Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01]

by A Small Colonial War (epub)

  One of the speakers, a corpulent man Sanmartin recognized from Rettaglia’s files, seized a sign from a thin woman and waved it. What he said did not require translation.

  Sanmartin let the electronic marvel in his hand float his voice over the babble. “It does not appear you can be trusted to conduct yourselves in a peaceful manner. I direct you to disperse. Anyone wishing to conduct an orderly march may assemble by the rear entrance. The rest of you are directed to return to your homes. You have one minute to comply.” This he repeated in Afrikaans and stepped back before a shower of projectiles.

  As a large rock sailed past his head, Sanmartin turned to Muslar who was trying to count the crowd and had given up at three hundred. Only a few souls near the back were slipping away.

  “We’ll want to shake them up before they pull in ash and trash from around the town,” Sanmartin murmured calmly to Muslar.

  The chanted slogan had become a crisp, “Imperialiste! IJit! Staan! Vas!” A few in front of the crowd ran several paces forward to hurl their missiles before retreating to the relative safety of the mass.

  As a cluster of zealots from the front rank began to surge, Sanmartin finished counting down. “Five, four, three, two, one,” he said to Mekhlis, jerking his arm downward.

  Mekhlis needed no urging. Under heavy pressure, a jet of liquid played over the mob, which melted away with a shriek. Playfully, Mekhlis pulled the spray down to squirt the civil servant and platform speakers. Signs began falling like leaves.

  Sanmartin turned around, satisfied. “Edmund, move your teams out, column marching and all that. And don’t hang your mouth open like that. You’ll break the seal of your mask and wish you hadn’t. They have skunks where you come from? Little black and white mustelids? Well, this is homemade skunk oil. Reinikka and I had a chat with a little man in biochem.”

  “I hope the fat one doesn’t have a heart attack,” Mekhlis commented as he doused laggards.

  “Those poor, wasted suckers are going to wish we’d used bullets,” Sanmartin explained for Muslar’s benefit. “It’ll bind with their skin, and they’ll pretty much have to let it wear off. I’ll bet it’s hell on contact lenses, too.”

  “So much for ‘stand fast.’ If the ones we tag want to march, they’ll clear the streets. For the next few days, they’ll be about as popular as social disease,” Mekhlis said.

  “Chiba point two. Break. How’s it coming, Hans?”

  Coldewe was in the Stellenboschstraat. “Not bad. We have one peaceful march with about thirty people. Two other groups of would-be rioters have called it a day. About a dozen Border Policemen called in sick, local recruits. The commandant is out making them wish they were. One major incident so far. Sniper.”

  “Sniper?” Sanmartin queried sharply. The Variag’s companies had little liking for urban guerrillas.

  “One bright boy took two shots at Karaev from a rooftop. Winged him, too. Karaev’s annoyed. His arm’s in a sling, but he’s all right. The bright boy is hanging from a light pole with his weapon tied around his neck. I’ve posted a guard to make sure he stays there awhile. We’ll want whoever sent him.”

  “I can’t argue that. How are we doing on identifications?” “We should have more than enough to please your roommate.”

  Rettaglia wanted pictures for identifications. It was always a little shock for would-be activists to receive a polite morning-after letter from Imperial intelligence. It made it easier to screen would-be martyrs from the faceless masses before they caused problems and got themselves killed.

  “Oh, and do you know that silly handgun Rudi has?”

  “The one that looks like a cannon?” Sanmartin asked. “Right. A group of teens got unruly looting one of the shops Sergei’s lads did up with their tin-opener. Rudi held up that peacemaker of his, and shot out a light pole. Quietest bunch of looters you ever saw. Any problems on jour end?”

  “The teacher’s union has gone home to scrub off and bum their clothes. Good, bourgeois burghers don’t make good rioters. They called their general strike for a week. A dinner in town says it’s over by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “ ‘Son, some day a man will come up to you with a deck of cards upon which the seal has not yet been broken . . .’ ”

  “Is this Sky Masterson with the cider again?”

  “From Damon Runyon. You’ve heard it.”

  “I swear, you make these names up. Is he your jumping frog man or the Yankee clock peddler fellow?”

  Coldewe shook his head, a gesture that Sanmartin was in no position to observe. “Stick to seashells.”

  “All right, Hans, you’ve had your fun for the morning. I’ve got to go find Beyers. Out.”

  Reaching the staatsamp, he looked up at Beyers’s wide windows with a mental note to have them sandbagged before he had to elect himself a new mayor. Beyers was in his office in a patched cardigan sweater, munching a croissant absently. He wiped away the crumbs and rose to pump Sanmartin’s hand. The Bond had tried to enlist Beyers immediately after he assumed office. With considerable courage, Beyers had refused.

  Most of the shops were open and enough public maintenance workers were being dragged out of beds to make the town function. The young man swaying in the Vryheidsplein was an inducement to good order.

  Beyers’s comments in the English he’d learned over the past several months were cutting. Johannesburg would not have

  struck if it had not been for Landrost Andrassy’s heavy-handed attempts to enforce the conversion laws and Director Tuge’s arbitrary revision of the price schedules.

  Far below, a ball sailed by on the cobbled stones of the Vry-heidsplein. The huge form of Rudi Scheel seized it and flung it back in one graceM motion. Sanmartin and Beyers both leaned out the window as Scheel walked over to the knot of young Afrikaners. There were five or six, boys of about eight years by Earth’s standards and little hellions by any. Beyers looked at Sanmartin.

  “That’s Company Sergeant Scheel. You should remember Rudi. Rudi is fond of children,” Sanmartin said.

  “Many of my people dislike Imperials. I am distressed their children this attitude may share,” Beyers said stiffly.

  “Company Sergeant Scheel has nineteen years’ service in the battalion,” explained Sanmartin cryptically.

  Before the mayor could comment further, Scheel bent to the little rats. As he did, one of them spat in his face and began running.

  For an instant, Beyers thought Scheel would chase the boy. Instead, Scheel’s left hand darted inside his jacket almost faster than the eye could follow and whipped out a small pistol.

  Beyers gasped. Leveling the pistol, Scheel fired a stream of water into the back of the hoodlum’s head that sent him sliding on his belly into a trash can. Rudi smiled at the others and blew imaginary smoke off the end of his gun. Pushing back his cap with the barrel, he rubbed his bald, bullet head.

  Beyers was clutching his chest. He looked at Sanmartin beseechingly.

  “Rudi is right-handed,” Sanmartin explained.

  Rudi walked over and picked up the little toad like a sack of sand. Making a few ineffectual passes to dust the boy off, Rudi held him at arm’s length and stuffed him headfirst into the trash can.

  “Rudi carries a real pistol on his left side. It’s much bigger,” Sanmartin commented. He looked over at Beyers, who was panting hoarsely. “The first time I saw him do that, I nearly had a heart attack myself.”

  LEFT IN THE ALMOST DESERTED CASERNE, BRUWER LOOKED OUT her window into sunshine, feeling the hours of her life passing away. She did not dare go into town, not today of all days, and she felt pent up, as if she were back in the camps.

  Her grandfather remembered the camps as places to die.

  In some ways, he had been a father to her. Like other men who had spent a double span of years trying to grow maize on peaty soil, he knew how thin was the taproot that supported the pretty, bourgeois life the Afrikaners had made for themselves.

  She had not mentioned to Raul Sanmartin that
he suspected the pseudoblast that had destroyed the strandloopers’ rice was alien. “The strandloopers,” she recalled him chuckling grimly. “What is it your new friends call them? Jungle bunnies! I think some one of us murdered them, Little Princess,” a name she had long outgrown.

  In the company of Vereshchagin’s men, Bruwer’s differences made no difference. Bruwer felt herself free as she could remember being nowhere else.

  But she was not, and she knew she was afraid.

  Tuesday(12)

  HENDRIK PIENAAR HAD COME TO SEE THE HUURLING IER, SO HE

  couldn’t very well leave without doing so. Pushing the door open with distaste, he walked into the room.

  “Good day to you, my name is Meagher,” the mercenary said, squatting on the cold, concrete floor with a deck of playing cards in his hand. “And who might you be?”

  " Hendrik Pienaar. ’ ’

  “Well, Hendrik Pienaar, I’m pleased to have met you.” Meagher pushed two rounds of machine gun ammunition into a center pile and dealt himself two cards. "What brings you here?” “A few influential Friends asked for me to come. They wish for me to command you and your mercenaries.”

  “Very interesting, it is.” Meagher threw in a few cards and added a few more bullets to the heap.

  To Pienaar’s eyes, Meagher seemed to be playing some variant of poker solitaire. "What religion have you? ’ ’ Pienaar asked out of curiosity.

  “Didn’t you know, General Hendrik Pienaar? All the Irish are Christian. It’s just that some of them remember it in a more timely fashion than others.”

  Pienaar coughed. “What would you say the status of your men is?” he asked.

  “Not good, not good at all. They’re what remains of Chalk-er’s lot, you know. They were even less keen on coming over to you Afrikaners than I was, but there was nowhere for them to go.” Meagher studied his cards. “I can hold them together for another two weeks, maybe three. After that, I could shoot a few if you like, but they won’t stay. They don’t think much of this business of no war and peace for everyone except themselves, and they flat don’t like camping out here in the jungle with not a thing to do.”

  “Are they any good for an attack?”

  "They might be. Mind you, for love or money they won’t like going up against Ebyl’s armor again without better antitank weaponry than they’ve seen, and you Afrikaners have shown them precious little of one or the other, General Hendrik Pienaar.” The mocking insolence in the mercenary’s voice transferred itself well. “Are you perhaps thinking of an attack, now? If so, you’d best give me a few days to plan for it.”

  “You mercenaries have not become popular.”

  “Ah, it’s poor Hughie you’re thinking of, rather than mercenaries in general. The man was daft to think of going back to school at his age. Still, you needn’t be so harsh. We all do what we must, and I understand they had a rare time scraping up enough of him to bury.” He looked directly at Pienaar for the first time. “Do you know, General Hendrik Pienaar, since the Imps have refused us amnesty, there aren’t very many of us hirelings left. Sometimes we have to stick up, one for another. ’ ’ “You haven’t been playing very long,” Pienaar interjected. “Why no, that I haven’t. I didn’t start until we saw you coming.”

  “Why was this?” Pienaar asked.

  “Well, General Hendrik Pienaar, some of the young squirts your masters have sent from time to time to keep an eye or two on me these last few weeks were pious, God-fearing folk who didn’t hold with gambling and playing cards and suchlike. They didn’t stay. However, it occurs to me now that you took your fair time getting into this rattrap of a building to see me, did you not?”

  “I did. I wanted to find out whether your sentries knew how to shoot those pretty guns of theirs before I stuck my head in this rattrap of a building of yours.”

  "Is that so, now? ’ ’ Meagher said, sweeping up all of the cards into a single stack in his left hand. “Tell me, general, about this attack you mentioned.”

  “The spaceport. In and out.” The weather forecast for the week was for light rain through Saturday, with showers and thunderstorms following on Sunday and Monday. The worst of it would partially nullify the Imperial space-borne fire support.

  “Indeed,” Meagher commented. “How many people know your plan?”

  “One. Me. If you keep your mouth shut long enough, you might know, too.” Pienaar took the deck of paying cards from Meagher’s hand. He began dealing them out.

  Meagher looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you know, Hendrik? You’ll do, I think.”

  Wednesday (12)

  ON THE SOFT WOODEN BOARD, LIGHT AND DARK ONYX PIECES

  mingled in confusion. Sanmartin swapped a knight for a knight with a savage glee, intending to simplify, to push the game to a resolution.

  “Rhett, be honest. It ruins your concentration. Whose idea was it to dissolve the Bond? I mean, I was touched by the proclamation.”

  Rettaglia’s nostrils twitched as he studied his position. “Colonel Lynch. He seemed quite taken with the idea. ’ ’ His hair was graying noticeably.

  “And when do we enforce it?”

  Rettaglia’s lip curled.

  “That’s what I thought. Did the admiral tell Lynch they have an ordinance prohibiting fornication in Johannesburg, too?” “He might have. Although the admiral is singularly lacking in humor, he possesses a well-developed sense of whimsy. How is Hanna? ’ ’

  Sanmartin made a grimace.

  “She figured out about the mercenaries at the school?” “Wanjau, of all people, let slip that we planned and executed a stupid idea flawlessly, which is a nice way of saying we should have been sweeping up toasted tots with a shovel.”

  “The Variag said as much to the admiral, which did not greatly please him.” Rettaglia pushed his queen’s knight pawn to open a long diagonal. “Kimura’s battalion will be switching over to a depot establishment. They will be the permanent garrison. We’ll be up to our knees in Baluchi wives, livestock, and children. Higuchi’s battalion will ship back when the goats arrive.” “Where will that leave us?”

  “Here for the present.”

  Sanmartin pushed forward a pawn. “A bunch of itinerant killers, that’s what we are.”

  Rettaglia stared at him curiously. “Where did you pick up that notion?”

  Sanmartin grimaced again. “Probably chatting with Solchava.”

  “I understand that you and Albert Beyers got her into the hospital in Pretoria.”

  “It’s the closest thing there is to an advanced medical facility on this mudball. Our beloved Dr. Devoucoux asked me to help her out before he left. Albert and Hanna finally smoothed it over between them, but for a while I thought I was going to send a half section of rifles. You can imagine what Solchava thought of that idea.”

  “The Brothers on Earth handpicked their doctors the same way they selected predikants. How is she working out?”

  “The Variag’s helping to ease her integration, but she’s a strange one.” The Variag had charm. He remembered her saying almost wistfully, " Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin is a very unusual officer, is he not?” before staring away.

  “She transferred from the civil side. It shows.”

  That made sense. Dapper Claude had come the same route. Medical specialists who desired passage to the new worlds often found that only the military was hiring.

  Sanmartin smiled. “She doesn’t understand why we need to rely upon rifles.”

  “Rifles command obedience. And they’re not too expensive. We’ll have them as long as they can do that,” Rettaglia said complacently.

  “I suppose. What’s the latest on the politics on this orb of slime?”

  “I can tell you that we are ready to come to a conclusion with the Bond. The first salvos have been made. A committee of ‘well-disposed citizens’ has presented itself.” Rettaglia countered his move with a knight. “Rear-Admiral Irie, Gamliel, and I will present them with nonnegotiable demands.”

/>   “I suppose Lynch’s proclamation reduced them to quivering fear and trepidation. Is this what you expected?”

  “In truth, no.” Strijdom’s proposal had flabbergasted half the Executive. The move smacked of some subtle plot on the part of the old fanatic, and Strijdom was not a subtle man. “This might be legitimate. Three-percent probability?” “Cut by a factor of five.”

  Sanmartin lifted his eyes. “Is this why you’re wearing a face I expect to wear at my fimeral?”

  “In part. As a result, the admiral made the decision to give the blacklegs to Acting Major Dong. ’ ’ Reading the lack of comprehension in his friend’s face, he added, “Dong’s stupefying ineptitude aside, I will be required to clear detentions through him and Gamiiel. Lying Louis suggests that further detentions will destabilize negotiations. Effectively, there won’t be any.” Sanmartin let his jaw swing free. “Has everybody up there in Cloud Cuckoo Land gone collectively silly? Brandftihrer Snyman, at least?”

  “Snyman least of all. He’s untouchable, even for you and the Variag. Gamiiel thinks he’s running Snyman and several others I might name.”

  “Rhett, are you saying the ones stirring up the ants with sticks are working for our side? The son’s a good trooper, but his father is poison.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said Gamiiel thinks he’s running them. Half of the people I want are on his payroll, feeding him feathers.”

  Sanmartin slouched, obviously and visibly disgruntled. Rettaglia calmly adjusted his rook. “Charity. The holiday season is upon us. The sixth was sort of a Finnish O-Bon festival for you, the Boers celebrate the sixteenth, and Christmas is next.”

  “It’s still unconscionable to have thirty-four days in December,” Sanmartin growled. He thought for a moment. “Rhett, for the last six weeks, you’ve been touching all the right wires and the frog is kicking every which way. Why? Is there somebody else I don’t know about making the puppets dance?” Rettaglia paused, suspending his surviving bishop, asking himself whether there was another layer of secrecy to the Bond, men possessed of “secret knowledge” not vouchsafed to the little frogs, or perhaps a rump secret society within the Bond trying to wag the dog. The thought had occurred, more than once. A man named Hertzog once tried something similar.