“Emile? Captain Dassa?”
“You know, I didn’t believe it when I heard you’d turned gentleman farmer on us.” The stars reflected off of the circular lenses just under the helmet’s brim when Dassa looked up. “What a sad end to a good infantryman.”
“Just trying to feed the troops, sir. Following in the steps of First Battalion’s legendary supply officers.”
“Stop it. You’re embarrassing me.”
“I was actually referring to Drew Follett.” Jander carefully walked over, taking Emile’s hand warmly. “You barely had the job for a month, if I remember.”
“And they promoted me, just to keep the battalion from starving.” Neither man continued the story to its true conclusion, when the brigade’s enormous losses on Fractus had left B Company’s top slot open for Dassa to assume. “Major Hatton’s pleased with the job you’re doing.”
“Sergeant Strickland does all the work. I just go to coordination meetings with the higher-ups. Officer stuff.”
“Sounds awful. But I brought you a gift. First Platoon’s spending the night here, and I thought you might like to visit them.”
“I dunno. I was planning to spend the evening watching my plants grow.”
“Come on. They’re eager to see you.”
They headed down the trail, which took on a greenish tint once Mortas had donned his goggles.
“I gotta hand it to you, Jan; I have never seen a supply base showing this kind of light discipline.”
“The trick is to start by beating the living hell out of a gang of criminals on a high hill where everybody can see it. After that, you’ve got their attention.” Dassa laughed, and Mortas corrected himself. “Honestly, I’ve got this one truck NCO named Leoni who made all the support types toe the line. He’s got the touch. Friendly where friendly works, but rough when it doesn’t.”
“So who’s in command here? Nobody I talked to seems to know.”
“We’ve got a rotation going, if you can believe that. Three different colonels who own the biggest outfits on the Mound. They really don’t like this place, but when they heard that an infantry lieutenant had basically taken over, they couldn’t leave it alone. Each of them spends a week here before running back to showers and air-conditioning.”
They passed a line of troops in the darkness, maintenance personnel by the look of their outfits. All of them wore goggles, and almost half had torso armor. Several muted greetings reached out to Mortas, and he returned them by name.
“I heard you’d been elected mayor. I didn’t believe it until now.”
“Strickland and Leoni again. They know how to find things people need, like the body armor you saw. Most of these troops want to do things the right way—ready to defend themselves if necessary, not attracting the bad guys’ attention with all those lights—but a lot of them didn’t have the training or the basic equipment.” Jander paused. “Listen to me, telling you about life in the rear. How’s it been going out there, sir?”
“It’s just really strange. On the one hand, we’ve hit the Flock hard. They had this whole sector basically under their control when the sun went down, but we changed that. Aggressive patrolling, heavy use of snipers, and quick reaction teams. Wyn Kitrick came up with the idea to run phony supply convoys loaded with hidden troops, and that really scored some points until Roger changed up on us.
“There are so many deserters among the rebels that they’ve got an answer for most of our standard stuff. So we switched to old-fashioned groundpounding. Humping enough ammo and water to survive a fight, but not so much that we can’t move quickly. It’s a tough balance, but your old platoon does it well. Wolf seems to have a sixth sense about where the bad guys are headed, and before you know it First Platoon has caught up with them or even got in front.”
“That doesn’t sound so strange.”
“That part isn’t. The weird part is the way it’s all changing. The Orange have hunkered down inside the mines, and nothing we’ve done has brought them out. I heard they sent a platoon of Spartacans underground, a special tunnel rat outfit, and that we lost every one of them. Robot recon hasn’t done any better, and Erlon’s spies . . . well you know what happened to them.”
“That’s all Leeger’s influence. I told Pappas he was too smart to fight us. The question is, what’s he been doing all this time? He’s not just waiting down there.”
“Neither are his troops.” Dassa stopped next to the sunken opening of a large bunker. “We think the Rogers are still getting around on the surface pretty well.”
“How? Every truck and mover has been chipped and entered into the system. They can’t pull any of that nonsense of pretending to be Force units anymore.”
“Maybe it’s the hogs. Everybody assumed the rebels spoofed Victory Pro into releasing new herds here so they’d have something to eat.”
“That wasn’t it?”
“Come inside. Ringer’s got an interesting story about this.”
The two men clomped down a short flight of wooden steps set into the ground, and Mortas heard noisy laughter as they entered the first set of blackout drapes. He removed his goggles before following Dassa into a well-lit dugout with a low ceiling and a prefabricated floor.
He stopped just inside, a wide smile spreading at the familiar sights. The walls lined with rucksacks, weapons, and body armor, with ground mats spread out in front of them. Dirty infantrymen in rows to either side, most of them in T-shirts and camouflaged trousers, engaged in the full range of stand-down activities. Pulling a soiled bandage off of a purple blood blister. Cleaning weapons. Eating chow. Peering at handhelds, getting the latest censored news or re-reading the most recent messages from home.
“Hey, Lieutenant.” A hard voice, young, from the corner behind him. “What you doing here?”
Anger flared up in Mortas, even after he saw that the challenge came from someone he didn’t recognize. Late teens, shaved head, cleaning part of a grenade launcher. The troop stared at him insolently, and Jander decided to play with him.
“Not much. Just taking it all in. You know?”
“Well take it all in somewhere else. This is First Platoon, and if you ain’t First Platoon, you can go—”
“Well look who it is!” A figure rolled up in a field blanket had lifted his head to view the confrontation, and he now sprang to his feet. “Shut up, Greeber. This was our last platoon leader.”
The thin frame of Private Prevost approached on bare feet before hugging Jander’s torso armor. “Good to see ya, sir! How’s the leg?”
“Better than ever. How’s the head?” Prevost’s helmet had been cracked in half by a flying rock at the end of the wolf attack.
“Gettin’ there. I still see double sometimes.” Prevost pulled at his nose. “But I make it work for me. Whenever things are going to shit, I tell myself it’s not half as bad as it looks.”
The two friends laughed, and other familiar figures started rising. Remillet and Bernike shook Jander’s hand warmly, both experts with the grenade launcher that the troops called a chonk.
“Looks like we got all the chonk men sleeping in the same spot.” He turned this over in his mind before turning to Prevost. “They finally give you some authority?”
“Nah, this is one of those unofficial things. Lieutenant Wolf lets me take charge of the chonks when we’re fighting, just like you did.” Prevost grinned. “Kinda makes you wonder why we have platoon leaders at all.”
“You said it.” The surly words came from Greeber, still sitting on his ground mat, but just a little too loud.
“Greeber, I will kick your ass,” Prevost snarled. “You know who this is? This is Lieutenant Jander Mortas. You see that Spartacan knife he’s carrying? He killed a Force major with that, when the guy flipped out on him. And he fucked that alien shapeshifter, before he found out she wasn’t human.”
Mortas couldn’t decide how to react to the cascading exaggerations, but Prevost saved him.
“You did think she was
human, right, sir?”
The group laughed heartily, and Prevost took Mortas by the arm. “Come on, say hello to the rest of the platoon.”
Moving forward, Jander looked at the end of the room. Dassa was pointing at something on a wooden table, surrounded by the platoon’s senior NCOs and a stranger who was no doubt Lieutenant Wolf. Medium height with a shaved head, the platoon leader’s muscles showed through his T-shirt. He brought an index finger near Dassa’s, and the men around him nodded when he spoke. A flush of envy went through Mortas, but then a tall soldier was in his path.
“Hey, sir!” This was Ringer, the man Emile had mentioned. “Good to see you again. Listen, you’re friends with Captain Pappas, right?”
“Oh, not this again, Ringer,” Remillet said gently.
“Nobody believes me, but I know what I saw.”
“Captain Dassa said I should talk to you, so he believes you enough for that.” Jander touched Ringer’s arm. “What did you see?”
“Craziest thing. I was pulling security for a sniper team, on top of this rocky knob near Supply Line Orpheus. They were watching the route, so I was keeping an eye on the plain behind us.”
“What, did you hear something?” The joke came from one of the new men, and Ringer’s normally placid features froze in a cold stare. His nickname came from the constant sound in his ears, the after-effects of too many explosions.
“It was what I saw.” Ringer looked at Mortas. “You know those hogs we got runnin’ wild around here?”
“Yes.”
“They don’t come together in big bunches unless there’s a lot of food, or something big to tear up. So what I saw was probably a group of families, a few big males, a bunch of females, and a whole lot of young ones. Nothing special.”
“Go on.”
“Except there were these other shapes. Dark like most of the pigs, just a little taller than the males, moving with them. On two legs.”
“Now tell him what their heat signatures looked like, Ring.”
The veteran pursed his lips and twisted his head to look at the floor. “I know what I saw. Those were men, Lieutenant. Bent over, camouflaged, but moving with the hogs.”
“I believe you. But you did check their signatures?”
“Yes.” For the first time he looked doubtful. “I can’t explain it, but I figure that’s why we got people like Captain Pappas. Their heat readings were almost the same.”
“You were droning, Rings.” Prevost put a hand on his shoulder, giving him a brief shake. “Happens to all of us. Humping all night to get in position, watching all that great big nothing, the sun beating down, you thought you were awake but you weren’t.”
“Tell Captain Pappas, sir.” Ringer stepped up close to Jander. “I’m not wrong.”
“I’ll do it. Don’t worry.”
He was about to clasp Ringer’s arm in acknowledgment when the soldiers to his front parted and the medium-sized officer was in front of him. Light green eyes that blazed as they went from his head to his toes.
“Mortas! How’s my leg doing?” Wolf demanded.
Taken aback, Jander stammered a response. “Last time I checked, it was my leg.”
“No it’s not. You were feeding it to a big dog when I saved you. That makes it mine.”
Wolf was standing too close, and even though he was shorter he carried his muscles with an aggressive confidence. Jander thought he detected smirks from some of the men around them, even troops he’d commanded, and it rankled him more.
“You rode up in an armored car after my guys had killed most of the wolves. I don’t count that as being saved.”
“You’re right about the platoon.” The green eyes glowed, and Wolf spoke to the group. “This platoon don’t need help from anybody!”
Hoots and howls boomed around the bunker, increasing Jander’s annoyance. He’d encountered this type of male before, at prep school, in university sports, and in Officer Basic. Full of bravado and self-congratulation, some of them could deliver but most of them didn’t.
“And this platoon ain’t afraid of nobody!” a voice called from behind him, obviously the second stanza in a well-used group cheer.
“What platoon’s got the highest number of kills in the whole brigade?” Wolf shouted, and through the forest of heads Jander saw Dassa watching in bemusement. When he made eye contact with the company commander, Dassa raised his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
“First! First! First! First!” The chant went on for ten seconds more, and then died out. Mortas noted the way every eye was on Wolf, waiting for the next prompt.
“Sorry to cut this short, Mortas!” A hand slapped his torso armor. “But Captain Dassa just gave us tomorrow’s mission, and we got infantry stuff to do.”
He turned and headed back for the table in a gesture of dismissal, and Jander was standing there alone when Dassa walked up. Most of the men had stopped to say goodbye, but they were now busying themselves with their gear, and Jander knew he’d been forgotten. Wolf was bent over the table, working out the details with Dak and the men who had been his squad leaders, and he barely felt Dassa’s hand on his arm.
“Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
Jander didn’t move, staring at the green eyes as Wolf outlined his plan for the next day’s operation. Dassa spoke quietly.
“I know he’s a handful, but he wasn’t lying about the stats. The platoon’s in good hands.”
Mortas turned and headed for the blackouts. Dassa went with him, and they stood together outside as their goggles adjusted to the night.
“No need to walk me back, sir. I’m gonna go check with the security company, make sure they’re on their toes.”
“Never a bad idea. And don’t worry—I’ll talk to Pappas about what Ringer saw.”
“Thanks.” Jander looked down the steps, seeing them now as a void. He raised his goggled eyes to Dassa, and pointed at the bunker. “I don’t like that guy.”
“That’s okay. Roger the Rebel doesn’t like him either.”
Mortas didn’t reach the bunker where the Mound’s security force maintained its command post. He was walking past a covered garage where mechanics were working on a mover when the first explosions rocked the base. Diving for the ground, he scrambled up against a pile of lumber and raised his Scorpion rifle into firing position, but there was nothing coming at him. Bodies raced past, but they were Mound personnel heading for protection underground. Somewhere out on the perimeter, more blasts sounded.
Still watching for danger, he slipped an electronic thimble onto his finger and used it to put aerial imagery in one lens of his goggles. The camp appeared as a collection of orange-to-red heat signatures from the various machines and collections of personnel, but he was familiar with that. Small fires had sprouted at three points on the wire, the largest right at the main gate and another one near the main shuttle pad. A heavy machine gun started up somewhere out in the darkness, and was soon joined by rifle fire.
“Security, this is Mortas!” Working so closely with the force that protected the Mound, he had a direct link established. “What’s going on?”
“We got breaches in three spots!” The answer came from the command bunker. “How the hell did they get so close?”
Jander spun the thimble in the air, enlarging the image of the base. A constellation of white dots was rapidly moving away, and he recognized them as the signatures of the hogs Ringer had mentioned. His warning that the rebels were using the animals to conceal their movements echoed, but it was no time for explanations.
Out on the perimeter, the gunfire rose to a steady roar. Focusing the picture on the main gate, he now saw tiny flecks of light, incoming and outgoing bullets, alongside the flames that had once been twin watchtowers guarding the entrance. Concrete fighting positions had supported the wooden structures, and he watched in surprise as bright flashes streaked toward them from just outside the wire. The unmistakable boom of shoulder-fired HDF rockets came to him moments after the bunker b
usters slammed home.
“They’re through! They’re at the entrance! They’re throwing grenades!” the voice from the command bunker screamed, and then the transmission ended in a thunderclap.
Jerking his head around, Mortas debated where to go. If the rebels were inside the perimeter, it would be foolish to run around presenting a target. His thoughts went to FITCO and his own supply people, up the hill.
“Sergeant Strickland? Sergeant Leoni? This is Mortas.”
“Hey Lieutenant!” Leoni sounded buoyant. “You in a safe spot?”
“Not really. Where are you?”
“I got my boys and girls on the slope just above our truck park, armored up and loaded for bear.” A marker blinked into life, showing the bunkers that overlooked FITCO’s vehicles. “Anybody tries to damage my wheels is gonna be sorry.”
“Sounds good. You seeing any movement?”
“Just a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. You’d think people would know where the shelters were.”
“Roger just nailed the command post, so stay put and try to coordinate air support. What about Strickland?”
“I’m with the battalion’s stuff,” the supply sergeant answered, and another marker appeared on the slope close to Leoni’s. “Rigging charges on the medicine and the ammo. Just in case.”
“Don’t waste any time on that,” Leoni advised. “This isn’t a smash-n-grab. They’re here to kill. Hey, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah.”
“I already called for drones, but there’s a problem. Since we haven’t had any customers here until now, they reassigned our support. They say we can have orbital rockets if things get bad enough.”
“Fuck.” Mortas tensed up, bringing the Scorpion rifle tight against his armor before recognizing the shadowy figures as more troops trying to find shelter. “Listen, I’m gonna head for the perimeter. Looks like most of the positions are still intact, and they’re fighting it out. You’re in a good spot to coordinate everything, so see what you can get us, short of those rockets.”
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