Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 02]

by Fire in a Faraway Place (epub)

  With his arms around her, the pulse in his veins told her as much of the story as the words did.

  “The cliff was so steep that while we were scaling that silly fissure the cakes couldn’t shoot at us without exposing themselves, and I’m not sure they realized that we were crazy enough to try. I followed Anton up, and we turned the comer just as Piotr Kolomeitsev jumped two platoons on top of them. We

  chased the cakes down the mountainside and into the valley for ten kilometers until I was gray in the face.” He paused again.

  “The official record reads different, but that was what broke the cakes on Ashcroft. Up until then, when they ran out of

  ammo, they came at us with their teeth. On the Jebel d’Aucune, they had us and they knew it, and we took them.

  After that, they thought we could fly.”

  Sanmartin punched his free hand with his fist, and then let his voice fade. “After that, C Company would have followed me into hell. And I’d lead them there if Anton Vereshchagin told me which chimney to climb.”

  “I did not know,” Bruwer said simply.

  “You see him playing his kindly grandfather role, but the rest of us have seen his other side. I’ve often thought that every moment since then has been borrowed,” he said, finishing his story. He said after a few moments, “The only person on this planet who likes fighting the war that Sumi and Matsudaira are angling for less than you do is Anton. But he can’t really see a way around it, and neither can I and neither can you. What do your pupils say?”

  Bruwer maintained, with a degree of truth, that the best advice she received was from her former students, the eldest of whom had just turned thirteen—they took advising her seriously and weren’t old enough to rationalize.

  “they don’t approve of fighting, but think we should make an exception,” she said, smiling through the tears on her face. “So, do you understand, and are you still angry at me?” “Amantium irae amoris integratio est,” she said, leaning against him. “Lovers’ quarrels are the renewal of love.” “Come on. Let’s go find Hendricka. One three-year-old is as hard to keep track of as fifty-nine legislators.”

  WHEN BEYERS RECONVENED HIS “ASSEMBLY OF GOD,” AS THE WITS

  dubbed it, Dominie Naas Van der Merwe gave the invocation and intentionally spoke to all of Suid-Afrika’s inhabitants, taking his text from the verses in St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians which begin, “For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity.”

  After the first vote, Hanna Bruwer proposed a second vote for the sake of unanimity, and this time the measure passed unanimously. As Prinsloo Adriaan Smith argued, “We must all hang together in this; or assuredly we will all hang separately.” Wynard Grobelaar did not attend, having urgent business

  with the public prosecutor. After Christos Claassen, who was occasionally vindictive, foreclosed on Grobelaar’s home in his capacity as banker, Grobelaar had enough of a sense of shame left to take his own life. It was convenient.

  Thursday(314)

  ADDRESSING HIS SECURITY COMPANIES, COLONEL SUMI SAID, “IT

  has become increasingly important for the population to recognize the futility of resisting Imperial authority in any manner. Labor unrest and political dissent are extremely disruptive forms of resistance. There are over one hundred thousand Afrikaners on this planet, and each of you should become aware that mining operations would proceed efficiently even if there were fewer than fifty thousand.”

  Major Nishiyama, commanding Sumi’s No. 303 Independent Security Company, asked timidly, “Honored Colonel, when may we expect a firm decision from Admiral Horii on—such measures?”

  Sumi bared his teeth. “In a few days, Admiral Horii will see the wisdom of the correct course of action.”

  He resolved to watch Nishiyama closely in the future for other signs that the major lacked true spirit.

  Friday(314)

  AT THE FIRST RECESS OF THE ASSEMBLY’S SPECIAL SESSION, HANNA

  Bruwer left her high seat and walked to the back benches. “Heer Hanneman, I wish to speak with you a moment.” Engrossed ,in drafting a speech he planned to read, “Jaapie” Hanneman, the Reformed National party assemblyman from Nelspruit, nodded and then looked up uneasily. Hanneman had not been asked to attend the “Assembly of God.”

  A moment later, Christos Claassen walked up beside her and folded his arms.

  “Heer Hanneman, I understand that your health has made it impossible for you to continue to represent your district, and I am prepared to accept your resignation.”

  Hanneman made a sickly smile. “You have heard wrong, Madam Speaker. My health has never been better.”

  In a low, penetrating voice that carried to every comer of the chamber, Bruwer said curtly, “Heer Matsudaira has purchased your voice for his company.” As the babble elsewhere quieted, she reached into her bag and threw a sheet of paper in front of him- “Heer Matsudaira maintains good records.”

  “But, Madam Speaker, this is all a mistake!” Hanneman protested in the booming voice that was his greatest asset as a politician. “Heer Matsudaira only paid me for some consulting work. Indeed, I was your grandfather’s friend!”

  “You told me once that you were my grandfather’s friend,” she said, cutting through his peroration. “I did not believe you then, and I do not believe you now. You have accepted a bribe.” She laid another sheet of paper in front of him. “My secretary has typed up a letter of resignation for you. I wish to see your signature on it before we reconvene.”

  “It was a ... contribution,” Hanneman said, cringing. “Heer Hanneman, as speaker of this Assembly, I am disturbed by what you have done. As Hendrik Pienaar’s granddaughter, I am—sickened.”

  She walked over to her high seat, pulled out a long sjambok her grandfather had owned, and walked back. “If you do not sign the resignation in front of you, I will do what my grandfather would have done and whip you out into the streets.” “We drew lots as to who would actually get to horsewhip you,” Claassen murmured too quietly to be understood by others in the room. “Tell Colonel Sumi that after careful consideration, you have retired from politics. And if I hear one peep from you after you have returned to Nelspruit, I swear before God that I will have you arraigned before the public prosecutor within the hour.”

  Sobbing, Hanneman signed as he was bidden. Two of his former colleagues led him away.

  Bruwer quietly walked to the women’s restroom and threw up into the sink.

  Moments later, when she came back and called the session to order, there were two letters of resignation on her desk, one handwritten.

  USS PLANETARY DIRECTOR MATSUDAIRA WAS ENCOURAGED TO MEN-

  tion the incident when he made his television debut on Suid-Afrika’s evening news.

  Prompted by his young aides and confident of his ability to explain his company’s attitude to a hostile audience, Matsudaira had spent most of the morning composing answers to questions prepared by a reporter who, Deiselmann had assured him, was “sympathetic.” Matsudaira had been flattered by the station’s insistence that no other spokesman could adequately explain the company’s viewpoint.

  At one point, the newswoman conducting the lengthy interview asked him in a syrupy voice why his company’s management was so competitive. Pursing his lips, Matsudaira made a pretense of considering the question deeply. “Forgive me, but you must understand that our company’s management is Japanese. Excessive competition by Japanese is first and foremost due to the fact that the mental structure itself of Japanese produces a peculiar kind of excessive competition. Such racial characteristics are a product of ethnological, climatic, and historical conditions which do not easily allow rectification.”

  In his role as Beyers’s political consultant, former senior censor Ssu had carefully prepared the questions Matsudaira was asked, then coached the interrogator. Thanks to the hole in Matsudaira’s data base security, he had also reviewed Mat-sudaira’s responses prior to airtime. As Ssu repea
tedly stressed, the timing of the interview request was critical—enough advance notice to lull Matsudaira into a sense of false confidence, but not enough to allow him the luxury of obtaining other opinions.

  “Some people might believe that this excess competitiveness is evil,” the reporter purred “sympathetically.”

  “Ah! Such people misunderstand. This matter is not so much a question of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as a problem of character,” Matsudaira informed her, reassured by her demure manner and unaware that the cameras were capturing the drops of sweat running down his face and the veins popping in his neck every time he lied.

  The reporter played her part skillfully. So did Matsudaira, in a manner of speaking. Judging from the shocked calls that poured into the television station, Matsudaira probably couldn’t have done a better job of damning his cause if he had tried.

  Admiral Horii laughed himself speechless when he accidentally caught the second half of the broadcast. “United Steel-Standard must have looked very hard to find the appropriate representative to send here,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes.

  ANTON VERESHCHAGIN HAD LAST ADDRESSED HIS BATTALION AS A

  group on a transport the day before they landed on Suid-Afrika. He spoke to them once again, as always in a quiet voice sitting on top of an ammunition box.

  “As many of you know already, Admiral Horii, however reluctantly, plans to hand Suid-Afrika over to USS, and to disband this battalion and dismiss its officers, for we no longer have a place in what the Imperial system has come to be.” Seemingly embarrassed, he chose words carefully. “There is an old Kazakh folk legend about mankurts, slaves whose memories were destroyed by torture so that they would not remember who they were and who they had been. A man without history, without a past, cannot understand. We have lived through the past and seen history distorted.”

  Even the Suid-Afrikans, the Afrikaners and cowboys interspersed in the ranks, nodded silently. Suid-Afrika’s old history texts had been a thin tissue of lies. As a former teacher, Hanna Bruwer had conscripted some of her former colleagues to write new texts and commissioned Senior Communications Sergeant Timo Haerkoennen to build tricks into the programming to identify the students logging on, so that she could terminate teachers and school administrators who preferred teaching lies.

  “Before the crack-up, Russia was an empire of nationalities, and the Russian people forged chains for themselves to hold these peoples. Russia never quite let all of them go, and when the missiles and the plagues came, it discovered too late that it had helped lay the seeds for a holocaust. The cost of the crack-up was terrible. From its ashes, Japan helped to build an Imperial system for all of mankind, but the Japanese have begun forging chains for other nations, and for themselves.”

  He spoke to them carefully for about an hour, and in conclusion, he said, “For many of you, some who were bom here and others who came later, this planet is home. The rest of you have nowhere better to go. Esdraelon onge had a bright future. Now, Esdraelon has been wrecked and that future thrown away. I, for one, am not willing to allow the future we have built here to be thrown away.”

  Vereshchagin paused, and afterward, the only sound Sanmartin could recall hearing was the tapping of the Variag’s pipe against his thigh.

  “Unless we are very fortunate, most of us may not live through this, but whether we succeed or not, I believe that it is important for us to try. I would say that you can crush cinnabar without taking away its color, and bum a fragrant herb without taking away its scent. For once, I will ask for volunteers. Any man who does not wish to take part in this may leave, with my blessings.”

  He folded his arms and waited stoically.

  Raul Sanmartin studied the faces around him. “What’s wrong, Deacon?” he asked Roy de Kantzow.

  Although Vereshchagin’s battalion was somewhat unique in that it discouraged the use of vile language with an appreciable degree of success, the exception to this rule was “Filthy DeKe” de Kantzow, who hadn’t managed to string two completely clean sentences together since the age of twelve.

  De Kantzow struggled to refine his thoughts. “This frosting planet—first we shoot frosting cowboys so they can’t shoot Imps and Boers, then we shoot frosting Boers so they can’t shoot Imps and cowboys, now we got to shoot the frosting Imps. It’s hard to keep track.”

  “Want out of this one, DeKe?” Sanmartin asked, mildly surprised.

  De Kantzow looked indignant. “And miss getting paid for snuffing blacklegs? But if we’d frosting started with the frosting Imps in the first place, we’d have saved half the bother.” Sanmartin patted him on the shoulder, a little frightened, but with his faith in human nature restored. “Politics makes for strange bedfellows, Deacon.”

  De Kantzow nodded, having his own ideas what the quotation meant. “Yeah, they’re mostly frosting boy-lovers anyway.” To no one’s surprise, except perhaps Vereshchagin’s, every man stayed, including Captain Chiharu Yoshida, bom in Kyoto of a corporation family.

  Saturday(314)

  “THERE doesn’t SEEM LIKE VERY MUCH HERE, NOT FOR FIVE BAT-

  talions anyway,” Superior Private Dinkers commented, looking around the inside of the main Imperial supply depot. The young reconnaissance trooper craned his neck to see what was stored on the third level of flats.

  “There isn’t,” Lieutenant Thomas whispered impatiently. “Admiral Horii is a shrewd old bird. He only keeps about three or four fire units of stuff on hand where people might get to it. The rest is still up in orbit.”

  “You’d think that they’d have guards and sensors outside to keep people out of this place,” Dinkers commented.

  “Lots,” Thomas said laconically. “Why do you think we had to crawl on our bellies to get here?”

  “Practice,” Dinkers said ruefully, based on ample prior experience.

  Thomas gestured toward two banded plastic crates. “Let me show you something fun. These are urine tubes so the people in the armored cars can leak without stopping and getting out.” He lit his torch, making a small glow in the darkness of the warehouse, and began heating the metal band around one of the crates. “There’s about twenty thousand tubes in each of these crates. If we took the boxes, the people at the Complex could turn some more out in a few days, which wouldn’t help us at all. Heating them up like this won’t hurt the outer shell, but it’ll melt the inner osmotic liner, which means half of them will have a blockage in the middle and overflow when the Cadillac gunners try and use them. And if the admiral’s supply dinks are like supply dinks everywhere else, they’ll just keep issuing out bad tubes and ignore the complaints.”

  After a few seconds, the metal band started glowing and Thomas switched his attention to the other crate. “When those Japanese Cadillac boys dribble in their laps two or three times, they’ll start scheduling themselves comfort breaks.” He looked at the young soldier. “If we have time, I want to do some things to their ammo.”

  “Can’t we just set a bomb to blow the place up?” Dinkers asked.

  “Maybe later on, but Horii’s units are all putting in requisitions, and for now I want to get to the stuff they plan on issuing out in the next couple of days.”

  Dinkers scratched his head. “How do we know what stuff that is?”

  Thomas ignored his question. “I brought you here to work, not talk, you know. We need some stuff. Pull out your shopping list. Fuses are down aisle fourteen, and I want one box of everything listed there. Try not to drop anything.”

  Grabbing a hand truck, Dinkers scampered off to comply. As he did so, he observed Senior Communications Sergeant Timo Haerkoennen, the third member of their party, patiently disassembling a field diagnostic kit for an armored car. “What’s Timo up to?” he asked.

  “Ah, that’s mother’s little secret,” Thomas said.

  Another war party paid an unofficial visit to Daisuke Matsudaira’s sedan. The next morning, when the ignition was switched on, it took the air conditioning system sixty-seven seconds to
fill the vehicle’s interior with soapsuds.

  Sunday(315)

  “the ASSEMBLY EXPELLED TWO LEGISLATORS FOR PRO-IMPERIAL

  sympathies. All the officers are discussing it. I think it is an intolerable affront,” Captain Watanabe declared in Admiral Horii’s hearing.

  Horii smiled, knowing the true facts better than Watanabe, as he checked his reflection in the mirror. “Where is Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin today?” he asked.

  “I have not seen him for two or three days now. Not since Colonel Sumi asked him to cease to attend staff meetings. His bed appears to have been slept in. Should I inquire?” his aide responded.

  “No, that will not be necessary, Watanabe.”

  “It will be pleasant when repairs to your quarters are completed,” Watanabe said wistfully.

  Horii made a noise to indicate agreement. A few moments later, he asked, “What else are the young officers saying, Watanabe?”

  “Admiral,” Watanabe said nervously, “they are concerned that we have not dissolved the civil government. While I disclose my respect from my inmost feelings, I earnestly feel that continuing to evade the issue might lead to unpredictable consequences. I—also share their opinions.”

  Horii stared at his aide for a long moment. Finally, he said, “We have always undercompensated our officers. Perhaps more so now, with inflation. This is a weakness of ours. How shortsighted of us.” He closed his eyes.

  Without the expense accounts and annual bonuses that most Japanese workers took for granted, young officers were perennially short of money, perhaps intentionally so. “How much did Matsudaira-san give you, Watanabe?”

  Shamefaced, Watanabe pulled out a packet of elaborately folded sheets of colored paper and opened it to display the money inside.

  “How shortsighted of us.” Horii sighed and again closed his eyes. “One person cannot change things. What must be, must be. Please inform Major Harjalo that I wish to inspect his command this afternoon.”