Louis Shalako
With Unfriendly forces inbound or in the area, their
arrival on-planet was more of an insertion than a landing.
Escorted by a pair of destroyers of the Confederation,
their transport, the Eliza, had arrived
in-system with no major vessels of the Conglomerate detectable. The destroyers
had peeled away, off on a hunting trip of their own.
It was a high-energy approach, with tight radii and
rapid decelerations.
Eliza,
approaching
in a fast spiral from the far side of the planet, had hopefully been undetected
by ground-based sensors but that wouldn’t last for long.
“Hang on.” There were over a hundred and fifty of them
in there, scattered all up and down along the freight deck.
The load was exquisitely balanced on the centres of
thrust, maneuver and braking. The warm-blooded part of the cargo was almost an
afterthought. People were easier to stow, whether strapped in thin aluminum and
nylon-web seats or hanging in a sling-net from the rafters.
The ship vibrated and moaned in the upper atmosphere,
the jostling intense as people bounced around in their straps.
“All secure.”
Her officer’s voices rang in the background, cheerful
and confident. They were keeping an eye on things and joshing with the troops.
Up front, just above her shoulder, on the other side of the hatch, their pilots
were engaged in their own little world, plotting to the second when they should
be able to get off the ground again—just more pressure and nothing to be done
about that.
If she cared to look, there would be men and women,
young and scared, watching her for any kind of a sign.
Then there was Gunnery Sergeant Kelly. Ten metres away
on the port side of the ship, the man hung in the gap between cargo nets and
the walls of the ship with perfect aplomb. Some would have found it
claustrophobic. Dona wasn’t so sure she would have liked it much herself. The
cargo, even the vehicles, strapped down as they were, heaved up and down on
their tires, left and right with the momentum of every turn. He couldn’t even
let himself down, relying on others to do that for him. It was a sign of
confidence, she supposed. Anyone who screwed up that operation was going to get
one big blast.
She almost laughed.
Every strap and line hummed and twanged with the tension.
Kelly had been there before, of course, where so many
of them hadn’t. Four major campaigns, wounded twice, refused promotion more
than once. Decorations, which he didn’t wear. Bonuses, which he sent back to
his mother on Old Earth…his needs were simple, apparently, and he’d signed on
without hesitation. That was all she knew.
That and the fact that he looked the part—
As for Dona Graham, she was head down, reading as much
as she could jam in before touchdown. She needed to know everything there was
to know about the place, its people and its terrain. Her own people were also
on that reading list.
As far as leaving that part a bit late, her first
study had been of the enemy, the local economy and the road network.
That wasn’t saying much. There was hardly anything
down there.
The co-pilot spoke in her ears. Captain Aaron in the
rear of the compartment would hear it too.
This was the command circuit.
“Ground’s coming up, thirty seconds. We’re coming in a
bit hot, so make sure everything is secure.”
“Thank you. I think we’re okay.”
There wasn’t much to see out of the tiny portholes
stretching the length of the cargo bay. The big display screen on the rear wall
of the crew compartment lit up. There was a view straight ahead and down, very
much down as the crew tried to kill
energy and neither overshoot or undershoot.
The nose came up, bleeding off speed, they all gained
a lot of weight in a hurry, and she sank into her seat insofar as that was
actually possible in the thin aluminium bucket.
The ship, creaking audibly from frame members and
bulkhead joints, went into another hard turn. From her position, watching it
was hard on the neck under the gee-load and she decided to ignore the view and
trust to their pilots. It was hard enough just keeping breath in her body.
“Ten seconds. Brace yourselves.”
The good ship Eliza,
CT-119, a combat transport, had the
latest threat-detection systems. If there was anything out there, no one up
front was saying anything. Unarmed, their only hope lay in flight and the
active defense systems designed to defeat missiles, jam radars and fool optical
tracking systems.
Borderline obsolete, the ship was expendable, pulled
out of mothballs and recommissioned.
She was under short-term lease from the Kant system, an independent entity under
the umbrella of the Confederation. She’d always thought of them as the psychological planets.
There was no colourful nose art on the front end. That
sort of shit was pointless these days…Eliza
probably wouldn’t be around long enough to justify that kind of effort.
The crew were all volunteers. Highly-paid, but
volunteers nevertheless.
“Okay, people, here we are.”
The sky was gone, it was all dirt and hills and
scenery.
They must have hit pretty hard. The first bounce was a
big one and there were shouts and curses all up and down the line. That second
one came right up through the tailbone, echoing around the teeth and up into
the top of the skull.
Confederation troops were trained in military Anglic,
but there were one or two unfamiliar words in there. These could hardly be
complimentary.
There was another big bash from the bottom and then
they were skidding along a grass strip of about two kilometres in length. The
noise was overwhelming. With the ship relatively level, only a small patch of
ground was visible in the view-screen. The rest of the picture was deep blue
sky and fluffy white clouds and a big flare where the sun should be.
The retros flared, one more big blast.
“Hang on…hang on…wait for it.”
The ship finally slowed and then stopped, hooking a
bit left at the last second. The ship had heeled to the right discernably, not
enough to interfere with unloading. It was unbelievably quiet, but only for a
moment.
There were some muted cheers in the background and a
few nervous laughs.
Someone was still puking…off in the background noise.
“Doors opening. Stay clear. I repeat. Stay clear.”
Daylight flooded in from the after end and the smaller side hatches as people
struggled up and out of the straps and the seats.
“All right, people. Everybody out. Remember your
assignments.”
The nearest exit was five metres away and Dona headed
for it. Captain Aaron and several other senior officers followed, a small squad
of enlisted rank carried communications equipment and weapons slung in case of
trouble.
So far, it seemed pretty quiet out there.
When she got to the hatch, she was pretty much blinded
for a moment, but the stairs were deployed and there were handrails. People
were jostling from behind and she scuttled down.
Dark forms flurried forward and someone took her right
hand in a strong grip.
“Welcome to the planet Denebola Seven-A, Colonel. We
are sure as hell glad to see you, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Thank you. We’ll need as many people as you can
spare. Let’s get this thing unloaded. The pilots are engines-hot and anxious to
get going.”
Her eyes adjusting, Graham saw that the need had been
anticipated. There were already growing piles of equipment and supplies outside
of each hatch and there were voices yelling back and forth in the interior of
the ship. People milled around, getting their bearings as Kelly and the
security squad sprinted off towards the nearest tree-line. The airfield was
north-northeast of the town of Roussef, in one of the longitudinal,
flat-bottomed valleys where most of the planet’s agriculture was carried on.
They were surrounded by steep hills of five hundred to
a thousand metres at about the same distance. The vegetation above was spotty,
all rock in some places and a lot of brush in others.
The darkest clumps would be plantations of imported
Terran species, a valuable resource locally and for export. It had its beauty.
First impressions are lasting ones—
“All taken care of, Colonel. Please, if you would like
to step this way, we have transportation back to the command centre—”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to hold up for just a
minute.”
“Of course, Colonel.”
Graham turned to a slight figure at her side.
“Major, I want you to take charge here.” When in
command, command—the voice of her
father speaking.
Shut
up now.
“Right.” Major Victoria Chan snapped a quick salute
and turned away towards the rear loading doors where the bulk of the cargo and
the vehicles would have to be unloaded.
Graham took a more leisurely walk down there, the rest
following along. She gave a firm nod to one or two troopers, but said nothing
as she turned back to the line of vehicles.
Everyone seemed to be busy.
Vicky would have no problems with this crew.
“Right. Let’s go.”
The young lieutenant beckoned at the open side door of
a good-sized all-terrain utility truck.
There was room for six or seven, there were leather
seats and a rather pretty looking young trooper sat at the wheel, eyes a bit
wide and taking it all in.
CT-119 was probably the biggest ship that had ever
landed there, not since the initial colonization ships decades previously,
which might have accounted for it.
Other troops and officers piled into a second and
third vehicle, all rather civilian-looking in dull black, charcoal grey and
even a dark blue one. Their original planetary contingent had debarked at Deneb
City, a much larger facility.
Doors thudded closed.
Graham turned to the nearest one and stuck out a hand.
“Graham.”
“Tanguy. Jerri.”
The girl at the wheel let out the clutch and they were
moving.
“Okay. Get on the horn and let people know. Briefing
as soon as the ship is unloaded. We can leave the troops and as many rolling
units as possible moving all of that to secure storage—the hangars on the field
are a bit too obvious, although that will be a good place to start.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“My people know all of this and they have their
instructions. I’ve given them one hour to clear a few hundred tonnes and I’ve
got a funny feeling they can do it.” Everything was crated and palletted and
the ship had its own material handling system. “However, I need to be briefed
and then I might have a few things to share as well. What is the status of the
enemy?”
“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them, Colonel. They
have their main detachment in the big city, and that’s why our troops had to
withdraw. We were originally contracted as police for the colony, and sometimes
a bit of honest persuasion as far as the natives are concerned. We were never
intended for planetary defense. The natives actually like us, incidentally. We
put down a couple of disturbances, which probably saved them from massacring
each other—the elders know that even if some of the young hotheads don’t. This
was a couple of years ago. As for the Unfriendlies, they put down a thousand
troops where we had maybe two hundred and thirty.” The other thing was that the
Confederation’s hired mercenaries were relatively impartial in administering
justice to colonists and natives alike.
It was in the Contract and they were being paid for
their time.
It might not have been that way before. She wound up
this aside before Dona had to cut her off.
Best to let them talk sometimes—when one had a minute.
The road slid past, at roughly sixty-five kilometres an hour.
“What have they been doing.”
“About what you’d expect. Still unloading the ships.
Haven’t even refueled them yet. Building checkpoints, some small field
fortifications around the port, and most likely, waiting for reinforcements and
considering themselves lucky. They’re being remarkably smart. If the main body
is down yet, there’s no sign of them so far. Deneb City is about a hundred and
ninety kilometres southwest. If they brought ships of any size down there, we
really ought to have seen something. Let alone detected it.” The other thing
was, none of their civilian contacts in Deneb had seen or heard anything of the
sort. “It’s only a matter of time before they send a patrol up the road.”
They had so many contacts among the local colonists,
the information almost had to be genuine.
“Right.”
Looking out the window, Colonel Dona Graham, on her
first major combat command, took a good, long look at the terrain.
End
of Part Three.
Please check out Louis Shalako’s books
and stories on Amazon. Full length books are available in paperback or
ebook, short stories are in the ebook format. They’re science-fiction, mystery,
fantasy, horror and just plain satire.
Thank you for reading.
