Colonel (UC)

by Rick Shelley

  Lon took his helmet off for the first time since before boarding his shuttle on Golden Eagle more than sixteen hours earlier. His scalp itched; he scratched it, vigorously, with both hands. He rubbed at his face and eyes. I've got to find a little time for sleep myself, he thought. He was tired, physically and mentally, which seemed to aggravate the minor aches that being on the move all day had brought. Sleep before my mind gets too fogged up to function. Stim patches would help, but there was a limit, and sometimes there were side effects.

  I'll wait until I know that we've got Berlino and the others back to their people, Lon decided, nodding to himself. As soon as the attack on the aerospaceport started, two companies from 1st Battalion would escort the Elysians who had traveled to Dirigent into the capital to hand them over to their own military for escort home. By that time we might even have a decision at the port. He did not doubt that the New Spartans there would be defeated, forced to surrender. The main question in his mind was how expensive it would be. How many of his own people would be killed? Combat economics was how the Corps referred to the subject, and it came complete with budgets and balance sheets—a macabre species of bookkeeping that disturbed many field commanders when they could put names and faces to the numbers on the spreadsheets.

  Lon yawned, almost out of control. His eyes started to water. Maybe I'd better not wait, he told himself. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I need sleep.

  "Teff," Lon said, putting on his helmet to talk to his second-in-command. He waited for Ives to acknowledge, then said, "I'm going to try to get a nap in before you hit the port. I'll have everything fed through to you until then. Give me a call when Parker is ready to move."

  A nap. Sleep. Get it while you can. That was one of the first tricks most soldiers learned about combat contracts. Lon lay back in his slit trench, using the webbing of his helmet as a pillow. Fifty minutes, even forty, and I can get through the night, he thought as he shifted around to get as comfortable as possible. The temperature was acceptable, and it wasn't raining. There wasn't much more an infantryman could ask for in the field. Lon closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing—long, slow breaths—while he tried to shut out everything else.

  This time it even worked. He drifted into sleep—light and easily disturbed—within two minutes and didn't come all the way out of it until forty minutes later when Tefford Ives called to tell him that 4th Battalion was staged to begin its assault on the aerospaceport and the New Spartans around it. "Two minutes," Ives concluded.

  Lon had come completely awake at the mention of his name on the radio. "Keep me posted, Teff. As soon as you get things going there, I'll start our Elysians home. We'll get them in before the New Spartans can even think about getting in the way."

  Next, Lon called Jaz Taiters, who was leading the two-company element of 1st Battalion that would escort the New Spartans on the last part of their journey home.

  "We're ready to move whenever you give the word, Colonel," Taiters said. "We got everyone up forty-five minutes ago. Our guests seem anxious to get this over with."

  "Just make sure your point men keep their eyes open for mines or other booby traps, and snipers," Lon said. "Other than that, you should have fairly clear sailing. Get our VIPs home safe, then check in with me. I don't know yet if I'm going to bring you back here or not. We may want to use you to help seal the enemy in near the port." The first distant sounds of cannon fire rumbled in then. The tanks and howitzers had opened up on the New Spartan positions. In less than a minute the infantry would start moving forward as well, if the schedule held.

  "Five minutes, Jaz," Lon said. "I'll get back to you." Lon spent those minutes listening to reports from Ives, Parker Watson, and CIC. Watchers on Peregrine had the best view of the barrage launched against the New Spartan positions. A number of buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged, including the port's main terminal. It was suspected that the New Spartans had been using those buildings. Better to waste buildings than our people, Lon thought, shaking his head. Even if they are our hosts' buildings.

  "We're on the move," Parker Watson reported, right on schedule. "Only light enemy small-arms fire so far, except in one location on my left. The tanks are going to help there." There was a pause, during which Lon heard what sounded like several rounds of tank fire hitting almost as one. "There, that should do it," Watson said. "I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

  Lon watched the timeline on his helmet display, then called Captain Taiters. "Get moving, Jaz. The fight is joined at the port. Good luck."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The sun can be your enemy. It lets unfriendly eyes see you, target you. Night is your friend. Embrace it as a vampire might. Revel in the darkness; use it. No matter how good the night-vision system your opponent uses, it won't give him as good vision as daylight. That gives you an edge, a slight extra margin of safety in almost any operation on almost any world. The memory came from Lon's days in recruit training just after he had arrived on Dirigent, before he had qualified as an officer cadet and been assigned to A-2-7. One of the drill instructors had shouted that message at his troops, virtually every day. Even now, Lon could almost hear the man's voice, even though that DI had died twenty years before and a hundred light years away.

  I never seem to think about the ones who retired or resigned, just the ones who died in battle, Lon thought. He tilted his helmet's visor up to look around, sticking his head out beyond the cover of the camouflage tarp. The darkness was not quite complete. It was never total… aboveground. Here, heavy tree cover and a low cloud deck had combined to minimize unaided visibility, but the clouds were just moving in. To the east, just above the horizon, the sky was partially clear. A few stars and Elysium's moon—which was almost as large as Earth's—gave texture to the darkness, a backdrop against which trees moved in the breeze. Silhouettes danced against the blackness.

  It's going to rain before long, Lon told himself. He fancied he could feel the approach of precipitation on the breeze, confirming the forecast he had received from CIC earlier. A front was moving in from the northwest, with rain showers and occasional thunderstorms. CIC thought that the heaviest storms would most likely stay farther north, away from the main zone of operations. Only 2nd Battalion might experience any of those and, according to CIC, even that was not especially likely.

  Lon pulled his visor back into place. Vision improved to about 80 percent what it would have been in broad daylight, the faintly greenish tint of objects too familiar to even be noticed; his brain trained to integrate the view from infrared sensors and available-light multipliers in the duplexed night-vision system. The fighting around University City's main port had been going on for a bit more than an hour. The New Spartans were being forced into a smaller perimeter, compressed and pressed. They're running out of places to hide, Lon thought, trying to reassure himself. They'll have to surrender before much longer. None of their other forces are close enough to come to their aid… not in time.

  Chancellor Berlino and his compatriots were only minutes from being reunited with their people. Then the two companies from 1st Battalion would be available. I'll have to decide if I'm going to use them to reinforce 4th Battalion pretty soon. Turn them west to force the issue there or… Lon had several options. He could send those two companies east to help block the fragment of the enemy force that had gone south to the river before turning, try to keep them from rejoining the main New Spartan force. He could bring them back to rejoin their battalion. Or he could send them northeast, set up another line between the main New Spartan force and the Elysian capital.

  The fewer pieces we split into, the better off we are, Lon reminded himself. Make sure we have tactical numerical superiority over any enemy force we engage. There's no need to fragment ourselves. So I bring those companies to one or another of the segments we've got

  out now. Back under the cover of his tarp, Lon pulled out his mapboard and opened it.

  I need to start moving 7th east, east
-northeast, he thought, adjusting the view until it included all known enemy positions as well as those of the Dirigenter troops. As soon as we know we've got this one batch of the enemy taken care of. Work at enveloping their main force with 15th on the right and us on the left, keep them from turning off in either direction. Maybe reinforce 2nd Battalion to put down the enemy rocket artillery running around north of here. There were two segments of 15th Regiment operating apart from each other. One shorthanded battalion was keeping pressure on the New Spartans moving east along the Styx. The rest of the regiment was following the main enemy force east, drifting gradually more to the north.

  He looked up from the mapboard, trying to picture the movements in his head. If we can get rid of those rocket launchers, the rest should be just a matter of running the enemy down and forcing them to fight or surrender. He squeezed his eyes shut. The planning always seemed so simple—crisp, clean, uncomplicated. But no enemy could be counted on to fall in with those plans, no matter how elegant they seemed.

  How far can they run? How far will they run? Lon shook his head, then opened his eyes to stare at the mapboard. He still had no hard count on the number of New Spartans on Elysium, but CIC's best estimate was that Lon had them slightly outnumbered, maybe six-to-five, overall. Which will improve if we neutralize the one batch around the port, he reminded himself.

  He didn't think that the firefight around the port would continue very much longer. Soon, very soon, the New Spartans would have to realize that they were hemmed in, outnumbered too heavily—locally—to win that engagement. Then…

  "Twenty enemy rockets vectoring toward our troops near the port!" There were no preliminaries to the report from CIC. The speaker followed by saying that the warning also had been broadcast directly to the Dirigenter units around the port and that coordinates for counterbattery fire had been fed to the rocket launchers and howitzers of 7th and 15th Regiments.

  Seventh Regiment's 4th Battalion had less than a minute's warning before the New Spartan missiles started exploding among them. The Elysian troops behind the port had virtually no warning at all. There were no direct communications channels between Peregrine and the EDF units. More than half the rockets targeted that section of the encirclement.

  "Lon, they're making a breakout!" Tefford Ives shouted over the noise of a pair of secondary explosions—somewhere near him. "Right through whatever's left of the Elysians on the far side, moving a little south of east. There's not one chance in hell that we can head them off on the ground."

  "Easy, Teff," Lon said. "Get me a report on our casualties as quickly as you can. Leave enough people to take care of the wounded, then pursue the New Spartans. I'll move the two companies from 1st Battalion to intercept." While he talked, Lon scrolled the view on his mapboard and increased the magnification to give him a better view of the area between Captain Taiters and the fleeing New Spartans. It looked as if it might be a tight race. Lon switched radio channels and gave Jaz Taiters his new orders, then switched back to talk with Ives again.

  "It's going to take an hour to get those two companies moved, and I'm not sure that'll be fast enough. I'll have the rest of the regiment moving in fifteen minutes, sliding in on the side. If the enemy looks as if they're going to try to move deeper into University City, you'll have to try to get around on their south, force them to keep going east, or even northeast."

  "Should we just start angling that way now? Keep them from even trying?" Ives asked.

  "No." Lon shook his head, even though there was no way Ives could see the gesture. "You do that and they're liable to double back to the west and get out of range of interception. We'll have to wait until I get the troops here close enough to make it impossible for those New Spartans to move in that direction. Get on with Parker and get his battalion moving as quickly as you can. Coordinate with the Elysian units you've been working with. I've got to get things started here."

  Lon spent five minutes giving orders to company and battalion commanders, and setting up missions for his artillery—as much to slow down the escaping New Spartans as to cause casualties. There might be as much as a battalion and a half of New Spartans trying to get out of the pocket, twelve hundred men. Half of Lon's 1st Battalion and all of 3rd were ready to move in less than ten minutes. The advance scouts had already started along the routes that the six companies would follow. Lon's headquarters detachment formed and moved onto the line of march.

  "They sure don't seem to know how to give up," Phip Steesen said on his private link to Lon.

  "Maybe they've decided that they don't have to defeat us completely to fulfill their contract," Lon said. "Maybe the commander of the New Spartans has convinced himself that all he has to do is demonstrate to the Elysians that they're vulnerable even with outside help—unless it's the Confederation's help. Make the Elysians too frightened to say no, which must have been their original mission in any case."

  "You mean, even if we beat the New Spartans it might not be enough?" Phip asked.

  "That might be what the New Spartans think. I don't think that's the case myself. I think our employers are too set on maintaining their independence, no matter the price." I hope, Lon thought. Otherwise this whole exercise is a waste.

  The lights went out in University City. There had been no blackout during the weeks that the Elysians had waited for the Dirigenters to appear out of Q-space. The locals had tried to keep everything as normal as possible. Now, though, the lights went out—not all at once, as if all power had been cut, but gradually, over ten or fifteen minutes, as the message circulated from one neighborhood to the next. Lon saw the lights go out a floor at a time, top to bottom, on one of the three tallest buildings in the Elysian capital. He wasn't certain what the structure was, but thought it was the main building on the university campus. The urban glow faded quickly.

  The point squads on the two columns set a fast pace, and Lon did nothing to slow them. Use the night. It doesn't last forever. He felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck, the anticipation of action, the almost subconscious thought that he himself might get close to the front in the next firefight. Anticipation, almost a perverse eagerness for battle—something he had not felt since he was an officer cadet out to prove himself and win his lieutenant's pips. When he realized that, his pace faltered for a second. He almost stumbled.

  That's crazy, he told himself. This is just another job that has to be done, not the spring dance back at The Springs. The Springs was the unofficial name of the military academy of the North American Union, back on Earth, where he had almost become an officer. He would have, too, and perhaps never left the planet of his birth, except for a political decision to commandeer the top graduates of his class for duty in the federal police, suppressing the dissident poor in their urban circuses—ghettos—putting down riots with maximum violence and hunting out those who might foment future difficulties. Might. As an idealistic young cadet, Lon had considered that career revolting—as had others, including the commandant of The Springs, who had helped Lon and a few others escape the onerous duty.

  Maybe some of those others are in the New Spartan force, Lon thought, and the notion was startling. None of the other cadets who had used the commandant's disciplinary scam to escape duty in the NAU's federal police had come to Dirigent with him, though at the time Lon had understood that Dirigent was to be the destination for all of them.

  Not too likely, I guess, not after all these years, he told himself. He took a deep breath and looked around. It's been too long. Even if some of them did go to New Sparta, the odds are against any of them still being on active duty, more so against even one of them being here, across the lines from me. That would be too much of a coincidence.

  His momentary distraction was ended by a call from CIC. The latest estimate was that two-thirds of the New Spartan rocket launchers had been destroyed by counter-battery fire following the barrage that had let the enemy that had been hemmed in around the port break out. Two-thirds of the launchers that had
taken part in that attack, CIC qualified. More hopeful than certain, the duty officer in CIC added, "They can't have many more rockets available for the launchers they still have, not with all they've expended since we've been here."

  "Don't let that hope blind you to what they might have," Lon cautioned. "They haven't started waving white flags yet." He didn't hesitate long enough to get a reply. "Sorry, that was uncalled for. I know you won't quit watching."

  Lon kept his men on the march for an hour and a half—covering nearly five miles—before he permitted a five-minute rest. He sat with his back against a tree trunk and pulled out his mapboard. He had been receiving frequent updates from his subordinate commanders as well as from CIC. Now he needed to look at the chart to help him fix all of the changes in his head.

  The main enemy force had stopped moving and appeared to be setting up and reinforcing defensive positions—even if they only intended to remain in them for a few hours, long enough to give their men a chance for a little sleep. The smaller force to the southeast was still moving, trying to angle north, hoping to rendezvous with the main force… but unable to because of the battalion from 15th Regiment between them. The force that had broken out of the trap around the port was also moving east, but leaving skirmishers and booby traps to slow pursuit. That was where the only real fighting had been going on. To the north, Lon's 2nd Battalion had come across the remains of four rocket launchers and several dozen dead soldiers. There was evidence that some of the enemy had survived and were continuing to move away, north and east, but not obviously on a route designed to rendezvous with the main New Spartan force.

  Phip Steesen sat next to Lon. Phip laid his rifle across his legs after checking to make certain that the safety was on, then lifted the faceplate of his visor. "They get off into the wilds, we might chase them for months and never be able to force the issue," he said when Lon also raised his faceplate. "Time for them to get reinforcements in or force the issue up top. Whatever." Phip shook his head.