Freehold (61 page)

"Congratulate my troops. I just led," Naumann said. He looked distracted. "We will take you to the capital and arrange for your return. This battle is won, but there is still a war to finish."

"Thank you, Colonel. I'm amazed at your total destruction of our satellites," he hinted.

"Yes?"

"I understood you had no local space assets. How did you destroy them?" he asked.

Staring levelly, Naumann said, "That was the Special Warfare Regiments and a few remaining boats."

"To
all
the stations? But how did they get through the sensor fields?"

"That I cannot tell you." The sensors were programmed to ignore vacsuited individuals to make maintenance easier. Typical bureaucratic laziness. Naumann had no intention of revealing that at this time.

"But how long did that take? How much oxygen do they have?" Meyer asked. That wasn't possible!

"Not enough," Naumann confirmed.

"But . . . I'll ask our ships to search for survivors," he offered. Mother of God!

"Thank you for your offer. That won't be necessary. They had no way to evacuate from the structures anyway," Naumann said. He looked very tired and hurt.

Meyer stood silently, eyes locked with Naumann for about a minute. His mouth worked silently, finally rasping, "I would consider it an honor to attend that memorial, sir."

"Granted," Naumann nodded. Turning his face away, he said, "The guards will escort you to our headquarters."

Kendra sat at a UN medic's tent, now run by Freeholders. They'd patched her arm and leg and the flesh wound in her other leg she hadn't noticed and told her to wait for a scanner to become free. The surgeon in charge expressed the opinion that she'd lost thirty-five percent of her hearing, but that would have to wait for better facilities.

She sat silently, tired and sick and emotionless. Someone had told her she was a hero, and her force had held the brunt of the attack. The four-hundred-odd Freehold regulars and militia along the ridge had held against almost seven
thousand
UN infantry troops with weapons and vehicles. She nodded, uncomprehending, and tried to ignore her ringing ears.

Reports were coming in across the system. The UN fleet had been captured or destroyed, mostly by converted mining craft and ore carriers using mining charges and beam weapons. Once command and control was lost, the UN forces had muddled about helplessly, individual commanders untrained and unwilling to take charge and give orders. The casualties had been horrifying on both sides. The SpecWar Regiments had captured or destroyed every fixed station that mattered and two cruisers at a cost of ninty percent casualties.

And there'd been biochemical attacks south of Kendra's position, an act of desperation by an artillery commander who had hoped to save his troops. There were tens of casualties, alive but raving from the vicious neural toxin.

Cowboy was dead, brought down by ADA fire. Rob was reported missing in action, which meant dead. Kendra supposed she should be crying for his loss, but couldn't track enough to hurt. It occurred to her she was one of the lucky ones; alive, mostly intact and not screaming crazy from nanowar. She didn't feel lucky.

"In here!" a voice called. Marta snapped alert. Freehold or UN? Risk a fight? Or surrender? Was it over? She was still asking herself questions as the door was pried open with a bar. She waited to see how it developed.

UN troops swarmed into the room. "Here's the general. Dead," one said.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" one asked.

Before she could answer, the first shouted, "Fucking sure she's okay! Someone fucking strangled him!" He leaped over to her, raised his hand and punched her. She blocked it, stepped aside and disarmed him. As she raised his weapon, a massive blow crashed into her head. She staggered back into the wall, her face in agony, sinuses already stopped with blood. She tried to get into a defensive stance, but the shock and suddenness had her totally disoriented. She felt several more blows and mercifully passed out.

"All warfare is based on deception."

—Sun Tzu

Not all the UN's satellites were down. A spare handful existed, varying in status from "functional" to "deadlined for overhaul." The UN battle staff aboard the flagship and the captured Sheppard Military Station brought up data and sensors bit by bit, acquiring what minimal data they could. Numbed shock ran through the staff as they realized just how badly their equipment had fared. Controlled fear could be smelled as they searched frantically for a marauding fleet. It was hours before they stood down from that alert and most of the crew immediately had to supplement the personnel attempting to get data of any kind from the surface.

Trickles of intelligence filled in a few gaps, but most of the map was a huge black zone, marked "Status undetermined." The fear created a trembling tension that threatened to break out into panic at any moment.

The command staff knew in detail what forces the Freeholders had started with. They knew fairly accurately what they had destroyed or captured. They had estimates of what force was left in both military and civilian hands. That intelligence flew in the face of the more than decimated UN strength that could be accounted for. Something had smashed the ground forces into powder, but what? Something had brutally crippled their space-based Command and Control network, but what?

Little rebel activity was visible, but the flood plain around Delph' was a scarred graveyard of armor, artillery, close-support craft and materiel. No response came from any command unit and only garbled, terrified demands for help from a few soldiers and platoons cut off from their headquarters and hiding. The base at Jefferson Starport wasn't responding, even though it looked only lightly damaged.

It was a day later that an assault boat rose from the planet and neared the station. It sat, well within range of the defensive batteries and defiantly challenged them. "You are commanded to surrender to the Freehold Military Forces within three minutes or be destroyed," came the only transmission.

The three ranking officers stared at each other, shook their heads in utter hopelessness and complied. The boarding party were all Freehold regulars, in spotless armor and gear. That appearance was the final crushing blow and the prisoners offered no resistance. The Freeholders had to hide their triumphant grins. The prisoners didn't need to know that this was the only boarding crew and boat left in the planet's vicinity. Not yet, anyway. Nor that it had three trained professionals and seventeen experienced militia dressed accordingly and looking as professional as possible. The senior sergeant in charge reported back, "Station Sheppard secure."

"Acknowledged, Three Juliet Two Zero," the ground controller replied. Behind her the battle staff waited, stock still and silent. Turning, she reported to Naumann, "Sir, the system is secure."

The cheer that exploded in response could probably have been measured on the Richter Scale.

"When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy."

—Ancient military proverb

The war continued despite the victory at the bluff. While the head had been destroyed, the thrashing body of the behemoth was still a grave threat. It was a manageable threat, but still to be taken seriously.

The Freeholders were helped by a huge set of cultural assumptions. No matter General Huff's assessment, the UN staff and soldiers still clutched at the belief that "high number of privately owned weapons" meant five percent or so, and most of those in the agricultural areas. They visualized a few hunting rifles or shotguns and had not been disabused of that notion. Those battles in the major cities were easy to chalk up to captured weapons. Most Freeholders had refused to fight when the odds were suicidal and had instead waited. Any number of signals would have ended that wait, and this was more than sufficient.

Weapons came out of closets, out of barns, up from the ground and in from the woods. Fully seventy percent of households were armed, most multiply so. There were still enough weapons for every adult and most juveniles and they were not all hunting gear.

Most surviving veterans still had their military rifles, some, machineguns. Even with the captured and casualties, the weapons were often recovered by other rebels. And military weapons were reliable, sturdy, and cheap as surplus, thus were very common. Target shooting was one of the most popular sports, whether it was with pistols rapid fired at ten meters or large bore rifles at two thousand. Support weapons were less common, but grenade launchers, machineguns, small cannon and howitzers were not unheard of. Along with readily bought and readily hidden explosives, plenty of aircraft and the willingness to use it all, the Freeholders were a credible, competent militia, with a military heritage nurtured from the time of the old English fyrd.

Certainly, most rifles were used for pest control on farms, but a self-loading military rifle was a cheap and convenient means of doing so. Shotguns were excellent for hunting, had been little changed, only refined, over the last five hundred years, and were still as deadly in close-range and urban combat as the military and police had found them centuries before. Pistols were readily concealed under coats and Freeholders had adopted more Earthlike dress for that reason.

Without the support of air superiority, artillery, a credible threat of space-based retaliation and a large staff, the tactical odds evened tremendously. Logistically, the locals now had better access to materiel, and half a million scattered UNPF troops suddenly found themselves outnumbered, even with the massive infliction of rebel casualties, by 300:1. It wasn't quite that bad on an engagement basis, as they tended to be clustered in urban areas with only small patrols detached elsewhere and protected by the threat of massive retaliation. But that threat was now gone and those who were dug in could only listen helplessly as the cries for help of those comrades were snuffed out one by one, and wonder where the command structure was. They awaited their own turn and hoped that succor from above was to be forthcoming.

Kendra led her friends cautiously into Delph'. Dak and Kyle were now with them, as were several others she knew at least peripherally. They'd been flown in with as many other volunteers as could be located. The basic force structure was one FMF member, any rank and specialty, as squad leader, and nineteen locals as the remainder of the squad. Some very few squads had half their troops equipped with RGL weapons or seized UN weapons or missiles or snipers. Kendra was not so lucky. At least she had a working comm and the commnet was up. Most of her squad had seen action. She didn't envy those who had neither in their squads.

Sighing, she led them forward, on foot, into the south edge of Delph'. The town was mostly intact, but that wasn't likely to last. The remaining UN troops, perhaps four thousand, were dug in and panicked. Getting them out was necessary, as they could be reinforced with a drop if any assets were still insystem. And they had some support weapons. And there were still civilians trapped here. They couldn't be starved out.

It was eerily quiet the first div, as they checked houses one at a time. Some few civilians met them and reported what they knew. A map was gradually being built and it would help, but distressingly large areas of it were black. All such civilians had their residences searched, in case they were under duress. Some were. Usually their faces showed it.

She would have thought anyone rational would have surrendered by now. There were reports of single UN troops fighting squads. She couldn't understand panic on that level.

They hit an industrial zone and began digging through the buildings for pockets of resistance. She expected a fight and was not pleasantly surprised. Massive small arms fire erupted from several sources and they scattered for cover behind a flowerbed that was still manicured despite the destruction. One of her new kids dropped in a heap and she cursed as she ran a search for sources. There and there. "Dak, to our front left, third floor, second window from the right, and to our right, rooftop, one third of the way south," she advised. He acknowledged with a yell and began sending troops out. She lobbed a grenade toward the roof, fused for altitude, and ducked as more fire came from the left. She was exposed and the only cover was bad cover. Then the enemy came running out, right in front of her, and something crashed into her helmet. She shot the first soldier automatically and swung for the second, noting the third was flanking her. She stepped sideways to close with number two and shot offhand at number three, who flinched. Kendra finished her turn and buttstroked number two under the jaw, feeling bones splinter. The third one was raising her weapon and Kendra spun, shooting twice. The girl grimaced momentarily and stared at her with deep eyes until Kendra's rising weapon smashed up under her visor, just to make sure. It wasn't disgusting or horrible anymore, Kendra thought. It was just a job. "I'm going to check inside this building," she said over her helmet's comm. "Team One with me, Two around the back, Weapons stand by for support," she ordered.

After a quick look through the door showed no obvious threats, she darted inside to get out of the rubble-strewn street. Inside, she looked around for signs of life, information, anything. Her vision faded. Malfunction! She unsnapped her helmet and shrugged it off, swearing to herself. She turned to the left and saw movement too late. A heavy weight crashed into her head.

She felt and heard a rush like water and her eyes swirled from blotches to colors. She was aware of returning to consciousness. Momentary nausea passed, the world spun and she looked up at figures in UN uniforms. She suddenly was aware of her pants being yanked down. A hand clamped her mouth shut and covered it. She could smell earth and scorched polymer on the rough skin as her briefer was ripped open.

"Another baldie!" a voice from her ankles hollered in triumph. It was tinny in her ears.