“Could you?” Huber said, interested.
She grinned, a more familiar expression. “Yeah,” she said, “but I couldn’t do it without leaving a trail that the counterintelligence people could follow. I don’t want to discuss that with Joachim Steuben.”
“It’d be a short discussion,” Huber said, also with a smile of sorts. Major Steuben was as pretty as Doll herself. Frequently his duties involved killing somebody, a task at which Steuben was remarkably good. Inhumanly good, you might say.
“I don’t know anything about Lindeyar except he seemed to expect a red carpet and wasn’t best pleased not to have one,” Huber said. He rubbed his neck; Doll gestured to the box of tissues on the console.
“Doll?” he went on, meeting her eyes. “Do you know how bad it is out there?”
She shrugged in turn. “I know it’s not good,” she said. “My section’s job is to keep up the links with friendly units, so I see all the traffic whether I want to or not.”
“Solace is pushing us everywhere,” Huber said. He was glad to talk to somebody. Misery wanting company, he supposed, and he knew he could trust Doll. “We’re just trying to block their advances.”
He shrugged again and went on, “The Waldheim Dragoons are landing at Port Plattner in a day’s time. They’re mechanized and brigade strength, maybe a thousand combat vehicles. They’ve got powerguns and there’s three 5-cm cannon in each platoon. Those’ll take out a tank at short range, and a combat car’s toast any time they hit it.”
Doll made a moue and patted her tight black hair with her fingertips as she absorbed the information. “I can tell you,” she said, staring toward the bulldozed wasteland past the slanting louvers, “that the UC isn’t expecting the arrival of any significant reinforcements in the next ten days. I’d have been warned to make sure there’d be circuits clear.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Huber explained. “Solace is landing the Dragoons in a single lift. In a week or less they’ll be organized and move out. It’d take a month to unload a brigade in what passes for spaceports in the UC, and it’d take longer than that to put the dribs and drabs together as a fighting force. Via, what we’ve got now isn’t a coherent force except for the Regiment!”
“Could Nonesuch do anything?” Doll asked. “They’re the major player in this arm of the galaxy.”
“Lindeyar isn’t somebody whose good will I’d want to depend on,” Huber said. He chuckled at the thought. “But I sure don’t see a better hope.”
He was still wearing his commo helmet out of habit. The faceshield was raised, so the attention signal chimed in his ear instead of being a flashing icon. At the same time Doll’s switched-off console lit under Central’s control.
Colonel Hammer’s face coalesced out of pearly light. He looked grim, though that was normal for the few times Huber had seen the Colonel make a Regiment-wide announcement.
“Listen up, troopers,” Hammer said. Huber and Basime stared at the display. Hammer’s hard gray eyes were locked with theirs, despite the varied angles, and with those of everyone else who viewed the transmitted image. “Orders’ll be coming down in two hours. Be ready to move with your field kit. This means everybody. There’ll be reassignments of rear echelon personnel to line slots where they need to be filled.”
The Colonel rubbed his forehead; for a moment he looked very tired. His expression hardened again and he went on, “You’ve been the best soldiers every place you’ve fought. It’s no different here. Do your jobs, troopers; and if I do mine as well as you’ve always done yours, we’re going to pull this off yet!”
The image shrank and vanished; the memory of the Colonel’s words hung a moment longer in the small office. Huber got to his feet.
“Going to get your kit together, Arne?” Doll said as she squeezed aside to let him past.
“That’s next,” Huber said. “First I’m going to see the Colonel.”
He grinned at Doll as he opened the door. He felt numb, and there was a glowing wall in his mind that blocked off all the future except the next five minutes or so.
“First …” Huber said as he stepped into the outer office. “I’ve got to make sure I’m going back to the line!”
Huber strode toward the TOC entrance, his left leg stiff but not slowing him up a bit. He didn’t know how he was going to bluff his way through the guards, but as it chanced he didn’t have to. They’d heard the Colonel also, and they knew a lot of people were going to be moving fast on Regiment business.
Half a dozen figures came up the ramp from the TOC at the same time as Huber reached the wire going the other way. He unhooked the gate and pulled it open, then closed it behind him when they’d passed.
The last one through was the civilian, Lindeyar. He reached back and caught Huber’s arm over the wire. “You, Lieutenant!” he cried. “There’s to be a vehicle to carry me to Benjamin!”
Huber hooked the wire loop to the gate’s frame. He pulled his arm away, suppressing a momentary desire to slap the civilian back on his haunches with the same movement. He nodded to the guards and shuffled down the ramp, keeping to the right side as three more officers came out of the buried trailers with set expressions. They were on their way to duties that weren’t limited to staring at a display as other people fought a war….
Huber grabbed the door before it closed; the air puffing from the interior was cool. The man coming out now was Colonel Hammer himself, with Major Kreutzer—the S-4 Personnel Officer—just behind him. Kreutzer’s arm was raised; he was in an agony of wishing he dared to physically restrain his commanding officer.
“Sir!” said Huber, stepping in front of Hammer.
“Not bloody now!” the Colonel snarled. He looked as though he might bull past. Huber braced himself, but there was no contact.
“Sir, you said you owe me,” Huber said, pitching his voice loudly enough to be heard over the sound of vehicles spinning up all around the base. “I’m collecting now. I want to go back to the field.”
Behind Kreutzer were three other officers, trying to catch Hammer before he went off without answering their questions. Warrant officers sat at consoles to either side of the narrow aisle, immersed in their displays.
“Huber?” Hammer said. His face thawed like ice breaking up on the surface of a river. “Via, yeah, you’re going back if you’re able to walk.”
He looked over his shoulder at the personnel officer. “Kreutzer, you wanted a CO for L Company?” he said. “All right, put Huber in the slot. And brevet him captain when you get a chance.”
“No sir!” Huber said. He’d expected the fury in Hammer’s expression, so it didn’t slow him down as he continued, “Sir, I’ve never commanded infantry and this is no time for on-the-job training. Send me back to F-3.”
“You only get away with crossing me if you’re right, Lieutenant!” Hammer said; and smiled again, minusculely. “Which you are this time. Kreutzer, got any suggestions?”
“Yancy in L-2’s senior enough,” Kreutzer said. He shrugged. “We’ll see if she can handle it. There’s not a lot of choice, not now.”
“Not a bloody lot,” Hammer agreed. “All right, and we’ll transfer—Algren, isn’t it? The newbie we put in F-3 to L-2. Get on with it.”
He pushed past Huber. The S-4 locked down his faceshield and passed the orders on, his voice muffled by his helmet’s sonic cancellation field. Huber fell in behind the Colonel, heading back to the surface and an aircar to take him to wherever platoon F-3 was
while the movement orders were being cut. Lieutenant Arne Huber was going home.
Huber could’ve held a virtual meeting, but for his first contact with F-3 since his medevac he preferred face-to-face. The platoon could still scramble in thirty seconds if they had to; as they well might have to….