Stand Against The Storm (The Maxwell Saga Book 4) (8 page)

“They won’t be coming.” Riza’s voice was grim. “Those Marines didn’t want to let us have the transporters. I’m here to tell you, Boss, they fight like buzz-saws! There were only two of ’em with rifles. We got one, but they took out four of us and hit Kerem three times as he tried to drive the transporter away. He’s tough as nails, but not even he could take punishment like that. He blacked out only half a kilometer into the bush. I got him out of the driver’s seat and took over. When we reached the road I turned towards Hairun and ran a few clicks to mislead them, in case they had a drone watching; then I turned off at the burned-out shop by the crossroad and circled around on farm roads. I didn’t see any patrols. I left the trailer in the woods, ’cause I figured you wouldn’t want one of their hoversats spotting it in the yard. I put a few ration packs in the cab for us to eat today.”

“Good idea. Let’s get Kerem into the barn. Pull the transporter in there too, out of sight.”

Their medic came running from the farmhouse wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair and body still wet from the shower. He hastily examined the unconscious Kerem, then looked up and shook his head. “He’s too badly hurt and he’s lost too much blood. I don’t think even a hospital could save him, Boss. At least he’s not in pain. It won’t be long now.”

Bairam swallowed a curse. Kerem had been one of his earliest recruits when he’d started planning this uprising five years before. He hadn’t been particularly intelligent or displayed any powers of command, but he’d been faithful, reliable and – as Riza had remarked – tough as nails. It hurt to lose him; almost as much as it hurt to know Fikri was either dead, or wishing he was dead as the goons interrogated him. He thrust the thought from his mind. Fikri wouldn’t talk. He’d die first.

What now?
he wondered as he walked out of the barn.
Did they track the transporter here? We’d better move to Miller’s farm as soon as it’s dark, just in case. As for those Marines, if they want to join the party, we can handle that too. They’re normal people – they wanna stay alive. We know we’re gonna die, and we don’t care. That gives us an edge. The Marines should’ve stayed out of it. Now they’ll pay for Fikri an’ the others, just like the Governor’s gonna pay for all those empty years I wasted on this rock!

It was well after noon the following day before Major Emory returned to the depot. His assault shuttle landed on the hardstand outside the temporary enclosure protecting tens of thousands of ration packs. He’d radioed ahead, so Steve was there to meet him.

“Great job yesterday, Lieutenant,” he began with a handshake of congratulation. “Captain Davis wasn’t very happy about it, but my boss pointed out that you’d been attacked and had no choice but to defend yourselves. He rather grudgingly accepted that.”

Steve frowned. “I… perhaps I’d better not say anything, Sir.”

“Not if it would be rude. He
is
the Senior Fleet Officer on this station, after all.” They grinned at each other. “The leader of those insurgents is still out of it, but the other one’s talking. It seems a group of them made their way back here after escaping from the fight in the foothills. He doesn’t know whether any other groups are doing the same thing – he wasn’t told. Frankly, if I’d been his boss I wouldn’t have told anyone either. You know what they say about keeping something secret?”

“Yes, Sir; ‘three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead’.”

“That’s right. We’re more than a little worried about the lack of intelligence information from the Eskishi authorities. The Governor’s been sharing with us all that his civilian administration knows, but the Colonial Guard’s been a lot less forthcoming.”

“Is that because of professional jealousy, d’you think, Sir?”

“Maybe – I really can’t say for sure. Anyway, how’s Gunnery Sergeant Kinnear doing?”

“He’s fine, Sir. I’ve kept him on light duties for the day, but he doesn’t like that at all. He’s at his desk in the Administration building, breathing fire and brimstone at his Marines to keep them hard at it. Would you like to see him?”

“I would, thanks. Lead the way.”

Kinnear rose from his desk to greet them, snapping to attention as he saw the Major. “Afternoon, Sir.”

“Good afternoon, Gunnery Sergeant.” Emory grinned as he shook the NCO’s hand, inspecting the broad bandage wrapped around his head. “I don’t think your new fashion in headgear will catch on in the Corps.”

“Perhaps in a different color, Sir?” Steve suggested artlessly. “How about pastel pink?”

There was revulsion in Kinnear’s face and voice. “Trust a
Spacer
to think of
pink
– begging your pardon, of course, Sir.” He sounded remarkably unrepentant.

Laughing, the Major assured him, “I doubt the Corps will adopt Lieutenant Maxwell’s suggestion. You both did very well yesterday. I wanted to thank you personally for protecting your people, including local personnel as well as our own. I was surprised to hear that you had rifles so readily available. I thought you were complaining that you didn’t have enough weapons?” He looked at Steve inquiringly.

“We… ah… we took steps to resolve the problem, Sir,” Steve said as neutrally as possible.

Emory winked. “Meaning that if I ask no questions, you’ll tell no lies, right?”

Steve remained silent, but the Gunnery Sergeant grinned. “I see the Major’s remembering a few things I taught him when he was still a Lieutenant.”

The Major looked at him severely. “You led me into paths of corruption and dishonesty from which it took me years to recover. I’ve only recently succeeded in becoming the shining knight and paragon of military virtue you see before you.” His sally was greeted by a barrage of loud coughing from both Steve and Kinnear, and he laughed. “Oh, what’s the use! You’ve probably corrupted each other by now! Anyway, the Governor’s taken note of what you did yesterday. He may arrange official recognition for both of you in due course, but he’s a bit tied up at present with the Eksalansari’s visit.”

“Is he here already, Sir?” Steve asked, surprised. “I’m afraid we’ve been so busy here I haven’t had time to keep up with other developments.”

“He arrived this morning. He’s staying with the Governor. For the next few days he’ll be inspecting the Colonial Guard operations in the interior, then the MRF battalion and its operations in and around Surush, including our engineers at the sewage plant and waterworks. He’ll visit here as part of that. I’ll let you know more nearer the time, but I wanted to give you a heads-up so you could have things in as good an order as possible.”

Steve frowned. “We’ll do our best, of course, Sir, but we can’t possibly meet normal standards for inspection.”

“We don’t expect you to. It’s clearly out of the question under present circumstances. Do your best, but operational efficiency is far more important than outward appearances. I’ll be with the Eksalansari during his visit, and I’ll make that clear to him, particularly because you’re using a mostly convict labor force rather than military professionals.”

“Thank you, Sir. I must say, though, that based on their work so far, the Qianjin prisoners are almost as professional and competent as our Fleet Spacers or Marines.”

“He’s right, Sir,” Kinnear agreed. “I’ve been surprised by how much they’ve got done, and how well they did it. I’ll work with them again anytime.”

“That’s good to know, although one hopes if we work with people from Qianjin in future, they won’t be convicted criminals.”

Steve suppressed a grin. They might not have been convicted, but the odds that any senior members of Qianjin’s military personnel or its civil servants would also be members of a criminal organization were very high indeed. However, he decided, it would probably be best not to mention that in present company.

~ ~ ~

The last group of insurgents didn’t reach Miller’s farm until after sundown. By then Bairam was pacing the floor of the barn, cursing beneath his breath at their dilatoriness. He took time to make sure the new arrivals got ration packs and were allocated places to sleep, then called the group leaders together in an empty lean-to shed at the side of the barn.

“Listen up!” he called them sharply to attention. “We got one transporter load of rations. That’s enough to see us through the next few days until our attacks go in.”

“No, it’s not,” Luna objected sharply. Bairam flushed red with annoyance, but she glared at him and went on, “You’re ignoring our families. Some of us finished our sentences and built what lives we could in exile on this rock. We found new partners and made new families. Others had wives or husbands follow them here – stupid, I reckon, but love can make people do things like that. Our families have been hungry ever since the revolt. We thought we’d be able to get them off-planet after we won, but instead we lost. Since then the administration’s not done spit to distribute emergency rations. The Marines have been doing better in the areas they patrol, but that’s sure to stop when our attacks go in. There’s not much to buy in the shops even if you’ve got money – which most of our families haven’t. We can’t win and we can’t evacuate our people, so we’ve got to give them enough food to survive until supplies return to normal. That means rations for a couple of months for up to a thousand people.”

“Dammit, Luna, we don’t have
time
to worry about those who won’t or can’t fight! They gotta look after themselves!”

“No. That’s not going to happen.” Her voice was flat, emphatic. “Half my group’s been asking about this. They know our only choice now is between death in combat or being hanged as rebels; but they still care about those they’re leaving behind. If we can’t provide for them, they’re going to break away from us and try to do it themselves before they’re arrested or killed.”

There were reluctant nods from most of the others around the table. Orhan said, “She’s right, Bairam. Some of my people have been talking that way too.”

“Then they shoulda thought about that before joining us!” Métin protested vehemently. “Wadda they think we are, some kinda charity?”

“None of us thought about it because we figured we were going to
win
, remember?” Orhan snapped. “We had it all worked out. We were going to kill the Governor and every official and guard we could reach, loot the planetary bank, then use that money to buy our way onto a spaceship with our families an’ get outta here. We didn’t know Arne had betrayed us.”

“Aw,
hell!”
Métin was silent for a moment, face reflecting his internal struggle, then he shrugged, looking at Bairam. “Boss, we gotta do something. If we don’t, we’ll lose them, and if that happens we may as well commit suicide instead of fighting on. It’ll come to the same thing in the end.”

Bairam sat silently for a moment, anger burning within him, but he could recognize inevitability when it stared him in the face. “All right. It’ll have to go down at the same time as our main attack, though. If we launch a raid before then to get rations, it’ll tell everyone we’re back in Surush. We gotta surprise ’em when we hit ’em. I’ll assign one group to take hostages at th’ spaceport, then trade ’em to the Marines at Carsamba in exchange for some transporters loaded with rations. They can drive each transporter to a rendezvous point where families can collect what they need, then they can reassemble and hit another target. While all that’s goin’ on, the rest of us will launch our strikes.”

“That might work,” Luna agreed.

“Lemme think on it. Meanwhile, I’ve chosen eight possible targets. Five are inside the zone patrolled by the Marines. We’ll have to sneak through real slow and careful to avoid ’em spotting us. Fortunately they’re spread real thin and we know the sewers and alleys like the backs of our hands, so I think we c’n do that. Of course, when we start the ball rolling they’ll figure it out, but I don’t think they’ll be able to interfere in time to stop us.”

He handed out printouts showing the target zones. “Study these maps. Look for approach routes an’ weak points in the defenses. We’ll get together again in three hours to make a final selection of our targets and start planning our attacks.”

~ ~ ~

Steve and the Gunny stood on top of the administration building once more, nursing the last mugs of coffee of the day, watching the third and smallest of Eskishi’s moons rise over Surush. Serried housetops showed a kilometer away at the edge of the city in the moonlight, broken here and there by roads and the skeletons of buildings that had been wrecked during the recent fighting.

Steve said reflectively. “Gunny, I wouldn’t talk like this to anyone else in the detachment, but you’re a senior NCO. You’re supposed to help train and form junior officers, so even though I’m not as junior as I once was, help me out here. I’m getting a bad feeling about this operation. In all my training I’ve been taught that the Fleet should only act if something’s imperative to the interests of the Commonwealth or our principles. We’re supposed to clearly define our objectives, then develop a plan to not only get achieve them, but get out again after we’ve done that. I haven’t seen any of that in this operation. I get the feeling the Marines were just flung in here willy-nilly.”

Kinnear shrugged. “Didn’t they say something about wanting to help Karabak so it would consider stronger anti-piracy measures?”

“Yes, they did, but who decided that would motivate Karabak? It doesn’t sound like something a Sector Admiral would come up with – more like a touchy-feely idea from his State Department advisor. Also, I can understand dispatching the on-call MRF battalion and you Engineers to an emergency on a Commonwealth planet, but to a foreign world with no particular ties to us? Where’s our ‘imperative interest’ here?”

“I dunno, Sir, but then I’m an NCO. I go where they tell me and do what they want me to do. I leave the deep thinking to the powers that be.”

Steve snorted. “Oh, come off it, Gunny! You don’t fool me. Before being promoted to senior NCO rank you’ll have earned a Bachelor’s degree in Military Science through training and online education, the same as I have. You’re no automaton, so tell me: if you’d been killed by that hit you took yesterday, d’you think you’d have died doing something worthwhile? You swore an oath to uphold and defend the Commonwealth Constitution. What does our job here have to do with that? Would you be satisfied to be killed defending a pile of not-very-good rations against ragtag bandits on a world that has nothing to do with us?”

Kinnear grinned and shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever be
satisfied
to be killed, Sir! Let me put it another way. I saw you in your Class Two uniform aboard
Cybele
. You were wearing the ribbon of the Combat Injury Medal in silver, which means you’ve been wounded in action twice. When and where?”

“The first was on a United Planets mission to Radetski. The second was in a fight with smugglers in orbit around Midrash.”

“OK. The second was on Commonwealth business, sure enough, but the first was like mine yesterday – an injury suffered on a world that has nothing to do with us.”

Steve frowned. “No, it was during a United Planets mission that had been accepted by the Commonwealth, which made it an ‘imperative interest’ for the Fleet by default. This isn’t. There’s been no formal determination by our government that we need to be here – or at least, if there has, I don’t know anything about it.”

Kinnear nodded. “I see your point, Sir, but you’re splitting hairs. We’re here in obedience to orders from our superior officers. If those orders were wrong, someone much higher up than us will have to sort out the mess; but that’s not
our
job. We do what we have to do, in the situation in which we find ourselves, with the tools that come to hand. If we tried to second-guess every order that came down the pike, we’d end up chasing our own tails and the Fleet would disintegrate.”