Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01]

by A Small Colonial War (epub)

  Snyman nodded.

  “Frosty straight. Tell the walkers they’re on a frosting errand of mercy. But don’t get too close, they all got frosting runny noses.” He tossed Snyman Fripp’s assault rifle. Snyman cleared it and went through a quick functions check. De Kantzow looked over at Thursby, kneeling beside a ragged hole in the wall providing covering fire for another team. “Thursday’s frosting busy,” he said, and bent to use Vincente’s foam dispenser to weld a wounded Boer to the broken door himself.

  Snyman stepped over to look at de Kantzow’s impressed stretcher bearers. “We are going to take these wounded men back for treatment. If you give me difficulties, I will shoot you,” he said in Afrikaans.

  Yelenov made a comment. “It would be easier if one of these turtles took the one on your back.”

  “No, I think that I will have less problem if I show that I myself am helping. Also, I want to. ” Snyman looked up at him, his eyes showing white against the green skin of his mask. “I owe Mario a beer. Maybe two.”

  Yelenov said softly, “When this is over, you look us up.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  AS BRUWER’S INTENSITY WANED, BEYERS THREW UP HIS HANDS.

  “This is madness. Four months ago, no one knew my name.” His wife examined Bruwer closely. Bruwer sat gripping the arm of the chair with her left hand. The sleeves of her pullover were carefully rolled. Veins crossing her wrist stood out, blue and pulsing.

  “Hush, Albert. The child is right,” his wife said.

  Beyers stopped wringing his hands to consider this possibility. “I understand that Vroew Reinach threw a stone at you the other day. I would ask you to forgive her. She is a bit of a goose, really, but she did lose her husband.” Beyers’s wife looked at her own husband. “You must excuse him. At his age, men need a full night’s rest.”

  Beyers had ceased to wring his hands. Instead he rubbed the fingertips of one hand across the palm of the other softly. “What do you think, Mother? ’ ’ he asked his wife quietly.

  “Some men seek out greatness. You waited to have it come along and shake you by the neck.”

  With her hatchet face, it was clear that she had never been a beauty. Beyers had had other reasons for marrying.

  “The war will be over, ’ ’ she continued. "Either you beat this into the farmers’ thick heads, or someone else will. But no prancing about, lining up supporters and all the things you politicians do.”

  “You are right, Mother. Who would have thought it?” Beyers said quietly.

  “I did, or I wouldn’t have married you.” She glanced at her timepiece. “I should think that there are a number of men who owe you favors, but the phones are turned off and there is the curfew. How should we begin, Hanna?”

  Bruwer held up a small radio. “With this. But if you could excuse me for a moment, first,” she said haltingly. “I feel I shall be sick and your carpet is too pretty for me to ruin. Not the infection,” she added hastily.

  “In there,” Beyers said, pointing. Bruwer rose and left.

  As they heard the sound of running water, Beyers turned to his wife. “How do we thank her, Mother?”

  “Don’t thank her, use her. Make her the landrost or even the burgemeester, God willing. Who else can you trust?”

  Beyers laughed. “And what about you, Mother? What office would you hold? ’ ’

  “None, thank you. I’m too busy keeping my children and their father from acting the fools they were bom,” she said primly.

  “Mother, would you come to the fort with me today?” he asked formally.

  It was a local conceit, of recent and unknown etymology, to refer to the Johannesburg Staatsamp as Fort Zindemeuf.

  THE CHURCH WAS BUILT OF STONE, LIKE A MEDIEVAL CASTLE.

  Snaking past the ruins of the bell tower as resistance crumbled away, Coldewe darted inside, following his own grenade with two of the Gurkhas close on his heels.

  The little Gurkhas were pathetically eager, but it was mostly “Follow me. Do what I do.” Still, for peasant boys off to earn a little money and see the wide worlds, they caught on to the essentials.

  The north wall was pockmarked, 88 hits. Overhead were the stars, disappearing in the gray light of morning. A stray round had desecrated the dominee’s living quarters, but there was a cellar or crypt that appeared intact. On impulse, Coldewe started down the steps, pushing open the door.

  Inside were two dozen Boers. A few were civilians. One tall girl with a very pallid face was standing up clothed in little more than a shift. A young man was seated in one comer with one arm bandaged, holding a light machine gun across his knees. Several of the men were holding grenades. Two of them removed the pins as Coldewe entered and let them fall to the floor.

  The two Gurkhas looked to Coldewe uncertainly. Coldewe shrugged.

  “Good day, I am Hans Coldewe, from Tuebingen,” he said in his less than fluent Afrikaans.

  The young boy nodded politely.

  “Who’s in charge?”

  No one spoke up. Coldewe pointed to the tall girl in the shift. “What’s your name?”

  “Elise Louw, Heer Coldewe.”

  “You are in charge of these people. Have them stack their weapons along the wall there. Take them to the Van Rensburg house. Do you know where that is?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll send Bahadur to help you. If the armored cars stop you, tell them that I sent you.” Bahadur was the taller of the two Gurkhas, the only one whose name Coldewe knew. He looked around at the faces.

  “Find the pins to those grenades.” he directed. He pointed to the two Gurkhas who hadn’t understood a word. “You two, help them.”

  The young boy nodded again without ever changing his slack expression. He lay his light against the wall neatly at a tilt with the muzzle up. Several men began scrabbling in the dust for the pins. Louw had the others follow the boy’s example.

  Coldewe turned to his Guikhas. “Bahadur, show these people to the Van Rensburg house.” He pointed to the other. “You, guard these weapons!” Both of them straightened and snapped off crisp rifle salutes. The shorter man took station stiffly by the wall.

  As he stepped outside into the warm air, Coldewe realized that they were clearing the last buildings, and that he’d almost become the last casualty.

  He made a mental note to check up on Louw.

  On the outskirts of town, No. 10 was strung out in a broad wedge. To the right of lYilya Pollezheyev’s team, there was nothing but trees to the sea.

  On either side of Pollezheyev, cleared ground rose gradually to slight crests half a kilometer apart. Down the middle ran a soggy depression that would have been a stream on a respectable world. Except within the depression’s confines, the rest of No. 10 had a clear and murderous field of fire. The depression would draw Boers like a magnet pulls iron. Sitting in water up to his assets, Pollezheyev was sited to fire down its length.

  The first Boers streaming out of the stricken town passed in no particular order. Marksmen from the other arm of the wedge took most of them. They let the survivors by. Pollezheyev wanted something better.

  He spotted one group of three men, clustered together and moving purposefully.

  Reaching down to squeeze off, he was momentarily distracted by a little girl with golden hair. She skipped along in her ruffled dress across the meadow. Pollezheyev hesitated.

  The girl said something to the men that he couldn’t make out, pointing emphatically toward Pollezheyev’s positions. The command group melted away into the mire leaving the little girl alone to admire the scenery.

  “The devil!” Pollezheyev observed with feeling.

  Shocked by the narrowness of his escape, Danny Meagher watched the girl skip away and then began crawling a body-length at a time toward the inviting forest a few hundred meters off. Halfway across, he heard overhead an engine’s sound and froze.

  A solitary Shiden flew obliquely by at a low altitude, spewing a stream of little pellets from the ruptu
red pods on its hard-points. Meagher felt a few of the motes cascade over his body, then heard the tiny sounds as the pebble-sized mines armed themselves. He turned his head backward to see Pat’s unsmiling face. Pienaar was behind him.

  “All, Pat, Hendrik,” he said, “my mother told me once there’d be days like this.”

  Saturday(13)

  “HOW ARE WE DOING, TIMO?” VERESHCHAGIN ASKED, WAITing.

  Haerkoennen pulled his headset off and tried to make sense out of the conflicting signals he’d been monitoring. “Major Henke has cordoned the farms and is quartering. They are gassing the tunnels. Captain Sanmartin is still cleaning up in and around Krugersdorp. Major Kolomeitsev has broken off pursuit to complete refueling.”

  And to have his shoulder dressed. The Iceman was a difficult man to kill; if he acquired the same reputation here as he had on other worlds, it would not be long before the Boers still full of fight were scratching crosses on their bullets.

  Haerkoennen glanced at the time. Fourteen minutes more. To Haerkoennen’s experienced eye, it appeared the Variag was out of courtesy.

  “I wish I were with them,” Vereshchagin said very softly. “Casualties?”

  “Eighty-seven at last count. One aircraft, three vehicles. Less than we expected.”

  “But more than we can afford. What would you say, Timo?”

  “If they don’t know they’re beaten now, they never will.”

  At Elandslaagte, panicked Boers had tried to break away east along the road. Ajax had found them, spewing chickenseed until the very aluminum in the vehicles began to bum. Survivors from Elandsslaagte, Nelspruit, and Krugersdorp who didn’t give themselves up would spread disease all over creation. Albert Beyers knew as much about the tactical situation as anyone on the planet. If Beyers hadn’t convinced himself by now, he never would.

  Haerkoennen had been around the Variag too long to imagine that Beyers’s sudden shift was entirely fortuitous, but one way or another, they’d have worked the trick. Shimazu, Tomiyama, and Aksu had broadcast teams out, letting some of their prisoners speak to their former colleagues. Haerkoennen had no doubt that they could put on a fairly convincing prancing pony show even if Beyers had a change of heart.

  The key to live biological operations is controlled dispersal. Uncontrolled dispersal creates infection foci that the slightest mutation can turn into a pandemic. Haijalo had done some reading in the last few hours.

  Psittacosis strains are uniformly marked by extreme contagion; apart from the odium attaching to live biological operations from the Wizard Wars, the difficulty of controlling dispersal normally rendered use of PS strains unacceptable, but war is rarely normal.

  The Psittacosis37 strain Raul had let loose when he triggered the transponders was distinguished from other PS strains by its low lethality and delayed onset of symptoms. Infection settled in the respiratory system and was spread by coughing or spittle. The illness was characterized by high fever, disorientation, and muscle ache, with complete convalescence requiring several months. Strain-specific immunization was ninety-eight percent successful.

  The thirteen Boers who had abided by their paroles had been snatched up and quarantined before they became infectious, with apologies and compensation. Eva Moore had quietly arranged to have Solchava brought down for a plague presentation. There were some jobs even too dirty to pass off to the infantry.

  Moore had said that Solchava’s face had gone dead, pale white in the course of it. Moore had also said without a trace of self-pity that when her own time came, there would be no hell too deep for her.

  Haerkoennan glanced down again. As for Beyers, thirteen minutes more and they’d be sure one way or the other.

  Vereshchagin tried to smile.

  Haerkoennen missed what he had to say, pricking his ears up at a signal. “Muravyov, sir. For you.” He listened for a moment. “His number three Cadillac, the one that took the rocket.” Vereshchagin nodded. “Inform him that Prigal has been reinstated as a superior private by my order. What did Prigal have to say for himself?”

  “I’ll ask.” Haerkoennen did so and awaited a reply. “Prigal figured Johan had gone to sleep at the switch, so he took it upon himself. Johan will be all right. Muravyov also mentions a pay discrepancy. Prigal got around to admitting he’s been getting paid as a superior private. He was afraid to mention it before.” Vereshchagin made a face. “Please ask Muravyov to inform Superior Private Prigal that the battalion sergeant is not accustomed to making mistakes. Nor am I.”

  “Acknowledged. Surgeon Solchava has returned from Complex. She has requested permission to see you as soon as is possible.”

  Vereshchagin nodded distantly as he watched Beyers appear before the camera and begin to speak.

  Beyers was leaning on the table in front of him. He spoke softly at first. “My friends, my enemies. My name is Beyers. Some of you I know. Some of you know me. Others among you know my wife. She is my conscience.”

  Beyers had made the journey to Pretoria as if it were to Calvary instead, as in one sense it was. He kept his speech slow and formal. Behind him, he felt rather than saw the presence of his wife and the young Bruwer. They were well matched, both of them, far too somber. Beyers felt it was the curse of his race that they took things so seriously that men died for them.

  “My colleague of Bloemfontein is dead, murdered by Afrikaners. His deputy resigned two days ago in fear for his life. My colleague of Pretoria resigned last night, his deputy as well. I am the last.”

  Both resignations had come under duress, but Beyers saw no obligation to muddle his tale.

  “Both Pretoria and his deputy have promised to pay several million yen, to ease the sufferings of our people. For this I thank them with all of my heart.”

  That, too, had come under duress.

  “But as I have said, I am the last representative. For this reason, a duty is mine. I have a story which I must tell you. It is a story of shame, a shame affecting each of us. ”

  The population was huddled in their homes. The papers stopped printing. Power came on for them to cook, and they were hearing only the news that Ssu’s surviving censors released to supplement the wild rumors and wilder speculations that passed from hand to hand. No artifacts flowed from Complex. Men tried to purchase from dwindling stocks of goods with money in which men placed no confidence, the ablest among them realizing what had been lost when the warehouses filled with goods from Earth were destroyed with the port.

  When vehicular traffic ceased, isolation was added to other fears. The rumors had been ugly.

  When the power came on, out of habit they turned on their televisions. They saw and heard Albert Beyers.

  Beyers spoke in that style of brutal frankness that the worst of the Boer politicians affect and the best discover naturally. He spoke. From time to time he paused, to read from a list of names, of the dead, of the wounded and captured, fifty names at a time, Afrikaners and Imperials.

  There were three things he told his people.

  He told them of the Order; the Order had made itself an unholy parasite on the Bond, itself a cancerous growth on the body of the Afrikaner Volk. He told them how the Order had made its unholy alliance with USS in order to wage its war on the Imperials, how the Order had murdered Reading and the spaceport in the name of a past that was dead.

  He told them of the cost. The cost was measured in the battles that had been fought, for if the deaths of a few men were acts that cried out for vengeance, the death of a few thousand was something that called for searching one’s heart; he told them as well of the infection, the psittacosis fever, that had been spread among the shattered, deluded fighting Boers in retribution.

  Finally, he explained to them the proposal he had made to Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin. Vereshchagin’s counterproposal had been replete with sticks rather than carrots, and Beyers made no effort to disguise this. What he spoke of instead was amnesty, of autonomy in local affairs, of rebuilding. What he emphasized instead was that he int
ended to have a peace for which no more would die.

  And he paused to read names from time to time. Even Afrikaners who reviled his name listened, if only to hear the names of the dead, the wounded, the captured.

  He intended to speak until night fell or he collapsed at his post. He offered hope.

  “in THERE, YOU SAY?” SANMARTIN SAID TO HIS PRISONER. LIKE

  most of the ones they had taken in the course of the night, this one was disposed to be agreeable. Sanmartin pointed to the nearest soldier who didn’t contrive to look busy. “You, look after him!”

  The young rifleman rammed the barrel of his weapon up the back of the Boer’s coat, twisting it to tangle the foresight in folds of cloth.

  “Please do not move. Otherwise, I must explain the expenditure of ammunition.”

  Sanmartin cupped his hands and shouted toward the mine entrance. “Raul Sanmartin, captain, First Battalion, Thirty-fifth Imperial Rifles. Please surrender yourselves.”

  “I regret to say that we shall not,” was the reply.

  “If you don’t, we’re going to blow you out of there. Suicide is silly. Also useless.”

  “Not entirely useless. My last task is to be sure that the ammunition stockpiled here does not fall into your hands. It is my ammunition, you see, ” the man said in a cultured and somewhat pedantic voice. “My name is Claassen. You may perhaps recognize it from the Geloftedag Proclamation.”

  Sanmartin registered the name. “Don’t be silly, Christos. You’re not one of Scheepers’s merry chuckleheads. We’re cleaning up tonight. It’s over, and we’re going to want a few people to pick up the pieces,” he shouted back.

  “Still, I believed. I still believe. I have committed my honor, Heer Sanmartin. There is a proverb that I learned once that you might perhaps understand. ‘The wine is bitter, but it is our wine,’ ” was Claassen’s reply. He punctuated it with small arms fire. He turned to Olivier having made his point. Olivier was shaking with fear.