1
The temperature had finally fallen below one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, but the humidity remained near one hundred percent. There was not the slightest breath of wind to bring even modest relief. Lieutenant Lon Nolan had been perspiring heavily, but the sweat could not evaporate to cool him. All it did was soak his clothing and add to his discomfort. Just remaining motionless, resting, was tiring. The stagnant jungle air of New Bali was so thick with moisture that breathing was work. It was almost three o’clock in the morning. Company A, 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment of the Dirigent Mercenary Corps was ready for action.
Lon lifted the faceplate of his helmet to get a little air. He felt as if he were near suffocation with the visor down—and little better with it raised. After a moment he took the helmet off, then wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve. The action did little good. His sleeve was already damp.
“This is ridiculous, Ivar,” he whispered. “You’d think that after two months of this sauna, a man would get used to it.”
Platoon Sergeant Ivar Dendrow grunted. “Some things you never get used to, Lieutenant. You just bear it as best you can.” He paused, then added, “I’ll bet there’s not an ounce of body fat left on any of the men.” Not that there had been much fat on any of them before they arrived on New Bali—fitness was a way of life for the mercenaries of Dirigent.
“At least we’re near the end,” Lon said. “If nothing goes wrong in the next few hours, we should be back aboard ship by this time tomorrow.” He knew that he was talking more than he should, even though the next few hours should be as simple as a training exercise on Dirigent. The only casualties in his two platoons on New Bali had been heat-related, and all three of those had happened in the first week. Now, although everyone was still uncomfortable, they were sufficiently acclimated to avoid further problems of that nature. The only positive thoughts Lon had of New Bali were that there were no stinging or biting creatures with a taste for human blood. The insects left them alone. There were, apparently, no snakes, and the lizards stuck to native prey—even the large lizard that seemed to be a near relation to Earth’s Komodo dragon.
“If nothing goes wrong in the next few hours,” Dendrow echoed. He lowered his faceplate just long enough to look at the time on its head-up display. “It’s about that time, sir.”
Lon suppressed the sigh that wanted to force its way out. It would have been inappropriate. He wiped his face again, using the other sleeve this time, then put his helmet back on. When he spoke to third platoon’s sergeant again, it was over the radio channel that connected him with both Dendrow and fourth Platoon Sergeant Weil Jorgen. “Get the men up and ready to go.”
New Bali was a relatively old colony world, but it had grown very slowly. After four hundred years, the total population was only three million, widely dispersed among two dozen cities and hundreds of smaller settlements. The impetus for early settlement had been the pharmacological promise of the world. The discovery of thousands of medically useful organic compounds in New Bali’s tropical ecosystem had justified the initial colonization. Discovery of accessible lodes of platinum and gold had led to a boom just at the time when medical applications of nanotechnology had reduced, then virtually eliminated, the need for medical drug therapies.
Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, Dirigent Mercenary Corps, was about to find out whether two hundred professional soldiers could stage a successful coup and capture the world’s central government and communications facilities.
Singaraja, New Bali’s capital and largest city, boasted a hundred thousand inhabitants. Originally a small enclave on the northern edge of the Utan delta from which researchers could stage forays into the jungle, the city had grown mostly northward along the seacoast in a thin strip. Proximity to the ocean mitigated climatic conditions. There could be a twenty-degree difference in temperatures between the coast and a mile inland during the day—and sometimes as much as thirty degrees at night, when the breeze generally came from the southwest.
“Third and fourth platoons ready, Captain,” Lon reported as soon as his platoon sergeants had confirmed that fact.
“Right. It’ll be a few minutes yet,” Matt Orlis, the company commander, replied. “Just keep cool, Nolan. Everything by the numbers.”
“Yes, sir.” Lon did not worry about the admonition. He was the junior officer not only in Company A, but in the entire regiment. He was used to having officers spell things out in detail, as if they were afraid that he could scarcely put his trousers on right without specific instruction. The New Bali mission was his first contract since receiving his commission.
“You’ve got the easy half of the job, Government House and the communications center,” Orlis said.
“Yes, sir, I remember,” Lon said, interrupting before the captain could go on to explain in more detail. I know the mission, he thought. I know what we should be facing. The targets for the company’s other two platoons were the central police station and the capital’s militia barracks.
“The revised strike time is oh-four-thirteen,” Orlis said. “We hit all four targets at the same time.”
“We’ll be on time,” Lon promised, glancing at the timeline on his head-up display. He switched channels on his radio to tell his platoon sergeants and squad leaders that there would be a short delay. It was short. Only three minutes passed before Captain Orlis gave the order to move out.
“Let’s go,” Lon told his platoon sergeants.
Every man in the two platoons knew the details of the operation. The DMC believed in sharing information as fully as practical. No matter how badly the chain of command might be fragmented by casualties in battle, the unit would be expected to continue its mission, even if a junior noncom ended up in command of a platoon. Or a company.
Third and fourth platoons moved along separate tracks a hundred yards apart. Lon hiked with third. He had been assigned to it as a cadet, before earning his commission. He felt more comfortable with that group.
Moving silently through the jungle was not difficult, or particularly dangerous, even at night. The floor of the tropical rain forest was mostly clear, except along streams and treefall gaps, where sunlight could reach the ground and stimulate the growth of new trees and undergrowth. And the night-vision systems built into the helmets of the mercenaries gave them almost full vision.
The two columns of soldiers moved in almost perfect silence, watching their flanks, alert for anything. Their course had been mapped and scouted ahead of time, so there were no surprises in the terrain. No alarms to send them diving for cover.
We‘ll have as near total surprise as we could ever hope to achieve, Lon thought. It won’t be until we leave the jungle and get into the city that there‘ll be any real danger of discovery. He was grateful for activity, for the increased tension of moving toward the target. That let him quit wallowing in the discomfort of the climate. He kept as close a watch on the men of third platoon as their platoon sergeant or squad leaders did. Fourth was too far away for direct observation, but Lon had his radio set to monitor fourth platoon’s noncoms’ channel.
The staging area had been less than a half mile from the border of the jungle. There was a clear line marking the edge of Singaraja—city on one side and untamed jungle on the other. Looking out from the city, the rain forest appeared as a solid green wall, up to 130 feet high. The border was like a treefall gap, miles long and filled by young trees and the adventitious vines and shrubs that took advantage of any opening to the sun. The human residents had to maintain constant vigilance against the forest to keep it from reclaiming land they had “stolen.” There were always interlopers, seedlings trying to establish themselves in the open.
“The point has reached the edge of the forest, Lieutenant,” Corporal Tebba Girana of third platoon’s second squad reported after the two platoons had been on the move for twenty minutes. “They’re holding just this side.”
“Okay, Tebba. We’ll take five here. Put two men through the tangle to observe.” Lon switched to talk to the point squad for fourth platoon, which was just reaching the same line, and gave them the same instructions. Then it was time for a final talk with the platoon sergeants.
“This is where the fun starts,” Weil Jorgen commented.
“It shouldn’t be too bad,” Lon replied. “The local militia’s geared to looking for trouble from inside the city, not coming out of the jungle. As long as we don’t make mistakes, there shouldn’t be much danger of them spotting us until we’re within a block or two of our objective, if then.” As long as we don’t set off a thousand dogs barking, he thought. One of the tidbits of information they had about Singaraja was that there were twelve thousand dogs in the city. The original colonists, the ones who had come to find medicinal plants in the jungle, had brought dogs to help sniff out the plants that were most valuable, and the canine population had increased since.
“I wouldn’t count on any of that, Lieutenant,” Ivar said. “These local lads have had good training, and they know that something is coming.”
“Let’s just do our job,” Lon said. “We’ll cross into the city the way we planned. One squad from each platoon across the open space first. Then two squads. Then the rear guard. Once we’re all on the city side, we move toward the objectives. And even though the timing is critical, I want the same care we’d take anywhere. If we run into trouble before we reach our objectives, it could throw the timing too far out to recover.”
“We’re ready,” Ivar said. Weil grunted his agreement.
“Okay, let’s go,” Lon said.
The strip of dense growth at the edge of the rain forest was nowhere thicker than thirty yards. Within that narrow belt, conditions could be chaotic, and difficult for anything larger than a rodent to find a way through. But there were a few spots. Alpha Company had scouted the verge carefully. Beyond that thicket was a hundred yards of flat, cleared land. Automated equipment tended the barrier, mowing the grasses that had been planted to serve as the first obstacle to the jungle. Beyond that, a plascrete roadway served as a more solid barricade. And, finally, there were the gardens and yards of private homes, then several commercial buildings before the area where Government House and the communications hub for Singaraja and all of New Bali stood.
When his platoons were ready to move through the border of the rain forest, Lon went forward to join third platoon’s point squad to have a look for himself. He switched his faceplate to full magnification and slowly scanned the open area from left to right. After two minutes, he was certain that there was nothing moving within visual range. Singaraja was quiet. There was some light. The capital of New Bali boasted streetlights and a scattering of neon signs in the business district. Along the edge of the city, some of the houses showed outside lights.
“Move it,” Lon said over the radio channel that connected him to all of the squad leaders and both platoon sergeants.
As two point squads started to cross the open field, two more squads from each platoon moved through the dense border of the jungle to cover them. The last squads remained on the forest side of the dense growth, against the minimal chance of attack from the rear. The point squads spread out into broad skirmish lines, jogging across the open fields, bent low. In the dark, against the backdrop of the rain forest and the green wall of its border, they would be virtually invisible to any watcher without the assistance of night-vision helmets or goggles.
As soon as the squad leaders reported that they were in position and had seen no indication of defenders, Lon ordered the next squads across, and the rearguard squads moved through the tangle to the city side, ready to follow. Lon and Weil moved with the middle squads. Ivar stayed behind to move with the rear guard.
Normally, running a hundred yards in full battle kit would have been only moderately taxing for Lon. In training, back on Dirigent, the men of the DMC—including all officers—regularly ran carrying the forty to sixty pounds of equipment they would have in a combat situation. But the temperature and humidity, added to the tension of going into action, made the crossing almost difficult for Lon. He felt himself gasping for breath before he reached the strip of black plascrete that marked the halfway point between jungle and the first houses.
Lon gave himself one short stop by moving to the side and watching as the rest of his men moved past. Then he started jogging again, staying close. There was no real chance to rest even when he flopped on the ground behind the skirmish line his men formed when they completed the crossing. He had to watch for the rearguard squads to cross, and get point squads moving through the residential strip that stood between them and the commercial and governmental district of Singaraja.
He conferred with his noncoms on the radio. No alarms had been sounded. Not even a single dog had started barking at their proximity. Two minutes, Lon told himself. We all need that much of a break to catch our breath. He glanced at the timeline on his helmet display, knowing that he could not afford more than two minutes. He could not be certain that there would be no delays later. Lon went over the routes that his men were to take to their targets. Although the two buildings were close together, his platoons would remain separated throughout the rest of the journey—a safety measure, to minimize the chance of total disaster if they were discovered. Two routes—one squad in front of each platoon and another trailing behind—would also minimize the few slight sounds that might be unavoidable.
“Move out,” he told the platoon sergeants when the two minutes were over.
For a few minutes, they would still have the cover of full darkness, following back lanes, separated from the nearest houses by gardens and back yards, far from porch lights, and farther from the first streetlights. There was no running now. The men moved at a slow walk, five yards between each of them. Everyone kept eyes open and weapons at the ready. An ambush by the New Bali militia was not out of the question. And if first and second platoons ran into trouble, the locals might quickly move to block Lon’s platoons as well.
Lon had the external audio pickups on his helmet at maximum gain, and he strained to hear any possible threat—as if intense concentration might extend the reach of his hearing. One dog started barking in the distance, too far away for the baying to be the result of Lon’s men moving. Almost at once, several other dogs started to answer the call of the first. Most of the ruckus seemed to be off to the north, away from any of the Dirigenters.
“Halt!” Lon ordered over his all-hands channel. “Let’s give the mutts a chance to settle down before any of them close by start yowling.” Lon listened to the scattering of dogs barking against the silence of the night. Gradually, over a period of several minutes, they quieted down.
“Okay, let’s get going again,” Lon said once he thought that the remaining disturbance was far enough away that it was unlikely to be picked up by dogs closer in.
Five minutes later, he had a call from Tebba Girana, whose squad had the point for third platoon. “We’re at the first checkpoint, Lieutenant,” Girana reported. “The food warehouse is across the street from us. Lights half a block on either side. The alley next to the building is dark.”
“Wait where you are until fourth is in position. I want both point squads to cross at the same time,” Lon said.
With an entire world available, the people of New Bali had chosen to make their cities almost as crowded as they would have been back on Earth. Although streets and alleys were broad, buildings pressed in against them. Where the New Balinese could have allowed acres of open space around each commercial or governmental building, they had instead lined them up next to each other along the streets. Instead of dozens—or even scores—of small green oases in the commercial zone of the city, there were only two large parks set aside, at opposite ends, nearly a mile apart. Government House and the central communications building bordered one of those parks.
It was 0349 hours when fourth platoon’s point squad reported that they were in position—two blocks from Tebba facing the same street. Lon acknowledged the report, then switched channels to talk to his platoon sergeants.
“We’ve got twenty-four minutes, and there’s still a fair distance to travel. Barring trouble, we start moving and keep going until we’re in position around our objectives.” As soon as Dendrow and Jorgen responded to that, Lon said, “Move ’em out.”
Awareness of the heat and humidity had slipped away from Lon. Once he was moving again, inside the city, closing on the two buildings that his platoons were to take, he was too tightly focused on the mission to worry about anything so trivial as personal discomfort. He was still new enough as an officer that he found it difficult not to try to do everything himself, keep track of every single man and watch every degree of the terrain around them. He could, at need, check on the vital signs of all of his men—pulse, respiration, and body temperature. He could monitor all radio traffic within the platoons. The temptation was there, but there was no way that one man could do everything—not with even moderate success. He did keep his eyes moving, scanning ahead and behind as well as to both sides, and he tried to listen to the environment rather than to intrasquad talk.
He had a mild adrenaline rush as he crossed the street into the alley next to the food warehouse with half of third platoon. But there were no alarms, and in seconds the men were across, split into two columns to walk down the sides of the alley.
At the next intersection, the point squad was waiting. That was the second checkpoint. From the shadows at the mouth of the alley, Lon could see Government House.
It was not particularly large, barely half the size of the analogous building on Dirigent—a structure that served both as the seat of government for the world and also as headquarters for the Dirigent Mercenary Corps. New Bali’s Government House was only two stories high, shaped like a letter E. The long side faced the mercenaries, and the smaller strokes were wings aimed toward the park beyond. The building was two hundred feet long across the front. The width was eighty feet. There were streetlights at each corner, lights over each of the three entrances that Lon could see, and lights on in several windows.
No police or militiamen were posted outside the building. There would be, at a minimum, guards inside each entrance, although only one of those doors was left unlocked at night, and there might be two or three roving guards inside—a total of no more than eight security officers. If the intelligence was right and the New Balinese had made no changes.
The number of workers in the building at night was uncertain. It should be small—New Bali was not large enough to require extensive round-the-clock staffing of Government House—consisting of one mid-level official, perhaps a few clerks, and the maintenance and cleaning staff. The estimate was between six and twenty.
The communications building would be an even simpler affair. Two people ran the operation at night, and there would be one guard, and perhaps one person to run the cleaning machines.
“Oh-four-oh-five,” Lon whispered on his connection to his platoon sergeants. “You both know the drill here. Get the men in position.”
Lon would go into Government House seconds behind the squad that was assigned the main entrance, along with one other squad. Fire teams, each half a squad, would force the other entrances to Government House and neutralize the guards there. Once the doors were secured, the rest of the building would be searched quickly to find the rest of the people on duty. If everything went perfectly, there would be no need for shooting. If …
All that Lon could do for the next few minutes was watch, his tension increasing almost with every second. This was when the chance of discovery was greatest. A civilian driving through might spot armed men scurrying toward the objectives and raise the alarm. A police patrol might happen by. A guard might step outside for a breath of air. Anything.
If surprise was lost, the operation might be lost as well.
No screw-ups, please! Lon thought. He wanted everything to go perfectly. Two hundred men attempting to usurp control of an entire world seemed almost insanely audacious, but Lon had put worries about the sanity of the exercise behind him. It was possible. It had been done on other worlds.
One by one, the fire teams reported that they were in position, close to the objectives. By 0410 hours, everyone was set. Lon moved closer with the last squad, crossing two streets and moving into the shadows on the lawn in front of Government House. The men went prone, half of them facing the building, the others facing the streets. Lon reported to Captain Orlis that third and fourth platoons were ready to move in, and that there was no sign that they had been detected.
“Good job, Nolan,” Orlis replied. “Wait for my command. Everyone moves at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
Time showed its own insanity for Lon then. The seconds dragged like hours, waiting for the order, but when Orlis’s order did come, it felt as if no time at all had passed.
“Go” was all the captain said. Lon repeated the order on a channel that connected him to all his sergeants and corporals. Then he got to his feet with the men of the final squad, and they moved toward the main entrance to Government House as third platoon’s first squad burst through the doorway to take the guard there by surprise.
For the first six seconds, Lon thought that luck would hold and that the two buildings would be taken silently, but before he reached the main entrance, he heard several gunshots off to his left, apparently from the door near that end of the building.
“What was that?” he demanded on the channel that connected him to third squad’s leader, Ben Frehr.
“The guard here spotted us coming in,” Corporal Frehr reported. “It’s okay, Lieutenant. We’ve got the situation under control now. No casualties.”
“What about the guard?” Lon demanded.
There seemed to be restrained amusement in Frehr’s voice. “He’ll live.”
Gunshots meant that the element of surprise ended a few seconds two soon. Two roaming guards within the building had time to report the sounds, and they were ready when third platoon found them. They did not resist, but they had had time to spread the warning.
“We’ve got Government House and the communications center secure, Captain,” Lon reported at 0420. “The guards inside here had time to raise the alarm, though.”
“We expected that, Nolan,” Orlis replied. “No matter. We’ve got the militia barracks and police headquarters surrounded. We’re negotiating for their surrender. They’re in no position to resist, and they know it.”
“Then we contact the governor?”
“Or he contacts us,” Orlis replied. “It shouldn’t be long. I expect we’ll have a final resolution within an hour or so. Set your defensive positions and wait.”
Wait, Lon thought with distaste after he had given his orders and moved up to the second floor of the building. He had sentries posted there, high enough to have a wider view of the area surrounding Government House. Ninety-nine percent of what we do is wait.
At 0447, Captain Orlis told Lon that the militia were stalling, refusing to capitulate. The police station had surrendered, but there had been only six officers inside—not the twenty to thirty that the Dirigenters had expected.
“Sounds like something might be up,” Lon suggested.
“If so, we’ll find out soon enough,” Orlis said. “I’ve given the militia a deadline—oh-five-hundred. I told them if they haven’t surrendered by then, we destroy the barracks with them inside.”
“I want everyone alert,” Lon told his noncoms. “The locals might have something up their sleeves. Except for the men watching the prisoners, I want every eye looking for activity outside. And keep the men down. I don’t want anybody where a sniper could take them out.”
Wait!
At 0501, Lon heard the dull crump-thump of two explosive charges going off in the distance. The militia didn’t surrender, he thought. He felt a tightening in his stomach. There might have been as many as three hundred men in the barracks compound, twenty percent of the world’s entire militia force.
“Foolish heroics,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Stupid way to waste people.”
Five minutes later, Captain Orlis had news. “We went in. There was only a single platoon of militia in the barracks—thirty-five men. Watch for trouble. The rest must be somewhere in the city.”
Lon’s stomach growled nervously. Most of the militia missing from where they were supposed to be. The same for the police. They knew something was up, he thought. Then: Where are they?
He alerted his noncoms. And sweated. Government House was efficiently air-conditioned, but sweat came to Lon anyway. He prowled the second floor, going from room to room, standing in the dark at the side of windows, looking out, searching for any hint of approaching soldiers. They’ll come, sooner or later, he thought—he knew.
It did not take much for his thoughts to move to We can’t hold. Surprise was all we had going. We had to take all of the local forces available in the city at once. We didn’t do it.
The waiting was different now. He knew what had to come. When a loudspeaker came to life outside, just minutes after five-thirty, as the sun was beginning to brighten the eastern horizon, Lon was not surprised. He had been expecting it.
“You, in Government House,” a metallic-tinged voice said, amplified far beyond necessity. “Lay down your weapons and come out. We have you surrounded and out-numbered.”
Lon immediately called Captain Orlis and reported. “What do we do?” he asked.
Orlis did not hesitate. He had just received a similar message. “Surrender, Nolan. It’s all we can do.”