Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  Still, with ships that were centuries old, there was a great deal of room for improvement. Even her own flagship, Spirit of Peace, was a century and a quarter old, as were her sisters of the Spirit class.

  Marguerite turned her attention from the fleet maintenance officer to the captain, pro tem, of the Monnet, McFarland. His face was as blank as her own, something she knew that came hard to her former chief engineer. Indeed, it came so hard that if the maintenance wallah had been bullshitting McFarland wouldn’t have been able to hide it.

  Good. It’s going about as well as reported, then.

  Back in Old Earth orbit she’d intended to put someone else in as skipper as soon as she had a replacement trained to take over from McFarland. Instead, time being short and the successful transition of Monnet from the Solar System to Terra Nova so critical, she’d pulled Buthelezi in to serve as Peace’s chief engineer. He was doing well enough in the job for her to wonder if she shouldn’t make it permanent, leaving McFarland in command of Monnet for at least several more supply runs back home.

  Something that requires serious thought, Marguerite reminded herself. Buthelezi is on top of things on a ship that McFarland tuned to a T before transferring completely to Monnet. That doesn’t mean he can handle it as things begin to wear again.

  And if there’s anything that better refutes the core philosophy behind the system on Old Earth, that man’s just malleable clay in the hands of the elites, then I can’t imagine what or who it could be than McFarland. After all, if it were true, that core belief, how is it that the system didn’t ruin him? Or convince him, being only a Class Three, after all, that he just wasn’t up to the job.

  That thought, “Class Three,” scared her suddenly. She spared McFarland another glance, looking over the bald pate fringed with gray, the sagging skin under his chin, and the wrinkles framing eyes and ears. Elder gods, what if he dies on me? He’s only a Three; no really good anti-agathics for him. Note to self: if it takes blowing the SecGen of the Consensus to get Mac raised then I can do that.

  Well, she silently corrected herself, I could if I could go back home before I’ve settled the Terra Novan question. Hmmm…maybe I should ship Khan the wife back with McFarland on his next supply run to make an…ummm…an oral…request.

  At that Marguerite did permit herself a small smile. Small as it was it caught the maintenance officer’s attention. “Ma’am?” he asked worriedly.

  “Nothing, Chief,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Keep going.”

  “Yes, High Admiral.”

  The invisible speaker mounted behind Wallenstein beeped, then squawked. A very natural sounding computer-generated voice announced, “Admiral’s barge ready for transport to the surface.”

  Marguerite pointed at McFarland. “Captain, take over the briefing,” she said. “Esma, assuming you’ve finished packing us?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the Earth-girl replied. “Your bags should already be at the shuttle.”

  “Excellent. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  For a number of reasons, not least that the major power on the planet below, the Federated States of Columbia, utterly feared, hated, and despised the United Earth Peace Fleet, and was both capable and prepared to destroy it on fairly minimal provocation, Wallenstein found it wise to go first to the UEPF base on Atlantis Island, in the Mar Furioso, before boarding a more conventional aircraft for the mainland. From there she would fly to the Tauran Union, then to Balboa. The second and third legs of that journey would be in aircraft registered on the planet, and not marked as owned by the Peace Fleet. It might not fool anyone who was looking, but would at least keep casual comment to a minimum. Her final segment, Tauran Union to Balboa, would be on a Gallic Air Force dirigible with several high functionaries of the TU aboard as well. The dirigible would be carrying necessary supplies, too, for partial cover, along with a few hundred replacements.

  Still, the journey of a thousand miles or, in this case, about forty thousand, began with a single…

  I hope to hell Buthelezi’s right about this elder gods-damned thing, Marguerite thought as she climbed the three steps from the hangar deck to her shuttle. The steps formed the lower third or so of the shuttle’s main hatch. Behind her the hatch whined shut as she settled herself into her—it had to be admitted—luxurious seat. On the other side, Esmeralda, already seated and strapped in, fidgeted nervously.

  She had reason to worry; they both did. A different shuttle had once nearly killed Marguerite’s immediate predecessor, High Admiral Robinson. She spared a quick glance out her porthole to the pressure indicator. The balloon system some prole had come up with was still in place but, comfortingly, the digital display was working again.

  She felt a metallic vibration through the shuttle’s body, as the clamps were let go, then sensed more than felt a slight rise as it was magnetically pulled upward. Again glancing out the porthole, she saw the hangar deck sliding by as the shuttle was magnetically moved out of the bay. She realized it was just as well that she couldn’t see forward, as the hangar deck spun with the ship and the sight of spinning moons, stars, or planets was an almost guaranteed nausea inducer.

  And then the hangar’s rectangular portal slid past. The pilot waited perhaps half a minute before firing a brace of attitude rockets to aim himself, then another to stop. Marguerite braced herself.

  Whoomf!

  Personally, I prefer a more sedate flight, Marguerite thought. But if I’m going to turn this gaggle of inbred mules into stallions…well, a little discomfort is probably required.

  * * *

  The plane to the mainland was waiting when Marguerite’s shuttle set down. She was quickly hustled out and into a locally produced limousine, Esmeralda trailing behind, watching but not carrying the baggage. The limo then raced to the plane. No sooner were the admiral and her cabin girl strapped in than the thing started its takeoff run. In seconds, it seemed, she was airborne and heading toward Valdivia, in the shadow of the Atacama mountain range, in Colombia del Norte. The UEPF wasn’t precisely popular in Valdivia, which retained a fairly strong alliance with the Federated States, and very friendly relations with the Republic of Balboa, but as long as war wasn’t actually in the offing and there was a peseta to be made, a limited trade—mostly limited by the UEPF’s emphasis on security and secrecy—was kept up. For the most part the trade was by air, but three or four times a local year a ship was allowed in Atlantean waters with heavier and bulkier goods. This was always presented as a case of mere efficiency over shipping goods from Old Earth.

  In truth, though, thought Wallenstein, as her plane lifted wheels up, the fleet couldn’t survive six months without the planet, even with the latifundia on Atlantis Island. Speaking of which, if the locals ever discover how we do our farming even the bloody Gauls will be up in arms over it. But what the hell am I going to do with the slaves and serfs? I can’t free them, not really. Oh, sure, I have the power to, but if I do, they’ll start to leave. No food would be bad enough. But when they start leaving and the locals, especially the Federated States, discover what bad shape we’re still in they’ll nuke us on general principle.

  Fuck, I hate my own system. But I have to tolerate some evil—and I know it’s an evil—for a longer-term good. I have to.

  * * *

  The plane was supersonic. This didn’t completely eliminate engine noise—it travelled through the material of the hull—but at least reduced it to a tolerable level.

  “Do they have slavery here on Terra Nova, High Admiral?” Esmeralda asked.

  Reluctantly, Wallenstein nodded, adding, “Commonly, in some places and some cultures. The more civilized local states try to stop it, but…well…even there there’s slavery. Mostly for girls. Mostly for sex.”

  Esmeralda shivered. “You know what happened to me before you freed me at Razona Market? You never asked, but you know?”

  “I know,” admitted the high admiral. “I wish I’d gotten to you sooner. Before…”


  The olive skinned cabin girl had no trouble believing that. But would you also have saved my sister whose heart was cut out by the Neo-Azteca on your Ara Pacis? she wondered silently. She had to admit, in fairness, Yes, you likely would have.

  Esmeralda could read, but what had been a more or less vestigial ability was now, under the instruction of her lover, the earl of Care and captain of the Peace, quite polished. And she had read, too. She’d read enough to know that her admiral’s ultimate destination was in the middle of a place settled by her own distant relatives. She knew, too, that the physical layout was very similar. None of the books she had read on screen seemed to explain why, but to her it was obvious. The people—the “Noahs,” they were called—who built or created the transit point, the people with that kind of power, who had also moved populations of Earth animals to the new world, had also simply used their immense power to modify the new Earth to closely match the old. Precisely why they did this she didn’t know.

  The books from which Esmeralda was allowed to read were strictly limited by a system even the high admiral would have found a chore to override. And none of their authors had really cared all that much about the new world. On Terra Nova, on the other hand, where many people were deeply concerned with the planet of their birth, there was, in fact, a cogent theory as to why their world physically matched Old Earth so closely. It had to do with weather or, more properly, with weather and the animals the Noahs had brought, from sabertooth to megalodon to phorohacos.

  Plainly, the Noahs had wanted those animals to live. That required a proper climate, proper seasons, proper winds and rain. And, since weather was largely a function of the layout of a planet’s surface, that had necessitated raising up continents and islands here, moving others there, and perhaps sinking others, still.

  At least, that was the prevailing theory among those who cared.

  Gaul Field, Balboa Transitway Zone, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Both the admiral and the cabin girl had changed out of UEPF blacks into mufti during the second leg of their flight. That way they raised no comment as they made their way from one airport portal to the next in Valdivia, or in Taurus, or here.

  It smells exactly like home, Esmeralda thought, as she and the high admiral walked the short distance from the Tauran dirigible’s hatchway to a waiting helicopter a quarter of a mile away. Well, underneath that funny oily stink it does. Sea salt. Flowers. The jungle.

  The TU’s political and diplomatic crew lagged respectfully behind Wallenstein, who outranked them any way they cared to look at it. Her cabin girl, conversely, stayed by her side. About two hundred meters from the waiting TH-527 helicopter the wind shifted. Esmeralda sniffed again. Even the food…it’s all the same.

  Suddenly the girl was overwhelmed by a sense of homesickness and loss. It was all she could do not to break down in tears at the thought, I’ll never see home again.

  Wallenstein hadn’t gotten to be as old as she had without learning to read people. That she and the cabin girl had spent about the last two years in close company helped, too. Gently, she patted Esmeralda. “Yes, child, you will someday go home. Moreover, you’ll go home free and rich and famous all over. With a nice jump in caste to see you through a long and happy life.”

  And when I hang the last of the Castro-Nyeres—foul brood—you’ll be there to set the ropes. I promise.

  Esmeralda wasn’t as good at reading her admiral as her admiral was at reading her.

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

  Marguerite had it on very good authority that the TU’s headquarters was an intelligence sieve, that the domestic staff and some of the secretarial staff spied for the other side, that the phones were tapped, and even that some areas were subject to sound amplification via parabolic mirror. She thought that last was paranoia but… Never hurts to be a little bit paranoid.

  Indeed, she’d been paranoid enough to force a third of the more senior TU personnel to precede her out of the helicopter, having ordered the Gaul, Janier, to greet them. While all of that folderol was going on, she and Esmeralda escaped into the building via a less obvious door, held open by a short, well-stacked, very damned pretty blonde with very large blue eyes.

  Who, unfortunately, Wallenstein realized in an instant, isn’t remotely interested in girls. Oh, well.

  The blonde’s nametag read “Campbell,” while the rank on her epaulets indicated captain of ground forces.

  “This way, ma’am,” Campbell said, leading Marguerite and Esmeralda down a narrow, brown-painted corridor, up an even narrower flight of steps, then around two corners and into a thick-walled conference room of perhaps four by six meters. The door to the conference room was doubled, with a small chamber between doors, very much like the air lock of a star ship.

  Almost, Wallenstein ordered Esmeralda to go with the captain. In the end, though, she not only recognized the captain as straight but as an intel type. No way she was letting an intel type get anywhere near her cabin girl.

  “His Gribbitzness will be along shortly,” the captain said, before leaving through the double door.

  I wonder what the hell “Gribbitzness” means, Wallenstein wondered. The tone she used said it was not a compliment. I suppose I’d better not ask. Yet.

  * * *

  Whatever Marguerite had come to expect from reports about Gallic General Janier, the broken reed seated opposite her didn’t quite fit it. He hadn’t even donned the reproduction uniform of a marshal of Napoleonic France, and she’d been certain he would. Why, he wasn’t even carrying the marshal’s baton that was supposed to be his constant companion.

  “I could have taken them four years ago,” the Gaul said, shaking his head regretfully. “Maybe even three years ago, I could have. We had a good plan for doing it. We’d go after their leadership, before they could mobilize, using forces here and others brought in from Taurus. Then we could have turned on and destroyed the leaderless rabble one small unit at a time.

  “Back then they were in the throes of reorganization. They had people in high places we could have gotten to. Eventually we did get to some of them, too. And there was—thanks to Federated States meddling—an existing opposed government to step in and give legitimacy to the entire operation.”

  There was a touch of frenzy on the Gaul’s voice as, leaning forward excitedly, he insisted, “It’s all gone now. We can’t win anymore, not with any likely level of force the TU will give me. There are too many of them—not even counting the parts we don’t know about but which I am sure exist.” Janier collapsed back into his chair.

  “Like what?” Wallenstein asked, ignoring the outburst.

  Janier sat up a little straighter. It was pleasant, after all, to have someone his political masters would happily grovel to, and who also possibly understood some military realities.

  He replied, “Like, for example, what do you call a three or four thousand man construction company that has no official formation or barracks or anything else, but where every man is a veteran of the legion and where the CEO is never referred to by anything but his legionary rank?”

  Marguerite agreed, “I’d call it a brigade of engineers.”

  “Precisely,” the Gaul said. “And that, I think, is just the tip of the iceberg. Worse, still, my own political superiors are willing neither to retreat from this place nor to put in an effort to win here. They are, for all practical purposes frozen, like a megaloceros caught in headlights.”

  “What if I could unfreeze them, General?” the high admiral asked.

  “They’re cowards,” he replied.

  Marguerite smiled wickedly. “Oh, I’d count on that. What if I could unfreeze them by offering them a limited rejuvenation, about twenty or twenty-five years’ worth?”

  “You could do this?” Seeing she could, Janier grinned for the first time since the meeting began. “They’d be on it like a child molester on a six-year-old.” Which, come to think of it, and though th
e controlled press avoids the subject, some of them are.

  “All right then,” the Gaul said, “I could do something with the kind of political support that would drum up.”

  “What would you do?” Wallenstein asked.

  “I’d build us up to eighteen light and heavy—mostly light—infantry battalions here,” he answered, without any noticeable hesitation. “With all the usual support. This would require some civil construction, to be sure. I’d beg, borrow, or bribe transit rights through Santander to the west and Santa Josefina to the east. I would begin stockpiling in those places as well as here and in Cienfuegos to support a moderately lengthy campaign. I would get substantial sections of both our fleet and the Anglians to control the coasts. I would…”

  Marguerite held up a hand, palm forward. “At least you know what you would do, General. That’s more than most can say. It’s also more than I need to know, in any detail. I’ll get you the political support. You use it to good effect.”

  Again, as if one cue and even though no cue was needed, the entire headquarters building shook as a couple of Balboan fighters skimmed low over the roof.

  “And I’m going to fuck with them mercilessly,” the Gaul finished.

  Marguerite reached into a pocket, pulling out a thin communications device. “We’ll need to talk from time to time. Use this.”

  Cerro Mina road, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova