by Leo Champion
“This is interesting,” the tech remarked about a minute later. “Jamming reduced. Overall average is down, too, but – Lieutenant-Colonel, this vicinity is free of most jamming, just the background noise.
“You think we can talk to them?” Faden demanded.
“Hold on, data connection establishing itself now.” How can she be so calm, Faden thought as she went on: “Lot of stored stuff at their end to be sent, and stored stuff from our end – two weeks’ worth – for them to receive.”
“The systems are exchanging old email that wasn’t delivered until now?” Faden asked.
He took out his military-issued phone – and yes, a stream of updates were coming in. Reports, the last two weeks that he’d been desperately wondering about, coming in from when they had happened!
He was about to say to hold on and let him read up, but then the cameras flickered and the projector showed a real-time image of the fort, coming up from the south. It was zoomed in at about a forty-five degree angle, very slowly moving under the satellite.
“This is real-time,” the tech said needlessly. There was a moving time- and date-stamp in the lower right of the satellite footage.
“Try to get a voice connection,” Faden asked. “You can link through this network to secure military channels, can’t you?” They were in Intelligence offices, after all.
The tech’s fingers raced across her keyboard, entering codes.
“Hardware ID of that phone, please,” she said. “It should be on the back. Sixteen-digit alphanumeric code.”
Faden picked up the digital telephone on their desk, tensely read the code from it. Doom was in another window of his laptop – the projector display hadn’t changed from the view of Kandin-dak, as the satellite slowly moved over the place.
“Got you, Captain,” the tech said as she hit more keys. “You’re good.”
“General channel, please,” Faden said as he reached for the phone.
“…Bravo Six,” a voice was saying. “Mayday. Come in anyone—
“Bravo Six,” said Faden, “we hear you.”
* * *
The fort’s remaining officers and senior NCOs, with the exception of Lieutenant Henry – someone had to be in charge on the blockhouse in case something happened – were gathered around Croft’s terminal in the radio room. MacGallagher had given Croft a thumbs-up a couple of minutes ago, indicating solid digital signal.
The radio had been connected to a speaker, although Croft still had a handset pressed to one ear. Now there were exhalations of breath and a low whistle as the new voice came through.
“This is Bravo Six Actual,” Croft spoke carefully. “Who is this?”
“This is Bravo Six Actual,” came the other voice.
It took Croft a moment to realize who that had to be.
“Captain Faden, sir?”
“Yes. Gardner?”
“No sir. Croft.”
“Good to hear you, Croft. Is Senior Lieutenant Gardner around?”
He has no idea about the last two weeks, Croft realized. To him it was an eternity ago that Gardner had died and the siege had started.
“Senior Lieutenant Gardner,” he told Faden, “is dead. I’ve uploaded casualty lists as they happened, sir. And a recommendation signed by every man in Second Platoon that Nakamura and Korval get the Medal. Posthumously.”
“Well, shit,” said Faden. “I’m looking at you right now, Croft, from overhead, and…”
“It’s not good, sir,” said Croft to murmurs of agreement.
“I assume you don’t know the overall situation.”
“Just that it’s probably something big,” said Croft, “or the jamming would in itself have warranted a check on us.”
“Correct. To sum it up, right now there is no completely safe part of the Chongdin Empire. And that,” Faden said slowly, “is going to be a problem for you guys.”
“I understand,” said Croft.
“We’re seeing – that’s Rhee and I, and an intelligence officer – those trenches, and it doesn’t look like you have any defenses left short of the walls,” said Faden. “They’re within three hundred and fifty yards. How long do you think you have?”
“Sir, this is a military channel, but how secure is this line right now?”
There was a short pause while the company commander presumably asked someone.
“A hundred percent,” he said. “No reason to think the encryption’s been compromised, and I’m talking to you from the center of Planetary Intelligence. Be blunt, Croft.”
“Sir, we are down to less than a hundred rounds of ammunition per man, and that includes the heavy weapons. We are completely out of grenades and mortar rounds. They could take us now, sir, if they knew that. But I think we stung them hard enough when they tried open assaults, that they’re being wary now. I give them Wednesday when they attack.”
Croft thought, but wasn’t sure, that he heard an exhalation of breath from the captain.
“What do the senior staff think?” Faden asked.
“Ortega thinks they’ll try tomorrow. Nobody gives us past Thursday.” He wondered if he should mention that the men had a morbid pool going on when the final attack would come. Most of the money that had been thrown into that said Wednesday or Thursday; nobody had bet on living past Saturday morning. Nobody had bet on more than four days from now.
“That’s my read on it, too,” said Faden. “A few days at best. Without help.”
There was a possibility of help? After being abandoned for two weeks, it was hard for Croft to get his head around. But they’d been incommunicado for two weeks. Now they were talking to someone. Of course it was reasonable that they would help!
“You think you can get us reinforcements,” said Croft. “Or get us out of here.” At the very least, resupply. He’d have given both testicles for a few pallets of MREs and ammunition.
“I can’t promise you anything at this point,” Faden said. “The Chongdin Empire is being overrun and assets are short everywhere. But I swear to you and Bravo Company that Rhee and I are going to do everything in our power to save your asses.”
“Got it, sir,” said Croft.
“I’m being told the satellite is leaving good-signal range,” Faden said. “Keep the radio room manned going forwards, although it sounds like you already are.”
“Yes sir. We’d been hoping for this.”
“Bravo Six Actual out, then.”
“Three Actual out, sir,” Croft said as the channel went dead.
* * *
Richard Doom had been listening to the conversation with half an ear, because the data uploaded from the fortress was more interesting. His eyes skimmed over the daily reports – construction data from Lieutenant-Colonel Newbauer – for the first few days, and then things to bad, Croft taking charge.
He raised an eyebrow at the part where Master Sergeant Ortega had killed the khan and the Department man who’d been trying to force Kandin-dak’s surrender. Well, that had been an ignominious end for the son of a bitch and his torturing lackey!
We owe the master sergeant a rescue just for having the balls to do that, he’d thought and suppressed a smile.
More reports; Lieutenant James Croft had been good about filing them daily. Losing men, help; running low on ammunition, help; down to one-third rations, please help. For two weeks.
Then—this morning, when the jammer had been blown. Contact with Lieutenant-Colonel Newbauer and his party. An update on where they’d been – so he’d been right with his theory about a loose group blowing the Diamond North jammer array.
A loose group near Kandin-dak now, Doom thought. They’d already blasted the nearby jamming array to enable communication; they might have other uses past that.
That group had a signalman in it, who’d done field intelligence along the way, data that had been uploaded to Kandin-dak when they’d made contact. Bravo Company’s field intelligence specialist, a Sergeant Robinson, had passed it along and flagged some of
it as high-priority.
Doom clicked on those files; what information could a bunch of stragglers in the wastelands have gathered that would merit a high-priority grade? Especially when it was ten days old. Some of the company-level intel people, he thought, upflagged stuff far too readily.
Then he saw the first map and his eyes widened.
It has to be fake, he thought, reading the Eurolang notations on it. The common-denominator language of the European Federation was also the language they taught eaties, and would have written their maps in. By design it wasn’t hard to learn; Doom spoke it fluently.
He changed to the other map, which the RTO on the ground had done the same thing with; taking multiple high-resolution photos of different parts, letting the AI stitch them up. This was a detailed map of everything between the Vasimir Way and a hundred miles west of Kandin-dak; two detailed maps that together showed not just terrain, wells and jammers, but also tribal allegiances! Which tribes had joined the hordes and which had not…
A human-intelligence map of – some of – the wastelands!
He annotated both files critical-priority and forwarded them onto a civilian subsection head who now owed him a favor. And made a decision.
Faden had finished his conversation and was looking expectantly at him.
“Yes,” Doom said, “there might be something I can do to help. Not from this intelligence shop, though. I’m going to take charge of the battalion.”
“Yessir,” the captain replied after a moment.
“I’m going to need its resources to get your men out,” Doom explained.
“But you’ve got a plan if you do get them?” the captain asked.
“Yes,” Doom lied. He’d come up with something; you never had a solid plan at this stage of the game. “A solid one.”
“Yessir.”
“I’ll submit a proposal now. Captain, get the rest of your people on standby. We may need them.” For what, Doom had no idea, but having a squad’s worth of men handy wasn’t going to hurt with whatever he might come up with.
“Yessir.”
Doom got up, dismissing them. The captain and the first sergeant saluted and left. The tech packed up her gear and followed them.
Bravo Company aren’t the only people around Kandin-dak who have communications, occurred to him. The jamming there had stopped a bit over five hours ago; the Euros had more satellites in orbit than the Americans had, so the European advisers would probably have been able to make contact a lot sooner than now, certainly to exchange data. Orders and updated information.
Doom wondered, as he began typing an email, if the Kandin-dak siege had drawn any attention from the Department. They had, after all, had two men – one of them definitely an agent – killed there, and the Department never liked losing agents.
We’re not just playing against time for the fort, he thought. It’s possible we might also have an opponent.
* * *
It was early afternoon in Vazhao, but the European Federation planetary capital of Binwin was on the opposite side of the supercontinent, thousands of miles and eight timezones west of the Chongdin Empire. It was half past five in the morning there, and Colonel Arlene Lavasseur resented having been taken away from her wake-up run to hear Americans whine.
It had been a waste of time explaining, to the same pissed-off American diplomats who’d been making complaints since her operation had started, that she had had nothing to do with the operation.
The diplomat was a political appointee but with him had been a CIA man – and not all American political appointees were morons, since you usually didn’t make friends in Washington without being shrewd in some way or another.
“We have not just multiple confirmed sightings of European personnel among the aliens, but we have captured three!” the diplomat had snarled.
“Criminals and renegades,” his European counterpart, a slick Flemish man, had smoothly responded. “Hand them over to us and they will be punished.”
“And they certainly have no shortage of European-made explosives and missile systems!”
“We did inform you, on May 15th, that an armory on the border had been raided, and a substantial amount of weapons had been taken,” the Fleming had answered. “We apologize that some of them have fallen into misuse.”
There had in fact been an armory raid that night, or at least the report had been made of one. Standard procedure, with six or ten false incidents of that kind reported for every one that was going to be part of a deniability charade.
“Colonel Lavasseur of the Department of Security,” the Federation diplomat had said, “is here to assure you personally that none of her agents have had anything to do with your ongoing unpleasantness.”
So she’d duly lied, knowing that everyone knew she was lying, about the Department having nothing to do with any of it, most personnel are fully accounted for, and this is the action of renegades. Our sympathies for your unfortunate problem.
It was how the Americans reacted when they pulled something the same way. The last President had been terribly sorry for Fleurent, an incident – theft of an entire planet! – that had been a crowning success of his time in office. ‘Sorry’ didn’t undo the damage.
But the formalities, the transparent lies and skin-deep pretense at believing them, were part of the game too. So an hour of her time had been wasted going to the inconveniently-timed meeting, a courtesy to the Americans, and she had things to do.
“Ma’am,” said her aide as they headed down the corridor at Lavasseur’s brisk pace. “Personal message has come up. Flagged as priority/personal.”
Lavasseur picked her own phone from her belt. That was unusual for European Federation officials of her level, across the branches; you didn’t have your own devices because every prole on the street could have his own devices. Power meant having the ability to filter everything through human aides, from emails to purchases.
But the Department, or at least Lavasseur and every ranking officer of it that she’d ever met, valued competence over show. She had the regular number of aides – having them was a status symbol respected even in the Department – but who in their right mind cut themselves off from information?
So she picked her phone up, activated it and opened the message her aide had just flagged. It had been forwarded from Field Command, and the introduction explained that a jamming station had been blown allowing communications with Team Nine to resume. Her brother Andre’s team, which explained why he hadn’t appeared in the Chongdin Empire, had made contact.
The jamming was across the wastelands and the mountains, but it would have been impossible to set up jamming arrays inside Chongdin. So the teams with the hordes there had been in communication via satellite. The advisory teams weren’t supposed to go through the passes, but a few hotheaded agents always went further than they should, and she’d expected impetuous young Andre to be one of them.
She got past the header and to the message, reporting how her brother had been killed.
Killed under a white flag. The other details were irrelevant.
Colonel Arlene Lavasseur froze. This Captain von Kallweit was a reliable man, or he wouldn’t have been selected to babysit Andre on his first assignment. But he had failed, and Andre was dead.
“Ma’am?” her aide asked. She had stopped dead in the corridor.
“Bujold,” she said, looking up from von Kallweit’s dispassionate – icy Germans, no feeling – account of her brother’s murder. The information was two weeks old. It could wait another ten minutes.
“Yes ma’am?”
“I want everything related to Team Nine on my desk by the time I get there. Every report since the operation began.”
“Yes ma’am. That’s your brother’s team, isn’t it?”
“Was. He’s dead, Paul.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Thank you. I want that data lined up by the time I’m in my office.”
“Yes ma’am.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Lavasseur – a stiff glass of cognac mostly empty on her desk – finished reading the reports. Everything that had come from Team Nine since the operation had started. They included her brother’s last reports; his last known-for-sure words since the recording devices he’d have been carrying had been destroyed in his murder.
Captain von Kallweit’s updates over the last two weeks of the siege, notes complaining about the new khan wasting his horde on an irrelevant personal objective.
Normally she would have agreed with the German. Intellectually she knew he was right.
But there was more to this world than the dispassionately intellectual. The men who had killed Andre were known – even their unit was known, they were Bravo Company of the Fourth Battalion, Fourth Brigade, First US Foreign Legion Division.
Notes from prisoner interrogation also said they’d been guarding Legion penal troops as part of a Central Territories Improvement Program, which looked from other files to be a typically quixotic American attempt at buttering up obvious hostiles.
An Air Force medical section and an Army combat engineer platoon had been – were? – with them, as well as a helicopter element based out of the now-overrun forts at the Vasimir Way.
All nice details to have, and there was no such thing in Lavasseur’s world as irrelevant information, but the important data point was that the men who had murdered Andre under a white flag – extenuating details were irrelevant – were bottled up like rats in a trap at Fort Kandin-dak.
Even if she didn’t want to herself, and she very much did… Julius had doted on his youngest brother, protectively kept him out of the field for as long as possible because of that. Julius would be very disappointed if she allowed them to live.
That overcame professional objectivity. She was, after all, French and not German.
“Get me von Kallweit,” she said to Bujold.
Doubtless the American murderers in Kandin-dak had been in communication with their own superiors – a satellite had been rerouted, a note said – and that made it all the sweeter. They would have suspected no help was coming.