Orphan Brigade (10 page)

The mess hall was large enough to seat two hundred men, but most of it was empty. Clutches of troops were spaced out around the tables, dressed in fatigues or PT clothing. Once again Mortas was surprised to notice just how young many of them looked. Shuffling along in the line, he caught snatches of conversation, some boisterous and some not, but all indicative of long association.

“You can't be serious. I told you about her in confidence!”

“What can I say? They sent me to the same ward you were in, and she seemed to fit the description.”

“And you used my line? The exact same words?”

“Yeah, and she didn't seem to notice. Honestly, she isn't all that bright . . .”

Mortas looked out the window to hide his smile, and the moving column soon took him toward another discussion.

“They were gonna fit him with a replacement leg, grown right there, just like new, but there was something missing.”

“No shit there was something missing. His
leg
. I tied him off myself.”

“No, no, something medical. Something only the doctors would understand. Cells in the replacement wouldn't match up with what was left of the old leg for some reason. So they're sending him back to a regeneration hospital.”

“A regen? That takes
months
. Lying there with all those little DNA bots crawlin' over the stump.”

“Yeah, but when it's done it'll be all him. Wonder if they'll send him back here.”

A stack of trays appeared in front of Mortas, and he was through the line and following Hatton to a seat only moments later. They joined a small group, all in fatigues, one of them sporting pin-­on rank and branch insignia on his collars. Mortas looked more closely as he sat down, recognizing the man as a captain and the branch as military intelligence.

“Hey, this is our newest officer, Lieutenant Mortas. I know you've all heard of him.” Hatton spoke as if in an afterthought, sorting through the utensils on his tray. Mortas cringed at the introduction, but the others gave him an assortment of friendly waves. He recognized the adjutant from the battalion headquarters, and decided these were officers from the battalion staff. Their conversation confirmed this soon enough.

“Sir, we got another inquiry about Captain Pappas.” The adjutant spoke across the table at Hatton. “His previous owners don't seem to understand he's not coming back.”

“What did you tell them this time?” The captain with the military intelligence insignia asked in a wary voice. His short hair was blond, and even though he was seated, Mortas could tell he was tall and lean.

“I had to start recycling the older stories. You're quarantined again.”

“What did I catch?”

“You got Thorn Worm from a prostitute.”

“My wife's not gonna be happy if she hears this one.”

“Aw, come on. She's bound to like it better than when we reported you were missing.”

“But that one was true. I was actually missing at the time.”

The adjutant gave him a look of surprise. “Really?”

Hatton stopped eating long enough to explain the discussion. “Captain Pappas here was sent with us on a mission a year or so ago. Technically he's still assigned to some high-­level staff somewhere, but we lost our intelligence officer and decided to keep him. He's head and shoulders above most of the intel types at our level; he can read and write and speak in complete sentences. Every now and then his old outfit asks about him.”

“Erlon Pappas.” The captain extended his hand, and Mortas shook it. “I can get out of here anytime I want, but it's an interesting anthropological study, interacting with the infantry. I'm thinking of writing a paper on it . . . wait a minute.” He turned to the adjutant. “You can't catch Thorn Worm from a prostitute.”

“I know. Sometimes I include a screwy detail like that, just to see if they're seriously trying to get you back or only going through the motions.”

Hatton leaned across the group and spoke to the man next to Pappas. “Drew, you haven't touched your food. Bad sign from the guy who orders our chow.”

Drew looked up with a dazed expression that he immediately replaced with a forced smile. Mortas noted the way his fatigue top hung, as if there was nothing but an empty rib cage holding it up. His own recent experience with radical weight loss came rushing back, but he and the other maroons had never looked as bad as this scarecrow figure. A set of watery eyes darted his way, then went back to Hatton.

“Oh, I'm all right, sir.” The voice was soft. “Just remembered something I forgot to do back at the office. Excuse me.”

He rose and carried his tray toward a refuse chute set in a nearby wall. Mortas watched as the slim man stopped, then turned in almost a complete circle while his eyes searched the nearest tables. Drew then set off, cutting through the rows until reaching a group of seated soldiers who greeted him in a friendly manner. Mortas couldn't make out the words, but one of the troops at the table accepted the full tray.

“Eat hearty, men,” the scarecrow said, and headed for the door. The soldiers he'd addressed watched him go, some with pursed lips that Mortas mistook for bottled mirth. Once he was gone, eyebrow raises were exchanged and one man made a finger gesture that Mortas took to indicate a reluctant suspicion of insanity.

“That was Captain Follett, the battalion supply officer.” Major Hatton sighed loudly. “He worries a lot.”

“Yeah, but he always comes through. Remember when the Sims had us surrounded at Airhead Juno?” The adjutant was obviously trying to lighten the conversation, and turned his eyes to Mortas. “No normal resupply could come in, so Follett packs a company-­sized personnel ring with everything you could think of and has them drop this narrow-­beam cofferdam right in the center of the airhead.”

Cofferdams were miles-­long high-­energy cylinders directed from orbiting ships straight to a planet's surface. They were used to deliver troops and equipment directly to the ground, and personnel coasted down the cofferdam in giant wheel-­shaped carriers that hugged the sides of the vast tunnel. Because of their vulnerability, cofferdams were not generally used where they could be fired on.

Another of the staff officers joined in. “That was so crazy. The Sims shot the
shit
outta that thing. Directed every piece of ordnance they had at this giant doughnut as it slid down. That's what the men called it: the Doughnut Resupply.”

Hatton was laughing out loud. “You don't know the half of it. I was waiting for the thing to land, so all the debris was raining down on me and the breakdown party. Giant chunks of metal, crates of rations, you name it, most of it on fire. Never knew I could run that fast while looking straight up at the sky.”

The adjutant recovered some of his composure. “But here's the good part: the Sims saw that it was a company-­sized ring and figured it was an emergency attempt to put reinforcements into the airhead. Now we'd been hookin' and jabbin' with them for days, but really hadn't taken major casualties. The Sims thought we must be really hurting for bodies, so they attacked all along the perimeter.

“It was incredible. We were mowing them down with direct fire, and the ASSLs brought in everything from orbital rockets to drone gunships.” Mortas recognized the acronym for Aerial Support Systems Liaison, members of the Force air wing who traveled with the infantry and coordinated supporting fires. “We slaughtered them, then Colonel Watt comes up on the radio and just says, ‘Stretch your legs, guys' and the whole perimeter jumps up and goes after the Sims. We chased them for miles, then new cofferdams came down with two mech brigades, and we got relieved.”

Hatton shook his head at the memory. “Follett comes down with them, and I'm standing there wrapping a bandage around Martin's head—­you guys remember Martin—­because he got clocked by a can of peaches or something. And Follett's asking me how the resupply went.”

L
ate in the afternoon, Mortas got to watch his platoon come back from the rifle range. His head spinning from all the ­people he'd met and the different advice and requirements they'd laid out for him, he'd gone back out onto the athletic fields behind the barracks. A row of chest-­high wooden platforms dotted the far side of the open area, and he'd climbed up on one of them. Normally used by instructors directing physical training, the stands were a common fixture on Force bases and he'd found them comfortable places for thinking in the past.

The air was still warm, but life around the brigade area had picked up speed while he'd been in-­processing at B Company. A long column of armored troops carrying various weapons had tramped into view a short time earlier. They were now spread out on the grass near A Company's barracks, cleaning their weapons. Ground mats had been laid out so that the men could sit together in loose groups, and various company leaders could be seen circulating among them.

In the distance, a flight of shuttles slid across the reddening sky. Here and there, pairs and trios of soldiers would come into sight from behind different buildings, headed for the barracks at what was presumably the end of their duty day.

Mortas folded his long legs and rested his wrists on his knees, palm up, in a relaxation pose he'd learned in a meditation course at university. He'd signed up for the class because it was reputed to have a high percentage of female attendees, and although that had been true, he'd been surprised to have learned something useful. Straightening his back and relaxing his shoulders, he looked out from under the bill of his soft cap, taking it all in.

He'd finally met his boss, Captain Noonan, after signing in at B Company's orderly room. Noonan had seemed distant in their meeting, and Mortas came away from the interview wondering if the man's coolness arose from concern over his lack of combat experience or his father's high position.

The company's most senior NCO, First Sergeant Ettleman, had been friendlier. Bald and heavyset, he had the air of a man without a care in the world. Following his in-­briefing with Captain Noonan, Mortas had been treated to a cup of coffee in the first sergeant's office. Ettleman had gently explained that the commanding officer was still establishing himself with the Orphans and that Mortas shouldn't attach any significance to his demeanor. He'd then gone on to praise the platoon sergeant that Mortas would be inheriting, a senior sergeant named Berland who'd been in charge of B Company's First Platoon since the wounding of its last platoon leader.

Like most of the platoons in the brigade, First Platoon had been understrength when they'd deployed to their latest mission, the search-­and-­destroy Major Hatton had described. They'd suffered their share of casualties, and some of the veterans had yet to return from various hospitals. First Platoon had recently received six replacements, of whom four were brand-­new to the war zone, and so Sergeant Berland had taken the platoon to the rifle range that morning.

Having been informed of the direction from which his troops would return, Mortas became aware of them when they were still far away. A double column of men, bent under the weight of heavy rucksacks, had appeared at a break in the far wood line and slowly moved closer. Soon he was able to distinguish the camouflage fatigues, helmets, head-­and-­shoulder armor, and all the weapons of a standard platoon. He observed the slight bounce of the walking infantry, the easy stride that chewed up the miles, and noted with approval that the troops were spread out with good spacing between them. The long Scorpion rifles were held at the ready, here and there he detected the larger silhouettes of the platoon's machine guns, and finally he saw the large-­bored rocket launchers that the gunners carried across their shoulders.

Obviously his platoon sergeant was conditioning the unit to move on foot with all its equipment, even those items that hadn't been fired that day. Mortas couldn't determine which of the platoon NCOs was Berland, but he did identify the internal leadership as they moved up and down the truncated column, giving corrections or encouragement.

The platoon turned up the road that ran alongside the playing fields, allowing him to see them in profile. Some were hunched over under the loads and some stood tall. Some were hustling along at an almost feverish clip while others were sauntering as if they could go forever. Watching them, Mortas felt a twinge in his stomach, a feeling he didn't quite understand. For an instant he saw a different column, a long double file of the enemy, trudging along as they walked toward the Sim base where he and the others had stolen the spacecraft that had finally gotten them off of Roanum.

Roanum. How odd, to be thinking of the unnamed planet by its new name. The name of one of the ­people who'd been with him on that march, pretending to be Sims. The name of a dead man. That thought helped Mortas to identify the twinge, and he recognized it as doubt. Not doubt of his own abilities or his genuine desire to lead his troops well, but the ugly concern about events that were beyond his control. Events like the ones that had killed Cranther, Gorman, and even the alien pretending to be Trent. He'd been powerless to stop them, and he alone had been spared.

The platoon turned onto the grass in front of the row of barracks, and he wondered how his new troops felt about his having survived. He'd been marooned with three Forcemembers, yet he was the only one still living. Apparently his report (or, rather, the slightly doctored version where he was the hero) had been read by just about everyone in the brigade, and so hopefully these men would be able to see that he'd done his best. That he and the three strangers had become a solid unit and that they had all risked their lives for each other at different times.

Mortas saw the first sergeant's wide form emerging from B Company's barracks, and he watched the man approach the platoon. The troops were easing their burdens to the grass, and some had begun to shake out ground coverings like the ones being used by the nearby A Company men. First Sergeant Ettleman conferred with one of the soldiers, and Mortas decided this was his platoon sergeant. He'd just unfolded his legs and hopped down from the platform when Ettleman pointed in his direction, and the other man started walking toward him.