Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

The garrison
had two approaches, one from directly in front and one from the side. 
Foveaux’s forces came from the tunnel to the side.  Exiting the tunnel the
three transports found themselves in a wider space with a perimeter wall and an
entrance to the compound beyond guarded by two USAN troops.

Maya got out
of the first transport and approached the guards.  “Can we come in? 
I’d like to talk with Colonel Shaw.”

“Do you have
an appointment, Ms?” said one of the guards.

“I don’t,”
said Maya, “but it’s urgent.  Could you get the colonel out here for me?”

The guards conferred,
then one wandered away a short distance, mumbling into his comdev.  The
other spoke to Foveaux.  “We’re trying to get hold of the colonel for you
now, Ms.  Would you mind waiting back in the transport?”

“I would,
actually,” said Foveaux.  She walked back to the lead transport and banged
on the side.  The back doors opened and officers spilled out.  She
repeated the operation on the other two transports until she was surrounded by
armed officers.  As planned, the most heavily armed were at the front. 
The guard now mumbled something into his comdev.  He conferred a bit then
put the comdev away.

He approached
Foveaux.  “Ms, could you please have your people wait in the transports?”
he said.  If he was nervous, he wasn’t showing it.

“We’re fine,
thank you,” said Foveaux.

The guard
backed away without argument, once again speaking into his comdev.  The
other guard approached him and spoke quietly into his ear.  He nodded, and
the two guards went back to their positions either side of the gate.  The
second guard shouted to Foveaux, “The colonel will be with you
presently.”  He went back to guarding, looking bored.

Ten minutes
later Colonel Katrina Shaw left the garrison building and strode toward the
gate.  She was flanked by her subordinate officers, Majors Edley and
Bowers.  Behind them were at least a dozen armed soldiers of the
USAN.  They carried their sub machine guns in their hands, marching in
step with their commanding officers.

Shaw was an
unusually tall woman, and broad.  She had swimmer’s shoulders and her dark
hair was closely cropped.  She had strong features.  Within a few
seconds they were at the gate.  Shaw gestured to the guards, who raised
the barrier, and she walked through to meet Foveaux.  Her phalanx of
guards remained inside the compound, two deep across the entrance.

“Colonel
Shaw,” she said, “you must be Maya Foveaux.  We’ve talked before, nice to
meet you finally.  What can we do for you?”

Maya had
planned to offer Shaw her hand, but reacting to Shaw’s tone, she felt
disinclined to do so.  “I’m here representing the new Martian Security
Service.  I’d like to discuss the handover of security operations.”

“‘Hand over
of security operations,’ well, well,” said Shaw.  “My commanding officer
hasn’t informed me of any such handover, so until I have a signed order from
her there isn’t much to discuss.”

“Your
commanding officer won’t know about it because the decision came from me. 
We’re taking over your operations.  That’s just how it is.  I’d like
it very much if you’d work with me.  You and your people have a wealth of
knowledge and other resources that could be of great benefit to our new
service.  We can work out terms and a timetable and do this in a civilized
manner.  I can offer a job to any of your people who want one.”

Shaw shifted her
weight from one leg to the other.  “And on whose authority are you
acting?”

“The
authority of the people of Mars and President Elect Charles Venkdt.”

Shaw
nodded.  “I’m an officer of the USAN Army.  It says so right here on
my shirt,” she said, pointing to her shirt.  “We swear an oath of
allegiance to our country, and we answer to our commander-in-chief,
President Cortes.”

She took a
step closer to Foveaux.  “I do not recognise the authority of Charles
Venkdt, so unless I hear otherwise from my superiors I will continue to run
this garrison as the USAN has ordered me to.”

She turned to
walk away but Foveaux called after her.  “How long have you been
here?  Nine years?”

Shaw stopped
and turned back.  “It’ll be ten, next spring.”

“You like it
here, right?  You’re settled.  What’s back there for you?  I
know most of your men and women do a tour or two and rotate back, but not
you.  You’re one of us, Katrina.  A Martian.  Help us build the
new Mars.”

Shaw eyed her
suspiciously.  “I’d prefer you to address me as Colonel Shaw,” she said,
“and I will not be able to assist you building a new country.”  She spat
the words out contemptuously.  “My loyalty is to the USAN, under whose
president I serve.  Until I receive the order I will not arrest you for
treason, sedition or a hundred and one other things I could think of. 
Until then, get your goddamned tanks off my lawn.  Because I promise you
this; if you want a real live shooting war I’ll give you one.”  She turned
and disappeared through her armed escort, who remained at the entryway staring
out at Foveaux’s Martian Security Service personnel, who stared back. 
There were maybe ten metres between the two groups, both carrying arms, both
staring silently across the border between Martian soil and the one remaining
vestige of the USAN’s authority on the Martian surface.

Foveaux
waited a while.  She hadn’t expected the meeting to go in her favour but
she was disappointed with Shaw’s entrenched attitude.  Still, a point had
been made.  The garrison was contained.  Shaw must know for sure now
that she was outnumbered by the MSS and lacked popular support in the wider
community.  It would keep her at bay but Foveaux really needed the
garrison to be totally neutralized.  She would have liked to have Shaw on-side,
and on a more prosaic level she wanted the garrison building itself.  She
could work on that later.

Foveaux
banged the side of a transport with her fist.  “Okay people, load up,” she
said.  Her officers dutifully trudged to their transports and climbed
aboard.  Foveaux saw them all in before she took her place in the first
one and led them back through the tunnel.

By the time
she got back to her office it was late.  The signing back in of all the
kit and
the debrief
had taken longer than necessary. 
It was gone 02:00 in the morning when Foveaux sat back in her chair.  She
felt exhausted.  Maybe it was the long day, or the adrenaline from the
stand-off with Shaw.  There was a slightly dreamlike quality to it
all, like it maybe wasn’t actually happening.  It seemed too fast, too
crazy.

She thought
about what she would need to do next.  Her first priority was to get the
MSS fully established.  Lacking the garrison building she would have to
run it all from Venkdt Security for the time being.  She worried about how
that might look, what with the conflict of interests.  She reasoned that
she might get away with it for a few months.  Everyone was so giddy with
independence fever they would hardly notice.  Maybe she could ask Venkdt
for a new site.  He might have some warehouses or disused facilities that
could do the job for a while.

She felt
confident with her personnel.  They had done well, doing exactly what had
been asked of them.  She had worked with them a long time and knew they
could be trusted.  The work ahead was going to be tough, but she felt
assured.  The only cloud on the horizon was Colonel Katrina Shaw and the
USAN Garrison.  She kept mulling over what her next move might be. 
Shaw would have to leave the garrison at some point.  There were no
flights back to Earth for nearly two years.  Was she really going to sit
it out for that long?  Maybe she should have tried a more diplomatic
approach.  Shaw was the key.  Maybe she would work on Shaw.  She
made a note on her terminal: ‘Invite Colonel Shaw for dinner.’  “Scratch
that,” she said aloud to the terminal.  “Invite Colonel Shaw for
breakfast.”  She then set to work on some documents and did not fall
asleep until well into the night.

Katrina Shaw
was a career soldier.  She had signed up when she was twenty-one and
fresh out of school.  She had done officer training and risen quickly
through the ranks, eventually attaining the position of colonel.  She had
been posted around the world and had requested to be considered for the Mars
job should it become available.  The stars aligned for her and, coming off
a posting to Australia, she left for Mars in 2231.

She was well
suited to the post.  Though fascinated by military matters her strengths
were man-management.  The role on Mars was an odd one for the
army.  It was part symbolic and part police force.  Shaw found it
interesting, and she liked the
smalltown
feel of the
place.  The only thing she missed was the horses.  There were some on
Mars, but a trot around a dome was a poor substitute for the wild rides she had
taken across the New Mexico deserts when she was a girl.  She still rode
occasionally, either in a dome or an IVR, but she sometimes longed for the open
spaces.

Shaw arrived
at Foveaux’s HQ at 07:00 in the morning.  Foveaux was asleep at her
desk.  She woke with a start and leapt up.  “I’m so sorry, Colonel, I
must’ve fallen asleep,” she said.

“No apologies
necessary,” said Shaw.  “What is it?”

“I just
thought we should talk, woman to woman, without the theatrics.”

“Okay. 
I’m listening.”

Foveaux
gestured to a sofa.  “Please, sit down,” she said.  They sat on the
sofa.

“I know
you’re in a tough position.  I want to help you negotiate a path through
it in a way that’s best for you and best for us.”

“I thought I
was coming here for breakfast,” said Shaw.

“Of course,”
said Foveaux.  She spoke to her comdev.  “Can we get some food in
here, please?  Two breakfasts and some coffee.”

“Yes, sir,”
came the reply.

“You’re in a
tough situation.  You have to hold your position as instructed, even
though you know it’s pointless and won’t achieve anything.  We will
prevail, eventually, with you or without you.”

Shaw had a
quizzical smirk on her face.  “I guess you’re going to advise me on what I
should do next?”

“Yes, I
am.  This doesn’t have to be a fight.  If you join with us you can
bring all of your subordinates with you.  They won’t be committing
treason, they’ll just be following orders.”

“I thought I
made my position clear last night.”

“You did,
abundantly so.  That was before you knew about this.”  Foveaux tapped
her comdev and her terminal screen was displayed on the wall.  A document
there showed precise battle orders for an MSS attack on the garrison. 
There were diagrams, times and troop numbers.  Shaw studied the plan
carefully then turned to Foveaux.

“First of
all, that’s a terrible plan of attack.  I can see you’re a goddamned
amateur at this and you’re right about needing help.  Secondly, this is
obviously a bluff.”

“Well,” said
Foveaux, “we can debate the first point, but you’re right on the second. 
It’s a bluff.  But what if you decided to take it at face value? 
Surely capitulating in the face of such insurmountable odds would be the
honourable thing to do.  You would be able to justify surrendering your
forces in order to save them from a massacre.  They would be answerable to
you and off the hook for any charges that might get thrown about at a later
date.  And you would be able to justify your actions as the only course
you could take in order to avoid unnecessary loss of life.”

Shaw
thought.  “I don’t think I could convince a court martial that I found
these bullshit plans in the least bit plausible.”

A droid
entered the room with the breakfast.  Shaw poured herself a coffee. 
“And if I can’t do that it leaves me on the hook for all of it.  Treason,
Commissioner Foveaux, and by a commanding officer no less.”

“Surrendering
isn’t treasonous and I’d make sure there was plenty of evidence that you were
acting under duress, with no other reasonable option open to you.  In ten,
fifteen years this will all be a distant memory.  They’ll forget all about
it - maybe even give you a medal.  Help me build the
MSS.  Don’t stand in the way of history.”

Shaw took a
long draw from her coffee.  “Thank you for breakfast, Commissioner
Foveaux.  I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavours.”  She
held out her hand.  Foveaux took it and shook it firmly.  “I’ll look
forward to the attack,” she said, and winked.  She stood and went to leave
the room.  Maya stood too.

“What if we
do attack?” she said.

“Now why on
God’s green Earth would you do that?” said Shaw.

“To make it
look plausible,” said Maya.

Shaw stopped
in the doorway.  “You’d do that?  Bring two opposing forces together
and risk a real live shooting war just to make it look like you mean business?”

“If I have
to, yes,” said Foveaux.  “Do I have to?”

Shaw stepped
back into the room, square on to Foveaux, eye to eye.  She was close
enough that Foveaux could see the fine downy hair on her cheeks. 
“Commissioner,” she said, “I sure as hell hope you’re a better reader of people
than you are a military tactician.  Do what you need to do, but make damn
sure you do it right.”  She turned smartly on her heel and left.