Officer-Cadet

by Rick Shelley

  Cheery thought, Lon thought with a grimace.

  Lieutenant Taiters had one radio call to make before he gave the order. Colonel Flowers and Captain Orlis were both on the channel. “We’re ready to move in,” Taiters reported.

  There was only a slight hesitation before Flowers said, “Go.”

  23

  Platoon Sergeant Ivar Dendrow moved down the slope toward Anderson’s Creek with his first two squads. They established a skirmish line that left a lot of room between men. Third and fourth squads would be the rear guard. They would remain on the ridge, far above the thicket, ready to give covering fire if necessary, until the rest of the troops, mercenaries and militia, had crossed the creek.

  Captain Molroney split his militia company, sending two platoons behind each of the point squads. To minimize the time that the unit would be stretched out, the militia went in four columns, with the intervals the minimum that prudence dictated—in such heavy cover, the men were no more than six feet apart, following the sometimes twisted avenues available once they moved into the thicket about halfway down the slope.

  Molroney, Taiters, and Nolan stayed in the center, near the front of the militia, thirty yards behind the mercenary skirmish line. Arlan and Lon maintained open channels with their noncoms, in front and behind.

  At first Lon thought that it felt like descending into a green ocean. The huge vines completely dominated the lower slopes and the valley floor, choking out any competition. At the edge of the thicket, where the men started to sink into the green tangle, the footing was extremely tricky. Small runners and thin vine tips seemed to reach out and loop around feet and ankles, threatening to trip men and send them tumbling. As Lon reached that juncture, he found himself unconsciously holding his rifle higher, as if trying to keep it out of water—until he realized what he was doing and felt foolish about it … and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, or was doing the same thing.

  When the large leaves of the vines finally closed over Lon’s head, he nearly started to hold his breath. He felt an instant of claustrophobic panic. The air under the leaves was humid, and felt twenty degrees warmer than it had above the thicket. There had been a light breeze “outside,” but no air at all moved within the thicket. The air weighed heavily against Lon’s chest, making breathing more difficult—psychologically if nothing else. I want out of here! he thought, but that was impossible. He had to go forward with the rest, could not show that it bothered him. After a few minutes, it no longer did. Only the slight additional effort breathing needed remained.

  Even after the leaves closed overhead, it never got completely dark in the thicket. The upper layer of leaves seemed almost to glow, to radiate a diffuse emerald light.

  Lon looked at the vines and the encapsulated universe they held. It was unlike anything he had ever seen—or dreamed about. Individual vines went on for dozens of yards, perhaps for hundreds, spiraling along like gigantic coils of living concertina wire—without the barbs. A dozen feet from the end of one strand, the woody vine was still as thick as Lon’s upper arm, and covered with a knotty bark in a medium gray. Thin, wirelike roots extended from the lower reaches of each vine, anchoring it to the ground. The diameters of the spirals reached eight to ten feet and stayed remarkably constant, so there was no real difficulty in moving through the mess. The men simply had to be careful where they put their feet, and to remember to step clear each time they crossed a loop of vine. Different vine systems appeared to cross and recross each other, creating a tangle that could never be satisfactorily untangled. Except like the Gordian knot, Lon thought.

  The berries that Molroney had spoken of hung from the higher levels of the vines, each growing near the stem of a leaf. Some had been partially eaten and left to rot by animals.

  “We’re at the creek and ready to cross.”

  Lon had become so fascinated by his surroundings that he was startled by Sergeant Dendrow’s voice on the radio.

  “Any sign of opposition yet?” Lieutenant Taiters asked.

  “Not a thing. And we haven’t seen any nasty surprises planted anywhere in this … whatever it is,” Dendrow said.

  “Take it easy crossing the creek. Do it four or five men at a time,” Taiters said, although they had discussed that procedure earlier, before starting down the slope.

  “Yes, sir, I know how to play it,” Dendrow replied. “We’re starting … now.”

  Again, Lon almost held his breath, as if he anticipated that the rebels would immediately take the point squads under fire as soon as they exposed themselves by stepping out into Anderson Creek. But he restrained himself. Getting a good breath is hard enough in here, without doing something ridiculous, he thought. Next thing you know, you’ll start closing your eyes so people can’t see you.

  “Once you get all your men across the creek, move off twenty yards, establish a line, and take a breather,” Taiters told Dendrow. “Give the reception committee a little longer to stew about just when and where we’re going to come out of this mess.”

  “Will do, Lieutenant,” Dendrow replied.

  “If they don’t show their hand by the time we get across the creek, I might send three or four men off to one side to set up a little distraction to make them think,” Taiters said. “I doubt that it will come to that, though. I expect that once they see the main force hit the water they’ll start shooting while they can see what they’re shooting at.”

  “That’s what we’d do,” Dendrow commented. “Okay, sir, I’m going across with the last group now.”

  Lon imagined rather than heard the splash of water as Dendrow and the last few others made their dash across the creek. Lon’s hands tightened on his rifle’s grips, another sign of tension, but there was no gunfire.

  “We’re all across, Lieutenant,” Dendrow reported. “First squad is already on the line you indicated. The rest of us will be set up in three minutes. There’s no sign of opposition.”

  “Okay, take ten,” Taiters said. “Wait for my command to start moving again.” He switched channels and spoke to Nolan. “The logical thing for them to expect is that we’d want to get out of this stuff as fast as we could, up on higher ground where we could see. When they don’t see or hear anything, it’s got to put them a little on edge.”

  “It would me,” Lon replied. “I don’t handle suspense all that well.”

  “I’ve noticed. That’s why I’m telling you the why. Sometimes the best thing you can do is sit on your ass and wait. I think this is one of them.”

  “You’re not worried that it gives them more time to get extra soldiers in position as well?” Lon asked.

  “Of course I’m worried about it, but this still seems to offer us an edge. If we can force the rebels to commit to an all-out fight, without taking unacceptable losses ourselves, it has to bring the completion of the contract closer. We pick off one small group and let the rest get away again, it could take weeks, even months to get enough of them to make the rest quit.”

  “If they’d ever quit,” Lon said. “On Earth, more than five out of six didn’t, including kids and women.”

  “Let’s just hope that they’ve mellowed a little since then.”

  Don’t try to get a loan at the bank on that, Lon thought.

  Taiters and Molroney kept the militia moving for another two minutes before calling a halt—narrowing the gap between the militia and the point squads. The men sat or squatted in place, those on the outside turned to cover the flanks. But there was no point in establishing a firm perimeter, not with soldiers who had only had a few hours of military training. It was enough that they remained generally silent, and alert.

  For the first time, Lon gradually became aware of the sounds of birds and animals in the thicket. He was straining to hear more distant noise, especially gunfire, but what he heard was twitters and flutters, the scraping of tiny claws on wood, the sounds of chewing. He looked around but saw only a pair of birds twenty yards away, up in the top twist of one of the vines. The
birds looked as if they must be of the same species, but one was predominantly colored green—the same green as the vines’ leaves—while the other was a bright yellow, with red streaks on the bottom of its wings. Female and male, Lon guessed, assuming that birds on Norbank would follow the general pattern of birds on Earth, with the male more brightly adorned.

  Lon took a sip of water from his canteen. It tasted salty. His face had been sweating in the thicket, and the perspiration had touched the corners of his mouth. He licked at his lips, then took another sip of water. The second was better than the first, though both seemed to be about body temperature.

  “Why don’t we have better insulation on the canteens?” he asked Taiters on the radio. “Even at The Springs we had chillers, and we didn’t get much in the way of luxuries there.”

  Taiters glanced toward Lon—they were about eight feet apart—and frowned. That was masked by Taiters’ tinted faceplate. He shook his head then, and held a finger up in front of his visor, about where his mouth was. Nolan took the hint and kept his mouth shut. He watched the timeline on his visor, while still trying to keep a good watch on the thicket in front of him. The wait might put off the rebels on top of the opposite hill, but it was doing a good job of doing the same thing to Lon. And probably to our militiamen too, he thought. This is maddening.

  The ten minutes passed. Lon looked toward the lieutenant.

  He showed no hint of movement, no sign that he was ready to order the point squads and main body to start moving again.

  Fifteen minutes. Taiters raised his right fist and made a pumping motion, up and down, a signal for Captain Molroney, who relayed it to his commanders. At the same time, Taiters told the point squads to start moving again. “Be ready to get down fast when the shooting starts,” he added.

  Lon’s legs felt stiff when he got to his feet and took his first few steps forward, careful to stay as nearly even with Taiters and Molroney as possible. The militia companies were arrayed to either side of them, stretching out in front and behind. Molroney made several hand signals and his men started to put more distance between them, widening the front.

  “Ivar, send your beamers and two riflemen on a loop to the left, like we talked about before,” Taiters ordered the platoon sergeant. Each squad had one man with a beamer, an energy pulse weapon. “Tell them to find a good place without being spotted. Even when the shooting starts coming our way, I want them to keep out of it until I give the word. We’ll save that surprise for when it’ll do us the most good. The rest of you find good spots as near the eastern edge of this thicket as you can without losing your angle of fire on the ridge.” Dendrow merely clicked his radio transmitter to acknowledge the orders.

  There was one more stop for the militia, when they reached the creek, still under cover of the vines. Before anyone crossed the twenty yards of open water, Taiters and Molroney wanted to have plenty of firepower close to cover them.

  When Molroney and Taiters moved closer to the front themselves, Nolan followed automatically. A dangerous habit to get into. I could take a night job as a shadow, he thought when he realized that he had moved without conscious decision. He was within twenty feet of the creek before he saw his first hint of water through the leaves. It appeared that some of the vines did go down into the water, but Lon could not tell if their main roots were there or if the coils just dipped out of sight.

  ”Okay, Captain,” Taiters said eventually. “I think it’s time to start sending your men across.” Phrasing it as a suggestion was the politic way, since Molroney theoretically outranked him.

  Molroney nodded jerkily, then signaled his men. A plan for the crossing had been agreed on earlier. The militia would cross the creek one platoon at a time, with the rest ready to provide covering fire if—when—the rebels started shooting.

  Taiters warned his own men. They too had to be ready to cover the crossing. The men with the best chance of actually hurting the rebels were in the two squads that had been left behind. Although they would be shooting at long range, they would have the most visible targets when the rebels exposed themselves to fire at the men in the water.

  Lon moved around until he found a small opening in the leaves overhead that gave him a minimal view of the eastern ridge. He brought his rifle up partway. The quiltlike pattern of large leaves would be shredded quickly once the shooting started. More holes than I want, no doubt, he thought. The better he could see out, the better the rebels would be able to see in, and the vines would not provide good cover, not like a tree trunk would—or a deep hole in the ground.

  The first militiamen stepped out into Anderson’s Creek and started wading across, moving as quickly as they could. There was a rocky bed under the water, which helped. Muck might have proved to be disastrous. As the first platoon moved out into the creek, the second platoon moved into position on the bank, rifles at the ready, anticipating trouble. Molroney, Taiters, and Nolan would cross with the second platoon—the captain and lieutenant at opposite ends of the formation, Lon staying with Molroney so the militia leader would not be out of radio contact with Taiters.

  The first line of militiamen got five yards out from the bank, into water that reached the hips of the shortest men, before the shooting started. The rebels opened with a volley. Lon could only guess, but he thought that there had to be considerably more than a hundred rifles firing, perhaps two hundred or three hundred. Few bullets came into the thicket west of the creek. Clearly the barrage was aimed strictly at the visible men. It was not terribly accurate, but the volume was great enough that there were casualties.

  Taiters and Molroney ordered their men to return fire. That quickly lessened the number of incoming rounds, as the rebels had to start thinking of their own cover. The second militia platoon moved forward. Lon stepped into the water, shooting at the eastern ridgeline as he moved, trying not to think of anything but walking and shooting. After the humid heat of the thicket, the water felt cold, but he only noticed the initial shock. The water was only an obstacle that slowed him down then.

  Lon looked down just once, when his thigh bumped into something—a body. The red stain of blood was quickly diluted and washed away. The man was clearly dead. Lon pushed past, looking back to the eastern ridge and continuing to fire his short bursts toward it.

  Crossing the twenty yards of Anderson’s Creek took Lon an eternity squeezed into a minute of real time. The first militia platoon took the heaviest casualties, most suffered in the first fusillade. But once the last militiamen had crossed, the rebel fire followed them into the thicket on the eastern side of the creek.

  Molroney’s men moved away from the water, spreading out to either side, trying to hide from the metal hail. There was no time to total the casualties, scarcely time to give them first aid. Lon could see wounded men from where he lay, and he knew of at least one dead man, back in the creek. How many more there might be he could not even guess.

  “Spring our surprise on them, Ivar!” Taiters shouted over the radio to his platoon sergeant. “As soon as that distracts them, we push forward. We’ve got to take this hill.”

  24

  Sounds like something out of a bad vid, Lon thought as he started moving forward again with Captain Molroney and the Norbanker militia. “We’ve got to take this hill.” He snorted. The addition to the battle on the flank was undetectable in the valley. Beamers’ slight noise did not carry far, and two extra slug throwers could not make that much difference in the sound level. But once Sergeant Dendrow reported that the diversion had started, so did the advance out of the thicket and up the hill.

  I just hope the rest of it is on schedule, Lon thought. Colonel Flowers had made one addition to Lieutenant Taiters’ plan—close air support. It would not be much, no more than two of the battalion’s attack shuttles, but it would help. They had been maintaining high surveillance most of the day, in relays.

  Lon had not left the thicket yet when he heard the sonic scream of a shuttle stooping to the attack. The colonel still did not w
ant to risk the craft too low, so the assault might not be as devastating as it could be if carried without regard to possible losses, but even though the aircraft never came below four thousand feet, their rockets and two or three seconds of gunfire could make a significant difference.

  The distinctive stutter of a shuttle’s Gatlings was audible over all the small-arms fire on the ground. Four rockets, accelerating from a supersonic launch platform, whined toward their targets and exploded, shattering rock and wood at the top of the hill into millions of shards of shrapnel.

  Atop the ridge, the rebels had to abandon shooting at the approaching militia and seek cover. Some tried to take the attacking shuttle under fire, but their rifles were of no use, and neither of the rockets they launched came close enough to lock onto the shuttle—which had already pulled out of its dive and started to accelerate upward, out of reach. The mercenaries and militia made good use of the respite, racing up the slope. Even after the shuttle was gone, the rebels did not immediately return to their positions facing down the hill. By the time they did, Molroney’s militiamen were halfway up the slope.

  Then a second Dirigenter shuttle dove into its attack. The rebels were quicker to react this time, taking cover as soon as they heard the noise and getting their antiaircraft rockets ready. But the shuttle was scarcely visible before it unloaded its own munitions and pulled out of its dive, twisting away from the ridge, accelerating away from danger at the highest gee-forces its crew could withstand.

  Even the militiamen below had to duck the rocky shrapnel blasted out of the hilltop by this attack. They were that close to the ridge. And before the rebels had recovered from the second air attack, the militiamen were over the top, moving in with bullets and bayonets.

  Lon could not afford the luxury of looking around to see how many of the enemy there might be on the hilltop. The nearest were too close. He fired at the first rebel his rifle’s muzzle tracked against and moved to the second with his bayonet. That man was just getting to his feet and never made it. Lon slashed across his throat and he fell to the side. But there was another enemy close then, coming in from Lon’s right, swinging his rifle like a club. Lon ducked and threw a shoulder block into the man, knocking him backward. Before the rebel could recover, Lon shot him, then moved toward his next encounter.