“This way,” a headquarters soldier called. I knew he was a headquarters soldier because, as the Master Sergeant had taught me, his uniform was absolutely perfect, despite being in the middle of a war zone. I found myself disliking him on sight. “You can get your showers here and then fresh outfits.”
The shower felt like heaven and I managed to ignore some of the comments from the female reporters — and the rather more disturbing ones from one of the male reporters. Kitty had said that I had a nice ass, but really! I almost felt human again when I donned a new outfit, but that rapidly changed when I realised how much body armour I was being given to wear. The streets were evidently not as safe as the UN had promised. The reporters, for once, weren’t blind to the implications either. They protested until the headquarters staff officer informed them that they’d be travelling in the midst of a heavily armed convoy, something that didn’t reassure me in the slightest. I’d been in a heavily armed convoy back on Terra Nova.
This time, to be fair, it was a little better organised. The reporters went into a security truck that was so heavily armoured that I doubted that even a KEW could break it. I went into a different truck, which would at least allow me to take a look at the city as we passed through. As the truck rumbled to life, I heard more explosions in the distance. The insurgents were keeping up the pressure at all times. They also had time on their side. We had to haul all our weapons from Earth or one of the other fleet bases. Their sources of supply were right here on Heinlein.
The countryside was surprisingly neat, but it was marred by the destroyed towns and villages we passed, places where the defenders had tried to use as strongpoints. Eventually, they’d been bombed or blown out of them, leaving a blackened set of ruins on the countryside and thousands more civilians dead. A handful of men and women were wandering through the rubble, looking for survivors perhaps, and some of our escort unleashed a few rounds in their direction. I felt another rising gorge of vomit as a woman, who couldn’t have been older than me, fell to the ground with a hole in her head. I wanted to grab the weapon and shoot the infantryman, but what would have been the point? There were thousands upon thousands where he came from.
“There’s the city,” one of my escorts said. “Get ready to duck if you insist on watching.”
Lazarus was a city? My first impression was that it was a large town. I’d only seen two cities on Earth — I’d gone to Houston for a brief visit to relatives once, back before my father lost his job permanently — and both of them had sprawled out for miles, crammed to bursting with citizens who had no job, no life, and no hope. Lazarus looked like a dream come true; it was comfortable, surprisingly pretty and very open. If it hadn’t been for the handful of blackened buildings and the presence of thousands of UN infantry, it would have been a paradise.
The entire city seemed to be teeming with infantry marching the streets. They didn’t have the same presence as the Marines, but they seemed, instead, to be almost terrified. I saw them watching a pair of girls across the street — wearing outfits that would have been an invitation to rape back on Earth — as if they were scared of the girls. It was uncanny. There wasn’t even a wolf whistle. The girls, for their part, completely ignored the soldiers, who looked glad to be ignored.
It changed as we drove into the heart of the city. Here, there were more damaged buildings and soldiers… and prisoners. Hundreds of men and women sat on the grounds, their hands firmly cuffed behind their backs, watched by a handful of heavily-armed soldiers. A pile of guns, larger than any I’d seen in my entire career, had been dumped in one corner of the yard. The prisoners gazed at the infantrymen, their eyes promising bloody vengeance, one day.
“Arrested for possessing illegal weapons,” my escort commented. “We’ve arrested men and women with enough weapons to fight a small civil war on their own.”
I stared. “What’s going to happen to them?”
“The detention camps, probably,” he said. “They’re… just bursting at the seams already. Everyone on this damned planet has guns.” We stopped in the middle of a large courtyard. “Here we are, son; hop off.”
The soldiers on the inner gate, at least, were very alert. They checked my identification carefully and then did the same for the reporters, some of whom protested at the imposition. They were ignored. No one, it seemed, was taking chances. Judging by the sullen resentment of the prisoners and the damage the town — no, city, I kept reminding myself — had taken, it was probably fully justified. A team of staff officers arrived and took charge of the reporters and I found myself alone…
“Hey, John,” a familiar voice called. “What are you doing here, you stupid bastard?”
I turned to see Roger. “An armed escort and two military policemen,” I joked. It was the old Academy definition of a patriotic volunteer. I hadn’t realised, until now, just why we had been taught to believe that. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I ended up taking down the Admiral’s zoo of reporters,” Roger said. I winced in sympathy. “Fancy a drink?”
There might have been a war on, but the headquarters staff hadn’t wasted time in seeing to their comforts. There were several large canteens, two bars and a brothel. The latter, I noted, was unmanned. Roger explained that the staff officers had found several women willing to work in them for the first week, and then the women had managed to poison the visitors, somehow.
“They probably did us a favour,” he added, with a hint of his old smile. “The sooner we start fighting this war properly, the better.”
I stared at him over my lemonade. Alcoholic drinks were strictly forbidden on duty and even through my charges had gone off to be lied to — or told the official version of what was going on, which was more or less the same thing — I was still on duty. Roger had ordered a exotic cocktail that looked as if it could glow in the dark, but he hadn’t drunk enough to make him drunk, had he?
“Roger,” I said, slowly, “look what we’ve done to their planet?”
“So?” He asked, taking another sip. I couldn’t believe it. What had happened to the carefree boy I remembered from the Academy, or the first starship we’d served on together? “The war has to be won, John. If they’d decided to be reasonable about it…”
“Why are we even here?” I asked. The wave of guilt bubbled out of my mind. “Heinlein wasn’t a threat to us, was it?”
“Oh yes it was,” Roger said. He seemed to hesitate for a long moment. “Look, John, you’re a friend, so I’m going to give you a word of advice. If you’re having doubts, keep your mouth shut about them. It’s not healthy to shoot your mouth off here.”
“Why?” I demanded. “What’s happened to you?”
“I grew up,” Roger admitted. He sighed. “Look…you know about my family, right? Part of the Establishment, control several seats on the UN General Assembly, have interests in most of the industrial concerns…”
I nodded. Roger had never made an issue of it before. He could have been effectively running the Academy with a few words in the right ears, but instead he’d earned his Ensign’s bars the hard way. We’d all respected him for that, even though we had also envied him his position. He would rise far higher than any of us. I couldn’t believe the change that had come over him.