“In the first wave there were
“I read your whole packet, Captain,” he continued doggedly. “And I’d already read a classified after-action report in which you were a minor bit player. You did a good job at the Monument, no question, but if it hadn’t been for Keren, you’d be dead right now. And your… experiences in the retreat from Dale City are one of the classic egregious examples.”
“Who’s Keren?” Elgars asked. “And what do you mean by that?”
“Keren is a captain with the Ten Thousand,” Mueller said as they reached the doors. There were two sets with a chamber in between and they acted as partial airlocks, reducing the blast of wind that was trying to escape the bunker. “He was in a mortar platoon near the rear of the retreat. He apparently picked you up during the retreat and you rode with him all the way to the Monument.”
“You’d been dumped by another unit,” Mosovich said tightly. He turned left and headed up the wide stairs on the exterior. There were two sets of those as well, one on each side of the entrance. There was a walkway on the wall opposite the doors that joined them near the top. Running along the surface on that side were small concrete combat positions, which were accessible from the walkway. On the far side was an open area nearly two hundred meters across and then a large parking lot filled with dirt covered cars and trucks and one Humvee, parked on the grass on the verge.
“That was what happened to a good many females in that retreat and others. Some units returned with nearly one hundred percent female casualties versus fifty to sixty percent casualties among the males.”
“Well, the actual incidence of
“Why
“You’d been raped,” Mosovich said tightly. “Then they took away your sniper rifle and dumped you with an AIW and a single magazine.”
“Oh,” Elgars said. “That’s… annoying in a distant way.”
“So, you’re saying that they don’t want me in the Ground Forces because I might get raped in a retreat?” Wendy said angrily. “Then they shouldn’t ought to let their damned soldiers in the Sub-Urbs!”
“Am I to take it that’s why you were so uncomfortable coming to the surface with us?” Mueller said. “In that case, I’m sorry I asked. And if you’ll give me a name and unit I’ll take care of it.”
“I was just giving testimony,” Wendy said. She stopped at the top of the stairs blinking her eyes against the light and looked down at the town.
Franklin had been a small, somewhat picturesque city nestled in lightly inhabited hills before the war. Its main industry was supporting the local farmers and retirees who had moved up from Florida to get away from the crime.
With the change to a war footing, it became a vital linchpin in the southern Appalachian defenses. Units from just south of Asheville to Ellijay depended upon it for supply and administration.
The city was now overrun by soldiers and their encampments stretched up the hills on either side of it. The small strip mall that the entrance overlooked had been taken over by pawnbrokers and T-shirt shops with the only sign of “normal” presence being a dry cleaner.
She looked down over the bustle and shrugged. “When… when the Urb was first set up anyone could come and go at any time. That was… good at first. The corps did a lot of good in the Urb. And… there was a lot of dating. Most of the corps was male and most of the Urb is female so… things naturally happened. Then… the… the attitude sort of changed.”
“A lot of the girls in the Urb were… lonely,” Shari said. “They would take up with the soldiers and some of the soldiers practically moved into the Urb. A lot of what you could call ‘black market’ transfers went on; you used to be able to find coffee even. But then things started getting out of hand. The security force wasn’t large enough, or effective enough, to keep the soldiers under control and they had an authority dispute with the corps MPs, who
“We ended up having a…” Wendy shrugged her shoulders and shuddered. “Well, one of the officers that was involved in the investigation referred to it as a ‘sack’ during a long weekend. Something like a riot with
“I had a… well, a group of… boys really that were like kids I was taking care of,” Shari noted. “A couple of them were there when the riots started. I was okay.”