War To The Knife (16 page)

Allred waited for silence once more. “The Council of the Resistance has been discussing options for a final mission for several days now. All that was lacking was certainty as to whether or not we’d have enough volunteers to carry it out. Now that we do, I’ll ask them to give their final approval tonight. That’s a mere formality, of course, but it’s an important one.

“Thank you all very, very much. This will be the last chance I get to speak with all of you together like this, so I want you to know I’ve never had a greater privilege than to lead you all during these years of conflict. We’ve made the Bactrians pay in blood and in treasure for their decision to invade us. Now we’re going to strike our most powerful blow ever against them.” More cheering interrupted him once more.

“That’s all for now. Relax and enjoy yourselves this evening. Tomorrow we get down to work.”

March 11th 2850 GSC

LAGUNA PENINSULA

Jake led the way into the meeting room. Dave followed him, closing the door as Brigadier-General Allred and his wife Gloria rose to meet them. After a flurry of handshakes and muttered greetings, they all sat down around the table and helped themselves to glasses of water.

“I’ve asked the two of you here privately because… well, we need something that I know Captain Carson will find very difficult. Since it affects you as well, Colonel, I thought we owed it to you to broach the subject in private, where you can talk about it freely.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Jake responded for both of them.

“Captain, you put your name down on the list of those qualified in spacesuits and freefall maneuvers. You’re the only officer who did so. That makes you the automatic choice to command that portion of our final mission, but it also means we’re going to place a very heavy burden on your shoulders. I’ll let my wife explain, in her capacity as President of the Council of the Resistance and
de facto
head of state of our Provisional Government of Occupied Laredo.”

Gloria Allred nodded. “You know that we’re going to mount a final mission against the invaders, Captain, one that few of us – including your own father – are likely to survive. That makes what I must ask of you even more difficult. You see… we’re going to ask you to escape from Laredo. We want you to survive.”

“WHAT?”
Dave surged to his feet, incredulous. “You’ve just told me that you expect to die – that you expect my
father
to die – on this mission. How can you – how
dare
you – expect me to let him die alone?”

The General held up his hand. “It’s more complicated than that, Captain. Will you please allow us to explain?”

There was a long silence as Dave stared mutinously at him. Eventually Jake put his hand on Dave’s forearm. “Son, please listen to them – because it’s me asking, if for no other reason.”

“Why
are
you asking? Dammit, Dad, you’ve got more experience in freefall and spacesuits than I have! Why didn’t you put your name on the ‘Orbital Operations’ list too? Then
you
could lead that mission, and I could be with you!”

Jake looked him in the eye and said slowly, deliberately, “My regiment is about to embark on its final mission. I cannot and will not send my soldiers to their probable deaths without accompanying them.”

Dave slowly nodded, then sat down, but obstinate rebellion was still evident in every line of his body.

“Thank you,” Gloria acknowledged softly. “Our biggest problem is going to be to get our accumulated evidence off the planet, and make sure it reaches the Vice-President and our Government-in-Exile. For the duration of the Satrap’s visit nobody will be allowed to enter or leave orbit except Bactrian personnel. Security will be as tight as possible. That means Mr. Ellis will be trapped here until after our attack on the Satrap. The Bactrians will be in turmoil, and probably won’t let anyone go anywhere for weeks, if not months. As for cargo shipments, even personal baggage of passengers boarding spaceships here, they’re sure to go through everything with a fine-toothed comb. There’s no way Mr. Ellis will be able to smuggle our evidence aboard his ship. That means, if we want to kill the Satrap, we have to plan on getting Mr. Ellis away ourselves, along with all the evidence we’ve gathered and our two bank bearer keys.

“There’s another aspect to that. I’ll ask Bill to explain it.”

Her husband sat forward. “Please understand that what I’m about to say is no reflection on Mr. Ellis, or whatever his real name is. He’s arranged the ship that will take our evidence to the Vice-President. Lack of secure transport is all that’s stopped us sending it to her before now, so we’re profoundly grateful to him for that. By coming here and putting himself in danger to inform us about it, he’s more than earned his fee. Nevertheless, we want to have our evidence and the bearer bank keys escorted and delivered to the Vice-President by our own people.

“There are three reasons for that. One is basic security, of course – we don’t know who we can trust off-planet. The second is that… shall we say, a certain firmness may be needed to persuade the ship’s captain and crew to take it out of the Laredo system once it’s aboard. There’ll be all sorts of consternation and monkeyhouse going on, both planetside during and after our attack, and in orbit after the attack you’ll have to mount on the defenses there in order to open a window of opportunity for the ship to escape. Its crew may believe they’d run less risk by handing over the evidence and anyone accompanying it to the Bactrians, in the hope that they’ll then be allowed to proceed. They won’t be accustomed to the Bactrians’ methods, after all, nor to their SS torturers. The third aspect is that while our evidence is very comprehensive, essentially it’s
things
– objects, data, recordings and what have you. It’ll be far more convincing if it’s accompanied by eyewitnesses who can recount – if necessary under truth-tester examination – their own experiences of the Bactrian invasion, what they themselves saw and heard and went through. They’ll back up the evidence and turn it into something living, something real, for those who read or see it.”

“I guess there’s a fourth aspect too, Sir,” Jake interjected thoughtfully. “If whoever gets the evidence and Mr. Ellis aboard his ship tries to return planetside, that’ll no longer be possible. By then most of us will be dead in the ruins of Banka, along with the Satrap and an ungodly number of Bactrians – at least, we hope so. I don’t know where the orbital force would go, or how they’d get there. In the turmoil they’d probably be shot out of the sky before they could even land.”

“A very good point,” the General agreed. “Over to you, Gloria.”

“Thank you, Bill.” She turned to Dave. “There’s another reason for what we’re asking of you, Captain, but before I go into it, we need to know where you stand. We can’t in good conscience
order
you to do this if you feel it’s your duty to die with your father. Therefore, we’re asking you to volunteer, and we’ll make the same request of everyone else that put down their names for the orbital mission. Only those who accept the burden of survival – and it
will
be a burden, trust me on this – will be accepted for the mission. The rest will be reassigned to join the assault on Banka.”

Dave was silent, his mental struggle written plainly on his face. Jake watched him quietly for a while, then said softly, “Son, I’d like you to accept this assignment.” He held up a hand to stifle his son’s instinctive half-cry of protest. “It’s absolutely vital. Unless the orbital defenses are suppressed, the evidence is delivered to the spaceship, and it gets safely away from the system, there’ll never be a United Planets inquiry into what Bactria did here, and it’ll never face punishment for its invasion of Laredo. Whoever commands this mission will face huge difficulties. Unless it’s done right first time, all those who died over the past three years will have wasted their lives, and those of us who are about to die will do so in vain. I can’t think of anyone I’d trust more than you to succeed, no matter what the odds.

“As for me…” He shrugged. “I’m sure to be killed in due course, whether in this assault or later. I’d rather not have to watch you die as well. Jeanette, Timmy, Janet and I will live on through you and your kids, on some planet I may never have heard of and will never see. It’s not just me, either. All of us will live on through all of you. You’ll honor our memories, tell our stories to your children, and explain to others why we fought so hard for so long. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to be remembered in that way.” Bill and Gloria murmured their agreement.

The lump in Dave’s throat was so large and painful he couldn’t speak. He looked at his father for a long moment, then gave a slow, reluctant nod.

“Thank you, Captain,” General Allred said formally, his voice husky. “I know you don’t want to do this, and I honor your willingness to put your planet’s needs ahead of your loyalty to your father.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll leave you to discuss a related issue with my wife. Your father and I will begin planning a number of the operations that will be integral to this whole affair. When you finish with Gloria, see me and we’ll put the question of survival to your team – but we’ll swear them to secrecy first, and we won’t tell them everything yet. If word should leak to the Bactrians about our plans, they’ll make it flat-out impossible for us to succeed.”

“I understand. Thank you, Sir.”

He stood at attention as the General and his father left the room. As they closed the door behind them, Gloria refilled her glass with water and drained half of it. She brushed back a curl of hair from her forehead, her eyes drawn and weary.

Dave took his glass, walked up the table and sat down nearer her. For a moment her face was outlined against the light from a wall fitting behind her. It looked gaunt, almost skull-like, and he suddenly realized how much she’d changed. At the beginning of the war she’d had a well-rounded, roly-poly figure with a face to match. Now she was almost stick-like, her frame showing the enormous strain of three years and more of watching friends and comrades – not to mention her own son and daughter – die all around her. He’d seen the same thing in his father and the rest of Niven’s Regiment, including Tamsin and himself; but since all of them had gone through the process together and they’d all deteriorated at the same rate, it hadn’t really struck him until now how much they’d all been ground down by the war.

He broke the awkward silence. “What did you want to discuss, Ma’am?” His voice was still husky with emotion.

“Oh, forget the formalities! We’re preparing for our last stand. I hardly think it matters any more who has what rank. Death won’t play favorites with us, or go by seniority.”

He couldn’t help laughing. “True enough. All right, Gloria.” He placed subtle emphasis on her name. “What’s up?”

“Thank you… Dave. Do you know how I ended up in my present position?”

“No, I can’t say I do.”

“I was a psychiatrist. I did my basic medical degree here, then went off-planet to specialize. I came back to set up in private practice. In due course I was authorized by Congress to serve as acting, unpaid, voluntary Deputy Minister of Health for mental health issues. When the Bactrians invaded most of the Cabinet was killed in the initial series of strikes. Through a long series of events – not least of which was simply surviving! – I ended up as Minister of Health in President Wexler’s underground Cabinet. In due course I found myself its only surviving Minister. As such, the Council of the Resistance co-opted me as its Chairperson after the President died in captivity.

“That may help you to understand why mental health has been my particular focus for years, both before and during this war. I’m very aware of how we’ve all been mentally and emotionally scarred by this war.” She saw his quick frown and hastened to add, “I’m not saying we’re mentally
unstable
. We’ve had to be stable in order to survive, but stability is different in time of war than in time of peace. We’ve had to abandon anything and everything that got in the way of staying alive. If you think about it, you’ll realize that’s why you and your comrades have survived this long. You’ve learned to put aside every distraction and focus on killing the enemy before he killed you. Those who didn’t learn that lesson are mostly no longer with us.”

Dave said slowly, “I daresay you’re partly right, but luck’s important too. Sometimes it works in your favor, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“You’re right; but even given good luck, those who didn’t adapt very quickly to this new life of war were usually the first to die. Those who’ve survived this long, despite all the Bactrians could do to them, are those who’ve adjusted most completely to its demands.”

He sipped from his glass of water. “All right, I’ll concede that. So?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you how much that’s warped and twisted our thought processes? Let me give you an example from just a few moments ago. You’ve just been offered a chance to live. Instead of jumping at it, you were
upset
by it. You didn’t want to leave your father to die alone. You had to be persuaded that living was more important to our cause than dying.  I understand where you’re coming from, and I truly admire your dedication; but to someone outside this environment, your attitude would be so incomprehensible as to seem deranged. She’d wonder why
anyone
would choose to die when they have a chance to live. Does that illustrate how drastically your outlook on life has been changed by this war? Would you have reacted that way before it broke out?”

“No, I wouldn’t; and yes, I suppose it does show how I’ve changed. I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective.”

“Thank you.” Her shoulders sagged as she relaxed and took a deep breath. “Having said that, I think you’ll understand better what I’m about to ask of you. It was because I’m a psychiatrist that I began our ‘Witness to War’ program almost three years ago. I patterned it after a famous example in history. Did you ever hear of something called the ‘Holocaust’?”