War World: Jihad! Read online

Liberty? Then Savage recognized that Boer underlay. Vreeheit! At least he had been in the right ballpark.

  “They have their old boy network. What’s wrong with a few of us colonials having ours?”

  “A few?” Savage tended to get nervous around anyone who talked of tight little groups. “Isn’t our first loyalty to the CoDominium?”

  “Of course it is!” Vreeheit snapped. “I’m not some goddamn Bolshevik plotting in a cellar with three drunks and a Cheka agent. There’s nothing secret about our aims. Anyone’s welcome to join us. We just don’t go out of the way to call attention to ourselves.”

  “What are your aims?” the other lieutenant asked.

  “As long as the CD survives, we’re for it. But how many of you think the status quo can last another generation? Back on Earth, in spite of all those rapprochements and peaceful coexistences and Gorbachev’s False Dawn, Yanks and Russkis still distrust one another. And the turd world hates them both. Do you want to see the whole galaxy go the way Latin America turned into two dozen warring states when Napoleon interfered with the Spanish mails? Who will equip us, feed us and pay us when no more ships come from Earth?

  “Half of those time-serving poor relations will resign their commissions. The other half will turn pirate and guess whose planets they’ll plunder? We’ve an ugly time coming up but it’ll get no better by shirking responsibility. Somebody has to keep the peace!”

  The tall lieutenant had spilled half his drink. He forced himself back down in his chair.

  “Sounds as if you’d been there,” Savage observed.

  “It comes from growing up a minority in a country we settled about the same time the Yanks were exterminating all their Indians. Our mistake was in not doing the same.”

  “Then you’re from Earth?”

  “Pop and I went back to lend a hand to the Vaterland. My father managed to get himself killed. I couldn’t even accomplish that.”

  “Legio patria nostra,” Savage said.

  Vreeheit raised his glass. “While it lasts.”

  The topless waitress reappeared with another round. Savage gulped his and got carefully to his feet. “See you tomorrow,” he said, knowing Lieutenant Vreeheit would feel he had gained the field. But Jeremy’s real reason for leaving the taproom was more urgent. One more drink and he’d find himself proposing: the prospect of a topless wedding gown was enough to get him soberly back to his quarters.

  Jeremy’s head felt heavier than Ceres’ near-nonexistent gravity could warrant next ‘morning’ but he took the hair of the dog and got through the day without any fatal screw-ups. He tried unsuccessfully not to reach for the pipe that he could not carry or use in a controlled atmosphere. God, he was sick of casual duty already and he’d not been two standard days on Ceres Base. His last unit had been decimated on Winslow after a Soviet colonel had disregarded his Soviet major’s and captains’ recommendations, along with not even hearing Jeremy Savage’s. The colonel’s reply to every objection was that “My dearest friend, Lermontov, would not do it that way.”

  From the way he harped on his friendship Savage suspected that Rear Admiral Lermontov had never heard of Colonel Grodky. Pulling a classical Custer, the CD regiment had split forces to march down a river which, within half a day, became impossibly wide with low marshy banks that afforded no cover. At which point the local irregulars hit both banks to score a forty percent casualty rate in the first ten minutes of mortar, recoilless and bazooka fire.

  Jeremy Savage had been so furious he intended to make at least one kill before he died. But before he could get Grodky a piece of shrapnel shattered his right humerus while another piece from the same shell parted his right clavicle. He was struggling to shift his pistol to his left hand when he lost consciousness and awoke sixty standard days later to first the nausea, then the raging hunger that always followed regeneration. By then others had been promoted into all the vacancies and he was still Lieutenant Savage. Where would they send him this time?

  After several eternities the day was over and retreat blew. Savage went to the Bachelor Officers Quarters for a shower and change. He couldn’t develop enthusiasm for the ichthyoid fillet on the evening menu, instead settled for a Big MacGoo at the slop chute. When he showed up at the topless dive his companions of last night were already sitting at the same table.

  “Well,” Vreeheit asked, “Are you in?”

  “What can I lose?” Savage asked. In the back of his mind he heard an echo from an ancient document. ‘Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.’

  There was a subdued murmur of congratulation around the table which died down as the impossibly pneumatic barmaid appeared. She failed to understand Savage’s Britannic order for a double whisky. Doubting that an addition of the American “e” would clarify the matter, he forewent all thought of rye and asked for bourbon. The waitress departed, drawing all eyes for an instant and then Jeremy was truly embarrassed as he endured a coaching in the orthodox Brotherhood way to rub his ear and scratch his nose. Finally the foolishness was over with.

  “Now that I’m in, what am I supposed to do?” he asked.

  “Once you’ve joined the Forty-second we’d like to know what Falkenberg is up to.”

  “Slow down,” Savage said. “I’ve heard all the scuttlebutt about Falkenberg and his meteoric rise on Arrarat.” He had to work to keep the unbidden jealousy out of his voice “But I didn’t know he was with the Forty-second; last I heard he was with the 501st Battalion. Isn’t Colonel Hiram Silvers commanding the Forty-second?”

  “Yes, but he’ll be eased out now that Lermontov’s fair-haired boy is on board.”

  “Who says I’m assigned to the Forty-second?”

  “Commandant McKinley,” Vreeheit said.

  “But what am I supposed to find out?”

  “Major John Christian Falkenberg is one of Lermontov’s ‘Young Lions’. Learn what Falkenberg’s objectives are and you’ll know what future the Admiral plans for us.”

  * * *

  “Casey Jones,” the repple-depple lieutenant said as he handed the fat envelope to the Lieutenant Savage.

  “I beg your pardon?” Jeremy Savage said.

  “Orders in your hand. You’re finally escaping this drab and wretched hellhole.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Quite so, old chap.” The staffer knew the words to Savage’s Oxonian accent but had never quite mastered the tune.

  “Are you going to tell me or must I go to the bother of reading them?”

  “Ceres Base. The Forty-second.”

  “Oh really?” It sounded too good to be true.

  “With the Service’s latest meteor, the famous and fabulous Falkenberg.”

  Savage got the notice out of the envelope and learned that he still had twenty free hours. “I’ll fax my first campaign ribbon to you,” he said as he was leaving the office.

  “That’s what they all say,” the staffer said, although the expression on his face said he was not about to trade places.

  Jeremy Savage scoot-walked through the low Ceres gravity to the Base Library and punched up the Fleet Register on the nearest terminal. He had no idea what had finally gotten him out of this backwater. Falkenberg was a rising legend through the Legion; youngest captain and now youngest major, but he would never have heard of Lt. Jeremy Savage. He began scrolling the regimental muster sheet looking for familiar names. Brent Myers popped up. Until recently Savage had not seen him in over seven years. Did anyone anywhere know or give a damn about Jeremy Savage?

  Stop it! Savage told himself. No matter who’s responsible, seize Opportunity by the forelock. Forelock, hell, grab him by the bollocks! He shut down the terminal and went back to BOQ to pack and settle his mess account. An hour later he was in the Ceres duty room studying the overhead display trying to find the Forty-second’s HQ.

  “Savage?”

  He turned and it was Brent Myers in uniform, looking totally at home with new captain’s bars.

  “God damn, it�
��s good to see you again. Will you be joining us?”

  He pointed to his folded transfer papers. “Yes, I think I’ll be settling in with you.”

  “I wasn’t sure but I had a kind of feeling.”

  “Pray tell me why?”

  “Colonel Silvers was poking through the machine a while ago looking for somebody with knowledge of Kennicott and your name popped out.”

  Lieutenant Savage nodded. “I spent a year there with the Eighteenth when there was a dust-up five years ago. Some farmers and ranchers were trying to put the squeeze on the Company.”

  “It’s worse than that this time. The Colonial Governor’s been assassinated and there’s been some kind of coup. Convict gangs have taken over the streets and the mines have shut down. The new ‘President’ wants official recognition and he’s taken over the Kennicott mines in the name of the ‘Free Republic of Nogales.’ Grand Senator DeSilva is fit to be tied.”

  “I see,” Savage said.

  * * *

  Actually, it had been a bit more complicated than Myers was letting on. The Colonel was an advocate of ‘bringing up’ good troops who had been lost through the cracks and corruption of the system. And when the all-knowing computer had revealed that Jeremy Savage had been posted to Kennicott and was familiar with their towns and traditions, Myers had been fast to reveal that said young officer had been a classmate and thorough-going stout fellow.

  “No blotches on his record,” Silvers mused. “Seen plenty of combat and acquitted himself well. Seven years is a long time to remain a lieutenant—even for a colonial.”

  Brent Myers had worried about that too. But there were code words for every possible human failing. If ‘bachelor’, for example, appeared once too often the conclusion was obvious. Almost as damning was ‘women find him attractive’. None of these foibles appeared in Lieutenant Jeremy Savage’s curriculum vitae. Which left only a single explanation.

  “Major Falkenberg, what do you think?” the Colonel asked.

  Falkenberg gave the question due consideration. “He’s on somebody’s shit list,” he said.

  “I believe you’re right, Major. Let’s see if we can change his luck.”

  “Yessir!” Brent Myers had been hard put to contain his delight.

  * * *

  “I’ll hang around here and pick up your luggage,” he told Savage. He punched his wristwatch and a line on the overhead display jumped into pulsating amber boldface. “Follow the yellow brick road and make your call on the Old Man.”

  Alexander’s Sword

  ER Stewart

  Haven, 2074 A.D.

  WILLIAM GARNER CASTELL, known as Wilgar among the Harmonies of Haven in the early CoDominium years, smiled, revealing white teeth that contrasted his bronzed skin and bright black eyes.

  Tiger teeth, I thought. Fit to clamp on for good.

  We mingled at the inaugural of our new Haven Administrator, Governor Thompson Erhenfeld Bronson Jr., son of the late Governor, Thomas Erhenfeld Bronson, dead in his sleep of what many whispered were hidden causes linked to his son’s ambition.

  I pegged Thompson as just the type to plunge a dagger into the ear of a sleeping patriarch.

  Wilgar moved among the VIPs at ease, gracefully using just enough of his considerable charisma to charm each mover and shaker he met. Yet I could see the hard glint in his gaze, the tension in how he shook hands; he knew the Harmony leadership, in his person, had been invited not to participate in CoDominium consolidation of Haven, its power parades and governance dances, but rather to learn its limited place and how to keep to it.

  I kept an eye on things, meaning everything with sharp points, serrated edges, and barrels that spat metal hurlants. As Wilgar’s gallowglass, it was my job to keep him from the fatal ambitions of others. Wilgar hid his own ambitions well behind that glowing smile. He was astute and well-informed and understood that all war is deception, as Sun Tzu taught. Wilgar was also as pissed off as a muskylope with a Haven dust tiger clamped to its ass, so he was motivated.

  Having been leader of the Harmonies since his father, Charles Castell, had been hanged and martyred when Wilgar was thirteen, he had watched the Harmony sect colonize this far-flung, undervalued planet only to be bumped aside and marginalized first by waves of unwanted, disharmonic settlers, then by the CoDominium’s Marines. And CoDo presence brought concurrent political and business aspirations, such as Kennicott mining and other destructive discords that calculated no profit margin in tolerating Harmony land-ownership or freedom.

  * * *

  Earlier, in our semi-underground enclave outside Castell City walls, I’d watched the frustration come to a boil in our leader.

  “They seek to marginalize us so they can gradually eliminate the Harmony presence on Haven,” Wilgar had said, pacing the narrow confines of his father’s erstwhile chamber. “It’s taken only a generation to move us from the founders of this place, at the center of it all, to cowering fringers kept at the margins.” He slammed a fist onto the torso-sized rope knot his father had so obsessively tied on the altar at the back of the room. “Soon, they’ll expunge us.”

  “Some of the outlying farmsteads are empty,” one of the Deacons said, his face as regretful as a funeral director met with genuine loss for the first time in a life of feigning. “Rumor is, they’ve fled to the mountains.”

  “Cowards,” Wilgar shouted. He again struck the knot; I’d caught him several times pummeling it and railing at the ragged thing, as if it were his father, who had been hanged, and transformed into legend when he burst into flames and vanished from the gibbet that fateful night.

  Wilgar sighed. “Monasteries only scatter our chorus, weaken our song. We lose the melody and…” He trailed off as if he now lacked even the heart for Harmony metaphor. “There must be a better way.”

  I watched and waited through various suggestions from Deacons and Beadles. As the protectors of the faithful, Deaks and Beads could deploy deflective, defensive violence and be forgiven. No full Harmony could, being pacifists, which I tended to spell ‘passive fists’ in my mental journal. Having trained them for years, I knew they did a conscientious job, but I also understood their limitations. Their goal, after all, was to earn their way into the silence at the heart of the song and become complete Harmonies. Once there, they were useless to the likes of me, who prowled the perimeter on guard against the endless challenge, hostility and attack Haven offered.

  They had sung their parts, finally. I ushered them out so Wilgar could meditate. I knew that probably meant another boxing match with his dead father, who had left him such a mess to deal with. Haven born, Wilgar had known more about the realities of this world than his father could have conceived, including the secrets in the book his father had hidden at the core of the huge knot he’d worked on in his last years.

  I’d seen that book, although I’ve not been privileged to read much from it. It is a leather journal, handwritten by Garner “Bill” Castell himself, the founder of the Harmony sect. It was remarkably candid about such matters as political theater, appearance versus reality and keeping the flock in line. It was, in fact, quite a cynical little primer on Machiavellian strategy and tactics, jotted down in earthy language by an Earther who had been kicked around enough to know street smarts could often prevail over other kinds. He knew faith was not enough, too. He had a Fitzgerald quotation on the front cover that read, “Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat.” He had added, “So make ’em lose first.”

  It was an admirable tome, one that had served Wilgar remarkably well in the past dozen years.

  * * *

  He had met me as one of his Irregulars, a band of ragtag kids neglected, abandoned, or unwanted who banded together to run with the smartest, fastest, and best-looking Harmony we’d ever seen. His ideas were always fun and frequently risky, and we prospered under his devilish tutelage. He even made us into a force to be reckoned with, which we found out when three shuttles full of CoDo Marines were due to
come take over our little world.

  It had been my idea to use waterlogged logs to create obstacles for the CoDominium shuttles to collide with in Havenhold Lake when the first contingents of Marines splashed down. We destroyed two of the three shuttles and struck a solid blow against tyranny but it had only worked once; they patrolled the lake’s perimeter and swept the splashdown lanes now with fanatical devotion. That once sufficed, though, to teach the arrogant interlopers that their fake uprising, used as an excuse to garrison Haven, might just turn real on them after all.

  Since that night Wilgar had me study and hone myself both educationally and physically. My mother was one of Cambiston Doxie’s best earners and she accepted books from Earth as pay for extra attentions. She taught me to read. My mother is now long used up; she died of some untreated Earth rot caught from some Marine, and Cambiston Doxie’s is now Dockside Doxie’s with a whole new Doxie and a whole new and bigger building, but we Irregulars maintain contacts there.

  Best place to learn things is in a bordello, bar, restaurant, or taxi. Anywhere conspirators relax and especially if they can get drunk there. This is straight from Castell’s knotty book.

  * * *

  Once I’d shooed everyone else out, I turned to Wilgar and said, “Do I have to wait for you to beat up your father some more, or can we talk?”

  He glared at me. I stepped back involuntarily, even though I knew he would never hurt me, such was the force he commanded through his gaze.

  “More than a decade and still nothing,” he said. “Haven is lost to us.”

  I smiled. “Or we are lost to Haven?”

  “How do you mean?”

  I could see the hunger for a new idea, any idea, in his face, his stance. He was ready to pounce.

  “Which breaks first, a stiff branch or a flexible one?”

  “How much further can we bend before our spine snaps? How much more can they demand of us? They’ve subsidized our farms, they say; it means they now take seventy percent of what we grow to feed their damned Marines and the riffraff they protect. They’ve helped us irrigate, meaning we must depend on them for water now. They take all our fuel from the dung pits and steal our minerals outright from the mines—”