The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  If they ever do, she thought, grimly. The Slaughterhouse is gone.

  She straightened to attention as Bonkowski took the lead. “Pathfinders reporting for duty, sir.”

  “Good.” Major-General Anderson looked harassed, for someone who’d just won one of the most shattering victories in modern history. The marine corps had met its first real test in decades and won. “We have another mission for you.”

  Rachel nodded, shortly. She assumed the team hadn’t been summoned to discuss the weather. There might be some grumbling about shore leave, or lack thereof, but they knew their duty. She’d rest when she was dead. Besides, unless they were wanted back on the planet, there’d be some time to rest before they reached their next destination. She didn’t bother to speculate. She’d get the details shortly.

  “We’re going to be sending the prisoners back in two days, as you know,” Anderson said, adjusting the holographic display. “What you don’t know is that you’re going to be going back with them.”

  “Cool,” Phelps said.

  “Quite,” Anderson said, as Bonkowski shot Phelps a sharp look. “Your orders are to insert yourself into their society and be ready to assist, if - when - the invasion fleet arrives. I can’t give you any more precise instructions, because I don’t know what you’ll find when you get there, but ideally you’d avoid anything that might reveal your presence before it’s too late.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bonkowski said.

  Rachel had a different thought. “Do you expect to insert us with the POWs?”

  “If you believe that’s the best way to do it, then yes,” Anderson said. “However, I would be very surprised if they didn’t take the POWs into custody the moment they returned home.”

  “And getting to the planet without getting detected might be impossible,” Bonkowski said, thoughtfully. “Even if they don’t know what they did here, they’re bound to have newer and better sensor nets covering their homeworld.”

  Rachel nodded. She’d handled some of the interrogations herself and monitored the others. The POWs hadn’t known much, but the ones who’d been born on Onge - as they called their world - had been a wealth of information. They’d told Rachel how their society worked, how everyone was listed in a database ... a database most of them considered to be holy writ. The weak point was obvious. If they could get onto the database, they could move around freely. Anyone who questioned them would be told they had authorisation ...

  So all we have to do is get on the database, she thought. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d sneaked into an enemy-controlled system, either by forging the right documents or simply taking someone’s place. It shouldn’t be too hard.

  “We’ll hitch a ride on the freighter,” Bonkowski said, firmly. “And jump ship before it gets boarded and searched.”

  “You have complete freedom,” Anderson said. “Just make sure you’re in position to be useful when the time comes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bonkowski said. “We won’t let you down.”

  Rachel smiled as they saluted, then left the compartment and headed to their private section to hash the operation out properly. The chance to devise their own operational plan, to call on whatever stores and personnel they needed to make it work ... heaven. Assuming, of course, they survived. She was too experienced to believe that everything would go perfectly. Midway through the operation, they might find themselves having to improvise ... her imagination provided too many possibilities. She’d faced religious nuts who’d believed that anyone held prisoner had been defiled and could no longer be trusted. They’d gunned down their own people rather than take them back.

  The corprats won’t do that, she thought. If nothing else, they’ll need to know what happened to their fleet.

  She frowned. It was one hell of a gamble, although - from what she’d heard - standard naval doctrine insisted that a fleet should be accompanied by a picket ship just to keep an eye on things from a safe distance. There was a good chance the bad guys already knew what had happened. They had to know there was no point in killing the former POWs. And ... if nothing else, the returned POWs should be one hell of a distraction. It would keep them looking in the wrong direction.

  “So, we have our orders,” Bonkowski said. He was, technically, the team lead. They were all experienced enough to have few qualms about putting the plan together as a group, then following orders when they went into the fire. They’d all proved themselves long ago. “Get to the planet, blend in and wait.”

  “Sounds very simplistic,” Phelps offered. “Should we try to seduce the head honcho while we’re at it?”

  “You’re not allowed to watch those dumb spy comedies anymore,” Bonkowski said, curtly. “Go get a sex life instead.”

  “They’re not comedies,” Phelps insisted. “They’re what some overpaid hack thinks a spy genuinely does for a living.”

  “And, according to those hacks, we’re all ultra-violent drooling morons who chant like football fans when we’re on the battlefield,” Rachel pointed out. “I don’t think their opinions can be taken seriously.”

  “And they’re probably dead,” Perkins offered. “There’s room for some real stories now.”

  Phelps snorted. “They did a story about an army garrison on some shithole world once,” he said. “It was very realistic. The grunts spent most of their time standing guard and sitting about doing nothing, while cramming ration bars into their mouths. It was so boring it never got so much as a second episode.”

  “You can write something better, when you’re older,” Bonkowski said. He keyed the holographic projector. “The official files say the planet has nothing more than a handful of outdated Orbital Weapons Platforms. Anyone want to bet that’s true?”

  “Not a hope in hell,” Rachel said. She was used to gambling, but she disliked the idea of being on the wrong side of a sucker bet. “I thought we’d taken the enemy admiral prisoner.”

  “We did,” Bonkowski confirmed. “And he’s been spilling his guts. Problem is, he doesn’t know very much about the planetary defences. Lots of shit was compartmentalised, apparently.”

  “Wise of them,” Phelps commented, sardonically.

  Bonkowski nodded. “Frankly, they’re either trying to mislead us deliberately or they know so little they’re misleading us by accident. There’s a pair of orbital elevators and suchlike, and a whole bunch of stations in orbit, but none of the POWs can say what they are. Not with any great certainty, at least. The chances are good some of them are industrial nodes and others are weapons platforms, but they don’t know which is which. We might not know until the weapons platforms start shooting.”

  “There’ll probably be less debris in orbit too,” Rachel commented. “An orbital drop is unlikely to work.”

  “We’ll be dead before we know we’re under attack,” Perkins agreed. “But we can probably get onto the orbital stations, with a little effort.”

  “Yes.” Bonkowski tapped the display, bringing up an image of the captured freighter. “We can’t insert ourselves into the prisoner compartments. The ship itself will be flown by the POWs, which means that joining the crew isn’t a possibility either. We’ll be riding on the outside until the ship reaches its destination, then jumping off and making our way to the enemy stations. At that point, we’ll have to wing it.”

  Rachel nodded. Getting into the station wouldn’t be difficult. The Empire had standardised everything centuries ago, including airlocks. They could open an airlock from the outside and get into the station, although - unless they were very careful - there was a good chance they’d set off the alarms. The corprats probably wouldn’t seal their airlocks. They wouldn’t want to take the risk of trapping someone outside when they were running short of air.

  Accidents happen, particularly when someone makes them happen, she thought. She had plenty of experience in arranging them herself. And the station is probably large enough for us to sneak around without being detected.

  She frowned. “Do we have copie
s of the enemy personnel files?”

  “Not enough,” Bonkowski said. “We have copies of the files for this world, but not for Onge itself. And we’d better get used to calling it Onge too.”

  Rachel nodded. “Best case, we replace a bunch of people long enough to make their lives miserable,” she said. “Worst case, we hide in the ducts until the time comes and then make their lives miserable.”

  “Worst case, we get caught and shot,” Phelps pointed out. “Anyone got any famous last words?”

  Perkins smiled. “I told you I was ill!”

  “Back to work,” Bonkowski said. “We have an operation to plan.”

  “Sir,” Phelps said.

  ***

  It had been years, Captain Kerri Stumbaugh thought sourly, since she’d set foot on an Imperial Navy battlecruiser. The design had always annoyed her, speaking more to the Imperial Navy’s desire for big and spectacular starships rather than workhorses that could actually do the work. They didn’t even have the firepower of the battleships, although - she acknowledged - this ship had battered her squadron badly before she’d been forced to surrender. Cruisers could do everything battlecruisers could do and cheaper, much cheaper. One could buy and operate ten cruisers for the cost of one battlecruiser. The corps certainly had.

  Although the navy’s finances were a mess before the end finally came, she reminded herself, dryly. Between corrupt officers and a shitty procurement system, they probably spent more on screwdrivers than they did on this ship.

  She walked onto the bridge and looked around with interest. The Onge Navy didn’t seem to have made many improvements, although what they had done had been disconcertingly good. The battlecruiser’s sensors were better than she’d thought, the missiles top-of-the-range ... it was lucky, she supposed, that she’d had an ace up her sleeve. Their first real engagement between capital ships could easily have gone the other way. The Onge had trained their crews very well. She made a mental note to learn from the battle. It could have ended very badly indeed.

  “Captain.” Chief Engineer George Daniels stood from behind a battered console. He looked as if he’d been working constantly for the past few days, without so much as a shower or bed. “Or is it Commodore here? I can never tell.”

  “Either.” Kerri shrugged. She’d met Imperial Navy officers who’d throw a fit if they weren’t addressed by their proper rank, but she’d never been that concerned. She was in the corps, not the navy. Besides, she wasn’t on her ship. “Can we get her to move?”

  “Barely.” Daniels shrugged as he wiped his hands on his uniform trousers. “There’s not that much damage to her hull, Captain, but they damaged the datacores beyond easy repair. I’d say take her to a shipyard, if we had the time. We’ve done a lot of jury-rigged crap to get her moving again, but she won’t have anything like the flexibility she should have. The rest of the squadron is not that much better off.”

  “I see.” Kerri frowned. The battlecruiser was little more than a sitting duck if her systems couldn’t interact. Her hull was tough, but not that tough. “How much can you do with automation?”

  “Very little,” Daniels said. He removed a datapad from his belt and held it out to her. “The datanet is shot to hell. There’s a bunch of systems that survived more or less intact, but can’t talk to each other. My crews can rig up a wireless system to make it work, but a couple of solid hits will knock it down again. Like I said, she needs a shipyard.”

  “Which isn’t likely to happen, not any longer,” Kerri said. The corps had small shipyards and mobile repair ships, but they weren’t big enough to handle a battlecruiser. The giant shipyards that had supplied the Imperial Navy had been dying for years, before the crunch finally came. “Can she make a voyage through phase space?”

  “Yes, as long as you’re careful,” Daniels said. “But I wouldn’t try anything risky with her unless I wanted to die.”

  “Got it.” Kerri smiled. She’d had an idea. It was crazy, the sort of idea that would get someone marched in front of a court martial in the old days, but it might just work. “Get as much done as possible, then ask for volunteers from your crew to sail her.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Daniels said. He sounded as if he didn’t believe his ears. “If you take her into harm’s way ... I don’t think she’ll come back.”

  “I know,” Kerri said. She reached out and touched the battered command chair. “As long as she does what we want, she’ll be fine.”

  Chapter Five

  Imagine three people: a lumberjack, a carpenter and a builder. They may see themselves as independent, as separate people, but in truth they are part of a chain that leads from relative poverty to wealth.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

  Julia awoke, sharply, as the hatch hissed open.

  She’d been asleep ... she wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep. Her eyes felt leaden, as if she’d stayed awake for days - helped by mil-grade coffee and stimulants - and only just fallen asleep when the hatch opened. She wondered, as she blinked tiredness from her eyes, if she’d been drugged. It would be almost laughably easy. They controlled her entire environment. Doping the water or ration bars - or even piping gas into the compartment - would be simple. She forced herself to sit up and look at the hatch. A lone man was standing there.

  Julia scowled. He wore a suit of featureless armour, covering him from head to toe. It was impossible to see a face behind the helm, impossible to know who was intruding on her privacy. Julia felt her expression harden, knowing - even though she didn’t know how she knew - that she was being scrutinised. The armour was intimidating and the grim certainty she could never point out the man in a crowd was worse ... Corporate Security used the same trick, she’d been told. It was impossible to punish a man if you didn’t know who he was.

  “On your feet,” the marine ordered. The voice was completely atonal. “Come with me.”

  Julia stood on wobbly legs. “Shouldn’t I be cuffed and shackled for this?”

  The marine showed no visible reaction. “Do you want to be?”

  “No,” Julia said, after a moment. They didn’t need to bother. She was helpless, lost and completely alone. “There’s no point.”

  The marine beckoned her to follow as he turned and walked through the hatch. Julia sighed and did as she was told, passing from one metal compartment to another. The air smelled of too many people in too close a proximity, but there was no one in view save for her and her captor. The skin on the back of her neck prickled as they walked on. They were being watched by unseen eyes. Julia gritted her teeth, feeling the sensation grow stronger. She felt as if she was walking to her execution.

  They said I could go home, she thought, as they passed through another pair of airlocks. They said ...

  The gravity field shifted, slightly. She stumbled, nearly falling to the deck. The marine put out a hand to steady her, Julia leaned on his arm gratefully. The armour felt cold and hard. Admiral Agate had said something about it, once ... she couldn’t remember. Not, she supposed, that it mattered. She wasn’t a trained marine, let alone a superhero from an action flick. There was no hope of kneeing her captor in the groin and fleeing. She literally had nowhere to go.

  Another airlock opened. A gust of air washed across her nostrils. She grimaced. The air smelled of oil and sweat, a stench that nagged at her mind. The marine didn’t slow as they walked down a long tube and through yet another airlock. The deck started to thrum beneath her feet. It dawned on her, too late, that they’d moved from starship to starship. The marines had docked another ship to theirs and marched her over ...

  A young man, wearing a simple shipsuit, waited for them. “Commissioner Onge?”

  “Ganister-Onge,” Julia corrected, waspishly. She wasn’t about to allow her family name to be mangled. The intermingling of bloodlines was vitally important to ensure the family remained healthy, escaping the curse of inbreeding and hereditary illness. “What can I do for you?”
<
br />   “I’ll take her from here,” the young man said. “Thank you.”

  The marine nodded, turned and withdrew. Julia glanced back in time to see him pass through an airlock and, presumably, back onto the mothership. The hatch closed ... she wondered, idly, if the marine had looked back at her before it was too late. Not that it mattered, she supposed. They’d never see each other again.

  “We have prepared a cabin for you,” the young man said. “If you’ll come with me ...?”

  Julia gave him a sharp look. “Who’s we?”

  “Those of us who want to go home,” the young man said. “If you’ll come with me ...”

  Julia hesitated, then allowed him to escort her through a warren of metal corridors. The ship - one of the troop transports, she guessed - was heaving with people. They passed a dozen compartments crammed to bursting with former naval and army personnel, men and women trying desperately to find somewhere comfortable to sit and wait for departure. The transport hadn’t even left orbit and there was already friction, she noted; she shuddered at the thought of what conditions would be like in the next few days. Even if they flew at their best possible speed, it would be at least a week before they reached Onge. The decks might turn into warzones. It was not going to be a pleasant flight.

  They could at least have offered us security, she thought, numbly. It would've made the trip so much more bearable.

  A hatch opened. She peered into a tiny compartment, barely large enough for a single adult ... she couldn’t help thinking it had been intended for a child. The bunk was tiny, the washroom barely large enough to accommodate her ... she wasn’t even sure she could shut the door. She silently prayed she didn’t have to share with anyone. There simply wasn’t enough room.