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Authors: Tom Kratman
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into where we can guard.” He’d added, “It won’t be long. As a widow, she’s going to have priority for a flight out.”
“It’ll be fine,” Judy had insisted, taking young Lydia under wing, more or less literally, and leading her to the spare bedroom. The warrant had carried in the woman’s two bags and left them just inside the door.
It had been a couple of weeks since then and—however charitably inclined and sympathetic Judy may have been—Lydia’s crying had started to wear. But then, so have those Gallic tarts singing the “Internationale” under Balboan supervision.
Then the Balboans had come and taken the widow to her old quarters to supervise packing up of her household baggage. When she returned, it was with travel orders cut by the legion’s own travel section. The orders only took her as far as Asseri, Santa Josefina, though. From there, she’d be the responsibility of the Tauran Union.
Decent of them, though , thought Judy, more decent by far than just putting us in tents behind barbed wire and feeding us gruel for however long it takes for things to resolve themselves. She’d been around the Anglian Army enough to have heard that that was normal procedure in cases like this.
One of the chaplains occasionally came by, too, to check on them. This Judy found more than a little embarrassing, as the very same chaplain had once caught her in the middle of her living room, stark naked and shocked speechless, as a Balboan gun battery in the parade field lit up the night. Oh, will I ever live that down?
A knock from the stairs leading to to the porch caught her attention. The knock was followed by, “ Señora Tiptón?” It was one of the guards. He hadn’t quite gotten English pronunciation down yet, and might never.
“Yes, Legionary?” she asked.
“The car to take you and Mrs. Gordon to the comisariata is here,” said the guard. “Comisariata” was not, strictly speaking, the right word, but it had entered Balboan currency a century prior and never quite been superseded.
“It’s around the other side of the house.”
“Ah. Thank you, Legionary. I’ll get Lydia and be right out.”
And that was another point of decency, she thought, the Balboans giving us a credit—a limited credit, to be sure, but still a credit—to allow us to shop at the commissary. Of course, that means it’s easier on them because they can feed us through our own efforts with food seized when they took the Transitway area, but even so . . .
At the very least, when I do get home and someone asks me how we were treated, I’ll have to tell them, “Very well, indeed.”
MV Roger Casement (Hibernian Registry),
Port of Cristobal, Balboa, Terra Nova
The forty-foot container hung suspended by one of the ship’s two cranes, a few dozen feet above its red painted hull. The container swayed in the light tropical breeze coming off the Shimmering Sea to the south. About a hundred containers had already been loaded, and three hundred and twelve more were visible not far away, awaiting their turn.
It was a truism that no one really knew who owned any given merchant vessel. Between leases, lease backs, shadow corporations, dummy corporations, registrations under flags of convenience, and any of a hundred other tricks, merchant ships were essentially orphaned prostitutes. In the case of the Roger Casement , the owner was the Senate of Balboa, though even years of investigation was unlikely to prove that.
The Roger Casement had come in, bearing little but food and medical supplies, plus some building—which was to say, fortification—material. Its cargo discharged, orders had come from the corporation which at first glance might be said to own it, to pick up a load of Balboan fruit and coffee and deliver it to Jagelonia and Hordaland. The fruit, duly placed in refrigerated containers, was to be loaded where power could be supplied to those, for the most part aft of the ship’s superstructure. The coffee was
“It’ll be fine,” Judy had insisted, taking young Lydia under wing, more or less literally, and leading her to the spare bedroom. The warrant had carried in the woman’s two bags and left them just inside the door.
It had been a couple of weeks since then and—however charitably inclined and sympathetic Judy may have been—Lydia’s crying had started to wear. But then, so have those Gallic tarts singing the “Internationale” under Balboan supervision.
Then the Balboans had come and taken the widow to her old quarters to supervise packing up of her household baggage. When she returned, it was with travel orders cut by the legion’s own travel section. The orders only took her as far as Asseri, Santa Josefina, though. From there, she’d be the responsibility of the Tauran Union.
Decent of them, though , thought Judy, more decent by far than just putting us in tents behind barbed wire and feeding us gruel for however long it takes for things to resolve themselves. She’d been around the Anglian Army enough to have heard that that was normal procedure in cases like this.
One of the chaplains occasionally came by, too, to check on them. This Judy found more than a little embarrassing, as the very same chaplain had once caught her in the middle of her living room, stark naked and shocked speechless, as a Balboan gun battery in the parade field lit up the night. Oh, will I ever live that down?
A knock from the stairs leading to to the porch caught her attention. The knock was followed by, “ Señora Tiptón?” It was one of the guards. He hadn’t quite gotten English pronunciation down yet, and might never.
“Yes, Legionary?” she asked.
“The car to take you and Mrs. Gordon to the comisariata is here,” said the guard. “Comisariata” was not, strictly speaking, the right word, but it had entered Balboan currency a century prior and never quite been superseded.
“It’s around the other side of the house.”
“Ah. Thank you, Legionary. I’ll get Lydia and be right out.”
And that was another point of decency, she thought, the Balboans giving us a credit—a limited credit, to be sure, but still a credit—to allow us to shop at the commissary. Of course, that means it’s easier on them because they can feed us through our own efforts with food seized when they took the Transitway area, but even so . . .
At the very least, when I do get home and someone asks me how we were treated, I’ll have to tell them, “Very well, indeed.”
MV Roger Casement (Hibernian Registry),
Port of Cristobal, Balboa, Terra Nova
The forty-foot container hung suspended by one of the ship’s two cranes, a few dozen feet above its red painted hull. The container swayed in the light tropical breeze coming off the Shimmering Sea to the south. About a hundred containers had already been loaded, and three hundred and twelve more were visible not far away, awaiting their turn.
It was a truism that no one really knew who owned any given merchant vessel. Between leases, lease backs, shadow corporations, dummy corporations, registrations under flags of convenience, and any of a hundred other tricks, merchant ships were essentially orphaned prostitutes. In the case of the Roger Casement , the owner was the Senate of Balboa, though even years of investigation was unlikely to prove that.
The Roger Casement had come in, bearing little but food and medical supplies, plus some building—which was to say, fortification—material. Its cargo discharged, orders had come from the corporation which at first glance might be said to own it, to pick up a load of Balboan fruit and coffee and deliver it to Jagelonia and Hordaland. The fruit, duly placed in refrigerated containers, was to be loaded where power could be supplied to those, for the most part aft of the ship’s superstructure. The coffee was
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