A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  That having failed, she was using a combination of “Bronze Bild,” a Sachsen image matching program, several ship-watching sites, and an intelligence program for sorting data. Those had narrowed the field down to, Oh, call it about five thousand ships that could be it. Five thousand . . . shit.

  She had worked with those for several hours, feeling no closer to her goal at the end than she had in the beginning, Or even in Cochin, for that matter. This is hopeless for one girl on her own. A couple score could work through the problem in a few days, I imagine, but I cannot risk that many people suspecting. I can’t even risk Turenge knowing. Those spacesuits . . .

  So what else might work? How about if I look into known Balboan contacts, formerly used ports, and sources of supply? Well, start on that one tomorrow night, since I can only duck out of the office occasionally during a duty day, while Janier is still—pretty reasonably, in my humble opinion—stressing himself into an early grave over trying to clear the port of Cristobal while not really knowing what’s behind him.

  The ancient anti-aircraft guns cut out, which cease-fire was followed by a substantial boom, surprisingly close. The large plate glass window rattled but held.

  Leaving the few small coins that constituted her change next to the cup, Jan got up and left. She supposed, in retrospect, that while ignoring the incoming bomb, in general, was sound, given the odds, staying in a place with a plate glass window, which would have made even a fairly distant miss potentially quite deadly, was dumb as shit. Note to self, new coffee shop tomorrow.

  The new Defense Agency Headquarters wasn’t far. Rather than calling for a taxi or for her usual driver, she decided to walk it. And besides, if someone gets inquisitive about my whereabouts, I’d rather not give them a coffee shop’s account and records to check.

  As she walked, she passed several shipping containers, sandbagged against blast and fragments, plopped down wherever there might be space. They served as convenient, cheap, and, once reinforced, reasonably effective bomb shelters. The sandbag layers appeared to be about half a meter deep, on all sides, but heavier on top. More sandbags formed dog-legged entrances, sheltered against fragments but a little precarious for the blast from a near miss.

  As the all-clear sirens sounded, people began to emerge, frightened and shaking from the experience. A few looked at her as if she were a madwoman, or too stupid to take shelter. Her own face didn’t show her feelings. Pussies, the odds of getting killed or even hurt were small. Stay at your jobs. More people are being hurt by stampedes than by the bombings.

  A bit closer to the agency headquarters, she came to a still smoking crater and a number of burning cars. People were coming out from a brace of shelters, on opposite sides of the street, not too far away from the crater. Some wept. A few staggered. There were even a couple of people bleeding from superficial wounds. All looked to be in shock. Jan’s face remained impassive and indifferent.

  That is, Jan’s face remained impassive while taking in the mice who walked like men, scurrying away. She looked back at the shelters though, and suddenly smiled. Turning, she walked to the dog-legged entrance to one, the sandbags of the leg, itself, having been knocked over. She looked inside. No bodies. Not even one.

  She recalled seeing a largish number of shipping containers during her brief captivity in Balboa. Then she called up the memory of some intelligence reports she’d seen.

  Twenty-five to thirty good-sized freighters came to Balboa between the invasions, not counting the ones we know were late contracts to bring in non-military, or at least not obviously military, supplies. Twelve were container ships, ten as big as would fit the country’s transitway and the other two ultramaxes carrying over seven thousand twelve-meter containers each. At least forty thousand prefabricated bunkers, anyone? Yes, about that many; they came in full and we know they left empty.

  I think the general needs to know that, whatever the flyboys are telling him, losses-wise the aerial campaign probably counts as “mere” in the Balboan ledgers.

  Campbell continued on her way. When she reached the Defense Agency headquarters and her own office, a message was waiting for her from Janier. It seemed he was most unhappy with the performance of Claudio Marciano and wanted her to go see what was going on in war-torn Santa Josefina, with an eye toward getting Marciano recalled.

  “This kind of thing is hardly my purview,” she’d wired back. “I’m intelligence, but not a head hunter.”

  His prompt response had been, “We’re bleeding like stuck pigs trying to take the port of Cristobal, nobody more so than your own boys. I know Marciano needs more men but they aren’t available. I need someone there who will hang on until the war here is over. I know you’re intelligence, but more importantly you’re intelligent. So go either make sense to Marciano or get me grounds to remove him.”

  Hmmm . . . when he puts it that way. And it can’t be too difficult for Stuart-Mansfield to get me press credentials. I just hope there’s nobody in our contingent in Santa Josefina who knows me . . . in any sense.

  Headquarters, Task Force Jesuit, Nacientes, Santa Josefina

  The old base at Rio Clara had been abandoned and burned over the course of several days. The new one wasn’t much yet beyond tents and some motor pool areas, barbed wire, a defensive berm, and a bunch of radio antennae. To Jan Campbell it seemed almost homelike.

  Campbell’s trip had been considerably less stressful than Aragon’s in either direction. Armed with credentials—and, my, wasn’t that quick?—and authorized to fly military as an ostensible civilian, she gone in directly to Julio Asunción Airport on a Castilian medical flight. A half hour of talking to Rall and del Collea later by the main map—Marciano was too busy to bother—and she’d messaged Turenge to forward to Janier, “He has no choice. If he doesn’t either get more force or shorten his lines, Task Force Jesuit won’t last ten days longer. If that happens the equivalent of a very large and unusually powerful division, plus more than a corps of what amounts to home guard, will descend on the Zhong from the east. After that, they won’t even be able to give a pretense of fixing any of Carrera’s legions, all of which will then be free to face you.”

  Janier’s response, in turn, was pithy. “Merde.”

  Jan almost echoed that sentiment, “Shit,” when she first caught sight of the black uniformed girl hanging around the headquarters and occasionally consulting with Marciano or one or both of his two chief assistants. I’m as straight as they come, thought Campbell, but if I did prefer girls, that would be the kind of girl I’d prefer to prefer. That was her first thought. Her second came as a surprise. Crap, I missed the uniform. She’s one of them, the Earthers. She knows their ships. It’s things like this that so complicate the case for the nonexistence of God.

  Bide my time a bit, yes, but I need to talk to her.

  Jan’s chance came the better part of a day later, at early breakfast in the officers’ mess, of which she’d been made a courtesy member. She very rarely heard her native accent in her thoughts but in this case, Bludy bastards just like ’avin’ me tits around.

  Seeing Esma alone, she sat down opposite her at a square folding table. Fortunately, she’d picked up enough Spanish in Balboa to get by, as well as enough to avoid her own thick accent in her own tongue.

  “Do you mind, miss?” Campbell asked.

  Esma, shy as was often the case, just quietly shook her head in the negative.

  “Thank you,” Jan said. “I couldn’t help but notice you and your uniform. You’re with the Peace Fleet, yes?”

  Swallowing to clear her unreliable throat, Esma answered, “Yes; I work for the high admiral. Ensign Miranda,” she added, holding out her hand.

  “Jan Campbell,” Jan answered, shaking the girl’s hand in an informal and friendly way. “Daily Post.”

  There had been some question over using her real name but, as Stuart-Mansfield had pointed out, if she was recognized under her own name, “Oh, I left the army and am working for the Daily Post,” was a l
ot less suspicious than, “Oh, I left the Army, went to court to change my name, and now work for the Daily Post.” She’d considered and rejected herself the other possible line, “Well, I got married.” She wasn’t the type to give up her own name for anybody.

  “You work for the high admiral in an office of some kind or more . . . directly?” Jan quizzed.

  “Pretty direct,” Esma said. “I’m detached as an observer—officially I’m an observer—to General Marciano. Normally though I’m somewhere between a cabin girl and an aide de camp.”

  “Ah . . . well . . . in that case, you’re going to know a lot of things you have no business telling me or anyone else. Okay, Jan, no pumping the girl for operational information.”

  That got a laugh from the girl. “Thank you,” she said.

  “But can I pump you about some things that aren’t secret? You can tell me to butt out any time but . . . well . . . I’ve been in love with the idea of space travel, travelling to new worlds, since I was a little girl. Can you please tell me what it’s like to live, work, and travel on a starship?”

  My, thought Jan, as she digested the information she’d gained, wasn’t that a lovely little intelligence gathering cum interrogation session? So, yes, the space suits are for an assault on the ship, either from outside entirely or from a possibly unpressurized hangar deck. No air on that latter if the captain doesn’t want there to be. So now the question is, how the hell do they get from the planet’s surface to the ship, whichever ship they’re targeting, in orbit?

  It’s possible, I suppose, that they have only an intent, but not a real plan. I could see them buying the suits against the chance of someday being able to launch a ship of their own, or capture one from the Peace Fleet. On the other hand, those suits cost a lot of money. Something I think people miss about Carrera; he looks like he spends like the prodigal son, but he’s cheap as dirt as an instinctive matter. He’d not have spent the money if he didn’t have a plan and either the means or a way to get the means.

  “And that means . . .” She gave a long, eloquent whistle.

  That ship; it’s going to get him the means to get into space.

  And how do I actually feel about that? Do I care a fig for Old Earth? Not a bit of it. Are they our allies, to whom I owe some kind of duty? Not remotely, they’ve been using us and our soldiers like cheap whores. Win or lose on the ground in Balboa, is my country hurt by the Earthpigs being hurt or even destroyed? No; no, it will all be done one way or another, and independently of what happens here.

  So fuck ’em, the arrogant pricks; we’re all better off with them out of the picture.

  Julio Asunción Airport, Aserri, Santa Josefina

  “Better than nothing, I suppose,” said Rall, as five new battalions, two gendarmie from Gaul, two carabinieri from Tuscany, and a battalion of police from Sachsen formed up in ranks on the tarmac outside the cargo airship that had brought them. From behind the airship light armored vehicles, wheeled for the most part, disgorged themselves. A number of helicopters, partially disassembled and mounted on rollable frames, came out the rear ramp as well.

  “The Tuscans and Gauls are better than regular infantry,” del Collea corrected. “I know you Sachsens don’t have them, nor anything like them, but these guys, a mix of policeman and light infantry in their organization, training, and equipment, are the best, just the best, for guerilla suppression and rear area security.”

  “One battalion to embassy security,” commanded Marciano. “We’ll rotate them in and out for a rest. For the other four, send them to the assembly area for the troops we’re going to launch at the fuckers who attacked the embassies. Let’s see how that one battalion likes dealing with seven. With artillery.

  “Rall?”

  “General?”

  “Curb your prejudices and think of these men as professional light infantry with some additional skills.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll try, sir.”

  “General, we’ve got a breathing space now,” del Collea said. “Instead of attacking into about half a vacuum I’d suggest putting the gendarmes and carabinieri into intelligence gathering, en masse, so when we strike we hit something. We probably only need to keep one infantry battalion for that; the rest can reoccupy our old positions to the northwest.”

  Marciano thought about that for a while, eyes squinting against the sun but focused on the lean, sunburned, and tough faces of the new arrivals.

  “They are pretty good at that kind of thing, aren’t they? All right, we can do that now. And set me up a meeting with the commanders of all five new battalions; I learned a lot about guerilla suppression in Pashtia from Carrera and I would like—oh, I so would like—to pass some of those lessons on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Stefano?”

  “Sir?”

  “Send a case of wine from the officers’ mess—no; instead make it my personal stock—direct to Janier. The frog son of a bitch went way out on a limb for us this time and deserves a reward.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.”

  —Leon Trotsky

  Internment Area, Puerto Bruselas, Santa Josefina

  In the shadow of the aircraft carrier, Dos Lindas stood two men in the denim uniform of local security guards. The senior of the two, sometimes called “Centurion Mora,” was unarmed. The junior, Sanchez, was armed only with a shotgun. Both watched the newly arrived Taurans fanning out to take up positions all around the shoreline.

  Said Centurion Mora, “Colonel Nguyen told my class that it was the police, not enemy infantry, artillery, or tanks, that were the most dangerous opponents of the revolution.”

  Sanchez nodded, slightly. “Not immediately; for a little while they’ll be in the dark.”

  “But only a little while,” Mora added. “We see them so often directing traffic that we forget too readily that police are, in good part, intelligence gathering organizations. And I wonder how much intelligence they already have. Do you think they know we’re actually part of the resistance, operating under the cover of idiot law?”

  “Yes,” said Sanchez, pointing with his chin. “And I think they’re coming to arrest us now. Fight?”

  Mora looked at a small column of uniformed Taurans, maybe in platoon strength, marching toward them, rifles held in front of their chests at port arms.

  Weighing the impossible odds, Mora commanded, “No, don’t fight. Bluff, lie, whatever it takes. But I think we’re going to be out of work for a while.”

  He pulled out his cell phone, pressed a few buttons to dial up his platoon sergeant, and then, after a brief pause, said the word, “Conejo,” or rabbit. That was the code to get low and in the shadows and hide for a while.

  “Oh, well,” said Mora, “we had a pretty good run for a while.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Sanchez. “You know, those guys give off the feel of a real force, one that acts like an infantry company because they live like an infantry company. I wonder how many units like that the Taurans have.”

  “No clue, but it’s a good question. Unfortunately . . .”

  Mora shut up as the approaching Tauran column halted about ten meters away. Their leader then gave a command. The leading man on the right of the column stepped out, gave a command of his own, and then nine men fixed their bayonets. On a second command they rushed the two “guards.”

  The Taurans formed a ring about Mora and Sanchez, most leveling their bayonetted rifles menacingly. Two, however, took ostentatiously careful aim. Their leader stepped past the ring, snatched Sanchez’s shotgun, and announced, in very badly accented Spanish, “I am Vice Brigadiere Martone and you two shits are under arrest.”

  Nacientes Internment Camp, Santa Josefina

  With Task Force Jesuit rolling forward to reoccupy their previous positions to the south and northwest, Marciano decided that part of the never completed and not yet abandoned headquarters camp would, with
the addition of some towers and barbed wire, make a fine holding pen for the guerillas and their sympathizers being rounded up daily. The president of the country, Calderon, of course, objected, as did any number of human rights lawyers and other very sensitive and caring people.

  Sister Mary Magdalene of Pax Vobiscum was one such. Sadly for the cause of human rights, the Gallic gendarmes were not cut from the same cloth as the usual Gauls she, Father Segundo, and their organization normally dealt with. Indeed, the entire organization, already under deferred sentence of death in Balboa, was picked up within the space of a dozen hours, each member being handed a plastic cup and bowl, as well as a spoon, before being unceremoniously pushed behind the wire.

  Along with Pax Vobiscum went into the holding pen some seventeen human rights lawyers, thirty-one peace activists from the Federated States, fourteen Santa Josefinan police, including the president’s military advisor, Lieutenant Blanco, and, to date, two hundred and seventy-one previously clandestine members of Second Cohort, Tercio Le Virgen.

  All were subject to considerable interrogation by men and women who were, unlike most military interrogators, long service professionals of vast training, considerable experience, and no little skill.

  “Well, of course you can be hanged or shot,” said Adjutant de Gaullejac to Corporal Sanchez. She was tall and slender, sexy in her own way, albeit no longer young.

  “We know your unit was involved in the terrorist attacks on the embassies. We even know which embassy you, personally, were involved in attacking. Tsk.” That was a lie, of course, but it would suggest to the captive that someone in his group had already broken, and he couldn’t refute it by asking “which one” because that would be an admission of guilt for someone. “We both know your people murdered several hundred innocent civilians. As part of those organizations, as a coconspirator, you’re as guilty as any man who pulled a trigger. You’ll get a trial, of course, but don’t expect it to be much. And—exigencies of war and all—you won’t get an appeal and your execution won’t be advertised in time for anyone to make a deal for you.”