by Rick Shelley
‘ ‘Field skins, superior helmet armor, battledress that minimizes penetration, nanoscrubbers that isolate damage and minimize shock and bleeding.” Truscott could list factors all night. If a Commonwealth Marine could be kept alive long enough to reach a trauma tube, he was virtually certain to survive, and recover… and more Commonwealth casualties made it that far.
“But we’ve never seen just how far ahead of the Federation we are in this area before,” Ian pressed.
Technicians were examining every bit of evidence the Marines had managed to collect on the surface—weapons, uniforms, and most importantly, two dozen Federation battle helmets.
“If the situation is general and not just limited to a single battalion sent to occupy a backwoods colony world,” Truscott said. “We don’t dare accept what we find here as typical. The troops might be a secondrate unit with obsolete equipment. We may find completely different conditions when their reinforcements arrive. Those will likely be the best units the Federation can send our way on short notice.”
“How soon do you think?” Ian asked.
Truscott shook his head. “I haven’t a clue, Ian, and that’s infinitely more worrisome than if I knew exactly when they would show up.” He started to add something else, but there was a knock on the door.
“Come in.” Truscott turned as Prince William came in.
“Excuse me. Admiral. I just heard that one of the casualties tonight was Doug Weintraub, the member of the planetary commission.”
Truscott frowned, then nodded. “Rather a serious injury from the report I heard, but he’ll recover. By now, he should be in a trauma tube over on Victoria.”
“While he’s aboard, I’d like a chance to meet with him, if possible,” the prince said. “If I could hitch a ride over there before he returns to the surface?”
“No need to thumb a lift,” Truscott said. “Take my shuttle. We’ll find out how soon he’ll be ready for visitors. Ian, you’ll see to the details?”
“Of course, sir.”
“And perhaps you’d be good enough to escort His Highness,” Truscott continued.
“Certainly. I’ll put through a call to the chief medical officer now to see how soon Weintraub will be, ah, available.”
Prince William left as soon as Ian completed the arrangements. They would leave for Victoria just before 0530 hours.
“You might as well turn in as well, Ian,” the admiral said when they were alone again. “If you’re going to be up and about that early.”
Ian chuckled. ‘ ‘Not so much earlier than usual, sir. But, still. I think I will take you up on that offer—if you’re certain you won’t be wanting me for anything else tonight.”
“No, go ahead, go ahead,” Truscott said. “I’ll be retiring myself shortly. I’ve just been waiting for Khyber to make its first transit.” He switched the display on the chart table to show the scout ship’s position, course, and speed.
“Should be within the next few minutes,” Ian observed. “I can wait, sir. Ten minutes more or less won’t affect me.”
Truscott laughed. “No, go on with you. I’m not so feeble that I can’t tuck myself in.”
“Of course not, sir. Good night.”
“Good night, Ian.” Truscott turned his attention back to the display on his table and didn’t hear Ian gently close the door on his way out.
“Miles, I hope you help me pull this off,” Truscott whispered, staring at the almost imperceptible movement of the blip representing Khyber on the screen. “We’re going to need all the reinforcements Long John can scrape together before this thing’s over. I feel it in my bones.”
Feeling unusually selfconscious about talking to himself, Truscott got up to get himself a fresh cup of tea. He brought it back to the table and stood for several minutes, sipping absentmindedly while his eyes remained fixed on the schematic of Buchanan’s system, and Khyber.
What’s the balance point? he asked himself. How do I maximize my forces if there are no reinforcements from Buckingham? I certainly can’t expect a Federation commander to deploy according to our book standards or convenience.
“Hell,” he muttered. “I’ve thrown the book out myself coming into Buchanan. It’s worse than useless.” He growled softly.
If I put my frigates out far enough to intercept an enemy coming in at what the book considers a standard entry vector and distance, I could end up with those ships completely out of range, too far away to take any hand in the battle. But if I keep everything in close, we could be forced into an engagement with no more warning than that Cutter class had.
Finally, Truscott set his cup on the edge of the chart table and leaned forward to watch the last moments of Khyber before she entered Qspace. There was nothing dramatic. Khyber’ s blip simply disappeared from the screen when its Nilssen generators slid it into Qspace.
“That’s that, then,” Truscott murmured. “Time I was off to bed.” But he called the duty flag operations officer first.
“Anything going on I should know about?”
“Operations continuing in that greenbelt, sir. There’s been very little activity the last half hour.”
“What about casualty totals?”
“We’ve had three killed and twentyseven wounded, sir. Federation losses are fortysix killed and nine wounded. Four others were captured after being disabled by stun grenades.”
“Thank you,” Truscott said before he broke the link. He regained the chart of the greenbelt on his display screen, they keyed in an overlay to show the areas that had been cleared by the Marines.
“Nearly ninety percent secure.” He nodded with satisfaction, and then frowned suddenly. “How could they put nearly ten percent of their entire force in a place like that?”’
He tapped his fingers against the edge of the table several times. Was it simply that they had no time to move to better terrain? That was possible, but it seemed too much to hope for, far too much to count on.
Or is that figure so much less than ten percent? Late at night, the latter possibility seemed much more likely. Truscott was shaking his head gently when he finally went into the other room to sleep.
25
Doug Weintraub couldn’t recall ever feeling even remotely like he felt lying on his side on a path in the Park. The peculiarity of his sensations was so striking that he could hardly think about anything else. The realization that he had been seriously wounded came slowly, and only as a curious abstraction. He felt remarkably calm, dreamy, almost buoyant enough to float away. There was no pain, no hint of discomfort. Only gradually did he become aware of the intense concern he had heard in David Spencer’s voice. More than anything, that was what convinced Doug that he was indeed gravely injured.
Am I going to die? But Doug found it hard to concentrate, even on that possibility. It was almost as if his mind had abdicated any responsibility for, or interest in, his future. Other people were taking care of him. His future was, somehow, their worry now. David had seen to his injuries and administered first aid.
Another man, a field medical orderly, came along and did more. Doug felt no discomfort even from being rolled over and strapped to a framework of some kind.
“We’ll get you right up to the hospital, mate,” the second man said. “Not to worry. You’ll be all right.”
Doug couldn’t even summon up a reaction to that. He was still trying to puzzle his way through the words when the anaesthetic finally knocked him out.
His return to consciousness was marked first by an awareness of bright lights. The glare continued even after he closed his eyes again. Bright spots floated across his awareness. He opened his eyes again, just to slits. When he could finally distinguish objects, Doug noted that the lights were beyond a transparent curved panel.
A trauma tube. That impressed itself slowly on Doug’s mind. He tried moving, but nothing would budge, not even his head. Only his eyes. He could open or close his eyes; he could look a little from side to side, and up and down. The limited range of
movement showed him nothing new.
I’m alive. I’ll survive. I’ll recover. Those thoughts were separate, cumulative, spread over a timeless time. Eventually, Doug reached his memories of the patrol through the Park, to the burst of fire that had marked the first ambush. There was an immeasurable lacuna to his memories beyond that instant, marked only by dreamlike images that refused to come into focus or identify themselves. He could not recall being hit, or anything about the second ambush.
Seriously wounded. No pain. No movement. In time, or outside it, those data points came together for Doug: a spinal injury. I could be in this tube for weeks, he thought. And, somewhat later: I wonder how much better this tube is than ours? The newest trauma tube on Buchanan was twenty five years old.
Doug blinked. He could still do that, if little more. He saw movement at the edge of his field of vision, outside the trauma tube, a moving blur of white and pale blue. He tried to find some way to attract the person’s attention, but no exercise of will permitted him to move anything more than his eyes and eyelids.
But the transparent panel above him slid away and a face looked down.
“Good morning, Mr. Weintraub. I’m Ahmed Nassir, naval surgeon. Don’t try to talk yet. It will be a few minutes before you can.” Nassir smiled and reached in to touch Doug’s arm. Doug didn’t feel it. “I’ll do what I can to anticipate the obvious questions. That will save us a little time. By the time we get through those, you should be able to ask any that I miss.” Nassir leaned closer. “I just want a quick look at your eyes now.” He produced a small, narrowbeam torch and shined it briefly into each of Doug’s eyes, then nodded.
“You’re doing quite well,” Nassir assured Doug with a wider smile than before. “Your spinal cord was severed, but it was a clean cut, and we had you in the tube in plenty of time to avoid complications. The readouts tell me that the mending process is proceeding precisely on schedule. There’ve been no flags at all. We should be ready to do followup tests in about fortyfive minutes, and if those tests come out as I expect them to, we’ll release you from the tube shortly after that. There will be no permanent ill effects.
In fact, you ought to feel better than you did before you were wounded. The tube is correcting nutritional deficits as well.”
Doug realized that his mouth felt dry. He worked his tongue around, trying to tease some moisture into evidence. It was a moment before he realized that he could finally move more than his eyes.
“What time is it?” His voice was hoarse and the words didn’t come out easily. They were separate sounds, scarcely coherent. “Dry.”
“Yes, of course,” Nassir said. “We’ll get you a touch of water, straightaway.” He turned away. Doug caught a glimpse of part of a gesture. “As to the time, it’s, ah, a few minutes before five in the morning, local time.”
A nurse came over with a container of liquid and a long, flexible tube.
“We need to take it easy with the liquids at first,” the doctor said while the nurse put the tube in Doug’s mouth and gave the container a meager squeeze. ‘ ‘Just until you’re out of the tube and in the recovery ward. Then, if you want, you can drink until your kidneys float out the door.”
Doug swallowed greedily, astonished at how wonderful such a scant drop of water could taste. He sucked at the tube. The nurse smiled and gave the bottle another squeeze. This time, Doug let the water sit in his mouth for a instant before he swallowed… and then sighed with delight.
“More?” he asked with a hopeful look up at the nurse. His voice sounded more nearly normal now.
“Just a little,” Nassir said, and the nurse complied.
“There, that should hold you for a time,” the doctor said when the tube was removed.
“How many others were brought up with me?” Doug asked. His voice was stronger now that his mouth wasn’t desert dry.
“Quite a few, I’m afraid,” Nassir said. “They even sent up a few who hadn’t been wounded. None of our lads were killed in that skirmish though.”
That skirmish. Doug noted the qualifier but didn’t pursue it. Bad news came too soon in any case.
“Sergeant Spencer?” he asked.
Nassir smiled. “Our head nurse had to chase him and two of his lads out an hour or so ago. They were being bloody nuisances, so concerned about you and their other mates.”
Doug closed his eyes for a moment to enjoy the thought of Spencer fussing over his men like a mother hen.
“I hope you’ll let them back in to see me,” Doug said when he opened his eyes again.
“I imagine we can arrange something,” Nassir said. “If I can sneak them past our head nurse.”
26
It had taken a direct order from the senior nurse on duty to get David Spencer and his two uninjured men, Jacky White and Sean Seidman, out from underfoot. “Get yourselves back to the troop bays,” the nurse, a lieutenant commander, told them, displaying a formal fierceness that was more act than actuality.
“You obviously need time for personal hygiene, not to mention hot food and sleep. When we want useless spectators, we’ll sell tickets.”
David led his men away, reluctantly. “We might as well take advantage of the facilities,” he told the others. “Get yourselves cleaned up and we’ll see what sort of meal we can scare up.”
“This time of night?” Jacky asked. ‘ ‘You going to wake the cook and offer him a tip?”
David managed a smile. “Don’t go trodding on Alfie’s turf, lad. He’ll be back soon enough. No, if there’s no one on duty in the troop mess, I’ll find someone in the sergeants’ mess. Maybe even in officers’
country. There’s food to be had, and we’ve got a direct order to get ourselves fed.” David knew he could always pop for a meal out of the machines in one of the snack bars… but he didn’t expect it would come to that. There was always a hot meal to be found aboard Victoria, if you knew where to look.
And David did.
“How long do you think we’ll have before we go back down?” Sean asked, his voice quiet as it always was. ‘ I’ll bet he even shouts in a whisper,’ Alfle had quipped. Half of the men in the platoon were already calling Seidman “Whispers.”
“Not long enough by half,” David said. “Unless the rest of our blokes manage to mop up all of the Feddies first.”
“You don’t think they will?” Jacky asked—too quickly.
“My mother didn’t raise any optimists,” David said. ” ‘Always look for the clouds,’ she told me. ‘That way all your surprises will be silver linings.’ We’re doing well enough, I expect, but it’ll be a bloody long road if we have to dig out every Feddie squad the way we did those tonight.”
“We got off lucky tonight,” Jacky said. “That could have been even worse than the first ambush.”
“We were lucky,” David agreed. “But part of that luck is made by good men honed by firstrate training, protected by the best gear available. Think of those Feddies. Look at the ratio of killed to wounded. I’d hate to be one of their lot.”
With twothirds of her Marines dirtside, Victoria’s troop section seemed even emptier than it had during the trip from Devereaux to Buckingham. And in the early hours of the morning, nearly all of the Marines who were still aboard were asleep, adding to the sense of emptiness. David took his time showering and changing to a fresh uniform. Not having on the field skin was a holiday in itself. For all the good a field skin did in the field, he always had a sense of confinement wearing one, and a need to scratch all over when he took it off. David’s exhaustion retreated a little with the shower and clean clothing. He was still tired— sleeping the clock around twice would scarcely cure that— but hunger was more immediate.
Before he left his cabin, David called the sergeants’ mess.
“This is Sergeant Spencer, First Battalion. Can you fix up three hungry men?” he asked the mess steward who answered the complink.
The steward grinned and nodded. “Three or thirty, Sergeant?’ ‘
&n
bsp; “We may eat like thirty,” David said. “We’ve had a busy couple of days.”
“Whenever you get here,” the steward said.
Jacky and Sean were almost ready when David got to the troop bay. Sean was still dressing. Jacky was dressed, except for his boots, and lying on his bunk. But he got up as soon as he saw Spencer.
“Thought you’d skipped out and forgot us,” Jacky said.
“Had to make the arrangements, lad,” David said. “I figured that was easier than doing a forced march from mess hall to mess hall.”
“Got the Christmas goose waiting for us, have they?” Jacky asked.
“One wiseacre in a squad is more than enough,” David said with a smile. “We’ve got a hot feed coming up. Count yourself lucky and let it be.”
“Admiral’s table?” Sean asked with a nervous grin at Jacky.
“I give up!” David threw both hands up. “When we get back to the medical department, I’m going to ask for a vaccine. This must be contagious.”
The others started laughing. “Get that under control before we get out in the passage,” David told them.
“Don’t want to wake the rest of the regiment, the ones who don’t know there’s a war on yet.” It took quite an exercise of willpower for David to keep from joining in the laughter.
The duty cooks and mess stewards were eating a meal of their own when David and his men arrived. It wasn’t quite time for the staff to start preparing breakfast for the units of the regiment that were still aboard Victoria. The steward David had spoken to over the complink got up from the table.
“You’re in luck, mates,” he said. “You got here in time to share our fare.” It was an article of faith among serving Marines that the mess staff aboard ship ate better than anyone else in the CSF.
“You’ve been down below, then?” one of the other stewards asked.
David nodded. Jacky said, “Been down? We’ve been most of the whole bleedin’ show, mate. I&R
platoon, H&S Company, First Battalion.”