Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  “And how many of those do the bastards have?” she asked Hendryksen.

  Hendryksen shook his head. “We don’t actually know,” he said. “We think maybe four hundred.” There was a trace of unofficial skepticism in his voice.

  “We?” Campbell queried, with an eyebrow raised.

  “‘We,’ as defined by the Frogs running the local show,” Hendryksen conceded. “And sure, there are about four hundred in country. But me? I think twice that, and the missing four hundred are probably still sitting in Volga, or Jagelonia.” Hendryksen’s face grew contemplative for a moment. “I also think that maybe they don’t have enough pilots for all of those. Or at least not enough replacement pilots. Or not enough good replacement pilots.

  “Or maybe they think they don’t need two or two and a half pilots per plane.”

  “Undeveloped world bullshit?” Campbell asked. “All show, no go?”

  “You might suspect that,” Hendryksen answered. “But it would be so totally out of line with everything else we know about the legion that it just strikes me as a terrible bet. And since our lives are the ante…” The Cimbrian shrugged eloquently.

  “Fucking Frogs,” Campbell muttered.

  “It’s not really them anymore,” Hendryksen corrected. “Or at least not mostly them. Janier seems a broken reed since the failure of the coup. Instead…” To explain, he pointed the index finger of his right hand straight up.

  Campbell’s gaze followed Hendryksen’s upturned finger. “Them, too,” she scowled.

  Range 18, Imperial Range Complex, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Beneath the jinking Mosaic jets, a ship heading to the Mar Furioso slowly descended as the water in the Florida Locks was let run out toward the sea. A man and a boy stood on an historic overlook above the locks. They had no eyes for the ship but concentrated entirely on the enemy headquarters on the opposite side of the Transitway.

  Carrera and his oldest living son, Hamilcar, aged twelve in local years, watched the building intently despite the backblast from the recoilless rifles. It pounded them, if anything, worse than the Taurans in Building 59. But Carrera could leave anytime he wanted. The Taurans couldn’t. Man and boy watched the building through a couple of pairs of the best binoculars made anywhere on Terra Nova.

  “You are a cruel bastard, Dad,” the boy observed, loudly enough to be heard over the thumping of the “reckless rifles.”

  “Son, you have no idea,” Carrera mostly agreed. But you’ll find out in a little while.

  The boy had only been home about a month. In that short period of time, any number of problems had arisen which, so far, had proved impossible to correct easily. Drastic measures were in the offing, though the boy didn’t know about those.

  A glint in one of the windows caught Carrera’s eye. It came from one of the windows off to the left of the portal in the center of the building and two floors above ground level.

  Ham noticed his father’s movement. “You looking for the flash, Dad?”

  “Yeah.” Is the little bastard trying to remind me I’m getting old and my eyes aren’t what they were?

  “It’s a woman,” the boy said. “Her hair’s done up but she’s short and you can just make out the tits…”

  “Where’d you learn to talk like that?”

  Ham didn’t bother answering, instead just rolling his eyes. From you, among others, old man.

  Headquarters, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova

  “Kris, come here, please,” Campbell asked. When he stood beside her she handed him her own binoculars and asked, “Is that who I think it is, behind those field glasses?”

  Hendryksen took the field glasses and, adjusting them to his eyes, focused on a couple of Balboan soldiers, one taller, one shorter, half exposed amidst the jungle of the hill opposite.

  “Your lucky day,” he confirmed. “It’s Carrera and, if I’m not mistaken, his son.”

  “What’s he doing with a boy out amongst all this dangerous crap?” she asked.

  Hendryksen shrugged. “There’s almost no telling. He doesn’t seem to think like normal people.”

  Campbell contemplated the implications of the boy’s existence. “Oh, I’ll bet he does.” With that she twisted the knob to the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the balcony. As she did she made sure to turn right to present a side profile to the man and boy standing on the other side of the Transitway, perhaps a half a mile away.

  “That’s right, boys,” she whispered, needlessly, “get a good look.” Then she turned slowly toward the hill on the other side and waved.

  Range 18, Imperial Range Complex, Balboa, Terra Nova

  “I did mention tits, Dad.” said the boy, keeping his glasses firmly fixed on the heavily front-loaded hourglass shape across the water.

  “Yeah…yeah, you did. And you didn’t lie, either. They’re…impressive. I wonder what the purpose of the show is?”

  “Find out who she is and you’ll probably find the purpose,” the boy said. “Legate Fernandez will know. Or can find out.”

  “Yeah,” Carrera agreed. He lowered his binoculars and then, on a whim, raised his hand and waved back.

  “She’s very pretty,” Ham said. One didn’t see too many blondes in Balboa, which made flaxen hair rather exotic and desirable.

  “Tell you what,” answered Carrera, “if you don’t tell your mother I waved, I won’t tell your wives you were looking at another woman.”

  “That seems very fair.” True, the boy’s wives were in name only, so far. Soon that would be changing, at least with the older ones, if nothing interfered. And it was also true that they would never think to criticize their god, Iskandr, less still to nag. But they could make him feel like dirt with the mildest sniffle or flash of hurt eyes. So, yes, very fair indeed.

  Headquarters, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova

  “Why the show, Jan?” Hendryksen asked, once Campbell had reentered the office. Closing the door didn’t do a lot to reduce the sound of shock of the counterrecoiling gas from Range 18. “You’re usually content to let them flaunt themselves.”

  “I want him to ask his intel folks—what was his intel chief’s name?”

  “Fernandez,” the Cimbrian replied. “Legate Fernandez.”

  “Right, Fernandez. I want him to ask Fernandez who the new blonde with the big tatas is. That will get this Fernandez looking at me, too. And when he tries to look at me, I’ll get, or at least I may get, a chance to look right back. And maybe I’ll even get a close look back.”

  Hendryksen tsked, quoting, “‘And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’”

  “Precisely,” Campbell agreed, with a happy smile, stretching slightly and letting her chest flaunt itself. The smile dissolved into a frown when she looked once again out of the door’s vibrating window only to see that her ultimate quarry had disappeared.

  “Now that’s hardly fair,” she said.

  InterColombiana Highway, east of the Puente de las Colombias, Balboa, Terra Nova

  With one armored car ahead and two trailing, Carrera’s big black armored Phaeton, with Warrant Officer Soult at the wheel, whizzed past jungle and small town and smaller still roadside stand. The armored cars were driven by Carrera’s own troops. Following, however, were another two trucks with forty-eight of Hamilcar’s in-laws, armed to the teeth, seated on center-running benches, and glaring out.

  “My wives are not going to think that’s very fair, Dad,” said the boy. “They’ve been very good girls, not doing proskynesis where anyone can see, waiting until I was old enough to do a proper…umm, what’s that word?”

  “Deflowering.”

  “Right. They’ve been waiting two years—over two years—for a proper deflowering. And they’re expecting me to start within the next month or two.”

  Carrera shook his head firmly. “Not gonna happen. You’re not legally married in the Re
public. They’re all under age, even if all but one is older than you.” The father frowned. “They’re… What are you smiling at?”

  “Close-in-age exception, Dad. Forget it. I can fuck ’em all perfectly legally. Even if I wasn’t married to them. But I am. Alena the witch checked and the Republic recognizes foreign marriages and has no express bar to polygamy. And I learned to talk like that from you, so forget bitching about that, too.”

  Alena, sometimes called, “the witch,” was probably less of a witch than just a supremely intelligent and observant woman. She’d been the first among her people to recognize Ham’s striking resemblance to the image on an ancient gold platter, smuggled from Old Earth when her people had been exiled. Thereafter she’d become Ham’s caretaker, guardian, surrogate mother, chief acolyte, and matchmaker. All the boy’s twelve wives had been selected by her.

  Carrera sat back heavily in the well-upholstered seat of the limousine. “Yeah, well consider this: They’re all too young to bear a child without unnecessary risk. None of them had any real choice before they were married to you. Their families told them, ‘go,’ and they went. And they’ve all been told you’re the avatar of God, so they aren’t even fully people in their own eyes. You want to talk about fair and unfair, boy?”

  Hamilcar sighed heavily. “I know. So you want me to go off to military school so the girls can grow a little?”

  “Least of my concerns,” the father answered. “I’m not that nice a man. No…it’s more about you than them.

  “Ham, you’ve got all kinds of attributes to make you an effective commander already…among people who think you’re a god and can’t be convinced otherwise. You try relying on that crap with the legion and they’ll kick your ass. And the girls only make it worse. Maybe you haven’t seen it, but they’ve even been teaching your sister to do proskynesis where they think no one can see them. That’s not good for you. And they sleep on the floor around your bed, confident that no guards could possibly protect you as well as they can. Son…that can’t be good for you. And it’s perverse, besides, a male hiding behind females.”

  “I admit,” said the boy, “that that part troubles me. On the other hand, who’ll take care of them when I’m gone?”

  “Your mother’s volunteered. And their Spanish is coming along very nicely, you may have noticed.”

  Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Weeping and banging of pretty little heads on hard wooden floors was interspersed with pleas for mercy. “Por favor, señor! Por favor, no llevar a nuestra esposo Iskandr.”

  Carrera looked down at the—So much for orders, even from “God.” Hmmm…lemme count. Yep, thirteen of them. They’ve got one of his sisters begging, too—little lake of exotically clad, barely post-pubescent feminine humanity clustered around his feet. Some were beating their heads on the floor. Still others looked up with huge brown, green, or blue tear-filled eyes, hands clasped in supplication. He looked more closely for his own daughter, Julia, then bent over and picked her up by one arm. Setting her to her feet he spun her in the direction of the stairs, applied a swat to her fundament, and ordered, “Go to your room!” The child ran off with a shriek.

  “For the rest of you, shut up and get on your feet.”

  Silence descended like a falling axe, suddenly and decisively. Hamilcar was their god, but who was it who could tell God what to do? Most of the girls really weren’t up to the theological depths of that question. Rather than test the thought, they simply shut up and arose to their feet. Sniffling, at reduced volume, continued.

  “Into the living room…MARCH.”

  * * *

  Carrera judged his success in explaining matters to his daughters-in-law by the level of sniffling and the flow or tears. When he had those down to a tolerable degree he was pretty sure he’d won. There was, however, an exception. This was the youngest and, pretty much everyone agreed, the second prettiest, Pililak. In her language the name meant, “Ant.” Twelve years old only, strawberry blonde, with enormous green eyes, the girl was the hardest working and possibly the brightest among a hard-working and bright lot. Her Spanish was the best, as well.

  No Christian martyr was ever firmer in the faith. “You are trying to separate me from my husband and lord,” she told Carrera, chin lifting fearlessly. “It will not happen.”

  * * *

  No adult guards would be permitted to Ham while he was away, any more than wives were allowed at any of the academies. Even so, the world being the way it was, he being who he was, and the Tauran Union being something like the wicked and hypocritical organization his father thought it was, Ham would need some kind of extra security. To this end Carrera had had Alena select five boys of the right age from among the families of the Hamilcar’s Pashtun guards. These he had briefed personally, extracting promises that there would be no special treatment of his son, other than to watch out for his physical safety from external threats. Alena had administered the oaths in her own language, with Cano, her husband, present to verify that the oath was what Carrera wanted, rather than what Alena thought was proper for a god. He’d extracted an oath from Alena, even so, in advance.

  Places had been made for each of the boys in the Sergeant Juan Malvegui Military Academy, two in Ham’s company, but not his platoon or section, and three in the next company over. Their bags—one overnighter, each—were stored in the trunks of the armored Phaeton and another sedan. Everything else would be issued at school.

  The girls, Carrera could see, lined both sides of the long driveway that led down from the house to the InterColombiana. Also lined up, in addition to those twelve, were Alena and both of Ham’s sisters. He shot a dirty look at Lourdes who shrugged in return. What can one do against religious faith? Even so, she strode over to first the little one, Linda, then Julia, picking each up by her waistband and carrying them, luggagelike, kicking and weeping, to the house.

  The boys, too, stood in a short line, in front of the open space left between the cars. Solemnly, Carrera walked the line, shaking each boy’s hand and giving a few words of encouragement. Most of them answered to the effect of, “I won’t let you down, father of our lord.”

  Ham just said, “I’m ready, Dad.” He gave a quick look to the door through which his mother had carted off his sisters. “And if you had any doubts about whether this is the right thing, forget it. It is.”

  At a word the boys split up, three to each vehicle. The engines started smoothly and the drivers began easing them down the driveway. Alena shouted a command, in her own language. All thirteen of the females still lining the driveway dropped to their knees, then to all fours, and then placed their faces into the dirt as the car bearing Hamilcar passed. The Moslems among whom Alena’s people lived would have been appalled. She and her people, however, were anything but monotheistic Muslims.

  After the first sedan passed they began to rise, all except Ant, aka Pililak, who, still on her knees, shot Carrera a look: This tyranny will not stand.

  He wondered, I wonder what makes Ant so pigheaded about this? More of a monotheist than the ones who are afraid of me?

  Past that, Carrera ignored the girl, the more so as his digital personal data assistant beeped with a message that, upon checking, he saw was from one of Fernandez’s drops.

  Chapter Two

  The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.

  —Marcus Aurelius

  High Admiral’s Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Terra Nova

  One of the earlier high admirals, perhaps a hundred years prior, had ordered the conference room paneled in rare Terra Novan silverwood. This material shone iridescently from the walls, reflecting the light of a fixed chandelier mounted above a long conference table of the same material as those walls.

  Around the conference table sat United Earth Peace Force High Admiral Marguerite Wallenstein’s seven subordinate squadron commanders, her own staff, and the frightfully young captain of the flagship, Richard, earl of Care. Richar
d’s mistress and Marguerite’s lovely, olive-skinned cabin girl, Esmeralda, a freed former slave from Old Earth, stood in the back, pitcher in hand, ready to refill a water glass or, later on, provide more potent comestibles.

  Though a former slave and now just a cabin girl, the sixteen-year-old Esmeralda had grown close to Marguerite on the long journey from Old Earth, through the Rift, to Terra Nova. Esmeralda knew the high admiral cared for her, and probably deeply. The best proof of that, to her mind, was the fact that, though the high admiral liked girls at least as much as boys, and though Esmeralda would have gone to her bed—joylessly, true, but she’d have gone—if asked or ordered, the request never came; the order was never given. That, alone, was so unlike the normal attitude of a Class One…

  She loves me, thought Esmeralda, but like a daughter. Or maybe a favored pet. The thought of being a pet sent a shiver through the girl. Even so, she thought, Beats becoming a bowl of chili for the neo-Azteca. Which I almost became. She sent an encouraging smile over the table to her admiral.

  * * *

  Marguerite Wallenstein, High Admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, acknowledged the smile, but only with her eyes. About a century and a half old, she was a leggy, slender—even svelte—Scandinavian-descended Old Earther, with blue eyes that were a bit too small and a nose that was just a trifle too large to qualify her as a true beauty. Even so, she was still a woman who rated a second look; one just wouldn’t be enough.

  Over the rest of her face she maintained a screen, stonelike and detached. It was the best she could do as her fleet maintenance officer went down the list of major deficiencies in her command. She knew them all by heart anyway. Until quite recently nothing had changed with the fleet, except for the worse, in decades. Now, finally, with the old mothballed colonization fleet substantially looted for the parts now being disgorged from the repurposed colonization ship, Jean Monnet, some improvements were being made. With the significant push on the part of the secretary general of the Consensus, United Earth’s governing body, to support the distant Peace Fleet, more should be possible soon.