by Blaze Ward
In other words, utter barbarism. Goths at the gates of the city.
Jessica leaned back as Wakely waved a hand to get her attention.
Jessica paused the channel and raised an eyebrow. This was verging over into Civilian Affairs, and she had an expert on the topic who wanted to say something.
She already knew what Kim’s recommendation would be.
“He is absolutely correct, Jessica,” Wakely began. “You would utterly decapitate this planet’s entire government if we significantly damaged that building.”
What Jessica didn’t understand was the mischievous gleam in Dr. Okafor’s eyes as she spoke.
“Okay?” Jessica hesitated to commit herself to anything.
“Think about the records he’s referring to, Margrave,” Wakely continued. “Who owes the state taxes and how much? Who owns the all the property? Who has been in trouble with the Imperial authorities?”
Wakely paused to consider the image.
“That smoke is probably Securitat troops burning all their records.”
“Possibly,” Jessica said. “So?”
“Jessica, the entire planet is basically the personal fief of the Duke. People owe him taxes. His police throw people in jail or ship them off to labor colonies. If we burn it, he loses everything, even if they evict us later. He would have to spend a decade recreating those records. If he even could.”
“And if we hold the planet?” Jessica asked, suddenly realizing where Wakely’s mind was going.
Creator. Could she commit that level of vandalism and pull it off? This would be something she would be answering to the Senate for, one way or the other.
Huns. About to cross the frozen Rubicon with a howl of savage glee fit to chill the blood.
“You would absolutely have to nationalize everything immediately, in the interests of orderly government, Jessica,” Wakely said, apparently almost verging on a fit of giggles. “Ports. Transport. Industry. Everything.”
“And then turn around and sell it to locals,” Jessica breathed. “Who would be personally invested in keeping it up, expanding it, making a profit from it. Sweat equity in new corporate structures, with the Republic of Aquitaine as eventual minority partner.”
Jessica could measure the pure insanity of the idea from the looks of bewildered shock on the faces around her. Men and women of her Flag Staff, jaws hanging open. All except Wakely.
But then, Queen of the Pirates.
Jessica turned to her Flag Centurion.
“Get me some Shore Patrol marines down there immediately, Enej,” she said. “I want Miles Gunderson politely transported up here to keep him from meddling.”
He nodded.
Jessica reopened the comm channel to the ground.
“Cohort Centurion Kim,” she ordered forcefully. “You will take Mayor Gunderson into custody and secure him safely away from danger. Auberon is sending troops to transport him out of Yonin. Let me know when we have a secure signal.”
Even gruff, no–nonsense, pain–in–the–ass Cohort Centurion Kim’s mouth fell open a little. Gunderson turned white. Well, less chocolate brown. More burnt umber than anything.
Still, two minutes later, Kim was buttoned up inside Freefall. The crew of StealthLlama had taken the mayor, and were holding him a block away.
“Go ahead, Flag,” Kim said warily.
“Kim, that building is a concrete and steel shell, faced with local granite, correct?”
“Affirmative, Flag. Not sure what they’re burning over there. Probably furniture.”
“No, Rebekah,” Jessica replied. “Most likely they are burning paper files. The building is a major records repository.”
“Paper records?”
Rebekah sounded aghast. Culture shock.
“That’s the Imperial Way, Cohort Centurion,” Jessica hammered the point home. “Metal filing cabinets and rooms filled with boxes, all filled with paper. Permanent records of government.”
Jessica took a deep breath. This went against everything she had ever believed about law and order.
“Kim, I am ordering you to open fire on the building with the particle cannons on your tanks until you have crushed all resistance coming from that building. Exercise maximum care for your forces, pouring more fire into the building until you are absolutely certain the Imperial Security forces inside have been destroyed.”
“And if they want to surrender?”
“They would have done that twenty minutes ago, Kim.”
A light dawned in the woman’s eyes.
“Paper records. You want me to commit arson, Flag?”
“Kim, I want you to burn every single piece of paper you can reach from there. The building won’t collapse, but His Imperial Majesty’s Government of Thuringwell just might.”
“Roger that, Flag.”
Jessica could hear the savage glee in that woman’s voice.
Alber’ d’Maine never got that happy, but the two of them were certainly kinfolk, under the skin.
Jessica stared at Wakely for a moment.
“This is insane, Okafor,” she said.
Wakely nodded sagely.
“It is a clean slate, Keller.”
Jessica nodded back.
She was about to destroy this planet as a working civilization, gambling that she and Wakely could rebuild it tomorrow.
Assuming it didn’t get her Court Martialed.
Again.
Chapter XV
Date of the Republic April 30, 396 Yonin, Thuringwell
Vo Arlo watched the DropShip Cayenne lift back into the sky and quickly run for the stars. He looked around for a moment to get his bearings.
It was a gray, cool, almost miserable day at this latitude. At least it wasn’t raining, even if it smelled strange.
Every new planet smelled strange for at least a week. And that was without horses.
Somehow, he had gotten himself attached to Scout Patrol, First Cohort, as a liaison to the ground forces. That meant city boy was riding on the back of a horse in the middle of a planetary invasion.
Seriously?
A monstrously big, black gelding named Shevi who didn’t look too smart, but was two hands taller than all the other horses around him.
That’s how these people measured horses. Not meters and kilograms. Hands and Stone.
Weird.
And he felt like a fool. In mufti, no less.
Well, not mufti.
Army gear.
Heavy pants with thigh pockets and a reinforced seat. Baggy. Loose. Strange after his normal uniform, where everything had to be planned to fit under an emergency lifesuit in a hurry.
Button–up shirt instead of a tunic, with a button–up, rain–proof jacket over that and a heavy, armoured vest over that.
Big, floppy hat, a darker brown than the tan–speckled pattern of everything else.
At least he got to keep his boots.
They had wanted to raise a stink about that. They all wore boots with pointy toes on them, to slip into the stirrups easily.
No, thank you. Make me bigger stirrups, I’m keeping my boots.
They relented, eventually. It would have taken the Fleet Centurion to get him to change his mind on that one. They even figured that out all by themselves.
And he had been issued slug–throwers, instead of energy weapons.
Who the hell fights with slug–throwers?
And a six–shot, 12mm revolver? And a matching 12mm carbine rifle?
And a lariat. Let us not forget the lariat.
Seriously, these people took this cowboy thing way too seriously.
Of course, the single–edged saber on his belt was deadly. Nearly a meter of yataghan. Not quite the ancient–style katana he had mastered aboard Auberon under Navin the Black’s eye, but serious business.
Vo looked up and realized that Patrol Centurion Mitja was smiling at him.
It was a warm smile. Not as nice as the one she usually had for Gaucho, but not threatening or disappointed.
Now he was supposed to play cowboy with these people?
“You’ll do fine, Arlo,” she reassured him.
His horse seemed to disagree. Or maybe sneeze. Hard to tell, beast this big. Almost as big as him.
Vo wiggled his butt to get used to the hard leather saddle and shrugged. He was prepared to punch the monster, if Shevi turned to take a bite at his foot again.
Horse seemed to understand that. Finally.
“What’s first?” he replied.
Dashyl pointed at the houses in the near distance. A few faces could be seen peeking out windows, but nobody was brave enough to actually stand in their front yard and wave.
Cayenne had set them down in an open ninety–hectare field, on the edge of one of the nicest neighborhoods in Yonin, a suburb called Aarhus.
Money.
Mansions that verged on castles from fairy tales.
Just the sort of place to ride up like a medieval knight on horseback, looking for the Holy Grail.
Seriously. How had he gotten here?
“First,” Dashyl replied. “A sweep through the neighborhood to make sure everyone here understands we mean business. Later, we’ll spread out and keep the peace. Local gendarmes aren’t particularly heavily armed, but they’re Ministry of Interior troops, not cops. Nothing protect and serve about them. They all get shipped sky–side, if they behave.”
“And if they don’t?” Arlo asked.
He had a pretty good idea what was likely to happen, but he wanted to see how a woman like Dash approached it. She was Tip–of–the–Spear crazy. Kinda like Gaucho, come to think of it.
“That’s why we brought the whole patrol, Arlo,” she replied seriously, gesturing to the mob of ninety–odd horseback troopers around them.
“PeeCee,” a woman said from close by. Patrol Centurion. Dashyl. “Spotter call from Gaucho. Armed troops in a park not far from here. I’ve got coords.”
Curator Aoibhín Hult, pronounced EE–ven, regardless of however weird she spelled it. Cornicen. Patrol communications. Technically, the person he was supposed to be spending the most time with.
She looked eighteen. Waify brunette. Her body language had suggested she might not be above an occasional tumble in the hay, if he wanted.
Vo couldn’t bring himself to want to.
Not after last year.
Keep it professional, soldier boy.
He turned to her and cleared his throat. Too much horse dust in the air.
“Contact LVIII Heavy and see what units they have that can meet us there,” he commanded.
Dash gave him a hard look.
“You don’t think we can handle it?” she asked with a hard sneer.
A bunch of the troopers nearby similarly growled under their breaths.
Vo went to a dark place in his head before he spoke.
“My orders were simple, Patrol Centurion,” he said with a blunt, sledge–hammer tone everyone close enough could hear. “Civilians who behave get left alone. Armed resistance gets crushed. If that means calling down orbital strikes from Auberon and the fleet, and leaving this city a smoking crater, that’s the cost of doing business today. Any questions?”
That seemed to get through to the men and women around him.
Scout Patrol, First Cohort, was apparently used to operating on their own, utterly self–sufficient. They needed to be reminded occasionally that there was a whole fleet backing the Legion.
And a man willing to call down the fires of the apocalypse.
It had been one hell of a year for Vo.
“CC Kim says she’s got a lance close enough to help out,” the Cornicen replied after a minute.
Vo just looked mutely at Dash, unwilling to usurp her command, her experience, here on the ground.
“Vector them in on a pincer, Hult,” Dashyl commanded. “Second Squadron on the right, Third on the left. Move out, troopers.”
Apparently, Vo’s horse was better trained at this than he was. Shevi immediately lurched into a trot with the rest of the force, nearly tossing Vo ass over teakettle.
He grabbed the saddlehorn and got his weight centered again.
Tomorrow, he was going to hurt, but he was damned sure not going to embarrass himself today.
Ξ
It was a park: big and green and artificial. That much Vo was sure of.
The rest was less obvious.
There was a big, square, concrete pond, almost in the middle. More than a wading pool, but not much more.
Concrete pathways ran in curves instead of straight lines, something utterly anathema to the Imperial mindset. It looked almost inviting.
A few trees dominated sparingly, leaving mostly hedge–like bushes here and there. Nothing at all like cover.
Scout Patrol was coming in from the south. The open space was approached by several wide, tree–lined boulevards on a precise, Imperial grid. It probably covered two hundred hectares, all in all, nearly as flat as a snooker table.
Along the northern part were a set of what looked like monuments. At least from here, through powerful binoculars.
Big, granite edifices. Strange shapes, almost geometric.
The big clues were the two obelisks on the ends. Black stone. Polished but not shiny. Flat tops. Big bronze–looking statues of soldiers atop those, facing each other, rifles out like they were charging over the top of a hill, bayonets fixed for serious business. Each four meters tall.
It was in the middle that he saw the problem.
That piece was a big, gray box of a monument. Looked kinda like an ancient altar from a church.
In front of it were four men.
At least they were dressed for the weather.
Each wore a long navy–blue coat, almost a cloak, but with sleeves. Kepis with cloth on the back protected their necks from the chill, as did scarves wrapped around their necks and tucked in.
All four were armed.
Long arms. Big, decorative rifles, minus the bayonets. Probably close by if necessary.
Two men stood at the near corners of the big monument, while the other two walked a very formal pattern in front of it.
Vo lowered the glasses and looked around him.
They were at least a kilometer away, at the far end of the park, but you couldn’t hide an entire squadron of cavalry approaching in terrain like this.
Nobody over there had reacted. Or maybe they didn’t care.
Dash had everyone still mounted, but he knew that there was a Ballistae team with each of the nine lances. Mostly, light machine guns and sniper teams, but there was at least one pair of troopers equipped with shoulder–launched anti–tank missiles.
Patrol Squadron, First Cohort was used to being the tip of the spear.
A sound on his left brought his head around and the binoculars back up.
A lance of heavy tanks, Solenopsis models with the big, sixty–six millimeter particle cannons, emerged from a side street on the other corner closest to them with a noisy rumble and a hint of burning diesel.
Three big, green Fire Ants.
Cataphracti.
The big guns.
Vo was pretty sure that the combined force could take on four men armed with single–shot rifles in a park.
Now, what the hell were they up to over there?
Nobody could miss this. And they hadn’t reacted at all. Two men marching. Two men standing.
Vo laughed.
“Something funny, Arlo?” Dashyl asked from close by.
“Dunno,” he said with a smile. “Think we can take them?”
“It’ll be close,” she replied with a matching smile. “Good thing you brought in that heavy armor to cover our flank.”
The lance closest laughed as well.
Vo spurred Shevi into motion. The big horse blinked at him over a shoulder before he got up to speed.
“What are you doing, Arlo?” Dash asked as she spurred her own roan
mare, Göll, into motion. Other horses started to move as well.
“Going to talk to them,” he replied. “Don’t need the whole squadron. And you’ll probably make them nervous.”
“Squadron halt,” Dash called.
Shevi wanted to stop, too, but Vo heeled him once, maybe a little too hard, and the big gelding got back up to a canter. With an equine grumble.
Göll came alongside as well. When Vo glanced back, two others rode behind them, Curator Hult, and Curator Charpentier, the big man who was the Squadron’s Draconarius, their standard–bearer. He had that flag out on the end of a spear.
Seriously, a spear.
“You sure you should be doing this, Dash?” he asked.
“Mags can run things just as well as I can,” she replied, waving a hand behind them to encompass Centurion Borislavov and the rest of the group.
Nine lances settled. Vo could see the various weapons teams setting up, including the two lunatics with AT missiles.
This could get interesting.
They cantered across the open space, looping left–hand around the pond, the four of them.
The four men over there finally reacted when they got within a hundred meters.
Vaguely.
The two in the middle stopped marching and turned to face them. Nobody had taken the rifles off their shoulder slings, but they weren’t going for cover either.
Vo glanced over and considered what would happen if even one of the particle cannons fired this direction. He shrugged.
This was probably a stupid idea, but so was getting out of bed this morning.
He brought Shevi down to a walk at about fifty meters out, and then pulled on the reins at about thirty.
Dash out–ranked him, but she was letting him ride lead on this one. She would have probably just opened up with the big guns at five hundred meters, followed by a massed charge. She had that kind of reputation.
Vo got a good look at the four men.
If he was reading their uniforms right, they were all fairly high–ranking enlisted men, without any officers present. Something equivalent to a Curator or a Decanus. Maybe a Decurion. And if the stripes on the right forearm each meant three years’ service, like he thought he remembered, the baby in that group had been in for at least eighteen years.
So, veterans. Long serving–ones.
Everybody stared at each other for a few moments.
