Chapter Twenty – Loose Ends
French writer Voltaire had the last word on the execution by firing squad of English Admiral John Byng, as a scapegoat for the disastrous Battle of Minorca. “In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time,” he had a character say later in a play, “in order to encourage the others”.
They found the body of Captain Janice Morrison, head of Room Nine, off a track in the bush leading away West from the visitor’s centre. Her throat had been cut, which meant that Boothroyd had killed her. The Midis did not kill in that fashion. They found out later that she had stood up to Boothroyd and had tried to get his other captives released. The former biker had then cut her throat and watched her bleed out as a warning to the others.
“He’s getting worse,” said Gideon to Monster. “Has he killed before?”
“Dunno man,” said Monster. “But Captain still has her clothes on – no rape. Need to settle the fuck.”
As far as the others who had escaped into the Witch’s building could work out Boothroyd would have six captives including three female musketeers, after killing Captain Morrison. Gideon had ten musketeers plus Monster, Sam and sniper Skull with him and thought that should be plenty. Sam carried the same heavy spear he had been using at Terminus still smeared with Midi blood. None of them were trackers or hunters but the trail left by Boothroyd’s not so happy band was easy to follow, in any case they were simply moving along an existing, well-used trail.
They set off, moving deeper into the forests around The Witches’ structure and the Summer Camp than any of them had ever been. Gideon knew Boothroyd’s camp was a long hike from the Musketeer base which was why he had not paid much attention to the man before this – an oversight Captain Morrison had paid for with her life. They spent the night, without a fire munching the witch’s bread for dinner and breakfast. Gideon thought he could see a glow, possibly a campfire, far ahead of them. The next night, the fire was a distinct glow in the distance.
“We go in tonight?” asked Monster.
Gideon shook his head. “We’d just blunder around in the darkness and Boothie would escape. I want to be sure we grab him.”
“Grab the fuck?” said Monster being uncharacteristically loquacious, “then what? No prisons on Haven.”
Gideon shrugged. “Take him back to the structure for identification then a fair trial and a firing squad I guess.”
“Why fuck around?” said Monster. “Catch Boothie, shoot him. Walk back.”
The next day Gideon sent out scouts, then took his small force off the track to loop around to the North of Boothroyd’s camp. Any traps or guards, he reasoned, would be set on the approach trail. By the time they were close enough to see a collection of shacks and lean-tos which made up down town Boothville, the town bonfire had been lit and Boothroyd himself had settled in for the evening’s entertainment. They walked right up to the clearing in the dark – there were no guards except on the approach trail and no walls – just as one of the captive girls, a Sergeant Deborah Flinders had been forced to her knees in front of Boothroyd, hands tied behind her, as he sat on a log. A group of Black Band Midis sat on a log close to the fire to watch this strange human camp theatre.
Flinders had been deputy to Captain Morrison. As she was also a good-looking brunette Flinders was being courted by a number of musketeers but had not indicated any choice. She was not about to choose Boothroyd.
“Time you girls learnt I ain’t that bad,” they heard Boothroyd say. “I’m getting horny here and you c’n make this difficult or you c’n make it easy.”
“Oh sure, you’re not that bad,” said Flinders. “I realised that when you killed my boss.”
In response Boothroyd produced a Midi knife and cut the top button of Flinders’ blouse. She jerked back then spat in her face. He got up and punched her hard enough for her to fall in the brown grass by the fire.
“Like I said, easy or hard,” said Boothroyd.
“Time to stop this,” said Gideon and they walked up to the fire.
Boothroyd did not see them until they stepped into the fire’s circle of light then whipped around. He would have grabbed Flinders except that she was still lying on her side and the musketeers were pointed the weapons straight at the former biker. They pulled the hammers back in what sounded like one, menacing click. Sam had his spear out. The Midis on the log, sensing a regime change, promptly vanished into the bush, never to be seen again.
“How did you..” he said, knife back in his hand. “I was told phones were all down and you’d be wiped out.”
“Email still works, and reports of our deaths were exaggerated,” said Gideon.
“Shit you guys are like cockroaches. Real hard to kill.”
“Funny, I was going to say the same thing about you,” said Gideon. “Now that you’ve mentioned killing, it’s sort of on my mind. Skull, cut the sergeant’s bonds and find the others.”
“Yessir.”
“Morrison was a class lady,” said Monster. “Why cut her throat, man?”
Boothroyd pretended to think about this for a second then shrugged. “Bitch had it coming.”
There were angry rumblings from the musketeers. Monster brought his own rifle up, waist high and pointed it at the biker.
“What’s the matter,” sneered Boothroyd. “You soft on her.”
Gideon noticed that the biker was moving closer to them, and shifting the grip on his knife, but before he could warn anyone Boothroyd struck, lunging straight for Gideon, knife out.
Four rifles, including Monster’s, cracked. Sam brought his spear up so that the charging Boothroyd ran onto it – the weapon’s tip disappearing into his chest and then emerging on the other side.
“Kill! Kill!” yelled the Android.
Impaled on the spear, as well as hit by all four of the shots aimed at him, Boothroyd tried one wild swing of his knife which glanced harmlessly off Sam’s jacket.
“See you in hell,” he said to Gideon with almost his last breath.
“Keep it warm for me, Boothie,” said Gideon, smiling. The biker’s action had saved him a lot of paper work. “No doubt I’ll be along soon.” Boothroyd’s eyes closed and Sam dropped his spear point so that Boothroyd’s lifeless body slid off the weapon onto the ground with a distinct thump.
“Now we’ve got a fire,” said Monster. “What’s for dinner?”
Gideon thought about just leaving Boothroyd’s body where it had fallen as a final mark of disrespect but then thought that was the sort of detail that would get him into trouble – or rather more trouble than he was already in – if and when contact was re-established with Earth, particularly if the man had any family. They dug a grave deep enough to discourage the forest creatures and rolled the biker into it, marking it so that anyone sufficiently interested in reclaiming the biker’s body could find it again.
A search of the camp uncovered a tablet with distinctly Witch-like styling. Gideon tapped the screen which glowed then, as Monster watched with him, cleared to reveal a wall of deep blue. To one side, visible in the screen was another wall with what might be a picture frame viewed from below. It took Gideon a few seconds to realise the table was showing the field of view of another tablet lying on a table so that it was looking at the ceiling and part of one wall. The humans barely had time to process this when they heard footsteps and a creature in black robes looked into it.
“You’ve decided to make contact at last,” said the creature. Its accent was faintly English, like that of the Witches and he had a witch face with the distinctive half-curved nose but perhaps broader and harder. A male face? “I have bad news.” The creature stopped. Its eyes widened.
“Boothroyd already knows the bad news, my friend,” said Gideon.
“I see he does,” said Black Robes calmly, then added something in the bird-like Witches language and terminated the connection.
“Boothie’s in bed with the Black Robes guy?” said Monster.
“Seems so,” said Gideon. “Must’ve used this to show Black Robes how we loaded and fired the cannon and how they were built. He must not have realised we’d shifted to explosive shells and indirect fire, not to mention rifles. If Black Robes had made any of the large artillery pieces with explosive shells our casualties would be a whole lot higher.”
“Boothie’s a fuckup,” growled Monster. “Good riddance.”
Gideon could only agree.
When the Boothroyd hunting band and its free captives got back to base, Gideon found that The Witches had finally unhacked the gate to the extent that email was now flowing freely both ways, which was a mixed blessing. They found out what had been happening on Earth during the news blackout but, more importantly, Earth finally found out what had been happening on its only off-world settlement.
It was typical of the HEO that the staff had been so busy in meetings about almost everything else except the work of the office that it was a full month after the gate had been closed before the mid and lower tier staff noticed anything amiss, only to be reassured by seemingly confident senior managers. By that time, the baby-killer communications consultant Gideon Swift had been all but forgotten. Everyone assumed that Benson had fired him.
Another two months went by before a website pointed out that earth-based relatives of Haven settlers had been getting strange replies to emails and there had been no postings, videos or phone calls from the planet for months. This story was picked up by what was left of the mainstream media, with the resulting stories prompting the UN, which was supposed to oversee the operation, into being seen to be doing something.
Initial, fumbling UN attempts to find out stuff were easily deflected by senior HEO managers skilled in obstruction. Requests for an external review of the office’s dealings with the settlement just before the information flow stopped were countered with statements that a “rigorous internal review” had been conducted. The results of that review could not be released at that time due to privacy concerns, as well as confidentiality issues. HEO officials needed to be able to discuss matters concerning the settlement on Haven without fear that those internal discussions would be made public.
The UN directed the HEO to comply with disclosure requests. The office refused. The matter went to court where it might have stayed for months, if not years, but then one of the HEO senior managers got stoned at a party and confessed that the office was concerned that the colony had been overrun by alien creatures – concerns that found their way onto a blog.
All hell broke loose. Officials from several different regulatory authorities turned up in the office of HEO director Dr Benson, who had sent Gideon to Haven, waving warrants and subpoenas. Computer records were seized. Finally, despite the best efforts of the HEO, the truth came out. The earth’s first and only interstellar settlement and one dedicated to equality, non-violence and peaceful co-existence, had been overrun by primitive spear-armed creatures. Those captured rather than killed had been enslaved, and all contact lost.
The UN officials now charged with investigating the HEO and events on Haven itself, uncovered Dr Benson’s last despairing effort of sending a reserve quartermaster sergeant who had been working as a contractor at the HEO, plus a rag tag band of former convicts and a discharged soldier to Haven, but they dismissed the effort as a gesture. What could such a band hope to achieve, especially as the records also showed an inquiry was pending over confiscated weapons? These were the three rifles which Gideon didn’t get. Dr Benson did not mention that they had all been Shanghaied into going. The fact that most of the younger Havenites had been sent to the Summer Camp was also noted but it was assumed that the camp had been overrun.
So much for the facts, but what could Earth do now? The gate was closed. No one knew whether that closure had anything to do with the spear-carrying creatures but, in any case, it was closed. As Earth scientists had no idea how it worked they could not be expected to fix it, and they had no other means of reaching the Haven. UN officials had come to the regretful conclusion that they might never hear from the Haven settlement again when, just as Gideon led his small party off into the bush to find Boothroyd, the data connection was re-established.
Information poured through. Too much information. The musketeers had not just been listening to music on their phones, they had recorded the conflict in excruciating detail. The phones still might not have been working but enough had been stored on laptops to dump significant amounts of recorded information onto earth’s social media, without anyone consulting Gideon, musketeer officers or HEO officials. What was known about The Witches was passed on. Fredericka had been able to get a selfie with Agnes – the alien had been bemused by the process but stared at the camera. Another taken of her looking a little more relaxed with the beauteous Angela flashed around the world.
Pandemonium!
The entities in the structure said they wanted military protection all along and the younger humans, with the help of these entities and a reserve quartermaster sergeant and two ex-convicts, had started a full-on rifle and artillery interplanetary war against the creatures who had overrun the settlement.
WHAT?
There had been three major engagements including one resulting in forty one human deaths and several times that number of casualties, as well as many thousands of alien fatalities.
…WHAT?
Questions poured back through the unhacked link. Who was this Colonel Gideon Swift? What was the formal name for The Witches? Who said that these creatures just wanted military protection from humans? What was this about The Witches giving medical treatment to humans? (In fact, Agnes had got to the point of being able to restore shattered limbs, albeit with some difficulty.) Bishop, at the summer camp, did his best to muddy the waters by claiming that Musketeers had committed war crimes, but had to admit he knew of no actual crimes. He also admitted he had seen The Witches who had not listened to his sensible talks on passifism, but he had no direct access to them and no control over the musketeers. The officials had to speak to Colonel Swift.
Gideon had been issued with an email address while he contracted with the HEO and that still worked on Haven, but its inbox quickly filled while he was off hunting Boothroyd. Sabrina, who had unhacked the gate, alarmed at the material flowing through it, thought to direct all the correspondence with Gideon’s name on it to a separate file. For want of a better way of passing it on, this material was printed out. As a result, when Gideon returned from his hunt for Boothroyd, he was confronted with several enormous stacks of paper. On top of the stack closest to his chair was a printed note.
“Tell us if any of this is important – Tabitha.”
Out of curiosity he riffled through a part of one stack. There were requests for media interviews, several demands from the HEO to hand over control of all military units to Dr Bishop with threats of criminal prosecution if he did not, and requests from various UN bodies for information on The Witches. That was just the official stuff. Activists of all kinds asked for an official name to replace The Witches, as the popular name was thought to be demeaning. Academics complained that he had upset decades of careful research by actually speaking to the entities in the structure, and this business about them wanting military protection had to be “clarified”. Gideon suspected that “clarification”, in this instance, meant trying to argue around or redefine an inconvenient fact so that it went away.
There was also advice. Earth could not send actual help but they could send advice, lots of it. Gideon was told to hold where he was, retreat at once as he was too exposed, attack with everything he had, that the musketeers should disarm themselves at once as a gesture of peace and goodwill, and that they should adopt new terror weapons. One group suggested that The Witches could probably make Sarin gas, why not use that?
“As if I’m not in enough trouble as it is,” thought Gideon.
He arranged these stacks of paper into a wall of columns besides his chair, weighting them down with rocks, and then visited the Witches.
They waved away the request that they state a more formal name for themselves.
“Why not ask BD?” said Tabitha. “She understood our language and can think of some adaption humans can readily speak, but we don’t mind the term Witches. We understand what it means in earth culture and do not mind.”
They heard that the human and Midi gang that had disturbed them would not disturb them ever again. Sabrina took the tablet recovered from Boothroyd’s shack declaring that she would work on it, although she was still trying to unhack the gate so that ships would pass through.
“One other thing,” said Tabitha, after they talked about what the Musketeers would do next. “I found our security android, the one you call Fred, using these.” She produced a pack of playing cards.
“Oh I see,” said Gideon taking the cards. “The musketeer Dean Greenburg gave it to him. He had been teaching Sam to use them. I didn’t realise he was also teaching Fred and that it would cause problems.”
“We do not see a problem,” said Tabitha. “We were curious about just how they worked.”
“Oh, right! Well, they don’t work as such. They’re just square pieces of plastic. You play with them.” He shuffled the deck, thinking of poor Dean and put five cards in front of himself, and then five cards at the hem of Tabitha’s robes. “The cards come up randomly and there are rules for deciding which combination of cards are better than the others.”
“I see,” said Tabitha. “You are given five cards as the starting move of this.. game?”
“Correct. As a starting move. There’s a lot more to it and many different types of games. Dean was the person to explain it all but unfortunately he died at Terminus.”
“Died?” queried Tabitha looking up.
“Yes, he was killed in a tough fight on the left..” Gideon trailed off. He had already said how many had been killed and Agnes had been treating the seriously wounded, but now they were looking at him in horror. “I know that Agnes met Musketeer Angela Macdonald and Fredericka took a picture of them together.”
“Tall, female, a light inside her,” said Agnes.
“She also died,” he said. The Witches continued to look at him. They had left the cycle of birth and death so far behind that they had trouble grasping the concept of death. The numbers quoted by Gideon had meant nothing to them. It was only when he mentioned individuals that, for all their intellect, they finally began to comprehend the drama that had been unfolding literally on their doorstep for months.
“To be heard from no more,” said Tabitha, half to herself.
“That’s right, they’re gone,” said Gideon, “and more must go before we can win this.”
“More deaths to win?”
“That’s the way,” said Gideon. “To win we must attack and attacking means casualties - deaths.”
“I hope you will not be amongst those killed,” said Tabitha.
“Thank you,” said Gideon thinking that the only other person besides BD who had expressed concern over his safety was an alien. “I will try not to be dead.”
He left not realising what he had done. For the witches, reminded of the cycle of life and death, began to turn aside from their path of imprinting their personalities on the fabric of space-time itself and to help the humans, to allow doctors to observe their healing technologies and answer questions from scientists. In that sense, the casualties incurred by the musketeers had achieved more than all the other deaths on all the other human battlefields in all of history combined. The process was not complete. Another factor had to be introduced. In the meantime. Gideon returned to Terminus. He had a war to win.