by Chris Bunch
“Very well,” Williams said. “Carry on.”
He took a deep breath, went over and sat down beside Rivers. She lifted her head, and Williams saw the tear streaks. “You make them into soldiers … and then you lose them,” he said gently. “That’s the way it’s always been. The first time’s always the hardest.”
“Jav … Alt Hofzeiger was one of my best,” she said. “I’d recommended him for the next Cent Board. Now …” She blinked, swallowed very hard. “They murdered my whole platoon, Caud. They shot Finf Zelen in the face … she would’ve lived, if we could’ve gotten her evacked in time. But …”
Her voice trailed off.
“Come on, Theresa,” Williams said. “There’s almost one hundred sixty people still alive. They’re depending on you.”
“I know. I just hope there’ll be some way to make them pay for this.”
“There will be,” Williams said firmly.
Rivers looked at a dark, drying stain. Her lips compressed. “Yes, sir. Someone will pay. Soon.”
• • •
Two nights later, a Grierson grounded gently about half a kilometer from the village, just at last light. Twenty-five men and women, wearing dark coveralls, faces and hands darkened, got out. They carried pistols and fighting knives. All were volunteers. It was fairly dim — only the two smaller moons, Penwith and Bodwin, were out.
They gathered around Cent Rivers. She drew her knife, held it up. “I want everybody on D-Cumbre to know the Force never forgets … and we always punish murderers. And everybody in that village is guilty. I’ll take point.”
She sheathed her knife, and the twenty-five filed off, into the jungle, toward the village.
• • •
“Did you hear the skinny?” Garvin said.
“I heard,” a glum Njangu said.
“Which version?”
“Both,” Yoshitaro said. “Matin claims the ’Raum outlaws did it because one of the villagers must’ve given us some good intelligence. That’s the official word.”
“And you know that’s bullshit.”
“I know.”
“Damn, but that’ll teach ‘em,” Garvin enthused. “Mess with the bull, and you get the horns. How many did they kill?”
“About forty,” Njangu said. “Mostly women and kids.”
“I heard Cent Rivers led the raid in person.”
“I heard the same thing,” Njangu said.
“So what’re you so gloomy about? That’ll put a chill in all those illegal settlements out there. Teach ‘em they can’t play on both sides.”
“Garvin,” Njangu said tiredly, “come on, man. Think.”
“Think what? That’s the way to run things. They kill one of us, we kill a dozen of them. That’ll teach them not to be aidin’ and abetting.”
“It’ll teach them, all right,” Njangu said. “Teach them to be guerrillas.”
Garvin stared at his friend. “How do you figure?”
“Real simple,” Njangu said. “First, think about things from the villagers’ perspective. We come through for half an hour, then go back to this island. The ’Raum live next door. The villagers can add … half an E-hour for us, twenty-six and a half for them to get even.”
“Yeah,” Garvin nodded.
“So if you were a villager, and you wanted to stay a live villager, who would you be more polite to?”
“I guess the ’Raum,” Garvin said reluctantly.
“Now, we’ve started patrolling the hills. We’re going to bring law, order, and justice, right? So the first thing we do, when a patrol gets shot up, is send out a death squad and obliterate the village. Fine court of law there, and a really good way to get people to love you, last time I heard.”
“Who said we were supposed to be loved? That’s why they gave us guns.”
“Hide and watch, my friend,” Yoshitaro said. “Every dirt-gobbler that was wondering about things, after that dumb bitch created a slaughterhouse, shouldn’t have much trouble making up his mind. Which side would you pick if you were out there?” Njangu finished.
“Shit,” Garvin said. He slumped down on Njangu’s bunk. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“It doesn’t look like anybody is,” Njangu said. “And I’ll bet they don’t start now. Williams can’t court-martial Rivers, even if he wanted to. Which is going to set a real fine example for the next idiot who’s standing there with a gun in his hand, pissed off because his bunkie got his head shot off.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I know I’m right,” Njangu said.
“How’d you get to be so damned smart?” Garvin asked.
“I’m not smart, I’m cunning,” Njangu explained. “Cops can make all the mistakes in the world. Crooks only get to make one.”
“So I’d better leave the thinking to you from here on out?” Garvin said.
“Might be safer. And I’ll make you another prediction. This batshit won’t stop anything. There’ll be more patrols hit, and pretty soon we won’t go into the hills at all in anything other than company strength. And then they’ll start sniping at us while we waddle through the jungle, grinding us down one by one.”
“You’re sure a cheery bastard,” Jaansma said.
“I am that,” Njangu said. He put down the sight he’d been carefully cleaning, grabbed his cap from the end of his bunk. “Come on. I’ll let you buy me a beer and maybe that’ll make me into a laughing idiot like the rest of this murderous goddamned Strike Force.”
• • •
An assault team was wiped out three days later, and, four days after that, HQ Honor Guard was almost sucked into an ambush making a sweep five kilometers beyond the Heights.
Less than half a dozen ’Raum were confirmed killed, although the claimed body count was ninety, and only seven had been captured. About six villages were cleared as suspected ’Raum strongholds, and another dozen razed after weapons or other banned materials were found.
Caud Williams announced a change in tactics — henceforth the Force would patrol in company-sized elements, remaining in the jungle for up to five days, being resupplied from the air while hiving smaller units off on close-range sweeps. “Once these small patrols locate the bandits,” he said, “it’ll be a simple matter either to smash them from the air or hit them hard with the main force. Another advantage we have, and one I propose to exploit to the fullest, is our command of the air. These bandits will become like field mice, always looking over their shoulder for the hawk … and I guarantee it’ll be there.
“This campaign should last no more than another month or two before we bring peace to the hills.”
• • •
“I’ve decided,” Garvin said gloomily, “God … or the gods … hate me.”
“Why?” Jasith asked. “And why is the pickup so spotty?”
“ ‘Cause I’m calling from the public line outside our orderly room,” Jaansma explained, “and there’s about a kazillion taps on the line to make sure I don’t say anything classified. There’s also a delay in the transmission, I think. Not that I would say anything I’m not supposed to. Hell, I don’t know anything classified.”
“So why are you so hated by gods and such? You got a chance to call me, didn’t you,” Jasith asked.
“That’s about all I’m going to get to do,” Garvin said. “Because …”
The sound blurred for a moment, then cleared as he said, “so you see why I said that?”
“No,” Jasith said. “Your voice went away.”
“I guess I do know something secret,” Garvin said. “ ’Kay, lemme rethink how to put it.”
“Uh, was it something about us?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe something like it’ll be a while before you see me again?” Again, the sound blurred, but Garvin had nodded while speaking. “I already figured that out,” Jasith said. “Daddy told me what … some real big people told him.”
“That figures,” Garvin said. “Everybody out there, includin
g probably the ’Raum, knows more about my future than I do.”
“Can I come see you?”
“I don’t think so,” Garvin said. “All of our civilian workers have been told to stay away, and they’ve doubled the …” Again his voice blurred. “I’m sorry, Jasith,” he said, sounding as completely pitiable as only a celibate twenty-year-old can. “I really hoped, well, that …” His voice trailed off. “Maybe, someday … aw, hell.”
The two stared at each other for a moment. “I gotta go,” he said finally. “There’s two or three other guys waiting to use this com.”
“Garvin,” Jasith said softly. “Do you still want to … see me?”
“Of course. You know I do.”
“Then let me give you something to remember, when you’re out there.”
She swiftly unfastened her blouse, opened it. She wore nothing under it, and her breasts stood up firmly. She ran a fingernail around one nipple, and it stood up firmly. “I wish it was you doing that to me,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Garvin said, his voice a little hoarse.
“I’d show you more … give you something more … but a housekeeper’s just around the corner. I’ll miss you, Garvin. And I’ll be there when you want me.” She ran a tongue slowly around her lips, then cut the connection.
Garvin sat, staring at the gray screen. Someone hammered on the booth’s door. “Come on in there! Other people got girlfriends, too.”
“Not like mine,” Garvin said. “Not like mine.”
• • •
Two months later, there were about twenty confirmed ’Raum killed, fifty-six captured, eighteen surrendered. Thirty-eight Force men and women were dead, about half that many again wounded. Seventy-three civilians had been killed by one side or another. Forty-six “illegal” settlements had been burned by Force patrols or civilian vigilance patrols. And no one in the Strike Force, beginning with Finf Garvin Jaansma, had been granted a pass.
• • •
“You see,” Comstock Brien said, “this is the way to victory. Slow, proven, but little by little we whittle them down, without any expensive adventurism, such as you advocated.”
Jord’n Brooks smiled thinly. “Let us hope, brother,” he said, “that your way continues to be successful.”
“It shall,” Brien said smugly. “And now is a good time to show how our power has increased.”
• • •
Five days later, an estimated two hundred or more ’Raum came from nowhere and seized a suburb of Leggett. They held the holo station long enough to make a planetwide ‘cast proclaiming that justice and equality for the ’Raum must come to the Cumbre system, or the worlds would run with blood. They held a drumhead trial in the town’s police station, and hanged the town’s officials and seven of the local police force. The others had either fled or been killed in the assault.
Another thirty-nine civilians whom the ’Raum accused of being traitors to humanity were shot before the assault force vanished as silently as it had come, a full half an hour before police reinforcements arrived, and forty-five minutes before the first Force reaction element was deployed.
CHAPTER
25
They came out of the Griersons fast, blasters ready. Overhead, unseen in the mist, three Zhukovs howled close orbits around the buildings, gray in the gray dawn.
But there was nothing waiting except bodies.
Bodies and the Musth. There were thirty-three of the aliens, a platoon, wearing the combat harness that identified them as soldiers, and they moved in pairs, from human corpse to corpse, methodically making sure each was adequately dead.
Njangu and the rest of Gamma Team ran around the Musth headquarters, and set up a hasty perimeter. Not two meters from Yoshitaro was a very dead man, who wore the simple coveralls of a farmer, but wore a Confederation battle vest and carried an issue blaster. There was a fist-sized hole in his chest. Njangu glanced at the body, away, then quickly back, for something in the hole had moved. White-gray worms wriggled, then returned to their burrowing. Njangu swallowed hard.
“That’s one of their weapons,” Kipchak said calmly. He was crouched, blaster ready, to the team’s rear. “It’s a projectile weapon that blows a frigging great hole in you with a capsule, the capsule breaks, and those worms eat you to death before you’ve got time to scream more than once or twice. Supposedly the worms then die.”
“Not that it’d matter by then,” Penwyth said.
“Silence over there,” Gonzales snapped.
“Your men need not mire themssselves,” a Musth told Alt Hedley. “Thessse creaturesss have gone beyond, and will not be troublesssome, and there are no more of them, or we would have found them on our detectorsss.”
“So it appears,” Hedley said. He glanced back at Caud Williams and his staff, coming out of a C&C Grierson. “But I have my orders.”
“Then continue wasssting your time,” the Musth said. “It isss no concern of mine.”
Hedley nodded, made the rounds of the I&R company. The ’Raum must’ve come out of that ravine, he guessed, seeing the sprawl of bodies from there almost to the main buildings. The first to die had been hit with conventional blasters, and left not completely unpleasant remains. But the closer the raiders got to the Musth, the more nastily they’d died. Here was a clot of bodies shredded by something, there was —
“You are interesssted in what happened?” It was the Musth.
“I am.”
“I have the name of Wlencing,” the Musth said. “I have the lead of the sssoldiers who dessstroyed thessse bunglersss, I believe the word is.”
“Why bunglers?” Hedley asked. “Jon Hedley is my name, by the way.”
“To make an attack, and be utterly wiped out without causssing any casssualties in return doesss not sssuggessst the most ssskilled of warriorsss to me. Or am I making a misssevaluation?”
“No,” Hedley said. “Not considering the results, you’re not.”
“Are thessse the same sssort I have ssseen on your holosss? Banditsss, I think you term them?”
“Yes. Renegades from the ’Raum.”
“I know the ’Raum,” Wlencing said. “Wormsss who burrow at the ordersss of your authority-onesss. From thisss, I would think they ssshould know their ssstation, and not presssume to be fighters.”
“They didn’t do very well,” Hedley agreed.
“That makesss me wonder about certain … thingsss,” Wlencing said. “About how good your warriorsss really are.”
“I am not familiar with your weapons,” Hedley said. “Blasters killed those men and women over there. But what about this group?”
“A very sssecret weapon,” Wlencing said. He opened a pouch, took out a box with rounded corners. “I touch thisss stud, then throw the deviccce. When it ssstrikes, sssmall creaturesss explode out, sssmall creaturesss with … bitesss? Isss that the word?”
“Stings?”
“Yesss. Ssstingsss. Quick, but not pleasssant.”
“You said it was secret,” Hedley said. “Why are you telling me?”
“Why not? I do not think there isss anything that ssspecial about the deviccce. Ssstarshipsss’ performance, ssstrategies, misssiles, yesss, sssecret. But a sssimple killing tool? That isss ridiculousss. Besssides, sssince I command our warriorsss, no one will contessst what I decccide to do. Or not to do.”
“I see,” Hedley said.
“Are you not plagued by thossse-far-from-the-fight, who think it their right to make rulesss for all?”
“Lord knows we are that,” Hedley said. He looked at another body. “How did she die?”
“By a hand weapon like this,” Wlencing said, taking something from a pouch. It had a short, stubby barrel, and the “grip” was a double strap. Wlencing touched it to his upper paw, and the grip curled around it, as his double thumbs clasped it. “A very, very fassst acccid, sssprayed by ultrahigh-presssure air. As fassst asss one of your blasssters, if ssshorter-ranged.” He put the weapon away, looked back at the
command group. A Musth had joined Caud Williams. “That isss Aesc,” he said. “Our sssystem-leader. He isss telling your leader what happened, and warning him.”
“Warning him?” Hedley said.
“No Musth died here today at the handsss of these sssavages,” Wlencing said. “That isss good. That isss the way it mussst continue. If one Musth … jussst one … isss killed by these rebelsss, thessse banditsss, all humansss, innoccent, guilty, everyone in the Cumbre sssystem will either die or become our digging worms, and these worldsss will become part of the Musth Empire.”
CHAPTER
26
Word of the Highland Massacre swept through the ’Raum mining colonies on C-Cumbre, the ’Raum settlements across D-Cumbre, and especially in the Eckmuhl, the ’Raum ghetto in Leggett. The ’Raum exploded in blind rage and hatred. There were no Musth in Leggett, but there were the hated police and the Rentiers who exploited the sect. Police lifters were overturned and burnt, and the officers in them beaten or worse. Riot squads were driven back, and police stations became fortresses under siege. Stores were looted, including two of Angie Rada’s family’s Markets. Gangs of ’Raum ravaged the streets, and anyone not armed and traveling in company was in danger.
The Force was brought down from the hills to bring order. The soldiers swept the streets, set up roadblocks. Unfamiliar with civil disorder, the soldiers behaved as if the ’Raum, all ’Raum, were their enemies, sweeping the rioters back into Eckmuhl, arresting any ’Raum who couldn’t give an instant explanation for who he — or she — was, and what he — or she — was doing, or even for just having a ’Raum-sounding name. Sometimes the ’Raum fought back, and sometimes they ended up in hospital. Others, not so “lucky,” ended in the morgue.
The streets were quiet again. The holos, especially Matin, cheered the Force as saviors of Cumbre. The soldiers gloried in the praise they received so seldom, or at least some did. Alt Hedley, Finf Kipchak, Finf Jaansma, Striker Yoshitaro, Cent Angara and others kept their own counsel.
