Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (34 page)

I looked over at Ensign Geoffrey Murchison, he who had stood up for Yianni. “Well, Ensign?” I asked. “Would you like to try?”

Geoffrey gulped. “Do I get the demerit reduction as well?”

“Ten minutes,” I said, motioning Evgenia away from the tactical console. She looked vaguely surprised that the seat wasn’t covered in sweat. “Good luck.”

Geoffrey lasted eight minutes before he lost his ship as well. He hadn’t done badly at first – and he’d clearly been watching what had happened to Evgenia, learning from her experience – but he missed a scatter-missile before it scattered, right into his face. The point defence computers overrode at once, but it was too late to prevent the three fatal hits. He didn’t swear and listened carefully when I outlined what had gone wrong.

“There are no clues in the display as to what missile is what,” I said, “but if you watch carefully, you may notice slight hints. That one, however, drove in like a standard missile and you ignored it until it was too late.”

Geoffrey blinked. “But…no clues,” he said. It wasn't entirely accurate, but picking up on the clues would require experience. “That’s not fair.”

I snorted. “Whoever told you that the universe was fair?” I asked. “Yianni – your turn. Try and last longer then Geoffrey.”

Yianni lasted five minutes. I replaced her with Sandra and she lasted seven minutes. Allan, who went last, had studied carefully and managed to last nine minutes, but only Sally – who’d been doing it for years – managed to cross the ten minute limit. It wasn't so useful in her case. Because of her age and general experience, she hadn’t been given a demerit for years.

“That,” I said, pointing to Sally, “is what you have to match.” I smiled at their expressions. Sally had made it look easy. “You’ll be drilling time and time again on this console – and others, set up down below. You’ll be registered in the ship’s computers and anyone who survives longer than nine minutes will receive a merit point. Anyone who dies before passing the five minute mark will receive one demerit instead.”

“I don’t understand,” Evgenia said, slowly. “I’ve studied tactical records at the Academy and no ship ever had an engagement like that one.” She nodded towards the console. “Why do we have to practice like that?”

I smiled. “First, the engagement we created for you is theoretically possible,” I explained. “I admit that no ship has ever had to fight such an intensive battle, but it is possible. Furthermore, there are…issues in real battles that don’t arise in simulations, and if we programmed the simulation to let you only practice what we have experienced, you’d be at a disadvantage. The purpose of this training session is to teach you how to think and act quickly, not to practice real battles.

“Second, because we said so,” I added. “You need to learn. Once you learn, you will understand the basis for this training session – and others – far more thoroughly if I simply told you the answers. In time, you may find yourself teaching others.”

I grinned, nastily. “Now we’ve done the easy part,” I said, “we can turn to the harder part. How many of you have ever flown a starship before?”

The helm console, rigged to simulate actual flight operations, lit up at my touch. “It’s time to see if you can dock us with Orbit One – who wants to go first?”

Evgenia took the helm, and then Yianni, and finally Allen before we ran out of time and they had to go to their political briefing. If I’d been commanding a real starship, I would have probably had them strangled and then thrown out of the airlock; they crashed the ship into Orbit One twice and avoided disaster by the skin of their teeth seven times. A starship handles like a wallowing pig near an orbit station…and the slightest mistake could be disastrous.

“You’ll be doing that again and again too,” I said, at the end. “If you don’t learn that quickly, you’re going to get us all killed.”

Afterwards, I laughed, even though it wasn't funny. God help me, but I was growing to like them. How had Lieutenant Hatchet coped with it?

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Outside observers have often wondered at the discrepancies between the United Nations Infantry, the United Nations Specials, and the United Nations Marines. The first is a blunt instrument used for the violent suppression and occupation of enemy worlds, the second is a covert/special forces operations unit and the third is used mainly in space. The discrepancies are explained by differences in their training methods. The UN invests a great deal in its Marines, while Infantrymen are regarded as expendable. This goes a long way towards explaining the treatment of civilians by the infantry. They know that their masters regard them as worthless.

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

I hit the deck hard enough to hurt, even though the padding.

“Uncle?” Master Sergeant Erwin Herzog asked sweetly. “You’ve not been keeping up with your practice, have you?”

I rubbed my jaw slowly, knowing that it could have been a great deal worse. I was almost certain that he’d pulled that punch, and yet it felt as if someone had smashed the entire starship into me. The contest bout had been my idea, but I hadn’t had the time to keep up with training on the Devastator and I had slipped, badly. He’d knocked me down in just under a minute.

“Uncle,” I agreed, thoughtfully. I ached in several places and I hadn’t landed a single punch. I’d treated him as I’d treated Jase and his friends down on Earth…and that had been a mistake. When he'd dared me to challenge him, I had accepted…and realised, too late, that it was a trap. He’d knocked me down with ease. “That was sore.”

“Hard training, easy mission,” Erwin said. It was a Marine saying that had never made its way into the Infantry, or, for that matter, the Academy. “Easy training, hard mission.”

“Touché,” I agreed, sourly. “How are the new Ensigns coming along?”

“Three of them will make…adequate martial arts artists in a few months if they work at it,” Erwin said, helping me to my feet. “The other two won’t make anything other than journeymen at best, I’m afraid. Too much reluctance to try to land the killing blow, or perhaps too much fear of pain. We could beat that out of them if they went to Camp Currie, but here…well, there are limits to what we can teach them.” He shrugged. “I trust you’re not thinking of challenging one of them to regain your pride?”

I started to sputter before realising that I was being teased. It wasn't as if I were short on possible sparring partners. There were the other Lieutenants, Sally herself – although that would have bent regulations almost to breaking point – and, of course, Andrew’s infantrymen. I could see several of them gathered around a Marine and an Infantryman, watching them pushing at each other. It looked more like a hazing rite than an actual bout, but Andrew and a pair of Marines were watching them carefully. We had already had one bloody fistfight and didn’t need a second one.

The relationship between the Marines and the Infantrymen was an interesting one, I’d decided. The Infantrymen were determined not to be outdone by a bunch of overpaid pretty boys – their words – while the Marines were equally determined to rub the Infantry’s collective nose in their own inferiority. I would have bet on Erwin’s twenty-one Marines against all of the Infantry Company if it were a normal under-trained Company, but Andrew was apparently a good officer. Their stats, according to Erwin, were better than anyone had a right to expect.

It had also led to an interesting series of encounters. Some had challenged others to grudge matches, while others had produced illegal decks of playing cards and engaged in cross-unit fraternisation. The joint training had broken down into several fistfights before their respective leaders restored order, but an hour later Andrew and Erwin had been arm-wrestling for superiority, or a point of order. Neither of them knew how to quit and they’d managed to sprain each other’s wrists. The Doctor had made a number of sarcastic comments about how many small injuries she was being called upon to treat, but after a few days, they seemed to come to a halt – mostly. The two leaders were also very inventive when it came to punishment duty.

I smiled, thinly. If nothing else, the starship was cleaner than it had been in years.

“No,” I assured him, as I staggered over to the dressing bench and pulled off the tunic I’d been wearing. Being naked in front of men and women had bothered me when I’d gone to the Academy, but I was used to it by now and wasn’t particularly surprised when Erwin joined me. I was glad I hadn’t seen him naked before I’d been volunteered for fight training. I would never have dared raise a hand to him. “They’re not ready for that, are they?”

“Be glad of it,” Erwin said, as we stepped into the showers. The warm water sluiced off the sweat and drained away down towards the recycler. Cleaning that was yet another punishment duty. “I’ve served on ships where the Captain used force to keep his people in line. It never ended well.”

I nodded as I washed away the dirt and stepped out of the shower. Water is always at a premium on a starship and while we could, in theory, mine an asteroid or a comet for water ice, it wasn't something the Captain would want to do if it could be avoided. It was against regulations to remain in the showers for more than two minutes, unless you had special permission, but I wasn't surprised when Erwin stepped out of the shower just after me. We’d all learned to time it properly, although the shower in the Ensigns’ Wardroom was configured to only give them two minutes and nothing more.

“So,” Erwin said, afterwards. We were alone in the changing room. “I understand that you have something to talk to me about?”

“Not here,” I said, quickly. I’d broached the issue with the Senior Chief and he had insisted on approaching Erwin personally. I hadn’t attempted to prevent him. They’d been friends for years. The Master Sergeant might not listen to me, but he’d listen to the Senior Chief. “Can we talk in your quarters?”

“I don’t have any fancy quarters,” the Master Sergeant said, dryly. I flushed, remembering that all of the Marines shared a single wardroom. The Infantry had had to be spread out, but the Marines practically lived in each other’s pockets. They shared a closeness that even the best Ensigns never achieved. “Your cabin, John?”

I nodded and led him through the corridors, before we turned and entered my cabin. I took a moment to wave him to a chair and turn on my music player, accessing a file of heavy metal music. Midgard Metal, the singer and songwriter, wasn't entirely to my taste, but anyone trying to listen in to our conversation – I was almost sure that the cabins were probably bugged – would have some problems. It was one of the ideas I’d learned from the Heinlein files. They even included instructions on how to subvert and overthrow the government, something that had convinced me that the system worked better than Earth. I couldn’t have hoped to find information like that on Earth.

“All right,” I said, as the strains of Darkness Falls Upon Her Heart echoed through the cabin. “Listen carefully.”

I outlined everything that had happened at Heinlein, from the deaths of innocent civilians to Ensign Gomez’s rape and my determination to overthrow the system before it killed us all, or led the Earth to ruin. I knew I was taking a chance, but I trusted the Senior Chief…and we’d need the Marines to help us. Without them, it would be much harder to seize the fleet. Without the fleet, the entire plan was dead in the water.

“Interesting,” he said, when I’d finished. “What do you plan to do afterwards? Declare yourself ruler of the galaxy?”

“Hell, no,” I said, angrily. I didn’t want the job and I knew no one who could be trusted with it, even if the UN’s experience suggested that interstellar government couldn’t work. “We just end the war – without the Peace Force, the UN can’t fight the war – and declare peace. We pull the infantry off Terra Nova and prevent further invasions, from anyone.”

I didn’t bother with emotional appeals. Erwin would either go along with it or he would refuse. If the latter, we were in serious trouble. If something happened to me, now, the entire plan might be blown out of the water.

“It might work,” he agreed, finally. “You know, of course, that some form of interstellar trade will have to continue?”

“Yes,” I said, flatly. I suspected that Heinlein, Williamson’s World and maybe even Iceberg would corner the market on interstellar freighters, but that hardly mattered to me. Freighters couldn’t be used to wage war. If we prevented anyone else from building warships and didn’t launch any invasions ourselves, interstellar society wouldn’t collapse under the weight of the war.

“And there’ll be a bloodbath when the locals realise that the Infantry no longer has access to orbital weapons,” Erwin added. “What will you do about that?”

“Withdraw them as quickly as possible,” I repeated. “I don’t think we should be supporting them any longer than it takes to withdraw them. The local resistance fighters might even back off and allow us to pull them off the planet, along with any collaborators the UN created over the years. God knows, we can even try them for war crimes.”

“If I agree to help,” Erwin said, “that’s my price. I want genuine war crimes trials for the infantry. I don’t want my Marines contaminated by their…attitude to war.”