Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  And the Theocracy may try to retake the offensive, he reminded himself. Who knows what they’ll do next?

  Pat wasn’t sure what he’d expected from the holding camps, but he wasn’t too surprised when he and his troops flowed out of their shuttles to discover that they looked like basic marine barracks. Someone had taken prefabricated buildings that had been intended to serve as temporary housing on a colony world and erected them inside a fence, creating a cross between army barracks and prison camps. Pat had been in worse places during his long service, but he doubted the evacuees would like the barracks, which would be cramped, uncomfortable, and completely lacking in privacy.

  “Colonel,” a thin-lipped man said. He wore a militia uniform and carried himself in a manner that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’d never seen combat. His boots were far too shiny for Pat’s tastes. “I’m Major Jarrow, Evacuation Control Officer.”

  “A pleasure,” Pat lied. Jarrow was a REMF, plain and simple. “How do you plan to distribute the evacuees?”

  “We have three barracks for women in this camp, two barracks for men,” Jarrow said. “Kids will be allowed to stay with their mothers, as long as they are younger than ten. Older boys will stay with their fathers. All evacuees will be entered in the database as soon as they land, then assigned a bunk. We’ll brief them on how we expect them to comport themselves later.”

  Pat cocked his head. “And do you anticipate letting them out of the camp?”

  “It depends on how they behave,” Jarrow said. “If they behave themselves, they can explore the outside world. If not, they can stay here until we know where they’re going.”

  “They’re people,” Pat reminded him sharply.

  “And so are the people on this world,” Jarrow snapped back. “There’s already been some angry muttering about accepting so many refugees. It’ll get worse if something, anything, happens to really make the locals mad.”

  Pat turned away to keep from punching Jarrow in the face. The hell of it was that the REMF had a point. Civilians were often charitable, but their willingness to be charitable was often dependent on the recipients behaving themselves. No one liked to see their donations being wasted, let alone watch helplessly as their towns and cities were transformed into dangerous wastelands. And the evacuees he’d supervised during the long trip had been prideful asses, reluctant to admit any dependency on the Commonwealth. These close quarters were a recipe for disaster.

  “Check the buildings,” he ordered his men. The first shuttles would be landing shortly. “If you have any concerns, bring them to me at once.”

  “There’s nothing else,” Jarrow said. “There’s no way we can billet refugees on the local population.”

  “Bastards,” Pat muttered. But, again, the REMF had a point. People tended to be reluctant to take complete strangers into their homes, particularly on Tyre. Trying to force the locals to take refugees would cause political problems. And perhaps riots. “We’ll have to see what else we can organize.”

  The impression of walking into a prison camp only grew worse as he stepped into the closest barracks. If anything, the building was worse than the barracks he remembered from boot camp, a soulless monstrosity so bland and colorless that it would drive its occupants mad. Someone had the wit to collect books and entertainment terminals, but a quick glance at the titles was enough to tell him that they’d probably be tossed out by the vicars. He’d had to imprison a couple of men for beating a third man back on Queen Elizabeth. Their victim had been caught watching a very racy period drama dating all the way back to Old Earth.

  He shook his head as he glanced into the washroom, making a mental note to arrange for extra toilets and washing supplies. No one ever had enough water in barracks. He still smiled at the memory of the sergeants teaching the new recruits how to wash by the numbers, but the evacuees wouldn’t have anyone showing them how to wash. And they’d probably run short of water very quickly. He doubted the holding camp was part of the planet’s water distribution network, and they were too far from the nearest city to make the connection feasible in a hurry.

  There definitely is not enough water here, he thought. God alone knew what the poor bastards were going to do for food and drink. Do we have enough of anything here?

  The remainder of the staff had already arrived, lining up as the first shuttle dropped down from orbit and landed neatly at the edge of the camp. Pat hurried to take up position with his men as the hatches opened, the wind blowing the stink towards the staffers. He couldn’t help smiling at their shocked reactions, although he knew the situation wasn’t really funny. They’d probably be filing complaints with their superiors about the disgraceful conditions. And they’d be right too, if the task force hadn’t been more concerned with getting as many evacuees as possible off the surface to safer accommodations. He rather doubted the bean counters would take that into consideration when they were screaming about the whole affair.

  “Line up,” Jarrow ordered, using a megaphone to ensure he could be heard over the shouts of dismay. The evacuees were united in horror at the sight of their new homes. “Your details will be taken, then you can go straight to the barracks!”

  Pat frowned as the mood rapidly darkened. The evacuees weren’t happy at all, pushing and shoving as rough lines formed. None of the staffers looked pleased either as they struggled to record every last evacuee, including a number of children. Some of the husbands didn’t seem to be pleased about their wives talking to other men. Pat decided that it was only a matter of time before violence broke out.

  A planet of paradoxes, he decided, bracing himself. Women who are both strong and weak at the same time; men who are domineering and yet unable to dominate.

  Pat cursed as he realized he’d made a mistake not coming in full armor. The armor would have been unpleasant if he and his marines had to stop a riot, but the intimidation factor alone might have kept the riot from happening.

  He cursed again as an evacuee husband punched one of the staffers in the face, sending the man falling backwards. Others started to lash out too, the fight rapidly sliding out of control. Pat barked orders, drawing his stunner and hastily sweeping the weapon across the closest fighters. They tumbled to the ground, their bodies twitching unnaturally. The remainder of the evacuees drew back, clearly shocked. They weren’t prisoners, they’d been assured, but they were being treated like prisoners.

  “Line up,” Pat ordered calmly. Showing weakness, any kind of weakness, would be a fatal mistake. “The staffers will take your details, then you can rest.”

  He ordered his men to carry the stunned evacuees out of the way, then flexi-cuffed them for later attention. A special camp would be set up for unruly evacuees, a prison camp. Idly, he wondered how anyone could hope to tell the difference. The remainder of the evacuees went through processing with surprising speed, then hurried into the barracks. He didn’t need enhanced ears to hear their dismay.

  There’ll be more riots, he thought glumly as another shuttle landed. Hundreds of others were already on the way, stacking up until they had a chance to land. We might lose control of an entire camp.

  “Thank you,” Jarrow said, glancing at the prisoners. “Those fuckers . . .”

  “Are probably sick of being treated like prisoners,” Pat said. He’d met plenty of people with bullying tendencies, people who’d often become broken when faced with vastly superior force. They prided themselves on being men, but they didn’t understand what that actually meant. “This camp needs to be improved.”

  Jarrow gave him an incredulous look. “You do realize how many refugees there are on those ships?”

  “I helped to load them,” Pat said. Another pair of shuttles screamed overhead. “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that even providing the basics for so many people has pushed us to the limit,” Jarrow snapped. “Food and water, clothing, and other equipment. They’re all in very short supply. I’ve put out a call for donations, but it will be days, at
least, before more shit arrives for them. Until then, we have to do the best we can with what we have on hand.”

  “Of course,” Pat agreed. The Commonwealth was rich, but getting vast amounts of supplies to the holding camps would take time. “But you don’t have to rob them of their dignity.”

  “I don’t care about their dignity,” Jarrow said. “All I care about is keeping them alive and out of trouble.”

  “Yes,” Pat agreed sarcastically. “Because losing control of a camp will definitely keep them out of trouble.”

  “And losing public support for the evacuation will be utterly disastrous,” Jarrow said. “This isn’t a relatively small number of refugees, Colonel. There are hundreds of thousands on the way. The public doesn’t like it.”

  He turned and strode off. Pat watched him go, resisting the temptation to make a rude gesture at Jarrow’s back. The hell of it was that Jarrow was right. If public support vanished, the camps would be closed down.

  And what, he asked himself, would happen to the refugees then?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Kat said. “Supplies are already being pushed to the limit.”

  She sighed as she sat back in her chair. She’d invited both William and Pat to dinner, but the discussion had rapidly turned political. She supposed the development shouldn’t have surprised her, not after the destruction of an entire planet. The Commonwealth’s best attempts to cope with the crisis were still proving woefully inadequate.

  “The barracks are overcrowded,” Pat said softly. “It won’t be long before there’s a full-scale riot.”

  “And everyone is stuck in the camps,” William added. “They can’t even join the navy!”

  Kat took a sip of her wine. She didn’t blame either of them for siding with the refugees, but the briefs her father had sent her were depressingly blunt. The Battle of Hebrides had caused no end of economic damage to the Commonwealth as stock markets plummeted and resources were diverted to assist the survivors. The analysts had noted that the knock-on effects were likely going to cause all sorts of long-term problems. If a freighter owner-captain could lose his ship because it had been diverted to Hebrides, thus breaking his contract to deliver goods and supplies to their original destination, what would that do, particularly if it happened to more than one or two ships? It would be years before the problem was sorted out, years of uncertainty.

  And who will want to invest in your own ship, she asked herself, only to lose her for something that wasn’t your fault?

  “I think we definitely need to open the local training centers to evacuees,” she said. She had no idea why recruitment had flagged. Everyone agreed that young men from Hebrides made good recruits. “But there’s little else we can do.”

  “I know that,” William said. He sounded surprisingly petulant. “But the evacuees don’t.”

  Kat felt a surge of sympathy. If she’d been in William’s place, with Tyre destroyed and only a tiny fraction of her population surviving long enough to escape their homeworld, she would have been desperate to help them too. But she knew the cold hard facts of life that made solving the problem impossible. There was nothing she could do to ensure that the evacuees received better medical care, let alone anything else they needed. All she could do was pray that they were hastily moved on to a final destination.

  William glanced at her. “Did you hear anything from the diplomats?”

  “About a new homeworld?” Kat asked. “Nothing particularly new. Some planets have indicated they’ll take a few thousand refugees, but no more. A couple of stage-one colonies have offered to accept more, yet they insist on the refugees meeting certain criteria. One of them wants every newcomer to convert to their religion before landing.”

  “And the other wants women and children alone,” Pat said. “Bastards.”

  “Absorbing so many newcomers would be an absolute nightmare,” Kat pointed out. “There’s enough of them to form a separate society in their own right.”

  “And that would eventually lead to civil war,” Pat finished. “I’ve seen that happen before, with far smaller populations.”

  “Our best bet would seem to be one of the under-settled worlds,” Kat added. “But negotiations are proceeding slowly.”

  William gently put his wineglass down. “And what happens when the Theocracy destroys a second world?”

  “I wish I knew,” Kat admitted.

  She had a nasty feeling she did know. The second world would be on its own, with barely a handful of people evacuated. The Commonwealth would be unable to put together a second evacuation fleet in time to do any good. And even if there was a fleet, where would the evacuees go?

  “Rumor has it that some poor world is going to be forced to take the refugees,” Pat commented. “Is that true?”

  “I hope not,” Kat said. The idea was tempting but would blow the entire Commonwealth out of the water. Planets could set their own immigration rates, according to the Commonwealth Charter. Forcing someone, even a stage-one colony world, to take hundreds of thousands of refugees would fragment the Commonwealth. “But it has to seem appealing to politicians on Tyre.”

  “Hebrides would not have reacted well to the suggestion,” William admitted. “Can you imagine any other world accepting such a directive without a fight?”

  “No,” Kat said. “But what other solution is there?”

  William shook his head. “Can we win the war before another world is destroyed?”

  Kat had no idea. The details of Operation Hammer had remained a closely guarded secret, but it had been impossible to hide the arrival of four entire superdreadnought squadrons and hundreds of smaller ships. Something was in the works, even though hardly anyone knew the details. Rumors, some of them alarmingly accurate, had been circulating for days. She suspected that some of the rumors were already on their way to the Theocracy.

  “I don’t know the answer to that question,” she said, finally. “The alternative is accepting the peace missive they sent us.”

  “And giving in to blackmail,” Pat snapped. “We can’t end the war on such terms.”

  “No,” William said. “But what else can we do?”

  “Push on,” Kat said. “And hope for the best.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair. Her father’s briefs stated that public opinion was veering wildly between pleading for bloody revenge and a demand for immediate peace. Thankfully, plenty of evidence maintained that the Theocracy couldn’t be trusted to honor any peace treaty or the political debate would have been a great deal worse. As it stood, the prospect of an enforceable treaty would probably have been enough to swing most of the government behind peace. But enforcing such a treaty was impossible without beating the Theocracy into submission.

  There’s no way we could trust them to keep the peace, she told herself. They’ll be at our throats again as soon as they rebuild their fleets.

  “I hope you’re right,” William said. He reached for his glass and took another sip. Kat wondered again, suddenly, if her friend might be drinking more than he should. “Did you manage to get your flagship cleaned?”

  “Barely,” Kat said. “Captain Higgins was most unhappy.”

  “I must go see her,” William mused. “It’s been too long.” He cleared his throat. “Good thing the IG isn’t planning any inspections anytime soon,” he added. “We’d all be in the doghouse.”

  Kat grinned. The Uncanny disaster had shaken the Inspectorate General badly, what little of it that had survived Admiral Morrison and First Cadiz. She’d heard rumors that a number of inspectors had been ordered to resign or face court-martial for gross incompetence. And while she knew that strings had been pulled to keep the inspectors from taking a close look at Uncanny, she found it hard to feel sorry for the bastards. Every captain with half a brain dreaded an inspection. They did everything within their power to keep the inspectors as far from their ships as possible.

  “We have a war to fight,” she said.
“The inspectors can go hang.”

  “So we are going to be taking the offensive,” William said. He sounded pleased by the notion. “Anywhere special?”

  “Ask Admiral Christian,” Kat said. “Or wait until the formal announcement.”

  “You should watch yourself,” William warned. His voice suddenly sounded a great deal steadier. “People have been noticing that you’ve been spending a lot of time with Admiral Christian.”

  Kat swore under her breath. Nineteen commodores were under Admiral Christian’s command, commanding officers of superdreadnought or battlecruiser squadrons, but she was the only one involved with planning Operation Hammer. And she was also the youngest, the one with least seniority, even though the nine ships under her direct command were the most powerful in the fleet. She had, quite by accident, probably put a great many noses out of joint.

  “I can’t help what the rumor mill says,” she said, irritated. “No one in their right mind believes the crap that passes for news these days.”

  She put her wineglass down before she accidentally broke it. Being born a Falcone had ensured that she would be a public figure, even if she wanted privacy. And her career had made her interesting even to eminently sensible men and women who didn’t read tabloid rags discussing the lives of the aristocracy. Her name had been romantically linked with everyone from King Hadrian to Duke Rogers. She frowned, fighting to keep her anger under control. Duke Rogers was old enough to be her grandfather. The idea of marrying him . . .

  “People will say what they say,” she said. Her father had advised her to keep that in mind the day she’d discovered a reporter had written nearly three thousand words about the dress she’d worn to her sister’s birthday party. “But reality is quite different.”

  “I know that,” William said. He finished his wine and put the glass down on the table. “But you are causing comment.”

  “I’ll survive,” Kat said, bluntly. She didn’t dare look at Pat to see how he was taking the discussion. It still puzzled her that none of the tabloids had realized they were in a relationship, even though he’d stayed at the mansion several times. Maybe they’d refused to believe such a romance was possible. Pat was depressingly boring compared to her sister Candy’s love interests. “And we still have a war to fight.”