Come and Take Them Read online

  Shaking his head, Ham said, “No . . . I . . . all of us thought they were binding.”

  “Puhleeze!” said the centurion. “Like we’re going to let thirteen-year-olds decide the futures of honest-to-God, actual human beings? Your father and I may look stupid, boy, but only when we drink and even that takes a while.”

  “Oh.”

  “But we do use them, and not always in ways that are obvious.” He decided to leave that last as a mystery.

  “For example, without attribution, let me read you a few comments from your fellow cadets: ‘When I needed help, where was he?’ ‘Pushy; tries to do too much.’ ‘Too good to talk to the rest of us.’ ‘Talks down to us.’ Worst of all, this one: ‘I can’t believe this snob is the child of our Dux Bellorum.’”

  With each sentence, Ham sank a little deeper into the chair. “But . . . but . . .”

  Cruz sighed. “But they’re all bullshit, son. I’ve watched you for the last couple of weeks closely. The only one of those that has any relationship to reality was the ‘too good to talk to the rest of us’ one. And that wasn’t because you think you’re too good, was it?”

  The boy’s voice was breaking as he answered, “No. It’s because I don’t know what to say. I never had to talk to regular kids before . . . not as one of them. That’s why the old man sent me here.”

  “That’s one of the reasons, yes,” Cruz concurred. “There are others. Tell me, Ham, do you like the other kids in your section?”

  “Some yes, some no. Mostly I don’t really know them.”

  “They don’t know you, either.”

  “I suppose not. They only know about me.”

  “No,” Cruz countered. “They don’t know a damned thing about you past your name. They know what they imagine about you: rich boy, powerful family, never had to do anything for himself, spoiled, soft . . .”

  And that last was about all Ham could take. His eyes flashed. “Soft? Soft?! Jesus Christ, Centurion, I was in my first firefight when I was nine years old! And I won, too. I was living in a camp at the war, getting mortared about every third day, when I was three! And you think it’s easy growing up under a father who’s never happy, never content, who always expects more?”

  “Yes,” Cruz said, “I knew all that. I was in the same camp, son. Or camps. But they don’t, and you can’t just tell them.”

  Again, the boy deflated, anger spent. “What am I going to do, Centurion?”

  “Mostly,” Cruz replied, “you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself, with a different approach for everyone or, at least, everyone that matters. But for the group and in the main, I want you to try three things. Number one, don’t talk about yourself, ask them about themselves. Number two, help them when they need help. Once. Don’t worry about offending them. If they don’t object, you can keep helping. If they do, fuck ’em; don’t help anymore. And number three, if you need to, pick one and beat his ass.

  “You would be surprised how often getting along depends on the willingness to beat someone’s ass.”

  Prey Nokor, Cochin, Terra Nova

  Cochin was important to Balboan defense. It had a place in research and development. It was involved in a certain amount of arms funneling, manufacture of sundry odd items of military utility, and provision of training. That latter included both advisors to the legion and in training for the legion—pilots and sappers, especially—within Cochin. It was also creating a few important systems from plans drawn up by Obras Zorilleras. Since the legion had money while Cochin aspired to rise to poverty someday, they’d have been willing to do still more. The limit was in how much could be done there without attracting unwanted attention.

  On the surface, the ship looked like just another Ro-Ro. It was only when one went inside and looked that one became impressed with the power hidden within. And, after that, when one thought about how that power had gotten inside, without it being obvious, one became very impressed.

  “It was a labor of love,” said Terry’s Cochinese guide, Commander Nguyen. “We hate the fucking Gauls and figure you’ll use this against them.”

  Terrence Johnson had met Nguyen on his arrival in Cochin two weeks prior. Since that time, besides dealing with some bureaucratic intricacies peculiar to paranoid and quasi-communist states, he had inspected the ship known so far only as the ALTA (Armada Legionario, Transporte de Assalto). He had acquired some understanding of ship-to-shore attacks during the counter–drug war in La Palma Province. Since that time he had studied more on the subject.

  Johnson was extremely impressed by the amount of thought that had gone into modifying the ships, and said so.

  “Labor of love,” Nguyen had repeated, lifting his breathing mask to speak. The mask was necessary as the entire deck was flooded with nitrogen gas to preserve both the launchers and their rockets.

  Walking Terry through the missile deck of the modified Ro-Ro, Nguyen pointed out blast shields, controls, and back-up controls. On that missile deck seventy-three thirty-centimeter multibarreled rocket launchers, minus the heavy trucks that normally carried them, had been mounted with their tops flush with the top deck. In this form, though the rockets were pricey, the elevating and traversing mechanisms were not all that expensive while the launch tubes were almost frightfully cheap.

  Nguyen’s finger traced the tell-tale lines above each launcher. “We’ve got shipping containers above to hide the marks in the deck that show where the launchers will rise to fire. They’re empty and will rise up with the launcher covers, then fold down onto them.”

  The mechanisms that would raise the launchers and move them through their limited traverse were protected behind armor plating. Also at the missile deck level the starboard side of the ship had been cut away and replaced with blow-out panels to vent away the explosive power of the rockets that drove the missiles to a range of over ninety kilometers. Likewise the decks above and below had been reinforced. Johnson noted that the ship could only fire to the port, or left.

  Nguyen then led Johnson to the deck just below the missile deck. There he removed his mask and said Terry could do the same.

  Johnson saw twenty-eight helicopters, three-quarters troop carriers and one-quarter gunships. Those were all contained in plastic sheeting. He suspected, even before Nguyen confirmed it, that the helicopters had had their air replaced with nitrogen under their plastic covers.

  A long ramp led up from the hangar deck to the top deck, which was covered by hydraulically moved decking. There were vehicles on the hangar deck to pull the helicopters up the ramp. Along both sides were elevators for moving ordnance from the magazine to the hangar deck.

  The next two decks down had living quarters for a small tercio of infantry and their supporting troops, some space being taken up by containers. Nguyen had some Cochinese open several of the containers, chosen by Terry at random, to insure they held what their labeling said.

  In the rear of the ship was a closed ramp, not too different from the bow of an Old Earth style LST, except for being in the rear where it would not be subject to the full force of an angry sea.

  Behind the ramp sat six Volgan-built hovercraft, each capable of carrying upwards of fifty men with their supplies and equipment. These, too, were protected from the salt and water by sheeting and nitrogen gas. They would be able to leave their deck and make for the sea along the ramp once it was lowered to the water.

  Impressed as he was, Terry still had his doubts. “How the hell did you manage to do this without anyone the wiser?” Johnson was, in fact, sure that no one outside the legion and Cochin knew about the ALTA, if only because the assembly of such awesome raiding power would have meant an international, if not indeed interplanetary, shit storm. And that hadn’t happened.

  Nguyen smiled wickedly. “Trade secret. But consider how good we were at hiding things from your native country’s best efforts during your war here.”

  Terry nodded soberly. It was true enough, the Cochinese had driven the Federated States armed forces
batshit insane for better than a decade. “How about the other three?” he asked.

  “Those are easier, so they are a lower priority,” Nguyen replied. “They’re almost ready, even so.”

  Turonensis, Republic of Gaul, Tauran Union, Terra Nova

  Reconnaissance wasn’t really Khalid’s main line of work. Oh, sure, he’d had all the courses Fernandez’s department had to offer, plus a few from the line elements of the legion. But . . . really . . . anybody can do recon. My specialty is assassination, and not just anybody can do that. Still, I suppose the chief has his reasons. Actually, I think I know what they are: Do triple duty, find targets, set up a few cells of terrorists who think I am one of them, and get to know my way around in the areas I am going to operate in if . . . when . . . war breaks out.

  A Druze from Sumer, Khalid had entered the legion in a roundabout way. Having lost family to terror, he’d been recruited for counter-terror. In this, he’d proven skilled enough—remarkably skilled, really, and ruthlessly imaginative, to boot—that his contract had been transferred from Carrera’s ally, Sada, to Fernandez. With that employment had come new training, a new face—several new faces, actually, over the years; right now he had blue eyes and red hair—and for the most part the most difficult assignments. Want a grotesquely fat cinematic moral gangster to suffocate on film under a neck-wrapped plastic bag? Khalid was your man. Want a sewer cover explosively driven more or less up the ass of a family member of the enemy? Oh, Khalid? Need a corrupt female journalist terrorized into toeing the legion’s line? I would have been hurt if you had assigned anyone else to the bitch.

  Khalid had worked for Fernandez, the legion, and Balboa for many years now. In that time he’d had close comrades from the legion. The sister of one of those was now Khalid’s wife and the mother of his children. He’d grown used to Balboa’s green, at least twenty percent as sacred to his own faith as it was to the Islam from which important elements of that faith had sprung.

  Like nearly all Druze, Khalid was fiercely loyal to his countries, first Sumer and now Balboa, so long as said country did not oppress the Druze. In Zion, for example, formed by Israelis enticed away or deported from Old Earth, the most Zionist group in the country were the Druze. Also in Zion, Druze who were citizens of bordering countries occupied by Zion gave up not a bit of their loyalty to the countries of their birth. A small people the Druze may have been, but they were mighty of heart, courageous, and trustworthy, for all that. Better, they were, in a famous poet’s famous words, “Few, but apt in the field.”

  Khalid was of that ilk. He had never yet voted in a Balboan senatorial or presidential election, and would not until released from service by Legate Fernandez. But it was still . . . it had become . . . his country. And, on his country’s behalf, he was a fine assassin.

  Or saboteur, Khalid thought, if that’s what Fernandez wants. Though it’s funny that they have me reconning, and getting twelve-digit grids for, power stations, airplane factories, windows in same, key cranes at shipyards, bridges . . . everything . . . except nuke plants and nuclear weapons sites. I guess Fernandez or his boss figures nukes are just that step too far.

  Actually, though, Khalid’s purview was restricted to certain provinces in Gaul, Castile, and Sachsen. Other people—he knew no names and knew better than to rely on alterable faces—had other areas, in those countries and in other countries. Still others checked behind the primary operatives, so Khalid surmised.

  Aiming a small laser range finder from his rental car toward a window in a four-story office building that housed the management for a trucking firm, Khalid took down the range in his notepad, then consulted his military-grade Global Locating System receiver for the grid. 2197 meters . . . 004121482337 . . . up 4.5 meters.

  Lastly, he took a final series of digital pictures of the nearest wall before starting his engine and driving off. Tomorrow he’d come back for an appointment with the human resources people of the trucking firm, so he could make an assessment of interior vulnerability.

  Sound Studio, Canal Siete, Ciudad Balboa, Terra Nova

  The studio had been pretty thoroughly trashed during the fighting in and around the Pigna coup. Carrera and Parilla could have just let the channel go off the air. Still, it hadn’t been the owners’ faults that an unwittingly renegade unit of the legion had taken it over. So repairs had been made at government expense.

  Still, if Parilla was generous hearted, Carrera very rarely gave anything without strings. Sometimes the strings were in plain sight, at other times hidden. In the case of Channel Seven, those strings—mostly hidden—included it becoming a de facto arm of the legion, of Television Legionario, hence heavily into propaganda.

  In one little, really fine, really hard to see string, the studio was making audio recordings in several languages, all of women, all of whom had very sweet and sexy voices.

  Lourdes, for example, spoke excellent French and English, while Artemisia McNamara had both her native Spanish and fair Italian from her modeling days. Two girls who might be useful if the legion ever formed a Tercio Amazona would be doing the honors in German and Portuguese. Currently—rank, even hidden rank, having its privileges—it was Lourdes doing the recording.

  The sound chief shook his head, slightly. “Given the message, Señora Carrera, and what your husband seems to want to accomplish within it, I think we need to get the excitement completely out of it, to make your message initially no different in tone from ‘Please wash your hands before leaving the lavatory.’ And then turn imperative right at the end. Does that make sense?”

  Lourdes giggled over the chief’s little joke, then answered, “I think that’s probably right. Shall we try again?”

  “Please.”

  Sitting upright to relax her diaphragm and get maximum clarity thereby, Lourdes spoke into the microphones in front of her, “Votre attention s’il-vous-plaît, je suis une bombe à retardement de cinq minutes. Votre attention s’il-vous-plaît, je suis une bombe à retardement de cinq minutes. Veuillez évacuer la zone. Je suis une bombe à retardement de cinq minutes. Veuillez évacuer la zone. Je suis une grande bombe à retardement de cinq minutes. Mon délai de détonation a été fixé au maximum à cinq minutes mais pourrait bien y être inférieur. Sortez d’ici sur-le-champ. Quatre minutes cinquante-cinq . . . quatre minutes cinquante . . . une minute . . . cinquante-neuf . . . cinquante-huit . . . cinq . . . quatre . . . trois . . . deux . . . adieu.”

  “And that’s a wrap. Mrs. McNamara? Your turn.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Evil and madness are not synonyms. Societies that cannot distinguish between the two are destined to get more of both.

  —Jonah Goldberg

  Estado Mayor, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Terry Johnson had brought back with him from Cochin a video disc prepared by Siegel, now on his third research and development tour in Cochin. Interestingly, Sig’s now freed former slave, Han, was still with him.

  Carrera, Parilla, and Fernandez sat in a completely secure and shielded conference room watching the grainy video on a wide screen television. The grains disappeared to be replaced by a clear image of Siegel, centered on screen. Behind him a diminutive Cochinese—male, so not Han—was tethering a goat to a stake in the ground.

  “Hello, sir,” Siegel’s picture said. “I know you can’t come here and we sure as hell can’t test fire one of these things in Balboa, so I’m sending you this video by courier to let you see what it’s capable of . . . or not.”

  Siegel began walking as he spoke. He wavered across the screen. Plainly his cameraman was inexpert. “It isn’t as good as we hoped. Let me tell you that right up front. ‘Why not’ I hear you ask. Just this, it isn’t a straight line progression in power from a five-hundred-pound Fuel Air Explosive bomb to a fifty-thousand-pound FAE. This big boy uses up all the oxygen in the immediate area and then stops exploding because there isn’t any more oxygen for the misted fuel to react with. We’ve solved that problem partly by making it multichamber
ed, with some chambers containing pure liquid oxygen to continue to feed the explosion after the air is gone and partly by addition of some enhanced high explosive the Cochinese got from the Volgans, along with ethylene oxide and powdered aluminum. That helps but we’re still not getting a one-hundredfold straight increase in power from the five-hundred-pounder.

  “There are other problems. Because the thing explodes into half a sphere a lot of the explosion is wasted up where there are no people. In any event, for all that bang you get an area on the ground with about a four times bigger radius than you would get with just a five-hundred-pound bomb. That’s not much bang for the buck, is it?

  “On the plus side, the visual impact, especially from someone standing a good distance away, is as near to a nuke as I ever want to be. Well, I’ll show you.”

  The cameraman had obviously stopped filming, because the image cut out and then changed to a completely different scene. Siegel began to speak again. “We’ve put about fifty animals, pigs, goats, monkeys . . . one water buffalo, at different ranges from the bomb. Some of those are in bunkers, some in armored vehicles. The Cochinese wanted to give me a condemned man in place of the water buffalo. It would have been a lot cheaper but I said ‘No’ anyway. I hope you don’t mind but I bought the condemned prisoner from them. He might be useful . . . a thief, they say; name of Nguyen.” Sig gave off a small laugh. “If you didn’t know, boss, everybody here is named Nguyen, just about.

  “Anyway, the bomb is about three kilometers from here. That will give you a pretty good visual shot of its detonation . . .” Siegel consulted his watch “. . . in about two minutes.” Pointing at a tripod, Sig ordered, “Tranh, lock down the camera.”

  Again the scene changed, this time to a small hill off in the distance. A large cylinder dominated the hill.

  Suddenly the hill was shaken with an explosion. A dozen or so sparklerlike things traced up and out across the image. Within a fraction of a second the first explosion was swept away by one altogether of an order of magnitude, or perhaps several, greater than the first. The fuel had reached the sparklers.