Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  As well I should have, Ham thought, since the old man’s been grilling me and drilling me on the Twelfth Principle of War, Shape, since I was a toddler.

  Explaining it to the section leader for the exercise, Vladimiro Adame, was tougher. The latter, olive-toned scion of the yearning middle class, really didn’t have a lot of use for the all-too-white upper class of which Hamilcar seemed to him the epitome. Getting through that was a much greater challenge than solving the bloody problem.

  “The problem, Miro,” Ham said, “is that somebody has to go out on the end on one of the nailed-together planks, pass the other plank to the far side, then tie them together. To do that, someone else—more likely four or five someone elses—are going to have to stand on the end of the plank while he ties them together. Once that’s done, he can cross and then we can move people to the far side. Then he and they can stand on the end of the plank to balance the weight of one of us and the drum. Think: Leverage.”

  Vladimiro looked at Ham suspiciously, obviously wondering, How far can I trust this well-connected bastard?

  “And I’m not technically a bastard,” Ham said, “since my mother and father managed to get to the altar first. Now what’s your excuse?”

  That got Carrera’s boy a laugh and a question. “So how do we keep enough weight on the near plank?”

  “You lead from in front,” Ham replied. “Get on your belly and crawl out. As you clear space on the rear of the plank, moving forward, I’ll get others to stand on it in the rear. Go slow because getting them stable might take a little effort.

  “Once you’re at the end, we’ll pass you the second plank across your back, then you feed it all the way over. It has to be the short plank or you’ll lose control of it. Then you tie them together and cross over yourself. I’ll feed three more cadets over to you to stand on the far end.” Ham fluttered his fingers. “Three . . . maybe even four. Then we use somebody small and strong . . .”

  “Jorge Rodrigues,” Miro decided. “He’s not the smallest but he’s strong for his weight.”

  “Yes,” Ham agreed, instantly, knowing he’d won the point and also that the glory of the thing would accrue to Jorge, whom he counted a friend.

  “Don’t fuck this up on me,” Miro warned.

  “Don’t you.”

  “Time is wasting, gentlemen,” announced Cruz, looking down at the broad and thick nylon band holding his watch to his right wrist. He pulled the protective tab over the watch’s face and glared out at the boys, struggling to get their little one plank bridge assembled. The centurion’s right boot tapped theatrically on the ground.

  Hamilcar, the biggest boy in the section, stood at the very end of the longer plank, holding it down with his body weight. In front of him he had the next largest boy, likewise applying weight to balance out Miro, slithering down toward the free end. At a certain point, Miro was out too far and the leverage was not quite enough.

  “Get your feet on the plank, Roger!” Ham ordered. Then, feeling the plank start to rise, he amended, “Screw that. Sit on it. Belisario, sit on his lap. Raul, crawl up on my back and hang on.”

  With the weight of five boys on the friendly side, that end of the plank settled back down to the dirt. Still, Ham found it pure hell to try to balance with Raul on his back, the more so as Miro set the plank to vibrating.

  Worse than learning to ride a bicycle, he thought.

  “I’m as far as I can go,” Miro said, over his left shoulder. Lying flat on his belly, he had the rope draped loosely around his neck. “Send me the other plank.”

  That was more trouble than anyone, including Ham, had expected. In the first place, the plank caught on Miro’s fatigue shirt. He found he had to use both hands to hold the shirt tight to his back to let the plank pass it. Since the plank was actually two, nailed together, the ridge where they were nailed likewise caught. The boy feeding the plank had to pull it back then, flip it, and start over. In that action he nearly lost the plank over the side.

  Almost Ham lost control of himself and lunged for the plank. Whether he stopped from presence of mind or because the other boy managed to get control of it he wasn’t quite sure. Still, the other boy did get control of it and began once again feeding it across to Miro.

  And there arose another problem. The angle was just all wrong. Miro couldn’t hold the plank with his hands behind his head feeding it forward.

  “Flip over on your back,” Ham shouted. That seemed like good advice, so Miro tried it. It worked but the motion set the longer rearward plank to vibrating again. The boys clustered at that end began to sway . . .

  “Shit!” Ham exclaimed.

  “Two demerits, Cadet,” Centurion Cruz announced.

  “Shit,” Ham whispered, then, “Jorge! Get over here and balance us!”

  That helped.

  Miro, flat on his back and feeding the plank forward—or up, depending on how one wanted to look at it—couldn’t see the far end. “Guide me, Hamilcar,” he ordered. “I can’t see shit.”

  “Two demerits, Cadet.”

  “Shit,” Miro likewise whispered.

  Cruz, who could still hear him perfectly well, permitted himself a thin smile. Damn, I wish we’d had these schools when I was a boy. This shit—two demerits, Centurion—is too much fun.

  “About two feet from the far bank,” Ham advised. “But you’ve got to lift the far end or you’ll put it in the water.”

  As Miro struggled against the reverse leverage of the plank, Ham guided, “Up . . . up . . . little more . . . set it!”

  Miro jammed the far end of the plank into the dirt on the far side, then slithered like a snake, but backwards, before easing the friendly end down to the plank on which he lay. Flipping over to his belly—which movement very nearly cost him the rope—he slithered forward again and began to tie the planks together. In the excitement, he tied them with the wrong knot, and perhaps a bit too close to the lower and longer plank, but you’ll get that on those big jobs.

  “TIME IS WASTING, CADETS!”

  Shit, thought Ham and Miro and just about every one of the others, all at the same time.

  “Far side, Miro,” Ham reminded.

  Exhausted from his struggle with the plank, Miro just nodded and began belly crawling across the shorter plank. For a moment the other plank began to teeter, but then he was past that danger point and the thing settled back down. In less than half a minute, he was standing at the edge of the far plank, saying, “Send one man over.”

  “Francisco, go,” Ham ordered. “Augustino, get ready. You’re next.”

  Centurion Ricardo Cruz was mildly impressed. The boys had the bridge up. They were using the weight of their bodies to keep the planks up. And they had one small but strong boy carefully rolling the “fuel drum” across.

  I think they’re going to make . . . uh, oh . . .

  What followed wasn’t really the fault of Jorge Rodrigues, the boy rolling the drum. Rather, it was a combination of things. In the first place, even with five boys on one plank and four on the other, the weight of drum and boy combined introduced a certain amount of vibration. That stretched the rope. Then there was the rise where one plank lay atop the other. Getting the drum over that induced more vibration to the planks, drove the short plank a little farther away, and further loosened the rope. Then the drum hit the rope, nudging it just a bit, and bouncing back.

  All of that would have been survivable. But the rope was already very near the edge of the lower plank . . .

  “Oh . . . SHIT!” cried a dozen cadets as the two spanning planks were disconnected, and all the weight of both boy and drum rested on the near one, which had just a little bit too little weight holding its near side down.

  “MORE DEMERITS THAN YOU PEOPLE CAN COUNT TO!”

  Ham felt himself and the other four boys with him lift up. Two boys fell off almost immediately. Ham and the other two picked up speed . . . upward.

  Meanwhile, Jorge fell forward, smashing his belly on the drum and his
face on the far plank. Blood burst from the boy’s mouth as hard teeth penetrated soft lip. Stunned, he rolled off to one side with the heavy drum following him.

  Ham, standing at the very edge of the longer plank, had more velocity than the others. He was thrown, arms and legs splayed, forward into the stream. It was a belly flop, stunning and painful, both. Arms wrapping around his midsection, Ham began to sink. He came to his senses when his face brushed the cold, painted metal of the drum.

  Jorge, he thought, then began frantically feeling around for his friend. He thought the back of his hand brushed clothing once, but before he could twist it to make a grab it had passed.

  Downstream . . . downstream . . . he must be floating downstream. I can’t see shit in this crap. He began paddling furiously in the direction he thought Jorge must have been swept. Then, suddenly, Ham felt something grab the back of his shirt. He was hauled back and upward faster than he could even form the thought to break away. Just as suddenly, he was out of the water and into the light and air. Blinking the muddy water from his eyes, he saw Centurion Cruz holding Jorge above the water by the scruff of his collar. Jorge seemed disoriented, but otherwise fine. Miro was wading in, too, to take control of Jorge away from the centurion.

  He must be fine, was Ham’s thought, else Cruz wouldn’t be laughing.

  A soaking and muddy Ham sat with his back to a tree and his arms wrapped around his knees. Failure. Miserable failure. Everyone’s gonna hate me. Why? Why? Why? With each “why” he slammed his head back against the tree.

  Unaccountably, when Miro came walking by from his after action review with the centurion, he was smiling broadly. Miro sat down beside Ham and said, “Your turn.”

  “Fuck, what’s the point?” Ham asked. “We failed. My plan and I caused you to fail.”

  “Oh, shut up, you snot,” Miro said, still smiling. “The centurion said the objective isn’t really getting the drum over. It’s all about planning and execution, leadership and what he called ‘troop leading procedures.’ He said I passed and that we ‘done pretty good for a bunch of runny-nosed kids.’”

  “No shit?” Ham asked, looking up at last from his blue funk.

  “No shit,” Miro said. “Now go take your beating because, pass or not, we must have our daily beating.”

  Ham reported, then took a seat as directed. He didn’t wait for Cruz to say a word, but said immediately, “You planned it that way, Centurion.”

  “Not exactly,” Cruz corrected. “I—silly me—really thought your plan was going to work. Not sure why it didn’t.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Ham said. “You planned for me to make a friend by assisting someone to pass.”

  The centurion smiled, slyly. “Just figuring that out, are you? And there I thought you were a bright boy. I guess . . .”

  “Oh, come on, Centurion.”

  “Okay, son. Here’s the deal. You’re going to be the assistant for a plurality of the problems your section will face. Not a majority, just a plurality. Not only will it teach you some valuable humility, but it will make your squad mates very dependent on you.

  “And no, before you ask, I will not be passing anyone just to make you look good. I expect you to make them look good.

  “Speaking of which, since a) I need an excuse to make you assistant so often and b) your section did, after all, fail to get the drum over the creek, you are a failure for this task, Cadet Carrera. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  As a visibly shrunken Hamilcar slunk away from Cruz’s field office, the centurion thought, I didn’t tell your old man I had a trick to help you along. He needed the moral space. That, and to let someone else decide, anyway. He’s always been too close to the problem. And that’s my trick. ’Course, after that, it’s up to you, boy. They’ll need you, each in his turn, but only if you prove that you can help them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful.

  —Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

  Nyen, Volgan Republic

  Kuralski, sometime chief of staff for the combined legions, but more often more valuable as arms purchaser in Volga, walked around some dozens of heavy-duty shipping containers and crates, checking off items on an old-fashioned clipboard. The weather was typical Volgan winter, bitter, miserable, and more miserable still for Nyen’s proximity to a cold sea. Had it just been snow, Kuralski might have enjoyed the weather. But no, it was a winter mix of snow, rain, and sleet.

  Open the dictionary, thought Carrera’s legate, to the word “shitty” and there will be a two-by-three color glossy of Nyen in the winter.

  In this fortress town by the Ancylus Sea, site of the first colonization party—monarchistic dissidents all—sent out from Old Russia, a major arms shipment sat in unwalled sheds near the docks awaiting their transportation. These included, crated up for shipment, twenty-four one-seat and seven two-seat Artem-Mikhail-23-465 Gaur jet fighters, heavily modernized but still cheap since they were such old basic designs, plus fifty-two cargo helicopters, IM-71s or some variant thereto, likewise crated. The helicopter would be going straight to Balboa, but the fighters had a lengthy stop off scheduled in Zion for further upgrades.

  Obsolete by Columbian, Tauran, and Volgan standards, the Gaur were still perfectly adequate to serve as training aids. Moreover, by Northern Colombian standards, they were almost top of the line aircraft. The Volgans had originally asked for over four million drachma, each, for them, on the theory that this was still cheaper than anything from the TU or Federated States. By showing the arms dealer a copy of a civilian publication dedicated to the sale of small arms, in which Gaur were being offered for sale to private individuals at just over two million Federated States Drachma, each, Kuralski had gotten the price, with shipping, reduced to just over two million each, with avionics.

  The outsides of each of twenty-six shipping containers were marked FMTG, Inc., the wholly legion-owned, but largely Southern Columbian–manned, corporation that provided a certain amount of training support for Balboa, especially in areas, air and naval, where the foreigners had greater expertise.

  The helicopters were similarly marked. Some months earlier, though, a totally unmarked set of twenty-two cargo choppers and eight gunships had gone by rail to Cochin. Further, eight hovercraft had gone by sea to Cochin, sailing from a different port. From there, the criminal organization that had sold them to Kuralski had no clue and less interest.

  Expecting that United Earth Peace Fleet’s satellite reconnaissance would see the crates containing the aircraft sitting at the dock, Carrera had had FMTG try to defuse the matter by bringing it up first. Since the aircraft were alleged to be essentially unarmed—which was true; the armaments were to be shipped separately—and were the theoretical property of a foreign defense contractor, there was no Federated States reaction to the shipments. For their own purposes, though, the FSC confirmed their existence through satellite photography.

  The UEPF and Tauran Union were another story. Their reaction was to demand that the crates not be shipped anywhere. So far, the problem was being kept low key. That might change as the shipments got closer to Balboan hands.

  It is possible that Carrera had another purpose is having FMTG bring the aircraft up first. After all, when someone is concentrating their remote sensing capability at one port, they’re more likely to miss another, and quite likely to miss movement by rail.

  The crates of the other twenty-six helicopters were instead marked Servicio Helicoptores Balboenses, S.A., SHEBSA for short. These were newer than the other group, configured as civilian choppers, and distinguishable by their more comfortable seats and large rectangular, rather than small and round, windows. Also, they had their tail rotors on the left, rather than the right, side of the tail boom. SHEBSA, Kuralski knew, was a part of the “hidden” reserve, much
like the five merchant shipping corporations and the two construction companies. Though how hidden they actually were was a matter of some speculation.

  Having made his last minute check of the shipment, Kuralski left the dock area for a meeting with a retired Volgan pilot who needed a job.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Taurus, Terra Nova

  There were two Khans on the high admiral’s staff, husband and wife, to the extent those terms had meaning within Old Earth’s ruling classes. They did, of course, though the meaning was not necessarily one that would have been accepted on most of Terra Nova.

  Both Khans were concerned with intelligence. The wife, Iris, who despite being quite blond and blue-eyed had had a much darker ancestress among the hereditary bureaucrats who had eventually risen to rule of mankind’s home planet, was concerned with political and social intelligence gathering and analysis. Her husband, conversely, was more involved in operational and strategic intelligence, to include such aspects of technological intelligence as might impact on those.

  They both sat with High Admiral Marguerite Wallenstein in her private office, just abutting her own quarters. The office sat in the mid-gravity area, halfway between the ship’s central spine and the spinning outer hull. Rather than the ostentatious locally harvested silverwood of the conference room, Wallenstein’s private office was more subdued, without wood on the walls—beyond picture frames—and with only the built-in carbon fiber desk.

  Iris Khan was speaking.

  “I just don’t detect a lot of disunity within Balboa, and I don’t sense a lot of unity in the Tauran Union. The TU certainly doesn’t show the will to engage in major war.”

  She’s really quite pretty, thought Marguerite, wistfully, as Khan the wife briefed her on developments below. If only she were not a submissive, I wouldn’t be half so lonely and not at all frustrated. It’s funny how in matters sexual and romantic most of us need whatever real life can’t provide. I have to be the bull dyke bitch of the fleet in my public persona but in my private life I want the exact opposite. And can’t have it. Dammit.