Orphan's Triumph

EIGHT

RUSTY LEFT HIS EXECUTIVE OFFICER in charge of brigade training, and then he, Ord, Howard, and I reconvened our little war council back on Spook level forty-eight, huddled around a conference table in a neat and tidy compartment adjoining Howard’s office.

I outlined the mission and my concept. It would have been unprofessional to betray my own reservations, and I don’t think I did.

Rusty shook his head slowly and his brow wrinkled. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Big rewards justify big risks, Rusty. How soon can you embark Ready Brigade?”

“The preparedness standard for a Ready Brigade is wheels-up in fourteen hours, sir. Last drill we did it in twelve hours, thirty-nine minutes-”

Ord raised his eyebrows at me and almost smiled. Wheels-up hearkened back to a time when troops deployed in fixed-wing aircraft with retractable landing gear. At the turn of the century, a crack light division like the Eighty-second Airborne would have needed sixteen hours to embark.

I said to the brigadier, “Last time I was at the Pentagon, a Marine claimed that the Marine Ready Brigade at Camp Pendleton once went wheels-up in twelve hours flat.”

Rusty smiled. “My command sergeant major gently suggested to the brigade after the last drill, sir, that twelve thirty-nine was a time even jarheads could beat. Ready Brigade will be embarked in eleven hours flat, if Space Force can warm up the bus that fast.”

Ten hours later, I watched as Ready Brigade’s three thousand troops crowded the hundred-foot-wide platform of South Forty D to which the Abraham Lincoln was moored. The soldiers shuffled toward the maglev-tunnelsized aft hatch in the Abe’s flank. Gravity on Broadway, near Mousetrap’s centerline, was low enough that the Eternad-armored soldiers easily carried individual loads of personal weapons, shelter, ammunition, rations, and unit- and mission-specific equipment in back and chest packs that made them look like cartoon Santas on Christmas Eve. On Weichsel, at ninety-eight percent Earth gravity, each soldier would cut down to a combat load within minutes after disembarkation but would still be loaded like an abused burro.

Into the Abe’s forward hatch slid the hovertanks of Ready Brigade’s armored cavalry battalion, their engines whispering at idle in the light gravity.

I walked alongside a specialist fourth, his freckled face pale inside his open-visored helmet. He was combat-fit-they all were-but he breathed in staccato gulps. “First combat deployment, Specialist?”

He turned to me and his eyes widened. Then he said, “Sir! I deployed with the Eighty-second to Korea after the quake, General.”

I nodded. Human Union Space-Mobile Division Mousetrap was this century’s equivalent to the old-time gunslingers of the United States’ Eighty-second Airborne Division, a razor-edged unit light on equipment, long on mobility, and ready to move anywhere within hours, improvising on the fly if necessary, whether the mission was disaster relief or stinging the scourge of the universe on the ankle. The ’Trap Rats were mostly volunteers seconded from crack Earth units like the Eighty-second, the Légion Étrangère, and even the Ghurka Rifles, with a sprinkling of offworld talent.

The kid asked me, “Is it true, sir? We really get to fight Slugs?”

Howard and the Spooks weren’t going to brief the brigade until the Abe had buttoned up and cleared Mousetrap’s south doors. But the fact was that after three decades of war, indications of Slug espionage or communication interception to discover human plans remained zero. The maggots didn’t spy on us any more than we spied on the common cold virus. If we got in the Pseudocephalopod’s way, it exterminated us, or fought to its last deployed Warrior trying. If we didn’t get in its way, the Pseudo-cephalopod ignored us. I nodded to the kid.

He pumped his fist and grinned. “Outstanding!”

I sighed, and he shuffled on toward the Abe’s intake hatch. The bluster of esprit de corps sometimes carries troops to victory, like wind in sails. But only those who haven’t seen war are fond of it.

All these kids were about to learn that lesson.