The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  “Get yourselves straightened out quickly, lads,” he said. Tory Kepner had gone on to his cabin, leaving Alfie in charge of the squad. “I don’t want to be late for mess call.” The “tired” voice was only partly artifice. It was this part of the assistant squad leader job that he hated the most.

  The three privates in his fire team were William Hathaway, John McGregor, and Eugene Wegener.

  Hathaway, known as “Wee Willie” or “the Hat” to his mates, was the only one of the three who had never been in combat, despite eighteen months in the Royal Marines. He had missed the Second Regiment’s short mission to Dundee because he had been in civilian custody over a charge of causing grievous bodily harm to four men, civilians, in a pub fight. The fact that the charges had eventually been dropped had been all that had saved him from court-martial for missing shipment. Keeping Hathaway in check was almost a full-time job for Alfie and for Tory Kepner. Wee Willie would never have been tolerated in the peacetime Marines. With a war on, though, he might be just the ticketin combat—as long as he remembered who he was supposed to be fighting.

  John McGregor was almost too true to his Scottish heritage to be real. Born on the world of Bannockburn, Gaelic was his first language, and his accent was so thick that his English was barely intelligible. He was large for an I&R man, but McGregor had proved to be so proficient in the necessary skills that he had gone to the platoon straight out of training.

  Matched with his more fiery squad mates, Eugene Wegener could almost disappear from thought. Quiet and retiring when not on duty, he was the sort of person often overlooked. He talked little, and almost never about himself. The others in the squad knew little about his background or family. Any of them would have needed time to recall that they had even heard that he came from the German-speaking world of Hanau. Wegener showed almost no trace of accent. Perhaps he would have had he spoken more, or more rapidly. Like everyone assigned to I&R duties, he was an extremely qualified Marine. He carried the squad’s needle rifle, a short-range weapon that could fire sixty short needles a second, shredding enemies or the underbrush that might conceal them.

  “Get settled in quick-like, because we won’t be aboard long,” Alfie told the others as he stretched out on his berth. As a corporal, he rated a bottom rack in a stack of three. “It’s not like the old days when we’d have a couple of weeks for drills and fatigue work along the way. Now it’s out and in before you know what’s what. We won’t hardly have time for more than a field skin drill, most like.”

  Out and in, and in and out, if you’re lucky, he thought. The shiver that came over him was entirely in his mind. He closed his eyes briefly, thinking of lost comrades, and times when he had thought that his own time had come. You’re pushing the odds now, Alfie-boy. This’ll be your third time in. Nobody lives forever.

  By the time that mess call sounded, Victoria was already two hours out from her parking orbit over Buckingham. Accompaniedby two battlecruisers, HMS Sheffield and HMS Hull, four frigates, a scout ship, and two supply vessels, Victoria was at nearly its maximum rated acceleration, pushing for its transit to Q-space. Galleys for the lower ranks were scattered throughout the living areas of the ship. Officers and sergeants each had two mess halls (another change made during the ship’s refit), located so that no one had to make too long a trek for his meals.

  An officers’ call had already been held. A sergeants’ call was announced during the meal, for immediately after it, in the forward sergeants’ mess.

  “This is where we get the news,” Hal Avriel said as he and David Spencer made their way from their mess hall to the other. “This is where they tell us that we’re going in someplace by tomorrow morning, and probably not the place we’ve been training for all these months.”

  Spencer didn’t respond. The quick meeting almost convinced him that Hal was right. It wasn’t unusual for the colonel to give his noncoms a pep talk, but this was too soon.

  “It can’t be good news, that’s for sure,” David finally allowed. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean a change of plans.”

  There was standing room only in the forward sergeants’ mess. It was ten minutes after Avriel and Spencer arrived before Regimental Sergeant Major Alan Dockery spotted officers at the door and called, “Attention.” Colonel Arkady Laplace and several members of his staff came in and moved to the front of the room.

  “As you were,” the colonel said when his people were all in place around him.

  “There hasn’t been much time for rumors to get started,” the colonel continued, “but I’ve already heard a few.” At the rear of the room, Hal nudged David.

  “I am here to tell you that there has been a change of plans.” He paused and let his eyes scan the room. Laplace had taken the King’s shilling more than four decades before. He was a line officer, a combat veteran, and totally at ease with himself. If he had started looking forward to finally making brigadier, it never showed in his words or actions.

  “As you know, our training the last several months has been aimed at a specific target, even though none of you have known where that target was. Even now, I cannot tell you the name of the world we were scheduled to attack. We won’t be going there, at least not on this trip, but someone will, at a later date, so there’s no cause to create additional security worries for whoever draws that assignment.” Laplace had the undivided attention of every sergeant in the room, even Sergeant Major Dockery, who already knew what he had to say.

  “The Federation have forced our hand. They have attacked a Commonwealth world, and we have to respond immediately. That world is Coventry, part of the core of the Commonwealth, and far too near Buckingham for us to fail to contest the Federation invasion just as quickly as we can possibly get there.”

  An undercurrent of murmuring moved across the room when he named the world. Only Lorenzo was closer to Buckingham. Some of the men in the room had been to Coventry. There might even be two or three who had been born there.

  “That’s right, Coventry, one of the founding worlds of our Commonwealth, not quite eight light-years from where we are right this minute. Federation forces have entered every city on the planet, and the reports we had were that they had started doing large-scale burning in at least a few of the urban areas. The locals managed to get off several message rockets in the early hours of the invasion, not yet a week past.

  “It’s up to us to go there and kick the Federation back off of Coventry, with as many casualties as we can inflict on them. At first, it will be just us. For perhaps more than a week. But we will be reinforced as quickly as the Fourth Regiment can be assembled from its current deployment and rushed in if required. And, if needs be, units of the Second Territorial Army will be brought in as well, though organizing and transporting them could well take more than a fortnight. It is up to us to determine the situation and makethe call for whatever reinforcements we need. With a fair amount of luck, we might be able to do the job ourselves, or with just the help of the Fourth. I would be loath to call on the Army to help us, unless that is absolutely necessary.” He received a scattering of nervous laughter for that, then quickly squelched it.

  “After the recent catastrophe on Reunion, the Commonwealth Army needs time to recover, in more ways than one, lads. The worst one-day disaster in recorded history. A quarter-million people wiped out like that.” He snapped his fingers. There was not so much as a smile left in the room.

  “Here’s the drill. We’ll make our first two Q-space transits in fairly short order, no more than an hour between them, then lay to for twenty-four hours before we make the third. During that interval, we’ll provide what we can in the way of revised plans for our landings on Coventry and our initial objectives there. We anticipate a rendezvous with a scout ship during that layover as well, with the latest intelligence from Coventry. We’ll be playing this one by ear, so take care with the one day you’ll have to get your people ready. Your officers will provide the latest information for you, as we get it. Remember, we’re Marin
es. We’ll get the job done.”

  He glanced at the sergeant major, who jumped to his feet and called, “Attention,” again. As the noncoms stood, the colonel and his staff filed out of the mess hall.

  “More than twenty-four hours,” David said, turning to Hal. “That makes one good night of drinking you owe me.”

  4

  Five days had passed on Coventry since the Federation landings. Somehow, Hawthorne had earned a respite. No one that Reggie Bailey talked to had seen a Federation soldier, although there were second-and thirdhand reports of a small unit in Hawthorne the night of the initial landings. One neighborhood, near the airport four miles from the Bailey house, had been torched, its residents given five minutes’ warning to clear out. But since then, there had been nothing—in Hawthorne.

  The public service nets remained off. None of the news or entertainment channels were functioning. But, on occasion, private links were still available. The automatic machinery that controlled the communications nets was still working, at least sporadically. Bit by bit, some news—or rumors—did reach Hawthorne. None of the reports were encouraging.

  The Bailey house was located just over two miles out from the ring road that encircled the center of Hawthorne. The neighborhood was moderately old for Coventry, having been settled 350 years before, which made it only a little more than half as old as the first cities on the world. The original settlement was a circular area a mile and a quarter in diameter, with Black Sloe Creek marking nearly a third of the circumference. For a long time, that had been all there had been to Hawthorne. Now it radiated out from the core of the original settlement in a half dozen tendrils, widely separated, with houses outside the core occupying rather large tracts of ground, often as much as several acres.

  Despite this, Hawthorne still numbered no more than 25,000 residents.

  The Baileys had three acres of land, backed by untouched forest that spread into the foothills east and south of town. There were neighbors fairly close at hand, but the houses along this stretch of Sherwood Pike were, on average, about one hundred yards apart. Like most people on Coventry—at least outside the proper cities—the Baileys gardened, using nearly a quarter of their land for vegetables and flowers. Winter was never too harsh, although they could count on perhaps six significant snowfalls each year. Mild winters left lengthy growing seasons.

  “They could show up here any minute,” Reggie told his wife after they had seen the children to bed on the fifth evening. “We’ve got to use every bit of time we have to get ready.”

  “I can’t help it,” Ida said. “I worry myself sick when you go out at night. If soldiers come around, they’re apt to shoot you on sight if they catch you skulking about like a thief.”

  “It’s the only chance we’ve got.” Reggie was dressed in black and dark gray. As soon as he left the house, he would smear mud on his face to make himself even less visible. “They’re burning people out of their homes, chasing them off into the woods. Caching supplies now, while we’ve got the time, is our only hope.”

  Every night but the first, Reggie and a few neighbors had gone out into the forest, carrying whatever they could—a few valuables to be buried, but mostly food, clothing, and other articles that would be worth more than gold if they were forced out into the wilderness.

  “I still don’t like it,” Ida said, resignation in her voice. After the news of the landings, it had been the next night before she had remembered to tell Reggie that she was pregnant. And, if the stories were true about the soldiers forcing people out into the wild, that pregnancy was a terrible complication to think about.

  “I don’t like any of it,” Reggie said, “but we’ve got to do whatever we can. This might be the last time we go out.

  There’s not much more we can take. We wouldn’t be able to carry everything we’ve stashed out there now if we had to.” Each night, fewer people had made the trek, a mile or more into the native forest that bordered the community. “I think it’s just Eric and me tonight. We can move as quietly as red mice. Nobody’s going to catch us.”

  “Soldiers don’t need to hear you, they might see you. Anna says that soldiers have night-vision gear that lets them see as well in the dark as in the day.” Anna Knowles was Eric’s wife. “All this playacting is useless.”

  “They won’t be out in the forest anyway. There’s nothing out there for them to do. I’ve got to go. Eric will be waiting.”

  Reggie stepped out from the kitchen into the courtyard, then moved along the side of the house toward the gate in front. Before he opened that, just enough to slip through, he stood quietly for several minutes, listening and looking. There was little light. No one in the neighborhood had been burning outside lights since the invasion. There were no public streetlights along Sherwood Pike either. And Coventry’s only moon was so small that it scarcely showed a noticeable disk. The fullest starfields were on the daylight side of the world just now, not that the sky was anything approaching empty. In the heart of the Commonwealth, there were plenty of stars.

  When Reggie finally left the courtyard, he took the path across the garden toward the Knowles house. Eric was waiting at the property line, crouched low next to a tree. His neighbor had a flashlight switched on, the lens covered with tape so that only an eighth of an inch opening was left, and he kept that near the ground, moving it occasionally until Reggie arrived.

  “I was getting nervous,” Eric whispered.

  “Ida,” Reggie said, as if that were all of the explanation needed. He shifted the backpacks he was carrying, one over each shoulder. A few nights of lugging heavy loads for two or three hours was not enough to overcome a lifetime of minimal exertion. Reggie was only in his early forties, noteven approaching middle age by the standards of a developed world like Coventry, but those years had been overwhelmingly sedentary.

  “Anna’s not very happy about our expeditions either,” Eric said. He was ten years younger than Reggie. Eric and Anna had two sons, ages ten and seven. Anna was pregnant, within a month of her expected delivery date, and Eric’s preparations had something of a grim determination to them. Winter was coming, and mild though it might be around Hawthorne, it could be too much for a mother and infant to survive easily in the wild.

  “We’re wasting time,” Reggie said. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we’ll get back so they can stop worrying.”

  They followed well-defined paths. Near the houses, the paths had been made by humans and their animals, pets and livestock. Farther off, the paths had been made and kept open by native animals. Wildlife still flourished. Some species were more numerous now than they had been when the world was first settled, their predators thinned out or chased away. Many residents did some hunting, to provide treats for the dinner table, but there was little “sport” hunting. Animals were hunted for food, or because they posed an immediate threat to people.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Eric said after they had covered two thirds of the distance to their cache. “If we are forced away from our homes, people are going to get desperate in a hurry. All of the goodwill in the world might evaporate over a chilly night as soon as folks start getting a little hungry.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I think maybe we should take a little more care with what we’ve brought out than we have so far.”

  “Come on, say it.”

  “I think we should move our stuff someplace else, farther off, away from where the rest have put their things, someplace only you and I will know about. At least part of our caches. We can leave a little where it is, move the rest to where we can get to it when we need it. If we need it.”

  “I don’t know. Showing the others that we don’t trustthem might make things just as difficult as leaving everything where it is and taking our chances along with the rest.”

  “We’ve both got kids and pregnant wives to think about.”

  “Let me think on it a little, at least until we get to the caches. We’d best both think on it—a chan
ce that our neighbors might take advantage of us, or a chance that they might resent the fact that we don’t trust them, and show it. Whichever we do, we’ll have to live with it.”

  Away from the houses, they remained as nervous as the animals they disturbed. Twice, one of the two-foot-tall grazers that Coventrians called deer started and bounded away. The sounds stopped both men and slapped a tightness on their chests until they recognized the sounds of the animal. The only animal that might pose a threat to them was a wild grey, the felinelike predator that fed on the deer. But there were no confirmed reports of wild greys attacking humans.

  The closer they got to their destination, the tenser Reggie and Eric became. They worried that Federation soldiers might have found the caches and have them staked out to nab whoever came. They stopped thirty yards from their goal. A dry gully ran along a slight incline toward a creek. Erosion had exposed the roots of several trees along one side of the gully. Two trees that had been toppled in storms formed temporary bridges. The people from the neighborhood had used the exposed roots systems of those trees to store food and other necessities. Those who had buried valuables had done it a little beyond the gully—or in different locations altogether—taking whatever measurements they could to recall just where they had left their treasures.

  The two men went down on their stomachs and listened for several minutes, hoping to hear if anyone was waiting for them. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of soldiers could have lain in wait in the gully. Eric was the first to move, long before Reggie would have felt safe to advance those last few yards.

  “What do you think?” Eric asked when they reached the gully.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Better to be safe than starve. And starvation is a more immediate threat than ostracism.” Eric had made his decision, but he wanted to persuade Reggie as well. Two families could face the displeasure of their neighbors more easily than one.

  Reggie hesitated before venturing a reluctant, “Okay. Where do we move our stuff?”