7
“It doesn’t make sense, Captain,” Lon said with some heat. “It just doesn’t make sense.” He pointed at the complink monitor in Orlis’s cabin. “Belletiene has pulled more men from the seacoast and sent them to the mining region. If the numbers we’re getting are right, they’ve split their force almost right down the middle now.”
Orlis shrugged. “Don’t get so lathered up, Nolan. If they want to make things easier for us, let them. Don’t ask me to make excuses for them.”
“They have to know we’re here,” Lon said. The transports were less than thirty minutes from being in position to launch shuttles, nearly sunset in Oceanview. The cruisers were pushing in faster, heading for a confrontation with the Belletiener troopships, which were armed with rockets and both energy and projectile guns. There was no sign of the aerospacecraft carrier. The estimate was that it had gone home. Belletiene had no cruisers or anything else over Calypso, and there was no sign of traffic along the route between the two worlds, which were currently about 80 million miles apart. “You’d think they’d be massing to meet us.”
Orlis sighed. There were things he would rather be doing, but educating junior officers was part of the job. “There are good reasons for dispersing troops when faced with attack from space. And it’s almost always beneficial to do the unexpected. If Belletiene’s moves confuse Colonel Gaffney and CIC the way they have you, that’s justification enough, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Lon conceded reluctantly.
“According to the record of the campaign Belletiene has waged up to now, there’s no reason to suspect that their commander on Calypso is incompetent,” Orlis said. “They appear to have done a creditable job so far. And—assuming that they have decent intelligence about our fleet—it would make sense for the Belletiener commander to use his shuttles before we can interdict air travel for them, get all his people where he thinks they’ll do the most good, or be in the least jeopardy.”
“But …” Lon started, then stopped. He shook his head, a gesture aimed more at himself than at the captain.
“Don’t worry about it,” Orlis said. “You’re just upset because this makes all your wargaming for the contract obsolete.” That was a guess, but from the startled look that flashed onto Lon’s face, the captain knew that he had struck the primer. He held up a hand to stop whatever Lon was about to say. “I know. We all do it. I just hope you got your share of sleep this afternoon. If we go in tonight, hard telling when you’ll get a chance to get any real sleep next.”
“I got what sleep I could,” Lon said, his tone almost pouting. Altogether, Lon doubted that he had managed two hours of sleep during the past ten. But he was not tired, not sleepy. His mind was wired, thinking ahead to the landing and the combat that might come almost immediately after that.
“Too late to get any more,” Orlis said, glancing at the clock. “We ought to be getting an assault plan from regiment any minute now.”
“I hope so,” Lon said, half under his breath.
“Look, I’ve seen contracts where we didn’t get any plan until we were in the shuttles, and even then it was nearly obsolete before we landed. We had to start improvising within five minutes after grounding. You can’t count on the enemy doing what you expect. If you do, you’re in serious trouble.”
“Yes, sir,” Lon said. “It’s just so frustrating.”
“Goes with the territory, Nolan.”
Lon left the captain’s cabin and went back to his own. There was no room to pace in the tiny stateroom, which was what Lon felt like doing, but he did not want to start walking up and down one of the passageways where he might be seen by enlisted men. Officers were supposed to remain unflappable. Any sign of nervousness might infect the lower ranks. In the troop compartments, things would not be so tense. It seemed that every squad had at least one man who had some way to ground the static of worry among his mates. In Girana’s squad, the lightning rod was usually Phip, with his unending wisecracks and sometimes sardonic observations, often aided and abetted by Janno and Dean. There were times when their antics could distract the entire platoon.
“Relax, dummy,” Lon told himself. “Don’t get so keyed up.” Don’t use all of the adrenaline before you get down where you might need it. He sat on the edge of his bunk, then lay down. He tried breathing exercises to relax. To some extent it did work, but not as much as it might have if he was not also trying to listen for the first note of a signal from the complink that an action plan had come through—or orders to muster the men and start moving to the shuttles.
After a few minutes Lon started working through the latest troop movements and dispositions on the surface—the last he had seen before his excursion to Captain Orlis’s room. New positions, new possibilities. Take out one or the other of the enemy concentrations, he thought. It’s almost a toss-up which to attack first. He needed only a few seconds to proceed from that to On balance, I guess I’d concentrate on the enemy force threatening the capital and the cities on the coast. Once they ‘re neutralized, there’s plenty of time to see to the rest.
He did not fall asleep. Most of the time his eyes remained open, though he was really not seeing the ceiling. He did lose awareness of passing time, as if his mind had created a Q-space bubble around him, making time almost irrelevant. He was thinking about the possibilities, where he might land the troops if he were in command, how they would put the enemy in an unfavorable position and then move in. Lon focused on that, and found nearly as much relaxation in his musings as he might have in sleep.
… Until his reverie was interrupted by a worried What time is it? He was so startled by the sudden realization that time had passed that he almost levitated from his bunk. He turned toward the complink monitor and the timeline across the top.
Twenty hundred hours.
Lon got to his feet, fighting back the thought It can’t be. By twenty hundred, they should have had orders at least, if they were not already en route. Lon moved to the complink and keyed in the self-test programs—a useless gesture, because even if the set, or the entire net, had been out of order, he would have heard. Someone would have come to the door to fetch him, or to tell him that they had their action plan.
The complink ran its tests without complaint and announced that everything was functioning properly. Lon barely glanced at the screen. He started toward the door, ready—without thinking through the decision—to run down the passageway to Captain Orlis’s room to ask what the problem was. He had his hand on the door handle before thought caught up with instinct. You’ll just look like a fool, he told himself. Again.
Think, dummy. He took a deep breath, then released the door handle and returned to the complink. He keyed in a search for late additions to the files on the coming operation. New intelligence had been added about the latest movements on the ground, and a report that the Belletiener troopships were accelerating toward home, fleeing from the Dirigenter cruisers, but there was no new analysis from CIC—and no action plan.
I can’t just sit here and twiddle my thumbs, Lon thought. I could go to the mess hall and get a cup of coffee. Maybe check with Ivar and Weil to see how the men are bearing up. It would use up some time. There was also a chance that he would run into Captain Orlis or one of the other officers. They could chat. I’ll just have to act calm, Lon thought. I can do that.
Nearly half of the battalion’s officers were in the officers’ mess, drinking coffee, tea, or soft drinks and chatting. Some turned to look when Lon opened the door. There was a quick subsidence in the level of conversation as men waited to learn if he might be the messenger who would tell them that orders had finally come. When he headed directly for the drink caddy at the end of the serving line, the conversations resumed.
Carl Hoper was sitting alone at one of the tables. Lon joined him once he had his coffee. “I guess I’m not the only one getting a little antsy,” Lon said sotto voce.
Carl grinned. “I don’t know about the rest of these people, but I just got tired of being by myself.”
Lon grinned back. “Yeah, me too. It was either come up here or go bother the men.”
“Matt came but only stayed for about two minutes, long enough to drink half a cup of coffee. Said he was working the kinks out.”
“You suppose someone forgot to wake Colonel Gaffney from his afternoon nap?” Lon asked, looking to see that no one was close enough to overhear. Gaffney was a popular commander.
“You’re the third one to ask me that in half an hour,” Carl replied. “It’s the joke of the day.”
“It’s not just me, is it?” Lon asked. “I mean, this is unusual, this stooging around waiting for some sort of plan?”
“It’s unusual,” Carl agreed. “Not unheard of, but not something you expect to run into. And, no, I don’t know why. Hell, maybe the Calypsans want to renegotiate the contract. Strange as it may seem, that has happened before, other places. They get to thinking that maybe they can dicker the price down a little once we’re on the spot.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Look up the Dinwaith contract when you get the time. Seven or eight years ago, I think it was. Our Fourth Battalion waited overhead for nine hours while the governor of Dinwaith tried to talk down the fee. That wasn’t the first time. It’s just the one that comes to mind.” Carl got up to get another cup of coffee. Lon took a couple of long drinks of his, then went to the machine as well to refill it.
“I think I’ll get a couple of doughnuts or something,” Carl said. “Once we do get moving, hard telling how long it’ll be before we get a shot at halfway decent chow again.”
Lon was not especially hungry. He had eaten to capacity at supper, five hours earlier, and that was still sitting firmly in his stomach. But he took a doughnut for himself—something to nibble at to help fill the remaining waiting. Besides, Carl was right about one thing. Once they went into action, it might be a long time before they had anything but packaged battle rations to eat, and although those were nourishing, they were not noted for being tasty or filling.
It was past 2100 hours before the loudspeakers said, “All officers of Second Battalion will report to the officers’ mess immediately.” Several more officers had drifted into the mess before the announcement. Few had left.
Lon and Carl stared at each other.
“Now we find out,” Carl said.
Lon nodded. “At last.” He looked around, not actually counting noses, but checking. “Not too many people missing, other than the colonel and his staff.”
“I think I’ll get another cup of coffee before the briefing starts,” Carl said. As he stood, he added, “Assuming that this is going to be a briefing and not just another ‘Well, we still don’t know what we’re going to do, but soon now’ sort of excuse, or—worse yet—news that the contract has been canceled and we’re going home.”
“It can’t be that,” Lon said.
“I hope not” was Carl’s less than optimistic reply.
The remaining officers started arriving within seconds of the end of the announcement over the public address system. Inside four minutes, every officer in the battalion was present but its commander and the executive officer. Matt Orlis joined his lieutenants after getting coffee.
“I hope you two haven’t had so much of that go-juice that you won’t be able to sleep if the orders are that we don’t go in until just before dawn,” Orlis said as he sat.
“You think that’s likely?” Hoper asked.
Orlis shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t suppose our mere presence overhead is going to be enough to make the Belletieners suddenly surrender, but …”
He did not finish the thought, because the door opened and Lieutenant Colonel Flowers strode into the room followed by Major Black and Battalion Lead Sergeant Zal Osier. They went straight to the head table. The two senior officers sat. Sergeant Osier remained standing behind them. The company commanders and platoon leaders—those who had been standing when the commander entered—hurried to find seats.
“Gentlemen,” Flowers said in his usual soft voice, “we have our orders.” He did not have to speak loudly. There was not another sound in the room.
“The rest of the regiment will be boarding their shuttles within the next thirty minutes.”
Don’t tell me we’re going to be held in reserve! Lon thought during the brief pause the colonel left after that statement. There were a few sounds in the room in that gap, small noises—murmurs and involuntary movements, feet shuffling.
“Our turn will come soon enough,” the colonel added, looking around. “Here are the basics. The other battalions will land close enough to engage the Belletiener forces in the mining region. CIC estimates that the enemy will attempt to shift more men to deal with that threat. If they attempt to use the shuttles they have on the ground to move those men, our Shrike fighters will have a crack at them—which could save us some work. In any case, the landing of our main force in the west should provide some stress for the enemy commanders, and maybe even a little confusion. Those landings will be accompanied by fighter cover, with our pilots striking at enemy positions. Then, at oh-three-hundred hours, we will board our shuttles to land near Oceanview just before first light there.
“This might be tricky. Just after sunset this evening, Belletiener soldiers reached the outskirts of the capital. Calypso is contesting their advance, holding them to a very slow pace, but how long they can continue that successful resistance is open to question. We will come down on the right flank of the Belletiener force—which will outnumber us about three to two.
“The immediate objective for Second Battalion is to get between the invaders and the government of Calypso. We will operate as a separate force, but we will be in close cooperation with the Calypsan army, coordinating our moves with the local commander. Remember, the Calypsans have shown their abilities. Many of them were trained by our people, and those who weren’t were still trained by those who had. They are a serious military force, not haphazard militia.
“When you get back to your rooms, you will find more detailed briefing information on your complinks. Get with your noncoms. Give them the word and let them pass it on to the men. I won’t pretend that the plan we have is comprehensive. Everything after the actual landings is up in the air, depending on the conditions that prevail then. CIC has scores of scenarios ready to act upon, depending on how Belletiene responds to our grounding and the outcome of the early fighting.”
Flowers paused again, but only briefly. “I’m not going to ask for questions now. “We’ll try to deal with any of those later, when we’re ready to head for the boats—after you’ve all had time to read through what CIC has provided. By the time we get ready to leave, we should have some idea how the Belletieners are reacting to the rest of the regiment.” He stood and the rest of the officers immediately followed suit.
“Once you’ve briefed your noncoms, try to get at least a couple of hours of sleep, and that goes for your men as well. Reveille will be at oh-one-forty-five hours, followed by a quick breakfast. For now, gentlemen, let me just add, good luck, and may God go with us all.” Flowers, Black. and Osier left immediately. The rest of the officers were slower to depart, but there was still not much of a delay, just long enough for men to express their reactions to the news.
“This doesn’t even come close to any of the possibilities I saw,” Lon said. “And if I had thought of it, I probably would have dismissed it without a second thought.”
Captain Orlis’s short laugh was almost a bark. “Let’s just hope that the enemy is as much in the dark as you were, Nolan. Now, let’s tell the men what’s up. And, you two, if you’ve got too much coffee in you to sleep naturally, use patches. I want you as fresh as possible when reveille comes.”