by David Drake
“Maybe not,” Huber said; not agreeing, just ending a discussion that didn’t have anywhere useful to go. Maybe nothing at all mattered, but on a good day Arne Huber didn’t feel that way.
The command car pulled up alongside the chute, making a half turn so that its bow angled toward the camp proper. Though it was an hour short of sunset and the clouds had cleared, the driver switched on his headlights. In their beams the strands of razor ribbon glittered like jagged icicles. Two troopers with sub-machine guns got out of the vehicle and walked over to the wire.
“Prisoners of Hammer’s Regiment!” a voice boomed through the command car’s loudspeakers. “You will walk in line through the passage at the southeast corner of this camp. As you pass my vehicle—”
The whip antenna on top of the car glowed, becoming a wand of soft red light.
“—you will turn to face it. Then you will walk on to the containers in which you’ll be transported to Midway. There you’ll be released.”
The words were being repeated on the north side of the POW encampment. It wasn’t an echo from the volcano, as Huber thought for a moment. The A Company combat cars were relaying the speech through their public address systems.
“Who’s that in the car?” Deseau said. From the way his eyes were narrowed, he already knew the answer to his question.
“It sounds like Major Steuben,” Huber said. “As you’d expect.”
A full company of Gendarmes stood by the shipping containers. Mauricia Orichos was among them, her hands linked behind her back. Huber had been watching her as Steuben spoke. Orichos hadn’t been best pleased at the words “prisoners of Hammer’s Regiment.”
That was tough. She knew she’d been the only member of the Point forces present when Fort Freedom fell. The Slammers had taken these prisoners, and if the Gendarmery wanted to get snooty about it, the Slammers could take the prisoners away from their present guards any time they wanted to.
A prisoner bellowed something toward the car. Though he made a megaphone of his hands, Huber couldn’t catch the word or brief phrase.
Steuben did, however. The loudspeakers boomed, “A gentleman has expressed doubt that you will actually be released. Let me assure you, mesdames and sirs, that if I wished to kill you all I would not bother with play acting. When you get to Midway, you will be told to sin no more and be released.”
The trucks had unloaded their pallets of black-banded gas cylinders. Five of them shut down. The sixth lifted and lumbered past Task Force Sangrela to settle again beside the command car. The driver opened the cab door and stood on his mounting step, looking at the camp. Another squad of White Mice dismounted from the back and walked over to the chute.
“Very well,” the PA system thundered. Amplification softened Steuben’s clipped tones, making his words sound pompous. Huber found the contrast with the real man chilling. “Start coming through. The sooner you get moving, the sooner we can all get on to more congenial tasks.”
A prisoner near the front looked around, then shambled into the chute. One of the White Mice reached an arm over the wire to halt the man in the headlights. His head rose in surprise and sudden fear.
“Keep going!” the amplified voice ordered.
The trooper’s arm dropped; the prisoner jogged the rest of the way to where Gendarmes herded him into the first container. Several more prisoners followed, shuffling forward in a mixture of desperation and apathy.
“I suggest reconsideration on the part of anyone who thinks he’ll remain in the tents,” Steuben continued, the catlike humor of his tone coming through despite mechanical distortion. “We’re going to destroy the entire site, starting at the north side. We can see you through cloth as surely as we’ll be able to see you in the dead of night, so don’t be foolish.”
There was a hollow boop, then a second later a white flash and a shattering crash. A second boop, Wham! followed immediately. Troopers in the combat cars on the north side were firing grenade launchers into the tents.
Thermal viewing would show any holdouts, so there was no need for the grenades. Major Steuben was just making a point, to the Gendarmes as surely as to the captive Volunteers.
“Sierra, this is Flamingo Six-three,” said the A Company signals officer. “Fox Three-six is to report to the command car ASAP. Out.”
Deseau and Learoyd both looked at Huber. From the driver’s compartment, Sergeant Tranter said over the intercom, “El-Tee? What’s going on?”
Huber cued his intercom and said, “Curst if I know, Sarge. I’ll tell you when I get back. Assuming.”
He swung his left leg over the armor, then paused. He unclipped the sling of his 2-cm weapon from the epaulet and offered the big gun to Learoyd, saying, “Trade me, will you, Herbert?”
“Sure, sir,” the trooper said. He took the 2-cm weapon and slapped the butt of his sub-machine gun into Huber’s palm.
Deseau cackled like a demon. “Handier inside a car, eh, El-Tee?” he said.
Huber climbed the rest of the way out of the fighting compartment, then hopped from the plenum chamber to the ground. He started grinning also. You might as well see the humor in the screwed-up way things worked. It didn’t change things; but then, nothing did change them.
He started toward the command car, his boots squelching and tossing mud up his pants leg with each stride. He didn’t look over his shoulder to see the troopers of Task Force Sangrela watching him, but the Gendarmes watched and the driver of the big air-cushion truck stared down from the cab with a puzzled expression.
Grenades continued to crash on the north side of the camp. They’d started several fires; the sluggish flames gave off curls of black smoke.
Enough prisoners had passed through the chute that the cage meant for twenty cattle was what Huber would’ve called full. The Gendarmes seemed happy to pack more in. Well, if the former Volunteers had nothing worse in their future than an uncomfortable airship ride, they were luckier than they deserved to be.
“That one,” the loudspeaker ordered crisply. A low-intensity laser stabbed from the mount of the command car’s tribarrel. Its yellow dot quivered like a suppurating boil on the cheek of the bald-headed man nearing the end of the chute.
The fellow looked up in startled horror. One of the waiting troopers grabbed him left-handed by the shoulder, holding the sub-machine gun back like a pistol in his right where the prisoner couldn’t reach it.
The trooper walked the fellow out of the chute. Instead of leaving him for the Gendarmes, he handed him over to another of the White Mice who led him in turn to the back of the air-cushion truck.
The prisoners had been moving with something like the docility of the cattle normally loaded into the shipping containers. Now they paused; the woman two places behind the fellow who’d been taken away tried to go back.
“Move it!” the other trooper at the chute snarled, waggling his weapon.
The woman resumed her way down the chute—and out the other end to the Gendarmes, ignored by the voice from the command car. A man who’d been waiting in the crowd turned and started to force his way back through his fellows.
“Halt!” called the trooper nearest to him along the fenceline as he leveled his sub-machine gun. The prisoner tried to run, pushing at others who were trying desperately to get out of the line of fire. The sub-machine gun stuttered a short burst into the man’s legs, one bolt into the left calf and two more at the back of the right knee.
The prisoner fell, screaming with surprise. It was too soon yet for the pain to have reached him; though that’d come, it’d surely come. Only a tag of skin and one tendon connected his right thigh and lower leg.
“Two of you carry him through,” ordered the loudspeaker.
“Make sure to turn his face toward me.”
The wounded man continued to scream. He tried to stand but slipped onto his right side.
From the command car, Joachim Steuben giggled. Amplified, the sound was even more gut-wrenching than it’d seemed when Huber heard i
t from across the major’s desk.
The prisoners nearest the fallen man stood frozen till the trooper waggled the glowing muzzle of his sub-machine gun. Then they grabbed his arms convulsively and stumbled through the chute as he screamed even louder. One brushed the razor ribbon, leaving much of his sleeve on the wire and blood dripping from his torn arm. The wounded man’s legs didn’t bleed; the powergun bolts had cauterized the wounds.
“A moment of your time, Lieutenant Huber,” said Captain Orichos. He jumped. She’d walked over to him while his attention was on the byplay in the camp.
“Ma’am?” he said. Without thinking about it, he stiffened to parade rest. “That is, Captain?”
“Mauricia, I hope,” Orichos said. After the battle she’d resumed wearing her beret instead of a Slammers commo helmet. She took it off now and shook her short hair loose before replacing the cap. “I suppose you know your unit will be routed back with a stopover in Midway?”
“No ma’am,” Huber said with a faint grin. “There were rumors, but we’re line soldiers. Nobody tells us anything.”
“Well, I’m telling you,” Orichos said with a mixture of crispness and challenge. “I’ll be flying back by car shortly; there are some things to clear up in the capital now that the threat’s been dealt with.”
She cleared her throat and looked away. “What I’m saying, Arne, is that I hope when you arrive in Midway, you’ll get in touch with me. I’ll have some free time by then, and I’d really like to repay you for all you’ve done for the Point and for me.”
Orichos smiled. It softened and transformed her face to a remarkable degree.
“I think I can guarantee you a good time,” she said. She touched the back of Huber’s wrist, then turned and went back to her fellows.
Huber rubbed his wrist with the fingers of his other hand as he walked on, thinking about Orichos and about the shooting he’d just watched.
It’d taken skill to hit the running man and not nail a couple of the bystanders. Though it could as easily have been dumb luck: he didn’t suppose either the trooper or Major Steuben would’ve cared if some of the other prisoners had lost limbs.
Huber reached the hatch in the rear of the command car. It opened before he rapped it with the barrel of his powergun. The two men inside had their backs to him as they watched a high-resolution image of prisoners moving steadily through the chute to the shipping containers.
Joachim Steuben was as dapper as if he’d spent the past three days in Base Alpha instead of making a thousand kilometer run over difficult terrain. His companion was blond and in his thirties; Grayle’s chief civil aide, Huber recalled, the one who’d disappeared between the Assembly meeting and the time Captain Orichos found incriminating papers in the files that had been under the aide’s control.
“That one!” the aide said. What was his name? Patronus; that was it. “He’s Gerd Danilew. He was in charge of off-planet weapons purchases!”
“That one,” Steuben said, his amplified voice damped to silence when the hatch closed behind Huber. The pipper of the cab-mounted tribarrel framed the face of the sallow, moustached prisoner walking nervously between the barriers of razor ribbon.
The man looked up. Instead of trying to run, he fell in a faint as limp as if the tribarrel had decapitated him—as the slightest additional pressure of Steuben’s finger on the trigger control would’ve made it do.
“Well, carry him, then,” Steuben ordered into the pickup for the external speakers. He looked over his shoulder at Huber and raised an eyebrow in delighted amusement, then turned back and added, “Now!”
The procession resumed. Patronus kept his face rigidly forward as if he thought that by refusing to acknowledge Huber, he could deny what was going on.
Steuben rotated his full-function chair to smile at Huber. “So, Lieutenant,” he said. “I thought I’d use this opportunity to see if you’re still happy with a line command.”
Instead of the slot in the White Mice that he offered me three weeks ago, Huber thought. He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I’m happy. We did a good job here.”
He guessed he’d made that sound like a challenge, which wasn’t the smartest sort of attitude to show when you were talking to a weasel like Joachim Steuben. Huber didn’t care much at the moment.
“Indeed you did,” Steuben said, nothing in his tone but mild approval. “Both the task force and you personally . . . which is why my offer is still open.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
“I said I was happy!” Huber said. Via, he was going to have to watch himself. It’d be a hell of a note to come through a mission like this one and then be shot because he mouthed off to a stone killer like Joachim Steuben.
He smiled—at himself, but it was probably the right thing to do because the major giggled in response.
“That one!” Patronus said, pointing at the image. His hands were clean but he’d chewed his fingernails ragged.
Major Steuben’s right hand moved minutely, then clicked the switch that controlled the laser marker. Huber didn’t see him look around, not even a quick glance, but the pipper was centered on the forehead of the grim-looking man who’d brushed his full moustache in an attempt to cover the scar on his cheek. “That one,” Steuben repeated into the PA system.
In a quick voice, bobbing his head to his words, Patronus continued, “That’s Commander Halcleides, he took over after Commander Fewsett—that is, when he died.”
“What happens next?” Huber asked. He didn’t exactly care, but he knew Deseau’d ask when he got back to Fencing Master and he wanted to have an answer. “You’ll shoot them?”
Patronus turned with a furious expression. “They’re traitors!” he snarled. “They deserve to die!”
Steuben made a peremptory gesture with his left hand. His head didn’t turn, but Huber saw his eyes flick toward the former aide.
“Master Patronus,” Steuben said without raising his voice, “I’d appreciate it if you’d attend to your duties while the lieutenant and I speak like the gentlemen we are. I don’t want the bother of replacing you.”
He giggled again. To Huber he added, “Though shooting him would be no bother at all, eh, Lieutenant? For either of us, I suspect.”
Patronus was on a seat that folded down from the sidewall. He turned again to face the screen across the front of the compartment, pointedly concentrating on the prisoners shambling through the identification parade. His face flushed, then went white.
Huber looked at the man who’d first planted evidence on his friends and now was fingering his closest colleagues for probable execution. In a good cause, of course: the Regiment’s cause. But still . . .
“No, Major,” Huber said. “It wouldn’t be much bother.”
“But to answer your question,” Steuben continued, “no, we’re not going to shoot them, Lieutenant. They’ll be shipped off-planet to a detention center; an asteroid in the Nieuw Friesland system, as a matter of fact. The Colonel believes they’ll be a useful . . . reminder, shall we say, to the government of the Point as to what might happen if it suddenly decided to back away from its support for the war with Solace.”
“Th-the-there,” Patronus said, pointing at the strikingly attractive woman going through the chute. His outstretched hand trembled. “Talia Mandrakora, she was in charge of propaganda.”
“That one,” Steuben said, highlighting the woman. To Huber he added, “Do you fancy her, Lieutenant? I dare say you could convince her that the only chance she has to survive would involve pleasing you.”
Huber felt his lip curl. “No thanks,” he said. “I don’t have trouble finding company for the night.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Steuben said with a smirk. He rotated his chair toward the screen again. His posture didn’t change in any definable way, but he was no longer the man who’d been joking with catlike cruelty. “And now, I think, we have the personage we’ve been waiting for.”
The prisoners waiting to walk through the chute parte
d, glancing over their shoulders and then lowering their faces as they pushed clear. Melinda Riker Grayle strode through the gap which fear rather than respect had opened for her. She was no longer the woman who’d cowed her colleagues in the Assembly. She wore a white uniform but the right sleeve had been singed and at least some of the stain on her trousers was blood. Nonetheless she walked with her back straight, glaring toward the command car.
“Invite Assemblyman Grayle to join her associates in our van, if you please, Sergeant Kuiper,” Steuben said into the pickup.
Grayle walked alone into the chute. The trooper there hesitated, his arm raised but not fully extended.
“Keep your filthy hands off me!” Grayle said. Steuben must’ve switched on the external microphones, for the assemblyman’s voice sounded as clear as if she’d been in the compartment with them.
She turned to face the car and shouted, “You in there, whoever you are! Hired killers! You know the election was rigged! And you know that you’re charging ten times what the citizens think they’re paying for your services! Tell them!”
“Take her away, Kuiper,” Steuben said, sounding vaguely bored. “I’d rather you not shoot her in the legs so that she has to be carried, but do that if she won’t come peaceably.”
“You know it’s true!” Grayle screamed. When the trooper reached for her shoulder she slapped his hand away, but instead of resisting further she marched down the chute and turned toward the truck where her aides were being held. Her head was high, and she didn’t look around.
Steuben smirked at Huber. “She’s right, you know,” he said conversationally. “The election was rigged. The Freedom Party would’ve taken forty-four percent of the seats if your friend Captain Orichos hadn’t manipulated the vote count.”
Huber looked sharply at the smaller display above the big screen, a 360-degree panorama from the command car. Mauricia Orichos stood watching the parade with three other Gendarmery officers, a few meters behind the White Mice who did the sorting. They followed Grayle with their eyes until she’d disappeared into the box of the truck.
