Orphan Brigade

by Henry V. O'Neil

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” Olech Mortas hissed even as the elevator descended into the very bowels of Unity Plaza.

  Leeger, the only other occupant of the circular car, answered calmly. “Because somebody ordered me not to bring him a status report every time Jan went to the latrine.”

  “How did we not know the Orphans had been put in such an exposed position?”

  “The battle was far south of them and moving away until just a few hours ago.”

  “And so an entire Sim army just appeared out of nowhere?”

  “There seems to have been a mix-­up involving reconnaissance responsibilities. And the dust storm created by the mud munitions isn’t helping.”

  The door slid open, and they were presented with the secure room deep underground where Olech Mortas tracked the war. Circular in shape, its walls were black where they weren’t taken up with large screens depicting everything from planetary positions to unit locations in actual battles. The room was a hive of activity, with uniformed personnel chattering into headsets, punching away at consoles, or rushing about on a gantry that ran all around the room several feet over their heads.

  The activity came to an abrupt halt as more than a dozen heads turned and went silent. The meaning couldn’t have been more obvious, but Olech ignored it. Reminding himself to maintain the charade he’d been playing for almost two decades.

  Leeger conferred with one technician, and the largest display screen changed to show a cone-­like piece of mountain terrain, pointed south where it descended to level ground. Three passes cut the cone from west to east, and military symbols were massed all around them.

  “Where’s this dust storm you were telling me about?”

  “This is an earlier photograph. From the reports we’re receiving, that whole screen would be gray if we used the latest feed.”

  Olech stepped forward, intimately familiar with the martial symbology. Enemy armor was converging on the cone from the south and east, while Sim infantry was simply all over it. The three battalions of the Orphan Brigade were defending sectors on either side of each pass, with Jander’s B Company from First Battalion holding a large piece of terrain on the southeast edge of the cone.

  Human engineers were clearing extensive obstacles in the three lanes, but it was hard to tell how far they’d gotten.

  “What’s going on with the passes here?”

  “Our sappers were clearing them of mines when the attack began. The Sims have been hitting all three lanes with concussion rounds, probably to set off the mines so they can force the passes.”

  “I assume we have assets that can reblock those lanes if necessary?”

  “We’re being told that the overall commander is planning to do just that.”

  “Why are so many of the Orphans in the red?” When a unit dropped below fifty percent strength, its symbol turned red. If it went below forty percent its marker would start to flicker, and a flickering unit that went below thirty percent simply vanished. Over the years Olech Mortas had seen many unit symbols disappear in that fashion.

  “They’re taking casualties, but there’s a question about what strength they were at when they were committed. They hadn’t been brought back up to one hundred percent following their most recent mission.”

  The questions screamed inside his head. How could a brigade that was supposed to be a quick-­reaction force be left understrength? And who would commit such a unit to hold so large a piece of ground?

  Harsh, cold suspicion answered both questions for him, and Olech became aware of the glances, the fearful looks. They knew his son was out there and that it was going badly. He set his private accusations aside, hiding inside the role he’d assumed so long ago.

  “Stay here and monitor the situation,” he ordered Leeger before turning toward the elevator. The entire room had heard the next line before, many times. “Don’t update me until the battle is over.”

  Olech forced a pleasant expression on his face, but moved through Unity’s teeming corridors in such a way that most of the ­people he encountered knew not to speak to him. Nodding infrequently, unable to focus enough to see smiles or even hear greetings. So sick of the toadies and the climbers and the ­people who plotted against him while swearing loyalty to his face.

  So sick, so sick of it all. The ugly façade maintained over the last seventeen years, the mask that so many found so attractive, the one that had driven away his two children in the name of saving them. And to what end? Ayliss scouring the databases for his downfall and Jan fighting for his life under the command of idiots. Perhaps even dead. Dead already.

  Olech reached the throne room and passed inside. The door hissed shut behind him, leaving him temporarily in darkness, and he reached out for the wall. His palm flattened against the cold surface, and his other hand came up in front of his eyes. Fighting back the grief that wanted so badly to surge over the dams of his self-­control.

  The shock of the news accessed memories that Olech Mortas sometimes believed had never happened. Bursts of light and sound, explosions and screams, adrenaline surging through him and his breath coming in short gasps. The shattered bodies of the teenagers and preteens, the Unwavering, who had fought beside him during those awful weeks before he’d been wounded. The chaos, the terror, the frantic fighting when the Sims appeared, seemingly out of nowhere because nobody seemed to know what was going on.

  The room’s lights hummed into life, blinking, calling up a mental picture he’d trained himself to forget. A teenaged Olech Mortas, grubby, hungry, footsore, shambling up a muddy hill as fast as he could move in the flickering darkness. A disordered clutch of boys behind him, following him simply because he’d told them to, passing the ruined fighting positions that had been blasted into splinters by Sim artillery. Flares floating in the night sky on parachutes, swung by the wind so that their light threw crazy moving shadows all around.

  Reaching the summit, directing the others to form some kind of defensive perimeter because no one was there. Olech had left the position only hours earlier as part of a detail sent to get more ammunition, and a Sim bombardment had commenced while he was gone. The few boys he still knew, from an infantry company shrunk to the size of a platoon, the teens he’d trained with and fought with, had been trapped up there while the merciless explosives rained down on them.

  Picking through the debris, finding the bodies, many of them unrecognizable, and finally admitting to himself that every last one of them was dead.

  Olech tottered across the throne room to the dark chair on its cylindrical post. Activating the system alone, specifying that he wanted the most recent feeds even though he’d never requested them before.

  The room going dark as the chair ascended, the Earth spinning into existence in front of him, the utter hubris of it punching him in the stomach over and over. He was barely able to give the command.

  “Take me to Fractus.”

  No astral voyage this time, no feeling of riding the nose of a rocket. The room going pitch-­black again, then the new planet rotating into life. Unfamiliar stars, lots of them, their pinpoints of light helping him to see the planet where his son was fighting. A bizarre world, most of it water, and the largest continent alternating between lush vegetation and an ugly gray slate.

  “Take me to the battle.”

  The planet enlarging, as if rushing up to hit him, then he could see the ugly cloud stretching for miles. Rectangles popping up all around its southern edge, human units confronting Sim units. So familiar, ingrained after all those years, able to read the terrain and see how the commanders were using it. Tanks in the open, maximizing their speed, armor, and firepower while avoiding closed-­in areas such as mountains, woods, and swamps. Armored infantry with the tanks, artillery behind them throwing shells and rockets in front of them, logistical units running supplies from massive dumps up to wh
ere the battle raged.

  The fight in the south had started up again, the symbols overlapping where the humans and the Sims were contesting the same piece of ground. The display stuttered as new data came in, and one of the Force armored brigades went red. Under fifty percent. Another rectangle began flickering, a supply outfit somehow caught far away from the others and surrounded by enemy. Under forty percent.

  “Shift north.”

  The depiction rotated downward, taking him over the enormous cloud, but not before the data refreshed and the endangered supply unit disappeared. Under thirty percent. Destroyed. Annihilated.

  The globe stopped moving, showing nothing more than an ominous gray smudge that spread its cottony plumes far up into the mountains that had made the southern approach more attractive. Somewhere down there, under the dust cloud, Jan’s unit was caught between armor and infantry.

  Remembering that a unit that had been destroyed would no longer appear on the display, knuckles digging into the arms of the chair, the Chairman of the Emergency Senate croaked a command with a dry throat.

  “Take me to the First Independent Brigade.” The resolution didn’t change, but the cloud became opaque. Now he could see the incredible sinkhole created by the Sims, the jutting end of the mountains, and the three passes. His hand came up and clamped on his mouth, but not before he begged, “Please show me the Orphans.”

  Tripping over hunks of blasted stone and torn bushes, Mortas rushed forward. Half-­falling, he pushed himself back up with the butt of his rifle, keeping his eyes uphill the whole time, boring through the fog. Straight for the spot Smashy had hit, where the rock wall was gone, sure that a Sim helmet or Sim grenade would appear at any moment and that would be that. Choking, not from the fumes but from the blocked membranes of his filter mask, knocking it aside and feeling it fall away. Smelling smoke and cinders and the stench of devastation.

  And then he was barreling through, sent sprawling, tripped by a dead body that must have been in the direct path of the boomer round’s explosion. Hitting the dirt hard, rolling, and seeing.

  Pressed up against the remaining rock, combat smocks and skeletal Sim rifles. Three of them standing, more of them sitting, the seated ones dazed and wounded and bodies all around. The three who were on their feet turning looks of surprise in his direction, but then the tall rocks were chipping and sparking because he was firing without aiming, and so of course he was missing.

  Suddenly aware that he had no idea how many rounds were left in the Scorpion’s magazine. Pressing the butt into his shoulder armor, the steps he’d been taught on so many rifle ranges coming into his mind even as the goggles told him where he was pointing the rifle.

  Adjusting, forcing himself to slow down, the dot slipping up high onto one Sim’s torso. Squeezing the trigger, trying not to pull it off target, the enemy soldier looking right at him when he stiffened as if shocked with electricity, then began to crumple. Shifting the dot to the next one, who dived out of the way but came to a stop on the ground where the dot and the bullet found him a second later.

  Sweeping the weapon back up, past the wounded who were feverishly casting about for some means of defending themselves, in time to see the last standing Sim pointing his rifle right at him. Mortas knew in that instant that the slug was on its way, and that he was as dead as the enemy soldier he’d just killed, because like that dead Sim he too was motionless on the ground.

  The Sim’s head jerked sideways as if he’d been slapped, and Mortas saw his shoulders sag and didn’t need to see the wound where he’d been shot. Running forward from his left, where he’d come around the barrier, Ladaglia recognizable because he’d lost helmet, goggles, and mask. He skidded to a halt and fired a single long burst at the seated enemy, stone chips flying, bodies contorting, and a grenade falling from the lifeless hands of one of them.

  Before Mortas could shout a warning, Ladaglia jumped forward with his arm sweeping down. Snatching up the deadly explosive, lobbing it over the wall before throwing himself down among the bodies. Mortas rolled to his side, elbows in, knees up, and heard the dull boom on the other side of the rocks.

  And then the real booms, the orbital rockets raining down. Curled up on the ground, facing downhill, Mortas saw the dust storm brighten like lightning inside a storm cloud, narrow lines of light slamming into targets on the plain. Enormous explosions, missiles fired from outside the planet’s atmosphere crashing on top of the tanks and personnel carriers and Daederus’s voice back again, hooting and laughing and calling for more, more, more.

  Desperate fire from the machines dying on the flat, trying to kill the observers who were killing them. A round from a tank’s main gun detonated just up the hill, throwing rocks and dirt down on him. More blasts, and a tugging at his sleeve. Looking down, astounded by a single dart-­like object that was sticking out of his arm. Puzzled, and then recognizing the shrapnel from an antipersonnel round fired by the tanks down on the plain. Casting his eyes about and seeing more of them, thin hard nails with feathery flights, blunted when they’d hit the stone and bounced off.

  “Lieutenant.”

  Raising his helmet and seeing Ladaglia, sitting with his back against the rock as if imitating the wounded Sims. A dozen flights sticking out of his armor, blood coursing down both arms.

  Mortas was up and running again, sure that another of the horrible antipersonnel rounds would burst behind him, lurching side to side as more rockets impacted on the enemy far to his front. Grabbing the stricken man by the armor and dragging him, unprotesting, down into an ancient shell hole. Propping him up as best he could, fingers through the holes in the sleeves, ripping, seeing the flesh covered in pulsing scarlet. Reaching into his side trouser pocket for the tourniquets, looking where he should have looked before, seeing the hole in Ladaglia’s throat and the lethal rush of blood that ran down under his armor. Leaving the tourniquets where they were.

  Eyes losing their focus, the head sagging back against the smashed dirt. The lips moving, Ladaglia seeming to smile. Mortas leaned forward, straining to hear the words over the explosions.

  “I lied, El-­tee. I was kinda hoping we’d win the war right here.”

  In a dark room on Earth, the most powerful human in the universe sat on a chair that was mockingly referred to as his throne. An entire world shone before him, marked with the different units of his army that were even then locked in a vicious fight for survival. So many of them red, so many of them flickering, so many of them gone forever.

  One unit symbol, a rectangle with the markings of infantry on a piece of high ground guarding three mountain passes, had been red when it finally appeared under the dust cloud. Large enemy forces were converging on it, infantry chopping through from the north, armor charging from east and south. No doubt such an attack was accompanied by a ferocious amount of artillery fire.

  The lone infantry symbol began to flicker, and the man let out an anguished moan. He finally released the arms of the chair, leaning forward so that he was in danger of falling out and plunging down through the darkness. His hand reached out, trembling, passing through a light display meant to indicate nearby stars, fingers straining to reach the blinking rectangle.

  Abruptly, the symbol representing the First Independent Brigade of the Human Defense Force vanished. One moment it was blinking, and the next it was gone. The man’s hand dropped to his lap, and when he spoke his voice was choked with tears.

  “Jan. Jan. Don’t leave me, Jan.”

  Back down the slope, tottering on exhausted legs, inhaling the noisome vapor, headed back because no one farther up the hill was alive. Hearing the voices on the radio, now that the desperate fighting had abated and the rockets had stopped falling. For the moment.

  “—­musta been a dozen rounds landed right on the command party. Colonel Alden’s dead, Ops is dead, XO is wounded—­”

  “Knock that off right now.” Mortas knew he should
recognize the voice, but with the battalion’s three most senior men gone, he couldn’t imagine who would be taking charge. “A Company, B Company, get your wounded to the supply line. Armadillos are on the way with Captain Dassa.”

  Zacker. It was the wiry battalion sergeant major he’d met on his first day. Taking charge because the rest of the battalion command element was gone. Mortas tripped over a smashed tree trunk, falling to the rock surface and simply lying there, too weak to move.

  “Company commanders, give me your status. Re-­form your lines, but be prepared to fall back over Lane One and establish new positions to the west of C Company.”

  A Company’s executive officer came up, telling a horrifying story in a halting voice. Company commander wounded, first sergeant killed, three platoons that had been at half strength before the battle now reduced to a handful of men still able to fight.

  As if to confirm this assessment, Mortas’s eyes finally focused on the bodies scattered nearby. Sim and human, broken, bloody, dismembered, lifeless. Hearing Daederus somewhere out there, calling in long-­range fire on the retreating tanks, but the voice was dull, as if his radio was dying. Pushing himself up onto all fours, Mortas coughed loudly and then called Berland.

  “This is Mortas. I think the ASSL and I are all that’s left of my position. What’s our status?”

  Mecklinger came up in response. Dry, croaking voice. “Sorry, sir. Berland’s had it. Most of the guys with him got nailed in the barrage; the survivors brought him to my position. My squad’s down to five guys, and I can’t raise Testo or Dak.”

  Mortas tried to imagine the platoon layout before the assault. Dak’s squad had been to his northeast, and Testo’s had been to his southwest. If they were all gone, that meant his observation point would have to cover that entire area. He stumbled forward, but stopped when a familiar voice spoke to him.

  “I ain’t dead yet.” Berland’s words came across the radio, weak and slow. “Lieutenant, you should get everybody headed for the supply line. It’ll take every man to move the wounded anyway. Can’t hold this spot.”