by Tom Kratman
A steel mold was erected around the rebar. It was perpendicular to the ground on the sides. Several other mold sections, which formed a dome when joined over the main construction, were set up nearby. The overall site engineer, in the corporation's military configuration he was a tribune, returned during the molding and rebaring phase to direct the placement of the flattish trapezoidal shapes that defined the firing ports so that they would cover the maximum possible terrain while providing the minimum possible target. The sometime captain had to slither through the rebar, snake-like, to get behind the trapezoidal mold in order to orient it just right.
The Rebars also installed the pipes that would allow grenades to be dropped from the inside of the design to the revetted ditch that would be left in front of it. They emplaced the double curved pipe that would provide an air vent—doubly curved with a drainage pipe that led outside to prevent inflammables being poured down it into the bunker. Fixtures for steel shutters were added in this phase of construction along with the pintle that would hold and guide the cradle for the bunker's eventual main weapon.
* * *
"Come on," Cheatham shouted, "they're ready to pour that one."
That one, Carrera saw, was a major fighting bunker.
The molds were in place, covering the lattice of rebar that would reinforce the structure. A trough led to them from a cement truck just off of the road. At a signal from the engineer foreman (who also happened to be a reserve centurion; go figure) the truck driver wrenched a lever. Cement, good quality Portland with a partially coral aggregate and reinforcing aramid fibers for added tensile strength, began to flow down the trough, helped by engineers with paddles.
"We put in an additive," Cheatham explained, in a somewhat softer voice now that they'd left the jackhammers behind. "It helps the concrete flow."
The first concrete filled the floor and sealed around the culvert that, along with the bunker, would later be covered by earth. The culvert led to another excavation, deeper and wider. The first truck was empty before the area defined by the molds was more than one sixth filled.
When the first truck had pulled out, empty, another pulled into position to dump its six cubic meters. Then came a third, fourth, and fifth through ninth. During the pour of the sixth, seventh, and eighth trucks the construction crew added sections of dome mold and threw in an assortment of shaped pieces of plastic, of an average dimension of two inches on a side.
"Good job, boys," said the foreman of the crew. "Back to the truck. We can fill three or four more before nightfall."
* * *
"It'll be a couple of days," Cheatham said, as he escorted Carrera back to his vehicle, "but that bunker is now the responsibility of the 'Recovery' team. They'll wait until the concrete's set sufficiently for the molds to be taken down, then pass the molds on back to the 'Rebars.' The interior mold, the treated plywood, we leave in place.
"After that, a couple of days after, the 'General Labor Group' comes in to put more hollow plastic cubes and soda bottles around the sides and then fill the dirt back in over the bunker and the cubes and culvert. They also do the re-camouflaging with the foliage we stripped off in the beginning."
"Remind me," Carrera said, a look on his face composed half of wonder . . . and half of financial desperation, "remind me of just how much concrete we are going to be using."
"This fort will take seventy-two hundred cubic meters," Cheatham answered, without hesitation. "Some forts will take a bit less, others, somewhat more. More than ten times what goes into the forts is going into the entire program. If you want a big figure, that's one hundred and five thousand truckloads of concrete. If you want a little one, it's only going to equal a cube about one hundred and ten meters on a side.
"Of course, that's still about what went into the Maginot Line, six centuries ago, on Old Earth. And," Cheatham added, "we have some advantages over that system of fortifications. We can't be flanked."
Chapter Ten
Along with all the other illusions and frauds of human existence, there have been and are the millennial philosophies, those reform movements who promise us a paradise in this life, if only we would X or Y or Z. There are at least three common problems with these philosophies. One is the Year Zero problem. Another is the assumption of a closed system problem. The third, related to the second, is the illusion, perhaps better said, delusion, of the possibility of permanence.
It is the last, the delusion of permanence, that allows the millennialist to avoid the need to realistically define and measure good and evil not merely by their intensity and scope, but also by their practical duration. Assuming permanence, an infinity of good results, allows the millennialist to accept, even to advocate, any and every practical amount of evil because, measured on the scale of a presumed infinity, any good, however trivial, must outweigh any evil, however vile, done to achieve it. Kill twenty million. Nay, kill two hundred million. Even these levels of atrocity cannot compete with even a tiny permanent improvement in the lot of mankind. That this is intellectually sloppy bothers the millennialist not at all.
Of course, nothing is permanent without being in a closed system. Millennialist philosophies are illegitimate for that reason alone.
The Year Zero problem, the problem that society and custom are as they are and will carry their effects over into the future, can, of course, be overcome . . . provided one is able to identify and willing to kill everyone whose values are conditioned by having, unfortunately, been born prior to the millennialist turning back of the clock to some presumed, and mythical, Golden Age. Unfortunately, even were it possible, this leaves alive only people with no values whatsoever.
—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468
Anno Condita 471 Hotel Rustico, San Antonio, Balboa, Terra Nova
The town was situated in the caldera of a long dormant volcano. Because of that volcanic soil, the caldera was lush and green beyond the power of mere words to describe. Mathematics could describe it, after a fashion. Simply multiply the greenest thing imaginable by something approaching infinity. That would have been a fair approximation.
The hotel, itself, was almost snug up against the sheer western side of the caldera. This area was, if anything, greener still, except where it was an explosion of flowers. Too high up for mosquitoes, the place was almost supernaturally healthy. Some of this health may have derived from the sheer joy of being there.
Many well to do Balboans kept holiday places there, some, like the hotel and its name, quite rustic, other nearer to palaces. Legate Pigna, for example, of the Seventh Legion, kept a place there, as did several twigs of the Rocaberti family tree. For that matter, so did Arias, the senior man of those police still loyal to the old government and president Rocaberti. It had, in fact, been the policeman who, upon hearing of the mass ass chewing delivered by Carrera to all his senior leaders and staff, had found and sounded out Pigna before inviting him to this meeting.
* * *
"Oh, take the idiotic fake mustache off," said one of the men gathered in the back room of the Hotel Rustico. "It's not like any of us don't know who you are, Pigna. It's not like everybody who is anybody in Balboa doesn't know everyone else who is anybody."
Pigna glared down at the speaker, one of the rump President's nephews, a young but very fat man he knew only by sight. That clan tended to run to fat, anyway, and as far as he was concerned, they all looked alike. He was about to reply when he heard a group of Cadets or perhaps Young Scouts marching by the front of the hotel singing:
". . . together with the legions then,
Rise up together with the legions then.
In the morning we rise early
Long before the break of dawn,
Trixies screeching in the jungle,
Moonbats scurrying from the sun.
Now assemble, mis compadres.
Gather, boys, and muster, men,
Hand to hand with butt and bayonet,
Let their blood across the homeland run.
And you are welcome, Balboenses.
Side by side we'll make our stand
Hand to hand with butt and bayonet.
We'll rise up together with the Legions then . . ."
"That," said one of the men present—Pigna assumed he was foreign, probably Tauran, Gallic, from his accent, "is a chilling thing to hear from the throats of barely post-pubescent teenagers. I'm de Villepin, by the way."
"Your children don't sing songs like that in Gaul?" Pigna asked.
Villepin shook his head, confirming his origins. "No . . . not anymore. The bureaucrats would have apoplexy. There they sing about peace and love, the Family of Man, and glories of the Tauran Union."
"It's aimed at you, you know," Pigna said. "They're raising a generation here that, with the best of democratic motivations, wants to rip out your throats and drink the blood."
"We know," Villepin replied. "It is . . . worrisome. It is even worrisome to my . . . superior, General Janier. We must put an end to it before that generation grows to manhood."
"Never mind all that," said another of the men present. Pigna recognized him as, the old head of the police, one of the Arias brood, now reduced to lording it over the couple of companies of police left to the old president in the old city. "We all know what the problem is and why we're here. We have to put a stop to all this . . . this . . . madness."
"It would be better if you could do that for yourselves," said Villepin. "Oh, yes, we would help behind the scenes. But still, in the long run, it is best if you take the initiative."
"With what?" said the policeman. "I've got less than five hundred men that I control and no more than that number that would go along with me in the hope of restoring old times again."
"Ah," said Pigna, "but I have over four thousand. And by the time I am in a position to do anything it will be closer to ten thousand."
"In a position?" Villepin enquired.
Pigna sighed. "On the scale of the force being created my one legion doesn't count for much. Applied in the right place, it could count for a lot. But I can't just mobilize it and move it. We'd be intercepted and destroyed on the road or in the air. On the other hand, in about a year or fifteen months we'll do our annual training at the Centro de Entrenamiento Nacional, at Fort Cameron, not all that far from here. That would put us in a position to seize certain key facilities."
"You've been giving this some thought," Arias accused.
Pigna didn't deny it, but did say, "Enough to know that I can't do it alone. I can possibly hoodwink my men into seizing President Parilla, for example, if I told them it was Carrera's order, but they would never, not in a million years for a billion drachma, seize Carrera. I can get them to, say, take over the television and radio stations, and seal the City off from traffic. They would not attack other regiments in the Legion, unprovoked."
He looked very pointedly at de Villepin and added, "Any plainly Tauran activity, any attack, made openly, would shatter the illusion I would create for those men, and lose me control over them."
De Villepin nodded agreement. This one had been giving it some thought.
"We can probably restrict our activities to the fairly clandestine," the Gallic intelligence chief agreed. "Say, using a commando group to take Carrera and sundry other of the Legion's highest ranking men. And perhaps Parilla if we decide that's would be best."
"The corps commanders and General Staff," Pigna said. "Get them and I'm a fair shot for first among equals. If my legion is in a position of control, I would be first among equals."
"I doubt we could keep such a vast enterprise secret, or hide our involvement long before being discovered," the Gaul objected.
"Block the road from the City to Valle de las Lunas and you would take more than half out of the picture, at least for a while. And, if you chose the right place and right method of blocking, it could be many days before anyone discovers your involvement."
This, de Villepin considered. "Perhaps," he conceded. "It would help if we could somehow convince the Federated States that we were acting in their interest in doing all this." He mused, "Perhaps a bit of lawfare would be in order."
Belalcázar, Santander, Terra Nova
The place was by no means upscale. Waitresses bantered with customers, cooks shouted out for orders to be picked up, flies buzzed lazily from table to table. In this restaurant of no great name or reputation, two men who took some pains to have neither name nor reputation sat over coffee. One was an assistant to one of the members of the increasingly powerful Belalcázar Drug Cartel; the other a specialist in moving drugs from Santander, where they were grown and processed, to Southern Columbia and Taurus where they were avidly consumed. Neither felt any guilt at being in the drug trade. Either, if asked about guilt, would probably have answered that drugs were a South Columbian and Tauran problem; that, even if the trade from Santander stopped, those who craved the drugs and those who profited from the craving would simply look to new sources and new—even home made—drugs.
After several hours of conversation the two men reached across the table to shake hands. The deal was struck. Seven tons of nearly pure "huánuco" paste (in fact, a extract of the leaves of a primitive plant, apparently brought to Terra Nova by the Noahs, that might or might not have been an ancestor to or relative of the terrestrial coca plant but which at least produced a very similar alkaloid) would leave Santander within the week to travel through Balboa on their way to the Federated States, Secordia, and the Tauran Union.
Aduana (Customs), Herrera International Airport, Ciudad Balboa, Terra Nova
As with many public servants in the less developed parts of Terra Nova, Señor Donati was much underpaid. As with nearly all of those, he supplemented his income, where possible, through a mixture of cash for favors. Sometimes these were trivial, both the favors and the cash. Sometimes they could be quite substantial.
Chief of the main airport's customs office, Mr. Donati was well placed for both the doing of great favors and the receipt of great rewards. He was at the moment engaged in the former, in anticipation of the latter.
And it's so easy, he though, quietly filling out the necessary forms to insure the easy passage of several crates of what he assumed were drugs. The crates were due in on a flight from Belalcázar later this afternoon. Twenty thousand drachma were already in the chief's wife's account; fair payment for little more than looking the other way and approving and amending a few forms. The payment had started considerably larger. But, of course, the chief had not been able to keep everything the Santanderns had given him. Some few thousands went to his men in the Aduana. Rather more went to certain high-ranking people in the rump government of the Republic, which still had considerable influence among the civil police and customs service.
In particular, thought Donati, the office of the President—the old President—always insists on its cut.
Still, what Donati had been able to keep made quite a tidy sum. Certainly in Balboan terms it did.
Almost as valuable as the money given directly, the Santanderns had also given the customs chief a bagged kilo of nearly pure stuff. This was neatly stowed in the chief's briefcase. He would turn it over to a street dealer this evening for many thousand dollars more.
And none of that had to be shared.
Executive Complex, Ciudad Balboa, Terra Nova
The Honorable Thomas Wallis, Ambassador to the Republic of Balboa from the Federated States of Columbia, shared few of the values of his more enlightened kindred. Wallis was an ordinarily friendly faced, medium height, slightly heavyset man, who wore his suit somewhat uncomfortably. There were reasons for that, as there were for the lack of shared values, as there were reasons why he had been made ambassador, to the complete surprise of himself and everyone else.
The reason for the lack of comfort when wearing a suit, and for the rest, was that Wallis had been a career soldier before ent
ering his country's foreign service. Surprise or not, given how badly the Federated States had needed the troops of the Legion for the campaigns in Sumer and Pashtia, and given how few career soldiers it had in its ranks, Wallis had been a natural. Parilla and Carrera could talk to him, with confidence that what they said would be understood, and that their concerns would find a sympathetic ear.
"Ambassador," Carrera began, ". . . Tom, I don't know what you and the Federated States want from us. We're already doing everything possible to stop the trade through or near Balboa. The classis is engaged almost entirely in drug suppression."
"Which the Federated States pays for," Wallis corrected.
"Which the Federated States pays most, but not all, of the operating costs for," Carrera further corrected. "Which is a drop in the bucket, anyway, compared to salaries, food, wear and tear on the ships . . ."
"Which you would have to pay for anyway," Wallis finished.
"Which we would have to pay for anyway," Carrera conceded, with a sigh. "But that doesn't change that we're still doing everything we can."
"And yet the drugs still get through," Wallis said.
Parilla suppressed a sneer, not so much at Wallis as at the policies of his country. Still, he said, "They wouldn't if you hadn't split our country."
"The Tauran Union is not running drugs," Wallis insisted.