A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  Also, an interesting way to reinforce quickly, provided the drop zone is secure. I suppose security was Job One for the people who came in by helicopter.

  A uniformed radio-telephone operator, an intensely beautiful and very young black female corporal named Asilos, from Cristobal, emerged from the bunker, carrying a field phone in one hand, and the phone’s handset in the other. The phone trailed a wire across the concrete floor.

  “Sir,” she said, interrupting Jimenez’s thoughts even as she proffered the phone. “Sir, Ninth Legion is asking for permission to retire on the city and assume their defensive positions. Their commander says it’s now or never, at least for his more exposed units.”

  “Thanks, Sarita,” answered Jimenez, taking the phone. The legions tended to informality, after all, and if there was any senior officer Carrera trusted not to be screwing the female staff, nor showing favoritism, it was certainly Jimenez.

  “Jimenez,” said the legate into the phone. “. . . no, not yet . . . you can fight to keep the lines of withdrawal open . . . yes, I am fully aware that means blood . . . yes, I know you don’t want to waste the lives of your boys and girls on a losing endeavor . . . tough shit, Legate; we can’t let them just walk in and take over. Fight, damn you!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.”

  —Fezzik in The Princess Bride

  Tauran Defense Agency Headquarters, Lumiere, Gaul, Terra Nova

  To be striking back, finally, was the sovereign cure for most of the humiliations inflicted by upstart Balboa on Tauran arms, over the last several months. The men and women of the headquarters, once utterly downcast and demoralized, walked now with a spring in their step, their chins high, and something of a pirate’s gleam in their eyes.

  This was a new building for the headquarters or, rather, an old one repurposed. The foundations were thick, the walls essentially soundproof. A former palace, the building had stood abandoned but for a guard for thirty years before being repurposed as a replacement for the old TDA headquarters, burned to the ground by a Balboan aerial attack using a large, but stealthy, drone carrying a “five-minute bomb.”

  While some good people had been killed in that attack, it was generally agreed among the survivors that those deaths in no way harmed the cause quite so much as the death of the former agency chief, Lady Elisabeth Ashworth, had helped it.

  General Janier pretty much summed up the sentiment of nearly everyone concerned who wore a uniform: “Good riddance to the ignorant bitch.”

  Still, the sentiment wasn’t entirely universal. There were those who missed Lady Ashworth. Among these was a certain Anglian Royal Signals officer, a major by the name of Jonathan Houston.

  It was dark outside, but everyone still was working with something like joy. Overhead, in distant space, the Smilodon stalked the Leaping Maiden, as the Beer Glass Galaxy poured from the Tap.

  Far below those constellations, and below the first floor of the headquarters, Jan Campbell also stalked. Her prey was not a maiden, though it was not impossible that Major Houston was a virgin.

  Short, blonde, shapely to the point of extravagance, and more than a tad pretty, Jan wore mufti, and only mufti, around the headquarters. This served primarily to disguise her rank in a headquarters where majors counted as “mere.” Given her easy and immediate access to the military head of the Tauran Defense Agency, the Gallic general Bertrand Janier, it was widely assumed she was quite a bit senior to that, and civil rather than military. This wasn’t in the least hurt by her having been a late-entry officer, hence rather older than the norm for a major.

  But, major or sergeant major or colonel or well-connected bureaucrat, everyone simply assumed clout. This, too, wasn’t in the least hurt by the fact that she acted like she had clout, possibly even beyond the not insubstantial clout she did pack.

  That clout was real, deriving partially from direct access to Janier and partly by direct access to Lieutenant General (Retired) Sidney Stuart-Mansfield, the head of Anglian Intelligence, which organization was also known as “Pimlico Hex.” That clout had enabled her to do three key things.

  The first of these was to set up a sacrificial intelligence organization composed of nine hangers-on to the exiled Balboan, Belisario Endara-Rocaberti. These had taken a short course run by the Anglian intelligence apparatus, and were then reintroduced into their homeland, Balboa, to try to reconnect with certain intelligence assets with whom communications had been lost as a result of the previous Tauran defeat and expulsion from the country. Of those, three were still at large, to no one’s surprise more than Jan’s. And one of those had even managed to establish contact with a former asset, a machinist in the arms works at Arraijan, in Balboa, who wondered why no use had been made of an earlier report he’d submitted.

  If this first organization had produced nothing except a flurry of activity and a lot of smug satisfaction on the part of Balboa’s chief of intelligence, Omar Fernandez, that would have suited Jan well enough. After all, its primary purpose was to provide cover for the second organization.

  That second organization was smaller and considerably more elite, for certain values of “elite,” and was certainly not intended to be sacrificed. It consisted of three assets, with Jan serving as handler, personally, aided by a close-mouthed secretary, a cryptologist, and a communications specialist.

  This first of these was a diplomat from La Plata, assigned to their embassy in Balboa, and in dread fear that the Balboan revolution would come to his country and displace his class. Young Señor Avellaneda, handsome, with his Anglian education, posh accent, and ten thousand Tauro suits, had gone home to La Plata for consultations and promptly offered his services via the Anglian embassy there. That his country had sent a brigade of marines—now enrolled in the Legion as the Thirty-ninth Tercio, and serving in Jimenez’s corps—made his offer something very like treason. This would have set Jan’s suspicion circuits to tingling madly if she hadn’t known that, in La Plata, treason to fatherland was far less of a crime than treason to class. And that was true of all classes there.

  Sadly, Avellaneda had yet to produce anything of real value.

  The second operative, a Volgan, Jan trusted more readily. He, a newsman, was assigned by his bureau to cover the Twenty-second Tercio. This unit had begun life as the Tsarist-Marxist 351st Guards Airborne Regiment, before signing on, en masse, with Carrera. The regiment, the tercio, was mostly Balboan, now, but still retained the traditions and customs that it had brought with it to Balboa. There was also, among the old hands, some emotional connection to the Volgan Republic.

  Jan trusted the newsman, not least because she understood and trusted his motivations. Pyotr Simonov simply wanted money.

  “Ideologues and idealists,” she had said to her secretary, in French, “cannot be trusted. Trust money. Trust greed.” While Jan’s English always carried an accent, light or heavy depending on many factors, her French, courtesy of the Anglian Army, was about as good as that of the crown prince of Anglia.

  That trust in Simonov had been well-placed, since the Volgan, before departing his homeland for Balboa, had managed to acquire quite a bit of information on some of what the Volgans had supplied to Carrera, and just how much of an interest Carrera held in certain Volgan defense companies.

  “Holy shit!” had pretty well summed up Jan’s thoughts on that.

  The third active member of her elite, non-sacrificial organization, however, had proven the most disappointing. Sister Mary Magdalene, of the international pacifist organization, Pax Vobiscum, had been recruited on what the nun thought were ideological and idealistic grounds. Jan had a better measure of the woman; the short-skirted, thin-shirted “nun” wanted payment, sure enough, but in perks and prestige, rather than in money. Unfortunately, and to Jan’s mind most shockingly, when Pax Vobiscum had shown up on the figurative Balboan doorstep, offering to become human shields, they’d all been put on trial for
treason . . . to Balboa’s enemies. Sentenced to death, the group had instead been deported to neighboring Santa Josefina, where a guerilla war raged. It was made very clear to them that the full penalty would be exacted if they returned.

  Who would have expected one of my primary intelligence assets to be booted for something like that? had thought Campbell. These people are too insane to predict. Maybe Kris was right, and they’re too insane to leave in peace. Or maybe they pegged the group for having spies within it, and decided this was a useful way to get them out of the way. If so, damned clever of them.

  Hmmm . . . Maybe I can get the bitch infiltrated with the guerillas. But do I want to?

  The third leg of Jan’s little unofficial and carefully hidden organization was a direct-action team, seconded to her via the influence of Stuart-Mansfield. Two of these now accompanied her—Sergeant Greene and Corporal Dawes—as she stalked the halls of the newly repurposed Tauran Defense Agency Headquarters, looking for the basement office of the aforementioned Jonathan Houston, seconded from Anglia’s Royal Signals Regiment, and flying a desk formerly devoted to intelligence on Balboa but now rather underused.

  Corporal Dawes, short himself, had a much taller Gaul in hand, the Gaul’s arm twisted up behind his back, wrist painfully bent, walking on the balls of his feet to keep from having his arm or wrist broken, and just barely audibly whining on the way. Since the good corporal had already demonstrated that whining loudly would cause him to twist the wrist enough to elicit a scream, the Gaul had to content himself with no more than that subdued whine.

  Another Gaul, a not unattractive but rather cold-faced woman, Captain Turenge, followed along purposefully. She was Campbell’s liaison with Janier or, rather, his office, when Jan couldn’t meet directly. Somewhat to her surprise, the Anglian had found the Gaul most sympathique, indeed, almost a sister in wickedness and sin.

  How fortunate, thought Campbell, that these basement rooms are soundproofed, in the main. How lucky, too, that almost no one is down here.

  Someone, nationality indeterminate, did look out from an office, alerted by the whimpering of the Gaul. A quick, infinitely wicked smile from Jan sent that someone reeling back into their office, slamming the door behind him.

  Houston, as short as Jan, chubby, and with an anemic caterpillar of a blond mustache, showed no alarm when Jan entered his basement office uninvited and, smiling sweetly, took a seat. He didn’t know anything much about her but, like most of the rest assumed she was a highly connected bureaucrat. And he’d seen and noticed her physical charms, of course, as had every man—including the gays—in the headquarters.

  On the other hand, when the bruiser pushing the Gaul entered, with tears running down the Gaul’s face, Houston took some notice. When the other bruiser and the other woman entered, and the former closed the office door and took a station behind Houston’s own chair, the signaler really began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. And when Jan Campbell, holding two rolled up pieces of paper in her left hand, stood and slapped him across the face with her right, he was so shocked he couldn’t speak initially. And then, of course, bruiser number one, Sergeant Greene, made sure he couldn’t speak at all, at least for the nonce, pulling the desk jockey’s head back by his hair and wrapping a thickly corded forearm across his mouth, almost covering his nose.

  Campbell held one piece of paper before Houston’s wide eyes.

  “Dae ye nae ken this?” she asked. When she was furious, as she was now, and speaking English, she tended to revert to the thick Scots of her girlhood.

  When the signaler’s eyes, wide over Sergeant Greene’s burley crooked arm, showed nothing but incomprehension, Campbell placed a dainty finger on the address block, repeating, “Dae ye nae ken this?”

  Houston’s eyes flicked down the page. It was a report originating with a machinist in the enemy’s main armaments complex, detailing the special milling of something over a thousand arrow shells, in 122mm, and the fitting of same with sabots in 180mm, along with the dimensions and threading particulars for the fuse wells.

  “DO YOU NAE KEN THIS?”

  The eyes only widened further.

  “Sairgant Greene, scomfisht him.” The perfect calm with which she said it, after the shouted query, set Houston to emitting a high-pitched squeal—all that he could get through Greene’s gagging arm.

  “Bide a wee, Sairgant,” she commanded, then again asked Houston, “Dae ye nae ken this?”

  The latter managed the most constrained of nods.

  “A see,” said Campbell, then turned her attention to Corporal Dawes’s captive. “Now why, Monsieur,” she asked, switching to French, “did you not inform Houston of the purchase by Balboa of a large number of laser guidance packages and emitters for artillery shells, with the fuse well requirements for the fuses? You had the information.”

  The Gaul gave Campbell a pitying look, as if she were an idiot child. That caused Campbell to shoot a glance at Dawes, who promptly lifted the Gaul by his bent wrist, eliciting thereby a most sincere scream of pain, while also illustrating in a very clear way why contemptuous glances were not to be directed at Miss Campbell.

  Yes, it is fortunate, indeed, that the walls are thick and soundproof.

  When Dawes let the now sobbing Gaul down enough to put his weight on his own feet, Jan asked, rhetorically, “It was the old political game, wasn’t it? The keep all information close hold game? The give away nothing for free game, not even to one’s allies?”

  “Yes . . . yes . . . yes,” the Gaul admitted, in a series of sobs.

  “And ye,” she accused, turning her attention back to Houston and the language back to something approaching English, “war thay the sel an same games for ye? Or were ye wirkin for the fae’s chief o‘ intelligence?”

  Houston’s eyes, if possible, grew wider still. The Tauran Union, like all civilized polities, had long since done away with capital punishment even for treason. That did not necessarily mean that death could not be meted out, even on mere suspicion, if the suspicious were ruthless enough.

  He gave off another “girl in a horror film” shriek, mostly muffled by his captor’s arm.

  “Nae workin’ for Fernandez, then?” Jan enquired, with a dubious moue, her blonde head shaking just as dubiously. “But how can A be certaint? How can A be certaint whan vital intelligence is nae passed on, vital coordination nae done?”

  “Shall I kill him now, Miss?” asked Sergeant Greene, on cue. “It won’t take long.”

  This time Houston’s scream almost escaped the knotted muscles of the sergeant’s forearm.

  She knew that, working in the TU Defense Agency, Houston spoke good French. She switched back to that so that both Gauls present could understand her words, as well.

  “The unnecessary dead we’re going to have suffered because the Zhong got hammered by the Balboan artillery, firing these shells from their island fortress, thereby releasing Balboan legions to face our own invasion, almost demands the deaths of these two,” Jan agreed. “Still, we are civilized folk.” She turned to the Gallic captain. “What do you think, Turenge?”

  “I think the general would not miss these two,” said the female Gaul, her lip curling in a contemptuous sneer. “I think there would be no serious investigation, even if they were found, each with ’is knife in the other’s chest, especially after I testify that we were involved in a sordid love triangle. We Gauls understand these things ’appen, you see.”

  “I think I do see,” Jan agreed, with the faintest hint of reluctance in her voice. At her words the other Gaul promptly voided his bladder, much to the worsening of Corporal Dawes’ shoes.

  “Bastard,” said the corporal, giving the Gaul’s wrist a vicious, scream-extracting twist. “Tha filt’y fuck.”

  “Still, don’t you think something else could be done, Captain? I mean, if these two agree to place themselves under our modest little organization, and to work diligently and honestly for it, to devote their funds to our purposes . . .”

&
nbsp; “We don’t, after all, have proof that this chubby pig, Houston, was working for the enemy, do we?”

  “Sadly not,” Turenge admitted, then offered, “but a stint with the general’s interrogator . . .”

  “But people are so ruined after something like that,” objected Campbell. “Why, no one would get any use out of them then.”

  “But, then again, I would personally be inconsolable, just inconsolable, if these two were to fail to cooperate or coordinate in the future, in any way that brought harm to our men at arms or their cause . . .”

  Dawes used his right hand to grasp the Gaul’s hair, then bent his captive backwards until his ear was about at a level with Dawes’ own mouth.

  “‘Inconsolable,’” Corporal Dawes explained softly, into the captive Gaul’s ear, in an accent not dissimilar to Old Earth’s Tyke, “is Anglian code for I rip thy fuckin’ ’ead off and shi’ down t‘ole.”

  Landing Zone / Drop Zone Trixie, Cristobal Province, Balboa

  Ammunition was still highly limited, for the batteries of the Fallschirm-artillerie Batallion, so the half dozen Sachsen-manned 105mm guns, from their position at the southern end of the drop zone, were having to be rather circumspect in their allocation of fire. Their flailing away at the Balboan defenders was, therefore, somewhat fitful. When they did have the wherewithal to fire, the trees over which they hurled their shells shuddered and shed leaves to the point of barrenness.

  North of the battery, Sachsen Fallschirmjaeger continued to pour in from the lumbering transports passing overhead. Those mainly infantry sorts didn’t stick around, but moved off smartly into the surrounding jungle expanding the airhead, and providing security by, in the main, sending the Balboans nearby reeling for shelter.