The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  Instead of having an artillery tercio with three light or medium cannon cohorts, a heavier cannon cohort, and a multiple rocket launcher cohort, the Eighth had one cohort of man-portable (if barely) wheeled multiple rocket launchers, one of super heavy 240mm breech-loading mortars, and three of heavy 160mm mortars. Both types of mortars had more or less elaborate fixed positions, those for the 160mm guns being turreted with redundant, modified tank turrets. It also had a larger than normal complement of tanks, mostly hidden in fairly strong and well-camouflaged positions. The legion’s service support tail, and its headquarters, generally, occupied some portion of one or another of the Isla Real’s thirteen deeply dug fortress complexes, arrayed mostly in an irregular ring about Hill 287. Two of the thirteen were dug in under lesser heights.

  The different casernes and areas of the island were connected by two transportation systems, running in parallel. One of these was an asphalted two-lane highway, laid in a ring a couple of kilometers inland from the coast. The other was a 600mm rail system, open to the sky but dug in and protected by concrete revetments, a half a kilometer or so even farther inland.

  The Twelfth Coastal Artillery Brigade was based on the island, though it had reduced strength cohorts of heavy artillery at both Punta Gorgona and Chimaneca. These were at reduced strength because they weren’t expected to last very long, anyway, nor to do much good if they did. They existed, for the most part, for no higher purpose than to keep a potential enemy from wondering why the far ends of a future naval mine barrage were not covered by direct and indirect fire.

  Similar were the sixteen former naval turrets, triple 152mm jobs, ringing the island. The Twelfth Brigade had a single maniple whose job it was to make those look active and threatening, even to the point of firing them on occasion. In fact, nobody in the know expected them to survive an attack for long nor much cared if they did. The turret’s main function, like that of the understrength cohorts of heavy guns off on the mainland, was to keep people from asking the wrong, which is to say the right, questions.

  Instead, the meat of Twelfth Brigade on the island was hidden. It consisted of four demi-cohorts of heavy guns, mounted on railway carriages, and four torpedo batteries, two to either side of the island. The torpedo batteries actually belonged to the classis, the Legion’s naval arm, but were attached to the Twelfth.

  Back on the mainland, the situation was considerably more dire than on the islands. For one thing, the Eleventh Legion was brand new, though most of its higher command and staff came from school brigade and were, individually, generally quite competent. The troops, however, had mostly not finished their initial entry training yet. They, still under their training cadres—in the Balboan system a rather lavish set of cadres, though—were grouped into new tercios, numbered Forty-sixth through Fifty-first Infantry, and Seventy-first Artillery, among others, The infantry were at roughly half to two-thirds strength in personnel, though the artillery was considerably stronger than a normal tercio.

  Some of those men and women, indeed, had as little as two weeks in uniform. The bright dye of their uniforms said as much. Worse, many of them were still sitting on the island, working on defenses while awaiting transportation.

  “Not for three more months, Duque,” was Puercel’s judgment. “I don’t have the wire up or the mines laid. Christ; Cheatham’s still got Balboa Foundation and Wall pouring concrete and building obstacles and nutcrackers along the beach. And the unmanned water-cooled MGs are taking a while to get out of storage and set up.”

  Nutcrackers were a kind of antilanding obstacle employing a wooden frame, a wooden lever, and a standard antitank mine to smash landing craft as they approached shore. The water-cooled machine guns were just that, except that, once someone started them firing, a curved and notched bar, to which a modified traversing and elevating mechanism was attached, caused them to fire continuously over a wide arc. The bar and T&E mechanism had been fairly easy to design and develop. Even the automatic cocking mechanism in case of a stoppage hadn’t been all that tough. The twenty-four-thousand-round drum magazine had been a bitch.

  “Plus,” Puercel continued, “I don’t have two of my five combat regiments yet. I don’t have many of the half-trained trainees off the island yet. We are still bringing in food and ammunition from the mainland where it had to be offloaded since our port facilities are not up to handing large freighters. Two more months.”

  Carrera raised one eyebrow and pointed at first the Thetis, then the other coaster impressed into being a minelayer. The implication was, This is on time. Why aren’t you?

  “Because what he has to do,” offered Roderigo Fosa, in defense of his comrade, “is a thousand times more complex than just loading some stockpiled mines and delivering them, with crews that have spent nearly ten years learning how to do just that.

  “Can’t we do something diplomatically,” Fosa asked, “to keep the Zhong out of it? And yes, I know that would probably mean turning one of my people over to a ritual execution, but . . .”

  No, thought Carrera, because I need the Zhong to come into it. If they don’t, the TU won’t fight but will let this ceasefire drag on until we’re bankrupt.

  “No, as a matter of principle,” Carrera said. This was less than the truth but he couldn’t reveal the truth. It was also not quite a lie, since he did consider protecting his people a matter of principle.

  “How soon can you sail?” Carrera asked Fosa.

  “Anytime,” the latter replied. “But I thought you wanted me to intern my fleet in Santa Josefina just before hostilities recommenced.”

  “Correct. But what if you sail and put on a very defiant show for the Zhong?”

  “They can kick my ass, which is to say, sink my fleet,” the naval officer replied. “Remember, though, God be my witness, I asked for some modern VTOL fighters for the Dos Lindas”—the Dos Lindas, alleged to be named for the breasts of Carrera’s late first wife, which were also alleged to be on demure display as part of the figurehead, was the legion’s sole sailable aircraft carrier—“but ‘no,’ you said, ‘too expensive,’ you said, ‘not our job . . . ’ ”

  “Never mind that,” Carrera answered. “I was right then and I’m right now. And that’s not the question, that they can sink your fleet even minus the carrier Warrant Officer Chu and the Meg took out. I know they can. The question is how much does it delay them, figuring out what we can and can’t do, and then beefing up their fleet to be sure of success when faced with a fleet that looks ready and eager to fight.”

  “Oh . . . well . . . couple of weeks, I suppose,” Fosa conceded. “A couple of weeks more, I mean.”

  “And how long to sail here from Xing Zhong Guo?”

  “Month.”

  “Which gives me the time I need,” said Carrera. “Put to sea, Fosa. Put on a good show. When the Zhong come, run for Santa Josefina and intern yourself. Denounce me if you think that will help, since we both know it will be fake.”

  Like so very much of what we’re doing and showing is fake.

  “By the way, Rod, have you finished loading the arms, ammunition, and equipment for an infantry cohort?”

  Arraijan Ordnance Works, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The gliders—“Condors,” they were called, though they differed from the manned versions—came in in containers, and left in containers, the containers holding also the tanks of hydrogen, frames, balloons and harnesses to lift the aircraft. Here in the Ordnance Works, they were pulled out, modified, then resealed and released. The modification for one type consisted of filling them with roughly three hundred to three hundred and twenty pounds of high explosive, seventy of incendiary material—magnesium—sixty of guidance and control package, and about twenty of speakers, battery, and digital player. In the process of mounting the speakers, sections of the polyurethane foam were cut away that, with the tiny convex-concave chips embedded within them, gave the condors their stealth capability. The frame around the speakers contained very small explosive charges to blow out t
he removed and replaced polyurethane panels to allow the speakers to be heard.

  Another type carried an electromagnetic pulse generator. Still another carried a naval mine. And there was one made to dispense electrical wires to short out power systems. There were approximately as many types as human ingenuity could come up with, filtered by the demand of human depravity to do the most damage for the drachma.

  Another particularly wicked type of modification was made to very few in number, only four in total. These were fitted with a cylinder containing a mix of various forms of counterfeit and real Tauran money, generally in fairly high denominations, especially the counterfeit. The cylinder, developed by Obras Zorilleras, the Balboan research and development organization, had sufficient explosive of a type no sniffer dog was likely to key on, to first disintegrate the condor that carried it then to cut itself into dozens of fragments, leaving the money to flutter to ground. The counterfeit came from the same mint that printed up Balboa’s legionary drachma, which mint had been set up for Balboa by the Taurans. If one is going to do counterfeiting on a massive scale, it helps to have the engraving done by experts, and the paper and ink coming from the very people whose money you intend to counterfeit.

  The guards on both types were very heavy indeed.

  The guard force’s problem was that the several hundred modified condors neither came in nor left in large groups. Instead, it was one here, one there, and a couple the other day. The most they’d ever managed to get out was thirty in a single day, and that was because the Balboans could cover the movement in the form of a massive distribution of ammunition to the Isla Real. The condors didn’t go to the island of course; the move merely got them to the docks where they could be loaded on an about to depart ship.

  Where they would go from there was anybody’s guess.

  Carretera Balboa-Cristobal, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Any given military veteran of the old, now liberated, Transitway Area would probably, if asked about the terrain, have answered to the effect of, “Miles and miles of fuck-all jungle, most of it not seen by a white man in a century.”

  For his area, and his time, that would have been approximately correct. The Transitway Area, barring the bases, towns, roads, dams, and such, was mostly jungle, and for a very good reason. Without trees to hold the soil in place the waters would have silted up in no time, while mudslides would probably have buried the place in the course of a couple of rainy seasons.

  For much of the rest of the country, though, to include much of the country near the Transitway, the veteran would have been as wrong as could be. More than anything else, the noncity but populated parts of Balboa were farms. This was true also on either side and between the not quite parallel roads that ran from Ciudad Balboa, on the Mar Furioso, south to Cristobal, on the Shimmering Sea.

  There were casernes, a few, and also a few legion-owned housing areas along the westernmost of those two roads, the one that avoided the old Transitway Area completely. These already contained the casing for some very large thermobaric bombs, said casings containing the bursting charges, the initiation flares, and the seismic fuse, so far unset. These only needed to be filled and have their fuses set to arm.

  In addition, south of the Parilla Line, some others had been buried some time prior, though they did not extend into the old, formerly Tauran-controlled, Transitway Area. Teams were burying a few—three, no more—though none were to be filled yet. Getting them into position was proving a positive nightmare, since here the jungle was pristine . . . and thick.

  Most of the rest, a total of ten, were going in under cover of defensive works preparation between and to either side of the twin roads. They, also, were not yet filled. Neither were their fuses set.

  Isla Real, Hovercraft Ramp C, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Ordinarily the hovercraft had been used to ferry out new trainees and limited resupply, and to bring the cadres back to the mainland for rest and recreation, the island never having been set up for much in the way of the latter. There wasn’t time for that now; the troops coming out were coming to fight; the ones going back were going back to finish their initial training and then, if things got bad, to fight. Supply was an ongoing crisis. Indeed, it had to be. Past a certain point of obvious preparedness and the Taurans would probably never have attacked, whatever the provocation.

  Among the troops coming today, on this hovercraft load, were a mix of the Forty-first infantry, itself a mix of foreign allied cohorts, and a special crew, in more senses than one.

  The Forty-fifth, the Tercio Santa Cecelia, was composed of the mentally retarded and the physically disabled, with only a minimal cadre of normal leadership, seconded from other units. The troops of the tercio might be assigned to anything, or attached over to another unit for anything. The core of them, however, formed the “Adios Patria” men and women, people who would man fixed positions from which there was relatively little hope of escape in the event of attack.

  Sergeant Rafael de la Mesa had been a first class infantryman, once, a legionary on the fast track to centurion. Then an accident had intervened, breaking his back and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He tried to control his bitterness. He didn’t always succeed. Sometimes it leaked through to fall in full acid fury upon his three charges, Julio, Juan, and Pablo. These were boys or young men, mentally retarded but not so badly that they couldn’t understand the oath of enlistment or what it meant. Together, they and de la Mesa formed a fixed turret crew, though they didn’t yet know which turret was theirs.

  “De la Mesa?” asked a wheelchair-bound centurion, Robles by name.

  “Here, Centurion,” answered de la Mesa.

  “Your crew is assigned to Turret 177. It’s just south of the tadpole’s tail, if you remember the island’s layout.”

  De la Mesa mentally pulled up a map of the island, as best he could remember it. “I do,” he said.

  “Good,” said Robles. Passing over a plastic folder, he said, “Here’s your position data. I haven’t looked at it, myself, but one of the attachments who can still walk said it’s fine. You may have to get rid of some antaniae; there were droppings.”

  “Roger,” said de la Mesa. “Juan?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” answered a retarded boy, though one whose face said his Down’s Syndrome was light.

  “You have your basic load of ammunition?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “You shall be killing antaniae, soon.” Turning back to Robles, de la Mesa asked, “How do we get there?”

  “Wait here,” said the centurion. “A truck with a loading ramp will be along sometime in the next hour to carry you and your men to the turret. I’m afraid the road doesn’t go close enough to your position to just let you off. They’ll have to port you through a few hundred meters of jungle.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind.

  —Gilbert Keith Chesterton,

  What I Saw in America

  Admiral’s Barge, over the Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  The UEPF Spirit of Peace was a bright, sunlit spark behind her. Ahead was Wallenstein’s destination, Xing Zhong Guo, or New Middle Kingdom. This was the last significant state on the planet to officially adhere to a variant of Tsarist-Marxism. Of course, in true Han fashion they didn’t call it that. Instead, they called it Enlightened Path to Perpetual Peace and Prosperity. Never mind that, as bloody-handed as Volga’s Red Tsar had been, he was a piker compared to the Zhong’s Huangdi, in terms of sheer volume of premature deaths by starvation or judicial murder. Never mind that, as far as prosperity went, the Zhong as individuals were among the poorest people on the planet.

  Whatever “enlightened” means, thought the high admiral, I don’t think it means what the Zhong think it means.

  Fortunately, Marguerite would not be meeting the reigning Huangdi. The Han Chinese had lost none of their sense of aggrieved cultural superiority in coming to the new world. Thus, for those
meeting the emperor—largely a figurehead now but a much revered figurehead—kowtowing was a minimum requirement. Since, as a practical matter, the UEPF had outranked the Zhong since the planet was founded, and since some of its past high admirals had insisted on proskynesis from the barbarians below . . .

  Well . . . better to just go along with what the diplomats worked out centuries ago, to just avoid the issue by keeping the two of us apart. Besides, if the SecGen of the Consensus, himself, rated neither proskynesis nor a blowjob from me, the local potentate sure as hell will not.

  Wallenstein had to be discreet whenever she travelled to the surface for anything that might trip the weapons grade paranoia of the Federated States. No matter the government in power, progressive or federalist, on one matter the massively overwhelming bulk of the Federales were united; they detested utterly the Peace Fleet that had nuked two of their cities to ash. This might not have been so bad, except that the Federated States had the ability to nuke the UEPF and its base on the island of Atlantis, both, to ash. And all that kept them from doing so was the belief, wrong, in fact, that the UEPF could visit like destruction on the Federated States.

  The only other state down below that hated the Peace Fleet as much, and for approximately the same reason, was Yamato which, after suffering through the loss of two cities, and being on the verge of surrender, had been bucked up by the reprisal visited on the Federated States, and thought better of surrender. Had they actually been able to achieve a satisfactory peace with the FSC, they might have felt differently. As it was, the Federated States Army and Navy had imposed a blockade of the Yamatan Islands, engaging and destroying anyone trying to flee, letting no food in, and destroying every vestige of food transportation network and storage they could find.