Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  I’ve got seven maniples here now, plus one back at Beach Red, one guarding very important prisoners, one around the helicopters’ refuel and rearm point, and one in reserve, but collocated with the artillery battery, and not far from the helicopters.

  That’s probably about as good as it—

  Ham’s thoughts were interrupted by the same short, brown commo sergeant who had previously connected him with the old man. Once again, the sergeant handed Ham a radio handset, saying this time, “It’s the Duqueon the line and he says he needs to talk to you. It’s a better connection than before—a different Federated States’ communications satellite came up over the horizon—so you can speak at greater length this time.”

  Ham slithered backwards, then sat up and took the handset, nodding gratefully. “Ham here, Da—what!?. . . Oh . . . Oh, hell . . . And you don’t know how much more might be coming?

  “No, actually, Dad, it’s not all that much consolation that you’re taking the blame for this. Awfully big of you, of course, but me and my cadets are just left out here to twist slowly in the sun . . . no, no, I suppose that’s not very charitable.

  “Seven hours, huh? . . . And Fernandez says another dozen heavy lifters have arrived at Wellington to refuel? So I’m looking at what? A brigade? A big brigade? . . . Maybe a division? Yeah, okay, shit . . . No, I don’t think we have the horses to handle that . . . We needed those fighters . . . someone’s fighters, anyway.

  “Okay, keep me posted. We’ll do our best. Ham, out.”

  It was a paler Ham who handed the microphone back to the commo sergeant. He looked at his map, asking himself, Where are those Zhong Paras going to make their jump? This isn’t something I’ve ever studied. Maybe  .  .  .

  “Get Tribune Cano here, ASAP,” he told the sergeant.

  ***

  “It was never my specialty, either, Ham,” Cano said. “I’ve been a foot soldier and even a horse cavalryman; but do I look stupid enough to jump out of a perfectly good airplane or airship?”

  “I was afraid of that. I wonder if Alena . . .”

  “She’s sedated and ashore,” Cano said. “The doctors cleaned her out and sewed her up. But, you know . . . she’s smarter doped up than any five geniuses on tea and coffee.”

  “Can she be moved?” asked Ham.

  Cano shook his head. “I’d rather not, if it can be avoided at all.”

  “It can’t be. We need her . . . I need her, here. Use whatever means you need but get her to me.”

  “Funniest damned thing,” Cano said, an hour later, shortly after the helicopter brought his stretcher-bound wife to a plateau at the base of the ridge. A team of six husky cadets was already carrying her up the rocky slope to bring her to Ham. Cano had left them to their task, while he trotted upward to report to Ham. “She’d already refused her painkillers. Started refusing about the time you and I were talking. I filled her in, as best I could, but . . . well . . . she never really seems surprised, does she?”

  Ham shrugged. “You’re just her husband; I’m her son by a different mother. She’s a witch; everyone knows this. She sees all and . . .” Ham let the sentenced drift off. unfinished. Instead, he shouldered his own pack, picked up his rifle, and trotted down the slope to meet her halfway.

  At least she’s not obviously bleeding, Ham thought, when he reached the stretcher. Bad enough that I had to put her through this; I couldn’t stand the thought of harming her more than that.

  The cadets lugging Alena stopped when Ham reached them. Gently, they lowered her to the ground, letting the built-in metal stirrups keep her a few inches above it.

  Ham was about to apologize when Alena held up her hand. “No need, Iskandr; you needed me; I came. How may I help advance your holy work?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Alena, but the old man tells me I’ve got at least a brigade of Zhong Paras inbound, half getting here in maybe six hours and half sometime after that. No, we don’t know how long after.”

  “Zhong?” Alena the witch mused. She mused, but then she winced. Still, she was able to say, “I can see where they’d come, yes, given that the empress is the high admiral’s lover. Yes, before you ask, of course I have the clearance to know about our . . . mmm . . . most highly placed spy. And the Zhong are also a lot closer than the Tauran Union, so maybe more able to get something there quicker.

  “I’m a little surprised they had much to spare, given their commitment to their lodgment in Balboa.”

  “Imagine my surprise,” Ham said, sardonically, “when the old man told me.”

  Alena shook an unsteady finger at him. “Don’t be bitter, Iskandr. I don’t know if anyone, ever, has had so much on his own shoulders alone for such a great war. Anyone can make a mistake. Except for you, of course.

  “In any case, my lord, none of that matters. What matters is defending yourself and your command from some very elite soldiers, while accomplishing your mission.”

  “Well, without fighter cover, our first line of defense are the air defense vehicles on the ship. It isn’t much but . . .”

  “They must come off the ship and be landed, Iskandr,” Alena said, with both heat and force. She cast her eyes heavenward. “I do not know what kind of weapons the Earthpigs can launch from space, but that they have something I have no doubt of.”

  “Yes, yes,” Ham agreed. He looked over at Cano.

  “I’ll see to it, Ham.” Cano turned and beckoned over a young cadet bearing a radio on his back.

  “They are, “Alena continued, with another wince, “doing one or another thing. Either they intend to seize this for themselves or they intend to return it to the Earthers. I think the former very unlikely, Iskandr, because even if the Zhong empress were doing nothing but playing the whore with Admiral Wallenstein, for sheer advantage, the fact remains that they have her and can force her to relinquish any hold they might gain on this place. So they really do intend only to defend it from us. Oh, and I suppose to destroy us in the process. That might be a good revenge for what was done to the carrier we sank that was loaded with civilians as well as for what happened to them around the Isla Real, wouldn’t it?

  “So you are the soldier, Iskandr. You are young, yes, but have a raw talent to rival—possibly to exceed—your father’s. They are coming to take the base and destroy you. How would you do that?”

  Ham walked alone, pacing back and forth across a sort of natural corniche carved into the slope. They’re going to jump onto the island and try to grab a field somewhere. But then  .  .  .  on the flattest patch of ground big enough to take a long-range jet cargo plane  .  .  .  Flat ground? With a jet? Yeah  .  .  .  maybe. They’re using older Volgan designs, pretty much like we do, and those tend to be rough field capable. Se-67s, the old man said they were, probably eight of them. So two battalions are coming, maybe with a regimental headquarters split up among them.

  It seems pretty easy, drop one battalion around the base, to hold us in, and one on the best or second best area suitable for a rough landing. The battalion that holds us inside the base probably gets joined by the second battalion, while the landing area builds up. When they’ve got a couple of regiments or even a division they come and destroy us. And we’ll have failed. I don’t want to even think about what it would mean to the old man and the country to fail. And I really don’t want to think about setting off a nuke.

  So can I divide my forces to either hold the base or possibly destroy the battalion that will secure the landing area? Yeah  .  .  .  no.

  Second option, go after the one that will secure the landing area. Might be able to do that. I mean, I’ve seen drops before, even if I’ve never done one. And I’ve read about them. They’re as bad as amphibious or worse. Total chaos, in other words, at least for a while.

  No, that won’t work. If they can’t land outside the base, because I’m outside of it, follow-on echelons may just take their chances and land inside it. And there’s a concrete strip there, which has got
to be better than a rough one. And once they land, I cannot take the base back.

  So can I use my limited armor, the helicopters, and maybe the guns to seriously fuck up the landing outside? But then, how to get them back inside? Okay, that’s obvious enough; I’ll need to attack to create a temporary gap in their perimeter to bring the armor back in.

  Ham stood up straight and began to look around at the slope on which he stood. He noticed one smoking tower, one of the smashed ones from the initial barrage.

  “Hmmmm,” he muttered. But maybe I can do something else, too.

  ***

  Cano had been standing over his wife, far enough away to give the boy room to think, close enough to be ready to hand while still being able to hold his wife’s hand.

  Alena—as always, watching her god carefully—noticed that Ham had stopped his perambulations and, where he’d been bunched over with his hands clasped behind his back before, he’d now straightened up.

  Smiling with absolute confidence, even through her pain, the green-eyed witch said, “Iskandr is ready, husband. Go to him.”

  By the time David trotted up, Ham was bent over again, this time on one knee, with his map unfolded besides him and his hands busily forming the dirt into a scale model of the bay, the base, and the slope.

  Looking down, Cano could see larger pebbles dotting the inner military crest of the slope. He was about to ask, when Ham said, “We must attack, Tribune. We must attack holding nothing back except a guard on the special prisoners, and a thin screen on the reverse slope of the ridge around the town . . .”

  Ham proceeded to sketch out the scheme of maneuver to strike the more distant landing and then to create a gap to get that strike group back. “And when we’re done,” he finished, “we take up a defense around the perimeter.

  “Make it happen.”

  Cano was a little shocked when he found himself answering, “Yes, sir.”

  “And I want you to have a chat with whoever was responsible for those mostly bogus laser towers. I don’t see why we can’t get some use out of the ones remaining.”

  Even as the staff worked to turn Ham’s will into orders, one could still hear the sounds of skirmishing and building clearing toward the southern end of the base. Here, however, at the central park, those sounds were faint and becoming fainter. For the nonce, David Cano was free for other matters.

  “Who here was in charge of or worked with the laser defensive turrets?” David Cano asked over the handheld megaphone. He spoke to the group, much the largest, composed of those who could not be linked to the crews of one of the ships. “Come forward; I’m not planning on hurting you What, nobody? I see.”

  David left the speaker button keyed while saying to the same intel warrant that had overseen the segregation of the prisoners, “We don’t have enough crosses set up yet. Go grab two hundred people at random, men, women, children, both sexes and all ages. Then nail them up to the walls . . .”

  At about that time, someone inside the group of captives shouted a rough translation. The group, itself, then pushed forward half a dozen men, three of them uniformed.

  Looking them over and raising one eyebrow, David asked, “May I assume that you six are responsible? Are there any others?”

  The six identified prisoners turned around and called out names and gestured until there were between two and three times more of them, standing there, in front of the crowd.

  “Come forward. As I said, you will not be harmed, at least as long as you cooperate.” Slowly, hesitantly, the men and women came forward.

  “Who is senior?” David asked.

  The prisoners looked side to side, exchanging glances, until one stepped forth. “I suppose I am.”

  “Sir,” David corrected.

  “Sir. I suppose I am, sir.”

  “Good, come with me, please. The rest of you have a seat where you are. You’ll be fed and watered here. Also let my warrant officer know if you have any injured among you. We’re not especially well equipped in that department but we’ll do what we can.”

  “Sir,” asked one of them, “can we use our own hospital?”

  “Yes of—your own hospital? Your own . . . tell me, how good are your medical facilities?”

  “Best on the planet, sir, by a lot.”

  “GET MY WIFE TO THE EARTHERS’ HOSPITAL!”

  Seeing a group of cadets racing to Alena’s stretcher, Cano then turned back to this key group of prisoners. He led the senior prisoner toward where Castro-Nyere and the other two Class Ones still writhed on their crosses. “What’s your name and rank?”

  “Commander Juncker,” the prisoner answered.

  “Good, ‘Juncker.’ How many of the defense turrets still work or can be made to work?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How would you find out?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “I see,” David said, congenially.

  “Mr. Robles?”

  “Sir?”

  “We’ll be needing another crosspiece and four more spikes.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir.”

  “I meant,” said Juncker, with a gulp, “that I couldn’t from here. There is a control building not far from here. I can find out there.”

  “Ah, good. Lead on, Commander Juncker.” With a motion of his head, David indicated that two armed cadets were to follow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,

  Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

  —Rudyard Kipling, The Female of the Species

  First Landing, Federated States of Columbia

  Not being on the public dime, Lourdes and her entourage were billeted on one half of one floor of one wing of a five-star hotel in this, the largest and second most expensive city in the Federated States. The carpets were deep. The furniture was all handcrafted, mostly antique, and criminally expensive. On the walls hung art from both Terra Nova’s two-hundred-odd nations and thousands of cultures, as well as prized pieces auctioned off by the Peace Fleet (officially to bring culture to the benighted heathens of the new world, but really to fund the fleet).

  That later had led to a team of Fernandez’s best antibug men sweeping all the rooms with extraordinary care, and leaving the bugs in place in all but one of them, with signs posted to be “Careful what you say; the walls have ears.”

  It was in the one room where the bugs had been “accidentally” shorted out that Lourdes paced frantically, head down, stomach a-churn, contemplating the battalions of Zhong Paras heading to attack her only son. Her only company—two armed bodyguards with diplomatic immunity to cover their pistols better than their suit jackets could hope to, and Matthias Esterhazy—followed her with their eyes as she pounded to and fro.

  What can I do? What can I do?

  My boy is commanding mostly boys, themselves. They’re not that well trained. They’re not really that well equipped. Better trained and better equipped than Earthpig space-squids is a very low bar.

  And that was all deliberate. Patricio said every addition to their arsenal, every extra day that might be spent on training them, was potentially an arrow pointing right at them and tipping off the UEPF that something was up. I understand that  .  .  .  well, almost, I do.

  And I understand that this was important, that the war ultimately wasn’t over and won until not only the Tauran Union was wrecked, but the UEPF as well. Okay, too, yes, it was worth it to the planet to risk my only son on that.

  But it was hardly worth it to ME!

  Will that fat pig of a Valparisan understand that we now have the entire UEPF? Was that really the only reason they refused to send the fighters? Maybe  .  .  .  maybe they were afraid of us. After all, they’re just another corrupt oligarchy, like the rest of our Latin “allies.” Maybe they’ve come to realize the threat we represent to their ruling class. I wonder  .  .  .

  She stopped her pacing and
suddenly, inexplicably, smiled. Turning to one of the bodyguards, she said,

  “I need to talk to the Duque. Please set it up.”

  Forty-five minutes later she returned to the swept area, looking somber but determined. “He said to give it a try,” she said to Esterhazy, without mentioning what “it” was. “Get my driver to bring the limo around. We’re going to go pay a visit to the ambassador to the World League from Valparaiso. Oh, and pick up our new vassal on the way.”

  World League, First Landing, Federated States of Columbia

  Lourdes carried the firearms in a satchel through the security checkpoint. As an ambassador her person was effectively sanctified, beyond the insult of a search or even a mandatory pass through a metal detector. This was long-established practice at the World League, even for various terrorists who were absolutely knownto be carrying weapons in.

  With the small group walked someone whose slump was the very image, the Platonic essence, of dejection and despair, the former ambassador of the UEPF to the World League,

  She passed the satchel to Esterhazy, once past the entrance. Then they all stopped off at her office for the guards to reequip themselves.

  “And now, gentlemen, let’s go for that high-level diplomatic talk with Valparaiso . . .”

  Felipe Bazaar, the ambassador to the World League from Valparaiso, would never have dreamt of having his own armed guards in his office. Thus, when Lourdes entered with Esterhazy and one of the guards, leaving the other to block the door, there was only a female secretary, thin like Lourdes but much smaller, to bar the way. Carrera’s wife sent the girl sprawling on the floor, with the caution, “Sit there and shut up if you want to see tomorrow’s sunrise.” She directed the other guard to keep the secretary supine, quiet, and away from the phone.

  Inside his office, the ambassador arose from his massive Silverwood desk in a good simulacrum of high dudgeon. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded.