by Marko Kloos
“Hop in,” the company sergeant says through the open hatch.
“Something wrong?” I ask as I climb into the mule and reclaim my seat.
“Just a bunch of civvies throwing a tantrum,” the major answers for him. “We’re used to it. Hard batch of people down here.”
We drive back to the base, but instead of going back the way we came, our driver goes straight to the outskirts of town and then drives around the settlement across rough terrain. We have to buckle in as the mule heaves and bounces on the rocky, uneven ground like a ship in stormy seas. Finally, he picks up the hardpack road well outside of town, and the ride becomes smooth once more.
I know better than to prod the brass for more information. Instead, I give Sergeant Fallon a questioning look. She smiles a brief and clandestine smile, and very briefly forms a letter T with her hands, the signal for “time.”
“It was a dipshit idea to go down there in an armored vehicle, anyway,” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp says. He’s the CO of Sergeant Fallon’s HD battalion, and right now his mood seems to be somewhere between amusement and exasperation.
“Not my orders,” Major Vandenberg says. “You may take that one up with your task force CO upstairs. I could have told him that the civvies around here don’t take kindly to the military putting their hands on civilian assets on the best of days. Rolling in with a tank and wearing body armor, well…”
We’re back in the ops center on the base. I still don’t know exactly what transpired at the meeting with the civilian administrator, but from the comments between the brass, I have a pretty good idea.
“Well,” Lieutenant Colonel Kemp says. “I’m not going to make that call, that’s for sure. Let me get on the comms with the old man, and see what kind of flag-officer wisdom he can dispense.” He sneaks just the slightest amount of sarcasm into his inflections. I decide that the mood among all the ranks—enlisted, NCOs, and officers alike—is unusually weird. Under normal circumstances, a staff officer rank openly criticizing the flag officer in charge would be tantamount to insubordination, especially in front of junior personnel.
Sergeant Fallon, who has been leaning against the wall near the window, shoots me a glance and nods toward the door. I return a nod of confirmation and walk over to the hatch, to leave the officers and senior NCOs to have their little command powwow among themselves.
I leave the room and head down the corridor toward the chow hall. A few moments later Sergeant Fallon hails me from behind.
“Wait up, Andrew,” she says. I stop to let her catch up.
“Let’s find a quiet corner somewhere, shall we?” Sergeant Fallon suggests.
We grab some coffee at the chow counter and sit down at a table by the windows. The local chow hall is much nicer than anything in the fleet, a compensation for being stationed on a frigid wasteland where you can’t even step outside without heated armor half the planetary year.
“Here’s the deal,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Fleet said we are to take charge of all the civvie resources on this rock. Food storage, water reserves, everything.”
“Looks like our general doesn’t want to go beg the civvies for food and water once we run out of what we brought.”
“Well, their head guy told our brass to go piss up a rope. His exact words, too. He also invited them to convey that message to the general. Said he’d post his cops by all the storage facilities, and that he’d have anyone arrested who sets foot on them without permission.”
“With civilian cops? He’s nuts. No way his guys can keep us out. They have freakin’ pistols. Might as well throw rocks at someone in battle rattle, for all the damage you’ll do.”
“That’s not the point, Andrew. You think we can just walk in and start popping civvie police? The locals outnumber us twenty to one. We piss ’em off enough, we’re in deep shit. I doubt that one-star reservist who thinks he’s running the show from up there has the stomach to tell us to start shooting civvies.”
“And what if he does?” I ask.
Sergeant Fallon takes a sip of her coffee and looks out of the window, where the planetary sunset paints the snowy mountain chain on the horizon in muted shades of ochre and purple.
“I’m done shooting at civilians,” she says quietly. “If we get deployed, and they order us to open fire on those barely armed cops, I’ll order my troops to stand down, and fuck orders. I doubt the brig here on base is big enough to hold a company’s worth of troops. Assuming we’d go quietly,” she adds.
She looks at me expectantly, as if she wants me to argue the point with her. I don’t have to think about it very long.
“Shit,” I say. “Remember Detroit? If I have nightmares these days, they’re not about the Sino-Russians or the fucking Lankies. They’re about that clusterfuck.”
I ponder the swirl pattern of the creamer in my coffee.
“I was done shooting at civvies the moment they medevaced me out of that shithole. I’m not too keen on starting again.”
Sergeant Fallon nods with satisfaction and looks out onto the landscape of our temporary homeworld again.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m done shoveling shit for these people. If the Lankies show up, I’ll gladly shoot every round in our supply chain at them. But if that idiot general tells me to point my rifle at civilians without danger, I’ll turn in my rank sleeves and tell them to stick my retirement money up their asses. Along with that Medal of goddamn Honor.”
CHAPTER 17
We spend the next few days squaring away our new quarters, unloading cargo from the orbital shuttles, and eating way too many meals in the fancy chow hall. After a week has passed since our ill-advised sojourn into town, I allow myself some hope that the task force commander isn’t completely off his rocker.
On day eight of our stay, that little kernel of hope is squashed, not exactly to my surprise.
Whoever is in charge of the whole thing has either a flair for drama or a sadistic streak. We’re all barely out of our bunks when the combat-stations alarm in our building starts blaring. I’m brushing my teeth in the head when the lights switch to the ominous red-tinted combat illumination. All around me, the noncoms of the HD staff platoon drop their morning kit and rush out of the room.
“That better be a Lanky invasion,” Sergeant Fallon says from behind one of the stall doors near me.
“Well, whoever it is, you better cut things short in there,” I reply.
“Grayson, if this is a bullshit alert, there’s no reason for me to rush. And if it’s the end of this place, it won’t make a difference whether I finish taking a dump, will it?”
“See you at weapons issue,” I say, and leave the room with a grin.
The HD grunts are every bit as squared away as the Spaceborne Infantry. Every single member of the platoon is in full battle rattle and standard combat loadout less than five minutes after the first sound of the combat-stations alarm. We don’t have designated posts, so we fall out in front of the building and trot over to the ops center, heavy with weapons and ammunition.
“HD platoon, briefing room Charlie,” one of the senior SI sergeants greets us at the main entrance. He’s in his battle dress fatigues, not in armor, so I deduce that we don’t, in fact, have a Lanky seed ship or Russian invasion fleet headed for Camp Frostbite at the moment. We file into the building and sit down in briefing room Charlie as directed. The SI troopers on duty in the ops center move around without great urgency.
“That’s just fucking mean-spirited,” one of the HD sergeants mutters as we claim our seats, cramming our armor-clad bodies into chairs too small by half for troopers in battle gear. “Coulda waited until after breakfast with this shit.”
Nobody disagrees. There’s an unwritten protocol to the alert system, and it’s considered harsh to summon a whole platoon or company with a combat-stations alert without emergency while the unit is in the middle of personal maintenance or chow.
“Ten-hut!”
The HD platoon’s lieutenant jumps to his
feet when the SI major and his company sergeant enter the room. We all follow suit.
“As you were,” the major says.
Forty grunts in armor lower themselves into their too-small chairs again.
“Apologies for the alert before morning chow,” the major continues. “The old man upstairs called that one. I’m guessing he’s not keeping track of the local time.”
“That’s not the only thing he isn’t keeping track of,” someone behind me murmurs.
“I realize this is going to go down without rehearsal,” the major says. He steps up to the briefing lectern at the front of the room and picks up the remote for the holographic screen on the wall behind him. “The word just came down an hour ago. This one’s called Operation Winter Stash.”
He turns on the holoscreen, which instantly shows a 3-D image of New Longyearbyen. Several spots on the map are marked with drop-zone icons.
“This should be a quick thing, since we’re only facing mostly unarmed civilians. We’re going to seize control of the civilian storage facilities under emergency regulations.”
The drop-zone markers on the map flash in turn as the major points at them.
“Objective A is the main food storage. Objective B is the water farm. Objective C is the control center for the hydroponic greenhouses, and Objective D is the fuel storage at the civvie airfield. We’re sending your platoon in, one squad per objective.”
Members of the platoon are silently absorbing this information. I look at Sergeant Fallon across the room, and her face is impassive and unreadable. Finally, the platoon lieutenant raises a hand.
“Sir, you’re going to send four squads into a town of over ten thousand to take their most important resources?”
“You’ll be in battle armor, and you’ll have all four Dragonflies supporting you from above. The most dangerous stuff they have down there are sidearms and maybe some stun sticks.”
“Why isn’t the SI company going in?” Sergeant Fallon asks. “Sir,” she adds, with a bit of acid in her voice.
“The general feels that the HD platoon is better suited for this task. You folks are trained and geared for exactly this kind of mission profile, and you have a lot more experience handling belligerent civvies than we do.”
I have an unpleasant flashback to a drop into Detroit almost five years ago: our squad holed up against the side of a building, and a surge of angry civilians coming toward us like a natural disaster. Then the hoarse chattering of our rifles, and our fléchettes cutting through bodies, mowing down rows of people in a bloody harvest. I don’t believe in souls, but if I have one, a big chunk of it died that night in Detroit.
“We do a quick vertical assault with the drop ships. One Dragonfly per squad, so we can get you all on the ground in the same second. Secure the facilities, establish your perimeters, and call in the cavalry once you’ve seized the objectives. If the civvies get cranky, use nonlethal deterrents. Once you give the all-clear, the Dragonflies are going to RTB and pick up one platoon of SI each, to reinforce the objectives. Should be a cakewalk.”
“Spoken like a man who ain’t gonna be there,” the SI sergeant next to me mutters under his breath, and I nod in agreement.
I want to talk to Sergeant Fallon before we board the ships for our little cakewalk, but on the way to the flight area, she’s in a walking huddle with the rest of the platoon’s NCOs. With my fleet-pattern armor and my fleet weaponry, I already feel like a bit of an interloper among the HD troops, and walking to the flight line by myself only reinforces the feeling. Just before we get to the flight-ops area, the wandering HD powwow breaks up, and I notice some of the NCOs shooting me sideways glances.
We walk up to the ramp of our waiting Dragonflies without much enthusiasm. The troop bay is designed to hold a full platoon, and our little squad has lots of legroom. I sit by the tail ramp for faster egress, but Sergeant Fallon and two of her noncoms sit by the forward bulkhead, right by the crew chief’s jump seat and the passageway to the cockpit.
As our Dragonfly lifts off into the cold morning sky, I have a very strange feeling about the upcoming drop.
Our four-ship flight takes a course away from the settlement, to gain altitude out of sight and earshot. When we are high enough to be inaudible from the ground, we swing around and head straight for our targets.
“Prepare for combat descent,” the pilot says over the shipboard intercom.
When we’re directly above the town, twenty thousand feet above the hard deck, our drop ship banks sharply, cuts its engines, and drops out of the sky. The pilots are either adrenaline junkies or they don’t get very many opportunities to do combat descents. We’re all grunting in our seats as the drop-ship jock at the stick holds a three-g turn for what seems like minutes. Then the engines rev up again, and gravity pushes us back into our seats. The Dragonfly slows its rapid descent, and a few moments later, the skids hit the ground roughly.
“All squads,” Sergeant Fallon’s voice comes over the platoon channel. “Bastille, Bastille, Bastille.”
“Up and at ’em,” the crew chief calls out. We unbuckle and grab our weapons from the storage brackets.
Most of the squad exits the ship at a run, but Sergeant Fallon and the two NCOs with her don’t follow them. I stop at the bottom of the ramp and look back to see that one of the HD sergeants has his rifle aimed at the crew chief, who looks utterly perplexed. Sergeant Fallon rushes up the passageway to the drop ship’s cockpit, with her remaining NCO at her heels.
I jog back up the ramp, careful to keep my hands away from the carbine slung across my chest, lest the HD trooper holding the crew chief at gunpoint thinks I’m about to intervene in whatever crazy-ass plan Sergeant Fallon is executing.
“Hands off the comms gear,” the HD trooper instructs the crew chief, and emphasizes the command with a wave of his rifle muzzle. I walk past them to follow Sergeant Fallon into the cockpit, and the HD trooper gives me a curt nod.
When I step into the open cockpit hatch, I see Sergeant Fallon and her NCO holding sidearms against the helmets of the pilots.
“Listen up, flyboy,” Sergeant Fallon tells the pilot, who looks every bit as stunned as his crew chief. “Your ride is now HD property. Unplug your helmet, get out of your seat, and walk off the ship.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind, Sergeant?” the pilot says.
“Not half as nuts as I was the day I signed up for this bullshit,” Sergeant Fallon replies. “Now make your call. Your fingers touch any buttons, I’ll put a round right through your hand, sport.”
She reaches across his chest and removes his sidearm from its holster. The muzzle of the pistol in her other hand never wavers. The pilot carefully unbuckles his harness and starts to get out of his seat.
“No need for violence, Sarge. It’s not like you can do a damn thing with this bird anyway.”
“Whatever you say,” Sergeant Fallon says.
When both pilots are out of their seats, Sergeant Fallon marches them out of the cockpit at gunpoint. I retreat into the armory nook behind the cockpit to let them pass.
“Cameron, she’s all yours. Andrew, you may want to come with me.”
In the cockpit, the HD sergeant picks up the pilot’s helmet and wedges himself into the right-hand seat.
“Uh, Sarge?” I ask. “You sure you want him to fly this thing?”
“Why the fuck not?” she says. “That’s what he does for a living back home. He’s one of our Hornet pilots.”
I remember her comment about reshuffling the HD battalion’s personnel roster, about making sure the right people are in the right places. The HD “sergeant” behind the stick raises two fingers to the brow ridge of his helmet in a casual salute, and I grin.
You can’t land something as big and noisy as a Dragonfly in the middle of a colony settlement without drawing instant attention. Whatever element of surprise the combat descent may have bought us, the HD troopers let it evaporate by not charging into the storage bunker that was our squad�
�s objective. A few minutes after our arrival, the place is lousy with curious civilians. The HD troopers merely stand in a group near the entrance of the bunker, helmet visors raised and weapons slung.
“All squads, objectives secure. The birds are in the nest.”
Sergeant Fallon sends out a curt acknowledgment in reply. Then she takes off the helmet and walks up to the nearest gaggle of civilians.
“Go fetch the administrator and the chief constable, please. And be quick about it. We don’t have much time.”
The colony administrator shows up a few minutes later on an ATV, accompanied by Chief Constable Guest and two of his officers. They climb off their vehicle and approach Sergeant Fallon, who is the only one of us without a full-coverage helmet on her head. The administrator looks livid, and the cops don’t seem to be in a friendly mood, either.
“The hell are you people doing at the food bunker, geared up for a fucking war?” he shouts at Sergeant Fallon. “Pack up your troops and go back to base. You have no business claiming civilian assets.”
“Shut up and listen,” Sergeant Fallon replies. “We didn’t come to seize your shit. But the people they’ll send after us are going to.”
The administrator looks from Sergeant Fallon to her combat-ready troops.
“So what are you here for, dressed up like that?”
“They told us to seize your food and fuel,” she explains. “But I have no interest in following illegal orders today.”
Constable Guest folds his arms in front of his barrel chest and looks at me with a raised eyebrow and the faintest of smiles.
“You guys staging a mutiny, or what?”
“Looks like we are,” I reply.
“I don’t suppose that fleet in orbit is going to share your legal interpretation?” Constable Guest asks Sergeant Fallon.
“No, I don’t suppose they will,” she says. “Mainly because the guy who gave the order is in charge of that fleet, too.”