“Even numbers, go!” Colonel Voston ordered. Every other soldier on the perimeter melted backwards, forming into clumps of soldiers racing toward the nearest shuttles. “Steady!” Voston called out to those still holding position.
Geary could see Voston’s movement highlighted on the overhead view. The colonel wasn’t leaving on the first lift, but was instead walking steadily along the perimeter. Geary could see majors, captains, and lieutenants from the regiment doing the same, and when he called up the data saw that every senior noncommissioned officer was still in place as well. Voston had sent up the first lift with just corporals in charge, keeping the rest of his command structure in place to help maintain stability in the half of his badly pressed regiment still forming a tenuous barrier between the refugees and local government forces.
“Back! Off! Now!” A sergeant and several Alliance soldiers had leveled weapons at local toughs, who were so close that the ends of the barrels of the Alliance weapons almost touched their bodies.
Several of the toughs paled, trying unsuccessfully to push back against the crowd behind them. They were used to beating up civilians, not facing armed and armored ground forces.
Geary was trying to figure out how to keep the situation from blowing up when he saw another sergeant leading a wedge of refugees toward the point of confrontation. “They’re taking over security here!” the sergeant called. “Fall back!”
The toughs had only a few moments to relax and start to smile as the Alliance ground forces faded backwards, before the mass of refugees charged them and swamped their front ranks in a swirl of improvised weapons and swinging fists.
Everywhere along the perimeter, the refugees were surging outward as Voston’s soldiers dropped back to where the second wave of shuttles would land. The government thugs found themselves trapped between the refugees and the antigovernment crowds pressing in behind, who had joined in the fight when violence finally erupted.
Geary hastily checked the status of the few local military units that had been backing the toughs and found them falling apart without fighting as other local forces allied with the crowds began arriving in vastly larger numbers. The local police, who had been protecting the thugs, had completely vanished, either overrun by the crowds or seeking shelter anywhere they could find it.
Voston’s soldiers backed into the shuttles, the last ones raising their weapons in triumph and shouting encouragement to the refugees while the shuttle ramps closed.
As the last shuttles bounded upward, a single shoulder-fired missile bolted through the air after them.
Geary didn’t have time to order any response, but he didn’t have to. The FAC flown by Nightstalker whipped around, slicing between the rising shuttles and missile, popping out flares, chaff, and other decoys that caused the missile to weave back and forth before locking on a decoy and detonating far from the shuttles.
While Nightstalker handled the missile, Night Witch had taken care of the launcher. Geary saw a single shot slam into a small crowd of mob toughs on a flat rooftop, scattering the thugs and leaving a hole in the top of the building, along with three toughs who had never had time to regret their mistake.
The three FACs did victory rolls over the roiling mass of refugees and other civilians in the square, then sprinted skyward in the wake of the shuttles.
“Pilots!” Duellos muttered. “Do they always have to show off?”
“I think so,” Geary said. “Pilots were like that a century ago, too. They can’t just be good; they have to make sure everyone else knows how good they are.”
“Black Jack!” Another comm window, this one showing the refugee leader Araya and, in the background, the local armored forces commander who had spoken to Geary earlier. “Thank you! Naxos was right, you are hard copy. But this is our fight now!”
“Good luck,” Geary said.
By the time all of the shuttles were recovered and Geary led his task force away from the planet, he could watch intercepted broadcasts showing that the crowds were storming the hall of government, chanting demands for freedom, backed by substantial military forces which had joined the revolt.
“Freedom,” Duellos repeated as he watched the reports from the planet. “Will they really get freedom?”
“That’s up to them,” Geary said.
He cut loose the former refugee ships, whose crews aggrievedly demanded pay for their long chore hauling and housing the refugees, but when offered the chance to plead their case to any of the governments in local star systems chose instead to head out in search of more profitable activities. The leased freighters carrying the two regiments of ground forces, Kim’s now consolidated along with Voston’s, were sent with a strong escort toward the jump point back to Yokai, then Adriana, while Geary took the rest of the warships to the jump point for Tiyannak.
“Is this covered by your orders?” Duellos said.
“Tanya wouldn’t be asking me that. She’d be happy that I assumed it was a necessary part of solving the refugee problem. And it is.”
It took an extra two weeks to jump to Tiyannak, ensure that the heavy cruiser, light cruisers, and HuKs that had escaped at Batara were still fleeing as fast as they could run, launch a mass of bombardment projectiles aimed at the former Syndic shipyards and refitting facilities there, where a few more warships still sat in various stages of repair and refit, then return to Batara with the knowledge that Tiyannak would no longer be able to support offensive operations against its neighbors.
The squadron to which Night Witch, Catnap, and Nightstalker belonged had begun setting up camp in the partially reactivated facility at Yokai. Geary dropped off the pilots and their FACs along with some sincere appreciation for their support, then headed back for Adriana.
As he prepared to leave the bridge of Inspire, the FAC base dwindling behind them, Geary paused to listen to Duellos as he spoke to a virtual window showing one of his senior noncommissioned officers.
“Give them whatever assistance we can,” Duellos said, sounding unusually aggravated. “And let me know when our own is completely straightened out.”
“Is something wrong?” Geary asked.
“Software updates,” Duellos said in the same persecuted tone of voice that Colonel Galland had used a few weeks ago. He closed the virtual window and pointed astern. “The FAC base techs made a backdoor request for assistance from my code monkeys because they’re having particularly bad problems running the accumulated updates on the gear that was mothballed here.”
“Aerospace forces software techs asked fleet techs for assistance?” Geary asked. “Voluntarily?”
“Amazing, isn’t it? Everybody’s code monkeys tend to get along and help each other out regardless of institutional rivalries. I am told they actually call it the Code of the Monkeys though I may have been getting my leg pulled.”
Geary cast a worried glance at the image of the FAC base, floating serenely in space. Additional lights could be seen on a portion of it, where the aerospace forces were reactivating enough compartments and equipment to support them. “What’s their problem? The same sort of stuff that afflicted the FACs at Adrianna?”
“No. The warbirds appear to be all right. They were all updated before they deployed here. This time it’s the software in the sensor and combat systems on the base.” Duellos waved a grand gesture. “My senior chief code cracker says the New! Improved! Intuitive! updates on the FAC base appear to be causing fights between the base’s subsystems.”