by Tom Kratman
Loma Boracho, Fort Tecumseh, Balboa, Terra Nova
It was a low hill, with a pleasant sea breeze, overlooking the southern terminus of the Transitway. Its name had come from the parties of construction workers, a century previously, who had taken advantage of the breeze for their drunken revels on their infrequent breaks from construction work. Now, it was a training area. Also was it a designated mosquito feeding area. Similarly, it was a howler monkey breeding reservation. The last two designations were unofficial, but real for all that.
With monkeys howling their rage in the distance, and mosquitoes coming in for suicide runs altogether too close, machine gun fire, blanks, rattled in the moist night. Xavier Jimenez listened to the fire, trying to judge its exact direction.
Jimenez keyed his radio to the controller push and asked what the trouble was.
"Monkeys, sir," came the answer. "Stinking monkeys spooked the troops and caused them to go to full stand-to and then to open fire."
"Roger."
Tsk, thought Jimenez. That will cost you, boys.
* * *
On the hill itself, grumbling headquarters troops cleared their weapons and filed back to the bunkers and bedrolls. Before being spooked, they'd been fully clothed and had their weapons nearby. Now-
"That's right, sweetie-pies," said the regimental sergeant major, his booming voice carrying clearly across the hill. "Off with the boots and uniforms. You spooked once. The price of that is war is a slower reaction the next time. So we're making your reaction slower by having you strip down."
* * *
Patricio said in his last training brief that this would be a way to train people to take advantage of surprise, thought Jimenez. I confess, I have my doubts. Still, worth a try.
* * *
There were a number of things, in training for war, that were simply hard as Hell to simulate. One of these was to provide an opposing force that was both challenging and realistic when training people for reconnaissance patrolling. Another was giving them a realistic portrayal of surprise, so they would learn to recognize when they'd achieved it and to take advantage of it.
Carrera's last training guidance had addressed both.
"Look," he'd said. "When you send troops out on a recon, in training, you've got a choice of either no realistic probability of them running into opposition, or you have the very unrealistic technique of vectoring an enemy patrol in on them. Or . . ." he hesitated a moment to see if anyone had figured it out. When no one offered a solution, he'd said, "Or, you can have the patrols, for a company say, start around the edge of a rough circle and the objectives be toward the center. That way, there's a strong chance of chance contact and they will have to act as though there is.
"You've got a similar problem—a little similar, anyway—when you try to train to create and take advantage of surprise. You can choreograph it. You know what? The troops know choreography when they see it. And they don't believe in it. And they don't think, not deep down, that the training was legitimate.
"Or, you can—"
* * *
By three in the morning, the defenders—who had had to defend nothing yet—were tired, and frustrated. All three moons had gone down, leaving the area plunged into complete blackness, except for the distant glow from Cristobal, across the bay. Worse, they were bootless and stripped down to their skivvies (that was from the first false alert), their weapons' slings were tangled (from the second), and their body armor, their loricae, were piled up (from the third false alert). In each case, the speed with which they could react to a real attack had been artificially but realistically slowed. Thus—
* * *
Jimenez swatted at a mosquito buzzing his left ear when he heard over the other radio, "Zulu Six Seven this is X-ray Five One. Fire Target Group Bravo."
"Six Seven, Five One; roger, over . . . shot over . . . splash, over."
Trees were instantly silhouetted as artillery simulators began whistled and exploding all over the hill, from military crest to reverse slope. There was fire, both rifle and machine gun, coming from the hill. Yet it only came from the quarter of the defending troops who were allowed to be fully alert, strung out mostly in observation and listening posts around Loma Boracho.
Jimenez saw another explosion flash through the trees, followed by what he thought were probably antaniae, winging it upwards to escape the blasting.
Nasty fucking moonbats, he thought.
"Breach One, clear," said the radio. A second explosion followed. "Breach Two, clear."
Jimenez pulled his night vision goggles onto his face and looked northwest. This was the direction from which the 8th Tercio commander had briefed him that the breach team would blow through the wire. Sure enough, he saw twin files of armed men rising from the jungle floor to dash forward toward the breaches in the hill's perimeter wire.
A crump overhead and just past the position turned into a mortar illumination round. The casing whistled down to impact in the nearby bay. Cursing, "Shit!" Jimenez removed the goggles as Loma Boracho lit up almost as brightly as day. Another crump from the same direction as the first told that the next round was on the way.
On cue—as if on cue, at any rate—evaluators redoubled their throwing artillery simulators, pyrotechnic devices that whistled for several seconds before exploding with a fairly realistic flash and bang. Machine gun fire—still blank, the only live ammunition being used were the mortar illumination rounds—erupted from outside the perimeter.
* * *
In the bunkers pandemonium erupted as half naked troops shook themselves out of sleep and struggled to find and free uniforms, boots, rifles and armor. Evaluators stood by the bunkers to ensure no troop left without being fully dressed and equipped. Men cursed as heads bumped and hands and feet were trod upon.
This was not to say that all the defenders left with their own gear. More than one soldier ended up in clothes too big or too small in the rush. By ones and twos, except where a leader had the presence of mind to organize before moving—the defenders began to filter to their perimeter through the trenches.
Under cover of the suppressive fire from the machine guns, and smoke from hand held smoke grenades, teams from the 8th Tercio were already through the wire and beginning to enter the trenches. Here and there evaluators tapped soldiers of the 8th, making them lie down as casualties. The cry "medic" arose from half a dozen throats.
In their ones and twos the defenders tried to slow down the avalanche of combat power overwhelming their position. It was to no avail. Throwing grenade simulators ahead of them, 8th Tercio's storming party drove the headquarters troops back and further back.
Not all of the cries for medical support were simulated; the grenade simulators could cause nasty burns and mild concussions. As the evaluators had rehearsed, an evaluator accompanied the forward elements of both sides, both to assess casualties and to pull unwary soldiers out of the way of the simulators' explosions.
This is fucking great! thought Jimenez. He recollected something Carrera had said in the training brief: Many senior commanders don't enjoy training their soldiers unless they can maneuver their entire units. I have found that these men typically have fragile egos. The best trainer of combat troops is usually the one who can enjoy the fun his small units are having.
"Well, I'm having fun, anyway," Jimenez muttered, as another series of explosions, more grenade simulators, moved a prong of 8th Tercio's attack closer to the center of the Loma Boracho position. Jimenez walked forward to oversee the final assault.
Military Academy Sargento Juan Malvegui, Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
Two white men, Volgans, in mufti, stood on a spit of land on the west side of the old town's roughly rectangular harbor. A centuries-old stone fort watched over the harbor's mouth, as it had for all those centuries. The fort's seaward gun ports were sighted to intersect and interlock with those of another fort across the water on the eastern side. At the bay's mouth was a tree-covered island. It seemed to float on
the water. For that matter, people who had stared at the island long enough had been known to say the thing was moving.
Behind and around the two men, more or less surrounding the fort, arose the barracks and classrooms of the academy. Work still continued on some buildings, an irregular pounding of hammers interspersed with a drone of heavy machinery.
Sitnikov, leaning with one hand resting on a verdigris covered bronze cannon, asked, "Well, Victor, what do you think?"
His companion, Victor Chapayev, nodded. "It is adequate."
Chapayev wore an air of inestimable sadness. Sitnikov knew as much of Chapayev's story as Samsonov had thought he needed to know. He could guess at the rest.
"If the duque is happy with it," Chapayev amended, "who am I to complain?"
"You were with Carrera in Santander, weren't you."
Chapayev nodded.
"What did you think?"
"He seems decent enough. He's been decent to me. He might have saved my company down there, after I was hit. Probably did, in fact."
"So he seems. Decent that is. Let me tell you something, though, Victor. Carrera will treat you well right up to the day you cross him. Then, he's no different from the Red Tsar. I've seen it. Boy, have I seen it. His goals are not normal."
"You think he's a Marxist?" Chapayev asked.
Sitnikov shook his head. "No . . . not a Marxist. Not a capitalist either. He's . . . I don't know that there's a word for it; but he wants to change this country as much as the Red Tsar ever wanted to change Volga, and to change it as profoundly. But what he wants to change it into . . . I don't know. It's as if he doesn't let it be known so that no one can resist him in achieving his goal.
"The Red Tsars let everyone know what they wanted and applied pressure to force the society into the mold they picked. Carrera doesn't. He seems to be eliminating some things, true, but then he mostly entices people to fit themselves into a mold they can't even see. He's a community organizer, and no one in the community seems to realize they're being organized.
"Think about it, Victor," Sitnikov continued, "to get anywhere, these days, a Balboan must associate with Carrera's army; to become a part of his team. The Red Tsars used the power of the state to force change. Carrera is making the state irrelevant. Balboans who need or want something are getting out of the habit of looking to the government. More and more they turn to Carrera, or rather, the Legion. But that is the same thing now. And he's every bit a ruthless as the Tsar was."
Sitnikov pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Despite which, I'll continue to work for him because . . . because he's . . . a terribly good soldier. Do you know how rare that is; in any army, to work for a really good soldier?"
Chapayev said nothing. Sitnikov asked, "Is that why you are here, too? I asked Samsonov, but he wouldn't tell much of anything except that you were one of his best officers. Still, I had to wonder . . . why would he let one of his best go? You were back in the rodina not long ago, weren't you?"
"I found I didn't belong there anymore." Chapayev cut off that line of conversation.
"Nor any of us, I suspect."
Sitnikov ignored that. He asked, "So is Balboa your home now? Do you even have a home, Victor?"
"I won't know until I find it, will I, sir?"
Sitnikov shrugged. "Would you like to make this your home for a while?" He once again cast his arms out to encompass the school.
"Why not?" Chapayev said with no noticeable enthusiasm.
"Fine. The day before we open this school for the next semester, you are promoted to Tribune III. I believe that makes you one of the dozen or so youngest Tribune IIIs in the country. You will be the assistant to the Balboan legate who commands the school, but you will report to me, as he does. I want you, in particular, to concern yourself with the light infantry training of the cadets."
"How much time will I have for their training?"
"The boys spend two military days a week. Monday through Thursday are for academics. Friday and Saturday are their military training days. Sunday is parade, church, and inspection. By the way, how is your Spanish coming?"
"It needs work."
"You have two months. Make that your first priority."
"Sir."
"I suggest that the best way to learn might be to find yourself a horizontal dictionary," Sitnikov added.
"A what?"
Sitnikov shook his head, smiling at Chapayev's innocence. "A girl, Victor, go find a girl." Sitnikov cocked his head slightly, musing on something. With a broad smile, he said, "Now that I think about it, Victor, the Castilian, Colonel Muñoz-Infantes has a very good relationship with us here. I think perhaps you should also become our liaison to him. That will give you a bit more motivation and opportunity to work on your Spanish."
Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova
Lourdes still served as Carrera's very private and very confidential secretary, as she had since he'd first hired her, more than a dozen years before.
"The big advantage," he said to her, as she laid the latest consolidated Research, Development and Procurement Report on his desk, "is that now I don't have to pay you a regular salary."
"Watch out," she answered, "I might go on strike for better working conditions. More sex, for example." She glanced, meaningfully, from Carrera's office toward their bedroom.
"Why is it," he asked, "that you always get hornier when you're pregnant and stay that way until the baby's a year old?"
"Are you complaining?"
"Oh, not a bit. But you're a lot younger than I am. I foresee the day when I knock you up as the last gasp measure of an old man and you then kill me with your insatiable demands." He sighed. "Can't think of a better way to go."
"You better believe it," she said, turning away from the desk. He was struck, as always, by the fact that, recently pregnant or not, she never lost her shape. Bigger breasts? Yes. And yum. A bit displaced in front? Yes, but that didn't last. And from behind she was still the willowy girl he'd married.
"Anything interesting in the report?" he called after her.
"They finished testing on the frontal composite armor for the SPATHA," she answered, without turning. "Likewise the gun. And the Global Locating System Interdictor has some technical problems they need a tactical solution to."
"You're a treasure," Carrera said, just loud enough for her to hear.
"You better believe that, too."
* * *
Only five people had access to the complete report. There were Carrera and—as a practical matter—Lourdes, plus Fernandez, Grishkin, the Volgan-born chief of Obras Zorilleras, and Kuralski. Not even Fernandez's deputy had access. (Though Legate Barletta didn't, in any case, have access to much, his post being more administrative in nature.) This was about as compartmentalized as information ever got. Carrera quickly scanned over the reports from Siegel, in Cochin. Those projects were well on track. The Meg plant at the shipyard on the bay of Puerto Lindo was slated to begin full production soon, he was pleased to see. Mortar production was keeping pace with force expansion. Good . . . very good. The artillery ammunition plant at Arraijan, not too far from the small arms fabrica that produced the F-26 rifle, M-26 light machine gun, and their variants, was experiencing a shortage of brass for shell casings.
Note to Fernandez: Is the brass shortage worldwide? Our screw up in procurement planning? Long term or short? Note to the Ib: Can we substitute?
He did more than just scan the report on the SPATHA, the Self Propelled, Anti-Tank, Heavy Armor, project. Balboa didn't have access to the planet's best armored vehicles; those were the purview of the Federated States and the Tauran Union, neither of which was interested in selling to the Legion.
And I wouldn't trust a Tauran tank even if they'd sell.
Still, the Legion needed something that could go toe to toe with a first line Tauran tank, if only to keep the latter from playing too free if—No, when—war came.
Hence, the SPATHA, a semi-obsolete Volgan tank, with the turret removed and
a fighting compartment built up, a 152mm gun bored out to 160mm slung in the fighting compartment, and enough composite armor added on front to stop even a Gallic or Sachsen 120mm depleted uranium penetrator at knife fighting range.
And the redundant turrets go out to the Isla Real to add to its defenses.
He read first about the armor, a back-engineered composite expressly designed to defeat long rod penetrators. Satisfied with that, he pulled out several photos from an envelope attached to the report. One of these showed a dead pig, strapped into the gunner's station of a tank, with a machine gun driven completely through its body. All the other pigs, so said the report, were likewise killed, if not in so grisly a manner.
So, a hundred pound charge of a plastic explosive, splattered on the turret and detonated, will do that to the crew of the target, will it? Cool.
On the other hand, we still need to build nearly a thousand of the bastards, including for operational floats.
Turning the page to close that section of the report, Carrera skipped ahead several—there were forty-one major sections—to go to the section dealing with GLS Interdiction.
* * *
GLS, the Federated States' Global Locating System, and its Tauran and Volgan competitors (which were incomplete in any case, causing both to rely more or less heavily on the GLS anyway), depended upon timed signals. In effect, a receiver was bombarded continuously with signals that amounted to, "At the tone, the time will be." By comparing the time "stamps" it was given, a receiver could calculate quickly and accurately its location on the surface of the planet, its altitude, and even—if moving—its direction of travel. So dependent had all possible adversaries grown on the GLS system, that defeating or sabotaging it was a major priority of the Legion's R&D establishment.
But, as Obras Zorrilleras had discovered, there were some limitations to what could be done.
* * *
"It just won't work, sir," the project officer had said to Grishkin, out on the OZ facility on the Isla Real. "Not like we planned anyway."