Chapter 10

No question about it, being trapped in the city hall while it was being reduced to rubble by shellfire had not been part of the original plan, at least, not my plan! I had a quick decision to make: we could fight or we could run; that is, transport out of the building. I figured to make a stab at fighting. If that didn't work, we could always run.

I ordered everybody to look for a stairway going down. I wanted some protection from falling ceilings, etc. Very quickly I got the report I expected. One of the squad leaders reported that the stairs going down had been found, so we all dashed for those stairs. I couldn't imagine why the military was so intent on destroying the city hall building; maybe, there was a political fight going on within this side of the waring factions, and the city hall represented the wrong side as far as the military was concerned.

For whatever the reason might be, the military was sure as hell doing a good job of smashing up the building. If we were going to have to fight from this location, I was all in favor of them demolishing all that they could, right up short of the point of pulverizing the place to powder. A smashed building makes a hell of a good defensive position; just ask the Russians and the Germans at Stalingrad in WW2 on Earth.

The bombardment continued for several hours. From the sound of things, the building had long since been demolished and the bombardment was continuing for the fun of it. Whatever the reason, that much ammunition had to be expensive unless they had replicators, and I knew that they didn't. We let things simmer down for a couple of more hours before we took a look up the stairs.

I was not the least surprised to see that some falling debris had acted like a roof over the stairs, and there was nothing to keep us from using the stairs to reach the ground level. At ground level, we found tunnels running in every direction through the rubble. I sent out two squads to form a defensive perimeter while we tried to figure out what was going on. The third squad was kept in reserve, though I honestly doubted that we would need it.

The squad that was held in reserve was sent to delve through the lower levels of the cellars to see if there was something interesting there that we should know about. About half an hour after I had sent out the scouts, I got an excited report over the radio that there was something on the third level down and to the extreme west that I should see.

I made my way to the site and was as surprised as the person who had called in the report. I was confronted by some jail cells that contained 15 prisoners. The scout said, "These people claim to be the legitimate city council, and they have been held here under arrest by a military junta."

Son ... of ... a ... Bitch!!! Maybe we have found a gold mine and the reason why the building was so thoroughly pounded by artillery! If these are the legitimate rulers of the city, the junta may have been trying to kill them off and make it look like an accident. The junta could claim that these people had run to a shelter during the fighting and had been killed when the overhead collapsed on them. None but the friends of the junta needed to see what had really happened or where the people had been "hiding."

This was a serious and unexpected change in the situation. I radioed back to base for instructions. They were as disconcerted as I was, so I was told to hold in place until a decision could be reached. Now that was a sensible command! The decision came down in less than 30 minutes: we were going to rescue the prisoners, and all of us were to be transported back to base.

I called in the two squads on the perimeter and told them and the prisoners what was about to happen. Everybody was happy to get back to base. We went through a short debriefing session and were sent to our quarters. Anfon and I were pissed about the way we had been set up by the junta, but we were able to vent our unhappiness with enough sex to knock us out for the rest of the night.

Two days later, I was called into headquarters and informed that my platoon was to return to Ocgur to capture the top brass of the junta that had taken over the city. Now that was an order that I was glad to get. Intelligence had pinpointed the probable location of the junta headquarters, and it was our job to go in and verify the site. We and the bad guys would be transported out as soon as they knew that we had found the right place. My confidence in Intelligence had not changed any, but we had nothing else to go on, so I was willing to go along with their pick, not that I had much choice.

This time, we were not going to have to walk down the city streets. The junta headquarters was in a large building with a flat roof just right to act as a transporter stage. We "beamed" on to the roof at 1300 hours. We wanted to catch the crew inside on their way back from lunch. There was bound to be some confusion with a lot of people walking around, so we should be able to get in without too much trouble.

What the hell!?! They were waiting for us! Intelligence had failed to warn us about the surveillance system on the roof, so the security detail had spotted us as we came in. First squad was hit with small arms fire as Anfon led them down the steps. Fortunately, our body armor was adequate protection against the weapons they were using, so nobody was killed, but there were a few nicks and scratches as a result of so many bullets flying around.

I heard the shooting and made an immediate change in plans. I led Second squad down the north face of the building and sent Third squad down the east face. We broke in through the outside windows and laid down supporting fire for the trapped First squad on the stairs. We only used our modified Uzis, but they were enough to wipe out the opposition that had hastily assembled to stop us.

We didn't know what our quarry looked like, so our plan was to grab anybody in a uniform ranking at colonel and higher. We did know what the insignia looked like, so that was no problem.

This was a three storey building, so there were few elevators. Most traffic was confined to the stairs, but there were plenty of those. Therefore, we had to act quickly before the people we wanted had time to run away. I sent a man back to the roof to put an RPG HE round into the elevator house on the roof. That forced anybody who wanted to escape to use the stairs, and we soon had all eight stairwells blocked with at least three of our troopers.

An occasional shot with an RPG fragmentation warhead down the stairs discouraged any attack from below, so we had a free hand on our level, at least for a few minutes. An occasional shot was directed our way, but we couldn't find the shooters, so Anfon ordered that all of the natives on our floor strip to the skin so that we could be sure that none were carrying guns. I don't know why, but this amused the female troopers even more than it did the males. In any case, all of the natives were naked in a few minutes. We found 12 guns that had been concealed. Those people were sent running naked down the stairs on pain of being shot if they were still visible after 15 seconds. There was a strong local fear of being nude in public, so we had some fun with that as a punishment for shooting at us.

We found 13 colonels and higher rank, so they were assembled and we all transported back to base before an effective counterattack could be organized against us. We went through the usual debriefing and were sent to quarters. Anfon and I celebrated a successful mission in our usual way with plenty of sex.

I don't know what finally happened in Ocgur, but we never were called upon to return there, so I guess that the problem was resolved. As usual, people at our level were treated like the proverbial mushrooms—kept in the dark and covered with shit! Oh, well, Anfon and I were having fun, so we did not care too much.

I doubt that it did any good, but my written report had a scathing denouncement about Intelligence's failure to warn us of the roof surveillance. Oh, well, the rant did make me feel better!

Rumors were flying around the base about an entirely new conflict that none of us had ever been involved in before. The main part of the rumor was that our galaxy was being invaded by beings from the Andromeda galaxy. The basic question was "Why?" Andromeda was plenty big enough that there could hardly be a good reason for them to want to conquer us. Speculation had it that there was some sort of religious motive behind the attack, but that's all it was, just speculation.