Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01]

by A Small Colonial War (epub)

  The driver of the bakkie was a slender woman with red-gold hair, expensively dressed. Striking blue eyes shone in her rear reflector.

  “Perhaps she has a radio that works,” Uborevich offered.

  “One way to find out. Obverse or reverse?”

  "Obverse or what? ’ ’

  “Chiysanthemum or crowns?” Coldewe asked, holding up the coin.

  “Crowns, it is.”

  “Crowns, it is,” Coldewe said, spinning the coin where Uborevich could pluck it out of the air and slam it on the dash.

  “Chrysanthemum,” Uborevich observed dejectedly.

  “Sorry. Always use your own coin. Besides, I speak Afrikaans.” Coldewe switched on the line-of-sight radio built in. “Come in, please, white pickup with Jo’burg ID, come in, please.”

  A lilting feminine voice answered in English. “Hello, is that you back there?”

  “Yes it is, dear one. Hans Coldewe, lieutenant, late of Tie-bingen. I’m dreadfully sorry, but I’m running a convoy through and I’m going to have to move you off the road. Sensitive materials and all that. Dreadfully sorry, and what is your name, dear?”

  The woman had a laugh like bells of silver. “You are one of the Imps, then. My name is Brigitte. I hadn’t thought a lieutenant would be out directing traffic.”

  Her voice was piercingly sweet, which the radio amplified well. ‘‘I think that it’s the lilt that does it,” Uborevich observed.

  ‘‘Well, dear one, someone has to do it, and it gets very lonely sitting around the caserne doing nothing, ’ ’ Coldewe called back.

  “Sir, with all due respect, you need to work on your technique,” Uborevich added dispassionately.

  Coldewe snorted. “There’s a side road about a kilometer down. Please be so kind as to pull off on that,” he suggested.

  "I place myself in your hands, Lieutenant Coldewe, ’ ’ was the reply.

  “Please, call me Hans.” He held his hand over the mike. “Do you think you could let me off? I could catch a ride when the convoy comes through.”

  Before Uborevich could interject, the woman asked, “Did you say that you were from Ihebingen?”

  “There was I bom and passed sixteen years of my life. Do you know of the city?”

  “Tuebingen? Of course! My son took his degree there before we emigrated. I am sure that he would like to meet you, he has such fond memories.”

  Uborevich refrained from comment to his eternal credit.

  SANMARTIN WAS PEACEABLY DOZING, NOT PRECISELY A FIGURE

  of grace when Coldewe entered. Resting his hands on his hips, Coldewe announced generally, “Raul, you are one lucky idiot!” He colored his voice with amazement and envy. Sanmartin awoke with a start.

  “Hans,” he inquired as he put his weapon back on safety, “have you been sniffing exhaust fumes?”

  Thursday(3)

  THIN SHAFTS OF SUNUGHT PENETRATING THE TREES, AND THE mist caused the air to shimmer. Suspended motes of dust sparkled in the shifting columns of light. Caught in light, Meagher blinked. He was damp and desperately tired from the clinging mire. The tangled, choked delta was fit for neither man nor beast, but it kept away Imp armor, which was more than could be said for many things more pleasant.

  At his back were forty men. Three were real meres.

  Meagher had broken his force into pieces two days previously when Kimura’s lot had given way to Lieutenant-Colonel Ebyl’s lads. Meagher had sent out two company-sized columns that delta mud had swallowed up. Tsai had tried to make a deal with the Imps; Meagher had kept the old rancher with a rope around his neck until the man’s heart had given out. Ebyl’s choppers were still somewhere overhead.

  With the river to one side, the sea to the other, and the armor boyos behind, things were not promising for Mother Meagher’s little lad. The mercenary couldn’t rid himself of the feeling his were being herded like cattle to a pen. Their last evasion had cost them fifteen men. Little flying tanks the choppers were. They had a trick of firing blind into the canopy; an hour ago and a silly squirt had fired back. They’d saved Meagher the trouble of shooting the man dead, but a sweet mess it was.

  He held his hand for a halt, tilting his head to listen. The hand signal was one familiar to his squirts. Without bothering to remove gear, they flopped, panting, onto the sodden muck. Meagher grinned mirthlessly. With Ebyl’s lads combing the delta, straggling was self-correcting. No one did it twice.

  He suddenly swiveled his head at a sound, that of fixed-wing aircraft. A pair of short-takeoff Shiden ground-attack aircraft were flying side by side. Meagher’s mind tried to encompass what that meant.

  With a touch of real fear, Meagher turned to hurry on his tired cannon fodder. He heard instead a series of pops and knew that with only four of forty men wearing protective gear, his men were as good as dead. “Down, all of you, down!” he shouted. Throwing himself into the ground, he huddled with his knees up, his neck pulled in.

  Hell came in a series of spaced bursts, the tolling of a knell. One group of sticks exploded, followed by the popping of the next.

  Dropped in pairs, sticks opened to spill sixty-four individual whirligigs, whose casings split and sailed them toward the ground like winged seeds, rotation carrying each of them to a proper place in the grid. At five meters, the charge in each whirligig’s tail drove down an iron rain that came from the bomblets as sheaves of slivers, well packed.

  Noise and air assailed Meagher’s ears. A hot poker went through his arm. Other fragments tore at his vest. The impact stunned him as the concussive wave passed him by.

  Meagher shook his head to clear it. Two more sticks exploded. Looking up, he saw the sun through the ragged gaps where femtrees had been sawed away. Two planes meant a pattern five hundred twelve meters by two hundred fifty-six meters. Sowing fields, they called it. There were far more elaborate things with delayed detonations and sensors and optical pickups. On terrain like this, the simple things worked as well as any and better than some.

  Ripping his sleeve with a practiced care, he wrapped his arm careMly in plastic as another set of sticks exploded, and then a sixth and seventh. For some reason they didn’t use an eighth, and Meagher felt somehow disgruntled. He tested the arm before rising to his feet.

  Zhou was on the ground, the great hole in his leg being bandaged by Patrick. The younger mercenary was ignoring a scratch of his own. Meagher’s third mere was moving not at all.

  All told, there were eight or nine dead or nearly so, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight wounded of sorts; a fine strike, indeed.

  “Well, it looks like I won’t be seeing you,” Meagher said slowly.

  Zhou made as if to rise. Patrick held him softly.

  "Don’t be a fool, man. You’re bleeding like your throat’s slit, and you can’t walk on that. Hold a moment.” Meagher reached down and took up a light machine gun and a canteen nearly full from one boy who surely wouldn’t be needing it. Gently cradling the boy’s curly head, he removed the boy’s hand-stamped identity disk of copper and threw it to Zhou, who caught it up in his good hand.

  “Get rid of the vest, and you’ve a fair chance of sliding through,” he said. The mercenary nodded.

  Meagher turned to Chapman, the levelest and most nearly unwounded of his noncommissioned officers. “They’re yours, Jimmie. We’ll be going, now. They’d chop us for sure, but you they won’t. Take the lighdy wounded and bandage the rest. It’s a hard thing I’m asking of you, but when the Imps show, surrender quietly. They’ve likely eaten our dust for days, so don’t give them any excuse to shoot you.”

  He nodded toward Zhou. “If him they should ask about, he’s your brother-in-law, and you’ve known him for years.” He shook hands with Chapman and then with Zhou. "Will you be coming today, Pat?” he said softly.

  With one man out of forty, the mercenary moved through the forest without a backward glance to his stricken squirts.

  THAT EVENING, ONE OF LIEUTENANT-COLONEL HIGUCHl’S VE-hicles lost its brakes on t
he Kitzbuettal road and slammed into the back of a bakkie full of children, cracking the spine of the only niece of a minister of religion named Strijdom. It was a significant datum Major Rettaglia’s computers missed. It altered a pattern.

  ASCENT

  The pig put on his webbing, and they marched him up and down

  He did it with a whistle, so they gave him sand to pound He crossed the burning desert, and he trekked the arctic night And they made him do it over so he d learn to do it right

  Sunday(ll)

  SANMARTIN POURED OUT THE LAST OF RETTAGLIA’S BOTTLE OF arak and downed it. Letting it warm his insides, he rolled the glass between his fingers. Rettaglia waited him out.

  “Rhett, I’m serious. It’s been a long three months. I want out of intelligence. Knight to B4, check.”

  Rettaglia moved the piece for him, then his own. “King to F3. Did I mention there’s a general strike in eight days time?” ‘‘What?”

  “They want it to last a week. They’ll want demonstrations. I’ll give you times and places. Be assured, Admiral Lee will provide orders. I assume you want to play knight takes pawn.” “The Admiral wants it discouraged?” Sanmartin asked, studying the board.

  “He does. There won’t be a great deal of support for it, and we don’t want to give people the impression the Brothers control the streets.”

  “Wish them luck. Is the word out?”

  Rettaglia smiled broadly. “No. Our Friends are going to wait until very nearly the last minute to make it appear spontaneous.”

  “That’s asinine.”

  “Quite.”

  “Hakkaa Pdalle, ” Sanmartin chanted softly.

  “Pardon?”

  “It means, ‘Cut them down.’ The Finnish cavalry of Gusta-vus Adolphus used it in battle a half millennium ago. We use it ourselves now and again.”

  “No martyrs,” Rettaglia cautioned. “I’ll tell you now, you’re going to be wearing leg irons. Reaction category eight.”

  “Cat eight? Eight?”

  “Designated snipers, only, will fire at armed men not in crowds if fire is taken.”

  Sanmartin expelled air from his lungs in a hiss. “That’s even more asinine. Well, we’ll manage. We’ve done riots.”

  “How do you plan on handling it?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll have a week to think of something suitably silly. Yes, I’ll take the pawn. Were you trying to distract me?”

  “I don’t need to, the arak has been doing your thinking for the last six moves. Bishop takes knight.”

  “Rook takes bishop.”

  “Rook to H8. Concede?”

  Sanmartin studied the pieces for several minutes. “You can force the exchange in two and march the little clowns down, can’t you?”

  “With my king in front to shepherd the little lambs, your pawn advantage goes for naught.”

  "Concede. ’ ’ Sanmartin stood up from the mats and stretched. “Rhett, I’m serious. Apart from the fact that I haven’t got any aptitude for intelligence, I don’t much like it.”

  “Shimazu says that you’re doing fine.”

  “It must be die drugs he’s on. Does he sleep?”

  Rettaglia chuckled. “Shimazu has the Brothers panicked. He keeps allowing them to follow him to the houses of other Brothers.”

  “The Brothers are going to shoot him one of these days.”

  “I have a great deal of confidence in Shimazu, Raul. I think he’ll surprise you. He has fine things to say about both you and Bruwer.”

  “He’s doing a better job of making an intelligence officer out of her.”

  “He did say something to that effect,” Rettaglia mentioned diffidently as he cleared off the board and folded it away. “He really is very good at diverting attention from Menzies. Did I ten you he got four thousand sen for a map of your defenses?” “That map is such an obvious fake I’m surprised he got four hundred. I just hope he gets a better funeral than Schoolmaster Theron did when they fished him out of the muck. Are you going to tell me why you want me in intell so badly? Otherwise the Variag and I are going to have a long, long talk.”

  “Promise you’ll give serious consideration to sticking with it,” Rettaglia replied.

  “Agreed.”

  “Then sit and relax yourself. Talk about life in general.” Rettaglia started to place the intricately carved pieces in their soft swaddling of velvet.

  “You realize Matti Haijalo is still breathing fire from his nose over the weapons the blacklegs carted away.”

  “Any possibility of convincing him it was a mistake?”

  “Not the slightest. We record serial numbers with a light pen, and when Matti found out we’d dug up the same rifle twice, you could actually see smoke.”

  “Can’t be helped, Raul. If blacklegs were honest, they wouldn’t be blacklegs. Speaking seriously, it serves a very useful purpose, which is why I turn a blind eye. You’ve been turning up a fair number of caches, and I don’t want the Brothers panicking, which they’ll do if they think they’re running out of guns.”

  “You try telling that to an irate major named Haijalo.”

  “I value my skin. You’re holding back most everything you find anyway, so why worry?”

  “I refrain from comment. What else is there I should know at Landing plus eleven weeks?”

  “We’ve pretty much hunted down the last of Tsai and Chalk-er’s remnants. That reminds me to ask, most of the cowboys are Amies, does that bother your lads?”

  “No, not really. The crack-up was a long time ago. National rivalries died with it. North America got plastered almost as bad as the Soviet Union, so most of ours figure it was a fair exchange.”

  “Have I mentioned you’re getting a new surgeon?”

  “No, that’s new to me. Who?”

  “Natasha Solchava. I don’t know if you know her. Keep it a secret between you and your confessor. ”

  “No, I don’t know her. If this is supposed to be a surprise, how do you know?”

  Rettaglia gave a very hurt look. Sanmartin laughed aloud and sloshed his drink in his glass. “I swear you must spend half your life spying on the staff.”

  “Raul, how do you think people get ahead? There are intelligence officers who spend their whole life spying on the staff.” “I thought political officers were supposed to do that.” “Naivete becomes you. Raul, political officers who aren’t ditherers are dabblers, they aren’t happy unless they have a finger in three or four pies, like Gamliel. Speaking of political officers, how did you manage to steer clear of the PO at your last station?”

  “Ashcroft? Pumamo had his eyes set upon retiring rich rather than famous. He got his hooks into the logistics company, had Nakamura kick us out of town into the bled~the deep desert— and concentrated on career goals. When it came to our internal matters, if the Variag told him it was sleeting dung outside, he’d put his head out the door and stick out his tongue.”

  “Aptly put. Was he repaid?”

  “A few of mine paid their respects to his place of business before we departed. I understand they got four meters of lift out of the roof when it blew. The Variag was most displeased. He had me give them each at least a thirty-second oral reprimand on the sins of ostentatious display.”

  Rettaglia chuckled. “I wish Gamliel were as easily handled.

  I’ve had to arrange for Lieutenant-Colonel Moore to shift biochem to Complex to keep it out of his hands. ”

  “That’s a wonderful setup, the hospital and biochem together. The Florence Nightingales barely tolerate ms; I can imagine what they think of biochem’s wizards.”

  “Oh, the hospital company loves it. ‘Biochem’ is still a dirtier word than ‘nuclear’ ever was.”

  ‘‘What I can’t imagine is why Gamliel would want biochem.’’ “Because it’s there, I suppose. There’s no better explanation. People don’t exactly trip over themselves to associate with them.”

  “What do we have in biochem, anyway?” Sanmartin asked. “Two biochemis
ts, two chemists, a dozen or so technicians and things. Some equipment.”

  “Anything much?”

  “Only a little real wizard stuff and nothing much in the way of dispersal systems. They have some nerve agents—two gases and a toxin, I’m sure of—an incapacitant, a vesicant, and some irritants. On the live bio side, they mostly have tailored strains of old stand-bys: QF8, EM13, and PS37 for certain, and I’ve forgotten what else. Token amounts.”

  "Encephalomyelitis13, psittacosis37? ’ ’

  “The EM is a primary infectant, the PS is an epidemic. Both are long-term debilitants.”

  “A debilitant is five-percent lethality or less, correct?” “Correct. With treatment, of course. They didn’t bring any of the real killers they let loose during the crack-up.”

  “Good thing. People wouldn’t stand for it. The problem with live biologicals, the dispersal systems are always too random to do any good in a tactical environment. Even primary infectants spread themselves unexpectedly. You can’t very well dribble out wildfire in measured doses,” Sanmartin said, diverting his mind to consider the problem. “What’s the latest on the Afrikaner Bond?” “Nothing shattering to report. They’re quiescent for the present. The long-term picture still distresses me.”

  “In what way?” Sanmartin asked absently, still engrossed in biologicals.

  “A thousand words are worth a picture.” Rettaglia turned to his computer and punched up a passage, keying the computer for voice.

  A member of the Bond must subscribe to the ideal of a never-ending existence of a separate Afrikaans nation with

  its own culture. In order to achieve this ideal, our goal is baaskap, and the vemfrikaansing of this planet in all aspects. . . .

  The computer’s voice was low and feminine, strangely devoid of harmonics. Sanmartin reached over and tapped out a pause.

  ‘ ‘Baaskap ?” he queried.

  “It doesn’t translate well, but ‘domination’ conveys the overall effect. Verafrikaansing means what you think it does,” Rettaglia replied.