Honor of the Legion

by Leo Champion

  Millions of nomads were savaging the Chongdin Empire, aided by European advisers – three of which had been captured so far; they were being interrogated but would eventually be exchanged – and European weapons. It was a problem for troops and firepower, not analytics.

  Not as though American Dinqing had turned out to be the best assignment anyway. There was the potential for it to be interesting, but he didn’t have assets of his own – beyond the still-small personal network he’d developed as a matter of routine – and that limited him to making recommendations and reports that were generally ignored.

  Updates finished, he checked his email. The headers said a new one had been bounced between at least three people before ending up in his box. A Legion captain, Faden of Battalion 1/4/4, wanted to speak with an intelligence officer regarding his company, which he’d apparently lost communications with.

  Richard Doom could tell from the forwarding headers what had happened; it had been kicked between departments before the last guy, an aide in Dinqing’s Office of Joint Intelligence, had decided that as a Legion officer wanting something to do with intelligence, this guy belonged in the work-basket of the senior Legion Intelligence officer on-planet.

  1/4/4, thought Richard Doom. The battalion that had lost its commander earlier this morning. And yes, some of those men had been deployed out in the wastelands, hadn’t they? One of the Territorial Improvement Programs. He’d talk with the captain, at least.

  The finger he’d had hovering over ‘Delete’ suddenly switched to press ‘Forward’.

  “Call this guy in,” Doom told his aide. “We’ll see what we can do for him.”

  * * *

  “Faden,” he answered the number-blocked call on his phone. Was it news?

  “Captain,” came a male voice at the other end, “I’m the aide to Lieutenant-Colonel Doom, Legion Intelligence. He’s received your enquiry and wants to see you at your earliest convenience.”

  “Tell him I’ll be on the way immediately,” said Faden. “Where can I find him?” Because they were in the Administrative Zone, not the Imperial Zone or Military Zone. Vazhao’s other two government districts were considerable distances from this one, across urban sprawl that was crowded at the best of times these weren’t.

  “Planetary Intelligence offices, but they won’t let you in without an escort. I’ll meet you there when you arrive.”

  “We’re on our way right now,” said Faden, ending the call.

  “A Lieutenant-Colonel Doom of Intelligence wants to see us,” he said to Rhee.

  The first sergeant raised a heavy eyebrow.

  “The Doom of Legion Intelligence?” he asked as they picked up their pace from a stroll to a fast walk. The offices were in the direction they’d been slowly heading anyway.

  “You’ve heard of him?” Faden asked.

  “You haven’t, sir? Richard ‘Tricky Dicky’ Doom? The man who sold Interstate 95?”

  “Around when?”

  “Fifteen or so years ago. He actually got away with it, with millions.”

  “If he got away with it,” Faden asked, “why did he join the Legion?”

  “Because of Hawaii. He tried to sell administration of the State of Hawaii to a consortium of investors.”

  “He tried to sell a state?”

  “Well, the state was going through default proceedings at the time, and Washington does that kind of privatized-administration deal in the colonies sometimes – selling a company the right to charge whatever taxes they think the economy will bear, in return for providing specified government services to certain standards. It wasn’t impossible to think that if Washington would do that with a colony, they might with a state.”

  “But he got busted for that?”

  “It was all over the news. He might have gotten away with it, but someone recognized him from the I-95 scam. He took Legion instead of time, and… here he is.”

  “He’s the only person to have given me the time of day so far,” said Faden.

  * * *

  “He’s on the way, sir,” Broder told Doom, who didn’t look up from the request he was drafting. He’d been considering it ever since he’d heard of Lieutenant-Colonel Hall’s death.

  Getting appointed acting battalion commander would be easy enough; making the recommendation stick would require confirmation from the Commandant’s Office on Chauncy. And having a recommendation for command not stick would look bad for the prospect of future recommendations. He wasn’t going to try to make a move he wasn’t sure would be backed.

  Feeling out this captain would help make the decision, and helping him out would make Doom look favorable, as someone who cared. As to some extent he did; he’d been out of communication with teams of status uncertain, he could understand how this Faden was feeling right now.

  He could draft the appointment request later, if he chose to make one. Now, he started to quickly rush through some homework: what was the Central Territories Improvement Program, now?

  * * *

  Doom’s office, to Faden, was surprisingly small and plain. He’d expected a legend to have surrounded himself with trophies of his various civilian cons and service achievements, at least those that weren’t classified. Either everything the lieutenant-colonel had done was classified – not impossible, come to think of it – or he just liked bare walls. There wasn’t even a photograph on his desk.

  “Thank you for your time, sir,” he said, saluting.

  The intelligence officer, a man as bland and forgettable-looking as his office, dressed in the same Legion-standard blue shirt and white trousers as Faden and Rhee were wearing, saluted back.

  “Sit down, Captain, Master Sergeant. Lieutenant Broder, thank you.”

  The aide closed the door behind him.

  “I’ve been looking up the Central Territories Improvement Program,” said the lieutenant-colonel. He turned to the computer on his desk, did something with the mouse for a moment. “Run by a Lieutenant-Colonel Newbauer of the Army Corps of Engineers, as part of a broader Territorial Improvement Program across the eastern part of the territories.

  “CTIP was to build a railroad between the Vasimir Way, taking two paths through waystations known as Diamond North and Diamond South, to the old Chongdin city of Kandin-dak. Based out of Kandin-dak, assets given to Newbauer for the purpose included a Class Two labor battalion of about five hundred Black Gangers and thirty MP overseers. There were a few helicopters and their crews, the choppers themselves to be based out of the Vasimir Way where mechanical facilities were available.

  “There was an Air Force medical element, there was a platoon of combat engineers – and there was Bravo Company, Fourth Battalion,” the colonel finished.

  “Yessir,” said Faden. None of that had been at all new to him. “I’m wondering if we can find any trace of them now. If you might be able to know something I don’t.”

  “I might,” said the lieutenant-colonel evenly. “I’ve called up records. Captain, you’re aware that most of your men would have been spread out around the far side of Diamond North and Diamond South, between there and Kandin-dak. A few of them were getting started east of Diamond North; two teams according to the last report.”

  “Yessir,” said Faden, who’d done all the research he could before going to Intelligence in the first place.

  “It’s unfriendly ground, but your men are a company of mostly experienced soldiers, armed with modern weapons, who’ve been trained for unfriendly ground. Your Delta Company survived; Captain Faden, I expect that there are remnants and stragglers of Bravo Company making their way back. There was some warning before they started their jamming and EMP’d every civilian-spec satellite in Dinqing orbit.”

  Which ought to be considered an act of war went through Faden’s mind, not for the first time. But Americans had “accidentally” done the same kind of thing themselves in the past.

  “So Captain Faden, bluntly put I don’t think your company has been completely obliterated in the firs
t place. There are going to be a few survivors in the field, and some of them will make it home. They could show up at the Vasimir Way any day now.”

  “It’s a comforting thought, sir,” said Faden, “but it’s not information. Is there any way we can get through the jamming and see?”

  “There’s evidence,” Doom said, “that at least one party is out there.”

  Faden forced himself to restrain his eagerness: “Sir?”

  “Yes.” Doom turned back from the computer to look at him and Rhee. “The jamming strength is randomly variable, you realize, between stations. It makes it hard to triangulate specific ones, confuses any radio-guided missiles we might send out at them. However, we had every reason to think there had been a jamming array around a location a few miles north of the Diamond North waypoint,” the colonel said.

  “Sir, I’m very much listening.”

  “On October 31st, that station went off the air. Signals intelligence is certain of this, that at least one of their jammers went offline then. Mechanical problems are one possibility, but unlikely; a Euro jamming station is the aerials linked to a bunch of transmitters and a cold-cell power unit. Not much to go wrong. Native interference is unlikely. There is no reason to think the Euros would have intentionally shut it down.

  “Signals disagrees, but my read on the situation was that someone blew the transmitter up. Ergo, someone was out there. The most likely ‘someone’ is a group of your men, Captain.”

  “A lot of them would have retreated to Kandin-dak,” said Faden. “They had a stockade there. Is there any chance, sir, you could get some satellite photographs of the place?”

  “I put out a general cross-database query for images of those coordinates,” Doom said, “just before you came in. The results have to be cleared by a human, but they don’t take long.”

  Someone out there, thought Faden. And yes, Doom was right, the most likely survivors were his men. Bravo Company.

  Somebody had been alive ten days ago, at least. Were they still? Where were they?

  “Here,” said Doom. “Just got cleared. Metadata says this came from a general surveillance satellite, 0733 two days ago.”

  The colonel turned his laptop sideways and gestured Faden forwards so he could see.

  Faden wasn’t sure, as he leaned over the colonel’s plain desk, how you would tell if the fort had been sacked. It was a stone fort; what was there to burn? But surely there’d be evidence of ruin to see.

  The colonel moved the focus, zoomed in several times. Blocky graphics sharpened into rough ones, and then the square fort of Kandin-dak was visible in the center of the laptop’s screen.

  Surrounding it at what the scale said was about a mile’s range at this point, were hundreds of small black and white shapes. Camps, Faden recognized them as; this wasn’t the first satellite photo he’d reviewed. Camps and tents.

  Moving in from them were twenty-five or thirty zigzagging patterns that Faden, in the context of a fort and given their distance from it, recognized instantly and unambiguously: those were siege trenches! You dug forwards in zig-zags so the fort’s defenders couldn’t shoot down your trench.

  His eyes flicked down to the date on the image. Monday November 6th.

  Morning of the day before yesterday.

  He and Doom turned to look at each other. Surprise was in the lieutenant-colonel’s eyes, too.

  “They’re holding out,” Faden breathed. “Kandin-dak was under siege as of two days ago. They’re still holding out.”

  “It’s a fortified position on a well, Captain,” said Doom. “I didn’t consider it that unlikely.”

  “They’re holding out!” Faden repeated, putting a brake on his relief. Yes, it was reasonable to think that elements of the company would still be there, it was what he’d desperately been hoping for—

  “So now we know someone’s alive,” he asked, “how do we get them out?”

  Doom was silent for a bit.

  “That,” he said, “might be the hard part.”

  * * *

  Richard Doom looked across the table at the company commander, understanding his relief. He’d been legitimately surprised himself to find evidence of an ongoing siege – he’d put the odds at about thirty percent – and to him it was a game-changer. Every opportunity began as a potential one, of course – but most potentials never turned into real opportunity.

  This one just had.

  He had to attend to that assignment request. And other things.

  “Getting them out might be hard,” he told the captain, “but before we do anything we need to confirm they’re still alive. I’m asking for a satellite to be rerouted so we can get a more recent look.”

  In front of him on the screen was a track of satellite paths. Filter unsuitable ones out, soonest reasonable overhead of Kandin-dak’s coordinates for one with video capability – ah, that Type M51 multipurpose would cover the approximate location two hours from now if the orbit were shifted slightly.

  He switched to his email and wrote a terse request to someone he knew, mentioning a favor owed.

  “And we should be able to do that in approximately two hours,” he said, hitting Enter.

  “Lieutenant-colonels can reroute satellites?” the captain asked.

  “Unofficial channels, Captain,” said Doom. “Yes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “MacGallagher,” Sergeant Robinson said from his terminal in Hubris’ signals room. Since re-establishing radio contact – if only with Hill, Mullins and their group; it was still a welcome relief to hear from anyone – the comm shack had been manned with at least three people at all times.

  “Yeah?”

  “The software has flagged a signal change. A satellite’s been rerouted, by the ping differences. We might not have to wait five days to get radio contact.”

  “How long now?” the chief signalman asked.

  “It would be now if there wasn’t still the background noise from the other jammers in the wastelands. But it looks like we should be in contact – it should be in clear line of sight – soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “If these pings are any indication, shouldn’t be more than an hour from now.”

  MacGallagher looked up sharply.

  “Jankowski,” he said to the most junior man in the room. “Let the officers know.”

  “You got it, sarge,” Jankowski said, getting up.

  MacGallagher thought for a moment. “But don’t tell the men,” he told the lance-corporal. Announcing that they might be about to make contact with the outside world – was a call for the officers to make. He could see not wanting to give anyone false hope.

  “Don’t tell the men, just the LT,” said Jankowski. “Got it.”

  * * *

  Gartlan was asleep against the parapet, a shirt over his face to shield it from the fierce overhead sun, dreaming of back home in Texas where there was plenty of water and enough food. There was food in Houston, steak and ribs and chicken and coleslaw and…

  The delicious images in his mind seemed to falter, then broke up as his eyes opened. Kiesche was shaking him.

  “Sean, dude! Dude!”

  “I was asleep,” Gartlan complained. There was a smile on Kiesche’s face and nobody was shooting, so they weren’t under attack. “Fuck you.”

  “No – you gotta hear this. Rumor says we’re making radio contact with someone!”

  Gartlan wanted to slap his friend.

  “You just heard? We made contact with them hours ago. You were there when we heard, you fucking idiot.”

  “Not Hill, Doc and those guys. We got through to the outside world!”

  Gartlan sat bolt upright, pushing away the shirt away from his face.

  “With Vazhao?” he asked. “What did they say?”

  “Haven’t said anything yet, but they’re about to.”

  Gartlan sighed, but began to get to his feet. He checked his rifle – acutely conscious of the three full magazines on his belt
; the other men all had a similar amount, down to barely a hundred rounds per man and no more after that – and looked around the battlement.

  Digging. The digging hadn’t stopped, the zig-zag lines towards the walls. They were digging slowly and ineffectively, nomad warriors unfamiliar with this kind of work, but steadily boring in on the fort. Already home to snipers.

  Pantaleo had given it three days. Gartlan himself thought it was closer to two; they would die Thursday. The lieutenant had said ‘easily a week’ when Andrews had asked him bluntly for an estimate on how long before they got close enough to successfully launch an attack. But that had been officer bullshit. Nobody expected to live past Friday.

  It had been an easier fact to get his head around than he’d expected it to be, that he was going to die here. Enough others had died in the assaults and the sniping, or the massacre at the start with the grenade launcher, that… well, it had become familiar.

  And maybe not so horrifying. He was sunburned and starving, and since the nomads had started digging, he’d become to the fact that it wasn’t ‘if’ but ‘when’. They’d been abandoned, they were going to die here, that was all there was to it.

  But now – now they might be about to rejoin the universe. With communications, help might come.

  For the first time in two weeks, Private Sean Gartlan felt hope.

  * * *

  “Coming up on location,” the satellite technician reported to Faden, Doom, Rhee and Doom’s aide Broder. A dark-ponytailed woman in a neat civilian suit, she’d brought her own laptop into the small conference room next to Doom’s office. It was set up across the table from Doom’s, which was connected to a projector so all four men could see without crowding.