REMEMBRANCE

A short story by R Roger Bedford

"Ten thousand gobs lay down their swabs to fight one sick marine" "Ten thousand more stood up and swore, Twas the damndest fight the´d ever seen"
-Tell It To The Marines, Lon Chaney, 1927



New Gallipoli was a nowhere duty station on a backwater planet whose population enjoyed the sport of war.

The brown skinned people of the Northern dessert tribes would wage guerilla war against their paler yellow skinned southern neighbors. In return and retribution the yellower southerners would feign flanking attacks at northern villages and camps. Generally, neither side inflicted death or even serious destruction. This was war as sport, not to the death battle.

Together the two indigenous races would war against any alien power which sought to establish itself upon the terra firma called, by the Empire, New Gallipoli. In this matter of ‘foreign devils’; however, the natives of new Gallipoli acted as one and with one mind. The invaders which occupied their land must die or be driven off world, period, the end.

Several planets of the Empire had legations, consular offices and embassies in the main cities of the main land masses on the planet. Because of the prevailing attitude of the population, these subject planets were allowed to keep their own small forces to show the colors, fly the flag and guard their various diplomatic missions, citizens and business interests.

Usually these military, and the diplomats they were to protect, were housed in special ‘foreign compounds’ in the cities to which they were assigned. The prevailing language was that of the home world, not the strange tongue of the New Gallipoli. The foods, clothing and entertainment were all that of home. No integration with the native population was attempted or desired. The attitudes on both sides made the armed troops of the alien civilizations necessary rather than a luxury.

Our story begins with a certain senior NCO assigned to the Terran Consulate as a squad leader. It includes his twelve man squad, along with several other attached specialists, a few natives of New Gallipoli, and citizens of other planets within the Empire.

The actions of this band of strangers were to be the stuff of legend, so much so that today, two generations down the road of history, they have become arcane apocrypha. Were it not for the fact that one of this squad was my grandparent, I too would be skeptical of the tale. As my grandparent had possession of, and bequeathed to me on death, certain ‘proofs’ I believe what I am about to share with you to be fact and not fiction.

When the Romulan Earth War came upon us, member planets of the Empire were short of troops. They began to call back various detached forces from the far reaches of the galaxy to serve as the core of trained soldiery for the new draftees and impressments drawn into the ever expanding military force.

So it was on New Gallipoli. Caledon recalled its embassy guard first, and shortly thereafter closed all diplomatic missions. Orion, Andorra, Baldrique, Quillion and Samara were next. Within four earth standard months, one hundred twelve earth days, all allied forces had departed. Terra, the Empire´s home world was the last to withdraw its troops. The warnings of Romulan incursion were a heavy cloud of rumor almost as dank and foreboding as the approaching winter on New Gallipoli.

That soon, very soon, the skies would darken with the Romulan landing craft and atmospheric fighter bombers and New Gallipoli would be over run by the occupation forces of the enemy of the Empire was a certainty. Soon.  But when?

The general order came through to the diplomats at the end of the month of Gadar the Gallipoli equivalent of terran October. The garrison would leave within two weeks. New Gallipoli would be left to fend with the Romulan occupiers by itself.

The citizens of Gallipoli viewed this as simply trading one strange colored occupation force with another. They would continue to harass the occupier and each other as usual. Only the face of the occupier would change. When they bored of that, they would again fight among themselves as they had for generations passed.

Twelve days into the evacuation preparations, senior Sergeant Maxwell Brandt was summoned into Lt Col of the Praetorian Guard, Pierre Frankton’s office.

Entering on command and snapping to attention, Brandt offered no salute, as neither he nor his superior were wearing covers indoors. Told to stand at ease, offered and refusing a glass of the sweet tea that was the staple beverage on Gallipoli, Brandt awaited his officer’s pleasure.

“Sgt.”, the colonel began, “we have a situation. It seems that several of the out posts assigned to the business and cultural exchange programs farther in country have not reported in to barracks to be processed off planet. We do not know if Romulan special ops troops have already landed in the out country secretly, if the locals have captured and killed the small tactical units or if they are simply out of communication with this HQ for atmospheric or equipment problems.

“What I want,  Sgt., is for you to pick no more than twelve good men, ones handy with projectile weapons, phased energy weapons and the old fashioned edged weapons, and take them on a circuit ride of the outposts, mission stations and start up industrial sites. I want you to bring back every Terran Trooper and Praetorian Guard you can find, so that we may evacuate this forsaken chalky backwater before the Romulans get here. Do you understand your orders, Sgt.?” The colonel concluded.

“Clearly, Sir,” Brandt responded. He then asked if he could add two corpsmen, two hover pilots and a scout to his twelve riflemen. Senior Sergeant, the rank replacing Gunnery Sergeant in the Empire’s Combined Forces, wore five stripes, three up and three down. Brandt also requested a three stripe Sergeant to go as his second in command. The band grew in number to nineteen with the added specialists.


Frankton had no objection to the request. His one stipulation was Brandt had only 96 hours to ride the circuit round up as many of the stray troops as possible and get everyone back to the Terran Embassy barrack for departure from the planet.

Brandt returned to the company compound and made his selection. A three stripe sergeant named Bermudez, known for being a stickler in the arts of ‘old school weaponry’ had ten troopers in his squad honed so sharp that the Company joke was they never needed to shave, the hair sliced off as it grew. A First Class Corpsman named Jenks and his partner Broomhall were told to round up every medical tricorder and surgical, battle trauma and survival replicators needed to treat wounded in country. They would have their own medical hover car. Motor Pool, even in this day and age old names stuck, provided two squad size fighting vehicles, ten man squad bay and turrets with phased and projectile capability. Brandt also requisitioned a light, two man scout hover, fitted with a belted projectile weapon in .308 caliber.

Fourteen-thirty hours the same day, packs filled, ammunition issued and protective personal armor fitted tightly to each man, the nineteen man unit left the Embassy barrack compound and headed for the hinterlands.

They were well away into the back country when, at 0630, the next day, The Romulan shock troops arrived in drop ships, surrounded the regimental compound, now holding slightly more than two hundred Terran Praetorians and took them captive without their being able to fire a shot. Surprise was complete.  Surrender was the only option.

Held in their own barrack for several weeks, the Praetorian and Terran troopers would be force marched to a labor camp in the south of Gallipoli and would spend the remainder of the conflict there doing forced labor.

Brandt and his tiny force escaped the immediate notice of the Romulan occupiers. Thermite bombs had for all intent and purpose rendered records of the troop concentration, weaponry and available mobility non retrievable. The Terran officers and NCOs were tightlipped and holding to name, rank and serial number. For the moment, Brandt would be able to go about his business while the Romulans, knowing the nature of the natives of New Gallipoli would write off the first of his many stunts to the native population.

But “Brandt’s Brigands” would not remain a secret to the Romulans for long and their harassment of and successful tying down of an entire Romulan garrison for the 3.2 years of the Romulan occupation would take on a life of its own. To a Terran Empire, suffering defeat at the Romulan hand, this little guerilla strike force would be the glimmer of hope a war weary populace would need. A shot in the arm. A boost for morale. Just what the Romulans did not want or need; a rallying point for the Terrans.

Strangers in a strange land do not often make the best irregular or guerilla soldiers. They look different than the native population, they have mannerisms that mark them as foreign, and they often speak the language of the locale poorly, if at all.  Max Brandt’s small unit was no different. In the grey tunic and black pant and boot of the Imperial Praetorian, with the green grey winter long coat over the uniform, the nineteen man unit sent to pick up strays in the back country may as well have been lit up in neon lights.

Only two of the nineteen spoke the local dialect of Gallipoli, and neither of them spoke it like natives. However, the next two added to Brandt’s growing roster would remedy this. Lamas Rednick, a Praetorian senior non-com who had taken his retirement to live with his Gallipolian native wife and their five children, saw the small column of uniformed men trekking through his market village. Stepping in front of the column and shouting the command “column halt’ in the voice of someone who has given the order more than once and expects immediate compliance Rednick achieved his goal.

Brandt came forward from the light scout car and seeing the very recognizable Rednick went to the hulking figure with right arm extended in greeting. Grasping forearm to forearm and then drawing the other in with left arm until the pair were in a hugging embrace, Brandt whispered  ‘what do you think you are doing, old man?,’ to Rednick.

Rednick responded, “probably saving your life, and your squad as well, get the hover cars under cover and your people into my barn and we’ll talk there.” Motioning to his left, where his wife had already opened the cavernous doors to a livestock barn and silently pointing up with his right thumb, Rednick indicated the squad should take shelter in the upper level hayloft of the barn. Several local townsmen, obviously friends and neighbors of Rednick, covered the vehicles with netting and then with detritus normally found in farm village back alleys. Brandt thought the smell might be off putting, but if it saved them from being spotted by the enemy, his people would live with the odor.

Rednick briefed Brandt and the others as best he could or knew from the information that had come over the broadcast communication before the Romulans seized and cut it off. The garrisons left at the Embassy and consulates were captured or being pursued and would soon be in custody. Native Gallipolian forces were being executed if found bearing arms. No police force no armed forces and no privately held weapons would be allowed by the Romulan occupiers. Armed persons not Romulan were to be shot on sight. It was Romulan standing order number one for this occupation.

Brandt asked about the small detachments he’d been sent to locate. Rednick laughed and told Brandt that he knew personally that fifteen Terran Troopers and eight Praetorians were within 20 klicks of the barn in which the men now sat. When word of the drop ships had come to the villages these men had been secreted away by natives of Gallipoli loyal to them. By this was meant wives, girlfriends, and or families of wives and girlfriends the men had taken while stationed on this planet. The natives may not be loyal to the Terran Empire, in any respect, but family was family, and if these soldiers from earth fathered their daughters children, then they were family, and thus protected.

This was how Rednick would also survive, his wife and children and he protected by the extended family. Brandt asked the older man how best to keep his own detachment safe.

“You cannot abandon your uniforms. To do so would allow execution as spies. However, you can strip your vehicles of their Terran markings, dirty them up a bit and try to blend into the traffic. Those long coats are a give away as well. We here on Gallipoli wear defalope skin garments in the winter. The oily hide side is drang near waterproof and the hair side traps your body heat to the point that it is summertime next to your skin. Hats and gloves and perhaps over boots of the same hide and you’ll stay warm enough. You can take the flashes from your issue gear and put ‘em on the skins. Maybe that will suffice as being ‘uniform’ and prevent your executions.” Rednick paused for breath, then he continued on with the ultimate challenge. “Traveling in a caravan like yours will draw attention, if there are no women and children with you. The nomads are always salvaging surplus hover cars, rigging them up as travel quarters and going about the out country in family packs. I’m suggesting you my wife, Malvek, myself and our kids along as cover. I can pass off most of you as my herdsmen going to the foothills to gather the herd into the low barns for the cold weather. Malvek has two sisters, one, Malren, a widow with two children, who would add to the cammo effect. The unmarried one, Malvok, is a veterinary medicine student. She could travel with your medics as part of a circuit riding medical team. You have sent those out to the country side many times while on planet, Brandt, so you know if they were caught by the Romulans out of communication with HQ and in the out country, they might stand a survival chance.”

The more Rednick spoke to the retrieval team the more Brandt liked what he heard. Most of all he feared the Romulans punishment on the market village if they found the people had aided the Terrans. Brandt wanted to be out and away from these people as soon as possible. Several of the native pack and riding animals, for Rednick and his extended family, and much non perishable food went into the squad bays of the fighting vehicles which more resembled farmers trucks than military equipment after being ‘decorated’ by the Gallipolian townspeople. The story would be that long before the Romulans landed this detachment had come and gone headed south toward the seacoast. This was drilled into the townspeople by Rednick.

To abet this story the IDFF units from the hover cars were removed, they had been switched off upon receiving the news the Romulans had landed, and placed in the saddle bags of several young female riders. Girls and young women often journeyed forth from their towns seeking employ and mates as the birthrate of female to male on Gallipoli was something akin to three girls for every boy born. Even in bad times these treks were the norm.

This was, therefore, not an uncommon sight on the roads between market towns and villages. The girls would find native vehicles, abandoned or ruined and place and activate the IDFFs on these wrecks. The farther the girls got to the south toward the seacoast, the better.

A meal eaten, the issue outer coats buried in a manure pit and the troopers, dressed in native defalope coats and hats, began to look and smell more like they belonged in the country side. At dusk, the reinforced squad and Rednick and his extended family would set out to find the Troopers and Praetorians known to be still in the area. Best of all Broomhall, the second medic, was a female and the same size as Malvek’s middle sister. She was outfitted head to toe as a Gallipolian female and would, with the help of the veterinarian riding in the ambulance pass herself off as an off world trained healer. This would explain her ‘accent’ to the nomadic peoples they encountered. “Oh, she’s even started to think in Standard,” became the standard patter the veterinarian Malvok would offer to the people they encountered.

It took three standard days, after the team departed Rednick’s village, to come across the first band of Imperial troops. Dug in on high ground and surrounding an abandoned Gallipolian temple the fifteen Terran Troopers looked haggard and rather rag tag. Their arms, however, were well cleaned, oiled and functioning perfectly. Under the cover of  the flag of the Terran Empire, Rednick and Brandt slowly walked up the hillside, hands open and arms away from their bodies, showing no hostile intent.

The sentries called for their squad leader, a senior corporal [two stripes up with a  dagger point down beneath them] appeared with his weapon at port.

“I am Sergeant Rednick, with me are Sgt. Brandt and the last Terran organized fighting force on New Gallipoli, we are here to offer you the chance to join up with us.” Rednick called across the fifteen yards separating him from the Corporal.

Brandt muttered under his breath, “Nice to hear you reenlisted, Lamas, but I’m still the NCOIC of this unit.” He then smiled a crooked smile and with right arm extended approached the Corporal. “Corporal, Max Brandt here, is there a place where we can sit down and get a sitrep from you?’

Jesus Sanchez could not believe his eyes. These people, dressed as nomadic Gallipolian natives, claimed to be Imperial troops. Thinking he had nothing to lose by talking, he invited the two sergeants, and only the sergeants into the compound. Over a native tea and around a warming fire, Sanchez heard the pair out and then told his own tale.

“Me and my men,” Sanchez began, “we been here for three weeks, four maybe. Our squad was detached from a platoon size patrol by the junior LT heading it. Told us to defend this piece of rock as a fall back position. Said he’d be back with the platoon in seven ten days. He’s overdue. We still wait.”

Brandt explained that most troops found out in the open had been scooped up shortly after the Romulan drop ships landed. Sanchez and his people probably did not attract attention as they were encamped. Probably the intelligence people in the Romulan HQ took Sanchez as a nomad setting up his winter camp. Brandt figured the Romulans would get around to checking such camps in a few days to a week, tops. Rednick nodded assent to this evaluation.

“We was left without communications gear,” Sanchez continued, “Got a civilian radio to hear the weather and news, but no two way. We heard about the landing, then the radio went silent for six hours and when it comes back up it is a Romulan speaking bad Gallipolian telling the locals they come as friends and to turning the ‘foreign devils’ from the Empire. We figure we’re cooked. So we dig in. Then you guys and your, begging your pardon sergeants but what exactly is that called, show up.”

Rednick chuckled, “We are calling it the Terran caravan for right now, that might change down the line.” Then getting quiet and serious, he added, ”Gonna stay or come with Corporal? We gotta know and quick.”


In the end Sanchez polled his people and they decided to stick it out where they were. Brandt and Rednick went back to their caravan and departed the area headed north west. The choice of Sanchez squad to stay caused two things to happen. First, a three man scout car sent out by the Romulans passed by the temple hill on routine patrol. One of Sanchez young privates, war nerves on edge snapped off two shots at the car. Shattering the wind screen and killing the driver the shots caused the car to veer out of control flip over and come down hard on the exposed turret. Driver and gunner dead only the co driver spotter was left and he had a radio.

Less than twenty minutes later there was not a survivor in Sanchez squad. Who escaped the massive aerial phasering of the hilltop was soon butchered by the honor blades carried by Romulan foot troops. No wounded taken for treatment. No prisoners taken for interrogation. Every Terran soldier on that hill was eliminated. This was to be an example, set for all Terran hold outs and gone guerilla.

Sanchez choice to stay and his rifleman’s bad thinking created the second consequence. Townsmen had talked, forced to talk actually, to the Romulan intelligence people who had come to Rednick’s little market village. The size of the party they described matched Sanchez troops by approximation. The local Romulan garrison commander relaxed just a bit and let the numbers crunch a bit in his brain. The four or five hours it took for the realization that no vehicles were captured and it was clear that the Terrans had left with vehicles was time sufficient for Brandt and his little group of Imperials to go to ground in a  series of caves along a seasonally dry river bed.



The vehicles hidden deep within the largest cave and the power systems turned off to disallow sensors to pick up mechanical signals, Brandt and his men went about the business of making their new base appear to be the winter camp of Gallipolian nomadic herdsmen.

Tents were erected, colorful dyed woven hair fabric tents such as used in the day time hot night time bitter cold arid environs of interior Gallipoli. Pens for animals were established. Defalope, gundion goats and a type of llama like pack animal called rhackna were penned appropriately by Rednick and his female family members. The young female riders, who had been sent out with the IDFFs were sent on to Brandt’s camp by the town folk, after the Romulan interrogators departed.

There they bore testimony of the Romulan occupation to Rednick and Brandt. Thus far only the Terran troopers left behind had been rounded up and either executed or interred. Terran civilians, be they wed to or in business with Gallipolian natives had been left alone to go about their business.

The girls had succeeded in placing and reactivating the IDFFs in some very creative and distant locations. One was mounted on an automated light rail turbo train which ran between the coastal port city and the Gallipolian capital several hundred kilometers inland.

Two others had been clamped to the hulls of Romulan drop ships. The last was mixed in with the cargo laded aboard a sea going tramp freighter. Whether this would send the Romulan pursuers on a merry chase of red herring leads, or not, Brandt could not determine. At least, he thought, the are not chirping away here on our cars and giving our location away.

Rednick offered the suggestion that the girls be allowed to stay and pair up with some of the men. If it was true that the Romulans would leave Terran civilians alone if intermingled with the natives of Gallipoli, then this would be an excellent cover. Two other female troopers from Bermudez squad ‘went native’ in all the camp began to take on the appearance of a nomadic family, replete with squealing children running about.

Paired riders, a local female and a male trooper, would ride out daily to gather intelligence and scavenge for food. Root vegetables and non perishables were premium items. Meat and milk they had fresh and on the hoof, in the pens.

Gradually, the Terran trooper’s skin, sun darkened and wind leathered, took on the appearance of the native population. This allowed them to more freely move about and the local language was learned by all, some of course better than others. The Romulans couldn’t tell by accent or dialect that the Terrans were not native to Gallipoli; the fear was the native collaborators who might turn the Terrans in for reward money or other favors from their Romulan masters.

First line troops were needed elsewhere in the battles with Earth and its allies. The garrison force left behind was still Romulan, but not warrior. They tended toward the bureaucratic and housekeeping end of planetary occupation rather than the discipline and military.

Brandt, Rednick and Bermudez allowed the false sense of security to bloom, by doing nothing for the 120 days between the occupation and the time the shock troops left for other battles. Once they were away and the garrison troops took over, however, the planned harassment and sabotage began.

‘Brandt’s Brigands’ tore up rails for the automated train line, causing wrecks. Freight was looted, particularly Romulan weaponry, food and clothing. Using Romulan explosive devices, Brandt and his troops blew bridges, water conduits, and one particularly impressive hydroelectric dam destroying the Romulan use of the Gallipolian infrastructure. Not all at once, of course, over a period of weeks and months, each raid planned and executed with sufficient time between to allow the Romulans to fall back into a false sense of security. One week it might be an intersection mined and blown as a column of Romulan troops passed by. Another it might be a bridge weakened so that heavy armor crossing it crashed into the riverbed below. Yet another might find the fuel cells on a transportation company moving Romulan troops about the countryside failing and stranding the soldiers hundreds of kilometers from their home base.

Many Gallipolian people were disturbed by these acts, but, many more were encouraged by them. Slowly, Bermudez and Rednick went further a field from the main encampment training local people in sabotage and subversion. Soon those locals began perpetrating their own small acts of rebellion against the occupier. Gallipoli, in the words of one Romulan bureaucrat, was becoming a pain in the rear to administer.

After two years of this the Romulans had enough. The Tal Sha’ir was brought in to quell the fomenting rebellion and to bring in or eliminate Brandt’s Brigands. The timing of the Tal arrival led to a humorous result. A raid of a new type had been in the long planning stages by Brandt, Rednick, Bermudez and several indigenous resistance leaders. A single Romulan quantum torpedo had been recovered following a munitions train derailment. These were not supposed to be set off within a planets atmosphere. The resultant electro magnetic pulse from the torpedo would destroy the functioning of every computer within a three thousand kilometer radius. This would shut down every communications system on the planet, and make the computer units on all vehicles inoperable.

The use of this weapon had been debated weighed pro and con and finally areed upon by all parties. Word was passed by the local Gallipolian resistance, cell by cell, person by person that this was coming. The Gallipolian people were prepared.

The Romulans were not. From atop the highest mountain on the continent, nine hundred kilometers inland from the sea the quantum torpedo was remotely detonated. Brandt chuckled at the fact that the computer used to set the warhead off was never to be used again. It would fry with all other electronics.
The blast was planned for 1730 hours local time. All Gallipolian families would be home observing the 1800 curfew set by the Romulans and thus in shelter. The Romulans would be out and about on patrol, over flying the land in their atmospheric patrol craft and in geocentric orbit above the planet in transports and warships.

The initial blast on the mountain top was just a flash of blue white flame. The shock wave, like an airborne tsunami, passed by Brandt’s caves with the roar of a jet propelled freight train. Then, there was only ghostly silence.

As the shock wave ebbed and it became safe to leave shelter, outriders began to filter into the cave which had become Brandt’s field headquarters. Craft near the ground had settled onto the soil or pavement and had not moved since. Romulans were seen trying to make their energy weapons work, they could not. Aircraft had plummeted from the sky and it was believed that the wave had passed out of the atmosphere and crippled several of the war birds and birds of prey in orbit.

Snipers in the resistance, using old fashioned projectile weapons, were picking off Romulan officers as they emerged from buildings or stalled vehicles to investigate the power outage. Of course, with communications also down, the Romulan commanders on scene could not report back to their superiors and request reinforcements. Nor could their troops replicate weapons to combat the ones the resistance was now using against them.

Two nights later, the ultimate effect of the blast was observed by those with field glasses or telescopes. Two Romulan space vessels, apparently caught in low orbit, decayed out of orbit and passed through the atmosphere. Looking like shooting stars at first, then one broke into five pieces and tumbled to the ground smoking and broken. The other plunged, largely intact, into the sea about fifty kilometers off shore. Neither ship had survivors.

This would prove to be the high point of Brandt’s Brigands. The heavy handed shock troops sent in by the Romulans within six weeks of the “Night of the EMP” began to clamp down upon the population by simply executing 20 people for every act of rebellion done by the resistance.

Entire villages were rounded up and held hostage. Word was sent out, written, verbal and over the restored communications network that if Brandt and his men did not surrender to the authorities those thousands being held would be vaporized. The dead line was noon of the next day.

Leaving Rednick to lead the ‘family’, Brandt, Bermudez and Jenks each took one of the riding animals and headed in to surrender themselves.

They simply disappeared. The Romulans never formally acknowledged they had surrendered or had been taken prisoner. There was never a show trial or court martial. No one could find a  record of any kind as to the disposition of  the trio. Of the sixteen others five had been killed captured or so badly wounded to be rendered non combatant over the years.
The other eleven had gone native. Married into Gallipolian families, had children, and simply blended into the country side.

The occupation would last fourteen more months until the Romulans withdrew from New Gallipoli. In all that time none of the other members of Brandt’s Brigands were located by the Romulan search parties.

Broomhall, the junior medic, married and bore three boys. One of them was to be my father. Her med kit, one of the few things to survive over the years was given to me when she died.

The EMP had scrambled some of the data in the old tricorder in the kit. Over time and with patience I was able to reconstruct most of it as told above.

Desperate times breed heroes fools and legends. While I am not sure which category Brandt falls into, New Gallipoli to this day has a planet wide holiday. It is a day of public mourning and repentance and is called on the calendar, simply, REMEMBERANCE.