Terra Nova- the Wars of Liberation

by Tom Kratman

  The sun was more than halfway through its arc, and there’d been no sign of pursuit. Something was on their side—either good planning or dumb luck. Or self-interest. Perhaps her attacker wouldn’t report letting a thief get the best of him.

  She nodded.

  Juan held her hand all the way to the rendezvous site, a clearing at the base of a tiered waterfall that spilled into a pond. The water flowed over the ledges like crystal veils piercing emerald silk.

  The area around the pond was undisturbed, with no signs of recent use, no animal droppings, and no foot- or hoof-prints.

  “Our people haven’t been here yet,” she said.

  “I’ll start a fire.” He let go of her hand, set the pack down, and gathered stones for the fire pit.

  She set the escopeta aside and shrugged out of the shirt to wash it. The scrubbing motion reawakened the pain in the heel of her palm. It throbbed, protesting any further tenderizing. She flexed her hand, testing it. She’d hit the would-be rapist hard enough to bruise. Hard enough to feel a pain like shin splints all along her forearm. And it had felt glorious. Freeing. Right.

  Leaning over the placid water, she caught her reflection and grimaced. The bruise that circled her neck looked like she’d survived a hanging. She couldn’t recall how she’d gotten the split in her lip. Or the cut above her brow. And she was still covered in mud and sweat.

  Within moments she was out of her sandals and castoffs and underneath the waterfall. She tucked her head, letting the soothing water work the knots out of her back and shoulders. Combing her fingers through the fall of her hair, she closed her eyes and tilted her head.

  The scent of clean, male musk flowed along the breeze. She opened her eyes to find Juan standing over her, wet hair slicked back, looking like some mythical sea god risen from his watery domain. His gaze met hers as his thumb traced her lip line, lingering at the cut there. Then the one at her brow. The blue eyes questioned in silence.

  Her breath caught.

  He leaned closer, thick dark lashes fanning a scorching gaze. His face hovered over hers for what seemed like an eternity as something deep inside her untangled to feed a rising, torturing anticipation.

  His lips touched hers.

  Her fingers tangled in his hair, drawing him in so he could devour and be devoured in turn. They shared breath after breath, touch after touch. Roughened hands anchored to her hips, he pulled her against him, leaving no doubt as to what she did to him. He wanted her.

  Having tasted him, she broke their kiss to savor his scent, inhaling deeply, running her cheek against his roughened jaw. Despite the cooling water, his lips continued to trace a line of fire to her brow, then to the bruise circling her neck. He lingered there longest, soothing. A balm.

  For all her pain.

  Within easy reach, the escopeta rested behind Juan, as flames from the fire cast shadows that seemed to dance to the music of the waterfall. Mitzi lay in the shelter of his body, resting her head on a makeshift pillow. Her face was soft in sleep, the fall of her hair draping across her still-naked form. He could live out the rest of his life with nothing and no one else to look at, if he could only make this moment last so long.

  He’d insisted on taking first watch, knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Even now, his heart drummed in his chest, like an untamed thing. A war drum. His thoughts were likewise, in turmoil.

  What have I done?

  He caressed the swell of her hip, admiring her curves. The softness of her skin belied the strength beneath, just like her silence had. She would not speak to him of what had happened, of the blood, the bruises. He hadn’t pressed. When she was ready, she’d tell him. All that mattered was that she’d emerged victorious. He squeezed her hip and she snuggled closer. Greed tugged at him, wanting—demanding—more.

  Mine.

  He took a shuddering breath. His. She could be his. And he, hers. He would make a good husband.

  Unlike his people who’d bought passage on the colonization ship, hers had been sentenced to their lives here. How would she feel about being uprooted once again? Would she even leave her family with the fight not won?

  He could stay. They needed fighters. All he required was some training. He was willing to fight for them—for her. They had come here for that purpose—to fight for liberty. Their fates had been intertwined from the start.

  Across a sky barely lit by the smallest of Terra Nova’s moons—Bellona—distant guns thundered. Eyes wide, Mitzi jerked upright and pulled the thin blanket around her.

  “It’s all right,” he said, pushing aside the netting as he sat up. “They’re far away.”

  Her gaze traveled above the treetops, to where a sinister light pulsed and swelled against the distant horizon. A staccato of softer sounds was answered by a deeper boom. Cannons?

  Mitzi rose, parted the netting around them, and retrieved the clothes that had been set to dry on rocks around the fire. She tugged her underclothes on with urgency, but fumbled for shirt buttons that were no longer there. She drew her pants over long legs, but her belt fought back when she tried to cinch it.

  He followed and stepped into his pants.

  Silence fell. Something like the faint call of a bugle echoed, barely there and receding. Even to his untrained ear it sounded like retreat.

  She slipped into sandals.

  There were tears in her eyes when she stood to face him. “Stay here,” she said, going for the escopeta behind him.

  “No.” He grabbed her arm.

  She tried to shake him off, but he pulled her into his embrace and held her. “If you think I’m letting you go off by yourself, you’re crazy,” he whispered into her ear.

  “Someone needs to stay here, or all this will have been for nothing.”

  The token words had none of the determination with which she usually spoke. She knew. Knew as well as he did, that it was folly to go, that one or both of them would make no difference to whatever was going on out there. Not without the cargo they’d brought. The cargo that wasn’t here yet.

  “Then we both go.”

  Another distant roar. Her fingers dug into his arm. “Those are my people. My father.”

  “I know.”

  He held her as she flinched with every explosion. She buried her face in his chest.

  “Everything will be fine, you’ll see,” he said as the noise and light ceased.

  At some point she had relaxed against him.

  “How do you know?”

  “The stars are shining.”

  Morning greeted them without cannons, bugles or drums. Whatever her father had been doing, it was over. Mitzi studied her map, folded it, and paced. Unfolded it again. She had a good idea of where he could be, but uncertainty gnawed at her gut.

  Juan snored softly atop their makeshift bedroll, his tossing and turning mimicking her own churning doubts. Would he stay? Could she convince him to stay? Stay? She huffed out a surprised breath. She wanted to stay.

  The edges of the bruise on her palm were fading to green. For years she’d wished for the chance to escape this place and all its demons, tormented by the guilt that came with knowing that her family wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for her. She wouldn’t have abandoned her family—not even in those selfish moments when being el jefe’s daughter meant pretending she didn’t hear the warnings the young men around her received as a matter of course—but she had wished that she could. And there was her opportunity for escape, on the bedroll, and she wanted him to stay.

  Here. With her. For her.

  One of Juan’s shirts was still spread out on the rocks. Its fabric was soft and clean. She scrunched it up and buried her face in it, savoring the masculine scent lingering in its fibers. She’d never be satisfied with just the memory of him.

  No more regrets. If she had to do the same again . . . she would. And she would make her father understand—whatever it took—and dare him to deny her.

  A wicked smile crept across her face. She opened her eyes and cast
a sideways glance at her still-sleeping man. She donned his shirt—its buttons still worked, after all. He could wear the damaged one, or better yet, go without.

  She pushed the netting aside, knelt, and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. He stirred, eyes fluttering, lips seeking hers even as she pulled away.

  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he rolled to his side. “Good morni—”

  The braying of a donkey bounced off the cliff face, a second before the source of the sound barreled through the foliage like a beast possessed, bee-lining for them like he was going to mow them down. Mitzi stepped out of the donkey’s way just as Juan rolled, barely avoiding careless hooves.

  Felix burst out of the jungle, shouting something that sounded very much like a curse. Eyes wide, he sprinted towards her and almost took her down with his enthusiasm.

  “Mitzi, Mitzi, you made it.” An instant later he stepped back, cheeks blazing at the taboo of having his wiry arms around her. His gaze lingered on her healing lip and brow. He frowned at the one on her neck. His hands, no longer awkwardly hanging at his side, tightened on the bow sling crossing his chest.

  “So did you,” she said. Smiling, she pulled him to her so she could kiss the top of his head before he could draw the wrong conclusions. She gave him a squeeze that made his eyes go even wider. He stepped back, his gaze darting, doubt and disbelief playing over his face, but he relaxed.

  Juan was lacing up his boots as the donkey carelessly slurped at the water. A bell sounded in the distance accompanied by a chorus of nickers, snorts and a drawn-out neigh.

  “Sorry we’re late. We lost one of the mules,” Felix said as the rest of their party emerged from the trees.

  Mitzi and Juan reached Joe at the same time. He looked better than she’d expected. He was still riding in the litter, but he was propped up into a sitting position, rifle across his lap. The amount of sweat on his brow betrayed the lingering fever, but he was smiling at them.

  Joe and Juan traded reports with the abbreviated bravado of old friends reassuring each other. There was a slight tremor in her hands as she prepared the antibiotic. She’d expected teasing and judging gazes. Her hands steadied as she shot the antibiotic into her patient’s good arm.

  “Ouch.” Joe flinched at the sudden sting as she pushed down on the plunger, too hard and fast for comfort.

  “You big baby.” Carr’s mocking voice was colored with relief as he gave Mitzi a grateful nod.

  She checked the dressing. No infection. No tell-tale smell. They had kept it clean. She wished Esmeralda was here. Her little sister was the better medic, the gentler touch.

  “Here,” Mitzi said, handing Joe painkillers and steroids. She wasn’t sure if she should up-dose him or not, given that so much time had passed, and that he was doing better, somehow, all on his own. Lucky gringo.

  He gulped the pills down and joined the ongoing banter . . .

  “Did you hear the explosions?”

  “—smilodon, and—”

  “What about the helicopters?”

  “Helicopters? No. Cannons.”

  “How could you miss—”

  A few hours later they were in the deep jungle again. Juan rode at her side, rifle in hand once more.

  “I told you everything would be fine,” Juan said.

  She nodded, gaze intent on the path ahead. They were close. They had to be. Dread over facing her father, fear at finding that they were too late, relief that they had made it this far, all took their turn battering her.

  It was Pedro, her father’s best sniper, who found them.

  “We’re down to seventy-five men,” Pedro told her as he assessed the reinforcements she’d brought. She could tell by his expression that he found the gringos wanting.

  “Your father is thinking of surrendering,” he added in a whisper as he took the mare’s reins and led them towards the camp.

  “I didn’t think that word was in Father’s vocabulary.”

  “He’d rather surrender to the honorable enemies than the maricones,” Pedro said.

  He meant the Gurkhas and Sikhs. Despite the fact that both of those groups were part of the contingent sent to hunt them all down and kill them, her father respected them for their adherence to honorable behaviors. Well, that and their guts, toughness, and discipline.

  She hopped down so she could walk at Pedro’s side. The gringos dismounted as well, as if she’d given some silent order.

  Pedro shrugged. The little loin-clothed man walked on, his gaze intent on his bare feet as they walked into the center of camp. Ragged tents, cooking fires, and camouflage netting surrounded a handful of the supposed seventy-five fighting men who’d survived.

  Exhausted faces greeted them, blinking in disbelief.

  Juan was at her side, rifle slung over his shoulder. His arm found its place around her waist. She turned to catch his gaze. He smiled that blindingly optimistic smile of his.

  Father emerged from a tent. His gaze came to rest on her mother’s escopeta and his face hardened.

  She must not let him think something had happened to her mother.

  “Mom says ‘hi.’ She told me to lead these men to you. Even loaned me her shotgun for safety and I never would have expected her to do that.” She cringed at the fumbling words. All it took was Father’s presence to make her feel like a child again.

  Juan’s arm tightened around her waist.

  Her father frowned past them, no doubt trying to make sense of the heavily laden mules and her mother’s strange instructions.

  Juan stepped forward, hand extended in greeting. “Are you Belisario Carrera?”

  “I am.” One piercing blue gaze met another as they shook hands.

  “Sir, I’m Juan Alvarez, Jr., from down in Southern Columbia, and, sir, we’ve brought some things I think you maybe need.”

  INTERLUDE:

  From Jimenez’s History of the Wars of Liberation

  Though we—all of us, all across the planet—should never lose sight or memory of the courage and determination of our ancestors, we also ought to remember that, absent help from certain safe areas, we’d still be under Old Earth.

  Help, however, ran in two directions. If we, in Balboa, were the beneficiaries of gringo charity, no less was the UN the beneficiary of human capital from our own planet.

  This came in several forms. One was obvious, corvee labor, more honestly called slave labor, from some aspects of our population. They had, too, informers galore, local women engaged in what we might euphemistically call “morale support,” a number of whom were informers for us. There were also policemen who sometimes assisted them, if only by keeping peace in areas the UN had pacified, bureaucrats who did the important work of collecting taxes, usually in kind, to keep the UN troops fed, road builders, wood cutter, animal breeders, etc.

  One of the more ambitious projects, however, involved the use of Uhuran mercenary troops in the exceedingly hot—in both senses—Cochin Front. . . .

  7.

  The Panther Men

  Justin Watson8

  FROM: MARSHALL HIMCHAN MOON, COMMANDER UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING FORCE–TERRA NOVA

  TO: GENERAL JEAN-PAUL ARCAND, COMMANDER-UN FORCES COCHINA

  SUBJECT: UNACCEPTABLE

  Jean-Paul, I have long defended your unorthodox decisions, but arming neo-barbarian Terra Novans with modern equipment? The SecGen himself is aware and annoyed that you’ve undertaken something so brazen without so much as a by-your-leave. Taking this in conjunction with the massacre of the Italian contingent and your disappointing opium harvest, there are elements on the council calling for your relief. Give me something, some justification for your actions, some reason why I can or should oppose the people howling for your head.

  ACK ASAP

  MOON

  FROM: GENERAL JEAN-PAUL ARCAND, COMMANDER-UN FORCES COCHINA

  TO: MARSHALL HIMCHAN MOON, COMMANDER UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING FORCE–TERRA NOVA

  SUBJECT: RE: UNACCEPTABLE

  Th
e Italians were massacred because you appointed a useless, whore-mongering drunkard as their commander and refused to listen when I tried to have him relieved. The opium numbers for Lang Xan and Angkok were better than mine this year because the Cochinese Liberation Front simply buys safe haven from the cowardly incompetents you’ve placed in command there with stolen opium. As for why I’m arming Terra Novan neobarbs, that reasoning is simple; because it will work. I assure you my Zulu mercenaries make far better soldiers than the soft city boys and irredeemable criminal scum you’ve been sending me, and we don’t have to pay the outrageous expense of transporting the Zulu on interstellar spaceships.

  If you want to relieve me, you’re welcome to come and try.

  SCIPIO, OUT.

  Thung Lung Xanh District

  Cochin Colony, Terra Nova

  Arcand’s guts rippled unpleasantly as another volley of artillery shells landed on the redoubt four hundred meters to his front. The ring of hilltop fortifications was occluded by black-gray-brown clouds of fragmentation, smoke and upturned mud, but once the smoke cleared he could see the boxy shapes of the bunkers were un-deformed and defiant.

  His Zulu mercenaries surrounded a trio of fortified hills rising from the middle of an island in the junction of the Green River Valley with the Snake and Horn Rivers. The island had long since been cleared of jungle. The hills guarded a compound of metal containerized housing units, wire and sandbags, once occupied by UN troops, now in the hands of Cochin Liberation Front resistance fighters.

  The hilltops provided clear observation for miles along all three rivers. Given Cochina’s lack of a road network, each water way was an essential vein of goods and information and vital to controlling the colony. Arcand had posted two companies of infantry to hold this island, with heavy fortifications and a full battery of mortars.

  And STILL those worthless fucking Dagos managed to lose the damned base.