“It looks clear,” Erica said, from the lead helicopter. “Granny” — the code for the transport helicopter — “can move in now.”
I tensed as soldier rappelled out of the helicopter and spread out on the ground, looking for possible threats, but finding none. There were only twenty-one soldiers, but they searched the surrounding area — apart from the farm — quickly and efficiently. We’d have to check out the farm, sooner rather than later, but for the moment we were content to merely check out the remains of the vehicle. One of the soldiers had a little headcam that he used to send footage back to the command centre and I heard some of my people blanch. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
“It looks like all five of the inspectors are here,” he reported back, as the camera peered where he looked. The five inspectors were blackened and charred, but the fire hadn’t destroyed all the evidence. “Cause of death; shot through the head. It was definitely sniper-grade work, sir.”
“Understood,” Erica replied. “Spread out and…”
The hail of shots took down two soldiers and sent the others diving for cover. “Contact,” the Lieutenant commanding snapped. “Enemy snipers, firing from cover!”
I cursed and glared down at the pilot. “How the hell did you miss them?”
“They’re firing from cold spots, under heat-absorbing garments,” the pilot replied, grimly. Now the enemy were firing, the radar onboard the UAV could track their shots back to their origin. The whole ambush had been carefully planned. “We couldn’t see them until they opened fire!”
“Damn good shooting,” Peter commented, from behind me. “That’s much better than the Communists used…”
“Never mind that,” I ordered. Not for the first time in my life, I had the feeling that events were rapidly running away from me. “Pass orders to the assault helicopters; the snipers are to be terminated with extreme prejudice.”
“All units, fire at will,” Erica ordered, from her helicopter. The shooting rapidly expanded as the soldiers on the ground returned fire in short precise bursts. They were experienced enough to find cover and fire from there. The problem was that they were pinned down, unable to retreat or return to the transport helicopter. “Assault One, engage!”
The lead helicopter swooped down and unleashed a spread of dumb rockets down towards the enemy position. The targeting wasn’t very precise, but it didn’t have to be, not with so few enemy soldiers in the area. The shooting died off as the enemy died in the explosions or struggled to find other places to hide. My soldiers advanced quickly towards the burning wreckage, but found no one alive. It looked as if the enemy had all been wiped out.
“We can search the farm,” the Lieutenant said, once the soldiers had secured the area again. “It wouldn’t be hard…”
“Do so,” Erica ordered, issuing instructions for two of the helicopters to move up and support the infantry. Their intimidating presence should quell any desire for heroics among the farm’s inhabitants. “Move in… now.”
The soldiers were not gentle. A grenade knocked down the gate and they moved in shouting for everyone to come out with their hands in the air. The three men and seven women, including two teenage girls, were rapidly secured and left in the yard under the watchful eye of the helicopter crew while the soldiers searched the farm. They found nothing incriminating apart from a handful of ex-UN rifles and a pair of more modern hunting rifles. The weapons were confiscated, but it was becoming increasingly clear that the search was futile. The real birds had flown long ago.
I toyed with the idea of bringing the prisoners in for interrogation, but there really was no need. Some of the soldiers planted surveillance devices in the farm, but in the end we withdraw, feeling frustrated and angry. Some of the UN commanders I’d known on Heinlein would have burned the farm to the ground, just on general principles, but I liked to think that I was more civilised. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway. The war wouldn’t stay civilised.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The key to combating an insurgency can best be described as presence. There must be no areas where the insurgents can regroup and rearm, safe from your interference. You must develop situational awareness at all times, even if this means embracing serious risks. Failure to know what is going on will be fatal.
The map on the wall looked grim, as well it might. As far as anyone could tell, the writ of the central government barely ran outside of the major cities. Four days after our brief battle with the farmers’ militia — or whatever they were calling themselves — we only controlled the territory under our guns. The handful of government outposts across the region had been wiped out — those that had surrendered, at least, had had their personnel repatriated to the cities — and it looked grim. Victory would be long in coming, if it came at all.
I had managed to talk Frida into a strict rationing scheme, but simple logic suggested that it would take weeks before the system could take effect, by which time much of the food would be gone. Some of the nearer farms still shipped to the cities, but they couldn’t produce enough to make up for what we’d lost from the other farms, and the miners… well, they weren’t talking to us at all. I had the unpleasant feeling that they were waiting for the next interstellar freighter to arrive, whereupon they’d sell what they’d produced directly to the freighter and place orders for items they wanted themselves, rather than thinking about the good of the planet. It was a legal grey area; the freighter crew would have to have something from the trip, and if the local government clearly didn’t control the countryside, then why not buy directly from the miners?
“The sooner we repossess Fort Galloway, the better,” I said. We had been unable to tell if the farmers had occupied the fort or not, but the UAV flights suggested that they’d just ignored the fort. We should have sent out a caretaker crew to maintain the base, but we’d been distracted by the Communist uprising. I hated to admit it, but perhaps some of the UN Generals had deserved their massive salaries. They’d seen a big picture that barely floated in front of my eyes. “Ed, is the convoy ready to move?”
“It has been ready for two days,” Ed said, not without a certain amount of amusement. We’d been forced to keep putting the departure date back as I had to run around pissing on fires. If it hadn’t been the farmers, it had been the massive anti-farmer demonstrations in the cities, or riots among the ex-Communist prisoners in the work gangs. Not for the first — and probably not the last — time, I cursed the absence of a real police force. The planet was damn lucky that the murder rate hadn’t risen sharply. It wasn’t as if we were equipped to track down murderers we didn’t catch in the act. “A Company is on permanent standby, B Company is ready to act as a QRF, and the designated local units need only their alert to move.”
I nodded. Although the vast majority of the local soldiers came from the cities, a handful came from the farmers… and I was unwillingly aware that they could be acting as spies within the Army. I hated to do it, but we’d been spreading rumours and even outright lies about our future plans, just in the hopes that they’d confuse the enemy leadership. The brief bursts of encrypted transmissions had continued, but no one knew what they said, or even who was sending them. Even if we had wanted to create a real police state, Svergie simply lacked the infrastructure to operate one.