I looked at him. That hadn’t been in my files, either of them. “It’s not commonly advertised,” Andrew added, seeing my look. “They used to use it on Earth to get better weather for farming. After a few years, they discovered that it only caused more havoc later on and banned it – too late. Botany, on the other hand, doesn’t have an environment to fuck up any further.”
A moment later, the shuttles came down to land and I saw the Governor and his men.
I took one look and knew that we weren't going to get on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The position of Planetary Governor tended to vary wildly in importance. Some of them, particularly on worlds like Terra Nova, had vast powers and control of the UN Garrison to back up their decisions. Others, such as the Governor appointed to Heinlein before the invasion, had very limited powers and had to contend with local governments that resented dictation from Earth. The posts naturally became key magnets for greedy or corrupt men and the rewards were often great indeed. Those who prospered even found that the UN regarded them as experts on the planet in question and were consulted on all issues involving the planet.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
“Welcomes to Camp Sand,” the Governor said. He had a voice that reminded me of a gang-member, a mixture of overwhelming power and confidence, underlain by the awareness that he didn’t control everything. I disliked him on sight. “I am Governor Rollins.”
“Lieutenant Walker,” I said, shaking his hand. It was soft and flabby. The man himself was grossly overweight. I didn’t understand how he managed it on a place where foodstuffs were always rare, but it was possible that some supply transport had dropped off thousands of MREs for the Garrison. “We’ve brought the…”
“Yes, yes, I can see that,” the Governor cut me off, impatiently. “Captain, I trust that your sergeants can allow Captain Ridley to lead your men to the barracks?”
“Of course,” Andrew said, a tight note of anger barely concealed in his voice. I understood exactly what he was thinking. This overweight governor held his men in contempt? “Sergeant Pascell; please see to it.”
We shared a glance as Captain Ridley led the soldiers away towards the barracks, which we could see in the distance. The entire garrison wasn't even fenced in, or encircled by walls, and even to my untrained eyes, it looked like a recipe for disaster. The Captain had looked surprisingly well-dressed; in fact, he’d looked too well-dressed. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d been chasing tribesmen away from the mining equipment. I heard a noise in the distance and caught sight of a sandy-coloured beast, being led by the nose towards a watering plant. I couldn’t help myself. I stared. I’d never seen anything like it before.
“It’s called a Camel,” Rollins explained. I caught a glimpse of the man he’d once been underneath and smiled to myself. His enthusiasm was almost touching. “They were originally used by desert nomad tribes on Earth as they travelled the deserts, mainly because they didn’t need to drink as much water and could eat things that no human could eat. Back when they landed the garrison here, the first Governor ordered a few hundred of them shipped in and handled most of them out to the nearest tribes. They bred them and there are now thousands of the beasts wandering the planet.”
He paused. “Anyway, if you’ll accompany me…”
I didn’t see anything to change my first opinion of the garrison. It was little more than a collection of prefabricated buildings that had been dropped onto the planet from orbit and then carefully embedded in the soil. Most planets would have broken them up as they built new homes and offices from local materials, but Botany’s governors hadn’t bothered. It wasn't as if there was much to build from on Botany, apart from sand or stone. If there were other raw minerals on the planet, it would require too much effort to get at them.
He led us through a small office, staffed by a handful of girls who looked nervously at Andrew when they saw his uniform. There was no way to be sure, but I would have guessed that they’d been recruited from the planet’s tribes and taught typing and other skills, along with…ah, servicing the needs of the UN staff and soldiers. They would probably never be allowed to return to their tribes, even if they were wanted back. It was quite possible that the Governor had traded the tribes useful supplies in exchange for their services. God alone knew what would have become of them otherwise.
“Of course,” the Governor said, when I asked. “I only take in girls born on this planet and doomed, otherwise, to be little more than mothers, daughters and wives.” I remembered Muna and grimaced. Had that been something of the same? “They’re taught useful skills here, but even so, most of them never go home. We tried to teach medicine to a handful in hopes they would serve as a goodwill gesture to the tribes, but they were rejected when they were returned. We don’t know why.”
I frowned. “Surely you could set up a home for them elsewhere,” I said. “Couldn’t you even send them off-planet?”
“The only people allowed to leave the planet are people who came here, to the garrison,” Rollins said. He shrugged. “The convicts are not permitted to leave, nor are any of the tribes. The sociologists say that their tribal culture is a civilisation that must not be contaminated by us and…hell, I think that if they didn’t sometimes sell their girls to us, they’d still die anyway. The largest tribe we’ve encountered has been only around one hundred strong.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he added. “They’re barbarians.”
“You never tried to recruit them for the mines?” I asked. “Can’t they be taught how to mine?”
“They don’t want to learn,” Rollins said. He seemed to be becoming irritated, so I decided not to press him any further. “They believe that staying in one place too long is bad luck and so they stay away from the miners. The miners have their own brothel of girls taken from the tribes, but they haven’t had any other contact, as far as we know. The tribesmen do steal some items from us, mainly metals and other items they can’t get for themselves, but otherwise…little contact”
Andrew frowned as we entered a massive dining room. “If that’s the case,” he said, “why did you request a reinforcing unit for the garrison?”
“We do have some contact,” Rollins admitted. “The tribes…well, they don’t take some things very calmly. If someone commits an offence against the tribe, they boot him out and leave him to live or die as the planet pleases. They worship the planet, you see, and if the man survives more than a year, they take him back – if he wants to go back. The sociologists sometimes pick up an outcast – male or female – and ask them questions. One of them said that his tribe had been invited to join others in an attack on the garrison itself.”
“I see,” Andrew said, doubtfully. “And has such an attack materialised?”
The Governor shook his head. “We sometimes get light raids,” he said. “They’re never a serious problem and we can drive them away with ease. The tribes don’t have a formal government so sometimes we have to kick them a little to teach them not to mess with us. There’s never been an all-out attack. Even if they won, the tribe that took the Garrison would be brutally wounded.”
Andrew nodded. “Do they fight amongst themselves?”
“Sometimes,” Rollins said. “It’s really challenges and counter-challenges than actual warfare. Their society argues against it. The winner would still be badly weakened.”
He waved for us to sit down as the remainder of his staff came in. I couldn’t believe the dining room. It was on a primitive planet, yet it was as luxurious as an Admirals-only reception bar back on Earth. His staff didn’t look very impressive either and they all blurred into one after I’d been introduced to a few faces. Some were little more than people who’d annoyed the wrong person and been sent to Botany, others were proper engineers, or sociologists. Their chatter was meaningless to me. Some talks about their miners and their complaints, others talked about their researchers into the tribal so
ciety developing just outside their door. I was starting to see why the Captain had volunteered me for the job. The thought of being fawned over by the Governor and his lackeys was nauseating.
The first course was served by tribal girls in scanty outfits, barely practical for anywhere outside Luna City. I took a moment to study them, trying to place their original origins, but their parents had clearly been born to a mixed partnership. They had dark skin – the sunlight beating down on the planet had seen to that – and soft brown eyes. They also looked thoroughly terrified and one looked as if she had been beaten. I felt a flicker of anger that I was quick to subdue. How dare the Governor abuse his position like that? I watched helplessly as the girls served, sometimes being groped or fondled by the staff, and wondered how long it would be before the Governor was poisoned. There had to be a plant that could serve as a source of poison somewhere on the planet.
“Eat,” Rollins said. I didn’t want to eat anything, but there was little choice. The meat tasted strange to my tongue, but it was surprisingly good. “This is the one meat that we’ve been able to raise on this damned planet.”
Camel, I realised. The beast I’d seen hadn’t looked very appetizing, but perhaps it tasted better than it had looked. I’d never ridden a horse before, let alone a camel, but I could see the attractions for the tribesmen. They probably regarded them as wonderful creatures.
“Tell me something,” I said, as I finished the plate. “Are you going to be introducing other animals to Botany?”
“Perhaps,” Rollins said. He grinned at one of his people, a sour-faced woman who looked like she’d been slapped too often as a child. “Debbie there is doing an Impact Analysis Report on introducing other forms of desert life, but there’s just so much paperwork to do. In fact, I don’t know why…”
He broke off as an explosion and a series of shots echoed out in the distance. “What the hell was that?”
Andrew’s terminal pinged. “Sir, we’ve got multiple hostiles coming in from the north,” one of his sergeants said. “Captain Ridley is dead, I repeat, dead. They’ve somehow hit the first barracks and most of the on-planet soldiers are dead.”
“The hell?” Rollins asked. “Captain, I demand that you see to the defences…”
“Yes, sir,” Andrew said, tightly. He jumped to his feet. A moment later, I was on my feet and with him, drawing the pistol I’d worn at my belt. The laser pistol might not have looked as impressive as the Infantry rifles, but it could kill. “You’re staying here.”
“No, I’m coming,” I said, firmly. “Governor, I suggest you get your people under cover.”
A wave of hot air hit us in the face as we ran out of the building, towards the sound of shooting. A towering wall of fire had enveloped one of the buildings and the disgusting scent of burning flesh was in the air. I winced, remembering it from Terra Nova, and followed Andrew. A moment later, he threw himself to the ground and I followed, just as bullets crackled over our heads.
“Stay down,” Andrew hissed. I saw a man wearing some kind of tunic pointing a very obvious weapon at us. We fired at the same time and the man staggered backwards and collapsed, half of his head blown off. “Take his weapon, now!”
The sound of shooting from the barracks only grew louder as I crawled over to the dead tribesman. He had the same skin colour as the serving girls, but he was almost completely covered in hair, with more muscles than I’d seen on anyone else, even a Marine. I wouldn’t have wanted to trade punches with him. I recovered the weapon – it looked like a simple rifle, but well outside their capability to build – his ammunition pouch and his knife, before searching his tunic roughly. He had nothing apart from his weapons and clothing.
“Come on,” Andrew hissed, and I followed him towards the defences. As we reached the corner, he held up a hand to stop me and whistled a tune into the air, twice. It was a moment before it came echoing back and he turned the corner. A second passed and then he waved me onwards as well. “Sergeant, report!”
“A major attack from the north, sir,” the Sergeant said. Here, the sound of shooting was growing louder. I could see the Infantrymen spread out on the ground, lying flat and shooting with short precise bursts, or taking up firing positions in the second barracks. The first was now a burned-out shell. Whatever they’d built it of hadn’t been fireproof, which still raised the obvious question. How did they get a bomb inside the barracks? I remembered the serving girls and had my answer.
“Got it,” Andrew said. He fired a burst himself at a dark figure, which toppled over backwards, howling in pain. “Why the hell are they attacking now?”
The answer flashed into my brain. “The shuttles,” I said, grimly. I keyed my terminal. “Shuttles, come in – now!”
“Pilot Van Diamond here, sir,” the lead pilot said. “What’s all the shooting?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Seal up the shuttles completely; no one to get onboard without either mine or the Captain’s permission.” I thought about ordering them back to orbit and thought better of it. If we needed to evacuate the Garrison, we’d need the shuttles. The tribesmen’s bomb had made sure that we had a lot of empty seats. “Andrew…”
He was way ahead of me. “Sergeant, take D and E and get them to the shuttles,” he ordered. “I want the ground around the shuttles swept and then secured.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, and started to run. The infantry were reorganising on the fly and, once again, I was impressed by their professionalism. I’d seen attacks on Heinlein that had broken down as one unit tried to advance through ground controlled by another unit, or even fired on their own side, quite by accident.
“We’ll cut them off from the shuttles, and then drive them back from the garrison,” Andrew grated. I saw him smile and realised that he was enjoying himself. “Contact the ship and see if they can move into position to support us.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and keyed my radio again. “Captain, we’ve got a bit of a situation here.”
“I understand,” the Captain said, when I had finished explaining. “We’ll move into low orbit and prepare to unleash KEW strikes if required, but our sensors can barely pick up the tribesmen.”
Andrew overheard. “Anyone outside the compound is an enemy,” he said. “We really need a helicopter flight or two.”
I nodded. Botany’s atmosphere was too much for helicopters though, or even any other kind of aircraft. The Garrison had experimented with an airship, but the idea had never really worked in high winds. The shuttles might be able to lay down fire for us, but the cost in fuel would be prohibitive. Of course, we were probably past being able to care about it.
“Understood,” the Captain said. “We can use our lasers to target the ground.”
“Do so,” Andrew said. “I want a wide-beam sweep around the compound.”
I covered my eyes as the laser beams swept through the air. Normally, a laser beam is invisible until it hits its target, but the weird atmosphere made the beam show up as a flickering ray of light. The results were unmistakable. Sand overheated and became glass, while any tribesmen caught in the beam died instantly. I hoped – prayed – that it would be enough. After that, the tribes were probably going to be out for blood.
“Sir, this is Sergeant Price,” Andrew’s radio said. “There was an attempt to rush the shuttles, but we beat it back and they faded into the desert. The little shits can hide right under our noses.”
“Well done,” Andrew said. He looked at me. “With their goal now impossible to reach, what do you think they’ll do?”
I heard a sound, rather like a thin trombone, in the air. A moment later, the tribesmen stopped shooting and vanished into the desert. Our shooting stopped a moment later as we realised that there was nothing left to shoot at. The brief attack – it didn’t seem that it really had only been ten minutes – was over.
“Sergeant King, take A Platoon and sweep around the compound,” Andrew ordered. “All others, sound off.”
I listened
absently as the infantry ran through their names. “Get the injured to the medical clinic,” Andrew ordered. He frowned down at one of the dead tribesmen. “Check the tribesmen and find out if any of them are alive. I want to know where they got those weapons.”
It was an hour before we found out the truth. The captured tribesman had sworn that he wouldn’t talk, no matter how much we hurt him, but an injection of truth serum loosened his mouth. He’d explained how the tribes had been contacted by someone from the stars who had offered them weapons and supplies, inviting them to take their revenge on the garrison and its people. One of the tribe, a convict who had survived the harsh welcome, had even suggested taking the shuttles and the starship in orbit. With a little luck, the plan might even have worked. Would the Captain have realised the danger in time to fire on his own shuttles?
And the observation network surrounding the planet was primitive. Anyone could have landed without being observed. They might have been resistance fighters from a dozen worlds, or they might have been pirates. It didn’t matter in the end, did it?
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 29