Retreat Hell

by Christopher Nuttall

  “In an urban environment,” she said, “our advantages – better training, better weapons, better surveillance – would be degraded. The enemy, I believe, knew better than to meet us in the field by then. Instead, they set a trap, knowing that we would have no alternative but to walk into it. We had no choice.”

  There were several more questions, but none of them seemed too focused on her and her conduct. The Colonel had been right, Jasmine realised; Councillor Travis was more interested in nailing him than anyone else. It was true, Jasmine had to admit, that they should have learned lessons from the Lakshmibai War, but not like this. Personalities would end up pushing the issues aside ...

  “Thank you for your time,” Councillor Stevens said, finally. “Your testimony is greatly appreciated.”

  Jasmine saluted, then strode out of the chamber.

  ***

  “She didn't do too badly,” Gaby observed. “But if Councillor Travis hadn't been so bent on getting at you ...”

  Ed nodded. Jasmine hadn't had any training for facing politicians, even the relatively easy-going politicians on Avalon. Councillor Travis might think he was being a hard-ass, but compared to some of the politicians Ed had met in the past he was actually quite tame – and focused. The Grand Senators would probably have brought the issue of Jasmine’s romantic life up as soon as possible, even though it had nothing to do with the issue under discussion.

  “She did fine,” he said, instead. It had been an hour since Jasmine’s testimony, long enough for the councillors to make some private contacts outside the building. “Where do you think we stand?”

  Gaby scowled, biting her lip. “It’s hard to say,” she confessed. “Right now, no one has been formally charged with anything. The hearing is just bringing out the facts, one by one. Once they think they know everything, they will decide what – if anything – should be done.”

  Ed sighed. Not knowing what was going to happen was a major problem – and it wasn't just the hearing that worried him. Wolfbane could attack at any moment ... and they wouldn't even know about it until two weeks after the attack took place. Hell, with a little care, Wolfbane could overwhelm a number of worlds without word getting out at all.

  “We just need to get it over with,” Ed said. “We don’t know what Wolfbane is planning to do.”

  “If anything,” Gaby pointed out. “Governor Brown was a corporate officer. Wars are bad for business.”

  Ed shook his head. He’d met too many corporate drones who had believed that wars were very good for business. The hell of it had been that they'd been right. As long as they weren't at risk, profits were immense.

  Chapter Ten

  Perversely, failure was not punished if the officers in question could prove that they had followed orders. Doctors used to say that the operation was a success, but the patient died. The Empire’s military officers could say that their deployments were a success, yet the war was still lost.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. War in a time of ‘Peace:’ The Empire’s Forgotten Military History.

  The house was smaller than Mandy remembered, although it was bigger than the one-room apartment they’d shared during their final days on Earth. That apartment had been nothing more than a box with some bedding; there had been no computer, no entertainer, nothing to do apart from bicker and fight. And it would have been worse, much worse, if the Marines hadn't offered them transport away from Earth. No matter how much she’d screamed and thrown tantrums at the time, she knew now they’d been lucky. If they’d remained on Earth, they would be dead.

  Bracing herself, she walked up to the door and knocked, once. Her relationship with her parents had never really been good, although after Jasmine had knocked some sense into her their relationship had definitely improved. But the Professor and his social-climbing wife had little in common with their daughter – with both of their daughters, if she were to be honest. Mandy had been kidnapped by pirates, then joined the Commonwealth Navy, while Mindy had joined the Knights. The last Mandy had heard, her baby sister was going in for Stormtrooper training. It was the closest she could get to being a Marine.

  Her mother opened the door and nodded at her, smiling wanly. Fiona Caesius was an older version of her two daughters, but her red hair was shading to gray and her body was alarmingly thin. She’d been determined to climb to the top of academic society on Earth – as the wife of a tenured professor, she had automatic entry into the system – and losing it through her husband’s curiosity had almost destroyed her. Mandy knew, now, that her mother had fallen into deep depression, but back then she’d merely been a nagging mother to a pair of little brats.

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said, as Fiona stepped to one side, inviting her in. “And it’s good to see you recovered.”

  Her mother gave her the ghost of a smile. “I have been better,” she said. “But I have been worse too.”

  Mandy followed her into the living room, which was littered with evidence of her mother’s latest hobby. She’d taken up cooking and, according to her father’s letters, had actually started work preparing food for short-term residents in a large communal flat. Mandy wasn't sure what she thought about that – the flats were tiny versions of Earth’s cityblocks – but at least it gave her mother something to do with her life. An academic’s wife, used to the environment of Imperial University on Earth, would be utterly unprepared for life on a colony world.

  As was I, Mandy thought. She too had been unprepared for the dangers of living on Avalon – or anywhere away from Imperial University. And she’d come close to death before ever meeting the pirates.

  She looked up as the door into her father’s study opened, revealing Professor Caesius. He was an older man, so completely unlike his children that it was hard to believe they were actually related to him. His short brown hair was starting to grey too, but he'd taken his exile far better than any of the women. Unlike them, he’d found a useful position right at the start as a political advisor. Now, he spent half of his time advising the government in ways to avoid the Empire’s mistakes and the other half writing books on political theory and practice that were eagerly devoured by people all across the Commonwealth.

  “Mandy,” he said. He pulled her into a hug that brought back memories of being a little girl, before she’d fallen victim to the Empire’s public schooling. In hindsight, it was alarmingly clear just how thoroughly she’d been indoctrinated by her teachers. But she’d lacked the experience to know, at the time, just how badly they were leading her astray. “Welcome home.”

  There was a loud clunk as her mother put a pot on the table. “Sit down, please,” Fiona said, softly. “It won’t stay hot forever.”

  Mandy sat and watched as her mother ladled out something that resembled beef and dumplings stew. On Avalon, real meat was common, something she'd taken in her stride after she’d asked and discovered the truth. Mindy had spent a week refusing to eat it before finally surrendering to the inevitable and devouring the food. Fiona hadn't, as far as Mandy could recall, said anything about the fresh meat. But, as it would be massively expensive on Earth, she might just have decided that eating it was a sign of status.

  “Thank you,” she said, when Fiona had finished. “I'm sure it will be good.”

  It tasted better than she’d expected, thankfully. Her mother’s first experiments with cooking had been unpleasant, to say the least. Mandy rather suspected that Fiona had tried to start with something complicated, rather than something simple, but she wasn't inclined to worry too much about it. After eating the slop the pirates had called rations, she’d permanently lost any impulse to quibble over the food.

  “I understand that you’re going on deployment,” her father said, when they had eaten enough to satisfy the pangs of hunger. “Thule, isn't it?”

  “Yes,” Mandy said. It was no secret where they were going, unfortunately. “It’s going to be a long trip.”

  “I have been watching the hearing,” her father said. “I believe that
the general consensus is that Lakshmibai was a trap. If so, Wolfbane is hostile.”

  “It seems that way,” Mandy said. Something had to be driving their research programs onwards, apart from a desire to escape the strictures set by the Empire. “Do you know anything I haven't been told?”

  “Not as far as I know,” her father said. “I worry about you, though.”

  Mandy nodded, feeling another flicker of shame. She hadn't been a very good daughter – and she hadn't realised just how lucky she’d been to have such a gentle man for a father. Some of the children she'd known on Earth had had worse fathers – and there were children on Avalon who’d grown up without fathers after they’d been killed in the fighting. But, when she’d been a teenage girl, she’d sneered fearlessly at her father, ignoring his gentle rebukes and her mother’s rages. She’d been an awful brat.

  “Thank you, dad,” she said, quietly.

  “This could be bigger than Admiral Singh,” her father said, quietly. “We know next to nothing about Wolfbane, apart from the fact they exist and that they’re clearly powerful. Our best guesses are nothing more than estimates. Will a corporate stooge prove an effective leader, someone who can rebuild the sector after the economic crash, or will he be a failure, someone with no more imagination than Admiral Singh?”

  “I wish I knew,” Mandy said.

  “So do I,” her father confessed. “So do I.”

  He stood up and started to pace the room. “The best models we have tracking how the decline and fall of the Empire might have taken place are based on too much guesswork,” he added. “We simply don't know the answers to the questions we need answered. All we know is that Governor Brown took control of Wolfbane and built himself an empire. We need information, Mandy, as much of it as we can get.”

  Mandy hesitated. He knew about her deployment to Thule, that was obvious, but did he know about the second part of her orders? Father or not, she couldn't tell him – or even ask for his advice. Colonel Stalker would be furious if she broke secrecy; she’d be lucky if she was allowed to spend the rest of her days on an asteroid mining platform.

  “We may not get any unless someone defects to our side,” she said, recalling the runaways that had first alerted the Commonwealth to Admiral Singh. “And Governor Brown seems to keep his people firmly under control. There have been no escapees ...”

  “That we know about,” her father said. “But escaping isn't that easy.”

  “I know,” Mandy said. She’d plotted hard to escape Sword, but she’d had to bide her time until the starship returned to a friendly star system. And a few moments either way would have cost her everything. “I will be careful, father.”

  “See that you are,” her mother said. “I would hate to lose you too.”

  After the dinner had finally come to an end, Mandy sat down and wrote a note to her sister. It was unlikely Mindy would be able to read it until she went on leave – Stormtrooper training took place in complete isolation – but at least there would be something. And if Mandy didn't come home ...

  She shook her head, irked at herself. Her will was already written. Mindy would receive her savings, her parents would receive most of her possessions ... apart from her commissioning coin, which she’d willed to Jasmine. If she didn't come back, she’d be remembered as more than the brat she’d been when she’d been exiled to Avalon. And her parents would mourn her death.

  As soon as she'd said her goodbyes, she left the house and started to walk back towards the spaceport. Tomorrow ... they’d be on their way.

  ***

  “I wish I could come with you,” Emmanuel Alves said. He lay below her, looking up. His face was flushed after a long bout of lovemaking. “But my editor wants me to remain here, covering the hearing.”

  Jasmine nodded. Part of her wished he was coming with them too – she’d been doing her best to make up for years of celibacy – but the rest of her knew that it would be awkward. Too many people knew they were lovers; too many people would be watching them, wondering if her command independence would be compromised by his presence. Or, for that matter, watching him. Would he stop being an impartial reporter simply because he was dating her?

  “You’ll probably be called upon to testify at one point,” Jasmine said. She’d seen the list of people who had been called after her, all officers and soldiers from the CEF. Half the time, the questions went over the same information, time and time again. The only interesting moment had come when a supply officer confessed to accidentally mislabelling a couple of pallets of supplies. “You were there, too.”

  She gritted her teeth. Every entrant to the Slaughterhouse faced a full medical exam which included a great deal of poking and prodding in body cavities. The Marines joked that it was a test of nerve, that if you could handle having your cavities poked you could handle the rest of the Slaughterhouse, but she would have definitely have preferred repeating the exam than facing another hearing. She might even have preferred to face Admiral Singh’s torturers again.

  But I had to put those revenge fantasies aside, she reminded herself, firmly. If she’d allowed such emotions to influence her recovery, she knew, it was unlikely she would have been cleared to return to duty. Personal feelings had to be put aside when one was on active duty, no matter how tempting they were. They were dealt with after the provisional government took power.

  “You didn't deserve such treatment,” her boyfriend insisted. “I’m going to run an article on just how the hearing is treating experienced veterans.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “You’ll compromise yourself,” she warned. “You will have taken a side.”

  Emmanuel reached out and touched her right breast. “I think I took a side the moment I started courting you,” he said. “I’m on your side.”

  He paused. “Does the hearing bother you?”

  Jasmine eyed him. “Off the record?”

  “Of course,” Emmanuel insisted. “I don’t tell everyone about this” – he waved a hand to indicate their nakedness – “either.”

  “Yes and no,” Jasmine said. She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Learning from mistakes is a vitally important part of serving in the military. Everyone makes mistakes, I was taught, but we have to recognise them, admit they were mistakes and then make sure they don’t happen again. Ideally, we should be learning from mistakes made by our enemies too – it’s cheaper than learning from our own.”

  She paused. In hindsight, some of the reluctance shown by the Imperial Army’s officers to recognise that they had made mistakes might have stemmed from an awareness that admitting the mistake might have cost them their careers. At least the Marine Corps normally got to handle such matters without political intervention.

  “So, in this case, we allowed ourselves to become involved in a battle – which may or may not have been a trap – that could have ended very badly,” she added. “We need to learn from that experience. Examining every last moment of the decision-making process will highlight the moment the process failed – or what we need to modify to ensure that future surprises don’t catch us out so badly. Everyone involved with making the decision needs to be questioned so that we have as full an understanding of what actually happened as possible.

  “But it’s human nature to search for someone to blame.”

  “Like the Colonel,” Emmanuel said, quietly. “Councillor Travis blamed him for the death of his son.”

  “I know,” Jasmine said. “It’s turning into a witch-hunt. Already.”

  “It should be over soon,” Emmanuel said, reassuringly. “They can't prolong the process indefinitely.”

  “Not here,” Jasmine agreed. She shook her head. “Be careful what you print, all right? You might well be accused of losing your neutrality.”

  She smiled, inwardly. No one could ever have called the Empire’s hordes of reporters neutral, interested more in reporting the facts than slanting them in a particular way. But some of Avalon’s reporters genuinely were ... oddly, she sus
pected the Marines would find that more useful than either sycophants or politically-motivated enemies. There would be mistakes and setbacks, but the public would realise that nothing was being covered up.

  “I’ll take that chance,” Emmanuel assured her. He shifted under her weight. “Ah ... stand up?”

  Jasmine concealed her amusement as she lifted her leg, then lay down beside him. She'd known, intellectually, that between the training and medical treatments she was considerably stronger than the average untreated man. But she had never really believed it, despite all the fighting she’d been involved in, until she’d started dating Emmanuel. It would be alarmingly easy to hurt him by accident.

  It was odd, she realised, as she watched him stand up and make his way towards the shower. Logically, she should have been interested in a fellow Marine – although, she knew, such relationships were strictly forbidden. Emmanuel and her just weren't anything alike. But maybe that was the attraction; she didn’t have to keep her game face on when she was with him. But what did he see in her?

  “Perhaps he likes the thought of dating a woman who can kick his ass with both hands tied behind her back,” Mandy had said, during one of their talks. Mandy had been delighted at Jasmine finding someone, going so far as to send Jasmine suggestions for underwear and date nights. “Or maybe you make him feel safe.”

  Shrugging, Jasmine swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat upright, reaching for her chronometer. She’d supervised her subordinates as they prepared the ships for departure, then given everyone the traditional Last Night on Avalon. In a few hours, they would be expected to board shuttles and return to orbit – or face disciplinary charges when they reported into the garrison and confessed they’d missed departure. Jasmine wouldn't be merciful to someone who overslept and nor, she knew, would any of the other officers.