A Time to Fight
J.F. Holmes
Part 1
Orme, Plains District, Year 206 of the Freehold
“Warrant McClellan? We’re about to de-orbit, you need to secure yourself in the passenger compartment.” The shuttle crew chief sounded loath to break into the older man’s reverie, but space was unforgiving.
He said nothing in response, but stood, placing his hand on the green flag of the Freehold, feeling the aluminum container underneath. It was cold in the cargo bay, but not as cold as his heart. “Jesus, John, what am going to do now? This is going to kill mum,” he muttered.
The body of his brother, Senior Sergeant John McClellan, communications specialist, Third Mobile Assault Regiment, Freehold Military Forces, had no answer for him. The military standard casket remained silent, as it ever would.
“And how the hell am I going to deal with Jack? The boy will want to know. Should I tell him you’re a hero, John, or just tell him the randomness of a mortar? The stupidity of it all?” Bitter tears rolled down his clean-shaven face, and he jerked as the crewwoman touched his arm.
“Sir,” the crew chief said compassionately, “you have to get strapped in. As soon as we touch down, you can come back and escort your brother out.”
“Aye, lass. I will,” he said, slipping into his native brogue in his grief. Though Scotland was thirty Earth years behind him, he had never really left the Highlands at heart. Grainne may have become his home, but it held no joy for him now.
She turned and led him back through the hatch to the personnel compartment. He sat, cursing as the basket hilt of his claidheamh cuil, the backsword, caught on the harness. Then G hit with the retros, pushing him forward in the restraints. Once in atmosphere, the pilot took them in a smooth arc, dropping down to Jefferson Starport. Still the heavy push and pull made his leg ache, where tendons were badly damaged by the same mortar that killed his brother. Regen would heal the leg almost like new, but it wouldn’t bring back his brother. He had family to look after now, and retirement age was a good public reason.
Half a div later, he stood with his hand on the casket again, wincing at the harsh Iolight as the ramp dropped, unused to it after his time on Mtali. Six figures in dress uniform, black boots, gold laces, black pants, and green jackets matching his own, stepped forward with precision, filing toward either side of the hold.
Logistics Warrant Leader David McClellan, Third Legion, Freehold Military Forces, stepped aside, drew the sword, edge gleaming in the harsh light of Iota Persei, and held it to his face, looking stonily ahead. The four men and two women, three to a side, stepped forward, grasped the handles just under the flag with white gloved hands, turned, and lifted. In measured step, they carried the body of his only brother out onto the apron, past the young boy who stood stiffly, trying not to cry. Next to him stood the boy’s grandmother, and her face was as gray as the aluminum of the casket that bore her son.
12 March 210
“And what, exactly, do you suppose we do about them?” asked McClellan, addressing the whole town hall in general. Gathered in front of him were twenty-three men and women that represented the total adult population of Orme within thirty kilometers.
“We FIGHT!” shouted James Harrow, the man with the smallest farm in the area, and the least to lose. Even on Grainne, there were those who lived in a shack and slowly drank themselves to death. His choice, but if the war hadn’t come, the neighbors might have soon interfered with his kids. As it was, they ate at others’ places more than at home. A right bastard he was.
“Aye, you fight, we can do that,” answered the older man. “And how do you propose to do so? That’s a whole UN supply battalion, with at least a platoon of infantry to provide security.”
The arm he waved was in the general direction of the forward logistics base being erected just outside of their small town. Two hundred and fifty kilometers northwest of Jefferson, Orme made a good place to service VTOLs and truck convoys, though the village itself was little more than a grain depot, the Singh’s convenience/grocery store, and McClellan’s farm equipment dealership. Prefab buildings were quickly growing up in the “requisitioned for government needs” wheat fields of Killian Gots’s farm. The owner himself had not been seen since he went to the UN offices at Jefferson to protest. That had been two weeks ago, and rumor had it that he was “detained.” Mac knew well enough what that meant: to never expect to see his friend again.
“Listen to me,” said McClellan. “I’ve seen war, and it’s not pretty. There’s enough firepower in that base to sweep away the lot of us, and this is my home. I’d like not to see it destroyed.”
“Are you a coward then?” asked a voice from the back of the room.
McClellan’s grip tightened on the pistol he wore holstered on his belt, then relaxed. They were all tense, and getting into a duel now would solve nothing. He couldn’t just let that pass, though. “I’m no coward, Miguel, and any other time I’d prove it to you. I just know what war is, and I have no desire to see you all slaughtered for no reason.”
That brought an angry outburst from some of them, and Mac wished desperately that there were other veterans around him, even a reservist or two, but they had all disappeared northward three months ago when the war started. What was left were a bunch of small-town people, and he was an outsider to them. Hell, he could probably have lived here for a hundred years and still been an outsider. Being from Earth, even three decades ago, didn’t help.
“Listen,” he continued, “you’re all farmers. Regardless of who is in charge, people need to be fed. I have some contacts in what’s left of the FMF.” Maybe. “If you want to help the war, then grow food, and I’ll see what can be done about getting it to the people who need it, the ones that CAN fight effectively.”
“Well, I’m not sticking around here. I’m going south, to see who will take me to fight,” said Miguel. Several of the younger men stood and said they would join him, giving looks to McClellan. He just nodded; they would do what they would do.
* * *
The meeting broke up after that, the farmers somewhat mollified. Although they loved their freedom, the immediate threat of the UN base next door had brought home the war as nothing else could. Everyone, that is, except Harrow, who left cursing everyone and swearing that he would show the “goddamn UN that not everyone in this town is a pussy.”
“Listen,” he said to the men who wanted to go south, “stop by the dealership, I’ll give you what supplies I can, and you can have one of my lifters.”
As Mac returned to his warehouse, he felt the angry waves coming off his nephew, and did his best to ignore it. The boy would learn, he hoped, that sometimes rash action was worse than no action.
“Are you a coward, Uncle?” asked Jack, when they had gotten back to the dealership. “I know there have been attacks, and we’re fighting back. I want to be part of it, not just sit here and suck up to the aardvarks. Like my dad did!” He could hear the emotion and anger in the teenager’s voice.
“Jack, your dad would have agreed with me one hundred percent. There’s no point to rushing off and getting yourself killed. If you’re going to fight, you have to fight smart.” He said it, but he could see that there was no getting through the kid’s head.
The teen grew angry at the mention of his father, and shot back, “He died a hero, saving other people’s lives! And I don’t see YOU fighting! Just trying to make money off those scumbags.”
McClellan had no answer to that. How do you explain to someone who had never seen the randomness of violence that a highly trained soldier had been killed by a black market UN mortar round? That the low-angle shot had sailed over the wall, beneath the protective anti-indirect fire screen, and gone off a meter from where Communications Sergeant John McClellan Sr. had been walking to get some chow at midnight? That thank God his brother had probably never known what hit him?
You didn’t, of course; you told Jack Jr. that his dad died a hero. You also didn’t tell him about the men who came at night, to pick up anything even remotely militarily useful, from trucks for transport, to industrial piping for rocket casings, to fertilizer for improvised explosives. Mac had debated bringing Jack on in this. He was a good kid and a great help around the business. The kid’s hotheadedness, and the way he had started listening to that asshole Harrow, made him too much of a risk. No, better to keep him out of the loop.
* * *
Summer was coming fast, and it was going to be a tough one. True to his word, Mac had arranged secret pickups of whatever the farmers could afford to send to the guerrillas. It was getting harder, though, as the UN agencies wormed their way into the farmers’ lives, measuring crop yield, registering assets, enacting strict regulations. They even put radio tags on all of the farm equipment in his dealership, down to the smallest power tool. Each sale now had to be registered through their computer system, and he had another “official” in his office every other week.
Jack came in, wearing what looked suspiciously like combat fatigues. They were a mix of green Earth and orange Grainne vegetation. That is, the pants were green and black, and the shirt was dull orange and brown.
“What’s with the outfit?” he asked, and got nothing but a scowl.
Seeming to realize he might not get what he wanted by being obnoxious, the kid smiled and said, disarmingly, “Can I get your old hunting rifle out of the locker? Me and Carl want to go hunting for meat.”
“Carl and I,” he said absently, looking more over the books. “Remember the UN rules, no more than three rounds.”
“What if we come across a ripper?”
“Make sure you hit it with your first shot,” McClellan tried to joke, but the teen was already gone.
* * *
This was the tricky part. When you blackmail someone who was up to their eyeballs in criminal shit, things could go very wrong. Or right. McClellan wasn’t even sure it was necessary, yet. Hopefully the man’s greed would be enough, and he wouldn’t have to use the videos from the escort service. It was a seriously dangerous game of poker, one he had played before. Two of the men he played against on Mtali had lost their lives.
That had been some hairy action, setting up a deal for the Special Warfare to catch a Shia arms dealer. Mac was the bait, posing as, basically, a corrupt version of himself. The deal went bad, and only his body armor saved him from the ancient Tokarev pistol. Mac’s return shot blew off the man’s head, the second shot catching the startled bodyguard in the crotch, then McClellan had thrown up as the SW troops came pounding into the room.
They sat in Nimbutu’s office, both men smoking cigars from Earth. The UN sergeant major had offered him a joint, and Mac nodded no. “It’s a cultural thing, Joseph, you understand.” The real reason is that he wanted a clear head to do business. Being on a first name basis, though, with a man like this, chewed at his insides.
“Are you sure? It is just a sample, but I can get you more, in bulk.”
“No, if I wanted that, I could go to just about any farmer around here,” said Mac.
Nimbutu shrugged and said, “Well, on to other things. Business had been good, but I suspect that you want something more than band-aids and medicines to help out your ‘farmers.’ Everything, of course, comes with a price.” With that, he slid a paper across the desk to McClellan.
It was a list, of course, but his eyes widened involuntarily when he read it. “These are…FMF munitions.”
“Well,” said the logistics NCO, “obviously your farmers don’t have any UN weapons, do they? And things are not as easy to get here as they were on Mtali. This is all captured stock, set to be destroyed. Of course your friends need small-arms ammo to defend against the nasty wildlife here on Grainne.”
“Aye, that’s true,” he muttered in response, looking the list over. Fifteen thousand cases of 4mm rifle clips. Ten thousand 7mm rounds for pistols. One million rounds of 11mm sniper for light machine gun. That made sense; the heavier stuff wasn’t issued to be carried. The list went on, but no prices.
“I see you’ve been busy.” Mac slid the list back across the desk, and Nimbutu used a lighter to burn it.
“I have many friends in many places. As you know from Earth and Mtali. You could say that nothing moves anywhere on Grainne without my, how do you say in English? My cut.”
Now was the time to be careful. Negotiation over that amount of material would be tough. “This is a lot more than simple farmers need. Or can afford.”
Nimbutu laughed, and said, “I don’t want your money, David, I want my freedom.”
“What the bloody hell?” said the surprised Freeholder. “Freedom?”
The African steepled his fingers, and said, “I know what you’re doing, with your buying supplies from me. I know who they are going to, also. You may win, you may not. Maybe this whole planet will crash down around us. But if you do win, I want you to remember who helped you.”
He opened a drawer on his desk, and McClellan tensed, feeling naked without a gun to defend himself. Though, if it came down to it, he could strangle the fat bastard before any weapon cleared the top of the desk. He relaxed when Nimbutu brought out a small cooler box, humming faintly on battery power.
“What’s this, then?” asked the suspicious Freeholder.
The UN man smiled, and said, “A token of my good faith. It’s a sample of a nonlethal but nasty virus that, rumor has it, the UNPF will be releasing atmosphere wide soon. To force rebels in to the clinics to be accounted for. They’ve used this tactic in regional rebellions on Earth. This one was modified for your atmospheric conditions. Maybe you can do something with it.”
Mac put it in a pocket of his kilt, and they stood up. “I’ll let you know what my friends need. I understand what you want.”
“Until then, David.”
Walking outside into the damp night air, to where McClellan’s truck was parked, the two men ceased talking about any more deals. They stood in the loading bay while lower-ranking enlisted UN troops unloaded the boxes of foodstuffs.
“Perhaps you can introduce me to your driver?” asked the sergeant major, wiping sweat from his face. His immaculately tailored dress uniform contrasted sharply with the battle dress uniforms of the lower enlisted, who were lazily unloading the truck. Jack, hearing that they were talking about him, rolled up his window and turned the truck radio up full blast, making the frame thump with bass.
“My apologies, Sergeant Major,” said McClellan. “He lost his father on Mtali, and doesn’t particularly care for aard—I mean the UN military.”
“Ahhh, that was a bad place, son, a very bad place. I’m sorry to hear that.”
I bet you are, you son of a bitch. It had taken him a long time, but David McClellan knew who was responsible for his brother’s death. The fragments they pulled out of his body were from a 120mm UN-issued mortar round, sold on the black market to religious fanatics. Sold by a scumbag like this man. If anything, he hated them more than his nephew did.
“But,” continued the UN soldier, “I’m glad some of your people are coming around. Things up in the capital…” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“Well, I’m just a businessman, and I enjoy doing business with a fellow Mtali veteran,” McClellan answered, nodding to the six rows of ribbons on the man’s chest. Probably all bullshit, he thought. His own few ribbons were locked up in a box. The two veterans exchanged small talk for a while as the UN troopers carried used plastic cartons back onto the truck.
“Yo, Sarge, you shitbag,” called a private, making McClellan cringe at the lack of military discipline, “some of these boxes is still got stuff in them.”
“Jackson, I told you before, some food doesn’t get used before the mandatory expiration date. Do you want the Food and Drug Administration crawling up our asses?” the sergeant major blasted back at him. The two had an argument for almost a seg, with Private Jackson eventually throwing his hands up and walking off the detail. Incredible.
“Well, got to go,” said Nimbutu, offering his hand to the Freeholder. David shook it, resisting, as always, the urge to slip a knife into Nimbutu’s guts. He climbed back into the truck, Jack started it, and they maneuvered to the gate, zigzagging slowly through the barriers. As always, he took note of the soldiers manning the two bunkers on either side, and the watchtower, looking for signs of any more alertness than usual. Nothing, so far. One machine gun, the ammunition locked in an ammo box. One stickyweb gun in the other bunker, and a heavy-duty tangler in the nearest guard tower. Troops with their helmets off, smoking. Even as they drove through, a male and a female lazily walked back to the MG bunker, carrying food trays.
“I don’t know how you can shake that goddamned aardvark’s hand. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself. Mr. Harrow says you’re a traitor for doing business with them!” barked his nephew when they had cleared the gate.
“Jack, there are a lot of things you don’t understand. When you get older…” Maybe the wrong thing to say. Obviously the wrong thing to say, because the boy shut up and said nothing else for the rest of the short trip.
* * *
Later that afternoon a battered farm truck rolled into the rear of McClellan and Son Farm Supply and backed up to a loading dock more permanent than the one at the UN warehouse. A man in rough, worn clothing stepped out and met Mac at the rear door. In silence, they worked together to move six crates into the truck, working up a sweat in late summer heat. When they were done, both returned to the office.
Jack was nowhere in sight, and customers few and far between, once word had gotten out that he was dealing with the UN. They had the office to themselves, but even so, the stranger ran a sweep for bugs.
“Clear,” he said.
McClellan reached over and grabbed the man in a bear hug. “It’s good to see you, Minstrel. We need to talk.”
“Bet we do. Got a few segs?”
The two sat in Mac’s office, and the resistance fighter brought him up to speed on where things sat with the UN occupation. “I don’t have to tell you that they’re moving out and expanding into the rural areas. Word’s out that hitting their logistics is a good tactic; some people have been doing some damage.”
“Not here, if it can be avoided. I’ve got a lead into the base, and tomorrow I put a lock on him. I’ll be able to get at least ammunition for captured weapons, as well as more medical supplies. Starting with this,” he said, pulling out the box Nimbutu had given him.
“What is it?” asked Minstrel.
“From what I understand, and here’s some intel for you, the aardvarks are going to start using viruses. This box contains a sample of one; supposed to be a sign of good faith.”
Minstrel took it and placed in a backpack. “Thanks for the info and the sample. I know a group of people who would love to get their hands on it.” The FMF Blazer, for that was what he was, whatever his role now, shook his head and said, “This war is getting nasty.”
David said, “War is always nasty. You were there on Mtali. You know.”
“And other places, yes,” agreed the younger man. “We’ll take this base off the target list, for now, if you can keep a conduit open. We lost a lot of stuff in the orbital strikes.”
“Give me a shopping list, and I’ll see what I can do. For now, let’s get you loaded up.” The two men went out back, and the boxes that had come from the UN base were quickly shifted to Minstrel’s truck.
“So what have we got?” Minstrel asked.
Mac ran through the inventory in his head; there was no paper record. “Primarily medical supplies. Bandages, run of the mill nanos, antibiotics.” Just as valuable to an insurgency as ammunition and weapons.
“And to think, all they want in return is alcohol and prostitutes.”
“Hey, it’s like gold to them. Their idiot General Order Number One. No drinking, no fraternization. It’s like they’re a bunch of children, not soldiers.”
Minstrel nodded, and asked, “Tell me about your contact. In case something happens to you.”
“Well,” began McClellan, “I knew of him when I was on Mtali. Slick mother, knows computer logistics systems inside and out, knows how to blackmail too. Deals in supplies, weapons, you name it, as long as the price is right.”
“How come he hasn’t been caught by the UN inspector general?” asked Minstrel.
“Always covers his tracks,” answered Mac. “This assignment, he’s like a kid in the candy store, looting a whole planet. I hate the bastards.”
Minstrel nodded; he was the one who had passed along the information about the munitions that had killed Mac’s brother. “It’s war, David,” he said. “After we win, you can do what you want with him. For now, though, we have to play it cool.”
“Yes, after we win.” The two men shook hands, and Minstrel climbed back in his truck, just another farmer getting replacement parts for worn-out machinery.