“Sir, where are we going to stick two battalions and a whole regiment down there? Camp Frostbite doesn’t hold much more than two or three companies.”
“We’re not,” Captain Michaelson replies. “We’re splitting up our HD friends among all the terraforming bases. One platoon per station. Their HQ platoon stays with our guys at Frostbite. The SI regiment goes on rotation—one company dirtside, the other three up here on the Midway with the drop ships, as a mobile reaction force. I’m keeping the recon platoon and all three of you Spaceborne Rescue guys, too. The combat controllers will be embedded with HD, one of you per battalion. You’ll be the fleet liaison, give the big guns something to shoot at if the shit hits the fan. Keep an eye on our HD friends while you’re down there, too.”
As the captain goes into details, I consider this new development, and can’t help but feel a bit of grudging respect for the genius at Fleet Command who decided where to put those two shaky battalions without having to tie up three thousand bunks in military prison. It’s too bad the only truly clever people upstairs use their smarts to screw over their own instead of coming up with better ways to kill Lankies.
According to my commanding officer, part of the reason for embedding me with the HD troops is to keep a dependable set of fleet eyes in their ranks, so I feel more than a little seditious when I seek out Sergeant Fallon right after our briefing to fill her in on the fleet’s plans for her battalion.
“That’s pretty devious,” she says when I have sketched the big picture for her. “Splitting us into platoon-sized chunks, so we can’t get too many rifles to bear all at once. Without our drop ships, we’re stuck wherever they’re putting us.”
“And they can come down on uppity units with most of a regiment from orbit, since they have all the airmobile gear.”
“But what’s to keep our grunts from just wandering off and meeting up to re-form companies anyway?”
I shake my head. “This is New Svalbard, Sarge. Ever done any cold-weather training back on Earth?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica.”
“Well, picture Antarctica in the really shitty time of the year. Outside of the tundra belt around the equator, that would be called a heat wave on New Svalbard. Most of the moon is a sheet of ice, ten kilometers thick at the poles. We have one big town down there, and sixty-four terraformers. They’re all along the equator, like a girdle. We got this strip of tundra worked out, but you’re still talking three-hundred-kilometer winds in the cold season. Even the heaters in your armor won’t keep you alive long enough to walk from one atmo exchanger to the next. You want to stay real close to that fusion plant at the terraformer.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” Sergeant Fallon says, and exchanges glances with the other HD troopers sitting around the table. “That’s one hell of a good way to keep us all holed up and in a predictable spot.”
“We’ll figure something out,” one of the troopers says with conviction. All around the table, HD grunts nod in agreement.
“Of course we will,” Sergeant Fallon says. “That’s what we do. Improvise, adapt, overcome. I’ll be damned if I let myself get outfoxed by some fleet pukes.”
She gives me a curt nod, and raps the surface of the makeshift table with the knuckles of both fists.
“Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Andrew. I owe you one.”
“Not at all, Sarge,” I say. “Just starting to pay back everything I owe you. Plus five years of interest.”
I head up to Captain Michaelson’s office nook. He’s looking at a tactical map of New Svalbard when I knock on the frame of the open hatch, and he waves me in without turning off his screen.
“You been down there before, Grayson?”
“Yes, sir. Bunch of times, for water stops. Never had to set foot outside Camp Frostbite, though.”
“I haven’t been down there in three years, since I was a second lieutenant,” he says. “I’m sure it hasn’t turned into a tropical paradise since then.”
“Have you decided where to embed me, sir?”
“No, I haven’t. Why, you got a preference?”
“I know someone in the 330th, sir.”
He looks at me with an unreadable expression for a moment, and I’m just about convinced he’ll assign me to the 309th instead, when he shrugs and returns his attention to the screen of his data terminal.
“Sure, go with the 330th. Might as well make our stay as pleasant as we can. Go check in with their CO, and get your stuff ready for the ferry drop. We’ll be in orbit in six hours, give or take.”