Profiteer

It was the fifth Bakunin night since the operation had taken GA&A. During the previous two nights, perimeter defense had kept its hands full by repulsing nuisance attacks from a coalition of northern communes. There were people on this planet who really did not like the Confederacy. Even so, no real Bakunin resistance had reared its head yet.

 

As long as the Confed forces confined themselves to the single property, anything more was unlikely.

 

Tonight was quiet.

 

Quiet enough to allow Captain Kathy Shane to contemplate the end of her career.

 

Eight hundred and thirty-seven prisoners huddled below her, crammed behind the impromptu electrified barrier.

 

Eight hundred and thirty-seven.

 

That number was etched in her mind. Yesterday it was eight hundred and forty-three. Two lost to exposure, two to injuries sustained in the attack, one attempted escape, one suicide.

 

The suicide had been pregnant.

 

Eight hundred and thirty-seven.

 

Four hundred and ten men. Three hundred and eighty-nine women.

 

Thirty-eight children.

 

Shane stood alone on the platform the engineers had built on top of the remains of GA&A antiaircraft battery number seventeen. Kropotkin had long since set and the tiny lump of Guillaume was passing in front of the waning form of Schwitzguebel. The two moons didn’t quite give the scene a double shadow, but the presence of Guillaume managed to fuzz the edges.

 

Even in the dim lighting, she could make out the forms of individual prisoners. Few of them were military. They were office workers, secretaries, engineers, scientists, laborers.

 

As well as their families.

 

The armed defense of GA&A either died in the assault, or defended the evacuation of approximately six hundred personnel—nearly half of them children. The colonel was sending squads of marines on search and destroy missions to target the evacuees.

 

It was the fifth Bakunin night since the operation had taken GA&A.

 

The fifth Bakunin night since Colonel Klaus Dacham had ordered the death of all the GA&A workers.

 

Shane had stalled and delayed things as much as her rank and position would allow. The prisoners were to be cleared out in the morning.

 

What really scared Shane—and until now she had never thought herself capable of fearing anything—was the acceptance by her people of the coming atrocity. Men and women she’d been to hell with and back suddenly were strangers who talked of the impending murder of eight hundred civilians as if these people were simply another enemy asset to be disposed of.

 

During dinner, Second Lieutenant Murphy, a man she had known since his training on Occisis, a man she considered a good friend, had started a dispassionate discussion on the best way to dispose of the bodies. Shane had to excuse herself, go to the head, and throw up.

 

She shivered.

 

She crossed the platform of the makeshift guard tower. Engineering had been busy during dinner. Someone had actually taken Murphy seriously. Engineering had mounted a wide-aperture plasma cannon on the platform. Unlike the other perimeter defenses, this one covered the small space given the prisoners. If it was used on the civilians, they would only leave a slight shadow etched in the bedrock. Something easily bulldozed over—no disposal problem.

 

Shane closed her eyes and pictured the half-second the cannon would need to reach full power. A half second when eight hundred and thirty-seven people would feel the flesh melt off their bones. A half-second before they would be flashed into eternity.

 

Half a second could be a very long time.

 

It was going to be her hand on the switch.

 

Captain Kathy Shane cried for the first time since she’d joined the marines.

 

She had to be the one to carry out the order. She couldn’t let any of her people bear the responsibility of such an act. She could not pass on such a command.

 

But she just wasn’t capable.

 

She would falter, and Murphy, pragmatic as he was, would push her aside and fire the weapon. She could see him doing that, and he wouldn’t feel a damn thing.

 

She used to like Murphy.

 

Damn Colonel Dacham. Damn him straight to Hell. He was the scariest part of all of this. Shane seemed to be the only one who realized that they were under the command of a psychopath.

 

She was an officer, but she had risen up through the ranks. In her heart she was a grunt, and she had a grunt’s appreciation of the fact that more often than not, command was truly fucked.

 

She looked down at the prisoners and realized that this was beyond fucked.

 

The colonel should never have gotten a commission, much less a command. Even the intelligence arm of the Confederacy should have known better— Her people had been delivered into the hands of a crazy man.

 

Shane walked to the rail on the edge of the platform and saw Corporal Conner on watch in a nest fifty meters from the west edge of the electrified containment area. Conner was in full battlesuit and was bearing his weapon as though he hoped that someone would try to escape.

 

She used to like Conner, too.