A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  “I was a janitor, sir,” the old man replied. “My name is Pablo, Pablo Escobedo. I needed the job to support a sick wife. If you kill me, who will take care of her?”

  “The revolution is not heartless, Pablo,” Mora said. “Go and take care of your wife. But”—Mora looked around the compound; flames had begun shooting out of the embassy’s upper story windows—“I think you’re going to have to find another job.

  “Now go.”

  At that time the squad that had gone into the embassy building emerged, pushing the ambassador and a few of her assistants. They were pushed toward the breach in the wall from whence they’d be led to cars and captivity. Each of the prisoners was heavily laden with files and, in a couple of cases, cabinets.

  Mora turned to the next. “You; what is your name and job . . .”

  In the end, Mora let seventeen of them go. Nineteen, including the ambassador’s secretary, remained standing under the word on the wall. The numbers were deliberately chosen for the message, “The revolution is not without mercy, but your odds of survival if you work with the enemy are less than half.” Seeing the last of them off to the breach, Mora joined the third squad’s firing line.

  Out of her wits or not, Estefani realized the implication. Her bladder let go as she sank to her knees, eyes tightly closed and mouthing, “puhpuhpuhpuh.” She was still doing so when Mora steeled his heart and gave the command, “Fuego!”

  It took a day and a half for Marciano to turn his columns toward the capital, march there, and fight his way to the embassy district. It would have taken longer but for the timely intelligence provided by Khan and company, and relayed through Esma.

  Marciano’s first intent was to get to his own country’s embassy, that of Tuscany, but the United Earth embassy was on the way to that, indeed, only a quarter of a mile before it, so that was what he’d reached first. He stopped in front of the Embassy’s wide-open main gate, two security guards sprawled in undignified, bloody death in the opening. Esma recognized both of them from the party that had escorted her from the shuttle to shelter, not so long ago.

  “High Admiral Wallenstein is going to want an eyewitness report,” she’d said to Marciano, “and I’m probably the only one available.”

  Shaken with both the completeness of the disaster and, from the limited reports he’d received, the shocking ruthlessness displayed by the guerillas, Marciano just told del Collea, dully, “Get her a platoon for security.”

  Del Collea answered, “Yes, sir,” then his eyes flicked back and forth for a few moments as he pulled up some memories. He ordered into the radio that such and such platoon of a particular company was to come forward. It meant nothing to Esma until she saw a familiar and friendly face dismount from a wheeled infantry carrier.

  The platoon proved to be under the leadership of a saluting, “Maresciallo Bertholdo, reporting as ordered.”

  Del Collea returned the salute. As he did he stole a glance at Marciano. No, no; the general is not up to detailed orders to individual platoons at the moment. Then he said, “Bertholdo, escort Ensign Miranda into the Earth Embassy. Don’t let anything happen to her. While you’re doing that, make sure the enemy didn’t leave behind any snipers or bombs or booby traps.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The diesel and gasoline-driven roar of Marciano’s column continued on up the boulevard, behind them. The pavement of the road shook with their passage. The stink of exhaust was heavy in the air.

  Bertholdo went through the main gate just ahead of Esma. Before she’d passed, a couple of soldiers dragged the bodies out of the way to allow passage for their carriers without mutilating the dead. Thus, he saw the large word, “Colaboradores” before she did. He wasn’t sure what it meant until he saw the distortion, looking something like heat distortion, of a huge swarm of flies buzzing around between the word on the wall and the ground.

  I’ve got a very sinking feeling about what we’re going to find over there.

  “Miss,” he turned and put up an arm to stop Esma, then said to her, “why don’t you wait here, inside one of the armored vehicles, until we can make sure it’s safe?”

  Esma leaned to one side and saw the same pseudo-heat distortion and the same huge, spray-painted word. She, too, had a pretty good idea of what she was going to find. She pushed past Bertholdo, then began to race, then sprint, for the spot. Frantically, the Maresciallo began gesturing and ordering his vehicles and men to position themselves to cover and secure her. Then he, himself, clutching his rifle, began to follow at a jog. He picked up to a sprint, too, no mean feat for a man of his age and weight class, encumbered by full fighting equipment and armor, when he saw the ensign cover her mouth with both hands and sink to her knees.

  The nearest body, Bertholdo saw, was female. Her face, whatever there might have been left of it, was covered by a layer of blood-lapping flies. More flies feasted on the sticky red stuff across her ruined chest.

  He looked then at the Earth girl, who was rocking back and forth, face still half-covered, and tears running down her cheeks.

  “Did you know this one, Miss?” the maresciallo asked.

  “I can’t remember her last name,” Esma managed to get out. “I’m ashamed, but I just can’t remember it.” Stifling a sob, she continued, “Her first name was Estefani . . . ‘Stefi,’ I called her. She was the nearest thing to a friend that I had on this world, outside of some of you. She was kind of dumb, I suppose, in some ways, and kind of innocent, too, in others. But she meant well and she didn’t ever in her life do anything to deserve anything like this.”

  “Almost nobody does, Miss. I’m sorry for your friend.”

  “Why would anyone do this? Why?”

  Bertholdo sighed, wearily. “I’ve seen this before, in a few places . . . Pashtia . . . Xamar . . . couple of others. The key is in the word on the wall. That, and the bodies, mean ‘do not collaborate with the enemy in the slightest or you will pay a price’. In effect, these score or so bodies were not people; they were just stationery.”

  “Does it work, that message, when they send it this way?”

  “I’d like to tell you it doesn’t,” Bertholdo said. “I’d like to but I’d be lying. It works more often than not.”

  Esma began to stand, saying, “She wanted us to go to lunch together, when I passed through here, but I didn’t have time. And now she has no time and . . . and . . . and . . .”

  Bertholdo caught the tiny girl before her wilting body could hit the ground.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “The long march through the institutions”

  —Rudi Dutshcke

  Oppenheimer Mosque, Sachsen

  “May Allah grant you peace and security, and may His Mercy be upon you.”

  So said Khalid to the man to his right, his assistant, Maytham. Turning his face to the left, he repeated to his other follower, Bandar, “May Allah grant you peace and security, and may His Mercy be upon you.”

  The Asr then being finished, and after a minimally decent pause, he rocked back onto the balls of his feet, then stood straight up, even as his feet rocked further back to rest flat on the thick rugs beneath him.

  Taqiyya-wise, thought Khalid, Muslims have nothing on Druze.

  The imam of the mosque, one of the largest in Sachsen, older, and less fit, indeed, rather pudgy, was helped to his feet by two acolytes who had performed the afternoon prayer in the foremost spots of the two central rows behind the imam. The iman, somewhat unsurprisingly named Mohammad, had the lump on his forehead called a “zabiba,” or “raisin,” which indicated a life of devotion and enthusiastic prayer to his god.

  Turning to Khalid, Mohammad made the palm down, finger gathering motion to come or to follow. He then walked toward a side door, in confidence that Khalid and his assistants would.

  Through the door a broad set of marble stairs led to a basement. Motion sensor-driven lights came on automatically as they descended and as they walked the somewhat plainer corridor to the imam’s offi
ce. On the way, they passed a locked storeroom containing, If I recall correctly, one hundred and fifty rifles, selective fire, thirty-two light machine guns, an even dozen medium machine guns, a dozen sniper rifles, twenty-nine submachine guns, fourteen pistols, eighteen anti-tank rocket launchers, two hundred and twelve thousand rounds of ammunition, four hundred pounds of assorted demolitions, twelve hundred grenades, hand thrown, three hundred rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades, and—if the imam and his committee of jihadists have been listening—thirty or forty radios and a thousand liters of gasoline, with bottles. Couple that with the shotguns and hunting rifles the imam has been advising his followers to obtain, and there’s probably a smallish battalion for this city.

  Khalid mused further, A fascinating place, Sachsen, really. Reputed to be tied for first place in terms of abiding by the law, it is nearly as well armed a group as Balboa but three-fourths of the arms are illegal and, rather than being in criminal or military or police hands, in the hands of otherwise upstanding and law-abiding civilians . . . which is to say law abiding except insofar as they refuse to be disarmed.

  This place is going to be a horror story once the revolt kicks off.

  If they had two brain cells to rub together or, rather, if their rulers did, no mosque would ever have been given the chance to amass the kind or arsenal this one has. Of course, they couldn’t, because they might have been accused of racism. Now Druze, we may be a race, but Moslems are not; they’ll take anyone.

  But there’s no reasoning with a Kosmo—a cosmopolitan progressive—where his fantasies are concerned.

  I suppose by now the Tauran police forces probably have some idea of what’s been building underneath their feet, but are probably afraid of the civil war it will kick off if they started to violate the mosques’ sanctity.

  Silly folk, Tauran elites; they really think they can hide from what’s coming.

  Too, even if they didn’t want to enter mosques to search, they could have cut off the flow of arms, but that would have been racism, too, if they’d found anything or not. I can almost hear the words, “The Moslems only started stockpiling arms because we’ve made them afraid . . . and you’re only looking for their cars and boats because you’re a racist.”

  Idiots.

  “What was that, Khalid?” asked the imam.

  “Did I say something? I must have been thinking out loud.”

  “Thinking about?” Mohammad prodded.

  “What idiots our enemies are, to permit what we are planning.”

  “Allah has stolen their wits,” the imam said.

  “It must be so.” And, in truth, old man, I agree with you.

  “Il hamdu l’Allah.” To God be the praise.

  “My arms deliveries are complete now,” Khalid said. “Your other preparations?”

  “I cannot speak for the other half dozen mosques in the city,” Mohammad said, “but for my fifteen thousand we have the radios, the medical supplies, and the food you suggested.”

  “How much food, actually?” Khalid asked.

  “Thirty days’ worth,” the imam replied, “or about seven hundred tons. Only about one hundred tons is here, the rest is in various warehouses and safe houses.”

  And that shows the Tauran rulers are doubly idiotic. Arms? Anyone can have arms. When people start stockpiling food on that scale it means they’re serious.

  “Most of my fighters are uniformed, as well. They’re not fancy uniforms, just stout working clothes, gloves, boots, and hats. We don’t have body armor, except for a few. It isn’t so much tightly controlled as simply unavailable.”

  “It is enough,” Khalid said. “Allah will smile upon you and yours for your foresight.” Though He’s unlikely to be too happy with Fernandez and myself for ours.

  Global Court of Justice, Binnenhof, Haarlem

  There was a considerable international crowd gathered outside the halls of the Global Court of Justice, or GCJ. The chants and banners varied from “Peace now!” to “Save the rainforest!” to “Stop the bombing!” to “Death to the Tauran Union!” Even in the innermost depths of the building, the chanting could be felt. In the main courtroom, which abutted on an exterior wall, the chanting made it hard to hear oneself.

  Carrera’s Staff Judge Advocate, Puente-Pequeño, had engaged the Sachsen law firm of Litten, Heinrich, and Kipping to press a lawsuit to ban the Tauran Union from using either aerially dropped munitions, or artillery, in such a way as would damage the Balboan rainforest. There was a protocol to a climate treaty to this effect, called, simply enough, “The Protocol to Protect Indigenous Fauna, Flora, and People of the Rainforests,” duly lodged with the World League, and subsequently ratified and signed by every member of the Tauran Union and a good chunk of the rest of the planet. It was a matter of some speculation to what extent the Treaty, in turn, had been derived from a set of treaties on Old Earth.

  The language was somewhat ambiguous: “No party to this treaty shall permit the cutting of timber on its territory, nor the destruction of habitat, nor the destruction nor displacement of less developed peoples, nor the processing of products on the rainforest. Neither shall they permit their nationals to do so, in their private capacity, either within their own territory nor anywhere on the planet.”

  War, of course, hadn’t been remotely within the consciousness of the Kosmos drafting the treaty; they were of a class for whom war was a horrid abstract, unfit for discussion in polite company, but not an actual problem to consider and deal with. Similar sentiments had made the anti-landmine movement—and there was remarkable commonality between the supporters of both—a bit of precious nonsense.

  Hence, the suit.

  Carrera had explained to Puente-Pequeño that, while it might be nice if the courts would order the various national armed forces of the Tauran Union to stop bombing, that wasn’t the objective of the suit. Instead, the objective was “to drive a wedge between the Tauran elites and their ecofreak minions. I want more riots to add to the other ones we’ll be fomenting. I want their society as disrupted and fragmented as possible. Also, the suit, win or lose, must delegitimize their leaders and the institutions of the Tauran Union in the eyes of the people.”

  Ordinarily, the Global Court of Justice, didn’t have jurisdiction over or between individuals, but only between states and, occasionally, supra- and sub-national organizations. Moreover, for Balboa—the same country which had sentenced to death for treason various Tauran pacifists aspiring to human shield status—it would never do to appear to be hiding behind an international treaty. Thus, state versus state legal action was right out . . . for Balboa. However, the other states of Colombia del Norte, not being at war with the Tauran Union even though they provided some rather elite troops to help defend Balboa, didn’t live under the same moral memetic onus. Therefore, the documentation delivered by Litten, Heinrich, and Kipping, included the signatures of almost every Spanish and Portuguese-speaking state on the planet.

  The President of Atzlan had pretty well summed up the general feeling, “Those do-gooding, self-righteous, posturing Tauran assholes have been using this crap to try to limit our use of our own resources, to develop our own economies, to feed our own people, for decades. Let’s see how they like it when it’s used to harm them!” He then signed with the words, “Gander, meet sauce.”

  In any event, with the roar of the crowd outside ringing in their ears, fully armed with the righteous anger of the yearning masses, this in the form of a multiply presidentially signed motion for injunctive relief, specifically to order a halt to the bombing of the Balboan rain forest, Lawyer Johannes Litten, brief under his left arm, flanked by his legal cohorts, Beate Heinrich and Karlie Kipping, marched to the carpeted marble grand staircase that led up to the courtroom of the day. At the end of the first dozen steps the party came to a landing, also carpeted, from which more steps led to the right and the left. Litten looked right, then lifted his chin to look down his nose at that set. Saying, “Come, ladies,” he, instead, turned ost
entatiously to the left, ascending those stairs.

  The fifteen judges sat along a long bench, under a trio of stained glass windows, with a marble wall behind them and framing the windows. Behind the judges hung a portrait of the current president pro tem of the Tauran Union, Monsieur Gaymard.

  With the slightest of smiles crinkling his lips, Litten cocked his head to the right slightly, looked up at the painting and said, sotto voce, “Ah, I have long been in favor of hanging him up high.”

  Then, amidst the twitters of the onlookers and even a few judges, Litten paced forward and, far more forcefully than might be considered polite, slammed a copy of the motion in front of the chief judge. (This—the delivery, not the slamming—was a formality of this particular court; the judges and clerks had had copies for several weeks.)

  With that, Litten and company retired to their table, to await the judges’ pleasure.

  Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Peace

  The walls were paneled and the wood made of frightfully expensive, and now endangered to the point of approaching extinction, Terra Novan silverwood. At one end of the long conference table, seated under comfortable high gravity, with the huge Yamatan Kurosawa screen on the right-hand wall, was the high admiral.

  “Was it an inside job?” Marguerite asked, forehead propped by the digits on one hand. She carefully kept her face impassive, lest any fraction of her surprise, anger, and hurt leak out. In this, she was not entirely successful.

  “We don’t know,” said Khan, husband. “It seems at least plausible, though.”

  “How many embassies do we have that are at high risk? Minus the one in Santa Josefina, I mean; I have no intention of reopening that one.”