“Set up a shuttle schedule, based on the assumption that we will spend no longer than five days here,” she ordered. “I want each of the settlements visited; if the prisoners want to leave, we make plans to pick them up once the freighters are empty.”
“Aye, Captain,” Roach said.
“They will need medical support,” the XO offered. “Hell, if they don’t want to leave, we could drop the ration packs on the surface.”
Kat shrugged. “I think they’ll all want to go,” she said. She found it hard to imagine anyone actually wanting to stay. “The only real question is where we take them.”
Her console bleeped and a voice came online. “Captain, this is Davidson. I’ve downloaded a copy of the prisoner manifest. There’s no trace of anyone from the Commonwealth.”
“Thank you,” Kat said, disappointed. It would have been nice to rescue POWs. “Copy the intelligence over here, then continue with your operations.”
“Aye, Captain,” Davidson said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“There’s a shuttle inbound,” Talien shouted. “There’s a shuttle!”
Jean-Luc frowned as he pushed the blankets aside and scrambled to his feet. He’d seen the explosion in orbit, where he assumed the orbiting station had been, and pieces of debris burning up as they fell into the planet’s thin atmosphere, but he hadn’t allowed himself to hope that they were about to be rescued. It was far more likely, he told himself, that the Theocracy’s crewmen had done something stupid. Or that one of their prisoners had managed to cause an explosion that had destroyed the station.
He stumbled out of the hut and peered into the distance. There was a shuttle inbound, heading towards the settlement and dropping down to land just outside the walls. He stared in disbelief—he hadn’t seen a shuttle since the day he’d been shipped up to orbit and thrown into a holding cell—and then joined the others as they ran towards the walls. The Theocracy had never sent anyone to check up on them, not since they’d been abandoned. Whoever was flying the shuttle, he was sure, wasn’t one of their jailors.
The hatch opened, revealing a man in powered combat armor. Jean-Luc felt a flicker of fear, recalling the Theocratic stormtroopers who’d broken countless resistance cells, then relaxed as he realized the markings on the armor were different. He had no idea whom he was staring at, but at least he didn’t work for the Theocracy. Were they being rescued? He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of hope, his first in a year. They might survive after all!
“Greetings,” the figure said. There was an odd accent to his Galactic Standard, but it was understandable. “I represent the Commonwealth of Tyre. We have smashed this world’s defenses, but we cannot remain here for long. How many of you wish to leave?”
“All of us,” Perrier said.
The figure nodded. “How many of you are there?”
“Fifty-seven,” Perrier said. “When can you pick us up?”
There was a long pause. Jean-Luc had a moment to feel that, perhaps, there were too many of them to be uplifted, then the figure spoke again.
“A shuttle will be assigned to pick you up tomorrow morning,” he said. “If you have personal possessions, declare them to the Marines. You may not be allowed to take them with you.”
Jean-Luc snorted inwardly. Personal possessions? There were no personal possessions in the settlement! It was why the suicidal stripped naked before giving themselves up to the cold. Someone else could use their ragged clothes . . . there was nothing, not even the shirt on his back, that truly belonged to him. They had achieved an equality he couldn’t help feeling the communists on his homeworld would have envied.
“We understand,” Perrier said.
“I have some food supplies for you, along with basic medical gear,” the figure stated. “You are welcome to them, but please be prepared to leave as soon as the shuttle arrives. We may not have much time.”
Jean-Luc barely heard him. They were saved! Wherever they were going, he was sure, had to be better than the penal colony! And who knew? There might be food, drink, women, and warmth! He’d give up the first three for the fourth.
He watched as the shuttle crew unloaded a pallet of supplies, then returned to their ship and took off. Perrier elbowed him, pushing him to join the men running towards the pallet and digging it open. Inside, there were a hundred ration packs and a handful of medical kits. It looked very much like manna from heaven.
“Don’t eat too much at once,” Perrier warned. “You’ll get sick.”
Jean-Luc knew he was right, but, as he tore into a ration pack, it was hard to resist the urge to just eat and eat until he burst. Real food! And they were going back into space . . .
“This is the best day I’ve spent here,” he said, grinning. He wasn’t the only one. Everyone was grinning like an idiot. “And tomorrow we’re leaving for good.”
“Most of the female prisoners were either kept on the station as slaves or dumped in an isolated colony,” Doctor Katy Braham said. “They’re not as badly off as . . . well, pirate prisoners, but they were treated pretty badly. Most of them managed to survive, however, with their sanity intact. I expect them all to make a full recovery.”
William winced. “And the ones on the ground?”
“They’re worse off,” Doctor Braham told him. “If they hadn’t received regular food shipments from orbit, I think most of them would be dead. Hell, even with the shipments, quite a few just died of despair or nutritional problems. They didn’t have a hope of growing enough food to feed themselves.”
“Then this was never intended as a breeding colony,” William observed. The Theocracy never failed to find new ways to horrify him. “They were all intended to die out within a generation.”
“Or someone changed the plan,” Doctor Braham said. “Several of the sex slaves admitted they served willingly, in exchange for food being sent down to the surface. And it was, apparently. They might have changed the plan to hide what they were doing.”
“Seems flimsy,” William said.
He shook his head. Set up a penal colony, dump prisoners . . . and then not give them what they needed to establish a permanent settlement. It looked more like an exercise in sadism than anything else, except the Theocracy had lavished resources on the penal world. They could have been sadistic without shipping the prisoners away from their homeworlds. No, it made no sense at all.
“I looked through the manifests,” Doctor Braham added. “We think there’s around seven thousand prisoners on the planet’s surface, mostly from Verdean. However, the manifests state that over twenty thousand prisoners were dumped onto the surface. That’s a hellish loss rate by anyone’s standards.”
William shivered. “How does it compare to ours?”
“I don’t know,” Doctor Braham admitted. “As far as I know, no one has ever actually studied the development of our penal colonies. But then, most of the prisoners are guilty of appalling crimes. For all we know, the truly bad ones get killed shortly after they’re dumped on the surface.”
“Probably,” William agreed. The worst of criminals were often killed by their fellow inmates, even in a secure jail. He doubted any of them would survive for long on a penal colony, not if their crimes were common knowledge. “It’s not the same, is it?”
“No,” Doctor Braham agreed. She cleared her throat. “A number of prisoners are suffering from various diet-related illnesses despite considerable levels of genetic engineering. Luckily, regular food will help them recover, but they’ll be weak for some time to come. The remainder should be fine once they’ve had a chance to relax and eat; there’s more than enough food for them, thanks to the captured ships. Long-term, of course, they may manifest other health problems. We don’t have time to do a full medical check on each and every one of them.”
“I’ll inform the captain,” William said. “Is there anyone we can use?”
�
�You’ll have to check the manifests,” Doctor Braham said. “I wasn’t interested in anything other than their health.”
“Understood,” William said. It was unlikely the Theocracy would choose to maroon trained spacers, not when it had ways of making them obedient, but it was possible. He’d check the manifests before reporting to the captain. “Do you think any of them will pose a threat?”
“There may be some extreme behavior,” Doctor Braham said, slowly. “For better or worse, most of them believed they’d been dumped to die—quite rightly, given the evidence. They had no hope of doing anything more than living as long as they could, then dropping dead. Now that they’re free, or at least have real hope, they may act out in unpredictable ways. And if any of them were loyal to the Theocracy . . .”
“Or conditioned,” William interjected.
“Or conditioned,” Doctor Braham agreed, “we probably won’t know until it blows up in our face. All we can really do is keep an eye on them and hope nothing goes badly wrong.”
William nodded. He couldn’t imagine anyone remaining loyal to the Theocracy after being dumped on an icy hellworld, but people had remained loyal to unworthy governments in the past, despite being treated like shit. It was just something else the crew would have to watch—and watch carefully. A single person who’d been conditioned, without knowing he’d been conditioned, might explode like a time bomb at the worst possible moment. He wouldn’t set off any alarms because he wouldn’t know he was lying. Only a deep mind probe would find the truth . . .
And such a deep probe would do more harm than good, William thought sourly.
“I’ll report to the captain,” he said. “And thank you.”
Doctor Braham nodded curtly. William left Sickbay and walked to the intelligence section, where a team of staffers was already going through everything pulled from the station’s computers and matching it against what they already knew. There was little direct data, he saw, but quite a bit that could be mined for useful intelligence. Later, once the former prisoners were on the freighters, they would be interrogated too. The oldest of them had been on the planet no longer than six years. They’d have more up-to-date information than any second-generation refugee.
He pulled up the prisoner manifest and ran through it. The Theocracy hadn’t bothered to compile a proper manifest; most of the prisoners, he saw, had been classed as insurgents, questioners, or heretics. He was surprised the latter had remained alive long enough to be dumped on the icy world, but perhaps there was a certain sense to it. The Theocracy would assume that mere death wasn’t good enough for the heretics, not when they needed to suffer first. And, judging by the vast numbers who’d died on the penal colony, they’d succeeded magnificently.
Bastards, he thought savagely.
There didn’t seem to be anyone immediately useful, much to his irritation. He wasn’t sure he would have trusted any former prisoner with military-grade technology, but it would have been nice to have some extra crews for the captured freighters. Shrugging, he made a copy of the data, then checked the latest updates from the surface. The captured soldiers had been dispatched to the planet’s surface in landing pods, while the first prisoners were being brought up to the ships now.
He shrugged, then walked through the ship to the captain’s office and pressed the buzzer once. The door slid open, revealing the captain studying the fleet readiness reports from the rest of the squadron. William had to smile; how long would it be, he wondered, before the other ships started complaining that they weren’t being given a chance to take a swing at the enemy? But then, they had fired on the convoy escort ships . . .
“Captain,” he said, saluting. “I have the report from the doctor.”
He outlined what he’d heard and then leaned forward. “Most of them are from a single world,” he said. “There’s clearly something going on there.”
“I know,” the captain said. She tapped a switch, then motioned for him to take a chair as a holographic image sprung to life. “Verdean. Settled in 2300, according to the old UN files; apparently, the original settlers were a French offshoot who had no real interest in settling on the official French-ethnic worlds. The files don’t go into details on why, or how they managed to remain separate from New France, but they convinced the UN to give them a settlement grant and a colony ship. They were quite well established by the time the Breakaway Wars began.”
She shrugged. “Like us, they took no official part in the conflict,” she added after a moment. “And that’s the last we heard of them until now. They were already behind the Theocracy’s borders by the time we realized we needed to gear up for war.”
“They couldn’t have been occupied for very long,” William said thoughtfully. “Not if there’s a resistance movement still in existence.”
“No, they couldn’t have been,” the captain agreed. She gave him a mischievous smile that almost made him wish he was younger and out of the chain of command. “And they’re barely twenty light years from our current location.”
William smiled back. “You intend to attack?”
“I certainly intend to scout out the system,” the captain said. Her smile widened. “It occurs to me that we have several thousand former resistance fighters, a great deal of captured weapons, and a restive world. Dumping both the fighters and the weapons onto Verdean might give the Theocracy a few nasty headaches.”
“Or they might simply wreck the world from orbit,” William said. He didn’t disagree with the captain, but it was his job to point out the downsides. “They’re not likely to restrain themselves if they feel their grasp on the world is weakening.”
“The resistance may have to choose if they wish to fight or not,” the captain said. “All we can do is give them the opportunity.”
“They could stockpile the weapons and build up their forces,” William suggested. “When we liberate the system properly, they could hit the bastards on the ground.”
“Their choice too,” the captain said. “I’ve asked for two representatives from the resistance to join us.”
“What they know will be out of date,” William warned.
“I know,” the captain said. “But it’s the best we have.”
Jean-Luc couldn’t help feeling bitter envy as he and Perrier followed the Marine through the starship’s corridors and into the captain’s office. If Verdean had had such ships, it would never have fallen when the Theocracy arrived; it would never have known the humiliation of submission to an alien religion and an alien way of life. But Verdean had never been wealthy, never been able to afford more than a pair of destroyers to ward itself against outside threats. The formal battle for his homeworld had lasted, he’d been told, less than an hour.
He blinked in surprise when he saw the starship’s captain. She was young, so young he would have classed her as no older than himself; beside her, the grizzled older man looked far more like a commanding officer. But there was no mistaking the gold star on her collar, or the simple fact she was sitting behind a desk. Perrier hesitated, then snapped a salute; Jean-Luc, unsure of what to say or do, merely nodded. The captain didn’t seem inclined to take offense.
“Welcome aboard,” the captain said. Her voice was sweet, all the more so for being the only female voice he’d heard in a year. “I’m Captain Falcone of the Royal Tyre Navy; this is Commander McElney, my XO. Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for coming,” Perrier said. “I don’t think I have the words to say just how grateful we are.”
The captain nodded. “I’ll get right to the point,” she said. “The Commonwealth and the Theocracy are currently at war. Our king has stated his intention of eventually taking the conflict into Theocratic space, liberating the worlds currently held in bondage and occupying their homeworld in hopes of preventing a resurgence of the war. Our mission is currently to make their lives as miserable as possible, buying time for a major offensi
ve to be prepared.”
Perrier smiled. “Sounds like a good idea to us,” he said. “How may we be of service?”
“It is my intention to scout out your homeworld, then plot a raid,” the captain said. She must have sent a command, somehow, for a holographic star chart appeared over her desk. “You’ll notice that we’re not actually far from Verdean. Assuming we can break the defenses without risking major losses, I will do so—and then hammer the enemy positions on the surface. I then intend to insert you and your men onto the ground before the enemy can rally a counterattack.”
“Interesting,” Perrier said. “You don’t intend to hold the system?”
“I don’t have the firepower if the enemy comes in force,” the captain admitted. “I may hang around long enough to lure them into a trap, but that will be tricky. There’s very little leeway to do anything but get out before they pin us down.”
Jean-Luc coughed. “So you can get us down, but not help us?”
“You would need to decide if you intend to continue the fight or remain underground until your world can be liberated completely,” the captain said. “We couldn’t force that choice on you.”
Perrier considered it for a long moment. “We were slowly being strangled when I was captured,” he said. He glanced at Jean-Luc. “I don’t think the situation has gotten any better since.”
“Oh, no,” Jean-Luc said. He forced himself to feel anger. Anger was far better than the helpless despair that had convinced him to throw himself at the janissaries, fully expecting that they would kill him. “It was dire when I was captured. They killed my family for nothing, after they’d had their fun. It’s a fucking nightmare.”
“Language,” Perrier said quietly.
“I’ve heard worse,” the captain assured him.
She gave Jean-Luc a smile tinged with sadness. “We will spend the next couple of days going through everything you know, then we will start preparing you for the insertion,” she added. “If we don’t, or we can’t complete that objective, for whatever reason, we will find another option. You’ll have your chance to make them pay for what they’ve done.”
Falcone Strike (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 2) Page 15