by Mark Kalina
"Legs! There you are!" the man shouted again, and Tara sighed and stood up.
Some of the other patrons were frowning at the man's shouts. Others were watching with wary expressions. A few parents called children over to be closer to them. A few took in the Armored Corps jumpsuit and smiled.
"Still scaring the kids, Younger?" Tara called back as she strode to meet him, her metal toes clicking slightly on the tiles of the pool-side.
"Hey, Legs! Looking good, Lady! Looking good!"
"Coming from you, I might take that as an insult, Younger. What's so important that you're here, frightening children and ruining my leave?"
"Aw, hell, Legs, I ain't scary," the huge man said with an exaggerated smile.
Daniel Younger was a giant; an even two meters tall and over 150 kilos, and none of it flab. He claimed his heritage had been Danish and Irish, but Tara had been among a majority who suggested that alien abduction might have been involved in his family tree. That or maybe something like a Nepalese Yeti or a North American Bigfoot.
"You are so, Younger... scary that is. Most people don't even know that ogres are real. 'Course they're scared when one shows up. Only natural that they try to hide their children."
"Well," Younger said, "maybe if they gave us better rations, the child-eating wouldn't be such an issue. How’s about it, Colonel Legs? You could get us better rations huh? You've got some pull now, don't you?"
"Only a lowly lieutenant-colonel," Tara replied, smiling. "I'd have no chance going up against the Supply Corps. Seriously, Younger, what are you doing here? I'm on leave for the three more days."
"Well, no. You ain't. Captain Dan Younger reporting, and the Lieutenant-colonel has been recalled from leave."
"What!? Why?"
"Emergency deployment to the Isthmus Highlands. 8th Battalion is assigned to a convoy escort mission with, and I quote, 'maximum possible priority,' unquote."
"You have got to be kidding me! Now!? They need a convoy through the Highlands now? They cancel my leave for convoy duty?"
"You bet. They want your battalion on station within an A-day."
"Shit," Tara said. An A-day —an Arcadian day— was 27 hours long, more or less; better than a 24 hour E-day, but not by much. She didn't have much time at all.
"Do my officers know? Wait, why my battalion? I'm short a company."
"No, you're not. Company commander Captain Daniel Younger reporting for duty!"
"You?"
"Me, Legs. Me."
"They gave you a company?"
"Yup," the huge man agreed, nodding. "Close to full establishment. I've got eleven War-Hammers. Nine are new production; still got that new tank smell. Newby crews, but not bad as far as raw material goes. My platoon leaders aren't bad, either. Freshly minted lieutenants, but not bad as far as that breed goes. House-broken at any rate."
"Shit. Let's go," Tara said, moving purposefully for the gate. "I still don't understand how you even fit into a tank, Younger," she quipped to him, over her shoulder.
"Hey, Legs," Younger called, "don't you think that swimsuit's a bit too far out of uniform, even for the Armored Corps?"
The only "staff car" Tara could find at the nearest Defense Force post was a battered 50-year-old Hyundai "Eco-Cruizer," a pick-up truck that might have come to Arcadia with the original United Nations colonization survey. It had been painted white, once. It ran, though, which was enough.
The car had no communications system, so Tara spent the entire drive using her wrist-phone while Younger drove.
"Yes, Major Feldman, it's a full battalion call up. I want you and your company at the staging area north of Baker's Station, and I want them there before sundown. We move out to meet the convoy at dawn. If I have to move without you, you'd better damn-well believe I will. I'll move out if all I have is the staff car I'm in now, Major. Cut whatever corners you have to, Major, but get your company in place on time. This is supposed to be a maximum priority operation, so even though we both know it's chicken-shit, we're going to act like it's a maximum priority operation."
By the time she disconnected, Major Feldman had sounded mildly annoyed, Tara thought, which wasn't altogether a bad thing. She and Feldman had never really gotten along that well. On the other hand, he was one of the few officers still serving with her who'd been part of her company seven years ago, when she'd led the armored charge across a hundred kilometers of desert, punching through three UEN defensive lines to relieve the Arcadian troops fighting at the gate building.
The Arcadians had taken the gate building, in the end. The infantry framers who'd been dropped to capture it had endured over 70% casualties. For that matter, her tank company had suffered 50% casualties... and she'd been one of those herself. But they'd taken the gate, cutting off the flow of UEN reinforcements and trapping the surviving UEN forces on Arcadia with no support.
The commanding officer of the UEN Peace Forces on Arcadia had requested a cease-fire within a few hours of learning that the gate was shut down, when it became obvious that, even if UEN forces somehow managed to take the gate building back, there was no possible way to keep the Arcadians from destroying the irreplaceable equipment needed to actually generate the Tannhauser gate back to Earth.
Once she thought of it that way, a pair of legs seemed like a small price to pay. And Feldman had been there with her. It had, in fact, been his tank that had picked her up and gotten her back to a field hospital.
So, she might not like Major Feldman —the man was too serious, too formal, too cold-fish— but she respected him, and she trusted him as far as it was possible to trust another human being. And she thought that he probably felt about the same way about her.
For now, though, her main concern was making sure her battalion got to the staging area on time, ready for the convoy run south into Isthmus Highlands. Apart from her thirty-one Type-51 Mk.IIIb "War-Hammer" tanks, that also meant getting the support section and their utility vehicles ready. The two-and-a-half ton, four-wheel drive "utils" were the unglamorous jacks-of-all-trades for the battalion; they could serve as ambulances, as staff cars, as transport inside towns and cities, or for any of a dozen other jobs where a seventy-five ton tank was too big. The battalion never had enough utils; they were assigned "as needed" and poaching —or even outsight stealing— utils between different Defense Force units was treated almost like some sort of sport. If Tara had been given more warning about this deployment, she could have arranged to have gotten more utils, either assigned, or just "requisitioned" from other units that were stood down. As it was, she had only three of the utility vehicles still in her battalion; not even enough for her to use one as a proper staff car. Of course the utils were usually a bit of a drag on the battalion's mobility; they could outrun the tanks on roads —though not by much— but were nowhere near as fast off-road. But since they'd be escorting a convoy, they'd be sticking to the road this time, so it wouldn't be an issue. There was only one main road through the Isthmus Highlands, but it was a solid, well graded road, suitable for anything more rugged than an electric scooter or a street-racer sports car. The road served to connect the Arcadian settlements south of the Highlands to the main population centers of the north, but that was incidental to its intended purpose; the rapid deployment of military force.
The Highlands and the Southern Wastes beyond them were one of two possible trouble spots that the Defense Force had to watch out for, the gate building being the other one. Granted a battalion of tanks was, without doubt, overkill for the a convoy escort job, but for all her griping about convoy duty, in Tara's book overkill was a lot better than having insufficient force to do the job. Besides which, deploying the battalion this way was both a good exercise for her people, and an unmistakable message.
As long as the trouble-makers south of the Highlands knew that overwhelming firepower was ready to respond to any attempted raid, the odds of such raids were substantially reduced.
The threat from the south tended to piss Tara off, though
; constant thefts, raids, attack of convoys, outright terror attacks on isolated settlements, and even —despite the Defense Force's draconian policy regarding hostages— kidnapping attempts and crude demands for ransom.
As far as Tara was concerned, nothing good ever came north from over the Isthmus Highlands; nothing at all. It was a mess, it was all the UEN's doing, and when the UEN had left Arcadia, seven years ago, they'd done nothing clean up the mess they had caused.
For that matter, Tara mused, it had been that mess which had led to the uprising against the UEN in the first place.
5.
Aran Silaban Hogan glanced briefly at his wrist-phone to check the time. It was just after 2pm; less than an hour to go before the train reached the Tannhauser gate to Arcadia. His partner for this assignment, Ulla Schneider, had her data-glasses on and her type-pad spread out across her lap, trying to use the train's uplink to do some last minute research. From her expression, she was having trouble.
"No signal?" he asked his colleague.
"Nein. No. Perhaps you are used to this, but I have to tell you, I am not. I expected better from the Americans. This is... like something out of some third world country," she said, then broke off, embarrassment reddening her pale European features. "I mean..." she started to add.
"No, I'm not offended. From what my mother told me, Indonesia was like this not too long ago, true enough. Though not since she was a very small child. I grew up in Australia, though. I'm just based in Jakarta these last few years. But I think the uplink interference might be a matter of Tannhauser gate being active, rather than the decayed infrastructure of this place."
"Ah, yes. Of course. Have you been through a Tannhauser gate before?" she asked.
"Yes, several times. Once before to Arcadia, but also, my news service has sent me to Mars, and to Elysium."
Ulla looked impressed.
He smiled at her expression and added, "and I once had to take an actual spaceflight to the lunar mining colonies. It's rather ridiculous, you know, the politics that keeps them from opening a gate from Earth to the lunar mining operations. It's actually faster to take the gate to Mars and then the Mars gate to the Moon, but part of my assignment was to cover cultural interaction of the Mars-based lunar mining corporations with the Earth-based Orbital Transport Pilots' Union."
"You really are quite the traveller, then," Ulla said, losing some the redness in her face and favoring him with a rather pretty smile.
Aran smiled in turn, an expression he knew most women found charming. Ulla was an attractive woman, in a classically European-German manner —flaxen-haired, blue eyed and quite curvaceous— and he had some hopes for their... non-professional... relationship on this assignment.
"I take it this is going to be your first Tannhauser gate transit?" he asked.
"Yes. Current biotechnology news doesn't take a reporter off Earth that often, and before I started working for EuroBiotechZeitschrift, I only covered local news in Frankfurt."
"Well, it's nothing to be afraid of. Not really. There's sometimes some discomfort, but my understanding is that it's from some people's reactions to being near strong induced currents. At any rate, it doesn't last long. And the sight of the actual Tannhauser gate is... actually quite amazing."
"Well, I guess I get to find out. I have to say, I'm more worried about... well, about the Arcadians, than about the gate. An entire planet of lawless anarchists..."
"Well..." Aran said, wondering how good the listening devices in the train car were. It was almost certain that the UEN and the government of the Federal States of North America —the FSNA— had put in some sort of listening devices. On the other hand, the Jakarta Post and Globe had given him pretty good counter-surveillance equipment. Doing his job with no counter-surveillance gear wasn't an option; not unless he and his editors wanted to read the work they'd sent him to do from a Chinese news service, before they'd even had a chance to publish it.
"Just a moment," he said, and reached into his carry-case to activate a listening jammer that looked like —and functioned perfectly as— a portable VR game unit. The little device's readout flickered and then showed three lines of glowing amber text, giving the details of three listening devices that it had detected and successfully spoofed. And in theory, the listening devices wouldn't even be able to detect that they'd been spoofed; the latest Japanese technology was expensive, but supposedly very good. He supposed he was counting on it being better than what either the UEN and FSNA had placed in this train, but that was probably a good bet.
"There," he said. "Something like a private conversation, now."
"Really!? We were being...?"
"Not really a surprise, is it?"
"Ah, no," Ulla said. "I suppose not. But in Germany, it would only be Public Security listening, and the software would only flag things like violent speech, hate speech, that sort of thing."
"Yes, the same in Australia. Or in Jakarta, for that matter, these days. But in the FSNA, things are more restrictive. But about Arcadia, you mentioned that they have no laws. That's not really right. They have a few laws, but they do tend to obey them. And 'anarchists' is... well, not quite right either. Or maybe it depends on your definition of 'anarchist.'"
"People have no restrictions on their speech or their actions, not even when it's outright hate speech and provocation. There's no government oversight of contracts to ensure social equity. There's no government licensing or certification of jobs... even for jobs that could impact public safety. And I've even heard that civilians can be armed!" Ulla said, sounding a bit upset. "It sounds terrifying."
"Well, you have the details right, but I've found that it's not that terrifying. Enough to make me nervous, yes, but not as bad as being in a war zone or an economic refugee camp."
"Civilians with weapons isn't enough to scare you?"
"At home, certainly. Or here. But on Arcadia, it's not.... Well, you can see the weapons, they wear them openly, some of them. But I was there for two weeks and in that time I never saw anyone draw a weapon or even make a threat. Not once. It's very odd, I know, but that's how it was."
"Well, obviously the Arcadian government was careful with what you were allowed to see. They probably kept you away from any violence."
"No... that is, the Arcadian government never even talked to me, except to make sure I completed the UEN-required transit documents. And even for that, they sounded like they wouldn't have bothered, except that then the UEN wouldn't allow access on this side of the gate."
"Like I said," Ulla said, "anarchy. Besides which, there's the way they treat those poor refugees."
"Maybe," Aran allowed. "But it seems that they've somehow managed something like a functional society even so. I'd say it was because there were so few of them, but their population is up above six million now, and I've been to less populous cities on Earth where the social situation looked... more chaotic that it seemed on Arcadia.
"In fact, that's one of the things I really want to research. You know that we tend to less stringent social controls, in the Pacific Alliance, than what you'd be used to in Europe, say."
Ulla smiled wryly and nodded; the relatively relaxed social controls of the Pacific Alliance were well known. It gave the nations of the Pacific Alliance a certain reputation for easy-going social interactions.... Though for that matter, Aran thought, German girls had rather a reputation along those lines as well.
"So the question I want to look into," he went on, "is what sort of social controls do the Arcadians use, to get that sort of effect? My editors and I think there's a good story in it."
"I see," Ulla said. "I hope there is. For my part, as soon as I get the interviews with the two biotech companies I need, I plan to head back to Earth as soon as I can."
"It will be at least a week, with the way the gate traffic works to and from Arcadia, though," he told her. "An E-week, they call it; an Earth-week. Just a bit more than six of their local days. Last time I was there, I missed the first return wind
ow and had to stay a second week."
"Do they use Earth times, then?" Ulla asked.
"Sort of," Aran replied. "They mostly use Earth years, since their orbital period is so short, but then they use their local 'years' as months, more or less, since their orbital period isn't that much longer than an Earth lunar period. But their day is somewhat longer, if I recall."
"I think we're getting close," Ulla said abruptly, and indeed, the train seemed to be slowing.
"Ah, well," Aran said, "let's try to stay together. The screening and security on this side are... thorough."
6.
Calvin Piper stood at attention and did his best not to scowl. In his hands was a sheet of print-film with his scores for the Armored Corps. Failing scores.
It wasn't his fault, he thought. Not his fault at all. If he'd been able to get enough sleep, he knew he could have passed. The driving test at least.
Of course, the reason he didn't have enough sleep... even now that was enough to raise a blush on his features. He'd heard silly stories about recruits who lost their virginity after they'd been inducted, but he hadn't really believed them. He certainly hadn't expected to have it actually happen to him. But it had.
He wasn't sure if he should be upset at it or not. Reiko had been... wild, enthusiastic, eager... or maybe desperate. Cal never thought of himself as the sort of guy a girl would be desperate for, but Reiko had... well, had ridden him, all night, muffling her cries by biting her pillow and waking him every time he'd fallen asleep... sometimes with a whisper... other times with her hands... or her mouth. All night.