John Dalmas - Soldiers

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Soldiers

John Dalmas

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real

people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31987-6

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, May 2001

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

This novel is dedicated to gamers,

and particularly to Rod Martin,

Cory Rueb and Bill Cooper.

And to an extraordinary warrior

Bill Ashby

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to novelists David Brin

and Jim Glass for their critiques

of an early draft of this novel.

To the Spokane Word Weavers

for reading critical chapters

in preliminary form.

And to Gail, who as usual,

read and commented on the

very first, very rough draft.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THIS

EPIC ADVENTURE

“Too many military SF novels ignore the essential unevenness and tragedy of war. John Dalmas

knows better. His Soldiers have both courage and heart.” —David Brin

“Rich, inventive world-building and a good solid story from an outstanding writer.”

—C. J. Cherryh

“Slam bang action . . . with a heart and soul.”

—William C. Dietz

BAEN BOOKS by John Dalmas

Soldiers

The Regiment

The White Regiment

The Regiment’s War

The Three Cornered War

The Lion of Farside

The Bavarian Gate

The Lizard War

BAEN BOOKS by JOHN DALMAS

Soldiers

The Regiment

The White Regiment

The Regiment’s War

The Three Cornered War

The Lion of Farside

The Bavarian Gate

The Lizard War

Chapter 1

The Wyzhñyñy

Grand Admiral Quanshûk shu-Gorlak waited. “Thirty-nine,” the ship counted. “Thirty-eight, thirty-seven . . .”

After eleven years in hyperspace, Quanshûk asked himself, how can these final seconds seem so long? Eleven

years of wondering what he’d find. Probably, hopefully, nothing basically unfamiliar.

Most of his people had spent the entire eleven years in a sleep so profound that aging was suspended; even

he’d spent alternate months in a stasis chamber. Eleven years of hyperspace, mostly between spiral arms. On the

screen’s display of the F-space potentiality, there’d been whole months without the matric distortion of a single

star. Only today had they seen two on a watch, both clearly unsuitable. And now a third. Judging by its mass not

a promising third, but it was time to emerge, examine the starscape.

“ . . . twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-two . . .”

He glanced around at the bridge watch, all of them tense. Not so much as an ear flicked. But Quanshûk was

not deceived. Those long brain cases harbored thoughts. Anticipation. Apprehension.

“ . . . thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten . . .”

The word “ten” focused him. His eyes gripped the matric distortion caused by the massive stellar object, with

a lesser distortion showing “nearby.” Unexpectedly he too was gripped by apprehension. Intense apprehension.

His bowel wanted to void right there on the bridge.

“ . . . five, four, three, two, one . . .”

Stars exploded onto the screen, glorious, a panoply of brilliant points almost stunning in their collective

beauty. For a moment Quanshûk’s emotions soared, then responsibility took command. Responsibility for 26

million people. What would they find in this distant place, or what would find them? Every earlier swarm, over

the centuries, had expanded the empire’s existing boundaries into space already probed by scouts. But this—was

territory totally unknown.

The brightest star was brilliant blazing red, the primary of this system. Ten degrees to its left was the next

brightest, a planet orbiting it.

Reaching, Quanshûk pressed a key, and on the screen, reality was replaced with a system mechanics

simulation, and a data menu. Already navcomp was identifying and computing provisonal orbits for the system’s

planets, along with their masses, spectra, solar constants . . . Perhaps one of them would prove habitable despite

the red giant primary.

Shipsmind would inform him promptly of any technically produced electronics.

The living gas bag was both ancient and young, had identity without a label, and thought without words. For

its kind, language had long since become not only needless, but pointless. It floated in the uppermost atmosphere

of a Jovian giant, enjoying the radiation—the sunshine—on its huge balloon-like body. Meanwhile it

composed/produced what, for lack of a more suitable label, might be termed music. An activity carried out

jointly with its play companion, fifteen degrees of arc—10,000 miles—distant on the same latitude.

A sudden awareness interrupted their activity—interrupted the activities of all the gas bags around the planet.

Something else sentient—some sapient presence—had manifested within their perception. An armada was not

part of their experience, but the concept intuited within the group mind, and expanded to comprehend the beings

operating the ships.

Together, the thousands of great globules contemplated this new phenomenon, among other things perceiving

its reason for coming there, its purpose and intentions.

They made a decision.

What happened next intensified the newcomers’ earlier apprehension. For brief minutes they’d been in a

planetary system which their navcomp made perfect sense of. A locatable system in real space, F-space. Even

now, shipsmind could tell Quanshûk where that system was, relative to their home sector. Even though they were

thousands of parsecs from it—11.26 hyperspace years, rounding off.

Then for a moment the navcomp had blacked out so to speak, as the Wyzhñyñy had. They had completely lost

orientation—and Quanshûk’s armada was suddenly at a different location. A location without any recognizable

reference point.

The ship insisted that the change had occurred in zero elapsed time, and that they had not left F-space. They’d

simply—translocated. Instantaneously. Meanwhile Quanshûk and most of the bridge watch stood frozen,

transfixed. Only one had lost consciousness, and toppled to the deck.

For a full half minute—a half minute with millions of star reads and trillions of computations—the navcomp

labored to determine their new location. Without success. What it was able to do was begin creating a new star

chart, centered on current ship position. Which was effectively stationary, relative to galactic coordinates.

Clearly they were not in the outermost fringe of a spiral arm, as they had been moments earlier. They were well

within whatever galaxy this was.

Acknowledging that was the first step in recovery. Quanshûk’s muscles twitched. Tremors flowed across his

hide. His hair bristled from nape to withers to tail. Bypassing the ship’s captain, who still stood cataleptic,

Quanshûk called the flagship’s medical center and ordered the fallen crewman tended to. Then he ordered the

ship to generate hyperspace and proceed to the vicinity of the nearest promising star.

To give that order had taken a major effort of will, but he was grand admiral, with all the responsibilities

thereof. He tried not to wonder what might happen next, or what it might mean to this migration, this

outswarming he led.

Chapter 2

Pirate Base

The planet had no official name; its system hadn’t yet been visited by a Survey ship. Unofficially it was called

“Tagus”—short for Tagus Cove—by the only humans who knew it existed. Actually, the small part of the planet

they were interested in didn’t look at all like the historical Tagus Cove, which lay on the west shore of Terra’s

Isla Isabela, in the Galapagos Archipelago. But both were, or had been, pirate hangouts.

Also like the Terran Tagus Cove, this deep-space location was equatorial and volcanic, though the vulcanism

had long been dormant. But the base itself was twelve miles from the planetary ocean, and had no shortage of

drinking water. Instead of scrub, it bore magnificent rainforest, with towering trees, lush green foliage, and

colorful darting birds—red, yellow, blue—even more vivid than the flowers.

And numerous technological improvements: a system of tunnels and chambers cut deep behind the craggy

wall of a basaltic plateau. These tunnels accessed, among other things, comfortable dormitories and mess halls

for raiders, and both family-style and bachelor lodgings for base keepers. Caverns sheltered and concealed the

fighting craft and “bag ships,” whose long absences provided the reason and wherewithal for the base. Entrances

were inconspicuous, opening into a narrow gorge eroded into one flank of the plateau. The excavation rubble was

visible from overhead, of course, but resembled natural rockfall.

Everything at the base was designed to elude detection from both space and atmospheric reconnaissance.

Even the geogravitic power converter, that provided the base’s energy, was too deep to be detected. As was the

emergence wave detector. Hyperspace emergence waves pass through rock as freely as neutrinos.

Not everything could be concealed, of course, but what couldn’t was designed to mislead. The electronics

scanners had been installed in the roofs of what looked like a fishing resort, on the coast twenty miles from base.

There, except for the scanners, everything was exposed: lush lawns and gardens, tennis courts, comfortable

cottages and cabañas, dining hall, large pool, boat houses . . . There were almost always off-duty base personnel

and crewmen there, who came on anti-grav scooters to enjoy their free time.

An innocent vacation spot with little to hide, a secluded, low-gravity stop for the space-touring wealthy.

Though it was a long way to go for a vacation.

All in all, Tagus seemed a harmless place, without so much as a pod beacon in the system’s fringe.

Henry Morgan was Tagus’s founder and (often in absentia) ruler. He’d borrowed his name from a 17th

century Welsh buccaneer, and it was the only name he admitted to. Like the original, this latter-day Henry

Morgan was Welsh, born in Swansea, but he’d grown up in the North American city of Omaha. Remarkably, his

birth name was Edward Teach, a name he shared with an 18th century pirate, but the earlier Teach was more

barbaric than his namesake cared for. In fact, this latter-day Morgan and his personnel were generally civilized,

even amiable, with a leaning toward nonconformity and adventure. Morgan thought of his crew and himself as

gentlemen adventurers—daring, risk-taking, colorful. An attitude shared vicariously by many “good

Commonwealth citizens.” On Terra, from time to time, pirate dramas were popular, in the form of books, videos,

and cinemas.

Henry Morgan was eating lunch in his living quarters when his yeoman knocked, audibly agitated.

“Commodore,” he said, “come quick!”

Morgan stopped his fork in mid course. “What stung your ass, Jerzy?” he called back.

“Sir, it’s emergence waves, sir! All over hell, sir!”

Frowning, Morgan lay down his fork, with its morsel of sea turtle fried in nut oil, got to his feet and left,

hurrying down the corridor. In his forties and moderately overweight, he still moved well. The wall screen in his

office showed a three-dimensional coordinate model of the local solar system and environs. And thousands of

hyperspace emergence loci! A footer said 16,297.

Sixteen thousand spacecraft! And Jerzy’s “all over hell” summarized the situation nicely: the loci formed a

diffuse lenticular swarm in the Tagus System’s far-side fringe. Some were out—hell!—close to 5 billion miles,

according to the grid. Others were less than 2 billion. Allowing for distance, the size of each locus indicated the

mass of the emergent ship, and virtually all were larger than anything his two small squadrons of corsairs had.

Larger than anything the Commonwealth admiralty had, excepting a handful of prototypes.

For just a moment Morgan stared, then sat down on his command seat and pecked at his key pad. An overlay,

a chart, popped onto the screen, its numbers telling him more than he cared to know. Centuries of galactic radio

monitoring had turned up nothing remotely convincing—threatening or otherwise—in the way of alien radio

traffic. But in his youth, Morgan had read disreputable novels in which the Commonwealth was invaded by

aliens. So the concept of alien invasion was familiar to him, and it seemed the only possible explanation of what

he was looking at. Sixteen thousand alien ships! While the Commonwealth had half a dozen squadrons—frigates

and (mostly) corvettes—for piracy suppression. That was the sum of its space defenses.

Sixteen thousand! And unless their hyperspace navigation was incredibly poor, they’d come a very long way;

otherwise they wouldn’t be so dispersed. After—what? Years? After years in hyperspace, it seemed likely they’d

explore a bit before moving on. Look over the neighborhood, establish references.

Morgan frowned. “It’s going to take them weeks to re-form formations,” he said thoughtfully. “Days even to

form up an assault group, if they’re interested.” He turned grinning to his yeoman. “Tell me, Jerzy, if you were

me, what would you do about this?”

The young man blinked. “Why, sir,” he said, “I’d order all hands to prepare for evacuation. In case the

intruders move insystem.”

Morgan laughed. “Sounds like a winner. Let’s do it.”

Preparing ships would take a day or so. The onworld squadron parked in the hangar caverns had recently

returned from a long sweep. The loot was still being transferred to the bag ships, and Morgan was short on AG

cargo handlers. And till now there’d been no hurry.

The only data he had on intruder ship positions was when the instantaneous hyperspace emergence waves

were received. The emergence loci were an unchanging record of something that had already happened. They

told him nothing of subsequent ship movements. Equally important, Morgan was unfamiliar with either the

intruders’ intentions or procedures, and his working assumptions were incorrect. Nor, of course, could his

sensors see into warpspace, to detect ship movements there.

He left his office and strode back to his apartment. He was someone who didn’t hesitate when something was

necessary, however unpleasant, and he was about to throw away a secure base he’d developed over a dozen

years. Entering his younger brother’s room, he stepped into a fragrance much like Terran night jasmine. An

orderly on an AG scooter had collected them from the forest roof; she collected some fragrant species or other

every morning. It was more than a duty. It was an expression of fondness for Robert Teach. Robert was a pudgy,

disarmingly sunny man, a thirty-one-year-old child liked by everyone. Beginning with his older brother, who’d

rescued him after their mother suicided.

Just now, Robert was sitting at his computer terminal, playing with the ephemeris for Epsilon Indi. He could

compute in his head—if compute was the word—the moment-to-moment positions of the planets of every

inhabited system in the Commonwealth, for any moment you’d care to give him. What he could not do was read

above the primary level, or write at all beyond a carefully lettered “signature.” He even had trouble buttoning his

shirt. Med-tech Connie Phamonyong did that for him. Robert didn’t like Press Close or pullovers. He liked

buttons. They were nicer.

“Hi, Robert,” Morgan greeted. Robert didn’t reply. The words hadn’t registered; he was utterly engrossed.

Connie came out of the kitchenette and gave her commodore a hug and kiss. A fond, familiar kiss. They’d been

together for fifteen years.

Morgan nodded toward Robert. “I need his help,” he told her. “I need to contact the prime minister and the

Admiralty.”

Her eyes widened, but she asked no question, simply nodded. Turning, she spoke to Robert, the words a

command hypnotically programed years earlier. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t even blink, simply turned his chair, got

up, stepped to a nearby couch (it once had graced a yacht owner’s saloon) and lay down. Connie pulled the

computer chair over to it and sat, then looked questioningly at Morgan.

“Just the two for now,” he said, “the PM and the Admiralty.”

She turned to Robert, and spoke with a calm she did not feel, a standard prolog to whatever the message

would be. Then she looked again at Morgan, and briefly they waited.

On Terra, in the palace penthouse at Kunming, a young man not basically unlike Robert Teach sat at a

keyboard, playing a flowing improvisation based on a Chopin nocturne. Abruptly he stopped, and turned to his

attendant. “It is something for Mr. Peixoto,” he said. Then getting to his feet, he stepped to a nearby lounge and

lay down. The attendant clicked a switch on his belt and sat down beside the young savant.

At the same moment, half a mile away, a tiny aging woman at a computer screen broke off her inspection of a

commercial freight schedules at the Kinshasa terminal; she could have recited it verbatim, it and numerous

others. Turning, she spoke to her attendant, not a frequent event. When a communication triggered a trance, her

speech was quite clear, not at all like her usual lisping voice that resembled a three-year-old’s. Her attendant

helped her to her couch; the old woman couldn’t walk unassisted. She’d never been able to.

When the two communicators on Terra had responded, Robert Teach spoke again. “They are ready,” he said.

Then his elder brother began to dictate, identifying himself by both his legal name and pseudonym, Robert

passing them on precisely, mentally. Instantaneously. Without a qualm, Morgan gave his galactic coordinates,

then described what his emergence wave detector had shown. Those same emergence waves had reached Terra at

the same instant, of course, but at that distance—hundreds of parsecs—they’d been far too slight to register.

It would be an historic event: the first planetary capture by the Seventh Wyzhñyñy Swarm. The flagship’s

bridge was bright with officers of the exalted genders, their fur blue, except for the ridge of cardinal that began at

the withers, and in the master gender culminated in a cranial crest. Amongst the tan or reddish-brown of the crew

and subordinate officers, they were vividly dominant.

Their flagship was equipped with the best sensory system the empire could provide. Within minutes, the

grand admiral knew the location and approximate orbits of all the system’s planets, and their first-order

environmental parameters—mass, solar constant, magnetic field, surface temperature, approximate atmospheric

composition . . . Also the presence of technical electronics—that had been recorded almost at once—and the

curious absence of any apparent pod beacon.

With those data established, Grand Admiral Quanshûk shu-Gorlak had ordered the fleet of one preselected

tribe—transports, cargo ships, armed escorts—to head insystem. While inbound, all colonists were to be revived;

all but the matrons were soldiers. The bombardment ships and ground-assault craft would emerge from

warpspace close to the inhabited planet, move in, and wipe out all military installations and population

concentrations. That accomplished, ground forces would seek and destroy all remaining native sophonts. With

mop-up under way, they would commence base construction.

Nothing was said about prisoners. The only prisoners the Wyzhñyñy ever took were for interrogation, and

only as ordered by their high command. Without such an order, all alien sophonts would be killed. Of course.

The tribal fleet, or most of it, emerged from warpspace and approached quickly in gravdrive. Its scouts

quickly found the sole source of technical electronics—the “resort.” Eight miles out, Support Force Commander

Kraloqt stood on the bridge of his flagship, frowning. Was this all? The place didn’t appear dangerous. He

ordered a single pulse fired, adequate to obliterate the central building, hopefully drawing fire from any defense

forces.

It did the first but not the second.

Perhaps the defenders were in subsurface installations. Kraloqt ordered a spray burst, each pulse more

powerful than the single first shot. The resort site exploded, lofting a large cloud of smoke and dust, leaving a

twenty-acre crater field.

He then ordered in an elite infantry battalion, to scout the surrounding forest and flush out the enemy. The

first assault lander had barely put down when a small spacecraft emerged unexpectedly at the surface, twenty

miles east-northeast of the landing zone, accelerating outbound as strongly as its crew could tolerate. Another

quickly followed, then a third, a fourth. By that time the first had generated warpspace on the run, and was

essentially out of harm’s way. The others followed suit.

Kraloqt’s battlecomp had peripheral attention better than any living organism’s; it was never distracted. In the

same moment that its alarm system squalled, his flagship fired a series of pulses at the location from which the

alien craft had appeared. Kraloqt ordered a bombardment ship into action.

To hunt fleeing craft in warpspace was impractical, and at any rate not Kraloqt’s responsibility. His job was to

destroy the planet’s surface defenses and prepare it for occupation. He radioed a report to the grand admiral (it

would take a dozen hours to reach him), then ordered another elite battalion to the site of the alien launch. In less

than a minute, the battalion’s armored assault landers were on their way, with gunships flying cover.

When the resort’s electronics reported bogies entering F-space only 90,000 miles out, the surprised Morgan

had ordered all base personnel to board their assigned ships for evacuation. They were to be fully secured for

flight within ten minutes, and depart on his command. His own yacht would leave after the others were clear.

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SoldiersJohnDalmasThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2001byJohnDalmasAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBooksOriginalBaenPublishingEnte...

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