by Tom Kratman
Despite the guards' surpassing paranoia where his safety was concerned, Hamilcar was not in the conference room for safety's sake. Rather, he had learned to hijack the computer to play wargames from the Legion's educational programs on the conference room's big Kurosawa screen. On that screen now, thousands of electronic shadows were dying as a young student of the art of war swung in his flanks onto the opposing exposed flanks and smashed his cavalry into the computer enemy's rear.
It's a lot better, now, thought Hamilcar. Much, much better since dad snapped out of it. Mmm . . . mostly snapped out of it, the boy corrected. I can hear when he screams at night no less than mom can. And she doesn't really know, not the way I do, why he screams. After all, I was there.
Poor dad; when I'm a little older I'll be able to take some of the burden away.
Hamilcar knew, because his father had discussed it with him, that within a year, a year and a half at most, he would be going to Pashtia on his own—or, rather, with his company of guards—to grow some in ways the local schools could never teach. He suspected that it had more to do with getting him someplace comparatively safe than it did with furthering his education. Not that Pashtia was precisely safe, or perhaps ever would be. But there he would be guarded by hundreds, really thousands, of fanatics, every one of whom from the chief down to the least little girl milking a goat would eagerly die to prevent anything from happening to "Iskandr, avatar of God."
"Which is nonsense," the boy muttered aloud, his fingers sending a recall command to his light cavalry. "I'm not an avatar of any god. I'm just eight years old. With maybe some skills and knacks. And a slight resemblance to a nearly three thousand year old image on a gold plate in a dusty cave somewhere in Pashtia."
On the big screen, trapped shadows, nearly eighty thousand of them, continued to die.
Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova
From the island, the sea today might as well have been an expanse of blue painted glass, with waves drawn on. Close in, one could see that the waves were real enough, but very gentle. They rolled in to a smooth sandy beach, dominated by a hill with a couple of natural caves in its face.
"We could butcher them down there," said Alexandr Sitnikov, late of the Red Tsar's Fifth Guards Tank Regiment, as he pointed from the shallow cave mouth down to the beaches to the north, northeast, and northwest.
Carrera nodded but said, looking around the shallow cave, "I expected you would have made more progress than you have, Alexandr."
The short and balding Volgan looked sheepish. (All Volgan tankers were short, though baldness was optional.) "I know," he said. "And I'm sorry. But I ran out of money last year and Esterhazy"—the Legion's Sachsen-born comptroller—"wouldn't shit me any more money without your express order."
Carrera thought, Query to self: Despite what was intended to be a training program that developed vast individual initiative, did my behavior the last couple of years before I cracked make people defensive and rob them of initiative? Ask Mac and Xavier; no one else will answer honestly. If so, how do I fix it?
He nodded his understanding, agreeing, "Fair enough. Not your fault. The money will be forthcoming. Can you finish preparing the island for defense within three years?"
Sitnikov could remember a time when Carrera had been so worn out with the struggle, so tired, that he'd have lashed out viciously over any failing. The rest did him good, I think. Which is good for me, too.
"It will cost more," the Volgan answered. "The old rule still applies: You can have it quick or good or cheap; pick any two. And, of course, some preparations cannot be completed, per your guidance, until war is impending or has already begun.
Sitnikov's face took on an uncharacteristically mulish cast. "And besides that, I've got the problem of running the cadets. They're a goddamned division all on their own, Patricio. I've been juggling the two for years, probably to the detriment of both. You really need someone to do both, separately."
"I know," Carrera agreed. "And I am sorely tempted to make that someone Esterhazy, who is not only a trained engineer but also the fucker who should have taken the initiative and given you the money." He sighed. "But if I did, who would be comptroller?"
"That, happily, is your problem. I didn't sign on with you to specialize in personnel management."
"You didn't sign on to run herd on teenagers or design a system of fortifications, either," Carrera answered, drily, "but you never bitched about either one."
"Actually," Sitnikov corrected, "I signed on to teach your first troops to operate White Eagle tanks. You just bribed me into staying on for the cadets and this island."
"Mere details."
"Hmmm . . . details . . . tanks . . . I've got a demonstration for you, if you're up to it."
"Demonstration of what?" Carrera asked.
"Bunkers, actually," the Volgan answered. "If I didn't have the money to build them all, I did have enough to build some of the prototypes we first discussed and to test a few of the designs."
* * *
"Best put these in," Sitnikov said, taking a pair of earplugs from a pocket and handing them to Carrera. He took another set out, rolled them in his fingers to collapse them to narrow cylinders then stuck those in his own ear canals. Carrera did similarly.
In front of them a Jaguar II (formerly "White Eagle") tank sat with the tank commander's upper torso sticking out of the turret. Sitnikov gave the tank commander, or TC, a thumbs up. Immediately the tank commander dropped down into the turret, hurriedly closing the hatch behind him.
Sitnikov shouted, "This is going to—"
KABOOMMM!
"—sting."
Before the last word was out, indeed, before the concussion from the muzzle had dissipated, a concrete bunker downrange was blocked from view by the evil, black smoke of a good-sized explosion. Eight seconds later, after the turret had traversed a few degrees, the same thing happened to a second bunker, then, another eight seconds later, a third . . . a fourth . . . a fifth . . . a sixth.
"Jesus, I hate those things," Carrera muttered, completely unheard by anyone but himself. "Sting," was something of an understatement. The Volgans made great guns, of tremendous power and range for their weight and complexity. A major downside, however, was that the muzzle blast from those guns was somewhat incompatible with maintaining human health.
The TC of the tank emerged and made an all clear signal. Sitnikov nudged Carrera's arm, even as he dug into his own ears to pull out the plugs. "Come, let me show you." The Volgan picked up a box and began to walk toward the still smoke obscured bunkers.
"The concrete we use," Sitnikov explained, "is special. For fill we use coral we blast out of the reefs around the islands. Remarkably strong stuff, that is. Plus the cement is very high quality, as good as made anywhere on the planet."
Carrera nodded. It was no legend that, during the Great Global War, bunkers made of such material had taken direct hits from sixteen inch naval guns and very large aerially delivered bombs and survived intact.
The Volgan continued, "While we may have to face a substantial aerial bombardment, heavy weight naval gunfire is a thing of the past. I think we carry the largest naval guns on Terra Nova today, in our Kurita class cruiser, and they're only six inchers. Still, what will resist a sixteen inch shell is likely to resist a thousand kilogram bomb, as well."
"Not a deep penetrator," Carrera pointed out.
"A penetrator of any size," Sitnikov countered, "would rarely or never be used on a bunker containing at most three men and a machine gun or light cannon."
Carrera nodded. "True enough."
"And after I show you these I have something else to show you in reference to bunkers a deep penetrator might be worth expending on."
"What's in the box?" Carrera asked.
"Toys and garbage," Sitnikov answered, cryptically.
* * *
The range had been short. Thus, each of the six bunkers had taken a direct and well placed hit from the tank's main gun. The hits were, however
well placed, off center.
"There's no point in testing for what happens if a major round hits the firing aperture," Sitnikov explained. "In that case the crew dies. We're more interested in what happens when a gun hits any other part of the bunker."
The Volgan led the way around to the back of the bunker, to its entrance.
"This first one shows what happens when a tungsten or depleted uranium long rod penetrator hits anything but the firing aperture or hits at an angle that drives it through the bulk of the shelter. And it's . . . ugly."
Carrera looked through the entrance. Inside, lit only by daylight, the butchered carcasses of three pigs lay on the concrete floor. No, Carrera thought, they're not all dead.
One of the pigs, still breathing, lifted its head and looked at Carrera hopelessly before laying its head down again and expiring. Air escaping from punctured lungs turned pig's blood into a red froth.
Ignoring the iron-coppery stench of porcine blood, Carrera looked at one wall, where a long deep furrow of concrete had been blasted out, leaving the rebar exposed. He nodded, not needing an explanation for what had happened. The penetrator, when passing through the concrete, simply forced displaced concrete out the most convenient side, explosively.
"The next one," Sitnikov said, pointing and leading the way, "is a high explosive plastic, or HEP, hit."
Here, Carrera saw, the outside surface of the bunker was deeply pitted and cratered over an area of about a foot and a half in diameter. Walking to the back and, again, peering through the entrance, he saw something similar to what had been in the interior of the first bunker. This included three dead pigs—mercifully they were dead by this time—as well as a large, fairly round gap of exposed rebar.
"The exterior explosion sends a shockwave through the concrete. As the shockwave bounces back from the inner face, that face detaches . . . explosively."
"I understand."
"The next," the Volgan said, walking on, still carrying his box of toys and garbage, "was a simple high explosive round on a superquick fuse." At the bunker Sitnikov opened a steel door. "We only closed it for this one and the last," the Volgan explained, "to get a good simulation of concussion. It didn't matter for the others."
Carrera said nothing but looked through the open portal and saw three . . . living pigs.
"Straight concrete," Sitnikov said, "and the concussion gets transmitted pretty much in full. This stuff . . . well, what we've done to it, plus the peculiar qualities of the coral fill, and . . . well, you can see for yourself."
Carrera face grew mildly contemplative as he considered the stunned, staggering, but still living pigs. "What were you planning on doing with our porcine brothers?" he asked.
"Back to the farm?"
"No," Carrera shook head. "Seems kind of cruel . . . maybe even double jeopardy. I think they ought be retired for 'service to the Legion.' "
"Your pigs," Sitnikov shrugged. He walked to the next bunker. "Now it gets interesting. Look for yourself."
Carrera saw that, curiously, there was a wire mesh over the open portal and that behind the mesh were stunned but otherwise healthy porkers. He looked inside and saw no exposed rebar. He walked around front and confirmed that, yes, there was a pitted crater about where there had been one on the first bunker. For the moment, he withheld comment.
"This next one," Sitnikov said, pointing, "was another tungsten penetrator. You'll find the pigs are mostly healthy enough."
Carrera walked over and looked again through wire mesh. As the Volgan had predicted, those pigs weren't even stunned.
"All right, what's the trick?"
Now Sitnikov placed his box on the ground and opened it. From it he withdrew a number of two to three inch colored plastic shapes, a tetrahedron, a square, a pyramid, a cube, a sphere. These he placed on the ground, then reached in again and set beside them a small, plastic soft drink bottle.
"Those are the tricks," he said. "For the last two bunkers, plus the one you haven't seen yet, we placed these more or less randomly in with the concrete as we poured. They have the effect of breaking up the shock wave from HEP, of providing space where concrete can go when displaced by a penetrator, and of muting the concussion from a hit or near miss with high explosive."
Carrera mused on the concept for a half a minute, then pronounced, "Clever . . . but I've got some questions," Carrera said.
"Shoot, boss."
"What the hell are these projections of concrete all around the base of the bunkers?"
"The technical term is 'rafts.' Basically, they help keep the bunker from flipping over from a near miss from a big shell or bomb."
"Are the plastic fillers expensive?"
Sitnikov shook his head. "Cheaper than the concrete they displace."
"What's the cost of a bunker?" Carrera asked.
"About five hundred legionary drachma for the base structure, exclusive of NBC filters, electrification, labor for camouflaging, and such."
"And you want to put how many up?"
"We still haven't finished completely surveying the island for defense. Right now, my best guess is that we need about fifty-four hundred of these, plus maybe another six hundred that will cost several times more to house redundant tank turrets, plus thirteen—twelve more, plus one we've already built—underground shelters of very large size that will cost considerably more than the other six thousand, together, plus . . ."
"Show me."
* * *
The elevator fell and fell, lifting stomachs mouthward. To reach it, Sitnikov had driven into a tunnel that led right into the side of Hill 287.
"We put up the first one," he explained, "in part by using the budget you gave McNamara to build a secure facility for the precious metal. He and I had a little chat and agreed that we could kill two birds with one stone. So you have your secure vault, and you also have a very deep and strong fortification."
How many floors down is it?" Carrera asked.
"It's more than fifty meters from the surface, though still above sea level. There are twelve floors, each with about four hundred square meters of working and living space. You could house a cohort in it, more or less comfortably. Though this one is modified from the base design in order to serve as a command and control station, with service support and a small infirmary.
"We can put up to six, including this one, under this hill," Sitnikov continued, as the elevator slowed to a stop. "Here, they'll be safe enough from a direct hit even from the really deep penetrators the FSC is developing. Well . . . provided it's not a nuke, anyway.
"Should some enemy try the other approach, an offset hit to create a camouflet, a large hole beside the bunker to collapse the foundation, we've left a considerable space between the bunker and the rock of the hill and reinforced that space. The other locations, and those are driven by tactical considerations that we can't do a lot to change, need something else."
As the elevator doors opened to a sparse, Spartan, concrete-walled emptiness, Sitnikov took a one drachma coin from a pants pocket, and a pen from his breast pocket. He held the coin out between thumb and forefinger, parallel to the floor.
"Imagine," the Volgan said, "that this is a steel, about two inches thick and a bit less than two feet around. Call it a 'shield.' " He showed his pen held in the fingers of the other hand. "Now imagine this is a deep penetrator." He moved the point of the pen to the coin. "When the penetrator hits the shield, it will either hit it so near the edge it simply rips through, or it will hit further in and pick up the shield, or it will hit more or less in the center. In the latter case, the shield, being bigger than the penetrator, will have more resistance to the rock or concrete and so reduce the depth of penetration. In the middle case, where it hits between the edge and the center, it will cause the penetrator to . . . tack, basically . . . to shift from coming straight down to coming in partially on its side. This, too, will change the cross section and reduce penetration. For the first case, where it just rips through, we need to have more tha
n one layer of shields."
"I recall Obras Zorilleras sending me a message telling me something about this technique," Carrera said. "Cost?"
"Not cheap, particularly," Sitnikov answered, with a shrug. "Though we are looking into using reformed and re-alloyed scrap to cut costs.
"In any case, that is how we're planning on securing the big shelters that have to go someplace else."
"Won't work," Carrera said. "the explosion will rip off the layer of shields and the next bomb that comes in will go right through."
"Might not work," the Volgan conceded. "But we'll have a couple of things working for us."
"Such as?"
"Bombs like that are expensive and rare. Nobody has an excess. They're also expensive in terms of operational costs; planes, because they're doing that, can't do anything else for a while. People also have acquired a lot of faith in them, such that they're disinclined to question whether or not a hit was a kill.
"Somebody drops one of those bombs on a shelter, they're going to get all the signature, smoke, and debris that would indicate a kill. Why should they question that?"
"They still might," Carrera insisted.
"Yes, they might," Sitnikov conceded. "But we can't do anything about that and this is our best shot."
"Fair enough, then."
"And besides, we might have some chance of replacing the shields in between a strike and a repeat." Seeing that Carrera looked highly dubious of that, Sitnikov amended, "Well . . . a chance, as I said.
"And I've something else to show you."
* * *
Carrera whistled. It really was a lovely thing Sitnikov had wanted him to see.
"My boys made it in sections," Sitnikov said, explaining the fifteen by twenty-five meter terrain model that filled up over half of the shelter's bottom deck. "Then we moved it here and modified it."