by Tom Kratman
“Happenstance or not,” DeGrasse said politely, “The crux of the matter is that you have them and will deliver them to us now.”
“And our pardons will be granted?”
“Certainement,” replied the Quebecois major. Still standing over the tired commando, Colonel Bin Ra’ad partially clenched his hands, like talons.
“I’m betting that our deal is unlikely to be honored once those discs are in your hands,” replied Champlain, totally ignoring the Earther. “Unless our signed pardons are in my hands first.”
DeGrasse lit himself another cigarette and exhaled luxuriously.
“Exactly what position do you think that you are in, that you can dictate terms, Capitaine?” asked DeGrasse. The urbane major presented a small pistol and laid it on the table. “While it pains me to make so obvious a statement, I must insist that you produce the discs now, if you please.”
Champlain noted in passing that it was the same model as the gun that Gagnon carried. He looked back up and briefly imagined a bloody red crater where DeGrasse’s perfect left eye was. Fatigue slipped away and Champlain chuckled. The smile cracked the blood that had dried on his neck.
“Sure, you can shoot me,” he said. “Shooting is easy. But that doesn’t get you the discs because they aren’t with me.”
He leaned backwards, stretching his legs straight out under the table.
“If I don’t walk out of here, those discs will remain beyond your reach forever,” he said, casually crossing one ankle over the other. “I’m betting that since no one else has checked on us so far, you two are the only ones on this base who really know about the discs. And the UN survey mining assay data on them. Data that is supposed to be locked away in a UN vault in Atlantis and that somehow ended up in the personal cache of a Secordian general.”
“What nonsense is this?” Bin Ra’ad said angrily. “How do you know this? Those data are UN property, to be returned immediately!”
“Oh, maybe there are some other conspirators who know about the gold deposits documented in the assays,” Champlain continued, ignoring the indignant UN officer. “But Quebecois high command? The High Admiral in orbit? I rather doubt it. And after this mission and the loss of UN aircraft, you won’t get a second chance to retrieve the data from anywhere else, if it even exists.”
“That damned Quebecois whelp talks too much.” Bin Ra’ad ground his teeth. “If he were back on Earth I would teach him, and his father, a very long lesson at the end of a very short stake.”
DeGrasse looked at the automatic and then back up, meeting Champlain’s eyes.
“We appear to be at an impasse,” he said, tapping one manicured fingernail on the table top, a few inches from his gun. “What do you propose? For if as you suppose, we are the only ones who are aware of the mining assay data, then surely we are desperate men. Without the discs, I can’t imagine a reason why you should depart this room with that knowledge.”
“So we exchange one for the other, sir,” replied Champlain. “You prepare the signed pardon for the entire unit, even the dead. You then loan me a phone and I reach a party that will bring the discs to us here.”
“You dare . . .” repeated Colonel Bin Ra’ad. “You dare to dictate terms to me! Do you know what I can do to you, to everyone that you care about?”
“I can guess, Colonel,” said Champlain. “And that’s why we’re going to do it my way, or not at all.”
“Sir, sir! Wake up!”
Champlain blinked, his eyes gummy. Cool liquid splashed on his face and he raised a hand to try to wipe it away. It came away red with clotted blood.
“It ain’t yours, sir. C’mon, you with me?”
He rapidly came all the way back. Bowie was kneeling next to him in the wreckage of the library courtyard. Champlain drank a little water from the canteen at his lips.
That’s twice in one night I’ve been blown the fuck up, he thought.
In the background, a heavy machine gun stitched the compound. The faster rate of fire identified it as a Secordian weapon. The high-pitched cracks overhead meant that the rounds were still supersonic and the enemy was uncomfortably close.
“Sitrep, Senior Sergeant,” Champlain said, slightly slurring the words.
“Tha’ Secordians pushed those APCs all the way up and your team got hit by a stonk from the mortar. Gagnon’s dead. You’re wearing bits of him across your face. Tremblay dove on top of the hostage and caught a bunch of shrap in the neck, he’s down hard. Tha’ kid, he’s shook but okay, hell—Kuhlman even gave him his schoolbag back. Tha’ major took what’s left of Second to push back on the Secordian react squad. As soon as he left, a pair of sappers tried to blow the courtyard but I potted them before they could arm the charges.”
“Weapons Platoon?”
“Sir, there ain’t no more Weapons Platoon.” answered Bowie. “Major said that you, me and First are gonna head for the LZ. And we have less than fifteen minutes to get there before those fancy tilt-rotors leave without us.”
“How we set for the heavy stuff?”
“We’re just about out of ammo for the belt feds,” the noncom replied. “I used tha’ last of tha’ rockets to break contact in order to get here, just to have that crazy Earther go right back out t’tha’ road. If youse tired of living, we got those sappers’ demo charges and that’s it.”
“Right, help me up,” the lieutenant ordered, after a very brief pause. He and Bowie clasped forearms and Champlain stood all the way up, barely swaying.
“Everybody’s getting out, Razor,” he said. “Even the wounded. You organize movement to the LZ. Protect the package at all costs. I’m going for Kuhlman and Second and we’ll fight our way back to the LZ. If we’re not there in twelve minutes, you get the fuck out. Got it?”
“Sir, you’re a crazy fucker,” replied Bowie. “But it’s your call.”
“Royce, on me!” ordered Champlain. “We’re heading to the sound of guns.”
When radioman and his officer left the courtyard, Champlain was barely weaving at all.
The fighting was a lot closer than when Champlain had entered the building. Red tracers spurted overhead. Periodically they ducked when they heard the faint whistle of a mortar round descending on final trajectory.
Overshooting their objective, they nearly surprised the crew of a Secordian APC that was gathered on the open ramp of their vehicle, arguing on their radio. Hastily backtracking around a low brick wall, they crawled as fast as they could heedless of the skin on their knees and palms. Two hundred yards further on they came to an abrupt halt.
“Sans Peur!” came a harsh whisper from ahead.
“Coeur robust!” replied Champlain, completing the challenge and password. “Where is Major Kuhlman?”
“Over here, sir.”
They followed a Second platoon runner to the UN major who was peering through the sights of his high tech weapon, which projected a faint green glow on his brow. To either side, the remains of Second were strung out in hasty firing positions that blocked the road leading further into the Secordian base. Less than fifty yards away, an APC was stopped in the middle of the road, pale flames licking up from the open driver’s hatch.
A few still bodies lay beside it, illuminated by dull orange flames that dripped from the undercarriage.
“I thought I saw a couple friendlies scuttling about out there,” Kuhlman said conversationally, scanning the near distance. “Figured it was Bowie, not you.”
Intermittently, commando carbines answered the much larger, but diffuse, incoming Secordian firepower.
“Major, we got to get the fuck out, now!” said Champlain. “Birds are gonna leave in less than ten minutes.”
He glanced at his luminous wristwatch.
“Make that nine minutes!”
“Thing is, Wilsyn,” Hermann began to answer. He paused, and his weapon coughed once. “That’s eleven.”
“Thing is,” he repeated. “The moment we pull out, the Secordians are going to roll ‘hey
diddle-diddle’ right up this here road all the way to the LZ.”
He turned to look directly at Champlain, carefully keeping his modern weapon pointed down range.
“If they get line of sight to the extract birds then no one goes home,” he said exasperatedly. “My way, at least you were going to get out with kid and have a shot at freedom for your men. But without you, whoever Gagnon was working with will just roll over top of the survivors. No pardons for any of you, get it?”
“So we use these,” answered Champlain, shrugging out of his pack in order to reveal a linked pair of scratch built Secordian demo charges. “My radioman has two more.”
He tumbled out the crudely taped and fabric wrapped bundles. A coil of yellow prima cord and metered pull ring fuses flopped to once side, making Kuhlman wince.
“Well, ordinarily, given the choice between chancing a demo charge improvised by what passes for a demo expert on this planet and wrestling a bear,” Kuhlman said, more closely examining Champlain’s payload. “I’d say, bring on the b’ar. But . . .”
His fingers gently plucked at the connections, checking the integrity of the explosives while Champlain spoke aloud.
“We give them a final defensive fire, set the charges to stagger every minute and haul ass,” the Quebecois lieutenant urged. “By the time that the last one goes, we’re all the way to the birds. So fuck your b’ar, sir. Everyone goes home.”
It worked.
The first of the charges appeared to stun the Secordians and covered the withdrawal of the remains of the Second. After the first burst of speed, the dozen or so Rangers slowed from their initial headlong sprint into a more sustainable running pace. The slow motion ripple of subsequent explosions along the road must have done the trick.
Or near enough that Second just passed the crest of the rise that shielded the LZ before the first Secordian APC poked its snout through the wreckage of the Secordian base, emerging into view.
A dozen meters behind the survivors, Champlain brought up the rear, trotting alongside Kuhlman, Royce faithfully dogging his heels. The feeling of elation was stronger now. The rotors of the aircraft were plainly audible over the sound of small arms and the faster Second platoon Rangers were already descending towards the LZ.
Champlain flashed a wide grin at Major Kuhlman, who just shook his head, returning a more restrained smile.
The merest whisper overhead was all the warning that they had, before the faithful radioman tackled his officer to the ground, even as the triple hammerfist of mortars bracketed the road.
Three times. That’s three fucking times I’ve been blown up tonight. Fucking mortars. thought Champlain. He struggled to roll a soft, heavy weight off his back.
“Royce, hey Royce!” the commando officer said. “Hey, man, you all right? Get up, Royce!”
He felt warm wetness soaking his shirt.
Though the radioman didn’t answer, some slight movement suggested that Royce was alive. But when Champlain finished sliding out from under his man and carefully sat up, the gush of lifeblood spilling from the radioman’s gaping head wound was already slowing to a trickle.
Kuhlman was alive, however.
“Hey Wilsyn,” he said. “Now you got to beat it.”
“Let’s go, sir!” Champlain crawled the short distance between them. “We got to go!”
“Can’t feel my legs.” The UN officer coughed, and a light pink froth speckled his lip. “Can’t see too good; look there’s something you need to know.”
Champlain let him talk, but ditched his own equipment. It was the work of a minute to sling the Earth made gun across his chest, and then roll Kuhlman to a sitting position without hurting him too much. Despite Champlain’s best efforts to be gentle, a grunt of pain interrupted the major’s message, which he hadn’t stopped muttering. With a muscle-tearing effort, Champlain got Kuhlman’s weight across his shoulders and then straightened.
A few more shots whined overhead but the extract aircraft beckoned just down the slope. A spill of light shone like hope, and his Rangers were waving him on.
Bowie entered the room, Hebert’s backpack hanging negligently from one scarred hand. In the other an olive drab steel egg was partially visible. The grenade was tightly enfolded in the big man’s fist and no one missed the glaring detail of the safety pin missing from the striker device.
“Over here, Razor,” said Champlain, beckoning him closer. “Keep a hand on the bag, but let Major DeGrasse here have a look on the table.”
Cigarette dangling, the intelligence major flipped the bag open, the fleur-de-lis winking like quicksilver in the dull light. If the grenade bothered DeGrasse, it wasn’t evident. He looked inside where the CDs gleamed, easily visible. DeGrasse nodded to Bin Ra’ad.
“Here, you rotting extortionist!” the UN colonel said, angrily shoving a sheaf of paper over the table. “Take your pardon and pray that we never meet again.”
Champlain nodded as he read the top page, examining the signatures, the great seal of the Terran Novan nation of Quebec and the counter stamped endorsement of Atlantis Command.
“Colonel, that’s my earnest desire,” he said. “And given what Senior Sergeant Bowie is capable of, you might want to make that a mutual wish. In fact, the sergeant has had a particularly trying night. We all benefit from him not suddenly deciding to frag the officers that cost us three quarters of our team.”
He nodded to Bowie, who slowly relinquished his hold on the pack. He kept the grenade visible.
“Thank you Capitaine Champlain,” DeGrasse said, replacing the flap on his pistol holster. “You have my word that it ends here.”
“I know what you word is worth, Major,” Champlain said, folding the pardons and tucking them inside his blouse.
A sudden bitterness invaded his tone for the first time.
“And I know why you arranged this entire mission. In fact, I’d wager these pardons that the only ones who were supposed to know about the existence of the UN assays were Gagnon, the kid’s father and you two. You dare not tell anyone else or you would get in trouble. Not for raiding Terran Novan gold from under our noses but because you didn’t invite anyone else in. The High Admiral would certainly take exception to missing his cut, no?”
“As you say,” replied DeGrasse. “But this business is complete. Take your pardons and your men and enjoy your life. Bon soir.”
Champlain rose and walked to the end of the hut, the papers crinkling audibly under his chin. He held the door for Bowie, who continued to look at each of the two officers.
The fingers on his grenade hand whitened for a moment.
Bin Ra’ad sneered but otherwise remained silent as the tall commando slowly backed to the door.
Outside, they quickly exited the checkpoint manned by a pair of Security Police.
“You mind sliding the pin back in that bombe, Razor?” asked Champlain.
“Naw, sir, I don’t mind,” said Bowie, fishing in his pants pocket for the cotter key that would secure the grenade’s bail. “I just wish that I’d tossed this into the hooch as we walked out. Really chaps my ass that those spooks are gonna make money off our dead. Doesn’t feel right.”
“Here’s your pardon Top,” said Champlain, tapping his blouse. “That should feel pretty right. Besides, they’ve got the CDs. I didn’t say shit about promising them the data.”
“Huh?”
“Before I got Kuhlman out,” Champlain remarked. “He told me what was what. During the confusion when we got mortared the first time, he used the ranging laser on his fancy gun to light up the discs.”
“So what, sir?” replied Bowie.
“Kuhlman was an Earther, trained on high tech,” said the officer. “The UV range finder was in the same wavelength as the lasers used to record the data. He scrambled the CDs so that the data was trashed without leaving any marks. It’ll just look like they didn’t get copied properly. That’s on the kid.”
“The kid that we thought was the whole point of the op?�
� Razor started laughing. “The kid that already pissed off that tall UN asshole?”
“Yeah, the kid that I risked my life, your life, all of our lives for,” Champlain shared a final, feral grin. “I’ll risk it all, risk us all, for la belle patrie, or to save a hostage. But, I’ll be damned if I’ll do it so some UN Earther or SecPol can make a fortune. And Kuhlman? He felt the same way.”
INTERLUDE:
From Jimenez’s History of the Wars of Liberation
It is altogether too easy for us, from the vantage point of almost five centuries, to look back on the old UN, the predecessor of Old Earth’s Consensus, as being nothing but a hive of corruption and villainy. Certainly there was a good deal of that, but also there were good men on the other side, as the wars began to unfold, fighting well in a bad cause. Sometimes, they even fought well in a good cause. . . .
With control of space, and no genuinely heavy manufacture anywhere on the planet in the early years—small engines, flintlocks, wooden ships, and a little surface collection of petroleum were the height of industrialization on Terra Nova for at least seventy years, and even then rare—the UN was in an excellent position to create of the planet its bureaucrats’ wildest fantasies by withholding arms from Faction X and giving them to Faction Y.
One reason it never quite worked that way appears to have been the nature of the UN, itself, being both factious and fractious. There were high ranking Muslim bureaucrats, who favored their co-religionists on planet, just as there were Catholics, Jews, Atheists, and Communists. And that was only one fault line in the UN’s colonization regime. There were also ethnic splits, with Han favoring Han, English speakers favoring “the cousins,” Spanish speakers doing no less for their co-culturalists.
3.
Sacrifice
Peter Grant4
Father Francisco shivered, pulling his ankle-length cloak closer around him as he walked down the hill in the half-light of dawn. He watched the boats pull into Pescara’s little harbor, the rumble of their engines echoing off the stone quay and the walls of the processing sheds. Clouds of dirty smoke drifted up from their exhausts, and the slowly undulating water was churned to white froth as they jockeyed for position. Those who’d had good catches headed for the processing sheds. Those who’d been less fortunate pulled their vessels into berths further away or tied them up to a row of buoys on one side of the small harbor.