by Eric Thomson
“Crap.” Her eyes widened in shock when she made the final connection. “Colonel, the unscheduled train that we saw entering the yards carries their indirect fire support. It has to. There’s no other reason to send it there instead of...”
Harend held up a hand to silence her when he heard a sound he knew only too well.
Moments later they heard another pair of muted crumps, the second ranging salvo.
“There’s your answer, Captain,” he whispered, mentally ticking down the seconds before impact. “The freight train carried a heavy mortar battery.”
Then, the center of the government precinct erupted in gouts of flame, earth, and stone.
**
Decker, Verrill, and their escort joined up with the commander of Bravo Company on the south side of the river, at a spot where they could see both the near battle for control of the bridge and the brooding mass of dark buildings that marked their target. No sooner had they arrived that the first rounds landed, lighting up the night.
“Perfect,” Decker smiled like a proud father. After all, he’d overseen gunnery training. “When your first shots are on target, the fight is almost over.”
As if the forward observers had heard him, a voice on the radio ordered the mortar battery to fire for effect seconds later.
Within moments, twelve one-hundred-and-twenty millimeter rounds fell less than a thousand meters away, turning night into day.
The troopers of the rapid reaction company, caught between two conflagrations and already staggering under the sustained fire of two dozen rebel machine guns, wavered for a few seconds, then the combat cars furthest away from the engagement, turned tail and sped west along the riverbank, away from the main action. It was enough to cause a general rout.
Bravo and Delta companies surged across, Decker hot on their heels, carbine held at the high port as he ran. A second salvo came thundering in, and the earth shook beneath his feet. Then a third.
The moment he stepped onto the north bank of the Yangtze River, now bright with the reflection of bursting shells, Zack heard a familiar voice on the special radio channel.
“Rookie Trooper, this is Phoenix. We’re inbound and can see the center of the target. No need to mark, just have the assault force hold in place and suspend the mortar fire.”
“Roger. Wait, out.” He nudged Verrill and passed on the news that their air support was almost here to help deliver the deathblow.
Then, when the orders had been duly transmitted and acknowledged, Decker called Talyn.
“You’re weapons free over the target. The last mortar salvo is about to...there it is. Have fun.”
He looked towards the east, squinting until he could detect an approaching shape, dark against the night sky and no more than five hundred meters above the ground. It grew larger at an alarming rate, to the sound of a deep roar that threatened to overwhelm the noise of battle.
“There she is.” He pointed at the sudden eruption of small-bore plasma rounds stitching a wide swath of super-heated ruin across the heart of the government precinct.
“Booyah!” Decker shouted when a combat car, parked near the governor’s mansion, exploded in a fireball of molten alloy, adding to the damage already inflicted on the building’s facade.
Then, with an ear-splitting rumble, the starship’s bulk passed over them and momentarily blotted out the sky. The keel calliope slewed all the way back, kept up a steady stream of fire while Phoenix withdrew towards the western horizon.
A new mortar salvo whistled in, though, at this point, Zack figured they were mostly bouncing the rubble.
Verrill must have had the same thought because he gave the order to advance over the now shredded security perimeter and seize what was left of the Garonne colonial government and its militia.
With the artillery storm over, Decker gave into his urges and sprang forward with the lead company. A wolfish grin spread across his face when he heard the wail of pipes to his right, where Alfa and Charlie companies had overrun weak militia resistance.
He saw a shadow move behind a ruined second-floor window and snap-fired two rounds. A militia light machine gun began to chatter on the left, and a few rebel troopers went down, screaming.
Decker’s eyes tracked the flash of the weapon’s muzzle, and he shot back, pumping a dozen rounds into the dark recess where the militia soldiers had holed up. He heard them die noisily before he clambered over the debris of a wall blown down by a direct hit.
Once past the outer row of buildings, he saw a sight that made him smile so broadly it almost went from ear to ear. The center of the government precinct was no more than a burning ruin.
Chaos had indeed done good business in Iskellian this night.
Verrill finally caught up with him and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“My people can take care of the rest without you, Zack. It would be a shame to catch the last militia round of the mopping-up operation. Hera would have my guts for garters if that happened and I’m a lot more scared of her than I am of you.”
**
Landing at the Iskellian spaceport had turned out to be a lot easier than taking off, once Talyn had talked down an indignant controller with a brief demonstration of firepower.
Finding a ground car to take her and Corde into town to rejoin the rebel forces proved to be a lot more difficult, though, in the end, they commandeered the personal vehicle of the self-same controller, leaving him to examine Phoenix in wonderment.
Their trek took them through the streets filled with throngs of civilians, both curious and jubilant, some exacting vengeance for years of insults from the colonial administration by setting fire to deportee slums, abandoned militia posts, and government offices.
The far horizon began to show a line of increasingly pale pink, heralding the start to a day of reckoning, while by the river, in the gray city within a city, the independence movement’s rage burned itself out.
They passed through the rebel cordon sealing off the area and were directed to the remains of the governor’s mansion where Verrill had set up his headquarters.
Talyn found Zack sitting on a step partially shredded by the exploding combat car, chewing thoughtfully on a ration bar. Around him, Verrill and the rebel officers dealt with the aftershock of the decapitation operation: rounding up prisoners, seizing intelligence, taking care of the wounded, stacking up the dead and sending orders to rebel units still battling the militia in outlying districts.
His face was creased with fatigue, his battledress was covered in dust, and the charred mark of a near miss creased one arm, but he smiled when he saw her and patted the stone beside him.
“How’s my air support?” He asked, leaning over to kiss her.
“Apparently getting a good whiff of your goat smell, mister,” she replied after coming up for air, “although I suppose I’m no better.”
“I like you down and dirty, don’t forget.” Decker held out a second ration bar. “I know you get as horny and hungry as me after a fight, but this will have to do for now.”
She bit off a chunk and examined the plaza separating the mansion from militia headquarters in the growing light of dawn.
“I think we may have gone at it harder than we needed to,” she remarked.
“Restraint in war is the ultimate perversion.”
“Is that a Deckerism?” She asked, accepting his water bottle.
“Probably, but it’s been proven right more often than not. The Celeste government won’t say boo when the matter of Garonne independence is put before the Senate, not after they see pictures of what the supposedly weak and uncoordinated rebel movement did to its lackeys.” He jerked his chin at the ruins.
“A few love taps, just enough to take control, wouldn’t have had the same effect. I think we did well, all things considered.”
“True,” she nodded after considering his words. “Mind you, we still don’t have any evidence who was pouring in all that money to trigger a bloody civil war.”
>
“Also true.” He shrugged. “We’ll share our pet theories with the analysts when we get home, and they can think it through. At least we made sure the bastards weren’t able to ruin Garonne, and I figure that’s called a successful mission.”
“Captain Ulrich might disagree.”
“So what? I told him I’d give this gig a year. The year’s up. He decides to kick my ass out of the section for going rogue, he’s welcome. I can find myself a good billet in a lot of units where I don’t have to be the man of many faces, none of them mine.”
She was about to reply when the commo unit linking her to Phoenix beeped.
“Who knows your number around here?” Decker asked.
Talyn slipped an earpiece on and opened the link, listening for almost a minute before shutting it off.
“Mikado’s arrived in-system with your parakiting buddies. She’ll call again when she’s about to slip into orbit.”
“That should give the Avalon sloops a few nervous hiccups.”
“I think by now they know there’s been a change in ownership, so they’ll no doubt be very careful.”
“Why would Ulrich send in the Marines?” Decker mused before biting into an apple he’d pulled out of his pack. “I’m already here, sorting things out properly.”
She chuckled.
“The boss may be freakily good when it comes to our business, but he doesn’t have precognition that I know of. He’ll have asked SOCOM to dispatch someone a few weeks ago, and SOCOM, in turn, sent folks who are used to your little explosions of creativity.”
“As long as I can welcome Ryent and Vanleith in proper style, I’m happy.”
“No doubt.” She playfully jabbed an elbow in his ribs. “Just make sure it doesn’t offend each and every morals law on the planet, will you? I don’t want to be summarily run off before we have a chance to sift through whatever Verrill’s men have captured.”
“Speaking of running, how’s Phoenix? Can we ride her home as she is?”
“Probably, but I’d still like to have a proper engineer look her over. She took more damage than we thought from the Avalon ships.”
“I’m sure your buddy running Mikado will lend you his.”
“Actually,” she stood and wiped the dust from her buttocks. “I’d be even happier if he sent a few of his people to crew Phoenix while we take the long way home. Sailing a starship single-handed loses its charm after a while.”
“The way I remember things, you weren’t single-handed. I was doing most of the stuff not involving the arcane and ancient mysteries of astrogation.”
Decker stood as well after tucking his water bottle away.
“You know what I mean, big boy.” A weary, yet fond smile softened her features. “Flying that little monster in and out of places not designed as hangars gets old fast.”
One of Verrill’s troopers jogged up to them.
“The boss wonders whether you’d like to join him in inspecting the prisoners.”
He waved towards an open area in the northwest corner of the precinct that had been largely spared by both mortar and starship.
A cruel grin twisted Decker’s lips.
“Oh, would I ever. There’s a certain militia captain I’d like to nominate for summary execution on a charge of war crimes.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
The rebels had erected a makeshift stockade using the precincts own fences. Row upon row of men and women in green militia uniforms to one side, and in civilian clothes to the other, sat on the damp grass under the watchful eye of machine gunners set at each corner.
Verrill met them by the entrance, looking like he’d aged fifty years overnight.
“We’ve got the top leadership that survived, thank God. My folks haven’t started processing them yet, but I’m hoping I can convince someone with sufficient rank, military or civilian, to convince the rest of them in the outlying districts it’s time to surrender.”
“The fighting’s still going on?”
“Pretty much everywhere except Tianjin, thanks to Miko, though the government’s utter defeat should be obvious even to the dumbest militia trooper. I just want to stop the killing.”
“Maybe some are fighting on because they figure your people will string them up the moment they put down their guns.”
“A not unreasonable fear, considering recent history.” The rebel leader shrugged.
Decker gripped Verrill’s shoulder.
“I don’t know if it’s sunk in yet, but absent any other claimant, you’re the interim president of the provisional Republic of Garonne now. You need to set the tone for this planet’s future, and if it’s to be one built on a foundation of law, you need to make sure all prisoners are treated in accordance with the Rules of War, tried fairly by a court and if found guilty, punished accordingly. And if your own people don’t want to obey, you also need to deal with them for violations of the Rules.”
“The surest way to get Fleet intervention on Garonne and years of martial law,” Talyn added, “is by going rogue. The surest way to get Fleet backing against those still wanting to deny your claim for independence is by being better and cleaner than the colonial government you just replaced.”
Verrill nodded.
“I know. I just feel a bit overwhelmed right now.”
“Then delegate until you have enough time on your hands for a day at the beach,” Decker replied, grinning. “Cleaning up after a successful decapitation and setting up a new government is going to be a lot harder than anything you’ve done up to now.”
He nodded towards the stockade.
“If you’re open to another piece of advice, find some of the colonial administration’s better people, the ones who haven’t bloodied their hands, and hire them. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot don’t want to go back to Celeste and face the music. Hell, hire Cedeno as your advisor, if you can stomach it. There’s a guy who knows how to run this place and who probably doesn’t have any appetite to go home.”
“None of my inner council would stand for it,” Verrill objected.
“Bugger them. You’re the president now, not first among peers. If Garonne goes to crap after today, it’ll be on you, not them.”
A small sigh escaped Verrill’s lips.
“I’ll think about it.” He waved towards the stockade. “Do you wish to examine the prisoners?”
Zack nodded. “There are a few people I need to sort out.”
The rebel leader looked at him curiously, then motioned his men to open the makeshift gate.
Decker ignored the civilians after glancing at a bedraggled ex-Governor Cedeno, looking more composed than one would expect and the still elegant woman by his side.
He had no problems identifying ex-Colonel Cen Harend or ex-Captain Rika Kozlev.
The former commanding officer of the Garonne militia sneered at the Marine when Zack stopped to examine him.
“You have no idea what’s going to happen to you, rebel scum.” Harend’s voice was raspy, damaged by the fumes and smoke of battle. “Celeste is going to petition the Senate to send in the Fleet and restore the rightful government. You’ll find Marines don’t mess around with the likes of you. When that happens, I’ll gladly see you hang.”
Decker smiled and leaned down to whisper in Harend’s ear.
“I’m Chief Warrant Officer Zachary Decker, Commonwealth Marine Corps, senior ground forces officer on Garonne. The Marines have been here all along and approve of this change in government so there won’t be any hangings unless President Verrill decides to institute the death penalty, in which case, you’ll be at the head of the list.”
He stepped back to watch Harend’s reaction to his startling announcement and, as expected, the man turned a lovely shade of puce, struggling to speak.
Decker leaned down again.
“The lady over there, standing with Verrill – she’s the senior naval officer in the Garonne system and my CO. Between the two of us, I’m the nice one. My advice to you is don’t piss her
off.”
Laughing, he walked down the row of prisoners until he was level with Kozlev.
She looked at him with such disinterest that he shook his head, snorting.
“Remember me? The guy you wanted to geld just to see if my conditioning would take that as a reason to initiate cardiac arrest?”
Decker pulled his dagger from its forearm sheath.
“For all the crimes you’ve committed, no one would blame me if I executed you here and now.”
The blade flashed in the morning sun, and Talyn tensed. After Decker’s speech about rules and due process, killing even a psychopath like Kozlev would make his words ring hollow.
Zack grabbed Kozlev’s hair and yanked her head back, exposing her pale throat. Then his blade came down, and a collective gasp rose from the watching soldiers.
Kozlev screamed, but when Decker let go of her head, instead of a carotid artery spurting blood, all they could see was a thin red line under her jaw. He flicked a crimson droplet from the tip of his blade and then wiped it on her shoulder before sheathing the dagger.
“I claim coup.”
With that, he walked away from a sobbing Kozlev, to Talyn and Verrill’s relief.
**
“Are you sure you have to leave now?”
“We are, Mister President.”
Decker finished the last of Harend’s Glen Arcturus whiskey, recovered from the ex- colonel's quarters, and smacked his lips.
“If you have a case of this stuff stashed away somewhere, I might try to convince Hera we need a holiday on Garonne, but not here. The air is still too thick.”
Even after three days, the smell of smoke hung heavily over Iskellian, a reminder of the violent night that had ended colonial rule.
To the surprise of everyone but Decker, ex-Governor Cedeno had been able, at Verrill’s behest, to talk the last militia holdouts into surrendering a few hours earlier. The Garonne insurrection was officially over.
“Sorry,” Verrill smiled. “But if you’re ever in these parts again, I’ll be sure to have some on hand.”
Talyn’s commo link beeped for attention, and she raised her hand briefly.