Into the Maelstrom

by David Drake

  Light and riding high in the water, the lighter corkscrewed with every large wave. As it did, the wind caught the bow on the rise, trying to push the vessel off course as if the weather conspired against the voyage. The stream of white foam emerging from the drive at the stern twisted backwards and forwards as the helmsman fought the helm to keep his clumsy vessel on a heading.

  Allenson waved to them as the barge passed but was ignored. The men’s faces were in shadow but he could readily imagine their feelings as they watched him swan past in his warm shell. Frankly he was surprised they didn’t make rude gestures.

  The lighter slipped behind them and soon became lost in the sea haze, except for the squared off bow that occasionally reared up over a particularly heavy swell.

  “We’d make much better time in the Continuum,” Allenson said.

  “Assuming we didn’t run smack into a Brasilian trap,” Hawthorn replied.

  “Or we could go faster at a higher altitude,” Allenson continued.

  “And we could be shot down by some sort of air defense system.”

  “Is it likely that the Brasilians would have a mobile version of the type of equipment needed to detect and hit targets at this range?” Allenson scoffed.

  Hawthorn glared at him.

  “I don’t know, Allenson. Just like I don’t know if we might attract the attention of some sort of Brasilian hot-shot with eagle eyes and a marksman’s badge to go with his long range cannon. Now why don’t you just sit down and get some sleep and leave the rest of us to get on with our jobs?”

  Allenson smiled and held up a hand to indicate surrender and sat. He leant back and closed his eyes to show he was willing, although there was no chance of him snatching any sleep.

  Hawthorn shook him awake.

  “We’re closing on the coast.”

  “Right, thanks.”

  Allenson struggled to free his mind. His head felt heavy and he had trouble concentrating, so Hawthorn seemed to be talking to him from the end of a long pipe. He fumbled in his jacket pockets for a Nightlife. He eventually found one on the second attempt in a sleeve pouch. Pressed against his wrist, it released a cold chill that flowed through him. It sharpened his vision like bringing a lens into focus.

  “General,” said a female voice. “I have contact with Colonel Kaspery in voice only on a tight band. Apparently, the Brasilians have been mortaring the location of broad band transmitters and the 1st are running out of relays.”

  Allenson nodded. He supposed he should have expected that.

  “Put him on Lieutenant . . . ,” what was the damned girl’s name?

  “Very good, sir, on your pad now.”

  “How’s it going Kaspary?” Allenson asked.

  A damn fool question but he couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it. He could hardly start by inquiring after the man’s family or his views on the weather.

  “Not good but not awful either, sir. We’re falling into a pattern where I ambush their leading units with half my force while sending the other half back to find the next defensible position. The Brasilians deploy and force back my first detachment which passes through the second and so on. I can’t stop them but each contact slows them down and buys time.”

  “Time’s what I need, Kaspary. Time’s the most valuable gift you can give me.”

  “Yes, sir, but I lose a few more troops every time. Pretty soon I won’t have enough left to split my force.”

  “Do your best. I’m on my way to organize an evacuation. When you can’t delay their vanguard anymore fall back on Slapton ferry. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Understood, out,” Kaspary said and the line went dead.

  Hawthorn’s men switched off the safeties on the tribarrels and swung them on their gimbals to check for freedom of movement. Someone, probably Hawthorn, had trained them well. It was too late to discover a problem with the mechanism when you were under fire.

  Allenson automatically leaned out but could see nothing but sea-spray. Boswell had the barge moving at fifty kph or so right down on the water. Air displaced by their passage left a wake like a speedboat. It meant they couldn’t see far, but by the same token nothing could see them except at minimal range.

  The lasercannon burst came out of nowhere. A red flare of burning calcium gushed from the top of the right-hand gunshield. It lit up the helmet crown of the trooper serving the weapon. His head exploded, his body falling back into the cargo bay.

  The rest of the laser burst flared into the sea mist above and ahead of the barge. A fraction of a degree to the right and the burst would have missed the barge altogether. A fraction of a degree to the left would have left a burning wreck crewed only by the dead and dying. That was the logic of warfare. Random choices decided who live and who died. Choose to get into this car and you lived, that one and you died—died pointlessly and no amount of cleverness or skill or bravery could shave the odds in your favor. It was what drove normal men mad after too long in the combat zone.

  Allenson scrabbled for his carbine, which he’d placed on the floor. He’d just got his hand to it when he was bowled over by Todd racing forward. He cursed and got to his feet. Looking out over the side he saw a squat flat vessel to starboard lying low in the water. It churned the sea to foam with its tracks.

  The barge flew on straight and steady, giving the Brasilian gunner in the amphib a perfect deflection shot. He ceased fire to take aim. Allenson found himself staring straight into the tribarrel. The amphib lurched over a swell as the gunner fired and the burst cut into the sea short of the barge. Energy hot enough to sear the skin on Allenson’s face reflected off the surface. The water exploded into steam that almost immediately condensed white in the cold air, temporarily screening the barge.

  The respite would only be momentary. Allenson screamed at Boswell to take evasive action, but the man was frozen in shock. Todd reached the pulpit and pushed the servant out of the way. He hauled the barge through a tight turn so that it emerged from the artificial fog on an unexpected trajectory. The Brasilian gunner fortunately knew his job and fired automatically onto their predicted bearing, so the shots went wide. They would all be dead in a flaming wreck if the barge had continued straight and level.

  Hawthorn took a tight two-handed grip on the trigger handles of the barge’s starboard gun. He flipped up the safety lever with his thumb and depressed the fire-tab. Astonishingly, the weapon was still operational. The tribarrels streamed fire into the sea about seventy five meters to the side and behind the barge.

  He held down the trigger, walking the laser stream onto the slowly moving amphib. Steam exploded and condensed around the lumbering craft. Hawthorn fired continuously, pumping laser bursts into the steam.

  Hawthorn kept the triggers down until red flared through the condensing white water vapor and black smoke coiled within it like a nest of cobras in a snowstorm. First one then another barrel overheated and cut out. Hawthorn only let go of the grip when the final barrel fused with a despairing phut of burned out components.

  Smoke curled away from the gun. Todd brought the barge back on course.

  Boswell leapt down into the cargo bay, his eyes wide with shock. His mouth worked but no words emerged.

  “You did well, Boswell. Now sit down and rest,” Allenson said gently, steering the servant to a bench.

  Fendlaigh appeared with a medical kit.

  “Shut your eyes,” she said.

  Allenson did as he was told and she sprayed his face with analgesic synthetic skin.

  “When you’ve finished I believe I could use some of that,” Hawthorn said in an over-controlled voice.

  He held out badly burned hands for Fendlaigh to treat.

  “Mind your arc,” Hawthorn snapped to the port gun trooper who had his head turned to look back into the barge.

  “I’ll give you a cell-growth booster as well, sir,” Fendlaigh said to Hawthorn, holding the kit against his wrist.

  Allenson grinned the grin of a maniac.

  �
��You’ve wrecked our gun, Hawthorn,”

  “I suppose you are going to charge it to Special Project’s budget,” Hawthorn replied gloomily.

  “I think under the circumstances we might combat-loss it,” Allenson replied. “Anybody broken or lost anything else? We might as well get maximum use out of a combat-loss report.”

  Hawthorn had turned away to watch the starboard arc. He cradled his rifle in his arms so his burned hands were free.

  “Do you think he’ll be able to hold that gun?” Fendlaigh asked, talking softly so only Allenson heard. “His palms and fingers are a mess.”

  “He’ll manage,” Allenson replied. “He always does.”

  Slapton Ferry turned out to be an artificial harbor dug out of the mud flats. A change in water color showed where a narrow channel had been dredged to permit lighters to get right up against the foreshore. A curved breakwater of stabilized mud blocks on the side facing down the bay shielded the harbor from wave action. A one-track road connected the single short platform serving as a dock to a cluster of prefab one-story buildings a few hundred meters inland on drained ground that was slightly higher than the surrounding marshes.

  A line of buoys marked the solitary channel through the shallow haven. Lighters milled around outside the breakwater looking for a suitable spot to anchor while they waited their turn to go in.

  A brightly painted yellow boat was tied up to the dock. Troopers wearing flashes from a variety of different regiments churned in confusion over the shore and lighter, which rocked dangerously while the crew waved their hands impotently.

  “Discipline’s broken down completely,” Allenson said.

  “That’s fixable,” Hawthorn said, his voice as bleak as the winter wind.

  It was hopeless trying to land on the dockside amongst the tightly pressed soldiers. Todd passed over the dock and up to the factory where there was a hard stand. Troops piled out of the way as the barge came down. A rush to get aboard started as soon as the field was turned off. Todd straight-armed a woman who tried to climb over the front. The scramble only stopped when Hawthorn gave a snarled order and his trooper triggered bursts from their remaining lasercannon across the heads of the crowd.

  “Link my pad to the station’s audio,” Hawthorn said to Fendlaigh.

  “Attention! Form up in your regiments around the station at attention. Anyone failing to comply will be regarded as deserting in the face of the enemy and summarily shot,” Hawthorn said.

  The activity around Slapton Station ceased. None of the troops moved. They just stared uncomprehendingly at the barge. Hawthorn nodded to his trooper and the man fired another burst skyward and troops ducked and recoiled. One or two who had retained their weapons half raised them.

  “To me,” Allenson said to Fendlaigh. “Give me vocal.”

  “This is General Allenson,” his voice boomed around the station and echoed off the buildings in ghostly audio images. “I’ve come to get you people out of here but I can’t do it if you prance around like a bunch of Terran dancing masters at a fine arts festival.”

  A small titter of amusement drifted across the hard stand. It was a rotten attempt at humor but as Allenson had often noted before, a general’s jokes are always funny.

  “So form up in your regiments and let’s have some discipline and try and act like soldiers of the Cutter Stream Army.”

  There was a silence.

  “You heard the general: The Reds form on me. Sergeant Nolan, I see you there. Get our people into rifle sections if you want to keep your stripes,” a young man in an officer’s uniform who was standing by the entrance to one of the warehouses shouted so loudly that Allenson could hear him in the barge.

  It broke the spell. Men and women began to remember they were soldiers and started moving purposefully, clumping into groups with identical unit badges.

  “Thank you gentlemen—and lady,” Allenson said to the barge crew, remembering to nod to Fendlaigh. “I think we can make this work now. I couldn’t have got this far without your efforts.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Allenson,” Hawthorn snorted. “I can stop people doing things but only you can persuade them to act. You’d have found a way whether we were here or not.”

  “Take over if you please, Hawthorn, and get this place in order. Keep everyone up here until you hear from me. I’m going down to the dock.”

  Allenson jumped down from the barge. A cold wind tugged at his clothes, bringing the sharp fresh tang of the sea. He sought out the young officer whose intervention had been so useful. He had formed a small group of soldiers into two lines and was inspecting them.

  “General present,” snapped the sergeant when he noticed Allenson.

  The troopers jumped to attention. It was a bit ragged and one had lost his rifle but at least they were soldiers again and not an armed mob.

  The young officer spun on his heels and snapped off a salute.

  “You are?”

  “Ortiz, sir, second platoon of The Reds, we’re part of First Brigade, General.”

  “A fine body of men, Ortiz.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ortiz said sourly.

  Actually they were anything but. However, all things were relative.

  “You and your men will accompany me to the foreshore, Ortiz, where we will restore order.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sergeant Nolan, at the double, weapons live,” Ortiz said without turning his back on Allenson.

  “Carter where’s your rifle?” boomed Nolan.

  “Lost it, sarn’t.”

  “Lost it, bleedin’ lost it? No one in my platoon loses their bloody rifle. You bloody well find one smartish my lad or you’ll be on my list.”

  Ortiz and Allenson walked down to the dock. Nolan lined his men into a column and marched behind them. Disordered troops parted for them, moving off the stabilized road into the mud to allow The Reds passage. It was that or be trampled. Allenson affected not to notice men wearing jackets with red facings surreptitiously attach themselves to the rear of the column. By the time they reached the landing stage their small force had doubled in size.

  The babble of sound and constant movement at the dock stilled at their arrival. Ortiz muttered something to Nolan and the sergeant spread his men out into a line right across the back of the platform, rifles ostentatiously held at high port.

  Allenson switched on the amplifier in has pad.

  “Everyone—and I mean everyone who is not a crewman of the lighter—will leave this area immediately and report to Colonel Hawthorn at the Station. Form yourself into your units and await further orders.”

  There was the sort of silence you find at the center of a storm before the wind swings the other way. Allenson continued in a more conversational tone.

  “Lieutenant Ortiz, you are to consider anyone who fails to obey my order as deserting in the face of the enemy and deal with them accordingly,” Allenson said.

  The troopers filed off the lighter in a sullen group.

  Allenson spoke into his datapad, “Send the first batch down, Hawthorn, walking, if you please, in an orderly column.”

  “Understood,” Hawthorn replied succinctly.

  The first batch of troops appeared a few minutes later. They may have started in an orderly column but they broke into a ragged trot upon sighting the lighter.

  “Get these people into line, Sarn’t,” Ortiz said loudly. “Anyone who shoves goes back up to the factory.”

  “You heard the officer,” Nolan said. “You there, that man with the squint. I saw that. Back you go.”

  A man protesting volubly was forced back by the threat of a raised rifle butt in the hands of one of Nolan’s troopers: a huge woman with pockmarks across her forehead. This particular man hadn’t been any more unruly than the rest but Allenson supposed an example must be made of someone and he would do. Anyone who thought life should be fair had no business in the army.

  “How many people can you carry?” Allenson said to the light skipper.


  “We’re licensed for forty,” the skipper said.

  “Not what I asked,” Allenson replied.

  The man considered, “Perhaps sixty?”

  “Detail the first seventy for evacuation, Lieutenant,” Allenson said, adding ten percent or so for luck. In his experience vehicle captains of all sorts tended towards conservative estimates unless being paid by the unit.

  The lighter skipper gave Allenson a dark look but held his tongue.

  “Count of seventy, Nolan. They walk slowly, one at a time onto the lighter and sit where they’re told. Any trouble and the miscreant goes back up to the station.”

  The evacuation proceeded. Allenson realized after the first lighter had cleared the dock that he had no way of signaling the next one in. Fortunately the lighter skippers showed no inclination to hang around a war zone and sorted themselves out by some hierarchical system of ranks known only to the trade of lightering. One succeeded another in a smooth efficient procession so Allenson happily let them get on with it.

  As the evacuation continued, civilians, mostly displaced farmers, got wind of what was going on and started to turn up. The first few were not a problem but as their numbers increased they tended to disorder the waiting columns. Allenson was obliged to make them form a line of their own on a first come first served basis, feeding them onto the lighters a few at a time.

  It wasn’t long before the inevitable happened. A florid faced man in a business suit left the back of the civilian column. He made his way briskly to a gray-painted lighter with yellow flashes that had just pulled up at the dockside. Allenson intercepted him.

  “Get back in line,” Allenson said.

  “That’s mine,” the man said.

  He gestured at the barge with one hand while using the other to turn back a lapel to show a badge in the same gray and yellow.

  “You can’t stop me getting on my own boat.”