“Met up with your men,” Jock said. He sounded annoyed under his tight control. “Next time, brief them better…sir. One of them almost killed me.”
“Well, tell him to take another shot,” I snapped back, angrily. “What are you doing now…?”
“Hunting for other prisoners,” Jock said. “Hang on.” I heard him picking someone up. “Show me where the other prisoners are and I won’t cut off your cock, get it?”
The prisoner seemed to get it. “He’s taking me somewhere,” Jock said. “I’ll report in as soon as I find her.”
There was a long pause. “Found her,” he said. I felt my heart turn over in relief. “She was held in a private cell. It looks as if they wanted to interrogate her, but couldn’t decide if she was more use as a dead mercenary or a live hostage. I’ve got her, boss.”
“Get her out when you can,” I ordered, turning my attention back to the map by force of will. “I’ll order the assault units to keep an eye on you so that no one shoots you this time.”
It was nearly twenty minutes later when Jock and Muna finally showed up in an armoured car. She looked tired and wan, but alive. They hadn’t hurt her, just kept her as a prisoner and considered killing her. I couldn’t resist and reached out to give her a hug, feeling her body hardening against mine. Whatever she had gone through, in the past, had left her unable to touch anyone, even me. She’d never had a boyfriend, as far as I knew, and a husband was out of the question.
“It’s good to see you too, sir,” she said, breaking the embrace as soon as she decently could. “I hope you didn’t let anyone near the logistics computers, right?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I left all the paperwork for you.”
She laughed. “Jock,” I ordered, “escort her back to the spaceport and ensure that the medic takes a good look at her before we do anything else. You’re both on leave for a week. I think we can finish up here without you.”
“You couldn’t get out of a paper bag without me,” Jock said, quickly. “In fact, without me you’d still be…”
“Out,” I said, firmly, and turned back to the display. The fall of Strongpoint Four left only seven strongpoints in the city and now that Muna had been recovered, along with a few dozen politicians, we could afford to blow them into dust from a safe distance. Too many people had died already. “Ed…”
Ed was looking down at his console. “Sir, I’m picking up a signal from the Communists,” he said. “They’d like to discuss terms.”
“Get a lock on where the signals coming from and blast it,” Jock suggested, echoing my own thoughts. “Or send me back in there with a knife and licence to kill…”
“I said, get out,” I snapped, angrily. If Jock wanted to risk himself, I didn’t mind, but Muna needed an escort back to the spaceport. Honestly, there were days when things wouldn’t go right if you paid them. “They want to surrender?”
“They said they want to discuss terms,” Ed said, once Jock had stomped out of the command post. “I think they’re stalling.”
I smiled as the sound of firing broke out again in the distance. “Tell them that we’ll accept their surrender now if they wish to surrender,” I said. “We won’t make promises, but I think that most of the small fry might be sent to work camps for a few years instead of being executed.”
“It might not be best to remind them of their executions,” Ed said, dryly. I nodded as he bent his head to the console. “I’ll tell them that we’ll take them all prisoner rather than shooting them on the spot.”
I listened absently as the discussion raged backwards and forwards. I suggested a ceasefire to see how sincere they were and was surprised when they accepted without demur. They had to be desperate, I realised; perhaps they were even short on food and supplies. They’d been firing off ammunition like it was going out of fashion and we’d overrun some of their supply deports. It was just possible that they were very short on ammunition…
“They’re willing to surrender as long as they can keep their personal arms with them,” Ed said, finally. I snorted at that one. “Thought not; they’re asking what guarantee we’ll make for their safety.”
I considered it. “Tell them that we’ll provide the guards and protect them from being lynched,” I said, finally. “As a condition of their surrender, they respond to questions and help us sort out what actually happened. If they cooperate, we’ll put in a good word for them.”
Ed leaned over to me. “Sir, the Acting President isn’t going to like that…”
“I know,” I said. “If it comes to that, we can recruit the small fry into the Legion and take them off-world. We won’t have to stay here for the rest of our lives.”
Ed chatted backwards and forwards for nearly ten minutes, and then he looked up at me. “It’s over,” he said, simply. “They’re surrendering.”
Chapter Nineteen
Honourable terms of surrender are for honourable foes, but one must always remember that one must develop and keep a reputation for keeping surrender terms, even if they prove to be disadvantageous later.
-Army Manual, Heinlein
One by one, they crawled out of the remaining strongpoints, their hands in the air.
I watched, grimly, as the remaining Communists stumbled forward. We hadn’t taken any chances; they’d been ordered to come out naked and to be very careful that they didn’t do anything that might alarm the armed guards. They’d tried to protest, objecting to the thought of showing everything they had to the world, but I’d been firm. They came out naked, male and female alike, or they would be shot down like dogs. I just wanted the fighting to end.
I’d set up A Company to receive the prisoners, trusting them not to abuse the Communists more than I trusted the locals. I’d heard some grumbles from Ed about his men being used as glorified policemen, but I rather suspected that he was enjoying their punishment, just a little. The Communists had killed too many of his men and A Company had lost seventeen men. That would have been a pinprick to the UNPF or even Heinlein’s resistance forces, but to us it was devastating. I didn’t have a ready supply of replacements I could slot into the Company, although we could fill up the holes from the trainers if necessary.
“Check them, secure them and send them into the trucks,” I’d ordered. We didn’t have a complete list of Communists – Svergie had never compiled such a list, but we knew the leaders – but those we did know would be taken prisoner and transferred to a more secure prison camp. The smaller fry would end up going into a more standard prison camp and would be held until the local government decided what to do with them. They looked tired and worn as they marched out to be taken prisoner; they’d probably be glad of the rest.
“That’s one of their propagandists,” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist muttered to me, as a blonde woman stumbled out, her hands in the air. She looked terrified and ashamed, furious and…yet, she was trying to pose. I guessed she’d been an actress before she’d gone into politics – she’d probably taken the idea from the UN’s use of actors to endorse their politics – and even while she was being taken prisoner, she was acting. I foresaw a future in chicks in prison movies. “She always knew what to say to cause a riot or convince the poor that it was someone else’s fault that they were poor. She had half of the kids wearing red caps and talking like Communists.”
I shrugged. “Whatever she was, she’s a prisoner now,” I said, as the cuffs were snapped on and she was pushed – not gently – towards the prisoner buses. It had taken several hours just to clear the roads so we could get the buses up to the strongpoint boundaries, but there had been little choice. If we’d marched the prisoners through the streets, they would have been lynched. “She’ll be tried and convicted by a fair court.”
“After today, you won’t find a fair court on the planet,” Jörgen said, tightly. “Look around at all the damage and ask yourself; who’s going to stand up for them and say that they don’t deserve death?”
“No one,” I said, without hesitation.
The vast majority of the Communist leaders would probably end up facing a firing squad, or perhaps the hangman, on the grounds that hanging people was cheaper. Svergie had had massive stockpiles of ex-UN weapons left lying around, but we’d probably used far too many of them in the brief Insurrection. I couldn’t believe the damage the Communists had been willing to inflict on the city. What had they been thinking?
But I knew the answer to that. They’d thought that they’d been in the right and anything they did for the right was justified because it was for the right. The UN had felt the same way too, as had any number of terrorists and wreckers. If they couldn’t play nicely by the rules, they sought to tip over the board and make the rules for themselves. Anything could be justified with the right Cause and the right Words; people like the actress had helped to convince millions that their Cause was Just. Her fans would probably disown her…or wait, that would be the logical thing to do. They’d be more likely to claim that she was an innocent dupe all along.
I smiled. The videos of her arrest would probably be selling on the black market tomorrow.
“Hang on,” I ordered, as yet another naked and bleeding form stumbled from the strongpoint. “I want to talk to that one.”
Daniel Singh had looked much better the last time we’d met, a week ago. It felt like centuries. He was bleeding from several wounds and his body was covered with scars and bruises. It looked as if he had been the victim of a bare-knuckle fight and I wondered just what had happened inside the bunker. Had he wanted to fight to the last and been overruled, or had something else occurred?
“It’s over,” I said, tiredly. His smell probably qualified as an illegal weapon in its own right. “You’re under arrest.”
Daniel shook his cuffs at me angrily. “Do you think that you’ve won?” He demanded. “You can’t keep the People down forever!”
I made a show of looking around at the blackened ruins surrounding the strongpoint. “You seem to have blown most of them out of their homes,” I observed. “First you took the city, then you started to kill hundreds of people you didn’t like, and then you fought and destroyed half the city. I don’t think you’re going to be Man of the Year after getting so many people killed.”
“You don’t know the half of it, mercenary,” Daniel snapped, his voice rising. “The People cannot be held down forever. They followed me because I promised something better and…”
I sighed. “If you must monologue, do it somewhere else,” I said, as calmly as I could. It wasn't very calm at all. “You promised them the impossible and gave them nothing, but rack and ruin. Whatever else happens, you won’t be going back into politics here.”
“And when you’ve defeated me, who next?” Daniel asked, his voice rising. “Will you turn on the Progressives or the Conservatives, just for a change. How long, oh mighty General, until you’re Emperor of the entire planet?”
“Enough,” I said, and looked at his guards. “Take him to the secure centre and have his wounds treated, and then put him in solitary confinement.”
“Yes, sir,” the Private said. He grasped Daniel by the shoulder and started to half-lead, half-drag, him away. I watched him go, listening to the shouts of abuse that continued until the Private slapped Daniel’s head, hard. His suggestion had cut; I had no desire to rule the planet, even if John Walker wouldn’t have sent Fleet to do something about it. I just wanted to build a strong stable government that could hold together for more than a few years before coming apart.
“That was the last of them, sir,” Peter said. He’d insisted on inspecting all of the prisoners personally and I couldn’t blame him. His paranoia had been aroused. “The strongpoint is empty.”
I nodded to Ed. “Take it and inspect it carefully,” I ordered. I wouldn’t have put leaving a few IEDs behind past the Communists. “Once it’s clear, give me a shout.”
It was an hour before the bomb disposal squad had finished checking the strongpoint and confirmed that it wasn’t booby-trapped, allowing me to go in with Peter behind me. He had tried to talk me out of it, but I had insisted; besides, I think he was just as curious. The interior of the strongpoint reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of Hitler’s bunker hundreds of years ago; a strange mixture of burned-out sections and others that were almost habitable. Weapons and equipment lay on the floor where they’d been dropped or thrown in frustration, while half-eaten cans of food stood on a table. The stench of too many people in too small a space was appalling; we might have lived in similar conditions, but we observed basic hygiene. The Communists, it seemed, hadn’t bothered to prepare for a long siege.
Ed put it into words. “Were they that confident of victory, sir?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. It seemed an odd place to plot the conquest of the world, but even John Walker had had to plan in secret. If the Communists had worked from within, they might have succeeded in implementing lasting change, rather than upsetting everyone and turning the name of Communism into mud. I doubted that there would be a Communist Party on the planet for years to come, although there would always be something to fill that void. They’d probably call themselves socialists. “Maybe they really believed that half of the planet would rise up in their favour.”
I mulled it over as we explored further into the strongpoint. The dead had been stacked like cordwood in one place; hundreds of men and women, just abandoned and left to rot. I gagged at the stench and muttered orders for us all to be decontaminated after we left the strongpoint. We’d probably have to send in a chemical warfare team in full masks and gowns to recover the bodies, or perhaps it would be better just to bury them all below the wreckage of the building. A flamethrower would set them all on fire, but the stench would only grow worse. The city stank quite enough already.
“They were definitely running short of ammunition,” Peter said, as we inspecting an inner bunker. It had once clearly stored thousands of rounds of ammunition, but was now almost empty. I wondered where they’d gotten all of the weapons and if there actually was an off-planet supplier involved, but it didn’t look if anything here had come from anywhere apart from the UN. The only exception was a hunting rifle that looked almost homemade, although it was clearly serviceable enough.
“Mine,” Ed said, firmly, clutching the weapon. “I claim it as the spoils of war.”
I laughed. “That probably counts as looting,” I said. I don’t understand how some people can be so mad over guns. They’re just tools, as far as I am concerned, tools used to fight and win a battle. I had a commanding officer once who had an antique weapon from the pre-space era and always chose to use it in combat. The paperwork must have taken him hours to complete, every time he used it – the UN frowned upon private ownership of firearms – but he hadn’t hesitated. “Pay the locals a reasonable price for it and then keep it, if you insist on having it.”
Ed nodded. I don’t approve of looting under normal circumstances, but if the owner of the weapon was dead or a traitor, Ed might as well have it. If it could be traced to a person who was still living, however, he would have to return it or pay for it.
“Yes, sir,” he said, finally. “I’ll put it in the sack for the moment.”
We reached another room under the strongpoint. It was bare, apart from a card table strewn with documents. “I want TechnoMage down here as soon as possible,” I ordered. “I want him to go through everything here and find out just how far the Communist influence actually stretched.”
“Yes, sir,” Ed said. “I’ll call him as soon as we’re out of this place.”
I took the hint and nodded, allowing Peter to lead us back towards the surface, keeping my thoughts to myself. Daniel had suggested that the Communists and Progressives had had strong ties – and that Frida might be a Communist, or once have been a Communist. I wasn't sure what I would have done if she had turned out to have planned the entire insurrection…and she’d definitely used it to get rid of some of her political enemies. If she was guilty…what the hell would we do? It wou
ld be a grey area.
First, we find out if she really was a Communist, I thought, finally. If she is one, or was one, then we can decide what to do.
The fresh air of the city was a relief, even though it still stank of fire and burning flesh and hydrocarbons, an unholy cocktail that would probably linger in the air for years. We sucked in deep breaths as we walked back to the Command Post to confirm that the remaining Communist strongholds had been searched, emptied and disarmed. The city was probably still mined in any number of inventive and unpleasant ways, but given time, we’d disarm them all. The soldiers were spreading out now, looking for any rogue holdouts, but it seemed that the Communists had accepted their leader’s orders to surrender. I’d known UN Infantry units with less discipline than that.
Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law) Page 19