by Leo Champion
“If you’re going to plead morals with me, Captain,” he said to the older man – the conservative German – “then don’t waste your time. I’ve made my decision.”
“Then not morals, sir,” said von Kallweit. “Practicality. We’re breaking rules. Has it not occurred to you that if we break rules, they might as well?”
Lavasseur shrugged.
“The Americans think they’re the good guys. They always follow rules.”
“Sir, I could name off the top of my head a hundred times when they haven’t.” The captain paused for a moment, then said, “Fleurent.”
Lavasseur’s lip involuntarily curled at the mention of that… incident.
“That was a planned operation,” he said. “We’re dealing here with troops in the field, a line company and some combat engineers. Heroes in their own minds; heroes of mongrelism,” the young Department major spat.
“Sir—” von Kallweit began, but Lavasseur cut him off.
“You’re becoming insubordinate, Captain. I have taken your considerations both moral and practical under advisement and, Captain, I have rejected them. Now bring the prisoners out and get the white flag up.”
* * *
“Stay with me,” von Kallweit said to the under-khan, Axhar son of Tenzhen, as his father with some of the horde’s bannermen moved toward the gate with Lavasseur, herding the hundred and thirty or so Legion prisoners ahead of them.
“My place is with my father,” said the tall, skeletally lean even for a Qing nomad, under-khan. But he didn’t follow.
“Your place is away from your father,” said von Kallweit patiently. “The same as mine is away from Lavasseur. They have their roles, that they are going to perform.”
A stupid and unnecessary performance, the German was thinking. We shouldn’t even be here. Leave a few hundred to keep the fort’s defenders from breaking out, let them starve while we head for the Vasimir Way and the real spoils inside Chongdin.
Well, it would probably be over in half an hour, assuming Lavasseur’s plan worked. von Kallweit had his doubts on that, but he’d thoroughly been shot down on them; the young aristocrat, the idiot young aristocrat he was increasingly starting to think, had pulled rank he hadn’t earned on the experienced captain.
von Kallweit had fought Americans in the past, Americans and their proxies. Yes, they followed a moral code, but they were unpredictable and half of their Foreign Legion weren’t even yet Americans; by von Kallweit’s understanding they didn’t get their residence permits until after they’d done their five years. Mongrelized fighters for a mongrel nation, but despite the teachings of Marcand, von Kallweit had learned to be wary of the soldiers of the Legion. They could be – unpredictable.
Major Lavasseur, with his aide Dumont and half a dozen other men – mostly Scandinavian NCOs – and Tenzhen lord of Anzing, with thirty or forty of the khan’s entourage helping to herd them, were pushing the prisoners forwards, several white flags waving from the khan.
“This way,” said von Kallweit to Second Lieutenant Hecht and under-khan Axhar, and their entourage of zak-mounted nomads and advisors.
He spurred them toward the crest of a low hill, his binoculars ready.
* * *
“We come under a white flag,” Croft heard the Qings and their advisors say as, herding about a hundred and thirty men, several dozen zak-mounted nomads – about a third of them carrying banners, several of those being white flags on poles – and half a dozen humans moved forwards.
Through his binoculars, at the front of the herd of convicts, MPs and Legion troops, Croft could see Senior Lieutenant Gardner, company clerk Corporal Arwen, Private Buckley and Lance Borchardt.
They were being driven at lance-point by the same sneering Frenchman he’d seen earlier, young but with an air of command that Croft could see even from a hundred yards away. He rode his zak imperiously, a lance in one hand and a machine-pistol in the other. Ahead of him, the prisoners stumbled in the yellow-white dust.
“Advance,” Croft made himself say through the megaphone Williams had given him. “What do you want?”
The imperious Frenchman had his own megaphone, which he raised as he drew his troops to a halt a hundred feet from the gates of Hubris, the prisoners herded and lined up in front of them. The prisoners’ hands had been tied – probably with the standard zip-ties the Legion also carried – behind their backs. They looked exhausted and scared, although Croft couldn’t see any real injuries beyond that.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Newbauer,” the Frenchman said in perfect but accented English, “you are to immediately open the gates of Fort Kandin-dak and surrender yourselves to the Anzing Horde.”
Croft felt eyes on him, many eyes on him. Every man and woman in the fortress was waiting to see what he’d do next.
What he’d say next.
And there was no choice.
“We will not surrender,” he said through the megaphone to the Frenchman, his human subordinates, the Qing bannermen and their hundred and thirty prisoners.
“You are illegally present and I demand you leave, and release the prisoners you have unlawfully taken. Immediately!”
“Dumont,” said the senior Frenchman to the human nearest him, “cut one up.”
The man named Dumont, a big blond man in the same dust-stained grey fatigues all the humans wore, produced a knife. The prisoner in front of him was Lance-Corporal Erwin Borchardt, a lean man with blond stubble on his head.
Oh no, thought Croft. You are not going to cut his throat.
You bastards.
While another man held Borchardt firmly, Dumont cut the man’s left ear off.
Borchardt screamed.
Dumont cut his right ear off.
Croft watched in horror as the Frenchman’s aide put out one of the screaming Borchardt’s eyes, then the other.
“Croft, is that you there?” Gardner pleaded as two humans forced Borchardt, screaming and sobbing, onto his back. Dumont’s knife descended toward the man’s pants.
“Lieutenant Croft,” Gardner screamed – he was the man next to Borchardt – “I am ordering you to surrender! I am ordering you to surrender the place now!”
The senior Frenchman raised his megaphone.
“I suggest you follow that order, Lieutenant Croft,” he calmly said over Borchardt’s screams. “He’s next. One every fifteen minutes until you surrender.”
Mercifully, the aide named Dumont slashed Borchardt’s throat. Blood flowed out onto the dry sands from the man’s ruined, still-kicking, corpse.
“You have fourteen minutes left to make up your mind,” said the Frenchman, “before the monkey gets it. Then that one” – he gestured at Buckley – “and then him” – a gesture at Arwen.
“Do as he says, Croft!” pleaded Gardner. “Do as he says and that is an order!”
No, it wasn’t a legitimate order; Croft could not imagine a position of more duress than the one Gardner was in. He was a prisoner, outside the chain of command.
He was going to die horribly, all these men were, men Croft knew, unless Croft surrendered.
He couldn’t surrender. He couldn’t give in to this tactic.
There were almost a hundred and fifty prisoners. These bastards could keep this up all day if they wanted to. He couldn’t watch almost a hundred and fifty Legion men be tortured to death.
He turned to Dunwell, whose face showed the same shocked horror Croft well knew was on his own.
“We can’t.”
“You have to,” said Dunwell. “Or they’ll kill all of them like that.”
The bastards were a hundred feet, thirty yards, away, within pistol range let alone that of the M-25s or the fort’s heavier weapons. He could shoot the knife-wielding Dumont himself…
…but there were hostages. The bastards had almost a hundred and fifty men prisoner, and then there was the matter of the white flags they were under.
Croft felt paralyzed. He couldn’t surrender, but he couldn’t let them
kill the rest of the men this way.
He looked at Dunwell, at Henry, at Atkinson, at Williams. A part of him wanted to ask, pleadingly, “What do we do?”
But it wasn’t their decision to make. He was the commanding officer on the spot. It was his.
But he couldn’t open the gates and surrender. General Edwards would never have.
Would General Edwards have allowed a hundred and thirty men to be cold-bloodedly tortured to death one at a time in front of him? While he watched?
“You have twelve minutes now,” came the French officer over the megaphone, “before that little monkey gets the same as his radio man.”
Croft had never realized how much it was possible to hate a man, as he now hated the sneering bastard on the other end of the megaphone.
“We can’t surrender,” said Dunwell.
“We can’t let them do this to Gardner. And then all the others,” said Henry.
Williams said nothing, his lips pursed.
“You have eleven minutes before the next one dies,” came the sneering Frenchman’s voice over the megaphone. “Surrender.”
* * *
“Stay cool,” Sergeant Garza urged Private Sean Gartlan and the other Second Squad men. “They’ve got a white flag, remember? And a bunch of hostages in front of them. So stay the hell cool, guys.”
Gartlan, a lanky Texan in his mid-thirties, wanted to bring his gun up and take out the bastards, starting with the knife-murderer and then the sneering spokesman. Even if Lieutenant Gardner and Corporal Arwen were right in front of them, and another hundred and thirty or so more Legion men lined up to either side, almost a human shield even if they weren’t hostages.
Three quarters of them were MPs and Black Gangers Gartlan didn’t know, but even convicts and Goldnecks were still Legion when you got down to it. Besides, the only difference between Black Gangers and half the Legion was when you’d been convicted.
“Scum,” Ryan Andrews was saying over and over, next to Gartlan. Like him, like the whole squad, they’d been ordered by Lieutenant Nakamura to place their weapons on the parapet and not touch them until otherwise directed or someone outside the fortress shot first. “Scum, scum, scum utter scum.”
“Chill,” Garza said, coming back along the battlement. Making sure everyone was keeping hands off weapons, Gartlan figured. “Everyone chill while Lieutenant Croft thinks up a solution to this.”
Yeah, but Gartlan’s hands itched to open fire, to blow away that smirking Frog and his torturing goon.
* * *
Croft felt paralyzed – knowing it was his decision, knowing that he had to say something or act in some way, and soon. Knowing that there were absolutely no options that weren’t terrible.
Knowing he had to make the decision.
“That is murder and beyond illegal,” he said into the megaphone. Weak words, but he had to say something. “In accordance with international law, let those men go.”
“Surrender the fort,” came the Frenchman.
Who suddenly vanished in an explosion. A rippling wave of explosions moved left along the line of nomads, advisors and hostages, cutting them down and shredding them. The men on the right had time to start to run – and then more explosions, 40mm antipersonnel grenades, the stunned Croft realized, caught up with them.
A few pieces of shrapnel whipped past Croft’s head, and something thudded into the battlement near him. A hundred feet was outside the explosive radius of the 40mm belt-fed but only barely.
Something in him said to go for cover, as at least one person in his peripheral vision – Dunwell? – was. But he couldn’t look away as the wave of antipersonnel explosions, which had reduced everyone in front of him to shredded meat, was followed by high-explosive rounds.
A wave of blasts walked along the line that had, seconds ago, been the nomad khan, his entourage, the French advisors and the Legion hostages. The noise was tremendous, as sand was kicked into the air alongside shredded human and nomad flesh.
Then there was silence. For a moment.
“Dear God,” said Croft, stunned.
* * *
“Kill them!” someone not far from Gartlan shouted. Before the echoes of the 40mm grenades had died, while they were still ringing in Sean Gartlan’s shocked ears, rifle fire was picking up the din.
Jezzails bloomed back, as some of the smarter nomads reacted.
And fuck that shit. Gartlan was on edge, everyone was on edge, and that was all he needed to pick his gun up from where it lay on the battlement, thumb the fire-select from safety to burst as he raised it to his shoulder, brought the sights up on one of the nearer nomads and opened fire.
Andrews was doing the same thing to his left, Pantaleo to his right; from the amount of fire whipping out, everyone in Hubris was shooting. Lines of dust were kicked up, and hastily-retreating nomads were cut down amidst them, as squad machine-guns got into the action; there was another explosion as someone fired a rifle-propelled grenade at a cluster of nomads, missing them but sending sand into the air.
“Hold your fire!” Lieutenant Nakamura was shouting. “Cease fire!”
But nobody was listening, not while there were nomads or Euros in range. They were retreating as rapidly as they could – a lot of the horde had come in close to observe their khan parleying, too close for comfort now the khan and his buddies had been reduced to flesh confetti – and Gartlan sighted in on another one, raised the M-25 a little to allow for what he estimated as nearly three hundred yards of distance, and fired.
The mounted nomad went down, although the frantic and furious Gartlan wasn’t sure whether that had been his shots or ones from another of the madly firing troops. Didn’t matter, dead was dead. He found another nomad, opened fire, and then they were getting out of range and the fire began to peter off.
Not from everyone, as the nomads drew back. But officers and sergeants were shouting people to stop, to hold their god-damned fire, and before long Gartlan couldn’t see any more flecks of dirt kicked up.
“What the hell,” Andrews asked Pantaleo as they lowered their M-25s, “just happened then?”
* * *
“What just happened?” Croft demanded, looking over the bloody mess that had been a hundred and fifty men and eighty nomads. The flechette or fragmentation grenades had shredded them; the high-explosive ones had all but vaporized their remains. And it had all happened in seconds. “Who the hell was it on that grenade launcher? Find out.”
“It was Master Sergeant Ortega,” said Williams.
“Get him here,” Croft snapped.
“I’m here, sir,” said the big black company guide. Croft was his six-foot-two height, but the master sergeant was probably a third again the lean, aristocratic lieutenant’s weight, and in his late thirties fifteen years Croft’s senior.
He could kill me in a heartbeat occurred to Croft for a moment, but only a moment. It wasn’t relevant.
Ortega, as per rules for in the field, didn’t salute. He did draw himself to rigid attention in a way that would have impressed drill sergeants on Chauncy.
Croft nodded.
“I suppose,” he said, “you have an explanation for that!”
“Sir,” said Ortega, “yes sir. The acting skipper and the rest of them were dead men from the moment that fucker started cutting up Borchardt.”
“They were under a white flag!” protested Dunwell.
“I’ll handle this, Dunwell,” he told her without turning in her direction. He kept his eyes on Ortega’s, who remained at attention but didn’t look down.
“Ma’am,” Ortega said, “you don’t murder hostages while under a white flag. Lieutenant Croft, sir, you really think those bastards would have done any better to us if you had surrendered?”
“They’d have death-marched us to the Vasimir Way,” said Williams. “Shot anyone who fell out and tried to pull the same stunt with us on Captain Numminen and D Company.”
Croft gave a slow nod.
“You still fired at
men under a flag of truce, and killed a hundred and thirty of our own soldiers. That they may have been dead men walking, that you killed them nice and quick, doesn’t negate any of that,” he said.
“Sir, if we get out of this, sir? I will answer for my actions to a court-martial.”
“Yes,” said Croft, “you will.”
“Am I to place myself under arrest now, Lieutenant?”
Croft thought for a moment. The fort did have a small brig.
But ‘if’ they ever got out of this was the question. What was left of Bravo Company was surrounded by thousands of nomads in the middle of nowhere in a situation where he strongly suspected Vazhao had much bigger problems. He needed every man, and he especially needed the experienced ones. Ortega was about the most experienced man he had.
He’d be denying the company its acting senior NCO and Fourth Platoon its acting leader at the time both were most needed.
“No, Master Sergeant. But I want your word that you will not open fire on another flag of truce if one appears.”
“I give you my word, sir, that I will not open fire on any legitimate flag of truce. Sir.”
Croft’s lips twitched. Ortega had promised nothing.
“You’ll answer for your actions to an indictment panel,” Croft said. “If or when we ever make it back to Chongdin. The task now is for us to hold until relief can come” – he looked around at Dunwell, Henry, Atkinson, Williams, big barrel-chested Master Sergeant Koppel the MP chief – “or we can be evacuated. Got that, Ortega? Everyone got that?”
There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the company leadership.
I think I defused that nicely, crossed Croft’s mind. And now to more important things.
Like holding out for long enough to relief to come.
Chapter Sixteen
“By the customs of succession,” Axhar son of Tenzhen said in front of the gathered horde, “I am proclaimed khan.”