Come and Take Them

by Tom Kratman

  Another blast of the centurion’s whistle sent a search team out into the kill zone to gather intelligence from the bodies. A small pile of useful tidbits grew near the center of the kill zone. These had been placed in the uniforms draped on the targets before the exercise. Another pile, of plastic weapons carried by the targets, grew nearby. Cruz, accompanied by Jan, stood and followed the search team out. He observed the search team without comment, until he saw one man turn over a target carelessly. Then Cruz took a hand grenade simulator from a pocket, pulled its fuse, and dropped it on the spot where the target had lain. An explosion followed in a few seconds.

  “You’re hit, dumbass! Deader than fucking chivalry.” Cruz pointed at two men nearby. “You’re hit, and so are you. Now lie down and scream for a medic, both of you. And blame ‘dickhead’ here.” Cruz’s stick pointed at the careless soldier. “And YOU! Boy, next time be careful as you turn a body over.”

  “Si! Sergento-Major. Perdoname, Sergento-Major!”

  “I could forgive you, son,” answered Cruz, “but what about the wives and mothers and children of the men your carelessness might kill?”

  “It won’t happen again, Sergeant-Major. I promise.”

  Through the mind of every man flew a single word, Shit! The platoon had thirty-seven men assigned and two attached. They’d just lost three plus the one from the mine fragment. If they lost even one more they would go over the ten percent casualties—rounded up—permissible under legionary training standards for an ambush. Then the platoon might have to stay past their twenty-five days to train to standard. That meant both more misery and less money. Shit, indeed.

  Jan was unusual among Anglian military women in the number and type of courses she’d been allowed to take. These included at least two where night ambushes were part of the curriculum. She was used to a well-run ambush. Even so, she was shocked at the speed and violence of the exercise, and maybe even more shocked at the short shrift given to safety. Her army, in any case, didn’t think that a couple of sandbags placed behind a directional mine were quite safe enough, when the mine’s pound and a quarter of high explosive was set off a meter in front of the firing line.

  We could do it better, she thought, at least a little. But . . . but we’re professionals and these are citizen-soldier militia. Most of them haven’t had a uniform on in the last six months, and that only for some minor administrative crap. And, okay, sure; they rehearsed this most of yesterday. But they didn’t rehearse it here, on this spot . . . like we might or probably would. Their . . . centurion . . . told me the unit has never been on this spot, doing the same mission, before tonight. And I think I believe him. Even if I don’t, it was a good job. So how the fuck did they do that with part-time, citizen-soldier militia?

  It’s an important question and I need an answer to it.

  Perhaps twenty feet from Campbell’s musing, the platoon leader used a red-filtered flashlight to inventory the pile of intelligence items as they were deposited. When he was satisfied that he had everything he might find—radio, a small book of frequencies and call signs, two maps, and sundry other pieces, including one little book marked “journal”—he blew his whistle for the fourth time that morning. The search team ran back to the ambush position. Two of its members paused by their platoon leader to divide up and carry off the pile of intel items. Three others carried the men Cruz had declared as casualties over their shoulders. Another blast of the whistle and the assault team, until now waiting as security on the far side of the kill zone, likewise picked up and ran to the ambush position.

  Calling “Fire in the hole!” three times, loudly, the platoon leader dropped a simulator onto the pile of captured “weapons.” He then ran, Cruz right behind him, to rejoin his platoon. They managed to get down just before the simulator exploded. At that moment every soldier in the platoon opened fire again, more or less generally spraying in the direction that any survivors of the ambush might have fled, had it been real. The theory was that this would drive them back to ground long enough for the ambushing unit to make an orderly and safe getaway.

  This they proceeded to do, though it was possibly not quite as orderly as the ideal.

  Cruz let them return to the last place they had occupied before moving to the ambush position, then halted them to make absolutely sure all weapons were unloaded and to conduct an after action review, a critique of the platoon’s performance. Twice during the AAR, he had to stop speaking and questioning as the other two platoons of the company opened up their own ambushes some kilometers away.

  When the after action review was over, Jan—whose Spanish was improving by the hour—asked Cruz, “Sergeant Major, is there going to be a stink over that one man whose arm was scored by the mine fragment?”

  Cruz snorted. “Ma’am . . . you aren’t serious, are you? There wouldn’t be a stink if we killed him, as long as the exercise was reasonably well calculated—that’s a bullshit term meaning guessed at—for the state of training of the unit at the time. We don’t have a stink unless we kill too many legionaries too often, where those are defined as more than three or so for a cohort per year.”

  Yeah, she thought, these people need a serious dose of figuring out.

  Cerro Urraba (Urraba Hill), Balboa, Terra Nova

  On the impressively steep, jungle-clad hill, the sound of picks and shovels rent the air, accompanied by the steady oogah, oogah, oogah of a two-man saw.

  Campbell, in whose breast was growing a considerable admiration of the scrappy little Balboan legionaries, mused, Last night another mission, a raid. Now digging in like maniacs for platoon defenses. The Balboans are really starting to get frazzled. But their spirit and morale are still pretty good, considering.

  She realized, not for the first time, I like these kids. They’re not like most part-timers. They’re not worried about when their next “fuck-off” time will be.

  As she watched, the maniple’s centurions walked the line, pointing with their little sticks at deficiencies in the troops’ preparations. Details were stringing barbed wire between the trees and also between some steel stakes that had been driven into the ground.

  A centurion jumped up and down on the overhead cover that shielded one fighting position. The centurion stepped off and bent low to look at the tuberculoid “logs” that had gone into the cover. Campbell smiled as the centurion exploded in rage. Two privates and a sergeant quivered in fright at the tongue lashing dished out to them. The centurion said something too low for Jan to hear, then tapped the sergeant twice, each time hard enough to raise welts, on the chest with his stick. As the centurion walked to the next position the sergeant began his own verbal beating of the privates. Within a few minutes the inadequate overhead cover had been disassembled, the logs removed to a draw behind the line. Then the two men trotted off in the direction of oogah, oogah, oogah seeking more and better ones.

  Campbell glanced to her right. A sergeant, standing a hundred meters in front of where his squad was digging, was pointing out to a corporal how easily his fire team’s two fighting positions could be seen. The corporal hurried off to see to the camouflage.

  Good. The privates are relatively weak in skills, not so well-trained as the Tauran Union’s norm. Or maybe not nearly. The leadership is . . . Campbell hesitated at a painful thought . . . maybe . . . if only a little . . . better than ours. Better than most of ours for sure. Tougher . . . more demanding anyway.

  And this promises to be an interesting problem. The platoons have until 0900 tomorrow to finish digging in. Then the maniple CO will have two platoons plus the weapons platoon attack one platoon. He’s letting his junior signifer command the attacks. A good experience for a brand new lieutenant. Then they’re going to switch off platoons; one of the former attackers will return to its position and become the defender while the previous defending platoon will join in the attack. Should be fun.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’
s a whole different way of thinking.

  —Elayne Boosler

  Cedral Multiplex Shopping Mall, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  Cedral was one of those places—they existed over most of Colombia del Norte—where the terribly wealthy went up on cool, pleasant, and green hills, to lord it over the peasants in the slums below. Naturally, since that was where the money was, it was also where some bright developers got together to build the largest and most exclusive—to say nothing of most expensive—shopping mall in the country. Even the resorts of the Mar Furioso and Shimmering Sea had nothing to match.

  Estefani, the ambassador’s personal secretary, was older, lighter, and taller than Esmeralda, all three being signs, in her world, of superiority, however unjustified. Even the Castro-Nyeres were approximately as white as High Admiral Wallenstein. Estefani was certainly also better educated. That made her fright at having to escort Esma around more than a little disturbing.

  I wonder what she’d say if she knew I grew up as the daughter of a serf and was a slave in the market for a while? No matter what she’d say, really, since I can’t tell her.

  The secretary licked her lips nervously as the embassy staff car pulled up to the main entrance to the mall. “There are three of these that I know of, ma’am,” she said. “This is the second largest.”

  “Where are the other two?” Esmeralda asked.

  “Ma’am, there’s one in Lempira and another in Balboa. I believe the one is Balboa is the largest, though they’re always adding more stores, so that may have changed.”

  That “ma’am” thing is bothering me, Esmeralda thought. But how to get her to stop . . . ah, I know.

  “Estefani,” she said, “I am here incognito. I am darker than you and look younger than you. Tell me it’s not suspicious for you to be calling me ‘ma’am.’”

  The secretary switched from licking her lip to chewing at it. “I can’t,” she admitted.

  “Thought not. Call me Esma and I’ll call you . . . what do you prefer?”

  “Stefi, ma— Stefi.”

  “Stefi, it is. And it’s a nice name, too.”

  The secretary blushed. “Thanks, ma— Esma.”

  “Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you one thing about me, incognito or not. That is that I’ve spent my entire adult life in the fleet.” Which is absolutely true. You don’t have to know I haven’t been an adult very long. “I haven’t the first clue about how to dress here and, since I haven’t seen anyone on the streets dressed like me, I’m not sure that what the fleet gave me is entirely suitable.”

  Stefi really didn’t want to address that. Fortunately, by that time the driver had come around and opened the door for the two women. “Go find someplace to park, Pedro,” Stefi said. “Don’t go to sleep and keep your phone on. I’ll call when we’re done.”

  As the car pulled away, Esma asked more directly. “Is what I’m wearing suitable?” Seeing Stefi start to chew her lip again, Esma added, “I will not report you.”

  The secretary sighed. “They’re too severe,” she admitted. “You look like a lesbian, a mannish lesbian. Especially with the short hair.”

  “Ohhh. They recycle the water aboard ship, but it’s never enough. Most of us keep our hair short. Plus long hair gets in the way in the low grav areas.

  “Thank you,” Esmeralda said. “Now take me to wherever I need to go to get things that make me look like a regular woman, and not too noticeable.”

  “That won’t exactly work here, either,” Stefi said. “Women here dress to be appreciated. It’s a fine line we walk; one step too far in a sexy direction and you’re a slut . . . too much in the other and you’re a matron or a lesbian, depending.”

  She looked Esma over appreciatively. “But we can do something with you, I think.”

  They first saw it between Joyeria Haarlem and Veronica’s Passion, a recruiting station from the legion in Balboa. A cloth banner over the entrance proclaimed it as such.

  Embarrassed, Stefi tried to push on past it. Esma would not. She stopped right in front of the station and put the two stuffed shopping bags she carried down, reading the posters on the front windows.

  “Isn’t it a little unusual,” she asked, “having a foreign country recruiting inside another? Your president told me that traditionally young Santa Josefinan men have joined revolutionary movements all over this quarter of your planet. But one country recruiting inside another just strikes me as different.”

  “Well,” said Stefi, putting her own couple of bags down, “of course on Old Earth there isn’t any war or anything like that, and you’re a unified planet—as I wish we were—so I guess you couldn’t really know, but, yes, it’s unusual. Only the Balboans do it, I understand, and they have recruiting stations all over Colombia Latina.”

  Actually, my dear guide, thought Esmeralda, there is something a whole lot like war going on back on Old Earth. And with whole swaths of the surface reverted to barbarism, we’re not as unified as all that, either.

  “Hmmm,” murmured Esmeralda, just loud enough for Estefani to hear, “my commander wanted broad intelligence on this place. I think this qualifies. Guard the shopping bags. I’m going in.”

  She was lying; neither the high admiral nor any of her staff had suggested that Esmeralda was to gather anything but President Calderón’s agreement to denounce Balboa and ask for protection.

  “How can I help you, miss?” asked the sergeant at the desk. Though the name tag on the desk said, “Centurion Chavez,” the sergeant’s name tag read “Riza-Rivera.” She decided the latter was probably his name.

  There was another one, at a different desk, but he had a phone stuck to his ear and his head bent down over an open manila folder. Three more desks, all empty but showing signs of normal occupation, suggested the recruiting station was much bigger than a two-man deal. There was also a corridor that led off into the recesses of the station or the mall, but there were no signs to say what lay down that way. There was an office door labeled “Doctor Arroyo,” but that door was closed.

  “Miss?” he repeated.

  Esmeralda tore herself from visually scanning around the room and apologized. Then she asked what the sergeant could do for her.

  The sergeant shrugged, saying, “Probably not much. We have women in the legion, but, frankly, enough of our own women volunteer from the limited positions available to them that we really don’t have a lot of need for foreign women. There’s a rumor that this is going to change someday soon but, near as I can tell, that’s only a rumor.”

  “Oh,” she said, somewhat dejected and perhaps a little annoyed. Whatever failings the Peace Fleet might have, they were pretty egalitarian as far as gender went.

  “Don’t look so glum, miss. If you really wanted to join we’d make an effort to try to find you something to do. Good chance though that it would be something miserable.”

  The sergeant looked her up and down.

  He’s seeing what Stefi said people would see, a lesbian.

  That, in fact, was not what the sergeant saw at all, since Esmeralda’s clothing would not have sent the same signal in Balboa as it did here. No, what he saw was a woman too well dressed to be happy scrubbing pots in a field mess.

  “May I see your hands, miss?” the sergeant asked.

  Esmeralda held them both out, palms down. The sergeant took them in his own hands, running his fingers over what a palm reader would have called her “planetary mounts”—Jupiter through Mercury.

  “Odd,” said the sergeant. “You’re not dressed like a girl who would have much callous. But you do.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Esmeralda replied.

  Nodding, the sergeant agreed. He opened a drawer in his desk and took from it a cheaply bound volume, about the size of a Catholic missal. He held it up so she could read the cover, “Historia y Filosofia Moral, by Dr. Jorge and Marqueli Mendoza. Abridged and annotated.”

  “We give these out sometimes,” the sergeant said, s
lipping a business card between the pages and handing it to her. “They’re special editions printed up expressly for foreigners and high school students. You can have this one to keep. Who knows; it might do you or someone else some good.”

  “How many stations like this are there?” Esmeralda asked.

  “Total, I’m not sure,” the sergeant answered. “I know our recruiting maniple for Santa Josefina has eleven, three of them here in the city, and two more in well-populated suburbs. The only other country I know of with that kind of density is Santander, which has four or five times more of them. Well . . . it’s that much more populous, after all.

  “Other places? Dunno. Some I do know operate out of the embassy. Others are clandestine. Most of them are somewhat subdued.

  “Not all of us are recruiters, either.” The sergeant jerked a thumb at the man still talking on the phone. “Sergeant Morales’ job, for example, is setting up transportation for Santa Josefinan reservists and militia who live here to get back to Balboa for training.”

  “Well, that was interesting,” Esmeralda said to Stefi as she slid the booklet she’d been given into her own bags, picked them up, and started to walk again in the direction they’d been going.

  “I think it’s disgusting,” said Stefi. “Recruiting our young men and using them as cannon fodder in their mercenary wars.”

  “Are they mercenaries?” Esma asked.

  “They claim a distinction. They claim they’re auxiliaries, currently unemployed. But it’s not a distinction that means much to me. We’ve had several hundred of our boys butchered for their profit. And many times that in wounded and crippled. It’s a filthy bunch.”