Days of Burning, Days of Wrath

by Tom Kratman

  Her two main bits of muscle, Corporal Dawes and Sergeant Greene, snickered at the sudden pallor that took over Jonathan Houston’s face. The rest of Campbell’s direct-action team, seconded to her from the Anglian Special Air Service, likewise snickered, but lacked enough of the detail Greene and Dawes possessed to make a very enthusiastic show of it. They simply enjoyed Houston’s obvious discomfort.

  The whole Anglian crew, nine members of the SAS, Campbell and Houston, plus the lovely, albeit thin, Gallic captain, Turenge, occupied one corner of one floor of the headquarters. Turenge, though armed, was away from the windows, listening into an earpiece attached to a small portable radio. They were all armed. Unlike the Anglians, whose insular histories tended to deprecate and discount both domestic violence and the means of violence, the history of Gaul had been almost unremittingly violent since inception. As such, they tended to expect disaster and likewise to prepare for it. In this case, preparation had come in the form of an arms room and ammo bunker, in total with enough arms and ammunition for a small war.

  There was also enough food for several weeks, over and above what the city authorities had collected.

  These factors had both proven to be important, though the food was less so, so far. Whereas the Moslems in Sachsen had been more or less integrated inside the cities, hence had found it fairly easy to take them over, in Gaul they’d generally been banished to towns outside the major cities. This had had two effects. One was that it had been easier to smuggle arms to them, by Khalid’s French-speaking colleagues, meaning they were also somewhat better armed. The other was that taking the cities had been much harder, since they’d had to work their way in from the outside, and the Gallic civilians had turned out to be a lot better armed than Gallic proponents of gun control had imagined, with a surprising number and amount of arms and ammunition left over from the Great Global War, generally hidden in a closet, or up in an attic.

  The headquarters had been among the first places to stand like a rock, as the men and women—to include a goodly number of civilians—had flocked to the arms room and then, the armorer having given up on getting signatures, raced to man the windows and doors. A substantial number of Moslem rebels lay in various postures of undignified death in the streets around the building.

  So far, the Moslems hadn’t asked for a truce to recover their dead, while the Gauls and other Taurans in the building hadn’t been especially eager to offer one. Instead, as they’d organized their numbers, they had simply sat back for a siege of the place. This didn’t prevent a certain amount of psychological warfare from continuing.

  Jan and her people were better placed than most to see where the screaming was coming from but they still couldn’t see it. They were also better placed to hear what the screaming was, and couldn’t do anything to stop it. It went on for a long time, several hours, from at least two tortured throats, before anyone had a clue what it was.

  They found out when two poles were erected over a wall on the other side of the boulevard. The poles hadn’t been screaming, of course. Instead, the sources now hung by their wrists from the poles. Jan took a set of binoculars, dialed the focus in, and immediately pulled them from her eyes.

  “My God, how could anyone . . . ?” She had no answer, though she had a strong urge to retch. Greene borrowed the binoculars and looked for himself. It took about half a minute for his mind to believe what his eyes were seeing.

  “They skinned them,” he said. “Obviously alive . . . they’re still alive . . . the bastards fucking skinned two people alive and then hung them up on display.”

  “Braiden?”

  “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “Put them out of their misery.”

  Two shots rang out. Everyone could hear those, too, and, by that time, understood what was going on.

  Ten minutes later, Sergeant Pangracs came calling. He was the senior medic at the headquarters, and more used to passing out pills to snivelers than to field expedient surgery. He was, however, picking up the latter rather quickly.

  He’d already been a deft hand with psychological issues. That was why he materialized at Jan’s corner with a bottle of brandy and a fistful of paper cups.

  “I figured you guys might need this.”

  Santa Cruz, Santa Josefina, by the Cordoban Border

  “The patrols all say the same thing,” said Rall to Marciano. “The enemy is thickening by the day. One group managed to get eyes on a particularly nasty-looking artillery group, about ten kilometers from our forward trace. It looked, the squad leader thought, like Balboan regular artillery, well trained, and digging in fast.”

  “They’re not even bothering to hide it,” Marciano observed.

  “They don’t have to, anymore, sir. They’ve won. They’ve won more completely that I ever imagined they could have.”

  “How long do you think we have before they’ve brought up enough to stomp us out of existence, Rall?”

  “Less time than I thought initially,” the Sachsen answered. “Do you think it’s time for us to get interned in Cordoba?”

  “No . . . we’ve got to get back home intact. And soon. We are needed there. Internment would last until a peace treaty was arranged, and there can be no peace treaty while most of our government—our governments—are on the run from or captured by the Moslem rebels.”

  “It would be a worthy goal, getting home to fight for our own again,” Rall agreed, “but, I confess, I haven’t the slightest idea how to do it.”

  “An airship, maybe?” Marciano suggested. “We have enough in the treasury to charter one.”

  “No . . . no,” said Rall, “the range is so short the Santa Josefinans will shoot it down. And we can’t cross into Cordoba to get out of range because they’d have to intern us. They were terrified of the Balboans before, but now . . .”

  “‘And now Carrera, too, is running on the mountain, with no more between him and his will than a wolf has.’” Marciano quoted.

  “Where did that come from?” Rall asked.

  “Book—old book—from Old Earth; The Last of the Wine.”

  “Ah. Someone predicted the son of a bitch that far back?”

  “In a way.”

  MV ALTA, Mar Furioso

  A single Condor, one of the stealthy gliders developed by Obras Zorilleras, had come in the night before, carrying a heavy package for Hamilcar Carrera. Opening it would have been a chore, the package being three Faraday cages, one inside the other, with directions not to open them until the very last possible minute. Given that Ham knew what was inside the last cage, those were instruction with which he fully agreed.

  This morning, a two-man Condor sat on the deck, with eleven more resting behind it. The gliders sat on lightweight rolling frames. The frames might be recovered, when the gliders launched, but they were just as likely to go into the sea. No matter; they were cheap and easily replaced.

  The Condors were highly stealthy auxiliary propelled gliders developed by the Legion’s Obras Zorilleras. Stealthiness, in this case, was not achieved with precision manufacture, based on advanced engineering, itself derived from complex calculations. No; stealth here was acquired randomly.

  Of the three normal primary factors that affect an aircraft’s radar, cross section, size, materials, and shape, the Condor made little deliberate use of the first and the last. True, they were not large, and that helped. It was also true that they had no sharp edges and no flat surfaces. These, however, were incidental. For size, although it is the least important factor, if two aircraft have exactly the same materials and shape, but are of different size, the larger will have a greater radar cross section. For shape, the important things are to have no sharp edges, no flat surfaces pointed toward the radar. These things, however, accrued to the design by virtue of them being gliders, and had little deliberate stealth to them.

  Instead, it was in something of a perversion of the normal rules for materials that the Condors acquired their stealthiness. The short version was that they were b
uilt, at core, of a radar-absorbing carbon fiber and resin shell, around which had been built up a thick layer of decreasingly dense foam in which were suspended hundreds of thousands of tiny, radar-scattering concave-convex chips. The shell, being “lossy,” absorbed incoming radar and converted it to heat. The chips either scattered incoming radar or concentrated and then scattered it. Very, very small percentages of the radar energy would ever return to the sender.

  So far, whether in scouting or bombing the tactical enemies, carrying messengers and senior leaders, bombing the Tauran Union on their home turf, bombing Cienfuegos, killing foreign dignitaries and even chiefs of state, delivering a nuclear weapon, or, indeed, scouting the United Earth Peace Fleet’s Atlantis Base, the amount of radar returned had never yet been enough to permit detection. Moreover, since the process of applying the foam was random, every Condor was tested for radar return and then assigned to a particular duty based on mission, with the most stealthy being used for the most important missions, and the least as throwaways for less important ones. A lot of very expensive missiles could be expended on birds before a first-class Condor was identified and engaged.

  It didn’t go without saying, because it had never been so much as whispered outside of the most secure facility in Balboa, or aboard a ship, that the twenty-four crew and four standbys selected from the Fourteenth Cazador Tercio for the mission were among the most capable, more determined, gutsiest men in Balboa. Moreover, they’d been preparing for years.

  Awaiting launch, two of those men sat in the lead Condor: Tribune Cherensa, the mission commander and one of the oldest still active Cazadores in the Legion, plus the pilot, Cazador Sergeant Leon. Both wore combination intercom and oxygen masks.

  The launch method had been a subject of much thought, as had the payload. For the latter, it had been argued that two five-hundred-pound bombs would have been more effective against a block in the UEPF’s perimeter defenses than three hundred pounds of men and two hundred of equipment and ordnance. The question had never gone up to Carrera. Instead, Omar Fernandez and the legate of Fourteenth Cazador had decided, together, that a bomb was good for one place and one time, if everything went right, but that men, good men, were flexible enough to deal with anything.

  To amuse himself while waiting, Cherensa mentally recited the legion’s definition of Special Operations: “Special operations are those small unit actions, the geopolitical, strategic, or operational importance of which, and the price for failure in which, are so high that they justify the early identification and special training of extraordinary human material and the continuing expenditure of relatively lavish levels of money and materiel.”

  Well, thought the tribune, this being the first blow in the “First Interstellar War,” it probably counts as special enough.

  Cherensa’s reveries were interrupted by one of the deck crew, holding out an inquisitorial thumbs-up, head half turned away. The pilot, sitting up front, returned it. The deck crewman made a kind of “after you, madam,” bow. The Condor began to thrum and vibrate as Leon started the small jet engine and fed it fuel. The engine also gave off a whine that Cherensa found distinctly annoying.

  The Condor also began to move, slowly at first, and then picking up speed. Still, it was all very gentle. Between the wind coming from the bow, half natural and half from the forward movement of the ship, it seemed to be mere seconds before Cherensa felt the thing lift off the cradle. He didn’t have the chance to see deck crew race out to drag the cradle out of the way.

  The ship wasn’t pointed quite at the target, so almost immediately after takeoff, Leon had to veer a bit to keep the glider between the island, and any thermal detecting defenses it might have, and the engine.

  “Is number two behind us, yes?” Leon asked.

  Cherensa turned to look. A curse died unspoken as he saw the other glider rise to take up position behind and to the right of his own. “They’re in place,” he answered.

  “Okay, increasing speed, sir. Please let me know if they start to fall behind. Also, if you can tell me about number three?”

  “Wilco . . . there’s three.”

  Leon kept track of altitude as the Condor arose. At twelve thousand feet he reached over and turned a dial to provide one liter of oxygen per minute to each mask. Cherensa didn’t consciously notice any change.

  Shortly after turning on the oxygen, Leon announced, “Sixteen thousand feet, sir; I’m killing the jet and leveling off.”

  After the long climb, leveling off felt like falling to the tribune. “Roger,” he said, then asked, “how long before the engine gets cool enough to retract?”

  “No more than twenty minutes, but I’ll give it thirty to be safe.”

  “Good. I like safe.”

  “Me, too, boss; me, too. Is number two conforming? Number three?”

  Again Cherensa twisted about and watched the trail gliders for a few moments before reporting, “Yes.”

  Condors, especially when purely gliding, were slow. They were also, absent turbulence, extraordinarily smooth riding. In other words they were . . .

  Boring, boring, boring, thought Cherensa. I’d probably go to sleep except that we have essentially no idea of what’s waiting.

  Cherensa pulled out the target folder from its pocket on the front of his silk and liquid metal lorica, the legions’ standard torso armor. He turned a page and looked at a map on the left and a photo on the right thinking, Defenses. All strategic recon could figure out was that there were domes around the perimeter of Atlantis Base. They’re well positioned to bedefenses, but we don’t know what kind, or even if they are. Fernandez’s best guess—and I agree with him—is that they’re probably antiaircraft and antimissile defense, mostly with the Federated States in mind.

  The next page was labeled “Landing Field Conditions.” Sadly, it was blank except for a photo that was too fuzzy to be remotely useful.

  He turned another page and scanned for the umpteenth time for “Enemy Personnel.” Not like it’s going to have changed since last night. Vehicles were spotted carrying people to and fro, but what they did there or how many were stationed there   .  .  .  no clue. We could make an educated guess about how many might be stationed on the single visible floors below the domes—maybe six or seven, not more than that—but we don’t have a clue how many floors deep down into the ground they go. We don’t know how well trained they are. We don’t know how they’re armed. We don’t know if they have defenses for poison gas. We have an idea of how long it will take to reinforce them, because we think there are company-sized barracks, maybe five kilometers away from the four we’re going after.

  On the other hand, if we and the other three mission packages succeed in taking out the defenses, those reinforcements won’t matter, because the ALTA is going to pour missiles through the gap and obliterate anything that looks like a possible defense or barracks within minutes of our reporting in.

  But, for that to happen  .  .  .

  Cherensa’s thoughts were interrupted by a clank and a shudder.

  “Tell me, Leon, that that was just the jet being retracted.”

  “Yes, Tribune, just that.”

  “Great. In the future, let me know, okay?”

  “Yes, Centurion. Sorry, Centurion.”

  “How long until we hit now?”

  After a brief delay, Leon answered, “About an hour and ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  When one would make a surprise attack on the enemy, he should avoid the major roads and seek out the lesser ones. Then attack.

  —Takeda Nobushige

  UEPF Spirit of Peace

  Ensign Esmeralda Miranda sat on a chair in a corner of the high admiral’s plush quarters; plush, at least, by the standards of the United Earth Peace Fleet. Xingzhen, empress and de facto, if not de jure, ruler of the Zhong, lounged against pillows piled against the bulkhead that did double duty as the head of the bed. The empress was covered only by a light sheet that came no higher than
her waist. Not young and yet still aetherially beautiful, she enjoyed the effect her half nakedness had on the high admiral, who was also her lover. Also in the suite were Commander Iris Khan, the fleet’s sociology officer, plus the high admiral herself, the tall, blonde, and svelte Marguerite Wallenstein.

  “They did what?” demanded Wallenstein, slamming her hand down emphatically onto the top of her Silverwood desk.

  “They’ve declared war on us, war on the Earth,” answered Iris, also known as “Commander Khan, female” or “Commander Khan, wife.” “That barbarian Carrera’s wife announced it in the World League. Formally. In the middle of the battle they assembled a quorum of their senate and got a formal declaration of war. Ordinarily, I’d say we could just blow it off, a little pissant country declaring war on a planet they can’t even get to. But . . .”

  “But, no, not in this case,” said Wallenstein. “In this case, if they say something, we need to take it seriously. Where’s your husband?”

  “Hunched over a monitor, scanning inputs from every ship, every skimmer, every embassy . . .”

  “The embassies!” Wallenstein’s blue eyes flashed. “They can get to us through those!”

  “He’s also had his assistant ask all the host countries down below with help providing security, from the ground and the air. They’ve put out a general alert for all our personnel planet-side to get to the nearest embassy or, at least, to vacate their normal quarters, if they’re not staying inside an embassy, and to go hide somewhere.”

  “That’s sound, I think,” Wallenstein agreed. “How long before our local security is augmented?”