Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Thirty-Five

Fort Galloway looked surprisingly different from how I remembered it, although that shouldn’t have been a surprise. The basic layout was still the same, but Ed had taken everything that had come in via the daily convoys — which were shot at regularly and sometimes had to shoot their way out of traps — and used it to build up a far more formidable base. The trees and grass had been cut down, providing clear fields of fire for the soldiers in the bunkers, and some of the damaged buildings had been rebuilt. Given time, I was sure, Fort Galloway would be more than any UN-standard fort had ever been before. It was amazing what a single competent officer could do.

I smiled to myself as the helicopter came in to land. The UN’s senior officers had regarded competence as a threat to them personally and a competent officer, far from being rewarded, was likely to be exiled to some garrison in the middle of nowhere — like Botany — or be sent out on various suicide missions. I thought differently and had given Ed his head, knowing that if the fort were to be attacked, he’d be the one in the front line. He’d taken everything I’d given him and worked it into defences that would be formidable, if the farmers ever chose to do more than sniping from a distance, and costly to any attacker.

But at the same time, in a way, they were also useless. Back in the days of the UN, the UN had controlled the low orbitals and could call down fire on any enemy base, forcing them to resort to insurgency right from the start. Fort Galloway was only useful in a low-intensity war; in a high-intensity war, with the enemy controlling the low orbitals, it would be wiped off the face of the planet without ever being able to strike back at the enemy. Svergie didn’t have any defences that could be used against any enemy starship; if Fleet were to fall apart, as the Freedom League wanted, the result would be absolute chaos. If I had had any doubts about my role, meeting the Freedom League representative had cured them; whatever she wanted, it wasn’t good for Svergie.

The helicopter touched ground and the hatches opened, allowing a trio of medics to climb inside and help Muna and I out onto the ground. I shrugged off the helping hand and staggered out myself, refusing to show weakness in front of the troops, and accepted the salutes from the handful gathered by the helicopter pad. I returned the salutes as best as I could and allowed one of the medics to lead me to the sickbay, where I gratefully collapsed on a bed. It felt so soft and warm that I almost fell asleep right there and then.

“Never mind me at the moment,” I said, as the medics gathered around me. “See to Muna.”

“We’ve got people seeing to her now, sir,” the lead medic said. I hated it when they used their oh-so-reasonable tone on me. “We can treat you at the same time.”

I’d prefer to draw a veil over the next hour, as it involved a lot of poking and prodding, blood-sampling and other tests that weren’t generally found outside of a military or intelligence hospital unit. They sent for a dentist, who examined my jaw and muttered a lot, before freezing it and doing some basic repair work. I’d never liked going to the dentist either, when I was a kid; the UN’s policy that everyone should have access to free healthcare had lowered standards so much that you were taking your life in your hands every time you went. Their accidental death rates were shockingly high, but what was more shocking was that I had accepted them as normal until I saw some of the Colonies. Their Doctors were far better trained.

“It shouldn’t take too long for everything to set,” the dentist assured me, finally. “They jarred a few teeth pretty badly, but they didn’t actually start pulling them out for torture, not yet anyway.”

“Thanks,” I slurred. I hate having my mouth frozen. It makes talking very tricky, somehow. I barely knew what I was saying. “I’ll be sure to recommend you to them when we capture them.”

“I can’t torture them for you,” the dentist said, quickly. I couldn’t really blame him for that. He probably thought I wanted revenge. “I won’t heal them so you can keep hurting them either.”

“Good for you,” I said, coldly. “Now go away and let me sleep.”

I blanked out for the next few hours and recovered, finally, to discover that I’d slept through an entire day. I still felt weak and exhausted, but at least I didn’t feel as if I were going to throw up everything I swallowed within seconds. I called for one of the nurses — the Legion’s nurses are all female, because it’s good for morale — and ordered her to bring me something solid to eat, even a UN-issue MRE. She brought me a bowl of Carrot Soup and informed me that the doctors would want to speak to me before I ate anything solid. My protests didn’t convince her to bring me anything else, but water and some dry biscuits.

“Ah, Captain-General,” the Doctor said, coming in before I could say anything unfortunate. Doctor Awad was a vaguely Arabic-looking man, a political refugee from New Damascus, who had joined the Legion because it gave him a proper home. I don’t know why he’d left his homeworld in the first place, but I could guess; after the end of the UN’s occupation, the planet had plunged right into a bitter civil war over religion, of all things. “You’ll be pleased to know that you’ll be back to normal before too long.”

I glowered at him, silently promising everything from a year’s KP to an actual flogging, but he refused to speak any faster. “They injected you with a fairly standard truth drug from the UN’s Security Directorate,” he continued. “There’s little room for doubt, sir; we picked up enough traces from your bloodstream to confirm just what they hit you with. It reacted badly with the immunisations you took last year and your body violently rejected it; luckily, you coped better than many others with the effects. It was quite possible that you would have died from the reaction, had you been weaker or if they had tried to give you additional doses.

“Overall, we injected you with cleansing drugs ourselves and that should flush the remainder of the truth drug out of your system,” he continued. I already knew most of what he’d just told me. “If you drink loads of fluids — not alcohol; water or milk — it should speed up the process considerably. You should also recover most of your strength over the next two days, although we’re still concerned about possible damage to your liver or kidneys or both. The UN created the immunisation drugs with mixed motives and the results… well, let’s just say that you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, in hopes of cutting off the endless stream of words. “And the rest of me?”

“The dentist assures me that your jaw will be fully healed soon enough,” the Doctor said. “Naturally, I checked the bone structure myself and confirmed that there was only minor damage, all of which was handled while you were dead to the world. You’re also suffering from dehydration and a handful of other problems, but overall you survived the experience remarkably well. Given a few days rest, sir, you should be completely back to normal.”

I nodded, tiredly. “We’ll want to check you out again at the spaceport,” the Doctor concluded, “but I think we can give you a clean bill of health, once you flush the remainder of the truth drug out of your system.”

“Thanks,” I said, waving for the nurse to bring me water to drink. “And Muna?”

The Doctor frowned. I recognised his concern. He wasn’t used to the idea of discussing a patient’s condition with anyone, but their relatives, even though I was her commanding officer. As far as anyone knew, Muna had no relatives left, just like me. They’d probably died somewhere back on Old Earth during the early stages of the civil war.

“She wasn’t injected with anything, thankfully, which will make her recovery easier,” the Doctor confirmed, finally. “She was slapped twice as well, but otherwise they generally left her alone, so all she’s really suffering from is dehydration and slight injuries on her wrists from the handcuffs. I’d prefer to keep her in for observation, but overall… she’s capable of going back to work now, although I would not advise it.”

“No,” I agreed. “Tell her, from me, that she can take a week’s extra leave if she wants.” I met his eyes. “And ask Captain Stalker to report to me at once.”

“After you’ve had some sleep,” the Doctor said firmly, reaching for a injector patch. “You’re in no fit state to issue any orders at the moment.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he slapped the patch on me before I could react and I was out of the world. I don’t like sleeping under the influence of drugs, but I did have to admit that it meant no bad dreams. I awoke, what seemed like hours later, to discover that the Doctor had hooked me up to a set of blood-cleansing machines and was using them to scour my blood of any last traces of the drug, but I was out again before I could muster the words to protest. I knew it was all for my own good, but I needed to talk to Ed, or someone else who knew what was actually going on. I had to warn them about the Freedom League…

When I awoke, hours later, I was free of the machines and felt a hell of a lot better, so I managed to pull myself out of the bed and stand up before one of the nurses came over and helped me dress. At my command, she brought me some food — a real steak dinner, not hospital food — and watched over me while I devoured everything, even the fat. I was that hungry. I was used to eating all kinds of things on the UN’s service, even UN-issue MRE packs, but I had never liked eating fat. When I had finished, the nurse allowed me to leave the ward and find somewhere more appropriate to sleep. I wasn’t too worried about sleeping; I wanted to talk to Ed.

The noise of helicopter blades outside shocked me, at first, until I realised that I was still sensitive to any kind of noise. My head hurt as the noise grew louder, but I made my way to the command centre, wondering absently what I was doing in the midst of the army. I didn’t feel like a commanding officer, but a kid who’d somehow stumbled into the middle of a military operation and was now hopelessly confused. I’d forgotten my ID Card as well — it took my nearly two minutes to remember that the Freedom League bitch probably had it — and had to bully my way past the two guards on the command post. Ed, luckily, was in his office and it was easy to get inside.

“Sir,” he said, when he saw me. “Are you sure you should be out of bed?”

I had my own doubts about that, but I was past caring. “Yes,” I said, as the door closed behind me, cutting off much of the noise. It was such a relief that I almost collapsed. “You need to listen to this.”

“Take a seat, at least,” Ed insisted, standing up and offering me one of the chairs. I sat down gratefully. “You should definitely be in bed, sir, with all due respect…”

“I don’t get no respect,” I said, wryly. It seemed the funniest thing I’d heard or said for years. “Ed, they were right; the Freedom League is definitely here.”

I detailed everything that had happened since I’d been kidnapped, sparing nothing, even the attempt to drug me into spilling my guts. We’d suspected that the Freedom League was involved — well, Fleet had suspected that the Freedom League was involved — but we hadn’t had any proof, until now. I even told him about Suki and how I hoped she’d realised just what the Freedom League actually stood for… and my quiet suspicion that the terrorists had killed her after we’d been rescued. I was surprised at the pang it caused me; Suki had betrayed me and led us into a trap, but she’d thought she was doing the right thing. Terrorist groups are good at convincing people that they’re doing the right thing.

“We suspected as much after you dropped off the grid suddenly,” Ed confirmed. “Robert put out an alert for her just after we confirmed that you’d vanished from the city and… sir, the rioting faded away just after you disappeared.”

I blinked. “All of it?”

“Not all, but the main core just faded away into the side streets and escaped,” Ed confirmed. “A handful of real rioters — the people attracted by the chaos — kept going until Robert’s men dropped the hammer on them, knocked most of them out with stunners and dragged them off to detention camps. I think they’re going to be going out to help with the new farms before too long. The people who actually started the riot… they’re gone. We didn’t find them.”

I rubbed the side of my head, wishing that the pain would fade. It might all make sense in daylight, but I felt that everything was just too confused. If Suki had been working for the farmers all along, who had triggered off the riot? I hadn’t thought that the farmers had that much influence in the city; hell, the reason for the riot had been distinctly Progressive Party-style. They couldn’t be cooperating, could they? The Freedom League might urge them to cooperate, but somehow I had problems seeing them working together so well. I was definitely missing part of the puzzle.

“I understand,” I said, finally. “And the war?”

Ed frowned, stretching the side of his nose. “It seems to be taking a break,” he said, puzzled. “Since we rescued you, two days ago, there haven’t been any contacts with the enemy, apart from a handful of shots being exchanged between a patrol and a handful of enemy fighters, who broke contact soon afterwards. There have been no major attacks, here or anywhere else; hell, a handful of government agents were left completely unmolested.”

“Odd,” I said. It would be nice to believe that Suki’s family had turned on the Freedom League, but I couldn’t allow myself to become optimistic. My headache wouldn’t allow it. “Are you confident that you can hold this place?”

“Unless they bring up some additional firepower, we can hold out indefinitely,” Ed confirmed. I smiled at the confidence in his voice. “We have enough supplies to last us for weeks of what we’ve been doing through, even if we had to pull in the patrols and hunker down. The real threat is them bringing up other surprises…”

“I know,” I said, ruefully. We knew that a lot of firepower had fallen into the hands of the miners, but we hadn’t seen any of it, so far. It might be useless to them, or they might be saving it for something pretty devastating. “I’ll have to go back to the spaceport in a day or so, on the next supply flight. Keep me updated on what’s happening here and keep watching for enemy activity. This could be the calm before the storm.”

I knew I was repeating myself — and Ed knew the standing orders in any case — but my head just kept pounding. “Of course,” Ed said. He tilted his head slightly. “And I would really recommend that you got some more sleep, sir. You’re dropping off on your feet.”

The sense of betrayal flickered through me again, but I knew that Ed meant well. “I’ll get back to the ward,” I promised, firmly. It would be an easy promise to keep. Lights were starting to flicker painfully at the back of my head. “You just organise the flight tomorrow morning.”

“I’d better summon Peter to help you get back to bed,” Ed said, firmly. He keyed his earpiece and issued orders before I could object. A moment later, Peter came in through the door and stood to attention. “Please help the Captain-General back to bed and keep him there until tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said, sternly. I read his thoughts in his expression and knew that he had been worried about me since I vanished. Somehow, I doubted that I’d be leaving anywhere unescorted for a long time. Just now, I could see their point. I’d been in a position where I could be drained of everything I knew about Fleet’s covert involvement and only dumb luck had saved me. “Come on, sir; we’ll get you back to bed.”

Sergeants have been helping officers since time out of mind; often, they’d helped young officers learn how to command and when to stand back and let the subordinates get on with it. Peter helped me back to the ward and assisted the nurse in getting me back to bed, before taking a chair and sitting down firmly at the end of the bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.