The infantry protecting the base lived in tents on the bunker roofs. They had no protection except—for the ambitious ones—a wall of sandbags. The tents weren’t dry either, but at least the troops didn’t have to swim to their bunks.
Conditions for support personnel within the base weren’t a great deal better. Walkways constructed from wooden shell crates led between locations, but for the most part the makeshift duckboards had sunk into the greasy, purplish mire. The Tactical Operations Center was an assemblage of the high officers’ four living trailers placed around a large tent.
The whole complex was encircled by a triple row of sandbags and dirt-filled shell boxes. The construction engineers had trenched around the protective wall to draw off water. Because of the lack of slope the would-be channel was a moat, but at least it prevented the TOC from flooding.
The 150-mm howitzers of the four-tube battery were on steel planking to keep them from sinking to the trunnions. The guns slid during firing, so it was impossible to place accurate concentrations when the sensors located movement. Because rain and the slick ground made it so difficult to manhandle the 45-kg shells, most firing was done at random when battalion command decided it needed more ammo crates for construction.
The remainder of the support personnel lived in tents and slept on cots. Most of the tents were sandbagged to knee-height, three layers. Higher than that, the single-row walls fell down when the slippery filling bled through the fabric.
The two Frisians’ assignment was for six standard months. The indigs were here for a local year—twenty-one months standard, and at least three times longer than Daun could imagine lasting under such conditions.
“Oh, sure, it’ll dry out in spring,” Bondo said as he scowled at his cards. “Dry out, bake to dust, and blow into every curst thing from your food to the sealed electronics. You think equipment life’s bad in this rain, wait until spring.”
The purpose of this Central States Army outpost in Maedchen’s western tablelands was to service a belt of sensors brought at great expense from Nieuw Friesland. In theory, the sensors and the reaction forces they triggered would prevent infiltration from the Democrat-controlled vestries on the other side of the divide.
Bondo was quite right about the sensor failure rate. The Belt no doubt looked impressive during briefings in the capital, but the reality was as porous as cheesecloth. Infiltrators had an excellent chance of penetrating the eastern vestries unnoticed, and an even better chance of evading the Central States Army’s half-hearted reaction patrols.
“One club,” Bondo offered.
Daun didn’t blame the rain or the quality of the hardware for the rate of sensor failure. Quite simply, personnel assigned by the Central States government weren’t up to the job of servicing electronics this sophisticated.
Central States field teams wouldn’t follow procedures. For example, they regularly used knives or bayonets to split the sensor frames to exchange data cartridges. The special tools that would perform the task without damage were lost or ignored. They didn’t understand their duties. At least a third of the cartridges were inserted upside down, despite the neon arrows on both casing and cartridge, and despite anything Daun could say to the troops he was trying to train.
And they didn’t care. As often as not, a field team huddled in a sheltered spot within a klick of the base instead of humping through the rain to service the sensors for which they were responsible. In the morning, they returned with the circuit marked complete—and there wasn’t a curst thing Daun or Anya could do about it.
“Three no trump,” Anya bid. She grinned coldly around the table.
Daun had already drafted an assessment for the Frisian Defense Forces Maedchen Command, back in the capital Jungfrau. In it he stated flatly that the system wasn’t working and could never work as presently constituted.
Nieuw Friesland should either withdraw support from the Central States, or the FDF should insist that the Central States hire a detachment of Frisians sufficient to perform all field as well as base servicing tasks. Otherwise, the inevitable failure would be blamed on Frisian technology rather than the ineptness of the Central States Army at using that technology.
Anya wouldn’t let Daun transmit the assessment. It wasn’t that she disagreed with him—quite the contrary. But she didn’t believe anything a Tech II said could change the policy of bureaucrats on Nieuw Friesland …and there was a good chance Daun’s opinions, once released, were going to become known to the Central States personnel she and Daun shared a tent with.
There are a lot of ways to get hurt in a war zone. Pissing off the heavily armed people closest to you wasn’t a good way to survive to a pension.
But the situation grated on Daun’s sense of rightness, as well as making him feel he was a bubble in a very hostile ocean.
“Too rich for my blood,” Hendries said. “I pass.”
Daun stared at his cards again. They hadn’t changed for the better. He had four clubs, three of each other suit, and his high card was the jack of hearts.
He knew his partner was asking where his support was greatest; and he knew also that the proper answer was: nowhere.
“I pass,” he said aloud.
Anya grimaced.
“Pass,” said Bondo.
Daun laid out his wretched hand. His partner’s expression softened as she saw just what Daun had dealt himself. Hendries glared at his cards to determine a lead, a nearly hopeless task under the circumstances.
The tent flap tore open. “Hey!” called the Central States soldier who stuck his head in. “Smart guys! Your fucking pickup’s gone down again. The screen in the TOC’s nothing but hash!”
“Bloody hell,” Anya muttered. She laid her cards down. “My turn, I guess,” she said to Daun. “You were out all morning with the satellite dish.”
Daun stood up, waving his partner back. “Look, you were up the mast last night. Besides, I’m dummy. I’ll catch this one.”
“Hey!” the messenger from the Tactical Operations Center repeated. “Colonel Jeffords isn’t real thrilled about this, you know.”
That was probably true. The amount paid to Nieuw Friesland by the Central States government for Anya’s services was comparable to what the colonel himself earned. Daun’s pay was at the scale of a senior captain. The money didn’t go into the two technicians’ pockets, much of it, and if it had there was still no place to spend money out here on the tableland. It still provided a reason for some of the locals—Jeffords certainly, and apparently this messenger—to get shirty about off-planet smart-asses whose equipment didn’t work.
“I’m on the way,” Daun said. “Just let me get my gear.”
He buckled his equipment belt around his narrow waist, pulled on his poncho, and tried to punch the larger working canopy down into its carrying sheath. He could only get it partway into the container, but that would hold it while he climbed the mast.
The slick fabric still shone with water from when Daun had had to use it that morning. It didn’t matter—to the job—if he got soaked, but rain dripping into an open box could only make a bad situation worse.
The messenger disappeared. Daun sighed and followed him. “I’ll catch the next one, Niko,” Anya called as Daun stepped out into the rain.
The flashlight strapped for the moment to Daun’s left wrist threw a fan of white light ahead of him. He could switch the beam to deep yellow which wouldn’t affect his night vision, but it didn’t matter if he became night-blind. He’d need normal light to do his work anyway: many of the components were color-coded. The markings would change hue or vanish if viewed under colored light.
Rain sparkled in the beam. Reflections made it difficult to tell what was mud and what was wet duckboard. The crates were likely to shift queasily underfoot anyway.
Three months more. How the locals stood it was beyond him.