Of course they stopped, he thought, darkly. How could they follow a religion imposed upon them at gunpoint?
He shied away from that thought as enemy targets started to vanish. It was hard to remember, as whoops of joy and shouted prayers echoed around the compartment, that the lights on the display represented real people. People—unbelievers, to be sure, but people—were under those flashing lights, people who were dying as the KEWs hit their targets and destroyed them. He wondered just how many would perish in the months and years to come. The targeting matrix included just about every government building that had been in use during the occupation.
And many of the survivors headed into the hills, he thought. Judd was a heavily populated world, but the hills had never really been developed. The files had stated that the mountain people had never embraced the True Faith. Even now, we cannot find many of their hiding places.
He shook his head. Zaskar wanted to lay claim to Judd once again, to land in force and punish the unbelievers with whip and flail, but he knew better. He and his forces couldn’t allow themselves to be pinned down. It wouldn’t be long before the Commonwealth responded in strength to their move. If they were still at Judd when the enemy fleet arrived, they’d be wiped out within hours. He couldn’t take the risk.
“The troops are on the way,” the tactical officer reported. “They’ll hit the camps in twenty minutes.”
“Remind their commanders that they don’t have much time,” Admiral Zaskar said. He’d refrained from softening up the defenses around the camps, insofar as there were any fixed defenses. He didn’t want to kill his own people. “We have to be back in hyperspace as quickly as possible.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Run,” a voice shouted. “Get up and run!”
Millicent Barbara grabbed her coat and ran for her life, unsure of where she was going. The Commonwealth Refugee Commission HQ was supposed to be safe, certainly when compared to the bases on Ahura Mazda or a couple of other worlds that had been under Theocratic control long enough for the True Faith to sink deep roots into the population’s minds. She’d been reluctant to work on Judd, at first, but she’d come to believe that the locals were genuinely decent people, although they wanted to be rid of anyone who followed the True Faith or collaborated with the occupation. It wasn’t something Millicent particularly understood.
She ran out into the cold morning air, just in time to hear explosions echoing over the distant city. There hadn’t been any real trouble since the Theocrats had been rounded up, something Millicent found deplorable even though her superiors had told her not to make a fuss. The locals had endured a decade of oppression—a decade of watching their men be brainwashed, women brutalized, and children raised in the True Faith. She supposed she should be grateful that the vast majority of the converted hadn’t been killed out of hand. The blood had flowed for weeks on a dozen worlds.
An aircraft flew overhead, heading north. She looked up to follow it and saw a streak of light dropping down from low orbit to strike a target in the distance. There was a blinding flash when it touched the ground, followed by a billowing fireball and a rumble of thunder. She stopped and stared, her mind finally realizing what she was seeing. Judd was under attack, heavy attack. More projectiles followed, some falling within the city. She turned just in time to see a distant skyscraper topple and fall. She thought she heard people screaming as the remains hit the ground.
“Millie,” a voice called. She turned to see one of the military liaison officers. Dave or Charlie or . . . she couldn’t remember his name. They were all interchangeable, all in firm agreement that the refugees had to be relocated somewhere else as quickly as possible. “We have to move!”
Millicent found her voice. “What’s happening?”
“The planet is under attack,” Dave said. She was almost sure he was Dave. “The high orbitals have fallen, and the enemy is bombarding the surface.”
Another projectile landed within the city. Millicent looked away as she saw a towering fireball rising up and over the land. It was . . . Judd City wasn’t the largest city in the explored universe, not by a long chalk, but there were hundreds of thousands of people living in the skyscrapers or occupying the slums on the riverbank. They were being slaughtered, brutally slaughtered. She couldn’t imagine what sort of mind-set would do such a thing. The attackers weren’t firing at military targets. One of the projectiles looked to have come down in the slums.
Dave caught her arm. “We have to move!”
Millicent stared at him. “And go where?”
“We can’t stay here,” Dave said. “You know how close we are to the spaceport?”
Millicent nodded curtly. The spaceport had been taken over by the provisional government almost as soon as the planet had been liberated, then made over to the Commonwealth as a base of operations. Her superiors had insisted on placing the HQ right next to the spaceport, so refugees could be moved through the scanners once transport was actually arranged and then shipped straight to orbit. Now . . . now, she had the nasty feeling their location might have turned into a liability.
“The spaceport will either be turned into a bridgehead or bombed,” Dave said. He pulled her away from the HQ. “Come on!”
Millicent hesitated, then followed him. Military or not, he was the only friendly face in the area. The spaceport was largely isolated from the nearby city, but it wouldn’t be long before people started flocking to the compound. She’d studied refugee flows enough to know that some people would try to take the shortest route to the spaceport, convinced that it would somehow magically allow them to escape the entire planet. Others, meanwhile, would head to the hills. They’d very rapidly turn desperate, then feral. Offworlders, and both of them were offworlders, would be attacked on sight.
“What do we do?” Panic yammered at the back of her mind. She’d never envisaged being caught in the middle of a war. “Where do we go?”
“There’re a few places we can hide until the navy shows up,” Dave said. Another round of explosions underlined his words. “I don’t think there’ll be much of a provisional government by this time tomorrow.”
Millicent didn’t want to agree with him, but there was no way to avoid conceding that he might be right. Judd’s provisional government had been held together by spit, baling wire, and a great deal of luck. And subsidies from the Commonwealth, she admitted in the privacy of her own mind. There was a good chance the planetary president was dead, along with the leaders of most of the factions. The remainder would probably start blaming each other for the disaster or simply go their own way. Civil war was a very real possibility.
“I thought there were marines by the embassy,” she called. Thunder echoed in the sky. “Why can’t we go there?”
“I’ll be surprised if the embassy still exists,” Dave said. “And even if it does, I don’t fancy our chances of getting there. All hell is breaking out on the streets, and I’ve only got a pistol. Do you have a gun?”
“No,” Millicent said. She’d done the basic firearms certification course, as it was a requirement for her position, but she’d never bothered to keep up with the training. “I don’t need one.”
“You need one now,” Dave told her. “This world is collapsing into chaos.”
Millicent had a nasty feeling that he was right.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
JUDD
“Dig that fucking hole,” Sergeant Lewis shouted. “Dig, dig, dig!”
Private Alicia Callahan felt sweat dripping from her brow as she struggled to dig the trench in the unyielding soil. Guard duty was supposed to be easy, damn it. A company of provisional government militia, assigned to guarding the wretched refugee camps . . . she’d thought it would make a pleasant break from sniping at the occupiers before the sudden liberation. It had been positively cathartic to watch the Theocrats be on the wrong side of history for a change. The bastards had squirmed whenever they’d seen her jacket, just a little tighter than it
needed to be, and the gun in her hands. A woman with a gun was their worst nightmare.
She shivered at the thought, despite the heat. She’d been captured, once. She knew she was lucky to be alive, but . . . part of her wished she’d had the time to commit suicide before they’d started in on her. The piece of battered meat the resistance had rescued had needed years to recover, years she hadn’t had. Going back to the war, going back to killing the bastards, had been better therapy than anything else, but . . . she’d been looking forward to the peace, damn it. Once their homeworld was cleansed of the infection, once the devotees of the True Faith had been banished, she could finally feel safe.
It isn’t fair, she told herself. They’d won, or rather they’d been liberated. Judd had been looking forward to a time of peace and prosperity. Instead, they’d been attacked. Enemy shuttles were inbound, and Alicia knew all too well that the only reason the camp hadn’t been bombed from orbit was that the Theocrats wanted to rescue their allies. It just isn’t fair!
“They’ll be here in five minutes,” Lewis bellowed as streaks of light fell from the sky. “Get your weapons ready!”
Alicia gritted her teeth, cursing the loud thunder echoing over the hills. Not real thunder. The KEWs were landing in the nearby city, she thought. Garston had been a hive of resistance, back during the war; the Theocrats had done their best, but they hadn’t been able to keep the city under tight control. Now, they were simply flattening the locale from orbit, slaughtering the population before they could flee. She muttered a silent prayer for her friends and relatives in the region, then ducked into a trench as shuttles flew overhead. A single HVM rose up to blast a shuttle out of the air, the wreckage falling to the ground, but the remainder kept flying on. They seemed determined to land just outside engagement range.
At least they’re not dropping in on us, Alicia thought grimly. She checked her ammunition pouch, wishing she’d thought to carry more. During the war, she’d loaded her belt and pockets with so much ammunition that she’d practically clinked when she’d walked. Now, she’d picked up bad habits. If we survive the day, we must never become complacent again.
A low rumble echoed through the air. She leaned forward, spotting the first tank as it advanced up the road, turrets swinging from side to side as it searched for targets. The Theocrats might not be able to build a decent sensor suite or vortex generator without help, but she knew from grim experience that their assault weapons and support vehicles were first-rate. They’d built them to be as simple as possible, she’d heard. She’d certainly never had any trouble using captured weapons against their makers.
“Stay low,” Lewis shouted as a second tank came into view. “Wait for my signal!”
Alicia nodded. The Theocratic tanks weren’t heavily armored—they’d found that out during the war—but the defenders didn’t have many antitank weapons. It was sheer luck they had any. The POW camp wasn’t meant to be heavily defended. The guards had been more concerned about prisoners breaking out than defending the camp against an outside enemy. Most of them would probably have looked the other way if a lynch mob had arrived to slaughter the prisoners.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the enemy soldiers, using the tanks for cover as they advanced with the squeamish determination of untried men. Whoever was in command over there had a working brain, she decided. That wasn’t good news. The Theocrats had often turned victories into defeats through overplaying their hands, or launching human wave attacks, but this CO seemed to be smart enough to avoid heavy losses. But then the Theocrats had presumably lost a once-infinite source of manpower. They had to conserve their forces or risk losing everything.
“Fire,” Lewis snapped.
Two antitank rockets flared towards their targets, punching through the thin armor and detonating inside the tanks. Alicia felt no sympathy for the tankers, cooked before they had a chance to realize they were under attack; instead, she aimed at the nearest enemy soldier and shot him down. The other enemy troops dropped to the ground, but kept advancing forward with grim resolution. Clearly, the Theocracy hadn’t learned too many lessons from the war. They would have been better advised to fall back and call in an airstrike.
She cursed as a volley of machine-gun fire cracked over her head. A third tank had come into view, firing with gay abandon towards the trenches. Alicia ducked as low as she could, swearing out loud as she saw the bullets digging into the ground and tearing the trench into a muddy nightmare. She saw a man stand up to hurl a grenade, only to be disintegrated by the enemy machine guns. Sweat ran down her back as she tried to spot a target without exposing herself. It was only a matter of time. The defense wasn’t strong enough to stand up to a sustained assault. They had no time to dig proper trenches, establish pillboxes, or do anything that might do something more than slow the enemy down for a few moments.
“Fall back,” Lewis shouted. “Fall . . .”
Alicia saw him fall, half of his head missing. She swallowed, hard, as she crawled back towards the camp. Lewis had led a charmed life, until now. He’d never even been scratched by enemy fire . . . now he was dead. She found a vantage point and fired a handful of shots towards the advancing troops, seeing two of them fall before the remainder ducked for cover and returned fire. There was no hope of getting out alive. Perhaps they should have abandoned the POW camp as soon as the enemy starships had entered orbit. Or killed the prisoners. She didn’t want to think about what they’d do to the local population.
The tank kept inching forward, crushing the remainder of the trenches beneath its treads. Alicia reached for a grenade, took careful aim, and hurled it towards the tank, trying to get it underneath the vehicle before it exploded. The resistance had learned, the hard way, that the tanks weren’t as solidly protected underneath. A minefield would probably have stopped the invasion force in its tracks.
Until they started using prisoners to clear the minefield, she thought as the grenade exploded. The tank shuddered to a halt. I think . . .
Something struck her, hard. She was on her back, her thoughts blurring in and out of existence, before she quite knew what had hit her. Someone had shot her. And she could hear someone running towards her. She tried to reach for her other grenade, but her fingers felt as if they were no longer listening to her. A man was looking down at her, a gun pointed directly at her face . . .
It barked, once. Silence fell.
“The camps have been liberated, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “We’re sorting out the prisoners now.”
Admiral Zaskar barely looked away from the display. “Casualties?”
“Forty-seven men dead in total, along with five tanks,” the tactical officer said after a moment. “Nineteen others injured.”
“Have the wounded men returned to the shuttles,” Admiral Zaskar ordered. They could no longer afford to spend men like water. Besides, being seen to care for his men would do wonders for morale. He could no longer hammer men for dissent either. “And execute any surviving enemy personnel.”
“Aye, sir.”
There was a pause. “I’m picking up a radio transmitter, five miles from the capital,” another officer said. “Should I send them a bomb?”
“Yes,” Admiral Zaskar said. The enemy needed radios to coordinate military operations, now that their ground-based telecommunications system had been destroyed. He had no intention of allowing them to muster resistance. It didn’t look as though there was anything they could do that would pose a threat to his ships, but he didn’t want to discover that he was wrong the hard way. “Take them out.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying the display. They’d rained death on the planet, hitting every military and governmental facility . . . and then striking everything that even looked as though it might help the planet rebuild. Hundreds of thousands of unbelievers would have died already, he was sure, and hundreds of thousands more would die in the next few weeks and months. Judd simply didn’t have the food to feed its population, nor the vehicles or transport
network it needed to move what food it did have from the warehouses to where it was needed. The Commonwealth could fill the gap, if the infidels were prepared to make a major commitment, but they would have too many other things to worry about. He’d see to that personally.
As long as we withdraw without being caught by enemy ships, he thought. It had been nearly two hours since they’d dropped out of hyperspace and engaged the enemy ships. He wanted to be gone in less than five hours. They didn’t dare risk being intercepted so quickly. We really don’t want to lose our second chance before we make a real impression on the enemy.
“Admiral, we’ve finished assessing the prisoners,” the tactical officer reported. “Fifty-seven of them may be useful, for the fleet; ninety-two are women. The remainder are of little use.”
“Have the useful ones, and the women, loaded onto the transports,” Admiral Zaskar said. “The remainder are to be given weapons and told to give the enemy a hard time.”
He smiled, rather grimly. There was no way the remainder of the prisoners would be able to recapture the planet, not with the handful of weapons he could give them, but they’d give the planetary defenders a headache or two. They’d have to waste time tracking down the escaped prisoners instead of repairing the damage to their infrastructure. Who knew? Enough armed prisoners might be able to spearhead an insurgency of their own. Judd had been a Theocratic world long enough for the True Faith to grow roots. And a long, drawn-out insurgency might lead to a political solution . . .
It isn’t likely to happen, he told himself. But God may have other ideas.
He dismissed the thought. “Are our long-range sensors still clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the sensor officer said. “The system is empty.”
Or anyone within sensor range has shut down their drives and active sensors, Admiral Zaskar reminded himself. Judd had once had a small space-based industry of its own that had been destroyed during the invasion, but the provisional government would have every reason to want to restart it as soon as possible. We could be being watched by unseen eyes.
Debt of Honor (The Embers of War) Page 9