The Supply Officer, Part 2/2

When you're in a colony dependent on outside help and galactic society collapses, what do you do?

After the first month, it felt like everyone finally got some sleep. The gardens were green and projected to bear fruit in four weeks. Everyone stopped talking about us dying and had time to worry about their families back home and their fate in this current upheaval. So morale improved too.

And I got to go back to filling out forms. Except we committed all available paper and plastic to recycling purposes, so I maintained purely digital records and hoped my hard drives didn’t wipe one day.

It was a degree of normalcy. I maintained my normal working hours, and spent my hours after either inspecting our supplies for spoilage, or at home playing video games. All the other senior officers kept their normal hours. It was a steady, reassuring hand on my shoulder.

With the mine closed, miners started queuing up for repair and maintenance jobs. I passed them in the corridors telling each other ‘it will only be for a few more weeks, the next supply run will surely arrive.’ The Colonel handled those. She assigned them to repair equipment we’d otherwise be sending back to the supply depot for recycling, or put them through rifle training.

Then, at the end of week six, the Colonel caught me as I was leaving my office and pulled me into hers.

“What’s the problem, ma’m?” I said.

“How do you know there’s a problem?” she said.

“You only come to me when there’s a problem,” I said.

She sighed and stared at her boots for a second. I knew I was just an accountant after all, and she was the Colonel. So, I was about to apologize when she shook her head. “I’ll pay you a visit tomorrow just to play video games, okay? Tech has rigged up a spare server to host multiplayer.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said quickly, surprising even myself. I was an accountant in a base full of soldiers and rugged miners after all. I’d never fit in. Video games would be nice. though. “Now what’s the problem?”

“We keep payroll for eight weeks. As a precaution if someone in the banks fucks up and misses a supply run,” she said.

“Oh dear,” I replied as I thought about the implication. Working people, not just soldiers but everyone who picks up a hammer and chisel in service of the government, expect compensation. If the money runs out, they start taking equivalent value.

I know there was an incident about five years ago, in the Merripac System. The division guarding the main outpost wasn’t paid for six months. The civilians stopped letting the soldiers take out IOUs for groceries and drinks, and the local bars closed. The general promised he’d be back in a week and headed towards the inner worlds to find out what had happened to their money.

Two weeks later, the division rioted. Burned down the whole port and killed every store owner who’d refused them business on credit.

I know because I was a Second Lieutenant called in to assess damage and investigate where the money went.

I found the bank slips for the division’s pay. It had arrived, only to be diverted to the General and colony governor’s accounts.

When I saw that, they gave me the promotion to full Lieutenant, and told me to turn in all my records. I didn’t fight it. I’m not a soldier, after all. I know the colony was rebuilt, and the general quietly retired while the colony director was hit with full blame.

“So, we need to either come up with an alternate form of income, or convince everyone not to riot,” I said.

“Sounds like it. Now, ideally, we could forget the whole money thing for however many months it takes for the dickheads in the inner worlds to figure their shit out, but I know people, LT. I know they don’t accept promises for pay. So, I’ll handle the whole keeping them in line part. You need to get your comrades together and figure something out,” she said.

“Yes ma’m,” I said, and saluted. “What games tomorrow?”

 “I’ll surprise you. And while we’re playing, you’re not allowed to talk about work,” she said. There was a little smile on her face.

I spent most of the next day dusting off my console and filling out rudimentary paperwork. The Colonel had promised 1800 local time, but that came and went. Then 1900. I fired off a message to her, politely hoping her work was going well.

2033, someone kicked the door with metal toes. I answered and found the Mayor and Captain Poebelt waiting at the door, utterly solemn.

“LT, with us please, now,” Poebelt said. The use of please instead of an order send my danger senses ringing. I seized my sidearm and holster from the desk drawer, sneezed on all the dust flying off it, and headed out.

“You don’t need that, LT,” Poebelt said.

“Yes, I do,” I said. The fact he was questioning my legal right to wear my sidearm worried me further.

The mayor grabbed Poebelt’s arm and shook his head. I pretended not to notice that.

We headed back to the Colonel’s office, moving with all the silent solemnity of a commando mission.

She was facedown at her desk, blood spread across her keyboard and pooling under her computer. I froze and stared at her. Not just because the Colonel was dead, and this entire base was suddenly deprived of the only person who could lead it, but because she’d shot herself with her right hand, even though she was a lefty.

“We heard the gunshot and found her like this,” Poebelt said. He took my shoulder. “We’re in deep shit.”

I nodded and kept staring. The impracticality of it all. The absurdity of handicapping this little, isolated base in such a blatant way. It numbed me. For what?

“LT?” Poebelt said. I didn’t answer. “Mac!” he slapped me.

“Yes sir?” I said.

“I need you to keep this a secret while we figure out what to say. Lock down the gardens, something. People are going to panic, don’t let them fuck it all up,” he said. Poebelt had never commanded anything. He’d spent his career at the desk jobs I dreamed about, and, rumor said, only come out here to get some field experience before being promoted up to Admiralty adjutant. The mayor was nodding along, staring at his back as much as mine.

“Yes sir,” I said and saluted. “May I leave?”

“Yes, please,” Poebelt said. “Oh, and Mac?”

“Sir?”

“She must have ordered this on the last supply run.” He handed me a new game cartridge. Inner worlders laugh at physical cartridges with their planet-wide neuralnet servers, but when you live on a dust ball, there is nothing better than physical cartridges. It doesn’t vanish with server crashes and can be jailbroken from DRM or online-only requirements.

“Thank you, sir,” I said and took it in hand.

“No, thank her,” he said.

I walked out. On the way, I counted eight soldiers in the command bunker, all armed and on guard. They were all in on it. I headed back to my cabin, promising to come back once I’d had a drink. Soon as I rounded the corner I went straight to the barracks and called Valya and Girka together.

“Got a new project?” Valya said.

“No, he’s got a problem. LT doesn’t come visit unless there’s a problem,” Girka said.

“Same thing,” Valya said.

I put an arm around their shoulders and pulled them in. “Poebelt and the mayor murdered the Colonel. They’ve got about eight soldiers and a couple deputies with them,” I said.

Girka hissed in shock.

“Hell we gonna do about it?” Valya said. That’s why I kept going back to her. She had that can-do attitude. Her world was just problems she needed to solve.

“Violence,” I said. “Before the mayor fucks everything up.”

Girka came back with a dozen soldiers. ‘These are the reliable ones,’ he said to me. Valya arrived with a half-dozen of the biggest miners I’d ever seen. We didn’t have the key to the armory, but I had the key to the supply depots where the replacement weapons and ammo were stored before being sorted into the armories. We armed up with assault rifles and ammunition.

Girka tried to shove a rifle into my hands.

“Oh no, I’m not a soldier,” I said and drew my handgun.

We hurried straight back up to the Colonel’s room.

I went in alone. One of the soldiers standing guard stopped me and knocked on the door.

Poebelt emerged. “Mac, what’s the problem?”

“Sorry,” I said. It felt kind of silly, apologizing to a mutineer right before prosecuting him for his crimes. Still, I’d spent a year with Poebelt and felt rather bad about this whole business. Maybe I was apologizing to the base, for depriving them of a few more bodies. Anyways, soon as I said it, I threw myself to the ground and gunfire roared over me. I covered my ears and held still as bootsteps shook the bare rock and the gunfire continued on and off.

Silence fell and left my ears ringing. A hand grabbed my shoulder. “LT, we’re clear,” Grika shouted through the ringing.

I leapt up and looked around.

Poebelt, ever the people-pleaser, had died fighting like a good soldier should. The rest of the soldiers were scattered around the command bunker, very dead.

We found the mayor alone, hiding under the Colonel’s desk and stinking of piss. I sent Valya off to explain the midnight racket to the rest of the base. Then I sat him down at the Colonel’s desk and pulled up my usual chair opposite it.

I let him wipe the sweat off his brow and smooth out his collar.

“Excuse me, Mac, but can I change my pants before going into custody?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Well, you see, this current situation is very uncomfortable and I’m sure you would be humiliated if you were in my place,” he said and smiled at me.

I leaned on my elbows and stared him in the eyes. “Why did you kill the Colonel?”

“I didn’t do that. Captain Poebelt did,” he said and held up his hands with a smile on his fat lips.

“Why did you kill the Colonel?” I said.

“I just told you I didn’t. Please, are we in the hands of an idiot now?” he said.

“We were in the Colonel’s capable hands. Why did you kill her?” I said.

He gaped at me and slapped his hands on her desk.

“I just said I didn’t! I was sitting right where you are now and the Captain walked around behind her and did it. He said it was best if she never knew,” he said.

“Why did you kill the Colonel?” I said. With that, I took out my sidearm and laid it on the desk. The safety was on, and a round wasn’t even chambered. I’d never been much of a shot anyways.

He whimpered. “Because she locked this base down and starved us over some idiocy. She panicked and was unfit. Everything in the core worlds will surely be worked out soon enough and we’ll look like fools here. Everything is always worked out. You soldier types are always panicking but I’m from a family with history. We know that everything always works out. I want to eat, and not go around being treated like a common miner. Is that too much? Isn’t that what you want, Lieutenant?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I wanted the Colonel to lead us, and you killed her.” I flipped the safety off and chambered a round. He was staring so intensely at my face I’m note sure he noticed.

“I supported competent leadership, and you’ve ruined that,” he said.

I shot him in the head. He let out a last whimper and flopped forwards so his head lay exactly where the Colonel’s had, his blood trickling around hers. My ears rang with the echoes of the blast in this confined office.

We incinerated the Colonel in the reactor and erected a cairn beneath the comms tower. The conspirators, we harvested and added to the fertilizer. She’d appreciate the irony.

I realized I was now the senior officer of this demoralized outpost. After recovering from my horror in the privacy of my own office, Valya and Grika came in and demanded orders.

My first act was to find someone more qualified to lead it.

With the mayor dead, there needed to be elections to replace him. I scheduled it for the next day, explaining that we needed better leadership now. I tore up my copy of the Infantry Officer’s Manual since I was not a soldier after all, but an accountant, and set up a polling place.

The corporate director counted the votes, on account of him having experience refereeing the weekly game tournaments and lacking close friends with anyone.

Valya didn’t enter but she won anyways. She glared at me as I shook her hand in the mess and everyone else applauded.

I kept the Colonel’s office locked and moved command to my office. Valya moved into Poebelt’s office across from mine.

I left the video game sitting on the Colonel’s office. I’d play it at some point, I told myself. I repeated it every day six times a day; once each time I walked by her office.

Until at the end of one day, I realized a full three weeks had passed and I was still telling myself that I was going to play that game. I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands. I thought about it, until I finally forced myself to say that yes, I was going to play it.

Steel toed boots hammered on my door.

I grabbed my sidearm and unlocked it. It was Grika, and Valya, both out of breath.

“Satellites detected a ship’s drive trails as it entered orbit. It’s something big,” Grika said.

By the time I’d reached the recon station, the sensors had identified her as a long-range hauler. Specifically, the same model as our normal supply runner. She’d settled into geosynchronous orbit 400 kilometers over our base like it was a normal supply run.

Except her transponder was turned off, so we couldn’t identify her.

I looked around at Valya and Grika. They stared back, neither believing our luck. I didn’t either. “Comms, send a generic greeting. Do not give them permission to land.”

“Yes sir,” the comms officer said. “Greeting sent.”

“Now we wait,” I said. I sat down on the sensor table itself and watched Grika and Valya fidget in silence as the minutes ticked away.

The comms set squeaked as a reply came.

“Sir, their reply is visual only,” the comms officer said. I leapt off the table and pushed past him to see.

They’d replied with a picture. The base had been furnished with a bowling alley and bar. We’d ripped up the lanes and planted them with tomatoes and vegetables. A couple of the youngest soldiers had snapped a selfie of themselves amongst the tomatoes.

“Sound combat stations and do not reply,” I said.

“Maybe they’re looking to buy?” Valya said.

“They’d have led with an offer like any proper businessman would. They’re not here to buy or barter, they’re going to take it,” I said. I am an accountant after all, I do know business.

Within twenty minutes, the crew of that freighter must have understood our answer. The sensor contact that represented their hull expanded into eight more contacts as it launched its cargo hoppers. They descended immediately.

I watched on the sensor table as they entered Ziggy 3’s atmosphere and vanished. The dust storm was particularly strong over us tonight, with the upper shroud reaching eighty kilometers overhead. The hoppers flickered in and out as they closed.

They didn’t attempt evasive maneuvers as they approached and dropped a token showing of scouting drones to buzz our base at close range.

“Hold fire,” I said as the drones passed overhead. “We’re not tracking them with our normal targeting array so they think we’re helpless, let them think that until they’re in range.”

The hoppers suddenly shined through the dust grid as they fired their retrothrusters at ten kilometers altitude and came screeching to a gentle fall. Five kilometers.

“Sir?” Ensign Riga, our lonely gunnery officer said. She seemed just as dazed as I felt, utterly in disbelief that we were seeing combat.

“They’re going straight in,” I said. “Begin sonar pulses at one kilometers. Don’t fire until my order.”

“Yes sir,” she said. Her finger flexed over the big, red power button.

The first sonic pulse revealed them all. They were in a rough V formation, falling slowly towards the base perimeter. I let them get within five hundred meters before giving the order, “full power to the weapons grid.” Our turrets brought down half. The rest scattered and landed all over the perimeter. I kept the turrets firing to make sure they couldn’t take off again. Then I turned Grika and the garrison loose.

It wasn’t a battle. They were scattered all over the two square kilometer perimeter, blinded by the dust, and scared. Grika and his sixty soldiers knew every rock within a kilometer of the perimeter. They hunted each group down one by one. A few individuals fled into the dust flats and vanished from sensors. I ordered Grika not to pursue.

There was one survivor, barely. Our medic tried to stabilize him, but he had internal bleeding and we needed the advanced medical supplies for our own people. I met Grika in the airlock and gave all our soldiers individual congratulations, before viewing the dying man.

I was shocked to see the short, pale loading officer who’d delivered our last supply run. He was caked in a soupy, rust-colored mud mixed from dust and blood, but it definitely was him. He saw me and tried to rise on his elbows. His skin looked like it had rusted over.

“Hello again,” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting food for our people,” he said and coughed so hard he slammed his head on the deck. Blood foamed up on his lower lip.

“Don’t you have the whole regional supply depot to pull from?” I said.

“We ate through it. We thought the trouble…” he coughed again. “From the inner worlds would end quickly, but it’s only gotten worse.”

“So you were going to kill us and take it all?” I marveled at the complete infeasibility of pursuing the violent option when much better options existed.

“Yes, like that,” he said.

“We could have shown you how to grow your own. We’re fully self-sufficient here,” I said.

“Like we’d trust you in this time of chaos,” he said. “Nothing personal. That’s just how it is.”

I popped the flag pin off my shoulder; the sum total of all our identities as soldiers, and held it before his eyes. “Does this mean nothing to you?”

“It doesn’t anymore. Nothing matters but our own guns. You had bigger guns, and so you’ve killed our entire population,” he said. He coughed and kept coughing. His back arched, and he flopped down, leaking blood from his mouth.

“I would have gladly helped you,” I said. I saw something flicker in his eyes. Then he wheezed one last time.

We salvaged what we could from the wreckage. There were plenty of guns, medical supplies, and spare parts for our own vehicles. The bodies: we burned outside the perimeter.

I gave the order to scuttle all the satellites in orbit, save one we set to passive sensors only. We went dark and silent, and hoped no one left alive remembered our location.

The totality of our universe was now this base, and 1,793 people within. When the rest of the galaxy figured its shit out and someone sent scouts to investigate all the frontier outposts, we’d be waiting.