Read Come and Take Them-eARC Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
Tags: #Military, #Science Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction
Come and Take Them-eARC (9 page)
Carrera reached out and gently plucked up one of the little magnets from Ruiz’s hand. “Won’t work,” he said. “They’ve got new mine detectors, ground penetrating radar based, that will see the difference between a magnet and a mine.”
“Yes, sir,” Ruiz agreed. “I know about those.” The corporal then reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out half a dozen flat, metallic can tops. These he spread with his fingers like playing cards. “The new mine detectors won’t know the difference between these and a mine, sir.
“And, sir? I really doubt it would be too expensive, and it sure wouldn’t take up much space in a crate of mines, if we manufactured thin metal discs like these, but with a magnet in the middle.”
Carrera looked at the young man with a touch of wonder. “All really good ideas are simple,” he said warmly. He took note of the sapper’s name, intending to have an aide enquire into the boy’s status for Cazador School and accelerate his course date. Squeezing the sapper’s shoulder, he said “This is a
really
good idea, son. We’re going to do it. But we’re not going to call them ‘Dianas.’ No, they’ll be called ‘Ruiz’s.’”
“Sir, it would be so much funnier if you call them ‘Dianas.’ Really.”
* * *
Later, over drinks in Jimenez’s officer, Carrera observed, “You would not call me over here just for a morale building exercise. And you would not call me over here just for an informal briefing from a—need I say really, really,
really
smart—corporal, nor even both of those together. So just what the hell did you have in mind?”
Jimenez smiled, wickedly. “I intended to get to it, but not until you were on your second drink.
“Has the Legionary II shop ever briefed you on personnel issues in Fourth Corps? When you were actually paying attention, I mean?”
“Probably,” Carrera answered, “though…I think it’s been a while.”
“Okay. Well I’ll give you the short version,” said Jimenez. “I have—it is widely recognized and acknowledged—probably the best Centurionate in the country. I am also roughly twenty-nine percent under even our low allowable strength for officers. Do those two bits of data suggest anything to you, Patricio?”
Carrera waved dismissive fingers. “I hate guessing games. Just tell me the meat of the thing.”
“You don’t get off that easily, friend.
“Have you also noticed that our world is being run by people who do very well on standardized intelligence tests and then go to the very best schools?”
“Hard not to notice,” said Carrera. “Hard not to notice they’re running the whole planet into the ground, too.”
“You do well on those tests, I am sure,” said Jimenez. “I do well on them. And, surely, both of us are at least reasonably bright. But I’ve got to ask you, Patricio, do we do well on those tests because we are bright, or despite the fact that we’re bright? Because most of the people who do well on standardized intelligence tests are, as near as I can figure, incompetent, arrogant morons who are ruining our world. Whatever those tests measure, it is not intelligence, and whatever the schools are delivering that those tests get people into, it is not competence.”
Carrera shrugged. “I don’t have any necessary argument with that,” he said. “But would you
please
get to the point?”
“Sure. Corporal Ruiz-Jones, an obviously hugely bright young man, is on the centurion track rather than the officer track because his IQ test score was only a hundred and fourteen. That’s from the legion’s own standardized test.
“That may be in part because Cristobal Province was the ass end of the country’s educational system until well after the good corporal entered school.” Jimenez looked down at the back of his own hand and said, “It could be because us black folk are just stupid. But, in my personal opinion, the evidence for that proposition is somewhat weak. Though it might well be true that, for whatever reason, we do not usually do as well on the tests.
“But I think what we really have going on is a set of bad presumptions and assumptions going into how we measure intelligence. And that’s why I have a tremendously bright corporal, who someday ought to be a legate of engineers, about to go to school to become a centurion.”
“So,” asked Carrera, “you want me to grant him an exemption to go to OCS after Cazador School rather than CCS?”
“That? Well, sure. And—though it’s going to sound like some Kosmo-Progressive racial preference, quota system bullshit—I need to start shunting higher IQ centurion candidates to OCS, because they’re smarter than their test scores say they are. But I really think we need to move Heaven and Terra Nova to come up with a better way to measure intelligence.”
“Let me mull it some,” Carrera said.
* * *
Carrera’s armored Phaeton was framed by armored cars, front and rear. He wasn’t a fool; he knew that the Taurans—and probably United Earth, too—would like him dead. And the Pigna coup had been better than any counseling session to demonstrate that he’d been taking his own security too lightly. But it grated on him even so, having to hide behind others.
Oh, well; I didn’t make the world, I just have to live in it.
That was just a comforting fiction, of course. He intended to remake the world, two of them, if possible.
Jamey Soult asked, as Carrera strapped himself into the Phaeton, “Where to, boss?”
“
Puerto Lindo
, Jamey,” Carrera said.
“Going to see to the boy, sir?”
Carrera shook his head. “No, I’ll check on him with someone, but I don’t want Ham to know I did. Mostly I want to see Chapayev and then swing by and talk to Centurion Cruz.
“And, Jamey, tell me; what in your opinion is intelligence and how do we identify it?”
Chapter Eight
Any sane person should be instinctively skeptical when all the smart people agree.
—Mark Steyn
Academia Militar Sergento
Juan Malvegui,
Puerto Lindo
, Balboa, Terra Nova
Victor Chapayev, slender, middling tall, blond, blue-eyed, and Volgan, was probably the third- or fourth-youngest legate in the legion.
I suppose the adjutant could tell me exactly where he stands, age-wise,
thought Carrera,
but who really cares about things like that? It’s not like the knowledge would change anything. Besides, I trust both him and his abilities, and that’s knowledge enough.
Carrera had good reason for the trust. After all, he and Chapayev had fought side by side in Santander. More importantly, during the Pigna coup Chapayev’s intervention had been instrumental in saving the pro-Balboan Castilian colonel, Muñoz-Infantes. Better still, the Gauls’ attempt to get rid of him had prompted the latter to defect, along with his entire regiment—really a reinforced battalion—to Balboa. The defection wasn’t entirely open, of course. Muñoz-Infantes’ men were still paid and fed by Castile, which pretended that its contribution to the Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, was still under TU command. Personnel replacements, too, were still provided by Castile, but only if vetted and approved of by their colonel on the ground. And he selected only from Castilian soldiers who
detested
the Tauran Union.
Muñoz-Infantes was also Chapayev’s father-in-law, which helped mutual trust all around. Moreover, Victor always got the Castilian battalion a generous allocation of tickets to the cadets’ game, as well as rides on the buses to those games. The Castilian never mentioned it to anyone, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the massive use of buses bringing the kids to one sporting event or another were a cover—a “
maskirovka,
” his son-in-law would have called it—for something else entirely.
Perhaps the best marker of Carrera’s trust in Chapayev was that, of six military schools run by the legion, he’d picked Chapayev’s to send his boy to.
“Which is an honor,
Duque
,” the Volgan said in the school’s conference room. “And the boy…”
“We’ll discuss the kid later,” Carrera said. Thunder rolled above, a long rumbling barrage. He held out a hand and felt the first drops of a seasonal deluge begin. “For now I want you to show me the…mmm…more sheltered aspects of your school.”
Chapayev jingled a ring of keys that he never allowed more than arm’s reach from his person. “Sure thing, sir.”
* * *
All of the academy’s buildings—offices, mess halls, academics, the auditorium, post exchange, clinic, the twelve cadet barracks, etc.—were connected by tunnels, put in when the school was first built. In addition, a few of the officer and senior NCO quarters were likewise connected to narrow feeder tunnels. Lastly, when the main sewer line had been put in, deep down, above it had been laid yet another tunnel that branched off from the trace of the sewer to emerge in several places in the jungle to the north.
Satisfied with the general layout, Carrera asked, “Class I?” Food. “Class III?” Petroleum, oil, and lubricants. “Class V?” Ammunition. “Class VIII?” Medical supplies.
“Green, green, green, and green,” Chapayev answered. “Except for tank ammunition.”
“No matter. It’s not like you’re going to use tanks,” Carrera said. “They’re really still here only for the cadet tank club.”
“Fair enough,
Duque
. And we do have enough for the few Ocelots.” The Ocelot was the legion’s infantry fighting vehicle, though often pressed into duty as assault guns. It was fitting that the cadet tank club should have some and equally fitting, if they were to be allowed to shoot the cannon, that it be cheaper 100mm shells than expensive 125mm penetrators.
Carrera looked up, suddenly aware that, “I can still hear the rain. Why?”
“We’re more than three meters deep,” Chapayev replied. “And you saw that I closed the vault doors behind us. But what happens is that the sound gets in the buildings and is transmitted right through the concrete.”
“Okay,” Carrera said. “I just didn’t want the boys buried alive by a Tauran bomb if I can help it.”
“They’re hypocrites and ruthless, to boot,” Chapayev said, then asked, “but do you really think they’d bomb children?”
“Yes,” Carrera answered. “Now tell me how you would move the boys out if you had to. Without being noticed, I mean. Just in case the Taurans decided to attack a group of fleeing children, of course.”
“Of course,
Duque,
” agreed Chapayev, with a knowing smile.
Training Area C,
Academia Militar Sergento
Juan Malvegui, west of
Puerto Lindo,
Balboa, Terra Nova
“
Cabo
Escobar?” shouted Ricardo Cruz, as he closed his folding cell phone. He’d intended to go along with the cadets but sometimes one ran into a higher calling, so to speak.
“
Si, Centurio!
” answered the former narco-guerilla, since recruited, and now assisting his centurion in the training of the young cadets.
“Move the boys out!”
“Yes, Centurion… Cadets…riiighttt…FACE. Fowarrrd…MARCH.”
Escobar counted off, “One, two, three, four, left, right, left right,” then began a song: “In the morning we rise early—”
The cadets picked the tune up immediately, a few of their immature voices breaking:
“…Long before the break of dawn,
“Trixies screeching in the jungle,
“Moonbats scurrying from the sun.
“Now assemble,
mis compadres.
“Gather, boys, and muster, men,
“Hand to hand with butt and bayonet,
“Let their blood across the homeland run.”
Cruz stood where he was, smiling, watching the cadets’ receding backs, until they rounded a turn in the jungle trail. With their disappearance into the jungle’s perpetual twilight, he turned around himself and walked past the parking area, itself halfway between camp and the main road to
Puerto Lindo,
then continued on to a little indentation in the jungle.
Cruz saw him there, leaning against a big, black Phaeton, arms folded and a couple of armored cars on guard.
He must have got my number from his wife who got it from mine.
Cruz reported with a snappy salute, duly and formally returned by Carrera who stood to attention away from the Phaeton for the brief ceremony.
“Anything you absolutely need to be present for, Centurion?” Carrera asked.
Cruz shook his head in negation. “Nothing the corporal I brought with me can’t handle,
Duque.
”
“Great. There’s a cantina about three miles down the road. Let’s go chat.”
“Oh, a little chat with the boss, eh?”
Carrera chuckled. “Not like that, Ricardo. But I do want to know about the boy. I do want to know if there’s anything—beyond staying out of the way which, you will note, I’ve been doing—that I can do to help.”
* * *
The cantina’s name was “Miramar” and one could, in fact, see the Shimmering Sea from it. At an unusually high tide one could possibly wash one’s feet in the Shimmering Sea from the
bohio
facing the water. A regular tide and it would be a walk of perhaps fifty meters.
For the moment, though, the tide was out. Near the lapping waves—above them too—hopped or flew several species of seagull cognates or cousins. They looked a lot like Old Earth gulls, being rather solid and quite feathery, but retained teeth as well as clawed fingers on each wing. They also sounded a lot like gulls.
With the tide out, the smell of the sea, which was actually the smell of the land—salty and slightly rotten—competed with the flowers and vegetable and animal decay of the nearby jungle. Over all of that was the aroma, by no means unpleasant, of a simmering stew—or possibly a
sopa seca
, a dry soup—hidden from sight by a woven reed wall.
Carrera called for a couple of beers.
As the proprietress was cracking those, Cruz laid his “stick,” his badge of office as a centurion, on the table, setting it against the salt shaker to keep it from rolling off. Then he whispered, “Try the
paella de marisco
but stay away from the
empanadas.
Seriously.” He made a closed fist thumping the chest gesture:
heartburn.
“You’ve been here before?” Carrera asked. He waved the answer off. “Wait; stupid question; of course you have.”
Two bottles of cold
Cervesa
Legionaria
appeared on the table. No glasses, it was not a glasses kind of place. Carrera and Cruz each ordered
paella de marisco.
“Found it a couple of weeks ago,” Cruz confirmed, “not long after starting cadet training.”
“There’s no way in Hell for me to keep up with all the transfers, even though we don’t do that many, but no one’s cut orders permanently moving you to the academy, have they?”
“No, sir,” Cruz answered. “I’m still just temporary help. Go back to the Second Tercio in three weeks or so.”
“Okay. We’ll get back to that. For now though…” And from there silence descended and hung for a bit.
I never would have thought,
thought the centurion,
that
el Duque
would ever be at a loss for words.
“I’m not sure you didn’t make a mistake,” Cruz said. “Sir.”
Carrera sighed. “Neither am I. The boy is…well…he could go either way. He could be my replacement, an asset for the legion and for Balboa or…”
“Or he could be a monster,” finished Cruz, then added, “The problem is, though, that this might turn him into a monster. I shudder to think”—and the centurion did, in fact, shudder—“just what it might mean if all he learns here is to manipulate people, without ever learning to care for them, as people.”
“That’s a possibility, isn’t it?” Carrera put his elbows on the table then lowered his head to massage his temples.
“Yes, sir,” Cruz nodded, “it’s a real possibility. I’ve seen him do it once, already. At least I
think
I have. He’s clever so it’s hard to be sure.”
“Yeah,” Carrera said, “he’s clever. So do I pull him out of here or leave him?”
Cruz hesitated. This was not normally one of his failings. Finally, he said, “Leave him here. If you pull him out now, while he’s still teetering between success and failure, he’ll assume you’ve judged him a failure. You’ll never get an honest day’s use of the boy after that.
“And—since he
is
clever—he’s been picking off the low hanging fruit in his section. But it’s about to get much tougher from him. The boys he hasn’t yet swung over to his side are the middle or upper middle class ones, the self-confident ones, the athletes, and the ones who already have strong military connections.”
Cruz took a long pull from his beer, the condensation on the bottle gathering and then running down to drip from his chin. “It’s going to be interesting to see anyway.”
Carrera agreed, reluctantly, “Okay, I’ll leave him here for a while, at least. There’s something else, though. You’re moving up, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Cruz said. “Giving up my maniple and taking over cohort sergeant major for Second of the Second.”
“Okay, honest opinion; if you had to judge the best cohorts on the
Mar Furioso
side, which would they be? And then which ones on this side?”
“Including the heavy cohorts by
Lago Sombrero
?” Cruz asked.
“No, just the regular infantry near the terminal cities on each end of the Transitway.”
“I can’t say I’ve seen enough to judge,” Cruz admitted. “I
can
tell you some that are good. For example, Eighth Tercio, from hereabouts, relieved mine, Second, down in
La Palma
during the drug war. Lotsa snap, lotsa drive, to the Eighth Infantry.
“On my side I’m too self-interested to call a fair judge.”
Carrera glared.
“Buuut…Second of the Second or First of the Third. We work with Third Tercio a lot and their first cohort is the one that’s most impressed me.
“But, sir, if I may ask, why?”
“Two reasons, only one of which I’ll tell you. Parilla wants peace, if at all possible. One of the ways we get peace is to convince the Taurans we’re too tough a prospect to attack. So Fernandez has invited them…well, he invited one of them who caught our collective eye…to come and see just how tough a prospect we might be. I’m not going to tell her—”
“Her?”
“Yes, ‘her.’ Extravagantly ‘her.’ I’m not going to tell her which units she can see. But I’m not above manipulating the annual training schedule a little so that her choices are limited.”
“Ohhh…well, in that case, don’t let the Taurans see anybody from the Seventh or the Tenth. The Seventh is still shamefaced and, I think, a little unreliable over their involvement in the Pigna coup. Yeah, you and I both know,
Duque,
that that wasn’t their fault. They still feel guilty. And the Tenth Tercio is just frigging weird. In my personal opinion. Sir.”
Carrera let that one go. The Tenth Tercio, it was well known, pushed the Roman-ness of the legion to an unusual degree, Caesar’s Tenth and all.
“Okay,” he agreed, “during the window we have given Captain Campbell, Anglian Army, the Second of the Second, First of the Third, and Third of the Eighth will be training at Imperial Range. That work?”
“Think so, sir,” Cruz affirmed. “Best we can do, anyway.”
The pair went silent as the
paella
arrived. Cruz, the more religious of the two, crossed himself before picking up a fork. He speared a healthy looking whole shrimp, then held it in front of his face, contemplatively. He rotated the fork in his fingers, examining the shrimp from every angle.
“
Duque,
” Cruz asked, “what if the Taurans don’t understand or won’t let themselves understand that our cadre is better than theirs and our rank and file, if maybe not as well trained as theirs, technically, is more than willing?”
“I suppose, eventually, we fight. Hmmm…on a related subject, and based only on your own observations, Centurion, what would you say about the relative intelligence between the officers and centurions of your own tercio, or any of those on the
Furioso
side, and the ones here?”