Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  Rain, not a serious downpour but just a dry season sprinkling, began coming down as the tracks of B Company passed by Brookings Field, a long abandoned Federated States air base, now used to house commandos and a squadron of helicopters, along with diverse support.

  Well past Brookings, and just before commencing an unauthorized invasion of Balboa, the column swung right, with the MP car flashing away frantically on its left as it turned. The troops rolled about another half mile, then halted in place in front of Cerro Mina before pivoting left. At that point, Captain Bruguière walked the line to ensure he was satisfied with their spacing—there wasn’t any cover out there on the road—then called in to 420th Headquarters that he was in position. Battalion then sent back, “Come on home.”

  Not far away, perhaps a kilometer as a trixie would fly—presupposing the quasi-intelligent bitch didn’t stop off somewhere to hunt antaniae—Signifer Porras, duty officer for Second Cohort, Second Tercio, on Fuerte Guerrero, trying to catch a half hour’s nap between rounds, was awakened by his runner.

  “Sir! Sir! Signifer Porras . . . for God’s sake, wake up! The duty centurion’s gone to wake the troops. The Gauls are moving toward the Comandancia and the fort, sir, and the police told us they look ready to fight. They’re lining up on Avenida Ascanio Arosemena just before it becomes Avenida de la Santa Maria!”

  That was a portion of the broad and lengthy boulevard that separated Balboan territory from de facto Tauran Union ground. The street had gone through many name changes and a couple of minor changes in route since it had first been founded by Belisario Carrera as Avenida de la Victoria, following the driving out of Old Earth’s then United Nations, centuries before. Sometimes it was still called that, for its entire length.

  “What? Shit!” Porras rubbed sleep from his eyes, trying to gather his thoughts from his dreams. The signifer asked, “From where are they coming? How many? Tracks or infantry?”

  “We don’t know, sir. The police sub-station on their way just made a call to tercio that they are moving. Tercio called cohort; cohort called us.”

  “Well, dammit, man,” said Porras. “Call them back. And start the mobilization recall, level two. And remind them to Second Legion, the Estado Mayor, and those assholes in Tenth Tercio. They may not know yet. Hmm . . . on second thought, I’ll call legion and Estado Mayor. They can call the Tenth. You get the recall going.”

  “Si, Signifer.” The orderly snapped to attention, then scurried off to obey.

  A junior sergeant, one of the cohort’s supply section, stepped up to Porras, reported, then asked, “What’s the word, sir?”

  “Fucking Gauls,” Porras answered. “Coming toward the Comandancia.”

  “Shit! I’ll get the arms room open, sir, for the crew-served weapons. Shit!” The corporal hesitated, looking worried. After a few pained seconds he admitted, “Ah . . . sir? Umm . . . I issued half our alert stocks of ammunition for training last drill.”

  “And you haven’t made them good yet?” Porras snarled.

  “Hell, sir, it was only two weeks ago. I put in the request, but it hasn’t been filled. That’s all.”

  “Then why the fuck didn’t you tell someone before now?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I just didn’t think it was that important.”

  “Assuming the gringos don’t attack tonight, this will be the last time you make that mistake. Clear?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  Porras, thought, It really doesn’t make all that much difference, I suppose. The reservists have a fighting load of small arms ammunition at home. But it rankles.

  Then Cruz, unshaven, boots untied, and trousers hanging loose, burst into the headquarters. “Status, sir?”

  Porras began briefing the sergeant major, as he dialed tercio headquarters. When someone there answered, he held up a finger toward Sergeant Major Cruz: Hold one and listen. You’ll learn as much as I know from what I ask higher.

  While Cruz listened and tucked his shirt in, then bent to lace his boots, a cacophony arose in the hallways of the barracks. There just might have been a note of hysteria in the men’s shouts.

  Changeover from Avenida Ascanio Arosemena to Avenida de la Santa Maria, Ciudad Balboa, Terra Nova

  Legate Suarez pointed at the black rubber skid marks on the asphalt of the road. “The fuckers were here, all right. Pulled up and pivot steered, right fucking there, then pivot steered again and took off.”

  Porras, somewhat overawed at being in the presence of his legion commander, said nothing. Conversely, Cruz shook his head, saying, “And for the cost of pulling one of their companies out of its bunks, twenty thousand of our people had to respond.”

  With a wicked, nasty smile across his face, Suarez asked, “There’s a certain elegance in that, don’t you think, Sergeant Major?”

  “Yes, sir. And if we let them keep it up, they’ll frazzle the troops’ nerves to bits.”

  “Just so. That’s why they’re doing it.”

  Both men stopped speaking as Carrera’s jeep rolled up. They saluted and reported.

  Carrera scowled. “So it begins again,” he said.

  Porras, Cruz, and Suarez stood silent.

  “Are you ready to fight them, Suarez? Sergeant Major?”

  Suarez didn’t answer immediately. Cruz did.

  “Sir, we aren’t quite ready yet. Two more years, if we can delay it that long. At least a year. Or buy us six months. But not today. Not and win more than one fight. Sir, it isn’t that the men won’t or can’t fight, sir. But we need just that little more time to fill up our ranks and train.”

  “I agree with the sergeant major, sir,” said Suarez.

  Carrera exhaled audibly. “Yeah . . . so do I.”

  Suarez, looking down, said, “There’s another thing, though. The boys aren’t sure they can beat the Taurans. But they’re not sure they can’t either. Every time they do this to us and we don’t fight, our men are going to be a little more sure that we can’t win, that you don’t believe we can win. We can’t delay forever.”

  “I know.”

  Fort Nelson, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Balboa Transitway Area, Terra Nova

  Named after one of the most successful, most courageous, luckiest, and least principled officers in Federated States military history, Fort Nelson and its next door neighbor, Arnold Air Force Base, formed one of the strongholds of foreign power in Balboa, dominating the northeastern exit from the Transitway. They had done so for the Federated States, for decades; they did so now for the Tauran Union. That Balboa held Fort Guerrero, on the other side of the bay, didn’t change this. Whoever held either post could prevent anyone from using the Transitway, at will.

  Fort Nelson and Arnold AFB were, in turn, dominated by the hills to its east. Those were recently fortified by the Taurans, but lightly held. On the post three lines of substantial, white-stuccoed barracks ran north to south. Two of these, of five each, held one battalion of Gallic commandos, one of infantry, an engineer company, and a light artillery battery, with one large, centrally located mess hall for all ten company-sized units.

  Opposite the barracks that held the mess hall, which—being a much larger building—housed the headquarters for both of the other battalions, another barracks sagged dangerously in the middle where an idiotic Federated States major had once had a load-bearing wall knocked out to put in an unneeded chapel.

  The last line, of three barracks, housed a large aviation squadron, most of whose helicopters sat at nearby Arnold AFB. That last line of three was separated from the other ten by an athletic complex and parade field.

  Out on the parade field, stopwatch in hand, a starched and spit-shined staffer observed the last of Company B, 35th Commando Battalion (Airborne) board helicopters. The other two commando companies likewise boarded helicopters, on different parts of the field, but those were not that particular staff officer’s problem. To the northwest and southwest, in two open fields, the artillery battery—split into two firing sections—blasted
away with signal blanks, simulating fires on Fort Guerrero, a few miles away across the bay, and at the old Comandancia, now serving as Second Corps Headquarters. The staffer jotted down the exact time the helicopters lifted from the open athletic field between the Thirty-fifth’s barracks and the helicopter squadron.

  Turning north, the helicopters passed low over the two old and abandoned hemispherical coastal artillery bunkers of Batteries Henry and George, then across Nelson Beach and out to sea.

  Once past the pounding surf, the helicopters veered east toward Fort Guerrero, flying only a few feet above the waves in V formation. A kilometer out from the Balboa Yacht Club the helicopters closed that V into a trail formation, one behind the other. In the next few seconds the commandos of Company B felt their stomachs sink as the pilots, one after the other, pulled pitch to raise the aircraft safely over the trees that fronted the coast.

  As soon as the trees were cleared the pilots dumped altitude to come low again, even as they pushed pedals to change direction. Troopers’ stomachs heaved. Then, engines roaring and blades chopping the air, the birds were down, landing in trail on the south side of Fort Guerrero’s parade field.

  With shouts the commandos leapt from the open doors to take up a perimeter around the helicopters. No sooner had the helicopters been unloaded than they took off once again, then headed to Arnold again to refuel. There was a short halt while the company’s leaders got the troops on line. Then there began a series of short rushes by individuals and small teams, moving toward the 2nd Cohort, Second Tercio barracks. The troops shouted “bang” . . . “bang” in between rushes. They could have used blanks, of course, but blanks could be mistaken for real rounds, which might have invited real return fire. It was not the time for that, not just yet.

  I am getting so sick of these games, thought Sergeant Major Cruz, standing with arms folded on a second floor balcony to catch a bit of sea breeze against the heat. Of course, that’s their objective.

  “Duty Sergeant,” shouted Cruz. “Get the boys outside and on line. No weapons. I have an idea.”

  “Si, Sergeant Major.” The sergeant didn’t have a clue what Cruz intended, but wasn’t about to question his cohort’s sergeant major.

  Over the next few minutes, as the skirmish line of commandos drew closer, the available men of Second Cohort, Second Tercio formed an even line on the pavement in front of their barracks. When Cruz saw that he had about as many as he could expect he gave the command “Cohort . . . Atten . . . shun!” Still sleepy, the response was ragged.

  The Gallic troops barely hesitated in their movement towards the barracks. In seconds, the pace of the advance had resumed. As the “bang . . . bang . . . bangbangbang” grew louder, the Balboan soldiers awoke quickly.

  “About . . . face!” The legionaries seemed still ragged, but it was mostly reluctance to turn their backs on an armed, advancing enemy.

  “Drooop! . . . Trousers!

  “Bennnd . . . over.

  “At My Command . . . Fart.

  “Ready . . . Fart!”

  With the Gauls a bare fifty meters away the Balboans gave a Bronx cheer that just grew louder and louder with time. Faster than if mowed down by machine guns, the Gauls’ assault line broke down in laughter.

  Cruz gave the order to his men to recover and go back to bed. Before retiring into the headquarters, himself, he gave a single upraised finger towards the men on the parade field.

  As the screen door closed behind him, and the Gauls shuffled off to where the helicopters could get in to pick them up, Cruz thought, And “on each end of the rifle we’re the same.”

  He shook his head. It won’t do much good, not for long. But anything positive is better than nothing.

  Gatineau, Secordia, Terra Nova

  Emotionally, substantial sections of Secordia, south of the Federated States, felt as one with the Tauran Union. Moreover, they’d put their traditionally excellent army to use for decades toadying to the World League in peacekeeping missions in sundry undeveloped hell holes. If there was a spurious, recently invented human right held sacred anywhere on Terra Nova, the odds were good the notion had been birthed right here in Gatineau. Occasionally, the United Earth Peace Fleet had acted as midwife for the birth.

  Among those sacred human rights, and one where the UEPF was not merely midwife but father, as well, was the right not to be blown up by the small explosive devices called “antipersonnel land mines.” It might further be noted that while the UEPF was the father of the treaty, its mother was an Old Earth princess, long deceased.

  Mind, it was a right only among some nations whose armies were really quite careful with the use of land mines, and who could have been counted on to recover mines once emplaced but which were no longer needed. For the major powers, the Federated States, Xing Zhong Guo, the remnants of the Volgan Empire, along with some of the lesser states around some of those, people who took war seriously, in other words, that “right” and the treaty which sanctified it, were studiously ignored where not actively sneered at.

  Among serious war making powers, only Anglia and Gaul had ratified the “Gatineau Treaty Against the Manufacture, Stockpiling, Sale, and Use of Antipersonnel Landmines.” And of those two, the Gauls totally ignored it whenever ignoring it was convenient, while castigating anyone who used mines where such use was inconvenient for Gaul.

  And yet—oh, the thrill—another serious military power was about to sign on: the Timocratic Republic of Balboa.

  Balboa did, however, insist on certain codicils of its own. First, it accepted only a ban on undetectable plastic mines. Second, it reserved the right to use any device on hand, or obtainable, in self-defense. The country cited its unique importance to world trade in defense of its position. The Balboan codicils were simply stated at the moment of signing; the treaty itself did not permit national reservations in the text. Still, the international community of the very, very caring and sensitive assumed that, once signed, the Balboans could be legally forced to ignore their own codicils and their own domestic law.

  Balboa’s ambassador to the World League signed the treaty on behalf of the Republic. From the conference room under the Curia, the Senate House, Carrera and Parilla laughed.

  As Carrera told Parilla, “And why not, Raul? Isn’t it wonderfully ironic, a really perfect memorial. Think of it. A woman dies. She was fairly vapid and, though merely somewhat attractive, she convinced the world she was beautiful. She led a fairly meaningless life as a mere clothes-horsey ornament to a purely symbolic royal family. She went through an artificial marriage in which both she and her husband cheated nearly from the outset. So we, and the rest of the deluded world, are memorializing her with a vapid, only apparently lovely, meaningless, ornamental, symbolic, and artificial treaty which, when put to the test, will have both sides cheating shamelessly. What a wonderfully fitting piece of international and interplanetary lawmaking cum eulogizing.

  “Certainly, we’re going to cheat, mercilessly. And that’s hilarious, too.”

  “She meant well, you know,” said Parilla, uncomfortable with maligning the dead.

  “She meant to make herself feel good and get applause from all the right people, never mind those who might die for lack of a minefield defense,” Carrera answered. “To Hell with that.”

  Barrio San Miguel, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Not every cohort had a sergeant major with quite the force of character or self-discipline, to say nothing of the imagination, of Ricardo Cruz. Not every tercio in the legion was as disciplined as Second, either. But every unit, every maniple, every cohort, every tercio, every legion and corps had been seriously inconvenienced and annoyed by Janier’s “Green Monsoons” and “Mosquitoes.”

  But even if they had been, every unit contained a few marginal characters. A couple of those, Corporal Bairnals and Private Castillo, were from Tenth Tercio. Half-drunk, the two were leaving one of the brothels where they’d been unsuccessful in negotiating from one of the local professional
ladies the precise services they desired at a price they were willing to pay. They might have had the money she demanded, had they not drunk up such a large percentage of it before entering into negotiations. She, on the other hand, might have come down on her price, had they not been quite so drunk.

  Knocking around a whore in one of the city’s many brothels, always well-guarded, was a good way to end up dead in some painful fashion. Drunk the Tenth Infantry legionaries might have been. That drunk they were not.

  Sure, they were armed, with their wire-cutting bayonets. The Republic didn’t have many rules against carrying firearms; it would have been silly in a place where over half the households had a fully automatic weapon. The bordellos, however, did. In the interests of protecting the girls, the atmosphere . . . such as it tended to be . . . and making money, they never permitted firearms. Knives or bayonets? Some were okay with that. The key thing was that security had to be better armed than the clientele.

  Those better armed guards had shown Castillo and Bairnals the door.

  Filled with a sense of the injustice of it all, the Tenth Tercio troopers had staggered to the curb and sat down, nursing their grievously wounded egos. The street was Avenida de la Santa Maria. On the other side arose Cerro Mina, with the Tauran Union sitting atop it, but also some families of the officers and senior noncoms residing within its chain-link fence.

  Sometimes, not unlike some married couples, soldiers who have trained long together can read each other’s thoughts, even when drunk . . . or perhaps especially when drunk . . . or aggrieved . . . or both.

  Add to the injustice of being turned down by a Santandern whore the nearly nightly disruptions from the Taurans, and the near presence of Tauran family members . . .

  Bairnals lifted his shirt and took the bayonet from its repository in his waistband. Flipping it a couple of times, he slurred, “Let’s go get us some Tauran pussy, my friend. Teach them to wake us up in the middle of the night . . .”

  “Right,” agreed Castillo. “Go teach them motherfuckin’ Tauran pigs a lesson.”