War World X: Takeover

by John F. Carr

  They watched as the bright specks in the sky grew. The splashships extended wings, and sonic booms echoed as they approached in formation. As all re-entries took place west to east, the final maneuver necessary for coming down in Havenhold Lake’s splashdown lanes was a dogleg to north or south, depending upon cross winds and other ground conditions.

  This dogleg usually took the shuttles over the Harmony Compound, or over Shorewood Forest to the south. This time they banked over the forest, which was preferred, due to the lack of settlements there. Dropping salvageable shuttles and/or cargo on populated areas was avoided; no use making scavenging any easier for the Haveners.

  Kev tensed. He found himself holding his breath. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the shuttles coming down, even though he couldn’t see them all that well in the dark sky. Mostly they looked like shadows, and except for their relative motion against stars and their blinking lights, they would not have been visible at all.

  The three splashships seemed to be coming directly at the trench now, and the irregulars collectively hushed. “The turtles are near the middle,” someone whispered.

  The first splashship kissed water, sending up spray which looked fluorescent. It settled on the water, plowing a trough of wave, its speed slowing considerably. And then, just as the second shuttle touched the water’s surface a few seconds later, in another lane, the first splashship struck several semi-submerged logs.

  It canted sideways and entered the third ship’s lane even as the second shuttle veered due east in a standard emergency right turn which took it out of harms way.

  Lights and sirens came on at Splashdown Island, and rescue boats deployed. The first shuttle rolled almost gracefully onto its right wing, which was still extended for atmosphere. The wing dug into the water like a paddle and the shuttle, now perpendicular to its motion, rolled onto its back and completely blocked the third shuttle’s lane.

  Screaming engines drowned out screams and sirens for a moment as the third splashship tried to pull up and out. It failed, and so the third splashship came down virtually on top of the first, nose up, engines roaring.

  When water entered the suddenly-reheated engines, steam formed, tearing the engine compartments apart. Explosions illuminated the night.

  “Two out of three, anyway,” one of the irregulars muttered, seeking approval. Another muttered, “Four hundred pissed-off soldiers left,” and shuddered. “Yeah,” a third realized, “their buddies all got killed; they’ll be after revenge for sure.”

  The irregulars discussed where to hide, or whether or not to split up into smaller groups.

  Kev and Wilgar gazed at each other, their faces visible now as fuel burned on the lake’s surface. “Murder,” said Kev.

  “Accident,” said Wilgar.

  Kev blinked first.

  “Eight-hundred and four Marines killed,” Ibansk said, face sad. Cole shook his head. “Never expected this,” he muttered, making notes. “Come on, I’d say it’s time to activate Operation: ROPE.”

  But General Lassitre and Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson were way ahead of him, and from The Egg and other, smaller bunkers placed all over and around Castell City and Environs and as far west as Hell’s-a-Comin’, as well as from the surviving splashship, CoDo Marines swarmed like angry wasps, to put down what was now looking like an actual rebellion.

  Furious squads jumped from ship to dock even before the lucky shuttle got tied down by dockhands. They fanned out, moving from a wharf just south of the Town Square. At each building flash-bang grenades were tossed, and trained, angry soldiers with weapons set on automatic cleared each successive building with quick, merciless bursts.

  No quarter was asked or given; Haveners met the attacking soldiers with axes, hammers, stones and fists; they were mauled, mowed down, routed. Nothing stood against the Marines, who channeled their fury into professionally disciplined tactics. Choreography could not have gone smoother, and it became difficult for squad leaders to control their men’s wrath. “Take no prisoners,” was a frequent refrain.

  Corporal Jenges waved his squad forward. He crouched behind a boulder some indig had used for a front door. The dwelling had been full of cowering people; it was now empty, unless you counted fresh corpses, which they didn’t.

  Jenges growled, “Clear that next pile of shit,” and fell in with his Lieutenant, Mazziolli, who said, “Fuckers killed Bobby’s squad.”

  “Two ships gone,” Jenges agreed. He inhaled deep, to chase tears. His face hurt from all the frowning he’d been doing the past hour or so. When a torso appeared from behind a rickety wood-slat shack, Jenges raised his rifle and squeezed off a quick burst. The Havener fell, howling, and Mazz finished him off. “Loud, ain’t they?” he said.

  Corporal Jenges saw the all-clear signal and moved out, rounding a building and leading his people directly into an ambush.

  A rock bounced off his helmet, another off his right shoulder. He fired his rifle in reflex even as he dived flat. A stick fell across his arm, and he brushed it aside. His squad had all fallen flat, too, and now systematically crawled forward in staggered movements, a pair at a time.

  A hail of pathetic makeshift hurlants fell on the soldiers. One sergeant, tired of the bullshit, stood up and sprayed his weapon. “Hose ’em down,” he called, and a few of the others stood to do the same. In about ten seconds the ambush had been defeated, all indigs chased or dead.

  “And this one’s for Jay-Jay, you holy scum,” a monitor yelled, administering a coup-de-grace to a wounded Havener with his pistol.

  Corporal Jenges shuddered. The Havener had been a little girl no more than ten years old. For throwing a rock and for being there to catch the flack from two wrecked shuttles, she’d been blown away.

  “Up for it, sir?” Mazz asked, moving out.

  With a nod, Jenges followed, his moment of regret over, his hunger for more payback returning with a vengeance.

  APCs bulled through crowds and the ruins of burned buildings. Squads of Marines cleared and secured areas with mechanical efficiency. Field commanders enjoyed excellent communications using tethered balloons to take line-of-sight laser-relays aloft. A couple of tanks offered bluster and boom. Unit after unit reported resistance as light to non-existent. “It’s harder securing our barracks,” one report asserted.

  There were guns on Haven. Most were wielded by one-time hunters, who had expended most of their ammo on muskylope slaughters. Still, occasional shots rang out in response to the overwhelming fire-power of the CoDominium Marines.

  Chuck Wittbeck, a private, slogged under a laser radio pack. He heard the shot which knocked out his comm-gear. When the slug hit, it not only trashed the radio, it slammed Wittbeck to his knees. “Damn, I’m hit,” he said. He lay right in the middle of a street, between two-story buildings, not far from the wharf. They could still smell Havenhold Lake, but they could smell Castell City gutters a lot better.

  “Medic,” his pair-partner Ed Kaufener called, firing a wild burst that tore apart a wood building, almost knocking it over.

  “I’m not wounded,” Wittbeck said, pushing out from under the radio which, despite advanced technology and all that slap-happy stuff, still weighed over twenty-eight kilos, even on Haven. Helium leaked from the pack; no more comm-balloon line-of-sight relays. They’d be off-lasernet. “It was my radio that took the hit.”

  Pulling his sidearm, Wittbeck spotted a glint in a window on a second story. “Hey Ed, up there.” He pointed. “Let’s go get ’em, huh? Damned if I’m going to be pinned down by some Have-Not.”

  They zigged and zagged toward the building. More shots dug into the ground around them.

  Ed slammed into the door and hit the stairs as if he’d known where they’d be. Wittbeck followed, panting in the thin, cold air, his gun carried at the ready, barrel raised. Training on the transit ship hadn’t prepared them for the change in atmosphere, but CoDo Marines can cope, and they’d prove it, no problem.

  Footsteps sounded in a room ahead of t
hem, to the left of the top of the stairs. Ed signaled, then they flanked the door. On three, Wittbeck mouthed, and when Ed nodded, he counted.

  They hit the door, which broke inward as they kicked. Ed fired a clear-the-room shot, then rolled in, with Wittbeck spinning around the doorframe just behind him. They covered the room in standard two-man vectors, each aiming their weapon at the old man who wore nothing but a kind of diaper rigged from sheets. “You ain’t gettin’ it,” the old man said. “Ain’t getting what, old man?” Ed asked.

  “Ain’t getting m’gold map, so go ahead and shoot.”

  “Gold map my ass,” Wittbeck laughed.

  “Might as well shoot,” the old man said, his rifle lying at his feet, having fired its last bullet during the soldiers’ charge toward the building. “What do you think?” Ed asked.

  “Not much,” Wittbeck said. “Almost insulting to be fighting these losers.”

  “So shoot, already, I’m tired of your waffling,” the old man said one last time, snarling without teeth.

  Ed plugged the old man in the head. Brains flew out the window from which the old man had sniped. They ruined the ancient rifle and left it for scrap, then checked the rest of what appeared to be a run down hotel. The boards had never been painted in some rooms. They found no more people, got sick of being separated from their squad, and rejoined their comrades a few blocks north, where the killing continued.

  What little fight some of the rougher elements of Haven offered got knocked out of them with their first exposure to professional weapons and tactics. Discipline beat desperation every time, and coordination smashed the few contradictory poses struck by recalcitrant saloon owners and the like. It was harder for field commanders to keep their people from looting than to gain control of the assigned zones and, with all the bars and lowlifes, temptations could not always be avoided. Gang rapes, organized theft and other insubordinations were inevitable, but few.

  “Gridlocked,” came report after report, code for mission accomplished, area secure, awaiting further orders. And then came the calls from outlying farms. “Stockpiles of stolen ore found,” they said, and “Obvious rebel activity,” and “Resistance nil.”

  Ollie Sheed was in on one of those farm raids. They used an APC to get them out there fast, then waited for the good-to-go signal in a no-fire bivouac, just thermals to keep them warm. When word came of the sabotaged splashdown, tempers ran high, and it was about all Corporal LaMonte could do to settle them down. “Farmer’s daughters,” someone started chanting.

  By the time the Corporal’s implant chirped, they’d creepy-crawled to within a few meters of the farm’s central building, which was a Harmony style mound of sod, covering a three-quarters sunken home made mostly of wood-slats and stone. Ollie got to flash-bang the tunnel, which zigzagged as he crawled into cordite and magnesium residue.

  Choking, Ollie flash-banged the place’s main room for good measure, and only then did he rise up and train his weapon on the people lying blind and deaf here and there.

  Ollies’ pals were forever grateful that he’d resisted his first urge to pull the trigger; only women occupied the farm, their menfolk having been called down to the Harmony Compound to help with all the discord.

  Harmony women are demur, on average, but those raised in Haven’s harsh environment could hardly be called beauties, even by horny soldier standards. They did, however, provide sport for those in the squad who believed, as Ollie himself observed, “All cats are gray in the dark.”

  Corporal LaMonte didn’t participate, and didn’t condone, and didn’t much like what happened, but he didn’t report it, either. After all, these Harmonies had proven treacherous, and had apparently killed over eight-hundred fellow Marines. If they wanted war, then fine. Wars got rough right from the start, and they’d learn that, if the soldiers had to teach the lesson over and over and over.

  “What’s the matter, Corporal?” Ollie asked, crawling out of the tunnel tired but satiated for the nonce.

  The squad leader said, “Nothing,” but what he meant was the women’s screams, and the men’s laughter. He told his radioman to report the mission a complete success, with no casualties.

  A single Haven night was all it took to create, then crush, a rebellion.

  Cole and Ibansk rode with General Lassitre and Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson in an Armored Personnel Carrier from a wharf in Docktown to Town Square, where the gibbets had been built. “Remember,” Ibansk said, upon seeing the apparatus of death. “No gallows humor, please.”

  His oxymoron was not appreciated by Taxpayer Bronson, who grunted in disgust and looked away.

  The interior of the AFC had to be air conditioned, even on icy Haven, because its engine was an old fusion model which built up excess heat. It smelled of stale sweat from the thousands of soldiers who’d ridden in it to battle over its years of service. The plain metal was scored with layers of initials, probably scratched with bayonet tips by doomed soldiers bored with the hours of waiting between the instants of terror which defined their lives. Cole touched the layered names and letters and numerals and muttered, “Palimpsest.”

  “Don’t worry,” General Lassitre said, eyes twinkling. “You’ve left your mark on this place.”

  Ibansk placed a hand on Cole’s shoulder, but said nothing.

  They came to the square. Cutting diagonally from the middle of the north side to the middle of the west side, a long stage had been built. It stood three meters high. At its center, ten cross-beam gibbets had been erected, and an eleventh was even then being finished. A military band warmed up on a grandstand near the southwest side of the stage. Lights were hoisted and lashed to remaining above-ground buildings. Loudspeakers squawked as technicians adjusted them. Other calibrations caused other sounds of preparation.

  “Reminds me of a political rally,” General Lassitre said.

  Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson snorted and said, “What else is it, then?”

  “I thought it was to be a public execution of the rebel leaders. The CoDominium Marine commander demands it, as do I. Examples must be set, and the deaths of our people must not go unanswered.”

  Taxpayer Bronson merely chuckled, a sound as quiet and unpleasant as a slice through an abdomen.

  When the APC’s safety was ensured by a phalanx of soldiers, the VIPs were allowed to get out of it. Cole and Ibansk let the general and the businessman/politician go ahead of them. As they came down the ramp, guards crushed in on them. “Crowd’s raucous,” one of the guards said. “Threw some rocks, that kind of thing.”

  In the harsh glare of klieg lights and mantle-lanterns, Cole saw a sea of faces just beyond the ropes separating square from stage. All eyes seemed riveted to a spot just past the gallows and Cole tried to step up onto a crate to get a better look, but a guard knocked him down. “Don’t expose yourself like that, sir,” the soldier said, face sheepish but voice quite sincere. He seemed willing to knock his charge down as often as necessary, so Cole just nodded.

  A clear plastiflex barrier had been built on the northeast side of the gallows; behind this the VIPs were herded. “As if they expect snipers,” General Lassitre said in contempt, and a soldier said, “SOP, sir, that’s all.”

  Observing the niceties and doing everything by the book meant, as usual, that most of the off-the-books maneuvering was over. Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson sat heavily, then offered the General a single baleful look.

  Now that they were on stage, Ibansk and Cole could see the prisoners, each suffering fate in his own way. One man, short and skinny, danced a hellish mockery of the pomp and circumstance surrounding them, and jabbed at guards in mock-boxing stance. He jumped around like a leprechaun and put up about as much squawk and derision as a banshee. He even wore mostly green, and he refused a hood as the hangman passed along the line of condemned prisoners. “That’s Fineal Naha,” Ibansk said, “Governor of Hell’s-a-Comin’.”

  “And that,” said Cole, pointing to the tall, wild-haired figure in the torn, soiled robes, “is
the Reverend Charles Castell. I’ll be damned.”

  “So will he, apparently, at least by human standards,” Ibansk said.

  He and Cole took seats behind the general and the politician. Neither thought of Anwar Sadat, but some of the security procedures currently making them so uncomfortable and bored owed much to that Earthside warrior’s demise as each layer of protection covered the others.

  Finally the lights, their colored gels like swollen stars in the middle distance as viewed from the stage, mixed into brilliant white and illuminated only the stage. The crowd was left in silence usually said to be awe-struck by the lighting designer in his after-action reports.

  A plastiflex podium was carried on stage by two armed Marine sergeants, who fell in to either side of it once it had been placed properly, and then General Lassitre rose. “Ladies and gentlemen of the fair planet of Haven, outpost of CoDominium’s grand design and eternal glory, welcome to this sad, this festive occasion. Sad because we must face the fact that some of your brethren, yes, even members of the gentle, peace-loving Harmony sect, have conspired and committed acts of rebellion against the greater order.

  “Evidence has been gathered and presented to a tribunal, which returned a unanimous verdict. Such evidence shall become public soon. Also be it known that it wasn’t sheer luck that saved you. A formal request for military help in putting down the rebellion was made through channels, and it met with the response you have, in the past few hours, experienced. Professional, restrained force has been applied to the problem, despite the dastardly sabotage of a splashdown, and the problem is no more. And that’s why this is also a festive time.”

  Here the General paused, as mixed applause, probably from claques, backfired through the crowd. He raised his hands as if to still a thunderous ovation, then said, “And to further our civilized ends, we have found it necessary to revoke the Harmony charter of settlement rights, which, upon examination, has been lawfully found to have been granted in error and undue haste. Public pressures must not be permitted to victimize an entire planet’s population, and certainly a single religious sect must not be allowed to hold sway over what promises to be a population of millions in the very near future.