Lieutenant, page 6
part #2 of Dirigent Mercenary Corps Series
“Indulge yourselves, gentlemen, if you care to,” Flowers said, gesturing vaguely. There were several boxes of cigars open in the room, on various tables. Flowers peeled the wrapper from his cigar and used his steak knife to nip the end from it.
Lon looked around, more than a little nervous, concerned whether he should take one of the cigars. Captain Orlis did. So did Carl Hoper and maybe a third of the others.
“Never smoked, Nolan?” Matt Orlis asked softly.
Lon shook his head minimally. “They grow tobacco back where I was raised,” he said. “Not much, of course, but there’s apparently still a market for what they call the ‘real stuff’ instead of what’s produced by a machine. I’ve seen it growing in the fields, seen people who smoke, and even chew the stuff, but I don’t think I was ever really tempted to try it myself, even when some of the kids I hung around with did.”
“I don’t myself, as a rule,” Orlis said. “Once in a great while, like now. It won’t kill you.”
“Though you might think differently when you get your first lungful of smoke,” Carl Hoper said with a short laugh.
Lon shifted his glance from the nearby box of cigars to the others around him. Then he shrugged and took one for himself. He watched Carl prepare and light his, then copied him.
Lon coughed, and felt his face getting red. Orlis and Hoper both laughed, but not loudly. “I warned you,” Carl said. “It takes getting used to.”
“Why?” Lon asked when he felt he could dare to speak without going into more coughing.
“Beats me,” Matt Orlis said. “People who do it regularly seem to get some sort of pleasure from it.”
“All the rage in some circles,” Carl said. “Why, I know some people who’d rather have a good smoke than a good beer.”
Lon took a second, far more cautious, draw on his cigar, holding the smoke in his mouth rather than allowing it to travel any deeper. This time he noticed the taste, the mild tang and almost a sweetness, before he expelled the smoke.
“I feel a little dizzy,” he said.
“Just because you’re not used to it,” Carl said.
“You do this often?” Lon asked.
Hoper shrugged. “I go through phases.”
“Gentlemen!”
Colonel Flowers rapped on the side of his glass with a fork and spoke loudly enough to make certain that he got everyone’s attention. The private conversations in the room ceased.
“There’s no way to know what we’ll face on Calypso,” Flowers said, waving smoke away from in front of him, then leaning forward. “We may have to fight our way in, or we might land and spend six months waiting for something to happen. If you’ve spent any time at all looking through the database we have on Calypso, you will have noted that it offers a lot of … temptations. We’re going to have to be careful about discipline, if we do have time on our hands and find ourselves stationed in or very close to one of the major population centers.” He paused long enough to drag on his cigar.
“I know that the Corps rarely has problems with discipline. A large part of that is the spirit that we instill in all of our men, the knowledge of what the Corps stands for, and the certainty that breaches are treated most severely. But the rest of that success comes from having officers and noncoms who will do whatever is necessary and possible to prevent having anything happen that would require disciplinary action.” He cleared his throat and scanned the room. “Something to think about,” he said. When the colonel leaned back and turned toward Major Black, his executive officer, the other conversations resumed.
“More routine?” Lon asked.
Captain Orlis shrugged. “Not especially. But he’s right. If the men have time on their hands and temptation wiggling in front of their eyes, there could be trouble.”
“Just let your sergeants know that the colonel is concerned about discipline,” Carl suggested in a whisper. “They’ll know if there’s any cause for alarm before you will anyway.”
Lon nodded. Sometimes I wonder why they need us at all. He stared at his cigar and wondering about that as well. Dendrow’s been in the Corps since I was eight years old, and Jorgen has been in even longer. I need them a lot more than they need me. Lieutenants are like these cigars, a questionable habit.
Lon found himself thinking about home that evening—his real home, Earth, not Dirigent. His parents were still there, and most of his childhood friends—those who had survived to adulthood. It had been several months, before the New Bali contract, since he had last received a message chip from his parents, with news of home and friends and relatives. Sending message chips by interstellar transport was expensive. Each one had to be used entirely, which meant several months worth of occasional notes sent together. Lon had known when he left Earth that there was little chance he would ever return. But there had been an element of desperation to the decision. His choices were to leave and take a chance of getting the military career he wanted on Dirigent, or staying home to be drafted into the federal police force of the North American Union when his class at the military academy graduated.
The only thing Lon had ever wanted to be was a soldier.
It was unusual for Lon to have trouble getting to sleep, except during a contract when sleep might allow danger to overtake him, but this night, he did. He lay awake for more than an hour, restless, unable to shut out memories of home. When he closed his eyes he could almost see his mother, hear her talking to him—way back when he was seven or eight years old—and almost smell a special Sunday dinner cooking. On Sundays, they had always splurged and had natural food, meat and vegetables from nature instead of from the food replicator. On Dirigent, natural food was commonplace, as common as the more modern substitute. But Lon had never escaped his earlier … respect for grown food. His mouth started watering. There was a hunger that no available meal could possibly satisfy. When he finally did fall asleep, he dreamed of pot roast with potatoes and carrots, brown gravy, coleslaw….
He was never aware of the few tears that wet his pillow in the night. They had dried before he woke the next morning.
6
The gymnasium, the only training facility available to Alpha Company on Long Snake, was small, cramped, and minimally equipped. Each company had a similar room. There was only space for one platoon at a time. Lead Sergeant Jim Ziegler posted the schedule the first evening the battalion was aboard.
Lon alternated his own schedule, taking his exercise with each squad in his platoons in rotation. Some days, he went through two sets in the gym, not so much for fitness as to keep himself occupied. On Long Snake’s eighth day out, he was in the gym with Tebba Girana’s squad. He paid little attention to the men around him. Lon was too focused on his own exercises, pushing himself, using exercise to keep his mind somewhere near where it needed to be—instead of drifting back to Earth and the family he could not reasonably expect to see again.
It can’t be homesickness after all this time, he told himself. It’s not the way it was during the trip from Earth to Dirigent, or my first weeks in the Corps. This is … different. He could not explain it any other way. It was nothing as simple as a retreat from fear. He did not know what was coming on Calypso, and even if he had been certain of the most desperate combat, that was something he could accept. That was his profession. Until an answer surfaced in his mind, he compensated by pushing his exercises almost to the point of abusing his body. Subconsciously, there was the faintly ridiculous thought that self-torture might force his mind to produce the answer, or set aside the weakness that had come.
“Lieutenant?” It took a few seconds for the word to penetrate Lon’s concentration. Lon blinked. He had not noticed Sergeant Dendrow standing five feet in front of him.
“What is it?” Lon asked, almost gasped.
“The platoon has finished, sir,” Dendrow said, moving a pace closer once Nolan halted his almost frantic workout. “And the bridge made the thirty-minute warning for our next Q-space transit.”
Lon looked around. Tebba’s squad had left the gym. He and Dendrow were alone. Lon shook his head. “I guess I got a little carried away, Ivar. I was so focused that I didn’t even notice.”
“Yes, sir. I got that impression.” If there was an undertone of concern in the platoon sergeant’s voice, it was too subtle for Lon to notice. But Dendrow was concerned. Any real or suspected aberration in a commander was cause for concern.
“How long ago was the warning for Q-space?” Lon asked.
“Been eight or nine minutes now, Lieutenant.”
“We’d best be getting back then, hadn’t we?” Lon said. The full power of all three Nilssen generators would be required for the transit. Long Snake’s occupants would be deprived of artificial gravity until the ship returned to normal space. The hiatus was rarely more than six to eight minutes, during which the ship’s position might alter by scores of light-years.
“Yes, sir.” Dendrow paused. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked then, hesitantly.
Lon did not answer immediately. He turned the question over in his own mind a couple of times first. “I’m fine, Ivar. This is going to sound a bit ridiculous, but I’ve just been feeling a little homesick the past few days.”
“Not Dirigent, I gather?”
Lon shook his head. “No, Earth—the one planet in this galaxy I know I’ll probably never get to again.”
For the duration of the Q-space transit, Long Snake was effectively in a universe of its own. The Nilssens generated a bubble of Q-space—quantum space—around the ship. The ovate bubble’s long diameter was barely greater than the ship’s length. Looking out from Long Snake, all that anyone could have seen was a featureless dark gray, lit only by the few exterior lights on the ship. Theoretically, the bubble of Q-space was contiguous with every point in the universe of “normal” space. By stressing the Q-space envelope around it at the proper point for the proper length of time, Long Snake could—in theory—reemerge in normal space at any desired point. But the stresses did require calculation. In practice, that was why ships normally made three separate Q-space transits during each voyage—one from the point of origin out to a customary “shipping lane,” one along that well-documented route, and a final jump from it to the point of termination. The days spent in normal space before and after each jump were meant to reduce the chance of variable fluctuations that could affect the accuracy of the calculations. There was no measurable distinction between one Q-space bubble and any other. It was merely an inescapable part of interstellar travel, no more remarkable for the traveler than transferring from one bus to another in a large city.
During the three days between the second and third jumps, the approach of the end of the voyage, with its uncertainties and possible danger, gradually took Lon Nolan’s mind from Earth and the melancholy memories.
Long Snake emerged from its third transit of Q-space in Calypso and Belletiene’s star system, eighty hours out from Calypso. The first order of business was to reestablish contact with the other ships of the armada, all of which emerged in normal space within the space of less than a minute. The fleet was, of necessity, well dispersed by this point. DMC policy was to require considerable separation between ships when they entered and exited Q-space, to minimize turbulence.
The second order of business was to learn the latest news from Calypso. Less than two hours after the end of the final Q-space transit, Colonel Flowers called his officers together.
“Belletiene’s invasion of Calypso began five days ago,” Flowers said as soon as everyone was assembled. “I don’t have many details yet. Regiment and fleet CIC”—combat information center—”are still trying to determine what the situation is. What we do know is that fighting continues. We can expect to either make a combat assault landing or to enter combat shortly after arrival. As soon as I know anything more definite, I’ll pass the news along to you.”
Rumors had a short lifespan in the transports of 7th Regiment. Colonel Arnold Gaffney, the regimental commander, and CIC aboard his ship, Star Dragon, processed information from Calypso as quickly as it could be obtained. At times there were as many as four separate communications links open between the ship and Calypso. Colonel Gaffney shared what he was learning with his battalion commanders and their staffs, who passed each bit of solid news along to their subordinate officers. Facts killed rumors, but—phoenix like—gave birth to new rumors.
The history of the fighting was compiled and distributed—troop movements, battles, and various intelligence estimates of the relative abilities and equipment of the two sides. There was even video of the Belletiener landings and many of the firefights that had taken place. In the Calypsan army, only officers and sergeants had video cameras in their battle helmets, but those were of Dirigentan manufacture, so the quality was as good as video from the helmets that the DMC used. The video of the enemy landings came primarily from other sources, including the cameras of tourists and the civilian complink nets.
“Don’t wait for someone to tell you what you should or shouldn’t bother with,” Lon told third platoon during one of his briefings. “There are plenty of complinks available. Use them. The more you know about what’s going on down there now, the better equipped you’ll be when we hit the ground.”
“Lieutenant?” Corporal Wurd of first squad raised a hand.
“What is it, Heyes?” Lon asked.
“Any idea yet when that’ll be? When we go in, that is.”
Lon shook his head. “Not when or where. Regiment hasn’t firmed up a plan of attack yet. We’re still forty hours out from attack orbit, so it’s going to be at least that long before we go in. My best guess is that we won’t wait too long after that. Our employers might not take kindly to the paid professionals sitting safely in orbit and watching while they take all the heat. We’ll reach our orbit about sunset in Oceanview, the capital. Figure that a landing is most likely that night, or dawn the next morning. But that’s just my guess, worth what you paid for it.” During the trip, the diurnal cycle had been gradually adjusted so that time aboard the ships would coincide with time in Calypso’s capital.
“Night won’t give us an advantage here,” Corporal Girana of second squad said; it was definitely not a question.
“Expect the Belletieners to be equipped as well as we are,” Lon said. “That means weapons as well as electronics and full night-vision capability. They’ve spent liberally over the past twenty years to build and maintain a modern army, shopping anywhere they could find good gear.”
“We gonna be facing anything made on Dirigent?” Heyes Wurd asked. “Damn near all my relatives work in military industries.” That garnered nervous laughter from about half of the platoon.
“Dirigent hasn’t sold anything to them directly, I do know that,” Lon said with an appreciative grin. “And it’s unlikely that anyone has transshipped anything in the sort of quantities they’ve been buying.”
Lon conducted at least two sessions a day with each of his platoons, answering questions and sharing information—doing what he could to keep his men loose, ready for action. That had started during the interstellar part of the voyage, and the sessions got longer once the fleet was in-system.
At least for the length of time that the sessions lasted, Lon was able to set aside his own concerns about the contract. The closer to Calypso that the fleet got without a definitive battle plan from regiment, the more nervous he got. Lon was not the only one. Matt Orlis and Carl Hoper both admitted to nerves as well. “I don’t know what the colonel’s problem is,” Matt said when the three officers gathered in the captain’s stateroom after supper, one day out from Calypso.
“Yeah, you’d think he would have approved at least a preliminary plan by now,” Hoper said. “Something to let us start preparing the men for. No matter how fluid conditions are on the ground, CIC should be able to come up with something reasonable.”
“With all the policy about being open, you don’t suppose they’re holding something back from us, do you?” Lon asked.
Orlis shook his head quickly. “Not Gaffney. I’ve served under him too long to think that’s even conceivable. And he’s got twenty years more in the Corps than I do. The only explanation I can come up with is that there must be some sort of argument going on, that the Calypsans want us to do something that the colonel doesn’t want to do. That I could understand. The locals probably want us to drop right on top of the largest enemy concentration, and the colonel would resist that.”
“Too costly,” Hoper interjected.
“Colonel Gaffney won’t spend men thoughtlessly,” Orlis said, nodding. “And, with him, I’m sure it’s more than just because it’s bad for business.” Mercenaries looked at the idea of last stands or suicide charges with total horror. Casualties, deaths, were part of the business, but a mercenary needed to know that he had a reasonable chance of surviving any contract.
“If it’s something like that, wouldn’t he just pass the word?” Lon asked. “That way we’d know what’s going on and wouldn’t be worrying over it the way we are—and the way the men must be too.”
Matt Orlis looked at the floor between his feet for a moment. “If we haven’t heard anything by morning, I’ll ask Colonel Flowers, and ask him to ask Gaffney if he doesn’t know.”
Medwin Flowers anticipated the questions at breakfast the next morning. “You’re all wondering why we haven’t been given at least a preliminary plan of attack.” He paused. “Perhaps I’ve been remiss. I should have anticipated your concern sooner.”
Lon and Carl Hoper exchanged glances, but no one spoke. Colonel Flowers had obviously not finished.
“I know you’ve been studying the action reports we’ve been getting,” the colonel said. “There are two zones of fighting, one near the capital and the seacoast, the other in the area of the most productive gold mines. Those are the obvious primary targets for the invader. The Calypsan army is, for the time being, holding its own. The situation is fluid, changing dramatically, almost hour by hour. Our CIC has come up with three equally feasible scenarios for us. Calypso’s Defense Command Center has one other—and is pushing hard for it.
