Freehold (45 page)

In a few segs, she had a small fire going in a shallow pit. It provided a little heat and a lot of comfort. She set her shelter up near the base of the tree and crawled in. Fuel was within arm's reach and so was the fire. She chewed on a ration package while keeping the dim flames going to build up enough coals to keep the fire self-supporting. Once done, she snuggled back into her sleeping bag, rifle in one hand, thumb on safety and sword in the other, tip above her head.

Sleep didn't come. There were
sounds
in the forest and she was too terrified to move. She felt bladder pressure again, clamped down on it. Gingerly, she added another small stick to the fire, still clutching her rifle in the other hand. She felt all kinds of sensations and realized she was panicking.

This is stupid! she told herself. You are a combat vet from Mtali. This is just a forest. You've killed a ripper that wanted you for lunch. There's nothing here as dangerous as you. The words were logical and ineffective. She took to watching seconds pass on her comm. Tears welled up from accumulated shock, as she realized that friends were dead, her two home planets were killing each other, her worldview had just been destroyed for the third or maybe fourth time and that this night was subjectively going to last forever.

Eventually, she thought she could see some gray in the shadowy trees. She compared time to predicted sunrise and realized night was almost over. She huddled, twitching until the sky was faintly visible through the foliage, then jumped out to relieve herself again. The air was frigid, and she hurried back to her shelter, crawling in and finally falling deeply asleep.

She woke in filtered but bright Iolight and stirred slightly. Stretching, she was jarred awake at the sight of a rifle muzzle.

"Don't move," a rough male voice commanded. "Let's see your hands."

Sliding them cautiously overhead, she spoke firmly, "Corporal Kendra Pacelli, Third Mobile Assault Regiment."

"You got an aardvark accent there, lady."

Aardvark.
Earth pig.
She gritted her teeth at the derogatory term and replied, "I'm an immigrant about three years back."

"Uh
-huh
. Where you been living?" The man asked. She saw he had friends. Three of them. Two other men and a young woman. Her old Earth habits found the woman's presence a reassurance.

"Jefferson, until they canceled my indent. I've been at Heilbrun Base since."

"Jefferson, huh? So which side of Liberty Park is the Council building?"

"Twelve blocks north."

"Name some good bars."

"Stanley's Surf n' Turf; good food, too. Level Three if you like dancing. Bellefontaine if you have a ton of money and like a good show—"

"All right, you'll do. And you move in richer circles than I ever did. You can get out now, Corporal."

"I dunno, Dak. I'd like to see some references," one of the others said.

"You heard of Citizen Humberto Hernandez? Friend of mine. Last year on Heritage Day we unveiled a new four-stage pyrotechnic shell that got everyone's attention. My sword comes from Mike Cardiff, if you've heard of him." She was angry now, although she understood their caution. She knew she was still in shock and was trying hard not to crack.

"Easy, lady. Corporal," Dak corrected himself. "I believe you." He offered a hand and helped her out of the small tent. She grimaced in pain and he gave her more support. "My sister-in-law is a nurse. We'll take you to where she is. Kyle, help with the gear," he ordered one of the three others. The young man nodded and shouldered her heavy ruck quite casually. The woman collapsed the shelter and gathered up the few other items. By the time they were done, the traces of fire were gone, as were those signs left by the shelter.

Not much was said on the way to the house. Kendra tried to remember the route, got lost immediately. She surmised they were near the north edge of the woods, as the trees thinned out slightly. Shortly, they entered marked fields and approached a small farmstead. She was glad to see it; her ankle was throbbing in pain. Her ribs, thigh and hand were tight aches that simply contrasted the pain in her ankle to an extreme.

As they neared the house, Kendra saw signs of others, also armed. Dak knocked for entrance and Kendra was quickly handed over to his sister-in-law Vikki for care. She was married to Kyle, Sandra was married to Dak and the younger man Brian was their son. The other two children were Eric, who looked about ten Earth years and Riga, a cheerfully bright-eyed two-year-old.

"You'll be fine. But that ankle is going to need lots of support. Keep it bandaged." Vikki Simonsen told her after a brief exam.

"Will do. So, Dak, what's the tactical situation here? And have you heard any news?"

"Only secondhand," he said. "They hit Maygida, Heilbrun and Merrill. Kinetic kills. Serious damage to the surrounding towns. They're landing a large number of troops. The cities are being occupied. I can't give you more than that at this time."

Nodding, she said, "Okay. What kind of force do we have here? I need a complete list."

"Well, we've . . . twenty-three adults in the surrounding farms. At least one rifle each. Several hundred rounds per. Some shotguns and pistols for defense at home. A few grenades—we picked them up cheap for blasting rocks. We have about a thousand kilos of commercial blasting agents, castable and plastic, no flake type. Usual night vision gear and we've got radios of course, some with scramble. Ten or so trucks, six cars and plenty of horses. Standard navigation gear for land management. There's plenty of food—we are a commercial producer, so no worries there."

Kendra frowned. "That's a very light squad. I hope we can find some support weapons." The UN organized its squads with eight soldiers: a leader, a squad weapon gunner and three buddy pairs with rifle/grenade launchers. The Freehold used twenty-troop squads, in three teams of six with a squad leader and assistant. The third team carried one each of an antitank launcher, heavy machinegun and a sniper rifle and was organized as pairs, one spotting and supporting, the other shooting. They put out a lot more fire than a UN squad, assuming one had the weapons.

"I'll check. What do you have planned?"

"Any veterans here?" she asked, stalling. She had no plans yet.

"No. My older brother is aboard the
Heinlein,
" he said, "but no one here has experience otherwise."

"Okay," she said. "Then until I get more intelligence, we are going to limit activities to training only. I'll try to organize a program." She realized this was going to be a very difficult task.

"You stay off that ankle, Corporal," Vikki ordered her.

"Plan on it," she agreed.

Dak and his wife Sandra—the woman who'd been with him to pick her up, cleared a room for her. The house was a sprawling ranch and had plenty of space. It took Kendra the rest of the day to recover from the drop and half the next to convince them of the need to begin training. "If we are going to fight them, we have to be in shape. That means drilling." They finally relented, on condition she sit while they practiced under her guidance.

Kendra had cribbed as much information as she could from her comm the night before. The section on training insurgents was long, detailed and made a lot of sense. Most of it could not be used under her current circumstances. The book called for everyone, instructors and students, to exercise together, to lead by example and boost morale. She couldn't do that, currently. The risk of observation required that they practice at night, especially when cloudy, which was good training, since guerrilla warfare worked better when the enemy was handicapped by as many factors as possible. The daytime tasks of running a farm made that very tiring, annoying and stressful. This was good for practice also, but bad for morale among those who had never put the training to use and seen its benefits. There was insufficient ammunition for extended practice. "I can hit a human target five times out of six while running through heavy smoke," she explained, "but I shoot . . . shot . . . several hundred rounds weekly. We don't have that option."

Still, they took her advice earnestly and seriously, despite their complaints. Her ankle began to heal and she forced herself into hated exercise to restore the strength. She found her capacity waning without the amino boosters she was used to taking. She hadn't had a lifetime's exposure to higher gravity, a cultural emphasis on physical activity, nor the sheer upper body strength of the male physique. Every time she turned around, another handicap slapped her.

She gave regular pep talks to increase flagging morale, including her own, as the comm reported greater and greater "progress" of the UN's "development of the system." Two weeks went by and summer heat made their civil and military tasks more obnoxious.

One morning, Kyle burst into her room. She was sleeping naked above the covers and wasn't fazed, although her brain still took a moment to readapt to the local mores. "Corporal! Quickly! Urgent message!" he said, then turned and ran.

She rolled out, grabbed her rifle in one hand and clothes in the other and tracked Kyle's progress. She found him and the others gathered around the vidsat receptor. He was opening a toolkit.

Pulling on pants, she asked, "What goes?"

"Look at the reception meter," Dak said.

She looked. It was fluctuating wildly. "You can't fix it? Or is the satellite being captured?" she asked.

"No, no," he said, shaking his head. "This caused us to kick onto fault mode, but it is receiving. The control signal is acting oddly though, and is far too active."

"I noticed it," Kyle said to her quizzical stare. "I think it's a signal," he explained, as he attached two induction probes to the meter's base. His analyzer was plugged into a portable comm and after a few seconds translated words began to appear on its screen.

"—ural locations only. Further information will be sent daily at zero divs. Say again, this is Station Wye Wye Zed, transmitting to rural locations only. Further . . ."

She raced back to her room for her comm, sprinted back and queried it about Wye Wye Zed. She had to identify herself in intense detail to get the unit to admit it had heard of that designation. It was authenticated as real, but would not give more information than that.
Black Operations
, she mused. It had to be. Those cunning bastards. She smiled in admiration. Using the entertainment system control channels as binary data transmitters, while still sending the regular signals. That was just about undetectable.

"Plug mine in," she demanded and Kyle swapped leads. Immediately, her comm was able to pull out a second, encoded transmission. Everyone crowded around, heads in a gaggle, and stared intently at the screen.

Vikki shouted in triumph, as did Dak. Kyle shushed them and kept reading as they informed the others. Kendra grinned wider and wider. Those unbelievably resourceful bastards! They still had intel of some kind and were downloading the UN order of battle and movements. A table of frequencies, directions and an updated ephemeris for transmissions followed, with orders to bounce all signals off Syscom Sat 3. How her weak signal would reach that far, even through a dish antenna, or how they'd prevent the UN from retrieving those signals was beyond her. These people clearly had ways and every code checked out, including the hidden codes that were within existing documents. That and the details on UN forces that could be verified by at least some of the recipients. She wished for a means to double-check.

Was it too good to be true? She would be very cautious about logging in, but the risk was worth it to get intelligence for the fight. "Drive me out about twenty klicks and I'll report in tonight," she told Dak. "I'll need a dish antenna, too."

"We'll pull one of ours and keep it aside," he promised.

The response to her transmission was a load of troop positions and deployment schedules. However Intel or Black Ops or whoever was doing it, they clearly had good access to UN files. She decided the info was legit. If the enemy knew about her and wanted to show up and capture or kill her, they could have.

She sent a followup message the next night, transmitting back through the receiver following directions from the control station and hastily built by Kyle. She listed her force as "militia, small" without further details and was rewarded with a suggestion of targets and a promise of support weapons. She ceased wondering how it would be accomplished. These people redefined deviousness.

The targets were all forward units moving into the rural settlements to "liberate" them. She studied the list at length, ran calculations and picked one that was close by, small, and was suggested as having little combat experience. She wanted their first raid to be successful, and their second, and every raid after that. Then she chose an unorthodox target and method of attack.

"What?" was Dak's reply. "Why in the Goddess' name?"

"Trust me, Dak. I was in the UNPF, I know how they think. This will hurt them badly."

He shrugged and deferred. All they needed now was support weaponry. Kendra sent out a signal.

Said weaponry arrived the next day. A battered air truck flew in low and landed well clear of the house, letting its intentions be known. The body was ugly, but the engine sounded healthy. The pilot was a burly young farmer with full beard, dressed in timeless coveralls and natural-fabric shirt. "I'm Minstrel," he introduced himself. "We'll try to get you better stuff later, but this will have to do for now. Good hunting," he concluded, handing over the bundle, then was gone again. He never asked their names, and Kendra realized it was for security.

"Molon labe!" ("Come and get them!")

—King Leonidas of Sparta,
when asked to lay down his force's arms.

Jefferson's residents were in shock as thousands of troops in powered armor and vehicles swarmed the streets. Shock turned to outrage, then to outright disgust and fighting commenced, disorganized at first, but still effective. Well-aimed shots from heavy rifles, grenade launchers and some rockets attacked the lighter vehicles and armor-clad troops. Rocks rained down on the grounded soldiers, along with rifle and shotgun fire. City Safety, most of them veterans, threw up roadblocks of cars to channel the attackers and dug out their old service weapons to make a brief stand before scattering.