I scowled and keyed my earpiece. “Robert, move your infantry company up in support and try and take prisoners,” I ordered, promising the lead tanker a hard time afterwards. I couldn’t fault his decision, but I needed prisoners, if only to learn what the interior of the city looked like. “Let the tankers go ahead and…”
A massive explosion blew up right in front of one of the tanks and sent the entire vehicle flying through the air, spinning until it crashed down on the ground, upside down. The hatches burst open and the men came pouring out; I silently blessed the unknown genius who had designed the Landshark. It might have been crude and ugly, but it took care of its drivers. It might even be salvageable in the near future, once we’d cleared the city. It wasn’t as if we were short of spare parts.
“Or maybe not,” I added, without skipping a beat. The shockwaves from the explosion would have killed any potential prisoners in the area. Flames were already spreading through the remains of the slums. It made me wonder if the Communists had intended to do just that. The slums were burning down, providing a barrier to further advancement, while allowing the inhabitants to decide that we were to blame. They’d probably done it to encourage the inhabitants to fight harder. They’d probably succeeded.
Another round of mortar fire echoed overhead as I rekeyed my earpiece. “Robert, advance at your own discretion,” I ordered, knowing that I was passing the buck. The UN commanders would have always looked over his shoulder, but I trusted the man on the spot to make his own decisions. “Keep a careful eye out for more booby traps.”
“We’re going to have to go slow,” Robert said, in reply. “Those flames aren’t going to abate quickly.”
I nodded as the wind shifted slightly, blowing the smoke towards us… along with the stink of burning human flesh. I forced myself not to recoil through sheer strength of will, remembering just how many people were packed into the city. The fools who called war glorious had never seen this side of the fighting; the dead and dying people who had only gotten in the way. They saw the pageantry and the baubles with which men are led, not the bloody truth. There were seven million people in the city. How many of them would be dead before the day ended?
“Understood,” I said, looking down at the display. The live feed from the UAVs showed Communist fighters rushing towards their back-up fortifications. The cruise missiles hadn’t wiped them all out, just the ones that were large enough to be worth expending a missile taking them out. “Your call.”
My earpiece buzzed again. “Boss, I may have a lead on the prisoners,” Jock said, in my ear. “I request permission to leave my post and follow up on it.”
“Do so,” I ordered, tightly. “Good luck.”
Ed looked over at me. “Advance patrols just picked up a mass of civilians who fled when their guards were distracted,” he said. I looked over at the live feed from one of the other UAVs. The civilians were being treated gently, but firmly. We couldn’t take risks with them, but they’d already been through hell and didn’t need more suffering. The hanging I’d supervised would ensure that none of them were molested, I hoped. “The Communists are losing their grip.”
“Here, yes,” I agreed. The fires were still burning brightly. There were probably water-dropping aircraft for fires somewhere on the planet, but the Communists would probably shoot them down if we tried to use them. “What happens when we advance our way into the heart of the city and hit their inner defences?”
Ed considered it. “Sucks to be you, I guess,” he said, with a wink. “Perhaps the dumb bastards will see reason and give up.”
“And maybe the horse will learn to sing,” I countered. Another waves of explosions echoed out in the distance. “Or maybe they won’t give up until everyone is dead.”
Chapter Seventeen
It is a core of our society that all elected persons in leadership positions are men and women who have had military experience. This requirement exists so that the elected politicians have a clear idea of what a military operation requires. Other planets, which lack this system, encounter problems because their leaders do not understand military realities. Their interference is sometimes disastrous.
New Copenhagen looked better than I remembered, I decided, even after a full week. The city still had hundreds of blackened and burned-out buildings, but the bodies had been removed to storage somewhere outside the city — I’d recommended burying them all in a mass grave, but the local government had balked — and work crews of prisoners, emergency servicemen and volunteers were struggling to clear up the mess. I spied a number of soldiers on patrol and allowed myself a smile. No matter what the UN says, you can’t beat local troops for local security. They knew the area and everyone trusted them, at least at first. The city felt, despite the damage, optimistic again.
The same couldn’t be said for Pitea. There had been four days of heavy fighting as we’d pushed into the city and we were still far from having completed the liberation. Parts of the city had fallen almost at once as the locals rose up against the Communists, but other parts were holding out and forcing us to reduce them, one by one. We’d liberate the city — I had no doubt of that — but it was starting to look as if we were going to destroy Pitea in order to save it. Where would we put all the homeless refugees? They couldn’t go to any of the other cities. They were already overcrowded with immigrants and didn’t need more.
I stopped outside the New Copenhagen Medical Centre and showed the guard my ID. They were definitely on alert, much to my relief, and double-checked the badge before waving me through, without my bodyguards. Peter fell in beside me and dared the guards to say anything, but the remainder of my guard had to wait outside. I couldn’t fault the logic — a Communist spy could wear a soldier’s uniform without being detected easily — but Peter’s snort suggested that he thought the guard was pushing it. The guards inside the hospital issued a series of warnings about not firing guns or smoking tobacco inside the hospital and then summoned an intern to take us to the President. There were so many guards in the building, I noted as she led us up the stairs, that normal business had to be quite disrupted. There were so many guards that sneaking inside would be easy, with just a little preparation. The more men there are involved in a mission, the easier it is for confusion and chaos to set in.
“The President is sleeping at the moment,” the Doctor said, when we reached the heavily secured private room. The doctors had their own set of cots in the room where they could sleep in-between tending to their patient, but the President lay in his own private space. I peered in and saw him sleeping peacefully, but I could tell that he was seriously injured. He was barely moving at all. “I’d prefer you didn’t attempt to rouse him.”
“I understand,” I said, closing the door — the nurse by his bedside winked at me just before the door closed, much to my private amusement — and turning to him. “How is he? No bullshit, just the facts.”
The Doctor frowned, but decided to answer anyway. “He was badly wounded when he was shot, although a few inches to the right would have killed him before you could get him to hospital,” he said. I nodded. I didn’t know why the sniper hadn’t aimed for the head — UN snipers were taught to aim for the head to ensure a kill, which was remarkably efficient of them — but I wouldn’t complain about his mistake. “The level of care he received afterwards wasn’t of the best either, although” — he hastened to explain — “I do understand that you didn’t have a choice. Overall, he suffered a great deal of trauma, which wasn’t improved by the stress he was under as President. His official medical advisors actually advised him not to run this time.”