by Tom Kratman
"There are basically two ways an air force can come at you, Duque," Yakubovski said, "en masse and by what is sometimes called a 'conveyor belt.' They much prefer the latter. Indeed, just assembling the former, gathering and organizing a major strike, is so wasteful of fuel—which cuts into ordnance carried, wears out the planes so badly—while they're hanging around waiting for the rest of the strike package to assemble, uses up so much time, and is so hard to coordinate, that air forces will usually only do it to establish initial air superiority or supremacy, or to support a major effort on the ground.
"The conveyor belt, on the other hand," Yakubovski continued, "has none of those flaws. Small strike packages are quickly assembled and easily controlled. They do not overstrain fuel and ordnance units on their way out, or maintenance units when they return. Airfields are orderly and efficient. Aerial refueling is easy. Conversely, aerial refueling of up to twelve hundred aircraft in a few hours is impossible for the TU. Even the Federated States cannot handle so much.
"However, the conveyor belt has its own flaws. It cannot be used efficiently until air superiority or, in preference, air supremacy, is established. If one tries, one finds that an altogether inefficient mix of aircraft must be used, fully a third of them equipped not for ground attack but for aerial combat. Still others must carry munitions for suppression of air defense."
Yakubovski stopped speaking for a moment, searching Carrera's face for a glimmer of understanding. The latter, on the other hand, kept his face blank while leaning back in his chair and staring upwards at the junction of off white-painted wall and white hung ceiling.
After perhaps a minute's quiet, Carrera asked, "You're trying to tell me that if I can maintain the ability to engage and destroy small strike packages . . . hmmm, define small."
Yakubovski didn't miss a beat. "About fifty or sixty aircraft, maybe half of them strike aircraft."
"Okay. If I can meet and defeat something that size, then they'll have to go to larger, less efficient, strike packages, that are also less deadly on a per aircraft basis?"
"Yes, which for all the reasons mentioned, plus the difficulty of planning and coordinating a major strike, will not come all that often."
Carrera lowered his head, closed his eyes and held up one finger for silence. He pictured, in his mind's eye, a major air raid coming in to Balboa . . .
"So I need to be able to defeat a raid of sixty aircraft?" he mused.
"Something like that," the Volgan agreed. "If you're willing, it might be well to plan for twice that. In fact, we have."
"What does that take?"
"Besides the barrage balloons you are calling 'Project Sarissa,' and the lavish air defense suite you are building, either two hundred or so fairly modern fighters or three to four times that in obsolete fighters with some improved capabilities. We recommend the latter."
"Why?"
Grishkin answered. "Partly it's cost, Duque. Two hundred modern fighters, on their own, without even counting training and maintenance, will cost more billions than you can lightly afford. Six or seven or eight hundred obsolete fighters cost . . . well," Grishkin handed Carrera an advertisement, torn from a newspaper printed on yellow paper.
"You're shitting me," Carrera said. "Under twenty-five thousand FSD for a depot rebuilt Artem-Mikhail 82 Mosaic-D? That's a typo, right? They left off a zero or two?"
"No, Duque, it's not a typo. In fact, it's practically an attempt at piracy. Larceny, anyway. I ran down—I have my contacts after all—the original source for the aircraft and the markup in that advertisement has been quite high. For that price we can get the aircraft, several replacement engines, and spare parts for years of operations. And for a few hundred thousand FSD, each, we can upgrade the things to where they would have a reasonable chance of killing TU fighters and strike aircraft at about two for five. If you are willing to risk men in training, we might get that up to three for five."
"They'll bomb the shit out of our airfields and we'll never get a plane off," Carrera objected.
Grishkin laughed and wagged a finger. "Oh, no, Duque. The AM-82 is very rough field capable. Moreover, we can get true vertical takeoff for them, or at least for some of them, in the form of a Zero Length Launch system. This is basically a trailer mount with a blast shield and some Rocket Assisted Take Off, or RATO, bottles mounted to the plane. They've been done. They work. Nobody's ever really used them because guided missiles took over. In your case, and Balboa's, they might make more sense."
Carrera shrugged. Maybe. Air war was not really his forte.
"Explain to me how you see an air war developing," he said.
Grishkin pointed. "Fuckoffski, you're up again."
Yakubovski stood and said, "Still using the TU as a template, Duque, the first attack will probably come en masse. Your Air Defense Artillery would unmask, briefly, but shut down, run and hide as soon as the individual systems and batteries have any reasonable excuse to. The TU would then pound a lot of empty jungle. Oh, sure, they'll hit legitimate targets, too. We aren't saying this will be easy.
"After a day or two of that, maybe three at the most, the TU would declare "air supremacy" or make some such meaningless public relations point.
"At that point, expect the TU to go to the more efficient conveyor belt type of operation. After putting up with that for a few days, you unmask your air defense, lift your aircraft, and attack with very heavy odds in your favor to engage a smallish TU strike package. Hurt it badly, even if it hurts you, too.
"The TU then has to revert to larger, all capacity, aerial task forces. The Legion hides for a while.
"After a bit, you could expect the TU to again declare 'air supremacy' and go back to conveyor belt operations. Once again, the Legion hits a small raid and hurts it.
"At about that point they'll try to get clever and do small raids but with a larger air to air group waiting to ambush. You ignore all such attacks until the larger group is not in evidence. Small fishing boats, coast watchers, and spies, plus whatever technical intelligence you can develop, will be important here. The effect is still virtual attrition on the TU, since planes not bombing are . . . well . . . not bombing, which is fine."
Yakubovski sighed. "I know, we all know, you've never told us your end game. Still, a blind man could see that, if you can drive out the TU and if the TU later lands, you must attack and crush that landing. Now imagine you can time it so that your artillery prep for that counterattack begins just as a TU air raid is departing."
"The TU's going to say, 'Oh, shit,' and start trying to assemble a major strike package. But the ground pounders are going to be screaming bloody murder for support. Politically, that will force the TU air forces to start scrambling and trying to assemble whatever can be assembled to help the ground pounders. Then your AM-82s lift. Your barrage balloons lift. Your ADA unmasks. The TU comes in, but in small groups and facing something truly awful, old planes, but a lot of them, and with good weapons, and a thick air defense umbrella.
"You're going to pay, of course. We're undecided about whether the air force you must build will be annihilated, or just butchered. The smart money is on annihilated. But you can get the time, through expending their lives and planes, to fight and win a battle on the ground."
Carrera looked questioningly at Lanza. His return look as much as said, They convinced me, boss. Though the idea of my boys being sacrificial lambs is not something I'm too comfortable with.
"How far along in planning are you?" Carrera asked.
"Very far," Lanza answered. "Costs, Tables of Organization and Equipment, training programs, instructor requirements, land usage, facilities . . . give us the money and we can start tomorrow. The boys have even done the redesign work to bring the Mosaic almost into our day and age."
* * *
"Something still bugs me," Carrera said. "Two things, really. I don't understand: Why so cheap and why so many?"
Grishkin shrugged, answering, "For the latter question, the Red Tsar never threw a
nything away and neither did his allies and clients. For the first question . . . basically, nobody wants them anymore so their value is reduced to not much more than the metal . . . and even metal prices are down. Everyone's looking for the most modern planes, whether or not they can maintain them and whether or not they've got the training system and the social system to procure sufficiently high quality human material for pilots. Over much of our world, it's a prestige thing, mostly, a way to keep the sons of the ruling classes amused and give them more reason to strut and better ways to talk girls into bed.
"The average air force, in the world, is nothing but an expensive indulgence. There are only a few air forces that even matter. One of those, sadly for you, is the Tauran Union's."
"Yeah . . . no shit." Carrera hesitated, perhaps only due to an innate conservatism, before agreeing, "Fine. Lanza, get your cost estimates to the Estado Major. We're going to go for it.
"And God help the poor kids who will, I have no doubt, volunteer in droves for this."
* * *
Carrera looked genuinely happy as he slunk out the entrance to the real offices of BYC, into the trashy alley, and then into the nondescript car driven by Mitchell and guarded by Soult. The latter two shared a look that said, Dunno why but it can't be bad.
"Estado Major building, Mitch," Carrera said.
"Sure thing, boss," Mitchell said, turning the key and bringing the engine to life. "Umm . . . boss, if you don't mind my asking, why so chipper? It just ain't like you."
"Two reasons," Carrera answered. "One is I've got a little more hope of survival than I did have. The other is I'm going to cut a little cancer out of the system at the Estado Major. Meanwhile, ignore me for a bit. I have to work myself into a fury."
El Estado Major, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova
There were over a hundred senior officers and non-coms present. Of those, only two, Jimenez and McNamara, knew what was the occasion for the assembly. Even Jimenez's Chief of Staff and Sergeant Major hadn't been told by their commander. As for Mac, Letting out the word about the boss going to the island so he can have a proper reception is one thing. But this . . . this really needs to be a surprise.
Legate Pigna of the Seventh Legion, recruited and based in the east by the border with Santa Josefina, thought if anyone knew what was up, it would be Carrera's Sergeant Major-General. He walked over and asked Mac directly.
"No clue, sir," McNamara lied, then retrieved his integrity by adding, "which means I know exactly, but am forbidden to say. I'd tell you if I could."
Mac actually rather liked the Seventh Legion commander, both at a personal and a professional level. He consider Pigna somewhere around the bottom of the top third of legion commanders and knew Carrera shared approximately the same opinion. Moreover, the Balboan legate looked like a soldier, from narrow waist to broad shoulders to strong chin to pencil thin mustache. If the man was a trifle ambitious, and Mac thought he was, that ambition tended to come out in the form of pushing the troops hard. This, the Sergeant Major didn't disapprove of. He wore a high decoration for bravery at his neck, the Cruz de Coraje en Oro con Escudo, so Mac couldn't fault him on his combat performance either. If Pigna had any flaw, in the sergeant major's opinion, it was perhaps that he had a trifle too much personal pride.
Pigna sighed. "I hate being surprised."
"I understand, sir." And I wish I could warn you that this is going to be a really unpleasant surprise, too.
Jimenez's voice sounded off, "Gentleman, the Duque, commanding."
* * *
I so wish, thought Jimenez, while braced at attention, that I had never taught Patricio to smile while chewing ass. It's unnerving, being on the receiving end.
Carrera had been chewing for a while by now, and the tongue lashing showed no sign of flagging.
"I thought," he sneered, "that you were all soldiers . . . real soldiers . . . not neversufficientlytobedamned pimps! Not bendoverandgreaseyourass whores for bureaucracy!"
A good ass chewing is a rehearsed operation. Carrera had spent days rehearsing this one.
Present, besides Carrera, were the five corps commanders, thirty-two commanders of legions and sub-legions so far designated, the chiefs of staff and sergeants-major for all of those, plus six members of the primary Legion staff, including the acting chief, standing in for Kuralski. McNamara was there, too, but he stood behind Carrera, immune to and exempt from the ass chewing.
Kuralski, himself, had been sent one of those letters that sometimes drives the recipient's blood pressure up into the Never Never land of apoplexy and cerebral stroke.
Pounding his fist on a table with each syllable, Carrera continued, "I turn my back on you for one miserable year and you revert to pencil pushing bureaucrats?" The pounding ceased and his voice took on almost the quality off weeping. "God! God! God! Where did I fail? How could I have been so wrong about you all?"
It could be worse, Jimenez thought, philosophically. Napoleon, back on Old Earth, used to beat his marshals over the head with a stick.
From the table Carrera picked up the top copy of a sheaf of papers perhaps a quarter of an inch thick. "Suarez," he said, reverting to a facial and verbal sneer. He crumpled the paper into a tight ball and threw it directly into the face of the Second Corps commander. "Pussy."
The next name he . . . well . . ."read" wouldn't be quite accurate. "Cursed," perhaps, would be closer. "Brown."
Aaron Brown, a short black legate who had been, before being recruited by Carrera, a tanker with the Army of the Federated States, steeled himself for the coming blow. Not that a sheet of crumpled paper would hurt, except deep inside.
Nor did it, when it struck him square on the nose . . . except deep inside.
"Chin, you stupid . . ."
* * *
Only the corps and legion commanders were blessed with a paper projectile to the nose. All the other flypaper reports Carrera saved for the acting chief of staff.
"And you . . . you wretch of a pencil pusher!" Carrera crumpled a flypaper report and threw it into the acting chief's face. He continued crumpling and throwing as he screamed, "Who cares about your silly fucking reports?" Another report struck the chief's face. "Who needs them?" And another. "Who told you to have your fucking staff suck my commanders away from training their units? Are you some kind of fucking Tauran saboteur?" Carrera reached up and ripped the legate's insignia from the chief's shoulders.
"Get out! Get out now. You are retired effective today."
No doubt about it, Jimenez thought. The son of a bitch is good at what he does.
"Obviously I have made a number of serious mistakes," Carrera said, his voice growing terribly calm. "I made you legates and put you in command of legions and corps, or made you my key staff, because I thought you had enough courage to stand up to the inevitable bureaucracy. Or, at least," he looked directly at the bent back of the departing acting chief, "not to make the bullshit grow.
Carrera sighed, as if brokenhearted. "Where I am going to find real officers, now . . . men of talent and courage . . ."
That was just a little too much. "We're sorry, sir," Brown said. "It just sort of . . . grew on us."
Carrera stopped in mid tirade. He nodded slowly and said, "All right. Enough then. Don't let it happen again. Don't just let the bureaucrats nail you to your desks with endless demands for information.
"You are all on probation. You have disappointed me . . . badly. If you let the administrative shit the staff has been laying on you distract you from training your men you have let them, and the Legion, and the country down . . . badly. In the future, try to remember that your duty is to prepare for war, not to shuffle paper.
"Except for Jimenez and McNamara, dismissed."
* * *
After the others had left, Jimenez said, "I didn't deserve that. Neither did the others."
Carrera cheerily agreed. There wasn't a sign of anger on his face now. "I know, Xavier. If anyone's, the fault was mine for letting administration
get out of hand."
"So why the ass chewing?"
"Because I'd already chewed my own ass and, after that little session, the next time someone starts asking for useless information, your brother commanders will tell that person to take a flying fuck for himself. Besides, I've been thinking about dumping the acting chief for a while. This way, more people benefit from the lesson."
McNamara shook his head, doubtfully. In his accented English he said, "I t'ink you were maybe a little too hard on t'em, boss. T'ere's such a t'ing as overacting."
"It's possible," Carrera agreed, still cheerily. "But they're big boys. They'll get over it."
Jimenez shook his head. "The acting chief won't. You fired him. He wasn't a bad sort, you know."
"You want him in your corps?" Carrera asked.
"I didn't say that."
"Well then—"
"—but now that you mention it I do have a place for him."
"As? Besides 'Assistant Corps Vector Control Officer,' I mean."
Jimenez thought upon that for a minute or so. "He was a better commander than a staff weenie. He never wanted to be a staff wienie, not even chief of staff. I think he could be a decent to good tercio commander."
"What tercio?" Carrera asked.
Jimenez already had the answer for that. "Forty-fourth Artillery, Fourth Legion. We're really running short competent artillerymen, you know."
"Fine," Carrera said. "But let him stew for a few days first, so that he appreciates the grace."
"I wouldn't wait t'at long, boss," McNamara said. "Whatever his faults, and t'ey were many, the old acting chief was pretty damned dedicated. He's going to take t'is hard. Maybe even terminally hard."
"You really think?" Carrera asked.
Hmmm. I suppose it's possible.
"Okay, Mac," he said, then turning to Jimenez he added, "Xavier, invite him to dinner. Tell him you are going to work on me to rescind my order and to get him a slot. That will give him a lot of well deserved suffering along with a reason not to decorate the wall.