The First Casualty

by Mike Moscoe

  From the reports he’d been getting back from the first platoon of A company, the colonials were just about fought out.

  • • •

  “Everybody, get your head down,” Mary shouted. “We got incoming on the way. The bastards are running like shit downhill, but somebody’s tossing artillery our way to keep us out of their way. I vote we let them run, and dig deep.”

  There were a lot of cheers for that one. Even the lieutenant breathed a hearty “Amen.” Then the net squawked again. “First platoon, don’t pull your heads out of your holes for this, but if you can look up, those missiles going by are on their way to the transports. Now we got the bastards between a rock and a hard place. Yeehaa.”

  “Who is that?” one of Dumont’s kids asked.

  “That crazy woman who was on net a while back,” Cassie answered. “I didn’t get no name.”

  “She’s Commander Umboto, brigade XO,” the lieutenant answered. “And those big missiles sure do look good going over. Mary, can you catch them on a vid?”

  “No, sir, not till they come down a bit.”

  “They sure look pretty.”

  “Lieutenant, shouldn’t you get your head down?”

  “It is down, Mary. Don’t worry about me.”

  The barrage was light, but steady. Every minute or so another shell would wander their way. Mary kept up a running commentary—on the enemy running and on the general direction of the next incoming round. Most rounds went right into the gap. Once in a while, one would go long.

  “Oh, God, I’m hit!” came the lieutenant’s scream. Mary focused a vid where the lieutenant’s hole was. A new and bigger one was right next to it. Rocks and debris were still falling.

  “Lieutenant, you okay?” Cassie called.

  No answer.

  Mary took her system out of combat mode and into troop status. The lieutenant’s suit was still on net, but it glowed a yellow-red. “He’s alive, but we’re losing him.”

  “Okay, crew, let’s dig him out,” Lek sighed on net. On the vid, first one, then three, finally six people were out of their holes, headed for the lieutenant’s.

  “Mary, you call the incoming artillery,” Cassie said. “Try to get a good read on where it’ll fall.”

  “Yeah,” Dumont muttered. “I ain’t never done somethin’ this stupid before. Hate to get killed the first time I try it.”

  More were out of their holes. Mary doubted they’d do any good. “Six is enough. If we need more, I’ll call. Don’t need anyone standing around watching others dig.”

  “You bet nobody’s gonna watch me dig,” Dumont snarled, but the bite was gone. His usual snap drew a laugh. Mary divided her display, half on those digging, half on the artillery. A gun puffed. Mary used her radar sensors for the first time to plot its fall. “Shell’s headed for the crest of the gap. No sweat.”

  The diggers didn’t even pause when the shell exploded. Second shot was no worse. “We’ve found him,” Cassie yelped.

  Across the plain, the gun carriage bucked. Mary did the numbers. “Oh, shit. You got incoming, and it’s gonna be close.”

  Most of the diggers flattened themselves in the shell crater. Two didn’t, huddling together just outside the crater, covering something—someone. Mary forgot to breathe as she counted seconds. “Hail Mary, full of grace” came from one suit. “Our Father, who art in heaven” from another. “Sweet Jesus, help the fuck us” was balanced by someone’s prayer mantra.

  Mary just counted down: “Four, three, two, one.”

  A dust plume sprouted twenty meters from the first crater. Again rocks and shell fragments cut their lazy arcs through the vacuum. Mary could only watch as it showered down.

  Dumont yelped. “Goddamn it, somebody pull that hot hunk of metal out of my ass.” On vid, one of the two figures that had stayed exposed to cover someone else reached over with a gob of goo and started rubbing it on the other’s rear.

  “Now, does that feel better?” Cassie cooed.

  “Yes, Mother. You gonna kiss it, make it well?”

  “Only in your dreams, kid. Okay, crew. Give me a hand. Lieutenant’s still breathing, but he’s out cold. Everybody keep goo handy. I don’t know how bad his suit’s holed.”

  “Lek,” Mary ordered, “bring the bubble.” Mine disasters could hole a suit in too many places for goo—too many places to even find. The bubble could keep you alive for an hour. Longer if they found more air. The next three shells stayed out of the way while they cared for their officer.

  “How bad is he?” Mary asked on Lek’s private line.

  “He don’t look none too good. There’s a lot broken and we got no way to take a peek at him through all this damn armor.”

  Mary switched to battalion. “Major Henderson. We got a bad hurt lieutenant here. You don’t get us help fast, he’s dead.”

  “Nearest set of wheels is yours.” The voice wasn’t the major’s. Commander Umboto was back on the line. “Load the lieutenant on whatever shows up. We’ll have an ambulance with a med team meet them ASAP.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Mary answered.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. You put up a damn good fight. The Spartans couldn’t have done better. No use losing someone who won the battle just before they get it over with. Umboto out.”

  Mary put a vid on long-distance search. “I think I see a dust cloud coming our way.”

  “Looks so,” Lek agreed.

  “Who the Spartans?” Dumont wanted to know. Mary let them talk, but the commander’s words had hit her. They had won their battle, but could still die under one of these random shots. It didn’t seem fair, to win a battle and get killed before it was over. Miners bitched about owners and their twisted idea of fair. War seemed to have no idea of fair. No idea at all.

  • • •

  “Major Longknife, Senior Pilot Nuu here, and we’ve got a problem. The Hardy, Noble and Gallant are unfit for space. If the Earthies got more where those came from, we’re in a world of hurt. Santiago tells me things aren’t going well on your end either. I got people who want to lift. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re in bad shape. Falling back fast as we can. Lighten what ships you got and pile troopers in. Launch them as fast as you fill them.”

  “How many troopers do we have to load on each ship? You offloaded seven hundred fifty-eight.”

  “The Second got bled plenty. I don’t know what we’ve got now. The gear’s not worth the lift, but the troopers are the brigade. Honey, you got to get them back. With them we can rebuild. Without them, we’re all dead.”

  “Ray, you okay?” The voice went soft, no more the transport commander’s.

  It was the softness that did it, took the lie from his mouth and let the truth out through clenched teeth. “No, friend.”

  “I could lift the Friendship, drop it down close to you.”

  “Probably on my head, girl. No, we evacuate by the numbers. You fill up a transport, you launch it away from their damn base. We’ll make it,” he ordered. “Captain Santiago, you out there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Turn those carriers around as soon as they get back. Pull drivers from A company. Tell them their ticket out is one trip forward. You having any trouble?”

  “Nope. Few hotheads want to go up and show the rest of you how it’s done, but I got them taking care of the wounded right now. When are you coming back, sir?”

  “On the last carrier.”

  “I’ll be driving it.”

  “And I’ll be waiting for you,” Rita whispered.

  Major Longknife couldn’t turn his head anymore. He didn’t have to. The vision of a battle bravely started and badly wreaked was etched behind his eyes, never to go away. For two hours he waited as the remnants of the 2nd Guard streamed past. He should have ordered the artillery silent when it was obvious there was no pursuit, but it slipped his pain-wracked mind.

  When Santiago loomed over him, he didn’t resist the pain spray. The battle was over. He’d lost
this one big.

  • • •

  Trevor Hascomb Crossinshield the Ninth stripped naked. He needed to meet the most powerful men on one hundred planets. They were in the sauna; he had exactly five minutes of their time. If he took less, it would be accorded a virtue to him. He could not take more.

  Wrapping a towel around himself, he slipped his feet into sandals and padded noisily toward his business appointment. He opened the sauna door only enough to slip in. These men did not suffer cold interruptions. He took the appropriate supplicant’s seat on the lowest of the four tiers of cedar shelves, next to the hot stones. When asked, he would ladle water on them for more steam. He would do whatever he was told.

  The room was hot. How can they take the heat? Not born to this life—or wealth—Trevor doubted he could stand the heat of the highest tier. He would, however, find a place along the middle tiers most comfortable. Searching for the one who had invited him, Trevor risked a quick glance at the upper tier. Steam billowed and drifted there, hiding the men’s faces. No, one was a woman. Her towel open, she stretched out languidly along the highest shelf, forcing men to either sit closer together or move to a lower bench. Was she a “companion” on display? The body was sculpted, expensive. Earned or…

  For a moment, Trevor caught her eyes. There was cold fire there, but nothing for him. He felt like he’d been hacked, the entire contents of his mass storage reviewed and not found worth the effort to format. Trevor snapped his eyes down, locked them on a floor tile and awaited notice. The room was silent; here he would get no dropped scrap of information to sell. Are my five minutes ticking away? Desperate, he forced himself to quiet.

  “How goes our little war?” a familiar voice spoke from a corner of the highest tier.

  “Your war, Henry, not ours,” someone in the opposite corner dared to interrupt, and interrupting, to correct—and to challenge. Trevor held his tongue.

  “Edward, when all of humanity groans in birth, of course we will be there. We raped her fair and square. The little bastard will fall right into our tender clutches. Of course it is ours.” The voice held a chuckle…empty of mirth.

  “Thank you, Henry. I love your poetry. But let us not forget, the colony planets are throwing their full weight behind their tin dictator. On several fronts their Red Banner fleets advance, spewing their songs of ‘One Humanity, United together. The only coin the sweat of the worker. The only just pay what you’ve made with your own hands.’”

  “And I do love your poetry too, Edward, even if it is all secondhand. Yes, they do press us here and there, but they are like any new entrepreneur with a penny vision. They overreach, and just moments before they might have realized a profit, they go bankrupt. That is when we step in with a takeover bid. There is nothing they plant that we cannot reap.”

  Trevor risked a glance at his patron. Heat swirled around him. Beneath his words were fire, enough to cut down a dozen CEO’s of transplanetary corporations. Still he leaned back against the wall, talking coolly, body frozen in a posture of good cheer. Not even a finger twitched.

  “You put much at risk.”

  “Because you were blind, Edward. People seeped out to the frontier like water under a dam. And you ignored them.”

  “They paid their bills. Living off the interest made you fat, Henry, and left them nothing.”

  “Nothing, Edward. One moment you speak of fleets pressing in on us. Another moment you call them nothing. You have ignored the frontier worlds too long. It is time to bring them back into the wide river of humanity, to let them grow wealthy and comfortable like Earth and her seven sisters, like Pitt’s Hope and the other two score that came after. The colonies must be brought into the family, not by some foot-stamping messiah, but our way. Peacefully, profitably, comfortably. There is no profit in surprises. Left long enough on their own, anyone can dream up a surprise. Edward, we must eliminate surprises.”

  “And so you play with a war, Henry. Brute force follows no laws, physical or economic. The hounds of war nip at any heel they choose, not just the one you want. You gamble.”

  “When I gamble, Edward, the fix is already in. Mr. Crossinshield, the fix is in, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir.” Trevor wasted no time on the gulp he desperately wanted. His button pushed, he spewed his contents in words too rapid to be interrupted. “We have multiple contacts in all major and minor theaters of operations on both the colonial and Earth sides. Information is being received, collated, and analyzed daily. If President Urm’s Unity Movement cannot be properly guided, we have subcontractors in place to cancel him.”

  The woman rolled over, propped herself on one elbow, and crossed her legs. “And there is no one to take his place among the collection of thieves with whom he has surrounded himself.” She grinned. There was no humor behind it, no evidence of any feeling at all. “Of course, some of those thieves are our thieves. Very good, Henry.”

  Trevor’s patron opened his lips in an empty smile and went through the motions of a thank-you before turning back to the man across the room. “You see, Edward, this is a restructuring, not war. A growth of franchises that will be handled delicately. Before the next annual reports are due, we will have closed out our wartime contracts profitably and plunged into the next economic expansion fueled by the unmet needs of the colonies on the credit we extend, to managers we select.”

  “If you are right. If these puppets are truly yours and if they do not slip their strings and discover a life of their own,” the questioner growled. His face twisted in a grimace, and he threw up a hand. He knew none of these people of power could hear his words. He had lost.

  “I am always right. Thank you, Mr. Crossinshield. It is a pleasure doing business with you. We must talk another time of expanding our relationship.”

  Trevor stood. “Thank you, sir.”

  He left. In the cool of the locker room, sweat poured off him that had nothing to do with the sauna. When he could, he walked unsteadily to the shower. Under the cooling spray, he regained himself. The fix is in. We have agents everywhere. We know what is happening. It was a comforting mantra.

  FOUR

  THERE WAS NOTHING worse than being beached. Abeeb men had shunned exile to the land for a thousand years, since the first one set sail in a wooden dhow to cross the blue waters off the east coast of Africa. Well, Uncle Dula had chosen to squat dirtside until this war blew over. Mattim could not. Uncle Dula had seniority and twenty years of good solid profits; he’d be one of the first captains recalled when peace came again. Captain Mattim Abeeb had no such track record.

  He’d leaped at the offer: command of his own ship at thirty. He should have looked closer at what he was jumping into. The routes he drew were deep along the rim of human space. He watched prices paid for his cargos plummet as competing bidders were replaced by Unity monopolies—one offer; take it or leave it. And profit was a dirty word, rapidly elevating into a crime. Mattim could only wonder what the storekeepers were paying for his cargos—and who pocketed the difference.

  As profits went down, expenses went up. Corporate groused about the Westinghouse fire control he’d bought, but Mattim and crew had been glad for it when they needed it. Maybe that was why his crew, every one of them, had signed with him when the Maggie D had been contracted for conversion to a Navy cruiser. They knew as well as he that the Red Flag Line wanted its ships back on routes as soon as the war ended. With luck, Mattim would have the Maggie converted back and making money long before Uncle Dula got his recall letter.

  Assuming the Navy hadn’t messed up the Maggie too badly—and they lived through the war. Big assumptions.

  Mattim studied his Maggie D; staring down past his feet, out through the viewing port imbedded in the floor of the station’s corridor to where she lay at Pier 12. She took some getting used to. Maggie was not the ship he’d left three months ago.

  The blocky freighter he’d commanded for five years was gone. About all that hadn’t changed was the thick ice of the dust catcher at her
bow. She was now an even five hundred meters long, fifty added to make room for the second reactor. In doubling the engines to twelve, the stern had gone from a rectangle to something like an oval. Better make sure the engines balance, he thought to himself.

  The hull was the major change. The blocks of thousands of standard containers were replaced by a smooth teardrop, no different from any Navy cruiser. She glistened, metal and ice armor reflecting back the dim light. Amidships, a turret popped up, rotated, then retreated, leaving a smooth hull. Laser guns, ready to boil someone else’s armor, were his new business.

  Squaring his shoulders, Mattim marched to meet the officers and crew that had breathed this different life into his ship.

  “Sheffield arriving” blared the moment his foot touched deck plates. He returned the ensign’s smart salute, saluted the blue and green flag painted on the aft bulkhead, and turned to find himself being saluted by a three-striper who hadn’t been there a second ago. “We’ve been expecting you, sir. I’m Commander Colin Ding, your exec. Would you like to inspect the ship?”

  Without waiting for an answer, his XO turned and began said tour. He followed the woman of medium height, medium age and medium Asian appearance, wondering if it had all been issued to her. The Margarita de Silva y Rodriguez Sheffield, Maggie to him, Sheffield to the Navy, was big, one hundred meters at her widest. Plenty of room for fuel tanks and weapons—and redundancies. The Navy was big on redundancy.

  And people. He now commanded two doctors. Abdul still ran the galley, though a freckle-faced ensign was in charge. All told, the crew was five hundred strong in dozens of specialties, though four hundred were green as hydroponic goo. The balance was an equal number of old hands from the Maggie and Navy types.

  Yes, the XO showed him a lot. Fuel storage, food storage, people quarters—everything about running a ship. Nothing about running a warship. Interesting.

  “Let’s drop down to engineering,” Mattim suggested.