by Tom Kratman
The thought, My lord will never want me now, not with the ruin I’ve become, gave birth to a renewed bout of heartbroken weeping.
She had nothing of her own anymore; all she’d been able to save was her lord’s rifle, and that needed a cleaning she no longer had the equipment for. Saving the rifle had very nearly cost her her life, but she’d far rather have died than lost Iskandr’s arms.
And how had she lost her carefully pilfered equipment and almost lost her lord’s rifle and her own life?
She’d stepped off of the muddy bank, into the murky water, with trepidation more than matched by determination. Courage, Pililak, she’d thought. Be like your namesake, small, perhaps, but strong and fearless. Her air mattress she’d placed partly in the water, with one end resting lightly on the bank to hold it in place for a moment. It had been little problem to put her now much lighter pack on the air mattress, nor to get herself and Ham’s rifle aboard as well. She’d pushed off from the bank, then paddled—that the water was still helped here, enormously—to turn around and place her head toward the opposite bank, or where her compass told her the opposite bank must be.
Then, using arms alone, she’d paddled for all she was worth. She couldn’t see a damned thing but falling rain and her compass, nor hear a damned thing but the rain.
She was almost exactly halfway across when the merchant ship, suddenly, with no warning, loomed out of the rain, towering impossibly high and moving faster than she could hope to paddle out of its way. Even though she couldn’t, still she tried. The ship struck her, spinning her air mattress so that both compass and pack flipped off to disappear into the light brown water. Barnacles scrapped it and her, ripping both open. A long spasm of pure agony shot up her back and down her legs as the wandering crustaceans shredded her flesh. She barely managed to hang on to the rifle, and that took both hands, with her feet kicking desperately to keep her nose above water.
It was actually the barnacles that saved her life for the nonce. Entangled in her clothing and digging deeply into her skin, they, along with her kicking, and the forward drag of the ship, held her aloft for perhaps twenty or thirty life-saving seconds. This enabled her to get the rifle’s sling over one shoulder and across her chest, freeing her hands in the process.
At the time, she understood none of this. In a panic, whatever positives she did were matters of automatic response coupled with sheer luck.
The resistance of the water tore her away from the barnacles, leaving bits of flesh behind, as well as a red train from the hull to her back. Still in full flight mode, she began to swim frantically to get away from the ship. Its passage, though, caused drag, that pulled her backwards, cancelling out her frenzied paddling. Indeed, more than once the drag and the induced current in the water spun her around so that she found herself swimming toward the dark and menacing bulk passing by.
The worst moment, though, came when the ship had just about passed her. That was when the inward-running trace of the stern caused the water to pull her strongly into the center line…the center line where the propellers churned the water and would have readily churned the girl.
Screaming aloud, “My Lord, Iskandr! Give me strength!” she found strength. Though Hamilcar, called “Iskandr,” by some, didn’t give it to her; her faith did. Still, it was close, and before she broke free of the tug of the ship, she felt the wash of the propellers, massaging her legs and beckoning.
She saw the ship go, after that, and, knowing the way it had come from gauged her proper direction from that. She might have guessed, but didn’t, that the ship had dragged her well to the east. Almost exhausted, swimming slowly to conserve what little strength remained to her, she came to the shore of Darien Island. There she pulled herself out of the water, then lay like one dead, except for the soft sound of a young girl’s weeping.
It was light now, but would be dark soon. Then the homicidal mosquitoes would come out, to feast on her, even further reducing her already low levels of blood.
But I don’t know where I am anymore. I don’t have a map. I don’t have a compass. I can’t see the stars…
She was about to shriek with her frustration and her sense of complete failure. And then she heard it, loud enough that even the rain couldn’t drown it out. It was the train, said to be the “fastest transcontinental train on the planet,” since it took only two hours to cross two continents.
She remembered the lay of her lost map. There is only one train here. It is only on one side. When I reach it, I need only face to the left and follow it, and it will bring me closer to my lord.
Tears forgotten, Pililak—“Ant” the small, yes, but also the strong, the determined, and the very brave—stood, grabbed Hamilcar’s rifle, and began the not so very long walk, some of which would be through water and mud, to the train tracks that ran toward the Shimmering Sea, Puerto Lindo, and the boy she believed was her god. With the passing train’s rumbling and whistle growing ever louder and more distinct, Ant looked heavenwards at the unseen stars, thanking her lord’s true father for his aid at a time she desperately needed divine aid.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
― Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching
UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Terra Nova
A single large ship with half a dozen much smaller escorts crawled across the screen in Marguerite’s conference room. Telling her ship’s computer, “Get me Khan, male,” she asked the latter just whose little flotilla that was.
“New Middle Kingdom,” Khan answered. “But as to whether they intend to join in the attack on Balboa, something I am inclined to doubt, or have some other reason—”
Khan female piped in, “Give you odds, husband, that they’re going to try to evacuate their civilians and nothing else.”
“Civilians?” asked Wallenstein.
“Yes, High Admiral. Nobody officially made much of it, though I understand the Balboans were seething inside, but the Taurans hired a large number, eight or nine thousand, Zhong to run the Transitway. They came cheap, I understand, and the revenues from the Transitway went a long way toward paying for the defense of the Transitway. Perhaps, even, a bit more.”
“All right,” Wallenstein said. “But what kind of ship is that?”
“Wait a sec, please, High Admiral,” Khan, male, requested. Wallenstein heard keys being tapped. In a few minutes he came back with, “She’s either the Luyang, or the Anshan, but not the Jiangwei,” Khan answered. “Those are all midsized aircraft carriers, though the latter pushes that definition. The Luyang and Anshan are real aircraft carriers, not just amphibs. Even so, they’re better configured for helicopter and antisubmarine operations than surface actions.
“They’re just not that big.”
“Could they engage the Balboan Navy with success?” she asked.
She couldn’t see him, but she could almost hear wheels turning in Khan’s head. When he answered, it was to say, “Not really my area of expertise, High Admiral, nor anyone in the Peace Fleet’s. That said, the Balboan carrier, the Dos Lindas, carries precisely no high performance aircraft, while the Zhong ship can carry about fifteen or eighteen, depending on how many helicopters they’re carrying. I should think, then, that the Zhong could take them out. At least at sea, some distance from Balboan land-based air, I think they could.
“On the other hand…”
“Yes?” Wallenstein prompted.
“On the other hand,” Khan continued, “if the Zhong intended something like that, they’d have sent all three. If they’d had four, they’d have sent all four.”
“So what the hell do they want?” she asked.
“I h
aven’t the first clue, personally,” Khan admitted, “though my wife’s instincts for such things are generally sound.”
Mar Furioso, Anshan Battle Group, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Terra Nova
Eight bows plowed furrows in the waves, rising and falling in the way of ships moving at speed. In the center, the largest two bows rocked perhaps a bit less than their half dozen escorts, all of which kept in a fairly tight ring around the mother ship, the carrier Anshan, and the large fleet replenishment ship which was indispensable for getting the task force to where it was and wanted to be.
Vice Admiral Yee Ten Li, commanding the Northern Fleet Expeditionary Force, had sailed with three dozen sets of sealed and coded contingency orders locked in a safe in his own staff’s area of the Anshan. Heavens forbid he should return to home port with a set unsealed that he had not been authorized to open and read. Ordinarily, given modern communications ability, carrying sealed orders would seem silly. Realistically, given the ability to break communications on the part of some of Xing Zhong Guo’s adversaries, carrying contingency orders which could be activated was much more secure, where those could be made appropriate.
The battle group had been engaged in antisubmarine training in the rough middle of the ocean, against the Federated States Navy. With that group the Zhong were, for the last twenty on so years, on very friendly terms. It had not gone especially well, even though Admiral Yee had the sense that the round eyes were going easy on his crews.
But you’ll get that when you’re using out-of-date ships, with out-of-date sonar, and out-of-date computers, and crews basically new to their jobs, thought the Admiral. We have reason to be concerned, yes, but no reason to be ashamed. My men did well, given their disadvantages, especially in going up against the class of the planet, the FSN.
Even so, he had been embarrassed for his country and his service. Thus, it had come as something of a relief when he’d received coded instructions to open a particular sealed envelope, a thick, yellow thing, which had directed him to proceed to the northern shore of the Republic of Balboa, take no part in any hostilities beyond self-defense if attacked, but to begin evacuation of imperial subjects upon the outbreak of hostilities, or upon their imminence, should that be obvious enough to judge.
The orders were about as clear as he could have expected. The problem was that the staff weenie who had written them up, anywhere from six months to six years…or sixteen years…prior, hadn’t really thought about the likely situation on the ground. Yes, there were about nine thousand imperial subjects in Balboa, working on the Transitway. There were also an additional twenty-two thousand family members the staff weenie seemed to have forgotten about. To make it worse, about half of those were in easy range of the sea the Balboans called the Mar Furioso. A quarter were midway across the isthmus of Balboa, which was hard to get at, while the last quarter were all the way on the other side, by the Shimmering Sea, which Yee thought would be impossible to get helicopters to, and impossible for the civilians to evacuate from should fighting break out across the country. There was after all, only a single road and a single railroad, both of which were sure to be cut within minutes of the first fusillade.
The prospect frightened Admiral Yee. In political and military circles in Taurus, the Federated States, Volga, Yamato, and some other spots that mattered, the Zhong were reputed to care little for human life, even their own. This was base calumny. The Zhong cared deeply about Zhong lives. They were just realistic: They lived in an imperfect world, surrounded by adversaries real and potential. They were not rich, while some of those adversaries were filthy rich. Thus, sometimes, when it was necessary or so advantageous as to be nearly necessary, or when it was a case of lose one to save ten, the Zhong could be quite ruthless. This did not, however, mean that they didn’t value the lives lost, nor weep for the suffering of those killed and those left behind, bereft.
Still, thought Yee, the simple fact is that my orders are impossible. I cannot evacuate thirty-one thousand civilians, some of whom will be two hundred kilometers away, with the miserable thirty helicopters at my disposal, even tossing in the utterly unsuitable four on the escorts, and the two on the replenishment ship. I couldn’t do it if I moved right up to the coast. The best I can hope for might be to get the half that are on the Mar Furioso side. The very best. And then only if I move in very close.
Which—sigh—I suppose I’m going to have to do. Glad I stood down all the helicopters for the last week or so, so they’ll be ready when the time comes, if it does.
SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova
The fleet, such as could move, was gone from their normal moorings in the port of Balboa or the hook of the Isla Real. Where they were going, none but the legion’s naval commander, Roderigo Fosa, knew. Everyone knew, though, that nothing Balboa could field on the surface of the sea was a match for much of anyone with a real navy.
Still, not every vessel in Balboa’s little fleet had scampered off. The SSKs, the coastal defense subs, remained on local waters, as did a number of patrol boats and corvettes.
“Skipper,” said the sonar man for the original of the SSKs, the Megalodon, Antonio Auletti. “I’ve got something…something big, I think.”
Conrad Chu, Warrant Officer Chu, captain of the Meg, had been dozing, as had most of his crew. No real need, after all, to keep everything continuously manned when all you’re doing is resting on a sandy bottom, mostly surrounded by seaweed. Still, some things did require continuous monitoring, sonar, life support, some aspects of engineering. That still left most of the crew unoccupied and either bored to death or, in preference—and in anticipation of possible lengthy periods of time without rest—dead asleep.
Chu hit the lever on the side of his chair, itself sitting on a low dais, and leaned upward as the chair’s back moved with the quietest of hisses. Once upright, he rubbed sleep from his eyes, then asked, “Identification?”
“Nothing I’ve heard in these waters before,” Auletti replied. “It sounds a little like the St. Nicholasburg class the Volgans trained me on, but…mmm…smoother. Plus a big support ship; that one’s noisy. And some numbers of escorts but I can’t make out their number or types.”
“St. Nicholasburg…hmmm…any sounds of air ops?” Chu asked.
“None, Skipper…ah…ah…wait.” Auletti held up a finger, then clasped his left hand around his headphone. “There it is. I make it as a jet takeoff.”
“Attack carrier then,” Chu decided. “Weapons?”
“Yes, Skipper.”
“Make that ‘target one.’ I want a continuous firing solution kept for it.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
Mar Furioso, Anshan Battle Group, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Terra Nova
Yee had tried getting in touch with the Balboan government through his country’s embassy. “Sorry, Admiral,” the embassy reported, “but the Balboan government seems to be a little out of touch…yes, that means we can’t reach them for anything, lately.” He’d tried calling directly. No luck. He sent a message through some chums in the Federated States Navy. They reported that the FSC’s ambassador, Thomas Wallis, also was out of communication with the Balboan government. He’d asked permission to take a helicopter ashore but that his government had refused.
“Perfumed princes floating on high on their ancestors’ achievements,” he’d judged it. “But what can I do? Orders are orders.”
Guano Island, Hurricane Straits, north of Caimanera, Cienfuegos, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova
The house could have been magnificent. Once it just might have been. About sixty feet on a side, originally double floored, with tall and elegant windows, sadly sans glass, the thing, reconstructed and reroofed, would have done for a wealthy misanthrope’s mansion, or a monastery, in fine fashion. It even had a highly desirable interior courtyard.
As it was, a husband and wife couple squatted in a tent among the ruins. They were originally fro
m the nearby island of Manteca. The husband had joined the legion a decade or so prior. Now they drew a standard salary for him, with a not-insubstantial hardship allowance for them both, for keeping a look out. They interspersed that with fishing as a cover.
Carrera didn’t have recon satellites and, though a compromised television screen aboard the Earthers’ flagship sometimes got him some important intelligence from the Yamatans who had provided the TV, it was always a bit iffy and always subject to what the Yamatans thought. They defined his “need to know” as whatever would be good for them, if he knew. Otherwise, they could be extremely reticent. They’d never even admitted to the TV.
So, as with most things, he and his legion made do. They had the Condors, which were fine for long-range recon, though too secret for the nonce to be lightly risked. They had spies, especially in Taurus. And then there were the “island people,” which was how Fernandez referred to them. These were sometimes Balboans, sometimes sympathetic and trustworthy local hirelings, living out on the islands of the Shimmering Sea, traveling around by boat, often making their living by boat, and reporting in.
Just this once, though, for that husband and wife team squatting in the ruins of the old Federated States light keeper’s house, sheer awe interposed itself between the thing to be reported on—things, rather, thirty-six of them—and the report itself.
From a window a quarter of the way up the lighthouse came, “Holy Fucking Shit.” That was Sergeant Miller, in his native language, a kind of English.
“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Miller, from about forty feet below.
“Unu ron, woman,” said the sergeant. “You bring me deh pen un deh pad.”
His tone said, Hurry; it’s really important. Not questioning his judgment on such things, she ran up the spiraling concrete stairs. When she looked out the window she, too much the lady, didn’t say anything. She thought, however, Holy fucking shit.