Part 23: Chatting over Cordite at the Whampoa Academy

Sino-Arumic Liaison Provisional Headquarters

Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

April 24th, 2016

The warbling tone of the portable terminal interrupted what had been shaping up to be a very steamy dream. Renaril lay still for several seconds, her frustrated groans insufficient to overwhelm the aggravating noise, then rolled off the bed, marched to the desk and gave the infernal machine a righteous thump. The alarm went silent and the screen lit up: the Arume's gaze flitted across it, seeing no messages requiring immediate attention. She put the device back into sleep mode, then checked the door to her cramped quarters.

As on many mornings, Colonel Kang was already up and had slipped a note under Renaril's door on her way out: after making the customary checkups, she would be going down to Hong Kong for the remainder of the morning. The paper scrap made no mention of a certain matter which had sprung upon them last night. Now that she thought of it, Renaril's first impulse was to go back to the terminal and open up the article in question. She suppressed that urge: she'd spent enough time looking at it already. Stepping over to the bed, the group commander lay on her back and stretched her arms and legs as far as she could.

Rationally she knew her dream made no sense, however vivid it was. Soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army had no business standing guard in the opulent Ming imperial court, and her sleeping mind seemed unable to picture the Tiananmen gate without Mao Zedong's portrait upon it. The setting of the nocturnal fantasy was a hodgepodge stitched together from the stack of historical dramas Elaqebil had dug up for her young friend. The flow of events, however, was born of Renaril's own imagination.

In the dream, Renaril was a slave – a captive brought into the palace from a faraway land, paraded before the officials for a leisurely inspection and chosen to serve the empress herself, before being led away by a pair of eunuchs with thick Australian accents. Her replay skimmed over the connecting scenes, in which she was stripped, bathed and perfumed by a group of other servants, girls who resembled herself yet carried names even more alien than her captors' own. The important part started when she was led into a lavish bedroom and left alone there... Alone until a rustling curtain betrayed the entry of another.

In reality, Kang Li walked in plain, efficient strides. In Renaril's brain, she moved with confident sensuality, her broad hips swaying with each step. Finely oiled skin gleamed in the soft light of the room's flickering lanterns. Dark, bottomless eyes evaluated the empress' prize languidly, lips forming a satisfied smirk when Renaril's alter ego understood what was wanted of her and lay back on the bed, slowly parting her thighs. In the next instant, the girl was lifted from the bed and crushed against Kang's body.

Renaril startled herself by letting an aroused moan slip out. She'd begun to rub herself without even thinking, and now certain parts of her flesh were stiffening and swelling under the thin material of her uniform. Her fingers rushed to the collar, triggering the micro-zipper and pulling the separating halves to either side with borderline convulsive force. The sudden current of air which tickled her flushed and increasingly wet folds could only reinforce just how strongly turned on she was: one hand slipped down between her legs, the other moving to the firm mounds just released from the confines of the body-hugging suit.

In her fantasy, it was the oriental war goddess whose fingers pinched and stroked her skin, whose tongue probed deep into her mouth and whose breasts yielded so pleasantly as the captive squirmed in her mistress' grip. She reached apogee all too soon, arching her back with an ecstatic squeal, and was left with a sheen of sweat and a fading tingle of pleasure for her efforts. Renaril lay still for another minute or two before rousing herself and stumbling off to the shower.

As the water began to flow, she pondered what the act said about her character. It was a forgone conclusion that the colonel would not approve. Elaqebil might reassure her student that these urges were perfectly normal for a healthy Arume of her age, or she might pity her for the remoteness of the object of her affections. Daebaril's approval would hinge on whether the elder Arume's personal dislike of Kang weighed more or less than her interest in gaining strong, well-formed grandchildren.

Renaril washed and dressed briskly, a vague plan forming. After she'd seen to her daily duties, she too would pay a visit to a certain person.

"This next one's called 'Gristly Bear'."

"Apple juice, lemon juice, Avtomat vodka..." Karan picked up the cartridge-shaped bottle and scrutinized its label. "Guaranteed to put any capitalist pig under the table?"

"Believe it, mate." Errol Darwin stirred the contents of his glass briskly, adding wine, berries and a slice of lemon to the concoction. "Ready?"

"I suppose." The Indian leaned over and cautiously sampled the drink through a straw. "Euagh... It's unbearable."

"Yah reckon?" Errol seized the mix and tossed it back. "WAAAAAAAAGH!"

"...Well?"

"I can't bear it either." Errol grimaced. "Bloody 'eck, me accent's slippin'!"

Kang walked onward, satisfied that the pair were keeping weapons and alcohol strictly segregated. She could still hear Errol whooping well after she'd left the experimenters behind, and saw just a few others going about their business as she navigated among the sprawling warehouses. The gradual rebuilding and resettlement of Hong Kong was yet to reach this district: the colonel had listened to the din of jackhammers and bulldozers on her ride through the outlying communities, yet here the loudest noises were gunshots coming from the Eto Delo training ranges.

The shooting had stopped by the time she reached her destination. Schuhart was right where he'd said he'd be, sitting under a striped canvas awning which extended from the wall of the warehouse facing the firing line. Phil Darwin was with him, along with a shortish Asian brunette whom the colonel didn't recognize. All sixteen of the gosta were there as well, holding an animated discussion in their native tongue.

"Hi Colonel," said the arms dealer affably, briefly looking up. "Gimme a couple minutes to finish this and I'm all yours."

The Chinese officer nodded, watching as he guided a cleaning rod into the breech of the long, badly worn rifle on his lap. Turning her eyes to the others, she observed that Phil was doing the same with a heavily-finned barrel which presumably belonged to the Brno machine gun sitting at his feet. The unknown woman seemed to be napping. Judging by the great age of the inventory laid up against the wall, today's excursion was for fun more than for training.

The tempo of the gosta conversation changed subtly. Kang inferred that they were talking about her, even before she caught her own name among the foreign words. Her relations with the alien orphans had gotten better since Lin Qinsong's attack on Guangzhou nearly a month ago, at which time they had decided by committee that she was a good person after all. The girls had adapted to their new environment spectacularly in the intervening weeks, though the melding of Arumic and Terran cultures produced its own set of idiosyncrasies: each one had either knotted up the front of her shirt or cut it away completely, honoring the Arume custom of exposing one's navel.

Suddenly the debate ended, and Richardson stood up. "Good morning, Colonel," she said respectfully. "You are well?"

"Yes... And you?"

"Very well," the gosta replied proudly. "We have been testing historical Chinese ordnance. Later we are going to visit Miss Camilla when she is released from hospital."

"I see."

Richardson's expression became grave. "Colonel, why have you not refuted the slanders which are being published by your rivals?"

"It's not the right time."

The girl frowned. "They are insulting you and insulting the painter. They are making you look bad... Are they not bad people?"

A straight affirmative would not be appropriate here, however accurate: the last occasion on which Kang positively identified a 'bad person' had led the gosta into a lengthy discussion of the ballistic combinations most suitable for deleting said malefactor from the gene pool. "It's... not so simple," she hedged.

"Rien n'est simple," Schuhart agreed. He reunited bolt and receiver, worked the action a couple of times, then set the elderly boom-stick aside. "All set." Rising from his chair, the large man collected a pair of oblong cardboard boxes. "Shall we?"

Kang fell into step beside him as he left the group. "So," she began once they'd walked a little distance, "I gather you've been adding to your collection."

"A little." Schuhart noticed a spent casing lodged in the front of his vest and, after a brief examination, pocketed it. "Found a Hanyang Eighty-Eight with some actual spirals left in it, plus a worn-out Zhongzheng Mauser and a Guomindang contract Vee-zee Twenty-Four for the pattern room... The Hanyang shoots about minute-of-arse with handloads – not bad for its age. You should give it a try sometime."

"Sometime," Kang answered noncommittally. "Who is your new companion?"

"Name's Sawakaze Mariko. She's joining Phil and Karan as a sniping instructor."

"Highly skilled?"

"She'd better be. Came highly recommended."

The colonel concurred with the sentiment: qualified training personnel were short all around. "How was the 'Free City' of Shanghai?"

"Pretty good," said Schuhart cheerfully. "Only one guy tried to kill me."

"...Seriously."

"Yeah." The munitions magnate scratched his chin. "I was in a bar on the Bund, meeting a possible buyer. This punk came in waving a three-fifty-seven snubbie: five rounds rapid, missed every time."

"Who was he?"

Schuhart shrugged. "Vitaly smashed his head with a stool before I could ask... Probably just another of bin Salaad's ten-a-penny toughs."

Oh yes, Kang thought sourly, the notorious Omar bin Salaad. One of these days, she was certain, Schuhart and bin Salaad were going to settle their differences once and for all... and she fervently hoped she wouldn't be in the vicinity when it happened. "Is the Nerv base secure?"

"Insofar as anything is secure in Shanghai."

"What was the stance of the Juche cadre?"

"The nomadic Nor-Kor diehards? They stayed on their ships as far as I could see... Locals didn't want to get close to 'em, and I didn't either."

"What about the warlords' roundtable? Is the talk of a united front true?"

"Yeah, but so far it's just talk." Schuhart made a turn at the next crossing, heading south towards the shore. "The warlords aren't team players – every one wants to be top dog. As it is, they can't amount to much individually... Didn't pick up much else of use there. You already know Taipei is making a bid for China's seat at the UN, yeah?"

"Yes."

"Right, well... The good news is, I was able to talk to General Jiang." The man grasped the smaller of the boxes and held it out. "He asked me to pass this along."

The box was unmarked. Inside, carefully wrapped in paper, was a bottle of Taiyuan vinegar with a small paper label affixed. For my worthiest opponent, it read, and Kang could imagine the old man chuckling dryly as he penned the ideographs. "The general attended in person?"

"Yeah... Showing off his power a little, I think. He's got it good – favorable terrain, energy reserves, heavy industry... Not to mention the largest share of the Chinese nuclear arsenal."

"He intends to pursue an independent course."

"Pretty much... He seems to think well of you personally, but he wants nothing to do with the sky eyes. Defending Shanxi is his top priority, he was very clear about that." The road ahead was blocked by rubble, sloping into the briny deep beyond the heaps of broken, algae-stained concrete. Schuhart turned right, walking parallel to the water. "That's all I got, I'm afraid."

Kang didn't like to trust in fickle hopes, but she felt relief at the knowledge that she might avert an armed campaign against her own homeland. "I appreciate it," she said sincerely.

"Hah." Stopping in the shade of a crumbling wall, Schuhart bent and adjusted his leg brace. "Excluding the Liaison made the whole thing a charade."

"Did your association with me cause you much trouble?"

"Nope." A foraging seabird flapped away as the pair drew near. "Word on the street is that I'm as mercenary as the next middleman... I did get a lot of questions about you, though."

"My private life?"

"Nah, mostly ideological stuff." The one-eyed man made a lemon-sucker face. "They know Marxism-Leninism, they know Stalinism and they know Maoism, but damned if they know Titoism-Dubcekism!"

Kang made a face of her own. "Is that what you called it?"

"That's what Jiang called it. I know you don't want it named after yourself, but 'New Communism' sounds... It doesn't have brand appeal, it's not catchy."

"Marketing can wait," the colonel pointed out. "Anything else to report?"

"Not from Shanghai." Coming up on the left was a wall which had fallen at an angle, creating a sort of rampart overlooking the harbor. Schuhart headed for it. "Unfortunately I didn't have much luck on the marksman rifles – Izhevsk and Cugir are both backordered and world-plus-dog is snapping up whatever the surplus market had."

Kang frowned as she followed him up the slope. "What about Kragujevac?"

"No word yet, but it's probably gonna be the same story."

The soldier tried not to grind her teeth as she gazed across the harbor. How had it been allowed, she wondered, for so much of China's former military might to be shuffled, sold, or simply lost over the years? "Then we will need to make do with what we have," she conceded, "until domestic production recovers."

"Maybe." Schuhart cocked his head. "This morning one of my, eh... suppliers called up and said to me, 'Tovarishch Schuhart, can I interest you in a depot?'"

Kang blinked. "A depot?"

"A Brezhnev-era reserve dump near Kharkov." The arms dealer carefully sat down. "The Ukrainians want the place cleared out for renovation and I got first pick of the relic heap... Must be their reward program for repeat customers."

"What did you get?"

"Some tanks, some anti-air weapons and a warehouse full of small arms."

The woman perked up slightly. "Any Dragunovs?"

Schuhart shook his head. "They kept those. We got the stuff made before 1950."

"How does that help me?"

"I have a few ideas. Let me talk to Nereus about it."

"Of course." There wasn't much else she could say.

They sat together in silence for a minute. "You know," said Schuhart at length, "Richardson has a point – staying silent may not make the scandalmongers go away."

"I know," Kang sighed. "But a careless denial will not be convincing."

"Bastards," the man grunted. "What the hell is 'The Empress's New Clothes' supposed to mean, anyway?"

"It's from – "

"I know what it's from," Schuhart interrupted. "I'm saying it's a cheap shot. It's got nothing to do with the original context." He contemplated his bad leg with an expression of disgust. "It's not just about disrupting morale or ridiculing you. The warlords want to rile up the puritans back in the States, scuttle your chance for most favored nation status."

"Perhaps."

"How's Renaril taking it?"

"I haven't seen her yet today."

"Hm." The cripple folded his arms across his chest. "So what are you going to tell her?"

"The truth."

Schuhart put a gravelly edge into his voice, as if he'd been hiding a serious smoking habit. "All we want are the facts, ma'am... Nine years ago, you were a first lieutenant. You went to Shanghai on leave. You met an art student who was in despair because his model abandoned him. You took pity on him and agreed to pose for a series of figure studies. Nothing indecent happened. Afterward you went back to your duties and never saw him again." The edge vanished. "Am I right?"

"Almost." Kang smiled just slightly. "I did check on him a few times."

"Doesn't make much difference. Renaril's probably so thrilled to see your..." The sentence trailed off. "Sorry."

"I expect she is thrilled," the officer replied mildly. "For better or worse."

"Yeah," Schuhart concurred solemnly, "emphasis on 'worse'." He glanced to the side. "It's starting to impact her performance, isn't it?"

"Yes." Kang hunched forwards, drawing her knees up and resting her arms on them. "She may require... disciplinary measures."

"Careful, now. She might not take that the way you mean it."

"I know." The woman bit her lip. "If she just wants sex, I... might be able to accommodate her. If she's looking for romance, that's another problem."

"Because you don't like her? Or because it would be 'inappropriate'?" Schuhart looked the other way, watching waves lap at the foundations of fallen structures. "Guess it's not really my business."

"It's all right." Kang stood up, brushing dust off her trousers. "I should return to headquarters... Thank you for everything."

"Everything? More like almost nothing," the arms dealer grunted, pushing himself off the rubble. "I'll give you a lift back... I was thinking of going up to Changzhou and taking a hike around the old military academy, if that's okay."

"It is." Kang carefully made her way back to the street. "By the way, what's that other box for?"

"Oh, right." Schuhart alighted with more finesse than such a large man should be capable of. "I wasn't sure I'd see you again before May first, so..." He held out the box in both hands. "Happy birthday, Colonel."

"I don't think I can help you."

"I haven't even told you why – "

"Coming to see me with that look on your face means you've either pissed off a G-Eight government or else you're having problems with the colonel."

This was not how Renaril wanted the conversation to begin, but she wasn't going to give up now – not after working up the courage to approach one of the biggest, scariest forime she'd ever met, on her own, in a place she barely knew. "I need advice on... getting to know her better."

"Go talk to her. If you're too scared to do that, then ask Elaqebil or Daebaril."

The Arume flinched at the thought of her chubby mentor bringing all her bounding enthusiasm to bear on the matter. "I can't get Elaqebil involved," she pleaded, "and Mother isn't on my side."

There was a sardonic snort. "What makes you think I am?"

"I don't," Renaril replied defensively, "but you are on the colonel's side."

"And?" Schuhart contemplated a small tree beside the narrow footpath. "I'm an arms dealer, not a dating agency. I sell stuff and get in fights. What do I know that does you any good?"

"You must have some idea of what she likes or doesn't like, what her tastes are..."

"Okay," the man answered flippantly. "The colonel likes team spirit and punctual people. She hates hypocrites and suck-ups. She doesn't wear skirts and she doesn't watch Star Trek... Do you feel enlightened now?"

For a few seconds Renaril thought she might burst into tears. "Why do you hate me?"

"I don't." Schuhart resumed his walk along the path, motioning for the group commander to follow him. "I've been sorely tempted at times, but I haven't been pushed quite far enough yet."

"Then why won't you help me?"

"You mean, why won't I tell you the secret to unlocking her heart?" The scarred man sighed before speaking again. "I don't know what the secret is, Group Commander. I could guess, but I'd probably be wrong."

"But you... you know, don't you, what kind of women she likes?"

"Not in any precise way." Schuhart stopped to examine a bronze plaque fixed on a granite plinth. "I only knew of one."

Renaril had heard a little about this person, but it was one of the subjects Kang would never discuss. "Tell me about her."

For a minute Schuhart said nothing, as if he hadn't heard the request. Then he limped over to the large, well-weathered tree which loomed over the next part of the path and rested his back against it. "Her name was Zheng Mei," he began softly. "Her father, Zheng Wu, was China's ambassador to Japan at the time."

"I met him," said the Arume. "He was part of the first talks in Shenzhen."

"Right, pulled away from his precious vacation... I first met the family when I was working in Japan, filling a security contract. Mei was studying engineering, and the colonel was her bodyguard – a punishment for some faux pas or other. Mei was... Well, she was a lot nicer than her money-grubbing dad." The dealer rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "She was cute, I guess. Very friendly, a bit naive... Could be pushy when she had to, especially against her father." His voice turned wistful. "It's really too bad things didn't work out."

"What happened?"

"The ambassador never liked the colonel, and Mei only ever saw her as a friend. Eventually Mei found a man she liked and married him, and the ambassador sent the colonel away... I suppose he thought bringing her along to the Liaison talks would, you know, dull the pain."

"I see." Renaril said that, but she didn't mean it. To her it seemed more probable that the gesture was meant to add insult to injury. Here's a whole race of women like you, she imagined the pudgy old man intoning snidely. Go have fun with them.

"I gather you don't approve," Schuhart remarked. Straightening, he resumed his walk. "That's the gist of the story. Does it help?"

"I... I think so." Renaril stumbled as she made to follow him, her slim shoes better suited to cool deck plates than loose warm gravel. "Mister Schuhart..."

"Hm?"

"Am I... not good enough?"

"That's not for me to say." He looked back over his shoulder. "You do understand the colonel has bigger things to worry about, right?"

"I know reuniting the country is important – "

"That's not what I mean." Schuhart made a broad sweeping motion with both arms. "Do you know what this place is?"

"Um... Some kind of military school?"

"The Nationalist Party of China's Army Officer Academy isn't just a school. It's a legacy of a time when the Chinese dreamed of rising above their harsh circumstances, of being more than a carcass for warlords, bandits and imperialists to pick at." Schuhart's eye wandered to the ragged banner hanging at the end of the path: a many-pointed white sunburst on a deep blue background. Beside it was a red banner bearing a yellow hammer and sickle, and between the two hung a painting of a serene-looking man with a thin mustache and prominent eyebrows. "The dream has been deferred, distorted and discarded over the years, but it hasn't yet died." He turned around. "It won't die, so long as the colonel believes in it."