Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  CIC, Anshan, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  “Close the goddamned seacocks, for Heaven’s sake!” screamed the captain into the intercom.

  The answer came back. “Too late, Captain. We can’t get at the ’cocks.”

  I have to abandon ship, Yee thought. With the seacocks jammed open we will go down in a few hours. It will be a nightmare but we should at least get the majority of the civilians onto the escorts or into lifeboats and life rafts.

  Torpedo three’s wake detector detected a faint trace of a ship’s wake above it. The torpedo corrected its course to starboard . . .

  A young Zhong wife shivered almost uncontrollably on the stern end of the flight deck. It wasn’t the temperature; the woman was terrified for herself and her children. She had a baby clutched in her arms and a young son holding onto a sash at her waist. Her two other children—a boy, nine, and a girl, seven—sat on the deck nearby. The woman was simply a wreck. Between the fighting, the dimly sensed disaster, worst of all no word from her husband, and all this something her own government had had nothing to do with . . .

  Then the hurried evacuation to this passing strange environment. She shivered.

  “Mommy, what’s that?” asked the boy, too young to see this as more than a really great ride.

  The woman looked to where her son pointed. A faint trace of bubbles, though not so faint as the carrier’s weak wake, were coming straight for her and her children.

  SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova

  Chu’s sonar operator turned white as he turned his eyes toward the skipper. “Captain Chu, we have a splash within half a kiloyard of our position. It is a lightweight . . . It’s spooling up . . . It’s pinging, it has turned on us. Captain! Skipper, it’s homing!”

  The Hengshui’s—also known as Golf Romeo Two’s—missile-launched torpedo turned immediately on the noise and bubbles of the noisemaker. What might not fool a ship-borne sonar could still fool the much less sophisticated and capable guidance package of a missile-launched torpedo.

  Or it might not; once the torpedo passed the noisemaker by, its small electronic brain began the search anew.

  Chu sat strapped in his command chair. His fists were clenched and his eyes were closed. He tried to visualize the positions of all the targets and dangers around him. The sub was nose down in a straight dive, moving far faster than her own power would allow. Sonar continued to report that the Tauran’s torpedo was following.

  The captain thought, Damn, we should have gone with that expensive Zion “poison” decoy. That Volgan shit didn’t work!

  “Level up over the sea bottom,” Chu ordered. “Ahead at flank speed.”

  The Zhong torpedo sensed a faint shadow of a sonar reflection. The self-guiding torpedo began to ping rapidly. She nosed over and dove for what her tiny brain thought might be a target. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

  “Captain,” Auletti announced, “that whore of a torpedo is on our tail.”

  Chu decided to try something desperate. “Chill the rear tanks, superheat the nose tanks. Release another noisemaker! Pull out of the dive. Ahead full!” His guts, and those of his crew, lurched as the Meg’s stern continued to fall while her bow stopped and turned upward.

  “She’s still on us,” screamed Auletti, followed by a softer. “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”

  “Brace for explosion,” screamed the XO.

  One hundred thirteen meters below the surface, the lightweight torpedo punched through a cloud of bubbles, then, with a solid return signal from the ocean floor, she sped on ahead, impacted on the sea bottom, and blew up.

  “We’re fuckin’ lucky to be alive,” said Auletti.

  “No, Chief, you’re wrong,” Chu countered. “They are. And their luck is out.”

  Auletti nodded, then reported, “Captain, huge explosion on bearing Three-Zero-Five! Bigger than anything I have heard today, That cannot be anything but the carrier!”

  The XO sharply looked at Chu. “You are a prophet!”

  Chu shook his head and answered, “Must have been fish number three, five has still too much time on its clock.”

  CIC, Hengshui, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  “Underwater explosion on Zero-Eight-Two . . .” The short report barely cut into the grief felt by the PWO on the destruction of Anshan. Nevertheless, “Release the SAU, we need to support Delta Six Echo in the Rescue operations.”

  The PWO didn’t dream that the horrors for the day were not yet over.

  “Sir, a wake-homing torpedo has just overrun our towed array!”

  “That is eight hundred yards back! Flank speed ahead”

  The PWO knew that at this stage evasive action was futile and he had less than eighty seconds to live. He, unknowingly, echoed his admiral’s earlier sentiment. Why? We were on a mission of mercy. Why?

  The petty officer working the surface picture had trained the electro-optical sensor platform on the gigantic smoke column rising above the Anshan’s position since the last torpedo hit had turned it ablaze in burning fuel and secondary explosions. This allowed the PWO to view this transient monument to his failure. Then the waterjet of Meg’s torpedo six explosion tore through Hengshui’s CIC, killing the ops crew instantly

  CIC, Siping, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  “Bore in, goddammit! There may be survivors.” The captain nearly wept.

  The crew, some of them, did as well. Three and a half sea miles away the Anshan, with over a thousand sailors and an uncounted—now probably uncountable—number of noncombatants aboard burned like an oil well gone out of control. Thick smoke billowed up into the sky. At the smoke’s base, there was an inferno of flame.

  When the third torpedo had hit Anshan, the aviation gasoline had been set off; then the stored munitions. These made a hash of sonar, sound waves thrumming the water.

  “Captain . . . there are no survivors we can help. But she is burning fiercely and the main air ordnance magazine might blow any second,” said Siping’s XO.

  “But we’ve got to try,” answered the captain.

  SSK Megalodon, Mar Furioso, Bahia de Balboa, eighty kiloyards north of the Isla Real, Terra Nova

  “Head for base,” an exhausted Chu ordered. “We’ve stopped their carrier, the Tauran shits. That’s enough for one day.” And I don’t want to fight anyone else. I feel like my luck is all used up.

  Twelve sea miles from the Meg its torpedo number five exhausted its fuel after finding no target on its bearing and slowly sank to the bottom of the Bay of Balboa.

  Via Hispanica, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Pipes playing “The Men of the West,” Fifth Mountain Tercio moved into and through the city. The Twenty-second, the Volgans, were already engaged against elements of the ad hoc Tauran Mountain Brigade. Intelligence reports were fragmentary, at best, but local citizens braved the random fire to update the tercios. The two tercios’ orders were clear: “Find and destroy or capture any and all Tauran forces in the City.”

  The Mountain Brigade would last until sometime after midnight, but no longer.

  The Tunnel, Cerro Mina, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Moncey sat unmoving by his desk. For the first time in his life a disaster had left him stunned. Then, too, it was the first disaster of his life. All communications with the outside had long since been lost. De Villepin brought Moncey a cup of coffee and sat down beside him.

  “It’s all over,” the chief of staff said, then repeated, “It’s all over.”

  “Yes, sir. We tried though. What should we do now?”

  Moncey answered distantly, “Surrender the men. See if you can get contact with the legion and offer surrender.”

  “Yes, sir,” said de Villepin, “I’ll see to it now.”

  As de Villepin turned the corner
a few paces from Moncey’s office he heard a single pistol shot. It echoed from the concrete walls. De Villepin shook his head sadly but did not bother going to investigate.

  Fort Williams, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Pililak stumbled into the quadrangle at Fort Williams. She still had a rifle clasped in one of her hands but, so swollen were her eyes and face from the hordes of ravenous mosquitoes that had assailed her, she had not a hope of seeing a target. Even to stagger this far had required that she use the fingers of one hand to pry an eye open.

  Semi-delirious, she asked the first legionary she met, “Has anyone seen my lord, Iskandr?”

  The fuzzy image of a man she spoke to was just a boy, aged sixteen. He had no clue who or what “Iskandr” was. “Sorry, chica,” he answered, waving at his nose against the incredible stink of the girl. “I have no idea what you’re looking for.”

  “Oh,” she replied, softly. “Sorry. I’ll look elsewhere.”

  She was staggering toward a large group when someone came to stop her. “Sorry, honey,” that boy said, “but you can’t bring a rifle to the prisoners.”

  Frustrated, half out of her mind, the girl simply sat down on the grass where she was. Tears began to flow. Finally, in her psychic agony, she screamed out at the top of her lungs, “ISKANDR!”

  Ham was conferring with his commander, Ustinov, when he heard the name he hadn’t been called in years, “Iskandr.” Even the five Pashtians, two of whom were now dead, who had followed him to the academy had been forbidden to use it. And yet he heard it.

  “Sir,” he asked of Ustinov, “may I be excused?”

  Hamilcar walked at first, heading in the direction from which he heard his other name. Then, when he saw the thin ragged bundle, rocking and weeping on the grass of the parade field, he began to run.

  He reached the girl and went to one knee. Poor little thing; what’s she been through to be so dirty? He looked carefully for a few moments . . . this . . . creature looked familiar but . . . No, the Pililak I knew was always fastidious. And not so well chested, either. Still . . .

  Ham bent his head closer and whispered, “Ant?”

  The filthy creature looked up and, after prying the swollen lids of one eye apart, shouted, “My lord! My lord! My Iskandr!” before launching herself at Ham and more or less wrapping herself around him. Her tears flew freely again, as she informed him, “I brought you your rifle, my lord.”

  Epilogue

  I

  The Curia was subdued. There were at least a dozen spots that were vacant now, senators the Taurans had tried to arrest in their homes and who decided not to go gently, or others who, ignoring their years, had grabbed a rifle or machine gun and gone to find the regiments that had elevated them. Carrera wasn’t back yet. He was somewhere in the Transitway Area, more specifically at Fort Muddville, watching a cohort burn out the last Tauran defenders of Building 59.

  That didn’t matter; he and Parilla were long agreed that the war could not be permitted to turn into one of those interminable Zion-Arab things that just went on and on. No, this would be fought to a finish, either the destruction of the Revolution in Balboa, and the legion that had brought it about, or the discrediting, humiliation, and casting off of the new hereditary aristocracy of the Tauran Union . . . and with it, United Earth.

  A screen on the wall of the Curia showed a long tongue of flame lick out to splash against the brick wall before finding its way through a blasted window. Smoke began to pour from all the other windows at that end of the building. The hundred and eleven senators so far assembled watched the scene with grim satisfaction.

  The senators stood in front of Parilla’s dais and curule chair, rather than in their wonted marble benches. They’d had to vacate the space; those benches were now full of people in formal dress, mostly, though a few wore the battle dress of the legion. Farther down, towards the great bronze doors, still others in similar clothing held musical instruments.

  Parilla stood at a podium that had been wheeled in for the occasion. He was flanked by the statues of Balboa and Victoria. The latter had been ready for some months, but Parilla had thought it better to wait for the victory that gave the statue her name.

  “So I’m superstitious,” he’d told the Senate. “So sue me. We wait until we have the victory before we proclaim it.”

  A cameraman at the far end, on the aisle by the doors, gave Parilla a high sign.

  He began to speak:

  “This morning the Republic of Balboa was suddenly and deliberately attacked by ground, air and naval forces of the Tauran Union. The excuse given for that attack were certain crimes allegedly perpetrated by members of Balboa’s armed forces upon Tauran citizens. The real reason for the attack was to force upon Balboa a traitorous clique of puppets who would do the will of the Tauran Union even against their own country and people.”

  Parilla stopped speaking to take a short drink of water.

  “In any event,” he continued, carefully placing his glass back on the podium, “the criminals who caused this war—those, at least, who are in our hands—have been punished. Some few remain at large in the Tauran Union. They, however—being elected officials or unelected but well-connected bureaucrats—appear to have a certain immunity to criminal action at law. Still, do not be fooled. The war the Tauran Union began is not yet over.

  “We currently hold some eighteen thousand Tauran prisoners of war. Many of them are wounded. We also have some thousands of Tauran civilians, former workers in the Transitway Zone. We are not nearly done with counting the dead and wounded, ours and theirs. So many were lost at sea that we may never have an accurate count.

  “In the interests of possible peace we will, in three days, begin transferring prisoners of war, at the rate of one hundred per day, back to the Tauran Union. First we shall return the wounded, in accord with the severity of their wounds. Then we’ll return the civilians. Then, if there are no further hostile acts, the Tauran Union will be given back her military personnel. This is contingent upon several factors.

  “First: the conditions of permanent peace. We insist upon absolute renunciation by the Tauran Union of any interest in and over the Balboa Transitway and the Republic of Balboa. After all, the Tauran Union can hardly claim any longer that Balboa is incapable of self-defense, can they? We also demand the repatriation of any and all Balboans held by the Tauran Union. Lastly, we demand reparations for the damages we have sustained, to recompense our wounded, to pay for property damage, and to care for the orphans and widows this artificially provoked invasion has left without a provider. We think a million drachma for each prisoner we hold should be sufficient for that.

  “Further, Balboa demands that all hostile actions on the part of the Tauran Union government, to include the unwarranted ‘drachma embargo’ and all other interferences with Balboa’s trade, cease.

  “Return of prisoners and detainees will be through the port of Cristobal, by ship. We will march and truck them there. It is up to the Tauran Union to have transport waiting.

  “And now, a final word from la Republica de Balboa to the people and bureaucrats of the Tauran Union.”

  Parilla smiled broadly and pointed at a formally dressed man holding a little stick, the conductor of the Balboa City Philharmonic. The stick tapped a few times, then pointed. A male singer, in battle dress, his head wrapped in a bandage, sang out. His voice was a deep base baritone: “O Tauran Union, den of iniquity.”

  A hundred voices raised themselves: “INIQUITY!”

  The lone baritone continued: “Odiferous fief of a corrupt and unelected bureaucracy.”

  “BUREAUCRACY!”

  Almost instantly, the hall was filled with music, more specifically the Old Earth composer Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The words had been changed a bit, though. Balboa’s granite Senate house rang with the lyrics:

  “Fuck the filthy Tauran Union!

  Fuck their courts and MTPs!

  Fuck their rules and regulations;

  Their
whole vile bureaucracy!

  Asshats, Bastards, Cowards, Dimwits,

  Excrement-feeding Gallows-bait.

  Hang the swine Higher than Haman,

  Ignorant Jackasses, Knaves!

  Watch them purge the bent banana.

  See your taxes rise and rise.

  See your nations fall to ruin.

  Watch as every freedom dies.

  Lick-ass Morons, Nincompoops, Oh,

  Pity the Quagmire these Reds made.

  Sycophants and Thieves, the whole crew,

  Underworked and overpaid.

  Friday mornings they will sign in

  To ensure their holidays

  Are paid for by lesser people.

  Free men call those people, ‘Slaves.’

  Green on the outside, red on the

  Inside, Watermelons, black of soul,

  Xerox copies of each other,

  Yahoos, Zeroes, one and all.

  To the lampposts, Tauran People.

  Tie the knots and toss the ropes.

  Fit the nooses. Haul the free ends.

  Stand back; watch your masters choke.”

  With a complex wave of the stick, the singing and music ceased. Every man and woman in the Balboa Philharmonic was smiling, perhaps smugly. Smiling more smugly still, the maestro turned to the cameras and bowed.

  “And that pretty much sums up our feelings about you,” Parilla said, also smiling. The smile disappeared. He raised his arms above his head and shouted for the cameras, “Viva Balboa! Viva Anglia Libre! Viva Sachsen Libre! Viva Gaul Libre! Viva Castile Libre! Viva Jagelonia Libre! Viva Tuscany Libre! Viva Lusitania Libre!