First Casualty (20 page)

Umboto turned back to the celebration around the lieutenant. “That ought to take a bit of the pressure off you for a while.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You folks owe me a bigger thanks than that. You remember those rockets that took out the transports?”

“Yes,” five marines answered.

“They were mine. Let me tell you what the rest of us were doing while you were having all the fun.” One story led to another. Then there was lunch. Umboto knew where a chief in supply kept a still, and that led to a private celebration. They were late getting to the truck for the ride back. Sprawled out on the truck bed, Mary didn't even try to sleep.

Dumont spoke first. “I'm glad for the medal, but I didn't do nothing special. They were going to kill me if I didn't kill them. I did what I had to do to stay alive.”

“Yeah,” Cassie mumbled. “I wanted to hide in my hole. Joyce and me, we were just going to stick our heads up long enough to fire a clip. When I started to duck, Joyce was dead.” Cassie was crying. “Where's the medal for Joyce?”

“This ain't no different from the mines,” Lek drawled slowly. “Sometimes you hit it big. Other times you don't. You never know why. It just happens.”

“It just happens.” Mary repeated the words. Let them roll off her tongue slowly. She'd said that a lot in her life. It just happens. She was getting awful tired of just hanging around to see what happens next. She doubted Umboto did. That was one woman who knew how to kick butt and take names until she got what she wanted.
I’m an officer now. Do I get to be like Umboto?

It was a pleasant thought to fall asleep on.

* * * *

The engagement of Rita Nuu to Major Raymond Longknife was a most indecorous week long, though her mother seemed no less enthusiastic for the date. The honeymoon was a very short week. Then Senior Pilot/bride Rita Longknife reported to her ship for a lift the admiral assured everyone would end resistance on ELM-0129-4A. A week later they informed Ray he was a widower.

Nine

Lieutenant Mary Rodrigo tried to keep an open mind about her new job. She was getting away from the captain. Of course, she'd be meeting two more. Still, it was a kick taking off with the captain's command car; Dumont said it was better than stealing wheels. The drive was like old times after a shift. No beer, but it felt the freedom you got after long hours in the hole.

Maybe they treated her a bit different, but not that much.

At B company, there was a difference. The others headed off to spend time with the sergeants. A runner, stiff ¦ a board, led Mary to the company HQ. She hoped this new captain wouldn't be as big an ass as hers. She passed through the airlock, prepared to report like she'd learned in boot camp. What she saw stopped her dead in her tracks Not one captain but two were waiting for her. Both sat, feet up on the desk, unlit cigars in their mouths. When she started to salute, the one that seemed to be most behind the desk waved her off. “Damn fine bit of fighting. Lieutenant. Damn fine.”

“'And even more impressive field preparations,” a third man said, standing to shake her hand. “Lieutenant Hampton. They call me Hambone. I'm in charge of the engineering platoon. How the hell did you do all that in the time you had?”

“With the mining gear we ... uh ...”

“Stole,” the other captain put in. “Call me Hassle. That's the best most folks can do with my name. I've got C company, but I figured I might as well trudge over here so you can brief us together. Our passes are only two hundred klicks apart, so we're right neighborly. Right, Trouble?”

“Tordon, Company B.” He reached across the desk to shake Mary's hand. “Tordon to my friends, Trouble to anyone else.” Then he shrugged into a sly grin. “Okay, Trouble to everyone.”

Hambone got her a chair. She was later to discover, not from him, that he was a first lieutenant, and therefore outranked her. What she did discover was a man very intent on learning everything he could about battlefield preparation. For the next two hours, they listened while she described the deployment and battle. When Mary finished, the engineering lieutenant walked around the desk, examining the map Mary had called up. “Outstanding killing field.”

“And holding those SS-12's to the last minute,” Trouble said slowly. “Brilliant timing by your lieutenant. And your targeting was just as smart.”

“The way you played the laser designators.” Hassle looked up from the board and fixed her with a hard eye. “Yours were programmable. I could use a few like that.”

Trouble leaned back in his chair. “We got a lot of retraining to do. And a lot of work. We better get cracking.”

“I figured on a day to fix you up like us.” Mary immediately felt dumb as all three officers shook their heads.

“They've tried straight on with you,” Trouble said.

“They'll be indirect on us,” Hassle concluded.

“We've got to prepare a lot of rim,” the engineer muttered.

Mary kept her mouth shut as they worked their way around a map of their own positions. They didn't expect anyone would be dumb enough to land in the crater. What they did expect was small teams of spotters working their way over the rim and around their positions. “We got to spread out, Mary,” Hassle told her. “Your diggers and sensors can cover a lot of territory. With rockets and gunners to back them up, we should be able to cover a big chunk of the eight hundred klicks of rim we got. How long will it take to bust your gear loose from Ted?”

“There's a truck parked next to our rig. It's got everything you'll need.” Mary grinned. These guys were nice to be around.

“Woman,” Trouble said, “if you could cook, I'd marry >you. On second thought, I've eaten so much marine chow my taste'11 never recover.” He dropped to a knee. “Will you marry me?” .

“Better decide quick,” Hassle cut in. “He's got a lousy memory, but I must say, his tastes are improving.”

“Well. . .” Mary hesitated as if in the throes of indecision. “It is the best offer I've had this week.”

Trouble was off his knee, reaching for a helmet behind his desk. “Let's go see what Santa brought us good little girls and boys in her truck.”

“Too late, Mary, you've lost him,” Hassle sighed.

* * * *

The
Sheffield’s
tanks were topped off. What battle damage they could fix was repaired. They floated a hundred klicks from the unruly jump point. Mattim took his chair and punched his mike. “All hands, this is the captain. We've got the ship in as good a shape as we're going to, short of a yard period. We've got a good handle on this system. Let's see how these jump points work.”

Sandy had done her best with what they knew of this point's wanderings. This system might account for as much as ten percent of the travel, or as little as two percent—depending on how you factored in the inverse square effect. In other words, they were guessing.

“As you've probably already figured out, all we can do is try a few jumps and see what happens. Since we're almost dead in space, we should be able to do them fairly quickly. Strap yourselves in tight. Here goes the first test.”

He killed the mike. “Sandy, take us through.”

“Thor, activate course Sandy One. Let's see what a spin with a bit of lateral movement gets us. Keep her under one klick per second.” Mattim forced himself to breathe normally for the minute and a half it took to reach the jump.
When had ninety seconds been so long? Right, in battle.

He waited.

The
Maggie
entered the jump without a shudder. One moment the stars were there, twinkling in the unique way the gravity fluctuation in the point made them. Then they were different. Mattim waited for the specialists to tell him how different.

“It's not Pitt's Hope,” Thor quickly reported.

Sandy and the three middies around her said nothing.

“Scan the system,” Mattim ordered.

“Doing it, sir,” Thor answered. “Got a single yellow sun down there. My middies will need a while to check for planets.”

“Thanks.” Mattim let out a long sigh. He'd have to do better at waiting. He didn't like waiting. He'd better learn.

“I'll need a couple more minutes to refine this,” Sandy said a short time later, “but it looks like we're about fifty light-years from our last system.”

“Closer or farther from human space?” Mattim asked.

“Neither. We lateraled.”

“Sandy, how much of a workup do you want on this system?”

“A pretty full one, Matt, if you don't mind.”

“Thor.”

“Give us a few hours. My team's pretty excited. That sun's got about the same heat and light as old Sol. If we find a rock in the right place, we might go into the real estate business when we get back.”

Or know where to go when we give up
, Mattim added to himself. “Guns, any ideas from your team?”

“One of them may have something. We aren't sure.”

“Could we make the return trip at just a few meters per second?”

“Sandy?”

“It's worth a try.”

* * * *

Time was a blur for Mary. Both companies had half a platoon of miners. Once Mary gave them a chance to shine, they were quick to open their own private stashes. The captains were honest enough to admit they'd goofed, hearing about what Mary'd done and not looking in their own ranks for the same skills. They quickly corrected that, establishing an interim two squads of engineers in each company. Battlefield prep went quickly.

B and C companies spread out until they touched in the middle, then they stretched the other way as far as they could. B company should have touched A company, but Captain Teddy refused any assistance from Mary and her team. Digging in the other two companies turned into an endless task. First they did it as far as they could, as quickly as they could. Then they did it again, better. Finally, they did it a third time, looking for what they'd missed, improving what they had. They were only half done with the third iteration when all hell broke loose.

* * * *

The
Maggie D
rifted toward the jump point at exactly ten meters per second. Mattim had this terrible urge to keep asking “Are we there yet?” He had a moment of dizziness as the stars changed; there was a ... bump?

“What was that?” Sandy asked even as she started her search to pinpoint their location; four suns were not waiting for them.

“Felt just like when we hit a waterlogged log in the boat back home on the lake,” Zappa mused without looking up from her work. “Did we hit something?”

“Damage control,” Mattim snapped.

“No alarms, sir. No reports. No visible damage to the hull.”

“Guns, did that happen in the jump or around it? Were you expecting something like that?”

“I don't know, and no. We're stumped down here, too, sir.”

Mattim put the thump aside for the moment. “Thor, am I right, a new system?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sandy?”

She rubbed her jaw like she'd been hit. “Speed was the only variable. But it's not supposed to have any effect!”

“It looks like it did this time. Flip this ship while we've still got the same motion on it, and put us back through the jump at the same slow speed. Now.” Mattim couldn't wait for this new disaster to shoot through the ship. The middies might be having a ball studying new worlds, but the rest of the crew, not to mention the captain, wanted to find their way home.

Thor did the flip. He headed them back at the same terribly slow pace. This time, Mattim still felt dizzy, but there was no thump. And the stars changed back to the last system they'd been in. “We can repeat a trip,” Mattim breathed in relief.

“But velocity shouldn't have any effect,” Sandy mumbled.

“It does now,” Mattim concluded. “It does now.”

“No bump the second jump,” Zappa noted. “Wonder what it was?” Mattim had other questions. That one he'd leave to the kids.

* * * *

Lek alerted Mary and the captains as soon as the first jump point coughed up activity. The Collies were expected; not thirty minutes later, Pitt's Hope spat out its contribution. Everyone dug in deep and sweated out the eight hours for the relativity bombs to hit. They did a lot of rocking and shaking, but there was no damage. Mary's team sidestepped to the right of B company. They would cover the midpoint between A and B. If the captain didn't want them, at least they wouldn't be too far away if he hollered.

Eight hours later, the scene above Mary was hellish in its beauty. The Navy and the colonials went at each other with no holds barred. Lek showed Mary the situation. There were thirty, forty transports. The Navy wanted at them; the colonials had to keep them away. In the black sky above Mary, ships burned yellow and red. Bright comets swept across the sky, ships holed and bleeding incandescent. Stars, as bright as Mary had ever seen, flared up and disappeared in a blink. She knew this was war and people were dying, but it was beautiful.

Lek kept a running count of the transports destroyed. The marines on net cheered at each he reported gone.

Rita held the Friendship in formation, jinking and dodging. The Earthies had not gone for a head-on pass, but had angled over, matched orbits with them. Two were now dogging the formation's right flank, nipping and cutting at any transport that came in range. Rita jinked wrong.

“We're hit. Losing pressure in tank five,” Cadow reported.

“Pump it dry,” she snapped, and jinked again. Her little transport didn't have the ice to take too many hits. Where were those damn Unity cruisers? Three dropped from the higher orbit, and the Humanity cruisers got busy and then got gone.

She came in fast and low for her landing zone and hit heavy. The troops didn't mind; they piled off in less than ten minutes. Their rigs and a month's supplies added another ten minutes to the
Friendship’s
stay. It was too long.

A rocket landed close; fragments rattled the ship. A second missile took out the
Brotherhood
. Loaded with heavy weapons and ammunition, the ship disintegrated. A thick slab of hull smashed down next to the Friendship—and bounced in the other direction.

“That was close,” Cadow breathed.

“Too damn close. Hesper, we unloaded?”

No answer. Rita scanned through her video stations. An outside shot showed a supply rig upside down, smashed by a jagged fragment. Hesper's orange suit was half under it. Rita tuned to the vitals from Hesper's suit. The suit was still sending; it just had no vitals to report.

“Prepare to lift ship,” Rita ordered.

* * * *

Mary hated each and every ship that landed. They seemed to be setting up a base in the general direction of C company. Mary was glad to have them over there—then ashamed. Hassle and his crew didn't deserve what was headed their way. “Mary, Trouble here. Can you spread out to cover my right? C's going to catch all hell, and I'm shuffling some teams to cover his right.”

“No problem.” Mary sent Cassie and Dumont to fill the hole. They'd be covering thirty klicks, but with the sensors and rockets, they should be able to keep any surprises under control.