“Well,” Takahashi said, as Lazy altered course, heading for First Company’s depot area, “I guess this is where we part company, Lieutenant. Good work. Lazy and I will be glad to have you on our flank anytime.”
“Thank you, sir.” Maneka knew her face had turned pink with pleasure, but she managed to keep her voice conversational. “Benjy and I feel the same.”
“See you around, Lieutenant,” Takahashi said.
The two Bolos continued towards their separate destinations and Maneka Trevor allowed herself to bask—briefly—in the knowledge that she was earning the acceptance of her vastly more experienced peers.
“Listen up, people!”
Maneka shook her head groggily as Major Fredericks’ sharp, hard voice echoed in her mastoid transceiver. Her entire skull still seemed to be ringing like a gigantic bell from the emergency signal which had just snatched her up out of the depths of sleep.
“We have an Alpha One Zulu alert,” Fredericks’ voice continued, and Maneka sat bolt upright in bed, such minor considerations as her vibrating cranium totally forgotten. Alpha One Zulu?
“Get your butts up and awake,” Fredericks went on grimly. “The Depot’s already beginning final maintenance checks. Colonel Tchaikovsky and Major Dumfries will be briefing all personnel at zero-two-thirty. So let’s move it!”
The voice in Maneka’s mastoid went silent, but the youthful lieutenant sat frozen for several seconds. Alpha One Zulu. Impossible!
Alpha One Zulu meant a full-fledged invasion of a major planet, and in the sort of war this one had become, with the madness of Plan Ragnarok and its Melconian equivalent, “invasion” was another word for the murder of an entire planetary population. That sort of operation wasn’t something the Puppies were going to undertake with secondary forces. No. It was the sort of operation where they committed entire armored divisions of the latest, most modern combat equipment they had, and the Thirty-Ninth Battalion was, for all intents and purposes, a training command. Its obsolescent Bolos had no business going up against front-line Melconian combat mechs with the sort of support which would be assigned to the invasion of a major Concordiat planet.
An icy wind seemed to blow through the marrow of her bones, and she was surprised when she looked down at her hands to realize they weren’t actually trembling the way they felt they were.
“Benjy?” she said over her private link.
“Yes, Maneka,” he replied instantly, with all his normal calm assurance.
“This is real? It’s not some sort of drill?”
“No, Maneka, I am afraid it is not a drill,” he told her gently.
“Where are they hitting us?”
“The target is Chartres.”
Maneka’s belly seemed to fold in on itself. Chartres was in the neighboring Esterhazy Sector, one sector further away from the frontier with the Melconian Empire, beyond Santa Cruz’s Ursula Sector. Esterhazy was a wealthier sector than Ursula, with the sort of heavily industrialized star systems which obviously made it a priority target. But it was also the better part of a month’s hyper-travel from the Line, even assuming the invasion fleet was able to use the intervening jump points without being engaged. Without that, the trip would take at least six weeks.
“How—?”
“Unknown,” Benjy answered. “The Enemy has been pressing harder on the Line in the vicinity of the Camperdown Sector for several months now.” The Camperdown Sector lay on the far side of the Ursula Sector from Esterhazy, directly in the path of the Melconians. “I would surmise that this was a deliberate stratagem intended to draw our naval forces and all available Brigade units towards that sector in order to uncover Esterhazy. If so, it has succeeded.”
“We can’t be all the Brigade has available!” Maneka protested.
“I fear we are all that can reach Chartres in time to respond,” Benjy said. “The Santa Cruz jump point connects to Chartres via Haskell. We can be there within thirty-six Standard Hours of departure from Santa Cruz. That strategic position between Camperdown and Esterhazy,” he pointed out gently, “is why Santa Cruz was developed as a major base in the first place, Maneka.”
Maneka nodded numbly, although she knew he couldn’t see her. But still…
“How soon can someone else get there to support us?” she asked quietly.
“Unknown. I do not have sufficient data on current deployments to answer that question.”
Maneka swallowed hard, then shook herself violently. Sitting here dithering was doing absolutely no one any good, she told herself sternly, and climbed out of bed.
“All right, Benjy. I’m up. I’ll see you after the briefing.”
Colonel Tchaikovsky and Major Dumfries, the Battalion XO, looked grim as they walked into the briefing room where the Battalion’s unit commanders had been assembled. They could just as easily have conducted this briefing electronically, Maneka knew. In fact, if they’d used the Bolos’ tactical plots to display the information for the unit commanders, they probably could have imparted the information more efficiently. But there was something ritualistic about gathering them all together in the flesh, as it were. Some almost atavistic compulsion to meet and gather strength from one another one last time before some of the people in this room died.
The commanders came to their feet as Tchaikovsky and Dumfries strode briskly to the traditional briefing lectern.
“Be seated,” Tchaikovsky said in a clipped tone, and boots rustled on the floor as they obeyed.
He let them settle back into their chairs for a moment, gazing out over their faces. Then he cleared his throat.
“I’m sure by this time all of you have checked with your Bolos,” he began, “which means you’re all aware that the Dog Boys’ target is Chartres. For those of you who may not have the latest figures at your fingertips, that means a planetary population of two-point-four billion.”
Maneka shivered as the colonel’s simple sentence told them all they needed to know about the cost of failure.
“The good news for Chartres’ population is that the Dog Boys apparently want permanent possession of the system, probably because of the way it flanks the Haskell jump point. If they keep it, they can pincer Ursula and Camperdown, which would require the Navy to at least double its strength in those two sectors, weakening it elsewhere along the Line. But it also means they aren’t likely to use biologicals or radioactives against the planet. Since they’ll want to use it themselves, they’re going to put in a ground force and take it the old fashioned way, meter-by-meter. Which means it will take them a while—hopefully long enough for us to kick their ass up between their little puppy dog ears.
“Commodore Selkirk’s received a subspace situation report from Camperdown Fleet HQ. It would appear the enemy has succeeded in drawing us badly out of position. According to the Commodore’s sitrep, it will be at least two full Standard Weeks before any substantial forces can be diverted to Chartres. Commodore Selkirk has his own system—defense task force here in Santa Cruz, but it’s going to be very heavily outnumbered by the Melconian fleet units escorting their attack force.
“Nonetheless, his is the closest naval force which can respond, and we are the closest ground force. We will be reinforced by the Three-Fifty-First Recon Company and the Ninth Marines, in addition to whatever Commodore Selkirk can spare from his Fleet units, but that’s all we can count on. So it’s going to be up to us to stop the Dog Boys before they kill every single human being on the planet.”
He paused, letting his eyes travel across the grim faces looking back at him, then smiled with absolutely no humor at all.