When Duty Calls

by William C. Dietz

  As the last of them entered, Kobbi was pleased to see that both Santana and Quinlan had survived, the first being a good deal more useful than the second. Although Quinlan had led his troops bravely, if not brilliantly, which was more than some allied officers could claim. By virtue of a small miracle, one of the Legion’s supply sergeants had conjured up thermos bottles filled with hot coffee and a “secret ingredient” that was immediately recognizable as rum. Most of the officers carried fire-blackened cups that were critical to a quick “brew-up,” and hurried to produce them, as the much-abused aluminum bottles made the rounds. The rest were supplied with mugs, some of which were of Ramanthian manufacture, but still serviceable.

  Santana took a tentative sip, and having found the concoction to his liking, took another. A sensation of warmth flooded his belly and seemed to spread out from there. The company, minus a number of casualties, was waiting about a mile away. Zolkin had orders to get a hot meal into the bio bods, and carry out cold-weather maintenance on the cyborgs, while Dietrich went out to scrounge whatever supplies he could. Alpha Company had burned through lots of everything during the past few days and was going to need a lot of ammo, food, and medical supplies if they were going to make it back over the pass. Which, based on the cavalry officer’s limited knowledge of the situation, was what everyone would have to do. Some fly-forms were still in service, but they were being used to air evac the wounded, and even that was iffy.

  “All right,” General Kobbi began, as he stepped up onto a platform that consisted of two side-by-side cargo modules. “I know you want to rejoin your outfits, so I’ll keep this meeting brief. First, in case there’s someone who hasn’t heard, General-453 is missing in action, and presumed dead. And yes, the man who led the advance on Yal-Am was a person other than Four-fifty-three.”

  That announcement produced a good deal of buzz—since it served to confirm some of the rumors that had been floating around. Santana felt the first stirrings of concern when he saw that Kobbi was looking directly at him. The general wouldn’t send him after Colonel Six right in the middle of a full-scale retreat. Would he?

  The question went unanswered as the briefing continued. “So as the most senior officer still on his feet, I assumed command,” Kobbi said grimly. “Unless there’s another officer who wants the job—because they sure as hell can have it!”

  That generated a chorus of chuckles from the officers who, better than anyone else, knew how difficult the retreat was going to be.

  “Most of you know that we were suckered,” Kobbi said matter-of-factly. “And not once—but twice! Because even as the chits boiled up out of the ground in Yal-Am, a Ramanthian battle group dropped out of hyperspace, and tore into our ships. The swabbies bloodied the Ramanthian beaks pretty good, but took a lot of casualties, and were forced out of the system. That left the chits holding the high ground, which means our line of retreat has been severed, and we’re momentarily cut off. Worse yet, I’m told that thousands of Ramanthians have filtered in behind us, which means they’re planning to inflict a lot of casualties as we withdraw.”

  The report produced a symphony of groans, followed by a more upbeat assessment from a Hudathan major. “Good!” the legionnaire rumbled. “Now we’ve got ’em where we want ’em!” Santana laughed along with the others, but knew the reality of it wouldn’t be funny, as thousands of soldiers and civilians started the long cold trek up over Tow-Tok Pass.

  Kobbi marveled at the fact that the men and women in front of him could still laugh and waited for the noise to die down before picking up where he had left off. “But, thanks to some bug technology, we have real-time communications with General Booly, and he’s working on a plan to pull us out. I can’t go into the details yet, lest one of us be captured, but I want you to know there’s hope. And I want you to communicate that to your troops. But before we can take advantage of the general’s plan, we need to get our people over the mountains. So focus your efforts on that. Be sure to get your marching orders from Lieutenant Giles as you leave. And obey them. Because if we’re going to retreat—then it’s going to be the best damned retreat that anyone ever saw! Do you read me?”

  The answer was a ragged, “Yes, sir!”

  “Good,” Kobbi said. “Now, one more thing before you go out to play in the snow. . . . As many of you have heard, there has been a change of government on Alpha-001. Simply put the Alpha Clones are out—and something called the Clone Republic is in. The new government is going to be a democracy, or so I’m told, and the existing alliance remains in effect. Which, all things considered, is all we need to know!

  “All right,” the general finished. “Get your orders—and get in gear. I’ll be checking in with each one of you during the coming days. Captain Santana—a moment of your time please.”

  Quinlan frowned. Kobbi’s habit of using Alpha Company to run errands for him was starting to grate. Especially now that more than a third of his battalion was either dead or wounded. But there wasn’t much Quinlan could do about it except shoot Santana an annoyed look before following the others toward the door.

  Santana drank the last of his coffee and rum before folding the handle into the center of the mug and tucking the implement away. Kobbi had stepped off the cargo modules by then, and had just completed a conversation with a major, when Santana made his way forward. Kobbi nodded as they came face-to-face. “So, have you ever seen a bigger screwup than this one?” he inquired lightly.

  “No, sir,” Santana replied honestly, as his breath fogged the air. “I can’t say that I have.”

  “Nor have I,” Kobbi said grimly. “Not even on Savas. But, as we haul our miserable asses back into space, I’d feel a whole lot better if we took Colonel Six along with us. Or, failing that, if we buried the treacherous piece of shit right here. Am I clear?”

  The cavalry officer found himself staring into a pair of very dark eyes. They looked like gun barrels. “Yes, sir. You are.”

  “Good,” Kobbi said. “Six and his Seebos are long gone. I want you to pull out before the others, head up the road, and catch the bastard. He has a lot to account for, including dead marines, dead civilians, and a couple of hostages. Not to mention his impersonation of General-453. Although I must admit that I liked his version of the general a lot better than the real thing! If it hadn’t been for the reserves Akoto had tucked away, we would have kicked their pointy asses.

  “Anyway, see what you can do, but don’t stray too far. . . . Because when I call for the evac to begin, time will be short—and there won’t be any second chances. See Giles on your way out. He’ll give you some written orders and a high-priority pass signed by me. Show it to any sonofabitch stupid enough to try and get in your way.”

  Santana knew that the first troops to go back up the road were likely to run into some of the stiffest resistance, but there wasn’t anything he could do other than nod, and say, “Yes, sir. We’ll do our best.”

  Kobbi grinned. “See that you do. . . . Dismissed.”

  Once again Santana felt grateful for the heat that Deker gave off—even if it did leave his ass out in the cold. The two of them were standing next to the road as Alpha Company began the long journey to the west. Lieutenant Amoyo, Sergeant Matos, Sergeant Telveca, Corporal Han, and Private Xiong had all been killed in action during the assault on Yal-Am. In the wake of the battle, Hoyt-11,791 and fifteen of her thirty-one CVA conscripts had attached themselves to Alpha Company, along with a squad of stray marines, and a Seebo transportation platoon that still had two half-tracks. The vehicles would be extremely useful if the company was going to catch up with Colonel Six.

  Lieutenant Mitch Millar passed first, began to pick up speed, and disappeared beyond the veil of softly falling snow. His orders were to scout many miles ahead, keep his sensors peeled for any sign of Ramanthian troops, and find Six. It was something the recon ball was uniquely qualified to do.

  Next came Sergeant Suresee Fareye, and his T-2, Private Ka Nhan, who were also acting as scouts an
d would try to give advance warning of potential ambush sites, road damage, and anything else Santana would want to know about.

  The scouts were followed by Master Sergeant Dice Dietrich on Corporal Stacy Subee, and the first squad of the first platoon which, due to casualties, was the only squad in the first platoon. It consisted of four bio bods and five Trooper IIs in addition to Dietrich and Subee.

  Then came the reassuring whine-thud of heavy footsteps as Private Lupo, the company’s sole remaining quad, lumbered up the road. The marines were safely tucked inside his cargo compartment, where Santana imagined some were starting to feel the first symptoms of motion sickness. But it beat the hell out of walking—and the officer knew he wouldn’t hear any complaints.

  The huge cyborg was followed by the half-tracks, loaded not only with supplies, but with Hoyt and her CVA troops. Lieutenant Gregory Zolkin and Sergeant Mark Tebo were right behind them, followed by what remained of the second platoon. Sergeant Jose Ramos was in charge of the rearguard, which included two bio bods, and three reasonably intact T-2s. That force should be strong enough to counter anything that could catch up with the fast-moving company from behind.

  It wasn’t perfect. Santana knew that. But it was the best he could do. As Ramos marched past, the company commander sent Deker forward on the first of what would eventually be dozens of trips up and down the length of the column. Because that was the only way to enforce the proper intervals, make sure that people were alert, and keep morale up.

  Even though the company had traveled the wintry road before, it looked entirely different now, partly because they were going the other way and partly because of the additional snow. And as more of the white stuff continued to fall, visibility was limited to a hundred feet or so, and the monotony of it caused Santana’s thoughts to drift. First to Vanderveen, who might be anywhere, then to her mother, who was trapped on Earth. If Margaret Vanderveen was still alive—which seemed doubtful.

  A couple of hours passed like that, with Santana battling to maintain his focus, while the company covered fifty miles or so. They were up off the flatland and well into the foothills, when the attack came. It was a crude affair, conceived by a group of desperate CVAs, who, lacking any sort of heavy weaponry, managed to roll half a dozen boulders down a steep embankment. The plan was to disable one or more of the vehicles in order to obtain food and ammo. The low-tech ambush had gone undetected because the clones were well hidden. The boulder barrage was followed by the insistent pop, pop, pop of small-arms fire as a fusillade of poorly aimed bullets swept the surface of the snow-covered road. But, crude or not, the attack was successful in that one of the bouncing rocks killed Private Sig Gomyo, and disabled T-2 Private Rin Ibo, before it jumped into the air and continued downslope.

  The response was swift and uncompromising. A force of enraged T-2s ran uphill, located the CVA bandits in among the rocks, and put them down. Dietrich, who was right behind them, was forced to yell, “Cease firing!” over and over in order to conserve ammunition as some of the legionnaires continued to fire on dead bodies.

  One of the bio bods pulled Ibo’s brain box, and carried it into Lupo’s cargo bay, where the cyborg was hooked up to the quad’s life-support system. The entire incident was not only stupid and unnecessary, but a measure of how desperate some of the allied forces were. It was another danger for Santana to worry about.

  There was darned little chance that anyone would collect Gomyo’s body, not in the midst of a full-scale retreat, so like thousands of legionnaires before him, the bio bod was lowered into a shallow, unmarked grave. The burial was followed by a quick prayer and a flurry of orders as the company resumed its journey. The other corpses, those belonging to the clones who had been so thoughtlessly sent to Gamma- 014, would soon be covered with a shroud of white snow.

  Two hours later the column had covered another fifty miles and it was getting late. Since it wouldn’t be prudent to travel at night, Santana wanted to set up a defensive perimeter while there was light left to see by. So when Fareye alerted him to a short side road that led out along the top of a ridge to a spacious lookout spot, the cavalry officer seized on the opportunity. While it might be necessary to camp on the surface of the road before the journey was over, Santana had no desire to do so any earlier than was absolutely necessary. Such spots were hard to defend, and there was no way to know what might come down the road in the middle of the night.

  The company followed Fareye and Nhan out along a snow-covered two-lane road onto the hilltop beyond. As Zolkin and Dietrich began to organize the unit’s defenses, Santana took a stroll around the perimeter. The snow was unmarked by footprints. That was good. But the slopes that fanned out away from the lookout point weren’t very steep, and that was bad. The legionnaire knew from previous experience that the bugs could advance over that sort of terrain at night and were brave enough to do so. Lacking crab mines, all Santana could do was position T-2s around the perimeter, park the quad and the tracks in the middle of the turnaround, and establish an outpost (OP) at the point where the side road intersected the highway. Because the last thing they wanted was to be cut off from the main thoroughfare and isolated on a vulnerable hilltop.

  As the temperature continued to drop, and darkness crept in all around them, the men and women of Alpha Company prepared to eat, sleep, and carry out some much-needed maintenance. Given their circumstances it was all they could hope for.

  Meanwhile, a hundred miles to the west, Lieutenant Millar was stalking his prey. It was something the cyborg was uniquely qualified to do because he could fly, “see” in the dark, and mask himself electronically. The capabilities that had already enabled the scout to spot three groups of Ramanthians, all hidden within striking distance of the highway, waiting for an opportunity to attack. That was interesting, and well worth reporting, but secondary to his primary mission to find Colonel Six and his band of renegades.

  But the clones had a tremendous head start—and Millar had orders to stay within a hundred miles of Alpha Company. So, once darkness descended, and the cyborg found himself a hundred and twenty miles out, he was about to turn and head back when there was a brief burst of static, followed by a low-power radio transmission. The exchange was brief, but sufficient to pique the cyborg’s curiosity, and trigger a full spectrum sweep of all the possible frequencies. That effort revealed more activity, which the recon ball traced to what had been a power transfer station, but was now little more than a pile of bombed-out rubble.

  A useful pile of rubble, however, because as Millar got closer, it soon became clear that he was onto something. Even though it was dark, and the scout had to rely on infrared imaging, it quickly became apparent that the ruins were being used by a company-sized force of humans.

  But were they the humans he was looking for? That was by no means certain given the fact that dozens of military units were strung out along the highway. In fact it was quite possible that this one had been on its way to join allied forces in Yal-Am when the Ramanthian poop hit the proverbial fan.

  In order to find out who he was dealing with, Millar began to work himself into the dimly lit ruins, being careful to remain in the shadows whenever possible. There were sentries, but none of them saw the recon ball as Millar passed over their heads.

  Having penetrated the inner part of the encampment, Millar caught glimpses of a heat source so intense it had to be a fire, and continued to work his way inwards until he found himself within three standing walls. There was no roof, but the walls served the soldiers as a windbreak, which had been put to good use. Viewed from the cyborg’s perspective, eight man-shaped heat blobs were seated around a much brighter heat blob, eating their dinners and talking. All Millar had to do was back his spherical body into a convenient hole and listen in on the conversation below. It quickly became obvious that the humans were clones, who by some means unknown knew about the revolution and were trying to deal with it.

  “I don’t know,” the first soldier said doubtfully. “The founder�
�s plan worked for all these years. Why change it?”

  “Because we don’t have any say,” the second man replied critically. “And if we’re going to do all the fighting, we should have a say.”

  “But what if no one wants to do the fighting?” the first Seebo wanted to know. “What then?”

  “Maybe the Santos will want to fight,” the third clone put in.

  That caused laughter all around. “That’ll be the day!” the second Seebo exclaimed. “All they do is go to meetings and boss everyone around.”

  There was a moment of silence as one of the men put a piece of wood on the fire. A column of sparks shot up into the air and spiraled away. “I’ll tell you one thing,” the fifth soldier said. “The old man has the right idea. . . . He won’t be cold tonight.”

  “That’s for sure!” number three said enthusiastically. “How would you like some of that? Every single one of us will be free breeders once this is over.”

  “Odds are that we’ll be dead once this is over,” the fifth man said darkly, as he blew on cold fingers. “General-453 is an idiot.”

  “Was an idiot,” the second Seebo said, as he took a sip of coffee. “He’s dead by now.”

  “And a good thing, too,” the sixth soldier added. “I wonder what Six is doing?”

  “Screwing the doctor’s brains out,” the fourth man answered cheerfully. “The lucky so and so.”

  “That would be hypocritical,” the first Seebo observed. “Him being a true believer and all.”

  “Well, you know what they say about the true folk,” the seventh clone put in. “They’re truly horny!”

  That produced gales of laugher and an opportunity for Millar to slip away unnoticed. But not uninformed. Because he not only knew who the clones were—he knew that the female hostage was sleeping with the man who had taken her prisoner! A man who, according to his profile, hated free breeders. Except for pretty free breeders. Or so it appeared. But hearing is one thing—and seeing is another. So as the snow continued to fall, the recon ball continued to ghost through the ruins, searching for Dr. Kira Kelly.