“Ah, thank you very much, Captain,” Ruthven said. He’d heard the man he was replacing’d been promoted to the command of Company K. That’d worried him because it meant Lyauty must be a good officer. How am I going to measure up?
The trooper who’d accompanied Lyauty was looking in the direction they’d come from, watching their backtrail. He had his right hand on the grip of his 2-cm weapon; the stubby iridium barrel was cradled in the crook of his left elbow. He hadn’t spoken.
“This your gear?” Lyauty said, reaching into the back of the jeep before Ruthven could forestall him. I thought the trooper would carry the duffle bag. “Via, Lieutenant! Is this all yours? We’re in forward positions here!”
“I, ah,” Ruthven said. “Well, clean uniforms, mostly. And, ah, some food items. And the assigned equipment, of course.”
The driver snickered. “He’s got his own auger, sir,” he said.
“Right,” said Lyauty in sudden harshness. “And you let him bring it. Well, Adkins, for that you can haul his bag over to the car. I’ve got Sellars on commo watch. The two of you sort it out. Leave him a proper field kit and I’ll take the rest back to Regiment with me to store.”
“Sorry, sir,” the driver muttered. “I shoulda said something.”
“Come along, Ruthven,” Lyauty said. “Sorry about the trail, but you’ll get used to it. Say, this is Trooper Rennie. I’ve got him assigned as my runner. You can make your own choice, of course, but I’d recommend you spend a few days getting the feel of the platoon before you start making changes.”
The trooper leading them into the forest turned his head; in greeting, Ruthven supposed, but the fellow didn’t raise his faceshield. He was as featureless as a billiard ball.
Ruthven turned his head toward Lyauty behind him. “A power auger is assigned equipment, sir,” he said in an undertone.
“Right,” said the captain. “We’ve got three of them in the platoon. A bloody useful piece of kit, but not as useful as extra rations and ammo if things go wrong. The brass at Regiment can afford to count on resupply because it’s not their ass swinging in the breeze if the truck doesn’t make it forward. Here in the field we pretty much go by our own priorities.”
The trail zigzagged steeply upward; Rennie in the lead was using his left hand to pull himself over the worst spots, holding his 2-cm weapon like a huge pistol. Ruthven’s sub-machine gun was strapped firmly across his chest, leaving both hands free. Even so he stumbled repeatedly and once clanged flat on the wet rock.
“It’s not much farther, Lieutenant,” Lyauty said. “Another hundred meters up is all.”
“I thought …” Ruthven said. He slipped and caught himself on all fours. As he started to get up, the toe of his left boot skidded back and slammed him down again. The sub-machine gun pounded against his body armor.
“I thought your headquarters would be the command vehicle,” he said in a rush, trying to ignore the pain of his bruised ribs.
“We couldn’t get the car to the top of this cone,” Lyauty said. “I’ve been leaving it below with three troopers, rotating them every night when the rations come up.”
“The jeeps couldn’t climb above that last switchback,” said Trooper Rennie. “We had to hump the tribarrels from there, and that’s hell’s own job.”
There was a tearing hiss above. Ruthven jerked his head up. The foliage was sparse on this steep slope, so he was able to catch a glimpse of a green ball streaking across the sky from the west.
“Is that a rocket?” said Ruthven. Then, “That was a rocket!”
“It wasn’t aimed at us, Lieutenant,” Lyauty said wearily. “Anyway, our bunkers’re on the reverse slope, though we’ve got fighting positions forward too if we need them.”
“I just thought …” Ruthven said. “I thought we, ah …I thought that incoming artillery was destroyed in the air.”
“They can’t hit anything with bombardment rockets,” Lyauty said. “Anyway, they can’t hit us. To use the tribarrel in the command car for air defense, we’d have to shift it into a clearing. That’d make it a target.”
“We’re infantry, Lieutenant,” Rennie said over his shoulder. “If you want to call attention to yourself, you ought to’ve put in for tanks.”
Ruthven opened his mouth to dress the trooper down for insolence. He closed it again, having decided it was Lyauty’s job properly since he hadn’t formally handed over command of the platoon.
“We can hit hard when we need to, Lieutenant,” Lyauty said. “But until then, yeah …keeping a low profile is a good plan.”
“Who you got with you, Rennie?” a voice called from the darkness above them.
Ruthven looked up. He couldn’t see anybody, just an outcrop over which a gnarled tree managed to grow. His torso beneath the clamshell body armor was sweating profusely, but his hands were numb from gripping wet rocks and branches.
“Six’s come up, Hassel,” Rennie said. “And we got the new El-Tee along.”
“Sir?” said a man kneeling beside the outcrop. “Come on up but keep low. If you stand here, the Wops get your head in silhouette. I’m Hassel, First Squad.”
“It’s Hassel’s bunker, properly,” Lyauty said. “I asked the other squad leaders to come here tonight so I can introduce you.”
Another man stepped into the night; this time Ruthven saw his arm sweep back the curtain of light-diffusing fabric hanging over a hole in the side of the hillside. “This the new El-Tee?” he said.
“Right, Wegs,” said Lyauty. “His name’s Ruthven. Lieutenant, Sergeant Wegelin’s your Heavy Weapons squad leader. Come on, let’s get under cover.”
“Yessir, two tribarrels and two mortars instead of three of each,” said Wegelin as he held the curtain for Hassel, then Ruthven after a directive jab from Lyauty’s knuckles. “And if you think that’s bad, then we only got three working jeeps. It don’t matter here since we offloaded the guns, but we’ll be screwed good if they expect us to displace on our own.”
Ruthven hit his head—his helmet, but it still staggered him— on the transom, then missed the two steps down. He’d have fallen on his face if the tall man waiting—he had to hunch to clear the ceiling—hadn’t caught him.
“Have you heard something about us displacing, Wegs?” the man said, stepping back when he was sure Ruthven had his feet. “Because I haven’t. Talk about getting the shaft! E/1 sure has this time.”
“Troops, this is Lieutenant Ruthven who’s taking over from me,” Lyauty said. “Lieutenant, that’s van Ronk, your platoon sergeant, Axbird who’s got Second Squad …”
“How-do, Lieutenant,” said a short woman who at first seemed plump. When she lifted her rain cape to pour a cup of cacao from the pot bubbling on a ledge cut into the side of the bunker, Ruthven realized she was wearing at least three bandoliers laden with equipment and ammunition.
“And that’s Purchas there on watch,” Lyauty said, nodding to the man in the southeast corner. “He’s Third Squad.”
Purchas was on an ammo box, using a holographic display which rested on a similar box against the bunker wall. He didn’t turn around.
“We pipe the sensors through optical fibers,” Lyauty explained, gesturing to the skein of filaments entering the bunker by a hole in the roof. Rain dripped through also, pooling on the floor of gritty mud. “Below the ridgeline there’s a microwave cone aimed back at the command car. We need the car for the link to Central, but other than that we’re on our own here.”
Everybody’d raised their faceshields; Ruthven raised his too, though the bunker’s only illumination was that scatter from the sensor display. My eyes’ll adapt. Won’t they?
“If you’re wondering, there isn’t a separate command bunker,” Lyauty said. “You can change that if you want, but I feel like moving to a different squad each night keeps me in the loop better.”