War To The Knife

by Grant, Peter

  “If there is, I don’t know what it might be.”

  “Can we see you off tonight?” Tamsin asked.

  “I’d rather not, if you’ll forgive me. We’re all saying goodbye to our friends and loved ones round about now. If a group of them gather to see us off, there’ll be tears and grieving. I don’t want that – none of us do. We’d rather just… get on with it. Is that wrong?”

  “No. I understand.” She reached over and hugged him.

  “Thanks, Tamsin. You look after my son for me. I’ll leave him in your capable hands.”

  “I’ll keep him safe as long as I’m spared myself. That’s a promise.”

  “You do the same for her, boy, you hear me?”

  “You bet.” Dave embraced him.

  Jake pushed himself to his feet. “All right, you layabouts, we’ve wasted enough time. You’ve got your own work to do. Be off with you!”

  ~ ~ ~

  At eleven-thirty that night, by unspoken accord, Dave and Tamsin walked out of the vehicle tunnel and down the road towards the clearing where they’d landed the captured SS shuttle. They stayed to one side among the trees and bushes lining its perimeter. Below the cliffs the waves rolled against the coast in the minimal light of the new moon, occasionally throwing spray high above the rocks, leaving the smell of ozone in the air. It was high tide.

  They sat on a fallen log, a remnant of the debris from when the clearing had been cut. She leaned against him, his arm around her. They waited in silence until, shortly before midnight, they heard a low hum from the direction of the cave and the crunch of tires on gravel. As they rose to their feet an airvan moved into the clearing. Its lift fans accelerated, thrusting air downwards and outwards, molding their clothes against their bodies and whipping through their close-cropped hair. Without hesitation it rose, dipped and straightened, then headed out slowly over the sea. Behind it four more airvans followed in rapid succession. They formed up in arrowhead formation low over the waves then turned north and accelerated into the night. Tamsin knew their pilots would be keeping a wary eye on their warning panels, ready to take instant evasive action if radar or lidar transmissions should be detected and activate their masking devices.

  Tamsin held Dave as she wept silently into his shoulder. She knew he was crying too, because his shoulders were shaking. He reached up now and again to wipe the tears from his eyes.

  At last she whispered, “It’s hard, isn’t it, love?”

  “It’s harder than I’d ever have imagined possible.”

  “Do me a favor, darling. Don’t ever say goodbye to me the way your father did tonight. Let’s just… take what comes our way, in the sure knowledge that we love each other and nothing’s ever going to change that, in this life or the next. If I know you’re about to die, or you know I’m about to die, let’s not burden each other with that. Let’s go with a smile on our face and love for each other in our hearts.”

  “You’ve got my word.”

  They turned and walked slowly back down the road towards the cave, arms around each other.

  March 14th 2850 GSC

  TAPURIA: MILITARY GOVERNOR’S COMPOUND

  Lieutenant Yazata blinked weariness from her eyes as she studied the huge wall display. It showed icons of various styles and sizes denoting roadblocks, patrols, radar and lidar stations, plasma cannon and missile batteries, reserve forces to reinforce threatened areas – the entire structure of the security perimeter surrounding Tapuria. It seemed impenetrable, she had to admit. If only it wasn’t taking so long for the additional forces Major-General Huvishka had summoned to get here from their garrisons and take up their positions! The perimeter wouldn’t be fully secured for at least another week.

  She turned to look at the adjacent wall. It supported a similar display of the area inside the security perimeter, including the site of the former Banka that was being rebuilt into a proud, bustling Tapuria. Major installations such as the spaceport, the civil administration center and the military headquarters where she now stood were outlined in red to show the extent of their security perimeters. Within those borders, higher-security zones were highlighted in yellow. She zoomed in on the Command Bunker site, and nodded in satisfaction as she saw that the missile battery on top of the massive reinforced structure was now depicted as having all of the launch units it was supposed to have. Regrettably, some batteries had lost equipment during the years of conflict, destroyed, damaged or even captured by the enemy, but not replaced due to budget constraints. The General had taken the unprecedented step of disbanding two batteries whose commanders had failed to meet his high standards, and distributing their components to other batteries to make up their deficiencies. His own headquarters had been the first to benefit. She couldn’t help but approve, given that the security enhancements added to her own protection too.

  As she watched, she saw an assault shuttle icon blink into life at the far corner of the Royal Palace compound. Again she nodded in satisfaction. After two missile batteries had been disbanded there hadn’t been enough of them to go around, so the General had removed twenty assault shuttles from those originally assigned to the parade and directed them to arrive at Tapuria a few weeks early, bearing a full warload of missiles in addition to their plasma cannon. They were being placed at points where their weapons would provide additional security to vital installations. Their search radars and battle computers would remain silent, of course, as would those of local batteries. The far more powerful and sophisticated ground- and aerostat-based radar and lidar facilities of the spaceport’s Traffic Control could search the entire volume of space over and around the city much more quickly and accurately than any mobile device, and its supercomputers could control missiles and plasma cannon with greater precision.

  “What are you doing in the Operations Center this late, Lieutenant?”

  The deep voice behind her made her jump. She stiffened to attention as she turned to face Major-General Huvishka, looming above her in the gloom of the glass-enclosed observation gallery. “Good evening, Sir. I thought you’d gone to bed already.” She glanced down at the operators on the floor below. None looked up. The soundproof gallery prevented their voices from being overheard.

  “I’m on my way there now. I thought I’d stop in here first, to see how things looked. I’m surprised you aren’t in bed yourself.”

  “I was trying to figure out any other ways the rebels might try to penetrate our defenses, Sir.”

  He regarded her with keen interest. “Has any new intelligence made you suspect that they’re going to do that?”

  “No, Sir. That’s what worries me. At the Military Academy they taught us there were only two ways to force an enemy to fight. One was to attack something she absolutely has to defend. The other is to defend something she absolutely has to attack. If I were the rebels, this parade would be something I’d feel obliged to attack. It concerns me that we’ve seen no indication they’re preparing to do so. They may not have heard about it yet, of course, but enough units are moving to reinforce our security perimeter around Tapuria that the enemy must be aware that something’s going on.”

  “And what would you do if you were in their shoes?”

  “I’d expect them to try to smuggle some of the few heavy weapons remaining to them through our perimeter, but there’s been no sign of that as yet. We may have overlooked it, but I don’t think that’s possible. They can’t carry plasma cannon or heavy mortars on their backs through the bush! They can only move them by vehicle, and we’ve covered the roads and air traffic very effectively. They don’t have any long-range artillery left. We know what they had before the war, plus what they captured from us. We’ve accounted for all of it during previous operations. That means they can’t bombard the celebrations from outside the perimeter. The only signs of activity we’ve seen are a few small parties of rebels who’ve tried to sneak past various checkpoints. They’ve all been detected and taken under fire. Unfortunately none survived to be taken prisoner – a pit
y, because our interrogators might have been able to get useful information out of them.”

  She swept her finger around the areas of special security. “The interior security zones are all being tightened up, with additional sentries and mobile patrols assigned to critical areas. The most critical sites – the arena, the newly-completed Royal Palace, this complex and Traffic Control – now have triple-layered security, which is inside the city security zone, which in turn is inside our outer perimeter. That’s five separate layers of defense attackers would have to penetrate in order to reach them. I don’t see how a lightly-armed guerrilla force can hope to accomplish that, Sir.”

  “I tend to agree with you. Go on.”

  “Thank you, Sir. I’ve been concerned about whether the rebels might try to sneak one or both of their captured shuttles into the formation that will overfly the arena, but given the newly revised traffic control precautions I don’t think that’ll be possible, Sir.”

  “I haven’t seen the latest updates. Refresh my memory about them, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, Sir. Due to lack of space and facilities nearby, we’ve set up a temporary landing field here for the assault shuttles flying in from our garrisons for the parade.” She indicated an icon twenty kilometers south of the security perimeter. “All of them are scheduled to arrive by not later than sunset on the thirtieth. Their troops will be taken to temporary barracks near the arena, from where they’ll be bussed to the parade early the following morning. The crews will spend the night with their shuttles, then launch in sequence from zero-eight-hundred on the thirty-first. They’ll form up in five groups over the field, then depart at zero-nine-forty-five to slowly overfly the arena from south to north at ten hundred precisely.”

  “How will Traffic Control prevent any marauding rebel shuttles from interfering?” General Huvishka asked.

  “Each shuttle – in fact, everything in the air – will be assigned a new secure transponder beacon ID by TrafCon for the duration of the Satrap’s visit, Sir. That’ll protect it from being targeted while overflying our secure areas. All air defenses will be centrally controlled and activated through TrafCon. Anything not using one of the new transponder codes will be shot down at once, without prior warning.”

  “That should take care of that problem. Very well, go on.”

  “The shuttles will overfly the arena in formation before peeling off to land in the parking area outside. The Satrap and Crown Prince will then inspect the troops and equipment paraded inside, after which their motorcade will exit the arena and drive through the assembled shuttles to take the salute of their crews. When the parade is over the shuttles will return to their temporary field to collect their troops before departing for their garrisons later that afternoon.”

  “What anti-aircraft precautions are in place at the arena itself?”

  “We have eight shuttles stationed there, Sir, two at each corner of the grounds. They’re each equipped with eight missiles plus their plasma cannon.”

  “That should suffice, given the multiple defense layers an enemy would have to penetrate before getting anywhere near the arena in the first place.”

  “I hope so, Sir.”

  “Only ‘hope’, Lieutenant? Are you still not sure about the Satrap’s safety and security?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “Sir, I’m out of my depth here. I’ve never commanded a unit in the field – at least, not yet.” She saw a flash of approval in his eyes at her qualification of that statement. “All I can say is, judging from the amount of damage the rebels have done to us over the years, I daren’t underestimate them, even if it currently appears that they’re no longer capable of interfering. I think it might be as dangerous to be overconfident as it would to be paranoid about them.”

  “I approve of your mindset, Lieutenant.” The General stretched wearily. “If there’s one law that applies to situations like this, it’s Murphy’s Law. Did you ever hear about it?”

  “Isn’t that the Old Home Earth saying, ‘If anything can go wrong it will’, Sir?”

  “That’s it. There’s also a variation that warns us, ‘Nature always sides with the hidden flaw’. I’m fully expecting both Murphy and an unsympathetic Nature to show up when we least expect them. We’ll just have to be ready to deal with them when they do.”

  March 15th 2850 GSC

  LAGUNA PENINSULA

  “How are your preparations coming along?” General Allred asked as he shook Dave’s hand.

  “As well as can be expected at this stage, Sir. This afternoon we’ll be put through our paces in the spacesuits. It’s hot, sweaty and uncomfortable wearing them planetside, but that’s the way it has to be, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, we’ve no other option.”

  “How are you going to get the garrison attack party back to Caristo tonight, Sir? We’ll need a lot of airvans – nothing else can cover the distance fast enough.”

  “Yes, so we’ll do it over two nights to make the best use of our limited number of vehicles. They’re stretched to the limit right now ferrying more than half our strike force to within walking distance of Banka, to make their way through the fortified perimeter. The remainder will hit the four garrisons we’ve targeted, then board the assault shuttles we capture there and use them to join us. Your orbital team will meet you in Caristo in the SS shuttle, of course.”

  Gloria sighed. “All we’ll be able to do for you at that point is to cross our fingers and pray hard. It’ll all be up to you.” She gestured at the large hard-sided suitcase on the table. “We hope this will help you to accomplish all the tasks we’ve laid on your shoulders.”

  The General opened the lid and took out four trays, laying them next to each other on the table. “We had our techs modify the suitcase and make up these trays on a fabber. Let’s start at the beginning.” He pointed to the lowermost tray, which was divided into compartments holding data chips and optical storage units. “We’ve duplicated every one of our records from the last three and a half years, including Gloria’s ‘Witness To War’ material, and consolidated them all onto these media. You’ve got magnetic and optical storage versions as backups for each other.”

  “Each chip is in a protective case,” Gloria pointed out as she opened one to demonstrate. “They should keep the data intact against anything short of a close-range electromagnetic pulse. The optical media aren’t vulnerable to that, of course. The suitcase itself has been lined with a Faraday cage to provide another layer of protection.”

  “The next tray up is the physical evidence,” the General continued as he touched it. It was a deeper unit containing several packages and envelopes, lying flat next to each other in specially constructed compartments lined with shock-absorbing material. “There’s a detailed inventory in this envelope. These are all originals, of course.”

  “This is the critical stuff, then,” Dave observed.

  “Yes. We can produce copies until we’re blue in the face, but Bactria would simply insist that they were forgeries. These are actual original enemy documents, including their signed threat to destroy Banka. There are also electronic storage units from captured hardware and other things that can be analyzed forensically, such as the torture materials you captured in the Matopo Hills, your recording of that SS Colonel speaking about them, and Lieutenant-Colonel Yardley’s report on his experience of them. Any UP inquiry will need this evidence to verify our claims.”

  “And the Bactrians won’t be able to dispute it?”

  Gloria laughed scornfully. “Oh, they’ll dispute it all, you can be sure of that! They’ll fight tooth and nail to neuter any inquiry. They’ll almost certainly try to exclude physical evidence altogether. It’ll be up to Vice-President Johns and our Ambassador to the United Planets to get an inquiry resolution with teeth, one that’ll admit physical evidence and allow for its verification. That’ll give us a much better chance of proving that Bactria has been guilty of crimes against humanity, including genocide. If we do, interplanetary sanctions against th
em will be almost guaranteed.”

  “The UP won’t send a peacekeeping force to kick them out of Laredo?”

  “Only if member nations are willing to pay for it and contribute forces. I’m not sure they will. Frankly, we’re a tiny polity in a galactic backwater. We liked it that way, of course; we could do our own thing and ignore the rest of the settled galaxy. Unfortunately, our independent natures bit us in the butt when Bactria invaded. We simply weren’t, and still aren’t, important enough for the major powers to overly concern themselves about us.” Her voice was bitter. “That may be unpalatable, but it’s the reality of interplanetary politics. Still, we’ve already resisted militarily, and made Bactria pay a far higher price in blood and money for Laredo than they ever foresaw. We’ll do that again at the end of this month. This,” and she patted the suitcase, “is a continuation of our resistance by other means. Who knows? In the long run it may cost Bactria even more than we’ve already made them pay.”

  Dave scowled. “Let’s hope so.”

  “Indeed!” The General turned to the next tray. “Now we come to a more interesting tray. You’re going to incur all sorts of costs in getting to Vice-President Johns. There’ll be space travel, the cost of clothing, meals and other essentials, possibly some bribes to pay if you pass through less civilized planets… we simply can’t predict all your expenses. That being the case, we’re going to give you almost all that’s left of our hard currency and assets. You’ll draw on them for your needs, and deposit the balance into our Treasury account on Neue Helvetica.”

  He indicated several overstuffed banknote-sized envelopes, each in its own compartment. “Those contain cash: Laredo pesos, Bactrian bezants, Earth neodollars, Lancastrian Commonwealth credits, Neue Helvetica francs and New Bavarian marks. They add up to the equivalent of about half a million of our pesos in all. They’ll be useful to pay a quick bribe, or something like that.