CHAPTER 6
NO, I WAS NOT EAGER TO GET BACK INTO COM bat. I’m not that crazy. I got the usual knot in my stomach at the thought of what might be waiting. I know the odds, what can happen. But there was a war on, and I was a career soldier—a professional. There was an Enemy out there who wanted to destroy peoples, wanted to conquer every world it could. It had to be stopped. After a time under a cloud, my outfit was going to be given another chance to fight, and this time I thought we were ready for whatever we might face. We had shown how good we could be, even when we had a lot going against us, before we learned how to fuse men of half a dozen species into a credible fighting machine.
We were given seventy-two hours notice of movement, but were not told where we were going or what we were to do when we got there. That’s a routine security measure. There was little training between notice and departure, little more than calisthenics each morning … and our “morning” was gradually moved later, to get our diurnal rhythms prepared for the cycle of day and night at our destination. That was also routine.
Before we went to bed for our last night on Earth, we could see some of the ships gathered overhead. They were a couple of hundred of miles out, but they are huge—thelargest transports are more than five miles long and over half a mile in diameter. Some of the fighting ships, the weapons platforms with their squadrons of aerospace fighters and banks of rocket launchers, and particle and energy beam weapons, are even larger.
There was a briefing for company commanders and above before we fell out for transport to our shuttles. The rest of us were loaded on trucks and moved to the Fort Campbell spaceport under the supervision of our lieutenants. As soon as the senior officers returned, we boarded shuttles and were ferried up to the transports. It was an orderly operation; no snafus. Ninety minutes after the first shuttle lifted off, the fleet started moving out-system. And Captain Fusik gathered the men of B Company, Ranger Battalion, to give us the scoop.
“The first thing,” he started, “is that this is not—I repeat, not—a combat deployment.” He paused to let that sink in. I felt a mixture of relief and concern, the latter because maybe we were still under a cloud, not considered good enough for combat. The reason for relief should be obvious: my men and I were less likely to become casualties. For the time being, the pressure would be reduced.
“We have drawn an important mission,” Fusik continued before anyone started asking questions. “The world we are going to is called Unity. You may have seen something about it in the news over the past months.” I hadn’t, but I don’t follow the news closely, except for war news.
“Unity is an experimental Alliance colony world being jointly settled by humans, porracci, ghuroh, and divotect. A few hundred abarand families are expected to arrive shortly. After that—well, we don’t know whether any biraunta are going to join the experiment or not.” I could understand the why of that, remembering how difficult it had been for biraunta to serve alongside porracci when our regiment was created. Porracci resemble a prehistoric predator from the biraunta homeworld, and they had been terrified of the porracci in the unit.
“What we have shown can be done in the military, Unityis designed to show can be done by civilians. The Alliance considers this experiment critical to the future cooperation and peaceful coexistence of our peoples. Unity is in what might prove to be a strategically important location in the war, which means that it is possible that the Ilion Federation might decide to invade once they learn about our colony there.” Fusik paused, then shrugged.
“Military intelligence feels that there is little chance that the Ilion Federation will be in any position to invade Unity for at least two months, probably longer, and by that time the Alliance will have strong defenses on the ground and in the space surrounding Unity. We are going in as a temporary garrison, due to be relieved in a month.
“I know, this battalion is not designed for defensive operations, not geared toward garrison duty. It’s not something Ranger Battalion—or the Regiment as a whole—has trained for. But the Grand Alliance doesn’t want to take chances. They don’t want to leave Unity unprotected until proper units finish training and move in. We are to fill that gap.” He stopped again and cleared his throat noisily—obviously a theatrical gesture to make sure he had everyone’s attention.
“It’s not a combat assignment, but that does not mean that the high command doesn’t believe we’re ready for such an assignment. With the importance being placed on the defense of Unity, they want the best available troops there. Us.” I don’t think the timing was intentional, but Fusik stopped then as the ship started to vibrate—building power for its first transit of hyperspace. The ship made its jump and the vibration and noise stopped. There would be a pause of, perhaps, only three or four minutes while the computers verified our position and the calculations for the next jump, and made sure that the entire fleet was accounted for.
“Unity is a brand-new colony. The first shiploads of settlers have been on the ground for three months. The total population is under ten thousand, fairly evenly divided among the participating species. We have one extendedcommunity, laid out similar to the common divotect plan, with considerable space between homesteads. The town spreads out over an area of approximately twenty-five square miles, at the edge of a forested area, but with open savanna to the south and west that can be used to graze animals and be turned by the plow to provide fresh food for the colonists.
“As I understand it, the initial complement of settlers is not merely farmers and their families, although agriculture is always important in a colony’s first years. Preference was given to heads of family with military experience, and the colonists are armed with more than the usual hunting weapons. They will be forming their own militia, and part of our duty on Unity will be to give them as much training as we can—another reason why this regiment was deemed appropriate. Ranger Battalion will draw most of the training duty since our makeup is similar to that of the colony, while the line regiments will establish defensive positions around the settled area. This fleet is carrying satellites to give the colonists an outer warning system as well as a few defensive weapons systems. The units that replace us next month will bring in more.”
The ship started vibrating again, building up for its second hyperspace transit. I felt surprised; it hadn’t seemed like enough time had passed for the things that have to be done between jumps, but they certainly knew what they were doing on the bridge. I guess I had let myself get too caught up in what the captain was saying.
“We’ll be going in easy,” Captain Fusik continued. “No airsleds, not even hot shuttle landings. I know no one is going to complain about that. Maybe there won’t be any bars or any of the other, ah, recreational facilities on Unity that you’d have back home, but we’ll get through this month as professionally as possible, get in a little training of our own while we’re training the militia. Then, after this assignment is done, we’ll be ready for something more active. We’ll have earned it.”
* * *
THERE WAS A LONGER INTERVAL BETWEEN OUR second and third hyperspace transits, and we emerged in normal space farther out from Unity than we would have if we had been going in for a combat landing. I guess that was to make sure we didn’t spook the people we were coming to protect. We had a three-hour wait between the end of our last hyperspace jump and getting in the shuttles for our trip down to the surface.
We had video of the world to occupy our minds during that interval, long-range stuff magnified so that we could see a little detail. I could have seen more by unfolding my electronic map, but I watched the show on the larger screens with my men. There were captions to orient us. There were large ice-covered continents around both poles, with most of the readily habitable land on one massive continent that straddled the equator and extended about 60 percent of the way around the world. The colony had been planted near the eastern edge of the continent, in the southern hemisphere. We had been told that the climate would be on the border between temperate and subtropical—warm but not excessively hot. And it was early spring.
“I still don’t see how we managed to luck out and draw a month in the Garden of Eden,” Robbie said, after Captain Fusik had gone to another briefing. “Things like this don’t happen to me.”
“If you feel guilty about accepting good luck when it falls in your lap, I’m sure we’ll be able to find enough miserable details for you to feel at home on Unity,” I offered, trying to stifle a laugh.
“Do me no favors,” Robbie said, holding up a hand as if to ward me off. “Whatever you do, don’t wake me. If this is a dream—and it must be—let me sleep as long as possible.”
We had a hot meal before we were ordered to the shuttles. With conditions undoubtedly at a fairly primitive state on the ground, it might be days before we got mess kitchens set up to provide us with our next hot meal. Unitymight not be a combat assignment, but we’d probably be eating a lot of battle rations while we were there.
MY GUESS IS THAT IT WAS MENTAL INERTIA SOME- where up the line that sent Ranger Battalion in ahead of the rest of the regiment. We would be the first ones in on a combat landing. You put the spec ops people on the ground to disrupt enemy defenses and make it easier for the line battalions to come ashore. Apparently, somebody didn’t want to tax their brains by changing the routine simply because this was different. We would go in first. The line regiments would follow. Heavy Weapons Battalion and additonal supplies would come in at the end of the process. It was the same sort of routine that had us draw a full field issue of ammunition and battle rations before we filed aboard our shuttles—as if this were a combat insertion.
One platoon filled a shuttle. The web seats aren’t particularly comfortable, but they beat the accommodations in a sled by one hell of a margin. We strapped in, checked to make certain everything was secured, and waited. The hangar was depressurized, a boom lifted the shuttle away from the ship, then turned us loose—giving the shuttle a push to move it farther from the ship. The shuttle pilot used bursts of inert gas to increase our separation, then lit the rockets, and we started our ride down to the surface of Unity.
“Remember, it’s Alliance people here,” Tonio said over our platoon channel. “Friends. We land, get out of the shuttle, and move just far enough from the LZ to be out of the way of the rest of the shuttles. I don’t know if the colonists are going to be on hand to welcome us, but watch your manners if they are. We don’t want them running off to lock their daughters away until we leave.” Tonio kept his tone light, almost joking, but we knew he was serious. We didn’t want the locals to think we were modern Vikings come to ravage their land and their women.
It was midmorning at the LZ, located a little more thanfour miles from the nearest edge of the settlement—far enough that the noise of shuttles landing and taking off wouldn’t be overwhelming. Our shuttle dropped us off, turned around, and taxied about a mile before turning and starting its takeoff run. By the time our lander had taken off, we had trotted out of the clearing, and two other shuttles were landing. I could see the next flight of three shuttles on their final approach. It was very military and very precise. The shuttle jockeys knew what they were doing.
As soon as all of B Company was on the ground, Captain Fusik and Lead Sergeant Deelock formed us up and marched us toward our bivouac area—about three and a half miles away. The captain didn’t push the pace. There was no hurry. We were all loaded down with a full field load—in the case of the humans that meant close to eighty pounds of gear. Porracci and ghuroh carried even more. Even divotect were expected to carry half their body weight. Biraunta, who only averaged about seventy-five pounds, carried less—both absolutely and also relative to body weight.
We reached our assigned area before the landings were complete—before the last of the line battalions reached the ground, before Heavy Weapons Battalion and the extra supplies even left the ships. According to the schedule, it would be close to sunset before the operation was complete, and even then, there would be more stuff to bring ashore later, like the defensive weapons we had hauled along to set up for the colony.
The last of the day’s scheduled shuttles were just moving away from their ships when we got the news. An IFer fleet had just popped out of hyperspace, less than three hours out from our ships. It looked as if Unity was going to turn into a combat assignment after all.