The Battle for Terra Two

by Stephen Ames Berry

  “Must have made you feel good.”

  “Luck, John.” The blonde kissed him quickly on the lips, warm and soft, two lovers parting, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  John wiped his lips with his jacket cuff, glaring after the Scotar.

  “Final call for Air Canada, Flight One-Seven to Boston,” warned the public address system. “Now boarding, gate fourteen.”

  John’s uniform didn’t exempt him from the security check. Luggage and person electronically probed, he hurried across the lounge and down the carpeted ramp, making the plane just as the stewardess reached out to pull the door shut.

  The aircraft’s interior looked like any wide-bodied Lockheed or Boeing, but the blurb in the seat pocket described it as a Fokker-Hughes 803. About half the passengers were American military, most of them wearing the brown-wool class A’s of the U.S. Army. Taking the aisle seat, John fastened the seat belt and closed his eyes, falling asleep as the big jet roared down the runway.

  “. . . pee.” John opened his eyes. The obese young man in the next seat was shaking his arm. “I’m sorry, but could you get up? I’ve got to pee.”

  “Sure.” Stepping into the aisle, he let the man out; a round, top-heavy form draped in gray Harris tweed that seemed almost to float, balloon like, toward the lavatory.

  A moment later, the uniformed stewardess appeared, pushing a coffee-and-pastry cart. Giving up on sleep, John took coffee and sweet rolls for himself and his absent neighbor.

  Returning from the lavatory, the man introduced himself as he ate. “Walt Wenschel,” he said, putting down the pastry and extending his hand.

  “Harrison. John Harrison.” Shaking the hand, John felt the honey frosting transfer from Wenschel’s plump fingers to his. “You live in Boston, Walt?” he asked. Freeing his hand, he slid it under the tray table, rubbing his fingers on his napkin.

  “Moving there.” He smiled. “One-year, tax-free Urban Zone assignment. I’m a research chemist with Patch-Grumbacher. PG’s got a small facility inside the Green Line. Pretty safe, great tax break for PG and me. You part of the UC garrison, John?” asked Wenschel.

  “G2. Intelligence officer.”

  The chemist nodded absently. “Want your sugar?” He nodded to the two white packets.

  “Please, take them.”

  John closed his eyes as Wenschel stirred four packets of sugar into his cup.

  The chemist turned back to him a moment later, set to discourse on Urban Zone tax credits. John was asleep, breathing deeply, chair reclined.

  Boston’s Saltonstall Airport was a stark, white utilitarian box, all sharp angles, high ceilings and fluorescents. Much smaller than the Montreal facility, it held few passengers, mostly male, all well-dressed, and soldiers—lots of soldiers—patrolling in pairs or flanking doorways, deadly little machinepistols slung over their shoulders. Walking from the Air Canada gate toward the waiting area, John counted eighteen of the black-uniformed troopers. None were over thirty, and all were white, with the shifting eyes and expressionless faces of professionals. He felt those eyes follow curiously as he crossed the room, black patent-leather boots clip-clopping on alabaster-white tile.

  Have a good look, you bastards, he thought. I’ve come to save you from slimy green bugs and worse.

  “Major Harrison.”

  A short, bald UC officer in black fatigues and combat boots was coming through the waiting area, a .45 holstered to the webbed belt around his waist, two troopers behind him. “Captain Grady, sir,” said the older man, saluting. “Garrison Adjutant. Welcome to Boston, Major.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” said John, returning the salute. A trooper took his bag.

  “We have transport waiting,” said Grady. “The Hospital’s ten minutes by chopper.”

  “The Hospital?” said John as Grady led the way toward a “Restricted Access” door.

  The captain smiled—the thin smile John came to associate with Terra Two. “They built headquarters on a big hill, over in Roxbury. There was a hospital there once.”

  The chopper looked like a Vietnam-vintage Huey to John, a black-painted troop carrier complete with helmeted door gunner. Engines roaring, it swept them up and out over the harbor, skirting the brightly lit shore for a few minutes, then turning inland as the city lights vanished.

  Holding a safety strap, John stood behind the gunner, ignoring the damp chill wind knifing through the door cracks. Stars above, dark ground below—he saw little else through the closed Plexiglas gun port. Once, far off, there was a glimmer of light, quickly gone.

  He gripped the safety strap as the helicopter banked suddenly, dropping toward the brilliantly lit helipad that had flared to life below. The helipad topped an unlit, sprawling structure of uncertain shape, its outline twisting into surreal shadow beyond the landing lights. As they touched down, John saw other Huey-like choppers to one side, and smaller, deadly looking gunships to the other.

  “The Hospital,” said Grady as they touched down.

  Outside, the lights went off, dying to a sullen glow for a few seconds, then vanishing. “Don’t want to draw fire,” explained the UC officer. The gunner swung the door wide as the rotors died.

  “Here.” Grady handed John a black helmet with an equally dark visor. “You use starhelms in CIB, Major?” he asked, pulling one on.

  “Never used one,” said John. Imitating Grady, he fastened the helmet and dropped the visor.

  The Huey’s dark interior resolved into the phosphorescent hues of infrared—Captain Grady and his squad were now a Scotarish green.

  “They’re finicky. Jungle maintenance would probably be a bitch,” said Grady, making the small jump onto the concrete. “We have elevators. Follow me, please.”

  Troopers patrolled the roof, green-and-red from a distance, green closer up. The walls were sandbagged, topped with razor wire and interspaced by tarpaulined machine guns and mortars. At the far end of the roof, four sleek surface-to-air missiles pointed skyward. Walking behind Grady, John saw a tier of circling radar dishes, set atop a square concrete mast above the elevators.

  An elevator was waiting, dark inside except for the control panel. As the door shut, the light came on. The two men removed their starhelms.

  “UC doesn’t have any friends in the neighborhood, does it?” said John.

  “About as many as CIB has in Mexico,” said Grady as the elevator descended. “We’re in a war here, too, whatever Frederick wants to call it.” The elevator stopped, doors opening silently. “BOQ level,” said the captain. “You’ll be quartered here.”

  John squinted as they stepped into the long white hallway. The light was harsh—more fluorescents and latex-painted walls, he saw.

  Grady led him along the deserted hallway to a tan door marked “Petersen” by a stenciled placard. “Here you are,” said Grady, slipping the placard out of its holder.

  “What about Petersen?” asked John as Grady turned on the lights. It was a small room, just a maple bed with matching dresser, black footlocker and a small armchair. The walls were white, the floor brown.

  “Captain Petersen was our last G2,” said Grady, setting Harrison’s bag on the footlocker. “Against orders he went to parley with one of the ganger chiefs. Some of him came back in a poncho.”

  “Can I do anything else for you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Colonel Aldridge expects you at 0800 tomorrow, Major—level five, turn right. Office with the flags out front. Officers’ mess is level three—just follow the herd.”

  “I will. Thank you, Captain.”

  “Good night,” said Grady, pulling the door shut. His footsteps receded down the hall.

  On the whole, thought John, slipping into the too-hard bed, I’d rather be with Zahava, in that little villa near Caesarea.

  He dreamed of reporting to the CO’s office, where a long line of John Harrisons waited, each dressed as a UC major. An argument broke out as to who was the real John Harrison—an argument growing louder
until the office flew open and Guan-Sharick-as-blonde stepped out, wearing a UC colonel’s uniform. The Scotar looked at them, then threw back its head and laughed.

  Chapter 3

  It might all have ended much sooner and differently, had Hitler survived Wolfsschanze. Stalin’s refusal to ratify the Basel Accord and his subsequent catastrophic use of biological weapons, uniting Germany and the Allies against Russia, would not have occurred had von Stauffenberg’s briefcase been less well-placed. The war would have been fought to its bleak conclusion, surely no later than mid-1946.

  —John Harrison

  Why We Lost: America and the Second World War, Key Variables and Outcomes (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, submitted to the Faculty of History, McGill University)

  “‘Reassigned to Urban Command by order Lieutenant General Quentin Harwood, Director, Central Intelligence.’” Colonel Aldridge unhooked his wire-rim bifocals, setting them down on John’s file. “You must have stomped some big hairy toes, Major. You were evidently very much in the general’s favor, not long ago. The CIA did send you for your doctorate.”

  Tall, thin—gaunt, really, thought Harrison—Aldridge was a man of strange contrasts. The boxy white office was too small for his awards and memorabilia: diplomas (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., all history, all Harvard), lacquer-framed Chinese calligraphy (Lao-tzu, 6th century BCE.), and a faded black-and-white photograph of a group of U.S. Army and Wehrmacht officers beside a blasted T-32 tank. This last was captioned The Ukraine, Summer, 1949.

  “The general didn’t care for certain arguments in my dissertation, sir. I was ordered here the day after receiving my diploma. My phone calls to the Agency aren’t—weren’t returned.” John was fairly certain, from the way Guan-Sharick had structured everything, that General Harwood had long ago been replaced by one of the Illusion Master’s transmutes.

  “You’re in good company, Major,” said Aldridge. “Urban Command has few volunteers. Everyone starts fresh here—killers, rapists, deserters, intellectuals. Do your four years well and you’ll get a good posting. Sit, please.”

  John sat.

  “You know, Major,” said Aldridge, leaning back in his chair, “the longer I’m at this job, the more I flirt with Marxism.”

  Aldridge’s face held John: a craggy, weathered New England patriarchal face, seemingly lifted from a John Singleton Copley canvas and set atop the long black-uniformed body. Colonel’s eagles, Silver Star with oak leaf cluster and the Wehrmacht Liaison ribbon lent the final incongruities. James Lowell Munroe Aldridge, soldier, scholar, Yankee; Gauleiter of Boston, military governor of what remained of the Athens of America. An iconoclastic Boston Brahmin, Guan-Sharick had said of Aldridge.

  “How’s that, sir?” asked John.

  “I come more and more to believe in economic determinism, Major,” said the colonel. “Why do you think anarchy’s triumphed in so many of our cities? Why do you think we’re here, an encircled garrison defending the remnants of civilization in the urban enclaves?” Soft, cultured, a hint of steel beneath, his was a voice made for the Socratic Method.

  There’d been a chilling note in Guan-Sharick’s briefing about the consequences of free speech. John answered carefully. “The War, Colonel. We’ve never recovered from the War.”

  “The German War, the Japanese War or the Soviet war, Major?” He smiled indulgently. “Or do you mean the endless war preparations, the alleged Armistice that saps our resources, fueling a huge force that may never fully engage?”

  John held out a pack of Lucky Strike Greens—the Major Harrison had done two packs a day.

  Aldridge shook his head. “Enjoy.”

  “Why is a man of your attainments an Urban Corps commandant, Colonel?” asked John, lighting a cigarette. “Many Canadian schools would welcome you.”

  Aldridge looked into his coffee mug, index finger thoughtfully tapping the faded red coat-of-arms etched into the side. “A man needs more than the pap of intellectualism to hold his life together. Duty is my cement, Major.” He looked up. “It keeps me here. That and a sense of place. My people signed the Mayflower Compact, stood at Lexington, broke Pickett’s Charge, fought at Chateau-Thierry. Boston bred and buried, the lot.” He reached out, pressing a button. “Know anything about our situation here?”

  “Very little, sir.”

  “We’re essentially a Norman castle, protecting the few from the many.”

  A young Wehrmacht captain came in, carefully shutting the door. He snapped a brisk salute at Aldridge. “At ease, Erich,” said the colonel, returning it sketchily.

  “Major John Harrison, Hauptmann Erich zur Linde of the Fourth Reich’s Civil Order Unit. Erich’s an exchange officer, here for a year. His experience in Southwest Africa is proving most helpful with the gangers.”

  John took the German’s hand, startled by the field gray uniform and the jackboots—the Fourth Reich had obviously kept the Third’s military dress.

  “Erich’s father and I served under Speidel. We crossed the Malinkoff Line together in ’49.” Aldridge pointed his pen at the photograph. “He’s third from the left.” John glanced at the picture. The younger zur Linde might have been his father’s twin: tall, broad-shouldered, with the same square jaw and disturbingly resolute expression. Harrison supposed they also shared the same blond hair and blue eyes.

  “Erich, I’d like you to give Harrison the tour. He’s our new G2, with CIB experience. Let’s hope his insight’s as useful as yours.”

  “My pleasure, Colonel,” said the young German. His English bore only a trace of Europe.

  “See you tomorrow, gentlemen. Staff meeting at 0830.”

  The two saluted and left, leaving Aldridge to his reports.

  The tour began over ruins and ended over cocktails. Leading Harrison to the rooftop heliport, zur Linde signed out one of the small recon choppers. Sliding into the pilot’s seat, he motioned John to the copilot’s seat. They lifted off and swung east.

  The Hospital by daylight was a squat rectangle as bleak as its surroundings: windowless, gray concrete fronted and topped by the sandbags and razor wire. The rubble around it had been cleared from the hill on which it sat, providing a thousand-meter killzone. Landmine furrows puckered the slopes.

  Away from headquarters, the ruins stretched for miles. Burnt and shattered tenements, stores, garages, factories, schools, all spilling into weed-choked streets. A forest of broken glass glinted in the noon sun. Once they flew over a rusting tank, its left tread gone, eighty-eight millimeter cannon at an absurd angle. Nothing moved in the whole desolate landscape.

  “Roxbury and North Dorchester are like this,” said zur Linde, voice clear in John’s headset. “Uninhabited since ’68. South Boston, Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park are turf—ganger country. Not on our tour. They hit us in the enclaves. We hit them where they live. Otherwise, we stay clear.”

  Issued in August of ’68, Executive Order 1016, the Soweto Order, had mandated photo IDs and travel documents for all residents of the proscribed areas. The day after 1016’s promulgation, a fifteen-year-old Chicano in the Los Angeles barrio had molotoved a UC registration point. Two days later, the cities were burning.

  When it ended, air strikes, armor and rolling artillery barrages had laid waste much of urban America. Tens of thousands were dead, with most of the stunned survivors being herded aboard trains bound for resettlement camps in the Southwest. Those who’d hid, staying behind, learned to fight, turning their turf into death zones for the patrols.

  The Urban Corps had been formed in ’70, mandated to restore order. Badly mauled by increasingly formidable gangs, UC had taken to merely patrolling turfs’ perimeters, guarding the burbs and enclaves from ganger forays.

  Reading it in a briefing book was one thing. Seeing the result was quite another. John sat numbly, watching the passing wasteland.

  Coming to the shoreline, zur Linde turned north to the harbor. “Here we are,” he said after a moment, bringing the chopper over the waterfront. John had a fleeting glim
pse of a jammed marina, old warehouses upgraded to atrium-lobbied condos and chic market-stall boutiques, now filling with the lunch-hour crowd. Skillfully weaving between the tall office buildings, zur Linde set them down atop one of the twin Fed towers overlooking Government Plaza.

  “Did you see the marina?” he asked later as they sat sipping Rob Roys in a Back Bay plaza dubbed Cinzano Bay. (“All these tricolore table umbrellas make it look like a red-white-and-blue bay.”)

  John nodded.

  “I have a thirty-two-foot Morganer moored there. If you’d like to go sailing, just let me know. I can fix you up with a date.”

  “Does everyone who works here live here?” John pointed his celery stalk at the passerby. Most were well-dressed, with the sleek, easy ways of early affluence. Except for a sharp-looking black woman sitting alone, the few minorities were waiting table.

  “Many of the technos do.” Zur Linde munched a handful of macadamia nuts. “Some come in from the burbs, but there’s only one open road, an expressway with lots of checkpoints. Sometimes it’s mortared.”

  “The gangers have mortars?”

  “Not just mortars. Spandaus, claymores, bouncing jujus, TOWs.” He eyed a leggy Japanese as she passed, blue silk dress slit almost to the waist, gaily colored boutique bag swinging from her left hand. A piece of war booty from Occupied Japan.

  The two sat silently, watching that dahlia-blue dress melt into Cinzano Bay.

  “Why is UC headquartered between turfs?”

  “Stupidity. Pride,” said the German, signaling for another round. “They built HQ there years ago, just after ’68, thinking all resistance was crushed. When the incoming rockets burst that myth, it was decided—by officers in Frederick, Maryland—to enlarge and harden all the regional headquarters, rather than pulling them back, losing face. You’ve seen the result—the Hospital.” He polished off his drink, reaching for the next as it arrived. “I have this recurring dream,” he said, slouching down in the white wrought-iron chair. “The Hospital is being overrun by dusky hordes. It’s night. I’m up on the roof, carnage all about me, machinepistol in one hand, knife in the other—Dietrich at the gates of Leningrad. Turning to Aldridge, I shout, ‘It’s hopeless, Herr Oberst! Permission to autodestruct?’”