“Admiral, we’ve finished assessing the prisoners,” the tactical officer reported. “Fifty-seven of them may be useful, for the fleet; ninety-two are women. The remainder are of little use.”
“Have the useful ones, and the women, loaded onto the transports,” Admiral Zaskar said. “The remainder are to be given weapons and told to give the enemy a hard time.”
He smiled, rather grimly. There was no way the remainder of the prisoners would be able to recapture the planet, not with the handful of weapons he could give them, but they’d give the planetary defenders a headache or two. They’d have to waste time tracking down the escaped prisoners instead of repairing the damage to their infrastructure. Who knew? Enough armed prisoners might be able to spearhead an insurgency of their own. Judd had been a Theocratic world long enough for the True Faith to grow roots. And a long, drawn-out insurgency might lead to a political solution . . .
It isn’t likely to happen, he told himself. But God may have other ideas.
He dismissed the thought. “Are our long-range sensors still clear?”
“Yes, sir,” the sensor officer said. “The system is empty.”
Or anyone within sensor range has shut down their drives and active sensors, Admiral Zaskar reminded himself. Judd had once had a small space-based industry of its own that had been destroyed during the invasion, but the provisional government would have every reason to want to restart it as soon as possible. We could be being watched by unseen eyes.
He looked at Askew. “I trust this is suitable?”
“It is more than suitable,” Askew said. The man hadn’t shown any reaction whatsoever to the carnage the fleet had unleashed on Judd. He seemed to view the attack as perfectly normal. “The Commonwealth will be kept very busy indeed.”
“And they’ll have to waste their resources rebuilding the system,” Admiral Zaskar added. He had no idea if the Commonwealth would make a major commitment to Judd or not, but they’d pay a price no matter what they chose. “It will be very difficult for them.”
He turned to his subordinates. “Order the transports to expedite the loading,” he added. “We need to be moving soon.”
“Damn those bastards,” Rupert Flinty swore. “Damn them to hell!”
“Watch your mouth,” Simon Laager snapped. “We don’t want to be seen up here.”
He kept his own feelings to himself as they lay on the ledge, peering down at the POW camp in the valley below. It had been sheer dumb luck that they hadn’t been with the rest of the company when their comrades had made their last stand. They’d been sent out to hunt for deer, and they’d been too far away from the camp to rejoin the company during the attack. Now all they could do was watch.
It wasn’t a pleasant sight. The defenders, all too aware of the fate that awaited anyone who surrendered, had fought to the death. A handful of soldiers who’d been too wounded to fight had simply been shot down like wild animals. Now the invaders were going through the prisoners, dispatching half of them to the shuttles and pointing the other half towards the road leading down to civilization. It looked as if the Theocrats were having everything their own way. A couple of prisoners who objected, from what little they could see, had simply been shot, their bodies left to rot where they’d fallen.
“They’re taking all the women with them,” Flinty commented. “Good.”
“Not for them,” Simon said. He had no sympathy for the male prisoners, be they faithful or simple collaborators, but the women had been treated like dirt. It was hard to understand why any of them had refused the offer of a better life somewhere else. “They’re going straight to hell.”
He ducked down as the first shuttle started to rise into the air. If they’d had an HVM . . . He shook his head. It wasn’t as if they’d needed antiaircraft missiles to go hunting. In hindsight, the camp should have expected an attack from the air, or space, but no one had considered the possibility. They’d believed the Theocracy was dead. The shuttles, two more rising even now, proved that they were wrong. He didn’t want to think what the plumes of smoke, rising from the direction of the nearest city, meant. The Theocrats might have flattened every building they could see.
And they certainly tried to destroy the caves, he thought, remembering the nightmarish days when the Theocrats had realized that the resistance was using the caves to hide. They’d bombed the entire region from orbit, crushing hundreds of fighters below fallen rock. They’ll probably try to do it again.
He scrambled to his feet as the fourth and last shuttle clawed for space. The pilot didn’t seem inclined to go looking for trouble—his human cargo was presumably vital—but there was no point in staying anywhere near the camp. If Simon was any judge, the Theocrats would probably destroy it from orbit once the former prisoners had scattered. Even if they didn’t, he didn’t want to stick around anyway. The former prisoners would be hunting for any survivors from the garrison.
Flinty caught his eyes as they scrambled down the ravine. “So . . . where do we go?”
Simon had to think. “Allenstown,” he said finally. The locale had been a resistance stronghold, once upon a time. And it was only a few short hours away. “It’ll do for starters.”
And if we can’t make contact there, we’ll have to find somewhere else to go, he added privately. That won’t be easy.
But he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“The shuttles have returned to the ships, Admiral.”
Admiral Zaskar nodded. “Is local space still clear?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Then take us out of orbit,” he ordered. “Detach a cruiser to take out the
