of Europe, and part of Africa before he ran out of steam. Until then all who stood in his way were crushed. Your job here is, in part, to stop a Temujin before he starts." He looked at his audience and saw he had their full attention. He smiled and started telling them about the Avionians of the steppes.
Quietly, Thelma Hoxey got up and left. Captain Conorado stayed; he needed the lecture as much as his men did. General Cazombi also remained at the head table; he wanted to see how the Marines reacted to Abraham's lecture. Nobody seemed to mind that Abraham took the rest of the day to tell the Marines about the Avionians.
The real problems didn't begin until late the next afternoon.
Chapter 15
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
MISSION
1. Apprehend human personnel illegally on Avionia.
2. To the greatest extent possible, consistent with the General Rules of Engagement, remove all evidence of the presence of illegal personnel.
GENERAL RULES
1. Use the minimum force necessary to accomplish mission.
2. Illegal personnel who want to surrender will not be harmed. Disarm them and detain them for transfer to the ship.
3. Treat apprehended personnel humanely.
4. Collect and care for wounded or injured humans, whether Marine or illegal personnel.
5. Do not personally collect any personal property of apprehended personnel—do not steal.
6. Prevent and report all suspected violations of the law of armed conflict.
INDIGENOUS POPULATION
1. Contact with indigenous population is to be avoided.
2. Do not collect property or artifacts of indigenous population—no souvenirs.
3. Do not, using vid or any other means of data capture or storage, collect images of indigenous population.
SELF-DEFENSE
1. Only the appropriate nonlethal weapons may be used.
2. Use only the minimum force necessary for apprehension of illegal personnel.
3. Force in any measure against indigenous population may be used only in extremis.
4. If absolutely necessary, the minimum force may be used to avoid contact with indigenous population.
"What is this?" Claypoole demanded. "No pictures, no souvenirs, no contact! How are we supposed to do our job?"
"That's right," Corporal Kerr said to Claypoole. "This mission is secret, we don't take anything to show anybody that anyone's here."
"No force," Schultz said. A thunderhead seemed to gather over his brow.
"No force," Corporal Dornhofer said. "We're here to protect them, not kill them." He shook his head ruefully. Part of him understood exactly why Schultz was angry about no force. That part of him agreed.
General Cazombi stood at the dais in the same theater where he'd first spoken to the Marines. He made an unobtrusive gesture to Company L's leaders—let the men talk, give them time to study the Rules of Engagement. Each man had the rules on a card he was required to carry with him. The cards were printed on Avionia Station in place of the cards he'd brought with him from Earth. They were slightly altered because Dr. Hoxey demanded what she called a "semantic correction." The original cards said "native personnel." The modified ones said "indigenous population." According to Hoxey, personnel implied they were human. Personally, Cazombi suspected that for Hoxey personnel implied people, population implied animals. That would mitigate legal liability for her experiments on captive "research subjects."
"This is not a combat operation," General Cazombi announced when he thought the Marines had had enough time to digest the ROE. There was more mild annoyance in the company than anger. He even heard a few jokes cracked, followed by laughter. But nobody was going to find humor in what he had to tell them next. "Because it's not combat, you are going to turn in your blasters before you go planetside." He had to shout out the last few words.
Two other voices cracked over the shouts and protests from the Marines, the loudest and most violent of which came from third platoon. Captain Conorado bellowed, "AS YOU WERE!" and First Sergeant Myer boomed out, "COMP-nee, A-ten-HUT!"
The men immediately shut up and rose to stand stiffly, facing the stage.
"This is a general officer addressing you," Myer shouted, glaring out at them from the front of the stage. "You will listen! You will not interrupt! You will not object! The next man jack to disrupt these proceedings will find himself in deep shit. His ass will belong to me until I feel like turning him over for court-martial. Have I made myself clear?"
There were murmurs from the company, but the first sergeant had made himself clear.
Myer turned to Cazombi. "Sir, I apologize on behalf of the men."
General Cazombi nodded at him, then looked stony-faced back at the Marines facing him. "Sit." They sat as rigidly as they had just stood. "You aren't going to be unarmed. Platoon sergeants and up will carry their normal hand-blasters. The rest of you will carry nonlethal weapons. I'll tell you about them in a moment. You aren't carrying your normal weapons because we don't want to kill smugglers or natives. You'll be wearing your chameleons; nobody on the surface is going to see you unless you want them to. Now, remember what Dr. Abraham told you—the Avionians have a very poorly developed sense of smell, they aren't going to pick up your scent. As lo
ng as you exercise reasonable caution, you are not in any danger of discovery." He held up a hand. "Yes, I know full well how many times ‘no danger’ has been said before a disaster. But I don't expect you to exercise reasonable caution; I expect extreme caution on your part." He stopped talking and looked at them for a long moment as agreement began welling up. Except in third platoon.
"All right," he finally said, looking directly at third platoon. "I know some of you are upset, and I know why. For right now, just take my word for it: the Avionians aren't like anything you've ever encountered before." Third platoon stared back at him. They didn't look like they agreed, but most looked willing to listen.
"Now," he reached under the dais, "this is what you are going to carry." He withdrew an odd-looking object a meter long. It was roughly a tube with a butt plate at one end and a blocky assemblage jutting out of it less than halfway from the butt plate to the business end. "The engineers who designed this call it a zapper. It's a neural disrupter. It fires a disruptive electric charge effective up to a distance of fifty meters. Its effect on a man is dramatic—it knocks him down and causes full-body spasms. It disables him long enough for the slowest person to run fifty meters to him and clap him in a restrainer. At closer range, it can knock a person out. Someone hit by a zapper is mobile again in five or ten minutes, but it takes several hours for all the effects to wear off. A shot from the zapper will render an Avionian unconscious for ten to fifteen minutes, longer if the hit comes from close range. It takes an Avionian a full day to fully recover." General Cazombi hadn't been told, but he had a pretty good idea how Dr. Hoxey had determined the zapper's effect on the Avionians. "Your platoon sergeants have already been familiarized with the zapper. When we are finished here, you will be issued these weapons and your platoon sergeants will instruct you on their use.
"We don't have much time. You make planetfall before dawn tomorrow morning. That is all."
"COMP-nee, A-ten-HUT!" Myer bellowed. The Marines jumped to their feet and stood at attention as General Cazombi left the stage.
Cazombi signaled Captain Conorado to follow him. "I want to meet privately with your third platoon," Cazombi said softly when they were alone. He looked uncertain, and somewhat embarrassed, when he said, "Third platoon only. Nobody from outside it, not even you or anyone else from your command group."
Conorado looked at him, stunned. For a general officer to exclude a company commander from a meeting with the company commander's own men was unheard of. And then he was angry. He guessed that Cazombi knew what third platoon had run into on its recent deployment and was going to talk to them about it. An army general was going to talk with his men about something he could only guess at, and he was banned from the meeting. And then he wasn't merely angry, he was furious. So he did the only thing he could under the circumstances. He said, "Aye aye, sir. Where does the general want to meet with them?"
Sitting with one haunch on the corner of the lecturer's desk in a classroom, Major General Alistair Cazombi waited patiently for the men of third platoon to file into the compartment. The first Marine in froze briefly then snapped to attention, blocking the door. Cazombi casually waved a hand, telling him to come in and take a seat. The Marine walked stiffly to the indicated chair and sat at attention.
"Come on in, have a seat," Cazombi said to the Marines who hesitated in the entrance. He waited until Staff Sergeant Hyakowa closed the door behind the last Marine and sat down himself before saying anything else. The hostility and anger in the platoon was palpable, and he knew he had to do something to defuse it.
"Relax," he began. "I may carry a lot of rank, but I started out as an enlisted man, just like you. At heart I'm a groundpounder, the same as every man in this platoon." A slight smile briefly cracked his face. "Well, not quite the same. I'm a dogface, and we do some things a bit different from the way you Marines do. Nevertheless, all of us in this room are field-ration-powered, foot-operated, multipurpose killing machines. Don't be fooled by the fact that my current job is personnel officer for the Combined Chiefs." He saw several Marines looking at the two ribbons he wore, and gave them time to consider the implications of an army major general who was a former enlisted man and had won the Medal of Heroism.
When the silence stretched long enough, he said, "There probably aren't many more than a dozen people in the Office of the Combined Chiefs who know what you encountered on Society 437. I'm one of them. I've seen all the vids, the trids, and read all the reports. I've also done extensive study of the Avionians—especially the Cheereek. The Cheereek aren't skinks." His use of the word startled many of them. Again there was a slight change in Cazombi's demeanor that those who knew him would recognize as a smile. "Yes, that's how thoroughly I studied your encounter on Waygone." He looked at each man and saw three who looked confused. He nodded and said, "That's right, not everybody here knows what we're talking about.
"You're a platoon. A squad is a family. A platoon is an extended family. I don't care who told you what before, I think it's time you filled in your family members on what happened. The way things are right now, you've got a rift in this platoon, a certain lack of trust between the veterans and the new men. The secrecy behind that rift will no doubt create stresses that can distract you from what you're doing, stresses that could get some of you killed. That would be tragic, particularly on an operation like this, which—once you get beyond the exotic aspects of it—is a pretty routine police procedure.
"Now, it's essential that you understand the differences between this operation and the one on Society 437."
General Cazombi then did his best to drum into the Marines of third platoon, Company L, 34th FIST the differences between the two missions, and why they were in little danger on Avionia. When he finished, he didn't ask for questions. By then he was thinking about something else. Whoever had made the decision that the Marines had to keep Society 437 such a deep secret that not even their immediate chain of command should know—well, they were wrong. He knew it might cost him his career, but the people who needed to know were going to find out. Beginning with Captain Conorado and his top people. Cazombi went to find the company commander.
Company L assembled by platoons in Avionia Station's docking bay at oh-dark-thirty hours to board the Dragons that were already on the two regular navy Essays assigned to ferry them planetside. They boarded, strapped themselves in, and the ramps were closed. When the Essays were secure, the atmosphere was pumped out of the bay and its hatch opened. Tractors nudged the two shuttle craft onto the launchpads at the lip of the opening and backed off. The launchpads' plungers lifted into position and seated themselves at the rear of the Essays. When all was ready, the plungers gave the Essays a quarter-g push then withdrew as the Essays floated free of the station's internal gravity. The webbing that held the Marines made quick adjustments for the transition to null-g. The coxswains used the crafts' vernier jets to maneuver to a safe distance from the station and pointed their noses at a slight tangent to the planet below.
"All right back there," said the coxswain of the Essay designated as Lander Two, "picnic's over. You're back with the real navy now."
With no further warning, the main engines blasted on and the Essays shot downward. Five seconds later the engines cut off and left the shuttles in an unpowered plunge at a velocity of more than 32,000 kilometers per hour. When the two Essays reached atmosphere, the shuttle craft deployed their wings and hit their retro rockets. The Essays shuddered violently, the men in the Dragons bouncing and rattling about in the acceleration webbing.
"High speed on a bad road," was how Marines described the fall from the top of the atmosphere to the beginning of powered flight, fifty kilometers above the surface. It was an apt description.
The Essays split from each other during the drop to the top of the atmosphere, so by the time the breaking rockets and deploying wings cut their speed and the angle of the shuttles' dives, the Essays were two kilometers apart. That gave the coxswains the space to bring their reentry v
ehicles under control without risking collision. Once the Essays' wings were fully extended, huge flaps extended from them to further decrease their speed. When the wings finally bit into the thickening air hard enough for controlled flight, the coxswains turned off the breaking rockets, fired up the atmosphere jets, and maneuvered the craft back toward each other and into a velocity-eating spiral that slowed their descent as well as the shuttles' forward speed. At one thousand meters altitude the coxswains pulled out of the spiral and popped drogue chutes. At two hundred they angled the jets' vernier nozzles downward. Seconds later the Essays came to rest on the surface of Avionia. Their rear ramps dropped. Three Dragons roared out from each and sped toward the area where the smugglers were suspected of having their base. The Essays launched and headed back to the Khe Sanh.
Chapter 16
The Nomads
"SSKKAARROOUUU!!!" screeched Guard Captain Cheerpt. He held his Clumsy Ones' weapon high over his head and kneed his eeookk into full galumph over the steppe. The fifty warriors of the raiding party lifted their Clumsy Ones' weapons and screeched victory cries as they galumphed behind him.
Cheerpt was beside himself with glee at the success of the raid. He and fifty warriors had attacked a hunting-roost of nearly four hundred Koocaah-lice, including more than a hundred armed hunters and warriors. Now they were nearly four hundred dinners for scavengers—and not a single Cheereek had fallen. He twisted his neck around to look again at the eighty captured eeookks that struggled to keep up with his raiding party under their heavy burdens of captured food and shinies.
"SSKKAARROOUUU! ! !" he screeched again, and waved his weapon at his warriors. They waved their weapons and screeched victory back at him.
He brought his head back around and leaned forward, stretching his neck alongside his eeookk's so his head was next to his riding beast's—the posture of an attacking Cheereek warrior. Even though the fight was behind him, he still had energy to burn off. He continued the galumph until his eeookk gave signs of exhaustion. Only then did he sit upright and allow the beast to slow its pace. A few hops later he stopped and turned about. His warriors were strung out behind him, slowed by the eeookks with the booty.
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