Officer-Cadet Read online

  3

  There were fresh rumors every day. New contracts were in the offing. Whenever soldiers got together with nothing more important to occupy their minds, the rumors flowed. It was not just privates who relished the unfounded gossip. Lon heard the same thing, less often and in more subdued form, from noncoms and even between Lieutenant Taiters and Captain Orlis. Everyone was anxious to be heading out on a paying contract. The only protocol seemed to be that the gossiping was done only with one’s peers. Lon, because of his peculiar status as a cadet, heard it on every level.

  But for the next three weeks, each rumor proved baseless. There were no new contracts, and only two diplomats had arrived to conduct preliminary talks about the possibility of future employment for men of the DMC. Then …

  Lead Sergeant Jim Ziegler, the top enlisted man in Alpha Company, came into the mess hall while the men were at supper.

  “Listen up, I’ve got an announcement,” he said. “As of this minute, A Company is off-duty. You’ve got two days free. No training, no fatigue details, no duty until reveille Friday.”

  The cheers were almost deafening. Some of the men used silverware to beat against their serving trays several times.

  “All that for two days off?” Lon asked when the tumult started to fade.

  “You don’t understand!” Phip said, excited. “It means we’re going out. We’ve got a contract. We’re finally going to get a chance to make some contract pay.”

  During the two and a half days of freedom, Lon was spared even from tutelage. Captain Orlis and Lieutenant Taiters were gone the entire time. The company was under the command of Lieutenant Hoper, and even he was rarely in evidence. All of the married noncoms were gone as well. And many of the privates showed up only for sleep and food.

  “Aren’t we going to learn anything about the contract?” Lon asked Corporal Girana before Tebba left.

  “Time enough for that Friday, or on the trip out,” Girana said. “Don’t worry about it. Make good use of your free time. No telling how long we’ll be gone. With any luck, it might be next spring before we get back.” Summer was not quite over.

  Lon was the only member of his squad who remained in the barracks that first evening of freedom. Phip and Janno had come to tell him they were off and to suggest that he come along. “No, you guys go ahead,” he had said. “I may track you down later.”

  “Sooner or later we’ll get to the Dragon Lady,” Janno had added with a grin. “Come over there if you want. Give you a chance to meet Mary proper.”

  “I may not catch up with you tonight,” Lon said, not certain what Janno meant by “meet Mary proper.” Dirigenters might look at it differently, but he was not yet ready to have sex with a friend’s fiancée, even with his blessing.

  Lon ate in the mess hall, which was almost completely deserted. Of the entire company, fewer than thirty men—barely more than half a platoon—came in for supper. Sitting alone, Lon took more time than usual with his meal while he tried to decide what he would do with the evening and with his free time. After supper he went back to his barracks cubicle.

  I could still go out, he told himself. I don’t have to go to the Dragon Lady. But he still might run into Janno, Dean, and Phip, and if he did, they would insist on dragging him along for the rest of the evening.

  He spent a half hour working on a letter home. I guess I’ll send it out before we ship out, he decided. He had been writing on the same message chip since his arrival on Dirigent. The chip was not yet full, but … the time to send it seemed to be before heading out for combat. Mail was not particularly fast. It could not go by radio, since that was limited by the speed of light. A message home from Dirigent would not arrive for decades. Electronic data chips, physically mailed, were the only practical means of personal interstellar communication. It was expensive, especially when they had to be routed indirectly (there was no direct service between Earth and Dirigent), which was why Lon had decided early on to send one only when he had a chip filled. His parents had not heard from him since his layover at Over-Galapagos. And he had not heard from them.

  After he had said everything he could think of to say in the letter, Lon read for a while, then went to bed early. And in the night he dreamed—of combat … and fear.

  Like most of the worlds that had been settled by humans, Dirigent retained as much of the old as possible in reckoning time. The year was divided into the same days, weeks, and months, with the same names. But the year and the day were not precisely the same as on Earth. The day was seventeen minutes longer; to compensate, the Dirigentan “minute” and “second” were fractionally longer than their terran progenitors. There were only 363 and a fraction days in the Dirigentan year; so its twelve months each had thirty days, with a three-day (four in the leap year that came every six years) intercalary New Year holiday to make up the difference. But Dirigent only used that calendar for its own reckoning. It also kept track of the “standard” time and calendar common to most human worlds. Those all needed some common system to avoid hopeless confusion.

  The men of second battalion started to drift back in late Thursday evening, broke, exhausted, and—for the most part—quiet after the end of their unexpected holiday. “We can’t spend money in the field,” Phip had said earlier that day when Lon ran into his buddies in town. “And we’ll have pay coming when we get home, so there’s no reason not to blow it now.” Besides, there’s always a chance of not coming back, Phip had thought I’d hate to die knowing I hadn’t spent all of my money, hadn’t drunk every beer I could afford.

  No one went to sleep drunk that night. Those who came in inebriated took killjoy pills to sober up and prevent hangovers. If they were too far gone to think of it themselves, every man had buddies to make sure.

  Lon had posted his letter chip home that morning. That evening, when the barracks started to settle down, he started another letter home. This one would not go out until he returned to Dirigent … or until it was clear that he would not be coming back. He would take it along on the ship, work on it when he could, when he thought of something else to say to his parents or to the few other people who might want to hear from him.

  “The other guys in the squad are all veterans. They’ve been through this before, some a dozen times or more. They go out, drink, relax, and then come in and sleep—peacefully to all outward appearances. But this is new to me. I’m sober and … not at all certain that I’ll be able to sleep at all tonight, or during the couple of weeks it will take us to get wherever we’re going.” He spoke softly to his complink, knowing that it would pick up a whisper, wanting to avoid disturbing any of the others nearby—and wanting to avoid being overheard.

  But the time came when he ran out of things to say. He turned off the complink but continued to sit in front of it, staring, trying to avoid the uncertainties that surrounded him.

  It’s too soon to start worrying. I start now, by the time we get wherever we’re going, I’ll be a vegetable, or a raving lunatic. The trip out would take between fourteen and sixteen days. Any interstellar transit took that long, even between neighboring star systems. A ship would travel five days in normal space before making its first of three Q-space jumps, and there would be three more days in normal space after each jump, sometimes five after the last.

  You don’t even know what the contract is yet, he reminded himself. It might not be all that dangerous. It could be training, or a safari, or … anything else. He frowned, then got to his feet. There was not much room to pace in his cubicle, little more than the length of his bed, but he used all of that. If it’s not combat, it doesn’t count for getting me my pips. It takes combat to get a commission.

  Eventually, he slept.

  Not one man in the battalion missed reveille Friday morning. The manning reports were made. Lieutenant Colonel Medwin Flowers, the battalion commander, accepted them, then turned the men over to their company commanders.

  “Orders for the day,” Captain Orlis told A Company. “Spend the morn
ing at equipment maintenance. Get yourselves ready to leave. Immediately after lunch, we’ll have a contract briefing.” Before he dismissed the company, Orlis said, “Nolan, my office at 0800.”

  Such summonses were not unusual, but Lon suspected that this one was different. So did the men in his squad.

  “Looks like you’re going to get the lowdown before we do,” Dean Ericks said at breakfast.

  Lon shrugged. As long as the captain doesn’t tell me that I’m staying behind, that he doesn’t think I’m ready for combat. “Maybe he just wants to make sure that I haven’t wasted the last two days the way the rest of you did,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned.

  “We haven’t wasted anything,” Phip said. “We’ve done it all, gone the whole route and back again.”

  “Done it all, spent it all,” Janno contributed.

  The mood in the mess hall was light that morning. Nearly everyone seemed genuinely excited at the prospect of contract pay. For the veterans, it was too soon to worry about what the contract might entail. Once they knew what the job was, and once they were on the ship heading out, there would be time enough for worry—if it was appropriate. Until then, they would console themselves with thoughts of having their extra pay waiting when they got home.

  Lon ate steadily but slowly. He had little appetite. He had not slept well, and he was still worried. One way or the other, it’ll be good to have the first time over, he told himself, but it did not stop the nervous twisting in his stomach.

  He was spared too much attention from his squadmates. They were all so excited that they did not notice that he had withdrawn from the conversation. And, as soon as he could without drawing attention, Lon left. It was not nearly time for him to report to the captain, but he wanted time to himself.

  It was still ten minutes before eight o’clock when Lon went to the orderly room. Lead Sergeant Jim Ziegler was there already. “Captain’s waiting,” Ziegler said. “He said to send you right in as soon as you got here.”

  In the commander’s office, Lon did not have a chance to salute and report formally.

  “Skip the ritual, Nolan. Sit down, here.” Orlis pointed at the chair next to his desk. Lon sat. “Nervous?” The captain leaned back, staring directly at the cadet.

  “Yes, sir, you could say that,” Lon admitted.

  Orlis smiled. “I know that nothing I say will stop that, but I can at least tell you not to worry about worrying. Waiting for the first time is difficult for everyone. You know it’s coming—not as an abstraction but as a concrete thing finally—and you’re not sure what to expect, how all of your training will measure up to the real thing. Something like that?”

  Lon nodded. “I worry more about fouling up, doing something stupid, and getting people hurt or killed. That doesn’t give me a lot of time to worry about what might happen to me.”

  “Well, at least you’re worrying about the right things. But we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’re not just going to turn you loose to fend for yourself. That’s why we have the apprenticeship program. We don’t like to waste anything in the Corps, especially men. You have a lot of training behind you, on Earth and here. The Corps has an investment in you, hopefully a long-term capital investment. You do as you’re told and stick close to Girana, or whichever of the veterans you’re with, and you should do fine.”

  “I hope so, sir,” Lon said.

  Orlis nodded. “Now, I didn’t call you in just for a pep talk. We could have done that anytime during the next couple of weeks—and we probably will. The reason I wanted you here is that Colonel Flowers specifically said that you were to be included in the officers’ call this morning.”

  “The contract briefing?”

  Orlis nodded.

  Lon finally smiled. “One of the guys in the squad guessed that when you told me to report, said that I’d find out what was going on before the rest of them did.”

  “And the minute you get back, they’re all likely to grill you about it.”

  “I expect so, sir. Is it all secret, or can I tell them?”

  “I doubt that you’ll get much chance. The briefing is likely to take all morning. The colonel might even have the mess hall send our lunch over to battalion headquarters so we can continue right through it.” He grinned. “Even if it doesn’t run that long, I’ll see to it that you don’t have to worry about questioning long enough for it to be a problem. Not that it’s secret or anything—the men will find out right after lunch, or as soon as the briefing is over—it’s just that I don’t like to have anyone stealing my thunder.”

  “Yes, sir. Do you know where we’re going now, sir?”

  “Norbank is the name of the world, and that’s all I know, except that it’s a one-battalion contract. Colonel Flowers likes to keep his thunder too. We’ll find out soon enough.” He glanced at the clock. “Lieutenants Hoper and Taiters should be here in a minute, and then we’ll all head over to battalion HQ together. The officers’ call is scheduled for 0830.”

  The scheduled start for the conference might have been 0830, but every officer except the battalion commander and his executive officer was seated around the U-shaped table in the headquarters conference hall ten minutes early. There were drinks available, juice, coffee, tea, and water. Captain Orlis poured orange juice for himself. His two platoon leaders took coffee. Lon also took coffee. They talked softly. A half dozen complink monitors were on the table, on but showing only blank screens. On the wall behind the top of the U, a six-by-eight-foot wall monitor likewise waited, on but blank.

  Precisely at 0830 hours, the door next to the wall monitor opened. Lieutenant Colonel Medwin Flowers came in with Major Hiram Black, his executive officer, and Battalion Lead Sergeant Zal Osier close behind. No one yelled, “Attention!”—not for an officers’ contract briefing. Flowers went right to his position, a podium set to one side of the wall monitor. Major Black sat at one end of the U, near Flowers. Lead Sergeant Osier went to the other end of the room, to handle the complink program that was part of the briefing.

  “You all know the basic fact that we have a contract on the world of Norbank,” Colonel Flowers said, giving Osier time to get in position and key in the first video command. A global view of Norbank appeared on all of the monitors, a view from space, over the equator, showing the planet rotating, speeded up enough to show a complete rotation in a minute, then slowing down and finally coming to a stop over the region of interest.

  “The colony on Norbank has been there for just under a century,” Flowers continued. “The total human population is approximately two hundred thousand. Slightly less, actually, according to the information we have been given. The colony is still fairly basic, barely into second stage.” Roughly, colonies were categorized through four stages. Stage one was the early, primitive “first settlers” time, with colonists concerned with carving out homes and farms for themselves and surviving, then getting the basics of a local infrastructure in place. Stage two would see the beginning of cottage-scale industry, with colonists beginning to find things they could use in trade with other worlds, but still in need of more from outside than they could match in trade. Stage three saw growth and economic independence, larger factories, and more trade, the beginnings of urbanization. Stage four was the final, developed product, with the move from rural to urban centers accomplished. The classification was, however, vague and largely subjective.

  “Our contract is to put down a rebellion and to train a militia to keep the peace in the future. The rebels are from a second wave of colonists who arrived a generation after the initial settlers. The two groups have, according to our liaison with the planetary government, remained separate, and have, ah, gone their separate ways. The dissident group comprises about thirty percent of the total population, but the faction actively fighting the government is much smaller. Again, according to the information given to us by the contracting negotiator. These rebels are attempting to overthrow the majority government to impose their own ideas on the entire p
opulation.”

  Flowers paused and looked around the table at his officers, his gaze moving up one leg of the U, around the end, and back up the other side. “I don’t have to tell you that all of this information is tentative, based solely on what the contracting party has been willing to share.

  “The number of open combatants is supposedly under five hundred on the rebel side, and about the same number for the government, despite the greater population base the government can count on. The government’s soldiers are all volunteers. None of them are trained soldiers, though, on either side. If the information is anywhere near correct, we will have approximately a two-to-one advantage over the rebels without taking into account the loyalist forces on the ground, about three-to-one if we take them into account. But the rebels are almost certainly more highly motivated. That is usual in such cases. If they were not, they would be unable to mount a creditable threat. And even though the actual rebel combatants may number fewer than five hundred, they will probably have thousands of sympathizers willing to offer more or less help. And our arrival might help their recruiting.

  “The government does fear that it will not be able to put this rebellion down on its own, or they would not be contracting for our services. And, by the way, the contract allows one month to put down the rebellion and another two months to train the militia that the government intends to raise to prevent a recurrence of the situation. In addition to our services, they are also purchasing infantry weapons to supply a thousand men. The weapons and ammunition are not to be delivered on-planet until such time as the military situation is stable enough that there is no fear of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.”