Chapter Eighteen

Abnegation is the spirit of the legionnaire.

—Lt. Colonel Paul Rollet,
French Foreign Legion, 1917

Karatsolis started forward, his FEK trained on DuValier. The lieutenant would be the more dangerous of the two prisoners, with his Legion training. Now that Barnett’s thugs were disarmed, the civilians wouldn’t be much of a problem.…

“Look out!” Kelly screamed from the balcony. “He’s got a gun!”

He caught Barnett’s movement out of the corner of his eye and whirled, feeling that everything, himself included, was moving in slow motion. The tiny pistol was coming up in line with Fraser’s back.…

Karatsolis fired almost by instinct even as someone—was that Trent?—shouted “Don’t kill him!” The FEK was set for a three-round burst, but even the short whine of the gauss fields seemed to stretch on forever.

The civilian spun away from the blast, dropping the pistol and clutching at his arm. The high-velocity rounds had torn through flesh, probably shattered the bone, and blood was spurting from the wound. Barnett stared at the arm for a long moment, then collapsed.

“Medic! Medic!” someone shouted. A legionnaire was beside the injured man already, applying emergency first aid. A moment later Legionnaire Delandry pushed through the crowd and joined him.

“Someone get the Doc,” Delandry snapped, producing her medkit. “Hurry!”

Karatsolis lowered the FEK. He realized that one of his men already had DuValier covered. Everything had happened so fast that it had hardly registered on him.

Then Fraser was beside him. “Good shooting, Spear,” the captain said. “Thanks. If it hadn’t been for you …”

He nodded automatically. “Yes, sir. I’ll … take charge of the lieutenant for you.”

Slinging his FEK, Karatsolis joined the soldiers flanking DuValier. After the tense confrontation with the mutineers, the sudden action had drained him completely.

It took all his willpower to keep from stumbling as he led the detail toward the Legion’s cellblock.

O O O

“Skipper? I think you’d better see this.”

Fraser looked up from his desk at Trent. “What is it, Gunny?” he asked. It was hard even yet to keep his voice level, although more than an hour had passed since the abortive mutiny.

Trent laid a small weapon and another unidentifiable object in front of him. “The pistol’s the one our friend Barnett tried to use on you,” the sergeant told him. “Narmonov picked it up while they were policing all the other weapons.”

Picking up the small pistol, Fraser turned it over in his hands. It had a familiar look to it.…

“Good God!” he said suddenly, as he recognized the workmanship. “This is the same technology as the nomad rocket guns!”

“Right down the line,” Trent agreed. “Koenig looked it over and said the same. Barnett got this from the nomads … or from whoever’s been supplying them.”

Fraser leaned back in his chair, still looking at the pistol. “This isn’t an infantry weapon,” he said. “It was designed for concealability.” He remembered the questions that had crossed his mind during the first meeting in the conference room. “You think Barnett was a spy?”

The sergeant nodded. “I had his quarters and office searched,” he said. Trent prodded the other device. “Pascali turned this thing up. Transmitter.”

“Pretty lightweight job,” Fraser commented. “Not much range.…”

“More than you’d think. Koenig says it’s a Toel job, and they’ve got some pretty sophisticated electronics.”

“And a technology designed for underwater use, like these guns!” Fraser finished the thought, angry that he hadn’t made the connection sooner. “Not to mention a lot of experience dealing with the natives here, to know the best weapons designs to manufacture!”

“That’s the way we figure it,” Trent said. “The Toels have the biggest stake in all this. If Seafarms fails on Polypheme, the Toels might just pry it loose from the Commonwealth and set up their old operation all over again.”

“Pry it loose? Hell, Gunny, if Seafarms backed off of this dump, the politicians would be glad to unload it on the Toels. Especially with a massacred garrison and a lot of nasty hostiles complicating things. The Elders in Ourgh would disown Terra if we were wiped out, and anybody trying to come back here later would have to start from scratch. It all fits.”

“Gives us something to go on, at least,” Trent said. “I wonder how much Barnett knows about the whole operation.…”

“Maybe we can find out,” Fraser said. “Have you checked with Ramirez lately on his condition?”

“He’ll be all right,” the sergeant said with a look of distaste. “A week or so in regen and he’ll be ready for a hot shot.”

“Good. Tell Garcia to turn over her duties to the other C3s. I’ve got some special work for her. We’ll get some answers out of Barnett. You can count on it.”

“You figure DuValier was in on the whole thing?”

“I don’t think so, Gunny,” Fraser said slowly. “He had a personal grudge against me, but I think he really thought he was doing the right thing. There were too many ways DuValier could have sabotaged us. He didn’t.… Not until Barnett conned him with this negotiation nonsense.”

“I guess you’re right. Looks like Barnett was just doing his best to keep Seafarms off-balance while the bad guys did their thing.”

“Yeah,” Fraser said. He laughed as a thought struck him. “God, he worked so hard to keep us from bringing the civilians in here. He must have had it figured that his friends would stay clear of Ourgh and concentrate on us! No wonder he didn’t like the idea of a move!”

Trent nodded gravely. “And when his boss overruled him …”

“She died, and he started screwing around, keeping his people from cooperating with us. He’s probably been passing intel to them ever since he moved in. But I’ll bet the surrender bit was his own idea, to get the hell out of here before the nomads hit us.”

“If they know our timetable …”

“Then they know we’ll have the magrep generators up about the same time Cyclops gets back, fifty hours at the outside!” Fraser pounded the desk with a clenched fist. “They’ll attack before then, damn it! We’ll have to step up everything.”

“With Barnett gone, the Seafarms bunch’ll cooperate a little better,” Trent said. “I’ll get their tech people out on the perimeter to help with the generators.”

“Good. And while you’re at it, find out how many have had some kind of military training and start issuing weapons. And let’s have every legionnaire ready. We’ll need all the troops we can get.”

Trent raised an eyebrow and stroked nervously at the corner of his mustache. “Is that a good idea? We’ve already had one mutiny.…”

“Gunny, the next time Choor! hits us it’s going to be with every nomad in his whole army. If the perimeter isn’t secure by then, there’s no way we can hold them off without some more troops. No way at all. We have to trust those people. Either that, or surrender now and let Choor! and his Toel friends win without a fight.”

“God help us all,” the sergeant said. He headed for the door.

Fraser looked at Barnett’s pistol and radio on the desk. “Amen to that,” he said softly.

O O O

Sparks crackled, and acrid smoke coiled from the makeshift power hookup on the magrep generator. Kelly shouted “Cut it off!” into her throat mike. She started to curse as she knelt by the housing to recheck the leads, then realized the mike was picking that up as well.

As the power cut off, she thought she could hear someone chuckling over the commlink. Kelly ignored it and reconnected the lines. Not for the first time—or the last, she suspected—she found herself wishing that the assortment of magnetic-field generators they were using wasn’t quite so assorted. The equipment represented at least twenty different makes and models, some of them fifty years old or more. Some of the Legion vehicles had mounted four different units in the same chassis, many of them obsolete by any sane standards.

Kelly was beginning to believe that the mechanics who kept Legion APCs running were either geniuses or madmen, but she wasn’t yet prepared to choose which.

This was a Stellectric Products Mark XVIII, probably off of the FSV Bashar and Karatsolis were so proud of. She’d hooked it up as if it were a Mark XXX, like the last one. No wonder it hadn’t been working right!

“Try it again,” she said aloud. Power hummed, and the improvised check light came on to indicate that the generator was up and running.

That made exactly half of the generators in place and running now. Fraser wouldn’t be happy at the slow pace of the work. Ever since he’d begun to suspect that Barnett had been feeding information to the enemy, Fraser had been determined that the defenses had to be finished as soon as possible—preferably about a week ago. But it was a time-consuming job to install and hook up the magrep modules. At least they were ahead of the schedule Kelly had expected to manage.

As she gathered up her tools and moved down the line to the next unit, Kelly hoped again that they’d be fast enough.

A pair of civilian technicians was working on this one already, but Kelly wasn’t planning on taking their work on faith. The mutiny was still too fresh in her mind to let her trust anyone from Seafarms, even though Fraser seemed prepared to do so.

She’d protested when he had briefed her on the situation. “You can’t just ignore it, Col,” she had said. “Letting everyone go back to work except Barnett and DuValier … You’re asking for more trouble with them, you know.”

“I can’t lock up eight hundred civilians just because they might sympathize with Barnett,” he’d replied wearily. “Or all the legionnaires who might’ve known and trusted DuValier more than me.”

“I’m not saying you should, Col,” she had shot back, angry. “But the ones who were with those two bastards in the mutiny …”

“Not even them,” he’d said, looking away. “Those kids from Wijngaarde’s platoon were just following DuValier’s orders. I expect that’s true of the Seafarms people as well. Once I can question Barnett I’ll know for sure, but until then my main job is to get these boys and girls together. It’s got to be a team effort from here on out, Kelly. Because if Seafarms really did decide to take us out and surrender, there’s no way we’d stop them. We’ve less than two hundred legionnaires in this base now. That’s the real tip-off that Barnett was improvising all this. If he’d been in a position to expect all of his people to support an uprising, he could have taken over easily, with or without DuValier.”

“Yeah … maybe. But—”

“No more arguments, Kelly. Please. Just get those generators up. And pray.”

He’d looked so tired, so dispirited … less confident than she’d ever seen him before, even in those rocky first days of the march on Hanuman.

That had been almost eighteen hours ago. Susan Gage and the two gunnery sergeants had been taking charge of the preparations in the fortress since that time, while Fraser, Hawley, and Angela Garcia concentrated on another project in the medical section, working with Dr. Ramirez on something no one was talking about.

Whatever it was, she hoped it would work.

O O O

“It’s as ready as it’s ever going to be, sir.”

At Garcia’s words Fraser looked up from the computer terminal. “Any problems?” he asked.

“You mean aside from the fact that I’ve never worked on a setup like this before, don’t have all the right gear, and don’t really believe in it anyway?” Garcia shrugged and grinned. “Not a one.”

He wished he felt like joking about it. Garcia had summed up all the problems with his scheme in a nutshell, but it was their only hope of getting the information they needed.

Fraser looked past her at the two examining tables that had been set up side-by-side in the extra operating theater of the Sandcastle’s medical center. The setup looked primitive compared to what he’d seen in service with regular Intelligence units, but it was the best they could improvise under the circumstances.

Most military personnel and Intel operatives were routinely conditioned against chemical methods of persuasion; that was standard procedure. In light of the dangers of modern corporate espionage, a lot of senior executives got similar workovers. Odds were that Barnett wouldn’t be broken that way. If Seafarms hadn’t seen to it, the Toels—if they were indeed his employers—would surely have done so.

Physical and psychological interrogation techniques would have worked eventually, but they took a long time, and time was something the Terrans didn’t have right now.

That left Fraser’s idea, unlikely as it was. They’d have to improvise the direct mind-to-mind questioning process that was SOP in Army Intelligence. Both theoretical and practical information were easy to come by in the files of the demi-battalion’s master computer, but translating them into working interrogation equipment had taken hours of labor and all of Garcia’s ingenuity. And there was still no guarantee they could make it work.

Looking through the glassed-in wall at the triage room where Ramirez was finishing a medical examination of Captain David Hawley, Fraser couldn’t help but be pessimistic. Everything, literally, rode on the old man’s slender shoulders this time.

At first he’d hoped that they could come up with a usable substitute for the computer implant usually used for this sort of interrogation. Externally worn adhesive chips—adchips—could do many of the same things as computer implants, and certainly the subject in one of these questioning sessions didn’t need an implant. But as he’d studied the computer files, Fraser had realized that this was one place where shortcuts weren’t going to work.

The interrogator and the computer had to work together on an almost instinctive level when interrogating a subject. Fraser might have been able to do it if they’d rigged up an adchip and given him several months to practice with the computer, but once again there just wasn’t time. Only someone who had long experience with brain-computer interfacing could handle the nuances of mind-to-mind interrogation.

That meant there was only one candidate for the job in the Sandcastle, Captain David Hawley.

But it took a strong mind to handle the pressures of literally ripping information out of another man’s memories—strong, and agile as well. Could Hawley break Edward Barnett? Or had he been retreating from reality, avoiding responsibility, for too long to be able to get the job done?

He cut the terminal, rose, and crossed to the door. Sticking his head into the triage room, he asked, “What’s the verdict, Doctor?”

Ramirez glanced down at his compboard. “Physically, I see no problems,” he said slowly. “Captain Hawley is in good condition. But this is certainly … unfamiliar work. Lacking formal training or experience in interrogation proceedings, I would say ten-minute sessions, at least until we see how the captain will hold up under the strain.”

Hawley finished putting on his uniform blouse and favored Ramirez with an angry look. “Don’t talk around the problem, Ramirez,” he said harshly. “You don’t think the old man can cut it, do you? Afraid I’ll end up letting Barnett dominate me, instead of the other way around. Right?”

Before Ramirez could answer, Fraser intervened. “Sir, you know better than I do how much damage you can do to your mind through misuse of an implant. It takes a strong will to maintain control during an interrogation. And the doctor is right to be concerned. None of us want to see you burn out your mind fighting Barnett.”

Hawley looked like he was about to flare, then nodded and sat down on the examining table. “And you’re right to be concerned that I’m not up to it,” he admitted. “My record’s not exactly something to inspire confidence, is it?”

“Sir, your record’s got nothing—”

“Don’t interrupt me, Captain!” he barked. Then he smiled. “I was trained to command, son. Once. And I think I can safely say that I have more experience with this implant than most regular interrogators. If I can find my way back to reality from Dreamland as often as I do, surely I can do it this time.” He paused, still smiling. “Anyway, if you’re looking for a man with a strong will, what else would you call an officer who won’t give it up even after twenty years of being told that a quiet resignation would be the best thing for everyone, hmm?”

Fraser forced a smile in return. “I’d call him stubborn, sir. Or perhaps ‘pigheaded’ would be a better term.”

“There you have it. I’ll have this bastard Barnett for lunch. I’ve been wanting a crack at him ever since the first time I heard a snide remark about how I wasn’t fit to be a security guard at the Seafarms warehouse, much less the CO of the garrison. I was getting comments like that even before you got here, Fraser, and I’m getting damned sick of them!”

“You’ll have your chance, sir,” Fraser said. He nodded to Garcia. “Have an escort fetch Citizen Barnett from his cell. It’s time he started helping us as much as he’s helped the wogs.”

O O O

Karatsolis leaned against the rampart, staring down at the restless waters of high tide. There was no more work for him in the repbay, now that all the magrep units had been dismounted. He had another twenty minutes of free time left before he was due to relieve Sergeant Franz, who was now operating the unit’s second veeter on the south wall.

He couldn’t get his mind off the mutiny. When Bashar had first called him, he had still been dwelling on O’Donnell and Sandoval, on the whole question of his place in the Legion. And he’d been no nearer to resolving it.

Then the mad rush, warning Kelly and Trent, then organizing the Transport Section at Trent’s orders to help close the trap on the mutineers. Even Franz had taken his orders. Trent had made it clear that he wanted none but Hanuman veterans in charge of the operation, and to Topheth with rank.

When Fraser had started talking, his first reaction had been one of frustration. Why try to reason with the bastards?

But what he’d said about every man playing a part had hit home. And Barnett’s assassination attempt.…

He’d saved Fraser’s life. Twice, maybe, since he’d helped organize the resistance to the mutiny. And if they held off the wogs and got off of Polypheme, it would be because Colin Fraser was alive to do it. Karatsolis had no doubt of that. None of the other officers inside the Sandcastle had Fraser’s flair for tactics, or the ability to inspire the legionnaires the way he could.

One man like Fraser could really make a difference. And so, it seemed, could Karatsolis, when he guarded Fraser’s back or did his part in combat.

A siren pulled him forcefully out of his reverie. “Attention! Attention!” the PA blared. It sounded like Gunny Trent himself making the announcement. “Sonar has detected large groups of targets approaching the base! All personnel to defense posts!”

Karatsolis ran for the nearest stairway. For the first time in days, he was eager to come to grips with the enemy.

To do his part.