Christopher Nuttall - Picking Up the Pieces

“Sir,” he said, when he saw me. “Are you sure you should be out of bed?”

I had my own doubts about that, but I was past caring. “Yes,” I said, as the door closed behind me, cutting off much of the noise. It was such a relief that I almost collapsed. “You need to listen to this.”

“Take a seat, at least,” Ed insisted, standing up and offering me one of the chairs. I sat down gratefully. “You should definitely be in bed, sir, with all due respect…”

“I don’t get no respect,” I said, wryly. It seemed the funniest thing I’d heard or said for years. “Ed, they were right; the Freedom League is definitely here.”

I detailed everything that had happened since I’d been kidnapped, sparing nothing, even the attempt to drug me into spilling my guts. We’d suspected that the Freedom League was involved — well, Fleet had suspected that the Freedom League was involved — but we hadn’t had any proof, until now. I even told him about Suki and how I hoped she’d realised just what the Freedom League actually stood for… and my quiet suspicion that the terrorists had killed her after we’d been rescued. I was surprised at the pang it caused me; Suki had betrayed me and led us into a trap, but she’d thought she was doing the right thing. Terrorist groups are good at convincing people that they’re doing the right thing.

“We suspected as much after you dropped off the grid suddenly,” Ed confirmed. “Robert put out an alert for her just after we confirmed that you’d vanished from the city and… sir, the rioting faded away just after you disappeared.”

I blinked. “All of it?”

“Not all, but the main core just faded away into the side streets and escaped,” Ed confirmed. “A handful of real rioters — the people attracted by the chaos — kept going until Robert’s men dropped the hammer on them, knocked most of them out with stunners and dragged them off to detention camps. I think they’re going to be going out to help with the new farms before too long. The people who actually started the riot… they’re gone. We didn’t find them.”

I rubbed the side of my head, wishing that the pain would fade. It might all make sense in daylight, but I felt that everything was just too confused. If Suki had been working for the farmers all along, who had triggered off the riot? I hadn’t thought that the farmers had that much influence in the city; hell, the reason for the riot had been distinctly Progressive Party-style. They couldn’t be cooperating, could they? The Freedom League might urge them to cooperate, but somehow I had problems seeing them working together so well. I was definitely missing part of the puzzle.

“I understand,” I said, finally. “And the war?”

Ed frowned, stretching the side of his nose. “It seems to be taking a break,” he said, puzzled. “Since we rescued you, two days ago, there haven’t been any contacts with the enemy, apart from a handful of shots being exchanged between a patrol and a handful of enemy fighters, who broke contact soon afterwards. There have been no major attacks, here or anywhere else; hell, a handful of government agents were left completely unmolested.”

“Odd,” I said. It would be nice to believe that Suki’s family had turned on the Freedom League, but I couldn’t allow myself to become optimistic. My headache wouldn’t allow it. “Are you confident that you can hold this place?”

“Unless they bring up some additional firepower, we can hold out indefinitely,” Ed confirmed. I smiled at the confidence in his voice. “We have enough supplies to last us for weeks of what we’ve been doing through, even if we had to pull in the patrols and hunker down. The real threat is them bringing up other surprises…”

“I know,” I said, ruefully. We knew that a lot of firepower had fallen into the hands of the miners, but we hadn’t seen any of it, so far. It might be useless to them, or they might be saving it for something pretty devastating. “I’ll have to go back to the spaceport in a day or so, on the next supply flight. Keep me updated on what’s happening here and keep watching for enemy activity. This could be the calm before the storm.”

I knew I was repeating myself — and Ed knew the standing orders in any case — but my head just kept pounding. “Of course,” Ed said. He tilted his head slightly. “And I would really recommend that you got some more sleep, sir. You’re dropping off on your feet.”

The sense of betrayal flickered through me again, but I knew that Ed meant well. “I’ll get back to the ward,” I promised, firmly. It would be an easy promise to keep. Lights were starting to flicker painfully at the back of my head. “You just organise the flight tomorrow morning.”

“I’d better summon Peter to help you get back to bed,” Ed said, firmly. He keyed his earpiece and issued orders before I could object. A moment later, Peter came in through the door and stood to attention. “Please help the Captain-General back to bed and keep him there until tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said, sternly. I read his thoughts in his expression and knew that he had been worried about me since I vanished. Somehow, I doubted that I’d be leaving anywhere unescorted for a long time. Just now, I could see their point. I’d been in a position where I could be drained of everything I knew about Fleet’s covert involvement and only dumb luck had saved me. “Come on, sir; we’ll get you back to bed.”

Sergeants have been helping officers since time out of mind; often, they’d helped young officers learn how to command and when to stand back and let the subordinates get on with it. Peter helped me back to the ward and assisted the nurse in getting me back to bed, before taking a chair and sitting down firmly at the end of the bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

The spaceport looked different to my eyes as the helicopter made one final circuit of the base before coming in to land, but for a moment I couldn’t have said what was different about it. It struck me a moment later; for the first time since we’d arrived, the spaceport looked like a fully-functioning spaceport, with aircraft and even shuttles on the ground being serviced and launched back into the air. It might well have looked that way for quite some time, but I hadn’t seen it from the air since the last time I’d used a helicopter.

“Welcome back, sir,” Robert said, as I stepped out of the helicopter and accepted his salute. A small number of senior officers had gathered to welcome me back to the base, even though I hadn’t been gone for more than a few days. I like to think that they were happy to see me, but it might just have been relief over what would have happened if the enemy had killed me. “We have a situation report for you if you wish to see it.”

“Yes, please,” I said, accepting the final salutes. Everyone seemed to have found an excuse to come salute me and, even though I felt a hell of a lot better, I still wanted to get back to work rather than glad-handing everyone. I’m a soldier, not a politician. “What is the security position here?”

“We went through everyone’s records again after… well, your aide decided to kidnap you,” Robert said. “We isolated a handful of possible suspects, but we don’t actually have any evidence that we can use to press charges against them, just suspicions. We could put them through standard interrogation training if you want…”