Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Twenty

Two weeks after the city had fallen and peace — of a kind — returned to the planet, we gathered once again in the conference room on the spaceport. The room was decked out in black banners, a reminder of those who had fallen in the recent battle, but none of us needed the reminder. We’d held the funeral service yesterday and I had cringed, inside, as the bodies were systematically lowered into the graves we’d dug for them. It was so little for so much; the men and women who’d died on active service had deserved much better, but what else could we give them? They couldn’t go home again.

The names and faced seemed to shimmer in front of my eyes. We’d lost forty-seven infantrymen, nine tankers and five support staff… and all of them were effectively irreplaceable. B Company had suffered the worst losses, but we’d all been scarred by their deaths; the fallen ones would be sorely missed. There was no one on the planet who could take their place, not without heavy training; the local soldiers didn’t quite come up to our standards, yet. They’d suffered worse than we had in absolute numbers, yet they had far more to lose than us. A single highly-trained soldier from the Legion, one with several skills beyond fighting, was worth more than a local who knew nothing, but fighting. I’d had to throw them into the meat grinder and they’d been… ground.

I was quietly pleased with the local soldiers, but they’d lost over two hundred men in the fighting and it would have been worse, if they hadn’t been heavily supervised. Some of them had the knack for being warrior leaders and had learned fast, but others had gotten themselves and their men killed for lack of experience. Several units had been wiped out and others had been decimated, not always by the enemy. Two soldiers had been shot by others for taking the oldest revenge on some of the Communist women. Others were currently cooling their heels in the guardhouse until the argument over who should have jurisdiction was settled. The only consolation was that none of my people had gotten into trouble this time.

The words of the funeral service echoed through my mind. I’d spoken about each and every one of the fallen, in turn, while the drummers had tapped out the last drumbeat and we’d lowered them into the grave. There hadn’t been a dry eye or a resentful scowl among the men, either; they knew that it could quite easily have been one of them lying there dead on the ground. Some of the men had had families back on Botany, or local girls, and they’d be taken care of, but the others had nothing, but the Legion. We weren’t called the Legion of the Dispossessed because someone had thought it was a cool name.

“We’re clean,” Peter said, finally, as we sipped our coffee. The local coffee was much better than the UN-brand — which wouldn’t have been that difficult — but we still drank the original whenever we met in conference. It helped remind us of where we’d come from, something that seemed to grow more and more important as the years slipped by. “No one’s managed to slip a bug into the room, sir.”

“Good,” I said, calling the room to attention. My inner circle sat up in their chairs and came to a version of attention that would have had a drill sergeant in tears, before he expressed his displeasure in very loud words. “Two weeks ago, we liberated Pitea from the Communists and cleared the remainder out of New Copenhagen. We won, in short, but it won’t be the last challenge we face.”

My gaze swept the room. “Who would like to go first?”

Ed leaned forward, seemingly reluctantly. “The infantrymen are generally pleased with their performance, as am I,” he said. “The deaths were… unpleasant, but they accepted them and silent wakes” — an old UN tradition among the enlisted men — “were held last night in their name. They can be safely said to have been avenged. The downside is that we are down in numbers and we don’t have replacements that can be thrown into the Companies without needing heavy training.”

I nodded. “You don’t feel that the locals can replace them?”

“I doubt it,” Ed said. “Every one of my men is a long-lifer who has at least five to six years of experience in the infantry, either with the UNPF or one of the planetary armies. There are few people on Svergie who can claim the same length of service and few of them served with the UNPF or anyone else. I think we’re either going to have to slot in some of the trainers or send back to Botany for replacements. Either way, we’re going to need more exercises.”

“I know,” I said, juggling priorities in my head. We had a rule that everyone in the Legion had to be qualified as an infantry rifleman, if nothing else, but the support troops were generally needed elsewhere. I could throw in a few dozen support staff for a short period if I had to, but doing it permanently would leave dents in my roster. There were a few who would want to transfer, and that could be arranged, but others wouldn’t be too keen on the idea. It’s a bad idea to force a man to take such a position if he doesn’t want it. “Put out a call and see who volunteers, then put them through the training course. If they don’t make it, we’ll send back to Botany for replacements.”

I paused. “Is there anything else?”

“Nothing that needs to be discussed in council,” Ed said, after a moment. “There are some concerns about the quality of the local mortar teams and artillery gunners, but that can wait until they have proper training.”

“Which leads nicely to my part,” Russell said, blowing a smoke ring from his cigar. He shot Ed a quick grin and carried on, puffing out smoke. “The local soldiers generally did very well, or at least as well as could be expected, given the limited nature of their training and how they were tossed right into the worst field of war. They’ve actually refused to accept the disbanding of the shattered units and are insisting that we refill them with new recruits, something that I wouldn’t have expected to see in the locals for quite some time.”

We exchanged glances. A unit — a company, or a regiment, or a division — outlasts everyone who has every served in it. The Legion would go on after my death and the new recruits would be told that they had joined a proud tradition started by one Andrew Nolte. There were UN units that had lasted for hundreds of years, proudly carrying their battle standards from planet to planet; hell, I didn’t know a single planetary army that didn’t have such a tradition. The soldiers might have fought for their planet, but they would die for their comrades… and with such baubles soldiers are led.

“I see no reason to disband them, even if we do have to rebuild them from scratch,” I said, seriously. The table murmured agreement. “Do you have any specific concerns?”

“Discipline was generally good, although there was some… ah, reluctance to jump right into the fighting,” Russell said. “They weren’t too trusting of the body armour at first and frankly that’s not a bad attitude for them to have. Body armour is good, but it’s far from perfect. A handful of soldiers broke down completely and had to be helped off the battlefield…”

He snorted. “I must be mellowing in my old age,” he added. “Time was when I would have shot those bastards for daring to show cowardliness in the face of the enemy.”

“You’ll outlast us all,” I snapped. It was probably true; Heinlein had sold the regeneration treatments to almost all of its citizens. It was just something else that the UN propaganda machine had turned into a great injustice perpetrated against the UN. “And the other departments?”

Russell frowned. “The tankers and gunners need a hell of a lot more training,” he said, firmly. “In fact, as you know, I was opposed to sending them into battle at all, but there was no choice. Even so, I would recommend that we attempt not to commit them again until they have had much more training and experience. As for the gunners… they need more training as well. If we had used them without supervision in the recent battle, there would have been far more friendly deaths, caused by our own shooting.”

There was a long pause. “We lost nine helicopters and had two more badly damaged,” Captain Erica Yuppie said. The Airborne commander scowled as she looked at me. “Seven attack helicopters were blown out of the sky by their SAM missiles and two transports were picked off while they were vulnerable. We do have replacements for the vehicles here, sir — the locals have allowed us to replace our losses — but training an attack helicopter pilot is not an easy task. We’re desperately short of reinforcements and we don’t have locals who can stand in.”

She looked down at the table. “We barely started work on developing a training program for local pilots,” she admitted. “We need to push that forward as hard as we can and get replacements in the air before the shit hits the fan again. At the moment, we barely have seven attack helicopters and nine transports capable of being deployed. If we are called upon to serve in our normal role, that of assisting an advance against dug-in enemy forces, we will have serious problems meeting our obligations.”

“I know,” I said. She was right, too. We didn’t have the numbers to absorb such losses without feeling the pain. “Get a list of what you need and expand the training program as fast as you can. I’ll authorise the expense.”

“Excuse my ignorance,” Muna said, “but couldn’t you borrow some of the shuttle pilots from the transport?”

“They have a different set of skills,” Erica said, grimly. “If they could fly attack helicopters, I’d have borrowed them in a split second.”

I looked over at Robert, who smiled dryly. “The spaceport defences were barely tested during the insurrection,” he said. “I think the Communists preferred to have a go at people who might not fight back. There were a handful of mortar rounds that were fired into our defences, but the point defence took them all out before they could crash down and actually damage something. I don’t expect that we’ll be as lucky the next time, but for the moment, we’re safe enough here.

“On the other hand, we need to expand the patrols around the base perimeter and watch out for mortar teams or SAM teams trying to slip into range,” he added. “We might well lose a shuttle to a SAM and if that happens, the cost of replacing it will be considerable.”

“See to it,” I ordered. Shuttles couldn’t be produced on Svergie; they lacked the technical base to even begin to construct the ships. We’d have to ship in a replacement from a more advanced world and the shipping costs would push up the overall price astronomically. Most shuttles come with the starships; a new one, built to our specifications, would be costly, even if we could find an old UN-surplus craft. “Apart from that…?”

“Nothing that needs to be discussed in council,” Robert said, a way of saying that he had everything under control. The UN would have insisted that I kept an eye on him — and everyone else — permanently, but that would have just driven me mad. I trusted them to handle their sections and wouldn’t think any less of them if they had to ask for help. “There are a number of semi-permanent relationships forming between the men and the local help, but so far there haven’t been any incidents because of it. It seems that merely wearing a military uniform can get you laid in New Copenhagen at the moment…”

“So naturally you went and tried it out,” Ed said, quickly. I smiled and some of the others laughed openly. “Did it work?”

“I only got my cock sucked seven times and had sex three times, so clearly it was a failure,” Robert said, dramatically. There were more chuckles. “Seriously, though, I don’t think we have to worry too much about the issue, but I’ll keep a close eye on it, just in case.”

“Good,” I said. Soldiers have something of a mixed relationship with the hired help. Some would be white knights in shining armour, others would just see the girls as a convenient outlet for their lusts… and the Sergeants would have to separate the two. Svergie, at least, allowed prostitutes to operate — although I have never seen a world that managed to suppress prostitution — and so there were other outlets. “Muna, you’re up last.”

“Thank you,” Muna said. I’d been worried about having her out of bed so quickly, but she’d insisted and the medics hadn’t been able to keep her down. She looked tired and wan, but most of the bruises had faded back into her pitch-black skin. It bothered me that her captors had been killed in the fighting; I wanted to cut their throats myself and hear their screams. Indecent it might be, unhealthy it was not. “Our logistics position is not good.”

Everyone sat up straighter as she continued to speak. “We expended considerable amounts of ammunition and supplies in the recent… ah, unpleasantness,” she explained. “The basic assault rifle ammunition, grenades and even mortar shells can be replaced here. The problem is two-fold; we lack the ability to replenish our supplies at such a rate of expenditure. We have enough stored ammunition for several weeks of fighting, but after that we will suffer considerable shortages. We need time to rebuild our supply deports.

“Furthermore, we’re unable to replace certain items completely,” she continued. “It will take months, maybe as much as a year, to rebuild some of the more vital factories from Pitea. Specifically, we are unable to replace tanks, helicopters and various other heavy equipment until those factories are rebuilt… and we are unable to replace artillery shells completely. The UN always shipped them in from Earth and never gave consent to a local arms industry. What they have was built after the occupation ended and… well, it’s not that good.”

“True,” I agreed. There had been so much abandoned on the planet that it seemed unthinkable that we would ever run out, but I’d never seen a military operation that used less ammunition than predicted. We’d expended ammunition like it was water, but there had been no choice. Lives were much harder to replace when we didn’t have access to Earth’s bottomless supply of flesh. “How much can we replenish before the next set of elections are held?”

“Not much,” Muna admitted. “Let me put it this way; we’d be well advised not to fight another such war for a year.”

“A shame most wars can’t be timed,” I commented, dryly. Back in the dim past, human tribes had engaged in ritual warfare rather than real warfare, all according to a script. We didn’t have that luxury, if luxury it was. I looked over at TechnoMage. “Is there anyone else considering trouble?”

“We have most of the Communist ringleaders and their upper levels in custody,” TechnoMage said. “As far as I can tell, those who were on the fringes of the Communist movement have disowned their fellows and are currently sucking up as much as they can to the legitimate government. The smaller small fry, the ones we missed, seem to have vanished underground completely; I don’t think we can expect much more from them than the occasional terrorist attack, if they don’t disband completely.

“The other parties seem to be spending most of their time considering the ramifications. With the President out of the political scene for at least six months, power is shifting firmly into the Progressive camp, which leaves some of the other parties wondering just when the other shoe is about to drop. They don’t trust Councillor Frida Holmqvist very much, sir, and they think that she’s going to use the state of emergency to cement her grip on power. We may see more violence in the very near future.”

I remembered Daniel’s claim and went cold. “Do you think they might launch an uprising of their own?”

“I doubt it,” he admitted. “I think we might be looking at a repeat of our original scenario; a three-way civil war spread out over the main continent. They don’t have the… fanatical nature of the Communists and, in a way, they have access to more firepower. They may provide a conventional threat if the Independence Party gets their way, but…”

He shrugged. “At the moment, it’s too close to call,” he admitted. I scowled, but took his point. A lot of intelligence work involves seeing through murky glass. “A lot depends on what happens in the next few months. That said, there is a new and disturbing trend. A number of personages are attacking us… for not handing over the molester to the local courts for judgement.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ed protested. I couldn’t help, but agree. “We hung the bastard! What more do they want? Him staked out on an ant hill covered in honey?”

“They seem to feel that there is a question of jurisdiction involved,” TechnoMage admitted. “I’m not sure who’s behind this, although they’re using the girl’s parents as spokespeople, but I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t know if the Acting President is behind this, but she’s doing fuck all to piss on this particular fire.”