by Peter Nealen
The scouts would have been of only limited help in the Market, or any city for that matter, though. The indig had no cities, which was part of why the humans hadn’t noticed them until after the first landing and the founding of Capitol. They were at their best in the open lands, the forests, plains, and deserts.
The streets doglegged several times on the way in toward the center Family complexes. The roar of the fires was starting to become audible, over the crackle of small arms fire and the thumps of more explosions. The detonations sounded small, like grenades—or pipe bombs, which seemed more likely. The Latecomer rebels had always gotten arms from off-world, but most of their explosives were locally made; they were cheaper that way.
Movement caught his eye, just off to his left as he crossed a gap between two of the Latecomer stores. He flinched, whipping his coilgun around, to find himself aiming at a young woman and her children huddled behind a refuse container. They probably couldn’t see more of him than a dim silhouette, but in the light-enhanced view through his face shield, he could see their eyes widen with fear. The woman held a baby close, while the two older children clung to her.
“Get out of the Market,” he hissed, pointing back the way they’d come. “There are PDF soldiers back there. Go!” She didn’t move, but he couldn’t afford to linger. The Knights were getting farther ahead.
The Knights disappeared around the next corner, leading into the Eseneer Family Complex. A few more strides, and Gaumarus and Diricks rounded the same corner.
For a moment, he thought that this was what Hell must look like.
The bomb that had gone off in the center of the Family complexes must have been huge. Fire was raging in the interior of the prefab stall in front of him, visible through the shattered windows, and through the flames, he could see that the front of the stall was simply gone. They must have driven a truck full of explosives inside the Market and detonated it.
The Knights were fanning out to either side of the burning prefab, their weapons up. The sounds of gunfire were still coming from deeper in, near the center of the Market.
Kassen and his fireteam came out of Aleph Avenue, and Gaumarus pointed, signaling the other corporal to take his men with the left-hand group. He’d follow the right. Kassen gave him a slightly shaky “Okay” sign and moved toward the prefab. Gaumarus pointed Diricks toward the right-hand group.
The prefabs and stalls around the central plaza of the Market were so much burning wreckage. The plaza itself was a smoking crater, littered with debris. It looked like his guess about an exploding truck had been spot on.
Gunfire was spitting from a low structure on the far side of the crater. It took a moment to see that it was the old Mengroedt Family stall, which had been built from the beginning as a bunker. The Mengroedt Family had never gotten along with the other Families, never mind anyone else. It was the most intact of the remaining Family buildings in the center of the Market, and it looked like the rebels had taken full advantage.
At first, Gaumarus couldn’t tell who or what the rebels were shooting at; the plaza just seemed to be a desolation of fire, smoke, and rubble. But he saw what was happening soon enough.
As the Knights and the PDF soldiers moved out into the plaza, the soldiers moving to cover and the Knights advancing across the open ground as if their armor made them invulnerable, there was a moan, almost inaudible, from somewhere in the wreckage ahead. It was coming from where the Pikavet site had been. The light-enhancement in his face shield showed Gaumarus a human figure, burned and disfigured so badly that he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, writhing in pain on the ground. Whether the victim saw the Knights or not, he or she was calling inarticulately for help, and crawling out of the wreckage of the Pikavet storefront.
A shot cracked, and dust and ash puffed into the air less than a meter from the crawling figure. The pitiful creature that had been a human being didn’t even seem to notice, but moaned and dragged itself forward.
The next shot blew half the wounded person’s head off.
The gunfire was abruptly answered by a storm of brilliant powergun discharges, and the plaza reverberated with the thunder. It was dark enough that the pulses of hypervelocity plasma didn’t have a hue; they were simply sun-white, dazzling flashes. Gaumarus’s face shield darkened to protect his eyes, but he still had the pulsating afterimages of the powergun bolts impressed on his retinas when he blinked.
More powergun fire blasted at the Mengroedt bunker. It was well aimed, too; none of the bolts were spending their fury against the thick stone and cement walls. They were punching through windows and doors, blasting at any rebel shooters who were unwise enough to stay close to the openings. The gunfire from the bunker died down to nothing in an instant.
The Knights continued their advance, on-line, across the plaza. Gaumarus looked over at the rest of his team. With the gunfire having ceased, they couldn’t very well continue their careful leapfrog advance, not when the Knights were simply walking forward through the fire and the smoke, as if there was nothing to worry about. He signaled that they would follow, wondering if it was really a good idea. The Knights could take a direct rifle shot and probably survive, in that armor. The PDF flak vests were less reliable.
But he didn’t want to be the one who held back, no matter how good his tactics were. That wouldn’t look good, and would probably get him a dressing-down, once it came down from higher command. Lieutenant Yuusen and Sergeant Verlot might not think he’d done wrong, but the likes of Colonel Vermuelen certainly wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice a corporal who hesitated in the face of the enemy when in the sight of the Knights.
They picked their way across the devastated plaza. Rubble, guttering fires, and sharper bits of smashed vehicles and other machinery presented obstacles that were harder for the relatively unarmored PDF troops to get around than the Knights, who could kick a twisted, sharp-edged bit of metal or composite without worrying about getting cut or gashed. Still, they moved quickly enough to keep up with the Knights, and arrived at the door to the Mengroedt bunker only a few paces behind the lead Knights.
The armored Knights were stacked on either side of the blasted hole of the door, their powerguns held ready, and they drove inside behind their weapons as the PDF soldiers approached. There were two blinding flashes visible through the windows, and the harsh, resounding cracks of the powergun shots blew dust away from the windows. The concussion inside that small space must have been brutal.
A harsh, mechanical voice resounded from inside. It sounded like a command in Oxidanese, though it was still too muffled for Gaumarus to be able to make out the words. A moment later, a red-armored Knight appeared in the doorway. He motioned for the PDF soldiers to come inside.
Gaumarus looked to either side, half expecting Sergeant Verlot to take over. But he was the only noncom in sight. He didn’t know where Verlot was, and Kassen was out of sight, too. That left him.
His face shield brightened the image as he stepped inside the door. The Knights loomed in the dark, their powerguns lowered casually, showing no lights at all. He once again wondered at the tech crammed into their helmets. His own light enhancement was struggling to show him a grainy image of the inside of the bunker, even with the sullen firelight coming in the windows.
The air stank of smoke, dust, ozone, and charred flesh. Several bodies were sprawled on the rubble-strewn floor, contorted unnaturally in death, weapons still near their grasping hands. He was momentarily glad, even as the stink in the air made his gorge rise, that he couldn’t see much detail in the dark.
He could hear whimpering and crying. It took a moment’s looking, but he finally picked out the huddled form at the feet of two of the Knights, rocking back and forth a little, making the mewling noises of a frightened animal.
One of those Knights turned his helmeted head, and Gaumarus could see just the faintest glint of the outside glow reflected in the vision slit. It was hard to see in the dark, but he was pretty sure the Knight was looking
at him.
“Who are you?” the mechanical voice asked in Oxidanese. Gaumarus suppressed a flinch at the sound. There was something unnerving about these men and their facelessness, only made worse by the stark tones of their helmets’ translators.
“I am Corporal Pell, 121st Motor Infantry,” he said, momentarily proud that he hadn’t stammered.
“Corporal Pell,” the Knight said after a moment’s delay. “Since you are the closest Provenian leader, I am turning this prisoner over to you. It is not our place to take him ourselves.” Even through the rote, dead-flat tones of the translator, there was a strange note of courtesy in the man’s words. It seemed odd, after the attitudes the Knights had displayed in the barracks.
One of the other Knights said something in their own language, the man’s own voice coming through. He didn’t sound happy about something, presumably deferring to a mere Provenian Corporal. But the Knight looming above the prisoner responded shortly in the same language, and the other man subsided. It was then that Gaumarus recognized the voice; the man who was turning the prisoner over to him was the scarred Knight from the barracks.
He stepped closer, joining the two Knights above the prisoner. Even with his light-enhancement turned all the way up, he couldn’t see much except that the man was young, with dark hair. Slinging his coilgun to his back, he reached down and seized the man by the upper arm. The rebel tried to flinch away, but Gaumarus clamped his hand around the young man’s bicep and wrenched him to his feet, his own fears and misgivings suddenly drowned by fury at what he’d already seen. Yes, the rebel was clearly scared out of his wits. But Gaumarus had seen that horribly burned man or woman gunned down like an animal, and now all he felt was the need to kill this Latecomer with his bare hands.
He wouldn’t; he knew that Verlot would probably end him personally if he showed that kind of loss of discipline. But that didn’t mean he had to be gentle with this murderous scum. Twisting the rebel’s arm behind his back, he turned him toward the door. “Are there any more?” he asked the Knights.
“That was the only one to have survived,” the scarred Knight replied.
Gaumarus frog-marched the rebel out into the wreckage of the plaza and forced him to his knees. “Stay there, and look at what you and your comrades did, Latecomer,” he snarled.
More of the PDF troops were spreading out around the Market. There didn’t seem to be any resistance left; the only pocket of rebels appeared to have been within the Mengroedt bunker.
A group of silhouettes loomed out of the flickering fire-glow ahead, and they were only a few paces away before Gaumarus recognized Lieutenant Yuusen, Sergeant Verlot, and several of the lieutenant’s command fireteam.
“A prisoner?” Yuusen asked. “Good work, Corporal Pell.”
Gaumarus was momentarily tempted to go ahead and take credit for the capture, but shame at the thought forced him to say, “The Knights captured him, sir. They turned him over to us.”
Yuusen only nodded absently as he stepped closer and looked down at the cringing rebel. Out of the shadows, the young man looked skinny and pale. He couldn’t be much older than seventeen. “You have a lot to answer for, Latecomer,” Yuusen said.
It was strange; Yuusen was not a member of any of the Families; his own family had come to Provenia two generations after the first landing. To the Families, he was a Latecomer. But the Yuusens had become retainers to the Vael Family, and to them, only the unconnected were the Latecomers.
Only the rebels, vagrants, and terrorists were the Latecomers.
“Please,” the young man whimpered. His Oxidanese was accented; he sounded like he came from Gdan, ten light-years distant. “I didn’t want this. None of us did.”
Yuusen spat. “I don’t believe you, Latecomer,” he said. “Not when you are kneeling in the ashes of the people you killed.”
“No, it wasn’t us,” the youngster wailed. “We didn’t want to do this, but we were afraid, afraid of them.”
“Of course you were,” Verlot said sarcastically. “It’s always someone else’s fault. The Devil made you do it.”
“No, please,” the young man repeated, looking from Yuusen to Verlot desperately. “They’re crazy. They’re not part of the revolution, not the real revolution. We thought they were, but they’re insane.” He pointed at the crater with a shaking finger. “One of them drove that truck.”
“As if you lot haven’t blown up trucks before,” Verlot said.
“No, you don’t understand,” the boy said. “He was still in the cab when he detonated it.”
Rubble crunched under an armored boot beside Gaumarus, and he turned to see one of the Knights at his shoulder. He suppressed a flinch; he hadn’t been aware of the armored form until just then.
“Suicide bombers are not unknown,” the Knight said. Gaumarus couldn’t tell from the translator’s synthetic voice which one of the Knights it was.
“They are here,” Yuusen said thoughtfully. “The Latecomers have done some heinous things, but they have never stooped that low before.”
“I tell you, they’re insane,” the prisoner said. “They only talk about oceans of blood and a New Day. We just want a world where immigrants can stand on equal terms with the Families. They want something else, and they want to burn the planet down to get it.”
“You want power you didn’t earn,” Verlot spat. “You want those who have worked and fought and sweated to build this world to hand over the reins of power to you just because you breathe the same air, and you’re willing to murder anyone in the way to get it.”
“When did these people appear among you?” the Knight asked the prisoner.
The young rebel flinched at the sound of the Knight’s synthesized voice. “A few months ago,” he said after a moment. “They have been planning this for a long time.”
“It is possible that another off-world group has infiltrated your rebels,” the Knight said to Yuusen. “Though there is too little information available to say which one. There are certainly enough cults and revolutionaries running around the galaxy.”
But Yuusen was watching their prisoner. “You say they’ve been planning this for a long time,” he said. “What did they hope to gain by destroying the Altgeld Market?”
The frightened young man shook his head. “The Market wasn’t the target,” he said. “This was only the opening round.”
As if on cue, an alert icon flashed in Gaumarus’s face shield, and his comm burbled the PDF alert tone for the second time in as many hours.
He didn’t get a chance to check it. Yuusen had quickly pulled up the alert on his own comm. When he spoke, his voice was slightly shaken.
“Ten more attacks across Family holdings, all over the continent,” he said. “And a paramilitary force just attacked and penetrated into the primary PDF Headquarters in Capitol.”
4
The Provenian Planetary Defense Force Headquarters building was a massive, steel-and-glass U-shape, fronted by a broad, lush parade ground. The PDF flag, with a sharp-pointed octagon representing the eight original Families, on a field of black and green, slashed with a gold stripe, flew above the combined banners of the Families across the head of the grounds. The entire compound was surrounded by a doubled, electrified fence and guarded by hardened bunkers equipped with heavy coilguns.
But once past that perimeter, there was very little in the way of security within the headquarters building itself. There were armed PDF police, but they had little more than sidearms. And the bunkers on the outside perimeter had not been designed to turn their weapons inward.
No fewer than three suicide truck bombs had charged the front gate. The first had been disabled by heavy coilgun fire while still nearly fifty meters short. The driver, mortally wounded, had detonated the truck.
The second had rammed through the shockwave and cloud of dust and debris from the first, taking advantage of the shock to get close to the bunkers protecting the gate. When it blew up within the gate, it took the bunkers and t
he guard detachment with it.
The third labored through the crater and over the wreckage of the second, to roar across the parade ground and slam into the main doors of the headquarters building.
That one didn’t explode. But armed rebels, having dismounted from more trucks that pulled up behind the wrecked and burning hulks of the first two trucks, ran in behind it, gunning down anyone who tried to get to the truck, or even run away from it. Two PDF policemen attempted to fight and were nearly cut in half by bursts of automatic gunfire.
The rebels were carrying the older chemical-propellant firearms, mostly PDF surplus that had been stolen from warehouses, but mixed in with a number of newer, off-world designs. They were every bit as powerful as the infantry coilguns, while being somewhat more reliable and notably not requiring the heavy powerpacks.
It took an alarmingly short time for the rebels to reach the main command and control center in the heart of the building. It was locked, but not hardened; after all, no one had ever expected the indig or the dirt-poor Latecomer rebels to get that far. A quickly-assembled water charge folded the steel door in half and blew it six meters inside the command and control center, killing two PDF officers as it went.
The rebels stormed inside. They did not spray the room down with indiscriminate gunfire, but went systematically across, killing everyone with aimed gunshots. None of the PDF personnel inside the command and control center were armed. Only when everyone in the C&C room was dead did they get to their real work.
It took some technical work to get the main deep space transmitter antennas reoriented. Then a prerecorded message, that would have been gibberish to any Oxidanese speaker, was uploaded and transmitted toward the outer system, with all the transmission power at the Provenian PDF’s disposal.
