Lieutenant, page 22
part #2 of Dirigent Mercenary Corps Series
“It looks as if Belletiene isn’t ready to let go,” Orlis said. “CIC has spotted at least seven ships on course for Calypso from Belletiene, and they haven’t answered any of our queries. We can’t be certain yet, but it looks like they’re sending another invasion force.”
21
The fleet traveling from Belletiene to Calypso was visible to the detection systems of the Dirigent ships the entire time they were en route. The trip would take slightly more than three days.
On Calypso, preparations were made based on the assumption that it was indeed a second invasion force—since none of the approaching ships was answering queries. After consultation with local military and governmental leaders, Colonel Gaffney dispatched a message rocket to Dirigent, detailing the supposition that they were about to face a second enemy army, perhaps as much as twice the size of the force that had been present when the regiment landed. Gaffney expressed his “hope” that 2nd Regiment had already been dispatched as planned.
Colonel Gaffney shared all of that information with his officers, the afternoon after the Belletiener fleet had been spotted. “But, as you know,” he continued, “even if the Council of Regiments dispatched those reinforcements immediately on receipt of my message that the invasion had occurred before we arrived, we’re looking at a minimum of another twenty-five days before help can arrive.” The requirements of interstellar passages made that time immutable. “Until then, we’re on our own, us and the Calypsans.” The only good news was the colonel’s reminder that they had warships and a squadron of Shrikes to meet the invaders. With a little luck, the enemy would not be able to land everyone they might bring, and every ship or shuttle shot down would improve the odds for the men on the ground.
Gaffney detailed the preparations that the regiment, and the Calypsan army, would make. There was no time to recruit and train civilians to bolster the ranks of the defenders, but civilians would be enlisted to provide information on enemy movements. The local army and the mercenaries would concentrate their efforts on the defense of Oceanview and The Cliffs, with the Dirigenters ready to use shuttles to transfer men in case the enemy chose to attack elsewhere first. Supplies and vehicles would be gathered and positioned at a number of points, just in case. Dirigenters were being detailed to help choose defensive strong points around the two cities.
“Since we can’t know where the enemy might land, there are limits to what we can do to prepare,” Gaffney said. “We can set up our perimeter around Oceanview and man a few key points on the outskirts of The Cliffs, but that’s about the limit. We’ll have to react when they arrive.” Packing up and leaving for Dirigent before the new Belletiener army could arrive was not mentioned. The Corps had accepted a contract. It would be honored.
Seven ships, then three more. The second group was moving faster than the first and would, according to CIC’s calculations, rendezvous with the first group just before they reached Calypso. The faster vessels were assumed to be warships sent to cover the landings and deal with the Dirigenters’ fleet. The ETA for the combined fleet was honed. The earliest minute that the Belletieners could reach orbit was noted and circulated. Preparations needed to be complete by that time.
When that time came, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Oceanview time, the soldiers were still working, assisted by civilian laborers. The Belletiener ships had slowed earlier than expected. They would not be in position until slightly before sunset.
“They want the night for cover, the same way we would,” Weil Jorgen commented to Lon. “They’ll come in when it’s full dark.”
Lon shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll have a few minutes warning when they launch their landers.”
“I figure they’ll drop far enough from us that they don’t have to worry about us on the ground until they’re set,” Jorgen said. “The way we’d do it. They’ve got to have enough smarts not to come down right in the middle of us.”
“Always give the other guy credit for being at least as smart as you are,” Lon said, almost a quote from a half dozen instructors and mentors he had had over the years. “Even then, there’s always the chance you’re underestimating him.”
“You seen any data on how many soldiers Belletiene has?” Weil asked. “I don’t mean just what we’ve seen and this new bunch. I mean, how many times could they throw a force against Calypso before they run out?”
“I haven’t got a clue, Weil. I’m surprised they could throw a second army against Calypso with the first all killed or captured.”
“That’s another thing that bothers me. Keeping all those prisoners secure in the face of new fighting is going to be tricky as hell. Dangerous.”
“We can’t just line them up against a wall and shoot them, or let Calypso do it.”
“I know, Lieutenant, but that would make life a lot simpler for us the next few days.”
Regimental headquarters provided a continuous feed from CIC as the new armada from Belletiene approached and the battle in space was joined. Only rarely was there a burst of light that could be seen from the ground to mark the fight. Most of the battle in space was well to the west of Oceanview. To Lon’s surprise, the fight was almost equal. Belletiene had fewer fighters, but their capital ships were well armed, and the crews knew their business. The regiment’s transports had been moved out of harm’s way prior to the arrival of the enemy. The escorts moved to engage the invaders farther from the surface, in an attempt to keep them from launching shuttles to land troops. That was only partially successful. The Belletiener ships kept coming. Fighters were launched, then shuttles. A few shuttles were destroyed, but—to Lon’s pragmatic thinking—too few. The bulk of the landers came on, protected by rocket and beamer fire from the ships that had launched them, and by the aerospace fighters that came in with them. Then, finally, it was possible for CIC to plot where the shuttles were likely to land—south and southwest of The Cliffs, more than ten miles from where the bulk of the defenses were.
“There may be more troops that haven’t been launched yet,” a message from CIC said. “It’s possible that there are as many as two thousand more soldiers available.” That possibility limited the response of the Calypsan government and Colonel Gaffney. Not all of the available defenders could be moved south to meet this first wave—if that was what it was—of the new invasion.
“Our Third and Fourth Battalions are being hurried south, along with one battalion of the Calypsan army,” Lon told his noncoms as soon as he had been briefed. “That should make the numbers there about equal. The rest of us are going to have to adjust to cover more of the perimeter up here.”
“Anything more on whether or not there are more troops waiting to come in?” Tebba Girana asked.
“It looks as if the Belletiener fleet is going to make a tight orbit. If they’re planning on launching another strike tonight, it could come in as little as ninety minutes,” Lon said. “But that’s guesswork. If they do have additional soldiers up there, nothing says they have to commit them right away. They might hold them back for hours, waiting to see how the fight develops. We deal with what we know about, and wait for them to show their hand.”
“My guess,” Weil said, not quite interrupting, “is that they’ll want to put those extra soldiers, if they exist, on the ground as quickly as possible, because they’re going to be in as much danger up there as they would be down here. And losing troops before they get dirtside is one hell of a waste.”
“Let’s hope for a lot of waste,” Wil Nace said. “The more our sky-guys space, the fewer we have to worry about.”
On the ground, the waiting continued. Alpha Company spread its men to cover a slightly larger segment of the defenses for Oceanview. They were on the north side of the capital, as far from the expected landing zones of the new invaders as anyone.
Belletiene landed without opposition on the ground, though they were dogged all the way in by Dirigenter fighters. Lon saw one flaming craft arc across the southern horizon, but there was no way for him to determine whether it was friend or foe.
They’re going to have time to get organized on the ground before any of our people get close enough to engage, Lon thought. He felt a growing anxiety even though the fighting would be far away from him and his men. Battle had been joined again, with too many uncertainties.
The Belletiener fleet completed its orbit of Calypso. More shuttles were launched, also with fighter cover. Lon waited for word as to where these landers might be aimed. It was another twenty minutes before the news came from CIC. They were headed north of Oceanview, possibly to an area within five miles of Lon’s platoons.
Lon took in a deep but fluttering breath and held it. Our turn, he told himself.
22
Lon anticipated orders for the regiment to move to intercept the enemy, but they did not come. “We’re staying here,” Captain Orlis told him. “Our instructions are to make certain that the invaders do not get into Oceanview. As long as they want to muck about in the forest, we let them. Our fighters will continue to hit them, as they can. And keep us posted on their movement.”
“Aren’t we even going to put out patrols to slow them down?” Lon asked.
Orlis’s no was too terse, too contained. “We man the line and wait for them to come to us.”
That’s foolish, Lon thought, but he did not say it. The order had to have come from Colonel Gaffney, probably under pressure from the Calypsan government. We’re not meant to be static. It’s all about mobility.
It would have been too much to hope for that the Shrikes would knock all of the enemy shuttles out of the sky, or even half. But it would be nice, Lon told himself, like winning a tontine. The Dirigenters left to guard the capital were near the outer edge of the native forest left around the city on all sides but the east, where they would have clear fields of fire. A series of fallbacks had also been readied. The risk in that scheme had been that the invaders would guess correctly about the disposition of troops and make their landings in the heart of Oceanview, which was guarded by only a few platoons—though heavily equipped with surface-to-air missiles. They might have shot down a few shuttles, but would have been insufficient to deal with the troops who managed to land safely.
“We wait,” Lon whispered on a radio linkup with Tebba and Weil. The sounds of fighting were audible, dogfights between Dirigenter and Belletiener fighters, the rapid-fire cannon as the Shrikes strafed enemy troops who made it to the ground, and the explosion of missiles. Except for the cannon fire, it was rather like listening to a distant thunderstorm. The flashes were similar enough to lightning hidden by clouds to complete the illusion. It ended almost as quickly as a summer thunderstorm as well. The combatants had to burn for orbit to rendezvous with their motherships—for ammunition and fuel, if nothing else.
“How soon do you think they’ll get here, Lieutenant?” Phip Steesen asked when Lon stopped for a few minutes near that squad. Lon had started making the rounds, pausing to talk with each group of men.
Lon shrugged. “If they push hard, they could be here in an hour, Phip.” There was no humor in the short laugh—almost a grunt—he used for punctuation. “If their luck was good and they didn’t get slowed down by the mines and booby traps we set.” Explosives had been brought down from the ships soon after the new Belletiener fleet had been spotted, and the Calypsans had also uncrated much of their remaining stockpiles.
“Any word on how many of them made it to the ground?” Lance Corporal Dav Grott asked.
“The last estimate I heard was three thousand on our end of it.” Lon paused. “Give or take five hundred.”
“Which means they don’t have any idea?” Dav suggested.
“That’s about the size of it. And maybe the same number, with the same margin of error, on the other end, down past The Cliffs,” Lon said.
“Puts us on the short end of the numbers, doesn’t it—even allowing for the Calypsans?”
“Not by all that much,” Lon said. “Even if there are seven thousand of the enemy this time, that’s not much worse than seven-to-five, and we’re the defenders. That should make up the difference, not even allowing for the fact that we’re supposed to be the super-professionals. And if the estimates are off all the way in the other direction, the numbers would be about even.”
“I’d feel a lot better with the numbers working in our favor,” Dav said. “A whole lot better.”
“This is our business, Dav.”
Lon knew that he had time for the moments of byplay during his tour. He was receiving updates from CIC, and there were electronic snoops out in front of the lines, up to five hundred yards away. And there was always a chance that the enemy would not head directly at the few hundred yards of perimeter that Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion was guarding.
That chance became slimmer in a hurry, though.
“Almost enough to make a man paranoid,” Tebba said when they received more definite information on the course the Belletieners were taking. “That whole army is coming straight toward us. Straight toward me is how it feels,” he added, shaking his head.
“I know what you mean,” Lon replied. He had shared the news of the enemy’s approach with his men immediately. The Belletieners were more than two miles away, far enough that a change of course was not impossible—but Lon planned for the worst. A force the size of a complete Dirigenter regiment might try to poke through precisely the section of the perimeter he was responsible for. “Give us a chance to show what we can do.”
Tebba snorted at the bravado. “Gonna have to keep you away from those adventure vids, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’re starting to sound like some Galactic Ranger.”
Lon laughed. He could feel his tension growing, and any release was welcome. It made the waiting easier to bear. “My secret is out,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper, even amplified by Tebba’s earphones.
It was three in the morning when the point squads of the Belletieners came within range of the first snoops. Five hundred yards. “Get everyone down and in position,” Lon told his noncoms. A couple of minutes later, he heard an explosion and saw the brief flash of flame as one of the land mines went off. Four hundred yards off, he thought. That was where the first line of explosives had been planted.
Lon was in his slit trench, on his knees watching the far side of the clearing, with the visor of his helmet set to maximum magnification. For the last 150 yards, the enemy would be in the open, easy targets if they were foolish enough to try a frontal assault over that much open ground. An attack like that, against a trained force of defenders with automatic weapons, would be almost suicidal, without some advantage—such as tanks or close-air support. Heroism alone would not do it.
They have to know we’re here, Lon thought. We haven’t been observing full electronic silence, and they had to expect that the capital would be defended.
“Be on the watch for enemy aircraft,” Lon warned. There had been nothing from CIC, regiment, or battalion, but the Belletieners had to have something planned.
Captain Orlis called Lon and Carl Hoper. “They must be setting up in that next patch of woods,” he told the two lieutenants. “I think we’ve got a few minutes before anything happens. Their ships have launched fighters again. If they’re coming our way, it will take them fifteen minutes to get here.”
More waiting, Lon thought. The palms of his hands started to sweat. He dried them off quickly, wishing he had something to stop the perspiration completely. Someone might notice, and realize that he was … nervous.
Fifteen minutes passed. It was another two minutes before Lon heard the sounds of aircraft coming in at transonic speeds. Lon felt his shoulders tighten. He had been in a prone firing position, on his elbows, looking over the end of his trench. At the sound of aircraft, he went completely flat, waiting for the first sounds of attack. But the fighters did not attack the perimeter. The aircraft—Lon thought that there had to be at least six—kept going toward the center of Oceanview. Seconds later, Lon heard the first explosions, south of his position.
“There’s no one there for them to hit,” Tebba said on his channel to Lon. “They must be trying to destroy Government House since they haven’t been able to capture it.”
“Something,” Lon said. “Maybe they think that will draw men away from the perimeter and make it easier for their infantry.”
“Will it?” Tebba asked.
“I doubt it,” Lon said. I hope not. The tactic would not get a professional military leader like Colonel Gaffney to change his dispositions, but Gaffney might not have the final say. The Calypsans were so concerned about the safety of their capital that they might insist, or might pull their own troops back to protect the government buildings, leaving the mercenaries on the front line even more shorthanded than they already were.
The Belletiener attack on the government district did not go completely unopposed. There were still a few teams of Calypsan soldiers there with surface-to-air rockets, and Dirigenter fighters came in from above to challenge the move. But there were too few interceptors in the air, and the men on the ground had minimal success with their shoulder-launched missiles. The Belletiener pilots mostly stayed high enough to give themselves time to escape any rocket coming up from the surface.
Then, abruptly, the Belletieners changed their target, veering away from the center of Oceanview to attack the defensive perimeter. The Dirigenters had little warning. The enemy fighters were operating at speeds that meant that only a few seconds elapsed from the change of course until the fighters were making their strafing and rocket runs along the line of defenders. For the most part, there was nothing that Lon and his men could do but press themselves into the dirt near a side of their slit trenches, presenting as small a target as possible.
Each platoon of mercenaries had two rocket launchers. Those were loaded and ready for use, but the response was only minimally successful. The enemy fighters were past and climbing out of range too quickly. Only one enemy fighter exploded, then cartwheeled to the ground in pieces. By the time it hit—far to the west—the defenders were just starting to lift their heads to check for casualties among their comrades. Several men had been wounded and needed treatment. Luckily, there had been no fatalities in Lon’s platoons.
