"And you didn't," Kustaa said softly.
"The cities did… so the snakes thought. All the ones who could were out in the forests. We destroyed our machinery, fuel, everything useful; burnt the crops, and all the livestock was already salted down. Some stayed behind in the towns for sabotage; many of the ones who couldn't fight took poison." He paused. "My wife, and our children." Another pause. "After a while, the snakes got sick of time-bombs and ambushes in the cities, so they deported everyone they could catch. The younger children to training creches, the rest to destructive-labor camps. We've heard… we've heard they sterilize the camp inmates, and lobotomize the troublemakers." Arvid grinned like a death's-head. "And we Finns are all born troublemakers, no?"
There was a silence that echoed. "I doubt there are half a million people left in the whole of Finland," the guerrilla finished softly. "Most of those Swedes and Danes and Germans the snakes brought in for labor. The documents we've captured say they aren't going to ever try and settle more than a few hundred plantations on the south coast. The rest of the country will be a nature-preserve and timber farm. Right now it's a hunting preserve, and we're the game."
Kustaa looked around the long room, at the men and women sitting at the table, at others lying wakeful on their bunks, at the eyes empty alike of hope and fear.
"Damned dangerous game," he said. "Damned dangerous. More so now that I've brought the new radio, and our little surprises for their Air Force." He nodded to the seal package. "The codes, and directions on how to fit the deciphering wheel."
Some of the cold hostility Faded from the faces turned to him. "What if they'd captured you?" Arvid said.
"There's a sequence of four randomly selected sentences you have to use on the first four contacts. One word wrong, and they cut off contact permanently, and then the codes are useless." He shrugged. "Don… Donovon… the OSS trusted me enough to hold out convincingly long, then give them the wrong word-group. Not necessary, as it turned out; and with luck, we can set up a permanent supply route."
Arvid nodded. "This is bad country for armor, and they don't have enough infantry to spare to really comb us out. We've got plenty of weapons and ammunition, enough food. Their aircraft, though, and the damned helicopters—with an answer to that we can cause them even more grief, before we die." Thoughtfully: "There are outposts east of here, in Karelia and Ingria, almost as far as the White Sea; if we could set up a supply line through submarines, then…
"The doctor says you'll be ready for action in a day or two. Come along and see your toys in action."
"I'm supposed to make Helsinki as soon as possible," Kustaa said carefully. Then a broad grin split the weathered tan of his face. "Obviously, it'll be impossible to leave before we stomp a few snakes, hey?"
Chapter Three
… no soldier who has bent to scratch and felt the bullet go crack through the space above him can doubt the role of chance in war. The same applies to larger issues; how would the Domination have fared if we had not pressed ahead with the nuclear-weapons research? It was a long shot, after all; another of Tech Section's crack-brained just-in-case projects, in the beginning no more promising than that absurd 150-ton articulated tank, or the caseless-ammunition project that has been "one year" away from success since 1928. And nuclear physics is not our field of choice; we Draka are competent technologists but simply lack the cultural inclination for really first-rate pure science work. But Security swore that Hitler and the Americans were pressing forward with their reactors, and suddenly the implications of atomic explosives sank in. Then it became a priority project Whatever our other faults, we have seldom passed up a promising weapon, and through great good luck and our initial head start we exploded our first device within months of the Americans. Those first crude bombs proved very useful in breaking the last resistance in Europe…
Yet it was after the war they proved crucial. Whale and elephant, sea power and land power, the Domination and the Yankee-led Alliance have glared at each other under the enforced Truce of the Mushroom Cloud now we curse the technological stalemate that keeps us from the Americans' throats. But in the late 1940's our conquests were potential strength and present weakness: the defeat of Germany and the annexation of mainland China left us desperately overstretched, a billion new-caught serfs to pacify, the whole of Eurasia to guard, while the sheer biological necessity of reproduction forced us to demobilize the Citizen Force to peacetime levels. The Alliance navies could have struck at will, with the Domination forced to shift armies through devastated lands and populations primed to revolt… except that we held the nuclear sword over Melbourne and New York and Rio de Janeiro. Of course, the game of "what if can be extended back indefinitely. For example, "what if our ancestors had followed impulse and revolted in 1833 when the British abolished slavery throughout the Empire? Sober second thought prevailed, and so did slavery under various cosmetic disguises: but the revolt might have happened, and the infant Domination been crushed in its cradle. For that matter, "what if the Netherlands had not joined France and Spain in war on Britain in 1779. giving Britain an opportunity to seize southern Africa? The Loyalists scattering without a new home to welcome them… a weak Dutch colony in place of the great cities of our southern African heartland … a world without the Domination, perhaps?
Fire And Blood: The Eurasian War
V. VIII: Conclusion and Aftermath. 1946-50
by Strategos Robert A. Jackson (ret).
New Territories Press. Vienna.1965
LYON, PROVINCE OF BURGUNDIADETENTION CENTER XVIIAPRIL, 1947
Tanya von Shrakenberg eased herself to her feet, leaving the half-empty cup of coffee on the table and gently uncurling the small solid weight of her daughter into the waiting arms of the nurse. Not so small any more, either; arms and legs just starting to lengthen out, she would have the rangy height of the von Shrakenberg line, even if her coloring took after her father's maternal ancestors. Tanya looked down at the fine-featured oval face, already losing its puppy-fat and firming towards adulthood, and stroked one cheek.
I wonder if I could catch that? she mused, in painter's reflex. Difficult, when so much of an image like this was your own response to it; that was the weakness and strength of representational art, that it relied on a common set of visual codes… Oh, shut up, Tanya told herself. Critics theorize, you're a painter.
The girl murmured without opening her eyes, turning and nuzzling her face into Beth's wide soft chest. Tanya felt a slow warmth below her heart, and reached out to draw a light finger down her cheek. Mother, painter, soldier, Landholder, she mused. All true, but which is really me, the me I talk to inside my head? Knowledge was a thing of words, but you could never really reduce a human being to description. Still less a child, whose self was still potential, before the narrowing of choice. She felt a moment's sadness; children changed so fast, the one you knew and loved reshaping into someone else as you watched.
"Shall Ah wakes her, Mistis?" Beth asked.
"Let her rest," Tanya replied. Not enough sleep last night, and then the long drive down; the family gathering in Paris had been enjoyable but strenuous for all of them, a good thirty adults and more children. The first opportunity since the War, now that travel was getting back to normal and demobilization nearly complete, and most of those still in the Forces able to get leave. A good deal of useful work, besides the socializing: plans had been made, political and otherwise, and the dozen or so younger members who were settling in Europe had compared notes.
Damnation, Tanya thought, rising and catching herself on the back of the chair. Balance going again. Pregnancy always did that to her.
She looked around the office, eager to be gone but reluctant to face the bother of the trip; the air smelled of coffee and food from the buffet and the peculiarly north-European odor of very old damp stone, so different from the dry dust-scent of her birth-province, Syria. At Evendim, her parent's plantation in the Bekaa Valley, the days would already be hot. From her old room in the east
wing she could watch the sun set over the Lebanon mountains to the west, down from the snowpeaks and the slopes green with the forests of young cedar her people had planted; over the terraced vineyards in patterns of curving shadow; slanted golden sheets between the tall dark cypress that fringed the lawns behind the manor.
They tossed in the evening cool, the wind down from the mountains faintly chill against your skin while the stone of the windowledge was still blood-warm from the day's sun. Sweetness from the mown lawns, delicate and elusive from the long acres of cherry-orchard blossoming between the greathouse and the main water-channel; sometimes the sound of a housegirl singing at her work, or faint snatches of the muezzin calling his flock to prayer, down in the Quarters.
No use getting homesick, she chided herself. It was probably just this damned depressing city… Tanya had been a Cohortarch in the Archonal Guard Legion when she saw it last, back in '45; burnt-out rubble, and the natives sick and hungry enough to eat each other. Things had improved a little, but not enough.
Or it could just be pregnancy, the aches and itches and the continual humiliating need to pee. It was unfair: some women went into the sixth month hardly showing at all… Thank Freya this was the third; one more and she could count that particular duty to the Race done. Or no more if it was twins again; her family ran to them. Children were delightful and no particular bother; if anything, between the servants and the eight months a year at boarding school required of all young Draka, you scarcely saw them enough. She glanced over at Gudrun, the bright copper hair resting against Beth's dark breast. Sleep was the only time you saw her still; where all that energy came from was a mystery. But having them was something she would rather have skipped; the whole process was stupid and barbaric, like incubating and then shitting a pumpkin. And Almighty Thor knew a Security pen wasn't the most cheerful setting in the world, either; the fear and misery and throttled hatred drifted through the air like smoke. Stimulating, in reasonable quantities, like all clanger, but there was a sickness in too much of it. No point in being sentimental about serfs; this sort of place was necessary enough in new-taken territory, but so were terminal wards in a hospital, and who would live in one by choice?
She nodded politely to the Security Strategos. It was courteous of him to expedite matters; a routine request like hers could have been handled at much lower levels, even if Draka did not set much store by proper bureaucratic channels.
"Thank you for your time," she said. "It'll help; stonemasons and electricians and bookkeepers are in demand. I expect yo'll be glad when the other Directorates and the labor agencies get set up proper an' things normalize.
"It'll be good to get back home." she said more quietly, to Andrew. Her brother looked up, unhooking the borrowed electroprod from his waist and smiling.
"The new place is home already?" he asked, lifting one eyebrow. The movement pulled at the scar on his cheek, exaggerating the quizzical gesture.
"Of course. Chateau Retour's mine, and Edward's," —she laid a hand on her stomach—"an' our next will be born there. Evendim stopped being home a long time ago; it's Willie's." Draka law and custom demanded a single heir for an estate, usually the eldest. "We can visit, but that isn't the same… I worry about you, brother mine; where's the place yo' can call home?
Officers' quarters in Helsinki? We fought the War, let the next generation do their share. There's still some good landholdings ready for settlement, down in the Loire valley. Yo' should get yourself a mate, stop wastin' all your seed on the wenches, make a place for y'self. The Race has to build, or what's the conquerin' for?"
"Maybe after my next hitch," he said absently, pulling the folded cap from under his shoulder-strap and settling it on his head. "Loki's hooves, I'm barely thirty-odd; still plenty of time, unless I stop a bullet, and good Janissary officers are scarce. An' Finland will be a while bein' tamed. A while, surely." He blinked, and she could see his consciousness returning, pulled back from the forests and snowfields of the Baltic. "Meanwhile, leave the motherin' to Ma, she's been bombardin' me with the same advice since we reached the Channel."
"An' the young fogey should shut up about it, eh?" Tanya reached to stroke her daughter's forehead. "Wake up, sweetlin', time to go down to the cars." To her brother: "Well, doan' forget to visit, before they post yo's back east. Some good huntin', a little up-valley; boar and deer, at least. And we've still got crates of that stuff you picked up, in the attics. Should get it catalogued soon."
Her brother laughed and took the yawning Gudrun from her nurse, tossing her and holding her up easily with his hands beneath her arms; she smothered a smile and responded with an adult glower. "Not too old to play with y'uncle, I hope?" he said, and continued over his shoulder to his sister: "It took a two-ton car to drag the lot you got out of Paris, as I recall."
He turned to the Security officer. "Thanks again, Strategos Vashon."
The secret policeman closed a folder, rose and circled the desk to take the offered hand, give a chuck under the chin to Gudrun as she sat on her uncle's shoulder. "No trouble," he said. "A relief from my other problems, frankly; and I knew your granduncle Karl, we worked together after the last war." Unstated was the fact that Karl von Shrakenberg was now an Arch-Strategos of the Supreme General Staff; there was always an undercurrent of tension between the Directorates of War and Security, the Domination's two armed services. It never hurt to have a favor due. "Nothin" but problems; sometimes I'd be glad to be back home, promotion or no."
Tanya nodded to the murals of rocky hills and and plains covered in long lion-colored grass. "There, Strategos?"
He shook his head, fitting another cigarette into the ivory holder. 'That's North Katanga, where I was born; I meant Bulgaria. Sofia's home, I worked out of there from 1920 until the Eurasian War started. Probably why they sent me here, similar problems." Thrace and Bulgaria had been the western stopping-point of the Domination's armies in the Great War, a generation before. "Although at least we could terrorize Rumania into sending back runaways who tried to make it over the Danube. Sweet fuck-all luck we've been havin' with the English on that score; good thing the Channel isn't swimmable." He puffed a smoke-ring. " 'Course, they've got the Yanks behind them, their damned Alliance for Democracy." For a moment his calm tone became something far less pleasant.
Tanya shrugged. "Ah, Sofia; pretty town, had a leave there durin' the War… '43, I think." A grin. "Gudrun here'll take care of the Yanks, eh, chile?"
Brother and sister nodded approvingly as her hand made an unconscious check of the knife in its leg-sheath.
Vashon laughed dutifully. "Maybe our grandchildren," he said with sour pessimism, "if then."
"That ol' stretched-thin feelin'?" Andrew said, swinging the girl to the ground.
Vashon shruged. "Ah, well, it's only two years since the War ended." He looked out over the city, brooding. "Remember how things looked back in '39? Soviets to the north of us, Germans to the west, Japs to the east? War on three fronts, wouldn't that-there have been lovely, now?" A shake of the head. "Then Hitler conquers Europe an' Russia fo' us, exhausting himself in the process; the slanteyes attack the Yanks—who'd have thought we could end up fightin' on the same side of a war as the U.S.? Enormous victories for negligable cost."
"Didn't seem quite so negligible in the Guard," Tanya said dryly, hitching up the elastic waistband of her trousers. "An' the Fritz didn't seem so exhausted, not when they damn' near shot my tank out from under me, half a dozen times. Four years fightin', total mobilization."
Vashon spread his hands in an apologetic gesture. "Negligible in relation to the booty," he said. "Half the earth, an' half mankind; two-thirds, with what we had before. It's assimilatin' it that's going to be the problem. We aren't a—"
"—numerous people, and nobody loves us," Tanya said, completing the proverb as she crossed to the windows, leaned her palms against the strong armor-glass. "Doin" my best about that, Strategos. Perceptible improvement here, since I saw it last."
Th
e Security officer scowled. "Partly because so many of the labor-force doan' have anything to do but shift rubble." He stubbed his cigarette out with a savage gesture. "Damn that sack! Waste: waste of raw materials, waste of skilled workers, waste of machinery. We could have used it, the Police Zone is still run-down from lack of maintenance durin' the War an' having trouble retooling."
"What's the point of victory, without lootin'?" she said lightly. The clouds were thinning, a good augury for the trip home.
'To take what they make and grow—for which we need them alive, and their tools. More important than stealin' their jewelry, no?"
Andrew snorted. "My Legion was in on that sack, Strategos. We took twenty, thirty percent casualties between the Rhine crossin's an' here. Janissaries aren't field-hands or houseserfs; yo' needs to give them proof-positive of a victory. Lettin' them loose in a town, drinkin' themselves wild, pickin' up pretties and riding the wenches bloody is the best way I know. Does wonders for morale, sir; wish there was somethin' equivalent on antipartisan duty."
Vashon composed himself and donned a smile. "At least with yo' settlers gettin' agriculture in order, we won't have to sell much more oil to the Yanks for wheat to feed Europe with… how's it going, over there along the Loire, Cohortarch?"
She stretched. "Jus' Tanya, Strategos; I'm in the Reserve now. Well as can be expected, all in all; the French were good farmers, but they pushed the land too hard durin' the war. Shortages of fertilizer and livestock, equipment, horses… We're producin' a surplus and it should increase pretty steady-like. Our place is all yo' could ask, on the basics. North bank of the river, just west of Tours; first-rate light alluvial soil, with some hills on the north. Lovely country, fine climate, grow anythin', well kept… but Frey and Freya, the way things are cut up! Fields the size of handkerchiefs, little hamlets 'n villages all over the place, goin' take a generation or two to get things in order."