War To The Knife (21 page)

“Second, your primary mission is to get this evidence to Vice-President Johns. Thereafter you’ll make yourself and your detachment available to her. In the event that you’re unable to reach or receive orders from her, I’ve given you sole discretion as to your future conduct. You’re free to continue hostilities with Bactria as best you can; or you can disband your unit and discharge its members from the armed forces of Laredo, giving them an opportunity to make a new life elsewhere. If you can’t arrange for a United Planets inquiry, you’re requested to publicize what Bactria did to Laredo, using this evidence as effectively as possible under the circumstances confronting you. To accomplish all these things you’re authorized to use as you see fit the contents of this suitcase and any other external resources of Laredo that may be available to you.”

Dave swallowed. “That’s a pretty heavy load to put on my shoulders, Sir.”

“It is, but I see no alternative. Do you?”

“I guess not. I’ll do my best, Sir.”

“Good.” He began to replace the trays in the suitcase. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you – but I will anyway – to instruct the other members of your orbital team what to do with this suitcase in the event that you’re incapacitated or killed.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“All right, then.” He closed the suitcase and fastened its latches. “I’ll put this aboard your shuttle, to join you after you take the garrison at Caristo.”

Dave shook his head. “Sir, with your permission I’d rather take it with me. It’ll be no less safe in our hideout near Caristo than it will be here, and that way I won’t be worrying about it all the time. I can have some of our attack team mount guard over it if you wish.”

Allred frowned, then reluctantly nodded. “I daresay you’re right.” He handed over the suitcase. “Two last things. First, we’re entrusting you with two of our nuclear demolition charges.”

Dave’s eyes widened with surprise. “I thought the Bactrians got them when they took the space station, Sir.”

“They were kept there for use against asteroids or space hazards, but when the survivors escaped planetside they brought the five charges with them. We’ve kept that quiet and hidden them ever since. We’re in the process of burying three of them in a remote spot. I’ll give you the location for future reference in case you’re ever able to retrieve them. The last two will be put aboard your shuttle, along with instructions in their use and the necessary codes and keys to activate them. Use one or both to destroy the space station. If you have one left, shove it out of the freighter with a half-hour time setting when you reach the system boundary, then hyper-jump away before it goes off.”

“Will do, Sir.”

“Good. Second, here’s a satellite back-door channel.” He handed him a folded slip of paper. “In the event that you get away, and you need to communicate with any of us who survive on this planet by sending a ship the way Marvin has, tell whoever you send to try a tight-beam link to our comm satellite network at midnight every night, Banka time. Use that channel and our standard codebook. If we’re able to, someone will answer. If we don’t, it’ll probably mean the Resistance has collapsed and we’re all dead.”

“Understood, Sir.”

“In that case, all that remains is for us to wish you success. We’ll see you and the garrison attack team for the last time tonight, to bid you farewell and Godspeed.”

PART TWO

March 30th 2850 GSC

TAPURIA

Jake pulled down the corner of one of the blinds and glanced through the cracked, dirty glass at the street below. An armored car rumbled past, tires crunching over scattered dirt and debris. Its power pack whined and its badly adjusted turret made a grinding noise as it turned slightly from side to side. Its commander looked over the barrel of the vehicle’s plasma cannon as he scanned the street ahead, not bothering to turn his head to examine the half-ruined warehouses lining it. He looked bored in the rays of the setting sun. Jake knew that here at the outer edge of TrafCon’s security zone, nothing ever happened – not with missile batteries, plasma and laser cannon, and security forces within arm’s reach, ready to open fire at the drop of a hat and drop it themselves if they felt like it. No-one in his right mind would start anything here.

Jake let the blind fall as he grinned to himself, thinking,
No-one ever said the Resistance was in its right mind – and the Bactrians have gotten careless about checking just outside the zone. They only worry about what’s inside it. That’s going to hurt them. In just a few hours we’re going to demonstrate that a security zone’s only as good as the people who run it… and sometimes they’re not very good at all.

He turned back to the others. “It’s just another street patrol. Nothing to worry about.”

“Supper, Sir?” Lieutenant Kubicka asked.

“I may as well eat,” he grunted, scanning the selection of ration packs lined up on the table. He reached for one labeled ‘Meat Stew’. “This is easy to digest, even if it isn’t very tasty.”

“It won’t give you gas like the beans and sausage, either, Sir.”

“Yes. It’d be just too much to go into action farting. I bet the Bactrians would complain we’d used poison gas on them!”

Those standing nearby chortled, but their laughter was brittle, strained. Jake knew their minds were on the morning, and what would almost certainly be the last day of life for many of them. He was having the same difficulty himself. The tension was a red-hot wire threaded through his guts, tugging, pulling, burning. Their target was right slap bang in the middle of Banka’s security zone. Getting away after the attack would be very difficult.
What will death be like?
, he found himself wondering for the umpteenth time.
Will it hurt? Will I be able to control myself and die like a man? Or will I scream helplessly, like I’ve seen too many good people do when they were driven beyond self-control by roaring red agony?

He thrust the memories from his mind by turning his thoughts to his son. He knew Dave would be preparing to brief the force about to assault the Caristo garrison, just as he was about to speak to the rest of Niven’s Regiment. Would the boy live through the night’s assault and tomorrow morning’s desperate fight in orbit? Would he escape to start a new life somewhere else?
I’ll probably never know,
Jake thought sadly to himself; then cursed softly and again tried to drive the dark shadows out of his mind. There was too much still to be done.

He sipped coffee as he walked to the store-room against the rear wall and checked his combat gear yet again. His last clean uniform was laid out, complete with underwear and a brand-new pair of socks – a rare treat. His electromagnetic rifle was cleaned and ready, along with a dozen hundred-round chargers of ammunition and two spare power packs. He grinned wryly. The Bactrians actually made a decent infantry weapon, accurate and reliable, with which the entire Resistance was now equipped thanks to plentiful captures and a shortage of ammunition for their original carbines. As for heavy weapons, they hadn’t been able to smuggle them through the security perimeter around Banka, but their shuttle-borne comrades would bring some with them and they’d capture more from the defenders if they needed them. They’d done so often enough in the past, after all.

He checked for the umpteenth time that his earpiece and microphone were securely clipped to his helmet and the encrypted radio on his battle belt was set to the right frequency. His visor displayed all its six modes correctly as he ran through them. The power pack on his belt was fully charged, to provide a day and night of power to his battle tools. Finally he took a miniature Bible from his pack and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

He swallowed the last of his coffee and walked to the door of the storeroom. In the half-wrecked upper-level office space outside, part of its roof missing since the explosion that had destroyed nearby Banka, the troops were also checking their gear.

“All right, everyone, gather round!”

Jake waited as his forty soldiers filed to the front of the room, sitting down on boxes and crates in a rough semi-circle before him. He switched on a portable projection unit and checked its display against the wall, then asked one of the men to hang a white sheet against the partition so it could be seen more clearly. He’d finished by the time the last person sat down.

“I know all of you have been curious during the past couple of weeks,” he began. “You’ve trained to attack targets with a specific layout and configuration, but without knowing what or where they were. You were told that this is a volunteer mission with little chance of survival, but not why it was so important as to be worth your lives. I can only thank you all for accepting the challenge. Tonight I’m going to tell you more about our part in this mission. Strike teams from our other three regiments are waiting in the ruins of Banka just as we are, standing by to attack as soon as we open the way for them. Four more teams of our comrades are preparing to assault distant garrisons tonight. They’ll kill every Bactrian there and take control of their assault shuttles. They’ll arm them, then bring the shuttles here to help us tomorrow.”

The soldiers grinned their approval, exchanging comments in quiet tones so as not to alert any passing Bactrians. Jake waited for silence, then pointed out, “We in this room are the key to this entire operation. We have to succeed if our comrades are to succeed. If we fail, they can’t achieve their objectives – but we won’t fail. In fact, through their laziness and stupidity, the Bactrians have made our job possible. You see, two years before the invasion Laredo invested a lot of money in new traffic control systems. We bought a supercomputer and ground- and aerostat-based planetary radars, and upgraded our space station equipment too. When the Bactrians took over they didn’t see any point in replacing perfectly good equipment; so they kept it, merely adding their own interface to bring it into conformity with their standard operating procedures.”

He grinned ferally. “They made two crucial mistakes. The first was combining spaceborne and airborne traffic control in a single new facility down here, instead of keeping them separate. That’s great for centralized control, but it’s a lot easier for an enemy to disrupt things, because he only has to take out the central node for the entire network to disintegrate. Second, our radar and comm feeds all went to the basement of the old traffic control center. The above-ground portion was severely damaged during the destruction of Banka, but the basement levels, including the computer center, were left intact. When the Bactrians built their new TrafCon they saved a lot of time and money by making it simply an operations center. They left the computer and the radar and comm feeds in the basement at the old center and laid new connections to them, instead of moving them all to the new building.

“They included both buildings in their high-security zone, but their contractors decided to take a short-cut to save time and make a bit of extra profit. Instead of cutting a new secure cable tunnel between the two buildings, they dug a short connecting tunnel to the main service tunnel beneath the street. They then ran their conduit along the roof of that tunnel until it passed the new center, where they dug another connecting tunnel into its basement. Unfortunately for their security – but luckily from our perspective – that service tunnel passes through a four-way intersection with another tunnel halfway between the buildings. The cross-tunnel passes out of the high-security zone with only a heavy gate to bar access to it, and runs beneath the road outside. It even connects to this warehouse to allow tie-ins to city utilities.

“We’re going to use those tunnels to sneak beneath the enemy’s defenses and take over the old traffic control center tomorrow morning. We’ll hold off the Bactrians while our technicians,” and he nodded to several people at the rear of the group, “use emergency consoles in the basement to make some creative adjustments. Some of them worked on this system before the war, so they know exactly what to do. They’ll clear the way for our shuttles to move in on the Satrap’s parade, to kill him and as many enemy troops as they can. While they’re doing that, we’ll cut the links to the new TrafCon to cause as much confusion as possible, then rig the supercomputer for demolition.

“The attack on the arena will trigger a massive knee-jerk response from other Bactrian forces in the city. They’ll rush to rescue their Satrap, but to do that they’ll have to pull defenders from other important targets. That’ll be the cue for our raiding parties to come out of hiding and attack the civil and military headquarters compounds and the central stores depot. They’ll wreck the planetary administration from end to end. Furthermore, while all that’s going down, another team under the command of my son Dave will be taking out the space station and dealing with the warships in orbit before putting all our evidence aboard a waiting freighter whose visit was set up by our Government-in-Exile. It’ll take it to our Vice-President, who’ll use it to demand action against Bactria by the United Planets for its crimes against humanity.”

There was a moment’s awed, shocked silence, then suddenly everyone was on their feet. They didn’t forget the need for relative quiet, but even so, hardened troopers fist-bumped and hugged each other in excitement, their eyes sparkling. Jake let the muted hubbub go on for a few moments before he called for order. “Come on, people! We’ve still got a lot to do. Settle down!”

He waited for the celebrations to subside, then said solemnly, “General Allred has assigned to Niven’s Regiment the most important task in this entire operation – taking over the traffic control network. If the network is operational the Bactrians will detect our shuttles coming in and shoot them down, and be able to co-ordinate the response of their own assault shuttles to our attacks in the city. They’ll also warn their forces in orbit about our attack here, putting them on alert. If we take over the network they can’t do any of those things. More to the point, they’ve slaved all their defenses against airborne attack to the TrafCon supercomputer. If we control it, we can do all sorts of interesting things with their defenses – and we will!