Knox's Irregulars Read online

  "You can tell Tobias yourself when you see him."

  The blistered lips twitched in a ghastly smile. "Not gonna happen. Now go on, I'm feeling tired again."

  Randal embraced him as tightly as he dared. "I'll see you again, Jack. This world or the next."

  ***

  Randal fixed his eyes on the candle he held. It kept him from seeing the shroud-covered bodies moldering around him in the chamber. Bodies his orders had put there. He dimly heard the young seminarian they had called as their Chaplain as he spoke the liturgy of burial.

  Instead he remembered Van Loon back in Basic Indoc. Though only a few years older than the rest of them, he'd had a wife and a child and seemed ages more mature. He was the one who usually kept them out of trouble when they left the base on pass and the one to talk them out of trouble the rest of the time. He had a quiet dignity that even military police respected.

  As the Chaplain came to the end of the liturgy, Randal and Lebedev placed the body on a rocky shelf.

  "Unto God Almighty we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to these depths of the earth; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

  "Amen."

  The Chaplain extinguished his candle. The mourners did the same, plunging the room into utter darkness. For a time all was still and black.

  Then a candle was relit, and in turn lighted another and another until the room was illuminated again. "Let these candles serve to remind us of the hope we have of the life to come and the covenantal unity which binds us together in this life."

  "Amen."

  As he filed out with the others, Randal felt a small hand take his own, squeezing it. "You'll see him again."

  "I know, Ariane. I know."

  CHAPTER 12

  We all agree that your theory is crazy,

  but is it crazy enough?

  —Niels Bohr

  When asked what forces drove an economy, a venerable Terran thinker once replied: "Animal spirits."

  That phrase played in Randal's mind often in the weeks following Van Loon's death. The resistance movement took on a life of its own, growing from a handful of cells to dozens. The early days of harrying Abkhenazi sentries with snipers seemed a lifetime ago. With each operation the Irregulars grew bolder and more proficient. Men who were accountants and mining engineers just months before now commanded platoons.

  The focus of the missions was also changing. Rather than merely trying to wear down the enemy by plucking a soldier here or there, strategic points were targeted for destruction: communications centers, modes of transport, unit commanders and so on.

  It was heady to see his vision taking shape, but at the same time the pace of events always looked just this side of disastrous. Van Loon would tell him to trust God and trust his people. That was easier said than done.

  Case in point, he thought bemusedly, spotting Lebedev and a sinewy Asian man crossing the floor of the main chamber. "So Sergei," he called, setting aside the propaganda leaflet he was reviewing. "How did it go at the MagLev control station?"

  The Belarusian blew loudly into a handkerchief, tucking it inside his cowl-hooded pullover. "Builo prekrasno, Captain Knox, you should have seen explosion! Everywhere train cars and people flying. Was it not, Lieutenant Shin?"

  Shin grinned a wide, feral sort of smile, nodding. As always, Randal found the expression disconcerting. The man had filed his teeth down to points.

  In the autumn, Shin had been a prosperous and unassuming actuary with a wife and children, from what Randal heard from Jeni. Now, at mid-winter, he was the leader of the Headhunters. They were all-Korean and prided themselves on assassination. Extremely insular, they set themselves apart with the facial and body tattoos used to initiate recruits. A unit takes on much of its commander's attributes and that was obvious with Shin. He was aggressive and proud; even in conversation he was imperialistic, constantly inching closer into the space of whomever he was talking to. Randal half expected Shin to promote himself from lieutenant to warlord.

  When Lebedev requested Shin for the attack on the MagLev lines, Randal had been skeptical. Lebedev was an odd bird in his own right; the idea of setting him loose with a madman like Shin was alarming. "Nothing went wrong?"

  A laugh from Shin.

  "Well..." Lebedev said, motioning vaguely. "One of the trucks of explosive blew up on way to site. Otherwise... no."

  "Anybody hurt?"

  "Nyet, our man got out. And important thing is mission vas successful. Even if they replace tracks, station is gone. Sovsem unichtozhena." He brushed his hands together as if washing them.

  "Excellent, Sergei. I'm continually amazed what one can do with fertilizer, cleaning supplies and petrochems. Who knew they were so versatile?" He gave Lebedev's hand a shake, settling for a bow with Shin. Last time the man had tried to lay a bonecrusher on him.

  Watching them leave, he marveled at what war brought out of a person. Some of the loudest braggarts in the militia were the first to freeze when the lead started flying. At the same time, the war revealed strength in Ariane no one had ever noticed before. And then there were men like Shin or Nabil — ordinary men twisted by extraordinary circumstances into something unnatural, something that wouldn't know how to live when peace came and there was no more killing to be done.

  Sometimes he worried he might be one of them. Over and over he thought of what Nabil had said on the mountain. Was there anyone he wouldn't sacrifice to hurt the Abkhenazi? Was there anything he wouldn't do?

  Everything in him was invested in liberating New Geneva, in breaking the Abkhenazi. He thought of Van Loon, killing himself in the very act of destroying his target. Randal wondered if he was doing the same thing, just much more slowly, and on a level where the wounds weren't physical.

  ***

  The beefy quartermaster tugged on his pointed van dyke beard for what seemed like the hundredth time. The man was nervous, though Randal thought it was understandable with people like Shin and the Sergeant-Major in the audience asking direct questions. It was no easy task keeping the Irregulars in beans, bullets and bandages.

  The command group had taken to calling itself the "Little Council" — a tongue-in-cheek reference to Calvin's government in Geneva during the First Reformation. In addition to the Sergeant-Major and each of the former NGDF regulars, it was composed of the leaders of the Irregulars' reconnaissance, special ops, supply, and internal security sections, as well as the company commanders. The militia cells were now organized in fours as companies.

  "We can't just let the civilians starve," said one of the company commanders angrily, as if the Quartermaster were somehow advocating it.

  The Quartermaster mopped sweat from his forehead, looking overwhelmed. "I didn't say they were starving. Yet. But with the suborbitals stopped, the little food the Abkhenazi were giving our civilians has stopped too. I've barely got enough in our stores to keep our own troops going, let alone a whole city."

  The Abkhenazi were getting desperate as their problems mounted. Few supplies were coming in from the countryside; the MagLev train connecting them with their armies in the south was destroyed; and no help would come from Abkhenazia until spring. They had taken to going house-to-house, confiscating anything edible for use by the army. The people of Providence might not be starving yet, but the writing was visible on the wall.

  All eyes looked to Randal. "From now on, no blowing up supply crawlers or storage facilities. We'll prioritize seizing them intact and securing provisions." He paused for thought, hoping it wasn't too obvious he was coming up with it on the fly. "We'll train Jeni's Kitchen Klatch in rationing, and use them to teach others and distribute the food we score."

  "Speak of the devil and she appears," Jeni said, bustling into the room. "Sorry I'm late, Randy. Onegin, our man on the inside, got word to me that we needed to meet." She walked to the head of the group, giving the Quartermaster a long look until he relinquished the floor to her.
She did not speak right away, instead raising up on the balls of her feet and lowering slowly, enjoying building the suspense. "The honchos from the NGDF sent a message to us."

  A low murmur filled the room. It was big news. For so long the Irregulars had been totally isolated, feeling no part of the "real" war to the south. Now the regular army was contacting them.

  The Sergeant-Major grew impatient. "Out with it. What'd they say?"

  "Well, first of all, the Prime Minister expresses his gratitude on behalf of the country. Which is nice. Oh, and your mum says hello, Randy."

  Jeni leaned back against the damp rock wall, folding her arms. "The rest of the message is a bit uglier. They want us to kidnap the science faculty at Abraham Kuyper University. That and blow up Pieter's biggest factory. And they want it all done within seventy-two hours."

  "What?" Pieter nearly came out of his seat.

  "It's not like it's doing you any good these days, Pieter. I'm talking about the benzkamen facility. Very strategic."

  It was strategic. Randal was surprised he hadn't thought of hitting it himself. Benzkamen was a shale-like rock that yielded respectable amounts of oil when refined. While most vehicles in New Geneva ran on electric, the great majority of Abkhenazi still used petroleum-based systems. Before the war, most of the petrol produced in New Geneva was shipped north.

  Now, with their supply lines disrupted, the benzkamen plant must be vital to the Abkhenazi army.

  "She's right, Pieter. I'm sure your father has it insured anyway." Randal winked at Jeni.

  The woman's smile faded and she pushed off from the wall. "There's something else Onegin wanted to tell me. The Fist of the Mogdukh are here now. They've come for us."

  The former civilians in the room shook their heads uncomprehendingly, but the soldiers all took on the same worried expression. "The Fist of the Mogdukh," Pyatt explained glumly. "Abkhenazi special forces. They make regular troops look like a children's choir."

  "Worse," added Jeni, "They've got powered armor. Bought off-planet. Not as technical as ours, but it's made up for in brute force."

  An anxious quiet descended on the group.

  "It's quite flattering, really." Pieter said thoughtfully, pausing to take a pull from his hip flask. "Much better than being killed by some second-string bad guy, don't you think?"

  "I move to adjourn," Randal said, rolling his eyes.

  "Seconded," everyone answered in unison.

  ***

  Randal found Pieter in the large, round chamber that was serving as the Irregulars' rec hall. Clumps of men sat on the improvised furniture talking, smoking or dicing. Shouts echoed from a group of Koreans playing five field kono in the back of the room, pebbles and shell casings filling in for markers.

  Pieter lay in a low-slung hammock hung between pitons driven into the opposite ends of an alcove. He didn't look up as Randal approached, busily laying out cards on the blanket resting across his legs.

  "Better not let Pyatt see you, Pieter. He's a First Centy. He'll keep you up half the night explaining the evils of card playing."

  "Highly unlikely, Kipper. Take a look over there."

  Randal scanned the line of crates serving as the Irregulars' pub and recognized a slumped form with thinning red hair passed out at the bar.

  "I watched him. Four drinks and he went to sleep like a kitten."

  "If a First Centy is strung-out enough to drink, that's not a good sign. I'll talk to him tomorrow after his headache wears off."

  "Your girlfriend was in here looking for you earlier. She had good news. That al-Hise fellow's last Geiger reading came back almost clean. She's okayed the drinking water, though milk is still on the No list."

  "Well, given our lack of subterranean cows, that isn't a real concern. I came by to talk to you about the benzkamen factory. Have a few?"

  Pieter gathered up his cards, nodding. "That was the plant where my father made me intern. Remember the summer he went on a crusade to teach me responsibility?"

  "Of course. A rousing success."

  "Oh, shut it. Anyway, I've been thinking. Half of our job is done already. That factory is a gigantic bomb just waiting to go off."

  "Really? Show me." Randal untucked the datapad from under his arm, tossing it to Pieter.

  After clearing the screen, Pieter began scrawling squares, lines and circles. "See this box? The feed prep area. Crawlers dump the raw benzkamen in here. Conveyors then pull it up to this big square. They call this square the MTP; don't ask me what it stands for, I just know what it does. It heats the rock to six hundred centigrade, which liquefies it."

  "So then it's petrol?"

  "Not yet, it's kerogen," Pieter said, drawing lines to another box. "Pipes bring it to this place — the Kerogen Processor. At this point it's lacking a hydrogen atom. Over here..." He added a circle. "This is a liquid hydrogen tank."

  "Beauty. That's pretty flammable."

  Pieter grinned cheekily. "Too bad for them, eh? And the kerogen is vaporized to add the hydrogen, which only increases the explosivity. Explosiveness. Explosivefulness. Whatever, we can have fun with it."

  He scribbled a bit more. "This is the petrol reclamation point, where it's separated into various grades. Then it goes to these day-tanks and then ultimately to these holding tanks. They're much, much bigger."

  "All of which adds up to the mother of all explosions," Randal said brightly, taking the stylus. "So planting charges on these holding tanks and the hydrogen tank should disable the plant, right?"

  "Only temporarily. If you really want to set off wailing and gnashing of teeth, you'll need inside here." Pieter added a small square well away from the complex. "The control center. I imagine that damage to the rest of the plant could eventually be repaired by cannibalizing factories in Abkhenazia. But they'll have a real job trying to replicate our controls."

  "Security is pretty tight there?"

  "That's a dead cert. We were always paranoid about terrorists, what with the plant surrounded by suburbs these days. The place has chem sniffers, magnetic anomaly detectors and a pass card system. And that was before the Abbies took it."

  "We can get the senior director to slip us in. He'll have a master passkey."

  "Use your head, Kipper. Even if he's still alive, they'd certainly have changed the codes by now."

  "Uh-uh. He's a sodding collaborator. All that's changed for him is the name of his boss."

  "You're serious? Laurent Mireault, right?" Pieter huffed. "The man was nothing when he came to us, just Earther trash. Good help really is hard to find these days." He tilted his head, giving Randal a curious look. "How do you know, anyway? And if he's sold out, why would he help us?"

  "Because he's Ariane's father."

  Pieter's shoulders shook in silent mirth. "You certainly can pick them. An illegitimate child and a collaborating father. Oh well, you can't choose your in-laws, right?"

  "I'm going to hurt you now. This'll just take a minute."

  Pieter shielded his face, still laughing.

  Randal stood, tumbling Pieter from his hammock. "I'm going to talk to Lebedev about charges for the storage tanks. You'll be on the team hitting the university, so get started on your pre-ops."

  ***

  Randal descended the thick, knotted rope to Lebedev's level. After one of his accidents nearly brought down the headquarters, the mad Belarusian and his acolytes were exiled a couple hundred meters down and away, placing any innocents out of likely blast radii.

  He dropped to the floor and started down the corridor toward Lebedev's den. Along either side were small chambers, most of which contained either sacks and jugs of raw materials or complicated constructs of tubing and beakers.

  Ahead of him sounded a shoom, followed by a gush of smoke from one of the side rooms. One of Lebedev's followers tumbled from the room, a young, red-haired woman wearing the hooded pullovers they all seemed to favor. A cloth was pressed over her mouth and nose. "Don't breath the fumes, don't breath the fumes!" she yelled,
pushing past him without slowing.

  Tucking his face into the thick field jacket he wore, Randal sprinted through the haze, eyes stinging powerfully. He didn't stop until he reached Lebedev's main shop. Once inside, he let himself breath again, gratefully sucking in lungfuls of air. From behind a monstrosity of glass and hoses emerged Lebedev, watching Randal with his sad eyes.

  "Sergei," Randal said once his breath was caught. "I've got a job for you." He swept aside the clutter of small electronic pieces on the table and set down his datapad. Calling up the crude map Pieter had drawn, he explained the basics of the op to Lebedev.

  "And so basically, I need this hydrogen tank and these big holding tanks here to explode," he summarized, tapping the screen with a finger. "Oh, and the bombs need to be small enough to get manpacked in."

  He expected protest from Lebedev on that last part. It seemed like a tall order, making bombs small but powerful enough to do the job.

  When Lebedev didn't answer, Randal glanced up, anticipating a skeptical look. Instead, he looked near tears. "Thank you, Randal. I am so happy. Is so boring always making the mines and booby traps."

  Randal patted his shoulder, forestalling what he sensed was an impending hug. "Don't mention it. So you think it's possible then?"

  The man waved dismissively. "Will be like shooting the puppies in a barrel. On hydrogen tanks a scabbling foam will be used. I have just the thing."

  "Scabbling? Do you mean spackling?"

  "Eh? Nyet... scabbling. Instead of putting bomb in one spot, person sprays explosive foam over big area. Stick on a detonator and cap, and boom! Whole section blows up. Ve can remove big piece of tank all at once, which makes explosion bigger."

  Randal whistled softly. "You're a scary guy, Sergei. Will the scabbling work on the holding tanks?"

  A shake of his head. Lebedev pointed to the holding tanks on the datapad. "Smotri. Probably very thick walls on these. To us will be necessary shaped charges with molded explosives." He shifted, no longer speaking to Randal but himself. "Ili polusharia, ili truba... mozhet buit veyer..."