“Take cover! Fire at will!” Ardway screamed. His voice carried determination but it had an edge of fear. “Roger, get the hell inside, you damn fool!”
“But—” The advancing troops were no more than a hundred meters away. One of Ardway’s militia fired an automatic rifle from the house next door. The leather-clad troops scattered and someone shouted orders.
Fire lashed out to rake the house. Roger stood in his front yard, dazed, unbelieving, as under Franklin’s bright reddish light the nightmare went on. The troops advanced steadily again and there was no more resistance from the militia.
It all happened so quickly. Even as Roger had that thought, the leather lines of men reached him. An officer raised a megaphone.
“I CALL ON YOU TO SURRENDER IN THE NAME OF THE FREE STATES OF WASHINGTON. STAY IN YOUR HOMES AND DO NOT TRY TO RESIST. ARMED MEN WILL BE SHOT WITHOUT WARNING.”
A five-man detachment ran past Roger Hastings and through the front door of his home. It brought him from his daze. “Juanita!” He screamed and ran toward his house.
“HALT! HALT OR WE FIRE! YOU MAN, HALT!”
Roger ran on heedlessly.
“SQUAD FIRE.”
“BELAY THAT ORDER!”
As Roger reached the door he was grabbed by one of the soldiers and flung against the wall. “Hold it right there,” the trooper said grimly. “Monitor, I have a prisoner.”
Another soldier came into the broad entryway. He held a clipboard and looked up at the address of the house, checking it against his papers. “Mr. Roger Hastings?” he asked.
Roger nodded dazedly. Then he thought better of it. “No. I’m—”
“Won’t do,” the soldier said. “I’ve your picture, Mr. Mayor.” Roger nodded again. Who was this man? There had been many accents, and the officer with the clipboard had yet another. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Lieutenant Jaimie Farquhar of Falkenberg’s Mercenary Legion, acting under authority of the Free States of Washington. You’re under military detention, Mr. Mayor.”
There was more firing outside. Roger’s house hadn’t been touched. Everything looked so absolutely ordinary. Somehow that added to the horror.
A voice called from upstairs. “His wife and kids are up here, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, Monitor. Ask the lady to come down, please. Mr. Mayor, please don’t be concerned for your family. We do not make war on civilians.” There were more shots from the street.
A thousand questions boiled in Roger’s mind. He stood dazedly trying to sort them into some order. “Have you shot Colonel Ardway? Who’s fighting out there?”
“If you mean the fat man in uniform, he’s safe enough. We’ve got him in custody. Unfortunately, some of your militia have ignored the order to surrender, and it’s going to be hard on them.”
As if in emphasis there was the muffled blast of a grenade, then a burst from a machine pistol answered by the slow deliberate fire of an automatic rifle. The battle noises swept away across the brow of the hill, but sounds of firing and shouted orders carried over the pounding surf.
Farquhar studied his clipboard. “Mayor Hastings and Colonel Ardway. Yes, thank you for identifying him. I’ve orders to take you both to the command post. Monitor!”
“Sir!”
“Your maniple will remain here on guard. You will allow no one to enter this house. Be polite to Mrs. Hastings, but keep her and the children here. If there is any attempt at looting you will prevent it. This street is under the protection of the Regiment. Understood?”
“Sir!”
The slim officer nodded in satisfaction. “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Mayor, there’s a car on the greensward.” As Roger followed numbly he saw the hall clock. He had been sworn in as mayor less than eleven hours ago.
* * *
The Regimental Command Post was in the city council meeting chambers, with Falkenberg’s office in a small connecting room. The council room itself was filled with electronic gear and bustled with runners, while Major Savage and Captain Fast controlled the military conquest of Allansport. Falkenberg watched the situation develop in the maps displayed on his desk top.
“It was so fast!” Howard Bannister said. The pudgy secretary of war shook his head in disbelief. “I never thought you could do it.”
Falkenberg shrugged. “Light infantry can move, Mr. Secretary. But it cost us. We had to leave the artillery train in orbit with most of our vehicles. I can equip with captured stuff, but we’re a bit short on transport.” He watched lights flash confusedly for a second on the display before the steady march of red lights blinking to green resumed.
“But now you’re without artillery,” Bannister said. “And the Patriot army’s got none.”
“Can’t have it both ways. We had less than an hour to offload and get the Dayan boats off planet before the spy satellites came over. Now we’ve got the town and nobody knows we’ve landed. If this goes right the first the Confederates’ll know about us is when their spy snooper stops working.”
“We had some luck,” Bannister said. “Boat in harbor, communications out to the mainland—”
“Don’t confuse luck with decision factors,” Falkenberg answered. “Why would I take an isolated hole full of Loyalists if there weren’t some advantages?” Privately he knew better. The telephone exchange taken by infiltrating scouts, the power plant almost unguarded and falling to three minutes’ brief combat—it was all luck you could count on with good men, but it was luck. “Excuse me.” He touched a stud in response to a low humming note. “Yes?”
“Train coming in from the mines, John Christian,” Major Savage reported. “We have the station secured, shall we let it go past the block outside town?”
“Sure, stick with the plan, Jerry. Thanks.” The miners coming home after a week’s work on the sides of Ranier Crater were due for a surprise.
They waited until all the lights changed to green. Every objective was taken. Power plants, communications, homes of leading citizens, public buildings, railway station and airport, police station . . . Allansport and its eleven thousand citizens were under control. A timer display ticked off the minutes until the spy satellite would be overhead.
Falkenberg spoke to the intercom. “Sergeant Major, we have twenty-nine minutes to get this place looking normal for this time of night. See to it.”
“Sir!” Calvin’s unemotional voice was reassuring.
“I don’t think the Confederates spend much time examining pictures of the boondocks anyway,” Falkenberg told Bannister. “But it’s best not to take any chances.” Motors roared as ground cars and choppers were put under cover. Another helicopter flew overhead looking for telltales.
“As soon as that thing’s past get the troops on the packet ship,” Falkenberg ordered. “And send in Captain Svoboda, Mayor Hastings, and the local militia colonel—Ardway, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Calvin answered. “Colonel Martine Ardway. I’ll see if he’s up to it, Colonel.”
“Up to it, Sergeant Major? Was he hurt?”
“He had a pistol. Colonel. Twelve millimeter thing, big slug, slow bullet, couldn’t penetrate armor but he bruised hell out of two troopers. Monitor Badnikov laid him out with a rifle butt. Surgeon says he’ll be all right.”
“Good enough. If he’s able to come I want him here.”
“Sir.”
Falkenberg turned back to the desk and used the computer to produce a planetary map. “Where would the supply ship go from here, Mr. Bannister?”
The secretary traced a course. “It would—and will—stay inside this island chain. Nobody but a suicide takes ships into open water on this planet. With no land to interrupt them the seas go sixty meters in storms.” He indicated a route from Allansport to Cape Titan, then through an island chain in the Sea of Mariners. “Most ships stop at Preston Bay to deliver metalshop goods for the ranches up on Ford Heights Plateau. The whole area’s Patriot territory and you could liberate it with one stroke.”
Falkenberg studied the map, then said, “No. So most ships stop there—do some go directly to Astoria?” He pointed to a city eighteen hundred kilometers east of Preston Bay.
“Yes, sometimes—but the Confederates keep a big garrison in Astoria, Colonel. Much larger than the one in Preston Bay. Why go twenty-five hundred kilometers to fight a larger enemy force when there’s good Patriot country at half the distance?”
“For the same reason the Confederates don’t put much strength at Preston Bay. It’s isolated. The Ford Heights ranches are scattered—look, Mr. Secretary, if we take Astoria we have the key to the whole Columbia River Valley. The Confederates won’t know if we’re going north to Doak’s Ferry, east to Grand Forks and on into the capital plains, or west to Ford Heights. If I take Preston Bay first they’ll know what I intend because there’s only one thing a sane man could do from there.”
“But the Columbia Valley people aren’t reliable! You won’t get good recruits—”
They were interrupted by a knock. Sergeant Major Calvin ushered in Roger Hastings and Martine Ardway. The militiaman had a lump over his left eye, and his cheek was bandaged.