by Tom Kratman
Sergeant Guilbeault, an infantryman crippled in a training accident months before, had been left behind when the rest of his company had airlifted over to Fort Guerrero on the other side of the bay. Standing there by the ground floor door of Fort Nelson’s Building 804, while the rest of the company moved to the helicopter pickup zone to be lifted to Guerrero, had been a gut wrenching experience for Guilbeault. He didn’t want to go to war, exactly, but neither did he want to be left behind when his friends moved off to war. He felt cut off, left out, and angry. Worse, there was no one really to be angry at except himself for getting hurt in a stupid training accident.
The men going on the attack had felt a sympathy for Guilbeault’s being left behind as great as Guilbeault’s anger at not going along. When the first sounds of firing at Guerrero announced the beginning of the assault, Guilbeault had felt as low and useless as a man can. That was how it came to pass that, when the rockets and mortars started pummeling Arnold Air Force Base, Guilbeault was sitting on the curb outside the barracks, smoking a cigarette dejectedly. He stared a few moments at the fireworks display before understanding had him running inside the barracks to gather up whatever force he could. This turned out to be three soldiers; all, like Guilbeault, too badly hurt to go along with the rest of the company.
Guilbeault told the senior of the three, a caporal from the antiarmor section, to take one of the privates down to the edge of the big drainage ditch that divided the battalion street in two along its length. He told another of the privates to call, in order, battalion, brigade, and TUSF-B headquarters until he reached someone he could report to. Then Guilbeault ran to the mess hall to round up any of the cooks who might be on hand.
By the time Guilbeault had gone through the mess hall, each of the battalion’s company barracks, plus the engineer barracks, he had found a total of twenty-three soldiers. When he arrived at the west end of the drainage ditch with the last of them in tow, he discovered that a few others had joined from the artillery unit whose building was just north of the ditch’s opposite end. In all, Sergeant Guilbeault then had thirty-two soldiers, including himself. He set about organizing his little command.
“Until someone comes along to tell us what to do, our mission is to defend Fort Nelson. Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, those air force pukes are going to bug out. Then, whoever is attacking them is probably going to turn on us. We can’t let them have the post. Number Two Company?”
“Here, Sergeant,” answered a young, frightened looking man with unlaced boots. “I’m Superior Private Seton. I’m senior. Three men with me.”
“Seton…good. Take your guys and set up to defend Building 801.” Guilbeault pointed to the building just north of where the soldiers stood. “Orient your fires north and south along the main drag to Arnold and toward Fort Nelson Beach. Don’t let the bad guys get a foothold on the artillery barracks. What’s your ammo?”
“We ain’t got shit, Sergeant. Twenty-eight rounds per man.”
“Right. Figures.” The sergeant turned to one of the cooks. Pointing into building 804, he said, “Jennette, there’s a case of rifle ammunition and about half a dozen antitank rockets first platoon left behind in their CP. Go get ’em and anything else you can find.
“Take off now, Seton. I’ll get you topped off for rounds as soon as I can. Artillery?”
The soldier in charge of the remnants of the artillery spoke up. “Here Sergeant. Caporal Maillard, with four gunners.”
“Maillard, take your men and go back to your own barracks. Orient your fire northeast across the road toward Radar Hill…”
Guilbeault continued on, assigning small teams of men to defensive positions, layering his deployment to have at least a little depth, with the troops in one building covering the approach to others. As he spoke, the sound of firing from Arnold rose to a crescendo and then dropped off. Before he finished issuing instructions to the last of his men he heard the sound of feet hitting pavement. Others, too, heard the sounds. Bolts of rifles slammed home as rounds were stripped from the magazines and chambered.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The troopers clustered around Guilbeault held their fire until seven aviation maintenance personnel stood in front of them, bent over with exertion and fear. They were weaponless, unhelmeted, and unkempt, as broken men often are.
“Who are you?” asked Guilbeault.
“Maintenance Squadron…” answered one, breathlessly. “We were on the base perimeter when the locals attacked. They had tanks, man. No shit, tanks! We hightailed it. Where did they get tanks?” The wrench turner sounded almost offended by the injustice of it.
Guilbeault’s lip curled with distaste. “Get in the ditch.”
“No way, man. We can’t fight tanks.”
Guilbeault flicked off the safety of his rifle and repeated himself. “I said, ‘get in the fucking ditch.’” The SPs hesitated a moment until they saw that Guilbeault’s rifle was pointed at them, backed up by the rifles of several more. Then they climbed down.
No sooner had they climbed into the ditch than a tank gun fired from vicinity of the airfield, about a third of a mile to the east. A shell screamed over Guilbeault’s head to impact on a wall behind him. Then another shell, from a different tank, followed. Machine gun fire tore at the grass that grew thick around the sides of the ditch. Risking having the top of his head blown off, Guilbeault peered through the grass at the pair of tanks. They were moving forward slowly. Behind the tanks Balboan infantry walked. Soon their fire was joining that of the tanks. The east-facing walls of buildings 801 and 802 were splattered with lead.
Guilbeault had never before heard the cloth-ripping sound of standard Balboan rifles and light machine guns. It was… A little frightening.
Despite the splattering, shots from the defenders answered back. Guilbeault saw several Balboans fall. Still they kept coming.
“Sarge, I’m coming with the ammo!” Guilbeault looked to see Private Jennette, antitank rockets slung across his back, with a box of rifle ammunition in each hand, running from Building 804 toward the ditch. He had almost made it when something, a bullet no doubt, sent him flying. The ammunition he had been carrying hit the ground along with Jennette’s body.
Davout, a boy from Guilbeault’s own company, ran back to where Jennette lay. He took the cartridge boxes from the lifeless hands and threw them to the floor of the ditch. Then he pulled Jennette’s body in as well and stripped it of the antitank weapons. These were one shot, disposable rocket launchers, the basic design of which had become ubiquitous across Terra Nova. Gathering up all of the ammunition, Davout ran to where Guilbeault lay against the edge of the ditch.
Guilbeault took the ammunition boxes from Davout, opened them both, and pulled out two thirds of the ammunition from each, eight bandoleers or eleven hundred and twenty rounds. Handing one back to Davout he said, “Take this over to 801 and give it to Number Two Company’s people. Drop off four of the antitank rockets. Crawl over. Crawl low.” He detailed another troop to carry the other box, and two antitank weapons, to the men in Building 802.
By this time the Balboan tanks and infantry were only 150 meters away, still advancing at a walk, as their large Volgan instructors had trained them to. Risking the bullets that lashed the area, Guilbeault extended one of the antitank rocket launchers, took aim and fired at one of the tanks.
“Fuck, I missed!” he exclaimed as he ducked back down into the ditch. The return fire from the tanks plastered the area around him as the tanks concentrated on the greatest apparent threat.
While the tanks, and their accompanying infantry, concentrated on Guilbeault’s position, Davout reached the east side of Building 801, crawled through a window, and ran toward the rooms from which he could hear gunfire.
“Here, take this,” he said as he threw a rocket to Seton. Davout tossed the box of ammunition to another of A Company’s stay behinds. Then he joined Seton in extending the launchers.
There wasn’t time to take the ammuni
tion and load it into magazines immediately. Still, knowing that they had more was reassuring enough to cause the men in the building to increase their rate of fire greatly. This fire was joined, moments later, by fire from the artillerymen in Building 802 on the other side of the ditch. A rocket lanced out from the Tauran positions. It missed but was followed by another that hit. One Balboan tank stopped dead and began to burn. Faced with this sudden reversal of fortunes, the Balboan cadets, and their remaining tank, elected to pull back out of range of the LAWs until they could hit again with overwhelming force. They retreated, bounding back by squads, and still firing.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Guilbeault had the remaining ammunition distributed to the other positions on Fort Nelson. He noticed, for the first time, that the seven Air Force wrenches were no longer in the area. Good riddance, he thought. But I’d still like to shoot the bastards…personally.
A soldier clapped Guilbeault on the back, then asked if they could hold the Balboans again.
“Sure we can,” Guilbeault answered, while thinking: For a while. Then we’re dead.
Alcalde Flores Township, Headquarters, Tenth Artillery Legion, Balboa, Terra Nova
Of all the reserve units in the legion, only one had been given major command permission to mobilize above Mobilization Level Two (excepting the Third Legion which had been fully mobilized to hunt for the killers of the Tauran women but was also scattered because of that hunt). That unit was the Tenth Artillery Legion. Consisting of eight tercios, two each of eighteen 180mm cannon, one of eighteen super heavy multibarreled rocket launchers, three of thirty-six each 122mm multiple rocket launchers, one of super heavy mortars, and one of antishipping missile crews without missiles; the Tenth Artillery was at about forty percent manning, its six percent regular cadre, an additional eighteen percent reservists called up and another sixteen or so percent of the militia. Thus, of the Artillery Legion’s full mobilization strength of over eleven thousand, fully four thousand were waiting for the Gallic Airmobile Brigade when it arrived.
A few days before, when doing the final planning and coordination of the semi-mobilization and demobilization that would, with other factors, cause the Tauran Union to invade at the desired time, in the desired way, with the right force, the Tenth Legion’s commander had questioned Carrera on the limitation of forty percent. It did not seem prudent to do less than mobilize fully.
“Legate,” Carrera had answered, “you can’t even let them so much as suspect I’m letting you go to forty percent. If they thought you had mobilized completely, the first news you would get of an invasion is when they carpet bombed your ass from miles up and to hell with civilian casualties in the town.
“The idea is to make a threat they think they can deal with using less force than bombing you to obliteration, but still be strong enough to hold out for several hours until you can be relieved. Twenty percent is my best estimate of what that force is, but I’m going to let you o forty, anyway. Live with it.”
The mobilization had indeed drawn TUSF-B’s attention, enough so that, when it became known that the artillery brigade was already so heavily manned, the Airmobile Brigade of infantry was assigned to the attack. The brigade’s attached aviation battalion, direct support battalion of 105mm guns, and all of their air force support were also committed to the effort. This was a measure of how seriously the TUSF-B chief of staff took the threat posed by the Tenth Artillery Legion. The entire Tauran Union’s operation and presence in Balboa would be jeopardized if the guns, mortars, and rocket launchers of the Tenth were freed to support their brother defenders.
Although there had been no real surprise in the fact that so many Taurans would assault the Tenth, the legion had been shocked at the timing of the attack. More shocking still was the aggressiveness and élan brought to the action by the Gauls, who retained the spirit of their Para ancestors. They had also been deployed away from the Tauran Union, and out from under the malign influence of the late Marine Mors du Char, long enough to become real soldiers again.
In the first minutes after H Hour, dozens of troop-carrying helicopters had deposited troops at every major legion facility in and around the township of Alcalde Flores. Fighting had erupted instantaneously and brutally over virtually the entire area. Still, few were the legion casernes in which the Taurans did not gain at least a foothold. A steady stream of helicopters brought more men to the scene. Where the fighting was particularly fierce, Tauran helicopter gunships and artillery intervened. Although some of the Balboan gunners tried to man their pieces to help hold out against the attack, radar-directed counterbattery fires from the 105s across the canal quickly put them out of action with appalling and grotesque losses. From there the fight had degenerated into a slug fest, with rifle and grenade predominating. House by house, room by room the Balboans were driven back, killed, or forced to surrender. By four AM perhaps two-thirds of those men of the Tenth Artillery Legion already mobilized were still in the fight.
Cerro Mina, overlooking the fight around Second Corps Headquarters, Balboa, Terra Nova
From where he stood looking down onto the fight around the Comandancia, Moncey could not make out how his men below were doing. Tracers, red and green, crisscrossed through the night. The occasional major explosion told little. Was it an Tauran tank firing? A legionary antitank weapon or satchel charge? A civilian automobile blowing up? No one not on the scene could have said.
Many of that area’s older, woodbuilt structures had burned in the Federated States’ invasion. They’d been rebuilt in brick and concrete. No fires could be seen in those areas. Other areas, spared during the earlier attack, were burning now. The Gallic chief of staff said a brief prayer that the civilians would have more luck getting away now than they had had then. He doubted they would, though. The fighting this time was more intense. Any civilian who took to the streets was risking being shot as he ran.
Moncey gave an involuntary shudder. Better to be shot than burned. Like most people, he had a great fear of being burned to death, great enough he would prefer never to see even an enemy burn.
The chief’s field of view shifted a bit, to where he could observe a helicopter gunship firing down at something, or rather someone, on the ground. The possibility of casualties from friendly fire wasn’t high on the Gaul’s list of concerns in the II Corps area. All of the Tauran troopers had patches of infra-red reflecting tape sewn to the tops of their helmet covers, which the legionaries did not. Nor did the tercio from the Ciudad Antigua area have any armored vehicles in immediate support to confuse the helicopter gunners.
Moncey was startled as a streak of light and smoke tore up toward the gunship. The helicopter began to smoke after the rocket exploded beneath it, sending a continuous rod of steel flying up. The helicopter started to twist and turn violently. Then it dropped below the line of buildings. A bright flash, followed by a sound like distant thunder, indicated to the chief what at least one of the explosions he heard was. “Shit,” was all he could say at the death of the helicopter and, most likely, its crew.
The general still stared at where the gunship had gone down when his aide found him on the side of the hill. “Sir, the Airmobile Brigade has lifted off a platoon of cooks to take out whatever’s been jamming us. They should be touching down on the docks right about now.”
Nodding, still saddened at the fate of the helicopter, the general walked to the entrance to the Ops bunker.
Haarlem Marine lines, a few hundred meters east of Dahlgren Naval Station, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
Little had gone quite right for the Sixteenth Cadet Tercio so far this morning. First they had had trouble getting into position to ambush the Haarlem Marines that were expected to come up the road toward the Arraijan Ordnance Works. Then, after the Marines had passed the forward observation post and were almost in the kill zone east of the town, the Seventeenth Cadet Tercio had begun its attack on Arnold to the south. Sure as hell the Marines had sensed something was wrong greater than a mere b
arrage on the airbase and turned around. Then the jamming had started, cutting communications, so that the commander of the cadets, Legate Olveira, couldn’t get his boys reoriented quickly. It had taken over an hour to get them up and moving, south of and parallel to the InterColombiana, to go after Dahlgren. Even so Olveira had no idea of what was happening with his tank platoon and motorized rifle company. They hadn’t been put into the ambush position, but had been left behind to move up into the attack on Dahlgren after the ambush had gone off.
It’s bad enough that no plan survives contact with the enemy, Olveira fumed. Ours hasn’t even survived without contacting the enemy.
Ahead of Olveira grew the sound of a rapidly developing firefight. Red tracers whipped through the leaves overhead. This was somewhat disconcerting to the legate. All of his life, in training and in combat against the Sumeris and Pashtians, the enemy tracers had always been green and his own red. Now it was reversed and the red streaks struck him as somehow more malevolent.
On the Balboan firing line, mere meters from where the Haarlemers were sending tracers toward Olveira, a terrible fight was in progress. Eighteen- and nineteen-year-old Tauran kids traded shots, grenades, and sometimes bayonet thrusts with sixteen- and seventeen-year-old Balboan kids. Screams of pain, fear, and anger resounded in the dense jungle. Under the pressure of nearly three to one odds the Haarlemers were being driven back.
Olveira advanced with his small group of staff and currently useless radio operators. By the light of the moon filtering through the trees Olveira saw terrible scenes the fight had left behind. Here a Balboan cadet, sixteen but looking younger still, clutched at his belly and moaned. A closer look showed that he was trying to hold his intestines in where a bullet or fragment had ripped open his abdomen. There a somewhat older Haarlemers lay dead, bayonet in the gut and his hands still gripping the knife he had shoved into the boy whose bayonet had pierced him. Olveira almost tripped over a helmet that lay on the ground, then again over the boy—Tauran or Balboan, he couldn’t tell—whose smashed skull the helmet had failed to protect…brains in the helmet, brains on the ground.