There had been very few occasions in her career when Steph had questioned her sanity, but this was definitely one of them. Strapped into a sling chair aboard an assault boat deployed from the carrier Subic Bay, she felt like she was on the bobsled ride from hell as the boat plunged from the carrier’s belly into Keran’s atmosphere. She was one of half a dozen journalists embedded with the two heavy divisions Tiernan’s fleet had brought along to shore up Keran’s defenses, and was attached to the headquarters troop of the 7th Cavalry Regiment under the 1st Guards Armored Division. That division was an odd mix of American and Russian lineage, but together with its sister 31st Armored Division, which had its roots in the old Indian Army, they were the best-trained heavy divisions Earth could muster. The 7th Cav, as it was often known, was famous - or infamous, depending on one’s point of view - as the last command of General George Armstrong Custer, who led the regiment to defeat and massacre in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Traditionally it had the job of providing reconnaissance and security to its parent division. On the modern battlefield, the decision had been made many years before to convert it to a heavy armored brigade. The unit’s traditional title had stuck, and it had also retained its reputation as one of the first units sent in to stir up trouble for the enemy.
True to form, the regiment would be the first on the ground on Keran, the lead element brought in by the assault boats that would then return to the carriers for a second load. And since they would be on the bleeding edge of the ground campaign, assuming the Kreelans landed, Steph had immediately decided that she wanted to be with them.
But now, as the assault boat screamed through the atmosphere, bouncing and jarring its occupants and cargo like it was flying through a tornado, she had to wonder just what the hell she had been thinking.
She also wondered about the fleet battle going on above. From the brief exchange she’d been able to have with the regimental commander before the boats deployed, the Terran fleet had jumped into the middle of a naval meat grinder that had already left dozens of burning hulks in its wake. No enemy ships had maneuvered to intercept the carriers as they raced from their in-bound jump points to the drop zones over Keran, for which everyone was thankful. But there were still plenty left that were hitting back at the Terran fleet and what ships were left of the French Alliance, and Steph felt herself uncharacteristically worried about Ichiro.
The thought of him gave her a momentary pause from her contemplations of falling through the atmosphere in the company of a bunch of suicidal cavalry troopers. What exactly did she feel for Ichiro? she asked herself. While the two of them had certainly become more than friends, could she say that she loved him? Even if she did, assuming that both of them survived this, what could they do about it? Ichiro had made it clear that he wanted to stay in the Navy, and the war would almost certainly mean extended service for everyone in the military, and possibly even a draft if the president could get it approved by Congress. Despite the series of events that had linked her fate to Ichiro’s over the last year, her own career would no doubt take a separate road from his. Her being aboard this ship and not with the fleet above them was already proof enough of that. Looking beyond any love the two of them might share, even if she decided to settle down and start a family - a bridge she was not yet prepared to cross - did she want to be a Navy wife, with Ichiro off on deployment for months at a time?
She frowned inwardly, for she had no answers to those questions. But she cared enough about him that she felt they needed to have that conversation. If they mutually decided that they were better off as friends, fine. But she didn’t want to pass up even a one in a thousand chance that they could be something more. He was as close as she’d ever come to finding someone who really cared about her, and she didn’t want to throw it away.
While she was going into harm’s way herself, she silently prayed for the Lord of All to keep him safe.
* * *
Lieutenant General Arjun Ray was furious. As the commander of the Terran Army’s I Corps, the parent corps of the two armored divisions now plummeting toward the surface of Keran, Ray had been given the task of leading the ground portion of the battle. He was subordinate to Tiernan, who was in overall command of the expeditionary force, but once the admiral’s carriers got Ray’s troops to the surface he would largely be on his own. His greatest concern had been the threat of Kreelan attack against the carriers before his troops could even hit dirt. But soon after the boats had deployed for the surface he discovered that he had another battle to fight.
“My apologies, general,” the brigadier of the Keran Defense Forces repeated sternly, and not sounding very apologetic at all, “but you have no clearance to land your troops. Our diplomatic service is already sending a démarche to the Terran embassy here to protest the presence of your fleet.” He shook his head. “We will not allow, under any circumstances, Terran ground forces to land on Keran soil.”
“My god, man, do you have any idea what is happening right over your heads?” Ray asked him, trying desperately to rein in his anger. “The Alliance Fleet has taken serious losses and may very well not be able to prevent the enemy from attempting a landing if they should choose to. If we don’t get our troops on the ground now and consolidate our defenses, we may not get another chance. I’ll speak to the Alliance commander and try to get him to convince you-”
“General,” the brigadier rudely interrupted, enjoying the opportunity to tweak a superior officer from another planet’s service, “the Alliance has no say in this matter. They are here simply for exercises with our own navy. We have received no reports of enemy activity-”
“I can hear the bloody raid warning sirens going off in the background of your transmission, you idiot!” Ray shouted, finally losing his temper. He had already been in contact with Ambassador Pugacheva of the Terran Embassy and so had some idea of the disarray the Keran government was in at the moment. But this was simply too much. Calmly dickering with this imbecile while strapped into a combat chair in an assault boat as it screamed toward the surface was simply beyond the patience of anyone but a saint. “Brigadier, let me make this clear to you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am landing my troops at the coordinates we sent you earlier, with the intention of taking up positions on the left flank of the Alliance Foreign Legion troops that have deployed on the outskirts of Foshan.”
Foshan was the largest population center on the planet, although the planetary capital was a smaller city to the north. It was a bustling metropolis that had a nearly perfect balance between the Arabic and Chinese populations. The city center had an impressive skyline of high-rise office buildings sporting garish video banners, countered by the graceful spires of minarets from the many mosques that lined the downtown area. The city’s main roads radiated from the downtown area like spokes of a wheel, serving a colorful hodgepodge of neighborhoods and shopping districts that were a mix of pagoda-style buildings and white- or tan-faced stone structures with intricate scrollwork that were typical of many of Earth’s cities in what was once the Middle East.
Ray knew that three more French divisions would be deploying to Foshan, while the remaining five would be divided up among the three other largest population centers. It was scant coverage in terms of defending against a planetary assault, but it was all they had to work with. They would be leavened with men from the Keran paramilitary forces, but that was about all the support the off-world troops could expect. Like their navy, the Keran military had little actual combat capability, amounting to a total of three light infantry brigades and some antiquated aerospace defense systems.
“And let me make sure that you understand something,” Ray continued. “You are dealing with the commander of two heavy armored divisions. If my troops or the assault boats transporting them are molested in any way by Keran forces,” he growled as he leaned closer to the video pickup, “I will have those divisions blow you little fuckers to bits and grind what’s left into fertilizer. Do I make myself clear, brigadier?”
The other man’s darker skin, be it from Chinese or Arab descent, Ray could not have cared less, visibly paled. Beyond the insult, he must have immediately come to the conclusion that Ray wasn’t bluffing. On that count, he would have been quite correct. “I will let my commander know that you intend to force a landing on our sovereign soil,” he protested with as much indignation as he could muster, “and convey your threats against our forces. And I will lodge the strongest possible protest with your embassy, general!”
“Go right ahead, you little bastard,” Ray spat dismissively as he killed the connection. “Just don’t get in my way.”
* * *
Lieutenant-Colonel Lev Stepanovich Grishin, commander of the Première Régiment étranger de cavalerie, or 1er REC, of the Alliance Légion étrangère watched with professional interest as the Terran assault boats swept down to their drop sites to the south of his unit’s position. He had briefly listened to the local Keran military liaison rant about the Terran “invasion” and orders he had for Grishin to fire on the boats before they landed. Making no attempt to conceal his contempt, Grishin kicked the fool out of his command vehicle and had him escorted out of the regiment’s defense perimeter. He knew that not all Keran military officers were idiots, but there were enough in key positions to be causing trouble when they desperately needed to be pulling themselves together. The Legion operations staff had been keeping track of the hammering that the Alliance fleet had taken, and Grishin himself had given up a cheer when the Terran ships had appeared. While the Legion had been his home for nearly twenty years and he fully expected to die in uniform, he would prefer that he and his men not be wasted unnecessarily by incompetent bureaucrats.
“Have we made contact with them?” he asked his adjutant.
“Yes, sir,” the man replied immediately. “We can only speak in the clear, mon colonel. The communications security systems are not compatible. Their commander is waiting to speak with you.”
Nodding, Grishin spoke, his voice picked up by the tiny microphone embedded in his helmet. “Terran ground commander,” he said, “this is Lieutenant-Colonel Grishin, commander of the First Cavalry Regiment of the Alliance Foreign Legion. To whom am I speaking, please?”
“Bonjour, colonel,” came a gravelly voice that was unmistakably from the American South. While he appreciated the gesture, Grishin winced at the man’s pronunciation of the traditional French greeting, hoping that the Terran officer would prefer to speak English. While his own French carried an unmistakable Russian accent, it was pure Parisian compared to this man’s speech. “This is Colonel James Sparks, commanding the 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Guards Armored Division. We’re going to be operating on your left flank, and I wanted to stop by and coordinate our lines and fire plans with you, if I may.”
“Certainly, colonel,” Grishin told him. “My command post is at-” he read off some coordinates, “-and I will be waiting for you.”
“Thank you, colonel,” Sparks said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Sparks, out.”
Grishin looked at his adjutant, who shrugged. “At least they will have tanks,” his adjutant said. “That must count for something...”
Exactly ten minutes later, Grishin tried to keep the dismay from showing on his face as the Terran regimental commander dismounted from the wheeled reconnaissance vehicle that had pulled up in front of Grishin’s mobile command post. Sparks looked as if he had walked off the set of an ancient American “western” movie. While he was dressed in the standard combat uniform of the Terran Army, the wiry man wore a cowboy-style black cavalry officer’s hat replete with an insignia of crossed sabers and a gold acorn band, along with a matching bright yellow ascot showing from the vee of the neck of his combat tunic. And under his left arm, carried in a matte black leather shoulder holster, was the biggest handgun Grishin had ever seen. The huge weapon was nickel plated with contoured grips that he would have wagered a month’s pay were made of mother-of-pearl.
But the most ridiculous thing, Grishin thought, aghast, was what the Terran wore on the heels of his boots: riding spurs, which made a ching-ching-ching sound as the Terran colonel strode purposefully toward him.
The man was simply outrageous.
“Mon Dieu,” Grishin’s adjutant whispered, desperately trying to hold his face rigid and not burst out laughing.
Grishin shared the sentiment right up until the moment that Sparks took off his sunglasses and tucked them in a pocket as he drew to within hand-shaking distance. While Grishin did not believe that the eyes told everything about a man, in some cases they could tell a great deal. And in this case, Sparks’s piercing blue eyes and no-nonsense expression told him what he needed to know. A Hollywood dandy, this man might be. But Grishin suspected, and greatly hoped, that he was a formidable combat commander, as well.
Rendering a sharp salute, Grishin said formally, “On behalf of the men of the 1er Régiment étranger de cavalerie, I welcome you, sir.”
Sparks snapped a salute that was parade-ground perfect, then said, “Thank you, colonel. I appreciate the hospitality.” As Grishin lowered his salute and shook the Terran colonel’s extended hand, noting how strong the smaller man’s grip was, Sparks went on, “But if it’s all the same to you, I suggest we get down to business over a glass of whiskey.” Like magic, he produced a small silver-plated flask and held it up with a devilish grin on his face.
Grishin could no longer help himself. Laughing, he gestured for Sparks to accompany him into the command post. “Come, colonel,” he told Sparks. “If you have whiskey, there’s no time to lose...”
* * *
Steph stood in the background, recording the coordination session and making verbal notes as she watched the two commanders and their small staffs huddle around the map display in Grishin’s command vehicle. Of the two men, she wasn’t sure which one was more unusual. Sparks was outwardly an extreme stereotype of the romantic cavalryman, but even in the short time she had been with his unit she had discovered that the men and women who served in his regiment would go to hell and back for him without a second thought. He was polite, thoughtful, and unquestionably loved the men and women who served under him as if they were family. But he could also be ruthless and absolutely merciless to those he found lacking in the will to do their best, or who in any way dishonored his regiment. And from hearing him speak, ruthless and merciless would be the lead traits of his personality that he planned to direct at the enemy.
Grishin, on the other hand, appeared to be what one might expect of a competent colonel in any army, with a very significant exception: of the twenty regiments of the Légion étrangère, he was the only regimental commander not seconded from one of the Alliance armies. One of those exceedingly rare individuals who had worked his way up the ranks from a lowly legionnaire to commander of a combat regiment, Grishin was a veteran of the St. Petersburg war. In fact, he had joined the Legion right after the armistice, and rumor had it that he was one of the few communists who had managed to escape the final destruction of the Red Army. But in the Legion, no one cared. His past, whatever it truly was, was left behind and gone. And if he was good enough to make it through the political battlefield that controlled Legion officer assignments, then maybe he would be a good match for the Kreelans, as well.
Turning her attention back to the discussion around the map table, she heard Sparks say, “Our biggest problem as I see it is intelligence. We have absolutely no idea what we may be up against, or which direction they’ll be coming from.”
“Surely, sir,” said Grishin’s adjutant, “they’ll have to come from the south, over here.” Foshan was situated in a forested area, with the western side of the city along the shore of one of Keran’s freshwater seas. On the map, the adjutant indicated a large open area in the forest to the south. “That’s the only decent nearby landing zone that’s not in direct sight of our weapons here. There just aren’t many other choices unless they want to drop right into the city, which...” He shrugged. “That would make no sense to me, but I do not know how they think.”
“That is the problem,” Grishin sighed. “We have no idea what they might do, what they could do. And what if they do drop directly into the city? Our tanks are made for fighting in the open. In the city they would be very vulnerable without more infantry support. And half of Foshan’s streets are too narrow for our tanks, let alone yours.” The Alliance-made wheeled light tanks that were used by the 1er REC were not terribly dissimilar from vehicles used long in the past, for a very simple reason: the combination of mobility, lightness, and firepower was extremely effective for the types of low-tech opponents the Legion typically faced. The Terran heavy armor units, by contrast, were equipped with vehicles that weighed upward of one hundred metric tons and were marvels of every facet of human engineering. They were incredibly powerful, well-protected, and amazingly fast for something so heavy, but were totally out of their element in close-in street fighting.
“Yeah,” Sparks agreed grimly. “We’d have to blow half the goddamn city down just to move through it. On the other hand, we’re cavalry: if we have to dismount, every trooper in my regiment’s got a rifle and he knows how to use it.”
Grishin thought it would be ridiculous to use tank crews as infantry, but as far as he could tell, Sparks wasn’t joking.
“Mobility has to be the key,” Sparks said, finally. “It’s the only thing we’ve got against so many unknowns. And the first thing I’d recommend,” he went on, “would be to send a company of tanks forward, with some of your men, colonel, as guides, to this nice open patch your adjutant pointed out. That way if our friends do show up there, we can give them a warm welcome.”
Thinking it over, Grishin nodded. It wouldn’t cost them anything, since they had absolutely no idea what the enemy might do. If the Kreelans did try to land there, one of the 7th Cav’s tank companies could give them a difficult time. “I agree, colonel,” he told him. “I will detach one of my reconnaissance teams to you: they have been out to that area several times and know the route and commanding terrain well.”
“Outstanding,” Sparks told him. “My tanks will be outside your door here in thirty minutes. You’ll know they’re here when the ground starts shaking.” He held out his hand. “Colonel, it’s been a pleasure, and I’ll definitely be in touch. But I need to get back to get the rest of my regiment squared away.”
“My pleasure, sir,” Grishin told him, meaning it, as he shook the Terran cavalryman’s hand and they once again exchanged salutes. “We will be standing by.”
On the brief trip back to the reconnaissance vehicle that had brought them over, Steph walked beside Sparks. The two staff officers who’d accompanied him were walking behind, already setting the colonel’s orders into motion over the comm sets built into their uniform harnesses. She saw a look of unusual concern on his face. “Colonel,” she asked quietly, “may I ask what you’re thinking?”
He glanced over at her. “On or off the record?” he asked sharply.
That took her by surprise. One of the whole points of having journalists embedded with the forward units was that everything was “on the record” unless it might compromise the safety of friendly troops.
“Okay, colonel,” she said guardedly as they reached the vehicle and she turned to face him. “Let’s start with off the record.”
Taking a look around them, with the city behind and the dense forest in front that led to the hills protecting the possible landing zone, he told her, “Unless I’m badly mistaken or the enemy really disappoints me, we may be in for the biggest defeat since Custer got his ass handed to him at the Little Big Horn.”
“What?” Steph blurted. Sparks’s comment was totally out of place from what she’d understood of his conversation with Grishin. “Why?”
“Listen, Miss Guillaume,” he told her, beckoning her to the front of the vehicle and away from the droning of his staff officers as they continued issuing orders, “this is probably the first battle in modern history where at least one side - that would be us - knows virtually nothing about the enemy. Nothing. We don’t know jack about their weapons, tactics, motivations, objectives: zippo. For Christ’s sake, we don’t even know what they look like aside from what that young boy Sato could tell us. And if you don’t understand what your opponent wants, it’s pretty damned hard to keep him, or her, in this case, I suppose, from getting it. And because we don’t understand them, we can’t take the initiative and force the battle on our terms: we can only make assumptions about what they want and try to prepare for it, react to what they do. But all our assumptions could be wrong. For all I know they might just start dropping nukes on the cities here and be done with it. Or what if they use a biological weapon? For the love of God, they attacked the French ships with boarding parties, just like Sato said they did to the Aurora. Who the devil would expect such a thing in this day and age? And the French paid the price for it from the reports I saw on the way down: they lost over a dozen ships just to that. And the enemy could do something as unexpected here that will throw us totally off-balance. We just don’t know. And that just bothers the hell out of me.” He dug his heel in the ground in a sign of frustration. “So we’re all just guinea pigs right now, I guess,” he sighed. “We just have to wait for them to show up at the party and take the lead.”
Steph couldn’t say that what Sparks said made her happy, but she understood his point well enough. “Well,” she prompted, “how about what you think on the record?”
He looked at her, his blue eyes bright and his mouth set in a hard line. “On the record, if those alien witches come down here looking for trouble, the 7th Cav will be damned happy to oblige them.”