Come and Take Them-eARC (8 page)

Chapter Seven

“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,

“’Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;

The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,

And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair

—can ne’er come down again.”

—The Spider and the Fly,
Mary Howitt

Building 59, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Fort Muddville, Balboa Transitway Area, Terra Nova

“Bullshit,” said Hendryksen to Campbell, as she waved—Fernandez didn’t lack for a sense of drama—a gilt engraved invitation, in good English, for her and a male escort of her choosing to spend a full month with Second Infantry Tercio, during the annual training. “Let me see that.”

She handed over the invitation, then arched her back ever so slightly. Looking down she said, “Aye, lassies, ye did it.”

“I doubt it was them,” said Hendryksen, rolling his eyes eloquently.

“You leave me ma own delusions and I’ll leave you yours,” Campbell retorted.

“Sure,” he said, with bad grace. “You realize you’re going to need de Villepin’s approval, right?”

De Villepin was the Gallic chief of intelligence for the Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, and their local superior. In fact, he had little direct power over anybody not in the Gallic Army, and had to really work at it, as did General Janier, to
influence
the army for which they really did work.

“Oh, teach yer mither to suck eggs, Kris; I
know
how a military bureaucracy works, yes. You want to be ma escort?”

“I’d love to,” he said, “but the Frogs are going to want a Frog.”

“Fock!” was all she could say to that prospect.

“It will be all right provided they give you an enlisted man or noncom,” Hendryksen assured her. “Tell you what, though; I will give you a list of questions I’d like answers to. Hmmm…what date did they give you?”

Campbell rechecked the invitation, then did a little figuring in her head. “Thirty-seven days from today.”

“Don’t count on doing it then. His Gribbitzness will be starting Operation Carbuncle before that. About ten minutes after the Balboans realize the rules have changed, and that their current degree of restraint is going unappreciated, they’re going to become rather less open and friendly.”

“So I’d better accept soon, hadn’t I, so that their gentlemanly instincts will kick in and they’ll refuse to disappoint a lady.”

Hendryksen sighed. “There are many words I would use to describe you, Jan, all of them complimentary, but until this moment ‘lady’ probably would not have been among them.”

“Heathen,” she answered, with a sniff of pseudo-hurt.

Casa
Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

It had been easy for Ant to find the direction to Hamilcar’s new school. She’d simply asked one of the compound’s Pashtun Scout guards for the use of a compass so that she could pay proper obeisance to their joint lord daily. That had sounded good enough for the guard that he’d gone to supply and gotten her one to keep, then trained her in how to use it. Thereafter, every evening, she, her co-wives, Hamilcar’s sisters (when they could sneak away), and Alena had all gathered in his bedroom at the
casa,
then prostrated themselves in the direction of
Puerto Lindo
and the Sergeant Juan Malvegui Military Academy, praying fervently to be reunited with their god.

Meanwhile, Ant’s swimming lessons, her minor thefts of relatively nonperishable food, and her acquisitions of necessary equipment and information continued apace.

But I’m not ready yet,
she sighed to herself in the dark.
Not yet. My feet aren’t tough enough yet. I don’t know the dangerous plants and animals well enough yet. I can’t swim well enough yet. And, though I’ve been practicing, I can’t use a map and compass well enough yet.

But soon
.

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

It’s about time to take some of Centurion Cruz’s advice,
thought Ham.

It was also dinner time. Better still, dinner was combat rations, rather than the deliberately tasteless crap they usually dished out. Rather, it was combat rations, minus, since the boys were not going to get the rum ration until they were much, much older. The rations had been prepared by the camp cooks, themselves almost all discharged veterans, reservists, or militia. The boys had formed in line to pass through a field kitchen where the cooks had splashed the chow more or less randomly into the trays of their mess kits. Most of the alcohol would probably go into the cooks over the next couple of weeks.

The boys sat on the ground or on fallen logs and upright stumps, wolfing their rations down before the setting sun released a horde of homicidal mosquitoes, some of whom would surely end up stuck in the gravy.

There were eleven other boys in his section. They’d started with fourteen, total, but two were gone already, having left fairly early. The remainder, besides Ham, were Augustino, Belisario—named for Belisario Carrera—Francisco, Jorge, Jose, Oscar, Ramon, Raul—named for the president, though he hadn’t been president back then—Roger, Virgil, and Vladimiro.

Ham knew that was the wrong order to alphabetize them into, but,
Screw it. I’m twelve and I think in terms of first names. And it’s a little funny that none of them are named for my father. I would have thought…but maybe he knows what he’s doing by staying out of politics. He’s not the most charming guy on the planet, no matter what Mom may think.

And, speaking of politics…

“Pick one and beat his ass,” the centurion said. Sadly, Centurion Cruz has forgotten the code of honor of boys. I’m
bigger
than any of them. So it’s inherently unfair. But I’m not so big that I can handle two of them. At least, not for sure.

So it’s number one, which is way harder than beating someone’s ass.

So who can I get to talk about himself, and how do I start? I should know this, but I never had to learn, because everybody always treated me as special and different or, with my Pashtun, divine. I wonder what they’d say if they knew how much they fucked me over.

Probably something like, “It’s for your own good, Lord.”

Ah, well, I know they mean well. No…actually they mean the best.

And now, which one to break the ice with…ah, Jorge’s always seemed fairly reasonable.
Jorge, last name Rodrigues, sat alone with his back resting against a tree.

Sitting down on the ground on the next quarter over from Jorge, Ham said, “I was actually in on the testing of this crap.”

The boys talked between half chewed gulps.

“Doesn’t seem like crap to me,” Jorge said.

“Right now, it doesn’t to me, either,” Ham admitted. “At least it has a taste to it. But when the old man made us all, himself and my mom and sisters included, eat ration
sancocho
for a week straight to see how much we’d learn to hate it, I sure thought it was crap.”

“He does that?”

“Every time something in the menu changes,” Ham confirmed.

“Must be nice.” Jorge said, wistfully. “Nice to always have enough to eat, I mean. That’s what’s so great about this place; if I get hungry it doesn’t last for long before they feed me.”

Great? This place? What kind of suckiness do you come from? But…best to let that go for now. Besides, I knew there were poor people and poor areas, still.

“Where are you from?” Ham asked.

“Little town you never heard of by the sea. No road to it and the trails aren’t much. And, yes, before you ask, dirt poor. Not just my family, the whole town. We didn’t even have a full time teacher until the legion put one in about ten years ago. Not much electricity, still, except for some solar power the legion put in so a cell phone—just one in town, and that only for emergencies—a refrigerator, and a single small TV, in the school, could be powered.”

Wow. That
is
poor. Doesn’t sound bitter though.

“How did you…?”

“End up here?” Jorge finished. “The teacher’s a medically retired corporal—missing one foot—who seems to do some recruiting on the side. We had one opening in a military academy allocated to the village, but it wasn’t going to go to me. I asked the teacher to help and he pulled a couple of strings and got us another one, here, though it’s not close to home. So, also yes, before you ask, I
really
wanted to be here.”

“I don’t know if I wanted to be here or not,” Ham said. “The old man ordered me here and so I went.”

“Now
that
sounds rough. Being here when you don’t want to be here.”

“Didn’t say I didn’t want to be here,” Ham corrected. “Said I didn’t know. On the other hand, I
do
know I don’t want to piss the old man off, so here I’m going to stay.

“You planning on enlisting when your time here’s up?” Ham asked. “You don’t have to, you know.”

“No,” Jorge said, “I know you don’t. But I probably will. It’s the best way I can think of to never have to go back to my village. You?”

“I don’t think I’ve had a choice about anything once I was potty trained,” Hamilcar replied. “So I doubt I’ll get a choice about that.”

“Bet you didn’t get any choice about the potty training, either,” Jorge said, with a smile.

That raised a chuckle from Ham. “I can’t really remember too much about that but, no, I suspect not. Though I seem to remember my mother with this flexible switch…”

It was the chuckle that did it.
Hmmm…poor little rich boy seems human after all,
thought Jorge.

The latter then stood up and looked down. Yes, Ham had cleaned off his plate as thoroughly as he had, himself. “Seems like eating that for a week didn’t make it too nasty.”

Ham looked up and answered, “Well, about halfway through I realized this couldn’t possibly be the same stuff, since I was sick of that but haven’t had hardly enough of this.”

“C’mon,” said Jorge, reaching a hand down to help Ham to his feet. “Let’s go get our mess kits and cutlery cleaned. You
know
what they do to people they catch with dirty kits.”

One down, ten to go,
thought Ham, as the two young cadets walked to the wash line.

Headquarters, IVth Corps, Cristobal, Balboa, Terra Nova

About forty miles east of where Ham was making his first friend and convert at the Academy, Patricio Carrera walked the lines of one of Jimenez’s units, an infantry tercio, conducting a fairly rare in ranks inspection. It was rare because Carrera hated to waste what could have been training time conducting inspections of the troops in garrison. Jimenez had, however, for some reason of his own, requested it. Since Carrera had a strong faith that Jimenez had trained his corps exceptionally well and would not ask without a good reason, he had agreed.

As such things went, the inspection had gone fairly well. Carrera noted few faults, none of them serious. Afterwards, in Jimenez’s office, facing the ocean and with a refreshing breeze coming through the open, screened windows, Jimenez had asked if Carrera was willing to entertain an idea, even if it came from a junior enlisted man.

Carrera’s eyes narrowed at the tall, whippet thin, coal black senior legate. “Xavier,” he asked, “when the fuck have I ever given you the impression that I wouldn’t listen to a junior trooper who had something to say?”

“Never,” Jimenez admitted. “But you’re a lot busier than you used to be and spread a lot thinner on the ground. Things could have changed. God knows, we never see much of you over on this side.” Fourth Corps was on the opposite side of the isthmus from the capital and legion headquarters.

“That’s half the reason I wanted you to come over here, so the troops could see they’re not just a ‘lost command.’”

“What’s the other half?” Carrera asked.

For answer, Jimenez cast head and eyes toward the door to his office and shouted, “Centurion Candidate Ruiz;
report
!”

The door was flung open by an orderly. Through it, stiffer than his starched uniform, marched a young corporal, shorter than either Carrera or Jimenez, as black as the latter, and broader through the shoulders than either. Carrera noted the miniature insignia on the boy’s sleeve marking him as a centurion candidate.

The boy—he couldn’t have been more than nineteen—stamped to a halt, then snapped a salute. “Sir, Corporal Ruiz-Jones reports as ordered!”

Carrera returned the salute, more or less casually, then ordered, “At ease.” With that he shot an inquisitive look at Jimenez:
What’s this bullshit about?

“Corporal Ruiz is a sapper, Patricio,” Jimenez said. “He has a very interesting idea, one I think you ought to consider carefully and then act on. Corporal Ruiz, show the
Duque
.”

The young sapper reached into a pocket and pulled out two or three dozen small magnets. Holding them out in the palm of one hand, to demonstrate, he told Carrera, “Sir, I was reading a couple of months ago about a big push by the Taurans and Secordians to get our world to adopt that Old Earth treaty, the one that bans antipersonnel landmines. One proposal I read—I think it came from the Federated States—was to make all mines detectable, no more plastic jobbies.”

The corporal shivered. “Sir, I really love mines, especially the neat little plastic ones—the toe poppers. It bothered me, you know. I mean, sir, what’s a sapper without mines?

“So one day I was playing with some of those magnets they use around the orderly room to hold papers to metal desks. And it hit me. Go ahead and make mines detectable from magnetism. But if we issue every mine with a couple of hundred of these little motherfuckers and scatter them about, whoever is looking for the mines will still have to stop and probe and dig for millions of these little suckers before he can be sure there are no mines in the area. After all, a magnetically detectable mine in a magnetized field is still invisible.

“Of course, we’ll have to either push these into the ground with some kind of probe or scatter them early enough to sink into the earth on their own. I figured we could call them ‘Dianas,’ in tribute to the Old Earth princess who they say started the movement back there, but that might give the game away.”