Robert Frezza - [Colonial War 01] Read online

  A SMALL COLONIAL WAR

  Robert Frezza

  PROLOGUE

  Suid-Afrika

  Huddled, dressed as soldiers, they moved up toward a plateau rich with plants from Earth. Square flashes of brown leather bearing a Lake District brand were sewn to their shoulders with wide stitches. Gaudy camouflage designs glistened like flowers against the drab filaments of the fern forest.

  Ahead of them, point man and proud of it, Louie Hain spat sideways. Moving his hand to wipe away the sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, he listened to the buzz of voices and the click of metal. His fellow slum rats were tolerably good for instant mercenaries, even the two gerbils who spent their time holding hands. This was their second slash and bum; they hadn’t screwed up the first one too badly.

  Three or four more, Hain thought, and the Dutch hayseeds might get the idea. Stubborn they were, like Amish at home. Right now, most of them didn’t seem to know there was a war on, one the Steyndorpers had started by running Chalker and Henderson from between the rivers.

  They would learn quick enough. Ian Chalker had shown Big Jim McClausland off. He wouldn’t take kick-all from farmers. As big a planet as Suid-Afrika was, if Boers could run a man like Chalker, there wouldn’t be much place on it for Louie Hain.

  The air was humid hot, hot as hell in August. Dripping with moisture, Hain cradled his rifle. Strange that after a century’s worth of space flight they didn’t invest in better ways to kill people. He stopped to light an Earth cigarette and give the city boys a minute. The mere officer wearing the three circles of a captain waved him on irritably. Shrugging, Hain ducked under the thorns clinging to the underside of a frond. He crushed dry ferns underfoot.

  Hain had jacklit his first deer at thirteen in an unburned slice of western Pennsylvania, half a lifetime away. The job would do

  fine for the time being. The cowboys paid regular, and the food wasn’t bad. As for being point, point man got first pick. There might be a woman this time.

  The captain hollered again. Someone was going to catch dirt. Hain licked his lips and went to fish out his canteen.

  His hand stopped. A familiar patter of four hooves on the other side of the crest stood out from the quiet cursing and the rattle of metal on metal. “Well, goddamn,” he muttered.

  He ran to the top. A gray-bearded man in a black coat sat astride a little brown pony. “Old Amishman’s going to get himself killed like that,” Hain thought aloud. An instant later the assault rifle in the crook of the Afrikaner’s arm leveled and half a clip tore Hain’s chest away. The stub of the cigarette slid from his mouth.

  Automatic rifle fire from the Crestline raked the meres struggling up the slope, and a burly Afrikaner heaved a satchel chaige at the sound of their voices. Fumbling with safeties, two of the meres tried to charge the ambush and died. The rest froze or fled. Eight horsemen led by the gray-bearded man cantered past Steyndorp riflemen to cut down the survivors.

  The youngest rider outstripped the rest, flaxen curls peeping out from under a floppy hat. Spurring his horse up behind the nearest of the fleeing mercenaries, the boy stitched a pattern from the man’s left hip up to the right shoulder. Recoil carried his shots into the sunlight. He reined in and fumbled for another magazine.

  One of the meres looked back to see his comrade slide over at the waist. With an incoherent scream, the mercenary turned and ran back firing wildly. The boy’s horse thrashed, the young Afrikaner slipping from his saddle. A three-round burst from the gray-bearded man blew away the side of the mercenaiy’s head. He toppled, his face masked in crimson.

  When the gray-bearded man returned, he leaned over at an impossible angle and fired a single shot between Hain’s sightless eyes. He watched the body jerk. Medals taped down, from a forgotten government, a forgotten war, bounced softly on his chest.

  He heard a voice in Afrikaans. “Hendrik! Where is Piet?”

  Hendrik Pienaar didn’t answer. “Amateurs,” he whispered instead to Hain, savoring the taste of the English word. His Steyndorpers were amateurs too, God rest them, but Pienaar was a professional still.

  The Steyndorp kommando stripped the cowboys’ mercenaries of weapons and field gear. They left the bodies for the crawling amphtiles to eat. Piet and his blond grandson came back lashed head to foot on the same horse.

  NADIR

  ‘We ’re having a war, and we want you to come! ’

  So the pig began to whistle and to pound on a drum 'We 'll give you a gun, and we 'll give you a hat! ’

  And the pig began to whistle when they told the piggies that

  excerpt from The Whistling Pig, anonymous

  In Ashcroft Orbit, Outbound

  VERESHCHAGIN PACED THE LENGTH OF HIS COMPARTMENT, three meters square. It took very little time.

  Anton Vereshchagin was a man of medium height. Crisp features and a jutting nose made him look taller. As senior officer aboard the assault transport Kaga, he had a cabin to himself. Only the vessel’s captain shared that distinction. With well over seven hundred men squeezed on board, Vereshchagin’s battalion was packed like tinned fish. The timetable the vessel had been given precluded more comfortable arrangements until they began moving men into the cold sleep of the ice box. It was hell in a little tin basket.

  The wall announced its presence. “Lieutenant-Colonel Vereshchagin, the last shuttle is arriving in the landing bay. Battalion Sergeant Malinov has requested your presence.”

  “Thank you,” Vereshchagin remarked to the wall. He opened the door and stepped smartly down the passageway, squeezing past a file from A Company and a lieutenant headed in the opposite direction.

  The battalion sergeant was waiting at the landing bay with a corporal’s guard. Vereshchagin cocked an eye and said nothing. Yuri Malinov was a tall, erect man with iron-gray hair cropped closely. Otherwise superb, he was unnaturally reticent.

  Grinding sounds indicated that a shuttle was coupling to the

  loading lock. When the hatch opened, Raul Sanmartin stepped out, straightened, and saluted briskly.

  Vereshchagin returned the salute without comment.

  Slender, painfully so after the desert, Captain Sanmartin had recently come in possession of Vereshchagin’s C for Chiba company, his predecessor having made the error in judgment that cost him his life.

  "We have six altogether, ’ ’ Sanmartin was saying, "one under restraint. Superior Private Prigal.”

  Vereshchagin could hear Superior Private Prigal faintly. Prigal was a driver in Muravyov’s No. 15 light attack platoon, and Lieutenant Muravyov was doubtless an unhappy man.

  Vereshchagin eyed Sanmartin as he might have eyed a piece of wood, seeking the fineness of its grain before setting knife to it. “How many unaccounted for?”

  “None.”

  That was far better than Vereshchagin had expected. Many, many years ago, before the battalion had become Vereshchagin’s, when leaving Earth there had been twenty-nine deserters and something of a small mutiny. He deliberated. “Very well. Battalion Sergeant, I think that under the circumstances, Prigal need not wait.”

  “Sir.” Malinov replied.

  Sanmartin nodded and made a stiff-fingered motion with his left hand. Two soldiers jerked Prigal through the opening. Prigal managed to curl his arms around the shuttle door frame. For a few seconds he clung, squawking fit to raise corpses. Then he turned his head far enough to notice Vereshchagin tapping on the back of his hand the pipe that he never lit. Vereshchagin raised his left eyebrow.

  “Oh, hello,” Prigal said weakly.

  The battalion sergeant clapped his hands, and his guard whisked the unfortunate Prigal off the door. They planted him on the deck
in a position resembling attention.

  “I bring this field court-martial to order. Superior Private Prigal, stand at rest. Would you care to have me formally read charges?” Vereshchagin said.

  The accused shook his head rapidly from side to side.

  “Captain Sanmartin, will you take oath?” Vereshchagin requested formally.

  “I do.”

  “Where did you find him?” Vereshchagin asked.

  “In an establishment on the RuePissarro, barricaded in one of the rooms.”

  “What did our superior private have to say for himself?” Vereshchagin inquired.

  Sanmartin paused, then said, “He claimed to be sniffing out a plot against His Imperial Majesty that took priority over his duty to move with the battalion. He also stated that he was someone other than Superior Private Prigal, I am not entirely sure who. He may have come up with other explanations while we were breaking down the door. I would have to ask.”

  Vereshchagin allowed his eyes to close. “How did you find him?”

  Sanmartin coughed politely. “The superior private left himself an audit trail.”

  Vereshchagin inclined his head a few millimeters. “Prigal, are you listening?” he asked kindly.

  Prigal suddenly realized he had an audience. “Ah, sir, I was just on my way to report to the landing pad when I was attacked and forced to drink vile liquor. Then there was the plot, sir—”

  “Prigal. Please, do not add mendacity to your other accomplishments. Have you anything to say in your defense or in mitigation?”

  Sobering quickly, the accused stood mute.

  Vereshchagin recalled the city below, the RuePoussin and the cobbled plaza of the Place Watteau, where against the flow of thin crowds, the horizon tales moved in chakras and veils as bright birds of passage, luring men like Prigal.

  Outside the barriers to the desert, willie-willies joined and spun away, gouging furrows into ruddy sands. Inside the city, Ashcroft’s oligarchs didn’t speak to soldiers, didn’t look at soldiers. Most of the “parasites” veiled their hostility in indifference. The rest were being cleared out on the Lisbon Mam. Vereshchagin’s battalion had put down their insurgent slave labor, but the parasites had lost more than the cacos—the cakes— that Vereshchagin’s men had shot down, because they had more to lose. Inside the city, brick-red dust lay pasted as a glaze. The desert had crept into the city and stayed.

  Yet even on Ashcroft, some men found some things worth clinging to. When the battalion had mustered on the landing pad, one lad had broken ranks. Vereshchagin remembered him quietly sobbing, pinned to the tarmac by three of his comrades, his soft blond hair fanned by the demon breeze. One always coaxed soldiers on board the transports with patience, because the time differential and the icebox meant no return; the world left behind would prematurely age.

  In Ashtoreth bei Hebron there had been a girl who had made a very young lieutenant wish that he might stay. That lieutenant had not stayed, and his name had been Vereshchagin. Her children would have children older than that lieutenant had been. Departure was a final step, a step not taken lightly even on Ashcroft, which did not excuse or diminish Prigal’s conduct.

  “Superior Private Prigal, this field court-martial finds you guilty as you have been charged. Captain Sanmartin?” Sanmartin hesitated for a second. “The offense is capital.” Vereshchagin tapped his pipe softly against his thigh. “What should I do with you, Prigal? You do realize that Captain Sanmartin should have shot you when you made a complete nuisance of yourself.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, I don’t know what you should do with me, but I understand, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” Prigal said, slurring his words.

  “Battalion Sergeant?” Vereshchagin asked.

  Malinov rubbed his chin. "We could start the former superior private in the starboard washroom. For five, six months.”

  “I concur, Battalion Sergeant. Shooting is much too good for you, Prigal. You must first earn the right to be shot. Do you understand me in this, Prigal?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Excellent. Bring yourself to attention, Superior Private Prigal. We shall talk again in a week, Rccruit Private Prigal.” Prigal left in the arms of his escort to polish the starboard washroom, centimeter by centimeter. The two other members of his armored vehicle crew who would join him in the washroom would not thank him kindly for it. Five other defaulters followed Prigal in various stages of disarray. Then a ship’s crew-member secured the aperture.

  “Was there difficulty with the others?” Vereshchagin inquired of Sanmartin quietly.

  “No, none. My four were waiting on the landing pad. Detlef’s pedaled up on a cycle as we were buttoning up.”

  Vereshchagin nodded and waited. One of Sanmartin’s teams had overstayed in a body, and therein lay a tale.

  “Pumamo’s little establishment was thoroughly torched,” Sanmartin volunteered.

  Vereshchagin smiled.

  At some point, Vereshchagin’s reputation for probity had evidently touched the city garrison commander’s business interests too closely. While it would be a long while before the battalion forgot Major Pumamo, it would now be an equally long time before Major Pumamo forgot the battalion.

  “Admiral Nakamura will undoubtedly be irate, not that this will matter. What else of interest?”

  “The brothel owner wanted to affix a lien to Prigal for his bill.”

  “You persuaded her otherwise?” Vereshchagin’s cheek dimpled slightly.

  “I told her the expenditure required your personal authorization, and I offered to knock down a few walls to see whether she was harboring any other deserters while we were waiting.”

  “Simple, imaginative, unorthodox, forthright. I value this in you,” Vereshchagin stated, and paused. Despite his record as a company officer, Raul Sanmartin was not a known quality.

  “Raul, the essence of punishment is twofold. It must persuade a man that he is shamed by his actions, and persuade him that he may regain self-esteem in undergoing punishment. You overplayed your line. We only shoot the ones we cannot alter,” he said, indicating dismissal.

  Sanmartin stood still for a second, then moved out to find his company.

  FORTY-SIX HOURS LATER, HE LAY EXHAUSTED, ORIENTING himelf to a space half a meter high and half a meter wide, his bergan and the ruck with his personal possessions hung at the far end.

  His company sergeant, Rudi Scheel, had selected a location immediately below an air louver, which did much to mitigate the odor a transport rapidly acquired. Company Sergeant Scheel tended to treat his company commander as a beloved, brilliant, but not very well pinned together younger brother.

  Soft breathing from Sanmartin’s executive officer in the hammock below penetrated the whine that a fusion ship never seemed to lose. With his eyes shut, the cherubic look on Hans Coldewe’s face would fool saints and martyrs.

  On Ashcroft, some men had lost sanity, a few had lost the will to live. Lieutenant Coldewe had developed a sense of humor, which was worse.

  But it had been Hans who had snipped a lock of hair from Vilho Isotalo to cremate.

  Corporal Isotalo had been C Company’s last casualty, gunned down in the street of the city he had helped liberate and saw again so briefly. When the reaction squad arrived, he had been staring to the sky where the ship waited, the citizens walking past with an air of elaborate unconcern.

  Unfortunately for passersby, Admiral Nakamura had hand-picked his reaction squad from newly arrived Imperial security police. If the infantry played the game rough, the blacklegs played it rougher. Debarking in the street, the reaction squad rounded up the first twenty well-dressed male citizens they saw and shot them, beginning with the man who had been careless enough to be found kicking Isotalo’s corpse.

  An hour later, the names of one hundred and eighty more citizens were posted on a mass detention list. Three hours later, a man wrapped in a fur-bordered cloak was dumped on the access ramp in front of Admiral Nakamura’s headquarters. H
e had been shot with a wave pistol on wide aperture at close range. He lived long enough to confess. Examination of the weapon which had been carefully tied around his neck corroborated his testimony.

  The hundred eighty citizens were released with Admiral Nakamura’s personal thanks for their assistance. The admiral apologized for the inconvenience.

  The following day, C Company began the labor necessary to ship the battalion off-planet. They left behind the refuse of the insurgency for the regular police and the blacklegs to clean, bound for a world that called itself Suid-Afrika.

  “Hans, a new planet, a new war,” Sanmartin whispered softly, only to himself.

  ACROSS THE SMALL TABLE, FRAMING A REPLY, CLAUDE DEVOUCOUX shook his head. Vereshchagin considered his physician gravely.

  “The voyage is awkward, Colonel. Eight months in space is a very long time. Hibernation units are simply not intended for such. Moreover, climactic conditions on Ashcroft were very bad, very bad. Most of the tnen have little fat.”

  “What other bad tidings do you bear, Claude?” Vereshchagin asked.

  "Physical conditioning will be a great problem. The battalion sergeant tells me that for the first part of the voyage half of the gymnasium will be needed as storage space. The vessel’s captain tells me we only have rotation for seventy-seven percent of

  Earth sea-level gravity. We may expect some calcium loss. May I ask what you have decided?”

  Vereshchagin turned to his battalion sergeant. “Yuri?”

  “Sir. A and B companies have the 1200 to 2400 cycle, with the engineer platoon, the reconnaissance platoon, and aviation administratively attached. C and D are with the quartermasters on the 2400 to 1200,” the battalion sergeant said, naming separate day-night schedules the two halves of the battalion would follow. Hot-bunking—-two soldiers sharing every space—was not especially well thought of. Soldiers have little enough to call their own.

  “To make space, A and C companies will go into the icebox, every last man,” the battalion sergeant continued. “Number fourteen and number fifteen platoons from D will go in as well. We will fill out with aviation, reconnaissance, and odd bodies from quartermasters. We will stagger out the rest.”