The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  “We’ll get better use out of our updated Mosaic-Ds, which our pilots do know how to use, and which we can launch without runways—”

  Parilla interrupted, “You can launch them, yes, but you can’t recover them without runways. And they’re so old, our boys are going to be slaughtered.”

  “Raul,” said Carrera, “we’ve been through this before. The Mosaics are all rough-field capable and we have a metric shitpot of rough fields. They are still, sixty years after first being fielded, the second tightest turning aircraft on this planet. And the TU doesn’t have the tightest turning, the Federated States does. They’ve also been extensively upgraded in everything from weapons, to radar signature, to avionics. We’re going to take them down, when we commit, two or three for every five. We can stand that. They can’t.

  “We have five tercios of air defense in the Eighteenth Legion. When the bombing starts again—and it will, pretty damned soon—their orders are to cease fire and go out of action and hide at the first near miss. They all have solid hides dug or built. We also have enough mock-ups of wrecks for most of them. The duckhunters come back into action at a time of our choosing. The Eighteenth has the SPLADs, about which the Taurans may know nothing and against which they are unlikely to have developed a defense.”

  The SPLADs were Self-Propelled Laser Air Defense, a system some would have called illegal, designed to blind pilots as painfully as possible, making them crash their aircraft.

  “And we have Project Sarissa, which we will know is coming, when we decide to use it, and they will not.

  “Lastly, we are dug in like termites. Over an area of ten thousand square kilometers, they would need to expend seventy million tons of bombs over a short period of time to temporarily neutralize us. They couldn’t drop that many bombs in ten years.

  “Mr. President,” Carrera finished, “relax. Please. I have . . . oh, shit!”

  The sirens began to blare all across the city. In places, those where the newest warning systems had been installed, voice commands rang out: “Take shelter. Enemy aircraft inbound. This is not a drill. Enemy aircraft inbound within fifteen minutes. This is not a drill. Enemy aircraft . . .”

  Parilla’s bodyguards bustled in to cart him away. From outside came the screech of presidential limousine tires, laying rubber.

  “JAG,” said Carrera, heart pounding and eyes flicking back and forth, nervously, “you come with me. Professor Ruiz, please accompany the president and first lady.”

  Once outside, Carrera let the presidential limousine depart first, waiting impatiently for it to clear the way. Then he and Puente-Pequeño mounted up in the much less ornate staff car—unlike the limo open to the air—where Warrant Officer Soult pulled out from his parking spot and began following the president to a shelter, but not the one under Cerro Mina. Crowds of nervous civilians, mostly women and children, flooded the streets, making the drive slow and difficult. Carrera scanned faces, seeing less than he’d have liked of determination and more than he wanted to see of terror.

  Well . . . it’s a new experience to them, he thought. Though I’m not entirely sure how much it helps when it becomes a common experience.

  They lost sight of the limousine somewhere in the crowds ahead, a fact that raised Carrera’s heart rate until they caught sight of it again, turning onto Avenida Ascanio Arosemena, which was half of Avenida de la Victoria.

  A bomb unexpectedly exploded atop Cerro Mina, raising a long and drawn out wail of fear from the civilians who, herdlike, began flooding back into the city and away from the blast.

  “What the . . .” began Puente-Pequeño.

  “Either something stealthy that snuck in under the radar,” answered Carrera, “or something jammed our radar to let something else sneak in. They went after the top of Cerro Mina because we have both radar and a heavy air defense missile battery up there, covering the city, with a battery of light self-propelled guns covering them. If they survived that, they should be—”

  The air overhead erupted with the sound of multiple sails ripping, and those ripping fast, overlaid with organ-shaking bangs as the propellant in the heavy missiles expended itself almost as quickly as explosive in a cannon barrel. That sound, too, raised another long drawn out wail from the civilians.

  At least they’re not panicking, thought Carrera, though, of course, Ruiz has pre-made recordings of very calm and determined-looking civilians going to their assigned shelters, complete with the sounds of aircraft and air defense women herding them in. And we’ve got teams out to record the damage as it comes in. And then there are the atrocity tapes.

  Now, my personal opinion, is that the average Tauran is about like anybody else, and really won’t give a shit about the damage done to us, real or, as in the atrocity tapes, acted. And the Tauran ruling class, the unelected bureaucrats, won’t really give a shit, either. But between them is a class that doesn’t rule, but decides who does. That class is sensitive, which is to say, weak, and will not be able to stand the damage they do to us.

  So they’re giving us ammunition to use against them. Silly bastards; they forget that, except when the Federated States leads, so it can take the blame, they can’t sustain anything on their own that offends their sense of aesthetics.

  I think . . . well, I hope.

  Still the loudspeakers blared, “Take shelter. Enemy aircraft inbound. This is not a drill. Enemy aircraft inbound within seven minutes. This is not a drill. Enemy aircraft . . .”

  The car had to stop for the dense crowd. Soult turned around and said, “Boss, I’m never going to get through this in time for you to get to the shelter. It’s not far, you can get out and trot there before their main attack gets here.”

  “What about you?” Carrera asked. “You can’t ditch the car; the ambulances are going to need a clear path through.”

  “I’ll stick with the car until the crowds clear.”

  “Fuck that shit,” said Carrera. “There are things one doesn’t care to live with. Saving one’s own skin while leaving behind one’s friend is among them. But Puente-Pequeño?”

  “Yes, Duque.”

  “You get out and go on ahead on foot.”

  Shaking his head, the lawyer replied, “To quote somebody or other, ‘fuck that shit,’ Duque.”

  “Insubordinate bastard.”

  “Yes, Duque.”

  Again, the air defense batteries on the hill overhead erupted in a mix of rapid light-cannon fire and a single blast from a launching missile. That was followed by two explosions that definitely were not from the defenders, the shockwave knocking the scurrying civilians to their knees or all fours and rocking Carrera’s staff car.

  The scampering crowd thinned enough for Soult to advance a few more meters. Catching sight of a thin opening between the row of parked cars, Carrera said, “Stick the son of a bitch in there! Crossways. Just so long as it’s out of the road!”

  Soult cut the wheel to the right, struck one of the parked cars, pushed it out of the way, and forced his way up and over the curb. In a flash, he, Carrera, and the JAG were out of the vehicle and hurrying forward. A large explosion hit the hill again. This one was big enough—most likely a thousand kilogrammer—to knock all three down, stunning them on the way to the asphalt.

  “Enemy aircraft inbound. This is not a drill. Enemy aircraft inbound within three minutes. This is not a drill. Take shelter immediately. Enemy aircraft inbound . . .”

  Standing, Puente-Pequeño caught sight of a little brown girl, no more than three, standing alone and crying. She took turns wiping at her eyes and at the snot running down her face. Ignoring the latter, the JAG trotted over and scooped the child up. He looked around for Soult and Carrera, only to find they had almost reached him. Again, the three men, now reinforced by a child, took off for the shelter.

  KaaaWHOOMF! That last, apparently on the old Comandancia and current Second Corps headquarters was a whole new order of explosion. The blast shattered windows over a goodly chunk of the old city and sent a
column of smoke rising high over the slums between the headquarters and the avenue. A chorus of screams and wails, mixed with an increasing number of police, fire, and ambulance sirens, arose ahead of the party.

  Shit, thought Carrera, the Taurans must be pissed. No sense of humor, those people.

  “Here, sir,” announced Soult, upon arriving at a concrete opening, then turning and waiting for the lawyer and the Duque to show up.

  The shelter was marked as such, both in words and in a graphic showing a wall turning away a blast. Because so much of the area had been destroyed during the Federated States’ invasion of a generation prior, new buildings had been able to incorporate some very strong basements, deliberately designed as shelters. They wouldn’t stop a deep penetrator, but they could stand up to almost anything else, and had within them life support sufficient to provide oxygen in the event of a firestorm.

  Entering into the shelter, lit, if not well, by emergency lights lining the walls at just over head level, Carrera looked for a place to stand. Taking the JAG by the sleeve, he dragged both him and the little girl to it.

  “You picked her up,” said Carrera, “you get to ask for her mother. How’d she lose her mom, anyway?”

  Puente-Pequeño shook his head. “She doesn’t know, but from what she says I would suspect the crowd simply parted them and dragged the mother along with it.”

  “Okay, well see if you can . . .”

  A woman walked up, bearing a very small baby in her arms. She gave Carrera a dirty look, and then a grateful one to the lawyer, then took the crying girl by the hand, dragging her off while scolding her without cease.

  Nice to be loved, Carrera thought, sardonically.

  The ground underfoot shook with another huge blast. Even through the thick concrete walls, the shockwave could be felt by the people sheltering within them.

  Nodding to himself, Carrera stood up on the short platform he’d intended for the lawyer to use to find the girl’s mother. The ground shook again, this time worse. This time, also, it raised a new bout of crying from the civilians who were, again, mostly women and children.

  “I thought,” said Carrera, loudly enough to be heard even in the recesses of the shelter, “that I ought to give you good people the chance to see if I am as big a son of a bitch as most of you probably think I am . . .”

  Joint Headquarters, 16th Aviation Legion/18th Air Defense Legion, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Miguel Lanza, with both his own key staff and that of the duckhunters, felt his organs quivering under the aerial assault. The worst of it was when, so he guessed and so it later proved, the enemy dropped several penetrating bombs onto the thick piles of earth and metal over the concrete bunkers of the joint headquarters. Those had knocked people to their hands and knees, set some of them to vomiting, caused a couple to wet themselves, and generally been a most unpleasant experience.

  The lights went out momentarily, but flicked back on again once the emergency power system kicked in.

  The mission of the moment was more distasteful than any Lanza could recall. Little by little, he was taking the country’s air defenses off line and hiding them, leaving everything open to a lashing from the air.

  As he ordered the Air Defense Legion’s chief of staff to take a battery of medium self-propelled out of action and hide them in bunkers, Lanza thought, You are a soulless bastard, Patricio Carrera.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

  —Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August

  Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Lieutenant Sanders, flying a Sea Hurricane low over the sea, bearing a good seven tons of unguided munitions, really didn’t get it. He’d dropped his bombs on the mainland for weeks now, not less than a sortie a day. At first the resistance from the ground had been fierce, and not especially ineffective. Between the four carriers, the bases on Cienfuegos, and the airfields in “neutral” Santa Josefina, the Tauran Union had been sending in a thousand sorties a day, carrying two or three thousand tons of ordnance. They’d lost better than forty aircraft to ground fire which was not, given rates of production of modern aircraft, long-term sustainable. The rate of loss probably would have been a lot worse except that they had apparently driven the Balboan air defense from the field . . . that, or destroyed it.

  Saunders wasn’t entirely convinced of the latter, but when he’d raised the objection with his wing commander he’d been pooh-poohed off.

  He still wondered though, and about more things than one.

  I wonder if the reason I’m carrying unguided crap now is because we used up everything we had in the inventory trying to avoid bombing their field hospitals and our prisoners. Okay, that part I could get, if true and they’d admit that it’s true.

  What I don’t get is why are the higher-ups so confident. How do we know their air defense umbrella is shredded? I know that three other pilots and myself made a claim on a missile launcher near Brookings. I am pretty sure they counted us each as having destroyed one. What if it was only one? Or what if it was none, a diversion, a dummy?

  It’s always been a problem with air forces, inflation of damage reports; don’t the generals and admirals know that? Were they selected for something besides brains?

  Hmmm . . . that’s a stupid question, isn’t it, Saunders? Next you’ll be thinking that the Tauran Union’s democracy deficit isn’t a feature of the system.

  And then the dipshits declared “air supremacy!” What the fuck is that supposed to mean, that the declaration is a victory? Jesus, popping champagne corks everywhere, and on the GNN cameras. Nearest to an explosion any of those pogues have been, I suppose.

  “Aaand . . . here’s my target.”

  Saunders jerked his stick, just in case anybody on the other side hadn’t heard that the TU had achieved “air supremacy,” then pulled back and climbed upward, paralleling the slope of the central rise of the island. His targeting computer was already set for this target, a supposed mortar battery, well dug in, facing the northern beaches. At the proper time the computer, itself, released two one thousand pounders. The bombs kept a goodly portion of the course the Sea Hurricane had already been on. They flew up and over the hill, losing energy all the way, then reached the apogee of their arc and began a rapid descent.

  The target was a series of turrets, set into concrete, with large muzzles pointing generally upward. What damage he did, Saunders had no clue. Supposedly someone was tracking battle damage from the air or space or both.

  The pilot deftly punched in the number for his next target, noted the preferred approach on his screen, and brought his plane around for another pass.

  Hmmmph. Wonder why we’re not bombing the city today. I suppose it could be those peace activists who chartered an airship and intend to occupy various points in Balboa as human shields. Yeah, that’s likely it.

  Herrera International Airport, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Pax Vobiscum, despite the use of a Latin title, and the presence of Catholic clergy, was not a Catholic organization. Oh, it had its share of mostly nominal Catholics in it, mostly liberation theologians, nuns in mini-skirts and see-throughs, that kind of thing. But, by and large, the organization was secular, and made up of citizens of the Tauran Union’s member states supremely dedicated to preventing the use of force, even where that use was necessary to save life. They did this by physically placing themselves in positions to protect whatever it was they thought either their home countries or the Federated States might want to bomb, then defying those same powers to do so. It might have been noble and brave had there been the slightest chance that either the TU or FSC would take them up on their dares. As it was, though, it was safe and, better still, gave the membership of PV the chance to travel in style, screw all kind of grateful and admiring youngsters, and preen themselves on their courage.

  In the case of Balboa, they’d have ridden to the rescue sooner, of course, had it been possible. This was the chance to
stop a real war. But chartering airships—five star airships—and having them repainted in Pax Vobiscum colors took time. And both, of course, the five stars and the colors for advertising, were a lot more important in the big scheme of things than mere timeliness. Besides, if the TU managed to kill a slew of civilians in Balboa, while that killing had to stop upon the arrival of PV’s martyrs, that would go to show how very important and effective PV was.

  A couple of the senior Paxers had been invited up to the bridge by the airship’s captain. They were listening as the captain made the call to the control tower, below.

  “Herrera control, this is Anglian Airways Charter Eight Seven Seven, out of Mauer, Sachsen, with eight hundred and ninety-nine really annoying passengers. Can’t you please take them off of our hands?”

  It’s possible that the captain lacked tact; a remarkable lack in an Anglian, to be sure.

  “Eight Seven Seven, this is Herrera Control, are you requesting permission to land?”

  “I thought I’d made that clear, Herrera Control.”

  “Just making sure. You are carrying Pax Vobiscum, are you not, Eight Seven Seven?”

  Said the disembodied Anglian accent, “Sadly, yes.”

  “ ‘Sadly,’ ” echoed the Spanish-accented voice from the ground, “it’s not as simple as that. Assume a circular holding pattern, eight kilometers south of this port . . . hmmm . . . you’re dynamic lift, so circle clockwise, altitude of thirty-five hundred feet, while I notify some people of your request. Note that the solar chimney that was there is currently dysfunctional and you won’t be able to see the plume it used to put off. Lights are out, too. The peak of the tower’s still there, though, except that now it’s jagged.”

  “Roger, Herrera Control, eight kilometers south, thirty-five hundred feet, clockwise. And thanks for the tip.”