Chapter 21: Loathness to Depart

Should we be taking leave
As long a term as yet we have to live,
The loathness to depart would grow. Adieu!
- Posthumus, Cymbeline, Act I, Scene II

Just as William Whitefeather was less than impressed by the quality of the troops that the Commandant of the Marines had so far managed to scrape together to defend this outpost of the Confederacy, so T’kliktguul and T’klikrooz were less than impressed with the decidedly Spartan orbital harbour facilities available to them at this outpost of the Confederacy.

At the same moment that Lieutenant William Whitefeather was entertaining his fellow officers with a demonstration of the explosive power of an MB-15 concussion grenade, T’klikrooz was beginning to drink deeply of propellant from the overworked sublight tanker. T’kliktguul was impatiently waiting his turn, while Captain Karl Becker aboard CSS Dance of Spirits impatiently paced his bridge. He’d pulled rank and ordered his own Aurora-class transport fuelled first. The tanker would have to pick up more fuel from the system’s gas giant twice more before finishing its job of succouring the two T’klikt Trading Clan freighters.

“Drink deeply, old friend,” T’kliktguul called to his old friend.

“I shall drink deeply indeed, old friend,” the other freighter replied. “I just wish this was a tad intoxicating, as in the ‘wine’ that everyone talks about.”

“Would that be ‘WINE Is Not an Emulator’ program that I’ve read about?”

“That is an excellent witticism, friend T’kliktguul.”

In his previous life, Captain Ramjeet Singh had been a Linux programmer/analyst. He found himself chuckling as he overheard the communications between the ancient Tuull ships. Captain Ratimir Doroshenko, gnawing his fingernails as he waited for his own vessel’s turn at the pumps, rolled his eyes.

Captain Becker was less charitable. “Cut the chatter on this line,” came the stern order from CSS Dance of Spirits.

“Baa,” acknowledged T’kliktguul, followed a beat later by a second “baa” from T’klikrooz.

“I never thought I’d say this, but those two ships are borderline insubordinate. Not the crews, the bloody ships,” Becker fumed aloud to himself as his bridge crew desperately tried to maintain straight faces. “How long do I have to have those bleating albatrosses hung around my neck? What gods have I upset? To whom do I apologize?” He stared at the little tanker that was feeding T’klikrooz. “The sooner we get back to Earth for reassignment the better.”

The squad that Sergeant Hopson had led onto the surface had long since headed back into the relative comfort of the dome. Whitefeather noted uneasily that there seemed to be no guards standing picquet duty on the perimeter of their new home. It didn’t strike him as a good idea: such duty helped get your men used to the terrain they might be fighting in, even if you expected the enemy to be months away from battle. Besides, concubines and dependants might wander beyond the dome and get into trouble. Yet another example of the ragtime air that surrounded this so-called “brigade”.

“Sir?” Lieutenant Janke subvocalized to Colonel Palmer. “I’d just like to know, am I still your second-in-command?”

“Of course,” Palmer’s voice whispered back through the communications implant. “I can’t trust any of the new lieutenants. They don’t know me like you do, and I don’t know them like I know you. Besides, you’re the one with the imagination. That Whitefeather fellow might seem to be the logical candidate for my second, he appears to know his stuff, but he suffers from ossified thinking, as all soldiers do. Look at his point about the trench – right out of a war well over a century in the past. Can’t even think in terms of the second of Earth’s great conflicts, let alone this war. No, he’s strictly rear echelon now. Sad really. It’ll take too long to have him unlearn everything he’s been taught.”

Confident in his utterly mistaken assessment, Palmer confirmed to himself that Lieutenant Whitefeather would remain in command of his one-company strong reserve “regiment”. Whitefeather’s supposed lack of imagination would do the least damage in that position should the Swarm have the nerve to hit them.

Lieutenant Kirk Boland, on the other hand, held no such illusions about William Whitefeather. The exhibition with the grenade had thoroughly impressed him with the need to adjust the trenches. It would be a pain, but at least they’d found out with test dummies rather than live Marines.

He allowed his commanding officer’s pet pull ahead a few paces to give him and Whitefeather some privacy. “Thanks, Bill,” he whispered to the Iroquois warrior. “You’re right – I’ve never built anything military before, just offices and homes. It’s a different mindset, isn’t it?”

Whitefeather nodded. “Don’t let it worry you. You’re experienced at construction, and as I said that trench was great – if you were pouring the foundation of a factory. Just think of it as a ‘change order’. You’re used to those?”

Change orders were common in construction, despite the best efforts of architects and contractors to avoid them like the plague. Change orders tended to add to the scope of work, and to the cost, and to the client’s dissatisfaction with the outcome of the project. It meant that either something unanticipated had turned up, or the client had changed their mind about something. Yes, Boland was all too familiar with change orders.

And now, Boland realized, this was a massive and very necessary change order. Mentally he began assigning the men and machines of his company to get the job done as expeditiously as possible.

Henry Cho and Stuart Lacey themselves were dimly realizing in their subconscious minds that there was a problem in the Brigade’s command structure. By rights, it should be William Whitefeather who was the colonel, and not Robert Palmer, but there was no way that this switch could occur without outside intervention – and there was no way for any outside intervention to occur. Both lieutenants were feeling a great deal of unease, without being entirely certain of the cause.

“And I disagree!” Colonel Palmer was angrily saying.

The Marine officers were sitting around the Officers’ Club, a rather plain compartment located just off Main Street, the main tunnel between the primary dome and its as-yet-unfinished twin. Most of the men were downing colas, but Whitefeather was drinking a double-double – a coffee with two servings of creme and sugar – and Palmer’s highball glass contained lime and tonic water. The men drinking colas were trying to ignore the rather loud disagreement.

“I believe it’s prudent planning,” Whitefeather patiently responded. “We expect the Sa’arm, and need to be able to evacuate the noncombatants, and in a hurry. I strongly recommend that we keep all three of those Aurora class transports, at least until replacements arrive.”

“We also need troops. Are you being a white feather? A coward?”

Whitefeather flushed with fury but controlled himself manfully. He’d been bullied about his name all his life; one of the reasons he’d gone into karate at 8 years of age and then into Army Cadets at 13 years of age had been to disprove the doubters. From there his furious need to continually disprove the doubters led him to the Royal Military Academy in Kingston, Ontario. It was also probably part of what drove him so relentlessly to have the best record, the best platoon, the best company, the best battalion. It was this need to prove himself that forced him to be hyper-competitive in all matters martial.

It had led to a Victoria Cross dipped in the blood of men and women of both attackers and defenders. Whitefeather’s side still bore the scar of that battle, a scar that when he’d gotten his enhancements, he’d deliberately retained to remind himself to be miserly with his men’s lives.

“I’m being a realist. At present the Brigade consists of five companies, none of them fully trained and all of them green as grass. I wouldn’t trust them to defend anything right now. Given weeks or months of training they might be able to take on the Swarm, but not right now. And we’re so far out in front that we can expect the Sa’arm to show up literally at any moment. In the event the Swarm arrive before we can finish our preparations, the colony transports can hide around the gas giant’s moons until the issue is decided, and then either get the hell out of Dodge or return to Atalanta. Otherwise, we risk the entire colony being reduced to Swarm Chow without slowing the Sa’arm down by one single second.” Whitefeather paused just long enough to take a breath. “If we were farther back from the pointiest end of the spear, I’d be saying something else, but right now this is very much a temporary home that we should be expecting to lose within two years, not a permanent colony.”

Palmer’s face remained diffused a puce colour, but he managed to calm himself down. “It does make sense. I don’t have to like it, but it does.”

“When the next Aurora arrives, one of them can be dispatched immediately back for another load, but we need to have three in orbit, ready to go.”

Palmer nodded. “I’ll give the order.”

“Forgive me, Sir,” Whitefeather advised him, “but you can’t. Those ships are Fleet Auxiliary, not property of the colony. We’ll have to request Fleet Auxiliary HQ give those orders.”

“And how do you propose I communicate with them?”

Whitefeather shrugged. “Messenger drone?”

Palmer winced. As both governor and brigade commander, he should have thought of that. “How long will it take a messenger drone from here to Earthat and back?”

The AI spoke up at that point. “Colonel Robert Palmer, it will take two weeks, three days, seven hours and twenty-three minutes total, not including turnaround time at Earthat.” The messenger drones being smaller and far lighter than any manned ship the Confederacy could manufacture, they could travel at three times the speed available to any Aurora-class craft.

“And they’re supposed to leave as soon as they’re refuelled,” Whitefeather mused. “How soon to top up their tanks?”

Lieutenant Boland smiled. “Just over four weeks. It’ll take at least two more trips between the gas giant Iasus and here, and those engines on the tanker are low thrust, making it pretty poky, especially on the trip back with a full load. We were only able to refuel Dance of Spirits first because we had built up a reserve. The new tanker is still being built by the replicators, it’ll be larger and more powerful, but until it’s finished, we have to do with the one.”