by Grant, Peter
“Have you heard the news?”
“Er… what news, Sir?”
“Colonel Kujula and his team were killed yesterday.”
“What?” In her shock she forgot to use the normal honorific, but in his agitation he didn’t seem to notice.
“He was at the base we destroyed a few weeks ago. The combat engineer patrol he was visiting out there appears to have been wiped out by the rebels.”
She recalled with a mental frisson of horror, I asked to go with him! If he’d said yes, I’d be dead too!
The Major straightened with a visible effort at self-discipline. “You’re about to be summoned to the Military Governor’s office. You’re to tell him only that the Colonel ordered the engineers to open up the base to retrieve evidence we believed would be there, based on information provided by a prisoner. Don’t speculate about anything else. Understood?”
“Er… no, Sir, I don’t understand. He’s the Military Governor, after all, and we’re under his authority. Shouldn’t I answer any questions he asks me?”
“No! I don’t care what the regulations say about who’s in charge. We’re the Security Service, the true guardians of the Satrapy, and you’ll do well to remember that!” His voice was snappish, vindictive. “Tell him only what he absolutely has to know, nothing else! Be sure I’ll know at once if you disobey me, and you won’t escape punishment. Understood?”
“Y – yes, Sir.”
He turned on his heel and walked away down the corridor.
As she sank back into her seat, her desktop comm unit rang. She picked up the handset. “Lieutenant Yazata speaking.”
“Lieutenant, this is Captain Dehghan, aide to Major-General Huvishka, the Military Governor. Your presence is required immediately at the Command Bunker. How soon can you get here?”
“I – ah… It’ll take me fifteen to twenty minutes, Sir.”
“I’ll so advise the General.” He hung up without waiting for her reply.
She realized two things as she raced her car towards the Military Governor’s compound. First, her agent probably hadn’t been joking about what Major Moshira might have done to him had he disobeyed his order to engage in black-market speculation on his behalf. I wonder if he was using official funds to do that?, she pondered. The second thing was that the Major must have an informant or some sort of monitoring device in the Military Governor’s office – otherwise how could he have known about the imminent summons?
She began marshalling her thoughts. If the Colonel was dead, her temporary assignment to the Security Service was now subject to the whims of whoever took over from him as Commanding Officer of the SS mission on Laredo. That would probably be Major Moshira in the short term… and the Major had a wandering, lustful eye that had mentally undressed her on more than one occasion. If he were now to be in authority over her, she might be faced with a very difficult situation. On the other hand, if she asked the General for a transfer and the Major was listening to the conversation, he’d hear whatever she said to justify her request – which might land her in even worse trouble.
She mulled over the situation as she drove, and by the time she turned into the Military Compound parking area she’d reached a decision. She parked her car, then opened the secure equipment locker bolted to the chassis and took out a small flat black box. She blessed the late Colonel Kujula for trusting her with it as she switched it on, checking to ensure that the red diode indicator was illuminated, and dropped it into her pocket. If Major Moshira was angry with her for carrying it, she’d excuse herself by saying that the Colonel had ordered her to use it when meeting clandestinely with agents, as she had earlier that morning. In her shock at the news he’d brought, she’d forgotten to switch it off or remove it from her pocket.
The security desk at the entrance to the Command Bunker complex was expecting her. A guard escorted her down three levels to a corridor lined with offices, and delivered her to Captain Dehgahn in the anteroom to the Military Governor’s suite. He ran his eyes up and down her uniform as he got to his feet, and nodded in approval.
“You’ll do. The General likes to see smartness in his officers.”
He knocked at an inner door. “Lieutenant Yazata is here, Sir.”
“Well, don’t just stand there, man – bring her in!” The voice sounded angry.
She followed the Captain into the office. While he closed the door, she crossed the carpet to stand at attention in front of the desk. “Lieutenant Yazata reports to General Huvishka as ordered, Sir!” Even as she spoke, she felt the electronic device in her pocket start to vibrate.
The General was a tall, spare man. He leaned back in his chair and looked at her penetratingly, his cold gray eyes seeming to bore right through her. “What can you tell me about Colonel Kujula, Lieutenant? You worked for him, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Sir, I was his aide until a couple of days ago; but before I say more, there’s something I must show you.” She removed the jamming device from her pocket and laid it on the desk. “Have you seen one of these before, Sir?”
He went very still. “Yes, I have – I used one in a couple of previous assignments back on Bactria. That’s a jammer to block eavesdropping devices, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And from the way it’s vibrating gently against my desk, it’s clearly found something to jam here, right?”
“Yes, Sir.” She quickly explained about Major Moshira’s warning. Turning to Captain Dehgahn, she asked, “Sir, how long was it after the decision to call me in that you actually made the call?”
“Not more than ten minutes.”
Major-General Huvishka growled, “Yet Major Moshira knew about it before the call was made. He must have been monitoring our conversation in here! What the hell is the SS playing at, to treat me as if I were the enemy?”
“Sir, with respect, as far as I can tell they think you are an enemy – or at least a rival,” she said flatly. “From comments I’ve overheard, they seem to regard the Army as competing with them for the role of ‘Guardians of the Satrapy’, as they call it. As an Army officer on assignment there I’ve often been treated with disdain and distrust, even by their enlisted personnel. If they had enough SS people here to staff their office exclusively with them, I think they’d be a lot happier.”
“Thank you for alerting me to this, Lieutenant. That, in itself, has justified bringing you here today. Now, to get back to my question, what can you tell me about Colonel Kujula? He’s just got a reinforced platoon of my combat engineers killed – or so we assume – and I want to know why they died. They were sent out on his orders.”
“Sir, he told me that a prisoner we’d taken at that base a few weeks before had proved to be a senior rebel officer. He’d been interrogated, and provided information. All the Colonel told me was that there was something hidden in the base that we had to recover. He had me contact our regional garrison in his name, and order a patrol of combat engineers to be sent to the base. They were to dig through the rubble left after its destruction to see whether they could find… whatever it was. He said he was going to fly out there to join them in an assault shuttle. I asked to accompany him, because I’ve never been in the field before, but he refused. That was when he reassigned me to handle his agents in and around Tapuria, so I don’t know any more, Sir.”
“It’s a good thing he didn’t allow you to go with him, or you’d also be dead! You didn’t receive any report or signal from him to suggest that they might have found anything?”
“No, Sir. Did they find anything on his body?”
“They haven’t found it yet, and they may never do so. The patrol appears to have camped close to the entrance to the base, at the foot of a steep hillside. They made routine calls at twenty, at midnight, and at four yesterday morning – then they never called again. By noon they’d missed two routine calls and the regional garrison was getting worried. They sent a drone to investigate, but all it found was a massive heap of rock at the foot of the hi
ll. They then sent an infantry company out there in assault shuttles. It reported that the mid-section of the hillside, above the entrance to the base, had been undermined by what looked like multiple plasma cannon shots. That brought down hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and soil from the cliffs above. It completely covered the place where the patrol had reported it was camped. The landslide’s up to twenty meters deep there.”
“And no-one knows what’s underneath it, Sir?”
Huvishka made a sour face. “We presume the patrol’s vehicles and the Colonel’s assault shuttle are in there somewhere, along with all their bodies; but thanks to a panicky sentry yesterday afternoon, we can only guess. He saw two figures emerge from the bushes and fired on them at once without waiting to identify them. They proved to have been members of the combat engineer patrol. They must have escaped whatever happened to it, but since he killed both of them we can’t ask them what it was. He’ll be court-martialed and executed, of course, but that won’t bring them back. The only other evidence is the wreckage of one of our armored cars about a hundred meters from the landslide. It had been destroyed by a plasma cannon bolt.”
“Are there no more engineers to dig away the landslide and locate the vehicles and bodies, Sir?”
“Not in that area, and I don’t have enough of them to assign another platoon to the job. I only have one battalion of combat engineers, and they’re split up into independent platoons and spread all across the continent to support my infantry units. I’ve asked repeatedly for more engineers from Bactria, but every time I do they turn me down because of cost – infantry are a lot cheaper to train, equip and support in the field. Anyway, never mind that now. Lieutenant, thank you very much for revealing to me the extent of my problems with the SS. To prevent reprisals against you, I’m going to transfer you immediately to my staff. For now you’ll assist Captain Dehgahn with his duties as my aide. He has a lot of extra work at present, what with the upcoming parade for the Satrap and our impending handover to a civilian Administration, so he’ll be glad of your help.”
The Captain grinned. “That’s an understatement, Sir! Thank you for thinking of me.”
“Thank you, Sir.” She hesitated a moment. “May I make a suggestion, please, Sir?”
“Go ahead.”
She explained her agent’s comments about buying diamonds for Major Moshira. “Sir, if his account can be proved – particularly if he gives you the diamonds, and the money the Major gave him to pay for them can be traced back to SS funds – then that might give you grounds to take action against the local SS office.”
“A very good point. Are you prepared to go back to the SS this afternoon? I can send Captain Dehgahn with you if you wish.”
“I’ll be glad to have him, Sir, in case the Major decides I’ve been disloyal to him.”
“Very well. I want you to get your agent’s written report as scheduled. When you’ve done that, place him under arrest and bring him here for interrogation by my own people, not the SS. We’ll see what he has to say.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Captain, please escort Lieutenant Yazata back to the SS offices and help her in any way necessary. Take some of my MP’s with you to provide assistance as required. If you run into anything you can’t handle, call me at once.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“All right. On your way, both of you.”
March 6th 2850 GSC
RESISTANCE HEADQUARTERS
Jake was eating breakfast when the Council’s summons reached him. He hastily crammed his mouth full of food, dumped the rest unceremoniously in the trash bin, and hurried down the tunnel to the meeting room.
“Sorry to have kept you, Sir,” he apologized to General Allred as he entered, brushing crumbs from his utility coverall. The General was sitting alone at the roughly-cobbled-together table, drinking coffee.
“No problem. The Council’s still assembling.” Allred rubbed his tired eyes. “I was up until the small hours after the aircar brought you back, reading your progress report on the activation of Laguna Base and your son’s after-action report on the Matopo Hills affair. That was one hell of a mission!”
“It sure was, Sir.” Jake’s pride in his son was obvious in his voice.
The other members of the Council trickled in over the next five minutes. As soon as all seven were present, Gloria Allred called the meeting to order. She looked around, her prematurely gray hair framing a tired, careworn but still determined face.
“We’ve done everything in our power for over three years to collect evidence of Bactrian atrocities. We’re currently assembling it all, including some items that were dispersed to different locations for safekeeping. We almost lost some of the most important evidence at the Matopo Hills, but fortunately that’s been recovered, along with intelligence that’s going to have a dramatic impact on our future. We should have all the evidence, and our two bearer bank keys, at our new Laguna Peninsula base by tomorrow. There we’ll catalog it, assemble it into a package, and duplicate as much as possible for safekeeping in case anything goes wrong.
“Mr. Ellis has arranged for a spaceship to be here at the end of the month to collect him. However, intelligence obtained from a Security Service colonel reveals that at the same time the Satrap of Bactria and his son, the Crown Prince, will be visiting Laredo. During their visit all space traffic will be restricted, and no boarding or disembarking will be allowed. Mr. Ellis will be stuck planetside until the Satrap leaves. If we try to kill the Satrap and his son, even if we fail, the result will be chaos and disorder. The Bactrians will be frantic to find whoever’s responsible, and they certainly won’t permit any spaceship to leave until they’ve searched every nook and cranny. Therefore, if we want to attack the Satrap, we have to first find a way to get Mr. Ellis and our evidence aboard his ship, then send it on its way. That’s what we’ll have to decide over the next couple of days. There’s also a major military consideration looming over us. I’ll ask my husband to address that. Bill?”
“Thank you, Gloria.” The General looked around the table as he spoke. “The single most important reason we’ve pursued low-intensity operations for as long as we have has been to buy time to get this evidence to the United Planets. If it weren’t for that I’d have conducted higher-intensity operations, albeit at the cost of even higher casualties than we’ve already taken. Let’s face it, we can’t get off-planet and we can’t win militarily. Whether we die sooner by inflicting greater damage, or live longer by inflicting less, still leads to the same outcome for all of us in the end.”
Another Councilor shook her head. “I can’t help thinking that it may all have been in vain anyway.” Her voice was sad, almost despairing. “The United Planets isn’t renowned for solving problems – it’s more a gathering-place for politicians to see and be seen. The best we could hope for is a peacekeeping mission, and with more than four-fifths of our planetary population already dead that would be pointless. They probably won’t bother. As for sanctions against Bactria, even if they’re imposed they won’t come in time to help us. In the end, who’s to say our long fight has been worth anything at all? Haven’t we merely delayed the inevitable?”
Gloria Allred replied, “We haven’t surrendered, Maria, and we never will. That counts for a lot in my book. By getting this evidence out we’ll at least let people know the truth about what happened here. We owe that to all our soldiers who died for us, and the slaughtered population of Banka, and all who’ve died as slave laborers. They deserve to be remembered.”
“But will Bactria ever be punished?” Maria asked.
General Allred nodded vigorously. “Ever heard the old saying ‘What goes around, comes around’? I’m a student of history. Almost every time one nation has mercilessly crushed another, sooner or later they’ve been crushed in their turn. We won’t be around to see it, but I’ve no doubt Bactria will pay a heavy price for what it’s done to us. It’s the ‘Golden Rule’ applied to nations instead of individuals. What they’v
e done to us, someone else will one day do to them.”
He waited for a further response, but none came. He continued, “To get back to our present situation, as you know, our remaining major bases are now known to the enemy. We’ll finish evacuating them by tomorrow morning – in fact, this Council will be among the last to leave. We’re going to booby-trap them, of course, in order to kill as many Bactrians as possible when they attack them. However, we need to decide whether it’s feasible for us to continue to fight when most of our bases are gone. Personally, I don’t think it is, particularly because with only one base left to us, it can’t be long before it’s also discovered by the enemy.
“There’s another thing. If we want to attack the Satrap, success will depend on being able to overwhelm local defenses. That’ll take every able-bodied soldier we’ve got. Furthermore, the enemy will throw everything he’s got into trying to rescue the Satrap or avenge his death, so our chances of escape will be slim to none. If we attack him, it’ll be our swan song – a last stand. I’m not opposed to that if the Council decides it’s worth the cost in order to kill him. However, any attempt to send our evidence and Mr. Ellis out of the system will have to precede or coincide with our attack, because afterwards there won’t be enough of us left to do anything about it.”
There was a long silence as the Councilors digested his words. Eventually Jake raised his hand. “Sir, here’s a thought. If we plan to attack the Satrap, wouldn’t it be best to make the Bactrians think we’re a spent force – that we’ve shot our bolt and no longer pose a real threat? If so, I suggest we don’t booby-trap our bases after evacuating them. Let the Bactrians walk right into them and suffer no casualties. We’ve booby-trapped things so often before that they’ll come in all worried about what’s waiting for them, only to encounter a huge anti-climax. I reckon they’ll think we either didn’t have the stomach for it any longer, or perhaps had run out of the explosives and other things we needed to make the booby-traps. I hope that’ll help to make them more complacent about the Satrap’s security.”