“Now I suggest you get an early start back. You have a lot of work to do.” Vance looked down at his plate. Business concluded, he wanted to eat…and he wanted to do it alone.
Thoms realized he’d been dismissed, and he got up quietly and walked toward the access tube with considerable regret for the half of his extraordinary lunch he was leaving behind. Tranquility deserved every bit of its reputation, he thought as he made his way through the main dining room and out into the corridor. “Now, how am I going to pull this off?” he muttered softly to himself.
Chapter 9
General Isaac Merrick walked across the polished granite floor of the Assembly Hall’s lobby, his footsteps echoing loudly off the high ceilings. The building was nothing compared to the government facilities in Washbalt or the other major cities of the Alliance, but he had to grudgingly acknowledge it was an impressive effort for a colony world. He knew from his briefing it was only a couple years old, yet somehow it looked as though it had been standing there for a century, massive and proud. Now it was scarred from battle and vanquished, the Arcadian colors that once flew from its pinnacle torn down, leaving only the Alliance flag flapping in the early fall breeze.
His troops had spent the last week securing the city of Arcadia, an effort which had proven to be more difficult than he’d expected. These colonists were tough and, even worse, determined. The few times he’d been called upon to suppress unrest on Earth all he’d had to do was fire a few shots and the protestors would panic and flee. But these Arcadians had decent weapons and they fought like hell. Whenever he beat down one group, another rose in its place.
Now that the city was secured he would use it as a base to move out and pacify the rest of the planet, a job he was approaching with trepidation. The Arcadians were not what he’d expected, not what conventional wisdom made them out to be. They were defiant and stubborn, and a significant number of them had combat experience. And what the hell did these fool colonists have in mind anyway, he wondered, naming their capital the same thing as the entire planet? Are they all crazy?
Merrick was glad, at least, to have solid ground under his feet again. He and his force had been unceremoniously loaded onto transport vessels and shipped out here, but they were Earth-based military, not those crazy Marines. They didn’t belong in space, a fact underscored by the prodigious amounts of vomit the ships’ maintenance crews had to clean up every time they went into freefall.
His troops had been sent here to back up the Federal Police who’d been attempting to assert control over the planet…with extremely limited success. Arcadia seethed with discontent; rebellion was in the air everywhere. The first series of arrests made by the police triggered a wave of terrorist attacks and ambushes of federal patrols. The police didn’t have the strength to deal with the situation, so Merrick’s soldiers were dispatched.
His orders were clear. Assume the military governorship of the planet, secure all installations of strategic significance, and disband the local militia and any armed colonists. He was also to determine if there was any truth to intelligence reports suggesting that the locals had secretly begun production of weapons and high tech gear without the knowledge of Alliance Gov. He was to seize any such facilities and arrest all involved. He hadn’t gotten any hard leads on weapons production, but based on the way the rebels were armed it was obvious they were getting guns from somewhere.
He had one other directive – to avoid trouble with the Marines if possible. The Corp’s officer training facility was on Arcadia, and he was to give them a wide berth. He’d already sent the commandant of the Academy his respects, along with his assurances that none of his forces would interfere with their operation. However, if the Marines intervened on behalf of the rebels, he was authorized the wipe the Academy off the map with an orbital nuclear strike. Stark himself had issued that last order, along with the assurance that Merrick could trust the naval forces supporting him.
Merrick didn’t understand the colonials; to him they were simply upstart traitors who needed to be shown their place. He was a Political Academy graduate, as were all senior officers in the terrestrial military establishment and, as such, a member of the de facto upper class of the Alliance. Not surprisingly, he tended to view the colonists in the same way as the lower classes on Earth. A bit more troublesome, perhaps, but he had been confident they would cave in once he applied the iron fist. He hadn’t given much thought to the fact that the police had been applying that same strategy, and all they had to show for it was a planet in turmoil and a growing casualty list. Now he was reassessing and coming to the conclusion that he faced a long and difficult struggle.
His troops were well-equipped, but one on one he wasn’t sure they were a match for the armed colonists, leavened so heavily with Marine veterans. The Alliance army, like the other terrestrial forces of the Superpowers, was of mediocre quality. There’d been no fighting between the Powers on Earth for a century, so combat experience was negligible, nothing more than the occasional punitive action against a gang or band of outlaws. The Alliance officers were drawn from the Political Class, the junior ranks filled from families with little influence and the senior officers drawn from those higher-placed. It was usually somewhat of a dead end as a career, but even some members of the highest placed families liked putting on fancy uniforms and calling themselves general, at least until parents and grandparents died or retired and passed on choice government posts. Governmental positions weren’t officially hereditary, of course, but that’s how it worked in practice.
Merrick, though fairly typical of the mindset of the Political classes in the Alliance, was actually a capable officer. He spent a considerable amount of time tending to his troops, far more than others of his rank. Though untested in battle, he was smart and well-educated in strategy and tactics. He was more patient and restrained in his actions than many of his peers, and he was popular with the rank and file, another rarity in the Alliance army.
The capital city had been a hotbed of unrest when they arrived, and Merrick’s first order of business was to clamp down and assert effective control. He instituted a curfew and sent troops to take over the entire communications network. He tried to utilize as little force as possible, but there had been armed resistance in the communications center, and his troops had to fight their way in. When he disbanded the Planetary Assembly, the representatives who were present barricaded themselves in, and a nasty battle broke out. His troops suffered heavy casualties and he’d had to send in reinforcements before they managed to overwhelm the defenders and secure the building. Both sides had taken serious losses.
He had to think about his next steps. He couldn’t just sit in Arcadia; his orders were to secure control over the entire planet. Now he was considering just how large the planet was. If they fight everywhere the way they did here, he thought, we’re going to have our hands full.
Kara Sanders walked across the rough stone floor of the production facility. She had always been slim, but after the last few months she was stick-thin, her clothes hanging loosely over her tiny frame. Amazing, she thought…these pants used to be tight. She’d been working day and night, and it was starting to wear her down. Her shoulders ached and her once beautiful blue eyes were red and sore. She hadn’t slept in two days…or was it three?
The makeshift factory was burrowed into the low mountain range that formed the western border of the Concordia district. There had been a fairly large cavern there already, and they’d massively expanded it with plasma-blasting. Now it was almost a kilometer long, large plasti-steel girders bracing the high stone ceiling.