by Peter Grant
“Listen up!” he called them sharply to attention. “We got one transporter load of rations. That’s enough to see us through the next few days until our attacks go in.”
“No, it’s not,” Luna objected sharply. Bairam flushed red with annoyance, but she glared at him and went on, “You’re ignoring our families. Some of us finished our sentences and built what lives we could in exile on this rock. We found new partners and made new families. Others had wives or husbands follow them here – stupid, I reckon, but love can make people do things like that. Our families have been hungry ever since the revolt. We thought we’d be able to get them off-planet after we won, but instead we lost. Since then the administration’s not done spit to distribute emergency rations. The Marines have been doing better in the areas they patrol, but that’s sure to stop when our attacks go in. There’s not much to buy in the shops even if you’ve got money – which most of our families haven’t. We can’t win and we can’t evacuate our people, so we’ve got to give them enough food to survive until supplies return to normal. That means rations for a couple of months for up to a thousand people.”
“Dammit, Luna, we don’t have time to worry about those who won’t or can’t fight! They gotta look after themselves!”
“No. That’s not going to happen.” Her voice was flat, emphatic. “Half my group’s been asking about this. They know our only choice now is between death in combat or being hanged as rebels; but they still care about those they’re leaving behind. If we can’t provide for them, they’re going to break away from us and try to do it themselves before they’re arrested or killed.”
There were reluctant nods from most of the others around the table. Orhan said, “She’s right, Bairam. Some of my people have been talking that way too.”
“Then they shoulda thought about that before joining us!” Métin protested vehemently. “Wadda they think we are, some kinda charity?”
“None of us thought about it because we figured we were going to win, remember?” Orhan snapped. “We had it all worked out. We were going to kill the Governor and every official and guard we could reach, loot the planetary bank, then use that money to buy our way onto a spaceship with our families an’ get outta here. We didn’t know Arne had betrayed us.”
“Aw, hell!” Métin was silent for a moment, face reflecting his internal struggle, then he shrugged, looking at Bairam. “Boss, we gotta do something. If we don’t, we’ll lose them, and if that happens we may as well commit suicide instead of fighting on. It’ll come to the same thing in the end.”
Bairam sat silently for a moment, anger burning within him, but he could recognize inevitability when it stared him in the face. “All right. It’ll have to go down at the same time as our main attack, though. If we launch a raid before then to get rations, it’ll tell everyone we’re back in Surush. We gotta surprise ’em when we hit ’em. I’ll assign one group to take hostages at th’ spaceport, then trade ’em to the Marines at Carsamba in exchange for some transporters loaded with rations. They can drive each transporter to a rendezvous point where families can collect what they need, then they can reassemble and hit another target. While all that’s goin’ on, the rest of us will launch our strikes.”
“That might work,” Luna agreed.
“Lemme think on it. Meanwhile, I’ve chosen eight possible targets. Five are inside the zone patrolled by the Marines. We’ll have to sneak through real slow and careful to avoid ’em spotting us. Fortunately they’re spread real thin and we know the sewers and alleys like the backs of our hands, so I think we c’n do that. Of course, when we start the ball rolling they’ll figure it out, but I don’t think they’ll be able to interfere in time to stop us.”
He handed out printouts showing the target zones. “Study these maps. Look for approach routes an’ weak points in the defenses. We’ll get together again in three hours to make a final selection of our targets and start planning our attacks.”
~ ~ ~
Steve and the Gunny stood on top of the administration building once more, nursing the last mugs of coffee of the day, watching the third and smallest of Eskishi’s moons rise over Surush. Serried housetops showed a kilometer away at the edge of the city in the moonlight, broken here and there by roads and the skeletons of buildings that had been wrecked during the recent fighting.
Steve said reflectively. “Gunny, I wouldn’t talk like this to anyone else in the detachment, but you’re a senior NCO. You’re supposed to help train and form junior officers, so even though I’m not as junior as I once was, help me out here. I’m getting a bad feeling about this operation. In all my training I’ve been taught that the Fleet should only act if something’s imperative to the interests of the Commonwealth or our principles. We’re supposed to clearly define our objectives, then develop a plan to not only get achieve them, but get out again after we’ve done that. I haven’t seen any of that in this operation. I get the feeling the Marines were just flung in here willy-nilly.”
Kinnear shrugged. “Didn’t they say something about wanting to help Karabak so it would consider stronger anti-piracy measures?”
“Yes, they did, but who decided that would motivate Karabak? It doesn’t sound like something a Sector Admiral would come up with – more like a touchy-feely idea from his State Department advisor. Also, I can understand dispatching the on-call MRF battalion and you Engineers to an emergency on a Commonwealth planet, but to a foreign world with no particular ties to us? Where’s our ‘imperative interest’ here?”
“I dunno, Sir, but then I’m an NCO. I go where they tell me and do what they want me to do. I leave the deep thinking to the powers that be.”
Steve snorted. “Oh, come off it, Gunny! You don’t fool me. Before being promoted to senior NCO rank you’ll have earned a Bachelor’s degree in Military Science through training and online education, the same as I have. You’re no automaton, so tell me: if you’d been killed by that hit you took yesterday, d’you think you’d have died doing something worthwhile? You swore an oath to uphold and defend the Commonwealth Constitution. What does our job here have to do with that? Would you be satisfied to be killed defending a pile of not-very-good rations against ragtag bandits on a world that has nothing to do with us?”
Kinnear grinned and shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied to be killed, Sir! Let me put it another way. I saw you in your Class Two uniform aboard Cybele. You were wearing the ribbon of the Combat Injury Medal in silver, which means you’ve been wounded in action twice. When and where?”
“The first was on a United Planets mission to Radetski. The second was in a fight with smugglers in orbit around Midrash.”
“OK. The second was on Commonwealth business, sure enough, but the first was like mine yesterday – an injury suffered on a world that has nothing to do with us.”
Steve frowned. “No, it was during a United Planets mission that had been accepted by the Commonwealth, which made it an ‘imperative interest’ for the Fleet by default. This isn’t. There’s been no formal determination by our government that we need to be here – or at least, if there has, I don’t know anything about it.”
Kinnear nodded. “I see your point, Sir, but you’re splitting hairs. We’re here in obedience to orders from our superior officers. If those orders were wrong, someone much higher up than us will have to sort out the mess; but that’s not our job. We do what we have to do, in the situation in which we find ourselves, with the tools that come to hand. If we tried to second-guess every order that came down the pike, we’d end up chasing our own tails and the Fleet would disintegrate.”
Steve sighed. “All right, Gunny. You’re right, of course… but I’ve got a nasty feeling in my water about this. We’ve come in here not knowing enough about the background to the rebellion, or the major actors, or what happened, or what’s going on now in the fighting inland. Our forces are divided, and we don’t have enough Marines or weapons here to secure ourselves if things turn pear-shaped. Yesterday coul
d have been very bad, but we were lucky. I doubt we’ll be as lucky again if something else goes down; so I intend to do something about that. Are you willing to bend a few rules to help me?”
“If it keeps my engineers safer, Sir, I daresay I can stretch a point or two here and there.”
“Good. At midnight you and I are heading for the spaceport with a raiding party – I mean, a work crew.” Both men grinned. “I want a bunch of stuff from the armory and warehouses there: heavier weapons, surveillance gear, anything we can lay our hands on to secure our perimeter. I want enough not only for your Marines, but also to arm some of the Qianjin prisoners. It’s as clear as daylight that many of them have had military training. They’ve already had to fight against these rebels to stay alive, so I don’t think they’ll hesitate to help defend this place and themselves if necessary.”
“Makes sense.”
“You’ve all got engineer’s armor rather than combat armor. Does that mean you can’t fight in it?”
“No, Sir, it’s combat-capable – we’re not called ‘combat’ engineers for nothing, after all. It’s just got extra features and software to help us handle heavy equipment and dirty jobs.”
“Good. Make sure you have all the weapons you need to fight if necessary. If you need more, we’ll add them to our shopping list tonight. I also want to ‘borrow’ some heavy maintenance spacesuits from planetary stocks. Their powered exoskeletons are almost as strong as armor, even if they don’t have the offensive and defensive sensors you Marines use. Their environmental systems will allow us to use them planetside for short periods if we have to, although they can’t move as fast as your armor. The Qianjin spacers will know how to operate them, and they’ll help them to keep up with your Marines in a firefight if necessary. If we can’t have more Marines to guard us while we work, I’m going to form our own fire teams.”
“Er… you know the planetary authorities will crucify you if they find out about this, Sir? Arming convicts has got to break all sorts of regulations.”
“Screw regulations! You and I damn nearly got ourselves killed yesterday because we were caught unawares and unguarded. I don’t intend to let that happen again.”
~ ~ ~
The six leaders of what was left of the rebellion gathered at twenty-three. They sipped mugs of strong black coffee to stay awake as they talked.
“Boss, I had a thought,” Métin said without preamble. “You said we’d send a group to the spaceport to take hostages, then trade them for the ration packs our families need. Why not take that further? Did you see who just arrived here?”
“The Eksalansari, you mean? Yeah, it was on the news this evening.” Bairam’s lip curled in disgust. “He’s just a wet-behind-the-ears shavetail straight out of the Military Academy, nothing much at all.”
“Yeah, but he’s also the Sultan’s youngest son. If we grabbed him, would he be valuable enough to trade for a way off this rock for ourselves and our families?”
There was a sudden hissing intake of breath around the table. Even Bairam was momentarily staggered at the thought. He said slowly, “I… you know, I never thought of that. I must be getting old and slow! Yeah, I reckon the Governor wouldn’t have much choice. If he did anything to get the Eksalansari killed, he’d be finished, even though he’s one of the Sultan’s closest friends.”
Luna nodded eagerly. “Instead of killing as many high-ranking officials and their families as we can, why not try to take them hostage? We may not get the Eksalansari or the Governor, but if we got the Governor’s wife, an’ the families of a few other senior officials, that’d be almost as good, wouldn’t it? We could use them as shields to force the Marines to back off and stay out of the fighting, then trade them for a way out of here.”
Orhan shook his head doubtfully. “Tricky. Even if they gave us a ship, they’d never let us leave with the hostages. We’d have to hand them over before they let us hyper-jump out of here; but once they got them back, what’s to stop them blasting us out of space with a nuclear-tipped missile before we reach the system boundary?”
Bairam thrust back his chair and stood. “Wait a moment. We need expert advice, and I know someone who can give it to us.”
He was back within minutes, ushering a grizzled older man into the room. “You all know Turgay, right?”
“Yeah.” “Sure.” “Hi, Turgay.” Nods and greetings ran around the table.
“He was a Bosun in Karabak’s merchant marine. He smuggled goods on and off the planet for years until someone decided he wasn’t paying enough in bribe money, an’ made an example of him to warn other smugglers. He drew a ten stretch here, followed by permanent exile.” He looked at Turgay. “What you hear doesn’t go any further until I say so, OK?”
“OK, Boss.”
Bairam swiftly explained their embryonic discussion. “We need to know whether we can make this work. We don’t know much about spaceships, but you do.”
“There are three problems you’ll have to deal with as far as the ship’s concerned,” the spacer began. “The first is finding one that can take a thousand of us or more – that’s us and our families. A merchant freighter can’t. She’s all cargo holds, most of them non-pressurized. Her crew quarters won’t handle more than forty or fifty, or maybe three times that if we hot-bunk.”
“What’s a ‘hot-bunk’?” Mariam asked, puzzled.
“That’s when two or three people share a single bed in turn. As one gets out, the next gets in. It never gets a chance to cool down.”
She giggled. “The name suits.”
“Yeah, but it’s no fun, believe me. It starts to get real smelly after a while, even if you change the bedding more often. The ship’s environmental systems are another problem. They’ve got to handle sanitation for everyone aboard, and supply enough air and water for them. The galley has to be able to prepare meals for everyone, or there have to be individual ration packs, and then there’s garbage disposal, laundry, taking care of any infants and kids that come along… it’s a tall order.”
Bairam said thoughtfully, “The Colonial Guard reinforcements arrived aboard three freighters fitted with personnel pods in their holds. They’re still in orbit around Eskishi, as far as I know.”
“That would work,” Turgay agreed. “There was a full regiment of Guards, which’d be fifteen hundred to two thousand troops. Each of those freighters would have carried several hundred troops in personnel pods, plus their heavy equipment and supplies in the holds. With hot-bunking they could load twice that number if they had to, maybe even more. The pods’ systems would deal with sanitation and air supply, but the ship would have to carry enough supplies for the trip.”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. What are the other two problems?”
“The next is that a spaceship’s pretty big – at least, a merchant freighter is. She’s got lots of compartments where troops can hide. If they wanted to get tricky with us, they could pretend to give us a ship, then conceal a reception committee aboard to surprise us once our guard was down.”
“How long would it take to check the ship to make sure that wasn’t happening?”
“I could do it in half a day if I had a few spacers to help me.”
“Are there any more spacers with us?”
“Two that I know. There may be a few others. I can ask around.”
“All right, do that. Last problem?”
“The ship’s crew. They won’t want to be trapped aboard with you. If they’re civilian, I reckon they’ll probably refuse to obey orders to take you wherever you want to go; or they might just abandon ship and leave it drifting in orbit. Where are you going to find spacers to replace them?”
“That’s a problem,” Bairam admitted, brow furrowing in thought. “I’ll… I may have an answer there too. I’ll have to think on it.”
Turgay’s eyebrows shot up. “Boss, if you can conjure an entire trained crew out of a hole on this rock, I’ll kiss your ass in public!” A ripple of laughter ran aro
und the table.
“Well, start practicing your puckering-up, because I may know where to find one – although I don’t know whether they’ll agree to help us. OK, thanks, Turgay. Remember, not a word to anyone till I tell you. Stay close, so I can find you if I have more questions.”
“OK, Boss.” The spacer let himself out of the lean-to shack into the barn, closing the door behind him.
“Where the hell are you going to find a ship’s crew?” Métin’s voice was incredulous.
“Never mind that right now. We’ve got a bigger problem to deal with first. How do we make sure they’ll let the ship go with our people aboard after we’ve handed over our hostages?”
There was a long silence around the table as everyone thought hard. At last Luna said slowly, “There may be a way… but it’s probably a suicide mission for some of us.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Bairam demanded.
“If they get the hostages back, they’ll have no reason to let us go. They can chase after the ship and try to recapture it, or simply shoot it out of space. They can even plant a bomb aboard, timed to blow up hours or days after the ship’s left the system. It would never be seen again, and no-one would ever learn what had happened to it. The only way to stop those things happening is to keep the hostages until the ship arrives at a safe destination where our people can get off.”
“But how the hell do we do that? They’ll never allow us to take them along!”
“We keep them here,” she said simply. “We can’t risk staying on the planet with them – it’s too easy to mount an attack to free them – so we put them aboard a cargo shuttle in orbit, with enough supplies for a month or two. A few of us stay on the shuttle to guard them until we receive a message from the others – probably brought back by the ship that took them – confirming they’ve arrived at a safe place. After that we hand over the hostages; but that means those of us on the shuttle won’t have any chance to escape. We’ll be arrested and hanged.”