First Casualty Read online

  Mattim got an arm around Buck's shoulders just fast enough to keep his friend in his seat. Still, Matt had to agree with the dirtbag. Until the Navy quit wasting time teaching merchant captains what they'd learned twenty years ago. Until the Navy turned loose the engineers like his own Ivan who knew the power plant of his ship better than his wife's body, the Navy was going to get junk, not the made-over warships they wanted.

  And the marines would be on their own.

  The bottle arrived. He and Buck began the long, slow process of getting the pain out.

  * * * *

  Sergeant Mary Rodrigo edged her mole a fraction higher, checking the echo carefully. There was still two centimeters of dirt between it and the surface of the pass. She backed it out and had it shove the mine back where it had been. To any surface scan, the gap was as virgin as it had been a billion years ago when the cooling rock of the rim cracked and split open.

  Good.

  “Old lady, what we gonna do?” Dumont was the coolest of the kids, which was why they followed him. Now he was one of Mary's corporals and had listened in on the channel Lek used to pass along what was really happening. He knew the colonials were due any time now, and the rest of the company was a long way out. “I mean, some of those Colly troops were killing people before us street kids were hatched. They gonna stomp right over us and not even slow down. We got to get gone from here.”

  If they ran, they'd die. “Du,” Mary cajoled, “we've dug you good solid holes with the mining gears. Hunker down. If we hang together, we can make it through together.” How many times had Mary said that? In the mines it worked. Would it work on a battlefield?

  “You old folks always got something up your sleeves. What you dreamed up this time?”

  Mary never lied to Cassie, Lek, or other miners who'd saved her ass too often to count. The same didn't apply to Dumont and his kids. Still, she'd rather distract him than lie to him. “You seen the minefield. You know the sensors I've put up. Your girls got us the extra rockets.”

  “Yeah, some of the girls traded real nice for that shit. But none of us gonna die for that joking green flag.” Dumont shook his head; most of the movement was lost in the suit.

  Mary hadn't asked how Dumont 's girls got the extra gear, especially the big rockets. She was willing to do anything to see her team come out of this alive; they were too. Maybe Dumont deserved the whole truth; Mary checked to make sure she was on one of Lek's very private channels. “Maybe we can talk to the colonials before the shooting starts. Maybe we don't have to kill each other.”

  “You think so?” Dumont didn't sound nearly as happy about the prospect as Mary had expected. “Them Colly goons don't stop to ask no questions. They just roll up to you and over.”

  “I heard that too. We'll try to catch them early. And we got enough here to slow them down. Maybe to talk to them. If not, to stop them. Trust me, Du, we're gonna get through this.”

  “I'm thinking maybe we just might,” the kid said softly.

  “I'm thinking the last mine's in and we ought to get back.” Cassie broke from her concentration, her right hand the only part of her moving as she supervised her moles. She stretched tall, then wide. “Sure you don't want company?” Cassie offered. “It's gonna get lonesome out here.”

  Mary owed her life to Cassie too many times to count, and she'd returned the favor often enough. It would be good to have someone here, someone to talk to when the time got slow, someone to share the burden with when it got through to Mary what she was doing, really doing. “Thanks, Cassie. You're good, but I got to do this one myself. No sharing.”

  “God go with you,” Cassie whispered as she gave Mary a hug, battle armor to battle armor, and ducked out the hole and onto the jet cart.

  Dumont clapped Mary on the shoulder. “Suit looks good. Take care, Sergeant,” and he was gone.

  As Mary ordered the jacks to swivel the massive stone door closed and settle it solidly in place, it dawned on her. That was the first time Dumont had ever called her “Sergeant” when the lieutenant wasn't listening. “He picked a hell of a time to get respectful,” she muttered through a grin.

  Mary cycled her heads-up display through the sensor coverage of the gap and both sides of the crater rim. Her diggers were charged; if she had to juggle something, she was ready. Thanks to the jet cart, there were no footprints on this side of the rim. She switched to a view of the platoon. Using the excavator from the mine, everyone was dug in solid. The LT had planned to use the rill for cover. Half the platoon was still dug in there, but two squads now were scattered behind it. Good.

  But sensors showed an awful lot of tracks pointing to where the fire teams had gone to ground. Mary wasn't the only one checking. “Sergeant, you on line yet?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “We need to dust this place. Make footprints disappear.”

  “Yes, sir. Nan , use the cart and all the nitrogen we got left. Blow away the footprints and cool down any hot spots. I'll pass you the sensor picture.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  On Mary's screen, Nan was out, gliding over the ground in the cart, blowing compressed nitrogen. The lieutenant was also up, walking toward the crest of the gap.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Sergeant, I'd like to see the other side, too. You can't have all the fun.” This was the kid's first battle; she'd heard the longing in his voice as he talked about it. She'd needed the same chance to taste the ground, get the feel of how the battle would unfold. The kid was green as slime, but not dumb.

  “Aye, aye, Lieutenant. I've turned the mines off.”

  “Lek showed me your plan. You've set up a good attrition field, Sergeant. Thin them down before we hit them. You dug in deep?” The video showed him standing at the crest, slowly turning his suit to take in the scene before him.

  “Pretty deep, sir, in a cavern with a half-meter-thick stone covering the entrance.”

  “Skunks, five minutes out,” the command circuit interrupted. “Everyone to cover.”

  “Well, everything's done.” The Lieutenant turned and started a low-gravity hop down the gap. “Now we do our duty. See you when we're done, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mary said. One way or the other, she would.

  * * * *

  Major Ray Longknife sat, his back ramrod straight. From the spare seat on the bridge of the Unity attack transport Friendship he had a good view—of the red Unity banner with its yellow lightning bolt painted on the ship's nose, and the blinking displays that made his hands clench into fists. The Navy was screwing the ground-pounders— again!

  The admiral had promised a cakewalk when he'd ordered the 2nd Guard Assault Brigade aboard ship on an hour's notice. “We'll blow those Earthie scum away with relativity bombs, and seize Pitt's Hope before they know what hit them.”

  Well, the relativity bombs hadn't hit a damn thing. He'd known they were in trouble when Rita—correction, Senior Pilot Nuu—lowered her beautiful eyes at the admiral's bloody optimism. She'd explained during the three-day run out here that the jump point they'd be using was horribly unstable. She'd been right.

  Every ship exited the jump point on a different heading. Each captain followed his orders and launched bombs as soon as he was through and before slowing. None hit even close to where ever so slight hints suggested his enemy was. Damn!

  The jump had one benefit. Scattered and low on fuel, the fleet had made a scoop pass on the gas giant. That at least slowed the damn Navy down. The cruisers' lasers might actually hit something on their firing pass.

  “Quixote.” Ray snarled the code word. On that order, the admiral would drop the 2nd right in the crater the Earthies were using for their defense. Did he really expect grunts to tilt with windmills and win? There was a second code word, Rosebud, to land the transports outside the crater. One site would even save them a low pass across the Earth defenses. Ray and Senior Pilot Nuu both voted for Rosebud One. Quixote and Rosebud. Computer-generated code names; Ray doubted t
he admiral even knew who Don Quixote was. He also doubted the admiral had any idea what he was sending the 2nd Guard up against.

  Then again, neither did Ray. That was the problem. Wait until you know more, and you'd face more. Boot the Earth hirelings before they dug in, and he might get the easy win the admiral wanted. The 2nd was a proud outfit; it had never lost a battle. Ray would not be its first CO to break that record.

  * * * *

  Carefully, Mary settled into an almost comfortable slouch. Whoever designed battle suits had made them great for running, leaping, killing. They hadn't put much thought into “hurry up and wait.” The status lights of the gear around her provided the only light in the cavern. Mary waited; it couldn't be long now.

  As the now stretched into a private eternity, Mary found herself with time on her hands and the first time to think in way too long. What are you doing here, girl?

  Mary scowled at herself. I’m no girl, and the question has too many answers.

  She was here because she had no choice. A couple of kids from Dumont 's gang ran after they got their boot camp “haircut.” Their bodies were found the next day, throats slit, decorated with little green flags and a note from the “Patriots for Humanity.”

  Nobody'd been arrested for the murders.

  That night, the platoon talked it out after lights out. Dumont and the other kids wanted to go over the wall, head for the hills until the war was over. When Cassie asked them if any of 'em had ever hunted or eaten roots, they got quiet and sullen.

  Some of the miners wanted to strike. Lek asked them to read their labor contract, then unfolded his enlistment papers. “Nothin' in here about a labor rep, but it do say we got to obey the orders of our superior officers. I checked. They can shoot us if we don't.”

  “They can't shoot all of us,” someone in back whined.

  “Two kids ran, two kids dead. How many of you got wives that will raise a stink?” Lek asked. “Got family that have any say at the Commissioner's Office?”

  About that time it had dawned on Mary. Slowly she'd stood. “We got nobody,” she said, looking around the room. Nobody out there.” She jerked a thumb at the rest of the world. “But we do got somebody. We got each other.” She opened her arms like some kind of corner preacher—only she felt it. “We got to look out for each other, 'cause sure as pay's gonna be shorted, nobody else gonna look out for us. We can't get out of this. But we can get through it. We can if we do it together.”

  Which had probably been her first step on the way to being the platoon's sergeant. Cassie told her, after the vote,

  We need a ma. You're the closest some of us will ever come to one.”

  That had to be a laugh; Mary had never known her own ma or pa.

  So, to keep her friends alive, Mary was here, getting ready to kill a lot of people in a war that didn't mean a damn. And when it was over, the only jobs open would probably be farther out in what was now enemy space. Why not do the job-hunting as prisoners of war? Mary checked; the digger burrowing under the plain was about four klicks out, halfway to the escarpment. “Hurry up, little mole. If they ain't using radios, your little wire patch may be the only way we can get a word in edgewise.”

  Two

  Senior Pilot Rita Nuu liked having Major Ray Longknife on her bridge. It hadn't always been so. He'd done a good imitation of a horse's rear end the first time he crossed her bridge coaming. As the senior woman in Wardhaven's attack transport squadron, she was used to male disapproval. It had taken her a while to realize that his attitude had nothing to do with her and everything to do with his beloved brigade. Once that was straightened out, she discovered she actually liked the guy. Love came later.

  They had discovered, both on and off ship, that working together was far more fun than fussing. At the moment, Rita was putting the major's position to good use for her squadron. As usual, the admiral didn't think the transports needed to know boo. However, Longknife's access to the command net was displayed on her heads-up. It helped to know what the hell was happening.

  To Rita's right, Junior Pilot Cadow had the conn; his hands showed white knuckles on the stick. Technician Hesper did double duty behind Rita, running the electronic countermeasures stations and communications. Ray rode the jump seat behind Cadow, his portable battle station linked with the Friendship's .

  “The destroyers in the van are going in,” the major reported. “The Dry Lightning is low. The Stormy Night is high. Should have visuals and sensors sixty seconds before the cruisers start dusting down the crater.” Again Rita wished they had a cruiser attached to the transports. Setting down in that crater five minutes after the cruisers shot it up and two hours before they'd be back was not her idea of smart.

  Rita eyed two data screens. One showed strung-out lights representing the gun line. The other waited for sensor data on their target.

  * * * *

  The rocket was old, and the dumbest of the dumb. In its nose was a tiny proximity fuse to tell it to blow up a few meters above the ground, scattering its plastic flechettes in a deadly cloud to puncture battle suits or thin-skinned vehicles. Today, the proximity fuse was disabled.

  Today, it simply waited for the backup timer to tick away the seconds as its motors blasted at full power. The tiny brain did face a challenge, though. The weight distribution of the rocket was off. The simpleminded CPU had to adjust the rocket nozzles again and again until the missile took on a slight spin. The dumb control unit had not intended the spin, but it did make its job simpler.

  The source of the rocket's problem, if it had been wise enough to seek out and solve problems, was a collar that had been added around its payload section. A thick cylinder of sand, barely held together by glue, covered the entire warhead.

  Two of the rockets shed their dusty mantles. Three more could not solve the problems created by them and wandered off on their own track. None of them heard Commander Umboto's proud shout. “Crossbows away, Captain. Thirty-one running hot, straight and normal.”

  * * * *

  “What's that?” Rita and Ray asked at the same moment.

  Hesper worked her board with quick, deft fingers. “Stealthy something, not well guided. They'll miss the destroyers by a wide margin. Doubt if the cans'll waste a shot on them.”

  “Hope all their defenses are as shabby,” Rita prayed.

  The first sensor reports came in—video of the crater. A couple of piles of ice stood out, but they looked like ship Armor that had been dumped there for later processing.

  Give me some other scans,” The major breathed. “Infrared, electromagnetic. We can't go in there on visual alone.”

  A new scan started working its way down the screen. Electromagnetic. Good,” the major smiled.

  The picture went fuzzy, then turned to static.

  “Hesper, get that back,” Rita ordered.

  “No signal,” ECM answered.

  “Fix it.”

  “Can't, Skipper. It's not us. We got a beam from the flag, but it's just noise.”

  “Is the Dry Lightning gone?” Cadow choked on the question.

  Rita glanced at her display. “Everybody's still squawking.”

  “Hesper, can you get me the flag's command net?” Longknife asked softly.

  “Lurk on it regularly, sir.”

  “Please put it on speaker,” the major requested. He never gave an order on Rita's bridge. If he wanted something, he went through her. Rita didn't begrudge him today's directness.

  “Comm,” the admiral shouted from the speaker, “get me through to those tin cans.”

  “No can do, sir, we got a brick wall ahead of us. No comm to or from them.”

  “Sensors, what kind of brick wall?”

  “Damned if I know. Those missiles that missed started exploding and suddenly we got dust and something else all over the place.”

  “Gun squadron, begin acceleration at three gees. Now.” My, but the admiral was sounding a tad hysterical. “Transports.” Ah, the admiral finally remembered them
. “Execute ...”

  “What?” Cadow yelped.

  “Signal lost,” Hesper reported.

  “Can we accelerate?” Ray asked.

  “We're in landing mode,” Rita answered. “Even if we go to three gees, we'll float over their base like target balloons.”

  The major pursed his lips. “Set us down at Rosebud One.”

  “Once grounded,” Rita nodded, “we can always launch out into the opposite orbit.”

  Ray considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Political officer would have my head on a platter.”

  Rita snorted.

  “And these folks have just landed. It must be a mess down there. I've got seven hundred combat veterans. What have they got? A mob that's never had a shot fired at them.”

  “That's what the jollies tell us.” Rita spat the epitaph for political officers.

  “We got to find out sooner or later who's right. If he is, I damn sure want to find out sooner. Land us at Rosebud One.”

  “I've got the conn,” Rita snapped, taking the sticks back from Cadow. “Just once, Ray, I wish you'd let somebody else find out if the buzz-saw is unplugged. Just once.”

  “Where can you set us down?”

  “How close you want to be, grunt?”

  “About thirty klicks from the pass,” Ray ordered. “It'll make for a short approach march. Put the transports safely out of range, and you can keep the rockets warm if we come running back and need a quick ride out of here.”

  “Just make sure you come back.”

  * * * *

  Mary jumped when the infrared signals started screaming again. Six ships, rockets pointed her way, sunk over the horizon. “Landing force arriving,” she announced, ready to get to work. To do, as she had done every day of her working life, the job she was paid for.

  She checked the digger; still not to the escarpment. They had to get a chance to talk to the colonials! But what do you say? They sure as hell hadn't included that in boot camp. She glanced at her board; she was ready to fight. That they'd taught her well. How do you not fight in a war when everybody else is?

  * * * *

  Grandpa always told Ray a soldier expects problems, and problems were staring Ray in the face the second he disembarked. His largest transport, the Loyal, stood at an angle, one landing gear in a crater. The right edge of the roll-off ramp was down the rest hung in space. Engineering platoon was rigging a derrick to offload the artillery the hard way.