by Leo Champion
Now, they would have been updated with the situation in Chongdin, an empire being overwhelmed, and they would know their situation was helpless.
“Madam Colonel? Captain von Kallweit of Team Nine is waiting for you,” said her aide.
Lavasseur picked up her phone.
“Captain,” she said. “I’ve read the reports.”
“I’m sorry about your brother, Madam Colonel,” came the German’s voice. If he was surprised – captains in the field did not usually get calls from colonels in planetary capitals – it didn’t show.
“So am I,” she said coldly. “Captain, young khan Axhar is right. You are to continue as you have been doing.”
“Madam Colonel, we could attack now if you wanted,” von Kallweit said. “It would be expensive, but I am one hundred percent certain a fourth attack would succeed. And allow the horde to move on to our original objectives.”
Lavasseur thought for a moment. What von Kallweit was saying was surgical, practical, methodical, German. It was the decision she should make.
But no. She was French, and therefore allowed to act on emotions once in a while.
“No, Captain. I want the scum who killed my brother to suffer a few more days. Follow the original plan; draw it out and let them cry for help that isn’t going to come,” she said in a low hiss. “And there are to be no prisoners and no survivors from that fort, Captain. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Update me if anything out of the norm changes. I will be paying close attention to this situation, Captain. And when you take the place – I repeat, no survivors.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Next on the list,” said Tribolo to Governor Evanston, “is a personnel recommendation. It seems one of the Legion battalions lost its commander early this morning. You’d never guess,” the chief of staff said dryly, “who’s been proposed for acting commander.”
“Who?” Evanston asked.
“Richard Doom,” said Tribolo. “The pain-in-the-ass from Legion Intelligence.”
Yes, she knew Doom. From his pestering her for assets, her and everyone else he could reach. And from intelligence reports she’d never paid much attention to.
“It came up as a recommendation through the G-1 office of Second Brigade, Fourth Division,” Tribolo went on. All Legion units on-planet went through Second Brigade’s headquarters for administrative purposes, even if they weren’t under the brigade’s direct command otherwise.
“I thought the brigade’s headquarters people had been deployed themselves, to reinforce Administrative Zone security,” Evanston remarked.
“Yes,” said Tribolo, “and Doom probably knew they’d be heavily preoccupied. They’re recommending Doom for the job, but it’s obvious they didn’t write the recommendation. Doom did, and he probably called in a big favor to get it.”
“Lieutenant-Colonel Doom wants to be a battalion commander,” Evanston mused. Of a battalion that was one-quarter written off in the wastelands, about to be wiped out. That would happen on Doom’s watch and it would superficially make the commander look bad, in a way that zero-defect bureaucrats would strongly consider.
Why approve him for permanent command when we could give the battalion to someone without those kind of casualties listed on his watch?
Doom would know that as well as she, Evanston, did. That he’d have no chance of keeping the battalion, he would be blamed for the losses, and having an acting command not ratified by the Commandant would seriously hurt his chances of getting another one anytime soon.
“Is there a reason given why an Intelligence lieutenant-colonel wants a battalion?” Evanston asked.
“I understand it’s basically a requirement for promotion to colonel,” said Tribolo.
That made sense. And Evanston could understand the man’s desire for resources, which nobody had seen fit to assign to him. A line unit would at least stop him from bothering her for a while, and maybe he’d accomplish something useful while he had it.
“It gets him out of our hair,” the Governor said, “and it won’t last more than a few weeks. Sure.”
* * *
“Sir,” one of the men in the trenches as Major Ramos came along, his head down. “How long are we going to have to continue to hold this fucking bridge?”
Fire clattered over them. The nomads were everywhere on the west side of the river, sniping with their jezzails while another group prepared for a rush. It was a four-lane suspension bridge with a considerable superstructure, and with the amount of lead going through the air around it, Ramos sincerely hoped nothing demolitions-relevant had been cut or broken.
A man raised his rifle over the trench’s fire-step and fired a long burst. Not far away, machine-guns were firing. This close to Vazhao, at least there was no problem with ammo supply.
“For as long as we have to, soldier!” Ramos said. “Got that?”
“Yessir!”
More shooting.
“Hold on, men!” he heard Sergeant-Major Cedeno’s voice. “They’re coming again!”
“Sir,” said Ramos’ personal RTO. “District Command.”
Ramos took the handset.
“Gambler Six Actual, you are cleared to blow bridge. Repeat, you are affirmatively cleared to blow bridge. Code Golf Niner Echo Four.”
Finally!
Ramos could have radioed, but he was already near the widened trench that served as a front-line HQ. A few seconds got him over to there, where Sergeant-Major Cedeno and about a dozen others were, ducking and shooting from the parapet.
They had a couple of .30 caliber machine guns set up behind sandbags, firing down the hill at the nomads starting to cross the bridge. Between the gunfire Ramos heard a boop as someone nearby fired a grenade launcher.
“Brace yourselves and hold!” Cedeno shouted. “Godfrey held and so will we!”
The battalion engineering officer, a filthy senior lieutenant crouching next to a plunger box, looked expectantly at Ramos, who could finally give him a thumbs-up.
“About time!” the lieutenant shouted over the gunfire. “Sergeant-Major! Do we have any engaged elements on the bridge?”
“Negative! Repeat, negative!”
There had been hand-to-hand fighting on the bridge earlier, the nomads clambering across piles of their own corpses to get at the defenders.
“Cleared,” said the engineering officer, keying the box and pressing the plunger handle.
For a couple of seconds – long enough for Ramos to wonder if the demolition had been sabotaged by an enterprising and sneaky nomad, or something important had been cut by the fire lashing across its superstructure – there was nothing.
Then with a whoomph the bridge’s four pylons disintegrated; the nomads apparently hadn’t thought to cut the wires on the west side that they had full control of. The entire four-lane, two-hundred-yard suspension bridge disappeared in smoke, and a few men cheered.
“Pull back!” Ramos ordered. “Spread the word to pull back past the ridge.”
Most of the men were on the west-sloping side of a hill that overlooked the bridge and the west bank of the river. Had overlooked, Ramos saw as the dust cleared. The combat engineers had done a solid job – nothing was left of the bridge but ruined pylons on either side and turbulent water.
There was nothing left to defend here. Time to bug out before they were flanked.
* * *
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ramos breathed a few minutes later at his terminal in the battalion command post. He’d just read the email authorization that had come with District Command’s verbal permission to blow the bridge.
It was a reply to a reply, and the timestamps told the full story: Vazhao District Command had finally approved Hall’s request to blow the bridge, forwarding it at 6:02 yesterday evening to the Department of Transportation to confirm permission.
That permission had come – ‘Approved per memo DQDOT2215-441’ – about fifteen minutes ago; it was arou
nd four in the afternoon.
Some bureaucrat had sat on the email for twenty-two hours, almost a full day, during which nineteen men including Lieutenant-Colonel Hall had been killed, before bothering to perfunctorily reply.
Ramos sighed. At least they could pull out now.
“You are directed to withdraw to Administrative Zone,” the order said, “to resupply and await further orders.”
The header of the next important-flagged email, the most recent, was ‘Replacement CO’.
Well, that didn’t take long, Ramos thought without any particular disappointment. It notified him that “The Governor’s Office has selected an interim commanding officer for Fourth Battalion. Meet him at HQ in Administrative Zone for change of command.”
A part of him was relieved that he wouldn’t have to preside over the destruction of Bravo Company. It had been a relief to learn a few hours ago – Faden had apparently gotten the attention of someone in Intelligence – that some of those guys were still holding out. But the relief hadn’t lasted long.
What was left of Bravo Company was four hundred miles west of the Vasimir Pass, surrounded by nomads with no way out. With the Chongdin Empire in its current state there wasn’t likely to be any help coming. Some of the guys’ friends in Bravo might still be alive, but they were doomed.
Maybe the incoming CO had a plan in mind. He wondered if the man would be anyone he knew.
* * *
Doom raised an eyebrow as, alone in his office, he read the report from Binwin. An ultra-classified asset within the Department had informed them that a high-ranking person – Colonel Lavasseur or someone immediately below her – had shown a personal interest in the case of an agent who’d been killed in the wastelands two weeks earlier.
Then he saw the name of that agent and slowly exhaled: shit.
He hadn’t known there’d been a baby brother.
The high-ranking person would be Arlene Lavasseur herself. The interest would be very personal.
Not an inherently bad thing, however. The fort was a long way from any real hard assets the Department was likely to have on hand, at least for the next two or three days before it was going to fall anyway.
Her attention would come in the form of information assets; he could expect satellites to be rerouted so that the European Federation would have constant communications with the area, and probably camera observation of it too.
The senior adviser on the ground would have Colonel Lavasseur looking over his shoulder at least, taking personal charge of the situation more likely. Emotion would likely affect her judgment, although the extent of that was unknown.
It was trouble, but complications simply shifted the network of possibilities Doom’s mind had been playing with.
Colonel Lavasseur’s personal involvement would make things more… interesting. And it certainly dictated his first order.
From the phone that had been delivered to him ten minutes ago, tied in to the battalion’s direct network, he wrote a message directing that as new Gambler Six Actual, the first thing he was going to enforce – a pretext that would make sense to everyone, including unauthorized listeners – strict communications protocols. Company nets too. No private chatter and no extraneous information, was what that really meant.
It would go out as a priority text to every battalion-, company- and platoon-level radio set in the battalion, not to mention every officer and senior NCO’s portable devices.
There was a knock at the door.
“Sir, HQ Company has arrived in the Administrative Zone,” said Broder. “And the Governor’s representative will be landing shortly.”
Doom put down the battalion-commander phone, opened a drawer of his desk and took out a particular burner phone, colored a garish mauve. He turned it on and unlocked it.
“Hold on,” he said to his aide. “I’ve just got to send an email.”
* * *
The change of command had been a perfunctory handshake, since Doom was only the provisionally-appointed acting commander; there’d be a ceremony if Legion G-1 on Chauncy made the acting appointment formal. As Major Juan Ramos doubted Personnel would even consider.
He hadn’t known much about the new commander, although he’d heard the name in the context that he was the senior Legion G-2 person on Dinqing. Why a career intelligence officer would want a line battalion, let alone one with one of its companies about to be annihilated and that loss attached to his record, was a mystery to Ramos.
On the truck ride through suburban Vazhao from the bridge, he’d had time to do a bit of research on his new commander. Career intelligence officer and apparently good at it, his name coming up in reference to several major American wins. Details classified, of course.
But Ramos had also found references to his life before the Legion, and courtroom photos confirmed it was the same guy; Richard Doom had enlisted under his own name, if ‘Doom’ was the name he’d actually been born with. It was hard for Ramos not to be suspicious of the con man’s motivations.
The Governor’s representative had handed over the appointment letter, shaken Doom’s hand in front of the tiny gathering – Ramos, Faden, Rhee and battalion sergeant-major Luis Cedeno – and promptly departed. Ramos stood waiting to see whether they were about to be dismissed, too; new commander or not, he needed some sleep.
“Before I let you guys eat and rest,” Doom said to the four men, “we are to assume going forwards from this moment that the security of the battalion radio communications network has been compromised.”
The logical thing there would just be to change frequency combinations and encryption codes – three companies were right in Vazhao, the third was a flight away at East Vasimir, but…
Yeah, it would be impossible for a thoroughly-secure update to be given to Bravo Company. Still, you could shut the battalion’s other elements out from being observed, and still talk insecure with Bravo.
“I’ll take care of the switch before I crash,” Ramos promised the new CO. “Unless the new codes are already on their way?”
“No new codes,” Doom said. “You are to proceed as absolutely normal, although now you see why I gave the order that ‘normal’ be strict radio protocols. Anyone listening will put tight lips down to the new CO being a new-broom on comms discipline, no more.”
“Why not just shut them out completely, sir?” Ramos asked. Why would you want an insecure channel when you could have a secure one?
“Because we can’t shut out Bravo Company and still talk to them, Major Ramos,” Doom explained. “If everyone else in the battalion suddenly goes off the air, Lavasseur will realize we know the network’s compromised.”
“So this person – you know him? – knows we’re onto them,” said Ramos. “I don’t see the problem with that. Maybe he’ll stop listening.”
Doom looked at Ramos, then glanced around Rhee, Faden and Cedeno.
“Gentlemen,” Doom said, “the information that One-Four-Four’s communications have been compromised, including at the email and portable-device level, is to remain confidential between the people in this room. The CO, the XO, the SNCO and two others know this fact, and you are the only ones who will know until I indicate otherwise. Only. People. In. The. Battalion. To. Know. This, no exceptions. Clear?”
It was very much an order, and Ramirez didn’t have to like his orders – or understand his orders, this was undoubtedly part of some trick the man was trying to play on the Euros but it didn’t make sense to the XO – to obey them.
“Yes sir,” he said with the other three.
“Anything you guys want to raise with me before you go?” Doom asked in a softer tone.
“Yessir,” said Sergeant-Major Cedeno. He was a big man, scarred and balding, in his forties. “What are we doing to save Bravo Company’s asses, sir?”
“I’m working on that,” said Doom. “Faden, Rhee, stay please. You other two get some food and rest.”
“Yessir,” said Ramos.
Walking out of
what had been Hall’s office – someone had cleaned his personal stuff out already, but Doom hadn’t moved more than a laptop computer in – Ramos shook his head.
“I assume there’s a reason for it,” Cedeno said to him in the corridor.
Ramos gestured with his head in the direction of battalion staff living quarters, where the two men’s suites were on the same floor.
“He’s crazy,” Ramos said.
“Crazy like a fox, maybe, sir,” said the sergeant-major. “Sneaky like one, anyway. I don’t get it myself, but let’s assume there’s a reason for it.”
“For now,” said Ramos warily.
* * *
Faden had taken over from Diodorus as duty officer, Rhee from S-4’s senior NCO as duty NCO. In practice that meant that with the entire headquarters company crashed out, the two were sitting in the front of the battalion office, really just a greeting room – there were chairs for visitors to wait – with 1/4/4’s battle standard on display in one corner, with nothing to do but wait.
The captain sat with his feet on the desk, thinking about stranded Bravo Company and pizza toppings. Aside from Faden, Doom, Broder, Rhee and the other Bravo and Delta returnees, about twenty-five men in all, every man of the battalion in Vazhao was off-duty.
Senior Lieutenant Hadfield had borrowed a small visitor cubicle just off the greeting room, was sitting there at his laptop reading Delta Company updates and the story of their walk to East Vasimir.
“Hadfield,” said Doom, coming out.
Faden saw the lieutenant turn. “Yessir?”
“Into my office for a moment.”
“Yessir.”
“Wonder what that’s about,” Faden observed quietly to Rhee. Something the two of them weren’t supposed to hear, obviously. What?
The first sergeant shrugged. “Were we going to order pizza or not?”
It had turned out that, despite the Chongdin Empire in flames and nomad hordes savaging the outskirts of Vazhao itself, you could still get thirty-minute pizza delivery in the Administrative Zone.