The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  He snorted at himself as he studied the display. Poor little rich man? He’d known a couple of aristocrats who’d joined the corps and made something of themselves ... hell, they’d been quite a few who hadn’t gone anything like that far and yet had turned into quite decent people. The mansion owner, the effective ruler of the entire planet, had shut himself away in a hive of luxury ... he could have surrounded himself with friends, or at least sycophants, if he’d wished. And yet, he hadn’t even had a dedicated close-protection team. Gerald was sure the enemy CEO had felt safe. He’d probably had good reason.

  “Sir,” Colonel Patel said. “We have secured corridors through and around the city.”

  Gerald nodded. Roxon City would be a nightmare, if he tried to occupy it. There were just too many people in too close proximity ... the early outbreaks of rioting and looting were likely to get worse if the marines didn’t stamp on it, but he simply didn’t have the forces to keep the city under control. He hated to admit it, yet there was no choice. They’d hold the vital points within the city and nothing else. Thankfully, the local population was largely unarmed. They didn’t have the firepower to do real damage.

  “Good,” he said. “And the refugees?”

  “We’re billeting them on the estates for now,” Patel said. “They seem a little ... astonished.”

  Gerald snorted in cold amusement. He’d been on planets where the higher-ups had demanded all sorts of things for the poor, all of which had to be paid for by the taxpayers and kept a very long way from them. Here ... he wondered, idly, what would happen if - when - word started to spread. The aristocrats lived in giant mansions, each one big enough to house a regiment of marines, while the workers lived in apartment blocks and single-room flats ... if they were lucky. The spooks were already speaking to the refugees, looking for people who might carry messages to their fellows. Gerald doubted they’d be many volunteers, but it didn’t matter. They were already getting close to hacking the enemy communications network and filling it with propaganda.

  He frowned as he studied the map. The marines were advancing lightly along a broad front to feel out resistance, a tactic he would have preferred to avoid. Strong forces were held in reserve, ready to stamp on anything the scouts couldn’t handle; he knew, all too well, that a capable enemy commander might mousetrap the scouts and use them as bait to ambush their reinforcements. His point defence units were moving forward, backing up the mobile missile launchers and artillery as they supported the offensive. It was a shame the enemy point defence was pretty good - he’d started to deduce their positions from where he’d lost drones - but it was no longer a surprise. His men were used to fighting within the fog of war.

  “There are patches of resistance along the motorway,” Patel informed him. “But the enemy seems more intent on delaying matters than actually stopping us.”

  Gerald nodded, coldly. Someone on the other side was actually thinking. There was nothing to be gained by sending men to do or die, particularly when they would just die. They were sniping at the marines, then falling back towards the defence lines ... defence lines Gerald knew had to be taking shape. The marines would have to push forward, at the risk of exposing their supply lines to enemy attack. He ground his teeth in irritation. It would be so much easier if they could land shuttles west of Roxon, but the enemy would have a clear shot at them. And there was no way to get around the problem.

  We could start pressing their aircars and hover vehicles into service, he mused. It might let us speed things up a little ...

  “Smart of them.” Gerald put the thought aside for later consideration. They didn’t have time to come up with a whole new logistics system, not when they were advancing as fast as they could. The enemy commander was known to be tenacious. “Keep funnelling supplies around the city. We don’t want to get a logistics unit bogged down on the streets.”

  He frowned. “And see if you can locate some premade dumpsters,” he added. “It might let us drop a lot of supplies into enemy positions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Patel said.

  ***

  “Incoming!”

  Haydn hit the ground as a volley of shells screamed out of the clear blue sky. Flashes of light darted overhead as the point defence units engaged the shells, trying to swat them before they crashed down on top of the marines. The ground shook, violently, as a handful of shells made it through and slammed down. Haydn breathed a sigh of relief as he realised most of the shells had fallen behind the platoon. The company had advanced forward so quickly they’d effectively outrun the shells before they’d been fired.

  He crawled forward as, behind him, he heard the self-propelled guns returning fire. Chatter echoed through his earpiece, reporting that enemy guns had been sited within yet another town. Haydn prayed the locals had fled before the shooting started, that the enemy troops had let them flee. The town was doomed. The shells would take out every building that might serve as a hiding place for troops and guns. And if the inhabitants had remained behind, they were doomed too.

  The ground shook, again. Haydn forced himself to his feet and ran forward, risking everything as he led the platoon through the field. The enemy hadn’t started putting together IEDs yet, but it was just a matter of time. They had enough material on hand to make life truly miserable for the invaders, if they knew how to use it. The corprats wouldn’t want to teach their people, if only because the training would be very effective against them, but they didn’t have a choice. The marines were advancing at breakneck speed.

  A hail of bullets shot through the air, dropping lower as the gunner sighted the marines. Haydn dropped again and crawled forward, flashing backwards to his training as he approached the enemy position. Someone had set up a machine gun in what had been a commanding position, before the shells turned the town into a burning wasteland. The gunner was moving quickly, but not quickly enough. Haydn put a shot through his head, watching emotionlessly as the man’s body flopped over and hit the ground. He kept moving, readying a grenade to hurl into any further enemy positions. An interlocking network of machine gun nests could have made life interesting - and gruesome - for the marines. Instead, the gunner seemed to have been alone. No shots poured out of the burning town.

  Haydn felt sweat trickle down his back as the marines searched the remains of the town. It was hard to guess what the town had looked like, before the shells, although he was fairly sure it had probably looked just like the other corporate towns. They all looked the same, a handful of prefabricated buildings surrounded by homes, schools and shops laid out in a soulless pattern. He peered into what had probably once been a school and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw no one inside. The town had definitely been evacuated. He doubted anyone with any sense would have stayed put when he saw the refugees on the road. The corprats simply didn’t have time for crowd control.

  He dismissed the thought as a trio of tanks crashed their way through the cornfields and advanced through the town, weapons sweeping from side to side as they looked for potential threats. A pair of Raptors flew overhead, launching drones into the distance. Haydn hoped the enemy point defence would fire on the drones, revealing their locations to the waiting gunners. The enemy had managed to keep the marines from taking control of the air, but ... they didn’t have control either. They certainly didn’t have enough point defence to save their gunners and shoot down the drones. Either way, the marines won.

  A tall figure jumped from the tanks and landed neatly by the side of the road. Haydn tensed, then relaxed slightly as he realised the figure had to be friendly. The newcomer straightened up and nodded, rather than saluting. He wore simple camouflage, rather than proper BDUs. Haydn didn’t give much for his chances if the enemy caught him. The corprats had fought a relatively civilised war - it was a nice change from terrorists and insurgents, who unleashed horror for the sheer hell of it - but they’d be completely within their rights to shoot someone they caught out of uniform. Admittedly, the laws of war had been a dead letter well b
efore Earthfall ...

  “Sir,” the newcomer said. “Specialist Phelps, reporting.”

  Haydn raised an eyebrow. “I doubt you’re here to check the plumbing.”

  Phelps chuckled, although the joke had long since lost its humour. “No,” he said. “I have to cross the lines.”

  “You’re right on the edge now,” Haydn said. He unhooked his terminal from his belt and held it out. “We’re here, on the forward edge. The enemy is somewhere to the east.”

  “Understood,” Phelps said. He didn’t complain about the lack of data. He’d probably been briefed before he’d ridden a tank to the town. “Are there any refugees on the roads?”

  “Some,” Haydn said. A flight of missiles roared overhead. He turned his head just in time to see fireballs rising in the distance. “The enemy has been fairly good about telling people to leave their homes.”

  “They’ll find that harder, as the war advances towards their industrial core,” Phelps told him. “But I should be able to blend in.”

  “Try not to get shot,” Haydn told him. “We’re hoping to push forward again once reinforcements arrive.”

  Phelps laughed. “I laugh in the face of danger. I stick ice cubes down the vest of fear. I” - he adopted a quavering voice - “I don’t want to go!”

  “You’re uglier than the guy in the flicks,” Haydn said. He had no idea why some idiot producer had turned a war movie into an absurd satire, but he supposed it made sure no one took it seriously. “Just keep your head down and your balls covered and you’ll be fine.”

  “Hah.” Phelps grinned. “Just try not to shoot me in the back. That would be embarrassing.”

  “Quite,” Haydn agreed. He felt a flicker of envy. The Pathfinders got all the really interesting missions. “You’d be the first marine to get shot in the back while running towards the enemy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  And it is simply impossible to produce wealth without a degree of capitalism. Feudal states (the aristocrats own everything and leave the peasants with pittances) and communist states (the state owns everything and doles out what it thinks the peasants need) routinely go through periods of starvation. Why? Because the producers know they won’t be allowed to profit from their hard work, so they do as little as possible and nothing more. And there is no way to make them.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

  “Director,” Vice Director McManus said. “I think we have a problem.”

  Thaddeus frowned. He’d spent the morning working his way through the reports and putting together a replacement staff to handle the issues he didn’t need to. Julia had been a blessing, for all that her ambition was clear to see. She could handle some issues without ever turning into a major threat herself. But she couldn’t deal with the security director. McManus reported directly to Thaddeus himself.

  “Joy,” he said, crossly. The marines had been advancing for the last two days. It was hard to be sure if they’d been slowed down - they certainly hadn’t been stopped - by the defenders. “What happened?”

  “We arrested Colonel Belmar two days ago,” McManus said. “The colonel received an email from an unknown source, offering him a role in a pro-imperial coup. We had a spy on his staff who reported the email to us, before Colonel Belmar could decide what he wanted to do. We arrested him at once.”

  Thaddeus sucked in his breath. “He didn’t report it?”

  “No,” McManus said. “The email specifically warned him not to report it. We have to assume he wouldn’t have reported it. He wasn’t one of the long-term recruits.”

  “I see,” Thaddeus said. “Have you traced the email?”

  “No, sir,” McManus said. “The email’s trail was wiped from the datanodes. From what little we’ve been able to determine, it was wrapped in authorisation codes that specifically ordered the datanodes to forward the email - following a path laid down by the sender - and then erase all traces of its passage, without checking with human authority. There’s no way to tell who sent the message, not without checking each and every datacore ... frankly, sir, my staff believes that it would take years to even try.”

  “And whoever sent it had the right authorisation codes,” Thaddeus mused. “How did they get the codes?”

  “We don’t know,” McManus said. “It’s possible the codes were stored somewhere in Roxon and the marines captured them, although the secure datanodes were ordered wiped and then physically destroyed. There were quite a few senior corporate managers who kept private datacores, even though it was officially discouraged. We don’t know what, if anything, was on those cores, let alone what happened to them. There are simply too many missing people for us to be sure.”

  He paused. “It’s also possible that the message was sent by someone from our side.”

  “Someone planning to take advantage of the chaos,” Thaddeus said. “Someone planning to sell us out to the marines.”

  He felt a flash of cold anger. He could name a dozen high-ranking people who were ambitious enough to try to make a deal with the marines, perhaps offering to surrender in exchange for maintaining their positions, and stupid enough to think they could get away with it. They probably assumed they’d get no more than a slap on the wrist if they were caught. Hell, they wouldn’t have their positions if they didn’t have supporters who’d defend them even if they were caught and convicted of treason. He ground his teeth in frustration. The planet had been invaded. He didn’t have time to worry about being stabbed in the back.

  “Who?” Thaddeus glared at his hands. “And why?”

  “We don’t know,” McManus said. “We have a list of possible suspects, but no solid proof.”

  His face darkened. “However, there is a second problem.”

  “Someone else received the message,” Thaddeus guessed.

  “We suspect so, sir,” McManus said. He looked as if he knew he was on the verge of delivering bad news. “It is quite likely Colonel Belmar wasn’t the only person who received that particular message. As an ex-imperial officer who was recruited shortly before Earthfall, he was unlikely to rise any higher and he knew it. That’s not the real problem, though. The real problem was that there was a second set of messages. These went out to a bunch of civilians.”

  Thaddeus understood, suddenly, why so many of his relatives had liked the idea of shooting the messenger. “Who? Why?”

  “The message offered them the chance to join the underground,” McManus said. He sucked in his breath. “We received ninety-four reports from people who received the message. It is quite likely there were many more who got the message and chose to keep their mouths shut.”

  “Fuck,” Thaddeus swore. He rarely swore, but now ... he met the younger man’s eyes. “Is the message being believed?”

  “We don’t know, sir,” McManus said. “The handful of people who openly questioned the news broadcasts have already been rounded up and taken away. They were the idiots, sir. The vast majority of people who don’t believe the reports were probably smart enough to keep their mouths closed. There’s simply no way to hide the flashes in the sky or the hordes of refugees being moved into the city.”

  “So they don’t believe us,” Thaddeus mused. He took a tight grip on his temper. “What’s the point of sending such messages?”

  “If the messages come from the marines, they may be hoping to either convince our military officers to surrender or convince dissidents to stop working,” Thaddeus said. “If the messages come from someone in the government ...”

  His voice trailed off. Thaddeus had no trouble seeing the implications. There would be someone who thought he could deal with the devil and come out ahead. The marines would make whatever agreements they had to make, then break them as soon as they were no longer necessary. Thaddeus knew he had political enemies, including some of the people on the corporate board. And the entire government had enemies from outside ... he made a face. They’d recruited ambitious ex-imperial officers w
ho hadn’t been able to climb the ladder any further. Those officers hadn’t lost their ambition just because they’d signed up with the corporation ...

  He looked at McManus. “How do you suggest we proceed?”

  “We already have a network of commissioners monitoring the ex-imperial officers, but we cannot be sure they’ll catch everything,” McManus said. “The commissioners were chosen more for loyalty than expertise. Worse, their charges know they’re being watched and react accordingly. There’s no way to know what’s in someone’s head until they start something, and by then it’ll be too late.

  “I think we’re going to have to double our security measures, even to the point of tying up humans monitoring the ex-imperials in real time,” he added. “And that will cause no end of problems.”

  “Yes.” Thaddeus gritted his teeth. “Do we have a choice?”

  “A couple of officers deserting their posts could cause a great deal of damage, if they timed it well,” McManus said. “If they just ordered their men to surrender, the moment they see the advancing hordes, well ...”

  He shrugged. “We’re also going to need to make a show of strength on the streets,” he continued. “More troops around critical positions, more policemen clearly visible ... too many people simply forget the surveillance network is there. We’d be better off deterring any hostile moves than swatting them once they come into the light. Once they show themselves ... it might be too late. We do not want to waste time and effort putting down a rebellion on the streets.”