by Jay Allan
The soldier coming down the ladder dropped to the ground, spinning around, assault rifle in hand. He froze when he saw his comrade’s position.
“Drop the knife,” the federal said.
“Back up,” Gavros spat back. “Drop the gun and move against the wall, or I’ll slit his throat.” He saw another set of boots climbing down, and he shouted, “Get back up there. I’ve got your man down here, and I’ll kill him.”
The captive soldier stared back, clearly terrified. His comrade looked at him, their eyes connecting. The other soldier looked up and yelled, “Hauser, do what he says. He’s got Johnson with a knife to his throat.” He took a step back, but he held on to his gun, holding it still, being careful not to make any threatening gestures.
Jamie was watching, holding still himself, barely breathing. Gavros’s last-ditch ploy was only going to make the soldiers angrier. And if he killed the trooper, there was no question the others would unload. They would shoot Gavros, and most likely Jamie, too. And anyone else still hiding in the bowels of the mine. Unless . . .
He turned his head, slowly, almost imperceptibly. He needed a weapon, something.
There was nothing.
Damn.
He’d have to attack with his bare hands. It was a crazy risk, he was sure of that. If Gavros heard him he would almost certainly cut the soldier’s throat . . . and the other one would open fire, killing them both. But what other choice do I have? Besides, I’m dead if I do nothing anyway.
“Drop the gun . . . now.” Gavros’s voice was an angry growl, and his knife hand moved closer to the captive soldier, the point just breaking the skin, sending a droplet of blood down the man’s neck.
“Stay cool,” the other soldier said, still holding his weapon. But he did loosen his grip, letting the barrel drop down toward the ground. “We can work this out.”
“We ain’t working shit out. Not unless you drop that gun. Now.”
Jamie took a long, slow breath. He knew he’d only have one chance, a second or two . . . maybe. And if he failed, he would almost certainly be dead in a less than a minute.
He tensed his body. He started to twist, moving slowly, closer to Gavros, all the while struggling to stay quiet. The pain in his leg was severe, but he bit down, suppressing any sound. He looked over at the other soldier, trying his best to communicate wordlessly that he was trying to help.
This is going to hurt.
Go!
He lunged forward, leaping up and grabbing Gavros’s leg, pulling with all the strength he could manage. The pain in his leg shot up through his entire body in waves of unbearable agony. He screamed, and he fell to the ground, lying facedown, gasping for air.
But his attack had startled its target as he’d planned, and Gavros stumbled backward, his blade slipping away from the enemy soldier. Gavros wobbled for an instant, and then he started to fall. But before he did, the soldier against the wall opened fire, taking him in the chest with at least half a dozen shots. The stricken prisoner stumbled back about a meter and fell to the ground, dead.
The soldier he’d held captive took a step away from where he’d been, his hand moving toward the cut on his neck. He was shaking, with both fear and rage, Jamie suspected. He reached down and scooped his own rifle off the floor, and then he turned and fired at least ten shots into Gavros’s body. “Fucker,” he yelled as he mutilated the corpse. Then he stopped shooting, turning slowly.
Jamie saw the man’s eyes, and he knew what he planned to do. He could see the rifle moving around toward him, and he opened his mouth to shout out his surrender, one last attempt to survive. But before he could say anything he heard the other soldier’s voice.
“Kenny, no! He saved your life, man.”
Jamie could see the terrifying indecision in the soldier’s eyes, the man’s desire to kill him wrestling with the knowledge his comrade had just given him. For a few seconds, a period of time that seemed to stretch into eternity, Jamie wasn’t sure what the soldier would do, and for the second time that day—for the second time in less than five minutes—he resigned his fate to another man’s hands. Then he saw the twitch, the slight relaxation in the man’s body. The rifle dropped down a few centimeters.
“I wasn’t involved in the uprising,” Jamie said, forcing himself to speak calmly despite the near panic he felt in every centimeter of his body. “I surrender.”
The soldier stared down, wordlessly, for a few seconds. Then he said, “Get up.” The tone was harsh, angry. But the cold-blooded rage was gone.
Jamie tried to struggle to his feet, gritting his teeth and trying to ignore the pain wracking his body. But he’d shaken his splint loose, and he couldn’t manage more than to sit up.
The soldier sighed, as if Jamie’s injury existed solely to inconvenience him. He pulled the comm unit from his shoulder and spoke into it. “This is Johnson . . . I’ve got a prisoner down here who needs medical assistance.” His voice was annoyed.
Jamie just sat quietly, taking quick shallow breaths, trying to endure the pain. He was beginning to believe he’d made it through. If they believed him, he might even escape punishment.
And if they didn’t, he’d probably die on the scaffold with any of the other prisoners who had survived the assault.
He was too tired to worry about that anymore and, the adrenaline drained from his body, he finally passed out.
“Fuck you, you asshole. I told you a million times to cut the shit, watch out for yourself. Why the hell couldn’t you listen?” Johnson was sitting on the cold rock floor staring down at the body of his friend.
He and Clyde Billings had gotten each other through training. They’d been inseparable, closer than brothers. And now that brother was dead, shot through the heart by a rebel, by a criminal probably spared a death sentence for his crimes and shipped to Alpha-2.
He looked at the corpse, lined up next to twenty-five others, laid out in two long rows. Twenty dead men and six women, all his comrades, all killed by the murderous prisoners.
No, he thought, not just prisoners.
Rebels.
He could feel the anger coursing through him. No, not anger. Hatred. For those who had done this. For those who had supported them. For every whining, protesting rebel on this godforsaken planet.
“Damn you,” he said, putting his hand out, touching his friend’s arm. It was cold, stiff, and he felt another wave of emotion. Clyde Billings hadn’t been the smartest guy or the best at anything. But Johnson could remember times he’d had the barracks in hysterics with his offbeat sense of humor.
Whatever you want to say about Clyde Billings, you had to admit he was truly alive. And now he’s dead.
Johnson’s eyes were watery, but he wouldn’t allow a tear to escape. There was no place for that. He would not indulge weakness. But he would take his revenge. And he knew he wasn’t alone. The governor was a weakling. That had been whispered before, but now those voices would be louder. The officers were bound to support the governor, to enforce his wishes, whatever they themselves might think. But the rank and file were different; Johnson knew many of them felt as he did. They were tired of being yelled at by protestors, harassed by rebellious colonists. And now they had seen more than two dozen of their comrades killed in action.
He knew, on some level, that the convicts in the mine weren’t representative of the population at large. But even if someone hadn’t instigated the uprising from outside, they had somehow smuggled weapons to the miners. The same weapons that had created this line of his friends on the floor. If his comrades had been facing prisoners armed with makeshift clubs and knives, the fight would have been over in minutes, and the casualties would have been a fraction of what they’d been. But someone had given military weapons to the rebels. And that guilt stained the population of Alpha-2, the protestors in the street, the ringleaders who met in secret, who conspired in the night. They would pay.
They would all fucking pay.
Johnson took one last look at Billings’s
face, eyes closed, a strangely peaceful look for a man who had died so violently.
“Goodbye, buddy,” he said, barely containing the sadness he felt. “I’ll write to your folks. I’ll tell them . . . I’ll tell them something to make them feel better.”
Though I have no idea what that will be.
He stood up slowly, taking a deep breath. He turned and took a few steps, and then he stopped and turned back one more time toward Billings’s body.
“And we will make them pay, old friend,” he whispered. “Your comrades will never forget.”
“I will be speaking live tonight.” Wells was sitting at his desk looking across toward Thornton. He knew she’d just gotten back from the mine, but somehow she’d found time to ditch her combat gear and change into her service uniform. “It is important to get ahead of this, to do whatever we can to quell the backlash.”
Thornton nodded. “Yes, sir.” Her words were clipped.
“Alex, I know this is difficult.” What an understatement. Thornton had lost twenty-six of her people . . . and another two dozen were in the hospital, a couple of them in rough shape and in serious danger of becoming number twenty-seven.
“I am fine, Governor.” She stared back, unmoving, looking like the perfect military automaton. Which he knew she wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t “fine” either.
“I mourn those lost as much as you do.” He paused, thinking he should have phrased that differently. He’d never been military, but he knew the soldiers well enough to have an idea how they viewed things. And he was sure they felt no one cared as much as they did about those lost in battle. “I mean, I know how upsetting it is for you.”
“Honestly, Governor, I am fine.” She sat silently for a few seconds, then she added, “I saw worse during the war. Much worse.”
“I know, Alex. But it’s okay to say whatever you’re feeling. At least when it’s just the two of us.”
“It’s not your fault, sir. There was no choice.” Her face hardened. “But with your permission, I intend to find out who smuggled those guns into the mine. Our losses would have been a fraction of what they were without those weapons.”
“You have my permission, Alex, but try to keep it quiet. We don’t want to give the rebel leaders any more ammunition to inflame the public. If your people go out kicking down doors and hauling in crowds for questioning, we’re just playing into their hands.”
“I understand.” She said the words, but Wells could tell she disagreed with him, too.
“I hope you do. We will find out who was behind this. You have my word. But if we react too forcefully and spark open rebellion, your people will lose more than twenty-six of their number.” He took a deep breath. “I know everybody thinks I’m too soft in how I respond, but I think I understand just what a war on this planet would do. As terrible as the last international conflict may have been, at least you knew your enemy. Knew where they were, and who could be shot at and who couldn’t. This will be guerilla war, every alley, every patrol route outside the city a potential trap, a place where a group of your troopers can be ambushed.”
Wells shook his head slowly. “And every time we respond, we will kill as many innocents, men and women who’ve done nothing. And with each such death, the revolt will grow, the hatred.” He locked his eyes on Thornton’s. “You are a veteran, Alex, so you understand the experience of war. But I am a historian. My father died in the civil war. It is easy to divide into opposing camps, to shout rhetoric back and forth. But few understand the nature of the tragedy they are creating until it is upon them.”
He sat silently for a moment before he continued. “I have done all I could to prevent this rebellion from becoming a reality . . . because in my mind I can see it already: the destruction, the hatred unleashed. The dead. Not twenty-six soldiers—or even a hundred miners—but thousands. Troopers, rebels, civilians. The cruelty of such catastrophes, the naked brutality, will cover the planet. If we slide into that nightmare, Major, you will find your soldiers mutilated and dumped on the streets. Kidnapped and tortured. Burned bodies, unrecognizable.”
Thornton sat silently, listening.
“You will respond, of course, as much in kind as your professionalism allows. You will seek out those responsible, and of course I will give you death warrants for colonists guilty of murdering soldiers. But that will not be enough for the troops. As much as they respect your command, they will take matters into their own hands. You will find civilians, too, lying in the smoking ruins of their homes. Men, woman—even children—tortured, murdered. The soldiers will be silent . . . no one will seem to know anything about the incidents. And it will grow from there, each atrocity provoking an escalation from the other side. And with each dead civilian, the revolution will grow. To stop it we will have to destroy Alpha-2, or come perilously close to that.” He looked up at Thornton. “Is that what you wish, Alex? To be the military commander of a virtual genocide?”
She sat quietly for a few seconds before answering. “No,” she finally said, “of course not. But what do we do?” she asked, frustrated. “Someone smuggled weapons into that mine, Governor. Today twenty-six soldiers and over a hundred prisoners died. What will it be next time? Twice that? Ten times?” She looked down at his desk for a moment before snapping her eyes back up to meet his. “How do we stop what you fear from happening? Surely not by allowing those who engineered this tragedy to escape? To repeat their actions on an even greater scale?”
“No—”
“Then what, sir? We have tried to penetrate the rebel networks, but we have had little success. The agents we still have deployed are on the periphery at best, with no knowledge of the actual ringleaders. If we do not up the pressure, if we don’t increase the intensity of our operations and intelligence-gathering, how do we prevent the next disaster?”
She was right. For all the impassioned rhetoric he’d just laid on her, he was all too aware that nothing he had tried had even remotely prevented the situation from escalating. He had held back, been lenient, allowed protests as long as they didn’t become too violent. But none of that had worked. He knew harsher crackdowns would only fuel the disruption . . . but his efforts to date had failed just as utterly. Twenty-six troopers dead. Hundreds of prisoners as well. Protests on the streets. Illegal guns flowing onto the planet. Things were spiraling out of control and, truth be told, he didn’t know what to do about it.
Thornton stared across the desk, a sympathetic look on her face. Wells returned the gaze. He could see she was upset . . . but she didn’t realize how fortunate she was. Because whether he authorized her to crack down hard or commanded her to back off and let the guilty go free, she would have the solace that she was following orders. His orders. His answers to the impossible question put before them. He wondered if she could truly understand the burden on him right now. Whatever actions had been taken, whatever happened in the coming months, it was all on him. And if revolution broke out despite his best efforts, his hands would be awash in blood.
“There is one more thing, Governor . . .”
He knew what she was going to say, but he was silent, staring across the desk as she spoke.
“The federal observer will be here in a matter of days. We—you—are going to have to have some answers ready.” She paused. “And I suspect a passive response will not sit well.”
“No, Major,” Wells said softly, “I don’t suppose it will.” Wells didn’t know what orders the observer carried or what authority she would have. But he could guess she wasn’t coming to propose a peaceful sit-down with the rebel leaders.
The comm unit buzzed.
“Yes?” he said, a hint of impatience in his tone.
“Governor, Lieutenant Ward is here.”
“Very well, send him in.” His eyes flitted up toward Thornton. “I’m sorry, Major, but I need to take this meeting.”
“Of course, sir.” A pause, then: “Damian Ward?”
“Yes, Major. The lieutenant and I have come to an underst
anding. He is going to use his influence to help us keep things under control. You know Lieutenant Ward, Major?”
“We’ve crossed paths, sir. On the frontier during the war.”
The door slid open, and a second later Damian walked in. “Hello, Governor. I got here as quickly as I could. The streets are . . .” He turned and looked at Thornton. “Alex,” he said. “I knew you were posted here. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before.” He looked a little uncomfortable, but quickly gained his composure. “I should have looked you up sooner. I meant to . . . but . . .”
“But time has a way of passing quickly, doesn’t it?” Thornton voice was odd as well. “I’d heard you had a farm here. I meant to visit you as well, but I wasn’t sure . . . and then, with all the disturbances, I was just so busy . . .”
“It’s okay, Alex. I’m just glad we finally saw each other.” He walked up to her, looking for a moment like he might put his arms around her. But he just extended his hand. “You look well.”
Thornton reached out and took Damian’s hand. “You do, too. Civilian life seems to suit you.”
Clearly there was some kind of past between the two, something beyond simply having “crossed paths,” as Thornton had put it. He wondered for a moment if that would help or hinder his plans to use Damian to help him calm the population. Would the two of them work together as old friends? Or was there some festering resentment there, the lingering feelings of a jilted lover?
“Damian, I don’t mean to cut the reunion short, but we’re pressed for time.”
“Of course. Alex . . . we should get together. Talk about old times.”
“I’d like that, Damian.” Thornton paused for a second. Then she looked over at the governor. “With your permission, sir.”
Wells nodded, and Alex took one last look at Damian, and then she turned and walked out the door.
Wells was tempted to ask Damian about the encounter, but he decided against it. It was none of his business. He gestured toward the chair Thornton had vacated. “Please have a seat. As you saw, the streets are full of protestors, and things are in a dangerous state. I need to address the planet . . . and I’d like you to do it with me. Let’s discuss some ideas.”