Come the Revolution - eARC

by Frank Chadwick

  “They are fanatics,” Katranjiev said. “Do you think losses really matter to them?”

  Prayzaat looked at him with an expression of contempt. I hardly knew how to answer that myself. I didn’t want to get into an argument right now, but misreading the enemy that stupidly could get a lot of people killed.

  “It’s easier to be a fanatic when people aren’t dying all around you,” I said. “You want the rest of the logistics report or not?”

  All three Humans nodded. Prayzaat seemed lost in his own thoughts.

  “Okay, ammo. Our troops on the line blew through about thirty-five thousand flechettes.”

  “Thirty-five thousand?” Katranjiev exclaimed. “And they only killed a hundred of the bastards? That’s insane!”

  Zdravkova leaned forward and opened her mouth to fire back but I held my left hand up to stop her.

  “Katranjiev, if you keep interrupting with editorial comments, this report is going to take all day. And between the dead, the wounded we recovered, and our estimates of wounded who returned to their own lines or were carried away, I’d estimate over three hundred hostile casualties. That’s about one casualty for every hundred flechettes fired. Given the level of training and experience of our people, that is insanely good shooting. Killer, you tell your kids I said so.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Privately, I figured the high casualty rate was more due to stupid militia tactics than to excellent Human shooting, but better to let our folks feel good about what they did. From what I’d heard from the fighters I talked to, the Varoki just charged, firing their weapons as they came, and then bunched up in the streets once they encountered resistance. Hard not to hit something when your target is a big milling mass of bodies.

  “So, back to the hard numbers. We had a total magazine capacity for all our weapons of about sixty thousand flechettes, when every magazine we own is loaded and charged. That means we burned through over half of our ready ammunition in about an hour, maybe a little less. We’ve got a bunch more flechettes fabricated but it takes time to recover the magazines, reload them, and then recharge them.

  “We also suffered some attrition in our magazine supply. We still could use some improvement in how conscientious the troops are about recovering and taking care of their spent mags, but some attrition is inevitable. Here’s why that’s important. Once we distribute the captured arms, we’re going to about triple the number of RAGs we have, but those guys must be having magazine problems too. Most of their fighters only had a magazine or two on them, so I’m guessing we’re going to add at most fifteen thousand flechettes to our RAG magazine capacity and less than that to the civilian weapons.”

  “Get to the point, Naradnyo,” Katranjiev said, but Zdravkova frowned.

  “I see where you’re going, Sasha,” she said. “If we ran through over half of our ready ammunition before, if we triple the number of RAGs but only increase the magazine capacity by a half…I’m too punchy to do the math.”

  “Okay, here it is in simple terms,” I said. “We had about fifty RAGs with a total of about three hundred magazines, or six magazines per system, and we burned through over three per system. We add a hundred RAGs to the mix and about a hundred fifty more magazines, and we end up with only three magazines per system instead of six. If each one blows through the ammunition just as fast next time, we’re bone dry after about three quarters of an hour.”

  We sat there in silence for a couple seconds, each of us thinking that over.

  “But you said they had a similar problem,” Katranjiev finally said.

  “They seem to, at least for now, but the Army could solve it for them in pretty short order if they decided to. Now don’t get me wrong. A hundred more RAGs is great news, not bad. It just doesn’t put us on Easy Street, that’s all.

  “I think ammo is our biggest and most pressing issue for now, so I did that first. Here’s an overview on where we stand on the other things.

  “Rations. The protein’s going to get even more boring before long, but we’ve got two buildings full of hydroponic tanks and grow racks giving us a good veggie yield, and we haven’t had as much of a refugee influx as we figured, probably because of how thick the CEM positions are around us. I’m a little concerned one of our hydroponic buildings is so close to the east perimeter, and we’re scouting a site closer to the headquarters cluster. But we’ve got food to last probably four weeks and can stretch it to six if we have to. After that we’re in trouble, but I doubt this mess is going to go on that long.”

  “What,” Katranjiev said, “you still think your precious Cottohazz is going to—”

  “Shut up and let me finish,” I said, cutting him off. He opened his mouth to answer but then glanced at the others and thought better of it. He leaned back and frowned—sulked was more like it.

  “We have a big potential fire problem, as I’m sure everyone noticed. I don’t think we can count on Municipal Fire and Rescue to save us next time, so we’re sinking some shafts down to the storm sewers and will pump waste water up to fight the next fires. We’re going to test the water as well. If it’s not too bad we may be able to process it to potability, supplement our own supply, and even if it’s not quite drinkable we may be able to arrange some showers.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Zdravkova said.

  “Yes,” Katranjiev said, “it’s starting to smell so bad in the headquarters building I can hardly stand going in.”

  I wondered what he did there. For that matter, what did Stal do all day? I knew what Zdravkova and I did. Something to think about later.

  “Power,” I said. “We need some sunlight. If we get it, and today looks pretty good in that respect so far, we’ll at least keep our heads above water. We’ve been supplementing the LENR generators with some juice still left in auto and truck battery packs, which is a dwindling supply and not a very efficient use of Greenwald’s crew’s time, but we really need the wattage, especially with all those magazines to charge right now and the autodocs going full tilt.

  “Med looks okay, aside from all those Varoki. We have a couple autodocs which might pack it in, but we’re okay on the rest and have a good supply of key trauma drugs. Only thing we can’t fabricate is nanites, so that’s forcing med to rely on more invasive treatments. The autodocs have the programming they need to do it. We could use another couple surgical techs, but we’re squeaking by.

  “Facilities and Infrastructure: next big priority is getting some below-ground shelters for our people. We still have some technical issues to iron out, but I want to get going on the initial excavations this afternoon, and we’ll work the rest out as we go. We’ll be using some of the PLX for that, so I want to have the fire fighting contingency in place first.

  “By the way, some of my infrastructure guys working as litter bearers got in a dispute with a couple fighters from the north strongpoint.”

  “I heard about that,” Zdravkova said.

  “Yeah, well my guys were in the wrong and yours were right, so extend my apologies.”

  Her eyebrows ticked up a little in surprise, but she nodded.

  The buzzer on Prayzaat’s desk sounded.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “A runner just came for commander Zdravkova,” the Varoki patrolman serving as door guard said through the speaker. “He says the militia members are displaying a medical truce panel on the north side of the Avenue of Peace.”

  Zdravkova grinned and picked up her RAG from beside her chair. “You know what that means? It means our bulletins are getting out there and somebody is not just listening; they’re acting.”

  Prayzaat looked at me.

  “What else do you have, Mr. Naradnyo?” he said.

  “End of report.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

  Billy Conklin took one last look around to make sure everyone was clear and then closed the circuit on the detonator. I felt the explosion in the
ground under me as much as heard it, saw the force of it blow the narrow shaft Conklin’s crew had dug wider, throw earth and pieces of rubble high in the air and then rain it down on the surrounding street and buildings—rain a little farther than we’d anticipated. At least there was no fireball this time. We’d figured out that the best way to use the stuff was to just pour it into the hole and make sure it had lots of air to breathe.

  After the chunks had all hit ground but as the dust cloud still drifted over the crater, a dozen of us trotted forward to look at the results of our handiwork.

  “Who’s got a hand torch?” I said. I couldn’t see down the hole but I could hear running water. Someone produced a torch and shined it down the hole, which was now a couple meters across. It took a few seconds for the dust to settle enough to see, but then we made out the surface of flowing water in the storm sewer, sparkling in the light of the overhead noon sun. The work gang cheered and I smiled.

  “Nice job, guys,” I said. “Drinks are on me, next bar we find.”

  “Kalabratov, let’s get that pump set up,” Conklin called to one of the workers, the one I remembered as the loudmouth from the stretcher detail the night before.

  “Billy, you might want to let the water flow carry away as much of the dirt and small rubble as you can before you actually start pumping,” I said. “We knocked a lot of shit down into there.”

  “Sure,” he said. “don’t want to burn out our pump motor. Might have to pry Greenwald off that Bulgarian heifer to get it fixed.”

  I let it pass. No law against talking behind people’s backs, especially since Zdravkova was a member of the Executive Troika. Came with the territory, even if the talk wasn’t true, and I didn’t figure it was. Most of us were too busy to find the time or surplus energy for the horizontal bop lately.

  But I had a feeling the crack was aimed at me, not them, Conklin thinking he’d find a nerve in me and jab it. I didn’t like that, which was all the more reason to let it pass. When I didn’t say anything for a while, Conklin stole a look at me out of the corner of his eye and crossed his arms.

  “You know, Kalabratov’s a hell of a metalworker. Kind of a waste having him on work details up close to the fighting.”

  “He scared?” I said.

  “Hell, no! He’s a veteran himself, did a hitch with the Bulgarian Brigade in the WEU Army back before he emigrated.”

  I wasn’t aware that the Bulgarian Brigade, or any of the Westeuro military, had seen a lot of heavy action in the last decade or so, but I kept that to myself as well.

  “He’s tough enough,” Billy continued. “I just meant, what if he gets shot? Skilled worker and all.”

  “Bending metal is more important than saving lives?” I asked.

  “Hey, that’s not what I said. My guys don’t mind humping stretchers for our own kind, but they aren’t going to risk their necks for some leatherheads already trying to kill us.”

  “If this Kalabratov guy of yours ever saw any real action with the regulars, he knows all wounded get taken care of, no matter which side they’re on.”

  “Oh, we’ll take care of them,” Billy said, and he nodded a couple times for emphasis. “This is war, Naradnyo, not some rumble between two rival gangs. You fight a war to win, and you don’t get any points for playing by the rules. You ask most of my guys, they’d say line those prisoners up and kill every fuckin’ one of them. Show those bastards who’s got more sand in their guts.”

  His voice had risen while he said all that and I heard muttered agreements from the three men standing nearest us. I looked at them, didn’t recognize any of them, but saw Kalabratov put down the portable pump and walk over to the group. A few other men and women from the construction team standing around the crater were listening, watching what would happen, but not part of anything one way or another. So here was my first mini-mutiny.

  “This isn’t the regular army,” I said, “where any NCO worth his stripes would just tell you to shut up and get back to work, and he’d kick your ass from here to Sunday if you didn’t.”

  “Even with one arm in a sling?” one of the men said with a sneer.

  “Yup,” I answered and looked him in the eye. His expression got hard for a moment, then he blinked and looked away.

  “But like I said, this isn’t the regular army. It’s a real army, just sort of unconventional. So I’ll explain why we do what we do, but understand up front, we’re not going to have a debate here. You want to know why, and I’ll tell you, and then you can agree or not. But all our survival depends on everyone working together, so like it or not, you will do what we tell you to, or you’ll stop breathing.

  “Anybody not understand that?”

  I looked around the small circle of faces. They didn’t look happy, but I don’t think they knew quite what to say.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. There are over six million Varoki living in Sakkatto City. The Army has moved units into the city as well. We don’t know how many soldiers, but several thousand at least. We have about three hundred fighters here with no artillery, heavy support weapons, or armored vehicles. If the Army commits its mech infantry, those guys will at least have ballistic body armor and will be backed up by light armored vehicles and maybe some gunsleds.” I plucked at one of their shirts. “That’s about as good a body armor as any of us have.

  “In other words, we cannot win a protracted stand-up fight. Do you understand that? We. Can. Not. The only hope we have of survival is convincing people outside Sakkatto that not only do we need rescuing, but we deserve it.

  “Execute a bunch of Varoki who have surrendered to us, you not only convince the ones still alive to fight harder, you convince everyone out there that we’re just a bunch of bloodthirsty thugs, and if we all get killed, good riddance.

  “Conklin here says you fight a war to win. Of course you do. But you don’t fight it to win bragging rights, show how tough you are. You fight it to win a good peace for your people, and if that means saving wounded Varoki soldiers, then by God you will hump your asses and risk your lives to do so.

  “And that is the end of the discussion. Now I think enough of the dirt we dumped into the storm sewer has washed away, so let’s drop that hose down there and see how the pump works. Then we can start blowing holes in the ground for shelters.”

  * * *

  For the next two days there were no more massed assaults. I guess we cured them of that. We did start getting sniping against our perimeter posts, and we took some casualties before our people got serious about staying under cover. That damned Army recon hoverplat kept hanging around e-Kruaan-Arc, making those slow ovals and looking us over, but there wasn’t much we could do about that.

  Aurora kept sending out daily bulletins, mostly interviews with folks in the district, trying to put as unique and individual a face on the Humans as possible. She was good at her job, I gave her that. I wasn’t sure what the other part of her agenda was, the one which involved a bio-recorder, but my money was on an exclusive long-form feed special when this was all over, assuming we survived. I didn’t see anything of my father for a while after that first meeting. I was okay with that.

  I still felt as if Billy Conklin and his construction crew were a source of simmering dissatisfaction, but you have to put up with a certain amount of bitching when you’re in charge of something. Katranjiev even noticed the bad looks Conklin and Kalabratov gave me behind my back and told me, which surprised me, seeing as how I wasn’t exactly his number one boy. Maybe he just wanted to lecture me about his management style, which was to come down hard on anyone who’s attitude “wasn’t right.” I thanked him and went about my business.

  Katranjiev seemed to think people’s attitude was really important and maybe he was right but I didn’t think so. I want people to do their jobs. If they have a shitty attitude about me but do a good job, I can live that. Besides, if you keep people busy and they do good work, sooner or later their attitude usually comes around.

  I sure kep
t Conklin and his crew busy, mostly digging shelters. He got a laser torch working and used it to cut up a couple metal cargo containers, used the steel and composite components as the braces for the overhead cover, shored them up with lengths of scavenged steel pipe about fifteen centimeters in diameter, and even got some lights and ventilation blowers installed. The “Big Attack,” which is what we called it for lack of a better term, had come in during the predawn hours of the fifth day after the coup, Seventeen of Eight-Month Waning. By nightfall on Nineteen of Eight-Month Waning, Conklin had enough shelters to hold five hundred people, with more under construction. If we were lucky, all that effort would end up wasted. I didn’t think we were that lucky, though.

  Sookagrad mostly shut down at night those days, since electricity was in short supply and not much got diverted to lighting except at the clinic and other work areas. Most folks not working stayed indoors and turned in early, so I didn’t see much foot traffic on my way from the building site back to the metal storage unit we’d rigged up as my office and headquarters—another job executed quickly and efficiently by Conklin and his crew. Maybe his plan for getting even with me was to never give me something to complain about.

  I had some things to think about on my walk. I’d talked to Doc Mahajan about my postdeath experience two years ago and how it had included contact with dead people, two of whom it turned out weren’t really dead. She didn’t say anything at first but then told me about the physiology of near-death experiences: oxygen starvation of the brain producing random firing in the optic nerves—the sensation of light and increasing movement along a narrowing tunnel as the peripheral nerves shut down, then a big shot of endorphins to send you on your way happy, along with a lot of other brain chemicals that produce hallucinations and false memories.

  “So you’re saying it’s all bunk?” I asked.

  “No,” she answered, “I am simply telling you what we know happens, chemically, inside the brain near the final moments of life. I have no insights to offer regarding transcendental truth.”