Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  Worse, not unlike some of the monitor lizards found on various parts of the planet, the antaniae had vilely septic mouths that caused infections that only the most heroic medical treatment could cure, and not always then.

  Fortunately, the little bastards are cowards. Even so, I wish we had a small flock of trixies to pull guard. They can see the antaniae without the night vision equipment the cadre didn’t give me.

  Well . . . of course they didn’t give me any, though they have some for themselves. They didn’t give any of the other cadets any either. And I’m pretty sure the old man wasn’t lying when he told me what he’d told them: “You coddle the boy half a gram; you give him a goddamn thing more than any other cadets gets, and your balls go up on the fireplace mantle.”

  ’Course, I hope he was more tactful than that. You would think so, after the Pigna coup. But he has his flaws still, so maybe not.

  Some of those flaws, I suppose, I’ve inherited. Though if my mother and sisters and wives and Alena have anything to say about it, I’ll never have a clue.

  ’Course, not everything the old man had in mind is working out. The other cadets know who I am and who he is. They don’t kowtow, but they grew up in Balboa. Here people just assume family connections matter a lot more than they do to Dad. So they sometimes defer to me a little more than Dad would approve of and sometimes detest me more than I approve of. And there’s more of the latter.

  ’Course, I ate better all my life than most of them did, so I’m taller than most. And I’m taller still because Mom’s oversized and Dad’s bigger than most of our people. Height gets you a little deference, too, on average. Maybe it isn’t all who I am or who I’m related to or who I know.

  I hope. I . . .

  Suddenly, the boy had the distinct sense of being watched, from close by, by something or things that didn’t necessarily bear him good will. He froze, instantly, then began corkscrewing his eyes to keep from wearing out the night vision in any given sector of his visual rods.

  He couldn’t quite make out what it was, though his indistinct night vision was telling his brain that something was out there. Slowly, very slowly, he raised the shotgun to his shoulder, pointing it generally at the indistinct shapes his eyes couldn’t quite grasp.

  They’ll so be on my ass if I use the light and don’t need to. And worse if I open fire and don’t need to. But there’s something there . . . something . . . ahhhh, fuckit.

  Ham’s thumb came down on the light button. The light flashed on three little horrors, red-eyed, green and gray splotched, about two feet long, with their frills spread and wings folded in, hissing and drooling.

  “Shiiittt!” Kaboom, kaclick—“shit”—kaboom, kaclick—“shit”—Kaboom!

  The encampment behind Ham began springing to life, even as the jungle outside cracked with the flap of reptilian wings. A lot of reptilian wings.

  Ham looked closely in the area lit by the narrow beam. One of the little beasts had apparently escaped, maybe wounded, maybe not. One was so much strawberry jam spread unevenly across the bare jungle floor. The last was crying out piteously, writhing and crawling in a circle, with one wing and two legs on one side gone, and the pus that passed for blood leaking out. They’d only given him the three rounds and he’d sort of forgotten about the .22 slung across his back. Instead, he walked up to the wounded antania, reversed the shotgun, and brought the butt down on the nasty creature’s head with a satisfying crunch.

  Casa Linda beach, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Though the air and water were both warm, the girl trembled. She had her reasons.

  Depending on whose book one read, swimming in Terra Nova’s oceans was either quite safe or an obvious attempt at suicide. After all, the Noahs had brought, among other hungry things, a healthy, albeit now declining, population of carcharodon megalodons, for whom one small girl would have been barely an appetizer.

  In practice it wasn’t as simple as that. A meg was so big that it really couldn’t come close to shore, usually. This tended to drive lesser predators shoreward for protection. One the other hand, a meg ate so much, not least lesser predators, that there weren’t as many dangerous sharks and other forms of marine life as there might otherwise have been, partly through being eaten and partly through there not being enough for them to eat after a meg had eaten its fill.

  Conversely, from the meg’s point of view, they themselves ate so much and required such a large range that the species had never really learned cooperation. So they were vulnerable, at least when young, to smaller but more intelligent predators with a sense of teamwork, like orca.

  In an interesting oversight, while the three forms of genengineered flora left by the Noahs kept down the natural rise of intelligent life ashore, nothing anyone had yet found had done the same at sea. Orcas, as it turned out, were very bright indeed.

  None of that was really all that comforting to Pililak as she nervously waded to about waist deep in the sea. For the underwater slope of the casa’s private beach, that worked out to perhaps fifteen feet from shore. The girl didn’t have a bathing suit. Instead she wore one of Ham’s left behind t-shirts and that was all. Her clothes were back on the sand.

  Facing out to sea, scanning for sharks and who knew what, she saw the family yacht gently and slowly bobbing at the private wharf to her left. This was the same boat that had carried Lourdes to find help to defeat the Pigna coup, though repaired and repainted from the damage taken in crashing into the dock at Punta Gorgona Naval Station.

  For a moment Ant thought about practicing her swimming over by the yacht. The water was deeper there. Then she thought, No. Here I have a better chance of seeing something coming for me. Over there something could come right under the boat with no warning.

  This might not have been entirely rational, but it was most sincerely felt.

  Ant had no one she could trust to teach her to swim. And, since water in her homeland and her village either came from a well or flowed fast about half a meter deep over sharp rocks, she’d never learned. Instead, she dug from the ’net how to do it and practiced that in her mind until she felt ready to try.

  Putting her palms together, the girl—with a bravery that no one would have understood who didn’t know her background and how absolutely scared to death she was of being eaten—bent forward at the waist, thrust her arms ahead of her, and dove in.

  Stream Crossing Site Two, Rio Cuango, Training Area C, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Victor Chapayev’s day-to-day and permanent rank was Tribune III, roughly equivalent to a major in most of the armies of Terra Nova, though in the legion carrying more responsibility and prestige, both. His full mobilization rank, on the other hand, was Legate II, roughly the equivalent of a colonel, which was a significant rank even in the most overofficered armies on the planet.

  Today, the Volgan wore his permanent rank. Indeed, the true reason why he had a higher rank was highly secret, although the fact that most legionary officers and centurions held higher rank was not. Few knew the reasons for the special exception for Chapayev and a couple of hundred others. They themselves didn’t, though it was generally assumed it was just to give retirement pay parity to those who were not assigned to a mobilizable tercio. That was the official story, in any case.

  Chapayev didn’t buy the official pravda, though he kept his doubts and opinions on the matter to himself. He’d learned, as a young officer in the army of the now deposed (and very, very dead) Red Tsar (whose large extended family was also very, very dead), that this was a sound policy (as was making sure that the families of one’s deposed tyrants joined them in death).

  I’m not sure, though, thought Chapayev, that Carrera tossing his son in amongst a bunch or regular kids—okay, better than regular kids but still not in the same class or league as Hamilcar Carrera—is such a good idea. The boy might learn to lead them or he might learn just to manipulate them. He might learn to love them but he might just as easily l
earn contempt for them. He might get the common touch or it might end up being nothing but noblesse oblige masquerading as the common touch. And it strikes me all as needlessly risking the worst possibilities without sufficient probability of achieving the best.

  Victor leaned against a tree at the moment, arms folded, watching the new class of boys trying to set up a two-rope bridge under the leadership, for the exercise, of one of them. That one was not Hamilcar and was not doing spectacularly well, either. And, so Victor could plainly see, Ham was practically bursting at the seams to tell the other boy, Cadet Oscar Arrias, how to do it, how to command it. He also saw that First Centurion Ricardo Cruz, temporarily detached from his maniple for a month of cadet support, supervising the exercise up close and personally, was practically bursting at the seams to tell the boy to jump in and take over.

  And there’s no good answer I could give you, Ham, ran Chapayev’s thoughts. Tell him how to do it and maybe you make a friend for life . . . but it’s just about as likely you make an enemy. Don’t do a thing but follow along and everyone in your section who knows anything about you assumes you’re a selfish slacker. Hell, I wouldn’t know what to do myself, boy.

  And peer reports will be coming in a few weeks. I wonder if your old man thought of that, or that all this might just ruin you.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There never was a good war or a bad peace.

  —Benjamin Franklin

  Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.

  —Colman McCarthy

  Palacio de las Trixies, Ciudad Balboa, Republic of Balboa

  Since the defeat of Pigna’s coup and the extinction of the rival regime, Presidente, and former Duque, Raul Parilla had moved into the official and traditional executive mansion, an open-courted “Palazzo” in the Venetian style. It even had, per the name, a dozen or so trixies, colorful archaeopteryxes brought to Terra Nova by the Noahs. Under recent administrations, the trixies had been effective captives. Now the wire over the courtyard was mechanized, to roll back during the day. That was Carrera’s doing, as part of his trixie breeding and antaniae reduction programs.

  Most trixies did, in fact, leave while the sun was up. Usually they returned by nightfall—when the wire rolled back over the open top—for their free meal.

  The style of the palace, a carryover from early days of colonization, was extremely appropriate. No less than one once could have in Old Earth’s Venice—now sadly landlocked as a result of falling seas from global cooling—from his bedroom balcony Parilla could hit the waves of the sea with a hand-tossed rock.

  Antaniae lived in the neighborhood, of course, that was the original point of keeping trixies there. Even now, the area was very old, very built up, with hidden spots, nooks, and crannies sufficient to shelter the antaniae from the day’s harsh sunlight. No extermination program had ever proven quite thorough enough.

  Though the exterior of the palace was Venetian, the interior courtyard was very Arabesque, with sparkling columns in the Moorish style, a simple but elegant central fountain, sixteen symmetric but nonuniform arches, and a long staircase that arose in the back to lead to the second floor. Someone had probably had coup prevention in mind when that staircase had been designed; it was the only way up that led to the presidential quarters.

  Parilla—short, stocky, swarthy, and with steel gray hair—was waiting at the top of the stairs, hand on a railing, as Carrera walked through the courtyard, skirting the central fountain. A gray, emerald green, and red trixie, bent over and drinking at the fountain, ignored him entirely.

  He looks so old now¸ Carrera thought, looking up the staircase. And, well . . . I suppose he is.

  “It’s not the years,” said Parilla, as if reading his chief soldier’s mind, “it’s the mileage.”

  Carrera nodded, answering, “A year ago, Raul, you didn’t need a railing to hold yourself up.”

  “Cascading failure,” Parilla said. “When things start to go wrong they all go wrong together . . . and fast. Come on, let’s go chat in my office.”

  I don’t like the sound of that word, “chat,” Carrera thought. Maybe he was always more politician than soldier, but the old man was a pretty fair soldier too. A “chat” could be unpleasant.

  The silverwood paneling in the presidential office was considerably older than that on the walls of Spirit of Peace’s conference room. It was also reflective enough that the light spilling in from the window was more than sufficient.

  “Fernandez’s boys and girls swept the place two days ago,” Parilla said, as Carrera took a leather seat. “We can speak freely here.” Then the president went to a liquor cabinet and pulled out two glasses. These he filled with ice, then took a bottle of ancient rum and poured several generous fingers in each.

  Carrera stood up, took one glass and set it down, then took the other, which he placed on Parilla’s desk. Only then did he retrieve his own glass and resume his seat.

  “I have a sense of the Senate,” Parilla said.

  I like the sound of that even less.

  “There is a sufficient consensus that we should avert a war with the Tauran Union if at all possible. If I asked for a declaration of war today, I would not get it.”

  “Even though they’re sitting in the Transitway like a rope around the country’s neck?” Carrera asked.

  “Even though,” the president confirmed.

  “They don’t have faith I can win it?”

  Parilla shook his head. “No, they believe you can win it. They don’t believe you or anyone alive or anyone who has ever lived could win it without getting ten or fifteen percent of the country killed.”

  And I could not gainsay that with a straight face or clear conscience. It just might cost that much.

  “So what do they want . . . what do you want, Mr. President?”

  Parilla frowned. “Don’t you get formal with me, Patricio. I’m still Raul. And don’t get your back up over the Senate, either. They’re your creation, not your creature, and you set them up that way.

  “As to what I want . . . I want us to back off from provoking the Taurans. I want us to . . . let’s say . . . give peace a chance.”

  “I think that’s a mistake,” said Carrera.

  Parilla shook his head. “It’s not a mistake; it’s a gamble. It’s gambling a somewhat less advantageous position should war come against the chance of avoiding war altogether. Are you trying to tell me that that is always a losing bet?”

  “I’m . . . no.” Patricio likewise shook his head. “No; Machiavellianism notwithstanding, human history is replete with instances where a little restraint might have avoided endless grief. It’s just that in this case, in our circumstances, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “You knew the new high admiral of the Peace Fleet visited the Taurans, here, recently?” Carrera asked.

  “Yes,” the president agreed, “my aide de camp got the briefing from Fernandez and briefed me.”

  “You don’t agree it’s a bad sign?”

  “Could be,” Parilla conceded. “Equally, it could be a good sign. We just don’t know.”

  “I can contact her, you know,” Carrera said. “I haven’t because I don’t trust the bitch as far as I could throw one of her starships.”

  “Yes, I knew. Maybe you should.”

  Carrera shrugged his shoulders. He really didn’t know if he should or shouldn’t.

  “So what say you?” the president asked.

  “I don’t want to stop preparations for a war I consider inevitable.”

  “Can you break those preparations into nice to have and necessary?” asked Parilla. “Into those that you can keep hidden from those you can’t? From the innocuous to the provocational?”

  “Maybe, maybe, and maybe.”

  “Try. Try. Try.”

  Carrera smirked at the retort. “And when they sense weakness and start to provoke us?”

  “Restraint. Restraint. Restraint.”
<
br />   It was Parilla’s turn then to smirk at Carrera’s scowl. “You’ve recently put your son into one of the military schools, haven’t you?”

  “It’s common knowledge,” Carrera answered.

  “When you’re weighing this gamble I want you to take, don’t forget to weigh the life of your son if we go to war with someone a hundred times bigger and a thousand times wealthier.”

  “I suppose there is that . . . Okay, Raul, I’ll try; I’ll lay off harassing the Taurans. But I’m still going to keep preparing in everything that’s key.”

  And the only reason I’m not throwing a shit fit is because I can ignore most of what you’ve ordered—as you fully expect me to.

  Batteria McNamara (former Battery Ranald, FS Army), Cristobal Province, Balboa, Terra Nova

  There was information that was open. Then there were secrets, deeper secrets, and deepest, top secrets. It was, for example, no secret that the legion had bought an impressive number of 180mm guns from the Volgans. The exact number, though, was secret. It was no secret that some dozens of these had been mounted in old Federated States-built coastal artillery batteries along both the Shimmering Sea and Mar Furioso coasts. That an additional fifty-four had been hidden out on the Isla Real was very secret. It was not a secret that the legion had laser-homing shells for many of their heavier artillery pieces and mortars; they’d used some of those during the campaigns in both Sumer and Pashtia. That they had developed lengthened, subcaliber, laser-guided shells for the 180mm guns, which shells could range over eighty kilometers, was almost the deepest secret in Balboa.

  The battery—then named “Iglesias Point Battery”—had once housed two twelve-inch rifles on barbette carriages, which is to say carriages that allowed a gun to be fired over a parapet. Other batteries, up and down the coast, had housed twelve-inch mortars, fourteen- and sixteen-inch rifles, and an assortment of lesser pieces. None of those were required anymore, since ships no longer mounted the armor such beasts were designed and built to punch through. The gun about to be fired, at just over seven inches, was more, much more, than required to punch through the thin metal of a modern warship, if punching though armor at longish range had been the objective.