by John F. Carr
“And most impressive,” the Colonel said. “All that negative heat-of-formation in one magnificent pop. Might do almost as nicely as Joshua’s trumpets.”
My God he could be Right, The simultaneous blast of every mine in the field just might be enough to make the walls come tumbling down. It was most assuredly not going to improve anyone’s hearing. He looked around. The men were all helmeted and had their earplugs in. There was nothing for it now but to wait and see what happened.
Overhead came the double crack of a sonic boom as a splashship punched down into the atmosphere. Before the revolt had forced the gallium mines to shut down this had been a several-times-a-day occurrence but nothing had touched down for the last three months.
“Sergeant!” he yelled. “See if you can contact that splashship. Warn them not to come down in Crater Lake. We can’t rescue them.”
“I say—ah!”
Yeovil turned. There was a look of mild surprise on Colonel Trelawney’s face. Then blood gushed from his mouth and nose as he slumped. Yeovil’s mind rode off in several directions. He had liked the sharp old duffer, and suspected the old man had liked him too. But Major Pritchard was still in hospital and Captain Staines was dead. For the foreseeable future Yeovil was in charge. Even if he was only a junior captain and militiaman to boot. “To a short, bloody war, sir,” he muttered, “and lots of promotions.”
The Colonel did not reply.
Enemy fire was becoming more accurate. “Commence firing!” he yelled and the gunners began their persistent, five-deaths-per-second rattle. Over the clatter he heard a sharp whistle which gradually lowered in pitch. Somebody had screwed-up on communicating with that splashship and the poor bastards were heading in. He looked around. Too many men out of action already. It would take heroic effort and a full ration of luck just to hold the fort. The men aboard the splashship were as good as dead.
How much ammo left? The 12.7s were keeping the Mahdi’s mob out of accurate shooting range, but they were not going away. With so many former employees out there, chances were the Mahdi’s force knew to the exact round how much ammo was left. When the guns were silenced he would have to take his chances on blowing the whole fort up when every mine went simultaneously. Considering what awaited anyone captured alive, it might be the best thing to do. And after Fort Camerone goes out in a blaze of glory what happens to all the women and children in Eureka?
A machine gunner took a hit which knocked him backwards off the firing bench. Yeovil scooted over to take his place at the gun. There was a momentary silence as, by one of those common coincidences, everyone stopped firing at the same moment. Then he noticed the enemy had stopped too.
Over behind the slight rise that concealed Crater Lake something very noisy was happening. Heart sinking, he heard the sound of a recoilless gun—probably the one he’d thought silenced last night. Then there were two shots faster than anyone could reload that piece of reinforced stovepipe. An engine roared and he caught the distant clank of tank tread.
So the Levanters no longer cared what the CoDominium thought… To unload arms of this level of destructiveness was against all treaties, all regulations. The CD must have lost all control of the Tanith Sector.
One of the Mahdi’s bright-turbaned officers stood with his back to the fort, looking toward the lake. It was too good to pass up. Yeovil guesstimated the range and aimed high without changing the sights. It was tricky to squeeze off a single round but one of the two shots he got off made the man’s arms fly outward as he went face-down into pig-fouled ground.
The tank clank became louder and suddenly the Mahdi’s men were moving. Away, from the fort. It took Yeovil an instant to understand what was happening then he saw the CoDominium banner on the first tank. The defenders of Fort Camerone raised a ragged cheer.
It was one setback too many. Yeovil could hear the angry and hysterical haranguing of Jihad officers but the Faithful were having none of it. They had no artillery. Yeovil had not heard that recoilless again after the first heat-seeker he had sent toward it. Chances were their small arms ammo was as low as their morale. With the fort still untaken and fresh CoDominium Marines moving up behind, the Mahdi’s forces scattered in both directions across the mesa, moving with all the discipline of a squashed tomato. The lead tank approached the minefield and waited.
Captain Yeovil grabbed the telephone and it was dead. “Open the gate!” he ordered. As it swung open the Captain stepped out and walked far enough to show the CoDominium tankers that the minefield was inactivated. They followed him into the fort and laagered noisily in the bailey.
SIX
“SO,” Colonel Falkenberg said, “Haven is sixty percent Muslim. Which means three million out of a total population of some five million. Almost all of them in the high plains. What’s keeping them out of the Shangri-La Valley?”
“The Atlas Mountains and the Girdle of God range,” Captain Yeovil answered. “The only entrance to the Shangri-La Valley is about fifteen hundred clicks south and it is guarded by Fort Stony Point. The Seventy-seventh has a battalion there on permanent garrison duty. Only trade caravans and birthing parties are allowed through the pass and into Purity. All weapons are checked at Fort Stony Point, the pass checkpoint.”
“Why are they restricted to the highlands and steppes?”
“The first two BuReloc transports of the Mahdi’s people caused so much trouble in Castell City that the then Consul-General, Erhenfeld Bronson, had the Seventy-seventh CD Marines evacuate them to the Highlands. After that, he told the Colonial Office that Haven would refuse any and all future BuReloc transports unless they were dropped at Dire Lake.”
“Sounds like Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson,” Falkenberg said. He solved two problems simultaneously; he had removed possible subversives from the Shangri-La Valley while supplying Dover Miner Development with plenty of cheap labor for their gallite mines. Fortunately, for Falkenberg, the Bronson scion had been murdered; otherwise, he would have had a war on two fronts—a holy war and a political war. Falkenberg’d had a number of run-ins with the Grand Senator Adrian Bronson and the rest of his clan during his career.
According to Grand Senator Grant, the current governor was a DeSilva family ne’er-do-well and Colonial Office time-waster who had been transferred to Haven to keep him from mucking things up back at CoDominium Luna Headquarters.
“Okay,” Falkenberg replied. “Half of the three million Muslims are women; two-thirds of the men are too young, too old or disabled. Say a half million effectives. But Eureka has the only petrocarb plant in the Highlands, except for the one the Mahdi was supposed to have gotten from Levant. Agriculture has collapsed and most of the livestock are dead except for those pigs from the one ranch with adequate water and forage. The Mahdi’s men won’t eat pork so how many men can he field?”
“Too many,” Captain Yeovil said. “We killed four thousand in a single skirmish. If you’d splashed down an hour later we wouldn’t be here.”
Falkenberg accepted this without comment. If the Mahdi could field that many men he must have his own petrocarb plant.
“Now, where’s the Seventy-seventh stationed besides here and Ft. Stony Point?”
“One battalion is stationed in the Shangri-La at Fort Kursk,” Captain Yeovil reported, “two companies are in Kennicott’s Vale and another battalion’s in Castell City to maintain order. The other two battalions are scattered willy-nilly over the Highlands.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Colonel Shawley’s, sir. When the Mahdi first declared his Jihad, the Colonel believed that the best way to contain the Faithful was to hold the Highland’s small towns and major villages. Shawley and his staff died at a regimental dinner party in Eureka, along with the Mayor and most of the City Council. It turned out the waiters had been ‘substituted’ with one of the Mahdi’s suicide squads. They blew themselves and the dignitaries up like roman candles. Not a single officer of the Seventy-seventh above captain survived.”
Falkenberg
shook his head. “Another splashship due in an hour. I don’t know about those old 12.7s of yours but we’ll restock you for everything else. Do you have transport to get it from the lake over here to the fort?”
“I can probably get the trucks over there but I’ll need fuel to get back.”
“We’ll be off now,” Falkenberg said.
“No point in giving them time to regroup,” Captain Yeovil agreed.
“I’ve nowhere near enough troops to go chasing off after the Mahdi,” Falkenberg said. “But while I’m gathering in the Seventy-seventh Marines my other reinforcements will have landed and then we’ll do something. In the meanwhile, please consolidate your survivors so we’ll have available quarters when we’re back with whatever’s left of CD forces on this planet.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Yeovil said. The militia lieutenants were all dead or wounded from previous engagements. Now he was the sole surviving commissioned officer in the Haven Volunteers north of the Shangri-La Valley. Which, he supposed, made him the CIC. Commander in chief of what? He called his sergeant as the Forty-second’s tanks clanked out the gate.
* * *
Riding slightly more comfortably in the middle of the column in an APC, Major Brent Myers said, “We won’t find any Arabs.”
“I hope not,” Falkenberg said. “It’s embarrassing when a tank is taken out by a man on foot with a bottle of gasoline. Doesn’t do our image of juggernaut invulnerability any good either.”
“Are we just out here to show the flag then?”
“Partly.” Falkenberg turned his attention to the map and muttered instructions into the throat mike. The lead tank changed direction slightly. Ahead lay the remains of a splashship that had come in short of the lake and somehow managed to belly land in the sand without too much damage.
A dusty and totally dehydrated hour later the column creaked into Eureka. After a cautious inspection from foxholes the miner inhabitants came up to greet the Forty-second’s Heavy Weapons battalion. Drivers and gunners were busy squirting grease into innumerable fittings as the mayor led Falkenberg and Myers into a city hall with a limited back bar and cracked mirror along one side.
“Thank god you finally got here!” the Mayor said. He was a huge beer-bellied man with a red walrus mustache and had not taken off his apron before getting to official business. “Things are getting pretty dry around here,” he explained. “Not much food left either.”
“Did you get any out of that splasher that went in?” Major Myers asked.
“Fuckin’ ragheads got that one and another with SAMs,” the Mayor said. “By the time they picked them over there wasn’t even any paint left. Ants couldn’t have done a better job.”
“Why are you hanging around here?” Falkenberg asked.
The Mayor gave him an odd look. “We live here.”
“You’re not working the mines, nor preparing ore for transport,” Myers said. “Until the rebellion is over there’s no reason to risk your necks.”
“It was rough all right, but now that you’re here…”
“We’re not here to spread ourselves thin defending every outpost. That’s what the last commandant did. What’s left of the Seventy-seventh wouldn’t make a good company,” Brent Myers said. He glanced at Falkenberg and continued, “Assemble your women and children for evacuation. Choppers will be here in about an hour.”
By now most of the two hundred-odd citizens of Eureka had drifted into the saloon to listen.
“Now wait a minute!” the Mayor protested.” “It’s hard enough for a man to hang on out here without somebody to do the cookin’.”
“The Forty-second has excellent cooks,” Myers said. “As of now you’re all volunteers.”
“Be damned if I’m volunteering for nothin’!” a raucous Cornish voice called.
“Suit yourself,” Myers stated matter of factly. “The Forty-second wants no unwilling soldiers.” He was about to say more when a rumbling explosion shook the building.
“What was that?” somebody asked in a panicky voice. “Your well and waterworks,” Major Myers explained.
“You crazy? Now how the hell we gonna live out here?”
“You’re not,” Falkenberg said. “Neither is the enemy.”
There was the double boom of another splashship breaking orbit but it sounded strangely distant to residents of Eureka. Which was natural since the captain up in the Relentless was expending credits and fuel like a drunken sailor to send the splashships in from unusual vectors where the Mahdi’s people would not be setup and ready with SAMs.
“The helicopters will be aboard that shuttle,” Myers said. “Those willing to face the Mahdi alone are welcome to stay here. The more sane among you will select twenty kilos each of personal belongings and be ready when the choppers arrive. Those who wish to enlist in the Forty-second will be sworn in at Fort Camerone. Any man fit for military service who does not wish to enlist will be drafted into the Haven Volunteers. DisMISSED!”
The tank battalion took a wide swing around the barren flat to see what surprises awaited the choppers. To Myers’ astonishment several well-fed pigs were clumped around a tree rooting through the Siberian pea shrubs.
“I could use a few of those,” Falkenberg mused.
“You haven’t heard about cholesterol?” Major Myers asked.
“Amazing animals,” Falkenberg said. “A conversion factor almost as high as turkey, a lot more flavor; the Chicago stockyards used to boast that they used every portion except the squeal.”
“Knowing you, I suspect you’ll have found a use for that.”
“Maybe,” Falkenberg said. They continued circling Eureka until the choppers landed, loaded, and were safely airborne again. Then Falkenberg checked his maps and moved on to the next small town for more of the same. Colonel Shawley, the commander of the Seventy-seventh Marines, had been killed early-on in the hostilities, which probably saved that benighted political appointee from the court martial he so richly deserved for spreading his regiment across fifteen hundred kilometers, a squad at a time to ‘protect’ the settlers.
Recognizing the cold contempt of the survivors at the mention of Colonel Shawley’s name, Brent Myers pondered whether he had been helped into the next life by the Mahdi’s terrorist squad or by one of his own.
“My god, look!”
Falkenberg was already looking.
“Must be the remnants of that lot they drove onto the minefield at Camerone,” Myers guessed. The porkers were Berkshires. Bred as much for lard as for meat, changing fads in diet had rendered them almost extinct on Earth. Here on Haven where an average day in the mines was equivalent to a sentence at hard labor, no one worried overmuch about saturated fats. Falkenberg muttered into his throat mike and within moments a pair of small scout choppers had plup-plupped out and were herding the pigs back toward Fort Camerone.
It would have been quicker, Myers knew, to conduct this whole foray with helicopters. But not safer. If the Mahdi’s men had SAMs capable of downing splashships a lone man in some wadi could down a chopper. But with an armored column below and choppers aloft even the most fanatically devoted mujahadeen and Hamas fighters would think twice before inviting all that firepower.
They spent a week evacuating the small mining towns that radiated around Eureka. Though the Cousin Jacks and the few Christian Lebanese with them were voluble and shrill, few were willing to stick it out alone.
Back in Fort Camerone, Myers returned to find that Captain Yeovil had cleaned out one half of the barracks for the Forty-second and the Seventy-seventh which was struggling with its few remaining noncoms to rebuild their decimated regiment. He knew there would not be enough time to drill any spit-and-polish unit and, according to Captain Yeovil, most of the outland miners went pot shooting in their spare time and were already familiar with hand weapons, as well as being consummate masters of explosives and/or demolitions. The Captain had limited himself to instructing them in tactical movement with mortars, recoilless rifles, and what
few tanks the Haven forces could still field.
The ‘volunteers’ and their dependents were eating up the pigs Falkenberg’s choppers herded in at a prodigious rate. For reasons known only to God and Falkenberg, the latter insisted on freezing all the offal and inedible portions of each animal butchered. He also reserved for his own purposes all the heads and tails.
“There are still a lot of our people outback,” Captain Yeovil said as he helped himself to another pork chop.
In the last week Major Myers had eaten enough pork to last him the rest of his life but…Captain Sternlieht’s shuttles were busy hauling other more urgent supplies so they made do with the Berkshires which the scouting choppers’ daily sorties still turned up in scattered bands.
“The trouble is,” Yeovil continued, “they’re out of fuel and batteries so we can’t raise them on the radio.”
“Too bad we can’t drop some kind of simple transmitter at every water hole,” Myers replied. “But the Mahdi’s boys would just try to lure us into ambushes.”
“Not necessarily,” Falkenberg said, “I like your idea.”
“What if some Muslim opens one and finds it isn’t pork?” Myers asked.
“Highly unlikely,” Falkenberg replied. “But to make sure, we can load each batch of grease with the same chemical cocktail that goes into bacon bits. The cans can be made deliberately leaky so the smell prevails. There will also be another convincing bit of theater.”
The Colonel finished his coffee and hastily left the mess. Within hours the Relentless was aiming care packages from orbit. A hundred meters from the ground each package blossomed with a day-glow chute. Wherever Muslims picked them up the cans of Spam, their porcine origin proclaimed in several languages and scripts, were discarded. Giaour Cornishmen and equally Christian Lebanese with their filthy pig eating habits were delighted to find that the petrocarb inside cushioned a small transponder and instructions.
SEVEN