Chapter 32: Battle

Overnight, a company of infantry from the Third Brigade on board the Algiers had landed and taken control of Arcturus Station, the orbital facility that served the needs of the colony below. While they'd suffered light casualties of a dozen lightly wounded, all of whom were now back on duty, twelve of the station's crew had resisted. Of the resisters, all First Families men, ten had been killed and the other two wounded. Now cleared of Arcturus personnel, the station was being transformed by the crew of the Diane Webber as a floating hospital, just in case.

The eight prisoners from Arcturus Station were a mixed bag of First Family and Latecomers. The two surviving First Family men were icily cold, demanding to be freed immediately and at any rate, not imprisoned with "the stink of the Latecomers". They loudly demanded that the rest be spaced as punishment for not resisting the boarding. The six Latecomers were happy to be out of the fighting but worried for their families, and by the way they had no objection to having the two detested First Family men housed elsewhere. There was nothing much the crew and soldiers on board Algiers could do except try to identify where the Latecomer prisoners' families were.

The Deneb Algenib representative, Warrant Officer Stan Henderson, stared at the missive they'd received from the planetary government. The reply to the demand for the Planetary Council's surrender was excruciating polite but read, basically, "Get stuffed".

"Why," he asked rhetorically, "do they always want to do things the hard way?"

Major-General Chartres looked up from the station where he was monitoring troop preparations and shrugged his shoulders. "They do seem somewhat divorced from reality, don't they?"

On board the Bataan, the First Brigade suited up, ready to land. One member of every infantry platoon would land in a tall bipedal battle suit, the rest in armoured shuttles, one heavily-armed squad to a shuttle, backed up by a mixed platoon of tanks and scout cars.

The next day broke dark and ugly.

As the primary star of Arcturus dawned over the capital of the only inhabitable planet in its system, troops began to land in parks near the city core. One platoon landed near enough to one of the Frontiersman-occupied office buildings on the south side of the occupied zone that they were immediately taken under long-range projectile rifle fire. As the alighting infantry ducked for cover and the armoured platoon began sniffing out likely best routes, the occupant of the battle suit fired a parachute-equipped sensor to determine what was ahead of them and where that fire was coming from.

As the sensor gently paraglided to earth, the turret on one tank swivelled and adjusted itself. A single energy shot went streaking for the office building and struck. A quarter of each of the two top floors of the building centred around the sniper's nest simply vanished in a spray of disintegrating brick and mortar, and the gunfire stopped.

A sergeant with the group was on the radio to command: "We have casualties!"

"Ident casualties, we have no indications from monitors," came the clipped reply from the command ship. On board the Diane Webber, tensions among the naked medics ratcheted up another notch.

"Negative personnel, I say again negative personnel. Civilian casualties. We're being told the city hospital is in the target zone and is unavailable. Please send a medical team. Six wounded, all civilian. More arriving from target zone by foot."

Lieutenant Wendy Chen didn't even hesitate. "Two medics on me! Don, we launch now!" Crew chief Petty Officer Don van Tendt and two medics raced to catch up with her.

As Wendy's shuttle undocked from the Diane Webber, she was too busy concentrating on flying the shuttle to consider for a moment how she was dressed – or rather, how she wasn't.

At the southern landing site, Wendy and her fellow medics were startled that the number of wounded had grown substantially. There had to be a good forty people there, mostly walking wounded. The medics went into triage mode, with half of the squad of infantry who had been securing the landing zone helping to take the stretcher cases onto the shuttle, and the other half unloading the panniers of medical supplies and gear. By the time a dozen cases had been stretchered on, the LZ had attracted another twenty or more walking wounded – with notification by them that other stretcher cases were on the way. Without wasting a single second, Wendy and Don lifted off, leaving two naked corpsmen to deal with the rapidly-growing crush of civilian casualties.

Back on board the Webber, they found that the other shuttle had gone down to the LZ on the north side of the target zone to set up an aid station and evacuate any wounded. As soon as one side of their shuttle's passenger bay was unloaded, panniers and empty stretchers were loaded on, and when the second side was freed of its patient load they filled it up with all the supplies it could carry – enough for a forward aid station. Four medics climbed on board, and Wendy took off with instructions to unload at the eastern landing zone, and head back to LZ South, as they had more stretcher cases to evacuate.

The rest of the morning continued like that, with civilian aid stations established at the four original landing zones. Wendy and Don handled the south and east zones, and the other shuttle's crew were kept busy by the north and west zones.

At the zones themselves, the routine quickly established itself. The South Zone was typical. As the civilians approached the zone, they were funnelled into one entrance. Those seeking assistance were told to line up "on this side" of the lane, as the Sergeant pointed to his right, and those seeking to help on his left. When Wendy landed the shuttle for the second time with two additional medics and enough supplies to set up a full aid station, he had the able-bodied race on board and offload the stretchers and panniers.

Meanwhile, the squad's medic was going through and triaging the line, sending those needing stabilization back to the frantic nude medics. Stabilized patients that needed further attention were on stretchers set up on the ground.

The sergeant kept the civilian volunteers busy. Adults were loading the stretchers of stabilized patients onto the shuttle and hefting the panniers over to the medics as the contents were required, while a pair of 12-year-olds opened up the stretchers and laid them on the ground, ready for the next patient.