Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  “And some disinfectant?” he suggested.

  “Oh, by all means the disinfectant. And some clean, dry socks.”

  While Hendryksen was rifling the captain’s pack, the short and mean looking sergeant major came up. He squatted down near Jan’s feet, craning his neck slightly to look at them from both sides.

  “Be careful to disinfect completely,” Cruz said to Hendryksen. “There are kinds of fungus in this country that I think the Noahs put here specifically to destroy anybody stupid enough to do a march under a heavy pack.”

  “Sure,” Kris agreed.

  “And, if you want to attend, you’re welcome to; the commander’s giving initial orders to the maniples in half an hour.”

  Chapter Twelve

  All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.

  —Chou En-Lai, Saturday Evening Post (27 March 1954)

  Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  Being driven through the streets of the city, unfamiliar in its details but totally familiar in it sounds, smells, and overarching culture, Esmeralda was absolutely thrilled to be ashore and unsupervised. She had a job to do, of course, but that the high admiral had entrusted it to her…that was just too delicious. Of course the high admiral entrusted her with myriad things in the course of a month, but this was different. This was trust beyond sight.

  * * *

  The reason that High Admiral Wallenstein had sent someone else, rather than going herself, had to do with not making the whole thing—Santa Josefina’s president calling for disarming the Balboans—seem like an Old Earth trick. It made sense, too. The only known possible match for the Peace Fleet was the Federated States of Columbia. Let the FSC know that the Peace Fleet wanted X and they would automatically push for whatever was the opposite of X. After all, the United Earth Peace Fleet had once destroyed two cities of the Federated States. The FSC simply hated the UEPF with a passion. Even the progressives in the FSC shared in that hate.

  For the same reason that Marguerite couldn’t go below to Santa Josefina—or couldn’t go conveniently, anyway—Esmeralda couldn’t wear her uniform. That would be as much of a warning to the FSC as if Wallenstein had been caught going herself.

  But not wearing a uniform had presented problems, as well. First and foremost had been the fact that not a single female garment in the entire fleet had been suitable for wear in Santa Josefina. Old Earth had been going through a Minoan fashion fad for some time now, which fashion trend extended to both the Peace Fleet and Atlantis Base. Liberal, Santa Josefina might have been. They weren’t liberal enough to have women in open-front bodices parading down Calle Central to the presidential palace.

  Not even if I’d committed the fashion faux pas of not rouging my nipples, thought Esmeralda.

  In desperation, the girl had turned to Commander Khan, female, for help and guidance. It was the commander’s responsibility to prepare her for the mission, generally, so why not some fashion advice?

  Khan’s initial thought had been to dress her in something like the national costume of Santa Josefina. A little checking though, and, “Uh, uh, honey. Those are for debutante balls and national patriotic festivals. They don’t appear ever—or hardly ever—to be seen on the streets.”

  Ultimately, Khan had settled on South Columbian dress, a lightweight business suit of a dark cashmere-silk blend, over an embroidered beige silk top.

  “No accounting for taste,” the commander had said, “but no matter, either. There are so many FSCers in Santa Josefina that you’ll blend right in.”

  “I guess so. Commander?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Why me? I’m nobody. Not so long ago I was a slave. I didn’t even really learn to read and write well until I came here. So why me?”

  Khan smiled knowingly. She had her flaws, but inability to judge people was not among them. “Because the high admiral trusts you. There are a few other people she trusts—the earl of Care, for one—but none of them are available. And in our system there are never enough people you can actually trust. She doesn’t, for example, trust me or my husband. Oh, sure, she trusts our judgment. But she does not trust our loyalty. You? She trusts your loyalty.

  “Hmmm…that reminds me.”

  “Yes?” Esmeralda asked.

  “The Josefinans can be a formal and stuck up crew, I understand. I think I’d better advise the high admiral to brevet you to…mmm…you’re young so…lieutenant, junior grade, I think. Yes, that’s a good rank for a naval emissary. That should at least keep them from sneering.”

  “But I am,” Esmeralda objected.

  “Yes, aren’t you just. And, since you’re going down there to sell the fountain of youth, what better advertisement than you could there be?”

  “You mean tell them I’m older than I am?”

  “See? The high admiral had more reasons than one for picking you.”

  “Why not use our ambassador to Santa Josefina?”

  “Again,” said Khan, holding up a single finger for emphasis, “trust. Now run along to my husband’s office. He has something to give you and show you how to operate.”

  * * *

  Dressed, packed, and with a secure visual recorder cum communicator obtained from Commander Khan, husband, in her purse, along with the equivalent of several thousand drachma, Esmeralda had gone to the hangar deck for her flight down to Atlantis Base. Her lover, Richard, earl of Care, was there to see her off. He was also visibly unhappy to see her go.

  It would be better, she thought, if I could believe he was only distressed for the lack of sex. But be serious, Esma, sex is the cheapest thing in the universe. As captain of the Spirit of Peace he could have any woman aboard except for the high admiral. Maybe even her, too, if she were in the mood. No, he really loves me and is going to miss me. And maybe he’s a little worried for me, too.

  And how to I feel? I care for him, yes. But love? I love my family back on Old Earth. I loved my sister, murdered by those psychopathic Orthodox Druid bastards. No one else.

  Thought hate, now…that I have lots of.

  * * *

  The girl’s journey began following the same track as she and the high admiral had taken before: Ship to Atlantis, Atlantis to Colombia del Norte, and from there to Taurus. Instead of picking up a Gallic Air Force dirigible in Taurus, however, she’d taken one from the Federated States, to the Federated States, and from there yet another to Aserri.

  She didn’t know how the Josefinan government had been informed to have a car meet her at the capital airport. That they had was enough. From that airport she was whisked to the presidential palace, through busy streets, not always all that well kept.

  Still, thought Esmeralda, thinking back to her little home village, a street, even with trash and potholes, is better than no street.

  * * *

  The limousine carrying Esmeralda wasn’t marked with anything that would indicate an official capacity. That didn’t mean it wasn’t official, of course; she learned a great deal from Commander Khan, female, during the latter’s extensive briefings concerning euphemism, deceit, sleight of hand, and hypocrisy, especially among the political classes of both worlds.

  Suddenly, the limo swung right, through a guarded open gate framed by a high dressed stone wall. Unseen behind the limo, uniformed and armed guards swung closed a stout iron-banded gate, then brought down a thick cross bar to lock it shut.

  The limousine pulled into a stone and tile porte cochere, where another uniformed guard opened the rear door for Esmeralda, then stepped smartly out of the way. Another man, this one not uniformed but wearing an appallingly heavy looking tuxedo, asked—with a obsequious deference she found quite disgusting—that she follow him. The limo, with her overnight bag still in the trunk, pulled away gently but stopped, she saw, only a few hundred feet down the driveway, under a spreading tree. She had her purse in hand, still, and that was the important thing.

  Esmeralda had noticed the uniformed guards and not thought much of it. In th
eory, Santa Josefina didn’t have an army, nor even a national guard or gendarmerie. In fact, they had all those things, but not much of them, what they had being not particularly well led, trained, or equipped, and none of it going by those names. In effect, they had abandoned any notion of self-defense and left themselves to the mercies of the international community of the very, very caring and sensitive—who could not really be relied on for much—and the Federated States, which could. That this was a form of moral welfare that seemed to bother the average citizen of Santa Josefina not a bit.

  “Remember, child,” Khan had said, “Sleight of hand and hypocrisy. They are the grease that makes civilization possible.”

  * * *

  The tuxedo clad “major domo”—that was how he had introduced himself—led Esmeralda through long corridors, up and down winding stairs, through doorways, and outside again. Once back in the open air, he led her through a walled garden, across a bright green lawn via a line of flagstones, over a possibly artificial stream by a narrow wooden bridge, and then to a small, stuccoed garden building surrounded by dense hedges.

  If I had to guess, Esmeralda, in fact, guessed, this would be where the presidential weasel deflowers twelve-year-olds.

  She was wrong. The president of Santa Josefina kept a mistress, of course, virtually all men of his class in his country did. But he thought it vile to have sex with a girl under thirteen and didn’t think it was much better to sleep with girls anywhere near the age of consent, which was fifteen. Eighteen or nineteen? Well…maybe.

  “Señor Presidente?” asked the major domo, with a light knock on the small building’s door.

  “Come in,” President Calderón said. Esmeralda found it odd that his accent essentially matched her own. She also found it odd that he was actually good looking; thin but not too thin, hair a distinguished gray at the temples, green eyes.

  Old enough to be my father, of course, but even so…

  The major domo didn’t enter, but stepped aside holding the door for her. She walked in, with a confidence she didn’t really feel, and took a seat at the president’s invitation, opposite him across a small, round table. She noted the telephone on the desk—it looked enough like one of the shipboard back-up communicators—and made a note of the number.

  “Lieutenant Esmeralda Miranda, Mr. President,” she announced. She saw no reason to append “Junior Grade” to that, since none of the real shipboard officers would have.

  “United Earth’s ambassador to my country said your high admiral had an offer for me. She would not say what it was.”

  “She could not say what it was, Mr. President. She didn’t know.” Esmeralda took from her purse the recorder-communicator, set it on the table and pushed one button. Nothing happened immediately and absolutely nothing happened that was obvious, but the recorder-communicator had the special ability of scrambling any other electronic devices within a radius of forty or fifty feet. That was why Khan the husband had given it to her, from intelligence stores.

  At the push of a second button a miniature hologram of High Admiral Wallenstein, decked out in dress blacks, with her hands clasped behind her, appeared to float a few inches above the table.

  “Mr. President,” said the hologram, “this is merely a recording. It cannot respond to your questions. Neither can it negotiate with you, not that there’s much to negotiate. Lieutenant Miranda is my plenipotentiary and could sign on my behalf…if we were going to sign anything, which we are not.”

  Esmeralda studied the president’s face carefully while Wallenstein’s hologram spoke. She knew from watching the sailors aboard the Spirit of Peace play poker that there was such a thing as a poker face. If ever she had seen anyone with such a face, it was the president of Santa Josefina.

  The high admiral’s recording continued, “President Calderón, the basic problem is this: I see a threat to the entire planet growing in the country next door to yours. Some in the Tauran Union see it as well. Almost no one in the Federated States does, and the Federated States stymies me from doing anything about it, on general principle reinforced by immeasurable hatred. The Zhong aren’t telling anyone their opinions on the matter, but the fact they’ve said nothing means, at least, that they don’t care.

  “Surely you, too, see that the military colossus arising next to you could squash your country like an insect. Worse, it has at least twenty thousand of your citizens in its army; it could use them to squash you.

  “You must raise the world’s awareness of this threat.”

  Esmeralda reached out and pressed a button again, causing the hologram to freeze in place. Still poker faced, the president asked, “What’s in it for me and mine?”

  “For you alone,” Esmeralda corrected. “Twenty years’ worth of rejuvenation once the Balboan threat is eliminated. It will be a UEPF special contribution to the World League Peace Prize, which the fleet will arrange for you to receive. There are a couple of million drachma involved, and you can do what you want with those.”

  “It’s not so easy,” said Calderón. “The Balboans, they’re popular here. Sure, it’s not like we didn’t fight a war or five over the last four centuries, but it was always a family dispute, no really hard feelings. There’s not enough real difference between us to drive a needle through.

  “And then there are those twenty thousand—really closer to twenty-five thousand—Josefinans in Balboan service. We let them go because we don’t have our own army for domestic political reasons that seem good to us, while there’s still a certain kind of young man who is nothing but trouble for a few years unless you give him an army to join. Before the Balboans began raising their legion we had young men fighting over half of the world, I think. Every guerilla movement from a place that spoke Spanish used to set up recruiting booths right at the university and in the shopping malls.

  “Now they’re all, or almost all, with Balboa. And those twenty-five thousand Balboan soldiers not only send money home, they represent at least twenty thousand Josefinan families who will be pretty damned annoyed if their kids get killed.

  “And what if the Balboans get vindictive?”

  Esmeralda shrugged, not with indifference but to cover the fact that she didn’t have a clue what then.

  “You haven’t met their president or duque, have you, Lieutenant? President Parilla is not an unreasonable man. But their military commander, Carrera, sends shivers up my spine.”

  This much Wallenstein had briefed her on. Again she hit the button.

  The hologram paced a few inches back and forth across the table. “I know you’re concerned about a possible Balboan overreaction. The Tauran Union’s commander in the Transitway area has committed to me to fly in an initial two battalions with support, as soon as you a) denounce the Balboan arms buildup, b) ask for protection, and c) demand they be disarmed. Larger forces will follow on then.

  “We are talking mere hours here for that first screening force, much less time than the Balboans can mobilize a force to punish you.”

  Again Esmeralda tapped the button to freeze the hologram once more. Damn, she’s good.

  “Can I think about this for a couple of days?” Calderón asked.

  Esmeralda didn’t need the recorder-communicator to answer that one. “You may, Mr. President.”

  United Earth Embassy, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  High Admiral Wallenstein had cautioned Esmeralda against telling the ambassador a damned thing when she went to overnight at the embassy. This wasn’t easy; the ambassador was a Class One in Old Earth’s hierarchy.

  And I’m nothing but a freed slave girl who came within inches of becoming a big bowl of chili, with a thermos full sent back home for the discerning palate of Count Castro-Nyere. I can’t even converse with the woman; she’d find me out in minutes. Minutes? Hah! Seconds.

  She thought long and hard on the problem on the drive from the Casa Presidencial. Finally, she decided she could put on a good enough show of being one of the arrogant, near psychopathi
c rulers of her home planet and her home province to fool someone who didn’t get a chance to engage her in conversation.

  Thus, instead of conversing, or even giving the ambassador a chance to invite her to dinner, Esmeralda put her head down, forced her shoulders forward, and barged from the Santa Josefinan-provided limousine, through the embassy doors, demanding, “My room, you pigs! Show me to my room this instant. Heads will roll if it’s not ready for me! If you’re lucky. And bring me food, you filthy peasants. And a bottle of wine. You crawling excrement should have anticipated my needs. Heads will roll!”

  And who says I learned nothing of use from the Castro-Nyeres?

  Casa Presidencial, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  Despite Esmeralda’s initial thoughts on the matter, President Calderón was about as decent a man as Northern Colombian politics permitted to rise. Corrupt? Sure, a little. Take care of his family first? If you can’t count on them, which also means take care of them, who can you count on? Even so, and even though family came first, he was unusual in that country was not all that distant a second.

  And it is the fate of my country I need to be concerned with. Provoking the Balboan eagles, as I told that charming young—hmm…is she young?—girl, is not something to undertake lightly. They have a lot more of our people in their ranks than we do of our people in our supposed ranks. The best case I could hope for, if they decided to turn those soldiers loose on me, is that some portion would side with country over military organization. And how “good” would that be if it just plunged us into civil war? Not much. Maybe better to just lose quickly.

  And yet…and yet…whatever her real reasons, the Old Earth admiral is right. I have read the political underpinnings of the Balboan system and it is the end of everything I have ever believed in. Social democracy would die wherever they spread their system. Progress as I think of progress would be a joke in poor taste. They are dangerous, deadly dangerous. If even half of what I’ve heard of their conduct in the war is true…even a quarter…well, there’s no place for that kind of barbarism on my continent, in my culture, or on my planet.