“Why don’t you just say what you want to say?”
“I’ve been fielding calls from the local politicos all morning. I’ve had Beecher from the Temperance Legion. I’ve had Chernenko from the Radical Orthodox. I’ve had Steiner from the Aryan Jihad. You’re just about the only thing that can get the hardcore militias to agree on something. And that something is that they want your head. The local Reps want you court-martialled. They were hellbent on filing a petition to prosecute for war crimes. The writs were ready to be sent.”
“See, my presence is already creating unity among the factions.”
“If that were true I would throw you to the dogs and be happy about it, but we both know that the second you are replaced, and probably before, they’ll go back to blazing away at each other.”
“They never stopped. The whole ceasefire is a figment of the politicos’ imaginations. On the ground, it’s business as usual.”
She glanced over at me. “And that offends you, does it?”
“Believe it or not, I don’t enjoy blowing away citizens.” OK—that was a little white lie, at least when it came to some of Faith’s more prominent militias. “I just don’t see why we’re here. We’re not allowed to stop them. We just stand around with our thumbs in our asses giving them extra targets to practice on. People are dying down there while we pretend that we give a shit for the benefit of the citizens back in the Core. We could put a stop to the nonsense down there in five days. But we’re not allowed to.”
She glanced at her slate again and then back at me. “We’re not supposed to intervene. We’re supposed to let the citizens work out their problems in their own way and in their own time. Think of how it would look if we put troops on the ground. It would be Corinthia all over again. We’re here to support and encourage the peace process.”
“So we do nothing until the bodycount rises into the tens of thousands? That’s the plan?”
“Well at least there are forty-four less troublemakers down there for you to worry about. You moved us a tick toward the intervention threshold all by yourself.”
There was not a lot I could say about that so instead I asked, “What’s going to happen next?”
“The local Reps are still on the warpath. The Accord Arbitrators are pissed off. Fortunately for you Representative Monger supports you one hundred and ninety eight per cent.”
Monger was the figurehead of the Fiscal Loyalists, a coalition of local business types and the big off-world mining and agri corps. No representation without taxation was their slogan. Anybody who put the boot into the church militias was all right by them. And their money talked at least when it came to Federal politics.
“Nice to know the taxpayers are on my side.”
“Let’s see if they feel the same way when the bill for reparations comes in.”
“Just tell them that all the bullets the Jihad wasted on me, won’t be used to extract protection money from the local corporates.”
“We’ll be having full and frank discussions about the situation.”
“I know what that means.”
“You don’t know anything. Haven’t you got that into your head yet? I am trying to put out the fire you just lit and I would appreciate a little cooperation while I am doing it.”
“By that you mean contrition.”
“I just don’t want you smartmouthing the Reps and the Arbitrators, at least not until I’ve pulled you out of this hole you seem determined to dig yourself into. Just keep a low profile. Think you can manage that?”
“What does my psych test say?”
“You really want to know?”
I nodded.
“That you are kind of a dick.”
“But at least I am the sort of dick you’ll want to have around when the Assimilators come back.”
“Let’s hope we never find out. I’m not sure we’re in a position to do anything about them after the last wave of budget cuts.”
And suddenly I knew what all this was about. Election year. Budget cuts. Lots of Grid footage of me mowing down civilians. Lots of peaceniks in the Core saying this is what our tax dollars are being used for.
“I hate it when StarForce becomes a political football,” I said.
“War is an extension of politics by other means,” the Colonel said. “So are military budgets.”
“I didn’t notice any of our politicians in the dropships when we were fighting the Brood,” I said.
“Probably just as well, they would only have got us killed.”
“And they can do that without getting into the ships,” I said. She gave me a strange look.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes they can. Now get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Five
My squad were waiting at their table in the mess. They kept their eyes glued to their cards as I entered. I ignored the catcalls form Anderson and Medved’s people and made my way across to the table where my squad sat.
“How did it go?” Medico Mark asked without lifting his gaze from the hand of blues and reds. With his cropped blonde hair and chiseled blue-eyed good looks he could have passed for a local and joined the Jihad if he felt like it.
“About as well as could be expected,” I said. “I got the speech about how we don’t shoot the voters.”
“Enough,” roared Raqequit. He slammed one huge fist down on the tabletop, giving Lopez a view of his cards.
I looked at him just in case he was planning to cold cock me. He’d been on the edge of a Blitz breakdown for a while now. “Sorry, what was that?”
“We don’t shoot the voters enough,” he bellowed. “That’s the problem. If we did, they would be a bit more careful about who they pointed their weapons at.”
“I don’t think the Colonel would agree with you,” said Medico Mark. He put a red three down on top of a green three.
“She’s paid to disagree with me,” shouted Raqequit. “She has to say don’t shoot the voters.”
“We are supposed to be protecting them,” said Lopez. He studied his cards with a worried expression. He seemed to find losing embarrassing. He gave the game as much thought as he would tactical dispositions on the battlefield.
“Seems to me that we could cut the deathrate ninety-nine per cent by sending in the drones and disarming them,” said Mark. He shook his head and picked something up from the top of the deck.
“That’s why we’re not allowed to send the drones down,” said Raqequit. “They can claim it violates the tenets of their faith all they like, but it is the real reason.”
“It is one of the tenets of their faith,” Lopez said, putting his hand of cards face down and staring hard at Ragequit. “They don’t believe a machine should be made in the image of a man or software in the image of a man’s mind. They don’t want to join the Ascendants in the Singularity States. They don’t want to be slaves to the A.I.s.”
Raqequit turned unblinking porcelain blue eyes on him, and reached up to scratch his shaved head with one huge paw. “We’re not slaves to the A.I.s.”
“That’s because all the smart ones have gone to the Singularity. The INT Cap sees to that. The only things left are the ones like Orbital and our golems, who don’t cross the Brin Threshold for manumission.”
“You’re all wrong,” I said, to stop the argument I could see inevitably heading across the event horizon. “They don’t want drones down there, they want living bodies.”
“How so?” shouted Raqequit.
“So they can shoot at us. It’s part of their insurgency strategy. They can make life uncomfortable for the Fed Gov by inflicting casualties on its people. You can’t do that if there’s only drones to shoot at. That’s why they killed the Enforcers.”
“Well you taught them that’s not such a good idea either,” said Lopez.
“StarForce!” Ragequit shouted. “They should call us Hostage Force and have done with it.”
“Don’t even think about,” I said. “Remember when they were going to rebrand us PeaceF
orce.”
“PeaceForce,” Ragequit said. “Who would want to join PeaceForce? StarForce is bad enough.”
Lopez covered his eyes with his hand. Medico Mark glared at me. “You had to do it, hadn’t you?”
“It beats listening to you all argue about religion,” I said.
“Join StarForce, they said,” Ragequit ranted. “Join StarForce and see the Galaxy. Join StarForce and fight the alien hordes. I thought they said alien whores. Mud wrestling in an Arcturan brothel, I thought. But no . . . they really meant alien hordes. I ended up in a bloody foxhole being shot at by Brood corpse warriors. Would they listen to me, when I tried to explain there had been a misunderstanding? No. They bloody well would not. And now they send me here on a bloody peacekeeping mission. Except there’s no peace to keep, and I’m not allowed to shoot the people shooting at me because of politicians, and I’m not allowed to deploy my robogrunts because it’s against the shooter’s bloody religion. I tell you there are times when I would rather be fighting the Assimilators again.”
“You’ve got him nostalgic for the Brood,” said Medico Mark, pointing an accusing finger at me. “You’re a monster.”
“My work here is done,” I said. “I shall bid you goodnight.”
“BastardForce,” Ragequit shouted. “That’s what we should be called. People would respect BastardForce!”
I left the mess to ironic applause from the rest of the squads. They were grateful really though. Because Lopez had been right. The militias would think twice about trying to off us after today. At least I hoped that was the case.
My room had not got any bigger during my absence. It was still the same standard issue cell that all stormtroopers get on an Orbital Platform. It had a porthole looking out at the stars because I had requested one. It had a picture of Maria mag-clipped to the wall. Wherever my wife was now I hoped it was better than here.
I stared at her as I removed my armor and my helmet. Then I lay down on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Sleep would not come. I turned over the events of the day in my head.
Was there something I could have done different?
It was hard to see how. The Jihad were always going to come at us. They claimed our mere presence on their world was a provocation. They did not want us here. They just wanted to be left in peace so they could kill their neighbors and the refugees.
We would have let them do it too, if some of those neighbors had not been taxpayers and if the Faith wyrmgate had not been strategically located near the boundary zones with the Shogunate. FedGov could not afford any instability here at this time, not with border tensions running so high.
The militias had a nasty habit of picking on anybody they saw as different and a number of Shogunate merchants had been blowtorched. That had given the samurai warlords an excuse to rattle their ghostblades at us. We’d be trading shots soon if this kept up.
I could not sleep so I called up a vid, one so dull I hoped it would put me to sleep.
The holo swirled into being over my head, shifting its position to track my eyes and generally keep within my line of sight. I saw the usual historical stuff. Holos of the Orange Voortrekkers heading out from Sol, followed by the rest of the Christian Utopian Diaspora. Some of them departed even before the wyrmgates opened, taking their generation starships with them. Most of them had religious objections to machine intelligence, genetic engineering, or both. Later they followed the wyrmlines out from the gate, skimming past innumerable Corpse Worlds, looking for places that would still hold life.
At this point, as always, the voiceover had to pause and talk dramatically about the Corpse Worlds and give the usual useless speculation about the Extinction Event. You know, you’ve heard it. The deep gravelly voice. The ominous background music—what could have wiped out almost all advanced civilizations in the galaxy all those tens of thousands of years ago? Why was mankind spared?
Many of the Christopians saw the Hand of God, of course. The galaxy had been scoured so His Chosen could inherit it. The Flood had really referred to the Extinction Event. The Earth had been the Ark. It was as plausible a theory as any we had.
The Diaspora had accelerated during the Machine War and the Manumission. The A.I.s and Ascendant Humanity had walled themselves off in the Singularity States. The rest of us had stayed behind and become the Federal Republic, the Shogunate, and all the other Survivor States that had chosen to avoid accelerated evolution.
The Christopians and the other cultural Amish, the Kaliban, the True Humans, and the rest of them had lit out for the Far Frontier, to put distance between themselves and Children of the Devil Machines.
And then came the Brood. We woke them on some infected station somewhere beyond the Rim and they swept into human space borne on our own ships. For a decade or so it had been touch or go. A flicker of images showing destroyed worlds, corpse warriors, giant monsters, progenitor bio-ships big as small worlds.
I caught sight of myself, younger, strapping on a nuke and being shot into the maw of the Progenitor Ark. I pushed those memories aside. I did not need any reminders of the Assimilation. I had fought it every step of the way. It had looked for a season as if humanity would be absorbed. Then the Brood hit a Singularity station.
Big mistake. Warmind Ares wasn’t going to put up with that. Nano factories the size of small worlds belched forth ships and battledrones. Asteroid belts were dismantled to provide materiel. The Ascendant Legions tipped the balance of the war. The Brood were destroyed absolutely and utterly. And then the forces of the Posthuman Ascendancy withdrew to their singularities once more.
Of course, during the Assimilation, the Christopians and the others had little to no chance of standing up against the Brood. They had thrown themselves under the protection of whatever faction could shield them. That’s how we had acquired responsibility for Faith and a dozen other worlds like it. They had become part of the Federal Republic of Terra. Most unwillingly. They had stayed loyal just so long as the Brood was a threat. Now they wanted to be free of our yoke. Rumors abounded that the Brood had been a creation of the Feds intended to let us take over, that the Republic was secretly run by the Satanic Posthuman Intelligences of the Ascendancy. And so on and so on. Sleep came.
A small incessant buzzing woke me from a dark dream. I was with my wife in the hospice again. She was skeletal, only her eyes still alive as they gazed at the crucifix on the far wall. She raised a claw-like hand and gestured to it, seemed on the verge of saying something important but I never got to hear it. The buzzing kept on.
“You awake?” the Colonel asked over the internal Grid.
“Nope. I talk in my sleep.”
“It’s funny, sensors show you’re awake.”
“There’s always a margin of error with these things.”
“You’re up for a run to the surface.”
“You sure you trust me not to massacre the civilians?”
“It might not matter. We’ve just got an alert from one our agents in Sternheim, Priority One.”
“This agent reliable?”
“Graded as such.”
“They say what the flap is?”
“Couldn’t talk without blowing cover. We need a pickup and we need it to look real.”
“Where is it?”
“Jihad territory.”
“That why you want me? To make it look real?”
“Make it convincing. Fast and dirty.”
“On my way. Upload the briefing.”
“Already done.”
I pulled myself out of bed, kissed my fingertips then touched Maria’s portrait, then got into my armor. Time to go to work.
Chapter Six
I’ve raided dozens of medical facilities in my time. They’ve always been used as cover by the bad guys. What were the chances that the Sternheim Hospital for Sick Children was going to be any different? With a name like that I expected to see rooms packed with wounded militiamen as soon as I kicked in the door.
Dave was siloed dormant on
my back, translations systems linked to my armor and ready to go. I clutched a thunderflash in my hand, in case I was greeted by a hail of bullets. It had taken ten minutes of argument with the Arbitrators to get even that special effects firecracker approved under the Peacekeeping Accord. My reaper was still on lockdown. My Magnum was empty at least until I could acquire some more bullets.
The plastic door splintered nicely under the impact of my armored boot. Women and children wailed in terror. I could hardly blame them. I’d put the holographic burning skull up over my helmet. It did nothing to reassure the screaming three-year-olds but at least it provided some much-needed contrast to the pictures of pink unicorns and smiling teddy bears that covered the walls.
On the plus side, I hadn’t thrown the flash grenade. Yet.
Under the circumstances there was not much I could do but go ahead. The pickup order said extremely urgent. Fast and dirty was what I had been told. Fast and dirty it was going to be.
The kids screamed and dove for cover behind the chairs and tables. Their mothers reached into their purses, handbags, and daysacks and produced an interesting assortment of firepower. There was everything, ranging from the smallest concealed-carry pistols right up to an Ishtar Mark Three hand blaster with meson-laser targeting system. Good handgun that. All of the weapons were pointing at me.
The faces above the barrels didn’t look any too friendly. Lips were thin lines. Eyes were narrowed. The shooting stances were very good. Say what you like about the Aryan Jihad, they know how to teach weapon skills.
A small girl ran up to me and started battering me on the leg with her doll. “Leave my mummy alone,” she said.
She came all the way up to my knee. I looked down at her and said, “Citizen, you are assaulting a Federal Stormtrooper. The penalty for that is up to ten years hard labor.”
Mummy’s face got darker and more rage clotted. The rest of the ladies obviously didn’t know a joke when they heard one. Fingers tightened on triggers. Tough crowd.