by Rick Shelley
"It feels good, Tebba," Lon said, recognizing the sergeant's voice. "Almost as good as running a mile race and winning." He turned. Girana was sitting in the grass a dozen feet away, even farther from his own foxhole.
"If you're just coming back to where you started, what's the hurry about it? That's what I never figured out," Tebba said.
"Is that smoke coming out of your ears? You're starting to turn philosopher again."
Tebba grinned. "It's how I cope with the waiting." His eyes shifted focus to the hole that Lon had so painstakingly dug.
"It's better waiting like this than getting shot at," Lon said quietly, the smile fading from his face.
"Any day," Tebba agreed, nodding.
"Tell me, the men start making bets how deep I would go?'' Lon asked, walking over and sitting next to Girana.
"If they did, nobody let me in on it. I was just worried you would work so hard you'd fill that hole up with sweat."
"Thanks for reminding me. I had just about forgotten about the heat." Lon pulled a canteen off his belt and screwed open the top. "I trust you've reminded the men about not letting themselves get dehydrated?" he asked after he had taken three careful sips of water.
' 'A couple of times. I was about to remind you when you finally quit working."
Lon looked sheepish. "How long were you watching?"
"Oh, not all that long, I expect. Too much to do keeping after this gang of ours for spectator sports. Nobody much likes the waiting, even though they'd like the other even less."
"Life in the army, Tebba."
"All the way back to spears and clubs, I imagine," he said. "Some progress we've made."
"We've made some," Lon said, his voice going serious again. "When we fight, we don't have battles with a mil-106
RICK SHEUEY
lion soldiers involved. There aren't fifty thousand killed in a single day's battle. I guess we're getting somewhere."
Lon's fourth platoon drew a patrol assignment. He handed it to Corporal Wil Nace and his men, the first squad. They were to cover the eastern sector, out to a thousand yards from the perimeter. Captain Orlis gave Nace the briefing personally. Lon sat in on it. Go here. Don't go there. Report any contact, or any sign of enemy military forces, immediately. Be back in three hours. Nace listened, nodded, and said, "Yes, sir," at the appropriate places.
"Nace is the best noncom I've got for this kind of assignment," Lon told the captain after Nace had gone to collect his men and move through the perimeter.
Orlis nodded soberly. "I know. He's like a ghost. Until some brain-boy comes up with a way to make soldiers really invisible, Nace is the closest thing we've got."
Lon actually managed to sleep for most of the time Nace's squad was out. He told his platoon sergeants he was going to take two hours. Partly that was show, to let his men know he wasn't nervous, or worried that the patrol might run into trouble. But partly it was a reaction to the waiting. He felt deeply tired, unable to suppress yawns or keep his eyes from watering. Sunset came while Lon was sleeping, lying on his side, his back against the angled dirt wall of the hole. Three feet below the surface of the savanna, the temperature was almost comfortable.
"Lieutenant, the patrol's comin' back in," Well Jorgen said, speaking over their radio channel. He waited for Lon to speak, then repeated his message to make certain he heard it all.
"I take it they didn't run into any trouble?" Lon asked through a yawn.
"Beer run," Jorgen said. "Wil just gave me the rundown, after he reported to the captain."
"Make sure they eat before they turn in," Lon said. "They've been out three hours. They're due."
UOTJUM
117
Well's chuckle was very contained. "They've done their share of walkin', that's for sure, Lieutenant. I'll see 'em down proper. You want to talk with Nace first?"
"Just long enough to tell him 'well done,' " Lon said, and then he changed channels to do that. "Get your men fed and settle in for a nap, Wil. We'll try to hold the noise down."
The settlers had made no response to the ultimatum, not even an acknowledgment that they had heard the message—and it was as certain as possible that they had. CIC had taken over all communications channels relayed into the settlement by satellite. Anyone using a complink in the settlement would have heard and read the message. And it was being repeated on all channels every thirty minutes—continuously on the main news link. The deadline given was dawn the following morning. The "or else" was left undefined.
After midnight, Delta Company put a patrol out to the edge of the settlement without trouble and reported they had seen no sign of fortifications or soldiers. The next patrol sent in that direction, two hours later, was not so lucky. Lon was sleeping again by then. The sounds of a firefight woke him.
Gmfire, even at a distance, was enough to wake almost everyone. Squad leaders and their assistants took care of the few who seemed ready to sleep through it. Lon checked with his platoon sergeants and squad leaders, then concentrated on listening to the sounds of the fire-fight. It was clear it was just a skirmish. Our patrol must have run into an enemy patrol, Lon guessed. It was an easy hypothesis, confirmed by Captain Orlis within five minutes.
"Just stay alert, Nolan," Orlis said. "Delta is dealing with the contact. Unless it gets out of hand, we stay put."
That did not surprise Lon. Under the prevailing rules of engagement, any other course would
have been remarkable. "Tebba, Well," Lon said, switching channels. "Get the men fed. Tell them to stay alert but, at least for now, we're staying put. Eyes on their own section of the front."
Lon unfolded his mapboard, low in the trench so the slight glow from the screen would not give away his position. He adjusted the chart until he could see the blips of Delta's beleaguered patrol. There were no other blips, which meant that the enemy was not using helmet electronics—or had gear so advanced that the DMC's equipment could not detect it.
"Not likely," Lon muttered to himself.
The skirmish, more than three miles from the nearest point of the DMC perimeter, lasted less than a quarter hour. Disengagement was complete. Delta's patrol was on its way back, with its casualties, five minutes later. A full
109
Ill
RICK SHELLEY
platoon from their company had gone out to meet them and get the injured to treatment as quickly as possible.
Lon waited for information. As quickly as the patrol's report could be processed, Lon expected that any pertinent information would be relayed. It would take longer for any change in plans to be decided on. Dawn was more than two hours away. That had been the deadline given to the settlers to respond. There wouldn 't be much point in doing anything serious before then, Lon thought.
Exactly what the battalion would do if the deadline passed without response from the locals had not been announced, but there seemed little question about the only possible response—other than extending the deadline. The battalion would have to get out of its defensive perimeter and march on the town, try to move in and occupy it.
Wait for somebody to shoot at us. Lon let his face screw up in a momentary grimace. In his trench, with his visor down, there was no chance that anyone would see his expression. Put troops all the way around the settled area, then march into town in skirmish line, ready, just waiting for someone to pull a trigger and start a fight. It was not a happy thought.
He was distracted by an update from Captain Orlis. Delta's patrol had run into a six-man squad. Two enemy soldiers had been killed, three wounded, and left after first aid. One prisoner had been taken and was on his way to battalion headquarters for questioning.
Delta had lost one dead, four wounded, one seriously enough to require speed getting him to a trauma tube.
"Put your men back on half-and-half," Orlis told Lon and Carl. "Unless battalion gets startling information from the prisoner, I expect we'll be moving shortly after dawn." The prisoner would be questioned, humanely, with drugs that
would give him no opportunity to lie or remain silent and that worked too rapidly for a body's implanted medical defenses to offset them. Even if the molecular health maintenance system had been programmed with the exact formula of the truth drugs, it could not work quickly enough to neutralize them. Any-UPTAIN
111
thing the prisoner knew would be divulged quickly. A similar drug was used to establish truth in criminal cases on Diligent.
Lon took out a meat pack and ate after passing the word to his noncoms to put the men back on 50 percent watch. "Better make it forty-five minutes at a time," he added. "We can't count on more than about an hour and a half."
Night had brought quiet to the battalion's general radio channels. They were not officially observing electronic silence. The enemy knew where they were and could get a close estimate of their numbers. There had been no point in secrecy. The more nervous the settlers and their protectors got about the odds, the less likely it was that 2nd Battalion would have to fight. Night had brought its own peace, the men getting what sleep they could, and not doing anything to disturb those who were off watch. Even me firefight had only briefly
increased the traffic.
The shank of the night, just before dawn, when people find it hardest to stay alert, Lon thought after finishing his meal—a breakfast of spaghetti with meat sauce, roll, and chocolate bar. There was almost a smile in his mind as he recalled long nights of cramming for tests at The Springs, when all of the slim patches in the world had not been enough to keep his mind functioning at full speed. We 'd sit there studying, yawning together. Pretty soon no one could stop. He blinked rapidly, fighting back a yawn dial came with the memory.
After the heat of the previous day, Lon was almost chilled sitting in his foxhole with no chance to move around. Dry air heats rapidly and cools rapidly, he thought, recalling a basic lesson in meteorology. He had wondered why an army officer might need to know so much about forecasting the weather at the time, when there were so many other topics whose importance had seemed so obvious. "Hell, even professional meteorologists still get the forecast wrong sometimes," he had joked to a few classmates. / wonder where they 've all got to, he thought, and that took the humor from his thoughts. The top men in his class were to be denied the chance to
112
RICK SHELLEY
be army officers—the goal they had sought for so long— dratted for service in the national police force. Some, like him, had left, aided by the academy's commandant. Most of those had intended to go to Dirigent, as Lon had, but none of them had made the journey with him, and he had not seen any of them since leaving Earth. He did not know if they had all changed their minds, been intercepted trying to leave, or had been turned down by the DMC.
Lon sat huddled up as protection against the greater chill that came over him, a chilling of the spirit as much as the body. He no longer felt homesick for Earth. Even before meeting Sara, he had overcome that. He missed family and friends, and he regretted the infrequent exchange of letters, but Dirigent had become home, in thought as well as in fact. Earth had become a place to escape, for those who could, long before the birth of Lon Nolan. The inescapable problem was that people could not emigrate fast enough to keep the population from continuing to grow.' Doomsayers had been predicting a final "meltdown" of civilization on Earth for generations, always "imminent," always "inescapable." Someday they might even be right.
The call from Captain Orlis was a welcome distraction.
"Here's the poop," Orlis started. "There are about three hundred regular soldiers in the area, most right in the town, a few at another village twenty miles southeast. But count another two hundred militia among the settlers, some of them retired soldiers, the rest given three to six months of military training before being allowed to be part of this intrusion. No heavy equipment, no aircraft. The settlement isn't completely self-sufficient. They've still been getting items they can't grow or replicate on site from East. And the most they can muster is four mortars. The prisoner claims they have 'plenty* of ammunition but couldn't provide specifics. Morale is apparently good, despite complaints about the heat and conditions. It appears that these people were chosen as much for patriotic fervor as anything else."
"Doesn't bode well for a peaceful resolution, does it?"
CAPTAIN
113
"Nobody said it would be easy," Orlis said. "Just after dawn, Colonel Black is going to make one final direct appeal to the people of the town. He has the name of the military commander and the civilian mayor to work with, so that might help. But we are going to proceed on the assumption that it won't. As the colonel makes his broadcast, the battalion will start moving into position. Bravo and Delta Companies will move first. They'll be traveling farthest, to the far side of this town, spreading out to prevent any attempt by the garrison to escape. Alpha and Charlie will stay put until the other companies are set. Then
we advance directly on the town, securing farmhouses along the way, going right into the settlement unless we come under fire first. If that happens, we respond, but still without going beyond the essentials of defending ourselves. What happens at that point depends on circumstances. We're still playing this by ear."
We could lose a few ears, and more, that way, Lon thought, but all he said was the necessary, "Yes, sir." We walk forward like a row of targets until somebody starts knocking us down.
"We'll have our three shuttles in the air ready for immediate response, and Shrikes not far away," Orlis said. DMC attack shuttles mounted rocket launchers and rapid-fire cannon.
They were not as heavily armed or as ma-neuverable as Shrikes, but they might be able to fill in until the Shrikes could arrive.
"Anything from that prisoner on land mines or booby traps?"
"Nothing was said. Assume there are."
Lon shared the news with his platoon sergeants and squad leaders. "Make sure the men know that we're likely to be moving not long after sunup," he told them.
Lon lifted his helmet visor, then looked toward the horizon, watching for the earliest hint of dawn. For a time he concentrated on that, putting everything else out of mind, almost entering a state of meditation. But there was one nagging thought that would not let go completely. We're going to have to fight before the morning is over.
114
RICK SHELLEY
Along the eastern horizon, the black of night started to cycle through dark blues toward dawn. When the rim of Aldrin's sun showed above the mountains, the deadline would have arrived. Colonel Black would make his final appeal to the settlers from Aldrin East, and 2nd Battalion would start to move into place to furnish the "or else."
Lon had his squad leaders check their men. Then he got out of his trench and made the rounds of the section of perimeter his platoons were responsible for, talking to each squad—a few words here and there, encouragement, answering questions, showing himself to be confident and calm.
"Since we've got work, best to get it out of the way before the day gets too hot," he told one squad. "No need to have sweat complicate things." It got a weak laugh— more than it deserved, but enough. For Dav Grott's squad, Lon's jest was different. "I don't know of any pubs there, and the locals aren't likely to ask us in for a pint anyway, so enjoy the water in your canteens. Drink it like it was the best beer on Dirigent."
When the orders finally came for the company to form up for the move toward the disputed settlement, Lon was satisfied that his men were alert and as relaxed as possible. They would perform as the professionals they were supposed to be.
There was more waiting. The two companies that had the greatest distance to travel left the perimeter first. The others were on standby. Many of Lon's men took a few minutes to loosen up muscles that had been inactive through most of the night, preparing themselves. Lon continued to circulate, working the stiffness out of knees and back by walking. The sun rose, showing more of itself in a cloudless sky. The lower arc of the star appeared to be supported on top of the moun
tain range when word finally came for Alpha and Charlie to form up and move out.
Alpha was on the left, Charlie on the right. Lon's platoons were in the center, in two columns.
Carl Hoper's
CAPTAIN
115
men were to Lon's left. Three hundred yards away, Charlie moved south in similar formation, drawing farther away from Alpha as they moved toward their respective stations.
How close will they let us get? Lon wondered, thinking of the soldiers and civilian militia in the settlement. When will the shooting start?
The movements of 2nd Battalion were deliberate, slow. As Alpha and Charlie companies
put more distance between them, they changed formation from platoon columns of two to a skirmish line. Each platoon had three squads in front and one trailing. The interval between soldiers in the front line grew to an average of eight yards. There were few stands of trees to complicate the movement of the companies. Each of those obstructions was investigated by a patrol first. Only when they proclaimed the trees free of ambush did the companies proceed.
Two thousand yards from the first cultivated fields, Alpha and Charlie Companies were given fifteen minutes to rest. The encirclement of the town was nearly complete. There would be considerable gaps in the ring, but that was intentional. The battalion was not attempting to establish a siege. Unless they met with serious resistance, they were going to occupy the town.
"I want everyone down flat," Lon told his noncoms when the order to halt came. * 'No heads sticking up above this grass we're in. Let's not tempt any Deadeye Dick with a rifle and scope."
Nearly everyone stared toward the town, peering through gaps in the wild savanna grasses, looking for any hint of the enemy. It was a nervous time. There was a grain field directly in front of Lon's platoons, across a strip some twenty yards wide that had been plowed to keep native grasses away from the settlement's crops. He guessed that the grain must be nearly ready for the har-117
118
RICK SHELLEY
vest. The stalks were waist-high, with heavy heads turning a golden tan.