War To The Knife

by Grant, Peter

  Huvishka snapped, “That’s the space station! It has to be. The rebels have destroyed it!”

  They all goggled at him. The Satrap found his voice first. “But – but how? How could they get up there? They don’t have spacecraft! And how could they destroy something so big?”

  “I don’t know how they did it, Sir, but look at the reaction of those rebels out there. They’re excited, congratulating each other. This wasn’t a surprise to them – they were expecting it. What’s more, if the light came from a fireball it was probably a nuclear weapon exploding far outside atmosphere. We know the Laredans had a few nuclear demolition charges to deal with asteroids or other space threats. My predecessor reported they’d all been disposed of by the enemy to prevent us capturing them. Having seen that flash, I now suspect he was… optimistic in his report. I think we’ve just seen one of them being used – and if they’ve used one, how many more do they have?”

  Yazata said carefully, “Sir… if the rebels can cause carnage like what we saw in the arena this morning, and do that without nuclear weapons… what might they achieve with them?”

  “I wish you hadn’t asked that question, Lieutenant,” her boss said with a sigh. “They’re certainly motivated enough to use them. The attack here is bound to be a one-way mission for many of them, and they must know that. Forces from the security perimeter outside Tapuria are undoubtedly already on their way to relieve the city. The rebels must be hoping to kill as many of us as possible and destroy as much as they can before they get here. They’ll then try to make their getaway in the confusion, accepting heavy losses in return for inflicting massive damage on us. That shows a level of fanaticism and commitment that goes beyond anything I’ve seen so far on this planet. If they have more fanatics out there, and they still have a few nuclear warheads, there’s no telling what they may do next.”

  “But I thought we’d crushed them!” the Satrap objected.

  Huvishka sighed. “Does Your Majesty remember what I said to you when you appointed me Military Governor of Laredo?” he asked.

  “Yes. You said I’d been given poor counsel thus far, and that we’d treated the population here far too harshly. You asked permission to try to reconcile them to our rule.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty; but you wouldn’t permit me to do that.”

  “I put it to my Council, but they were irrevocably opposed to what they considered a sign of weakness. Some even wanted me to revoke your appointment on the grounds of what they called ‘deficiency of character’ for even daring to make the suggestion.” He sighed. “I suppose that’s partly the fault of my father and grandfather. They chose advisers who shared their vision of Bactria as superior to all other nations. They encouraged my father to invade Laredo on the principle that ‘might makes right’. I didn’t share that opinion, but he didn’t consult me. I came to the throne two years after the invasion, when it was too late to alter our position.”

  The General nodded towards the door. “There, Your Majesty, you see the fruit of such counsel. Even if their forces here today are all killed, the rebels have scored a major victory. They must have wiped out almost everything we’ve built in Tapuria, judging by the smoke covering the horizon as far as we can see. They’ve certainly killed most of those in the arena this morning, including a third of our combat forces on this planet and many of our colonial administration personnel. We just saw them destroy our space station. They’ve demonstrated that when you oppress and grind down a people, those who continue to resist become stronger, not weaker. We’ve already killed all the weak ones. In the process we’ve distilled and refined the rebels until those that are left are harder, stronger and more dedicated than all those who’ve died. We’ve created our own worst enemy.”

  The Satrap gazed at him for a long moment. “So you wouldn’t advise reprisals against the remaining Laredans for this morning’s affair?”

  “We’ve already killed or enslaved four-fifths of the planet’s population, Your Majesty. This” – he waved his hand towards the devastation outside – “is what that’s brought us. No, far better to halt the most repressive actions at once, then try to find leaders among the surviving locals with whom we can slowly improve relations. The hard-liners among your advisers won’t want that, but you’ve seen for yourself what their counsel has wrought. It won’t be easy, and it’ll take time; but if I were you I’d appoint wiser counselors, ease up on the local population, and try to find a better way forward.”

  “Do you know, after this morning I’m more than half inclined to agree with you,” the Satrap said slowly. He glanced at his son. “What say you?”

  “What the General says makes sense to me,” the Crown Prince declared.

  “Then you’re showing more understanding than I did at your age. However, we’ve got to survive before we can do anything about our policies. How are we going to do that, General?”

  They were interrupted by a fusillade of shots from the room behind them. Yazata hurried to the door, flattening herself against the wall before looking cautiously through. “One of the guards is down,” she reported. “The other two are still on their feet.” She turned to face the General. “Sir, we’ve got to split up before they join forces and overrun us.”

  “What do you mean?” the Satrap demanded.

  Huvishka stared at her intently, then nodded slowly. “What she means, Your Majesty, is that there are too few of us and too many of them. Within a few minutes they’ll have informed their forces outside that we’ve broken through to these offices. They’ll then attack from out there while those inside try to get through the wall, just as we did. We’ll be pinned between both forces. Our only escape is up those stairs, to try to lose ourselves in one of the levels above and hold out until relief forces get here.”

  “What about the elevator?” the Crown Prince interrupted. “Won’t that be easier for my father?”

  “You can’t see what’s waiting for you, Your Highness,” Yazata explained. “If the enemy is already on the floor you’re going to, they’ll gun you down as the doors open. You won’t stand a chance.”

  The young man winced. “Forget I asked!” he said hastily.

  Huvishka continued, “If we stay together and they catch us, we’ll all die – we don’t have enough people to defend ourselves, and no heavy weapons. If we split up, two smaller groups might be able to find hiding-places that won’t be so easily discovered. One or both groups might survive until help reaches us. Lieutenant Yazata is right, Your Majesty. Our best chance for one of you to make it is for us to split up.”

  The Satrap nodded decisively. “Let’s do it. You take charge, General.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. Lieutenant, take the Crown Prince. I can’t spare a guard to go with you, because there are only two still uninjured. Two of us will have to help the Satrap while the third covers us. Head up the stairs. Pick one of the top three floors, then get as far away to the right as you can. We’ll give you a minute’s start, then go to the left on a lower floor to increase the separation between us.”

  “Yes, Sir.” She turned towards the stairs. “Come on, Your Highness.”

  “Just a moment.” The young man hugged the Satrap. “God be with you, Father.”

  “And with you, my son.” He hesitated, then said softly, “If you survive this day, remember what you’ve heard and seen and learned this morning. Now go!”

  ~ ~ ~

  OLD TRAFCON

  Jake was watching the fitting of a captured plasma cannon to a heavy transport’s load bed when the flash erupted. They all looked up to see the fireball form and swell high above their heads.

  One of the soldiers grinned, holding out his hand. “Congratulations, Sir! Looks like your son did his work well.”

  “It certainly looks that way.” Jake shook his hand. “Let’s hope they got away in time. Now they’ve got to take all our evidence to the ship that’s waiting for it, and get it out of the system.”

  The other man shook his head, grimacing.
“Sooner them than me. At least here I’ve got my feet on the ground and fresh air in my lungs. I’d hate to have to fight with nothing but vacuum all around me and the nearest solid ground thirty thousand clicks below!” The others laughed, even as they nodded in vigorous agreement.

  Jake left them to carry on with their work as he turned away, clambering over rubble tossed randomly about by the demolition of buildings at crossroads. When he reached a clear area he paused for a moment, looking up at the last of the fireball as it died away.

  “Go with God, son,” he murmured softly. “I hope and pray you and Tamsin make it out of the system OK. Have lots of kids, and remember me kindly to them, will you? I wish I could live long enough to see them… but that’s not likely to happen. God bless you, my boy.”

  Wiping a tear surreptitiously from his eye, he hurried back to the old Trafcon building and clattered down the stairs to the first basement level. Quincy and the other communications techs were gathered there, waiting.

  “Dave blew up the space station,” he told them. “We saw the fireball.”

  “We figured as much,” Quincy agreed. “The feed to the station just cut off dead.”

  “Right. Are you all set to blow the charges down here?”

  “We’re rigged and ready.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  They hurried up the stairs, one of the techs unreeling a long cable behind them, and ran down the entrance drive, past the gatehouse and up the road in front of the building. They didn’t stop until they were fifty meters away. Another tech cut the insulation from the cable and connected it to a plunger. He offered it to Jake.

  “Would you like to do the honors, Sir?”

  “I did the tunnel. Quincy, I think this one’s for you.”

  “Why, thank you, Sir! I didn’t know you cared.”

  As the others chuckled, the senior tech took the plunger and pushed it down. The ground trembled beneath their feet as a thunderous roar rose from the old TrafCon building. The single-story guard accommodation above ground collapsed into the triple basement levels as the station, the supercomputer, and all the communications gear was shattered by demolition charges. Smoke and dust billowed upward.

  “Between bringing down their new TrafCon Tower and blowing up their computer and other equipment, I reckon we just cost Bactria close to half a billion bezants,” Quincy mused as they watched the destruction.

  “That’s just the start of it,” Jake assured him. “Bactria has to import a lot of its high tech. Its bezants are too weak to be easily convertible on the interplanetary market, so it has to buy hard currency at extortionate exchange rates, or pay in hard assets like gold. If the arena strike went as well as I think it did, and the space station, warships, assault shuttles, stores depot, and civil and military administration complexes have been destroyed as planned, we’re talking up to a trillion bezants in losses, maybe more. That’s half Bactria’s annual gross planetary product. It’ll cripple their economy if they try to replace all they’ve lost in less than five to ten years, on top of their other expenditures. By resisting from the beginning, we made Laredo a constant drain on their Treasury instead of the economic bonanza they expected. With today’s work, we’ve turned our planet into a financial millstone around their necks.”

  “The day’s still young, Sir. Let’s see if we can’t give their collective wallets something more to complain about!”

  “We’ll probably find some worthwhile things to shoot at as we fight our way out of the city. All right, everyone, get aboard.” He indicated the captured transports ahead, with armored cars at the head and tail of the convoy. “Let’s get the hell out of this maze of streets before relief forces arrive.”

  ~ ~ ~

  SECURITY SERVICE HEADQUARTERS

  The assault force wasted no time. As they drew nearer to the hated building, the armored cars took the lead and used their plasma cannon to flatten the entire perimeter wall and every guard post and tower along it. The sentries carried only light personal weapons, the SS having relied on the defensive perimeter around the city to protect their headquarters from any major onslaught. They died at their posts or fled in panic as the building was laid bare.

  The armored cars took up position in the parking area, spread along the façade of the black building. They blasted the main entrance into rubble, allowing their comrades to charge in, weapons blazing. As they spread throughout the ground level, they passed word back to the cars whenever they encountered a pocket of resistance. By counting windows along the façade, the vehicles could aim their plasma cannon precisely at the trouble-spot. If a single shot didn’t solve the problem, a second usually did. Before long the entire ground floor was secured.

  Demolition specialists followed the assault force down to the cells in the basement levels. They killed every jailer, interrogator and torturer they found, then opened every cell, growling in anger as they saw the condition of some of those inside. The leader of the assault team ordered his soldiers to assemble all the former prisoners in the entrance foyer among the rubble, and laid things out for them.

  “The city’s surrounded by forces that are even now on their way here to crush us. We expected that. Before they arrive we’ll have killed the Satrap and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of their fellow soldiers and colonial administrators. We’re destroying the entire military and civilian infrastructure they’ve built up here. When we’ve finished, those of you who are too badly hurt to walk will join our wounded aboard our surviving assault shuttles and be flown out. The rest of you have three choices. You can stay here and wait for the SS to return. I don’t recommend that.” There was a growl of agreement from those who’d recently had to endure their hospitality. “Besides, the building won’t be here much longer.” Laughter and applause.

  “The second choice is to find a hole to hide in. We’ll give you a couple of ration packs and a weapon. You can wait until the fighting dies down, then try to sneak out of the city on foot. I don’t think you have much of a chance, but if worst comes to worst you can at least try to take some of the bastards with you. The third option is to join us. We’ll give you a rifle and ammunition and teach you how to use them if you don’t already know. We’re going to split up into four or five convoys of transports and armored cars and try to escape. We’ll launch hoversats that we’ve captured from the enemy to identify their approach roads, and try to dodge around and between their columns. It’ll be very risky, and we know a lot of us won’t make it, but that’s the best option we’ve got. What do you want to do?”

  The overwhelming majority of the able-bodied former prisoners chose to join the convoys. The few who elected to hide and try to escape later were armed, given some captured ration packs, and allowed to go their own way. Meanwhile the demolition experts laid charges in the basement against every pillar and reinforced wall they could find. They didn’t have time to set them very efficiently, but compensated by using more than four tons of explosives, enlisting the eager help of former prisoners to unload it from the trucks and carry it down the stairs. Any attempt by those on the upper floors to shoot at them was met with plasma cannon fire from the armored cars. The defenders rapidly learned to lay low, keep quiet and do nothing if they wished to survive even a little while longer.

  As soon as the charges were wired into a ring-main, the leader of the team put everyone aboard the vehicles and sent them several blocks away for safety while he connected a plunger to the wire.

  “Ready?” he asked his deputy, crouching beside him behind the cover of the smashed perimeter wall.

  “Ready. Blow it!”

  He shoved the plunger down. A massive shockwave rolled over them as the ground bounced and shook. The ten-story building heaved, shuddered, and collapsed straight down into its own basement, taking with it hundreds of screaming SS personnel trapped on the upper nine floors. A huge choking cloud of smoke and dust rose high above the ruins.

  The two kept their heads well down until fragments stopped fallin
g on and around them. The leader glanced at his deputy, shaking his head in a vain attempt to clear the ringing from his ears. “D’you think we might have used a tad too much explosive there?”

  “Perhaps just a skosh.”

  “Oh, well. They were SS, after all.”

  “True. If anyone deserved overkill, they did.”

  “My feelings exactly. Come on, let’s go!”

  Grinning, they raced for the transports through the fog of smoke and dust.

  ~ ~ ~

  MILITARY GOVERNOR’S COMPOUND

  The Bactrian Army offered more resistance at the Command Bunker than at any other site in Tapuria. The assault force managed to cut their way into the Military Governor’s administrative building without too much difficulty, but that was because the forces guarding it chose not to die at their posts. Instead they made a fighting withdrawal into the adjacent underground bunker, covering each other’s retreat, carrying their wounded. Soon the bunker was filled with over a hundred defenders. A similar number prepared defensive positions around its perimeter, hurriedly digging foxholes and scrapes, and beat back all attempts by the attackers to penetrate it.

  The leader of the assault force consulted her subordinates, then made a decision. Technical specialists filtered their way to the front line, each carrying cases and boxes, consoles strapped to their chests. As they opened the containers and set up their gear, she contacted the surviving shuttle still supporting her group.

  “I need you to open a way for the bugs,” she told its pilot. “Can you use your plasma cannon to shoot a hole in the earth over the bunker, all the way down to the roof, and then through it?”

  “Might be tricky – that’s hardened plascrete under there. I don’t want to burn out my cannon by firing too many shots too quickly. Let me call one or two of the others to help.”

  “OK, thanks. Quick as you can, please. We’re taking casualties.”

  Two more Laredo shuttles swiftly joined their colleague. They formed a circle overhead, following the lead of the first shuttle. As each passed over a landmark building near the perimeter they fired a single shot from their plasma cannon, aimed at an angle into the mound of earth above the bunker. The first five plasma bolts did no more than dig out massive quantities of soil, raising a cloud of dust and depositing layers of grit and grime on attackers and defenders alike. They momentarily forgot their differences in a barrage of lurid curses directed at their airborne tormentors. The sixth shot exposed the plascrete roof. It took four more bolts to cave it in and open a huge hole to the sky.