“Say, Staff Sergeant Grayson,” Master Sergeant Fallon addresses me, loud enough for the rest of the table to hear. “How many colony planets and moons have the Lankies contested so far?”
“Forty-four at last count, Master Sergeant Fallon,” I reply in the same volume.
“And how many did we successfully defend, Sergeant Grayson?”
“Zero at last count, Master Sergeant Fallon.”
There are nervous chuckles all around us. At the head of the room, the SI major launches another appeal to keep the noise level down. Overhead, the general continues his little speech over the one-way circuit, unaware of the sudden unrest among the ranks.
“We will dig in, and we will hold the line until we are relieved. The Lankies have never shown any interest in the Fomalhaut system, and the Sino-Russians have other problems, so I predict we will have a nice, quiet stay on New Svalbard.”
Sergeant Fallon leans back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. Unlike most of her HD troopers, she doesn’t look shocked or dismayed. Instead, there’s a knowing sort of smile on her face, as if she just heard the punch line to a good, but familiar joke.
“Now, see,” she says in my direction, “I wouldn’t bet any money on that.”
CHAPTER 16
We waltz into town like the command section of a conquering army.
I’m in the back of one of Camp Frostbite’s armored cargo mules, eight-wheeled transport tanks shaped like giant doorstops made out of composite armor. The troop compartment is big enough for a ten-man squad in full kit. I’m the only fleet puke in the vehicle. The other seats in the troop bay are occupied by the COs of the two Homeworld Defense battalions, the major in charge of the Spaceborne Infantry garrison company, and all three of their senior sergeants. In the bucket seat next to mine, Sergeant Fallon is napping, or pretending to, with her arms folded across her chest. By orders from upstairs, we’re all wearing full combat armor minus our helmets, and we’re carrying sidearms and rifles. The general in charge of the task force is a reservist who hasn’t seen any combat since the tussle with the Lankies started, and he’s utterly afraid we’ll all be caught with our pants down if the Lankies suddenly show up in orbit. Those of us who have been fighting them for the last five years know that it won’t make a bit of a difference if we’re in armor or not when they show up, and that our little oxygen tanks will merely give us a few hours to contemplate our impending deaths. But orders are orders, so we look like a bunch of heavily armed football players spoiling for a fight with the locals.
When we roll past the first buildings of New Longyearbyen, the HD troopers turn in their seats to peer out of the small armored windows in curiosity. I follow suit, even though I’ve seen plenty of colonial architecture in the last few years. Only the major in command of the garrison company doesn’t bother craning his neck, and Sergeant Fallon is still snoozing with her head on her chest.
New Longyearbyen is like no other colony settlement I’ve ever seen. Every single building is overengineered, almost bunker-like, to withstand the harsh winter climate that locks the moon down for half the planetary year. Where the housing and facilities on a warm colony world are mostly the same standard squares of prefabricated modular housing, the structures here on New Svalbard are custom-made domes with meter-thick ferroconcrete walls. The buildings are laid out not on straight and even street grids, but in loops and irregular patterns designed by computers to minimize the effects of the hundred-klick-per-hour winds that blow even in the temperate tundra belt in the middle of the winter season.
Our driver snakes the huge armored mule along roads that are mostly turns.
When we pull up in front of the civilian admin building, and the mule comes to a gentle stop with a snort of its hydropneumatic suspension, Sergeant Fallon’s eyes pop open, and she looks around in the crew compartment with an exaggerated yawn.
“We there yet?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Welcome to the booming metropolis of New Longyearbyen, population ten K.”
We climb out of the armored troop hatch, battle armor scraping against polysteel laminate plating as seven of us in full kit squeeze out of a hatch no designer ever tried to negotiate while wearing hardshell battle rattle and carrying rifles with twenty-inch barrels and clunky attachments.