Terra Nova- the Wars of Liberation

by Tom Kratman

  It had been almost two weeks, but Rodrigo was still hanging on. He was pale and thin. The family forced him to drink rich broths when he was awake to maintain both nutrients and fluids. He spent most of his time unconscious, though, sedated by herbal extracts. George was concerned about the long-term effects of the drug, but the boy would have to survive for them to worry about that. It was doubtful that the antibody would work quickly enough to help, so, with the family’s permission, he was about to try the antitoxin.

  The boy’s arms were so thin; George was unable to get the needle into a vein to deliver the injection. Julio had returned, and was about to try when Annalise pushed them both out of the way, manipulated the needle for just a moment, drew back the plunger to reveal a small amount of dark red blood, then deftly injected the antitoxin. She looked up and glared briefly at both men, then smiled sweetly.

  “That’s why I married her,” Julio said. Annalise just snorted.

  Rodrigo had been sleeping, mouth open, breathing heavily through his constricted larynx. The harsh snoring—so like the sound of a hunter’s duck call—cut off. His body started to convulse and both doctors immediately reached to restrain the heaving body. Yelena gasped and started to cry, but after a moment, the convulsions eased and his breathing resumed with a gasp.

  The snoring faded, and George could see the muscles in the face relax. He reached his hand to feel Rodrigo’s throat. It too appeared to be relaxing.

  This might just work.

  The four watched Rodrigo for another hour before turning over the watch to Emilio and retreating to the farmhouse. It was late night, and Julio had men making sure that there had been no unwanted “guests” following any of them. George had been out to the farm many evenings, and it was now common knowledge that he was engaged to Yelena. No one from the UN or TNHO seemed to care too much about Balboa, given the reports that many insurgents were being caught elsewhere, having been discovered when UN and TNHO “humanitarian missions” were vaccinating locals against a virulent new strain of influenza.

  “So we have a cure and a vaccine that the UN can’t trace. Tell me, Tonio, operationally speaking, what’s to keep them—to keep Carvalho—from doing this again?” Julio asked George while they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee with a healthy serving of Don Guerrero’s whiskey.

  “We know the gene sequence. We know what we’re looking for. It will take them time to synthesize a novel nucleotide, and even then, they mostly don’t work. R and Q only work because they just copied Novan nucleotides.” There were dark circles under George’s eyes, but with Yelena snuggled up under his arm, he looked at peace. “Besides, right now, I know more about Novan genetics and immunology than anyone on Earth.”

  “No, that’s a technical answer,” Julio corrected patiently. “I asked you an operational question. What is to keep them from doing this again?”

  “Oh.” George thought a moment. “Well, I am the person most knowledgeable about Novan genetics and how it interacts with human immune system. I suppose we could send them a message. ‘Try this again, and we release a countervirus on Earth.’ It could be a targeted direct-contact virus with secondary spread to anyone on Earth that’s had contact with the Novan nucleotides. That would limit collateral spread to just Carvalho and the lab that made K-fever.”

  “Now that is an operational answer!”

  George smiled as he wiped disinfectant on Julio’s arm and gave him the second injection. “You’re lucky you get to go back after only fifteen years.”

  Julio grinned back, “You should have read the fine print in the contract, Jorge. Standard loan repayment is ten years or fifteen including residency. Sabbaticals and fellowships kick after seven years. You got taken amigo . . .” He stopped as he saw the smile disappear from his friend’s face. “I’m sorry, George, it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

  “It’s the past, Julio. I’m alive, and not in an unmarked grave in Durham or Chorillo. Besides, it wasn’t your fault or mine; it was the fault of the WHO officials who promoted the bastard.” George smiled again, “Besides, I met Yelena here. Her father said ‘yes,’ so we’re getting married in the spring. I’d ask you to be Best Man, but well, you’ve got to go.”

  “Yes, amigo, I do . . . or well, that’s supposed to be your line.” Julio’s grin was back as he pulled down his shirt sleeve and reached over to pull back the sleeve on the opposite arm.

  “Nope, this one goes in the buttocks, drop ’em.” George held up the third syringe as Julio winced, then complied. “Okay, that’s vaccines for H9N6-gamma and K-fever, as well as the Payload.” George put the empty syringe in a heavy red box and closed the lid. A light on the cover turned red and then blinked yellow, followed by a momentary flash of bright light around the edges of the lid, before turning green. “Okay, we’re clean. Now, what are you going to do once you get to Earth?”

  “The fellowship is with Pegram’s old department. The hombre gruñón was forced out by WHO many years ago, but there will be people who remember what happened. They can extract the Payload from my blood and prepare the serum. The WHO annual inspection won’t be for another four to six months after I arrive.” Julio stood up and buckled his belt.

  “. . . and if Lord Lucas accompanies the inspection?”

  “We have word that he’s usually there at some point during the inspection. The new dean is his biggest fan, and Carvalho loves the adoration. We’ll be ready. If I can’t deliver the payload in person—or even if he doesn’t come, we can get to someone in his office.” Julio winced as he worked his arm. “Maldito, that stings.”

  “These sources of yours, you trust them?” George looked doubtful.

  “We have a few friends in the new ‘United Nations Peace Force’ that is replacing the UN Space Fleet and at least one at WHO—but no, I don’t trust them. That’s why they all think the ‘message’ to Carvalho is a computer virus!”

  “Hah,” George responded mirthlessly as he disposed of the remaining syringes in the “sharps” receptacle and placed the used gauze and alcohol wipes in the ’cycler. “You’ll need a source of either natural P or synthetic Q nucleotide to activate the payload. I don’t think you’ll find very much antaniae saliva on Earth.”

  “Si, Madre. I know, I know. The Genetics department should have it, or Biomedical Engineering. They were working on it during my previous sabbatical, and my sources tell me that they can get actual venom if I need it . . . just so long as I don’t carry it myself.” Julio reached out to clasp his friend’s shoulder. “You know, amigo, you should have stayed in Infectious Diseases. You’re very good at it.”

  George looked away. “I’m needed here.”

  Julio released his shoulder when George wouldn’t look at him. “I know,” he spoke quietly. “We could have lost a lot of good men. Besides, I need you to keep an eye on Annalise for me. This is probably a one-way trip.” When George looked up, there were tears in his eyes. Julio continued, “I know, my friend. It shouldn’t be this way. We took an oath: ‘First, do no harm.’”

  George’s expression hardened. “Yes, but they broke it first—a long time ago.” He put his hand to his face, remembering the contours of the face he’d been born with, and smiled a cold, bitter smile. “Sometimes, you have to be a surgeon and cut out the cancer before it spreads.”

  INTERLUDE:

  From Jimenez’s History of the Wars of Liberation

  It’s never been entirely clear whether or not Belisario Carrera knew, either at the time or for many years after, just who he had killed in defense of his village. His own memoirs smack a bit of revisionism, and of remembering with, as we say, “advantages.”

  What is clear, however, was that the death of High Admiral Kotek Annan spiraled very quickly into punitive expeditions, on the part of the UN, attempts at biological warfare by its medical branch, terrorism on the part of everyone, and a cycle of atrocity, reprisal, counter-atrocity, counter-reprisal, mayhem, massacre, not a little rape . . .

  From Primer G
rito: The Memoirs of the Liberator,

  Belisario Carrera

  They can’t have been very well trained, I thought. I wasn’t either, of course; I wasn’t trained at all. If I had been, I wouldn’t have opened our ambush with the order, “READY . . . fire!” but with my own rifle.

  Didn’t make a bit of difference, as it turned out, since they couldn’t hear me over the sounds of their own firing. Indeed, their first warning was when half of them went down in the course of a second or two. Since one of those had taken an arrow in the throat, that meant that our thirty-two shots had managed to inflict a grand total of four wounds, or about one in eight. At under one hundred and fifty meters. With no one actually shooting back. From a prone position.

  Yes, we sucked at the time and for some time after.

  On the other hand, since of the five beaters still standing, only two knew to take cover, we were not appreciably behind the learning curve of the UN Marines of the day, either. No, I had a hard time believing this, too, and I saw it with my own eyes.

  “Reload,” I called out, “reload!”

  We weren’t drilled for rapid reload, but some were faster than others. Over the next minute another thirty or forty shots rang out, irregularly. Sometimes it would be three of four shots within the second; sometimes there would be a gap of four or five seconds between shots. The last half of the minute was wasted, as the remaining standing Marines were bowled over. Me, I was too busy thinking to even attempt to reload.

  There was a brief flurry of shots overhead. Out of the corner of one eye I saw Little Pedro fall limp and soundless to the ground. His father screamed.

  I sent some more men up into the trees, shouting, “Cover us.” Then I told the rest, once again, “Follow me,” adding, “Kill them all, then we’ll go after the other group.”

  I’d said, “Follow me,” but the villagers weren’t paying close attention. In other words, they rushed out on their own, rifles ready. I heard a lot of begging interspersed with the occasional shot . . . or the more frightful scream as someone bludgeoned a survivor to death. Myself, I followed them out but heading for the dandy who’d kept a bit behind.

  As I advanced, I passed one of the UN Marines, laying flat on the ground with his arms stretched out above his head. A quick glance showed a lead splotch on his armor but I couldn’t see where it had penetrated. Maybe he’d had a rib broken. Maybe he’d just lost his wind or been shocked.

  He begged, but in a language I didn’t recognize. Pedro el Cholo was standing over him pointing a rifle at his head, one handed. The Marine closed his eyes and began to pray; I don’t know to who. The shot, mid-prayer, basically caused his head to explode, the top of his skull, skin and hair attached, flying away, spinning flecks of blood all around.

  You’ll get that when you use a fifty-seven caliber rifle firing a two ounce Minié ball at point blank range.

  I continued on until I found my target, lying on his side, trying desperately to staunch the flow of blood from his shattered thigh.

  His rifle, a very nice, expensive-looking rifle, lay by his side. By rights it belonged to me now. I kicked it out of his reach before he could try to take back my rifle.

  For a joke, I cocked the rifle I carried and pointed it at his head, then pulled the trigger. I was rewarded with both a scream and the sudden aroma of voided bowels.

  I told him, and this is exactly what I told him, though I don’t know if he understood, “I should burn you alive. I should burn you alive, you bastard, but there isn’t time. Still, you won’t live to gain revenge for this.”

  I drew my machete and raised it. He put his arms up and squeaked like a little girl. I swung, lopping off one of his hands but then only digging maybe an inch into his neck.

  His eyes widened bigger than I’d have thought possible. He reached with his remaining hand to try to stop the blood gushing from his neck. A coppery stink added itself to the stink of the UN bastard’s shit. I hacked again, and then again. On my fourth slash, his head came free and began to roll . . .

  I picked up my new rifle and looked around, seeing that my people were doing the same.

  “Now let’s go get the rest of them!”

  6.

  Bellona’s GIFT

  Monalisa Foster7

  Mitzi stood on the lookout’s cliff, right up against the ledge, sandaled feet solidly set atop the rock. Her boonie hat, with its broad, drooping brim and dark green, military mottling eased the late afternoon glare as she kept watch.

  Hundreds of meters below, the crash of the waves wasn’t quite right. Even after more than a decade, she could hear the difference of rhythm, like a song played on a piano with a missing key. Terra Nova’s three moons rivaled Earth’s only when they were properly aligned. Even then, the tides weren’t as strong, and for some reason, it was the wrongness of those crashing waves that still stood out. Not the color. Not the smell. Her memories of those things had faded enough that these colors, these scents now had the familiarity of home.

  Insidious progressivines had crept right up to the ledge. Like giant snakes or the tentacles of some vile monster, they would eventually choke out everything around them. An odd species, more parasite and man-trap than weed, the result was always the same: a slow blight of destruction in need of constant pruning. She stomped a vine into the soil. Within moments, her feet and ankles were stained with an oozing, oily green-black. Taking a deep, cleansing breath she cast her gaze back out over the Shimmering Sea.

  The breeze shifted with the clouds darkening the horizon. The line separating water and sky blurred. It hardly seemed worth making the climb, but there was something about all that unbroken water, that ever-changing sky, that beckoning vastness that made her volunteer to make the climb twice a day. She blinked the wind-sourced moisture from her lashes. Out there, a white speck separated the seam of water and sky.

  She raised the binoculars to her eyes and adjusted one eyepiece and then the other. The speck was still a speck, albeit several times bigger. Shaped like a megalodon’s fin, it rose peacefully from beneath the horizon rather than slicing through the water.

  A mast and the hint of a sail. Definitely not a meg. Nevertheless, her stomach hardened, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose.

  Calm down. They swoop in from the sky.

  “They” being the enemy. The UN cowards. The thieves, murderers and rapists that had uprooted her family and sentenced them to “transportation.”

  Such an innocent word. Much better than exile or deportation or being forever torn from everything and everyone you’ve ever known, profound loss the only certainty in your life. Much better than being shoved into a coffin and frozen, not knowing if you’d ever wake up, your life now in the hands of the same people that took your lands, your home, and your innocence. Much better than being a troublesome piece of meat.

  Even after all these years, memories of waking up on the Amerigo Vespucci colonization ship made an arctic chill seep into her soul. Despite the tropical heat, goosebumps rose on her body.

  It had been years since anything good had come to Cochea. Uprooted once again, her people had fled the tiny settlement they’d come to call home: the women, children, and elderly to the caves; the men to the jungle. Mitzi’s father, Belisario Carrera, and his men were now scattered across two hundred square kilometers on the other side of the isthmus, their numbers dwindling by the day, but not as fast as the ammo for their captured guns. For lack of ammunition to feed them, their best fighters had resorted to burying even their prized sniper rifles.

  Her father had been known to say, “The war goes on until we are, all of us, free.”

  The dead are free, aren’t they?

  The binoculars quivered for a moment, then steadied. The main mast was joined by two others. At the bow, four-stacked sails swelled and billowed with the wind.

  There was no flag, at least not that she could see.

  She shoved the binoculars into her knapsack and carefully looked down. Nine-year-old Diego had clim
bed down onto a sliver of an outcropping about ten meters down the cliff-face. The boy was like a mountain goat, spry, sure-footed, and fearless, whereas it took all her will to just stand there. She called down, describing what she’d seen and told him to warn the others. He nodded and jumped to another ledge.

  Mitzi took a step back, no longer able to bear the vertigo. She drank the last of her water from the battered canteen at her waist, and resumed her watch. It was nearly sundown when she left the cliff and headed down the trail. A cooling westerly breeze tugged the boonie hat off her head, sending her hair down in a tumble. She gathered and twisted it back into a sweat-soaked bun, reseated the hat and tightened the chin strap.

  The muddy, well-worn footpath snaked into the perpetual twilight of the jungle’s triple canopy. The vegetation intertwined so closely that by the time light reached the jungled floor, it lost to darkness.

  Sandals sloshing, she raced past pools of fading light. She turned at a fork marked by the rusting, crumpled remains of an enemy vehicle. The cowards had abandoned it to the jungle.

  Covered in slime and moss, it was slowly blending into its surroundings. The not-so-native trixies had claimed it as their own. One of the red-and-gold flying reptiles, its bony tail swishing back and forth, preened atop the barrel of the vehicle’s roof-mounted mini-gun. The trixie screeched, revealing razor-sharp teeth.

  “I know, I know.”

  Mitzi wasn’t exactly small, or old, or weak, but she was alone, and the venom-less, septic-mouthed moonbats that came out at night could still take a bite out of her. Unarmed, she couldn’t fight them off, and even one bite would debilitate her enough to allow the vile creatures to feed on her at their leisure.

  They’d take their time too, the nasty things. They preferred the taste of still-living prey and, barring rescue by a flock of ravenous trixies—the moonbats’ natural predators—well, it’d be a long, unpleasant death. She quickened her pace.