“Damn you, Frida,” I muttered under my breath. “What the hell have you gotten us into now?”
“We lost seventeen men,” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist reported. His accent, clearly local, earned him attention from the prisoners. Their faces promised him a horrible death if he fell into their hands. “Five more are seriously injured and need to be flown back to the spaceport before they die.”
“Call for a transport helicopter and ensure that it is heavily-escorted,” I ordered, finally. I wasn’t going to allow wounded to be driven back to the spaceport if it could be avoided. They might not survive the experience. I looked at him, wondering if he could be trusted with prisoners, and decided that I’d have to start trusting him sooner or later. “Round up a platoon and have the prisoners moved to somewhere more secure — one of the former storage rooms, perhaps. Don’t let them talk to one another, but try not to hurt them further if it can be avoided.”
Peter shrugged as we walked into what had once been a command post for the fortress. It had been stripped of everything that might be useful, leaving only bare patches of wall where computers and display systems had once stood, apart from the ever-present dust. The miners had evidently decided not to bother refitting the room for their use, although I couldn’t blame them for that. It was evidently nearly useless for them. We could probably use it if we moved in some of the stuff we’d recovered from the UN base at the spaceport, but that would have to wait until we moved up some of the more vital defence systems. We’d shown the enemy just how to assault the fort!
“The prisoners might be talkative,” he said, as soon as we were alone — apart from the bodyguards. “We could inject them with something designed to make them talkative if necessary.”
“Leave them for the moment,” I said. “If they’re inclined to talk, we’ll see later what they have to say for themselves, but the last thing we need at the moment is a reputation for abusing prisoners. The odds are that we picked off all of the leaders anyway — or did we? Can you have them checked against the known miner leaders?”
“Yes, sir,” Peter said. I looked over as Ed came into the dust building and then sneezed as the dust blew around him. “It’s dusty, sir.”
“I had noticed,” Ed said, crossly. He looked at me. “I’ve carried out a quick inspection of the fort, sir, and it’s defendable. We just need to bring down the gear we need and then we can start putting the place in order.”
“I think so,” I agreed. “Is the field large enough to take the shuttle?”
“Yes, sir,” Ed said. “The pilot is confident that he can land precisely where we want him?”
“Then tell him to start moving,” I said, pushing my doubts aside. “We need him here as soon as possible.”
The problem with resupply for the fort lay in logistics — one of the military swear words, as far as I was concerned. The fort needed supplies that had to come from the spaceport and that meant either land convoys or transport helicopters, both of which were vulnerable. We couldn’t stop with just one either; we’d need so many that the odds of a successful attack would be high. I’d decided to gamble and use one of the shuttles from the Julius Caesar, bringing all the supplies we needed from low orbit on one drop, but if a SAM unit happened to be in range, we were taking a serious risk.
“Chancy,” Peter commented. He’d expressed his doubts back when we were planning the mission. “You know how many ways this could go wrong?”
“Better than I wanted to know,” I assured him, dryly. We’d gone over the benefits of the plan — many — and the risks — serious — before deciding to chance it. “We need to get Fort Galloway back in working order before the enemy decide to try and throw us out — which won’t be long.”
I pulled out my direct link to the UAV and scanned the live feed. It seemed clear, for the moment, but I was sure that the enemy would be waiting until darkness fell to launch an attack, if they had enough men in the area. It was the downside to the leaderless resistance concept; it made it hard to muster enough men in a given area to launch a significant attack. Or, for that matter, would they just try to lay siege to the fort? It would be just as irritating for us and much less risky for them.
The roar of the shuttle’s engines brought us both out to watch as the craft came in to land, braking heavily. The shuttle had risked a dive down from orbit to the fort, to minimise the time the craft was exposed to enemy fire, and I allowed myself a moment of relief as it landed safely. The risk of losing a surface-to-space shuttle was considerable.
“Excellent flying,” I said, as the pilot came out of the craft. He looked utterly beat by the flight and I didn’t blame him. The slightest mistake could have killed him. There was nothing routine about any shuttle flight, but the high-power drop had been extremely dangerous, even without enemy action. “You did very well.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, as he stumbled into a version of attention. I silently forgave him the trembling in his limbs. “Might I suggest that you unload the shuttle as fast as possible” — the sound of ticking metal drew my attention back to the shuttle — “so that I can return to orbit? I don’t want the shuttle around here when the enemy start firing into the compound.”
“Of course,” I agreed, seriously. “Ed, supervise the unloading and get everything prepared. I have to call back to base and let them know what happened here.”
It took several hours to unload the shuttle, despite the pilot’s haste, and darkness was falling before the craft returned to the skies. I thought, seriously, about going back to orbit with him, but instead I’d only sent the wounded and the prisoners. I didn’t want to take them away from the fort, but I didn’t want them around either when their fellows began the attack. I was turning away from the darkening skies when it happened.
“Sir,” Peter shouted. “Look!”
I turned back and saw a streak of light rising up to meet the shuttle as it climbed into the air. The two lines connected and, a moment later, an explosion sent the shuttle’s burning remains falling towards the ground. I watched the explosion in numb horror — no one would have survived that — and knew just what it meant.
The enemy were here.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Although the insurgent, as noted before, will seek to avoid conventional battle, he is a master at draining the enemy strength though tiny cutting attacks — the death of a thousand cuts. Time and space are on his side. He must not win, only not lose. For the government, the exact opposite is the case.
“Shit,” Ed said, quietly.
I nodded. “Damn it,” I said, keying my earpiece for the link to the UAV pilot. “How the hell did you miss them that close to us?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the pilot said, after a moment. I looked at the burning remains of the shuttle in the distance and swore under my breath. I’d known that we were risking a shuttle, and at least we’d gotten all of the supplies off the ship, but I still hated to lose any of them. The cost of replacing it would cut severely into the profits from the contract. “They just seemed to appear from nowhere!”