Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  “Fix…bayonets!” the Amazon tribune commanded. Down the line the word was passed. “Fix bayonets…fix bayonets.” Maria’s shaking hands reached toward her belt, unsnapping the large-handled knife and fixing it at the end of her rifle. A steady click-click-click told her the rest of her company was doing the same.

  Other sounds assailed her ears: magazines being inserted into rifles, bolts being drawn back and released to slam home. One woman of her squad was praying on her knees, there on the hard pavement. Maria heard her include the Taurans in her prayers.

  Another girl was crying; Maria didn’t know what or who for.

  On the hill above, the artillery seemed to redouble its fury. Maria noticed that her internal organs rippled with the blasts. It was a sickening sensation. She felt like throwing up.

  The tribune handed the microphone back to her radio operator, who held it to her own ear, listening. She looked at her F-26 rifle, then shook her head and slung it across her back. The tribune then took the maniple’s eagle from its bearer, crossing herself as she did so. She had discussed what she was going to do with Avila. He had agreed and decided to emulate her.

  She cast her voice wide, “On your feet, Amazonas!” The tribune waited for her girls to rise. “Now…for your old parents and grandparents back in the City; for the children you have or hope to have; for our country…for OURSELVES! The Future is at the top of that hill! Follow me, you cunts!”

  Holding the eagle high, the tribune raced out into the street. She had almost made it halfway across before three things happened: the artillery stopped falling on Cerro Mina, the rest of her women realized what she had done, and two Tauran machine gunners on the slope simply shot her to pieces.

  The tribune was dead, very dead, even before her body hit the ground. Broken staffed, the eagle fell to the pavement. The rest of the Amazons—those who were in a position to see—looked on, speechless, for a moment. Their reactions told the others what had happened.

  It took some moments for it all to register, for their anger to build. Then with hate-filled cries they swarmed en masse across the street.

  Maria ran with the others. More machine guns joined those that had killed their leader. A long sweeping burst cut down the woman—more of a girl really, she was no more than eighteen—beside Maria and three more Amazons past her. They fell to the pavement with cries and screams.

  Maria continued on. Half of those who had begun the charge fell before the other side of the street was reached. The rest reached the wooded slope and, firing from the hip, began the slow ascent. They reached a line of triple concertina and went to ground or one knee until it could be cleared, available cover depending. Some girls detached their bayonets to use with the scabbards to cut their way through. The enemy concentrated their fire on those trying to cut through. They were hit, wounded or dead.

  The assault broke down, and not for anything the Amazons did or failed to do. A few pockets of women tried to move forward or even back. The Taurans were having none of it. Still those survivors might have been safe enough but that some of the wounded raised their rifles to their shoulders to fire—at a Tauran or perhaps merely where one might be. They couldn’t know if they had hit anything.

  * * *

  Half a kilometer to the east the company from Tercio Gorgidas had, ultimately, found no greater success. Avila—bearing the eagle—succeeded in reaching the far side of the street unscathed. Still, the avenue was liberally littered with bodies.

  Looking around him, Avila saw something unexpected. Where neither man in a pairing was hit they behaved as normally as one could hope for under the circumstances. But where one member was hit…or killed…the survivor tended to act in one of two ways. Either he stopped completely, broken-hearted, or he charged mindlessly to attack those who had shattered his life.

  Avila saw one such soldier actually succeed in reaching a Tauran position. The soldier had there gone into a frenzy of killing and mutilation, slashing with his rifle and baronet until it was broken, then pulling an entrenching tool from his harness to continue the mayhem. He was still standing, defiant, over three or four butchered Taurans when he, in turn, was cut down.

  Thought Avila, Carrera made a mistake with us. We should not have been formed as infantry. We should have been grouped as pairs of pairs in tanks, where we could live or die together.

  The maniple XO took one knee beside Avila and reported, “The Amazons are fucked. It’s up to us if this hill is going to fall now.”

  “What happened to them?” Avila asked. “The Amazons, I mean.”

  “Just shitty fucking luck,” said the exec. “I never saw anything braver in my life.”

  Avila affectionately patted his partner’s helmet and said, “Then let’s get a move on, Juan. We’ve still got most of a maniple.” He adjusted his grip on the eagle and began to move forward, shouting encouragement to his men. His shouts were cut short as a 40mm grenade exploded beside him. Sections of serrated wire ripped his lungs and a number of important blood vessels. Avila fell.

  Juan, his XO, rushed to Avila’s side, calling for a medic. When the medic arrived, the XO grabbed the eagle’s staff and began his own charge. It didn’t last long.

  Northern Slope, Cerro Mina, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Captain Bernoulli looked out over the scene, what he could see of it, with some satisfaction. After being left hanging out to dry at Guerrero, he and his men had escaped through Balboa, held in position for a while, then moved again to this slope. There they were told to occupy the defensive positions…fast. His men had done well. A full assault, in nearly battalion strength, had been broken.

  Bernoulli looked at one of the Balboan bodies. It hung on the barbed wire to his front. The corpse—no it wasn’t a corpse, was it—twisted to try to free himself—no, no…the long hair said it was a woman. She cried to herself, softly and piteously, sobbing at times. She did succeed in freeing an arm briefly before it was caught again on the wire. In the brief time it had been free she had tried to gather her intestines from the ground to put them back into her torn belly.

  Sergeant Tom Gilbert came up behind his commander. His wife was Balboan. “Let me go to her, sir. Please?”

  There was still some wildly inaccurate Balboan fire coming in. With great sadness Bernoulli said, “No, Tom. I’ll do it.”

  Crouching, Bernoulli stepped toward the dying girl. A shot rang out, from where exactly, none but the firer could tell. The bullet passed through Bernoulli’s nose, out the back of his skull, bounced from the inside of his helmet, then lodged in his already destroyed brain. He fell without a sound.

  Gilbert was by Bernoulli’s side in an instant. Not bothering to check for wounds or cover himself, he dragged the corpse back to the company’s line. A medic pronounced the captain dead.

  “Where did the shot come from? Where did the fucking shot come from?” Gilbert demanded.

  No one knew. Some soldier ventured, “Down there somewhere. One of the ones we hit, maybe.”

  Roughly, Gilbert pushed a machine gunner aside. “They want to play that fucking game, do they? Well…we’ll see how they like the payback.” Then, slowly and methodically, Gilbert proceeded to put a burst of fire into each body, dead and wounded alike, in his field of view. The first one he shot was the girl hanging on the barbed wire, though that was done as much in mercy as in anger. As word spread down the company line that their beloved CO was dead, and how he had been killed, the other men of the company joined in. A few, like Gilbert, knew they were shooting women and didn’t care anymore. Most didn’t know.

  Perhaps a hundred meters down slope from where Bernoulli had died, Maria Fuentes—bullet hole through her abdomen—hid in a small shell crater. She wasn’t in much pain. That, she supposed, would come soon enough.

  Several others had joined her there in the muddy pit. All but one were hurt. For some reason, the gringos were still firing like mad. Maria didn’t know why until she heard a friend call for help, that the Taurans were
killing the wounded. A short burst of firing and her friend made no more sound. Maria began to cry too. Then the pain began in earnest. She soon lost consciousness.

  * * *

  There hadn’t been any more intel to gather, nor much point in trying to gather any. This fight was as good as over, Jan Campbell knew. So she and Hendryksen had gone topside, ducking the incoming shells as best they could, until they found an empty fighting position they could occupy.

  They’d had their part, too, in defeating the charge of the Amazons. They hadn’t known it at the time. Then Hendryksen had crawled out to try to succor one of the Balboan wounded. She’d died about the time the Cimbrian had discovered the he was a she. He crawled back to Campbell, then lifted her bodily from the hole.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Those weren’t men we killed. Those were women.”

  “So?” Campbell asked. She didn’t see what possible difference that could make.

  Hendryksen, being a man, did understand. “We killed their women,” he said. “When they take this hill—and they will—they’re not going to leave anyone alive. This place is a massacre just waiting to happen. And we need to get away from it.”

  Just north of Avenida de la Victoria, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Suarez went to one knee beside the stretcher bearing Captain Avila. With a raised eyebrow he looked up to the medic attending. The medic shook his head “No.” Suarez nodded and turned his attention back to the tribune.

  “Your men did great, son,” he said. “Just great.”

  “Son…my father would never call me son after…you know.”

  “I imagine. Well…he should be proud of you today.”

  “My boys?”

  “Casualties were pretty bad. But,”—Suarez lied—“they’ve just about gotten to the top of the hill.”

  “Juan, my…XO? I thought I saw him fall.”

  “Maybe he tripped. Anyway, he’s fine. A few minutes ago he reported that he’d be pulling down the Tauran flag momentarily.” Another lie. There had been no report of late from anyone in the two shattered maniples.

  “Good…good. Tell him not to miss me too much, to take over the company and find someone worthy to take his place.”

  “I’ll do that, son.”

  “I think I need to sleep now, sir.”

  “You do that. The medics will take care of you.” Suarez patted the dying man’s shoulder and stood up. He walked out of the makeshift aid station. Outside DeSantis, his operations officer told him, “Second and part of Tenth Infantry Tercios are ready to go in now.”

  * * *

  De Villepin threw down the microphone in frustration. “Fucking cowards.”

  Hearing, Moncey asked what the problem was.

  “It’s the goddamned aviators. They’re saying its getting too hot around the hill to come in to the hospital any more. How the hell are we supposed to get the wounded out without helicopters?”

  “Give me the microphone.” When he did Moncey keyed it and spoke in the clear.

  “Who is this?” Moncey demanded. “No…I mean your name and rank… Good. Let me make this clear as a bell, Colonel, as completely unopen to interpretation as anything in this world. This is General Moncey. You will come in and continue to pick up the wounded until they are all evacuated or you and your men are dead. I’m already sending lists of commendation to Taurus. I’ll be happy to add a list—a short one—with recommendations for trial by court-martial. Not that I’ll let you live long enough for that… Yes, I’m sure you were only thinking about the safety of the wounded, Colonel. Let me worry about that. Moncey, out.”

  The chief shook his head, then said, “He’ll go in. How’s the evac of the civvies going?”

  “Better, sir. Their pickup zones are not under fire yet. I shudder to think about what will happen when they are.”

  “The pressies?”

  “Refuse to leave, sir. Insist we cut loose some troops to guard them.”

  “Right. Fuck ’em. Can the Navies take all we have to send them?”

  “They’re not complaining yet.”

  “Imperial Base?”

  “They’ve been off line for a little while now. I think they’ve had it.”

  “Yes…I suppose so.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Will you yield, and this avoid,

  Or guilty, in defense, be thus destroyed?

  —William Shakespeare, Henry V

  Front Street, Cristobal, outside 4th Corps Command Post, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Jimenez stood next to the wave-lapped bay. Opposite him, Fort Tecumseh’s huge barracks stood, clearly silhouetted in the light of morning. To the north, Eighth Tercio was even now battling for possession of the Shimmering Sea Locks. The cadre of the Taurans’ Jungle School were putting up a strong resistance.

  Along the piazza covered walkways of Front Street the First Cohort of the Ninth Tercio clustered by squads around the pitiful rubber boats that were to carry them across the bay. Men from Jimenez’s transportation company stood by each boat. They would carry the infantry across and return for the next load.

  The other two infantry cohorts of the tercio were marching and trucking toward Cristobal as fast as possible. This was not all that fast. They had taken losses and were very tired as well.

  In the long narrow park toward the eastern side of the city Jimenez’s six heavy mortar batteries and two rocket batteries stood manned and ready, fifty-four mortars and eighteen 122mm launchers. They were recruited from Cristobal itself and had assembled with little trouble.

  The First Cohort’s heavy and light mortars had found other little open areas from which to support their infantry. The other battalions’ mortars were with their own battalions and would be along sometime.

  Jimenez barked a command. Word was passed. The small boats were dragged from behind him to the water. Squads of legionaries carried, pulled, and dragged them into the salt water, then clambered aboard themselves. Coxswains pulled the starter ropes on the small engines mounted to the back of each boat. Some started reluctantly, a few refused to start at all. For these the coxswains passed out short wooden paddles on the theory of better late than never.

  The line of boats, it was nearly two kilometers long from north to south, put-putted for the far shore.

  Jimenez waited until the boats had almost reached the halfway mark before ordering the Ocelots to follow. They moved through the water at nearly twice the speed the boats were capable of.

  He didn’t give the order for the heavy mortars to fire until the boats were fifteen hundred meters from Fort Tecumseh. Before the first lance of defensive fire could lash out, the far shore was wreathed in smoke and fire.

  Fort Williams, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Ham was the platoon leader now. Delgado had died after being hit but while being evacuated. He hadn’t quite turned eighteen yet. Sitting in the ruins of the post, looking around at dinosaur-chewed walls, crumpled roofs, fire, and smoke, Ham thought, maybe inanely, Dad is going to be pissed. He loved this post.

  The cadets had suffered badly. They’d never really had the numbers on this side, and surprise only carried them so far. Indeed, it had been touch and go until Ninth Tercio had intervened.

  Give the fuckers their due, thought Hamilcar, the Anglians are tough.

  The Anglians, such as remained, were gathered under guard in the middle of the post’s trapezoidal parade field. By eye, Ham estimated no more than two hundred prisoners. He didn’t know how many might be back at Fort Melia. He also didn’t know how many wounded were being treated. Certainly a number of the less seriously wounded were still out on the parade field under guard.

  One of the Anglians began to sing. The song had elements of faith to it, of course, but also a degree of defiance. The Anglian sang:

  “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide”

  Twenty or so more joined in:

  “The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide”

  Fifty more added their vo
ices:

  “When other helpers fail and comforts flee”

  All of them sang now:

  “Help of the helpless, O, abide with me.”

  And then Ham and a couple of others stood. They knew this song from services back at the academy:

  “La luz del día aquí conmigo está

  “Desaparece ya la oscuridad

  “Tu das la fuerza y la libertad

  “Siempre contigo vivire verdad”

  And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.

  Fort Muddville, Balboa Transitway Area, Terra Nova

  It was a nightmare: screaming women, civilian men, children, without order and control, all desperately trying to get aboard any helicopter as it touched down. From every side, at a distance but growing almost imperceptibly closer, came the sound of rifle and machine gun fire. Windows rattled as the big tank cannon fired. Whimpers were heard whenever an artillery strike landed.

  To the east, the last holdouts of the dragoons’ headquarters troops—cooks and mechanics—were buying time, dying gallantly on and around Florida Locks and the swing bridge that would let hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Balboan troops take Muddville in flank.

  The tattered remnants of crushed military police units attempted to maintain some kind of order in the unplanned evacuation. Whenever a Navy or Marine helicopter touched down to pick up a new load, the MPs were forced to use their sticks to prevent the helicopters from being swamped by a horde of terrified refugees.

  Anshan Battle Group, Imperial New Middle Kingdom Navy, Bahia de Balboa, Terra Nova

  The Zhong evacuation was going better. For one thing, they had more naval helicopters of greater carrying capacity than all four Tauran carriers combined. For another, they’d started sooner, having put out word through their own channels for their people ashore to muster at certain key points. For a third, they weren’t part of this war; their people had no reason to expect being punished for the actions of their government. Lastly, not being part of the war, the Anshan and her consorts had come in closer to shore, thus cutting flight times drastically. Finally, they were simply better disciplined than the hedonistic, individualistic Taurans.