by Tom Kratman
The local, a man light enough in complexion, as well as blond and blue-eyed enough, to give the lie to the name, “Singh,” resisted the urge to answer with his actual thought and the truth, I’m here because your armed goon squad dragged me here. No, this wasn’t the time for honesty.
Unlike most UN troops, the interrogator’s uniform bore no nametag, though she went by the name of Loretta Castro. She asked the same basic question again with a little more implied to it. “Why are you here when your people are all over in Whirinaki?”
Whirinaki had been subject to the same routine a few days prior that New Wairakei was experiencing today. Eventually, the entire island, and possibly the entire world, would be DNA registered, the better to allow UN forces to know who belonged where and, more importantly, who did not.
“I married one of the local girls,” answered Singh. He was not—not quite—a prisoner yet and would have been just as happy to remain that way. His cell would have preferred it, too.
“Indeed?” Castro typed a few words into her keyboard, then turned around a computer monitor that sat on her field desk, though off to one side. The monitor had pictures of several score of the local females. and said, “Point her out to me, please.”
“Ah, well, she died, you see?”
“Indeed? And so point out your mother-in-law, please?”
“Her, too. Dead. Pouakai attack.” The Pouakai were a very large brand of eagle, extinct on Old Earth for more than half a millennium, but still flourishing on Wellington, on Terra Nova.
“Indeed? And they’re both in the cemetery? How are their graves marked?”
“Ummm . . . ”
“And why is there no record of an attack here by one of those birds?”
“Ummm . . . ”
“And no record of a marriage?”
“Ummm . . . ”
Castro stuck one hand in the air, extended a finger, whirled it around twice and then pointed at Singh. “Take him away,” she told the MPs, while thinking, Thank whatever powers there be that I failed that course. “Mark him down for a class one interrogation.”
Uh, oh; that doesn’t sound good.
Two months later
Daily, Ford checked the map in headquarters as slowly, inexorably, it changed from red to UN blue, even as the prison camps filled with the detained, the dispossessed, the desperate, and the doomed.
As a general rule, Inspector General Ford didn’t shoot even the worst prisoners. Instead, he put them to work. The most recalcitrant he moved out of Wellington, and put to work growing food to support his army. These, with their families, were fed a portion of their production, just enough to keep body and soul together.
And that frees up hull space—a lot of hull space—to bring munitions, fuel, and other supplies in system.
Still others could be seen on any given day on Atlantis, cutting and hauling lumber, smashing coral into aggregate, building, clearing. These couldn’t have their rations matched to what they grew of course, so norms were set, beneath which rations were sharply curtailed.
Mortality is, of course, high with these. No matter; their lives are not worth much to them and to me they’re worth nothing at all.
On Wellington, on both East Island and West Island, some, along with civilian corvées temporarily impressed, spent their days clearing and building roads to facilitate logistics to support his troops as they hunting for the enemy. A few he permitted to be recruited into his own forces, as scouts.
And none of those who don’t have families we can hold as hostages.
He’d had to have two entire families shot, in fact, which tended to reduce the numbers of Wellingtonians trying to join his force but made those who did want and were allowed in much more reliable.
They’ve got to be getting desperate now, I think. And desperate men . . .
Wellington Community College, Canterbury, Wellington
There were plans somewhere to turn the colony’s sole institute of higher learning, WC3, into a four-year degree granting institution. Those plans remained on indefinite hold due to both a shortage of professors and a perceived lack of need. For those colonies fortunate enough to have them as yet, high schools actually, and unlike on Old Earth, produced children who could read.
Still, such as it was, WC3 was also, as with colleges and universities of earlier days, a hotbed of antiestablishmentarianism.
“We’ve just got to do something,” said Professor Graham Kelsey, Ph.D., Anthropology. “The movement is collapsing!”
“It was always silly to try to resist the UN with arms,” answered Professor Jane Ngati Whakama Smith, LLM (Law). “Nonviolent civil disobedience is the thing. It always works. Always.”
“The students?” Kelsey asked.
“The students!” Smith replied. “And I know just where to lead them!”
Jacinda Hobbs, in pink, and Marion Ardern, in a rather dowdy gray, stood at either end of the hastily painted banner demanding FREEDOM for Wellington from the UN. Behind them walked Smith and Kelsey, while behind the two professors marched some twelve hundred students of the WC3. All of them chanted what the banner proclaimed: “Freedom!”
Hobbs and Ardern made an interesting pair, the former being lanky, horse-faced, and toothy, while the latter was a close approximation of the Pillsbury Doughboy, in a mildly feminine idiom. The column turned left on Ohinehou Road, marching slowly toward the little port that served both Canterbury and a good deal of Ford’s seaborne logistic effort.
The port was actually key; Thomas had that much right. With more than seventy thousand UN troops between both islands, including those previously there, and with one of the airships down for maintenance at any given time, plus the time required to load cargo at Atlantis Base that couldn’t load itself, Ford had come to depend on contracted merchant bottoms to keep the campaign going. Any delay or disruption in that could have required him to reduce both the size of the force and the strenuousness of the effort in the colony.
And the shuttles are more trouble than they’re worth, thought Ford, circling overhead in his command boat. Even if I could spare the fuel, for routine logistics, which I cannot. But I’m going to have to use some fuel now.
“Get me Oberst Schmidhuber on the line,” he told his aide de camp, seated behind him. “And notify Beattie that I’m going to need more than thirty shuttles to transport the Special Action Battalion from Atlantis Base to here.”
Thanas Schmidhuber, Ford thought. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a non-introspective, bigoted, willfully blind piece of shit in my life. He thinks of himself as a progressive, a stalwart supporter of the United Nations, peace, and global governance. He hates even the idea of Nazism, as he’ll tell you at the drop of a hat. But he displays in full measure all that stereotypically German pigheadedness, inability to see any point of view but his own, strategically imbecilic short view, and toadying to superior authority that makes him nothing but another Nazi in the larval stage. And his idiot refugee from the customs police, Loehr, is even worse. And neither has absolutely the slightest clue, none whatsoever, that this is so. There were reasons, a century and a half ago, that, while fascism sprang up in many places, Nazism could only arise in Germany. And Germany, at core, has still never changed.
And, as a larval stage Nazi, he’s perfect for the position in which I have placed him, command of what, were I being frank, I would call “My Prison Sweepings for Special Purposes.”
“And tell Beattie I’ll want the thirty shuttles standing by at the nearest pickup zone to Schmidhuber’s battalion within two hours.”
“Oh, and get me some surveillance drones on that mob; I want clear faces and for us to be able to identify who’s in charge.”
Atlantis Base
Oberst Thanas Schmidhuber was a half-Albanian, half-German, raised in German culture. He greeted the news that a use had been found for his somewhat troublesome command with something approaching joy unstinted. Now, at last, he could show his devotion to the United Nations and its c
ause, while, at the same time, giving his troublesome rank and file a chance to take out their aggressions.
They frightened him, those reprieved criminals, under his nominal command. Dressed in full riot gear, with batons, it was only the firearms of his non-coms and officers that kept the swine in line. But then, nearly everything frightened him. Only with the power of the state fully behind him—and the bigger and more powerful the state, the better—did Thanas feel safe.
After a timid glance at the long, staggered trail of shuttles being boarded by his men, he turned and bounded up the ramp to his own boat, a standard model with the logo, “Stardestroyer,” emblazoned along its side.
Ohinehou, Wellington
This is the way to do it, Jane Thomas self-congratulated. Faced with non-violent resisters the powers that be cannot use vio . . . Hmmm . . . those are an awful lot of aircraft coming in to join that one that’s been circling for the last half day. Ah, but they’re not coming to attack, they’re landing. Whew, that’s a relief.
“What do you suppose those are up to?” asked Kelsey, handing Smith a cup of tea catered in by the WC3 cafeteria, in support of the student protest. He pointed with a fat, rummy nose at the area the shuttles had gone to land.
“Can’t be much,” Jane answered. Then they heard the singing, distant, at first but growing louder.
The hills to either side of the road leading down echoed with the sounds of two big drums and the voices of men, singing, “Das Lieben bringt gross Freud, es wissen’s alle Leut . . . ”
Did they sing this song on the way to Lidice? Ford wondered. It would not surprise me in the slightest.
“Weiss mir ein schoenes Schaetzelein . . . ”
I wonder if those innocents blocking the port . . .
“mit zwei schwarzbraunes Aeugelein . . . ”
. . . have even the slightest idea of what they’re in for.
“I’d feel a little better about this,” said Thomas, “if the media had shown up to cover it.”
“Relax,” answered Kelsey, “they’re setting up now.” He pointed a finger to where a white-painted, horse-drawn wagon had stopped, and where a team was setting up a tripod for a camera along with some solar panels.
“Finally! They wouldn’t dare get violent with the press watching.” Thomas relaxed visibly, then sipped at her tea.
“Just in time, too.” Kelsey again pointed with a broad, fat, veinous nose to where the point of the oppressor’s column was emerging from a cut in the slope overlooking the town. The singing, they both noticed, had stopped, though the pounding of the big bass drums continued.
The column seemed endless, though in fact it was, including gaps between companies, only about half a mile long. The groups peeled off, first one going left, then the next to the right, then left, then right, and so on until the final group stopped in the center.
Then came commands over a loud speaker. Kelsey thought they were in some language other than English, but this was just mistaking a sergeant major’s bellow for a foreign tongue. In some ways, of course, it was very foreign to a cultured academic.
The predatory growl that came from the line of men as they fanned out into a long double line didn’t need any translation.
“They mean to harm us,” Smith said, disbelievingly.
“The press will protect us; never fear,” answered Kelsey. “Besides, even if they move forward it’s only going to be to push us away from the port and the road to it.”
“Then why,” asked Kelsey, “are their end groups—‘flankers,’ I believe they’re called—racing to form a line all the way down to the sea?”
“I don’t . . . ”
They heard a bugle call, nineteen notes, four, four, two, two, four, and three.
“What does that . . . ?”
Kelsey just shook his head. The call was repeated. On the last of the last three notes, a sound around from the head-to-foot armored troops. It was a sound of sack and plunder, of pillage and rape, of the wolf pack clustering to pull down the old elk or the baby moose. It was a sound that none of the mob around the port, students, professors, dock workers, or just the idly curious had ever heard before.
And then, still howling like madmen, which, indeed, a good third of them were, the troops raised their batons and charged.
For a long moment, Jane Smith stood, open-mouthed, at the sight of UN troops charging her with obvious intent to do harm. She might have stayed that way until they reached her, except that the students, perhaps a bit wiser, reacted immediately with flight toward the sea. That moving sea of humanity carried her along with it, away from the troops.
Where Kelsey was, she didn’t know. (In fact, fat in body as fat in nose, Kelsey tried to flee with the rest. Thanas Schmidhuber’s maniacs quickly caught up with him and cracked his skull in the course of bludgeoning him to the ground.) She knew there was danger and she knew there was screaming from every quarter. Most was fear but some sounded like pain, as well.
In a slight eddy in the human tide Jane stopped to risk looking behind her. She saw a boy from one of her classes, lying on the ground while two armored thugs kicked him in the ribs and head. Between her and the student dozens more ran, male and female, clutching broken ribs or with blood seeping through fingers pressed to open scalps.
Jane took the further risk of remaining to see what was happening to the news team with the tripoded camera. Inexplicably, they, their white wagon, and the dray horse stood in place, filming unmolested. That makes no sense, she thought. None of this makes any sense.
In didn’t occur to her as even a remote possibility that, if something really did make sense, it was most likely the evidence of her own senses.
The troops line slowed now. Jane saw she didn’t have to run anymore; she could walk and keep ahead of them. Why that was, though . . .
It’s the sheer mass of us, they can only push with their shields now to move us because we can’t move much further, no matter how much they threaten with their batons.
This turned out to be not entirely true. A boy and a girl, both aged eighteen or nineteen years, at the edge of the frightened mob couldn’t move any further. The UN troops simply smashed the boy over the head, then pulled him out and threw him to the ground. At a whistle’s signal team of two from the second line of troops then taped his hands behind him and his feet together.
The girl was in for an altogether different treatment. Instead of clubbing her, she was dragged out of the mass. A foot was stuck out and she dragged over it, causing her to fall to the ground, skinning her knees. A rough hand slapped her once, hard across the face, knocking her to the pavement completely. Then, at another whistle blast, the two who had previously taped the boy were joined by two more. Those four took all four of her limbs in their control, holding her spread-eagled on the pavement. A fifth, apparently the one who had blown the whistle, knelt down between her splayed legs. Hands reached out, ripping her warm weather blouse apart. She screamed at the indignity. No matter, she was cuffed to silence again. At a hand signal she was lifted by her legs so that her skirt could be raised over her arse to her waist . . .
None of this, NONE of this, makes any sense!
Thanas Schmidhuber had never been much of a ladies’ man. No, he’d lacked both the confidence and the looks for that. Nor did he smell like much of a man to any woman who had ever gotten close enough for that. Back on Earth, he’d paid whores. On the ship, he’d been frozen. Here, on Terra Nova, there hadn’t been enough women for him to hope to snag one of his own.
Now, however, standing uniformed by the airship’s ramp, he could have his pick of the girls. “Take two, if you like;” Ford had told him. “Your men did a fine job here and you deserve the reward. Take them, use them, sell them; whatever you like. Just don’t forget that this won’t be the last job for you and your psychopaths, Thanas.”
Reaching one arm out, Thanas pointed at a very young thing, weeping and clutching the remnants of her clothing around her. He dropped his arm thinking, No, sh
e’s just used goods. Aha; there’s one.
“Take the slut in pink to my stateroom,” he ordered. “Chain her to the bed.”
Jane and Graham, along with a dozen other professors and student leaders, were soundly taped and segregated from the rest. Before their eyes, a huge airship hovered a few feet off the ground with its cargo ramp lowered. Up it marched a horde of bloody, weeping, disheveled students and what were probably some innocent bystanders. More than the few of the girls clutched the ragged remnants of their clothing to cover as much of themselves as they could.
Gradually, Jane became aware of someone very calm, also very uniformed, looking at the segregated group from one side. She recognized him from a couple of places, the odd appearance on local television and the wanted posters put up by the resistance.
“What are you doing with those children?” she demanded of Titus Ford.
“Exactly what you were doing,” Ford replied, “using them for my own purposes without much regard for their welfare.” He gave a deep laugh at the nonplussed expression on Jane’s face. “Oh, you want to know in detail? Sure, why not; the knowledge won’t cost me anything.
“The boys are going to become agricultural slaves on Atlantis Base. It’s a hard life and mortality is high, so I can use the replacements, thank you. As for the girls . . . they’ll be staffing field brothels for my troops. Some of them may get redeemed if their families prove sufficiently helpful.”
“That’s—”
“Perfectly sensible use of what would otherwise be liabilities,” he finished for her. “As for you people”—his gaze took in all the segregated group—“you may know some things of use to me, so you’ll be going to a different part of Atlantis Base for some special attention. If you’re all smart and lucky, it won’t be too hard on you.”
