The judges withdrew from the room and went into seclusion. I leaned over to Frida and murmured a question in her ear. “What happens now?”
“The judges announce their decision and it gets enacted,” Frida said. “There’s no appeal for High Treason, so if they’re found guilty they’ll be hanged today.”
I gave her a sharp look. “Aren’t you moving a little fast?”
“I don’t think I’m moving fast enough,” Frida admitted. “The public mood wants them hanged yesterday, not tomorrow, and I have to bow to the public mood. The public is always right about such things. If they’re proven guilty, we have to deal with them as quickly as possible, just to allow the wounds they caused to heal. If there was reasonable doubt, I’d slow the proceedings, but if there’s not…”
She turned back to look towards the prisoners and I watched her, wondering what was going through her mind. Her scar seemed to be showing more now, as if she was reluctant to try to hide or minimise it. It had come from her time with the resistance, as far as I knew, yet she’d never tried to trade in on it — until now. I wished, not for the first time, that I could read minds. I would have given anything to know what she was thinking.
The door opened and the Judges returned. The usher called the court to order — and glared at a politician who had his feet up on a chair until he got the message — and then summoned the spokesman to address the court. An old and venerable looking Judge stood up to speak.
“We have considered the matter most carefully,” he said. His back might have been weak, but his voice was very firm. “We find that there were no grounds that might have justified an armed insurrection against the government. Their actions were not only without precedence; they were also without due cause, or due respect for constitutional law. They chose to commit High Treason; the burden of the responsibility for the following actions and disasters falls upon them.
“There is little point in discussing the other issues,” he continued. “Each of us will render a written judgement later, but the basic conclusion is simple; the accused committed high treason, a crime for which there is only one punishment. It is our judgement that they are guilty and they are to be hung this afternoon before the public.”
The courtroom seemed to burst into noise. One side was cheering loudly, while the handful of relatives of the accused started to cry, leaving the accused to look stunned and terrified. I could have sworn that one of them wet themselves. The usher gestured to the bailiffs, who grabbed hold of the prisoners and escorted them out of the courtroom, followed by most of the crowd. I found myself swept up in the motion and pushed down and out of the building, heading right towards the gallows. Everything happened so quickly; the convicts were noosed and then placed before the public. The crowd stared at them, anger and hatred written on their faces… and then the hatches dropped and the men died.
I had wondered if the nooses would be configured to cause slow death, rather than a quick sharp end, but they had been merciful, if mercy was the right word. Silence fell as the horror of the situation sank in; I’d seen horror before, but this was different. The crowd had been baying for blood. The bodies hung in front of the crowd, moving slightly as they twitched their final spasms, and then it was all over. The Communist leadership was dead.
“And let that be an end to it,” I muttered, as I pulled myself out of the crowd and found Suki. “It’s time to go home.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
There will always be those who join up for the thrill of being a soldier. Some of them will be the best soldiers in the unit. Others will be screwballs who need to be thrown out before they infect the rest of the unit. The trick lies in telling the difference between them.
A week later, I stood on the parade ground, watching as the latest group of recruits went through their basic training. The Sergeants were shouting at them as they tried to carry out fifty press-ups and only managed a smaller amount, demanding that they kept trying until they did all fifty. A handful of fitness freaks did all fifty easily and only stopped smiling when they were ordered to do fifty more. It was astonishing just how many recruits we had after the Communist Insurrection, even if they were all just interested in the girls. If nothing else, they would have to work to get their uniforms and they wouldn’t be going off-base until they qualified as cadets.
“We’re going to have to expand the training facilities,” Peter said, from behind me. I nodded as a Sergeant screamed instructions to another bunch of recruits, demanding that they stopped hiding behind their mothers and started pretending to be something like soldiers. There was always a lot of work to do with new recruits, but half of this intake had been practicing being soldiers before they came to the camp, and naturally they’d picked up bad habits. Their salutes were far from perfect. “How many of the locals do you think we can use as trainers?”
I scowled. There’s an old joke that the life of a Drill Sergeant is easy and all a candidate needs is a good pair of lungs. It’s nothing like that simple. They have to be capable of keeping raw recruits in order and, somehow, prevent them from injuring themselves without appearing to care what happens to the recruits. The recruits are not meant to like their teachers; they’re just meant to learn from them. A drill sergeant needs to know when to stop, as well; a sadist or an idiot could do untold damage to new recruits. The UN hadn’t cared, of course; some of the graduated soldiers had been treated like dirt and had been effectively useless. One of them had been raped by his — male — instructor. If I’d had that bastard in my command, he’d have been torn apart by wild dogs.
“Russell thinks that there are seven or eight possible candidates,” I said, finally. It wasn’t something easy to decide quickly, yet that was exactly what we needed to do. There might well be others after they had a few years of soldiering under their belts, but at the moment… we would have to rely on relative newcomers. They might have had combat experience in New Copenhagen or Pitea — I wouldn’t have accepted them if they had no experience at all — but would they know enough to translate it into terms the new recruits could understand?
It got worse. The longest-serving local had around seven months in the army. They’d all grown up very fast after the fighting had begun — those who had survived the experience — but they would still think of themselves as recruits. There would be a temptation to go easy on the newcomers — or, alternatively, to bully the newcomers — and that had to be resisted. Men whose memories had dimmed would be more likely to understand the reason for the hard-ass discipline and the seemingly-pointless labours, and inflict them on the recruits without qualms. I’d never been a Drill Sergeant myself, but I knew the score. The job required a man with perfect control and few of the locals had had the time to build that control.
“That’s bad,” Peter said, dryly. “Is there any point in recruiting the ex-UNPF personnel here?”
I shook my head. I’d considered it, but most of the ones I’d want were up in the mountains or on the farms, while those who had remained in the cities were effectively useless, although that hadn’t stopped the Communists from killing several hundred of them. Even if they’d all been qualified to help, they wouldn’t have had the experience working with Russell and the rest of the Drill Sergeants, nor would they have had an understanding of how we work. The standard UNPF introductions to military life bore about as much resemblance to real military life as Heinlein did to Earth. The recruits were coddled, even those who should have been kicked out on general principles.