There was a long pause. “I have presented the evidence before the court,” the Prosecutor concluded. “I have proved that they deliberately set out to launch an insurrection with the intention of overthrowing the government and replacing it with one more to their liking. They murdered tens of thousands of people directly and saw fit to risk the lives of thousand more. They killed half the Council and seriously injured the President himself. They are guilty.”
“The accursed may make a final statement in their own defence, if they wish,” the usher said. “If not, the judges will issue their verdict now.”
“I so wish,” Daniel said, quickly. He drew himself up as much as he could in the chains. “This court is a farce. This trial is a joke. We believed that the purpose of the President in hiring outside mercenaries” – and here he shot a nasty look at me – “was to create an army that could be used to disarm the political parties and then impose a new order on the planet. We knew how close the President was to the rich and wealthy upper classes who ground the people into dirt beneath their feet; we knew what he had in mind.
“We knew that the Progressive Party had been suborned by the Liberty Party. We knew where the Conservatives and Farmers stood. We did what we could to prevent the planet from falling under a dictatorship. If we are to die today, then we will have died for what we believe in. This trial is a farce and, in the future, we will be hailed as martyrs.”
The judges withdrew from the room and went into seclusion. I leaned over to Frida and murmured a question in her ear. “What happens now?”
“The judges announce their decision and it gets enacted,” Frida said. “There’s no appeal for High Treason, so if they’re found guilty they’ll be hanged today.”
I gave her a sharp look. “Aren’t you moving a little fast?”
“I don’t think I’m moving fast enough,” Frida admitted. “The public mood wants them hanged yesterday, not tomorrow, and I have to bow to the public mood. The public is always right about such things. If they’re proven guilty, we have to deal with them as quickly as possible, just to allow the wounds they caused to heal. If there was reasonable doubt, I’d slow the proceedings, but if there’s not…”
She turned back to look towards the prisoners and I watched her, wondering what was going through her mind. Her scar seemed to be showing more now, as if she was reluctant to try to hide or minimise it. It had come from her time with the resistance, as far as I knew, yet she’d never tried to trade in on it – until now. I wished, not for the first time, that I could read minds. I would have given anything to know what she was thinking.
The door opened and the Judges returned. The usher called the court to order – and glared at a politician who had his feet up on a chair until he got the message – and then summoned the spokesman to address the court. An old and venerable looking Judge stood up to speak.
“We have considered the matter most carefully,” he said. His back might have been weak, but his voice was very firm. “We find that there were no grounds that might have justified an armed insurrection against the government. Their actions were not only without precedence; they were also without due cause, or due respect for constitutional law. They chose to commit High Treason; the burden of the responsibility for the following actions and disasters falls upon them.
“There is little point in discussing the other issues,” he continued. “Each of us will render a written judgement later, but the basic conclusion is simple; the accused committed high treason, a crime for which there is only one punishment. It is our judgement that they are guilty and they are to be hung this afternoon before the public.”
The courtroom seemed to burst into noise. One side was cheering loudly, while the handful of relatives of the accused started to cry, leaving the accused to look stunned and terrified. I could have sworn that one of them wet themselves. The usher gestured to the bailiffs, who grabbed hold of the prisoners and escorted them out of the courtroom, followed by most of the crowd. I found myself swept up in the motion and pushed down and out of the building, heading right towards the gallows. Everything happened so quickly; the convicts were noosed and then placed before the public. The crowd stared at them, anger and hatred written on their faces…and then the hatches dropped and the men died.
I had wondered if the nooses would be configured to cause slow death, rather than a quick sharp end, but they had been merciful, if mercy was the right word. Silence fell as the horror of the situation sank in; I’d seen horror before, but this was different. The crowd had been baying for blood. The bodies hung in front of the crowd, moving slightly as they twitched their final spasms, and then it was all over. The Communist leadership was dead.
“And let that be an end to it,” I muttered, as I pulled myself out of the crowd and found Suki. “It’s time to go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
There will always be those who join up for the thrill of being a soldier. Some of them will be the best soldiers in the unit. Others will be screwballs who need to be thrown out before they infect the rest of the unit. The trick lies in telling the difference between them.
-Army Manual, Heinlein
A week later, I stood on the parade ground, watching as the latest group of recruits went through their basic training. The Sergeants were shouting at them as they tried to carry out fifty press-ups and only managed a smaller amount, demanding that they kept trying until they did all fifty. A handful of fitness freaks did all fifty easily and only stopped smiling when they were ordered to do fifty more. It was astonishing just how many recruits we had after the Communist Insurrection, even if they were all just interested in the girls. If nothing else, they would have to work to get their uniforms and they wouldn’t be going off-base until they qualified as cadets.
“We’re going to have to expand the training facilities,” Peter said, from behind me. I nodded as a Sergeant screamed instructions to another bunch of recruits, demanding that they stopped hiding behind their mothers and started pretending to be something like soldiers. There was always a lot of work to do with new recruits, but half of this intake had been practicing being soldiers before they came to the camp, and naturally they’d picked up bad habits. Their salutes were far from perfect. “How many of the locals do you think we can use as trainers?”
I scowled. There’s an old joke that the life of a Drill Sergeant is easy and all a candidate needs is a good pair of lungs. It’s nothing like that simple. They have to be capable of keeping raw recruits in order and, somehow, prevent them from injuring themselves without appearing to care what happens to the recruits. The recruits are not meant to like their teachers; they’re just meant to learn from them. A drill sergeant needs to know when to stop, as well; a sadist or an idiot could do untold damage to new recruits. The UN hadn’t cared, of course; some of the graduated soldiers had been treated like dirt and had been effectively useless. One of them had been raped by his – male – instructor. If I’d had that bastard in my command, he’d have been torn apart by wild dogs.
“Russell thinks that there are seven or eight possible candidates,” I said, finally. It wasn't something easy to decide quickly, yet that was exactly what we needed to do. There might well be others after they had a few years of soldiering under their belts, but at the moment…we would have to rely on relative newcomers. They might have had combat experience in New Copenhagen or Pitea – I wouldn’t have accepted them if they had no experience at all – but would they know enough to translate it into terms the new recruits could understand?
It got worse. The longest-serving local had around seven months in the army. They’d all grown up very fast after the fighting had begun – those who had survived the experience – but they would still think of themselves as recruits. There would be a temptation to go easy on the newcomers – or, alternatively, to bully the newcomers – and that had to be resisted. Men whose memories had dimmed would be more likely to understand the reason for the hard-ass discipline and the seemingly-pointless labours, and inflict th
em on the recruits without qualms. I’d never been a Drill Sergeant myself, but I knew the score. The job required a man with perfect control and few of the locals had had the time to build that control.
“That’s bad,” Peter said, dryly. “Is there any point in recruiting the ex-UNPF personnel here?”
I shook my head. I’d considered it, but most of the ones I’d want were up in the mountains or on the farms, while those who had remained in the cities were effectively useless, although that hadn’t stopped the Communists from killing several hundred of them. Even if they’d all been qualified to help, they wouldn’t have had the experience working with Russell and the rest of the Drill Sergeants, nor would they have had an understanding of how we work. The standard UNPF introductions to military life bore about as much resemblance to real military life as Heinlein did to Earth. The recruits were coddled, even those who should have been kicked out on general principles.
“Leave them alone,” I ordered finally. It wouldn’t be easy, but we’d manage somehow. “Have you got the bill of lading for the ship?”
“Muna is sorting it out now,” Peter said, accepting the change in subject. We were going to have to send the Julius Caesar back to Botany to pick up some additional supplies, along with a handful of other Legionnaires who might be useful here. “I think that Fleet will want to have a quick look at her before she leaves.”
“Muna or the ship?” I asked, without humour. Muna had been in the UNPF before it mutinied and became Fleet. She rarely spoke about her time on the starships, but it must have been something dramatic. Every time John Walker’s name was mentioned, she winced. “No, stupid question; they’ll want to inspect the ship.”
“Of course,” Peter said, dryly. “I don’t know why they want to bother, but if they insist…”
“Then we have no choice, but to comply,” I agreed. It struck me as rather pointless – Svergie had nothing worth the effort of smuggling off-planet, even if it had laws against it, which it didn’t – and I suspected that Captain Price-Jones was taking the opportunity to harass us a little. He’d heard the Communist broadcasts claiming to be an independent state and even though he hadn’t intervened, he couldn’t have been very happy about them, or the allegations concerning Fleet’s involvement with Svergie. “Let me know when they want to inspect the starship and then let them get on with it.”
“Yes, sir,” Peter said, spying Ed in the distance. “I think Ed wants a word with you.”
Ed saluted as he walked up to us and I returned the salute. “We’re about to start the first heavy exercise now,” he said, as we walked towards the testing ground. A hundred vehicles and three hundred men had deployed into a large and deserted area of the countryside for their first heavy exercise. It wasn't quite live-fire – we had laser systems to count hits without risking harm to anyone – but people had been known to be injured or killed on such training grounds. “Do you wish to observe?”
I shook my head. “I can observe through the UAV units if I have to watch,” I said, seriously. I would have loved to watch, but I just didn’t have the time. Ed was luckier than he knew; he got to run a Company and a training exercise, while I was trapped between paperwork and Fleet’s demands. “Let me know if there’s something I should keep a particular eye on.”
“I will, and I’ll even write you a report afterwards,” Ed teased. He knew what I was feeling, all right. “Have a good time here, sir.”
My earpiece buzzed before I could frame a suitably insulting reply. “Sir, this is dispatch,” a voice said. “A Fleet shuttle is inbound and the officer onboard insists on seeing you personally.”
“Understood,” I said. I had a strong suspicion I already knew who was on that ship, but better safe than sorry. “Show him into my office when he arrives.”
Twenty minutes later, Commander (Fleet Intelligence) Daniel Webster was shown into my office. I didn’t waste time pretending to be busy; I stood up, shook his hand and invited him to sit on the sofa. He accepted a cup of local coffee – no UN-brand for him, clearly – and we chatted for five minutes about nothing. I knew, just from that alone, that it was going to be bad.
“The Captain was quite annoyed about the Communist broadcasts,” he explained, once he had run out of small talk. “I take it that there’s no need to worry that the Protocols were infringed?”
“No,” I said, firmly. Daniel – he had the same first name as Daniel Singh, I realised suddenly – looked doubtful. “The Communists lost the election, nor did they manage to use force of arms to overturn the results. The Fleet Protocols were not infringed as it was a purely local matter.”
“It is questionable how…local this entire affair is with you and your men mixed up in the middle of it,” Daniel commented, dryly. “The requests for recognition from the Communist Government, the…ah People’s Republic of Pitea were quite worrying. If it had turned into an interstellar incident, certain people would not have been best pleased.”
I understood the underlying message and nodded. “It shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, playing the guilty schoolboy. “It won’t happen again.”
“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Daniel said. “Captain Price-Jones is unaware that we allowed you to use the ship’s orbital imaging systems to monitor the situation on the ground. If he were to discover the truth – and it doesn’t sit well with anyone on the ship who does know – the results would not be pleasant. At the very least, you’d be cut off from all further intelligence from us; at worst, you’d be ordered off-planet in such a way that it couldn’t be countermanded easily. The entire situation might well have been exposed to scrutiny.”
“It won’t happen again,” I repeated, angrily this time. I hadn’t expected the Communists to beg for help from Fleet, although Captain Price-Jones had refused to get involved. “Like I said, it was a purely local affair.”
“It may not stay that way,” Daniel said, as he calmed down a little. “The William Tell detected several unexplained wormhole signatures over the last three weeks. It’s possible that someone is smuggling stuff down onto the planet and that, of course, is a major concern for Fleet.”
“Or it could be just someone setting up base in the asteroids,” I countered. The only official arrival at Svergie had been a freighter acting as a pathfinder for an interstellar shipping line, wondering if it was worth the effort of adding Svergie to their list of destinations. I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected that they had decided against it and vanished back into more profitable shipping lanes. “Do you have any proof that someone managed an orbital insertion without being detected?”
“No,” Daniel said, “but that proves nothing. Fleet’s…sensors are good, but not that good.”
“True,” I agreed. I knew far less about space combat and tactics than I did about ground warfare, but I knew enough to understand his point. Given sufficient time and patience, a stealth shuttle could have landed when the William Tell was in the wrong position to observe it and catch them in the act. A landing pod would have been even easier, although the new arrival wouldn’t have been able to leave the planet afterwards. “We detected nothing, of course.”
“It could be just jumping at shadows,” Daniel agreed. “It’s not as if Svergie is a closed system where no one might want to come under any circumstances. It’s even possible that the wormholes belonged to freighters performing navigational checks before heading out again to their next destination. It’s just…worrying, and with the reports of the Freedom League taking an interest in this general area…”
I snorted. ‘This general area’ consisted of hundreds of light years and a couple of dozen inhabited planets. It was possible that the Freedom League might have their hand in events somewhere, but I doubted they’d work with the Communists. The Freedom League had been born in revolt against the United Nations and preferred to support democratic systems against the UN, or Fleet. They hadn’t stopped operating just because the UN had been broken and Fleet had taken its place.
/> “It could be nothing,” Daniel conceded. “However, there are more practical concerns on Svergie itself. What do you make of the local situation?”
I hesitated, and then decided to be truthful. “It’s unstable,” I said. “We beat the Communists hard enough to make anyone else think twice about starting a second insurrection, but we’re going to have to work to rebuild the damage and that it going to take time and resources the planet doesn’t have. It doesn’t help that the vast majority of the Council and the Acting President are Progressive, which leaves the other parties feeling left out and suspicious. The farmers will have to produce extra food over the coming year to feed the starving, which isn’t going to make the political situation any better. Overall…if we can last the next year or two we should have a fairly stable planet.”
Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law) Page 22
