“The Police had largely broken under the impact of the Communist offensive,” I reminded her. There had only been a few policemen left when order had been returned to New Copenhagen. The Communists had wrecked havoc among the Police and had forced army units into a de facto policing role. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with them doing. “I didn’t have anyone to hand him over to, even if I had wanted to hand him over.”
Frida’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you want to hand him over?”
I took a moment to compose myself. “When I formed the Legion, I agreed to certain… conditions of leadership,” I explained, carefully. “One of them was that soldiers would not be abandoned to the tender mercies of local governments. That kind of betrayal would do nothing, but spark bad feeling among the men, no matter the original cause. The UN regularly betrayed its men to the point where entire units mutinied fairly frequently. In this case, everyone knew that the sentence for abusing locals was death. He was put to death legally, by us.”
“I’m not sure that you could be described as having tender mercies either,” Frida said, dryly. “You do not feel that your troops should be accountable?”
“They are accountable to me,” I countered, firmly. “If they cross the line, they get punished according to regulations. If you have complaints against my men, bring them to me and I will deal with them.”
Frida nodded and changed the subject. “I also have a list of complaints from various people who hold property in Pitea,” she said. “They’re complaining about the damage being done to the city by your attack. Is there any way you can reduce the amount of damage…?”
“I doubt it,” I said. I wasn’t surprised by that line of questioning. The industrialists were probably going mad with worry that nothing would be left of their investments, but piles of rubble. I couldn’t blame them for that, but the Communists had dug in so firmly that nothing short of heavy firepower would dig them out. “The city is very strongly held.”
“And thousands of innocents are being killed every day,” Frida said. “Is there nothing you can do about that either?”
“They’re in the city,” I explained, grimly. “We’re getting as many of them out as we can, but they’re often being held back by the Communists and used as human shields. We’re doing the best we can, but a combat zone isn’t the safest place on the planet.”
It was worse than I’d suggested. Hundreds of civilians had been gunned down by accident, mistaken for Communists in the heat of the battle. Others had been raped by the Communists or, in one case, by two of the local soldiers. Their Sergeant had handed out swift justice from the barrel of a gun and placed himself on report. God alone knew what we were going to do with him.
“And then there’s the ones you have in the detention camps,” Frida continued. “Do you know how much feeding them is costing us?”
“Do you know how much havoc even a handful of Communists could cause outside the city, if we let them go?” I countered. “We have to keep them somewhere safe and out of the way.”
“They’ll have to be moved,” Frida said. “I was talking to some of the other Councillors and it should be possible to foster some of the families in the more rural areas, where there’s food and some of them can work for a living. Others will have to come here to help rebuild the damage the Communists inflicted. We can’t keep them penned up in the camps or we’ll end up with riots on our hands.”
I shrugged. “I would like to recruit amongst them as well,” I suggested. “We’re going to need to rebuild entire units after feeding the army through the meat grinder in the city. There are plenty of young men and women who could become soldiers and God knows they’ve seen just how much damage the Communists have inflicted. They’ll have motivation, all right.”
“See to it,” Frida said. “And the remainder can be sent here, or to the farms?”
“If you insist,” I said. I had doubts about fostering them out to the farms, but it was her decision. We’d probably end up picking up the pieces later. “We’ll try to end the Communist occupation of the city as quickly as possible, but… it would go a lot easier if you promised not to kill them out of hand.”
“I can’t,” Frida said, her eyes darkening with fire. “Even if I wanted to spare the Communist leadership, the Council and the people would never let me get away with it. They want the bastards to hurt!”
“I want them to hurt too,” I agreed. “The problem is that they know they’re going to be executed once they’re captured, so they have no reason to surrender and quite a lot of reason not to surrender. They might survive if they kept fighting, or so they tell themselves, while we batter down the city around their ears. You could always exile them to one of the unpopulated islands.”
“No,” Frida said. I remembered what Daniel Singh had said and felt cold. Was Frida prepared to have them all killed to cover up her own links with the Communists, or was it just an attempt to confuse the issue? The Communists had learned to lie from the UN, past masters of the art. “We want them dead and if they survive the fall of the city, we want them tried and hung right here in New Copenhagen. The people want revenge!”
Chapter Eighteen
A desperate foe is a foe who will not offer or accept quarter. It is therefore wise to avoid placing a foe in a position where he feels that he has no choice, but to fight or die.
Pitea was dying.
I stood and watched as flames consumed yet another part of the city, despite the fire hoses the remains of the fire brigade had turned on the blaze. The Communists had withdrawn back into their inner strongholds, daring us to come and blast them out, leaving the remainder of the city to stand or fall on its own. The city was struggling to survive valiantly, but the fighting was making it hard for the remains of the local authorities to take control. The contrast was staggering; some parts of the city were almost intact, almost homelike, while other parts were nothing, but ruins. What the Communists hadn’t used, they’d tried to destroy; they’d utterly ransacked and then burned the richer parts of the city, just to make their point.
And it was all so pointless! The mindless vandalism wouldn’t solve anything. The workers the Communists claimed to represent wouldn’t find their lives any easier because of the devastation; many would find themselves out of work, or trapped in mindless brute labour jobs, clearing up the mess. Each destroyed factory or small business represented another few hundred people unemployed, looking for jobs that didn’t exist. They’d have to turn to crime to survive, I knew, and the rest of the planet wouldn’t be able to tolerate it. The Communists had a hell of a lot to answer for, eventually. If we took their leaders alive, their own people would be trying to crucify them. They probably wouldn’t live long enough to stand trial.
“The gunners are ready to hit Stronghold Four,” Ed said, from behind me. We’d moved the Mobile Command Post into the suburbs of the city, despite Peter’s objections. I wanted — needed — to know what was being done under my instructions. A commander who tried to run the battle from miles away — or light years away, as some of the UN Generals had tried — was one who simply wasn’t in control. I couldn’t afford that kind of luxury, not now. “We haven’t heard anything from Jock.”
“Hold fire for a while,” I said, keying my earpiece. Strongpoint Four was the most likely location on the prisoners; a complex of several factories, including considerable underground facilities. The entire city was riddled with tunnels and sewers and the Communists had used some of them to launch attacks from the rear. They’d grown less enthusiastic about it since we poured gasoline down the sewers and set it on fire. The complex under Strongpoint Four was supposed to be extensive enough to house a bunker; it had been built in the days of fighting the UN and no one seemed to have a clear idea of just what was under there. The owner of the complex had never made it out alive. “Jock, can you hear me?”