He began to say something and she said, “Hush! Timo knows we are not taking calls from anyone. I told him that for the next five hours, it is ‘Saturday in Chubut.’ ”
AS SHE WAS WAITING FOR THE PLANE THAT WOULD CARRY HER OUT
of the mountains, Bruwer entered two verses from the Gospels into her engagement book: “Jesus was stripped naked before his enemies, tortured, and killed,” and “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done.”
Raul Sanmartin had had one other girlfriend in his life, in Argentina when he was fifteen. After his mother had enrolled him in an Imperial military academy and gotten herself arrested for preaching sedition, he had written her several times. She never wrote back.
ADMIRAL HORII HEARD THAT EVENING AND IMMEDIATELY WENT TO
confront Colonel Sumi. “Colonel Sumi, 1 understand we have captured Assembly Speaker Bruwer-Sanmartin.”
“Yes, she came to protest our hostage policy. How foolish. I have begun interrogating her personally.” Sumi had a bowl of rice with plum pickles in front of him, and pushed it aside, half-eaten. “She claims she has poison in her body that will allow her to die if we mistreat her too severely, but this is obviously false.”
“Please discontinue interrogating her. You will discover nothing useful.”
*‘I have been quite gentle. A few more hours—”
“She is quite unreasonable.”
“Yes,” Sumi finally agreed.
“Indeed,” Horii mused, “it would be prudent to simply release her. Please do so.”
Sumi locked eyes with Horii. “I regret that I cannot comply with your wish. She is an enemy of the nation. Regrettably, this is a security matter, not a military matter.”
With ill humor, Horii let the matter drop.
Wednesday(317)
SITTING IN A METAL CHAIR IN A WAREHOUSE CONVERTED INTO A
cell, Louis Snyman watched Hanna Bruwer as she moved from person to person, speaking with each of them in turn. Even from a distance, Snyman could see faint bruises on her heart-shaped face.
Sensing his eyes upon her, she came over. “Heer Snyman.”
Snyman nodded. “Vroew Bruwer. Please excuse me if I do not get up.”
Bruwer quirked one side of her mouth into a smile. “Yes, well, when we were discussing a woman’s place, I suspect we both had something different in mind.”
“How is my son?” Snyman asked, unable to conceal his anxiety.
“Jan and Natasha are both fine. Raul says that he is a fine young officer, and you will be pleased to know that he has been annoying the Manchurians.”
“Thank God for this.” Snyman noticed that the other hostages, most of them ordinary men and women, were listening without being obtrusive. He settled back, content. “Thank you, Vroew Bruwer. How are you feeling?”
Bruwer grimaced. “Colonel Sumi made an effort not to leave marks. He was also in something of a hurry. I suspect that I owe Admiral Horii for this.” The electrical shocks had been the worst, and her hands twitched involuntarily. “Is there anything I can do for you, Heer Snyman?”
“Yes. Please get those savages to give me back my wheelchair.”
“I will see what I can do.”
Curiosity got the better of Snyman. “Why are you here?”
“Admiral Horii wants hostages.”
“What kind of information will it take to buy your freedom, I wonder?”
Bruwer dusted off an area of the floor and sat down. “If the
only thing they asked was my husband’s middle name, the price would still be too high. We must stop this trade in information.”
“It is trafficking with the devil.”
“If it does not stop, we will lose our chance at freedom. So I came to stop it. It sounds very melodramatic coming from a woman sitting on a concrete floor, doesn’t it?”
“I understand,” Snyman said.
“Perhaps you do, Heer Snyman. Perhaps you do. I imagine that they will shoot us in a few days.”
“It is all in God’s hands.”
“Yes, I know. Everything is always in God’s hands.” Snyman studied her. “You meant that, didn’t you? I did not know you were a woman of faith.”
Bruwer smiled mischievously. “Did not Saint Paul say that women should keep silent in the churches?”
“I shall be sure to mention this in my next letter to you. You are a lot like your grandfather, you know. Why are you being so kind to me?”
“Well, Scripture does say—”
“ ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; by doing so, you will heap burning ashes on his head.’ ” Snyman finished for her. “You know, for years I hated you and Beyers and Vereshchagin, and could not understand why God permitted the broken pieces of me to linger this way.”
Snyman lifted the blanket that covered his withered legs and allowed Bruwer to see them.
“I forgot that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom. Now I know that He saved me so that one Afrikaner would be spared this place. This much has been granted me. I wish you to know that I have forgiven you, and I pray that you have forgiven me.”
Bruwer turned her head so that she wouldn’t see the tears in Snyman’s eyes. “In Ephesians, it says, ‘All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.’ ’’ Bruwer looked around at her fellow prisoners. “Perhaps all of us would like to pray.”
Several of the persons listening were released that evening. Two of them found the courage to refuse release and had to be carried out of the warehouse. As intended, the message spread.
Thursday(317)
HENKE AND MALINOV PASSED AROUND THE PLAN THEY HAD
worked up. Henke confessed, “We worked in the crazy parts that Raul and Hans suggested, but there is a problem which Yuri and I have not been able to resolve, which is the Ninth Light Attack Battalion.”
“In open country, their electromagnetic guns can chew us up,” Harjalo commented, glancing through the plan. “And if we don’t come out and challenge them, they have a hundred thousand civilian hostages. At best, we have a stalemate. At worst, we have a massacre.”
Hans Coldewe said, “Maybe they’ll leave if we ask politely.” The mood was tense, and no one laughed.
“ARE YOU CERTAIN, SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS SERGEANT?” ADMI-
ral Horii’s chief signal officer asked his principal subordinate.
“Watch the map, honored Major. The signals we are intercepting last approximately two seconds in duration and are repeated four times daily.”
The map was tied into the network of geosynchronized surveillance satellites. Each radio signal that the Imperials locked onto as it cycled between frequencies appeared as a white cross.
“It would be very unfortunate if this turned out to be another balloon incident, Mogi,” his superior cautioned.
Senior Communications Sergeant Mogi had been very excited about the signals intercepted in “Volcano Valley” until someone pointed out that all of Vereshchagin’s men appeared to be traveling downwind at a steady speed.
“No, we are quite certain, honored Major. We have been plotting the movements of individuals for the last day and one half.” “Strange that Vereshchagin would have his men report in at such regular intervals. Have you been able to decrypt these signals?”
“No, honored Major. Vereshchagin appears to have made modifications to his personal radios. We are intercepting strings of numbers in a code we have not been able to crack. Nevertheless, we are able to locate over two hundred individual radios to within two hundred meters four times each day.” Suddenly, Mogi’s map burst out in pinpoints of light. Brushing his hands across the controls, Mogi focused in on a heavily
forested stretch of the upper Oranje Valley dotted with white crosses.
Friday(317)
AS AGREED
PRIOR TO DEPARTURE, THE CORVETTE AJAX LEISURELY
practiced an unobserved return to Suid-Afrika on the side of the planet opposite Akashi continent.
The ship’s commander, Lieutenant Detlef Jankowskie, was manning sensors. “Things must have gotten interesting while we were away. There are a bunch of ships in orbit.”
“I hope everything’s all right. 1 don’t know about you, but the first thing I plan to do is to eat a five-course meal in a hot tub,” his first gunner, Lance-Corporal Nicolas Sery replied.
During the rebellion, when the frigate Graf Spee was induced to take aboard a large cube of platinum containing a fission device, Graf Spee and the corvettes Achilles and Exeter disappeared in the blink of an eye. Lucky Ajax survived. This, however, created its own difficulties.
A corvette is a short-range vessel, essentially a manned fusion bottle. Although a corvette’s fusion drive could theoretically take it anywhere, it lacks the navigation instruments and the storage capacity to travel between solar systems. A frigate would normally carry up to three of them across the void.
The destruction of Graf Spee left Ajax and her crew of eight enlisted technicians and four officers in an awkward position. Although a corvette can dip lower into a planet’s atmosphere than a frigate and possesses devastating firepower in the form of two missile launchers on the underside of the hull, and a ground attack laser and composite particle dispenser underneath the nose, a corvette is not intended to operate independently for any great length of time.
Making the best of the situation, Vereshchagin detailed Detlef Jankowskie and seven undersized infantrymen to form a second crew. With a degree in robotics, Jankowskie had been the least unqualified of Vereshchagin’s officers. The ship’s commander objected mildly, but as Vereshchagin explained, it was the first time that the Imperial Navy had managed to lose a frigate in a colonial operation, and a novel situation required a novel response.
Three years later, after Jankowskie and his “seven dwarfs”
had made themselves proficient, Vereshchagin allowed the ship’s original crew to return to Earth.
Jankowskie had tried not to act surprised when Vereshchagin suggested sending Ajax on an exploratory cruise around the system’s outer planets towing a pod with water and supplies to last the trip. Politely, Jankowskie thought that the Variag had lost his mind; when he announced the voyage to his dwarfs, they politely thought that he had lost his. Nonetheless, as Jankowskie observed in one of his infrequent reports, although privacy and creature comforts did not measure up to navy standards, for the infantry, it wasn’t half bad.
“I’d like to find out what has been happening. Moushegian keeps asking me whether I think the Engineers whipped the Springboks this year. We should be close enough to check in,” Jankowskie told Sery, who was manning the communications board while the primary communications specialist slept. Unlike the rigidly stratified navy, Jankowskie had insisted on cross-training each of his men to do every job, especially his own.
“I’m ahead of you,” Sery said as he made contact with a four-man communications center Vereshchagin had stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere on the planet’s far side.
The reply came back, “Very good approach. The Variag says he has a dozen bottles of beer for each of you.”
“What do they mean by that?” he asked Jankowskie. Jankowskie whistled loudly. “It means all hell has broken loose. There’s an Imperial task group down there to put down a rebellion that we’re on the wrong end of.”
“What?!”
“Hold on, there’s something else coming through.” “Eighty-nine, eighty-nine, eighty-nine. Twenty-nine, twenty-nine, twenty-nine.” Sery rubbed the top of his head. “What does that mean?”
Jankowskie pulled a tiny cipher book out of the pocket of the T-shirt he was wearing and began flipping through it. “It means four Imperial warships, two freighters, and two transports. They want to know if we can take them out. Reply ‘eleven,’ which is ‘Who knows?’ Nobody’s ever fought a battle between warships in space. Our detection and fire-control isn’t up to the job, and neither is theirs. Of course, there are four of them and only one of us.”
“Eleven, it is.”
A moment later, the station responded. “One-forty-seven,
one-forty-seven, one-forty-seven. Two, two, two. Why the repeat?” Sery asked.
“It would be embarrassing to have the numbers come through garbled. Maybe a bit more than embarrassing,” Jankowskie replied distractedly, flipping through his book. He whistled again.
“What is it?”
“One-forty-seven is a plan, that’s what it is.” Jankowskie looked at Sery directly. “It’s an awfully furry one, too. Better get everybody in here so we can talk over the whys and wherefores of mutinying against the Imperial Government.” He added, ‘Two means ‘We’re awfully glad to see you.’ ”
A month or so before the Afrikaner rebellion, Detlef Jankowskie had innocently put a rocket into what turned out to be the second-largest ammunition dump on the planet. He hoped that this might turn out a little less spectacular.
Saturday(317)
IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING, ADMIRAL HORII RECEIVED
a radio message from Captain Chiharu Yoshida asking plaintively whether there was some way to compromise the differences that separated Horii from Vereshchagin.
A few moments after they finished speaking, Colonel Sumi appeared at Horii’s door. “Honored Admiral, I understand that you have communicated with traitor Yoshida. From a security standpoint, this gives rise to uncertainties.”
Horii noted that Sumi was wearing his sword and smiled inwardly. “Yoshida is tom between loyalty to Vereshchagin and his duty. He wishes to know whether there is any possibility of compromise. Of course, there is not, but one makes use of tools. Unfortunately for Vereshchagin, we were able to trace the location of the call to an area in the central Stormberg Mountains. Please direct Captain Yanagita to contact Heer Afanou. Our eyes are beginning to focus. It is necessary for us to act.” Reassured, Sumi bowed and left.
PULLING A HEAVY BOX MARKED WITH AN AMMUNITION TREFOIL
out of Ajax's stores, Sery and Moushegian suited up and hauled it out the air lock where Jankowskie was waiting for it impatiently. Securing the box to a stanchion, they began passing its contents “up.”
One of the two-meter cylinders broke free of Moushegian’s grip and began drifting off in the general direction of Arcturus, which, with extreme good fortune, it might have reached in ten or twelve billion years. Cursing, Jankowskie kicked himself free of the corvette’s skin and used a hook fashioned from a bent tie-rod to bring the flak missile back while his backup man watched anxiously.
Sery almost turned white as a few more projectiles tried to free themselves. Quickly, he and Moushegian regained control, dangling the missiles like flies from a safety line. Flipping on his suit-to-suit radio, he asked Moushegian, “Why do the warheads on these flipping things look nine months pregnant?” “Because they’re stuffed with a whacking great antiarmor charge, Nicolas,” Jankowskie cut in. “Please save aimless questions until we get back inside.”
“Sorry.”
When the job was finally done, Jankowskie’s dwarfs came outside to admire their handiwork in the quiet reaches of space. “We look like a Christmas tree,” Moushegian complained.
From each of the corvette’s four steering pylons, a fifteen-meter rod projected, hung with four flak missiles pointing backward. Connections run through the duplicate wiring in the pylons ran to an ungainly control panel mounted on the first gunner’s seat.
“Want to try her out?” Jankowskie asked.
Reentering the ship, his crew took up positions, with Moushegian poised at the air lock holding a bundle of magnesium flares. At Jankowskie’s command, he pulled the tab on the flares and pitched the bundle hissing into the void.
Opening up the main jet, Jankowskie moved the corvette forward. Sery manipulated his breadboarded control rig. After a moment, he said in
disgust, “Abort. The pitching things have locked on to our jet, not the flares.”
Jankowskie shut down the main jet. “Aborted. What now?” Moushegian stuck his head through the access door to the bridge. “We have enough rods to stick them out another five or six meters. If that doesn’t take us out of the target acquisition angle, we’ll have to dismount four missiles.” He shrugged. “You didn’t actually expect this to work, did you, Lieutenant Detlef, sir?”
Jankowskie threw the ration bar he was chewing on at him. Their second practice missile took their fourth and last package of flares out of space in a wild cascade of sparks.
“So much for the easy part,” Jankowskie said. He noticed that Sery, who didn’t smoke, had pulled out a cigarette— something strictly forbidden on Imperial warships—and was trying to light it. “Nicolas, when you get that thing going, give me a puff.”
BEFORE THEY WERE TAKEN FROM THEIR WAREHOUSE PRISON TO THE
execution ground, Snyman, Bruwer, and their fellow hostages inscribed in the dust on the windows, “If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing symbol. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all tilings, endures all things. Love will never fail.”
Sunday(318)
“ARE WE PREPARED TO STRIKE YET, HONORED ADMIRAL?” CAPTAIN
Watanabe asked as he presented Admiral Horii with the overnight summaries.
“One must be prepared to make deliberate haste, Watanabe,” Horii said, carefully scrutinizing them.
At morning staff call a few moments later, Horii asked, “Captain Yanagita, were you able to contact Heer Afanou, and is he prepared to guide us into the mountains?”
Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 02] Page 24