The nearby village was abandoned. No footprints told where the villagers had gone. Prints of horse hooves, some dozens of them, led off to the east but disappeared in the sodden jungle. The major was about to organize and send off search parties when he received a distress call from the UN supervisory office, now some hundreds of kilometers away.
The call for help ended almost as soon as it began. By the time the shuttle arrived back at the office it was nothing more than a corpse- draped, smoking ruin.
The shuttle landed nearby. This was a mistake.
XIII.
Among the weapons found in the supervisory office's armory had been a single sample of a very special type. This was a magazine-fed, bolt action rifle in 14.5mm, with its own limited visibility scope, recoil absorption system and a muzzle brake to further reduce the otherwise shoulder-shattering recoil of the piece. For all that, it was no different in principle from any of the bolt-action rifles in use on Earth. It was this simplicity that recommended the weapon to both Belisario and the UN, though the latter used it exclusively for hunting mammoth, not men nor their machines.
Belisario lay now beside the sniper he had chosen, a cholo from Panama with a deserved reputation as a marksman. The cholo 's, or Indian's, name was Pedro.
"Pedro, can you hit the gas tank?" Belisario asked.
"No, senor," the indio answered. "I don't even know where it will be. But I can hit an engine, no problem."
"Make it the engine then, compadre. But make it the engine. We can't afford a miss."
The pair lay in a shack overlooking the UN office. More particularly, their field of fire covered the marked, concrete shuttle landing pad to one side of that office. What they would do if the shuttle landed elsewhere, Belisario didn't know. His men were scattered in small groups in other buildings. Perhaps that would be enough.
He'd told them no cooking fires, an order that had not gone over particularly well. He hoped they'd listen, but had less than absolute confidence that they would. What he could do about it he didn't know. Rather, he hoped he didn't know.
Will it come to that? Belisario wondered. Will I someday end up having to shoot some of my own men if they won't follow orders? God… if there is a God… deliver me from this, please.
His thoughts were interrupted by the whine of the UN shuttle circling the area before coming in for a very soft, though leaf and dust churning, landing.
Belisario was just rising and turning his head toward Pedro to give the order to fire when the cholo fired sua sponte… and immediately screamed and rolled from the gun, clutching a broken shoulder. So much for recoil absorption systems. The muzzle blast half-stunned Belisario, knocking him right back on his arse.
"What the-?"
On hands and knees, shaking his head, Belisario crawled back to the low window through which Pedro had engaged the shuttle. As he neared the opening, he heard and felt the familiar blasts of his own men's muzzle loaders, combined with the rattle of machine guns. Belisario hoped at least some of those machine guns were among those he and his followers had captured at the UN's office armory.
The first thing Belisario saw from the window was smoke. True to his word, Pedro had struck an engine. The engine had then caught fire, a fire which spread to other parts of the shuttle. The entire machine seemed about to burst into flames.
While Belisario watched, it did burst into flame, the fireball catching several of the UN Marines, sending them running as shrieking human torches. The Cochean felt no satisfaction at this, but only pity and perhaps even a bit of regret. He regretted, too, that any equipment that might have been on the shuttle was now irretrievably lost.
A near miss knocked bits of wood off of the wooden window frame causing Belisario to duck. Taking a moment to steel his soul he returned to his observation point. There were no more near misses, however. Instead, with his head now rapidly clearing from the shock of Pedro's muzzle blast, Belisario saw a dozen or fourteen-it was hard to be sure under the circumstances-UN Marines, cowering at the edges of the burned area. He suspected that those, plus the ones he had seen burn, were all that had gotten out of the shuttle. Those survivors were tightly pinned by the machine gun fire coming from Belisario's looted weapons.
Between the machine gun and rifle fire, plus the real fire from the shuttle, first one, then another, then a group of three of the Marines dropped their weapons and stood up, arms raised high. It wasn't their bloody fight and if the locals were willing to take prisoners they were willing to become prisoners.
Belisario was still in the first phase of a very steep upward learning curve. He'd never thought to arrange for a signal to cease fire. Fortunately, his followers were not cold-blooded killers but simple farmers and ranchers and artisans who would kill only most reluctantly. Fire ceased as the gunners and riflemen saw that the Marines were, in fact, trying to surrender. As the fire let up, and seeing those trying to surrender standing unharmed, the rest of the UN troops quickly put down their weapons and stood, as well.
Saying, "I'll send someone for you, Pedro," Belisario left the room and walked out of the shack towards the UN Marines. He was met, not too far from the burning shuttle, by one very shaken Botswanan major with his arms raised high over his head.
Chapter Twenty-Nine It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people. -John 11:50
Las Mesas, Balboa, 28/2/462 AC
Was there ever a sweeter sounding word? Cruz was home!
Admittedly, it was only for four weeks leave and, even worse, he had an allegedly nasty leadership selection course to run through, to be followed by more advanced training. But he was home, he was a sergeant, and at last he could marry his lovely and sweet Caridad.
Actually, there was one sweeter word… or rather, one sweeter phrase. Standing beside him in a white dress-well, she was still, technically, a virgin-surrounded by both their families and with Cruz wearing the new, black and silver dress uniform of the legion that he'd been issued at Fuerte Cameron, Cara had said, "I do."
Feast followed and honeymoon, altogether too brief a one, followed feast. As for the honeymoon… well, newlyweds are entitled to a certain amount of privacy.
Main Bus Terminal, Ciudad Balboa, 8/3/462 AC
It was just after midnight, with the lights of the city washing out the stars overhead. Under the bright streetlamps, Caridad MoralesHerrera de Cruz fought to keep control of her voice. But it was just so damned unfair. She and her Ricardo had barely had time to get to know each other again before he had had to go.
I refuse to cry. I refuse. I refuse.
She cried anyway.
Around the young couple, hundreds of other Cazador hopefuls and their nearest kin awaited the buses that would bring them to the nearest thing to Hell man's imagination could create on Terra Nova. Many a young girl and elderly mother wept. Cazador School had gained a well-deserved reputation for misery and danger in its brief existence.
Cruz stiffened and Cara began softly to cry with the sound of the first horn. Cruz pulled her close, stroking her long midnight black hair and murmuring words of comfort into her ear. Around them, unnoticed, others left behind by loved ones joined in a low floating wail.
Camp Gutierrez, Balboa
A long line of students wound from the class headquarters building down to the tiny unkempt parade field. To either side of the students CIs roamed like ravenous beasts of prey.
Standing at rigid attention, shorn of hair, rank, and the external trappings of personal dignity, Cruz listened attentively to the CIs' grandiloquent vituperation. Might come in useful someday.