by Tom Kratman
* * *
Patricio Carrera blinked two or three times against the bright blinding flash. Funny, he thought, for a half second there I thought I saw a trixie. Maybe I'm sicker in the head than I'd realized. Maybe . . .
Ah, never mind. Not important.
Little seemed very important to Carrera, of late. Little had, since he'd collapsed the year prior, a result of a combination of overwork and overwhelming guilt at having become at least a candidate for the title of "Greatest Single One Day Mass Murderer in Human History." This wasn't a title he wanted, though he thought it was one he might well deserve.
Carrera looked down at his hands, thinking, first, Miserable dainty things, and then, How can I defile my wife with the touch of hands so stained with blood?
Besides that questionable title, Carrera had many others: The Blue Jinn . . . Carnifex—the Butcher. Most still referred to him by his military title: Dux Bellorum, in Latin, or Duque, for short, in Latin's daughter, Spanish. And no one had ever so much as suggested that he resign his title and position as commander of the Legion del Cid.
Though I should, he thought. That, or find a way to force myself to take up once more the duties that are plainly mine.
Lightning flashed again, in the distance. It was another shot of ribbon lightning, which again lit from behind the clouds across the sky.
That's what Hajar looked like . . . almost . . . in the last second before the fireball destroyed the camera I watched by. What did the people see—ninety-nine percent of whom, or more, were utterly innocent, I am sure—in that last second before the fire engulfed them? Poor sorry bastards.
But did I have a choice, really? A valid one, I mean? The Salafi Ikhwan intended to nuke not one but a dozen cities. Yes, I captured their nukes before they could. But they could have gotten more . . . probably . . . eventually. And they'd have used them if they had them, of that there is no doubt at all.
Now? Now they've no support. I nuked Hajar but they took the blame. And virtually everyone in the Moslem quarter of this world counts that as Allah's doing, his ultimate statement and command that terrorism is wrong. More practically, not one country in the world is loony enough, now, to give them shelter, on the chance they might bring in a nuke and allow it to detonate. A reputation for incompetence has hurt them more than any reputation for frightfulness.
I saved tens of millions of people maybe. I killed a million, though, maybe more, for a certainty. And my hands still drip with blood. And I can't bring myself to touch my wife.
* * *
She was fairly tall for a woman of any race, but remarkably so for a woman of Balboa. In her stocking feet, Lourdes Nuñez Cordoba de Carrera, wife of Patricio Carrera, stood five feet, nine inches. In heels, which she usually avoided, she towered over her man.
Like her husband's, Lourdes' eyes, too, were rare. In his case it was the color, and the dark blue circles about the irises that gave them a frighteningly penetrating quality . . . that, and their odd habit of seeming to glow under certain lights at certain angles. In hers, a gentle and beautiful golden-brown, it was the sheer size and shape that excited men and made women cringe with envy.
Those huge and lovely golden-brown orbs remained open, though the woman lay abed. Hand tucked between pillow and cheek, Lourdes stared at the strobe-lit French doors which led to the covered balcony connecting her husband's office and library with their bedroom.
I'd wish he'd come to bed, the woman thought, feeling frustration well mixed with anger and despair, but, then, what would be the point? All he'd do is lie as far to his side of the bed as possible, and then turn away. And if he actually did sleep? Then the screaming would begin.
He thinks I can't guess at Hajar. Why do men think—how can they think—that there are any secrets from wives? I hear the name of the city; I hear him mutter his plea for forgiveness. I see the tears on his cheeks.
But he never talks about it, when he talks at all. Does he think I wouldn't understand? It was war. My people were in danger. All people were endangered. Worst of all, my children were targets. Does he think I would prefer any number of strangers over my own son, Hamilcar?
Silly man. Come to me and, for a while, at least, I will make you forget. Come to me and give me another son.
* * *
In his own room, on the same floor, Hamilcar Carrera, eight years of age, stirred. His eyes opened and focused on the ceiling, onto which a home planetarium, the best model made on Terra Nova, painted stars. The planetarium was a gift of the boy's father. Instantly, sensing that their charge was stirring, the turbaned Pashtun who slept on the floor to either side of the boy, guarding him as if he were a god, were on their feet. They had weapons in hand as their eyes searched for the threat.
"It's nothing, Karim, nothing, Mardanzai," the boy assured his followers, as he sat up. The Pashtun did not relax for an instant. "The thunder awakened me," Hamilcar explained further. Not that the guards needed explanations, oh, no. If it was their lord's will to awaken and walk, then it was their merest duty to follow and protect.
"Where is my father?" Hamilcar asked.
"I saw him on the balcony, Lord," Karim answered.
"I will go to him, then," the boy said, sitting up and placing his feet to the throw run beside his bed. "He shouldn't be left alone too long."
"I sent two men to watch over him after I saw he was awake," Karim said. "Alena, the witch, insists we watch over those you love, Lord, as we watch over you." The boy nodded his thanks. He'd long since given up trying to break the guards of their form of address.
He was about to leave when a series of cautionary coughs from the Pashtun reminded him. Nodding again, the boy turned and walked to a corner of his room, taking in hand his rifle, a hand-made gift of the Balboa Arms Corporation, over in Arraijan, in honor of the boy's eighth birthday. The rifle was a full caliber F-26, but specially lightened and shortened and with a muzzle brake to reduce recoil. Likewise were the pistol grip and foregrip carved to fit an eight year old's hand. Under the black paint the Pashtun had laid on to reduce shine, the thing was ornately inscribed.
Hamilcar checked the rifle to ensure it was loaded, then padded out the door and down the corridor to his father's office from which a glass-paned doorway led to the balcony. The two guards, joined immediately by two others who had stood alert at the boy's door, followed.
Ciudad Balboa, Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
Caridad Cruz followed her own husband from the bedroom to the living room. She found him there, seated in his chair, admiring his sole badge of rank, his centurion's baton.
"And they say we women are vain," Cara said to Ricardo, smiling and shaking her head.
Cruz looked up, his heart suddenly warming at the sight of his short, brown and still very pretty wife. "Men are just as vain, no doubt about it, queridisima esposa," he admitted, lowering his baton to his lap and smiling at her. "We're just as vain, only in different ways."
The centurion was as brown as his wife, and, at about five-seven not all that much taller. She found him handsome and assumed everyone else did, too.
Cara glanced about the walls of the living room. On two wooden pegs driven into one wall rested Ricardo's rifle, an F-26. Below it, on similar pegs, was his very first rifle, a simpler and cruder Samsonov, purchased for a very nominal price from the Legion in which her husband served, as a memento of that service and of his first campaign. On the opposite wall hung his battle scarred and stained lorica, the silk and liquid metal body armor he worn for years. Cara tried to keep the thing clean. But not too clean. I love the smell of my man.
On a third wall hung Ricardo's decorations. She heard the citations read off for some of them, those awarded formally when he was home from the wars. The knowledge of the things her husband had done both filled her with pride and chilled her to the marrow. She never read the citations themselves, lest that refreshed knowledge drive her to try, once again, to talk Ricardo out of the Legion. She'd done that before. He'd acquiesced, too. The
loss of purpose had nearly killed him.
He must be free to do the work he loves, she reminded herself, glancing over the wall holding the awards. He must be free if, for no other reason, because when he's miserable, I'm miserable.
And, too, it's not like I'm ashamed when other women come over, and have to pass under his corona civilis to come into the house. I like their envy of the courage of my man. Is that so wrong?
"What's wrong, Ricardo?" she asked. "Did the thunder awaken you?"
Cruz shook his head. "No . . . I never really got to sleep." Seeing that that wasn't really an answer to her question, he added, "Things are not right with the Legion since the duque had to . . . take a sabbatical. It worries me. We are not the kind of force that deals well with inaction."
"But the war is over," she said. "We won."
"One war is over," Ricardo corrected, picking up the baton again to admire it. "There will be others." He seemed very certain of that.
Please let it not be so, God, the wife silently prayed, even as she knew the prayer was futile. For there would be other wars, and her man would fight in them. It was the way of the world just as it was the way of Ricardo Cruz. Between the Santandern guerillas infesting Balboa's province of La Palma, the Tauran Union troops occupying the Transitway, the old government cowering in the old section of Ciudad Balboa under Tauran Union protection, or the drugs passing daily through the country, there would be war.
Cara shivered at the thought. "Any word on the duque?" she asked, changing the subject slightly.
"No, none. I'm tempted sometimes to ask you to presume on your friendship with Lourdes . . ."
"I can't. She has enough troubles."
"I know," he agreed.
Headquarters, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa
No matter what that Old Earth bimbo told me before she left, I know I could take these peasants out now. So thought an elegantly slender man dressed, perhaps absurdly, in the reproduction blue velvet uniform of a marshal of the army of Napoleon. Impatiently and repeatedly, General Janier, Army of the Republic of Gaul, slapped his unawarded marshal's baton into the palm of his left hand. The baton, like the uniform, was reproduction. Fake or not, both captured something of the spirit of the man, as did his hawk-like, pugnacious nose.
Not that Janier had much of the republican sentiment of a Lannes or the family fidelity of a Davout (Janier's mistress lay asleep nearby in a suite of offices he'd had converted to an apartment for her) or the stoic loyalty of a MacDonald. He had some of the sheer courage of a Ney. And he had the one thing virtually all of Napoleon's marshal's had shared, love of glory.
And why shouldn't I? I am related to half of them and descended from more than one.
Sad, sad it is; to be a man of my inclinations and breeding, and be saddled with the wretches who rule the Tauran Union. Pacifist swine. Eunuchs, the lot of them.
A flash in the distance lit Janier's sneering face. In this case, the flash came not from the more distant lightning, but from an explosion somewhere across the Transitway, at Balboa's premier training facility, the Imperial Range Complex, nestled in the corner formed by Lago Chagres and the Transitway, rather, that portion of it called the "Gallardo Trench." The Legion and the Tauran Union troops shared the complex, not always amicably.
Mine, preparing to fight theirs, or theirs, preparing to fight mine, I wonder. No matter. No one is going to fight anyone right now. With their leader incapacitated, the locals won't start anything—more's the pity—and with my political masters unwilling to fund me or give me the troops I need, I can't start anything. That Wallenstein woman was wasting her time telling me not to do something I can't do anyway.
Still, this is all a house of cards. I sit athwart the Transitway. Ultimately, the Balboans—the ones in power—won't accept that state of affairs. The Balboans who will accept it rule over a tiny corner of the country and dream of ruling it all again. And why should they not dream? There's little for them to steal where they are. And theft is in their very genes.
The general ceased slapping his baton into his palm. He shook his head. As is crime, generally. Even now, they fund themselves—they think I don't know, the fools—by assisting in the drug trade and taking their cut.
Well, if they're criminals at least they're good at it. They cover their tracks well. All the pressure to stop the trade, all the pressure coming from the Federated States, falls on those who have nothing to do with it. And them, the peasant Parilla and his defunct renegade Carrera? They can't deal with the real problem because that real problem is guarded by us and guaranteed by the Federated States.
A house of cards; let one thing come loose and it will all crumble.
On the other hand, the sinister hand, if it all crumbles while the Balboans—the enemy Balboans—are ready and I am not, I just might lose. No glory, no name, no place in the history books. Simple defeat and a footnote to avoid my example. That is intolerable.
Perhaps things will improve when the permanent High Admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet comes to us, be it Wallenstein or someone else. At least the filth in the Tauran Parliament will listen to him or, if Wallenstein's appointment becomes permanent, her.
SS Hildegard von Mises, Lago Chagres, Balboa Transitway, Balboa, Terra Nova
A dozen or so miles to the southeast of Janier's headquarters there was a ship anchored in the lake, rocking violently in the wind-driven waves. It was well guarded at all times, though the guards only changed at night. It hadn't moved in at least a year. Someday, it would, but only to get rid of the last traces of evidence when it was finally sunk into a deep ocean trench.
Whether the ship would have any people aboard when it went down was a matter of some speculation for the group of guards who manned it in rotation. They reported to Carrera's chief of intelligence, Omar Fernandez, and he was noted for tying up loose ends neatly.
Loose ends?
* * *
There was an evil-looking, weasel-faced man waiting in one of the ship's offices when former High Admiral Martin Robinson and the Marchioness of Amnesty, Lucretia Arbeit, were escorted in. Both of the Old Earthers bowed deeply and respectfully to the man. They'd long since had their arrogance beaten out of them.
"I have a little problem," said Legate Omar Fernandez, weasel face splitting in an unpleasant grin.
"A problem, sir?" asked Robinson, worriedly. Arbeit merely shivered in place. Though both measured their years in centuries, and both, as Class Ones and members of the Peerage, had received the best anti-aging therapy Old Earth could offer, both looked to have aged like cheese left in the sun, all wrinkled and hard and dry. This despite neither of them having been subjected to real torture in many months. Indeed, they'd been wrung dry long ago.
"A couple of problems, really," Fernandez said, his eyes flickering once at Arbeit, and then a second time, at Robinson. "One is that we haven't been able to get your old shuttle working again. I don't suppose you know anything about the flight computer?"
Robinson gulped. "No, sir. It wasn't anything in my training. I can fly one but . . ."
Arbeit shivered still more; her naval rank came from her civil position. She didn't even know how to fly one.
"Pity," Fernandez said, in a voice that seemed to contain real regret. "Well, there goes one reason to keep you both alive."
Arbeit crumpled to her knees then, bending until her face rested on the floor and weeping as softly as she was able. Fernandez felt a certain pity for the woman. Had he known her life story; he'd have felt nothing but disgust. He tortured. He didn't generally enjoy it.
"Are there other reasons?" Robinson asked, hopefully. "Could there be?"
Fernandez shrugged. "Possibly. Much depends on whether or not the two of you, or either of you alone, has seen the error of your old ways and decided to join our cause for the betterment of humanity.
"You see," Fernandez continued, "we're getting rid of this ship and what it represents. It should have been done a
while ago, but . . . well, never mind.
"The current storm is expected to last another three days. The ship sails in the morning out into the Shimmering Sea where a terrible accident will take place. The crew and your guards, of course, will be evacuated in time . . . since they're mine."
Arbeit heard. She had the sudden image of herself chained in her cell below decks as the waters arose and the rats scurried across her body and face and then the bubbles began leaking from her nose and . . .
She screamed, once, a very long and drawn out, "Nnnooo . . ." before she began to vomit with fear onto the floor.
Robinson was more composed, if only slightly. "Please, Legate," he begged, getting to his knees and clasping hands together, "tell me whatever I can do to help. Anything. Anything!"
Arbeit didn't have words. Even so, the pleading look she gave Fernandez, as she raised her vomit-dripping chin from the floor, echoed Robinson's words, "Anything."
Casa Linda, Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
I wish there were something I could do, Lourdes mentally sighed. Anything, really, to bring my husband back. It's so lonely, despite Artemisia, Alena, and the kids. I need my man again.
An unpleasant thought intruded. What if I am the one holding him back? I mean, I thought I was doing the right thing when I chased off Xavier Jimenez with one of Patricio's guns . . . but what if he needs the work and the purpose more than the rest? I just don't know . . . I just don't know.
* * *
Carrera heard nothing, what with the lashing rain, the driving winds, the thunder and the pounding of the surf below. Still, he became aware slowly of a presence or, rather, several of them on the balcony with him. One, he felt, in the chair next to but slightly behind his own, was very small.
"Hello, Ham," he said, over the natural roars surrounding them.
"Dad," the boy answered.
"What are you doing up?"