Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  “Sarn’ Major,” Cleric announced, as he guided Carrera down the sharp and ragged slope of a large crater, “you ain’ gonna believe oo’s come callin’.” To Carrera he added, “You can take the blindfold off now, sir.”

  “Deserter is it, Cleric?” asked the sergeant major of the regiment, with disgust. “If so, he’s the dumbest bastard in two armies.”

  “You’re possibly half right, Sergeant Major,” Carrera agreed, lowing himself to sit on the muddy side of the trench. “About the dumb part, that is. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that you and my warrant could agree on that completely.”

  Not knowing he was repeating Cleric’s own words, albeit in a higher-class accent, the sergeant major said, “Holy shit!” before standing to attention and rendering a proper salute.

  Not really expecting that—Should have, I suppose—Carrera stood again and returned it, then returned to his seat.

  “Sergeant Major,” he said, “we need to talk. We seriously need to talk.” Glancing at his watch, Carrera added, “And at this point we’ve got a bare forty-three . . . no, forty-two minutes to do it in.”

  “If I may ask, sir; to do what?”

  “Hopefully arrange some way to keep from all of us getting killed,” Carrera replied, “Ummm . . . RSM . . . ?”

  “Ayres, sir, RSM Ayres.”

  “Thank you. Me, I guess you know.”

  The RSM said, softly, “Oh, yes, we know,” and then shuddered slightly. Carrera didn’t think it was about him, exactly, or even his being there, but something else, maybe something having to do with the battle.

  “We’re not surrendering, sir.” The RSM pointed at a radio with an obvious bullet hole in it. “Shot it myself, sir, when the order to surrender came. We’re not interested.”

  “All your officers are dead?” he asked. No sense saying that the corporal let that information loose. That wasn’t changing the subject; that was an attempt to figure out if there was anyone above Ayres who might surrender.

  “That, or badly wounded, a couple, and unconscious,” Ayres replied. “All but one, sir. Major McQueeg is in a deep bunker, playing with himself last I saw. He . . .”—and there was that shudder again—”he broke during the bombardment.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Carrera said. “The Tauran Union Expeditionary Force was under a bombardment that may as well have been nuclear.”

  “I never thought especially well of the major, anyway,” said the RSM. “But we . . . all of us”—there was a worse shudder, this time, and maybe an impossible glisten in the eye—“we mostly collapsed. For a while, anyway, we did.”

  “Then don’t be too hard on yourselves, either. I’m telling you, that bombardment was as fierce as anyone has ever faced. There’s no shame for anyone in whatever it did to them. None whatsoever. I mean that.

  “And, besides, you bounced back well enough, didn’t you? This will help some more.

  “Excuse me a moment,” Carrera said, reaching into the satchel. From it he selected by feel a can of legionary rum. This he pulled out and set on his knee, then reached in for a P-15 folding can opener.

  “I’ve got a cup for myself,” he said, genially. “You folks?”

  “I do,” answered Cleric. “RSM, where’s yer own? I’ll fetch it.”

  “That’s the real legionary stuff?” Ayres asked, then told the corporal, “In my pack; where else?

  “We captured some early, not long after we landed, but haven’t seen any in a while. It’s pretty ferocious.”

  “It’s supposed to be cut with water, yes,” Carrera said, working the can opener to create two thin slices in the top of the can of rum. “And it’s strong, but you could mix it in with loose shit and be sure that all you were drinking was the shit; no microscopic bugs would survive it. And it doesn’t do bad things to your arteries, like the purification pills do.

  “Corporal?”

  Cleric who, by this time, had retrieved Ayres’ enameled tin cup and his own, passed the two cups over.

  Carrera hesitated a moment. “Hmm . . . let me think . . . forty-eight ounces . . . call it about . . . ah, fuck it, we’ll make it healthy; there’s not enough for everyone to have a decent last drink no matter how I ration it. Or . . . how many men still fit, RSM?”

  “I can’t tell you that, sir.”

  “I understand,” Carrera agreed, “but surely that only counts if I am going back.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Shaking his head, Carrera answered firmly, “No. I’ve had enough. I’ve done enough. I’ve been at the core of wickedness beyond your wildest imaginings, always for what seemed a good reason, of course.” Carrera’s eyes grew distant for a moment. “Yes, it always seemed like there was a good reason.” He shook his head, recovering composure. “And orders I’ve already given are going to add considerably to what I’ve already done, too.

  “In about . . .” he consulted his watch, “call it thirty-five minutes, now, the bombardment’s going to start again, much heavier though, this time. If you men are willing to stand it and die to the last man then I’d be proud to stay here and die with you.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, sir,” said Ayres. “Not your regiment. Your honor isn’t involved.”

  “It’s not about my honor, RSM; it’s about what I said. I’ve just had it. If I could have talked the Die-hards into surrendering then maybe, just maybe, I’d have brightened my soul enough. But I can see already that that’s just about impossible. So here I stay.”

  Ayres remonstrated, “Sir, we can’t surrender. Our colonel had us bring the colors with us here. ‘Colors that aren’t risked are useless,’ he said, ‘meaningless and valueless.’ I suppose he had a point. But just surrender and give up the colors that are—at least in parts of them—over four hundred years old? That came from Old Earth with the regiment? For an enemy’s children to point at and gloat over? Not a man here but wouldn’t rather die than live to see that.”

  “I see,” Carrera agreed, reaching to take one of the tin cups. Into this he poured a couple of fingers of rum, maybe two ounces’ worth. He handed that cup to Ayres, saying, “Now be sure to cut it fifty-fifty or it will be undrinkable.” He filled up the corporal’s cup to the same level, but without repeating the warning. Then he took his own cup and canteen from their pouch, poured, put the can down, and then added a good deal of water to it.

  Taking a sip he announced, “Perfect. Now where the hell, RSM, did you get the idea that we’d take and keep your colors?”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s just not our way. There’s not even a slight trace of honor or glory in humiliating a foe who fought hard, well, and bravely. It would demean us, make the victory cheap and hollow.

  “No, no, RSM; if the Fifty-seventh decided to spare itself to fight another day, maybe against an enemy that really needs a good dose of killing, it would march out of here with its colors flying, drums beating—my warrant is trying to scare up some drums, but I can’t promise—and a bullet each held in their cheeks.”

  Ayres looked intently into Carrera’s face and saw no guile there. Without first bothering to cut the rum, he took an unhealthy slug, then began to cough uncontrollably. After a thorough back pounding from Cleric, the RSM asked, “Are you serious?”

  Carrera stared him straight in the eyes and answered, “Never more serious in my life.”

  “So fill up your glasses,” Ayres recited, softly, “And show your regard, by drinking the health of each jolly Die-hard.” A more gingerly sip followed that.

  “Cleric,” said the RSM, “round up for me the senior noncom in each company.”

  “Best be quick, Corporal,” Carrera added. “And take the rum and cigarettes to pass out!”

  To Ayres Carrera added, “There’s not really enough rum to go around, but my warrant officer, Jamey Soult, should have more by the—”

  “Soult, is it, sir? Soult?” Ayres began to laugh near uncontrollably. In between guffaws, he could get the words out, “Of fucking . . . course . .
. it would have . . . just have . . . to a be a Soult . . . who’s going to . . . watch us surrender . . . a Soult!”

  One of these days I’m going to have to ask someone what’s so funny about this regiment surrendering in front of a Soult.

  Soult answered, “Roger,” then replaced the microphone on its hanger and leaned back against the side of the Ocelot. The fucking Pied Piper, he thought, scowling as he leaned, arms folded, against the hull of the Ocelot he’d retrieved. There hadn’t been enough room in the four-by-four for all the rum and cigarettes. He thought he heard singing, too, but, if so, it was very soft. It grew louder though, as the singers began to emerge from the sound-absorbing trees and stumps.

  In the warrant’s view, Carrera marched out of the smoke and mist at the head of a column of Anglians. Between the column, three across, and himself, a color guard carried and escorted two banners. The Anglian rank and file . . . Well, them and the others who attached themselves to them, they’re shot up pretty badly, a good chunk of them, but no one’s letting anyone fall behind and anyone who needs help, a friendly shoulder or whatever, is getting it. And, I guess I did hear  .  .  .

  “. . . a rampart or guarding a trench

  Neither bullet nor bayonet our progress retards,

  For it’s all just the same to the jolly Die-hards . . . ”

  I don’t know how he gets away with this shit, I really don’t. But I suppose I’d better produce the rum and cigarettes he asked for. Oh, and tell him that the package to the ALTA was delivered, safe and sound.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “But when Islam emerged it put slavery into order, by limiting it to legitimate wars between Muslims and their enemies...the female prisoners of wars are ‘those whom you own’...in order to humiliate them they become the property of the army commander, or of a Muslim...and he can have sex with them...”

  —Suad Saleh, Theology Professor (female)

  Al-Azhar University, Cairo, 12 September, 2014

  Oppenheim, Sachsen

  Stomach pained and churning, as it often was these days, Khalid stood by the main window to his small rental, watching the drops splatter on the pavement while runnels ran down the glass planes. He’d found himself standing there quite a lot, of late, worried to his innermost core.

  Khalid’s reflection on the glass, thin, opaque, and somewhat indistinct and distorted, caused him to shake his head. So many faces now; so many identities. I wonder if I could even pull myself out of a police lineup. Surely there are people in the world who look more like the real me than I do now.

  It was a fair complaint. Since coming to work for Fernandez and the legions, when they were in Sumer, Khalid had gone under the knife more times than he cared to think about. Now, his nose thinned and shortened, his chin built up, his hair dyed blond, and blue contacts in his eyes, his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. They’d done something to his eyes, too, Fernandez’s plastic surgeons; the shape and spacing seemed wrong. Hell, even his native Sumeri Arabic had acquired a Balboan accent.

  “Bad enough,” he muttered, “that Arabic comes harder to my mind than Spanish; at least I am domiciled in a Spanish-speaking country. But how much worse that these Sachsens’ guttural German sounds more native to my ears than my own tongue, too?”

  Those complaints really weren’t at the core of Khalid’s stomach issues, issues he had begun to suspect might be more than just emotional ones. No, what was killing him was the waiting.

  How many more days or weeks until Fernandez gives me the word? wondered Khalid. These people—neither of these people—are my own, but I’ve gotten to know them. The Moslems could fuck up a wet dream, timing-wise, and will always either strike before they’re ready or delay until it’s too late. The Sachsens  .  .  .  they’re under the control of a political mob that seems to hate their own country, yes, but there are some stout folk, good men, brave and strong, among them, too. And even a few virtuous women, wonder of wonders. If the Moslems are held back too long, the Sachsens will figure it out. Who knows what happens then? If the Moslems strike too soon  .  .  .  well  .  .  .  maybe in this case that would be better for them. Which, I suppose would matter to me if I didn’t hate their guts on general principle.

  I can understand Fernandez and his crew keeping me in the dark, me and the other agents. But it’s hard to tell what I should do or when  .  .  .

  It’s worse, too, because this isn’t really my thing. Machine gun a bunch of senior Moslem leaders in the course of what’s supposed to be a news interview? Just sheer fun. Blow a manhole cover through somebody’s asshole? Oooo, look at the pretty colors. Cut the throat of some terrorism-supporting Sachsen bimbo? No problem. Mail a few letters, get some grids for long-range cruise missile targets? Easy can do.

  Even smuggling arms was pretty easy, and pretty easy even in some very large quantities. But coordinate a bunch of Islamics for an uprising? Not really my forte; no training, no experience, no real skill . . .

  Off in the distance, muffled by rain and window, wall, street, and tree, Khalid heard a series of pops, like fireworks. He thought little of it until police sirens began sounding, those being a lot louder and much more clear, and coming from all over.

  “I wonder . . .”

  There was really no need to wonder long; a few steps to the television, a flick of a switch, and there, on screen, was a familiar scene. It was the front of one of the mosques to which he’d delivered arms. In front of the mosque lay a pair of dead and bleeding Sachsen police officers. A lone man, bearing a Volgan-made rifle, himself black-clad and face covered, stood over the corpses.

  But, to give the devils their due, they do understand using the media to get their message across. At least, no one seems to be objecting to that camera and what I suppose must be the news team around it.

  As if to confirm Khalid’s suspicion, the camera shifted to a rather pretty and admirably slender blonde Sachsen news reporter. She was standing next to another rifle-bearing man, likewise black-clad and with a scarf wrapped around his face.

  I’d best report in.

  Headquarters hadn’t had a lot to say, really. But they did allow that I should confirm how widespread the rebellion is. So  .  .  .  take my own rifle, put on my markers, and head on over to the big mosque.

  Khalid watched as from the Oppenheimer Mosque, in groups of ten, or twenty, or fifty, or one hundred, give or take, young men—quasi uniformed but fully armed—poured forth into the streets and began the hunt for their quarry. For the most part, this involved the police and such reserve armories as were to be found in the city. They also had lists, prepared by their imam, of those whom he considered the most depraved of Sachsen citizens to be found in the town. This included large numbers of atheists, Tsarist-Marxists, and Kosmos, to the extent those categories differed. From the point of view of the imam and his minions, their fighters would merely be purging this world of the very people condemned in Allah’s Own Voice, in the Quran. From the point of view of Khalid, Fernandez, and Carrera, on the other hand, they would be purging those most responsible for the existence of the Tauran Union, as well as those most likely to object to the Union’s abject surrender to Balboan demands.

  Sometimes, thought Khalid, even devout enemies can find common ground. And on that happy note, best to head home.

  ***

  Two Miles East of the Oppenheimer Mosque,

  Oppenheim, Sachsen

  Yes, indeed, thought Khalid, glancing up at the bodies dangling by their necks from the lampposts of the town’s main thoroughfare, sometimes even the most devout enemies can find common ground.

  The scene was lit only by firelight, the fire reflecting off the smoke and clouds lingering above. There was a smell of pork on the air. Of course, it might be pork or it might be people. If I had to guess  .  .  .  people. Lots of fires after all. Lots.

  Above the bodies and the fires, one of Terra Nova’s moons—Bellona—slowly crossed the sky.

&nb
sp; Along with the solid aroma of pork, mostly at least a bit overdone, there were screams on the air. Some, the more masculine ones, seemed to be cut short quickly. The feminine screams went on and on, so much so that they never seemed to end. In with those were what he recognized as the sounds of fighting, with different calibers and types of firearms lashing back and forth, distinct and distinctly menacing.

  His eyes came to rest on the darkened and swollen face of one of the dangling corpses. He recognized the face despite the swelling, the eyes being shut, and the lips twisted into something like a grimace. Below the face the thin cord the lynch mob had used had dug deeply into the neck.

  “Easy death or hard?” Khalid wondered aloud, staring up while chewing his lower lip. “Probably hard; whatever pain you felt, it must have been hard to be strung up by the very people whose cause you’ve championed your entire political life. Tsk; what a terrible thing it must have been to realize your mistake just that much too late.”

  Dismissing the dangling corpse with an indifferent shrug, Khalid slung his non − serial numbered rifle over his right shoulder, turned away, and set off for his apartment. It was time and past time for him to wash the dust of Sachsen from his feet and exfiltrate back to the country he thought of as home, Carrera’s Balboa.

  In his pocket was a safe pass, signed by the imam of the big mosque. In three languages it said, “This man is serving God by bringing arms to the servants of God. Let him pass for the sake of your souls and the advancement of our cause, and God’s.”

  Just to make sure, for those who tended to shoot first and ask questions later, Khalid’s left arm sported a green cloth armband with the words, “There is no God but God” in Arabic script on a white circle in the center of the armband. This was a sentiment with which Khalid, a Druze in the service of Balboa, could completely agree. Islam, on the other hand, he sneered at and despised.