by Leo Champion
“I think so – I don’t know what else these blue triangles would be,” said Mullins. The way to learn would be to physically go to one and check. He wished there was a nomad they could interrogate, although if they needed maps – if it wasn’t their tribe’s territory, Mullins figured, so the Euros were helping them travel as hordes – a given nomad might not know much to begin with about what was actually where. Or how to relate it to the drawings on the maps.
No – there was no key on either map. But…
“These T’s,” he went on, realizing. “One right north of here, where we know that array is. So those have to be the jamming transmitters.”
“Colonel’s gonna want to see those maps,” remarked Alvarez.
Yes, he probably would. This was an important find, an idea of how the wastelands were viewed by the nomads who lived there. Was there anything on this that the US surveyors had missed but the Euro scouts hadn’t, or had been able to learn without surveying from the nomads themselves?
He wished he could get them to Robinson, to Vazhao. This was a find battalion intelligence or higher-up, S-2 or G-2, would definitely appreciate. But those guys were out of reach.
“I’ll take them to him,” said Mullins reluctantly.
* * *
Newbauer, the maps bundled up under his arm, looked at the group gathered in front of him later that afternoon.
Leaving two men on guard they’d mostly slept, with the Black Gangers locked up in a bunkhouse. From the fact that four of the bunkhouses had twenty bunks apiece and did have doors that could easily be secured from the outside, that possibility had clearly occurred to the designers of Diamond North.
Now the sun was past its peak and, Cramer could tell, the lieutenant-colonel himself was well-rested enough. He’d kicked doors open and shouted until everyone was present, barring Mondragon standing guard on top of the blockhouse and Alvarez guarding the three prisoners.
“The transmitter,” the lieutenant-colonel addressed Mullins. “It’s a few miles north. Now let’s get up there and call for help! You think you can do something with it?”
“I might be able to,” said Mullins cautiously.
“What do we do about these three, sir?” Alvarez asked from the shed where the prisoners were, about twenty feet away.
“They’re wounded prisoners,” Cramer said. But it felt more obligatory than anything else. These three had been part of a group that had murdered ten Legion guards and would have murdered more if it hadn’t been for Bogdanov. Who had refused to be a part of that group. The others had had that choice, too.
“One of them is probably capable of walking,” she went on. “And the one with the snake tattoo should be good in a couple of days. Lock them up with some food and come back when we’ve checked out the transmitter, he should be able to walk then.”
“Doctor, do you seriously propose we carry the third one?” Senechal asked.
Cramer turned to look at the helicopter pilot. He seemed leaner than he had been before, and now he’d survived a couple of fights he carried his weapon – an M-25 rifle, now, taken from one of the renegades here – more comfortably than he had been. More confidently. She wondered how he was dealing with the loss of his co-pilot; maybe he’d managed to just block it from his mind, like she seemed to have done with Josephson.
“I don’t propose abandoning them,” the doctor shot back.
“Doctor, with respect,” said Hill, “this isn’t your call. These fuckers jumped Ciampa, Walsh, Kittery and Ndosi. The other men from our squad. We’d be with them now if these shits hadn’t jumped those guys and four other good Bravo Company men after that.”
There were noises of agreement from the rest of the riflemen – even Reuter, on his stretcher between the Black Gangers named Smith and Kwan.
“You can’t just murder wounded prisoners because they might slow you down.”
“Summary execution, Doc,” Lennon said. “Whole different thing to murder.”
“They’re—” she began.
“No time for moral bleating, Doctor,” Newbauer snarled. “They’re scum beyond redemption. I’ll kill ‘em myself.”
“No, sir,” said Hill, drawing that huge automatic pistol of his and heading toward the makeshift cell, about twenty feet up from where everyone was gathered. Alvarez had been standing guard, but he’d heard the discussion. “The pleasure’s mine. First Squad.”
The three prisoners had heard something too, because there began a stammering and shouting as Alvarez stepped aside and Hill appeared with gun in hand.
Boom. Boom. Boom, went the corporal’s hand cannon. She could see Hill firing, but not the men inside dying. That gave it an unreality, he did not really just kill three men in cold blood.
No, she thought. He didn’t kill them because they were wounded. He killed them because they tried to kill us, because they weren’t just escaped convicts; they were confirmed mutineers, a capital crime. And because they’d killed his friends.
Summary execution of confirmed capital criminals when in the field under emergency circumstances was entirely permitted not just under Legion military law but across all branches; it was in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
At the time she’d heard of that, she’d thought it barbaric. Executing anyone without a trial? Executing people at all…
But now, in the field, escorting three men with a confirmed past of mutiny, with nothing at all to lose once they did get to a court… even if they were wounded, especially if they wounded, that was impractical.
There was no way anyone could be spared, alone, here to guard and feed them at Diamond North – and besides, that would probably be a delayed death sentence for everyone, once the next nomads came by.
The gunshots echoed in her ears, but placed against the new logic Cramer was seeing of combat and violence? It seemed almost rational.
She didn’t like it, but she was getting to realize she didn’t have to.
“You OK, Doc?” Jorgenson asked.
Newbauer cracked his whip in the air. Smith and Kwan picked up their ends of Reuter’s stretcher and the other Black Gangers came out of their bunkhouse and began to pick up the packs that had been laid out for them.
Cramer turned to look at the medic.
“Fine, Specialist,” she realized she could say honestly now. “Just fine.”
* * *
As they trudged up a slight slope, avoiding the boulders that seemed to become more common the further north you got, Hill fell in beside Lennon.
“He walked us right into the ambush,” Hill muttered.
“Jorgenson said,” the other corporal answered in the same undertone.
“Tried to warn him more than once. He just pulled rank and kept on going. If you hadn’t shown up – if that guy hadn’t been there to warn you,” Hill growled, “we’d all be dead.”
“It was narrow enough as it was,” Lennon agreed. It had been a bitch of a fight.
“He’s going to get us all killed,” First Squad’s leader repeated. “I don’t care that he’s an asshole; I’m an asshole. But that man is a danger to us all.”
“You propose,” Lennon murmured, “doing something about him.”
It wasn’t a question.
“What do you think, philosophy professor?”
Lennon was silent for a few moments. Then he nodded slowly.
“Possibly, Hill. Possibly.”
* * *
The second shed at the base of the spire was bigger than the first, about half the size of a shipping container. By the dimensions and the fact that it was made of heavy steep, it might well have been a European shipping container with a door in it. Bundles of heavy cables snaked up from its base to the forest of aerials that ran along the high rocks of the spire.
“This has to be it,” Mullins said, finishing his circuit. There were no windows, and the only entrance was a heavy door with a numeric keypad on it. “Power and control unit.”
“I would not try opening that door,”
Mandvi said.
“I wasn’t planning to touch it,” said Mullins. Because the wrong code would probably set off a trap.
“So how do we get in?” Senechal asked.
“Blast it open,” suggested Dashratha. “Or I could try my shotgun.”
“Blast it with what charges?” asked Hill.
“Can you plug your phone directly into those cables outside, without access to the main unit?” Janja asked Mullins.
Mullins shook his head.
“What’s coming out of there look to be solid power wires, from their thickness, at voltages I’m not going to touch. The transmitters themselves, and their power unit, are definitely in the shed.”
He eyed the keypad lock on the door. Impossible to pick, even if they had someone with the skills. And no idea as to the combination.
“2059,” Mondragon suggested. The year of the European Federation’s birthday.
“Very funny.”
“I’ve got a couple of high-explosive grenades,” Mandvi said, pulling one out from his belt.
“A door like that would require shaped charges,” Hill said. He’d at one point been in a Weapons company, Mullins knew. “Even if we got the explosives out of those grenades, there’s still no way to set them off simultaneously.”
“But if you blow the wires, you at least shut the jamming down. Right?” asked Janja.
“Right,” said Mullins.
“Then I’ve got this,” said Mandvi. “Everyone stand clear…”
Everyone backed off as Mandvi took some string, tied it to the ring of the grenade in his hand, and loosened the pin.
Then – as Mullins watched from a safe forty feet away – he stuck the grenade under the bundled wires between the shed and the aerials, unrolled his ten feet of string as he backed off, yanked the pin loose and ran like hell himself.
The grenade exploded in a blazing flash, a bright blue electric snap amidst the explosion.
Everyone looked at Mullins, who unslung the headset from his radio. Tense himself, nervous about whether it had actually worked.
Faint white noise came through him. Distant jamming. Of course this couldn’t be the only transmitter in the wastelands; he was picking up the others. But at the volume this noise was, you could get your own signal through; it was an interference, not a blocker.
They could talk to people.
With his free left hand he gave a thumbs-up.
“Fuck yeah,” said Hill.
“You got a signal?” demanded Newbauer, coming up.
“I got a frequency, sir,” said Mullins. He cautiously began to rotate along the spectrum, up through bandwidth levels. Nothing but the distant jamming on any of them.
“Sir, I have frequencies,” he clarified to the colonel. “It worked. But nobody’s in range.”
“Then we wait here for a satellite,” said Newbauer.
“Sir, this transmitter doesn’t have the range to reach a satellite,” Mullins said. “Not in itself. And I have no idea when one might be passing over, anyway.”
“There’s no way to boost the signal?” Mandvi asked.
“Not with anything we have,” said Mullins. With Newbauer around, he was not going to suggest breaking into the shed because the colonel would probably order him to risk trying the lock. He was probably going to die in the next few days anyway – it was amazing how resigned he’d gotten to that fact – but everything he knew suggested that he’d definitely die if he messed with that lock.
He hoped nobody else would suggest the idea. Mandvi should have blown the shed up with his grenade; it would have wrecked the equipment inside and the Euro traps.
“Can you raise Kandin-dak?”
“No sir,” said Mullins. “Not at this distance.”
“Kandin-dak has bigger radios, right?” Newbauer demanded.
Mullins reluctantly nodded.
“Yes sir. Company-grade setup.” Or perhaps better, since the fort was a permanent installation with its own communications.
“So if we go there we can call for help? Right?”
He’s lost it, Mullins thought. Hubris is two hundred and twenty miles away as the bird flies. The Vasimir Way and definite safety are only a hundred eighty. But he said, “Yes sir.”
“Then let’s get there!” Newbauer decided brightly. “We’ve got all night to march. Westwards to safety! Kandin-dak and safety!”
Chapter Twenty-One
The nomads had been circling Hubris all day, galloping on their zaks just outside of weapons range. Steadily, one satchel-charge-wielding rider at a time, they’d chewed the outer fence into flinders and scrap.
In the afternoon, as the sun beat down on the fortress, the ruined city it sat next to and the rolling desert around, they’d started firing stinger missiles at the north-facing front gates of the fort. One of their advisers must have done something because the weapons seemed much more accurate now; it was obvious that the missiles were being aimed at the gates because more than a dozen had hit, with only a couple of misses.
So far as Croft could tell they hadn’t done a lot of damage – the heavy steel gates had seemed firm to his inspection, although he could tell they’d been hit from the other side – but even relatively light anti-aircraft warheads did add up. And what if they got close enough, during the night, to sneak or hurl a couple of those satchel charges at the base?
Now the sun was starting to set, and as Croft watched from above the gates, the nomads seemed to finally be doing something different.
“They’re up to something,” Sergeant Kalchenko remarked needlessly.
“You noticed,” Sergeant Garza said. He turned to his men; most of Second Squad were lined up along the battlement with him, leaning against cover or sitting behind it.
“Wake up, guys. They’re doing something new.”
“Do we do anything?” Kalchenko asked Croft, who thought for a moment and shook his head. There didn’t seem to be anything the riflemen could do from here.
“Just get the men ready,” he replied, and headed toward the blockhouse.
Along the wall, men tensed up, woke slumped-napping buddies, checked their weapons and put out cigarettes. Something was happening. After a night of sniping and a day of circling, hurling satchel charges and firing the odd missile, their attackers were finally doing something new.
Croft could feel the tension, the anticipation, as he climbed the steep stone stairs to the blockhouse.
There, Dunwell and Atkinson were watching through binoculars.
“Are those ladders they’re bringing out of the city?” Atkinson asked.
Croft raised his own binoculars. Yes – the change in movement patterns had involved nomads coming into ruined Kandin-dak. Now they started to come out with long ladders.
“No shortage of usable wood in there,” noted Dunwell.
“Wouldn’t the wood rot, Lieutenant?” asked Atkinson.
“Not in this climate, SFC,” said the lieutenant, not putting her binoculars down. “Given humidity this low, most of it would last a while. Enough of it, anyway, to give them their ladders.”
“If we hadn’t built this place so close to their source,” grumbled a combat-engineer corporal Croft didn’t know.
“Then they’d gotten their wood elsewhere, Chansky. It would have just taken them a bit longer to scrounge it up from those oases we saw.”
“Yes ma’am. I guess. But it would still have given us a few more days,” Chansky said.
“Lieutenant,” said Ortega from behind. He was standing by the two mortars, a shell in each hand.
“Master Sergeant.”
“They’re definitely clustered inside the city,” Ortega said. “I say we make their lives in there a little more interesting. Set these to burst at thirty feet; the shrapnel will ricochet between the buildings and get a few.”
Croft liked the idea, but it wasn’t like they had a lot of shells for the mortars. A time might come when they would really need them.
Then again, word s
eemed to have spread across the fort that the enemy were doing something; the ladders themselves had probably been spotted from other than the blockhouse now. It would be nice to do something instead of simply waiting – and the men would probably find it good for morale. The inaction had been getting to him enough.
“Walk four shells across the center of the city,” said Croft.
“Yes sir!”
The mortars popped as they spat the shells out, sending them in high arcs toward the center of the ruined city. There, triggered by timers, they exploded about thirty feet from the ground. They couldn’t see the explosions from the blockhouse – the city’s walls were higher than thirty feet, where they stood – but everyone in the fort could hear them, and know that Hubris was fighting back.
It seemed to interrupt, briefly, the spread of ladders, as bands started to dismount. But it didn’t more than interrupt it. As the sky darkened, nomads began to dismount and mass around the fort. Piercing horns started to blow.
* * *
“Almost primeval, isn’t it, Captain?” Second Lieutenant Hecht remarked as the bannermen’s horns – each chief and bannerman had a hornsman of his own – blew piercingly around the horde.
“Sounds like the kind of thing Napoleon would have heard,” von Kallweit agreed, then after a moment added, “Or Rommel.”
The sun was down now, and only one of the planet’s three moons, although it was the large one, in the sky at the moment. Aside from the flaming torches some of the nomads carried, the world was dim, semi-moonlit shapes unless von Kallweit wanted to put his goggles on.
Which, come to think of it, was a good idea. He flipped them to lowlight – thermal wasn’t ideal around Qings anyway, their exoskeletons blocked most of their body heat, and this generation of thermal goggles gave vision as clear as if it were bright daylight – and slipped them over his eyes.
After a moment he turned to look at the fort, absently adjusting his goggles’ magnification up to maximum. He scanned the mile-away battlements as if through binoculars, looking at the men between their crenelations.