Orphan's Triumph

FIFTY-SIX

AUD PLANCK STOOD IN THE DOORWAY of a room in the camp commandant’s quarters hut as I ran up. The windowless room wasn’t more than an oversized closet, and its only furnishings were a simple table, a chair, and a sputtering oil lamp suspended from a ceiling beam.

A figure in Tressen colonel’s uniform slumped in the chair, head down across the table. One hand clutched a service revolver that had been inserted in his mouth, and what had been the back of his head splattered the far wall of the tiny room.

Presiding over mass murder, in a frigid, forsaken outpost, would drive a normal human being near suicide, I supposed. Facing up to the reality that your sloppy command had gotten all your troops killed could drive a soldier the rest of the way. Or maybe he had been a fanatic, more afraid of having let down his RS bosses than of burning in hell.

Aud said, “I wondered why we hadn’t found the camp commandant.” Aud stepped to the table, slipped his pistol’s barrel beneath the empty hand of the dead man, and lifted it. Beneath the hand was a wood slab with a pivoting brass arm six inches long fixed above it.

Jude stared first at the body, then at the brass and wood device, then swore.

Jude turned to Aud. “You think he transmitted anything?”

Aud shrugged. “He could have been transmitting for the last hour.”

“Or not at all.”

I raised my palm. “The Tressens haven’t invented radio.”

Jude pointed at the wood block, and at bright copper wires that curled away from it, then disappeared over the table’s real edge. “Telegraph. It’s so new that it’s more a parlor trick than a practical system. At least that’s what I thought.”

“I looked out of that sledge for six days. I never saw one pole.”

Jude shook his head. “Wood’s rare here. Insulated cable would be buried in the roadbed.”

I shrugged at Aud. “It could be nothing.” I didn’t believe myself, but there was also nothing we could do now.

An hour later I sat on the edge of a barracks bunk, cleaning Ord’s pistol. My wrist ’Puter vibrated. I scrolled through functions. It wasn’t an alarm. It was an incoming call.

I picked up.

“General Wander?” It was Bill the Spook. Howard’s bargain satellites delivered terrific sound quality.

“Bill? I thought phone calls were off limits.”

“Officially, they are.”

“This contact is freelance? You could lose your pension.”

“The dental’s awful anyway.” He paused. “That was a rough trip you took.”

The Spooks may have been forbidden to help us, but that didn’t mean their overhead eyes weren’t watching us while they tracked the ’Puters that Aud, Jude, and I wore.

I shrugged, invisible to him. “I’ve had better.”

“But it looks like your operation’s off to a good start.”

“Successful’s a better word.” I shifted on the bunk.

“You have company coming.”

Hair stood on my neck.

“Some local eyes reported that Forty-fifth Infantry started scrambling onto a sledge train pointed north thirty minutes ago.”

The Forty-fifth Tressen Infantry, the Quicksilver Division, took its name from the commander that had made it into Tressen’s best outfit, prematurely silver-haired Audace Planck.

I swore.

Bill said, “I dunno what tipped them.”

I did. The camp commandant had tapped out a warning that had also served as his suicide note. “Bill, there was a telegraph line running south from here.”

Silence. A good Spook took a failure of combat intelligence personally.

“Sorry.”

“So we got, what, six days?”

“They’re loading on a streamliner, not a slow freight like you came on. And the Forty-fifth is garrisoned on the northern frontier to begin with. The only good news is it’s a passenger train. They’re leaving their artillery at home.”

Why bother? Artillery to quell a mere prison riot?

“That’s a small favor. You got an ETA?”

“The best eight thousand infantry on this planet are gonna land on your doorstep in forty-eight hours, ready to rumble.”

“Can you bring the rain?”

“The Duck’s been ragging the Tehran ’s skipper for an hour. But the rules are set. No fire support. No nothing. No exceptions. It stinks, but you’re all hung out to dry.”

I stared at my ’Puter, numb. “Thanks for the heads-up, Bill. Tell the Duck thanks for trying. And tell Admiral Duffy thanks for nothing. See you around, Bill.”

Silence. Then he said, “Sure.”