The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  “Yes, but I don’t have total access,” Julia said. “The entire system is operating on restricted mode.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. “Where is the command suite?”

  “One floor up,” Julia said. She bit her lip. “The ... the security troops are in control.”

  “No worries,” Rachel said. “Let us deal with it.”

  ***

  Colonel Parker Haworth was entirely sure the reports of General Gilbert’s suicide were total bullshit. He didn’t need to spent most of his career in the military, first for the empire and then for the corprats, to know that ninety percent of everything the media put out was utter crap. General Gilbert was an experienced officer. Sure, he’d taken a beating - Parker knew it was sheer luck his unit had been outside the blast zone when the KEWs started to fall - but the war wasn’t over. No, he’d been killed by the wretched brownshirts. The security officers had killed the general, just to cement their control over the military.

  Parker smiled to himself as he glanced at his wristcom, silently counting down the seconds to zero. He’d hesitated - he’d thought long and hard - before joining the coup plotters, although he’d kept the fact they’d contacted him a secret. Everyone knew what had happened to the dumb fool who’d reported the contact. The idiot had been interrogated so intensively he’d died in the chair. Parker knew he wasn’t going to die like that, not while he had a gun in his hand. In truth, he acknowledged silently, he’d committed himself the moment he’d heard about the general’s death.

  His eyes swept the FOB, noting the positions of the commissioner - a wretched rodent of a man - and his two escorts, armed security troopers. It was sheer luck everything was in total chaos. The remaining military units had been pulled back to the city and slotted into position along the walls, as if someone with only the barest understanding of military reality had been issuing orders. Parker had never seen the marines, but anyone who could advance so far in a handful of days ... he shook his head. The sooner they took power, the better.

  He unbuttoned his holster as he turned away, drawing his gun before turning and opening fire. The security troopers died first, shot through the head. The commissioner gaped at him, his gaze moving from Parker to the dead bodies as if he couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened. Parker keyed his wristcom, snapping out a command to his men on the outside. He hadn’t been able to prime them as much as he might like, but ... they should obey orders. The corprats had no one but themselves to blame. They’d been the ones who insisted that strict obedience to orders, no matter how insane, was the priority.

  “The security forces are mounting a coup,” he said, as he kept the gun trained on the commissioner. He thought he could trust his men, all of whom were unarmed, but it was impossible to be sure. Rumour had it that there were undercover spies within the ranks. “We are moving to stop them.”

  “This is insane,” the commissioner spluttered. “This is ...”

  Parker shot him, then keyed his wristcom again. The rest of the plotters should be moving now, trying to seize control of the military before it was too late. Unless ... he shook his head as the first set of replies came rattling in. He’d feared it might be a demented test of his loyalty, when he’d seen the first message, but no one in their right mind would stage a test in the middle of a war.

  He gritted his teeth as he heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. He had his orders - hold his position, purge the commissioners and the security troops, prepare for further offensive operations - but he knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Some units wouldn’t be taken over so quickly, others would start shooting in all directions or sit on their hands as their commanders, who didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, did nothing. And there would be the problem of dealing with the marines afterwards ...

  Parker shook his head. The coup had to succeed quickly, or not at all. They could worry about everything else later.

  ***

  Julia felt oddly free as the two marines checked the room, then started to fiddle with the terminal. She wasn’t clear on precisely what they were doing, but ... she felt as if she had finally committed herself. The decision had been made. She found herself looking at the marines - there was something familiar about the woman - and waiting for them to tell her what to do. Maybe they’d want her to sit and wait for the fighting to end. It wasn’t as if she was any good with a gun.

  She frowned as the female marine looked up. “The coup is underway,” she said. “Haydn and the others should be en route.”

  Julia frowned. “How many of the plotters know who’s really behind the coup?”

  “Just you,” the female marine said. “Although I imagine a few of them have guessed, given that we played on loyalty to the empire in some of the messages.”

  She glanced back at the terminal. “We need to move,” she said. “We have to snatch the director before it’s too late.”

  Julia nodded. “I’ll take you there,” she said. “Do you have any weapons?”

  The marines exchanged glances. “We couldn’t carry weapons through the security cordon,” the female marine said. “But we have a plan.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Julia said, biting down on a far sharper response. “Let’s go.”

  She led them through the door and up the stairs to the next level. There were no alarms, but she thought she could feel something shift in the air as they approached the director’s suite. The three men standing in front of the door looked more like prison guards than protectors, their weapons constantly sweeping the air as if they expected to be attacked at any moment. Julia almost took a step back when they looked at her, despite the marines moving up behind her.

  “Well,” the guard said. “What do we have ...?”

  The marines moved so quickly they blurred. Julia threw herself to the floor as they crashed into the guards, knocking them down. Julia felt the floor shake under the impact and looked up. All three guards were dead, blood leaking from wounds that ... she swallowed hard, unable to comprehend what had happened. The marines had said they were unarmed. They’d said ... no wonder they were unarmed. They didn’t need weapons to be lethally effective.

  “Fuck,” she managed.

  “Get up,” the male marine ordered. “Hurry!”

  His voice compelled obedience. Julia scrambled to her feet and stumbled forwards, pressing her hand against the buzzer as the marines searched the dead bodies and removed the weapons. The door hissed open, revealing the director sitting on a sofa. He looked to have aged fifty years overnight. It dawned on Julia, as she was pushed into the room, that the marines weren’t the only ones mounting a coup.

  McManus, she thought. He didn’t waste any time.

  And then the alarms started to ring.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Indeed, by Earthfall, the line between the corprats - as they came to be called - and the senators was effectively non-existent. The corprats had become part of the aristocracy. They were no longer so concerned with innovation. All they really cared about was preserving their power.

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

  The checkpoint didn’t look very tough, not to Haydn’s experienced eye. It had clearly been thrown up on very short notice, by troops more used to policing than soldiering. The handful of air defence vehicles behind the lines, their sensors swinging from side to side, were far too close to the barricades for comfort. If he’d been setting up the defence lines, he would have placed them much further away. But then, it looked as if their coup was taking place in the middle of another coup.

  “They’re checking everyone who goes in and out,” Mayberry muttered, as they drove towards the checkpoint. “Our paperwork probably won’t hold up.”

  Haydn nodded, then glanced back at the marines hiding in the rear of the truck. “Jump when the first grenade explodes.”

  He braced himself as they drove up to the checkpoint. The guards looked alert - and dee
ply worried. One of them was constantly glancing into the distance, not in the direction Haydn would have expected. Did he think the marines were going to circle around the city and strike from the rear? Or ... he heard an explosion towards the edge of the city and winced, inwardly. The Pathfinders had promised that some of the ex-imperial officers would jump towards the marines, but nothing had been guaranteed. The enemy chain of command was about to collapse. It didn’t sit well with him.

  The guard poked his rifle through the opened window. “Papers, please.”

  Haydn pushed the rifle up, then unhooked a stolen grenade from his belt and hurled it into the checkpoint. The HE grenade detonated a second later, taking out the guards inside the guardpost before they could react. The guard who’d accosted him pulled the trigger, the bullet going through the vehicle’s roof and heading onwards. Haydn’s ears rang as he yanked the rifle away, then punched the guard out. He snapped orders, directing the marines to seize the guardpost and the escorting vehicles. They had to be captured before some bright spark organised a counterattack.

  Mayberry followed him as he led the charge towards the antiaircraft vehicles. They were standard designs, meant to provide cover for military bases rather than advance with the remainder of the mobile units. Their hatches weren’t even buttoned up! He pulled them open, ordered the crews out at gunpoint and then directed a handful of his men to shut the vehicles down. The enemy would be - hopefully - reluctant to bomb their centre of government. He snapped more orders as the forward squad raced towards the main entrance, pushing through before the shutters could come down. He was fairly sure the enemy commanders would already be on their way to the bunkers.

  And they really should have bugged out long ago, he thought. He could understand a reluctance to abandon one’s capital city - it could not fail to have a demoralising effect on the defenders - but common sense should have sent the enemy leadership to a PDC or somewhere else safely away from the fighting. They must have thought they’d thrashed us.

  He shot down a pair of guards as they swept through the lower levels, keeping a wary eye out for rooms and elevators that weren’t on the plans. The enemy would have plenty of ways to get to their boltholes, unless they’d really been caught by surprise. His men hauled open elevator tubes and jammed them, ensuring the tubes and cars themselves were useless. There was no point in keeping them operational, not now. Elevator cars could turn into death traps at a moment’s notice.

  “Sir,” Mayberry shouted. “The enemy are massing outside the lines!”

  Haydn cursed under his breath. They’d caught the enemy by surprise, but ... they’d regrouped with impressive speed. There must have been a bunch of patrols outside the lines, under an officer with the authority and initiative to take action. It probably shouldn’t have surprised him. The enemy knew they were losing control of their city. They’d probably been drawing up plans for countering an insurgent uprising well before the population monitoring systems had been destroyed.

  “Hold the line,” he snapped back. The prisoners were being marched into the lobby, where they’d be guarded by his men, but there was no time to secure them. They didn’t have any ties. They hadn’t even thought to bring duct tape! If the prisoners decided to cause trouble, they’d have to be stamped on fast before things got out of hand. “Don’t let them get back inside.”

  He cursed, again, as the shooting started. He’d thought the enemy had thrown their defence lines together too quickly to do a good job of it. Now ... he found himself wondering if they’d been one step ahead of him all along. Had they intended to counterattack right from the start? Or was he overthinking it? The enemy might just have had a stroke of good luck to match the bad.

  We have to hold the line long enough for the Pathfinders to do their job, and for the reinforcements to arrive, he told himself. We can assess what worked, and what didn’t, later.

  ***

  “Sir, we just lost contact with two more garrisons,” the operator said. “The ...”

  The building shook. McManus scowled, eying the rapidly-darkening display with a jaundiced eye. He’d never trusted the ex-imperials - turning one’s coat tended to be habit-forming - but he’d never expected an outright uprising. Too many fighting units had dropped out of the command network, along with the commissioners who were supposed to be keeping an eye on them. McManus would have liked to believe they were trying to regain control, but he knew better. The commissioners were deeply disliked and completely outnumbered. And their charges no longer had reason to think they would be caught and shot if they raised a hand to the watchdogs.

  He rubbed his forehead as he tried to think. The command network was starting to break down completely. It was no longer possible to trust what he was seeing on the display. It was clear someone had attacked the building below, but ... who? The marines? A rebel unit? He didn’t know. The last report from outside the lines suggested that one of his most trusted officers was mounting a counteroffensive, forcing the original attackers to defend themselves rather than sweep the building for the corporate leadership ...

  McManus swore. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair! He’d finally reached a position of power and it was already falling apart. He couldn’t just run ... he wasn’t sure he could so much as get down to the bunker. In theory, the drop shaft was impregnable; in practice, the attackers might already have cut it from behind. He could drop down and straight into their waiting arms. He forced himself to think. It wasn’t over yet. If he could get to the aircraft and slip out of the city before the hammer came down ...

  “Team One, you’re with me,” he ordered, as he slotted a command earpiece into place. He’d need to fetch the director before leaving the city. The old man would give McManus the legitimacy he needed to secure his position, once he reached safety and organised a counterattack. “Team Two, concentrate on keeping the routes open as long as possible.”

  He took one last look at the display, silently noting how many military units had gone dark, then drew his pistol and headed for the door. There’d be time for revenge later. He’d use nukes and shipkillers on the marine position, turning the mansions to radioactive ash rather than waste time and men trying to recapture them. The sentiment that had saved the marines, during the first offensive, meant nothing to him. Oh, he was going to enjoy watching them burn. And then he’d hunt down their base and kill the rest of them.

  The hatch hissed open. He checked his terminal - the internal security net was coming apart too - and then nodded for his close-protection team to lead the way. He’d reward them later for their loyalty. They’d stayed with him when it would be easy to run the other way and escape. And ...

  Get to the director, then to the aircraft, he thought. And then get to safety.

  ***

  Rachel’s eyes adapted instantly to the darkness as she stepped into the director’s suite. It was smaller than she’d expected, smaller and less fancy than the rooms she’d seen when she’d been working under General Gilbert. The director himself sat in a chair, staring down at his hands. He didn’t look up as she entered, as if nothing mattered to him. Rachel guessed he’d lost everything in the last few days, including his power. The security officers were in charge now.

  She keyed the lights. The room brightened. Behind her, she heard Julia gasp. The woman might have thrown her lot in with the marines - finally - but she still had to worry if she was doing something wrong. The howling alarms - and the shooting, clearly audible even though the thick walls - were a clear sign the marines were not in full control. Not yet. Rachel could hear enough shooting to be fairly sure there was a pitched battle going on downstairs.

  The director looked up, his eyes old and hard. “What do you want?”

  Rachel chose her words carefully. “I represent the Terran Marine Corps,” she said. “I have authority to guarantee your safety - and the safety of your families - if you surrender the planet without delay.”

  “I doubt it,” the director said. His voice was flat, his fac
e unchanging, but she could still hear the sneer. “There are too many people who’ll want revenge.”

  It was a good point, Rachel conceded silently. There would be people on the planet - and elsewhere - who’d be horrified at the corprats being allowed to get away with everything. And yet ... she understood the logic. The enemy wouldn’t surrender if they thought they’d be put in front of a kangaroo court and executed, or shot without the formalities of a trial. An endless cycle of revenge, and revenge for the revenge, wouldn’t help anyone. She’d seen it before, on too many planets to name. Sometimes, you just had to draw a line under the past and refuse to allow it to overshadow the future.

  “We can take you off-world,” she said. “All of you. All you have to do is surrender and assist us in transferring power to a provisional government.”

  The director said nothing for a long moment. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Julia stepped forward. “Sir ... they did keep their word on Hameau,” she said. “They protected the former government, often to the point of risking their own men ...”

  “This isn’t Hameau,” the director reminded her. “This is Onge.”

  Rachel met his eyes. “The war is effectively over,” she said. “Half your military is in revolt. The security forces are launching a coup. Your population, simmering with anger, is out on the streets. There’s no way you, and your people, can regain control. The only question is just how much blood is going to be shed, between now and the end of the war. You can concede defeat and help us minimise the bloodshed. Or you can refuse and watch as the entire planet burns to the ground. You’ve already lost. You can only decide if you’re willing to die, for your entire family to die, just to spite us.”

  Phelps tapped her shoulder. “We have incoming!”

  “Shit,” Rachel muttered back. She checked the internal datanet. It looked as if there was a full-scale war going on below them. Haydn and his men were armed, but they couldn’t stand up to tanks and AFVs. “We need to finish this quickly.”