Retreat Hell (15 page)

He smiled.  None of them seemed to like the idea – which was, he had to admit, sensible enough.  Urban combat might limit the advantages of trained troops, but it would still mean a brutal fight which would count thousands of unarmed civilians as collateral damage.  He liked to think that a Marine would hesitate before ordering such an operation, yet he knew better than to think the local government would have any such qualms.  Even if the First Speaker objected, there were members of his faction who
hated
the Zone.  It had, after all, defied them.

“So we will go on the offensive first,” he said.  He’d planned a knockout blow aimed at the local government, but there were too many variables.  “Our objective will be knock the CEF out before it can be deployed.”

“As far as I know,” one of the older leaders grated, “we have no starships under our command.”

“True,” Pete agreed.  “But they will be vulnerable while they are trying to deploy.”

He felt his smile widen.  The Terran Marines were – had been, he suspected – the ultimate in rapid reaction forces.  They were trained extensively to deploy across light years as fast as possible, with all of their equipment standardised and lightened to make deployment and resupply an easy task.  The Imperial Army had been far more cumbersome, often taking months to deploy to a single world.  Reading the news reports, he suspected the CEF fell somewhere in between.  But even the Marines had run into snags while they were deploying their forces.

“The current ETA is one week from now,” he said.  He’d worked it out from the data he’d been sent, cursing the absence of an FTL communicator as he did so.  It had once been the Holy Grail of the Empire’s science, although he’d suspected that progress had been deliberately stalled more than once.  “We will have that long to prepare a warm reception.”

He walked over to the table and picked up a sheet of paper.  It would have to be destroyed, of course, once the meeting was over.  He’d hammered into their heads, time and time again, that nothing was to be written down permanently.  Marines, if no one else, knew the value of information pulled from a terrorist hideout.  And whoever they were facing would not fail to learn that lesson, not when she needed to leverage only a small number of troops to their best advantage. 

“I want all five of you to prepare cells for deployment,” he said.  “The spaceport will be our primary target, but we have to prevent the local forces from becoming involved.  Ideally, we want to suggest that the local forces actually knew the attack was coming and did nothing.”

“Might be tricky,” one of the leaders observed.  “They wouldn't want to ruin their relationships with the Commonwealth.”

“Which leads to another point,” another leader asked.  “How many soldiers do we have to kill before the Commonwealth pulls out?”

Pete shrugged.  The Empire had been indifferent to causalities, as long as the media hadn't caught wind of them.  But when it had, the Imperial Army had been forced to protect its own ass first and fight the enemy second.  Sometimes, a spectacular disaster that killed a few hundred soldiers had served as an excuse for withdrawal, while a steady loss rate had passed under the media’s radar.  There was no way to know what sort of loss rate the Commonwealth considered acceptable.

“We will probably have to find out the hard way,” Pete said.  He ran through the provisional plan, then listened to their input.  Some aspects were dismissed as being too ambitious, others were modified slightly.  “But if we can force the Commonwealth to withdraw, to abandon its commitment, we will be halfway to victory.”

He smiled at them.  “And once we win the war,” he added, “we can create a new world.”

Finally, however, there was the baleful influence of the Empire’s ivory tower social scientists.  They had never carried out field work, never researched their subjects properly ... and yet they branded themselves experts in social science.  Their ignorance and incompetence would have been laughable, had it not been for the simple fact that they were believed.

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

It was relatively easy for anyone, even someone who wasn't a trained navigator, to trace out the least-time course between two separate star systems.  A civilian, however, might not realise that even the slightest error in calculation would be enough to make the starship miss its predicted arrival point by millions of kilometres.  It was this reason, Mandy knew, that ensured that the standard pirate ambush tactic was to lurk just inside the Phase Limit and wait patiently for a prospective victim to arrive.  After all, if the ambush was triggered while the starship was still outside the Phase Limit even the quickest pirates wouldn't be able to prevent their victim from escaping.

Not that I expect to run into pirates here
, she thought, as
Sword
started to move towards the Phase Limit, followed by her squadron and the military transports. 
Pirates rarely dare take on a warship
.

“Send System Command our ID and our planned ETA,” she ordered.  “And then take us in, best possible speed.”

She settled back in her command chair to watch as the squadron crawled inwards, its passive sensors picking up signs of industrial activity from all over the system.  Despite the economic crunch, Thule still possessed a formidable industrial base; given a few more years, it was quite likely that the planet would be supplying the entire sector.  Jasmine, in one of her more pensive moods, had suggested that their real task was to support the local government long enough for the economy to recover completely, undermining the rebel position and destroying their support base.  Mandy had her doubts – the crisis wouldn't be forgotten so easily – but she would do whatever she could to support her friend.

“Picking up a signal from System Command,” the communications officer said.  They were still far too far from the planet for regular communication.  “They’re welcoming us to the system and directing us to assume high orbit in seven hours.”

“They’re in a hurry,” Mandy muttered.  So was she, of course.  Jasmine had been urging her to plan the deployment of her forces as soon as possible, pointing out that they were hopelessly vulnerable while inside transports.  “Send back an acknowledgement and our revised ETA.”

She had to smile as the system revealed more and more of its secrets.  There was an old-style cloudscoop orbiting one of the gas giants and two new-style cloudscoops orbiting the other gas giant.  Dozens of asteroids were radiating hints of settlements, including a number of RockRat colonies; even the outer planets and moons seemed to have moderate settlements established on their surfaces.  And it was all politically united, apart from the RockRats, or so the file had claimed.  Normally, a system as developed as Thule wouldn't have a completely united government.  Someone always wanted independence from the capital world.

Their corporation knew what the hell it was doing
, she thought. 
It helped that they didn't have any debts to the Empire too
.

The Empire, according to the files, had once counted Thule as a success story.  And they would have been right, if the economy hadn't collapsed.  A combination of local independence and political ideology had turned Thule into a powerhouse, boosting its industrial capability forward far faster than anyone had believed possible.  They’d even managed to keep the Empire’s interstellar corporations from gaining controlling interests, a remarkable feat in the waning years of Empire.  If the Empire hadn't fallen apart, Thule might well have risen to dominate the entire sector.

It still might
, she reminded herself.  It’s industrial base might not have any of the improvements the Commonwealth or the Trade Federation had devised, but they had a head start on anyone else within the Commonwealth, even Corinthian.  Given a few more years, they were likely to recover completely from the economic crash ... which meant, if Jasmine was right, the end of the war. 
And who knows what will happen then
?

She’d been raised, by the Empire’s educational system, to believe in the innate goodness of the universe and its rulers.  It had been badly-prepared propaganda, but she hadn't recognised it as such until she’d been exiled to Avalon.  There, she’d started to question the underlying assumptions she’d been taught to accept ... and her servitude with the pirates had destroyed whatever remained of those misconceptions.  Power was all that mattered, in the end; the power to save a world was also the power to destroy it.  What would happen, she asked herself, when Thule took the place it had earned in the new order?  Was it possible that some elements within the Commonwealth would be interested in quietly sabotaging the planet’s recovery?

No
, she told herself, firmly. 
Jasmine wouldn't go along with a scheme like that – and besides, we need their industrial base.

But the thought refused to fade from her mind.

***

Jasmine had seen Earth, which had – had had – the most densely populated high orbitals in the Empire.  There had been hundreds of settled asteroids orbiting the planet, joined by thousands of industrial nodes, dozens of orbital defence stations and countless shuttlecraft moving from space stations to starships.  The four orbital towers had sent a steady stream of emigrants – some willing, some otherwise – from humanity’s homeworld to the outer colonies.  Thule was nowhere near as developed ...

... But she had to admit they were getting there.  There were seven asteroids in orbit, three of them hollowed out and converted into settlements, while the remainder were still being mined for raw material.  Dozens of industrial platforms orbited beside the rocks, sucking in the raw material and turning it into useful goods, while freighters moved in and out of the system, carrying its produce to less fortunate star systems.  Beyond them, there were nearly a hundred orbital defence platforms.  In many ways, Thule was more heavily defended than Avalon itself.

They started earlier
, she reminded herself.  Avalon hadn't been prepared for an industrial boom, certainly not after the cloudscoop had bankrupted the development corporation. 
And they’re not as advanced as us
.

She smiled as she looked down at the green planet below.  Starship transport was all-too-familiar to her, but she wouldn't be happy until she was down on the ground.  It was unlikely that they would have time to explore the countryside, not when the rebels would probably take advantage of the opportunity to kidnap any of her people who wandered off alone, yet at least it would be groundside.  She had always felt a little helpless on starships and shuttles, knowing that a single missile would be enough to vaporise her and the rest of her unit.

“Brigadier,” Volpe said, “we’re settling into high orbit now.”

Jasmine turned back from the porthole, then carefully schooled her features into composure before she turned to face him.  “Good,” she said.  “And have we had an update from the local government?”

“We’re being assigned the military spaceport,” Volpe said.  “They’re asking us to get down on the ground as fast as possible.”

Jasmine wasn't surprised.  The local government had sent her an update as soon as they’d started their long crawl towards the planet, which she'd skimmed rapidly.  It was growing alarmingly clear that the rebel leadership was growing in power, uniting the smaller insurgent groups under its banner ... and it had done almost nothing.  That bothered Jasmine more than hundreds of tiny pinprick attacks.  An insurgency that did nothing was almost certainly plotting something.  But it’s silence did give the locals a chance to take the offensive.

“Order the lead elements to start prepping for deployment,” she said.  She saw his expression flicker and sighed, inwardly.  His unit – his
former
unit – was in the lead.  “Then check with the local flight control, make sure we’re cleared into their system.”

Michael nodded and reached for his terminal.  While he fumbled with it, Jasmine picked up hers and ordered the transport’s optical sensors to examine the spaceport.  It was larger than she’d expected, almost as large as the facility on Mars or the Slaughterhouse.  Twelve massive landing runways, for shuttles that couldn't land vertically; nine massive barracks for deploying troops ... and a security fence that should keep out anyone, but authorised personnel.  The only worrying detail, she couldn't help noticing, was that the urban sprawl had advanced to the spaceport and overwhelmed it.

They must be very confident in their safety
, she thought.  Avalon’s main spaceport was several miles from the outer edge of the city, even after five years of expansion.  A single shuttle accident could be disastrous, if the shuttle crashed in the middle of a town. 
Or maybe they don’t care about the folk who live near the spaceport
.

Michael looked up from his terminal.  “The lead elements are ready to deploy,” he said.  “The locals have confirmed that we are cleared to land; they’ve keyed us into the military flight control system.”

Jasmine nodded.   “Inform them that they are to launch in five minutes,” she said.  “We will go to the CIC.”

***

Cold logic – and sound tactics – told Pete that he shouldn't take command of the operation personally, let alone be far too close to the spaceport.  The area wasn't
entirely
friendly, after all.  Smuggling was common and the criminal gangs that operated the smuggling trade didn't like the insurgents very much.  After all, if the insurgents won, the high taxes that made smuggling profitable would be abolished.  But he wasn't about to send people into danger without sharing it himself, at least to some extent.

“I just had the word passed to me,” his aide said.  She was staring down at a portable computer, which they’d spliced into one of the underground cables that handled data traffic for the planetary datanet.  According to the hackers, who were practically an underground movement in their own right, the tap was completely undetectable.  “The Commonwealth has arrived.”

“Good,” Pete said, as enthusiastically as he could.  He knew better than to be so enthusiastic in truth.  Wars were inherently unpredictable, no matter how carefully one planned.  It was quite possible that the movement would lose.  “Pass the word.  The operation is to begin on my mark.”

***

Cary Thornton had worked at the spaceport before the economic crash had forced him and his comrades out of work.  Unable to find another job, despite more than a passing knowledge of electronics, he’d been forced to move in with his parents and try to avoid leeching off them more than strictly necessary.  Humiliated by his unemployed and unemployable status, he had been an easy mark for the movement’s recruiters, who had seen a promise in the young man his former employers had not.  He’d been taken out of the Zone, given a crash course in how to use a portable HVM launcher, then sent to find somewhere to live near the spaceport and wait.  Finally, the waiting had come to an end.

The five members of his team looked alike in their masks, he noted with some amusement, as they took up position under an awning on a warehouse roof.  They'd been warned, time and time again, that the government was peering down on Thule, twenty-four hours a day.  They didn't dare bring the launchers out into the open until it was too late for the local forces to intervene ... although Cary had his doubts about their willingness to intervene even if they’d had advance knowledge of the plot.  The criminal gangs that dominated the area were quite happy to turn on the cops if they tried to enter without permission.

“That was the mark,” Kay said.  Cary didn't know her story, but she was the most determined of them all just to hit back at someone – anyone.  “And here they come.”

Cary stepped away from his fellows, then lifted the HVM to his shoulder and activated the sensor head.  It started bleeping at once, picking up the emissions of four shuttles dropping through the planetary atmosphere and heading towards the spaceport.  A brief datanet formed between the three launchers, designating targets and ensuring that two missiles wouldn’t go after the same shuttle, then faded away as Kay removed the awning.  Bracing himself, Cary pulled the trigger.  The missile launched into the sky and roared towards its targets.

He stared after it, despite the spoke it had left in its wake.  The shuttles were barely visible to the naked eye, but the trail pointed directly towards their position.  Kay grabbed his arm, swore at him and pointed towards the hatch.  Catching himself, Cary dropped the remainder of the launcher on the ground – it was a one-shot; there was no point in trying to salvage it – and then jumped down the hatch.  They’d been told, in no uncertain terms, to make their escape without worrying about anything else ...

***

Jennifer Fallow had been cautious ever since she’d guided the shuttle into the planet’s atmosphere.  Every planet was different, every planet had unpleasant surprises for unwary pilots, from Earth's super-polluted atmosphere to the high winds that ravaged Yellowstone and drove its inhabitants into underground cities.  But she hadn't expected the threat receiver to start screaming at her as she dropped down towards the spaceport.