by David Weber
“It looks like the first organized seccy response was around the Sukharov manufacturing center,” Bartel continued. “That one took out two complete sections of Safeties before any of them even got out a mayday. It’s gotten worse since then, of course.”
“How much worse? And what’s happening now?” Drescher asked.
“A lot worse, Ma’am. And they’re sending in the Misties,” Bartel told her. “Howell’s got blood in his eye, too. They’ll be going in hot, with shoot on sight orders.”
“Wonderful.” Drescher pinched the bridge of her nose. “And just what are his objectives?”
“He’s planning to sweep the central arc of the northern seccy ring and drive as many of them as possible towards Neue Rostock and Hancock, then punch out both towers. Dusek’s got one of the biggest—and almost certainly the best trained and disciplined—gangs, and a lot of seccies have already refugeed towards Neue Rostock. Bachue the Nose has even more warm bodies in her organization in Hancock than he does in Neue Rostock. They’re not as cohesive and probably not as well armed, but they’ve got a reputation as tough, hardnosed bastards, and most of the seccies who didn’t make for Neue Rostock seem to have headed her way.”
“He’s planning to assault residential towers?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Bartel’s expression showed his opinion of that particular notion. “The idea, as I understand it, is to pen the seccies up in one convenient spot, then kick in the doors and clean them out once and for all.”
“Wonderful. Just frigging wonderful!”
Drescher suppressed a sudden urge to break something, but she wasn’t really surprised. Bentley Howell was good-looking and projected an aura of command—to the easily impressed, at least—but she sometimes wondered if he had two brain cells to rub together. Oh, he was reasonably intelligent in a lot of ways, but his contempt for seccies was bottomless, and it had led him into seriously underestimating them on several occasions she could think of right offhand. Once his prejudices engaged, his brain disengaged, and she had a sinking sensation it was going to be up to her to clean up one of his more spectacular messes.
The idiot probably thinks it’s going to be a routine corridor-clearing exercise, she thought disgustedly. From what Byrum’s saying, he and his people are going to be in for one hell of a painful surprise if that is what he thinks, though. It’s one thing to break up riots, or to sweep a single neighborhood in one of the towers to pick up a specific suspect, but this is going to be an entirely different animal.
She thought about that for another moment or two. She really didn’t like Howell, and he didn’t like her very much, either. But the Peaceforce was specifically tasked to stand behind OPS and MISD operations in case heavier support was needed. For that matter, the Mesan Planetary Peaceforce’s entire reason for being, really, was to respond to threats of seccy or slave unrest before they turned into genuine rebellion.
And, of course, to watch MISD like a hawk . . . and vice versa, she reminded herself.
The system government deliberately encouraged a certain degree of mutual antagonism between the Internal Security Directorate and the Peaceforce. OPS and MISD had significantly more combined manpower than the MPP, but the MPP had one hell of a lot more firepower than either—or both—of François McGillicuddy’s agencies, and it answered to General Caspar Alpina. Alpina was the Planetary Peaceforce’s senior uniformed officer, and under the Mesan constitution, he answered directly to CEO Ward, not McGillicuddy. The regular police forces, the ones that dealt with criminal investigations and peacekeeping among Mesa’s full citizens, stood completely outside the organizations specifically tasked with suppressing any seccy or slave unrest, of course. As such, even their SWAT teams had precious little in the way of heavy weapons. But the various security agencies had lots of weapons, ranging upward from OPS’ neural whips and flechette guns through MISD’s armored air cars, tribarrels, and plasma rifles to the MPP’s armored fighting vehicles, plasma cannon, and assault shuttles. Modern armies tended to be quite small, since there was no real point trying to defend a planetary surface if someone else controlled that planet’s orbital space, and technically—technically—not even the Planetary Peaceforce was actually an “army,” at all. But when roughly a third of the planetary population had to worry about mass uprisings from the other two thirds, the people responsible for preventing those uprisings needed plenty of firepower.
And their civilian masters needed to be confident that the people who commanded all that firepower weren’t going to be tempted to get together and use it to get rid of the aforesaid civilian masters. Actively fostering the tension between MISD and the MPP was one way to help prevent that from happening.
Unfortunately, that tension could also produce unhappy consequences when McGillicuddy’s security agencies and Alpina’s Peaceforce needed to cooperate.
Crap, Drescher thought. I don’t have a choice. I have to com the bastard.
She punched a dedicated button on her desk com and sat back. A few seconds later, a young man in MISD uniform appeared on her display.
“Internal Security Directorate, office of Commissioner Howell,” he said crisply. It was like Howell to use a live human to run his switchboard rather than letting the automated systems get on with it, the general thought disgustedly.
“This is Lieutenant General Drescher,” she told him. “I need to speak to the Commissioner. Immediately.”
“Hold, please,” the lieutenant replied. His image disappeared, replaced by MISD’s wallpaper, but the mailed fist and dagger of the Security Directorate’s insignia disappeared quickly.
“General Drescher.” Bentley Howell nodded his head in acknowledgment as his image replaced the wallpaper’s. “What can I do for you?”
“I understand you’re preparing to launch a sweep of Neue Rostock and Hancock,” Drescher said, coming straight to the point, although calling what he intended to do a “sweep” was clearly an enormous understatement.
“That’s right.” Howell nodded again. “I’m sending in two regiments—the Fourth and the Nineteenth.”
“I see.” Drescher looked at him for a moment, then cocked her head. “Under the circumstances, don’t you think it would be a good idea for us to liaise with each other? Make sure we’re all on the same screen if things turn ugly.”
Turn ugly again, you ass, she added mentally.
“Liaise?” Howell looked at her as if she were speaking an unknown tongue. “I’m sending my people in loaded for bear, General. Things are going to turn ‘ugly,’ all right, but not for them!”
“Commissioner, you’re talking about regiment-sized attacks on residential towers,” she pointed out as calmly as she could. “We’ve never done anything like that before, even after Green Pines. And the seccies have already demonstrated they’re in possession of heavier weapons than anything they’ve ever shown us before. This is not going to be a cakewalk.”
“Nobody thinks it is, General.” Howell’s tone was much cooler than it had been, and his eyes were even colder. “They’re still seccies, though. They’ll break quickly enough if they see us coming in hard and fast.”
“These aren’t ‘just’ seccies, Commissioner,” Drescher said. “They’re organized groups with weapons heavier than anything we’ve ever faced before, and they’re going to be fighting on their own ground inside those damned towers.”
“Your ‘organized groups’ are packs of common criminals and seccy street scum, General. Are you suggesting that their discipline’s going to be able to match my people’s?” His upper lip curled. “They’ll run for their kennels as soon as they figure out what’s happening!”
“I wouldn’t count too heavily on that, if I were you,” Drescher said. “And tower assaults—especially on towers like Neue Rostock and Hancock—are one of the nightmare scenarios we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about over here. Those aren’t like Rasmussen or Tyler Tower, Commissioner. You can’t envelop them vertically using the atriums and air shafts, and the way
their interiors lay out, they’re even more damage resistant than one of the citizen towers. Trust me, if it turns into a serious firefight inside one of those towers, you’re going to lose a lot of people. Frankly, the best way to take one of them would be to seal it off and wait it out. Sooner or later the people inside it are going to run out of food, at which point they either come out and surrender or starve. Unfortunately, that takes time, and I’m fully aware that the General Board wants this concluded as quickly as possible. But if we want to do it quickly, and if everybody’s committed to assaulting them, then you need to open them up with kinetic weapons before you go poking your head into the dragon’s mouth.”
“You want to use KEWs inside Mendel?” Howell shook his head incredulously. “You really think you’re going to get authorization for that?”
“I’m aware that the General Board’s already discussed the option,” Drescher replied in a much cooler tone of her own. “I believe, however, that at that point the discussion centered around using KEWs to completely take out the towers. There are smaller sledgehammers available, Commissioner, and enough blows from a little hammer will do the job of a great big one.”
“I’ve got all the hammers I’m going to need,” Howell said flatly.
Drescher gazed at his com image for a moment. He probably really believed that, she thought. And it was even remotely possible—remotely possible—he could be right . . . assuming Jurgen Dusek and Bachue Emmett and their people broke a hell of a lot faster than Maysayuki Franconi’s had.
She wasn’t very fond of the MISD, and she didn’t really much like Howell, but this time she found herself hoping he was right and she was wrong. Because she obviously wasn’t going to change his mind, and if he wasn’t right—and if she was—he was going to discover that a seccy slum’s residential tower was one of the toughest, most intricately subdivided fortresses the human race had ever built.
Chapter 58
“—and sweep northeast, towards Hancock,” Colonel Teodosio MacKane, CO, 4th Regiment, Mesan Internal Security Directorate said, jabbing his index finger at the holographic display in his lightly armored Cyclops command vehicle. “And while the Nineteenth’s doing that, we’re going to sweep northwest, towards Neue Rostock. Randy,” he looked up to dart a ferocious look at Major Randall Myers, commanding officer of his 2nd Battalion, “your people are going to take point. Brockie”—those angry eyes moved to Major Camelia Brockmann, 1st Battalion’s CO—“you’ll be watching Randy’s back, and I want you to peel off two companies as our reserve.”
Both majors nodded their understanding. Brockmann seemed a little less enthusiastic than Myers did, MacKane thought. It wasn’t that she looked hesitant, or afraid. She just didn’t seem as fired up and ready to go as Myers obviously was. That was the main reason he picked 2nd Battalion to lead and 1st Battalion as its supporting element. Myers and his company commanders were clearly eager to get to grips with the seccies who’d mauled the Public Safety troopers so badly, and MacKane wanted someone who was ready to kick ass leading the way. It wasn’t that anyone in the MISD felt all warm and fuzzy where OPS was concerned, but it was a really bad idea to let seccies get the mistaken notion that they could kill any security troops without paying the sort of price that would give any survivors, their children, their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren nightmares.
“All right, then. Get back to your units. We kick off in twenty minutes.”
* * *
“What now, Ferguson?”
Captain Gavin Shultz sounded more than a little exasperated as he glared at Bravo Company’s problem child. Schultz had commanded Bravo for almost three T-years, and Lieutenant Connor Ferguson had commanded Bravo’s 2nd Platoon—and been a pain in Shultz’s ass—for just over one of those years. To be honest, Shultz had never been able to figure out why Ferguson had joined the Security Directorate in the first place. The man’s mind—or heart, at least—simply wasn’t in the job, and he was a stickler for following rules and procedures, the sort who didn’t seem to grasp that sometimes you just had to ignore The Book and get the fucking job done. Schultz had known a few others like Ferguson, people who prided themselves on their “professionalism” but didn’t have the guts when the dirty work came along. Who thought they could keep the fucking seccies in their place without breaking a lot of heads and an occasional neck in the process.
Schultz hadn’t heard Regan Snyder talking about the “seccy problem” at the Directors’ conference, but if he had, he would have endorsed her sentiments strongly. He knew exactly why he’d joined the MISD eighteen years ago. Whatever people like Ferguson might think, he knew—like Snyder—that the mere existence of the seccies owed itself to a centuries-old blunder which had gifted later generations of Mesans with a problem that could only get worse. And it had. Anyone with eyes to see had known that even before Green Pines. Seccies were scum, genetically indistinguishable from the slaves who’d spawned them, and they bred like flies. Everyone knew they routinely evaded the birth licenses citizens abode by, and they packed into their filthy warrens like rats, scurrying around in their own filth. And they were always there, always turning up on the news, reminding people that the galaxy wasn’t perfect. There was always some stupid damn intellectual to whine about how terribly the seccies were treated, how restricting them to second-class citizenship was a blight on the honor of Mesa’s full citizens. But worse—worst of all—their mere existence was a constant, standing threat to Mesa’s fundamental security. They’d come from slaves, been manumitted, granted their freedom, and if it could happen to their ancestors, then why shouldn’t the current generation of slaves aspire to the same thing? And it was that kind of aspiration that led to things like Green Pines or Dobzhansky.
That was what people like Ferguson never seemed to grasp, and it was why Gavin Shultz had joined the Champions of Safety and Order when he was only twenty-three years old. The CoSO wasn’t quite legal, but it wasn’t really illegal, either. Its members understood that seccies had to be kept in their place, and Shultz, who’d risen to the rank of Champion First, had done his bit—after hours and purely on his own time, of course—to teach quite a few seccies their places over the years. Of course, he also used his official contacts to figure out which of the seccies needed tutoring, as well. That was one reason he loved his job.
And the stupidity of people who couldn’t see the truth when it stared them straight in the face was one of the reasons he had very little patience with people like Connor Ferguson.
“I just wanted to be clear on the rules of engagement, Sir,” Ferguson said now.
At only a hundred and seventy-seven centimeters, Ferguson looked like a teenager beside the taller, much more powerfully built Shultz, even in his utility armor. The MISD’s UA wasn’t quite the equal of battle armor, for a lot of reasons, starting with cost. Battle armor was expensive, and not even an affluent star system like Mesa had an unlimited budget. Worse, the corporate interests who managed Mesa had no desire to pay any more taxes than they absolutely had to, which meant that the Mesa System government’s budget got a substantially smaller slice of the Gross System Product than was the case for most other wealthy systems. Besides, MISD troopers didn’t really need all-up battle armor. They weren’t going to be fighting in a vacuum; a lot of their combat missions were going to be inside structures, where battle armor’s bulk could be a distinct disadvantage in close quarters combat; and they weren’t likely to need to carry full-scale plasma cannon around with them. Even more to the point, battle armor was an energy hog; utility armor got over three times the endurance off of little more than two thirds the power, which meant its wearer could remain on station and in action for five times as long off a single set of power packs. “Dwell time” was a major consideration in peacekeeping missions, and any MISD trooper would agree that more time out at the sharp edge was worth the sacrifice of a few bells and whistles. But if UA was more compact than battle armor, it was certainly bulky enough to project an aura of brute, t
hreatening power, especially in the eyes of someone who had no armor at all, and MISD’s designers had deliberately enhanced that aspect of it. It was inky black, trimmed in scarlet, with exaggerated, spiky pauldrons, spike-knuckled gauntlets, and one-way mirrored visors marked with the MSID’s gauntlet and dagger insignia.
At the moment, Ferguson’s visor was raised, and Shultz saw the unhappiness in his brown eyes.
“I believe the colonel was perfectly clear about the rules of engagement,” the captain said coldly. “If you failed to understand him, however, I’ll clarify for you. We’re operating under Rules of Engagement Omega, Lieutenant Ferguson.”
“I understood that, Sir,” Ferguson said stubbornly. “I just want to be perfectly clear about taking prisoners and about minors.”
Shultz glared at him. ROE Omega called for the immediate application of lethal force; allowed the use of all available and necessary supports—including airstrikes, armor, and indirect fire up to but not including KEW strikes—all released to frontline commanders on an on-call basis; and authorized the engagement of any potential threat without regard to possible collateral damage. The keywords, as Shultz and Ferguson both understood perfectly well, were “potential threat.” Officially, that simply freed an officer’s hands to deal with enemies who hadn’t already clearly resolved whether or not they were “potential” dangers by direct hostile action. In fact, it could readily be construed to cover any situation, because in an operation like Rat Catcher—especially after it had already gone so spectacularly wrong earlier in the day—a unit commander could construe just about anything as a “potential threat.”
The universe was an imperfect place, however, and even MISD had been forced to cave to public opinion—and appearances—in some respects. The bleeding hearts could always be expected to whine about the rigor reality required, and there was always somebody to point to the “interstellar public relations” consequences of being too forthright in anything that was committed to writing and available as part of the public record. That was why even under ROE Omega, someone attempting to surrender was supposed to be allowed to do so and why MISD personnel were supposed to minimize casualties, especially among minor children. And unless Shultz was sadly mistaken, Ferguson had his armor’s tac systems online, which meant he was almost certainly recording this entire conversation. It would be just like the sanctimonious SOB, and there was no telling how a court of inquiry might . . . misconstrue anything that wasn’t by The Book.