Dirigibles full of Gendarmes and the supplies needed for an open-air prison had begun arriving within a few hours of the collapse of Volunteer resistance. Huber, and Captain Sangrela, and probably every other trooper in the task force, had thought Sierra would be released immediately. The optimists had even hoped they’d be sent back by way of Midway, with a few days of leave as a reward.
Surviving a major engagement like the one just completed made even level-headed troopers optimistic.
Central hadn’t felt that way. Sierra had stayed where it was for the three days it took for a column from Base Alpha to reach them.
“It won’t be long, Frenchie,” Huber said. He quirked a smile. “It shouldn’t be long, anyhow.”
There were worse places, just as Learoyd said, but this was bad enough in all truth. The Slammers had snagged tents from the loads brought in to house the prisoners, but they didn’t help much. You could keep the rain from falling on you, but the ditches the troopers dug around the tents hadn’t been enough to stop streams of ash-clogged water from finding their way in from below and soaking everything.
Huber looked over at the POW camp which lay between Task Force Sangrela’s defensive circle and the slopes of what had for a short time been Fort Freedom; it was now Mount Bulstrode again. The prisoners had it worse than the troopers did, of course. There wouldn’t have been enough tents to go around even if the Slammers hadn’t imposed their tax on defeat, but accommodations weren’t what was probably worrying the former Volunteers. The Slammers knew they’d be leaving within a few days, maybe even a few hours. The prisoners weren’t sure they’d be alive in a few hours.
“Sierra,” said Huber’s commo helmet in the voice of the signals officer of the approaching column, “this is Flamingo Six-three. We’ll be in sight in figures two, I say again, two, minutes. Don’t get anxious. Flamingo out.”
“Stupid bitch,” Deseau muttered. “The only thing I’m anxious about is getting away from this bloody place. And if they’d got the lead outa their pants, that could’ve happened yesterday.”
Huber’s opinion was similar enough that he didn’t bother telling Frenchie to cool it. You never get relieved as quickly as you want to be. . . .
He wondered if Sierra would be allowed to pick its own route back through the unburned forest, or if in the interests of speed they’d have to return across the fire-swept wasteland. The downpour would’ve quenched the hotspots, but the filthy sludge the vehicles’d be kicking up in its place wouldn’t be much of an improvement.
Huber chuckled. Deseau gave him a sour look.
“Don’t mind me, Frenchie,” he said. “I’m just thinking that I went into the wrong line of work if I wanted luxury travel arrangements.”
“Guess they had to keep us,” Learoyd said, nodding toward the waste of mud and tents and captured Volunteers. “I mean, if them guys tried to break out, what was the cops gonna do about it?”
Learoyd was right, as he usually was when he offered an opinion. Squads of Gendarmes patrolled the perimeter of the vast razor-ribbon cage. Six or eight strands of wire were strung on flimsy poles only two meters out of the ground; all things considered, it wasn’t much of a barrier. The Point didn’t have the resources to deal with the sudden influx of over five thousand prisoners.
The Gendarmes had carbines and pistols. If they’d hoped to supplement those with automatic weapons captured from the Volunteers, they were out of luck. Every crew-served weapon in Fort Freedom had been brought out to face the Slammers, and none of them had survived. For the most part, the sharp-shooting tanks had destroyed the emplacements before the Slammers were in range of the defenders’ return fire.
If the prisoners, many of whom were rightly desperate, made a concerted rush on the fence, a few hundred Gendarmes weren’t going to stop them. The Slammers’ massed fire would, and the certainty the powerguns would hose the camp indiscriminately meant that prisoners who didn’t want to try a breakout were going to be bloody determined to keep their wilder fellows in line also.