by Tom Kratman
“Fifteen hundred and ninety rounds, 6.5mm, four ball to one tracer,” Arias answered. “One thousand and sixty in my pack; five hundred and thirty ready.” Arias tapped the two large magazine pouches at her waist for emphasis.
Arias sounded frightened. Maria couldn’t let herself.
Then she remembered the name. Maria squeezed Arias’s shoulder and said, confidently, “Vielka, don’t sweat it. You’re in good company. The best.”
Vielka smiled and relaxed just that trifle that said, Okay, Sergeant. I won’t be scared if you’re not.
“Good girl.”
While Maria checked her troops, the rest of the platoon showed up, a few at a time. The platoon leader, Centurion Zamora, arrived last of all.
Zamora pulled off her helmet to run fingers through sweat-drenched, long, coppery hair as the other Amazons gathered around. The centurion looked around at the platoon she loved and then fiercely pushed away the thought of what lay in store for them over the next several hours or days.
“Troops,” Zamora announced once they’d all been pulled together, barring only a few at the windows and one at the door, “troops, the country is under attack.”
Maria rolled her eyes Heavenward, thinking, What is it about higher leaders in the military anyway, that makes them need to restate the obvious? Ah, well, Zamora has other virtues.
“Our mission,” Zamora continued, “is to assemble, move toward the enemy Comandancia on Cerro Mina, attach ourselves to Second Legion…and fight as directed.”
“Those Tauran Union women who got raped and killed?” Marta asked.
Zamora shrugged, answering, “So far as headquarters knows, it never happened. But did they manufacture an excuse? That’s what I figure. Though who can understand a Tauran, anyway?”
Going to one knee, she pulled a map from a pocket, spreading it out on the floor where the troops could see. “Here’s our route.” A pencil traced a series of streets on a map. “Order of march is Second Squad, Headquarters, Weapons, First, and Third. The platoon optio will take up the rear. Move out in five.”
Maria was skeptical. Not all the ammunition was broken down yet. Pulling at a lock of hair, she said, “Damn, that’s not much time, Cristina.”
“It’s as much time as we have, Sergeant Fuentes. So it’s as much as we need.” Zamora shook her head, though her hair was far too sweat-soaked to move with it, while she thought, I hate using that tone of voice with people I care for.
Maria’s face went blank as she answered, “Yes, Centurion.”
The order of march put Maria’s squad first. She told Marta to take up the rear of the squad.
Bugatti twisted her face into a mild scowl and answered, “And just where the fucking hell else would I be, Sergeant, sometime Centurion, Maria?”
Maria chucked her on the chin and led the way out. One by one, the rest of the squad followed, some of the women taking a last chance to stuff a pocket with an extra grenade or meal or drum of ammunition. As they assembled at the door, a light truck, in civilian paint but driven by a uniformed elderly man, showed at the door.
“Anyone here need a couple of antiaircraft missiles?” the old man shouted out.
Maria passed the word back that the air-defense weapons were here. To the old man she said, “Just stand by. The crew will pick them up as they pass.”
“Wilco,” said the ancient.
Stomach flip-flopping as she slipped out the door, Maria began to move forward, hugging the sides of the street. There was the sound of firing ahead, the muffled patter of her soldiers’ booted feet behind. She often heard the distinctive sound of a missile being fired at some helicopter. Sometimes, when she passed through an open intersection and could look south or east, she saw tracers flying high in the air. I guess that’s what “a thousand points of light” look like, after all.
About halfway to Cerro Mina, Zamora answered the radio. After half a minute’s conversation, she called a halt. The optio came running up to her.
“Change of orders,” Zamora announced. “We hold here until called for.”
“Any idea why?” the optio asked.
“Personally, since Tercio Gorgidas got the same hold order, I smell politics,” Zamora answered.
“Mierda!” exclaimed the optio, who then ran back and began directing the troops to find what cover they could in the halls and alleyways off of the street.
Maria took her squad—there were ten of them, all told—and hunkered down between the outside wall of a house and some bushes. Marta flopped down next to her, whispering, “If I were you, Maria, I’d tell Gonzalez to duck into one of those buildings and not come out for several days. I’ll carry her gun.”
Maria nodded her head for a moment, then shook it in negation. “I know. I considered that already myself. Gonzalez’s three kids. I don’t want them losing their last parent to be on my conscience. Still…no. We’ll need everybody soon, especially the machine gunner.” Besides, I like the idea of Alma being orphaned even less than I like the idea of it happening to the Gonzalez children.
* * *
The troops began sweating profusely as the sun first rose, and then climbed higher in the sky. Then the spot Maria had picked turned out to have been a good move on her part. The squad was on the wrong side of the street, shade-wise, and would have roasted but for the protection of the bushes. Even so, the building behind them absorbed and then put out a lot of heat as the day grew longer.
Some people, civilians, came out and gave the women cold drinks, snacks, whatever they had to spare. Considering that their country just might lose, and be ruined, it was probably more than they could spare. That made it better in more ways than one.
Curiously, none of those who ministered to the soldiers were healthy young men. Those not with the colors already were perhaps too ashamed to be seen by armed women heading for battle.
It was a long, hot wait until Zamora received new orders. Marta filled the time with idle chitchat, mostly concerning the rumors that flew back and forth.
“Do you think the government’s really fallen?” she asked.
“The buildings may be in enemy hands,” Maria answered. “The president’s way too cagey to get caught himself, though. Not alive. He was a soldier once, too, you know.”
One trooper from the air defense team—they had to stay out in the open to use their missiles—stuck her head through the bushes and said, “I heard on the radio that the Taurans were being pushed back into the sea and that the boys of the military schools were on the attack.”
Remembering the other half of the machine gun team that had saved her from the sniper, Maria said that she thought it could well be true.
“C’mon, ladies,” Zamora announced, finally, once the sun was about halfway up the sky. “Enough loafing. We’re back on the job.”
In a way, the centurion thought, it’s better to go ahead despite what’s in store than to wait here, helpless.
It took a few minutes of shouting to get the platoon reassembled in the street. Then the women began to jog again, to move closer to the fighting, as civilians waved to them and cheered. Along their route Zamora’s platoon was joined by the others from the maniple, streaming in from the left and right. Maria almost felt sorry for the poor mortar rats struggling under their loads. Then again, they had a couple of mules to help out. She didn’t feel all that sorry for them. Besides, each of the Amazonas except for machine gun and rocket crews also carried a round of ammunition for the mortars. And seven pounds is not something to laugh at when you’re already toting over fifty.
They passed some awful things on the way. Bodies, of course, friendly and enemy. Some were uniformed and armed; some looked like civilians who had just gotten in the way. A couple were kids.
Maria thought of Alma for about the five hundredth time that morning. Please, God? Please help Porras keep my baby safe?
* * *
“Bring me a dozen eggs, child, and the side of bacon,” Porras told Alma Fuentes. The pan on the
stove was already sizzling. To Cat Gonzalez’s eldest, Romeo, she said, “Be careful not to scorch the chorley bread in the toaster.”
Chorley was a grain either native to Terra Nova or possibly genengineered by the Noahs. No one was really certain. Growing, it resembled a sunflower that never reached more than a foot or so off the ground. Harvested, processed and baked, it made a yellow bread that was naturally buttery in taste.
“And turn off the television!” Porras shouted at another of the older children. There was no sense in letting them get upset with worry for their mothers.
The safe house for the children was Porras’s own. It was on the coast, far enough from the fighting that the children couldn’t hear much, if any, of it. Whatever she could hear, Porras still knew, at least in general terms, of the battle raging. She forced herself to remain calm, or as calm as she could, and kept the children busy with helping her prepare breakfast. Porras didn’t break out the government provided emergency rations. Time for that later…if things get hard.
“Abuela Lydia, where’s my mommy?” Alma asked from beneath soulful brown eyes.
“Child, do you remember this morning at all?”
“Not much,” the girl answered, shaking her head.
Good.
“Your mommy’s with the tercio”—the regiment—“and I’m sure she’ll be back by this evening. Tomorrow night at the latest. And you and the other children will be staying here with me. Won’t that be fun?”
Alma nodded very deeply and seriously. “Fun,” she echoed, even while the child thought, I’m little; I’m not stupid. My mommy’s in trouble, isn’t she?
* * *
Before the platoons of Amazons reached the base of Cerro Mina they came to an open area filled with smoke, and bodies, and smells both unfamiliar and unpleasant. Marta nearly tripped over two of the bodies locked in what almost seemed an embrace. The knife of one was in the body of the other.
There was also a shot-down helicopter, a Tauran gunship, with two burned charcoal lumps in it, their arms and legs pulled up like a baby’s in a womb. Those and their stench made some of the women gag a little.
Maria looked at the helicopter and wondered if it was the same one that had dogged her steps earlier. She hadn’t heard or seen a Tauran helicopter since the one that had tried to fire her up and wondered if that absence was because of the eventual and increasing distribution of the antiaircraft missiles.
Marta took one sniff of the helicopter and started to gag herself. She bent over and deposited breakfast onto the asphalt.
The Amazons held up briefly just past that scene of battle, while their maniple commander, Inez Trujillo, went to find someone to report to. While waiting, Maria ordered her squad to take positions next to a couple of wrecked enemy armored vehicles. Yes, there were burned corpses in those, too. And, yes, they stank.
“A bad way to die; poor men,” she said.
Wiping her mouth with a hand, Marta answered with a ruthlessness she didn’t really feel, “Fuck ’em; better them than us or ours.” Still, she shook her head, regretting not the deed, but the necessity.
After several minutes Tribune Trujillo showed up in the open area near Zamora’s platoon. With her was some male tribune the women didn’t recognize. The man towered over little Inez. Muscular, narrow-waisted, and painfully handsome, he looked as if he could have made a pretty good living as a male model. Maybe he did. He and Inez shook hands good-bye. Then Trujillo began to walk—perhaps a little unsteadily—toward where Maria’s squad lay. Halfway there, Inez stopped and forced herself back to reasonable calm. Thereafter, she walked upright and with apparent confidence.
The other two officers and the eight centurions and optios in the maniple gathered around her while Trujillo spoke and gestured to the map and the buildings surrounding them.
* * *
Trujillo was nearly finished with her orders. “Our attack to seize the Taurans’ headquarters on Cerro Mina is to be ‘quick and irrespective of losses’; that’s how important it is.”
“Supporting forces on the right?” Zamora asked. She already knew that one understrength maniple of the Tercio Gorgidas was going to be on the left. And that there might be—or might not; things went wrong in war—an artillery barrage to soften the hill up.
Trujillo shook her head. “I’d have mentioned it if there were going to be.”
Zamora sighed at those words. “Irrespective of losses,” she quoted. “Oh, well. At least our left will be secure. Maybe the TGs are mariposas. We’ve all got reason to know they are some tough mariposas.”
“Other questions?” Trujillo asked. There was some lip chewing, some head shaking. Of further questions there were none.
“Dismissed.”
The officers and centurions saluted Trujillo and returned to their places. The Weapons Platoon centurion called her women and their mules over and began setting up the section for firing. As soon as the others saw the mortars begin to set up, they began filtering over by twos and threes to drop off their single rounds of ammunition.
* * *
Too soon Maria was crawling on all fours behind her platoon centurion, her squad following her. They passed through tight little alleyways and buildings; their inhabitants staring at them with wide, terrified eyes. A little girl came to stand near where they had to pass, making the sign of the cross at them. Maria flashed the girl her best smile; almost as if she wasn’t scared to death.
I guess she means well. And it’s nice to know someone cares.
The women crossed open streets with hearts pounding. The whole time they moved they heard artillery—their own, they’d been told—pounding the steep enemy held hill to their front. The blasts made their internal organs ripple in a way that was both fascinating and extremely unpleasant, the more so as they got closer. The sensation wasn’t entirely new to any of them as they’d all been shelled, deliberately, in basic training.
Eventually they stopped in a courtyard that abutted onto Avenida de la Santa Maria, also known as Avenida de la Victoria, the road that marked the partition between the part of the country under Balboan control and the part held for the last decade by the Taurans. Some of the machine gunners, the ones with the heavier .34 caliber belt-fed guns, were ordered into the buildings to support the attack. Cat and her drum-fed M-26 stayed with her squad.
Maria was scared to death. She didn’t want to kill anybody; she didn’t want to be killed either. The more she thought about it, the more frightened she became. It got so bad that she lay right down on the asphalt, pretending to nap and hoping that its steadiness would help her conceal from her troops how very afraid she was.
Marta wasn’t fooled. She sat down, cross-legged, and said, “Don’t worry, Maria. It’ll be fine.”
Foul-mouthed and occasionally insubordinate as Marta was, Maria was awfully glad of her company. She patted her leg and half agreed with her, “Fine. Yeah. Sure.”
In a way, having Marta there did help. Maria wasn’t quite so scared, anyway. She didn’t feel so alone. That had really been the worst part of getting to the hide, being all on her own.
Now she was with her tribe. Life was not so bad.
* * *
“What do you mean there’s no damned smoke available?” Trujillo cursed into the radio. “I can’t order my girls into that without smoke!…Yes, sir…Yes, sir…I understand, sir. Yes, sir, I’ll try.”
Inez handed the microphone back to her fire support sergeant, her forward observer. The FO just shrugged and said, “Can’t store the white phosphorus with the high explosive. We’ll have to wait for the WP to reach the guns.”
“We can’t wait. It’s got to be done now. Suarez promised to paste the hill good with high explosive before we go in. But we’re going in.”
“Oh, Christ,” the FO said. Smiling nervously, she added, “Funny, how you call on the only man who can help you, isn’t it?”
Trujillo looked at her watch nervously. “Yeah…funny.”
The FO looked up at
the sky and said a little, hopeless, prayer; something to the effect of, “Lord, please make them run away.” No such luck, of course. The Taurans had their jobs, too.
Trujillo looked around at her command, nearly two hundred women of the Tercio Amazona. Her eyes sought out especially those who had gone through training with her back when the regiment was just a dream. They were her best friends; no difference in rank could ever change that.
Her eyes settled on Maria briefly. She smiled with warmth and a little sadness. As she turned her gaze slightly, the smile grew both warmer and sadder. Cat Gonzalez smiled back, encouragingly.
* * *
The tempo of artillery fire landing on the hill ahead picked up noticeably. Maria opened her eyes and stood up. Lying on the asphalt hadn’t really helped all that much, anyway. She put her arms out parallel to her body to bring her squad on line. Marta fell in behind the squad. It was her job to make sure nobody fell behind her.
“Fix…bayonets!” Trujillo commanded. Word was passed from soldier to soldier. “Fix bayonets…fix bayonets!”
Maria’s hands shook as she reached toward her belt. She pulled the bayonet out and fixed it on the end of her rifle. A steady click-click-clicking said the rest of the maniple was doing the same, putting a knife on the end of a modern rifle to turn it into something a caveman would recognize as a spear.
It was not silly, however many thoughtless amateurs thought it was. True, bayonets almost never killed anybody who could still fight. They were not supposed to. What they were supposed to do, instead, was to terrify the enemy into running away or giving up. They did that well enough, often enough, to justify keeping them in the inventory. Of course, part of the terror was in the way they really were used; to hack the enemy’s wounded into spareribs after winning.
Even though it is against the law of war to refuse to take prisoners, prisoners are almost never taken in a hotly contested assault. Then, too, speeding is against the traffic code.
Arias got down on both knees, right there on the hard pavement, crossed herself, and began to pray. She included the Taurans in her prayers. Another girl, from a different squad, was crying softly. No one but she knew exactly for what or for whom she was crying for.