The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe)

by Walter Blaire

  Nana appeared with a tray full of steins. Sethlan stared at her in bemusement, noticing her damp dress and the glittery sheen of the powder on her skin. Other than that, the interlude in his apartment could have been a regular daydream. Except—it finally landed on him—she’d said, There is a manleader in Emsa.

  Trappia said, “I didn’t call you out of your grooming session just to talk your ear off. We’ve heard nothing from the pencil pushers about your Tacchie finger-writing, and I doubt we could track it down by this point even if we had the time. You sent Diggery with documents for their delivery, I understand?”

  “Yes,” said Sethlan.

  “And Diggery, you saw the documents delivered?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Diggery decisively. Sethlan watched the helpie and gave a pained sigh. Untruth. Trappia hadn’t asked the right question. Diggery had probably seen Sethlan deliver the map case to the Planner, and then wandered away as soon as Sethlan was out of sight.

  “Lieutenant Tawarna found papers of his own,” continued the colonel, “but my messenger hasn’t returned from wherever Haphan Southern Intelligence might be processing them.”

  ~Tell him to call for it,~ said the Voice immediately.

  “Ring them from the telephone machine,” Sethlan said. Trappia gave him a keen glance. “The general did promise to share.”

  Trappia nodded to Hopala, who departed.

  ~And there you go,~ said the Voice. ~They believe they can call out of the building, and no wires to be seen.~

  Maybe he’s going to a different telephone.

  Nana produced a box of unit markers. These were little wooden chits, useful for planning and putting on a map. She rolled her eyes as they exclaimed and leaned in.

  “How clever! Little units, like from the officer’s manual.”

  “We’ve had this box forever,” she said.

  “And you can write on them with grease pencils!”

  “Diggery has clean handwriting, thanks to his marvelous Haphan electro-shock torture education,” said Trappia, nodding graciously to the sole self-conscious Haphan at the table. “Diggery, come be our croupier.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mark down some battalions off this list: 1044th Ligae Rifles, the 345th, the Emsa Guards, and the Bechemsa Fusiliers. These are in the thick of it.”

  Locker keys and bits of eraser were retrieved from the map and their meanings argued over. Cephas handed Nana the empty drink tray from the table. She took it but was not dislodged. Sethlan knew why she stayed.

  “Here.” he passed her a grease pencil.

  “Yes, she has a pretty hand, la?” Trappia said. “We’ll put her on to the reserves. We have the 40th and the 51st coming up.”

  Sethlan saw her start when she heard the 51st. Her shoulders sank for a moment but she continued writing.

  “How much strength do we have to pull on?” Sethlan asked.

  “That is certainly something the table does not hear,” said Trappia. “Let me say there is no concern in that regard.”

  “I beg to differ,” Sethlan said. “Consider this back and forth on the line. In a day, we go from a focused assault to eight divisions fighting along four miles? With hand to hand? And a Haphan brigade obliterated?” He shook his head. “We will have an answer for that. Then the South will answer back. This is becoming a battle. We are only lucky we started first, and have a familiar line to fall back upon. “

  The table went quiet.

  Gawarty glanced around. “A battle? We had a fucking battle this morning, beg your pardon, colonel.“

  Tachba loved nothing more than to explain, and Gawarty was answered simultaneously from every corner of the table. A battle could go for months, he was told, and it could grow along the front as each side upped the ante. Battles were devastating and expensive, but once started, could not be declined. If one side found an advantage, it could lead to a breakthrough and a radical shift in the front. The stakes were usually too high for the Haphans to allow something so unpredictable as a battle, and they avoided them whenever possible.

  “It’s clear the Southies were planning this all along,” said Cephas. “They were never this clever.”

  “Hmm, yes. Look what happens when Ville Emsa falls,” Trappia said. “Sessera’s back is broken. Our supply rails will take years to re-route. A quarter at least of our soldiers dead, a quarter deserting, and the rest whinging about how improper it all is. Our history, culture, and all our wealth is here in Ville Emsa, as well as fifty thousand child-bearing factory women. These women engender almost eight divisions of fighting men every year. All of that capital lost, captured, and turned against us.”

  “Even worse,” said Cephas, “Diggery might get hurt.”

  “Quite enough of that,” Trappia snapped. “We may not care for ourselves, being just boots shuffling to orders until Brutal Butcher visits, la. But Sessera cares, for damned sure. I, for one, don’t want to see Nana abused, or this club turned into some kitchen of horrors where Southies carry on with our corpses and order the sculls around.”

  Hopala returned from the red door, frowning, and whispered in Trappia’s ear. The colonel straightened, “No luck. The Haphans are at sea, swimming next to us. The more promising documents are being photographed small and sent North to the big tabulating machines in the landed ark-ships. What exactly did you find in the trenches, captain?”

  “I found…” Sethlan noticed the table watching him. “I found a new enemy.”

  Cephas snorted. “Dramatist. That is unlike you.” The other officers, too, knew it was wholly unlike Sethlan, and they watched him sidelong, not wanting him uncomfortable but unable to turn away.

  “My old CO, Colonel Goldros, first understood it three months ago.” Sethlan paused. “There are too many changes from the South, and coming too quickly. The cleverness with the dreadnought battleship. Southies flanking our sorties between the trenches. Traps laid and triggered, at the expense of Tejj and all the soldiers of my unit. Today we found that the Tacchie trenches had been augmented by—I can only call them portable umbrellas to protect their boots from shrapnel. And now this writing, and the neatening up of their supply-line management, which is obviously connected.

  “General Tawarna spoke at length about the planning that goes into running even a quiet mile of trench. I don’t need to remind you about our supply abacus, our attrition abacus, and the hundreds of math tricks, the tons of pencil and paper shipped into Emsa every month. The South’s changes imply an entire generation of Tachba put on the leash and having letters and numbers pounded into their heads. This is not like them at all. We hardly endure it. The Tachba are being led by someone. That is the new enemy.”

  “And the writing?” Trappia prompted.

  “It’s being used everywhere. I saw re-supply requests, status reports, a recipe to make oar beetle soup, that sort of thing. At the end of the day, Lieutenant Tawarna held up a page which he showed the general. It was entitled, ‘Reversing Northern Tricks With Trench Craft.’”

  Dour looks crossed the table. Sethlan added, “Here is where we are now: our artillery superiority is gone, our supply superiority is gone, our tactical superiority is going. One by one, our advantages are disappearing, and if we can only match them soldier for soldier, we will not last.”

  “I think we must deduce when this Southie Golden Age began.” Trappia said. He finally sat, and they pulled up chairs, producing cigars and cheroots. “Nana, you have taught children, haven’t you? What girl hasn’t taught her brothers? Was you to grow a lad from a little scrag to a full squeaker who was then inducted into the Planners, how long would it take?”

  “I taught three pairs, and there were two more pairs under my wing when I finally left home,” she said slowly. “My brothers were out the door at fourteen, with reading and writing. They could certainly do papers at a desk. However, our military planners are usually older Sessies, more settled down. They are past their youth, with a long-range view.”

  “I don’t e
xpect the Southies to be efficient,” said Trappia. “Only that it works.”

  “Turning pages is as simple as digging a ditch, colonel,” Hopala said. “I’ve watched our planners read and write for minutes at a time.”

  “Still, children take time to grow, and knowledge takes time to bore into the skull,” Cephas said. “Give it two generations before it starts to show. And focus it on Ville Emsa—it does not have to be a change everywhere on the front, all at once. It might start here and spread up and down the line.”

  “So what happened two generations years ago?”

  “Thirty years? By that time, someone had already decided on the Emsa strategy, for one,” said Sethlan. “They saw how losing the city would ruin us, and then they worked backward, figuring out what would have to be accomplished. The signs, the writing, the dreadnoughts being pulled up—it’s all just elements of the goal.”

  “So there is a person, or a party, in a high place with the ear of the Southie king of kings. The newcomer caused the king of kings to adopt this new strategy to win the war, or at least crack it wide open.” Trappia sighed. “I suppose it is a starting point.”

  Cephas said, “When I think of the scale of misery necessary to bring reading and writing to enough happy Tachba to fight the Emsa front, well... it begins to sound likely. The South would relish that painful chore.”

  “Do we know anybody knowledgeable in Southie politics?” Hemes asked. “With our information they might be able to point out the obvious party.”

  “If I may, colonel,” Gawarty said. “There is the Haphan Indigenous Affairs agency. This would be a question they could answer.”

  A soldier in a messenger harness entered the club, and he passed a clipboard to Trappia. The colonel read it, put a check mark next to his name, and passed it back. “Word being passed, and the South has moved its ship-shells back to the Haphan artillery. They’re beating our guns into the mud, so the Happies are limbering for a move. With our ground effect gone, the Tacchies have pushed us back to our starting trench—but those are in good repair and well supplied. We’re holding them and it’s turning quiet.”

  The men at the table relaxed.

  “This is good?” Gawarty asked, confusion in his voice though his face was carefully blank. “I saw the new ground captured today at great cost. Was it all for nothing?”

  Cephas gave him a shallow smile. “You rarely keep new ground. Decimated by the time you enter, facing a full attack from the enemy’s reserves. We know quite well how to lose new ground. It’s our good, dry, high-ground trenches that we really want to keep.”

  Trappia said, “We can only hope that the 40th and 51st, fresh as clean underwear, will be able to hold the line against a horde of exhausted Southies. If they can’t, then we don’t deserve the trench.” He glanced around. “Cephas, Hopala: convince somebody at HQ to put us higher on the queue for circulations from the front. Everybody else, dismissed. I need to speak with Semelon—and, erm, Tawarna, also. Nana, kindly bring us something stronger to think with.”

  While the table cleared, Trappia gave Sethlan a long, evaluating look.

  “Nana is too clever by half,” he said. “When you first arrived at the Observers, she told me that you would be useful. She said that your three-week drinking binge was more role-playing than anything. She said that you might be low, but not destroyed. Beaten but not broken. She told me you were intending to continue your role in this conflict as soon as your pro forma misery was out of the way.”

  Sethlan sat in quiet shock.

  “I am sorry to speak about this in the open.” Trappia’s eyes flicked to Gawarty, who turned to the map and stared with undeflected interest.

  “Nana was mistaken,” Sethlan said. “To believe I had any power to pretend, after my boys...”

  “She was teaching, Semelon! Any grown-up can see that, please try to follow. With your obvious qualities and her obviously wrong-footed warning, my attention was fixed on you from the start.” He added, to Gawarty, “That’s how the slight girls operate. They like to stagger us with something unexpected, and meanwhile they pick our pockets.”

  “I see, sir. Does ‘slight’ mean pretty?”

  Trappia ignored him, turning back. “Sethlan, you turned out useful beyond all expectation. Even though you’ve been playing catch-up without any information, you’ve untied some interesting knots, pulled their strings, and brought more knots into the light. Now we have this battle for Emsa. Yes, there is a battle brewing. For us to survive—to merely continue the war, I mean, not to win it—we must break through the Tachba line, grab twenty miles, envelop the shooting range for their boats, and hold it.”

  Gawarty was already shaking his head. “That would be... surely that would be difficult.”

  Sethlan didn’t need to respond. There was no word that could measure the impossibility of what Trappia had just said.

  ”It’s a chore, certainly, but nothing else will answer.” Trappia was strained indifference. “We must pretend, at least, that there is a chance. It’s not like lying, not quite.” He took the bottle from Nana’s hand, ignoring the tumblers she held out, and poured bourbon into their steins. “Darling girl, won’t you join us?”

  Nana slid into the chair beside him, arm against arm. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and looked up at his face.

  ~She is fixing your attention on Trappia,~ said the Voice.

  Because she’s touching him?

  ~Yes. We’re watching her, and she shifts it to Trappia. It’s perfect management for a race of virgins—~

  Shut up. No, don’t. What is she showing me?

  Nana murmured, “Roaldan, why do you sound so old all of a sudden?”

  Unexpectedly, Trappia answered her directly. “We are just thinking about how everything hinges on the attack, three weeks from today.”

  “Oh, that? It’s nothing,” Nana said. “Remember, you are a brotherhood. You are my chivalry. You will all keep me safe.”

  “To keeping the alewife safe,” said Gawarty, face writ with confusion, raising his stein.

  Trappia ignored the Haphan. “Semelon, I’m confirming you as Haut Captain. You already have the clearances, and you ran the Observers while Haphan Intelligence had me as their guest for the last week. You also have this foul-mouthed, irregular Haphan here, with his own connections to the Empire’s top brass. You will gather the order of battle, and you will pull in everything you can, from every source available, to learn what the fuck is happening to our war.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sethlan.

  ~Don’t you understand anything?~

  This damned Voice would be the end of him. Not now!

  ~The sexy blonde bombshell owns your boss, too.~

  You will drive me mad. We don’t like to go mad.

  ~The colonel is showing you that Nana knows everything. He’s merely talking around the Haphan. He promotes you and your tasking is a vague ‘just look around?’ Please. Trappia is doubling—that’s what you call it, right? He is doubling himself, doubling the unit’s access to top-clearance intelligence, doubling the Observers’ leadership, and making sure you and Nana know about each other.~

  Sethlan could now easily recognize that kind of double-think, with each thought only half complete, though it still galled. It’s Nana’s poison all over again. Yet he sensed the truth of it. As a fighting officer, he had led night patrols fast up against the Southie lines, pitch black except when the enemy remembered to send up flares. He had crept along, leading his trusting men, operating on sense and suspicion alone.

  He now turned that hunted, animal feeling upon the faces of Trappia and Nana before him. Trappia’s head was cocked to the side, which was natural for him when he waited for his officers to catch up. Nana’s head was cocked identically, and that was not natural. Nana had stepped into Trappia, it was that old teaching magic where a child would be reflected back upon himself. Their two faces were orbs, like two eyes lit by a fire, staring unblinkingly at him, waiting.

 
That would mean…he thought, with a sudden fatigue that made him glacially slow.

  ~That would mean Trappia does not expect to be around around much longer. I guess he thinks the Haphans will yank him again, and soon, and this time he won’t come back.~ The Voice paused. ~I’m sorry.~

  Aloud, Sethlan said, “I understand, sir. May I provide useful service.”

  “Service,” Trappia said. “We all end in service. We are nothing but clay.”

  11

  Diggery

  Diggery disliked the idea that Sethlan had relaxed in a hot bath, especially since the man would have probably tolerated cold water without complaint. Hot water was so rare—outside of Haphan cities at least—that it seemed wasted on the captain. Diggery, however, had been raised in a Haphan orphanage, where a proper appreciation of comfort had been diligently beaten into his skull. When the meeting broke, he had the sudden powerful urge to wash off the stink of the front.

  For that, Ville Emsa had its famous hot springs. The overlords had co-opted them when they annexed the defensible central island for their Haphan Quarter, and this kept most Sesserans away. But Diggery wasn’t intimidated. He liked the Haphans. He liked their layered conversation, their quiet voices, their restrained movements that never flared into violence. Most of all, he liked being immune to everything the Haphans considered right and proper. Being among the Happies was liberating, empowering in a way.

  Diggery was on the smaller side of the Tachba scale, and he wouldn’t stand out. Still, as he crossed the Sec Bellawa bridge and entered the Quarter, he buttoned his collar and reversed his coat. He let his Observer timepiece dangle in plain sight where it might be mistaken for a pocket watch.

  On the other side of the bridge, the streets seemed wider, fronted by airy buildings with wide glass windows and well-lit interiors. The crowds were the same, but the people were thinner and smaller, the womens’ dresses more refined and the mens’ uniforms brighter, with more ribbons and sashes. He dove into the flow, trying to mesh with the Haphans by stepping lively and thinking jaunty thoughts.