S. Stirling - Conquistador

To Jerry Pournelle, for advice and assistance; Giovanni Spinella and Mario Panzanelli, for help with Sicilian dialect; Steve Brady, for Afrikaans; Greg Saunders, for local knowledge of LA; to the Critical Mass, for continuing massively helpful criticism; and any others on the list.

All faults, errors, infelicities and lapses are my own.

And a special acknowledgment to the author of Niven’s Law:

“There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author.

“The term is ‘idiot.’”

John Rolfe had rented the house for seventy-five a month, which sounded extortionate but was something close to reasonable, given the way costs had gone crazy in the Bay Area since Pearl Harbor. The landlord was willing because Rolfe promised to do the badly needed repairs himself, and because he had a soft spot for soldiers—his son had died on Okinawa, where Rolfe had taken three rounds from a Nambu machine gun and gotten a Silver Star, a medical discharge and months on his back in a military hospital. The house was a solid three-bedroom piece of Victoriana, a little shabby and run-down like the area, shingle and dormers; what they called Carpenter Gothic hereabouts, but at least it had a basement. The previous owners had been Japanese-American, sent off to the relocation camps in 1942; then it had been rented out to workers in the shipyards to the north, part of the great wartime inrush, and they’d made a mess of it.

A whole house to himself was an indulgence anyway, since he was unmarried, but he’d spent too much of the last four years on troopships and in crowded bases and bivouacs, plus painful months in the crowded misery of a hospital. Solitude was restful.

He rubbed his thigh as he limped out to the porch, scooping up a bottle of milk, the mail and the newspaper. The mail included his monthly check from Uncle Sam, which was welcome; every little bit helped to stretch the modest legacy from his father, even though the house and land back in Virginia had gone for a surprising sum. There were also a few more no-thank-yous from prospective employers. The market for ex-captains wasn’t all that brisk, not when their only other qualification was Virginia Military Institute. Being able to endure Beast Barracks, run an infantry company, and take out a Nip bunker complex… well, none of them were really salable skills in peacetime, particularly when they went with a slowly healing gimp leg. War heroes were a dime a dozen in the United States these days. He’d get something eventually….

I’m still having better luck than my grandfather, he thought.

John Rolfe III had lost a leg at Second Manassas, leading a regiment of the Stonewall Brigade against the United States, under Jackson. That had turned out to be a bad decision, at least from the viewpoint of the family fortunes; though not as bad as Gramps’ subsequent one to put everything he had into Confederate bonds as a patriotic gesture.

Of course, I’d have done exactly the same thing, but there’s no denying it never pays to lose, he thought with a chuckle.

There was also a letter from Andy O’Brien, who’d been his top sergeant in Baker Company until he and Rolfe were invalided out on the same day. Enemy holdouts had infiltrated in the dark just before dawn and nearly overrun them; it had come down to bayonets and clubbed rifles, boots and fists and teeth, with only the muzzle flashes to light chaos and terror and the stink of death.

For a moment his face froze under a film of cold sweat and the paper crumpled in his fist as a year vanished in an instant—he remembered the ugly crunching feel that shivered up the ruined weapon as the butt of his Garand splintered on a Nip’s face, with a splash of blood that blinded him and ran salt and hot into his own open screaming mouth. He remembered the bayonet poised to kill him until O’Brien smashed it down and hacked the wielder’s head half off with an entrenching tool, roaring in a berserker fury. That cut off suddenly as the bullets struck him like fists pounding on a block of beef and he toppled into the officer, pawing with arms gone flaccid.

He’d carried the big Irishman out on his back—until that slant-eyed bastard with the Nambu cut his left leg out from under him and broke the bone in three places; then he’d had to crawl….

He gave a shuddering exhalation and wiped a hand over his face. It was very bad when the memories came like that, taking you back so you could feel and taste and touch, so you were there again.

Got to stop doing that. It’s over, God damn it, and you’re alive.

The daytime memories weren’t as bad as the dreams, but they were a lot more embarrassing; nobody was around at midnight to hear him screaming.

He opened the screen door with two fingers, kept it open with his elbow as he got his foot up on the doorsill, and let it bang behind him as he went into the kitchen, tossed the mail on the table and put the milk in the Frigidaire, taking out some cold fried chicken left over from last night and a couple of big juicy tomatoes. One of the advantages of living in California was that you could get fresh vegetables earlier than most places. Rolfe’s housekeeping was painstakingly neat, a legacy of VMI and an inborn fastidiousness, but he didn’t pretend to be able to cook beyond the can-opener-and-campfire level.

You’re only twenty-four, he thought, eating and reading the paper. Your life isn’t over; it just feels that way sometimes.

The postwar world was going to hell in a handbasket, according to the Chronicle . The Russians were cutting up ugly in Eastern Europe; half the people between England and the Ukraine were starving or dying of typhus or both; the Reds were making gains in China; the French were trying to get Indochina back, and not having much luck; ditto the Dutch in Java; the Brits were having problems with the Jews in Palestine.

And MacArthur was lording it over the Nips, who were evidently worshiping him like a god or their own emperor. Which meant that Dugout Doug was finally getting what he thought he deserved.

He’s almost as good a general as he thinks he is, Rolfe thought with a smile. Which means he’s pretty damned good. We may need him again, someday. Vanity’s a small price to pay, and I don’t believe in an end to wars.

And closer to home, John Lewis was talking about taking the coal miners out on strike again. Rolfe ground his teeth slightly in fury. He was a Democrat, of course—it was virtually hereditary; where he was born they hadn’t forgotten whose idea Reconstruction was or who went around waving the Bloody Shirt afterward, but…

But I’d have had Lewis taken out and shot for striking during the war, he thought, and tossed the folded newspaper aside, standing and stretching cautiously.

The leg made it difficult to sit comfortably when it stiffened up, and it reminded him each time that he was less than he’d been before the wound. He was naturally an active man, a little above average height and built like a grey-hound, slim but deep-chested and lithe, with short-cropped hair the color of new bronze and leaf-green eyes in a narrow, straight-nosed face.

It was a fine April day, Bay Area style; that meant a bit chilly, with a cool ocean breeze out of the northwest coming in through the kitchen windows. The noontime haze over the bay was gone, and there were probably whitecaps out there on it—no ocean view here, of course, or the place would have been too expensive for him. A few planes were overhead from the naval air station farther north, adding the drone of their engines to a subdued hum of traffic, a ship’s horn, the distant clang of electric trolley cars. Rolfe finished his sparse meal, washed the dishes and doggedly went through another of the exquisitely painful series of exercises the doctors said would help the damaged muscles and tendons heal. That done, he felt he deserved some fun.