Lines of Departure

^{CHAPTER 17} BASTILLE DAY

We spend the next few days squaring away our new quarters, unloading cargo from the orbital shuttles, and eating way too many meals in the fancy chow hall. After a week has passed since our ill-advised sojourn into town, I allow myself some hope that the task force commander isn’t completely off his rocker.

On day eight of our stay, that little kernel of hope is squashed, not exactly to my surprise.

Whoever is in charge of the whole thing has either a flair for drama or a sadistic streak. We’re all barely out of our bunks when the combat-stations alarm in our building starts blaring. I’m brushing my teeth in the head when the lights switch to the ominous red-tinted combat illumination. All around me, the noncoms of the HD staff platoon drop their morning kit and rush out of the room.

“That better be a Lanky invasion,” Sergeant Fallon says from behind one of the stall doors near me.

“Well, whoever it is, you better cut things short in there,” I reply.

“Grayson, if this is a bullshit alert, there’s no reason for me to rush. And if it’s the end of this place, it won’t make a difference whether I finish taking a dump, will it?”

“See you at weapons issue,” I say, and leave the room with a grin.

The HD grunts are every bit as squared away as the Spaceborne Infantry. Every single member of the platoon is in full battle rattle and standard combat loadout less than five minutes after the first sound of the combat-stations alarm. We don’t have designated posts, so we fall out in front of the building and trot over to the ops center, heavy with weapons and ammunition.

“HD platoon, briefing room Charlie,” one of the senior SI sergeants greets us at the main entrance. He’s in his battle dress fatigues, not in armor, so I deduce that we don’t, in fact, have a Lanky seed ship or Russian invasion fleet headed for Camp Frostbite at the moment. We file into the building and sit down in briefing room Charlie as directed. The SI troopers on duty in the ops center move around without great urgency.

“That’s just fucking mean-spirited,” one of the HD sergeants mutters as we claim our seats, cramming our armor-clad bodies into chairs too small by half for troopers in battle gear. “Coulda waited until after breakfast with this shit.”

Nobody disagrees. There’s an unwritten protocol to the alert system, and it’s considered harsh to summon a whole platoon or company with a combat-stations alert without emergency while the unit is in the middle of personal maintenance or chow.

“Ten-hut!”

The HD platoon’s lieutenant jumps to his feet when the SI major and his company sergeant enter the room. We all follow suit.

“As you were,” the major says.

Forty grunts in armor lower themselves into their too-small chairs again.

“Apologies for the alert before morning chow,” the major continues. “The old man upstairs called that one. I’m guessing he’s not keeping track of the local time.”

“That’s not the only thing he isn’t keeping track of,” someone behind me murmurs.

“I realize this is going to go down without rehearsal,” the major says. He steps up to the briefing lectern at the front of the room and picks up the remote for the holographic screen on the wall behind him. “The word just came down an hour ago. This one’s called Operation Winter Stash.”

He turns on the holoscreen, which instantly shows a 3-D image of New Longyearbyen. Several spots on the map are marked with drop-zone icons.

“This should be a quick thing, since we’re only facing mostly unarmed civilians. We’re going to seize control of the civilian storage facilities under emergency regulations.”

The drop-zone markers on the map flash in turn as the major points at them.

“Objective A is the main food storage. Objective B is the water farm. Objective C is the control center for the hydroponic greenhouses, and Objective D is the fuel storage at the civvie airfield. We’re sending your platoon in, one squad per objective.”

Members of the platoon are silently absorbing this information. I look at Sergeant Fallon across the room, and her face is impassive and unreadable. Finally, the platoon lieutenant raises a hand.

“Sir, you’re going to send four squads into a town of over ten thousand to take their most important resources?”

“You’ll be in battle armor, and you’ll have all four Dragonflies supporting you from above. The most dangerous stuff they have down there are sidearms and maybe some stun sticks.”

“Why isn’t the SI company going in?” Sergeant Fallon asks. “Sir,” she adds, with a bit of acid in her voice.

“The general feels that the HD platoon is better suited for this task. You folks are trained and geared for exactly this kind of mission profile, and you have a lot more experience handling belligerent civvies than we do.”

I have an unpleasant flashback to a drop into Detroit almost five years ago: our squad holed up against the side of a building, and a surge of angry civilians coming toward us like a natural disaster. Then the hoarse chattering of our rifles, and our fléchettes cutting through bodies, mowing down rows of people in a bloody harvest. I don’t believe in souls, but if I have one, a big chunk of it died that night in Detroit.

“We do a quick vertical assault with the drop ships. One Dragonfly per squad, so we can get you all on the ground in the same second. Secure the facilities, establish your perimeters, and call in the cavalry once you’ve seized the objectives. If the civvies get cranky, use nonlethal deterrents. Once you give the all-clear, the Dragonflies are going to RTB and pick up one platoon of SI each, to reinforce the objectives. Should be a cakewalk.”

“Spoken like a man who ain’t gonna be there,” the SI sergeant next to me mutters under his breath, and I nod in agreement.

I want to talk to Sergeant Fallon before we board the ships for our little cakewalk, but on the way to the flight area, she’s in a walking huddle with the rest of the platoon’s NCOs. With my fleet-pattern armor and my fleet weaponry, I already feel like a bit of an interloper among the HD troops, and walking to the flight line by myself only reinforces the feeling. Just before we get to the flight-ops area, the wandering HD powwow breaks up, and I notice some of the NCOs shooting me sideways glances.

We walk up to the ramp of our waiting Dragonflies without much enthusiasm. The troop bay is designed to hold a full platoon, and our little squad has lots of legroom. I sit by the tail ramp for faster egress, but Sergeant Fallon and two of her noncoms sit by the forward bulkhead, right by the crew chief’s jump seat and the passageway to the cockpit.

As our Dragonfly lifts off into the cold morning sky, I have a very strange feeling about the upcoming drop.

Our four-ship flight takes a course away from the settlement, to gain altitude out of sight and earshot. When we are high enough to be inaudible from the ground, we swing around and head straight for our targets.

“Prepare for combat descent,” the pilot says over the shipboard intercom.

When we’re directly above the town, twenty thousand feet above the hard deck, our drop ship banks sharply, cuts its engines, and drops out of the sky. The pilots are either adrenaline junkies or they don’t get very many opportunities to do combat descents. We’re all grunting in our seats as the drop-ship jock at the stick holds a three-g turn for what seems like minutes. Then the engines rev up again, and gravity pushes us back into our seats. The Dragonfly slows its rapid descent, and a few moments later, the skids hit the ground roughly.

“All squads,” Sergeant Fallon’s voice comes over the platoon channel. “Bastille, Bastille, Bastille.”

“Up and at ’em,” the crew chief calls out. We unbuckle and grab our weapons from the storage brackets.

Most of the squad exits the ship at a run, but Sergeant Fallon and the two NCOs with her don’t follow them. I stop at the bottom of the ramp and look back to see that one of the HD sergeants has his rifle aimed at the crew chief, who looks utterly perplexed. Sergeant Fallon rushes up the passageway to the drop ship’s cockpit, with her remaining NCO at her heels.

I jog back up the ramp, careful to keep my hands away from the carbine slung across my chest, lest the HD trooper holding the crew chief at gunpoint thinks I’m about to intervene in whatever crazy-ass plan Sergeant Fallon is executing.

“Hands off the comms gear,” the HD trooper instructs the crew chief, and emphasizes the command with a wave of his rifle muzzle. I walk past them to follow Sergeant Fallon into the cockpit, and the HD trooper gives me a curt nod.

When I step into the open cockpit hatch, I see Sergeant Fallon and her NCO holding sidearms against the helmets of the pilots.

“Listen up, flyboy,” Sergeant Fallon tells the pilot, who looks every bit as stunned as his crew chief. “Your ride is now HD property. Unplug your helmet, get out of your seat, and walk off the ship.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Sergeant?” the pilot says.

“Not half as nuts as I was the day I signed up for this bullshit,” Sergeant Fallon replies. “Now make your call. Your fingers touch any buttons, I’ll put a round right through your hand, sport.”

She reaches across his chest and removes his sidearm from its holster. The muzzle of the pistol in her other hand never wavers. The pilot carefully unbuckles his harness and starts to get out of his seat.

“No need for violence, Sarge. It’s not like you can do a damn thing with this bird anyway.”

“Whatever you say,” Sergeant Fallon says.

When both pilots are out of their seats, Sergeant Fallon marches them out of the cockpit at gunpoint. I retreat into the armory nook behind the cockpit to let them pass.

“Cameron, she’s all yours. Andrew, you may want to come with me.”

In the cockpit, the HD sergeant picks up the pilot’s helmet and wedges himself into the right-hand seat.

“Uh, Sarge?” I ask. “You sure you want him to fly this thing?”

“Why the fuck not?” she says. “That’s what he does for a living back home. He’s one of our Hornet pilots.”

I remember her comment about reshuffling the HD battalion’s personnel roster, about making sure the right people are in the right places. The HD “sergeant” behind the stick raises two fingers to the brow ridge of his helmet in a casual salute, and I grin.

You can’t land something as big and noisy as a Dragonfly in the middle of a colony settlement without drawing instant attention. Whatever element of surprise the combat descent may have bought us, the HD troopers let it evaporate by not charging into the storage bunker that was our squad’s objective. A few minutes after our arrival, the place is lousy with curious civilians. The HD troopers merely stand in a group near the entrance of the bunker, helmet visors raised and weapons slung.

“All squads, objectives secure. The birds are in the nest.”

Sergeant Fallon sends out a curt acknowledgment in reply. Then she takes off the helmet and walks up to the nearest gaggle of civilians.

“Go fetch the administrator and the chief constable, please. And be quick about it. We don’t have much time.”

The colony administrator shows up a few minutes later on an ATV, accompanied by Chief Constable Guest and two of his officers. They climb off their vehicle and approach Sergeant Fallon, who is the only one of us without a full-coverage helmet on her head. The administrator looks livid, and the cops don’t seem to be in a friendly mood, either.

“The hell are you people doing at the food bunker, geared up for a fucking war?” he shouts at Sergeant Fallon. “Pack up your troops and go back to base. You have no business claiming civilian assets.”

“Shut up and listen,” Sergeant Fallon replies. “We didn’t come to seize your shit. But the people they’ll send after us are going to.”

The administrator looks from Sergeant Fallon to her combat-ready troops.

“So what are you here for, dressed up like that?”

“They told us to seize your food and fuel,” she explains. “But I have no interest in following illegal orders today.”

Constable Guest folds his arms in front of his barrel chest and looks at me with a raised eyebrow and the faintest of smiles.

“You guys staging a mutiny, or what?”

“Looks like we are,” I reply.

“I don’t suppose that fleet in orbit is going to share your legal interpretation?” Constable Guest asks Sergeant Fallon.

“No, I don’t suppose they will,” she says. “Mainly because the guy who gave the order is in charge of that fleet, too.”

“That could be a problem,” the administrator says. “You guys are just a squad. They can come down here and haul you off to the brig any time they want, and then take our stuff anyway.”

“We’re a platoon,” Sergeant Fallon says. “The rest of my people are over at the airfield, your hydroponic farm, and the water facility. They’re digging in to defend.”

“How many troops they got up there, in orbit?”

“Most of a regiment of Spaceborne Infantry. Plus the two SI companies up at Camp Frostbite,” I say. “But the fleet isn’t going to be keen on shooting anything into the middle of civvie towns. They’ll have to come and pry us out the hard way.”

“I’m not wild about the idea of a shootout right here in the middle of town,” the administrator says. “There’s over ten thousand people down here, you know. Not a lot of clear space for stray bullets.”

“Yes, but they know that, too,” Sergeant Fallon says.

The administrator looks over to the handful of troops by the entrance to the food storage bunker again.

“You guys are nuts. Not that I don’t appreciate your offer, but what can you do with a platoon against a whole regiment? That’s what, forty against a thousand?”

“Two thousand,” I say.

“Well,” Sergeant Fallon says, and smiles a lopsided little smirk. “We also have two full battalions of my own Homeworld Defense guys sitting all over this rock already. You have a bunch of those atmospheric puddle jumpers at the airfield, don’t you?”

The administrator and the constables stand off to the side for a few minutes, debating the situation in hushed, but animated talk. Then they walk back to where Sergeant Fallon and I are standing.

“Look,” the administrator says. “I don’t relish the thought of you grunts shooting it out with each other right in the middle of my town.”

He looks at the food storage bunker and chews on his lower lip for a moment.

“But I sure as hell didn’t sign up for a military occupation by my own people. Commonwealth Constitution says you serve us, not the other way around.”

“You’re the ranking civilian down here,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Until they open that chute again and send us orders to the contrary, that makes you my boss, not that one-star pencil pusher up there on the carrier.”

She nods at the troops by the bunker entrance.

“You want to keep all that stuff in civilian hands, you say the word. If you want them, I’m putting my whole outfit under your authority. Chances are they won’t want to try and root out fifteen hundred of us. And if they do, they’ll find out that Homeworld Defense is better at this game than they are.”

“How you going to handle those drop ships?” Constable Guest asks. “They can drop on top of us any time they want. You got something here that’ll scare off a flight of those?”

Sergeant Fallon smiles.

“We sort of, ah, borrowed the garrison’s brand-new drop ships. All four of ’em.”

Constable Guest shakes his head with a smile.

“Do it,” the administrator says. “Before they get wind of what you guys are doing down here. I’ll get on the radio with the fleet boss upstairs once you’re set up. See if I can talk some sense into him.”

Constable Guest turns to his fellow cops.

“We’re going to need a shitload of badges. I want to deputize every last one of these guys.”

“Time to pick a side,” Sergeant Fallon says to me a little while later, when the squad is setting up defensive positions at the food bunker. “I could use your help. You’re a pro running the tactical network. I need someone to coordinate the puddle jumpers and drop ships. Let us know when they send us company from orbit. But I’m not going to hold a gun to your head to keep you here. You want no part of this, you can go back to Frostbite, and no hard feelings. We’re probably all going to end up at a court-martial, best-case scenario. I’m not asking you to flush your career down the toilet.”

I don’t like the idea of taking sides against my fellow soldiers and fleet sailors. If I throw in my lot with Sergeant Fallon and her HD battalions, I will be forever persona non grata in any fleet chow hall and ship berth, even if I don’t spend the next twenty years in a military prison for mutiny. Since we’re at war, they probably wouldn’t leave it at that. What we’re doing here could get us all in front of a firing squad.

But to what end are we here? If we exist to defend the colonies, how can siding with the civvies down here be treason?

I remember the oath of service I took at my reenlistment ceremony just a few weeks ago. To bravely defend the laws of the Commonwealth and the freedom of its citizens.

Do we honor our oaths if we try to defend the Commonwealth’s laws by letting our commanders ignore them? Do we defend the freedom of its citizens by taking it away at gunpoint?

I don’t want to shoot at my fellow soldiers. But the thought of shooting at civilians is even more upsetting. I don’t want to pick a side, but now that I am forced to choose, I know which one I have to join.

“Maybe they’ll put us in neighboring cells at Leavenworth,” I say, and Sergeant Fallon smiles.

She pats me on the shoulder, and turns around to address the civvies standing around the ATV. “Can one of you folks give Sergeant Grayson here a ride to the airfield?”

By the time I get to the civilian airfield on the outskirts of the town, the administrator has passed the word down to all the colony facilities already. I pair my control deck with the main console of the local ATC system, and do a quick scan of the air and orbital space above New Longyearbyen.

“Sarge, this is Grayson,” I send to Sergeant Fallon. She has turned the platoon channel into our new top-level command circuit. The encryption isn’t completely bulletproof, especially not against our own people, but even with the hardware they have on the Midway, it will take the fleet a while to break into our renegade comms network.

“Go ahead,” she replies.

“I’m plugged in. Nothing at all in the air between us and the task force. Looks like they haven’t caught on yet.”

“Oh, they’re getting a good idea. The base has been pinging me with comms for the last fifteen minutes. Something about the whole drop-ship flight being off the air.”

I grin and look outside. On the drop-ship pad below the ATC tower, all four of Camp Frostbite’s Dragonflies are lined up on the concrete, with running engines and hot-refueling probes in their fuel ports. Without any air mobility, the two SI companies back at Frostbite don’t have a prayer at getting their main airborne firepower back, and if the task force in orbit sends a strike team down to the airfield, the Dragonflies can be in the air and on the move before the carrier’s Wasps are within five hundred miles.

“See if you can get me a comlink to the fleet units upstairs. I want to have a private tight-beam chat with those ship captains individually without any noise from our esteemed leadership.”

“I’ll see what I can do with the local gear,” I say.

“Good enough. Let me know right away if we get any visitors, air or ground. Fallon out.”

The hardware in the civvie ATC center is so good that keeping tabs on everything is ludicrously easy. The main ATC console is a three-dimensional projection that makes the holotables in our warships look like outdated junk. It presents unified sensor data from dozens of different sources—ground, air, and weather radar, environmental data from all the terraforming stations, satellite sensors. Everything is cross-linked with the comms network. It takes me just a few moments to tie the Dragonflies outside into my list of available assets, check the status of the airfield’s puddle jumpers, and assign them into separate flights to start ferrying HD troops from the terraforming stations. I assign the Dragonflies their own encrypted data and comlinks, and upload the mission data to their onboard computers.

“Gentlemen, this is Tailpipe One. I will be your combat controller today. Comms check, please.”

“Copy, Tailpipe One,” one of the pilots sends back. “Are we recycling call signs, or what?”

“Check your TacLink screens. You gentlemen are henceforth Rogue One through Four.”

“Copy that,” another pilot says with an audible chuckle. “Rogue Two copies five by five.”

“TacLink complete. So far, the coast is clear. I’ll call out inbound traffic once we get company from above, so keep your birds ready for immediate dustoff.”

“Understood,” Rogue One sends. The other pilots append their acknowledgments.

If the units up in orbit were Chinese or Russian, we’d be in a lousy tactical position. The civvie sensor network covers the entire moon, so sneak attacks with drop ships won’t be easy to pull off against us, but all that shiny sensor gear sits right out in the open, vulnerable to kinetic or guided munitions attack from orbit. Still, we’re holed up in a settlement of ten thousand, and even the clueless reservist at the stick up there probably won’t be eager to order an orbital bombardment of one of our own colony towns. If they decide to squash our little mutiny with a regiment-strength assault from orbit, we’ll see them coming from a long way out.

“Grayson, this is Fallon.”

“Go ahead, Sarge.”

“The civvie admin is gathering all the pilots for those puddle jumpers. Send them out as they get ready, please, and have them start picking up our guys. I want to have as many troops as I can back here before I get on the comms with the fleet.”

“Understood. I’ll send them out to the closest terraformers first.”

“You do that. Also, the constable is sending a bunch of his guys over to the airfield. I want you to have someone issue them some guns from the drop-ship armories. None of the heavy weapons, but something with a little more pop than those antiques they carry around right now.”

“Copy that. I’ll let them draw some rifles and armor.”

The idea of arming civilian cops with military-grade weapons makes me feel like we’re crossing a line, but we’re preparing to defend this place against battle-tested soldiers. With our limited strength, I have to admit that it makes sense to upgrade the capabilities of the cops that are responsible for the town’s safety in the first place. It’s not like we’re opening the armories and throwing missile launchers out for the farmers and ice miners to use. When we all end up at a court-martial, I doubt that violating weapons regulations will make our trouble any deeper in the end.

On the tarmac in front of the tower, the four Dragonflies are sitting with idling engines. They’re the entire armed component of our rebellious little air-and-space force, waiting for my word to intercept whatever the fleet will send our way to yank us back to the doghouse by our collars. We’re outnumbered in the air, vastly outgunned, and in a ludicrously exposed and predictable position. For some reason, however, I’m more at ease than I have been in months—or perhaps years.