Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  Okay, that means mutiny starting right in intel. Sure  .  .  .  if it were going to start anywhere, that would be the place.

  If this is happening, he planned it. If he planned it, what can I do to help? Because, yes, whatever he wants I will do.

  She gave off trying to hold the hatch shut with her back, plopping down on the thin but adequate mattress.

  So what is going on and how can I help? Obviously enough, one, they have the base below. Two, they are holding the families and ground crew hostage and will kill those hostages if the fleet doesn’t surrender. So, three, the surrender of the fleet is their goal.

  “How did he know that grabbing the families and base crew would cause mutinies?” she wondered aloud. Then she thought back to the book Cass Aragon, her handler, had given her. “When a group uses terror, even though it doesn’t work on the targets on which they use it, it is generally because they do not understand why it isn’t working, because it would work on them. Terror works best on terrorists.” Yeah, of course. I know the high admiral was involved in the attack that killed his first family. I’ve heard her weep over it. Though  .  .  .  was she weeping because she was involved and it was wrong, or because it didn’t work? The answer’s not obvious to me.

  More obvious, though, if I hadn’t gotten out of intel when I did the others would have taken me prisoner, maybe made me a hostage in my own right, for leverage over the high admiral and Richard. Why? Because it would work on Marguerite and Richard, and they knew it because it would work with them.

  I’m guessing, of course, but  .  .  .  the more I think on it, the more certain I am it’s a good guess. So  .  .  .  if I help him, use terror in my own right to help him  .  .  .  it’s likely to work.

  She felt a momentary but strong pang of guilt. Marguerite has treated me like a daughter and I owe her my life. Richard . . . poor Richard, I know he loves me but I simply cannot feel the same way. I never could have, but after meeting him I can hardly even pretend anymore.

  So  .  .  .  questions but no qualms; ungrateful bitch that I am, I am going to betray both of them.

  She stood up and thumbed open her locker, rummaging around inside until her hand fell upon the pistol given her by Claudio Marciano, down below when she was the high admiral’s messenger and liaison. It was a Helva 21S, an elegant nine millimeter, with Silverwood grips over a single stacked magazine, well suited to a dainty girl’s hand.

  Will your grandmother be proud of me now, General, I wonder?

  Fortress Isla Real

  You never knew from the deep inside, not without consulting a clock, what time of day it was outside. You also never knew, when you asked a Latin mechanic to fix something, just how he would fix it. Coat hangers and baling wire could generally be expected, though. Along with those you could reasonably expect that he would fix your problem.

  In fact, it was day. Inside, a very pleased Tribune Aguilar congratulated a rather proud mechanic because, also in fact, the problem was fixed.

  “Proud of you, son,” said Aguilar. “Damned proud of you.”

  As the tribune spoke, the shuttle hovered three feet above the concrete floor, magnetically suspended, with a pilot inside, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Now, how did you do it?”

  After the briefest of hesitations, it was the mechanic who answered, not the shamefaced software gweep standing nearby. “I rebooted it.”

  “What?”

  “Well . . . it was more complex than that, Tribune. The computer was covering up for a mechanical problem, a defective fuel pump, but it also had a problem of its own, in the control application. By rebooting it, the latter problem was fixed and we could see the former. The mobile machine ship produced the part we needed for the fuel pump, and . . . well . . . there she is.”

  “Ever think about maybe bucking for warrant or even officer?” Aguilar asked.

  The mechanic shook his head. “I’m here because my country called me. But, no offense intended, I hate this shit. I just want to get out and go back to my own little garage in Valle de las Lunas . . . if it’s still standing, that is.”

  Aguilar turned to his senior noncom, Centurion Martin, who was also grinning from ear to ear. “Tell the men we start countdown procedure in half an hour, and launch in accordance with the timetable.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Martin Robinson’s smile was positively beatific as he thought, Then it will be the nails, but on a low-gravity part of the ship  .  .  .  I’ll move my own quarters down there so I can hear her scream for days or maybe even weeks. I wonder how long someone could last on the cross on the hangar deck. Could be weeks. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  Robinson’s reveries were interrupted when his cell door opened, followed by the entrance of his chief keeper, Tribune Ernesto Aguilar, plus his physical training instructor, and the chief tailor for the base and fortress.

  “Time to get dressed, High Admiral,” said the former, using a title that was, at best, a courtesy for the nonce. “We have places to go and people to kill.”

  “Yes,” said the former and perhaps future high admiral, without specifically agreeing to get dressed or that there were, indeed, people to kill.

  In the event, it didn’t matter. The tailor had brought with him Robinson’s bespoke uniform, black silk with his old insignia, the latter salvaged from the threadbare uniform in which he’d been captured.

  With the tailor’s help Robinson put on the form of the uniform he hadn’t been allowed to wear since shortly after his capture.

  It feels good to be in command again, he thought, even though he was not and likely never would be.

  Uniforms had been made for both Robinson and his cocaptive, Lucretia Arbeit, the true marchioness of Amnesty. She wasn’t going on the shuttle, though; hers had been made in case Robinson had died. Instead, she looked out through the bars of her cell and said, “Get the bitch for me, too, Martin. Make the lower-class cunt suffer for everything we’ve suffered.”

  “Shut up, woman,” commanded Aguilar. “There’s a cross”—he pointed at two that had been erected outside the cells—“waiting for you, if we need to use it.”

  Wearing the look of a trapped animal and giving off an inarticulate cry, the former marchioness slid down, away from the bars and out of view behind the cell’s thick door.

  “Come with me, High Admiral,” Aguilar ordered, then led the way down a long corridor to a thick-walled concrete hangar bay.

  Inside the bay masses of sandbags—insurance against a near miss or minor penetration during the attack on the island—were piled against the walls. Robinson didn’t know, but guessed, that they’d once been piled around the shuttle—his personal pinnace—the Balboans had captured in Pashtia and for which they’d found a control model in a storage closet of an old museum.

  The shuttle, itself, looked different. It took Robinson a moment to realize why. They’re added extra armor to it, ceramic plates I suppose they must be. Well, given that the ships are not completely devoid of some self-defense capability, this makes a certain sense. And, since I am going up on this one, I’d just as soon that we not be shot to bits by one of the antimeteor cannon.

  There were also, in an adjacent area cleared of both shuttle and sandbags, twenty-two men, two pilots and twenty strikers, donning fairly advanced space suits. He didn’t know, but could guess from their glum expressions, that the other men, the ones helping those twenty-two, had been trained for the mission but not chosen to go on it. The suits were Volgan-manufactured jobs, Model SPM-7b, with their extravehicular activity modules already stowed aboard, and almost as advanced as anything produced on the world of Terra Nova. The Volgan suits’ off-white material was hidden behind black silk little, if at all, different from Robinson’s own uniform.

  While some were putting on their suits, still others, those not selected for the mission, loaded various incomprehensible items aboard the shuttle. Given the time between the it
ems being carried aboard and those who did the carrying emerging, Robinson figured they were probably stowing the things inside with some care. Some, too, he noted, were very heavy, requiring anything up to four men to port them about.

  The suits were generic, but had the means, pressure sensors and inflatable bladders, to be fitted to the individual wearers. This Robinson discovered when Aguilar led him to his own suit, which was then fitted to him. He noted the name on the suit wasn’t “Aguilar” or “Lopez” or “Ruiz” or “Velez,” but said, simply, “Earthpig.”

  Because they couldn’t know in advance, I suppose, if they’d have to crucify Lucretia or myself to get the full cooperation of the other. That, and to let whoever ended up wearing this suit know in full that they despised us.

  There were other differences: the others had various weapons and other paraphernalia attached to their suits, where Robinson’s had none, while each of the strikers mounted a substantial module on the back, where Robinson’s and the pilots’ were much smaller. On the other hand, his and the pilots’ modules had a couple of D-rings attached that the others’ did not.

  “There was no real need and no good way to train you,” Aguilar explained, “nor any particularly good reason to trust you. Once they put on the EVA modules, my strikers will have the ability to maneuver outside the shuttle. You, on the other hand, we’ll just haul over by rope once we have a secure area.”

  ‘I see.”

  “Do you? Do you understand your part in this?”

  “My part is mostly done with teaching your pilots to fly the shuttle, with making a recording, and with showing you how to tap in to the internal systems of the Spirit of Peace. I don’t really even understand why you want me along.”

  “Me,” answer Aguilar, “I don’t necessarily want you along. But Carrera thinks that, if there are any holdouts in the Peace Fleet, then seeing you transmitting a surrender order on the bridge will persuade them. Maybe he’s right, too.”

  “And I, of course, will transmit that order because . . .”

  “Nails,” answered Aguilar, simply.

  “Ah, yes; I had almost forgotten.” Not for an instant. “Nails.”

  Everyone was seated, helmeted, and strapped down. The great steel doors opened with the shriek of rust and not enough lubricant. As they did, they exposed a long tunnel with a glimmer of light at the end. Through mystical and arcane manipulation of the controls—something Robinson understood and mentally tsk ed at—the pilots lifted the shuttle about two feet off the ground and started in on a slow course down the tunnel.

  The shuttle lacked windows but the forward display was a very high-resolution screen. It had an airlock that was too small for the suits, so the cargo hatch had been left open. Air pressure would drop inside as it did outside. All the men were connected to a life-support system that wasn’t integral to the shuttle.

  Aguilar watched the view screen as the thin glimmer of light became larger and brighter with each forward meter. Finally, the walls of the tunnel disappeared, to be replaced by a mix of shattered jungle and man-made moonscape, together with a good deal of jungle still standing and even some fair number of cows grazing amongst some cleared areas or drinking from shell craters.

  As soon at it emerged, the shuttle nosed up and began building speed for space. A couple of unanticipated coughs and shudders in the system set everyone’s—in this case to include Robinson’s—heart to racing, but these settled out into a fairly smooth flight.

  It was smooth, that is, except for the weightlessness. Yes, yes; the men chosen for the mission had all done a good deal of freefalling and training in a zero gravity plane during its unpowered phase. It was always a little different, though. At least one of his legionaries, thought Aguilar, was bent over slightly as it ready to hurl.

  “Don’t even think about it, Velez,” the tribune said into his comms. “Remember you can’t use a barf bag.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the half-stricken trooper.

  “Eighteen minutes out, Tribune,” the senior pilot, Lopez, announced, turning his head over his right shoulder. “Give ’em the message?”

  “Do it.”

  Lopez turned a dial and pressed a button. Instantly, the message went out, “This is High Admiral Martin Robinson, the true high admiral of the Peace Fleet. Having been betrayed by the current imposter, Marguerite Wallenstein, I am only now able to return to you. Your bridge crews can check my transponder easily enough and prove it is my shuttle.

  “I hereby order the arrest of that same traitor, Wallenstein. I have also agreed to the surrender of the Peace Fleet in order to preserve the lives of our families and other noncombatants on Atlantis Base. Once again, we will save our people at any cost. Once again, the traitor, Wallenstein, is to be arrested or, if she should try to escape, shot. I am coming, with an escort. Let none of the minions of Wallenstein resist, they will be killed.”

  Without let up or break, the message repeated, “This is High Admiral Martin Robinson, the true high admiral of the Peace Fleet . . . ”

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  Esma played with the hammer of the pistol while she tried desperately to think. And so I have the means to do exactly what? I am one girl. I cannot be in two places. So, go to the ship’s bridge and take it over or go to the admiral’s bridge and take that.

  I can’t, I just can’t, do the latter. Richard I can betray and face him as I do it. At least I think I can. But Marguerite? I cannot face her. Richard, I care for but do not love. My mother in all but name, the high admiral, I do love.

  Besides, she thought, from the ship’s bridge I can isolate the high admiral from the rest of the fleet, while from her bridge I cannot control the ship.

  She chambered a round in the pistol, just as Maresciallo Bertholdo had taught her, back in Santa Josefina. With a little more rummaging she found the spare magazine and tucked it into a pocket.

  Esma took a deep, steadying breath, then undogged the hatch and stepped through. The red alert lights were still flashing and the sirens now blaring, but there was something else. Following some squelching, some squealing, and a good deal of static, over the public address system came a voice she’d never heard before: “This is High Admiral Martin Robinson, the true high admiral of the Peace Fleet . . .”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.

  —Niccolo Machiavelli

  Revenge is a moral obligation of the first water.

  —Patricio Carrera

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  Esma thought furiously. What does it mean  .  .  .  the implications  .  .  .  of the old high admiral coming back, seemingly from the dead? Now that’s one my high admiral never let me in on. But what ship is he headed to? Don’t be a ninny, Esma; this is the flagship; he’s coming here.

  When he gets here, I think she’s a dead woman, one way or the other. The only way to save herself would be to have the ship use its antimeteorite cannon to destroy the shuttle and order the fleet to surrender to save the people on Atlantis. And she cannot do the latter.

  Even so, she’ll try the former if only to save her skin. So  .  .  .  the controls for the cannon are on the bridge. And, since that’s where I’m going anyway, since he ordered the shuttle here—of this I have no doubt—then I am going to make sure it gets here.

  Though the crew in intel had tried to take her, the crew she passed on her way inward to the spine and forward to the bridge ignored her. Just as well; I really don’t want to kill any of my shipmates if I can help it.

  Once again she ducked into the ship’s hollow spine through the asynchronous open hatchway and then kicked her way forward to the bridge. As usual, she had to apply a degree of main strength to kill the limited Coriolis force she still had from the low-gravity deck.

  On her way forward there were, so it appeared, half a dozen pairs fighting or trying to. She passed two bodi
es, locked in a death grip, one with a crowbar driven through his sternum and the other with a knife buried in his belly. Blood seeped out before separating as individual droplets floating around the cylinder. These she tried to avoid but it just wasn’t possible. A few hit her uniform and a few more touched her hair and spread out from there.

  Madness, she thought. But  .  .  .  then  .  .  .  they’re fighting for opposed principles, aren’t they? Save their families on the one hand; defend the fleet and the Earth on the other. I suppose I should know about opposed principles if anyone does.

  Again, sections flashed past. She paid them no mind; her destination was ahead and only ahead. The whole trip the message echoed in her ears, “This is High Admiral Martin Robinson . . . they will all be killed.”

  She finally reached the airlock for the bridge—it was rarely needed as an airlock but was there anyway, against the day—and found it locked. Never before but, of course, with the mutiny  .  .  .  shit.

  Keeping her pistol carefully out of sight of the camera, she pressed the buzzer for admittance. In the small screen she caught a glimpse of the bridge. It was chaotic, but at least nobody was fighting. Yet, she cautioned herself. Yet.

  She heard Richard’s voice. “Who, what is it? Esma? Elder gods, what happened to you?” This was followed by, “Open the door you fool, open it now.”

  I suppose he’s seen the blood and thinks it’s mine. She quickly opened her tunic to push the Helva in and then resealed it.

  The wheel on the hatch spun and then the hatch swung outward. A strong pair of hands gripped her and pulled her through, before pulling the hatch shut behind her and spinning the wheel to dog it down, again.