Chapter Twenty-One – Liberation
It was a common, black joke of the time. The diary of a British armoured unit records the reaction of an American military policeman dropped off at a French village flattened by the artillery of both sides, after D Day. “This place,” said the MP surveying the smoking ruins of the village with awe, “sure has been liberated.”
The moment Gideon returned to Terminus, the day after talking to The Witches, he knew that the musketeers could not stay there. Although some progress had been made in clearing away the bodies the musketeers could reach, including many from the stream, a lot of bodies were left on the Midi side and they were beginning to stink. Clearing them all would take time and they should now be moving, fast.
As many of the Midis warriors had been killed and the rest now knew the consequences of attacking a human formation, the victory at Terminus meant that the Musketeers could move around without being constantly worried about being surrounded and then overwhelmed. There was also the external factor. None of Gideon’s officers even mentioned the order that he was to hand over control of all military forces, although it had been sent to everyone. No one wanted Bishop in control. But it was best to get moving before any fool thought to take such directives seriously.
“Maybe we could build a fort each night, like Roman legionnaires,” suggested Captain Toms, when he told his officers what he intended to do.
“That’s a lot of work,” said Captain Hannigan, “after we’ve been marching all day. The Romans use to build a full fort from scratch.”
“We can just do a ditch and palisade with stuff we bring with us,” said Toms.
“Officers, we will be doing something along the lines of a marching camp but just the ditch and maybe stakes,” said Gideon, “but first we’ve got to lay in supplies and get some sort of bridge across the stream.”
Gideon had no combat engineers. His musketeers had to evoke the spirit of the Roman legionnaires, who were engineers as much as infantry, and build a bridge strong enough to take an e-car plus an artillery piece in just two days – that was the deadline Gideon set. He may not have been Napoleon but he could galvanise his troops into action, like the master, when the need arose. The musketeers set to work with a will, using the ramps the Midis had thoughtfully supplied plus whatever material they could salvage from the sheds in Terminus. Other parties crossed the river and continued the work of clearing bodies, particularly from the road. Any Midis who tried to interrupt the work were forcibly reminded of the power of rifles and artillery. Cavalry patrols ranged further, happy to trade the extra risk of a fight for not having to clear bodies.
A whole group of slaves came in, released by a village that wanted to be left in peace, which increased Gideon’s anxiety to be away. He scented that something was happening in the enemy camp. On the third day the whole force marched – artillery, ammunition, food and all. He opted not to leave anyone on his lines of communications. The musketeers carried Witches bread for about three days in their packs and the supply train had another three days of rations. Gideon understood that he was taking a risk, but he also thought that a bold push now might do a lot to win the war he had found himself in.
Glad to be away from the increasing smell of decomposing bodies, the musketeers marched out eagerly and in much the same spirit that Union soldiers marched towards Richmond in the final stages of the American Civil War, on foot with Minie rifles slung on their shoulders and sacks of cartridges tied to their packs. Time to finish this. The image was spoiled somewhat by e-cars pulling the artillery and supply carts, not mention the drones, just visible in the distance, keeping watch on all sides, but the spirit was the same. Gideon strode along with his headquarters unit, disdaining to ride in a car.
About mid-afternoon a force of perhaps three hundred Midis tried to contest a bridge crossing. A charge by one company supported by mortars scattered them, and cavalry harried them to a nearby forest. Then the humans reformed their marching lines and kept on going. They tramped through several Midi villages, collecting humans who had been slaves as they went. A few of the Midis tried to flee but most did not, knowing that once they had freed their slaves the humans would pay no attention to them. A few of the Midi women whose husbands and sons had fallen at Terminus cursed them as they marched past. They would put a closed fist back behind their heads and then bring the fist down hard in front as if they were hammering an enemy. No-one paid them any heed. If cursing made the Midi women feel better, then let them curse.
Gideon selected a camp site besides one of the many streams that coursed through the Haven plain with about an hour left of light and the musketeers set to with a will digging a ditch, setting stakes, moving rocks and cutting down the occasional tree to give a semblance of an outer wall. They had brought plenty of sandbags with them and these were filled and stacked at apparent weak points in the line. Fodder was cut and brought inside the perimeter for the horses.
Sweeps by fighting patrols as the light faded found nothing. Fires were lit briefly to cook tinned stew they had brought with them, to relieve the monotony of the Witch’s bread then put out on Gideon’s order. They were not on a summer camp, he pointed out forcibly, but on campaign in enemy territory and that meant keeping low, lying down where possible, and shutting up. Quiet conversation was permitted but sentries were to remain alert. For once Gideon did not have to threaten dire punishment if he found anyone talking on their phones. The entire phone system remained unusable, and the musketeers were now disciplined enough not to listen to music while on sentry duty.
About midnight, one of the sentries heard a rustling noise, and peeked around a sandbag stacked on rocks. A spear hit the sandbag and punched through to jab him in the shoulder. He yelled. Several musketeers shot at the likely source of the spear.
“Don’t fire unless you see a target,” yelled a sergeant.
Just as the camp settled down again, this time with most of the force listening for noises in the bush, another spear came over the wall, without hitting anybody. This time no one fired. The pattern was repeated several times, causing another casualty, until Padre thought he saw a shape move against the night sky and fired. The shape jerked and a Midi yelled. At dawn they found a blood trail leading east but Gideon vetoed any pursuit. This taste of Midi guerrilla fighting was not to their liking at all but it was something they would face later, if they had to, once the main forces were defeated. The musketeers broke camp and marched out.
On the outskirts of Haven City they found the remnants of the Midi forces behind a hastily constructed wood and stone wall which stretched between the main river of the plain, the New Rhine, and a thick wood. A ditch had been dug in front of this wall, cutting across the human road, and filled with water from the river. It was a strong position in a natural choke point and the Midis kept low behind their new wall. They had learned something from fighting humans, but not enough. Gideon could outflank the position by sending cavalry through a trail in the wood which had been left uncovered – a point he knew from reconnaissance well before the came to the wall. The humans were also learning. But he did not intend to just outflank it.
“Captain Chifley, pick a spot and show Midis how artillery should be used to blow a hole in walls. Captain Toms get the mortar teams up and make life miserable for those guys. Get companies making ramps to cross that ditch and charge the hole that will soon be there. Captain Parker get around to their rear and wait until we’ve driven them from the wall, then charge in and take them all.”
They all yessired and went about their business. Captain Parker’s cavalry disappeared to the left but Gideon could keep track of them through one of the radio sets. After that he gave no further orders, content to sit back and watch as the subordinates he had trained did their jobs. Cannons, using solid shot this time, pounded the wall, concentrating all their fire on one section until the structure crumbled and fell. All the while mortars arched over and exploded on the other side of the wall, spreading musket balls among the defenders. It was not much of a contest. The Midis had no way of returning fire. The musketeers had wiped out all the cannon crews and musket teams they had met. The Midis could do little more than hope that a musketeer came close enough for them to throw a spear or shoot an arrow.
Two companies stormed the breach in the wall, wading across the ditch, while others sniped over their heads at any Midi foolish enough to show themselves at the breech or on the walls. A number of archers and spearmen stayed behind the wall and fought the humans as they came through the breach, causing a few casualties, before the defending line disintegrated. Then the humans were through, shouting “Kill! Kill!” bayonets glinting in the sun. Most of the Midis still living surrendered, many others fled to another group which was forming up into a traditional column, only to be scattered by a cavalry charge.
If it had not been for a handful of casualties caused by the archers and the loss of a horse which was speared and had to be destroyed, the battle would have been a massacre. Gideon, however, was not about to let the musketeers rest on their laurels. He wanted to drive on Haven City and it seemed apparent to him that the Midis did not have much left in them. Time to move and move fast – just like Napoleon, or perhaps General Patton or Rommel, he drove his troops on.
“C Company, Captain Yeon, start shifting dirt! Fill in that ditch where the road is, up to road level! Use rocks, whatever you can find. I want the cars and carts to be able to move over it and I want it now. The rest of you collect Midi wounded, use their own medical guys. Captain Parker have your people scout ahead.”
Thanks to Gideon’s stream of orders and his moving around, ensuring that it was all done, the force was back in the road in two hours, less one company and a few medics which had to be left at the wall. The Midi wounded could not simply be abandoned.
When they constructed a marching camp that night, the musketeers knew that they were within a morning’s march of Haven City where most of them had grown up. More slaves came in, bringing tales of Red Bands just pointing them in the direction of the human forces and telling them to go. Maybe the end was near?
“My guys have been right down to the city, sir,” reported Captain Parker that night. No-one had tents and the camp fires had been put out for the night, so the reports were given with the officers sitting on camp stools under starlight. “No organised groups between us and the city and the Midis we see run from us. But the civic quarter could be a real problem.”
“Civic quarter?” asked Gideon.
“Grand name for the public buildings, governing council and such around a square with a fountain,” said Toms. “The council building is a whole three storeys high.”
“Yep,” said Parker, “and a heap of die-hard Midis have been building barricades across the entrances. Red Bands mostly that have taken up spears, bows and arrows and a few muskets. But there are a few black bands and they’ve got human slaves in there. Might have a time convincing them we’ve won.”
“Don’t fancy using artillery, mortars or grenades if humans are in there,” said Gideon.
“Artillery could make holes in the building,” said Chifley, “but its easier to blow a door down or knock out one of the lower windows and climb in. Arrows can be nasty but they’re not automatic weapons.”
“Guess we gotta do that,” said Gideon. “House to house, room to room and clean them all out and we do it hard and fast. No messing around when we get there.”
“Yessir,” they chorused.
The next morning, as they were breaking camp, Sergeant Besser of the technical section showed Gideon a display on his laptop.
“What am I looking at, sergeant?” said Gideon, with his back to the HQ e-car.
“It’s the nuclear reactor page, sir,” said Besser.
“This already doesn’t sound good,” said Gideon.
“I was just checking out power output, if we’re going to reoccupy Haven City, sir,” said the sergeant. “And there’s something wrong. Someone’s messing with the operating system. The read out is in the panel at the bottom.”
Gideon read:
“safety protocol shell: override.
Cannot override at this time.
Command override emergency procedures.
Code required.
22456
Invalid code…”
This went on for half a page. As Gideon watched, another line was added.
“Operating output 100 per cent, pumps to 15 per cent
That exceeds safety specifications. Restate requirements.”
“Whoever is doing this is trying to get around the safety blocks on the nuclear reactor.”
“Isn’t that thing supposed to be inherently safe?” said Gideon.
“Well yeah, sir, and its got a containment shield, but just look at Chernobyl. If you work hard enough at doing dumb things with a reactor you can get a bad outcome. Maybe this guy – Black Robes – also has some way of cracking the containment shield…”
Gideon nodded. “As the Midis still don’t understand electricity they’re not going to be messing with nuclear plant control systems and even the green crazies on Earth won’t want to tip a nuclear plant over the edge, so that leaves Black Robes and he’s been supplying the explosives the Midis have ben using. Can we shut this off?”
“Here’s the thing, sir,” said Besser spreading his hands. “We’ll have to go to the facility itself, and Black Robes must be there.”
“He must, sergeant?” said Gideon looking up.
“It’s a fail-safe, sir to prevent hacking. The plant AI is completely self-contained. It gives stuff out, like that read out, but the only way you can change anything is from a keyboard at the site. Even then it’s tough. Black Robes is good – even The Witches haven’t yet figured out what he’s done to the phone system - but he’s not making much headway.”
“Where is this place?”
“About twenty five klicks due West of here, sir,” said Besser, pointing West. “We passed a side road a ways back yesterday that should go right to the plant.”
“Hmmm! There’s nothing for it, we have to go there. I’ll take a small party in one of the e-cars and you’re coming.”
“I am, sir?”
“Grab a rifle and bring that laptop. Captain Toms!”
“Sir.”
“Seems I’m urgently required elsewhere. You take the Musketeers and clear out that Civic Quarter as we discussed yesterday. Captain Parker!”
“Sir.”
“Take your guys and check the rest of the town. Freed slaves should tell you if there’s anyone left to fight. Then scout out the countryside on the other side of the river. You are to report to Captain Toms until I return.”
Gideon held Captain Parker’s eyes when he said this. There had been previous discussions with the cavalry commander about the musketeer chain of command. Parker and Toms did not like each other and Toms was younger than Parker. Gideon had been forced to lay down the law on who was second in command.
“Yessir,” said Parker, looking away.
Shortly afterwards, Gideon found himself at the wheel of an e-car, leaving the transport guys to reorganise the supply train. Sergeant Besser was beside him. In the back seat were Skull, Preacher and Musketeer Jessica Jimenez, a swarthy, heavy-set older musketeer who wore her hair in a single pigtail and had proved lethal with a rifle. The drive proved to be surprisingly pleasant. The e-car’s battery was full - there had been a recharging point where they stopped for the night - and the roads, having been built to last, were still in good condition. Gideon filled in his companions on the way. They passed Midi villages whose occupants stared at them from their doorways, then they stopped for one human slave who wanted to know what was going on. He asked for a lift. They gave him some bread, without getting out of the car, and told him to head towards Haven City.
“Nothing on this road except the nuclear place,” said this human, a middle-aged man with long hair and a beard, dressed in, of all things, the tattered remains of a business suit.
“That’s where we’re going,” said Gideon. “A threat to it. Gotta check it out.”
“Yeah? I saw a small band of Midis, all Red Banders, head that way this morning.”
“Thanks,” said Gideon, “but I have to ask, yours is the first business suit I’ve seen since I came here. I didn’t think anyone wore them on Haven.”
The man looked down ruefully at his ruined, stinking suit. “Yeah, well, I was negotiating team sent through by the HEO when things really turned South.”
“You were in that negotiating team?” said Gideon. “The office have been asking what happened to you.” He had read only a fraction of the messages the office had sent but one of those messages had been a request to find out what had happened to the team.
“The Midis came to the meeting we asked for,” said suit, “then took us into slavery, without listening to a word we said. Been kept working out by the reactor all this time. Dunno what happened to the others. There was another team sent through asleep for some reason. We didn’t wake them up before we left. I also don’t know what happened to them.”
“Now you do,” said Gideon, extending his hand through window for the man to shake. “Gideon Swift. I’ve taken the rank of colonel. I was one of those you left behind.”
“Oh, you’re this Swift guy,” said the man, shaking his hand. “Gordon Davis. You were in that soldier team?”
“Yep, but we’ll talk later. Keep heading towards Haven City,” said Gideon, pointing. “It should be under our control by the time you get there.”
He drove off, leaving Davis standing on the road, staring after him. After a few moments the negotiator walked off in the direction of Haven City.
They saw the reactor building loom out of the landscape long before they reached it. The reactor itself – a standard, modular facility sold on earth to overcome the problems of the variation in supply from renewable networks - was ninety metres long. The unit had been upended and buried so that thirty metres or so showed above ground with its entire length sheathed in concrete. At the base of this monolith was the administration building and electrical substations, surrounded by a wire fence. The single-story administration building wasn’t much more than a visitor’s centre and rooms for storing electrical grid servicing equipment, as well as one room at the back that contained displays showing what the reactor was doing, plus a control panel. That was their target.
They rolled up to within about twenty metres of the open gate where a half dozen or so Red Band Midis, all armed with swords, eyed them warily. The humans got out of their car, having already loaded their rifles, and fixed bayonets ostentatiously.
“Swords, really?” said Jimenez. The Red Banders were obviously gearing themselves up to charge. “These guys should learn the human rule about not bringing a knife to a gun fight.”
“Pick your targets,” said Gideon. “Shoot one after another so we don’t double up.”
Then the Midis charged. The humans all fired and hit – difficult to miss at that range – but Jimenez and Besser hit the same one. That left two. One of those ran straight onto Jimenez’s bayonet but managed to give the musketeer a nasty cut on the arm.
“Youch!” she said holding her arm. Blood spread over her jacket sleeve. “I take back the stuff about bringing a knife.”
The other went for Padre with a wild, overhand swing. The musketeer sidestepped calmly then hit the creature in the face with the butt of his rifle. It went down, out cold.
“Thou shalt not kill,” said Padre mildly, then added “mostly.”
They reloaded and drove through the open gates only to find the doors to the administration building – glass in wooden frames that could have come from any official building on Earth – had been locked tight, and a bicycle chain with a combination lock wrapped around the handles.
“Bicycle chain?” asked Skull. “I didn’t know the Midis rode bicycles.”
“Probably all Black Robes could find,” said Gideon.
“Um guys, in need of medical attention here,” said Jimenez swaying slightly. Her hand as well as her left sleeve was now red with blood.
“We haven’t got any bolt cutters with us,” said Padre.
“Don’t need ‘em,” said Gideon and he hammered on the bottom glass panel of the right hand door with the butt of his rifle. Skull caught on at once and hammered along with him. The glass was locally made and thick but shattered nicely with the whole pane falling inwards with a crash to lie in bits on the floor. They hammered out a few shards left behind in the frame.
“There’ll be a kitchen place with a table back here, I bet,” said Gideon, “put Jimenez in there. Might even be a first aid kit somewhere. Just be careful of the glass.” He bent down and stepped through.
H Company commander, Captain Ivor Gunderson, was also thinking about breaking windows. His company had been given the job of storming the rear of the council building, the side facing the New Rhine, which ran beside Haven City. B Company was trying to do the same thing to the three storey brick building from the square side and, to judge from the noise, was exchanging fire with spear and bow and arrow armed Midis – a drama being repeated around the City square as other musketeer units hunted for the last pockets of resistance.
The Midis may have been hopelessly out gunned but they were angry, desperate and showing signs of being inventive. One of Gunderson’s sergeants had tried kicking in the back door only to have a brick dropped on him from a window above. The sergeant had reacted to a warming shout by ducking out of the way but had still incurred a cracked rib. Gunderson then thought to put one of his platoons on Midi watch.
“A Midi shows a head or an arm, blow it off,” he said.
The other two platoons had found step ladders in near-by houses which Gunderson proposed to prop under one of the building windows and get in that way, once the window had been opened. They debated ways to jemmy it open with a knife or to just bust it open with a rock before one of the younger male musketeers suggested, “Why not just shoot it out, sir, before we go in?”
Why not, indeed. H company promptly shot out all the ground floor windows on their side and rushed one at each end, howling. The first musketeer at the window on the left, got an arrow in the gut. A brace of musketeers now able to see into the room, blew away the archer, filed in over the ladder, reloaded, then kicked open the room door, without thinking to throw a grenade into the corridor beforehand, and charged straight into a party of spear-armed Midis. They were down to the grim work of clearing the building, room by room with rifle, bayonet and grenade.
Gideon only saw the Midi waiting, bow drawn, when he stepped through the door. A moment later, an arrow sliced into his calf muscle. He yelped and threw himself behind the thin cover of a display stand extoling the virtues of nuclear energy, only to see his opponent notch another arrow and take aim at his precious person all in one, fluid motion. The colonel remembered what he read about the adoption of gunpowder weapons and how, almost everywhere, people would drop the traditional weapons such as bows and arrows in favour of gunpowder arms. Those who wrote lightly about such trends, Gideon decided, had not been targeted by a Midi with a bow and arrow. Then Skull, kneeling just outside the door, saw enough of the Midi to fire. The warrior collapsed just as he released his missile, the arrow hitting the wall above Gideon. Skull and Padre ducked through the door and checked the area beyond.
“You all right?” asked Besser who came through after them. Jimenez brought up the rear, still holding her arm.
“No, I’m not alright, sergeant,” blazed Gideon, more harshly than he intended. “I’ve just got an arrow in the leg.”
“Sounds as if the colonel’ll live,” said Skull from the next room.
“God be praised,” added Padre, “I guess.”
Despite her wound Jimenez giggled.
The two snipers came back. “A break room back there, like you said,” Skull declared, then “Whoa! Blood.” Blood from the arrow wound had soaked all the lower leg of Gideon’s pants and left a small puddle on the floor.
“Don’t think it’s hit an artery,” commented Besser, trying to see the wound through the cloth.
“Youch! Don’t try and take it out!” The shock of being wounded had hit Gideon – nausea and the feeling that the world was closing in, an overwhelming desire to close his eyes and curl up. The worst part about any wound, including an arrow through the leg, was the shock. He fought it. “Break off the shaft. The medics will have to dig it out, but not yet. Tie it up with what we’ve got and let’s go. Padre, stay out here with Jimenez, fix her up and both of you can keep away undesirables who want to crash the party.”
“Gottit, sir,” said Padre.
“Skull and Besser you’re with me. There must be a door to the reactor control room somewhere.”
“There’s a door just off the café area back here with a sign ‘Control Room’ on it,” said Skull. “That sounds good. But it’s got a pass card security lock.”
“Good thing I’ve got a security card,” said Sergeant Besser, before Gideon could ask. He felt in his pockets for a few moments before holding it up triumphantly.
“Where did you get that?” asked Gideon.
“Just asked around the freed slaves before we left. One of them still had his. The hackers’ motto is ‘be prepared’.”
“Isn’t that scouts?” said Skull.
“Whatever.”
Leaning on Besser, Gideon hobbled around to the door. Besser passed his borrowed card through the security lock and Skull went through weapon up as if it was an assault rifle. A few paces beyond was another door and a room that glowed with computer screens. In the middle of this room, tapping on a keyboard was a figure in Black Robes. Gideon thought he heard another door open and close somewhere behind this figure and was wondering about it, when the creature turned around and pulled the robe hood off his head. It was the same face that Gideon had seen in the tablet at Boothroyd’s camp. The creature’s bald head and skinny neck bore a passing resemblance to the head and neck of a vulture.
“I wasn’t getting anywhere with these safety blocks anyway,” said this creature. “They must be hard wired. I see the guys I left outside caused a scratch.” He gestured at Gideon’s leg. Besser pulled up an office chair and dropped Gideon in it so that he faced his adversary. Both the colonel and Besser still had loaded rifles, bayonets fixed.
“An arrow in the leg isn’t a scratch,” said Gideon. “We can show you the difference between a scratch and a major wound if you like.”
“I don’t think the offer is a friendly one,” said Black Robes. “But I do not plan on staying. We can exchange information if you like, before I go.” Black Robes drank from a cup. Gideon thought that he had not seen a cup on any of the tables. “I was curious about some things.”
“So am I,” said Gideon. “The Midis, the creatures we’ve been fighting, where did they come from?”
Black Robes shrugged – a very human gesture. “Copied them from a system perhaps three hundred light years from here as humans measure the distance. My sisters had already invited humans here by that time. I considered copying something from your planet, but it takes a while and I would have been noticed. The warriors you have been fighting are the best I could find close by. Even then the bodies had to modified for these conditions, and I had to set up facilities to cook-off, as you might say, a whole batch at once. Wouldn’t do to have a few come out and humans get used to them, or find out where they come from, before the rest were made and delivered, so to speak.”
“You say sisters, are you related to the – ah – entities in that structure?”
Black Robes shook his head. “No, not related. We live far too long for that concept to have any meaning. It’s just an expression. My turn. How did you make those guns you’re carrying,” he gestured at the rifles the Musketeers were carrying, “suddenly so accurate. You were killing warriors at half a kilometre or more – see I know your units – at the fort, but the musket I took from one your soldiers and copied couldn’t hit anything much beyond perhaps one hundred paces when I tested it. You also stopped that practice you had of firing all at once on command.”
Startled by the sudden change in subject, Gideon considered not replying. It was military information after all, but then he thought he was likely to gain a a lot of information in exchange for a little.
“That first weapon was all we could make initially but we realised we could convert the existing muskets so that the bullet could be spun while it goes up the barrel. If it comes out spinning it’s much more accurate.”