Come and Take Them Read online

  Almost, Wallenstein ordered Esmeralda to go with the captain. In the end, though, she not only recognized the captain as straight but as an intel type. No way she was letting an intel type get anywhere near her cabin girl.

  “His Gribbitzness will be along shortly,” the captain said, before leaving through the double door.

  I wonder what the hell “Gribbitzness” means, Wallenstein wondered. The tone she used said it was not a compliment. I suppose I’d better not ask. Yet.

  Whatever Marguerite had come to expect from reports about Gallic General Janier, the broken reed seated opposite her didn’t quite fit it. He hadn’t even donned the reproduction uniform of a marshal of Napoleonic France, and she’d been certain he would. Why, he wasn’t even carrying the marshal’s baton that was supposed to be his constant companion.

  “I could have taken them four years ago,” the Gaul said, shaking his head regretfully. “Maybe even three years ago, I could have. We had a good plan for doing it. We’d go after their leadership, before they could mobilize, using forces here and others brought in from Taurus. Then we could have turned on and destroyed the leaderless rabble one small unit at a time.

  “Back then they were in the throes of reorganization. They had people in high places we could have gotten to. Eventually we did get to some of them, too. And there was—thanks to Federated States meddling—an existing opposed government to step in and give legitimacy to the entire operation.”

  There was a touch of frenzy on the Gaul’s voice as, leaning forward excitedly, he insisted, “It’s all gone now. We can’t win anymore, not with any likely level of force the TU will give me. There are too many of them—not even counting the parts we don’t know about but which I am sure exist.” Janier collapsed back into his chair.

  “Like what?” Wallenstein asked, ignoring the outburst.

  Janier sat up a little straighter. It was pleasant, after all, to have someone his political masters would happily grovel to, and who also possibly understood some military realities.

  He replied, “Like, for example, what do you call a three- or four-thousand-man construction company that has no official formation or barracks or anything else, but where every man is a veteran of the legion and where the CEO is never referred to by anything but his legionary rank?”

  Marguerite agreed, “I’d call it a brigade of engineers.”

  “Precisely,” the Gaul said. “And that, I think, is just the tip of the iceberg. Worse, still, my own political superiors are willing neither to retreat from this place nor to put in an effort to win here. They are, for all practical purposes frozen, like a megaloceros caught in headlights.”

  “What if I could unfreeze them, General?” the high admiral asked.

  “They’re cowards,” he replied.

  Marguerite smiled wickedly. “Oh, I’d count on that. What if I could unfreeze them by offering them a limited rejuvenation, about twenty or twenty-five years’ worth?”

  “You could do this?” Seeing she could, Janier grinned for the first time since the meeting began. “They’d be on it like a child molester on a six-year-old.” Which, come to think of it, and though the controlled press avoids the subject, some of them are.

  “All right then,” the Gaul said, “I could do something with the kind of political support that would drum up.”

  “What would you do?” Wallenstein asked.

  “I’d build us up to eighteen light and heavy—mostly light—infantry battalions here,” he answered, without any noticeable hesitation. “With all the usual support. This would require some civil construction, to be sure. I’d beg, borrow, or bribe transit rights through Santander to the west and Santa Josefina to the east. I would begin stockpiling in those places as well as here and in Cienfuegos to support a moderately lengthy campaign. I would get substantial sections of both our fleet and the Anglians to control the coasts. I would . . .”

  Marguerite held up a hand, palm forward. “At least you know what you would do, General. That’s more than most can say. It’s also more than I need to know, in any detail. I’ll get you the political support. You use it to good effect.”

  Again, as if one cue and even though no cue was needed, the entire headquarters building shook as a couple of Balboan fighters skimmed low over the roof.

  “And I’m going to fuck with them mercilessly,” the Gaul finished.

  Marguerite reached into a pocket, pulling out a thin communications device. “We’ll need to talk from time to time. Use this.”

  Cerro Mina Road, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Esmeralda was a country girl, basically. The nearest she’d ever seen of a city was the Razona Market on Old Earth where, caged, she’d been put on display as goods to be sold. The twisting road carved into the side of the hill in the course of quarrying for stone for the Florida Locks was mostly framed by jungle. But every now and again the soil had been too thin to support much in the way of plant life and a vista opened up of the sprawling cosmopolitan city below the hill. She wasn’t at all sure she liked the city; it was just too different from what she’d known.

  The people she’d seen along the streets, though, between the gate under Building 59 at Fort Muddville and the MP shack at the base of this winding road were not different from what she’d grown up with: generally brown, stocky, and calm of countenance. She felt an immediate affinity for them, as if she could step out of Janier’s staff limousine and just blend in among them.

  Except for one thing, thought the girl, my “Spanish” is so contaminated by English, the language of Old Earth, and limited by the experience of the last five hundred years while theirs, supposedly, is pretty pure. I don’t know if we could even talk.

  Janier and the high admiral rode in back, with the glass barrier rolled up between them and the peasantry. What they talked about Esmeralda didn’t know, though she was sure the high admiral would tell her anything she needed to know. She did know, though, that Janier had said he’d had a set of quarters set aside on this sleepy post for the use of the high admiral.

  He intends to bed her, Esmeralda was certain. Which is good. Then I won’t have to feel guilty for not crawling into her bed on my own, after all she’s done for me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Disciplined in the school of hard campaigning,

  Let the young Roman study how to bear

  Rigorous difficulties without complaining,

  And camp with danger in the open air.

  —Horace, Odes, III, 2

  Estado Mayor, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

  A weasel-faced man, wheelchair-bound, eased his powered chair out from behind his desk and around to face his commander, seated in one of the overstuffed chairs in one corner of the office.

  “She’s here right now, Patricio,” said Omar Fernandez, “the high admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, herself. I’d have known a lot sooner except that Yamatan Imperial Intelligence didn’t rush the information from their special source to me, and it took a while to track down the aerial routes through my own sources in the Federated States, once I knew to start looking.

  “I don’t know if there’s anything you want to do about that or even anything you can do about it. Still, I thought you should know as soon as I could tell you without compromising anything.”

  Carrera ran a dozen possible responses through his mind, very, very quickly, dismissing each as either impractical or undesirable.

  “And,” Fernandez continued, “although it isn’t proof, I consider it evidence that none of my people actually in the enemy headquarters saw anything beyond a flock of Tauran Union bureaucrats, while one did see that their super secure conference room was used, but with none of the visiting bureaucrats in it. And then she and a young aide—or maybe lover; you never really know with the Kosmos—were seen being escorted by the Frog general to Cerro Mina. I should have a report of where they’re staying by midnight. But I already suspect where it will be, and I don’t have that building infiltrated.”
The intel chief shrugged apologetically. “I never thought I’d need it, since the building was never used for the last ten or fifteen years.”

  “I’d like to know whatever you can come up with, Omar,” Carrera agreed. “But I think I wouldn’t do anything if I could. Former High Admiral Robinson is still healthy?” At Fernandez’s nod, he continued, “Then I have a hold over the bitch to use at my convenience. Speaking of which, how’s the shuttle program coming along?”

  “We have five acceptably trained pilots for it,” Fernandez said. “But we ran into a glitch that we really should have anticipated.”

  Carrera raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Assuming we can bluff or force our way into a hangar, there’s no frigging air unless the ship we try to board closes the hangar doors and fills the compartment. That, or we find space suits from somebody and outfit a boarding party with them . . . or develop some ourselves. Even there . . .”

  “Even there,” Carrera finished, “it doesn’t really give us control of a fleet . . . or maybe even control of that one ship, since we won’t have a crew to fly or fight it. Okay, let me mull it some. But, for God’s sake, keep Robinson healthy.”

  Training Area C, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In the rest of Balboa it was the dry season. On the Shimmering Sea side of the isthmus, there was never really a dry season. Rather, there was a wet season, a wetter season, and “forty days and forty nights,” which, interestingly enough, usually lasted about forty days and forty nights. Currently, it was the wet season, which meant there would be the occasional dry day.

  Keeping healthy’s not a huge problem, Ham mused, but keeping happy sure as hell is. I never realized before how utterly essential women and girls are to keeping happy.

  The boy sat alone underneath a stretched out rubber poncho. Rain drummed the sheet like a distant barrage before gathering and rolling off the sides. Most of that water splashed up a bit of mud but then rolled downhill and away. From uphill, however, which was behind him, a neat little stream formed and ran under the frame of the rucksack he’d been issued, between his feet, and then off.

  The stream wasn’t a problem, yet, but . . .

  Serious doubts that I can divert it with a narrow run-off trench. Serious lack of desire to sleep in the middle of a stream. Serious desire to sleep, as soon as they let us.

  Ham’s family was, of course, not poor. Indeed, they were so not poor that his father had given away about seventy-five billion drachma and still could fund whole regiments and schools out of his own remaining wealth. But many of the students at the military academies, of which there were six, were from poor families. Since, unlike the rest of the country’s educational system, the military schools were totally free—in fact, they paid a small stipend—there were more applicants than there were slots. Thus, Ham and several hundred new boys were out in the jungle—the real, deep, dark, wet, stinky, snake-crawling, antaniae-crying, black palm-sticking triple canopy jungle—to drive as many boys who lacked motivation as possible out before wasting a precious school slot on them.

  So far it had all been very efficient and, compared to what Ham had expected, surprisingly gentle. There hadn’t been a lot of screaming—some shouting, yes, but a man had to be heard—and no real brutality, as the boys had been hustled through medical exams, shots, dental checks, the field uniform and equipment issue line, the small-caliber rifle issue line, and any of half a hundred other things to prepare them for what came next.

  What came next had been a walk. A long walk. A hot long walk . . . with blisters. It was all made a great deal worse by the fact that none of the boys, Ham included, knew how to keep up. Thus, it had been mile after mile of stop, march in place, run, run faster, stop, bump into the boy in front of you, stop, run, run, dammit . . .

  Where they’d ended up even Ham didn’t know, and it was probably his family’s property. What it looked like though: banana plants and palm trees at the edges of the few open areas. For the rest, bare dirt at ground level and some other, a lot of other, stouter trees growing up from that, with their branches intertwined overhead, blocking out direct sunlight.

  Apparently Carrera or his chief for cadet training, the Volgan, Sitnikov, had been very firm that the boys were not to be hit, starved, or kept from sleeping more than two days in a row. But the food . . . Ham looked down at the unappetizing mess slopped on the metal plate resting on his knees and wondered, Is this food? He sniffed, carefully. Doesn’t smell rotten, anyway. Doesn’t actually smell like anything at all. My mother or my sister or my wives or, least of all, Alena the Witch, would never have given me something like this to eat.

  I miss my womenfolk. But I am Hamilcar Carrera, son of Patricio, and I will not cry.

  He sniffed again at his evening meal. Unappetizing or not, nothing better is going to be forthcoming. I suppose I’d better eat it.

  Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Meals at the casa had always had an odd, military aspect to them. Purchased as a run-down and abandoned old pile, it had entered modern life as a staff headquarters and barracks. It had served in that capacity while Carrera and his men had been planning and putting together the first increment of the legion, the one that fought the initial campaign in Sumer. It had since gone through various other renditions. Currently, it was mostly civilian, but with two hundred of Hamilcar’s in-laws as guard, in barracks outside, it still had a strong military aspect to it, at least out on the grounds and at the doors.

  Even inside, though, with the presence of Tribune Cano, his wife, Alena the Witch, and Ham’s dozen wives, Artemisia McNamara and her brood, plus the domestic staff, the sheer numbers demanded a more than ordinary degree of organization, one highly reminiscent of a military organization. Thus, one might say there was an officers’ mess, where Carrera, Lourdes, and Artemisia, the widow of Sergeant Major McNamara, took their meals, along with, usually, Lourdes’ major domo. Then there was a staff mess, for the maids and cooks and groundskeepers, along with any of the guards on duty inside the house, as a few invariably were. Then there was the children’s dining room, which had originally been the sole dining room, but had been specialized once Ham came back accompanied by his wives.

  Alena and her husband supervised that mess, and Ham’s sisters, naturally enough, gravitated to the other girls who were not, in any case, all that much older. And besides, Ham’s wives spoiled Julia and Linda rotten, something always appreciated.

  They all spoiled Alena’s child, Dido, as the only real baby on the premises. That last was currently engaged in her own feed, courtesy of Alena’s abundant breasts. Cano, seated at the opposite end of the table, was reminded, And how can man die better . . . ?

  Ant looked up from an empty plate as Alena was switching her baby off. “May I be excused?” she asked.

  “Surely, child, run along.”

  Neither Cano nor his wife, both quite intent on Dido, noticed that Ant left with several packages of crackers concealed in the folds of her native costume. On the other hand, if she had noticed, Alena would likely have guessed the reason and thoroughly approved.

  Ant didn’t know quite how far her husband’s father’s powers stretched, only that they were immense, far above any of the chieftains of any of the clans of her own people. And she watched enough of the television and read enough over the GlobalNet—from the extensive house library, as well, for that matter—to know that power here meant a lot more than it did in her homeland, too.

  Looking over the map of Balboa she’d found over the GlobalNet, she fumed, If I knew how to drive I could be there at my lord’s school within a few hours, half a day at the most. But I haven’t the first clue. And if I try to get someone to pick me up on the road—“hitch-hiking,” they call it—the police will have me in irons in a matter of half an hour after I am reported missing. And there will be no second chance; the father of my lord gives me the impression that he never gives anyone a second chance.

 
; So it is on foot, and not on the roads, either. And not even on foot all the way; there are rivers I must swim and even a lake I must cross. Hmmm . . . maybe before I set out I had better learn to swim better than I do. Fortunately, the ocean—strange and frightful thing!—is only down the steep walkway to the north.

  And when I am ready, and make my way to my lord, I will be blessed among women, for—youngest or not—I will be the first to take my lord into her body, and the first to bear him a semi-divine child!

  Training Area C, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova

  For guard duty, they’d told Ham to sling his small-caliber rifle and given him a 20-gauge pump shotgun. He’d pass it on to the relief; they’d all done familiarization firing a few days past. In any case, the dangers against which he guarded his young comrades at night just weren’t the kind a .22 could help with. The shotgun had a strong flashlight mounted in parallel with the muzzle, the light being activated by a button near his thumb.

  Hamilcar walked gingerly. Despite the ministrations of the school medicos, his feet were still blistered from the march out here.

  From off in the distance, well past the perimeter, he heard the cries of hungry antaniae: mnnbt, mnnbt, mnnbt.

  The problems with the antaniae, thought Ham as, shotgun in hand, he patrolled the perimeter of the encampment, are triple. One is that they go after the small and young, which includes me. Another is that they come in mass if they think they can get away with it. The third is that they hate the light and like to attack when it’s darkest. He spared a glace upward at the light-blocking interwoven jungle above. I don’t even know if the fucking moons are up.

  The antaniae themselves were winged beasts, and more or less reptilian. It was widely believed they were genengineered life forms, as the equally dangerous bolshiberries, tranzitrees, and progressivines were engineered life forms. The difference was that the three forms of genengineered flora were dangerous only to intelligent life, while the antaniae specialized in devouring the eyes and brains of the young, the weak, the defective, and the feebleminded.