Captain

by Rick Shelley

  "Steady," he said on his platoon channels. "Wait."

  East got to the high ground on the south side of the draw. Once there, they forced West's troops to pull back. "They're good, better than I expected," Lon mumbled after checking to make certain that he would not be broadcasting his comment. That came automatically now, the product of experience—and mistakes. We'd be hard-86

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  pressed to do it better. That was perhaps the ultimate compliment.

  "We're going to take on the enemy point," Captain Orlis told Lon after several minutes more.

  "Stay put, but give them something to think about. On my command."

  The pause was just a few seconds. "Fire."

  The concentrated rifle fire of an entire battalion against the nearest squads of the enemy was devastating. Leaves and small trees were shredded. Larger trunks were pocked. In a few small areas the ground itself looked as if it had been plowed. The Eastman soldiers tried to respond, but they took catastrophic casualties. The few who could, retreated quickly.

  After only two minutes, Captain Orlis passed the order to cease firing.

  "Skirmish lines fifty yards apart," Orlis ordered. "No-lan, you've got the left; Hoper, the right.

  One platoon in front, the other behind."

  Lon's third platoon would be in front. He would follow with fourth platoon—behind, where he belonged, so he would be able to see everything in front, able to respond to anything.

  "Remember, mere's a lot more of them out there," Lon told his men as the first skirmish line started to advance slowly. The entire battalion was moving forward, moving up the draw toward the earlier positions of the enemy point. "They may be the best we've faced, so no mistakes."

  Second Battalion faced only light and sporadic fire as it advanced. The second skirmish line moved forward at the proper interval. Lon was in the middle of fourth platoon, two squads to either side of him. Occasionally he looked to make certain that his men were maintaining their position relative to the platoons that flanked them. The heaviest action remained farther ahead and well to the right, where the enemy main force had engaged the Wester troops.

  The first skirmish line traveled a hundred yards before they encountered heavier enemy fire.

  The rest of East's point company opened up with rifle fire and grenades.

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  And, for the first time, Lon Nolan saw what mortars could do in combat. The DMC did not, as a rule, employ mortars, trading off weight for whatever advantage they might give. But Aldrin East had them, and the mortar bombs started falling, sending shrapnel flying, carving holes in the ranks of the mercenaries, and leaving small craters where they exploded.

  "At the double!" Captain Orlis ordered. "Through it."

  Lon did not have to echo the order. Orlis had used the company's all-hands channel. All Lon had to do was start trotting forward, looking to make sure that all of his men were doing the same. The mortars bombs were exploding along a narrow line. Apparently the enemy was not bothering to adjust their range, just throwing up a wall of shrapnel the mercenaries would have to penetrate to get to them.

  The first skirmish line pushed through the curtain, taking more casualties, the men sprinting through the most dangerous area. The second line was still thirty yards from the heaviest concentration. Lon pushed himself. His breathing was labored, but he did not let that slow him. A glance to either side showed him that his men, most of them, were keeping pace.

  Everyone wanted to be through as quickly as possible.

  This is insane! Lon thought as a patch of ground thirty yards in front of him erupted. He felt several sharp impacts off of his helmet, a heavier bump against his shoulder—but not the pain of shrapnel penetrating. A clump of dirt, or perhaps a small stone, had hit him.

  Lon ran harder, straining himself to his limit. The bombs fell ten or fifteen seconds apart. If he could get through the target area before the next one hit...

  The effort brought stabbing pains to his chest, flashes of white light across his vision. For a dizzying second Lon thought he would pass out. He heard a distant thumping—the sound of a mortar round being launched from its tube—somehow isolated from all the other noises of the battle. There was a long whistling after the shell reached the apex of its trajectory and started down again.

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  The explosion. Lon half-dove, half-fell forward, unable to go another step, almost oblivious to the impact as he hit the ground, unaware that many of his men had also gone to ground, if not always so precipitously. He gasped for breath, his chest heaving painfully. He hovered on the brink of unconsciousness for thirty seconds or more. As soon as the world stopped spinning and he could take in a breath without pain, Lon forced himself up to his hands and knees and looked to either side and then ahead. The first skirmish line was still moving forward, climbing the draw and keeping the enemy under fire.

  "Up," Lon said. "Let's get the interval right again." Talking hurt. Getting to his feet brought another instant of vertigo. But that had to be ignored, conquered.

  "You okay, Nolan?" Captain Orlis asked, also struggling for breath. He was to Lon's right, between his lieutenants, and he had also been moving quickly through the area the enemy had targeted with their mortars.

  "Yes, sir. We're moving," Lon said, staggering forward as he spoke. "We'll be okay."

  "Let's get to those mortars and put them out of action."

  Lon did not bother to answer. He was moving forward with his men, concentrating on what lay ahead.

  Second Battalion was stopped by an order from Colonel Flowers a hundred yards farther east. The enemy was moving again, pulling the rest of their troops over the rise on the south side of the draw, retreating.

  "We're going to disengage," Orlis said after passing the order along. "See to our casualties and regroup."

  "Get down and find what cover you can," Lon told his men. He moved his platoons closer together. "Weil, send your first two squads back to check on our casualties. I want all of the wounded treated as quickly as possible."

  Lon stayed down for no more than a minute himself, still trying to get his breathing under control. The altitude and exertion had nearly been too much. But he had to see to his men, see who had been wounded. And killed.

  LOR felt gritty for thinking, We were lucky. It could have been a lot worse. As if two dead men in third platoon and seven wounded were of little consequence. It did no good to remind himself that they were in the business of war and that casualties were part of the job.

  Compensating for the sense of guilt—irrational though it might be—he hovered around while medical orderlies tended the wounded and saw that those who needed time in a trauma tube got there quickly. The only good news was that no one in fourth platoon had been killed or seriously injured. One man had sprained a knee during the mad rush through the zone that had been blanketed by the enemy's mortars. Two hours of rest and a series of med patches over the knee would have him walking freely again.

  The sounds of fighting moved farther east. The invaders were retreating in good order, and the troops of Aldrin West were following, harassing the enemy, making certain they kept retreating.

  "Maybe this will end it, Lieutenant."

  Lon turned and saw Sergeant Girana standing a little behind him. Tebba had his faceplate up and had not spoken over the radio. Lon lifted his own visor.

  "I hope so, Tebba, but don't lay any wagers yet. This was just a skirmish."

  "I know, but it helps to pretend that there's a chance," Tebba said, taking another step forward. "They've got good fighters here, on both sides. Disciplined."

  Lon nodded. "That's what worries me. If this turns really ugly, we'll need all the help we can get."

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  "Long as East can't move a hell of a lot of troops across the mountains all at once. They don't seem to have the logistics, from what I've seen of the fi
les on this place."

  Lon chuckled. "Need a little light reading to help you sleep along the way?"

  Tebba grinned and looked a little away. "I like to know what there is to know. Long as we've got the fleet overhead, I can't see the enemy moving overwhelming numbers this way."

  * 'Figure that the enemy must have a contingency plan set up for this, Tebba. They sent a lot of troops across the border on foot, investing quite a few weeks at it. And there's the hint of trouble in the south, the area the dispute is over. I don't think it's going to be simple."

  "If it was, West wouldn't have laid down good money to bring us in, and maybe a second regiment to boot. We don't often luck out and get paid for 'simple.' Any word what's next for us? Do we join the chase, or sit here and enjoy the mountain air?"

  "I don't know." Lon shook his head slowly. "You've got to give the brass a little time to think it out. When you're not looking down the wrong end of a rifle barrel you get to thinking you've got all the time in the galaxy."

  Second Battalion was the only one ordered to pull back. The other three battalions of 7th Regiment either held their positions or moved farther east, to guard against the possibility that the invaders would try to flank the pursuing Westers. A pair of Shrike fighters were on call, out of range of the enemy but close enough to join the fight in thirty seconds if needed.

  "We'd still like to see this resolved without a fullblown war," Matt Orlis told his lieutenants when he briefed them. "The colonel is trying to get West's leaders to ease off on the pursuit as well. The fewer new grudges we add to the old, the more chance there is of getting the two sides to negotiate."

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  It was near nightfall before the withdrawing invaders managed to completely disengage.

  West's field commander gave up the pursuit. His men needed rest, and he did not want to risk getting too far away from reinforcement by the mercenaries. They had stopped moving east five hours earlier, over his protests.

  Lon heard of the end of fighting when Captain Orlis told him to prepare for a battalion officers' call. "We'll be hiking over to Colonel Black's command post in ten minutes. If you haven't eaten in the last couple of hours, you'd better grab a quick bite while you can. I think we're going to be moving before long."

  "Yes, sir," Lon said. He repressed the questions that came to mind. He would find out soon enough. In the meantime he took the captain's advice and opened a meal pouch. Eat and sleep whenever you can. The next time might be a long way off.

  "We're in for a change of scenery," Black said without preamble once he saw that all of his officers had arrived. They sat or squatted in a semicircle around him. "The consensus is mat the action here was intended more to keep the government of West too busy to take action in the south than as a serious attempt to invade the core regions of the western colony. To a degree, that strategy has succeeded. West has committed its top units to guarding against this invasion. And we're here." His pause was more for effect than to weigh his next sentences.

  "It has kept West from interfering with the settlers East sent into the disputed region in the

  tropics. West may initially have missed the fact that East also sent troops into the area to protect those settlers. The government of West has decided that it is time to, ah, rectify the situation, to reaffirm its claim to that territory by dispatching troops and... political representatives." Hiram Black's slight smile was hidden from most of his officers in the dusk.

  "I am not privy to the details of the negotiations that went on between Colonel Flowers and his staff and the government of Aldrin West. Suffice it to say that those 92 RICK SHELLEY

  talks have occupied a considerable portion of the colonel's time recently. The government wanted to send a large part of its own forces south, leaving us to worry about this invading army. Colonel Flowers feared that putting West's troops in might make the possibility of rapprochement between the two colonies more difficult. The upshot is that 2nd Battalion will be going south, while West's troops remain here to deal with the more immediate threat to their sovereignty. We will be accompanied by a detachment of civil servants who have instructions to assert West's dominion over the settlers in the disputed region. It will be our responsibility to keep those government representatives safe, and to deal with any military action taken by any troops from Aldrin East we find in the territory.

  "We leave in ninety minutes," Black said after lowering his helmet visor to check the time.

  "We'll only travel half the distance tonight, grounding to give the men a decent night's sleep.

  The government people will join us in the morning, and we'll finish the trip then."

  News that they were leaving the mountains was welcome to most of the men. It was enough for now that they were going to an area lower and warmer. They could worry about the next step later, after a night's sleep far from any chance of combat.

  "Just as glad of it myself," Well Jorgen told Lon after the men had been informed. "Change of pace, change of scenery, if nothing else. Maybe it won't be raining wherever we end up."

  It had started raining on the western side of the mountains again, a slow, cold drizzle—just enough to make a foot soldier feel miserable.

  "From what I understand, it's the wrong time of year for rain where we're likely to end up,"

  Lon said. "And maybe hotter than New Bali. Remember, this area the people here are fighting over wasn't good enough for any of them until they started to think they had too many people to fit in the desirable areas."

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  Jorgen shook his head, smiling. "I was trying not to remember that, Lieutenant. 'Sufficient to the day are the evils thereof,' my daddy always told me."

  Lon grunted. "What did he retire as—battalion lead sergeant?"

  "Would've been regimental lead sergeant, but the man who had that job was too stubborn to retire when he should have," Jorgen said, with more good nature man his father would have.

  Lon had met the senior Jorgen once, at a Remembrance Day function. In his eighties, Weil's father still looked as if he could keep pace with any twenty-year-old recruit. And he had still talked with the assurance of a command lead sergeant.

  The shuttles came in one at a time, loaded, and took off. There was no landing zone large enough for all of the battalion's transport craft to come in at once. The seriously injured and the dead had been taken out earlier. The wounded were aboard Long Snake, and many had already completed their hours in the trauma tubes that mended their injuries. Only two wounded men, who would require regeneration and rehab time, would be left aboard ship in the morning. The rest of the wounded would rejoin their companies before the second leg of the move.

  Lon's platoons went out nearer the beginning of the series than the end. The ride was short and entirely atmospheric. They landed four hundred miles southwest of where they had started, at some distance from any large towns. But tents had been erected.

  "No hot food or running water," Lon told his men once they had left the shuttle. "No soft mattresses either. But eat a ration pack or two and get what sleep you can,"

  "Sir, what time's reveille?" one of the newer men asked.

  "Whenever it sounds," Lon replied. "Worry about it when you hear it. Just eat, clean up as best you can, and get all the sleep possible." They would post guards, but no one would have more than a single hour on that duty.

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  The platoon sergeants would pass along that bad news before they dismissed their men.

  Lon took his own advice. Before the last of the battalion's shuttles landed to discharge their passengers, he was already in his bedroll, waiting for sleep. It was not a long wait.

  There were no dreams to interrupt Lon's sleep. The first night out of trouble was usually peaceful for him. That more trouble might lie not too far in the future was not enough to disturb the pattern. Lon slept until he heard Tebba Girana call his name, then touch his shoulder.

  "Sorry,
sir. The captain said I should wake you."

  Lon yawned and stretched, his eyes open just enough to see that there was daylight beyond the tent flap over Girana's shoulders and head, almost a halo around him. "What time is it?"

  "Just past oh-seven-hundred," Girana said.

  "The men?"

  "Still sleeping. Captain said to give them till oh-seven-thirty."

  Lon finished his routine of stretching and sat up. ' 'The captain say any more than to wake me?"

  "Officers' call at oh-eight-hundred. He said he thought you'd like some time first."

  Lon nodded. Nearly eight solid hours of sleep. I don't often manage that much in barracks.

  That was something usually reserved for the trip home from a contract, when there was little else to do but eat and sleep, and no tensions of an upcoming campaign to spoil it.

  "How long have you been up?" Lon asked.

  "Jim Ziegler rousted me and Weil an hour ago," Tebba said. Ziegler was the company lead sergeant. "Told me to get my lazy carcass out of the rack and start earning my pay."

  Lon managed a smile. He was too newly awake to make it a laugh. "Anybody got any coffee brewed?"

  "Coffee and more, Lieutenant. Somebody come in and CAPTAIN

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  stuck up a mess tent during the night. Hot breakfast waiting."

  That was enough to bring Lon to his feet.

  A hot breakfast, even if the food was straight out of replicators, left Lon feeling almost cheerful. There had been plenty of hot coffee to go with the food. On top of a good night's sleep, Lon was almost able to put out of mind the fact that his men had already seen combat and might see more before they left Aldrin for home. He had gone to the mess tent before the enlisted men were wakened. Several other officers were there, taking their time with breakfast, savoring the unusual treat in the field of a meal that did not come out of ration packs. There were also a few noncoms, and a couple of privates who had been relieved from guard duty. Lon sat with Carl Hoper and the cadet he was training, Esau O'Fallon.