I’d set up A Company to receive the prisoners, trusting them not to abuse the Communists more than I trusted the locals. I’d heard some grumbles from Ed about his men being used as glorified policemen, but I rather suspected that he was enjoying their punishment, just a little. The Communists had killed too many of his men and A Company had lost seventeen men. That would have been a pinprick to the UNPF or even Heinlein’s resistance forces, but to us it was devastating. I didn’t have a ready supply of replacements I could slot into the Company, although we could fill up the holes from the trainers if necessary.
“Check them, secure them and send them into the trucks,” I’d ordered. We didn’t have a complete list of Communists — Svergie had never compiled such a list, but we knew the leaders — but those we did know would be taken prisoner and transferred to a more secure prison camp. The smaller fry would end up going into a more standard prison camp and would be held until the local government decided what to do with them. They looked tired and worn as they marched out to be taken prisoner; they’d probably be glad of the rest.
“That’s one of their propagandists,” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist muttered to me, as a blonde woman stumbled out, her hands in the air. She looked terrified and ashamed, furious and… yet, she was trying to pose. I guessed she’d been an actress before she’d gone into politics — she’d probably taken the idea from the UN’s use of actors to endorse their politics — and even while she was being taken prisoner, she was acting. I foresaw a future in chicks in prison movies. “She always knew what to say to cause a riot or convince the poor that it was someone else’s fault that they were poor. She had half of the kids wearing red caps and talking like Communists.”
I shrugged. “Whatever she was, she’s a prisoner now,” I said, as the cuffs were snapped on and she was pushed — not gently — towards the prisoner buses. It had taken several hours just to clear the roads so we could get the buses up to the strongpoint boundaries, but there had been little choice. If we’d marched the prisoners through the streets, they would have been lynched. “She’ll be tried and convicted by a fair court.”
“After today, you won’t find a fair court on the planet,” Jörgen said, tightly. “Look around at all the damage and ask yourself; who’s going to stand up for them and say that they don’t deserve death?”
“No one,” I said, without hesitation. The vast majority of the Communist leaders would probably end up facing a firing squad, or perhaps the hangman, on the grounds that hanging people was cheaper. Svergie had had massive stockpiles of ex-UN weapons left lying around, but we’d probably used far too many of them in the brief Insurrection. I couldn’t believe the damage the Communists had been willing to inflict on the city. What had they been thinking?
But I knew the answer to that. They’d thought that they’d been in the right and anything they did for the right was justified because it was for the right. The UN had felt the same way too, as had any number of terrorists and wreckers. If they couldn’t play nicely by the rules, they sought to tip over the board and make the rules for themselves. Anything could be justified with the right Cause and the right Words; people like the actress had helped to convince millions that their Cause was Just. Her fans would probably disown her… or wait, that would be the logical thing to do. They’d be more likely to claim that she was an innocent dupe all along.
I smiled. The videos of her arrest would probably be selling on the black market tomorrow.
“Hang on,” I ordered, as yet another naked and bleeding form stumbled from the strongpoint. “I want to talk to that one.”
Daniel Singh had looked much better the last time we’d met, a week ago. It felt like centuries. He was bleeding from several wounds and his body was covered with scars and bruises. It looked as if he had been the victim of a bare-knuckle fight and I wondered just what had happened inside the bunker. Had he wanted to fight to the last and been overruled, or had something else occurred?
“It’s over,” I said, tiredly. His smell probably qualified as an illegal weapon in its own right. “You’re under arrest.”
Daniel shook his cuffs at me angrily. “Do you think that you’ve won?” He demanded. “You can’t keep the People down forever!”
I made a show of looking around at the blackened ruins surrounding the strongpoint. “You seem to have blown most of them out of their homes,” I observed. “First you took the city, then you started to kill hundreds of people you didn’t like, and then you fought and destroyed half the city. I don’t think you’re going to be Man of the Year after getting so many people killed.”
“You don’t know the half of it, mercenary,” Daniel snapped, his voice rising. “The People cannot be held down forever. They followed me because I promised something better and…”
I sighed. “If you must monologue, do it somewhere else,” I said, as calmly as I could. It wasn’t very calm at all. “You promised them the impossible and gave them nothing, but rack and ruin. Whatever else happens, you won’t be going back into politics here.”
“And when you’ve defeated me, who next?” Daniel asked, his voice rising. “Will you turn on the Progressives or the Conservatives, just for a change. How long, oh mighty General, until you’re Emperor of the entire planet?”
“Enough,” I said, and looked at his guards. “Take him to the secure centre and have his wounds treated, and then put him in solitary confinement.”
“Yes, sir,” the Private said. He grasped Daniel by the shoulder and started to half-lead, half-drag, him away. I watched him go, listening to the shouts of abuse that continued until the Private slapped Daniel’s head, hard. His suggestion had cut; I had no desire to rule the planet, even if John Walker wouldn’t have sent Fleet to do something about it. I just wanted to build a strong stable government that could hold together for more than a few years before coming apart.
“That was the last of them, sir,” Peter said. He’d insisted on inspecting all of the prisoners personally and I couldn’t blame him. His paranoia had been aroused. “The strongpoint is empty.”
I nodded to Ed. “Take it and inspect it carefully,” I ordered. I wouldn’t have put leaving a few IEDs behind past the Communists. “Once it’s clear, give me a shout.”
It was an hour before the bomb disposal squad had finished checking the strongpoint and confirmed that it wasn’t booby-trapped, allowing me to go in with Peter behind me. He had tried to talk me out of it, but I had insisted; besides, I think he was just as curious. The interior of the strongpoint reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of Hitler’s bunker hundreds of years ago; a strange mixture of burned-out sections and others that were almost habitable. Weapons and equipment lay on the floor where they’d been dropped or thrown in frustration, while half-eaten cans of food stood on a table. The stench of too many people in too small a space was appalling; we might have lived in similar conditions, but we observed basic hygiene. The Communists, it seemed, hadn’t bothered to prepare for a long siege.
Ed put it into words. “Were they that confident of victory, sir?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. It seemed an odd place to plot the conquest of the world, but even John Walker had had to plan in secret. If the Communists had worked from within, they might have succeeded in implementing lasting change, rather than upsetting everyone and turning the name of Communism into mud. I doubted that there would be a Communist Party on the planet for years to come, although there would always be something to fill that void. They’d probably call themselves socialists. “Maybe they really believed that half of the planet would rise up in their favour.”