SG: Aurora #42 - Old Friends I - Part Two of Four

frobozz frobozz at eyrie.org
Mon Jul 5 16:32:48 PDT 2004


[CONTINUED FROM PART ONE, NOW WITH AM/FM STEREO!]

Day 7
Level 101

   Peterson raised his sidearm, pointing it in as close an approximation
to the medbay's door as he could manage in his current condition.
Fighting was an idiot's choice, and certainly there were other avenues
of escape from the little infirmary; but in his current state Peterson
was in no condition to use them, as nearly all of them required some
crawling, climbing and wriggling which just didn't set well with a state
of being wherein even the act of aiming his sidearm left Peterson in
intense pain. He quailed at the thought of trying to run... well,
walk... well, hobble... in this state, let alone trying to run the 500
meter triathlon of egress.
   Chambers could have run, as the only thing wrong with her was a
little bit of bruising and ablated suit armour -- plus, she had a
terminal case of the Stubborns, though that was rarely a physical
impediment. For the zillionth time in the minute that the pair had had
to set up their rude defense, Peterson wished that Chambers had run and
wondered, just for a moment, why in Hell(tm) she thought staying behind
was a Good Plan. He wasn't deluded into thinking that personal loyalty
wasn't important to Chambers; he knew for a fact that it was. He
recognized that there might be--no, must be--personal feelings
entangling the decision, making it far more complex on a human level
than run or don't run. The thing was... in this situation, the right
decision was to leave it in the hands of her commander, which Peterson
ostensibly still represented and follow his orders.
   You just couldn't take some people anywhere and expect them to
behave, Peterson sighed, as he faced the last few moments of his life.
Let it not be said that Al Peterson died alone or friendless, he mused.
   Then, all time for mulling went away very abruptly as the door to the
bay began to creep open. That wasn't how he would have done it, Peterson
was unable to keep from reflecting, even as he tried to maintain a
steady bead on that entrance. Assuming that Borealis had tell-tales as
good as Aurora's, they should know both that there were life-signs
behind this door and roughly where they were located. If their positions
were reversed -- and Peterson would have sold his right arm and several
other organs of the buyer's choice to have such be -- he would have
crashed open the doors, delivered several grenades, and tried to
generally stir up a holy stew-pot of confusion right from the get-go. It
also struck Peterson as odd that the current incursion was so cautious,
as thus far the Borealis had seemed just as Gung Ho for Guts and Glory
as the Auroreans. Sure they'd done trickery in the past to achieve their
objective, but right now any sort of scheme would be completely
superfluous to the object of taking two soft targets--
   "Shit," Peterson hissed, shaking his head to clear it of this cloud
of swirling thoughts. Chambers glanced at him in concern, then snapped
her attention back to the door. Peterson continued. "I'm too out of it
to focus right," he complained. "Can't keep my mind on aiming."
   "You won't have to worry about that for long," murmured Chambers, in
that matter-of-fact tone she had when the fit hit the shan. One wondered
how she sang with that voice, sometimes. "Just keep it up."
   Peterson opened his mouth to respond.
   "And leave the innuendo alone," she murmured back, finger tensing on
her trigger. Wisely, Peterson decided to follow some advice that he had
heard long ago: never ignore the friendly advice an armed woman who has
an alibi for friendly fire. He turned his attention instead to the door
and tried to hold it in his focus. Let it not be said that Al Peterson
died of being shot multiple times by an ally.
   The door opened about six centimeters, then stayed there. Peterson
tensed. Grenade toss? That would make sense, though the door wasn't open
far enough to pass a full-sized grenade. Micro-grenade, maybe? Oh great,
let it not be said that Al Peterson died at the hands of full-sized
munitions!
   Something came through the crack in the doorway. Peterson took aim at
the 'something' and very nearly fired on it, but held volley until he
recognized the probe: it was a small fibre-optic camera, infinitely
flexible and capable of seeing through small spaces and around corners.
That's when Peterson fired. He might be doomed, he might be  a dead man
who just didn't know it yet -- though it was clear that he fully
suspected it at the moment -- but he'd be damned if he let them gather
-any- more intelligence to make the slaughter even an iota easier. A
moment passed as the sound of rifle-fire faded. The folks what were
outside the door were probably trying to decide what to make of the
fractional image that they'd captured, and how to use it to best
eliminate those inside without taking any hits themselves. Grenade would
be the best way, sighed Peterson, who did not relish the thought. He'd
hoped to take someone down with him, maybe even the odds just a little
bit more for DeVrai...
   What came through the door was not a grenade, but a man's voice. And
it was perhaps the most unexpectedly welcome voice Peterson had ever
heard.
   "Yo! Al! Hold your damned fire!"
   Peterson's eyes widened as he recognized the speaker. He looked to
Chambers and tried to convey to her by sight alone that they were -not-
going to die just this second. He'd tried to be blase about this whole
death affair, but now that it was averted... he could admit to himself,
he'd wanted no part of it!
   "*John*?" called Peterson, finding his voice at last. "I TOLD you I'd
meet you at the freaking TOP!"

***

Day 7 Level 122

   Battlefield promotions are a funny thing, in main part because they
tend to work very differently from the civilian kind. In the day-to-day
world, promotions usually (though not always) reflected recognition of
merits earned through hard work, able skills or rampant skullduggery.
   On a battlefield, however, a promotion is generally earned by being
less competent than your immediate superior in all things save for the
signal skill of dodging bullets. While this system of collapsing command
allows military units to continue to function even after top-level
casualties are taken, it leads to a very high rate of ulcer-grooming in
the stomaches of those who suddenly find themselves the new men on top
after only so recently being quite glad that they were the men on the
bottom who didn't have to make any of these hard decisions.
   Stephen DeVraie -- new Top Dog of exactly one half of Aurora's
paramilitary forces -- wondered how long it would be before he'd be in
the market for something with a nice, piquant anti-Helicobacter pylori
kick to it. Probably not too long, reflected DeVrai, because while he'd
been a long-time back-seat commander all from the safety of the
after-action lounge room, he'd never actually had the yen to take the
reins himself. Still, chain of command was paramount in an organization
like this, even if Peterson had had to fudge it a little to make it work
with what had once been mostly a horizontal organization. One of
DeVraie's first command decisions had been to make sure the CoC
stretched down even further than  it had after Peterson's
reorganization. His assignment of ranking (based mostly on battlefield
experience, then service experience in the case of a tie) had ruffled a
few feathers, but that's what a commander was expected to do: ruffle a
lot of feathers and make sure that the ladies and gents underneath the
plumage got the job done regardless. Secretly this still stuck in
DeVraie's craw, as he'd always loved being part of the camaraderie of
the unit - which just naturally required being part of the crowd which
bashed the higher-ups (again, in the comfort and privacy of the
after-action lounge) - and now he was serving as a target for the same.
Life just weren't fair sometimes. DeVrai hoped to get himself demoted as
soon as this action was over, hopefully over a mug of beer and a little
'conduct unbecoming an officer'. He hadn't quite made up his mind which
kind of conduct would be the most fun.
   The second command decision DeVrai had made was to change his
squadron's tactical doctrine. DeVraie had had his reservations about the
'Old Man's' tactics, but second-guessing your commander was one of the
worst sins you could commit on the battlefield. DeVrai had occasionally
discussed what he'd do were -he- in charge of the show, but never in his
wildest nightmares had he believed he'd actually have the power to put
his ideas to the test.
   DeVraie could understand Peterson's paranoia about the Beanstalk's
elevators; after all, they were a mechanical device that had been firmly
established as an enemy asset, and as such could be considered little
vertically moving tombs waiting to happen. Events had certainly proven
that Peterson's paranoia had been -right-, to an extent, as well.
   But...
   But.
   But DeVraie felt that the 'Old Man's' alternative to taking the
elevator, while not nearly as deadly, was not really much better. Truth
be told, he thought perhaps Peterson was simply enamoured of the idea of
climbing up the Beanstalk's shafts because he'd once done it the other
direction. As such, he had repeatedly resisted several suggestions that
the troops climb up another, historically older elevating device that
had been in use for as long as people had had very high places to go and
no wings by which to get there. Sure, Peterson had reasons for avoiding
the stairs -- most of them boiling down to a fear of them becoming a
good choke-point for an ambush -- but everything that the troops used to
ascend was going to pose some threat to life and limb. What the shafts
had in obscurity and confusing multiplicity was counterbalanced by their
slowness and the fact that the enemy had proved they already knew the
troops were using them. The opposition had even managed to set up at
least one partially-successful ambush not too long after the cadre had
emerged onto a level to forage.
   Thus, DeVraie had decided that while the enemy watched the shafts,
his troops would be taking the stairs. Beanstalk stairwells, thanks to
whatever design philosophy the fair Aphra Behn had been following when
she created the massive edifice, were blessed by wide and structurally
sound access staircases all through the sky-hook's structure. There were
also at least six stairwells in this section of the 'stalk, so the odds
of being ambushed here were low... especially if the enemy was spreading
its troops out looking for them in the shafts.
   The odds of the stairwells being booby-trapped, however, were much
higher. Traps were cheap; could wait nigh forever; and were often hard
to detect until they decided to make themselves known. Which was why
DeVraie's troops were climbing in staggered hops of three groups, each
moving a level behind the other but remaining within easy voice contact.
The order of the groups was shifted constantly so the lucky ducks who
got the front, 'brush-clearing', spot traded off with more distant
groups regularly enough to avoid nervous breakdown. DeVraie had made
sure everyone got themselves a crash-course in room-sweeping, safe
door-opening and as much trap-finding as the group collectively knew,
which wasn't nearly as much as he would have liked. It was stressful to
have to move in so careful and risky a fashion, but on the flip side it
was no more stressful than hanging over an open shaft for hours at a
time while hoping that your suit's arm servos weren't past their
warranty period.
   But all incredibly stressful things eventually come to an end, and so
it was time to call it a day. And what a day it had been: ascending
twenty-one levels was absolutely nothing to sneeze at considering their
sheer size and the need to test almost every step before taking another.
DeVrai also half-heartedly cheered himself by borrowing against the
future: he knew that the time taken for each ascent would decrease as
his troops became more experienced at the nasty business of not getting
blown to shreds by boobie-traps.
   Finally putting deed to thought, DeVrai passed word forward that they
were calling a halt at the next access door. In this, DeVraie was again
not like Peterson: while he would take the same rotation to the front
that the rest of his troops would, he just didn't believe in -always-
leading from the front. Doing so smacked of just asking for an ambush to
provide another brevet promotion.
   And perhaps not being at the front as they called halt was a good
thing, DeVrai reflected. They'd practiced the
door-opening/ambush-sweeping routine plenty down below, and his not
being there to baby-sit would show the troops that he had a little bit
of confidence in their abilities.
   Along with the rest of his squad and the squad behind them, DeVraie
came to a halt and moved to a ready stance, arms at the ready as
front-squad prepared to enact the door-opening ritual. If there was an
ambush, there -should- be plenty of space in which to react without
cutting the front squadron off from support as they followed their
standing order to 'advance to the rear', where the dubious safety of
their comrades' combined arms awaited. The odds that the orders would be
needed were, in DeVraie's estimation, miniscule; but they were there,
just to be sure.
   An intolerable span passed before the 'all clear' came back from the
front. The troops needed no urging; a nice 'soft' floor and delicious,
'well-cooked' rations awaited them all. Relatively speaking, it was
paradise.
   You took your joy where you could get it, reflected DeVrai, as they
passed into their haven for the night.

***

[CONTINUED IN PART THREE, NAMED GUS!]

---
-Chris
frobozz at eyrie.org
http://www.eyrie.org/~frobozz

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