4
It was 0745 hours the next morning when Lon’s complink buzzed to alert him to an incoming call. He was sitting on his bunk buffing the shine on his dress shoes. He got up, crossed to the entertainment unit, and touched the “Accept” button. “Lieutenant Nolan,” he said.
“Sir, this is Corporal Vajerian at battalion headquarters. Captain Orlis asked me to call to make sure you remembered the officers’ call at oh-nine-hundred.”
To make sure I was awake and sober, fit for duty, Lon thought. “I remember, Corporal. Thank you for calling.”
There was no excuse for being drunk or hung over on duty. Killjoy-patches could get the alcohol out of the system, and an analgesic could get rid of any headache. Lon had no idea how many patches he had used the night before, but he had wakened at the first call from his alarm, in plenty of time to shower and make himself presentable. He had, however, elected to skip breakfast despite grumblings from his stomach. I’ll get a snack out of one of the machines before we go to the briefing, he had promised himself. He was to meet Captain Orlis and Lieutenant Hoper in the orderly room, the company office, thirty minutes before the briefing.
There was no one up and about in the hallway when Lon left his room. He did not bother to look into any of the squad rooms. The men were off duty. They did not need, or deserve, to have him popping in to disturb their rest. In any case, he doubted if half of the men would even be around, and most of those would be sleeping off the night’s celebrations … and resting up for one more round.
He stopped in the dayroom to get coffee and doughnuts from the food service machines. He ate one doughnut and sipped enough coffee to make transporting it simpler, then took the stairs down to the orderly room. It was empty. There was not even a CQ—Charge of Quarters—on duty. The company’s communications links were remoted to battalion headquarters. Lon sat at one of the two desks in the outer office to finish his makeshift breakfast while he waited for the other men. Captain Orlis arrived just seconds before the scheduled rendezvous time, and Lieutenant Hoper was actually almost a minute late.
“Sorry, Captain,” Carl Hoper said as he entered the orderly room and saw the others. “I stopped to get coffee.” He gestured with the cup.
“Close enough,” Matt Orlis said in a tired voice. “I almost didn’t make it on time myself.” Orlis was married and lived in the officers’ housing district on base, about twenty minutes by floater—ground-effect vehicle—from the barracks. “We’ve got plenty of time before the briefing.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Hoper said. “From the little that Colonel Flowers told us, this could be one hairy contract.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Orlis said with an economical nod. “In the middle of a war between neighboring worlds. That means at least one is space-capable on its own. The soldiers are likely to be at least arguably professional as well.”
“A real war?” Lon asked.
Orlis grunted. “They’re all real,” he said—mildly, without reproof, “but this one could be worse than most of the contracts we see. It depends on just what resources Calypso and Belletiene have available.”
“We should have some idea before long,” Hoper said, glancing at the clock.
“Before I forget,” the captain said. “I’m going to want both of you here and passably fit when oh-three-hundred rolls around in the morning. We may have to chase down anyone who’s late getting in. I don’t want to take the slightest chance of having anyone miss transport tomorrow.”
Hoper and Nolan both nodded. Discipline was not a serious problem in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps, but things could happen, and missing transport heading out on contract was a certain route to dismissal from the Corps.
“I’ll be here myself, along with Sergeant Ziegler.” Jim Ziegler was the company lead sergeant. “If you happen to see your platoon sergeants anytime today, let them know.” Orlis shrugged. “You’ve both got good platoon sergeants. They’re probably ahead of all of us on this.”
“Aren’t they always?” Carl Hoper asked.
The commanders of the other companies in 2nd Battalion had already been through a regimental mission briefing, along with the battalion commanders and staff officers. That had been held before Alpha Company returned from New Bali. But the company commanders were all present, along with their junior officers, for the battalion briefing. By five minutes before nine o’clock, all of the officers from the battalion’s four line companies were seated in the briefing room. There were complink monitors in front of each of them, and a large monitor at the head of the room, on the wall behind where Lieutenant Colonel Flowers would stand to deliver the briefing. Flowers and his executive officer, Major Hiram Black, came in precisely at 0900 hours, followed by Battalion Lead Sergeant Zal Osier, who would operate the controls of the complink during the briefing. Osier was the only enlisted man in the room.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Flowers said, glancing around the room. There were no military formalities about a contract briefing. This was business. “Let’s get straight to work.”
The complink monitors came to life with a three-dimensional chart of a solar system. “We’ll get the geography out of the way first,” Flowers said. “We have an unusual physical setup here, one of the rare instances of two inhabited worlds in the same system. Both are well within the parameters for colonization. Calypso is closer to their sun. Each world has a population of more than three million, with Belletiene slightly more populous.
“Our client is the government of Calypso. They have reason to fear that Belletiene is on the verge of invading. There have been ultimatums and propaganda claims and charges. Relationships between the worlds have been difficult for more than a century, and the tension has increased markedly in the last decade.
“It is only within those ten years that Calypso has started to build an army, something more than the usual colonial militia. Six years ago, a detachment from our 3rd Regiment spent half a year training that army, and setting up a local training protocol for the Calypsans. They have also purchased much of their military stores from Dirigent. That means that we will be working with troops who know how we operate, who have had training designed by us, and who use weapons that come from here.
“That’s the good news. The bad news is, first, that the Calypsans have no space defenses worth mentioning, nothing more than a few interceptor rockets of questionable design, vintage, and manufacture. Their atmospheric defenses are almost as primitive—one squadron of fighter aircraft that were obsolete when they were designed two hundred years ago. Second, Belletiene is capable of transporting its soldiery to Calypso, and has a fleet large enough to put the equivalent of two of our regiments on the ground at once, with the naval power to protect their transports and fighter craft that can operate from orbiting carriers to cover the landings and attack targets on the ground. Their capacity in that regard is not large, but apparently sufficient for their purposes. It’s been a long time since we faced an enemy with the potential of Belletiene, but we are not going in unprepared. Besides Seventh Regiment, the General is dispatching a four-ship task force to provide cover for us and the Calypsans—three cruisers and a fighter platform.”
Colonel Flowers took a long pause, looking around the room. “As I said, the Calypsan government has reason to believe that invasion is imminent. Since Belletiene does not have to make any Q-space transits to reach Calypso, it is possible that the invasion will have taken place before we get there. If that is the case, we will dispatch a message rocket back here and a second regiment, or more if that seems necessary, will be dispatched to reinforce us. But, if at all possible, we will go in immediately.” He paused again. “If that is the case, we will face at least thirty days of combat before our reinforcements can arrive, with only such resources as we bring with us, and what survives of the Calypsan military.”
The briefing continued for another two hours. Colonel Flowers, spelled occasionally by Major Black, gave information about the number of troops that Calypso had, the geographical situation and conditions on the world, likely centers of conflict, economic details, and so forth.
“We will start moving the regiment up to the transports at noon tomorrow,” Flowers said eventually. “That should be completed by twenty hundred hours, and the fleet will start moving out-system shortly after that. Questions?”
There were none at the moment. Everything that the colonel had said, and much more information, would be available to the officers through their complinks. And there would be plenty of time in the next two weeks—during the voyage to Calypso—for questions and discussions. The officers were dismissed.
“Captain,” Lon said after they were outside the building, “I’ve got an untouched bottle of green djorja from New Bali back in my room. The stronger variety. I think now would be a fine time to open it.” He nodded toward Carl Hoper. “I think all three of us could use a quick belt.”
Orlis grinned. “I don’t usually drink during the day, but this does seem like the time for an exception. We are off duty.”
“I know I could use a bracer,” Hoper said. “Green djorja? How many colors do they make it in?”
“Just the two, I think,” Lon said.
“We’ll have to hold it to one drink,” Orlis said. “That stuff needs food to make it safe.”
No one from Lon’s platoons missed the deadline for returning to barracks. Janno Belzer was the last man to check in, and even he made it with a half hour to spare.
Lon had returned several hours earlier, sober enough to work. He had sat in his office and gone through the entire data file for the Calypso contract—all the information that the DMC had, both from the client and from its own databases. The latter was unusually extensive because of the prior contract. Since the government of Calypso had seen Belletiene as its primary—or only—potential enemy then, the Corps had gathered additional information about that world. The file on Calypso included video and hundreds of still photographs, two-and three-dimensional, showing the areas of the world that the mercenaries had visited while there to train the colony’s new army.
We’re not flying blind this time, Lon thought. We know we have a lot of reliable information. That was not always the case. Often, the Corps had little more than what the client was willing to provide, and some clients concealed pertinent, even vital, information from the mercenaries they were hiring. The consequences could be disastrous.
“Another tropical paradise,” Lon said softly, shaking his head. Beaches and ocean, people running around in minimal clothing. Bright sunlight in cloudless skies. He keyed a query to find climatological information. It was somewhat reassuring. Calypso should not be as uncomfortable as New Bali. The primary centers of population were more subtropical than tropical, and edged into the world’s southern temperate zone. The world’s capital and largest cities were on the seacoast, and there were—according to the data gathered by the first Dirigenters to spend time on the world—prevailing breezes off the ocean that kept those cities relatively cool even during the hottest months of the year. The highest temperature they had recorded during the training contract was twenty degrees below the average highs that Lon’s company had endured on New Bali.
Livable, Lon thought. Maybe not as bad as Dirigent City during August. Except for the chance of getting killed in combat. Lon logged out of the database and keyed the complink to standby mode.