Read The Rods and the Axe - eARC Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #military
The Rods and the Axe - eARC (9 page)
“We don’t have the saying, as far as I know,” said Esmeralda, “but my society back on old Earth certainly understands the principle.” She had to work to keep out of her words her hatred of the society whereof she spoke.
“As do all civilized folk,” said the Zhong. “And right now, the high admiral and empress are cementing a relationship to the betterment of us all. Now, as I asked, would you care for something to eat?”
Esmeralda opened her mouth, closed it, opened it, closed it, then opened it again to say, “Please.”
Admiral’s Barge, over the
Mar Furioso
, Terra Nova
As it turned out, the Zhong empress, whose cheek rested against Wallenstein’s shoulder and whose hand the high admiral held in her own, was not just the emperor’s wife, nor even his chief wife. She ran the country, she and the hundred important families. He was a figurehead, nothing more.
Nor was the empress quite as young as she appeared. Though much younger than Wallenstein, she was of a certain age and looked a certain half of that.
And if ever I needed more evidence that people want in bed what they’re denied in real life,
thought Marguerite,
what more than she and I could I ask for? I, who have to be so cold and commanding in public, wanting to be dominated in bed and made to perform; her, having to be so demure in public, needing to dominate in bed and make me perform . . . well, me for now, anyway. Though I would not mind making it long term.
Unconsciously, Marguerite squeezed Xingzhen’s hand, then twisted her own head to kiss the top of the empress’s. Xingzhen, quite asleep, still managed to cuddle in closer.
Not entirely idly, Wallenstein wondered if she were in love.
Lust? Yes, clearly I’m in lust. And after so long without so much as a hint of sex I was more than ready. But love? In love? At my age? Why . . . it’s been . . . let me think . . . ummm . . . a hundred and sixty-two years? About that. Surely I can’t be in love. Surely . . .
Even so, she reached up with her free hand to stroke the Zhong empress’s silky-smooth, midnight black hair.
Shit. Yes . . . maybe . . .
in
love. Shit. Oh, nonononono. It was bad enough the last time . . . and I have no reason whatsoever to think she feels anything like the same way. Oh, elder gods, that’s slavery. A subbie I may be—at least in private—but I am not a slave. Shit.
“Passing over the coast of Santa Josefina, High Admiral,” announced the pilot of her barge, over a speaker in the passenger cabin. “Arrival in Aserri in about seventeen minutes.”
Esmeralda sat on the opposite side of the cabin from Wallenstein, where she usually did. She sat alone, though Li An Ming was behind her, as were nine
very
competent looking Zhong guards. She had reason to suspect that four of the oldest guards were much higher ranking than they pretended to be.
It had apparently been the empress’s idea, to call a peace conference in Aserri to which Santa Josefina, Balboa, the Federated States, the Tauran Union, and the Peace Fleet would be invited. Some Zhong diplomats were already en route, as were various functionaries for the FSC and TU. Wallenstein had tasked the Consensus’s ambassador to Santa Josefina to set it up and run it.
The Balboans hadn’t yet answered, a lack which had raised quite a broad grin on Xingzhen’s angelic face.
“They can’t come,” she’d told the high admiral, before it became obvious that they would not come. “Or at least not without a lot of soul searching. They’re just a regime of soldiers, comfortable and competent on a battlefield, yes, but quite uncomfortable off of one, or on one that doesn’t involve direct violence. And if they don’t come, they can’t make their case before the world. They’ll be ‘Warmongers who prefer fighting to talking peace.’ Trust me, this is going to hurt them.”
The high admiral had seen the truth of that. She’d also seen that the same logic applied in part to the Federated States. Hate the Peace Fleet as they might, they could not go on record as objecting to a conference that might lead to peace. Hence the open flight rather than the usual series of cutaways and deceptions.
Esmeralda closed her book and put it away in her bag. Of the five given to her by the Balboan agent, Khalid, she’d brought two with her. She was reading it not for the story, which she found deadly dull, and not for the illustrations, but to familiarize herself to places where she was more likely to find certain key words she would need to make the simple code Khalid had given her work.
But I
can
contact them
, thought Esmeralda.
And it’s just possible they might send someone to contact me.
Hotel
Cielo Dorado
, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova
Things like major conferences for international peace or the end to specific national wars rarely happen instantly. This is especially true when those calling the conference don’t really have an interest in working for peace nearly so great as they do in coordinating a war. Thus, while the Balboans were engaged in figuring out how to avoid the conference while maintaining the patina of aggrieved victim of Tauran imperialism, and while sundry TU diplomats and bureaucrats made their travel arrangements, for themselves, their wives, and their lovers . . . and sometimes all three . . . or four . . . while General Marciano arranged for a couple of companies of infantry and a company of military police for security, and while the Earthers’ ambassador arranged contracts, the people who mattered, the de facto ruler of
Xing Zhong Guo,
the high admiral of the Peace Fleet, and—to his considerable surprise—the chief military officer of the Tauran Union Defense Agency, General Janier, met early.
“I really don’t understand why they haven’t removed me,” said Janier, to Wallenstein, over dinner one night. “Did you . . . ?”
“No,” Wallenstein admitted. “Oh, I would have put in a word if I’d thought of it, but I was in a blue funk until well after it became obvious that you weren’t going anywhere.”
“Then why? How? I don’t—”
“They can’t admit a mistake,” said Xingzhen, more politically astute than either of her co-diners. “They can’t allow anything but the appearance of perfection. If you are relieved they have to admit something bad happened. Oh, it obviously
did
happen, but as long as the reality is denied with a straight face then it didn’t. Admit the truth? That would mean their perfect world, their perfect illusion of a perfect world, was a lie.”
“Oh,” said Marguerite.
“Makes sense, I suppose,” admitted Janier. “At least as much as anything else in the fantasy of the Tauran Union makes sense.”
Clever bitch, this slant-eyed bit of perfection
, thought the Gaul.
“It’s a fantasy world now,” Marguerite agreed. “That’s why you always needed, and still need, a successful war. There’s no other way, pious platitudes aside, to make a real, rather than a fantasy, country.”
Esmeralda hadn’t been invited to dinner. She didn’t want to be there anyway. Instead, she had first checked the e-mail address and password for the account Khalid had given her, then encoded a brief message using one of the books she’d brought. The hotel had had a business center, but it was too open and she was afraid she’d be seen. She asked the front desk for some help and, given whose party she was in company with, they’d found her a free computer at an empty desk in a small office. From there she’d logged in to the e-mail, opened the draft coded message from the Balboans, then typed in her own message, and signed out of the account.
Legionary Recruiting Station, Cedral Multiplex Shopping Mall, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova
Sergeant Morales, recruiter and transportation coordinator for the legion for the foreign city of Aserri, didn’t quite know what to make of them, the five key members of the Tsarist-Marxist Party of Santa Josefina who had entered the recruiting station uninvited and without an appointment. On the other hand, he didn’t, for the nonce, have anything better to do so,
why not? Just because we’re opposed doesn’t mean we can’t speak together.
Opposed? Yes. It wasn’t that the Timocratic Republic of Balboa was without serious streaks of socialism; indeed, it was in some ways quite heavily socialized. But the socialism of Balboa was, at core, in opposition to the man-as-malleable ethos of socialism, all forms of leftism, really, as they’d developed on two planets. Balboa and the legion didn’t try to change anybody, though they certainly fertilized some soil for people to change themselves if they wished, and to self-select if they wished.
Conversely, the five people standing in front of Morales’ desk were convinced that, given enough training and education, enough propagandization and relentless bloody nagging, along with the power to remove the inequities and inequalities of all the rotten societies of the planet, they could, nearly anyone could, make of man exactly what they wished.
“May I help you gentlemen?” asked Sergeant Morales, though they struck him as young and scruffy.
University weasels, I imagine.
“Did you come to join up?”
“No,” said the central and senior one of the five. He introduced himself as, “Ernesto Gonzalo,” and his companions as, “The steering committee for the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Santa Josefina.”
First I’ve heard of this crew
, thought Morales.
“And we won’t be part of some perversion of socialism,” Gonzalo announced. “We demand the real thing. But first we demand that the Taurans get the fuck out.”
“And?” Morales queried, with an eyebrow raised. “What? Do you want us to invade?”
“No,” said Gonzalo, obviously appalled at the thought. “But we could use some money and some ability to do some printing. And maybe a little advice.”
“I’ll get back with you,” said the sergeant.
After all, how often does one find a band of scruffy, bearded, university student who are willing to ask for, and maybe even take, advice?
CHAPTER FIVE
A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.
—Stalin
Palacio de las
Trixies,
Ciudad
Balboa,
Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
With so many men, and not a few women, called to the colors, the background sounds of the city were muted and, to a degree, warped. The street hawkers were mostly gone. Commercial traffic was at a minimum or, arguably, even less than a healthy minimum. Instead of the muffled sound of the limousine gliding through this wealthier part of the city, the walls reverberated with the sound of heavy diesel-engined trucks, barely muffled and doing nothing good to the cobblestones of the street as they crawled over them. At that, the diesels were a merciful cover for the sounds of weeping widows, still breaking forth with frightful regularity. There were occasional electronic wails as air raid sirens were mounted and tested. People wailed as well.
And even the wails of heartbroken women and children were to be preferred over the “spontaneous” patriotic demonstrations taking place several times a day under the guidance of the nation’s minister of information, which was to say, of propaganda, Professor Ruiz. Carrera, leaning against a bookcase in the president’s office, could, as
Dux Bellorum,
escape the torture. Parilla, however, was pretty much stuck.
If
, thought Raul Parilla, president of the Republic of Balboa,
I hear the triumphal march from Verdi
’s Aida,
one more time I swear I’ll shoot myself.
With the national symphony only three blocks away, the reappearance of Radamés remained a continuing threat.
And the day is young
.
Of course, there were worse things than opera in the streets.
And bagpipes. Fucking bagpipes. All hours of the day and night. I used to like them but—Jesus!—there’s a limit.
The president, from whose office one could hit the sea with the well-tossed rock, kept all the windows closed now, against the noise. Otherwise, thought would have been difficult and conversation impossible. Still, light seeping in though the closed shutters reflected off the iridescent silverwood walls of the president’s office.
“But what if they
are
sincere, Patricio?” asked Parilla. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Really?” asked Carrera, either incredulous or sardonic; Parilla couldn’t be sure. “When? Did the pope convert to Islam and me just miss it? These are a mix of diplomats and Old Earthers we’re talking about, Raul. Sincerity just isn’t in their repertoire.”
Sardonic it is
, Parilla decided.
“No, what they’re sincere about is wanting back the people we hold and getting us to revert to the status quo, ante bellum. They want to get on the negotiating table what they lost on the battlefield. And that’s all.”
“
Now
you’re showing your parochialism,” said Parilla.
“Never said I knew the first fucking thing about politics or diplomacy,” countered Carrera, with a dismissive shrug. “So teach me, O great launcher of coups d’état and elder statesman extraordinaire.”
Parilla first gave Carrera one rendition of the tall finger of fellowship, then said, “Sit then, young one, and learn.”
Carrera sat in one of the two chairs fronting the president’s massive wooden desk. Parilla, getting on in years and walking stiffly now, ambled to the front of the desk, parking his posterior on the desk and folding his arms, in full lecture the young ones mode. Not that Carrera was precisely young anymore. He was, however, considerably younger than the president.
“No,” conceded Parilla, “I don’t think they’re sincere . . . or rather, yes, they’re totally sincere about wanting to go back to the status quo ante, but also realistic enough to know that it would take an extraordinary confluence of events to get us to accept that.
“One of the streams in that theoretical confluence would be to turn the Federated States from a slightly pro-Balboan neutrality to something like hostility. And, given that the
Federales
have elected a ‘peace-loving,’ which is to say Cosmopolitan Progressive, regime, I wouldn’t want them to think we’re not as peace-loving as they are.”
“But the Tauran Union attacked us
first
!” objected Carrera.
Parilla gave his
Duque
a look that said, simply,
And so?
Explaining the look, the president said, “The culture that thinks it’s wrong for a small village in the middle of a war zone to ring itself in with mines to defend itself has little understanding of war. The culture that thinks it’s wrong for a young boy to pick up a rifle to defend himself, his mother, and his sisters from enslavement and rape has lost all touch with morality.
“Trust me, Patricio, if the progressive voters of the FSC come to think we’re not willing to roll over and grease our asses so that they don’t have to be reminded of how the universe really works, they’ll turn on us in a heartbeat.
“You came
from
them, old son. You
know
I speak the truth.”
“All right,” Carrera said, “even conceding all that, what the hell do we do? I can send Esterhazy but the fact remains, he has very little he
can
negotiate. We’re not going to disarm. We’re not giving back the Transitway. We’re not nearly ready to give back the prisoners . . .”
Post Theater, Fort Williams, Balboa, Terra Nova
“So, the baron,” said the captured Anglian sergeant, to an audience of hundreds, “the baron, full of his newly won skill at wit and repartee and ecstatic at the prospect of an end to twenty years of humiliation, rose from his seat, quelled the unruly peasants’ laughter with a haughty glance around the audience, and leant forward slightly, looking at the Red-Nosed Clown. He paused and pointed his finger at the clown. An expectant hush fell. He frowned and said, firmly, ‘Why don’t you just FUCK OFF, you red-nosed CUNT.’ ”
As they did every morning, the Balboan guards watching over the prisoners just rolled their eyes, thinking,
Anglian humor I will
never
get.
Marqueli, the petite and perfect, shook her head. It wasn’t so much that the joke wasn’t funny. The first time she’d heard it, she’d laughed, too, though she’d hidden her laugh under a demure pair of hands. It was that the same sergeant told exactly the same joke in exactly the same way
every
morning before class. And almost the entire complement of her class, some nine hundred Anglian and Haarlemer noncoms, practically rolled in the aisles when he did.
“Which is, I suppose, why you keep telling the joke, Sergeant Dane,” she said, from the theater’s stage.
“Why, yes, Ma’am,” answered the sergeant, brightly. “The lads seem to enjoy it.”
Resignedly, she nodded her head. “Take seats, please, gentlemen. Or, rather, wait.
“Who here intends to sleep through my lecture?” Like the sergeant’s joke, this was part of the morning routine, too.
“Anybody? Anybody at all? Ah, good. Well, if you’re embarrassed about identifying yourself and don’t want to sit through the class, just stand up and go to the back. The rest of you fill in to the front. I’m little, after all, and can’t fill this great big theater with my little lungs.”
An Anglian sergeant major stood up and said, “Not so little as all that, Ma’am.”
That had become part of the routine, too. Whether he was referring to her or her lungs, which was to say, breasts, was left open.
“Thank you, Sergeant Major,” Marqueli said. “Now if you would . . .”
The Balboans, for whom corporals were absolutely noncoms, had followed their own rules and lumped the corporals in with the sergeants and sergeants major. This was rather awkward for the Anglians and Haarlemers, for whom corporals were
mere
, and hardly worth counting.
“GENTLEMEN,” bellowed the sergeant major, using a broad brush in the absence of a formed, legal, organization. “Fellow members of the mess. And you fucking lot. Siiittt . . . fuckckckinggg . . . DOWN!”
He shot Marqueli an apologetic look.
Sorry, Ma’am, but when dealing with these bloody barely human corporals . . .
Marqueli waited the roughly second and a quarter it took for the men to settle down, then began her presentation. “Today’s lesson is about how you ended up here . . . here in Balboa . . . here in this theater . . . here listening to me.”
“We fucking lost a battle,” was the judgment of one of the Haarlemer corporals.
“Language, boy,” said the sergeant major.
The Haarlemer hung his head. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Looking up at the stage, he even managed to sound sincere as he said, “
Terribly
sorry, Ma’am.”
“You had a better general than us,” said an Anglian sergeant major, not one of the more senior ones.
“The battle wasn’t won by generalship,” answered Marqueli. “It was won by brave boys of, for the most part, fifteen and sixteen and seventeen.”
That was not actually her position, nor her husband’s, nor that of the bulk of the legion. It
was
, however, the
official
position.
“Half true, ma’am,” said
the
sergeant major. “If it wasn’t won by great generalship, it was surely lost by bad generalship.”
“Bloody frog bastard,” said several dozen mixed Anglians and Haarlemers, simultaneously.
“There was an Anglian general in command on the ground, here,” said the tiny Balboan woman.
“True, Ma’am,” said the sergeant major, “but the frogs were pulling the strings from back in Taurus. The key staff was nearly one hundred percent frog. Our man—no great shakes, himself; I won’t argue differently—was politically isolated. A limped-wristed, little boy bunging, incompetent politician-in-uniform Major General Solomon McQueeg-Gordon may have been, but the command wasn’t really his.”
Marqueli sighed. “Much as I might like to argue tactics and operations, Sergeant Major, I don’t know the first thing about it. So—since I’m a girl and you and the boys are all gentlemen—you will just concede to me that generalship wasn’t the big issue.”
“Fair enough, ma’am. GENTLEMEN, you will concede to the lady that generalship wasn’t the big issue.”
“Thanks, Sergeant Major,” said the teacher, bestowing on him a smile that, however innocent, was so brilliant that it made him wish he were twenty years younger and on her side. Or at least that he’d been there and in a position to give her away when she married.
“But what was?” she continued. “I’ll give you my opinion. My opinion, my own little personal opinion, is that the root of the problem is the Tauran political class . . . one may as well say the bureaucratic class, since politics there
are
largely run and ruled by the hereditary bureaucrats, party flacks, an unaccountable propaganda ministry in the form of a brave press that’s brave only when not pressed, the obscenely rich”—that got her a spontaneous round of applause from the troops—“ivory tower academics”—which got her a still more enthusiastic round of applause—“racial grievance mongers, corrupt chiefs of nongovernmental organizations, diplomats who drown in every little raindrop . . .”
Palacio de las
Trixies,
Ciudad
Balboa,
Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
“I suppose,” said Carrera, “that we could stop the conference by starting the war there. After all, we’ve got a large
tercio
in Santa Josefina. They’re scattered and almost entirely disarmed—no more than a maniple’s worth of arms and ammunition between them, and almost nothing in the way of heavy weapons—but that’s enough to storm the conference and kill a number of diplomats. The rest will scurry. Or we could get our people a couple of shoulder-fired surface to air missiles and take down . . . no, forget I said that.”
“And let the blame fall on native Santa Josefinans?” Parilla asked, avoiding mention of that fact that his friend and subordinate had been about to suggest what amounted to a terrorist act.
“Well . . . yes.”
“Problem is,” said Parilla, shaking his head, doubtfully, “that no one really believes those troops are anything but ours. I don’t think that works.”
Carrera rocked his head from side to side for a few moments, before admitting, “Yeah . . . neither do I. So what
do
we do?”
“I think we’re trapped. I think we send Esterhazy to the conference. But we’ll send him with a team. Assembling that team, of course, could take some time.”
Esterhazy, now as Balboan as anyone, was a former Sachsen field grade
Fallschirmstuermpioniere
who had also worked for SachsenBank. He’d signed on for the very first increment of the legion, way back before the campaign in Sumer. Since then he’d alternated between commanding engineer units, serving as the comptroller, and acting as a diplomat, the Legion’s messenger to those it wanted to help, or help from, and those it wanted intimidated. Most of the time he spent as comptroller.
“ ‘Some time,’ ” Carrera echoed. “And maybe the horse will learn to sing?”
“Precisely. Moreover . . .”
Carrera’s aide de camp, Tribune Santillana, stuck his head in the door. “Mr. President,” said the tribune, “sir . . . Legate Fernandez is here with what he says is important enough news to justify interrupting you. Shall I show him in.”
“Just send him, Tribune,” said Parilla. “He knows the way well enough . . . Hmmm . . . well, no . . . follow and make sure he doesn’t have a problem on the ramps.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Fernandez rolled into Parilla’s office on the best power wheelchair the legion could buy. Even so, the damp climate wasn’t good for the machine; it whined a bit as it climbed the thick rug.
“There are some intelligence decisions,” Fernandez announced, “that really go so far past intelligence considerations that the wise intel mucky muck bucks them to higher. This is one of those.”
Carrera made a give-forth gesture with his right hand.
“Some time ago,” said Fernandez, “the cabin girl for the high admiral, herself, contacted one of our people, a recruiting sergeant in Santa Josefina. The girl’s from TransIsthmia on Old Earth. That means Panama, our mother country. That means she’s a cousin, however distant.”