War To The Knife (7 page)

“I’ve never understood why Bactria invaded you in the first place,” Marvin confessed.

Gloria snorted. “The last three Satraps of Bactria ran their economy into the ground with grandiose public works projects. Taxes had trebled in half a century, and business and commerce were hurting. To jump-start an economic recovery the new Satrap decided to found a colony, quote, ‘for the greater glory of the Bactrian people’, unquote – and to get his people’s minds off their troubles at home and focused on something outside. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the political playbook.”

Jake added, “Sergeant-Major Garnati told me once that they wanted a colony planet arable enough to be self-supporting, with good mineral resources. They planned to use convicts as a labor force – they’ve got a lot, everyone who’s classified as a political dissident plus the usual criminals. They couldn’t afford the startup costs to colonize a virgin planet, so they decided it’d be cheaper to invade us and take over all the facilities we’d already installed, then use our population as slave labor to supplement their convicts. They figured we were too small and weak to resist.”

Marvin grimaced. “You sure proved them wrong! It’s terribly sad how many you lost, though. I saw the ruins of your former capital. I never understood how the crew of your dispatch ship could maneuver so recklessly as to cause that.”

“They didn’t.” General Allred’s voice was grim. “We destroyed over half their initial landing force during the first few weeks of fighting. They hadn’t expected that sort of resistance, especially from a small reservist army like ours, and they got mad. Their Commanding General gave me an ultimatum: ‘Surrender at once, or see your capital and everyone in it destroyed’ – that’s an exact quote from his message. By then we’d seen what they were doing to those they captured, civilian as well as military, so of course I refused. They’d captured our only dispatch ship the week after the invasion when it came back here, not knowing what was going on. It was a very old, slow ship, and quite small, but it was all they needed. They took it out, turned it around and brought it back on a collision course with the planet, then abandoned ship, leaving its original crew locked in one of its compartments. It entered atmosphere at one-tenth of light speed directly above Banka.”

Marvin’s eyes were wide with horror. “They claimed the ship’s crew accidentally dived into the planet while trying to escape!”

“Yes, they did, and the rest of the settled galaxy bought their story, but we know better. We have their General’s hand-signed message, and recorded their signals about it, and interrogated some of their officers we took prisoner. All that’s among the evidence we want to get off-planet. They destroyed Banka deliberately.”

Jake spoke very quietly, voice dark with remembered pain. “The ship was mostly hollow, of course, not solid like an asteroid, but it still massed fifty thousand tons. It exploded above the city. The blast and energy release flattened Banka and everything around it. A quarter of a million people died, half our planetary population. My wife was among them, along with Timmy and Janet, our two younger children – Dave’s brother and sister.”

Gloria looked as if she wanted to spit. “After Banka they stopped referring to us as ‘the enemy’ or ‘Laredan forces’. Instead we became ‘rebels’, because they claimed the Laredo government no longer existed and their Military Governor was therefore the only legitimate authority here. Lately they’ve taken to calling us ‘terrorists’ as well. Needless to say, we reject both labels, but there are those in the interplanetary community who’ll always buy the ‘official’ version of events. That’s yet another reason why we want so badly to get our evidence to the United Planets, to prove our case that we’re still a legitimate national armed force resisting an illegal invasion.”

The General added bitterly, “The Bactrians also stopped accepting individual and unit surrenders after Banka. Instead they handed over captured officers and senior NCO’s to their Security Service for interrogation under torture, and shot everyone else. The SS did the same to its prisoners when they’d wrung them dry. That’s why we no longer allow ourselves to be taken alive if we can help it. We also don’t accept Bactrian surrenders any more, although we don’t take prisoners for interrogation under torture. We’ve kept at least some standards of decency.”

There was a long silence. Marvin tried to eat more of his meal, but his mouth had gone dry and refused to co-operate. At last he laid down his fork and drank some water.

“I noticed when I landed that a large part of Banka’s ruins have been cleared,” he observed. “There are prefabricated buildings going up.”

Jake nodded. “They’re building their new capital on the ruins of our old one. They’ve rounded up over a hundred thousand of our citizens so far and interned them in labor camps to clear the site. An awful lot of our people have died in the process – they’re brutally treated and not fed enough. As each section is cleared the Bactrians lay in new services and put up prefabs to accommodate their own people and administrative functions. They’ve put up a few permanent structures too. They’ve just completed a Royal Palace for their Satrap if he ever decides to visit.”

“Are the destruction of Banka and the ‘no surrender’ order what motivated you to go on fighting?”

“That’s just the start. The Bactrians have made it clear they regard everyone on Laredo as sub-human. We have no value or dignity in their eyes except as cheap, disposable labor. We refuse to live like that. Emiliano Zapata said before the Space Age, ‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees’. When you know death’s inevitable, and your only choice is between being slowly worked and starved to death as a slave or dying quickly and cleanly in battle, it makes resistance the only logical option.”

“That’s about the size of it,” the General agreed. “There’s another aspect. More than three out of five of our soldiers became casualties during the period between the invasion and the destruction of Banka. After that, when we knew we couldn’t win using conventional tactics and they proved we couldn’t surrender by shooting those who did, we went underground to continue the fight as guerrillas. Over the past three years more than half the survivors of our armed forces have been killed. Most of us have lost our families. Less than one in ten of my troops are left now. We’ve killed for each other; we’ve killed alongside each other. Far too often we’ve had to give our comrades the final gift of a quick, pain-free death when there was no other way out. That makes us closer than brothers and sisters, closer even than lovers in some ways. We know that sooner or later we’re all going to die too; but we’ll kill as many Bactrians as we can before then, and take more with us when we go.”

Gloria added, “My father was a retired professor of history. Shortly after the invasion he quoted Winston Churchill: ‘You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves’. He was killed in Banka a few days after reminding us of that.”

Jake said grimly, “Before the war Dave and Tamsin were planning on getting married. They gave up that idea when they realized that they no longer have a future to plan for. Sooner or later the Bactrians will kill them, together or separately. I wish they’d had the chance for a peaceful life together. I think they’d have made great partners and great parents, and I hold the Bactrians responsible for the grandchildren I’ll no longer get from them.”

Marvin stared at him for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t think I truly understood until now how…
driven
you all are,” he said very quietly. “It… it almost makes me feel ashamed. I’m here as a messenger, just doing a liaison job to establish my reputation as a private investigator and security consultant and earn money to expand my business. I’m much less committed to your cause than you are.”

Gloria grinned at him. “I have news for you. While you’re on Laredo you’re every bit as committed as we are, whether you like it or not. The Bactrians will kill you right along with us if they get half a chance.”

“Gee, thanks
so
much for reminding me of that!” They all laughed.

As they left the mess hall, General Allred signaled to Jake to hang back. He said quietly to him, “That parade the Bactrians are planning – did the Sergeant-Major know anything more?”

“No. He said he hadn’t heard anything about it at all until his new boss arrived. He’s apparently in a panic over how unready the garrison is to participate.”

“If they’re going to pull a lot of their troops out of garrisons to attend it, we may be able to take advantage of the situation. It’s a good thing we heard about it now, rather than later in the month, or we might not have had enough time to arrange a nasty surprise for them. Let’s try to find out more, and see whether it offers us any opportunities.”

March 3rd 2850 GSC

MATOPO HILLS

“There’s that noise again,” Tamsin said, puzzled. They listened to the faint tremor of sound. “It sounds a bit like the high-pitched whine of a stinger flying around a room, but there are none of them in these parts.”

“Are we sure all the Bactrians left after they blew up the base?” Dave asked.

“So Captain Tredegar said. He might have been wrong, though.”

“I guess – oh, shit!
Freeze!”

She did as he commanded, both of them sitting dead still on the rocks inside the entrance to the transport cave. Beyond the bushes and loosely draped camouflage nets that hid them, a small flying ball suspended beneath two counter-rotating rotors appeared from behind a rock higher up the hill. It drifted down towards them, the whine from its electric power pack growing louder, and passed over the trees at the base of the hill before turning into the gully that led to the cave. It hovered nearby for a few moments, its sensor turret scanning in all directions, glinting in the mid-morning sunshine, then moved slowly away. There was no increase in speed or any other sign that it might have detected them.

Dave waited, holding his breath, until it was out of sight. He released the pressure in his lungs in an explosion of relief.
“Whew!
I thought we were goners for sure! Good thing it didn’t come close enough for its sensors to see us through the camo netting.”

“I damn nearly wet my trousers,” Tamsin admitted shakily. “Where did that come from?”

“Only one place it could have come from – the enemy,” he pointed out grimly. “That’s one of their standard small-unit hoversats. It only has an endurance of a couple of hours and it’s not very fast, so it must have been launched from somewhere nearby.”

“The main entrance to the base, you mean?”

“There was nothing and no-one nearby when we scanned it last night with our sensors during our approach,” he reminded her, frowning, “and from what Captain Tredegar said there’s no way they could be using the base themselves – they blew it up.”

“Then another enemy patrol must have arrived last night after we did. It’s the only possible explanation.”

“Yeah, and that means we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. We can’t get in through the tunnel – it’s completely blocked by the explosion Captain Tredegar set off – and we can’t leave this cave while we might be seen by that thing. We’re just going to have to wait out the day in here, then try to sneak out tonight on foot to reconnoiter the area.”

She clutched his hand in alarm. “Remember, those things have night sensors too!”

“Sure they do, but we have a few tricks of our own. I’ll be careful, I promise. Let’s go warn the others.”

~ ~ ~

As the sun sank beneath the horizon, Dave finished adjusting his equipment and turned to the two who were coming with him. Swiftly they double-checked one another, making sure that all metal items were covered or secured so they wouldn’t clink against each other, and that the thermally neutral battledress, ski masks, gloves and boots covered as much of their bodies as possible.

“Good enough,” he said softly when they’d finished. “They shouldn’t see us coming, even if one of those hoversats is prowling around. To be even more certain, we’re going to climb straight up the hillside for a couple of hundred meters.  Every time we saw that hoversat today it was a hundred meters up the hillside or lower. If we get above it, its sensor turret won’t be able to look down on us. We’ll move around the hill above its patrol altitude and see what we can find.”

“Got it, Sir,” Sergeant Kane assured him cheerfully as he collapsed the parabolic microphone he was holding and fastened the now tube-like device onto his pack.

“What do we do if we’re spotted, Sir?” Corporal Hansen asked.

“We’ll split up and make it as hard for them to chase us as possible. Don’t come back here under any circumstances – lead them somewhere else. Don’t let them take you alive, whatever you do.” He transferred his gaze to the others. “If we’re not back by zero-four-hundred, you’re to leave in the airvans and get as far away as you can before dawn. Laager up under camouflage netting during the day, then head for base to warn the General that we won’t be coming back.”

Tamsin looked rebellious, but he shook his head in silent warning as he looked firmly at her. She opened her mouth to speak, then sighed as her shoulders slumped. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted in a desolate tone. “I just hate the thought of having to leave you behind.”

“Not half as much as I hate it!” he assured her fervently, drawing shaky laughter from the others. “We’ll do our best to make it back; but remember, the General can’t afford to lose any more people than he absolutely has to. We’ve suffered enough casualties in recent months to be really hurting for trained soldiers. Let’s not make things worse than they already are!” He picked up his helmet with its attached night vision visor. “All right, people. As soon as it’s full dark we’ll move out.”

~ ~ ~

It took them more than two hours to make their way slowly and carefully around the mountainside, stepping cautiously from cover to cover, watching where they put their feet. Their multi-sensor night vision visors helped them to avoid most of the creatures of the evening, except for those that flew into them blindly. They batted them away as silently as possible.