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

by Walter Blaire

  Their faces were serious, transfixed by the unsettling idea of mothers that cared. Mothers, family, separation, homesickness…the thoughts were grave and debilitating once their minds set down that path. Home would not be defused after a moment’s pause by the wayward Tachba cheerfulness.

  “So whether it’s modesty or pollution that makes you indifferent to your future, don’t make that mistake with the women. Don’t make that mistake with a dashta. Who is watching? Who is remembering? I am. I am Nanatique Naremsa. My name is Briff.”

  They watched in utter silence, disarmed. She had shared her Deep name. They could now call her Briff as if they were lovers; she watched this fact go to work on them, their faces changing. A person wouldn’t just toss her name out in front of useless scrags. They must really be important to her after all.

  The caravan of the Induction squad stopped outside the front gate, pulling together and presenting the vehicles’ heavily armored sides to the Naremsa compound. There was some hidden activity, and then faces appeared over the raised parapets of the truck beds. Most of the soldiers looked bored with the process, and only half seemed to have bothered to arm themselves.

  These men were regular army boots, incredibly tall and broad, with shadowy faces under their helmets. To Nana, each one was a revelation, a prime Tachba male, quite outside her experience. She had grown up with the aged-out and the disabled, and as dangerous as they had once seemed to her, they were nothing compared to the twitchingly fast, businesslike troops in the trucks.

  A young helpie dropped to the ground in front of the trucks, where he was fully and politely exposed. “Hello the house!”

  “Naremsa,” added a voice from the trucks.

  “Hello the House Naremsa!”

  Papa gestured to Japha and Phajaja. “No point in making them beg.”

  The gates opened wide, and the lead truck detached from the line and pulled in. It was the first internal combustion vehicle Nana had ever seen, and it seemed wholly unnatural in its smooth starts and stops. It poured a vile white smoke from under the armored skirting.

  “Colonel Naremsa,” said an officer, climbing down from the gunner’s turret on the truck’s nose. “We’re here to take your boys away, any you have of proper size. By order of some Haphan somewhere, and the eternal regency of the Haphan Empire, due to the continuing emergency requirements of Sessera-Under-Arms, and all the rest.”

  “Yes, yes. Well, I have four Naremsa boys, and four other family boys, all returned from their shaping trips. Even the dumb ones are smart; I’m sure they’ll serve.” He shook the captain’s hand. “Can you stay long?”

  The captain was apologetic but brisk. “As you see on my clipboard, we have a list of visits we must make, written down, and then the trucks to return before someone notices them gone.”

  “That sounds like a story, there.”

  “Oh, it is,” the captain chuckled. “Suffice it so say, I feel that our new recruits should not have to trudge behind a flatulent baxxaxx for weeks. So we liberated a faster conveyance, Yod love the Happie generosity. Forgiveness is easier than permission, you know.”

  The captain saw the Naremsa boys tumbling out of the main hall, duffle bags dragging behind them. His demeanor changed immediately. “Oh, you useless snappies! Line up, there! Underweight by twenty pounds, barely able to straighten a spine. If you stop a bullet before it hits a real man, then maybe you’ll be worth the canvas in your uniforms.”

  Nana was outraged. She stepped forward to object, but the captain continued his harangue. He addressed the boy in the middle. “You, scrag, you seem to have a word you want to squeak at me?”

  “My word is ‘fuck you,’” said Gole, stepping forward. “I bet I could make you eat dirt.”

  Nana changed direction, set on driving Gole back into line. She felt a strong hand around her waist. It was Papa, and he scooped her up and held her firmly. She began to struggle, but then she saw his face as it was turned toward the boys and nearly broke into tears. All the strength left her arms.

  The captain glared at Gole, and called to the truck. “Any one of you boots think you can’t ream this squeaker’s ass with a trench toolie?”

  The soldiers were silent, except for one, who said, “Dunno-meh, sar, he looks mighty tough-la.”

  The rest of the soldiers laughed coarsely. Gole gave a fanatic grin, drawing his dagger, but the captain fearlessly strode past him and tapped the dagger’s pommel, shaking his head. “Any of you other squeakers have a tongue?”

  “Why?” asked Grulle, confused. “He’em think it take more than Gole to kill’em?”

  “Shall we knife-fuck him one-by-one? Or all together?” Japha flicked out his dagger and caught it over his head, ready to throw.

  The soldiers in the truck didn’t like that at all. The action was met by the snick-snick of drawn bolts. There were now guns pointing through the firing hatches.

  Gole laughed at the soldiers in the truck. “Like you’d really shoot through your captain to teach some new recruits a lesson.”

  Nevertheless, the boys spread out to make a less clumped target, and the captain found himself bracketed by two who could easily take him from the side. He flicked out his sidearm and pointed it at Japha. The boys twitched forward, and then stopped.

  Terrified, Nana grabbed Papa’s collar. Then she saw he was not concerned. He looked sad and proud, but not alarmed.

  The captain said, “You talk big, so you have balls. And you can pull your twitch, you let me draw without tossing that sticker. Can you hit the gatepost, there?”

  Japha nodded.

  “Well, hit the damn gatepost!” the captain said. “In the future, if it sounds like a question, you do it.”

  Japha turned with a fluid motion, throwing his body forward, and sank the blade.

  “Jaja better,” said Phajaja. He threw his dagger off the draw, and knocked Japhas’ off the post.

  The captain was impressed. “I could not have sidestepped that. So I’m glad your stop-training is current.” He crouched down to look Gole in the face. “For future reference, we don’t call out our superiors, just put that out of your mind. And we don’t even approve of calling out our equals. Certainly a new scrag like you won’t be answered, not until you show you have some worth. So, all of you, fold yourselves up and put your knives away.”

  He walked to the colonel, his eyes flicking over Nana. “Thank you, sir. We’ll use them up for you. Now I must speak to the mother.” He lifted his pad of receipts. Papa nodded to the house, where Momma watched from the doorway.

  “Stand down, you dogs,” the helpie bellowed at the boys. “Get your shit in the truck, la. You’re not too dumb to join the war.”

  Facing the crowd of soldiers, Nana continued.

  “I am just a slight girl named Briff. When you go back to your friends, they will ask you who is pretending to be a Queen. It is your job to make them understand. I had eight brothers, but two died. I raised six brothers from nasty biters into beautiful young men. Two more died. I saw four of my brothers leave for the front. After a month, I had three brothers. Now I have two brothers. Each brother that dies is a promise broken. In two week’s time, I may have one brother, or none.

  “Tell your friends that this queen will not see another man die out of habit. You may not care, and my own idiot brothers may not care—but the queen cares.” She made the mudra of the Thrown Knife, and their eyes followed, faces falling open. She made the Empty Bowl Filling, holding their attention. “Listen: Thou art men, and I am the manleader. I shall lead, and thou shalt follow.”

  She stepped down, leaving them staring at the space she had been. It was rare to leave men opened like that. At least, she’d never known it to be done with children. She wanted them to have the semblance of a dream in their minds, as if she were not wholly real. After all, none of this felt real. She didn’t even feel real herself. There was really nothing telling her she was right, in any of this. She was a complete fraud.

  She finally
approached the bosses by the door, who hadn’t moved through her whole speech. Kinsur was familiar, but she only knew the others by reputation. Glancing at their faces, she was glad she hadn’t spoken to them first. With their hard eyes and their unimpressed frowns, she could never have reached them. They were too hardened by responsibility, too high function, and too humanized by the daily demands of managing their organizations to be charmed by any dashta tricks.

  “You’re kicking yourselves,” she guessed. “You gathered these soldiers to demonstrate your power to me, and I just walked past you and spoke to them. Don’t worry. I certainly believe you are who you say you are. You’re old pirates and finger-breakers and gangsters. You’re not to be trifled with. But I own those boys now, and I wonder what your value is.”

  The highest boss was Bucephalon, and he had all the bulk and charm of a baxxaxx. He cut the air with a hand like a scimitar. “You don’t own them, girl. A puzzling speech does not own you anything.”

  However, a younger one, whom Kinsur had told her was named Warth, didn’t even try to disagree. “Here’s what we can do. We can give you information from the front. We can pass your information to the soldiers. How shall you get your instructions to the boots?”

  The others nodded agreement, but Nana merely gave an inward shrug. It was a simple matter to pass messages from soldier to soldier; they’d been doing it themselves for time immemorial. However, if she showed too much independence, these bosses would not have much reason to let her live. If they thought she could lead without their assistance, then she was merely a new threat to their power. The romantic oddity of a modern manleader would make no difference to them, there was no core of nostalgia or imagination in any of them. They were pragmatic about the Haphan yoke, not patriots seeking freedom.

  The crowd of soldiers slowly came alive, muttering and shifting their feet. They would soon begin dribbling out of the building’s many doors into the city, blending into the mass of uniforms on the street. Soon she would be committed, because word of the slight queen would spread like dysentery through the tightly massed armies around Ville Emsa.

  “I see you’re not impressed by that idea,” Bucephalon said. “Then how about this. I recollect how manleaders are prone to dying. How shall your heart keep beating, once the Happies learn about the Queen of Sessera? Unless your tender ‘motherhood’ encompasses destroying the Haphan Empire as well?”

  “That is what I need, thank you!” Nana said brightly. Bucephalon looked confused. “A time will come when the Haphans want me disappeared like a bad idea. I will need your best and most useful to protect my little self.”

  “And to do your bidding,” Bucephalon added harshly. “Are you asking for mere brawlers, or an action group?”

  An action group would be trained, flexible, intelligent. Good for much more than just guarding her on the streets. Nana didn’t nod—she couldn’t ask them of course. She glanced over their heads and shifted her eyes, indicating it was as they thought. “They would become mine, though. No matter who you planted.”

  “You are too sure of everything,” Warth said. “Even me? You could turn me?”

  She shrugged. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to have someone care about you. One day under my voice, and you will see I have no agenda you must guard against. I have just my one face, and I want just one thing. Remember the song. Am-a truly as I am. You’d have to be the worst sort of scrag to hate me when I open my heart to you. There is not a Tachba who would hurt me then, for love or money.”

  Warth looked only half convinced, and Nana realized the real meaning of his question. She added, with a smile, “So, Warth, I beg you to hold me close. You must see everything I do and keep me safe at the same time. Two sides of the wheel. We will be the best of friends.”

  Bucephalon watched the faces of the other bosses with heavy disapproval. “Stop smirking. You are aware this is just innuendo and that the dashta is not actually sexing you up at this moment? While we keep the dashta close, she’s keeping us under her thumb.” He turned to her. “I won’t jump at the snap of the fingers, and I’m not expendable. If you play the blood-fed you will die alone. I won’t stop a bullet without it being useful.”

  Nana nodded, putting a sweet and agreeable smile on her face. “Alive and intelligent: those are the kind of leaders I need. There is no point in getting rid of the Haphans if we don’t have replacements. When the Haphans are gone, we shall need fighters, supply lines, roads. I will need all my princes to keep Sessera alive.”

  The crowd of soldiers trickled behind toward the door. Their fingertips brushed her shoulders and arms as they passed, and now one of them took her hand. His huge callused fingers closed over her wrist like an ammunition locker.

  “Joy-la dashta. To think someone still cares, long after the indy-bones are spent.” His voice was low and devoted. Nana stood on her toes to brush his forelocks out of his face. She smiled just for him.

  Other soldiers passed, touching her cheek or stroking her hair. Still others moved by simply touching her with their eyes.

  Bucephalon gave an impatient cough. “Bodyguards are clearly indicated. Let us retire to a private place before all this groping becomes an affront.”

  Nana liked the edge in his voice.

  She allowed herself to be encircled and led deeper into the building. Somewhere, in the safest part of the munitions factory, would be the dashtas and old crones who shared the problems of these bosses. Then the real discussion would begin.

  Still, she hesitated to leave the soldiers. What the bosses didn’t understand was that she wanted to meet these men. Each time she met a pair of eyes, it was easier remember her brothers. One of these men would know them, or know a man who knew of them. She was only one or two voices away from Gole, Grulle, and Phajaja, and she almost felt like she could transmit through these men to the entire front. Yes, she could dashta a whole nation, if it would keep her brothers safe.

  Maybe she could really be a manleader.

  The transaction concluded quickly. Nana thought there would be tests, explanations, oaths, and other rigamarole. But with barely a dozen words her brothers were sold, ritually, and the captain issued receipts to Momma for the boys. They were valued at twenty bone six dime each.

  The boys were shepherded to the truck and lifted aboard. They looked small and unsure next to the soldiers. Nana clutched Papa, who held her tightly, but she didn’t feel like more than a husk.

  The captain signaled mount-up, pumping his fist, and the truck engine roared to life. “Take a look around, scrags. You won’t see home again. You’re soldiers now, and no love nor family ever more.”

  Her four brothers, and the four other family boys, peeked over the side as the truck circled. Their eyes drifted around the compound and paused on the faces. They gave timid waves, the reality of the induction finally landing on them. They had little imagination, unlike Nana, and they could not have seen this specific moment approaching.

  Nana slid out of Papa’s grasp, stepping after the truck as it accelerated out of the gate…and then it stopped.

  Gole had jumped out, somersaulting backward onto the dust of the road. The soldiers dropped down to retrieve him, but he was up and running—running back to Nana. Her throat swelled, and tears burned her eyes. She prepared herself to chide him, to tell him to not shame the family. To go back to the truck.

  Gole gave her a wicked grin. “Don’t even open your mouth-hole. I’m not running. I just had to say good-bye to my girl one last time.”

  He took her in his arms with a tackle. He swung her around and buried his face in her neck. He sobbed once, and said, “Oh Nana, I’ll miss you. I love you very much.”

  “Yes, Gole,” she whispered.

  “Will you remember me when I’m dead?” He pulled back to check her face. “And say a few words to me through the fire?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. Not meeting her eyes again, he turned and fled back to the truck.

  (Childhood: Broken Machines
)

  Young Nana

  It was the day Gole, Grulle, Japha, Phaja, and all the rest were inducted.

  The family compound was empty of boys. Empty of the endless stream of bravado, of threats punctuated with laughter. There was no one to chase Rellie or Chasza squealing through the halls. No one to outrage convention by addressing Momma as if she was a girl of sixteen. No one flattered Jullie with pretty words while well-briefed blood-feds rolled a wine-barrel out of the kitchen behind her back.

  The boys were gone. Gone and now surrounded by uniforms and hard voices. Surrounded by violent, indifferent men. Far from Nana’s sight and touch.

  When the sun fell, a new cask of bourbon was tapped. The men’s drinking was on a scale outside Nana’s experience. Neither sharp curses nor Deep Tongue commands kept them in line. They were ostensibly celebrating, but there was no laughter and no charm, just the endless attempts to corner her and tell about a soldier’s life.

  It wasn’t the thoughtless groping, which she could mostly deflect or beat away, disturbing as it was. It was their eyes, dead as boiled eggs. The simpletons she knew so intimately were cowering somewhere behind an automaton that had taken over their minds. They spoke without listening, turning their heads to speak, then turning again to speak in another direction, to the air. Like a bunch of broken machines put together in a room, they were utterly meaningless as they wound down to drunken stillness.

  Only old Grueff wasn’t drinking. He tipped his cups into his beard, and the whole front of his shirt and pants were wet. Grueff leaned close to the Colonel, answering every question or comment regardless how inane. He provided a constant voice as Papa drank himself blind in front of the fire. As with everything, Grueff was humorless about it. He spared only one glance for Nana when she drifted too close. The tears in Grueff’s eyes made Nana back away again, and she stuck to the shadows. When the language grew too bitter and hateful, she finally left for the kitchen.