The Hunger Rebellion

by G F Cusack

  Will realised that it had been risky to present this report. He had been hopeful that his initial perceived success at the compound would temper Brand’s anger from their previous meeting. And anyway, if anything the blame was partly on Brand. Will had wanted his mission to be a search and kill for the girl, but Brand had insisted on her safe capture. If she was a threat and Brand had stopped him from neutralising the threat, that wasn’t Will’s fault.

  Of course, he daren’t voice this to Brand. Instead, he moved on to some more hopeful news. “The rebels have headed to the Farm. They no doubt expect to have a ground battle on their hands. When the planes arrive, I am sure that they will provide a few surprises and another successful aerial assault. As soon as I heard that the rebels had intelligence of our plans, I expedited our ground assault on the Farm. By now everybody there should be dead and our troops should be heading home. The rebels will arrive just in time for our bombers, believing they have escaped the compound, but they will be consumed by fire.”

  Brand’s spirits seemed to rise. “It appears that you are not totally incompetent. Thank you for the update. Go away and the next update better include the news that all of the rebels are dead.” With that, Brand gestured to his assistant to open the door.

  Will was glad of the opportunity to leave the room. He nodded respectfully to Brand and headed back down to the command centre as quickly as his legs would carry him. In his head, he was praying that his next report to Brand was not his last.

  As Will was leaving, Brand removed his jacket. He was frustrated from that meeting and decided to use the assistant as a distraction to clear his head.

  33

  Flashback to Pepper’s basic training

  12 September 2202

  As they got closer to the Farm, Pepper was pondering on his history with the Company.

  He had always hated bullies and there were no bigger bullies than the Company. His mind flashed back to a time during his training after he’d been press-ganged into the Company forces. The training had created many painful memories that were burnt into his mind forever.

  They had just returned from a forced march in the freezing rain. As usual they had very little time before the next punishment began.

  The Company called the punishments training but the instructors seemed more interested in inflicting pain than training the best troops.

  The recruits had no privacy during their training either. They slept in long huts with twenty beds to a hut. The beds were so close that if you stretched out your arm at night, you could touch the person in the next bed.

  There were no doors on the toilets and they washed in long communal showers.

  Even during shower time they were harassed. On the day Pepper was remembering, he was showering while one of the instructors, Rob Strong, was walking up and down the centre of the showers shouting profanities.

  The recruits were all naked but Strong was in the customary grey overalls of the Company. Even though Pepper was quite tall for sixteen years of age, Strong towered over him, a giant of a man, bald and rippling with muscles.

  Strong suddenly stopped inches behind Pepper. Pepper just wanted to get this shower over with and avoid engaging with Strong at all.

  Unfortunately, if an instructor addressed you, they couldn’t be ignored.

  “Are you enjoying your shower, Taylor?” Strong pronounced his surname deliberately, speaking slowly but loud enough for the whole shower block to hear him.

  This question had no correct answer. If he said yes, he might be banned from showers for a week, or worse. If he said no, he could be punished for being ungrateful.

  “I'm grateful for the warm water that the Company provides for me, sir.” He hoped this diplomatic answer would suffice.

  “You like warm water do you, Taylor? Are you gay, Taylor?”

  Homosexuality was a crime in the eyes of the Company. Like most crimes it was punishable by execution, after which your body was shipped to the gel plants.

  Even the suspicion of homosexuality could get you twenty lashes of the whip, which had killed some recruits.

  “No, sir,” he said, knowing that this was the only reply that would be accepted.

  “How do you know you’re not gay, Taylor? Have you ever been with a man?”

  “No sir, of course not.”

  “I’ve been with a man, Taylor, and I didn’t like it so I know I’m not gay.”

  A cold shiver ran down to Pepper’s spine. The instructors had been known to beat recruits to death as they faced no punishment for their indiscretions. The Company saw the recruits as expendable during training. If they could be killed, Pepper reasoned, they could be raped too. The fact that homosexuality was illegal was giving him no comfort whatsoever.

  “Speak up, Taylor. How do you know you’re not gay?”

  “Because it’s illegal, sir.”

  “So you always abide by the rules, do you, Taylor?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, that’s interesting because I have it on good authority that you broke curfew last night.”

  Pepper had to think on his feet. He was in a precarious position, standing naked in front of an instructor who was looking for any excuse to dole out punishment. He was trying to both work out who had informed on him and find a way out of this. Yes, he had broken curfew but only because he knew that one of the boys in another hut was about to get a beating from some bullies.

  Pepper had gotten the better of the three bullies but Strong was their squad leader and he was looking for revenge.

  Although Royston, Pepper’s squad leader, was reasonably fair to his squad, he clearly wasn’t prepared to tangle with Strong over a recruit.

  “Get out of the shower, Taylor.”

  Pepper went to grab his towel.

  “No, Taylor, you don’t need a towel as you are about to get wet again. Get outside onto the square.”

  As Pepper walked out into the freezing rain, he was followed by Strong who had grabbed a thick raincoat and a large whip before exiting the building.

  All of the other recruits were now stuck to the windows to see what would happen. Some of them had grabbed their towels and others hadn’t even showered yet. They knew they were required to watch and they did so for fear of suffering the same punishment.

  “Go stand by the post. You know the drill. You’ve seen this before.”

  There was nothing he could do. Shivering with the cold, he walked to the post and placed his arms through the shackles. It took only seconds for Strong to secure the restraints and then he stepped back.

  He heard the first crack of the whip before he felt the searing pain on his naked back. The first couple of hits seemed like agony but by the time of the tenth and final lashing, he had collapsed into unconsciousness.

  He was left bleeding and hanging from the restraints by his arms for over half an hour. He was fortunate not to die of pneumonia or some other complication from his punishment but he used the power of hatred and anger to survive.

  After the instructors brought him inside, they had poured vinegar over his open wounds and allowed him to don a set of overalls. That was the extent of the first aid they administered.

  The wounds eventually scabbed over through the night but over the next few days they opened up on several occasions. Pepper remembered that the recruit he’d saved from the beating had sewed his wounds with a darning needle and thread. It could have been a lot worse if the wounds had been left open any longer.

  This was Pepper’s first public flogging. Although it wasn’t to be his last, for him it was the most memorable.

  The message of ruling by fear was instilled by all levels of the Company forces, the council, the Company leaders and even low-level leaders like Strong.

  With life seen as worthless, there was no freedom or justice to be had.

  His mind skipped on to exactly two years after the flogging. That was the day he had escaped from the Company. By that time Strong was no longer just an instructor at the A
cademy; now he was a commander in charge of field troops, including Pepper.

  When Pepper refused to massacre unarmed children, he had been marked for death. He took some pleasure from the fact that he had personally killed Strong during his escape.

  Unfortunately this pleasure was short-lived because to this day the Company forces were hunting for him.

  34

  Will views the attack on the Farm

  12 September 2202

  Will stormed into the command centre, livid with the way Brand had treated him. Brand was known for treating people cruelly but Will had fought his way up the ranks and believed he was entitled to some respect.

  He sought out the analyst, Jerome, remembering the special punishment he had promised him if he hadn’t kept Will informed.

  Glancing at the monitors and then back at Jerome, Will snapped, “Give me an update, now!”

  Since Will had left, Jerome had only taken his eyes away from the monitors for a second or two, and that was to make briefing notes. He wanted to have an update ready as he knew his life depended on it. “The planes are still twenty minutes away from the targets,” Jerome answered.

  Will took a breath. “Why didn’t you get me? Why didn’t you call me?”

  Jerome knew that silence was not an option. “I’m sorry sir, I thought you told me to call you when they were fifteen minutes away.”

  While realising he himself was being unreasonable, Will needed to take his anger out on someone and Jerome was an easy target. “Are you questioning me? Are you saying that I don’t remember what I said to you?”

  Jerome kept quiet, aware that the next few minutes could seal his fate.

  “Have we heard anything from our troops at the Farm?” Will asked.

  Jerome shook his head slowly.

  “So we will have no idea what has happened at the Farm until our planes arrive. Communications!” Will stood up and addressed the whole control centre. “Communications is your one job. All you have to do is to ensure that my troops can communicate with me, when they are away assaulting and fighting the rebels. Is that not clear? That is all you have to do yet you managed to lose communications with over a hundred of our fighters. For all we know, our soldiers are currently getting slaughtered by the rebels.”

  Will’s anger was building to a crescendo. “I suggest that you find some way of communicating with my troops at the Farm. Whatever you do, do it quickly. If I’m not getting an update from the commander at the Farm in the next ten minutes, every person sitting here now will be heading to the gel plants before the end of the day. Does everybody understand?”

  Nobody looked away from their monitors, nobody dared engage with Will. This made him angrier. “Am I talking to myself? Am I talking to myself? I will take your silence as a sign that you are working so hard you don’t have time to talk. That’s fine, you only have ten minutes so I suggest you use them wisely.” Will walked out of the main area and into his own office, where a fresh jug of coffee was waiting for him He slammed the door shut and poured himself a cup.

  He felt the anger and the guilt flow out because he knew that his future with Brand depended on the success of this mission. He hated the fact that his future was in other people’s hands. They had to re-establish communications as he could do nothing while he was blind to what was going on at the Farm. He sat down and took a gulp of the coffee to centre his thoughts.

  After a couple of minutes, he was more composed. Opening his office door, he headed back to the monitors.

  The monitors were displaying the view being transmitted from the plane’s external cameras. As the ground below passed by, time seemed to pass slowly but he needed to know what was going on.

  Suddenly over the speakers came Dennis’s voice. “Hello command centre, this is assault force, over.”

  Sparked into action, Will launched himself at the nearest handset and keyed the mike. “Hello assault force, this is command centre. Give me an update – now!”

  “Hello command centre, we have left the Farm,” Dennis said. “We have killed everyone there, torched the buildings and left before the rebels arrived.”

  Will visibly relaxed, his shoulders dropping. The first part of the plan was working. His troops had carried out their part of the assault and had escaped before the larger rebel force had arrived. If they’d stayed, they could have inflicted some casualties on the rebels but that wasn’t the plan.

  His convoy was heading back to the border while the planes were going to complete their task at the Farm. All Will wanted was for the rebels to arrive before the bombers dropped their cargo and he could have a total success.

  The next ten minutes were excruciating for Will. He was constantly looking at the monitors, hoping to see the Farm’s buildings. Through intelligence gathered from previous aerial passes of the Farm, he knew what the area immediately around it looked like from the air. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough information for him to identify how close the planes were now.

  The planes were flying at 30,000 feet. He could still see some of the ground below but very little movement.

  “Hello, Red dog, this is Blue dog. Five minutes out, starting descent, over.”

  “Red dog, right behind you, over.”

  “Blue dog, weapons hot.”

  “Red dog, weapons hot.”

  For the next few minutes, Will’s eyes were glued to the monitor. On the ground below he could see some people moving like ants. It was hard to distinguish numbers but he did know that his troops had left no one there alive. The people on the monitors were clearly the rebel forces. He thought this was going to be a very good day. His plan was working perfectly.

  He expected the rebels to arrive and find the buildings burning. Although they might approach carefully, they would hope to save some of the bodies. They wouldn’t know that an aerial assault was imminent.

  They would likely aim to fortify the Farm in case his troops came back. How wrong they were!

  “Blue dog, bombs away, over.”

  Red dog, bombs away, out.”

  The planes were approaching lower than they did at the compound. They had no markers on the ground here to hit specific buildings. These bombs were designed to destroy the maximum area, leaving no crops or other resources behind and denying the rebels anything that they might use for the winter.

  He could see movement more clearly now –these were definitely people, not animals. Suddenly the first bomb impacted from the rear. The image switched to the rear cameras on the plane. As it flew away, the whole screen was consumed by the flames. The bombs landed one after the other. Initially he could make out separate balls of flames; within seconds, the whole area was one large inferno as the flames joined together. It was like watching a river flowing across the land, a river of fire.

  The planes made one last circuit, following the mission plan. Within the boundaries of the Farm, all that could be seen from the cameras were flames and blackened earth.

  “Red dog, this is Blue dog. Heading home, over.”

  “Blue dog, this is Red dog. Right behind you, out.”

  With that, the mission was over. Will took a moment to analyse what he had just seen. Through his decisive actions on hearing that some of the rebels had escaped the compound, he had diverted his troops with perfect timing. His troops had completed their mission and left before the rebels arrived. Springing the trap, the planes had destroyed the Farm and with it the remaining rebels.

  Of over six hundred rebels initially at the compound, he had destroyed half of them with the compound and now the other half with the fuel bombs. This was a good day for Will, a very good day. He was looking forward to briefing Brand.

  His only concern was that he had no confirmation on the number of survivors. He could have turned his troops around en route to the border and get their confirmation that there were no survivors. Fuel was a consideration here as he was unsure how much his troops had, even though the plan was to refuel with the Farm biofuel. If they were close to the bo
rder, sending them back seemed like a waste of resources.

  He grabbed the radio handset again. “Hello, assault force, this is command centre, over.”

  “Command centre, send, over.”

  “Do you have enough fuel to go back to the Farm, estimate the damage and still return to the border, over?”

  “Command centre, say again, over?”

  “Do you have enough fuel to go back to the Farm, ensure that there were no survivors and still drive to the border, over?”

  “The biofuel at the Farm isn’t running too well in our vehicles so it is doubtful we can do that. Is that our next mission? Over.”

  Will thought for a split second of Brand’s earlier words about stealing defeat from the jaws of victory. “No, head straight to the border, confirm this order: head straight back to the border.”

  Of course, Will was gambling that the mission had been completely successful. Brand would ask if there had been any survivors and he needed a plausible answer. The option to send his troops back to the Farm to confirm success was one of his considerations when he had revised his plan and despatched them to the Farm early. That part of the plan had depended on the biofuel and had failed.

  Judging by his earlier encounter, it was clear that Brand only wanted to know about total successes. Any variables would just make Brand angry so Will determined on the story he would tell. He decided to wait at least an hour so that he could practise his brief. He needed to ensure he was prepared for any questions.

  Brand’s first question would be, “Did you get them all?” and his second, “Can you confirm this?” Will had to provide an answer that would also allow him some flexibility should any of the rebels have escaped. The key was to divulge a few minor escapees, without seeming incompetent. A dozen survivors out of over three hundred seemed like a reasonable number so that was what he settled on.