Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01]

by A Small Colonial War (epub)

  “Another one of Rettaglia’s inspirations?” Haijalo asked pointedly.

  “Quite. I think you’d like Heer Pienaar. An exuberant man. He still wears his medals from the Bantu Wars.”

  “Oh?”

  “He says it annoys the devil out of his contemporaries and allows young fools to know what sort of idiot he was when he was younger.”

  Haijalo laughed. “You’re right, I would. And I don’t doubt he’ll be shooting at us with the rest of them when the time comes. How is Tikhon doing with our berserkers?”

  “Very well. Surpassingly well. With number two, one always worries. I am quite pleased with both him and Muslar.”

  Even in a universe of disturbed personalities, killers were few and far between, but Vereshchagin did have a double handful of dragon’s teeth concentrated where the Iceman could direct their energies. Although No. 2 was not normally a place for a callow sublieutenant, Degtyarev the younger had essentially been in training for his present position since the age of three. With luck, Tikhon the second might rival Tikhon the first.

  Vereshchagin inclined his head. “I understand Colonel Lynch passed through during my absence.”

  “Ja, he gave me hell for not being here and Paul hell for not effecting better rapport with the elected officials. Then he went down to rapport with our friend, Laurens.”

  “So I feared.”

  Unlike his colleagues in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein— the latter was afraid to set foot outside his office for fear of offending the Iceman—the mayor of Pretoria, “Laurens of Arabia,” would have stolen a hot stove and come back to steal the smoke, at least until he became certain that the Hangman would shoot his lights out if he so much as spit on the sidewalk, an acute observation.

  “After rapporting with Lynch, Laurens decided that as a colonel’s friend he was too busy to talk to mere majors. We owe the city for a new door. Paul put his hand through it. He’s dealt with the matter for the time being, but after Gamliel’s little toads start filtering in, it’ll come undealt. I’d let the Boers have their strike if it would keep Gamliel out another week.”

  “Patience, Matti. What else resulted from Colonel Lynch’s visit?”

  Haijalo’s gray-in-blue eyes glinted, flecked with an unholy light.

  “We did get a delicately phrased request from a Lieutenant Fuwa in admin. He’s been directed to ask what a “helicopro-lite” is. “Heli” I know, and Raul tells me a coprolite is fossilized what-you-don’t-want-to-step-in. Dinosaur dung.”

  Malinov altered his expression very slightly.

  “Any other news?” Vereshchagin asked.

  Harjalo arched his back and grinned, catlike. “Do you remember the tinned beer we borrowed—”

  “Stole,” Vereshchagin amplified.

  “Tingrin told Mizoguchi not to issue more than a tin to a man at a time. . . .”

  Vereshchagin sighed.

  “So Mizoguchi passed it out and rang Tingrin every ten minutes to ask if everybody could haye another sip.”

  Vereshchagin briefly studied Haijalo’s face. “You are making this up. Matti, have you no respect for my graying hairs?” “Seriously, Anton.” Haijalo looked at Malinov, who had remained silent throughout. “In garrison, Chiharu Tingrin Yoshida is an ambitious ass. In the field, I shudder.”

  "Matti, let me refresh your memory. We shopped Chiharu to

  Admiral Nakamura’s staff. Admiral Nakamura gave him back and made us give him a company. I know what you are thinking, Matti. The answer is no.”

  “Anton, don’t go limp on me.”

  “Patience, Matti. As Colonel Lynch would say, you fail to see the broad picture.”

  “I see enough to know that you can’t make a nail out of leather.”

  “Matti, if we shopped Chiharu right now, he would be back in a month as a major, possibly in your place.”

  “It’s as bad as that, isn’t it? Anton, we may not have a month. And who said anything about shopping him?”

  “No, Matti,” Vereshchagin said judiciously, “do nothing precipitate. Patience. We might as well play soldier with the rest of them for a little longer. Chiharu has even shown signs of improving.”

  “I know. We only shoot the ones we can’t reform. I think you’re making a mistake, Anton, but I’ll play along. Nonsense aside, I respect the Boers more than I do Lynch, and they’re heading for some sort of eruption. I don’t doubt you’ve been laying brickwork for some massive chicanery on the slight chance Admiral Lee is going to give us some space to maneuver in.”

  “I will not deny making modest preparations.”

  “I suppose we’re going to have to do this the way we did with Ishizu on NovySibir and trust to luck and your aura of omniscience to fill die holes,” Haijalo said.

  “And do you recall what you wanted me to do about Admiral Ishizu?”

  Haijalo laughed, commenting, “Nothing is new under the sun, stars, or sky. Everything changes and ends up the same.” “No, I think that you are wrong, Matti. Even people change, occasionally,” Vereshchagin replied philosophically. He watched him depart.

  In actuality, Matti had touched his finger on several sore points. Yoshida was a superb officer for an Earth battalion, but nothing he possessed to lend to B Company could match the quiet fanaticism of the Iceman, the professionalism of the Hangman, or even the calm insanity Sanmartin occasionally displayed. Despite some exposure to combat and even a wound stripe, Yoshida inspired neither zeal nor confidence, and there was a tangible difference between B Company and the others.

  As for Lynch, he was dangerous if only because he lacked the experience to understand his environment.

  Vereshchagin looked at Malinov. “The defect is latent. We wait, Yuri. And you? Is our other weakness Raul?”

  Malinov nodded.

  Vereshchagin folded his hands. “Raul’s passions are inherited, Yuri, as we have inherited passions of our own. His father served ten years solitary on the Malvinas when the Argentines purged the Ecologists. ”

  Malinov nodded again.

  “Is it the girl that bothers you?”

  “Bruwer,” Malinov said, “is her name.”

  “I know, Yuri,” Vereshchagin said softly. “We let ourselves in for some very hard choices, do we not? I may have made a mistake. It is perhaps a small one.”

  Malinov nodded. Unhurriedly, he rose and left, closing the door softly behind him. Small mistakes took so very long to show themselves.

  Seated, Vereshchagin recalled a story he had read as a child, about an Earth under siege and a lone pilot flying interception for the beleaguered planet.

  For years on end, he beat back wave after wave. The parts of his body were replaced by gleaming metal, part by part, and time dilation changed the very surface of the world below. A final friend died, a last link severed. He flew into the void, escorted by phantom ships and the ghosts of dead pilots.

  Vereshchagin had spent two years of his last fourteen on Earth, and those cloistered with other misfits at the war collegium. The battalion had moved from one colonial world to the next, refilling its ranks with whatever came to hand.

  In a way, this was his fault. The battalion had never undergone a savage bloodletting, there had never been shattered scraps to be cost-effectively returned to reform and recruit. Instead from Odawara to Cyclade to NovySibir to Ashcroft, there had only been a gradual attrition and an overwhelming lassitude as the ones who were attached to worlds left behind disappeared or lost interest. Uwe Ebyl’s unit was no better, a floating foreign legion that had left its old vehicles and every memory with burnt embers on the savannahs of Canisius.

  As for Yoshida, he was blind to many things, but not all. His career had gone spinning into an ash heap when the battalion went nine months ship-time from thrones and powers and influential in-laws. Only a startling coup would put him on a fast track.

  One such coup would be for Yoshida to become acting battalion commander, and it was undoubtedly possible that Colonel Lynch had thought that far
ahead. Still, on Ashcroft, Admiral Nakamura, more perceptive than wise, had called Vereshchagin his Quintus Sertorius. Lynch did not know, and Yoshida had never thought to ask why.

  It was Independence Day. Checking the time, Vereshchagin reached for a candle and went out in Malinov’s company.

  ON A HILL OUTSIDE THE CASERNE, HANNES VAN DER MERWE swallowed bile at the unfairness of having to pull secret duty with less than three weeks until Christmas. Orders were orders, but a lot of fellows who turned in reports never left their beds.

  Watching the Imperial casernes was a waste of time, anyway. Nothing ever happened. Bored and a little frightened, he doodled sixes on his notepad. Suddenly, he gasped as the Pretoria caserne was lit by a circle of fireflies.

  “Jacobus!” He prodded his partner awake.

  For an hour the candles flickered, then extinguished, one by one, leaving the two young Boers mystified. On this world, December sixth was but a mark on a calendar, but in some fashion, this day Suomi celebrated its independence and mourned its war dead. Yuri Malinov, oldest of them all, left the last candle burning on Szigety’s crypt.

  Friday(11)

  ON FRIDAY, THE RABBI SLEPT LATE. SO SAID HANS COLDEWE,

  who was known to occasionally dip his bill in literature from eras earlier and later than the love of his life. Kolomeitsev’s preacher, who possessed the longest chin beard that could be stuffed into a protective mask, flew in at noon for those devoutly Orthodox souls who couldn’t decide whether the Lutheran Erixon was the Antichrist or just another godless atheist. Rudi Scheel, who was still trying to puzzle out the significance of Sergeants Felsen, Roche, and Pena, was not amused.

  Unfortunately, as his bearded excellency noted with asperity, the arrival of twenty-four sides of freeze-dried steer scrounged by Grigorenko occasioned more interest. Vereshchagin’s companies had quietly begun to scale back their purchases from Boer areas. Poison is a weapon of war.

  Saturday(ll)

  THE REVEREND DOCTOR WILLEM KLAUS STRIJDOM SPOKE Quietly, as befit his stature, in attempting to persuade waverers of the fitness of his course of action. The softness of his voice belied the fire in his eyes, in his belly.

  Four of his fellows on the Executive of the Bond shone with the light of God: five more spoke with Satan’s voice. The chairman and one other vacillated between heaven and hell, as they had for weeks. They would only approve the mildest of gestures, such as the forthcoming general strike. Its failure would weaken his voice in council and paradoxically strengthen it, for he knew that he could count on the Executive no longer.

  Strijdom felt it unfair; where Jesus had had but one Judas and one Peter, he need contend with five and two. Addressing his words to the latter, he spoke casually, but formally, hiding the light of God that was within him so as not to bum away their fragile faith. Not yet, not yet.

  “Thesis is countered by antithesis, becomes synthesis. That is the human condition. The political-cultural-historical tide grinds to sand and chips away the great rocks. In order to surmount this degradation, we must destroy the middle, deny this hateful synthesis which erodes all that we believe. We are the forge upon which the Imperials must cast their antithesis. We must provoke Satan’s host to repression, and each man who does not choose to cleave to us must recognize that he clings to the antithesis to God’s Law. Each traitor who would alter one word, one line, must be cast out and destroyed ruthlessly. It is thus that the laws of history push us forward on our sacred path.”

  That imp of Satan, de Roux, openly sniggered. For all his fair words, since the day he had been selected to the Executive he and his had deflected all Willem Strijdom’s efforts, or so he thought. It was all Strijdom could do to hold his voice in check; although the time for reckoning was near to hand, it would not do for those accursed by the Lord to suspect that the Lord’s host would rise in spite of their treason, that the fabric of the Bond was to become stainless and white.

  Then would the faithless, the Imps and Imp-lovers, have their comeuppance. The Imperials must rule by the consent of the governed. What must be eradicated was the possibility of such a consent, of such compromise in the minds of the people.

  The blandishments of Satan were hearkened to. The martyrdom that had befallen the small band of the Elect who had died in the caverns outside Bloemfontein to preserve their sacred trust had already caused more of the halfhearted to wobble, and Strij-dom was not so ignorant of matters practical to think that the loss of so many weapons of war was anything less than a tribulation that the faithM must strive mightily to overcome.

  Yet blind, ignorant fools stubbornly refused to see that such setbacks only showed that the Lord was abroad and actively choosing His own for the new Covenant. Their eyes would be opened for them. The Imperials were the anvil upon which God’s Chosen would be hammered out, the fire in which His instrument was to be forged and His will be done. Strijdom let his mouth subtly betray the pleasure he would take in transforming, with fire and the sword, the implements of Satan into tools of the Lord. The memory of the humiliations he had undergone at the hands of that yellow-skinned Bantu-lover Ssu burned at his very soul, and more so memory of his niece in her wheelchair.

  Still the time of the Lord’s vengeance was not yet at hand, and Strijdom cloaked his faith. His was the path of history. He who would not compromise must dominate those who would, Jacobins must annihilate the Mountain until they are eaten in turn.

  Quiddities(reprise)

  “VAN DER MERWE” IS THE QUINTESSENTIAL AFRIKANER. HIS name has the same prominence among Afrikaners as does Smith among Amies or Holub among Czechs. For two hundred years and more, Irishmen have told Irish jokes about Pat O’Reilly; Afrikaners have told jokes about Van der Merwe.

  At the spaceport, one of the ground crew invited Van der Merwe to see the robots charge fusion bottles. He watched the robots work through the remote hookup and watched the technicians at their dials. Finally, somebody asked him what he thought. Van der Merwe pulled on his beard for a minute. Finally, he said, “Too many workmen. Give me half a dozen blacks, and I’ll do the job myself.”

  “ARE THEY ALL THAT BAD?” IS THE QUESTION. THE ANSWER is, “No, because some are worse.”

  The customs officer asked Van der Merwe, “Did you just come from Earth?” Van der Merwe told him, “What do you mean, did I just come from Earth? This is Earth!” The customs officer said, “Don’t you even know what planet you’re on?” Van der Merwe replied, "There aren’t any other planets. ’ ’ Then he held up his Bible. “And this one’s flat.”

  IT IS SAID THAT THE ONLY FORM OF HUMOR LOWER THAN A VAN

  der Merwe joke is a pun. However, a pun is not a form of humor.

  Listening to the war news during the Bantu Wars, Van der Merwe heard the announcer say a heavy Bantu assault had been stemmed with nerve gas. For every Afrikaner casualty there were five dead terrorists. A little later, the announcer came on again. A second assault had been ground into the dirt by tactical nukes. For every brave boy dead, ten kaffirs had been vaporized. A little after that, the announcer spoke a third time. A third Bantu thrust had been stemmed with plague. Twenty Bantus had died writhing in agony for every Boer slain. Van der Merwe turned off the radio and put his head in his hands. “They’re winning,” he moaned. “Pretty soon there won’t be any of us left.”

  THE SUCCESS OF A VAN DER MERWE JOKE CAN BE MEASURED BY

  the reaction. A good Van der Merwe joke will draw a smile. A better one will draw a laugh. The best Van der Merwe joke will cause a man to run away screaming with his hands over his ears.

  Van der Merwe was cutting wood. Out of a clear sky, lightning struck the axe-head and knocked him spinning into the well. Bouncing from the axe-head, the bolt of lightning fired the bam. The livestock burned. A gust of wind lifted up the burning roof and dropped it on the house. Running from the kitchen, Van der Merwe’s wife fell and broke her leg. Van der Merwe pulled himself from the well. Surveying the desolation, he weakly lifted his fist to heaven, saying, “Those dam
ned Bantus!”

  IN ANY SOCIETY IN WHICH THE HEADS OF GRAIN THAT STICK

  out from the rest are lopped, self-depreciating humor is a safety valve. Even during the worst days of the Afrikaner Second Republic, the thought police made no arrests for telling jokes.

  Sunday(12)

  BRUWER SPIED SANMARTIN SPRAWLED ON A PONCHO, ALL BUT

  hidden by small horsetails. He appeared strange to her, then she realized he was wearing civ clothing, a tunic and pants in pale blue-gray. His hair was grown out a little, and had begun to curl.

  She stopped the pickup and waved. Shading his eyes, he waved back with his singlestick. She left the vehicle beside the surf and came across holding out a rucksack. “Hans asked me to bring this to you. He gave directions. I was only lost twice. Why are you sitting here? Shouldn’t you be back telling your soldiers what to do?”

  “Kind, thoughtful Hans. I never tell my soldiers what to do. Rudi tells my soldiers what to do. I tell Rudi what it is I think I would like my soldiers to do, and sometimes he arranges it.” He flung a pebble in the direction of the ocean. "My beloved lieutenant-colonel told me to take the day off and I can’t go sailing, therefore I sit. Did I mention that one can go sailing in Chubut?” He poked the rucksack with his stick. “What have we here?”

  She opened it and discovered it contained a field table and a picnic lunch.

  “What kind of cheese do you like?” he said.

  “That Hans!”

  “That isn’t kind. Hans has good qualities, I will have you know. I can’t think of any, but something will come, by and by.”

  “You’re as bad as he is.”

  “Not really. He has a knack for it. I have to practice.”

  She sat down beside him and smiled. “Actually, Katrina told me about the basket.”

  “Who?”

  “Katrina! Your cook!”

  Not even Kasha’s husband referred to her by her given name, and he laughed aloud.