The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  Soliz, wearing his very distinctive whites, left the bridge and went to the catwalks that encircled the airship. Normally these were fully Plexiglassed or otherwise fenced in, to protect the passengers from falling overboard. For the most part they still were, but several sections had been removed to allow fire from the machine guns and missiles.

  To get to the machine gun crews, or to expose them, would have required cutting through some thin material along the flanks, bow, and stern. Soliz wasn’t too concerned with them, anyway. They were warm and dry, inside Casamara. No, he was mostly concerned with the four three-man missile crews at the corners, where a dozen meters of Plexiglas sheets had been removed to allow firing to flank and stern or bow without the backblast damaging the ship. He’d verbally drilled the crews, personally, before issuing the missiles. Even so, he wanted to remind them. Hence, Soliz’s sojourn out to the catwalks.

  Having checked with the forward port missile men, Soliz, shivering because—What the fuck was I thinking wearing this thin white shit out in the open? Man, it is cold out here!—of the open catwalks, walked aft. There were stationed three men, all heavily bundled against the cold. One of the three men on duty sat on a passenger bench. The other two scanned continuously through huge binoculars that just happened to be mounted there, as if they were solely for the enjoyment of the passengers, when passengers were carried. The missiles remained in their cases on the deck, though Soliz could see that the tops were ajar already, for easy access.

  He stood there for a few moments, shivering while chatting with the troops. Then, duty done, Soliz ducked back into the shelter of the airship, walked a dozen meters down the corridor, and turned right to go to the cargo—sometimes the passenger—deck.

  In the center of the cargo deck was a kind of mobile cradle, mounted on roller rails bolted to the logistic track, or L-track, tie-down rails along the deck. The cradle seemed to Soliz to be a very good fit for the single Condor auxiliary-propelled glider that rested on it, hence also for the other eleven still resting on the deck. There was, he noticed, a thin, plastic-covered steel cable attached to both the rear of the cradle and the deck, with the excess rolled up neatly between them.

  Technically, the rolling cradle wasn’t necessary; the crew could have manhandled the gliders out the rear cargo ramp. This way was safer though.

  And why not? thought Soliz. The legion takes so many risks in every other activity, why not a little safety for the men where we can have it? Especially where it costs just about nothing?

  Soliz already knew the targets; the data for them had been selected from documents in his safe, based on certain inputs from home and the Global News Network.

  Even though he knew the targets, Soliz went and stood behind one of the Condor crew, the woman, as she input targeting data into a computer linked directly to one of the gliders.

  On one side of the screen were the numbers one through twelve, a target type, a location, a time of strike, and an approach, where that made a difference. It didn’t, always. Only eleven of those seemed to be complete. On the other side of the screen were displayed eleven empty sections and the twelfth, still full of data. Between those two was a map, the caption of which gave a code for the survey section and the major feature, in this case, the city of Lumière, capital of Gaul and, in some ways, of the entire Tauran Union, however much certain unimportant attributes—like the corrupt, rubber stamp of a Tauran Parliament—had been shunted elsewhere.

  Soliz silently skipped over the right side of the display, in no particular order, Soccer game, Altstadt . . . MB . . . Tauran Parliament . . . FMB . . . Throtmanni, Sachsen, MB . . . Kaiserswerth, Auto plant . . . FMTIB . . . Lumière, athletic event, MB . . . Lumière, Gaul, Tauran Defense Headquarters, FMB-I . . . Muddybrook, Anglia . . . SCIB . . . Nemossos, Gaul . . . FMB-I . . .

  The woman, Sergeant Vera Dzhugashvili, was a daughter of one of the Volgan officers of the Twenty-second Tercio, by his wife, also a Volgan. Soliz had never met either of Vera’s parents, but still had to admit, from a purely aesthetic point of view, that the match was a prime piece—Okay, pun intended, he admitted to himself—of evidence in favor of Volgan women.

  Green eyed, of a height to match Soliz’s own, blond, slender . . . Ah, crap, if I keep thinking this way we’ll both get in trouble. Still, what a great ass. Not much tit, but a truly spectacular bottom. He thought, both, because he was pretty sure the sergeant was interested, too. But nothing could be done until one or the other was out of service. The sergeant had joined at age nineteen, not so long after her family had moved to Balboa to man the legion’s opposing force regiment. She probably could have been an officer or centurion, thought Soliz, or even a pilot warrant officer, if she’d gone through Cazador School, for selection. Sadly, it was only recently that a female Cazador class had been opened, once annually. That was closed for the duration of the war. It was unlikely she’d ever rise above the rank of optio. And the legion could be literal death on that kind of mixed marriage.

  That rule’s got to change, thought Soliz. Now, with full mobilization, we’ve got to come up with something less restrictive. On the other hand, now, with full mobilization, we’ve got opportunities for corruption, favoritism, abuse of office, and de facto prostitution like never before. So maybe not. For sure, there’s no glib and easy answer. But, damn, is she pretty!

  “Sir,” asked the sergeant, “any idea why of four MBs, two are targeted at Sachsen but only one each at Anglia and Gaul?”

  Soliz shrugged, then answered, “My best guess, and it’s only a guess, is that Anglia and the frogs are used to hooligans, while Sachsen has a higher opinion of itself, possibly an unreasonably high opinion of itself, and so is likely to be more mortified when publically shamed.”

  “Oh . . . okay, that makes sense,” Vera agreed. “I guess.” She pushed a final key, then said, “Anyway, we’re ready, sir.”

  Soliz looked out and saw that the night was fast descending. “How close are we to the launch window?”

  Vera glanced at her display and answered, “Twenty-one minutes.”

  “Okay, commencing in twenty-one minutes, launch . . . one every five minutes. And let’s see how those bastards like it.”

  Vera felt a little shiver pass through at the skipper’s words. It’s so damned unfair. He already looks delicious and smells just right. Does he have to sound so damned perfect, too?

  Condor One, over the Southern Shimmering Sea

  The carriage slid easily down the rails to edge of the open loading platform. As soon as it reached that edge, a set of blocks abruptly stopped it, allowing the Condor to fly free.

  For a moment, the Condor dropped. But its long, thin wings quickly bit into the air, generating enough lift to turn the drop into a long, shallow glide. The glider’s GLS antenna was already out, and its active computer—though nothing special, to be sure—knew its objective, the course to take to that, and the final approach. The computer also received, through the same antenna, updated weather data to include wind, which ranged favorable from this direction, this time of year. Wind would be especially important at the target.

  The glider had been launched with its auxiliary power—a mast bearing a propeller—already set. This engaged sixty seconds after launch. After that, the gliding was done for a while, while the propeller lifted the thing to an altitude of four miles, then cut off. For the next several hours, the glider would, in fact, glide toward its target.

  By the time Condor Two departed the airship, Condor One was well out of the way. By the time the last of the twelve was airborne, on its own, the Casamara was an easy hundred and twenty kilometers from the initial launch point. Thereupon, the airship turned due west for Volga, where it would deliver the crew from the long-range bombardment squadron to a nice little dacha, then continue on in a circumnavigation of the planet until it reached Santander, west of Balboa. There it was to intern itself . . . for a while.

  Hotel Cielo Dorado, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  �
�It’s Commander Khan, the husband,” Esmeralda announced to the high admiral, shaking her awake gently. The empress barely stirred until the shaking became rather less gentle. “High Admiral, the commander says it’s important. He’s not given to panic or exaggeration.”

  “Oh, all right,” Marguerite answered, finally stirring from her bed. Esmeralda saw that she was naked, frankly magnificent, and had an interesting pattern of delicate-looking bite marks on her breasts. Totally unself-conscious of any of that, the high admiral stood, stretched, and then took the communicator from Esmeralda’s proffering hand.

  No sense in disturbing Xingzhen, thought the high admiral. I’ll take it in the other room. Esmeralda followed dutifully.

  “Are you alone, High Admiral?” asked Khan’s voice, once Marguerite answered.

  “Yes . . . well, except for Esma.”

  “She can hear this,” was Khan’s judgment. “High Admiral, do you remember a couple of days ago, that airship that resupplied the guerillas in Santa Josefina?”

  “Yes, sure.”

  “Well . . . I put a skimmer on it, just in case. I have visual of the airship launching a dozen or so . . . gliders. Yes, I am serious, gliders. But not just gliders, High Admiral.

  “Right now, Spirit of Brotherhood is over Taurus. It cannot see the glider by radar. Lidar is highly problematic. At least the limited returns we get show something that ought not be. We only have it on visual and, by the time I was notified, there was only one we had via the skimmer. It’s a glider, of course; it’s following the winds for the most part. So I can’t say where it will come down.”

  “So what is it?” asked Wallenstein. “Or what are they?”

  Khan hesitated a moment, then said, “I am guessing here . . . but I think this is how a nuclear warhead was delivered to Hajar without anyone noticing it. I would suspect these are delivering nukes to a dozen Tauran cities . . .”

  Oh, elder gods, thought Wallenstein, feeling a sudden attack of something like panic. Could he do that? Would he do that? He only had ten warheads though . . . well, ten I know about. He could have had more. But nukes? I could see him nuking the Salafi Ikhwan and those who supported it. It even worked out well for humanity, if not so well for the population of Hajar. But ten cities, or twelve, over some light bombing? No, he’s a nut but he’s not that bad of a nut.

  “Don’t think so,” Wallenstein said. “So go ahead and assume not and give me the other analysis.”

  “Just enough to provoke and humiliate them, High Admiral. Carrera wants this war as much as we do, and if there’s any better measure of his basic lunacy I don’t know what it could be. If not nukes then those are—I am guessing, of course—high-explosive-armed gliders.”

  “And we can’t see them by any technical means?” asked the high admiral. She asked herself, Will this help nudge the Taurans to the war they’re afraid of? Oh, yes.

  “No,” answered Khan. “Only visual.”

  “Then the TU can’t see them either?”

  “We think we’re still ahead of them in radar, lidar, and computer analysis, yes, High Admiral. So, no, High Admiral, they probably can’t. At least we’re ahead of them in those ships where the radar and lidar still worked and those we’ve been able to restore since your elevation to Class One and loosening of the purse strings.”

  Wallenstein thought for a bit, then thought some more, then asked Khan, “How long until these things reach somewhere worth hitting?”

  “Half a day or so, High Admiral. There’s no particular hurry.”

  “My instincts,” she said, “tell me to ignore this, in the same general way that any enemy, making a mistake, ought not be interrupted. I’m going to continue thinking about it, but unless you hear from me otherwise, ignore this and make sure no whisper leaves the fleet that we saw a damned thing.”

  “Roger, High Admiral. Wilco.”

  Condor One, over Lumière, Gaul, Terra Nova

  The gliders all had a pecking order and a presumptive time of arrival over their targets. Each on-board computer was also able to plug into the local global net, via a cellular connection, to coordinate, to the limited extent they had to coordinate. Condor One, also number one in the pecking order, was launched first and was first over its target. As soon as it was, it adopted a fairly high-level circular holding pattern, well away from well-travelled air routes. It also dialed into a site set up by Khalid, the use of which the assassin had never a clue to. The gist of its message was, “I am here. I am in charge. Notify when in position.”

  Condor Twelve, over Altstadt, Sachsen, Terra Nova

  The last one in position was Twelve, which had acquired its number by virtue of when it was expected to arrive on target. It duly checked in to Khalid’s website, reporting, “I am here and ready.” Twelve’s brother, Eleven, was also over the city, though its target type was very different. It had also reported in a few minutes earlier. Thereupon One said to all the rest, “Numbers Twelve, Nine, and Five, execute in three minutes. Numbers One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Ten, and Eleven, execute in five minutes.”

  All sent back digital, “Wilcos,” immediately, except for Number Six, which was a little slow. Six floated over an oil refinery in Tuscany. Eventually, it, too, reported in.

  Sicherheitsgruppen Park, Throtmanni, Sachsen, Terra Nova

  It was a huge stadium with a soccer game ongoing.

  Soccer had, unsurprisingly, been carried to the new world from the very beginning and kept intact since then. It was unsurprising because, where many other outdoor sports, and not a few indoor ones, required massive quantities of equipment, soccer required a ball. Everything else could be manufactured on site, if necessary.

  Soccer was, from some points of view, a perfect social sport; it encouraged a tie, no winners, no losers. For some, like the Federated States, this was anathema. But for Taurans it worked very well indeed.

  That is to say, it worked well for a large number, even a large majority, of Taurans. There were those, though, for whom anything but victory was as impermissible a concept as it was in the FSC.

  And then there were those who just liked a good fight better than anything except a good riot. These went to soccer games, invariably in groups, sometimes very large groups, on the not unreasonable premise that self-fulfilling prophecies are called that because they’re destined to be fulfilled.

  With Condor Nine floating lazily and easily above the stadium, unseen or ignored among the crowds, Gallic and Sachsen hooligan clubs took turns singing their national anthems, tossing unsavory ethnic epithets and similarly themed chants at each other, and generally engaging in the brotherly banter that had been at the core of soccer hooliganism on two worlds over more than five centuries. Before that it had been the core of the legal concept of “chance medley,” which was another way of saying, “young men like to, indeed are compelled to, fight and you can’t stop it.”

  In a crowd of eighty-three thousand, though, the presence of not more than a thousand hooligans, combined, was thought to be a minor threat.

  Nine received the word from One, via the website. It made a final read of the wind and weather, calculated its path from its own position and altitude, and then began a spiraling descent over the open portions of the stadium. Nine passed its eighteen-meter wingspan easily between the widely set yellow pylons over the stadium. Many in the crowd now did look up, some even pointing at the spectacle of the graceful glider coming so low.

  Then came a flash, a great puff of smoke, and the vision of the glider disintegrating. The wings, so light as to be harmless, flew off to the sides, then began to flutter down alone, spinning into the seating areas on either side. The small engine that separated out was heavier, dangerously heavy in fact. But soccer players are not noted for the slowness of their reactions. Neither are the referees who judge the play of the games. These saw the rapidly falling engine and stepped nimbly out of the way. The other pieces, the spun carbon fiber shell, the polyurethane embedded with its uncountable millions o
f randomized tiny concave-convex chips, the bits of shattered fuel tank, all sank slowly to the artificial turf of the stadium.

  And when all that had cleared, and the crowd looked up, all that they saw was a cloud, and not an especially thin one, of brightly colored rectangular pieces of paper, fluttering down like . . .

  Possibly the first to discern the nature of the attack was a camera and news crew, sending a live broadcast of the game to audiences and Gaul and Sachsen, both. The crew had two cameras, two cameramen, and two sportscasters, one Sachsen, the other Gaul, in each case. There was also a foreman of sort, an Anglian, who was the only man completely free to step outside the glassed-in booth.

  He grabbed one of the fluttering pieces of paper, saw what it was, and said, “Christ! Becken and Franck are no longer the highest paid men on that field.”

  “It’s fucking MONEY!” screamed one of the soccer hooligans of the Sachsen side, as he snatched one of the fluttering greenish pieces out of the air. Less certain, after the first impulse, he felt it between thumb and fingers . . . Yep, pure cotton.

  “It’s a fucking hundred Tauro note!” the hooligan screamed.

  “They’re all large notes,” said one of his compatriots, softly, gazing with wonder at another Tauro bill, this one a yellow two hundred, graced with the image of a mythical bridge.

  They’d been looking down at the notes. Spontaneously, they both started to look up to where the money had come from. One the way, their eyes, the eyes of forty thousand people, caught about forty thousand Gauls beginning to stream onto the field, where most of the money was blizzarding down.