Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  “Sit down, shut up, and listen you fat, overstuffed goose. I have wonderful news! Simply wonderful!”

  The ambassador was sufficiently nonplussed that he sank slowly back into his chair, hands resting on the desk to ease his way down.

  Esterhazy went to stand behind Bazaar and to one side. He was not a small man; the intimidating effect was profound.

  With a finger, Lourdes directed the former UEPF’s ambassatrix to a seat.

  Bazaar noticed and was about to ask when Lourdes offered. “Why, that is my wonderful news. Ambassatrix, please tell Bazaar about the grand news.”

  Bazaar thought the Old Earther would fall into tears as she said, “The Peace Fleet has surrendered to the Timocratic Republic of Balboa. All facilities, property, art, and personnel are likewise surrendered.”

  The Valparaisan hoped it didn’t show on his face but, Holy shit, now they own us.

  “That’s right,” Lourdes said. “Now we own you. I have only the one son, you know, Ambassador,” Lourdes began. “Did you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “A brother, two sisters,” Bazaar answered. “Why?”

  “Well, I was wondering if you ever noticed—sons often do not—how much better you—you and your brother—were treated than were your sisters, by your mother. Possibly even by your father, but it’s mostly a mother thing? It’s especially strong in we Hispanic types. Well, Hispanics and Arabs. I’m sure you already knew that, of course.”

  Bazaar shrugged as if to say, Well, of course boys are better treated than girls. It’s the way of the world.

  Lourdes nodded. In this, at least, we understand each other.

  “Now Hamilcar is my only son,” she continued. “And I am past the time I am likely to conceive another. I want you to imagine how much better, even than you were, you would have been treated had you been an only son, with no hope of more. Is there anything your mother would not have done for you?”

  “Pro . . . bably not,” Bazaar hesitantly agreed.

  Lourdes face turned to flesh-toned ice. “So when I tell you that if Valparaiso doesn’t get a squadron of fighters in the air to cover my son, I will personally push the button to nuke your half-dozen largest cities, you will understand that I mean it, yes?”

  Bazaar’s eyes grew wide. “What nonsense is this? Bullshit! Complete and utter—”

  “Hajar, Ambassador Bazaar, Hajar.

  “What? Did you really think nukes go off by themselves? Accidentally?” She began to laugh, softly and then with enthusiasm.

  “Oh, no, Mister Ambassador. We nuked Hajar. My husband nuked Hajar. My husband who also has one son left, and trends pretty faithful, hence is not going to have another, destroyed Hajar. He killed at least three million people, most of them innocent, in revenge over the murder of his first family. We nuked them and we can nuke twenty more. And we have the means of delivering them to your cities that you cannot even detect, let alone resist. Do you think he now—He with the blood of millions on his hands? Him, a charming monster?—will hesitate to destroy you if you let his only boy be killed?”

  She stood and walked partway around the ambassador’s desk, stopping to pick up a red phone. She pushed the phone in front of his face.

  “This is the secure phone, yes? Good. I want you to get on this secure phone to your government—right now, while I watch and listen—and let them know in no uncertain terms that, while the UEPF might have attacked you if you had gone to my boy’s aid, we will annihilate you if you do not.”

  “But—but, we’ve given you help in this war. Shed our blood for you. How can you do this? How can you even threaten to do this?”

  “What have you done for us lately?” she sniffed. “The phone, Mister Ambassador. The phone right now.”

  Bazaar didn’t have to dial, a simple push of the button was sufficient to connect him with the home office. “Put me through to the president,” he said, then waited for something under a minute for the connection to be made.

  “Yes, Mr. President, Ambassador Bazaar . . .it’s about the Balboans’ request for fighter support for their attack on the UEPF’s base . . . yes, Mr. President, I know we didn’t agree to it in advance . . . yes, they know it, too, and don’t care . . . yes, they’re also aware we were afraid of UEPF retaliation . . . Mr. President, but that excuse is dead now; the UEPF is theirs. Their military commander’s wife informs me that we either send those fighters or they will nuke us . . . Yes, as a matter of fact I do believe her.”

  Lourdes couldn’t quite—neither did she really try to—make out the stream of curses and obscenities coming from the phone. Even so, Bazaar pressed it tighter to his ear to make sure she didn’t. She could tell the flood had passed when he moved it slightly away from his ear and said, “We’re willing to try a bluff. A dozen of our most capable jet fighters will depart with two refuelers within the half hour. But they will not be armed.”

  “If the bluff works, fine,” she replied, “but, speaking for myself, I would consider that a very thin reed on which to hang your chances of not being destroyed by us.”

  Choukoutien, Ming Zhong Guo, Terra Nova

  Meaningless, useless courtiers clustered about the throne room, each resplendent in brightly colored, embroidered robes, and not a one of them of any value to the emperor. A new courtier approached through the main entrance. Begging permission to approach the throne, he skipped the usual self-abasement and simply hurried to the emperor’s side.

  “Your majesty,” whispered Li An Ming, into the emperor’s ear, “I have terrible news.”

  The Zhong emperor braced himself, thinking, What can that evil bitch come up with that is worse than what she has already put me through?

  Mustering what little dignity the empress had left him, the emperor asked, “And this would be?”

  “I am afraid that Her Imperial Majesty has been killed. I just received word. The killers—the Balboans, as it turns out—are asking what we’d like done with the body. They say they can deliver it, but it may take a few days.”

  “Done with the body? Done with the body?” All the useless, meaningless, and splendidly berobed present looked up in surprise at the emperor’s suddenly raised voice.

  For the first time since he’d been forced to marry her, the Zhong emperor began to truly and sincerely laugh. “Feed it to pigs! No . . . no, that’s not good enough. Toss it into an open-pit shit house. No, no, wait, that’s isn’t quite enough either.

  “Ask them to send the bitch’s corpse to me. I’ll find something appropriate.

  “And now, where is my minister of foreign relations and my minister of war?”

  “Oh, and one other thing, Your Imperial Majesty,“ Li An Ming continued. “It seems the enemy has captured the entire Peace Fleet.”

  The emperor paled, not so much for being a fan of the Earthpigs as that this interjected a dreadful level of uncertainty into his life. “I want my minister for foreign relations, finance, information, internal security, and my minister of war now!”

  The throne room was cleared now, cleared except for the three ministers the emperor had demanded, plus Li An Ming, who was there because he understood the apparatus by which the late empress had ruled the empire.

  “Peace,” insisted the emperor, right arm pounding the armrest of his throne for emphasis. “I want peace with the Balboans and I want our fleet and army—what’s left of them—back.”

  “What if they demand reparations, Your Majesty?” asked Finance. “What if they demand ransom even for the men they haven’t captured?”

  “Then we shall pay it,” said the emperor. “Whatever the late imperial bitch’s sins, and they were many, she had a good deal to do with holding the empire together. Without her, I will need that army. Badly.”

  “I can call the airborne and special forces group back from Wellington,” said War. “For the ones on their island and ashore, we lack the strength to withdraw them without Balboan permission. Our fleet admiral, Wanyan Liang, lacks the strength to evacuate them
in the face of the Balboan air force and”—here War shuddered at the memory of the roll of losses—“especially in the face of the coastal artillery of their fortress island.”

  “I will,” said Foreign Affairs, “have our ambassador to the World League approach theirs and see what can be agreed to. It may take a while—several days to several months—to work out arrangements.”

  “I don’t think you quite understand,” the emperor said. “The bitch sold the people on the war via the Propaganda Ministry. The lies flew thick and fast, each more incredible than the last—or, if credible, credible only because they were so consistent! With the war lost and her dead—I cannot even turn the cunt over to the people’s justice now!—the odds of rebellion here are . . .” The emperor looked pointedly at Li An Ming. As right-hand man for the late empress, he knew better than most the state of the empire.

  “Dangerously high, Your Majesty.”

  The emperor shifted gaze to Internal Security, who likewise agreed, “Not inevitable but, yes, Your Majesty, dangerously likely.”

  “So you see, I need that army. I must have it. Not in several months but at least the beginnings of it within the week.”

  Finance nodded, then bowed. “I will make it happen, Your Majesty. Please issue the authorization; much gold—much!—will certainly be required.”

  “I shall.”

  “And Information?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty?”

  “You have twenty-four hours to come up with a plan to pacify the people, as long as they can be pacified, and put all the blame on my late empress.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Now go!”

  The ministers began to shuffle out of the throne room, until Finance turned around and asked, “Your Majesty, what if they want more gold than we have?”

  “Where can we get more?”

  “The Federated States; they have the largest reserves on the planet, more than four times ours.”

  The emperor drummed his fingers for a few minutes, thinking hard, then thundered, “Get me the Minister of Trade!”

  Estado Mayor, Sub camp C, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa

  Carrera didn’t like the look on Fernandez’s face. The latter sat framed in the light pouring through the doorway into Carrera’s concrete office.

  “Out with it, Omar.”

  With a grimace, Fernandez laid out the bad news. “We haven’t been able to break back into the satellite network, neither the FSC’s nor the Tauran Union’s—and the Zhong’s was always out of the question—but our embassy in Wellington informs us that the Zhong air transport fleet there built up to some fifty-seven heavies and eight or nine refuelers. They’re flying out now. And I think we all know where they’re going.”

  “Shit. Where are the Valparisan fighters?”

  “Oh, they’ve landed on the airstrip at Atlantis Base. Moreover, they sent out three C-31s with ground crews, a mobile radar set, and sundry odds and ends. I had someone look at the ordnance they brought. Though they said they’d fly them unarmed, in fact they sent along a dozen air-to-air missiles, one per plane. Sadly for us, however, and worse for the cadets, a dozen, divided by two, for likelihood of a kill, and then further divided by fifty-seven plus eight or nine, means a division of Zhong Paras on the island. Sure, they take out two or three planes. Maybe even four. It’s not enough even to deter the Zhong.”

  An office drone stuck his head in the door. “Duque, your wife is on the line from First Landing, in the Federated States. Shall I patch it through here?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Carrera said. “And please close the door and post yourself as a guard on it.”

  “Wilco, Duque.”

  It took maybe ten seconds for all that to happen. At the flashing light signal, Carrera picked up the secure phone on his desk. He’d barely gotten the formal, “Yes, love,” out before Lourdes launched into a breathless narrative.

  “Patricio, I am sitting here with the Zhong ambassador to the World League. He’s asked for an armistice in place, without a formal surrender of his country’s forces, and repatriation without payment. I’ve told him this is impossible, that his empire has damaged our infrastructure, destroyed our buildings, killed and wounded our citizens, and committed numerous war crimes against us, from torture to biological warfare. I have insisted upon unconditional surrender, reparations, payments for the return of prisoners, an admission of guilt and apology, and turning over to us any war criminals, such as we may identify, that will not be among the prisoners.”

  Carrera looked at Fernandez and mouthed, Have someone notify the president. Fernandez wheeled around, opened the door, and told the office drone to get him.

  Biological warfare? thought Carrera. Well, sure, we accused them of it. After all, the Zhong always claim biological warfare is being waged by their enemies. Nobody believes them, of course, except left-wing academics, but they still always claim it, though this time we got our accusations in first.

  We sort of had to. We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the cratering of the Isla Real was going to a create a huge breeding ground for mosquitoes, and that those would bear malaria, dengue, yellow fever, black vomit fever, LLU-5, break-back fever, thotovirus-bravo-terranoviensis, and God alone knows what else. Moreover, we were going to be relatively protected and they were going to be extremely vulnerable. So we had to accuse them first.

  “Am I on the speaker, Ambassatrix?”

  Catching the hint, Lourdes replied, “You are, Duque.”

  “And the name of the Zhong ambassador is?”

  A new voice piped in, speaking in surprisingly accentless English. “I am Ambassador Shen Song.”

  “Very good. I will ask your indulgence for a few minutes, while the president is summoned and this call transferred to his conference room.”

  Parilla, Carrera, and Fernandez all clustered at one end of a long conference table. The former, who was also president of the republic, was able to get around now on his own, following a severe heart attack brought on, in good part, by Carrera’s insubordination. In the middle of that end of the table sat a wired-in speaker, currently shut off. Situation maps that mirrored those in the operations cell were affixed to the walls. “The Zhong are asking for peace?” Parilla asked. “I confess, I am surprised.”

  “And we need to make peace, Raul,” Carrera said. “We desperately need to make peace.”

  “And that surprises me even more. What is this, our Dux Bellorum, the great Patricio Carrera, wants peace? What is the world coming to?”

  “They’re got about a division of Paras heading for Atlantis, Raul. My kid can’t take those on, though he’ll try.”

  “And the Valparisans your wife browbeat and threatened into sending aid?”

  “They sent what they said they would. But, as it turns out, it’s not enough.”

  “So . . . peace, then,” Parilla mused. “It’s not such a bad word, I suppose. Whatever will we do with the time saved?”

  Carrera recognized that Parilla was being sardonic; the once brotherly-close relationship between them had frayed a bit under both the pressures of war and Carrera’s penchant for heart attack − inducing insubordination.

  Finally, Parilla said, “Fine, let’s talk to this Shen Song.”

  Carrera tapped the speaker. “Ambassatrix, Ambassador; the President of the Republic is here now, and listening. I have already told him of my wife’s demands, which are our demands. However, he assures me that everything is negotiable.”

  “In the first place, Mr. President,” Shen Song began, “the demand for payment for the return of our fighting men is simply too high, given that they are still undefeated in the field. We cannot and will not countenance paying more than a third of the cost to the Taurans  .  .  .”

  Carrera and Fernandez exchanged glances. If they are willing to pay anything, then they want this to end as much as we do. But what of the aerial armada heading toward Atlantis?

  Atlantis Base

  The armor and the gun
ships were out in position to strike any of the three most likely drop zones. Around the base, the cadets were as well dug in as time allowed, and with some depth in the defense gained by occupying and fortifying key buildings. A short cohort of cadets was also poised to attack to open up a route for the armor to escape after it savaged the descending Zhong Paras as best it could.

  Meanwhile, Hamilcar Carrera stood on the military crest of the ridge, Tribune Cano beside him, and cursed, “Come on, damn you, come on. We can’t wait forever!”

  Yincheng, Zhong Empire

  Sixty-five heavy-lift aircraft, hovering about from twenty to thirty-five thousand feet, all wanting to land, represented an unusually, and dangerously, high workload for the air traffic controllers of Yincheng Air Base, which was also the home base of the Paras.

  A nervous flight lieutenant, Rong Yuyao, glanced at his fuel gauge. Tapping his radio to life, he called down to the control tower. “Look, you misbegotten sons of low-ranked, back passage whores, we cannot stay up in the sky forever!”

  “Everybody’s got problems, Lieutenant Rong,” answered one of the controllers. “We’ll bring you down in good time.”

  BdL Dos Lindas,Mar Furioso

  Roderigo Fosa read the decoded message with mixed feelings. It would have been glorious, after all, the biggest naval battle since the Great Global War.

  “What’s it say, Skipper?” asked Sergeant Major Ramirez. “Good news? Bad?”

  “It says, short version, ‘Peace has been arranged with the Zhong Empire. Their fleet is to steam at flank speed for their main base in the Eastern Furioso. Do not interfere with them or harass them. Return to Balboa. Fight only in self-defense. Assume blockade around Zhong lodgment. Stop and board all ships heading for the Zhong lodgment. Only food and medical supplies come through until they’re evacuated. Any of them that can fit on the ships can leave. Bravo Zulu. Carrera.’”