Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Eleven

“Concentrate on securing the area,” I ordered, as Ed’s men started to set up their mobile command post. It was a UN-designed unit I wasn’t sure I completely trusted — people had been known to hack into them before — but at the moment it represented the best option short of returning to the spaceport. “Detail off a couple of platoons to replace Kendrick and a third to secure the normal government building.”

I examined the mobile command post readings as Ed headed off to carry out my orders. Now that A Company was parked in the middle of the city, I felt a lot safer, safe enough to relax slightly. I could still hear gunfire in the distance and the sound of someone putting up a desperate resistance — although I didn’t know against what — but on the whole we were safe, for the moment. The politicians in the remains of the stadium would live to politick again. Somehow, I wasn’t able to decide if that was a good thing or not.

The reports from the spaceport made me smile in relief. No one had tried to launch an all-out attack — they’d only throw a few shells into the complex — which meant that they weren’t insane enough to attack a dug-in position. The Svergie Army units were forming up now and preparing for operations; one of my minders reported that the men were pissed at what had happened to their capital city. I made a mental note to keep an eye on the situation — outraged soldiers might commit things that outsiders would call atrocities — and issued my orders. With the enemy in retreat, it was time to bring in the rest of the Svergie Army.

“Warn them to be careful,” I ordered, knowing that it was an unnecessary order. They hadn’t been prepared for MOUT yet, but we had no choice. The sooner we could establish a heavy presence on the streets, the better. I gazed around at all the carnage and winced. They’d see that… and then they’d be out for blood. How could I blame them for that? “We need to locate the remainder of the enemy.”

“Understood, sir,” the dispatcher said, back at the spaceport. He could afford to be calm. He was sitting in the safest place on the planet! “We’ve been picking up transmissions from the Communists, sir. They’ve taken over one of the broadcast towers and they’ve been screaming their propaganda into the air.”

“Put them though,” I ordered, angrily. It was another sign of just how primitive Svergie actually was. Most worlds used a datanet-like system for communication, preferring to reserve radio for emergencies. “I want to hear what they’re telling the people.”

The radio crackled and came to life. “…Time of the People’s Republic of Svergie is at hand,” a voice thundered. “Take to the barricades; claim your world from the off-world plutocrats and mercenaries. The old government has fallen. We have formed a government in the name of The People! Take to the streets and welcome us as we build utopia; Peace, Freedom, Collective Ownership…!”

There was more like that, none of it particularly interesting, or welcome. “Cut it off,” I ordered, finally. Their coup had failed, to all intents and purposes, even if they had seriously injured the President. It didn’t look as if the population was coming onto the roads in support of the Communists; it looked as if most of the population were staying indoors, as far from the chaos as they could. “Order the Svergie forces to continue deploying.”

I keyed my earpiece and called Jock. “Jock, the Svergie Army is on its way into the city,” I said. “Stay out of their way and make your path towards the hub of greatest resistance. I may need reports from you later.”

“Understood,” Jock said. “I’m on my way.”

I wiped my forehead as I turned back to the command post. No one likes city fighting, apart from deranged terrorists and wreckers. The most advanced army in the galaxy could make their way into a city and get chewed to ribbons in a carefully-prepared trap. All of their advantages would be cut down to almost nothing, while they’d never know who was in front of them, or behind them. I’d seen attempts to chart out the course of one particularly nasty battle in a city and it had looked like someone had mixed together several different strings. The battle had raged backwards and forwards for days.

And we hadn’t prepared the Svergie soldiers for such fighting. I’d expected that we’d be taking on farmers and miners in the open, not Communists in the city. Whatever the links between the Communists and the Progressives, they’d clearly been broken now. It was war to the knife and God help the person who lost. I doubted that public opinion would stand for mercy, or even permanent exile to Botany — as if they could be transported there in any case.

The next hour passed slowly. The Svergie Army units entered the city and paired up with a handful of our recon platoons. They discovered that the enemy had set off a handful of bombs in the residential area — they would have killed the Conservative leadership if they had been there at the time — but had otherwise fallen back towards the industrial area towards the north. It made a certain kind of sense, I decided; the Communists probably drew their greatest support from the factory workers and they would know the area perfectly, far better than my own people. The remaining streets were almost unoccupied, apart from a handful of looters. We shot several of them and looting dropped off to almost nothing.

“Christ, boss,” Ed said. “What a fucking mess.”

I nodded. It would take days just to take the dead bodies off the streets and give them a proper burial, but we had no choice. If the bodies were allowed to decompose, we’d be looking at a disease outbreak. Svergie wasn’t a rich world; their vaccination programs weren’t as all-encompassing as some of the programs Heinlein or Williamson’s World had mounted, or even the illegal genetic engineering programs in the Beyond.

“Yes,” I agreed, flatly. “Have you heard anything from the local police?”

“Only dead bodies,” Ed said, with a twinge of gallows humour. “They seem to have vanished completely. We’ve found hundreds of dead policemen, who died trying to prevent the chaos from growing worse, but no live ones. They seem to have had a special hatred for the police and several police stations have been attacked and burned out.”

“We’ll have to become the police,” I said, grimly. I didn’t like the idea at all. My men would make much better policemen than the scum on Earth pretending to be cops — it would be hard to make worse policemen — but that didn’t mean that they were suited to the role. They’d been taught to shoot first and shout questions at the body, not arrest someone as gently as possible. “What the hell do we tell them?”

“Just to stay off the streets,” Ed suggested. “At the moment, they’re going to be listening to that Communist pile of crap and wondering what the hell is going on. You have to tell them that there’s still a functional government…”

“Is there?” I asked. They’d started with twenty-one Councillors and a President. The President was badly injured and at least ten of the Councillors were dead. The police force seemed to be out of the picture, we hadn’t seen any sign of the fire department, and there was an armed rebellion underway. The only good thing about the whole situation was that a lot of reporters had died. “If we tell them the truth…”

I shrugged and walked back to the command post, keying in a specific series of commands. We could blanket the airwaves for a single message, if we chose. I set it to record and started to speak.

“Citizens of Svergie, this is an emergency broadcast,” I said. “There is a combined military and civil emergency underway. The Communists have launched an attempt to topple the government, which has failed, but military operations are still underway. Remain in your homes. Do not go out onto the streets. If you have injured, hang out a white sheet and we will attempt to come to your aid as quickly as possible. Remain in your homes. We will end this as soon as possible.”

I listened to my own voice twice and then pushed the send button. My signal would now be competing with the Communist signal, at least until we retook the broadcast centre. I detailed several platoons to secure vital infrastructure, such as the water plant and the fusion reactor that the UN had supplied, before keying my earpiece.

“Jock,” I asked. “What do you see?”

“They’re digging into the industrial sector,” Jock reported. “They seem to have had this planned for a long time. They’re using help — students, mainly — to set up barricades and there are definite signs of heavy weapons going into the area. I think they want to force you to come after them.”

I cursed. They would insist on making this difficult, wouldn’t they? “Understood,” I said. “Relay your impressions to Ed.”

I looked over at Ed and he snapped to attention. “Seal off that area, no one gets in or out,” I ordered. “If anyone tries, arrest them; get the Svergie Army to set up a detention centre — better make it two — using the equipment the UN kindly left us. If threatened with deadly force, reply in kind, but don’t try to force your way into the area. That’s going to take some careful planning.”

My bodyguard fell in around me as I walked back into the building. It was already looking neater — someone had moved the dead bodies and placed them in body bags, even the enemy bodies — and I inspected it briefly before walking up the stairs and looking in on the President. The Doctor and his medical team were working as quickly as they could, but it didn’t look good to my untrained eye. I don’t know much about advanced medicine. The UN had regarded medical corpsmen as non-combatants and denied them weapons. The net result was a serious shortage of medical corpsmen. Luckily, I got to make my own rules for the Legion.

I went up to the second floor and saw a handful of politicians sitting on the floor, looking warily at the heavily-armed soldiers on bodyguard duty. They probably thought that I would order the soldiers to gun them down, or arrest them permanently and take power for myself, but I wasn’t interested. Even if I had been, Fleet would probably have taken a dim view of it. They’d have taken a dimmer view of a successful Communist coup, but that would have been an internal affair. They couldn’t have interfered.

Frida’s eyes met mine and I was surprised at the fury within her. She looked angry, not at me, but at the people who’d plunged her world into hell. I doubted she’d ever been in as much danger in her life and she knew, not being particularly stupid, that she’d come very close to dying. The Communists probably considered her a class traitor and had attempted to kill her. They’d almost succeeded.

“We need to talk,” I said, quietly. She nodded and stood up on unsteady legs — I put out a hand to help her, but she brushed it away angrily — and staggered over towards a private meeting room. It had a window open to the north, which I checked carefully while she stared at the billowing clouds of smoke and fire. Was that a tear I saw in her eye?

“They’ve killing everyone,” she said, dully. I’d never heard her sound so defeated before and she flinched as the sound of another helicopter echoed overhead. Ed would direct them to where they were needed, but I doubted they’d be safe flying anywhere near the Communist stronghold. They’d probably hidden plenty of SAM units in the area, just in the hope we’d send another helicopter to be blown out of the sky. “They’re killing us all.”

“That’s not true,” I said, and hoped to God that I was right. “We have the main body of the army here and patrolling the streets. You’re safe now.”

Frida shook her head, rubbing the scar on her face. “We’ll never be safe again,” she said. “How could anyone do this to their own people?”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of political violence,” I said, not unkindly. The President had wanted to disarm the various militias and fighting groups once the Army was up and running — or perhaps shooting — but he hadn’t moved quickly enough. The Communists had made him pay for that lesson, in blood. “They’ve hurt us badly, but the government is still intact.”

“They killed the President,” Frida injected. I had expected her to be pleased at the prospect, but she looked sickened. “They killed the father of the planet!”

“He’s still alive,” I said. “The Doctors are working on him now and he’ll recover, eventually.” I trusted the Doctor to keep him alive, although I knew that it would take years for him to recover. “Until then, you’re the President. You’re the only authority this planet has left.”

Frida gathered herself. “What is the current situation?” She asked. “Are they beaten…?”

“They’re digging into the industrial complex,” I explained. I didn’t bother to explain that digging them out would be a bitch of a job. There are certain things, in my humble opinion, that politicians are happier not knowing. “Apart from that, we have reports of uprisings in other cities and…”

I winced. Muna had been in one of the cities, hadn’t she? I had to recover her, somehow, before the Communists realised who they’d caught. Muna knew far too much about the Legion and, if they caught her, they could learn everything she knew. I couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Leave that for the moment,” I added. Frida looked at me as if I were insane, but I didn’t back down. We needed to secure New Copenhagen first, and then move down to deal with the remaining Communists. Holding the capital city would give us the clout we needed to keep the civil war from breaking down into complete chaos. “We have to deal with the problems here first. I need you to declare martial law and convince people that the government is still in existence, because my broadcast won’t do that.”

“And then?” Frida asked. “Can you get them out of their stronghold?”

“Yes,” I said, simply.

Frida stepped up to the window and peered out. I knew what she would see; soldiers on patrol, ruins and wreckage, the remains of a democratic dream… and dead bodies, everywhere. The smell hit her as she fumbled and opened the window, despite my warnings, and she recoiled, gagging. I’d never grown used to it myself, but I controlled my gorge. It was the smell of a thousand dead or dying bodies. It was the smell of war.

“Do it,” she ordered. There was a new fire in her voice. “Whatever it takes, get them out of there.”

“Yes, Madam President,” I said. She glared at me. She’d probably intended to run for President herself eventually, but she’d assumed the title in a manner that brought the price — and responsibility — home to her. It might even change her political views. “Do you want to make the broadcast now?”

I led her back down the stairs to the mobile command centre and listened quickly as Ed updated me on the current situation. Now that calm was returning to large parts of the city, the fire brigade was out in force, combating the many fires as best as they could, while they’d even rounded up a handful of policemen and confirmed the Police Chief’s death. Frida winced at that; Police Chief Arne Johansson might not have been a friend to the Progressive Party, but he was someone she had known personally. It’s always harder to see a close personal friend die than it is to see a stranger. I’d seen too many people die in my career.

“We’ve taken the broadcast tower,” I explained, checking the reports. The Communist position outside their stronghold was falling apart as we pushed at it. “The Communist broadcast is no longer going out to the people. Are you ready to record a message?” Frida nodded. “All right; here you go.”

“People of Svergie, the President is injured,” Frida said, her voice cold and very composed. “He was shot down in the middle of his speech by a Communist sniper, the same people who attempted to kill everyone at the Government Stadium, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and trying to destroy the government. They failed. The Council is still alive and the Government is still intact. The President will even make a full recovery.”

Her voice hardened. “As Acting President, I am hereby declaring the Communist Party outlaws and renegades,” she continued. I blinked in surprise and hoped she knew what she was doing. A suspicious mind might wonder if she was doing it to get rid of a rival. “A state of martial law is in effect and the Army and the Police are empowered to do whatever they need to do to remove the Communist Party from their strongholds. They will pay for what they have done to our people. They will pay for what they have done to our President. They will pay — in fire!”