Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (22 page)

“Now?” “Jock asked. “Now we get you suited up and ready.”

Our next destination proved to be a massive supply dump, seemingly large enough to house Devastator and another couple of starships like her. Hundreds of supply clerks swarmed around the dump, filling in requisitions and supplying requests – or, if my experience back at Earth was any guide, thinking of extremely good reasons why they shouldn’t honour such requests. The clerks took one look at Jock and collectively winced. I guessed that they'd met him and the rest of the Specials before.

Jock grabbed one hard enough to cause him to drop the paperwork he’d been carrying. “This is an emergency,” he said, so coldly I almost winced in sympathy. “I want this gentleman” – one long finger pointed at me – “outfitted now with Special-grade gear, understand?”

“Yes,” the clerk finally stammered. He looked at me and probably found it something of a relief after Jock. “Your sizes, sir?”

It took nearly thirty minutes to outfit me like the rest of the team, but that was something of a record where the supply departments were concerned. At the end of it all, I was wearing a simple uniform, without any rank badges or insignia, weighed down with dozens of items I knew nothing about. Jock examined me thoroughly, removed half of them and dumped them back on the desk, before leading me back outside. The remaining team members were waiting in a small jeep.

“Keep your rifles at the ready,” Jock ordered, tightly, as Dan revved up the engine. “If we get shot at, I expect you to shoot back without waiting for orders.”

“Of course, boss,” Judy said. Her name, I realised suddenly, was shared with one of the reporters - wherever they were now – but her voice and attitude was very different. I wouldn’t have wanted to run into her in a dark alley. Jase and his merry band of rapists wouldn’t have known what hit them. “We’ll put them off their stroke all right.”

Jock snorted as the jeep raced out of the guarded compound and down the main road. Back on Earth, the roads had been clogged with litter; here, they were clean, apart from a handful of burned-out vehicles. The infantry had imposed a ban on all vehicles right from the start, forbidding the natives to use their personal vehicles – and that was a new concept to me too – unless it was urgent. Apparently, some vehicles had been packed with explosives and driven by their automated systems right into the guarded compounds, or infantry units on patrol. The streets were as dangerous as they ever were.

“Sniper,” Dan hissed. “Judy…”

“I see him,” Judy said. I barely had my rifle in position before she took the shot, sending a young teenager – barely a few years younger than myself – falling to his death. A hail of shots came at us from the windows, but Jock returned fire with his massive weapon and deterred them from coming any closer. “You got anything else for me, Danny Boy?”

“Bitch,” Dan said, with feeling. “No matter how much I give you, you’re never satisfied.”

“Men,” Judy retorted. The banter didn’t stop her from firing off several more rounds towards other insurgents. “If it wasn't for the three or so hours of sex you get out of them each night, what use would they be?”

Jock laughed. “You will keep wearing them out,” he said. He sounded a different person away from the base, more relaxed despite the possibility of insurgent attacks. “Did you ever return that guy you kidnapped and chained to your bed?”

I listened in a state of numb disbelief. At the Academy, speaking like that would have earned demerits, if not outright punishment for hate speech. We were told that hate speech – sexist, racist or any other kind of hate speech – demeaned people, but here they were just bouncing off one another. It didn’t even seem to affect their teamwork, either; Judy saved Dan’s life, despite his words.

“Of course not,” Judy said, with a wink. “He was too good to be allowed back so quickly.”

“He’ll be dead when you get back then,” Charlie said. “You did remember to feed him, right?”

“Best kind of man,” Judy said. She gave him a wink that probably qualified as a lethal assault in its own right. “As long as he can keep it up…”

I tuned them out as we raced into open countryside and studied the terminal in my hand. It was UNPF-issue, but designed for use on the ground. I could have taken a hammer to it and it would still work, according to the specifications. I knew better than to take that too seriously, but I could still practice. Calling in a strike from Devastator wasn't hard, after all. It just required practice and care. Everyone had been warned about the danger of accidentally calling in a strike on their own position.

“Here we are,” Jock said, as he came to a halt outside a small camp. The soldiers on guard looked much more professional than the ones back in the city. Their weapons, and a handful of automated weapons mounted on a small armoured vehicle, tracked us as we approached. Now that the jeep had come to a halt, I could hear explosions in the distance…and heavy shooting. “Don’t those willies look alert?”

Judy snorted behind her hand. “I could take them out in three quick shots, boss,” she commented. “Perhaps we should try to sneak in instead, just for shits and giggles.”

“Damn right,” Charlie agreed. “Boss?”

“Not this time,” Jock said, firmly. This close to the war zone, they were almost professional. “We have to report to the General.”

The guards inspected our papers and took our fingerprints, before grudgingly allowing us to enter the camp. It was crowded with men, like the city, but there was a very real difference. Most of the soldiers here were fighting soldiers and there seemed to be no sign of any luxuries. A handful of local buildings had been converted into barracks and offices, but the General had set up camp in a large tent. I wasn't sure that that was wise, but as I saw the mobile defence units shooting down incoming rounds, it became apparent that it was safer than it seemed, if not by much. Personally, I wished I was in a bunker, or back in orbit.

“Jock,” the General said. He was a bluff man with a heavy beard, carrying a rifle like the remainder of his staff. There were no headquarters soldiers here. “You brought the controller?”

“Here,” Jock said, pushing me forward. “Say hello, controller?”

The General ignored his comment. “We’re advancing now against these towns,” he said, tapping the map on the table. Red arrows lay on the map. It was primitive, compared to the holograms I’d used back on the Devastator, but that might have been the point. No one could hack into a paper map. “I want you to escort our guest to here” – he tapped a location on the map – “and call in strikes as requested by the local commanders.”

“Yes, sir,” Jock said, saluting. It was the first time I’d seen him using anything reassembling proper military protocol. He grinned at me as we walked out of the tent. “We walk from here, punk.”

I groaned. An hour later, I felt worse, even though we hadn’t walked very far. The four Specials had escorted me along smaller roads, avoiding vehicles and soldiers from both sides, until we reached the top of a hill. Dan and Charlie had scouted ahead and found an enemy hide there, which they had promptly cleared with a pair of grenades and some knife work. I ignored the still-bleeding bodies as best as I could and stared down into the valley. There was a medium-sized town below…and the inhabitants were defending it furiously.

“I’m surprised they haven’t been screaming for strikes already,” Jock commented, dryly. I wondered if he were bored. If half the stories I’d heard about the Specials were true, this was tame compared to their more normal missions. “They’re probably cursing the lack of heavy artillery now.”

I watched as explosions seemed to rip through the town without suppressing the enemy forces. “Why are they there?” I asked. “Why aren’t they retreating?”

“They can’t,” Dan supplied, from his position. Charlie and Judy were watching for enemy forces that might wonder what had happened to their spotter. “The General has infantry units in position to block any escape from the town.”

“But who are they?”

“Heinlein had the largest army and army reservists in the entire Human Sphere,” Jock said. “They could be anyone, making a stand because they know that they could bleed us to death here. This entire area was prepared for us and the General had no choice, but to enter it. Hear that?”

I nodded. The sound of mortars firing in the distance kept echoing out, answered by heavier guns from the infantry positions, a long-range duel to suppress each other’s fire. I hoped that none of the enemy had the hill targeted. It would be an absurd way to die after everything else.

“They’ll have everywhere here carefully targeted and marked with a big red circle saying ‘hit this when occupied,’ Jock predicted. “They want to bleed us…”

I looked down at the terminal. A fire request was already coming in. “They want a general shot over the entire town,” I said, in disbelief. They couldn’t demand that, could they? There were regulations against it. “That’s…”

“What’s required,” Jock said, a steely tone in his voice. “Do it.”

I started to object. “Do it,” Jock snapped, again. “How many of our people do you want to die if they storm the town?”

The terminal was heavy in my hand. I keyed it open, placed my finger against the scanner to confirm it was an authorised user, and carefully entered the coordinates, double-checking to ensure that I’d entered the right ones. The link back to Devastator buzzed as the tactical officer – Anna would be on duty, I thought – checked my coordinates against the system, and then confirmed the shot. It was ready on demand.

“Now,” Jock said, coldly. There was something in his voice that promised that failure would not go unpunished. “Place the request.”

I complied, trembling. Up above, a set of KEWs would be being fired from the tubes, targeted precisely on the town. The scatter-shots weren't as precise as the more normal shots, but they would be devastating to the defenders. I found myself counting under my breath. The timer read 00.50 seconds to impact. I should have taken cover, but I had to watch. There was a streak of light in the sky, a thunderous series of explosions that blurred into one roar…and a slap in the face that left me sitting back on the ground, wondering if my sanity had been impaired. The blast wave had knocked me to the ground.

“Wow,” Judy said, somehow appearing behind me and helping me to my feet. “Did the Earth move for you too, honey?”

The hide hadn’t been designed to stand up to such a blast and was collapsing, so Jock and Dan helped the rest of us out of the structure, leaving us to stare towards where the town had been. It was utterly devastated, the more so because there was no fire and little smoke. I saw the infantry advancing rapidly in their armoured vehicles, hoping to wipe out the remaining resistance before they could recover from the pounding. I barely noticed when Jock started to lead me away from the hilltop. I couldn’t wipe the sight from my eyes.

“You did well,” the General said, when we met his advancing convoy. The infantry was no longer being opposed and the only danger was pre-placed mines and explosive devices. The locals, unfortunately for the infantry, were very good at producing them. “The remaining insurgents have retreated and now we’ll go to occupy the town.”

It seemed pointless to me – the town no longer existed, really – but I accepted the offer of a lift. The town once had been neat, designed for a few hundred people at most, but now…now, it was just rubble. The infantry probed through the ruins carefully, finding little to distract them…until they discovered the cellar. They opened it, carefully, and then stumbled back. The smell of death was overpowering.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to look. The cellar had held children, young children, ranging from babies to early teens. They had been hidden from the infantry as they probed the defences, but not from the KEWs. The overpressure had killed them, perhaps, or maybe it was the shock. It didn’t matter. They were dead.

And I had killed them.

Chapter Eighteen

The UN has hundreds of different definition of the term ‘war crime,’ including everything from prisoner mistreatment to causing the deaths of civilians in combat. The sad truth is that, despite the high ideals behind the laws and regulations, the UN is completely unable to enforce the rules on everyone else, nor is it really inclined to enforce them on its own people. The only people charged with war crimes under the UN are people who have incurred powerful political enemies.

-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.

Back at Lazarus, I got very – very – drunk. It didn’t help. My dreams were still full of dead or dying children, slain by my own hand. The bar, intended for UNPF officers off duty, didn’t have anything vile enough to blot out the memories…and I had never been a drunkard. There were millions of drunkards on Earth, drinking endlessly to wash away the numb horror of their existence, and yet…it didn’t help me. I’d killed those children as surely as if I’d killed them myself, one by one. My nightmares tormented me with their faces and their dreams. Whatever the sins of the parents – and, if Roger was to be believed, Heinlein was only guilty of being too successful – why should the children have shared in the punishment? Why had they even been there in the first place?