Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  They were trying still. Up ahead, Carrera could see a group of them trying desperately to break down a bundle that might contain enough antitank weapons to let them defend themselves. Carrera watched them keep trying while machine guns closed on them. He watched without expression as the same guns tore them to bits.

  Not that the cadets hadn’t taken losses, too. Almost a half dozen armored vehicles flickered and smoked in the breeze. Nor were all the bodies Tauran, although most of them were. To the southwest, where the trail was free of caltrops and the wheeled APCs had gone, more firelight showed where the Paras had made a more costly, although still futile, stand.

  Behind the lines as he was, Carrera was in only incidental danger from the Paras’ rifles and machine guns. They had enough to do without bothering with a lone man far from the action. Thus when two navy jets off of HAMS Indomitable came in to investigate the scene at Lago Sombrero and discovered the disaster that had overtaken the Paras there, Carrera was nowhere nearby. When the two pilots decided to try to do something to help out on their own initiative, Carrera was also nowhere near the impact points for the bombs and twenty millimeter cannon. He added another half dozen tracks and perhaps fifty cadets to the loss column. It was a small satisfaction that one of the jets was taken out by the Balboans, spinning down to a flaming landing by the coast, while the other flew off.

  By radio Carrera spoke to Rogachev. The jamming didn’t interfere much with radios so far from Pericles and so close to each other. His orders were simple—finish off the Paras, stay until at least two of the reserve mechanized tercios were fifty percent mobilized, then move east toward the city. He, Carrera, would meet them on the road near Arnold Air Force Base. Carrera also made a call to the First Corps commander, telling him to move when he was ninety percent mobilized. Carrera then had himself driven to the east, toward the City.

  The Tunnel, TUSF-B Headquarters, Cerro Mina, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The three principles of the effort—Moncey, de Villepin, and Bessières—couldn’t know for certain that their plans were collapsing. Even so, the latter put two and two together and came up with the mathematically perfect answer: “We’re fucked.”

  And that was relying only information given and information missing down in the concrete lined bowels of the hill. Conversely, from his vantage point atop Cerro Mina, Moncey could hear the impact of explosives on both Arnold Air Force Base and Fort Nelson, to his southwest, and Brookings Air Force Station to his northeast. Nothing was hitting Dahlgren as of yet.

  But that’s mostly because Dahlgren hardly matters, he thought. At this range he couldn’t distinguish the tank gun fire from the other explosions. He could, however, see green tracers where none should be. The legion was attacking where it should not have been possible for them to attack. The amount of firing told him that these attacks were in strength. Where could they have gotten such strength?

  Mind racing, the general rushed back to the stuffy ops center below. It was well that he did, since just before his entering the Tunnel, the wave of fire from somewhere swept over the hill’s topographical crest, precisely where he’d been standing. Crossing himself at the narrow escape, Moncey entered the Tunnel and practically ran to de Villepin’s intel office.

  There it was in black and white on the intelligence chart. All of the legion’s maneuver tercios were unmobilized except for those of the Third Corps, which were scattered about the City looking for the murderers of Tauran female supremacists, and a couple at Fuerte Cameron, far from the center of action. Satellite, air, and such ground recon as had been possible all confirmed that. None of the training battalions on the Isla Real had moved back to the mainland by sea. The tercios at Fuerte Cameron, the Fifth Mountain, undergoing annual training at Mobilization Level II, and Twenty-second Airborne (Volgan…though it was at least forty percent Balboan by this time), were scattered all over creation.

  But in at least two places he knew of, the legion was attacking, while in two others, there were troops defending that ought not have been there.

  This Moncey thought impossible until a sudden thought occurred to him: Oh, shit. The cadets. And if there were two groups of cadets on the attack, there had to be at least six. Maybe more. Bastards, using children.

  Moncey looked to the main operations map. The military schools were posted on it as “no fire areas,” places where the Tauran forces couldn’t fire without permission from the commander of TUSF-B himself. If the legion had moved them into attack positions not too far from their schools there would most likely be one at Lago Sombrero, one or, more likely, two for the east bank of the Transitway, opposite Cerro Mina, one more that was probably attacking Brookings, one for the Shimmering Sea side, and the last one…that would be at Herrera International, which explained why the Gallic Para brigade was stuck.

  “Two, Three, Air, get over here!”

  Once they arrived, Moncey began to lay out what he suspected was happening to their operation and roughly what he wanted done to fix it. In a flurry of activity the TUSF-B staff began to try to formulate a reaction that would—or at least might—save them all from disaster. Radio communications were out, the jamming was broad spectrum—even the frequency hoppers couldn’t get through reliably. The phone lines, on the other hand, worked perfectly. Orders began to crackle out over those. That orders went out to the subordinate brigades made little difference, however, since those brigades had no telephonic commo with the battalions.

  One very notable exception was the Thirty-fifth Commando. From his TOC at Fort Guerrero, the commander of that unit did receive his orders. So it came about that, just as Number Three Company of the Thirty-fifth was getting ready to rush another of the legion’s barracks, the order came to cease the attack, get control of the artillery, and move to the Bridge of the Colombias.

  The Balboan defenders of the Second Cohort, Second Tercio didn’t know why the assault they were expecting to continue suddenly stopped. Most figured it could only be a good sign.

  Can’t be a bad sign, anyway, thought Sergeant Major Cruz, turning his back to the wall and sliding down the bare concrete to the floor. He wasn’t wounded, just exhausted.

  Fort Melia, Balboa, Terra Nova

  On the other side of the Transitway, at Fort Melia, near the Shimmering Sea, there was no communication between the TOC, located on the hill overlooking the post, and the companies currently clearing Fort Williams and the barracks at Lone Palm. From Fort Melia a Sochaux S4 set out carrying a message for the forward companies. The Sochaux raced at breakneck pace up the jungle bordered road until a well-laid ambush near the old Transitway Area dairy farm between Forts William and Melia opened up on the vehicle, killing both driver and messenger.

  Headquarters, One Hundred and First Air Defense Tercio, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa Terra Nova

  With the clouds having cleared for the nonce, and all three moons glowing above, the rooftop was bathed in light. There were few shadows on the ground either. The last of the troops-carrying helicopters that had brought Captain Guillaume Le Blanc’s commando company to the roof of the caserne’s armory had long since departed to complete other missions. Le Blanc, CO of Number Two Company, Thirty-Seventh Commando, didn’t mind in the slightest. The “truck drivers” were a nuisance anyway.

  Beneath le Blanc, who was crouched on the roof of the armory, the commandos were methodically clearing the building, top to bottom. From around the meter-high wall that surrounded the roof others were keeping a watchful eye on the low buildings in the vicinity. The men were especially careful to cover the legion’s heavy surface-to-air missile launchers that were parked on line in the motor pool area.

  The leader of one of le Blanc’s platoons popped up through the access way, then scampered across the roof to report. “Sir, the building’s just about clear. No friendly casualties. Two Balboan dead. No civilians.”

  “What about POWs?” asked le Blanc.

  “None, sir. That was it, those two guys at the front desk. They we
nt for their guns. The boys had to take them out.”

  “Fine. Report it to headquarters. I wonder where the hell everyone was.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

  —Mike Tyson

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Terra Nova

  Alone in the main conference room, watching events unfold on the big Yamatan screen, Marguerite wanted to scream. She had seen it as soon as the armored vehicles had begun to debouch from their thick-roofed, concrete bunker at Lago Sombrero. As soon as she’d seen those, and realized where they had to have come from, who they had to have been, she’d immediately seen also that the Tauran plan was going to unfold in disaster. And there was no one useful she could tell. Janier in Gaul had a communicator, and she’d advised him through it. But she’d advised him about the time that communications between Taurus and Balboa had been cut.

  And she could see where the communications had been cut. On her screen, set to detect electromagnetic radiation at high power, all indicators pointed to the largish trawler pulled up to a dock. And she couldn’t tell anyone in a position to do anything.

  She could have served as a first rate—or a better than first rate—artillery spotter, too. She could see every Balboan firing position, down to the glowing tubes of what Kahn, male, told her were 81 or 82mm mortars.

  And there’s no one, NO ONE, I can tell about it in a position to do anything.

  I could just weep.

  Oh, well; there’s this much solace. Obviously Carrera planned this from the beginning. And the Taurans are using the same basic plan they intended to when I was pushing them to war. But I didn’t push them to this war; this one they did on their own, albeit because somebody—Elder Gods You know it wasn’t me—butchered some Tauran women.

  I wonder who did that. If I ever find out, I’ll give that information, at least, to Carrera and he can make them scream for a while.

  TUSF-B Headquarters, The Tunnel, Cerro Mina, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Moncey wanted to scream. He couldn’t raise Arnold AFB on the phone. Brookings had stopped answering as well. The glow reflecting off whatever clouds hovered over the buildings suggested why.

  Though originally scheduled to attack into Balboa, with an objective of the area around the Arraijan Ordnance Works, the Haarlem Marines had shifted to covering Dahlgren Naval Station as soon as they saw strong indicators that things were beginning to unravel. They were now, their commander reported, under attack, but holding on well. They offered to break a company loose to investigate what was happening to Arnold. The general told them not to, to hang on to Dahlgren and secure the Bridge of the Columbias until it could be reinforced. He was quite sure there was little they could do to help Arnold Air Force Base, Fort Nelson, or the naval station that was an annex to Arnold. Observers on top of Cerro Mina had reported that it appeared many buildings and aircraft were burning. They had also seen that the Balboan rocket and mortar fire had shifted off the base and onto Fort Nelson.

  Moncey was having a little more luck at getting a coherent defense of the west bank of the Transitway set up. The Thirty-fifth had broken off from Guerrero and was sending two commando companies to keep anyone from crossing the bridge. Unfortunately, the bulk of Tauran combat forces were out of touch with their own headquarters which had, in any case, little to do since the Tunnel was exercising command and control down to platoon level. Those Moncey hadn’t been able to pull back were slugging it out with whatever defenders the legions had on hand, seemingly oblivious to the disasters around them.

  An aide de camp came over to the chief of staff’s side. “Sir,” whispered the aide, “the SF reported over SATCOM that the local Balboan Air Defense Battalion headquarters has been neutralized. They also report that almost no one was there. Fortunately, all the launchers are there that were supposed to be.

  “Another thing, sir; it looks like things are going badly for the Mech down by the Comandancia. I had Hauptmann Lang take a few MPs down to investigate but they haven’t come back yet. That’s not a good sign either.”

  Moncey nodded. Initiative in an aide de camp was a wonderful thing. He asked, “Do we have a fix yet on where the jamming’s coming from?”

  “No, sir. The RF people have only pinpointed it to one of the ships docked at Balboa. They’re all docked close together.”

  “Any ID of the flag of those ships?”

  “No, sir. We could sink ’em all, but what happens later when we’ve sunk a half dozen neutrals? I called about getting a patrol boat to investigate but they’re all supporting something else and are all just as much out of communication as the rest of us. They wouldn’t do any good anyway. They don’t carry the manpower to search a bunch of ships.”

  “Here’s what I want you to do. Get the grids on the likely culprits. Have the C-3 call the First Airmobile Brigade. I want them to hold the first fourteen troop carriers they can get their hands on. Then I want them to airlift troops—cooks and truck drivers will do if that’s all they have—onto the decks of those ships. I want my units to be able to talk again!”

  Three hundred meters southeast of Second Corps Headquarters, at the Comandancia, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  A Roland tank rested in the street with its turret ajar. It wasn’t burning yet, though the thin smell of smoke around it might have meant it was about to. On the opposite side of the street lay the Balboan who had destroyed it by wedging a satchel charge under the turret. Behind him, in a ragged line leading to the alley from which he and his squad had charged, lay a half dozen of his comrades, also dead, shot while trying to get at the tank.

  A Tauran soldier who had helped shoot them shook his head in wonder. Gutsy bastards, weren’t you. You might be the enemy, but you were still gutsy as all hell. I hope to fuck they’re not all like you. And good luck to you all, wherever you are.

  At his squad leader’s order, the Tauran soldier rushed with a friend to the other side of the street to make sure no more Balboans were waiting. Lying on shards of shattered glass next to a store front, he heard voices coming from inside the store. Reaching for a grenade, he signaled his squad mate to do the same. “On three. One. Two. Three.”

  After the grenades blew what little glass remained out into the street the two rushed in through the storefront window. Three Balboans lay on the floor, two of them very dead indeed. The two Taurans began to move toward the back room of the store when they were met by a heavy fire. Both were hit instantly.

  Crawling to where his friend lay, the less badly wounded of the pair returned fire at the Balboan muzzle flashes. Using his last grenade to drive back the legionaries, he grabbed hold of his unconscious buddy’s harness and began to drag him back out of the store. Badly wounded as he was, he could not move quickly enough. A rifle bolt slammed home. He threw his friend out onto the street and turned to fire at the sound. A half dozen bullets found his body before his finger could tighten on the trigger.

  Moving up to the side of the window opening, a sergeant of the Tenth Infantry Tercio looked around at the dead and wounded Balboans and Taurans. Buen’ viaje, compadres. You fought well. “Gomez, set the M-26 up here. And get a medic to check out the wounded. While you’re at it, have him check the Taurans. Maybe one of them’s still alive.”

  Fifteenth Cadet Tercio Command Post, Lago Sombrero, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Cadet Sergeant Miguel Cordoba stole a quick peek from the smashed window that looked over the last few buildings in which the Paras had rallied. What few street lights remained working cast an uneven glow over the main cantonment area at Lago Sombrero. Tracers leapt back and forth between what was left of the Anglian Paras Infantry and the cadets surrounding them. Often enough, when the Paras fired their rifles at the Balboans, the return fire was high explosive from a tank or Ocelot. Few antitank weapons seemed to remain in Para hands. At least they were being very frugal with whatever they had.

  Cordoba’s vision was aided by
an Ocelot that burned brightly near one of the buildings held by the Taurans. He didn’t see any good reason to assume the Taurans were out of effective antitank munitions. Four of the cadets that had not been killed outright when their track was hit had been shot down near it. Cordoba was looking forward to getting even for them.

  Behind Cordoba, in the same room as the rest of his squad. They had not lost anybody yet. As part of the tercio’s Combat Engineer Club, reformed as the Combat Engineer Platoon, they had been held out of action until now. At the call from the commander of the company they supported, they had rushed up in their armored personnel carrier, checked their weapons and moved to an assault position. Now they waited for Cordoba to lead them into the assault. Cordoba himself was waiting for the order to move from the commander. The plan, as he understood it, was for one of the rifle platoons to fire to keep the Paras’ heads down, while the engineer squad moved up to flamethrower range and roasted the Taurans out.

  Consulting his watch, Cordoba thought, Ought be right about—

  Although he knew what was coming, Cordoba still jumped at the sudden and vicious volume of fire that poured over onto the Tauran-held building. Tribune Rogachev shouted through the door for the engineers to move out.

  Screaming “Follow me!” Cordoba leapt out of the window and rushed for the building opposite. One by one, the squad followed. The last boy out had no luck, however, as a random shot from a Para spun him around and left him spread-eagled on the ground.