Knox's Irregulars Page 2

  He called up a blinking cursor on the holo, motioning with it toward the opposite side of the valley. "Our intel assets report a heavy troop build-up among the Abkhenazi all along the border. Our best estimate places at least two divisions facing us across the valley. That's about thirty thousand of them to the twelve hundred we've got in our reinforced battalion." Pressing thin lips together, he let that sink in.

  "Events in Abkhenazia are moving quickly. As you know, the Purists have been busy killing off any dissent since they took power eighteen months ago. Now that the Hegemony no longer protects us, Abkhenazia has called upon New Geneva to lay down its weapons in forty-eight hours. Negotiating with them is proving difficult, as they've expelled our diplomats.

  "You've probably noticed a lot of extra suborbital flights the past two days. They're deporting any foreigners and Christians they didn't already kill when they liquidated the ghetto in Samarkand. Our government has provided several of the suborbitals — the Abkhenazis threatened to walk the civilians through the mountains if we didn't. The pilots are under a strict flight path that keeps them away from anything sensitive.

  "I've ordered the dronekeepers to double up their surveillance schedule. In addition, Division HQ has been kind enough to attach a company from the Seventh Dragoons to us. Their armored scouts will be pulling round-the-clock Recon and Surveillance patrols."

  The scout company commander gave an acknowledging nod. The Major continued. "This is a big job, so I'm detailing Corporal Knox's team to assist them." He favored Randal with a small, mean smile.

  That's lousy, Randal thought sourly. Scout suits were built for extended duration patrols, but the heavy suits of the armored infantry were intended for shock assaults. Long distances were grueling.

  Major Tarrington dismissed them and Randal slipped outside before the man could reprimand him. Van Loon caught up, still chuckling. "If he didn't have kids, I'd think Tarrington had a crush on you..."

  "You only hurt the ones you love, right?"

  "Just you be cautious. Your da's Prime Minister, but Tarrington won't let something like that hold him back. I'll wager you Genevan pounds for Abkhenazi tangas he votes Social Democrat. He just seems like one."

  Randal grinned. He was a good Founder's Party man himself, but Van Loon was so far out on the right wing there was danger of him falling off. "I'll be careful," he promised, setting off at a dogtrot for his team.

  ***

  Reaching the bivouac area, he drew up short. Near his pressure tent stood the slender suit of an armored medic, olive drab crosses emblazoned on its shoulder plates. Its helmet was unsealed and resting on the integral backpack containing the unit's life support. The rectangular "Doc-in-a-box" issued each medic sat on the ground nearby.

  His breath caught as he noticed the suit's occupant. She was lovely. Even from a distance he could make out soft brown hair and a fair complexion. The graceful lines of the medic suit were a nice complement to her features.

  While she was a pleasant change from the five hairy guys with whom he spent each day, he still grumbled to himself. Whoever she was, she was the last thing he needed to deal with at a time like that. He'd rather put up with ten Tarringtons than one pretty girl. "What are you doing in my area, Private?"

  "I... they've placed me with you, Sergeant Knox." This was followed by a rough salute. "Private Ariane Mireault reporting as ordered."

  "Corporal Knox," he amended. "And don't salute in the field. We call that a sniper check. It tells the bad guys who to shoot at." He looked her over a moment. She seemed even younger than him. "Does your mum even know you're here?"

  "She signed permission for me to enlist, Corporal."

  That meant she'd come in at seventeen, which made her either desperate or one of those odd women who actually wanted a military life. He decided the latter option didn't seem likely. So she was desperate. Better and better.

  "Haven't seen you around the battalion before. I imagine you're fresh out of Basic Indoc?" he asked flatly.

  "Yes, Corporal. They shuttled us here straight from graduation."

  "Brilliant. Go re-camouflage your pressure tent; it looks like a soup sandwich. And try to stay out from underfoot." Turning, he bounded off to Kimathi and his team, the ground surveillance sensor plotting them about two hundred meters to the west.

  Later, as dusk settled in, the fire team shared a meal of chicken and barley field rations. A low whine sounded behind them and moments later the sleek form of the Platoon Support Vehicle crested the ridge. The skimmer kept to treetop-level as it flew to Randal's area, settling in between two firs on its bottom-mounted jets.

  Randal was there to greet the vehicle as the cockpit bubble slid back into its enclosure, revealing the platoon's terrible twosome— Johnny Warfield and Jeni Cho. Johnny was strapped into the pilot's chair wearing his usual jester's grin.

  Jeni slipped from the dronekeeper's harness, alighting from the skimmer. "Oi, Randal!" A mischievous smile played across her lips. "I heard something rather interesting on the coms... The Old Man was talking to Division HQ."

  Randal knew she shouldn't be anywhere near the Divisional ComNet, but pointing that out would only make her clam up. She was like some capricious goddess who wanted to be entreated for the favors she bestowed. Jeni loved flaunting her security clearance and his lack of one. He settled for a non-committal grunt. "Huh."

  "Uh-huh," Jeni answered coyly, making a show of looking around for eavesdroppers. Just as Randal was tempted to give her a good shaking, she finally relented. "One of the other dronekeepers spotted a mobile bridge and some of the Abkhenazi's new Proviso-class resupply vehicles moving into place."

  After the build-up, he was a little underwhelmed by the news. "Merciful heavens, a portable bridge. We're doomed."

  Jeni made a rude gesture. "You have your whole life to be a prat. Pace yourself." She took a cleansing breath. "The bridge, and those resupply vehicles, are corps-level assets. Do they seem a little more significant now?"

  That changed things. "They could have five divisions en route."

  She nodded, her expression sobering. "There could be as many as seventy-five thousand Abkhenazis moving in across the street."

  "You think they'll shuttle us in some reinforcements?"

  "I really doubt it. From what I gist, Division doesn't want to divide the main body. Just between you and me? As far as they're concerned, we have as much chance as Christians in the Coliseum. They won't feed more troops to the lions. If we have a war, it's important that the main army survives first contact."

  Looking across the valley, the small movements he could detect took on a much more sinister feel. "This is going to turn into a regular Thermopylae."

  "A thermo-what?"

  "It was a battle. Three hundred Greeks against thousands and thousands of Persians in a mountain pass. They made us read a lot of old Greek stuff at my academy."

  Jeni smirked. "Poor little rich boy," she said, rapping knuckles on his ceramic-plated chest. "How'd that one turn out?"

  "Not too special if you were Greek."

  She sighed, following his gaze to the Abkhenazi side. "This is all gonna end badly, ducky. Try not to get dead." Stepping up on tiptoe, Jeni planted a quick kiss on his cheek and then trotted back to the hovering skimmer. She jumped up to grab a handhold and clambered inside. In a blink, she and Johnny were gone.

  Randal debated telling the others as he returned to his team, but decided against it. It was better for them to spend their last night playing cards and telling lies.

  As he approached, he heard Tavish telling a war story. This was despite the fact that New Geneva had been involved in nothing larger than border skirmishes in its entire history. The men competed to see who could tell the most outrageous ones. "There I was, knee deep in bodies, ankle deep in shell casings. The odds were a hundred to two, and they were the toughest two we'd ever faced..."

  A stupid pastime Randal supposed, but it beat brooding.

  CHAPTER 2

&
nbsp; Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night,

  and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

  —Sun Tzu

  Two hours from first light found the team on the final leg of its Recon and Surveillance patrol. It had been a nerve-wracking night—six hours spent creeping through the Demilitarized Belt that extended 1000 meters to either side of the border.

  Both sides had deployed a full complement of skirmishers in the Belt, both expecting trouble. More than once Randal's men received amber flashes on their Heads-Up Display warning they were 'painted' by an enemy targeting sensor. The suits' stealth technology was cutting edge; nevertheless they'd been painted often enough to make everyone short-tempered.

  Randal had split the team in two: Rogers, Sanchez and himself in the first section, Kimathi and Tavish babysitting the medic in the other. The two sections were leapfrogging, one providing over-watch while the other bounded ahead.

  "Corporal, movement one hundred meters ahead. Three men on foot. Our side of the border," came Kimathi's voice on the comset, his words clipped and precise even in the tense moment.

  Randal was careful to emphasize every word as he answered. "Do not engage, Kimathi. Maintain position. We'll buttonhook around and usher them out, copy?"

  "Roger that, Corporal."

  He held his breath while leading his men around Kimathi's flank, whispering a silent prayer for the men to keep cool, especially hotheaded Tavish. Randal didn't want to be remembered as the Corporal who started a war.

  Pushing aside some brambles, he caught sight of the three infiltrators. They were busily digging a spiderhole in the thick brush of a draw. Behind them sat a pile of what looked to be man-portable signal collection equipment. They obviously planned to hunker down and tap New Genevan ComNets. Randal smiled mirthlessly. Soft little Intelligence types.

  Enhancing the magnification on his viewscreen, he cued the external speaker. "You are violating the sovereign territory of New Geneva. You will leave immediately, or we will fire upon you. Do not attempt to retrieve any equipment."

  The suit's night vision afforded him a wonderful view of their reaction. He had to cut the speakers quickly to squelch undiplomatic laughter as the three Abkhenazi scuttled for the border, nearly falling over one another. "Kimathi, police up their tech and carry it to the rear. Our spooks will want to take it apart and play with it. We'll rendezvous at the bivouac site."

  An hour later, Randal rested on his stomach, looking over the hazy valley from the team's position. Down the line, Ariane, Sanchez and Rogers lay in their own hastily-scraped fighting positions. Behind them slept the rest of the team, catching an hour's shuteye before stand-to. Come first light, everyone would be awake and facing front. It was always the most likely time for an enemy attack and every man was needed.

  It was only in quiet times that Randal could remember life before he enlisted. For the last two years his mind had been absorbed with soldiering. Looking over the deceptively peaceful valley, his mind drew back to a debate from his final year at the Athanasius Academy. For his final examination in Rhetoric he'd debated his friend Pieter Haelbroeck on the making of history — Pieter arguing great men made history and Randal countering that history was created by the impact of ideas.

  Both of them being good Calvinists, they had agreed at the outset that Providence guides history. The question was how Divine Sovereignty went about it.

  Pieter held up Abkhenazia as a clear example of great men forming history. Without the Prophet, Andrei Nazarbayev, Abkhenazia wouldn't exist.

  In 2018 on the world of Terra, in what was then called Uzbekistan, a new religion arose. It was one of those volatile times when economic and moral chaos reigned. The people of the region were looking for answers and the Prophet supplied them. Preaching in the name of the Mogdukh, or "Power-Spirit" he cobbled together a religion incorporating revamped Marxism, Islam and a dash of New Age spirituality absorbed while studying abroad in the then-European Union.

  The faith spread with frightening rapidity. In eight years Nazarbayev took control of Central Asia, Siberia, Iraq, northern Iran, the Caucuses and even portions of Russia west of the Urals. His followers came to call themselves Khlisti, or "Whips," in reference to the self-flagellation that figured prominently in their rituals.

  The Prophet taught that his followers would usher in the next stage of human evolution through asceticism, collective living, and the unifying conquest of humankind in worship of the Mogdukh. Over time man would transcend the corruption of the physical and become pure spirit, as the Mogdukh was. Individual humans were nothing more than experiments created by the Mogdukh in this process of Becoming.

  Through terror the Prophet crushed dissent and seized the industrial and governmental positions previously held by corrupt oligarchs. The rigid, centralized economy he instituted failed to bring prosperity, as such economies always do, but it did elevate the poor to a common level of misery.

  Even more ambitious than his economic "reforms" were the radical revisions he made upon the area's culture. He turned a demoralized region into a militaristic power bent upon converting its neighbors at the point of the sword. Over time, the Khlisti regime became a humanitarian and security crisis even Europe could not ignore. This led to war with the Atlantic powers and the Khlisti Empire was broken apart.

  Were it not for an "accident" of history, Nazarbayev's sect would have become a historical footnote. As his Empire was being subjugated, a joint project of Caltech and Tsinghua University made the theoretical breakthrough in physics that opened the door to faster-than-light travel. Within a quarter-century colony ships were rocketing off for distant stars and disaffected Khlisti were among the first to leave.

  The largest of their colonies was Abkhenazia. However, socialist economics and totalitarian control of ideas kept the planet impoverished and technologically backward. Facing hard times, Abkhenazia made a fateful decision.

  A group of religious settlers from Terra petitioned the Abkhenazi Parliament to sell them a peninsula jutting from the southern tip of Abkhenazia. It was a forbidding stretch of land — cold and windswept, seemingly stripped of anything valuable and separated from the mainland by a narrow isthmus of nearly impassable mountains.

  The Moderates in power reluctantly agreed, giving the cash-strapped economy a needed infusion of capital. Once the money was spent, the economy stagnated again. Over the next sixty years, Abkhenazi rhetoric toward their neighbors ratcheted inexorably toward war.

  All of these historical ripples were the result of one long-dead man, the Prophet.

  When Randal's turn came to demonstrate the impact of ideas as the driving force of history, he chose those same religious settlers, the New Genevans, as his model.

  The movement that birthed New Geneva had no central figure. Rather it began as a sentiment, a feeling by many that they were missing out on some unquantifiable thing, some vital essence of what it meant to be human.

  By the twenty-third century the social forces of political unification and mass communication had created a bleakly homogenous world. A materialistic worldview was ascendant and the unvoiced assumption of society's leaders was that happiness, fulfillment and social progress could best be defined in monetary terms.

  But man could not live by bread alone.

  With full bellies and empty souls, humanity went looking for answers. Tribalism came briefly into vogue among young people. Luddite groups organized bombing campaigns against media centers. Some others embraced Transhumanism, seeking transcendence by fusing humanity with technology.

  The most lasting impact was in a return to traditional religion. Adherence to the world's faiths had declined, and Christianity was no exception. It seemed for nearly two centuries to have lost its vigor, with the teaching of the Church consisting mainly of a nebulous humanitarianism.

  Here and there a thoughtful individual began to look to the past for answers. Some began once more to think of Christianity in terms of a relationship with a living God. Ini
tially the number of these was so small that the early talks on the subject took place between virtual strangers in virtual rooms.

  From these grassroots a worldwide social movement erupted. Hundreds of thousands of churches were built. However, these were merely the outward manifestations. The real drama was less visible — the changed lives of hundreds of millions. Sociologists of religion christened the movement the "Second Reformation."

  This new Reformation led to the founding of many colonies. Coming late in the colonial period, the most desirable planets were long since settled, so most of the Reformer's settlements were in the rim of backwater planets known as the Penumbra. Much like the first Reformation, the believers placed a marked emphasis on education, work and sober living. Work joined with frugality yielded a high savings rate; savings turned to capital and capital became the engine that prospered the colonies.

  New Geneva was no exception. As their economy surged ahead, they sought to emulate their forbears, founding many universities and colleges. New technologies allowed them to access minerals in the mountains of the isthmus.

  It was at this point that Abkhenazia first cast a covetous eye toward the prosperous south. Economic malaise sparked a rise in Purism. These Purists soon demanded territorial concessions from New Geneva.

  Thus Randal found himself looking across at tens of thousands of men planning to kill him come morning. Given the odds, they'd likely succeed. The realization made Randal's scalp tingle and a despairing sort of queasiness well up in his gut. Viciously he shunted despair aside, scowling at the moment of weakness. Man was a breath and a shadow, as Euripides had said. All that was left to him was duty. He was thankful for the classics his father had force-fed him while growing up. There was cold comfort in stoicism.

  Glancing up into the early morning sky, he murmured a quiet prayer asking God for courage, grace, and wisdom not to get his people killed. In that moment there was a flash of light, followed almost instantly by several others.