by Tom Kratman
Esmeralda was a country girl, basically. The nearest she’d ever seen of a city was the Razona Market on Old Earth where, caged, she’d been put on display as goods to be sold. The twisting road carved into the side of the hill in the course of quarrying for stone for the Florida Locks was mostly framed by jungle. But every now and again the soil had been too thin to support much in the way of plant life and a vista opened up of the sprawling cosmopolitan city below the hill. She wasn’t at all sure she liked the city; it was just too different from what she’d known.
The people she’d seen along the streets, though, between the gate under Building 59 at Fort Muddville and the MP shack at the base of this winding road were not different from what she’d grown up with: generally brown, stocky, and calm of countenance. She felt an immediate affinity for them, as if she could step out of Janier’s staff limousine and just blend in among them.
Except for one thing, thought the girl, my “Spanish” is so contaminated by English, the language of Old Earth, and limited by the experience of the last five hundred years while theirs, supposedly, is pretty pure. I don’t know if we could even talk.
Janier and the high admiral rode in back, with the glass barrier rolled up between them and the peasantry. What they talked about Esmeralda didn’t know, though she was sure the high admiral would tell her anything she needed to know. She did know, though, that Janier had said he’d had a set of quarters set aside on this sleepy post for the use of the high admiral.
He intends to bed her, Esmeralda was certain. Which is good. Then I won’t have to feel guilty for not crawling into her bed on my own, after all she’s done for me.
Chapter Three
Disciplined in the school of hard campaigning,
Let the young Roman study how to bear
Rigorous difficulties without complaining,
And camp with danger in the open air.
Odes, III, 2
—Horace
Estado Mayor, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova
A weasel-faced man, wheelchair-bound, eased his powered chair out from behind his desk and around to face his commander, seated in one of the overstuffed chairs in one corner of the office.
“She’s here right now, Patricio,” said Omar Fernandez, “the high admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, herself. I’d have known a lot sooner except that Yamatan Imperial Intelligence didn’t rush the information from their special source to me, and it took a while to track down the aerial routes through my own sources in the Federated States, once I knew to start looking.
“I don’t know if there’s anything you want to do about that or even anything you can do about it. Still, I thought you should know as soon as I could tell you without compromising anything.”
Carrera ran a dozen possible responses through his mind, very, very quickly, dismissing each as either impractical or undesirable.
“And,” Fernandez continued, “although it isn’t proof, I consider it evidence that none of my people actually in the enemy headquarters saw anything beyond a flock of Tauran Union bureaucrats, while one did see that their super secure conference room was used, but with none of the visiting bureaucrats in it. And then she and a young aide—or maybe lover; you never really know with the Kosmos—were seen being escorted by the Frog general to Cerro Mina. I should have a report of where they’re staying by midnight. But I already suspect where it will be, and I don’t have that building infiltrated.” The intel chief shrugged apologetically. “I never thought I’d need it, since the building was never used for the last ten or fifteen years.”
“I’d like to know whatever you can come up with, Omar,” Carrera agreed. “But I think I wouldn’t do anything if I could. Former High Admiral Robinson is still healthy?” At Fernandez’s nod, he continued, “Then I have a hold over the bitch to use at my convenience. Speaking of which, how’s the shuttle program coming along?”
“We have five acceptably trained pilots for it,” Fernandez said. “But we ran into a glitch that we really should have anticipated.”
Carrera raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Assuming we can bluff or force our way into a hangar, there’s no frigging air unless the ship we try to board closes the hangar doors and fills the compartment. That, or we find space suits from somebody and outfit a boarding party with them…or develop some ourselves. Even there…”
“Even there,” Carrera finished, “it doesn’t really give us control of a fleet…or maybe even control of that one ship, since we won’t have a crew to fly or fight it. Okay, let me mull it some. But, for God’s sake, keep Robinson healthy.”
Training Area C, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
In the rest of Balboa it was the dry season. On the Shimmering Sea side of the isthmus, there was never really a dry season. Rather, there was a wet season, a wetter season, and “forty days and forty nights,” which, interestingly enough, usually lasted about forty days and forty nights. Currently, it was the wet season, which meant there would be the occasional dry day.
Keeping healthy’s not a huge problem, Ham mused, but keeping happy sure as hell is. I never realized before how utterly essential women and girls are to keeping happy.
The boy sat alone underneath a stretched out rubber poncho. Rain drummed the sheet like a distant barrage before gathering and rolling off the sides. Most of that water splashed up a bit of mud but then rolled downhill and away. From uphill, however, which was behind him, a neat little stream formed and ran under the frame of the rucksack he’d been issued, between his feet, and then off.
The stream wasn’t a problem, yet, but…
Serious doubts that I can divert it with a narrow run-off trench. Serious lack of desire to sleep in the middle of a stream. Serious desire to sleep, as soon as they let us.
Ham’s family was, of course, not poor. Indeed, they were so not poor that his father had given away about seventy-five billion drachma and still could fund whole regiments and schools out of his own remaining wealth. But many of the students at the military academies, of which there were six, were from poor families. Since, unlike the rest of the country’s educational system, the military schools were totally free—in fact, they paid a small stipend—there were more applicants than there were slots. Thus, Ham and several hundred new boys were out in the jungle—the real, deep, dark, wet, stinky, snake-crawling, antaniae-crying, black palm-sticking triple canopy jungle—to drive as many boys who lacked motivation as possible out before wasting a precious school slot on them.
So far it had all been very efficient and, compared to what Ham had expected, surprisingly gentle. There hadn’t been a lot of screaming—some shouting, yes, but a man had to be heard—and no real brutality, as the boys had been hustled through medical exams, shots, dental checks, the field uniform and equipment issue line, the small caliber rifle issue line, and any of half a hundred other things to prepare them for what came next.
What came next had been a walk. A long walk. A hot long walk…with blisters. It was all made a great deal worse by the fact that none of the boys, Ham included, knew how to keep up. Thus, it had been mile after mile of stop, march in place, run, run faster, stop, bump into the boy in front of you, stop, run, run, dammit…
Where they’d ended up even Ham didn’t know, and it was probably his family’s property. What it looked like though: banana plants and palm trees at the edges of the few open areas. For the rest, bare dirt at ground level and some other, a lot of other, stouter trees growing up from that, with their branches intertwined overhead, blocking out direct sunlight.
Apparently Carrera or his chief for cadet training, the Volgan, Sitnikov, had been very firm that the boys were not to be hit, starved, or kept from sleeping more than two days in a row. But the food… Ham looked down at the unappetizing mess slopped on the metal plate resting on his knees and wondered, Is this food? He sniffed, carefully. Doesn’t smell rotten, anyway. Doesn’t actually smell like anything at all. My mothe
r or my sister or my wives or, least of all, Alena the Witch, would never have given me something like this to eat.
I miss my womenfolk. But I am Hamilcar Carrera, son of Patricio, and I will not cry.
He sniffed again at his evening meal. Unappetizing or not, nothing better is going to be forthcoming. I suppose I’d better eat it.
Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova
Meals at the casa had always had an odd, military aspect to them. Purchased as a run-down and abandoned old pile, it had entered modern life as a staff headquarters and barracks. It had served in that capacity while Carrera and his men had been planning and putting together the first increment of the legion, the one that fought the initial campaign in Sumer. It had since gone through various other renditions. Currently, it was mostly civilian, but with two hundred of Hamilcar’s in-laws as guard, in barracks outside, it still had a strong military aspect to it, at least out on the grounds and at the doors.
Even inside, though, with the presence of Tribune Cano, his wife, Alena the Witch, and Ham’s dozen wives, Artemisia McNamara and her brood, plus the domestic staff, the sheer numbers demanded a more than ordinary degree of organization, one highly reminiscent of a military organization. Thus, one might say there was an officers’ mess, where Carrera, Lourdes, and Artemisia, the widow of Sergeant Major McNamara, took their meals, along with, usually, Lourdes’ major domo. Then there was a staff mess, for the maids and cooks and groundskeepers, along with any of the guards on duty inside the house, as a few invariably were. Then there was the children’s dining room, which had originally been the sole dining room, but had been specialized once Ham came back accompanied by his wives.
Alena and her husband supervised that mess, and Ham’s sisters, naturally enough, gravitated to the other girls who were not, in any case, all that much older. And besides, Ham’s wives spoiled Julia and Linda rotten, something always appreciated.
They all spoiled Alena’s child, Dido, as the only real baby on the premises. That last was currently engaged in her own feed, courtesy of Alena’s abundant breasts. Cano, seated at the opposite end of the table, was reminded, And how can man die better…?
Ant looked up from an empty plate as Alena was switching her baby off. “May I be excused?” she asked.
“Surely, child, run along.”
Neither Cano nor his wife, both quite intent on Dido, noticed that Ant left with several packages of crackers concealed in the folds of her native costume. On the other hand, if she had noticed, Alena would likely have guessed the reason and thoroughly approved.
* * *
Ant didn’t know quite how far her husband’s father’s powers stretched, only that they were immense, far above any of the chieftains of any of the clans of her own people. And she watched enough of the television and read enough over the GlobalNet—from the extensive house library, as well, for that matter—to know that power here meant a lot more than it did in her homeland, too.
Looking over the map of Balboa she’d found over the GlobalNet, she fumed, If I knew how to drive I could be there at my lord’s school within a few hours, half a day at the most. But I haven’t the first clue. And if I try to get someone to pick me up on the road—“hitch-hiking,” they call it—the police will have me in irons in a matter of half an hour after I am reported missing. And there will be no second chance; the father of my lord gives me the impression that he never gives anyone a second chance.
So it is on foot, and not on the roads, either. And not even on foot all the way; there are rivers I must swim and even a lake I must cross. Hmmm…maybe before I set out I had better learn to swim better than I do. Fortunately, the ocean—strange and frightful thing!—is only down the steep walkway to the north.
And when I am ready, and make my way to my lord, I will be blessed among women, for—youngest or not—I will be the first to take my lord into her body, and the first to bear him a semi-divine child!
Training Area C, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
For guard duty, they’d told Ham to sling his small caliber rifle and given him a 20 gauge pump shotgun. He’d pass it on to the relief; they’d all done familiarization firing a few days past. In any case, the dangers against which he guarded his young comrades at night just weren’t the kind a .22 could help with. The shotgun had a strong flashlight mounted in parallel with the muzzle, the light being activated by a button near his thumb.
Hamilcar walked gingerly. Despite the ministrations of the school medicos, his feet were still blistered from the march out here.
From off in the distance, well past the perimeter, he heard the cries of hungry antaniae: mnnbt, mnnbt, mnnbt.
The problems with the antaniae, thought Ham as, shotgun in hand, he patrolled the perimeter of the encampment, are triple. One is that they go after the small and young, which includes me. Another is that they come in mass if they think they can get away with it. The third is that they hate the light and like to attack when it’s darkest. He spared a glace upward at the light-blocking interwoven jungle above. I don’t even know if the fucking moons are up.
The antaniae themselves were winged beasts, and more or less reptilian. It was widely believed they were genengineered life forms, as the equally dangerous bolshiberries, tranzitrees, and progressivines were engineered life forms. The difference was that the three forms of genengineered flora were dangerous only to intelligent life, while the antaniae specialized in devouring the eyes and brains of the young, the weak, the defective, and the feebleminded.
Worse, not unlike some of the monitor lizards found on various parts of the planet, the antaniae had vilely septic mouths that caused infections that only the most heroic medical treatment could cure, and not always then.
Fortunately, the little bastards are cowards. Even so, I wish we had a small flock of trixies to pull guard. They can see the antaniae without the night vision equipment the cadre didn’t give me.
Well…of course they didn’t give me any, though they have some for themselves. They didn’t give any of the other cadets any either. And I’m pretty sure the old man wasn’t lying when he told me what he’d told them: “You coddle the boy half a gram; you give him a goddamn thing more than any other cadets gets, and your balls go up on the fireplace mantle.”
’Course, I hope he was more tactful than that. You would think so, after the Pigna coup. But he has his flaws still, so maybe not.
Some of those flaws, I suppose, I’ve inherited. Though if my mother and sisters and wives and Alena have anything to say about it, I’ll never have a clue.
’Course, not everything the old man had in mind is working out. The other cadets know who I am and who he is. They don’t kowtow, but they grew up in Balboa. Here people just assume family connections matter a lot more than they do to Dad. So they sometimes defer to me a little more than Dad would approve of and sometimes detest me more than I approve of. And there’s more of the latter.
’Course, I ate better all my life than most of them did, so I’m taller than most. And I’m taller still because Mom’s oversized and Dad’s bigger than most of our people. Height gets you a little deference, too, on average. Maybe it isn’t all who I am or who I’m related to or who I know.
I hope. I…
Suddenly, the boy had the distinct sense of being watched, from close by, by something or things that didn’t necessarily bear him good will. He froze, instantly, then began corkscrewing his eyes to keep from wearing out the night vision in any given sector of his visual rods.
He couldn’t quite make out what it was, though his indistinct night vision was telling his brain that something was out there. Slowly, very slowly, he raised the shotgun to his shoulder, pointing it generally at the indistinct shapes his eyes couldn’t quite grasp.
They’ll so be on my ass if I use the light and don’t need to. And worse if I open fire and don’t need to. But there’s something there…something…ahhhh, fuckit.
Ham’s thumb came down o
n the light button. The light flashed on three little horrors, red-eyed, green and gray splotched, about two feet long, with their frills spread and wings folded in, hissing and drooling.
“Shiiittt!” Kaboom, kaclick—“shit”—kaboom, kaclick—“shit”—Kaboom!
The encampment behind Ham began springing to life, even as the jungle outside cracked with the flap of reptilian wings. A lot of reptilian wings.
Ham looked closely in the area lit by the narrow beam. One of the little beasts had apparently escaped, maybe wounded, maybe not. One was so much strawberry jam spread unevenly across the bare jungle floor. The last was crying out piteously, writhing and crawling in a circle, with one wing and two legs on one side gone, and the pus that passed for blood leaking out. They’d only given him the three rounds and he’d sort of forgotten about the .22 slung across his back. Instead, he walked up to the wounded antania, reversed the shotgun, and brought the butt down on the nasty creature’s head with a satisfying crunch.
Casa Linda beach, Balboa, Terra Nova
Though the air and water were both warm, the girl trembled. She had her reasons.
Depending on whose book one read, swimming in Terra Nova’s oceans was either quite safe or an obvious attempt at suicide. After all, the Noahs had brought, among other hungry things, a healthy, albeit now declining, population of carcharodon megalodons, for whom one small girl would have been barely an appetizer.
In practice it wasn’t as simple as that. A meg was so big that it really couldn’t come close to shore, usually. This tended to drive lesser predators shoreward for protection. One the other hand, a meg ate so much, not least lesser predators, that there weren’t as many dangerous sharks and other forms of marine life as there might otherwise have been, partly through being eaten and partly through there not being enough for them to eat after a meg had eaten its fill.