Chapter 217: Collecting a Road Tax
After Zeppelin's Valkyrie lifted off, the tent held only 109th Regiment personnel. The atmosphere relaxed immediately.
Colonel Leo checked on Hans first.
"How bad is it? Have the medicae had a proper look?"
Hans said: "I'll live, Colonel. A few sections of intestine. The surgeon's already been in. Few days' rest and I'm back."
Imperial medicine at the basic level was genuinely impressive — a gut wound that would have been a death sentence in earlier eras was, with available surgical capability, a matter of recovery time rather than survival odds.
Leo nodded, then looked at Kian.
"This farming idea — will it actually work? My soldiers grew up as factory workers' sons in the Hive. Most of them have never touched soil in their lives."
Kian was completely confident on this point. He'd grown up with dirt under his fingernails. How complicated could it be?
"Colonel — leave it to me. And we don't necessarily need our soldiers doing the actual farming. We provide security, we hold the land, and we find other people to do the cultivation."
His thinking was straightforward: recruit surviving civilian farmers from the rebel-held areas — people who knew the land and had the skills — give them protection from the other PDF units that would otherwise predate on them, and let them farm. The regiment provided the defensive perimeter. The farmers provided the expertise.
To scale it up properly, he also wanted agricultural machinery. He'd seen large farm equipment sitting idle in Whitepaper City during his visit to the Marshal — the rebels had no fuel to run it, and some had already been broken down for scrap metal, but others were probably still intact.
"I need to go to my fief and negotiate with the Marshal's people. A single agricultural machine does the work of thousands of labourers. Get enough of them running and our regiment can put hundreds of thousands of acres under cultivation."
Everyone nodded. The energy in the tent had shifted — from resentment to something more purposeful.
They worked through the details. Kian asked all three battalion commanders to survey their sectors for surviving civilians. If found, approach them carefully, explain the arrangement, offer protection in exchange for agricultural labour.
Leo proposed taking a small column toward the front lines to find concentrations of displaced civilians — there were bound to be large groups of them, people driven from their homes by the advance. Pull in several thousand at once.
Kian confirmed he could supply seed, tools, and fertiliser — his Underhive factories were set up for exactly this.
The plan was set. It waited on Zeppelin getting clearance from his superiors, after which the formal military farming operation could begin.
With the serious business concluded, the officers started talking about the fight itself.
Leo: "The regiment showed well today. Every man held his ground when it mattered. That's what a unit is supposed to be — brothers who cover each other."
Rudolphson looked less satisfied. "The 81st's commander is a combat veteran with a temper. We made an enemy today. Is he going to cause problems for us later?"
Leo dismissed this with genuine contempt.
"He can try. The man isn't titled — he's a regimental commander with no noble standing. The moment he realises our regiment has a Baron in it, he'll go from breathing fire to trying to find excuses to be in the same room. He just doesn't know yet."
He glanced at Kian with an expression that made Kian momentarily question who was nominally in command of this regiment.
Hans spoke up from his cot, with feeling.
"Those people don't see us as brothers. I stopped that convoy, I asked for one bag per vehicle — one bag out of a hundred — and they shot me for it. One bag."
Kian's expression went flat and calculating.
"If they're not going to treat us as brothers, we stop treating them as brothers. New policy: every hauler coming south through our sector pays three bags. One per battalion. That's the road rate."
Rudolphson frowned. "One bag got us a firefight. Three bags is going to bring armoured vehicles."
"Not if we do it correctly." Kian smiled in a way that did not suggest charitable intentions.
"When a convoy comes through, we stop them and explain that our sector has been suffering continuous rebel guerrilla activity — nighttime mine-laying operations, road damage, the works. We've been filling craters and clearing devices constantly. We can't do that work on empty stomachs. Three bags per vehicle, in exchange for safe passage through a maintained road. A reasonable exchange for services rendered."
Rudolphson: "What if they go around? The fields on both sides are open ground — they could just drive through the farmland."
Kian turned to Leo.
"Colonel — the regimental stores. We have anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, yes?"
Leo's expression went through a rapid sequence.
"You're treating other PDF units like rebel forces."
Kian spread his hands.
"They treated our battalion commander like a target. That moved them out of the brotherhood category.
Here's how it works: we lay a minefield along the verges on both sides of the road. Wire, warning signs, the full installation. The stated reason — documented in writing — is rebel guerrilla infiltration from the fields at night, requiring perimeter denial measures. That's a completely legitimate defensive use of mines. The paperwork is clean.
If some aggressive hauler driver decides to test the wire and gets himself killed, the inquiry finds us in compliance with standard defensive doctrine. We were protecting our sector from a genuine threat.
The minefield also happens to protect our farming operation. Stops other PDF units from rolling through and digging up whatever we grow."
Leo slapped his thigh.
"Do it. We have over five thousand mines in the regimental stores — various types. We put every last one of them around our farmland. And when they're gone, I'll requisition more from the logistics directorate. Entirely justified defensive requirement."
[End of Chapter 217]
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