Terra Nova- the Wars of Liberation

by Tom Kratman

  There were only three of them, but they wore body armor, and came on doggedly and competently, using the bend in the cave as cover. Enrique’s rifle rang out, and one of the sailors fell to the ground in a heap of pain, disabled, perhaps. The groans indicated that he wasn’t dead, though. Another sailor likewise fell, a round burning a hole straight through his helmet. Enrique dropped the magazine and reached for another.

  Rock shattered by Enrique’s position, and the burly enforcer fell, blood slowly soaking his chest from a trio of wounds. David could see the life leaving his eyes. There was one sailor left, and the man advanced cautiously, apparently thinking that the final obstacle had been broken as there had been no other signs of resistance. David waited, all his focus on this one task. He clutched the weapon and took his stance, exactly as Enrique had shown him. Behind the rock face, in the dark of the cave, he was near to invisible, but he was under no illusions. If he failed, he would die.

  And then Elena would suffer her sister’s fate.

  He took carefully aim and squeezed. And again. And again. The first was wide, but by the second shot, he had adjusted. The sailor was diving down to the ground for better cover, but David was quicker. He kept firing, not even remembering clearly how many rounds he possessed.

  A round caught the sailor in the chest. Then another. Though the armor prevented his immediate death, he cried out in pain, the ribs behind the armor snapping. Through it all, the sailor kept focus on his enemy, the rifle closing on his enemy.

  David’s final round caught the sailor in the forehead, and the struggles ceased. The weapon clicked empty.

  Elena wasted no time, for David had almost forgotten about the disabled first sailor. Her knife was out, and she quickly slit the throat of the wounded sailor, flashing just a hint of a cruel, vengeful expression as she dropped the man’s head back into the dirt. Blood spurt in gushing arterial bursts.

  David only just then realized he was shaking like a leaf from the adrenaline surge, and sat down, a ball of nerves. He couldn’t look at Enrique’s ruined body. Not yet. The old enforcer’s training, as little as he had time to give, was all that saved his life. And hers.

  When she saw Enrique’s sightless eyes, belonging to the man who had long been her father’s right hand, the tears began to flow. He held her silently, controlling his own shock and sadness. Enrique had been the first to respect him as a man, not some lumpy nerd. And yet in the battle-high, it was all so distant, somehow. He’d pay for that later, he realized. For now, he had to remain strong for Elena’s sake.

  Anger vied with fear within her as the communicator continued to ping. There would be no escaping the consequences this time, Pamela knew. She tapped the accept button. High Admiral Hortzmann’s face filled the screen, and she blinked back the tears.

  “It’s over, Pam. Recall your men.” His voice was solemn and cold. No desire remained in it, only profound resignation and disappointment. The pain of it ate at her more than the floggers had ever managed.

  Her fragile grip on composure failed utterly. It wasn’t merely the end of her career, or the foiling of her plans for wealth and freedom that broke her. She was shocked to discover that, in the end, her lover’s profound disappointment in her meant more than anything else ever could.

  Long Pier, Constancia, Cienfuegos, Terra Nova

  Sunlight glittered over the clear waters of Cienfuegos. Fall had come to the island, and a pleasant breeze was blowing in from the east, keeping the heat at bay for the moment. Thomas leaned idly against the dock piling. His linen shirt, a rare gift from a grateful Carlos, fluttered slightly in the wind. He could almost imagine being on old Earth again, just for a moment, living in some tropical paradise.

  But a paradise Terra Nova was not. The rickety contraption barely worth of the term “boat” floating alongside the makeshift dock was evidence enough of that. A few haphazard sailors were removing the ropes. It was time to go, he realized. Long months of memes, war, and death had passed, and a measure of peace had taken hold on the island, though probably only for a little while. All around Terra Nova, things were going bad, but in the Latin sectors, it was worse. Best to get out while the getting is good, he thought. Certainly best to leave before Carlos started another brush war with a starship captain, and the whole island got locked down again.

  “Sure you won’t stay?” David asked, his arm wrapped protectively around his blushing bride. Carlos had taken enough of a liking to the man to allow it. Though heaven help David if he ever mistreated Elena. The whole island knew of Cranston’s fate on the stake. David is certainly a brave man, Tom thought admiringly.

  “Nah. You got reason enough to stick around. Me? I’d just be staying for your lame ass.” He laughed and David smiled. “And anyway, I want to get my hands on another machine, get another crack at the smurfs, man. Shitpost the world again. Better chance of that in the American sector than around here.” Tom smiled. For the first time since all of this began, it was his choice. He’d probably never see David again, and that weighed on his mind. But who could say? His life was finally his own. Perhaps he’d come back one day.

  David nodded. “Yeah, I figured you’d say that. You think you’ll find another computer up there?”

  “Maybe. If anyone saved some scraps of technology, it’d be the Americans.” Thomas pondered that for a moment. He had plenty of what passed for money around here, for Carlos had not been stingy. And the sailors were Carlos’s men. More importantly, he was armed, experienced, and no longer appeared like some helpless geek stranded in a world he didn’t understand. He’d get his chance. If it took him decades, he’d get his chance.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Extending his hand, David smiled. Thomas took it and embraced him. They’d been roommates, coworkers, and friends for many years, in several countries and two whole planets. Everything would be different, now. For a moment, he felt maudlin.

  “I’ll see you around,” David said, a trace of regret in his voice.

  “No, you won’t.” Tom smiled.

  David laughed. “Come on, asshole, you know better than to use a cliché like that around me.”

  One of the sailors tossed the last line to the boat and hopped in. Tom’s guards fidgeted nervously. It was time to go.

  “Yeah, I suppose I do. You take care of that wife of yours, man.” It was still strange to think of David as a married man, now.

  “Oh yeah.” A full grin spread across David’s face, before he turned around and walked off. His new bride smiled knowingly and shrugged, waving before she disappeared after him.

  Captain Kemal Aydin sent his first message from his new command. The Angela Merkel had seen most of her crew replaced in a massive smuggling scandal in the weeks before, the likes of which he didn’t fully understand. Those that remained were still morose and demoralized, and thought of the vessel as somewhat cursed. But Kemal appreciated the opportunity for advancement, at least. And he certainly didn’t follow the odd superstitions of the leftover crew. The New Ottoman government had seen fit to select him to fill their diversity quota slot for the Terra Novan fleet, and that was a high honor.

  The previous captain had been a nervous, utterly disheveled wreck when she’d transferred command of the Angela Merkel. She appeared like a woman expecting death around every corner. And then there were the rumors of her sexual depravity. Of course, some of those stories included High Admiral Hortzmann himself. His nickname whore’s man was known to all, even a fresh-off-the-crossing captain, and was spoken aloud openly by nobody with even a modicum of common sense.

  Either way, Kemal decided he wanted no part of the ship’s checkered past. He would give the vessel and its crew a fresh start. His console chimed, and the high admiral appeared on his screen.

  “Congratulations on your new command, Captain,” the high admiral began, though the man seemed oddly preoccupied.

  I wonder if the rumors are true, Kemal thought.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said diplomatically. “We are ass
uming station at . . . ”

  The fart that blasted out of the speakers was loud and disgusting, sounding very much like someone had just shit his pants. Kemal looked around the bridge.

  “Captain?” The high admiral was caught between laughter and professional disgust.

  Another fart rang out. And another. Kemal looked around. There were shrugs and confused looks all around from the bridge crew. The comm officer was furiously punching at his keyboard, his face turning a particularly deep shade of red.

  The last fart sounded very wet and then tapered off into a long, thin squeak.

  “A moment, sir, we appear to be having some ah, technical difficulties.”

  Cursed ship indeed, Kemal thought. He had the first inkling that perhaps his appointment hadn’t been much of an honor at all.

  INTERLUDE:

  From Jimenez’s History of the Wars of Liberation

  At this point in the history of the wars of liberation, it is perhaps questionable even to call them “wars.” Instead, what was going on were a series of scattered resistance movements, most not even aware of the others’ existence or, at least, not in contact or cooperating, not always violent, and almost always low scale. And, if it seemed like war to our ancestors, the UN certainly didn’t officially admit to any such thing yet.

  However, what was admitted to officially and what was understood, even if not spoken of in public, were not quite the same things. Thus, as we know from captured records, at the highest levels of Old Earth’s United Nations the realization gradually dawned that they had a problem on Terra Nova, which problem was likely to interfere with their program of resettling Earth’s most recalcitrant traditionalists and antiaristocrats, and, which must have been maddening, forced them to stop resettling those same antiprogressives until matters of Terra Nova could be sorted out. This, of course, also meant more trouble on Old Earth and a slower than desired implementation of their entire program.

  We may imagine, but are not privy to, the negotiations, the screaming sessions, the cajoling, and the bribes that led to General Titus Ford being named Inspector General, though the commander of Earth Forces in all but name. Why the Secretary General chose an officer from the only one of Earth’s significant nations not to receive a colonial grant on Terra Nova remains a mystery . . .

  12.

  The Redeemer

  Tom Kratman13

  “And Australia, as everyone knows, is inhabited entirely by criminals.”

  —Vizzini, The Princess Bride

  UNSN Amerigo Vespucci

  The Inspector General awakened on the floor of his cabin, belly down, with his own vomit trying to force itself back into his mouth and up his nostrils, and with every nerve ending in his body screaming with the memory of the agony of conscious passage through the transitway that linked the solar system and the system containing the colony world of Terra Nova. It was a memory of being torn apart, atom by atom, being reassembled, outside-inward, being torn apart once again, and then falling into infinite nothingness, forever.

  “Ohhh . . . my head,” he croaked, pulling his stocky, five foot eight frame up to rest on hands and knees. He shook his grayed head, but only once. The agony of that collapsed him right down again into the pool of his own puke. “Never drink again . . . what am I talking about? I don’t drink.” He sniffed the air. “And I don’t lie around in my own vomit, either. Stand up, old man; stand up.”

  Shakily, unsteadily, the IG forced himself to his own two feet. He swayed on them, back and forth, left and right. As he did, memories—memories from before his dis- and re-assembly—came flooding back. I know who I am. I know—more or less—where I am. I know why I am here.

  The “who” of the matter was Titus Ford, a retired Australian officer, currently employed and remilitarized by Earth’s United Nations, to be Inspector General for all Earth forces on Terra Nova. The where of the matter was, still more or less, on the Terra Novan side of the transitway, a worm-hole by any other name, aboard UNSN Amerigo Vespucci. As for the why . . .

  I am going—I have been sent—to Terra Nova to push aside the nincompoops who have completely fucked up the planet and to bring it back to order and subordination to the United Nations.

  And my powers are close to absolute. “Forget diversity, Titus,” the SecGen told me. “Forget all that ever-so-sensitive crap. We can’t afford it anymore. If we don’t settle the planet down, then exiling troublemakers from here threatens our future here.” Well, that was nice to know. “You are the ultimate authority for military and civil legal matters,” he said. “You want someone shot? Shoot him. Or her.” Also happy news. And the press? I foresee some tragic accidents in the near future for any number of them. Bastards; don’t they know whose side they’re required to be on? The only real problem is that I have to keep my hands off the damned Americans’ colonies.

  Of course the happiest news was for my ears alone . . . but if I can succeed . . .

  The pain was ebbing fast, now. As it left, stamina and intelligence, both, began to return, the latter more than the former. Well, hell, I’m closer to seventy than sixty, mid-level rejuvs notwithstanding, so stamina is less of an is and more of a used to be. But intelligence . . .

  Though much detested in his own country and by his own army, in good part for his extreme faith in and devotion to the United Nations, nobody had ever called Ford “stupid.”

  And I am not coming alone, either.

  In comparison with the haphazard, undisciplined, poorly led and worse trained rabble that made up a good deal, even most, of the existing forces on Terra Nova, Ford had, in the Vespucci and the three ships following it over the next several months, over seventy thousand permanent UN troops, all raised, equipped, paid by, and trained for the UN by himself and his hand-picked underlings, plus another ten thousand officers and senior noncoms to replace the worst of the human filth currently in command. The officers and men had been hand-picked from among the most ruthless and mercenary elements of Earth’s increasingly bored armies. These were not the kind of rabble that had accompanied Ford’s de facto predecessor, the unmissed, unmourned bastard Kotek Annan, to his richly deserved death. These were real soldiers down in Vespucci’s hold, as well as in the holds of the others.

  No, not alone, either. And I’ve brought the sweepings of any number of prisons for things I may have to order that are really nasty.

  There came a wooshing sound from behind him, followed by a clipped Bantu accent enquiring, “General Ford, are you all right.”

  He recognized the voice. Without turning, he answered, “I will be, Captain Mzilikazi, as soon as I navigate myself to the shower and wash this filth off of me.”

  “Very good, sir. I’ll have some crewmen sent down to clean up the mess.” Sympathetically, the captain added, “And, no need for embarrassment; some of us the transition bothers, some it does not. It’s no reflection on character or worth.”

  “Of course it’s not a reflection on my character, Captain,” Ford snarled. “Who would imagine that it could have been?”

  Embarrassed now, himself, Mzilikazi coughed in embarrassment before scurrying off.

  In an earlier age, Ford would have sat at a large wooden desk, files full of reports piled high around him, as he made his way through the military, political, and literal jungles of the new world. Instead, and now fully sanitized, he read from a large computer screen the reports—as many as a quarter of which may be reliable—generated from the headquarters ahead and from its subordinates. On the way to the transitway, Earth-side, he’d sorted those he suspected contained more truth than the others, though most of even those he hadn’t read yet, relying instead on subject matter and the censors’ opinions.

  If the censors wanted the information suppressed, there’s a very good chance that it is true. It’s even more likely to be true the more they demanded it be suppressed.

  “Blame the mess on the failure of the first colonization effort?” Ford mused, reading one of the first reports on his list. �
�On the fact that we recreated the ethnic nations of Earth here? There may be a very little merit there, but it’s not as if there were any choice.”

  He closed that window and opened the next. This he read with concern. Rolling his eyes, he thought, Did those assholes in the frozen south really think they could have gotten a major mining operation going and the fleet not be aware of it. Hmmm . . . He pulled up orbital patterns and assignments and then wrote a note to himself: HAVE INTERNAL SECURITY CHECK THE FILES FOR THE THREE SHIPS CAPABLE OF OVERSEEING THAT SECTION OF SECORDIA. SOMEBODY WAS—OR SEVERAL SOMEBODIES WERE—ANTICIPATING A PAYOFF.

  Ford tended to shout a lot, when dealing with subordinates, hence also tended to write his notes in caps, as well.

  He was something of a rarity in UN circles, was Titus Ford, an apparently devout Christian. How genuine that devotion was a matter of considerable speculation in certain circles. It certainly didn’t seem to be in evidence when he wrote, WHO, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WAS STUPID ENOUGH TO HIRE MOSLEMS TO ATTACK A CHRISTIAN VILLAGE? FIND AND RELIEVE; POSSIBLY TRY AND EXECUTE. DOUBT ANYONE DUMB ENOUGH TO HIRE MOSLEMS FOR A MILITARY ACTION COVERED HIS TRACKS TOO WELL.

  And then: SECORDIA AGAIN? ODDS THAT ROGER LAMPREY HAS SURVIVED LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE IT WORTH WHILE PUTTING A BOUNTY ON HIS HEAD? NO MATTER; IF HE’S DEAD I DON’T HAVE TO PAY IT, DO I?

  The next report was half technical, and technical in an area in which he had little expertise. I’m no medico, but I know this, if someone in Balboa had the ability to defeat a biological attack, that someone also knows how to create a biological attack. Worse, they may well have diseases to use we haven’t the first clue about. Still worse, we have to believe them when they say they can launch and will launch a biological attack on Earth if we try that again. We need another method of dealing with the rebels in Balboa Colony.