by David Weber
Gaunt, smoke-stained faces nodded, and he nodded back to them.
"In that case, let's get our asses moving."
***
"Well, this truly sucks," Sergeant Major Winfield said. Major Palacios looked up from the tactical display table and quirked an eyebrow at him.
"I take it that that profound observation reflects some new and even more disgusting turn of events, Sar'Major?"
"Oh, yes, indeedy-deed it does, Ma'am," Winfield told her. "We've just received a priority request for assistance from none other than Brigadier Jongdomba."
"Why am I not surprised?" Palacios sighed. She shook her head, gazing down at the map display in front of her, and grimaced.
The response to the bungled arrest attempt had been even swifter and uglier than she'd feared. She still didn't think the GLF had planned any of this. In fact, her best guess-and the take from the Battalion's sensor remotes seemed to confirm it-was that the Liberation Front's remaining leadership understood just how suicidal something like this was. All indications were that Pankarma's surviving lieutenants were doing their damnedest to shut everything down before it got even worse. Unfortunately, if the GLF ever had been in control, it was no longer.
What had begun with the shootout at the Annapurna Arms had turned into something with all the earmarks of a genuinely spontaneous insurrection. There were conflicting reports-rumors, really-about who'd done what first, and to whom, after the initial exchange of fire. Her own best guess was that the reports that the Liberation Front people had only tried to pull back and disengage with the handful of their delegation they'd managed to get out alive were accurate. She couldn't conceive of them having wanted to do anything else. Aside from that, though, she had no idea what had transpired. Except, of course, for the fact that a sizable percentage of the capital city's population was out in the streets, armed with everything from combat rifles, calliopes, grenade launchers, and mortars to old-fashioned paving stones and Molotov cocktails.
A lot of it doesn't have anything to do with what happened to Pankarma, she told herself. This is the politically voiceless urban poor of a depressed economy scenting blood and the opportunity to get some of their own back against the people they blame for their poverty. Sure, there's separatism stirred into the mix, and anti-Empire feeling does run deep out here, especially with the people who feel most crapped on by the system, but that's not what's giving this the fury we're seeing.
The Gyangtse oligarchy was no worse than some she'd seen, but it was still worse than most, and it had generated a lot of resentment among the lower strata of Gyangtsese society even before it embraced the current Incorportation referendum. She knew it had, because she'd seen something like this coming for months. One of the reasons her battalion had been assigned to Gyangtse in the first place was that Recon was-in addition to being specifically trained to pull information out of chaos in a situation like this-also supposed to specialize in identifying trends and keeping a handle on even restive planetary populations in order to prevent a "situation" like this one.
Unfortunately, that assumed their civilian superiors would let them do their job ahead of time. Speaking of whom....
"Have we heard anything else from Governor Aubert?" she asked.
"No, Ma'am," Lieutenant Thomas Bradwell, her S-6, the officer in charge of her communications, said expressionlessly. "Not since his secretary commed to tell us that we're supposed to go through him, not Mr. Salgado, if we need to reach the Governor."
Palacios nodded, her face as expressionless as Bradwell's voice, and wondered once again whether or not Salgado's apparent fall from grace was a good sign, or a bad one. If it was a bad one, at least it had plenty of company on that side of the ledger sheet.
Once it all hit the fan, her people had quickly gotten their sensor remotes deployed. The small, independently-deployed drones were extraordinarily difficult to spot, even with first-line military sensors, as they hovered silently on their counter-grav. She didn't have as many of them as she would have liked to have-no CO ever did-but she had enough for decent coverage, and their own sensors, designed to deal with the smoke, confusion, camouflage, and electronic warfare systems of a full-scale modern battlefield were more than adequate to keep an eye on something like this.
That meant she had a depressingly clear picture of what was happening, and as she looked at the map, she knew that unless they were all far luckier than they had any reason to expect, the madness was still building towards its peak.
"What sort of assistance is Jongdomba requesting, Sar'Major?" she asked harshly.
"According to his message, Ma'am, he and the loyal core of his brigade are at the Mall. He says his men are prepared to die in defense of President Shangup and the planetary government, but he urgently requests assistance in order to insure the safety of the President and the Delegates with him."
"I see."
Palacios managed not to roll her eyes. At the moment, her people had a solid perimeter around the spaceport, as Operation Blockhouse had specified. They also had control of the city's main power station and water plant ,which put them in a position to preserve its core public services, and the governor's residence and most of the Empire's official offices on Gyangtse were inside the spaceport perimeter. But the Presidential Mansion was located amid the Capital Mall's parks and fountains on the far side of the city, beyond the chaos and bedlam.
It ought to have been relatively simple-even for Jongdomba, she thought acidly-to organize a semi-orderly evacuation of the President and the members of the Chamber of Delegates from the Mall's public buildings. They should have been gotten out of the capital the instant the shooting started, but no doubt Jongdomba had given Shangup his personal assurances that the mob couldn't possibly threaten the Presidential Mansion or the adjacent Chamber and executive office buildings. And, of course, no Gyangtsese politician could afford to radiate anything except steel-jawed determination to stand his ground at a moment like this.
Until, of course, it turns out Jongdomba can't protect them, that is, she thought, then frowned as another, distinctly unpleasant possibility crossed her mind.
"Did the Brigadier provide us with a situation report, Sar'Major?" she asked after a moment.
"He says the situation is 'unclear,' Ma'am. He says he has the equivalent of about two battalions, and his current current estimate is that he's pinned down by an undetermined-but large-number of heavily armed GLF guerrillas. He says they're equipped with military-grade weapons and that his own ammunition is running low. He also states that without assistance, he doubts he can continue to resist effectively for more than another two or three hours."
"I see," she repeated. "I take it he didn't include a list of exactly how many civilians he has inside his lines?"
"No, Ma'am, he didn't." Winfield frowned at her, and she showed her teeth in a humorless smile.
"Now, isn't that interesting," she murmured to herself.
"Excuse me, Ma'am?"
"Just thinking aloud, Sar'Major," Palacios said, and found herself forced to suppress a chuckle, despite her thoughts, at the look Winfield gave her. But the temptation to humor disappeared quickly.
"Tom."
"Yes, Ma'am?" Lieutenant Bradwell replied.
"I need to speak to the Governor, please."
***
"Are you serious, Major?"
Serafina Palacios' eyes narrowed, and she started to open her mouth quickly, but the man on her com display raised one hand, palm out, before she could speak.
"Forgive me," Jasper Aubert said, and despite herself, Palacios' narrowed eyes went wide at the sincere tone of his apology.
"I owe you-all of your people, really, but especially you, I suppose-a sincere apology for not having listened to you earlier," the governor continued. "For the moment, let's just leave it at that. Hopefully, I'll have an opportunity later to deliver it more appropriately. But I'm not trying to simply dismiss what you're saying now. I'm just trying to get my mind wrapped around it
."
"Governor," Palacios said, "I'm not sure I'm right-not by a long chalk. But if I am, then we may have an even worse problem than anyone thought we did.
"It's clear from our remotes that only a minority of Zhikotse's population is actively involved in all this, but even a minority of an entire city's an enormous absolute number. I doubt that as much as twenty percent of the... call them "rioters," started out with modern weapons, and most of those were civilian-market, not military. But it looks like most of the weapons from the two companies Sharwa deployed for the... arrest attempt are in somebody else's hands now.
"That's bad enough, but an overflight of the two main militia arsenals indicates that they've been looted, as well. So, by now, in addition to anything that may have been out there to begin with, there's probably at least the equivalent of a couple of militia regiments' firepower floating around in the streets."
Including, she thought grimly, shoulder-fired SAMs.
The militia surface-to-air missiles which had found their way into someone else's hands (or, she made herself admit, which the GLF had in its possession all along) had already reduced the original three sting ships of her attached air support to only two sting ships, and she'd lost the pilot along with the ship.
Which wouldn't have happened, if I'd allowed for the possibility that they had surface-to-air capability from the beginning. But I didn't. I fucked up, and I wanted a live set of eyes up there to supplement the remotes. Stupid bitch.
She pushed that thought aside, too. For now, at least; she knew it would be revisiting her in her dreams.
"I've called on the Fleet for support, but there's not much Lieutenant Granger can do for us at the moment. He's the senior Fleet officer in-system, and all he's got is his own corvette. Corvettes are too small to carry assault shuttles, so he can't assist us with airstrikes or troop drops, and while his vessel's armament could take out the entire city with a kinetic strike, heavy HVW aren't very well suited for fire support missions in a situation like this one.
"That leaves it all up to us, and with those SAMs out there, my tactical flexibility's badly cramped. I've got an attached company of air lorries, but we never got the counter-grav armored personnel carriers I requested, and this is exactly the wrong environment for what's basically an unarmored airborne moving van. The 'terrain' makes it effectively impossible to get a detailed read on what might be waiting down there, even with the remotes. There's no way to know with certainty where SAMs or anti-armor weapons actually are, especially if they hide them inside buildings, until the moment they open fire. And even if I knew roughly where they were, the firepower required to suppress them without precise locations would be devastating." Palacios shook her head. "At this moment, the majority of the people out there're undoubtedly simply trying to keep their collective head down. I'm not prepared to use that sort of fire when it could only inflict heavy noncombatant casualties. Killing that many innocent bystanders isn't what the Corps does, Governor."
"Of course not," Aubert agreed so quickly and firmly that Palacios had to suppress a fresh flicker of surprise. "Even if you'd been prepared to contemplate that on a moral basis, the political consequences would be totally unacceptable."
Despite herself, Palacios couldn't keep her disdain for his last sentence out of her expression. He obviously saw it, because his own eyes hardened briefly. But then he shook his head.
"I'm not being 'business as usual' about this, Major. I've already admitted that my own judgment and decisions here on Gyangtse have been... badly flawed, let's say. But however we got into this mess, eventually, the Empire's going to have to stabilize the situation down here. I've already made that difficult enough for whoever catches the job, but if we kill hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who haven't been up in arms against the Emperor's authority, 'stabilizing' Gyangtse once more will take decades. At best."
He said it unflinchingly, and she felt a stir of respect for him. It seems he's got a brain-and some guts-after all, she thought. Some moral integrity, for that matter. Pity he couldn't have shown any sign of it early enough to keep all of this happening, but this is definitely a case of better late than never. None of which alters the fact that my options are so damned limited.
She contemplated the tabletop map display again.
After it had finished massacring every militiaman it could catch (except for those who declared their change of allegiance quickly enough), the mob's greatest savagery-so far, at least-had been reserved for the downtown business district. At least a third of the main financial buildings clustered in the district, including the Stock Exchange and the home offices of the Gyangtse Planetary Bank, were already in flames. In addition, the sensor remotes had shown laughing, chanting looters-most of whom weren't armed and had no apparent political axes to grind-smashing shop windows and stealing everything they could find. And then, inevitably, someone set fire to the emptied shops, as well, of course.
What is it about pyromania and civil insurrection? she wondered. Can't anyone stage a riot without bringing the matches?
The thought provoked a bitter chuckle, but she pushed it aside and ran one finger across the top of the display.
"We're in agreement about the need to minimize noncombatant casualties, Governor," she said, looking back at the com display. "At the moment, I believe all of our Blockhouse positions are secure. Certainly that's true unless there's some new, major influx of weapons and organized manpower on the other side, and I see no sign of that. But unless I miss my guess, they're going to run into our spaceport perimeter sometime fairly soon. When that happens, there are going to be Gyangtsese bodies on the ground. I'm sorry, but there's nothing in the universe I can do to prevent that now."
"I understand, Major," Aubert said heavily. "For what it's worth, you have my official authorization to proceed in whatever fashion seems best to you on the basis of your military judgment and experience."
"Thank you, Sir. But that still leaves us this other minor problem. Do you have any directions in regard to that?"
"At this point? Frankly, no. As far as I can see, we simply don't have enough information at this moment."
"I'm afraid I concur." Palacios glanced at her map display once more, then looked back at Aubert's com image. "With your permission, Governor, I'll see what I can do about acquiring that information we don't have. And I'll also engage in a little contingency planning."
"That sounds like an excellent idea," Aubert agreed. "Please keep me informed of your findings and your plans."
"I will." She nodded courteously. "Palacios, clear."
She cut the circuit and turned towards Lieutenant Boris Adrianovich Beregovoi.
"Boris!"
"Yes, Ma'am?" The lieutenant was her S-2, her battalion Intelligence officer, and he looked up at her call from where he'd been buried in the consoles managing the remotes.
"They're still pushing in harder from the south and west, right?"
"Yes, Ma'am." Beregovoi didn't point out that the display in front of her had already confirmed that. Then again, he'd always been a tactful sort.
"What about confirmed GLF leadership elements?"
"Most of the ones we had positively IDed and localized have dropped off our plot, Ma'am," Beregovoi admitted. "Our intercept birds are picking up fewer and fewer com messages between them, which may indicate that they're meeting up with one another somewhere-close enough together they don't need the com traffic to tie them together. And once they stop actively transmitting, it's awfully hard to keep track of them in a mess like this one."
"Understood." Palacios drummed the fingers of her right hand on the display, frowning.
"You say we're getting fewer communications intercepts. Is there any indication from the traffic we did intercept as to where their leadership cadre might have been heading?"
"No, Ma'am. Not really. There was a lot of 'join so-and-so at location such-and-such,' but their security is pretty good. I think they took it as a given that we'd be listening in o
nce it all hit the fan. They're using code names for both people and locations, and we haven't got enough data yet for the computers to crack the code names for us."
"What about a general indication of their movement from position fixes on their last transmissions before they dropped out of sight?"
"I already ran the projections on that, Ma'am. There's nothing statistically significant in what we've got, but there is a slight trend of movement away from Downtown and the spaceport."
"Away." Palacios looked up and met Sergeant Major Winfield's eyes. "Like they're giving up their efforts to control the mob and get it back out of the streets, do you think, Sar'Major?" she murmured.
"Might be." Winfield frowned. "Question is, why. Are they just throwing in the towel? Giving it all up as a bad deal? Or are they headed somewhere else?"
Palacios nodded, then looked back at Beregovoi.
"Any sign of additional rioters moving into the area north or east of the Annapurna Arms, Boris?" she pressed.
