by Rick Shelley
The map projection had moved into a view of an area about a thousand miles square by this point. On the large wall monitor, the general topography was apparent, but the view still did not show human structures.
“As is customary, the initial colonists picked the site for their settlement based on climate and available resources,” Flowers continued. “Although the survey they had available covered only three months of the local year, they lucked out. They have temperate to subtropical conditions, with the worst of the summer heat alleviated by prevailing southwesterly winds off of a stretch of ocean unbroken by major landmasses for fifty-five hundred miles. The autumn and winter, of more interest to us, are mild, with the wet season due to begin about six weeks or two months after our arrival. That means,” Flowers said, looking up from his notes, “that if we conclude the first part of our contract on schedule, putting down the rebellion, we shouldn’t have to worry overly about foul weather affecting operations. Rain is of less concern when we are in the training stage.” He returned to his notes. Lead Sergeant Osier narrowed the limits on the map projection again. According to the scale at the bottom, the view was now down to a section about two hundred miles by three hundred.
“There are two main centers of habitation, corresponding to the two waves of settlement. The second group, the one that is rebelling, chose an area about one hundred and forty miles from the first, farther upstream, along what the Norbankers call First River.” He used a pointer to indicate the river on a small complink monitor built into his lectern. An arrow showed it on the rest of the monitors. The scale of the map closed in more. “The respective towns are here and here,” Flowers said, again using the pointer, “Norbank City and Fremont.” Around the towns, Lon and the other officers could see the patterns of farming, but not yet buildings.
“The country between the two areas is hilly and heavily forested, with a number of major tributaries entering First River. Both settlements are located primarily on the north bank of First River, although both have spread to the opposite bank. There is a single bridge at each town, of questionable strength, I might add, built by amateurs of locally available materials.”
Flowers had a rapt audience. None of the officers bothered to make notes. They would have recordings and transcripts available on their complinks. What they were concerned with now was listening, concentrating fully on that, without the distraction of trying to copy anything. Flowers went on to show the two primary settlements, describe the condition of the colony, and then talked about some of the major flora and fauna that they might have to contend with. He talked steadily for more than three hours, pausing only for an occasional sip of water.
“The latest information we have, now twenty-three days old,” he said then, “is that the rebels appeared to be staging for an attack on the capital. Our plan, subject to revision once we see for ourselves what the conditions are, is to land at the capital and move out to engage the rebels, preferably at some distance from Norbank City. One last note for now. Norbank was the name of one of the founding families. The current head of the planetary government is named Norbank, as is the contracting official.” Flowers glanced at his watch then.
“At 1300 hours, you will brief your men on the contract. At 1500 hours, the battalion will fall out, ready for movement. Duffel bags and field packs should be stacked, ready for transport prior to that time. Buses and trucks will be waiting to take us to the port. The ship is scheduled to head outsystem at 1815. Questions?”
No one spoke up. The questions could come later, aboard ship.
4
Combat. The word became fixed in Lon’s mind. He could not shake it loose. Captain Orlis kept Lon with him through lunch, as promised. They ate in the Officers’ Club, away from Lon’s squad and any temptation he might have to leak information about the contract. The two lieutenants were at the table as well, and the talk among the three officers was all about the contract. From time to time, Orlis or Taiters made an effort to include Nolan in the conversation, but Lon kept his contributions short and noncommittal. He was more concerned with the word—a snare drum beating itself to death inside his head. Combat.
That is what it’s all about, Lon told himself. I came here to be a soldier. But that did not quiet his nerves.
“Nolan.”
Lon blinked several times and looked to his left. Captain Orlis was staring at him. “Yes, sir?”
“At least lose the look of panic,” Orlis said. “You look as if you’re waiting for the hangman. I know you’re nervous. But you’ve got to keep it inside. You’re going to be an officer, if you make the grade. And part of being an officer is maintaining the front. You let men under your command see that you’re afraid, and you’ll have good reason to be. They’ll pick up your fear and lose half their effectiveness. We can’t have that.”
“I know that, sir.” The lieutenants were also staring at Lon. “Maybe it’s just having too much time to think. I’m okay when I’m with the squad. Really, I am. I don’t feel like the odd duck in the pond then, if you know what I mean.”
The captain’s serious look gave way to a grin. “I’m not sure about the way you put that, but, yes, I understand. Still, the point remains. You should do fine, Nolan. You’ve got the talent. You’ve had the training—more than most apprentice officers we see. But if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that you wear your thoughts on your face. The men pick up on things like that. They watch us, take their cues from us. If we project confidence, they’ll be confident, and twice as strong. If we project weakness … ” He shook his head. “That can be a slow wound. Maybe I should have sent you ‘round to the base theater group, gotten you some acting experience.”
“I tried that, sir, at The Springs. The director said I had a wooden face, couldn’t get the proper emotions to show, couldn’t get the words to sound convincing. I worked on it, hard, and was all set to try again when … well, you know what happened.”
“Keep working on it,” Orlis said. “Besides, this shouldn’t be too rough. We’ll have the numbers, the equipment, and the training. We’re professionals up against amateurs. If the odds were the other way around, I still wouldn’t be too worried.”
“I’ll try to remember that, sir,” Lon said, so earnestly that all three of the officers at the table with him started laughing. That helped. Lon managed a smile of his own.
I’ll be okay after the first time, Lon told himself. Baptism of fire. That’s the hurdle. After that, I’ll know.
Captain Orlis kept Nolan with him until the order to fall in was given. Then Lon had to run to take his place with the rest of his squad. They were all at attention. No one could ask questions. He could not answer. Even after the “At ease” order was given, there was no talking in ranks. The platoons were moved into a semicircle, the men close together.
“Sit down and relax. Here’s what you’ve been waiting for,” Captain Orlis said. The briefing he gave the men lasted just ten minutes and covered only the highlights: the world, the basics of the contract, the anticipated opposition. There would be time on the ship for detailed information, after the platoon sergeants and squad leaders had been filled in. It would be the noncoms who drilled their men on the necessary data.
“Get your gear together and have your duffel bags and field packs stacked in front of the barracks by 1430 hours,” Orlis said then. “We’ll form up for movement just before 1500 hours. Supper will be aboard ship.”
He dismissed the company. Lead Sergeant Ziegler got up and started shouting orders. “Platoon sergeants and squad leaders, see to your men. Make sure nobody forgets anything. Make sure everything’s out and ready to go on time. Move it, men, at the double. We’re on contract now!”
“You didn’t come back to let us know what was going on,” Phip said to Lon. “You did find out this morning, didn’t you?”
“The captain didn’t give me a chance,” Lon said. “He told me that he doesn’t like for anyone to steal his thunder.”
There was a bu
s for each platoon. That crowded the line platoons and gave extra room to the smaller headquarters and service detachments. The vehicles moved out in convoy, with Colonel Flowers in the first bus.
“Here’s where we put on a parade for the civilians,” Janno said, leaning across the aisle to poke Lon in the arm.
“What do you mean?” Lon asked.
“We’ve got a good landing strip right here on base, enough to handle the shuttles to take us up to the ship, but that’s not where we’ll go. We’ll make the trip all the way across town, hold up traffic along the way, so the civilians will know that we’re going out on contract,” Janno said.
“Let ‘em know that we’re going to have money when we come back,” Phip added. He was sitting next to Lon, by the window. “It’s always like this.”
“What about coming home?” Lon asked.
Janno’s voice lost the joking edge it had held before. “That depends on how we do. We fulfill the contract, win, and we come back the same way. We botch the job and they sneak us home via the base strip.”
“The casualties come in that way, regardless,” Dean said. “The wounded, those who still need treatment after the trip, are closer to the base hospital then. The dead … ” He shrugged then and turned away. There was no need to finish.
The dead and wounded, Lon thought. There would not be many wounded still needing treatment after two weeks. Medical trauma tubes, with their molecular repair systems, could treat all but the most serious wounds or injuries in hours. Traumatic amputation and the most severe spinal cord injuries were those most likely to keep men invalided for any length of time. It could take several months to re-grow an arm or leg and rehabilitate the injured man.
“I don’t like the idea of sneaking in the back way,” Lon said, forcing a smile, determined not to get caught in morose thoughts. “We’ll just have to make sure that we do the job right. That’s what they pay us for, isn’t it?”
A few minutes later, while the convoy was in town, he had another thought. “If they really wanted to do this parade business right,” he said, looking around at the others in his squad, “they’d take us past the Purple Harridan and the Dragon Lady, places like that, give us a real incentive. That’d be better than taking us past the government offices and department stores, wouldn’t it?”
That earned a laugh from several people, and not just the three who usually socialized with him. “Write it up and drop it in the suggestion box when we get home,” Phip suggested. “Hell, maybe we should all write that one up.”
Lon had seen this route before, when he arrived on Dirigent. He had looked out the window of the taxi then, trying to see everything at once. Dirigent was the first colony world that he had ever been on. Everything had been new, exciting, and seeing it for the first time had taken his mind off of his memories, the way things had ended at The Springs. He had spent a lot of the voyage out, and the stopovers along the way, brooding on that.
I’ve still got a lot of “firsts” ahead of me, Lon told himself with utter determination. Look forward to them. Most of them are going to be good.
When he caught himself humming “The Ballad of Harko Bain,” Lon smiled. I guess I’m going to be all right after all, he decided.
The transport they would be riding to Norbank was too large ever to land on a planetary surface. The men of the second battalion of the Seventh rode up to it in shuttles, the same attack shuttles they would use when they got to their destination. The Long Snake carried just enough landers to surface the complement of troops it could carry, one battalion at full strength. Lon recalled seeing, at a considerable distance, one of the DMC transports when his own ship arrived over Dirigent. Even under the magnification of the complink in his stateroom, the transport had appeared small. But it was large enough to carry a thousand fully equipped troops and everything they might need for a month in the field, complete with attack shuttles, transport shuttles, and its own crew. A second ship, a smaller transport, would be going to Norbank as well, carrying extra supplies for the troops, and the weapons and ammunition that were being sold to the Norbank government.
It took two shuttles to carry a full company of DMC troops. The luggage and trade goods had already gone up to the ship, carried by transport shuttles.
“Get to your seats and strap in,” Lieutenant Taiters said as the men of third and fourth platoons filed into their shuttle. “We’ll be taking off in just a couple of minutes and I don’t want any floaters. Secure all gear.”
Noncoms made the final checks before they took their own seats and strapped in. A shuttle was not equipped with artificial gravity. A Nilssen generator would have doubled the size and more than doubled the mass of an attack shuttle. Only ships carried Nilssens—which also provided the field distortion that permitted the ships to transit Q-space for interstellar jumps.
“Hurry up and wait,” Phip said under his breath after several minutes had passed with no indication that the shuttle was about to take off. The engines had not been started. Once they were, it might be another five minutes before the lander started moving toward the runway for its short takeoff run.
“You got somewhere else to go?” Janno asked.
“We could be aboard ship, eating, and ready for a long sleep,” Phip said. “Why make us wait here, where it’s least comfortable, packed in like cardulas in oil?” Cardulas were a plump delicacy on Dirigent, legless rodents with a tangy flavor.
Company A’s third and fourth platoons had not been strapped in for ten minutes before the shuttle started to taxi away from the line. The shuttles took off four at a time, ten-second intervals between them, then a minute before the next group started. That would space out their arrivals at Long Snake, which could dock only four landers at a time.
As soon as the landing gear were off the ground, the shuttle tilted back at a fifty-degree angle and the throttles were cycled forward to maximum, subjecting everyone aboard to more than four g’s of force. Then the lander banked left, carrying them toward the ocean and away from the settled areas of Dirigent.
“This lasts about three minutes,” Janno said through clenched teeth, turning his head fractionally toward Lon. “When the engines cut out, we drift the rest of the way, until it’s time to maneuver for docking. Me, I prefer acceleration to zero gravity. At least you still know which way is down.”
Lon did not bother to answer. Even a grin was out of the question. It’s a hell of a choice, he thought, weighing eight hundred pounds or nothing at all. Then the weight was taken away and he felt himself rebounding against his safety harness. His arms did not move, though. He was gripping the armrests of his seat too tightly.
“I don’t much care for either,” he said then.
“This is nothing,” Janno said. “Just wait for the first time we make a really hot combat landing, with the pilot pushing the throttle wide open going in.”
“Gee, thanks,” Lon replied, making it sound as sarcastic as he could. “Just what I needed, something else to look forward to.” When Janno laughed, Lon joined him, but it was an effort. The first three times that Lon had experienced zero gravity, he had been nauseous, and once he had vomited. There was no nausea this time, though. Lon waited for it, then decided that his stomach was finally used to the loss of gravity. He breathed out softly. That was a relief, one less thing to worry about.
Several video monitors were spaced around the troop compartment of the shuttle. Going in for an attack landing, they would display views of the terrain, give the soldiers some indication of what they were about to face. A few minutes after the shuttle left the atmosphere and its engines went idle, the screens came alive.
“This must be for your benefit,” Janno suggested, elbowing Lon softly. “We’ve all seen this before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just watch,” Janno said. “You’re going to get to see us come in to dock.”
Nolan watched. At first there was nothing to tell him that it was not simply an “empty” space shot, with st
ars or planets only distant points of light. Then he noticed one of the other shuttles, off to the right, almost out of frame. A few minutes later, he saw that one of the spots of light in the center of the screen was not moving the way it would if it were a star or planet. It seemed to remain stationary. And it grew.
That’s the ship, he realized. It was still far enough away that it was no more than a point, but it grew quickly. Then there were two sorts of light. Besides the dim reflection of sunlight—dim because the exterior was designed to minimize any electromagnetic signature—there were lights glowing within the ship, in open docking bays.
Details became visible. Lon could see the three capsule-shaped main hull sections in line, within a framework of supporting girders; two of the three outrigger pods that held the Nilssen generators that powered the ship through Q-space and provided artificial gravity in normal space; the cone-shaped nozzles of the rockets; the bulges of weapons turrets, their rocket launchers and beam cannon not yet discernible. At first there was no way to gauge scale. Long Snake was merely an object of indeterminate size at an indeterminable distance. Even the outline of the ship was difficult to focus on. The matte-black coloring and angled surfaces made it difficult to find the edges except where one was backlit by a partially occulted star.
Lon’s memory could supply the numbers, but they were only abstractions without solid visual references. Overall, Long Snake was twenty thousand feet long. The main hull sections were ellipsoidal, eleven hundred feet thick and fourteen hundred feet long. The hull ranged between thirty and forty feet in thickness, dense sandwiched layers of various materials that could provide full protection for its crew and passengers against the most intense cosmic radiation—and absorb considerable battle damage as well.
It was not the largest ship in space. Lon had seen ships a third larger than Long Snake during his layover at Over-Galapagos. He had gone to an observation pod to look at them, standing off two miles from the station and still hiding a considerable portion of the view of Earth below.