Marching Through Georgia (20 page)

"All that demolition," the sapper Legate said. "Chancy. Very.

Especially if we use nonstandard explosives. I can estimate, some of my NCO's…"

"It has to be done, it can be,' " he quoted with a shrug. "If we're going to be sacrificial lambs, at least we can break a few teeth. There'll be a lot of details; solve 'em if you can, ask me or Marie if you can't.

"Now," he said, turning to the cohortarch. "Dale?"

"It's all a little, well,
static
, isn't it?" The ex-cavalryman paused. "Besides your skulkers in the woods, I'd say you need a mobile reaction force to maneuver in the rear, once they're fixed against your fieldworks."

Eric nodded. "Good, but we don't have any reserve left for that…"

Dale examined his fingertips. "Well, old man, I could run a spot down the road, conceal my vehicles, then—"

Eric shook his head. "Nice of you to offer, Dale, but you're needed back above. That's going to be a deathride, and… I've got an idea.' He looked around the circle of faces. "Tell you later if it works out. No— Let's
do
it, people; let's
move
."

There was a moment of silence, of solemnity almost. Then the scene dissolved in action.

Eric turned to the old man. "Hadj, those prisoners the Germanski were holding behind the hall—they are not of your people?"

The Circassian came to himself, blew his nose in the sleeve of his khaftan and shook his head.

"They are Russia—partisans, godless youths of the
komsomol
from the great city of Pyatigorsk that the Czars built, when they took the hot springs of the Seven Hills from my people. Even so, we would not have betrayed them to the Germanski with the lightning, if they had not demanded food of us that we did not have. There are more of them westward in the hills; many more.

The garrison came here to hunt them." He bowed. "Lord, may I go to tell my people what you require of them?"

Eric nodded absently, tugging at his lower lip, then smiled and turned for the alley leading past the town hall.

Sofie trotted at his side, a quizzical interest in her eyes; her tasks would not be needed immediately, and a matter puzzled her. Eric was moving with a bounce in his stride; his eyes seemed to glow, his skin to crackle with renewed vitality. She remembered him at the loading zone, quiet, reserved; in the fighting that morning, moving with the bleakly impersonal efficiency of a well-designed machine. Now… he looked like a man in love. Not with her, her head told her. But it was interesting to see how that affected him; definitely interesting.

"Centurion," she said. "Remember Palermo?"

"What part?"

"Afterward, when we stood down. That terrace? We were talking, and you told me you didn't like soldiering. Seems to me you like it well enough now, or I've never seen a man happy."

He rubbed the side of his nose. "I like… solving problems.

Important ones, real ones; doing it quickly, getting people to do their best. And understanding what makes them tick, getting inside their heads. Knowing what they'll do if I do this or that…

I've even thought of writing novels, because of that. After the war, of course." He stopped, with an uncharacteristic flush. Sofie was easy to talk to, but that was not an ambition he had told many. Hurriedly, he continued: "Marie's a crackerjack sapper. I had some of the same ideas, but not in nearly so much detail.

And I couldn't organize so well to get them done."

"But you could organize
her
, and the ragheads, and whatever these 'russki partisans' are good for." She smiled at his raised brow. "Hell, Centurion, I may not talk their jabber, but I know the word when I hear it. I can see all that's part of war." She frowned. "And the fighting?" Draka were supposed to like to fight; more theory than fact. She didn't, much; if she wanted to have a fun-risk, she'd surf. Yet there was a certain addiction to it. You could see how the combat-junkies felt, and certainly the Draka produced more of them than most people, but on the whole, no thanks. This had been hairier than anything before, and she had an uneasy feeling it was going to get worse.

"We're of the Race: we have our obligations."

There was no answer to that, not unless she wished to give offense. For that matter, there were many who would have stood on rank already.

"Think we'll have time to get all this stuff ready?"

"I don't know, Sofie," he said simply. "I hope so. Before the real attack, anyway. We'll probably get a probe quite soon. With luck…"

Senior Decurion McWhirter cleared his throat. "Say, sir, what was it you used on the old raghead? Thought he was a tough old bastard, but he caved in real easy."

"I used the lowest, vilest means I could," Eric said softly. The NCO's eyes widened in surprise. "I gave him hope."

From the beginning, sheer size was a driving factor in the
evolution of the Domination. The Dutch colony which Admiral
Cochrane seized in 1779—essentially, the modem Western Cape
Province
—was
larger than France. By 1783 the Crown Colony
was the size of all Western Europe; during the 1790's slaving
bases and settlements were driven up the "eastern reach" to
Zanzibar and Aden, and 1800 saw the conquest of Egypt and
Ceylon. Inland labor raiders, ranchers, planters and
prospectors leapfrogged each other In quest of workers,
grazing, water and minerals; the arid climate and the large
size of the initial land grants combined to keep settlement
thinly spread
.

Communications—of troops, administrators. Information,
goods
—
were a problem that could only increase with time. The
continental interior was almost completely lacking in useful
waterways, and the plateau was everywhere fringed with
mountains. Stark necessity made roads and harbors a priority,
and engineering schools were founded to provide experts to
direct the forced-labour gangs. Cold mining paid much of the
costs, and the steam engines Imported to pump out shafts and
crush ore suggested a means around the weaknesses of animal
transport Richard Trevithick's experimental locomotives (1803)
and steam cars (1806) encountered none of the resistance that
vested interests produced in Europe; not only Draka prosperity,
but survival itself depended on swift transport A precedent was
established for the research projects which produced the first
successful dirigible airships in the 1880's…

200 Years: A Social History of the Domination
by Alan E. Sorensson. Ph.D

Archona Press, 1983

VILLAGE ONE, OSSETIAN MILITARY HIGHWAY APRIL 14, 1942: 0700 HOURS

The partisans
were being held in what looked to be a stock pen—new barbed wire on ancient piled stone. A walking-wounded Draka trooper stood guard; the German formerly assigned to that duty was lying on his back across the wall, his belly opened by a drawing slash from a bush knife and the cavity buzzing black with flies. The prisoners ignored him; even with Eric's arrival, few looked up from their frenzied attack on the loaves of stale black bread that had been thrown to them.

One vomited noisily, seized another chunk and began to eat again. There were thirty of them, and they stank worse than the rest of the village. They were standing in their own excrement, and half a dozen had wounds gone pus-rotten with gas-gangrene.

They were Slavs, mostly: stockier than the Circassian natives, flatter-faced and more often blond, in peasant blouses or the remnants of Soviet uniform. Young men, if you could look past the months of chronic malnutrition, sickness, and overstrain. A few had been tortured, and all bore the marks of rifle butts, whips, rubber truncheons. Eric shook his head in disgust; in the Domination, this display would have been considered disgraceful even for convicts on their way to the prison-mines of the Ituri jungles or the saltworks of Kashgar, the last sink-holes for incorrigibles. Anybody would torture for information in war, of course, and the Security Directorate was not notable for mercy toward rebels. Still, this was petty meanness. If they were dangerous, kill them; if not, put them to some use.

One thick-set prisoner straightened, brushed his hands down a torn and filth-spattered uniform runic and came to the edge of the wire. His eyes flickered to the guard, noted how she came erect at the officer's approach.

"
Uvana hchloptsi, to yeehchniy kommandyr
," he cast back over his shoulder, and waited, looking the Draka steadily in the eye.

Eric considered him appraisingly and nodded.
This one
, he thought, is
a brave man. Pity, we'll probably have to kill him if
the Fritz don't do us the favor
. Aloud: "Sprechen zie Deutsch?

Parlez vous Francais? Circassian?"

A shake of the head; the Draka commander paused in thought, almost started in surprise to hear Sofie's voice.

"I speak Russian, Centurion," she said. He raised a brow; everybody had to do one foreign language, but that was not a common choice. "Not in school. My Pa, he with Henderson when the Fourth took Krasnovodsk, back in 1918. He brought back a Russia wench, Katie. She was my nursemaid, an" I learned it from her. Still talk it pretty good. He just said: '
Watch out, boys,
that's the commander."

Sofie turned to the captives and spoke, slowly at first and then with gathering assurance. The Russian frowned and waved his companions to silence, then replied. The ghost of a smile touched his face, despite the massive bruise that puffed the left side of his mouth.

Grinning, she switched back into English. "Yfl, he understands. Says I've got an old-fashioned Moscow accent, like a
boyar
, a noble. Hey, Katie always said she was a Countess; maybe it was true." A shake of the head. "S'true she was never much good at house-work, wouldn't do it. Screwing the Master was all right, looking after children was fine, but show her a mop and she'd sulk for days. Ma gave up on trying…"

Actually, the whole Nixon household had been fond of Ekaterina Ilyichmanova; with her moods and flightiness and disdain for detail, she had fitted in perfectly with the general atmosphere of cheerfully sloppy anarchy. Sophie's father had always considered her his best war souvenir and had treated her with casual indulgence; she was something of an extravagance for a man of his modest social standing, and her slender, great-eyed good looks were not at all his usual taste. Sophie and her brothers had gone to some trouble to find their nursemaid the Christian priest she wanted during her last illness, and had been surprised at how empty a space she left in the rambling house below Lion's Head.

Eric nodded thoughtfully. "Good thinking, Sofie. All right…

ask him if there are more like him in the woods, and the villages down in the plains."

The Russian listened carefully to the translation, spoke a short sentence and spat at the Draka officer's feet. Eric waved back the guard's bayonet impatiently.

"Ahhh—" Sofie hesitated. "Ah, Centurion, he sort of asked why the fuck he should tell a
neimetsky
son-of-a-bitch anything, and invited you to take up where the fornicating Fritzes left off.' She frowned. "I think he's got a pretty thick country-boy accent.

Don't know what a
neimetsky
is, but it's not nohow complimentary. And he says it's our fault they're in this mess anyway."

Eric smiled thinly, hands linked behind his back, rising and falling thoughtfully on the balls of his feet. There was an element of truth in that; the
Stavka
, the Soviet high command, had never been able to throw all its reserves against the Germans with the standing menace of the Domination on thousands of kilometers of southern front. And the Draka had taken two million square miles of central Asia in the Great War, while Russia was helpless with revolution and civil strife; all the way north to the foothills of the Urals, and east to Baikal.

Fairly perceptive
, the Draka officer thought.
Especially for a
peasant like this. He must have been a Party member
. The flat Slav face stared back at him, watchful but not at all afraid.

Can't be a fool
, Eric's musing continued.
Not and have
survived the winter and spring. He's not nervous with an
automatic weapon pointed at him, either
. Or at the bayonet, for that matter; the damn things were usually still useful for crowd control, if nothing else.

"Stupid," he said meditatively.

"Sir?' Sofie asked.

"Oh, not him; the Fritz. Talking about a thousand-year Reich, then acting as if it all had to be done tomorrow…" His tone grew crisper. "Ask his name. Ask him how he'd like to be released with all his men—with all the food they can carry, a brand-new Fritz rifle and a hundred rounds each."

Shocked, Sophie raised her eyebrows, shrugged and spoke.

This time the Russian laughed. "He says he's called Ivan Desonovich Yuhnkov, and he'd prefer MP40 submachine guns and grenades. While we're at it, could we please give him some tanks and a ticket to New York, and Hitler's head, and what sort of fool do you think he is? Sorry, sir."

Eric reached out a hand for the microphone, spoke. Minutes stretched; he waited without movement, then extended a hand to Sofie. "Cigarette?" he asked.

Carefully expressionless, she lit a second from her own and placed it between his lips.
Well, the iron man is nervous, too
, she thought. Sometimes she got the feeling that Eric could take calculated risks on pure intellect, simply from analysis of what was necessary. It was reassuring that he could need the soothing effect of the nicotine.

The other partisans had finished the bread. They crowded in behind their leader, silent, the hale supporting the wounded. A mountain wind soughed, louder than their breath and the slight sucking noises of their rag-wrapped feet in the mud and filth of the pen. The eyes in the stubbled faces… covertly, Eric studied them. Some were those of brutalized animals, the ones who had stopped thinking because thought brought nothing that was good; now they lived from one day… no, from one meal to the next, or one night's sleep. He recognized that look; it was common enough in the world his caste had built. And he recognized the stare of the others—the men who had fought on long after the death of hope because there was really nothing else to do.
That
he saw in the mirror, every morning.