The Rods and the Axe - eARC by Tom Kratman Read Free Book Online Page A

lacquered box he’d apparently paid for himself, then left that on Janier’s desk.
    Why would that toad, Malcoeur, care ? Janier wondered. It’s totally inexplicable and illogical. I treat him worse—much worse, as a matter of fact—than my dog. And he weeps for my pain? I do not understand it. Worse, if after all that, and all my failures, the toad still cares for me . . . then I am even more unworthy than I had thought. Shit.
    Well . . . no . . . I can’t deal with that concept. Let’s just let it go with the notion that he’s weeping for our defeat, not for my defeat. Otherwise, I’d start acting like a girl, too.
    While he still faced the window and the bitter ashes—literal ashes—of his defeat and humiliation, a knock came from behind. He spun his chair around with no great haste to see Malcoeur standing by the door, a thick wad of file folders under his left arm.
    “What is it, Malcoeur?” the general asked, not ungently.
    “Intel reports from the Old Earthers, Mon General ,” the aide replied. “Since we aren’t allowed to . . .”
    Janier, with the fatalism and pseudo-courage of the career-dead, supplied the rest, “Since our political masters, in fear of their political lives should the war kick off again, won’t do a damned thing to so much as annoy the Balboans, the Peace Fleet is our only source of intelligence.”
    “Yes, sir. That.”
    “Well . . . set them down,” Janier said. He had a sudden thought, one he voiced as, “No man ought to have to look at this crap completely sober, Malcoeur. Why don’t you go down to the basement and tell the club to deliver to us a bottle of Adourgnac, along with two glasses.”

    Bar El Mono Loco , Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

    A young woman named Maura screamed as her boyfriend drove the jagged edge of his broken bottle into the stomach of the Tauran and twisted, then ripped to the right. His victim, a Tuscan sapper, likewise screamed at first, as the glass made a hash of his innards. Then, in a state of shock, the sapper’s scream turned to a groan. He turned ghastly white as his intestines, accompanied by a surge of blood, spilled out through his torn abdomen. The intestines unlooped themselves as they slid slowly to the floor, even as the Tuscan sank to his knees.
    “Try to steal my girl, eh, motherfucker?” said the Santa Josefinan, releasing his ad hoc butcher’s tool as he stepped back away from the spreading pool of gore and air of spilled shit and blood. Mouth gaping, the Tuscan looked up with eyes rapidly going blank. The Santa Josefinan lifted his foot from the ground, placed the bloody sole on the Tuscan’s forehead, and pushed. The sapper went over backwards, ending up with his back on the bloody floor and the lower half of his legs folded under him.
    “Come on, Manuel,” said one of the Santa Josefinan’s companions, Marco. “You gotta get outa here before the police come.”
    “Police?” asked Manuel.
    “Yeah, dude, police . That Tauro motherfucker’s dead or as good as dead. You sliced him bad, dude. You gotta get out of here and go into hiding.”
    “Yeah . . . but . . . but, no . Man . . . Marco, you saw he was hitting on Maura. He had no right . . .”
    “Manuel, snap out of it. Don’t matter about rights. The Tauros got the money, the guns, and own the government. You have got to get outa here.”
    “But where do I go?” asked Manuel.
    “Balboa, man. Cross over the border tonight. But for now you have got to get out of here.”
    Under his friend Marco’s prodding, Manuel let himself be led out of the bar and toward Marco’s car, waiting in a nearby alley. Behind them, Maura still screamed. Unheard for all her screaming, the TV in the bar’s main room was showing a program entitled, “Our Friends, the Tauran Union.”

    High Admiral’s Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Peace ,
    In Orbit over Terra Nova.

    One of Khan the husband’s underlings was droning on while standing in front of the big Kurosawa.