The Prince’s Gambit

(The Empire’s Corps – Book XX)

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

All Comments Welcome!

Series Listing

Book One: The Empire’s Corps
Book Two: No Worse Enemy
Book Three: When The Bough Breaks
Book Four: Semper Fi
Book Five: The Outcast
Book Six: To The Shores
Book Seven: Reality Check
Book Eight: Retreat Hell
Book Nine: The Thin Blue Line 
Book Ten: Never Surrender
Book Eleven: First To Fight
Book Twelve: They Shall Not Pass
Book Thirteen: Culture Shock
Book Fourteen: Wolf’s Bane
Book Fifteen: Cry Wolf
Book Sixteen: Favour The Bold
Book Seventeen: Knife Edge
Book Eighteen: The Halls of Montezuma
Book Nineteen: The Prince’s War
Book Twenty: The Prince’s Gambit

Cover Blurb

New Doncaster should have been a success.  It wasn’t.  A deeply-corrupt and embedded ruling class, disenfranchised settlers and embittered indentured workers – slaves in all but name – have poisoned the planet, unleashing the fires of class war and threatening – in the wake of Earthfall – to turn the beautiful planet into hell.  And sinister forces are stirring the pot.  Roland - once Crown Prince of Earth, now a Marine Auxiliary – was charged with building an army to stabilise New Doncaster.  But it was too late.  The rebels struck and the planet fell into civil war.

Roland scored one victory, keeping the rebels from winning in a single blow, but the war is far from over.  Rebel forces have swept over the outlying islands, destroying plantations, capturing infrastructure, liberating slaves while forcing their former owners to flee or die on the remains of their lands.  Now, with both sides preparing for the coming contest, Roland – cut off from the Marine Corps – finds himself charged with leading the government troops, to launch a desperate military gambit to win a war against a rebel force that might have right on its side. And if his gambit fails …

… The entire planet may collapse into chaos.
Historian’s Note

The Prince’s Gambit is a direct sequel to The Prince’s War, which is written to be as self-contained as possible but refers to events within When the Bough Breaks (The Empire’s Corps III) which are summarised in the prologue.  It takes place roughly a year after When the Bough Breaks and a month after The Halls of Montezuma.

CGN. 
Prologue I

From: An Unbiased History of the Imperial Royal Family.  Professor Leo Caesius.  Avalon.  206PE.

As we have seen in previous books, Prince Roland - the last surviving member of the Imperial Family - was extremely lucky to escape Earth before Earthfall.  The Childe Roland - as he was known - was a spoilt brat, permanently on the verge of descending into a sybaritic madness that would have suited the real rulers of the empire quite well.  It was only through the intervention of a Marine Pathfinder, Belinda Lawson, that Prince Roland started to climb out of the pit his minders had dug for him.  Indeed, it is quite possible - if Earthfall had been somehow delayed - that the prince would have grown into a fine young man.

But it was not to be.  Roland fled Earth and found himself in the custody of the Terran Marine Corps.  This posed a serious problem.  Legally, Roland was the ruler of the empire; practically, the empire was gone and hardly anyone would be willing to recognise Roland as the master of anything.  Even the Marine Corps had its doubts.  Roland’s reputation preceded him, to the point it was unlikely anyone who hadn’t met him would offer any support.  His value as a rallying cry for loyalists was very limited.  The corps finessed the problem by arranging for Roland to attend Boot Camp, under an assumed name.  It would either make a man out of him and give him a solid grounding in military and civil realities, or prove beyond a reasonable doubt he was unsuited for any major role in the post-Earthfall universe.

Results were decidedly mixed.  Roland had definite natural talent.  At the same time, he still bore the scars of his earlier life.  The corps was unsure if he should receive advanced training, with the aim of turning him into a full-fledged Marine, or quietly sidelining him into a less significant role.  It was decided, after much consideration, to offer Roland a chance to take command of a military training and assistance team, which would be assigned to New Doncaster.  The risk appeared minimal.  New Doncaster was a volatile planet, and long-term projections indicated the world would either fall into civil war or be invaded by one of its neighbours, but - in the short-term - Roland should be able to prove himself without any real risk.  Just in case, Specialist Rachel Green - a Pathfinder - was assigned to serve as a covert bodyguard.

It rapidly became clear that events on New Doncaster were not following the expected timeline. The situation was degenerating rapidly.  Roland’s training mission worked hard to build up the local military, despite opposition from government factions, but it was barely enough to stabilise the situation.  It seemed unlikely, despite Roland’s best efforts, that that planet could remain stable long enough for the government to start addressing the deep-rooted structural issues underlying the conflict.  Indeed, there were plenty of factions that saw no need to address the issues.

Roland showed both the strengths and weaknesses of a young officer with little practical experience.  He devised a scheme to mount an airmobile raid on a rebel base, which worked surprisingly well; he also drew up a plan to establish defence lines and blockhouses throughout the threatened islands in a bid to curtail rebel activities, a plan that might have worked if he’d had more resources at his disposal.  On the other hand, he also put his life at risk - sometimes to show the troops he was sharing the risks, sometimes for his own selfish reasons - and it could easily have ended in disaster.  However, he had good reason to think his plan would slow the rebel advance, giving the government a chance to at least try to hammer out a political solution.

He was wrong.  The rebels had long been planning a major offensive.  Roland’s army camp and the capital island came under heavy attack.  The spaceport, and the understrength Marine contingent providing protection, was destroyed in a single cataclysmic bombing.  It seemed likely, as Roland led his troops in defence of the government, that the rebels had dealt them a fatal blow.  Perhaps, if Roland had not acted so quickly, they would have won.  Instead, through heavy fighting and a great deal of luck, Roland was able to drive the rebels away from Kingston and save the government.  

However, the remainder of the rebel plans went off without a hitch.  The government’s authority across the outlying plantation islands, long hotbeds of insurgent activity, fell to rebel forces with terrifying speed.  It rapidly became apparent that, far from being beaten, the rebels had preserved much of their strength and were working to build up their forces as quickly as possible.

And, as Roland assumed command of the planetary military, it became clear the war was far from over.

Prologue II

Ludlow Estate, New Doncaster

It felt odd, Lord Hamish Ludlow reflected, to hold a party in the middle of a war.  His estate - and the island - was as secure as his personal armsmen could make it, but he had few illusions about what would happen if the rebels dispatched a small army to take his mansion and lands.  The seas were choppy, and the only safe way to reach the island was by aircraft, yet the rebels were master sailors and it was quite possible his household included some rebel sympathizers.   They were supposed to be trustworthy - they’d worked for his family for generations - but who could tell these days?  Hamish had cracked down hard, using the war situation as an excuse to keep his clients and servants under tight control, yet he feared the worst.  If the spaceport hadn’t been destroyed, he would have been very tempted to send his wife and daughters into orbit for their own safety.

Because the rebels made it clear they consider women and children to be legitimate targets, Hamish thought, coldly.  He’d seen the images from the first uprisings, the handful of video files that had been transmitted across the globe.  If they storm the island, they’ll show no mercy to anyone.

The thought pained him as he swept through the dance hall, quietly directing a handful of his fellows towards the meeting room.  His wife had arranged the ball with her usual skill, inviting everyone who was anyone; he had to admit, as he passed a pair of young debutantes being chaperoned by their mothers, that she’d done a wonderful job.  It was important to keep up the pretence that all was normal, as well as reminding the young men what they were fighting for.  He smiled, inwardly, as he spied a handful of men in fancy uniforms.  They looked ready and able to fight for the planet.  He just hoped they did as well on the battlefield as they did on the dance floor.

Hamish nodded politely to a maid as he left the hall, making his way down to the secure conference room.  It looked like a comfortable sitting room, complete with armchairs, a well-stocked drinks cabinet and a fire burning merrily in the fireplace, but his family had invested millions of credits in making the chamber as secure as possible.  They weren’t exactly going to discuss treason, but ... he shook his head.  The lower orders - and those who’d thrown their lot in with them - wouldn’t understand, if they knew what he was doing.  They’d assume he was merely being a selfish bastard, rather than a true son of New Doncaster.  His lips thinned.  Once, he could have spoken his mind and all would have listened.  Now ... speaking one’s mind risked social death.  It was just a matter of time until it meant literal death.

He poured himself a drink, then waited for the remaining three men to arrive.  They were older aristocrats, all descendants of the founders themselves ... all so deeply rooted in the planet’s history that the mere thought of pulling up roots and moving elsewhere was unthinkable.  There were no women, nor any young and foolish men.  Hamish’s mouth twisted in distaste.  It was hard to know who could be trusted, these days.  The war had sorted the men from the boys, true, but it had also made it hard to oppose the government.  And yet, government policy threatened to lead the planet to ruin ...

“Hamish,” Lord Prestwick said.  He was older than Hamish, with grey hair and cold blue eyes, but his mind was as sharp as ever.  “I assume there’s a reason you called us here?”

“Yes.”  Hamish looked from face to face.  “The first offensive will begin tomorrow.”

None of the men, he noted sourly, showed any hint of surprise.  They’d owned the government, at least until the Prime Minister had made peace with the townspeople, and they still possessed a considerable degree of influence.  The aristocracy had scattered its clients throughout the government structure; some openly patronised - in all senses of the word - some under strict orders to keep their true allegiances concealed.  It would have been more surprising if they hadn’t been aware the offensive was about to begin.  The media might have been muzzled, but word had been spreading anyway.

“That is good, is it not?”  Lord Doncaster was the oldest man in the room and the only one who could claim descent from the Doncaster.  He never let anyone forget it.  “The rebels are about to be crushed, freeing the islands from their iron grip.  Is that not good news?”

“Perhaps,” Hamish said.  It was good news.  The aristocracy owned the rebel islands.  Losing them had been painful.  Some families had gone bankrupt when their ability to pay their debts had been called into question, because they’d lost control of their lands and plantations.  “And yet, what does it mean for the future if the army emerges victorious?”

The question hung in the air.  It wasn’t enough to beat the rebels.  They had to restore the founding families to their former position of absolute mastery over the planet and that wasn’t going to be easy.  Hamish wasn’t blind to the implications of letting the townspeople have a share in government, certainly not after studying the history of Earth.  His distant ancestors had lost much of their power, after they’d widened the franchise to the point anyone could vote.  Earthfall was clear proof of what could happen if there was too much democracy.  He had no intention of letting it happen to his homeworld.  New Doncaster had once been a shining beacon of civilisation.  God willing, it would be again.

“The army is under our control,” Lord Doncaster pointed out.  “Their victories are our victories.”

“Except we don’t control the army,” Lord Prestwick countered.  “General Roland Windsor controls the army.”

He looked at Lord Windsor.  “Is he not one of yours?”

“No,” Lord Windsor said, flatly.  “When Roland Windsor arrived, we did a search of the archives.  There are quite a few people with the same name, as you can imagine, but none of them are our Roland Windsor.  If there is a family connection, it is a long way back in time.  We may share a name, but we have nothing else in common.”

“Even so,” Lord Prestwick said.  “He should support you.”

Hamish kept his face under tight control.  The age-old tradition was very simple.  The family supported its children - it birthed, educated and employed them - and, in exchange, the children supported the family.  Lord Oakley, the Prime Minister, had betrayed his family, as well as the rest of the aristocracy.  And Roland Windsor ... it was not clear if there was any connection between the imprudent young man and the Windsors of New Doncaster, but it provided a handy tool to hack away at the soldier’s reputation.  It would be easy, with a word or two in the right ear, to brand Roland Windsor a traitor.  He would never see it coming.

He tapped his glass, drawing their attention back to him.  “We have spent the last six months building up the army,” he said.  “The rebels are tougher than we thought” - it cost him to admit it - “but our victory is inevitable.  And what will happen then?”

Hamish didn’t give them time to react.

“Our forefathers were the ones who realised this world could become more than just a settlement, a refuge from the political storms battering the homeworld,” he said.  “They saw profit.  They invested vast sums in turning the planet into a going concern.  They made it work!  And are we going to step aside, to surrender to rebels and traitors and short-sighted fools and give up everything we’ve built?”

Lord Doncaster frowned.  “The government has agreed to limited political reform.”

“If there was no further reform, I might be less concerned,” Hamish told him.  “But it is unfortunately clear that each reform, each change in the rules, will lead to more demands and more changes and, eventually, we’ll surrender everything to keep the peace.  It has happened before, time and time again, on hundreds of worlds.  Once you get on the slippery slope, you cannot keep yourself from sliding down to disaster.  And if you try to say no, to uphold your old rights, you will be branded a reactionary fool if not an outright monster.  Do we want it to happen here?”

He watched their faces, hoping they’d understand and agree.  He had contingency plans, if one of the little party decided to go straight to the government, but putting them into practice would be difficult.  The old freedoms were gone.  The government’s emergency laws left little room for the old rights.  The days he was the absolute lord and master of his estate were gone.  It was up to him to bring them back.

“The army is largely townie,” he pointed out.  “What will it do, if it emerges victorious?”

“General Windsor is a Marine,” Lord Doncaster said.  “Will he not be recalled, and moved to another trouble spot?”

“We cannot count on it,” Hamish said.  “And there are townie officers making their way up the ladder.”

“They won’t reach the top,” Lord Prestwick argued.

“They’ll be in position to mount a coup,” Hamish disagreed.  “The rebels did it.  Why can’t they?”

Lord Windsor leaned forward.  “Your point is taken,” he said.  “I assume you have something in mind?”

“This is our world,” Hamish said.  He needed to remind them of it, time and time again.  They had to keep their eyes on the prize.  “And we need to defend it.”

He took a breath, then started to outline his plan.

Chapter One

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

From above, Specialist Rachel Green noted, New Doncaster was a surprisingly beautiful planet.

The hang glider - a flimsy device that would be torn to shreds if the weather changed before she reached her destination - seemed to shift slightly as she glided towards Mountebank Island.  Her passive sensor array picked up a handful of radar pulses, but not - thankfully - any active sensors that might pick her out against the charged atmosphere before it was too late.  The glider was so fragile that most sensors wouldn’t have a hope of spotting it, although she had no illusions about what would happen if the rebel defences did.  She wasn’t anything like high enough to see a missile coming towards her before it reached its target, nor would she have any hope of survival if it did.  Stealth was her only real defence and she knew it might not be enough.

It will have to be, she told herself.  We cannot afford to fail now.

She took a breath, waiting patiently as the island slowly came into view.  It looked tiny from overhead, a postage stamp of greenery set in an endless blue sea, falling slowly into darkness as the sun sank behind the horizon.  The sole city was a mass of dark buildings, the plantations beyond a haze of greenery and the burnt-out remains of manor houses and indent barracks.  Rachel’s lips twisted in disgust.  It wasn’t the first time she’d found herself, and the corps as a whole, supporting a government that didn’t deserve to exist, but it had never sat well.  She would have preferred to land an entire division, then thrash both the government and the rebels before dictating terms that might just keep the planet from exploding again when the division was pulled out and sent to the next trouble spot.  But it was not to be.  The government was the only hope of maintaining any sort of stability and that meant supporting it to the hilt.

For what it’s worth, when we have so little to offer, she thought.  New Doncaster just isn’t that important.

The thought mocked her.  She’d had reservations about the mission when she’d first been briefed, although she’d had to concede it was better than either being reassigned to another special ops team or being sent into deep cover somewhere in the former core worlds.  The Commandant had even suggested it would be a milk run, a chance to ease herself back into service after losing most of her former team.  It would hardly be the first time she’d handled close-protection duty, with orders to watch her charge while watching his back.  And yet, Prince Roland?  Everything she’d heard about the young prince had suggested he was a degenerate, a fop lost in pursuit of pleasure ... the idea he might make a Civil Guardsman, let alone a Marine, was absurd.  She’d half-expected disaster, right from the start.

And yet, he’s done better than I thought he would, she admitted, in the privacy of her own mind.  He has his flaws, and weaknesses, but he’s done well.

She twisted her head slightly, looking up.  The handful of government-owned satellites had been zapped when the rebels had started their offensive, although between their outdated technology and New Doncaster’s weather they’d been practically useless.  The government had made overtures to the spacers, in hopes they’d replace the lost satellites, but the spacers had been reluctant.  Rachel suspected half of them supported the rebels or simply wanted to wait and see who won before openly choosing a side.  The remainder wanted independence.  She had the feeling they would do what they could to stir the pot, making sure the war on the surface lasted long enough to ensure the winner inherited a ruined planet.  And there was nothing she could do about it.

And there’s no way I can send a message to Safehouse, either, she thought.  I don’t even know what happened to the messages I sent to the dead drop.

She cursed under her breath.  New Doncaster had been largely isolated since Earthfall, with only a handful of starships passing through the system before the simmering discontent had exploded into open war.  She’d sent a handful of messages on passing starships, in hopes of forwarding updates to her superiors, but she knew it would be months - at best - before there was any reply.  It was unlikely the corps would divert a starship to investigate what had happened, not unless the Commandant decided to reassign Captain Allen or Roland himself.  And then ... Rachel shook her head as a gust of wind carried her over the island.  Captain Allen was dead, killed by treacherous attack.  Roland probably wouldn’t want to leave.

Rachel put the thought out of her mind as she rechecked the sensor array.  The rebels didn’t appear to be using radio, let alone microburst transmitters, although the latter were difficult to detect, let alone pin down, before it was too late.  They’d probably be relying on landlines, if the island’s primitive communications infrastructure remained intact, or simply using couriers to take messages from place to place.  It was what she would have done, if she had been on the other side.  She knew from grim experience that anyone radiating a signal in the middle of a war zone was practically asking to get killed.

Her terminal vibrated, once.  It was time.

She braced herself.  The darkness was inching forward.  Her eyes had been heavily enhanced, allowing her to see in the dark, but she knew not to count on it.  She was too high up to be seen by the naked - unenhanced - eye, yet ... she took a breath as she unhooked herself from the glider, then allowed herself to plummet down.  The glider itself would be swept up by the wind and blown well out to sea before it came down, or so she’d been assured.  She hated the idea of leaving anything to chance but trying to land the glider or destroying it both raised the odds of detection.  She’d been careful to ensure the glider was as clean as possible, with nothing that suggested it was anything other than a civilian model flown by a dangerous sports club.  By the time it was found, if it ever was, it would be too late.

The air snapped at her as she fell, a silent reminder of her first parachute jump.  It had been fun and terrifying ... here, she ran the risk of falling straight into an enemy camp.  The intelligence staff had done their best to pin down the rebel positions, but their best wasn’t anything like good enough.  The rebels knew how to conceal their camps, how to keep their forces safe from prying eyes.  Rachel trusted the odds - they were in her favour - but mentally prepared herself for the worst.  If she did land in an enemy camp, she’d have to fight her way out before they recovered and brought her down.  Roland would never know what had happened to her.

She counted down the seconds, one hand on the parachute cord.  It was never easy to be sure when one should deploy the parachute, not on a high- altitude low-opening drop.  Opening the chute too early could get her killed, either by the weather throwing her right across the island and into the sea, or an enemy sniper spotting her and trying to do something about it; opening it too late could see her plunging into the ground hard enough to kill her, even with the chute slowing her fall.  She kept counting, using her altimeter to pick the right moment to pull the cord.  The chute blossomed above, jerking violently as the ground came up and hit her.  Rachel grunted as she landed, drawing her pistol as she ducked down and swept the chute aside.  She was alone.  The half-assed road was as still and quiet as the grave.

Bad thought, Rachel told herself, as she swept up the remains of the chute and hurried into the jungle.  Very bad thought.

She paused, listening with her enhanced ears.  The jungle was never quiet - she heard birds and insects moving through the trees, heedless of her presence - but she couldn’t make out any signs of rebel activity.  She reminded herself, sharply, that that was meaningless.  The rebels had good jungle tradecraft.  The ones who hadn’t developed such skills, in the years before the insurgency had turned into an outright war, had been killed long ago.  She turned slowly, listening carefully, then knelt and dug a small hole with her multitool.  The chute needed to be buried, before someone spotted it and started to ask the wrong - or rather the right - questions.  It wouldn’t be the first time a mission had been compromised by a local spotting something out of place, then passing a warning up the chain to higher authorities.

And we have no friends on this island, she reflected, as she kicked dirt into the hole before moving away.  No one here will give the government a friendly word, let alone any actual support.

She took a breath as she checked her compass, then went north, remaining within the jungle while following the road.  It would rain soon, concealing the few traces of her presence.  She kept her eyes on the rough road, reminding herself the lack of paving wasn’t proof it had fallen into disuse.  The planetary government - and the aristocracy - hadn’t been interested in investing in transport infrastructure, not this far from the coast.  And besides, even if they’d tried, the rebels would have tried to stop them.  A working road network would have made it easier for the militia to move troops from place to place.

The air grew warmer as she walked, faint flashes of light from the dark clouds suggesting a thunderstorm was on the way.  Rachel kept moving as the road widened, leading onto the remains of a plantation.  The rebels had burned the manor and the surrounding houses to the ground, then tore up the alien plants to ensure it would be years - at best - before the plantation could be made profitable again.  She felt a flicker of sympathy for the former workers, men and women who’d been told they could earn their way out of debt slavery ... only to discover, when they crunched the numbers, that the system was carefully rigged to make escape impossible.  She cursed the government under her breath.  If they’d wanted an insurgency, they could hardly have done a better job.  

No bodies, she thought, as she circumvented the plantation.  Perhaps that’s a good sign.

She dismissed the thought as she resumed her walk.  There were hundreds of refugees from the rebel-held islands, people who’d fled the wrath of rebels with nothing to lose but their chains, yet there should have been more.  There’d been a middle class, small yet not insignificant; there’d been aristocrats and overseers and trusties who ... she shook her head.  It had been six months.  Anyone who hadn’t made it out, in the first chaotic week, was either behind enemy lines or dead.  The rebel leadership, to its credit, had tried to put a lid on the violence, but the hatred was just too great.  Rachel knew what might have happened to any of the former masters caught behind the lines.  They’d be lucky if they were only killed by their former slaves.

The ground rose under her feet.  The skies rumbled, the first smatterings of rain falling around her.  Rachel almost welcomed it as she saw lights in the distance, heard the sound of roaring engines.  She ducked, careful to choose a vantage point that would let her watch the road without being seen.  A line of vehicles came into view, driving down the dirt road.  Rachel eyed them warily.  The rebel soldiers on guard looked antsy, their weapons shifting from side to side as if they expected to be attacked.  She wondered, idly, if there were loyalists or criminals within the jungle.  It wasn’t impossible.  Mountebank was not a penal island, nor one of the hellish colonies where criminals were sent to work themselves to death, but it was quite possible some of the indents were guilty of more than just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They might not have found themselves welcomed by the rebels ...

Her eyes narrowed.  The vehicles looked like technicals - civilian vehicles hastily outfitted with makeshift armour and weapons - but there was something about them that had her instincts sounding the alarm.  Purpose-built military vehicles?  The design was odd, but she couldn’t deny the practicality.  Would the rebels prefer to build such vehicles, rather than tanks or IFVs?  There was no way to know.  They might be better off relying on designs they understood, rather than expending resources on vehicles that might prove to be nothing more than expensive white elephants.

She waited for the convoy to vanish into the darkness, then resumed her walk towards the enemy installation.  Intelligence had sworn blind the rebels had set up their HQ near the centre of the island, well away from either Mountebank City or most of the plantations.  Rachel hadn’t expected the spooks to get it right, but - as she closed on the installation - she realised the rebels definitely had something in the right location.  Her sensor array picked up a couple of microbursts, compressed and encrypted to the point even modern computers would take weeks to decrypt the signals.  She frowned as she slowed her advance, careful to keep watching for enemy spies.  A regular military base would have cut the foliage back, in hopes of keeping someone from creeping up on the fence.  The rebels hadn’t had that option - it would have revealed their base’s presence - but they were doing their best to compensate.  Their patrols were alarmingly random.

Someone’s been studying the right books, she thought.  The patrol would have caught her, if she hadn’t stayed back to watch and study their movements, in hopes a pattern would emerge.  They appeared to be completely random.  There’s no way to predict when a patrol will be passing by.

Rachel slipped back, then studied the rebel base from a distance.  It was half-hidden in the foliage, like the base they’d attacked before the insurgency had kicked into high gear, to the point it was hard to be sure how big it really was.  There were no vehicles within view, nothing to suggest the base was anything more than a jungle resort or hidden settlement.  If there hadn’t been regular patrols, and microburst transmissions, she would have wondered if the spooks had made a mistake.  Hell, it was quite possible the real HQ was somewhere nearby ... but not too close.  The rebels would be foolish to assume that their microbursts couldn’t be detected, then pinned down.  A single prowling drone could drop a missile on the transmitter before the crew could escape.  

She kept inching back, then started to make her way around the edge of the base.  The patrols were too solid for her to risk trying to sneak into the base itself, not without setting off the alarms.  She thought she could get through, particularly if the rebels were distracted, but it was hard to be sure.  Better to wait until the offensive began, then go to work.

Dawn glimmered in the distance as she swept through the surrounding area, looking for hints of a secondary base.  There was nothing, but that was meaningless.  The rebels knew how to survive in the jungle, knew what was safe to eat, knew where to find water ... in their shoes, she might set up a tent, or even a very basic shelter.  The rain wouldn’t make that easy, but better to be damp and free then dry and in a POW camp.  Rachel knew Roland had worked hard to convince the government to treat prisoners well, yet she was all too aware hardly anyone believed it would keep its word.  It was hard to take prisoners when the prisoners feared they’d either be worked to death or simply shot out of hand.

She glanced at her terminal, then tapped a code into the touchscreen.  The microburst transmitter sent two wordless bursts, before shutting down completely.  Rachel was already moving.  It was unlikely the rebels could track her signals, even if they had modern sensor arrays, but she dared not rule it out.  The rebels had some support from off-world factions, factions that had remained carefully anonymous.  It was quite possible they might have been sent modern gear.  Better to be safe than sorry.

There was no hint she’d been detected, as she put some distance between herself and her former position.  She breathed a sigh of relief, then found a place to hide and settled down to wait.  There wasn’t long to go, not before all hell broke loose.  She checked her stimulant reserve, preparing for the coming chaos.  She’d pay for using the boost later, when all was said and done, but there was no choice.  She dared not let herself be captured or killed.  If Roland hadn’t figured out what she really was, she would have been standing beside him, watching his back.  Instead, she’d been pressed into service.

He had no choice, she reminded herself.  Roland had been persuasive - and right.  The political situation was a ramshackle nightmare.  The only reason he’d been put in overall command was to ensure the blame didn’t fall on any of the locals, if the coming engagement ended in disaster.  And she knew what was at stake.  The army must not lose the first battle or it will lose the war.

But she knew, even as she waited, that there were no guarantees in war.

Chapter Two

Near Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

Roland - Crown Prince of the Empire, Marine Auxiliary Captain of the Terran Marine Corps - stood on the command deck and tried to look as if he were doing nothing more significant than ordering tea.

He clasped his hands behind his back, keeping his face under tight control as the reports started to come in from the makeshift fleet.  Six months of hard work, of backbreaking labour and endless training and desperate preparation for war, all boiled down to the fleet of semi-warships making their way through the choppy waters towards the island.  It was remarkable, how much they’d produced in such a short time, yet he was all too aware of the gaps in his order of battle.  New Doncaster’s stocks of modern technology were limited, forcing them to rely on weapons and equipment that would have been familiar to Roland’s distant ancestors, the ones who had lived and died before humanity started its expansion into space.  A lone starship with kinetic bombardment projectiles could sink his entire fleet within seconds, if it inched into orbit.  Roland was uneasily aware that whoever was backing the rebels could take a more active hand at any moment, secure in the knowledge there was no one left who could hold them accountable for their crimes.

The ship - a makeshift assault carrier, if that wasn’t too grand a term for a converted freighter armed with missiles and propeller-powered aircraft - shifted under his feet as it turned into the wind.  New Doncaster had no shortage of water-borne ships and sailors, thankfully, but very few of them were trained to serve on warships.  There was something amateurish about the fleet, and the army within the landing craft, that haunted him, even though he knew he should be glad of what he had.  He could overlook an absence of protocol, and manners that would result in severe non-judicial punishment within the corps, if the sailors did their jobs and did them well.  They didn’t have time to smooth down all the rough edges.  

But the rebels had spent the last six months preparing, too.

Roland turned away from the windows and studied the tactical display.  It was a joke.  The force trackers were makeshift, where they existed at all.  He hadn’t dared outfit his forces with local-built force trackers, all too aware they would reveal their positions to the enemy as well as himself.  The operators had worked hard to develop techniques for coordinating the fleet, and the landing force, but the fog of war lingered over the battlefield like a bad smell, making it difficult for Roland to direct operations with any confidence.  He felt a twinge of guilt as he stared at the display, wishing he was on the first wave of landing craft.  If his career had followed a regular path, he would have been midway through the Slaughterhouse by now - or dead.  Instead, he was a brevet general in an army that had been thrown together in a tearing hurry.

There was no choice, he told himself.  The planet teeters on the brink of chaos or tyranny.

Admiral Forest caught his eye.  “General,” he said.  “The fleet is entering the combat zone now.”

As if I didn’t already know, Roland thought.  Admiral Forest had commanded a patrol boat, six short months ago.  Now ... he’d been jumped up several ranks, like hundreds of others, to meet a demand for commanding officers no one had expected to face.  New Doncaster had never had a real navy, until now.  Tell me something I don’t know.

He turned to face the older man.  Admiral Forest was an aristocrat, by local standards; the second son of a powerful lord who’d made sure his son got the posting he wanted.  Roland supposed it spoke well of Forest that he’d demanded a command post, rather than a shore office with little real responsibility.  But ... Roland suspected the older man was also the target of a great deal of resentment.  What was the point of working hard and getting your name mentioned in the dispatches, if someone could be promoted over you just by having the right social connections?  Roland had been told a number of Coast Guard personnel had deserted to the rebels, when the insurgency had turned into open war.  He believed it.  Even now, six months after the government had reluctantly made some concessions to fight the war, it was still hard for the former townies to trust things had changed.

“Very good, Admiral,” he said.  “Are we ready to begin the bombardment?”

“We’ll be in optimum firing position in five minutes,” Admiral Forest informed him.  “Do you want to give the command personally?”

Roland nodded.  The responsibility was his, even though part of him quailed at the thought of unleashing such makeshift missiles in combat.  They weren’t that inaccurate, he had been assured, but he wasn’t convinced.  There was no way New Doncaster could produce smart warheads, even laser-guided seeker-heads.  He was all too aware there was a very good chance he was about to sentence hundreds of civilians to death.  It would be accidental, but he wouldn’t feel any better afterwards.  The only upside, as far as he could tell, was that the rebels were supposed to have evacuated the shore of non-essential personnel.

Or so we’ve been told, Roland thought.  There’d been some contacts between the two sides, over the last six months, but most of them had consisted of little more than unrealistic demands.  They could have turned their own people into human shields.

He felt his mood darken as he turned his attention to the map.  The government’s intelligence network, it was clear, had been hopelessly compromised for years.  The deep-cover agents they’d inserted into the insurgent cells had insisted, time and time again, that the rebels were nothing more than disorganised thugs lashing out desperately as their inevitable doom grew closer and closer.  There had been very little warning, and none of it particularly useful, before the insurgents had mounted a desperate all-or-nothing bid for Kingston.  They’d come very close to complete success.  Roland hated to admit it, but whoever was in command of the other side had a fine tactical mind.  He’d realised the battle was lost and cut his losses with a speed and ruthlessness Roland could only admire, preserving as much of his forces as he could for the next engagement.  The enemy commander had shaken the government to the core.

And he knows we’re coming, Roland thought.  He can’t have missed the fleet heading towards the island.

He stroked his chin as he contemplated the fleet’s position.  In theory, they were well clear of any enemy missile batteries.  In practice, Roland wasn’t so sure.  A modern hypersonic missile would be more than enough to sink any of his ships, including the flagship.  There were no signs the rebels had such missiles, but they were smart enough to keep them under wraps until his ships were in the killing zone.  And even if their missiles were no better than Roland’s own, they could blanket his rough location in firepower until they wiped out most of his fleet.  It would be a disaster.

Admiral Forest caught his eye.  “General?”

“Inform your gunners to open fire on my command,” Roland said.  “Once we start launching missiles, the first assault boats can make their approach.”

“Aye, sir.”

Roland sighed, inwardly, as Admiral Forest strode away.  He liked the older man, but he was no trusted confidante.  The only person he could unburden himself to was Rachel and she was somewhere on the nearby island, carrying out her part of the plan.  He cursed under his breath.  He’d wanted to keep her nearby, as a sounding board rather than a bodyguard, but he’d needed to put someone on the island to take out the enemy command structure before it could react to his offensive.  And yet, sending her had been risky.  HALO drops always were, even on planets with more predictable weather.  Roland had feared, even as he wished her luck, that he was sending her to her death.

The timer bleeped.  One minute to go.

And then we will see, Roland thought.  They’d laid their plans, they’d wargamed each and every variable they’d been able to imagine ... soon, they’d see how well their plans worked when confronted by reality.  The rebels know we’re coming.  But are they ready for us?

***

Captain Richard Collier had grown to dislike the makeshift landing craft intensely, in the hours since they’d cut loose from the transport ship and started their voyage to Mountebank Island.  He was no stranger to small boats - he’d spent his summers as part of a fisherman’s crew, before he’d joined the militia - and yet, the way the boxy craft rolled under his feet disconcerted him.  The crew seemed unfazed, but Richard was all too aware that the entire company was doomed if the boat capsized.  His men could swim - he’d made sure of it -yet getting out of an upside-down boat would be difficult even at the best of times.  And there had been no time to even think of carrying out escape drills.

He felt cold, despite the growing heat, as he sat at the head of the line and watched the island slowly coming into view.  Mountebank looked a piece of paradise, a green blur shrouded by haze set within an endless blue, but ... somewhere to the north, the rebels were waiting for them.  The new recruits might have been bragging the war would be over by Christmas, that the rebels would raise the white flag and surrender the moment they saw the troops landing on the beach; Richard knew better.  It wasn’t going to be easy.  The government had made noises about amnesty for rebels who gave up the fight and surrendered, but it would be a foolish rebel who trusted in such promises.  The atrocities the rebels had committed, as decades of pent-up anger and hatred finally broke loose, made it very hard to offer them any kind of forgiveness.  He’d heard rumours there were people in government who wanted to drop enhanced radiation weapons on the rebel-held islands, wiping them out without risking a single soldier or militiaman.  The only reason Richard doubted the rumour was the simple fact that enhanced radiation weapons were beyond the planet’s limited industrial capability to produce.  There had certainly been quite enough chatter about weed-killer, defoliants and even nerve gas.

Richard shivered as he looked at his men.  The days when the army and the militia had been two separate forces were gone, now that the planet was fighting for its life.  His men - and a handful of women - were a mixture of old and new, soldiers he’d led into battle before the insurgency and recruits who’d joined up after the townies had been invited to take part in government.  There were even some former indents, trading military service for debt relief and enfranchisement.  Richard had worked hard to train them, all too aware that failure would throw the entire enterprise into doubt, but he had no idea how the newcomers would perform when they saw the elephant for the first time.  If they failed ...

We’ll just have to make sure we don’t, he thought.  We must not fail.

He turned his gaze away, wishing he’d had more time to see his family before boarding the ships and setting out to sea.  Roland was a more considerate commander than many - the days Richard had doubted his intentions, if not his experience, were also gone - but there’d just been too much to do.  Richard wore at least three hats – it rankled, at times, that his father had refused to allow him to accept a formal promotion - but Roland wore even more.  The handful of experienced officers - soldiers, militia and training staff - had worked themselves to the bone, trying to get the army into shape before the rebels mounted a second invasion or an outside power intervened.  In a way, it was almost a relief to be going back into combat.  The world was about to become a great deal simpler.  The army wanted to take the island.  The rebels wanted to stop them.  And everything would depend on who came out ahead.

The boat officer - Richard had never learnt his name - waved for his attention.  “Sir, the bombardment is about to begin.”

Richard nodded, stiffly.  The rebels would have to be blind to miss the fleet advancing on the island.  There were so many smaller islands with tiny settlements of their own - to say nothing of entire fleets of fishing vessels - that he would sooner expect the aristos to surrender their wealth and power than the rebels somehow failing to spot the oncoming fleet.  Roland had long since given up the thought of achieving strategic surprise, although there was at least a possibility they could keep the rebels from guessing where they intended to land.  The moment the missiles started to hammer their targets, the landing force would alter course and make a rush for the beach.  Richard had planned on the assumption the enemy wouldn’t be fooled, but he hoped for the best.  There were already too many voices whispering the army was unreliable, that it couldn’t be expected to produce victories.  The invasion could not be allowed to fail.

“Good,” he said.  He turned to face his men.  “Prepare to alter course.”

***

Private Angeline Porter had no time to feel nervousness, or anticipation, or anything beyond a burning hatred for the rebels.  Hatred had kept her alive, when she’d been gang-raped and nearly killed by her family’s former servants.  She’d been lucky to be taken off the island, to a facility on Kingston, before the uprising had shattered what remained of the government’s authority, but it didn’t feel that way.  The doctors had done what they could, yet ... there was no way they could restore what she’d lost.  She’d been expected to take what remained of her family’s money - she was the sole survivor - and step out of polite society.  Instead, she’d joined the army.

Her hands tightened around her rifle.  It hadn’t been easy.  New Doncaster had never been known for female emancipation, even before the war.  She’d been expected to marry well, to someone chosen by her family, and spend the rest of her life with him.  The army hadn’t quite known what to make of her, although they’d had to admit she could shoot.  She’d declined all offers of a non-combat posting, demanding to be sent to the front.  And her hatred had kept her going when her fellow recruits had taunted her for being a woman in a man’s world.

The surge of hatred threatened to overwhelm her.  She’d come very close to killing a recruit with wandering hands ... hell, she had intended to kill him.  The moment she’d felt his touch, she’d yanked the knife from her belt and slashed at him.  The bastard had been very lucky to jump back, an instant before her blade sliced through his chest.  Perversely, the near-fatal incident had done wonders for her reputation.  The days in which she’d been expected to grin and bear it were long gone.  

And we’re about to meet the rebels, she thought, as the landing craft altered course.  We’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.

She composed herself with an effort, drawing on the training that had been hammered into her over the last four months.  The goal was to secure Mountebank, to make it impossible for the rebels to use it as a staging base for further attacks on Kingston ... she told herself, as the landing craft picked up speed, that it was just a matter of time before the army returned to Baraka.  The servants who’d betrayed her family and raped her - she shuddered, caught in the memory - were waiting.  She’d hunt them down personally, making damn sure they didn’t have a chance to rape anyone else.  And then ... she didn’t care.  It wasn’t as if she had any hope of resuming her former position.  The rebels had made sure of that, too.

We’re coming to get you, she silently promised the waiting enemy.  And you won’t like it when we do.

***

“General,” Admiral Forest said.  “The fleet is in position.”

So hurry up and give the order to fire, Roland finished, silently.  He didn’t blame the admiral for wanting to move faster, even though they’d be committed the moment they started shooting missiles at the island.  No, that was foolish.  They’d been committed from the moment the rebels had kicked the insurgency into high gear.  It took two to end a war, but only one to start it.  It’s time.

He took a breath.  His distant ancestors had led fleets into battle, back when they’d built the empire, but his parents and grandparents and many others had done nothing more demanding than sitting in the Imperial Palace and waiting to hear what had happened, hundreds of light years away.  They hadn’t been gambling everything on one throw of the dice ... hell, they hadn’t even been anything more than puppets.  The smarter ones had known it.  Roland still hated himself for not realising the truth until Belinda Lawson had opened his eyes, too late for him to do anything but run.  Not, he supposed, that it would have mattered.  In theory, he was - he’d been - the ruler of the entire galaxy.  In practice, he’d had no power at all.  If he’d stayed where he’d been, he would be one more dead body amongst billions.

But this is different, he reflected.  An entire army is about to go into battle, on my command.

The thought tormented him.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his men were about to die, along with thousands of rebels.  And all of those deaths would be on him.  He was the one giving the order to launch the invasion.  He could still call it off ... no, he couldn’t.  It was time to emulate his ancestors, the ones who’d won martial glory, and fight.

He took a breath.  “Signal the fleet,” he ordered.  “Begin the bombardment.”

“Aye, General.”

Chapter Three

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

The rebels, Specialist Rachel Green noted sourly, were shifting to a more alert posture.

She kept her distance, keeping her passive sensor array online.  Some brief signals flickered through the air, too short to convey much in the way of actionable information.  Not, she knew, that it meant they were meaningless.  The mere fact someone had sent the signal could easily convey information, if the rebels had set up a signalling scheme ahead of time.  Rachel had spent enough time away from the regular forces to understand how easy it was to spoof listening ears, if one put a little thought into it.  There was no way to decrypt a signal with a predetermined meaning, unless one knew what the signal meant ahead of time.  And that was vanishingly rare.

The sounds of the jungle grew louder as the rebel troops expanded their patrols, heedless of the wildlife they were disturbing.  Rachel tracked their positions through the sound, constantly reminding herself that the rebels she could hear might easily be beaters trying to drive her into the arms of their quieter comrades.  Did they know she was there?  Had they caught a sniff of her presence?  Or were they simply tightening their security, now that Roland’s fleet was coming into view?  They might have doubted the precise target - Roland had spread hundreds of rumours, from training exercises to a strike directly at Baraka itself - but there could be no doubt now.  The fleet was just too close.  Mountebank was the only logical target. 

She stayed low as a pair of rebels crashed through the undergrowth, tensing as she readied herself to act if they spotted her.  They weren’t making a beeline for her, but that proved nothing.  The loud men, stamping around as if they didn’t know the meaning of the word stealth, weren’t the problem.  It was the ones lurking in the silence who might be the real killers ... if, of course, they were there.  The rebels didn’t seem that alert.  They certainly weren’t acting as if they were walking towards a possible sniper ... she shook her head, mentally.  She would have preferred to back off, to make her escape without contact in hopes they’d assume they were panicking over nothing so she could sneak back later, but that wasn’t possible now.  The offensive was about to begin.

Her ears pricked up as she heard the missiles, an instant before the first explosions began.  She ducked instinctively, even though the rebel CP wasn’t one of the primary targets.  The missiles were dangerously inaccurate and she was all too aware that some of them were being fired right over the island, raising the very real spectre of one crashing too close for comfort.  She didn’t fear death, but the thought of being killed by friendly fire - as if there was such a thing - was maddening.  The ground shook a moment later, flashes of light and fireballs rising in the distance.  Rachel had no time to try and determine if any of the targets had actually been hit.  Roland was smart enough to assume none of them had been hit and destroyed.

She put the thought out of her head as she triggered her enhancements, the booster drug running through her system.  Time itself seemed to slow as she lanced forward, darting through the undergrowth and into the rebels before they could register her presence.  Rachel killed one of them with a blow, then threw the other into a tree.  The body lay still.  There was no time to check if she’d killed him.  Instead, she turned and raced towards the rebel camp.  It didn’t sound as if anyone had realised what had happened, but it was just a matter of time.  She had to get inside and complete her mission before the boost started to wear off.

The camp came into view, a handful of buildings built within the jungle.  Rachel didn’t try to go for the doors.  There were too many guards.  Instead, she scrambled up a tree - snapping off shots at the guards as she moved - and threw a grenade ahead of her, blasting a hole in the wooden roof.  She dropped through into a barracks, a pair of sleeping men looking up blearily as she landed between them.  She cracked their skulls before they could react, then hurried down the hatch and into the lower levels.  A young woman appeared out of nowhere, hastily trying to draw a pistol.  Rachel punched her in the stomach, then kicked her in the head.  She collapsed and hit the ground, completely out of it.  Rachel hoped she’d stay unconscious long enough for her reinforcements to arrive.  She didn’t want to kill a woman if she could help it.

Which is foolish, she told herself.  She would have killed you, given a chance.

She plunged through a mess hall, empty and abandoned, and found her way to a staircase.  There was something oddly charming about the rebel base, although there was no time to appreciate it.  Her sensor array bleeped an alert as she rocketed down the stairs, cautioning her someone was sending radio messages.  Rachel darted through the door and straight into a trap, four men charging her with neural whips.  Good thinking, she acknowledged.  They probably wanted to take her alive, relying on the non-lethal weapons to put her down long enough to secure her.  It would have worked too, if she hadn’t been heavily enhanced.  She grabbed hold of the first whip, yanked the rebel behind it towards her and threw him into a second rebel, knocking both of them to the ground.  The sound of breaking bones told her they’d stay down, long enough for her to deal with the other two.  A third man grabbed for his pistol, too late; a fourth turned and ran.  Rachel knocked the third out, then threw him at the fourth.  He had no time to get up before she kicked him in the head ...

Bullets crackled through the air.  Rachel threw herself down, then crawled forward.  Someone was actually shooting through the door ... either they were panicking, which was very possible, or they were trying to buy time.  She didn’t think any of the rebels were enhanced to the point they could determine her exact position.  None of the shots were anywhere near her.  She grabbed one of the stunned men and threw him at the door, the impact smashing the wooden barrier and revealing a small office beyond.  A man stared at her, trying to bring his pistol to bear.  He was moving fast, but with the boost pouring through her system he might as well have been trying to give her a free shot at him.  She shot his weapon out of his hand, then plunged into the chamber and knocked him out with a single blow.  A pair of computer terminals sat on the desk, dark and silent.  Rachel cursed under her breath as she saw the puff of smoke drifting into the air.  The operator had set them to self-destruct, then fought to buy time.  She had to concede he’d succeeded.  The only way to ensure nothing was recovered from computer terminals was to destroy them completely.  He’d done it.

She glanced around, noting the map on the walls.  It was largely unmarked, save for a handful of locations within the city.  She frowned - there was no way to tell what the marks signified - then searched the rest of the chamber.  The rebels had practiced good operational discipline, certainly better than many terrorist and insurgent groups she’d fought over the years.  The datafiles had been destroyed with the computers, along with the microburst transmitter; there were, as far as she could determine, no paper files to be recovered and studied.  She glanced up as she heard someone crashing down the stairs and hurried back into the antechamber, concealing herself within the shadows.  She’d hoped the confusion outside would last a little longer, the missiles adding to the chaos as the fleet pounded its targets, but it seemed it was not to be.  Rachel lifted her pistol as two armed men ran past, clearly assuming she was still in the command room itself.  She hesitated, then let them go and hurried back up the stairs.  The sound of distant explosions was growing louder.  If the timetable was being followed, as they’d hoped, the invasion force would be landing.

A guard swung around, his eyes going wide as he saw her.  Rachel shot him - no time to slow down now - and ran past him, into the open.  The camp looked surprisingly deserted, as if half the occupants had run for their lives.  Somehow, she doubted it.  The rebels weren’t cowards, nor were they terrorist bullies who cringed and begged for mercy when they encountered someone willing and able to fight back.  They had a cause ... and, presumably, contingency plans.  The camp was compromised beyond recovery.  If she’d been in command of the rebel force, she would have ordered the remainder of the camp’s population to make their way to the city or fallback positions within the jungle, ready to continue the fight.

Clever bastards, she thought, as she ran across the camp and out into the jungle.  They know we landed on top of one of their camps.  They had to have come up with plans to react, if we tried it again.

She slowed as soon as she was concealed within the foliage, then keyed her terminal to record.  “General.  Enemy CP neutralised.  No data recovered.  All communications equipment destroyed.  Proceeding with stage two.”

Her fingers pressed a second command as her implants signalled a warning.  The boost was wearing off.  She dared not linger.  She’d trained to fight while in withdrawal, but it was never pleasant and always dangerous.   There was a reason most soldiers never even heard about the boost, let alone were considered for enhancement.  Her lips quirked as the terminal compressed the message, then sent it.  The cost of a single enhanced soldier was staggeringly high.  She put the thought out of her mind as she hurried through the jungle, trying to keep away from enemy contacts.  Her limbs ached, but she had to keep moving.  It was unlikely the enemy had modern passive sensor arrays, the kind of technology that would pick up her signal, yet she couldn’t take it for granted.  A single mortar round, dropped on her position, would really ruin her day.

The sounds from behind her dwindled away as she kept moving, overshadowed by the endless thunder from the coast.  Roland’s plan called for dumping a lot of missiles and shells on enemy targets, softening the rebel positions as much as possible before landing troops and moving in for the kill.  Rachel hoped the rebels would see sense and surrender, once the main force was ashore.  The city would rapidly become indefensible.  And yet, she feared the worst.  Roland - and the government - needed a quick victory.  He might have to try storming the city, which would cost him badly.

She kept the thought churning through her mind, trying to distract herself as her body started to shake.  She’d been told she was one of the lucky ones, that her reaction was surprisingly mundane compared to some of the others, but she didn’t believe it.  Her temperature soared, sweat beading on the palms of her hands; her legs felt wobbly, as if some passing sorcerer had turned her bones to noodles.  She snickered at the thought, the withdrawal messing with her mind to the point the joke was almost funny.  Somehow, Rachel kept moving.  She didn’t dare slow down, even to catch her breath.  The withdrawal would overwhelm her completely.

There is a reason we use the boost so rarely, she recalled.  The thought sounded like her old instructor, a man who’d outlined - in great detail - precisely what would happen if they overused the boost.  It was dangerously addictive, to the point that even a hardened special ops soldier might find himself enslaved by his implants.  And there’s no one who can help me, not here, if I go too far.

The path started to incline up again, taking her up the old volcano that - a long time ago - had given birth to the island.  The geologists had sworn blind the volcano was dead, unlike some of the active volcanoes outside the habitable zone, but the fanciful part of her mind wondered what would happen if a missile happened to crack the rock between the lava and the open air.  It wasn’t likely, yet ... she shook her head, dismissing the thought as another relic of the withdrawal as she kept climbing.  Given time, she would recover; given time, she would be fit to return to duty.  She grimaced.  She just wasn’t used to being unfit for combat.

She heard the sound of aircraft high overhead and looked up.  The three planes were a glorified recon flight, rather than a modern precision bombing or close-air support force.  She hoped the latter wouldn’t be needed, not when there was a shortage of modern technology to ensure the CAS aircraft hit the right targets.  Rachel had been in battles where, even with complete communications superiority, air support had pounded the wrong side.  Here, it was anyone’s guess how accurate the CAS aircraft would be.  She feared the worst.

No antiaircraft fire, she noted.  Why not?

It was a puzzling thought.  The rebels did have some modern air defence weapons.  They could also have produced a handful of older designs, including some that did double duty as antitank weapons.  Were they holding them in reserve?  Or ... or what?  She wanted to believe the rebels had fewer modern weapons than they’d thought, but she knew better than to allow wishful thinking to override common sense.  Perhaps the rebels were unwilling to make a major commitment to the island’s defence.  Roland had assembled such a powerful force that the rebels might prefer to stay out of its way, to slip back into the shadows and wait for a chance to resume the offensive.  It was what she would have done, if she’d been in charge.

She paused as the trees parted, allowing her to look over the ocean.  The fleet was clearly visible, the larger warships hanging back while the landing craft made their way towards the shore.  The advance teams would already be hitting the beach, she was sure.  There was no such thing as a perfect offensive - she’d been cautioned that a smoothly unfolding plan was a sign of imminent defeat - but they’d worked hard to keep friction as low as possible.  The troops would be ashore shortly and then ...

If we take the island, we prove we can win battles, she thought.  And then, if all goes well, we can start chipping away at the rest of the rebel islands.

***

Abdul Al-Singh stared at the enemy fleet and felt his heart sink into his boots.  

He’d thought, when he’d been given his final assignment, that the task would be simplicity itself.  The mountain cabin was primitive, to the point there was nothing that would draw enemy attention unless they stumbled into the clearing.  Abdul didn’t mind the lack of electronic devices.  The previous owner had stocked his retreat with books - real paper books - and Abdul had been reading them, one by one.  All he’d really had to do was keep an eye on events from a safe distance.  He’d never quite understood what his superiors had meant, when they’d given him his assignment.  His job was to pass on a warning when - if - the CP was unable to do it.

He reached for his notebook and started to compose a message, cursing his ignorance.  There were thirty-seven ships within eyesight, but how many were actual warships?  Some were clearly converted freighters, yet he could see guns and missile batteries mounted on their decks.  Others ... he swallowed, hard, as he spotted a line of landing craft making their way to the beach.  The first wave might already have landed.  His vantage point wasn’t as all-seeing as he might have wished.  But there was no time to try to get a better view.  His superiors had to be informed.

Taking the notebook with him, he opened the hidden compartment under the cabin and found the terminal.  It was completely powered down, to the point - he’d been assured - even the most advanced sensors couldn’t detect its presence.  Abdul pressed the switch, half-expecting to hear a missile rocketing towards him.  Silly, he knew.  The missile would probably arrive before he had any warning, let alone a chance to take cover or run.  His fingers darted over the keyboard, composing the message before it could be compressed and transmitted to the rebel HQ.  And then ...

He sucked in his breath.  His orders were clear.  The cabin was to be abandoned.  He’d considered burning it to the ground, but it would simply draw unwanted attention if prowling eyes spotted the fire before it was too late.  Instead, he keyed the transmit switch, waited for the bleep that told him the message had been sent, then switched off the terminal and ran for the door.  His bug-out bag was already waiting for him, where he’d hidden it weeks ago.  He had enough, he’d calculated, to survive in the jungle for at least a month.  Plenty of time for the island to calm down, before he slipped away.

For you, the war is over, he reflected, as he ran.  He had strict orders to avoid enemy contact, if possible.  His superiors wanted intelligence, not dead heroes.  For everyone else, the war has only just begun.

Chapter Four

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

“Brace yourselves,” the pilot yelled.  “We’ll hit the beach in a moment!”

Richard nodded, gritting his teeth as the landing craft picked up speed.  The island had been hammered by the invasion force - smoke was rising in the distance, turning the sky black - but it was quite possible the enemy had already anticipated their destination and set a trap.  There weren’t that many places they could land even a small force, not without mobile jetties and harbours and dozens of other requirements that would push the invasion timetable months - if not years - into the future.  And yet, it looked as if they’d gotten away with it.  If there was any enemy force nearby, it was keeping itself well hidden.

He smiled, coldly, as the last seconds ticked away.  The harbour was small, by the standards of Mountebank City or Kingsport, but it was large enough to handle a couple of midsized freighters at a time.  The file stated it had been constructed by an aristocrat who’d hoped to cut down on shipping costs - the island’s transport infrastructure was poor, barely worth the name - only to be abandoned shortly afterwards when the insurgency had kicked itself into high gear.  He hoped the rebels had overlooked the tiny harbour, after burning the plantation and driving the owner into flight.  It was possible.  The harbour had never made any real impact on the island.

His radio bleeped.  “Firing sequence one ...”

Richard resisted the urge to duck as shells whistled over his head and crashed down in the jungle beyond.  The shelling was random, but - hopefully - it would cover the landing force when it hit the beach.  If there was an enemy force within the jungle, it had to suspect it had been spotted even if it was dug in deeply enough not to be harmed by the shelling.  Richard watched the blasts for a moment, then raised his rifle as the landing craft grounded on the beach.  Water splashed around the ramp as it fell to the ground, allowing the soldiers to leave the craft.  It was time.

“Follow me,” Richard ordered.  “Now!”

He jumped into the water and splashed through the surf, heading for the beach.  It was risky to expose himself to enemy fire, but he had to set a good example.  Besides, if the enemy already had guns zeroed in on the beach, he would be in deep shit the moment they opened fire.  He ran onto the beach, hearing the noise as his troops followed him along the sand and on to the harbour.  It was deserted.  The old harbourmaster’s station - more of a hut, Richard noted - had been torn to shreds, but the remainder of the harbour was intact.  The bigger transports should have no difficulty landing and unloading their cargo.

“Harbour team, prepare for landing operations,” he shouted.  The enemy couldn’t have any doubt, now, where the troops were landing.  They might have lost their radio network - there was no way to be sure - but they would have couriers racing all over the island in hopes of preparing a counterattack.  “The rest of you, follow me!”

He glanced at the beach - the remainder of the landing craft were unloading now, waves of green-clad soldiers making their way onto the sand - and then led the way to the plantation itself.  The mansion was a burned-out shell, but the barracks and sheds appeared to have been abandoned at very short notice.  A nasty flicker of suspicion shot through his mind as the troops swept through the buildings, checking for everything from ambushes and sniper nests to IEDs and other unpleasant surprises.  Standard doctrine - and the rebels clearly agreed with the military on this point - was to have small units deployed to slow an advancing army as much as possible, while massing the remainder of one’s forces to man a defence line or mount a counterattack.  The rebels had to be on their way.  And he needed to push his own forces out as much as possible before they arrived.

The heat slapped at him as they pressed through the remains of the fields.  The water gullies were nightmarish, clogged with the remnants of the planet’s native biology in the wake of the uprising.  Richard understood, although he had no idea how the rebels intended to finance the planet’s economy after they won the war.  The crops were useless in the short term - humans couldn’t eat them - but in the long term, they were what brought in the cash.  He shook his head.  It wasn’t as if the plantation owners had ever shared the wealth with their indentured slaves.  No wonder the rebels had done so much damage.  Even if they lost the war, it would be years before the planet recovered.

He paused, recalling the map he’d memorised as they reached the edge of the plantation.  The road led around the island and down to the city, giving them a chance to surround the major settlement and secure the airport.  The rebels would know it too.  They might have assumed the landings would take place closer to the city - Richard knew Roland had considered it - but that assumption no longer held true.  He directed a team of antitank gunners into position, backed up by riflemen.  If the rebels didn’t show themselves before the transports were unloaded, and the first tanks were on their way down the road, he had an excellent chance of pushing all the way to the city before he ran into something he couldn’t handle.

Don’t count on it, he reminded himself.  The rebels know where we are now.  They’ll be coming for us.

***

“General,” Lieutenant Tricia Bear said.  “The harbour has been secured.  The transports are landing now.”

Roland nodded, stiffly.  He’d feared the worst, when he’d drawn up the plans, but it looked as if the bombardment - and Rachel - had crippled the enemy’s ability to coordinate their forces.  It wouldn’t stop them - Roland had no doubt the insurgent cells wouldn’t sit down and wait for orders, not when his troops were bearing down on their positions - but hopefully they’d have problems trying to bring their power to bear.  Given time, he’d land enough troops and armour to force the rebels to either stand and fight or flee into the jungle.

Which isn’t quite what I want, he reminded himself, as the next set of reports started to come in.  His staff updated the display, careful to add reminders the positions were all approximate and increasingly outdated.  We need to trap as many of them as possible.

He shook his head.  He wanted to be on the island himself, setting up a command post on the landing zone or leading his men towards the city.  He owed it to himself to take some risks, particularly as it was his plan.  His staff might have worked out the details, and turned his vague concepts into operational orders, but the responsibility was his and his alone.  And yet, he knew he didn’t dare put himself in the firing line.  Not yet.  There was no one who could take his place, no one who both knew what he was doing and was politically acceptable.  It burned at him, more than he could say.  But he’d given Rachel his word he’d stay out of danger, and he’d meant it.

There will be time later, when the island has been secured, he told himself.  For now, concentrate on your job and trust Richard to do his.

***

“Well,” Private French commented.  “Is this where you used to live?”

Angeline shook her head, biting down on her anger as the squad made its way through the remains of the plantation.  It wasn’t hers - it was on the wrong island, for starters - and yet, she had no trouble reading the land.  The owner had built a productive plantation, only to lose it when his ungrateful indents rose up and killed him.  She wondered, as bitter anger churned in her gut, if the owner’s family had made it out.  She was the only survivor of hers, save for a few distant relatives who’d expressed no interest in her, and she knew she wasn’t the only one who’d lost everything.  The rebels had been utterly murderous.  Anyone who didn’t drop everything and run would die, when the rebels caught them.  Angeline just hoped it had been quick.

She kept her eyes open, looking for bodies, but saw none.  It had been six months, she reminded herself.  The rebels might be bastards, but they weren’t stupid.  They would have buried the bodies, perhaps, rather than risk disease outbreaks or wild animals developing a taste for human flesh.  The nasty part of her mind whispered the rebels might have developed a taste for human flesh themselves, but cold logic suggested it wasn’t true.  They might be able to overcome the taboo on cannibalism - they might be desperate enough to force themselves - yet disease would carry them off.  Angeline had had a limited amount of survival training.  She knew how dangerous it could be.

The squad continued to advance, leapfrogging down the road to the city.  Angeline heard engines and tensed, before realising they were coming from behind her.  The landing force was already unloading the light tanks.  Angeline had declined the chance to become a tanker - she wanted to get face-to-face with the rebels - but she’d trained with them and it was good to know their firepower was behind her.  The rebels had to be on their way.  She wanted to believe that they were quivering in fear, that that were unable to move for fear of facing punishment for their crimes, but it seemed unlikely.  The government had promised to treat surrendering captives well.  Angeline hated the idea of offering any sort of amnesty to the bastards who’d destroyed her life.  If she met them, she had no intention of taking them alive.

She felt sweat prickling down her back as the road seemed to narrow.  The squad flitted from tree to tree, trying to conceal their movements as much as possible even though it was probably futile.  Angeline knew there’d been rebels near her plantation who’d taken to jungle like ducks to water.  She’d spent some time there herself, before her father had put a stop to it, and she knew how easy it was to get through the jungle undergrowth if you knew what you were doing.  The rebels ... she froze as she saw small animals and birds, fleeing from the jungle ahead of the squad.  There was no time to think.

“Get down,” she snapped, throwing herself to the ground.  “Hurry ...”

The rebels opened fire, bullets snapping through the air over her head.  Angeline sucked in her breath, feeling a surge of naked hatred as she returned fire.  A few more seconds and the rebels would have had them bang to rights, probably wiping them out of existence with a single burst of machine gun fire.  She snapped off shots at the enemy positions but couldn’t tell if she hit anything.  It smacked of a pre-planned ambush.  The enemy had had more than enough time to dig in.  Moments later, she heard the CRUMP-CRUMP-CRUMP of a mortar as it hurled shells towards them.

Lieutenant Ellis caught her eye.  “Fall back!”

Angeline nodded, launching a pair of grenades into the enemy position as she crawled back as fast as she could.  The enemy shells fell short, but she still felt a piece of shrapnel passing through the air bare millimetres above her head.  She shouted at Private Tzu to move his ass, then realised - too late - that he’d been hit.  There was no point in screaming for a medic, not now.  His head had been cracked like an eggshell.  She gritted her teeth - she’d liked him, though she’d never allowed herself to show it - as she joined the rest of the squad.  The enemy fire was intensifying, bullets tearing through the foliage as if the rebels just wanted to force them to keep their heads down.  She suspected they were trying to slow the invasion force long enough for a real defence line to be thrown into place, perhaps even a solid thrust that would push the invaders back into the sea.  Raw hatred surged through her as an aircraft rocketed overhead, spraying machine gun fire onto the enemy position.  Trees shattered, their trunks disintegrated by the strafing.  For the first time, the rebel fire slackened.

Ellis lifted his hand, signalling the advance.  Angeline pushed herself up and ran forward, the rest of the squad joining her a moment later.  They darted from tree to tree, trying to close on the enemy position.  A rebel stumbled to his feet, blood pouring from a gash in his arm; Angeline shot him through the head and ran on, heedless of the risk of her own safety.  She heard the mortar firing again, the ground shaking as the shells crashed down; she saw the enemy mortar team and opened fire, spraying them and their mortar with bullets.  Four men fell, a fifth started to raise his arms.  Angeline shot him down without thinking.  She was in no mood to take prisoners.  

The first of the tanks rumbled into view, machine gun turrets traversing menacingly as they sought targets.  Angeline was too stunned, coming off her first taste of real combat, to feel fear as the tanks roared past.  The tankers might mistake them for rebels ... she gritted her teeth as she sensed, more than felt, a sniper bullet whipping through the air.  A tank returned fire, hosing down the distant nest.  Angeline rallied with the remains of the squad, feeling unaccountably guilty as she realised Private Lopez was dead, too.  He’d been one of her critics, back during training; he’d been a constant thorn in her side, needling her about being a woman in a man’s world.  And now he was dead ... she watched as the body was hastily slipped into a body-bag and marked for later attention.  It bothered her, despite everything, that she hadn’t seen him die.  

She put the thought out of her mind as they resumed the advance.  The rebels seemed determined to slow them down, rather than standing and fighting.  There were brief patches of silence, broken by IED explosions or shooting from the jungle that faded away as the rebel fighters withdrew rather than push their luck.  Angeline cursed under her breath as they overran another antitank position, after the rebel gunners had turned two tanks into flaming coffins.  The tankers hadn’t been able to escape before death came for them.  She kept going, feeling as if she was being pushed to the limits of her endurance.  The entire world seemed to have narrowed to the road and the rebels lying in wait.

It will be over soon, she promised herself, as the sniping resumed.  The tanks returned fire with savage intensity.  And then we can move on to the next target.

***

Carlos Sanchez hadn’t expected to find himself in command of the island’s defences.  The plan had called for the defence to be coordinated by his superior, while he controlled the forces based around Mountebank City and Airport himself.  But a courier had told him, only a few short hours ago, that the command post had been hit and effectively destroyed ... and, while he’d been trying to come to terms with the fact he was now in command, he’d heard the government’s forces were landing on the island.

He cursed savagely as he studied the map.  The government planners had surprised him.  Really, he hadn’t expected actual imagination from the bastards.  Landing at the isolated harbour made it harder for them to get troops to the city, and there would be hard limits on how much they could land before the fighting came to an end, but it also let them outflank the defences the rebels had thrown up around the nearer harbours and docks.  Carlos had been hopeful, when it became apparent the missile bombardment had looked impressive yet done relatively little damage.  He wasn’t so hopeful now.

A courier appeared at the door.  “Sir, the invaders have reached Point Nine.”

Carlos scowled, although he’d expected as much.  He’d only had light forces between the tiny harbour and the city and, despite his best efforts, it wasn’t proving easy to get forces into position to block the enemy.  They’d have a harder time of it when they reached the outskirts, assuming they wanted to seize a larger harbour or storm the city itself.  And yet ... the more he looked at it, the more he admired the enemy move.  He was going to have real problems if he wanted to evacuate the city before the enemy arrived.

“Order Pablo’s Division to move into blocking position,” he said.  It wasn’t a real division, more like an oversized company, but hopefully it would confuse any listening ears.  “And then order Khan and his command to break contact and head into the jungle.”

“Yes, sir.”

The courier hurried away.  Carlos turned back to the map.  The enemy advance was slowing, but it wouldn’t stop, not until it reached the city.  He didn’t have much time to decide what to do.  His communications were already fraying.  Even if he ordered a general retreat, the orders might not reach everyone in time and that would be even worse.  And he hadn’t received any orders from his distant superiors.  The enemy jamming was strong enough to ensure he probably never would.

He summoned another courier.  When the young woman arrived, he gave her a handful of messages before ordering her to leave at once.  There wasn’t time any longer.  They had to force the enemy to commit themselves to a meatgrinder or a long siege.  Either way, there was a very real chance the cause might come out ahead.  Their deaths would not be meaningless after all.

It wasn’t much, he reflected as he checked his rifle, but it was all he had. 

Chapter Five

Baraka Island, New Doncaster

It had been a risk, Sarah Wilde considered, to set up her headquarters - and the core of a new government - in a mansion that had once belonged to the island’s largest landowner.  Certainly, she’d had second thoughts when the idea had been proposed to her.  The original owner might be dead - he’d been lynched by his own workers, when the uprising had begun - but she had no doubt his heirs knew everything about the building, from the location of the bed and conference rooms to the underground tunnels leading to the outbuildings where the owner had kept his mistresses.  It simply didn’t feel secure.  Sarah would have preferred to direct operations from a base camp deep within the jungle, or perhaps an anonymous building somewhere within a city, but it was vitally important for the provisional government to take the reins of power.  Or so she’d been told.

She scowled as she studied the paperwork in front of her.  She’d never dared write more than the bare minimum down, when she’d been just another rebel leader, and even after she’d been elected overall commander she had been reluctant to use anything from paper records to electronic files.  There was just too great a chance of the government’s troops overwhelming a camp before the records could be destroyed, handing them an intelligence windfall that might lead to dozens of spies, deep-cover agents and waverers who were hedging their bets by backing both sides.  And yet, the provisional government needed good records in order to function.  The ones they’d captured during the uprising were practically worthless.

Except as toilet paper, she reflected sourly.  And propaganda.

It was hard not to feel a twinge of annoyance.  The rebels had long suspected the government had done everything from debt manipulation to outright falsification of records in a bid to keep the planet under control.  Hell, they hadn’t really hidden what they’d been doing.  But the rot had clearly been far deeper than anyone, save the most paranoid, had ever suspected.  She understood, now, why the planet was both rich and desperately poor.  And why so many landowners had cheated on their taxes.

Which might be more useful if the aristos hadn’t brought the townies into government, Sarah reflected.  The townies had never been that fond of the government, but - unlike most of the rebels - they’d had something to lose.  They’d done their level best to stay on the sidelines as much as possible, although the more far-sighted had realised the balancing act was unlikely to endure indefinitely.  There’s little to gain by exposing wide-ranging tax fraud now.

She put the thought out of her head and raised her gaze, meeting Colonel Bryce Ambrose’s eyes.  He’d had a checkered career, and Sarah was all too aware he wasn’t entirely trustworthy, but there were few rebels with any proper military experience.  They knew how to wage a guerrilla war, how to choose their targets carefully and hit them hard, then withdraw before the enemy managed to muster a counterattack.  They didn’t know how to organise men to stand and fight, how to turn a rag-tag force into a tough and professional military that could take and hold ground.  She’d read the books and manuals, as had most of her local commanders, but turning the words into reality was beyond her.  Ambrose was the only person at her disposal who could do anything about it, at least before all hell broke loose.  It was just a matter of time.

“Colonel,” she said.  It hadn’t been easy to give anyone a rank, when they’d worked hard to ensure everyone was treated as an equal.  The commanders had never enjoyed total authority over their cells, to the point that anyone who tried to boss his men around was likely to be fragged the moment he turned his back.  “How’s it going?”

“Better than I hoped,” Ambrose said.  They’d become close, at least partly because their fates were bound together, but he was professional while they were on duty.  “There’s still a lot of resistance, from people who think they learnt everything there is to know before the war turned hot, but we’re making good progress by combining old and new tactics.  We should be able to launch the invasion of Kingston soon.”

Sarah nodded, curtly.  She’d gambled on overwhelming the government before it could muster a response, when the insurgency had turned into open warfare, but the bastards had been lucky.  They’d managed to clear most of the insurgents out of their capital city, then launch a thrust at Kingsport that had threatened to break her grip on the port before she could bring in more troops and equipment to continue the offensive.  Sarah hadn’t been wedded to the plan - she’d been honest enough to admit it had failed and signal the retreat before it became impossible - but it was still frustrating. The government had been gravely weakened, to the point the rebels had secured the rest of their targets without serious fighting, yet the war was far from over.  Neither side could afford to let the stalemate continue indefinitely and that meant ...

She glanced at the map, gritting her teeth.  It had grown harder to stay in touch with her spies on the government-held islands - their navy had become adept at intercepting and searching fishing boats heading into deep waters, where they could slip messages to their contacts - but the government hadn’t been able to hide their makeshift fleet.  It had slipped out of Kingsport and gone ... gone where?  The mere fact she’d lost track of it was worrying, although she had little doubt the fleet would be spotted if it approached the core islands.  The government had told everyone it was a training exercise, but she didn’t believe it.  They’d pulled that trick before.  Besides, they’d put far too much effort into the deployment for it to be anything so minor.

Ambrose tapped the map.  “We’ve got the crews training on the boats now,” he added.  “We may not have as much modern tech as we might like, but we’ll give them a very hard time when they come for us.  They can’t take many defeats.”

Sarah wasn’t so sure.  There weren’t that many aristos, but the government had been recruiting amongst the townies.  Whoever had come up with that idea - and she suspected General Roland Windsor, on the grounds the aristos weren’t that imaginative - had done well.  She was sure the government wouldn’t keep its promises - she had a feeling many of the townies feared the same - but it was unlikely to matter.  The strange alliance wouldn’t collapse until the government won the war, or - at the very least - drove the rebels back into the shadows.

“We shall see,” she said, finally. 

She looked at the wooden table, remembering how easy life had been when she’d been just a local commander.  Then, all that mattered was keeping her group intact while finding ways to strike at the enemy.  Now, she was in charge of the entire war effort.  She had to train her troops, many of whom had only signed up after the uprising had overwhelmed the island, while arranging for supplies of everything from food and vehicles to weapons and armoured vehicles.  The islands had more industrial capacity than she’d realised - she’d been amused to discover one of the factories concealed a galactic-level fabber, a device on the import blacklist - but setting priorities and finding war materiel was incredibly difficult.  It didn’t help they couldn’t rely on imports from distant allies.  She had a nasty feeling they’d come with a price tag attached, now that the rebels had become a provisional government.

And those bills will come due, when we occupy Kingston, she thought.  We may have to pay through the nose for what little they send us.

She stood, brushing down her pants as she looked around the chamber.  The room had once been a garden of sybaritic delights, the walls covered in paintings that had been so erotic they’d shocked even her.  She’d grown up on Earth, where - in the planet’s final years - all taboos had been thrown aside, but the original owner had crossed so many lines she couldn’t understand how his fellows had tolerated him.  Even aristos had some standards.  She’d had the paintings torn out and burnt, the gold and silver artwork melted down to pay her troops and everything else stripped out and replaced with cruder furniture, but the office still felt unwelcoming.  She supposed that was a good thing.  If she stayed in such a room indefinitely, what would it do to her?  Would she become used to luxury?  Would she allow it to corrupt her?  Or simply turn her into a lazy brat?

The thought nagged at her as she walked to the window and peered over the square below.  A handful of bodies hung from makeshift gallows, twisting slowly in the wind.  Sarah grimaced.  Two of the men had been aristos, who’d been hiding out in the jungle until they’d made a bid to steal a boat and flee; the others were looters, men and women she’d had to order executed to set an example.  She regretted their deaths, if only because she understood why they’d turned to crime.  Food wasn’t precisely in short supply, thanks to the algae-farms they’d captured, but the best of the grub was reserved for fighting units.  She would have preferred to send the thieves to a work gang, where they could slave beside the former aristos who hadn’t been killed during the uprising, but too many people had wanted them dead.  The mob needed to be placated.  God knew the uprising, with all the pent-up savagery that had been unleashed on the island, hadn’t been enough to satisfy the mob’s demand for bloody revenge.  How could it?

Her eyes wandered over the nearby streets.  They were bustling with life, from newspaper sellers advertising their wares to merchants inviting passers-by to come into their shops.  The old rules and regulations were gone, allowing anyone who wanted to open a shop to do it without splashing out thousands of credits in bribes, then paying more in punitive taxes.  The people below knew the war was far from over, that there was more struggle to come, yet ... they were doing their best to enjoy the freedom and safety while it lasted.  Her lips quirked into a smile as she saw a line of teenage girls walking past the square, assault rifles slung over their shoulders.  A year ago, owning weapons without special permits had been utterly illegal.  Now, everyone was armed and the streets had never been safer.

And if we’d been allowed to own pistols on Earth, she reflected, would the megacities have been safer for women?

There was a sharp knock at the door.  Her hand dropped to her pistol as she turned, bracing herself.  The mansion was heavily guarded, but she was uneasily aware an intruder might manage to get through the defences, either by tricking the guards or simply sneaking through a tunnel they didn’t know existed.  Sarah knew, without false modesty, that she was far from irreplaceable, but it would be difficult for the rebel leadership to appoint someone to take her place.  Her origins had made it easier, perversely, for them to accept her as their warlord and provisional president.  Her successor might not have that advantage.

“Come,” she said.

The door opened.  A young woman poked her head into the room, her eyes nervous.  “Ah ...”

Bad news, Sarah thought. She’d done her best to convince her expanded staff that she wasn’t in the habit of killing the messenger, unlike some of the aristos, but only a handful actually believed her.  Too many of the newcomers had clerked for aristocrats who’d had a habit of using their fists to express their displeasure.  Whatever she wants to say, it isn’t good.

She made a show of relaxing, keeping her hand away from her pistol.  “Spit it out,” she ordered, as gently as possible.  “What’s happened?”

The young woman looked as if she expected to be struck at any moment.  “Ah ... we just picked up a radio message from Mountebank,” she said, cringing.  “The island is under heavy attack.  They think they are about to be invaded.”

Sarah turned to look at the map, pinned to the wall.  “Details?”

“Very little,” the young woman said.  “I ... ah ... the message cut off abruptly.”

“I see.”  Sarah wasn’t too surprised.  The planet’s atmosphere played merry hell with radio signals.  The government didn’t really need to jam transmissions or bomb transmitters to keep word from spreading - effectively instantly - from island to island, although she was sure they would do it anyway.  Their off-world commander wouldn’t miss that trick.  “Go back to your station, order them to keep listening for updates.  If there are any, bring them to me.”

The woman bowed low, then retreated as quickly as she could without openly running.  Sarah scowled as the door closed.  She couldn’t blame someone for doing whatever she had to do to survive - she felt sick, sometimes, when she thought of the things she’d had to do - but the woman’s former master was gone.  Dead, perhaps, or simply fled.  His servant could afford to be more of a free woman now, couldn’t she?  But it wasn’t so easy to get rid of habits that had made the difference between life and death.  Sarah wondered, perversely, if her descendants would think of her as a weakling, for getting on her knees - literally - when confronted by superior force.  If everything went as planned, her offspring would know freedom.  The ever-present fear that had governed her early years as an involuntary colonist would be alien to them.

“That’s an odd target,” Ambrose mused, studying the map.  “They can take the island, perhaps, but it won’t get them any closer to us.”

Sarah was inclined to agree.  Mountebank had never been considered particularly important.  The island was too far from the core islands for her to risk improving its defences, for fear the government would simply bypass the island and leave the garrison to wither on the vine.  She was tempted to wonder if the invasion was nothing more than a raid, perhaps an operation intended to test the government’s forces while giving them the chance to withdraw if the defenders proved too stubborn to be easily overcome.  The government’s expanded forces were as green as her own, although she knew they had a solid core of military veterans to stiffen their spine.  They might see value in a probing attack they could convert into a full-scale invasion if victory seemed assured.

“We can’t get anyone out there to help,” Ambrose commented, grimly.  “The gunboats would be operating without support, right at the edge of their range.”

“Yeah.”  Sarah let out a breath.  There was nothing she could do.  The defenders had to win or lose on their own.  She suspected there’d be a result quickly.  Mountebank wasn’t a big island, not compared to Baraka, Rolleston or Winchester.  “If they convert the island into a base, how much does it hurt us?”

“Very little, unless they’ve built long-range aircraft,” Ambrose assured her.  “They’d be too isolated to have any real effect on the rest of the war.”

Sarah hoped he was right.  Ambrose had had only a few months of military life when the balloon had gone up, more than she did or many others, but far less than their opponent.  He was, at best, a gifted amateur.  General Windsor was young, or at least he looked young, but he’d spent years in the military.  And he lacked the short-sightedness of the aristocrats who’d tried to lead the militia into battle.  He was a dangerous - and sometimes reckless - foe.  She dared not assume the invasion wouldn’t weaken her position ...

The mere fact they pulled it off, if they win the engagement, will do wonders for their morale, she thought, crossly.  And our morale will go down at the same time.

“They’ll have to fight as long as they can,” she said.  There was no point in trying to direct operations personally.  Even if it had been possible, from such a distance, it would have been worse than useless.  The local commander would hardly surrender his authority to someone he barely knew, nor would his troops follow orders from the radio.  “And then slip back into the jungle.”

“Unless there’s an opportunity to counterattack,” Ambrose said.  “They might have a chance.”

Sarah let her eyes wander over the map, before shaking her head and stepping back.  It might be hours, or days, before she knew what was happening ... no, what had happened.  By the time she found out, it would be too late to issue any meaningful orders.  The local commander did have standing orders, but ... who knew how seriously he’d take them?  He might decline to fall back, if confronted by superior force, or ... she bit her lip.  The insurgency had suffered defeats in the past, but none of them had been fatal.  Now they were out in the open, a defeat might be far more significant.

“Contact the boats,” she said.  “We need to expand our warning network.  If they get a fleet close to the core without being detected ...”

“It’s unlikely,” Ambrose assured her.  “They probably took a very evasive course to Mountebank, letting them get close without being spotted.  Here ... there are a lot more inhabited islands and shipping between them and us.”

“Better to be careful.”  Sarah knew he was right, at least on paper, but she hadn’t survived so long without taking basic precautions.  “If they force a landing here, we may have trouble driving them back into the sea.”

Chapter Six

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

“General, we just picked up a signal from Unit Are,” Lieutenant Church said.  “They’re ready to head to the coast.”

Roland nodded, curtly.  Unit Are was Rachel’s designation.  He hadn’t been sure if she’d be able to continue her mission, let alone make it back to the coast under her own power; he’d been careful to devise plans that didn’t rely on her presence, just in case the worst happened.  She’d given him a whole string of dire warnings about what might happen if she overused the boost.  But if she’d signalled the fleet, it was clear she was alive and reasonably well.

“Good,” Roland said.  “Inform me when they signals again.”

He turned his attention to the display.  His men were landing more troops, vehicles and equipment all the time.  The tiny harbour was rapidly being turned into a stronghold, tanks and AFVs taking up blocking positions while antiaircraft and antimissile batteries swept the skies for incoming threats.  He didn’t have anything like as much of the latter as he would have liked, but - thankfully - the rebels didn’t seem to have any long-range missiles in their arsenal.  Their forces had largely been caught out of place, although - he had to admit - not as badly as he would have liked.  The city was teeming with enemy fighters, while the larger harbours were heavily fortified.  Some enemy troops were trying to flee to the jungle, but the remainder seemed determined to dig in and fight to the last.  And in an urban environment, Roland’s advantages would be minimised.  

We need to keep pushing, he thought.  He would have preferred to ensure his men had a chance to rest, rather than marching forward with a dangerous recklessness, but he needed to trap as many fighters within the city as possible.  Taking the city would be costly, and a siege would be time-consuming, yet better that than the rebels getting into the jungle and resuming the insurgency.  If we can cut them off and trap them, perhaps they’ll see sense and surrender.

He looked at Admiral Forest.  “I’ll move my command post to the island,” he said.  “Have the gear transported at once.”

Admiral Forest looked caught between relief and concern.  Roland understood.  It couldn’t be easy for the admiral to have Roland on his command deck, not when the makeshift navy had yet to sort out matters like command precedence under fire.  A smart commander had to worry about confusion, when missiles were blazing towards his ships.  And yet, he also had orders to keep Roland safe.  His death would be more than just a personal disaster.  There were no candidates who enjoyed bipartisan approval waiting in the wings.

“Yes, sir,” Admiral Forest said, finally.  “Good luck.”

Roland nodded, curtly.  It was unlikely he’d be in any real danger.  The invasion force had secured the lodgement within moments of landing, then spread out.  There were no major rebel forces within two miles and individuals were unlikely to get through the perimeter, not unless they were as capable as Rachel or Belinda.  He doubted it, although he’d been cautioned the rebels knew how to use the jungle to best advantage.  And besides, he needed to get a feel for the island.  Issuing orders from a safe distance, without any real awareness of the island’s realities, was asking for trouble.

Rachel will tell me off later, he reflected as he headed for his boat.  But she’ll understand what I had to do.

***

The town didn’t look that threatening, as the AFV nosed down the dirt road towards the settlement, but Richard’s instincts sounded the alarm even before the first bullet pinged off the vehicle’s armour.  He was morbidly pleased to have proof the enemy awaited them, although it hadn’t been unexpected.  The town sat on the road leading up to the jungle, ensuring that whoever controlled it could also control the road.  Richard suspected that the town had been emplaced with malice aforethought, even though neither the rebels nor the government could have expected Mountebank to become a warzone.  There’d been plenty of indents and de facto slaves within the city and keeping them from running away had been a priority for years.  His heart twisted.  He knew the rebels couldn’t be trusted.  He knew they would tear down the good, as well as the bad, if they won the war.  His own family would be destroyed ...

... And yet, part of him wondered if he was on the wrong side.

He forced himself to study the town’s defences as the AFVs opened fire, forcing the rebels to keep their heads down.  Most of the buildings were sturdy enough to stand up to machine gun fire, although a handful of missiles would be more than enough to destroy the town.  The rebels had adapted well, he noted, as a handful of mortar shells flew up from behind the buildings and fell towards his forces.  They obviously knew how to take best advantage of the terrain ... he reached for his communicator, ordering the lead elements to return fire.  The rebels might not be aware of it, but he needed to take the town intact.  Any delay in clearing the rubble would slow the timetable still further, giving the rebels time to set up more booby traps while pulling as many men as they could out of the trap.

“Unit One, provide covering fire,” he ordered, curtly.  There was no point in taking the AFVs closer, not when the rebels had makeshift antitank weapons as well as IEDs.  “Squad One, flank the town, then clear it.”

His fingers itched.  He wanted to disembark and join the flanking attack, even though he was in overall command of the offensive.  He cursed under his breath as he glanced at the tracker, reminding himself - once again - that everything was slightly out of date.  The offensive had been slowed, the rebels buying time with their lives, but the main thrust was still on target to reach its destination.   And then ...

Once we break up their positions, we can force them to surrender or simply starve them out, he reflected.  And then we can try to put an end to the war.

***

“Keep your fucking heads down,” Ellis snarled as the new recruits stumbled into the jungle.  “If they can see you, they can kill you!”

Angeline nodded, feeling sweat running down her back and pooling in her boots as the makeshift squad pushed through the foliage.  She’d never thought of herself as a hardened veteran, and it had only been six months since she’d gotten out of hospital and joined the army, but she’d learnt fast.  It helped that she’d watched others make tiny mistakes and die.  The newcomers, the young men who’d landed with the second wave, hadn’t had the chance to learn yet.  She hoped, as she stayed low, that they’d last long enough to make it.

The sound of shooting grew louder as they tried to flank the town.  Angeline stayed alert, watching for prying eyes or booby traps.  The jungle might look impassable, on a map, but anyone who’d actually lived in or near a jungle knew better.  The rebels couldn’t move heavy vehicles through the foliage, thankfully, yet there was nothing stopping them from abandoning their positions and retreating.  Angeline was mildly surprised they hadn’t started to run already.  The bastards were brave enough, when confronted by unarmed men and defenceless women, but they turned into cowards when they fought someone willing and able to fight back.

Ellis held up a hand, signalling for the squad to get down and crawl.  Angeline obeyed without hesitation.  To hell with dignity.  Better to stay in the mud than get shot.  She followed her commander, bracing herself as the first of the buildings came into view.  Her heart twisted in outrage.  It was a barracks, just like the ones on her family’s plantation.  The men who’d lived there had turned on her family ...

Get ready, she told herself.  Her hands felt sweaty, slippery, as her commander counted down the final seconds.  Fuck this up and get fucked.

She darted forward on command, reaching the door as Ellis hurled a grenade through the window and into the barracks.  Angeline felt the building shake as the grenade detonated, heard someone scream.  She shoved the door open and threw a noisemaker into the barracks, then followed it in.  The wooden bunks were shattered ruins, a handful of wounded men on the floor.  Angeline felt sick as she saw the carnage, then forced the sensation out of her mind as a pair of men ran towards her.  They didn’t have any visible weapons, but she didn’t dare take that for granted.  Besides, she wasn’t inclined to accept surrender.  She shot them both down, then pressed onwards.  The tunnel at the rear of the barracks looked new.  She heard voices at the far end and drew a grenade from her belt, hurling it into the darkness.  Angeline hoped, vindictively, that some of the rebels had been buried alive.  They deserved it and worse.

There was no time to rest on their laurels.  She ran outside, keeping her head down as the rebel position started to crumble.  A wave of heat, hot even by the planet’s standards, washed through the air and she looked up, just in time to see a man with a makeshift flamethrower.  She almost froze as the flames billowed towards her, an instant before Ellis shot the man, sending him and his weapon crashing to the ground.  Flames leapt up, the stench of roasting flesh permeating the air.  Angeline heard someone throwing up behind her and rolled her eyes in disgust.  She’d smelt worse, when the insurgency had begun.  The newbies behind her would do so too, given time.  They probably thought their training barracks smelt so bad it simply couldn’t get any worse.

She forced herself to keep going, heedless of her own personal safety.  The infantry spread out, clearing buildings with cold determination.  The flames spread behind them, threatening to burn much of the town to the ground.  Angeline didn’t care.  Her superiors could worry about keeping the town intact, if they wanted.  She just wanted to kill rebels.  She crashed into a small house and looked around, spotting a man leaning against the far wall.  A gun sat by his feet.  He had to be a rebel.  She shot him, then swept the rest of the tiny building.  It was very clearly an observation point.  She made a mental note of the radio’s location - the spooks might want to see it, afterwards - then rejoined the squad outside.  The enemy position was collapsing.  She breathed a sigh of relief as the AFVs rumbled into the town, despite the risk of accidentally being shot by her own side.  The drivers were good - she’d trained with them - but, for most of the crews, the invasion was their first taste of combat.  

The shooting stopped, so abruptly she half-thought someone had flipped a switch.  The remaining rebels, if any had survived, were on the run.  She hoped they were wounded, that they’d bleed out and die in the jungle before they reached safety.  Her lips twisted.  No, they wouldn’t reach safety because there was none to be found.  They might have a slight edge in jungle craft, but it wouldn’t last.  Angeline and her comrades would search the entire island, quartering it piece by piece until they found and slaughtered the rebel forces.  There would be nowhere to hide.

She sagged, taking a moment to catch her breath as the squad reformed.  A handful of faces were missing ... she hoped that meant the newbies were wounded, rather than dead.  Or simply ordered to join other squads.  The unit had never been that coherent, even before it had been sent into combat for the first time.  Their training officers had insisted they learn to form new units at the drop of a hat.  She was starting to understand why.  They’d learnt a great deal, since they’d volunteered to fight, but some lessons could only be learnt by doing.  And that could get someone killed ...

Ellis clapped her shoulder.  “You did well, Private.”

Angeline tried not to flinch.  She’d had a great deal of experience in concealing her real feelings from authority figures - her father would not have been amused if he’d known what she was feeling - but her defences had been shattered.  Once, she wouldn’t have been too concerned about a clap on the shoulder; now, it felt like a threat, like the promise of worse to come.  A person invading her personal space ... she turned away, trying not to vomit as her memories threatened to overwhelm her.  It would be a long time before she felt safe again, even when she was alone.  She’d found it near-impossible to share a barracks with the rest of the squad.  Only the desire for revenge had kept her going.

She nodded as she turned back to him, unhooking her canteen from her belt and taking a swig.  They had a few moments to rest, before they pressed onwards.  The follow-up units, looking disgustingly fresh and untested, marched past, securing the town and setting up blocking positions.  The rebels could still escape through the jungle, although that would be a great deal harder once the army started to patrol the roads, but they’d have problems getting their heavy equipment out of the city.  They’d have to abandon the gear, perhaps spiking the guns to keep their enemies from using them, or stand and fight.  Angeline hoped they’d make a stand.  She wanted to crush them like bugs.

“Grab a ration bar,” Ellis ordered his men.  “We’ll be moving again shortly.”

Angeline nodded.  She was tired, her entire body aching, but she wanted to be in at the death.  She wanted to be there when the rebels were crushed ... she wanted to do it herself.  She wanted to watch them scream ... she looked up as a trio of aircraft roared overhead, flying towards the burning city.  There was nothing keeping them from bombing the hell out of the rebel defences, weakening them so the groundpounders could overwhelm their positions and wipe them out.  Angeline hoped they wouldn’t surrender, no matter what the brass said.  She wanted them all to die.

***

Rachel felt almost normal again as she made her way down the dirt road, keeping her eyes open for possible ambushes.  Mountebank wasn’t that big, on a planetary scale, but the island was still large enough for the rebels to regroup in the aftermath of the invasion.  The sound of shooting was easily audible - she doubted there were any rebels who didn’t know what was happening - but it would be a long time before Roland and his commanders got a patrol up here.  She was all too aware she’d stand out, if someone got a good look at her.  Her ghillie suit was designed to camouflage her as much as possible, but there were limits.  If nothing else, the suit was unique.  As far as she knew, there were no other top of the line ghillie suits on New Doncaster.

She tensed as she heard engines further up the road.  It was hard to be sure - her enhanced ears could pick up aircraft as well as ground-based vehicles - but it sounded like a motorbike.  Rachel briefly considered concealing herself within the jungle, then stopped and waited.  If the reports were accurate, the rebels had commandeered every vehicle on the island.  Whoever was riding the bike was almost certainly a rebel.

And I can steal the bike for myself, she thought.  I need to get back ...

The motorbike came into view.  It looked primitive, burning hydrocarbons for fuel rather than using power cells, although it was at the peak of what the planet could produce without off-world help.  The rider, a young man wearing makeshift camouflage, gaped at her, then tried to gun the engine and zoom past.  Rachel darted forward, without using the boost, and knocked him off the bike, landing on top of him as he hit the ground.  He tried to struggle, but she was far stronger.  The shock, and fear, in his eyes didn’t surprise her.  If he knew what she was, or even guessed at her mission, he had to assume she’d torture him for information and snap his neck once he’d finished talking.

“Where are you going?”  Rachel deepened her voice, trying to sound masculine.  She didn’t look very feminine in the ghillie suit - he might not have realised she was a woman - and if he assumed she was a man, he might be happier about surrendering.  “Answer me!”

The man stared at her.  “The airport,” he managed, finally.  “I ... they told me to take a package there.”

“Now?”  Rachel found it hard to believe, but the courier was too scared to think of a lie.  She could smell the urine as his bladder gave way.  “Why the airport?”

The courier didn’t move.  He’d fainted.  Rachel checked, just to be sure he wasn’t faking it, then rolled off him and searched him quickly.   He wasn’t carrying much, just a primitive pistol and a sealed datachip box.  The package, she guessed.  The rebels wouldn’t have sent it to the airport unless they’d thought the datachips could be flown out, before the airport fell.  It was a priority target ... she played with the box for a moment, then stood as a thought occurred to her.  The man’s shirt and trousers were stained, but his overcoat was still wearable.  If she took his place ...

They’ll defend the airport to the death, she thought.  It wasn’t impossible they’d get a flight out.  The locals made good pilots, their aircraft designed for the planet’s cursed weather.  If the pilot stayed low, and well away from the fleet, there was a good chance of escape.  But if I can get inside, we can put the brakes on before they get away.

Chapter Seven

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

Blair Smith had never been so scared.

He’d thought himself a brave man, when he’d fled the plantation bare inches ahead of the overseer who’d intended to beat him to death.  He’d joined the insurgents shortly before the uprising, fighting beside them as they destroyed the plantations and stormed the city, executing the aristos too stupid to run before their time ran out.  And he’d danced and sang with the rest of his people, when they’d thought they were free.  But now ...

He stood at the guardpost and tried not to show fear.  The aristos had returned and they’d brought an army.  The rumours were insane - billions of men, millions of tanks - but it was clear the rebels were rapidly losing control of the lowlands.  Blair had heard the radio messages, before they’d been brutally silenced; he’d seen the aircraft flying overhead, dropping their bombs without interference.  There could be no doubt.  The aristos had landed and they could not be dislodged.  And that meant the lowlands would have to be abandoned before the defenders were trapped and killed.

It was hard not to give into the temptation to turn away and run.  The airport had seemed a nice safe billet, when he’d accepted the assignment.  He’d never seriously considered it might come under heavy attack, certainly not without a week’s warning.  He had to admire the nerve the aristos had shown, landing well clear of the main defences and practically outflanking them rather than trying to drive into rebel fire and clear them out pillbox by pillbox.  Now ... the reports were vaguer, and some observers had stopped transmitting completely, but Blair was no fool.  He could tell the aristos were driving on the airport.  It wouldn’t be long before they came into view.

Something moved, down the road.  He lifted his rifle, unsure if there was any point in trying to make a stand.  The airport had never been designed to serve as a strongpoint and what few additions had been made, when the insurgency had started to bite, weren’t anything like enough to stand off an armoured division.  He was tempted to run himself, or to try to surrender ... no, that wasn’t an option.  The man who’d owned Blair and his family might be dead - it was hard to be sure - but he had heirs.  They’d insist Blair was their property.  The best he could hope for, if they took custody of him, was a quick return to the plantation.  He couldn’t stand the thought.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the motorbike came into view.  They’d been told to watch for a courier, someone bringing something to the airport ... he hoped, as fear twisted in his gut, that the rider wasn’t a senior rebel trying to escape before it was too late.  The rider was a young man wearing a black trench coat and a cap that concealed his hair and most of his face.  It was a disguise ... Blair’s eyes sharpened, then relaxed as he spotted hints the rider was decidedly feminine.  He supposed that accounted for the disguise.  Women - his sisters amongst them - had been wearing male clothes for years, even though it had been officially forbidden until the rebellion, in hopes of avoiding harassment by the militia and plantation overseers.  His stomach clenched at the thought.  He couldn’t go back there. He just couldn’t.

“I have a package for the boss,” the courier said.  She didn’t sound very feminine, but there was definitely something in the tone that convinced Blair it was an act.  “Can I take it through?”

“He’s in the tower,” Blair said.  He knew he should pat her down, at the very least, but he was too nervous to bother.  “Good luck.”

The courier nodded politely, then rode past.  Blair wondered, idly, if she’d be on one of the last flights out of the airport, before the enemy closed it down.  He wasn’t sure it was possible to get an aircraft out safely, although - from the boasting he’d overheard - the pilots thought they could fly through mountains without scattering their atoms over the island.  He was pretty sure they were bullshitting.  The technology to fly through solid matter simply didn’t exist.

He flinched as the sound of shooting grew louder, followed by the rumble of engines.  There was nothing between the invaders and the airport now, nothing save for Blair and a handful of guards.  They couldn’t stand up to the enemy for more than a few seconds, if that.  He wondered, suddenly, if he could beg his way onto one of the aircraft, perhaps make his escape with the others.  It was quite possible they could escape the tightening noose and get back to the jungle, even if they didn’t get to another island.  And then ... he gritted his teeth.  No.  It wasn’t going to happen.  If he didn’t run now, he was doomed.

And if I do run, I’ll be shot in the back, he thought.  There’s no way out.

***

It was a given, Rachel had learned years before she’d been invited to train as a Pathfinder, that war was chaotic, as well as dangerously unpredictable.  Proper security relied upon the guards knowing what was normal, and having a good idea of who might be allowed to walk through the checkpoints even without checking the paperwork or calling for superior officers, but there was no normal in war.  She’d feared, even as she’d checked in with Roland and arranged for the army to rush the airport to support her, that the guards would insist on checking her identity.  It had been quite possible, at least in her view, that the guards would know the couriers by sight.  Rachel had bluffed her way onto military bases before, but that had been wearing the right uniforms and generally acting like an entitled asshole who did have the right papers, even if they’d been temporally misplaced.   Here ...

And I would have gleefully reported anyone who let me through without checking, she thought, without a twinge of guilt.  The guards should never have let themselves be browbeaten into allowing her to enter, even if she’d threatened them with permanent KP or something even worse.  That was the whole point of the exercise.

Rachel kept her face under tight control as she parked the motorbike with a bunch of others - there were no moving vehicles within the perimeter - concealing a small charge under the saddle before she looked around.  The airport was bigger than she’d expected, with a handful of concrete hangars and a single large control tower .... much bigger, she thought, than the island really needed.  Mountebank wasn’t really close enough to any of the major islands to serve as a refuelling point, although she supposed the excess capability might have come in handy for something.  Or maybe it had been built in a bid to boost the island’s economy.  The government was reluctant to invest in long-haul aircraft, when the weather made flying difficult much of the time, but private investors might have been willing to take the risk.

Her eyes narrowed.  There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people within eyeshot, most running around as if they had no idea where they should go.  She thought she knew how they were feeling.  The airport might have been reasonably secure during the insurgency, but there was a small army bearing down on the defences.  The refugees had made the wrong call, coming to the airport instead of trying to run to the jungle, and now they were trapped.  She glanced into one of the hangars and saw dozens of youngsters gathered around a mid-sized aircraft.  The ground crew were doing what they could, but it wasn’t easy to get it ready to fly.  There were just too many people waiting to get onboard.

She kept moving, careful to look as if she had a perfect right to be in the middle of operations.  The airport was in chaos, with so many strangers running around it was unlikely anyone would notice her, but there was no point in taking chances.  The trick to not being challenged, she’d learnt over the years, was to avoid giving anyone the slightest hint you should be challenged.  It was a difficult trick to master, but the confusion made it a great deal easier.  If she’d been in command of the airport’s security, she would have ordered everyone out before it was too late.

Even without an intruder, the people are making it impossible to get the aircraft out, she mused, as she walked to the control tower.  A handful of guards were on duty, eyeing the crowds nervously.  There were no aircraft inside the tower, nor were there any other ways out - assuming the plans she’d downloaded were complete - but crowds were rarely rational.  One spark would be more than enough to start a riot, tearing the airport apart from the inside.  One little spark ...

She pasted a nervous expression on her face as the distant shooting grew louder.  Roland had promised he’d do what he could and it sounded as if he’d made it happen, directing the advance elements to race down the road and reach the airport as quickly as possible.  The guards looked nervous too, exchanging glances as she approached.  She had no trouble recognising men who were slowly coming to realise, no matter how much they tried to fight it, that they were trapped and doomed.  The rebel propaganda worked against them, she noted wryly.  They’d tried so hard to convince their people that POWs faced an unspeakable fate that many rebels, given a chance to run, might take it rather than risk standing and fighting to the death.

“I have a package for the boss,” she said, again.  It didn’t help she had little idea of just who was expecting the courier.  The rebel command network was a mystery, save for a handful of codenames that could easily be nothing more than disinformation.  It was what she would have done.  The local spooks were doing what they could, but they’d yet to match any of the codenames to real people.  “I need to deliver it now.”

The guards hesitated.  Rachel realised, in a flash, she’d been caught out.  Either they knew the courier by sight or they’d simply expected a young man, rather than a woman.  She briefly considered trying to bluff, to lie her way out of the mess, but she didn’t know enough to make the story convincing.  If there were no women working as couriers, which wasn’t impossible given how few rights women had on New Doncaster, lying would only make things worse.  Instead, she used her implants to send a signal back to the motorbike.  The charge she’d hidden under the saddle, in preparation for a diversion if she needed it, detonated.  For a moment, all was chaos.  The guards jumped in shock, staring at the blast; the crowd fled in panic, shouting and screaming.  The explosion had triggered a chain reaction, destroying the remaining vehicles.  It gave her a moment of complete surprise.

She used it ruthlessly, punching out one of the guards and hitting the other in the throat before shoving open the door.  The interior was surprisingly warm - she guessed the rebels hadn’t bothered to keep the air conditioning on - and welcoming.  She drew her gun as she raced through the empty room, heading up the stairs.  The tower had looked, from the outside, relatively standardised, although built from concrete instead of prefabricated colonist crap.  She hoped they hadn’t made any non-standard alterations, as she ran up the stairs.  There wasn’t time to search the building from top to bottom.  If the sound outside was any indication, the first scouts had arrived.

The door at the top of the stairs was firmly closed.  She tested it gingerly, first to make sure it was actually locked and then to determine if she could either pick the lock or break down the door.  Neither seemed possible.  She did a quick scan for control circuitry, in hopes of finding a command circuit she could hack, but the door seemed too primitive for anything other than brute force.  She wondered if she could break the door down, then kicked herself - mentally - for overlooking the simple solution.  She knocked.  A moment later, the door started to open.

Rachel didn’t hesitate.  She shoved the door open, boosting as she darted into the control room itself.  A man stumbled back, hitting the floor in front of her; she stamped on his chest, too lightly to kill but hard enough to keep him down long enough for her to deal with the others.  Her gaze swept the room.  There were five other people within eyeshot, two men and three women.  She was surprised to see the latter.  She’d bet good money they weren’t airport staff.  Unless they’d been cleaners, spying on their former masters ...

“Hands in the air,” she ordered.  The boost made it harder to do something as subtle as take prisoners.  She was stronger and faster than them, but she knew from bitter experience it was easy to get overwhelmed and then blindsided.  “Hands in the air, now!”

The staff obeyed.  Rachel motioned them into a corner, looking around for something - anything - she could use to restrain them.  There was no way she could trust them not to do something stupid, not when she was coming off the boost and shaking so badly she was clearly in no state for a fight.  She briefly considered breaking a few of their bones when nothing came to hand, then found a roll of duct tape in a storage locker.  She had to smile as she tossed it to one of the women and ordered her to tape up the others, rather than risk doing it herself.  Duct tape was so useful, she reflected, that she should have expected to find it somewhere it could be easily reached.

She bound the last woman herself, once the others were helpless, then checked the communications console.  It was strikingly primitive, to the point she doubted it would be easy to spoof.  The sound of shooting from outside was growing louder, shouts and screams echoing through the open windows.  She heard engines powering up and cursed under her breath.  The pilots were likely to squash a bunch of innocent victims under their wheels as they made their way onto the runway and took off, without waiting for orders.  She keyed the radio and ordered the planes to stay on the ground, without any real expectation the orders would be obeyed.  It was worth a try.

A prisoner - one of the men - made a coughing sound.  “What ... what’ll happen to us?”

“If you behave yourselves, you’ll go into a POW camp where you’ll be held until the end of the war,” Rachel said, as she searched the room for anything else that might be useful or informative.  The rebels practiced good operational security, but it was possible they might have turned the tower into a command post once they’d secured the island.  It was very easy to lose good habits when they no longer seemed necessary.  “If not ...”

She let her words hang in the air as she completed the search.  The government hadn’t been that keen on taking prisoners, let alone treating them as POWs rather than insurgents and terrorists who could be legally interrogated then shot without trial.  Roland had burned up a lot of his political capital, when he’d insisted the government agree to treat prisoners well, and Rachel had no idea what would happen after the war was won.  Normally, POWs were exchanged with the enemy government, but ... unless the two sides agreed to split the planet between them, there wouldn’t be an enemy government.  And the government regarded many of the POWs as property, rather than people in their own right.  She hoped Roland could find a way to deal with the problem, without laying the groundwork for another civil war a decade or two down the line.  New Doncaster’s odds of surviving the first war were not as high as she might have liked.

The sounds from outside grew louder.  Rachel glanced through the window - it looked as if the defence line was crumpling - then ducked as bullets smashed the glass, sending fragments flying everywhere.  She hit the ground, covering her head with her hands as debris shattered around her.  Someone had spotted her and probably thought she was an enemy sniper, although they hadn’t reacted very well.  Rachel chuckled, despite herself.  She shouldn’t complain if someone had missed her, but the shooter should get a sharp lecture from their CO for having a clear shot at a suspected sniper and missing.  It wasn’t really that funny.  After all she’d done, to be shot by her own side would have been embarrassing.

No, it wouldn’t, she corrected herself.  You’d be too dead to be embarrassed.

The ground shook.  Something had exploded, something big.  A fuel tank?  Perhaps not, or the entire airport would have exploded.  An aircraft?  Rachel heard one of her prisoners whimpering and felt a flicker of sympathy, mixed with the grim awareness they probably wouldn’t have hesitated to kill her, if things had been reversed.  If they’d known what she was, they certainly would ... no one in their right mind would risk leaving a fully trained and outfitted special ops soldier in their rear, no matter how heavily they shackled her.  A person with the right enhancements could break handcuffs as easily as one might snap a twig.

“Don’t worry,” she said, as kindly as she could.  “It’ll all be over soon.”

But she knew, even as she spoke, it wasn’t remotely true.

Chapter Eight

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

Angeline couldn’t help herself.  She whooped.

The IFV charged towards the fence, the squad keeping their heads low as bullets cracked through the air and bounced off the IFV’s armour.  Whoever had designed the airport hadn’t taken security very seriously, from what she could see; they’d set up guardposts that might have made good strongpoints on the gates, but the remainder of the perimeter was secured by nothing more than rough terrain and a single fence.  There weren’t any walls, not even solid prefabricated blocks.  She was perversely disappointed, even as the IFV crashed over the terrain and slammed into the fence without slowing down.  The airport had changed hands at least once, if the briefing notes were accurate, yet neither owner had bothered to set up proper defences.  It made a certain degree of sense, she supposed.  The aristocrats hadn’t expected an uprising and the rebels hadn’t figured there’d be a full-scale invasion.

She kept her head low as bullets zipped overhead, a handful of rebels trying to mount a brief and utterly futile resistance.  They’d been caught in the open, unable to run or hide.  The IFV returned fire, sweeping the enemy positions with its machine guns.  Angeline grinned, savagely, as the rebels disintegrated, reduced to little more than blood and gore splattered against the hangar wall.  It was no more than they deserved.  She checked her rifle automatically as the IFV lurched to a halt, then followed Ellis through the hatch and down to the ground.  The airport was burning, flames rising up from near the gates.   She hoped that meant the defenders had other things to worry about, something that might keep them from mounting a proper defence before it was too late.  

The hangar doors slammed open, revealing a midsized aircraft heading for the runway, heedless of the rebels in its path.  Angeline blinked, honestly surprised, as the aircraft kept moving, catching sight of the pilots desperately preparing for takeoff.  A moment later, the roar of machine guns almost deafened her, the IFVs hosing the aircraft with bullets.  It seemed to stagger, just for a second, then exploded into a colossal fireball.  Angeline threw herself to the tarmac without thinking as the flames rose into the sky, then picked herself up and followed her superior into the hangar.  A single shot rang out, barely audible over the roar of the flames.  Ellis staggered, then fell.  He’d been shot in the head.  Angeline lifted her rifle, uncaring of her own safety.  The shooter - a man in plain clothes - was still trying to draw a bead on her when she shot him in the chest.  He crumpled, screaming in agony.  It wasn’t enough.  

She glanced back, trying to determine who was in command.  The original squad was effectively gone.  Too many soldiers had been killed in the fighting, to be replaced by the remnants of other squads that had been even less lucky.  Ellis had been in undisputed command, but now ... she didn’t have time to try to parse out the new chain of command.  It should have been settled during the race to the airport ... she snapped orders, knowing she’d be in deep shit if it turned out she wasn’t the senior survivor.  She told herself it didn’t matter as the squad swept the remnants of the hangar, then moved to the next.  It was teeming with people, refugees ... now, rebels.  She clenched her teeth as they stared at her, their eyes dull and hopeless.  They’d rebelled against the government, they’d committed hundreds of atrocities like the one perpetrated against her, and now they thought they could just get away with it?  A surge of hatred shot through her.  Her CO, a man who’d accepted her as one of the boys, was dead.  Her family was dead.  And the people in front of her had fought for the monsters who’d torn her world apart.

“Hands in the air,” she barked.  The shooting outside was dying down.  The guardposts had either been taken out by antitank missiles or forced to surrender.  The plan had been thrown together at very short notice, the assault more like a barroom brawl than a precise and perfect offensive, but it had worked.  “Stand up, then get your fucking hands in the fucking air.”

The rebels stared at her numbly, then moved to obey.  Angeline glared at them, her eyes scanning for possible threats.  A handful of men ... cowards, like all rebels, for not fighting on the front lines.  Women and children; the former no doubt cursing themselves for supporting the rebels, the latter unaware their lives were over before they’d even reached the age of maturity.  She met the eyes of a girl who couldn’t have been more than a year younger than she was and glared, hating the bitch for daring to fight for the rebels.  There was no way to know, but Angeline was sure the stupid girl had whored for them.  Everyone knew the rebels tormented their own people as much as their enemies.  The silly bitch hadn’t had the slightest idea what was being done in her name until it had been far too late to say stop.  

And now it’s too late for her, Angeline thought, as she directed the prisoners out of the hangar and onto the tarmac.  She’ll go into a POW camp, then spend the rest of her miserable life on a penal island.

Her hands tightened on the rifle as she saw the gold and jewels some of the women were wearing.  There was no way they’d come by them legitimately, not when they couldn’t have afforded even the simplest of jewellery.  No, they’d stolen it from a looted mansion, just as Angeline’s own jewels and family heirlooms had been taken during the first uprisings that had left her a broken woman.  There’d been over a dozen mansions on Mountebank, all now nothing more than burned-out rubble surrounded by ruined cropland.  Either the women had been looters themselves or they’d traded sex to the looters for fine jewels ... jewels they were completely unable to appreciate.  It was too much.  A woman met her eyes and smirked, as if she was somehow the victor despite being nothing more than a prisoner.  Angeline saw red.

She lifted her rifle, clicked the setting to automatic and opened fire.

***

Rachel had stayed low as the incoming forces stormed the gates and swept into the airport, doing her best to follow the action as government forces moved from hangar to hangar, rapidly and brutally quashing all resistance.  She’d kept her hands in the air as the soldiers had crashed into the control tower, all too aware she wasn’t wearing a uniform.  There was a very real chance, in the confusion, someone would take her for an enemy combatant and open fire before she could react.  It wasn’t until a senior officer arrived to take custody of her prisoners that she relaxed, a little.  There was still much to be done as the invasion force reorientated itself on the city, readying itself to storm the defences if the rebels refused to surrender.

She spoke briefly to the senior officer, directing him to keep the tower as secure as possible until the spooks had a chance to sweep the building for actionable intelligence, then donned a combat jacket and made her way down to the tarmac.  The shooting had come to an end, the remaining rebels dead or captured.  A line of prisoners lay on the ground, outside the command tower, their hands bound with plastic ties.  They’d be moved to a POW camp as quickly as possible, once the invasion force set one up.  It would take longer, she reflected, than a civilian might assume.  Fencing and prefabricated barracks were low on the invasion force’s priority list, while a local building would need to be searched from top to bottom before it could be converted into a makeshift camp.  Perhaps it would be better to use the airport’s hangars.  They could be searched easily, then sealed off from the rest of the complex without particular difficulty.  

And then we can see who we’ve caught, she thought.  It was unlikely, to say the least, that they’d captured the core of the rebel leadership - and it might not be a good thing if they had - but it was possible.  It was certainly worth taking some time to make sure.  If we captured someone who can order them to surrender ...

She rounded the corner, just as she heard shooting ahead of her.  Someone was firing a rifle on automatic... she forced herself to run, instincts screaming at her that something had gone badly wrong.  Had a prisoner grabbed a weapon?  Or had they stumbled across someone hiding in the hangar, someone intent on selling his life dearly.  Or ... she swore under her breath as she saw a soldier, one of the government’s soldiers, gunning down prisoners in cold blood.  Rachel was no stranger to terrorists and insurgents claiming to surrender, then lifting their weapons and opening fire as soon as the Marines came into point-blank range, but ... she couldn’t see any sign the prisoners had done anything.  They were women and children ... she boosted, picking up speed and hurling herself into the soldier, yanking the weapon out of his hand and throwing him to the ground.  No, her.  Rachel had no time to wonder as she pressed down, holding the shooter still.  It might be perfectly legal to shoot enemy combatants who pretended to surrender, but gunning down unarmed prisoners was a war crime.  And the other soldiers should have stopped it.

“Medics,” she shouted.  The shooter twisted underneath her.  Rachel upped the pressure, pressing down with her knee as she caught the shooter’s hands and wrenched them behind her back.  The shooter screamed, but kept struggling.  “Get the medics over here!”

She bit down the urge to curse as she looked at the carnage.  The shooter had fired on automatic ... the bullets had gone through their targets effortlessly, killing or injuring everyone in their path.  Blood pooled on the ground.  Some of the bodies were so badly mangled it was hard to tell how many people had been caught in the atrocity and slaughtered.  Rachel shuddered.  She was no stranger to carnage either, but this ... she knew mistakes happened, she knew sometimes innocents got swept up and slaughtered in war, yet this was nothing more than an outright war crime.  She gritted her teeth, watching sourly as the soldiers finally got to work, helping the medics sort out the mess.  They should have done something.  They had a goddamned obligation to do something.  They should have shot the wretched war criminal in the back, rather than just ... let her get on with it. If they’d been Marines ...

“Let me go.”  The shooter was struggling, still.  It would have been impressive if she hadn’t been a war criminal.  Rachel held her down, somehow.  “Let me go!”

Rachel snapped her fingers as a squad of fresh soldiers hurried up, a handful recoiling in shock as they saw the carnage.  “Give me a plastic tie.”

The soldiers obeyed.  Rachel hoped that was a good sign.  She’d worked with too many military forces that had loose ideas about discipline, or the proper treatment of prisoners taken in war.  Here ... she wrapped the tie around the shooter’s wrists, then searched her roughly, removing everything that could be used as a weapon.  The ID tags said ANGELINE PORTER.  Rachel vaguely recalled some kind of political stink about the girl, a conflict she hadn’t paid too much attention to at the time.  There was no proof it was the same person.  The name was hardly unique.

She stood, yanking Angeline to her feet.  “You are under arrest for committing a war crime, in violation of the Articles of War as approved by your government,” she said, flatly.  She had to do it by the book.  There was going to be one hell of a political explosion when the news reached Kingston.  “You will be held in custody until a tribunal can be assembled to hear your case.  You have the right to represent yourself or select someone else to represent you.  If you make any attempt to escape, I am authorised to do whatever is required to stop you, up to and including the use of lethal force.”

Angeline said nothing.  Rachel pushed her back to the command tower.  Roland would have to be informed, quickly.  Word was already spreading, or she was a Civil Guardsman with delusions of grandeur.  The local government might not take the same view of the atrocity, particularly if Angeline was well-connected.  The training mission had explained the laws of war to the new recruits, and Angeline had no excuse, but ... Rachel had seen well-connected people get away with rape and murder before, their families refusing to stand in judgement of their own people.  And that meant ... she shook her head.  Right now, it wasn’t her problem.  She had to get Angeline into custody before something worse happened.

And the rest of her squad will have to be rounded up too, Rachel thought.  She’d faced the pressures of combat herself, but ... it was no excuse for war crimes.  What the fuck were they thinking?

Captain Blythe met her at the tower.  “What happened?”

Rachel was in no mood to answer his questions.  “Private Porter is under arrest,” she said, sharply.  “She is to be treated as a dangerous prisoner, kept shackled and isolated until she can be transported back to Kingston.  She is to be monitored at all times, Captain.  I want at least two people in the cell with her, even when she’s on the toilet, and recording equipment trained on her and her guards.  If anyone wants to see her, they are to go through me.  Do I make myself clear?”

Blythe stiffened.  He’d been an aristocratic militiaman before the militia had been folded into the regulars and he’d never quite gotten used to the change.  Or to Rachel personally.  The idea a woman might outrank him ... Rachel shook her head.  She didn’t have time for petty prejudices from idiots too stupid to realise the world had changed.  If Blythe screwed the pooch, she’d make damn sure he spent the rest of his career standing guard on an island on the edge of the habitable zone.  It would be nice and safe and, best of all, it would keep him out of her hair.

“Yes,” he said, biting off the word.

“Good,” Rachel said.  There was no time.  She wanted to get help, but who could she trust with the prisoner?  Roland was on the other side of the island, the training mission was hundreds of miles away.  “I’ll take her to the storage room.  Have two guards, reliable men, sent down to join me.  And then I need to call the general.”

***

Angeline felt ... numb.

She was barely aware of her surroundings as she was pushed down a flight of stairs and into a bare room.  Her wrists hurt, but the sensation was somehow ... illusionary, as if it wasn’t really there at all.  She felt strong hands pushing her to the cold stone floor, then a knife cutting away the remnants of her uniform.  Once, being forcibly stripped would have terrified her.  Now, it was ... nothing.  Had she been drugged?  It was possible.  Her memories were a jumbled mess.  The fact she couldn’t bring herself to be worried about anything, even her own nakedness, hinted she might well be drugged ...

“Wow,” a male voice said.  “Naked and ...”

“Be quiet,” a female voice snapped.  The anger in her voice would have stopped Angeline in her tracks, if she hadn’t been so numb.  Only her mother had ever spoken to Angeline like that and only rarely.  “This room is being monitored.  If you show the slightest hint of unprofessionalism, you will be joining her in the brig.”

Angeline found it hard to care as icy fingers poked her in delicate places, as if her captor thought she was concealing a weapon in her genitals, then withdrew.  She felt someone snapping metal cuffs around her wrists and ankles, before the plastic tie was removed.  It wasn’t easy to turn over, but - when she did - she found herself staring up at a wiry young woman.  Two men stood by the door, watching her with cold eyes.  She was in a prison cell ...

Her memories fell into some form of order.  She’d taken prisoners, she’d been angry at the prisoners, she’d pulled the trigger and then ... she’d been knocked down.  She was concussed.  It was the only explanation and yet ... she swallowed, hard, as she remembered what she’d done.  The rebels had deserved it, hadn’t they?  They’d looted and raped and killed their way across the island and ... and they thought they were going to just go back to normal?  They’d deserved far worse than merely being gunned down by government troops.

“Water,” she managed.  “Please.”

Her captor pressed a small tube to her lips.  Angeline sipped, tasting something strange on the tip of her tongue.  She wondered, as the tube was withdrawn, what would happen to her.  The government would understand, surely.  It certainly hadn’t been able to decide what to do with the rebel prisoners.  There was no hope they could be redeemed, no suggestion they could even go back to the plantations.  And then ... what was to be done?

They deserved it, she thought, vindictively.  She clung to the thought, telling herself - time and time again - that it was true.  It had to be true.  If it wasn’t, she was nothing more than a murderer who was on a short trip to the gallows.  No, it had to be true.  They deserved everything I gave them and more.

Chapter Nine

Mountebank Island, New Doncaster

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

Richard stood by the IFV, shaking his head in dismay.  He’d served in the regulars long enough to admit, at least in the privacy of his own mind, that there were some officers - regular and militia - who’d gotten away with murder.  Sometimes literally.  The militia had never been noted for training or discipline, leading to the creation of units that threw their weight around or were really little more than criminal gangs.  He was honest enough to concede, because of his background, that the militia had supplied the rebels with an endless series of rallying cries.  God knew, one of the first insurgents he’d fought had claimed he’d taken up arms because his sister had been raped and murdered by a militia officer.  And he might well have been telling the truth ...

His stomach churned.  Twenty-seven women and children dead, nineteen more injured ... it was a fucking war crime alright, one committed by his own side.  Richard was all too aware civilians could be caught in the crossfire and killed, but this ... no, there was no getting around it.  There was no excuse.  The act was an atrocity, a war crime, a rallying cry for insurgents who might think they had no choice but to fight to the last.  Who could blame them?  Richard doubted there was any way to make things better, certainly not in time to make a difference.  Even putting Angeline Porter in front of a firing squad, without bothering with a trial, wouldn’t be enough.  He briefly considered suggesting the government hand her over to the rebels, to deal with as they saw fit, but he knew it would never fly.  Angeline Porter had become a rallying cry before, when her family had been killed and she’d been gang-raped and left for dead.  The government wouldn’t want to hand her over to anyone.

Fuck.  He kicked a stone as he raised his eyes, looking over the city.  What do we do now?

The fighting had, briefly, stalemated.  The rebels had raised solid defences around the city and the nearest harbours, forcing him to either bleed his men white in a bid to break into the city or set up barricades and lay siege to the rebel force.  The latter would work, given time, but it wouldn’t be the quick victory the planners wanted.  He allowed his eyes to wander along the enemy defences, sourly admiring how they’d woven the factories, warehouses and cheap cookie-cutter houses into a solid line of death and destruction, just waiting for his men to try to storm the city.  It wasn’t clear how many rebels remained inside the city - the invaders had caught hundreds of rebels trying to reach the jungle before it was too late - but he was morbidly sure there were enough to man the defences and keep him from breaking through in a hurry.  Sniper and mortar fire was already being exchanged, up and down the line.  He hated to admit it, but all hope of a quick and decisive victory was gone.

He keyed his radio.  “Anything from the rebels?”

“No answer, sir,” the operator said.  “We’re signalling on their frequencies.”

Richard grinded his teeth.  Nothing spread faster than bad news, to the point there were jokes about starships powered by bad news.  The rebels might already know what had happened at the airport, convincing them that surrender meant certain death.  What did they have to lose, if they fought to the last?  They might win and, even if they didn’t, they’d claw the government’s forces badly before they died.  Richard wasn’t blind to the limits facing the government.  If the fighting became too costly, it might have to hold its nose and try for a negotiated solution.

The rebels probably feel the same way too, he thought, crossly.  Right now, they have no reason to take us at our word.

He turned, watching as the latest forces started to arrive and take up position.  The siege lines around the city looked fragile, but without armoured fighting vehicles or heavy antitank weapons the rebels were unlikely be able to break out without getting themselves slaughtered for nothing.  It wasn’t clear how many modern weapons the rebels had, yet they’d shown none.  Roland had suggested the rebels intended to hold them in reserve, for the coming campaigns, and Richard was inclined to agree.  Mountebank wasn’t that important, not in any great sense.  Roland had picked the island as their first target because the offensive could be called off at any moment without risking overall defeat.

But a stalemate might be even worse, he reflected.  They can tie up thousands of our men more or less indefinitely.

His radio bleeped.  “Sir, we just picked up a communication from the rebels,” the operator said.  “They’re prepared to meet you at the old church.”

Richard frowned as he pulled the map from his belt and unfolded it.  The old church had been in ruins for decades, burnt down well before the insurgency had turned into a full-fledged war.  It was a good place to meet, he noted; it was roughly midway between the two sides, allowing them to meet without fear of one side doing something stupid.  Roland had already cleared him to treat with the enemy, if they agreed to meet.  Richard wasn’t about to let the chance slip by.

“Inform them we’ll be there in two hours,” he said, folding up the map.  “And then get me a direct link to the general.”

He kept his temper under control as he contacted Roland and explained, briefly, what had happened.  The original plan had been fairly simple.  They could offer to treat the surrendering troops well, after they marched into the camps; now, it was unlikely anyone would be convinced.  Richard had no idea what sort of guarantees they could offer and, even if they did, he feared the rebels wouldn’t believe them.  They could promise the world, only to break their word when the rebels were safely disarmed.  He shook his head, sourly, as he arranged for a close-protection detail to accompany him, with snipers on overwatch just in case the rebels were planning something.  It was quite possible.  Thanks to Angeline Porter, the rebels had nothing to lose.

And quite a few people back home would be relieved if I died in the line of duty, Richard thought, as he prepared for the meeting.  They’d praise me in public, as the son of a councillor, but in private ...

The thought nagged at him as he crossed the lines and made his way down to the old church, his close-protection team keeping their distance.  Richard had never been particularly religious, but he couldn’t help thinking there was something eerie about the ruined church.  The church itself was little more than a shell, the graveyard surrounding it torn and broken ... he felt oddly uneasy as he stepped around the graveyard, into what had once been a small playground.  The rebels were waiting for him; two middle-aged men, wearing civilian clothes with green armbands.  Richard nodded to them, politely.  The purists would probably berate him for not getting there first, or for timing matters so both sides arrived at the same time, but it probably didn’t matter.  He had a nasty feeling the meeting would end up being worse than useless.

“I’m Captain Richard Collier,” he said, once they were facing each other.  “May I ask your names?”

“You may call me Jericho,” one of the men said.  “My friend is Heartbreak.”

Richard nodded.  Jericho was one of the known rebel codenames, although - until now - the spooks hadn’t had a face to go with the name.  He was in his early forties, if Richard was any judge, his exposed skin bearing the signs of a life in the sun.  There was a nasty mark on his arm that suggested he’d been whipped, a few years ago.  Richard tried not to feel sick.  In theory, there were strict limits on corporal punishment for debtors and indents.  In practice, such limits were rarely observed.  Who gave a damn about the workers?  

Later, he told himself.  Right now, you have work to do,

“I’m not a diplomat,” he said.  It was true.  “My forces are embedded to the north, blocking your line of escape; the navy can and will keep you from shipping supplies into the city or transporting men out.  You are trapped.  I can afford to wait long enough for you to starve.  If you surrender now ...”

“We get slaughtered, as you slaughtered your earlier prisoners?”  Heartbreak’s voice was cold and hard.  He looked younger than Jericho, although it was hard to be sure.  Richard suspected he was the child of a debtor, someone born into serfdom rather than the original debtor.  The debtors who’d inherited their status tended to be the most resentful - and who could blame them?  “Or will you try to deny the slaughter at the airport?”

“No.”  Richard was sure lies would be worse than useless.  The rebels had fabricated a number of atrocity stories out of whole cloth, but this one ... they clearly knew there had been a real atrocity.  It couldn’t be a wild coincidence.  “The person responsible for the slaughter has been arrested and will be tried for mass murder, as well as whatever other war crimes are uncovered by the investigation.  If she is found guilty, she will be executed.”

“If,” Heartbreak said.  “How do we know you won’t come up with a pettifogging excuse for her?”

Richard frowned.  The honest answer was you don’t.  Angeline Porter’s fate would be decided by people well above his pay grade.  The further they were from the scene of the crime, the easier it would be for them to accept excuses.  And yet ... he shook his head.  They would suspect he was lying, if he offered guarantees.  He didn’t have the authority to make them.

“I believe she will be tried,” Richard said, finally.  “However, that isn’t the issue here.  If you surrender the city, we will take you into custody and treat you as legitimate prisoners of war.”

“We have no reason to believe you,” Jericho said.  “Here is our counteroffer.  You let us slip out of the city and back into the jungle.  In exchange, we surrender the city largely intact.”

Richard shook his head.  There was no way either Roland or the War Council would go for it.  The rebels would slip into the jungle and continue the insurgency, perhaps even retaking the island when the invasion forces pulled out.  Better to keep the rebels penned up, they’d reason, than have them loose in the jungle once again.  And besides, the city had been devastated by the rebels.  Even if it was recovered without a fight, it would be years before it returned to its former glory.  

“No,” he said, for the record.  “I repeat my earlier offer.  Surrender now and you will be treated well.”

“We’re done here,” Jericho said.  “Thank you for your time.”

He turned and strode away, his partner following.  Richard cursed under his breath.  It would be one thing if the atrocity had convinced the rebels to surrender, but instead it had only hardened their resolve to fight.  He briefly considered handing the other prisoners back to the rebels, in hopes of both convincing them to change their mind and draining their supplies, yet ... he shook his head as he turned and walked back to his lines.  Moments later, he heard a handful of shots as the snipers resumed fire.  The truce was already at an end.

“Sir.”  Sergeant Yu met him as he reached the tanks.  “Any luck?”

“No.”  Richard shook his head.  “They won’t surrender.”

He glanced at his watch.  The plan had been ambitious, perhaps a little too ambitious.  There’d be people back home, he was sure, carping and criticising because the offensive hadn’t produced immediate victory.  Poor Roland was likely to find himself spending the next few days patting politicians on the head, convincing them the war was not about to end in inglorious defeat.  In many ways, it had been very useful - and revealing.  They knew more about the strengths and weaknesses of their forces, as well as the rebel tactics and suchlike ... and it had all been wasted, because of someone proving unable to control herself.  Perhaps she’d had a good reason.  Richard conceded the point, although he doubted it.  But who cared?  By now, the story probably credited her with murdering thousands of people.  

“Direct the troops to start tightening the defences,” he ordered.  Days were long on New Doncaster, but night would fall soon.  The rebels would probably start trying to sneak out of the pocket, once darkness provided cover to their schemes.  There weren’t anything like enough NVGs in the army to keep the rebels from probing the defences.  “And move the tanks into blocking position.”

“Aye, sir.”

Richard nodded as he tapped his radio, sending a brief signal back to Roland at the beachhead.  The general had to be informed, although there was very little he could do beyond ordering a suicidal attack.  Richard had had commanders who would have thought that was a very good idea indeed.  Roland, thankfully, was smart enough to realise the downsides and keep his forces out of the meatgrinder.  If nothing else, a few days of being under siege might convince the rebels to rethink their stance on surrender.

And we can drop leaflets into the city, inviting the defenders to give up, he thought, as a pair of aircraft buzzed overhead.  The little fighters were primitive, by modern standards, but they were the best the government could produce without off-world imports.  Who knows?  Maybe they’ll think better of resistance after we tighten our grip.

He walked up and down the lines, inspecting the hastily dug trenches as shots and primitive missiles echoed in the distance.  The government wasn’t the only one digging up ancient weapons and putting them into mass production, he noted sourly; the rebels, it seemed, had been doing the same.  Their missiles weren’t that dangerous - they were quite light, even when compared to a simple antitank missile, and their accuracy was terrible - but they were incredibly distracting even when they overshot their targets.  Richard had to order the antimissile batteries to ignore them, fearing the rebels hoped to drain his supply of interceptor missiles.  It was quite possible.  They knew the government couldn’t get much of anything from off-world.

Because anyone who has any significant military hardware doesn’t really want to part with it for love or money, Richard thought.  And even if they did, it would come with massive strings attached.

He rubbed his forehead as he returned to the command vehicle and sat down, resting his back against the heavy armour.  His government was a mess - and that was being charitable - but he loved his planet.  The thought of off-worlders taking the high orbitals and dictating terms was unacceptable.  The spooks thought the rebels were working for outsiders, trying to destabilise the planet in hopes of an easy invasion and occupation.  Richard suspected that analysis was simplistic - the rebels didn't need off-world agitators to hate the government - but it was possible.  And yet ... really, it struck him as an excuse not to make any significant reforms.

We have a chance to make things better, he thought, as guns boomed in the distance.  But we have to survive the war first.

***

Private Warner McGonagall tried not to shiver as he was marched into the chamber.  He’d been cautioned, in no uncertain terms, not to speak to anyone until he was summoned to face the inquisitors.  It wasn’t clear if he was in trouble himself - he honestly wasn’t sure, despite everything - but he was sure he would be if he disobeyed orders.  He forced himself to salute as he saw the three people at the table, a young woman and two older men in military uniforms.  They looked at him as if he was something they’d scraped off their shoes.

No, he corrected himself.  As if I were something they hired gentlemen’s gentlemen to scrape off their shoes.

The young woman leaned forward.  Her voice had a nasal twang that hung in the air.  Warner disliked her on sight.  “McGonagall.  Five hours ago, you were present when Private Angeline Porter opened fire on a group of unarmed prisoners.  Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Warner said, shortly.  He wasn’t sure how he should address the woman.  Sir?  Or madam?  “I was there.”

“You could have stopped her,” the woman said.  “Why didn’t you?”

Warner hesitated.  He honestly wasn’t sure how to answer.  Prisoners could be dangerous, he knew, and he’d no reason to doubt Angeline’s combat instincts.  Once he’d gotten used to the revolutionary idea of having a woman in the squad - it helped she didn’t act like any of the women he’d known - she’d just been one of the boys.   He’d trusted her to do the right thing.  

“You could have stopped her,” the woman repeated.  “Why didn’t you?”

“You were cautioned, when you went through basic, that violent abuse of prisoners would not be tolerated,” one of the men added.  “Why didn’t you intervene?”

Warner still had no idea how to answer.  His thoughts were a jumbled mess.  It had all happened so quickly.  He’d trusted Angeline.  He’d ... he shook his head, fighting down the urge to scream.  It wasn’t fair!  He hadn’t had any reason to expect her to do ... to open fire on a bunch of prisoners.  And ... and ... and ...

He tried not to scowl as his heart sank.  They didn’t want answers.  They were only interested in covering themselves, when the shit hit the fan.  He was going to be blamed, even though it hadn’t been his fault.  And what could he do about it?

“Why?”  The woman held his gaze.  “Why?”

Warner looked down.  “I don’t know,” he mumbled.  “I just don’t know.”

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