Knife Edge

(The Empire’s Corps – Book XVII)

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

All Comments Welcome!

Series Listing

Book One: The Empire’s Corps
Book Two: No Worse Enemy
Book Three: When The Bough Breaks
Book Four: Semper Fi
Book Five: The Outcast
Book Six: To The Shores
Book Seven: Reality Check
Book Eight: Retreat Hell
Book Nine: The Thin Blue Line 
Book Ten: Never Surrender
Book Eleven: First To Fight
Book Twelve: They Shall Not Pass
Book Thirteen: Culture Shock
Book Fourteen: Wolf’s Bane
Book Fifteen: Cry Wolf
Book Sixteen: Favour The Bold
Book Seventeen: Knife Edge

Cover Blurb

An all-new story of The Empire’s Corps!

Earth has fallen.  The Core Worlds have collapsed into chaos.  War is breaking out everywhere as planetary governments declare independence, entire sectors slip out of contact and warlords battle for power.  The remnants of the once-great Empire are tearing themselves apart.  And, in the shadows, the Terran Marine Corps works to save what little they can to preserve civilisation and build a better tomorrow.  But now they might have met their match.

The marines have seized control of the corporate world of Hameau, only to discover that Hameau is merely the tip of the enemy iceberg and that the battle is still very much undecided.  Cut off from their brethren, the marines fight desperately to hold their ground while millions of innocent civilians are caught in the middle ...

... And all too aware that whoever wins the war will determine the fate of the entire galaxy.

Historian’s Note

I’ve done my best to make this book, the second of a series exploring what happens in the Core Worlds after Earthfall, as self-contained as possible.  It should be comprehensible without ever having read any of the prior books, save for Favour the Bold.  However, I would advise you to read When The Bough Breaks to set the scene, as it covers Earthfall itself.

CGN 
Prologue I

From: The Dying Days: The Death of the Old Order and the Birth of the New.  Professor Leo Caesius.  Avalon.  206PE.

In hindsight, Earthfall was pretty much inevitable.  We saw it coming.

I suppose we should have wondered, when we finally realised that all hell was going to break loose, who else might have reached the same conclusion.

It wasn’t as if anything was secret.  Sure, it was hard to get a completely accurate picture of what was going on, thanks to lies being written into the official record and prevalent official censorship, but enough leaked through for me to see it.  The Terran Marine Corps saw it.  I should have wondered ... why not others?  Who else knew - or guessed - what was coming?

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

As we saw in previous volumes, the Terran Marine Corps saw Earthfall coming and took steps to preserve themselves and - hopefully - rebuild the Empire they’d sworn to serve.   Small groups of marines were assigned to isolated worlds at the edge of explored space - including Avalon, a story explored in my earlier volumes - with a mandate to protect and preserve what remnants of civilisation they could.  Others were withdrawn from more populated - and inevitably doomed - worlds to await the final end.  And, when Earthfall finally came - somehow catching us all by surprise despite years of planning and preparations - the corps started liberating and recruiting the trained and experienced workers who would assist the marines to preserve civilisation.

All of this did not take place in a vacuum.  Earthfall led to utter chaos, to wave after wave of destruction sweeping across the Core Worlds.  Planetary governors seized power, only to be consumed by the chaos as uncounted billions were swept out of work and unemployment benefits came to a sudden end.  Imperial Navy officers declared themselves warlords and started building empires of their own, most falling prey to ambitious subordinates or supply shortages within a very short space of time.  Old grudges burst into flame, unleashing a cycle of attacks and revenge attacks that ended with entire planetary systems burnt to ashes.  We do not know how many people died in the first few months.  It remains beyond calculation.

It was during a recruitment mission, as detailed in the prior volume, that the marines discovered they had a major rival.  The Onge Corporation, previously ruled by Grand Senator Stephen Onge (who died during Earthfall), had established a major base on an isolated world, Hameau.  This alone would be concerning, but further investigation revealed that Hameau was a corporate paradise, a seemingly-ordered world held in stasis by a combination of extreme surveillance and a cold-blooded willingness to remove and terminate troublemakers before they became a serious threat.  It was clear, to the marines, that Hameau represented the future ... as seen by the Onge Family.  The upper classes would have considerable freedom, while the lower classes would be trapped within a social system that would keep them from either rising or rebelling.  If this wasn’t bad enough, the sociologists believed the long-term result would be utterly disastrous.  Hameau would either stagnate to the point it entered a steep decline - not unknown, amongst worlds that refused to permit a degree of social mobility - or eventually be destroyed by a brutal and uncontrolled (and uncontrollable) uprising.  

The marines therefore decided to intervene.  Landing troops on the surface - the planetary defences were strong enough to keep the starships from securing the high orbitals and demanding surrender - the marines carried out a brilliant campaign that ended with the capture of the capital city, the effective destruction of the planetary government and them being firmly in control.  Everything seemed to have gone their way until the enemy reinforcements arrived, too late to save the world ... but quickly enough, perhaps, to destroy the marines.

Now read on ...

Prologue II

Paradise Island, Paradise (Ten Years Prior To Earthfall)

Commodore Nelson Agate had heard the expression killing someone with kindness, but he’d never realised it might be applicable to the Imperial Navy.  The Admiralty had plenty of ways to deal with officers it didn’t like, from assigning them to dead-end desk jobs or dispatching them to asteroid mining facilities in the middle of nowhere.  Nelson had expected some kind of punishment for daring to disagree with Admiral Valentine, but being ordered to take a long shore leave on Paradise wasn’t quite what he’d expected.  And yet, the more he sunned himself on a remote island, the more he wondered if his career hadn’t been cunningly destroyed.  Who’d take a complaint about being ordered to go on leave seriously?

Paradise Island lived up to the name, he admitted privately.  The beaches were utterly pristine.  The water was warm.  The local girls were beautiful and willing.  The bars never ran out of alcohol.  The games weren’t rigged.  If he’d wanted to have a long holiday, he wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere else.  But three months of paradise had left him bored and jaded, convinced he’d sooner go somewhere - anywhere - else.  He’d almost pay for an assignment to an asteroid facility.

He lay back on his deckchair, wondering if he should signal the waitress for another beer.  It was too early in the morning to be drunk, but ... there was little else to do.  He’d swum, he’d played beach ball, he’d ... he’d done too many things, all of which bored him now.  The waitress was pretty, but ... all the waitresses were pretty.  It was funny, he reflected sourly, how quickly one could grow sick of something when there was an unlimited supply.  There was no longer any thrill, let alone pleasure, in victory.  What was the point of playing when the game was rigged?

I’m wasting away here, he thought, morbidly.  In Paradise!

A shadow fell across him.  He looked up, at a pretty young woman wearing a thong bikini and little else.  She looked like another guest, yet ... there was something in the way that she held herself that set alarm bells ringing in his mind.  Nelson forced himself to sit up as she knelt beside him, her bare breasts somehow ... unnoticeable.  She might have dressed to fit in, he noted, but she wasn’t one of the staff.  She was something else.

“Commodore Nelson Agate, is it not?”  The woman’s voice was calm.  She spoke with a corporate accent.  “I’m Julia.  Julia Ganister.”

“A pleasure,” Nelson said.  He shook her hand firmly.  “What can I do for you?”

Julia sat next to him.  “Why are you here, Commodore?”

“I was ordered to go on leave, an all-expenses-paid leave,” Nelson said.  “Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for people who interest me,” Julia said.  “And you do.”

Nelson frowned.  Julia held herself like someone with authority, which meant ... what?  An intelligence service?  A military unit?  She didn’t look as muscular as he would expect from a uniformed woman, but that was meaningless.  Standards had been slipping for years.  He’d been in the Admiralty’s bad books well before they’d found a way to get rid of him, just by complaining about officers who hired their staff based on looks rather than qualifications and experience.  Bad enough in a staff office; sheer, fucking disaster onboard ship.  He was tempted to say as much, just to see what Julia made of it.  If she was collecting information for the Inspectorate General ...

“I see,” he said, neutrally.  His career was already on the rocks.  Better to say nothing incriminating until he knew the lie of the land.  “And how do I interest you?”

“A competent officer,” Julia said.  “A cadet who graduated top of his class, when the rating system was stripped of all ID tags.  A midshipman who saved his ship when his drunken supervisor nearly crashed her into an asteroid.  A captain who stood against a rebel militia and defeated them, despite being outnumbered five to one.  And a commodore who dared to tell Admiral Valentine that his planned operation was going to fail and fail spectacularly.”

Nelson sat up.  “Who are you?”

“Julia.”  Julia smiled, as if she found his question amusing.  “Tell me something, Commodore.  Where do you see your career going in the next few years?”

“Nowhere,” Nelson said, sourly.

“We agree,” Julia said.  “And where do you see the Empire going in the next few decades?”

Nelson blinked.  It was treason to even suggest the Empire might be going through a very rough patch.  He dreaded to think what it might be to suggest the Empire was falling to destruction.  And yet, he’d heard enough whispered rumours, seen enough failing sectors, to know something was deeply wrong.  He’d kept that thought to himself, not daring to utter it aloud where anyone could hear, yet ... it had plagued him, in the dead of night.  The Imperial Navy that had fought the Unification Wars would not have tolerated Admiral Valentine.  The officers would have rebelled against him and the spacers would have used him for target practice.  It was hard to escape the sense the entire universe was heading for a fall.

“I’m not a traitor,” he managed, finally.  He studied her face, noting - for the first time - that it was pretty yet bland.  A few minutes with a cosmetic set and she’d look very different.  “And I ...”

Julia rested her hand on his arm.  “We’re not asking you to be a traitor,” she said.  “We’re asking you to think about the future.”

Nelson swung his legs over the side of the deckchair.  “And what do you want me to think about the future?”

“I’m not here to lead you into saying something incriminating,” Julia said.  Her voice was so calm that Nelson found himself believing every word.  “Believe me, your enemies already have enough lined up to ensure your career hits a dead end.  Admiral Valentine has spent the last three weeks making certain you’ll be on your way to the deep black once your leave finally comes to an end.  I’m here to offer you an alternative.”

“Like what?”  Nelson felt ice congealing around his heart.  “Who are you?”

Julia stood.  “There are some people you should meet,” she said.  “Will you come with me?”

“Perhaps,” Nelson said.  “And I ask again - who are you?”

“Julia,” Julia said.  “Julia Ganister-Onge.  And we’re trying to salvage something from the ruins.  Perhaps that answers your question?”

“It does,” Nelson said.

Julia nodded, then turned and walked away.

After a moment, Nelson followed her.

Chapter One

It is often said, when discussing communist, fascist, theocratic, corpocratic and other unpleasant regimes, that they might have survived if they’d possessed computers and - at the same time - avoided a dictator.  This is, for better or worse, untrue.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

Captain Kerri Stumbaugh kept her face under tight control as she stared at the display.

One of her instructors had told her, years ago, that if things started going suspiciously well it was a clear sign she was about to lose.  Experience had taught her there was a degree of truth in that statement.  Things going well wasn’t a sign of incoming trouble, but the mindset it bred was.  The idea that she could relax, that she could assume the matter was going to end without further intervention from her ... she shook her head, dismissing the thought.  They’d been caught with their pants down.  They were in deep shit.

Her eyes narrowed as the red icons took on shape and form.  Nineteen warships, led by the missing battlecruiser; nineteen warships and seven troop transports, probably crammed to the gunwales with soldiers itching for a fight.  Nineteen warships ... more than enough to destroy her squadron in a straight engagement.  She wanted to believe her superior training would give her the edge, if push came to shove, but it was clear the enemy ships were manned by trained and experienced personnel.  Her lips curved into a grim smile.  They weren’t Imperial Navy officers, then.  They’d been skimping on training and exercises for years, mothballing ships and discharging crewmen while pocketing their wages and skimming billions of credits from the budget for ships and facilities that only existed on paper.  These guys knew what they were doing.

“Captain,” Lieutenant Tomas said.  The tactical officer sounded grim.  “They’ll be within engagement range in thirty minutes.”

Kerri nodded.  The enemy was playing it safe.  They were advancing directly towards Hameau, forcing her to either block their path or get out of their way.  If she did the former, they’d crush her; if she did the latter, she’d be unable to help the groundpounders on the planet’s surface.  She forced herself to think, her mind racing as she tried to find a way to even the odds.  But she knew, all too well, there was none.  She didn’t have the time or equipment to do more than delay the enemy ships.

“Prepare for a long-range engagement,” she ordered, coolly.  An exchange of missile fire wouldn’t slow the enemy ships for long, if it had any effect on their plans, but the only alternative was withdrawing and waiting for a chance to regain control of the high orbitals.  She doubted they’d give her that chance anytime soon.  Hameau had been important ... was still important.  They’d be fools to let her retake the planet.  “And pass the warning to General Anderson.  Inform him that we cannot delay the enemy for long.”

She felt a surge of frustrated rage as the squadron rapidly prepared for battle.  She knew, better than most, the role sheer random chance played in human affairs, but ... she gritted her teeth in silent fury.  They’d won, damn it!  They’d defeated the enemy forces, they’d occupied the enemy cities, they’d taken out the enemy government ... only to have a relief fleet arrive to undo all they’d done.  She knew they’d screwed up by the numbers.  There’d been no hint the enemy possessed that many ships until they showed themselves.  It was agonisingly clear Hameau was merely a tiny fragment of a much greater operation.

And in hindsight, that shouldn’t have surprised us, she thought, coldly.  There was no time for recriminations, but even the Terran Marine Corps was not immune to people using hindsight to score cheap points.  Thankfully, they’d probably wait until the campaign was over.  Probably.  One world might preserve something of civilisation, and an industrial base, but it couldn’t hope to retake the galaxy.

She wished, suddenly, that she could communicate with someone higher up the chain of command.  Major-General Anderson was in command of the operation, but the communications lag would ensure he wouldn’t receive her messages until it was too late for him to countermand her orders.  There’d been times, in her career, when that would have seemed an advantage.  She’d met too many Imperial Navy officers who’d been promoted because of connections or bribes, rather than merit.  But Anderson was an experienced officer.  He might have something else in mind for her ships.

“The enemy ships are sweeping us with tactical sensors,” Tomas warned.  “But they’re not altering course.”

“They don’t have to,” Kerri said.  Whoever was in command of the enemy fleet knew what he was doing. It was tempting to think she could lure the enemy ships into a stern chase, forcing them to push their drives to the limit in a fruitless bid to run down her command, but she doubted they’d take the bait.  “They know they can force us to fight on their terms.”

She keyed her console, bringing up the latest sensor reports.  The enemy fleet hadn’t opened fire - yet - but she’d be astonished if their weapons weren’t in full working order.  Their sensors were certainly top of the range, military-grade systems that shouldn’t have been in civilian or corporate hands.  She wondered, idly, how they’d secured them, then dismissed the thought.  The Onge Corporation had built ships and weapons for the Imperial Navy.  It would have been simplicity itself, back then, to produce a handful of extra units - and hulls - and squirrel them away.  The Asset Tracking department on Safehouse was going to have to look at the data and try to deduce what had happened, as if it mattered.  The only important thing, right now, was that the enemy ships were bearing down on her.

And some of those ships might have non-typical configurations, she mused.  Starship design had plateaued over the last few decades - the enemy hulls looked like standard navy hulls - but tacticians had been talking about fitting the ships with newer or different weapons for years.  Her ship’s configuration owed much to their planning.  The enemy might have been trying to hide an ace or two up their sleeve too.

Her eyes narrowed as another report flashed up in front of her.  The enemy transports looked more like colonist-carriers.  Repurposed transports?  Or ... or what?  She doubted it mattered.  The transports would be sitting ducks, if her ships closed to engagement range.  It was the enemy warships that posed the real threat.

She felt an icy hand clench her heart as the range steadily closed.  There was no hope of doing more than delaying the enemy, if that.  There was nothing she could do for the marines on the planet.  They controlled enough of the PDCs - she thought - to keep the enemy from simply smashing their positions from orbit, but ... if nothing else, control of the high orbitals would give them a chance to land troops and retake the world.  Or simply let the marines wither on the vine.  Supplying the invasion force had been a problem even when the high orbitals were firmly in their hands.  She cursed under her breath, then smiled.  Hameau hadn’t been an easy target.  Hopefully, the factors that had made the planet a difficult world to invade would protect the marines long enough for reinforcements to arrive.  The Commandant would dispatch them as soon as he knew the invasion had gone off the rails.

And if he doesn’t, she thought as the enemy ships glided closer, a hundred thousand marines are going to wind up dead.

***
Admiral Nelson Agate, Onge Navy, allowed himself a feeling of grim satisfaction as he watched ONS Hammerblow’s tactical staff perform their duties.  It hadn’t been easy, even with the combination of headhunted officers from the Imperial Navy and very enthusiastic recruits from Onge itself, to escape bad habits and turn the Onge Navy into a lean mean fighting machine.  He’d relished the challenge - it helped that his budget had been immense, practically unlimited - but he’d been all too aware that the navy had yet to face its first real test.  Now ... the staff were performing well, even though they knew they were going into battle.  The red icons on the display weren’t simulated.  They were very real.

He studied the long-range sensor reports thoughtfully.  He hadn’t believed the reports when they’d first arrived, even though they’d come from unquestionable sources, but now ... the marines were invading Hameau.  He shook his head in disbelief.  He’d heard the Terran Marine Corps had been destroyed, that the Slaughterhouse had been turned into a radioactive hellhole and the remainder of the corps had been scattered to the four winds.  And yet ... the display was very clear.  Four giant MEU troop transports held position near Hameau itself, while a small squadron of warships sought to block his path.  And yet, they had no hope of stopping him.  They were going to die for nothing.

Know when to fold them, you fools, he thought, coldly.  He’d known enough marines to know they had the sense to know when they were fighting a losing battle and withdraw before it was too late.  Or is it already too late?

His lips curved into a smile.  The marines were renowned for travelling light, but they’d have problems packing up and retreating before his forces took the high orbitals.  They’d have to abandon all their equipment if they wanted to get their men out, if they had time to do even that!  He checked his console, silently contemplating the problem.  They’d have to get very lucky to pull even a fraction of their men off the surface before it was too late.  He didn’t think it was possible.  The last report from Hameau had warned the marines were advancing on the capital, with little standing between them and victory.  There was little chance they’d regrouped before it was too late. 

“They shouldn’t even be here,” Julia Ganister-Onge said.  The corporation’s commissioner - and his lover - sounded astonished.  “What are they doing here?”

“Invading, it seems,” Nelson said.  He shared her astonishment.  The Terran Marine Corps was a formidable force, but ... what were they doing?  “The corporation might not be the only people who planned for the future.”

Julia gave him a sharp look.  “They shouldn’t have invaded our world.”

Nelson shrugged.  He didn’t see the logic either, but ... no one would have gone to all the trouble of invading a heavily-defended world unless they thought there was a good reason.  The marines were hardly unthinking brutes, whatever the media claimed.  And they’d been at the sharp end of every conflict for the last few centuries.  They might have realised Earthfall was coming and planned for it.  Why not?  The Onge Corporation had been laying its plans for decades.

He felt an odd stab of guilt as the range continued to close.  He’d rarely questioned his decision to leave the Imperial Navy, yet ... he shook his head.  The Imperial Navy had been doomed.  The Terran Marine Corps were doomed too, doomed by lack of supplies and - he supposed - a cause.  What were they fighting for?  Did they intend to put their Commandant on the throne?  Or did they think they could find the Childe Roland and put him on the throne?  The last reports suggested the young emperor had died during Earthfall.  Even if he hadn’t ... what throne?  The Core Worlds were burning.  By the time the fighting died down, there would be little left of the once-great civilisation.  The Empire was gone.

“Prepare firing solutions,” he ordered.  “Engage them as soon as they enter medium-range.”

“Aye, Admiral,” the tactical officer said.  “Preparing to engage.”

Nelson smiled, coldly.  Julia had made sure he’d had a fairly free hand.  And he’d done his best to create a fleet that could go toe-to-toe with the best in the galaxy.  His officers were highly-trained, his crewmen drilled until they could perform their duties in their sleep and his maintenance cycles run to ensure peak efficiency.  He had no intention of letting standards slip, even now the principal threat was gone.  His crews would never have the chance to pick up bad habits.  He’d shoot anyone who so much as suggested an outdated component could be left in place because it hadn’t failed yet.

Julia glanced at him.  “Shouldn’t we be trying to defeat the enemy fleet?”

“No.”  Nelson spoke as much for his own benefit as hers.  She was no naval officer - he was all too aware that her duties included keeping an eye on him as well as everything else - but it helped, sometimes, to discuss issues out loud.  “They have the edge, when it comes to speed.  They’d just keep the range open while trying to lead us into a minefield.”

His eyes narrowed.  The ships - he smiled suddenly as he remembered the marines weren’t supposed to have any real warships - were clearly in peak condition, handled by crews who knew precisely how to get the best out of them.  If they’d had more than three heavy cruisers, he might have feared the worst if he’d taken Hammerblow against them alone.  He’d have made them pay a heavy price for their victory, but ... he shook his head.  He had nineteen warships against twelve.  Odds like that didn’t care if the weaker side had a slight edge in training.  Unless the marines had some kind of superweapon he’d never even dreamt existed, he had the edge.  

They might be nearly unbeatable, man for man, on the ground, he mused.  But we’re facing them in space.

He indicated the display.  “Right now, the folks on the planet know we’re coming.  They’re frantically running around, trying to work out how to evacuate what they can before we take the high orbitals and start shooting holes in their transports.  They’re going to have to get the transports moving in fifty minutes if they want to get them out of range before we run them down.  If we can get there before they start running, we might just trap them on the ground.”

“I see,” Julia said.  “And you are sure they’re frantically running around?”

“They’re caught in a bind,” Nelson said.  He doubted the marines were frantic - he’d never seen marines panic under fire, which was more than could be said for many other military formations - but they were in deep shit.  “They have to save what they can, yet they simply don’t have time.  If we take the high orbitals, they’re screwed and they know it.”

Probably, his thoughts added.  They’ve almost certainly taken the remaining PDCs by now.

“So the whole operation becomes relatively simple,” he explained.  “They have to get those troop transports moving before we get there.  Therefore, their ships will try to either slow us down or lead us away.  I have no intention of letting them do either.  The ships aren’t important, not now.  The real priority is the planet, not so much because of the industries as because the enemy has thousands of troops on the ground.  We retake the high orbitals and land troops - we win.”

He grinned as he looked at the display.  “They have to try to slow us down,” he repeated.  “And if they want to do that, they have to come within weapons range.  We’ll blow hell out of them.”

And if the marines refuse to surrender, he thought with a cold smile, we can blow hell out of the planet too.

He sobered.  They had strict orders to preserve what they could of the planet’s industry and trained workforce.  Hameau had served the corporation well, first as a training zone for everything from starship personnel to technical experts and then as a relocation centre for trained and experienced personnel from all over the Core Worlds.  The Corporation had done everything in its power to recruit trained personnel, often trying to remove them from worlds and systems that were already starting to collapse into chaos.  Nelson had devoted two-thirds of his life to the Empire.  It was chilling to watch it fall into ruin, even though it had betrayed him well before he’d turned his back.  At least the Corporation was trying to save something.  It wasn’t much, but it was all they had.

“Just remember we need to recover the industries intact,” Julia said, as if she’d read his thoughts.  She might not be a naval officer, but she was very skilled in her field.  “We can’t replace them.”

“Not in a hurry,” Nelson agreed.  The Corporation had gone further than anyone else - as far as he knew - in creating an entirely separate technical base, but losing Hameau’s industrial nodes would hurt.  It would take years to rebuild, even if there were no further glitches along the path to galactic domination.  “We’ll do what we can.”

He leaned back in his chair.  He’d already done everything he could to ensure success.  The crews were trained, the ships were in good condition ... they’d simulated the coming engagement, running through hundreds of variants in a bid to predict what the enemy was going to do and devise countermeasures.  He was entirely sure his squadron could engage and defeat an Imperial Navy squadron twice its size.  But the marines?  He didn’t know.  They understood the value of good training, preventive maintenance and prior planning.

But I still have the edge, he told himself, firmly.  And that’s all that matters.

“Admiral,” the tactical officer said.  “The enemy fleet will enter engagement range in ten minutes.”

“Good,” Nelson said.  The enemy had to know their attempts to lure him astray - and perhaps onto a minefield - had failed.  “Stand by point defence.”

He smiled, coldly.  It wouldn’t be long now.

Chapter Two

The short-term problem, of course, is that avoiding a dictator (and/or a dictatorship) is not easy.  The people you need to maintain a communist (etc) state are precisely the sort of people who should not be trusted with the role.  Indeed, those who would found such a state are people who have a yen to control their fellow man.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

Haverford was a very strange city.

Captain Haydn Steel felt oddly exposed as he led the platoon down the street, his eyes scanning from side to side.  The city felt deserted, as if half the population had decided it would be safer to cross the river and find shelter well away from what had once been the home of the planetary government.  The streets themselves were neatly laid out, suggesting the city had been planned instead of being allowed to grow naturally.  Dozens of abandoned ground- and air-cars lay everywhere, some burnt-out.  There were parts of the city that had been devastated during the thunder runs, with entire blocks reduced to piles of rubble; there were parts that looked utterly untouched, as if nothing more significant than a minor thunderstorm had swept over the city.  He felt sweat trickle down his back as they reached a crossroads and peered in both directions.  There was no one in sight.

He gritted his teeth.  The entire planet seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.  Two months ago, Hameau had been a peaceful - if repressive - corporate world, untroubled by the chaos sweeping through the galaxy.  The population had known their place and stayed there, if only because those who tried to step outside their box quietly disappeared.  It wasn’t the sort of place Haydn would have cared to live, but he could see the appeal.  And then the marines had invaded, falling out of the clear blue sky and shattering the planetary system beyond repair.  And now ...

Haydn had studied wars, invasions and occupations.  The most dangerous moments were the ones immediately after, when everyone was trying to come to grips with the new reality.  Some people would hide inside, cowering at the knock on the door; some people would try to continue as normal, even though things would never be the same again; some people would throw off the shackles of their previous life and turn to looting or seek revenge.  Haydn had served in places where the old order had been smashed.  There’d always been thousands of people with scores to settle, people who’d hated silently and bided their time.  And it was the same here.  They’d already discovered hundreds of dead bodies scattered across the city.  The marines hadn’t killed them.  They’d been so badly mutilated that hardened marines had blanched.

He kept his face under tight control as they walked down the residential street. The houses seemed abandoned, although his combat-honed senses insisted they were being watched by unseen eyes.  The drawn curtains could hide anything, from a cowering family to insurgents or stay-behind units preparing for a final desperate engagement.  He thought he spotted one curtain quiver, suggesting they were being watched.  He hoped the locals weren’t planning to cause trouble.  It wouldn’t do much for hearts and minds if the marines had to raid the entire district, dragging out the locals and tearing their houses apart in a frantic search for guns and ammunition.  If they didn’t have enemies before the search, they sure as hell would afterwards.

Sweat trickled down his back as he kept walking.  The streets felt eerie, oppressive.  The houses looked nice, but they were strikingly uniform.  They were practically identical, with very few signs of individuality.  A sense of unreality trickled through his mind as he cast his eyes over the closest houses.  The locals didn’t seem to like the idea of anyone stepping out of line.  Haydn knew the importance of standardisation, but there were limits.  The corps had no right to tell him how he should decorate his house.

Something moved, above.  He tensed, his grip tightening on his rifle as he looked up.  A drone?  A helicopter?  A combat support platform?  No, a bird.  He eyed it suspiciously for a long moment - there were combat drones designed to look like birds - before deciding it was probably real.  It might not be harmless - there were all sorts of ways to use birds in warfare -- but he couldn’t blow the creature out of the sky on suspicion.  That probably wouldn’t endear them to the locals either.  They’d gone to some trouble to establish an Earth-compatible biosphere on their world.

He put the thought aside as he passed a scorched, but still intact building.  A school, apparently.  He eyed the damage thoughtfully, wondering what had caused it.  The thunder runs hadn’t come anywhere near the district.  A stray missile or shell would have levelled the entire building.  Perhaps the local kids had taken advantage of the chaos to set fire to the hated building.  Haydn had little good to say about his education, but it hadn't been anything like as regimented as schools created by corporate educrats.  The kids had been on course to become mindless corprat drones before the invasion had intervened.

I suppose it beats schooling on Earth, he thought.  He could see why the parents liked it, even if - in the long-term - it was more destructive than constructive.  The kids learn discipline, if nothing else.

He snorted as they glanced over the schoolhouse, then continued on their way.  The kids clearly hadn’t had access to anything really dangerous, or the sort of education that taught them how to turn simple household products into dangerous weapons.  He supposed he should be relieved.  Young men were always the most aggressive, in the early days of occupation.  The locals didn’t have many weapons, thankfully, but that would change in the coming months.  They’d learn how to build IEDs, lay ambushes and other nasty tricks that would get people killed for nothing.  And there would be enemy soldiers who’d refuse to surrender, even after they’d been ordered to turn themselves in.  They’d either absent themselves or go underground to continue the fight.  It felt absurd to think they had a chance, but Haydn had seen too many occupations go bad.  The invaders couldn’t be strong everywhere.  They had to win hearts and minds before attitudes hardened and it was too late.

A line of powered-down cars was parked along the street, looking harmless.  Haydn eyed them suspiciously, motioning for the marines to keep their distance.  The local traffic control systems had ordered all ground and aircars to stay where they were - a degree of control that struck him as creepy - but that was meaningless.  A skilled technician would be able to bypass the control processor or simply reroute the system so it thought it had permission to move.  And then the cars could be turned into VBIEDs or simply crashed into marine checkpoints.  Even if they were powerless, they weren’t harmless.  Cars made excellent hiding places for IEDs.  

He heard two of his men muttering uneasily behind him as they kept walking.  He didn’t blame them.  They’d been in hundreds of engagements over the past two months, from simple firefights to complex multilevel battles, but they knew how to handle themselves when the bullets started flying.  Patrolling, on the other hand, was stressful.  The ROE were very clear.  They weren’t allowed to open fire - or even be extremely aggressive - unless they had good reason to believe they were under threat.  The enemy would have a chance to land the first blow, if there was an enemy.  Haydn scowled.  It was impossible to tell.  They were practically advancing to ambush, without being certain there was one.

It could be worse, he told himself, firmly.  You could be re-enacting the Defence of Duffer’s Drift in your underwear.

The thought made him smile, just as he heard the sound of breaking glass ahead of him.  He picked up speed, tensing as they hurried into a shopping street.  The uniformity didn’t change, even though the shops offered everything from food to fashionable clothes.  He gritted his teeth, glancing back and using hand-signals to urge the squad into tactical positions.  If they were looters, the marines would have no trouble.  But if they were insurgents, trying to lure the marines into a trap ...

“Call in,” he ordered.  The squad could deal with a handful of looters, but it was probably best to alert the QRF.  A platoon could be easily trapped in enemy-held streets, if there were no friendly units in close proximity.  The idea of being trapped and used as bait to snare the QRF was unpleasant.  It would be humiliating, even if they escaped without casualties.  He’d seen insurgents try that trick before.  Sometimes, it even worked.  “Tell the QRF to ready themselves.”

He braced himself as they approached the shop.  It had been a general store, judging by the sign on the broken door.  The shelves, the ones within eyeshot, were bare.  The locals had purchased everything they could, from food and drink to toilet paper and other essentials, as soon as it had dawned on them that their world was being invaded.  The planetary government had tried to put a damper on panic-buying, but they’d failed.  Haydn wasn’t surprised.  Even repressive governments knew better than to risk starting a civil uprising in the midst of all-out war.

We did the locals a favour, he thought.  There was no privacy in the barracks - he was used to it, after years in the corps - but the locals had been kept under intensive surveillance from birth to death.  He would never have tolerated it.  If the bad guys had won the war, they’d have punished anyone who panic-bought.

He levelled his rifle at a shape moving within the darkened interior, then barked a command in his best parade-ground voice.  “Come out with your hands up!”

There was a long pause.  The dark shape froze.  He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was a living person.  He tensed, silently praying the looters - if they were looters - wouldn’t do anything stupid.  Shooting looters was a good way to establish control as quickly as possible, but it bred resentment and hatred.  Better to take them alive, if possible; better to move them to the detention for processing before they were either released or shipped to POW camps.  God alone knew what would happen to them.  Perhaps they’d simply be dumped on an island and told to learn to farm or else.  It wasn’t as if they could be shipped to a penal colony now.

“Come on out,” he repeated.  “Now.”

The shape started to move, stumbling into the light.  A young man in a civilian outfit, his hands waving frantically in front of him.  His clothes were as much a uniform, on Hameau, as Haydn’s BDUs.  An accountant, perhaps, or a clerk.  Or a bureaucrat.  Haydn swallowed the flicker of disdain and swept his eyes up and down the young man’s body.  It didn’t look as if he was concealing anything, but that was meaningless.  He could easily be hiding an IED behind his back, if someone hadn’t implanted an explosive device and turned him into a living bomb.  The grinding horrors he’d seen on Han - and a multitude of other worlds - could easily start on Hameau too.

He jabbed his rifle at the looter.  The young man blanched, eying the weapon as if it were a poisonous snake rearing to strike.  Not a soldier, then.   Hameau’s defenders had been a mixed bag, from brave soldiers who’d fought with skill and determination to uniformed bureaucrats who’d thought nothing of deserting their men when the tide turned against them, but they’d all had basic weapons training.  The looter looked as if he’d never seen a weapon in his life.  Haydn felt a stab of pity, mingled with contempt.  The right to bear arms, in his experience, was perhaps the most important right in human history.  No wonder the empire - and the corprats - had worked so hard to keep weapons out of civilian hands.

Two more looters emerged from the shadows, a young man and a young woman keeping their hands in the air.  The woman - she was barely in her twenties, if that - looked tired and resigned, as if she hadn’t expected to get away with anything.  There was something beaten in her expression, although there were no marks on her face.  The man beside her looked as if he was trying to be brave, despite the weapons pointed at him.  Haydn resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  Bravado was all well and good, but mindless bravado was just annoying.

The marines searched them, removed a handful of possessions and bound their hands with zip-ties.  The locals submitted without protest, something that surprised Haydn more than he cared to admit.  They were in no danger, as long as they behaved themselves, but they wouldn’t know it.  They certainly wouldn’t believe it.  The remains of the planetary communications network had broadcast assurances no one would be harmed, let alone robbed, raped or murdered, but the locals probably hadn’t believed them.  They’d been told too many horror stories over the last few weeks.

And famous flicks didn’t help either, Haydn thought, as he searched the store.  It had been stripped bare - and abandoned.  The bedrooms on the upper level showed every sign of a hasty departure.  Drawers lay open, clothes lay where they’d fallen, some of them very high quality indeed.  Whoever had packed the bags had been ruthlessly practical.  They thought the hordes of Ming the Merciless were bearing down on them.

He breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear the store had been abandoned when the looters had broken in.  It wouldn’t have been easy to deal with looters who were also murderers, not when it might upset the locals whatever they did.  He took a final look around, noting the paint someone had slapped over the webcams and other surveillance devices, then headed back outside.  The prisoners were looking around despondently, clearly assessing their futures and finding them dark.  They’d be in no real danger, but they’d probably be put to work. The POWs were already helping to clear the roads into the city, unless they had specialised training.  The medics were working overtime, trying to help people who’d been wounded in the crossfire.

“On your feet,” he ordered.  He wondered, idly, why they’d turned to looting.  Were they starving?  Were they trying to hoard whatever they found, in the hope of selling it later?  Or were they blowing off steam?  They didn’t look starving.  That meant nothing, he reminded himself.  Civilians rarely prepared for disaster until it was too late.  “You’re going to the camps.”

The young woman - girl, really - looked at him as she was helped to her feet.  “What’s going to happen to us?”

“Very little,” Haydn said, as reassuringly as he could.  “You’ll go to the camps.  You’ll probably be fed, in exchange for work.  And then you’ll be released.”

Unless we have some reason to think you’re a threat, he added, silently.  The marines had seen too many enemies released by political fiat, only to take up weapons again as soon as they were clear.  This time, things would be better.  The prisoners wouldn’t be mistreated, but they wouldn’t be released in a hurry either.  We’ll be running your DNA against the captured files too.  If you’re hiding something from us, we’ll know it.

He kept an eye on the prisoners as the patrol resumed their walk.  The street looked to have been thoroughly stripped, probably during the hours between the surrender and the occupation.  The owners appeared to have vanished, save for a pair of bodies outside one of the shops.  Their clothes suggested they were storekeepers, although it was impossible to be sure.  He checked them quickly, noting they’d been shot.  Not civilian looters, then.  Enemy soldiers?  Former policemen?  Or ... he shook his head.  There was no way to know.  The interior of their store was as dark and silent as the grave.

The young man snorted, rudely.  “Why did you come here?”

Haydn hid his amusement.  It was unwise to challenge one’s captors, even if one did want to look brave.  It would just get someone marked as a troublemaker, someone who would be turned into an example or merely watched closely for signs he was planning an escape.  There were marines who’d do it to distract the enemy, but ... he shook his head.  There was no sign the captives had ever taken anything akin to the Conduct After Capture course.  He’d known experienced marines who still broke into a sweat at the mere thought of taking it again.

“Quiet,” Command Sergeant Mark Mayberry growled.

Haydn frowned as he saw a pair of shuttles skimming over the city, heading for the FOB the marines had established in the remains of a former enemy garrison.  The last he’d heard, shuttle pilots were being told to stay away from the city.  It only took one enemy soldier with an HVM to really ruin a shuttle pilot’s day.  Even if he missed, the pilot would probably win the brown pants award and supply flights would be badly disrupted.  Haydn knew, better than most, just how close they’d come to running out of supplies.  He hoped any lingering enemy forces didn’t know it.  A prolonged insurgency might end with the marines running out of bullets.

Although we can use their factories, given time, he thought. And ...

His headset buzzed.  “Captain, terminate your patrol and report to the FOB immediately,” the dispatcher ordered.  “I say again ...”

“I got it,” Haydn said.  Terminate his patrol immediately?  What was going on?  “We’re on our way.”

Chapter Three

The problem therefore can be posed like this: one must either become a dictator, in order to impose one’s values, or be pushed aside by a subordinate who not only wants to become a dictator, but is also practiced in the use of the power you have unwisely granted him.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

There was something pleasing, Major-General Gerald Anderson had always thought, in a military campaign executed without political interference.  Politicos never knew the first thing about military operations, which led them to demand bombing campaigns that took out industrial complexes without killing a single enemy soldier or invasions that were carried out without any of the invaders so much as getting a paper cut.  It had been a constant frustration to him, back in the days before Earthfall, that marines - his marines - would fight bravely to give their political masters their best chance of establishing a permanent settlement, only to watch the politicos throw it away for nothing.  The enemy frequently lost all the battles and won all the negotiations.  Gerald had long-since come to believe the only solution to the endless series of brushfire wars was to put political interference aside and bang heads together until the idiots got the message.

He snorted at his own hubris as he cast an eye over the makeshift command and control centre.  It was a scene of organised chaos.  His staff had commandeered a hangar, installed hundreds of foldable tables and covered them with computer terminals and communications nodes.  They sat or stood at their stations, snapping orders into headsets as they struggled to build an accurate picture and report to him.  A team of marine officers were being briefed in the far corner, staring at a map someone had pinned to the wall.  They looked to Gerald for leadership.  They expected him to set the objectives, then trust them to carry them out.  He felt a flicker of envy for the younger men.  They could afford to look at their tiny fragment of the picture, as if the bigger picture didn’t exist.  He couldn’t afford such a luxury.

The timing was diabolical, he acknowledged sourly.  If the enemy had planned it that way ... he shook his head in droll amusement.  Only a complete idiot would draw up such a plan and expect it to work.  He’d find a way to bust any of his subordinates who suggested it all the way back to rifleman - or, more likely, send them back to the field.  And yet ... it was possible, he supposed, the enemy CO had always had the plan at the back of his mind.  Only a fool would expect it to work, but only a fool wouldn’t take advantage if it happened naturally.  God knew he made sure to keep a handful of contingency plans in his head, even if he never expected to have the chance to use them.

They caught us with our pants down and our cocks on the chopping block, he admitted, to himself if no one else.  Denying reality - as unpleasant as it happened to be - was the first sign of terminal stupidity.  And we have only a short space of time to make corrections.

He didn’t touch his terminal or datapad.  He’d seen the figures.  He’d served in countless campaigns.  He knew there was no hope of lifting more than a few hundred marines off the surface before the hammer came down.  It was sheer luck they’d secured most of the PDCs and orbital industries.  If the enemy fleet had arrived even a few days earlier ... he’d have been thoroughly screwed.  As it was, the campaign hadn’t failed, but ... he shook his head.  Their options had narrowed to fight or surrender.  And he had no intention of giving up just yet.

“Sir.”  Lieutenant Hemet saluted, sharply.  “The MEUs are preparing to leave orbit.”

Gerald nodded.  He was no expert in space warfare, but he knew enough to understand the giant MEUs were sitting ducks.  They’d draw fire the moment the enemy fleet entered orbit, ensuring he couldn’t hope to evacuate the planet in time.  The spacers would do what they could, but it wouldn’t be enough.  He could calculate the odds as well as anyone else.  The spacers could delay the newcomers.  They couldn’t stop them.

“Order them to prepare to receive shuttles,” he said.  He had a contingency plan, but it was one he’d really never expected to use.  “Get me a list of space-specialists and prioritise them for evacuation.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Hemet said.  “They won’t want to go.”

“No,” Gerald agreed.  “But they have their orders.”

He frowned as he heard shouting from outside the hangar.  Word was spreading.  The marines wouldn’t panic, but their local allies probably would.  He couldn’t blame them.  Collaborators tended to get the worst of it, if it turned out they’d switched sides too early.  It was never easy to make such a judgement.  He privately hoped he’d never have to make it himself.

“And inform Captain Steel that I want to see him as soon as he returns,” Gerald added.  It had been bad luck sending Captain Steel on patrol just before the enemy fleet had shown itself.  There was no good time for an enemy fleet to arrive, but this one had picked a particularly bad time.  They’d thrown all of Gerald’s plans for a loop.  “Dismissed.”

Lieutenant Hemet saluted and hurried away.  Gerald winced inwardly, wondering if it was time to rotate the younger man back to a combat unit.  A good staff officer was worth his weight in whatever previous substance one cared to name, but - as they forgot the lessons of combat - they tended to make mistakes.  The corps tried to handle the problem by rotating officers from combat posts to staff duties and back again, yet ... by the time a staff officer learnt to be a good staff officer it was often time for him to go back.  He grimaced.  Perhaps it was time to put Auxiliaries in staff positions.  They wouldn’t be promoted, so they’d do better ...

He cursed under his breath as he looked at the display.  The enemy fleet was steadily advancing on the planet, ignoring all attempts to lure it away.  He felt a twinge of admiration for the enemy CO, tempered by the grim awareness that any tactical officer worthy of the name would know there was no point in altering course.  Why bother to play the game if it was rigged?

And they know the rules as well as we do, he thought.  His analysts had studied the captured files.  They’d cautioned that the enemy had been head-hunting experienced officers from the imperial forces.  If they’d given their officers freedom to act without regard for politics and political correctness, they could have built a formidable force.

Gerald strode outside, watching as flights of helicopters and assault shuttles rose and fell around the former enemy base.  There was no way to hide the activity from prying eyes.  If the remnants of the enemy army were still active, they’d know something had gone wrong even if they didn’t know precisely what.  The marines were sweeping the area outside the city, trying to ensure no one sneaked close enough to fire mortar shells or launch missiles into the throng, but there was no way to be certain.  If the enemy knew something had happened - or that a relief force was on the way - they might gamble everything on a bid to impede the evacuation.  They’d be killed, but they’d do immense damage before they were wiped out.  They might lose the engagement, yet win the war.

He glanced towards the gates as a marine platoon - and a trio of prisoners - entered the complex.  The MPs - marine MPs - hurried to take control of the prisoners, rushing them away before they could see anything incriminating.  Gerald suspected it was a waste of time - the garrison would have to be evacuated before enemy forces landed or simply bombed it to shit - but there was no point in taking silly chances.  Captain Steel disengaged himself from his men and headed towards the main hangar, his eyes going wide as he spotted Gerald waiting for him. Gerald kept his face as impassive as possible.

“General.”  Steel saluted, sharply.  “You recalled me?”

Gerald nodded, hearing the unspoken question.  Why?  “There’ve been developments,” he said.  “The enemy relief fleet has arrived.”

Steel looked grim.  He was a rifleman first - all marines were riflemen first, even the handful who tried to make careers flying desks - but he was also a space-specialist.  He understood the realities of space warfare better than Gerald, who’d spent most of his career on the ground.  In hindsight ... Gerald dismissed the thought with a flicker of irritation.  Hindsight was always clearer than foresight.  Sure, it would have been smarter to leave Steel on the MEUs ... but only if he’d known he’d need Steel up there.  And he hadn’t.

“We hold the PDCs,” Steel said, in tones that suggested he was looking desperately for the bright side.  “They can’t smash us from orbit.”

“No, but they can cut us off from Safehouse,” Gerald said.  Their supply chain had always been weak, despite the mobile factory ships the corps wasn’t supposed to have.  He hoped the enemy hadn’t thought to look for them.  “And they can fight us on the ground until we run out of ammunition.”

He met the younger man’s eyes.  “You and your platoon are going to be evacuated shortly,” he said.  “Grab what you can and join the line.”

“Sir.”  Steel gathered himself to make a protest.  “I can’t run out on you ...”

“Those are your orders, Captain, which you may have in writing if you wish.”  Gerald composed himself with an effort.  He understood Steel’s feelings.  He would have shared them, if they’d swapped places.  But there was no time to deal with them.  “I need you up there, not patrolling the streets or fighting a rearguard action.  You may have a more important role in space.”

Steel frowned.  “You have a mission for me, sir?”

“I have half a plan,” Gerald said.  He’d already forwarded what he could to Captain Stumbaugh and the other spacers.  They’d have to turn the concept into something workable - if they could - and then put it into action.  “Report to the shuttles, Captain.  And good luck.”

“Yes, sir,” Steel said, stiffly.  It was just one step short of insubordination.  “I’ll see you on the far side.”

Gerald nodded, keeping his expression blank as Steel turned and strode away. He understood, better than he cared to admit.  Marines were taught to be loyal.  Deserting one’s comrades was an unpardonable sin, even if one was ordered to leave.  Steel - and Gerald, truth be told -would have risked dozens of marines to save one.  And yet, there was no point in keeping Steel on the ground.  Gerald had thousands of groundpounders under his command.  Space-specialists were rarer.  In hindsight, he would sooner have left Steel in space.  He hoped - as he turned to watch the armoured vehicles and air defence units being moved towards the gates in preparation for the coming struggle - that Steel wouldn’t do anything stupid and try to remain on the ground.  He’d break the younger man, even though he’d understand.  Steel would have problems living with himself if he survived while his comrades died.

And if the worst happens, he thought grimly, I’ll die with my men.

***
Specialist Rachel Green did her level best to look like a harmless - and hopeless - civilian medic as she walked through the makeshift refugee camp.  The locals had fled the government complex and surrounding districts, crossing the river and taking up residence in a multitude of abandoned warehouses, schools and colonist barracks that had - somehow - survived the waves of civil unrest that had shaken the city before the thunder runs.  They looked pitiful to her eyes, cowering as if they couldn’t decide if they were more scared of the marines or their fellow civilians.  The planet had always been a hotbed of resentment, made worse by the government’s refusal to allow its people to vent.  She wasn’t surprised that hundreds of downtrodden civilians had thrown off the veneer of civilisation and turned into monsters.  The only real surprise was that it wasn’t a great deal worse.

These people are sheep, she thought.  They’d been born and raised in a cage, with bars both visible and invisible.  They acted as if they thought they were being watched at every moment, which - she conceded sourly - was more or less true.  The bars are removed and yet most of them are still pacing the cage, too scared to leave.

She grimaced as she cast her eye over a battered-looking family.  Their clothes suggested they’d been wealthy, once upon a time.  The planet’s upper classes had enjoyed a little more freedom than the commoners.  Now ... they looked too scared to move.  Rachel felt a twinge of pity for the children, reflecting on how their world had turned upside down practically overnight.  Their mother looked too frightened to meet her gaze.  There was no sign of any father or uncle or anyone else.  It didn’t bode well for their future.

Specialist Steven Phelps followed her, acting as assistant and bodyguard.  Rachel had little fear of the hapless refugees, even the ones who were steadily turning into wolves, but it was probably better to deter aggression than deal with it after it became a problem.  She moved from wounded refugee to wounded refugee, offering what help she could while listening to whispers and rumours flying through the air.  The refugees were unaware of her true nature.  They talked freely in front of her, exchanging wider and wider rumours that bore little resemblance to reality.  The marines had slaughtered the entire city.  The marines were rounding up women for secret breeding purposes.  The marines were lizard-aliens in disguise.  The marines were ... the stories got more and more absurd as they passed around the refugee encampment.  She supposed they made a certain kind of sense.  The refugees had been dependent on the planetary news service, a heavily-censored network that had no qualms about rewriting history to create favourable facts.  No, there were no reliable sources of information.  There were no private networks, radio broadcasts ... not even old-fashioned newspapers.  No wonder the rumours were growing out of control.  The population couldn’t hope to sort truth from lies.

Although one hopes they don’t believe we’re really man-eating lizards, she thought, as they moved to the next encampment.  That’s too absurd for words.

She shivered as she tasted the despondency in the air.  The refugee camp looked a little more organised than the last, something that bothered her on a very primal level.  Dozens of refugees sat on the ground, almost all women.  Young and attractive women.  She glanced at Phelps, who also looked concerned.  The camp was starting to look like a prison.  She braced herself as the guards stood and ambled towards her.  They looked like thugs, but thugs with some military or police experience.  She guessed they’d deserted when the enemy government had collapsed.

The leader sneered at them both.  “Who are you?”

“Doctor Moonchild and Nurse Robb,” Rachel lied smoothly.  The Opel Moonchild identity had the great advantage of being both useful and harmless, as far as the thugs were concerned.  “We’re doing what we can to help.”

The thugs exchanged glances.  “You’re working for us now,” the leader said.  “This way.”

Rachel pasted a nervous expression on her face as the thugs led them though the camp and into the warehouse.  They’d turned it into a brothel.  The warehouse was crammed with beds.  Her eyes swept the chamber, noting that there were only five thugs in total.  Five!  A couple carried visible weapons - military rifles, a common design - but the locals could have taken them out if they’d plucked up the nerve.  But they were too beaten down to realise.

“You can treat these bitches,” the thug said.  “And then ...”

Rachel made a sign to Phelps, then hit the thug in the throat.  He folded, making a gurgling sound as he hit the ground. Phelps took out the second thug, drawing his pistol a second later and shooting the remaining thugs before they could raise their weapons.  Rachel was almost disappointed.  The thugs could have been taken out at any moment, if the locals had stood up to them.  She’d been in more dangerous situations on the Slaughterhouse.

“Call HQ, get them to send a patrol out here,” she said, as she checked the nearest bed.  The women didn’t look like hardened prostitutes.  A number were badly bruised.  She guessed they’d been told they were going to whore for the gang and been beaten savagely when they’d refused.  “This place needs help.”

She gritted her teeth as she searched the warehouse, making sure they hadn’t missed anyone.  She was used to horror, but ...

“They’re telling us to report back,” Phelps said, in surprise.  “They don’t have time to send out a patrol.”

“Fuck,” Rachel said.  “Tell them ...”

“They put out a Red One alert,” Phelps said.  “I don’t think they’ll listen.”

“Fuck,” Rachel repeated.  “Tell them we’re on our way.”

She looked around for women who seemed ready to fight, then picked up the rifles and passed them around.  The bullets wouldn’t last - thankfully, the rifles were designed to endure all sorts of abuse - but they’d give the women a chance.  She hoped it would be enough.  Phelps was right.  A Red One alert admitted of no ambiguity.  They had to report back ASAP.

And see what’s gone wrong now, she thought.  The invasion force had been transitioning into occupation mode.  If something had derailed that ... she scowled.  It’s going to be bad.

Chapter Four

The long-term problem, however, is more serious (particularly as the regime outlasts its founder).  That is the problem of receiving accurate information from one’s underlings.  
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

Derek wasn’t sure, in all honesty, if he was a prisoner, an ally or merely someone the marines felt a certain obligation towards.  They hadn’t given him any good answer, after they’d escorted him from the government bunker to the commandeered HQ, then reunited him with Jenny Alyson.  His girlfriend - he supposed he could call Jenny his girlfriend now - had been swept up as the marines secured Bouchon.  He was glad they’d sent her to him, yet ... he didn’t know why.  Keeping him happy hardly seemed one of their priorities.

And everyone thinks I’m a traitor, he thought, numbly.  He’d been assured no one outside the marines - and Derek himself, of course - knew what had happened in the command bunker, but he didn’t believe it.  He’d spent most of his life in a small town, then the army.  There were few secrets in such an environment.  He knew more than he wanted to know about his neighbours.  If I stick my head out of the camp, I’ll be shot.

He paced the small room, wondering - again - what the marines were going to do with him.  He’d been too angry to think about the future, when he’d levelled his gun at the planetary governors and shot them.  He’d been too bitter at their failings, too bitter at watching too many good men - friends and enemies alike - die because they’d been betrayed or abandoned by their political leaders.  And now ... it was a wonder Jenny could even look at him.  Her father was a Town Councillor.  She’d been on the road to greatness, before the invasion.  Everyone had known it, particularly her.  Now ...

Jenny shifted, sitting up in bed.  They’d spent a lot of time making love over the last few days, if only because there was nothing else to do.  The marines hadn’t provided anything in the way of entertainment.  Their rations were better than the crap he’d eaten during the war - he honestly couldn’t imagine them eating anything worse - but there were only so many ways one could eat ration bars before one got sick of them.  Derek wondered, grimly, what Jenny would do if something better came along.  Before the war, she’d been way out of his league.  Her father would have broken anyone who so much as looked at his daughter.  Now ...

You don’t even know you have a future, he told himself, savagely.  He’d seen too many people die over the last couple of months.  Why worry about it?

“Come here,” Jenny said.  “I think we can try ...”

She cupped her breasts in her hands, squeezing them lightly.  Derek stared, feeling blood rushing out of his brain and down to his groin.  He’d never dreamed anyone could be so forward, not outside bad porno flicks.  Jenny had seemed as reserved as the handful of other upper-class girls he’d met, girls who appeared convinced they were under the spotlight all hours of the day.  And yet ... he stumbled forward, reaching for her.  All the old rules, official and unofficial, were gone.  They could do whatever they liked.

There was a sharp knock at the door.  Jenny squeaked, then grabbed the blanket and clutched it to her chest.  Derek muttered a word he’d learnt in the barracks, before turning and picking up the nearest towel.  He’d lost his sense of modesty long ago - there’d never been any privacy in his life - but he’d always felt a little defenceless when he was naked.   He wrapped the towel around his waist, then opened the door.  A grim-faced marine, vaguely familiar, stood on the far side.  He showed no sign of surprise at their state of undress.

We might be being watched, Derek reminded himself.  He stepped back, glancing around even though he knew any surveillance devices would be too small to see.  They won’t be that interested in watching us, will they?

“General Anderson,” he said, remembering the marine’s name.  “It’s good to see you again.”

Jenny cleared her throat.  “General, I ...”

Anderson glanced at her, then looked away.  “There have been developments,” he said.  “The relief fleet has entered the system.  It will enter orbit in” - he looked at his wristcom - “roughly thirty minutes.  We don’t have much time to react, let alone evacuate.”

“... Shit,” Derek said.  He was a traitor.  They were going to hang him, the moment they laid hands on him.  “I ...”

“You have several options,” Anderson said.  “First, we can give you a slot on one of the evacuation shuttles.  We should be able to get you into space, then well away from the enemy ships, before it’s too late.  However, there is a slight chance things will go wrong.  If that happens, we can’t guarantee your safety.”

“Oh.”  Derek swallowed, hard.  He didn’t doubt his bravery, but there was a difference between fighting on the ground, where he might be able to save himself, and sitting helplessly in a vulnerable shuttle.  “What are the other options?”

“Second, you can join us,” Anderson said.  “We should be able to hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive ...”

“I don’t like the sound of that should,” Jenny injected.  “Are you sure?”

“There’s little sure in wartime,” Anderson pointed out, stiffly.  “We cannot guarantee anything.  We’re going to need to carry out a fighting retreat, doing everything in our power to impede them to buy time.  You can help us, either by fighting on the front lines or by taking up position within the city.  It’ll give you a fair chance to fight back.”

“Right.”  Derek had seen more fighting in the last two months than he’d wanted to see in his entire life.  “And the third option?”

“You can vanish,” Anderson said.  “Very few people know precisely what happened in the bunker.  Those who do have either been put somewhere safe or know to keep their mouths firmly shut.  We’re looking through the POW camps now, reshuffling prisoners in hopes of sorting the dangerous ones - or the ones guilty of war crimes - from the ones who can be released.  You can be added to the latter set and released, with no one aware of quite what you were doing when you were captured.  I think we owe you that much.”

Derek frowned.  He was tempted, very tempted, to walk away.  The planetary government had had hellishly complete records, but the stresses and strains of wartime had to have broken the system ... right?  The relief force might know he’d been in the army, if they recovered the records or had copies, but they couldn’t know he’d been promoted, or that he’d been in Haverford when the city fell.  They’d have no reason to assume he was anything other than a common infantryman.  Losing the promotion would hurt, but it would be a small price to pay for vanishing into history.  And yet ...

He looked at Jenny.  She was wonderful and ... what sort of life would she have if the world changed hands again?  What sort of life would they have?  Her father was a collaborator, from what she’d said.  The newcomers might put him and his entire family up against the nearest wall, if - when - they found out. And they would find out.  Councillor Alyson had not been popular.  Someone would rat him out, sooner rather than later.  And then Jenny would die.

Jenny leaned forward.  “How long do we have?”

“To decide?”  Anderson frowned.  “Ten minutes, probably.  I’ll have to assign your slots to others if you don’t want them.”

And you have to go back to work, Derek added.  You’re not going to abandon your men and start running ...

“I’ll stay,” Derek said.  “Jenny can take the shuttle and ...”

“I’m not leaving you,” Jenny said, cutting him off.  “We’ll both stay.”

“The front lines aren’t safe for women,” Derek said.  “And ...”

Anderson laughed as Jenny flushed angrily.  “Dangerous waters, young man; dangerous waters.”

Derek glared at the older man.  “It’s true!”

“Right now, there isn’t anywhere safe for anyone,” Anderson said, quietly.  “And women can be in dreadful danger even if they’re far from the front lines.”

He shook his head.  “If you both want to stay ...”

“I want her to live,” Derek said.  “You can take her away while I stay and fight.”

“I’m staying.”  Jenny swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, wrapping the blanket around her like a shroud.  “And that’s final.”

Derek tried to think of an argument, but nothing came to mind.  Jenny had made up her mind and ... he wanted to order her to go, to tell her to go, to threaten her with everything from desertion to violence to make her go.  And yet ... he looked at the older man, who seemed uncommonly amused by the whole affair.  Jenny wasn’t a soldier.  It just wasn’t fair to put her in danger.

“We’ll stay in the city, then,” he said, desperately.  It would bring its own dangers, he was sure, but at least they wouldn’t be on the front lines.  “If we pretend to be a married couple ...”

“The records are shot to hell,” Anderson confirmed.  “But we’d still advise you to remain out of sight, for the moment.”

He looked from Derek to Jenny and back again.  “Get dressed.  We’ve a handful of other volunteers to stay behind, so you’ll be joining them.  We’ll get you into the city, armed and ready, before the shit hits the fan.  We hope.”

“You hope,” Derek echoed.  “Nothing is easy in war, is it?”

“No.”  Anderson turned and opened the door.  “It never is.”

He closed the door behind him.  Derek took a breath, then turned to face Jenny.  She’d dropped the blanket and started to dress.  Derek forced himself to look away.  Jenny looked stunning.  It was hard to believe, sometimes, that they’d spent the last few days in bed together.  It felt like a dream.

“You could get killed, or worse,” he said.  He wasn’t sure what Jenny had been through, the night Eddisford had fallen, but it couldn’t have been pleasant.  She’d been very tight-lipped about how she’d travelled from Eddisford to Bouchon.  “Jenny ...”

“And the only other choice is running and hiding,” Jenny said.  “And I’ve done enough of both.”

“I know.”  Derek felt his anger flow away.  “I don’t want you dead.”

“I should hope not,” Jenny said, primly.  She pulled her sweater over her head.  “Get dressed, unless you intend to fight naked.”

“It might frighten the enemy,” Derek said.  He reached for his pants and started to pull them on.  “Good tactic, do you think?”

“I think it’s much more likely they’ll be incapacitated with laughter,” Jenny said, with a faint chuckle.  “But I suppose you’d be able to shoot them while they were helpless.  Is that fair?”

Derek sobered.  “I don’t care if it’s fair or not,” he said.  “I just want to stay alive.”

***
“It feels like we’re running away,” someone said, as the company formed ranks and marched towards the shuttlecraft.  “Really.”

Haydn resisted the urge to look back and see who’d spoken.  He didn’t recognise the voice.  One of the newbies probably, transferred from another company because his experience in space was more important than skill on the ground.  He couldn’t help agreeing with the newbie, even though - as a senior officer - he had to hide it.  It did feel like they were running away, abandoning their comrades to save themselves.  The corps never ran from a fight.  It was an ethos that had been drilled into him the very first day at Boot Camp.  And yet, he had his orders.  They had to leave now, before it was too late.

A dozen ideas ran through his head for staying behind, each one more ridiculous than the last.  He could leave the company in his XO’s hands and accidentally miss the shuttle.  He could force the shuttle to make an emergency landing.  He could bail out as they clawed their way into space.  He could hastily rewrite the computer files to suggest he’d never actually passed the space-specialist training course ...  But none of the ideas were remotely practical.  Orders were orders, unless they were illegal.  And ordering him to leave the planet was far from illegal.  There would be nothing, but a court-martial and a dishonourable discharge in his future if he disobeyed.

Perhaps I should have asked for the orders in writing, he thought.  A gust of metallic air struck him as he clambered into the shuttle.  As always, the craft smelt of too many men in too close proximity.  Perhaps that would have made General Anderson think twice.

“Take your seats,” he ordered.  He stowed his carryall in the overhead locker before finding his own seat.  “And please keep the chatter to a dull roar.”

He sat and strapped himself in, then pulled his datapad from his belt and accessed the live feed from the command network.  The enemy fleet was closing rapidly, preparing to engage the marine starships.  The MEUs were already pulling out of orbit.  The shuttles were going to have to race to catch up with them.  And then ... he felt the craft lurch underneath him as the pilot powered up the drives.  The shuttle was about to depart.

“Please remember to put your head between your legs,” the pilot said, through the intercom.  “It won’t do any good if we get hit, but it’ll make it easier to kiss your ass goodbye before you die.”

Haydn scowled.  He’d heard too much of what passed for pilot humour.  They might be Auxiliaries, but they’d earned respect.  They didn’t need to make immature jokes about stewardesses, buckling one’s seatbelts and generally staying put until the shuttle reached its destination.  He supposed it was a way of coping with the grim reality that the shuttles were too small and fragile to survive a single hit.  If they were fired upon by starship-grade weapons, they’d be dead before they knew what’d hit them.

The shuttle lurched, then clawed into the sky.  Haydn swallowed hard.  The pilots seemed to go out of their way to make takeoffs and landings as rough as possible.  He’d been assured it was a side-effect of the military-grade drives and compensators, but he didn’t believe it.  The pilots joked too much about turbulence and airsickness.

He leaned back in his chair, trying to relax.  They’d reach the MEUs before it was too late and then ... and then, he promised himself, they’d find a way to fight back.  

It won’t have been for nothing, he promised himself.  Too many marines had died during the invasion for him to just cut and run.  We’ll make damn sure of it.

***
“General?”

Gerald looked up from his console.  “Yes?”

“The last of the shuttles just departed,” Lieutenant Hemet reported.  “We’re moving the captured aircraft and assault drones now.”

“Make sure we spike what we can’t take,” Gerald ordered.  A number of former enemy airmen had volunteered to join the marines, but he wasn’t about to put them in control of an armed helicopter or a drone.  The risk was too great.  “Did you set up the alternate command post?”

“It’s up and running,” Lieutenant Hemet confirmed.  “But there’s no way to know how long it’ll last.  We can’t depend on the landlines.”

Gerald nodded.  They’d grown far too used to having the advantage of better weapons, training and communications.  No insurgency had been able to match them, let alone take down the command and control network long enough to inflict serious damage.  But the corprats could.  He made a mental note to insist that training exercises be improved, in hopes of ensuring the marines were better-prepared next time.  It was terrifying to realise they’d been overconfident for so long.  They could have lost if the enemy had been ready to take advantage of it.

And we still can, he thought.  They’re going to give us a very hard time.

“Good,” he said.  Right now, he had to concentrate on the present.  “And the recruits?”

“They’re being armed now,” Lieutenant Hemet said.  He looked doubtful.  “Is it wise to trust them?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.”  Gerald shrugged.  “Turning one’s coat does tend to be habit-forming.  But we risk little by sending them back to the city and stand to gain much, if they accomplish something - anything.  It’s worth trying.”

“Yes, sir.”  Lieutenant Hemet didn’t sound convinced.  Gerald didn’t blame him.  “They might just hide again.”

“I doubt it,” Gerald said.  A handful of the turncoats would be executed, if they fell into enemy hands.  The others would probably be executed too.  “But it doesn’t matter.”

He cleared his throat.  “Order the beta, delta and gamma units to take up their positions as quickly as possible.  And then evacuate the alpha units.  I want this base empty by the time the enemy ships come within missile range.  If we can land missiles here, they can.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Hemet said.  “I’ll see to it at once.”

Gerald nodded, watching as his command staff packed up and hurried to the transports.  They’d drilled endlessly, making sure they could move to a new location and set up again as quickly as possible, but it wouldn’t be a smooth process.  Something always went wrong, even in drills.  One delay would lead to more, each one adding up to a real problem.  And now ... the missiles heading through space were real.  All hell was about to break loose.

And all we can do is prepare to take it, he thought.  And hope we can hold out long enough for help to arrive.

Chapter Five

This is, of course, a problem everywhere.  There isn’t a politician, corporate CEO or military officer who hasn’t faced the issue of his subordinates lying to him, for reasons ranging between self-promotion and self-preservation.  A man with a habit of shooting the messenger - i.e. blaming the messenger for the message - is a man who will grow uncomfortably used to hearing nothing but good news.  
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

“Fire,” Captain Kerri Stumbaugh ordered.

Havoc rocked as she unleashed a salvo of missiles.  The remainder of the squadron fired a second later, salvos merging into a single, giant barrage remorselessly advancing towards the enemy ships.  Their point defence sensors went active, filling space with sensor pulses as they targeted the missiles.  If she had one advantage, she reflected grimly, it was that the enemy practically had to impale themselves on her weapons.  It wouldn’t be enough to tip the balance in her favour.

“The enemy has returned fire,” Lieutenant Tomas reported, needlessly.  The display sparkled with red icons.  “Point defence online, ready to fire; defence grid online, ready to fire.”

“Engage as soon as they enter range,” Kerri said.  The enemy had flushed their external racks, trying to knock her out with a single barrage.  They were going to be disappointed.  Her fleet had drilled extensively, against simulated missiles that only existed in her nightmares.  Reality would be different, but not that different.  “Assess the enemy point defence for weaknesses, then adjust our fire to match.”

“Aye, Captain,” Tomas said.

Kerri leaned forward, bracing herself as her missiles flew into the enemy engagement envelope and vanished.  The enemy had clearly trained extensively too, working their ships and crews until they were practically a single entity.  She nodded in sour admiration at how their smaller ships provided point defence for the larger ships, particularly the battlecruiser.  Standard tactics in mass fleet engagements were to strip away the smaller ships first, but she didn’t have the time.  The enemy formation was simply too powerful.

An analysis popped up in front of her.  She glanced at it - the enemy command ship was evidently the battlecruiser, as if she hadn’t known that already - and then looked back at the display.  The enemy point defence was just too good.  It was unlikely she’d do any real damage, unless she closed the range to the point she could bring her energy weapons to bear.  And if she did that, she’d be torn to ribbons in short order.  The enemy CO was probably hoping she’d oblige him.  But she might as well have committed suicide if she tried.

Her eyes narrowed as the last of the missiles swept into attack range and lanced into a handful of enemy ships.  Laser warheads detonated, stabbing beams of ravening energy into enemy hulls.  Their armour was good, solid.  A handful of icons flashed up in front of her, suggesting damage was minimal.  One ship staggered under the weight of her fire, threatening to fall out of formation before her crew steadied her.  The remainder seemed untroubled as they launched another wave of missiles.  She simply didn’t have the throw weight to make a serious impression.

Havoc shuddered as a laser warhead detonated nearby, the beam striking her ship.  Alerts flashed up in front of her, rapidly updating as the onboard datanet struggled to assess the damage.  It veered between total disaster to a mere scratch ... she smiled, humourlessly, as her XO directed damage control teams to the hull breach.  The hullmetal had absorbed most of the blow. The enemy should have tried to target her drives.

Which they will, when we try to break contact, she thought.  The range was steady, her fleet holding position between the enemy ships and the planet, but that was going to change.  She’d find herself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea very quickly, once they pushed her right back to the planet itself.  We’ll have to show them our rears as we turn and run.

She watched, grimly, as the engagement continued.  There was no point in issuing orders.  Her crew knew what to do, allowing her to concentrate on the overall picture.  It wasn’t good.  The enemy ships pressed them hard, as if they literally wanted to drive her ships into the planet.  Death through ramming an entire planet would be embarrassing.  She’d heard of a particularly idiotic officer who’d rammed an asteroid, but - outside bad holoflicks - that was very rare.  The man had to have been more than just an idiot.  He would have had to have been very unlucky as well.

Her lips thinned, eyes tracking the enemy missiles.  She had the advantage of trying to keep the range open, giving the enemy missiles a chance to burn themselves out and go ballistic before they reached her formation, but she couldn’t keep the range that open.  They were already too close to the planet for her peace of mind.  She dared not let them close with her, not given their firepower.  The results would be disastrous.

She glanced at the communications officer.  “Confirm the MEUs have made it clear.”

“Confirmed,” the communications officer said.  “They’re heading to the RV point now.”

And planning to cloak as soon as they’re out of active sensor range, Kerri thought.  The MEUs weren’t warships, and wouldn’t last a minute if they ran into an enemy warship, but their stealth systems were second to none.  They’ll sneak around the system and link up with us as planned.

She frowned as she studied the enemy ships.  The Imperial Navy had the best stealth systems in the known galaxy - and the Terran Marine Corps had copied their designs - but what about the unknown galaxy?  The Onge Corporation had been on the cutting edge of starship design for centuries.  They’d had all sorts of technical concepts that had never, officially, received funding.  What if they’d secretly funded a project that had produced better weapons or sensors than any known to exist?  They couldn’t have known when they’d find themselves on their own.  They might have prepared for a clash with the Imperial Navy before Earthfall.  And advanced weapons would give them the edge ...

Better training alone would give them the edge, she thought, coldly.  The Imperial Navy had skimped on training, before the end.  The Onge Corporation clearly had not.  Their crews didn’t need wonder-weapons.  They just needed to know how to get the best out of their systems.  Their point defence was good, their targeting depressingly accurate ... she gritted her teeth as another missile slipped through her fleet’s defences.  There’s no doubt they know what they’re doing.

“Captain,” Tomas said.  “Lightning took a major hit.  She’s losing power.”

“Order her to break contact, if possible,” Kerri said.  “And prepare to evacuate if they can’t.”

She grimaced.  The light cruiser wasn’t designed for battle.  She wished for a formation of battleships, although she knew the monstrous ships had their limitations.  Her fellow cadets had joked battleships had been designed for admirals with penis envy.  And yet ... they might be ponderously slow, but right now a single battleship would have turned the tide in her favour.  The enemy had to come into her range if they wanted to retake the planet.

“Aye, Captain,” Tomas said.

Kerri nodded.  Evacuating Lightning under fire would be far from easy - the shuttles and escape pods might be mistaken for mines and blown out of space before the enemy realised their mistake - but she was damned if she was leaving her crew to be picked up by the enemy ships.  If nothing else, they knew too much.  There was no reason to think the enemy would mistreat prisoners, but Kerri would want to know what her prisoners knew.  The corprats had surprised her - she admitted that, grudgingly - yet the marines had also surprised them.  They’d want to know what else they’d missed.

And if we’d known they were preparing for Earthfall too, she mused, what would we have done about it?

She shook her head.  There was no point in dwelling on what might have been.  Right now, she had to buy time for the folks on the surface.  And hope, when she finally broke contact, that she’d bought them enough time.  It was going to be tight.  They just hadn’t planned for an enemy relief fleet.

We were too used to fighting at a time and a place of our choosing, she told herself.  And now it’s bitten us on the bum.

***
“Why are they wasting their missiles?”

Admiral Nelson Agate glanced at Julia as the engagement continued to develop.  The frustration in her voice was clear - and understandable.  People who gleaned their idea of space combat from flicks, and simulations where the umpire was on their side, had no concept of just how long a major engagement could last.  The enemy ships knew what they were doing.  They were forcing him to expend his missiles fruitlessly, delaying him for a few short moments as he crawled towards the planet.  It looked as though they were wasting their time, but he knew better.   He probably wouldn’t be able to recover the missiles he’d fired.

Particularly as we’re heading straight towards the planet, he thought.  If we accidentally hit the planet ...

“They’re trying to slow us down,” he said, putting the thought aside.  If a missile hit a planet at a respectable fraction of the speed of light, the damage would be beyond calculation.  The warhead wouldn’t need to detonate to do a hell of a lot of damage.  “And they’re wasting their time.”

He smiled, coldly.  The enemy hadn’t had any silver bullets in their guns.  That much was evident from how they’d chosen to fight, keeping the range open instead of trying to close.  Their missiles were good, top-of-the-range, but nothing new.  The Imperial Navy could have matched them, if it had been willing to expend time and effort in training and maintenance.  And to think the marines weren’t supposed to have any warships!  They were better at flying them than their naval counterparts.

But not as good as us, he thought, with a hint of amusement.  They could have done better ...

Julia frowned.  “So what do we do?”

“They can’t stop us from retaking the high orbitals,” Nelson reminded her, again.  “They’ll have no choice but to retreat or fight us on our terms.”

He forced himself to watch as the engagement continued, the planet steadily coming closer as his fleet advanced.  There were risks in firing missiles through the high orbitals, even if they didn’t hit the planet itself.  The orbital industries had to remain intact.  He’d done his best to explain that accidents happened, that there was no way to guarantee a stray missile wouldn’t hit a platform - or the enemy wouldn’t destroy them after they evacuated - but Julia had been insistent.  Very insistent.  He saw her point - the orbital industries were effectively irreplaceable, at least for the next decade - but he couldn’t make promises.  That was a good way to wind up with egg on one’s face.

And a grudge the size of a small planet, he thought.  He’d known too many officers, passed over for promotion or simply turned into scapegoats, who’d allowed their resentment to curdle into hatred.  That’s when people start plotting trouble.

“Admiral,” the tactical officer said.  “The remaining enemy freighters are breaking orbit.”

Nelson briefly considered altering course and trying to run them down.  Freighters couldn’t hope to outrun his ships, although if they scattered he’d have to break up the formation to catch the majority before they crossed the phase line and vanished.  But it looked very much as if someone had built the freighters on military hulls and given them military-grade drives.  Q-Ships?  Or simply a fleet train built to keep up with the warships?  That was something he wanted, something he intended to insist his superiors build as quickly as possible.  They weren’t going to be just defending the cluster, unless he missed his guess.  Sooner or later, they were going to start conquering the galaxy.  And they’d need a fleet train that was up to the task of keeping the fleet resupplied.

A shame the Imperial Navy never considered the issue, he mused.  But then, the last time it fought a serious war was over a thousand years ago.

“Let them go,” he ordered.  “How long until we reach the high orbitals?”

“Ten minutes, unless we reduce speed,” the tactical officer said.  A dull quiver ran through the ship as a missile impacted on her hull.  “The enemy fleet will have to break contact in seven.”

Unless they want to try to keep us busy, Nelson thought.  But the worst they can do is snipe at us.

He allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as the engagement continued.  The fleet - his fleet - had performed well.  His officers had proved they could engage the enemy in real life, as well as in the simulators.  There’d been no panic, no hesitation ... sooner or later, it would dawn on the raw recruits that the icons they’d seen vanish from the display had represented entire starships, each one with a crew in the hundreds.  He wondered, grimly, how they’d cope.  Space warfare was supposed to be genteel.  Starships met in engagements that were as much elegant dances as anything else.  And yet, when a hull was breached, the crew would suffocate unless they sealed off the section or patched the hole.  And that assumed an enemy missile didn’t detonate inside the hull.  The crew would be dead before they knew what had hit them.

“They have to alter course shortly,” he said.  “I wonder which way they’ll jump.”

Julia gave him a sharp look.  “What do you mean?”

“They can slow us a little more if they remain where they are,” Nelson said.  “But it’ll expose them to more and more of our fire.  And give us a chance to put a missile or two into their drives as they run.  Or they can break off now, giving them their best chance to evade us at the cost of losing the opportunity to slow us further.”

He shrugged.  “It’ll be interesting to see what they’ll pick.”

Another quiver ran through the giant battlecruiser.  Nelson smiled, coldly.  The engagement was becoming predictable.  The enemy could see it as clearly as himself.  They’d know what they had to do, even if they didn’t want to admit it.  And they’d do it.  It wouldn’t be long now.

Then we can reclaim the planet, he thought.  And that will be just the beginning.

***
“Captain,” Commander Joaquin said.  The helmsman sounded concerned.  “We’re running out of manoeuvring room.”

“It’s starting to look that way,” Kerri agreed.  There were thousands of kilometres between Havoc and the planet - and tens of kilometres between her and her fellow ships - but, at the speeds starships travelled, it was hardly any room at all.  The enemy were increasing their rate of fire, daring her to turn her back.  “Communications, signal the fleet.  We’ll execute Bravo-Two in sixty seconds.”

“Aye, Captain,” the communications officer said.  “Bravo-Two in sixty seconds.”

Kerri nodded as a timer appeared on the display.  She’d done all she could, slowing the enemy as much as possible without putting her ships in danger.  It galled her to turn and run, though she knew there was no choice.  Her ships were effectively irreplaceable.  She had no idea how the operations to seize navy shipyards were proceeding, let alone the plans to establish new shipyards in hidden locations, but she’d been warned not to expect replacements in a hurry.  Even if the shipyards had been taken intact, with their trained workforces, it would take years to smooth out the bureaucratic nightmares and start churning out new ships.  There was a reason the Imperial Navy hadn’t built any new battleships for centuries.

And that reason has nothing to do with their limitations, she mused.  Right now, a squadron of battleships would come in very handy.

“Execute Bravo-Two,” she ordered, as the timer reached zero.  “Now!”

Havoc’s drives grew louder, the gravity field twitching uncomfortably as the starship spun on her axis and reversed course.  The enemy fleet seemed to leap forward, a moment before the range started to open sharply.  They’d have a window of opportunity to put a missile into her drives ... she braced herself, watching as the fleet deployed sensor drones to confuse the enemy sensors.  The Imperial Navy’s officers would have problems separating the drones from the real ships - their computer programs were too limited - but she had no idea if the corprats would have the same problem. If they gave their sensor crews their heads, if they trusted them to use their intuition ...

She breathed a sigh of relief as the range grew wider.  The enemy had lost their one chance to weaken - if not destroy - her fleet.  She scowled, wishing she knew why they’d let her go.  Did they think it a trap?  Had the drones confused them?  Or were they too intent on recovering the planet to target her fleet?  The latter made no sense.  They had to know it would be difficult to replace any lost ships.  They could win the battle and lose the war, if she returned with reinforcements.

“Captain,” Tomas said.  “We have successfully broken contact.”

“Then take us to the first waypoint before we enter stealth,” Kerri ordered.  Hopefully, the enemy would think she was running for the Phase Limit.  If she was really lucky, they’d assume she would keep running until she’d put several light years between them.  “And alert General Anderson.  He’s about to have company.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Chapter Six

However, the problem is magnified in dictatorial states.  The dictator, a man who can and will punish the bearer of bad news, simply cannot afford to trust everything he hears.  And yet, once he develops a reputation for killing the messenger, there is no way he can keep his people from lying to him.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

There were times in his career when Gerald would have preferred to command his forces from a battlesuit or a modified AFV.  It would have combined the advantage of mobility with the advantage of making it hard for his political superiors to bug him, particularly in the middle of a complex military operation.  But, he’d come to realise, in the last few minutes, it also had a considerable downside.  The AFV he’d turned into a command post simply didn’t have the room to properly pace.

He stared at the display, watching the red icons as they crawled towards the high orbitals.  Captain Stumbaugh and her ships had done what they could, but Gerald - and everyone else - had known the outcome was preordained from the moment the enemy ships revealed themselves.  She couldn’t have stopped them, even if she’d thrown everything into a single, desperate charge.  And now ... she was retreating, falling back to the first waypoint with a half-formed plan to tip the balance back in their favour.  Gerald gritted his teeth in frustration.  He was no stranger to the fog of war, or how a military operation could shift from well-ordered precision to utter chaos in a heartbeat, but it was still irritating.  His forces were in disarray.  Too many of his men were going to be caught in the open when the shit hit the fan.

“General,” Lieutenant Salmon said.  “The enemy fleet is altering formation.  I think they’re trying to avoid the PDCs.”

“Wise of them,” Gerald muttered.  The PDCs could pump out enough firepower to deter anyone from approaching the planet.  Hameau’s orbital space was extremely cluttered, to say the least, but the PDCs could still do a lot of damage.  The enemy CO was lucky Gerald wanted to preserve as much of the orbital industry as possible.  “Can you get a target lock?”

“Yes sir, but I doubt we’d hit anything.”  Salmon shook his head.  “The range is simply too great.”

“Then we wait,” Gerald said.  “And see.”

***
“The enemy fleet has broken contact,” the tactical officer reported.  “They’re accelerating away from the planet.”

“And heading straight for the Phase Limit,” Nelson mused.  He doubted the enemy ships were really running in panic.  So far, the marines had made good use of what they had.  They were much more likely to start haunting the system, hacking away at his supply lines ... it was probably their best option, unless they had more ships on the way.  “Dispatch two destroyers to shadow them, under cloak.”

“Aye, sir.”

Nelson turned back to the display.  The enemy fleet might be gone - and the orbiting defences were also gone, wiped out during the first invasion - but the planet wasn’t defenceless.  It was ... infuriating... that the planetary government hadn’t destroyed the PDCs before they’d surrendered.  The bastards had sold out for the best terms they could get.  Nelson would have been a little more compassionate if they hadn’t sold him and his men out too.  Their stupidity and selfishness would force him to land troops in the face of enemy fire.  Even if the plan worked perfectly, the cost would be high.

We can pay it, he thought, but we don’t want to.

“Alert the fleet,” he ordered.  “Begin bombardment pattern, Charlie-Alpha.”

He gritted his teeth.  His staff had devised a dozen plans for softening up the planet before the landings began, but Charlie-Alpha was the most comprehensive.  The missiles and kinetic projectiles would be targeted on everything from known enemy bases and locations to captured garrisons and PDCs.  The beancounters would make a fuss, when the dust cleared and they realised billions of credits - perhaps trillions - in infrastructure had gone up in smoke.  But he knew better than to assume that retaking the planet would be easy.  The marines were tough.  They wouldn’t surrender.  They’d dig in and fight to the last.  

Julia said nothing.  She’d seen the plans; she’d watched as they’d been devised.  She knew what he was going to do, but ... she also knew it was necessary.  There was no choice.  The defenders knew he was coming.  There was no hope of taking them by surprise.  Better to hammer them from orbit than let the bastards take a bite out of his forces.

“Admiral,” the tactical officer said.  “The missiles are firing ... now.”

“Good.”  Nelson frowned.  Hameau presented a unique tactical problem, but not an insolvable one.  The marines had taken the defences down through a combination of cunning and brute force.  He’d just have to rely on brute force.  “And ready the landing force.  I want them dispatched as soon as we weaken the defences.”

He let out a breath.  He’d seen Hameau.  It was ... odd, by any reasonable standard.  Better than Earth, but Earth had been a wretched hive of scum and villainy even before it had turned itself into a wasteland.  The refugees might know they were swimming in cream, if they were lucky enough to reach Hameau, but the locals ... he wondered, sourly, just how many of them might have sided with the marines.  He knew how he would have reacted to living his life in a goldfish bowl, even if he trusted the watching eyes.  And experience had taught him the watching eyes could not be trusted.  The Inspectorate General had been the most corrupt branch of the navy.  It was, he supposed, quite a remarkable achievement.

A shame they didn’t do their job, he thought, as the missiles started to enter the planet’s atmosphere.  We might not be in this mess.

***
“It could be worse,” Jenny said, as she parked the groundcar outside the abandoned and commandeered home.  “It really could be worse.”

Derek wasn’t so sure.  The planetary communications network was screwed.  There were few - if any - radios or independent communicators on the surface.  The marines had resorted to driving through the streets, issuing orders via loudspeaker, but it was hard to tell if anyone was listening.  The idea of being completely cut off from his fellows was terrifying, even though he knew the old communications network had been constantly monitored for signs of dissatisfaction.  His universe had shrunk to what little he could see.  It was hard to believe there was an enemy fleet bearing down on the planet.  He sure as hell couldn’t see it.

He jumped out of the car and hurried up the path to the house.  The marines had inspected it a few days ago, searching for a missing government official, then marked it as abandoned, open to whoever wanted to lay a claim.  There were hundreds of abandoned houses within the city, Derek had been told.  No one should pay any particular attention to this one ... or so the planners had claimed.  Derek wasn’t so sure.  He’d lived in a small community.  Everyone knew everyone else’s business.  And it only took one person to spill the beans to have them arrested.

The door opened when he touched the keycard to the slot.  He stepped inside, one hand reaching inside his coat for the pistol.  Society had been breaking down even before the thunder runs.  The entire population seemed to have gone collectively mad.  There might be a squatter in the house already, if the missing government official hadn’t sneaked home to collect his belongings.  He felt oddly dirty as he moved from room to room, as if he were doing something wrong.  The house wasn’t his.  He hadn’t been amused when he’d heard someone had moved into his family’s house, back home.  Here ... he was doing the same.  And the previous occupant hadn’t even had time to move out.  His family’s possessions lay everywhere.

Jenny stepped into the house.  “You’d better help Roger with the junk,” she said, as she took off her cap and looked around.  “We don’t want to be caught in the open.”

Derek nodded and headed back outside.  Roger Dashan and Gayle Jalil were two more collaborators, a young man and woman who didn’t dare fall into enemy hands.  They’d gone too far, Derek had been assured, to survive if the newcomers caught them.  Derek would have preferred people he’d known, either from Eddisford Garrison or one of the scratch units that had been hastily thrown together during the invasion, but that wasn’t an option.  The marines hadn’t captured many survivors and most of them, it seemed, preferred to remain as POWs.  Derek didn’t blame them.  They couldn’t - wouldn’t - commit themselves until a clear winner emerged.

“You take the bigger suitcase,” Roger said, as he passed Gayle a large rucksack.  “I’ll take the other one.”

“Got it.”  Derek wondered, as he hefted the load, where Roger had served.  The man was a year or two older then Derek, clearly a veteran ... and probably someone who’d volunteered to stay in the army after completing his six months of planetary service.  But he’d been very tight-lipped about his past.  “Are you ...?”

A flash of light - lightning, he thought - darted across the city.  He glanced up, just in time to see a streak fall from the sky and land several miles to the west.  Another flash of light rent the air, followed by a colossal fireball.  Rumbling thunder echoed moments later, a low tremor running through the ground.  He cringed, mentally, as he realised the planet was under attack.  The enemy fleet was bombarding the planetary defences.

“That’s the garrison,” Roger said, quietly.  “They just dropped a rock on it.”

Derek swallowed, hard, as he carried the suitcase into the house.  Roger followed him, closing the door firmly as more thunder echoed.  Derek almost laughed as Roger carefully piled chairs and tables in front of the door, as if it would save them from a kinetic strike.  A stray missile or shell would smash the house and kill all of them ... he shook his head.  If someone had seen them move in, if someone realised who they were or what they were doing, the makeshift barricade might just give them enough time to grab their weapons and sell their lives dearly.

“There’re two bedrooms,” Jenny called from the top of the stairs.  “Roger?  Which room do you and Gayle want?”

“I’ll take the sofa,” Roger said, flatly.  “We really need to have someone on watch at all times.”

Jenny shrugged.  “Derek?  You come help me choose?”

“Coming,” Derek called.  He put the suitcase down, marvelling at its weight.  The marines had been generous - or so it seemed.  He was all too aware they’d expend their ammunition very quickly.  Another rumble shook the house.  “What are they doing up there?”

Roger spoke like a man who didn’t want to think about what he was saying.  “The system is full of junk.  They can gather asteroid rock and compress it into kinetic projectiles, then use it to take out as much of us as possible before landing.  Quick, easy and cheap.”

Derek said nothing as he hurried up the stairs.  The sense of doing something wrong only grew stronger as he peeked into the bedrooms as he passed. A room that had clearly belonged to a young boy, probably in his first decade; a room that had probably belonged to a teenage girl, walls covered with posters of heartthrobs and bed strewn with clothing; a bigger room that had evidently been the master bedroom, with its own bathroom and shower.  Jenny lay on the bed, smiling at the ceiling.  Derek started to join her, then stopped as he saw the picture on the wall.  A middle-aged man, a woman a year or two younger and their children.  He wondered, morbidly, how burglars coped with the guilt.  The urge to turn and leave - and pretend he’d never been anywhere near the house - was almost overwhelming.

“I was told I’d have a house like this.”  Jenny sat up, smiling at him.  “This isn’t how I thought I’d get it.”

“This isn’t our house,” Derek reminded her.  He sat on the bed and wrapped an arm around her.  “We don’t belong here.”

Jenny gave him an odd look.  “They gave the house to us.”

“No.”  Derek shook his head as another thunder crack split the air.  “This isn’t our house.”

He looked around, feeling a pang of envy.  The house was a nice house.  He couldn’t have afforded it, not on his army salary.  He’d have had to work his way up the corporate ladder to have any hope at all of affording anything like it, even in tiny Eddisford.  He was sure the owner was an asshole, if only because all government ministers were assholes.  That didn’t justify stealing his house and destroying his possessions.

“We’ll have to pack up his stuff,” he said, tiredly.  “We shouldn’t destroy it.”

“After we celebrate being alive,” Jenny said.  “We’re meant to remain indoors, remember?”

“For the moment.”  Derek started to take off his shoes.  “But it’s only a matter of time until someone betrays us.”

Jenny snorted.  “Are you always so distrustful?”

“Back home, they used to reward people for snooping on their neighbours,” Derek reminded her.  “Here ... it only takes one person to betray us.”

He sighed, then smiled as he turned and slipped into her arms.  There was nothing else to do, not until the invaders occupied the city.  They had orders to keep their heads down, whatever happened, until the enemy troops were within their range.  If, of course ... Derek felt a wave of despondency, even as their lips met.  He had to pray the marines won.  He’d be dead if anyone ever figured out what he did.  And Jenny would be dead with him.

***
“The PDCs are holding firm,” the tactical officer reported.  “But we’ve scored some good hits on the military infrastructure.”

“Good.”  Nelson wasn’t sure that was true, but it behoved him to claim it was.  “Have you taken down the planetary datanet?”

“I believe so,” the tactical officer said.  “But there’s no way to be sure.”

Nelson kept his thoughts to himself.  The planetary datanet was practically designed to be easy to take down, being only a handful of datacores, linked to buried landlines that tied thousands of houses, schools, businesses and government facilities together.  They could have hardened the network by making it decentralised, but that would have made it far harder to police. A decent network treated censorship as a malfunction and rerouted around it.  This planetary network had been designed by people who wanted to make damn sure they controlled the flow of information.  One could not make snarky remarks, let alone plan an uprising, without being caught and punished.

“Continue the bombardment,” he ordered.  It was a shame the PDCs had survived - the campaign could have been ended quickly if he’d been able to take them out - but he’d planned on the assumption they’d survive.  “Do we have solid locks on their positions?”

“No, sir,” the tactical officer said.  “We don’t have very good visuals at this range.  They keep shooting down our drones.”

And our KEWs, Nelson thought.  It wasn’t as if he was short of ammunition, except ... he was.  His fleet didn’t have the capability to convert raw material into ballistic projectiles.  In hindsight, that was a serious oversight.  The marines had certainly brought a factory ship with them when they’d invaded.  He simply hadn’t thought to do it himself.  That’s another lesson we’re going to have to remember.

He made a mental note of it - if nothing else, the entire campaign was going to remind them precisely what they’d forgotten over the centuries since the last interstellar war - and put the thought out of his mind.  There were too many other concerns.  And ... he had brought hundreds of projectiles with him.  Enough, at least in theory, to take down most of the planetary defences without resupply.  But no one had ever actually tested the theory.

Of course not.  The thought mocked him.  One does not test expensive fortifications by trying to destroy them.

“We need to land troops near Haverford,” he said.  “Divert the bombardment.  I want every suspicious target near the landing zone, outside the city itself, smashed before we start landing troops.”

Julia frowned.  “That would mean taking out property belonging to the planetary governors,” she said.  “Is that wise?”

“The governors are dead or captured,” Nelson pointed out.  The fleet had heard nothing from the planetary government.  If there was anything left of them, it was buried so deeply they probably didn’t know the relief fleet had arrived.  The bombardment might wake them up, but ... he doubted it mattered.  “I think we can afford to discount their opinions.”

He dismissed the thought with a shrug as the attack pattern continued to develop.  The marines would not have a chance to surprise his forces, even if they survived.  He’d sooner tear up the landscape and turn it into a battered nightmare than risk losing hundreds of soldiers.  The men were keen, according to the reports, but inexperienced.  They simply didn’t know what they faced.

“Admiral,” the tactical officer said.  The display updated, showing hundreds of KEW strikes around the city.  Haverford hadn’t been hit directly, but the sound and thunder had to have scared the civilians.  “The bombardment pattern has been completed.”

“Good.”  Nelson glanced at Julia.  “It’s time.”

He raised his voice.  “Signal the transports.  Order them to commence the landings.”

Chapter Seven

This undermines his rule, in ways both subtle and gross.  On one hand, a revolt might go unnoticed until it becomes too obvious to ignore.  On the other hand, his subordinates might easily decide that it would be better to turn on him - in simple self-preservation - or merely hold him in contempt, as his decisions will be based on a dangerously flawed conception of reality.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

I must have been out of my mind, Lieutenant Garfield Onge thought, as the landing pod detached itself from the giant transport.  What the fuck was I thinking?

He swallowed hard, trying to resist the temptation to reach for his water bottle and take a swig.  He’d been told, when he reached his majority, that he was expected to serve the corporate family or else.  The military had seemed ideal.  He was too junior to climb to the very top, while a mid-level corporate position promised nothing but endless boredom and resentment of his higher-ranked kin.  And the promise of rapid promotion had overcome what few doubts he’d had, when the recruiter came calling.  In hindsight ...

The pod shivered as gravity took control, yanking it down towards the planet.  Garfield had carried out high-altitude drops before, from air- and space-craft, but this was different.  This time, someone would be trying to kill him as he made the drop.  This time ... he tried not to look back at his platoon.  He’d been told to work his way up the ranks, to gain experience before he could be considered for promotion ... corporate royalty or not, he had to know what he was doing before he started making the really big decisions.  And every man under his command was ... was his.  The slightest mistake on his part could lead them to death - or worse.  Garfield’s tutors had spared nothing, as they’d prepared him for officer training.  They’d made sure he knew how bad it could get, if he screwed up.  He could condemn his men to a fate worse than death.

It would have been better to use an assault shuttle, he thought, or risk dropping men in armoured battlesuits into the teeth of enemy fire.  

He felt as if he’d left his stomach on the transport.  The pod was falling faster now ... the concept had seemed so clear, when he’d read the notes, but now that he was actually putting the plan into action it felt like the stupidest idea in the entire universe.  The idea would be brilliant, if it worked.  If it failed, a lot of men - including him - were about to die.

I could have stayed home, he thought.  He’d been raised in the lap of luxury, with servants competing to fulfil his slightest whim.  It wouldn’t have been hard.  Sure, he would have had to abandon all hope of doing something with his life - at least until he grew bored of luxury and sought something new - but he would have been safe.  I could have stayed home and ...

Something slapped the pod.  It rolled over, g-forces tugging at him as the pod spun madly before steadying itself.  Garfield heard someone loudly praying behind him, something that was technically against regulations ... right now, he didn’t care.  The rational part of his mind insisted there were no gods, that religion was nothing more than a mental trick to explain the unexplainable, but the feeling part of his mind thought a prayer or two might be a very good idea.  If the pod failed, if they hit the ground at speed, no one would ever find enough of their bodies to bury.  He counted silently under his breath, trying to remain calm.  This wasn’t his first orbital drop.  The falls were rough - he’d wet himself, the first time - but the pods were automated, unbothered by the drop from high orbit.  They could handle the drop, leaving him to do nothing but wait.  He almost wished he was flying his own shuttle.  He knew how to fly.  He’d be in control ...

Perhaps I should have gone into piloting instead, he thought.  There was little room for career development, but he’d already mastered most of the skills.  No one could question his nerve if he flew shuttles in combat zones.  It might not have been safer, but at least I would have been in control.

A low bleep echoed through the cramped compartment.  Garfield went limp, an instant before a bone-jarring thud shook the pod so violently he heard pieces of debris crash to the ground.  Gravity pressed down on him a moment later, reminding him they’d landed.  He forced his fingers to work, unbuckling himself and stumbling to his feet.  The platoon was following suit, led by Sergeant Janelle Richmond.  Garfield’s tutors had told him to pay close attention to anything she had to say.  A woman wouldn’t reach sergeant’s rank in the Imperial Army - let alone transfer to the corporate forces - unless she was at least three times as good as her male counterparts.  Garfield had never admitted it, not even to himself, but he found the heavy-world woman hellishly scary.  He hoped she intimidated the enemy as much as she intimidated him.

“Out, out now!”  Janelle’s voice was harsh, the legacy of decades in the military.  “Move it!”

Garfield forced himself to turn and run through the crack in the hull.  A wave of heat struck him as he jumped, landing neatly on the ground.  The ground was smouldering, a grim reminder they’d dropped so quickly the pod had had little time to cool.  He took a sniff of the air and regretted it.  The smoke burned his lungs, despite the genetic enhancements spliced into his DNA.  He wondered if the enemy had hit the LZ with area denial agents, even though it was against interstellar law.  The laws had died with Earth ... he shuddered, silently grateful the detectors weren’t going off.  If someone coated the LZ in nerve gas, they’d kill most of the lead units - including him - in seconds.

Another pod fell from the skies, retrorockets slowing its descent a moment before it hit the ground.  It opened, the platoon hurrying out and taking up position.  Behind them, a giant colonial dumpster fell and hit the ground with an immense thud.  Garfield smiled, caught up in the sheer thrill of the invasion.  The idea had seemed a joke when it had first been proposed, but he had to admit it had worked.  Colonial dumpsters were designed to transport vast amounts of men and materiel to a planetary surface.  If one didn’t care about retrieving the supplies, at least in a hurry, it was also the quickest way to get supplies dropped to the surface.  Anyone who’d expected a leisurely invasion was going to be in for a shock.

Janelle grabbed his arm.  “This way!”

Garfield flushed as he followed her towards the muster point.  The sound of falling pods - and kinetic projectiles - was overwhelming, testing even his ears to the limit.  The enemy could be shelling them now and he wouldn’t even know.  The final briefing had insisted the enemy positions near the city had been thoroughly pasted, but even Garfield knew there was no way to be sure.  It wasn’t that hard to conceal armoured vehicles and fighting positions from prying eyes.  There was so much smoke drifting across the LZ he was sure the second and third waves were going to have problems landing without coming down on top of one of the forward units.  

He lifted his eyes and peered into the distance.  Billowing plumes of smoke rose up in all directions, suggesting that someone had definitely gotten a pasting.  The KEWs had torn the ground up, turning the once-pretty countryside into a cratered wasteland.  He’d seen maps, but it was hard to reconcile his memories with the sight in front of him.  The distant forest was burning brightly, flames spreading in all directions.  He shuddered, despite himself.  Their CO had told his subordinates they were going to unleash hell.  It looked as if he’d been right.

A line of vehicles - light tanks - rumbled past, heading for what remained of the road.  They were followed by half-empty troop transports and air defence units, the latter already taking up position around the landing site.  Garfield admitted, grudgingly, that the dumpster plan - he couldn’t help smiling at the name - had worked very well.  The enemy would barely have any time to react before the armoured units started pushing towards the city.  Haverford hadn’t been designed to withstand a siege, or a direct assault.  The marines had taken it once.  And now the city was going to be taken again.

He found himself inspecting the platoon as it formed up, joining the rest of the company.  A platoon was missing, absent without leave.  He hoped that meant their pod had been held back, rather than simply being blasted out of the air while they made their descent.  It wouldn’t be the first time someone on the ships had ordered a sudden change in the landing timetable, even if the knock-on effects disrupted the entire invasion.  The spacers never seemed to realise that the landings were little more than barely organised chaos.  Garfield had been drilled endlessly on what to do if he suddenly found himself in command, something that could easily happen if the captain and his senior officers were killed in transit, but he’d never had to try outside exercises.  And they, as Janelle had pointed out sourly, tended to leave out the real emergency.

“Form up by platoons,” Colonel Foster bellowed.  The man looked stressed, alternating between glancing at a datapad in his hand and waving it around like a weapon.  “I want the forward positions occupied before they react!”

There’s nothing left of them to react, Garfield thought, as the platoon hurried through the desolate hellscrape.  We hammered them from orbit before we even started to land.

He glanced up as three more dumpsters fell from the skies.  The fleet was still launching projectiles towards the planet, hopefully aiming at targets on the other side of the city.  Garfield had been told the kinetic projectiles were very accurate, but he’d taken part in live-fire exercises where the spacers had missed their targets or accidentally fired on friendly units ... thankfully simulated.  Even if their shots were perfectly accurate, they’d risk damaging their own side if they dropped them too close to the advancing units.  He’d just have to hope the spacers were being careful.

“They’ll have pulled back to the city, sir,” Janelle said.  “And we’ll have to dig them out.”

“Assuming there’s a city left,” Garfield said.  The ground shook, again and again.  He saw a flash of light in the distance and cringed.  “At this rate, there won’t be much of one by the time we arrive.”

***
“That’s fucking impressive,” Phelps said.  He sounded incredulous, as if he didn’t believe his own eyes.  “They’re fucking using dumpsters to dump troops on the ground.”

Rachel barely heard him as she peered through the visors.  The enemy trick was impressive, she admitted sourly.  It would turn into an utter disaster if the LZ was rapidly overrun and destroyed - they’d have no way to evacuate their soldiers, let alone their material - but she was all too aware the marines were in no position to hit the LZ.  The enemy had smashed every structure between the LZ and the city.  It seemed as if they’d dropped a KEW on anything that looked even remotely suspicious.  Most of those shots had been wasted, but they’d done enough damage to ensure they could land and deploy in relative peace.

Relative peace, she thought, sweeping her gaze over the enemy formation.  A handful of troops were lagging, clearly suffering the side effects of their violent drop, but the vast majority were hurrying towards makeshift muster points.  She could see MPs sorting them out, barking orders at the soldiers as they passed.  Behind them, a dumpster started to disgorge a convoy of tanks.  We can slow them down a little.

“We should probably drop a nuke on them,” Phelps muttered.  “It’ll take most of them out.”

“Perhaps.”  Rachel wasn’t so sure.  The dumpsters were tough.  They’d passed through the planet’s atmosphere and landed - roughly - on the surface.  “We’d only take out the ones in the open.”

And encourage them to use weapons of mass destruction themselves, she thought.  Sure, there were hundreds of ways to make the invaders miserable ... if one didn’t mind encouraging them to retaliate in kind.  A few nuclear shells would take out a sizable chunk of the civilian population as well as us.

She reached for the pointer and fitted it, carefully, to her rifle.  “Call Gamma,” she ordered, as she peered through the scope.  It wasn’t as good as her visor, but she could pick out what looked like an enemy command vehicle.  At the very least, it was a communications unit.  They’d have been wiser to make it look identical to the supply trucks or AFVs.  “Tell them I have a target.”

“Got it.”  Phelps muttered into the microburst communicator as Rachel turned on the laser pointer.  “You got them?”

“Got them,” Rachel confirmed.  The laser beam was supposed to be invisible to the naked eye, but it was quite possible the enemy vehicle’s sensors would realise it was being targeted and take countermeasures.  “Tell them to hurry.”

She waited, counting the seconds as the enemy air defence units raised their weapons and opened fire.  The artillery units had been placed just outside the city itself, too close - the planners thought - to draw enemy fire.  Rachel wasn’t sure how she felt about that - there was a better than even chance that any counterbattery fire would land within the city, killing innocent civilians - but they needed to buy time to move back under the protective umbrella before it was too late.  The retreat plans had been drawn up in a hurry, yet ... even the worst-case planning hadn’t quite grasped what was coming.  She cursed under her breath as shells exploded in mid-air, picked off by enemy lasers.  If she was lucky ...

A shell struck the command vehicle.  It exploded, too quickly for any of the staff to bail out.  Rachel hoped they’d taken out someone important, although she was fairly sure the man’s death - if indeed they had killed someone important - wouldn’t slow the enemy for long.  A force capable of launching an interstellar invasion would have contingency plans for losing their commanding officer.  Hell, she would be surprised if they’d taken out the supreme commander.  The real commander would be safely in orbit.

Unless they took a leaf out of our book, she mused, as the last of the shells rained down on the enemy positions.  Their CO might have landed with the first wave.

She crawled back, scrambling to her feet and starting to run as the enemy troops continued their advance.  They’d know they were being watched now.  The shellfire would grow more random, now the laser pointer had been turned off.  Their guns were already starting to return fire, despite the risk to the city.  She saw a drone moving high overhead, invisible to normal eyes.  Thankfully, it was heading towards the city ... although that didn’t mean it couldn’t see them.  Their uniforms were designed to provide a staggering amount of concealment, from the naked eye as well as prying sensors, but she knew better than to assume they were invisible.  The Empire had spent a lot of money on trying to make sensors that could see through any level of concealment.  It would be unwise to assume the corprats hadn’t bought or stolen copies of the latest technologies.

A missile lanced up from the west, blowing the drone into a fireball.  Rachel smiled in relief.  An HVM team, positioned nearer the city.  Losing the drone would hurt the enemy, as well as serving as a stark warning they didn’t control the skies.  Neither side would be able to rely on air or space power to win the war.  They’d have to win or lose on the ground.  She gritted her teeth as she picked up speed, sweat trickling down her back.  Their plans had been smashed to flinders, first by the arrival of the enemy fleet and then by their rapid landing and deployment.  Her enhanced ears had no trouble picking out the sound of tanks and AFVs advancing in their general direction.

“Crap,” Phelps breathed.

Rachel followed his gaze.  The farm had once been a sweet place.  She’d seen it during their march to the OP.  A neat little farmhouse, a cluster of barns and a handful of fields, populated by cows and sheep.  Now, it was a ruin.  The farmhouse was gone, the barns nothing more than firewood and the animals ... the animals lay dead in the muddy ruins.  There was no sign of the farmer and his family.  She hoped they’d had the sense to run before their farm had been wiped out, merely for existing.

We brought the war here, she thought, morbidly.  It was hardly her first campaign - she’d been in the corps for over a decade - but it was the first invasion the marines had genuinely started.  Every other time, they’d been called in when the regulars had been unable to cope ... too late to end the conflict without major bloodshed.  And they were caught in the middle.

She shook her head.  It was never easy to see how high morals and good intentions collided with reality.  Or discover - again - that the locals were unwilling or unable to welcome them.  Or ... 

There’s nothing we can do for them now, save win the war, she told herself.  And we have to do it quickly.

Chapter Eight

This becomes worse as the dictatorial state outgrows the dictator himself.  The lying - which will be epidemic throughout the system - will ensure that no one, not even the liars, will really know what is going on.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

“The first wave has landed successfully,” General Rask reported.  “The LZ has been secured and we’re readying ourselves to advance on the city.”

Nelson frowned as he studied the display.  He was no ground forces expert - the groundpounders looked as if they were barely moving, even though he knew they were fighting desperately to establish a lodgement - and he had severe doubts about the landing plan, but he trusted Rask’s judgement.  The man had been cashiered for daring to disagree with his aristocratic commander, back in the bad old days.  Nelson had faith the older man knew what he was doing.

“Good,” he said.  “You do understand we’re running short of kinetic projectiles?”

“Yes.”  Rask looked unconcerned.  “We can’t drop them so freely within the city.”

“No,” Nelson agreed.  He cared little for the city itself, but the relief force had strict orders to recover as much of the population as possible.  Haverford housed thousands of technical experts and their families, as well as a small army of bureaucrats.  He’d sooner have watched the latter die, but he knew they were needed.  They were useful, as long as they were kept under close supervision.  “I assume you can proceed as planned?”

“Yes, sir,” Rask said.  “The marines appear to be retreating in good order.  I suspect they had a contingency plan all along.”

“That’s their style,” Nelson agreed.  He wasn’t so sure.  The marines had exposed themselves, for what?  Either they had an immensely cunning plan or there’d been a giant screw-up somewhere along the line.  Not, he supposed, that it mattered.  The marines could neither surrender nor withdraw.  “Can you take them?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” Rask said.  He raised a hand in salute.  “See you on the far side, Admiral.”

His image vanished.  Nelson stared at the empty space for a moment, then raised his eyes to the system display.  The enemy fleet had vanished, seemingly into nothingness.  They were either on their way out of the system or, more likely, lurking somewhere near the asteroid belt.  They’d run out of supplies eventually, he told himself, but it would probably take some time.  He wondered, idly, if they had reinforcements on the way.  If the Onge Corporation had been trying to seize shipyards and naval bases, why not the marines?  A single battleship could tip the balance either way.

Assuming they could crew the giant white elephant, he thought.  He’d served on battleships.  They might be formidable, in theory, but in practice they drained resources that could have been better used elsewhere.  It wasn’t as if the Imperial Navy had ever been going to face a peer power.  There were no other major powers within the known galaxy.  And yet ...

Julia cleared her throat.  “How long until we can secure the orbital industries?”

“Right now, we can’t,” Nelson said.  “They’re far too exposed to the planetside defences.  If we board and storm the facilities, the PDCs will blow them out of space.  Better to push the offensive on the ground, take out the PDCs and then force the orbital platforms to surrender.”

“I see,” Julia said.  Her face was artfully blank.  “And are you sure they won’t destroy the platforms anyway?”

“No,” Nelson said, bluntly.  “But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

He felt a stab of sympathy, mingled with irritation.  He didn’t pretend to understand corporate politics, but it was clear that Julia’s future depended on the success of their mission.  Either she’d be raised to higher levels, if not the very highest level, or be cast down to the very deepest depths of corporate hell.  Julia had every reason to want the mission to succeed, quickly, but there was no way they could speed things up.  The marines were in a sheltered position.  Winkling them out would take time.  

“In a sense, we’re both hostage to the orbital platforms remaining intact,” he said, as reassuringly as he could.  “They need them as much as we do.  They won’t destroy them unless they feel they have no other choice.”

And they can use them as bargaining chips when the time comes to negotiate a surrender, he mused.  The marines wouldn’t give up as long as there was a slight hope of victory, but they had to know they were in a bad spot.  Their survival depended on a relief fleet of their own arriving before it was too late.  We’ll do everything in our power to make it clear we’ll honour surrenders and treat prisoners well.

He keyed the display, drawing the starchart back until it showed the Core Worlds.  A dozen stars - Sol and its closest neighbours - were marked with red icons, each telling an emotionless tale of horror.  Planets nuked, asteroid colonies cracked open ... he’d long since given up trying to calculate how many people had died in the last few months.  Billions, perhaps trillions.  The figure was so high he couldn’t even begin to grasp it.  It was hard to believe that each of the icons represented billions of deaths ...

Julia stepped up beside him.  “Credit for your thoughts?”

“I’m wondering how long we have,” Nelson said.  “Where are the marines?”

He leaned forward, as if it would draw answers from the display.  The Slaughterhouse was a radioactive ruin.  Nelson had no idea who’d bombed the Slaughterhouse, or why, but it was obvious they’d failed to take out the Marine Corps.  The corps had clearly been planning for Earthfall ... where had they gone?  Nelson knew, better than most, just how hard it was to move hundreds of thousands of men at a moment’s notice.  The corps must have set up a fallback position, but where?  He shook his head in irritation.  There were hundreds of possible answers, from Sol itself to an isolated red dwarf in the middle of nowhere.  He wasn’t going to get an answer just by glaring at the starchart.  The datacores didn’t know where the marines were hiding.

And we have no idea how long it took them to get here, he thought.  They’d interrogate the prisoners, when they took some, but he doubted the rank and file would know anything useful.  Their superiors would only tell them what little they needed to know.  The riflemen didn’t need to know where the base was, let alone what it was called in the navy database.  They could have set up shop anywhere.

“We’ll see how long it takes for their reinforcements to arrive,” he said.  The marines hadn't known his fleet was coming, or they would have assumed better positions before he actually arrived.  If it took a week for their message to reach their base, their relief fleet could arrive within the next two to three weeks ... assuming, of course, it departed at once.  “It’ll give us a rough idea of where they have to be.”

Julia nodded.  “And can we find them?”

“Perhaps,” Nelson said.  “But it depends.”

He knew it wouldn’t be easy.  Searching every star system within a hundred light years would be a nightmare, even if he had every starship in the universe under his command.  The marines could remain hidden from all but the closest inspection, if they were paranoid enough to conceal their emissions.  They’d have problems operating a shipyard and a fleet, but ... he scowled.  The marines could establish a base in the middle of interstellar space and the searchers wouldn’t have a hope in hell of finding it.  They’d have to get impossibly lucky.  

“Right now, we have other things to worry about,” he said.  “We’ll deal with their relief fleet when it arrives.”

***
“Based on current estimates, they managed to land at least twenty thousand troops within the space of a few minutes,” Colonel Harkin said.  The intelligence analyst was grim.  “The dumpsters were a nasty surprise.”

“Tell me about it,” Gerald growled.  He’d heard the concept discussed, but always as something the corps would never dare try.  The enemy had committed their men to a do-or-die operation, knowing - they could hardly be ignorant - there was no way to retreat if they ran into something they couldn’t handle.  “They must be very confident of victory.”

He felt his frown deepen as he studied the map.  Both sides were fighting a vigorous campaign of surveillance and counter-surveillance.  Drones were being shot down, remote sensor platforms were being blasted by long-range fire and constant ECM barrages were making it hard to pick up any real data.  The fog of war had thoroughly enveloped the enemy LZ, ensuring he couldn’t plan any operations.  Constant alerts flashed in front of him, including a sensor report that over a billion enemy troops were crammed into a tiny space.  Gerald guessed that someone had pissed on the sensor.  It was a trick that dated all the way back to the pre-spaceflight days.

At least we know someone is there, he mused.  The gunners had hurled a few shells towards the compromised sensors, in hopes of hitting something.  We just don’t have any hard data.

“The enemy fleet is pulling back,” another officer said.  “They’re holding position outside engagement range.”

“That’s something, at least,” Gerald said.  The enemy bombardment had been staggeringly extensive, for an interstellar power that - presumably - wanted to recover the planet and its facilities intact.  He didn’t think there was a single, intact structure between Haverford and the enemy LZ.  Dozens of marines were reported missing, presumed dead.  “Keep harassing them as we pull back to defensible lines.”

He cursed his luck under his breath, trying to ignore the guilt in his heart.   He was relatively safe, unless his staffers made an unsecured transmission that drew enemy fire.  His men, on the other hand, were caught in a meatgrinder.  They were trained and experienced, but even the best soldiers had problems withdrawing under fire.  And the planetary population was caught between two fires.  Those who’d been too friendly to the marines, over the last few days, would probably be rounded up and shot.  Gerald knew the score.  He’d served in countless places where the locals had hated the insurgents, but were too scared to resist.  What choice did they have?  

At least we destroyed their records, he thought.  He had no way to know if there were copies off-world.  It was possible, all too possible.  It’ll take them a long time to rebuild.

“Contact report,” another officer called.  “They’re crossing MW-09!”

“Which puts them a few, short miles from Haverford,” Gerald said.  The enemy was expanding their foothold, trying to seize as much territory as possible before the marines rallied and counterattacked.  “And with the prongs heading north and south, they can lay siege to the city soon enough.”

He wanted to reach for the console and issue orders, but there was no point.  His men already knew what to do.  They were being caught in a vise, one that would steadily close until the retreating marines were crushed between two pincers.  He wondered, suddenly, just who was in command of the enemy forces and what his objectives actually were.  A skilled general would try to destroy the marines on the ground, before they could rally, but a political general - or someone overruled by his superiors - would concentrate on the city.  Gerald knew, all too well, that he should hope for the latter, despite the grim truth that thousands of civilians would die.  It would buy time for his troops to rally and reinforcements to arrive.

A young officer stepped up to him.  “Coffee, sir?”

“No, thank you,” Gerald said.  

He shook his head.  It was pointless to deprive himself of coffee, just because his men in the field had no time to relax, but he would have felt worse if he’d taken the drink.  He wished someone senior would arrive, just so he could take the field himself.  But duty insisted he keep out of harm’s way.

All we can do is try to get out of the trap before it’s too late, he told himself.  The fog of war was growing thicker.  He’d lost touch with positions on both sides of the city.  He hoped that meant the marines had managed to retreat; he feared they were dead.  And then hold the line.

He gritted his teeth as more reports flashed up.  It would take nearly six weeks for reinforcements to arrive, assuming they were dispatched the moment his report reached his superiors.  He knew it wouldn’t be that easy.  There weren’t that many troops - and starships - based at Safehouse itself.  The Commandant would do his best - Gerald knew Major-General Jeremy Damiani well enough to be sure of it - but there would be hard limits on what he could do before it was too late.  If he couldn’t get a relief force to Gerald in time ...

They’ll be here, Gerald told himself.  Marines did not abandon their own.  We just have to hold out long enough for them to arrive.

***
“Good to see you again,” Specialist Michael Bonkowski said.  The Pathfinder looked like a refugee from a horror flick.  “I thought we’d lost you.”

“Likewise,” Rachel said.  Splitting the squad had seemed like a good idea at the time, she reflected sourly.  “They came damn close to killing us.”

She glanced back.  The distant forest was still burning brightly, clouds of poisonous smoke drifting through the air.  The sound of fighting echoed over the torn-up fields and smashed buildings.  Streaks of light flew through the air, each a missile or shell aimed at targets on the other side of the line.  She tensed as she heard rumbling in the distance, suggesting that the enemy tanks were on the move again.  They were heading right towards the city, as far as she could tell.  She was fairly sure they were moving to cut off the city, too.  They had no choice, unless they wanted to launch a set of thunder runs of their own.

“We’d better get moving,” Bonkowski said.  “They’re not going to invite us for lunch when they catch up.”

“No,” Rachel agreed.

Phelps leaned forward.  “Any news on what they do with prisoners?”

Bonkowski shrugged as the squad started to walk.  “Nothing so far,” he said.  “If they bothered to demand surrender before they started landing, it never got forwarded to us.”

Rachel frowned.  It was customary to demand surrender during the landing period, although she knew from grim experience that very few took the invaders up on the offer until they’d fired at least one shot for the honour of the flag.  The enemy force behind her had practically had to land quickly, whatever happened.  They couldn’t have wanted to give the marines more time to regroup.  But they wouldn’t have lost anything by demanding surrender.  It wasn’t as if they had anything to lose.  Who knew?  The marines might have surrendered without a second thought.

Not that we would have, she thought.  Falling into enemy hands means certain death.

She kept the thought to herself.  She’d been warned, when she’d first joined the corps, that she couldn’t expect prospective captors to be gentle.  The enemies they’d faced before Earthfall hadn’t had the facilities to take prisoners, even if they’d wanted to.  And the stories of what happened to marines - male as well as female - who fell into enemy hands were gruesome.  Now ... perhaps the enemy would be civilised to the average marine.  They wouldn’t be civilised to her.  If they realised she was a Pathfinder ...

The sound of distant shooting - and explosions - grew louder as they made their way towards the city.  A handful of refugees - civilians, not marines - waved feebly as they passed, as if they thought Rachel and her comrades could help them.  Rachel wanted to tell the poor bastards they were heading in precisely the wrong direction, that the city would be a death trap, but there was no point.  The marines might manage to make it out of the trap before it was too late.  The civilians might be safer in the city than trying to run the gauntlet.

“Poor bastards,” Phelps muttered.  He raised his voice.  “Lie low!  You’re in no danger as long as you lie low.”

Rachel didn’t look to see how the refugees reacted.  She wasn’t sure Phelps was right.  In theory, sure; the refugees would be unharmed.  A disciplined military force would make sure they were harmless, then either ship them to a detention camp or simply point them on their way.  But she had no idea how the invaders would treat civilians.  Human history showed a wide range of possibilities, from all kinds of abuse to simple slaughter.  She’d seen Civil Guardsmen gun down civilians for kicks.  Who knew if the invaders would be any better?

They want to recover the planet, she told herself.  They won’t be too beastly to the locals, will they?

She winced, inwardly.  That might not be true.  If the invaders thought the locals were collaborators ...

“Nearly there,” Bonkowski called.  “You can thank me later.”

“For what?”  Phelps spoke with an arch tone that betrayed his true feelings.  “You just led us into a trap.”

“At least we have a chance,” Bonkowski pointed out.  “Those poor bastards back there don’t.”

“It depends,” Rachel said.  Their orders had been more than a little vague.  She was used to that, but ... there were times when she would have appreciated clearer guidance.  “Are we supposed to hold the city, hole up in the city so we can make their lives miserable, or sneak through the city and out the other side?”

“God knows,” Bonkowski said. “We’ll find out when we get there.”

Chapter Nine

Worse, the further the system becomes divorced from reality, the more erratic (and insane, from an outside POV) its decisions will become.
- Professor Leo Caesius.  The Right to be Wrong: How Silencing People Hurts You

It was hot, terribly hot.

Lieutenant Garfield Onge's back was sweaty. The sweat had even pooled in his boots as he led the platoon through the blackened, battered landscape.  The air stank of smoke and blood, his throat burning despite the combination of genetic enhancements and protective mask.  He tasted bile as he saw a body lying in a mud puddle, so badly burned that he couldn’t tell if the dead man had been a friend, an enemy, or a civilian caught up in the fighting.  Explosions shook the ground, the constant thrumming of the distant guns echoing through the air.  He saw flashes of light everywhere, followed by expanding fireballs as the shells crashed down.  

Fear gripped him.  He felt alone, even though he had nine men - and one woman - behind him; even though he knew he was in the midst of a vast army.  The fog of war was creeping over him, insisting he was cut off from his friends and comrades even though cold logic told him it couldn’t be true.  He just needed to reach for his communicator to call, but ... he’d been warned not to use it unless they made contact with the enemy.  A single communication might be enough to tell the enemy precisely where he was.

Another body lay in a ditch.  Garfield swallowed hard, trying not to be sick.  This body was so badly mutilated that it was impossible to determine if the body was male or female, let alone friendly or hostile.  He stared, trying to convince himself the dead body was an enemy soldier who thoroughly deserved to die.   The reports suggested the enemy troops were retreating in good order, and there were no civilians on the battlefield, but it was impossible to be sure.  The training exercises had insisted that everything would run like clockwork.  The live-fire exercises had suggested otherwise.  His first taste of real combat had taught him that something would always go wrong.

He frowned as they advanced towards the motorway.  It had been designed by a soulless planner; the road drew a straight line between two cities, never so much as curving as it carved through the landscape.  He could understand the appeal, but didn't share it.  The motorway was practical, but it was also a blight.  A handful of broken vehicles lay on the tarmac, burned out by ... something.  The road was covered in potholes.  He was sure someone had shelled the motorway only a few short hours ago.

A chill ran down his spine as he looked towards the city.  The motorway was completely deserted.  There were no moving vehicles, no refugees trying to get in or out of the city ... it was deserted, as dark and silent as the grave.  He forced himself to keep moving, unwilling to show fear in front of his men.  The instructors had made it very clear that he could not show weakness of any sort, even if it meant girding his loins in brown pants.  The joke had been funny, until it wasn’t.  Now ... he smiled, grimly.  He wasn’t the only one who’d wet himself during his first drop.  

He tensed as he heard more shellfire, the sound echoing through the air.  He couldn’t tell who was shooting at whom ... it sounded, as the shellfire intensified, as if both sets of guns were trying to destroy the other.  He forced himself forward, feeling oddly naked as he slipped down the grassy slope and onto the motorway.  He’d enjoyed driving, as a younger man; he’d taken ruthless advantage of his birth to ensure he could drive the groundcar himself, rather than rely on the onboard driving system.  Just standing on the motorway made him feel as if he was going to be run down at any moment when a car raced down the street at several times the speed limit.  But there were no moving vehicles in sight.

The sergeant moved up behind him.  “Stay away from the burned-out cars,” she muttered, pitching her voice to ensure the men couldn’t hear her.  “They can conceal traps.”

“Understood,” Garfield said.  He could have kicked himself.  The cars provided the only real cover for several miles in both directions.  “Let’s move.”

He wanted to call in as he resumed the advance down the motorway, keeping a steady distance from the wrecked cars.  He knew better than to try.  The closer they got to the city, the greater the chance of running into an enemy ambush.  The platoon was uncomfortably exposed.  He kept a wary eye out for traps, hoping that the horror stories he’d heard from the old sweats were exaggerated.  Getting covered in bright pink paint during drills had been embarrassing, but in the real world - the instructors had said, time and time again - he would be dead.  Sure, the medics could repair almost anything - as long as it wasn’t immediately fatal - but it would be difficult to get to them if one’s legs were blown off.  A sucking chest wound would kill him, enhancements or no, if he didn’t get medical treatment before it was too late.

And we spent months drilling on what to do if someone was hit, he reminded himself.  We just never tried it under battle conditions.

The sense of unreality grew as they inched down the motorway, passing a pair of cold concrete bridges that linked the motorway to villages outside the city.  A handful of buildings were clearly visible, all smashed from orbit.  Garfield noted the debris scattered across the motorway, although he was sure it wouldn’t slow the tanks for more than a few seconds.  The combat engineers wouldn’t be needed to clear the way.  He smiled, remembering how the heavy tanks had torn up the landscape during exercises.  No wonder they’d been cautioned to get off the roads as quickly as possible ...

He looked up, just in time to see a distant bridge collapse into a makeshift barricade.  He hit the ground a second later, as bullets started flying.  He cringed inwardly - it was the first time someone had tried to kill him - and then started crawling forward, trying to assess the situation.  It sounded as if there were hundreds of shooters in front of them, but he was fairly sure his estimate was off by at least one order of magnitude.  The marines couldn’t have spared more than a handful of men to slow him down.

Janelle spoke rapidly into her communicator, calling down shellfire.  Garfield stayed low as shells crashed down around what remained of the bridge - he was mildly surprised that the gunners had been allowed to fire on the motorway - and then jumped to his feet and ran as the aftershocks died away.  The bridge had been small by local standards, but it had been big enough for the debris to provide plenty of cover.  He forced himself forward, keeping as low as he could as he scrambled over the pile and into the enemy position.  A body - wearing civilian clothes - lay on the edge of the crater.  The other enemy soldiers had either been blown to bits or simply retreated as the shells crashed down.  He tried to tell himself they’d been killed.  He didn’t believe it.

Janelle examined the body.  “Sir ... what do you make of it?”

Garfield felt a hot flash of anger.  He had no qualms about learning from experienced soldiers, even ones he outranked, but the middle of a battlefield was no place for a lesson.  Not that kind of lesson, at least.  He leaned forward, studying the body.  It was hard to believe it had once been a soldier.  Garfield hadn’t met any marines, but he’d met elite corporate soldiers as well as the infantrymen he’d been trained to lead.  The body didn’t look anything like as fit as the lowliest private.

He frowned as it hit him.  “This was a civilian.”

“Yeah.”  Janelle sounded unsurprised.  “They gave someone a gun and told him to blaze away at us.”

Garfield shook his head.  He didn’t know why she was so unsurprised.  He’d seen the briefing notes.  The local population loved their society.  It was so much better than Earth, before and after Earthfall, that they had no reason to rock the boat.  The corporation provided everything they needed, from safe places to live to schools that actually educated the kids, and in return they were loyal.  And yet ... his mind spun as he tried to come up with an explanation.  The poor bastard could have been too stupid to know what was good for him.  The poor bastard could have been blackmailed into carrying out an ambush.  The poor bastard ... Garfield’s mind spun.  It didn’t make sense.

“Why?”  It was almost a cry of pain.  “Why?”

Janelle shrugged.  “In every society, there are people who are dissatisfied or discontented,” she said.  A faint sneer crossed her face.  “And some of them will act to pay back grudges as soon as they have a chance.”

Garfield said nothing as they made a brief report, then resumed their march.  He found what she'd said hard to believe.  The corporation was good at putting round pegs in round holes.  If someone was unhappy in one position, the corporation’s HR specialists could find them a position somewhere else.  He’d seen it in action during basic training.  Officer candidates who were better at supporting troops rather than leading them in combat were steered into roles where their talents could be used to the fullest.  

It made no sense!  Why would someone be discontented on Hameau?

He wanted to ask her more questions, but he didn’t dare.  Not in front of the troops.  Instead, he forced himself to remain calm as they started to approach the city.  The ring road surrounding the city looked untouched, but - beyond it - he could see a barricade.  It didn’t look like a very threatening barricade - a handful of tanks could smash it easily - yet ... he had a feeling the enemy intended to use the barricade to slow the invaders down while they rained shells on their positions.  He peered into the distance, noting there were more civilians amongst the defenders.  They looked ready to fight.

It makes no sense, he thought, numbly.  The civilians were fighting their liberators.  Were they being held at gunpoint?  It didn’t look like it.  Why?

He caught himself and started to snap orders.  There was no point in trying to get any closer to the city, not yet.  The enemy barricade would eat his squad alive.  If the original plan was still working - and he had his doubts - the other intersections would be secured quickly, allowing the invaders to surround and seal off the town.  He wasn’t sure what would happen then.  The planners had admitted - he’d heard, through the grapevine - that they weren’t sure what the enemy would do either.

Garfield nodded to himself as he peered at the city.  It was bigger than he’d expected, for a city on a relatively new colony world.  Towering skyscrapers loomed over the streets, massive warehouses, colonist barracks ... it didn’t look very welcoming, but the map had insisted the more expensive accommodations were on the other side of the river, well away from the lower-class districts.  It made a certain kind of sense, he guessed.  The colonists were expected to either move up in the world, as they found positions within the planet’s industrial sector, or moved out to the countryside to run the farms.  There was nothing to be gained by making the temporary accommodation too welcoming.  The colonists might not want to leave.

The wind shifted.  He tasted something unpleasant – piss, shit, and fear - in the air.  A low humming echoed behind and he glanced back, smiling in relief as he saw a handful of light hovertanks making their way towards him.  They weren’t heavily armoured, he recalled, but they’d provide cover if - when - the assault began.  He saluted as an officer jumped out of the lead tank and landed neatly on the ground.  Brave man.  The lead tank would almost certainly draw the most fire.  If the enemy disabled or destroyed it, the wreckage would slow the other tanks ...

“Sir,” he said.  “I beg leave to report the intersection is secure.”

The officer - a colonel - gave him a sharp look.  “Good,” he said.  “Follow-up units are already on their way.  I dare say we’ll receive orders once they arrive.”

Garfield wanted to ask when and where they were going to go into the city, or even if they were going to force their way into the city, but he knew the colonel probably wouldn’t know anything more than he did.  It didn’t look as if the city intended to surrender ... he reminded himself, again, that the original plan had been to seal the city off from the rest of the world first.  Perhaps General Rask would leave a blocking force in place to keep the city sealed up while the remainder of the force chased the marines back into the hinterland, overrunning the PDCs as they moved.  Or ... perhaps he’d see political advantage in recapturing the city quickly.  Haverford had little military value, but it had a lot of symbolic importance.  Leaving it in enemy hands would look bad.

He forced himself to relax, slightly, as more troops and vehicles arrived.  The enemy was shelling the ring road, launching a handful of mortar rounds at convoys as they tried to link the intersections together.  Garfield suspected there was no point in trying until they recaptured the city.  The ring road was just too close to the buildings, particularly given the reluctance to fire into the city.  Too many civilians, some of whom had powerful friends, would be at risk.

And their friends would make a fuss, he thought.  He was young, but he wasn’t naïve.  What would that do to the General’s career?

“Look at me,” someone called.  “I’m on top of the world!”

Garfield looked up, sharply.  A soldier - still in his teens - was standing on top of a tank, waving cheerfully towards the enemy positions.   Garfield understood - he would have liked to mock the enemy too - but it was dangerous.  The enemy snipers were good.

“Get down at once, you bloody fool,” Janelle snapped.  “Now ...”

The soldier tumbled to the ground.  Garfield thought, just for a moment, that he’d lost his footing and slipped.  Tanks were designed to make life difficult for people who wanted to climb on them.  He heard the shot a second later and knew, with a sick certainty, what had happened.  He ran forward as a cluster of friendly soldiers retaliated, firing a volley towards the enemy.  Their sniper would have to duck and sneak out if he wanted to survive the next few hours.  Garfield’s men had orders to take prisoners, but no one wanted to march a sniper into the POW camps.  The troops would kill a sniper as soon as look at one.

He bent over the injured man, searching for the wound.  The man looked unharmed ... no, he was bleeding from the chest.  Janelle tore his uniform open, removing the layers of body armour the techs had sworn blind would stop - or at least deflect - a bullet.  The armour had failed.  The bullet had cut through it and punctured a lung.  Janelle swore as Garfield yanked a medical pack from his belt, tore it open with his teeth and pressed it against the wound.  It might just keep the poor bastard stable long enough to get him to the medics.

“Dumb bastard.”  The colonel seemed unconcerned.  His voice sounded almost bored.  “He shouldn’t have shown himself so openly.”

Garfield barely - just barely - kept himself from saying something that would have earned him a court-martial, despite his exalted birth.  The colonel was right, he supposed, but ... it wasn’t good for discipline to express that opinion too openly.  The medics arrived a second later, waving the colonel away as they hoisted the wounded man onto a stretcher and carried him back down the motorway.  Garfield hoped they wouldn’t be fired upon.  The old sweats had cautioned him that some of their enemies had used the red cross as a target.  

The marines won’t do that, will they?  He tried to convince himself the answer was no.  The briefings had been clear.  The marines were civilised opponents.  And besides, the corporation wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate if it was the only way to deter atrocities.  They know that we’ll start killing their medics if they start killing ours.

Janelle touched his arm. “They’ll get him back in time, sir.”

“I hope so,” Garfield muttered.  He’d seen men die before ... no, he hadn’t.  Not really.  They’d been simulated deaths, deaths that - no matter how horrible - only lasted until the simulation came to an end.  A man could have his head blown off, then rise from the dead moments later.  Now ... the men who died would not be coming back.  His stomach heaved as it struck him.  “I ...”

He swallowed, hard.  He didn’t want to throw up.  Not here.  Not in front of the men.  “I ... does it get any easier?”

“No.”  Janelle’s eyes were hard.  “But you do get used to it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Garfield confessed.

“Yeah.”  Janelle shrugged.  “I said that too, when I was your age.”