Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Twelve

“Well,” Peter said, as we drove down towards the industrial area. “Who knew she had it in her?”

“I didn’t,” I said, coldly. I hadn’t expected a promise of blood and fire, although the free hand would be helpful. The early reports from Pitea were not encouraging. The Communists were strong there and had probably prepared it as a fallback position. We wouldn’t be able to nip this little rebellion in the bud. “All we have to do now is defeat the Communists and hope that that’s the end of the affair.”

I didn’t believe it and I suspected that Peter didn’t either, but he kept his opinion to himself as the jeep turned the corner and passed a large grassy park. It had originally been intended for kids to play with balls and perhaps court each other as they grew older, but it was now serving as a temporary holding area for prisoners. Hundreds of men and women, their hands tied behind their backs, sat there, watching the soldiers warily. Some of them were injured while a handful were naked, marking them as people who had tried to smuggle weapons past the soldiers. A handful, mainly young girls, were crying as we passed. They’d probably been swept up by accident and would be released once we’d sorted out who was who.

“They’re supposed to have most of the workers on their side,” Peter said, as we passed another holding camp, this one full of grim-looking men. “If we kill or capture them all, who’s going to run the industrial plant?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I admitted. It wasn’t a problem I could solve easily. Frida would have to grapple with that afterwards. The UN had dealt with rebels by dumping them in internment camps or exiling them from the planet, but Frida wouldn’t have those options. She might feel compelled to offer an amnesty. “If we put down this rebellion, perhaps we can negotiate with the other Communists.”

“Not a hope,” Peter said, dismissively. I feared that he was right. “Their minimum demands would be greater than anything we could reasonably give them, even before they decided to kill half the city. We’re going to have to beat hell out of them, boss.”

The New Copenhagen Industrial Zone occupied around five kilometres of factories and warehouses. The original designers of the city had intended to keep it neatly divided between residential, shopping and industrial areas, but over time they’d blurred together, particularly as the UN dumped more immigrants on the planet. I’d heard that there had been a massive rise in house prices and, consequently, thousands of people were living in shantytowns. The designers might not have intended to create a fortress, but with a little help from the Communists, they’d succeeded. It was a fortress manned by people who had nothing left to lose.

I removed my insignia and stepped onto the street near Ed’s command post. The sound of shooting was growing louder, telling me that a sniper duel was underway. The Communists would have recruited anyone with shooting skills they could get their hands on, but someone who had been hunting in the wilds would be almost as capable as a military sniper — or at least they had been on Heinlein. Our snipers would be trying to suppress their snipers and, hopefully, no one else would be shot in the crossfire. That was the theory, at least, but I rather doubted it would work out that way in practice.

“Sir,” Ed said. He looked tired and sweaty and I saw him almost salute before remembering himself. If he’d saluted me, he would have marked me out as a commanding officer for any watching sniper. “We have the area sealed off and we’re ready to reduce it at your command. We have taken seven hundred prisoners and searched them all as they came out; seventy-two of them attempted to smuggle out weapons and were stripped, according to protocol. None of them attempted to blow themselves up and take some of us with them, but it was getting pretty tense before the flow stopped. There are still hundreds of people in there.”

“Shit,” I said. It was possible that Frida had made a mistake. If she’d told them that they had nothing left to lose, they’d dig in and fight to the death. “Anything else to report?”

“Some of the local soldiers beat the detainees,” Ed reported, grimly. I scowled angrily. I couldn’t blame them for being angry, but discipline had to be maintained, always. “I had them disarmed and held for you or Russell to handle.”

“Russell would take their balls off,” Peter commented. I nodded. Russell’s ideas on discipline were stricter than mine, which was saying something. Everyone had thought that Heinlein was a planet of anarchists until the UN tried to invade. The training system on Heinlein was tough. “Do you want me to escort them back to the spaceport?”

“There’s another issue,” Ed added. “One of our men molested a female prisoner. He’s under arrest as well.”

“We’ll convene a court as soon as possible,” I said, turning my attention back to the map. “We have authority to engage them with all necessary force, but we’ll try sweep reason first. Get B Company ready for operations, but I want to speak to the enemy first.”

The street looked weird as I peered down it towards the barricade. The Communists had piled up vehicles and backed them up with concrete-filled barrels and probably IEDs and other surprises. It was a strange mixture of the normal, the mundane, and the military; I couldn’t see the enemy, but I knew they were there. The factory walls hadn’t been intended to form walls surrounding the complex, but they’d succeeded, somehow. It didn’t matter. I didn’t intend to go through the positions they’d so carefully prepared.

I keyed my radio. “Get the Landsharks up into position,” I ordered, tightly. The sound of shooting only picked up as the snipers took what shots they could. I hoped that no one was hit before it was time. “Mortar teams, prepare to take your shots.”

“Ready, sir,” the tankers said. “We’re in position.”

I keyed a different switch. “ATTENTION,” I said. My supercharged voice echoed out over the complex. Everyone in the city would hear it. “YOU ARE SURROUNDED AND COMPLETELY TRAPPED. YOU ARE IN A HOPELESS POSITION. SURRENDER NOW OR WE’LL COME IN AND GET YOU.”

Silence fell. Even the snipers seemed to have stopped shooting, although I hoped that that was because they had actually stopped, rather than just me having deafened myself. I had the same implanted ear protectors as my men, but even so, it had been deafeningly loud. I hoped that they’d hear the truth in my words and give up, or an awesome amount of death and destruction was about to take place.

I keyed the switch again. “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING,” I thundered, like the voice of God from on high. “COME OUT NOW OR WE’LL TAKE YOU OUT IN BODY BAGS!”

If I’d heard that noise, if I’d known how bad the position was, I’d have considered surrender, but the Communists obviously had other ideas. A moment later, a shot ricocheted far too close to me and bounced off into the distance. The sound of snipers started to rise again.

I scowled. “Very well,” I said, keying the earpiece. “Mortar squads, you’re up. Fire!”

The CRUMP-CRUMP-CRUMP of the mortars echoed over the city as the team launched their first shells into the enemy position. Mortars aren’t my favourite weapons, but a trained and experience team can use them to bombard almost any target that takes their fancy, within seconds. A mortar can be set up, fired, and taken down again before the enemy force can react. We weren’t shooting high explosive shells, however, but knockout gas. The UN’s secret weapon that wasn’t a secret; it should put most of the enemy fighters down, unless they were already immunised. I suspected they would be — the vaccine was easy to produce — but we had to try. Besides, the gas was only a diversion.

“Landsharks,” I added. “Go.”

The Landshark Tanks are one of the few UN-designed vehicles to find favour with the Colonies, or even the mercenary units. It looked as if it dated from the early days of tanker units, but instead of a heavy shell-firing gun it carried a dozen heavy machine guns, configured to fire in any direction, or all directions. It was also heavily armoured and extremely difficult to knock out without heavy antitank weapons. The UN had built it for operations against insurgents and it generally proved its worth. The insurgents would be mown down by the machine guns or crushed under the treads. It hardly mattered, in the end, what killed them, as long as they died.

“Moving now, sir,” the lead tanker said. “Detonate.”

The explosion shattered the factory wall and sent rubble crashing everywhere, but the tank was undeterred. The other interesting point about the Landsharks is that there are very few terrains capable of stopping them for long. Dump one in a ditch and it will probably be able to crawl out, as long as there is a little room to work. I’d seen one go right up on its rear and somehow make it out of a ditch. The piles of rubble that marked the death of a factory wouldn’t slow it for more than a few seconds.

“We’re in, sir,” the tanker said. “Enemy forces are engaging us now.”

“So much for the gas,” I muttered, as the tank’s guns began to fire. Infantrymen moved up behind them to protect them from the few remaining enemy fighters, but they were barely necessary. The tanks could hold their own against almost all threats. They’d still have to watch out for antitank weapons, though, or mines. “Tanker, do you have a read on the gas?”

“It’s in the air,” the tanker said. “The enemy doesn’t seem to have noticed.”

I keyed my radio. “All other units, start hitting the barricades with long shots,” I ordered. “Keep them pinned down as long as possible.”

It was easy to visualise it in my head. The enemy commander would be looking at what looked like an all-out assault coming from every point of the compass. He’d probably guess that most of them were diversions, but would be realise in time which one was the real threat? I knew just how rapidly the situation could swing out of control — it had happened to me when the stadium was attacked; it felt like years ago now — so how quickly could he react? It didn’t matter so much now, but if he reacted quickly enough, he could stall the offensive.

“Mortar teams, hit the centre of their position,” I ordered. The planet would have to rebuild the industrial complex afterwards, but there was little other choice. If we could kill their commanding officer, we might be able to convince the others to see reason and surrender. “Standard HE rounds, this time.”

“Understood, sir,” the mortar commander said. “Firing now.”

The enemy had mortars too, I realised, and attempted to pour fire onto the tanks. It wasn’t a bad tactic either — it would destroy a tank if a shell landed directly on it — but my mortar teams had counter-battery radars and were better shots. Every time an enemy shell was fired, they threw a shell of their own back, trying to hit the enemy before the enemy moved their weapon to another firing position. The sound of explosions grew to a crescendo, blurring with fire as the tanks used flamethrowers against their opponents. The final explosion was large enough to shake the city.

“Tank Seven is down,” the tanker reported. “They used some kind of heavy mind and lured Tank Seven over it and detonated.”

I winced, bitterly. One way to take out the tanks was high explosive. If they couldn’t get to the tanks, they’d made the tanks come to them. We had, in theory, sensors that were supposed to detect that trick, but they never worked right outside a research lab. The air was thick with the remains of explosives, enough to set the sensors bleeping away like mad. It would be impossible to distinguish between a real threat and a false alarm.

Another series of explosions crackled out, and then stopped. “Sir, we have some trying to surrender,” the tanker said. “Permission to take prisoners, sir?”

“Have the infantry deal with them,” I ordered. I wanted to kill them all after what they’d done, but I wouldn’t sanction a massacre. “Use the heavy protocols and keep them separated from the other prisoners. Don’t use locals to guard them, not after this; we’ll have to hold them ourselves.”

The fighting was slowly dying away as the infantry advanced, carefully, into a nightmarish maze. We’d broken through in three places and convinced most of them that it was time to surrender, even though the tanks weren’t good at accepting surrenders. Shots still rang out as isolated holdouts attempted to make a stand, only to be crushed by overwhelming firepower. I wasn’t going to risk more lives to capture people intent on dying and taking some of us with them. I watched the stream of naked prisoners, watched by heavily armed soldiers, as they filed out of the complex, their eyes grim and worried. They had cause to worry. I doubted that the planet’s population would suffer them to live.

“We’ve got the remainder barricaded into the centre building, but they’re refusing to surrender,” Ed said, sharply. “What do you want to do with them?”

“Pull back and let the mortars take care of them,” I ordered, grimly. I wanted to get my hands on the leadership, but if they were unprepared to surrender… well, the butcher’s bill was too high already. We were the most formidable military force on the surface of the planet and we’d lost at least fifty men in the fighting, probably more. It would have to wait until we’d totalled them all up, but every loss meant an irreplaceable soldier gone. “Contact the spaceport and tell them to rush extra supplies out here. We’re going to need them.”

A final set of explosions saw the centre building crashing down into a pile of rubble. The infantrymen probed it carefully, dispatched two mortally-wounded enemies, and then declared it safe. Peter refused to allow me to go forward into the remains of the complex, so I remained outside while Ed led the infantry and the local soldiers in a careful sweep of the entire area. A handful of IEDs were found and detonated from a distance. We could have disarmed them, but there was little point. I watched as the reinforcements arrive, having seen the damage the Communists had inflicted on the city, and warned them to treat the prisoners firmly, but gently. I’d have to deal with those who had treated them badly later, after I’d had a rest.

“Send them all to the guardhouse,” I ordered, when Ed raised the issue. He pointed out that it might be wise to deal with it now. “Tell the ones who beat prisoners that they have a choice between a month in the nick” — the guardhouse prison — “or running the gauntlet. The one who molested… I’ll deal with him later. There’ll have to be a court convened on that one.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed said, without argument. We couldn’t just hang our own people out of hand, regardless of what I wanted. We had to hold a formal court-martial. “Will you be observing the gauntlet?”

“Maybe,” I said, signalling for Peter and the driver. “I’m going to report back to the government headquarters and then get some sleep. Once C Company takes over the security here, get some sleep yourself. If the crisis in Pitea gets out of hand, we’re going to have to move down there and deal with it.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Ed warned. “Most of our transport is already overstretched.”

“I know,” I said. Pitea was seventy miles from New Copenhagen. It might as well be on the moon. We could march there in a couple of days, but we’d still have to fight at the far end. We’d just have to round up whatever transport we could. “We’ll deal with that tomorrow.”

Frida, I discovered when we arrived back at the stadium, had moved operations to one of the massive houses belonging to the elite. It wasn’t a bad choice. The President’s family owned a large house which they’d agreed could be used by the government, or what was left of it. Frida took one look at my tired face — I doubt I looked worse than her — and ordered me to bed. For once, I was quite happy to comply and the servant showed me to a room fit for a king. I showered, shaved, and came out to discover Suki sitting on my bed.

I stared. She was wearing a nightdress that left nothing to the imagination. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why…?”

She interrupted me with a deep kiss. I felt myself responding automatically. “I want to feel alive,” she whispered. “I want… I want you, now.”

Perhaps I should have refused, but I felt horny too. A second later, we were in bed together, barely pausing for foreplay. It had been too long for me and the pressure of combat — and the joy of being alive — pushed me on. The night sped by very quickly.