I had never seen larger than a scale-four crater. The theory was that they didn’t dare use too big an explosion because of damage to their troglodyte habitats, even if they cofferdammed around it.
“Place an offset beacon,” I told him. “Tell section and squad leaders.”
“I have, sir. Angle one one oh, miles one point three. Da-di-dit. You should be able to read it, bearing about three three five from where you are.” He sounded as calm as a sergeant-instructor at drill and I wondered if I were letting my voice get shrill.
I found it in my display, above my left eyebrow — long and two shorts. “Okay. I see Cunha’s first squad is nearly in position. Break off that squad, have it patrol the crater. Equalize the areas — Brumby will have to take four more miles of depth.” I thought with annoyance that each man already had to patrol fourteen square miles; spreading the butter so thin meant seventeen square miles per man — and a Bug can come out of a hole less than five feet wide.
I added, “How ‘hot’ is that crater?”
“Amber-red at the edge. I haven’t been in it, sir.”
“Stay out of it. I’ll check it later.” Amber-red would kill an unprotected human but a trooper in armor can take it for quite a time. If there was that much radiation at the edge, the bottom would no doubt fry your eyeballs. “Tell Naidi to pull Malan and Bjork back to amber zone, and have them set up ground listeners.” Two of my five recruits were in that first squad — and recruits are like puppies; they stick their noses into things.
“Tell Naidi that I am interested in two things: movement inside the crater … and noises in the ground around it.” We wouldn’t send troopers out through a hole so radioactive that mere exit would kill them. But Bugs would, if they could reach us that way. “Have Naidi report to me. To you and me, I mean.”
“Yes, sir.” My platoon sergeant added, “May I make a suggestion?”
“Of course. And don’t stop to ask permission next time.”
“Navarre can handle the rest of the first section. Sergeant Cunha could take the squad at the crater and leave Naidi free to supervise the ground-listening watch.”
I knew what he was thinking. Naidi, so newly a corporal that he had never before had a squad on the ground, was hardly the man to cover what looked like the worst danger point in Square Black One; he wanted to pull Naidi back for the same reasons I had pulled the recruits back.
I wondered if he knew what I was thinking? That “nutcracker”—he was using the suit he had worn as Blackie’s battalion staffer, he had one more circuit than I had, a private one to Captain Blackstone.
Blackie was probably patched in and listening via that extra circuit. Obviously my platoon sergeant did not agree with my disposition of the platoon. If I didn’t take his advice, the next thing I heard might be Blackie’s voice cutting in: “Sergeant, take charge. Mr. Rico, you’re relieved.”
But — Confound it, a corporal who wasn’t allowed to boss his squad wasn’t a corporal … and a platoon leader who was just a ventriloquist’s dummy for his platoon sergeant was an empty suit!
I didn’t mull this. It flashed through my head and I answered at once. “I can’t spare a corporal to baby-sit with two recruits. Nor a sergeant to boss four privates and a lance.”
“But—”
“Hold it. I want the crater watch relieved every hour. I want our first patrol sweep made rapidly. Squad leaders will check any hole reported and get beacon bearings so that section leaders, platoon sergeant and platoon leader can check them as they reach them. If there aren’t too many, we’ll put a watch on each — I’ll decide later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Second time around, I want a slow patrol, as tight as possible, to catch holes we miss on the first sweep. Assistant squad leaders will use snoopers on that pass. Squad leaders will get bearings on any troopers — or suits — on the ground; the Cherubs may have left some live wounded. But no one is to stop even to check physicals until I order it. We’ve got to know the Bug situation first.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Suggestions?”
“Just one,” he answered. “I think the squad chasers should use their snoopers on that first fast pass.”
“Very well, do it that way.” His suggestion made sense as the surface air temperature was much lower than the Bugs use in their tunnels; a camouflaged vent hole should show a plume like a geyser by infrared vision. I glanced at my display. “Cunha’s boys are almost at limit. Start your parade.”
“Very well, sir!”
“Off.” I clicked over to the wide circuit and continued to make tracks for the crater while I listened to everybody at once as my platoon sergeant revised the pre-plan — cutting out one squad, heading it for the crater, starting the rest of the first section in a two-squad countermarch while keeping the second section in a rotational sweep as pre-planned but with four miles increased depth; got the sections moving, dropped them and caught the first squad as it converged on the anchor crater, gave it its instructions; cut back to the section leaders in plenty of time to give them new beacon bearings at which to make their turns.
He did it with the smart precision of a drum major on parade and he did it faster and in fewer words than I could have done it. Extended-order powered suit drill, with a platoon spread over many miles of countryside, is much more difficult than the strutting precision of parade — but it has to be exact, or you’ll blow the head off your mate in action … or, as in this case, you sweep part of the terrain twice and miss another part.
But the drillmaster has only a radar display of his formation; he can see with his eyes only those near him. While I listened I watched it in my own display — glowworms crawling past my face in precise lines, “crawling” because even forty miles an hour is a slow crawl when you compress a formation twenty miles across into a display a man can see.
I listened to everybody at once because I wanted to hear the chatter inside the squads.
There wasn’t any. Cunha and Brumby gave their secondary commands — and shut up. The corporals sang out only as squad changes were necessary; section and squad chasers called out occasional corrections of interval or alignment — and privates said nothing at all.
I heard the breathing of fifty men like muted sibilance of surf, broken only by necessary orders in the fewest possible words. Blackie had been right; the platoon had been handed over to me “tuned like a violin.”
They didn’t need me! I could go home and my platoon would get along just as well.
Maybe better—
I wasn’t sure I had been right in refusing to cut Cunha out to guard the crater; if trouble broke there and those boys couldn’t be reached in time, the excuse that I had done it “by the book” was worthless. If you get killed, or let someone else get killed, “by the book” it’s just as permanent as any other way.
I wondered if the Roughnecks had a spot open for a buck sergeant.
Most of Square Black One was as flat as the prairie around Camp Currie and much more barren. For this I was thankful; it gave us our only chance of spotting a Bug coming up from below and getting him first. We were spread so widely that four-mile intervals between men and about six minutes between waves of a fast sweep was as tight a patrol as we could manage. This isn’t tight enough; any one spot would remain free of observation for at least three or four minutes between patrol waves — and a lot of Bugs can come out of a very small hole in three to four minutes.