I knew I was repeating myself – and Ed knew the standing orders in any case – but my head just kept pounding. “Of course,” Ed said. He tilted his head slightly. “And I would really recommend that you got some more sleep, sir. You’re dropping off on your feet.”
The sense of betrayal flickered through me again, but I knew that Ed meant well. “I’ll get back to the ward,” I promised, firmly. It would be an easy promise to keep. Lights were starting to flicker painfully at the back of my head. “You just organise the flight tomorrow morning.”
“I’d better summon Peter to help you get back to bed,” Ed said, firmly. He keyed his earpiece and issued orders before I could object. A moment later, Peter came in through the door and stood to attention. “Please help the Captain-General back to bed and keep him there until tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Peter said, sternly. I read his thoughts in his expression and knew that he had been worried about me since I vanished. Somehow, I doubted that I’d be leaving anywhere unescorted for a long time. Just now, I could see their point. I’d been in a position where I could be drained of everything I knew about Fleet’s covert involvement and only dumb luck had saved me. “Come on, sir; we’ll get you back to bed.”
Sergeants have been helping officers since time out of mind; often, they’d helped young officers learn how to command and when to stand back and let the subordinates get on with it. Peter helped me back to the ward and assisted the nurse in getting me back to bed, before taking a chair and sitting down firmly at the end of the bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
Chapter Thirty-Six
When an enemy prisoner of war is recovered, it is vitally important to debrief them as quickly as possible to discover what they told the enemy – if anything. It must be made clear that there is no shame in talking to the enemy – everyone breaks, eventually – but the full scale of the betrayal must also be shared.
-Army Manual, Heinlein
The spaceport looked different to my eyes as the helicopter made one final circuit of the base before coming in to land, but for a moment I couldn’t have said what was different about it. It struck me a moment later; for the first time since we’d arrived, the spaceport looked like a fully-functioning spaceport, with aircraft and even shuttles on the ground being serviced and launched back into the air. It might well have looked that way for quite some time, but I hadn’t seen it from the air since the last time I’d used a helicopter.
“Welcome back, sir,” Robert said, as I stepped out of the helicopter and accepted his salute. A small number of senior officers had gathered to welcome me back to the base, even though I hadn’t been gone for more than a few days. I like to think that they were happy to see me, but it might just have been relief over what would have happened if the enemy had killed me. “We have a situation report for you if you wish to see it.”
“Yes, please,” I said, accepting the final salutes. Everyone seemed to have found an excuse to come salute me and, even though I felt a hell of a lot better, I still wanted to get back to work rather than glad-handing everyone. I’m a soldier, not a politician. “What is the security position here?”
“We went through everyone’s records again after…well, your aide decided to kidnap you,” Robert said. “We isolated a handful of possible suspects, but we don’t actually have any evidence that we can use to press charges against them, just suspicions. We could put them through standard interrogation training if you want…”
I shook my head. “Just keep an eye on them,” I ordered. I wanted to interrogate them until they hurt, but we already had enough problems with the local government. I hadn’t heard anything about the parents of the molested girl – damned if I could remember her name now; it had been swept away by the pressure of events – but that was probably lurking in the shadows until it saw a chance to spring. “If they’re people we can rotate to reasonably safe duties, do so. If not…”
It would have been so easy to send them on suicide missions. “If not, just keep an eye on them,” I concluded. “We’ll deal with them if they become a threat.”
“Yes, sir,” Robert said, as we stepped into the command bunker. I was pleased to see that there was an added element of security surrounding the central command post, using men drawn from the Legion. We couldn’t trust the locals for that, even though they were handling their own security in the various outposts and garrisons we had scattered throughout the countryside and around the cities. There, of course, they had to worry about enemy forces attacking them. “The current situation is as follows…”
I listened as he outlined the remarkable shortage of enemy activity. It puzzled me; over the last two months, the farmers had launched entire waves of hit and run attacks on our positions, trying to bleed us into submission. Snipers, IEDs and other nasty tricks had all wrecked havoc on our forces, but now there was hardly anything. A handful of shots hardly constituted a problem. It was quiet – suspiciously quiet.
“Keep everyone on alert,” I ordered, finally. There was little else we could do for the moment. With the new regiments, once they were worked up and ready for action, we could take the offensive into the mountains, but that was still months off. For the moment, all we could do was wait and see if the enemy showed themselves. “And the prisoners from Jock’s raid?”
“We had them shipped here and interrogated them, as per standing orders,” Robert confirmed. “They apparently know nothing about anything – of course – and more specifically they know almost nothing about the Freedom League. They thought that the woman was just one of the mining representatives from the Mountain Men.”
“Mountain Women, in her case, I would have thought,” Peter injected.
I scowled at him and looked back at Robert. “They were really there just to add additional men to the guard force,” Robert continued. “The interrogators believe that they don’t actually know much else; hell, they didn’t even know who they were guarding.”
“A likely story,” Peter growled. “Are we sure they’re telling the truth?”
“The interrogators were not gentle,” Robert said, darkly. “They knocked the poor bastards about and used drugs and lie detectors unmercifully. They didn’t have any drug immunisations or even any counter-interrogation training. If they’re lying, they’re better at it that some of the people from Heinlein, the ones who were given full-scale training. Russell checked their biofeedback rhythms and swears blind that they weren’t using any such training.”
I held up my hand before the argument could get out of hand. “Never mind,” I said, firmly. “If they don’t have anything else to tell us, make them the same offer as the other farmer POWs. Tell them they can serve us for a short period on the new farms, or they can rot in the detention camps until the war comes to an end, one way or the other.”
“Yes, sir,” Robert said.
Peter looked mutinous. “Don’t you feel,” he asked, “that some harsher punishment is in order? They assisted in kidnapping you…”
“We’re not going to make a big deal out of it,” I said, firmly. “The people who planned and carried out the kidnapping weren't captured. We’re not going to give the grunts, the people who didn’t know what was really going on, a harder time than we have to give them. Let them see that we’re not going to treat it as a life-threatening matter, because it’s not. I survived.”
I grinned at them. “I hope you warned all of the departmental heads,” I added, with a mischievous smile. “It’s inspection time.”
I spent the next three hours going through everything on the spaceport, from the training period with Russell and the new recruits – many of which were happy to see me returned safe and well – to the crews servicing the tanks, helicopters and space shuttles. I inspected everything, handing out awards and punishments as required, just to ensure that everything was still working. The laser batteries providing protection against incoming mortar rounds were working perfectly – a relief; a single high explosive round in the wron
g place would be devastating – and the crews were quite happy to run through a drill with me watching over their shoulders. The simulated incoming rounds were all downed well short of their targets. The simulations, in fact, were far worse than anything we had faced so far, even at Fort Galloway.
“Excellent work,” I said, finally. They all breathed sighs of relief, for which I couldn’t blame them. They’d probably heard that I was looking for faults to punish, but standards hadn’t slipped on the laser batteries. “Carry on, men.”
An hour after that, Commander Daniel Webster finally arrived. I’d called him down from the William Tell as soon as I’d returned to the spaceport, but I’d known that it would probably take some time before he could actually report to me. The destroyer did allow some of its crew to take shore leave on the planet – the duty would be intolerable without that safety valve – but it wasn't in a good position to launch a shuttle when I called. The handful of crewmen immediately sought the bus to New Copenhagen and the delights there – whores, bars and other entertainments – while Daniel visited me in my office. I was surprisingly glad to see him.
“The Freedom League is definitely active here,” I said, once we’d exchanged greetings. I doubt he’d heard that I’d been kidnapped. The enemy hadn’t used it as part of their propaganda attack and we, for obvious reasons, hadn’t told anyone either. There was no point in giving the enemy a boost forward and dismaying our own people at the same time. “I saw one of their representatives recently.”
I outlined everything that had happened – I’d been right; he hadn’t known I’d been kidnapped – and watched his expression carefully. I had hoped that it would prompt Fleet into more open intervention, but it wasn't really proof, was it? The word of a mercenary trapped in a war that conventional wisdom said was hopeless, against a group of freedom-loving farmers and miners who only wanted to be rid of a tyrannical central government. I doubted that Fleet’s story would seem convincing to the Federation, or anyone else for that matter. It could tip over the applecart completely.
“It’s not the kind of proof we can use,” Daniel said, finally. I nodded in bitter understanding. He was right, of course; we’d still have to beat the farmers on the ground and hopefully capture the woman and her thugs in the process. “I don’t suppose you know her name, or any other details we can use?”
“Maybe,” I said. “We took a WARCAT” – War Crimes Assessment Team – “team through the house and they found DNA belonging to several people who weren't among the dead or prisoners. We could compare it to your records…”
“It might work, but I doubt it,” Daniel said. “If mopping up the Freedom League was that easy, we’d have them by now.”
I sprung my little surprise. “The woman had a Heinlein accent,” I said, seriously. I saw his eyes go very wide. “There’s nothing quite like it outside Heinlein itself and I’m dead certain that that was what I was hearing. Is that any help?”
“It may not be,” Daniel said. “Tens of thousands of people from Heinlein fled in the wake of the Invasion and most of them never returned to the planet. It’s possible that we might get lucky and find a comparison, but we’d need ironclad proof before we challenged Heinlein directly. It’s one of a handful of planets that might be able to stand us off if we intervened. If the government is directly involved…”
He shrugged. “It’s far more likely that we’re dealing with a rogue group,” he added. “The Freedom League started out fighting the UN, after all, and they might well have had support from Heinlein before the Invasion. The UN suspected as much although it’s hard to know just how much the UN actually knew as opposed to guessed, or merely made up to justify the invasion. God knows; Heinlein isn’t the most controlled place in the galaxy, is it?”
I shook my head. Earth under the UN had probably had that particular distinction – it wasn't something to boast about – and when John Walker launched his coup, the planet had fallen into civil war and environmental collapse. The centuries of repression had built up a layer of resentment and hatred on the part of the governed and they’d lashed out at everything representing the government. The chaos would probably take years to settle.
“No,” I agreed, tartly. “Is there any way you can intervene more openly?”
“I can ask the Captain to deploy several stealth sensor buoys to watch for any starship trying to come in on the other side of the planet,” Daniel said, after a moment. “They might cancel it, of course, now that you’re back in friendly hands. Even so, they might not manage to get the word out in time and we can keep an eye out for it. We might even manage to get the jump on it and capture it – along with all the proof we’d need, unless it actually was an innocent freighter.”
“I suppose,” I said, reluctantly. Fleet’s relationship with the hundreds of independent freighters, and the Merchant Guilds, wasn’t a very polite one. Fleet regarded the Merchant Guilds as supporters of black colonies and rogue groups, while the Merchant Guilds regarded Fleet as the successor to the UN, even though Fleet barely taxed them at all. It wasn't a comfortable relationship. Fleet was opposed to armed merchantmen on principle – because they could so easily become warships – while the Merchant Guilds didn’t trust Fleet to defend them from pirates. “It probably would be, wouldn’t it?”
“Probably,” Daniel agreed. “I’ll keep feeding the images from the orbiting destroyer to your intelligence staff, but there isn’t much else I can do to help you directly. You’re on your own.”
“Thanks,” I said, sourly. “I’ll call you when I have something else.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Be seeing you.”
That afternoon, I spent an hour talking to Frida over the communications network – Peter and Robert wouldn’t let me go into the city – about whoever had started the rioting. Frida’s own internal investigation had revealed that several of her fellow Progressives had started the riot, but they’d been urged to time the riot carefully by someone else, who had bribed them with food supplies smuggled in from the farms. It wasn't hard to figure out who had obtained the food supplies in the first place, or why they’d wanted the riot timed perfectly, but apparently the two Progressives knew nothing. Frida had them both under covert arrest and they would be tried publicly in a week.
“Unless you want them,” she added, hopefully. “If I try them here, my enemies will say that I’m trying to gather all of the power in my own hands. It could lead to further trouble down the line. I’m already under pressure to hold new elections and the Progressive Party is on the verge of splitting apart.”
I nodded in understanding. Frida hadn’t expected it, but I had – it had happened before. Whenever a political party became so powerful that no one on the outside could oppose it, the people on the inside tended to break up into factions, often largely invisible to the outside world. Eventually, the party collapsed into civil war – sometimes literally – broke up into several more parties, or created a dictatorship. I hoped it wouldn’t be the latter; a dictatorship worked fine in the short term and rotted away in the long term. I wouldn’t have advocated it for any planet, except perhaps Earth. Only a dictator could hold Earth together long enough to tackle the real problems.
“If they don’t actually have lines of communication that we can use to reach the enemy, there’s little point,” I said, even as I admired the enemy plan. The farmers had forced the Progressive Party into a near-civil war, just as a side effect of kidnapping me. I wanted the person who’d thought of it, although I wasn't sure if I wanted to recruit him for the Legion or shoot him in the head and swear blind I never saw him. “I’d suggest holding them for a few more days and then moving to trial. If you gather the evidence to convict them quickly, you might be able to forestall a devastating counter-attack.”
Frida snorted. “One will happen, like it or not,” she said, tiredly. “It’s good to see you back again, Andrew.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s good to be back too.”
I spent
the night in my depressingly cold and empty bed, before waking up early and going to inspect the intelligence section. TechnoMage met me at the door and invited me into his private office, where he showed me the remains of the telemetry from the UAV that had been shot down. Now that it had been carefully studied, it was obvious that an EMP cannon had been used to bring the craft down, creating a blank spot over our observation of the mountains.
Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law) Page 36
