At the point of retching, Hunsley saw a hidden, unmistakable gleam of triumph in Janine Joh’s eyes as a short oriental officer entered dressed plainly in blue, flanked by two more blacklegs. The officer stopped and smiled slowly like a shark.
“Ah, a historical scholar,” Admiral Lee remarked blandly. Newcombe jerked as if he had been shot.
“My father was such, fascinated by the last of the gay cavaliers of Virginia.” The short yellow man dressed in plain blue stopped smiling. “I wish I could say I shared his interests, Mr. Newcombe. Instead, I have important things to discuss.” He added as an afterthought, “Lee is a common name in many countries.”
Kirk Hunsley began making mental notes as always. Admiral Lee’s council would need a good secretary pro tem. Hunsley had precious little to sell, but he didn’t intend to be the last rat on the good ship Council Reading.
Tuesday(l)
WHILE EYBL’S AND KIMURA’S BATTALIONS DROVE SOUTH TO
smash Tsai’s cowboys in the delta, Vereshchagin split his battalion to control Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Bloemfontein. Higuchi’s troops occupied Complex, the ocean tap, and the spaceport.
The first brigade assets to land were construction engineers. They converted a warehouse for themselves and started work on the rest of the spaceport. Other brigade assets were billeted in the big USS terminal as they arrived: the security police platoon, the tiny biochem section, signals, and the heavy transport companies. The support battalion remained in orbit, Lieutenant-Colonel Moore having made her views on unsecure lodgings scathingly clear. The Border Police set up a recruiting booth; neither soldiers nor blacklegs, they were the men who would handle domestic strife and petty subversion with placid arrests and soft words.
Medical went over to Complex as a need for their services developed.
Wednesday(l)
PARTLY LOST, SANMARTIN WHISTLED THROUGH HIS TEETH AS
he passed each of the buildings clustered at the east end of the runway in turn. The Variag had not scheduled any sightseeing the first time through, and Rettaglia had Task Group Intelligence in the old customshouse, which looked like sixteen other structures. The cheerful Gurkha riflemen guarding the port gave bad directions; they weren’t especially good with numbers to begin with, and the silly bastard had already amused himself painting them out for security reasons.
Counting down the second row of buildings, Sanmartin rapped smartly at the door of yet another concrete block. Metal echoed under his fist. A tiny sergeant with a thin mustache opened up. He was clutching a wave pistol.
Before Sanmartin could stammer out an explanation, he was enveloped in a bear hug. “Raul!” Rettaglia said, holding him by the shoulders. “It’s about time you got here. Another eleven hours and I would have owed the senior sergeant some money. Raul, this is Senior Intelligence Sergeant Shimazu.”
Shimazu bowed slightly, pocketing his pistol.
“Our exec, Major Harjalo, let slip that the intelligence officer was named Rettaglia and seemed to know what he was about. There can’t be two IOs who fit that description. It took me a day or so to manufacture an excuse.”
“And?”
“Somebody misplaced a bergan coming off the ship. I gave mine away and got out of my company sergeant’s way rapidly. ” “Your company sergeant is Steel Rudi Scheel?”
“You’ve heard. This really isn’t worthy of his talents, but it’ll do until something better comes along. Acting major, now?” “On the voyage over, Major Randriamahazoman kept finding reasons why the admiral couldn’t do what the admiral obviously wanted to do. When the admiral called me in, I didn’t know whether he was going to let me kiss his ring or feed me to sharks,” Rettaglia explained, leading Sanmartin back.
“And Randriamahazoman?” Sanmartin asked, stumbling slightly on the unfamiliar name as he folded onto the tatamis. “Rejoined his ancestors.”
“Did you undercut him? You sound sincere.”
“Believe as you will, I played him straight. He deserved that much. What about you with a company?”
“The Variag can spot talent. What did you age on me, a year?” He peered down his nose, trying to read what Rettaglia had screened up.
“About two years relative. More gray is showing.” Rettaglia flicked off the screen from force of habit. “I kept track of you. Your people did a good job. ’ ’
“We did, didn’t we? Thank heaven we didn’t need any reserve.” Sanmartin laughed ruefully, remembering Beregov and the Complex. “But I had the Variag along to hold my jacket.” “Interested in moving on? I have something lined up.” “Staff? Thank you but no, Rhett. I like where I am.”
“You’d love Admiral Lee’s staff. If you can count to twenty with your shoes on, you’re the proverbial one-eyed man. Want to rub noses with the clouds, former roommate?”
“I hope you haven’t forgotten what I think of rubbing up clouds.”
“Here I am, poised to hand you creation ...” Rettaglia said in mock lamentation.
“C’est dommage, n ’est pas? Es tut mir leid. ”
“Sanfairyann. You’d have finished sixteen places higher at the academy if you’d bothered to learn a third expression in a classical language. Well, if your choice is the Variag, my blessing. Did he let you see the materials I had Colonel Lynch send over?” “He gave me the briefing materials. I’d hate to tell you what he does with everything else Colonel Lynch sends over.”
“The Variag is a man of many talents. What kind of time have you got?”
“Another hour before the transport’s loaded.”
“Then we’ll waste it on business. When I come down to Jo’burg, I’ll buy you dinner so we can trade stories about Ashcroft, Earth, and points in between.”
“Done, if there’s a dive on this mudball worth eating in.” “Live, learn, and prosper. The dive is Die Koffiehuis on Krugerstraat, the owner is a Greek married to a local girl. That was Shimazu’s first assignment. I must have sent 70,000 k of briefing materials, did you read all that junk?”
“I don’t know how to play mah-jongg, and it’s been a dull week, so far.”
Rettaglia allowed his face to assume a serious aspect. “There are a number of burning facts about this mudball that don’t fit, but one particularly perplexes me.”
“Ha! You want my keen insight, you’ve got to pay for it.” “Reach into the bottom drawer behind you. The amaretto’s for me, and the arak is for you. ”
“You brought arak?” Sanmartin said, opening the cabinet and handling the bottle reverently.
“Staff officers don’t have weight allowances. Why don’t you switch to drinking something healthy, like metal polish?” Sanmartin cradled the bottle against his chest. “Rhett, I did training on the isle of Kalimantan three times.” He took the bottie by its neck left-handed and swirled the liquid inside. “This is the only thing that’ll even slow thread-leeches and crotch-rot.”
“Internal or external application?” Rettaglia asked, taking the bottle from Sanmartin’s hand to open.
“Just pour. What is it you want to know, what killed the sects?”
Rettaglia looked at him narrowly as he filled little glasses. “You’re a little unwashed to run a company, but maybe the Variag does know what he’s about. Yes, the sects. The jungle bunnies. The strandloopers. They were dying in swarms even before the nice people began using them for target practice, yet the nice people weren’t.”
Sanmartin poised his head in an exaggerated parody of studiousness. “You want to spot the snake in this lovely Eden. Well, no snakes yet. Limbless amphibian types perform the same function. The ecosystem is about a quarter- or a half-billion years behind Sol III, roughly equivalent to early Permian. Amphtiles are roughly equivalent to labyrinthodont amphibians. Did Mayor Randuia . . . whatever-his-name-was ask your scientists for an answer?”
“Raul, this expedition orbited seventy-seven days after the Diet voted final funds. Scientists take that long to decide which urinal to use,” Rettaglia explained, doling out liquo
r. “Mind you don’t spill any, it’ll eat the furniture. What say you?”
“No diseases. Anything that does adapt will probably manifest itself by spreading like plague. Animal life is no problem. The big newts are dumb enough to try and eat anything that moves, but they’re not agile. What about normal human contrariness?”
“As an answer, the scientists love it. I think it’s putrid. Sect villages were falling apart and starving long before their inhabitants were spearing each other and getting shot by pleasant strangers,” Rettaglia answered after a pause.
“Well?”
“Well, now that you’ve bored me to tears with your erudition, what’s the answer you smug little lump?”
“A studious smug little lump,” Sanmartin corrected with relish.
“Speak friend, and enter.”
“Exhibit one: my biochem is stale, but the amino acids this planet uses are different, they almost look to be three-quarters reversed. The sugars and the carbohydrate chains look almost as funny. There’s nothing there you and I could live on, the proteins and sugars wouldn’t process.”
Rettaglia stared at him for a minute, then nodded.
“Exhibit two: the soil’s infertile. Histosols with scattered ox-isols and ultisols. Call it muck and mire with outcroppings of low-grade dirt. There isn’t much useful organic matter, and the fern things don’t aerate. I notice it takes a fairish amount of time and effort to turn the best of it around. If the cults expected to bring the crops in and live off the bounty of Allah the Almighty, well, the first few years they’d have been lucky to get their seed back, resulting in malnutrition, kwashiorkor, and cannibalism.”
Rettaglia nodded slowly.
“The clue is the cow dung. When the cowboys got here, they
had most everything figured except cow dung. Nothing native can touch a cow patty. By the time they shipped in dung beetles and tailored bacteria, they had five meter manure piles.” Rettaglia laughed aloud. “I should know better than to leave you an opening.”
“Ex parvis saepe magnarum momenta rerum pendant. ” “Which means, ‘events of great moment often hang on trifles.’ When did you start that?”
“The Latin? Serving with the Eleventh Shock Battalion on Kalimantan. When I asked for a colonial posting, they were very happy to let me go.”
“I won’t ask.” Rettaglia let his smile fade.
Sanmartin swirled the liquor in his glass. “So tell me, Rhett, when does the excitement start and have you figured out who we’re supposed to be shooting?”
“We’re shooting ranchers and their mercenaries to start with,” Rettaglia said grimly. “Some of them are making cooperative noises, but Tsai and his neighbors aren’t. They all had relatives in the riverport Lieutenant Colonel Kimura slagged. They have rice cached all through the swamps in the Vaal delta, and they’re leading him a merry chase. Until Kimura gets a handle on that mess, we are spread so thin it isn’t funny. The factions Chalker and McClausland head up are sitting on the fence.”
“I’m not going to ask what the ranchers do for government. ’’ “Call it creative anarchy.”
“What about everyone else?”
“Let me try and explain,” Rettaglia answered. He reached over and took hold of Sanmartin’s arak. Thinking clearer, he tipped a little amaretto onto the smooth surface of the table instead. With the little finger on his left hand, he traced a tiny pinpoint of liquor.
“Think of it as concentric rings. A few surviving jungle bunnies who don’t matter at all, various sets of ranchers, Boers, and USS,” he said tracing rings in the liquid.
“Start with USS.”
“USS is reorganizing. The new director is Yugo Tige. He brought his own people with him into exile. He’s a toppled tree. Interestingly enough, it was originally his idea to ship mercenaries to the cowboys here.”
“A former throne and power?”
Rettaglia nodded. “The local USS people were singularly short on illusions and reacted accordingly. Most everyone except
USS did exceedingly well out of anarchy and had enough of a sense of humor to blame everything on the meres. Eventually, friend Tuge found himself on the platform apologizing to the assembled shareholders’ reps.”
“So now he’s sipping the sweet wine of Elba.”
“I’m not sure he realizes it, yet. He acts like he’s still in the boardroom with his dossiers. He’s even got one on you, not that the information in it is worth anything. The old director cut his belly publicly. As near as I can tell, the man played the local factions like a musical instrument for years to maintain a semblance of USS control. Tuge has a talent for making his errors egregious, and I suspect that one will cost us dearly.” Sanmartin grunted. “What about the Boers, I have a city Ml of them I’m sitting on.”
“They did a job on USS and the bunnies, and they held their own with the ranchers. Your people did well to nail them up. They'll probably stay quiet, at least as long as we’re shooting cowboys, but they’ll be trouble. A lot of them would prefer expressing their political opinions with bullets rather than black sashes.”
Sanmartin missed the historical allusion. “What do they do for government? We’ve shut down the district councils and the landrosts’ courts, which were a cross between a debating society and a carnival. Did I mention that my burgemeester in Johannesburg objected to my taking away his police? His replacement is a man named Beyers.”
Rettaglia stretched, as if debating whether or not to answer. “It’s obvious your specialty is mollusks and not people. Beyers should work out well. Just between us, your Boers have been leaning on USS for seventeen years, local. They could have set up their own central government at any time over the last six.” Sanmartin looked startled. “Why didn’t they?”
“I have two notions. If the Boers had set up a government themselves, they’d have frightened USS and the ranchers into some awfully stupid things, but USS needs to stop the chaos. If we weren’t here, somebody like Tuge might be dumb enough to ask the Boers to form one. And the Boer thrones and powers might not think they need one just yet, at least out in the open. ” “That’s a wonderful thought. It means we’ve got a real mess to police up. Wonderful.”
“Isn’t it? Spend a minute considering the possibilities as you ruin your body with more thread-leech specific, then I have an even better idea for you to consider. There are also the ranchers’ mercenaries, who are going to start thinking for themselves in the near future. The admiral has decided to make an example of them. He wants them exterminated; they’re going to gravitate toward the people shooting at us.”
Sanmartin looked at him and carefully set his glass down. “Did you say things were dull?” Rettaglia continued with relish. “Until Kimura finishes fooling around in the delta, things could get interesting for you people.”
Thursday(l)
TIMO HAERKOENNEN COUGHED EXPECTANTLY, POISED TO COM-
plete the morning ritual. Solemnly, Vereshchagin unpocketed his little black book and handed it over.
Senior Communications Sergeant Haerkoennen lightly flipped to a page at random, scanned it with a light pencil, and recorded an encryption code for the battalion radio net. That portion of his task completed, he returned the book to Vereshchagin, who solemnly stuffed the ruined page in his pipe and flashed it.
Ease of communication from level to level was one of the fundamental strengths an Imperial battalion possessed.
Haerkoennen turned away, and Saki Bukanov took his place with a sheaf of requisitions to present. The intendance officer was buying up construction materials. Reinikka, who commanded the engineer platoon, had drawn up a detailed list of requirements before going off to Bloemfontein to help the Iceman make life miserable and brief for a few cowboys. With a single question, Vereshchagin initialed off. Bukanov called up a spreadsheet and bounced it off his assistant quartermaster.
Bukanov had a deputy quartermaster and a quartermaster sergeant named Redzup, but his “assistant quartermaster” was the little computer
that lived in his lap. The battalion had a standing jest that if the assistant quartermaster ever bought it, they’d have to call off the war. A short, swarthy man with pronounced lines under his eyes, Bukanov was, in Haijalo’s quaint phrase, “a walking contradiction,” an honest intendance officer. Bukanov was one of a handful of roses Vereshchagin had plucked from the soil of Ashcroft; Pumamo had given him away freely since an honest intendance officer was the very last thing Pumamo had a use for.
Although his quartermaster element had long ago been stripped bare to fill out. the rifle companies, Bukanov somehow contrived to make do. His computer and vehicle mechanics, clerks, communications specialists, and armorers were the slender, truncated “tail” Vereshchagin’s battalion needed to survive. A third of them were “straphangers,” women who had attached themselves to the battalion on one world or another. Bukanov’s also were the “extras,” the hewers of wood and drawers of water who handled ammunition resupply and miscellaneous tasks until they replaced casualties in the rifle companies.
Bukanov discovered an answer that pleased him and walked away in Haerkoennen’s footsteps. Vereshchagin dusted his hands, carefully reflecting that looking after communications and supply might be the most important tasks he accomplished in the course of the day. He was diverted by the sight of Matti Haijalo sliding through the cellar door with a twinkle in his eyes.
Intending to liberate anything not firmly nailed down, Haijalo had left for the spaceport in Yuri Malinov’s company. Without doubt he and the battalion sergeant had done precisely that.
“There were a lot of combat rations and ammunition just lying around, so we signed for them and brought them back,” Haijalo replied to the unasked question. “Electronics, too.” “That is very good,” Vereshchagin commented noncommittally, wondering what name Matti had chosen to sign. “Anything else?”
Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01] Page 5