by Tom Kratman
“Very strange people, these are,” observed Ayres.
“More than you know, RSM, more than you know.”
Assembly deck, MV Clarissa, Muelle 81, Ciudad Balboa
An open area had been left amidst the tall piles of neatly stacked containers. There were containers below it and only a tarp and a large number of large, slow-moving fans between those and the open sky, above. About a thousand folding chairs were laid out in rows, with a cruciform of wider spaces dividing the whole assembly into four parts. At the three far termini of that cross on the deck, Balboans, part of the legionary educational directorate, passed out cans of beer, one per man who wanted one, to the incoming Tauran prisoners.
Toward the front of the area, which was also toward the bow of the ship, a wooden platform had been raised by about five feet. On it were several chairs and one microphone on a stand. Behind the stand, on a wall composed of the ends of yet more containers, hung very large versions of a crucifix, a star of David, and a star and crescent.
Seeing those, the men typically moaned and said something like, “I joined the bloody army to get away from the holy joes” or “rabbis” or “imams.”
It was due to the nontrivial numbers of Moslems in the Anglian forces that the first one to speak, after the RSM has quieted the men down, was Achmed Qabaash, the Sumeri sent, with his brigade, to help Balboa against the Taurans.
He wore his Sumeri uniform, the insignia of which was plainly recognizable by any Anglian. Qabaash, himself, being partially Anglian educated, simply ordered them, without the usual flourishes, to, “Take seats.”
“Gentlemen,” he began, “I am Liwa Achmed al Qabaash, commanding Forty-third Tercio, Legiones del Cid, also known as First Brigade, Sumeri Presidential Guard. I think this is our first chance, this war, to get to know each other, since we played in somewhat different circles during the war.
“Moslems among you, of whom I know there are some; if you look behind me you will see our own star and crescent. You may remain here, with your old comrades, and you will be treated the same as anyone else. Alternatively, I have received special permission—no, do not ask about the intricate legalities behind this and behind why you are the only exceptions granted—to sign you up with my own brigade. I have taken serious losses, so you will be welcome. However, in all honesty, I must confess that the pay is not as good as you are used to. Still, the cost of living is less in Sumer, we have a lot of fun and, after all, we were smart enough to be on the winning side.”
That got a mass groan, though not an angry one, from virtually all the men in the assembly deck.
“Please make your decision quickly, for our airship home comes for us the day after tomorrow, tomorrow being our victory parade with the other tercios of the legion of which we were a part . . .”
Unheard, Marqueli quietly asked her husband, “Just what are the special circumstances that allow them to leave and give up on their own army?”
Leaning over slightly, he whispered, “There are two I am fairly sure of, love, along with one guess. One is that Qabaash is leaving, so anyone who crosses over won’t be sticking around here to potentially have to fight their own armies. Thus, our laws against treason shouldn’t kick in. The other is that nations are inherently suspect, under Islam, so the Duque felt it was questionable if the Moslems even could have legitimate loyalty to the Anglian state. The third, my guess, is that the Duque is planning something for which he doesn’t want Qabaash here and doesn’t want to ever send the Moslems back to Taurus.”
“Oh.”
Still at the microphone, Qabaash missed that interplay, but announced, “And so, let me introduce to you your two primary instructors for your upcoming course in History and Moral Philosophy, Warrant Officer Doctor Jorge Mendoza, and his lovely wife, Marqueli.”
Jorge came to the microphone first, while Qabaash backed away, then walked down the side stairs to the back of the assembly area. About thirty swarthy men in uniform awaited him there.
“I was a healthy private once,” Jorge said. “Then I was a crippled private. Let me tell you about that. I was in a tank, serving as a driver, in Sumer, during the invasion there. We were all brand new then, fighting, among others, the same man who just stepped down. The reputation of Arab armies is quite bad, of course, but there’s an exception to every rule. The men Legate Qabaash fought alongside were that exception.
“My tank was hit from above by a gutsy son of a bitch with a light antitank weapon. The ammo went off; the fuel went off; and I was blown bodily out of the driver’s compartment. My last sight for many years was of my own legs being snipped off as I was propelled upward on a column of fire. And that’s when and that’s why I went blind. There was nothing wrong with my sight; after seeing my own legs crudely sliced away my brain simply shut down and refused to admit to seeing anything my eyes sent it.”
Jorge then bent over and began to roll his uniform trouser legs up, first the left one, then the right, exposing his very high-tech prosthetics, all black carbon fiber and wiring. “For a legless man, you know, I could probably outrun two thirds of the men here, today.
“I know it’s going to be hard for you to believe, coming from a continent where soldiers are not only not very high priorities, but are actively despised and hated by the transnational ruling class, that a crippled soldier from a poor country like ours should get the very best in medical care and the very latest in prosthetic limbs. Well, as my wife will explain to you, there are reasons for that . . .”
Marqueli was speaking on the stage now, talking about truth in advertising, her relationship to Carrera through his wife, Lourdes, but also how Jorge’s medical care preceded any relationship except that of soldier and commander between him and the Duque.
“You’ve heard all this before, I suppose,” said RSM Ayres to Hendryksen.
“One version or another of it, yes. This isn’t the persuasive part. That comes when they start talking right and wrong, nature and nurture, and sacrifice and power.”
“Do you buy it?”
“Some of it,” the Cimbrian admitted. “Okay, most but not all.”
“Are the men going to buy it . . . no, let me ask a different question: before we speak of buying, what are they selling?”
“The short version is that service must come before citizenship, and that citizenship in the absence of service, and in the appearance of democracy, is a fraud.”
Ayres digested that for a long moment, then asked, “And the men, do they buy what the Balboans are selling?”
“Overwhelmingly.”
Cristobal Province, Balboa
While there has never been any such thing as the old joke about “mess-kit repair battalions,” there actually were military organizations that did similar things. Sometimes called “salvage” units, of whatever size, these took damaged, lost, and abandoned equipment and supplies, inventoried them, assessed them, repaired them and issued them at need. Typically, these had a very close relationship with quartermaster laundry and bath units, because when frontline soldiers reduced to rags finally got a shower, their own uniforms were past repair and would be replaced with either new uniforms or used ones from the salvage unit.
Currently four of the five corps-level salvage maniples were busily inventorying and amassing the almost incredible haul from the Tauran Union’s late expeditionary force. There were perhaps as many as one thousand armored vehicles, heavy and not so heavy, a similar number of serviceable or repairable guns and mortars, thousands, tens of thousands, of tons of ammunition, small arms galore, radios, wheeled vehicles, helmets, rations, medical supplies . . .
“But rounding up the small arms is the priority right now,” said the commander of one such company. “Small arms and their ammunition. Oh, and the mortars, antiarmor weapons, and the ammunition for those, too.”
“Kind of strange, sir, isn’t it?” asked the maniple’s first centurion. “I mean, you would think we’d prefer to feed the Taurans their own food and to use their medical
supplies, but, no, we’re salvaging rifles, machine guns, mortars?”
“We only serve and obey, Top.”
“Yes, sir, but, you know, sir, it’s going to be a while. If we put one hundred men on the small arms alone, and those just in this sector, it’s going to take a month just to clean and preserve them and match them to their ammunition.”
“Yeah, Top, I know. How about the containers and desiccant? Any word?’
“Just that they’re coming, sir. Maybe in the next day or two. Oh, also corps told us we could coat the weapons with used motor oil in a pinch.”
BdL Dos Lindas, Mar Furioso
It’s been, thought Fosa, a very long time since we’ve gone through this ballet.
The dance, the ballet, he had in mind was the complex drill of fueling, arming, and, where needed, moving to the deck the light attack aircraft, the Turbo-finches and Gabriels scheduled for the attack on the Zhong destroyers covering Marciano’s northern, seaward flank.
Though it had been months since they’d had to do anything of the kind, the crew had never really stopped practicing during their internment. As they had regularly, during the internment—standing behind Fosa, who occasionally glanced their way—the handlers coordinated—choreographed—every step, using models laid out on mockups of the flight and hangar decks.
The whole show was made more complex by the need to maintain the existing aerial antisubmarine screen even as the strike package was launched and assembled.
It’s just possible that they’re in the best form they’ve ever been.
Anyone else watching the show would have had to agree, as the ballet played out, with the elevators rhythmically lifting aircraft to the flight deck, fuel hoses dragged by men in purple snaking out to top off the fuel tanks, red bedecked ordnance crew moving, jacking up, and attaching missiles to hardpoints.
This last process was particularly of interest to Fosa, as some of those missiles cost a good deal more than the aircraft carrying them. In particular, the six Shiva-class antishipping missiles cost about two-thirds as much as all the other aircraft in the strike package, combined.
Part of the ballet was, of course, getting the aircraft airborne. This, given the kind of aircraft—basically derived from crop dusters—was much easier for the Dos Lindas than for any other aircraft carrier afloat on the planet. No catapult was needed, only that the ship nose into the wind, that the yellow-suited aircraft handlers ensure the way was clear and give the pilots their signal.
On the other hand, even as improved, the Gabriels could only carry one missile when launched from the Dos Lindas, rather than the two they could have carried if flying from a fifteen hundred or so foot hard-surfaced airstrip on land. Even at half a load, and even with a strong headwind, the planes typically waddled down the flight deck, and almost disappeared as they sank toward the ocean before rising up again.
Near gives me a fucking heart attack every time I watch one of those.
***
Turbo-finch Number 72
Number 72, which was the tail number of the plane and had nothing to do with its serial number or the seniority of the pilot, was the command bird for the mission. As such, it carried, uniquely for this strike, in addition to the pilot, both several extra radios, a senior officer to use them, and a horribly cramped rating to assist.
It had been the first up, piloted by a Warrant Officer Valdez and carrying a Legate Third named Cortez. The rating also had a name, but nobody much cared about it except for him.
Both the Gabriels and the Finches were economic with fuel even as they carried a good deal of it. Their loiter time was impressive, at seven hours for the latter and five and a half for the former. What made that important was that even taking half an hour to form up the package, they had lots of range still. This mattered because the Zhong destroyers they were aiming at were a good two hundred nautical miles away.
Zhong Destroyer Changsha,
Off the northern coast of Santa Josefina
A frowning helmsman kept his eyes to the front and his ship on course as his captain scanned forward over the calm sea.
There were two destroyers, only, in Captain Liu’s flotilla, Changsha and Chengdu. In line abreast, they moved toward a rendezvous with the enemy fleet. Water feathered up to either side of Destroyer Chengdu’s bow as it sliced through the waves at about one-quarter speed. Looking at the sister ship’s bow wave from the side, Liu thought, One-quarter speed is plenty; no need to hurry to die.
The Zhong skipper was under no illusions about his chances; they were nil. He once again glanced left from the bridge at Changsha’s sister ship and thought, I could run. I could just scuttle the ships and claim we were sunk. But then someone would talk; someone always talks, and I’d be lucky if my children were not skinned alive.
And the enemy? Yes, they’re primitive, too, as much so as, or even more than, my ships. But they have the numbers. They own the water underneath me, if those Gallic reports are to be believed. Then, too, something destroyed the Wu Zetian. My cousin, commanding the Mao Zedong, could not be very specific, but he was nearby when the Wu was destroyed and he warned me to watch out below. And behind.
Maybe worse, they own the skies above me. Primitive aircraft? Yes. Not built to purpose? Yes. But in the kingdom of the blind . . . and we are so blind . . .
I know they’re out there, both my sonar and my radar know exactly where they are, ships out of range of anything I can throw at them.
Of course, we don’t know where their submarines are. Nor will we until it is far too late. Even so, I’ll make a guess that it’s not submarines I have to worry about today, that those are staying fairly close to their irreplaceable carrier.
So no, my death will come from above . . . unless they want to send their heavy cruiser to destroy me. It can; it not only outguns both my ships taken together, it has enough armor to take the hits we cannot.
I can just picture the command and staff meeting before the Balboans sailed out, with submarine captains getting into fistfights with the cruiser’s skipper and the pilots, because everybody wanted the chance to kill us and any of them can do the job.
The image in his mind of that supposed argument made Liu laugh. Thought the helmsman, If the skipper can laugh, what do I have to worry about? His previous frown was replaced with a slight smile.
CHAPTER FIVE
No, I have no right to rank with the great captains, for I have never commanded a retreat.
—Moltke the Elder
Over and on the Mar Furioso, North of Santa Josefina
At about fifty miles out, the package split into three, two of six Finches, each, and one, much more spread out, consisting of the six Gabriels. One package of Finches circled out to sea, enveloping the Zhong destroyers. The other did the same thing, but veered toward the land. The Gabriels just spread out and, like the others, kept their height over the water to about twenty to twenty-five feet. The solitary command bird, Number 72, began circling higher and then a bit higher, until he had not only a clear view of the Zhong, but could see perhaps twelve miles past them. He was well out of range of anything expected to be on the old Federated States giveaways.
The legate in charge, Cortez, gave the command, “Finches, start bobbing.”
Those aircraft duly began raising themselves off the clutter of the ocean surface, enough to give the Zhong both radar and visual acquisition. They’d raise and then dive, raise and dive. In his very large spotting scope, Cortez could actually see the Zhong rapidly traversing their twin five-inch mounts, as well as the lighter forty- and twenty-millimeter air defense guns. The ships, themselves, also began to maneuver, or at least to zigzag. Cortez understood that this was mostly to avoid being an easy target.
This is beginning to feel like killing puppies, Cortez thought. Oh well, mine is not to reason why . . .
Beepbeepbeep . . . “Gabriel Six, Strike Six,” Cortez sent over the radio.”
Beepbeepbee
p. “Gabriel.”
Beepbeepbeep. “You are cleared to have one of your planes launch one sea-skimming missile, azimuth zero-one-seven.”
Beepbeepbeep. “Roger, one Shiva, zero-one-seven.”
Beepbeepbeep. “You are cleared to have a second of your planes launch one sea-skimming missile, approximate azimuth zero-one-four.”
Beepbeepbeep. “Roger, one Shiva, zero-one-four.”
“Finches, begin to close in from the sides. Don’t be an easy target but keep their eyes on you.”
There was a brief chorus of “rogers.”
As the Finches began to veer in, Cortez saw first one, then another, Gabriel rise to launch and release a streak of flame from under its belly.
Yeah, drowning puppies.
Zhong Destroyer Changsha
The guns had long since been cleared to fire. The ship rattled and roared, spitting out defiance. It was a waste of ammunition, especially since the enemy aircraft were still out of range of the forties and twenties, but, What the hell, it’s not like we’re going to have any use for ammunition in a short time.