by Tom Kratman
* * *
The explosion went off directly under Mahrous' ample posterior. Besides cracking the street around the manhole cover, sending chunks of asphalt, concrete and rebar flying, it lifted the cover strait up at an amazing rate of speed. The cover cut right through the Phaeton's transmission and then cover and transmission together mashed Mahrous' anus into his brain, forcing the resulting mix right through and out of the Phaeton's armored roof.
The blast was also sufficient to kill the ex-SOD driver and guard, both seated in front, as well as Mahrous' eldest son, sitting beside him.
* * *
Knocked over by the blast, as was nearly everyone else within two hundred feet, Khalid stood up, forcing an artificial expression of shocked disbelief onto his face. Like other people, he ran forward to try to help the injured. Khalid, however, merely wanted to confirm results.
He saw that all four tires had been blasted off the torn and twisted wreckage of the Phaeton, and that it was burning merrily. Since there were no screams coming from inside, despite the fire, he was reasonably confident that his hit had been a success. Once a sufficient crowd had gathered to cover his withdrawal, Khalid simply melted through it and was away.
I love my job, he thought. Where else could I get both revenge and excitement in these quantities and to these qualities.
29/9/466 AC, War Department, Hamilton, FD, Federated States of Columbia
Fuck, this sort of "excitement" I can live without, mused Virgil Rivers, waiting impatiently, and even nervously, at the office of the secretary of war for the Federated States. River, a tall, slender, café-au-lait colored general officer could not be said to be handsome. He had, however, a friendly manner and infectious grin that most women found very attractive. He'd married well as a result of it.
Ron Campos was gone as SecWar, gone with the outgoing Federalist administration. Truth be told, nobody much missed him. That is, nobody missed him yet. Virgil Rivers suspected a lot of people were going to miss him, to miss him badly and soon. The new SecWar, James K. Malcolm, Progressive, was Campos' match in arrogance, in Rivers' opinion, but lacked both the former SecWar's patriotism and his determination. Indeed, it was widely believed that, given a choice between advancing the interests of the Federated States, or looking out for the interests of his childhood summer home, the Gallic Republic, Malcolm would always choose Gaul. Nonetheless, Malcolm was one of a very few Progressives with any military background at all. Thus, he had been a seeming natural for secretary of war in the new administration.
He's a natural buffoon, Rivers thought, a natural gigolo, a natural panderer and an unnatural citizen. On the other hand, his goddamned tan is just a little too orange to be natural. Well, what can one expect from a natural fake.
Rivers' collar sported the two stars of a major general now. He'd always known he'd rise at least this high, even as a little boy. Thank you, Daddy, for training me as well as you did. The only question was would he rise any higher. He considered it no better than even money that he would. Rather, he had considered it no better than even money. With Malcolm as SecWar, he would now have given long odds against.
Still, I've had a good run, a damned good run for someone who's great-grandpappy retired as a master sergeant in the horse cavalry.
Rivers ported a laptop under his left arm. It contained the SecWar's daily briefing on the ongoing war. Briefing the secretary was so unpleasant, however, that it had quickly become a rotating duty. Today was River's day and he was not looking forward to it. He'd already been kept standing in front of the secretary's desk, rudely ignored, for almost ten minutes while Malcolm pretended to be busy with a file. It was another five minutes before the secretary closed the file and looked up. He didn't bother to rise or offer to shake hands.
Just as well; I'm pissed enough right now that if he did I'd probably do or say something that would move my chances of another star from dismal to none.
"Have a seat, Rivers," Malcolm ordered.
Rivers sat next to the desk, opened the laptop and faced it toward the secretary. The outside of the computer's top had a smaller screen that showed the same images as the main one. Rivers controlled the images with a small device he retrieved from his shirt pocket. He pressed a button on the device. A color map of the Republic of Sumer, highly annotated, appeared on both screens.
Malcolm looked the map over briefly. There wasn't much to see; the war in Sumer had been steadily winding down for two years. While the first three and a half years had cost the Federated States an average of just under one hundred men a month, killed, this had dropped down into the low double and occasionally single digits.
Rivers had been told not to offer commentary; that the secretary, being a lawyer, liked to direct the briefings like cross examinations in court.
"I see the Balboan sector has almost no incidents, General. To what do you attribute that?"
"They started off well and were able to enlist a great deal of Sumeri help early on," Rivers answered. He did not add, though he considered adding, and they're so ruthless almost nobody in their sector is willing to cross them.
"And we're paying for that?"
"Yes, Mr. Secretary. Under your predecessor we had an arrangement whereby the Balboans fielded, or sponsored the fielding of, combat capable forces, for a price that was originally about fifty-five percent of what the same force would have cost us. In addition, we had to provide medical care equivalent to what we give our own, but in Balboa. The price has slowly crept up as the cost of living rose in Balboa in response to all the money they earned from us. Right now it's about two thirds of our equivalent cost. That's still a bargain, since the blood is theirs, not ours."
Malcolm frowned. He'd known about the Balboans and had mostly negative feelings. Many of these feelings stemmed from rumors. He'd heard the Balboans used torture with gleeful abandon, though no one had ever provided proof. It was said they were conducting an international campaign of terror and assassination against both the common enemy, the Salafi Ikhwan, and any critics of their Legion; though, here too, they covered their tracks well. In a sense, it didn't even matter if the charges were true; the international and progressivist press believed they were true and acted accordingly. There was very little criticism of the Balboan force in the newspapers or on television.
He knew they'd put to death a number of international journalists for spying, war crimes and generally aiding the enemy; they made no secret of any of that. Neither did they make any secret of their penchant for enforcing the laws of war in the most forthright and barbaric fashions. Indeed, they made it a point to broadcast those reprisals.
They did not broadcast reprisals taken against family members though that, too, happened. So it was said and widely believed, in any case.
"How large a force do they have?" Malcolm asked. "How much does it cost us? How big a force could they field?"
This information Rivers had at his fingertips. He'd been, in a partial and roundabout way, instrumental in the Federated States' hiring his old friend Patrick Hennessey, now going by the name Carrera, and the force he had raised. He'd kept up on developments. After all, Hennessey had always been entertaining.
"In theory, Mr. Secretary, they have four divisions. They call them 'legions,' which is a little confusing as the overall organization is called "the Legion." Then again, we call the Army 'the Army' even though we have eight 'armies' under it.
"Of those four, one is forward deployed in Sumer. That's the only one that, officially, we pay for. The other three are back in Balboa in varying states of training and manning. The forward legion usually numbers around twelve to thirteen thousand men. The total active force is about thirty-three or thirty-four thousand and rising. There is also a reserve force but they are very tight lipped about that. We don't think it's as large as the active force . . . yet. They could probably double or triple their force if they wanted to. So far they have given no indication that they do want to. What they have raised, so far, costs us on the order of
seventeen billion drachma a year."
Malcolm's eyes bugged. "We pay seventeen billion drachma to some pisspot North Colombian city state?"
"Actually, no, Mr. Secretary. We pay it directly to the Legion. They give a portion, a very small portion, less than a percent, to the government of Balboa. But they're only a non-governmental organization, sponsored by that government. They are not controlled by it. They're not controlled by anybody."
"Oh, really? We'll just see about that."
Goodbye, third star.
"No, Mr. Secretary," Rivers answered forcefully. "Don't see about that. They're quite capable now, financially, of continuing the war on their own for quite a few years, if not quite indefinitely. If you try to control them you'll just find you've let slip any control we have for a control we can't have. I know their commander. Don't try to control him. It just won't work."
31/9/466 AC, Isla Real, Quarters #2
I think the thing I like about this, thought Lourdes, on her knees with her head bobbing and her tongue working, is the control it gives me, not just over the sex, but over Patricio. But then, she thought as her husband pulled her head off, stood her up and pressed her back to the wall, but then he doesn't always let me keep control.
Despite having borne two children, a boy and a girl, Lourdes' body was unmarked, well shaped and still very firm. Tall, almost as tall as her husband, she was quite slender except in those places a woman should be more full. If anything, her breasts had improved from her pregnancies.
Cupping one of those, Carrera bent his head to tease the nipple of the other with his tongue. Lourdes loved that, he knew.
She let him continue in that for a long while, moans of sheer desire occasionally escaping her lips. When she couldn't stand it anymore she pulled his head up to kiss more intimately.
Balancing her back on the wall, Lourdes arched her hips forward and reached down to guide. A small gasp escaped her lips as Carrera thrust up and forward. The gasp became a long moan as he filled her fully.
And, for a while, she didn't think of much of anything.
* * *
"Do you really have to go so soon?" she asked Carrera, later as they lay in bed. "You only come home about five or sometimes six weeks a year. Are you so anxious to leave me."
Carrera sighed, then answered, "I take more leave than the troops get."
"Yes," she conceded, "but they only spend one year away for ever three years they spend here."
"That's only now," he countered. "Most of the leaders have been gone half the time since the war began."
"And you've been gone eighty percent of it."
To that Carrera had no really good answer. He went silent, thinking, They don't carry the curse I do, the obligation to destroy those who murdered Linda and the children.
After a short time he offered, "You were with me there until you came up pregnant with the second child. Besides, the war won't last forever."
"It will last too long; long enough for me to become a dried up old prune."
"Never happen," he answered, adding, "You're one of those women who will keep her looks into old age. I can tell."
Lourdes shook her head, doubtfully. "I'll age, the same as anyone. And you'll grow tired of me."
"Never happen," he repeated, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her head onto his shoulder. "For one thing, you're a lot younger than I am. By the time you're a wrinkled up old lady, I'll be using a walker, too old to get tired of anything except pissing myself."
She giggled at the image. "Now that," she said, "will never happen."
"Yes it will." Unless I'm lucky enough to be killed before it does.
"Speaking of the future, what's on for tomorrow?" Lourdes asked.
"Mass review of the Corps of Cadets at Puerto Lindo, then rechristening of the old HAMS Venganza. Want to come watch? The boys are bussing in from all over."
"No . . . no. I'm not comfortable with turning fourteen-year-old boys into soldiers."
"I love you for that, too," Carrera whispered, "for that among many other reasons."
Lourdes never asked if her husband loved her more than he had his first wife, Linda. She was much, much too afraid of the answer.
Interlude
Munich, Germany, European Union, 15 May, 2077
The first thing Martin Hoyer the Third noticed about the envelope was that it was pink and flowered on the outside. How like the government to send bad news in such bright packaging, Hoyer thought. Perhaps if grandfather had not been such an untalentierte teilzeit schmierfink we would have had enough money of our own not to have to rely on the state's largess to see us through our old age. Instead he wasted his life writing books no one would read . . . even in German.
Not that Martin or his wife, or their one—unemployed —child, were particularly old. He and she were only fifty-seven and had been drawing on the state's pension scheme for a scant two years. The boy, Martin Hoyer the Fourth, received unemployment compensation, despite never having worked a day in his life. But even in two years they had seen the system go from penny-pinching to outright miserly.
At least we haven't been reduced to eating dog food. Yet.
He opened the envelope and began to read:
Dear Sir or Madam:
In accordance with the European Union Directive 2076/015 for the preservation of the public fisc and extra-planetary colonization, you and you spouse have been identified for reduction of benefits or transportation, with assets, to the planet of New Earth.
Hoyer took a quick glance at what "reduction of benefits" meant in concrete, Euro, terms and thought, Dog food.
You and your spouse have thirty (30) days from the date of this letter to decide. Thereafter, should you decline transportation, on each anniversary of this letter you will have another thirty (30) days to change your minds, transportation schedule permitting.
Hoyer read the missive through, sighing frequently. He put it down and called for his wife. As he waited, he went through the rest of the mail.
Interesting that there's a letter too for our lazy-as-dirt son, he thought.
Chapter Three
The Helen (H): that amount of beauty required to launch one thousand Achaean ships of approximately eight tons empty displacement each, or approximately eight-thousand tons of shipping, and to destroy one city.
The milliHelen (mH): a more convenient measure than the Helen, that amount of beauty required to launch one ship and burn down a single house.
The Linda (L): a more up to date measure; that amount of beauty required to launch eight-thousand tons of shipping in a single ship and destroy a city.
Dos Lindas: (ex-Venganza) an antique aircraft carrier of sixteen-thousand tons unladen displacement, restored and recommissioned to take part in the war waged against Salafi terrorists and their supporters by the Legion del Cid (qv). Destroyed cities: TBA.
From Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth, Terra Novan Edition of 475 AC
1/10/466 AC, Academia Militar Sargento Juan Malvegui, Puerto Lindo, Balboa
The original port had been raided and burned by pirates almost three centuries before. Its crumbling walls, what remained of them, huddled at one corner of the rectangular bay, held up in places by nothing but friction, gravity and the binding, green and brown tendrils of jungle that interwove among the stones. Shacks, too, sat within the ruins, sometimes surrounded on three sides by the chewed walls.
Outside that original town, or the ruins and shacks that remained of it, a certain amount of newfound prosperity could be seen; new houses, some few stores with bright glass windows, paved streets. This was to be expected when one trebled the population of a not very populous place, and considerably more than quadrupled the average income of an otherwise rather impoverished place. The new population and the new money had come from two sources. The first of these was the Academy, especially its fairly well paid (by local standards) professors and military cadre. The second was the shipyard built to refit the old aircraft carrier—th
e ex-HAMS Venganza—the Legion had purchased for a song, albeit at three and a half million FSD a rather pricey jingle, one step ahead of the breakers. There were other ships in port waiting for the shipyard's attentions.
Carrera had made some efforts to keep the old town as it was, buying up properties to fix and preserve the ruins. He'd wanted the boys of this first military school to have the lesson always before them: This is defeat; avoid it. (Another school sat on the other side of Balboa, right next to the equally ruined Balboa Antiguo, also sacked and burned but by Old Earth's UN. That one, the Academia Militar Belisario Carrera, was sited by the ruins for much the same reason as was the Juan Malvegui.)
The school itself was on the other side of the bay from the town, near the bay's mouth. When the fog was not heavy or the rain was light, the boys could see the ruins from the battlements of the old stone fortress—Fortaleza San Filipe—that dominated the bay, the school, and the old town.
There was no rain and only a very light fog as Carrera's staff car wound through the street. It was both preceded and followed by armed and armored vehicles. There was a battalion of Castilian troops at Fort Williams, not so far away. Relations between the Legion, on the one hand, and the government of Balboa and the Tauran brigade of which the Castilians were a part, on the other, were, at best, strained. Moreover, the Tauran dominated Cosmopolitan Criminal Court had a standing warrant for the arrest of Carrera and his nominal chief, Raul Parilla, for various alleged crimes committed by the Legion during the initial campaign in Sumer.
I know we're going to have to fight them, eventually, Carrera admitted to himself. But I want that fight to be on our terms, not brought on by well-meaning troops trying to save Parilla or myself from incarceration. So . . . best not to tempt the Taurans . . . yet.
Though no one but Carrera knew it for a fact, the boys of the Brigade of Cadets were part and parcel of the plan for meeting and defeating the Taurans when the day came. Some others had guessed some of that plan. Alexander Sitnikov, in particular, was, as commander of the cadets, well aware that the boys spent two days a week training on strictly military subjects, that the three schools thus far built had their buildings connected by tunnels, and that those tunnels led off the school grounds to well concealed spots in the jungle. Sitnikov knew, too, that the three schools still building shared these features. Lastly, any fool with a map could see that four of the six schools were well sighted to serve as springboards to attack into the Taurans' base area, the ten mile wide strip through the country that contained the Balboa Transitway, an above sea level canal. Of the other two, one was in excellent position to defend the country's main airport, west of the capital, from ground or airborne attack, while the last was near enough to the former—and future—military base at Lago Sombrero to effect the same purpose.