Orphan Brigade (9 page)

“Are you Lieutenant Mortas?”

He turned to see an older man approaching. Dressed in the same green T-­shirt and black shorts, the stranger was soaked in sweat that beaded on a taut scalp shaved almost bald. Medium height, the man was deeply tanned and appeared to have no extra fat on him at all. Several lines creased his forehead, but his skin hugged his body so tightly that they were almost flat.

“Yes. Yes, that's me.”

The man saluted while coming closer, and extended his hand before Mortas was able to return the military greeting. When he took the hand it was as if his fingers were in a vise, but the pressure dropped away immediately.

“Glad to meet you, Lieutenant. I'm Sergeant Major Zacker. Brigade said you were on the way.” The man's dark eyes overtly scrutinized him, sliding from his head to his toes. An intrigued smile sprouted on his lips, and he spoke while walking toward the back door. “Colonel Alden's waiting inside, so we should get stepping.”

Mortas followed him through the door and up a short flight of stairs, the battalion's most senior enlisted man talking the whole time.

“You're lucky to be assigned to First Battalion, sir, and in my opinion your platoon sergeant is the best in the brigade. You're going to B Company, which is funny because so many of the B Companies I've known have been such strange animals. Ya see, that whole A, B, and C designation carries a weird side effect that I've observed in a lot of different places.

“Your standard A Company is the power in most battalions even when they're not all that good, and your standard C Company is usually competing to knock them off the top of the mountain. That leaves your standard B Company in the unenviable position of either competing with C Company just for the honor of competing with A Company, or saying ‘Fuck it' and doing their own thing.”

Zacker stopped when they reached a large central room with big windows. Stairs led down to the building's front doors and up to its second story, and Mortas saw a group of offices through a door to his left.

“The thing is, our B Company is neither. They don't compete with the other two companies, but they don't say ‘Fuck it' either. They're tough, they're tactically sound, and they don't much care what anybody else thinks. Me, I think ol' B Company . . . competes with B Company. And I think that's outstanding.”

The sergeant major walked through the side door into what turned out to be the adjutant's office. Three other offices led off from there, and in time Mortas would learn one belonged to Zacker while the other two belonged to the battalion executive officer and the battalion's commander, Colonel Beekrek Alden. The adjutant, a captain in rumpled fatigues, exchanged greetings with Mortas so quickly that the new lieutenant didn't catch his name. He rose and entered the colonel's office to announce him, and Mortas was preparing to meet his boss's boss when Zacker spoke again.

“Your company commander's relatively new to the brigade, but he has an excellent war record. Your company first sergeant is very strong even though he's too banged up to deploy with us. Don't be afraid to go to either of them with questions, but I'd recommend talking to your platoon sergeant first. Good habit to get into.”

The adjutant walked past them and returned to his desk, so the sergeant major took Mortas by the arm and steered him toward the colonel's office.

“Once you're settled into your job, come on by and shoot the shit with me. I'd like to hear about that bad ol' alien you met on Roanum.”

M
ortas was just turning to enter the battalion commander's office when the man appeared in front of him. Colonel Alden was stocky like Colonel Watt, and short hair was obviously standard among the Orphans.

Alden shook Mortas's hand and turned him in the opposite direction. “Welcome aboard, Lieutenant. I'm sorry to cut this short, but I was just called to brigade. Walk with me.”

They headed for the back steps that Mortas had ascended only moments earlier. Alden spoke while donning a camouflaged soft cap.

“I read the report of your experience on Roanum, and I feel you performed quite well there. You still haven't had any actual combat experience, so your company commander will be putting you through a crash course on what you need to know to lead your platoon in the real thing—­everything from casualty evacuation to resupply operations.”

Alden stopped once they were outside, and Mortas did as well.

“The most important skill for you to master is supporting arms. This brigade is designed to be moved on a moment's notice, so we lack some of the organic firepower of a normal Force brigade. As a result, every now and then we end up outgunned. We make up that difference by maximizing all available assets, from orbital bombardment to drone fighters and gunships.”

A wheeled vehicle rolled around the corner of the building and stopped in front of them, obviously the colonel's ride.

“Which brings me to something I believe very strongly. Every successful organization makes the most of its resources, and the resource with the greatest potential payoff is the human resource. You, me, and every man in this battalion has a brain and a desire to survive, and I want to get everything that combination can give us.

“In this outfit we let every man do his job, then we push him to do some things that
aren't
his job. Do that effectively, and you'll create a valuable asset. Someone who's always thinking, shows initiative in the absence of orders, and is ready to offer sound advice. Listen to that advice, Lieutenant.”

Alden climbed into the front seat of the camouflaged vehicle.

“Remember that good units walk a thin line between indiscipline and ineffectiveness. Ignore the rules too often and you've got a mob, but enforce the rules too strictly and you've got a herd. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay then.” He signaled the driver to go ahead, and Mortas took a step back. Just as the vehicle began to roll, Alden pointed a finger at him. “You need to learn to talk more.”

He gave Mortas a wink, and then he was gone.

L
ooking around, Mortas noticed that he was in the exact same spot where he'd met the sergeant major minutes earlier. The two soldiers with the radio were there, still unable to communicate, and he decided to take a short walk. He probably should have reentered the headquarters to see the adjutant, but he needed time to digest the information and advice that had been thrown at him in the last hour.

Walking around the side of the building, he looked up the hill to see more lush greenery and a row of military-­style housing that was probably reserved for the senior officers. There was a lot of it, too much for even a brigade's worth of majors and colonels, but it appeared well maintained and he wondered who lived there.

The road in front of the battalion headquarters was long and intermittently lined with a curious type of tall tree. It reminded him of palm trees on Earth, except the bare stalk rose up to a chaotic tangle of vine-­like branches where he would have expected droopy fronds. A brightly colored bird was singing inside the tree nearest to him, and for a moment he was back on Roanum, walking with a column of exhausted Sim troops who didn't realize he and Trent and Gorman were human. The Sims, unable to form the vowels and consonants of human speech, communicated with sounds that resembled the chirping of birds.

A male voice sounded from down the street, and Mortas turned to see a squad of soldiers shuffling toward him. They were in a tight column, moving in a fashion that was somewhere between a fast walk and a trot. Bareheaded, they wore the green T-­shirts and black shorts that he now believed was the brigade's PT uniform, but every man was also wearing the torso armor of the walking infantry.

Human Defense Force body protection was modular, and the armless torso armor was its most basic element. It could be augmented with a set of shoulder armor that had always reminded Mortas of his lacrosse pads, separate pieces for the upper and lower arms, and similar wraparounds for the shins, knees, and thighs. An armored groin protector was also available, but it was decidedly uncomfortable for anyone who had to march anywhere, so it was seldom seen in the walking infantry.

He briefly thought of the Banshee commander he'd met at Glory Main, the one who had saved Cranther's fighting knife for him. The Banshees were all-­female fighting units who went into combat in powered suits of armor that were too expensive to be issued to the entire Force. The alien pretending to be Amelia Trent had told Mortas that the Banshees painted breasts and vaginas on their armor before going into battle, to let the all-­male Sim fighting units know who they were up against. According to the alien, the Banshees refused to end the practice no matter how harshly Command punished them for it.

The torso armor for the walking infantry was flat black because it would be covered by camouflage fabric. Like the chest protection itself, the camouflage covers were two pieces, front and back. The rear section snapped onto the armor and was left bare to make room for a rucksack, except for a row of slots at the bottom where canteens were usually attached. The front half was likewise affixed to the armor, and the majority of a soldier's ammunition was carried there. The chest camouflage could be opened down the center so the wearer could lie prone or crawl across the ground, and a strap at its top went over the wearer's head to rest behind the neck. In a tough fight, the ammunition of the fallen could be removed with a good sharp tug on the strap and carried to the rest of the fighters, while still leaving a wounded man with body protection and water.

The male voice sounded again, closer now, and he saw an NCO who was shuffling along outside the rapidly approaching column. Despite his shorn head, the sergeant was clearly much older than the others. He was speaking to a thin soldier in the center of the hustling line who appeared to be having difficulty with the exercise.

“You think this is tough? Wait until you're loaded up with a weapon, ammo, water, rations, and whatever else they decide to make us carry.” The voice wasn't a shout, but it didn't have to be. A quick look at the other faces showed that they ran the gamut from calm to queasy, and Mortas decided that the straining members of the squad were new men. “You're gonna be
dreaming
of the days when this was all you were hauling.”

The squad went by, boots crunching on the pavement, but Mortas was suddenly struck by the number of scars on the exposed limbs. Some linear, some curled, some whitened with time while others were red or purple. Having grown up in the war he was no stranger to wounded veterans, but he'd never seen so much scar tissue in one place before.

As they passed, the sergeant gave him a knowing leer that blossomed into a grin that could have been mirth or malice. He was well up the road before Mortas was sure that the inch-­wide red scar just above the man's left knee went all the way around his cruelly muscled leg.

“Y
ou must have command philosophy coming out of your ears by now.” The huge man walking next to Mortas was Major Hatton, First Battalion's executive officer. He'd collected him from the front of the headquarters just after the squad in torso armor had disappeared, suggesting that they go to the mess hall for lunch.

“Honestly, sir, I'm having a hard time just remembering all the names.”

Hatton wore the same style fatigues as Mortas and had donned the brimmed soft cap as well. Three inches over Mortas's six feet, he moved like a bear as they went down the walkway toward the mess hall. The long buildings Mortas had seen earlier turned out to be four in number, one for each of the companies and another for the chow hall and the personnel from the battalion headquarters company.

“Don't sweat it. It's like that with every new unit. The first few days you can barely find your way around, and you can't tell whether the latest guy you're talking to is the village idiot or the corps commander. Although”—­he gave Mortas a quick glance—­“sometimes that's the same guy.”

That last comment caught Mortas off guard, and he chuckled. They passed between two barracks, and when they rounded the corner a short line of soldiers was waiting to enter the mess hall. Hatton continued, once they'd joined the queue.

“The whole brigade's on a bit of a stand-­down right now. They had us doing a major cleanup on this one Hab, a search-­and-­destroy in this really brutal terrain, and it went longer than it was supposed to. Lots of nickel-­and-­dime with the remnants of this Sim battalion that was hiding out in this mountain chain.”

A soldier in line in front of them, also dressed in the woodland fatigues but wearing no rank, turned and smiled at Hatton. “What a motherfucker
that
was. How many of them did we finally bag, sir?”

“Confirmed, about a hundred. Counted 'em myself and reported the same. Somebody on high bumped it to two hundred.”

The soldier shook his head, smiling ruefully, then turned away when the line began to move. Hatton lowered his voice.

“Believe it or not, that doctored report was what got us out of that hellhole. The intel estimate said there were only a hundred to a hundred fifty enemy in the area, so when we topped that it probably embarrassed somebody important. Besides, by then the boys were pretty worn-­out from all that patrolling. Lots of sniper fire, shoot 'n' scoot, every now and then a full-­blooded ambush, and the weather went to shit on us too.

“We got a bunch of replacements a ­couple of weeks ago, but we'll still be understrength even when the veterans all get back from the hospitals.” He winked. “Some of them take the long way home, if you get my meaning.”

They passed inside, and an unidentified NCO in fatigues approached the executive officer. They began discussing a logistical issue that had apparently come undone, but Mortas was unable to understand much of the terminology. The line kept moving, first along a windowed wall and then through the serving area, and Mortas took the opportunity to get a look at the soldiers of the command.