Colonel (UC) Read online

  "Doc, with all the work that has to be done between now and Elysium, I don't have that much time to waste. I'll get by, the way I always have."

  "Lon, I told you it wasn't a suggestion," Norman said, his voice getting softer, almost a whisper. "You'll have to make time. Either we do this my way or I report you medically unfit for deployment and you stay behind."

  Lon moved his gaze from the doctor to the top of his desk. He didn't speak, though he wanted to shout protests. He knew that the doctor's threat was not idle, and he also knew the potential consequences. It could mean the end of his career. Maybe that would be the easy way out, he thought.

  "You're not the first commander to suffer this sort of problem, Lon," Norman said. "You might be surprised to learn just how common it is. It's something we can handle, but I've got to have your full cooperation or I can't let you command on a combat contract. It's that simple." Slowly, Lon nodded. "We'll do it your way, Doc." If I do leave the Corps, it can't be this way, he told himself.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When 7th Regiment fell in at 1300 hours Thursday, only one man was missing from the formation. His bus had been damaged by a landslide between Rainbow Falls and the airport, and he had missed his flight back to base. He would, however, arrive in time to leave with his battalion. Rainbow Falls was a popular resort, and it had frequent shuttle service. The later flight he had caught would arrive at Dirigent City's public aerospaceport twenty minutes before the convoy of buses carrying the regiment was due to leave base. He would join his unit at the port.

  Lon took the manning reports from his battalion commanders, then dismissed the troops—sending them back to barracks to complete their preparations for deployment. When they fell out again, in ninety minutes, it would be to board the buses. The regiment's heavy equipment, mostly the self-propelled guns and rocket launchers of the Heavy Weapons Battalion, had already been ferried up to the ships. The personal baggage of the troops would be going up to the ships shortly.

  "They look good, Colonel," Lieutenant Colonel Ives said. "Raring to go." He knew that Lon had been seeing the SMO, and—like most of the people who came in close contact with the commander—he had been able to tell that Lon was having some kind of difficulties. Seeing improvement in his boss was a major relief to Ives.

  Lon grunted. "Contract pay and the chance for a big bonus at the end, Tefford. I think that's how we developed

  RIGK SHELLEY

  the tradition of giving the men three days off before a contract, so they could go out and blow all their money and be looking forward to earning extra."

  Ives laughed. "Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Of course, it could be that they just want to bathe in the intelligence of all the eggheads on Elysium."

  Lon grinned and shook his head. "I only wish smarts rubbed off that easily, Teff. We could rotate everyone in the Corps through Elysium, a battalion at a time, starting from the top. Make life a lot simpler for all of us." That morning, Lon had conceded to Doc Norman that he felt better—"almost one hundred percent," was how he put it, followed by a suggestion that perhaps they could forget about the rest of the course of treatment the SMO had prescribed. Norman had laughed and suggested that the rest of the treatment would remove the "almost." Lon still had his worries—about Junior and about not failing his men—but he was managing them with less stress than before.

  The night before, an MR—message rocket—had arrived in-system from Elysium. The news the MR carried was mixed, but more good than bad. The New Spartan mercenaries had destroyed all of Elysium's orbiting communications satellites and its fighters had interdicted all air travel between cities, but fighting on the ground had slackened off considerably in the four days following the departure of Chancellor Berlino from the system. In the twenty-four hours before the launch of the MR, there had been only a few small skirmishes between the Elysian defense force and the invaders. The mercenaries on the ground had moved to cut off all major routes into University City, stopping the flow of fresh produce and meat from the outlying fanning districts, but that could not be called a real siege because the residents were, of course, able to fall back on replicators. Even if the siege could be total, it would take years before inefficiencies in the replicator system could cause serious shortages of raw materials for the nanotech assemblers.

  "It could mean that they were waiting for reinforcements," Lon had told his staff and battalion commanders during a working lunch. "That makes more sense than to think that they're just padding their contract, adding unnecessary days to the job. They certainly weren't hired just for minor harassment operations unless it's just another scheme to get the Elysians to submit to the CHW. Put the threat on the ground, then give them time to get frightened enough to accept whatever terms Union wants to grant."

  "If it's that," Tefford Ives had said, "it could be a break for us. According to Chancellor Berlino, the CHW didn't have a representative on Elysium at the time of the attack. That would mean that the mercenaries would have instructions to wait long enough for an exchange of MRs, and we might almost be there by the time they quit waiting."

  "What if the government of Elysium gives up before we get there?" Vel Osterman, now a lieutenant colonel and commanding the regiment's 2nd Battalion, asked. "Berlino is only the number two man. The president might have decided not to wait."

  "I don't think that's likely," Lon said. He shrugged. "If something like that does happen, then we've got ourselves a month's cruise, paid for in advance… and then some. I don't think anyone will complain too loudly." Certainly not me, he had thought.

  The Dirigent Mercenary Corps had developed a ritual—almost a spectacle—for sending troops off on contract. Although there was a more than adequate aerospaceport on base, used to transport equipment and baggage to the ships, departing troops were bused through Dirigent City to the civilian port across town. When they returned from contract, they would come back the same way, paraded through the city… unless they failed to fulfill their contract. Then they would come in through the port on base.

  The dead always came home that way.

  With two regiments going out, the bus drivers had a hectic afternoon, taking one load to the port and then hurrying back for the next. Civilian traffic in the city remained snarled throughout. Two regiments also meant more noise than usual in the city because of the number of shuttles taking troops up to their ships. The civilian port was well away from the most heavily populated districts of Dirigent City, and the traffic patterns had been designed to minimize overflights, but there was still the noise of jets and rockets, especially when the shuttles went supersonic. It was no secret how many men were leaving, and the more soldiers who worked off-world contracts, the more money would be filtering back through the local economy.

  Colonel Hayley and his headquarters staff were in the first shuttle that took off. Lon and his staff would be in the last. The troops of 15th Regiment started moving from base ninety minutes before 7th Regiment was mustered for the deployment. By the time Lon received the final manning reports in the regimental area, the buses had arrived to take 1st Battalion to the port, and the buses to handle the rest of the regiment arrived at less than ten-minute intervals.

  "It amazes me that we can get this many people deployed all at once," Lieutenant Colonel Ives told Lon while they were waiting for the staff car that would take them to the port. "Two regiments strain the system almost to the breaking point. Three would be a logistical nightmare. They'd almost have to hold one back a few hours to get anything accomplished."

  "This is all for show, Teff," Lon said. "It would have made a lot more sense to send one regiment up this morning and the other now, or afternoon and evening, space things out one way or the other. But this is all to make sure the civilians really feel the size of the deployment. Rub their faces in it. 'Look what we're doing for you.' Hell, if we had four regiments going out together they'd still try to do it all at once. Besides, two regiments going out on an open-ended contract is a big deal. You know how rar
e a job this size is. The Elysium contract damned near ensures a budget surplus for the year, even if we get the mission accomplished in only three months."

  "As long as we come out on top," Ives said. "We've never gone head-to-head with New Sparta on a large contract."

  The parade through Dirigent City had been going on so long that few people on the streets paid any attention to the final buses or the staff car that carried Lon and his executive officer. It might take a little time before the civilians realized that the show was over. The empty buses would return to base by a more circuitous route, avoiding the main boulevard connecting base and port.

  Lon didn't give the passersby much attention either. He was thinking about Sara and Angie, and the baby who wouldn't be born for seven months. If this contract was extended, if 7th and 15th Regiments put in a full six months on Elysium, there was a chance that the baby would be born before Lon got home. A small chance, assuming I get home at all, Lon thought.

  For the moment, Junior did not occupy much of his father's thoughts. Junior had come to the house the evening before, spent the night before deployment with the family. Junior had been somewhat more subdued than before his previous contracts, but not overtly nervous or apprehensive about the mission.

  Sara had been quiet and supportive, as always—watching Lon to see how he was handling the situation—but restrained, both with her husband and their son. Angie had been visibly upset, though she had tried to hide her emotions. Lon's departures had long bothered her, and now she had to say good-bye to her brother as well, with no guarantee that either of them would return. Angie did not know that her father had heard her tell Sara, "I'll never marry a soldier. I couldn't stand it year after year, not knowing if he'd come home." That's the smart way, Lon had thought at the time, suspecting that she would change her mind, perhaps many times, before she married.

  Lon's command shuttle was waiting near the military terminal building. The shuttles of his 4th Battalion were just taking off. The shuttles of the Heavy Weapons Battalion would follow in three minutes. That would leave only the three craft that would carry Lon, his staff, and the regimental headquarters and service company. There had been no traffic tie-up in the air. The port's controllers were efficient.

  "We'd better get aboard," Lon told Ives. They were the only two who hadn't boarded; their shuttle was the only one that had not yet "buttoned up" for the ascent. The command shuttle's crew chief was standing in the one open hatch, waiting to seal it as soon as the last two officers got aboard. The two men walked toward the hatch, not obviously hurrying. "I'm going to ride up front with the pilots," Lon said as they moved up the ramp and past the crew chief into the shuttle.

  The armada that had been gathered to take the two regiments to Elysium waited in a circular formation roughly two hundred miles above Diligent, several hundred miles south and more than a thousand miles east of Dirigent City. Most of the ships would have been visible from the ground in daylight, but they were over deserted ocean and the desert that occupied much of the southeastern district of the world's primary continent.

  There were ten of the new Raptor-class troop transports, each more than seven miles long and half a mile in diameter at the point of their greatest thickness. Each could carry a battalion of soldiers along with their equipment and supplies for more than four months, in more comfort than the older Dragon-class ships could manage. Three converted Dragons accompanied the fleet to carry additional supplies and munitions, including Long Snake, which had carried Lon on many contracts over the years. The heavy weapons of the two regiments were on Patton and Rommel, along with their mechanics and crews. Agamemnon and Odysseus each carried a squadron of Shrike II aerospace fighters. Sidon, the smallest ship in the armada, would be used primarily as a courier vessel, alternating duty with Tyre, which would not be accompanying this task force, traveling between Dirigent and Elysium on a monthly schedule… or more frequently, as dictated by conditions on Elysium. The two smaller ships would carry messages, supplies, and—if needed—bring home casualties who needed extended regeneration and rehabilitation treatment, and take replacements to Elysium.

  Lon sat in the cockpit of his shuttle, behind and slightly above the two pilots, and watched as they moved toward rendezvous with Golden Eagle, the ship he would be riding. The entire fleet was visible, even though night had arrived on the surface of Dirigent below it. Lights were visible on the ships—navigation markers and open shuttle hangars. Over Dirigent there was no need for the darkness of stealth conditions. In any case, the Raptor-class ships were so large that stealth was a relative concept. Within normal operating distances from a planet they could be seen from the ground during daylight hours and occulted a significant arc of space after dark.

  "Quite a show, ain't it, Colonel?" Captain Art Felconi, Lon's pilot, said as he started to move the command shuttle into line for its rendezvous with Golden Eagle. "I know I've never seen anything like this in the ten years I've been flying these bugs for the Corps."

  "Quite a show indeed. Nobody's seen a show like this in a long time, Art," Lon said. Felconi had been "his" pilot since Lon had assumed command of 2nd Battalion, and had moved along with him to regiment. There were still a few shuttles visible ahead of them, rendezvousing with their ships. Most were already secure in their hangars, their passengers moved out to shipboard quarters. "Been a dozen years since there was anything close to this. It may be another dozen years, or more, before it happens again." Long after I hang up my pips, Lon thought.

  "I'm handing control over to Golden Eagle now, sir," Felconi said. "I show a tock on remote. The launchmaster has the con. All we have to do is sit back and let her drag us in."

  "Just don't take a nap," Lon said, leaning forward against the straps of his safety harness to tap the pilot on the shoulder. "I feel a lot better with a good pair of hands at the controls here, just in case."

  "You and me both, Colonel," Felconi said with a laugh. "I always stay ready." The pilot did not take his eyes from the monitors in front of him, and his hands always remained near the controls, ready to override Golden Eagle's launchmaster if he thought it necessary. The odds were against that happening, but Art Felconi was an almost obsessively cautious man.

  Lon leaned back. Almost unconsciously, he gripped the armrests of his seat more firmly, though it was not the death grip he had achieved the first few times he had ridden in a shuttle cockpit. This was a routine maneuver. Mishaps were vanishingly rare, fewer than one per hundred thousand dockings, and most of those produced no casualties. The shuttle decelerated, quickly at first, then more slowly, finally coming to a stop—relative to Golden Eagle—thirty feet from the hangar door. A boom telescoped out from the top of the hangar and grappled the command shuttle, then drew the craft inside, turning it so it would be facing out. Captain Felconi did not take his hands from the controls until the shuttle had come to rest and its passengers felt gravity from the ship's Nilssen generators. Felconi switched off the shuttle's engines and seemed to slowly slump back into his seat, finally relaxing.

  The hangar bay's huge clamshell doors closed in silence. The hangar was pressurized, a process that took nearly three minutes. When it was complete, a series of green lights appeared on the hangar wall and on one of the monitors in front of Felconi. That was followed by an announcement from the launchmaster that it was safe to open the hatches of the shuttle.

  Only then did Lon and the crew of the shuttle unbuckle their safety harnesses and stand. "Another uneventful hop," Felconi announced. "Just the way I like 'em."

  By the time that Lon got back to the passenger compartment of the shuttle his staff was already moving onto the hangar floor, where a man from the ship's crew was standing to direct them. Although 7th Regiment's headquarters staff had never deployed together on contract since Golden Eagle had been commissioned, they had rehearsed this a half dozen times to make certain that everyone would be able to find their way around the ship. The Corps did not like to leave anything to chance.

&nbs
p; Lon was met at the hangar exit by the launchmaster, a lieutenant commander from the ship's complement. "Sir, the captain's compliments," the launchmaster said, saluting. "He asked me to extend an invitation for you and your executive officer to dine in the wardroom with him and his department heads this evening at nineteen hundred hours."

  "Thank you, Commander," Lon said, returning the salute. "Tell Captain Ewell that we will be delighted to dine with him." There was no surprise to the invitation. It was a tradition in the Corps.

  By 1900 hours the armada was under way, heading out-system toward their first Q-space jump, five days away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Accommodations aboard Golden Eagle were not as luxurious as those aboard the best passenger liners, but they were a marked step up from the Dragon-class ships, and worlds better than the extremely cramped quarters available on Port-class ships such as Tyre and Sidon, each of which could carry a single company of soldiers or function as a small freighter. The improvement that most passengers appreciated most, however, had nothing to do with living space. The Raptors escaped what had been the major inconvenience of interstellar travel. Older classes of ships required passengers to be strapped in during Q-space transits because that maneuver demanded the full power of all three Nilssen generators—which provided artificial gravity as well as propulsive energy. That meant that all activity had to be suspended three times during each interstellar journey. Raptor-class ships had a fourth Nilssen, allowing them to maintain artificial gravity even during Q-space transits.