Not For Glory

by Joel Rosenberg

  The ground came up fast, but just when I was sure we were going to smash into the runway, the pilot leveled off, pulled the nose up, and put the shuttle into a nice landing flare.

  "Touchdown," the speaker blared. "Braking."

  The shuttle screamed to a stop on the tarmac, shuddering as if it thought it was going to break up, vibrating so hard that I thought that I was going to lose my lunch or my teeth.

  But it didn't and I didn't, and in a few moments we'd rolled to a stop. Blue-suited stevedores wheeled a staircase up to the side of the skipshuttle, and the three of us descended to the black tarmac, Celia and her peacemakers behind us.

  Off in the distance, past the end of the runway, I could see the blue water of the Neu Hunse . . . or Nouveau Loire.

  A passenger skimmer hissed up behind us, settling onto the rubber rim of its plenum chamber as the driver throttled it back. Zev took a step toward it, but Celia shook her head and her peacemakers glared at us.

  "Commerce Department personnel only," she said. "You'll have to make your own way to the docks."

  I smiled. "A bit of the treatment, eh?"

  She smiled back. She didn't mean it anymore than I did. "I don't know what you mean," she said. "We'll see you at the riverboat, if and when."

  "Saddle up," Shimon said, hefting his bag to his shoulder and walking toward the end of the runway, away from the skimmer and the reception buildings behind him.

  I caught up with him easily. "You've got the local maps memorized?"

  He shrugged, and then smiled. "Of course. Besides, if you had your eyes open, you'd notice that the draglines they use to load shuttles onto the riverboats are over at the end of the runway, so the riverboat is going to have to dock there sometime. My guess is that we'll see some sort of path from the loading dock here to where we can pick up the boat as passengers." He glanced down at his thumbnail. "Let's hurry."

  I was about to suggest that it could be days until the next riverboat showed up, but a far-off steam whistle blew from the direction of the river.

  Zev laughed. "You prescient?"

  "Nah." Shimon smiled. "The riverboat schedule was on a flimsy on McCawber's desk and I'm quite good at reading upside down. It's about two klicks to the docks. Let's step it up."

  I can understand why the Commerce Department initially set up their launcher down south, at the mouth of the Neu Hunse: it's always easier, at least technically, to ship downriver than up.

  As it turned out, they would have been better off with the port about a thousand klicks north from where the river dumps into the sea; there was nothing in the French territory, to the south, that was worth enough to absorb the cost of shipping it offworld. All the hempwood grows up north; not only will the plant only grow within a hundred meters of the river, but it seems that it needs an occasional cold winter in order to keep its sometimes-commensal, sometimes-parasitic bacterial partner under control.

  But once the Commerce Department had built the launcher, they and the locals were stuck with the placement

  That's one of the more reasonable regulations of the Thousand Worlds Commerce Department: while they'll build landing strips for skipshuttles wherever the trade justifies it, the Thousand Worlds supplies one and only one laser launcher per colony world. Launching complexes are expensive to build and maintain. Alsace wouldn't have another until they developed the capital for a hefty down payment, and either the technology to support it, or still more capital to finance the import of technicians and equipment.

  So while the Dutch controlled the north and the hempwood, the French controlled the south, and their chartered area around the launching port.

  Make that "mostly controlled." The Dutch Confederates had made significant inroads into French territory along the river, in an attempt to give their ships free passage through Port Marne to the Commerce Department launcher.

  Which was why, of course, that the French had hired Metzada, and why the war in the south had brought the hempwood trade to a virtual standstill, and why a Thousand World Commerce Department inspector had me landed deep in Dutch territory.

  And, why, along with Celia and her peacemakers, there was a reception committee of sorts waiting for us at the Leewenhoek docks.

  I took a moment to size up the crowd. About four dozen blocky men, mainly middle-aged, but with a leavening of younger ones, all dressed in dull gray shirts and trousers. The hempwood tree's inner bark makes excellent thread, but the locals hadn't developed a dye that would last through more than a couple of washings.

  They all carried belt-knives, of course; on a frontier world, you'll more often find a local without pants than without a knife. A dozen of them had rifles as well: flintlocks and wheel locks. Alsace had yet to develop the manufacturing base to produce cartridges, and manufacturing smokeless powder is tricky. But saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal were easy to obtain locally. For the first, all that's needed is a well-used outhouse; natural deposits and wood provided the other two.

  Celia looked at me, her mouth pursed in self-satisfaction. "I guess this is goodbye." She moved off to the side, beckoning at her five black-suited peacemakers to follow.

  "Stand aside, General," Zev said. "When it hits, you go over into the water and swim for it."

  "Easy, boy," Shimon Bar-El said. "Don't borrow trouble."

  "It looks like trouble's going to lend itself without me asking," he said.

  I eyed the warehouses around the dock and the paddlewheel steamer, the Bolivar.

  No good. We'd have to go through the mob to get to the cover of the buildings, and the only way to the boat would be by crossing fifty meters of open dock. Don't be fooled: those primitive rifles can be very accurate. That aside, Shimon was in no shape to run, and if this whole trip made any sense he had the key to the Alsace campaign locked up in his head.

  Still, if we could get to the boat, we'd be safe. Even with a war on, it was still in both sides' interests for a neutral ship to be able to carry limited amounts of heavily-taxed Dutch hempwood to Port Marne. Both the French and the Dutch needed the offworld credits to import medical tech and supplies, among other things—so the Bolivar and her two sister sidewheelers had achieved a sacrosanct status, backed up, when necessary, by the two turret guns just aft of the bridge.

  And even if someone decided to forget the forms, the skipshuttle we'd ridden down on had already been mounted on the rear deck of the Bolivar for transport south; the hatch was only about two meters off the deck and standing slightly ajar—and a skipshuttle's skin is tough.

  But the boat was just too far away.

  I turned to face the crowd.

  "We want a word with you," a grizzled, black-bearded man said. While another faced both Zev and Shimon, the bearded man planted himself in front of me and tapped me on the chest with a gnarled stick almost as thick as my arm. "You're with the killers?" He glared at my khakis.

  No, I'm not, I was tempted to respond. I just like to dress up in uniforms.

  I sighed. He wasn't necessarily as stupid as he sounded. It usually takes civilians a while to work up to killing an unarmed man.

  "My name is Tetsuo Hanavi. Hanavi family, Bar-El clan. Inspector-general, Metzadan Mercenary Corps. This is Sergeant Zev Aroni, an Aroni of the Aronis. The other is my uncle, Shimon Bar-El. You are?"

  "Amos Sweelinck. What are you doing here?"

  Another silly question. But it didn't quite seem politic to point that out. "And these are . . . ?" I gestured at the two men at his side.

  "Friends. Of mine, and of the Roupers." He tapped me on the sternum, again. Not gently. "I asked you a question."

  "We are preparing to get on the boat. Obviously."

  Shimon touched my arm, but I'd already seen that behind the crowd, three men in gray shirts and pantaloons had stepped out of the clutter of boxes in front of the nearest warehouse.

  Sweelinck tapped me again, his forehead creased in puzzlement. When he hit me, I was supposed to react, not just stand there: attack him, or cringe. Either wo
uld set the mob off. It's standard primate psychology.

  I don't have any grievance with that; I'm a primate, too. It's just that a professional can't let his reactions be standard.

  He sneered. "We know that you want to join up with your French friends—"

  "Employers," Shimon said, flatly. "Eh?"

  "Not friends. The French have bought Metzada's services—not Metzada's friendship. They—" He swallowed. "We don't take our passions to the marketplace."

  "Now," I said, "can we just leave it at that? We'll just be getting aboard—"

  "No. We can not just leave it at that."

  The three men behind the crowd took up positions atop a stack of boxes; their compound bows strung, each nocked an arrow. It was about damn time.

  I held up three fingers. "Last chance." I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry.

  Sweelinck took a step forward.

  I stepped back, and pointed to Sweelinck and the two men with him.

  Zev pushed Shimon over the side of the dock and drew his knife. But he was too slow. A knobby stick caught him across the chest, staggering him; as he tried to bring his knife up, a flash of thunder smashed his face to pulp.

  When a powerful compound bow looses an arrow, you don't see the shaft in flight unless you're looking for it; it seemed as though arrows sprouted from the backs of the three men's heads. Sweelinck and the other two crumpled.

  I took a step back to dodge a hasty swing, then snatched my knife from my belt while I kicked Sweelinck's body into the crowd. One of the locals was charging me; I stepped aside and slashed him across the throat as he lunged by, then booted him over the side while I grabbed another, this one a boy of about sixteen, by the hair.

  I spun him around to serve as a shield. He didn't seem eager to hold still, so I smashed the hilt of my knife against his temple to quiet him down.

  He sagged against my chest, supported only by my grip in his hair. I rested the blade against his throat as I faced the crowd. "Three dead, so far. You want more?" I raised my voice. "Run or you're all dead men."

  It worked: the mob broke and ran, weapons unfired. No shame there; if they had been ready for a fight, they would have fought. But they were after a simple lynching, not a battle.

  One by one the three bowmen climbed down, and then, arrows nocked, they walked over, keeping a careful eye on the three bodies. Too many soldiers have been killed by supposedly dead men.

  I let the local boy's limp body fall to one side, then dropped to my knees next to Zev. It wasn't good. The bullet had plowed through his cheek and the roof of his mouth and lodged itself somewhere in his brain—but he was still breathing.

  One of the newcomers knelt beside me, laying his bow down as he shrugged out of his pack.

  "Corporal Nahum Eitan," he said. "I'm the medician." He unrolled his gear and brought out a scanner. "No good," he said after only a few seconds. He shrugged. "If it was Metzada . . ."

  But it wasn't. I squeezed Zev's hand, and I could have sworn he squeezed back, but Eitan shook his head. "My responsibility, sir. I'll call it. What's left of him is hurting, and he's got no chance." He lifted the only red hypo in his medician's roll.

  Water dripped on the hot wood next to me as Shimon Bar-El stood there. "Tetsuo—"

  "Shut the fuck up." They train us well in Section. I should have been able to say that Zev was my partner and my friend, but I wasn't allowed to say the first, and the second wasn't true, so all I could say was, "He's my sergeant." I held out my hand, took the hypo from Eitan and set it against Zev's neck. I triggered it in a single hiss, and then Zev jerked once and fell still.

  Gently, carefully, I handed the hypo back to Eitan, and stood. The knees of my uniform were wet with Zev's blood. I'd have to change when we got aboard, and I might as well throw these trousers away. It's hard to get the blood out.

  The oldest of the three newcomers, a lanky man with a badly scarred forehead, stood in front of me. He didn't salute; we're not much on saluting in Metzada. "Skirmisher-Sergeant Sid Levin, sir."

  "You took your time," I said, pleased to find that I could still punch for a calm voice and get it.

  "The general told us to stay out of it unless and until I was sure you couldn't handle the situation by yourself."

  Probably the right move. Probably. We might have been able to talk them out of it, and that would have been better, safer for all.

  It wouldn't have mattered, I told myself, looking down at Zev's body. Section men don't die in bed.

  "You want us to bring him along?"

  I shook my head. Let the Dutch take care of cleaning up the mess. "No, let's get out of here, and on board. Plan on sleeping in shifts. I don't exactly trust those peacemakers."

  Levin smiled at the five black-suited men, giving their wireguns a quick glance. His smile could have been mistaken for a friendly grin, if you didn't notice the way his eyes narrowed.

  They noticed.

  I took a flintlock pistol and powderbag from one of the corpses.

  "Do you think, sir," Levin asked casually, "that you could find some use for a handful of wireguns?"

  "No. And particularly not in front of witnesses."

  The youngest of the skirmishers, a blue-eyed boy with kinked blond hair, eyed the bodies of the three dead men. "Standard booty rights?" he asked. He couldn't have been more than seventeen.

  I shook my head. "No. Let's get—"

  "But we earned—"

  "Save it," Levin snapped. He shrugged an apology at me. "Sorry, sir. My fault."

  I was beginning to like Skirmisher-Sergeant Sid Levin. He took responsibility for his man. He'd probably chew the boy's head off later, out of my sight—but any discipline should properly come from him, not me.

  A blast from the boat's steam whistle spun me around, the pistol coming up as if by its own volition.

  At the motion, Shimon shook his head. "Asshole. Did you check to see whether or not it's loaded?"

  I shrugged. There isn't a way to do that with a flintlock. Oh, you can open the pan to see if it's primed, and you can push the tamping stick down the bore to see if there's something in there, but you can't tell if it's been loaded unless you loaded it yourself.

  Which I already knew. I guess I was a bit more shaken than I'd thought. I cocked the piece, then pointed the gun at the nearest of the Dutch corpses before pulling the trigger.

  The gun went off with a cloud of acrid smoke, and a loud bang; the body barely shook from the bullet.

  "It was loaded," I said, stooping to retrieve a powderhorn and shoulderbag from one of the dead men. "It looks like the captain's a bit nervous," I said. "Let's get aboard."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "This Thing that Ruth Did . . ."

  Alsace, Northern Continent,

  Dutch Confederation Territory

  Somewhere on the Neu Hunse

  03/07/44, 2207 local time

  The nights on Alsace are bright. Its moon is even larger than Earth's, and a trifle closer to Alsace than Luna is to Earth. You'd think that the tides would be the cause of the dramatic rising and falling along the banks of the river—but you'd be wrong. It's nothing so exotic; it's all caused by the spring thawing up in the mountains. While we were well into spring, in some spots along the banks the high-water marks stood two, three meters above low-water.

  I stood at the Bolivar's stern rail, watching the stars dance on the water behind us, spray from the twin paddlewheels giving me an occasional jolt when the light breeze would catch it and blow it my way.

  As we passed by another of the riverfront houses belonging to the wealthier Dutch hempwood planters, the boat slowly turned to follow one of the river's immense curves. It reminded me of a passage from Twain, so I pulled out the copy of Life on the Mississippi, and thumbed the pageglow on.

  The water cuts the alluvial banks of the "lower" river into deep horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the nec
k, half or three-quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple of hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again.

  I hadn't truly understood that from looking at the topo maps; it had only been an intellectual game.

  Here on Alsace, it came alive. As the river turned endlessly, it often would have been possible to leave the Bolivar at one of its stops and catch up with it by walking straight across one of the Dutch plantations while the boat followed the twists in the river.

  In fact, despite the fact that the paddlewheel was almost twice as fast as the sort Twain described—the boilers were of offworld manufacture, and could easily hold twenty times the pressure—I could have walked the eight hundred klicks from Leewenhoek to Marne in little more than three times the thirteen local days it would take us to steam the distance.

  Lay a ruler on the map and it will read out as eight hundred klicks; measure in all the twists and turns, and you'll find that the trip is more than eight times that distance.

  Figuring orbits is a lot easier than dealing with a twisting river. . . .

  Shimon was standing beside me; I hadn't heard him walk up. That was bad. You should always pay attention. I learned that a long time ago.

  A tabstick dangling from the corner of his mouth, he leaned back against the rail. "Sorry about Zev," he said simply.

  "Thanks."

  He turned and faced the water, and we just stood there for a few minutes, side by side, watching the water and smoking our tabsticks until he said, "Figured it out yet?"

  "What?"

  "The fix." He blew a puff of smoke out into the darkness, and then tapped a fingernail against the book.

  "Maybe." I shrugged. I had glimmerings, but that was all. "Want to tell me right now?"

  "Nah. Too tempting." We both considered the churning water below. "Two things you've got to remember, Tetsuki. First is that the Dutch aren't a nation, not here. They're a confederation—during peacetime, the families were feuding with each other more of the time than not." He fell silent.