“Who can’t? Who are you that wants a future?”
“I don’t know.” He started sobbing. “I don’t know who I am.”
There were fewer people in Fort Forward’s Ops Room these days, a barometer of the Liberation’s progress and nature. The massive coordination effort required for the initial assault was long gone. After that, the busiest time had been following the disastrous attack on Ketton when they had to change the front line assault pattern, splitting Mortonridge into confinement zones. It was a strategy which had worked well enough. There certainly hadn’t been any more Kettons. The possessed had been divided up, then divided again as the confinement zones were broken down into smaller fractions.
From his office, Ralph could look out directly at the big status screen on the wall opposite. For days after Ketton he’d sat behind his desk watching the red icons of the front line change shape into a rough grid of squares stretched over Mortonridge. Each square had gone on to fission into a dozen smaller squares, which became rings and then stopped contracting. The sieges had begun, 716 of them.
It left the Ops Room with supervising the mopping-up operation across open land. The Liberation command’s main activity was now managing logistics, coordinating the supply routes to each siege camp and evacuating the recovered victims. All of which were handled by different, secondary, departments.
“We’re redundant,” Ralph told Janne Palmer. She and Acacia had stayed behind after the early-morning senior staff meeting. They often did, having coffee together and bringing up points which didn’t quite warrant the attention of a full staff meeting. “There’s no fighting left,” he said. “No bad decisions that I have to take the blame for. This is all about numbers now, statistics and averages. How long it takes the possessed to finish eating their supplies, balancing our medical resources and transport facilities. We should just turn it over to the accountants and leave.”
“I’ve not known many generals to be so bitter about their victories,” Janne said. “We won, Ralph, you were so successful that the Liberation has become a smooth operation where no one is shooting at us.”
He gave Acacia a quizzical look. “Would you describe it as smooth?”
“Progress has been smooth, General. Individuals have of course suffered considerable hardship out on the front line.”
“And on the other side as well. Have you been monitoring the state of the possessed we’re capturing when those sieges fail?”
“I’ve seen them,” Janne said.
“The possessed don’t actually surrender, you know. They just become so weak the serjeants can walk in unopposed. We broke twenty-three sieges yesterday, that produced seventy-three dead bodies. They just won’t give themselves up. And the remainder—Christ, cancer and malnutrition is a bad combination. Once we’d put them through zero-tau, seven actually died on the emergency evac flight back to Fort Forward.”
“I believe there are now enough colonizer ships in orbit to cope with the casualty rate,” Acacia said.
“We can store them in the zero-tau berths,” Ralph said. “I’m not so sure about treating them. They may wind up waiting in stasis for quite a while until there’s a hospital place for them. And that’s even with all the help we’re getting from Edenist habitats and our allies. Dear God, can you imagine what it’ll be like if we ever manage to haul an entire planet back from wherever it is they vanish them away to?”
“I believe the Assembly President had asked the Kiint ambassador for material aid,” Acacia said. “Roulor said that his government would look favourably to helping us with any physical event which was beyond our industrial or technical ability to cope with.”
“And Ombey’s medical situation doesn’t count as a crisis?” Janne asked.
“Treating the de-possessed from Mortonridge is not beyond the Confederation’s overall medical capability. That would seem to be the criteria the Kiint have set.”
“It might be physically possible, but what government is going to let a ship full of ex-possessed into their star system, let alone parcel them out among civilian hospitals in the cities?”
“Human politics,” Ralph grunted. “The envy of the galaxy.”
“That’s paranoia, not politics,” Janne said.
“It translates into votes, which makes it politics.” The Ops Room computer datavised a stream of information into Ralph’s neural nanonics. He glanced through the window to see one of the red rings up on the status screen turn a deep mauve. “Another siege over. Town called Wellow.”
“Yes,” Acacia said. Her eyes were shut as she eavesdropped on the serjeants actually ringing the clutter of sodden, mashed-up buildings. “The ELINT blocks monitoring its energistic field reported a massive decline. The serjeants are moving in.”
Ralph checked the AI’s administration procedures. Transport was being readied, with a flight of Stonys being assigned to the camp. Fort Forward medical facilities were notified. It even estimated the number of zero-tau berths they’d need on the orbiting colonizer starships, basing it on the last SD sensor satellite’s infrared sweep. “I almost wish it was the same as the first day,” Ralph said. “I know the possessed put up a hell of a fight, but at least they were healthy. I was ready for the horrors of war, I was even coping with sending our troops into action knowing they’d take casualties. But this isn’t what I expected at all, this isn’t saving them any more. It’s just political expediency.”
“Have you told the Princess that?” Acacia asked.
“Yes. She even agreed. But she won’t allow me to stop it. We have to clear them out, that’s the only consideration. The political cost outweighs the human one.”
The rover reporters assigned to the Liberation were all billeted in a pair of three-storey programmable silicon barracks on the western side of Fort Forward, near the administration and headquarters section. Nobody minded that, it placed them close to an officers’ mess, which at least allowed them to get a drink in the evening. But as far as providing them with an authentic experience of troop quarters went, you could take realism too far. The ground floor was a single open space that was intended as a general recreation and assembly hall, with a total furniture complement of fifty plastic chairs, three tables, a commercial-sized induction oven and a water fountain. It did at least have a high-capacity net processor installed for them to stay in touch with their studio chiefs. Beds were upstairs, in six dormitories with a communal bathroom on each floor. For a breed used to four-star (minimum) hotels, they didn’t acclimatize well.
The rain started at eight o’clock in the morning while Tim Beard was downstairs having breakfast. There were three choices for breakfast at Fort Forward: tray A, tray B, and tray C. He always tried to get down in time to grab a tray A from the pile by the door, which was the most filling, so he didn’t have to eat lunch; trays D, E, and F violated all kinds of human rights declarations.
He pushed the tray into its slot in the oven and set the timer for thirty seconds. Drizzle pattered down in the big open doorway. Tim groaned in dismay. It would make the humidity hellish for the rest of the day, and if he travelled down into Mortonridge itself he’d have to used the anti-fungal gel that evening—again. Another day in the clutches of decay, watching a decaying Liberation. The oven bleeped and ejected his tray. The wrapping had split, mixing his porridge with his tomatoes.
There were a couple of chairs left at one of the tables. He sat down next to Donrell, from News Galactic, nodding at Hugh Rosler, Elizabeth Mitchell, and the others.
“Anyone know where we’re cleared for today?” he asked.
“Official Stonys are taking us down to Monkscliff,” Hugh said. “They want to show us some medical team just in from Jerusalem, got a new method of cramming protein back into the malnutrition cases. Direct blood supplement, slam protein back into your cells. Hundred per cent survival rate. It’s going to be real useful when the last sieges end.”