Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (17 page)

“They’re not in our wormhole,” I said. “We’re all in separate universes of our own.”

They still seemed subdued when I escorted them back to their stateroom, apart from Frank Wong, who caught my arm and pulled me to one side. He didn’t know how lucky he was. The Marines had taught me what to do with someone who caught hold of me with unpleasant intentions. I could have broken his arm quite easily.

“You know that Ensign you had helping us yesterday,” he asked, with a leer. “What would it take to have her sharing my bunk for a night?”

I couldn’t help it. I just stared at him. Ensign Gomez was beautiful, with delicate Hispanic features and a warm smile that seemed to light up the room, but I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. She was on her first cruise as an Ensign – she’d graduated from the class after mine, back at the Academy – and she was hard to think ill of, even though I tried. It was the job of a Lieutenant to toughen up the Ensigns. Had I ever been that young?

“You won’t even think about it,” I hissed, angrily. It was all I could do not to knock his teeth down his throat, but the Captain would have been annoyed. I didn’t want to think about his reaction to this incident. “She’s an officer on this ship and not someone you can hire, understand?”

Frank was either too stupid or too sure of himself to back down quickly. “When I was on the old Panama, the Captain sent two young Ensigns to share my bunk,” he said, his voice hardening. “You will send her to me or…”

“No,” I said, flatly. I believed him – there were Captains who would quite happily do that, even though regulations forbade it – but this wasn't the Panama. “If you touch her without her permission, I will beat hell out of you, understand?”

He wilted, perhaps finally sensing that I was serious. “I have powerful friends,” he called after me, his voice shaking. “You’ll regret this…”

The hatch cut him off and I stormed away, shaking with rage. How dare he ask me to send him an Ensign for the night? It was quite possible that Ensign Gomez wasn't as innocent as she looked – she’d grown up in Ciudad Barranquilla, one of the worst cities on Earth – but even so, how dare he treat me as a pimp, or a procurer? I wasn't going to allow him to bully me like that, even if it cost me my career. I was still raging when I reported to Anna and made a full confession. I had to know where Captain Shalenko stood on such incidents.

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” Anna said, once I’d explained everything. “The Captain will put him through a bulkhead if he tries anything like that on one of his crew.”

“Thanks,” I said, more relieved than I cared to admit. “I just…”

“It won’t be the last time,” Anna warned, slowly. “That kind of people will always treat us in the Peace Force as second-class citizens. We’re the ones who were foolish enough to sign our lives away, after all.”

I nodded slowly. The Peace Force recruiting office claimed that most recruits enjoyed a high standard of living, and excellent job prospects after retirement, but they were lying, of course. The Academy had been hard enough and the starships had been primitive for the newly-minted Ensigns; I dreaded to think what life on some of the research colonies or military bases was like. Afterwards…well, it wasn't uncommon to set veterans on the streets, begging for money. A handful had even been burned to death by the gangs.

“But if it happens again, report it at once,” she added. “I’d better have a few words with the Ensigns as well. We can’t forbid the bastards from chatting up the Ensigns, but we can promise them that if they do get…taken against their wills, they will be supported. The Captain won’t take that lightly.”

“Thank you,” I said, again. “You’ve put my mind at rest.”

“Mine isn’t,” Anna said, with a grin. “You’re on watch in thirty minutes. Go grab a cup of tea or coffee from the mess before you go on watch, or the Captain will throw you off the bridge for being distracted.”

I nodded and left her cabin.

The days wore on slowly, falling into a routine. I stood my watches – with the Captain or Anna watching me, at first – and learned more about the Devastator and her capabilities. Captain Shalenko insisted that we all be trained in operating every console on both the bridge and the Combat Information Centre – the Devastator had both, as did the Kofi Annan – just in case one of the regular officers was wounded. I hadn’t realised just how capable the Devastator actually was until I worked through the tactical simulations. We could strike and blow up an infantry unit on the surface below and never cause any collateral damage. We could dominate an entire planet from orbit. I began to understand, in a way, why the Admiral was so confident. He had weapons that no insurgents could hope to match.

And yet, I wondered in the dead of night, if that were the case, why was Terra Nova still a running sore?

“Because the weapons are only useful if they find a target,” Kitty explained, one night. We had taken to spending most of our off-duty time together, mainly playing chess or watching videos. One of the videos on the computer had been a documentary entitled The Liberation of Heinlein, which had apparently been produced before the fleet had departed to invade the target world. It seemed to be nothing, but poorly-cobbled together propaganda, without any mention of either violence or political upheaval. “How do you sort out an insurgent from a loyal citizen?”

I blinked at her, almost missing her attempt to fork my king and queen. “That’s against the Laws of War,” I protested, horrified. I’d only seen a pirate ship before…and then I remembered the ambush on Terra Nova. I hadn’t really had a chance to take in the details, but had they been wearing uniforms. “They can’t do that, can they?”

Kitty snorted. “I do wonder what he saw in you,” she said, dryly. “If a Law of War only benefits one side, why should the other one follow it?”

I nodded in reluctant understanding. “And so they hide among the people?”

“More or less,” Kitty agreed. “I bet you dinner somewhere expensive, perhaps on our next shore leave, that we’ll take the high orbitals all right, and then find ourselves trapped in a long insurgency, again. The Captain won’t permit random bombardment of the planet and even if he did, it wouldn’t solve the problem. We might never break the planet entirely.”

“No bet,” I said, without hesitation. Kitty was almost certainly right. “I don’t understand, then. Why was the Admiral so confident of victory?”

Kitty smiled. “How many Infantrymen are there in the troop transports?”

“Two hundred thousand,” I said, automatically. The troop transports were among the largest ships in the fleet, converted colonist-carriers. The UN preached that Earth’s population problem would be solved by exporting the population to the colonies, but even I knew that the logistics would never work. We might be able to export maybe two million a year, perhaps more if we really worked at it, but in that time the population would grow again. “I don’t understand…”

“They’re the dregs of society,” Kitty said, seriously. “The Admiral wouldn’t care in the slightest if half of them died to bring Heinlein back into the United Nations. Why should he? They’re pulled off the streets, given just enough training to make them dangerous, and then sent out to occupy resentful planets. Most of them will never be able to claim the patch of land the UN promises them in exchange for their services.”

She paused and moved a pawn forward. “I don’t know about the enemy, John,” she said, “but by God they frighten me.”

I lifted an eyebrow at her choice of words. Religion had no place in the UN’s brave new world, or so we had been told. It was illegal to discriminate against any particular religion, but practicing any religion was not encouraged. Muna had been allowed to keep her scarf for some reason, but she’d received no other encouragement. It simply wasn't allowed.

“They’re hated on every world,” Kitty added, grimly. “Whatever hope there was that the worlds might come into the UN voluntarily, they destroy, just by behaving like complete bastards, looting, raping and murdering wherever they go. They’re not Marines, John; remember that. They’re monsters in UN uniforms.”

She reached out and touched my icon the Senior Chief had given me. “Welcome to the Brotherhood,” she said. I felt my heartbeat racing suddenly. “The best we can do is try to prevent our honour from being tarnished any further.”

“You’re in the Brotherhood?” I asked, astonished. I hadn’t even given any through to who else might be in the Brotherhood, although I would have bet good money that Captain Harriman was a Brother, and Captain Shalenko was not. “How did you know about me…?”

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” Kitty said, her green eyes very serious. I caught her meaning and nodded. The Security Department wouldn’t hesitate to subject us both to intensive interrogation if they realised that we were members of what they would regard as a subversive group. “You’re young, but the word was passed along to keep an eye on you. You’re not the first to have doubts.”

I stared at her. “Kitty…what happens if we get caught?”

Kitty shrugged. “How many members of the Brotherhood do you know?” She held up a hand before I could answer. “I doubt you know more than three at most – don’t tell me – and you won’t encounter many others face to face. What you don’t know can’t be forced from you. I only told you now because you need to know that you’re not alone.”

A nasty thought crossed my mind. “Kitty…how do we know that the Brotherhood is real?” I asked. “What if it’s secretly run by the Security Department?”

“They’d have rounded us all up by now,” Kitty said. “I suspect that they do have some idea we exist, but they’re not really capable of rooting us all out, for various reasons. Several…ah, friends went silent last year and I think that they did get caught, but they weren’t able to betray the rest of us.” She shook her head. “We’ll talk more about that later. Checkmate.”

I looked down at the board. She’d won, all right. “Neat,” I said, admiringly. I’d played Chess in the Academy team and declined an offer to play for the big leagues. Kitty made me look like a newcomer. “Why can’t we do something?”

“Like what?” Kitty asked, seriously. “What is going to happen to Heinlein is going to happen and there is nothing we can do to stop it? Look” – she continued, catching my expression – “suppose that you have Brotherhood cells on all of the starships. What would we do with them? How could we coordinate our actions openly and take the ships, knowing that everything would be so confused…and what if Heinlein attacks?”

“I see,” I said, but Kitty wasn't finished.

“The Admiral was convinced that Heinlein has no warships,” Kitty continued. “I suspect that they will have a few surprises waiting for us. They have to know that the United Nations won’t let their defiance pass. The last thing we need is a struggle for power when the fleet is under attack. Besides, who can we trust?”

I nodded, reluctantly. Everyone knew about the dangers of informers in the ranks, men and women who would betray their comrades to the UN Security Department for money, or power, or even under threat of blackmail. Who could we trust? We’d probably end up shooting at each other.

“We’ll talk more later,” Kitty said, standing up. “Get some sleep. You’re going to need it tomorrow.”

I couldn’t sleep very well that night, or the night afterwards. I kept working the problem, trying to find a solution, but Kitty was right. There was nothing we could do to prevent the invasion from taking place, leaving us all as unwilling participants in the UN’s plan. I thought, seriously, about deserting, but where would I go? Earth would hardly welcome me now. Three weeks later, when we arrived at Heinlein, I was still no closer to a solution.

The Admiral had claimed that victory would be easy.

Need I mention that it was nothing of the sort?

Chapter Fourteen

The UN claims to be expert in space combat, but the truth is that few are truly expert in space combat. The pre-space dreams of clashes between vast fleets of space dreadnaughts have not materialised. It is rare for any armed encounter between the UNPF and the pirates to involve more than two vessels, or indeed to end in anything, but a draw. True space combat is more theoretical than anything else. The UNPF’s failure to understand that this was a weakness cost it heavily in some of the main campaigns of the war.

-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.

“Wormhole exit in fifty seconds, sir,” the Pilot said. “All systems are standing by.”

“Excellent,” Captain Shalenko said. He, at least, wasn't trusting his ship to a green Ensign when we entered a war zone. “All hands, this is the Captain. Battle stations. I say again, battle stations.”

I checked the duplicate tactical console quickly, confirming that I was locked out of the system – unless something happened to Anna. I doubted that it would matter that much – if Anna was taken out, the entire ship would probably be lost – but the Great God Regulations demanded my presence. At least the reporters weren’t on the bridge. The Captain had insisted that they remain in their stateroom until the system was secure and none of them, even Frank, had dared to argue.

“Systems ready, sir,” I said, when the Captain checked with me. If everything went to plan, I’d be nothing, but a helpless observer.