Retreat Hell (42 page)

Chapter Ten

“Lieutenant Croft, sir?”

The man who met them at the shuttle ramp was a dark-skinned senior sergeant in his late twenties. There was a touch of Mexico to his accent, and he wore a heavy rucksack. Behind him was a Hispanic buck-sergeant who looked a couple of years older and carried a similar rucksack.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Welcome to New Virginia, sir. And unless there’s some mixup, this must be F Company of the 996
th
Training Regiment. Going to Roanoke for Fourth Brigade?”

“Yes,” said Croft.

“I’m Senior Sergeant Alonzo, by the way.” He turned. “Hey, you men! Into line and stay the hell where you are!”

Some of the F Company men had started to wander away from the shuttle, looking around. It was late afternoon, about quarter to five, with grey skies and a pleasant coolness to the atmosphere. In the distance, beyond the single-storey port terminals and a low city skyline, were mountains. From not so far away, they could hear shouting – a protest of some kind.

So this is Godfrey’s Landing
, Croft thought. He’d always imagined the place as more imposing. Less small-city functional and more Historical. Where were the statues?

“We’ve been sent over to meet you guys. Sir, I was told to pass on the Brigade G-1’s apologies that we couldn’t spare an officer to meet you.”

“It’s quite alright,” said Croft. “Uh, how are we going to get to Roanoke? And is there time to take a look around here first?”

“Time, definitely, sir,” said Alonzo. “The train leaves at about 0600 tomorrow. There’s one tonight, but a hundred and ninety unexpected passengers – rail company’s gonna have to add more cars, and that takes time. Never enough cars, sir. The goddamned Buddies keep blowing `em up. Engines, too.”

“And ports,” Croft observed wryly.

Alonzo shrugged.

“That was nothing serious – happens all the time. They snuck in, planted UXBs and thermite all over the runways. But it’ll take at least twenty-four hours to clean up.”

“Twenty-four local, I assume.”

Alonzo nodded.

I hope he doesn’t think I’m an idiot
, Croft thought.

“Yessir. Out here – in all the colonies I’ve heard of, sir – we keep local time. Anyhow, sir, we’ve got about twelve hours to wait.”

He turned to the F Company men.

“What the hell did I tell you bastards about standing in line? You wanna stand at attention in platoon order? Then
don’t fucking wander off!
Damnit, you morons aren’t even
armed
yet!”

A thunderous boom came from behind. Croft resisted the impulse to throw himself flat; instead he turned and looked up. The cargo shuttle was out of sight, but a dual pillar of orange flame showed the path it had taken.

“Good job, sir,” said Alonzo. “First new LT I’ve seen in two years not to hit the deck the first time he heard one of those things launch.”

“I’ve seen them before,” Croft said. “On Earth.”

“That said, sir, when you hear a big ‘boom’ in these parts, it’s often a good idea to hit the deck. Buddy likes mortars. Cheap little pipe fuckers on time-delay fuses.”

“Who the hell is Buddy, Sergeant?”

“The bad guys, sir. Buddy Secessionist.”

“Speaking of whom, Senior Sergeant,” said the other sergeant, “wouldn’t you think it’s a good idea to arm these fish?”

Alonzo nodded.

“This is Sergeant Gonzalez, by the way, sir. These packs contain ammunition – one magazine per man. Permission to issue them?”

“You think we’re really likely to be shot at between here and Roanoke?” asked Croft.

“Wouldn’t rule it out, sir. The railway’s always being disrupted, and Buddy’s gonna know there’s a company of Legion fish on the way tomorrow morning. They’ve been quiet lately, but they haven’t vanished and we’re a sweet target here.”

Croft nodded, a little dazed by the responsibility.

I’m in effective charge of this whole
company
, in what these two veterans clearly think is at least potentially hostile territory.

“Yes. Go ahead and issue the ammo.”

“You heard the LT, Gonzalez,” said Alonzo. He unslung his pack.

Gonzalez yelled at the recruits to form a line on him. They began to, and he started handing out magazines.

Something occurred to Croft.

“Have them carry the magazines – not load them. Don’t want any accidental discharges.”

“Good idea, sir,” said Alonzo. He muttered something to Gonzalez.

“You got a weapon, by the way, sir?”

Croft tapped his holstered .45.

“No ammo for it, though.”

“Sort of figured that might be the case. Here’s three mags, sir.”

From somewhere in his field jacket, the senior sergeant produced three eight-round .45 magazines.

Croft drew his gun, loaded it – resisting the urge to chamber a round – and dropped the other two magazines into a hip pocket. Almost as an afterthought, and a little reluctantly, he re-holstered the pistol.

This is me, with a loaded weapon, in command of a company, on New Virginia!

“So we’ve got about” – Croft checked his watch, an expensive digital that his mother had bought him as a graduation gift. It automatically configured itself, through a satellite signal, to the local clock and calendar of whatever planet he might be on – “thirteen hours to kill. I assume there’s a waiting lounge or something, somewhere?”

“Yessir,” said Alonzo. “I checked with the port administration. They said we can keep the men in the departure lounges until the train leaves. Wanted an officer’s signature accepting responsibility for any trouble they might start, though.”

“I can do that. How about food?”

“There’s a couple of restaurants in the port area. You got cash, sir?”

On the advice of a couple of family friends, Croft had brought some – his wallet held ten $100 bills.

“Yes. I’ll buy something for them. It’s – ship time, Terran, they had breakfast about an hour ago. So we’ll get them dinner and something to eat on the train. Unless you’ve got other ideas, Sergeant?”

Alonzo shook his head.

“No sir.”

“You guys gonna stand around here all day or what?” came the shuttle pilot’s irritable voice from the door. “I’ve got to move this thing!”

Croft looked at Gonzalez, who was passing out the last of the magazines.

“I’ll take the rear, sir,” said Alonzo. “Gonzalez can show you the way.”

Another cargo shuttle blasted off, this one leaving quadruple flaming pillars.

When its sonic boom had died down, Croft moved to the front of the men.

“Alright, guys,” he said. “Quiet!”

Their chatter died down a little, but not much.

“The lieutenant said for you lot to shut the fuck up!” Gonzalez barked. “You bastards want to do fifty pushups each? Then do as the LT says and
shut the fuck up!
”

The rest of the chatter stopped immediately.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Croft said. Raised his voice:

“We’ve got a train leaving at half past six tomorrow morning. We’re going to be killing time in one of the port lounges until then. You’ll get dinner in a few hours.”

Do they need to know any more? Do
I
know anything more that I can tell them?

“Any questions?”

One man raised his hand.

“Yes, you?”

“Sir, where’re the bad guys and when do we get a crack at `em?”

Croft laughed. So did a few of the man’s friends.

“No idea where they are, Private,” he said. “But I suspect you’ll get to meet `em soon enough.”

***

Through a pair of high-grade binoculars, Pierre Skorzy watched the blueshirts head into the airport terminal.

Oh, for a few mortars
, he thought. One good salvo could wipe out the whole company, the way they were packed.

If we’d had more notice that they were coming in, we could have arranged something.

He put the binoculars down. He was lying on his chest, on the roof of a warehouse on the other side of the spaceport and the adjoining railway spurs.

A lean man in his early forties, Skorzy had blond hair combed over a high forehead and a starting-to-recede hairline. His face was all harsh lines, his nose sharp and triangular; his looks had been described as dangerous, imposing and stern, but never as handsome. His eyes especially – sharp and blue – drew attention for their intensity. Right now he wore blue workman’s overalls, a plain cotton shirt –
good New Virginia cotton from a farm like my brother’s
– and steel-toed boots.

The owner of this particular warehouse was a sympathizer, but it never hurt to blend in. That was how he’d survived.

“I say we do something,” said Tom Calhoun.

Calhoun was thirty-one, small, round-faced, dark-haired and knottily-muscular. His family – a hundred years ago – had come from the Appalachian Mountains of Old Virginia, on Earth. For the last four years he’d run a sizeable local cell of the Coalition for a Free New Virginia, ‘Cee-Free-En-Vee’.

Skorzy shook his head.

“At twelve hours’ notice?”

“We could muster up some guys. See when their train leaves – they’re going somewhere. If they were gonna be stationed at the Landing, they’d have marched straight off towards Division HQ like those other ones did. Put a bomb on it.”

Skorzy shook his head.

“Not after last week. They’re inspecting the trains pretty damn closely right now.”

“So? Half the CGs wouldn’t say jack if they
did
see a bomb.”

CGs were Colonial Guard, local troops reporting to the Governor. Everybody knew that a substantial number of them were secessionist sympathizers or secessionists themselves.

“
So
,” said Skorzy, “we’ve got twelve hours to cook up three decent-sized bombs and get them in. No. Besides – look over there.”

“Where?”

“The goods yard,” said Skorzy. “The secure area. What do you see?”

That was close enough that binoculars weren’t really necessary. The secure area was an enclosed square about eighty yards on each side. A watchtower stood at each corner; the walls were topped with thick coils of razor wire. US Army soldiers in grey urban camouflage sat in the watchtowers and walked the ramparts. More were unloading crates from a pair of trucks, passing them down a human chain to be stacked under crude wall-less shelters inside the secure area.

“I see the Army just got a shipload of goodies,” said Calhoun. “A big one.”

Skorzy gave a single slow nod.

“I say you get your boys together,” he said. “Looks like only a platoon of `em guarding the shit. You can muster up enough men to take on an Army platoon, can’t you?”

“
Army
?” scoffed Calhoun. “For a simple grab-and-run? Don’t joke, boss.”

“Can you or can’t you?” Skorzy demanded.

“Of course we can. Getting out with substantial material would be hard, though. If they raised the alarm. We’d have to do it quietly if we want to
get
the goodies, as opposed to smashing them up. Especially with that CG barracks practically next door.”

“I see Bobby Winchester taught you well,” Skorzy said. “You can do it, though? Tonight?”

“Yes.”

Skorzy smiled.

“We could use that stuff,” he said.

***

“Jerold,” said Senior Sergeant Alonzo to Sergeant Gonzalez, in an undertone.

“Yeah?” Gonzalez said. In the same undertone.

“One, have a drink. Two, you don’t want to know what I heard from the cashier at the stand.”

“What?” asked Gonzalez, accepting and opening the soda can.

“Seems Uncle Sam’s Assholes got a big load of goodies.”

Slowly he walked with Gonzalez to the big glassplex window that overlooked the shuttleport. Gonzalez was with Fourth Brigade, Fourth Battalion S-1 and Alonzo was with S-4; they’d happened to be in Godfrey’s Landing when the shuttle had been rerouted. Division had paged them in and told them to go meet it, since they were both Fourth Brigade and half these fish would be going to Fourth Battalion anyway.

“See that lander? Stuffed to the gills, the cashier said – she’d heard from some pissed-off stevodore – with Army issue. Got to be some stuff there we could use.”

“Sure,” said Gonzalez. “So – we tell Division G-4, they’ll send guys over, and they’ll cut us in?”

Alonzo shook his head.

“With ten percent, maybe, for the tip.
Hell
no. I say
they
get ten percent.”