by Leo Champion
“Thanks man.” Senechal accepted the cigarette, took a deep drag and handed it back with a nod.
Mullins took his own drag, offered the cig back.
“Those things are bad for your health, guys,” Cramer said, coming along and squatting next to the two men.
“Doctor,” said Senechal, “we are in the middle of a wasteland with hostile nomads everywhere, two hundred miles from questionable safety. Isn’t that bad for our health?”
Cramer smiled thinly.
“There’s that,” she said. “But I’m just checking on you guys. Doing my job as a doctor. How are your feet holding up?”
“No spare socks anyway,” Mullins said.
“Nice to have, not critical. Are you blistering?”
Mullins shook his head.
“I might be. Think I can feel something. Not used to this kind of hike,” said Senechal.
“Boots off and let me take a look, then,” said Cramer. She unslung her medical kit.
Mullins got up as the doctor began to look over the chopper pilot’s feet. Reuter was sitting not far off with a lying-down Mondragon, Reuter slowly sipping water. Most of the Black Gangers were collapsed; eight of them, four on each, had been pulling the two supply wagons, rotating the harder work every so-often. He saw Leon Smith lying down with his hatless head on a rock, in pain; for a moment Smith opened his eyes and watched Mullins pass toward Reuter and Mondragon.
The sun blazed down on them. It was hot.
* * *
It was hot, and Leon Smith didn’t have a hat – he’d had one when they’d first arrived, but a gust of wind had blown it off his head and he wasn’t going to chase after it, no way was he making that mistake again – and the sun beat down on his already-burned skin.
God, he hated the Legion. God, he hated his life and everything in it. He wanted to die.
He wanted to run away, but he’d tried that. Better to sit out his sentence and maybe try back at Chauncy again?
He had a year, of which ten months and change were left, in the Class Two Black Gang. That would end his sentence for attempted desertion from the Class One – minimum security, more or less – Black Gang he’d been flunked into after washing out twice on Chauncy.
The Class One gang had been bad, he’d thought at the time. Although from talking with other convicts since, it might have just been that his particular gang chief had been a whip-happy sadist. Hard work, clearing the way for a road – turning a path into a road – through a forest somewhere in Chongdin. The forest had been infested with bandits who weren’t happy about the development, and every so-often they’d sniped at the teams with their bows. Usually the arrows glanced off their construction equipment or missed completely, but he still remembered that one guy who’d taken one through the gut.
The night after that had happened, he’d tried to make a break for it. Slipped out of the tent, past a sentry and into the woods without any clear plan for what to do next. It hadn’t been a well-planned escape at all, and in fact Smith had since realized that it could have ended far worse – alone and unarmed in the forest, he might have run into Qing bandits.
He hadn’t, but by daybreak he’d found himself lost in the forest, hungry and without much of a clue as to where to go next. He didn’t know the area and he didn’t know where he was in that area. The idea had formed in his mind to go west, toward Varren Province and then the independent kingdoms. At the time he’d thought Varren was only – only! – a hundred or so miles away.
It hadn’t mattered. Walking, hungry, exhausted, he’d realized after a couple of days that he’d never make it. So when he came across a railroad he’d followed it until he encountered a watering station, guarded by a team of brown-uniformed Dinqing Colonial Guard who he’d turned himself in to.
The judge had taken that into account, at least, that he’d turned himself in. Normal penalty for escape or attempted escape from a Class One gang was eighteen months in a Class Two; that he’d given himself up had earned him a reduction to only a year.
“Only?” In a Two gang?
The Class Two gangs were worse, far worse. Tougher environments, less commissary money, longer hours. In the Class One gang they’d at least had Sundays off; the Class Two gangs worked you every day. According to others he’d spoken to, Class One gangs often got lengthy periods of downtime, sitting around a barracks chilling between projects. Not in Class Two.
Others had it worse. Class Three gangs, the next thing the Legion had to a death sentence, were pure hell he’d heard. How it could get much worse than where he was now, he didn’t know. But the Legion had its ways, he believed.
He opened his eyes again. Back to the present. Back to the long walk through dangerous hell.
Mullins, having spoken to Reuter and the other man, was coming back. Smith decided to take a chance.
“Mullins!” Smith rolled to his side, then got to a sitting position.
Mullins turned.
“Yeah, Smith?”
“Got a sec?”
Mullins shrugged and went over.
“Rough in the Gangs,” Smith said. “But you know I’m not a bad guy.”
Mullins frowned. Smith could tell why… maybe Mullins hadn’t been the best person to plead to?
“Look, I’m really sorry about that whole grenade thing on Chauncy,” said Smith. “I mean that, man. I fucked up and I’m sorry.”
“What do you want, Smith?”
“Look, we’re in danger. Wouldn’t another armed man in the party help? Give me a sidearm or something and I’ll help stand watch. There’s a couple other guys here I can vouch for, too.”
“Smith, you really think that’s my call to make?”
“No, but you can talk with your corporal, who can pass it up the line. Can’t you at least suggest it?”
“Pretty sure it’s already been discussed,” said Mullins.
“Can you ask, please? Some of us are good Legion soldiers. I just want to be a good Legion soldier, Paul.”
“I’ll ask,” said Mullins. “Don’t get your hopes up, though.”
Fuck that, thought Smith with a self-pitying sigh to himself. You didn’t have hopes in a Class Two Black Gang. Especially not under these circumstances.
* * *
“Hot. It’s fucking hot,” Longneck Simon muttered to Kaggs. “We should dig in somewhere and move by night.”
“Yeah,” muttered a couple of the other men. Nine of the group were armed; Kaggs, Simon and two others with M-25s, a man called Gomez with the dead MP’s subgun and four others with pistols and machine-pistols that had been the personal weapons of the late members of Fire Team Ciampa.
They were marching west, but not toward Hubris. East to the passes and Chongdin they’d be arrested as deserters, and Billy Kaggs’ original plan to become bandits had been foiled by the realization that bandits needed traffic to rob, and there was no traffic out in these wastelands other than the nomad tribes. Who were likely bandits themselves and might not appreciate the competition.
Instead, the new plan was to go to Diamond North for supplies and then get ready for a long hike off to Varren Province, join the secessionists and the raiders on the anti-American side of the bush war.
But first they needed some more numbers. And from the figures who’d just appeared over a hill some miles away, those numbers might just be appearing.
Kaggs raised his stolen binoculars to check them out. Yes, another Black Gang, heading east. Two men, one of them a Goldneck with a submachinegun, led the pace. The rest were obvious Black Gangers, you could tell by their vests’ reflections in the midday sun.
Well, who else would be out here?
Marching west to the passes, instead of deeper into the wastelands. Smart guys.
More to the point, there were twenty more men and five more guns plus holdout weapons, if Kaggs could play this right.
“Simon, Kopf, Vishni, Gomez,” Kaggs said to his other armed men. They’d taken the blue shirts and white trousers – th
e red shirt, in Gomez’ case – of the men whose guns they were wielding, swapping the shirts and trousers around until each had some that approximately fit. To all outward appearances they were a fire-team of regular Legion troops and their MP guard.
Those four came over to join Kaggs. He passed sallow-faced former Corporal Vishni the binoculars first, and pointed. Vishni took a look, then passed the binoculars to the next man.
When everyone in the armed group had taken a look, Kaggs took the binoculars back and placed them carefully around his neck.
“Now, here’s the plan…” he began.
When he was done, there were nods all around.
* * *
Following Longneck Simon and Gomez in his stolen red shirt, herded by Kaggs, Kopf and Vishni in back, the fifteen other members of the renegade Black Gang headed at a quick pace toward what was apparently another gang.
Kaggs had outlined the plan: they were going to pretend to be legit, make contact with the other group. Then Kaggs and the other armed men would open fire on the guards and MP, cutting them down. If the MP was taken wounded, as would hopefully be the case, there might be the chance for a little torture on his ass as well.
That had caused enthusiasm from some of the men in the group, but not Dmitri Bogdanov, who walked – a sharpened shovel in his hands, he hadn’t been lucky enough to take any weapons, even a knife, from the guard crews, but in fairness he hadn’t pushed for anything either – with the rest of the group.
Bogdanov was a heavy-set, gray-haired middle-aged Russian wannabe-immigrant, who had taken a vacation to Turkey and checked into the enlistment office at the US embassy in Constantinople. He’d made lance in the Legion before meeting, on Eclipse, a beautiful woman who’d convinced him to desert.
Dumbest thing he’d ever done. They’d booked bus tickets to walking range of the American-Chinese border on Eclipse, intending to seek asylum; the Chinese would surely want a good soldier with knowledge of both the European Federation – he’d done his four-year conscription period there, like every Russian did, serving fucking France – and American militaries.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Maybe Sally would have waited three and a half more years for him to finish his enlistment. Maybe she was still waiting, although she hadn’t sent him a letter in a while. How could he have been dumb enough to think that was a good idea?
Goldnecks had stopped the bus and pulled them off it within three hours. He’d paid cash for the bus tickets, but there’d been cameras in the ticket office and apparently someone, or a facial recognition algorithm, watching those cameras.
Sally had been charged under civil law as accessory to desertion and been given six months in provincial jail; Bogdanov had been charged under Legion military law with desertion proper, and been given eighteen months in a Class Two.
He was about halfway through that now, counting the days; he wanted nothing more than to finish his sentence and be a good Legion soldier again, eventually finish his hitch and get his C-visa. Live legitimately on Eclipse with Sally, if she was still interested. Find another girl if not. Become a good subject of the relatively free American colonies, which had their problems but still weren’t Europe.
He did not want to be some kind of a fucking bandit traitor, as that bloodthirsty lunatic Kaggs seemed to be aiming to make them. At best Kaggs and his crew had made Bogdanov an accessory to murder; at worst he was going to get them all hanged, if the nomads didn’t get them first.
As they marched, Bogdanov turned to his friend Jimmy Bellis, who disliked thug Kaggs and his clique as much as Bogdanov did.
We need to get the hell away from these people, he mouthed to Bellis, who nodded.
* * *
It had gone even easier than Kaggs could have hoped, as his crew picked over the three dead guards and the Goldneck for holdout weapons and personal loot. They’d sauntered up on the gang, whose guards and overseers had been happy to see them.
Then Kaggs had given the signal; he and his men had opened up on the guards, riddling them and the MP before they’d known what had hit them. He’d half-expected a fight; there hadn’t been one.
Even better news. The shot-caller of this crew was a friend of his.
“Kaggs,” said Shenko. He was a burly, shaven-headed man in his late twenties, who’d come from Serbia and spoke with a thick accent. “Thank you.”
Now Shenko carried an M-25 and wore a blue shirt with its kevlar lining. He’d kept his black Ganger trousers, allowing another man to take the dead man’s white ones.
Beginning to look like a proper good gang, Kaggs thought with a glance around the milling men. Some of them were helping themselves to ration bars and water from the carts, as Kaggs’ group had when they’d freed themselves.
A lot of the others, who were no longer dressed like good convicts in black trousers and black-orange shirts but had pretty much picked their guards and overseer clean and taken what they could for themselves, were looking at Kaggs, Simon and Shenko.
“All right, fuckers,” Kaggs said. “Get your food and listen the fuck up. I’m in charge here. Billy Kaggs. Shenko’s number two. Simon” – Kaggs gestured at the man with the twisted eyes, for the men of this gang who didn’t know him – “is three. We call the shots. Anyone got a problem?”
Nobody said a thing. After a little bit someone spoke up and asked “What’s the plan, boss? We gonna liberate some more heads?”
“Next up is Diamond North,” said Kaggs. “We’re gonna go there and supply up. If there’s anyone we can liberate, we liberate their asses the same way we did you. But we got forty men here, that’s enough. We’re there for supplies; take what we can and fuck up what’s left.”
There were positive noises from the men.
“Then what, boss?” the same man asked. “We gonna go bandit out here or something?”
“Thought about that. No, too many nomads. And what’s there to grab? No, we’re going to Varren Province if we don’t run into Euros first. Go over to the Euros if we do, word is they hire mercs. Otherwise get to Varren and join the rebels there.”
“Or Suret,” said someone.
“What the fuck’s Suret?”
“Other side of Varren is jungle, right? Then there’s Kingdom of Suret. Boss, you haven’t heard of Surretovski? Prince Surretovski?”
“Sounds like a Russki to me.”
“He was. Led a mutiny against their Frog commanders twenty-five years ago, took his battalion over there and set themselves up as lords of the kingdom. They’d take us in.”
Actually, Kaggs had heard something about a lunatic Russian warlord in one of the Central Kingdoms. It was probably the guy this man was talking about.
“Could be,” said Kaggs. “But first we get to Diamond North for supplies. And if we do come across gangs to liberate, then fuck yeah we kill us some more straight-edgers and pigs!”
There were cheers.
* * *
Major Lavasseur rode in the captured Mutt jeep, a Swedish enlisted man driving it slowly as they herded about a hundred and fifty Legion prisoners, mostly Black Gangers, toward Kandin-dak. One of the nearest prisoners, a little black monkey who had called himself a senior lieutenant, was glaring murder at him. Insolent punk.
von Kallweit rode his zak alongside the Mutt, distaste in his eyes. Prussians were like that, he’d learned; dutiful but their officer caste could get stupid about ‘honor’.
Honor applied to inferiors like Germans and Dutch, and you were certainly kind to the still-lesser races so long as they behaved themselves and followed orders. But monkey vermin in a mongrel force serving a pretentious and corrupted nation? How dare they assume the privileges due to a real officer!
“When do we reach Kandin-dak?” Lavasseur asked his aide Dumont, next to him in the back of the Mutt.
“Sir, we should be there in a day. Herding these prisoners – we can only go so fast as they can walk.”
“Sir, I again want to repeat my misgivings about this plan,” said von Kallwe
it.
“von Kallweit, which one of us is a major?” Lavasseur asked his babysitter. “And which is a captain? You advise me. I make the decisions.”
“What you have planned is beyond illegal. It’s an absolute violation of the Geneva Conventions, not to mention any number of other international laws. And basic morality, sir!”
“von Kallweit, Captain von Kallweit,” Lavasseur snarled, “we are illegal combatants right now as it is! How do the laws of war apply to us, when we are not at war and we are not under law? And morality? You know what Marcand said about ‘the constraints of conventional morality’ when it comes to the foregone future of racial destiny?”
“Yessir,” said von Kallweit flatly, and spurred his zak forward.
Lavasseur let him go. He for one was looking forward to taking this herd of prisoners back to Kandin-dak and proving himself in front of his siblings.
When they arrived tomorrow morning, Kandin-dak would fall.
Within an hour.
* * *
Greene and the labor gang had taken time to die, and they hadn’t died well. Screaming and pleading, some of them, Greene kicking the shit out of the dying – or dead by then? – Sergeant Major Second-Class Svetson until he collapsed himself.
It’s my fault, Janja thought yet again as he sat with his head in his hands. What he’d thought was honor had become murder.
If he hadn’t been honorable, some of the convicts they were protecting might have survived.
Instead they’d practically been sacrificed so that Janja could live. What if it had been his time? What if he’d cheated the gods?
What if it hadn’t been the gangers’ time, or Greene’s?
The thoughts kept circling back. He was intellectually aware that the dead nomads, and Svetson, had had in addition to canteens, hefty bladders of water with them, slung around their bodies or from saddlebags. That water was safe to drink, and the others had sparingly had their fill. I don’t deserve any, Janja thought.