“Take prisoners,” I ordered, when Robert contacted me to ask if we should bother. We needed to know what the prisoners knew, although the odds were that it wouldn’t be very much. I wouldn’t have sent people who knew everything into a position where they could be captured and interrogated by the enemy. I’d been captured myself, of course, but I hadn’t been going somewhere where I might expect to be captured. “Get them secured, then get them back to the guardhouse. I want the interrogators to pull out all the stops.”
Under the watchful eye of the helicopters, the handful of prisoners were rounded up, apart from a pair of men who were too badly wounded to last for very long. Robert’s men did the only thing they could and gave them a mercy killing, before setting out to survey the surrounding territory and looking for more enemy forces. I wouldn’t have put it past the enemy – and the intercepted transmissions suggested that I was right – to have an observer or two watching from a safe distance, just to report on what had happened to the enemy leadership. They would know that their assault on the spaceport had failed; indeed, that it hadn’t even come close to succeeding. Why…?
Because they wanted to pin us down, I realised, and swore under my breath. “Get me the feed from the UAV,” I snapped. I’d turned it away from watching what was happening in the north so that I could watch Robert’s men as they destroyed the enemy fighters. “Show me Fort Galloway.”
The UAV computer suggested something else I should look at, something that even the UN-issue program operating the UAV thought was important. I looked at it and swore. An entire army was advancing down from the mountains, towards New Copenhagen – and Fort Galloway. An entire modern armoured force. It looked to be about a Regiment in size.
“Shit,” I said, mildly. “Contact the garrisons and tell them to start deploying according to Alpha-Seven. We may have a bit of a serious fight on our hands.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
While a fort is useful in a counter-insurgency, it is rather less useful on a modern battlefield, where tanks and mobile artillery can hammer away at a fort’s advantages and cripple the defenders very quickly.
-Army Manual, Heinlein
Fort Galloway came under heavy attack first.
The Fort had been effectively invulnerable to the vast majority of the insurgents’ weapons. Machine guns and assault rifles had simply ricocheted off the Fort’s heavy walls and came down harmlessly in the area surrounding the Fort. Their light RPGs and even antitank weapons could do no more than scar the walls or perhaps slip through one of the firing slots if they were lucky – but even an interior detonation would do relatively little damage. Mortar rounds could do more damage, if they landed, but the point defence lasers could pick them off before they detonated and counter-battery fire could prevent the insurgents from launching the mass attack they would need to get a handful of rounds through the defences. And as for a ground assault…well, with clear fields of fire and a clear idea of how to defend a Fort, no ground assault could succeed unless the defenders ran out of ammunition. Ed had good grounds to feel that he could defend Fort Galloway indefinitely. The enemy had other plans.
The miners hadn’t used all of the war material the UN had left behind – they didn’t have the numbers or training to use all of it – but with some help from the Freedom League, they’d managed to get most of the armoured units working, without being noticed from orbit. They’d risked blowing their cover when they’d downed the UAV, but they’d had no choice; they needed to mass their forces without being spotted. Once their first assault had begun, keeping my forces pinned down and distracted, they’d started the advance, moving a formidable Regiment-sized force down towards New Copenhagen. This was the nightmare that the President had predicted; outright civil war, with devastation as the only winner.
The UN hadn’t been keen on heavy artillery – it hadn’t needed many self-propelled guns, as it could always call in fire from orbit – but it had abandoned several dozen self-propelled guns and rocket launchers. Those were now brought to bear against Fort Galloway, smashing away at the Fort’s defences from outside its mortar range. The hail of fire was too intense for the point defence lasers to stop more than a handful of the incoming shells, allowing the shells to come smashing down on the Fort and shattering the defences. The UN hadn’t provided them with armour-piecing shells, but it didn’t matter; the sheer weight of the bombardment was enough to break through the Fort’s defences and wreck havoc among the inhabitants. The walls started to crack and the barracks collapsed, shattering water bunkers and starting fires all over the Fort. The enemy wasn't even sending in any infantrymen to attack under cover of the incoming fire; they were merely hammering the Fort to death from a very safe distance.
“You can’t hit back,” I said, to Ed. We were still in touch, but there was little we could do to help the beleaguered defenders. I was still rushing to get a defence line in place near New Copenhagen. If we couldn’t stop the enemy’s armoured thrust, we would lose the war and with it any hopes of preserving Svergie for civilisation. “You have to surrender.”
The line seemed to flicker as another series of shells shook the entire fortress. I didn’t want to think about how many of my men were dying in the attack, unable to even hit back at their tormentors. The UAV had launched all four of its rockets against the enemy self—propelled guns, but there hadn’t been enough rockets to take them all out. I thought about deploying the helicopters up to assist, but Ed had already lost his helicopters in the first assault and the enemy clearly had antiaircraft units. I’d be throwing away the helicopters for nothing.
“I understand,” Ed said, bitterly. The line fizzed again. “Don’t you dare let them get away with this!”
“I won’t,” I promised. I hated to see any of my men going into captivity, but there was clearly little choice. They were helpless to hit back; helpless to do anything, but die. “Good luck.”
I watched on the display as the Fort fired surrender flares into the air. I had wondered if the enemy would even know what they meant, but as the fire slacked off I allowed myself a moment of relief. The enemy had accepted the surrender. Their infantrymen approached Fort Galloway’s remains carefully, guided through the minefields by my men, and accepted Ed’s surrender. Ed would have purged the computers before surrendering and it was standing orders that nothing classified was to be committed to paper where it might be found, but it was quite possible that the Freedom League would interrogate Ed and his men. They wouldn’t be able to use drugs on their captives – or, at least, on anyone who actually knew anything – but torture, isolation and other tricks would definitely have an effect. I silently prayed that they’d be safe, and then deliberately turned my attention to the enemy’s armoured force, rushing southwards towards New Copenhagen. I didn’t want to watch the surrender.
“Warn the other garrisons to deploy with antitank weapons,” I ordered, tightly. The garrisons had had the same advantages as Fort Galloway, but they would be just as helpless against the self-propelled guns as Ed had been. “I want them to slow up the enemy as much as possible.”
“They have ninety tanks, all apparently late-model Landsharks, and over a hundred transports and supply trucks,” TechnoMage said, though my earpiece. “They all appear to be in quite good condition, but they don’t seem to have the experience that we have – at least, not yet.”
“We’re going to need that advantage,” I said, grimly. Our own armoured units were still being deployed north of New Copenhagen. The enemy was in a race to get there first – who gets there first with the most usually wins – and they didn’t have to worry about insurgents. They didn’t have to worry about bridges, either; there were no convenient bridges we could knock down to slow their advance. We’d war-gamed the entire scenario quite thoroughly back when we’d arrived and the best we’d done was hold the enemy at the gates of the city. “Contact the pilots of the UAV craft; I want them to concentrate on hitting the enemy supply trucks and slowing the bastards down, whatever
it takes.”
“Understood,” TechnoMage said. “I’ll issue the orders at once.”
“Get me the Acting President,” I ordered, and went into my office. I had to talk to Frida. There were decisions to make that only she could make. “Frida; I’m afraid there is some bad news.”
***
Captain Jörgen Hellqvist and his men, after months of manning Garrison Nine and patrolling the surrounding area, knew it at least as well as the farmers who came out to attack the garrison from time to time. As soon as they drove the insurgents away, Jörgen pushed out patrols from his two Companies as far as he dared, forcing the insurgents to remain well clear of his position. A single isolated farmhouse, used by a handful of insurgents for a last stand, was burned to the ground, but other contacts just faded away. When the warning came in about incoming tanks, Jörgen deployed his men and prepared to meet them.
“Don’t fire until I open fire myself,” he said. The miners were following a fairly predictable path as they raced down towards the city, barely bothering with outriders or infantry support. Jörgen had actually trained on armour briefly while he’d been preparing to become a Captain and knew some of their weaknesses. The enemy could have driven cross-country, but that would have wrecked the fields and seriously annoyed the farmers. “Mark your tanks and get ready.”
The roar of the enemy vehicles drew closer and he braced himself for action. If the tankers knew – or guessed – that his men were there, they would open fire and the ditches and trees would provide absolutely no cover at all. They should have deployed infantry to flush out any watching soldiers, but they were concentrating on the race to the city instead. Jörgen kept reminding himself of that; they might not be able to stop the tanks, but they could certainly slow them down enough to buy time for the defenders of the city to get ready.
“Take aim,” he whispered. They were already within engagement range, but he wanted to make every shot count. “Take aim…and fire!”
He pulled the trigger on the UN-issue Knife missile and saw it lance out, propelled by a wave of flame, until it struck a tank directly on the vehicle’s forward armour. It was the best-protected part of the tank, but it didn’t matter to the knife missile, which produced a wave of superheated flame that burned through the armour and killed the crew inside. A moment later, the ammunition in the tank exploded and sent the entire vehicle up in a fireball. He dumped the remainder of the launcher on the ground – it couldn’t be used again – and ducked back into what pitiful shelter there was. Seven enemy tanks had been destroyed and two more had been damaged, but the remainder, now aware of the threat, opened fire savagely, slashing through trees and hedgerows to strike back at their tormentors.
Jörgen crawled, keeping as low as he could, away towards the fallback position as the enemy started to dismount their infantry, which ran into machine-gun fire from prepared positions. The tankers attempted to provide support to their fellows, only to reveal their lack of training and experience. Jörgen was able to escape along with most of his men, leaving the enemy behind licking their wounds.
“Get into the jeeps,” he muttered, as the enemy infantry started to patrol carefully after them. In their place, he would have withdrawn and kept advancing against New Copenhagen, although more carefully. If they wanted to waste time chasing his men that was fine with him; it just gave them a chance to set up another ambush further down the road. “We’ll meet up again at point seven.”
***
I watched Captain Jörgen Hellqvist’s encounter with the enemy as I spoke briefly to Frida. “The enemy force is going to be at New Copenhagen by late afternoon, at their current rate,” I said. It didn’t look as if Jörgen had delayed them enough to make them rethink their plans; indeed, it almost looked as if they had learned a few lessons and were pushing forward as fast as they could. “We might be able to stop it, but it will be chancy. You might want to think about moving your government somewhere else for a few days.”
“If they take New Copenhagen and wipe out most of the army in the fighting, they’re going to win anyway,” Frida said. She sounded tired and depressed, but at least she wasn't on the verge of giving up. Whatever she thought, I knew that the Freedom League and their stooges had to be stopped, whatever it took. A government under their influence – a government that could not be proved to be under their influence – would be disastrous. They would have a base for further expansion and attacks on the Federation. “If that happens, I’ll be better staying here and trying to negotiate a peace if they punch through your defence line.”
“You won’t have many cards left to play,” I wanted. Russell, against his strong feelings, was moving up the cadets to serve as a mobile reserve. The enemy was largely untrained – indeed, looking at them, I had the feeling that they had learned most of their tactics from UN training manuals, generally a bad idea – but we only had a small cadre of experienced soldiers. “If we lose, the best you can do is offer to recognise their supremacy.”
“Then I will have to play that card,” Frida said. She laughed, suddenly. “Oh, come on, Andrew; the Progressive Party is on the verge of splitting apart and both sides are not happy with the thought of me as leader for the next few years, let alone the next election. Even if we win the war, I don’t think I’ll be Party Leader or President for much longer. Between your advice and the insurgency, I don’t have much political capital left at all. What do I have to lose?”
I smiled back at her. “I understand,” I said. I thought about ordering her guards to transfer her to one of the other cities, but she was right. If we lost the Battle of New Copenhagen, we’d have lost everything. The Legion’s first contract would also be its last. A real mercenary unit would probably start thinking of ways to switch sides now, or withdraw from the planet, but neither was an acceptable solution. The real mission had to succeed. “See you on the other side, then.”
Her face vanished from my display and I called up the latest results from the UAV overflights. The enemy were taking a beating, but they were remaining together – even though they were shooting up plenty of innocent hedgerows. Some of my units had been leaving IEDs and other surprises behind for them; Jock and the other Specials had managed to shoot one of their commanding officers from an impossible distance – or at least a distance that should have been impossible. Jock’s personal sniper rifle came from Heinlein and was vastly superior to anything from the UN. I hadn’t understood why until Russell had pointed it out. The UN put weapons design in the hands of a single committee, while Heinlein had hundreds of gun designers, each building on the achievements of their predecessors. The results should have been inevitable; Heinlein had enjoyed supremacy in weapons design until the UN fell apart and other planets started their own programs.
I keyed my earpiece with a grim smile. “Muna, start moving all the dependents up to the Julius Caesar,” I ordered, shortly. If we lost the coming fight, at least the dependents would be safe in orbit. Fleet would ensure that they returned to Botany or…well, wherever else they wanted to go. If we lost, the Legion of the Dispossessed would be completely dispossessed – and wiped out. “Go yourself as well; I just want security here handled by C Company and the reserves. There’s no point in worrying about the spaceport if we lose New Copenhagen.”
“I’m staying here,” Muna said, firmly. “I’ll move the dependents up to the starship, but I’m staying with you and the others.”
I sighed, but I knew better than to argue. “I understand,” I said. I seemed to be saying that a lot lately, rather than simply barking orders. Was it just me, or did everyone have a death wish these days? “You’ll have command of the spaceport then; if we lose, move the remainder of the defenders up to space and then…and then do whatever seems best.”
“Yes, sir,” Muna said. “Take care.”
The line disconnected. I took one final look around my office, remembering the plans we’d developed and the times I’d had with Suki – wherever she was now – and then pulled on my battle
dress and body armour. I always hated wearing the UN-issue gear, but there was little choice now. I checked my webbing and made certain that I had enough ammunition for my pistol and assault rifle and then stepped out of the office. Peter was waiting for me there, carrying his own rifle and enough ammunition to fight the war on his own.
“Ready, sir?”
“Yes,” I said, allowing him to lead me out of the command bunker. “Let’s move.”
The spaceport seemed emptier, somehow, now that most of the defenders had gone to join the defence line at New Copenhagen. The helicopter remaining on the pad was the only one left at the spaceport, an assault helicopter waiting for two final passengers – myself and Peter. We climbed onboard, took one last look around the spaceport, and gave the pilot the ok. The helicopter launched itself down the runway and staggered into the air, the pilot watching closely for signs of enemy antiaircraft teams waiting for us in the shadows. Nothing rose from the ground to challenge us, or to attempt to impede us, allowing the helicopter to fly west without any problems.
Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law) Page 38
