Christopher Nuttall - Picking Up the Pieces

In the distance, I heard the sound of guns.

“Report,” I snapped, as I heard the sound of mortars adding to the general chaos. “Status report, right bloody now!”

“Enemy forces are engaging the gate guard with automatic weapons and mortar fire,” TechnoMage said, looking at his console. Red lights were blinking into existence as more attacks were reported. I took one look and swore. Apart from Fort Galloway, all of our smaller garrisons and patrols were coming under attack. “Counter-battery laser fire is taking down the incoming rounds so far, but it’s only a matter of time before one gets through and wrecks havoc.”

I keyed my earpiece. “Status Red,” I ordered, quickly. It was an alert status that had to be declared, never assumed. An incoming handful of mortar rounds was no particular danger, but the sheer scale of the assault meant that a major attack was under way. If Fort Galloway was under attack as well as the spaceport — and all of the other garrisons — it suggested that the enemy was intent on knocking out both the Legion and the Svergie Army. Against the UNPF, their tactics might well have succeeded — the UNPF was known to be careful about keeping watch, or allowing soldiers to carry loaded weapons while off-duty — but against us? We’d find out very soon. “Get all the shuttles and aircraft to hangers; prep the helicopters for flight.”

“Sir,” someone objected, “they’ll have SAM missiles near the spaceport.”

“I know,” I snapped back. It was much easier to shoot down a heavily-laden helicopter leaving the spaceport than one that was in the air and ready to launch countermeasures upon demand. The enemy was probably hoping that we’d follow the UN pattern and launch the helicopters as soon as the attack began. “Hold them back until I command them to launch.”

A moment passed as more reports came in; a handful of light attacks in New Copenhagen and the other three cities. They didn’t seem to be anything like as bad as the Communist attacks, mainly designed to force us to keep our heads down until it was too late. The Communists had shown a astonishing lack of concern for civilian casualties, but the farmers and miners were more restrained. They might even have a sense of proper governance, unlike their Communist counterparts. I hoped briefly that Frida was alive and safe — we’d designed precautions to keep both the President and the Acting President safe in the event of another attack — but if we lost the coming battle, it wouldn’t matter. The enemy were clearly going for all the marbles. They were throwing away assets that could have been preserved, such as agents in the capital, and the only reason they would do that was if they expected the battle to be decisive.

“I’m going to the command centre,” I said, finally. “Peter can escort me there. Tech, keep looking for the location of the enemy command unit and call in fire if you locate it.”

“It’s hard to localise the sources of those encrypted transmissions,” TechnoMage said, grimly. “I suspect that the sources are actually moving.”

I nodded. With the William Tell on the other side of the planet — the attack had evidently been carefully timed — it would be much harder to trace the source of the signals, or even gain an overall impression of what the enemy were doing. The UAVs were doing what they could, but I was leery about using them; if one could be shot down, the others could be knocked down as well. I smiled to myself; one way or another, it probably didn’t matter. If we lost the coming battle, the enemy would probably try us as enemies of the people and sentence us to death.

“Swing two of the UAVs towards the north,” I ordered, finally. “I need real-time data on what the enemy is doing.”

“Yes, sir,” TechnoMage said. If he had any doubts about what I had ordered, he kept them to himself. “I’ll inform the pilots at once.”

The sound of shooting and explosions grew louder the second Peter and I stepped outside, keeping low in case of enemy snipers. The enemy infantrymen were attacking the main gate on the road leading to New Copenhagen, using automatic weapons and RPGs to make an impression on the defenders, but it looked as if the defenders were holding them at bay. We’d sealed the area, cleared fields of fire and laid down minefields and other nasty traps for anyone intent on hurting our main base. The infantrymen, lacking heavy support, wouldn’t be able to break in until we ran out of ammunition and that would be a long time in coming.

Peter insisted on going first, pistol in hand, as we moved towards the command centre. The spaceport was still a hive of activity, with men and women struggling to get the aircraft into the hardened shelters before the enemy got lucky with a mortar round, but everyone gave us a wide berth, except Russell. He ran over, weapon in hand, and was damn lucky not to be shot by accident. Peter’s acidic comment left no doubt of that.

“I’ve sent the cadets into the bunkers, apart from the most advanced class, which I’ve armed and placed on reserve duty,” Russell reported, as we stumbled together into the command centre. The roar of a Landshark moving to engage anyone who broke through the main gate deafened us for a long moment. “If the enemy breaks through, we can use them as back-up for the reserves. I hate to place them at risk like that, but if the enemy break in…”

“Good thinking,” I said. None of Russell’s charges would have believed it, but their Drill Sergeant cared intensely about each and every one of them, even the ones he chewed out on a regular basis. A Drill Sergeant had to be very cruel to be kind, most of the time, and none of them would have disputed that Russell was cruel, but he cared. Using cadets as infantrymen went against the grain. “Are the ones in the bunker armed?”

“Yes, sir,” Russell said, taking full responsibility for what could have been a dangerous decision. If some of them were enemy agents sent in to strike from the inside… well, they could have caused considerable damage before they’d been gunned down. The UN had lost bases that way; the senior officers hadn’t kept a close eye on who’d gone in and out, allowing the enemy a chance to slip infiltrators in and set bombs, or poison the drinking water. Even if they weren’t enemy agents, they’d barely been checked out on their weapons. The results could be disastrous. “If the enemy breaks in, they’ll be ready.”

“One would hope,” I agreed. The guards insisted on checking our identity; they’d moved into the sheltered interior, but there was no way in without passing them. I passed over my ID card without comment and pressed my thumb against the scanner when they asked for confirmation. Peter and Russell followed suit. “Come on.”

The interior of the command bunker, I was relieved to see, wasn’t full of panic and confusion. Robert, who’d been in command until I arrived, looked relieved to see me, even though he seemed to have been doing fine. The enemy had been doing fine as well; the number of red pinpricks on the display, each one marking an enemy attack against our forces, seemed to have multiplied into the hundreds. I silently cursed the UN for leaving so much war material and ammunition lying about, before focusing on the reports coming in from the main gate.

“I’m having B Company prepped to go out and chase the bastards away,” Robert said, obviously intending to take command himself as soon as I was fully briefed. “They’re pushing too close to us to drive them away without an infantry advance, but they’re obviously armed and well-prepared. They’ll pick off any tanks we send out without infantry support.”