A Desert Called Peace cl-1

by Tom Kratman

  A much more attractive view than the cesspool below, thought Robinson. "What development?"

  "One we did not predict and are still investigating," Khan, the husband, answered. "There is a force building, down below, that was not in any of our initial calculations. Right now, all we can say definitively, is that it will be about the size of a brigade, that it will be technologically primitive in comparison to the most sophisticated armed groups on the planet, but that it is unlikely to be constrained by the web of treaties and accords your predecessors have thrown up around most of the planet's armed forces."

  "You mean to act like the Federated States?"

  "No, sir," answered the wife. "We expect it to be much worse than that."

  Interlude

  29 July, 2067, alongside Colonization Ship Cheng Ho

  The UNSS Kofi Annan adopted almost the same high orbit as the ghost ship, only a touch farther out. This allowed the captain of the Annan to watch as the launch neared the derelict and docked.

  "There's still a charge to the batteries, Captain," the Marine officer in charge of the away party announced. "The hatch is cycling and… we're in. Good Lord, the radiation is bad! Skipper, this ship is so hot we couldn't even hope to scrap it for a thousand years."

  "Very good, Major Ridilla. Put us on visual please."

  "Wilco." The Cheng Ho suddenly disappeared from the bridge's view screen, being replaced by the view from the Marine's helmet cam.

  "Where to first, Skipper?" asked Ridilla.

  "Check out the bridge to the Cheng Ho," ordered the captain. The image on the view screen wobbled as the Marine walked forward under the small gravity provided by the Cheng Ho 's spin, his magnetic boots gripping the deck lightly.

  "Stop," the captain ordered. "What's that writing on the walls?"

  "No clue, Captain," Ridilla answered. "I can't read Arabic."

  "Hold on the image, Major." The captain looked around the bridge. "Who can read Arabic?" she asked.

  "I can, Skipper," answered a lieutenant at life support. "It's from Sura Forty of the Koran. It says, 'Whose is the kingdom on that day? God's, the One, the Dominant!'"

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. Stand by and give me translations if Major Ridilla finds more. Proceed, Major."

  "Aye, aye, Skipper."

  Time passed slowly on the bridge, with little on the view screen but a trembling image and nothing to hear but the hum of the Annan and Ridilla's labored breathing.

  "I've got bodies, Skipper… twelve… no… fourteen. Mostly young but there's one old guy with a beard. The radiation must have killed any bacteria and the cold preserved them."

  The captain ordered, "Show me." The image on the view screen twisted down to show the fourteen corpses identified by Ridilla. They were all but one young men, half of them bearded and half cleanshaven, apparently locked with each other in deathgrips at a point where two corridors of the Cheng Ho met. One young man, frozen eyes staring blind at the opposite bulkhead, had managed to sit up before he died. The arms were clutched around a stomach wound and bloody icicles trailed outward from the fingers.

  Other bodies, singly and in pairs, dotted the way to the ghost ship's bridge. Most had apparently been killed by cutting or stabbing implements. There were only two obvious gunshot wounds, both of those outside the sealed hatch to the Cheng Ho 's own bridge.

  "The hatch is locked tight, Skipper," Major Ridilla announced. "We are cutting through."

  "I want the log for the Cheng Ho, Major. I want to know what happened on that ship."

  Chapter Twelve Hardship, poverty, and want are the best school for a soldier. -Napoleon I (Bonaparte), Maxim LVIII

  We become brave by doing brave acts, -Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

  I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys the war can't be won without. -Ernie Pyle

  Fort Cameron, Centro de Instruccion Militar, 20/3/460 AC, 3:30 AM

  A shrill blast of a whistle matched with a sudden glaring light awoke Cruz from a rather pleasant dream of Caridad. She was walking toward him, wearing nothing but an inviting smile…

  "Get up! Get up, you shitty little maggots. Move your nasty, lazy, chingada asses out of my tent. Put on your sneakers and shorts and move! You, chico! Do you think you're being paid to sleep all day? Out! Out! OUT!"

  The infantry corporal-his nametag read "del Valle"-strode quickly down the tent between two rows of cots. As he did so he overturned each one, spilling its occupant out onto the muddy tent floor. Cruz, who had been sleeping on his back, landed on his face, driving mud into his mouth and up his nostrils.

  From somewhere off in the distance a loudspeaker was blaring out some sort of martial music at an indecent volume. Dimly heard by the tent's occupants, other new recruits in adjacent tents were being subjected to the same treatment. The corporal no sooner reached the last cot than he began herding, sometimes with punches and kicks, the stunned and bewildered recruits outside into the street that fronted the tent.

  Disoriented, tired, confused… and sneezing; Ricardo Cruz followed the rest of his tent mates, sheeplike, into the night.

  Cruz had arrived at Cameron only about five hours before. He and seventy-nine other volunteers had been bussed from the police station in Las Mesas starting at seven PM the previous evening. A long and deliberately slow drive to the Centro de Instruccion Militar had brought them through Fort Cameron's front gate just after nine. The bus dropped the new recruits off in front of a mess hall. Met there by a friendly-faced sergeant, they were fed a light snack, and then issued running shoes and shorts, ponchos and poncho liners-thin nylon quilts-and smallish, inadequate pillows. This had taken until just before midnight.

  Then that deceptively friendly, warmly smiling sergeant had guided them-they didn't yet know how to march-to their tents. Cruz had gone to sleep shortly after midnight.

  So it was that an extremely tired Ricardo Cruz was hustled out into the street at three-thirty in the morning to face the wrath of his new squad leader. On either side of Cruz's tent's group, more of the new volunteers were also spilling out into the street. None had on anything more than their shorts, T-shirt, socks and running shoes. A couple still seemed to be pulling on shorts. One of these went down face first into the mud, a corporal's kick to his fundament providing the motive power.

  Cruz had a moment to look around before one of the omnipresent corporals shoved him into the formation that was building in the dirt street. Opposite from where Cruz stood was a line of grim-visaged soldiers wearing running shoes and shorts, black T-shirts and hostile glares. Behind the line of men there was a square podium. From the podium two men oversaw the scene. One of these was short and stocky. He looked to be a rather medium olive color, though in the dark Cruz couldn't be sure. Next to him stood a very tall and slender, graying but not balding black man. The black looked somewhat elderly in the face as well, his skin deeply seamed by what must have been years of exposure to the elements. Still, he carried himself like a young man, a very proud young man. Over the shouting of the corporals and the murmuring of his fellow volunteers, Cruz could not hear what the black man was saying.

  Sergeant Major McNamara, standing to the right of First Centurion Epolito Martinez, gave a few last minute words of advice before moving on to look over the next company of new trainees. When speaking Spanish, the sergeant major sounded very like a native of Cristobal, in the Republic, with only rare conversion of the English "th" sound into "t." That was no surprise to those who knew him; his wife was a native of that place.

  "There's no moment more critical than this one, Martinez," the sergeant major said. "Too forceful and you'll frighten them silly for months. Too little and they'll stop paying attention in a few days. What becomes of your company in the next several months all depends on what you do here in the next few minutes. You have shocked them. That's good. The shock will keep them i
n line until you have time to build some discipline in them, especially self-discipline. Remember, though, it is a tricky job, creating self-discipline. The more you impose discipline from the outside, the less they will build on the inside. Tricky."

  Martinez, although a soldier for more than fifteen years, was unused to the task of training new troops. He listened attentively to what the big gringo sergeant major had to say. As McNamara stepped off the podium, Martinez stepped up to its edge and began to address the company.

  "Welcome, volunteers, to Fort Cameron. I am First Centurion Martinez. You will address me as 'Centurion.' Together with your centurions of centuries, section leaders, and team leaders, we will, I am sure, turn most of you into soldiers the country can be proud of." Martinez shook his head in seeming regret, his face looking sad, even mournful. "Unfortunately, we will probably have to kill some of you first."

  In the ranks, the men around Cruz-Cruz, himself, for that matter-gulped. The way Martinez had said it, there could be no doubt but that some of the new boys would be killed in training.

  "Today marks your first day as soldiers of the Legio del Cid. It will be a day you will never forget. It will not be the hardest day you will ever face. Each day here will be worse than the day that preceded it. We will make it so, I promise. I promise you also hunger and fatigue, thirst and forced marches, hardship and pain. I promise misery. In the end, your only release will be when you yourselves are too tough to notice anymore. That… or when you die. To me it makes no practical difference which happens first.

  "Centurions, take charge of your centuries." Martinez returned the salutes of his subordinates.

  It was just ten o'clock at night, as Cruz lay on his cot waiting for sleep to overtake him. Outside a bugle played a soft call.

  Oh, God, I hurt. First Bastard Martinez was right. To lie on this cot and not be in pain is the best thing I've ever felt, even though everything still hurts.

  The day, too, had been as miserable as the first centurion had promised. From about a quarter to four to six in the morning, the company had learned the basics of marching. Then, from six to seven thirty, had come physical training. Given the number of push-ups awarded during the close order drill instruction, PT was agony. Cruz had lain on his back with his body twisted and his legs to one side until he thought his abdomen would rip apart from the stress. God, it had hurt! Push-ups had been interspersed with other exercises until Cruz's arms would no longer support him.

  Sure, his previous life had been hard, as was to be expected on a cattle ranch and farm that occasionally dabbled in pigs and kept a coop of trixies, megalapteryx fowl, for their olive-green eggs. Even so, it was nothing like as bad as his first day in the legion.

  A year on the farm wouldn't be as bad as today was.

  Arms quivering, Cruz had flopped onto the ground, head held high to keep his face from the muck. Pain lessened immediately, though the horrible burning in his arms did not abate at all. I can't do this anymore, he'd thought. No fucking way. These guys are insane.

  He was sadly mistaken, of course, except about the insanity part. Two instructor corporals had come up on either side of Cruz and convinced him he was underestimating his own strength; seriously underestimating it. A sneakered foot slammed into Cruz's left side, by his stomach so as not to break any ribs. Even as he writhed, arms crossing to protect himself, another foot rather more than nudged his kidney. Cruz barely held in a scream. More kicks followed. "Get back to your position, you fucking maggot," said a corporal.

  Cruz strained to do so, arms quivering like jelly as he tried to hold himself off the ground.

  The corporals waited until he had both his trembling arms beneath him. A shared nod and the feet moved together to kick his arms out from underneath him. Uncontrolled, Cruz flopped belly down to the mud. After his torso stopped descending, his face continued on. Mud filled his mouth and nose. More kicks followed. "Get up, shithead."

  Strangely, from somewhere inside, Cruz found the strength to get his body back off the ground. Assholes.

  After Physical Training, the corporals had turned hoses on the dripping volunteers. Since no other showers had been made available, Cruz guessed-correctly-that the hoses were all the showering he was going to get anytime soon.

  Breakfast had been served, though "served" may not have been precisely the right word, immediately after the hosing. Cruz had taken a full plate before discovering that he was too exhausted to be hungry. Yet another corporal had disabused him of the notion that food could be taken and not eaten. That, too, had been a painful lesson.

  Issue of initial equipment had gone very quickly. There hadn't been much to issue: a plastic foot locker with a lock and key, several pair each of underwear and socks, a black baseball cap, a two-quart canteen, another set of running shorts, a toilet kit with toothbrush and paste, soap, shampoo and a razor with blades. First Centurion Martinez had told the troops that, until they had proven they were worth the expense, there was no reason to waste money on uniforms for them. In fact, uniforms were for the time being unavailable, but there was no reason to tell the recruits that.

  The rest of the day had consisted of lectures, meals, close order drill, all interspersed with pushups and more creative punishments. Cruz's section leader, del Valle, was very fond of what he called "the low crawl." After hours of dragging his poor tired, scraped and battered body across the gravel and sand, Cruz's elbows and knees were weeping sores. By day's end two cots in Cruz's tent had been folded up and taken away, their former occupants kicked out after an interrupted public beating by the corporals.

  Halfway through the beating a relatively tall, relatively lightskinned officer appeared. Cruz couldn't see his name tag and didn't know enough to tell as yet the man's rank. It must have been very high though, so he thought, since the corporals stopped the beatings as soon as they spied him.

  "And just what the fuck is going on here?" the white officer quietly demanded.

  "Just a little discipline building, sir. We're making an example of these two to convince the others they can't quit."

  Carrera held his temper in check, though he was truly pissed. He stood tense for several minutes as he gained control of himself. The corporals' nervousness increased in proportion to the time it took for Carrera to control his anger.

  Finally he asked, genially enough, "Tell me, Cabo, just what do you think you can do to these men that the enemy won't be able to do more of and worse?" There was no answer. "At a loss for words, I see. Good. Let me tell you that there is precisely nothing you can do worse than the enemy. These beatings. Why bother? Who wants quitters? You? Would you trust your men in battle if the only reason they stayed was because they were afraid of a little beating?"

  "Put that way, sir… I guess maybe not."

  "Look, Cabo, I know this is all new to you, that you were probably a private just a few months ago. Maybe there might be a time and place for this kind of thing. But this is not the time and place. We are selecting the future of the legion. Even though we are a nongovernmental organization for now, we are building the future of Balboa, right here, right now. I want, I need, we all need, people who are not afraid of a little pain and people who will do what needs doing on their own."

  "No physical discipline, sir?" The corporal sounded incredulous.

  "Didn't say that," Carrera corrected. "There's nothing wrong with an occasional kick in the pants. And if someone mouths off to you, you deck him on the spot; hear me? There are some crimes that demand punishment public, graphic and as immediate as possible. But I do not want you frightening people into staying with us that really have no business in this business. Let them go. Encourage them, even. Make the training- the training, I say!- so fucking hard that only the best can make it. That will give you soldiers to count on. Now finish up these two-I don't want anyone thinking their corporals can do wrong-as soon as I leave. But don't do it again. And pass the fucking word."

  Cruz had heard none of that. The white officer had left, the bea
tings had resumed but then ended shortly thereafter, and the miscreants were marched out of camp under guard. He fell asleep with dread in his heart about what tomorrow would bring.

  Hotel Metropole, Saint Nicholasberg, 21/3/460 AC

  In the hotel bar pretty, but altogether too young, Volgan prostitutes solicited the business that might keep them fed for another week or even another day. Easterners-journalists and businessmen, mostly-flirted, or negotiated, or simply bantered with the whores. Along the bar sat a balding, Russian-looking, man. The hookers paid him no mind. He didn't seem like he had the money they, or their pimps, required.

  Being a bureaucrat, thought Dan Kuralski-seated at the bar, ought to be a capital offense. He sipped at his nearly frozen vodka. And I was so happy to be coming here for this mission, Patrick, old friend. "One big shopping spree," isn't that what you said?

  In the days since arriving in "Saint Nick" in search of arms, Kuralski had been up one dead end after another. One bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defense told him that MoD didn't have authority to sell arms to other nations, let alone NGOs; that was for the Foreign Ministry. In the Foreign Ministry he had been told that, "Sorry, no, the actual sale of arms was being conducted by the military itself." Kuralski had managed to corner one Volgan general. This hadn't worked either; the general was too drunk at the time and reportedly too much of a worm when sober. Dan was about ready to go directly to a factory and make a private contract for what was needed. He would have, too, if it had been possible to go to a single factory and get each of ten thousand different items. There was no such factory or warehouse or, so far as he'd been able to determine, business. And precisely where the particular items required were being manufactured was still a closely guarded state secret. It was sometimes even a silly state secret. Who cared who made one-liter water bottles, anyway, for Christ's sake? But that was still Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information in Volga.