The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  ***

  Thaddeus had always prided himself on being ruthlessly pragmatic, although - in hindsight - it was clear he hadn’t been ruthless enough. He’d been losing his grip from the moment the marines landed on his estate, well before McManus effectively took power for himself. Thaddeus wasn’t blind to the younger man’s manipulations. He’d hoped there would be time for McManus to overreach himself - the man didn’t realise it, but taking power and using it were two very different things - yet ... he was running out of time. They were all running out of time.

  He looked at Julia, wondering when she’d made the choice to betray him. Had she been a traitor all along? Or had she turned on him after he’d refused to listen to her? Or ... did it matter? He was old enough to put his anger aside, to consider his legacy logically. His family would be wiped out, if civil war raged across the planet. They had too many enemies. They’d die unless they came out on top and he was pragmatic enough to realise they might not. The offer was a good one, as frustrating as it was. They might lose their power, but at least they’d keep their lives. And they might be able to claw back their power.

  “You safeguard our people,” he said, softly. “And we will place the world into your hands.”

  “They’re coming,” the other marine said. “We have to hurry.”

  ***

  Haydn kept low and fired carefully, conserving his ammunition. It wasn’t easy to tell how many enemy soldiers were out there, but it felt as if a small army was bearing down on them. They seemed reluctant to use heavy weapons, for which he was grateful, but it was just a matter of time before that changed. He snapped orders at the marines manning the antiaircraft vehicles, directing them to turn the missiles into makeshift field artillery. They didn’t have much ammunition - it was starting to look as though the defenders had never planned for a long siege - but it would give the attackers a fright.

  “They’re bringing up riot-control vehicles,” Mayberry said.

  Haydn cursed. The police vehicles weren’t designed for the battlefield, but ... his lips quirked. It wasn’t as if his men had antitank rockets or plasma cannons or even heavy machine guns that would punch through the advancing armour like a knife through butter and leave the vehicles flaming wrecks. No ...

  He turned to the antiaircraft crews. “Don’t let them get any closer,” he snapped. The guns on the vehicles were hardly designed for a siege, but the defences were too weak to stand up for long. “Hit them!”

  Moments later, the first riot vehicle exploded into a massive fireball.

  ***

  McManus staggered as the building shook, violently. His earpiece seemed to fall silent, before filling - again - with excited chatter. The people below him had stopped the riot control vehicles in their tracks. They had antitank rockets! Where had they found antitank rockets? McManus knew there were none in the building. After a batch had been stolen, he’d made sure to keep the remainder of the stockpile under tight control ...

  “Keep moving,” he snapped, as they reached the top of the stairs. “I ...”

  His voice trailed off. There were bodies outside the director’s room. The door itself gaped open. He could hear voices inside. McManus swore, his arm shaking as he levelled his pistol. Someone had gotten there first. Someone had beaten him. Someone ...

  “Grenade,” he snapped. If someone had control of the director ... he felt a surge of naked hatred as his dreams threatened to crash into nightmares. No one would have the director, he vowed; he’d turn the man’s death into a rallying cry after he’d escaped the building and reached a PDC. “Now!”

  He took the grenade and hurled it through the door.

  ***

  Rachel blinked as she saw the grenade. She’d assumed the newcomers, whoever they were, would hesitate to kill the director. Killing the only person who could order a surrender was never a good idea, yet ... there was no time to kick the grenade back out of the room. Phelps hurled himself forward, landing on top of the grenade. It exploded a second later ... Rachel knew, without looking, that he was dead. No one, not even an enhanced marine, could take such a blast and survive. Her head spun. She almost wished it had been Julia or the director who’d taken the blast ...

  Mourn later, she told herself, savagely.

  She hurled herself forward, running down the corridor. The newcomers raised their guns, too late. Only one of them managed a shot, missing her by inches. She ploughed into them, blinking away tears as she ripped them apart with enhanced strength. She’d pay for it later, she knew, but she didn’t care. Her best friend was dead and ...

  Rachel caught herself and stumbled back to the room. The director was staring at the body, looking stunned. Rachel felt a hot flash of anger. The director had ruled a dog-eat-dog world. Was he surprised his subordinates had decided to remove him? A dead figurehead might be more useful than a living man. Whoever took power would be able to use his death to justify all kinds of things.

  “Order the surrender,” she said. The datanet was flickering and fading. She scowled as she heard another explosion outside, shaking the building once again. “Quickly.”

  The director nodded stiffly and walked to his desk. “Keep your word,” he said, as he keyed the console. “Too many lives are at stake.”

  “I know,” Rachel said. Phelps was dead. The rest of her comrades - her brothers - were missing. She shuddered to think how many others had died in the last few weeks. If the fighting continued, hundreds of thousands more were going to die as well. “End it, now. Please.”

  Five minutes later, the guns outside fell silent.

  It was over.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  This might not have been so bad, if they hadn’t realised - as we had - that the empire was doomed. Like us, they had no idea when the crunch would finally come; like us, they started to prepare themselves. They assumed they would be the masters of the new universal order.

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

  Gerald watched, coolly, as the Raptor flew over the burning city and headed directly for Government House. The military and police forces had largely surrendered - and had been ordered to hold position and wait for relief - but the local population wasn’t interested in going back to their homes. Too much hatred and fear had built up over the last few decades for the people to take their freedom calmly. The marines had already established camps to take the corprats - and an astonishing number of managers, directors and HR specialists - into protective custody. God alone knew how many had been killed before the marines had started trying to re-establish order.

  The only thing worse than a battle lost is a battle won, he thought. The Duke of Wellington had said it, after a battle that most people had forgotten long ago. And he wasn’t quite right.

  He smiled, but there was little real humour in the expression. Hundreds of marines were dead or wounded. Millions of credits worth of equipment had been lost. The corps had its own industrial base, established long enough to stop corrupt or penny-pinching beancounters from cutting the safety margins to the limits, but replacing everything that had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair would take years. The tanks, in particular ... he made a mental note to look into the captured stockpiles. He disliked the idea of using vehicles designed for the corprats, but not using them would be considerably worse.

  These are the problems of victory, he told himself. The other side is in an even worse mess.

  The thought didn’t cheer him. There were just too many things that needed to be done. The enemy industrial nodes had been occupied, their cloudscoops had been secured ... he had a feeling their design for newer and better cloudscoops would unlock an economic resurgence, when the chaos of Earthfall finally came to an end. The enemy fleet was still out there, but he was fairly sure the ships would be secured as they returned, one by one. If some of them became pirates or independent ... he shrugged. They wouldn’t have much of a support base, at least at first. They would be hunted down before they
became a real threat.

  He felt a twinge of ... something ... as the Raptor circled the building, giving him time to see the burned-out vehicles on the ground before the aircraft landed neatly on the roof. The final battle had been chancy as hell, the sort of plan that would probably be rejected out of hand by any sane military. It was hard not to think of all the things that could have gone wrong ... that nearly had gone wrong. The thought bothered him as he unstrapped and headed for the opening hatch. Major-General Foxtrot would take command shortly, allowing Gerald to head back to Safehouse to face the music. If the Commandant and the other Major-Generals decided they’d done the wrong thing ...

  I did what I had to do, he thought, as he stepped onto the roof. The air tasted of smoke and burnt human flesh. And we did come out ahead. In the end.

  “Major-General,” Julia Ganister-Onge said. “Welcome.”

  Gerald nodded. Julia Ganister-Onge had apparently become a liaison officer between the provisional government, such as it was, and the marines. He doubted it would last. The bemused coup plotters and their allies might have hung together, throughout the chaos of the last few days and the shock of discovering who’d really led the coup, but ... they’d start bickering over power very soon. The provisional government had no legitimacy worthy of the name. He wondered, idly, how long it would be until the various post-corprat factions started setting up political parties and fighting for dominance. Probably not very long at all.

  “The director chose to head straight into protective custody,” Julia informed him. She sounded older than he remembered, as if she’d learnt more than a few hard lessons in the last few weeks. “He hopes you’ll keep your word.”

  “We will,” Gerald said. He had no trouble spotting the signs of someone wanting to have a private chat. “What do you want to say?”

  “We’re getting organised,” Julia said. “A lot of the industrial nodes survived intact. The personnel who ran them have ... more or less ... claimed ownership. It’ll be a long time before things straighten themselves out, but ... they will.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Gerald said. It was true. A decently-run planet would have an uplifting effect on the entire sector. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

  “No.” Julia stopped and turned to face him. “We assume you have a plan for the future, for the post-Earthfall universe. What is it?”

  Good question, Gerald conceded. The planners had advanced a number of options, but none of them were truly viable. The sheer scale of the collapse, and just how many Core Worlds had been turned into radioactive ruins, had stunned everyone. We’re not sure what we want to do.

  He met her eyes. “We’re working on it,” he said. “If there’s one thing we’ve learnt, over the last few centuries, it is that plans often need to be adapted as circumstances change.”

  “You need a plan,” Julia said. She turned away from him. “The plan here ... it wasn’t very good, in hindsight, but it was the best they could come up with at the time. You need a plan, too.”

  Gerald nodded, curtly. “I know,” he said. He could hardly deny it. “But, right now, we have to handle the present before we look to the future.”

  ***

  Rachel felt oddly at a loose end, even though she’d been working with Captain Steel and his men ever since the director had ordered the surrender and the fighting had - finally - come to an end. She’d contacted the staff officers she’d known when she’d been undercover and invited them to join the new government, once they’d been released from the prison cells. They hadn’t been mistreated, which was more than could be said for Commander Archer. He’d been beaten to death, after confessing to a long list of crimes he couldn’t possibly have committed. Rachel wasn’t sure if the security forces had given much of a damn. The commander hadn’t been any use to them whatsoever.

  She let out a breath as she stood on the rooftop and stared over the city. It was slowly quietening down as the marines patrolled the streets, making it clear they would tolerate no nonsense. Groups of looters and vandals had been placed in shackles and put to work clearing up the mess. It was more useful than throwing them in a camp and, hopefully, it would discourage others from burning and looting if they thought they might have to clean up after themselves. She smiled, then sobered as she looked towards the distant countryside. She was alone ...

  Her heart sank. Phelps had died to save the mission ... she couldn’t help feeling it hadn’t been worth it. And the other two had vanished. She wanted to believe they’d remained underground, after the anchor station had been taken, but it was inconceivable they’d have stayed underground all this time. The war was over. They’d had ample opportunity to come forward and make contact, even if they weren’t pulled out. They must be dead and she was alone. She was almost tempted to take a step forward and allow gravity to pull her down, ending her life.

  Bad idea, she told herself. Really bad idea.

  She turned as she heard someone open the door behind her. She turned to see Major-General Anderson stepping onto the rooftop, looking remarkably tired for someone who’d done nothing more strenuous than sit at a conference table for the last few hours. She silently told herself off for being mean-spirited. The locals meant well, she supposed, but they were trying to put together a government out of spit and baling wire. There just wasn’t enough of the old government left for the task to be simple, even though the lower managing class had largely remained on duty. And they now thought they should be running things.

  “General,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  Anderson stood beside her and looked at the city. “It’s a very strange design, isn’t it?”

  Rachel nodded. “It looks like a giant chessboard,” she agreed. “Everything is laid out ... soullessly. Whoever designed this was an academic who knew nothing of the real world.”

  She smiled at the thought, although it wasn’t funny. What sort of lunatic would place the residential areas on one side of the city and the shopping complexes on the other? And then expect the residents to get to the shops when they wanted something as small as a pint of milk? Not to mention how easy it was to turn electronic currency into a means of social control, denying people access to their funds ... the system was always going to explode, she was sure. The marines might have saved the corprats from a far worse fate.

  “I’m sorry about the rest of your team,” Anderson said. “They deserved better.”

  “They died doing what they loved,” Rachel said. She knew she’d never know what happened to the other two. The medals she’d been promised were no compensation for the loss of her friends. “I’ll miss them, but ...”

  “You’ll be going home with me,” Anderson said. “You’ll spend some time on Safehouse before they assign you to a new team.”

  You mean, I’ll spend some time being mercilessly poked and prodded by the headshrinkers, Rachel translated silently. She understood the logic, but ... she shook her head. The marine corps employed better psychologists than the rest of the military, men and women who’d seen the elephant themselves, yet it was never easy to unburden herself in front of them. She’d heard all the stories, all the warnings whispered during basic training. Say too much to a headshrinker, they’d warned, and you’d never see active duty again. I suppose I don’t have a choice.

  She sighed, inwardly. She didn’t want to think about a new team right now. She wasn’t even sure there was a team waiting for her. Empty slots were rapidly filled ... she winced at the thought of being the FNG again. It wasn’t going to be easy, even though she had a stellar record since she’d earned her wings. Too many teams would ride her hard until they were sure she still had it.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. There was no point in trying to fight it. “When do we leave?”

  “Two weeks, I think,” Anderson said. “We’ll see.”

  You’re probably not too keen to hand command to Major-General Foxtrot, Rachel thought, silently. She understood the impulse. Very few marines had ever command
ed multiple divisions in combat. And when you go home ...

  She winced, again. She had a lot of reports to write. She’d have to go through everything she’d done, everything the rest of the team had done that she’d known about, everything the division had done ... she dreaded the thought of assessing the division’s overall effectiveness when she honestly hadn’t seen much of it. She’d been undercover for the majority of the campaign. The thought made her smile, reluctantly. Her report was going to be required reading if - when, she told herself firmly - the Slaughterhouse was reopened.

  A thought struck her. “They didn’t destroy the Slaughterhouse.”

  Anderson looked irked. “If they did, we haven’t been able to find any record of it,” he agreed. “They had means, motive and opportunity, but they didn’t actually do it. And we don’t know who did.”

  Rachel nodded. The corps was not short of enemies. There were plenty of factions who had a vested interest in crippling the corps, ranging from corprats to warlords ... she scowled as she realised the attackers might never be identified. She’d heard a rumour that the Commandant had assigned a team of Pathfinders to finding the attackers, but nothing concrete. Maybe she could get herself assigned to the team. It would give her something to do.

  “We’ll find them,” she said.

  “Yes,” Anderson agreed. He turned to head back downstairs, then stopped and looked at her. “Until then ... there’ll always be something for us to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rachel said. “I look forward to it.”

  ***

  “We must get captured more often,” Rifleman Young said, as the remains of the company settled into the berth. The makeshift unit had been left intact, although that would change if - when - the division was rebuilt from scratch. “If it means going home earlier ...”

  “That’s enough of that,” Command Sergeant Mayberry said, sharply. “We haven’t been ordered home as a reward.”