by Tom Kratman
Manuel wasn’t all that impressed. The thing is, chicos, that the country is becoming less of a dictatorship all the time. What you want to see happen? Will it mean less of a dictatorship, sooner, or more, forever?
Manuel’s family was not of the highest among the Rocaberti’s many-sided clan. In fact, his father was a modest businessman of no great wealth or pretensions; his mother, a simple farm girl brought to the big city. These facts had much to do with their having been spared any taste of the follow-on results to the attempt to get rid of Parilla and Carrera. For his own part, Manuel had a certain distaste for military regimes, but was not fanatically opposed either.
Still, Manuel listened politely to the parade of denunciation, perhaps made especially bitter by the fact that his class had just received their conscription notices. He caught on quickly to the common theme. Bored, he still applauded with the others. At the same time he attempted to catch the eye of Vielke, a lovely blond coed. When he realized he would not be able to do so, he turned his full attention back to the “rally.”
It was not much longer before Manuel realized that there was another theme, or rather a lack of one, in what was not being said. They all wanted to change the government. Each vowed resistance. And yet none had the slightest idea of what resistance meant. Looking at them, Manuel was fairly sure that none had the fire, the determination, the . . . courage . . . to resist with arms.
And why should they resist with arms, when it is an infinitely safer path to political influence to join up? And how could they, when—if they had the determination to fight—they would have the determination to organize and train to fight? I don’t think that’s going to happen with this bunch.
Bored and disillusioned, Manuel left the meeting and returned to his rooms. He dug through his personal papers until he found his “draft notice.”
He read:
Greetings from the President and People of the Timocratic Republic of Balboa:
You have reached your 18th birthday. As such, you are eligible to be conscripted into the Legion of the Republic. Under the law, the government is required to inform you of your choices.
1. You may do nothing. If you so choose, the citizenship rolls will be amended to place you on suspended status. This means that you will not be entitled to vote in elections for public office, or to run for election to public office. You are also denied any government funded job training, or educational assistance. You will further be prohibited from being selected for any of the “reserved” jobs—police, fire, weapons manufacture, teaching certain school courses, some few others. There will be no other negative effects from a failure to serve. Your taxes will remain the same. Your standing in a court of law will remain the same as that of any citizen, veteran or not.
2. You may write, call, or visit your nearest tercio to enlist. In such a case, and only after successful completion of training, plus the mandatory ten years’ reserve or militia service, or twenty-five years if you are selected for, and elect to change over to, regular status, the above constraints shall be lifted.
Choose well.
Signed,
Raul Parilla
Presidente de la Republica
Manuel reread the notice. After some hours of thought, he picked up the phone book and dialed a number.
After two rings the other phone was answered: “Third Infantry Tercio, Recruiting Sergeant Barrios speaking.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.
—Edward Everett Hale
Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova
In Ham’s bedroom, in a rack over the bed, sat a highly engraved, highly gold plated, custom F-26. The F-26 was the legion’s standard battle rifle, a very high rate of fire, fairly low recoil job, feeding 6.5mm bullets with semiplastic casings from large rotary magazines and firing them at a ripping cloth rate of fire. This particular one had been an eighth birthday gift to Carrera’s boy from the Balboa Arms Corporation, over in Arraijan. It was nonstandard, a one-off job, shortened and with a muzzle brake to reduce recoil, plus with a pistol grip slimmed down to fit the hands of an eight year old boy.
Of course the gilt and the engraving weren’t readily visible, as Hamilcar’s very practical Pashtun guards had covered the thing with dull black paint as soon as they could. The rotary magazine in it was empty, but left there to keep dirt and dust out.
Pililak stood in stocking feet on Ham’s bed, running her slim hands over the rifle’s stock lovingly. The pistol grip was too small for Ham, now, but fit her dainty little digits perfectly.
And when I leave this place, and rejoin my lord, his rifle will go with me. He can always get a better grip made. I just have to figure out how to get some ammunition for it with nobody noticing. I can’t steal or borrow a few rounds at a time; the magazine can’t be reloaded outside of at the factory. I have to steal a whole magazine or, better, three or four of them. Which, so far, has not proven easy.
The rifle was almost the final obstacle in Ant’s quest to join Ham. She could swim now, maybe not superbly but well enough. Moreover, she’d had one of the guards teach her to make a poncho raft, so she could float any gear and supplies she would need across bodies of water. She had boots and clothing in her own size suitable for trekking the jungle. The boots had been a pair of Ham’s old castoffs, still serviceable, while the clothing she’d sewn herself from some old uniforms she’d found in a closet in a room nobody used anymore.
The boots had been broken in, but not to her feet. Getting them broken in to her own feet, or her feet into the boot—depending on how one looked at it—had been an agony, while keeping a smile on her face while she broke them in had been most difficult. She had downloaded and printed out maps. A compass she had, since she hadn’t been able to get her hands on a global locating system receiver. She knew how to use it, too, to include with a map.
Months of stealing relatively nonperishable food had been a problem, made worse when some damned rats got at her stash. There went four pounds of smoked sausages; poof! Now she had about fifteen pounds’ worth of food in a waterproof, airproof case borrowed from household supply. To carry it and her water bottle she had a bag and some straps, since she hadn’t been able to steal anyone’s load-carrying equipment. That was all hidden in a closet down in what some of the visitors called, “the staff room.” She didn’t know why they did; the household staff rarely went down there.
And it had all gotten tougher lately. Alena the witch had gotten nervous and fidgety as could be. Pililak didn’t know why, precisely, but gathered that it had something to do with something some foreigner had said on the television.
Then again, Ant thought, the witch often doesn’t know why certain things bother her.
Ant wrapped her slim fingers and palm around the pistol grip for perhaps the hundredth time, a thrill coursing through her at the vicarious contact with her lord.
Hmmm, she thought, these will never fit my lord’s hands again. I wonder if I could get a measure of his hand size and have the household armorer carve new ones?
Dido, Alena’s baby, shuddered in her sleep, then gave off a single loud cry, almost a shriek. Bending over the crib and picking the child up, Alena clasped her to her breast, then sat and rocked. She didn’t bare that breast, it hadn’t been a hunger cry. Besides, the child was getting almost ready to wean, and Alena’s milk was beginning to fail.
What is it, baby? she silently wondered. Are you in fear for our lord, as I am? I’d say that it’s all the fault of that evil bastard from Santa Josefina, but my instincts say no, that it comes from far higher.
The unvoiced question was a valid one. No one, least of all herself, really knew if Alena was a witch. But it was said, back home, that the pistachio never fell far from the tree. If Alena was a witch, and if the knack passed
on, there was no reason her daughter had to be able to articulate words to know when something threatened their Iskandr.
Looking up at the ceiling, Alena thought the vilest curse she knew at the Old Earthers who were bringing peril to her god.
He will punish you, she thought further, at the vultures in space. With fire shall he burn you. With scorpions shall he chastise you. In blood and smoke your entire corrupt order shall fall. And he shall stand in his booted feet on the looted, smoking ruins of your world.
So it is written. So it shall be.
As if sensing her mother’s determination—as, perhaps, she did—Dido relaxed and made sucking motions with her mouth. “Aha, greedy thing! So you are hungry after all.” Alena dropped a flap on the front of her dress and presented herself for feeding. “And if you are a witch, then perhaps your hunger is a sign of confidence that our Iskandr shall come through.”
Paintball Facility, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
Centurion—No, it’s Sergeant Major now isn’t it?—Cruz had certainly done his part in getting Ham fit in and accepted. But running the boy ragged to get everyone in his section and platoon to see just how useful Ham could be—if he was on your side—only carried things so far. It took an enemy to really bring the rest of the boys around.
And who was the enemy? The treacherous Santa Josefinans? Not on your life. There were dozens of Santa Josefinan-descended boys at the school, no different from anyone else. How about the Tauran Union? Nah. Too distant. Too adult. Too off the scale. The United Earth Peace Fleet, perhaps? What? Old Earth? What did they ever do to us?
No, it was those bastards from third platoon waiting in the nine buildings of the paintball facility that Ham’s crew wanted to come to grips with.
Generally speaking, the academic week at one of Balboa’s six military schools went Monday through Thursday: Academic subjects, including history, Spanish, mathematics, some science or other, a foreign language, physical training, and such. “Such” included things like music, art, and public speaking . . . and such.
Thursday evening through Saturday late afternoon or evening were more military subjects, ranging from marksmanship to land navigation to special weapons and minor tactics. This included operating armored vehicles.
Saturday nights and normal Sunday afternoons were given over to studying, while Sunday mornings were for nonoptional religious services and a rather lavish breakfast. Some Sunday afternoons, it should be noted, were spent walking off demerits on the parade field in full kit.
Since there was no leave for the first two and a half years at the school, this meant that the cadets, before beginning their second year, had had on the order of two hundred and forty or so days of purely military training. This figure increased with subsequent years, albeit only at a rate of about another ninety to one hundred days per year.
In short, although young and immature, with their bodies not yet fully formed, and not being as strong as adults would have been, from a moral, technical, and tactical point of view the cadets were probably better trained than any reserve force on the face of the planet.
Ham was serving as section leader for the exercise. The other two squads in the platoon—there had been four total but washouts had forced them to consolidate into three—flanked his squad, all three being under cover in a concrete lined drainage ditch, about mid-thigh deep in murky water. The whole platoon was under the control of two upperclassmen, each fifteen years old, cadet sergeants Delgado and Vega. The former was the senior of the two. If he had not been a cadet, his rank equivalent would have been something like Centurion, Junior Grade. There were, however, no cadet centurions or warrant officers, even though there were cadet corporals and sergeants, as well as cadet signifiers, tribunes, and legates.
Ahead, standing on walkways above the roofless buildings, Sergeant Castro and his best friend, Corporal Salazar, waited for the boys to begin their assault. This was their particular bailiwick; they’d do the judging for weapons that had to be too simulated or occasions where someone flaunted the rules, by taking a shot after being hit in a fatal spot, say.
Castro was not too far from the building nearest the ditch, but deliberately facing toward another. Salazar stood atop the walls of a building three around, going counterclockwise. It was about the best they could see to do to give the boys assaulting a chance at surprise.
The paintballs tended to be painful enough, most of the time, that a hit meant there would be no immediate return fire. Fistfights following a hit, however, were not particularly rare. Stopping those before they got out of hand was Castro’s and Salazar’s other job.
The boys were “armed” with pretty close simulacra of the legion’s standard F-26 rifle and M-26 light machine gun. Being paintball markers, the rate of fire was much less, and range was very much less, than the real things. Even so, they were still adequate to clearing rooms and buildings. The boys had “grenades,” but those were heavy-duty plastic bodies with practice fuses. Assessing casualties from those, or from the directional mines third platoon had, no doubt, emplaced, was on Castro and Salazar. There were also smoke grenades and “demolition charges,” the latter being not a lot more than big firecrackers inside bags of flour on shorter than normal fuses with standard issue pull igniters.
The big advantage Ham’s platoon had, under Cadet Sergeant Delgado, was that third platoon didn’t know from which direction the boys would be coming. There was either a ditch, or low ground, or thick foliage, or ruined automobiles in every direction. Thus, third had had to outpost the eight exterior buildings with a couple or three boys each, while keeping one section, one-half of another, and the third platoon headquarters in the central building as a reserve.
At least that was Delgado’s intent and, so far as Ham could see or, rather, hear, it had worked. Of course, he hadn’t yet tried sticking his head over the lip of the drainage ditch, either, to find out. He’d seen the target building earlier, from a leader’s recon with Delgado. Things could have changed though.
Thing that bugs me about it, thought Hamilcar, heart beginning to pound in his chest as the time for action drew closer, is that if they did hear us, they’ll be waiting for us en masse. Delgado didn’t include a deception plan, but is relying entirely on stealth. And I don’t know if we were all that quiet.
He began drawing breath more quickly and shallowly, almost as if he were trying to jerk air into his lungs. So did the other boys in his squad. The rushing air made a hurricane sound as it passed through the mouthpiece of the durable plastic mask covering his face.
Which is fucking ridiculous, for me if not for them, thought Ham, trying to calm himself and breathe normally. I’ve done this sort of thing for real . . . but . . . aha! . . . but never with people who didn’t think I was a god. So . . . I’m afraid that I’ll fail them or they’ll fail me.
Yet another little piece of evidence that the old man knows what he’s doing, isn’t it?
Delgado, walking down the ditch as quickly as thigh-high water would allow, while maintaining quiet, interrupted Ham’s reveries. Delgado, despite the name, was pretty stocky and maybe two inches taller than Ham.
“Sir?” Ham asked, in a whisper.
“Just checking if you’re ready,” whispered back the senior cadet.
“At your command,” replied Ham.
“Right. Figured. But best to see for oneself, no?”
“Yes, sir.”
Delgado looked down at the water with distaste, then said, “Okay, assume it will take me about three minutes to get to the left flank squad. If I find nothing there wrong. We’ll start supporting from that side. The right will kick in as soon as the left does. Ammunition’s not limitless, so as soon as you’re fairly confident you can make it across to the windows, pop smoke and move out.”
“Yes, sir,” Ham said. His breathing grew strained and jerky again, even as he said it.
Delgado squeezed the younger boy’s shoulder. “Hamilcar Carr
era,” he intoned solemnly, “relax. You’ll do fine.”
Ham gave a jerky nod even though his breathing did, in fact, grow more regular. And then Delgado was gone off to the right as Ham signaled with his hands for his section to line up on the enemy side of the ditch. Ham, himself, crawled up the concrete until his head was about two feet below the lip. Then he listened for—
Phhhtphhhtphhhtphhht . . . That was from the left . . . faint but audible . . . now what the hell is going on on the right?
He strained to hear but . . . Nada. Dammit! Did Delgado overestimate how far away they could hear the paintball markers? Shit! Send someone to the right to tell them to engage or just cross? No time . . . limited ammo . . . Okay, change the plan.
Ham pulled the pin on a white smoke grenade and sailed it as far as he could toward the target building. His two team leaders, keying on him, did likewise, then repeated the barrage with less force. To either flank, a thin screen began to build.
“Francisco,” Ham called to the right. “Do not follow. Stay and support by fire. Send one man to find out what happened on the right.” Head swiveling left, he called, “Ramon! Follow me.”
Ham sprang up and over the edge of the ditch, with five more boys following. They fired from hip and shoulder both as they emerged. Ham caught something flying slowly from the right to splat against the target house wall in front.
NOW, they fucking get into it?
“Francisco,” he shouted over his right shoulder as he raced forward, “fuck it. Come on!”
“With ya, Ham! A Team . . . foll—owwwowwoww . . . motherfuckers!”
