Lieutenant Colonel

by Rick Shelley

  For a few seconds, Lon could see anger rising in the Bancrofter; his face started to get red; his jaw worked as he ground his teeth. Lon waited, ready for any kind of reaction, even violence. Finally, Crampton closed his eyes for a second, let out a long breath, and swallowed hard.

  “You’re right, Colonel,” Crampton said, his voice sounding near strangulation. “I was letting myself get out of control. Please excuse me. But I am under pressure. I had a call from the governor. He wants action, and military facts of life mean less to him than they do to you or me.”

  “Our turn will come, Colonel,” Lon said. “Come on. It’ll be drier in the shuttle.”

  14

  Three Peaks was no longer one of the most isolated mining camps on Bancroft, but it was still not in a well-populated area. There were several new camps, even smaller, within a radius of twenty miles, but all of them had been abandoned—temporarily, Colonel Crampton said, until the raiders were destroyed.

  Only one shuttle was on the ground when Lon’s craft made its approach. The landing strip, hacked out of rock, did not have facilities for multiple shuttles to sit around. There was barely enough room for aircraft to land. The mining camp and its landing strip were on a broad shelf on the flank of a moderately steep hill, some fourteen hundred feet above mean sea level. The camp got its name from three broken heights along the ridge on the southwest side of the ledge.

  “Looks like some expansion since I was here last,” Lon said to Crampton as the shuttle touched down.

  “I think so, yes,” Crampton said. “We opened two new shafts a couple of years ago, brought in more people to work them. And we had to build a barracks for the militia detachment.”

  Tebba Girana was waiting at the landing strip with a squad from his company’s first platoon. One of the Bancrofter captains was also waiting to report to his commander.

  “Doesn’t look like the locals had any chance at all here, Colonel,” Girana told Lon as they walked away from the Bancrofters, toward the remains of the village. “They got hit hard and fast, without warning. The bodies I’ve looked at, most were killed by fire or shrapnel, most looked like they didn’t even get out of bed before they died. I’ve only seen one body with bullet wounds, and the medic said those might have happened after the guy was already dead.”

  “You find any snoops planted around here?” Lon asked. “They should have had some warning.”

  “We’ve pulled three snoops, all nonfunctional,” Tebba said. “I can’t say if they were working when the raiders hit. Outside of that, it was raining and foggy. The clouds extended nearly five hundred feet down, more than halfway to the valley floor when we got here. Without night-vision gear, visibility would have been zero-minus. We haven’t been able to determine which direction the raiders came from, or which way they went when they left. All the rain, we might never figure it out.”

  “We’ll have to search, Tebba, at least until we know we’re not going to find anything,” Lon said. The rain had stopped, but there were still high clouds, thick enough to hide the sun.

  “I’ve got three platoons out, and half the Bancrofters are out as well.” Tebba glanced over his shoulder. “The other militiamen are taking care of the dead, getting them ready to take home.”

  “No survivors at all?”

  “None that we’ve been able to find. I suppose there’s a small chance one or two might have managed to slip away, to hide in the woods, but it’s not likely. Odds are we’d have already come across them.”

  The walk had carried Lon and Tebba, followed by the squad that had been on the ground and the Dirigenters who had come with Lon, into the center of the burned ruins of Three Peaks. Even with the rain, the smells of fire and ashes—and burned flesh—were heavy, rank odors. Some of the remnants were still smoldering.

  Three Peaks had been a narrow strip. A natural ledge along the hillside had been widened. Nowhere was the level cleared area more than a hundred feet wide, and the settlement, including the landing strip, was only six-tenths of a mile long. The buildings had been built against the back of the ledge.

  I doubt anyone escaped, Lon thought. They had only one way to go, and the raiders would have been waiting for them there. He shook his head, a minimal gesture.

  Bodies encased in plastic bags were being laid out on the wet rock. Two rows.

  “Not much left to some of them,” Tebba said when he saw Lon staring at the body bags. “Charred, some burned down to the bones. Hot fire.” He paused, then added, “I wasn’t the only one to puke. An’ one of the Bancrofter militiamen went hysterical. They had to slap a sleep patch on him to quiet him down.”

  “I can imagine,” Lon whispered.

  “Weren’t just wood burning, that’s for sure,” Tebba said. “We’ve taken scrapings of some of the charred wood. The raiders used something to make the fire burn hot and fast. Maybe just white phosphorus, maybe something more sophisticated.”

  “Won’t make much difference to the people who died, but it might help us prove who’s behind this,” Lon said. “Not that it’s ever going to get into a court of law.”

  “News gets out to enough worlds, it might make a difference,” Tebba said. “Earth could pretty much cut itself off from the rest of the human worlds.”

  Despite the surroundings, Lon felt a smile cross his face. “Politics, Tebba? You?”

  “A thing like this can do it to you,” Tebba said, his tone completely serious. “News gets out we can prove Earth was behind this kind of raiding, it’ll help Buckingham and Union. And Dirigent. Folks’ll maybe not hesitate so long to get professional help when things start happening on their worlds.”

  “If the Second Commonwealth and the new Confederation of Human Worlds get too big, it’ll hurt business for us and the other mercenary worlds, Tebba. Time’ll come when there won’t be room for independent worlds like Dirigent.”

  “Not in my lifetime,” Tebba said. “We’re a long way from that.”

  Lon was not particularly surprised to learn that Governor Sosa was coming out to view the scene of the tragedy at Three Peaks. He did not look forward to hearing what the governor might have to say. Neither could be avoided, though; Lon also knew that. Because of the visit, the bodies were not removed. Sosa would take some of them back in his shuttle. The rest would follow in one of the militia shuttles…after Governor Sosa had been videoed walking down the line of the dead.

  “We’re going to close down more of the small camps, Colonel,” Sosa said after he had performed the political rituals for the cameras. “We can’t take the chance of having this happen again. Close the smaller camps, move the miners home, increase the garrisons at the mining villages and more important camps.”

  “That’s probably wise, Governor,” Lon said, relieved that there had been no irrational outbursts. Yet.

  “They have escalated the conflict,” Sosa said. “I suppose in retaliation for us bringing you in, and for their defeat at Xavier’s Beak.”

  “None of the electronic snoops placed around Three Peaks were operational when we found them, Governor,” Lon said. “Whether they were working earlier I can’t say. Either the garrison had turned them off, or the raiders were somehow able to get around the security codes and shut them off themselves. Or the equipment was defective; that might be possible, though it seems extremely unlikely. The men in Three Peaks had no warning, no chance to call for help, no chance to defend themselves.”

  Sosa frowned at Lon. “I thought the encryption schemes used on the snoops were too secure for anyone to get around them. We bought them from Dirigent.”

  “I know. We pulled the snoops to check. And the security codes…” Lon shook his head. “The way it was explained to me is that it would take a dozen of the best computer nets a thousand years to hack through the protection. Hell, snoops that were around five centuries ago were too good for troops in the field to crack the security codes without setting off an alarm.”

  “If the codes can’t be broken and it’s so unlikely
that all of the units would be defective, that would indicate that either the garrison had turned off the snoops for some reason or the raiders somehow managed to get their hands on the codes that would let them deactivate the devices?”

  “Those are the only alternatives that I’ve been able to come up with,” Lon said. “And neither seems all that likely.”

  “I can’t imagine why the garrison would turn off the snoops,” Sosa said. “That is too incredible. Their own lives were at stake and, especially right now, every garrison would know that it was snoops that saved Xavier’s Beak. And only the garrison of the camp and perhaps two people at militia headquarters would have access to the specific codes that the individual snoops at this site used.”

  “Governor, I’d like to bring a couple of specialists down from Long Snake. We need to know for certain that we can account for every person who was in the camp, and that could mean sifting through a lot of ashes to make sure that none of the victims were burned too completely to leave visible remains.”

  “Are you suggesting what I think you are, that there might have been a traitor in the camp?”

  “I’m suggesting that we need to be able to rule that in or out as a possibility.”

  Sosa nodded once, an abrupt gesture. “Do it.” Then he walked away, waving for his aides to join him. He was ready to leave Three Peaks.

  It was past noon before the sun came out over Three Peaks. The bodies had been removed. A preliminary count showed a discrepancy. One man—everyone at Three Peaks had been male—was unaccounted for.

  “Can’t be sure yet,” Tebba reminded Lon. “Some of the bodies we did find, wasn’t much left but a few bits of bone and more ash.”

  “I know,” Lon said. “That’s why we brought the lab people down to shift through the ashes and look for traces of human DNA or small bits of bone that might have survived incineration.”

  “You think there was a traitor in the camp,” Tebba said. It was no question.

  “I think that’s the most likely explanation. Probably one of the men in the militia garrison. Turned off the snoops and got out of the way, left with the raiders. Maybe even set incendiary devices in the buildings where the rest of the miners and militiamen were sleeping. But we can’t say anything until we know. Absolutely know.” Lon shrugged. “The governor knows what I suspect. It was hard to miss the implications.”

  “The locals get to thinking they can’t trust each other, that’d make the job a hell of a lot harder,” Tebba said. “They’ll be too busy looking over their shoulders, wondering which of their buddies might snuff ’em.”

  “And they’ve got ready-made targets, Tebba, all the new settlers who have come to Bancroft in the past nine years. The militia has a bunch of newcomers. This could get really messy.”

  “There’s something else,” Tebba said, hesitating before he continued. “Even if there was a traitor here, nothing says the raiders had to take him away with them. They might have left his body just so we wouldn’t figure it out.”

  Lon nodded. “Start pulling our people in. If we haven’t found any trace of the raiders by now, we’re not likely to. We go back to Lincoln and do some more waiting.”

  “We’re not going to find anything. We’ve been out three miles in every direction, farther along the easy travel routes, and not a clue which way they went or came from. Hang on a second, Colonel, I’ve got Harley on the line now.” Lieutenant Harley Stossberg was one of A Company’s platoon leaders.

  Lon waited, resisting the urge to switch channels on his helmet radio to eavesdrop on the conversation. It lasted less than a minute.

  “Maybe we got something, Colonel, but not much,” Tebba said when he had finished. “Four miles off, across the ridge to the southwest. First platoon found a clearing big enough for shuttles. They found scorch marks, coulda come from shuttle engines, and fresh tire tracks. Looks like the raiders came in and left by air.”

  “Harley get video?” Lon asked.

  Tebba nodded. “And scrapings from the scorch marks.”

  Lon shook his head. “We didn’t pick up anything in the air. That’s not good, Tebba. Their stealth technology is beating us.”

  “They had good weather for hiding, Colonel. Don’t forget that.”

  “Tell the militia commanders here what we found,” Lon said. “I’m heading back to Lincoln now. That’ll clear the landing strip so you can get your company out. I imagine the locals will be hanging around a while longer.”

  “That’s the last word I had. I expect they’ll want to look that clearing over for themselves.”

  Impatience did not help. Lon knew it would take time to get answers—both on the search for human remains and the investigation of the deactivated electronic snoops—but waiting was difficult. Back in the privacy of his office, Lon paced through much of the afternoon. He took reports—the return of A Company, the work of the lab technicians from Long Snake, the end of the collection process. He talked by complink with Colonel Crampton, then with Deputy Governor Henks.

  The Bancrofters had begun the process of identifying the remains of the miners and militiamen. Before sunset, Henks was able to give Lon the name of the man who could not be accounted for, and had his DNA code transmitted to Long Snake so the lab could look for matches. “He had been in the militia more than three years,” Henks said. “He came to Bancroft with his wife from Lorenzo seven years ago. We had thirty-odd families who came here after Lorenzo voted to join the Second Commonwealth.”

  Lon keyed a note to himself to check Lorenzo in CIC’s database. “Dissidents?”

  “I don’t have details, Colonel,” Henks said. “It’s likely. And, to save you the trouble of asking, there are only two other Lorenzo immigrants in the BCM, and neither of those is posted to any of the mining garrisons.”

  “We don’t know for certain that there’s cause for worry there yet, sir,” Lon said. “But since you brought it up, I assume you have also checked on the employment status of other members of that group?”

  Henks hesitated before he said, “Yes, we have collected data on all of them. All in all, quite an accomplished group of people. Most live and work in Lincoln or the other towns. Two are lawyers. One of those works for the Ministry of Justice as a prosecutor. One is a chartered accountant who operates on contract from the government, auditing mining and trade accounts.”

  Lon responded without taking time to consider his words. “Someone who would know which targets might be most valuable?”

  Henks’s hesitation was a lot longer this time. “That did occur to us. Damn it, Colonel, I know we have to look into these things, but this is all most distasteful.”

  “I understand, sir,” Lon said. “I agree that it is most distasteful, and the problems an investigation could raise might be troubling long after the raiders are dispatched. Especially since one cannot assume that if there are traitors—still an unproven hypothesis—they must necessarily all come from the same world, from the same batch of immigrants.”

  “Colonel Crampton informed me that he has had the security codes changed for all of the electronic monitoring devices, and has restricted knowledge of those codes to the officer in charge of each garrison. None of those officers is a first-generation immigrant. Or second, as it happens. If we can’t trust people whose families have been here three or more generations, we are in much deeper trouble than we could possibly imagine.”

  You are indeed, Lon thought after the conversation ended. But it’s unlikely. That realization was little comfort.

  “Gentlemen, we’re at a standstill here.” Lon was addressing his staff officers and company commanders in the conference room adjacent to his office in the headquarters building of the militia base. Supper had ended fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Our surface scans have provided no clue to the whereabouts of any raider bases or aircraft. We haven’t made any significant progress in determining what the enemy has done to their soldiers to cause death if they receive treatment from us, so we can�
�t begin to search for an antidote that might keep a captured raider alive long enough to answer questions. We haven’t established, for certain, that a Bancrofter traitor shut off the snoops around Three Peaks and left with the raiders after the massacre. We haven’t been able to come up with a computer analysis of any pattern to the raider attacks that we could use to anticipate their next strike.

  “What is infinitely worse, as far as I am concerned, is that there’s damned little we can do immediately to improve our grasp of the situation. We have troops and equipment, but little useful way to employ them until we have more intelligence or catch a break. I dislike waiting for the enemy to make a mistake. Our contract is for three months, and every day that passes without making serious progress puts us that much closer to the possibility that we will fail to fulfill that contract on time.” Lon paused and held up a hand to forestall interruption.

  “I know. We can’t make things happen simply by wishing for them, and I’ve seen several of the proposals that you and your lieutenants have come up with, war-gaming the situation.” He smiled. “It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed. Encourage your platoon leaders to keep it up. There’s a chance someone might actually come up with something useful.”

  Captain Kai raised his hand and waited for Lon to nod before he spoke. “Some of the men are getting a bit…restive, wondering when we’re going to get off our butts and do something. Especially after we heard about what happened at Three Peaks.”

  “I know, Sefer,” Lon said. “All we can do is what we always do. Be as open with the men as possible. Tell them why we’re not doing much but chasing after raiders. Hell, we did get in a few licks at Xavier’s Beak. Husbanding our strength until we have a reasonable chance of scoring against the raiders is infinitely preferable to putting two or three companies out in the woods to look around, just hoping to stumble on some sort of trail when we can’t even guess where we should do our stumbling.