CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
West of a Staging Area, Four Hundred Kilometers Northwest of the Bataan Peninsula, Ravenette
The sniper teams didn’t have specific targets, they were merely inserted near locations that might have targets worth taking out. A military staging area was such a location. Even if they didn’t find a high-value target, it would only take a couple of hits from a sniper to begin eroding the morale of the troops being staged.
“Target,” Lance Corporal Dwan murmured. “More targets!” They’d been in their initial security position, half a kilometer from their insertion point, for three-quarters of an hour, standard.
“Where?” Sergeant Gossner asked, looking around for an enemy patrol coming to look for them.
“Up there.” Dwan slipped off her glove and pointed.
Gossner followed her pointing finger and saw the streaks of light left by two Essays making a combat assault planetfall some distance away, probably right at the staging area. Surprised, Gossner wondered if Thirty-fourth FIST was making an assault on the staging area, but he only wondered briefly. Surely the Marines on the Bataan Peninsula would clear any offensive operations with Admiral Hoi’s operations center, and the admiral wouldn’t let them make an assault in an area where a Force Recon squad and sniper team were active without notifying the Marines already on the ground. Dwan was right, these had to be reinforcements for the Coalition troops in the staging area. Besides, the Marines would come with more than two Essays—and they wouldn’t land right in the middle of the staging area. He slowly shook his head. During the pre-insertion briefings on board the Admiral Stoloff, he’d studied the display showing the Confederation cordon around Ravenette. The captain of the starship that had brought these Essays had to be a brave man—or suicidal—to run that gauntlet. Gossner wondered how long the enemy starship survived after making its drop—and how many Essays were still in the starship’s well deck when she died.
He shook that thought off, it didn’t pay to dwell on enemy losses.
“Yeah, more targets,” he murmured back. He burst-transmitted to the security squad, “Let’s move out. I’ve got point.” They’d checked their UV tags on the AstroGhost before they were inserted and again immediately after they assumed their initial security position, so he knew everyone would be able to follow him.
Second squad and the sniper team had been inserted into a nature preserve, a place where urban dwellers could come to observe and relax amid trees and other flora, or take tours to see wild animals in their natural habitats. According to the materials Gossner had studied while en route to Ravenette, and again after getting this assignment, some of the animals were predators big enough to take on a human being—and none of the animals had yet learned fear of man. In normal times, the park was thick with rangers, charged with keeping people from molesting the flora and fauna—or being molested by them. Neither Admiral Hoi’s nor General Billie’s intelligence sections knew whether the rangers were still patrolling the preserve. So the patrol had to be triply on the alert, watching not only for enemy soldiers, but for rangers and potentially dangerous animals as well.
Gossner knew this wasn’t the first time he or Sergeant Kare had gone someplace where they’d had to be wary of the fauna; most Force Recon Marines had to deal with dangerous predators at one time or another. And Gossner himself had even gone where he’d had to be wary of carnivorus flora.
Because of the possibility of rangers in the area, they couldn’t use puddle jumpers, but had to walk the thirty kilometers to the staging area. Nobody knew how much time they had before the Coalition began its big push to overrun the forces pinned on Bataan, or when the troops in the staging area would begin to move out. That lack of knowledge lent an urgency to this patrol, so they couldn’t go as slowly as Force Recon normally moved on the ground behind enemy lines. But they couldn’t go so fast they would accidentally spook the local animals and thereby possibly alert any rangers or enemy troops in the preserve. That was why Gossner wanted to take point, he was sure he could lead the patrol fast enough to reach their objective before the troops there moved out, while avoiding disturbing the fauna. The animals might not have fear of man, but they’d likely run from men they sensed but couldn’t see.
The nature preserve wasn’t a totally natural landscape. It had been sculpted and planted to provide a wide variety of habitats. There were temperate and boreal forests, meadows, plains, a desert, and even small mountains. Creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes watered it. Gossner led the way along interstices between the forests and the open areas—he calculated those were the places the Marines were least likely to encounter animals.
After a few hours of walking, he thought either his assumption was wrong or there were far more animals than he’d expect to find in such relatively small areas. Grazers wandered unconcerned between meadow and wood, from forest to savanna. Rodentlike animals darted or hopped underfoot, in and out of burrows in the grasses and between the roots of trees. Avians swooped to gobble insects in the open, then perched deep within the trees. At one point they passed less than fifty meters from a two-hundred-kilogram predator of a type they’d seen prowling under the trees; it was in the grass, dining on a grazer half its size. Catlike, the beast lifted its head and sniffed in their direction as they passed, then shook its massive shoulders and returned to its repast.
By nightfall they’d covered less than half the distance to the staging area. Gossner called a meal halt, then they set out again, using the light-gatherer screens on their helmets. They’d keep moving until they got where they were going.
Sunrise at Kampeer Aanval
As was his custom, Colonel Amptelik rose just as the sun peeked over the horizon. He didn’t need an alarm to awaken, nor did his orderly ever have to rouse him. Wherever he slept, his bedchamber had an east-facing window, which he uncovered before retiring; the changing light of dawn invariably woke him. He made short work of his necessary ablutions in the badkamer attached to his chamber, then donned a royal-blue uniform with medals splayed densely across its left breast; it was the uniform he preferred to wear when he first met newly assigned troops. He hadn’t yet been informed of the decision to give him command of the reinforced brigade being assembled at Kampeer Aanval, but he was certain such a decision had been made. Why else whould the Trinkatat General Staff assign one of its army’s most decorated officers to the command of a troop assembly camp? And surely, that command would lead to a well-deserved promotion.
Ready to face the world less than half an hour after rising, he marched out of his chamber and through his office, with barely a nod at the staff seconds who were sleepily assembling to begin their day’s work. Outside he marched to the officers’ mess. His aide, still straightening his shirt, scampered to catch up to march a pace to Amptelik’s left and rear.
At the mess, the aide darted ahead to open the door for his colonel. The mess major saw who opened the door and called the mess to attention. Only half of the available places were taken. Amptelik chose to believe the others weren’t present because they were already working, rather than because they were still asleep or cleaning the night from their bodies. He nodded at the officers and seated himself in his place at the main table. Only when he was sitting did the mess major call out, “Seats!” and the officers resumed their places.
Almost immediately, stewards entered through two doors in the rear of the mess, pushing food-laden carts. The first steward through went directly to the colonel’s table and, with the expected flourish, uncovered the lone salver on his cart. From it he served the colonel eggs, ham steak, sausage, fried potatoes, toast, and jam. He also poured a cup of real Trinkatat coffee, made from the beans of trees long ago imported at great expense from the Brazil section of Earth. Amptelik didn’t watch the serving; the steward knew exactly how much of each the colonel wanted on his bone-china plate. Instead, he looked at the other officers, who sat patiently waiting to be served, and mentally noted the names of the stragglers who entered the mess after his arrival.
“Your breakfast, sir,” the steward said when he’d finished filling Amptelik’s plate. He backed off, taking his cart with him. Around the room, the other stewards began to serve.
Amptelik sat with his back ramrod straight, cut his meats with precise slices of the steak knife set at his place. His hands moved with almost mechanical exactitude as he forked eggs, ham, sausage, potatoes, and jammed toast into his mouth in the order in which they’d been placed on his plate. After each round of foods, he took a measured sip of coffee from his cup. His cup, adorned on one side with the three gold and royal-blue lozenges of a colonel’s insignia, and on the other with his name in gilt.
Colonel Amptelik ate methodically, neither leisurely nor in haste. When he forked the last morsel and patted his lips with the monogrammed napkin he lifted from his lap, the other officers also stopped eating and rose to their feet, to stand at attention when he stood.
“Gentlemen,” Amptelik said curtly, and graced them with an equally curt bow. The others filed out after him; a few looked back longingly at the breakfasts they hadn’t had time to finish.
Colonel Amptelik marched from the officers’ mess and back to his headquarters, where his chief of staff handed him the list of men who’d arrived the previous afternoon.
Amptelik looked over the list, nodding occasionally when he saw a family name he recognized. “I will address them shortly,” he said when he’d finished scanning the list. He didn’t ask where the new men were. All new arrivals were billeted in the same place, whether they arrived from the hinterlands of Ravenette or via blockade runners from one of the other worlds of the Coalition.
He sat briefly at his desk, ignoring the bustle of the staff as they went about their duties in the large room. He preferred having his desk in the main room to having it in a private office; he believed the commander’s immediate presence helped keep the staff focused on their duties. He made a tick or two on the training schedule that awaited his initials and riffled through the other top reports to see if there were orders for any of the assembling troops to be dispatched as replacements for other units. He smiled internally when there weren’t. The lack of orders assigning him to command of the reinforced brigade didn’t concern him; so long as none of the troops were being drawn away as replacements for other units, he was certain the expected orders would arrive shortly. A few more reports and schedules needed his initials or signature. He applied them.
Then he was ready to meet the new troops, an entire company’s worth of fighters from his home world. He breathed deeply. These men would serve him well. Abruptly, he stood, grabbed his cap from where he’d set it when he’d reached his desk, and marched toward the exit. His aide scrambled to open the door so the colonel wouldn’t have to break stride in marching out of the headquarters. Outside, he pivoted left, opposite the direction of the officers’ mess, and marched down the middle of the street. A furlong away a barracks stood in front of a small parade ground. He could see men standing in formation on the parade ground as he neared the barracks.
On another post, Colonel Amptelik would go through the barracks, inspecting it on his way to the parade ground in its rear. But Kampeer Aanval was a temporary post, and so were nearly all of its buildings. This, the receiving barracks, had hastily been assembled out of second-rate materials and was never intended to last more than a year or so. Consequently its interior was dusty, floorboards loose, walls chipping, and tiles threatening to fall from its ceiling. At Kampeer Aanval, Amptelik chose to march around the receiving barracks.
He heard officers and sergeants barking the formation to attention before he appeared around the barracks’ side and nodded approval—they’d been alerted to his approach, so the troops would be standing in proper soldierly fashion, as was only proper when a senior officer came upon them. He rounded the corner and there they were, 160 officers and men, all from his own home world.
Amptelik marched to the front center of the formation where a captain awaited him. The captain saluted; his arm quivered from the strength with which he threw his hand to his brow.
“Sir, we are the 142nd Company, Trinkatat Guards,” the captain announced. “We are most happy to be here, to help the colonel drive the Confederation of Human Worlds into submission and for our freedom!”
Amptelik looked the captain up and down before returning his salute. He wouldn’t say anything about the man’s slovenly appearance just then. Between the cramped voyage from home and a night in the receiving barracks, it was perhaps understandable that his uniform was rumpled rather than properly pressed and creased. Still, the captain could have given a uniform to one of the enlisted men to clean for him. Amptelik contented himself with deciding not to shake hands after the salute.
“Captain,” he acknowledged as he returned the salute. Then he turned to face the men of the 142nd Company of the Trinkatat Guards. The Guards were more a ceremonial than a combat unit, but they were generally well trained. He would find out soon enough if this company was.
Like their commander, the men were in rumpled uniforms. So were the lieutenants who stood in front of each platoon. Amptelik would have a word with the captain later about the men’s appearance.
The colonel stood looking at the formation longer than he would normally have; he suddenly felt somewhat ill. Perhaps he needed to more thoroughly inspect the kitchen in the offi—
Outside the Staging Area, Four Hundred Kilometers Northwest of the Bataan Peninsula
The sniper patrol rounded a knoll more than a kilometer southwest of the staging area two hours before sunrise. They hadn’t stopped, other than for five minutes each hour, since the previous evening’s meal break. They’d encountered no one along the way, neither rangers nor army patrols, and with little difficulty had been able to avoid disturbing the animals. Sergeant Gossner stopped when he began to see lights shining in their objective.
He touched helmets with Sergeant Kare and Lance Corporal Dwan. “Wait here,” he told them, and went on alone.
He stopped where he could see the entire breadth of the enemy camp. He wasn’t surprised that the camp was lit overnight; it was far enough away from known Coalition forces that the camp commander had no need to order tight light-discipline. He was surprised, though, that the lights were so few. There were lights around the perimeter, but they didn’t cover it completely; at least two-thirds of the perimeter was unlit. Inside the camp, he guessed that there were road lights only at street intersections; that would leave long stretches unlit, and there didn’t appear to be any lights behind the barracks or other buildings.
The lack of lights in the camp didn’t prevent Gossner from seeing into it; he used his helmet’s light-gatherer screen to get a panoramic view, then a light filter on his ocular to see close up. Few sentries were posted, at least in the open—some could be in hidden locations, and Gossner saw a number of evident security cameras, some of which were pointed inside the camp. He used all of his sensors and light filters to examine the scrubby landscape between the knoll and the edge of the camp, but saw no sign of patrols. Invitingly open ground extended a quarter kilometer around the camp.
As the camp was four hundred kilometers from the nearest known Confederation forces, the camp commander obviously saw no need for outside security.
A menacing smile came onto Gossner’s face; he and Dwan would soon teach the enemy commander otherwise. Anytime you go up against Confederation Marines, he thought, you have to be prepared to get hit anywhere—even in your most secure facilities.
Gossner had watched for less than fifteen minutes, but he’d seen enough. He rejoined the other Marines.
Gossner had Kare set his squad in a defensive covering position on the face of the knoll toward the staging area, high enough to see over the scrub vegetation, yet well below the skyline. Then he and Dwan moved toward the camp. Normally, Gossner would take hours to cover several hundred meters so close to an enemy base, perhaps not getting within maser range until after dark. But normally he’d expect more security than was evident here.
Close to the knoll, the scrub was nearly two meters tall, and the sniper team walked nearly upright for the first couple of hundred meters, then went crouched for two hundred more. He gave Dwan’s shoulder a squeeze, it was up to her now—they were far too close for him to risk using his M111; the sound of its report would give away their position.
Dwan’s nod and wicked smile went unseen inside her chameleoned helmet. She took the lead and soon lowered herself to hands and knees to stay below the top of the scrub. Gossner followed suit.
The sun broke the horizon shortly before Dwan began crawling, and it was fully up well before she and Gossner reached the edge of the cleared area. The two Marines settled, shoulder to shoulder, in the shadows to observe. Gossner activated his motion detector and his sniffer to give them warning if anybody approached from their sides or rear. They had watched for only a few minutes when Dwan touched helmets with Gossner.
“Juicy target!” she said, and eased into a firing position.
Dwan’s “juicy target” was an officer in a royal-blue uniform with a cornucopia of medals splayed across his left chest. Other soldiers, probably officers, trailed out of the building the blue-uniformed officer had left. Gossner groped for Dwan’s arm and held it down so she couldn’t sight in; the officer was marching too rapidly for her to be able to hold her aim on him for the length of time needed to get a kill with a maser. He leaned close and said through helmet conduction, “He’ll be back.”
“But I want him now!” Dwan objected. But she didn’t try to move her arm from his grip.
They saw a number of attractive targets as they watched, but Dwan wanted the one in the royal-blue uniform. Gossner agreed, he thought that one was either the camp commander or the commanding officer of a unit being assembled here. They could take out some of the other officers if that one didn’t make a reappearance.
Throughout the camp, formations of soldiers engaged in physical exercises, while others ran along the streets or marched on a parade ground in the center of the camp. A group of soldiers, it looked like a platoon, held hand-to-hand combat training under the close eye of a sergeant, but that was the only combat training they saw. Another group, about a company, filed out of a barracks and fell into formation behind it.
Dwan poked Gossner with her elbow and leaned in to touch helmets. “He’s back!”
“Wait for him,” Gossner said. The royal-blue-uniformed officer was headed in the direction of the company that had just formed behind its barracks. When he reached the formation, he didn’t look pleased with what he found.
Gossner smiled and squeezed Dwan’s shoulder. She took aim and squeezed the trigger of her maser. A second later, the bemedaled officer in the royal-blue uniform crumpled to the ground. The officer he’d stood next to looked down at him for a moment before dropping to a knee to check him out. Then he looked up and shouted something Gossner couldn’t hear. A few soldiers under the direction of a sergeant broke ranks and ran inside the barracks.
While Gossner watched that, Dwan looked for another target. “Gotcha,” she murmured, and steadied her maser on a portly officer as far to her right as the first one had been to her left. Over the next several minutes, with Gossner spotting for her, she killed three more officers and got a probable.
“That’s enough, let’s go,” Gossner finally said.
“No, it’s not, I’m having fun!”
“Pretty soon they’re going to figure out somebody’s out here and come looking for us. Let’s go.”
“This is a big area, it’ll take them a while to find us.” But she lowered the maser from her shoulder and turned to lead the way out of their blind, back to the knoll.
Gossner looked at the marks they’d left on the ground and sighed silently. Well, there was always the possibility the marks wouldn’t be found. And even if they were found, the simple fact that someone could get so close to the camp unseen, and kill five or six officers before anybody had any idea what was happening, would have an unnerving effect on the soldiers at the camp—particularly on the officers.
Three hours later, the sniper patrol was halfway to its extraction point, to be delivered to its next area of operation.
Base Dispensary, Kampeer Aanval
Lieutenant Colonel Nommertwee, the assistant base commander of Kampeer Aanval, stood between two rows of beds in the base dispensary’s sick ward. Usually, most of the eighteen beds were occupied by junior soldiers, some sick, others malingering. At this time, however, all of them had been returned to their units, save for one laid up in traction from a training accident. Nommertwee brushed away the thought that this was another example of a grievance the worlds of the Coalition had against the Confederation: the Confederation had withheld the modern medical technology that would have let that injured soldier be repaired and returned to duty in a matter of no more than a week, instead of having to undergo months of healing and rehabilitation.
Grievances against the Coalition weren’t Nommertwee’s reason for visiting the sick ward. He was there because of the six sheet-covered bodies lying on as many beds at one end of the room.
The doctor, a young lieutenant, gestured for him to approach the first body and lifted the sheet from its head and shoulders when he did. Nommertwee looked impassively down at the face of Colonel Amptelik.
“What killed him?” he asked.
The doctor swung an arm at the other five bodies. “I’d say the same thing that killed them.”
“And that was?” Nommertwee kept the impatience he felt out of his voice.
The doctor shook his head. “I have no idea, sir. None of them bear any marks, and so far as I have been able to learn, none of them complained about any malaise before they suddenly collapsed.” Puzzlement furrowed his brow. “They all collapsed within a few minutes of each other,” he said softly.
“You’ve examined them?”
The doctor nodded. “A surface exam. My next steps are to cut them open for autopsy and extract tissue samples for analysis.”
“How long will that take?”
“I can complete most of the basic autopsies by the end of the day.”
“You are a forensic pathologist?”
“No, but all military doctors in forward bases are required to have some training in forensic pathology. I have that training.”
“All right. How long will the tests on the tissue samples take?”
The doctor shook his head again. “I don’t know. They are more complex than my dispensary can handle. I’ll have to send them to a pathology lab for analysis.”
“That can take a while?”
“Yessir, it will.”
A junior officer, the late Colonel Amptelik’s aide, bustled into the sick ward and waited for Nommertwee to acknowledge him.
“Speak,” Nommertwee said after a moment.
“Sir, I have completed my investigation of the movements of these officers for this morning.”
“I doubt you’d be disturbing me if you hadn’t,” Nommertwee said. “What did you find?”
The aide swallowed and cleared his throat. “Sir, the only location the—the dead men had in common this morning was the officers’ mess. They were all there for breakfast at the same time.” He looked pale; he’d also been there.
Nommertwee turned back to the doctor. “Could it be food poisoning?”
The doctor arched his eyebrows. “Food poisoning usually has symptoms that build up over a short period of time. And if it was, the pathogen responsible should have affected more than just six officers.” He shrugged. “But then, we are on a strange planet where there could be pathogens that act in such a manner.”
“Check it out.” Nommertwee glanced around at the six bodies. “And test for poisons, someone might have killed them deliberately.” He turned to the aide. “I want the officers’ mess closed until we find out what happened. And arrest everyone who was working there last night and this morning. I want them in the stockade where they can be questioned.”
“Yessir!” The late colonel’s aide scampered out of the sick ward.
“Doctor, I will leave you to your duties. Notify me immediately of anything you find.”
“I’ll do that, sir.” The doctor watched Nommertwee’s back as the man left and thought, I suspect whatever caused these deaths is beyond my abilities to discover.