by Tom Kratman
“Thenjiwe!” Alexander shouted, dropping to a knee beside Thenjiwe and going reflexively into casualty treatment. His cousin was still breathing, but he was out cold and bleeding profusely—
Mjanwe stopped him.
“I have him, sir, command the battalion!”
Alexander nodded, standing back up even as Mjanwe began treating the wound whilst screaming for a medic.
The enemy was within one hundred meters now. Torn by steel, shaken by concussion, covered in their own blood and the blood of their comrades, still they advanced. All about him, Alexander’s men were reaching the end of their ammunition.
But not the end of their courage.
Taking a deep breath, Alexander screamed from the bottom of his gut and gave what he expected to be the last orders of his life.
“FIX BAYONETS! KILL THEM ALL! NGADLA!”
His riflemen snapped their leaf shaped bayonets in place, his machine gunners and other troops without bayonet lugs on their weapons drew their traditional Iklwah short spears. Oberleutnant Mueller and his engineers affixed bayonets or prepared to gut the enemy with sharpened entrenching tools.
A medic slid into their foxhole and began to work on Thenjiwe. Alexander rapidly split the last of his magazines with Mjanwe as the old man stood to join him. Alexander’s ammo load was relatively full due to the fact that he’d been busy talking on the radio rather than shooting.
Moving targets were harder to hit, but the enemy was running straight toward them, simplifying the task a bit. Alexander placed his rifle on single shot, lined up the holographic crosshairs on the lead insurgent, less than fifty meters from his foxhole, and squeezed, his rifle jolted into his shoulder and—CRACK—the man tumbled to the ground.
The next bravest insurgent followed his friend to the ground, Alexander missed the third shot, and the fourth, but finally felled that target with a controlled pair—CRACK-CRACK. Mjanwe and Alexander stacked a dozen men in front of their foxhole, but then the gap was closed. Three men, uniformed and armed with Italian rifles were on the forward lip of their position.
The rightmost died instantly, Mjanwe blew off the back of his skull at point blank. The center man was on Mjanwe before the old warrior could shift his muzzle to bear. Mjanwe barely managed to parry the man’s bayonet lunge with his own rifle. The two collided, falling back against the rear of the command hole, grunting and cursing as they struggled for advantage.
Alexander drove his bayonet into the leftmost man’s guts and pulled the trigger on his still loaded rifle, blowing the man’s innards and a chunk of his spine out onto a nearby palm. The insurgent’s eyes widened in shock and pain; he slid to the jungle floor just in front of their foxhole and clutched his guts. Alexander placed his rifle muzzle to the back of the man’s head and pulled the trigger before turning to plunge his bayonet into the man who attacked Mjanwe.
The blade pierced the remaining attacker’s kidney, black blood spreading across the back of his uniform like an ink stain. He exhaled sharply, arched his back and screamed. Mjanwe took the opportunity to stab the man in the gut as he fell forward, knocking them both to the floor of the foxhole. Both Zulus screamed the ancient battle cry, “NGADLA!”
Alexander kicked the dead insurgent off his adjutant-chef and offered the older man his hand. Mjanwe took it, springing back to his feet with Alexander’s help.
“Than—”
The expression of gratitude died in a rush of air and a gurgle, an arrow protruded from Mjanwe’s throat, blood welling out of the puncture.
“NO!”
Alexander whirled to see a boy, in his early teens at most, kneeling less than ten meters away and reloading a crossbow. Enraged, Alexander leveled his rifle and cranked off five shots. Perfect trigger squeeze was hardly needed at that range, the boy’s reedy frame jerked as each bullet caught him in the chest.
The medic shifted his attention from Thenjiwe, who was now bandaged, to Mjanwe. Alexander, knowing his duty, kept to the fight. Three more insurgents died before reaching his foxhole and were not immediately replaced by a new threat. Alexander took the second of respite to load his last magazine and try to regain situational awareness.
The indirect fire had ceased from both sides, without a radio to check, he assumed that his mortars had burned through their entire load of ammunition. The enemy were only trickling through the human-carpeted gaps in the wire now, but his lines were already infested, overwhelmed by CLF, more than a thousand of them, he estimated.
The 1st Battalion of the 1st Zulu Auxiliary Rifles was dying hard, but it was dying.
Movement to his front drew his attention. A squad of non-uniformed, flintlock-armed insurgents appeared in front of his foxhole, kneeling and aiming, at him!
Alexander threw himself flat to the ground, pulling the medic down with him as a volley of lead balls flew overhead, ripping large divots out of the mud at the front of his foxhole but passing overhead without harming him or his comrades. Alexander popped back up immediately and returned fire.
Rather than try to reload, the squad of musketeers charged. Five fell to Alexander’s rifle before they reached his hole, but four jumped into his foxhole, swinging their heavy wooden muskets like clubs. One attacker swung at the medic, who tried to dodge but took the brunt of it on his left leg. He collapsed to the floor screaming.
Alexander batted aside the first swing aimed at him and kicked that man in the balls as hard he could, but the move left his right leg exposed and another insurgent managed to hit the back of his knee. A flash of intense pain surged through his entire right side when the wooden stock made impact with a meaty thwack. The force of it bent his joint, thankfully in the right direction, and buckled Alexander to kneeling.
In pain, but still aware, Alexander lunged awkwardly and managed to slash at that attacker’s belly with his bayonet, drawing a stream of blood and a howl of pain. He tried to whirl in time to close the gap in his defense opened by the lunge, but a third attacker landed a crushing over-hand blow on his shoulder, dislocating his arm with a sickly wrenching noise. Alexander’s rifle fell from his grasp and another buttstock hit him squarely in the chest, knocking him sprawling on his back at the bottom of the foxhole and driving the air from his lungs.
Time dilated for Alexander, the insurgents’ muskets cast unnaturally long shadows as his enemies raised their weapons, preparing to club him to death. But just as the muskets reached the aphelion of their deadly arcs, the angry hornet sound of bullets flying nearby and accompanying thump-squelches of impact broke the moment. Alexander’s attackers jerked as bullets ripped through them and they fell limp against the sides of the foxhole.
His breath returning to him, Alexander lurched to his feet. The medic was by his side, supporting him, his own assailant also lay dead at the bottom of the foxhole. Alexander hadn’t noticed the boy was German, not Zulu, until just then.
“Danke,” Alexander said.
“Bitte,” the blue-eyed boy said, panting.
Zulu prince and German private looked around for their saviors. Alexander first saw his own mortarmen joining the fray. Good lads, when they’d run dry of ammo they’d marched to the main line of battle. But also—
More than four hundred fully kitted infantrymen in lighter green fatigues than Alexander’s Zulus. The entire remainder of Cochina’s German contingent, and approaching his foxhole was a familiar, short boxy figure. Colonel Karl-Heinz Schwartzengrosse, armed with a rifle, clad in helmet and body armor, walked casually to Alexander’s foxhole as his Germans joined the fray.
“Guten Tag, Oberst nDlamini,” he said. “Thank you for saving some insurgents for us.”
Alexander gave a harsh chuckle, leaning against the side of his foxhole.
“It was kind of you to come, Herr Oberst,” he said simply. “Most welcome . . . most welcome.”
Alexander looked up and down the line, saw the CLF attack breaking like waves upon rock. His own people had still been fighting fiercely when the Germans arrived. Facing a full
battalion of reinforcements, the attackers’ morale shattered. Some ran, but they were easily gunned down. The rest were killed or captured in minutes.
While Schwartzengrosse and his fresh troops cleared off the ridgeline, supported by resupplied mortars and newly-arrived light artillery, the Zulus and Pioneers tended to their dead and wounded, drank deeply from the freshly arrived water stores, and slept.
Arcand with 2d REP met the remainder of the CLF main battle force attempting to flee into the hills towards Champasak in the foothills. Less than forty-eight hours from the day Alexander first set foot in Lang Xan, there were still follow-on operations to conduct, but the campaign was decided.
They had won.
Savannakhet, Lang Xan Colony
D+3
Another sortie of helicopters lifted from the field just south of Savannakhet. They carried the last and most lightly wounded of Alexander’s troops. The dead would start next. On the docks, lines of hundreds of prisoners awaited transport via boat to prison camps in Cochina. Non-expectant wounded took priority over them.
The prisoners were segregated into two groups; all those captured by 2 REP at the surrender of Champasak along with the uniformed combatants from the Battle of Savannakhet were one group. The second were those fighting out of uniform against Alexander’s Zulus. The first group Arcand ordered treated as legal combatants, entitled to the protections accorded prisoners of war by law and custom. Those fighting without proper uniform or identifying insignia at Savannakhet Arcand marked for thorough and brutal interrogation, followed by execution or reeducation on a case by case basis.
Arcand stood on the roof of the Savannakhet port authority watching it all. It was a great victory, but it was soured by the next task he had before him. The early evening was still oppressively hot and humid, but it was better than the day, and at least up here it was quiet for a moment.
“We didn’t get them all, you know,” Schwartzengrosse said.
Arcand turned to see the short, blocky German climbing crude wooden stairs to the roof.
“Had it occurred to you, Karl,” Arcand said. “That I came up here because I don’t want company?”
“Of course you don’t, sir,” Schwartzengrosse said. “But waiting isn’t going to make it any better. You need to tell him.”
Arcand’s gaze shifted south again, to where Colonel Prince Alexander Dumanisi nDlamini stood amongst the rows of his dead, his left arm still in a highly visible white sling. The rule of thumb was that a unit broke somewhere around thirty-percent casualties, combined dead and wounded. Alexander’s command had suffered forty percent killed in action and another forty percent seriously wounded, and virtually no one in the defense of Savannakhet had gotten away completely unbloodied. They’d still been fighting like rabid wolverines when the Germans relieved them.
And at the cost of two hundred and five dead, and two hundred seven wounded, Alexander had killed three thousand of the CLF’s best fighters. Schwartzengrosse, with only light casualties amongst his Germans, had captured another thousand.
“His legend, the Zulu legend, grows,” Schwartzengrosse said, nodding south to the rocky ridge that straddled the neck of the Savannakhet peninsula. “The locals are already calling it, ‘Panther Ridge.’”
“It’s deserved,” Arcand said. “We may not have gotten them all, my friend, but we got enough. Also, the amount of materiel here and at Champasak is damning. I will be able to use it to unseat Mgabe and unify Lang Xan and Angkok under my command.”
“I’ll send Mgabe my condolences on his impending, ‘suicide,’” Schwartzengrosse said, knowing how the UN liked to dispose of an aristocrat once he was too thoroughly discredited. “But if we’re going to pacify two more colonies, we’re going to need that boy commanding his other two battalions. How do you plan to arrange that?”
“I’m not sure,” Arcand said, turning toward the stairs. “I’ll think of something.”
“I should have listened, Nik,” Alexander said.
Nkosiphindule Mjanwe did not answer his prince’s words, lying as he did in eternal repose amongst the ranks of the 1st Zulu Rifles’ fallen. Zulu, German and Frenchman lay side by side in long rows. It was an awful, hallowed sight.
“You didn’t want this war,” Alexander said. “You told us not to come, and I insisted. I killed you and all these . . . my people.”
Alexander fell silent, unable to do anything but stand, grieving and suffering for the butcher’s bill they’d incurred.
Thenjiwe was back in Khoi Dau Moi by now. He’d still been unconscious when they’d loaded him on the medevac bird. Commandant Bongani was laid out two rows down from Mjanwe. All of Charlie Company’s lieutenants were dead, as were two out of the three of the officers of Alpha, Bravo and the battalion staff. The NCOs had been similarly winnowed; more of them lay dead in raw numbers, though their survival rate was somewhat better as a ratio compared to their lieutenants and captains.
A cough interrupted his thoughts. Alexander turned to find General Arcand regarding him. The general’s expression was carefully still, but Alexander thought he could detect something unusual, chagrin, or perhaps even shame, in the Frenchman’s eyes.
Alexander’s grief pivoted sharply into anger. This man had fed an entire battalion of his people into a slaughterhouse while his own legionnaires had a comparatively uneventful stroll through the jungle, culminating in accepting the enemy’s surrender without a fight.
“How?” Alexander said, the French word coming out unnaturally clipped and harsh.
Arcand didn’t need elaboration.
“According to Colonel Schwartzengrosse,” Arcand said. “They found a janitor trying to smuggle classified documents out of the Ops section yesterday. The counterintel specialists are still sweating him, we’ll ferret out the rest of his network. I’ve already reprimanded the Operations section for lax security.”
“I want to execute the spies,” Alexander said. “You’ve ordered me to kill men who’ve done me no wrong. I will have the blood of the men responsible for all this.”
Arcand nodded. The two men stood in awkward silence for several long seconds.
“Was there something else, General?”
“Colonel,” Arcand said, but then shut his mouth, starting over. “Alexander, I know you’ve been through hell these last two days, but I’m afraid I have more bad news.”
“What is it?” Alexander said, his face a mask of anger and fatigue. The resignation in his voice told Arcand that the young prince didn’t believe it could get much worse. Arcand desperately wished that was true.
“Prince Jacob nDlamini has assumed the throne of New Zululand,” Arcand said, he faltered for a moment at the expression of horror that crossed Alexander’s face, but then he plowed on.
“He deposed your father and executed him for crimes against humanity, along with most of your uncles and your mother,” Arcand said.
Alexander’s nostrils flared and his breath was coming in gasps, his right hand rested on the butt of his pistol. Arcand cursed himself silently. He’d allowed his guilt and sentimentality to cloud his judgment. He’d seen Alexander beat an insurgent half to death with his own hands; it was entirely possible the young Zulu warrior might kill Arcand now, and damn the consequences.
Arcand did not reach for his own pistol, but gazed unwaveringly at Alexander, waiting on him.
“What is the UN going to do about it?” Alexander said between gritted teeth.
“The change in regime was entirely the result of internal factors,” Alexander said. “And the UN has no vital interest in the region. King Jacob has promised to abide by the agreements your father enacted and even extend them. The UN will not authorize my intervention.”
“And you asked to intervene, of course,” Alexander said, every word dripping with bitter irony.
“I would if I could, Alexander,” Arcand insisted. “Perhaps someday, I can. After this victory I think I will be able to solidify the entire region under my command. Once I have
the resources, it’s just a matter of finding a pretext—”
“Spare me the pipe dream,” Alexander snapped. “I suppose you will now hand me and my surviving family over to my bastard half-brother? Take one of his lackeys as a replacement commander for your expendable kaffirs?”
“No!” Arcand said, sharply. “I have secured amnesty for you and all your men, including your cousins. You will continue to serve here, free, fully paid contractors and completely unharmed.”
“Except for the occasional massacre,” Alexander said jerking his head toward the rows of corpses. “Is this how you plan to dispose of us? Why fight us when you can just expend us on suicide missions.”
“I had no idea that we had a leak in our security,” Arcand said. “I swear I would not have just sent you in to Savannakhet if I’d known two full regiments were waiting for you.”
“But you knew my parents had been murdered before we embarked for this mission,” Alexander said. “Did you not?”
Arcand stood stock still, for three seconds, then nodded once.
“You expect us to keep fighting for you after this?” Alexander said. “How can I ever trust you again?”
“I did the best I could with a shit situation,” Arcand said. “I have never wished you ill. Stay, fight for me, and I promise you and your people will always have a place of honor here.”
“This is not our home!”
“MAKE IT YOUR HOME,” Arcand shouted. “Kingdoms go to those with the strength, cunning and courage to take and keep them, Prince Alexander. Your old throne is lost to you, take a new one here!”
“Won’t you be occupying that particular chair?” Alexander said.
When Arcand answered there was a fervent, desperate gleam in his eyes.
“I will need a lieutenant and eventual heir,” Arcand said. “Schwartzengrosse and I are old men, and none of my other officers have your ability to lead, much less to rule. Think about it, with the medicine at my disposal, you could live for centuries more, perhaps, with Mai at your side.”