Christopher G. Nuttall

PICKING UP THE PIECES

Prologue

From: The Post-UN Era. Williamson, Mike. Baen Historical Press, Heinlein, 2555.

As you have seen in preceding chapters, the attempt by the United Nations to secure the Colonies and secure control over the entire Human Sphere was terminated when Fleet — then called the United Nations Peace Force — launched a coup against its superior officers. The then-Captain John Walker believed that the war was beyond being won and, in fact, was heading rapidly towards mass slaughter on both sides. Be that as it may — and research on Earth suggests that the UN intended to resort to weapons of mass destruction again — his successful coup against the United Nations broke their power completely. The Treaty of Unity, rammed down the throats of Colonies and Earth alike, secured peace, at a price.

The UN had held hundreds of worlds in its grip, but now that grip was broken. Some worlds, like Terra Nova, collapsed into chaos, ironically secured by members of the former United Nations Infantry, who were no longer welcome back home. Others, like Heinlein, Williamson’s World and New Washington, managed to regain control quickly and even assisted in the reparation of the Infantrymen to other locations. Some even became citizens of the worlds they had tried to suppress.

And Fleet had secured control of space. The remains of the UNPF was still the strongest force operating in space and John Walker dictated peace terms that included a firm guarantee that Fleet would remain supreme, a neutral and disinterested force that would ensure that interstellar war would no longer threaten humanity. The Fleet was, to all intents and purposes, the ruler of the Human Sphere, although it ruled with a very light hand. Fleet was denied any major ground combat element and the vast majority of the former UN Infantry was disbanded. It would never be able to mount a campaign on a planet’s surface. Indeed, the treaty even allowed the development of space-based defences, everything, but jump-capable warships.

The remainder of the UN Infantry were in an unfortunate position. Some units returned to Earth and were disbanded. Others took service with various planetary governments, or were encouraged to settle their own worlds, along with the teeming refugees from Earth. And some became soldiers for hire. Five years after Fleet mounted its coup, there were hundreds of mercenary units operating in the Human Sphere. Some were tiny, composed of only a few hundred men, and some were large enough to qualify as armies in their own right. The most famous of these was the Legio Exheres, the Legion of the Disinherited.

Chapter One

FLEET PROTOCOLS: The general term for the set of agreements governing the level of Fleet involvement on the surface of a planet. Fleet is generally restricted to one garrison and no interference in the government of the planet, regardless of the moral standing of the government in question.

–The A-Z of the Human Sphere

“I’m picking up the beacon from the spaceport now,” the pilot called back, from his seat. “We should be landing in seven minutes.”

I nodded, tensing despite myself. There was no reason to believe that we were flying into a hostile situation, or an unwelcoming committee waited with SAM missiles capable of shooting down a shuttle, but old habits died hard. I looked at the threat board, tracking the Fleet destroyer in high orbit and the Julius Caesar in low orbit, and smiled. The destroyer could have picked us off with its lasers, but Fleet was officially neutral on Svergie. The planet’s internal affairs were none of Fleet’s concern.

“Stand ready,” I ordered, checking the pistol I wore at my belt. The other members of the advance party did the same. The UNPF, which used to make use of my services, disliked people loading weapons in shuttles, but I got to make the rules for my own people and I saw no harm in it. Besides, it the shuttle was shot down and if my some miracle we survived, I’d prefer to have a weapon in hand.

“Nice countryside,” Sergeant Peter Henderson observed, from his seat. I nodded. Svergie was definitely a blessed world, which made all the oncoming war and violence ironic in the extreme. More human wars have been fought over resources than anything else combined. “No signs of actual fighting.”

I shrugged. “The last war never touched here as bad as Heinlein or Terra Nova,” I said, seriously. I’d reviewed all the files I could find after being hired by the local government, but the UN files were half lies and I wasn’t sure I could trust the local files any further. Fleet would have the most modern files, but they might refuse to share them with someone most of the senior officers would consider a mercenary. “They only fought an underground war without any serious battles.”

The spaceport came into view as the pilot ghosted us down towards the surface. It looked fairly typical, but then, most UNPF spaceport facilities looked as if they were designed according to a plan some military bureaucrat had drawn up in a safe office on Old Earth. It was massive, large enough to hold hundreds of thousands of UN soldiers, administrators and servants, but now it looked almost abandoned. The UN forces on Svergie had been pulled out months ago and most of them hadn’t been sad to leave. It had been a hard life on a planet where most of the locals hated them. I doubted that they had left anything, but a caretaker crew, if that. The local government might well have taken over the facility.

“We’re being told to land now,” the pilot said. I tensed again as the shuttle came down and touched down neatly on the ground. It had been a near-perfect landing, although the jokes revolving around shuttles and landing craft generally focused on a good landing being one that you could walk away from. Military humour; you had to love it, or go insane. “Sir…?”

“Power down the shuttle and remain here,” I ordered, as I pulled myself to my feet. Peter pulled a heavy assault rifle out of the rank and slung it over his shoulder. I wasn’t fooled. As casual as he looked, he could still have it ready for action in seconds, perhaps less. “Shall we proceed?”

The scent of the planet, mixed in with the smell of a military base that had been, until recently, operating, struck us as soon as we opened the hatch. I breathed in hints of flowers and ripe corn in the distance, then recoiled as the smell of burning fuel and even hints of burning flesh touched my nose. The reports hadn’t been clear, but the spaceport had clearly been targeted by the insurgents several times, using mortars to strike from a distance. I could see a handful of burned out vehicles in the distance, but otherwise… nobody moved.

“I’ve never seen a base unmanned before,” Peter said, lightly. I suspected he felt the same unease I felt. The sense of something badly out of place kept growing. It had kept me alive in hundreds of engagements and I had learned to listen to it. “There should be ground crews and soldiers on patrol, spacers down from the starships and entertainers wandering around, officers wasting time and…”

“It’s been abandoned,” Muna Mohammad said, tightly. She was my supply and logistics officer. She’d had a strange career in the UNPF before it had rebelled against the UN and renamed itself Fleet, but she came with strong recommendations from John Walker himself. I’d known John briefly while he’d been a mere First Lieutenant. “They’ve probably looted the supply dumps as well.”

“Contact,” Peter hissed. I grabbed for my weapon before realising what he meant and glaring at him. He looked unmoved. Peter had been with me for years and he’d forgotten more about the military than I’d ever learned. He said I was the best UNPF Infantry officer he’d served under, but it wasn’t much of a compliment. The vast majority of UNPF officers couldn’t have found their butts with both hands and a map. “Over there…”

I scowled into the distance and saw a dark figure waving to us. Normally, no one ran at the spaceport unless there was an emergency, but there was no one around to complain about the safety violation. We double-timed it over to him and stopped right in front of him. To do him credit, he might have looked more like a computer geek than a soldier, but he didn’t flinch. He wore the simple black uniform of Fleet, with the golden rank bars of a Commander, although not one in the chain of command. It had been a while since I’d brushed up on Fleet protocol, so I snapped a salute and wasn’t entirely surprised when it was returned. He wasn’t quite sure where he stood either.

“Welcome to Svergie Spaceport,” he said, as he led us into a conference room. It had air conditioning and a small drinks cabinet on the wall. I disliked it on sight. The senior officers on a dozen worlds had gotten together there, drunk freely, and then issued orders that made little sense in the cold light of day. “I’m Commander (Fleet Intelligence) Daniel Webster.”

“Fleet intelligence,” I mused. This meeting was starting to look rather unlike a coincidence. “Captain-General Andrew Nolte of the Legio Exheres, the Legion of the Disinherited.”

He frowned. “Captain-General?”

“Long story,” I growled. It wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with anyone who wasn’t already part of my community. Fleet tended to take a dim view of mercenary units like us, even though some of them regarded us as a necessary evil. “This is Peter and Muna.” I didn’t give their ranks. “I assume that you have a briefing for us?”

Daniel nodded. “I’m supposed to…”

“First things first,” I interrupted. “How much direct support can we hope for from Fleet?”

He frowned. “Very little,” he said. “It is imperative that no one sees our hand in this, directly or indirectly. We can probably send you orbital reconnaissance images from the William Tell, but Captain Price-Jones is one of the Captains less willing to violate the letter of Fleet Regulations. The Fleet Protocols are in effect.”

A tap on a hidden console brought up a map of the planet. “Svergie was settled, originally, by a Scandinavian consortium headed by the Swedes,” he said. “They put up most of the early funds and got the right to name the planet, although the Danes got to name the first real city — New Copenhagen. Yes, I know; very imaginative. The original settlement was restricted to people from Scandinavia and was largely a success; immigration picked up as the European Union collapsed into the UN. The global financial crisis forced the consortium to plead for help from the UN, which allowed the UN to get its hooks into the planet. Oddly enough, they only insisted on the settlers accepting Icelandic and Irish colonists and...well, it wasn’t a disaster. The stains blended together neatly.”

I nodded. The UN had blundered badly from time to time, forcing planets to take in ethnic groups that were fundamentally opposed to the first settlers. Persia, a planet settled directly from Old Iran on Earth, had been forced to accept a large immigration quota of Sunni Muslims from the Middle East. The results had not been pleasant. The largely Shia population of Persia had moved there to get away from the Sunni in the first place. Svergie had been lucky.

“Disaster struck around fifty years ago when the UN discovered that the planet had vast deposits of various vital minerals,” Daniel continued. “The locals objected to the UN attempting to assert further authority and rebelled. The UN fought back with Infantry and moved a few thousand miners onto the planet. They weren’t popular with the locals and the war got worse. To add to their woes, the UN was suppressing a rebellion in Indonesia at the same time and dumped several thousand Indonesian women onto the planet, along with their young children. I think the idea was that they would provide wives for the soldiers and miners. Some of them did, but others became prostitutes or worse. By the time Admiral Walker launched his coup, the planet was heading for a nasty crisis, which was barely averted by the UN’s pull-out. Even so…”

I nodded. “They wouldn’t have hired us unless they needed us,” I agreed. Svergie’s Government had offered vast inducements to hire us, which suggested either desperation or stupidity. I wouldn’t have bet on the latter. “What’s the current situation like?”

“Unstable,” Daniel admitted. He paused. “I’m going to have to lecture, I’m afraid.” I nodded impatiently. I have never met an Intelligence officer who didn’t like the sound of his own voice. “The Government was formed from the underground resistance, which claimed descent from the last legitimate government on the planet, before the UN took over openly. The President — you’ll meet him this afternoon — was the political head of the resistance and quite popular among the people. He’s also something of a statesman in his way. He convinced Fleet to keep the spaceport rather than trust it to any of his own people because… well, it was the cause of the greatest political fight since the UN pulled out.

“The President is the head of the Liberty Party, which used to serve as the core of the resistance,” he continued. “Now that the war is won and the UN is gone, it’s having something of a crisis of confidence; they used to unite everyone, but now the factions are becoming clearer and political consensus is being lost. The President couldn’t stop the trend and there are now several other parties competing for the voters. I don’t think that Liberty will win the next election, which is in six months.

“The Conservatives and Farmers Party is the most reactionary of the parties and basically serves as the mouthpiece for many of the older residents, although they don’t cross the line into open racism. They’re popular with the farmers, but less popular with the city-dwellers, not least because they want to force the underclass to work or starve. Fringe groups are even talking about developing a Heinlein-style government here and altering the franchise, or evicting non-Scandinavians from the planet.

“The Progressive Party is pretty much their exact opposite. They stand for universal franchise and an extension of state welfare benefits to as many people as possible. They’re popular among the underclass as they’re seen as the people who stand up for their rights, but they’re universally loathed among the upper classes. Their leadership includes people who were abandoned here by the UN and preach that everyone could have the kind of lifestyle people have on Earth. Unfortunately, they may be right.”

I snorted. The UN had told the Colonists that everyone on Earth lived in a state-run paradise from cradle to grave, a world where everyone was equal and all rights were respected. It was also complete nonsense. The UN had created an equal distribution of poverty.

“They’re trying to push through various subsidy bills that would force the farmers to sell at set prices, but they’re being heavily opposed,” Daniel added. “They’re having more success with education and training programs for young children, many of whom come from the underclass.

“The Communist Party is a more extreme version of the Progressive Party. They want to have everything owned and operated by the state and set up communal farms and other such nonsense. They’re smaller than the Progressive Party, but actually more disciplined and they’re training a militia of their own. I don’t think they can win an election, but if they share it with the Progressive Party… well, they can probably have a major impact on politics.

“And finally there’s the Independence Party,” he concluded. “They’re not a political party as such; they represent the interior and are seriously considering seceding from the remainder of the planet. They think that the next government will do whatever it can to limit their rights and tax the planet to death, so they’re plotting resistance and independence. If the Progressive Party wins the next election, they say, they’ll secede from the government. If that happens… the planet will either have a civil war or a split government, with all that that implies for their future. It doesn’t look rosy.”

“No,” I agreed. I frowned and dropped a name. “What does John — sorry, Admiral Walker — want from this situation?”

Daniel clicked the display until it became a star chart. “At the moment, Svergie is simply not very important in the Human Sphere,” he said. “The planet is actually quite far from Earth and… well, while it is closer to Williamson’s World and New Paris, it’s not close enough to make shipping easier — now. Fleet’s projections are that interstellar trade will actually increase in this sector over the next twenty years and Svergie will be in line for a share of the benefits, if they have a united government. Chaos in this sector, on the other hand, will lead to Svergie being isolated or even dampen the development of the entire sector.”

Muna was nodding. No shipping line in their right mind would have a starship come out of its wormhole in interstellar space. Modern drives weren’t as prone to burning out as some of the early designs, but it still happened and being stranded in interstellar space would mean certain disaster. Svergie would definitely benefit from increased interstellar trade, but only if there was a united government in place to deal with the Merchant Guilds and the shipping lines. Without one, the shipping lines would be able to name their own terms.

“On a different note,” Daniel added, “we believe that the Independence Party has some links with off-world groups. The Freedom Alliance never went away and they’re currently opposed to what they call Fleet’s hegemony. They may be linked with the Independence Party, or it might be another government attempting to spread chaos, or even someone working for the shipping lines. There’s no clear proof yet, but if we find it…”

I nodded. John Walker hadn’t made many mistakes in his coup, but one of them might come back to haunt him. He’d dictated terms to governments in a manner that would certainly cause resentment, even hatred. Fleet was still the strongest military force in known space, but it had limits, not least the lack of any major ground-combat force. The Marines couldn’t take and hold an entire planet. He had also agreed to leave internal planetary affairs strictly alone. Whatever happened on Svergie, Fleet couldn’t be seen to interfere.

“I understand,” I said, without demur. The planetary government had hired me, not Fleet. Fleet couldn’t be blamed if something went wrong, although I was still unsure of what the planetary government wanted from me. I decided to ask. “Tell me something. Do you know what they hired us for?”

Daniel shrugged. “Not directly,” he admitted. “The general theory held by Fleet’s analysts on the William Tell is that the planetary government wants you to serve as a deterrent to the Independence Party, although a minority opinion says that they want you to take out the Independence Party, or even support the Progressive Party.”

“We do have minds of our own,” Peter protested.

“Hush,” I said. I couldn’t dispute his logic. I was even rather insulted that someone would see us as nothing more than guns for hire, even if I wanted them to see us as mercenaries. “What does Fleet think is going to happen here?”

“The Progressive Party may well win the next election,” Daniel said. “If that happens, they will probably push ahead with their program… and push the planet into civil war. The analysts have simulated the war extensively, despite our limited knowledge, and they’ve concluded that the most likely outcome will be absolute chaos. I doubt that the planet could afford two nations on one continent. We’ll be looking down from orbit at mass slaughter.”

“Like a dozen other worlds,” Muna said, coldly. “What makes this one so special?”

“Nothing,” Daniel said. “Our hands are tied, legally. We cannot interfere unless one side breaks the Federation Protocols. Even so, it would be chancy. The current situation is so unstable that if Svergie were to go under, it might have serious repercussions for Fleet… and the whole Federation. The best we can do is give you what information we have and hope.”

He smiled, thinly. “Good luck, sir,” he added. “You’re going to need it.”

Chapter Two

The Government of Svergie was originally intended to serve as a limited government, but when the UN took control of the planet they turned it into a despotic government that was destroyed shortly after the Fleet Coup. The replacement was established on a wave of hope. It didn’t last.

–The Secret History of Svergie

I mulled over what Daniel had told us as we were driven into town by the local trooper, who kept eyeing our weapons with a bemused respect. I was used to that kind of treatment on Earth — the few times I had been allowed to go armed on the planet’s surface — but Svergie was a frontier world. It should have had a more robust attitude towards weapons, even ones that looked intimidating as hell. Even the UN hadn’t been able to come up with a non-threatening assault rifle.

New Copenhagen was an interesting mix of styles. Some of the buildings looked as if they were built on stilts, although I was at a loss as to why, and others looked as if they were built out of wood. A massive wooden church dominated one corner and glowered at us as we drove past. I decided it had to serve a religious function, although I wouldn’t have trusted an entirely wooden building in a modern city if I could avoid it. Someone with a can of gasoline could have burned it to the ground. The locals looked to be surprisingly diverse; there were blonde-haired, blue eyed men and women, intermixed with short brown women and paler men. The latter had to be the results of intermarriage, which seemed to have had a happier result than on some other planets. It might cause them problems in the future, though; the economic report of the planet’s future was not encouraging.

“This isn’t going to be an easy city to defend,” Peter muttered, low enough so that our driver couldn’t hear. “I wouldn’t care to defend it with anything less than a full army and even if we did, half the city would burn down around us. I wonder how much trouble they actually have here.”

I shrugged. “That’s why they’re paying us,” I reminded him. As galling as it was to be thought of as nothing more than a mercenary, it did have its advantages. I didn’t have to pretend to be polite to assholes if I didn’t want to. “I wouldn’t want to take a tank through these streets if I could avoid it.”

“You could take a tank through the houses,” Peter said, dryly. I nodded in agreement. The houses looked surprisingly flimsy compared to a tank. “The more I look at this place, the more I think that there are unpleasant surprises waiting for us.”

“Look on the bright side,” I said. “We could be back on Botany.”

The driver took us directly into the centre of the city and, for the first time, I was vaguely impressed. The governing complex had been built for defence and a few hundred soldiers could have held it easily. The UN had probably started using the original buildings and then found that they needed to be sealed off and defended, just to keep the bureaucrats from being lynched by the people they were trying to help. The handful of policemen on duty looked professional enough, but they carried nothing heavier than pistols. A single platoon could have wiped them out in a quick action. I just hoped that they had reinforcements ready and waiting somewhere out of sight.

Or maybe they don’t have a real army, I thought, dispassionately. It boded ill for the future if that were true, but why else would they have hired us? Mercenaries didn’t come cheap these days, not when there was more work to do than there were mercenary organisations. The civilians hadn’t looked oppressed, or unhappy, but that might not have meant anything. I remembered the political briefing and shivered inwardly. That might be about to change, I decided, as we climbed out of the car and walked into the building. The planet wouldn’t be peaceful for much longer.

“You’ll have to leave your weapons here,” a guard said. I shook my head firmly. I don’t leave my weapons anywhere, not for anything. “Sir, I…”

“Let him through,” our escort said. “He’s not going to be going very far.”

The interior of the building was suspiciously ornate, not entirely to my surprise. The UN bureaucrats loved luxury and good-living, as long as someone else was paying the bill, and they’d shown surprising taste. It still seemed overdone to my eyes, but everyone says that I have no taste at all. I can’t think why. They’d hung a series of portraits on one wall and I took a moment to study them. They were all of nude girls in interesting poses.

“The Church wants to take those down,” our guide explained, “but this building is living history. Once the new Council Chamber is built, this place will become a museum.”

“Wise of you,” I said, calmly. “Whoever fails to learn from history is condemned to repeat it.”

He nodded and showed us into a smaller conference room, although it was nearly identical to the one that Daniel had used. The UN bureaucrats had probably just copied the design for all of their buildings. It wasn’t as if that had required much imagination. There were six people in the room; two women and four men, who rose to their feet as I entered. The President, at least, was obvious. I’d seen his image on the UN’s files, marked with dire warnings about how dangerous he was. He could command loyalty, a dangerous trait in someone opposed to the UN.

“Mr President,” I said, and held out a hand. “Thank you for your initiation.”

“You’re welcome,” the President said. His voice was surprisingly firm and charismatic. The UN hadn’t understated the case. Now that I had a chance to take a good look at him, I could see that he was underweight and probably under heavy stress, but healthy enough. He also looked relieved to see me. “I trust that you encountered no problems on your flight here?”

“No, Mr President,” I said, calmly. If he wanted to make small talk, that was fine by me. “I imagine that the William Tell will wish to inspect us before we land, but that won’t affect our deployment.”

“Of course, of course,” the President agreed. “I’m neglecting my manners. Please take a seat, all of you.” He waved from person to person. “Councillor Tindra Elmersson, Liberty Party, Councillor Albin Arvidsson, Conservatives and Farmers Party, Councillor Frida Holmqvist, Progressive Party, Police Chief Arne Johansson and General Lennart Fredriksson, Militia Commander. We are, to all intents and purposes, the government of the planet, gathered together in this room.”

I winced, but said nothing. I’d seen nothing to impress me with their security so far and a determined fanatic could have smuggled a bomb inside without any problems. The two women were both stunningly good looking, but Frida had a nasty scar running down her face. The Progressive Party representative eyed me in a manner that suggested she didn’t like my face, but I refused to show her any response. The Police Chief and the General looked more impressive, but the former was beaten down and the latter was coldly furious at something. Us, perhaps?

The President sat back and looked at me. “I understand that you brought your entire unit along,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “We had to be a little vague about why we’d hired you, but rest assured that it won’t get you into hot water with Fleet. There were… issues involved that made it hard to be frank with you, yet we needed you here as quickly as possible.”

“I understand,” I said, hiding my annoyance. If we weren’t being paid well for this, I’d have taken my ship and men elsewhere. I’d had enough of vague orders and politically-correct directives while I’d been in the UNPF. “I assume that this room is secure…?”

“It is,” the President confirmed. “We have something of a political crisis on our hands, one that has been developing since the UN pulled back into their bases and allowed us to regain control of the planet. There are factions within our planet that want to break away from the remainder of the planet and others that want to break down our system completely. Every faction is arming to the teeth, ah…”

“Call me Andrew,” I suggested.

“And there’s a lot of talk about armed opposition to the government,” the President continued. “We don’t have much of an army here and the police are unprepared to deal with political agitation.”

“If certain parties would stop trying to impose stupid policies on the farmers and miners,” the Police Chief said, “we would have less agitation.”

“If the farmers would charge prices that the public can afford,” Frida snapped back, “we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

The President held up a hand. I felt a moment of sympathy for him. Whatever he wanted from the situation, it was neglected by having to preside over a Council that was divided against itself. I knew little about how the government worked, but I was already seeing the chaos. When there were two parties and neither dared back down, the results was a war. When there were more than two parties… the results were normally chaos.

“As it is, we have no creditable deterrence to groups attempting to secede or take control by force,” the President said. “We hired you to build an army for us and take control of the spaceport. If it does come down to civil war, we will need you to lead your people and the soldiers you will have trained against the rebels.”

“I see,” I said. Securing the spaceport would be easy, unless Fleet decided to object. Training an army would be simple enough, although I suspected that the various councillors would make it harder. Leading an offensive… that might be tricky. “What sort of opposition are we looking at?”

“There has never been a full census of the Mountain Men up north,” the President admitted. “They had ties to the resistance, of course, but at the end of the war they refused to be disarmed. They weren’t alone in that, of course. We do know, however, that they overran two UN FOB installations in the area and took all of the supplies. They’re heavily armed enough to take the war to us if we give them a chance.”

“Perhaps,” I said unhappily, recalling the map I’d seen before. If the Mountain Men lived in the mountains, digging them out wasn’t going to be easy, yet the mountains were far too close to the mines, Svergie’s only source of outside currency. If they had taken an intact FOB, they’d have tanks and armoured cars — perhaps even helicopters — and the fuel to operate them. Crushing them wasn’t going to be easy… and then there were the farmers, and the potential for urban insurrection.

“There are other issues,” the President said. “If you can strengthen the state, it might allow us a chance to work out the political issues without a civil war. Can you build an army for us?”

I understood what he was saying and what he carefully wasn’t saying. Daniel had warned that the Communists — who didn’t seem to be represented at the meeting — were building their own armed forces. The same was probably true of the others. It wouldn’t take long for one of them to think about a strike at the government and launch a coup. An intact and loyal army could deter them from trying that, yet they would understand that as well — perhaps better — than I did. They might move before my troops were on the surface and ready to operate.

“Yes,” I said, wondering what kind of snake pit we’d dropped into. “We can build you an army. I assume that you will allow us to handle our own recruiting?”

“Absolutely out of the question,” Frida thundered, furiously. It did interesting things to her jumper. “You have to take the people we send you for training.”

“Not everyone who volunteers will be suitable,” Peter put in, from his position. “We may only accept a hundred out of a thousand volunteers. The training course is intended to separate the men from the brats and it does that extremely well.”

Frida scowled at him. I could almost read her thoughts. If the Progressives had supplied most of the Army, it would be loyal to them, although I doubted it. Soldiers don’t get to indulge in wishful thinking and the training program was designed to help recruits separate wishful thinking from proper thinking. A politically-neutral army might be harder to accomplish, but it was what the President needed. It might even be able to disarm the factions and put an end to the threat of civil war.

“You can open up recruiting booths in the cities,” the President said, firmly, “but you will give all the recruits a firm chance.”

“Of course,” I said. We always did, after all. “What other military resources are available?”

All eyes turned to General Fredriksson. “The Militia is formed largely from former resistance men,” he admitted, slowly. He looked ashamed, somehow. “In theory, we have ten thousand ready and willing to serve. In practice, half of them are permanently unavailable or absent without leave. What I have left is a light infantry force with only limited training, given by a handful of UN deserters. It isn’t suitable for anything other than light patrolling and I can’t send it into… political situations.”

He rubbed his bald dome. “We have a large dump of military supplies that the UN left behind when they pulled out,” he added. “Some of it got stolen before we managed to secure it all, but the remainder is at your disposal. It wasn’t as if we had a use for tanks and armoured fighting vehicles. A UN officer offered to raise an armoured regiment for us, but we refused his offer. It wasn’t as if we needed it.”

“I’ll inspect that later,” I said, firmly. I’d have to make sure that the UN hadn’t left the gear behind because it was useless, or because they’d decided to leave a few unpleasant surprises behind when they left. If nothing had blown up by now, it probably wouldn’t, but it always paid to be careful. “How long do we have to prepare the army?”

The President looked around the room. “The elections are in six months,” he said, grimly. “We need a deterring force by then.”

“Yes, Mr President,” I said. I doubted that the force would deter anyone. I’d have to study the history of the planet myself, but if there were two conflicting ideologies involved — with lots of weapons to boot — we’d probably end up with a war anyway. If Fleet’s intelligence was accurate, and it normally was, the two sides literally couldn’t get along without each other. It was going to be the worst kind of war. “With your permission, then, I will start shipping my people down to the surface.”

Frida smiled. “And the recruiting?”

“It will start a week from today,” I said, carefully. I thought we could secure the spaceport and work out the details quicker than that, but it never hurt to have extra time to work with, if we needed it. I also wanted to study the planet more carefully. “I trust that that is acceptable?”

“Yes, thank you,” the President said. For a moment, he looked very tired and old. “Ask for anything you need and it’ll be sent to you. We’ll talk later, Andrew.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, standing up and saluting. “There’s no point in wasting time.”

“Interesting set-up,” Muna said, when we were back in the car. Peter checked all three of us with a counter-surveillance tool he picked up on Heinlein. The President and his men were surprisingly trusting. They hadn’t tried to bug us… unless, of course, they had access to better bugging tech than we had countermeasures. I doubted that that was possible, but it was well to be careful. “It’s just like home.”

The edgy flat tone in her voice brought me up short. I still knew almost nothing about her, but one thing I did know was that she never wanted to go home. I had a suspicion I knew why, as well; I’d seen her naked once and she was scarred in places that had made me want to hunt down the person who’d done that and cut him into tiny pieces.

“They’re going to tear that poor man apart,” she continued, unaware of my thoughts. “This coming election will certainly tip off the civil war, whoever wins. I don’t think coming here was a good idea, boss.”

“Maybe not,” I agreed, and grinned. “Look on it as a challenge.”

Peter snorted. “A challenge,” he said. Muna’s snort was even louder, somehow. I doubted she saw it quite the same way I did. “Someone will probably write that on your tombstone.”

I laughed and keyed my wristcom. “Johan, this is Andrew,” I said. “You may begin the unloading now. Contact the William Tell and invite them to send inspectors if they wish, but tell them that we cannot delay to suit them. If they push it, agree — reluctantly.”

“Yes, sir,” Johan said. He’d been a former UNPF officer himself and there were times when I suspected that he was a Fleet spy watching us. How else would we have gotten to keep the Julius Caesar, a former UNPF Infantry transport? “We’ll commence the unloading now.”

“And tell Ed that I want A Company to land first and secure the spaceport,” I added. “I want the entire place checked completely before we start training operations.” I broke the link and smiled at Peter. “Shall we go earn what we’re being paid?”

Chapter Three

According to UNPF regulations, all spaceports and other service facilities have to be located at least twenty kilometres from any major habitation, for safety concerns. Officially, they worry about the safety of civilians, but unofficially they worry about preventing insurgents from getting close enough to attack the base.

–The Unblemished Truth; The UN and the Colonies

The spaceport, when we returned, was a hive of activity. Captain Stalker had landed A Company in three shuttles and ordered the spaceport secured, before we landed anything else. A team of armed soldiers met us at the entrance and insisted on checking our ID, even though they recognised us. I’d have disciplined them if they’d done anything else. The UN’s enemies had proved adroit at using the UN’s weaknesses against it before. It wouldn’t be long before someone on the planet tried to sneak into the spaceport.

Ed saluted when we finally caught up with him. “Sir,” he said. “We have secured the outer limits of the spaceport and are sweeping through the interior buildings. So far, we’ve located all of the barracks and enough equipment to keep a brigade functioning for years. We haven’t found any unpleasant surprises so far.”

“Good,” I said. Back on Heinlein, it had been a persistent worry that the defenders would mine the spaceport with nuclear bombs, detonating them when the invasion force tried to land. Here, with Fleet controlling the spaceport, I doubted that there would be any real threat, but it was worth checking. Start as you mean to go on, as my old Sergeant would have said. “Is there anything else to report?”

“No, sir,” Ed said. “I believe that Captain Price-Jones intends to have a few words with you, but he’s still on his ship.”

I nodded. “I’ll speak to him when he lands,” I said. “Once you’ve swept the spaceport, give orders for the main body of the unit to land. I think we’re not going to have much time.”

“I know,” Ed said. “I’d like to borrow B Company for a sweep around the perimeter. That set of shanty towns is looking rather worrying.”

I nodded and left him to get on with it. I trusted Ed to ensure that it was done properly, although I wanted a look at the shanty towns myself. I’d expected to see them, but it was more surprising that they were still there. The UNPF banned people from living near their installations, but the poor and the destitute always knew that they could sell crappy junk to UN Infantrymen, or even themselves. The towns were wretched hives of scum and villainy, where a young infantryman could lose his innocence, virginity and his life. No amount of orders could keep a young man out of the pleasure dens.

A series of sonic booms echoed through the air as the first shuttles came in to land. We’d obtained several heavy-lift vehicles from a former UN deport and each of them could carry over two hundred soldiers, or several armoured vehicles. B Company would add itself to Ed’s forces as they completed their deployment, then we’d bring down the trainers and their equipment, followed by the medical and support staff. We had one advantage over a UN unit of comparable size; every one of us was a fighter, as well as a specialist. A UN unit might have a thousand men with a hundred actual soldiers. It was something I’d grown to loathe while on UN service.

I found my office and examined it thoroughly, but found nothing apart from a set of dirty postcards some officer had picked up on deployment. It always struck me as odd that the UN censored news and routinely rewrote the truth to suit itself, but it never forbade pornographic material, even of the vilest kind. The pictures I found were tame compared to some of the stuff I’d seen before and I binned them without regret. Their owner had probably left them behind for his successor to keep.

My wristcom buzzed before I could do more than settle down into my chair. “Captain, Captain Price-Jones would like to have a word with you now,” Ed said. “Where do you want to see him?”

“I’ll come meet him on the landing ground,” I said. I’d have preferred my new office, but it wasn’t ready for visitors — besides, antagonising Captain Price-Jones might cause problems further down the line. Admiral Walker — John — might have interests here, but Price-Jones wouldn’t know that, would he? It would be better to meet him on neutral territory. “Just tell him I’m on my way.”

The landing ground looked almost like a functional base again when I emerged from the buildings. We’d landed almost all of our shuttles by now and two were even taking off again to return to the transport, after unloading their soldiers and their equipment. A small Fleet shuttle sat to one corner, painted a drab grey colour that looked faded compared to the colourful paintings on our shuttles, but it still drew my eye like a magnet. Captain Price-Jones was waiting for me by the shuttle’s ramp. He didn’t look pleased to be on the ground.

“Captain Nolte,” he said, shortly. “I am Captain Price-Jones, Fleet Senior Officer in system.”

The interview was brief, formal and edgy, confirming my suspicion that Captain Price-Jones hadn’t been told anything about Fleet’s clandestine interest in the system. He warned me that the entire mercenary unit would be inspected before it was allowed to land and any discrepancies — such as the presence of forbidden weapons — would result in the confiscation of my ship and probably criminal charges in front of a Fleet court-martial. I listened carefully and nodded in all the right places, wondering why Captain Price-Jones had been allowed to retain his command. He didn’t sound like one of the newer breed of Captains, but someone from the old regime. I was tempted to file a complaint, but in the short term, it wouldn’t matter. His tiny destroyer was the most powerful ship in the system.

“We’re hired merely to train and support a local army,” I said, when he had run out of dire warnings. Fleet generally doesn’t approve of mercenaries. “We’re not here to take over the planet.”

He didn’t see the humour. “See that you don’t,” he growled, and stomped away with a parting shot. “Make sure that you get an agreement on ROE before you begin operating with the locals. I’d hate to have to arrest you for that.”

I nodded as he retreated back inside his shuttle. It was something we would have to sort out with the President. Fleet was generally indifferent to what atrocities local governments perpetrated on their citizens, but when it came to interstellar units, such as a mercenary unit, it was a different story. We had our own codes of conduct — I’d hung men for rape and looting before — but we’d have to sort out ROE with the locals. It was something I wasn’t looking forward to doing. Civilians don’t have the slightest idea of what a military unit can and cannot do.

“Charming fellow,” Master Sergeant Russell Kelsey observed. In theory, he was nothing more than a simple soldier, but in practice I would have rated him as a Special, one of the UN’s Special Forces units. He came from Heinlein and swore blind that his training was typical of Heinlein infantry training, but no one believed him, not least because if they’d all been as good as him, the war on Heinlein’s surface would have cost hundreds of thousands more lives. It had cost just under two hundred thousand by the time the war ended. “I take it he’s going to be watching over our shoulder?”

“Probably,” I said, sourly. It wasn’t something I could bring myself to care about — for the very simple reason it wouldn’t matter. Fleet wouldn’t intervene on either side of a civil war, if one broke out. We’d just have to be careful not to do anything that Fleet would have to take official notice of. “Have you seen your facilities?”

“Typical UN crap,” Russell said. I’d hired him and several others from Heinlein, knowing that their experience against the UN would be useful. There were times when I doubted the wisdom of that choice, but they were few and far between. “The people here didn’t even bother to maintain it.”

I nodded. “I expected that,” I said. “They had this vast base and only ten people on the ground. No wonder the good Captain had a bug up his ass about it.”

“A destroyer only has… what? Forty men?” Russell asked. I nodded, tightly. Captain Price-Jones would have been terrifyingly short of men even before he was forced to assume responsibility for the spaceport as well. It was ironic — there were a few interstellar freighters that made the stop here — but if the factions had been able to agree on who should operate it, the planet would have been richer. “He’ll be glad to get them back into space.”

His lips tightened. “They won’t be,” he added. “Have you seen the cleaning staff yet?”

“No,” I said, feeling a trickle of alarm running down my spine. “Do I want to know?”

“There are fifty very good-looking young women here who have been gainfully employed doing the cooking, cleaning and probably certain other services as well for the people working here,” Russell said. I stared at him. On Heinlein, employing locals had been asking for trouble. On Botany, if anything, the problems had been worse. “They’ve been working here since before the pull-out and… well, they’re not sure what’s going to happen to them.”

“Shit,” I said. The only good thing about Svergie was that its war hadn’t been as bloody and merciless as several other wars. The girls would probably be safe enough if they returned to the city, or wherever they’d come from, but it would throw them out of work. We might well need them later. “Do they pose a security risk?”

“I doubt it, at least at the moment,” Russell said, confirming my inner thoughts. “That might change if the planet’s political situation shifts…”

“I know,” I said. I made a snap decision. “Very well; tell them we’ll keep them on provided they behave themselves. They’ll probably find themselves overworked cooking and cleaning for all two thousand of us. Sex… well, make sure they know that they have a veto over whatever one of us wants them to do. I won’t tolerate rape or molestation, understand?”

“Of course,” Russell agreed. “And the new recruits?”

“The girls are off-limits,” I said, firmly. Basic Training always kept the new recruits celibate for their early training. The UN had had mixed-sex groups for training, but it had been forbidden to sleep with a fellow trainee. It was something I actually approved of, although some Drill Sergeants had abused the trust placed in them and molested their charges. I would have shot any of my trainers who did that. “Once they’re in uniform and graduated… well, we’ll look at it then.”

“Yes, sir,” Russell said. “A soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight.”

It was Heinlein’s unofficial motto. “And a soldier who fucks when he should be fighting won’t be fucking any more,” I countered. “Get your people on the ground and get ready for the first bunch of trainees. Hopefully, we should have them here in a week, perhaps less.”

The day wore on slowly. I watched as the remaining units landed, only to be inspected carefully by Fleet observers before allowing us to move them into their pre-prepared positions. We were officially rated as an undersized regiment, but in practice we didn’t have anything like the uniformity that would have created a proper fighting regiment. Half of us were light infantry, although with antitank weapons that made them formidable opponents in built-up areas, while the remainder consisted of a variety of different systems. We had a small helicopter detachment, several dozen armoured vehicles, and what looked to be the most advanced medical complex on the planet. It was something else we were going to have to look at, quickly. What could Svergie produce for itself that we — and their new army — were going to need?

I smiled faintly, thinking of the Government’s reaction if we had to import even basic weapons from other star systems. Even if Fleet didn’t get involved — and I doubted they would if the weapons didn’t include nukes or biological warfare systems — the cost would be astronomical. Even very basic UN-standard rifles and their ammunition would be incredibly bulky and very costly. I’d prefer to buy it on the planet, if possible. If nothing else, it would give the local economy a boost.

“Captain, this is Ed,” a voice said, suddenly. “You have a… visitor.”

“Already?” I asked, puzzled. I’d expected the local politicians to come trailing out to the base over the next few weeks, not immediately. “Who is it?”

“A girl called Suki,” Ed said. His voice suggested that he didn’t believe her. “She claims to be from the government.”

“I see,” I said. My puzzlement hadn’t abated. “Send her in to my office.”

Suki proved to be a strange mixture of Chinese and Swedish. She was tall, dressed to show off her assets — and they were very impressive — and had a surprisingly oriental face. I studied her carefully — for tactical purposes, of course — and concluded that she didn’t have any real military experience. That proved nothing, of course. Jock and his band of Specials were good at looking like harmless assholes until they hit the enemy as hard as they could. Suki might be an unarmed combat expert with a degree in killing for fun and profit.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she said, in a voice I could grow to like, under other circumstances. “I’ve been sent to be your assistant and native guide.”

I fought down several words that came to mind, including what I’d like her to assist me with, and lifted an eyebrow. “You have been sent to me?” I asked. “Who sent you to me?”

“The Government,” she said, flicking her eyelashes at me. She had perfect soft brown eyes, I couldn’t help noticing. All in all, she was almost perfect. “They thought that you would need an assistant and I was in line for a position.”

“Really,” I said, dryly. If that were true, I’d put myself up for NJP, or perhaps a sparring session with one of the unarmed combat experts. “Which part of the Government?”

“The President’s office,” Suki explained. I gave up. It was clear that she was either genuine, or a very good spy. Even if she was the former, the odds were good that she’d been sent, at least in part, to report back on my activities. I couldn’t blame them for being a little paranoid — at the moment, my force was the most powerful force on the planet — but it was just a little insulting. “I can type, handle most normal clerical work and link you to the most powerful people on the planet.”

I wanted to laugh, thinking hard. She had to be a spy, witting or unwitting, and that made her dangerous, yet I could use her. There was something to be said for knowing who the spies were and keeping a quiet eye on her, unless they’d sent her in knowing that she would be noticed and expecting her to distract me from the more… subtle spies. She was trying to attract me and she might have succeeded — hell, she had succeeded — but I had enough experience to know that she was probably bad news.

“Very good,” I said, finally. I’d weighed up all the options. I could have rejected her, but I might not catch the next spy in time. I didn’t mind them knowing most of what we were doing, but they’d probably take exception to some of our activities. “Can you shoot?”

“Why, no sir,” Suki said. She sounded bemused at my suggestion. “We’re not taught how to shoot in school…”

I almost — not quite — rolled my eyes. I hadn’t been taught how to shoot in school either, but Russell had… and, overall, Heinlein produced a greater number of marksmen. They learned to shoot from the moment they could handle a gun and some of their marksmen were just out of this universe. Suki would be starting late, but she’d have to learn; it would have looked odd if I’d refused her training.

“You’ll have to learn,” I said, firmly. “It’s a rule; everyone who works for me here has to pass a series of qualifying tests on everything from firearms to basic tactics. If you’re willing to go through the training and tests, I’ll be happy to have you here. If not… well, goodbye.”

She flushed, slightly. “They sent me here to work for you…”

“Yes, they did,” I agreed. “They sent you knowing that you would have to qualify for the position.” I was tempted to add that there was more to any job than just waving her breasts under the interviewer’s eyes, but declined. It would have been cruel and I like to think I’m better than that. “That’s what you have to do to qualify. If you can’t hack it, then I’d suggest you left before you got someone injured or killed.”

She glared at me and I half-expected her to storm out in a rage, but then she nodded. “Very well,” she said, furiously. Her breasts shook as she quivered. “I will qualify.”

“Excellent,” I said, with false cheer. “Report to the Master Sergeant and tell him to issue you a recruit’s uniform, and then report back here. I’ll have some work for you to do then.”

I smiled inwardly as she left. One way or another, her employers would get more than they bargained for. A dose of training would be enough to see what she was actually made of… and it might even make a soldier out of her. Who knew?

A week later, we began recruiting in earnest.

Chapter Four

Basic Training (Boot Camp): The process of induction into a military unit used for new recruits. Basic Training covers the basics; it ensures that the recruits are healthy, teaches them the basics of discipline and firearms and breaks them down and rebuilds them into proper soldiers. The exact process varies from army to army.

–The UNPF Training Manual

“There are a lot of them,” Peter observed, as we watched the queue. We’d barely opened the recruiting office and hundreds of volunteers had arrived. There were so many that I was starting to suspect someone had prepared it in advance. “We’re not going to be able to train all of them at once, boss.”

I nodded. We’d set up three offices in New Copenhagen and if all of them were as busy as the main office, we’d have thousands of recruits. The clerks were working overtime to register them all, fingerprint them and give them a date for presenting themselves at the bus terminal. We could have asked them to make their own way to the spaceport, and the training grounds we’d prepared near it, but I figured that it would be easier to bus them in. Besides, it would cut down on the number of scenes outside the spaceport.

“There’s hundreds of them,” Suki said, astonished. I’d brought her along as native guide… and also because I didn’t want to leave her alone at the spaceport, not yet. “How many are you going to take?”

“As many as we can,” I said. “We’ll start with a couple of hundred, more or less, and move on from there. The ones we select to start training today will be the first class, but once we get up to speed we’ll be training thousands of them at a time. The UN used to train far more at any one time, but they had hundreds of training facilities. We have one.”

We walked over to one of the clerks and listened as she collected information from the recruit in front of her. He was a young man in his late teens, his face marked with the traces of acne, and he looked nervous as he recited his address, education details and resistance credentials. We’d hung a large sign threatening dire punishment to anyone who lied to his or her recruiting officer, but it was amazing how many people had joined the resistance when the UN pulled out. The prospective recruit looked uneasy when she finally took his fingerprints — the planet had nothing like a full database of its citizens — and I guessed that he had a criminal record of some kind. I didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t rape or murder. The military machine would grind mild criminal tendencies out of him.

“Report to the bus terminal in a week,” she said, finally. The recruit nodded, stood up and turned to leave. “If you don’t show then, don’t bother showing at all.”

Suki gave me an enquiring look. “Everyone has second thoughts when they join the army,” I explained, softly. “We try to give them a chance to rethink their decision, if we have time. If they don’t show up when they’re called, we won’t bother to worry about it; we’ll just note that they won’t be accepted again, should they try to apply at a later date. After they get to the training base and take the oath, things get a hell of a lot more serious.”

We walked back outside and into the middle of what seemed like a riot. A crowd of young men and women, mainly women, were protesting our presence, shouting slogans that had been old when the human race had been young. Some were personally insulting, while others were merely amusing, or silly. MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR was a popular one, even though it was perfectly possible to do both. Others attacked the President, or the Council, or even the Mountain Men, blaming them for the unwelcome presence of foreign mercenaries. I rolled my eyes, relaxing slightly as I realised that the police had the entire scene under their watchful eye, but I felt a prickling in the back of my neck as we walked over to the groundcar. Someone out there didn’t like us.

“They’re Communists,” Suki said, when I asked her. “They’re mainly students from the university who think that they’re going to be drafted into a planetary army or some such nonsense. That’s not going to happen, is it?”

“I doubt it,” I said, although it was possible that the Government might start a draft later. I don’t like using conscripts myself and few professional militaries disagree with me, although some worlds do make military training mandatory. I’d prefer to have the Drill Sergeants kicking the shit out of someone who volunteered to be there. “In any case, what happens after we’re finished and leave is none of our business, is it?”

We watched the protesters for a few more minutes, but nothing much happened. They were a surprisingly well-ordered group of protesters; I’d been in protest marches that turned to riots on command, attacking people the UN had Officially Classified as Evil. I decided that they’d probably been carefully primed; they weren’t even hassling the recruits. That happened on Earth and several other worlds, but not here.

“Interesting,” Peter agreed, when I pointed it out to him. “This is a smaller place than Earth. It could be that they know their fellow youths…”

“Could be,” I agreed. I checked my watch and smiled. “We’ve just got time for lunch and then we’ll have to be back at the spaceport for the induction.”

“Of course,” Suki agreed. “I know just where to take you, too.”

I’d been curious what kind of local food Svergie produced and it was a pleasant surprise. Some of the lunch was cold meat, barely touched with herbs or spices, while other dishes were hot and spicy, a legacy of the Indonesian girls. There didn’t seem to be any prohibition against pork and I ate several small spicy sausages without demur. The combination was interesting, I decided finally, after a dish of spicy chicken and noodles. There were definitely some benefits to the UN’s policy of mixing the races.

We felt stuffed afterwards so I allowed Suki to go on ahead while Peter and I jogged in to the spaceport. I enjoyed the run more than I should, but it was a relief to be somewhere that there was no danger of a hidden sniper, or a sandstorm that would literally strip the flesh from your bones. I felt surprisingly better after we passed through the gates — this time, there was a local policeman to add to the guards from A Company, eyeing their weapons warily — and double-timed it over to the training ground. The first bunch of recruits were already spilling out of the buses, looking lost and alone. That was good. We’d give them a new family here; fathers in the drill instructors, brothers and sisters in their fellow soldiers.

“It brings back memories,” I muttered to Peter, remembering my first day on the drill field. The boys and girls facing the drill sergeants were luckier than I’d been, although they probably wouldn’t see it that way. They were going to be taught by people who knew what they were doing. My trainers couldn’t have found their butts with both hands. “I wonder if they’ll break and run…”

The sergeants were imposing order by the simple expedient of shouting orders at volume and pushing recruits into some semblance of a straight line. It would probably have made some of them cry if the recruits did it like that later, but for the moment it was barely acceptable. I studied them with interest and was pleased to see that most of them didn’t look too scared. There’s no point in pointlessly torturing recruits, even though most of them are dumber than rocks. They need to learn that the torments have a point.

“ATTENTION,” Russell bellowed. His roar could probably be heard for miles. “I am Master Sergeant Russell Kelsey, your training supervisor. You will address me as ‘Sergeant.’ You will not call me ‘sir!’ I actually work for a living.”

He glared at the recruits, measuring them. “You are the sorriest bunch of recruits I have yet seen on this planet,” he said. It was perfectly true, although it was also true that they were the best bunch of receipts he had seen. “You are in this course for one purpose; you are here to become soldiers, the first real soldiers your planet has yet seen. In twelve weeks, we will break you down and build you up again into soldiers. Don’t bother crying to your mommy or whining about your pappy; they’re not here and they can’t help you. You volunteered for this.”

His eyes swept across their ranks. “You are under military discipline now,” he thundered. “You can be punished under the Code of Military Justice” — we’d borrowed Heinlein’s code with a few additions and modifications — “and if necessary sentenced to death by field court-martial. There is no point in whining about lawyers and due process. You’re in the army now. In order that you know what you should not do, we will list the offences against military order every day. You will learn them off by heart. You will not commit them. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” they shouted, a ragged chorus of words.

“What did I tell you about calling me sir?” Russell demanded. “All of you; drop and give me twenty push-ups, now!”

I watched as they struggled through them and finally stumbled back into line. None of them looked cocky now and a few looked downright scared. That was good too; hopefully, they wouldn’t try to push Russell too far. I didn’t want to have to condemn any of them for striking a superior officer. That carried the death sentence under martial law.

“Now,” Russell said, once they’d finished. “Offences against military order, listed as follows; Insubordination, use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, possession and/or consumption of food outside designated eating periods, possession of any contraband, failure to perform duties as assigned to you by lawful authority, being absent without leave and, last, but not least, fraternisation. To repeat; any of those offences will get you a punishment that may range from heavy exercise to being summarily discharged from the army. You will have those offences read to you every day, along with the definition of each offence. You will have no excuse for committing any of them!”

He paused long enough to size them up. “Many of you will have brought drugs, or alcohol, or even food onto this base,” he said, coldly. “When you are taken to be assigned your uniform and regulation-issue underclothes, get rid of them. This is your one warning. You may think that the police wouldn’t charge you with a crime if you are in possession of illegal drugs, but this is the army. If I catch any of you possessing or using drugs on this base, that person will wish that he had never been born!”

“Each class of recruits needs to be shocked out of their complacency,” I muttered to Suki, who had been watching the proceedings with a faintly stunned look on her face. “They also need to know exactly what they cannot do under any circumstances. Back on Earth, the recruits often had to be searched and drugs and shit still got into the bases. Here, we get a little more control.”

Russell was still thundering at his cowed audience. “Insubordination; wilfully disobeying, insulting, or striking a senior officer. Absent without leave; leaving the base or your unit without permission, or failing to report back to your unit at the end of a leave period without permission. Fraternisation; sexual relationships with any of your fellow recruits, or senior officers, or anyone within your military unit. The remainder should require no explaining. If they do, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

His gaze swept across them again. “That building there holds the medical personnel and the outfitters,” he said. “Form a line and march into the building, two by two!”

I pulled Suki away as, behind us, the recruits started to realise that they were going to get a haircut. They’d all have their hair trimmed right back to their bones when the barbers were finished with them, leaving them all looking like proper military cadets rather than louts we’d pulled off the streets. The medical staff would check each and every one of them afterwards and confirm that they were fit for duty. If they weren’t… well, if they were lucky, they wouldn’t have had their haircut by then.

“You’re not going to have them killed, are you?” Suki asked. “Not for…”

“It depends,” I said, vaguely. “Military discipline has to be maintained in the harshest of conditions. Just you wait until they get to the spit test.” She lifted an eyebrow. “The recruits will line up and spit into each others’ faces. The ones who learn not to flinch will pass.”

“I didn’t want to know that,” Suki said. “Why are you so down on… fraternisation?”

“The UN used to allow couples to form among military personnel,” I explained, more openly. “When those units were attacked, they ended up breaking up as the lovers tried to protect each other at the expense of the rest of the unit. They also had problems with jealousy and sexual rivalries that tore unit cohesion apart. There are some planets that bar women from combat altogether, but I’ve always preferred to have a strict law that forbids fraternisation within the ranks.

“I’m sure that those boys and girls will have lovers on the outside and I can’t stop that,” I added. “I wouldn’t even if I could. I can stop them from having sex within the unit and I won’t hesitate to bust someone out of the force for doing it.” I smiled at the vague pun. “It doesn’t matter who, or why. I drew the line and if anyone crosses it, they’re out.”

We reached a massive building, guarded by a pair of soldiers from B Company, who checked our IDs before allowing us to enter. The UN Supply Deport was large enough to take several starships — or so I thought — and utterly packed with supplies. I couldn’t understand how it had remained untouched until I remembered the Fleet garrison, who had kept it in trust for the planetary government. The circumstances of the pull-back hadn’t allowed for the return of all the supplies.

Muna emerged from one of the stacks and waved at us. Her dark face was lit with a sly smile. “You won’t believe how much stuff they abandoned here,” she said, cheerfully. I hadn’t seen her in such a good mood for years, but I suppose that being drenched in enough supplies to make her job easier would please even Muna. “We could operate several divisions on this and never notice the loss.”

I stepped further into the building and wondered if she might be right. There were spare parts for every vehicle in the UN’s inventory and enough weapons to outfit several fighting units. I passed a stack of machine guns and paused to examine a set of assault rifles, before studying a pile of gold coins and various stacks of currency. I couldn’t imagine why the UN General in command of the base had thought he’d need currency from a dozen different worlds. Perhaps it was the bribes he’d accepted — I never met a UN General who wasn’t corrupt — or maybe he’d planned to retire one day. It didn’t matter anyway. We would put the money to good use.

“There are several billion rounds of ammunition here and in the other bunkers,” Muna informed me, seriously. I could believe it. The UN sent out thousands upon thousands of boxes of ammunition, but there was so much paperwork involved with using it — every round had to be accounted for — that training sergeants tended to avoid using ammunition. Heinlein had taught us how foolish that was, but it had come too late. Earth’s civil war was still raging away back on the mother planet. “If the other supply bases have this much…”

I followed her logic. “The Mountain Men have enough to fight and win a civil war,” I concluded. It wasn’t a reassuring thought. The UN’s records of what had actually been in those supply bases were incomplete. They could have much more, or much less. “Have you established a distribution network yet?”

Muna nodded. “I can have it sent anywhere, sir,” she said. “Where do you want it?”

“Make as much as the trainers need available to them,” I ordered, shortly. We were not going to repeat the UN’s error and train our people on simulations only. They’d all have a chance to fire weapons before war broke out. “Get the Company Commanders to go through the listings and see what they want before we come to any other decisions. If we can equip a tank regiment… well, why not?”

“I could give you two reasons,” Muna said. “Would tanks actually do us any good?”

“Maybe,” I said. If we ended up fighting a war, Landshark and Goliath tanks might be very useful. “And the other reason?”

“This planet is very short on fuel,” Muna said. “A petroleum-based industry exists, but it’s very limited. Unless we find a source of crude oil, we’re going to be permanently hamstrung if we become dependent on the vehicles.”

“Oh joy,” I said. It was honestly something I hadn’t thought about, but the UN had a long history of limiting the use of oil-drilling equipment on the Colonies, in the name of protecting the environment. Other worlds used hydrogen-powered vehicles and never felt the lack. “Get in touch with the local oil concerns and see if you can find us enough, all right? The last thing we need is to be permanently short of fuel.”

Chapter Five

The Progressive Party claims that, if it were elected into power, it could force the ‘rich’ to help feed and support the poor, although naturally they don’t put it as crudely as that. Their arguments sound convincing, but in the hindsight of history, it is clear that their programs are the kiss of death to modern economies. This is not a flaw in the system, but a feature. It accounts for Earth’s collapse into an interstellar empire.

–The Secret History of Svergie

The first two weeks of training went surprisingly well. I’d been expecting that we’d have some incidents, but the few we had were swiftly squashed by the Drill Sergeants. A handful of recruits were rejected for medical conditions, a handful more were reluctantly allowed to quit when they discovered they couldn’t tolerate military life, but on the whole events went surprisingly well. I watched from a distance — half of running a military unit is knowing when to stand back and give your subordinates their head — as the recruits advanced towards becoming soldiers.

“They’re going to be riflemen,” Peter predicted, one evening. “They’re not going to become specialists until we can set up training schools for specialists. There might be a sniper or two among them, but…”

I nodded. “We’re not interested in building up specialist units yet,” I agreed. We’d have to hold off on building an armoured force until we’d solved the fuel shortage problem. I still wasn’t sure how that had been allowed to develop in the first place, but knowing the UN someone had paid a vast amount of money to have the planet develop like that. “We just need an infantry force so far.”

“So far,” Peter said, reminding me about the Mountain Men, and the farmers, and the various political militia groups, and all of the other problems we would face. The planet might succeed in developing a stable political base, and even an interstellar-level economy, but only if it survived its growing pains. I assigned officers to monitor the situation and held frequent conferences with Commander Webster. Fleet’s view of the situation was similar to our own. The planet was heading towards a very rocky patch. “So, how many of the recruits came from a particular political faction?”

I had my first inkling of the answer to that question two months after we arrived. The officer at the gate called my office and informed me that I had a visitor; Councillor Frida Holmqvist. I wasn’t particularly surprised. The political parties had been sniffing around our offices in town for weeks and had even tried to send inspectors into the spaceport, although I had deterred that as best as I could. I could give someone without military experience a completely useless tour and they’d never know what they’d missed, but I didn’t want to know how they would misinterpret what they saw. Suki’s reactions were interesting enough.

“I see,” I said, when they informed me. I hadn’t expected the Progressives to make the first move. I’d been betting on the Conservatives being the first to ask to talk to me privately. “Please have her shown into my office.”

I’d arranged procedures for handling visitors just after we’d taken over the spaceport. Frida wouldn’t be allowed to wander off on her own, or bring other people into the inner complex. I’d have preferred to strip search her, just in case, but the general level of technology on the planet precluded anything that could be smuggled past our defences. I wasn’t pleased about it — they could have purchased something more advanced and dangerous from Heinlein — but there was little choice. Stripping her naked and carrying out a full search, including a cavity search, would probably have annoyed her. I didn’t need additional enemies.

Frida looked as beautiful as ever, a real Nordic goddess, her appearance barely marred by her scar. I found myself studying her as I rose to greet her and made a mental note not to underestimate her. She had a mind like a steel trap. She wore a very traditional long skirt and a scarf in her hair, although it didn’t seem to serve any religious purpose. Her outfit also seemed to diminish her breasts.

“Welcome to Camp Currie,” I said. We’d put our suggestions for names in a hat and someone — I suspected Russell — had won. I’d wanted something a great deal more sarcastic. “How may I be of service?”

Frida smiled, but it didn’t quite touch her eyes. “You can explain why you rejected the officers we sent you,” she said, firmly. I tried my best to look as if her words meant nothing to me, but I knew what she was talking about, unfortunately. I was a little surprised to discover that she was being this blatant about it. “They all had good careers in the resistance and sound backers.”

“I’m sure they did,” I agreed, calmly. “I must say, Councillor…”

“You chose to order them to leave your camp,” Frida said, all trace of humour gone. “Why did you refuse to accept them?”

I took a breath. “The problems of running an actual army and a resistance group are very different,” I explained, wondering if she would understand. “The resistance group must operate, if you’ll pardon my metaphor, as fish in the sea of the people. There is little discipline and no respect for the rules of war. The leader must operate by personal example and, if he is killed, the group may fall apart.

“An army, by contrast, operates as part of a larger structure,” I added. “The problems of running an army include maintaining strict discipline, uniformity and strict respect for the rules of war. The kind of people who specialise in one set of skills may not translate well into the other set.”

I paused. “And there is another issue. Back when I was in the UN, the kind of officers who got promoted were the officers who kept up with their paperwork and pleased their superiors, not the warriors who went out and got their hands dirty. The results tended to have incompetent officers placed in command of units and, if they were lucky, breaking them. If they were unlucky, they racked up huge death tolls. I will not commission any officer who hasn’t come up from the ranks and gained actual experience in military operations. He would merely get a lot of good men killed.”

Frida scowled at me. “And yet they’re trusted by the government,” she pointed out. I don’t know how she managed to say that with a straight face. “What would you do if we chose to commission them anyway?”

“I would refuse them,” I said, flatly. She looked as if she were about to explode, so I hastened to explain. “I was hired to build this planet a professional army. An army that becomes led by paper-pushers and clerks is not a proper army. The only qualification for advancement that I will accept is experience in combat, or experience in heavy training.”

“They had experience in the resistance,” Frida said, coldly. “Or doesn’t that count?”

“No,” I said. “As I said, the problems are different. Your resistance didn’t even come close to pushing the UN off your planet. You barely managed to annoy them; they certainly never committed millions of troops to holding you down. You won your war when Admiral Walker” — my close personal friend, I carefully didn’t add — “took the UN out of commission. As far as I’m concerned, your resistance men haven’t seen the elephant.”

That wasn’t the only problem. From what little we’d been able to learn, the real resistance men had come from the mountains, where they could fight an underground war against the UN on their own terrain. The miners had supported them and, from time to time, protected them. The cities had been too firmly under the UN’s thumb to generate much resistance, although there had been some spectacular attacks. The Generals in command of the war, however, had known that they were not going to lose it. They’d only withdrawn when the UN collapsed.

And I was sure that the officers the Government had selected had been selected for their political reliability. I wouldn’t have put it past Frida to try to stack the deck in favour of people she knew and trusted, delivering the army I’d built into the hands of the Progressives. It probably wouldn’t work out perfectly — soldiers are not dumb animals, no matter what the UN says — but if they got their hooks in deep enough, it might not matter. The militia wouldn’t be able to mount a defence.

“I see,” Frida said. She leaned closer, stroking her chin. “May we be frank with one another, Andrew?”

The use of my first name only heightened my suspicions, but I smiled. “Of course, Frida,” I said, with false cheer. “What do you wish to tell me?”

“The Progressive Party currently holds eight seats in the Council,” Frida said, with the air of a woman making a speech. “As you are no doubt aware, we will almost certainly win the next election and with it the government. We want to know where you will stand when we take power.”

I frowned, trying to compose a reply. “I know little about how your government works,” I said, stalling for time. “How can you be sure of victory?”

Frida smiled. “There are twenty-one districts on the planet and each of them elects one councillor,” she explained, with the air of someone who enjoyed lecturing. She probably told her subordinates the same to keep them working towards their goal. “There are, therefore, twenty-one seats on the Council. The President is directly appointed by majority vote and serves as the Head of State. He also has vast influence over the Council and may, if his party holds most of the seats, rule without effective opposition.”

It sounded oddly primitive for a developed world, but I’d seen worse. “I see,” I said. “And you hold eight of those seats? That’s not a majority.”

“No,” Frida agreed. “The Liberty Party holds four, the Communists hold one, the Independence Party holds one and the Conservatives hold seven. In the next election, assuming that the polls are accurate, the Liberty Party will lose at least two of its seats and probably crease to exist as a competitive political party. The Communists support us if pushed. The Conservatives have no appeal to those living in the cities. I suspect that we will wind up with ten to twelve seats; an absolute majority.”

I see,” I said, finally. “And you want to know where I stand?”

Frida nodded. “At the moment, you’re training the army,” she said. “That makes you one of the most powerful people on the planet, unless you piss Fleet off and they send in the Marines to remove you.”

“True,” I agreed, carefully. My objective was to stabilise the planet, but if Frida was right and the Progressives did win the next election decisively, the planet would very rapidly become unstable. “If I may be equally frank with you” — she nodded — “my men and I work for the people who pay us.”

“Mercenaries,” Frida said. She made it sound like a curse. “And you have no loyalty to anyone?”

“Each other,” I said. I couldn’t blame her for her opinion of mercenaries. I didn’t regard most of them very highly myself. “Oh, we won’t switch sides on you if someone offers us a higher price; our contract specifically precludes that, unless you refuse to pay us. You have our services as long as you meet your obligations.”

“I see,” Frida said. Her smile was very cold and calculating. “And then you would support us if we became the planetary government?”

“As long as you pay us,” I confirmed, untruthfully. I would have to give some thought to the matter. The planetary government was unstable, but if one party gained an advantage the other parties would see no choice, but open rebellion. Civil war would break out and spread rapidly. “I might add, however, that I do not tolerate political interference with my men.”

“Of course,” Frida said, having filed me away under ‘easily bought.’ “What do you have to say about the complaints from the police department?”

“Complaints?” I asked, as innocently as I could. “There have been complaints?”

“Your men have been involved in fights,” Frida said, coldly. “Those fights have caused considerable damage and injuries to civilians.”

I matched her tone. “My men, while drinking in bars on leave, have been attacked by street toughs, Communists and protesters,” I said, firmly. “They have authority to defend themselves if attacked. So far, I don’t think anyone’s been killed, but everyone who got hurt thoroughly deserved it.”

“And the demands for compensation?”

I looked into her blue eyes. “They started fights with my men,” I said. “If they survived the experience, they should count themselves lucky and leave it at that. I am not in the habit of rewarding people for accidents and injuries caused by their own stupidity. I note that no one, not even the Communists, have attempted to bring my men up on charges.”

“No,” Frida agreed. “It was feared that you might react badly.”

“Or that my men might prove themselves innocent?” I asked. “Why don’t you send those youths out to work on farms, or something else useful? There’s plenty of land on this planet for expansion. They don’t have to swagger around the city all day, mugging civilians and living off the proceeds.”

“We can’t send them out to the farms,” Frida protested. “They wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do?”

“Then teach them,” I suggested, knowing that it was useless. The Progressives drew much of their support from the street gangs — those who depended on government largess — and sending them out to farm would deprive them of some of their strength. I made a mental note to look into the possibility of opening new farms, but put it aside for the moment. There would be time enough for that later.

“Besides, the farmers wouldn’t accept them,” Frida added. “We sent experts to advise the farmers on how to grow their crops and the farmers laughed at them. They even drove them away with guns! We can barely take a census, let alone anything else.”

“I’m sure they did,” I murmured. I’d seen the pattern before, but Earth remained the poster child for the end results of such disastrous policies. “It worked so well for Earth…”

“It did,” Frida agreed. “The people there live in a paradise where their every need is catered for by the government.”

I had to bite my cheek to prevent a laugh from bursting out. The hell of it was that she believed it. I doubted that anyone on the planet knew about Earth’s real condition, but they’d all seen the UN propaganda broadcasts, with their claims about how Earth was a paradise and how the Colonies could be a paradise too, if they stopped resisting and accepted that the UN knew what was best for them. Earth had looted most of the Colonies and it hadn’t been enough to keep the planet afloat. I didn’t want to get involved in Earth’s ongoing civil war, but the death toll had already passed the billion-death mark.

“My position is simple enough,” I said, coldly. I wasn’t going to play games any longer. “I work for the government, provided it pays me. I also want a ROE Contract.”

Frida blinked. “A roe contract?”

“ROE; Rules of Engagement,” I explained. “At the moment, we have none beyond our standard ROE, which basically prohibit kinetic non-reactive operations.” I saw her puzzled look and smiled thinly. “We can respond to attacks, but we cannot launch attacks, or combat operations. I need a ROE Contract from the Government specifying what we can and cannot do. Without it… well, Fleet might take an interest in us.”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Frida said. I suspected she’d consult her lawyers before she mentioned it to the President, or anyone else. The Progressives would probably try to draft the contract and then ram it down their throats. “What happens if you don’t like the contract?”

“I suggest revisions,” I said. “Look, I’m training an army and officers to run it. I need to tell them what they can and cannot do, or there will be accidents and disasters, all of which will cost lives. Are they allowed to burn farms? Are they allowed to torture suspects? Are they even allowed to take prisoners? You need to get me answers to those questions soon, before the first class is ready to be deployed.”

Her expression made her look as if she’d been hit with a bargepole. “I can send you a recommended version if you like,” I offered. She nodded gratefully. “Once you get the Council to sign off on it, we can begin combat operations at any time.”

“There’s no one to fight,” she mumbled, before collecting herself. “I shall see to it personally.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Now, was there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

As it happened, the answer was yes. Frida spent hours listing every possible complaint, which I shot down as calmly as possible. She probably didn’t realise it, but she was giving me insights into her own mind, and how badly we’d been infiltrated by the political parties. Why would she have complained about the month the recruits had spent without any outside communications unless she had spies among the recruits?

And she wasn’t the last politician to seek my company. Over the next month, I met with representatives from all of the political parties, even the Communists. None of them impressed me as much as the President had, but all of them left vaguely disappointed. I’d been careful to remain openly mercenary. As long as they thought they could buy my loyalty, we were safe. I just hoped that that would continue after the election.

Chapter Six

No military man can afford to be a virgin where politics are concerned. Although most soldiers will claim to distrust politicians and politics, the smart ones understand that wars — all wars — grow out of political causes. It is therefore wise for the military officer to study local politics carefully. They may serve as a harbinger of local conflicts.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

One month before the election, I called a Council of War.

“It’s been five months,” I said, as soon as coffee was served and the room checked for bugs. I was fairly certain that none of the factions on Svergie had a hope of slipping a bug through our detectors, but neglecting precautions tended to lead to disaster. It was a bad habit to develop. “In one month, Svergie goes to the polls to elect a new government, at which point we may find ourselves thrown into combat. We have to be ready.”

My gaze swept the room. “Russell?”

I smiled as Russell adjusted his uniform before speaking. Councils of War were common back in the United Nations Peace Force, with every officer trying to cover his ass if the operation went badly wrong — victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, as the saying goes — but much rarer on Heinlein. Russell would probably have preferred to give a straight report and return to drilling the new recruits, but I needed his input. It didn’t help that only four of us knew the true purpose of the mission. I didn’t dare let that slip out into the open.

“We have absorbed nearly six thousand recruits with what I may as well term superhuman efforts and contributions from every department,” Russell said, flatly. “I have a feeling that we’re stretching ourselves to the limit, but overall I’m fairly pleased with progress — not that I’d tell them that, of course.” He smiled. “We graduated the first few classes, branded them as soldiers rather than recruits, and started to give them harder training exercises. They’ve developed unit pride and cohesion, at least in the exercises, but the real test will come when they go to war.”

He paused, considering his next words. “We’ve had seven fatal training accidents and thirty-two injuries that range from modest to severe,” he continued. “This course is wimpy compared to some of the courses I went through back home” — there were some good-natured chuckles; Russell’s original plans for the training would have killed half the recruits — “but it definitely makes men out of them. The dead recruits were graduated posthumously and we held full funeral ceremonies for them. Their families insisted on reclaiming the bodies and we saw to it they were given a proper send-off. The injured were put on light duties if they could handle it; the seriously injured were given medical discharges, although two of them want to continue to serve in any capacity. I’ve sent them to train as clerks, although one of them will remain permanently wheelchair bound.

“The majority of the recruits have mastered the basic skills and have definitely learned to shoot,” he concluded. “We’re lucky that this place doesn’t have what is laughably called a martial tradition; we were able to break them of the few bad habits they’d picked up from the videos the UN used to show. We’ve burned through hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, but I feel that it was a fair price to pay…”

“Speak for yourself,” Muna muttered.

“…For the many benefits of having soldiers who actually know what it’s like to fire a weapon. We moved from assault rifles and pistols to heavy weapons and antitank systems and hammered those into their heads. We’re short on SHORAD units, it should be noted, but we trained on portable SAM missiles anyway. They might be required. Overall, by Election Day, we should have three to four thousand qualified soldiers ready and waiting.”

I smiled. “What about local commanders?”

Russell smiled. “We’ve identified several promising commanders and sergeants within the recruits,” he said. “In a month, we should have some local lieutenants, maybe even Captains, although that’s really pushing it too fast. The officers they tried to foster on us are utterly unprepared for the position and need to go through Basic Training before they can be trusted with anything. I have a feeling that the real local officers will rise from the ranks rather than being imposed on the soldiers from above.”

“Good,” I said. “Ed?”

“The three Companies are at readiness and we’re rotating through the duty areas and leave,” Ed said, sipping his own coffee. He was more at ease in the Council than Russell; like me, he’d escaped from the UNPF. He also had a simpler task. “It’s annoying to lose people to the demands of the training cadre, but we have enough reserves to cover our current duties. There have been no attempts to attack the spaceport or Camp Currie, but there have been several attempts to sneak into the secure locations, mainly by local reporters. I’d have preferred to shoot them, but as you ordered we’ve simply tossed them out stark naked. It seemed to deter them.”

“Not that much of a hardship in this weather,” I observed, thoughtfully. It was moving towards high summer and the temperature was rising steadily. “And what about the bar fights?”

Ed smiled, before remembering that he should look properly regretful. “The fights are always provoked by local gangs,” he said, confirming what I’d believed. “My men have given a pretty good impression of themselves and have sent several hundred thugs to the hospital. It seems that the local police can’t decide if they love us or hate us; one soldier rescued a woman from being raped and beat her attacker into a bloody mass. The Sergeants have been riding hard on the drinking and have prevented anyone from drinking too much, or using drugs while we’re here.”

I nodded. It wasn’t against regulations to drink, but being unfit for duty was a serious offence and I wouldn’t hesitate to order anyone foolish enough to report for duty drunk to run the gauntlet. It was something that people decried as barbaric, but discipline had to be maintained. There had to be both regulation and the demonstrated willingness to punish breaches of the regulations.

“We’re probably going to start losing our edge soon,” he concluded. “I’d be happier if we had someone to fight.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said. “Muna. You’re up.”

Muna nodded tightly. “I’ve been conducting an industrial and economic survey of Svergie,” she said, tapping the map I’d placed on the window with one dark finger. “The results have been interesting and I’ve placed a full report in the computers, but for now I’ll just give you the highlights. Svergie is not a modern economy, but roughly at 1985-2020 levels. That’s not uncommon for a colony world, but there are some odd points. As I believe I noted earlier, the fuel here is largely oil-based, rather than hydrogen or fusion power cells. I think, reading between the lines, that the first oil company slipped some UN inspector a pretty hefty bribe; the UN’s figures bare only a passing resemblance to reality. Overall…

“The factories here can produce tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters for us,” she continued. “I doubt that Svergie will be looking at a major arms-exporting industry anytime soon, but they should be able to meet local needs. The problem lies with the workplace disputes that have been growing more frequent as memories of the occupation start to fade. Basically, the highly-trained workers want more wages while the unskilled workers want equal pay, while there are very clear limits on just how much the owners can afford to pay. Svergie has discovered unions, but they haven’t yet learned how to use them. My best guess is that the situation is going to worsen before it gets better, sir; there’s almost no investment in local industries at all, just because of the political stalemate. What’s the point of investing when the Progressives or the Communists might take it all away from you?

“We need to encourage them to start prospecting for more oil,” she concluded. “That’s the single greatest weakness…”

“Neat,” Russell said. He scowled down at the table. “What about convincing them to switch to hydrogen?”

“They can’t,” Muna said. “They can extract hydrogen from seawater or from the gas giant. They don’t have the infrastructure to do either, nor do they have the technology to develop it quickly. They’d need to build up their space-based industries in any case, yet they would first need to bootstrap a new space capability; they only have a handful of shuttles, all ex-UN issue. They’d need to purchase the equipment from off-world and they don’t have much to offer in return.”

I frowned. “Can’t they ask Fleet for help?”

Muna’s face flickered, just for a second. “Fleet is unlikely to be able to spare the resources,” she said. “They’d insist on a fuelling facility that Fleet starships could use, rather than just a simple cloud-scoop. I doubt that they’d consider it worth their while. Some of the big interstellar corporations might disagree, but they’d insist on a stiff price tag or even direct control. Svergie probably wouldn’t be interested.

“More importantly, the oil workers would object, strongly,” she concluded. “If hydrogen was to be brought into the system, they’d feel the pinch and protest. It might be hard to convince the Government to accept it when they faced losing so many votes. The same could be said about too many other parts of the economy. They’re heading towards a spending crisis, yet any attempt to deter that spending crisis would result in disaster.”

“Neat,” Peter observed. “Civil war, here we come.”

“Yes, sergeant,” Muna agreed. “TechnoMage?”

TechnoMage nodded. He’d come into my service after discovering that his hacking exploits had made his homeworld too hot for him. He’d once reprogrammed a UN orbital weapon to fire on UN forces on the ground, which had killed over seven hundred soldiers. I didn’t bear a grudge, but I’d advised him to keep it to himself. He also served as my chief spy, hence the name. Even I didn’t know what he was originally called.

“I’ll be brief,” he said. He’d watched the recordings of my meetings with the politicians. I should have told them that they were being recorded, but people are normally much more talkative when they think they’re not on the record. “I may be wrong — polls are not an actual science, no matter what the UN claims — but the Progressive Party is almost certainly going to win the coming election. It took several weeks to parse out how the system works, but overall the votes going to them will have more… weight than the votes going to the other parties. That is just as obvious to them as it is to us — perhaps more so — and they’re going to react badly.”

He paused. “The Communist Party is already talking revolution,” he said, to my surprise. “They’re officially viewing the Progressives as fellow travellers, but their leadership seems to believe that the Progressives are not… ah, progressive enough for their tastes, or that they’re planning a purge of the Communists after the election. Their counter-surveillance tech is worse than the UN’s tech, but they’ve been very careful not to say anything too incriminating out loud. I have a feeling, however, that they’re definitely planning something bad for after the election.

“The same can be said for the farmers and miners,” he continued. “The irony is that Svergie’s economy is too interdependent, but…”

I held up a hand. “Explain,” I ordered. I hadn’t spent long enough studying the local economy, obviously. “How interdependent are they?”

“I’m going to have to lecture,” TechnoMage explained. I rolled my eyes. He loved lecturing us. No matter what he’d said, I’d never heard a concise briefing from him — ever. “Svergie can — this is a generalisation, of course — be said to have four sectors; the cities, the industries, the mines and the farms. The majority of the population lives in the cities and is largely unproductive from an economic point of view. This is reflected in their voting system, where seventeen of the voting districts are within the cities. Basically, the cities and the industries co-exist, while buying food from the farms and mined ores from the mines.”

He smiled. “The cities need the food to survive and they need the ores because it’s about the only thing that Svergie can export,” he said. “They therefore need them both as cheaply as possible, but the producers are… objecting to their treatment by the government. This sends unrest down into the industries, which the farms and mines need to produce their equipment, and sparks off more unrest. The Government isn’t helping by insisting on trying to pass laws that affect the farmers and miners without giving them anything in return, or even listening to their concerns. There was a law being passed that forbids the use of child labour…”

“I don’t understand,” Peter said. “What’s wrong… ah.”

“The farmer children are brought up to help with the farm,” TechnoMage confirmed. “The law would have prohibited the farmers from allowing their children to work on the farm, even in the most minor jobs. It sounded good, but it was so poorly worded that the farmers ended up refusing to tolerate it. The Government backed down on that issue, but continued to spout out an endless series of laws and regulations that annoyed and then outraged the farmers. Worse, they’re driving up farm prices at the same time they need to drive them down… and yet, they cannot force the farmers to lower their prices, now. In a month…”

I followed his logic. “They’ll be able to pass whatever laws they want,” I said, sourly. “I see your point.”

“I don’t get it,” Ed snapped. “Why can’t they move those bastard street children up to the farms and teach them something about working for a living?”

“They’ve tried on a small scale,” TechnoMage commented. “It was largely a failure. The youths who were sent up to the farms were hardly volunteers and didn’t want to be there. Some deserted almost at once and managed to get back to the cities. Two stole from their hosts and were arrested and charged with theft. One raped a farmer’s daughter and was shot by an outraged farmer. That farmer, by the way, was charged with manslaughter and is currently an outlaw, somewhere up in the mountains.”

He shrugged. “The program, worst of all, cost the government votes,” he concluded. “There’s always some damn fool telling the people that they can have something for nothing and… well, it’s an easy thing to believe.”

“Understood,” I said. I looked down at the map for a long moment. “And your final conclusion?”

“Svergie is heading for a disaster,” TechnoMage said. There was no dissent. “If the Progressives win the election, the farmers and miners will almost certainly revolt, as will the Communists. If the President attempts to stop them… well, they’d have the votes in Council to remove them. If the Progressives lose the election, they’ll still have plenty of influence and probably also a violent option of their own.”

“And they see us as mercenaries,” Peter commented, in a vaguely insulted tone. “Do you think they see us doing their dirty work?”

“As far as they know, we are mercenaries,” I pointed out, dryly. “TechnoMage, could we rig the election?”

TechnoMage looked uncomfortable. “Probably not,” he said. “The voting districts have been carefully studied by all of the major parties. I doubt we could deliver a convincing result that didn’t give the Progressives a victory. Even if we prevented them forming a government, they would still be able to ally with the Communists and form an impregnable voting bloc. We couldn’t give the Conservatives or the Liberty Party a victory without rigging the election in such a way as to ensure that it would be noticed.”

“And we’re not here to rig their elections,” Russell added, firmly. “The best thing we can do for Svergie is build them the army they need.”

“The one that will be used against the rebels after the election,” TechnoMage commented, dryly.

“We’re not here to judge,” Russell snapped. “We’re here to do a job.”

“Enough,” I said, before they could start a fight. “Unless there is any other business, I am declaring this meeting closed.”

Peter, Muna and TechnoMage remained behind after the others had filed out the door. “We probably couldn’t rig the election anyway,” TechnoMage said, once the door had closed. “This planet… well, it’s primitive in many ways. Their computers are junk even compared to the UN’s crappy scrap heaps, so they use humans to record and count the votes. We’d have to stuff the ballot boxes and it is pretty likely that we’d be caught at it.”

“Oh, my god,” Peter intoned. “The dead have risen and they’re voting Conservative.”

“Quite,” TechnoMage agreed. “Sir, unless you want to launch an open assault on the government now, we’re going to have to just… watch and see what happens.”

“I see,” I said, coldly. Fleet would almost certainly step in if we intervened that openly. Besides, taking New Copenhagen would be easy, but keeping it would be hard. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

I looked over at Muna. “Work out a plan for investing in their industrial base and see if we can improve it,” I ordered. “TechnoMage, keep working on penetrating their datanet and see if you can locate anything we can use for leverage. Peter, you’re with me. I feel an urge to spar.”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said.

“Remind me of something,” I added. “Next week, the President is coming here, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said. “It’s the graduation day for the current lead class.”

“Good,” I said. “I think I want to have a few words with him after the ceremony.”

Chapter Seven

Graduation Day: The Ceremony in which a recruit class is formally decorated as soldiers and honoured as such, before being assigned to their units and operating base. It is a time of celebration and yet, even in the heat of the ceremony, discipline is absolute.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“This is an impressive display,” the President said, as we watched the newly-minted soldiers lining up in front of their trainers. For once, the drill sergeants weren’t shouting or hazing the recruits, but being as pleased with them as they ever were — acting as if they might just barely survive their first years as soldiers. “What’s the point of the ceremony?”

I shrugged. “To remind them that they all sweated blood and struggled to get as far as they have and to convince them that it was all worthwhile,” I said. “To show them the comradeship of their fellow soldiers and how they’re all part of the same system, even though they’re going to be going to different units. To reward them for their suffering and promise them further suffering in the future, even though they’ve made it through the hardest part of the training. To…

“Pick one or all of them, Mr President,” I added. “With such baubles armies are led.”

“I see,” the President said. I would have been surprised if he had understood, at least completely. Civilians rarely understood the need for such ceremonies, either Graduation Day or the more-feared Last Night, where the recruits would be hazed one final time by the graduated soldiers before welcoming them into the ranks. The training never really stopped, of course; they’d be spending the next few months exercising as soldiers. “And you got them decent uniforms.”

“Yep,” I said, pleased with myself. Muna had rounded up a few hundred local seamstresses and hired them to sew the uniforms themselves. I had considered using the UN uniforms that had been abandoned at the spaceport, but it would probably have been impolitic. As it was, the simple green uniform was impressive enough for the local civilians; the soldiers who had gone on leave after graduating had been boasting about their conquests. On Svergie, all the nice girls seemed to love a soldier. It was a shame that that wasn’t true of Earth. “They’ll get urban or rural battledress for actual service, of course, but they deserve at least one nice uniform.”

We watched as the Drill Sergeants pinned on rank insignia and a handful of training medals. Some of the recruits from each class had already been marked out for advancement, but they’d all get at least six months experience in the ranks before they were promoted, unless they had to be promoted into a dead man’s shoes. It was something we’d borrowed from Heinlein, where every senior officer needed to have experience as a common soldier, not the UN. The UN had had a habit of promoting the wrong people.

“And finally, the oath,” I said. “At this point, Mr President, your young men become soldiers.”

He watched, a faint tear in his eye, as the soldiers swore loyalty to the planet’s constitution. I’d expected more political faction fights over what oath they’d be taking, but surprisingly enough a compromise had been reached fairly quickly. They wouldn’t be swearing loyalty to any one person, or political party, or even the government, but to the constitution that governed the planet. Svergie’s constitution had its flaws — it had been designed for the planet before the UN got involved — but it was surprisingly simple. I’d seen worlds where the constitution occupied several massive volumes and no one believed in it.

“And there they go,” I concluded, as the soldiers headed for the gates. It wasn’t a very orderly procession, but the Drill Sergeants tolerated it on Graduation Day. “They’ll be out at one of the bases after a week’s leave and they’ll be formed into units. If all goes according to plan, we should even be able to hold a major exercise within the year.”

“If everything remains peaceful,” the President said. He looked over at Suki, who was watching the display as well. She wore a simple unmarked uniform herself; she’d wanted to keep wearing her normal outfit, but I’d forbidden her from wearing it on a military base. It would have been bad for discipline, even if she did look stunning. Besides, she also looked good in a uniform. “Is there a place we can talk alone?”

I nodded and led him away from the parade ground, back towards my office. Ed and Russell would take care of any last-minute problems, unless civil war broke out almost at once. I’d quietly kept the defence of the spaceport in the hands of A Company, while B and C Company mentored the new Svergie units, just in case. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the new units we’d raised and trained, but I did want to keep them away from temptation. Some of them were almost certainly picked men — by one or more of the parties.

My office hadn’t improved much since I’d occupied it, although I had hung up a large map of the planet and some organisation charts, mainly to distract visitors. Most of what I needed to know was locked away in my head or in the secure computers — at least, we hoped they were the secure computers. The planet’s computer industry might have been trapped in the dark ages — they could barely produce something holding a terabyte of data — but we knew that they had purchased some items from off-planet. If we’d been able to identify what, and who, I would have been a lot happier.

“I’m sorry it isn’t more comfortable,” I said, sincerely. A military office has no business being comfortable — the UN, naturally, treated its senior officers like kings — but the President really needed a comfortable chair. He looked older than the last time I’d seen him, as if the stresses of the job were wearing him down, bit by bit. I wanted to advise bed rest, or even a long holiday, but that simply wasn’t an option.

“It’s fine as it is,” the President assured me, but I knew he was lying. “It’s just been a long day and I’m tired.”

“But not of the day,” I said, pouring him a mug of strong coffee. It wasn’t what I would have normally fed to a President, but UN-issue coffee is good at keeping people awake. It was probably the one thing the UN got right. “Are you worried about the election?”

The President nodded. “The Council is fairly evenly balanced right now,” he said, sipping his coffee and grimacing at the taste. I half-expected him to refuse to drink more than a few sips, but he carried on gamely. It was something of an acquired taste, after all. “After the election, it won’t be balanced at all. Something is going to break.”

I nodded, without speaking. I’d studied the Svergie Constitution carefully after TechnoMage had called it to my attention and he was right. The President — popularly elected by the people — had considerable power, but an absolute majority in the Council could overrule him. His personal powers were limited; he might control the army — such as it was — but not the police or the courts. The whole system seemed to have been created for a far smaller population, perhaps even a single city, rather than an entire planet. I suspected that that was the work of the UN.

“And when it does, our order is going to fall apart,” he continued. “What will happen then?”

“Civil war,” I said, sipping my own coffee. It was hard to pretend to be unconcerned and I suspect he saw though the deception. “The rural areas try to declare independence and the cities try to suppress them. It won’t be pleasant.”

“It was so much easier when we were fighting the UN,” the President said, rubbing his eyes. “Everyone was united then.”

“And now the factions are breaking apart,” I said. “You had unity as long as you had a powerful enemy to revolt against. Now you have to deal with the fruits of victory.”

The President looked up at me. “Rotten fruits, rather like the ones the UN tried to get the farmers to sell,” he said. He saw my blank look and explained. “Every single fruit had to go through a long supply chain, so by the time they reached the customer they were already going bad. I think it was meant for health and safety reason.”

I snorted. “Never mind,” he added. “Why did you leave the UN anyway?”

“Long story,” I said, willing him to drop it. I hadn’t left the UN; the UN had left me. “There are more important things to…”

“Why did you leave the UN?” He repeated. “I read your record, but as far as I can tell, it’s one of a honourable soldier. Or am I missing something?”

I felt a bittersweet pang at his words. “As I said, it’s a long story,” I said. “I joined to escape the hellhole Earth had become. The UNPF seemed the only way out. They don’t conscript soldiers, Mr President; they don’t have to conscript soldiers. The living conditions do that for them. They have more volunteers than they have spaces for them, even when they had millions of men in uniform and hundreds of planets to occupy. I went through their kind and sensitive training program and learned more about feeding the needy than I did about fighting. I think I fired about ten rounds in basic training and…

“They sent us into a hellhole called El Puta Dorada, or something like that,” I continued, feeling the bitterness welling up into my voice. “It should have been easy, or so they told us. Instead, they dumped ten thousand men right into a swarming horde of the enemy and trapped us under their fire. Thousands died, yet somehow we survived and escaped — somehow. When we reached UN lines, I found that the man who’d come up with the scheme had been promoted for innovative thinking, so I killed him. No one ever worked out that it was me.”

I don’t know why I told him that. I’d never told anyone else that. “His replacement was looking for heroes and decided I needed promoting, so I got promoted,” I said. “I don’t know if he knew all along and it was a reward for his promotion, but they gave me a platoon and told me to do things for them. I got half my platoon killed on my first mission, but they saw it as a success. I found myself trying to learn how to lead and maintain an infantry unit in the midst of a war. By the time that particular campaign ended, I was a Captain and had a whole Company under me

“And I was keen to show what I could do and correct… errors in our training, so we ran through endless drills and burned up more ammunition than all of the other units in the area combined, just drilling. The paperwork… well, I kept losing the paperwork, so the bureaucrats kept being unhappy with me, but I didn’t care. Eventually, I found someone to handle it for me while I focused on training and ended up with the best Company in the Infantry.

“And they hated that, so they sent us in on what should have been a suicidal mission,” I concluded. “We won, somehow, and embarrassed hundreds of Generals who’d declared that the mission was impossible. They sent us to Heinlein where we held an entire sector against the most bloody-minded group of insurgents in the Human Sphere, which made us even more of an embarrassment. And then…”

I broke off. I couldn’t discuss that in front of anyone, even John. “They decided we needed punishment and dispatched us to Botany,” I concluded. Hopefully, he wouldn’t see the hole in the story. “When the UN collapsed, we ended up homeless exiles, so we became a mercenary unit and picked up others in the same boat. A while later, your messengers found and hired us, saving us from financial catastrophe and disaster. You know the rest.”

“Thank you,” the President said. I wondered if he’d believed everything I’d said, or if he harboured doubts. “Do you regret the UN’s fall?”

I hesitated. “I used to think that I was part of something greater than myself,” I said, finally. “Now… I realised fairly early on that all we were was a tool of oppression and most of us just fought for pay anyway. There were no grand causes, nothing to fire the blood, just money. It wasn’t that hard to make the switch to doing it openly and accepting your money. Other planets have loyalty and causes worth fighting for, but the UN never had. It’s hard to believe in a greater cause when you’re wading through the blood of slaughtered children.”

“I understand,” the President said. He looked weaker by the second. “I had to order strikes that took out — killed — innocents in the crossfire. I used to hate myself for it, but I kept telling myself that the ends justified the means and everything we did served a useful and necessary purpose. And, in the UN, someone hundreds of light years away ended the war without any help from us. They call me the saviour of the planet and they have great difficulty finding anyone to stand against me for President, but what happens when I die?”

“Good question,” I mused. The President could, in theory, stand for re-election until he died, but I doubted he would stand for another term if he could avoid it. The elections might confirm him as President for another five years, but judging from his appearance, he probably wouldn’t live through them all. If the Progressives gained a decisive advantage in the Council, they might even try to weaken the President’s position still further, or worse, impeach him. The Communists already hated the President. They wouldn’t oppose him. “They might find someone else.”

“I used to tell myself that I could let go and nothing bad would happen,” the President continued. “Now, I feel as if I don’t dare let go, or the whole planet will come apart.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. I could be open with him, slightly. “My people believe that you’re looking at a major collapse within the next few years.”

“I know,” the President said. “Did they propose any solutions?”

I smiled. “You’ll have to send the unemployed out to the farms for training under supervision,” I said. “You’ll need a program of public works to improve the living conditions and the planet’s infrastructure. You’ll even need to expand the planet’s industry and energy sectors, which is something you desperately need. Your power shortage keeps you from developing into a properly developed planet.

“It might even get the Conservative and Progressive voting bases to get a good look at each other,” I added. “They might learn that the other side isn’t composed of monsters, or work-shy layabouts. It might help head off the coming disaster at the pass.”

“They’d never stand for it,” the President said. “There’s enough doubts about the army, let alone anything else. The Progressives would oppose sending people to the fields because it violates their rights; the Conservatives would oppose it because they’d see it as a dreadful mistake. They might even be right. The last bunch of people we sent out to the farms… well, only three of them ended up as proper farmers.”

“And you need to do something about the street toughs,” I added. “At the moment, they’re nothing, but a drain on your resources and a headache for the ordinary citizens. You should have them all rounded up and dumped in a work camp.”

“The trouble has been down since they started running into your soldiers,” the President said, wryly. “Of course, the Progressives are protesting that as well. The common people shouldn’t take the law into their own hands.”

“And so on, and so on,” I agreed. It seemed to be the only deterrent that had halted the street gangs in their tracks. The police weren’t allowed to do more than move them on and they often returned when the police left, intimidating the entire neighbourhood. My soldiers… well, they found the gangs, kicked the shit out of the ones stupid enough to stand and fight, and put the others to flight. Personally, I’d have rounded them all up and conscripted them, but the old arguments against conscription continued to apply. “They do need to be taught a lesson.”

“Yes,” the President said. He changed the subject abruptly, reaching into his briefcase. “I have something for you.”

He pulled out a small velvet box. I opened it and saw a pair of golden wings. “Mr President?”

“That’s the rank badge for a General,” the President said. “At the moment, according to the Rules of Engagement, you’re not actually a military officer on this world. You don’t have any legal authority to command our soldiers.” He nodded towards the box in my hand. “You do now.”

He held up a hand before I could speak. “You’re not from here and you understand our problems better than most of the people here,” he admitted. “Lennart is going to be retiring in the next few weeks — he doesn’t want to serve under a Progressive Government — and I decided to use my authority to promote you into his place. You may find it useful.”

I stared down at the badge. “Fleet…”

“Fleet will accept it if we commission you under specific conditions,” the President said. I suspected — hoped — that he’d consulted with Fleet before giving me the badge. “We have a month before the election, when everything changes. By then, I want you to be ready.”

“Mr President?” I asked. “What should we be ready for?”

“Anything,” he said. “Whatever happens… we have to be ready.”

Chapter Eight

The UN maintained a touching faith in elections, despite the development of a system that ensured that the average voter’s vote counted for nothing, and insisted on universal suffrage on every world it controlled. Although they intended to use it as a control method — divide and rule, in this case — many worlds accepted the right to vote… and even took it as the right to vote against the UN. This was not, of course, acceptable. In the long run, no pretence at anything, but a dictatorship would have worked.

–The Secret History of Svergie

I had been nervously expecting trouble on Election Day. The grapevine among the other mercenary companies — although I would not have willingly classed myself among their number — suggested that elections could be deadly dangerous, particularly if the political situation was volatile. I cancelled all leave, kept the troops on alert, and waited for the explosion. Nothing happened. The voters flocked to the voting booths, watched by the local reporters who made a habit of filming brief interviews with the voters after they left the booth, and politicians made their final speeches. It was surprisingly peaceful. A handful of bar fights broke out afterwards in the darker areas of New Copenhagen, but the police broke them up without trouble.

“The real trouble will probably come when they finish counting the votes,” TechnoMage commented, and he was right. The Svergie Constitution ordained a day for the election and another day for the votes to be counted up, with Inauguration Day following two days afterwards. I kept a close eye on the reporters as they counted results, cursing whoever had invented the system under my breath. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the Progressives had swept the board.

The system probably hadn’t been rigged by design, but that was the general result. The Councillors won by right of majority; a Councillor could be one vote ahead of his opponent and still win with ease. Worse — if that were possible — all of the political parties, and not a few independents, were standing for election in each of the voting districts. The vote was going to be bitterly divided, I decided. It was quite possible that someone would be voted into power with only twenty percent of the population behind him. Given careful planning and not a little deviousness, the political parties could position their resources for the greatest effect, but some were more successful than others. The Progressives and Communists were unpopular out in the rural areas, while the Conservatives were grossly unwelcome in the lower-class districts. The more I thought about it, the more I realised the irony. The original inhabitants of the planet had created a system that allowed their planet to be stolen from right under their collective nose.

“The Progressives seem to have won twelve seats for definite and probably two more when they finish counting,” Russell said. Democracy is almost a religion on Heinlein — which I always thought was a little odd, seeing that each voter had to endure two years of military service to earn the franchise — and he was enjoying watching a very different democracy at work. I had a private theory that he was secretly taking notes for a research paper after he gave up the mercenary business. “They’re the winners, boss.”

“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “I expected as much.”

“The odd thing is who didn’t get elected,” Russell added. “The Communists lost their seat to the Progressives and a couple of independents got elected. They’re calling for a recount now and shaking their fists, but unless there was massive fraud on a citywide scale I think they’re going to be refused. They’re not going to take this lying down.”

I ran my hand through my hair. I’d actually allowed it to grow out too far over the last few weeks and I hadn’t had time to go for a haircut. I should have gone to one of the training barbers, but I had my pride, damn it! Russell was right, of course; hell hath no fury like a group of political radicals convinced that ‘The Man’ had deprived them of their rightful place.

“They might decide to cause trouble,” I agreed. It wasn’t easy to see which way they’d jump. Would they remain quiet and support the Progressives, or would they see the Progressives as a sell-out and start a civil war? There was no way to know what their leadership was thinking, but I doubted that it was anything calm and tranquil. The Communist Militia — or the Vanguard of Workers Freedom, as they called it — was still drilling with captured UN weapons. I doubted they’d be a real threat in the open, but as a terrorist force they could be formidable. “Get the intelligence staff to keep a close eye on them and warn me if they look like they’re going to do something stupid.”

It took them another day to make it official, but the results weren’t really in doubt. The Progressives had claimed fourteen seats, with another five going to the Conservatives, one to the Liberty Party and one to an independent. I made a mental note to try to speak to that independent as soon as possible; I wouldn’t have put it past the Communists, or someone else, to have him assassinated just to reopen the seat. Svergie had no automatic system of succession for Councillors; they’d have to go through an emergency election to select his successor. Perhaps he’d be interested in a bodyguard and some personal protection.

Suki seemed to take the news with remarkable dispassion. Her brief stint on the training ground had convinced her that regular exercise was more than just healthy and when I didn’t need her, she was often to be found training with one of the female unarmed combat experts or practicing on the shooting range. I had grown quite fond of her in a way, although I refused to allow her through my defences, or accepted her offers of companionship in the night. I still wasn’t sure just who she was working for, or what her orders might have been. She didn’t seem to be sending any messages off-base, but that proved nothing. There were plenty of clever spies out there.

“They’re inviting you and a couple of your men to watch the inauguration ceremony,” she said, when she came bursting into my office. She wasn’t much good at the clerical work, but she could handle almost everything else I might want her to do. We’d also started training up a staff of local clerks to assist with building the army, although I had made it damn clear that they weren’t commissioned officers and never would be commissioned officers unless they went through Basic Training and served a term in the infantry. “Are you going to go?”

“I don’t seem to have a choice,” I said, curtly. The President’s gift of General’s rank was something of a double-edged sword. It made me senior officer in the planetary army, but at the same time it doubled my duties, not least because I couldn’t combine my roles. If I had integrated the Legio Exheres into Svergie’s Planetary Army, we’d lose all of our independence. Fleet would not be amused. John would definitely not be amused. It also meant that I had to attend ceremonies that meant nothing to me. At least no one had asked me to kiss babies.

“You could spend the day at the beach instead,” Suki suggested, with a wink that probably qualified as a lethal weapon on some more conservative worlds. “Take the day off and enjoy yourself.”

I snorted. “If we get through the next week without violence, I’ll seriously consider it,” I promised. I was overdue for a holiday myself and, unlike the lower ranks, I couldn’t go out and pick fights with the street toughs. The only relief I had was sparring with Peter, Russell and Ed and there was nothing unpredictable in that. “A time to relax would be lovely.”

Inauguration Day dawned brightly as the city came to a halt. The day was a planetary holiday almost everywhere — the staff at hospitals and other critical posts were not allowed to take the day off — and most of the streets were full of people partying. The massive government-issue car that had been sent for me, Peter and Suki — I’d decided to take her purely on the spur of the moment — had problems negotiating its way through the crowded streets. I saw happy young men and women courting in the sunlight, some of them making it all the way to third base in the shadows, while entertainers danced and sang old songs in a language I didn’t recognise. A handful of costumed characters paraded past the car, followed by hundreds of children grasping sweets, and I felt my heart twist suddenly. On Earth, there had been no time to be a child, with all that that implied. I had never played without fear, or walked to school without escort, but on Svergie children could sing and play as much as they liked. What would I have been, I wondered, if I had grown up in an environment that was truly safe?

“There’s no point in worrying about what might have been,” Peter said, when I expressed my thoughts aloud. “Besides, would you want to follow a giant cuddly bear with very little brain?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, shaking my head. The children following the bear, even the younger teenage girls, showed no sign of fear. The teens wore skirts that would have been an open invitation to rape on Earth, but here… here, it was safe. I felt another pang for the boy I could have been and silently cursed the UN under my breath. Earth was entering terminal decline. I wouldn’t have gone back there if they’d paid me with enough coin to buy a whole planet.

“That’s sad,” Suki said, seriously. “Everyone says that Earth is a paradise.”

I snorted. “Have you ever been there?” She shook her head. “I had two sisters when I was a boy. They were both raped several times as they entered their teens. They were lucky; they didn’t get pregnant. They all knew who did it, but when my sister took it to the police, they raped her as well. My younger sister married when she was fourteen and had a child a year until she was twenty-five. Three of them died before they reached their first birthday because of poor medical treatment. The others probably died when Earth started to come apart at the seams.”

Suki stared at me, her face torn by outright horror. “But… that’s terrible!”

“Yes,” I said darkly. The irony was that there were people with far worse stories than I. “It also happened.”

She was silent as the car finally drew into the Inauguration Stadium. It had been built during happier times and served only one purpose, a place where the new candidates could take their seats and be applauded by the people, even those who had voted for the other guy. The building behind it served as the first ceremonial meeting place and was, I think, the tallest building in the city. The hordes of reporters surrounding it looked large enough to occupy the entire building all by themselves. I spotted hundreds of policemen trying vainly to keep order and a handful of soldiers from the 1st Svergie. I’d tried to talk the President into having more security, but he’d refused, citing concerns about not appearing a dictator. The entire building was far too open for me.

“Try to keep a smile on your face,” I said, as the car parked, exposing us to the lenses of the cameramen. I’d have preferred to avoid photographs entirely, but it would have been impossible, unless I ordered some of the cameramen killed. They weren’t UN-approved reporters, to be fair, but they seemed to have the same pushy personality, although they did have more basic intelligence. The UN reporters tended to write their stories before actually finding out anything about what was going on, or why. If truth happened to disagree with their written work… well, so what? “Failing that, try not to kill anyone.”

Suki slipped her hand into mine as the flashbulbs flickered. It was another reminder of how primitive Svergie actually was; they didn’t have holographic cameras or even equipment that didn’t need flashlights. They were even back to using newspapers rather than datapads, although they had an expanding television industry. They’d probably reinvent plenty of other technology in the near future. Her dress was cut so short that they probably got an eyeful every time she bent over even slightly. I hoped they enjoyed the view. My own stunning good looks couldn’t compete.

“Welcome,” a harassed-looking usher said. “General and lady, you’re on the main stage over there, behind the Council Chairs and the President’s table. Can I show you there?”

“Of course,” I said, graciously. I should have tipped him, but I couldn’t be bothered. I looked around for the President, hoping to see a friendly face, but all I saw were reporters, civilians and Frida Holmqvist, who smiled at me from her chair. As someone who had retained her seat, she was already seated along with two others. “Lead on, my good man.”

The President might have been re-elected, but no one seemed to have any doubt that he was a lame duck. I listened absently to conversations that suggested that the Conservatives were considering resigning completely from the Council, or making deals with various factions of the Progressives, while the Progressives themselves seemed to be having trouble in the ranks. They’d stayed together while they’d been weak, but now they held most of the cards, cracks were starting to seep in. The Conservatives would be going fishing in troubled waters, but if Frida knew — or cared — she gave no sign. Her face was touched by victory.

Good luck, I thought, sardonically. The entire planet was perched on a knife-edge. You’re going to need it.

A trumpeter started to play a single series of notes and the crowds quietened down, almost by magic. I listened absently as the music swelled up into a single tune — the planet’s anthem, I guessed — and finally dimmed down to a single note. When it faded away and vanished, no one, not even me, could have said when it vanished. The silence seemed almost complete, broken only by the birds cawing in the distance. Even the reporters were silent.

An elderly woman stood up and slowly made her way to the podium, but instead of taking a place behind it she stood beside it. She wore red robes that marked her out as a High Court Judge, one of the three most senior Judges on the planet. I hadn’t met her, but I’d heard that she’d read and approved the ROE we’d operate under, if it came down to war. She hadn’t raised silly issues or tried to turn us into a glorified police force, unlike some of the others. That suggested, at least, that she knew what she was doing.

“The second election since the withdrawal of the UN occupation forces has just been completed,” she said, her voice ringing in the silence. The stadium had been designed to carry her voice to every ear. “The votes have been counted. The irregularities have been checked. The results, finally, have been reported. On this day, the new Councillors take their position. Give them great honour, as they deserve.”

The crowd started to clap as the first new Councillor appeared from the side and stepped onto the stage. The clapping only seemed to grow louder, more like a beat than spontaneous applause. It took me a moment to realise that it was part of the ceremony, a reminder of the power of mob rule, and how quickly a Councillor could lose the respect of his people. The power to elect was also the power to dispose. I watched as they seemed to flinch back from the display of power, before taking their seats and pretending that it wasn’t affected them at all. Inanely, I found myself thinking of a wedding, and smiled. This marriage wouldn’t work out perfectly, nor would they live happily ever after.

“Councillors, you have been elected to represent the will of the people,” the Judge said. “Do you swear to uphold the honour of your office, to act with courage and compassion, wisdom and mercy, to serve as the governing body of this planet? Do you swear — or do you chose now to refuse to accept the honour, knowing that you are unworthy?”

“We accept,” the Councillors said. I smiled to myself. Who would refuse after all the hard work they’d done trying to get elected. “We swear…”

The oath seemed to take forever, but finally they were all sworn in. “The President has been re-elected,” the Judge concluded. This time, the cheers and clapping were much more spontaneous. “Welcome him back for another term of office.”

I saw the President emerge from the rear of the stadium and make his way through the crowd and climb onto the stage. He looked as if he had aged overnight, yet his footsteps were firm and his eyes were bright. I didn’t envy him his position — the Progressives could ram whatever they wanted past him — yet I suspected part of him was enjoying the challenge. He might even beat the Progressives at their own game.

He stood behind the podium and lifted a hand for quiet. “The UN was forced to leave our world,” he said, into the sudden silence. His voice was calm and very dignified. “We are no longer faced with the problems of war. We won the war and now, like an animal who has escaped from the zoo, we are faced with the question of deciding what to do about it. We are free.

“We are…”

A single shot ran out.

As I watched in horror, the President stumbled and collapsed.

Chapter Nine

Although they wear many different forms, there are really two types of political party; systematic and counter-systematic. The systematic type seek to work within the existing political structure, while the counter-systematic type attempt to subvert and eventually replace the existing political structure. Typically, this is accomplished with a blatant disregard for the existing rules and a willingness to break them openly if necessary.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“Get down,” I shouted, as the President crumpled to the ground. The entire stadium was dissolving into chaos. There was an unknown number of shooters out there and people were panicking. I hit the ground hard enough to hurt, dragging Suki down with me, while Peter landed on top of her to cover her. I barely heard her yelp of shock. The President was down! “Everyone get down!”

The crowd didn’t seem to hear me. They were running everywhere. A crowd is generally as smart as the stupidest person in it and the panic was spreading. The exits were jammed up as hundreds of people tried to escape, while hundreds more swarmed around, screaming and shouting. I crawled over to the President’s body, cursing my limited medical experience, and realised that he was still alive. He’d been shot in the chest and blood was flowing out of the wound, but he was alive.

“Medic,” I bellowed, trying to be heard over the noise. I should have brought an experienced medic from the spaceport, or ensured that there was a heavily armed security force nearby. “Get a medic over here!”

An explosion shook the ground. I looked over the stadium to see a towering cloud of black smoke and fire rising into the air. The noise hurt my ears, but it was easy to deduce that someone had brought a car bomb into the area and detonated it just outside the stadium. The carnage would be appalling, I realised, with a thrill of horror. I’d seen car bombs used before against UNPF forces, but the victims here would be unarmed civilians. I barely heard the shooting over the ringing in my ears and the deafening roar of the crowd, but it was clear that someone was launching an attack. If there was a sniper in firing range, he or she could be drawing a bead on us right this moment. Did they know the President was still alive?

“Please,” the President gasped, between gurgles. I pressed down on the wound, feeling the strength leaving his body, even as I tried to stem the bleeding. “Don’t let them… please…”

He blacked out. “Sir,” Peter said, catching my arm. “This place is untenable.”

I looked up and saw that he’d rounded up seven soldiers and one policeman. The remainder of the crowd was exiting rapidly, despite the growing sound of shooting; I hoped that the shooters would allow them to leave, even though I doubted it. The car bomb and the shooting suggested a horrifying lack of concern for civilian casualties. The Judge stumbled to her feet and tried to come over to us, but a single shot echoed out and she crumpled to the ground. There was no point in trying to save her; the shot had gone right through her head.

“Keep down,” I muttered to Suki, and looked around. Frida was lying on the ground, shaking, but most of the other great and good were trying to get into the Government House, where they would have held their first meeting. It wouldn’t have been a bad idea under other circumstances — Peter was right; as soon as the shooters came in here, we were dead — but now… hell, it was the best idea we had. “Peter, help me to move him.”

I didn’t want to move the President at all; moving someone who has been wounded isn’t always a good idea, but there was no choice. Between us, we managed to pick him up and half-carry him away from the bloodshed, down towards the entrance. Suki followed, shouting for Frida to follow us, and I watched as Frida crawled on hands and knees towards us. She looked terrified out of her mind. I wasn’t sure if she were an innocent or not, but I doubted that she had expected all this carnage. We managed to make it through the entrance before the sniper fired again and I took stock. We had seven soldiers — nine counting myself and Peter — a policeman and a dozen politicians. It wasn’t much of a force for a last stand.

One of the soldiers was shaking in shock and half of the politicians looked as if they were on the verge of collapse. Peter took the shaking soldier and barked orders into his ear, forcing him to concentrate on what he could do and allow the training to take over. I wasn’t too surprised that one of the newly-trained soldiers had had problems; the training hadn’t taught them how quickly everything could just go to hell. They’d probably have done fine in an engagement in open countryside, but urban conflict was something else entirely. It also wasn’t easy to train a soldier to face.

“Get a defence line worked out,” I ordered, grimly. It wasn’t going to be easy. If they came at us through the entrance, we could greet them with a hail of fire… until we ran out of ammunition or they threw grenades into the building. It wouldn’t take long for the former to occur; I’d only brought my pistol and a couple of spare clips. I smiled, despite myself; I’d have to put myself on report later and issue a punishment duty. “No, on second thoughts, get everyone up the stairs onto the first level and we’ll set up a barricade there.”

Peter barked orders, forcing the politicians to work to save their own lives and help carry the President up the stairs. Suki had taken his shirt and used it to staunch his wounds, but I had no illusions about her ability to actually tend further to him. The odds were not in his favour. He needed a proper medical ward and trained doctors, not our amateurish treatment. I looked down at him, wondering if he’d returned to awareness, but he still looked to be out of it. I hoped that that would last until we could get him to a proper hospital.

I should have insisted on proper bodyguards, I thought angrily, cursing my mistake. I should have insisted on so much in hindsight, yet the President had had good reason to refuse all I could offer. He’d wanted to appear unafraid of his own people, yet some of his people had planned his death. There was no way that shooting him in the chest had been intended as a warning shot. Men had survived such injuries, even under UNPF treatment, but it required luck and prompt aid. The rioting outside ensured that there wouldn’t be any medical assistance soon enough to matter.

“Keep him as comfortable as you can,” I told Suki, and clapped her shoulder. She looked a right state; her tiny dress had slipped down, revealing more of her charms than she had intended. She looked as if she were on the verge of going into shock herself, but as long as she was focused on tending to the President, she should be fine, I hoped. Another explosion shook the building, sending plaster drifting down from the ceiling, and I concentrated. The situation was almost beyond recovery.

“Peter, keep them working on building barricades,” I ordered. “I’m going to call Jock.”

My earpiece was buzzing when I inserted it in my ear, running up the stairs towards the roof… and a place where I could see what was happening to the city. The noise from the outside was only growing louder; shots, screams and more explosions, as if the entire city was being torn apart. I winced as the voice of the dispatcher screamed in my ear and cut down on the feedback. I’d been so focused on getting the President to safety that I hadn’t checked in with the spaceport. They probably thought I was dead!

“Cut it down,” I snapped, and gave a quick outline of the situation. “Get Ed on the line.” I switched channels before they could reply. “Jock, this is Andrew; report!”

There was a worryingly long pause before Jock answered. I’d sent the four Specials into the city disguised as normal citizens, but even the Specials would have problems coping in the midst of a riot. I trusted that Jock would have seen to their weapons and equipment, but if they were in trouble there was no way we could come to their aid. I doubted that they could even help us.

“Boss, there’s a riot going on and it’s turning into a revolution,” Jock said, his voice echoing in my ears. Jock was normally a larger-than-life character, boasting of the women and enemies he’d conquered in one breath, and then terrorising the supply clerks with the next. Like me, he’d known John Walker before he became famous. “The policemen are all down and dead while shooters are occupying the surrounding buildings. I made at least a hundred armed men near your position. They don’t know we’re here yet, but that could change at any moment.”

I cursed under my breath, forgetting how sensitive the earpiece was. If the building had been isolated by now, the enemy — whoever they were — would be able to storm it and bring us all down in body bags. They’d planned it carefully, I realised, as I slipped onto the roof and stopped dead. The entire city was in chaos. There was always an element of chaos in the beginnings of a military operation, but this was different. The civil authorities wouldn’t be prepared for violence on this scale. The towering pillars of smoke bore mute testament to their lack of imagination.

“I see,” I said, finally. I trusted Jock. If he said that they were safe, they probably were. The building was tall enough for me to be fairly safe from snipers, but I didn’t dare show my face anywhere where someone might try to improve my looks by putting a bullet though them. “And the bombs?”

“I counted at least seven explosions,” Jock said. “Two of them were over in the rich district, the others were placed to deter civilians and kill policemen. I think we can safely say that the city is completely out of control. There’s no sign of any response from the local authorities.”

The police chief might be dead, I thought, as another burst of shooting echoed out in the distance. I wouldn’t have chosen New Copenhagen as the place to hold a battle, but evidently my enemies disagreed. If they’d hit the civil authorities hard enough, they might keep them completely out of the picture until they’d overrun the government and proclaimed victory. What would happen then?

I switched the earpiece back to the main channel. “Ed,” I said, “what’s going on over there?”

“A handful of mortar rounds got tossed into the compound,” Ed reported, calmly. His voice steadied me and I took a long breath. “We fired a single shot back with the counter-battery weapons and took out the launcher. The enemy apparently retreated without trying to engage the perimeter security force, but I have everyone armed or in shelters just in case. I have no contact with the civil police or local military headquarters. What is your situation?”

I gazed towards the north, towards another pillar of black smoke, and knew what had happened to the local military headquarters. The enemy had decapitated it in a single blow. Whoever was behind this had evidently studied carefully before launching their coup. It just wasn’t perfect.

“Bad,” I said, and outlined it. “Ed, I want A Company and 1st Svergie to mount up and come to the rescue. Get the choppers to provide security from the air; ROE are Beta-Three, understand?”

There was a pause. I’d just given him authority to fire on anything that even looked as if it were a threat, without waiting for it to fire first. It made sense in open countryside, but in a city it threatened a bloodbath. I was past caring. I wasn’t going to lose men because the enemy decided to hide in civilian clothes.

“Yes, sir,” he said, finally. “I had them ready to move once the first shells started to land. They’ll be at your position inside of thirty minutes.”

If we’re lucky, I thought. There was no bridge between the spaceport and New Copenhagen, but the enemy could probably delay a relief column with a little effort and minimum risk. The helicopters could be here sooner, but they’d face the possibility of handheld SAM weapons stolen from the UN deports. We’d never traced even half of the weapons the UN had shipped onto the planet. Still…

“Load up the transport helicopters with volunteers only and get them to fly directly here,” I ordered. “I’ve got the remains of the government here and they need help. I also need a medical team and their gear.” I paused. “Do you know anything about the remainder of the planet?”

“Local communications are completely down,” Ed reported. “Muna called in from Pitea — the industrial city — and reported that its dissolving into absolute chaos as well, but then we lost communications ourselves. I don’t know if she’s all right, sir.”

“Leave it,” I ordered, feeling my heart twist savagely. I considered calling the William Tell and asking for orbital footage, but even if Captain Price-Jones agreed without demur, it wouldn’t tell us much. I’d seen enough ‘safe’ areas from orbit to have a deep distrust of orbital images. If Muna were still alive… well, we’d have to deal with that later. “Do you have a general suggestion of who’s behind this?”

“Tech thinks it’s the Communists,” Ed said. I snorted. He was probably right, but way too late to be useful. “Pitea is one of their strongholds, sir.”

“Understood,” I said. It hardly mattered at the moment. “Get that relief force to us as quickly as you can.”

I risked one look over the parapet — Jock had been right; there were bodies everywhere, most of them civilians — and ducked back down the stairs as a bullet snapped past my head. Someone down there was good with a sniper rifle, although not as good as one of my men. The thought kept me smiling as I ran down the stairs and back onto the first floor, where I saw that Peter had organised a proper defence.

“There’s not much in the way of ammunition or weapons here,” he reported, not entirely to my surprise. If we lived through this, I suspected that the weapons laws were going to be rather sharply revised, although it might go in the wrong direction. Perhaps the President should have tried to disarm the factions, even though it would probably just have started the civil war early. “We’ve rigged up some weapons, but there isn’t much here we can use.”

I nodded. “Relief is on the way,” I said, and explained what I’d ordered. Peter nodded — he knew how long it would take to get any reinforcements into the city, even without armed opposition — but the others looked scared and angry, a dangerous combination. “We just have to hold out until then.”

“We spent millions of credits hiring you and your men,” one of the politicians protested, from where he was cradling himself. “Can’t you get them here sooner, or are you not worth your pay?”

“No,” I said, flatly. I was not going to get drawn into an argument, particularly one that would probably end with me punching his lights out. If the politicians had taken more precautions, such as having an entire infantry unit ready for action and a proper security blanket around the stadium, the entire disaster would never have happened. I silently wished Ed luck running the unit after I was gone. If I died here, Ed would have to take over both the unit… and the mission. “They have to get into the city and do so without causing major civilian casualties.”

I turned away from him and walked over to Suki and the President. He didn’t look any better; his face was pale and his breathing came in ragged gasps. I touched his hand slowly, wondering if he could hear me, but nothing happened. She looked almost as bad, but there was a new determination in her eyes. I wondered if she knew how much protection her dress would provide — she might as well be wearing tissue paper — and then smiled at her. She smiled back and I was surprised to feel myself stir. Combat does odd things to the human mind.

“He’s dying,” she said, softly. If she knew what I was feeling, she hid it well. “What happens if he dies?”

I remembered the Constitution and bit off a curse. Svergie had no Vice-Presidential position. The next President would be the leader of the party with the highest number of seats, at least until they held an emergency election, and that meant Frida. I looked over at her, sitting in a corner and watching us all warily, and wondered if she’d known that the attack was coming. It seemed unlikely — the attackers might not have left her alive either — but perhaps she had been confident enough to take the risk. I disagreed with her politics on every possible level, but there was nothing wrong with her mind, or her courage. It was also an insane risk…

And it was equally possible that she was an innocent in this affair.

I shook my head, dismissing the thought for the moment, and looked at the politicians. Most of them would be completely useless, but two were holding pistols themselves, mementoes from days in the resistance. I hoped they were ready to fight for their lives, even though if the Communists — or whoever — wanted them all dead, they could just blow up the building. It shook again, as if on cue, just as Jock’s voice buzzed though my earpiece.

“Boss, they’re making their move,” he said. “You’d better get ready.”

Chapter Ten

The essence of a Coup D’Etat is publicly defeating and discrediting the incumbent government. The Coup plotters must not allow the public or the military — many of whom will be undecided — to believe that the previous government is still in power or still capable of striking back. They must gather power, in fact and name, and ensure that no other centres of power continue to exist, even in name.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“All right,” I said, to the room at large. “Here they come.”

We prepared as best as we could on the first floor. There were only three ways up to our level and we’d guarded them all. Anyone climbing up the stairs would be at a distant disadvantage, but they’d also be able to hurl grenades up towards us. I didn’t know what weapons they’d have, but if they’d looted a UNPF deport they probably had everything we had and more besides.

I drew my pistol and held it by my side. The reaction of some of the politicians was amusing, but I didn’t have time to enjoy it, even though they looked as if I were holding a snake in my hand. I motioned for them to head up to the second floor, but I didn’t dare move the President any more. I was rather surprised he wasn’t dead yet, but it seemed that he was just hanging on. I heard shouts and shooting as the communists broke into the ground floor, but none of it was directed. They didn’t know where we were, but I doubted it would take them long to realise we were up one flight of stairs.

Peter stepped up to me, clutching his own pistol. “Make each shot count, sir,” he muttered. “If we’d had a few dozen mines and the time to deploy them…”

I nodded. One of the standard training tests for the Specials — and my people, once I had a chance to develop it — consisted of breaking into a building that had been converted into an armed fortress. It was a thoroughly dangerous exercise and it wasn’t uncommon to end up with real fatalities. If we’d had time, we could have made the Communists pay a high price for breaking in and killing us, but we’d only had seconds. Even a few mines would have deterred them from pushing us too hard.

“We can’t surrender,” I muttered back. The Communists might want to take the politicians alive so they could be forced to stand down and surrender the planet, but Peter and I were expendable. The Legion would seek revenge for our deaths, but if the Communists took control of the Government, they’d order the Legion out and ask Fleet to back it up with force if need be. What would Ed, or Russell, do then? “Whatever happens, we go out shooting.”

A crash heralded the Communists as they broke through the locked door at the bottom of the stairs. I wasn’t too surprised. It wasn’t as if it was hard to find. I nodded to one of the Svergie soldiers and he tipped a drinks cabinet down the stairs towards the first Communist. I heard a scream over the noise of breaking glass and smiled to myself. That was one Communist who’d drink nothing, but tea for the rest of his life. The sound of curses echoed up to us, followed by two quick shots. I don’t know what they thought they were shooting at. The bullets didn’t go anywhere near us.

“You up there,” a voice shouted, loudly enough to shake the walls. A distant explosion somewhere in the city underlined his words. “We have the building surrounded and there’s no escape. No one is coming to save your sorry butts. If you give up now, we won’t kill you.”

“Fuck off and die,” I snapped, and squeezed off a single shot down the stairs. I heard a scream, but I couldn’t tell if I’d actually hit anyone or if they’d merely been surprised by the shot. I hoped that his words hadn’t demoralised the other soldiers, or the politicians; I knew that Ed was on the way, even if they didn’t. The only question was what would get in his way. “If you want us, come and get us.”

I heard muttering downstairs and struggled to listen, but it was in a dialect I didn’t understand. “Their leader is telling them to assault up the stairs,” one of the soldiers translated. “The others are telling him to set the building on fire and pull out.”

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. I’d been more stunned than I realised. Would the Communists actually set fire to the building? It was partly built out of wood in a very old style and would go up like a furnace. We couldn’t hope to escape until the helicopters arrived to save us. I keyed my earpiece and called Jock. “Jock, come in.”

“Here,” Jock said, his voice very composed. I guessed that that meant they were far too close to the enemy and subvocalising to avoid being heard. “They’re milling about, sir, trying to decide what to do.”

“I noticed,” I said. “Can you watch out for any attempt to burn us out and distract them if they try?”

“I can try,” Jock confirmed, slowly. “It won’t be easy to intervene. The whole area is crawling with the bastards.”

“Do what you can,” I said, and broke the connection. I thought about calling Ed, but increasingly desperate pleas wouldn’t get him here any faster. The helicopters would be on their way and I spared a moment to pray for the civilians caught near then when they attacked. I hoped that the ordinary citizens were hiding in their homes, away from the chaos, but I knew that many of them would have been caught out on the streets. Some of them might even be caught up in the fighting as Ed punched his way into the city. “What are they saying now?”

“They’ve gone quiet,” the soldier said. I looked at his nametag. It read ‘Jörgen Hellqvist,’ while his rank badge marked him as a Lieutenant. He was clearly scared out of his mind, yet still holding it together, somehow. He’d go far, unless something killed him first. “I think they’re mulling over what to do.”

I nodded. A military unit would have hit all of the ways up at the same time, clearing the way ruthlessly with grenades and softening fire. The downside of a citizen militia, which the Communists probably thought they were, was that they weren’t always keen on taking insane risks. Local discipline would probably be a problem for their commanders, even if they were dedicated and loyal. The longer they spent worrying about what they should do, the better.

“They’re coming,” Peter snapped suddenly. An instant later, a grenade detonated at the bottom of the stairs, clearing the remains of the drinks cabinet out of the way. The same happened at the other stairs, allowing the first group of enemy fighters to attack and make their way up to the first floor. We greeted them with a round of shots and sent the first ones tumbling backwards, but the second group threw additional grenades ahead of them. I kicked one back down the stairwell and it exploded among the enemy, but another one nearly killed us all. We were only saved by a young private who threw himself on the grenade and took the brunt of the blast. We owed him our lives, yet we didn’t even know his name. I silently promised him a grave fit for a war hero and a posthumous promotion, but for the moment all we could do was fight.

“Keep them back,” I snapped. The enemy were hampered by the small size of the stairwells, but if they knew how short we were on ammunition, they’d press the attack regardless. The muttering from downstairs was growing louder, with a sharper undertone, but they didn’t seem any less determined. I heard faint noises I couldn’t identify, no matter how hard I listened, but in the distance, I could hear more explosions. Someone was tearing the entire city apart.

My earpiece buzzed suddenly. “Boss, this is Eye-Spy,” a voice said, sharply. I recognised it and blinked in surprise. Eye-Spy was the code name for Commander Daniel Webster. “We’re over your position. Be advised that the helicopters are about to make their final approach now, but enemy have portable SAM units; I repeat, the enemy have portable SAM units.”

“I heard,” I said, silently cursing Fleet under my breath. If that was all they would do, then how much use was the destroyer, high overhead? It might as well have been thousands of light years away. They couldn’t tell the difference between the terrorists attacking us and the civilians trying to flee in terror, away from the nightmare their city had become. “Thank you.”

I altered the earpiece and called Jock. “Jock, where are the helicopters?”

“Just coming in now,” Jock said. “One of them was engaged by a portable missile and had to sheer off, firing flares, to escape. No vehicles lost as yet, but the enemy are moving up more of their own men and trying to get into firing position.”

The roar of the helicopter blades suddenly broke in through the windows and deafened us all. I used hand signals, warning Peter and the others to keep a sharp eye on the stairwell, knowing that the enemy might use the distraction to attack. A pair of heavy helicopters drifted into view, their weapons blazing away at targets on the ground, and I allowed myself a moment of relief. That lasted barely a second before a SAM smashed into the lead helicopter and sent it crashing to the ground in flames.

“Shit, boss,” Jock said, grimly. “They brought her down and killed everyone. No one got out, sir.”

“Fuck,” I said, as a wave of tiredness swept over me. They built the little helicopters tough, but a missile at point-blank range, or close enough to ignore the difference, would always be lethal. There would be no hope of escape in the seconds it took for them to die. I rekeyed my earpiece. “Got nuts; I repeat, go nuts.”

The helicopters took me at my word and opened fire with furious abandon. Every building that could have hidden an enemy sniper or heavy weapon was ruthlessly hosed down, devastating the centre of town. I found myself hoping that Svergie didn’t send us the bill afterwards… or that they didn’t blame us for the civilians who would be caught up in the fire and killed. The rockets, normally designed for use on tanks and armoured bunkers, made short work of the surrounding area. The flames were already spreading out of control.

“That’s half the city on fire, looks like,” Peter commented, from his position. I desperately hoped that he was wrong. Between us and the Communists, we’d done more to render the city uninhabitable than the UN. “Do you think that the fire department can get a crew out here in time to save the rest of the buildings?”

“Fuck, no,” I said. The helicopters were very close now, the larger ones dropping down towards the roof. “Keep an eye on…”

The enemy down below took the opportunity to launch another rush attack, which we beat back soundly, losing two more of our number. A ricochet took out a politician who had insisted on staying on the first floor, rather than heading upstairs to the relative safety of the second floor, and we laid his body out next to the President. I looked into Suki’s eyes and saw her growing fear, but she was still in control. I heard the first soldier arriving on the roof and felt a moment of relief. We were no longer alone.

“F Unit, sir,” someone called down from the third floor. “King takes Bishop, Knight’s Move.”

“Advance and be recognised,” I said, coldly. The soldier stepped into the light, his assault rifle slung across his shoulder, and I allowed myself to relax as I recognised Captain Kendrick. The code phases weren’t perfect, but they were the best we had. Expensive IFF equipment had a tendency to fail when we needed it. The rest of his men soon followed and looked ready for orders. “Take position at the head of the stairs and advance downwards when ready.”

The team of medics who followed him were almost more welcome than the reinforcements. Doctor Patrick Keegan examined the President quickly and professionally, inspecting the wound and muttering curses under his breath before injecting the President with a small fortune’s worth of drugs. I waited as patiently as I could for the report, while Kendrick led his men down the stairs and into the teeth of the Communist position. He had some advantages over the Communists. His men were all wearing heavy body armour and had training in MOUT — Military Operations in Urban Terrain. It was still deadly dangerous and four of his men — my men — went into body bags before the remainder of the Communists were flushed out and killed. None even tried to surrender. I wondered at that, before I realised they’d probably been told that we’d torture prisoners to gain whatever information they had, even though I would never have permitted torture except as a desperate measure.

“The President is a very strong man,” the Doctor said, finally. “He’s also seriously injured. The bullet is pressing on his lung and the damage is threatening to cause serious complications, even with the drugs I’ve pumped into his bloodstream to slow the collapse. He’s damn lucky to be alive and we have to get him to a clinic.”

I swore, even though I’d expected that. “How long can we wait?”

“Not long,” the Doctor said. “If the damage gets worse, the odds are that he’ll die here on this cold floor. We can’t wait long before we have to operate.” He hesitated for a moment. “I might have to operate here.”

“Do so,” I ordered tightly. The noise of battle echoed again from the outside. Someone was launching mortar shells at someone else, although it didn’t seem as if we were the targets. The CRUMP-CRUMP-CRUMP of the incoming shells seemed to be coming from the other side of the river. I wondered who was shooting and at what, before it dawned on me that they had to be trying to impede Ed from reaching us. They might even succeed. MOUT is the worst form of military operation, although Fleet’s Marines, used to boarding starships in space, might just disagree. “Suki, help him as much as you can.”

I turned and headed down the stairs. Now that the reinforcements were here, I could leave them taking care of the politicians — one of which was demanding that the medic see to him at once, never mind the President — and see what remained of the stadium. Peter’s horrified expression made me smile inwardly, before he ordered a pair of heavily-armed soldiers to escort me everywhere and protect my life. I wished that I didn’t need a bodyguard, but I had to bow to his logic. The Communists certainly wanted me dead.

“What a mess,” I said, as we stepped down onto the ground floor. The fighting had torn the area apart, leaving nothing, but wreckage and dead bodies. The noise wasn’t so loud down here, but I could still hear the helicopters as they dealt death to anyone who threatened us… and the sound of explosions and gunshots in the distance. It sounded as if the entire city was at war, against us… or each other. I’d been in city-fighting before, but this was different; now that we’d pushed the Communists away from the Government buildings, it was as if the civil war was flowing around us without touching our lives. It was… strange, almost uncanny.

I keyed my earpiece. “Jock, come in,” I ordered. “What’s going on out there?”

“The fighting seems to be shifting towards the industrial regions,” Jock said. A shriek followed by a massive explosion underscored his words. “Sir, they just took out a transport helicopter.”

I winced. There’d be time enough to mourn later. One expensive helicopter and an irreplaceable crew had just died. The sound of shooting and rockets being fired grew louder and, unable to prevent myself, I stepped outside, to find that I was standing in a pile of wreckage. Dead bodies were everywhere, the stink of blood and piss and shit was almost overpowering… I had never gotten used to it, no matter what my trainers had promised. This was what happened when the military world interacted badly with the civilian world.

“They’re going to burn for this,” I promised. The growing black smoke rising up from the city smelt of fire and burning bodied. “The people responsible for this will pay in blood and suffering.”

“Stay back, sir,” one of the soldiers warned. I knew better than to object. Standing orders concerning bodyguard duties authorised everything, including physical force, to prevent the protected person from being endangered. They’d knock me down and sit on me if they had to. I couldn’t even object. I’d drawn up the rules myself. “The Captain’s on his way now.”

I heard the approaching convoy and allowed myself to be escorted back into shelter, watching as the first vehicles rounded the corner and sped towards us. The light tanks parked in a position to cover the area, while the men of A Company dismounted from their trucks and rushed to secure the area. Ten minutes later, we held the area surrounding Government House and it was over. The remaining Communists had retreated, leaving nothing, but devastation behind.

But I could still hear fighting in the distance.

Ed jumped out of a vehicle and marched over to me, before nodding respectfully. Salutes were forbidden in a combat zone. “Sir,” he said. “Captain-General Nolte, I presume?”

I cracked up laughing.

Chapter Eleven

By default, a legitimate government is one that controls territory. We may not approve of the government and/or how it acts, but our disapproval will not remove the government from power. The only way to remove a government from power is through pressure, which is generally expressed as physical force. Choosing not to do so means granting legitimacy to the government.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“Concentrate on securing the area,” I ordered, as Ed’s men started to set up their mobile command post. It was a UN-designed unit I wasn’t sure I completely trusted — people had been known to hack into them before — but at the moment it represented the best option short of returning to the spaceport. “Detail off a couple of platoons to replace Kendrick and a third to secure the normal government building.”

I examined the mobile command post readings as Ed headed off to carry out my orders. Now that A Company was parked in the middle of the city, I felt a lot safer, safe enough to relax slightly. I could still hear gunfire in the distance and the sound of someone putting up a desperate resistance — although I didn’t know against what — but on the whole we were safe, for the moment. The politicians in the remains of the stadium would live to politick again. Somehow, I wasn’t able to decide if that was a good thing or not.

The reports from the spaceport made me smile in relief. No one had tried to launch an all-out attack — they’d only throw a few shells into the complex — which meant that they weren’t insane enough to attack a dug-in position. The Svergie Army units were forming up now and preparing for operations; one of my minders reported that the men were pissed at what had happened to their capital city. I made a mental note to keep an eye on the situation — outraged soldiers might commit things that outsiders would call atrocities — and issued my orders. With the enemy in retreat, it was time to bring in the rest of the Svergie Army.

“Warn them to be careful,” I ordered, knowing that it was an unnecessary order. They hadn’t been prepared for MOUT yet, but we had no choice. The sooner we could establish a heavy presence on the streets, the better. I gazed around at all the carnage and winced. They’d see that… and then they’d be out for blood. How could I blame them for that? “We need to locate the remainder of the enemy.”

“Understood, sir,” the dispatcher said, back at the spaceport. He could afford to be calm. He was sitting in the safest place on the planet! “We’ve been picking up transmissions from the Communists, sir. They’ve taken over one of the broadcast towers and they’ve been screaming their propaganda into the air.”

“Put them though,” I ordered, angrily. It was another sign of just how primitive Svergie actually was. Most worlds used a datanet-like system for communication, preferring to reserve radio for emergencies. “I want to hear what they’re telling the people.”

The radio crackled and came to life. “…Time of the People’s Republic of Svergie is at hand,” a voice thundered. “Take to the barricades; claim your world from the off-world plutocrats and mercenaries. The old government has fallen. We have formed a government in the name of The People! Take to the streets and welcome us as we build utopia; Peace, Freedom, Collective Ownership…!”

There was more like that, none of it particularly interesting, or welcome. “Cut it off,” I ordered, finally. Their coup had failed, to all intents and purposes, even if they had seriously injured the President. It didn’t look as if the population was coming onto the roads in support of the Communists; it looked as if most of the population were staying indoors, as far from the chaos as they could. “Order the Svergie forces to continue deploying.”

I keyed my earpiece and called Jock. “Jock, the Svergie Army is on its way into the city,” I said. “Stay out of their way and make your path towards the hub of greatest resistance. I may need reports from you later.”

“Understood,” Jock said. “I’m on my way.”

I wiped my forehead as I turned back to the command post. No one likes city fighting, apart from deranged terrorists and wreckers. The most advanced army in the galaxy could make their way into a city and get chewed to ribbons in a carefully-prepared trap. All of their advantages would be cut down to almost nothing, while they’d never know who was in front of them, or behind them. I’d seen attempts to chart out the course of one particularly nasty battle in a city and it had looked like someone had mixed together several different strings. The battle had raged backwards and forwards for days.

And we hadn’t prepared the Svergie soldiers for such fighting. I’d expected that we’d be taking on farmers and miners in the open, not Communists in the city. Whatever the links between the Communists and the Progressives, they’d clearly been broken now. It was war to the knife and God help the person who lost. I doubted that public opinion would stand for mercy, or even permanent exile to Botany — as if they could be transported there in any case.

The next hour passed slowly. The Svergie Army units entered the city and paired up with a handful of our recon platoons. They discovered that the enemy had set off a handful of bombs in the residential area — they would have killed the Conservative leadership if they had been there at the time — but had otherwise fallen back towards the industrial area towards the north. It made a certain kind of sense, I decided; the Communists probably drew their greatest support from the factory workers and they would know the area perfectly, far better than my own people. The remaining streets were almost unoccupied, apart from a handful of looters. We shot several of them and looting dropped off to almost nothing.

“Christ, boss,” Ed said. “What a fucking mess.”

I nodded. It would take days just to take the dead bodies off the streets and give them a proper burial, but we had no choice. If the bodies were allowed to decompose, we’d be looking at a disease outbreak. Svergie wasn’t a rich world; their vaccination programs weren’t as all-encompassing as some of the programs Heinlein or Williamson’s World had mounted, or even the illegal genetic engineering programs in the Beyond.

“Yes,” I agreed, flatly. “Have you heard anything from the local police?”

“Only dead bodies,” Ed said, with a twinge of gallows humour. “They seem to have vanished completely. We’ve found hundreds of dead policemen, who died trying to prevent the chaos from growing worse, but no live ones. They seem to have had a special hatred for the police and several police stations have been attacked and burned out.”

“We’ll have to become the police,” I said, grimly. I didn’t like the idea at all. My men would make much better policemen than the scum on Earth pretending to be cops — it would be hard to make worse policemen — but that didn’t mean that they were suited to the role. They’d been taught to shoot first and shout questions at the body, not arrest someone as gently as possible. “What the hell do we tell them?”

“Just to stay off the streets,” Ed suggested. “At the moment, they’re going to be listening to that Communist pile of crap and wondering what the hell is going on. You have to tell them that there’s still a functional government…”

“Is there?” I asked. They’d started with twenty-one Councillors and a President. The President was badly injured and at least ten of the Councillors were dead. The police force seemed to be out of the picture, we hadn’t seen any sign of the fire department, and there was an armed rebellion underway. The only good thing about the whole situation was that a lot of reporters had died. “If we tell them the truth…”

I shrugged and walked back to the command post, keying in a specific series of commands. We could blanket the airwaves for a single message, if we chose. I set it to record and started to speak.

“Citizens of Svergie, this is an emergency broadcast,” I said. “There is a combined military and civil emergency underway. The Communists have launched an attempt to topple the government, which has failed, but military operations are still underway. Remain in your homes. Do not go out onto the streets. If you have injured, hang out a white sheet and we will attempt to come to your aid as quickly as possible. Remain in your homes. We will end this as soon as possible.”

I listened to my own voice twice and then pushed the send button. My signal would now be competing with the Communist signal, at least until we retook the broadcast centre. I detailed several platoons to secure vital infrastructure, such as the water plant and the fusion reactor that the UN had supplied, before keying my earpiece.

“Jock,” I asked. “What do you see?”

“They’re digging into the industrial sector,” Jock reported. “They seem to have had this planned for a long time. They’re using help — students, mainly — to set up barricades and there are definite signs of heavy weapons going into the area. I think they want to force you to come after them.”

I cursed. They would insist on making this difficult, wouldn’t they? “Understood,” I said. “Relay your impressions to Ed.”

I looked over at Ed and he snapped to attention. “Seal off that area, no one gets in or out,” I ordered. “If anyone tries, arrest them; get the Svergie Army to set up a detention centre — better make it two — using the equipment the UN kindly left us. If threatened with deadly force, reply in kind, but don’t try to force your way into the area. That’s going to take some careful planning.”

My bodyguard fell in around me as I walked back into the building. It was already looking neater — someone had moved the dead bodies and placed them in body bags, even the enemy bodies — and I inspected it briefly before walking up the stairs and looking in on the President. The Doctor and his medical team were working as quickly as they could, but it didn’t look good to my untrained eye. I don’t know much about advanced medicine. The UN had regarded medical corpsmen as non-combatants and denied them weapons. The net result was a serious shortage of medical corpsmen. Luckily, I got to make my own rules for the Legion.

I went up to the second floor and saw a handful of politicians sitting on the floor, looking warily at the heavily-armed soldiers on bodyguard duty. They probably thought that I would order the soldiers to gun them down, or arrest them permanently and take power for myself, but I wasn’t interested. Even if I had been, Fleet would probably have taken a dim view of it. They’d have taken a dimmer view of a successful Communist coup, but that would have been an internal affair. They couldn’t have interfered.

Frida’s eyes met mine and I was surprised at the fury within her. She looked angry, not at me, but at the people who’d plunged her world into hell. I doubted she’d ever been in as much danger in her life and she knew, not being particularly stupid, that she’d come very close to dying. The Communists probably considered her a class traitor and had attempted to kill her. They’d almost succeeded.

“We need to talk,” I said, quietly. She nodded and stood up on unsteady legs — I put out a hand to help her, but she brushed it away angrily — and staggered over towards a private meeting room. It had a window open to the north, which I checked carefully while she stared at the billowing clouds of smoke and fire. Was that a tear I saw in her eye?

“They’ve killing everyone,” she said, dully. I’d never heard her sound so defeated before and she flinched as the sound of another helicopter echoed overhead. Ed would direct them to where they were needed, but I doubted they’d be safe flying anywhere near the Communist stronghold. They’d probably hidden plenty of SAM units in the area, just in the hope we’d send another helicopter to be blown out of the sky. “They’re killing us all.”

“That’s not true,” I said, and hoped to God that I was right. “We have the main body of the army here and patrolling the streets. You’re safe now.”

Frida shook her head, rubbing the scar on her face. “We’ll never be safe again,” she said. “How could anyone do this to their own people?”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of political violence,” I said, not unkindly. The President had wanted to disarm the various militias and fighting groups once the Army was up and running — or perhaps shooting — but he hadn’t moved quickly enough. The Communists had made him pay for that lesson, in blood. “They’ve hurt us badly, but the government is still intact.”

“They killed the President,” Frida injected. I had expected her to be pleased at the prospect, but she looked sickened. “They killed the father of the planet!”

“He’s still alive,” I said. “The Doctors are working on him now and he’ll recover, eventually.” I trusted the Doctor to keep him alive, although I knew that it would take years for him to recover. “Until then, you’re the President. You’re the only authority this planet has left.”

Frida gathered herself. “What is the current situation?” She asked. “Are they beaten…?”

“They’re digging into the industrial complex,” I explained. I didn’t bother to explain that digging them out would be a bitch of a job. There are certain things, in my humble opinion, that politicians are happier not knowing. “Apart from that, we have reports of uprisings in other cities and…”

I winced. Muna had been in one of the cities, hadn’t she? I had to recover her, somehow, before the Communists realised who they’d caught. Muna knew far too much about the Legion and, if they caught her, they could learn everything she knew. I couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Leave that for the moment,” I added. Frida looked at me as if I were insane, but I didn’t back down. We needed to secure New Copenhagen first, and then move down to deal with the remaining Communists. Holding the capital city would give us the clout we needed to keep the civil war from breaking down into complete chaos. “We have to deal with the problems here first. I need you to declare martial law and convince people that the government is still in existence, because my broadcast won’t do that.”

“And then?” Frida asked. “Can you get them out of their stronghold?”

“Yes,” I said, simply.

Frida stepped up to the window and peered out. I knew what she would see; soldiers on patrol, ruins and wreckage, the remains of a democratic dream… and dead bodies, everywhere. The smell hit her as she fumbled and opened the window, despite my warnings, and she recoiled, gagging. I’d never grown used to it myself, but I controlled my gorge. It was the smell of a thousand dead or dying bodies. It was the smell of war.

“Do it,” she ordered. There was a new fire in her voice. “Whatever it takes, get them out of there.”

“Yes, Madam President,” I said. She glared at me. She’d probably intended to run for President herself eventually, but she’d assumed the title in a manner that brought the price — and responsibility — home to her. It might even change her political views. “Do you want to make the broadcast now?”

I led her back down the stairs to the mobile command centre and listened quickly as Ed updated me on the current situation. Now that calm was returning to large parts of the city, the fire brigade was out in force, combating the many fires as best as they could, while they’d even rounded up a handful of policemen and confirmed the Police Chief’s death. Frida winced at that; Police Chief Arne Johansson might not have been a friend to the Progressive Party, but he was someone she had known personally. It’s always harder to see a close personal friend die than it is to see a stranger. I’d seen too many people die in my career.

“We’ve taken the broadcast tower,” I explained, checking the reports. The Communist position outside their stronghold was falling apart as we pushed at it. “The Communist broadcast is no longer going out to the people. Are you ready to record a message?” Frida nodded. “All right; here you go.”

“People of Svergie, the President is injured,” Frida said, her voice cold and very composed. “He was shot down in the middle of his speech by a Communist sniper, the same people who attempted to kill everyone at the Government Stadium, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and trying to destroy the government. They failed. The Council is still alive and the Government is still intact. The President will even make a full recovery.”

Her voice hardened. “As Acting President, I am hereby declaring the Communist Party outlaws and renegades,” she continued. I blinked in surprise and hoped she knew what she was doing. A suspicious mind might wonder if she was doing it to get rid of a rival. “A state of martial law is in effect and the Army and the Police are empowered to do whatever they need to do to remove the Communist Party from their strongholds. They will pay for what they have done to our people. They will pay for what they have done to our President. They will pay — in fire!”

Chapter Twelve

Even on Heinlein, it is legal to have a political party that proposes the replacement of our current system by another — if the people want it to change, it will change, and a non-violent change is better than one accomplished by violence. Towards that end, it might be concluded that anyone attempting violent change is too dangerous to be allowed to live. The verdict of the voters must be honoured.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“Well,” Peter said, as we drove down towards the industrial area. “Who knew she had it in her?”

“I didn’t,” I said, coldly. I hadn’t expected a promise of blood and fire, although the free hand would be helpful. The early reports from Pitea were not encouraging. The Communists were strong there and had probably prepared it as a fallback position. We wouldn’t be able to nip this little rebellion in the bud. “All we have to do now is defeat the Communists and hope that that’s the end of the affair.”

I didn’t believe it and I suspected that Peter didn’t either, but he kept his opinion to himself as the jeep turned the corner and passed a large grassy park. It had originally been intended for kids to play with balls and perhaps court each other as they grew older, but it was now serving as a temporary holding area for prisoners. Hundreds of men and women, their hands tied behind their backs, sat there, watching the soldiers warily. Some of them were injured while a handful were naked, marking them as people who had tried to smuggle weapons past the soldiers. A handful, mainly young girls, were crying as we passed. They’d probably been swept up by accident and would be released once we’d sorted out who was who.

“They’re supposed to have most of the workers on their side,” Peter said, as we passed another holding camp, this one full of grim-looking men. “If we kill or capture them all, who’s going to run the industrial plant?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I admitted. It wasn’t a problem I could solve easily. Frida would have to grapple with that afterwards. The UN had dealt with rebels by dumping them in internment camps or exiling them from the planet, but Frida wouldn’t have those options. She might feel compelled to offer an amnesty. “If we put down this rebellion, perhaps we can negotiate with the other Communists.”

“Not a hope,” Peter said, dismissively. I feared that he was right. “Their minimum demands would be greater than anything we could reasonably give them, even before they decided to kill half the city. We’re going to have to beat hell out of them, boss.”

The New Copenhagen Industrial Zone occupied around five kilometres of factories and warehouses. The original designers of the city had intended to keep it neatly divided between residential, shopping and industrial areas, but over time they’d blurred together, particularly as the UN dumped more immigrants on the planet. I’d heard that there had been a massive rise in house prices and, consequently, thousands of people were living in shantytowns. The designers might not have intended to create a fortress, but with a little help from the Communists, they’d succeeded. It was a fortress manned by people who had nothing left to lose.

I removed my insignia and stepped onto the street near Ed’s command post. The sound of shooting was growing louder, telling me that a sniper duel was underway. The Communists would have recruited anyone with shooting skills they could get their hands on, but someone who had been hunting in the wilds would be almost as capable as a military sniper — or at least they had been on Heinlein. Our snipers would be trying to suppress their snipers and, hopefully, no one else would be shot in the crossfire. That was the theory, at least, but I rather doubted it would work out that way in practice.

“Sir,” Ed said. He looked tired and sweaty and I saw him almost salute before remembering himself. If he’d saluted me, he would have marked me out as a commanding officer for any watching sniper. “We have the area sealed off and we’re ready to reduce it at your command. We have taken seven hundred prisoners and searched them all as they came out; seventy-two of them attempted to smuggle out weapons and were stripped, according to protocol. None of them attempted to blow themselves up and take some of us with them, but it was getting pretty tense before the flow stopped. There are still hundreds of people in there.”

“Shit,” I said. It was possible that Frida had made a mistake. If she’d told them that they had nothing left to lose, they’d dig in and fight to the death. “Anything else to report?”

“Some of the local soldiers beat the detainees,” Ed reported, grimly. I scowled angrily. I couldn’t blame them for being angry, but discipline had to be maintained, always. “I had them disarmed and held for you or Russell to handle.”

“Russell would take their balls off,” Peter commented. I nodded. Russell’s ideas on discipline were stricter than mine, which was saying something. Everyone had thought that Heinlein was a planet of anarchists until the UN tried to invade. The training system on Heinlein was tough. “Do you want me to escort them back to the spaceport?”

“There’s another issue,” Ed added. “One of our men molested a female prisoner. He’s under arrest as well.”

“We’ll convene a court as soon as possible,” I said, turning my attention back to the map. “We have authority to engage them with all necessary force, but we’ll try sweep reason first. Get B Company ready for operations, but I want to speak to the enemy first.”

The street looked weird as I peered down it towards the barricade. The Communists had piled up vehicles and backed them up with concrete-filled barrels and probably IEDs and other surprises. It was a strange mixture of the normal, the mundane, and the military; I couldn’t see the enemy, but I knew they were there. The factory walls hadn’t been intended to form walls surrounding the complex, but they’d succeeded, somehow. It didn’t matter. I didn’t intend to go through the positions they’d so carefully prepared.

I keyed my radio. “Get the Landsharks up into position,” I ordered, tightly. The sound of shooting only picked up as the snipers took what shots they could. I hoped that no one was hit before it was time. “Mortar teams, prepare to take your shots.”

“Ready, sir,” the tankers said. “We’re in position.”

I keyed a different switch. “ATTENTION,” I said. My supercharged voice echoed out over the complex. Everyone in the city would hear it. “YOU ARE SURROUNDED AND COMPLETELY TRAPPED. YOU ARE IN A HOPELESS POSITION. SURRENDER NOW OR WE’LL COME IN AND GET YOU.”

Silence fell. Even the snipers seemed to have stopped shooting, although I hoped that that was because they had actually stopped, rather than just me having deafened myself. I had the same implanted ear protectors as my men, but even so, it had been deafeningly loud. I hoped that they’d hear the truth in my words and give up, or an awesome amount of death and destruction was about to take place.

I keyed the switch again. “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING,” I thundered, like the voice of God from on high. “COME OUT NOW OR WE’LL TAKE YOU OUT IN BODY BAGS!”

If I’d heard that noise, if I’d known how bad the position was, I’d have considered surrender, but the Communists obviously had other ideas. A moment later, a shot ricocheted far too close to me and bounced off into the distance. The sound of snipers started to rise again.

I scowled. “Very well,” I said, keying the earpiece. “Mortar squads, you’re up. Fire!”

The CRUMP-CRUMP-CRUMP of the mortars echoed over the city as the team launched their first shells into the enemy position. Mortars aren’t my favourite weapons, but a trained and experience team can use them to bombard almost any target that takes their fancy, within seconds. A mortar can be set up, fired, and taken down again before the enemy force can react. We weren’t shooting high explosive shells, however, but knockout gas. The UN’s secret weapon that wasn’t a secret; it should put most of the enemy fighters down, unless they were already immunised. I suspected they would be — the vaccine was easy to produce — but we had to try. Besides, the gas was only a diversion.

“Landsharks,” I added. “Go.”

The Landshark Tanks are one of the few UN-designed vehicles to find favour with the Colonies, or even the mercenary units. It looked as if it dated from the early days of tanker units, but instead of a heavy shell-firing gun it carried a dozen heavy machine guns, configured to fire in any direction, or all directions. It was also heavily armoured and extremely difficult to knock out without heavy antitank weapons. The UN had built it for operations against insurgents and it generally proved its worth. The insurgents would be mown down by the machine guns or crushed under the treads. It hardly mattered, in the end, what killed them, as long as they died.

“Moving now, sir,” the lead tanker said. “Detonate.”

The explosion shattered the factory wall and sent rubble crashing everywhere, but the tank was undeterred. The other interesting point about the Landsharks is that there are very few terrains capable of stopping them for long. Dump one in a ditch and it will probably be able to crawl out, as long as there is a little room to work. I’d seen one go right up on its rear and somehow make it out of a ditch. The piles of rubble that marked the death of a factory wouldn’t slow it for more than a few seconds.

“We’re in, sir,” the tanker said. “Enemy forces are engaging us now.”

“So much for the gas,” I muttered, as the tank’s guns began to fire. Infantrymen moved up behind them to protect them from the few remaining enemy fighters, but they were barely necessary. The tanks could hold their own against almost all threats. They’d still have to watch out for antitank weapons, though, or mines. “Tanker, do you have a read on the gas?”

“It’s in the air,” the tanker said. “The enemy doesn’t seem to have noticed.”

I keyed my radio. “All other units, start hitting the barricades with long shots,” I ordered. “Keep them pinned down as long as possible.”

It was easy to visualise it in my head. The enemy commander would be looking at what looked like an all-out assault coming from every point of the compass. He’d probably guess that most of them were diversions, but would be realise in time which one was the real threat? I knew just how rapidly the situation could swing out of control — it had happened to me when the stadium was attacked; it felt like years ago now — so how quickly could he react? It didn’t matter so much now, but if he reacted quickly enough, he could stall the offensive.

“Mortar teams, hit the centre of their position,” I ordered. The planet would have to rebuild the industrial complex afterwards, but there was little other choice. If we could kill their commanding officer, we might be able to convince the others to see reason and surrender. “Standard HE rounds, this time.”

“Understood, sir,” the mortar commander said. “Firing now.”

The enemy had mortars too, I realised, and attempted to pour fire onto the tanks. It wasn’t a bad tactic either — it would destroy a tank if a shell landed directly on it — but my mortar teams had counter-battery radars and were better shots. Every time an enemy shell was fired, they threw a shell of their own back, trying to hit the enemy before the enemy moved their weapon to another firing position. The sound of explosions grew to a crescendo, blurring with fire as the tanks used flamethrowers against their opponents. The final explosion was large enough to shake the city.

“Tank Seven is down,” the tanker reported. “They used some kind of heavy mind and lured Tank Seven over it and detonated.”

I winced, bitterly. One way to take out the tanks was high explosive. If they couldn’t get to the tanks, they’d made the tanks come to them. We had, in theory, sensors that were supposed to detect that trick, but they never worked right outside a research lab. The air was thick with the remains of explosives, enough to set the sensors bleeping away like mad. It would be impossible to distinguish between a real threat and a false alarm.

Another series of explosions crackled out, and then stopped. “Sir, we have some trying to surrender,” the tanker said. “Permission to take prisoners, sir?”

“Have the infantry deal with them,” I ordered. I wanted to kill them all after what they’d done, but I wouldn’t sanction a massacre. “Use the heavy protocols and keep them separated from the other prisoners. Don’t use locals to guard them, not after this; we’ll have to hold them ourselves.”

The fighting was slowly dying away as the infantry advanced, carefully, into a nightmarish maze. We’d broken through in three places and convinced most of them that it was time to surrender, even though the tanks weren’t good at accepting surrenders. Shots still rang out as isolated holdouts attempted to make a stand, only to be crushed by overwhelming firepower. I wasn’t going to risk more lives to capture people intent on dying and taking some of us with them. I watched the stream of naked prisoners, watched by heavily armed soldiers, as they filed out of the complex, their eyes grim and worried. They had cause to worry. I doubted that the planet’s population would suffer them to live.

“We’ve got the remainder barricaded into the centre building, but they’re refusing to surrender,” Ed said, sharply. “What do you want to do with them?”

“Pull back and let the mortars take care of them,” I ordered, grimly. I wanted to get my hands on the leadership, but if they were unprepared to surrender… well, the butcher’s bill was too high already. We were the most formidable military force on the surface of the planet and we’d lost at least fifty men in the fighting, probably more. It would have to wait until we’d totalled them all up, but every loss meant an irreplaceable soldier gone. “Contact the spaceport and tell them to rush extra supplies out here. We’re going to need them.”

A final set of explosions saw the centre building crashing down into a pile of rubble. The infantrymen probed it carefully, dispatched two mortally-wounded enemies, and then declared it safe. Peter refused to allow me to go forward into the remains of the complex, so I remained outside while Ed led the infantry and the local soldiers in a careful sweep of the entire area. A handful of IEDs were found and detonated from a distance. We could have disarmed them, but there was little point. I watched as the reinforcements arrive, having seen the damage the Communists had inflicted on the city, and warned them to treat the prisoners firmly, but gently. I’d have to deal with those who had treated them badly later, after I’d had a rest.

“Send them all to the guardhouse,” I ordered, when Ed raised the issue. He pointed out that it might be wise to deal with it now. “Tell the ones who beat prisoners that they have a choice between a month in the nick” — the guardhouse prison — “or running the gauntlet. The one who molested… I’ll deal with him later. There’ll have to be a court convened on that one.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said, without argument. We couldn’t just hang our own people out of hand, regardless of what I wanted. We had to hold a formal court-martial. “Will you be observing the gauntlet?”

“Maybe,” I said, signalling for Peter and the driver. “I’m going to report back to the government headquarters and then get some sleep. Once C Company takes over the security here, get some sleep yourself. If the crisis in Pitea gets out of hand, we’re going to have to move down there and deal with it.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Ed warned. “Most of our transport is already overstretched.”

“I know,” I said. Pitea was seventy miles from New Copenhagen. It might as well be on the moon. We could march there in a couple of days, but we’d still have to fight at the far end. We’d just have to round up whatever transport we could. “We’ll deal with that tomorrow.”

Frida, I discovered when we arrived back at the stadium, had moved operations to one of the massive houses belonging to the elite. It wasn’t a bad choice. The President’s family owned a large house which they’d agreed could be used by the government, or what was left of it. Frida took one look at my tired face — I doubt I looked worse than her — and ordered me to bed. For once, I was quite happy to comply and the servant showed me to a room fit for a king. I showered, shaved, and came out to discover Suki sitting on my bed.

I stared. She was wearing a nightdress that left nothing to the imagination. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why…?”

She interrupted me with a deep kiss. I felt myself responding automatically. “I want to feel alive,” she whispered. “I want… I want you, now.”

Perhaps I should have refused, but I felt horny too. A second later, we were in bed together, barely pausing for foreplay. It had been too long for me and the pressure of combat — and the joy of being alive — pushed me on. The night sped by very quickly.

Chapter Thirteen

The purpose of war, as a wise man once remarked, is not to die for your country, but to make the other person die for his. The role of laws of war, therefore, is to avoid endangering your forces; force protection is the first priority, always. The safety of your men — insofar as war can ever be termed safe — is more important than the safety or the dignity of the enemy.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

When I awoke, I wondered for a moment where I was. It wasn’t my bunk in the spaceport, or my tiny cabin on the Julius Caesar, but somewhere far more comfortable. A slight movement told me that there was a person — a woman — in my bed and memory came flooding back. Last night… we’d slept together; no, that was too mild a term. We’d fucked so violently that I was surprised I hadn’t drawn blood.

“Welcome back to the world,” I muttered, and pulled myself out of bed. The room in the President’s house was larger than any house I’d had myself, although I’d spent most of my adult life on military bases of one kind or another. Apart from the massive four-poster bed, there was a smaller washroom complete with a shower and a window that looked out into the city. The plumes of smoke seemed to have faded away.

Suki stirred under the covers and sat up, exposing her breasts. I felt a sudden surge of arousal I tried to push down, but failed. “Hi,” she said, rather nervously. “I just… I just wanted to… you know.”

“I understand,” I said, gravely. “It always happens after a combat mission; men and women get horny. It’ll have happened all over the city and there’ll probably be a population boom in the next nine months.”

“Oh,” Suki said. One hand rubbed a bite mark on her left breast. “I’ve taken my pills for the month. There won’t be any children for me.”

I smiled. Her oriental looks mixed with mine might produce an interesting child, although as long as they had their mother’s looks and their father’s brains I’d be happy. It had to be something to do with the way we’d spent last night. I don’t normally go to bed with a woman and think of children the day afterwards.

“What a pity,” I said. “Do you want to practice some more?”

She laughed and I advanced upon her with open arms. Afterwards, we took a shower together and washed each other, before I finally forced myself to get dressed in my uniform. It felt disgustingly unclean to the touch, but I hadn’t thought to bring a spare uniform to the ceremony. In hindsight, I should have brought an entire infantry company and a few dozen tanks, never mind a uniform.

I checked my wristcom and swore. It was much later than I had thought and I cursed myself for spending time with her, even if a soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight. I remembered the men I’d disciplined for being late back to their duties because they’d met a girl in town and winced. They’d all be laughing at me behind my back and I couldn’t blame them. God knew I would have done the same thing in their place.

“Ed, this is Andrew,” I said, hunting for the earpiece with one hand. “I need a status report.”

“Peter insisted that you needed sleep and threatened to beat hell out of anyone who disturbed you before you woke naturally,” Ed explained. He knew what I meant, alright, even though if it had been something truly urgent I would have been woken anyway. “The city is currently quiet, but still under curfew and we’re patrolling heavily to ensure it stays that way.”

“Good,” I said. I wasn’t commanding a UN unit any longer, where the commander had to have direct control at all times, but one composed of men who used their initiative when necessary. I could trust them to get on with it. “I’ll be downstairs at the command post in a few minutes. Have a pot of coffee ready for me.”

Ed laughed and cut the connection and I turned back to Suki. “I’m going to have to leave you now,” I explained. “I’ll see you back on the base later.”

“Later,” Suki agreed. “Make sure you get some proper food as well.”

I rolled my eyes and walked out of the room, pausing to dismiss the guards that Peter had left to ensure that my sleep was undisturbed, before walking down the stairs into the room that Ed had turned into a command post. Unlike the bedroom, there were no windows in the hall, although I would have been worried about mortar shells if I’d been in charge of the building. One day had inflicted more devastation than the UN had in years! Ed was standing near a portable communications unit, inspecting the report, and he saluted when he saw me.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, with a wink. “Did you have a good night’s sleep, sir?”

That, I decided, settled the question of how many people knew that I’d been with Suki. “Yes, thank you,” I said, putting an edge into my voice to suggest that ragging me wouldn’t be a good use of his time. “I need a status report, right bloody now.”

Ed nodded. “The city itself is calm, as I said,” he commented, nodding to the map. “We’ve got the industrial area sealed off still and we’re poking through it looking for unpleasant surprises, but the teams are pretty confident that we found most of the IEDs. The entire area was devastated, but some of the heavy machinery survived, which may mean that they can rebuild quicker than we thought.”

I remembered the piles of rubble that had replaced strong brick buildings and shrugged. It was possible to be optimistic, but I privately suspected that it would be years before the industrial complex was up and running again. They might be able to replace what they’d lost on-planet, but if not… they’d have to try to buy from another star system and that would drain the planet’s limited off-world currency reserves. It wasn’t as if they had much to trade, but raw minerals from the mines.

“The bad news is that they’ve definitely lost control of Pitea,” Ed continued. I winced, although it wasn’t a surprise. Pitea had been a Progressive city, according to the election results, but the Communists had been strong there. There were hundreds of factories there that used unskilled labour for menial work and they strongly resented the way they were treated. In the long run, the Communist program would lead to industrial wastelands and devastation, but in the short term… they might not mind, provided that they were allowed to hang the industrialists. “The last report had the police stations being overrun and… sir, Muna’s still missing.”

“I know,” I said. Muna was somewhere in Pitea… and I hoped she’d managed to go to ground and hide, but I feared the worst. Our communications systems were too advanced for the locals to jam, unless they’d had help from off-world, and Muna would have been able to report in if she’d been free. That suggested that she was either dead or in enemy hands. “And our own forces?”

“I redeployed A and B company to make their way to Pitea, and ordered most of the local units to prepare for the same journey,” Ed explained. “The bastards have taken out the local railroad, however, and they’ve blown up several bridges. We can still get there, but it’s going to take us three weeks to move the main body of the army there, assuming that there are no other problems.”

I swore. Attacking an industrial complex had been bad enough; attacking a full-sized city — Pitea was listed as having over seven million inhabitants — would be an order of magnitude worse. They’d have plenty of time to get ready for our attack and the only advantage we had was that it was possible, just possible, that not all of those seven million were committed Communists. We might be aided by a revolution in their rear. If we were lucky…

“Try and speed up the progress, if you can,” I ordered, finally. Ed would do everything in his power to get us there quicker. “What about the toll, Ed?”

“We lost eleven men,” Ed said, flatly. “Seventeen more have been injured and are at the spaceport medical bay. The doctors think that there’s a good chance that they’ll pull through, but three of them are going to be permanently disabled. We might be able to keep them on in some role, or we might have to pension them off…”

“Yeah,” I said. The UN had literally allowed people in wheelchairs to serve as combat troops — absurd regulations designed to counter ‘discrimination against differently able people’ — but I had no intention of allowing it to contaminate the Legion. If they could become clerks, I’d be delighted, but it was more likely that they would drink themselves to death. The poor bastards deserved better. “And the enemy?”

“We pulled around two thousand bodies out of the rubble,” Ed admitted. “I don’t know, of course, how many of them were actually enemy fighters or merely people caught up in the fighting, but we’re still finding bodies everywhere. We took over a thousand prisoners and they’re currently cooling their heels in detention camps, but I don’t know how we’re going to sort the hardcore out from the soft bastards.”

He paused. “Oh, and the local police — what was left of them — wanted to arrest some known hardcore we caught,” he added. “It seems that the Acting President’s decree banning the Communist Party means that the leadership have to be transferred to the local jail for immediate trial.”

“I see,” I said. “And you said?”

“I said that the final fate of the prisoners would depend upon you,” Ed said, passing the buck shamelessly. Well, I suppose the only other choice would have been to hand them over and wash our hands of the blood, afterwards. I wouldn’t shed any tears for them, but I believe in fair trials, then shooting the guilty. “I know we have hardcore, but we also have too many people who clearly aren’t hardcore.”

“Put them through a level one interrogation,” I ordered, finally. Heinlein’s invention of perfect lie detectors saved a lot of trouble. We wouldn’t have to keep everyone prisoner indefinitely after all. “Separate them out and keep the hardcore in prison. Release the innocent and use the softer Communists to clear the streets, under armed guard. Feel free to shoot them if they try to escape. We might as well get some use out of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said. He grinned, suddenly. “You’ll be happy to know that all of the local troopers accepted the gauntlet rather than spending time in the nick. I’ve scheduled the ceremony for tomorrow morning and promised them that you’d attend.”

“Bastard,” I said, without heat. They’d be relieved. Russell was probably so far beyond furious that he’d strangle one of the troopers, if given half a chance. His tolerance for indiscipline was less than mine. “Very well; I’ll attend. I’d better go see the President.”

“Take a driver and an armoured car,” Ed advised. “The streets are supposed to be clear, but I’m not taking chances with you.”

The city looked, if possible, even worse than it had during the fighting. There were hundreds of damaged and destroyed buildings, the latter little more than towering piles of rubble, and hundreds of dead bodies everywhere. Soldiers, emergency crews and volunteers worked together to clear the bodies away, but the sheer size of the task would keep them going for days. The estimate of how many people had died might be far too low, I realised, and silently cursed the Communists. Their mad plan had killed thousands of people, including some of my men, for nothing. Their control over Pitea might let them force a stalemate…

I shook my head. It wouldn’t; the farmers wouldn’t supply them with food. Given time, they’d probably start raiding the farms, or trying to force the farmers to cooperate. The war was barely underway and we were already looking at disaster. If they stayed penned in the city, they’d still starve and the men with the guns ate first. The innocent hostages — including Muna, if she were still alive — would die. The gunmen would live on human flesh, if they had to, to survive.

The Acting President — Frida — had moved operations again to Progressive Party HQ. It wasn’t a decision I would have supported at the time, but most of the other governmental buildings had been destroyed or damaged in the fighting. Ed, whatever misgivings he’d had, had assigned local units to guard the building and backed them up with a pair of Landshark tanks. Their guns tracked my armoured car as it approached, ready to deal out instant death if we showed them anything suspicious, then relaxed when the soldiers saw me and waved us through. I didn’t relax and jumped out of the car, marching over to the Sergeant in charge.

“Sergeant,” I snapped. He jumped to attention. “Why didn’t you check my ID?”

“But you’re the General,” he protested, stammering in surprise. “I know who you are…”

“I could be someone disguised as the General,” I snapped back. “You check everyone who tries to come into the secured zone, understand?”

He nodded. I waved my ID card under his nose, waited patiently for him to examine it, and then walked into the courtyard. In happier times, children had played here while their parents had directed the Progressive Party towards its electoral victory, but now it was occupied by armed soldiers, who watched me warily as I marched towards the main entrance. The security here was a little tighter, I was relieved to see; the guards checked my ID again and waved me through into the main office. The corridors were covered with propaganda posters, some promising the moon and the stars above, others making slightly more reasonable promises, and I smiled as I entered Frida’s office. She waved the others out as I entered, waving for me to take a seat.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, as soon as the door closed. She looked awful. Her face was paler than ever and her eyes looked tired and worn. I made a mental note to insist that a doctor examined her and perhaps prescribed a sedative, but for the moment I’d just have to watch what she said. A tired mind would make bad decisions. “What’s going on out there?”

I ran through a brief breakdown of the situation and she nodded when I reached the section about Pitea. “We got a message from them after you defeated their forces in this city,” she explained. “Everything was so confused that we didn’t know anything about it until hours after it was received. They’re declaring independence and demanding that we recognise their independence as the People’s Republic of Pitea.”

I smiled, remembering some of the scenarios we’d come up with when we’d started studying the planet’s politics. “We cannot allow it to stand, of course,” she continued, “but they’re hinting that they’ve asked Fleet to… meditate the crisis. Is that actually true?”

“If Fleet hasn’t contacted you to order you to remain in position while someone negotiates a settlement, then no,” I said. “I doubt that Captain Price-Jones will be willing to intervene without permission from Fleet HQ and, in any case, this is definitely an internal affair. Fleet won’t intervene as long as the chaos stays on the planet and no outsiders get caught up in it.”

Frida frowned. “Are you sure?”

“If Fleet wanted the Communists to create their People’s Republic, they would have told you so,” I confirmed. “They’d draw a line and tell you not to cross it. If there’s been no message from them, then they’re not planning to intervene. You could confirm it by speaking to Captain Price-Jones yourself, but I doubt it’s necessary.”

“Thank you,” Frida said, seriously. Her expression tightened slightly. “And the prisoners?”

“We’re going to begin sorting through them as soon as possible,” I said. If she wasn’t going to bring up the incident with the local police, I wouldn’t either. “Once we’ve sorted out the hardcore from the chaff, we can decide — you can decide — what to do with them. I’d recommend hard labour in the mines myself.”

“The miners won’t like that,” Frida said. She grimaced, as if she had just tasted something nasty. “I never realised how much the President carried on his shoulders. I never thought…”

“How is he?” I asked. “The last I heard was last night.”

“He’s stable and in the hospitals under heavy guard,” Frida said. “The doctors think he’ll be up and moving again in six months or so, but they don’t want him stressed or forced to move quickly. The Council — the remains of the Council — voted to put his term on hold until he recovers completely and can resume his duties.”

She shook her head firmly. “Never mind that at the moment,” she said. I had to admire her. I hadn’t realised that she had so much inner strength. I might still wonder at her politics, but perhaps she would shape up into an admirable leader after all. “Can you defeat the Communists?”

“Yes,” I said, seriously. “It’ll take us time to get our forces into position to move, but when we do so, the Communists will be crushed. They may have a whole city, but that merely pins them down and keeps them trapped. We’ll have the city surrounded by light forces by the end of the day” — we could move them via helicopter — “and then they’ll be trapped there until we move in to remove them.”

I wished I were as confident as I sounded. It was going to be a very nasty battle.

Chapter Fourteen

A civilian will say that army discipline is harsh, brutal and callous. This is partly true. Army discipline is required to give soldiers an ingrained respect for authority and to hold position while under heavy fire. An offence committed by a soldier can have disastrous effects further down the line, hence the spectrum of heavy punishments awaiting the offending miscreant. Unlike civilian punishment, once a soldier has been punished, the affair is at an end.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The next day dawned bright and clear.

I arose from my bed as the trumpeter sounded Morning Call and walked to the Mess to eat breakfast, joined by four of my officers. The Mess was draped in black unmarked banners and I saw some of the new recruits looking at them, worried. Their normal training schedule had been altered to accommodate the gauntlet and that bothered them. They’d have to get used to unexpected changes in routine — we threw a lot of that at senior recruits — but they’d also have to witness — and remember — the gauntlet itself. I ate as much as I could, but it wasn’t much, despite Peter’s urgings. It was almost like having a mother again. I should have concentrated on paperwork after breakfast — there was no point in looking over Ed’s shoulder as he moved the forces from New Copenhagen to Pitea — but I couldn’t. It was almost a relief when the trumpeter sounded Judgement Day.

“Form ranks,” Russell was bellowing, as I came onto the main training field. Normally, we had recruits and most of the old hands running laps around the field, trying to get into and then stay in shape. Now, we had a line of masked men from A Company, wearing black uniforms that reminded me uncomfortably of Fleet’s uniforms. We’d probably have to change them if someone like Price-Jones got a good look at them. The uniforms were stiflingly hot, but they had one great advantage. No one would know who was under the masks. “Form lines!”

The ten prisoners were marched out onto the field, exposed to the gaze of their fellow soldiers and the new recruits. A handful quailed under their gaze, others stood tall and glared back at the onlookers, refusing to show fear. I absently made a note to keep an eye on the ones who glared back. They’d go far, assuming we didn’t kill them first. Their hands weren’t cuffed, but they’d been warned that they were prisoners until they’d run the gauntlet and if they tried to run, they would be shot. No one, not even the rawest recruit, was blind to the significance of their bare uniforms. All rank badges had been removed.

I stepped forward as silence fell. “During the recent struggle against the Communists,” I said, my voice echoing in the silence, “you abused prisoners in your custody. You beat men and women who had surrendered to you. You broke the rules of war as hammered into your heads during the time you spent here. You knew that you were doing the wrong thing.”

There was a pause. Different worlds had different regulations, but I believed that abusing prisoners while they were in custody would make it harder to take prisoners in the future. If a prisoner acted up, they could be smacked down, but someone who was compliant couldn’t be abused. The recruits had that regulation, along with a dozen others, read to them each morning. They had no excuse.

“You have the choice between the Gauntlet and spending time in the nick,” I continued. “You have all chosen the Gauntlet. Number One, step forward and walk the Gauntlet.”

We’d even stripped their names from them. Number One, I was pleased to see, was one of the defiant ones, but even he was quailing as he approached the line of men holding sticks and waiting for him. The Gauntlet is brutally simple. He had to walk past the men — or run; it didn’t matter — while they hit him with their sticks. I’d chosen A Company because the men were disciplined enough to hurt them without causing permanent damage, but broken bones and even serious injuries were not uncommon. I wondered, absently, if he would break and try to run, or beg to be jailed instead, but he walked onwards…

The first stick glanced off his arm. He was allowed to try to block the blows, although he wasn’t allowed to actually attack the attackers. He gasped in pain and staggered slightly as another man stepped forward and launched a wicked swing at his chest, but somehow he blocked that as well, only to be struck across the back by a third man. He stumbled onwards, blood dripping from his nose after a glancing blow started a nosebleed, and somehow made it through the final pair of men. The last one ignored the stick and kicked the victim up the arse, sending him tumbling to the ground just outside the Gauntlet. He’d barely hit the ground before Russell was there, hauling him to his feet and pinning on the rank badges we’d removed. He’d survived the Gauntlet and was forgiven.

“Take your place,” I ordered, pointing one long finger towards the remains of his platoon. They’d probably rub it in a bit afterwards, but officially he was forgiven — besides, he’d shown commendable bravery in the Gauntlet. “Number Two?”

The next few soldiers managed to walk the Gauntlet without serious problems, but Number Six was hit neatly on the back of his knee and collapsed to the ground. A Company was disciplined enough to wait until he regained his footing before closing in again, but it took him nearly ten minutes to stand up again. It might have been calculated, I realised after a moment, allowing him to catch his breath. I didn’t know if that were true, but if it was… I couldn’t decide if he were being clever or stupid. I’d have preferred to run through the Gauntlet, shielding my groin and eyes, and take my chances. Number Seven tried just that and survived with nothing worse than aches and pains over his upper body and a limp. Number Eight tripped over himself and hit the ground hard enough to hurt. Number Nine went down on hands and knees and tried to crawl through the Gauntlet. That was technically against the rules, but his back and bum got hit hard enough to drive the message home.

“Your turn,” I said, to Number Ten. He’d been one of the ones who had refused to meet the accusing eyes. “On you go.”

He stared at the masked A Company men, looked at Russell’s merciless eyes, and turned to flee. The MPs were on him within seconds, knocking him to the ground and cuffing his hands behind his back, before they marched him off unceremoniously to the guardhouse. After he’d spent the month in the nick I’d promised him, he’d be discharged without a formal ceremony. He didn’t deserve even a dishonourable discharge. We were lucky we’d caught him before he infected an entire unit, or disgraced the army we were trying to build.

I allowed my eyes to move over the recruits. Some had fainted in horror and would be revived later by Russell, who would be uncharacteristically kind to them. Little in their lives had prepared them for such horror and they hadn’t had the benefits of six months hard training to harden them. Others were staring, their eyes wide, wondering what kind of monsters hid under the masks. If the Government kept the Army as I’d designed it, they might find themselves wearing the same outfit, one day.

“The matter is now closed,” I said, firmly. “By mistreating the prisoners, you disgraced yourself and the army. By running the Gauntlet, you paid for your offences and the matter is now closed. Go see the medics and then report back to your units for Evening Call.”

I watched as they stumbled away, wincing slightly at one of the soldiers who was limping badly, and kept my face carefully blank. I hated doing that to anyone, particularly men I was responsible for, but there was no choice. I couldn’t have people who were inclined to abuse prisoners in my army, not when a civil war was underway. The results would be disastrous if enemy fighters were afraid to surrender.

Or at least that’s what I told myself.

A flight of heavy UN-issue transports roared overhead as I walked back towards the guardhouse. The UN had kindly placed them at the disposal of the planetary government — which meant they didn’t have the freighters necessary to carry them back to Earth, where they would have been useless anyway — and Ed had commandeered them to move light infantry from the spaceport to Pitea. It wasn’t a perfect solution and I was worried about a couple of insurgents with SAMs, but it was the best we had. I wished I could leave this matter in Ed’s hands as well, but it was something I had to deal with personally. It would make running the Gauntlet seem easy.

The interior of the guardhouse had been fitting out like a courtroom. There was a high chair for me, a set of four chairs for the senior officers, a witness box and a small cage for the prisoner. It had been designed so that the accused had absolutely no doubt at all about why they were there and it was covered in chains so that an uncooperative prisoner could be restrained. I suspected that the prisoner would try to escape; molesting or raping a civilian girl carried the death penalty. I took my chair, accepted salutes from the other officers, and turned to Peter.

“Bring in the prisoner,” I ordered.

Private Sidney Hershey had served with the UN before joining us instead of returning to Earth, but I honestly couldn’t say that he had come to my attention before. His UN record was utterly unreliable, of course; the officers had to exaggerate so much that he sounded like the reincarnation of every great military officer, combined. My record had started off just as well, and then gone downhill with words that sounded great, but raised hackles everywhere. The UN Infantry regarded caring for your men as unusual.

“The prisoner will stand at attention,” Peter intoned, firmly. He removed Hershey’s hat and placed it neatly on the table as the man stood to attention, or as near to it as he could get in handcuffs and leg irons. I nodded to Peter after Hershey held the pose for a long moment. “The prisoner will be seated.”

He pushed Hershey down into the chair and secured him firmly to the floor. “Private Hershey,” I said, “you stand accused of molesting a local girl during the fighting two days ago. The charges against you were filed by Sergeant Thomas and confirmed by eyewitness statements from two other Privates within your unit. Do you have anything you wish to say in your own defence?”

“The bitch came out with her hands in the air,” Hershey said, after a moment. I guessed he’d taken the time while in the guardhouse to plan his defence. We don’t bother with lawyers for our men; they know their rights, and they know what they are definitely not allowed to do. His only defence lay in convincing us that the charges were misplaced. “I patted her down as per regulations, only to discover that she was concealing a knife in her pocket. I whipped it away from her and cut off her clothes…”

His voice faltered for a moment. He was right; if someone had come out carrying a concealed weapon, we did strip him or her naked to remove any possibility that we’d missed something. The UN and Heinlein had invented hundreds of deadly weapons that looked like something innocuous, until it was too late. There were complaints that females should only be searched by females, but if we didn’t have a female on hand… well, too bad. It was expected to be as impersonal as possible. It was possible that Hershey had simply been arrested by mistake.

“And then I searched her cavities,” he added. “I was midway through my examination when the Sergeant jumped me and knocked me to the ground.”

“That might be true,” I agreed, “but why were you exploring up her cunt? Why did you leave marks on her breasts?”

He said nothing. “The eyewitnesses state, specifically, that you hurt her and she was screaming,” I added. “You took advantage of her helplessness to have your fun with her, against regulations and common decency, disgracing the Legion. Sergeant, remove the prisoner.”

Hershey was luckier than he knew. Normally, Muna would have sat on the panel, and she was death on rapists, but she was lost somewhere in Pitea. I’d taken a risk and sent Jock and the Specials after her, assuming that they could make their way into the city unobserved, but we didn’t even have a lead on her location. Her wristcom was off or destroyed; we couldn’t even pick up a PLB signal. God alone knew where she was now. The images from orbit weren’t telling us much that we didn’t already know about the enemy defences. It looked as if they were expelling people who didn’t agree with their policies. It would help them to keep their food stores for longer.

“Right,” I said, pushing my concerns about Muna aside. “You’ve heard his words and reviewed the eyewitness testimony. We don’t have much to go on, but we need to make a decision fast. Your verdicts, please?”

I carefully didn’t mention that we’d probably end up having to explain our decision to the local government. The girl had been released after she’d been checked by the doctor and would probably be filing a complaint now. The contract we’d signed with the local government, in happier times, was vague when it came to complaints against my men, but I doubted they’d be happy. Frida’s constituency would demand heavy punishment. For once, I agreed with them.

“Guilty,” Russell said, without hesitation. “There was no need to hurt her so badly and she wasn’t resisting him. Take the bastard outside and shoot him now. I’ll volunteer for the firing squad…”

“Thank you,” I said, cutting off what promised to be a long tirade. Russell took indiscipline seriously, as I may have mentioned once or twice before. “Jackie?”

“Guilty,” she agreed. Her voice was icy. “We’ve talked about this farce long enough.”

“Not guilty,” Captain Erica Yuppie said. “We don’t know what was going through his head at the time. Soldiers do stupid things under fire sometimes, as you well know, and he might have thought that he was doing the right thing. We don’t always have time to be gentle when lives are at stake.”

“Guilty,” Captain Robert McClellan said, glaring at Erica. “There is no excuse for his actions.”

“Three guilty votes, one not guilty votes,” I said, flatly. My tone cut off another argument. Erica and Robert had never gotten along very well. “The sentence is passed as guilty.”

“I formally request that my dissent be entered in the record,” Erica said, flatly.

“Understood,” I said, nodding to Tim. The clerk nodded back and made an entry on his computer. “Sergeant, bring in the prisoner.”

We didn’t bother with a black cap or other such nonsense, but Hershey knew the verdict from our grim faces. He quivered, but Peter kept one hand firmly on his arm, ready to knock him down if he tried anything stupid. I wouldn’t have blamed him for trying — he had nothing left to lose — but I couldn’t allow him to escape. Frida was going to be annoyed enough without an escaped molester on the run.

“Private Hershey, this court finds you guilty of molesting one civilian girl without good cause,” I said, without preamble. The UN would have dressed up the verdict in flowery terms and phases, but I saw no need to mince my words. “You will be taken from this court, given one hour to put your affairs in order, and then you will be hung from the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul.”

The next hour passed slowly. I spent it preparing a press release for the local reporters — or what were left of them after the Communists had slaughtered hundreds of them at the stadium — about the hanging and why it had been carried out. They’d probably misunderstand and misinterpret everything I said, but at least we’d get an explanation out there. Some of Private Hershey’s salary would go to the girl to compensate her for her experience, but the remainder would be sent on to his relatives, or wherever he wanted the money to go. I doubted he’d be leaving it to the Legion, as some Legionnaires, including myself, did.

Peter had supervised the construction of the gallows and we called all of the recruits out to watch, again. They looked pale as Private Hershey stepped out in full dress uniform and was stripped of everything apart from the basic uniform, before being marched to the gallows. I spoke quickly to the recruits, explaining what had happened and why he was being hung, before offering him the traditional last words. He said nothing. The hanging took seconds, but it felt like forever. This time, more recruits fainted and had to be helped away. Hershey’s body was cut down and unceremoniously transported to an unmarked grave. No one would go to mourn at his graveside.

“I’m glad that that’s over,” I said, afterwards. Peter had poured me a small glass of local whiskey and ordered me to drink it. The memory of a body dangling on a rope would be with me for a long time. “Now we get to make war.”

Peter snorted. “Do you think that that’ll make it cleaner?”

“No,” I said, “but at least when fighting the Communists, I know I’m doing the right thing.”

The words ran hollow, somehow.

Chapter Fifteen

An offensive that is not carefully prepared beforehand already has one problem. An offensive launched ahead of time has another. The wise General refuses to bow to political pressure in timing and launching an offensive.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

From the air, Pitea looked like any other city on a Colony world, if larger than New Copenhagen. It was Svergie’s largest city and actually the second to be settled, although I doubted that the planners had the vast bands of slums and inadequate housing in mind when they’d created their plans. The UN’s shipments of refugees had spoiled the plan merely by existing; the planet’s economy couldn’t handle them, yet it couldn’t get rid of them. In their place, I’d have told them to work or starve, but successive UN administrations had preferred to squeeze the farmers to feed them, rather than admit that their plans needed changing.

I studied the city carefully through the cold metal eyes of the William Tell. The Fleet starship’s orbit kept it over the main continent on the planet and we had access to the take, although perhaps not with the knowledge of the vessel’s Captain. The images were depressingly clear, yet even they had limits; the Communists could be doing anything at all under cover and we wouldn’t know anything about it until we had boots on the ground. The flow of refugees leaving the city suggested that Communist rule was Not Popular, but it was quite possible that much of the Communist leadership had already escaped, although I didn’t know where they intended to go to hide. After they’d nearly killed the President and had killed half the Council, the entire planet was up in arms against them. They would probably end up being shot on sight.

“The best intelligence can suggest is that there are still upwards of six million people in there,” Ed said, grimly. I winced at the thought of so many people caught in the midst of a battle. They couldn’t all be committed Communists, could they? “We’ve established detention camps for people leaving the city, but there just aren’t enough soldiers to keep a full encirclement. There could be hundreds of people slipping past us.”

I nodded. Pitea had seven heavy roads leading out of the city, towards the other cities, and we’d blocked them as soon as we’d moved light infantry units into the area, but there was little stopping people from walking out cross-country. Everyone who had relatives in the countryside, or good reason to know that the Communists wanted them dead, would be trying to escape the nightmare that had gripped their city. They’d be a plague of locusts ravaging the land, yet even if we held them all in detention camps, we couldn’t feed them all. UN MRE packs were little more than cruel and unusual punishment.

“We’ve also been skirmishing with their patrols around the edge of the city,” Ed added. “We’ve killed several dozen fighters with snipers, but they’ve got their own snipers and a couple of my men got killed. I think they don’t want to come out of the city — I have teams in position to block any attempt to leave in force — but digging them out is going to be a bitch.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the map. Pitea was a confusing mixture of massive factory areas, slums and buildings that had once been warehouses, but had been converted into living space for the immigrants. Fighting our way through it would be a nightmare. “Any sign of heavy weapons?”

“Nothing that we can confirm,” Ed said. “They’ve probably got mortars at the very least, but if they have anything heavier… well, we’ve been unable to catch a glimpse of it. Jock’s somewhere in the city, but I haven’t heard anything from him.”

“He’ll be fine,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t feel. Terrorist organisations tended to be very good at filtering the trustworthy out from the untrustworthy — terrorist groups that weren’t rarely lasted very long — and if they knew who should be there, they’d probably realise that Jock wasn’t one of them. The Specials were good at blending into their surroundings, and chaos was an excellent operating zone for them, but if Jock was located… he’d have to break contact and escape. “We’ll hear from him when he’s ready to hear from us.”

“Doubtless,” Ed agreed, probably with as much confidence as I felt myself. “What about the President… ah, the Acting President?”

“She’s decided to allow us to spend time preparing before we move into the city,” I said. It had taking a long argument to convince Frida that getting the army I’d built chewed to ribbons would be counterproductive. She’d wanted to move in at once and crush the Communists as quickly as possible, but I’d wanted to prepare first. I needed time to ensure that we reoccupied the city with as little damage to the infrastructure as possible. The Communists had already damaged enough infrastructure to force us to spend years rebuilding. “And the ships?”

I hadn’t understood why they’d built Pitea where it was until I’d seen a map. North of Pitea, across the waters, was the Blue Island Chain, a set of small islands that housed a fairly affluent community. There was actually a surprising amount of sea travel on the planet and much of the carrying trade was done by boat; unsurprising, really, when all of the major cities were on the coast. The UN had actually tried to boost shipping by boat because of some halfwit theories about it being better for the environment… and, for once, the natives had agreed with them. Pitea was pretty much the shipping capital of the planet.

“We used the helicopters to move men onto the boats and bring them into safe harbour,” Ed confirmed. “They’re not going to be a problem, although several of them wanted to fight rather than be returned to Pitea. It looks as if most of the pleasure ships and some of the industrial ships managed to get away before the communists could stop them, or place their own men onboard. We called for volunteers to man the ships and moved the remainder of the original crews to the detention camps. That’s not going to be a permanent solution, sir; we’re already running short of food.”

“I know,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. It was a gesture I’d picked up in the UNPF and somehow never lost. “How many people do we have in the camps so far?”

“Several hundred thousand,” Ed said. I swore. That was worse than I’d expected, yet everyone in the camps was someone who wouldn’t be in the way when we finally went into the city, someone who wouldn’t be killed in the crossfire. “We’ve got a few thousand in secure detention — the violent or the known Communists — and the remainder are in looser camps. Still, feeding them…”

”I’m having MRE packs sent over,” I said. It would do nothing for the current government in the polls, but I was past caring. “Once the local government gets its act together, we can probably start releasing most of them to their families, if they have families outside the city.”

I didn’t mention the other concern. There had been no attempt to keep track of who belonged to a political party, or even which political party, but we did have a list of known hardcore Communist leaders who had to be arrested and removed from play. I didn’t want to let them go, yet I didn’t want to hand them over to the locals until we had sucked every last piece of information from them. They would know who else needed to be arrested and eventually shot, yet interrogating them was going to be a pain. The Communist Party was now officially banned… and the hardcore had nothing left to lose. They knew that they’d probably end up being hung from a tree until they were very unhappy.

“The sooner the better,” Ed said. He paused. “There’s been no sign of Muna, but we interrogated a few policemen who fled — the remainder were apparently being purged by the Communists — and they’ve confirmed that the factories were among the first seized. She’s either a prisoner or dead.”

“Yes,” I said. I changed the subject with an effort of will. “I need to inspect the defences. Show me what you’ve done.”

The air near Pitea smelt of burning fuel and the by-products of industry. I was surprised to smell it when the UN had ruled — almost uncontested — for years, and then I remembered Earth and understood. Some bureaucrats had probably taken a few huge bribes and granted exceptions to the harsh laws against polluting the environment, forcing the UN’s publicity machine to come up with new lies and shit to shovel down the throats of the workers. Probably something about how the Colonies had to help Mother Earth by suffering and therefore tilting the cosmic balance, or some other nonsense like that. It was amazing what the UN could convince people to do with a little effort and a lot of lies.

“This used to be a small town,” Ed explained. “We evacuated the population and took over. It was intended to be a storage place outside the city, I think, but somehow it never took off.”

I nodded. The town was crawling with soldiers wearing our uniforms and the ones we’d designed for the Svergie Army. We’d managed to spend a week moving tanks and armoured vehicles into position, along with vehicles that protected their crew from mines, IEDs and other unpleasant surprises. I saw Sergeants — some of ours, some newly promoted from the Svergie recruits — chivvying the soldiers along, reminding them of what the Communists had done to their President and thousands of people. I winced inwardly. The last thing I wanted was a massacre caused by outraged soldiers, yet we had to remind them of what had happened, just to remind them of what they were fighting for. A world free of Communism looked mighty good just now.

“This is Captain Hellqvist,” Ed said, introducing a man wearing a new insignia. It was always easy to tell someone who had just been promoted from someone who had been serving in the rank for a few months or years; they always looked just a trifle uneasy. “The Acting President promoted him personally and insisted that we gave him a platoon.”

I saluted. Now I remembered him; Jörgen Hellqvist had been at the siege of the stadium and had served well during the defence. I should have been consulted about any promotions to Captain’s rank and above, but I couldn’t fault the decision. He was young and unformed and had barely been in the army for more than five months, but the same was true of all of them. How could we refuse to promote natives? It would have ensured resentment and hatred among the lower ranks, yet… someone ill-prepared for the role would get people killed, or worse.

He returned my salute, almost perfectly. “Congratulations on your promotion,” I said, as I lowered my hand. “What do you think of the position?”

Jörgen was clearly smart enough to recognise a test question when he heard one. “If they try to break out, we’ll chew them up and shit out the remains,” he said, finally. “If we have to break in… it’s going to be a stone cold bitch.”

“Definitely,” I said, spotting Sergeant Rory behind Jörgen, keeping a paternal eye on him. If the new Captain was smart, he’d listen to the experienced enlisted man and seek his advice on all matters. Sergeant Rory had been taking young Lieutenants and turning them into Captains for longer than I’d been alive. “Keep drilling your platoon on urban combat, Captain; I have a feeling that we’re going to need it.”

I spent the next hour inspecting the ring of steel we’d created around the city. We’d held most of our forces back to keep them out of artillery range — if the Communists had such weapons, which was in doubt — and were carefully preparing our forces for the advance to the city. The recon patrols were confident and clearly had high morale; one of them bragged that they’d slipped right up to the city and even entered part of it, without being detected. Others claimed to have sneaked up on their counterparts and cut their throats before vanishing again into the shadows.

“They’re not good sneaks, sir,” one particularly pleased Lieutenant reported. “They keep blundering around in the countryside and I’d bet they’re not much better in the city. A few units of countrymen would cause us far more problems…”

“One moment,” Ed said, keying his earpiece and listening to the message. “Forward patrols have just picked up a man from the city carrying a white flag. He claims to be a Communist Leader and wants to speak to someone in charge.”

Shoot him at once, I thought, but pushed it aside. If we killed everyone who tried to talk to us, our opponents would only fight to the death. “I’ll talk to him,” I said, and pushed down Ed’s objections. “I’ll take an armoured car and meet him in the space between the two sides.”

The Communist stood on the road, waiting patiently for me. I was surprised to discover that I recognised him; Councillor — ex-Councillor — Daniel Singh. His family history had been more complex than most of the other prominent Councillors; he’d been the child of a mixed marriage that had fallen apart, a year after he’d been born. He’d drifted into Communism because racism was anthemia to the Communists — in the same sense that it was anthemia to the UN, but also useful for divide and conquer — and ended up their first Councillor. He’d also lost his seat to the Progressive Party and had taken it badly. Up close, he was a light brown man, with eyes that were cold and hard. He looked like someone who was prepared to fight and die.

“Captain-General,” he said, when I stood close enough for a friendly conversation. “You are surrounding territory belonging to the People’s Republic of Pitea, an extremely unfriendly act.”

I had to admire his chutzpah, if nothing else. “Blow it out your ass,” I said, rudely. “You took the city from the elected government and are currently holding it down by force. Dare I hope that you’ve come to negotiate a surrender?”

“When we spoke before, you were the leader of a group of mercenary army trainers,” Singh said, as if my words hadn’t affected him at all. “Now you’re the General of the entire planet. How your positions have grown.”

“They have,” I agreed, tightly. He was trying to get under my skin and succeeding. “You’re not a military man, Singh, but even you must agree that your position is hopeless. We’ll take the city back even if…”

“You have to destroy it to save it?” Singh asked, amused. “You certainly didn’t leave much of the Industrial Complex standing in New Copenhagen, did you?”

“I didn’t turn it into an armed fortress and kill half the planet’s government,” I said, angrily. “If you’re going to try and convince me that you’re only acting this way because we made you act this way… save it. The age-old cry of the terrorist; look what you made us do! You’re not going to get out of this alive if we have to retake the city by force.”

“We’re not going to get out of this alive anyway,” Singh pointed out. “Darling Frida will want to kill us all, just to ensure that her own connections with us are buried beneath our dead bodies. Would it surprise you to know that she was once a Communist in good standing?” I shrugged. “Or do you care, seeing that you are just a mercenary with no sense of what you’re fighting for?”

“Not really, no,” I said, ignoring his insults. Removing him and the rest of his gang suited both sets of orders. “Are you going to offer me a bribe?”

He smiled. “Bring your force over to our side and I’ll pay you twice what Frida and her government are paying you.”

I laughed, loudly enough for him to know that he was being mocked. “If I accepted that bargain, and I don’t believe that you could or would keep it, no one would ever hire us again,” I said. “There’s a whole string of mercenary companies out there and all of them would gleefully point out that the Legion of the Dispossessed had turned on their backers when a better offer came along. Fleet would probably forbid us from moving around if they viewed us as bearers of chaos… what can you offer us to make it worthwhile?”

He looked as if I’d struck him. “You could come work with us…”

My laugh grew louder. “Communism has never worked,” I said. I’d studied history enough to know that to be true. “The best you could create is a prison camp for your planet; the worst would be another civil war. Even if you became the government of the planet, you couldn’t make communism work — it simply doesn’t work.”

“There are communist planets out there,” he protested. “They work.”

“They were all created by committed believers,” I pointed out, in response. “And even they didn’t remain stable when their children learned about different worlds, did they? Some will probably go capitalist soon enough; others, the worst ones, will probably have a civil war. You have to force communism on people who don’t want it. You’ll be lucky if you last a year.”

His gaze darkened. “We have some of your people prisoner,” he snapped, forgetting his manners. “If you attack us, they will be killed.”

I felt a knife stabbing into my heart, but pushed it down angrily. “Anyone who joins the Legion knows the score,” I said. “If they die on active service, they die on active service… and we will hunt their killers to the ends of the universe.”

I watched as he stumbled away. If they weren’t going to give up…

We’d have to attack.

Chapter Sixteen

MOUT — Military Operations in Urban Terrain — is among the most dangerous forms of combat. The advantages of modern trained troops are cut down to nothing. It is therefore recommended that all ROE be adjusted to ensure the safety of the troops as the first priority.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

Three days later, we began a careful advance into the city.

I’d planned, after some consultation with Jock — who had finally bothered to report in — and Ed, for an attempt to win over most of the city’s population. Jock had confirmed my suspicions that most of the city’s population was caught in the middle of the fighting, without actually being Communists or even Communist Supporters. I wasn’t too surprised by that — the Communists had lost their seat, after all — but if they were caught up in the fighting, they might turn on my people. The Communists, it seemed, had disarmed the Police and most of the other militia groups, leaving them as the dominant presence in the city. I couldn’t see how they intended to convert their control of the city into control of the planet, unless they thought their resistance would spark off other insurrections in the other cities. I doubted it would work. Everywhere else, the Police had rounded up known Communists and thrown them in the detention camps.

The Communists clearly had SAM missiles, which they’d proved by firing at and missing a helicopter that flew too close to the city, but they hadn’t realised just how advanced the UAVs we had were. We might not have been able to count on the William Tell to continue to supply us with orbital reconnaissance — the broadcasts from the encircled city contained more than a few mocking references to Fleet’s apparent reluctance to intervene — but the UAVs would fill in the holes. The big ones could hover high over the city for hours, completely beyond detection, while the smaller ones fluttered down between the buildings. They looked so much like birds that they would almost pass unnoticed, at least until someone shot one down in hopes of an addition to their rations. The Communists had clearly stockpiled food and drink — hell, they had the entire seacoast to draw on for water — but they were already looking a bit sparse. I’d have held off for longer, but the political pressure had become irresistible. We needed to destroy the Communist faction before further trouble erupted. It probably wouldn’t be long in coming.

I looked over at the take from the bird-shaped UAVs and smiled. The Communists didn’t know it, but between them and the Specials we knew where most of their strongpoints were. This would be very different from battering our way into the Industrial Complex, when we were almost blind; this time, we’d know where we were going, and just where to hit to split up the enemy forces. They might have turned the city into a strongpoint, but we could break it up, at a cost. The thought made me wince. We had half of the Legion and four thousand soldiers from the local army… and we were about to assault a city with over six million people. It was going to be nasty.

“Ed?” I asked, finally. “Is everything ready?”

“It’s as ready as it’s ever going to get,” Ed said. We’d strengthened the ring of steel around the city as more units were shuttled down from the spaceport or New Copenhagen. Hundreds of people were still trying to flee and we’d picked most of them up, taking the time to debrief them properly. The Communists were still purging the city of everyone they hated; having killed the Police and the Industrialists, they’d moved on to the landlords and the loan sharks, even the drug dealers. The tidal wave of human movement had netted us quite a few people the Police would want to have a few words with, afterwards. “We could do with more men, but…”

“We could always do with more men,” I said, peering over in the direction of the city. There were small plumes of smoke rising up in the distance, caused by cooking fires, but otherwise it seemed peaceful. That wouldn’t last very long. “Are all of the units ready?”

Ed saluted sharply. “The Legion is fully at your command, Captain-General,” he said, formally. It was an old phasing, dating back from well before the UNPF and the Colonies War. “We are good to go.”

I took one last look at the display and keyed my earpiece. “Missile teams, this is Lead One,” I said. “You are cleared to open fire. I repeat; you are cleared to open fire.”

The missile trucks had come from the UN deports on the planet, where they’d been abandoned along with enough ammunition to fight a civil war, and it hadn’t taken long to get them back into working order. They weren’t used that often when there were starships in orbit, beyond any danger of being shot down or captured, but I had a use in mind for them now. I heard the noise as they fired the first spread of light cruise missiles into the city, targeted on the Communist command posts. If we were lucky, we’d kill the leadership and decapitate them in the opening round. I smiled as the streaks of light raced over the horizon and flew towards the city, watching carefully for any signs of laser point defence fire. The Communists could have obtained a ground-based point defence station from one of the UN deports, but instead the missiles came crashing down on their targets, exploding in massive fireballs that I could see even at a distance. There would be no way that they’d be hiding that from their captive population!

“Nine missiles scored direct hits,” Ed said, looking at the telemetry and the signals from the UAVs. “One crashed down in the suburbs and started a fire; I doubt that that’s going to make us very popular. And one of them caught a UAV in the fireball. It should have been vaporised, but the destruct system should have completed the job, just in case.”

I nodded. If the Communists captured a UAV, they’d know how they were being watched and start shooting all of the birds out of the sky. “Fire the second set of missiles,” I ordered, keying my earpiece. “Add Target Nine to the second firing list and fire at will.”

A second wave of cruise missiles crashed down on the city. The first wave of missiles had been targeted on known command posts. The second wave had been targeted on known strongpoints. We were taking the risk of heavy civilian casualties, but I wasn’t going to risk my men on cracking a heavily-defended city when massive applications of firepower would do the job. The feedback showed that, again, most of the missiles had scored direct hits. I’d hated facing cruise missiles myself, even with point defence systems, and the Communists had to be becoming demoralised. They might even be considering surrender.

“Launch the third set,” I ordered, again. This time, the missiles were targeted on their guard posts at the edge of the city. It was almost certain that some civilians would be caught in those blasts, if not the others, but it might just allow the survivors a chance to escape and run right into our arms. We’d take them all and interrogate them, learning everything they knew about the Communist position. It was amazing how much could be learned just by asking the right questions. Intelligence is the second most dangerous weapon in war. “Results?”

“I think we stunned them,” Ed said. “We shattered the guard posts and scouts report that there’s shooting from within the city. Their broadcasts seem to have cut off in the midst of blathering about the Communist Republic and how everything is going to be wine and roses forever.”

“Oh, what a shame,” I said, lifting my binoculars to my eyes and watching the massive black plumes of smoke as they rose into the air. The cruise missiles would not only have slaughtered most of the Communist leadership — and they might have killed the hostages as well — but they’d set parts of the city on fire. The Communists would have problems trying to organise resistance with the city burning down around their ears. “Transmit our message now.”

We’d recorded a message from Frida, not for the Communists, but for the innocent civilians caught in the midst of the fighting. It told them what was happening, promised them that the time of liberation was at hand, and ordered them to try and make their way out of the city. She’d wanted to tell them to remain in their homes and I had to admit that the idea was attractive, but we couldn’t run the risk of having people in positions where they might be mistaking for enemy combatants. The death toll was going to be high enough anyway. God alone knew how many people the cruise missiles had killed. The other part of the message warned them to come unarmed. Armed hostiles would be shot down in the streets.

“Message being transmitted now,” Ed said. We’d hijacked the local radio frequency, but it wasn’t a big loss; it had only been transmitting Communist bullshit. “Do you think anyone’s going to listen, sir?”

I shrugged. I’ve been through wars on a dozen planets and I liked to think that I was used to chaos. Combat isn’t like a disease, where a handful of doses can make you immune, but soldiers do develop a warrior mentality. The civilians wouldn’t be so used to the chaos and would probably remain cowering in their homes as long as possible. It made a pleasant change from Heinlein, in a way; there it seemed that everyone had had guns and even civilians had engaged entire UN Infantry Companies and forced them to retreat. It had been a thoroughly nasty war… and this one was shaping up to be worse.

“We can, but try, Ed,” I said, and meant it. “Order the first recon patrols to move down into the city and prepare to call in fire from the mortars.”

My earpiece roared in my ear. “God damn you, sir,” Jock’s voice bellowed. “You damn near killed me!”

“Ah… sorry?” I asked, dryly. “What’s going on in there?”

“You just kicked over a hornet’s nest and all the hornets are buzzing about looking for someone to sting,” Jock snapped, calming down slightly. “Your fucking missile nearly killed me in the blast!”

“You said,” I said, patiently. I had a million and one things to do, but I needed his report. “Did we kill the Communist leadership?”

“It doesn’t look like it,” Jock said, after a moment. “There’s still plenty of guys walking around issuing orders. It looks as if they’ve got the situation under control. I can’t find any trace of the prisoners yet — you do know you might have killed them?”

“I know,” I said. “And the civilian population?”

“Plenty of panic in places, but plenty of people just hiding indoors,” Jock reported. “I’d suggest pressing closer and trying to liberate parts of the city. The more chaos the better. Chaos is my friend.”

He cut the connection and I rubbed my ear before looking down at the display. The advance units had just reached the edge of the slums, mile upon miles of filthy squalid dwellings that had been used to house the new immigrants, and recoiled as the Communists opened fire on them. The newcomers had rapidly fallen to the bottom of the social pyramid and hated it, seeing themselves as the victims of discrimination. They might well have been right. The locals saw no reason to welcome the strangers the UN had fostered on them, seeing them as the UN’s attempt to weaken the planet and make it easier to rule. No wonder the Communists had done so well in recruiting them. They’d been the only game in town.

“They’re trying to hold us back,” Robert reported, as B Company fell back in good order. A hail of mortar shells rose from the slums and came crashing down in the general direction of my people; we answered with a wave of fire from our own mortars and a handful of long-range guns. It was a mystery why the UN had even brought them to the planet — they preferred to use KEWs to surprise ground-based defences and resistance — but they were worth their weight in gold and platinum. “It’s going to be hard to break through without the armoured vehicles.”

I swallowed a curse as the first IED exploded far too close to Robert’s position for comfort. “Tankers, this is HQ,” I ordered. “You are cleared to advance to your first positions. Do you copy?”

“Copy,” the lead tanker said. “We’re on our way now.”

I tilted the binoculars and saw the first tanks lumbering down towards the slums. The enemy noticed them as well and the tanks seemed to glitter as thousands of bullets slammed into the tanks, only to ricochet harmlessly away from the hull. The tanks couldn’t be hurt that easily, although the slums would provide plenty of places to hide IEDs or antitank weapons. Not for the first time, I cursed the weak planetary government; I believed in owning weapons, but there were limits. What else did the Communists have up their sleeves?

The tanks revolved and seemed to explode as they opened fire with all of their machine guns at once. The slums couldn’t take that weight of fire; they’d been constructed from cardboard to stolen bricks, wood taken from the nearby forests to the remains of burned-out UN vehicles. The shells cascaded through the slums and sent many of the ramshackle buildings crashing to the ground, crushing their occupants below the weight. The tankers showed little mercy to the handful of survivors crawling from the wreckage and mowed them down without hesitation.

I scowled and keyed my earpiece. “Robert, move your infantry company up in support and try and take prisoners,” I ordered, promising the lead tanker a hard time afterwards. I couldn’t fault his decision, but I needed prisoners, if only to learn what the interior of the city looked like. “Let the tankers go ahead and…”

A massive explosion blew up right in front of one of the tanks and sent the entire vehicle flying through the air, spinning until it crashed down on the ground, upside down. The hatches burst open and the men came pouring out; I silently blessed the unknown genius who had designed the Landshark. It might have been crude and ugly, but it took care of its drivers. It might even be salvageable in the near future, once we’d cleared the city. It wasn’t as if we were short of spare parts.

“Or maybe not,” I added, without skipping a beat. The shockwaves from the explosion would have killed any potential prisoners in the area. Flames were already spreading through the remains of the slums. It made me wonder if the Communists had intended to do just that. The slums were burning down, providing a barrier to further advancement, while allowing the inhabitants to decide that we were to blame. They’d probably done it to encourage the inhabitants to fight harder. They’d probably succeeded.

Another round of mortar fire echoed overhead as I rekeyed my earpiece. “Robert, advance at your own discretion,” I ordered, knowing that I was passing the buck. The UN commanders would have always looked over his shoulder, but I trusted the man on the spot to make his own decisions. “Keep a careful eye out for more booby traps.”

“We’re going to have to go slow,” Robert said, in reply. “Those flames aren’t going to abate quickly.”

I nodded as the wind shifted slightly, blowing the smoke towards us… along with the stink of burning human flesh. I forced myself not to recoil through sheer strength of will, remembering just how many people were packed into the city. The fools who called war glorious had never seen this side of the fighting; the dead and dying people who had only gotten in the way. They saw the pageantry and the baubles with which men are led, not the bloody truth. There were seven million people in the city. How many of them would be dead before the day ended?

“Understood,” I said, looking down at the display. The live feed from the UAVs showed Communist fighters rushing towards their back-up fortifications. The cruise missiles hadn’t wiped them all out, just the ones that were large enough to be worth expending a missile taking them out. “Your call.”

My earpiece buzzed again. “Boss, I may have a lead on the prisoners,” Jock said, in my ear. “I request permission to leave my post and follow up on it.”

“Do so,” I ordered, tightly. “Good luck.”

Ed looked over at me. “Advance patrols just picked up a mass of civilians who fled when their guards were distracted,” he said. I looked over at the live feed from one of the other UAVs. The civilians were being treated gently, but firmly. We couldn’t take risks with them, but they’d already been through hell and didn’t need more suffering. The hanging I’d supervised would ensure that none of them were molested, I hoped. “The Communists are losing their grip.”

“Here, yes,” I agreed. The fires were still burning brightly. There were probably water-dropping aircraft for fires somewhere on the planet, but the Communists would probably shoot them down if we tried to use them. “What happens when we advance our way into the heart of the city and hit their inner defences?”

Ed considered it. “Sucks to be you, I guess,” he said, with a wink. “Perhaps the dumb bastards will see reason and give up.”

“And maybe the horse will learn to sing,” I countered. Another waves of explosions echoed out in the distance. “Or maybe they won’t give up until everyone is dead.”

Chapter Seventeen

It is a core of our society that all elected persons in leadership positions are men and women who have had military experience. This requirement exists so that the elected politicians have a clear idea of what a military operation requires. Other planets, which lack this system, encounter problems because their leaders do not understand military realities. Their interference is sometimes disastrous.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

New Copenhagen looked better than I remembered, I decided, even after a full week. The city still had hundreds of blackened and burned-out buildings, but the bodies had been removed to storage somewhere outside the city — I’d recommended burying them all in a mass grave, but the local government had balked — and work crews of prisoners, emergency servicemen and volunteers were struggling to clear up the mess. I spied a number of soldiers on patrol and allowed myself a smile. No matter what the UN says, you can’t beat local troops for local security. They knew the area and everyone trusted them, at least at first. The city felt, despite the damage, optimistic again.

The same couldn’t be said for Pitea. There had been four days of heavy fighting as we’d pushed into the city and we were still far from having completed the liberation. Parts of the city had fallen almost at once as the locals rose up against the Communists, but other parts were holding out and forcing us to reduce them, one by one. We’d liberate the city — I had no doubt of that — but it was starting to look as if we were going to destroy Pitea in order to save it. Where would we put all the homeless refugees? They couldn’t go to any of the other cities. They were already overcrowded with immigrants and didn’t need more.

I stopped outside the New Copenhagen Medical Centre and showed the guard my ID. They were definitely on alert, much to my relief, and double-checked the badge before waving me through, without my bodyguards. Peter fell in beside me and dared the guards to say anything, but the remainder of my guard had to wait outside. I couldn’t fault the logic — a Communist spy could wear a soldier’s uniform without being detected easily — but Peter’s snort suggested that he thought the guard was pushing it. The guards inside the hospital issued a series of warnings about not firing guns or smoking tobacco inside the hospital and then summoned an intern to take us to the President. There were so many guards in the building, I noted as she led us up the stairs, that normal business had to be quite disrupted. There were so many guards that sneaking inside would be easy, with just a little preparation. The more men there are involved in a mission, the easier it is for confusion and chaos to set in.

“The President is sleeping at the moment,” the Doctor said, when we reached the heavily secured private room. The doctors had their own set of cots in the room where they could sleep in-between tending to their patient, but the President lay in his own private space. I peered in and saw him sleeping peacefully, but I could tell that he was seriously injured. He was barely moving at all. “I’d prefer you didn’t attempt to rouse him.”

“I understand,” I said, closing the door — the nurse by his bedside winked at me just before the door closed, much to my private amusement — and turning to him. “How is he? No bullshit, just the facts.”

The Doctor frowned, but decided to answer anyway. “He was badly wounded when he was shot, although a few inches to the right would have killed him before you could get him to hospital,” he said. I nodded. I didn’t know why the sniper hadn’t aimed for the head — UN snipers were taught to aim for the head to ensure a kill, which was remarkably efficient of them — but I wouldn’t complain about his mistake. “The level of care he received afterwards wasn’t of the best either, although” — he hastened to explain — “I do understand that you didn’t have a choice. Overall, he suffered a great deal of trauma, which wasn’t improved by the stress he was under as President. His official medical advisors actually advised him not to run this time.”

He shook his head. “Worst of all,” he concluded, “his body is actually rejecting the regeneration therapies your medical staff tried to offer him. He was too old to take them unless he was in the peak of health, and, obviously, he wasn’t. He may recover completely, but I think he’s always going to be in poor health and I would seriously recommend that he resigned from the Presidency when he recovered. At the moment, I wouldn’t permit him to do more than light duties when he awakes, if at all.”

I nodded. It was another reminder of just how primitive Svergie actually was, compared to Heinlein or Williamson’s World. Treatments that could extend a person’s life or cure the worst injuries or diseases simply didn’t exist here. Earth had had regeneration treatments as well, but they’d been reserved for the elite; everyone else, no matter who they were, lived a normal human lifespan. The UN had blamed that on the Colonies and convinced far too many people to support the various invasions and occupations. Worse, the treatments had to begin when the person was in their late teens for maximum effect… and the President was in his sixties. The best we could do was freeze his age and it looked as if we wouldn’t even be that lucky.

“Please inform me if his condition changes,” I said, finally. There was nothing else to say. “I’ll be on the military net and I’ll give you a priority code.”

We walked out of the hospital and back towards the armoured car. “I hope he recovers, sir,” Peter said, seriously for once. “What happens if he dies?”

“Frida Holmqvist ends up as the real President, not just the Acting President,” I said, remembering the Constitution. The Progressive Party would end up controlling both the Council and the Presidency; Frida, their leader, would be President. They’d have enough political power to ensure lasting change, both positive and negative. Frida had shown more backbone than I’d expected after the Communist Uprising had begun, but I wasn’t sure if I trusted her. “Our duties might change…”

The drive over to Government House was uneventful, although the building Frida had converted into a base of operations was surrounded by the one thing worse than an angry mob baying for blood — a mob of reporters, baying for news. The local reporters were less obnoxious than the UN’s tame attack dogs — they could be counted upon to write the story without doing anything as strange as actually checking the facts — but they were still irritating. I wanted to cover my eyes as flashbulbs started to go off in my face, but I swallowed the impulse. Instead, I walked to the armed guards in my best march, ignoring the reporters completely. They shouted silly questions anyway.

“When will the war be over?”

“Are you and the Acting President a couple?”

“Are you going to release the prisoners?”

I kept my face blank and ignored them. I didn’t know when the war would be over myself, the disposition of the prisoners was an affair for the planetary government and Frida and I were definitely not a couple. I didn’t understand why they came up with such questions, let alone had the nerve to ask. At least they weren’t casting aspirations on my sex life. The UN had been fond of using reporters to spread rumours and cast doubt on a person’s honesty, integrity and fitness for office. It was a wonder anyone believed them these days.

“Why did you hang one of your own men?” A reporter called, slightly louder than the others. “Why didn’t you hand him over to the Police?”

It was something I should answer, but I ignored the reporter anyway. I could have explained the truth, or made up a comforting lie, but the reporter would have misinterpreted and misrepresented everything I said for sensational effect. I could have told them all exactly why — I couldn’t tolerate indiscipline within the Legion — but they would never have understood. Their career insisted that they lie, cheat and steal; mine insisted on a certain personal integrity, if nothing else. Soldiers may fight for their countries, but they’ll die for their comrades in arms.

“You can’t take your pistol into the President’s presence,” the guard said, nervously. He wasn’t one of the soldiers I’d trained; my guess was that he was from the militia, just before the uprising. He should have been retrained at the spaceport under Russell, but the locals had been reluctant to pass all their fighting men through the camp. They probably thought that they had a good reason for it.

“Of course,” I said, removing the pistol from the holster and laying it flat on the table. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t get another one if that one were stolen. I would have liked one of the weapons that only worked for one person, but the UN had been experimenting for years and had never managed to get all the bugs out of the system. “Peter, wait here; I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Peter looked rebellious, but nodded reluctantly as I stepped into the office. Frida had taken over an executive boardroom for her personal office — at least until she moved again — and I examined it appreciatively. The previous owner had had good taste in paintings, although I was fairly sure that most of them were copies; the UN would never have let go of some of the classical paintings from centuries ago, even if they were banned to the general public. It wouldn’t do to have people wondering at the mystery of the smiling girl, would it?

“Reporting as ordered,” I said, formally. Frida looked up at me and smiled tiredly. “What can I do for you?”

“Stand at ease,” Frida said. Her lips twitched. “That is how you say it, isn’t it?”

“Close enough,” I said. “You could have roared like a Drill Sergeant or been fussy and precise like a Captain, but definitely close enough.”

Frida snorted as I sat down in a chair that was really too comfortable for my tastes. I dislike luxury when in the field, just because it can put me to sleep, or even relax too far. There probably wasn’t any danger of assassins within the building, but the discussion was too important to deal with while I was half asleep. Whatever Frida had called me from the besieged city to discuss, it had to be important.

“My small career in the politics has not been wasted,” she said, dryly. It had to be something uncomfortable, then. She didn’t normally waste time with small talk. “I’ve been trying to rebuild most of the government from scratch. The President handled more than I ever understood before finding myself in his shoes.”

I smiled. “If you wanted the job,” I asked, “shouldn’t you have found out what it entailed?”

“There’s normally a period when the outgoing President tutors the incoming President,” Frida explained. “Or at least there should be one; it’s easy to forget that the last few Presidents — apart from the incumbent — were really UN pawns. They only used the Constitution for toilet paper. They did everything the UN wanted and nothing for the people.”

She shrugged. “But you didn’t come here to hear a political speech,” she said. “Why did you hang the rapist from your men?”

I paused for a moment to think. “Because he abused his position,” I explained, finally. “Because he acted in a manner forbidden by regulations, regulations that were read out to him every day during his training and then every week while onboard ship. Because he allowed himself to get distracted in a very dangerous situation. Because he was a disgrace to the Legion. Because… take any or all of those answers.”

“The parents of the girl he… molested are demanding to know why he didn’t face the local courts,” Frida said, in the same dispassionate tone. “Why didn’t you hand him over to the Police for trial and sentencing?”

“The Police had largely broken under the impact of the Communist offensive,” I reminded her. There had only been a few policemen left when order had been returned to New Copenhagen. The Communists had wrecked havoc among the Police and had forced army units into a de facto policing role. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with them doing. “I didn’t have anyone to hand him over to, even if I had wanted to hand him over.”

Frida’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you want to hand him over?”

I took a moment to compose myself. “When I formed the Legion, I agreed to certain… conditions of leadership,” I explained, carefully. “One of them was that soldiers would not be abandoned to the tender mercies of local governments. That kind of betrayal would do nothing, but spark bad feeling among the men, no matter the original cause. The UN regularly betrayed its men to the point where entire units mutinied fairly frequently. In this case, everyone knew that the sentence for abusing locals was death. He was put to death legally, by us.”

“I’m not sure that you could be described as having tender mercies either,” Frida said, dryly. “You do not feel that your troops should be accountable?”

“They are accountable to me,” I countered, firmly. “If they cross the line, they get punished according to regulations. If you have complaints against my men, bring them to me and I will deal with them.”

Frida nodded and changed the subject. “I also have a list of complaints from various people who hold property in Pitea,” she said. “They’re complaining about the damage being done to the city by your attack. Is there any way you can reduce the amount of damage…?”

“I doubt it,” I said. I wasn’t surprised by that line of questioning. The industrialists were probably going mad with worry that nothing would be left of their investments, but piles of rubble. I couldn’t blame them for that, but the Communists had dug in so firmly that nothing short of heavy firepower would dig them out. “The city is very strongly held.”

“And thousands of innocents are being killed every day,” Frida said. “Is there nothing you can do about that either?”

“They’re in the city,” I explained, grimly. “We’re getting as many of them out as we can, but they’re often being held back by the Communists and used as human shields. We’re doing the best we can, but a combat zone isn’t the safest place on the planet.”

It was worse than I’d suggested. Hundreds of civilians had been gunned down by accident, mistaken for Communists in the heat of the battle. Others had been raped by the Communists or, in one case, by two of the local soldiers. Their Sergeant had handed out swift justice from the barrel of a gun and placed himself on report. God alone knew what we were going to do with him.

“And then there’s the ones you have in the detention camps,” Frida continued. “Do you know how much feeding them is costing us?”

“Do you know how much havoc even a handful of Communists could cause outside the city, if we let them go?” I countered. “We have to keep them somewhere safe and out of the way.”

“They’ll have to be moved,” Frida said. “I was talking to some of the other Councillors and it should be possible to foster some of the families in the more rural areas, where there’s food and some of them can work for a living. Others will have to come here to help rebuild the damage the Communists inflicted. We can’t keep them penned up in the camps or we’ll end up with riots on our hands.”

I shrugged. “I would like to recruit amongst them as well,” I suggested. “We’re going to need to rebuild entire units after feeding the army through the meat grinder in the city. There are plenty of young men and women who could become soldiers and God knows they’ve seen just how much damage the Communists have inflicted. They’ll have motivation, all right.”

“See to it,” Frida said. “And the remainder can be sent here, or to the farms?”

“If you insist,” I said. I had doubts about fostering them out to the farms, but it was her decision. We’d probably end up picking up the pieces later. “We’ll try to end the Communist occupation of the city as quickly as possible, but… it would go a lot easier if you promised not to kill them out of hand.”

“I can’t,” Frida said, her eyes darkening with fire. “Even if I wanted to spare the Communist leadership, the Council and the people would never let me get away with it. They want the bastards to hurt!”

“I want them to hurt too,” I agreed. “The problem is that they know they’re going to be executed once they’re captured, so they have no reason to surrender and quite a lot of reason not to surrender. They might survive if they kept fighting, or so they tell themselves, while we batter down the city around their ears. You could always exile them to one of the unpopulated islands.”

“No,” Frida said. I remembered what Daniel Singh had said and felt cold. Was Frida prepared to have them all killed to cover up her own links with the Communists, or was it just an attempt to confuse the issue? The Communists had learned to lie from the UN, past masters of the art. “We want them dead and if they survive the fall of the city, we want them tried and hung right here in New Copenhagen. The people want revenge!”

Chapter Eighteen

A desperate foe is a foe who will not offer or accept quarter. It is therefore wise to avoid placing a foe in a position where he feels that he has no choice, but to fight or die.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

Pitea was dying.

I stood and watched as flames consumed yet another part of the city, despite the fire hoses the remains of the fire brigade had turned on the blaze. The Communists had withdrawn back into their inner strongholds, daring us to come and blast them out, leaving the remainder of the city to stand or fall on its own. The city was struggling to survive valiantly, but the fighting was making it hard for the remains of the local authorities to take control. The contrast was staggering; some parts of the city were almost intact, almost homelike, while other parts were nothing, but ruins. What the Communists hadn’t used, they’d tried to destroy; they’d utterly ransacked and then burned the richer parts of the city, just to make their point.

And it was all so pointless! The mindless vandalism wouldn’t solve anything. The workers the Communists claimed to represent wouldn’t find their lives any easier because of the devastation; many would find themselves out of work, or trapped in mindless brute labour jobs, clearing up the mess. Each destroyed factory or small business represented another few hundred people unemployed, looking for jobs that didn’t exist. They’d have to turn to crime to survive, I knew, and the rest of the planet wouldn’t be able to tolerate it. The Communists had a hell of a lot to answer for, eventually. If we took their leaders alive, their own people would be trying to crucify them. They probably wouldn’t live long enough to stand trial.

“The gunners are ready to hit Stronghold Four,” Ed said, from behind me. We’d moved the Mobile Command Post into the suburbs of the city, despite Peter’s objections. I wanted — needed — to know what was being done under my instructions. A commander who tried to run the battle from miles away — or light years away, as some of the UN Generals had tried — was one who simply wasn’t in control. I couldn’t afford that kind of luxury, not now. “We haven’t heard anything from Jock.”

“Hold fire for a while,” I said, keying my earpiece. Strongpoint Four was the most likely location on the prisoners; a complex of several factories, including considerable underground facilities. The entire city was riddled with tunnels and sewers and the Communists had used some of them to launch attacks from the rear. They’d grown less enthusiastic about it since we poured gasoline down the sewers and set it on fire. The complex under Strongpoint Four was supposed to be extensive enough to house a bunker; it had been built in the days of fighting the UN and no one seemed to have a clear idea of just what was under there. The owner of the complex had never made it out alive. “Jock, can you hear me?”

There was no response. “Hold fire until the forces are in position,” I ordered, before Ed could say anything. If Jock was in the complex when we opened fire, we’d be condemning him to certain death, along with the prisoners. The Communists might have killed them by now, but I lived in hope. “Bring up the 7th and 8th units and get them deployed to seal off any possible route of egress.”

A string of detonations made the ground shudder under my feet. We’d located some of the enemy tunnels and used shaped charges to cause them to collapse, rather than send infantrymen down into the tunnels against a prepared enemy. The clear-up crews would probably be spending years clearing up all the debris from the fighting and removing bodies from the sewers. I didn’t like to think about it in such ways, but it was possible that by removing most of the population, we were actually doing them a favour. The possibility of disease couldn’t be underestimated.

“They’re moving in now,” Ed confirmed. “I’m adding some of the newer tankers to the older forces. They’re going to need support.”

Baptism of fire, I thought. We hadn’t expected such savage fighting and so we hadn’t built a native tank regiment. We hadn’t realised we’d need one, and now… the Legion had lost too many tanks, even if they were easy to replace. Russell had set up a tanker school at the spaceport and rushed a group of drivers and gunners though a heavy training schedule, but I was uncomfortably aware that I was sending babes to the slaughter. They wouldn’t know half the tricks of my tankers and they might not have time to learn. The burned-out shape of a Landshark showed me just what would happen to most of the young fools I’d sent to die. They deserved better from me.

A flight of shells roared overhead, coming down in the midst of an enemy position two kilometres to the north. We’d succeeded in breaking up the enemy position and isolating different groups in their strongholds, but most of them were still fighting savagely. I think that losing much of their civilian cover might almost have been a relief to them. It took a particularly unpleasant mind to accept the thought of fighting where families and friends might be hurt. I’d studied history enough to know that humans were capable of any barbarity, but this was beyond the normal run of unpleasantness. The Communists knew that they had nothing left to lose.

“The gunners are reporting that they scored nine direct hits,” Ed said, consulting the take from the UAVs. The Communists didn’t seem to have realised just what the birds actually were, although there had been some attempts to shoot them out of the sky for dinner. None had succeeded, luckily. The UAV would have exploded if it had been shot down, but even that would have been too revealing. “They’re asking for permission to fire another spread.”

I nodded. “Do so,” I said. The sound of firing seemed to be coming from all around us, as if we were surrounded and being fired upon from all sides. The city’s atmospherics had been weird before the fighting had begun, the residents had told us, and now it seemed to be perpetually wrapped in fighting. “I take it there’s no sign of any let-up…?”

My earpiece buzzed suddenly. “Boss, this is Jock,” Jock said. I almost sagged with relief. “I’m in Strongpoint Four and… sir, they’ve got at least a hundred prisoners here, including some of the local government. I can’t see Muna anywhere, but they’ve mixed up men and women together. The smell is dreadful!”

“Great,” I said, grimly. We couldn’t bombard Strongpoint Four, not if there was a chance of taking them back alive. The reporters probably wouldn’t give us any better press for saving the politicians — not that I could blame them for that, of course — but the politicians might be grateful. I doubted they’d be grateful enough to overlook their destroyed city, but perhaps… and perhaps pigs might fly. “What’s your status?”

“I’m just watching and waiting at the moment, sir,” Jock said. “They think I’m just a coward and have got me running supplies around the place. I can free the prisoners easily; I just can’t get them out without help.”

I looked over at Ed, who looked back. “I’m sending in soldiers to help you,” I said, finally. “The attack will begin in…”

“Make it ten minutes,” Jock said. “Once the chaos starts, I’ll get rid of the guards and keep the prisoners safe in their bunker.”

“We’re on our way,” I said, and closed the connection. “Ed?”

“Already on it,” Ed said. He paused for a moment. “The gunners want to fire shots at the other strongpoints, perhaps convince them that they’re about to be attacked…”

“Make it so,” I ordered, looking down at the plan of the city. We’d secured barely half of it in a week’s fighting, but the remainder was either No Man’s Land or Communist-held territory. As we compressed their strongpoints, resistance became fiercer, but also more hopeless. They had to know that they were badly outgunned. If the Government hadn’t decided they wanted them all dead…

I pushed that thought away and keyed my earpiece. “Tech,” I said, “I have a job for you. When the strongpoints fall, I want you to find out as much as you can from the Communist documents, if you can find them.”

“Understood,” TechnoMage said. “I should warn you that we haven’t had much success interpretation what little documents we have recovered. The Communists didn’t seem to be good at keeping records.”

I nodded. Most of the really bad Communist societies had been very bad at keeping accurate records of anything useful. They’d had people at the bottom of the food chain lying to the people above them because failure to meet their impossible goals would have been punished. Having had nothing to lose, they’d decided to lie to their lords and masters. The UN had had a similar problem, but they’d been able to draw on the resources of the Colonies to keep the ship of state afloat. It had lasted longer than any Communist regime, but it had had advantages that most of them could only dream about.

“The forces are in place,” Ed reported. “We’re ready to move.”

I looked at the time. “Launch,” I ordered. “Tell the gunners to open fire.”

The sound of heavy guns echoed over the city as the gunners opened fire. It was something else that we hadn’t thought to teach the locals and I’d had to man the guns with my own cadre. Normally, we’d have used the cadre to teach the locals how to use the weapons, but there was no time. It was something else I intended to fix once the Communist Uprising had been firmly squashed. There was no reason why the locals couldn’t handle the weapons for us and lighten the burden on my men. They hadn’t expected such hard fighting. In hindsight, of course…

I smiled as new explosions billowed up in the distance. The Communists had dug in extremely well, but we were just piling on the pressure, hour by hour. We’d seen some Communist fighters stumbling out of their barricades, blood leaking from their ears and quite mad. We’d removed them to one of the detention camps, but the medics had confirmed my belief that they’d never recover their hearing again. It didn’t matter. The local government intended to kill them all, even the grunts.

“They’re moving in now,” Ed said, slowly. The sound of shooting was barely audible over everything else I could hear, but it was definitely more focused. “The tanks are going up the front, as bold as brass; the infantry are going in the rear.”

I envisaged what must be happening in my mind’s eye. The defenders, struck suddenly by an all-out assault, trying to repel the offensive while, behind them, a silent killer struck again and again. Jock had the highest rating in the Legion and had once swum through a massive swamp to kill his enemy and escape. The Communists would be utterly unprepared for him as he took them apart from the rear. They wouldn’t even notice him until it was too late.

The sound of shooting grew louder and then dimmed suddenly. “They’re through the outer wall,” Ed reported, as a series of sharp cracks resounded in the air. “They’re pushing the bastards hard… hell, sir; some of them are trying to surrender.”

“Tell them to take them alive if possible,” I ordered, sharply. The local government could have them afterwards, but I wanted information first. “Standard procedure, but try and get them to our interrogators before someone puts a bullet through their heads.”

“Understood,” Ed said. We shared a long look. There had been times when some prisoners hadn’t made it all the way to the detention camps. None of my people had been involved, thank God, but some of the civilians had lynched captive Communists before we could get them to safety. I couldn’t really blame them, but I needed the information in their heads.

My earpiece buzzed again. “Boss, I got the prisoners secure,” Jock said. “Sir, one of them is talking about Muna!”

“Find her,” I snapped, ignoring the danger. “Look for her and find her now!”

“Of course,” Jock said. “I’m on the way now.”

“The advance guard has penetrated down to the inner surface levels,” Ed commented, from his position. “We took nine prisoners, six of whom are badly injured.”

“Get them treated and then send them direct to the interrogators,” I ordered. I thought about ordering a field interrogation, but there wasn’t time. “Jock?”

“Met up with your men,” Jock said. He sounded annoyed under his tight control. “Next time, brief them better… sir. One of them almost killed me.”

“Well, tell him to take another shot,” I snapped back, angrily. “What are you doing now…?”

“Hunting for other prisoners,” Jock said. “Hang on.” I heard him picking someone up. “Show me where the other prisoners are and I won’t cut off your cock, get it?”

The prisoner seemed to get it. “He’s taking me somewhere,” Jock said. “I’ll report in as soon as I find her.”

There was a long pause. “Found her,” he said. I felt my heart turn over in relief. “She was held in a private cell. It looks as if they wanted to interrogate her, but couldn’t decide if she was more use as a dead mercenary or a live hostage. I’ve got her, boss.”

“Get her out when you can,” I ordered, turning my attention back to the map by force of will. “I’ll order the assault units to keep an eye on you so that no one shoots you this time.”

It was nearly twenty minutes later when Jock and Muna finally showed up in an armoured car. She looked tired and wan, but alive. They hadn’t hurt her, just kept her as a prisoner and considered killing her. I couldn’t resist and reached out to give her a hug, feeling her body hardening against mine. Whatever she had gone through, in the past, had left her unable to touch anyone, even me. She’d never had a boyfriend, as far as I knew, and a husband was out of the question.

“It’s good to see you too, sir,” she said, breaking the embrace as soon as she decently could. “I hope you didn’t let anyone near the logistics computers, right?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I left all the paperwork for you.”

She laughed. “Jock,” I ordered, “escort her back to the spaceport and ensure that the medic takes a good look at her before we do anything else. You’re both on leave for a week. I think we can finish up here without you.”

“You couldn’t get out of a paper bag without me,” Jock said, quickly. “In fact, without me you’d still be…”

“Out,” I said, firmly, and turned back to the display. The fall of Strongpoint Four left only seven strongpoints in the city and now that Muna had been recovered, along with a few dozen politicians, we could afford to blow them into dust from a safe distance. Too many people had died already. “Ed…”

Ed was looking down at his console. “Sir, I’m picking up a signal from the Communists,” he said. “They’d like to discuss terms.”

“Get a lock on where the signals coming from and blast it,” Jock suggested, echoing my own thoughts. “Or send me back in there with a knife and licence to kill…”

“I said, get out,” I snapped, angrily. If Jock wanted to risk himself, I didn’t mind, but Muna needed an escort back to the spaceport. Honestly, there were days when things wouldn’t go right if you paid them. “They want to surrender?”

“They said they want to discuss terms,” Ed said, once Jock had stomped out of the command post. “I think they’re stalling.”

I smiled as the sound of firing broke out again in the distance. “Tell them that we’ll accept their surrender now if they wish to surrender,” I said. “We won’t make promises, but I think that most of the small fry might be sent to work camps for a few years instead of being executed.”

“It might not be best to remind them of their executions,” Ed said, dryly. I nodded as he bent his head to the console. “I’ll tell them that we’ll take them all prisoner rather than shooting them on the spot.”

I listened absently as the discussion raged backwards and forwards. I suggested a ceasefire to see how sincere they were and was surprised when they accepted without demur. They had to be desperate, I realised; perhaps they were even short on food and supplies. They’d been firing off ammunition like it was going out of fashion and we’d overrun some of their supply deports. It was just possible that they were very short on ammunition…

“They’re willing to surrender as long as they can keep their personal arms with them,” Ed said, finally. I snorted at that one. “Thought not; they’re asking what guarantee we’ll make for their safety.”

I considered it. “Tell them that we’ll provide the guards and protect them from being lynched,” I said, finally. “As a condition of their surrender, they respond to questions and help us sort out what actually happened. If they cooperate, we’ll put in a good word for them.”

Ed leaned over to me. “Sir, the Acting President isn’t going to like that…”

“I know,” I said. “If it comes to that, we can recruit the small fry into the Legion and take them off-world. We won’t have to stay here for the rest of our lives.”

Ed chatted backwards and forwards for nearly ten minutes, and then he looked up at me. “It’s over,” he said, simply. “They’re surrendering.”

Chapter Nineteen

Honourable terms of surrender are for honourable foes, but one must always remember that one must develop and keep a reputation for keeping surrender terms, even if they prove to be disadvantageous later.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

One by one, they crawled out of the remaining strongpoints, their hands in the air.

I watched, grimly, as the remaining Communists stumbled forward. We hadn’t taken any chances; they’d been ordered to come out naked and to be very careful that they didn’t do anything that might alarm the armed guards. They’d tried to protest, objecting to the thought of showing everything they had to the world, but I’d been firm. They came out naked, male and female alike, or they would be shot down like dogs. I just wanted the fighting to end.

I’d set up A Company to receive the prisoners, trusting them not to abuse the Communists more than I trusted the locals. I’d heard some grumbles from Ed about his men being used as glorified policemen, but I rather suspected that he was enjoying their punishment, just a little. The Communists had killed too many of his men and A Company had lost seventeen men. That would have been a pinprick to the UNPF or even Heinlein’s resistance forces, but to us it was devastating. I didn’t have a ready supply of replacements I could slot into the Company, although we could fill up the holes from the trainers if necessary.

“Check them, secure them and send them into the trucks,” I’d ordered. We didn’t have a complete list of Communists — Svergie had never compiled such a list, but we knew the leaders — but those we did know would be taken prisoner and transferred to a more secure prison camp. The smaller fry would end up going into a more standard prison camp and would be held until the local government decided what to do with them. They looked tired and worn as they marched out to be taken prisoner; they’d probably be glad of the rest.

“That’s one of their propagandists,” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist muttered to me, as a blonde woman stumbled out, her hands in the air. She looked terrified and ashamed, furious and… yet, she was trying to pose. I guessed she’d been an actress before she’d gone into politics — she’d probably taken the idea from the UN’s use of actors to endorse their politics — and even while she was being taken prisoner, she was acting. I foresaw a future in chicks in prison movies. “She always knew what to say to cause a riot or convince the poor that it was someone else’s fault that they were poor. She had half of the kids wearing red caps and talking like Communists.”

I shrugged. “Whatever she was, she’s a prisoner now,” I said, as the cuffs were snapped on and she was pushed — not gently — towards the prisoner buses. It had taken several hours just to clear the roads so we could get the buses up to the strongpoint boundaries, but there had been little choice. If we’d marched the prisoners through the streets, they would have been lynched. “She’ll be tried and convicted by a fair court.”

“After today, you won’t find a fair court on the planet,” Jörgen said, tightly. “Look around at all the damage and ask yourself; who’s going to stand up for them and say that they don’t deserve death?”

“No one,” I said, without hesitation. The vast majority of the Communist leaders would probably end up facing a firing squad, or perhaps the hangman, on the grounds that hanging people was cheaper. Svergie had had massive stockpiles of ex-UN weapons left lying around, but we’d probably used far too many of them in the brief Insurrection. I couldn’t believe the damage the Communists had been willing to inflict on the city. What had they been thinking?

But I knew the answer to that. They’d thought that they’d been in the right and anything they did for the right was justified because it was for the right. The UN had felt the same way too, as had any number of terrorists and wreckers. If they couldn’t play nicely by the rules, they sought to tip over the board and make the rules for themselves. Anything could be justified with the right Cause and the right Words; people like the actress had helped to convince millions that their Cause was Just. Her fans would probably disown her… or wait, that would be the logical thing to do. They’d be more likely to claim that she was an innocent dupe all along.

I smiled. The videos of her arrest would probably be selling on the black market tomorrow.

“Hang on,” I ordered, as yet another naked and bleeding form stumbled from the strongpoint. “I want to talk to that one.”

Daniel Singh had looked much better the last time we’d met, a week ago. It felt like centuries. He was bleeding from several wounds and his body was covered with scars and bruises. It looked as if he had been the victim of a bare-knuckle fight and I wondered just what had happened inside the bunker. Had he wanted to fight to the last and been overruled, or had something else occurred?

“It’s over,” I said, tiredly. His smell probably qualified as an illegal weapon in its own right. “You’re under arrest.”

Daniel shook his cuffs at me angrily. “Do you think that you’ve won?” He demanded. “You can’t keep the People down forever!”

I made a show of looking around at the blackened ruins surrounding the strongpoint. “You seem to have blown most of them out of their homes,” I observed. “First you took the city, then you started to kill hundreds of people you didn’t like, and then you fought and destroyed half the city. I don’t think you’re going to be Man of the Year after getting so many people killed.”

“You don’t know the half of it, mercenary,” Daniel snapped, his voice rising. “The People cannot be held down forever. They followed me because I promised something better and…”

I sighed. “If you must monologue, do it somewhere else,” I said, as calmly as I could. It wasn’t very calm at all. “You promised them the impossible and gave them nothing, but rack and ruin. Whatever else happens, you won’t be going back into politics here.”

“And when you’ve defeated me, who next?” Daniel asked, his voice rising. “Will you turn on the Progressives or the Conservatives, just for a change. How long, oh mighty General, until you’re Emperor of the entire planet?”

“Enough,” I said, and looked at his guards. “Take him to the secure centre and have his wounds treated, and then put him in solitary confinement.”

“Yes, sir,” the Private said. He grasped Daniel by the shoulder and started to half-lead, half-drag, him away. I watched him go, listening to the shouts of abuse that continued until the Private slapped Daniel’s head, hard. His suggestion had cut; I had no desire to rule the planet, even if John Walker wouldn’t have sent Fleet to do something about it. I just wanted to build a strong stable government that could hold together for more than a few years before coming apart.

“That was the last of them, sir,” Peter said. He’d insisted on inspecting all of the prisoners personally and I couldn’t blame him. His paranoia had been aroused. “The strongpoint is empty.”

I nodded to Ed. “Take it and inspect it carefully,” I ordered. I wouldn’t have put leaving a few IEDs behind past the Communists. “Once it’s clear, give me a shout.”

It was an hour before the bomb disposal squad had finished checking the strongpoint and confirmed that it wasn’t booby-trapped, allowing me to go in with Peter behind me. He had tried to talk me out of it, but I had insisted; besides, I think he was just as curious. The interior of the strongpoint reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of Hitler’s bunker hundreds of years ago; a strange mixture of burned-out sections and others that were almost habitable. Weapons and equipment lay on the floor where they’d been dropped or thrown in frustration, while half-eaten cans of food stood on a table. The stench of too many people in too small a space was appalling; we might have lived in similar conditions, but we observed basic hygiene. The Communists, it seemed, hadn’t bothered to prepare for a long siege.

Ed put it into words. “Were they that confident of victory, sir?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. It seemed an odd place to plot the conquest of the world, but even John Walker had had to plan in secret. If the Communists had worked from within, they might have succeeded in implementing lasting change, rather than upsetting everyone and turning the name of Communism into mud. I doubted that there would be a Communist Party on the planet for years to come, although there would always be something to fill that void. They’d probably call themselves socialists. “Maybe they really believed that half of the planet would rise up in their favour.”

I mulled it over as we explored further into the strongpoint. The dead had been stacked like cordwood in one place; hundreds of men and women, just abandoned and left to rot. I gagged at the stench and muttered orders for us all to be decontaminated after we left the strongpoint. We’d probably have to send in a chemical warfare team in full masks and gowns to recover the bodies, or perhaps it would be better just to bury them all below the wreckage of the building. A flamethrower would set them all on fire, but the stench would only grow worse. The city stank quite enough already.

“They were definitely running short of ammunition,” Peter said, as we inspecting an inner bunker. It had once clearly stored thousands of rounds of ammunition, but was now almost empty. I wondered where they’d gotten all of the weapons and if there actually was an off-planet supplier involved, but it didn’t look if anything here had come from anywhere apart from the UN. The only exception was a hunting rifle that looked almost homemade, although it was clearly serviceable enough.

“Mine,” Ed said, firmly, clutching the weapon. “I claim it as the spoils of war.”

I laughed. “That probably counts as looting,” I said. I don’t understand how some people can be so mad over guns. They’re just tools, as far as I am concerned, tools used to fight and win a battle. I had a commanding officer once who had an antique weapon from the pre-space era and always chose to use it in combat. The paperwork must have taken him hours to complete, every time he used it — the UN frowned upon private ownership of firearms — but he hadn’t hesitated. “Pay the locals a reasonable price for it and then keep it, if you insist on having it.”

Ed nodded. I don’t approve of looting under normal circumstances, but if the owner of the weapon was dead or a traitor, Ed might as well have it. If it could be traced to a person who was still living, however, he would have to return it or pay for it.

“Yes, sir,” he said, finally. “I’ll put it in the sack for the moment.”

We reached another room under the strongpoint. It was bare, apart from a card table strewn with documents. “I want TechnoMage down here as soon as possible,” I ordered. “I want him to go through everything here and find out just how far the Communist influence actually stretched.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said. “I’ll call him as soon as we’re out of this place.”

I took the hint and nodded, allowing Peter to lead us back towards the surface, keeping my thoughts to myself. Daniel had suggested that the Communists and Progressives had had strong ties — and that Frida might be a Communist, or once have been a Communist. I wasn’t sure what I would have done if she had turned out to have planned the entire insurrection… and she’d definitely used it to get rid of some of her political enemies. If she was guilty… what the hell would we do? It would be a grey area.

First, we find out if she really was a Communist, I thought, finally. If she is one, or was one, then we can decide what to do.

The fresh air of the city was a relief, even though it still stank of fire and burning flesh and hydrocarbons, an unholy cocktail that would probably linger in the air for years. We sucked in deep breaths as we walked back to the Command Post to confirm that the remaining Communist strongholds had been searched, emptied and disarmed. The city was probably still mined in any number of inventive and unpleasant ways, but given time, we’d disarm them all. The soldiers were spreading out now, looking for any rogue holdouts, but it seemed that the Communists had accepted their leader’s orders to surrender. I’d known UN Infantry units with less discipline than that.

We drove through the streets back towards the detention camps outside the city and I found myself, once again, sickened by the realities of war. Here, there was a burned-out house with a family staring at it, unable to understand what had happened to their lives. There, there was a string of looters trying to make away with their new possessions before the soldiers caught them, placed them up against a wall and shot them. Hundreds of thousands of tired people, their faces blank and worn, barely had the energy to glance at us. Some shied away from the soldiers, others welcomed them; I saw young girls flirting openly with some of the local infantrymen. The pregnancy rate in the town was probably going to rise sharply over the next few months.

And there were plenty of silent testaments to the barbarity of the Communists. I saw a man hanging from a tree with a sign saying EXPLOITER, although it wasn’t clear what he had exploited. He could have been anything from a pimp to an industrialist. There were mansions built by the wealthy that had been burned down long before we had started to bombard the city, schools and colleges that had been destroyed and as for the city’s government centres… there was nothing left, but ashes. The Communists hadn’t confined themselves, either; they’d burned down churches and other religious sites without even a hint of discrimination. The priests who’d tried to appeal to their better natures had been slain beside their former parishes; the Communists, after all, regarded religion as nothing, but the drug used to keep the masses in their place. I wondered how many of them had gotten religion in their final hours. There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole.

“Jesus, boss,” Peter said, suddenly. “How long is it going to take them to rebuild the city?”

“Years,” I said, my mind racing ahead to the problem. We hadn’t even put out all the fires yet, let alone anything else, but now the Communists had been disarmed we could bring up aircraft and drop water and fire-retardant foam into the mix. How long would it take? I wondered if it would take more resources than the planetary government possessed; after this, their off-world credit wouldn’t be very good at all. The political unrest would discourage investors from investing in the planet, knowing that the Communists might take over and nationalise all of their property. Even if Fleet intervened, the costs would still be enormous…

And I didn’t envy Frida at all.

“I want to inspect the detention camps,” I ordered, as we started to drive out of the city. The plumes of smoke still rising up behind us had a way of focusing the mind. “After that, we’ll have to see how much we can hand over to the locals without getting anyone lynched.”

There wasn’t much to each of the detention camps; they were really just a massive patch of ground encircled by barbed wire and supervised by men who had permission to shoot if they felt the situation mandated it. There was no protection from the elements for the prisoners, apart from a handful of UN-issue sleeping bags; they were still naked. It was a vital part of convincing them that they had been captured and were completely helpless, but I suspected that they were taking it a bit too far. The prisoners didn’t have a hope of escaping unless a strong outside force attacked the camps and liberated them. The guards were watching carefully, but as far as I knew, the Communists no longer had a fighting force left.

I watched carefully as yet another prisoner was processed and thrown into the camp. The small wire attached to their forehead was linked to a lie detector that informed us when the suspect lied. The guards asked questions and watched the responses carefully, before either accepting them or demanding better answers. We’d build up a database of people we’d arrested and, bit by bit, separate the smaller fry from the leadership and those responsible for atrocities. The leaders had been moved to a separate camp and isolated for their own safety. We’d put them to death nice and legally.

The thought made me smile as I inspected the camps. The prisoners had been told to dig latrines and prepare for a long stay, but most of them just sat there, trying to hide themselves from our gaze. The men and women who had been caught up in the excitement of being a Communist now discovered that those on the wrong side — i.e. the side that lost — faced the uncertainty and doubt of the future. If things had been different, that could have been me behind the fence…

I nodded once to the guards, returned their salutes, and turned to leave. There were a million and one things that needed to be done. First, however, we had to bury the fallen. After that, we could start to heal.

Chapter Twenty

Learning from defeat is easy — the gods of Darwin see to that. Learning from victory is a lot harder, yet it remains the most important task of a victorious army.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

Two weeks after the city had fallen and peace — of a kind — returned to the planet, we gathered once again in the conference room on the spaceport. The room was decked out in black banners, a reminder of those who had fallen in the recent battle, but none of us needed the reminder. We’d held the funeral service yesterday and I had cringed, inside, as the bodies were systematically lowered into the graves we’d dug for them. It was so little for so much; the men and women who’d died on active service had deserved much better, but what else could we give them? They couldn’t go home again.

The names and faced seemed to shimmer in front of my eyes. We’d lost forty-seven infantrymen, nine tankers and five support staff… and all of them were effectively irreplaceable. B Company had suffered the worst losses, but we’d all been scarred by their deaths; the fallen ones would be sorely missed. There was no one on the planet who could take their place, not without heavy training; the local soldiers didn’t quite come up to our standards, yet. They’d suffered worse than we had in absolute numbers, yet they had far more to lose than us. A single highly-trained soldier from the Legion, one with several skills beyond fighting, was worth more than a local who knew nothing, but fighting. I’d had to throw them into the meat grinder and they’d been… ground.

I was quietly pleased with the local soldiers, but they’d lost over two hundred men in the fighting and it would have been worse, if they hadn’t been heavily supervised. Some of them had the knack for being warrior leaders and had learned fast, but others had gotten themselves and their men killed for lack of experience. Several units had been wiped out and others had been decimated, not always by the enemy. Two soldiers had been shot by others for taking the oldest revenge on some of the Communist women. Others were currently cooling their heels in the guardhouse until the argument over who should have jurisdiction was settled. The only consolation was that none of my people had gotten into trouble this time.

The words of the funeral service echoed through my mind. I’d spoken about each and every one of the fallen, in turn, while the drummers had tapped out the last drumbeat and we’d lowered them into the grave. There hadn’t been a dry eye or a resentful scowl among the men, either; they knew that it could quite easily have been one of them lying there dead on the ground. Some of the men had had families back on Botany, or local girls, and they’d be taken care of, but the others had nothing, but the Legion. We weren’t called the Legion of the Dispossessed because someone had thought it was a cool name.

“We’re clean,” Peter said, finally, as we sipped our coffee. The local coffee was much better than the UN-brand — which wouldn’t have been that difficult — but we still drank the original whenever we met in conference. It helped remind us of where we’d come from, something that seemed to grow more and more important as the years slipped by. “No one’s managed to slip a bug into the room, sir.”

“Good,” I said, calling the room to attention. My inner circle sat up in their chairs and came to a version of attention that would have had a drill sergeant in tears, before he expressed his displeasure in very loud words. “Two weeks ago, we liberated Pitea from the Communists and cleared the remainder out of New Copenhagen. We won, in short, but it won’t be the last challenge we face.”

My gaze swept the room. “Who would like to go first?”

Ed leaned forward, seemingly reluctantly. “The infantrymen are generally pleased with their performance, as am I,” he said. “The deaths were… unpleasant, but they accepted them and silent wakes” — an old UN tradition among the enlisted men — “were held last night in their name. They can be safely said to have been avenged. The downside is that we are down in numbers and we don’t have replacements that can be thrown into the Companies without needing heavy training.”

I nodded. “You don’t feel that the locals can replace them?”

“I doubt it,” Ed said. “Every one of my men is a long-lifer who has at least five to six years of experience in the infantry, either with the UNPF or one of the planetary armies. There are few people on Svergie who can claim the same length of service and few of them served with the UNPF or anyone else. I think we’re either going to have to slot in some of the trainers or send back to Botany for replacements. Either way, we’re going to need more exercises.”

“I know,” I said, juggling priorities in my head. We had a rule that everyone in the Legion had to be qualified as an infantry rifleman, if nothing else, but the support troops were generally needed elsewhere. I could throw in a few dozen support staff for a short period if I had to, but doing it permanently would leave dents in my roster. There were a few who would want to transfer, and that could be arranged, but others wouldn’t be too keen on the idea. It’s a bad idea to force a man to take such a position if he doesn’t want it. “Put out a call and see who volunteers, then put them through the training course. If they don’t make it, we’ll send back to Botany for replacements.”

I paused. “Is there anything else?”

“Nothing that needs to be discussed in council,” Ed said, after a moment. “There are some concerns about the quality of the local mortar teams and artillery gunners, but that can wait until they have proper training.”

“Which leads nicely to my part,” Russell said, blowing a smoke ring from his cigar. He shot Ed a quick grin and carried on, puffing out smoke. “The local soldiers generally did very well, or at least as well as could be expected, given the limited nature of their training and how they were tossed right into the worst field of war. They’ve actually refused to accept the disbanding of the shattered units and are insisting that we refill them with new recruits, something that I wouldn’t have expected to see in the locals for quite some time.”

We exchanged glances. A unit — a company, or a regiment, or a division — outlasts everyone who has every served in it. The Legion would go on after my death and the new recruits would be told that they had joined a proud tradition started by one Andrew Nolte. There were UN units that had lasted for hundreds of years, proudly carrying their battle standards from planet to planet; hell, I didn’t know a single planetary army that didn’t have such a tradition. The soldiers might have fought for their planet, but they would die for their comrades… and with such baubles soldiers are led.

“I see no reason to disband them, even if we do have to rebuild them from scratch,” I said, seriously. The table murmured agreement. “Do you have any specific concerns?”

“Discipline was generally good, although there was some… ah, reluctance to jump right into the fighting,” Russell said. “They weren’t too trusting of the body armour at first and frankly that’s not a bad attitude for them to have. Body armour is good, but it’s far from perfect. A handful of soldiers broke down completely and had to be helped off the battlefield…”

He snorted. “I must be mellowing in my old age,” he added. “Time was when I would have shot those bastards for daring to show cowardliness in the face of the enemy.”

“You’ll outlast us all,” I snapped. It was probably true; Heinlein had sold the regeneration treatments to almost all of its citizens. It was just something else that the UN propaganda machine had turned into a great injustice perpetrated against the UN. “And the other departments?”

Russell frowned. “The tankers and gunners need a hell of a lot more training,” he said, firmly. “In fact, as you know, I was opposed to sending them into battle at all, but there was no choice. Even so, I would recommend that we attempt not to commit them again until they have had much more training and experience. As for the gunners… they need more training as well. If we had used them without supervision in the recent battle, there would have been far more friendly deaths, caused by our own shooting.”

There was a long pause. “We lost nine helicopters and had two more badly damaged,” Captain Erica Yuppie said. The Airborne commander scowled as she looked at me. “Seven attack helicopters were blown out of the sky by their SAM missiles and two transports were picked off while they were vulnerable. We do have replacements for the vehicles here, sir — the locals have allowed us to replace our losses — but training an attack helicopter pilot is not an easy task. We’re desperately short of reinforcements and we don’t have locals who can stand in.”

She looked down at the table. “We barely started work on developing a training program for local pilots,” she admitted. “We need to push that forward as hard as we can and get replacements in the air before the shit hits the fan again. At the moment, we barely have seven attack helicopters and nine transports capable of being deployed. If we are called upon to serve in our normal role, that of assisting an advance against dug-in enemy forces, we will have serious problems meeting our obligations.”

“I know,” I said. She was right, too. We didn’t have the numbers to absorb such losses without feeling the pain. “Get a list of what you need and expand the training program as fast as you can. I’ll authorise the expense.”

“Excuse my ignorance,” Muna said, “but couldn’t you borrow some of the shuttle pilots from the transport?”

“They have a different set of skills,” Erica said, grimly. “If they could fly attack helicopters, I’d have borrowed them in a split second.”

I looked over at Robert, who smiled dryly. “The spaceport defences were barely tested during the insurrection,” he said. “I think the Communists preferred to have a go at people who might not fight back. There were a handful of mortar rounds that were fired into our defences, but the point defence took them all out before they could crash down and actually damage something. I don’t expect that we’ll be as lucky the next time, but for the moment, we’re safe enough here.

“On the other hand, we need to expand the patrols around the base perimeter and watch out for mortar teams or SAM teams trying to slip into range,” he added. “We might well lose a shuttle to a SAM and if that happens, the cost of replacing it will be considerable.”

“See to it,” I ordered. Shuttles couldn’t be produced on Svergie; they lacked the technical base to even begin to construct the ships. We’d have to ship in a replacement from a more advanced world and the shipping costs would push up the overall price astronomically. Most shuttles come with the starships; a new one, built to our specifications, would be costly, even if we could find an old UN-surplus craft. “Apart from that…?”

“Nothing that needs to be discussed in council,” Robert said, a way of saying that he had everything under control. The UN would have insisted that I kept an eye on him — and everyone else — permanently, but that would have just driven me mad. I trusted them to handle their sections and wouldn’t think any less of them if they had to ask for help. “There are a number of semi-permanent relationships forming between the men and the local help, but so far there haven’t been any incidents because of it. It seems that merely wearing a military uniform can get you laid in New Copenhagen at the moment…”

“So naturally you went and tried it out,” Ed said, quickly. I smiled and some of the others laughed openly. “Did it work?”

“I only got my cock sucked seven times and had sex three times, so clearly it was a failure,” Robert said, dramatically. There were more chuckles. “Seriously, though, I don’t think we have to worry too much about the issue, but I’ll keep a close eye on it, just in case.”

“Good,” I said. Soldiers have something of a mixed relationship with the hired help. Some would be white knights in shining armour, others would just see the girls as a convenient outlet for their lusts… and the Sergeants would have to separate the two. Svergie, at least, allowed prostitutes to operate — although I have never seen a world that managed to suppress prostitution — and so there were other outlets. “Muna, you’re up last.”

“Thank you,” Muna said. I’d been worried about having her out of bed so quickly, but she’d insisted and the medics hadn’t been able to keep her down. She looked tired and wan, but most of the bruises had faded back into her pitch-black skin. It bothered me that her captors had been killed in the fighting; I wanted to cut their throats myself and hear their screams. Indecent it might be, unhealthy it was not. “Our logistics position is not good.”

Everyone sat up straighter as she continued to speak. “We expended considerable amounts of ammunition and supplies in the recent… ah, unpleasantness,” she explained. “The basic assault rifle ammunition, grenades and even mortar shells can be replaced here. The problem is two-fold; we lack the ability to replenish our supplies at such a rate of expenditure. We have enough stored ammunition for several weeks of fighting, but after that we will suffer considerable shortages. We need time to rebuild our supply deports.

“Furthermore, we’re unable to replace certain items completely,” she continued. “It will take months, maybe as much as a year, to rebuild some of the more vital factories from Pitea. Specifically, we are unable to replace tanks, helicopters and various other heavy equipment until those factories are rebuilt… and we are unable to replace artillery shells completely. The UN always shipped them in from Earth and never gave consent to a local arms industry. What they have was built after the occupation ended and… well, it’s not that good.”

“True,” I agreed. There had been so much abandoned on the planet that it seemed unthinkable that we would ever run out, but I’d never seen a military operation that used less ammunition than predicted. We’d expended ammunition like it was water, but there had been no choice. Lives were much harder to replace when we didn’t have access to Earth’s bottomless supply of flesh. “How much can we replenish before the next set of elections are held?”

“Not much,” Muna admitted. “Let me put it this way; we’d be well advised not to fight another such war for a year.”

“A shame most wars can’t be timed,” I commented, dryly. Back in the dim past, human tribes had engaged in ritual warfare rather than real warfare, all according to a script. We didn’t have that luxury, if luxury it was. I looked over at TechnoMage. “Is there anyone else considering trouble?”

“We have most of the Communist ringleaders and their upper levels in custody,” TechnoMage said. “As far as I can tell, those who were on the fringes of the Communist movement have disowned their fellows and are currently sucking up as much as they can to the legitimate government. The smaller small fry, the ones we missed, seem to have vanished underground completely; I don’t think we can expect much more from them than the occasional terrorist attack, if they don’t disband completely.

“The other parties seem to be spending most of their time considering the ramifications. With the President out of the political scene for at least six months, power is shifting firmly into the Progressive camp, which leaves some of the other parties wondering just when the other shoe is about to drop. They don’t trust Councillor Frida Holmqvist very much, sir, and they think that she’s going to use the state of emergency to cement her grip on power. We may see more violence in the very near future.”

I remembered Daniel’s claim and went cold. “Do you think they might launch an uprising of their own?”

“I doubt it,” he admitted. “I think we might be looking at a repeat of our original scenario; a three-way civil war spread out over the main continent. They don’t have the… fanatical nature of the Communists and, in a way, they have access to more firepower. They may provide a conventional threat if the Independence Party gets their way, but…”

He shrugged. “At the moment, it’s too close to call,” he admitted. I scowled, but took his point. A lot of intelligence work involves seeing through murky glass. “A lot depends on what happens in the next few months. That said, there is a new and disturbing trend. A number of personages are attacking us… for not handing over the molester to the local courts for judgement.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ed protested. I couldn’t help, but agree. “We hung the bastard! What more do they want? Him staked out on an ant hill covered in honey?”

“They seem to feel that there is a question of jurisdiction involved,” TechnoMage admitted. “I’m not sure who’s behind this, although they’re using the girl’s parents as spokespeople, but I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t know if the Acting President is behind this, but she’s doing fuck all to piss on this particular fire.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The end of a war is always the most dangerous time for a nation — or a planet. The effort of actually fighting the war is no longer needed, but the balance of power will have shifted radically. The most important issue is to prevent a second war, but that may take a second place to rebuilding the torn nation.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“You’re looking well, sir,” Suki said, as she drove me into New Copenhagen. “The fresh air in the countryside must agree with you.”

I snorted. The spaceport smelled better now that we had a proper regime operating the base, but it still smelt of hydrocarbons and the indescribable stench of thousands of people in close proximity. We’d been teaching the new recruits about hygiene as quickly as possible — unlike some worlds, including people from Earth, the locals generally knew already — but even so, there was a stink. There might be fresh air somewhere out in the countryside, but I hadn’t smelt it.

“Perhaps,” I agreed, as we passed the marker warning us to reduce our speed. There was nothing else on the road — there were hardly any privately-owned vehicles on the planet, something that probably delighted the remains of the Communists — but Suki reduced her speed anyway, barely. “You’re looking well too.”

Suki smiled. She did look stunning, even in a basic uniform rather than the outfit she’d worn for the inauguration. It was astonishing how much prettier a woman became after you’d slept with her; she almost seemed to be glowing. Her dark hair had been cut short, but she wore it in a style that was frankly provocative, while her uniform was just one size too small.

“It’s because I’m doing something useful,” she said, waving a hand towards a group of beggars in the distance. “Are they doing anything useful?”

I took her point. There were thousands of people on the streets, but many of them seemed to be doing nothing, but begging for charity. The devastation the Communists had inflicted had put thousands of people out of work and they were not happy. The Government had been organising work parties to help rebuild the city — both cities — but there was only so much that could be done with unskilled labour. Others were wandering around, looking for missing friends and relatives, a quest I suspected to be hopeless. We would probably never know how many people had been killed by the Communists, or had been caught up in the crossfire and slaughtered. The mass graves outside the city meant that the bodies would probably take their secrets to the next world.

There was a long line outside the army recruiting office, I was pleased to see, even if most of the recruits wouldn’t make the first cut. The planet had had a massive upswing in patriotism after the Communist Insurrection and thousands wanted to join the army, if only to get laid. Ed had been right; an army uniform was a certain ticket to spending a night with a girl, although naturally I didn’t know anything about that myself. Here and there, there were a handful of soldiers on leave, spending time telling lies about their exploits and trying to impress the girls. Others were on patrol, watching for looters and criminals, even though we hadn’t trained any of them for police work. The police force was being rebuilt as quickly as possible, but it was a long slow process.

“They’re not popular,” Suki explained, when I commented on that. “Everyone thinks that the policemen ran away when the firing started and hid in their houses until it was all over.”

“But it was a very brave retreat,” I said, deadpan. The joke slipped past Suki, who ignored it. “And public mood towards the communists?”

I had my answer as the car turned the corner and drove towards the makeshift courthouse. The original courthouse had been a surprisingly dignified building built by the UN, but the Communists had firebombed it in the opening stages of the insurrection — roasted seven judges, nine criminals and forty-nine others in the process — and Acting President Frida Holmqvist had moved operations to a local school. The kids were probably delighted at getting a few months off school — it didn’t help that parents were nervous about sending their kids into the city — and everyone else was delighted. The crowd outside the courthouse was baying for blood.

“They want them dead,” Suki said, pointing to a group of grim-looking protestors, carrying banners that had a multitude of inspiring slogans. DEATH TO COMMIES, BURN THE BASTARDS and MAKE THEM PAY were among the milder ones, although there were also stranger ones; FARMERS NEED TO EAT, FEED THE WORLD and MAKE WAR NOT LOVE. I think they got the last one mixed up a little. The UN used to use the reversed version as a slogan. “I don’t think they’re going to get out of it alive.”

I nodded as I passed my ID to a heavily armed soldier, who inspected it carefully. “It does look that way,” I agreed. I looked at the soldier’s insignia as he stood to attention. “Has there been any trouble here?”

“A gang of armed vigilantes wanted to break in and kill the Communists quickly,” the soldier said, once he had verified my identity. “We deployed and warned them to leave, or we’d open fire, and they left. A handful of others came by to threaten us, but we arrested them at once and handed them over to the local police. Feelings are running high among the crowd though, sir; I think we’re going to need reinforcements once sentence is passed.”

He nodded towards a wooden structure a carpenter was erecting on the other side of the street. It was a gallows, rather like the one we’d built ourselves, suggesting that the verdict of the court had already been decided. I shrugged, returned his salute, and led Suki into the building. The interior felt a little odd — I’ve never been comfortable with armed men in a school, no matter what Russell says about it being good for the kids — but it was easy enough to find the courtroom. The noise coming from it was deafening.

Frida had decided to charge the Communists with High Treason, a charge that automatically kept the public out of the court. I wasn’t sure if she’d done that deliberately or if it was a happy coincidence; happy, because the entire city wanted the Communists lynched. It was quite possible that the vigilantes would return and try to bully their way past the soldiers and if that happened there would be a massacre. The Communists weren’t the only faction that had guns; hell, we couldn’t even begin to disarm all of the militia groups. We’d just have to hope that they drew a lesson from what happened to the Communists and stayed out of armed violence. If not…

I shook my head as I was shown into the courtroom. It was clearly in the school’s gym and lacked a certain something, although I didn’t know what. Dignity, perhaps. Frida herself was sitting at one end of a long table, joined by the seven surviving High Court Judges and several others I didn’t recognise. Svergie’s Supreme Court was supposed to rule on matters like High Treason and Constitutional Law, but only half of them had survived the insurrection. The Communists had targeted them personally, just because of the positions they held.

“Andrew,” Frida said, waving me over. “I’m so glad you could make it. Please, take a seat.”

I frowned. “I was under the impression that I was here to observe only,” I said, puzzled. She seemed to be offering me a seat on the court. “I’m not actually…”

“You may be called upon to testify,” Frida explained. I smiled in relief. That made a great deal more sense, although I wasn’t particularly comfortable in the courtroom. Give me a good honest battle any day. “The Judges may want to put questions to you, or…”

“The Court will rise,” the usher bellowed. “The 3rd Supreme Court Judgement Session will now come to order.”

I sat down as the remainder of the court settled. “Bring in the prisoners,” the usher ordered. The side door opened and the nine Communist leaders — the ones who had survived the insurrection — were escorted into the room. They wore heavy chains, rather than light handcuffs or other restraints; I guessed that someone wanted to make a point. They looked relieved to be in private session; they might not have been able to play to the audience, but they wouldn’t be facing a lynch mob. They didn’t look confident or self-assured now; they just looked… terrified. I couldn’t really blame them for being scared. They knew they’d failed and were now looking at a short trip to the gallows.

“Daniel Singh will represent the prisoners,” the usher said. I reminded myself about the old saying — a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client — before realising that it was quite possible that no uninvolved lawyer had wanted to take part in the proceedings, or at least on their side. “The charges are as follows; High Treason, Conspiracy to Seize Power Unlawfully, Wilful Mass Murder — at least three thousand separate counts — and Mass Property Damage. Does the defending lawyer wish to make a statement before proceedings begin?”

“Yes, Your Honour,” Daniel Singh said. His voice was flat, but very composed. “I protest in the strongest possible terms this court and its claim to jurisdiction. I also protest our treatment. We have been denied access to friends and relatives, potential witnesses and those who might speak in our defence. We have been forbidden to stand before a bail court or even give testimony in our own defence. This court is illegal and a disgrace to our world.”

“You have been charged with High Treason, among other crimes,” the usher said, in response. “You would not be granted bail under any circumstances, but if we had done so you would have been lynched in the streets. You were not denied access to anyone; they chose not to come see you. And, as to our right to try you, you are in the dock. You may believe that this court is unconstitutional, but it was summoned in accordance with the Constitution, under the supervision of the surviving High Court Judges. We believe that we have the right to try you and if you are found guilty, we will sentence you and carry out your punishment.”

There was a pause. “The Prosecutor may speak now.”

The Prosecutor was a tall man, with dark hair that was shading towards grey. I listened as he outlined everything, from the early stages of the Communist Party’s plans for a coup to the final preparation and the assault on the stadium, killing hundreds in the opening blows alone. He brought videoed testimony from the survivors of Pitea, recounting their suffering and how they had barely survived under two weeks of Communist rule. Shopkeepers spoke of losing their stock to the Communists, women told of seeing their husbands dragged off and murdered, factory crews talked about losing their foremen and supervisors to the murderous mobs, collectively painting a picture of horror and suffering.

“I protest this,” Daniel said, at one point. “These witnesses have not been summoned to court. Their testimony is therefore unacceptable.”

“The case of Gustav V. Robeson would indicate otherwise,” the Prosecutor countered. “It was established in that case, and subsequently confirmed by the High Court, that videoed testimony was acceptable provided that it was properly recorded and notarized by a qualified court official. In this case, the dispositions were recorded under the watching eyes of no less than three officials from the court. There was little point in having the witnesses forced to endure your form of questioning.”

The Prosecutor continued his attack, noting that all of the allegations of fraud in the voting districts had been carefully disproved before the insurrection began — and, indeed, even some of the Communists had agreed with the final outcome. Those Communists, of course, were dead now, killed by their own kind. It didn’t take much imagination to guess why; they’d been honest and had paid the price for it. The Communist Leadership would probably have been happier with a lie claiming that the elections had been rigged.

“You claim that you were forced into insurrection,” the Prosecutor continued. “You have presented no reason to justify your claim. You merely want us to take it on faith that you had a good reason for your crimes, yet you refuse to accept some of our statements on faith. Your own people have testified as to your crimes against innocent civilians and those who merely belonged to the wrong political party. You cannot claim that you set out to kill people in order to save them.”

There was a long pause. “I have presented the evidence before the court,” the Prosecutor concluded. “I have proved that they deliberately set out to launch an insurrection with the intention of overthrowing the government and replacing it with one more to their liking. They murdered tens of thousands of people directly and saw fit to risk the lives of thousand more. They killed half the Council and seriously injured the President himself. They are guilty.”

“The accursed may make a final statement in their own defence, if they wish,” the usher said. “If not, the judges will issue their verdict now.”

“I so wish,” Daniel said, quickly. He drew himself up as much as he could in the chains. “This court is a farce. This trial is a joke. We believed that the purpose of the President in hiring outside mercenaries” — and here he shot a nasty look at me — “was to create an army that could be used to disarm the political parties and then impose a new order on the planet. We knew how close the President was to the rich and wealthy upper classes who ground the people into dirt beneath their feet; we knew what he had in mind.

“We knew that the Progressive Party had been suborned by the Liberty Party. We knew where the Conservatives and Farmers stood. We did what we could to prevent the planet from falling under a dictatorship. If we are to die today, then we will have died for what we believe in. This trial is a farce and, in the future, we will be hailed as martyrs.”

The judges withdrew from the room and went into seclusion. I leaned over to Frida and murmured a question in her ear. “What happens now?”

“The judges announce their decision and it gets enacted,” Frida said. “There’s no appeal for High Treason, so if they’re found guilty they’ll be hanged today.”

I gave her a sharp look. “Aren’t you moving a little fast?”

“I don’t think I’m moving fast enough,” Frida admitted. “The public mood wants them hanged yesterday, not tomorrow, and I have to bow to the public mood. The public is always right about such things. If they’re proven guilty, we have to deal with them as quickly as possible, just to allow the wounds they caused to heal. If there was reasonable doubt, I’d slow the proceedings, but if there’s not…”

She turned back to look towards the prisoners and I watched her, wondering what was going through her mind. Her scar seemed to be showing more now, as if she was reluctant to try to hide or minimise it. It had come from her time with the resistance, as far as I knew, yet she’d never tried to trade in on it — until now. I wished, not for the first time, that I could read minds. I would have given anything to know what she was thinking.

The door opened and the Judges returned. The usher called the court to order — and glared at a politician who had his feet up on a chair until he got the message — and then summoned the spokesman to address the court. An old and venerable looking Judge stood up to speak.

“We have considered the matter most carefully,” he said. His back might have been weak, but his voice was very firm. “We find that there were no grounds that might have justified an armed insurrection against the government. Their actions were not only without precedence; they were also without due cause, or due respect for constitutional law. They chose to commit High Treason; the burden of the responsibility for the following actions and disasters falls upon them.

“There is little point in discussing the other issues,” he continued. “Each of us will render a written judgement later, but the basic conclusion is simple; the accused committed high treason, a crime for which there is only one punishment. It is our judgement that they are guilty and they are to be hung this afternoon before the public.”

The courtroom seemed to burst into noise. One side was cheering loudly, while the handful of relatives of the accused started to cry, leaving the accused to look stunned and terrified. I could have sworn that one of them wet themselves. The usher gestured to the bailiffs, who grabbed hold of the prisoners and escorted them out of the courtroom, followed by most of the crowd. I found myself swept up in the motion and pushed down and out of the building, heading right towards the gallows. Everything happened so quickly; the convicts were noosed and then placed before the public. The crowd stared at them, anger and hatred written on their faces… and then the hatches dropped and the men died.

I had wondered if the nooses would be configured to cause slow death, rather than a quick sharp end, but they had been merciful, if mercy was the right word. Silence fell as the horror of the situation sank in; I’d seen horror before, but this was different. The crowd had been baying for blood. The bodies hung in front of the crowd, moving slightly as they twitched their final spasms, and then it was all over. The Communist leadership was dead.

“And let that be an end to it,” I muttered, as I pulled myself out of the crowd and found Suki. “It’s time to go home.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

There will always be those who join up for the thrill of being a soldier. Some of them will be the best soldiers in the unit. Others will be screwballs who need to be thrown out before they infect the rest of the unit. The trick lies in telling the difference between them.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

A week later, I stood on the parade ground, watching as the latest group of recruits went through their basic training. The Sergeants were shouting at them as they tried to carry out fifty press-ups and only managed a smaller amount, demanding that they kept trying until they did all fifty. A handful of fitness freaks did all fifty easily and only stopped smiling when they were ordered to do fifty more. It was astonishing just how many recruits we had after the Communist Insurrection, even if they were all just interested in the girls. If nothing else, they would have to work to get their uniforms and they wouldn’t be going off-base until they qualified as cadets.

“We’re going to have to expand the training facilities,” Peter said, from behind me. I nodded as a Sergeant screamed instructions to another bunch of recruits, demanding that they stopped hiding behind their mothers and started pretending to be something like soldiers. There was always a lot of work to do with new recruits, but half of this intake had been practicing being soldiers before they came to the camp, and naturally they’d picked up bad habits. Their salutes were far from perfect. “How many of the locals do you think we can use as trainers?”

I scowled. There’s an old joke that the life of a Drill Sergeant is easy and all a candidate needs is a good pair of lungs. It’s nothing like that simple. They have to be capable of keeping raw recruits in order and, somehow, prevent them from injuring themselves without appearing to care what happens to the recruits. The recruits are not meant to like their teachers; they’re just meant to learn from them. A drill sergeant needs to know when to stop, as well; a sadist or an idiot could do untold damage to new recruits. The UN hadn’t cared, of course; some of the graduated soldiers had been treated like dirt and had been effectively useless. One of them had been raped by his — male — instructor. If I’d had that bastard in my command, he’d have been torn apart by wild dogs.

“Russell thinks that there are seven or eight possible candidates,” I said, finally. It wasn’t something easy to decide quickly, yet that was exactly what we needed to do. There might well be others after they had a few years of soldiering under their belts, but at the moment… we would have to rely on relative newcomers. They might have had combat experience in New Copenhagen or Pitea — I wouldn’t have accepted them if they had no experience at all — but would they know enough to translate it into terms the new recruits could understand?

It got worse. The longest-serving local had around seven months in the army. They’d all grown up very fast after the fighting had begun — those who had survived the experience — but they would still think of themselves as recruits. There would be a temptation to go easy on the newcomers — or, alternatively, to bully the newcomers — and that had to be resisted. Men whose memories had dimmed would be more likely to understand the reason for the hard-ass discipline and the seemingly-pointless labours, and inflict them on the recruits without qualms. I’d never been a Drill Sergeant myself, but I knew the score. The job required a man with perfect control and few of the locals had had the time to build that control.

“That’s bad,” Peter said, dryly. “Is there any point in recruiting the ex-UNPF personnel here?”

I shook my head. I’d considered it, but most of the ones I’d want were up in the mountains or on the farms, while those who had remained in the cities were effectively useless, although that hadn’t stopped the Communists from killing several hundred of them. Even if they’d all been qualified to help, they wouldn’t have had the experience working with Russell and the rest of the Drill Sergeants, nor would they have had an understanding of how we work. The standard UNPF introductions to military life bore about as much resemblance to real military life as Heinlein did to Earth. The recruits were coddled, even those who should have been kicked out on general principles.

“Leave them alone,” I ordered finally. It wouldn’t be easy, but we’d manage somehow. “Have you got the bill of lading for the ship?”

“Muna is sorting it out now,” Peter said, accepting the change in subject. We were going to have to send the Julius Caesar back to Botany to pick up some additional supplies, along with a handful of other Legionnaires who might be useful here. “I think that Fleet will want to have a quick look at her before she leaves.”

“Muna or the ship?” I asked, without humour. Muna had been in the UNPF before it mutinied and became Fleet. She rarely spoke about her time on the starships, but it must have been something dramatic. Every time John Walker’s name was mentioned, she winced. “No, stupid question; they’ll want to inspect the ship.”

“Of course,” Peter said, dryly. “I don’t know why they want to bother, but if they insist…”

“Then we have no choice, but to comply,” I agreed. It struck me as rather pointless — Svergie had nothing worth the effort of smuggling off-planet, even if it had laws against it, which it didn’t — and I suspected that Captain Price-Jones was taking the opportunity to harass us a little. He’d heard the Communist broadcasts claiming to be an independent state and even though he hadn’t intervened, he couldn’t have been very happy about them, or the allegations concerning Fleet’s involvement with Svergie. “Let me know when they want to inspect the starship and then let them get on with it.”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said, spying Ed in the distance. “I think Ed wants a word with you.”

Ed saluted as he walked up to us and I returned the salute. “We’re about to start the first heavy exercise now,” he said, as we walked towards the testing ground. A hundred vehicles and three hundred men had deployed into a large and deserted area of the countryside for their first heavy exercise. It wasn’t quite live-fire — we had laser systems to count hits without risking harm to anyone — but people had been known to be injured or killed on such training grounds. “Do you wish to observe?”

I shook my head. “I can observe through the UAV units if I have to watch,” I said, seriously. I would have loved to watch, but I just didn’t have the time. Ed was luckier than he knew; he got to run a Company and a training exercise, while I was trapped between paperwork and Fleet’s demands. “Let me know if there’s something I should keep a particular eye on.”

“I will, and I’ll even write you a report afterwards,” Ed teased. He knew what I was feeling, all right. “Have a good time here, sir.”

My earpiece buzzed before I could frame a suitably insulting reply. “Sir, this is dispatch,” a voice said. “A Fleet shuttle is inbound and the officer onboard insists on seeing you personally.”

“Understood,” I said. I had a strong suspicion I already knew who was on that ship, but better safe than sorry. “Show him into my office when he arrives.”

Twenty minutes later, Commander (Fleet Intelligence) Daniel Webster was shown into my office. I didn’t waste time pretending to be busy; I stood up, shook his hand and invited him to sit on the sofa. He accepted a cup of local coffee — no UN-brand for him, clearly — and we chatted for five minutes about nothing. I knew, just from that alone, that it was going to be bad.

“The Captain was quite annoyed about the Communist broadcasts,” he explained, once he had run out of small talk. “I take it that there’s no need to worry that the Protocols were infringed?”

“No,” I said, firmly. Daniel — he had the same first name as Daniel Singh, I realised suddenly — looked doubtful. “The Communists lost the election, nor did they manage to use force of arms to overturn the results. The Fleet Protocols were not infringed as it was a purely local matter.”

“It is questionable how… local this entire affair is with you and your men mixed up in the middle of it,” Daniel commented, dryly. “The requests for recognition from the Communist Government, the… ah People’s Republic of Pitea were quite worrying. If it had turned into an interstellar incident, certain people would not have been best pleased.”

I understood the underlying message and nodded. “It shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, playing the guilty schoolboy. “It won’t happen again.”

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Daniel said. “Captain Price-Jones is unaware that we allowed you to use the ship’s orbital imaging systems to monitor the situation on the ground. If he were to discover the truth — and it doesn’t sit well with anyone on the ship who does know — the results would not be pleasant. At the very least, you’d be cut off from all further intelligence from us; at worst, you’d be ordered off-planet in such a way that it couldn’t be countermanded easily. The entire situation might well have been exposed to scrutiny.”

“It won’t happen again,” I repeated, angrily this time. I hadn’t expected the Communists to beg for help from Fleet, although Captain Price-Jones had refused to get involved. “Like I said, it was a purely local affair.”

“It may not stay that way,” Daniel said, as he calmed down a little. “The William Tell detected several unexplained wormhole signatures over the last three weeks. It’s possible that someone is smuggling stuff down onto the planet and that, of course, is a major concern for Fleet.”

“Or it could be just someone setting up base in the asteroids,” I countered. The only official arrival at Svergie had been a freighter acting as a pathfinder for an interstellar shipping line, wondering if it was worth the effort of adding Svergie to their list of destinations. I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected that they had decided against it and vanished back into more profitable shipping lanes. “Do you have any proof that someone managed an orbital insertion without being detected?”

“No,” Daniel said, “but that proves nothing. Fleet’s… sensors are good, but not that good.”

“True,” I agreed. I knew far less about space combat and tactics than I did about ground warfare, but I knew enough to understand his point. Given sufficient time and patience, a stealth shuttle could have landed when the William Tell was in the wrong position to observe it and catch them in the act. A landing pod would have been even easier, although the new arrival wouldn’t have been able to leave the planet afterwards. “We detected nothing, of course.”

“It could be just jumping at shadows,” Daniel agreed. “It’s not as if Svergie is a closed system where no one might want to come under any circumstances. It’s even possible that the wormholes belonged to freighters performing navigational checks before heading out again to their next destination. It’s just… worrying, and with the reports of the Freedom League taking an interest in this general area…”

I snorted. ‘This general area’ consisted of hundreds of light years and a couple of dozen inhabited planets. It was possible that the Freedom League might have their hand in events somewhere, but I doubted they’d work with the Communists. The Freedom League had been born in revolt against the United Nations and preferred to support democratic systems against the UN, or Fleet. They hadn’t stopped operating just because the UN had been broken and Fleet had taken its place.

“It could be nothing,” Daniel conceded. “However, there are more practical concerns on Svergie itself. What do you make of the local situation?”

I hesitated, and then decided to be truthful. “It’s unstable,” I said. “We beat the Communists hard enough to make anyone else think twice about starting a second insurrection, but we’re going to have to work to rebuild the damage and that it going to take time and resources the planet doesn’t have. It doesn’t help that the vast majority of the Council and the Acting President are Progressive, which leaves the other parties feeling left out and suspicious. The farmers will have to produce extra food over the coming year to feed the starving, which isn’t going to make the political situation any better. Overall… if we can last the next year or two we should have a fairly stable planet.”

“If,” Daniel agreed. “It may interest you to know that there were a number of heavily-encrypted transmissions from New Copenhagen to somewhere in the Mountains. This started a few days after the Communist leadership was sentenced to death and hung… how is the planet taking that, by the way?”

“Surprisingly well,” I confirmed. He probably knew already. There were a handful of small riots in some industrial areas, but overall the Communists blotted their copybook pretty well without help. There are some parties who are saying that they should have been sentenced to hard labour without the possibility of parole, but they’re very much in the minority. The general mood on the streets seems to be that the bastards got exactly what they deserved.

“As for the smaller fry, the vast majority of them will be spending ten-twenty years helping to rebuild,” I continued. “They’re going to be at hard labour for most of their lives, but in the end they should be safe and allowed to return to civilian society. A handful have been offered the chance to settle the other continents and see if they survive, so others may follow them. There was a minority opinion that said that they should all be exiled to a Communist planet, but the costs and logistics put a stop to that pretty quickly.”

“I’m not surprised,” Daniel said. The costs of transporting a few thousand men and women to another planet were astronomical. There was no point in doing it for convicted criminals, even if they probably deserved the reception they would find. “But I digress. There were encrypted transmissions and… well, we couldn’t decode them.”

That was a surprise. By law, every planetary encryption system had to have a backdoor built into the system to allow Fleet Intelligence to read their mail. It was about as popular as a dose of the clap and there were plenty of covert groups willing and able to produce encryption software without a backdoor — or at least not a Fleet backdoor. Fleet Intelligence could still decrypt messages, but it wasn’t easy and it sometimes took longer than they had. Whoever owned the system was risking Fleet’s anger, for what?

“You couldn’t get any idea of what they said?” I asked. There were times when it was easy to learn quite a bit about what was being said, even without the code being broken, but this obviously wasn’t one of them. “You don’t even know who owns the transmitters?”

“We suspect the Mountain Men, which adds fuel to the speculation that the Freedom League is involved,” Daniel said. “However, one of my subordinates pointed out that we might have already cracked the message, without knowing that we had cracked the message. If they used a pre-arranged code…”

I nodded. A simple substitution cipher could be a nightmare to crack without knowing the book they were using as the base for the cipher. It wasn’t as if we were short of possible candidates. The Freedom League might not be involved at all and only our own paranoia was convincing us they were there, but if they were, the Mountain Men would be the best allies they could hope to find.

“There’s still no grounds for intervening, but be careful,” Daniel concluded. “If the shit hits the fan completely, we might have to cut you out of the orbital images without warning.”

“Understood,” I said. I’d been out on a limb before. It didn’t make any difference if it were the UNPF or Fleet who were standing behind me, holding a saw, ready to cut off the limb and send me crashing to the ground. “Have you considered levelling with the Captain and explaining the truth?”

“Captain Price-Jones is a very by-the-book person,” Daniel reminded me. “His first response would be to brig the lot of us for usurping his command, followed by ordering your men into barracks and sending to Unity for instructions. The lid would be blown completely off the Legion and far too many people would learn the Legion’s real purpose.”

I scowled. “How the hell can they complain?” I demanded. I didn’t mean to shout at him, but the stress was getting to me. “We’re trying to stabilise a hundred worlds that would otherwise tear themselves apart!”

“It’s a question of who is actually in command,” Daniel reminded me. “If they feel that Fleet is turning into another UN, only one that is actually competent, they’ll start worrying about who’s next, or what we might have in mind for the long term. So we work in the shadows, and deny everything if someone gets a hint of what we’re doing, and know that no one will ever thank us for it.”

He grinned. “If the game were easy, anyone could play.”

“Hah,” I said, sourly. “Tomorrow, I have to speak to a load of young officer-candidates on military duty and what it actually means. How could I tell them about this?”

“You don’t,” Daniel said. “You just keep it to yourself until the time is right.”

“Never, in other words,” I concluded. “I just hope that you can sleep at night.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

How does one explain to young officer-candidates that lives, the lives of their men, the lives of their loved ones, the lives, even, of their entire country may rest upon their shoulders? Perhaps the best answer is to tell them the truth, evading nothing, and allowing them to see the price of their new rank and the responsibilities that come with it.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

I had given some careful thought to my personal classroom. It wasn’t going to be a perfect school-like room, with desks for the kids and a bigger desk for the teacher, and it wasn’t going to be very informal. I wanted to speak to the kids — the young local officers — as a big brother, not as a commanding officer or as a mercenary. It wasn’t going to be easy. No one who had spent years in the military would not be aware of a person’s rank, and their status within the organisation. They would all see me as their temporary commanding officer, and, perhaps, as a mercenary who got paid more than they did. Would they regard themselves as superior? It was quite possible. I hadn’t thought highly of mercenaries when I’d been in the UN’s service.

In the end, I’d settled for a mild information room with a standardised drinks table — no alcohol — and a handful of comfy chairs. I saw their expressions as they filed in and smiled to myself. Whatever they had expected, it wasn’t what I’d presented to them and they had to be wondering just what I was doing. I had wanted to put them at their ease, but first, they had to realise that it wasn’t a trap, or an attempt to lure them into breaching regulations.

“Come on in,” I said, calmly. “Take a seat, any seat.”

I felt absurdly like an oversized nursery teacher as the young officers took their places and stared at me. They looked ridiculously young for the uniforms they wore, but there had been little choice, but to accept their promotions. Five of them had been promoted by the local authorities themselves, without consulting us, and the remainder had been picked out by my people. They weren’t seasoned yet and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that some of them would get their men killed. I couldn’t stop that from happening, but at least I could try to warn them of the dangers, and the responsibilities, of their new rank. I also wanted to discuss the role of a proper military organisation and why it existed. I looked at them and wondered, privately, how many of them would actually understand the message.

“Close the door behind you,” I ordered, as the final officer-candidate, a young girl barely out of her teens, came in. “Take a seat and sit down. We have a lot to cover and very little time.” She sat down and eyed me nervously. “The first thing you all have to understand is that there are no ranks in this room. What does that mean?”

“That you’re going to be talking to us as equals?” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist guessed. He, at least, was someone I wasn’t so worried about. He’d done well in the recent fighting against the Communists. “Sir, I…”

“No ranks in this room,” I repeated. “There’s a reason for that and we will get to it in time, but for the moment, no ranks in the room.”

Jörgen took a breath. “Understood, sir,” he said. I rolled my eyes, but said nothing; clearly, some habits were hard to break. “What are you going to tell us?”

“On Earth, this was known as the Candidate’s Choice,” I said. “There’s a lot of history behind it, which I won’t burden you with, but the basics were that the officer-candidate would be tossed into a situation where he would have to make hard decisions about the lives and careers of his men, the men placed in his hands. It wasn’t an entirely fair test because a candidate could be denounced for political incorrectness and perhaps even nationalist thoughts rather than simply being an incompetent asshole, but it forced a young officer to come face to face with the harsh realities of their position. Some refused promotion and returned to the ranks, others preferred to transfer sideways into the supply department and other non-fighting sections of the Peace Force, leaving those who decided to go on to… well, go on.

“On Heinlein, it is referred to as the History and Moral Philosophy class,” I continued. “The candidates are given far harder problems to solve, but they don’t have to worry about pleasing their instructions politically. On the downside, they do have to pass the test to gain promotion, unless they gain a promotion under fire — stepping into dead men’s shoes, as we call it. You’ve all been through the fire far earlier than I expected, and you’ve all done well in drills and training exercises, but you all have one major handicap. What, pray tell, is it?”

“We’re all from this planet?” The girl — Captain Elsa Björkgren — hazarded. “We’re not part of your group of mercenaries?”

“No,” I said, with a half-smile. I had underestimated the resentment some of the locals felt, although it would have amused them to learn that we weren’t paid much more than they were. “Another guess, anyone?”

There was a long pause. “No guess?” I asked, finally. “It’s simple. You’re all very — very — inexperienced. If it had been entirely up to me, I would have sent your units officers culled from my men and used the additional time to bring you up to standard as quickly as I could. That was out of the question; therefore I have little choice, but to trust you with companies of men, knowing that your inexperience might get them killed. Do you understand me now?”

I went on before they could answer. “Tell me something,” I said, calmly. “What is the purpose of an army?”

“To defend the planet?” Jörgen asked. “That’s what we were doing against the Communists, wasn’t it?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I replied. “Anyone else?”

One of the Captains I didn’t know spoke into the silence. “To provide a useful place for those in society who will fight?”

“That sounds like the UN definition,” I commented, dryly. “The UN created an army that was a massive — and largely useless — blunt instrument. The Peace Force was so badly hobbled by their superior officers that it wasn’t even remotely capable of keeping the peace. Although the UN would prefer to believe otherwise, most people will fight if they feel that there is no choice, but to fight or die. You might take the other fellow with you, if nothing else.”

There were a handful of chuckles. “So,” I said. “One final guess?”

Elsa smiled. “To protect the people?”

“Again, in a manner of speaking,” I said. “I’ll save you the effort of thinking and toss in an answer. An army exists to defend society. Discuss.”

Jörgen frowned. “But that was what I said,” he protested. “I said that an army exists to protect and defend the planet.”

I smiled. “But what planet?” I asked. “Svergie was settled by a small group, then it was a UN-occupied world, and then finally it became independent again. If the Communists had won and created a Communist world, there would have been yet another Svergie society. If someone declared themselves King of the World and somehow managed to make the title stick, they’d have created a fifth society. Which one does the Army exist to defend?”

They chewed on that for a moment. “The answer is fairly simple,” I said. “The army exists to defend society.”

“But that’s what you said,” Elsa said, puzzled. “They’re all societies, so the army…”

She broke off. “The army here exists to defend our society, right?”

“As good an answer as you will probably get, for the moment,” I said, and leaned back in my chair. “Throughout history, force — normally expressed through an army, although some nations used navies instead — has served as the ultimate guarantee of a state’s existence. An army that is incapable, or unwilling, to uphold the state is something that will ensure that the state will not last long. The vast majority of states that… were terminated by the UN had rotted away from the inside a long time before the UN was anything more than a debating shop.

“But even that is an incomplete answer,” I continued, “and we need to look at different types of state to understand the role of their armies. A leader state depends on a single leader and the army may swear personal loyalty to him — or her. A bureaucratic state is run by the bureaucrats and the army may be loyal to them, or to the symbol of state, or it may have no loyalties at all. A democratic state, one where the people choose their own government, generally has the army swearing loyalty to the system, rather than to the current leader.

“On Svergie, you would call that the Constitution. It provides the guidelines for the system that elects and rejects new rulers. It provides the means for the people’s will to be felt and leaders to be exchanged. It even provides the means for change within itself without the need for a violent and bloody revolution. The Communists didn’t step beyond the pale for being Communists, but for their wanton attack on society and their attempt to destroy the glue binding it together. Your oath, the one I wrote with the President’s input, swore loyalty to that Constitution. Was that a wise choice?”

They hesitated, perhaps suspecting a trap. “I think so,” Elsa said, finally. “If we weren’t loyal to the system, we’d be… just another militia.”

“Quite right,” I agreed. “In a leader state, the army enforces the will of the leader. In a bureaucratic state, the army enforces the will of the bureaucrats. In a democratic state, the army upholds the system that keeps it democratic. You — all of you — have sworn to uphold the Constitution to the best of your ability. Would you serve a tyrant?”

“No,” Jörgen said, flatly. “I don’t want to… bully people just because someone tells me I should.”

“But if the orders are legal,” another Captain asked, “should they not be obeyed?”

“If they’re illegal orders,” a third asked, “who is to blame for following them?”

I smiled. “It’s good to see that you are beginning to think,” I said. I pointed a long finger at Jörgen. “Jörgen, I don’t like Elsa. Rape her.”

There was a long chilling silence. “Sir…” Jörgen stammered, finally. “Sir, I can’t do that because…”

His voice trailed off. “The proper response would be ‘sir, that is an illegal order’ and to protect — not to hurt, to protect — Elsa, with deadly force, if necessary,” I said, firmly. “We read out the regulations to you every week now and you should be able to cite them chapter and verse. An order to abuse prisoners is illegal and must not be obeyed.”

I leaned back in my chair. “And let us pretend, for the moment, that you had followed my order,” I continued. “Who would have been to blame?”

“You both would have been,” Elsa said. She sounded uncomfortable and I didn’t blame her. “You would have been to blame for issuing the order in the first place and he would have been to blame for following the order. There’s no defence that allows him to claim that he was only following orders. He knew full well that the orders were utterly illegal and following them would have made him compliant in your crime.”

“Quite right,” I agreed. I held up a hand before anyone else could speak. “You also know that it is illegal to torture prisoners, yet there are exceptions built in for terrorists and insurgents. Why are those exceptions there? What makes them separate from normal soldiers?”

Jörgen looked down at the ground. “The manual says that insurgents forfeit their protections by operating from within a helpless population,” he said, “but that would mean that… they couldn’t stand up and face us in open battle. We’d wipe them out and go looking for more. What choice do they have?”

“That’s something that people have been arguing for hundreds of years without ever resolving,” I explained. “Let me start by giving you some history.

“Originally, wars were fought between nations on Earth,” I started. “By the time the industrial age began, the nations had evolved various codes of conduct for wars, even the most savage. There were few significant terrorist groups in those days and they lacked the ability to make a real impact. As nationalism evolved, occupying armies discovered that they were harassed from behind their lines by civilians and reacted harshly. The civilian insurgent wore no uniform. He blended into the population and only emerged from his cloak when the fighting began. He was, in short, a nightmare.

“And so it became legal to shoot insurgents on sight,” I continued. “There might have been laws to protect soldiers who were captured — although not all of them were honoured — but insurgents received no legal protection. This actually became more of an issue during the early Space Age, when insurgents who operated on a global scale waged war against the various nations and later the United Nations. The insurgents hid in nations that provided shelter, forcing their enemies to invade or bomb those nations, causing massive civilian casualties. One reason why the laws are so merciless towards insurgents is that their actions always cause innocents to die.

“And yet, as you say, they have little choice,” I said. “So, what is the difference between a resistance fighter on Heinlein, or here, fighting against the UN… and one of the Communists who you just fought?”

“The UN forces were the bad guys?” Elsa asked. “We’re the good guys?”

There were some chuckles. “That’s not a complete answer,” I said. “You’re right — we were the good guys, yet they didn’t agree with that. The Communists thought that we were all out to crush and oppress the working class. What makes their answer any less valid than yours?”

“We won,” Jörgen said.

I smiled. “It’s true that any question of what is legal or not is commonly settled by the victor, who gets to write the history books,” I said. “However, the real answer is more fundamental than yours.”

“They could have voted the government out of power,” one of the Captains said, slowly. “They could have attempted to get elected into power, yet they choose to rise up against the government instead. They didn’t act within the constitution.”

“Bingo,” I said. “They had the ability to get their people elected; hell, Daniel Singh was elected to the last Council. They could have tried to convince people to vote for them, but instead they chose to rise up and overthrow the government by force. There was no choice, but to slap them down as hard as possible.

“On Heinlein, by contrast, the UN had removed the government and was ruling the planet directly,” I added. “It had closed businesses and shops, harassed people in the streets and generally caused vast damage even without the ongoing insurgency. Heinlein couldn’t — wouldn’t — give the UN what it wanted to loot from the planet. There was no choice left, but to resist.

“Answer me another question,” I continued. “Three hundred years ago, the Government of the United States of America faded away and handed over effective power to the United Nations. During the final years of American independence, with tens of thousands fleeing the planet for New Washington, Kennedy and Austin Star — the American-ethnic worlds — some of their army leaders considered a coup to remove a government they regarded as corrupt and treacherous. Later events proved them right, but they didn’t move. Were they right?

“On one hand, there was the fact that they were sworn to uphold the American constitution, yet they were seeing their country falling apart right in front of them. The brain drain was taking all of the Americans who might have rebuilt the country’s infrastructure and moving them to other planets, rioting was spreading through the cities, soldiers and policemen were being attacked in the streets, money was worthless and no one believed in America any longer.

“On the other hand, they were sworn to uphold the Constitution and the government in power had been legally elected according to the rules. There were no legal grounds for removing the government, even though it was treacherous, corrupt and far worse. The only thing they could have done would have been to send troops to the White House and Congress, arrest the Congressmen and assume power for themselves, yet their forces might not obey such blatantly illegal orders. If they tried and succeeded, they’d have to fix the mess; if they failed, they’d disgrace their institutions.

“They did nothing, and America fell. Did they do the right thing?”

I held up a hand before any of them could answer. “I won’t expect you to answer that question now,” I said. “I will expect each of you to think about the issue I raised, read round the subject — after all, you can’t trust what I told you — and then present me with an answer next week, when we next meet. You may want to bear in mind that no one knew for sure what was coming, or why. They lacked the hindsight we have hundreds of years in the future.

“Any questions?”

“Something I was wondering about,” Elsa said. “Why is it permitted to drink, but not to take drugs?”

I smiled. “An interesting change in subject,” I said. “It’s quite simple. If someone renders themselves unfit for duty they also render themselves a stay in the guardhouse. A man can drink some alcohol without affecting his judgement, but hard drugs are something different… and, in a combat situation, even alcohol would be banned.

“I hope to see some interesting answers next week,” I added. “Dismissed!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

There are as many different political points of view as there are fish in the sea. It is therefore obvious that what one political party may believe to be just, or necessary, isn’t what all of the other parties will believe is right. This becomes more pronounced during times of crisis, where the governing party will attempt to solve the crisis in line with its ideology.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“We have a crisis on our hands,” Frida Holmqvist said, as the new Council settled into their seats. I watched with some concern from the public bench. Frida had invited me as an observer, but it was clear that I wasn’t the only one. There were a dozen reporters and several known celebrities in the audience, the former probably under the impression that the latter supported the government. “We have thousands of people out of work and starving in the streets. We have an infrastructure that has been badly damaged and needs to be rebuilt. We have massive shortages of almost everything we need. We are, in short, in serious trouble.”

My eyes swept the Council as she continued to speak. Frida’s Council now numbered eleven after a handful of emergency elections had been held. The remainder had represented areas that were now torn and devastated by the fighting, the population so hopelessly scrambled that elections would be impossible — or at least that was the excuse. I couldn’t help, but notice that the newly-elected Councillors were all Progressive Party candidates, and that the other areas might well vote against a Progressive candidate. It wasn’t too surprising, either; a month after the insurrection had been ended, the Progressive Government had failed to improve their condition. Frida had to find that intolerable. It was quite possible that she was stalling long enough to make major changes as, with eleven Councillors, she had a quorum.

On the other hand, I decided, four of the Councillors were hardly Progressive Party. Two of them were Conservatives, a third was from the Independence Party — which effectively represented the Mountain Men — and a fourth was an independent. The Liberty Party had lost all of its candidates and, with the President injured and out of the picture, might well collapse completely. If they fell, where would their remaining voters go? They might go to either of the two main parties… but it might not matter. Frida had near-absolute power in her hands.

“Desperate times require desperate measures,” she continued, speaking for the crowd. No one on the Council looked cheerful, but some looked happier than others. The Conservatives, in particular, were looking wary. I guessed that no one had told them what was about to happen. “Our planet is on the verge of collapse. It therefore behoves us to take a good look at what we need to do and then do it, regardless of our sensibilities. There are few choices and none of them are good.”

She went on in that vein for nearly twenty minutes before getting to the point. “First, we have millions — yes, millions — of starving citizens,” she said. “The price of food is rising astronomically and the starving men and women are starting to die. That is unacceptable. I am therefore proposing a government-organised cap on the price of food so that it is priced at a level the poor and dispossessed can afford. This cap will be defined by a committee and all farmers will be bound by its decision.

“Second, we have to rebuild a vast amount of our industry,” she continued. “The shortage of trained personnel has made it harder to rebuild, therefore I am proposing that we conscript trained personnel into a pool that will allow them to be focused on the most vital parts of our economy. The vast shortages in farming equipment, vehicles, transport systems and mining gear must be solved, the sooner the better. The only way to do that is to rebuild our industry. Further, the trained personnel will impart their skills to others as quickly as possible, by serving as instructors of their disciplines.

“Third, we need to boost our off-world currency reserves in order to purchase items we require to rebuild our industry and develop an indigenous hydrogen cloud-scooping industry,” Frida concluded. “Towards that end, I am requesting that the mines double their output of rare metals and other items we can sell to obtain off-world currency.

“Finally, in order to give the dispossessed masses something to do, I am creating a massive job-creation scheme that will ensure that everyone who wants a job can have one,” she concluded. “We have much that needs to be done to rebuild and the dispossessed will aid in that rebuilding. We will provide training and guidance for those who want to seek a job, while creating a security blanket for those who are unable to find a position. No one will starve on our world. Svergie is a rich world and there is more than enough for us all. We will create programs that will ensure that everyone gets their fair share.”

There was a long pause. “I hope that you will do the right thing and ensure that these proposals are signed into law as soon as possible,” Frida added. “There is no time to waste.”

I watched the Councillors carefully. The Conservatives didn’t look happy now that the hammer had fallen and the Independence Party candidate looked furious. I wondered who would be the first to speak as I turned my attention to the reporters… and realised, for the first time, that Frida had sewn it all up neatly. The reporters were known friends and allies of the Progressive Party and would present her proposals in the best possible light. I doubted that it would be so easy to actually implement them. Svergie’s problem was that it had too many untrained people and not enough trained people. She might be right about trying to train others, but I doubted that they could train enough to make a significant difference.

Frida herself looked confident, and I understood why. As Acting President and a Progressive Party Councillor, she could be certain of getting the legislation through the government and into law. In a very real sense, she’d be giving herself the legislation to sign. Her supporters would back her up, of course, while her detractors wouldn’t be able to raise the votes to stop her. On the face of it, her plan looked workable, but I knew better. It was likely to be a disaster. The complex economic problems facing Svergie couldn’t be solved by seemingly-simple measures.

“I would like to speak against the… proposals,” Councillor Erik Henriksson said, finally. His voice was almost a hiss. The Independence Party would not take the proposals lying down. “I will focus on the mining issue. The mines are producing as much as they can produce and have been doing so for years, even before the UN left. We lack the heavy equipment required to expand the mines and even if we had it, it would be hard to expand them without causing a major ecological disaster.

“And then there is another issue,” he continued. “Your proposals are simple; you propose that the miners work harder and you city-dwellers get all the profit. You propose the same for the farmers. You may even propose the same for those who try to keep the sprawling cities running. You are asking us to do the impossible. We barely benefit from what we do now. Our benefits will not increase if we increase production, will they? We simply don’t have the manpower or the equipment to do as you request.

“You may suggest training up more men for the mines,” he concluded. “You should know better than that. It takes months to train a newcomer so that he doesn’t kill himself the first time he goes down the mines. Training is individualistic and very hard. We reject hundreds of men and women for working in the mines. We could not train miners on an assembly line. You are, again, asking the impossible. We cannot give you what you want.”

I shivered, despite myself. The last time I had heard anyone speaking in that tone of voice, people had died. The tribal leader on Botany had intended to wipe the UN garrison — which I had commanded at the time — off the face of the planet and had come damn close to succeeding. Councillor Erik Henriksson had the same tone… and the name of his Party was not the Independence Party for nothing. I had a nasty suspicion that all hell was about to break loose.

“And yet we must feed our population,” Frida pointed out, “or would you have them starve for lack of food and prosperity.”

“We did not ask for them to be dumped here,” Erik snapped, angrily. “We did not ask for them to be forced on us when we were weak and could barely feed ourselves. We did not ask for people who were culturally and socially very different to us to be dropped on this planet and then allowed to mooch rather than work for a living. We are unable to provide more ore for you and all the political buzz-words in the universe will not change that!”

“Racist,” someone hissed in the background.

Erik’s face purpled dangerously. “We should have insisted that the poor and dispossessed work for a living,” he snapped. “When the UN pulled out, we could have moved quickly to force them to work — or starve. Instead, we waited until it was too late and the Communists — your former Party — used them to wreck vast amounts of our industry. We will not beggar ourselves for people who are unwilling to do whatever they have to do to earn money and a living. We will not work ourselves into the ground for you.”

He stood up and picked up his briefcase. “I cast my vote, as futile as it seems, against your proposals,” he snapped. “They will bring us all to rack and ruin.”

I watched him march out of the room, his back bent as if there was a colossal weight pushing him down, and winced. Neither of them had left any room for compromise. I thought about keying my earpiece, about ordering his assassination before he could leave the city, but there would have been no point. Erik wasn’t the only member of the Independence Party and assassinating him would have convinced the others to rebel sooner rather than later.

And, if he were right, there was going to be a war.

“These proposals are unconstitutional,” Councillor Albin Arvidsson said, flatly. The Conservative looked over at Frida, his eyes hooded and wary. “The Government is specifically forbidden from meddling in private industry, apart from guaranteeing public safety…”

“And what, exactly, is ensuring that people don’t starve, apart from public safety?” Frida demanded. Her lips tightened noticeably as she addressed the problem. “The food exists, Councillor; we have nothing, but a distribution problem, one that must be solved. As prices and inflation rise, we face the prospect of mass starvation, a problem that must be avoided at all costs.”

Her face tightened. “I have obtained an emergency ruling from the High Court,” she added. “They have decided that our measures are barely constitutional and can be used, purely on an emergency basis. The measures will be reviewed every year — and, of course, the next election will be based around public confidence in the success, or failures, of our measures. You may argue, as the racist did, that the UN caused the problem, but we have a duty to fix it. I will not stand by and allow thousands of people to starve to death on my watch.”

“And if you make it impossible for the farmers and miners to meet your demands, what is going to happen then?” Albin demanded. “The whole area was unstable before you came up with these… half-baked measures. It’s going to explode now, and the results will be disastrous, or are you so confident that the army can handle a second uprising? What will you do if the farmers start refusing to send you food outright?”

“Then I will order it seized,” Frida snapped back. There was an audible gasp in the chamber. No one had expected that. “I will not let people starve!”

The discussion raged backwards and forwards, but the outcome was preordained from the start and all parties knew it. I wondered if Albin was right — no, I knew he was right. The farmers would object to having their crops confiscated and would fight back. I knew how many weapons there were in the inner farmlands and the mountains, including far more armed and armoured vehicles than the Communists had ever possessed. I had the unshakable feeling that we were about to rage headlong into another insurrection, only a far more dangerous one. The army I’d built was going to be fed headlong into another meat grinder and this one would be far worse.

I looked over at Frida and realised, to my shock, that she believed every word she was saying. She truly intended to feed the poor and dispossessed. It wasn’t even an ignoble goal, but I feared that it was an impossible one. There were too many mouths to feed and most of them were useless. She needed long-term plans, not short-team measures that would only alienate the farmers and miners from her government. If she fostered out dispossessed and orphaned children to farming families, she might even prevent them from dying in the streets.

“It is time to move on to the vote,” Frida said, finally. The standard procedure allowed an hour for debate and discussion, but it had gone on for far longer. “All those in favour of adopting the emergency measures, raise your right arm.”

I counted the votes. As I had expected, all seven Progressive Party Councillors had voted in favour of the measures. The independent hesitated, and then voted in favour as well, leaving the two Conservatives isolated. I wondered if they would vote in favour now, just to have the law passed unanimously, but they were made of stronger stuff than that.

“I will not continue to participate in this farce,” Councillor Albin Arvidsson snapped, as he stood up. “These measures are utterly illegal and without any form of justification. You are attempting to square the circle and you will soon discover that you don’t have the ability to even begin to get enough food for all the poor and hungry there are out there, nor can you hope to get enough jobs for them just by decreeing them into existence. We barely escaped one bureaucratic state and you intend to create another. There will be no pretence that we agree with your plans, or that we will merely… view with concern. We will challenge you in the High Court and the court of public opinion.”

“Public opinion is firmly behind these measures,” Frida said, coldly. She believed — again — what she was saying. “We did hundreds of surveys to see if the public would accept them.”

“And you did them here, in the cities, where people believe that food magically appears on the shelves of shops without giving any thought to the harsh realities of farming life,” Albin said. “The farmers will be against your plan because it enslaves them for nothing. The miners will be against your plan because it enslaves them for nothing. The rest of your population will be behind your plan until they realise the costs and how badly you’ve fucked up your duty. It will all be on your head. Goodbye.”

He marched out with the same precision that Erik had shown, but I hoped that they wouldn’t be going to the same place. As the new measures were passed into law, and the reporters scurried out to write their stories and place them on the news nets, I looked over at Frida, hoping she would consent to talk to me. It would be easier said than done. She was currently shaking the hands of various celebrities and thanking them for their support. I knew it would come back to bite them on the behind. I just hoped it would be painful.

I keyed my earpiece as the room emptied. “Ed, this is Andrew,” I said, without preamble. The spaceport had to be warned before the shit hit the fan. If we were lucky, we might avoid further losses. “Code Yellow, I repeat, Code Yellow.”

“Understood,” Ed’s voice said. Code Yellow warned him that the spaceport — or anywhere else we had a presence — might come under attack at any moment. They would all be put on very quiet alert and patrols would be doubled, just in case. The soldiers on leave would be recalled to their bases and warned to be careful. The situation might explode at any moment. “Our heavenly friend had a message for you; it came in two minutes ago. There was another one. Another one what?”

“Never mind,” I said. Daniel and I had arranged for me to be informed when there were any more encrypted transmissions. If there had been another transmission, who had sent it? Erik? One of the Conservatives? I looked over at Frida again and wondered just what she was thinking. “Go to Code Yellow Status and wait for me.”

I stepped over to Frida as the last of her admirers departed towards the exits. “This is not a good idea,” I said, flatly. I pushed as much icy firmness into my voice as I could. She had to believe that all the self-congratulation was just the calm before the storm. “They’re not going to take it lightly.”

“I know it’s not a good idea,” Frida agreed. Her face twisted bitterly. “But tell me; what else can I do? If I do nothing, people die. If I act, people may die. What choice do I have?”

I had no answer.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The term ‘Phoney War’ first originated during the 1940s on Earth when the British and French faced the Germans on the western front. Despite a declared state of war, peace existed along the battle lines — until it was broken by the smashing German advance in May 1940. More recent comparable examples include the UN’s position vis-à-vis Heinlein before the Invasion and the Terra Nova Conflict. It must always be remembered that while peace is apparent on the surface, the fires of war may be burning underneath. Keep the powder dry.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The first week went surprisingly quietly. Too quietly. I’d expected a major explosion within hours of the public announcement of the Frida Holmqvist Recovery Plan — Frida had named it after herself, as politicians were wont to do — but nothing took place, at least on the surface. A and B Company, injured as they were, took turns patrolling around the spaceport and becoming more familiar with the terrain they’d be expected to operate upon if the balloon went up. The Svergie Army kept a watchful eye on developments and waited for the opening rounds. The farmers… didn’t seem to be doing anything at all.

“We picked up more transmissions over the last few days,” TechnoMage said, when I buttonholed him on the subject. It hadn’t been easy to arrange for him to be monitoring unusual wavebands for transmissions, but I’d had little choice. It was a shame I couldn’t share the truth about our mission with him, but someone with such a shady past might well use it against us. “They were just brief burst transmissions and we haven’t managed to unlock them at all.”

Nor has the William Tell, I thought, grimly. I had scrutinised their orbital images carefully, but they’d picked up little of use. The limitations of orbital surveillance were well known and anyone who had survived the Occupation would be well aware of how to circumvent such observation. They might not know that we were looking at the take from the orbiting destroyer, but they’d certainly be watching for our UAV spies.

“Which means that there are still some of them in the city,” I concluded, slowly. They could be anything from spies to political agents to terrorists. They were no way to know what they were until we could unlock the code and it didn’t look as if we would unlock the code. The decryption section was still working on it, but neither they nor Daniel Webster were hopeful. “And we’ve seen no sign of trouble?”

“Unless you could the occasional bar fight,” Ed said, from his position studying the map. “The recovery crews repairing the damage from the last war have been drinking heavily in the evenings after finding bodies that had been buried under vast piles of rubble and some of the bars had had nasty bar fights. I don’t think that they’re the work of the farmers, or the miners, or even us.”

I smiled thinly. I’d cancelled the regular leave schedule, but unless trouble broke out soon I would have to reinstate it. The Legionnaires were used to such treatment, but the locals would gripe and complain about not seeing their families. The new recruits could be kept on the spaceport indefinitely, but not so the trained soldiers. Some of them needed a period of leave before they went on deployment up towards the farms, which the farmers would see as a hostile act.

“Probably not, no,” I agreed, silently cursing Frida under my breath. Her scheme sounded good, in the abstract, but applied to real life the results would be disastrous. There’s no such thing as objectivity when humans find their own interests involved and the farmers and miners would regard it — they did regard it — as a direct assault on their livelihoods. I’d seen it before on a dozen worlds. The UN set price caps, trying to feed the poor, only to discover that the farmers went out of business and food supplies dwindled. “Keep A Company on Quick Reaction Alert anyway. I think we’re going to need them sooner rather than later.”

I looked down at the map and winced inwardly. There was no single capital to take out in the countryside, no place where pressure could be brought to bear to defeat the enemy, just endless farms, small villages and a handful of towns. The farmers were tough and independent characters; they’d harassed the UN infantry with a mixture of determination, heavy weapons and sheer bloody-mindedness. I doubted our men would do much better if it came down to a counter-insurgency war; we couldn’t offer the farmers much more than the UN could offer them. Frida had managed to burn that particular set of bridges quite nicely.

No soldier liked counter-insurgency warfare, with good reason. The enemy could be hiding among scores of innocent civilians, often indistinguishable from them until they opened fire. If they were losing, they just faded back into a population that generally either supported them or was too scared to assist the soldiers in tracking them down and exterminating them. It was a delicate balancing act, but one that insurgent forces — living among the people as they were — had to master; failure to keep the people on their side meant certain extermination. We lacked the insight into the rural areas and their way of life — all of our local soldiers came from the urban cities — and picking out the guilty from the innocent would not be easy. And, if they were defending their livelihood, they’d feel that they had a cause and refuse to surrender easily, unless they got what they wanted.

I ran my eyes over the map and scowled. No one was quite sure how many farmers and miners there were, but general estimates said around two to three million at most, spread out over a vast area. The vast majority of the planet’s population was concentrated in the cities — the work of the UN and its plan to dump surplus populations here — and wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do if dropped in the countryside and told to work or starve. It was something we could work on — it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of unclaimed land that could be turned into farms — but that would take time, time we didn’t have. I was morbidly certain that the explosion was already on the way.

“Ed, Russell, draw up a training schedule for rural conflict and have all of the local units run through it,” I ordered, finally. The rules were very different to urban conflict, but at least it was something that we’d had in mind for the last few months, unlike the war against the Communists. “I want them all refreshed and pushed right to the limit. Add in everything we know about the enemy, but also give them advanced weapons and tactics, just in case.”

Russell nodded once. “Hard training, easy mission,” he quoted. “Easy training, hard mission.”

“Good,” I said. “That leaves us with a single problem. Should we push ahead of occupy Fort Galloway now or abandon it completely?”

There was a long pause. Fort Galloway had been built by the UN in the early days of their occupation and existed roughly midway between New Copenhagen and the mountains — and the Mountain Men. The UN had intended to use it as a base for rapid deployment forces, but the shortage of UN Infantry had always limited the base’s usefulness. They’d only kept a Company there during the later years of the war, which had contented itself with firing back at attacking forces and otherwise keeping their heads down.

“If we occupy the base, it may be taken as a provocative act,” Muna said, from her chair. She sounded more like her normal self now, but she was being worked off her feet running between factories that might be rebuilt and factories that were being overworked and risking self-inflicted damage. It didn’t help that employers had cracked down hard on union movements after the Communist Uprising and industrial unrest was growing. I half-expected Frida to pass legislation to deal with that, but it was a minor issue compared to the farmers. “We could occupy the base, no problem, but it might kick-start the war.”

“And yet, if we do not occupy the base, we will be forced to fall back on garrisons near the cities,” Ed pointed out, reasonably. “That would limit our ability to react to attacks on governmental forces and agents.”

I scowled. Frida’s latest brainwave involved thousands of ‘government inspectors’ who would go out to the farms, take the long-overdue census, and then give them their quotas for the year. It might have given people jobs, but the farmers would resent being told what to do by men and women who wouldn’t even know what part of a cow gave milk, let alone anything more useful. There was good value in actually taking a census, but everything else would just cause trouble. I saw their presence as being the spark that ignited the gunpowder. The other job opportunities she’d announced weren’t much better.

Robert snorted. “Do we want to react to attacks on such people?”

“We wouldn’t have a choice,” I said. “We’ve assumed a role here and we have to play it out to the bitter end.”

Robert shrugged. “I respectfully point out, sir, that if this goes belly-up — and it will — the reputation of the Legion will be severely damaged,” he said. “Our task here was to train the local boys and turn them into soldiers. We were meant, at most, to provide training, support, back-up and specialised assistance for the locals, not spearheading a counter-insurgency campaign. The local government has dug itself a hole and we can’t get them out of it.”

“I thought that that was what soldiers were for,” Russell said, dryly. “Doesn’t this prove that there is value in a system that only lets ex-soldiers vote and stand for government office?”

“We could not impose such a system here,” Muna said, crossly. “We could not even limit the franchise to natives — what is a native anyway?”

“And Heinlein only worked because the founders were all veterans who knew what they intended to create,” Ed added, dryly. He’d served on Heinlein at the same time as Russell, although they’d been on different sides of the fence. I wondered, absently, if they had faced each other in battle. “If we limited the franchise to veterans here, there wouldn’t be many voters. Even if we expanded it to everyone currently serving in the military, they’d have only… three hundred thousand? Perhaps a few more?”

Robert scowled. “That doesn’t change the issue at hand,” he said. “We did not sign up to become so deeply involved in the local politics. If we do become further involved, what happens to the Legion’s reputation?”

“Our contract specifics that we will handle combat missions at the discretion of the local government,” I said, firmly. It wasn’t an uninteresting argument, but Robert wasn’t one of those aware of the real mission. I hated leaving him in the dark, but the more people who knew, the greater the chance of a leak further down the line. Besides, politics had no place in planning sessions — well, at least my planning sessions. “We’re committed to supporting them unless they choose to order us out or insist that we break the ROE in their favour.”

I looked around the table and saw them all straighten to attention. “Ed,” I said, “after the training preparations have been completed, I want you to make preparations to escort a couple of local companies up to Fort Galloway to occupy it permanently. We’ll move up some of the attack helicopters as well, along with enough supplies to keep them active even if we get cut off from the Fort. We won’t go expecting a battle, but if we should happen to encounter resistance, we’ll deal with it.”

Ed frowned. “We, sir?”

“I’m going to be leading it,” I said, firmly. “I have to see the ground first-hand, so I’m going to command the escort force. If nothing else, that should prevent any pissing contests over who’s in charge. We’ll aim to set off in two days, although we may have to put the convoy back a few days if trouble breaks out here.”

I looked at the map. We’d been assigning too many soldiers to serve as police in New Copenhagen and the remains of Pitea, but what choice did we have? The Communists had broken the local police forces and we had to fill their shoes. It was just lucky that there hadn’t been any serious incidents, apart from a handful of looters being caught in the act and shot, but that could change at any moment. Were the farmers cold-blooded enough to provoke an incident that would tarnish our reputation in the eyes of the urban residents? Pitea was in ruins anyway. If chaos broke out there, it might well swell beyond our ability to deal with it.

“Yes, sir,” Ed said, finally. “I’ll be coming along as well, of course, with A Company.”

I knew when to give in. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. I glanced around the room. “Any other business?”

“I was just wondering if we shouldn’t provide an escort for the government agents,” Muna said. “It might deter someone from starting something stupid.”

“Or maybe underline the fact that they can’t trust the government anymore,” Robert injected. “They might even view it as a challenge, a gauntlet being thrown down that they have to pick up.”

“If we’re asked to provide one, we’ll consider it then,” I said, firmly. “Until then, you know your assignments, so… dismissed.”

Muna lingered behind when the others had left the room. “I was looking at the food distribution problem,” she said. “If I use the most pessimistic figures, the planet’s total store of food will be exhausted fairly quickly, if no more comes in from the farms. There are emergency stocks of MRE packs from the UN, but we used a number of those to feed refugees and not all of them are reliable.”

I nodded sourly. The people who’d packed the MRE — Meals Ready to Eat; three lies for the price of one — back on Earth had been low-paid and resentful of their status. They’d probably taken the opportunity to express their class anger — not that the UN admitted to having any such thing, of course — by damaging the packs in some way, or even putting unhealthy food in the package. I’d been on campaigns when it had been discovered that half the MREs were even more inedible than normal. There’d even been mutinies and riots over inedible MREs. The UN’s quality control was non-existent.

“I suspected as much,” I said, grimly. “How bad is it going to be?”

“It depends what assumptions we make,” Muna admitted. “If we go by the worst-case assumptions, the planet will be starving inside of three months, perhaps less. That’s with a total cut-off from the farms and a complete failure to seize and distribute seed corn from the farmers — which, incidentally, will prevent them from growing food for next year. The best-case assumption suggests that everything is going to be very rocky for the next five months before a steady decline sets in — I think this problem was already brewing well before the Communists started their uprising, let alone anything else.

“Overall, the planet needs to institute a harsh rationing scheme at once,” she concluded. “We need an accurate census of how many people are actually in the cities and how much they need to eat. We also need to start expanding farm capability as much as possible and that means rebuilding or dedicating the industrial factories to supporting the new farms.”

I scowled. I’d brought soldiers to Svergie. I hadn’t thought to bring any farmers. That oversight could have killed us all. “Get on to the personnel department and look for anyone we have with any farming experience,” I ordered, finally. “If you find anyone, tell them we need them to work out how we can quickly transform unsettled land into farms that can feed the population — by drafting new farmers from the cities, if necessary.”

“I’m not sure if that will settle all of the problems,” Muna said. “The Government would need to make life in the cities uncomfortable and that would be very… unpopular. At the moment, the urban residents have it pretty good and they don’t have many places to go anyway. A handful were able to get jobs and others did manage to go out to the farms, but they’re little more than a drop in a very big ocean. Worse, sir, the underclass are actually pumping out more children than the planet can support; we might have to suggest mandatory sterilisation of every woman who had a child, just to prevent the population from rising still further.”

Her face twisted. “I can’t have children myself,” she admitted, with a hint of pain in her voice, “but many women will be outraged by the suggestion. I can’t see the Progressive Party agreeing to it, yet they’re sitting on a time bomb, courtesy of the UN.”

“Thank you,” I said, finally. “I’ll do what I can.”

I made arrangements to meet with the Acting President — I had to keep reminding myself that she was the Acting President, not the President — and spent the rest of the day working on the paperwork I’d allowed to fall behind. It was one of the ironies of my job that I’d managed to cut down on the paperwork significantly — I saw no need for a UN-standard incident report on every little leaf that fell — but I still spent much of my time doing it. I’d promised myself that if I couldn’t justify a piece of paperwork to myself, I’d scrap it, but so much was clearly necessary. It was something that no one had ever managed to solve.

Two days later, the shit hit the fan.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It is a truism that large government cannot govern well, if by well we mean governing in a way that pleases the little people. A large government must — by the nature of the beast — concentrate on the bigger picture, and therefore irritate and alienate the little people who are, often quite unintentionally, ground up in the gears. This has three different outcomes depending on other factors; they abandon their work, they suffer in silence, or they rebel. All three have unpleasant consequences.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

I hadn’t been too impressed with Frida’s ‘government agents’ when I’d first seen them and I hadn’t seen anything to change my mind afterwards. She had intended to train up a new class of bureaucrats who could carry out her orders and create a detailed census of the farmers and their property, but she’d ended up having to raid the remains of the UN bureaucracy for personnel and instructors. I was surprised that she trusted them that far, but like most bureaucrats, they were loyal to the people paying the bills and that was Frida. She sent them in groups of five to the nearest farms with orders to carry out a census and collect the names of every farmer in the area. Three days after the first ones had been sent out, the shit finally hit the fan.

They hadn’t had a very comfortable journey as they drove towards the farms. It seemed that word of their coming had passed through the planetary grapevine — they didn’t have a full-scale datanet, but evidently they didn’t need one — and their reception had not been polite. They’d expected to stay at some of the smaller farms and holdings — there weren’t many hotels in the rural areas — but apparently none of the farmers was willing to put them up for a night. The farmers were generally hospitable to visitors, but apparently they weren’t willing to share their home with lechers and moochers — their exact words — regardless of how much money they were offered. They’d ended up sleeping in their cars, cursing the farmers as they struggled to find comfort on the seats, before washing in a cold river and carrying on towards their destination. They were probably starving by that time as well; they somehow hadn’t thought to bring any food with them, either!

That problem was only solved when they reached a small village and found a shop whose owner was willing to sell them some bread and cheese, which they munched as they made their way towards the core group of farms. Frida had chosen it as their first destination because it was a political hub — insofar as the farmers had a political hub — and if they could be induced to knuckle down, the remainder of the farmers might fall in line. They drove into the village and hunted for the elected representatives. It took them nearly two hours to establish that the elected representatives were on their farms — something they should have expected from the start, seeing that they were farmers — and then they spent another hour trying to find the farm! One farm looked pretty much like all the others to city-born eyes… and they weren’t helped by misleading instructions from people they encountered along the way. When they finally reached the farm, they were in a vile mode.

We only learned the remainder of the story from the recorder in their vehicle, which survived the brief encounter. The five government agents reached the farm’s gate and demanded admittance. The farmer came out instead and talked to them over the gate, demanding to know who they were and why they were bothering him. The representatives informed him that they were there to take a census. The farmer replied that he wasn’t going to allow them on his land. The representatives said that they had permission from the government to arrest anyone who tried to bar their way and tried to grab the farmer. A handful of shots rang out and they stumbled to the ground, dead. The farmers took the bodies, dumped them in their car, drove it some distance from the farm and torched it. That was the signal for a general uprising; the remainder of the government agents scattered over the area were swiftly wiped out, their bodies dumped in their vehicles and burned, or buried in unmarked graves.

We received the emergency call from the government an hour after the shit hit the fan. The farmers had intended, I suspect, to ensure that no one knew what had happened in their territory until it was far too late. As it was, one of the agents managed to get off an emergency signal and alerted the government, which tried to raise the remaining agents and discovered that they were all off the air. The government’s links to local law enforcement units — mainly farmers or relatives of farmers — failed as well and it became clear that something was seriously wrong.

“Andrew, something has happened to the agents,” Frida said, when she called. I’d hit the emergency alert as soon as the board lit up, but we couldn’t have gotten anyone out to the farms in time to save any of their lives. Robert had been right, of course; we didn’t want to save any of their lives. “They’ve all gone off the air.”

“It could be a communications breakdown,” I said, thinking fast. It was clutching at straws and I knew it, but Frida might not know it. Coordinated action on such a scale meant carefully laid plans, icy determination… and an infrastructure capable of pulling off such attacks. I pulled up the images from the William Tell and searched for the final locations of the missing agents. The burning vehicles were easy to spot from orbit, even if their attackers were indistinguishable from everyone else. “What would you like us to do about it?”

“Rescue them,” Frida snapped, angrily. I looked at the orbital images again and decided that rescue was probably out of the question. The burning vehicles might have taken the dead bodies with them, as a message to the farmers’ enemies, or they might have been dumped elsewhere. I doubted that they’d bother taking prisoners. They probably believed that it was war to the knife. “Do what you’re paid for and get some of your men out there and rescue the poor bastards before they’re all killed!”

“Yes, Councillor,” I said, icily, and broke the connection. It was tempting — very tempting — to just abandon them, but I had my orders — besides, trouble like that had to be nipped in the bud, if possible. We’d barely started looking at long-term programs to avoid disaster, regardless of who won the war that had just begun. I keyed my earpiece and waited for Erica to respond.

“Yes, sir?” She said, from where she was preparing the helicopters for action. “We’re ready to move on your command.”

I wanted to board one of the helicopters and fly with them, but Peter and my other subordinates — hah — would never allow it. “Launch a quick reaction force to the following coordinates,” I said, and recited the coordinates of the first burning vehicle. “I’m dispatching a UAV to recon the area first. Get a platoon there and examine the vehicles if it seems safe, but watch out for ambushes.”

“Yes, sir,” Erica said. Her tone told me not to tell her how to do her job. “We’re launching the QRF now!”

I heard the noise of the helicopters rising up into the air as I came out of my quarters and headed towards the command centre. I paused to watch as the heavily-loaded assault helicopters lumbered down the runway and lifted off into the air, while the transport helicopters hovered directly into the air. I watched them go with a sense of growing unease. A single farmer with a SAM missile launcher could inflict serious losses on our helicopter capability at a very fair return. The UAV would lead the way and their flight path would keep them away from any known habitations, but anyone could be out there, waiting for them.

The command centre was on full alert when I stepped in and received salutes from the sentries at the door. The main display was showing where hundreds of government agents had made their last reports before vanishing from human ken — which probably meant that they were dead. Other reports suggested that there were people moving in the cities, although no one was sure what they were doing, or if it were a legitimate protest or something else. We’d put the soldiers on high alert, but there was nothing else we could do until someone started shooting.

I sat down in my chair and watched the live feed from the UAV as it coasted to the farmer’s hub. It really was beautiful countryside, with golden fields giving way to blue rivers and lakes, but I saw it as a place where any number of ambushes could be carried out at will. A person who knew the territory would be able to set traps for my men and force us to spread our forces thin to try to keep the peace — although I suspected that it was already too late for that. The peace had vanished the moment Frida had started her measures to save the population from starving. After that, it had only been an illusion.

“We’re coming up on the target coordinates now,” the UAV pilot said. He’d been a UN pilot before joining us and had rapidly become a great fan of how I ran my organisation, where he didn’t have to sign off on every little risk. “There’s little sign of obvious threats, but there wouldn’t be at this point anyway.”

I nodded as I glued my eyes to the screen. The UAV was covered in a stealth coating that should have rendered it invisible to radar — although the farmers didn’t seem to have radar — and was almost completely silent. They might be able to spot it with binoculars, but it blended well against the blue of the skies. Even if they did spot it, bringing it down would have been difficult — although we’d lost UAVs on Heinlein. If the Freedom League was really involved with the farmers, what might they have given them to play with?

And, for that matter, what had they given the miners to play with?

“Contact the government and tell them to check what’s happening at the mines,” I ordered, leaning over to Peter. The government kept observers at the mines and they’d stayed in place, despite the political unrest — brave men or fools, I hadn’t decided. “Ten gets you twenty that this has spread there as well.”

“No bet,” Peter muttered back, but he went to carry out my orders. A moment later, he returned. “They’re overdue for their standard check-in, sir.”

“Dead or prisoners,” I said. The William Tell was out of position to observe the mountains. I made a mental calculation and realised it would be hours before we could get any live feed from the starship. “The crisis will have spread there as well.”

“Fighting in the mountains against the Mountain Men,” Peter said. “This isn’t going to end well, sir.”

“No,” I agreed. “We just have to hold on long enough to stabilise the planet and then we can leave.”

“No sign of enemy activity,” the pilot reported. “No, wait; there are possible enemy combatants, moving around and armed with rifles. No other weapons detected.”

“That proves nothing,” Peter commented, grimly. “They could be hunters or farmers for all we know.”

I looked at the image of the burned-out vehicle. “They either were involved or they know what happened,” I said, sourly. “Estimated time of arrival for the helicopters?”

“Twenty minutes,” the pilot said, as he pushed the UAV into a holding pattern high overhead. “I’m picking up low-level power sources, cause unknown, and numerous heat signatures inside the houses. I estimate around fifteen people inside the house, but the readings could be misleading.”

“Of course,” Peter growled. We shared a long look. We’d both been misled before by simple countermeasures on Heinlein. “There’s no point in bombing them on suspicion.”

I clicked back to the life feed from the helicopters and watched as they swept towards their destination in full combat formation. Their course was erratic, but I knew that the enemy would probably be able to guess their destination anyway. There weren’t many other places they could be going in that general direction, unless they headed towards Fort Galloway. I’d be leading a convoy there tomorrow, according to the plan, but I was already rethinking that plan. Open hostilities meant revising the ROE and placing other forces on alert.

“No trouble in the cities,” Peter muttered, upon my whispered question. “Our spotters are reporting some rumours running through the cities, but other than that, no real trouble.”

“The helicopters are arriving now,” the pilot said. The main display clicked back to show the direct feed from the UAV as the helicopters drifted into view like massive hunting falcons, or crows. The enemies would probably think of them as vultures. “They’re scanning the area now.”

The attack helicopters took the lead, swooping near the burned out vehicle and watching for ground-fire. They were surprisingly tough craft and could have taken machine gun fire without being seriously damaged, but a single SAM would have blown them out of the sky. The remaining helicopter — the transport — hovered far back. Unloading troops was the most dangerous time in a helicopters life — apart, perhaps, from when it was on the ground and helpless — and I wouldn’t allow them to start unloading men until we were fairly sure it was secure. No fire arose from the ground to challenge then; indeed, the handful of locals we could see were heading away from them as fast as possible.

“It looks clear,” Erica said, from the lead helicopter. “Granny” — the code for the transport helicopter — “can move in now.”

I tensed as soldier rappelled out of the helicopter and spread out on the ground, looking for possible threats, but finding none. There were only twenty-one soldiers, but they searched the surrounding area — apart from the farm — quickly and efficiently. We’d have to check out the farm, sooner rather than later, but for the moment we were content to merely check out the remains of the vehicle. One of the soldiers had a little headcam that he used to send footage back to the command centre and I heard some of my people blanch. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“It looks like all five of the inspectors are here,” he reported back, as the camera peered where he looked. The five inspectors were blackened and charred, but the fire hadn’t destroyed all the evidence. “Cause of death; shot through the head. It was definitely sniper-grade work, sir.”

“Understood,” Erica replied. “Spread out and…”

The hail of shots took down two soldiers and sent the others diving for cover. “Contact,” the Lieutenant commanding snapped. “Enemy snipers, firing from cover!”

I cursed and glared down at the pilot. “How the hell did you miss them?”

“They’re firing from cold spots, under heat-absorbing garments,” the pilot replied, grimly. Now the enemy were firing, the radar onboard the UAV could track their shots back to their origin. The whole ambush had been carefully planned. “We couldn’t see them until they opened fire!”

“Damn good shooting,” Peter commented, from behind me. “That’s much better than the Communists used…”

“Never mind that,” I ordered. Not for the first time in my life, I had the feeling that events were rapidly running away from me. “Pass orders to the assault helicopters; the snipers are to be terminated with extreme prejudice.”

“All units, fire at will,” Erica ordered, from her helicopter. The shooting rapidly expanded as the soldiers on the ground returned fire in short precise bursts. They were experienced enough to find cover and fire from there. The problem was that they were pinned down, unable to retreat or return to the transport helicopter. “Assault One, engage!”

The lead helicopter swooped down and unleashed a spread of dumb rockets down towards the enemy position. The targeting wasn’t very precise, but it didn’t have to be, not with so few enemy soldiers in the area. The shooting died off as the enemy died in the explosions or struggled to find other places to hide. My soldiers advanced quickly towards the burning wreckage, but found no one alive. It looked as if the enemy had all been wiped out.

“We can search the farm,” the Lieutenant said, once the soldiers had secured the area again. “It wouldn’t be hard…”

“Do so,” Erica ordered, issuing instructions for two of the helicopters to move up and support the infantry. Their intimidating presence should quell any desire for heroics among the farm’s inhabitants. “Move in… now.”

The soldiers were not gentle. A grenade knocked down the gate and they moved in shouting for everyone to come out with their hands in the air. The three men and seven women, including two teenage girls, were rapidly secured and left in the yard under the watchful eye of the helicopter crew while the soldiers searched the farm. They found nothing incriminating apart from a handful of ex-UN rifles and a pair of more modern hunting rifles. The weapons were confiscated, but it was becoming increasingly clear that the search was futile. The real birds had flown long ago.

I toyed with the idea of bringing the prisoners in for interrogation, but there really was no need. Some of the soldiers planted surveillance devices in the farm, but in the end we withdraw, feeling frustrated and angry. Some of the UN commanders I’d known on Heinlein would have burned the farm to the ground, just on general principles, but I liked to think that I was more civilised. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway. The war wouldn’t stay civilised.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The key to combating an insurgency can best be described as presence. There must be no areas where the insurgents can regroup and rearm, safe from your interference. You must develop situational awareness at all times, even if this means embracing serious risks. Failure to know what is going on will be fatal.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The map on the wall looked grim, as well it might. As far as anyone could tell, the writ of the central government barely ran outside of the major cities. Four days after our brief battle with the farmers’ militia — or whatever they were calling themselves — we only controlled the territory under our guns. The handful of government outposts across the region had been wiped out — those that had surrendered, at least, had had their personnel repatriated to the cities — and it looked grim. Victory would be long in coming, if it came at all.

I had managed to talk Frida into a strict rationing scheme, but simple logic suggested that it would take weeks before the system could take effect, by which time much of the food would be gone. Some of the nearer farms still shipped to the cities, but they couldn’t produce enough to make up for what we’d lost from the other farms, and the miners… well, they weren’t talking to us at all. I had the unpleasant feeling that they were waiting for the next interstellar freighter to arrive, whereupon they’d sell what they’d produced directly to the freighter and place orders for items they wanted themselves, rather than thinking about the good of the planet. It was a legal grey area; the freighter crew would have to have something from the trip, and if the local government clearly didn’t control the countryside, then why not buy directly from the miners?

“The sooner we repossess Fort Galloway, the better,” I said. We had been unable to tell if the farmers had occupied the fort or not, but the UAV flights suggested that they’d just ignored the fort. We should have sent out a caretaker crew to maintain the base, but we’d been distracted by the Communist uprising. I hated to admit it, but perhaps some of the UN Generals had deserved their massive salaries. They’d seen a big picture that barely floated in front of my eyes. “Ed, is the convoy ready to move?”

“It has been ready for two days,” Ed said, not without a certain amount of amusement. We’d been forced to keep putting the departure date back as I had to run around pissing on fires. If it hadn’t been the farmers, it had been the massive anti-farmer demonstrations in the cities, or riots among the ex-Communist prisoners in the work gangs. Not for the first — and probably not the last — time, I cursed the absence of a real police force. The planet was damn lucky that the murder rate hadn’t risen sharply. It wasn’t as if we were equipped to track down murderers we didn’t catch in the act. “A Company is on permanent standby, B Company is ready to act as a QRF, and the designated local units need only their alert to move.”

I nodded. Although the vast majority of the local soldiers came from the cities, a handful came from the farmers… and I was unwillingly aware that they could be acting as spies within the Army. I hated to do it, but we’d been spreading rumours and even outright lies about our future plans, just in the hopes that they’d confuse the enemy leadership. The brief bursts of encrypted transmissions had continued, but no one knew what they said, or even who was sending them. Even if we had wanted to create a real police state, Svergie simply lacked the infrastructure to operate one.

“Then we move tomorrow,” I ordered, finally. “Confine the designated local units to barracks and brief them in tonight; we’ll move out tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said. He looked as if he wanted to dispute my presence on the convoy, but finally decided not to say anything. “We’ll be ready to depart at 0700.”

I spent the rest of the evening discussing contingency plans with Robert and Muna, before joining Suki in bed and trying to sleep. I’d used to find it hard falling asleep before a mission, but that had faded as I’d become older and wiser and learned to sleep whenever I could. There was no such thing as enough sleep. Suki didn’t know that I was leaving tomorrow; as much as I hated to deceive her as well, she could have been a spy as well. Anyone who wasn’t part of the original Legion could be a spy.

The thought tried valiantly to keep me awake. If I’d been planning ahead, I’d have recruited agents from among the urban residents, rather than people from the rural areas who might be marked out as spies just because of their origins. I’d have tried to place agents among the Army as a matter of course; the enemy, logically, would have done the same. Who among the force I’d designed and built was a spy?

Perhaps we should interrogate them all under a lie detector, I thought grimly, and drifted off to sleep.

I was up at the crack of dawn the following morning. I kissed Suki goodbye, showered — I might not be able to shower at Fort Galloway — and dressed in standard BDUs, before pocketing my rank insignia. I couldn’t wear it on the convoy or else I’d mark myself out for an enemy sniper; shooting senior officers was an old and dreaded sniper tactic. I ate breakfast along with the men, exchanged a few words with Robert and Russell, who would hold the spaceport in my absence, and finally went out to join the convoy. The vehicles were already assembled and, as I watched, surprised local soldiers were urged into the trucks. They’d only been told where they were going last night.

“All present and correct, sir,” Ed assured me, as he and Captain Jörgen Hellqvist came up and nodded. We’d already discarded salutes on the verge of going into combat — and I was mortally certain that the enemy would be waiting for us. Our attempts to set up an intelligence network of our own had failed dismally, but we’d picked up enough to know that the enemy forces were watching the city. Some small patrols had been ambushed outside the city and others had been wiped out completely. “We’re ready to roll.”

I inspected the convoy personally before boarding my armoured car, Peter at my side. We had ten armoured cars — I’d have preferred tanks, but tearing up the countryside roads would not have endeared us to public opinion — seven trucks packed with soldiers and a handful of specialist vehicles. The lead vehicle had cost the UN so much that they kept them back for special occasions; it was designed to sniff out mines and IEDs that might be planted in our path. They generally had a high success rate, but the Generals had preferred not to use them. Dead soldiers caused less paperwork.

“Excellent,” I said, finally. I keyed the radio and was pleased to discover that the radio net was working perfectly. “Roll out.”

The convoy drove out of the spaceport and onto the main road, heading down towards New Copenhagen. We’d been running armed convoys along the road for several days now — the farmers had a habit of shooting up military vehicles that weren’t escorted heavily — and hopefully they wouldn’t see it as anything other than another convoy to the city. The first twenty minutes passed completely uneventfully, apart from spotting another convoy heading in the opposite direction, and I allowed myself to relax. The real challenge would come when we headed out into the countryside.

“We have to turn off here,” Ed murmured, through my earpiece. He was in a different armoured car, preventing a lucky shot from killing all of the commanding officers at once. It had happened, more than once, to the UN. “I’m moving the UAV to scan ahead of us now.”

The turn proceeded smoothly and soon we were racing away from the city, towards the mountains in the distance. The UAV had detected no sign of an ambush, but I wasn’t too impressed. They hadn’t picked up other ambushes before they’d been sprung, although some ambushes had been noticed because they’d been almost painfully amateurish. I’d hoped that they’d been linked to the militia, but the prisoners — after recovering from their shock — had confessed to being little more than youths out for a thrill. They’d thought that taking a few shots at armed soldiers would have been fun. I hoped they found the detention camp equally fun.

I watched as the buildings faded away into the countryside. Like most cities on colony worlds, New Copenhagen had a clearly-designated border between the urban and rural areas, but the sprawl was already pushing at the boundaries. Apparently, on Earth, cities had just kept expanding until they’d actually linked together into much larger cities, creating nightmarish areas of poverty and suffering. My hometown had been tame compared to some of the places I’d heard about on Earth, places where the UN’s writ hadn’t run at all, even before John Walker’s Coup. The UN had been putting out a call for mercenary soldiers, but I had already decided that the Legion was going to stay well away from Earth.

The roads grew rougher the further we moved from the city. The original settlers had intended to build railroads between the cities and the farmers, rather than develop a massive road network, but the UN had — quite accidentally, this time — put a stop to that. The net result was that the roads were in a terrible shape — it was something else, I decided, to have the unemployed working upon — and our progress grew slower. I suspected that even if the enemy hadn’t had any advance warning, they would have known we were coming just from the massive clouds of dust rising up in our rear.

“We’re about to pass through a town now,” Ed’s voice warned. I scowled. We had hoped to avoid all settlements as we moved, but we had no choice for some of them. They’d been built directly adjacent to the roads, for reasons that still eluded me, and had grown up to dominate the area. “Everyone stand at the ready.”

We rounded a corner and braked, hard, not an easy trick in a twenty-vehicle convoy. Someone, and it took no effort at all to guess who, had built a blockade right across our path, forcing us to halt. I conferred briefly with Ed, who ordered A Company to advance carefully. We couldn’t go around the barricade without crossing cross-country — which would tear up the fields and make a terrible mess for the locals to fix afterwards — but if someone had gone to the effort of building a barricade, they might well have it covered by armed men. A barricade without armed men was little more than a nuisance. I picked up my terminal and checked the live feed from the UAV. The town looked deserted, but there were hot spots in most of the houses. A moment later, the shooting started, pouring down at us from the buildings.

I ducked into the armoured car as bullets began to ping off the armour. “Return fire,” Ed barked, as the shooting grew louder. The heavy machine guns mounted on the armoured car returned fire — deafeningly loud, even inside the vehicle — and swept the buildings, trying to force the enemy to keep their heads down. The buildings were well-built, but they couldn’t stand up to heavy machine gun fire for long, any more than could the hedgerows or the barricade itself. A thunderous explosion marked the end of the barricade as a set of IEDs detonated under our fire. The lead armoured car advanced, laying down fire as it moved, and came too close to a buried mine. The explosion threw the entire vehicle over; it caught fire and exploded seconds later.

The infantry advanced under cover from the armoured cars and attacked the buildings. They took no chances; they kicked in doors and window and threw grenades into the buildings, before pushing through the wreckage to kill the remaining insurgents. I wanted to join them, even though I knew that house-to-house combat was the most dangerous of all, and forget that I was the commanding officer. Inch by bloody inch, we cleared the village of insurgents and IEDs, before driving the vehicles through as quickly as we could, leaving several burning buildings behind us. Before we’d arrived, it had been a quiet and prosperous town; now, it was nothing, but blackened ruins and shattered lives.

“We took a couple of prisoners,” Ed reported, once we were a safe distance from the village and could pause to lick our wounds. I could see smoke rising up from where we’d been and winced inwardly. “One of them is injured, but the other is unharmed, if not talkative. It was clearly a planned ambush, sir; there wasn’t a single child and only a couple of women in the village.”

“That’s a relief,” I said, and meant it. I had no problem with killing insurgents and people who were trying to kill me, but I hated seeing children caught up in the gears of war and mashed to bloody paste. I allowed him to lead me to the prisoners and examined them carefully, but neither of them was feeling talkative, even with the medic binding the wounds of the injured one. They both looked like typical farmers and the uninjured one managed to glare at me, even with his hands firmly secured behind his back with a plastic tie. I wasn’t sure if that were bravery, stupidity or a determination to make us kill him before we could make him talk. “Put them in one of the trucks. As long as they behave themselves, we won’t hurt them, but if they cause trouble, feel free to put them out of the truck with a cut throat.”

I walked back to the armoured car and took the chewy bar I was offered to replenish my strength. I think they make them taste awful on purpose; I’ve heard stories about UN units starving to death rather than eat them. Once everyone had had a snack and paused to answer nature’s call, we mounted up again and drove off towards the Fort. I settled down in the back of the armoured car and returned to studying the take from the UAV. There were three more small villages and one larger town we’d have to pass through before we reached the Fort… and that assumed that the Fort remained unoccupied. If it didn’t, we were going to have to assault it without causing too much damage, although I doubted that the farmers would seek a conventional battle. How many losses could they absorb before they lost the ability to farm their fields?

The next hour passed slowly, even though we picked up an escort in the form of a couple of attack helicopters. I’d kept a handful of them running patrols around the area, but I was persistently worried that one or both of them would get shot down by the enemy. The farmers seemed to dislike the helicopters, but it was still a mystery how many SAMs they had, or even if they had any. They would probably have picked them up from a UN deport, but would they still be in working order?

“Another village,” Ed’s voice said, in my ear. “Here we go again.”

This village was completely deserted. The infantry dismounted and searched the area carefully, but found nothing, apart from signs of a quick evacuation. We checked out the houses that were nearer the roads, but they were definitely empty. I even brought up the bomb-sniffing vehicle and checked the area, but it was clean of IEDs and mines. It actually felt eerie and I was glad to be away when we left. I’d had the feeling that someone was drawing a bead on us from a distance. Still, if they chose not to fight, it was something of a relief. I just wondered where the villagers had gone! Had they been ordered to leave, or had they heard about our approach and decided to hide?

“There’s no way to know,” Ed said, when I commented on it. He sounded as if it had been bugging him too. “They could be anywhere in the fields.”

I looked around at the vast empty fields, the cattle and sheep waiting plaintively for their masters to return, and took his point. There was no time for a search and so we drove on, passing through another empty village and a town that completely ignored us. The inhabitants saw us coming and cleared the main road, rather than attempting to talk or fight. It was better than fighting, I decided, but it would have been nice to talk to someone and try to set up diplomatic links to the militia. We might have been able to talk them out of continuing the fight…

No, I thought, with a touch of bitterness. They have no reason to stop fighting.

Three hours later, after a long drive filled with moments of screaming terror as snipers fired at us and vanished into the distance, we finally reached the fort. There was little pleasant about the massive blocky building — the UN had come up with a design it liked for a fort and kept it on all of the colony worlds — but it was clear, even from a distance, that the fort was occupied. We would have to assault it just to take it off the enemy.

“Get the men rested and bring up additional helicopters,” I ordered, tightly. The advantage of surprise was already lost. “We’ll assault the fort in an hour.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The insurgent will rarely seek a conventional battle with the government forces, as the government forces will generally be much better trained and armed than the insurgent. If they can be lured into such a battle, it is vitally important that as many insurgents as possible are killed or captured. An insurgency may be broken by one massive battle — IF the political conditions are right.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

I could hear the sound of snipers in the distance as I examined the fortress through the eyes of the UAV, which was circling high overhead. The enemy forces had to have remained in the barracks until we’d approached, before taking up their positions, trying to keep us in the dark as much as possible. I silently saluted their commanding officer in my mind. He’d done a good job, but I was ahead of him in one respect; I had always assumed that I would have to fight my way into the fort.

Fort Galloway was tiny compared to the spaceport, but it still dominated the landscape and seemed to keep us all under observation. It was surrounded by a network of bunkers and traps designed to funnel enemy forces into areas where they could be mown down by emplaced machine guns and probably minefields as well. Inside, there were a handful of barracks intended for the men, an underground hospital for the injured and a set of command buildings and helipads, all encircled by watchtowers and barbed-wire fences. The tiny fence surrounding the outside of the complex was a joke by comparison; its only purpose was to deter civilians from walking into the firing zone. The warning notices, writing in Standard and all of Svergie’s official languages, warned of dire penalties, up to and including death, for anyone stupid enough to slip under the fence and enter the complex.

“They’ll have stripped her of anything useful,” Peter observed. I tried very hard not to jump. He’d come up right behind me perfectly silently. “They took down most of the fence for marking out the fields, or something.”

I nodded. The reason we’d never bothered with Fort Galloway before was that the local government had removing everything the farmers or miners had left behind, before abandoning the fort to the ravages of nature. The UN Construction Corps generally did good work — several of them had been shot by outraged commanding officers to make the point — and the fort would remain standing for years yet, but anything mobile had probably been taken years ago. It wouldn’t be that much of a problem — we’d brought supplies and could move in more once we’d occupied the fort, either though helicopter or on the roads — and in some ways it worked in our favour. The enemy holding the fort were unlikely to be very well-equipped either.

“1st and 3rd Svergie lead the assault,” I said, finally. I hated to be cold-blooded about it, but the Svergie soldiers were more expendable than A Company and the remainder of my men. “A Company and the support will remain in reserve.”

Ed nodded and headed off to organise the assault as the firing intensified. I’d deployed my snipers to force the enemy to keep their heads down — nothing damages morale like a shot killing someone at an impossible distance — but the enemy snipers were firing back, trying to force us to change our minds. They hadn’t hit anyone yet — we were using our vehicles as cover — but it was only a matter of time. It was a shame we couldn’t use the helicopters to their best advantage, but if we’d rocketed the fort we’d have had to abandon it quickly or waste resources trying to rebuild it. The mortars would suffice for what we had in mind, loaded with anti-personnel rounds; they’d kill the enemy soldiers, without seriously damaging the fort. The UN built them tough.

“I think I’ve located the enemy command centre,” the voice of the pilot said, through my earpiece. A building flashed up on my terminal. “They seem to be communicating from here with runners and shit.”

I watched for a long moment and decided that the pilot was right. “Target the building with a missile and engage as soon as we begin the main assault,” I ordered. The enemy might not have realised the UAV was present — the memory of a particularly embarrassing training session floated up into my mind and I smiled in bitter memory — but they’d probably prepared for mortars and even artillery. How would they cope with a penetration missile? “Ed?”

“We’re ready, boss,” Ed said. He paused. “You’re not leading the assault in person, by the way.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, mom,” I said, tiredly. “I’ll coordinate from here. Go in five; I repeat, five.”

“Five,” Ed confirmed. “We’re ready and waiting.”

The original designers of the fort had cut down all the trees and everything else that could provide cover surrounding the fort, allowing them to see and engage everything that approached the fort. Depending on how paranoid they’d been feeling, they might have sensors designed to watch for anyone trying to dig a tunnel into the base — it had happened on several occasions on other worlds — but over the years some foliage had grown up to provide limited cover. The snipers intensified their duel at my orders, trying to force the enemy to hide behind their walls, although they probably had sensors in the watchtowers. They’d have to be handled through brute force…

I smiled. We’d brought plenty of that along.

“Group One, go,” I ordered. “Pilot, drop the bomb.”

Three of the armoured cars could fire small antitank rockets, designed to give them a ghost of a chance against a real tank — as opposed to absolutely no chance at all — and they could be configured to target other obstacles as well. Four of the armoured cars fired a single rocket at once, targeted on each of the watchtowers, blowing them down in violent explosions. The enemy might have scattered other sensors around, but if they’d stuck with the standard UN system, they were blind now. They’d have to get people up on the battlements to look at us and the snipers would pick them off with ease, even though the haze of the smoke.

An explosion shook the ground as a new pillar of fire billowed up from the centre of the fort. The penetration missile dug into its target and exploded inside, rather than simply exploding on the outside, and anyone caught in the blast was definitely dead. If that had been the enemy command post, it wasn’t any longer.

“Hit them,” I ordered. “Group Two, go!”

The mortars opened fire and threw a hail of antipersonnel rounds into the fort, targeted on areas we were sure had large enemy presences. Anyone who sought cover after the first explosion would be fairly safe, but anyone out in the open would be in serious danger. I clenched my fist as the explosions flared up in the distance and keyed my earpiece.

“Ed, go,” I ordered. “Good luck.”

The defenders of the fort were struggling to get their own mortars into action to return fire, but they hadn’t counted on the UAV and its precise instructions from high overhead. Our mortars threw their shells into their positions and wiped them out before they could get off more than a handful of shells, scattering the defenders and forcing them to seek cover. It proved that they hadn’t kept all of the fort’s original defences; the UN used point defence lasers, just to provide cover from any such assault. If they’d done that, they might even have prevented the UAV from picking off their command post.

I watched as the soldiers swarmed towards the first bunkers. The enemy seemed totally unprepared to see them and, even as they started to fire back, the armoured cars started to launch their rockets into the occupied bunkers. Their firing slacked off as our forces and the defenders became intermingled, but the snipers kept firing, picking off every enemy soldier who showed his face. Whatever else the enemy were, they hadn’t prepared for a conventional fight at the fort… or had they thought we’d just line up and advance towards the fort in the open? Even the UN wasn’t that stupid. The defenders tried to fall back as the first bunkers fell, only to find that a retreat was the hardest thing to do under any circumstances. A handful threw their arms up in surrender, others were shot in the back or tried to keep fighting until they were beaten. The inner defences struggled to hold out, but my men were already within the walls and pushing them back hard.

“They’re falling back to the underground bunkers,” Ed said, in my earpiece. “We may have to go after them unless they surrender.”

I nodded tightly. “Offer to accept surrender if they’re willing to surrender,” I said, seriously. I wasn’t going to risk men trying to capture people who didn’t want to surrender, but the chaos gripping the fortress would make it hard for my men to tell who was trying to surrender and who was preparing to throw a grenade at their positions as they advanced. It was quite possible that we’d kill surrendering men quite by accident, but there was little choice. They should have surrendered before we’d assaulted their fortress. “If they refuse, don’t be gentle.”

The firing started to taper off as the defenders either surrendered or were wiped out. A handful dug into the bunkers and tried to make a stand, but Ed’s men rolled grenades down the steps and blew them out, one by one. Others tried to flee into the surrounding countryside, only to discover that our snipers were watching for anyone trying that and were gunned down. A massive explosion rocked one quarter of the fort as their stored ammunition detonated — they’d blown it to prevent us from capturing it — and the last of the firing stopped. Fifteen minutes after the assault had begun, the fort was safely in my hands.

“You three, escort us,” Peter ordered, as I walked towards the fort. My three bodyguards from A Company fell into formation around me, leading me through the defences and into what had once been a functional fort. I was relieved to see that the defences weren’t too badly damaged, but many of them would have to be replaced quickly. Leave it to the UN to be efficient when it would best irritate us. On the other hand, at least they’d taken out the minefields. If they’d been left there, taking the fortress would have been much harder.

The interior of the fortress was full of scorched and blackened buildings, but I was relieved to see that most of them were still intact. The former command building had been reduced to a pile of rubble and the other buildings surrounding it were damaged, but the remainder were useable. We’d be able to set up home here without many problems. The prisoners lay on the ground in the central yard, which would have once been used to hold parades and inspections, their hands bound behind their backs. Some watched us nervously, others angrily and bitterly, even though we were treating the wounded. They didn’t look like farmers to me and it took me a moment to realise that they were actually miners. I looked over towards the mountains rising in the distance and scowled. The miners had come to aid the farmers, or had it just been a coincidence?

“Damn you, Frida,” I muttered under my breath. “What the hell have you gotten us into now?”

“We lost seventeen men,” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist reported. His accent, clearly local, earned him attention from the prisoners. Their faces promised him a horrible death if he fell into their hands. “Five more are seriously injured and need to be flown back to the spaceport before they die.”

“Call for a transport helicopter and ensure that it is heavily-escorted,” I ordered, finally. I wasn’t going to allow wounded to be driven back to the spaceport if it could be avoided. They might not survive the experience. I looked at him, wondering if he could be trusted with prisoners, and decided that I’d have to start trusting him sooner or later. “Round up a platoon and have the prisoners moved to somewhere more secure — one of the former storage rooms, perhaps. Don’t let them talk to one another, but try not to hurt them further if it can be avoided.”

Peter shrugged as we walked into what had once been a command post for the fortress. It had been stripped of everything that might be useful, leaving only bare patches of wall where computers and display systems had once stood, apart from the ever-present dust. The miners had evidently decided not to bother refitting the room for their use, although I couldn’t blame them for that. It was evidently nearly useless for them. We could probably use it if we moved in some of the stuff we’d recovered from the UN base at the spaceport, but that would have to wait until we moved up some of the more vital defence systems. We’d shown the enemy just how to assault the fort!

“The prisoners might be talkative,” he said, as soon as we were alone — apart from the bodyguards. “We could inject them with something designed to make them talkative if necessary.”

“Leave them for the moment,” I said. “If they’re inclined to talk, we’ll see later what they have to say for themselves, but the last thing we need at the moment is a reputation for abusing prisoners. The odds are that we picked off all of the leaders anyway — or did we? Can you have them checked against the known miner leaders?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said. I looked over as Ed came into the dust building and then sneezed as the dust blew around him. “It’s dusty, sir.”

“I had noticed,” Ed said, crossly. He looked at me. “I’ve carried out a quick inspection of the fort, sir, and it’s defendable. We just need to bring down the gear we need and then we can start putting the place in order.”

“I think so,” I agreed. “Is the field large enough to take the shuttle?”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said. “The pilot is confident that he can land precisely where we want him?”

“Then tell him to start moving,” I said, pushing my doubts aside. “We need him here as soon as possible.”

The problem with resupply for the fort lay in logistics — one of the military swear words, as far as I was concerned. The fort needed supplies that had to come from the spaceport and that meant either land convoys or transport helicopters, both of which were vulnerable. We couldn’t stop with just one either; we’d need so many that the odds of a successful attack would be high. I’d decided to gamble and use one of the shuttles from the Julius Caesar, bringing all the supplies we needed from low orbit on one drop, but if a SAM unit happened to be in range, we were taking a serious risk.

“Chancy,” Peter commented. He’d expressed his doubts back when we were planning the mission. “You know how many ways this could go wrong?”

“Better than I wanted to know,” I assured him, dryly. We’d gone over the benefits of the plan — many — and the risks — serious — before deciding to chance it. “We need to get Fort Galloway back in working order before the enemy decide to try and throw us out — which won’t be long.”

I pulled out my direct link to the UAV and scanned the live feed. It seemed clear, for the moment, but I was sure that the enemy would be waiting until darkness fell to launch an attack, if they had enough men in the area. It was the downside to the leaderless resistance concept; it made it hard to muster enough men in a given area to launch a significant attack. Or, for that matter, would they just try to lay siege to the fort? It would be just as irritating for us and much less risky for them.

The roar of the shuttle’s engines brought us both out to watch as the craft came in to land, braking heavily. The shuttle had risked a dive down from orbit to the fort, to minimise the time the craft was exposed to enemy fire, and I allowed myself a moment of relief as it landed safely. The risk of losing a surface-to-space shuttle was considerable.

“Excellent flying,” I said, as the pilot came out of the craft. He looked utterly beat by the flight and I didn’t blame him. The slightest mistake could have killed him. There was nothing routine about any shuttle flight, but the high-power drop had been extremely dangerous, even without enemy action. “You did very well.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, as he stumbled into a version of attention. I silently forgave him the trembling in his limbs. “Might I suggest that you unload the shuttle as fast as possible” — the sound of ticking metal drew my attention back to the shuttle — “so that I can return to orbit? I don’t want the shuttle around here when the enemy start firing into the compound.”

“Of course,” I agreed, seriously. “Ed, supervise the unloading and get everything prepared. I have to call back to base and let them know what happened here.”

It took several hours to unload the shuttle, despite the pilot’s haste, and darkness was falling before the craft returned to the skies. I thought, seriously, about going back to orbit with him, but instead I’d only sent the wounded and the prisoners. I didn’t want to take them away from the fort, but I didn’t want them around either when their fellows began the attack. I was turning away from the darkening skies when it happened.

“Sir,” Peter shouted. “Look!”

I turned back and saw a streak of light rising up to meet the shuttle as it climbed into the air. The two lines connected and, a moment later, an explosion sent the shuttle’s burning remains falling towards the ground. I watched the explosion in numb horror — no one would have survived that — and knew just what it meant.

The enemy were here.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Although the insurgent, as noted before, will seek to avoid conventional battle, he is a master at draining the enemy strength though tiny cutting attacks — the death of a thousand cuts. Time and space are on his side. He must not win, only not lose. For the government, the exact opposite is the case.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“Shit,” Ed said, quietly.

I nodded. “Damn it,” I said, keying my earpiece for the link to the UAV pilot. “How the hell did you miss them that close to us?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the pilot said, after a moment. I looked at the burning remains of the shuttle in the distance and swore under my breath. I’d known that we were risking a shuttle, and at least we’d gotten all of the supplies off the ship, but I still hated to lose any of them. The cost of replacing it would cut severely into the profits from the contract. “They just seemed to appear from nowhere!”

Ed looked over at me. “A hidey-hole nearby?” He guessed. “Or maybe more of those damned blankets?”

“Perhaps,” I said. The fires were starting to burn themselves out already, much to my relief. Burning down half the surrounding area would not have endeared us to the locals, although we would have to clear fire lanes in the morning anyway. The darkening skies probably presaged an attack on the fort. How many fighters had the enemy managed to slip up under cover? “Pilot, are you picking up any signals from the shuttle remains?”

“No, sir,” the pilot said. “There’s nothing, but the heat flare; the black box must have been destroyed in the explosion.”

“Return to scanning pattern and do a better job of it this time,” I snarled, and cut the connection. As the temperature dropped, it would be harder for them to hide under shielding blankets or any other form of cover. “I don’t think there’s any point in recovering the remains of the shuttle before morning, so push out A Company and set up the defences as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said. I looked back towards the dying fire and winced inwardly. If the black box had been destroyed, and there was no locator beacon blinking away in the distance, there was no hope at all that the crew had survived. “Do you want to call for extra support from the spaceport?”

I considered it. It would be useful to have more men, but the only way to get them here would be by land and that would take time. They’d also be coming up in the dark, which wasn’t something I would condone if there was any choice in the matter. The best of sensors couldn’t pick out hidden IEDs and mines in the darkness and the experienced soldiers wouldn’t be able to use their eyes. We might have the advantage of night-vision equipment, but I was prepared to bet that the enemy would have countermeasures in place. It was a risk that didn’t seem warranted.

“No,” I said, finally. “I’ll talk to Robert and have him prepare a second convoy at first light, and then we can send back some of the vehicles from here and prepare for a long stay. You get the defences sorted out; I’ll call home and explain what happened to the shuttle.”

At Peter’s insistence, the communications gear had been moved down into one of the bunkers — I think it had originally been intended to store ammunition; it had the right kind of smell — and set up there. I smiled to myself as I checked the equipment quickly and established a link through the Julius Caesar, back down to the spaceport. The enemy might be able to tap into our radio transmissions, even if they couldn’t decrypt them, but they wouldn’t be able to intercept the laser beam we were using from the fort. Peter had set the transmitter up personally and locked it onto the transport starship. It was just a coincidence — of course — that the William Tell couldn’t intercept it either. I didn’t want Fleet listening to everything I had to say.

“I’ll get B Company and two local units prepared and ready,” Robert said, once I’d made contact and updated him about the situation. “The local media is making a right fuss over the reoccupation of the fort; they’re calling it a slap in the face to secessionist opinion.”

“I bet they are,” I said, sourly. The local media seemed to spend half its time vilifying the farmers and miners as the villains of the piece, convincing the urban residents that all their prejudices against the farmers were fully justified. If the farmers were listening to it, they were probably on the verge of declaring independence and forcing the city-dwellers to work or starve. Their own media was much more restrained, but concentrated on how many of them were going to lose their farms and the clothes of their backs under the new regime. The irony was that I had half a plan to deal with the situation, yet I needed to win time… and that meant fighting the farmers.

“I’m afraid so,” Robert confirmed. “On the other hand, the reoccupation of the fort has been good for our morale as well. They’re a little surprised it happened without anyone hearing about it, but now the news is out…”

I shrugged. I’d been on operations that had been announced to the media well before the fighting actually began and, because of the advance warning, had gone horrifically wrong. Sometimes the enemy had just abandoned the positions they had known we were going to attack; at other times, they’d dug in and fought to the death. There hadn’t even been any way to know what we were facing until it was too late, just because the media had ruined the intelligence work. I’d have cheerfully shot half of the reporters I’d met if it had been allowed. I understood that quite a few of them had been killed in the wake of John Walker’s coup.

“Just say operational security if anyone asks,” I said, seriously. I hadn’t even told the local government about the planned mission. I was sure that they could be trusted — as if — but in my experience, politicians couldn’t help, but blab about everything they knew. The political leaders might be officially above suspicion, but their aides weren’t, nor were their wives, mistresses, catamites and relatives. The less they knew in advance, the better. “I don’t want any more leaks if it can be avoided.”

“Understood,” Robert said. “On a different note, one of the anti-farmer demonstrations turned violent. Two hundred people are dead or badly wounded and Main Street was pretty torn up. We ended up having to use tear gas to break up the riot and send most of the rioting scrum right into the detention camp.”

I swore. “What happened?”

“We’re not sure,” Robert admitted. “Apparently, one of the student groups in the university decided that some of the local leaders were linked to the farmers in some way and came out on the streets against them. One of the people they accused was a former trade union leader and some of his supporters launched a counter- demonstration, which led to several other groups becoming involved and a riot breaking out. The soldiers on duty were under orders to keep away from any demonstrations unless they were ordered to intervene specifically and… well, by the time they were ordered to intervene, there were too few of them to do anything, but fire into the crowd.”

He scowled. “I told them to stay back until we could get reinforcements over there,” he added. “Once we got several more companies over there, we used gas to break up the riot and send most of them fleeing for home. The remainder we arrested and dumped in the camps.”

My earpiece buzzed before I could respond. “Sir, we have major incoming enemy forces,” the UAV pilot said. “At least two hundred of them, approaching from the north, armed to the teeth.”

“I’m on my way,” I replied. If Peter had his way, I’d be stuck in the bunker during the entire fight, but I had other ideas. “Robert, I’ll be back at the spaceport tomorrow, depending upon events. Just keep the rioters penned up and then… well, they’re locals, so let the locals sentence them. Did any of us get killed?”

“No, sir,” Robert replied. “A couple of soldiers got pretty banged up and a third had an accident with a tear gas capsule, but none of us were killed.”

“Good,” I said, hiding a smile. Tear gas wouldn’t actually kill a soldier with the proper vaccinations, but no one would ever let him forget it. “I’ll see you tomorrow them. Over and out.”

The sound of shooting — brief isolated shots — could be heard in the distance as I came out of the bunker and into the yard. Ed had deployed his men carefully and put the snipers — complete with night-vision gear — in positions where they could fire, without being hit easily themselves, although the enemy snipers were also just as good. The farmers and miners had to have been training for years, although perhaps it made sense; there were some pretty nasty creatures up in the mountains. Svergie didn’t have anything comparable to the Heinlein Gnasher or the New Washington Neo-Scorpion, but it had bear and tiger analogues. The locals probably learned to shoot very quickly; the beasts had certainly developed a taste for human flesh.

I winced as I heard the sound of a mortar opening fire, sending shells flying towards us, but we had an ace up our sleeve. A radar-guided laser cannon opened fire and detonated the mortar shell in the air, exploding it harmlessly well away from us. Ed had placed the four laser cannons in positions to intercept and destroy anything that might hit the camp — unlike the defenders we’d removed — and as I watched, other shells were cut out of the skies before they could explode. The firing intensified, but they didn’t come close to overloading the laser systems.

Ed looked over at me from his position when I entered. “If I’d been running the attack, I’d have brought along the quick-firing guns they’re supposed to have,” he said, dryly. I nodded in agreement. The only way to overload the laser defences would be to give them more targets than they could handle. It would be possible, if the bombardment was intense enough, but it didn’t look as if the enemy had brought enough mortars to accomplish that feat. “Instead, they’re just playing games with us.”

“Or forcing us to look in the wrong direction,” I said, looking down at the take from the UAV. The enemy seemed to have discarded stealth altogether, choosing instead to push forward towards our positions as quickly as they could. I hoped they pulled back before they hit the first line of defences. Unless I was deeply mistaken, a lot of them were about to die. “Keep the sensor network up and running.”

The sound of firing grew louder as the enemy came closer. It rapidly became apparent that they had their own night-vision equipment, perhaps UN-issue, because their shooting was extremely accurate. They were flitting closer from cover to cover, firing as they came, forcing our men to return fire with short, precise bursts. The fighting only intensified as they came towards the main bunkers and discovered the landmines we’d prepared for them. The explosions sent them reeling backwards in disarray and our men picked them off as quickly as possible.

“We could send out teams and harass them as they fall back,” Peter suggested, but Ed and I both shook our heads. In the darkness, the odds of heavy casualties would be too high and I didn’t want to lose more men. There were already too many men lying in body-bags and waiting for a return to the spaceport. “Or use our own mortars.”

Ed nodded and keyed his radio. “Tell the mortars that they can launch counter-battery strikes at will,” he said. I nodded, leaving him to command. We’d held them back because we needed to keep our own shells away from the point defence lasers — on a hair trigger, the UN-designed system sometimes couldn’t tell the difference between a shell coming and a shell going — but now we could use them openly. “I repeat, fire at will.”

The sound of our mortars echoed out as they opened fire, sending death and destruction towards the enemy forces. I watched the take from the UAV as the explosions billowed out in the distance, flattening trees and destroying enemy equipment, but the enemy were moving their weapons as soon as they fired a single shell. I had to admire their determination, even though they had to know that they weren’t getting anything through the defences… or maybe they just wanted to drain our energy and force us to remain on alert. They just kept sniping at us from a safe distance, having learnt the folly of a frontal attack, keeping the men awake. I yawned suddenly and cursed under my breath. No one would be having a good sleep tonight.

“Rotate half of the men off-watch and tell them to get some sleep,” I ordered, grimly. Ed nodded, sharing my concerns. A tired army was one that would make mistakes. “No drugs or sleeping machines; tell them to sleep with their boots on.”

“I’ll supervise,” Peter volunteered. Sleeping with their boots on was an old UN piece of slang, referring to having soldiers sleeping in their uniforms and body armour, with their weapons by their side. The UNPF required hours of paperwork before it was permitted, but I didn’t have to worry about that. My men would be as ready for battle as I could make them. If the fort was seriously threatened, we’d need to get them up and firing as quickly as possible. “Keep an eye on him, sir.”

“Yes, dad,” I said, tiredly.

“You should get some sleep too,” Ed said. He didn’t look any better than I did; we both looked like walking zombies. His normally clean-shaven face was showing signs of stubble and his eyes were dark circles. I rubbed my own chin and felt two days worth of growth. I needed a shower, a shave and several hours in bed, perhaps not in that order. “It doesn’t look as if they’re going to break through.”

I looked down at my wristcom. There were still five hours before local dawn. We’d have to be on alert then — dawn was a common time to launch an offensive — but before then… I could sleep, couldn’t I? The thought was seductive, overriding my sense of duty and obligation to my men; I could crawl into one of the bunkers, get a blanket, and sleep for those five hours. I cursed it under my breath, but Ed was right; I could sleep — I even should sleep.

And my mind was wandering.

“Wake me if there’s a problem or twenty minutes before dawn,” I ordered, bowing to the inevitable. “If they don’t push in an offensive, I’ll relieve you then and you can get some sleep yourself.”

I staggered down the stairs, returned to the command bunker, and curled up on the floor with a blanket. There were UN Generals who had insisted on travelling with their personal staff and bedding, but I felt I should set an example. At that moment, it seemed like a very stupid decision to me; I should have brought more bedding for myself. It was the tiredness talking…

A moment later, Peter was shaking me. “What’s happening?” I asked, blearily. I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all. “Are we under attack?”

“It’s twenty minutes before dawn,” Peter said. I stared at him, half-convinced that he was playing a trick. I couldn’t have slept, could I? I looked at my wristcom and confirmed the time, then rolled over and stood up carefully. My mind felt musty and old, but somehow I managed to pick up my weapon and follow him out of the bunker, back up to Ed’s observation post. I could see the first hint of sunlight in the distance, turning the darkness of the night sky into the dull grey of morning. “They’ve been shooting at us all night.”

I snorted. “Let’s hope they’re as tired as we are,” I said, as we stepped into the observation post. “Ed?”

Ed didn’t look much better than I did; I suspected he’d popped a stimulant or something to help him keep awake. “They’ve been probing our defences all night, but they haven’t launched a serious attack,” he reported, grimly. “I don’t think they’re going to attack us, but they’re going to be a definite presence in the surrounding area. I think that any patrols are going to have to be heavily armed and perhaps escorted by the armoured cars.”

“Probably,” I agreed, looking at the take from the UAV. I didn’t trust it completely, but it didn’t look as if an enemy force was massing and preparing to attack. They’d be foolish to launch such an assault, as tired as we were; they knew we’d tear them a new asshole. They’d be better off sniping from a distance and hitting patrols. “Still, we’ll watch and wait.”

An hour passed slowly as the sun climbed into the sky. Little happened, apart from a handful of shots fired towards us, leading me to believe that the enemy had definitely decided to fall back and avoid a conventional battle. As the sun rose higher, I made my own plans. Once the first convoy arrived, I’d go back to the spaceport with it, leaving Ed in command until I returned.

“Hold the fortress and run patrols through the countryside,” I ordered, gazing towards the mountains. The miners were lurking there, waiting for the chance to attack us, or perhaps preparing for our own attack. They knew we had to go after them sooner rather than later. “I want to have a few words with the Acting President. It’s time we started looking for a political solution to this… nightmare.”

Chapter Thirty

An insurrection needs to be ended with a political solution. Sometimes, it is possible to defeat an insurgency in the field, but unless the causes of the insurgency are addressed, it merely guarantees that the insurgency will spring up again in the future and cause further devastation.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The first convoy arrived at Fort Galloway without incident, apart from a handful of shots fired at the vehicles from a distance that killed no one, and I boarded the returning convoy for the trip back to the spaceport. The commanding officer of the convoy offered tactical command to me, but I was in no shape to exercise it and allowed him to remain in command, although I suspected he felt that I was looking over his shoulder. It was common in the UN to have an ‘observer’ who was really in command, but I didn’t work that way. Besides, I needed to sleep desperately and caught up as best as I could in the armoured car. The return trip, luckily, passed without incident and I allowed myself to wonder if we’d overawed the farmers, although I knew better. The farmers hadn’t misplayed their cards so far and they wouldn’t want to attack a heavily armed military convoy.

As soon as we returned to the spaceport, I went into my quarters, booked a meeting with the Acting President for the following morning, and went to bed. I was surprised, and not a little horrified, by how badly I’d taken the day at the fortress and seriously wondered if I was coming down with something unpleasant. In the olden days — only a few years ago — I would have been able to stay awake for longer, although back then I had only been responsible for a single Company. The UN had decided that I was too untrustworthy — read competent — for a regimental command, so they’d frozen my career. Botany had been meant to be a death sentence; instead, I’d survived and prospered. Now, I was in command of a larger army than I’d ever dreamt of commanding and was in charge of a war I knew we’d lose, unless we created a political solution. That was not going to be easy.

Muna met me for breakfast the following morning. She looked better than she had after her captivity, but her wince when she saw my face convinced me that I hadn’t managed to wash away all the stress. I’d shaved and showered, but evidently it hadn’t been enough to make me presentable. She took a seat and a bowl of gruel — the UN called it Standard Breakfast Ration One, but everyone else called it gruel, mainly because it tasted like damp cardboard — and sat opposite me. I would have liked to devour everything I could, but instead I had a breakfast MRE myself. Nothing destroys morale faster than watching a commanding officer devouring a luxury breakfast when the common soldiers are still on MRE packs.

“I was looking at the farming problem,” she said, once she had eaten about half of the gruel and washed it down with water. I was drinking a mug of UN-standard coffee. “We need to get more food quickly and there are limits to what the farms can provide even if they surrendered tomorrow and accepted the Acting President’s proposals without further objections. We need additional farms and we need additional foodstuffs. I think I’ve found the answer.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “How useable an answer?”

She smiled, rather humourlessly. “One we should have seen from the start,” she said. “Have you ever heard of the Cropland Potato?”

I shook my head. “I’ve eaten potatoes, but I can’t say I ever paid any attention to what kind of potatoes they were,” I said, finishing my MRE and pushing it aside. “How can the Cropland Potatoes help us?”

“Oddly enough, the idea came from the UN,” she explained. “Back when the sea levels on Earth started to rise, before the UN got so bloated that it couldn’t take any action at all, they came up with a genetically-engineered crop that they could seed everywhere to prevent further soil erosion, which was destroying their own croplands and reducing their food supply…”

“So they tried to steal it from the colonies,” I said. I’d seen it happening, although naturally only the upper classes on Earth had benefited from the exercise in interstellar theft. The sheer logistics of transporting enough food to Earth to feed every starving mouth boggled the mind. The UNPF had never been large enough to transport all that! “I know how it worked.”

“Anyway, they used the common potato as the base for one of those crops,” Muna continued, refusing to be diverted. “They came up with something that would grow very quickly, within a few weeks, and produce a crop every month or so. The plants don’t last more than a year and they had to reseed them, but they were edible by humans without many precautions.”

She shrugged. “They wouldn’t need any precautions here,” she added. “There’s nothing in the planet’s atmosphere that would be poisonous to humankind.”

I sipped my coffee, wondering if she was right. Earth was a special case in many ways; the UN’s attempts to prevent pollution had backfired badly, leaving the planet on the verge of a permanent ecological collapse. The introduction of a genetically-engineered plant was against thousands of UN regulations, but I could see desperate men and women deciding to ignore the regulations and pushing ahead anyway. The UN might even have approved their actions afterwards… no, I was definitely dreaming. The people had probably wound up being exiled to Botany.

“If the crop is so useful,” I said, carefully, “why didn’t the UN use it to feed the starving on Earth?”

“They did,” Muna said, dryly. “Those ration packs that the UN used to issue to everyone on welfare — which was really almost all of the population — came from possessed potato and a handful of other crops. The problem was that the pollution kept getting worse, quality control became a joke, and the supply of even modified potatoes started to fall.

“In any case, they can be obtained on several words,” she continued. “Erin, in particular, maintains a massive supply of them because the UN issued an edict that they were to do so for cultural reasons. There are a handful of others, but we could get them cheaply on Erin.”

I smiled, tightly. The UN’s belief that all cultures were equally valid and worthy of respect led to some appalling blunders. Having decided that the potato was the national symbol of Old Ireland — a nation on Earth that founded Erin, a colony world only a hundred light years from us — the UN had decreed that they were to have potatoes all the time… and there’s only so much one can do with the common potato. The UN in a nutshell; it must be sensitive and tolerant in the most infuriatingly insensitive and intolerant way possible. The Irish hadn’t seen the joke. By the time John Walker launched his coup, the garrison on Erie was up to seventeen divisions and was still losing ground.

“We’ll send the Julius Caesar to purchase enough to start them growing here,” I said, finally. “Once we fix the food problem, we might be able to fix other problems as well or at least win time for a political solution.”

“That might not be easy,” Muna pointed out. “If we feed the poor, they will continue having babies and put new demands on the food supply. I think we need to look at longer-term solutions.”

“I know,” I said. “I intend to discuss it with the Acting President this very morning.”

Suki — after greeting me with a kiss — drove me into New Copenhagen and, at my request, drove us through the riot scene. A handful of Communist prisoners, wearing yellow jumpsuits and shackles to prevent escapes, were working on clearing up the mess. The riot hadn’t done that much damage compared to the insurrection, but a few more of them would destroy the city. The people who had friends and relatives out in the countryside had already gone to stay with them, leaving the inner cities packed with the hopeless and the destitute. Frida had her hands full… and yet, her solution would only cause more suffering. It would have been easier if she were evil. I could have assassinated her without remorse.

Frida looked tired when I saw her, sitting behind a desk and signing papers after reading them. I guessed that she had never learnt to delegate her duties, or even work out what was urgent and what could be handled by a lower level. There were probably hundreds of people in the Progressive Party alone who were demanding the attention of the President, and who would be angry if she brushed them off with someone else. It might explain her distraction, I decided; the President, at least, knew what to put aside for someone else to handle.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” she said, softly, signing another sheet of paper. I read it upside down and realised that it was a contract for repairing the damage to the roads caused by the war. Another involved welfare benefits for those who had been rendered homeless by the Communists. She pushed the rest of the paper aside with a sigh of relief and looked over at me. “Congratulations on occupying the fort.”

“Thank you,” I said. I’d taken the time to skim through some of the local newspapers and hadn’t recognised myself in them. It read as if I’d taken the fort single-handedly without even a single soldier to back me up… and that the occupation was a decisive blow and the war would end tomorrow. They were both lies. “We need to talk.”

Something in my voice caught her attention. “We need to talk?” She repeated. “What do we need to talk about?”

“The war,” I said, flatly. I looked at her and was surprised to see how tired and worn down she was. She was being hectored by everyone who wanted a position or influence. “We need a political solution to the war or we will lose it.”

She stared at me in shocked silence. “We can’t lose the war,” she protested. “How can we improve the planet if we lose the war?”

“You won’t have to worry about that,” I said, dryly. “If the farmers win, they’ll be condemning you and most of your government to death.”

Frida ground her teeth. “Explain,” she said, finally. “Why can’t we win the war? We outnumber the money-grabbing bastards!”

“We don’t,” I said. “Counting recruits, police and militia, we have around ten thousand men who can reasonably be considered fighting troops. That includes, by the way, the Legion and recruits who have had just a week’s training. We have a small base of a thousand men who handle everything from supply and logistics to what little paperwork we have, but they’re not fighters. The vast majority of the people in the cities are not trained to fight and we don’t have the facilities to train them up to fight. If we used them as soldiers now, the result would be a massacre and probably atrocities on both sides.

“The farmers and miners have, between them, around three million men and women who have some shooting skills, all the equipment they could use and are spread out over a vast area,” I continued. I wasn’t going to mention the possibility of off-world help, not to her. Frida didn’t need to know that. “We don’t have the manpower to hold them all down without burning then out of their farms, which would be… counterproductive as you need the farms to produce food. Your census agents have been wiped out and I cannot provide enough protection to guarantee their safety. We can win any conventional battle unless they bring in some of the equipment they took from the UN — like tanks and armoured cars — but they don’t have to win themselves. They just have to not lose.

“They think you’re exploiting them for your own benefit — for the benefit of the cities — and they’re right. They can’t feed the expanded population anyway without expanding massively, which they don’t feel like doing because they think you’re going to legally steal the crops anyway. From their point of view, half the city population dying off in the next year isn’t actually a bad outcome. The remainder might feel more inclined to respect the farmers and their point of view.”

“That’s horrible,” Frida said, genuinely shocked. “We’re trying to make the world a better place.”

“But you’re trying to do it by force,” I said, as gently as I could. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing — and on the face of it, you are — but it’s simply unsustainable over the long run. When it collapses, as it will, you’ll have a nightmarish time rebuilding anything from the ruins of your planet, just as the UN is having problems rebuilding Earth. It might not actually matter. You and I will probably be dead by then.”

“But…”

I drove over her objections. “You have these elaborate schemes to fix the problems faced by the poor,” I said. “You’re giving them free education, free housing,, free healthcare, free welfare grants, free children’s benefits, free… well, free everything. Where is the money for them all coming from?”

Frida looked at me. “From taxes,” she said, surprised. “We do have a working tax base.”

“Not any longer,” I said. “You see, the programs you want are expensive and I did the math.” Actually, it was Muna who’d done the math, but I decided not to bring her into it. There was no point in exposing anyone else. “You can’t afford to pay for them. You’ll run out of money very quickly.”

“Then we’ll raise taxes,” Frida said, sharply. “Why shouldn’t the rich pay to help the poor?”

“Because you don’t have very many rich people,” I countered. “You will start raising taxes directly and indirectly, either though honest taxes or regulations with infinitive fines on them. This will push the cost of operating a business through the roof and businesses will start to close rather than pay you taxes for nothing. This, in turn, will put thousands more unemployed people onto the streets, increasing the burden on your welfare payments at a time when you want it sharply reduced. The fall in working businesses will mean less tax revenue and a spending crisis.

“All of this will be matched by a parasite bureaucracy, which will rapidly become corrupt and oppressive, and a parasite state of people who will vote for you in exchange for government largess. The costs of running the state will skyrocket at the exact same time your income is falling sharply. If you try to discard elements of the parasites, you will discover that their votes slip to your political opponents, some of whom won’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation and dispose you, taking power for themselves.

“At some point, probably within two years at the most, you will discover that your system has rotted away from the inside and that your aim of building a better society will have been replaced by trying desperately to stay on top, knowing that falling from such heights would destroy you utterly. You will, in short, have entered the same failure curve as the UN back on Earth, with two major exceptions. You will be unable to export your revolution because there is a powerful neutral force — Fleet — willing and able to prevent it. You will also be threatened by increasingly desperate resistance from the farmers and miners who might well succeed in toppling your government and imposing their own order on the chaos. By then, extremists will have come to power and they may commit genocide to obliterate the people they will blame for their misfortunes.”

I allowed anger to slip into my voice. “It’s happened before and it will happen again,” I concluded. “You can use the emergency powers you’ve granted yourself to prevent it from happening to your world, or you can continue this futile attempt to reshape your world and be crushed when it all falls apart.”

Frida stared at me. She probably couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d hauled off and slapped her right in the face. Like most people of her kind, she thought of soldiers as being robots, or endlessly obedient, and didn’t realise that we could think for ourselves. Of course we could; we analysed battles of the past to prepare, as best as we could, for the future. I’d studied politics ever since I’d realised that I’d picked up hundreds of political enemies. I knew what was going to happen… unless we sought to avert it.

“Very well,” she said, finally. I knew better than to take that to mean that she’d given in completely. “What do we do about it?”

“First, we start getting people out to the fields and preparing new farms,” I said. “We can probably use some of the Legionnaires who come from a farming background to help newcomers start work on the farms. We won’t aim for anything too ambitious, but there are thousands of kilometres of unclaimed land out there. We can develop it and force people out onto the land. That would not only boost the food supply, but keep people out of welfare.”

I paused. The second suggestion was the kicker. “I would also suggest that you insisted that everyone who went on welfare take a contraceptive injection,” I added. Her eyes went wide. “The price for going on welfare should be to refuse to have any more children as long as they’re a drain on the public purse. I know it sounds horrible, but you don’t have any other choice. An increasing number of children in the cities will only be a drain on your resources. You need to move them out to the countryside…”

She didn’t want to hear it, or the rest of the suggestions, but I pushed her as hard as I could and finally she agreed to a trial session. That suited me just fine. We’d make it work and then adapt the scheme to the entire planet. And if that didn’t end the war…

There was always the doomsday option.

Chapter Thirty-One

The existence of an insurgency of any kind marks the presence of a serious problem. It is vitally important to address that problem or the insurgency will never go away. Leaders and soldiers come and go, but the insurgency is endless.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

We started the following week.

I hadn’t expected it to be easy to round up the first prospective farmers — and it wasn’t — but there were hundreds of thousands of possible candidates. For the first few hundred, we concentrated on men who had families and something to work towards apart from their self-gratification, or their self-destruction, as seemed to be the case with most of the drug addicts. We couldn’t eat many of the native crops of Svergie, but one particular weed could be used as a drug, giving a short burst of near-orgasmic pleasure, followed by a long period of depression. The drug addicts never seemed to be short of supplies; the weed was so common that the planet didn’t really have a drug mafia like several other worlds.

We’d chosen, upon the advice of the Legionnaires who had some farming experience, a patch of land several thousand miles from New Copenhagen. I’d had several motives for agreeing to that location; not only would it be hard for the enemy to mount an attack on the new farms, but it was also be hard for the new farmers to leave the land and return to the city. I didn’t want to have to force them to work — and I expected that most of the volunteers, for they had been volunteers, would stick it out — but I didn’t want to make leaving easy. A handful of boats could transport the crop from the farms to the cities; in time, we’d build a road and a railroad. The important thing was that we wouldn’t be trespassing on the land owned by already-established farmers.

The first task had been to break the ground and here the Communist prisoners came in handy. I’d made them all an offer when we’d shipped them from the detention camps to the new farms; if they worked for five years assisting us with setting up new farms, they could have their own farms afterwards. I meant it too; after five years, they’d have skills we needed and they’d hopefully have picked up the working attitude. The drug addicts or hardcore Communists would weed themselves out before they were released. We put them to work breaking the ground and weeding out the native plants, while I went back to the other detention camp. I had people I wanted to recruit.

“I don’t see any point,” I told the imprisoned farmers, “in beating around the bush. You know why the war started as well as I do. I intend to fix the problem by transporting as much of the urban population out of the cities and into the countryside — into new farms — as quickly as possible. This isn’t going to be easy. Very few of them have the slightest idea how to grow small crops, let alone massive farms. We need your help.”

It was true. Back during the early days of New Copenhagen, there had been a set of allotments for urban residents who had wanted to grow their own food, or at least small amounts of fruit and vegetables. The UN had tried to limit or ban the practice, regarding it as elitist — there was more demand than there were allotments — but enough had survived the UN’s semi-legal attempts to get rid of them that we had a core of people who had a vague idea of what they were doing. The problem lay in scaling up what they knew to a full-sized farm… and that wasn’t going to be easy. We weren’t helped by the fact that our supplies of farm machinery were critically low and we needed to use hands and non-powered tools where we would have preferred powered equipment. There were skill sets that were never used these days, apart from the pastoral worlds, and we would have to reinvent them under pressure.

“You were all arrested in acts of aggression against the government,” I continued. I held up a hand to stem the political argument I knew was coming. The farmers were lucky to be alive. As the embargo continued to grip the civilian population, the soldiers had been growing nastier, aware of what was happening to their civilian relatives. “If you give us one year of your time to help make the farms grow, we will release you without further detention.”

There was a brief murmured discussion among the farmers, and then a leader was pushed forward. “We’ve seen attempts by the cities to push their surplus population out into the fields before,” one of the farmers said, finally. “Why should we assume that this will work any better than the last attempt?”

I studied the farmer thoughtfully. He looked to be pure Scandinavian blood, rather than the more mixed racial heritage of the cities, but I wouldn’t hold that against him. The racial aspect of the conflict had been kept on the back burner as much as possible — and yes, there were farmers who were far more mixed than their spokesman. In the long run, the entire situation might sort itself out, if Svergie didn’t tear itself apart first.

“We won’t let it fail,” I explained. “We’ll be establishing the new farms well away from your farms and giving them as much help as we can.” I threw in my sweetener. “If we can get the new farms established, the Acting President has agreed to repeal the legislation you find so offensive and end the war on favourable terms. The planet needs fed and this is the best way we can find to do it.”

In the end, seventy-one farmers agreed to work for us in the new farms, although they drove a harder bargain than I had expected. They insisted on having armed soldiers stationed at the new farms to protect them from their workers, rather than their former comrades, and some — mainly younger children of farmers who wouldn’t inherit — demanded farms of their own. I agreed at once; I’d already intended to have soldiers on guard — previous experiments had been wrecked by teenage urban residents stealing, raping and murdering — and giving them farms of their own would only provide encouragement to work to make it a success. A handful refused to join us and had to be returned to the detention camps. I couldn’t release them. Not yet.

Two weeks passed slowly. Fort Galloway, under Ed’s command, reported a series of skirmishing raids and a handful of snipers taking pot-shots at anyone who showed their face, but other than that little happened. My soldiers — the Legion and the Svergie Army — patrolled through the nearby farms, but left the mountains and the miners strictly alone. I didn’t want to risk men patrolling in an area that would take thousands of additional soldiers to take and secure. I wasn’t fooled by the quiet either. Quiet, in my experience, meant that the enemy was preparing something pretty damn devastating.

“There’s been nothing, apart from the shots,” Ed reported, when I checked in with him one night. “A couple of soldiers have the galloping shits” — tummy upsets caused by eating too many MRE packs — “and another nearly managed to hurt himself on the shooting range, but apart from that it’s been quiet.”

“Good,” I said, although I didn’t believe it. One explanation for the shortage of attacks was the shortage of targets for the enemy to shoot at. The farmers didn’t seem inclined to come close to New Copenhagen and the other cities, where we had a formidable presence and cleared lanes of fire, and we weren’t running patrols into the wild countryside. The stream of new recruits was being trained, whereupon we might have the numbers to take the war into the mountains and recover the mines, but until then…

I smiled to myself. There was an ulterior motive in creating the new farms I hadn’t mentioned to anyone, apart from Ed. If the enemy realised that we might — no, we would — escape the effects of the food embargo, they might launch a conventional attack before we escaped their pressure. The farmers and miners, or at least the handful we’d interviewed, had been willing to end hostilities, provided that the government stopped interfering with them, but the Freedom League might have different ideas. They wanted — needed — a government in New Copenhagen that would be friendly to them and their aims. They’d try to push their allies into a direct grab for power before their political power was shattered completely.

The map of the planet glowed in front of me and I smiled again. Svergie wasn’t a heavily populated planet, not by the standards of New Washington, or Edo, or even Terra Nova, and there was plenty of room for expansion. If we kept up the pressure, if we kept moving people out from the cities into the new farms, we wouldn’t run out of space in a hurry. We could even settle the other continents and spread out much further. The local government would probably see that as a threat to its power — it had been an issue on several other worlds — but we could cope with that. We might even go looking for new colonists from Earth. There were billions of people trying to escape the mother world.

Two days later, I accompanied Frida on a visit to the new farms. I was quietly impressed with how much had been done in the three weeks since we’d broken the first patch of ground, but we had plenty of manpower and determination. Apart from the Communists, we’d emptied the jails of everyone who had committed minor felonies and set them to work as well, under the direction of the farmers. There were others as well; teenage kids and unemployed men, working for their daily ration. It looked uncomfortably like a slave camp to me, the kind the UN had tried to run on Botany, but there was no choice. I kept telling myself that there was no choice.

“Madam President,” Jack Hawthorn called. “Welcome to the Defiance Farm.”

Frida smiled reluctantly. “The Defiance Farm?”

“We’re defying the food blockade here by growing our own,” Jack said, as he led us towards the first set of fields. “Give us a few months and we’ll have the first crop of potatoes and other quick-growing crops underway. That’ll win us time to start planting proper fields of corn and other crops; we can even start purchasing farm animals and using them in the fields…”

I listened absently as he expounded on his pet project. Jack had been a farmer before running off the farm — or being run off the farm, as he’d explained, by corrupt local governors and taxmen — and he knew more about farming than almost anyone else in the Legion. Finding him had been a stroke of luck, by all accounts; he’d had experience with the UN’s farming methods and more conventional methods as well. I was glad we had him; without him, we would have had to trust the local farmers completely.

“We’ve got nearly ten thousand people working out here now,” Jack continued. “Most of them don’t know their arse from their elbow, of course, but we can use them to break the ground if nothing else. This is simple, brute force farming and we’re going to have to rotate the crops after two or three plantings, but it’ll get us some time to work on more permanent solutions.”

He waved a hand at the massive UN-issue tents that had been set up in one corner of the farm. “We’ve got enough room for everyone to sleep under canvas for the moment, but we’re working on establishing some farmhouses and barns as we go along,” he continued. “Families get their own tent, as do lovers and friends; the vast majority sleep in the communal tents until they’re settled down. We’ve had some problems with discipline — a handful of thugs, a handful of drug addicts — but we weeded them out fairly quickly. A couple of stupid kids committed rape and we executed them in front of the entire group.”

“Good work,” I said. Frida still looked rather stunned by everything she was seeing. “Have there been any problems with the Communists?”

“Not many,” Jack confirmed. “A handful tried to lecture everyone on Communism and got a bad reception, while several others tried to escape under cover of darkness. They’re all fitted with locator beacons, of course, so tracking them all down was fairly easy and we brought the bodies back to the camp. I think that impressed some of the teenage thugs more than having armed soldiers scattered around the camp.”

I nodded. Thugs — street gangs, bullies, and other scrum like that — always thought of themselves as tough, but most of them melted away when confronted with real violence. Each of the soldiers guarding them had been in real wars, real fighting, and it showed. Life might have been cheap on the streets, but it was rare for gang wars to be fought out to the bitter end. The sight of dead bodies would have made an impression on them, even though the Communists had left enough dead bodies littering the streets of New Copenhagen. We’d tried to train some of the street thugs to join the army, but it hadn’t worked very well. They lived in a world where they had to fend for themselves. Working in large groups was alien to them.

“We have films every night and what other entertainments we can scrounge up,” Jack continued. “Various ball games, some board games, card games… I had to forbid people from gambling for money, but we’re not here to make this a hellish death camp. We had some girls trying to sell themselves as well, but overall… this place could be a lot worse.”

“This is horrible,” Frida said, shocked. “You’re using them as slaves.”

“The farmers who landed on your planet would have had to do the same thing,” I pointed out, seriously. I looked over at the turned earth that would be planted with crops soon and smiled again. “The farms you know and love didn’t come out of nowhere. They had to be developed, by brute force if necessary.”

“I never thought about it,” Frida admitted, finally. I followed her gaze towards where a team of young men were pulling a makeshift plough. We’d given priority to farming tools in the factories, but it would be a while before they produced anything useful. The mining embargo didn’t just cover minerals that could be shipped off-world. We might have to start melting down cars and other metal items to produce the raw materials. “How long until you have proper farms?”

Jack smiled. “In ten years,” he assured her, “this area will be covered with farmland.”

I escorted Frida through a long tour of the area before we boarded the light aircraft to return to the spaceport. We took a detour over the ocean to avoid the threat of enemy SAM attacks and I watched as dolphin-analogue creatures swam in the blue waters below the aircraft. They looked so enchanting that I wanted to swim with them, but Frida wanted me — when I admitted to that desire — that the Jaws had sharp teeth and a great dislike of humanity. No one was quite sure why; their flesh was inedible and they were generally regarded as nuisances. No one even bothered to hunt them for oil.

“They take a handful of children every year,” Frida added, after a moment. “Parents are warned not to let their children swim alone, but every so often a few children get bitten and killed by the monsters. Some idiots look at them, think they’re safe and sweet like real Dolphins, and try to swim with them. It never lasts long.”

“I see,” I said, finally. There was a moral in that, somewhere. “I shall remember never to swim with them.”

Frida smiled. “Not if you value your nuts,” she said, dryly. I hoped she was joking. “They’ve been known to bite them off and eat them.”

A day after I returned from the farms, I was summoned to the main control room. “Sir, there’s been a development with the UAV flight,” the pilot informed me. “As you know, UAV-3 was orbiting over the mountains, watching for evidence of enemy activity.”

I frowned. “Was?”

“Was,” the pilot confirmed. “The UAV has been shot down.”

I stared at him. “Shot down?” I repeated. It should have been impossible. There was little on the planet that could detect the UAV, let alone shoot it down. “How?”

“I’m not sure,” the pilot said. “Judging from the telemetry, it was probably an electronic weapon of some kind; I suspect a directed EMP cannon. The signal blinked out completely, along with both backups. They may just have gotten lucky, or they might have obtained hyper-sensitive sensing gear from somewhere more advanced than this dump. Fleet-issue sensors, or stuff from Heinlein or Williamson’s World, could probably track the UAV from orbit. It was emitting a tiny signal, after all.”

“I see,” I said. I couldn’t help, but regard that as ominous. The William Tell wouldn’t be over the area for another few hours. A lot could happen in that time. “Get me a report on what it was seeing just before it was shot down.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said. “We could route UAV-5 over the general area.”

“And lose that as well?” I asked, dryly. “Or… wait; we could simply deactivate the transmitter, couldn’t we?”

“Yes, assuming that that was how they detected it,” the pilot said. I understood what he meant. If the enemy had an advanced radar system… but we’d have detected active sensors, and passive sensors wouldn’t have been able to locate the UAV, apart from tracking its transmissions. “These things are expensive, sir.”

“I know,” I said, sourly. “Keep the UAV back for the moment. I’ll have to discuss the matter with Ed.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

There are several different types of protest march, depending upon the government in question. Some are genuine marches of protest, others are whistled up at will by political figures to demand support for their actions, or to intimidate their opponents. Regardless of their origins, it is clear that any protest march can go badly wrong very quickly. The army may be required to end the resulting riot as quickly as possible.

–Army Manual, Heinlein.

“There’s going to be a protest march today,” Suki said, as we drove into New Copenhagen. There was a definite feel of tension in the air. “It was on the news; the Revolutionary Front Against Forced Contraception intends to march up to the government buildings and back down to the schools to claim that there is no public support for the emergency contraception legislation.”

I shrugged. I had known that it wouldn’t be popular and it had apparently cost most of Frida’s political capital to get the measure through, even with emergency powers. The government paid mothers to have kids — that wasn’t how it was presented to the public, but that’s how it was — and mothers wanted kids to get that money. They didn’t want to be told that the price for receiving government-issue rations and even benefits was having a contraceptive shot that would prevent them from having any more kids for at least two years. In their place, I’d probably have been unhappy too… or maybe I’d have got on my bike and looked for work. If the UN had done something like it on Earth, perhaps the entire system wouldn’t have fallen apart when they lost their ability to hold the Colonies.

“They don’t have a choice,” Muna said, harshly. She’d come with me to brief Frida on our logistics problems, but she seemed to have little sympathy for the protestors. “There are thousands of orphan kids on the streets. Let them adopt them if they want children and bring them up properly. They don’t have to have a kid of their own body.”

Suki gave her a surprised look, but I understood. Muna couldn’t have children herself any longer and, to all intents and purposes, the Legion was her family. She would see the entire issue in terms of costs and benefits and would understand that the more urban children, the greater the strain on the planet’s resources. I agreed with her, but it was a worrying development; so far, we’d avoided yet another outbreak of urban terrorism. This could be the issue that set off another round of bitter fighting.

“I used to think that I’d have twenty kids,” Suki said, finally. “Is that really so bad?”

“Every single kid in a city is a non-productive leech,” Muna said. Her voice was very cold and bitter. “The earliest they can do reasonable amounts of work is fourteen, or thereabouts, and this planet forbids them from working until they’re sixteen. That’s sixteen years of food, drink and resources being drained away, for nothing. It may not get any better after they turn sixteen; they’ve never been taught anything useful, anything that might give them a profession. That leaves them good for nothing, but brute labour, which this planet already has a surplus of.”

Her voice hardened. “And while they’re drinking to forget their sorrows and taking drugs to dull the pain, they’re knocking up girls and starting the whole cycle of hopelessness all over again,” she snapped. “If it isn’t nipped in the bud, it will consume everything until the city collapses in on itself.”

I nodded when Suki looked at me. The same pattern had repeated itself on Earth, where the UN had rewarded being unemployed… and, in any case, unemployment rates had hovered around eighty percent even before John Walker’s coup. The cities had been occupied by gangs of thugs who fought wars amongst themselves and terrorised the local population, while the police had stood by and watched. I had escaped it by the skin of my teeth and countless others hadn’t been so lucky.

“It’s monstrous,” Suki said, finally. I guessed from her tone that I wasn’t going to see her naked again for a while, but I hadn’t had the time anyway over the last few weeks. Between watching for the other shoe to drop after the UAV had been shot down and waiting for the farms to start producing food crops, I hadn’t had the time to rest, let alone enjoy myself. “How many women will never have kids because of it?”

I said nothing as the car turned the corner and drove past the beginnings of the demonstration. There were hundreds of men and women there — mainly women — carrying placards that started out as rude and went downhill from there. They seemed to be willing to believe the worst of Frida; the kindest thing they called her was a traitor. There were nasty suggestions about what she intended to do in the future, snide remarks about her relationship with me, and even vile slanders suggesting that she intended to make people pay to have the contraceptive injection nullified. The last one was definitely nonsense. In a year or two, it would wear off completely.

And the worst of it was that many of the protesters would never live without government benefits. They would never have children now. They could have put the energy they put into protesting into farming — we’d be quite happy to provide them with a farm of their own, sooner or later — and they might even have a family out in the countryside, away from the many pitfalls of the city. They chose, instead, to suck on the government teat and ensure, by doing so, that the government was permanently short of money. No wonder that Frida had attempted to tax the farmers… and no wonder that they’d resisted. They knew the likely outcome as well as I did.

“Here you are,” Suki said, as we drove into the government complex. “I’ll wait for you here.”

Muna and I walked inside, passed through the nervous guards, and entered the waiting room. “I don’t think she likes me very much,” Muna said, dryly. “You do know that there’s no choice, don’t you?”

“I know,” I reassured her. I could do the maths as well as she could. The planet was heading for disaster unless we could force it off the failure path. The contraceptive program, as harsh and cruel as it was, was a step in the right direction. “There’s no choice at all.”

Frida looked tired and worn when we were finally shown into her office. Her scar looked more prominent on her face than before. “General, Captain,” she said, with a thin smile. “I don’t have as much time as I thought — I’m supposed to be away from here by the time the protestors arrive — so shall we cut right to the meat of the matter?”

“Of course,” I said, seriously. “Muna?”

Muna coughed and folded her dark hands on her lap. “The food rationing program is holding up so far,” she said. She’d been tasked with handling it because few locals could be trusted to do so. Everyone and his dog wanted extra rations and they’d found all kinds of ways to pressure the government into feeding them. “There has been a slight drop in the number of people claiming food rations as they’ve gone out to the new farms, but otherwise numbers remain fairly consistent.”

She smiled, reciting from memory. “There has actually been a slight economic boost as a result of the program,” she added. “It’s too complex to analyse here, but items that are not rationed cost considerably more than items that are rationed, pushing people into spending money on other goods. This has led to a slight rise in sales and several hundred additional jobs being created. That is actually separate to work crews clearing the rubble from the streets, here and in Pitea, and other make-work programs, which are actually net drains in some ways. Unfortunately, we have no choice, but to rely on them.

“The attempt to rebuild the damaged or destroyed industrial capability is running into problems,” she continued. I heard Frida’s muttered curse and fully shared it. “The Communists killed a number of the trained and skilled workers we need to rebuild the industry, operate what we have, teach new apprentices and generally be in several places at once. Again, we have no particular shortage of unskilled labour, but the lack of skilled labour is producing a major bottleneck. In short, I’ve pulled a number of skilled workers out to serve as teachers and training manages, but I don’t think we’ll see major results for at least another five years. We can repair the damage, but rebuilding Pitea is going to take years.”

Frida glared down at her hands. “Is there no way the process can be sped up?”

“Not easily,” Muna admitted. “The quickest way to speed up the process would be to hire labour from off-world, but that would be costly; Svergie, frankly, does not have a high credit rating or trustworthiness index. The fact that there’s a war on…”

“I understand,” Frida snapped. “The sooner we put an end to the war, the better. General?”

I nodded. “The current stalemate seems likely to continue for the next two years, unless something happens to upset the apple cart,” I explained. “Once we have the new farms up and running, we can either negotiate a peace treaty or move into the mountains and defeat the enemy on their own ground. The mere presence of the new farms will weaken our dependence upon the old farms — although we will have to remove most of the government inspectors, those who are still alive.”

“Of course,” Frida said, annoyed. Most of the inspectors had been killed by the farmers. Those who had survived were not keen on going out again without a heavily-armed escort and guns of their own. It hadn’t saved several more from a violent and unpleasant death. “We should just admit defeat, like that!”

She snapped her fingers. “You have little choice,” I pointed out, reasonably. “Your government lacks the support in the right places to carry out a UN-style restructuring, even if it would work — and I think we have established that it wouldn’t work. Once the new farms are up and running, I think you will discover that the farmers and miners are willing to discuss terms.”

“I hope you’re right,” Frida said, sourly. “I just got an earful from the Progressive Party Coordinator. He thinks that I’m betraying the dream and had the nerve to demand that I submit to a full self-criticism session. I told him to go to hell, of course; the mass of the Party supports me, not him.”

She looked over towards the window. The noise of the protest could be heard, faintly, in the distance. “That’s his work out there,” she added. “He was rounding up everyone who thought that the contraception program was a bad idea and getting them to round up the usual suspects. It won’t matter, of course; much of the party supports me, even though they don’t dare say so out loud. It would get them lynched like the Communists. The great mass mind of the Party would regard it as high treason.”

I nodded. I was not unfamiliar with such reactions. On Earth, it was illegal to engage in any form of hate speech — which was basically defined as whatever the UN wanted it to mean — and yet, many would have supported a more vigorous crackdown on the gangs, or religious terrorists, or people whose only crime was being different. It was just politically incorrect to say so. A mob might only be half as smart as the stupidest person in it, but it was still composed of people who could think — in theory — for themselves. They might, given time, learn how stupid the ideas they professed to believe in actually were.

The door opened and one of the Presidential Guard stuck his head in. “Madam President, the protest march is approaching the lines now,” he said. “You have to evacuate.”

“Yes, thank you,” Frida said, crossly. I got the impression she didn’t want to be driven out of her government’s headquarters, but I agreed with them. Svergie didn’t need another power struggle on top of everything else. If Peter had been here, he would have been urging me to go with her to safety. “Andrew, we’ll catch up later, all right?”

“Of course,” I said, standing up. “It will be my pleasure.”

The noise of the mob stuck us with full force the moment we stepped out of the building. I could see it in the distance, a tangled mass of humanity, advancing with all the inevitability of a UN battleship, or a force of armoured tanks. The handful of policemen and soldiers keeping an eye on the protest seemed pitiful compared to the howling fury pent up within the snarling fury the mob was expressing. Their rage was almost a palpable thing and I shivered. I had seen soldiers swarmed under and crushed by such a mob and I had no wish to go the same way.

Muna’s hand caught on to mine. It was so out of character for her that I was astonished, but her face was as pale as it ever got. “We need to get out of here, sir,” she muttered, desperately. She was shaking like a leaf in a howling gale. “Sir, we have to get to the car.”

“Come on,” I said. Suki had already revved up the engine and was waiting for us impatiently. Not for the first time, I cursed the agreement that had put control over security in the capital in the hands of a wholly-Svergie unit. I could have contacted the spaceport and demanded reinforcements, but what good would it have done? I helped Muna into the rear and slipped into the jeep’s passenger seat, one hand reaching for the pistol I kept on my belt. “Suki, we’d better get moving.”

“Way ahead of you,” Suki growled, spinning the jeep around and taken off like a bat out of hell. Behind us, the mob reached the gates and spread out around them, howling slogans into the air. Their words all seemed to merge into an eerie cry of CHILDREN, CHILDREN, sending shivers down my spine and chilling my very soul. There was little individuality left in the mob now, just howling animals. “Oh, hell.”

I saw them at the same moment she did; other rioters, running up to join the riot, or to try to suppress it. The entire situation seemed to have billowed way out of control — indeed, it had never been under my control. I keyed my earpiece, contacting the spaceport, and wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that the Svergie Government had asked for help. The riot seemed to have been carefully prepared; I remembered Frida’s comment about others in the Progressive Party trying to move against her, and I worried about it being intended as an attempt to unseat her. If that was the case…

“We’ll just have to deal with it when it comes,” I muttered, as Suki took us down the street fast enough to force oncoming rioters to jump out of the way. I’d thought I’d seen bad driving before, but Suki was treating the jeep as if it were a tank, complete with armoured covering. A handful of glass bottles smashed off our bullet-proof windows and shattered — it would take more than that to damage them — followed by more junk and debris. Behind us, someone had started a fire. I wondered about Molotov Cocktails for a second, and then pushed it out of my mind. I had to concentrate on staying alive.

“Boss, this is Robert,” my earpiece buzzed. The tone was sharp and very insistent. That didn’t mean good news. “Find somewhere safe to hide until we get the reinforcements into the city. There are riots breaking out all over. This is looking very bad…”

The jeep spun around a corner and right into a barricade someone had constructed across a side-street, barely wide enough to allow the jeep and a handful of other vehicles to pass. Suki snapped something in a language I didn’t recognise as men wearing dark clothes materialised around us and slashed at the tires, before pulling at the door and trying to open it. I drew my pistol and kicked it open, firing a single shot into the first man’s head. I saw him tumbling backwards and hoped that the others would see sense and run, but instead…

Suki grabbed my right arm and yanked it back, just as I fired a second shot, which ricocheted harmlessly into the distance. A moment later, one of the men knocked the pistol out of my hand and pulled me out of the car. I dimly realised that Suki had driven us right into a trap — on purpose — as I allowed him to pull me forward and kept coming, lifting my knee and kicking him right in the groin. He yelled and staggered, then collapsed as I slammed a fist into his throat. It had been too long since I’d fought for my life, but I’d drilled every day with Peter and the others on the spaceport. Part of me was almost enjoying it, somehow.

Muna had grabbed Suki’s neck and was making a valiant attempt to strangle her. I couldn’t remember how good Muna was as I lashed out at another man, who came at me with a club… which suggested that they wanted us alive. Not good. Anyone who wanted us alive probably had unpleasant plans for us. I snapped a punch right into his throat and sent him choking to the ground. I turned to face the next man, only to see that he was holding a stunner. I barely had a moment to catch my breath before he pulled the trigger and blue-white light sent me crashing to the ground.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Treatment of prisoners varies among the different armies and insurgent groups present in the Human Sphere. Some believe in treating prisoners fairly decently, others will regard prisoners as the lowest of the low and simply execute them out of hand. Captive soldiers are therefore to be trained in resisting interrogation techniques as long as possible, bearing in mind that the enemy may see no use for them after their brains are sucked dry.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

I hate being stunned.

The UN, which invented the stunner in the first place, claimed that it put the target completely out for at least two hours — longer, depending on the target’s body mass, clothing and a handful of other factors — allowing the captor to transport the captive to safety. Like so much else, the UN’s claims are nonsense; I couldn’t move, or see, but I could still hear. I couldn’t feel, which was something of a relief — I’d hit the ground hard enough to hurt without the stunner’s effects — but I could definitely still hear. My mind shimmered in and out of awareness as they transported their two prisoners away from the ambush site. I could hear them talking.

“Good work,” someone said. There was a hint of a cough. “The mercenary and his whore in our hands.”

“She’s not a whore,” Suki said. I guessed that she meant Muna. She had betrayed us. The thought raced through my mind and refused to fade. She had betrayed us! “She’s one of his chief assistants; she handles logistics and other background work for him.”

“And a black-ass at that,” a second unfamiliar voice said. “Do we take her as well?”

“We’ve no choice,” the first voice said. He came closer and I heard his hands touching my uniform. I could hear the clink of handcuffs as he cuffed my hands behind my back. “Help me get them into the truck and search them for anything that might be dangerous. You, bitch; check the girl for anything that could be used to follow us.”

“Of course,” Suki said. I heard the annoyance in her tone and wondered if she had really realised what she was working for. They didn’t sound like honest and decent farmers to me. “I’ll do it at once, shall I?”

Sensation shimmered in and out as they dumped me in a vehicle and started the engine. The loud roar of the vehicle made it harder to listen for their voices, but I struggled enough to learn that the truck was designed to block all transmissions, preventing my radio or any other form of communications system from calling for help. I couldn’t blame them for the precaution, but I did wonder how they intended to get out of the city… and then remembered the riot. By the time the Quick Response Force arrived, they could be halfway across the city, or even heading out into the countryside. If they’d managed as much as they had, it wasn’t hard to believe that they had papers allowing them to leave the city without being inspected; hell, a careful drive would keep them away from all checkpoints. We hadn’t been so concerned with vehicles leaving the city.

An oversight I will rectify as soon as I get back to the spaceport, I promised myself angrily, trying to keep my mind off the betrayal. Suki had led us right into a trap, at considerable personal risk, which meant that she had worked for the farmers all along. That suggested a remarkable degree of forward planning — or, perhaps, collaboration. I had suspected that she belonged to the Progressives, not to the farmers, or anyone else. My suspicions hadn’t been focused enough.

Or had someone from the Progressives set us up? I asked myself, as the vehicle drove onwards. I could feel the cold metal floor of the truck, and the tight cuffs around my wrists, but I still couldn’t see. It made sense, though; there were plenty of Progressives who were opposed to Frida’s program, the program I’d convinced her to create. They might have regarded me as the power behind the throne and sought to remove me and Frida in one blow. Without me, would Frida carry on the programs or would she seek to undo what we’d created? Without me, Ed would become Captain-General… and he barely knew Frida, or what we’d created. He’d have to get up to speed very quickly while fighting both sets of enemies; internal and external.

There was no way to know and I concentrated on our surroundings. I could hear voices talking in a native dialect I didn’t recognise; both of them were male, which meant that Suki was… where? In the rear with us, or had they killed her and dumped her? It was a capital mistake to theorise without evidence, as even the United Nations Peace Force had agreed, but I couldn’t help it. Endlessly, I ran through possible combinations in my mind. Who knew what had happened just before my captors fled the city?

I heard a series of gasps and realised that Muna was staggering back to wakefulness. Our captors snapped to one another in their dialect and the world went blue-white again as they used their stunners. Evidently, they didn’t want to risk us breaking loose and alerting the army, even though I couldn’t see a thing, let alone feel. I hoped they took us for supermen — some civilians thought of soldiers that way — even though it would make escape harder. It would be good if the bastards were scared of us. The blackness came for me and swallowed me up again; this time, they’d stunned me enough to knock me out completely.

When I opened my eyes again, we were no longer in the vehicle, but sitting in what looked like a dimly lit cellar. I looked around as best as I could — they’d handcuffed my hands and feet to the chair — and saw Muna sitting in the other chair, also cuffed and secured. I met her eyes and winked at her, seeing the dull anger burning there, even though I knew she had to be furious. This was the second time enemy forces had held her prisoner on the damned planet. I knew something that I hoped the enemy didn’t know, however; after the first time, we’d taken a handful of precautions.

My mouth felt dry as dust, but somehow I managed to speak. “Muna,” I asked, “are you all right?”

She shook her head slowly, barely able to move. She was shorter and slimmer than me and the stun blasts would have had a worse effect on her. Her eyes looked crusted over, as if she’d been crying or simply slept for days, and her face looked gaunt. I privately promised her revenge for her suffering, even though I was in no position to make good on that promise, not yet.

“No,” she said, finally. Her voice sounded worse than mine, as if she were rasping as she tried to speak. “I can barely move or think.”

“I know,” I said, as reassuringly as I could. “Me neither.”

Where were we? I asked myself. I couldn’t see my wristcom — and they’d have taken it away anyway — but it couldn’t have been that long, unless we’d been sedated after we’d been stunned into darkness. That wasn’t recommended, I remembered, because the drugs might have an adverse effect on a stunned person, but it was quite possible that our captors wouldn’t care. We were both reasonably fit and healthy; I doubted that either of us had a heart attack pending that might be brought on by the drugs. If it had only been a few hours, we were logically in one of the near-countryside farming towns or villages — more likely, an isolated farm well away from anyone else. If it had been days, we could be in the mountains, well away from any hope of rescue. I mulled the question over and over in my mind, remembering Suki. Had she known about the precautions, or had we successfully deceived her? My brain felt as if I were trying to think through cotton wool. I couldn’t remember what she knew, now, that would be used against us.

I hadn’t noticed the door until it creaked open, revealing three men and a woman. I had hoped that the woman was Suki, but it was someone else, a redheaded girl whose eyes looked older than the rest of her body. In some ways, she reminded me of Muna, although I hoped that she had had an easier life. There was something about the way they both carried themselves that was alike, somehow.

“Good evening, gentleman and lady,” the lead man said. I studied his face, but saw nothing I could use to identify him from the records of known enemy fighters. He was middle-aged and going bald, but making a definite attempt to hide it. His blue eyes — blue eyes seemed to be fairly consistent among pureblood natives — seemed humourless, but there was an unpleasant cast to his smile. “Welcome to our little home away from home.”

The woman spoke into the silence. “This is the mercenary leader?” She asked. Her accent… her accent was not a native accent! It was oddly familiar, but it took me nearly two minutes, with my brain feeling like mush, to place it as a Heinlein accent. The clipped, precise tone came from nowhere else, as far as I knew. “You are certain that you got the right person?”

“Of course,” the lead man said. I watched the woman with new interest. I didn’t know her, but unless I was very much mistaken, this was the Freedom League’s representative on the planet. It was odd; either they hadn’t expected me to recognise her accent, or they had no intention of letting us go — somehow, that didn’t surprise me. “This is their leader.”

The woman gazed down at me. “Your name?” She demanded, in an imperious tone. Up close, the Heinlein accent was stronger, more pronounced. “What is your name?”

“Captain-General Andrew Nolte, Legio Exheres, serial number LE-4637363-7578,” I recited. The UNPF had stated that all soldiers were required to tell their captors name, unit and serial number and that was it. I suspected that the Freedom League wouldn’t follow the same conventions. The stories about what had happened to some prisoners on various planets were enough to chill the blood. The UN didn’t have a monopoly on mindless brutality.

“You are our prisoner,” she said, icily. “How many men are in your Legion of the Dispossessed?”

I said nothing. It was the beginning of a standard interrogation cycle. They would know just how many men had come with me to Svergie and, by asking questions to which they already knew the answer, would use it to get a baseline on my reactions. Later, when they asked questions covering other matters, ones that weren’t public knowledge, they’d be able to pick up on a lie. If I stalled as long as I could, I would buy time for Ed to get a rescue mission on the way.

The woman sighed. “One way or the other, you are going to tell us everything you know,” she said. “Beta?”

One of the men stepped forward and slapped me right across the face. The pain was shocking, but oddly dulled; the effects of the stunner hadn’t quite worn off. Another slap followed, and another, making me gasp in pain. I was tempted to scream, just to convince them that they were hurting me more than they were, but I doubted it would have fooled them. They knew what they were doing.

“We will keep hurting you until you give up the answers,” the woman said. Her voice was softer now, almost seductive. “You will not be able to resist us indefinitely. Why not give up the answers now and save yourself the pain.”

Another slap. I wondered, vaguely, if they were going to knock out a few teeth. I wanted to come out with a smart answer, but that would just be another chink in my armour, another opening they could use to beat me. I thought I heard Muna snarling in the distance, unable to help me or even help herself, as slap after slap rained down on my face. I wasn’t going to be such a pretty face afterwards, part of my mind whispered, and I almost smiled. It was too painful to smile. The effect of the slaps were burning through the effect of the stunner. A final slap sent my chair flying over backwards and I knocked my head against the hard stone floor.

“Get him back up,” the woman ordered. I felt my head spinning as the two men lifted the chair up and placed me back facing the woman. In one of the cheap entertainment vids the UN produced, the fall would have broken my cuffs or perhaps the chair, but I tested them and the links were as strong as ever. She seemed to come closer to me, whispering into my ear. “This won’t help you in the long run, my dear.”

I gathered my energy and spat right into her face. She didn’t squeal, or order my immediate death; she showed no reaction at all. Her two goons looked ready to pound on me until my head was crushed into powder, but she held up a hand, preventing them from acting.

“We could hurt your friend,” she said, wiping the spittle off her cheek with a paper towel. “Beta?”

Beta — a thuggish man — stepped forward and slapped Muna’s face. I saw a trickle of red blood spilling down from her lips, contrasting oddly against her dark skin, and winced inwardly. I met her eyes and saw her shake her head, just slightly, at me. She didn’t want me to tell them anything. I didn’t want to tell them anything either.

“Don’t,” a voice said. It was the first man speaking. “Hurting him is fine; do it, but don’t harm the girl.”

The woman rounded on him. “This is no time for half measures,” she snapped. I wondered, suddenly, if the farmers and the Freedom League had their disagreements. I hoped that that was true. It would give me — or my successor — a weapon to use to pry them apart. The farmers would regard Muna as a breeder — now there was a joke and a half — and would be sensitive to any harm inflicted on her, or any other woman. “This is our one opportunity to get the intelligence we need before the ship returns and I will not waste it.”

The farmer didn’t back down. “Use the drugs on him, if you must,” he said, “but don’t harm her.”

I wondered if the woman would lash out at him — she seemed mad enough to want to hurt him badly — but instead she just turned back to her goons. “Get the drugs,” she ordered, before she looked down at me. “With these drugs, you’ll give up everything you know.”

She was wrong, I realised, and seriously considered telling her so. The UNPF drug immunisation program wasn’t worth a quarter of the money the UN had spent on it, but the Legionaries — including Muna and myself — had been injected with Heinlein-grade immunisation drugs. The irony was almost laughable; unless the Freedom League had come up with something completely new, there was a good chance that they were about to kill me, or at least make me very sick. A dead captive couldn’t tell them anything.

“Here, Alpha,” one of the goons said. His voice wasn’t a Heinlein accent; unless I was much mistaken, it was a Russian accent from Rodina, the Russian-ethnic world. It suited Fleet’s impression of the Freedom League being a group that wasn’t backed by any particular planet — which made sense, as if Fleet managed to pin down a single supporter, the response would not be kind — but it was odd meeting any of them on Svergie. They tended to stand out in a crowd. “I’ll inject him now.”

I felt him push the needle into my arm and winced as he injected me with the drug. The reaction was not long in coming. I felt a wave of dizziness, followed by a burst of violent spasms against the restraints and finally throwing up all over the floor. My head was ringing as I retched again and again, trying to get some of my vomit on the bitch. I knew that it would probably get me killed, but I no longer cared. I just wanted the pain to end.

“Shit,” the woman hissed. I could barely hear her as my body convulsed one final time. I wondered if I was going to die, before realising that the worst was probably over. The immunisations I’d had when I had formed the Legion had rejected the drug, but unless I had plenty of water to drink — and soon — I was going to feel worse. My kidneys would have problems cleaning my blood after that. “No, don’t try to inject the girl; she’s probably got the same counter-drugs in her body.”

She came to a decision and stood up. “Beta, get the spy and get her to give him — give them both — as much water as they can drink,” she ordered, coldly. I felt a wave of relief that I tried hard to keep off my face. At the moment, water sounded like a very good idea, worth an answer or two. She probably knew it. “If nothing else, the results of today’s experiments will weaken their resistance for the future.”

I couldn’t resist. “Keep dreaming, bitch,” I said. I coughed and spat up more vomit. My throat felt as if I’d been on a nine-day bender before returning to barracks, as I had more than once as a young soldier. “I won’t tell you anything.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “Come on.”

With that, she swept out of the room, leaving us both alone.

Chapter Thirty-Four

It is vitally important that all captive soldiers be rescued as soon as possible. That is not just for morale reasons, but also to prevent them from spilling everything they know to the enemy. Although soldiers can be trained in resisting interrogation, the truth is that everyone breaks in the end. No prisoner can keep a secret forever.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The sound of the door opening again brought us both back out of our private thoughts. I would have liked to talk to her, but I would have been astonished if the walls didn’t have ears. They might have left us alone in the hopes that one or both of us would say something they could use against us, but I had a nasty feeling that it was going to be the end of me. I felt dehydrated and utterly sick, barely able to move; they didn’t even need the restraints. I was going to die here, leaving Muna in their hands and Ed in command of the Legion. At least it wasn’t as if someone incompetent was going to take command.

“I brought you some water,” Suki said, as she entered. She wore a farmer’s outfit now, the conservative garb of those who lived outside the cities, but her face was downcast and pale. She flinched away from what she saw in my eyes, but managed to hold the water bottle to my lips anyway, allowing me to drink. I wanted to reject the water, to accept certain death, but my body overruled me. I drank deeply before finally allowing her to remove the bottle and give Muna a drink. “I’m sorry about everything.”

Refreshed, I felt the dull ache of my face and the pain at the back of my head. “You’re sorry,” Muna repeated. She, at least, could talk properly. “We took you in and made you one of us. You repaid us by treason. What are you sorry for?”

I tuned out the two women, trying to remember what I knew about the counter-interrogation drugs. The water would make it easier for my liver and kidneys to flush out the remaining drug, but I wouldn’t be in for a very good time over the following three days. The galloping shits would be the least of my problems. If they tried to inject me again, my body might not endure the injection so easier this time… and the reaction might well kill me. Without the drugs, what else could they do? The answer came quickly. They could hook me up to a lie detector and an electric shock machine, shocking me every time they caught me in a lie.

Suki touched the side of my face, brushing aside the matted hair. “I didn’t know they’d do this to you,” she said, softly. “I just thought that they wanted to talk to you without the President anywhere nearby.”

I frowned in puzzlement, before realising that she meant Frida. The President himself might recover in the following months, but somehow I doubted he’d be happy with the war, or even the new farms. It was the only solution that could save the planet from internal collapse and civil war — but we’d ended up with the civil war anyway. If nothing else, Suki’s betrayal had brought that home to me. Anyone could be an enemy.

“Why?” I asked, finally, remembering long hot nights in my quarters. I felt a hot flush that faded against the overwhelming pain spreading through my head. “Why did you join them?”

Suki’s eyes were very sad. “My mother was one of the lucky ones who married a farmer when she was dumped on the planet,” she said, softly. “She never fell into prostitution or any of the other fates that could happen to a young girl without family or protection. She didn’t know what she was getting into when she married my father, but it was better than the alternative. I ended up working for the resistance as a spy and… well, after the UN left I just carried on. I was ordered to meet up with you and you know the rest.”

“Then why don’t you tell them that we don’t want to fight this out to the bitter end either?” Muna demanded. “For Allah’s sake, child; we’re setting up the new farms to avoid having to crush and enslave the farmers. Instead of trying to come to terms, you’re just ensuring that the war will last longer and the death toll will be much higher.”

“I told them everything that you told me,” Suki said, as she put down the water and picked up a ration bar. Her fingernails opened it as she spoke directly to me. “They wanted to set up this meeting and… I didn’t know that it would go so badly.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Muna said. Oddly, I believed Suki. The Freedom League was very good at manipulating people. “Congratulations. Do you know how many of your people are going to get killed because of you?”

I tuned them out again, thinking as hard as I could. The woman — the Freedom League bitch — had mentioned a ship. They couldn’t have kept a ship in orbit without the William Tell detecting them and insisting on searching the starship, but they might have been able to slip a starship in and out of the system if they timed it perfectly. The Fleet destroyer couldn’t pick up a starship that came out of a wormhole on the other side of the system and unless it changed course radically, the Freedom League could get us up to the ship without being detected. It would be risky…

A swearword formed in my mind as I realised that it wasn’t quite as risky as I had assumed. They didn’t need active sensors; all they needed was a set of telescopes on the surface of the planet and a degree of luck. They could watch the destroyer without setting off any kind of alert and easily warn their starship if it changed course suddenly. It was simple, low-tech, and almost unbeatable. I’d have to warn Fleet… assuming, of course, that I got out of this alive.

I pushed my concern about hidden ears out of my mind and looked over at Suki. “You can’t trust the Freedom League,” I said, hoping that she’d believe me. “They’re not interested in anything, but beating Fleet. They regard you all as expendable towards that end. They threw your career away just to get at us; what do you think they’d do to get at Fleet?”

Suki looked downcast for a moment, but recovered swiftly. “Should we trust the government, which includes people who hate farmers and want to tax them out of existence, or a group that cannot actually impose itself on us?”

I shook my head slowly. The hell of it was that she had a point. The farmers had no reason to trust Svergie’s Government, even if the Progressives lost power altogether in the wake of the riot the farmers had started to get at us. Somehow, I doubted it; the real cause of the riot would be suppressed, or blamed on Frida’s political enemies. Why should the farmers trust them? The Freedom League might be composed of bastards — and they didn’t think of themselves as bastards; terrorist groups never did — but they couldn’t invade the planet. They could only gain influence and use it to worm their way towards power.

“No,” Suki said, as she held the ration bar to my mouth and allowed me to nibble at it slowly. My teeth felt weird and loose — the slaps had probably loosened a few teeth — but I was able to eat a little. My stomach heaved again and I coughed desperately, trying to prevent myself from retching. “What choice do we have?”

“I shouldn’t worry about the political debates,” a new voice said. I looked over to see the Heinlein woman as she came back into the room. “One way or another, you’re not getting out of this alive.”

The food had given me a little strength back and I managed to glare at her. “That’s true, isn’t it?” I asked, as calmly as I could. “You don’t really care what happens to the farmers or the miners as long as your aims are met.”

“The farmers meeting their aims meets our aims,” she said, calmly. “Why did you come to this planet?”

“That’s a matter of public record,” Suki said, surprised. “They were hired by the corrupt government to enforce their will on those who defied them.”

“I was asking him,” the woman said, calmly. “Well, mercenary; why are you here?”

I said nothing. “I wouldn’t try to hide anything,” the woman continued, dryly. “You may be immune to interrogation drugs, but we can keep hurting you until you are definitely willing to tell us everything. Why are you here on this planet?”

It took me a moment to remember the words, but I finally managed to launch into the fifth verse of the Grand Old Duke of York. It was officially banned in the UNPF, but everyone knew the words; the first original verse and the hundreds of others that various soldiers had added over the years. The Grand Old Duke had everything from a thousand whores to a pecker the size of Jupiter. It had always surprised me that the UNPF hadn’t tried to actually enforce the ban, but it was possible that a rare dose of common sense had prevailed and the song had been quietly ignored.

“Shut up,” the woman snapped, irritated. “We’ll leave you alone to think about it, shall we? Suki, come!”

She marched out, slamming the door behind them, and I couldn’t help it. I dissolved into laughter and tired to sing the sixth verse, but it was impossible through the giggles. Muna wasn’t any help; she’d started in the space force and didn’t know that particular song. The humour faded fast. Sooner or later, the woman would return with her goons and start working on us in earnest. Once that happened… how long could I hold out? How long would they respect the farmer’s injunction to leave Muna alone? Somehow, I doubted that it would be very long.

I looked over at Muna and saw the pain in her eyes. She knew, as well as I did, that if they came back without the farmer, she would probably be tortured as well. “Don’t worry,” she said, finally. “I’ve been though worse in my time.”

An hour passed slowly — at least, it felt like an hour. Without a timepiece of any kind, there was no way to know just how long it had been since we had been captured and my time sense was unreliable. If I hadn’t been knocked out… I shook my head, despite the pain. There was no point in worrying over what might have been, if only things had been different. I silently tried to test the strength of my bonds, but they held firm, despite my probing. The chair itself was strong enough that tipping it over wouldn’t break it — besides, that only worked in the movies anyway. I considered it anyway, but even if I did manage to break the chair, what next? I was secured so tightly that escape was impossible.

Damn you, I thought, bitterly. The plan to reform Svergie was going to fail; I was sure of that, now. Fleet — Admiral Walker — would either have to intervene openly or write Svergie off as a world that wouldn’t be able to claim a seat in the Federation. And if that happened, the civil war would devastate the entire planet and take it back to the stone age, leaving the system open for someone else to develop…

They know. The thought was crystal-clear. If the Freedom League knows — or suspects — that Fleet is intervening covertly to keep a planet stable, they kidnapped us to gain proof they could show to other planets, other supporters. If they convince other worlds that Fleet is breaking its own rules, whatever the intention, they can use it as a tool to break Fleet, perhaps even spark off a second mutiny and coup. Shit.

I wanted to discuss it with Muna, but I didn’t dare. God alone knew what she was thinking, but she knew almost as much as I knew about Fleet’s covert involvement. If I died, they could still try to break her and perhaps they would; hell, Muna had known John Walker personally, just like I had. Her word might be more incriminating than mine in the secret councils. Fleet might not be able to save itself from disaster…

The ground shook violently, sending plaster drifting down from the ceiling. I looked over at Muna and saw the hope in her eyes, as the distant sound of shooting echoed out in the distance. The newcomers were firing short precise bursts, but that didn’t prove anything, although I hoped that they were friendly. Was it possible that the farmers had turned on the Freedom League? Another explosion, and another, shook the building; I heard the noise of running feet in the outside, hunting for someone — us? Someone kicked at the door and shook it, before breaking it down, revealing someone wearing a farmer’s outfit. No, not someone; Jock.

“I found him,” Jock shouted, as he came over to me and started to fiddle with the handcuffs, using a lockpick to undo my cuffs. I felt my hands come free and pulled myself away from the chair as he undid the remaining cuffs. “Boss, are you all right?”

“Never better,” I managed. It was true; just seeing Jock had put a massive boost in my sprit. I was delighted to see him. “You tracked the transponder then?”

“No,” Jock said, darkly. “They blocked that quite effectively. We had a stroke of luck; the building they used was one we’d had under quiet observation for a few weeks. We spotted just a few oddities from the UAV and decided to take a chance on hitting it. Hang on.”

I stood up as he turned to release Muna and staggered as I placed weight on my feet again. The handcuffs had blocked my circulation and it was all I could do to remain upright. Jock helped Muna to her feet as the others of his team came in, allowing him to pass her over to Judy, the only female on his team. I silently commended him for his compassion; Muna wouldn’t want to touch a man if it could be avoided. He caught me and helped me stand up straight until I could limp outside, hearing the sound of a helicopter and shooting in the distance.

“I think we kicked over a hornet’s nest,” Jock said, as he helped me outside the cell and into a corridor that seemed to climb upwards to daylight. “There was at least a hundred fighters nearby and we didn’t even detect them until they started shooting. If we hadn’t called up help from Fort Galloway, we would have been caught and shot up by superior numbers. We’d have killed most of them, but the rest would have got us.”

I nodded as we climbed up the stairs and came into a living room. It had once been open and airy, but someone had covered all the windows and barricaded all the doors. The farmer who had owned it had clearly been preparing for a siege, although it hadn’t helped the Freedom League when Jock and his team had come in to hit them. A handful of prisoners, all farmers, lay on the floor, under heavy guard.

“Should just kill them now,” Jock said, seeing the wounds inflicted on Muna and I in the better light. “Sir?”

“Never mind that,” I snapped, remembering my duty. “There’s a redheaded woman around somewhere, and two thugs. Did you find them?”

A quick check of the prisoners revealed no sign of the women and one of his thugs. The other was lying in a pile of bodies waiting to be identified. “No women here at all, apart from the Captain and Judy,” Jock said. “She must have gotten away in the chaos.”

The sound of shooting grew louder. I tensed as I heard a helicopter firing rockets down towards the ground, followed by a hail of explosions. Ed had to have sent out both of his helicopters to back up the rescue mission, along with an entire Company of soldiers. They were Svergie Army soldiers, I realised with a smile; he’d trusted them enough to carry out a delicate mission. It made everything we’d suffered worthwhile.

“We’ll have to move the prisoners out with the helicopters,” Jock said. “I don’t think they’ll risk shooting down a helicopter with their own people onboard.”

“Good,” I said, tiredly. I wanted sleep and a drink, but I wasn’t going to get either — I knew — until the medics had checked us both out thoroughly. “Jock, Suki betrayed us and led us into a trap. Did you find her here?”

“No,” Jock said. “Robert — ah, Captain McClellan — put out an alert for her, but we didn’t find her here.”

I hoped, absently, that she’d returned to her parents’ farm, but it was much more likely that the Freedom League had simply eliminated her. They’d regard her as a loose end, one who had seen more of the interrogation process — and heard that I’d said — than they’d be comfortable with. I’d have to track down her farm and ask her father directly what had happened to her, or perhaps… her father was part of the farmer leadership council. I might be able to use her death to drive a wedge in between him and the Freedom League.

“Good,” I said, finally. A transport helicopter came in to land, armed soldiers surrounding it at once, guarding it from all possible attack. The noise of the rotor blades hurt my head, but it could be endured. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Although a civilian may feel otherwise, it is quite possible to recover from many military-inflicted injuries fairly quickly, provided that medical attention is prompt and skilful. It is for that reason that we permit Doctors to obtain their Federal Service through serving as military medics, even though they are literally too valuable to risk lightly. Their care saves lives.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

Fort Galloway looked surprisingly different from how I remembered it, although that shouldn’t have been a surprise. The basic layout was still the same, but Ed had taken everything that had come in via the daily convoys — which were shot at regularly and sometimes had to shoot their way out of traps — and used it to build up a far more formidable base. The trees and grass had been cut down, providing clear fields of fire for the soldiers in the bunkers, and some of the damaged buildings had been rebuilt. Given time, I was sure, Fort Galloway would be more than any UN-standard fort had ever been before. It was amazing what a single competent officer could do.

I smiled to myself as the helicopter came in to land. The UN’s senior officers had regarded competence as a threat to them personally and a competent officer, far from being rewarded, was likely to be exiled to some garrison in the middle of nowhere — like Botany — or be sent out on various suicide missions. I thought differently and had given Ed his head, knowing that if the fort were to be attacked, he’d be the one in the front line. He’d taken everything I’d given him and worked it into defences that would be formidable, if the farmers ever chose to do more than sniping from a distance, and costly to any attacker.

But at the same time, in a way, they were also useless. Back in the days of the UN, the UN had controlled the low orbitals and could call down fire on any enemy base, forcing them to resort to insurgency right from the start. Fort Galloway was only useful in a low-intensity war; in a high-intensity war, with the enemy controlling the low orbitals, it would be wiped off the face of the planet without ever being able to strike back at the enemy. Svergie didn’t have any defences that could be used against any enemy starship; if Fleet were to fall apart, as the Freedom League wanted, the result would be absolute chaos. If I had had any doubts about my role, meeting the Freedom League representative had cured them; whatever she wanted, it wasn’t good for Svergie.

The helicopter touched ground and the hatches opened, allowing a trio of medics to climb inside and help Muna and I out onto the ground. I shrugged off the helping hand and staggered out myself, refusing to show weakness in front of the troops, and accepted the salutes from the handful gathered by the helicopter pad. I returned the salutes as best as I could and allowed one of the medics to lead me to the sickbay, where I gratefully collapsed on a bed. It felt so soft and warm that I almost fell asleep right there and then.

“Never mind me at the moment,” I said, as the medics gathered around me. “See to Muna.”

“We’ve got people seeing to her now, sir,” the lead medic said. I hated it when they used their oh-so-reasonable tone on me. “We can treat you at the same time.”

I’d prefer to draw a veil over the next hour, as it involved a lot of poking and prodding, blood-sampling and other tests that weren’t generally found outside of a military or intelligence hospital unit. They sent for a dentist, who examined my jaw and muttered a lot, before freezing it and doing some basic repair work. I’d never liked going to the dentist either, when I was a kid; the UN’s policy that everyone should have access to free healthcare had lowered standards so much that you were taking your life in your hands every time you went. Their accidental death rates were shockingly high, but what was more shocking was that I had accepted them as normal until I saw some of the Colonies. Their Doctors were far better trained.

“It shouldn’t take too long for everything to set,” the dentist assured me, finally. “They jarred a few teeth pretty badly, but they didn’t actually start pulling them out for torture, not yet anyway.”

“Thanks,” I slurred. I hate having my mouth frozen. It makes talking very tricky, somehow. I barely knew what I was saying. “I’ll be sure to recommend you to them when we capture them.”

“I can’t torture them for you,” the dentist said, quickly. I couldn’t really blame him for that. He probably thought I wanted revenge. “I won’t heal them so you can keep hurting them either.”

“Good for you,” I said, coldly. “Now go away and let me sleep.”

I blanked out for the next few hours and recovered, finally, to discover that I’d slept through an entire day. I still felt weak and exhausted, but at least I didn’t feel as if I were going to throw up everything I swallowed within seconds. I called for one of the nurses — the Legion’s nurses are all female, because it’s good for morale — and ordered her to bring me something solid to eat, even a UN-issue MRE. She brought me a bowl of Carrot Soup and informed me that the doctors would want to speak to me before I ate anything solid. My protests didn’t convince her to bring me anything else, but water and some dry biscuits.

“Ah, Captain-General,” the Doctor said, coming in before I could say anything unfortunate. Doctor Awad was a vaguely Arabic-looking man, a political refugee from New Damascus, who had joined the Legion because it gave him a proper home. I don’t know why he’d left his homeworld in the first place, but I could guess; after the end of the UN’s occupation, the planet had plunged right into a bitter civil war over religion, of all things. “You’ll be pleased to know that you’ll be back to normal before too long.”

I glowered at him, silently promising everything from a year’s KP to an actual flogging, but he refused to speak any faster. “They injected you with a fairly standard truth drug from the UN’s Security Directorate,” he continued. “There’s little room for doubt, sir; we picked up enough traces from your bloodstream to confirm just what they hit you with. It reacted badly with the immunisations you took last year and your body violently rejected it; luckily, you coped better than many others with the effects. It was quite possible that you would have died from the reaction, had you been weaker or if they had tried to give you additional doses.

“Overall, we injected you with cleansing drugs ourselves and that should flush the remainder of the truth drug out of your system,” he continued. I already knew most of what he’d just told me. “If you drink loads of fluids — not alcohol; water or milk — it should speed up the process considerably. You should also recover most of your strength over the next two days, although we’re still concerned about possible damage to your liver or kidneys or both. The UN created the immunisation drugs with mixed motives and the results… well, let’s just say that you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, in hopes of cutting off the endless stream of words. “And the rest of me?”

“The dentist assures me that your jaw will be fully healed soon enough,” the Doctor said. “Naturally, I checked the bone structure myself and confirmed that there was only minor damage, all of which was handled while you were dead to the world. You’re also suffering from dehydration and a handful of other problems, but overall you survived the experience remarkably well. Given a few days rest, sir, you should be completely back to normal.”

I nodded, tiredly. “We’ll want to check you out again at the spaceport,” the Doctor concluded, “but I think we can give you a clean bill of health, once you flush the remainder of the truth drug out of your system.”

“Thanks,” I said, waving for the nurse to bring me water to drink. “And Muna?”

The Doctor frowned. I recognised his concern. He wasn’t used to the idea of discussing a patient’s condition with anyone, but their relatives, even though I was her commanding officer. As far as anyone knew, Muna had no relatives left, just like me. They’d probably died somewhere back on Old Earth during the early stages of the civil war.

“She wasn’t injected with anything, thankfully, which will make her recovery easier,” the Doctor confirmed, finally. “She was slapped twice as well, but otherwise they generally left her alone, so all she’s really suffering from is dehydration and slight injuries on her wrists from the handcuffs. I’d prefer to keep her in for observation, but overall… she’s capable of going back to work now, although I would not advise it.”

“No,” I agreed. “Tell her, from me, that she can take a week’s extra leave if she wants.” I met his eyes. “And ask Captain Stalker to report to me at once.”

“After you’ve had some sleep,” the Doctor said firmly, reaching for a injector patch. “You’re in no fit state to issue any orders at the moment.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he slapped the patch on me before I could react and I was out of the world. I don’t like sleeping under the influence of drugs, but I did have to admit that it meant no bad dreams. I awoke, what seemed like hours later, to discover that the Doctor had hooked me up to a set of blood-cleansing machines and was using them to scour my blood of any last traces of the drug, but I was out again before I could muster the words to protest. I knew it was all for my own good, but I needed to talk to Ed, or someone else who knew what was actually going on. I had to warn them about the Freedom League…

When I awoke, hours later, I was free of the machines and felt a hell of a lot better, so I managed to pull myself out of the bed and stand up before one of the nurses came over and helped me dress. At my command, she brought me some food — a real steak dinner, not hospital food — and watched over me while I devoured everything, even the fat. I was that hungry. I was used to eating all kinds of things on the UN’s service, even UN-issue MRE packs, but I had never liked eating fat. When I had finished, the nurse allowed me to leave the ward and find somewhere more appropriate to sleep. I wasn’t too worried about sleeping; I wanted to talk to Ed.

The noise of helicopter blades outside shocked me, at first, until I realised that I was still sensitive to any kind of noise. My head hurt as the noise grew louder, but I made my way to the command centre, wondering absently what I was doing in the midst of the army. I didn’t feel like a commanding officer, but a kid who’d somehow stumbled into the middle of a military operation and was now hopelessly confused. I’d forgotten my ID Card as well — it took my nearly two minutes to remember that the Freedom League bitch probably had it — and had to bully my way past the two guards on the command post. Ed, luckily, was in his office and it was easy to get inside.

“Sir,” he said, when he saw me. “Are you sure you should be out of bed?”

I had my own doubts about that, but I was past caring. “Yes,” I said, as the door closed behind me, cutting off much of the noise. It was such a relief that I almost collapsed. “You need to listen to this.”

“Take a seat, at least,” Ed insisted, standing up and offering me one of the chairs. I sat down gratefully. “You should definitely be in bed, sir, with all due respect…”

“I don’t get no respect,” I said, wryly. It seemed the funniest thing I’d heard or said for years. “Ed, they were right; the Freedom League is definitely here.”

I detailed everything that had happened since I’d been kidnapped, sparing nothing, even the attempt to drug me into spilling my guts. We’d suspected that the Freedom League was involved — well, Fleet had suspected that the Freedom League was involved — but we hadn’t had any proof, until now. I even told him about Suki and how I hoped she’d realised just what the Freedom League actually stood for… and my quiet suspicion that the terrorists had killed her after we’d been rescued. I was surprised at the pang it caused me; Suki had betrayed me and led us into a trap, but she’d thought she was doing the right thing. Terrorist groups are good at convincing people that they’re doing the right thing.

“We suspected as much after you dropped off the grid suddenly,” Ed confirmed. “Robert put out an alert for her just after we confirmed that you’d vanished from the city and… sir, the rioting faded away just after you disappeared.”

I blinked. “All of it?”

“Not all, but the main core just faded away into the side streets and escaped,” Ed confirmed. “A handful of real rioters — the people attracted by the chaos — kept going until Robert’s men dropped the hammer on them, knocked most of them out with stunners and dragged them off to detention camps. I think they’re going to be going out to help with the new farms before too long. The people who actually started the riot… they’re gone. We didn’t find them.”

I rubbed the side of my head, wishing that the pain would fade. It might all make sense in daylight, but I felt that everything was just too confused. If Suki had been working for the farmers all along, who had triggered off the riot? I hadn’t thought that the farmers had that much influence in the city; hell, the reason for the riot had been distinctly Progressive Party-style. They couldn’t be cooperating, could they? The Freedom League might urge them to cooperate, but somehow I had problems seeing them working together so well. I was definitely missing part of the puzzle.

“I understand,” I said, finally. “And the war?”

Ed frowned, stretching the side of his nose. “It seems to be taking a break,” he said, puzzled. “Since we rescued you, two days ago, there haven’t been any contacts with the enemy, apart from a handful of shots being exchanged between a patrol and a handful of enemy fighters, who broke contact soon afterwards. There have been no major attacks, here or anywhere else; hell, a handful of government agents were left completely unmolested.”

“Odd,” I said. It would be nice to believe that Suki’s family had turned on the Freedom League, but I couldn’t allow myself to become optimistic. My headache wouldn’t allow it. “Are you confident that you can hold this place?”

“Unless they bring up some additional firepower, we can hold out indefinitely,” Ed confirmed. I smiled at the confidence in his voice. “We have enough supplies to last us for weeks of what we’ve been doing through, even if we had to pull in the patrols and hunker down. The real threat is them bringing up other surprises…”

“I know,” I said, ruefully. We knew that a lot of firepower had fallen into the hands of the miners, but we hadn’t seen any of it, so far. It might be useless to them, or they might be saving it for something pretty devastating. “I’ll have to go back to the spaceport in a day or so, on the next supply flight. Keep me updated on what’s happening here and keep watching for enemy activity. This could be the calm before the storm.”

I knew I was repeating myself — and Ed knew the standing orders in any case — but my head just kept pounding. “Of course,” Ed said. He tilted his head slightly. “And I would really recommend that you got some more sleep, sir. You’re dropping off on your feet.”

The sense of betrayal flickered through me again, but I knew that Ed meant well. “I’ll get back to the ward,” I promised, firmly. It would be an easy promise to keep. Lights were starting to flicker painfully at the back of my head. “You just organise the flight tomorrow morning.”

“I’d better summon Peter to help you get back to bed,” Ed said, firmly. He keyed his earpiece and issued orders before I could object. A moment later, Peter came in through the door and stood to attention. “Please help the Captain-General back to bed and keep him there until tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said, sternly. I read his thoughts in his expression and knew that he had been worried about me since I vanished. Somehow, I doubted that I’d be leaving anywhere unescorted for a long time. Just now, I could see their point. I’d been in a position where I could be drained of everything I knew about Fleet’s covert involvement and only dumb luck had saved me. “Come on, sir; we’ll get you back to bed.”

Sergeants have been helping officers since time out of mind; often, they’d helped young officers learn how to command and when to stand back and let the subordinates get on with it. Peter helped me back to the ward and assisted the nurse in getting me back to bed, before taking a chair and sitting down firmly at the end of the bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Chapter Thirty-Six

When an enemy prisoner of war is recovered, it is vitally important to debrief them as quickly as possible to discover what they told the enemy — if anything. It must be made clear that there is no shame in talking to the enemy — everyone breaks, eventually — but the full scale of the betrayal must also be shared.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The spaceport looked different to my eyes as the helicopter made one final circuit of the base before coming in to land, but for a moment I couldn’t have said what was different about it. It struck me a moment later; for the first time since we’d arrived, the spaceport looked like a fully-functioning spaceport, with aircraft and even shuttles on the ground being serviced and launched back into the air. It might well have looked that way for quite some time, but I hadn’t seen it from the air since the last time I’d used a helicopter.

“Welcome back, sir,” Robert said, as I stepped out of the helicopter and accepted his salute. A small number of senior officers had gathered to welcome me back to the base, even though I hadn’t been gone for more than a few days. I like to think that they were happy to see me, but it might just have been relief over what would have happened if the enemy had killed me. “We have a situation report for you if you wish to see it.”

“Yes, please,” I said, accepting the final salutes. Everyone seemed to have found an excuse to come salute me and, even though I felt a hell of a lot better, I still wanted to get back to work rather than glad-handing everyone. I’m a soldier, not a politician. “What is the security position here?”

“We went through everyone’s records again after… well, your aide decided to kidnap you,” Robert said. “We isolated a handful of possible suspects, but we don’t actually have any evidence that we can use to press charges against them, just suspicions. We could put them through standard interrogation training if you want…”

I shook my head. “Just keep an eye on them,” I ordered. I wanted to interrogate them until they hurt, but we already had enough problems with the local government. I hadn’t heard anything about the parents of the molested girl — damned if I could remember her name now; it had been swept away by the pressure of events — but that was probably lurking in the shadows until it saw a chance to spring. “If they’re people we can rotate to reasonably safe duties, do so. If not…”

It would have been so easy to send them on suicide missions. “If not, just keep an eye on them,” I concluded. “We’ll deal with them if they become a threat.”

“Yes, sir,” Robert said, as we stepped into the command bunker. I was pleased to see that there was an added element of security surrounding the central command post, using men drawn from the Legion. We couldn’t trust the locals for that, even though they were handling their own security in the various outposts and garrisons we had scattered throughout the countryside and around the cities. There, of course, they had to worry about enemy forces attacking them. “The current situation is as follows…”

I listened as he outlined the remarkable shortage of enemy activity. It puzzled me; over the last two months, the farmers had launched entire waves of hit and run attacks on our positions, trying to bleed us into submission. Snipers, IEDs and other nasty tricks had all wrecked havoc on our forces, but now there was hardly anything. A handful of shots hardly constituted a problem. It was quiet — suspiciously quiet.

“Keep everyone on alert,” I ordered, finally. There was little else we could do for the moment. With the new regiments, once they were worked up and ready for action, we could take the offensive into the mountains, but that was still months off. For the moment, all we could do was wait and see if the enemy showed themselves. “And the prisoners from Jock’s raid?”

“We had them shipped here and interrogated them, as per standing orders,” Robert confirmed. “They apparently know nothing about anything — of course — and more specifically they know almost nothing about the Freedom League. They thought that the woman was just one of the mining representatives from the Mountain Men.”

“Mountain Women, in her case, I would have thought,” Peter injected.

I scowled at him and looked back at Robert. “They were really there just to add additional men to the guard force,” Robert continued. “The interrogators believe that they don’t actually know much else; hell, they didn’t even know who they were guarding.”

“A likely story,” Peter growled. “Are we sure they’re telling the truth?”

“The interrogators were not gentle,” Robert said, darkly. “They knocked the poor bastards about and used drugs and lie detectors unmercifully. They didn’t have any drug immunisations or even any counter-interrogation training. If they’re lying, they’re better at it that some of the people from Heinlein, the ones who were given full-scale training. Russell checked their biofeedback rhythms and swears blind that they weren’t using any such training.”

I held up my hand before the argument could get out of hand. “Never mind,” I said, firmly. “If they don’t have anything else to tell us, make them the same offer as the other farmer POWs. Tell them they can serve us for a short period on the new farms, or they can rot in the detention camps until the war comes to an end, one way or the other.”

“Yes, sir,” Robert said.

Peter looked mutinous. “Don’t you feel,” he asked, “that some harsher punishment is in order? They assisted in kidnapping you…”

“We’re not going to make a big deal out of it,” I said, firmly. “The people who planned and carried out the kidnapping weren’t captured. We’re not going to give the grunts, the people who didn’t know what was really going on, a harder time than we have to give them. Let them see that we’re not going to treat it as a life-threatening matter, because it’s not. I survived.”

I grinned at them. “I hope you warned all of the departmental heads,” I added, with a mischievous smile. “It’s inspection time.”

I spent the next three hours going through everything on the spaceport, from the training period with Russell and the new recruits — many of which were happy to see me returned safe and well — to the crews servicing the tanks, helicopters and space shuttles. I inspected everything, handing out awards and punishments as required, just to ensure that everything was still working. The laser batteries providing protection against incoming mortar rounds were working perfectly — a relief; a single high explosive round in the wrong place would be devastating — and the crews were quite happy to run through a drill with me watching over their shoulders. The simulated incoming rounds were all downed well short of their targets. The simulations, in fact, were far worse than anything we had faced so far, even at Fort Galloway.

“Excellent work,” I said, finally. They all breathed sighs of relief, for which I couldn’t blame them. They’d probably heard that I was looking for faults to punish, but standards hadn’t slipped on the laser batteries. “Carry on, men.”

An hour after that, Commander Daniel Webster finally arrived. I’d called him down from the William Tell as soon as I’d returned to the spaceport, but I’d known that it would probably take some time before he could actually report to me. The destroyer did allow some of its crew to take shore leave on the planet — the duty would be intolerable without that safety valve — but it wasn’t in a good position to launch a shuttle when I called. The handful of crewmen immediately sought the bus to New Copenhagen and the delights there — whores, bars and other entertainments — while Daniel visited me in my office. I was surprisingly glad to see him.

“The Freedom League is definitely active here,” I said, once we’d exchanged greetings. I doubt he’d heard that I’d been kidnapped. The enemy hadn’t used it as part of their propaganda attack and we, for obvious reasons, hadn’t told anyone either. There was no point in giving the enemy a boost forward and dismaying our own people at the same time. “I saw one of their representatives recently.”

I outlined everything that had happened — I’d been right; he hadn’t known I’d been kidnapped — and watched his expression carefully. I had hoped that it would prompt Fleet into more open intervention, but it wasn’t really proof, was it? The word of a mercenary trapped in a war that conventional wisdom said was hopeless, against a group of freedom-loving farmers and miners who only wanted to be rid of a tyrannical central government. I doubted that Fleet’s story would seem convincing to the Federation, or anyone else for that matter. It could tip over the applecart completely.

“It’s not the kind of proof we can use,” Daniel said, finally. I nodded in bitter understanding. He was right, of course; we’d still have to beat the farmers on the ground and hopefully capture the woman and her thugs in the process. “I don’t suppose you know her name, or any other details we can use?”

“Maybe,” I said. “We took a WARCAT” — War Crimes Assessment Team — “team through the house and they found DNA belonging to several people who weren’t among the dead or prisoners. We could compare it to your records…”

“It might work, but I doubt it,” Daniel said. “If mopping up the Freedom League was that easy, we’d have them by now.”

I sprung my little surprise. “The woman had a Heinlein accent,” I said, seriously. I saw his eyes go very wide. “There’s nothing quite like it outside Heinlein itself and I’m dead certain that that was what I was hearing. Is that any help?”

“It may not be,” Daniel said. “Tens of thousands of people from Heinlein fled in the wake of the Invasion and most of them never returned to the planet. It’s possible that we might get lucky and find a comparison, but we’d need ironclad proof before we challenged Heinlein directly. It’s one of a handful of planets that might be able to stand us off if we intervened. If the government is directly involved…”

He shrugged. “It’s far more likely that we’re dealing with a rogue group,” he added. “The Freedom League started out fighting the UN, after all, and they might well have had support from Heinlein before the Invasion. The UN suspected as much although it’s hard to know just how much the UN actually knew as opposed to guessed, or merely made up to justify the invasion. God knows; Heinlein isn’t the most controlled place in the galaxy, is it?”

I shook my head. Earth under the UN had probably had that particular distinction — it wasn’t something to boast about — and when John Walker launched his coup, the planet had fallen into civil war and environmental collapse. The centuries of repression had built up a layer of resentment and hatred on the part of the governed and they’d lashed out at everything representing the government. The chaos would probably take years to settle.

“No,” I agreed, tartly. “Is there any way you can intervene more openly?”

“I can ask the Captain to deploy several stealth sensor buoys to watch for any starship trying to come in on the other side of the planet,” Daniel said, after a moment. “They might cancel it, of course, now that you’re back in friendly hands. Even so, they might not manage to get the word out in time and we can keep an eye out for it. We might even manage to get the jump on it and capture it — along with all the proof we’d need, unless it actually was an innocent freighter.”

“I suppose,” I said, reluctantly. Fleet’s relationship with the hundreds of independent freighters, and the Merchant Guilds, wasn’t a very polite one. Fleet regarded the Merchant Guilds as supporters of black colonies and rogue groups, while the Merchant Guilds regarded Fleet as the successor to the UN, even though Fleet barely taxed them at all. It wasn’t a comfortable relationship. Fleet was opposed to armed merchantmen on principle — because they could so easily become warships — while the Merchant Guilds didn’t trust Fleet to defend them from pirates. “It probably would be, wouldn’t it?”

“Probably,” Daniel agreed. “I’ll keep feeding the images from the orbiting destroyer to your intelligence staff, but there isn’t much else I can do to help you directly. You’re on your own.”

“Thanks,” I said, sourly. “I’ll call you when I have something else.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Be seeing you.”

That afternoon, I spent an hour talking to Frida over the communications network — Peter and Robert wouldn’t let me go into the city — about whoever had started the rioting. Frida’s own internal investigation had revealed that several of her fellow Progressives had started the riot, but they’d been urged to time the riot carefully by someone else, who had bribed them with food supplies smuggled in from the farms. It wasn’t hard to figure out who had obtained the food supplies in the first place, or why they’d wanted the riot timed perfectly, but apparently the two Progressives knew nothing. Frida had them both under covert arrest and they would be tried publicly in a week.

“Unless you want them,” she added, hopefully. “If I try them here, my enemies will say that I’m trying to gather all of the power in my own hands. It could lead to further trouble down the line. I’m already under pressure to hold new elections and the Progressive Party is on the verge of splitting apart.”

I nodded in understanding. Frida hadn’t expected it, but I had — it had happened before. Whenever a political party became so powerful that no one on the outside could oppose it, the people on the inside tended to break up into factions, often largely invisible to the outside world. Eventually, the party collapsed into civil war — sometimes literally — broke up into several more parties, or created a dictatorship. I hoped it wouldn’t be the latter; a dictatorship worked fine in the short term and rotted away in the long term. I wouldn’t have advocated it for any planet, except perhaps Earth. Only a dictator could hold Earth together long enough to tackle the real problems.

“If they don’t actually have lines of communication that we can use to reach the enemy, there’s little point,” I said, even as I admired the enemy plan. The farmers had forced the Progressive Party into a near-civil war, just as a side effect of kidnapping me. I wanted the person who’d thought of it, although I wasn’t sure if I wanted to recruit him for the Legion or shoot him in the head and swear blind I never saw him. “I’d suggest holding them for a few more days and then moving to trial. If you gather the evidence to convict them quickly, you might be able to forestall a devastating counter-attack.”

Frida snorted. “One will happen, like it or not,” she said, tiredly. “It’s good to see you back again, Andrew.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s good to be back too.”

I spent the night in my depressingly cold and empty bed, before waking up early and going to inspect the intelligence section. TechnoMage met me at the door and invited me into his private office, where he showed me the remains of the telemetry from the UAV that had been shot down. Now that it had been carefully studied, it was obvious that an EMP cannon had been used to bring the craft down, creating a blank spot over our observation of the mountains.

“Anything could be happening there when the destroyer isn’t directly overhead,” he said, and I could only agree. Orbital reconnaissance was so important that it was devastating when it was lost… and we couldn’t risk another UAV flying over the mountains. “All they’d have to do is keep everything under cover when the destroyer is overhead and we’d miss everything.”

“We missed a lot,” I agreed, grimly. We’d missed a lot because the Freedom League, I now saw, knew as much as we did about the capabilities of our equipment. They might not have been able to ship in much themselves, but even the best equipment could be spoofed by a determined and cunning foe. They could have hidden anything under the blank spot, waiting for the right time. “Has there been anything else?”

“Very little,” TechnoMage confirmed. “There are just a lot of things that don’t quite add up, such as the sudden shortage of enemy activity and the apparent lack of activity at the mines. We’ve been trying to track enemy personnel as they move around the countryside, but it’s not as helpful as you might think. They’re laying false trails to confuse us, among other tricks. We thought we had an enemy command post and A Company assaulted it, only to discover that it was nothing more than a handful of heaters and some automated radio transmitters.”

“I know the problem,” I agreed. I don’t like speculating in the absence of facts, but there was no choice. “And your theory to account for this is?”

My earpiece buzzed before TechnoMage could answer. “Sir, it’s Robert,” Robert’s voice hissed in my ear. He sounded unusually alarmed. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “Fort Galloway is under heavy attack!”

“I think it’s obvious,” TechnoMage said, as Robert’s voice faded away. It only took a moment to bring up the images of Fort Galloway from the UAV orbiting high overhead. “They’re finally launching their endgame.”

“No shit,” I said, sourly.

In the distance, I heard the sound of guns.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The enemy will try to operate inside your OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) loop by launching smaller attacks by Special Forces — or insurgents — to force you to react to the wrong threat while the main attack is underway. The scale of devastation such attacks can cause is considerable.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

“Report,” I snapped, as I heard the sound of mortars adding to the general chaos. “Status report, right bloody now!”

“Enemy forces are engaging the gate guard with automatic weapons and mortar fire,” TechnoMage said, looking at his console. Red lights were blinking into existence as more attacks were reported. I took one look and swore. Apart from Fort Galloway, all of our smaller garrisons and patrols were coming under attack. “Counter-battery laser fire is taking down the incoming rounds so far, but it’s only a matter of time before one gets through and wrecks havoc.”

I keyed my earpiece. “Status Red,” I ordered, quickly. It was an alert status that had to be declared, never assumed. An incoming handful of mortar rounds was no particular danger, but the sheer scale of the assault meant that a major attack was under way. If Fort Galloway was under attack as well as the spaceport — and all of the other garrisons — it suggested that the enemy was intent on knocking out both the Legion and the Svergie Army. Against the UNPF, their tactics might well have succeeded — the UNPF was known to be careful about keeping watch, or allowing soldiers to carry loaded weapons while off-duty — but against us? We’d find out very soon. “Get all the shuttles and aircraft to hangers; prep the helicopters for flight.”

“Sir,” someone objected, “they’ll have SAM missiles near the spaceport.”

“I know,” I snapped back. It was much easier to shoot down a heavily-laden helicopter leaving the spaceport than one that was in the air and ready to launch countermeasures upon demand. The enemy was probably hoping that we’d follow the UN pattern and launch the helicopters as soon as the attack began. “Hold them back until I command them to launch.”

A moment passed as more reports came in; a handful of light attacks in New Copenhagen and the other three cities. They didn’t seem to be anything like as bad as the Communist attacks, mainly designed to force us to keep our heads down until it was too late. The Communists had shown a astonishing lack of concern for civilian casualties, but the farmers and miners were more restrained. They might even have a sense of proper governance, unlike their Communist counterparts. I hoped briefly that Frida was alive and safe — we’d designed precautions to keep both the President and the Acting President safe in the event of another attack — but if we lost the coming battle, it wouldn’t matter. The enemy were clearly going for all the marbles. They were throwing away assets that could have been preserved, such as agents in the capital, and the only reason they would do that was if they expected the battle to be decisive.

“I’m going to the command centre,” I said, finally. “Peter can escort me there. Tech, keep looking for the location of the enemy command unit and call in fire if you locate it.”

“It’s hard to localise the sources of those encrypted transmissions,” TechnoMage said, grimly. “I suspect that the sources are actually moving.”

I nodded. With the William Tell on the other side of the planet — the attack had evidently been carefully timed — it would be much harder to trace the source of the signals, or even gain an overall impression of what the enemy were doing. The UAVs were doing what they could, but I was leery about using them; if one could be shot down, the others could be knocked down as well. I smiled to myself; one way or another, it probably didn’t matter. If we lost the coming battle, the enemy would probably try us as enemies of the people and sentence us to death.

“Swing two of the UAVs towards the north,” I ordered, finally. “I need real-time data on what the enemy is doing.”

“Yes, sir,” TechnoMage said. If he had any doubts about what I had ordered, he kept them to himself. “I’ll inform the pilots at once.”

The sound of shooting and explosions grew louder the second Peter and I stepped outside, keeping low in case of enemy snipers. The enemy infantrymen were attacking the main gate on the road leading to New Copenhagen, using automatic weapons and RPGs to make an impression on the defenders, but it looked as if the defenders were holding them at bay. We’d sealed the area, cleared fields of fire and laid down minefields and other nasty traps for anyone intent on hurting our main base. The infantrymen, lacking heavy support, wouldn’t be able to break in until we ran out of ammunition and that would be a long time in coming.

Peter insisted on going first, pistol in hand, as we moved towards the command centre. The spaceport was still a hive of activity, with men and women struggling to get the aircraft into the hardened shelters before the enemy got lucky with a mortar round, but everyone gave us a wide berth, except Russell. He ran over, weapon in hand, and was damn lucky not to be shot by accident. Peter’s acidic comment left no doubt of that.

“I’ve sent the cadets into the bunkers, apart from the most advanced class, which I’ve armed and placed on reserve duty,” Russell reported, as we stumbled together into the command centre. The roar of a Landshark moving to engage anyone who broke through the main gate deafened us for a long moment. “If the enemy breaks through, we can use them as back-up for the reserves. I hate to place them at risk like that, but if the enemy break in…”

“Good thinking,” I said. None of Russell’s charges would have believed it, but their Drill Sergeant cared intensely about each and every one of them, even the ones he chewed out on a regular basis. A Drill Sergeant had to be very cruel to be kind, most of the time, and none of them would have disputed that Russell was cruel, but he cared. Using cadets as infantrymen went against the grain. “Are the ones in the bunker armed?”

“Yes, sir,” Russell said, taking full responsibility for what could have been a dangerous decision. If some of them were enemy agents sent in to strike from the inside… well, they could have caused considerable damage before they’d been gunned down. The UN had lost bases that way; the senior officers hadn’t kept a close eye on who’d gone in and out, allowing the enemy a chance to slip infiltrators in and set bombs, or poison the drinking water. Even if they weren’t enemy agents, they’d barely been checked out on their weapons. The results could be disastrous. “If the enemy breaks in, they’ll be ready.”

“One would hope,” I agreed. The guards insisted on checking our identity; they’d moved into the sheltered interior, but there was no way in without passing them. I passed over my ID card without comment and pressed my thumb against the scanner when they asked for confirmation. Peter and Russell followed suit. “Come on.”

The interior of the command bunker, I was relieved to see, wasn’t full of panic and confusion. Robert, who’d been in command until I arrived, looked relieved to see me, even though he seemed to have been doing fine. The enemy had been doing fine as well; the number of red pinpricks on the display, each one marking an enemy attack against our forces, seemed to have multiplied into the hundreds. I silently cursed the UN for leaving so much war material and ammunition lying about, before focusing on the reports coming in from the main gate.

“I’m having B Company prepped to go out and chase the bastards away,” Robert said, obviously intending to take command himself as soon as I was fully briefed. “They’re pushing too close to us to drive them away without an infantry advance, but they’re obviously armed and well-prepared. They’ll pick off any tanks we send out without infantry support.”

I nodded. Infantrymen never believed it in the UN — where infantry and tanker units were kept well apart, for some stupid reason a bureaucrat had come up with years ago, but in the Legion, there was a great deal of crossing between different types of units — but tankers were often scared to death of infantry. It went both ways, of course; from the infantryman’s perspective, the tank was an invincible rumbling fortress, but the drivers knew that they could barely see, that their sensors were unreliable, and that an enemy with an antitank weapon or a Molotov Cocktail could ruin their day. The Landshark was a formidable weapon, but a lucky insurgent with a bottle of petrol could take one out, if they were lucky.

“See to it,” I agreed. The display showed that the enemy was attacking from all sides, but they only seemed to be making a real effort at the main gate. That wasn’t too surprising. The remainder of the base would be far harder to break into even with a preliminary bombardment. We hadn’t had to worry about moving in and out ourselves, so we’d rigged up even more unpleasant surprises for anyone stupid enough to try to break in. The barbed wire alone had caught a handful of Communists during the Communist Insurrection.

Robert hurried out as I turned my attention to reports from the other garrisons. We’d established a network of small patrol bases and garrisons intended to harass enemy fighters and prevent them from slipping close to the cities, and all of them had come under attack. The enemy had clearly been using the lull to lay their plans carefully, but it didn’t look as if most of the garrisons were going to be overrun. They didn’t have counter-mortar units shooting down incoming mortars, but they did have mortars of their own, armed with counter-battery radar. The main commanders of those bases were locals — I couldn’t spare many men from the Legion to command them, even if it wouldn’t have bred resentment — but they seemed to be doing fine. Only a handful had been caught so badly by surprise that it looked as if they were going to fall.

“Show me the feed from the UAV,” I ordered, cursing — not for the first time, naturally — my own position. I could issue orders and know that they would be obeyed, but I couldn’t actually do anything for myself. My Captains and Sergeants and even Privates would be hitting back at the enemy, but my duty would keep me well away from the front lines — unless the enemy brought them to my position. Even so, I wasn’t meant to be fighting, but staying alive to ensure continuity of command. I wanted to be out there, fighting back, yet what choice did I have? “I want to know what’s happening in the countryside.”

The UAV was skimming rapidly towards Fort Galloway, but even it was held back by demands from other sides, requesting real-time footage of what was going on around them. The ground seemed to be seething with enemy soldiers surrounding the various garrisons and pinning them down, while the handful of patrols that had been caught in the open seemed to be trapped — or being forced to surrender. I hoped that the enemy would treat their prisoners well — we hadn’t mistreated our own prisoners, but insurgents played by different rules and their media groupies whined when we played by their rules — but I remembered what the Freedom League had done to Muna and I and scowled. If they mistreated their prisoners, I would make them pay.

“Lieutenant Barrowman is reporting that his men are out of ammunition and are firmly trapped,” a dispatcher reported, breaking through my thoughts. “He’s decided to surrender and ask for terms.”

“Understood,” I said, looking through the eyes of the UAV as the soldiers offered surrender. Wary farmers surrounded them, cuffed them, and took them away on farm vehicles. I keyed a command into my console, warning the UAV to watch the farm vehicles and see where they ended up, but I knew it wasn’t going to be useful. We didn’t have enough UAVs to task one of them to observe the prisoners and their treatment full-time. It would have been different with a full satellite system and a set of intelligence analysts to maintain it, but Svergie wasn’t a wealthy world. It couldn’t have afforded such a system even if it could have built it. “Enter a note in the log; Lieutenant Barrowman had no choice and will not suffer any punishment for it, once he returns to us.”

“Yes, sir,” the dispatcher said. Under the UN, every POW had to be accounted for with so much paperwork that some POWs were simply reported as dead, just to keep the paperwork down to a handful of forests. A returning POW would be interrogated at length by the Security Directorate and the Political Officers, just to ensure that he or she hadn’t been contaminated by the exposure to the enemy. Some POWs on Heinlein had made the mistake of telling their interrogators — after they were returned — how much better Heinlein was to Earth and had never been seen again. We could afford to be a great deal more civilised than the UN.

My earpiece buzzed. “Sir, this is Robert,” Robert’s voice said. “We are preparing to engage the enemy now.”

“Understood,” I said. “Good luck.”

The sound of mortars grew louder as we fired our own shells back at the enemy positions, forcing them to duck and cover, while B Company advanced out of the rear gate. The enemy hadn’t pressed an assault against that section — I wasn’t sure why, unless they only had limited manpower — and it was an oversight that cost them dearly. Backed up by a pair of tanks and several APCs, the men of B Company cleared the enemy away from that section and started to circle around the spaceport, hunting for the site of the enemy mortar teams. Even for highly-trained infantry, covering such ground took time, allowing the enemy a chance to redeploy their own forces to meet them. It was a chance that we weren’t going to allow them to use.

Another furious salvo of mortar fire pinned down the enemy as the tanks advanced from the main gate. They didn’t have to worry about the prospect of any of our people among the enemy and so they laid down massive waves of fire into anything that might have been a threat. An enemy antitank team, either very brave or very stupid, got off an antitank rocket and destroyed one of my tanks before being scythed down by its fellows. With B Company attacking from the flanks and the tanks advancing — now with infantry support themselves from C Company and local reserves — the enemy started to fall back. It was an attempt to gain time to counter our move, but again, we weren’t going to give them that time.

I keyed my earpiece quickly. “Launch the first helicopters,” I ordered, sharply. “The enemy is in disarray.”

The display updated as the first helicopter lumbered into the air, orbiting out over the spaceport and heading towards the enemy positions. The gamble seemed to have paid off; the enemy hadn’t had a chance to set up any antiaircraft weapons again to take pot shots at the helicopters, at least before the helicopters opened fire themselves. The enemy, deprived of anywhere to hide, melted away under the helicopters’ ruthless fire and died in droves. A handful threw their hands up in surrender, casting their weapons on the ground, but the vast majority tried to run. There was nowhere to hide from the helicopters, or the advancing counterattack.

“Take prisoners,” I ordered, when Robert contacted me to ask if we should bother. We needed to know what the prisoners knew, although the odds were that it wouldn’t be very much. I wouldn’t have sent people who knew everything into a position where they could be captured and interrogated by the enemy. I’d been captured myself, of course, but I hadn’t been going somewhere where I might expect to be captured. “Get them secured, then get them back to the guardhouse. I want the interrogators to pull out all the stops.”

Under the watchful eye of the helicopters, the handful of prisoners were rounded up, apart from a pair of men who were too badly wounded to last for very long. Robert’s men did the only thing they could and gave them a mercy killing, before setting out to survey the surrounding territory and looking for more enemy forces. I wouldn’t have put it past the enemy — and the intercepted transmissions suggested that I was right — to have an observer or two watching from a safe distance, just to report on what had happened to the enemy leadership. They would know that their assault on the spaceport had failed; indeed, that it hadn’t even come close to succeeding. Why…?

Because they wanted to pin us down, I realised, and swore under my breath. “Get me the feed from the UAV,” I snapped. I’d turned it away from watching what was happening in the north so that I could watch Robert’s men as they destroyed the enemy fighters. “Show me Fort Galloway.”

The UAV computer suggested something else I should look at, something that even the UN-issue program operating the UAV thought was important. I looked at it and swore. An entire army was advancing down from the mountains, towards New Copenhagen — and Fort Galloway. An entire modern armoured force. It looked to be about a Regiment in size.

“Shit,” I said, mildly. “Contact the garrisons and tell them to start deploying according to Alpha-Seven. We may have a bit of a serious fight on our hands.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

While a fort is useful in a counter-insurgency, it is rather less useful on a modern battlefield, where tanks and mobile artillery can hammer away at a fort’s advantages and cripple the defenders very quickly.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

Fort Galloway came under heavy attack first.

The Fort had been effectively invulnerable to the vast majority of the insurgents’ weapons. Machine guns and assault rifles had simply ricocheted off the Fort’s heavy walls and came down harmlessly in the area surrounding the Fort. Their light RPGs and even antitank weapons could do no more than scar the walls or perhaps slip through one of the firing slots if they were lucky — but even an interior detonation would do relatively little damage. Mortar rounds could do more damage, if they landed, but the point defence lasers could pick them off before they detonated and counter-battery fire could prevent the insurgents from launching the mass attack they would need to get a handful of rounds through the defences. And as for a ground assault… well, with clear fields of fire and a clear idea of how to defend a Fort, no ground assault could succeed unless the defenders ran out of ammunition. Ed had good grounds to feel that he could defend Fort Galloway indefinitely. The enemy had other plans.

The miners hadn’t used all of the war material the UN had left behind — they didn’t have the numbers or training to use all of it — but with some help from the Freedom League, they’d managed to get most of the armoured units working, without being noticed from orbit. They’d risked blowing their cover when they’d downed the UAV, but they’d had no choice; they needed to mass their forces without being spotted. Once their first assault had begun, keeping my forces pinned down and distracted, they’d started the advance, moving a formidable Regiment-sized force down towards New Copenhagen. This was the nightmare that the President had predicted; outright civil war, with devastation as the only winner.

The UN hadn’t been keen on heavy artillery — it hadn’t needed many self-propelled guns, as it could always call in fire from orbit — but it had abandoned several dozen self-propelled guns and rocket launchers. Those were now brought to bear against Fort Galloway, smashing away at the Fort’s defences from outside its mortar range. The hail of fire was too intense for the point defence lasers to stop more than a handful of the incoming shells, allowing the shells to come smashing down on the Fort and shattering the defences. The UN hadn’t provided them with armour-piecing shells, but it didn’t matter; the sheer weight of the bombardment was enough to break through the Fort’s defences and wreck havoc among the inhabitants. The walls started to crack and the barracks collapsed, shattering water bunkers and starting fires all over the Fort. The enemy wasn’t even sending in any infantrymen to attack under cover of the incoming fire; they were merely hammering the Fort to death from a very safe distance.

“You can’t hit back,” I said, to Ed. We were still in touch, but there was little we could do to help the beleaguered defenders. I was still rushing to get a defence line in place near New Copenhagen. If we couldn’t stop the enemy’s armoured thrust, we would lose the war and with it any hopes of preserving Svergie for civilisation. “You have to surrender.”

The line seemed to flicker as another series of shells shook the entire fortress. I didn’t want to think about how many of my men were dying in the attack, unable to even hit back at their tormentors. The UAV had launched all four of its rockets against the enemy self—propelled guns, but there hadn’t been enough rockets to take them all out. I thought about deploying the helicopters up to assist, but Ed had already lost his helicopters in the first assault and the enemy clearly had antiaircraft units. I’d be throwing away the helicopters for nothing.

“I understand,” Ed said, bitterly. The line fizzed again. “Don’t you dare let them get away with this!”

“I won’t,” I promised. I hated to see any of my men going into captivity, but there was clearly little choice. They were helpless to hit back; helpless to do anything, but die. “Good luck.”

I watched on the display as the Fort fired surrender flares into the air. I had wondered if the enemy would even know what they meant, but as the fire slacked off I allowed myself a moment of relief. The enemy had accepted the surrender. Their infantrymen approached Fort Galloway’s remains carefully, guided through the minefields by my men, and accepted Ed’s surrender. Ed would have purged the computers before surrendering and it was standing orders that nothing classified was to be committed to paper where it might be found, but it was quite possible that the Freedom League would interrogate Ed and his men. They wouldn’t be able to use drugs on their captives — or, at least, on anyone who actually knew anything — but torture, isolation and other tricks would definitely have an effect. I silently prayed that they’d be safe, and then deliberately turned my attention to the enemy’s armoured force, rushing southwards towards New Copenhagen. I didn’t want to watch the surrender.

“Warn the other garrisons to deploy with antitank weapons,” I ordered, tightly. The garrisons had had the same advantages as Fort Galloway, but they would be just as helpless against the self-propelled guns as Ed had been. “I want them to slow up the enemy as much as possible.”

“They have ninety tanks, all apparently late-model Landsharks, and over a hundred transports and supply trucks,” TechnoMage said, though my earpiece. “They all appear to be in quite good condition, but they don’t seem to have the experience that we have — at least, not yet.”

“We’re going to need that advantage,” I said, grimly. Our own armoured units were still being deployed north of New Copenhagen. The enemy was in a race to get there first — who gets there first with the most usually wins — and they didn’t have to worry about insurgents. They didn’t have to worry about bridges, either; there were no convenient bridges we could knock down to slow their advance. We’d war-gamed the entire scenario quite thoroughly back when we’d arrived and the best we’d done was hold the enemy at the gates of the city. “Contact the pilots of the UAV craft; I want them to concentrate on hitting the enemy supply trucks and slowing the bastards down, whatever it takes.”

“Understood,” TechnoMage said. “I’ll issue the orders at once.”

“Get me the Acting President,” I ordered, and went into my office. I had to talk to Frida. There were decisions to make that only she could make. “Frida; I’m afraid there is some bad news.”

* * *

Captain Jörgen Hellqvist and his men, after months of manning Garrison Nine and patrolling the surrounding area, knew it at least as well as the farmers who came out to attack the garrison from time to time. As soon as they drove the insurgents away, Jörgen pushed out patrols from his two Companies as far as he dared, forcing the insurgents to remain well clear of his position. A single isolated farmhouse, used by a handful of insurgents for a last stand, was burned to the ground, but other contacts just faded away. When the warning came in about incoming tanks, Jörgen deployed his men and prepared to meet them.

“Don’t fire until I open fire myself,” he said. The miners were following a fairly predictable path as they raced down towards the city, barely bothering with outriders or infantry support. Jörgen had actually trained on armour briefly while he’d been preparing to become a Captain and knew some of their weaknesses. The enemy could have driven cross-country, but that would have wrecked the fields and seriously annoyed the farmers. “Mark your tanks and get ready.”

The roar of the enemy vehicles drew closer and he braced himself for action. If the tankers knew — or guessed — that his men were there, they would open fire and the ditches and trees would provide absolutely no cover at all. They should have deployed infantry to flush out any watching soldiers, but they were concentrating on the race to the city instead. Jörgen kept reminding himself of that; they might not be able to stop the tanks, but they could certainly slow them down enough to buy time for the defenders of the city to get ready.

“Take aim,” he whispered. They were already within engagement range, but he wanted to make every shot count. “Take aim… and fire!”

He pulled the trigger on the UN-issue Knife missile and saw it lance out, propelled by a wave of flame, until it struck a tank directly on the vehicle’s forward armour. It was the best-protected part of the tank, but it didn’t matter to the knife missile, which produced a wave of superheated flame that burned through the armour and killed the crew inside. A moment later, the ammunition in the tank exploded and sent the entire vehicle up in a fireball. He dumped the remainder of the launcher on the ground — it couldn’t be used again — and ducked back into what pitiful shelter there was. Seven enemy tanks had been destroyed and two more had been damaged, but the remainder, now aware of the threat, opened fire savagely, slashing through trees and hedgerows to strike back at their tormentors.

Jörgen crawled, keeping as low as he could, away towards the fallback position as the enemy started to dismount their infantry, which ran into machine-gun fire from prepared positions. The tankers attempted to provide support to their fellows, only to reveal their lack of training and experience. Jörgen was able to escape along with most of his men, leaving the enemy behind licking their wounds.

“Get into the jeeps,” he muttered, as the enemy infantry started to patrol carefully after them. In their place, he would have withdrawn and kept advancing against New Copenhagen, although more carefully. If they wanted to waste time chasing his men that was fine with him; it just gave them a chance to set up another ambush further down the road. “We’ll meet up again at point seven.”

* * *

I watched Captain Jörgen Hellqvist’s encounter with the enemy as I spoke briefly to Frida. “The enemy force is going to be at New Copenhagen by late afternoon, at their current rate,” I said. It didn’t look as if Jörgen had delayed them enough to make them rethink their plans; indeed, it almost looked as if they had learned a few lessons and were pushing forward as fast as they could. “We might be able to stop it, but it will be chancy. You might want to think about moving your government somewhere else for a few days.”

“If they take New Copenhagen and wipe out most of the army in the fighting, they’re going to win anyway,” Frida said. She sounded tired and depressed, but at least she wasn’t on the verge of giving up. Whatever she thought, I knew that the Freedom League and their stooges had to be stopped, whatever it took. A government under their influence — a government that could not be proved to be under their influence — would be disastrous. They would have a base for further expansion and attacks on the Federation. “If that happens, I’ll be better staying here and trying to negotiate a peace if they punch through your defence line.”

“You won’t have many cards left to play,” I wanted. Russell, against his strong feelings, was moving up the cadets to serve as a mobile reserve. The enemy was largely untrained — indeed, looking at them, I had the feeling that they had learned most of their tactics from UN training manuals, generally a bad idea — but we only had a small cadre of experienced soldiers. “If we lose, the best you can do is offer to recognise their supremacy.”

“Then I will have to play that card,” Frida said. She laughed, suddenly. “Oh, come on, Andrew; the Progressive Party is on the verge of splitting apart and both sides are not happy with the thought of me as leader for the next few years, let alone the next election. Even if we win the war, I don’t think I’ll be Party Leader or President for much longer. Between your advice and the insurgency, I don’t have much political capital left at all. What do I have to lose?”

I smiled back at her. “I understand,” I said. I thought about ordering her guards to transfer her to one of the other cities, but she was right. If we lost the Battle of New Copenhagen, we’d have lost everything. The Legion’s first contract would also be its last. A real mercenary unit would probably start thinking of ways to switch sides now, or withdraw from the planet, but neither was an acceptable solution. The real mission had to succeed. “See you on the other side, then.”

Her face vanished from my display and I called up the latest results from the UAV overflights. The enemy were taking a beating, but they were remaining together — even though they were shooting up plenty of innocent hedgerows. Some of my units had been leaving IEDs and other surprises behind for them; Jock and the other Specials had managed to shoot one of their commanding officers from an impossible distance — or at least a distance that should have been impossible. Jock’s personal sniper rifle came from Heinlein and was vastly superior to anything from the UN. I hadn’t understood why until Russell had pointed it out. The UN put weapons design in the hands of a single committee, while Heinlein had hundreds of gun designers, each building on the achievements of their predecessors. The results should have been inevitable; Heinlein had enjoyed supremacy in weapons design until the UN fell apart and other planets started their own programs.

I keyed my earpiece with a grim smile. “Muna, start moving all the dependents up to the Julius Caesar,” I ordered, shortly. If we lost the coming fight, at least the dependents would be safe in orbit. Fleet would ensure that they returned to Botany or… well, wherever else they wanted to go. If we lost, the Legion of the Dispossessed would be completely dispossessed — and wiped out. “Go yourself as well; I just want security here handled by C Company and the reserves. There’s no point in worrying about the spaceport if we lose New Copenhagen.”

“I’m staying here,” Muna said, firmly. “I’ll move the dependents up to the starship, but I’m staying with you and the others.”

I sighed, but I knew better than to argue. “I understand,” I said. I seemed to be saying that a lot lately, rather than simply barking orders. Was it just me, or did everyone have a death wish these days? “You’ll have command of the spaceport then; if we lose, move the remainder of the defenders up to space and then… and then do whatever seems best.”

“Yes, sir,” Muna said. “Take care.”

The line disconnected. I took one final look around my office, remembering the plans we’d developed and the times I’d had with Suki — wherever she was now — and then pulled on my battledress and body armour. I always hated wearing the UN-issue gear, but there was little choice now. I checked my webbing and made certain that I had enough ammunition for my pistol and assault rifle and then stepped out of the office. Peter was waiting for me there, carrying his own rifle and enough ammunition to fight the war on his own.

“Ready, sir?”

“Yes,” I said, allowing him to lead me out of the command bunker. “Let’s move.”

The spaceport seemed emptier, somehow, now that most of the defenders had gone to join the defence line at New Copenhagen. The helicopter remaining on the pad was the only one left at the spaceport, an assault helicopter waiting for two final passengers — myself and Peter. We climbed onboard, took one last look around the spaceport, and gave the pilot the ok. The helicopter launched itself down the runway and staggered into the air, the pilot watching closely for signs of enemy antiaircraft teams waiting for us in the shadows. Nothing rose from the ground to challenge us, or to attempt to impede us, allowing the helicopter to fly west without any problems.

I leaned forward to peer over the pilot’s shoulder towards New Copenhagen. The city seemed oddly peaceful compared to the Communist Insurgency; there were only a handful of burning buildings and most of them were definitely under control by the fire brigade. The city seemed prepared for the final battle, which was more than could be said for me, or my men. I’d have preferred to have several more years to prepare, to raise more troops and get the new farms producing food… but I’d given the enemy no choice. They had to attack before we broke the farmer food monopoly and used it as leverage to win the war.

Peter looked over at me as the helicopter swooped down towards the command post, north of the city. I could barely see it from the air. Even a Fleet-issue orbiting observation system would have problems locating it. “Credit for your thoughts, sir?”

“My thoughts are a Decicredit apiece,” I said, but the joke fell flat. The anticipation of battle was concentrating minds wonderfully. “I was thinking that if we win today, we win everything, but if we lose, we lose everything as well.”

Peter smiled. “That’s what comes of being a Captain-General,” he said, dryly. I laughed dryly at his words. “I just take each day as it comes and worry about the future when it happens.”

I shrugged as I stepped out of the helicopter. In the distance, the guns were already starting to pound. The final battle had begun.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

A decisive battle is actually rare in the history of warfare. Normally, it takes more than one battle to win a war and the balance of power will have shifted completely before the ‘decisive’ battle.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The enemy had made one mistake, I realised as I took my position in the command post; they’d mistimed their arrival so that the William Tell was high overhead. They might have suspected — the Freedom League definitely would have suspected — that we had a link to the destroyer and a live feed from her sensors, but they had been delayed enough to fail to reach New Copenhagen before the destroyer returned to a position from which it could observe their arrival. The enemy force — at least the armoured units and self-propelled guns — were clear on my display.

“Open fire as soon as they come into range,” I ordered, contacting our own long-range guns. We didn’t have as heavy an artillery section as I would have liked, but at least we now had locals trained on the heavy guns, allowing me to pull back my own people to their original units. “Use the live feed from the UAV” — officially, we were getting the information from an orbiting UAV with strictly limited protocols — “to adjust fire for effect.”

I heard the sound of the heavy guns booming in the distance, answered seconds later by the enemy guns as they fired back at their opponents. The telemetry from the destroyer suggested that they’d mounted lasers on trucks as well, using them to detonate shells well short of their target, making it harder to hammer them into dust. Without them, we would have smashed their force with artillery long before they reached the city. We were using lasers as well, but at least we had our forces dug in and ready to withstand a bombardment.

“Target their laser units with units A to D,” I ordered, knowing that it might be futile. The enemy would have assigned self-protection as their lasers highest priority. They’d be foolish not to do so, but if we spread out our fire to force them to divide their attention, it was quite likely that we’d get a few shells through their defences. It was a shame that we didn’t have self-guiding shells, but the UN had always considered them too expensive to purchase for anything other than the direst need. “Warn the first line to stand ready to repel attack.”

The enemy weren’t waiting for their shells to batter us down. Their commander had evidently come to the same conclusion that I had, or perhaps he — or she — believed that a long siege worked in our favour. Their infantry were advancing under cover of rockets launched from a UN MLRS towards our lines, forcing our men to duck and cover before scrambling into position to return fire. The display kept updating as both sides targeted each other, one trying to break through the lines, the other trying to keep them back.

“They’re running into the minefield,” Robert observed, from his position. I’d thought that he’d be taking command of B Company, but we’d decided to hold B Company and most of the tanks in reserve. If we broke the enemy advance, we could use them to drive the enemy from the field. “I wonder if it will slow them down…”

I watched as the enemy infantry fell back in shock and dismay, and then the MLRS opened fire again, rocketing the entire area and detonating the mines. I had to admire the solution, although it wouldn’t have worked perfectly against a properly-laid minefield. There are minefields on Heinlein and countless other worlds that are still deadly to anyone unfortunate enough to walk across them. The locals had been clearing the minefields for years and they were still dangerous. This time, as the enemy advanced, they encountered less resistance.

“The 3rd is falling back to the secondary lines,” Jock’s voice said, through my earpiece. “I request permission to wreck havoc on the enemy lines.”

“Go for it,” I said, flatly. Jock and the remainder of the Specials had been sent into the area between our lines and the enemy, hopefully hidden from all, even the orbiting destroyer. He’d had plans to hit the enemy from the rear, but I wasn’t sure how well they would work out with the enemy on alert. “Kick their butts.”

The sound of firing grew louder as the enemy infantry advanced on the secondary line. This time, my infantry called in artillery fire on their enemies, summoning mortars and short-ranged guns to bombard the advancing soldiers, who were ripped apart by the incoming fire. A handful set up their own mortars and returned fire, but they couldn’t bring enough fire to bear on our positions to force us to fall back again. I was tempted to send the reserves forward to add to the 3rd’s strength, but I held them back on impulse. I had the feeling that I was going to need them.

An explosion, powerful enough to shake the ground even at such a distance, billowed up from the enemy lines. Jock must have hit something, I decided, or a shell had broken through and come down on a supply truck loaded with ammunition. I keyed my earpiece, hoping to hear from him, but there was no response. It was as cold and silent as the grave. I hoped — desperately — that he and his team were still alive, but there was no way to know until after the battle. The enemy were pushing closer, right into the killing ground.

“They’re advancing their tanks now,” one of the dispatchers said. “They’re not even trying to be subtle; they’re just advancing right at the defence line.”

“Keep an eye out for a trick,” I ordered. There might have been a certain amateurishness about the enemy’s armoured tactics, but anyone who scanned a UN manual on tank operations would learn that charging a position equipped with antitank guns was asking for disaster. If they were sending their tanks forward they were either idiots, which I wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of, or they had something cunning up their sleeves and were using the tanks to distract us. “Warn the 3rd to stand by with antitank weapons.”

I watched grimly as the tanks lumbered across the battlefield and opened fire with their machine guns at extreme range, choosing not to come any closer and run right into the antitank weapons. Their tactic did make a certain kind of sense; as long as those heavy machine guns were blazing over the 3rd’s position, they couldn’t shoot back, but it was keeping their own infantrymen down as well. The ground was being chewed up by the bullets and everyone was ducking for cover. I thought about sending in the helicopters to hammer the tanks, but it was too dangerous as long as the enemy kept their antiaircraft weapons in position to cover their advancing forces. They’d see the helicopters coming a mile off.

“Call in mortar fire on those tanks,” I ordered grimly, as the tanks pressed forward slowly. It was enough to make me wonder if they had access to orbital reconnaissance as well… and then I understood what they were doing. There were birds flying in the air where most birds would have had the sense to flee for their lives, which suggested — shouted, rather — that most of those birds were UAV craft. I keyed my radio and ordered the machine guns to shoot them down, but as the birds started to evade our fire — dropping the pretence that they were anything other than common birds — I realised that the enemy had other tricks up their sleeves. The UAV birds flashed down towards the trench lines and exploded; a moment later, the tanks gunned their engines and raced forward, charging through the mud to press their advantage.

A tank — and a second tank — exploded as antitank rockets slammed into them and blew them into raging fireballs, but the remainder kept coming, hosing down any possible threat with their machine guns. The 3rd hadn’t been trained for such intensity of fire and panic spread through the ranks, sending soldiers running for their lives where many of them were mown down by the tanks. I found it hard to blame them; yesterday, they’d been fighting a counter-insurgency campaign and now they were taking on some of the most fearsome weapons of modern war. The UAV birds had cleared the way.

The mortars opened fire, forcing the tanks to fall back slightly, but the enemy infantry were already advancing into the next set of lines. I saw a tank explode as a mortar round came down right on top of it, but the remainder were unharmed; they wouldn’t be harmed by anything short of a direct hit. The drivers realised what we taught our own tankers in training school and gunned their engines, pushing forward despite the increasing weight of fire. They thought that they were invincible.

“Move the 1st forward to counter their advance,” I ordered, tightly. It was a risk, but if they tore through the lines they’d probably win the battle. We wouldn’t even be able to withdraw in good order… and even if we did, where would we go? The spaceport couldn’t be used to evacuate all of us before the enemy arrived and captured it. “Warn the tankers to be prepared for their own advance.”

I hoped it wouldn’t come to that — the Landsharks weren’t really designed to take on other tanks — but I’d bet on our tankers against theirs if there was no other choice. The enemy infantry were slowing down again — they seemed to have an unlimited supply of infantry, which didn’t strike me as being very fair, but they probably had the same impression about us — as our bombardment sharpened, but their tanks kept pushing forward gently, despite losing several more to antitank guns. Captain Jörgen Hellqvist and the remains of his unit fought a desperate battle to prevent the enemy from overrunning the trench lines, before falling back and detonating IED weapons in the enemy’s path, forcing them to slow down and check for more. The soldiers booby-trapped their dead comrades’ bodies with grenades before leaving, allowing them to strike one final blow in defence of their planet.

The meat-grinder rolled on. I threw in some of my reserves, slowing the enemy down again, even as the enemy sprung their surprise. As they’d sent their tanks forward, they’d sent infantry out to circle around our positions and try to come at us from the rear. They encountered the men of B Company in their position, waiting for the order to advance, and fell back in disarray at the precise and deadly fire that tore into their position. A UAV launched a spread of missiles at what we hoped was the enemy command vehicle, but only one missile made it through the lasers to detonate… and the enemy seemed barely slowed, if at all, by the attack. I decided that intelligence had probably gotten the details wrong…

“Incoming fire,” Peter snapped. He tackled me and knocked me to the ground just before I heard the whine of incoming shells and felt the shock as they detonated bare meters from the command post. The entire complex blacked out as the explosions cut power lines and damaged computers; emergency power, coming on a few seconds later, could only activate a handful of the computers. “Sir, this place is no longer tenable.”

“Probably,” I said, pulling myself to my feet. Peter’s weight was considerable. Did the enemy know what they’d done? We’d trained our people to use their initiative where necessary, but with the command links severed it would be harder to control the overall battle. “We need to fall back to the secondary command post.”

Outside, the noise of fighting was loud enough to damage my eardrums, even with the earpiece communicator that also served as an ear protector. I covered my ears as Peter ran ahead, scouting for new threats as we followed, keeping low to avoid flying shrapnel. There were dead bodies even in the rear, men and women killed by debris from incoming shells and mortar rounds, and we ducked around them as we fled towards the secondary command post. It dawned on me, in a moment of pure amusement, that we probably looked ridiculous, but who cared? We had to stay alive. I was still smiling as we burst into the secondary command post and met the relieved gaze of the dispatchers, who’d suddenly found themselves coordinating a battle.

“Sir, you’re alive,” the leader said. “We feared we’d lost you when the command links went down.”

“Rumours of my death, etcetera, etcetera,” I said, as I took the command chair and summoned up the live feed from the destroyer. The enemy seemed to have stalled on the fourth defence line, but were bringing up their heavy guns to try and pound the defenders into paste before they advanced again. I couldn’t fault the tactics, but it was evident now that it had just been a lucky shot that had knocked out my command post. If they had known what they’d done, they would have used our brief confusion to push their advantage as far as they could. “Do we have full command links?”

”Yes, sir,” the dispatcher said. “We confirmed the links as soon as the primary command post went off the net and all units confirmed the switch in command, ah…”

“Good work,” I said. He was probably worrying that he’d overstepped himself, but the truth was that he’d done exactly the right thing, and done it just in time. Verifying the command links took time that we no longer had. The fourth defence line was the final one before we were reduced to fighting house-to-house in the suburbs. I didn’t want to do that if it could be avoided. New Copenhagen had been damaged enough already by the Communist Uprising. How simple everything had seemed in those days. “Contact the tankers and tell them that I want them prepared to execute a pincer manoeuvre on my mark.”

I drew my fingers across the touch-sensitive screen, drawing out what I wanted them to do. “And contact the gunnery commander,” I added. “On my mark, I want them to throw everything — go to rapid fire; don’t worry about the amount of shells used — at the lasers and the antiaircraft systems.”

Another chain of explosions in the distance underlined my words. “The gunnery commander acknowledges, sir,” the dispatcher said. “They’re standing by…”

I took a long breath. “Stand by,” I ordered, coldly. “Stand by… fire!”

The guns opened fire as one, sending a hail of shells towards their targets, followed by another, and another. Rapid fire exhausted the supply bunkers pretty quickly, but it no longer mattered. If we won, we’d have all the time we needed to re-supply, but if we lost… it wouldn’t matter. It also gave their point defence lasers some serious problems; if they failed to knock down all of the shells, the odds of a direct hit rose sharply. The shells might not have been supremely accurate — although we had better gunners than they had — but the more that landed, the higher the odds of a direct hit. I had one advantage they no longer had, either; I could watch from orbit as the shells crashed down and see their effects. The enemy were trying to pull back their antiaircraft systems now, but it was too late; one by one, they were destroyed, or tipped over, by the incoming shells.

Got you, you bastards, I thought.

“Contact Captain Yuppie,” I ordered. “The helicopters are to go on the offensive; NOW!”

We had held the helicopters back well out of range, but now they gunned their engines, racing forward like bats out of hell, hunting for their targets. The attack helicopters are dreaded by the tankers for very good reason — a single helicopter rocket can blow a tank apart with a direct hit — and now the miners no longer had anything covering them. The helicopters swooped out of the sky and opened fire; their first pass turned half of the enemy tanks into flaming debris. Their second pass, as the enemy struggled to hit back at them with machine guns and even RPGs, annihilated most of the enemy supply line. One helicopter, despite the armour, was blown apart and sent crashing to the ground, but the others escaped, leaving the enemy force shattered.

“Send in the tanks and B Company,” I ordered. The enemy hadn’t had the time to set up their own defence lines. They might even surrender — those who had survived. “Keep pushing. Don’t let them escape.”

I watched as the tanks advanced from the front and B Company from the flanks. The enemy force was in complete disarray and hundreds of their men were simply throwing up their hands in surrender. B Company’s soldiers paused long enough to secure the prisoners and then kept pushing, forcing the remainder to surrender, or die. Ten minutes after the helicopters had made their devastating pass, it was all over.

“My God,” I said, as the full scale of the devastation became apparent. Between us, we had wrecked what had once been a nice place for children. The entire area would have to be completely reshaped and cleared of military ordinance, unless we decided to keep it as a memento of the price of civil war. It might make an interesting museum, or perhaps the planetary government would prefer to forget. The butcher’s bill was beyond belief. Hundreds of our men had died and thousands of enemy fighters had joined them, or had surrendered themselves into our hands. The cost of the lost equipment alone would put a major hole in the Legion’s budget — and why was I worrying about that when so many had died? “What have we done?”

“It is good that war is so terrible,” Russell said, afterwards, “or else we might become too fond of it.”

Chapter Forty

The ending of a war, if not handled properly, can lay the seeds for the next war. History is full of examples, from the ending of World War One to the final Arab-Israeli War of 2024, where the victors failed to enforce just peace terms upon the losers and ended up the worse for it. Politics, as always, remains the womb of war.

–Army Manual, Heinlein

The Peace Treaty was signed two weeks after the Battle of New Copenhagen.

I’d advised Frida on how to handle it, from agreeing to some of their terms to pushing forward the ultimate requirements of the planetary government. Some of the Svergie Army recruiting would come from the countryside, but there would no longer be any private militias or fighting forces, although there was nothing the government could do about the spread of guns. Disarming the entire planet would be an impossible task and it would restart the fighting. We could do, I said, without that and Frida reluctantly agreed. Gun ownership would remain part of the planet’s constitution for a long time to come.

The development of the new farms provided the impetus for major social change. The victory in the war ensured that Frida’s program would continue — her Party, naturally, was swearing undying loyalty to her again, even as they sharpened the knives for her back — and most of the population would find themselves moved out the countryside soon enough. With the end of the war, it was possible to work more officially with the farmers to develop the new farms — and avoid some of the more common mistakes, such as too-extensive government regulation. The new farms would provide enough food to keep the planet alive without the need for looting the old farms, while the planet might even build up a food surplus.

Not everyone was happy, to be fair. The miners had driven a hard bargain — it helped that no one actually wanted to restart the war — but some of the funds gained by selling their ore would definitely go to them and help expand the mines with modern technology. I suggested that in the long run it wouldn’t matter — given twenty years, the planet could probably build an asteroid mining industry, more than enough to supply the planet’s needs — but their representatives had to have something to take back to their people. If they hadn’t been able to convince them to accept the peace treaty, we might have had to spend the next few years chasing them through the mountains.

The one sticking point had been the Freedom League. I’d insisted that their representatives be turned over to us as part of the deal, but when they’d arrived at the spaceport they’d all been dead, killed by an implanted suicide device. The miners wouldn’t have had the tech to scan for it even if they had thought to do so, and I didn’t hold them to account for it, but it was still galling. The proof that Fleet needed, the proof that could have been used to push other worlds into clamping down on the Freedom League, was missing. They hadn’t even brought very much to Svergie; merely themselves and their knowledge. It had been their influence that had convinced the miners to launch the Battle of New Copenhagen, knowing that if the battle failed, they were lost anyway. I would have cheerfully strangled them for that decision — the overall death toll had been over four thousand people, including hundreds of civilians who had been killed by shells that overshot their targets — but they had killed themselves to avoid interrogation.

I watched as Councillor Erik Henriksson and Councillor Albin Arvidsson signed their parts of the treaty, before reassuming their role as Councillors. The voting boundaries were going to be redrawn as well, giving the farmers and miners additional representation, although that would include the new farms as well. I suspected that it wouldn’t work out well for them in the long run — the more of any group there were, the less chance of actual unity — but they were happy for the moment. So, I suspected, was Frida; she no longer had to worry about the prospect of a coup from the Progressive Party. The Progressive Party itself was on the verge of splintering apart.

“That’s my father up there,” a voice said behind me. I turned to see Suki standing there. She flinched back from my gaze. “He said I ought to go talk to you before you left.”

I nodded, tightly. One of the terms of the Peace Treaty was that all foreign mercenaries were to leave the planet, apparently on a quid pro quo basis for the loss of the Freedom League. I wasn’t unhappy with that, although naturally I’d protested and finally got them to agree to a phased withdrawal period of six months; the planet no longer needed us. The officers and men we’d trained could take over, aided by the men and women who had formed ties to Svergie and would be resigning from the Legion to remain on the planet. There had been some dark mutterings about traitors, but I had squashed them. If some of us had found a new home on the planet, more power to them. I doubted that I would ever consider Svergie home.

“Indeed?” I asked, coldly. It was easy to allow her to lead me into a private room. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Suki said, biting her lip. It made her look absurdly young. Suki, like most others who had fought on the losing side, had been granted amnesty, but she was damn lucky she hadn’t encountered Peter, or Muna. Peter wanted to tear off her head and shit down her neck. Muna just wanted her dead. The planet would probably be spending the next few hundred years settling scores after the civil war, then settling new scores created by settling the first scores...I rather suspected that several thousand people were likely to take a new boat and move out to settle one of the empty continents. “I didn’t know what the Freedom League was like.”

“We took you in,” I said. I heard the betrayal in my voice. Suki flinched back as if I’d slapped her. “We gave you a home, a purpose, training… and you decided to throw it all away for the Freedom League.”

She showed, for the first time, a flash of anger. “You weren’t there at the end,” she snapped, angrily. “You didn’t see how that bitch pushed my father into authorising the final assault on New Copenhagen, or how they tried to take control of the entire war effort, or… you don’t know what they’re like.”

“I’ve seen their handiwork before,” I said, tiredly. Outside the private room, the delegates were cheering the end of the war and the beginning of a new era. Their jubilation would last only until they realised that building a new world would take time and effort, but for the moment they were happy. “You betrayed us, Suki. How do you expect me to look past that? No one can ever trust you again?”

“I know,” she said. “I knew what I was doing when I went into it. I’m sorry and that’s all I have to say to you.”

She marched past me, opened the door and stepped outside. I expected her to pause and deliver a final crushing retort, but instead she closed the door behind her and vanished into the crowd. It was hard to feel sympathy for her, I decided, even though part of my body was making a very urgent argument to forgive her. She had made her own bed and now she could sleep in it — alone. I shook my head and headed out of the room myself, over to the President’s wheelchair. He looked up at me and smiled.

“Thank you for everything,” he said. His voice was weaker than I remembered, but he was definitely recovering from the sniper shot — it felt like years ago now, instead of nine months. “I’m just sorry that we couldn’t keep you and your men around for longer.”

We shared a wry smile. I had the feeling that he, at least, knew who I was truly working for and why, but he wouldn’t share it with anyone. He’d grown into a statesman the hard way, just as Frida had grown into a stateswoman herself. He knew what most of the politicians in the room preferred to forget; power came with costs and sometimes those costs included lives. It was something that many people never learned.

“It’s not a problem,” I assured him. It wasn’t as if the Legion was going to be short of work, even if we had been a common mercenary army rather than one of Fleet’s more covert operatives. “Do you think that the peace will hold?”

“Oh, I imagine that it will,” the President said. “Now you’ve broken the power base that kept people trapped in the cities, using them as tame voters, the planet can settle down to a more reasonable developmental pattern. We might even seek outside investment that we can use to build a space industry. The possibilities are endless.”

“I suppose they are,” I said, catching sight of one of the former POWs on the other side of the room. One non-negotiable condition of the peace treaty had been the immediate return of all POWs; ours and theirs, and Ed and his men had returned to us. The farmers had kept them well-separated from the Freedom League, which was something we owed them for; the Freedom League had apparently wanted to interrogate them heavily. “Good luck.”

“You too,” the President said. “And know that you have the thanks of a grateful population and government. If there’s anything we can ever do for you…”

“We won’t hesitate to ask,” I assured him. There was no longer any reason for me to stay at the conference hall, so I nodded goodbye and waved to Peter. “Coming?”

The ride back to the spaceport passed quickly.

* * *

Day followed day as we prepared to depart. The officers who had been promoted in the wake of the Battle of New Copenhagen were put through their paces, helped — this time — by a growing officer corps native to Svergie. The Drill Sergeants Russell and his men had picked out were given responsibility for basic training and watched like hawks until they had proved themselves. Training was finally moved to a training field on the other side of the main continent, leaving the spaceport and the barracks we had created feeling slightly empty. It was the end of an era.

“We can replenish most of what we lost from local supplies,” Muna assured me, one evening. Perhaps she felt the same way too about leaving, but she had no ties to Svergie to keep her here, unlike the men who had gotten married in the last few months. We’d be down nearly four hundred men when the dust finally settled, but we could get replacements for them fairly easily. Quite a few Svergie men had volunteered to remain with the Legion rather than stay on the planet. “We only really need to pay for the new shuttles and UAV craft.”

“Make out a list of stuff we can purchase and we can pick it up from Heinlein,” I said. We’d be swinging through the Heinlein System after we departed anyway. “They should be able to meet most of our requirements.”

My earpiece buzzed before Muna could answer. “Sir, this is Thomas down in dispatch,” a voice said. “A Fleet battleship just entered the system and her Captain has demanded that you come onboard personally.”

“Understood,” I said. I knew who had to be onboard that ship. I also knew that delay would merely irritate Fleet. “Tell them that I’m on my way.”

There were only ever three battleships in existence and one of them was destroyed at the Battle of Earth, during John Walker’s coup. The UN had built them as prestige craft for the high-ranking Admirals, wasting resources that could probably have been used to build a dozen cruisers for each battleship. The Percival Harriman was an impressive vessel — I wouldn’t have doubted that — but it was wasteful. Fleet had kept the two captured battleships, but they hadn’t bothered to build more. What could one battleship do that a dozen cruisers could not — and more besides?

I was met at the shuttlebay by a single officer, who escorted me through the ship’s corridors to Officer Country, and waved me into a single stateroom. I could have been convinced of the wastefulness of the battleships just by the Admiral’s stateroom — large enough to store extra missiles or emergency components — but my attention was distracted. It had been nearly two years since I last saw John Walker in the flesh.

“John,” I said, shaking his hand. “You’re looking well.”

“Liar,” John said. He still looked absurdly young for the Admiral’s uniform he wore — he couldn’t be older than thirty-five, if that — but he looked worn. “You still haven’t got rid of those scars, I see.”

“No, sir,” I said, taking the offered seat. It was easy to sit and banter with him, a distraction from the real purpose of the visit. “I feel that they add character to my face.”

“Someone lied to you,” John said, deadpan. “I read your reports — and Captain Price-Jones’ reports. You did very well down on Svergie. How long do you think it will last?”

I hesitated. I hated intelligence officers who made predictions — often just pulling the answers out of their behinds — but I understood why John was asking. If Svergie was reasonably stable, Fleet could encourage investment without fear of something blowing up in their face and forcing them to intervene openly.

“I think the new government will last until the elections in five years,” I said, finally. “The worst of the effort involved in creating the new farms will be over by then, so I suspect that the Progressives will probably find themselves weakened to the point where they have to adapt or be replaced by other parties — neither of which will threaten the planet’s new stability. Without us, the Svergie Army should still be able to handle any trouble that pops up now that the main body of the enemy force has been degraded and destroyed. After that…”

I shrugged. “It should hold together,” I concluded. “We broke the worst of their problems during the emergency situation.”

“Good enough,” John said. He looked relieved. “Not everyone on the Admiralty Board was happy with the concept of risking the Legion — or, rather, risking our activities being revealed — to try to save Svergie from itself. Now that it’s happened successfully, I think we can probably press for more interventions, while offering Svergie the trade credits it needs to make the jump to a space-based economy.”

“And ensure that it becomes a waypoint for the development of the sector,” I added. John didn’t bother to deny it. “Is it true that there will be nine more worlds founded in the next few years?”

“There are millions of people who want off Earth,” John confirmed. “There’s no way that they can all be housed in the solar system, even if the people who have already settled on Mars and Venus were willing to accept them — and they’re not. They made their feelings clear at the big conference on Unity last year. They will take some children, perhaps people with technical skills, but no one else.

“So we have to rush around trying to settle new colonies for them and force a lot of people who were basically just worthless parasites to actually become something useful. The shipping capability is stretched to breaking point even with the new starships coming off Heinlein’s production lines. If we can settle them and force them to work or starve, we will, but most of them would probably prefer to starve.”

I scowled. “I trust that you are not thinking of sending the Legion to Earth,” I said. “I wouldn’t go there on a bet.”

“I don’t think that the Legion could do anything even if you went,” John said. “Fleet Intelligence’s most optimistic projection is that half the population will die in the next few years. There’s a total biosphere collapse underway. We’re holding the orbital towers in hopes of keeping the gates open as long as we can, but God alone knows how many people are trapped down there without hope of anything, but death.”

“I’m surprised you’re even trying,” I said. If it was that hopeless, was John pouring Fleet resources down an endless hole? “I’m surprised that your fellows are allowing you to expend resources on saving them.”

John shrugged. “Earth still represents the largest human population in the Human Sphere,” he said, seriously. “If we can save as many as possible, we might be able to expand faster, maybe even get the Federation on its feet without another war.”

“Yeah,” I said. “How is the Federation coming along?”

“Slowly,” John admitted. “Half of them think that Fleet intends to become an Empire, the other half are out for what they can get for themselves and hang the rest. It’s total bloody chaos, not helped by the fact that there are people in Fleet who think that we should become an Empire, just to keep the children in line. If what you found implicates Heinlein… that demand is only going to grow stronger. Heinlein is definitely one of our problem children.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter for the moment,” he said. “Take your time; rest, recover, and prepare for your next deployment. Svergie is hardly the worst world out there, Andrew, and they all need fixing.”

I smiled. “Just call us the fixers,” I said. “It makes a change from breaking things in the name of the UN.”

The End

Svergie

A Short Guide

Svergie was originally discovered in 2206 by a UN survey team. The planet was rapidly assessed as a 95% — i.e. close to Earth, but lacking some vital components, including edible fauna — and the UN declared the planet open for bids in 2208. A consortium headed by the King of Scandinavia (a neo-federation of Sweden, Norway and Denmark) purchased settlement rights from the UN and major settlement began two years later. After considerable haggling between the various elected representatives, the planet was officially named by the Swedes, but the various cities were actually named by the other nationalities. A site near the ocean was selected as the location of Landing City, which was renamed New Copenhagen after Svergie officially gained self-government.

Owing to its distance from Earth — the Jump Drive was less efficient at that point — Svergie’s growth was surprisingly slow. This was a result of several factors, including a general feeling that development should be centred on small farming communities, rather than larger cities and orbital stations. The transit station established in orbit around Svergie was allowed to decay after the early settlement had been completed and — eventually — was decommissioned. Although there was a steady flow of immigrants from Earth — conditions were worsening on the planet as the UN took control — the planet’s population barely rose above the 10 million mark. It was generally regarded as a backwater and the population accepted that. They had no desire for galactic power.

This tranquillity was brought to an abrupt end when the UN Survey Team discovered the presence of vital minerals in the mountains and insisted on sending in ‘inspectors’ to assess the possibility of a mining operation. Correctly suspecting that the UN intended to claim the resources for themselves, the Svergie Government created a Mining Department that would mine a limited amount of ore and sell it to the UN. This didn’t please the UN bureaucrats sent to oversee the planet and, eventually, Svergie formally became a UN protectorate. A hundred years of independence had come to an end.

Originally, the UN presence was not onerous and it took a long time for resistance to form. Had the UN concentrated only on mining and ignored the rest of the planet, it is quite likely that real trouble would have been avoided for a long time. The bureaucrats, however, had other ideas and after an attempt to restructure local law to make it more ‘equitable’ proceeded with their own plans. As Svergie produced little that could be exploited, the bureaucrats attempted to make new opportunities… and, eventually, realised that new colonists could be dumped on the planet. At first, this was restricted to political exiles from Pan-Europe, but later this came to include refugee women from Indonesia and their children, a group that was socially and culturally very different to the original settlers. Matters were not helped by rumours that the newcomers carried diseases, or radical fundamentalist religious beliefs — and they certainly were not helped by the UN’s plan to feed them all. The bureaucrats intended to use the original settlers to feed the newcomers, without insisting that the newcomers worked for a living.

The first burst of resistance began with the Svergie Popular Front, which made a public protest to the UN Governor about the unsuitable settlers. Rather than being welcomed — protest was a right granted by the UN Regulations — they were arrested, charged with racism and hate speech, and locked up. Many died while trying to escape. Others served their terms and emerged driven by hatred for the UN. Armed resistance began soon afterwards and by 2467, the UN realised that it had a major insurgency on its hands. Svergie was not, however, important enough to rate major reinforcements and so the garrison hung on grimly, unable to retreat or counter-attack effectively.

Gustav Bergqvist, who later became the first President, formed the Liberty Party and managed to pull most of the resistance groups under his banner, earning himself a death sentence in absentia by the UN in the process. The differences between the various groups were pushed aside as they cooperated in launching more powerful attacks on the UN, yet neither side was able to actually win. The John Walker Coup, on Earth, ended the fighting and, after a brief set of negotiations, the UN withdrew from the planet.

Upon the eve of independence, Svergie possessed a population of 30 million, most of whom lived in the overcrowded four cities. The ethnic mix of the planet was badly scrambled by the UN, with the net result that the descendents of the original settlers live in the countryside and the later settlers live in the cities, where squalor and racism are rife. (To be fair, a number of later immigrants were accepted into the farming communities, generally as wives for younger sons.) It also possessed a small official militia, a dangerous political situation, and a location that made it important to the Human Sphere’s economy.

Content

Christopher G. Nuttall
PICKING UP THE PIECES

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Svergie A Short Guide