Retreat Hell

by Christopher Nuttall

  Chapter Thirteen

  Or, on Morningstar, several ethnic groups had their own off-planet backers (despite a moratorium on outside shipments of arms, imposed but not enforced.) Their belief was that, if their particular faction came out on top, Morningstar could be added to their factions scrabbling for influence in the Empire as a whole. They had no real concern for the planet as a whole, let alone its inhabitants.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. War in a time of ‘Peace:’ The Empire’s Forgotten Military History.

  Rifleman Thomas Stewart ducked his head as he stepped into the Brigadier’s office, then stood upright and snapped out a salute. He didn't resent it, certainly nowhere near as much as an Imperial Army soldier would have resented it, even if he did have more years in the Marine Corps than the Brigadier. She'd proved herself in command of a platoon, then the entire CEF, while he’d been on detached duty working with new recruits. And besides, even if he had, it would have been unprofessional to show it.

  “At ease,” Brigadier Jasmine Yamane said. “We’re both Marines here.”

  Thomas relaxed, slightly. It was true enough that the Marine Corps was surprisingly informal, at least by the standards of the Imperial Army, but every serving Marine had gone through the Slaughterhouse, giving them a degree of trust in one another’s capabilities. On the other hand, while his career had been effectively frozen, Jasmine’s had rocketed ahead. And he hadn’t known her very well before he'd been detached from the serving Marines ...

  “Thank you,” he said. “And thank you for the assignment.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jasmine said. Her lips twitched. “But I should inform you that it was the Colonel’s decision.”

  “Understood,” Thomas said. “Training was fun, but ...”

  “I know,” Jasmine said. “It isn't quite the same, is it?”

  Thomas nodded. He was a Slaughterhouse Brat, a child of a serving Marine who had grown up on the Slaughterhouse. He’d lived and breathed the Marine Corps since he’d been old enough to understand what a Marine actually was. Signing up at fifteen, the youngest age a man could join as a new recruit, had been an easy decision. After Boot Camp, he’d taken the Training MOS at the suggestion of his Drill Instructor. Ironically, it had made him too valuable to risk for the first five years of their exile to Avalon.

  He enjoyed training, even though he swore the new recruits came up with new ways to kill themselves every year. Some seemed to breeze through Hell Week, others quit or tried to commit suicide ... and still others, despite their problems, kept going, drawing on reserves of strength and determination they hadn’t known they’d had. It was those recruits, he knew, who were the most valuable. They learned their lessons early enough to adapt, react and overcome. But still ... it was a relief to be away from the training field for a few months.

  “I may be about to stick a knife in your back,” Jasmine admitted. “You may be needed to inspect the local training facilities on Thule.”

  Thomas made a face. “Must I?”

  Jasmine snorted. “It will probably be embedded combat duty rather than training duty,” she said. “But a lot depends on the situation on the ground.”

  “Oh,” Thomas said. Embedded combat duty was either rewarding or hellish, not least because the local troopers the Marine was supposed to lead might just stick a literal knife in his back instead. He’d served long enough to know that one bad apple could tear apart an otherwise decent unit. It hadn't been too bad on Avalon, but the Crackers hadn't really had time to infiltrate the Knights before the war ended. “I will be at your disposal.”

  He recalled the briefing notes – Lieutenant Buckley had made them read their way through the notes in exhaustive detail – and felt his enthusiasm sink. Civil wars were always nasty, even when both sides were inclined to give the other some compromises in the interests of peace. This civil war looked like it was heading towards bloody slaughter. Maybe it wasn't racial or religious, both of which had been present on Han, but it was going to be quite bad enough. Who would have imagined a civil war based on employment prospects?

  Thule, evidently, he noted. Damn them.

  “It may come to nothing,” Jasmine said, “but I want you prepared for the eventuality. The Colonel would prefer we had the situation well in hand before Wolfbane gets more openly involved.”

  “That may be difficult,” Thomas warned. “We got lucky on Avalon, Jas. Here ... we may not be so lucky.”

  He sighed. There were only two ways to win an insurgency; exterminate one side, root and branch, or make political compromises that would take the fire out of the insurgency’s support, isolating the insurgents from the people. On Avalon, eliminating debt peonage and ending political disenfranchisement had weakened the Crackers to the point they’d surrendered and joined the government. But on Thule ... the population was simply too large for such a solution to be enforced quickly. It was more likely that trying would merely add a third side to the civil war.

  “I know,” Jasmine said. “But we have to try.”

  “Understood,” Thomas said. He grinned, suddenly. “Can I play hooky from training simulations?”

  “Not unless you want Joe to come after you with a baseball bat,” Jasmine said. “I don't think he’ll be very pleased.”

  She passed him a datachip, then stood. “Do your reading, come up with plans ... but don’t get too attached to any of them,” she added. “The situation on the ground might be completely different from what we expect.”

  ***

  “Thief,” Buckley said.

  Jasmine ducked the kick he aimed at her, then danced around him, watching for the moment he would lower his guard for a spilt-second. At that moment, she would have to knock him out of the circle or risk being hammered herself. Despite her training and enhancements, she knew she was no match for him in terms of sheer strength.

  “That’s a pretty serious accusation,” she said, lightly. It was too, even though it was obvious that Buckley meant it in jest. A thief in the barracks could tear a unit apart. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

  “You’re going to steal Thomas from me,” Buckley growled. He eyed her with cold calculation, despite the irritation in his words. “How am I meant to run training simulations with him when I may not have him.”

  “Needs must when higher command pisses on your hand and calls it golden rivers,” jasmine said, remembering one of the cruder explanations for their hasty rush to defensible locations on Han when the shit had started to hit the fan. “There aren't many others I could call upon with the right experience.”

  “Still a major pain in the ass,” Buckley said. He lunged forward with striking speed; Jasmine jumped to the side, almost falling out of the circle. “I can put him on reserves, but that’s still a problem for training.”

  Jasmine sighed. The hell of it was that she knew Buckley was right. When she’d commanded the platoon, she’d had a fairly stable roster of Marines; Blake had had a couple of newcomers who had rotated off detached duty, but they’d had plenty of time to exercise with the rest of the platoon. Joe Buckley, on the other hand, couldn't make plans involving a tenth rifleman when that rifleman wasn't going to be there. Or even if he didn't think that rifleman wasn't going to be in the platoon.

  Marines were taught to work together as a unit, right from the start. No single recruit could get through Boot Camp on his own. But they needed to train to ensure they knew their fellow Marines inside out, if only so they could compensate for their weaknesses. Jasmine had, accidentally, made it harder for Buckley to train his Marines.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Can you put him on reserve, for the moment ...”

  Buckley saw his chance and lunged forward, his fist slamming into her jaw. Jasmine felt herself thrown into the air, over the circle and down onto the hard deck. She grunted in pain as her legs came down hard, then rolled over instinctively. Buckley was still within the circle, waving his hand in a victory gesture.

  “Bastard,” Jasmin
e said, as she picked herself off the deck. Despite her training and enhancements, her jaw ached badly. She’d need to see the medic. “That was low.”

  “Dating a reporter has obviously taken some of the edge off you,” Buckley countered, as he strode out of the circle. “You need to spend more time training.”

  He pointed a finger at her flat belly. “You’ll be getting fat next.”

  “Asshole,” Jasmine said, without heat.

  She sighed. He was right about that too, she knew. The exercise she should be doing, every day, was often pushed aside to handle the endless stream of paperwork, no matter how much she passed down to her subordinates. No wonder REMFs got so fat, she thought, with an unaccustomed feeling of sympathy for the bastards who normally made deployments far harder than necessary. They had no time for exercise. Hell, they had even less time than she had because they had far more paperwork.

  “Tell the reporter to withhold sex until you do at least two hours of hard callisthenics every day,” Buckley added. “That should get you working again.”

  Jasmine stuck out her tongue, then started to remove her training outfit. “Do you think that would work on me?”

  “It would work on me,” Buckley said, as he followed her into the shower. “I’d hate it if my wife withheld sex for a day, let alone a week.”

  “Men,” Jasmine said. “I’ll tell her you said that, Joe. I’m sure she’ll be very interested.”

  She snickered. “Don’t do the dishes – no sex. Don’t mow the lawn – no sex. Don’t ...”

  “Point taken,” Buckley said, hastily. “Please! Don’t say a word to her.”

  Jasmine felt her snickers becoming laughter as she finished undressing. She tossed her sweaty outfit into the receptacle – the unlucky soldiers on punishment duty would have to wash them – and then turned on the water. As always, the temperature seemed to move between boiling hot and freezing cold. The technicians swore that it was a problem with the pipes, but Jasmine had her suspicions. Boot Camp’s showers had been precisely the same. Maybe it was one of the secrets officer candidates learnt at OCS.

  “I won’t,” she said, as she picked up a towel and dried her body. “But you should try to keep her happy.”

  Buckley sobered. “Blake used to tell me that it was the same in battlesuits as it was in fucking. Having a big one isn't as important as knowing what to do with it.”

  Jasmine nodded, remembering the bloody battle against the Nihilists on Earth. Somehow, they’d obtained enough military equipment to hold out for weeks, if they’d known how to use it. Hell, they’d probably outgunned Stalker’s Stalkers when they’d plunged into the CityBlock, desperate to exterminate the terrorists before they could slaughter thousands of innocent civilians. If the terrorists had known what they were doing, Earth’s government would probably have had to call KEW strikes from orbit and to hell with the collateral damage.

  She reached for her uniform and pulled it on, rapidly. “That’s an old joke,” she reminded him. “A very old joke.”

  Buckley nodded. “I meant to ask,” he said. “Is Commodore Caesius seeing anyone at the moment?”

  Jasmine blinked. “Mandy?”

  “Yeah,” Buckley said. “There has been interest ...”

  “I’d suggest you tell whoever it is – and I don’t want to know who – that Mandy went through hell,” Jasmine said, tartly. She rolled her eyes, making sure he saw the gesture. Male Marines might not be allowed to hit on female Marines, but they were quite free to ask for dating advice. “She lost control of her life completely, Joe. It could have been a great deal worse ... and she knows it. I could not recommend such a girl to anyone.”

  Buckley lifted an eyebrow. “That bad?”

  Jasmine nodded. “Joe ... we go through hell at the Slaughterhouse,” she reminded him. “We are taught to shrug off trauma that would leave an ordinary civilian utterly broken. We’re even tortured just so we know how to act under interrogation. And yet we keep going. I could have remained defiant if Admiral Singh’s thugs had raped me while I was their captive, instead of just beating the shit out of me.

  “Mandy grew up in one of Earth’s better locations. She doesn’t have our level of training, nor does she have the enhancements we take for granted. “She seems normal, she seems capable, but the wrong stimulus could easily cause a flashback – or worse. To the best of my knowledge, she hasn't dated anyone since her return from pirate hands, even though that was years ago. I would strongly suggest that you tell your subordinate to forget about it.”

  Buckley nodded, thoughtfully. “I will,” he said. “But ... if she’s that vulnerable, why is she in command of a valuable starship? And the squadron?”

  “Right of conquest,” Jasmine said. By any definition of the term, it had been Mandy who had been the real victor of the Battle of Avalon. If she hadn't crippled Sword, it could easily have been the pirates who won the day. “And besides, we do have a shortage of experienced officers. At least Mandy had much less to unlearn.”

  “You should talk to her,” Buckley said. “I mean ... more openly than merely speaking to your subordinate. Ask her how she’s coping. Woman to woman, as it were.”

  Jasmine nodded. “I intend to talk to her,” she said. She checked her appearance, then headed towards the hatch. “I suggest that you place Thomas in the reserve, for the moment. And I’m sorry about the hassle.”

  The hatch hissed closed before Buckley could reply.

  ***

  Mandy had been surprised when Jasmine had asked, during one of their brief returns to normal space long enough to run location checks, if she could shuttle over to Sword for a conference. She’d agreed, of course, and had then been surprised when Jasmine had come alone, without any staffers. Not, to be fair, that she had many staffers. One aide, Mandy had been told, was the maximum for any senior officer. There would be no small armies of aides in the Commonwealth military.

  She received a second surprise, a moment after Jasmine entered her cabin, when the Marine produced a small bottle of wine and placed it on the table.

  “I think we should talk,” Jasmine said. She picked up a pair of plastic mugs and poured Mandy a generous portion. “How are you coping with the Commonwealth Navy?”

  Mandy had to smile. Jasmine was never subtle, not off the battlefield. In some ways, Mandy had wondered if Jasmine was actually a lesbian, or a man trapped in a woman’s body. She just didn't react like a typical woman. And then there had been the way Jasmine had taken her in hand, after the Sparkle Dust incident. It hadn't been until Jasmine had actually started an affair with a man that Mandy had realised that the Marine was merely trained and conditioned to a standard that admitted no trace of femininity.

  “It’s a great career,” she said, slowly. “Is this about me?”

  Jasmine nodded, then plunged on. “Are you recovering from your experiences?”

  “It’s a little late to ask,” Mandy pointed out dryly. After a brief session, Jasmine seemed to have decided to ignore the whole incident. “It’s been four years, more or less.”

  “Please,” Jasmine said.

  Mandy sighed. “I don’t get many nightmares now,” she said. She sniffed, loudly. “But I still think I smell the filth on this ship.”

  She shrugged. “I think I’m surviving, somehow,” she added. “Was that what you wanted to hear?”

  Jasmine leaned forward, meeting her eyes. “Have you had a relationship since you returned home?”

  Mandy knew she couldn't lie, not when Jasmine was watching her so closely. “Not really,” she admitted. “I ... I couldn't take it any further.”

  The memory made her shiver. On Earth, she’d enjoyed near-complete sexual freedom. It had been fun to experiment, to see how many of the positions she saw regularly on the datanet were actually possible. She'd had friends who had been just as interested, boys and girls alike. She still recalled with a flush what had happened the day she’d found herself kissing her best female friend.

  But thin
gs were more serious on Avalon. And then ...

  She’d been raped, to all intents and purposes, mentally if not physically. She’d given it up knowing that it could be taken from her at any moment, knowing that it was all she had to bargain with for the life of her friend. And it could easily have been worse ...

  Since then, she'd never been able to get past kissing a man. She’d panicked. She’d fled the room. Eventually, she’d just given up.

  “I don’t have much faith in psychologists,” Jasmine said. “But if you can find one, you should probably go speak to her.”

  “I hated them on Earth,” Mandy confessed. “They always asked such silly questions.”

  Jasmine nodded, ruefully.

  “You are in command of a squadron of warships,” she said. “That would not have happened if there have been more experienced officers at our disposal.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “If you have problems when the shit hits the fan – and it will – I want you to surrender command at once. Do you understand me?”

  Mandy nodded. She knew her XO probably had secret orders to keep an eye on her, but she’d never dared ask.

  “I understand,” she said, when Jasmine seemed to be waiting for a verbal answer. “And I won’t let you down.”

  “One week to Thule,” Jasmine said. She stood, looking devastatingly intimidating in her skin-tight shipsuit. “If you have problems, you can call me at any time.”

  “I will,” Mandy promised. “And thank you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A further problem was the sheer lack of military manpower. On the face of it, this seems absurd. At its height, the Empire disposed of over five billion soldiers (Imperial Army, Terran Marine Corps, Civil Guard (deployable). However, this number became vanishingly small when weighted against the sheer size of the Empire and the number of trouble spots that required attention.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. War in a time of ‘Peace:’ The Empire’s Forgotten Military History.