Louis Shalako
Following
the doctor’s advice, she’d been using the goggs more judiciously. The headache
hadn’t come back, not so far.
“Colonel?”
The
retreat was going well. The Unfriendlies were occupying the respective
hill-tops. They were moving carefully, with small teams checking for
booby-traps before the bulk of them moved in. They were now patrolling ahead of
themselves, staying off the road when possible and using foot-soldiers almost
exclusively when away from the main road. Side-roads were used by the civvies who
lived in the area, and so those hadn’t been mined at all. Unfriendly
mine-detection teams were out in force, wasting their time as there was nothing
there to find. There were Confederation cameras. The enemy was being judicious
in dealing with civilians. Far from the main road, the small farms and ranches
were being visited. Just visited. Enemy drones probably weren’t seeing much
down there, which proved nothing and so it still had to be checked. Therefore,
the enemy was checking—and the Confederation was monitoring.
The
problem was, there was nothing there to find, and yet it still ate up a lot of
time.
Their
great victories at Hill 163 and Hill 114-A were probably already being written
into the history books and going out on all the news services. Virtually
everyone in human space would soon know all about it.
The
enemy newsfeed was there if one cared to look at it. The only thing missing in
there was dead bodies—in all the old documentaries, no matter who was producing
them, the dead were there on display, in spades. The more the merrier, or so it
would seem. It would soon be apparent to almost any viewer that the same few
smouldering Confederation weapons and vehicles, were being shown over and over
again.
Yet,
they would play it for all it was worth. Always with the thought of the
negotiating table in the background. Cynical, but also probably true. She had
put some thought into that herself—she had to. It was part of the job and all
eventualities had to be covered.
One
of those possibilities was defeat.
Public
opinion being what it was when people were far, far away. Every society had its
fringe elements, every polity had its own local, internal opposition. These
could be very contradictory at times. The galaxy was a big place full of
divergent cultures, all of them busily polling themselves. That, was the
soldier’s opinion of civics and society, when the moral questions should have
been obvious to anyone.
Public
opinion still mattered.
“Yes?”
“Another
column forming up. In Deneb City—”
“Activate
Mongoose One.”
“Activated.”
The soldier made a funny little grunting noise and hit the firing button.
“Launching.”
They
watched onscreen as the missiles tracked.
“Colonel?”
Another voice, another problem, yet another question.
“Yes?
Go ahead.”
“They
seem to be settling in for the night.” Another picture flashed before her eyes.
He
was referring to the forward elements of the enemy, digging in to hold the
hills. No real counterattack was possible, probably even not really expected.
It was sniper and missile protection, random stonks of artillery and mortar fire, which could be kept at a
distance and didn’t require a shit-load of manpower. Nothing beats a good hole
in the ground. The enemy had plenty of shovels and good, strong, farm-boy
backs.
“Well.
Colonel Graham—” It was Captain Aaron, looking tired and yet oddly cheerful.
“This might be a good time.”
Harvey
looked at her.
The
next big booby trap had been Paul’s idea.
“The
honour is all yours, Colonel.” Harvey gave his head a rueful shake. “Too bad
poor old McMurdo can’t be here to witness this one personally.”
With
enough manpower, and more than enough rock-drills and slurry, some volunteer
civilian labour, the hills in question were death-traps. This was the sort of
explosive power used in the trench and tunnel, underground warfare of WW I.
Thousands of kilograms of it. It was all wired, with the cables and the charges
well camouflaged under a foot of dirt, leaves and pine needles. Two hills were
about to change in elevation.
Luckily,
none of the enemy diggers had hit one of their lines. These had purposely been
kept to the steeper slopes, the power lines leading in the perpendicular, up to
individual charges strung off of a main, horizontal bus.
The
charges were properly wired in parallel, like a good string of Christmas
lights. If one shot-line was cut, the rest were all still live.
“I
guess I have as much right as anybody.” It was a way of acknowledging
responsibility.
A
responsibility which they all shared, but the boss was still the boss.
She
leaned in over Harvey’s shoulder.
The
room was very quiet as she selected the weapon, punched in the code, 1-3-4-2-F, tapped her screen, and two
great explosions ripped through the night. Two hilltops had just been torn
apart.
More
silence, just two flaring blossoms, a few kilometres apart on the satellite
feed, the on-scene cameras temporarily blinded or even burned out by the sudden
overload. It was the sheer speed of the change in contrast that did it.
Someone
spoke.
“…estimated
casualties. One hundred.” The algorithms were running, always running in the
background. “Fifty of them fatal, with a mix of light and seriously wounded.
Congratulations, Colonel.”
“Thank
you. Thank you very much.” The room was very quiet.
There
must have been a few guns, weapons and vehicles among that tally, that toll,
but it would take a while to get a better picture. Still, one could imagine
what two hundred holes like that would do, when an entire hillside came down,
the land under you erupting in a million flying chunks of torn trees and shattered
granite.
The
scattered dots on the screen didn’t lie.
As
usual, it was like a punch in the guts.
Sorry about that.
Just doing my job.
***
Uncharacteristically,
the Unfriendlies had paused. They’d set up a veritable tent city, one which
could, admittedly, come down just as quickly. This was down off of the heights
proper, well back and in under a lot of trees and forest. The previous night
had taught them an abject lesson, but also a valuable one. They were holding
their hills with the minimum of people, with reinforcement within a short
radius. In an emergency, all they had to do was to run up that hill.
Having
taken the hills, they had set up what were nothing more than some glorified
guard-posts.
Having
studied the Confederation tactics, the Unfriendly camp was just out of range of
her howitzers and the mortars set to defend the next little stretch.
Predicting
their next encampment had just become
that much harder. Which wasn’t to say that it couldn’t be done, and this new
wrinkle had been programmed into the system for further study.
This
would be by machine-intelligence, as she had no one to spare to sit around
poring over maps. Next time, set the mortars a bit further forward. That was
one option. Find the next really good camping-spot, maybe more than one, and
mine them extensively, purely on spec.
That was another option.
With
the commanding heights of Hills 163 and 114-A dominating the road junction of
Highway 17 and Highway 2, the town of Roussef and the first part of the road to
Ryanville, they were digging the long guns into the rubble. The Unfriendlies
were building a temporary helicopter and drone facility on the flats, and
obviously preparing for a second phase of operations now that their second
major column had joined the first.
And
there were more where that came from—a lot more.
With
Roussef laying right there, undefended, and Ryanville at the end of the line,
it was only a matter of time before they moved. The Unfriendlies had sent a
large contingent back down the road, establishing a much more formidable
roadblock. This was presumably in response to the civilians and the native
Denebi attacks on their rearguard and patrols. They had grabbed stone buildings
for their command posts. They had a smaller one on Highway 2 coming up from
Walzbruch.
They
were using forward pickets and what appeared to be anti-personnel mines,
motion-sensors, trip-wires, laser and mechanical, as well as vibration sensors
in a ring about the main emplacements.
They
had also set up larger roadblocks on the approaches to Deneb City, Walzbruch
and a few smaller but significant villages and crossroads. Another dispersal of
their forces, all of which had to be planned, manned, set up, supplied, fed,
relieved, (and in typical Unfriendly fashion, the troops ministered-to by the
chaplains). It all had to be supervised and commanded. Two or three shifts a
day. It all took people. Always, more people. That tooth-to-tail ratio could
become pretty long in certain cases. It tended to grow in complexity over time.
So far, they’d only had a week or so.
Just
across the valley, on the other side of the road junction, lay another series
of high ridges, rising up into the real lake and snowfall country. The dome, as it was dubbed locally, was
the highest elevation for a hundred kilometres around. Here the tops of the
hills were barren, as much due to the altitude as well as the latitude. With
the planet’s density less than that of Old Earth, (it was also a younger
planet) the atmosphere thinned very quickly with altitude. At so-called sea
level, it was only three-quarters Earth pressure, although slightly more
oxygen-rich.
The
habitable zone was much narrower, about half as compared to Old Earth. The rest
was all Arctic and sub-Arctic.
Eons-old,
ground down by ancient glaciers, it wasn’t exactly Mount Everest up there. It
was definitely different, with a lot
of fog and mist, grasses and mosses, lichens, a few slightly-mutant marmots,
and the more purely Denebian species of flora and fauna which had adapted to
that range.
Trees,
food crops, didn’t grow here. It was so remote, and the season so short, even
the sheep and cattle herders ignored it.
After
several minor skirmishes, the armed civilian groups appeared to have faded off
into the bush, where there were farming hamlets, logging camps and hunting
cabins, fishing camps, and small habitations of various kinds. These were in
what the locals called hollers. In
the valleys, game was plentiful and there was plenty of wood for the stove.
Every little creek and pond was teeming with fish.
These
scattered homesteads were so far off the beaten path as to represent nothing of
interest to the Unfriendlies, not at this stage of the game, and it would be
difficult and dangerous for the civvies to return to Walzbruch. It was expected
that the Unfriendlies, aware of the civvies as well as the natives, would begin
patrolling the main roads, at the very least. Small as the forces would be, it
was another division, another commitment, another distraction. Another
time-suck for the enemy, especially if they started taking an interest in every
little track and side-road.
There
had been a phone call, purporting to be from the leader of one such group, down
at the south end of Highway 17. The individual, a male, calling himself Hawk, had reported two civvies killed
and three more seriously wounded.
They
claimed to have killed quite a few Unfriendlies, which she was taking with a
grain of salt.
Shouting
at the phone didn’t make it any more true.
He
had said there were some minor injuries which they could deal with on their
own—
He
had asked for helicopter extraction for the wounded, which she had no choice
but to refuse. It was just too far away. All she had were civilian helos and
she was holding them back for a possible raid. None of his business in any
case. He hadn’t been very happy about that, and she’d cut him off rather than
argue, or worse, to explain.
She
had no time for idiots and the untrained.
Her
own forces, the bulk of which had successfully withdrawn from Roussef, had
either made their way to Ryanville or had been redeployed along the axis of
attack. In this country this could only mean Highway 17 and a few connected
side-roads.
There
were stay-behind parties right in Roussef, staying undercover by various means,
and then there were the patrols south of the town.
The
next phase of the battle was clearly about to begin, with another major column
coming up the road from Deneb City, and with feverish activity being reported
by civvies at other Unfriendly installations in the city.
The
odds were, this meant even more Unfriendlies on the road.
***
Hungry
as hell, she was already sagging in her seat.
Dona
was sitting with Lieutenant Tanguy and a very large trooper named Rodriguez in
the dining room of a popular family restaurant overlooking Lake Ryan. Right on
the docks, there were fishing smacks of a peculiar, enclosed type lined up at
the wharf. Apparently the fishermen worked out of big, side doors coming down
fairly low to the water. In rough weather, the side doors could be closed and
they would ride it out, or one must assume. They could literally watch
tomorrow’s special being unloaded from the hatches, big wooden boxes of ice and
fresh-caught fish. Other, lugger-type boats, with all their booms and spars,
would be for shellfish. Shrimp or something. She really didn’t know much about
it, although it was picturesque.
There
was the clink of cutlery in the background, cutting through the low volume of
the light, airy, vaguely country-western sort of elevator music that was
apparently a requirement in public places on the planet. Some of it wasn’t so
bad, not compared to the metal that
had been popular on campus at the time of her going.
As
for herself, she was fond of Old Earth’s Iranian bossa-nova resurgence of the
late 2300s.
You
didn’t hear too much of that anymore.
She
had decided on the scallops, local yams, fresh green peas, tomato juice and a
nice tossed salad with the vegetables fresh from a local garden. On this
planet, you ordered each and every item from a list of the several major food
groups. No pre-planned menus, meat, potato and veg, juice or salad and a bun
here. Every meal was a custom job.
Having
ordered, and with none of them really in the mood for small talk, listening to
the mundane conversations from other tables was a reminder that there was a
whole ‘nother reality out there, a
world of normality. She couldn’t help but be a woman, with the odd little
twinge when she saw some other woman. A mother, a father and a couple of
children sitting about their own table, perhaps laughing and giggling. A few
tables away, a similar tableau, where the kids were misbehaving and the parents
weren’t presently on speaking terms—
And
sure enough, that could be me. Either one of them could be me.
That
is your reality, and this is mine.
But enough.
Just one more
personal observation.
The
people had their own unique accent, in spite of entertainment media from other
worlds being prevalent. In the original phases of colonization, several
contingents brought in by different commercial ventures, (all of which had
eventually failed and gone into bankruptcy), had been ethnically-diverse, some
from Old Earth and some from newer planets. Over time, all of those influences
had gelled into something uniquely its own. There were extremes of skin colour,
dress and probably cultures, too, some of which would be preserved and some of
which would fall by the wayside...
With
no lack of space, the town, really just a big village, Ryanville stretched for
quite a few kilometres up and down this end of the lake. There was really only
the one road, gravel, improved. It went on for about forty k to the west, and
maybe twenty-five to the east, up and around the V-shaped east end of the lake.
She’d had a quick drive around town, and she’d gone up there and had a look.
The roads were at least usable, this early in the season. How long that might
last was another question.
Lake
Ryan was two hundred and seventy kilometres long, and more than fifty wide in
places.
This
end of the lake, an impressive body of water indeed, was about thirty-four
kilometres across, measuring due north from Ryanville, with the bulk of the
lake laying off to the northwest.
There
had to be a thousand islands in the lake, the tops of former hills sticking up
from below.
This
end, the deepest, was relatively open.
Back
from the water, there were a few small hamlets and enclaves, mud huts with
corrugated metal and sod roofs in some cases, recent arrivals apparently, and
even some classic trailer parks, up in the hills.
So
far, no one had seen a flurry—
But
winter was coming. It had to be. Where
else was it going to go, as the saying went.
This
one from a table somewhere behind her left ear.
With
all the stay-behind parties out there, and a few more still to be deployed, the
Confederation had over four hundred troops in the town. This, was the end of
the line.
Still,
it was important to try and enjoy the moment.
If
only she could.
(End of part thirty-three.)
Previous
Episodes.
Images.
Image One. One of Deneboloa-Seven’s slightly-mutant
marmots. Louis Shalako.
Image Two. Collection of Louis Shalako.
Image Three. Confederation Public Communications Office.
Image Four. Denebola-Seven Defense Force.
Image Five. Higgins.
Image Six. Anonymous selfie.
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