"Ken Rand - Bad News from Orbit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ken)

Spiratz is the ore's primary source. In the 120 years Realtime since company scouts first assayed it,
Spiratz had become a company colony. Most people on and under surface and in the orbital stations
around the planetoid worked for Berenson or otherwise depended on company payroll.

Given their growing prosperity and other factors discernible in hindsight, it was only a matter of time
before the Spiratz population entertained nationalistic notions. A remote and insensitive bureaucracy
whose decision-makers had failed to read history responded to overtures of independence with
iron-fisted intransigence. Friction grew. Civil war seemed predestined.

And it happened. A miners’ union declared independence, shut down operations, overran security
forces, commandeered key installations and equipment, ousted or imprisoned management, and issued
demands for redress of grievances from Berenson Corp. in a “Declaration of Independence” patterned
after the historic Earthome document of the same name.

Management appealed to government for troops to halt the strike. Government, even more remote from
the situation “on the ground,” and, in a realpolitic sense, “in the pocket” of Berenson, agreed to intervene.
They dispatched the nearest available CMC unit and predicted victory in a few weeks.

Superior CMC forces soon suborned rebel-held orbital installations and recovered key equipment and
personnel. CMC land units, Horiuchi's outfit, regained the planet's surface with little effort. But the rebels
could not be extracted from their underground warrens by reason, coercion, or force. They fought a
low-tech guerrilla war, mobile hit and run tactics. They thumbed their noses at CMC, the most
sophisticated war machine known to man, and got away with it for two years.

Little ore flowed to the Aragon Shipyards, interstellar economy faced collapse, and the government and
Berenson got nervous. CMC HQ tried several ways to get the message—"Let's talk terms,"—through to
the rebels. Nothing worked. The rebels were too suspicious of traps and refused to respond. Desperate,
HQ sought volunteers with underground experience to make contact with the enemy and offer peace
terms—in essence, to surrender.

Finding an enemy to surrender to would be difficult. Rebels evaded CMC and company troops, or
wounded or killed them. They seldom took prisoners. Few grunts, even those with firefight experience,
had ever seen a rebel.

Horiuchi was among the fourteen grunts that volunteered to walk alone into separate cave entrances
unarmed, without supplies or even communications or survival gear, except a lightbeam, to wander
around until they made contact with the enemy. A desperate and daring tactic. HQ figured enemy scouts
would see the single defenseless troops and rather than kill them or wound them on sight, would capture
them out of curiosity. Maybe one would get word to rebel command—"Let's talk peace. Please."

When he set out, Horiuchi asked for a deck of cards to bring with him. He got his wish. He didn't
explain why he wanted the cards.

****
“Why cards?” I asked.

“Cause I knew the rebs played poker."

“I'm afraid I don't—"