A high-pitched loud monotone tone alarm came from somewhere behind the situation map monitor. Galen pressed the alarm-acknowledge key and looked at the screen. A free-text message appeared at the bottom.
“GO BN FREAK.”
Galen twisted to his left and used the middle finger of his right hand to stab the battalion command frequency into the numerical keypad of his receiver-transmitter. “Romeo eight Juliet six niner, this is nine three tango three zero. Request permission to enter your net. Over.”
“Cut the crap, Chief Raper. War’s over.”
“Last calling station, authenticate papa six, over.”
There was a pause, dead air space. “I authenticate tango alpha x-ray over.”
“And with whom am I speaking?” Galen decided to dispense with proper radio procedure, mostly for the hell of it.
“I’m Major Ross. Come to my location and stand down. Get some rest. Extraction is tomorrow.”
“Say again last transmission.” For the benefit of Sergeant Boggs and the three light infantry troops on the back deck of the tank, Galen switched on the external loud speakers and cranked the volume.
“I say again, this is Major Ross. Come to my location and stand down for some rest. Extraction is tomorrow. And I say again, cut the crap, Chief Raper.”
He turned the external speakers off. “Roger out.”
They arrived at the camp of the main body of the task force. The sun was just starting to come up over the mountains at the head of the valley. There was just one machine gun set up for perimeter defense, more of a courtesy gate guard to greet groups of stragglers or lone vehicles as they entered the area. The guard on duty was a panzer grenadier and he halted Galen’s tank when it pulled up. “Halt. Apple.”
Galen thought for a moment. “Chalk!”
“Right, Chief. You can park by those other cans down by the river bank. Then go check in with the Major.”
“This tank is no can, troop.”
The troop sneered, “Anything with tracks is a can.”
Galen remembered how the troop’s infantry carrier had been destroyed earlier. He decided to ignore the insubordination. “Move it, driver. Get us parked.”
There were six tanks already by the river. Two were missing turrets but apparently still ran because tow-chains connected them to the other four. One tank seemed still intact except the outside was covered with burn marks and bubbles in the ablative coating. The recovered tanks were little more than hulls and fusion bottles. However, the most salvageable and most expensive parts of the tanks were the fusion bottles. Crews were relatively cheap to replace.
Galen dismounted and walked over to the Major. The Major sat on the ground beside his pup-tent nibbling at a ration bar. Galen stopped in front of the field-grade officer and stood at attention. “Sir. Chief Raper reports.”
“Have a seat, Chief.” The Major picked up his field commander’s combat-portable noteputer and poked at the keypad.
Galen squatted and consulted notes he had scribbled on his hand with an ink stick. “Sir, I brought in Chief Miller, he’s wounded, and Sergeant Boggs and Trooper Jones from recon. From alpha light’s second platoon I brought in Corporal Nelson, Trooper McKinney and Trooper Murrell.”
The Major made some entries on his noteputer. “Good.”
“Sir, how did the battle go, exactly?”
“The Mosh commander got ambitious. He made an all-out attack against us, hoping to get by us and capture our boats. Didn’t work, though. You stopped them.”
“Glad to hear it. Too bad about Sevin.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw his tank get wasted on the situation map. My auxiliary status screen showed him as black.”
“How far were you from him when he supposedly died?”
“About nine klicks.”
“Well let me explain something. Usually information is passed between vehicles on short-range commo. When units are more spread out the ship in orbit handles the transfer of information on a redundant system and the two systems update each other.”
“Sir?”
“When Sevin’s tank was destroyed it no longer communicated. The transmitter on his election seat was too weak to reach the ship or you. He was too far away.”
“So he’s okay!”
“Yes. Go back to his last known location and recover him. There’s no hurry. We don’t extract for another nineteen hours.”
Galen stood and walked off.
The Major called after him and he stopped and turned. “Chief, while you’re out there you should pick up all the combat suits and ejection seats you might happen to see laying around.”
Two weeks later Tad, Galen and Spike sat together at a table in the Jasmine Panzer Brigade mess hall on the Jasmine Panzer Brigade compound on Mandarin.
“Good chow,” said Tad. He poured maple syrup on his French toast.
“Real food for a change,” said Galen. He put extra salt on his over-easy eggs. He broke the yolks and sopped up the runny yellow mass with a buttermilk biscuit.
“We ate better in flight school.”
“I’ll bet you did, Spike,” said Tad.
“Well we did. Are you coming to my promotion this afternoon?”
“Yes. It’s about time you caught up to me and Galen. Galen, you coming to see Spike get promoted to Chief?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What do you mean ‘maybe?’ You have to be there.”
Galen took a gulp of milk. “He didn’t come to my promotion.”
Spike looked indignant and Tad glared at Galen.
Galen smiled and said, “Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer. Of course I’ll be there. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Well,” said Spike, “I’m done with training and I’ll be sent out to a direct air support squadron in the fleet. I have to report next week but I’m off until then. Probably have to fight on Grange, if things heat up.”
“Have a good time. Tomorrow Tad and I report to the Master Sergeant’s School to train for company-level command. Good thing we came in this morning or we’d have to wait until the next cycle.”
“I thought you two were applying for officer rank.”
“No,” said Tad. “We have to be with the Panzers for a year before we can apply.”
“Your year will be up in two months. The Master Sergeant course is three months long. I’m sure the Colonel would agree to save himself a few credits and let you go through the officer training program instead. It’s only a month long. The unit could have you back out in the fleet sooner that way; makes perfectly good economic sense to me.”
Tad’s mouth was full of bacon so Galen responded, “I’m not sure if I want to be a commissioned officer. I’m already a perfectly good NCO. I’m proficient and respected. Why should I give that up?”
“Greater pay and benefits.”
“My pay is adequate. Besides, commissioned officers don’t get contract shares.”
Tad spoke, “Spike, we aren’t chicken and we haven’t lost our nerve. We just aren’t in a big hurry to head back out to the fleet. We want to take it easy on Mandarin for a while. Three months of school and then three months in the field here and then maybe we’ll check on the officer angle. Or maybe not. We just don’t want to decide right now, okay?”
“Okay, I understand. Take some sham time.”
“Damn right we’ll take some sham time.”
Chapter Twenty
Tad and Galen walked from the chow hall towards their barracks. Spike stayed in the chow hall to eat breakfast with his new flight school friends. As Tad and Galen walked past the athletic field they heard a voice. The sound was raspy and low and that caught their attention all the more because they could just barely hear it.