The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  Second, because of the threat of antiaircraft fire, both cannon and missile, whether radar guided, infrared homing, or Mark One eyeball directed, a certain weight of effort had to be directed to SEAD, or suppression of enemy air defense. These were also known as “Frenzied Ferrets.” Moreover, still more had to keep the runways cut, while the Balboans were still trying to keep them repaired.

  The threat from enemy ground and air remained conceptually, and as far as they could tell from the air or space, genuinely, fixed, so only so much had to be dedicated to it. But that amount didn’t change with the size of the attack package. Thus, the Tauran air forces could most efficiently attack by sending in between four and ten attack packages of one hundred to two hundred and fifty aircraft each, of which ninety percent were bombing, rather than twenty or thirty, daily, of thirty to fifty aircraft each, of which about half would have had to have been dedicated to something besides bombing.

  That limitation on numbers of strike packages also meant, in practice, that the enemy had eighty or ninety percent of each day totally free to do whatever they wanted, without any threat overhead to interfere. Worse, the big strike groups were predictable as to time. And the Taurans were pretty sure that observers were reporting as they assembled, too.

  Worse, perhaps, than any of that, though, was what the major strikes were doing to the ground crews, to the aerial refuelers, to airframe maintenance, and to bomb load per aircraft committed to bombing. Assembly took time. Time took fuel. Fuel took up weight that otherwise could have gone to ordnance. And both the intensive prep and the intensive recovery were wearing the ground crews to a frazzle. This was especially bad on the carriers, two of which had already experienced fatal wrecks while recovering aircraft.

  So, with the declaration of “air supremacy” the TU had been able to mount smaller packages, with less devoted to refueling, to aerial combat, or SEAD. Best of all, for the last several days there had always been an air raid in progress or en route, which was presumptively driving the Balboans crazy, wearing them out, and preventing their free and easy movement.

  Not that they completely dispensed with SEAD or aerial ordnance, of course, but a strike package of forty aircraft might have only one electronic warfare bird in it, and maybe two with a load primarily configured for air-to-air, with the rest carrying a maximum of either one HARM, Homing Antiradiation Weapon, or one air-to-air missile, plus whatever they carried for the cannon.

  It was all very efficient. It was not, however, without its weaknesses.

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

  The bunker complex had been built a goodly distance from the Estado Mayor building. This was just as well, since the latter was now reduced to a chewed wall, smoking hulk with cascades of brick and tile occasionally pouring off. Rather than there being one bunker, the legion had put in half a dozen, with a certain amount of redundancy shared amongst them, thick walls and roofs, all of that under considerable dirt and a double layer of roughly 30mm thick hexagonal steel plates buried under the dirt.

  Lanza, being senior and also having command of the more decisive arm, was in charge. At least he was when Carrera wasn’t there. However, today Carrera was present, therefore . . .

  “You’re in charge, Lanza,” said Carrera. “I just want to be here to witness giving these motherfuckers a healthy dose of fear and humiliation.”

  The first reports to come in were visual, from human observers using a mix of extraordinarily powerful binoculars, high-definition closed-circuit television cameras, thermal imagers, telescopes, and even the national observatory which, for whatever reason, the Taurans had elected not to target. These fed information to the command bunker, which some of Lanza’s staff converted into a display on a large map board in the middle of an operating theaterlike room.

  There was also a small fleet of Balboan-manned fishing boats operating off the northern coast of Cienfuegos, mixed in with other, civilian craft. Those, however, were being held in reserve for the day that much earlier warning would be required.

  “Arrogant bastards,” muttered Lanza at seeing the single package inbound. It was labeled with a formation number, the composition of the formation being shown on a large television screen on the wall. Lanza stated the number of aircraft aloud, “Forty-three, all in one close group. I wish I had a nuke to use.”

  No comment, thought Carrera. Turning to Lanza, he asked, “How are you going to handle it?”

  Lanza pointed to the same map as held the enemy formation marker. Staff legionaries were emplacing sundry markers for air defense units, lots of them.

  “They typically come in loaded heavy for ground attack.” He looked at the board as it flashed an update. “Anglians, flying Goshawks. We know what they’re capable of because the Federated States tried to interest us in their Goshawk multirole fighters, the same planes the RAAF bought. That group probably carries two hundred and fifty tons or so.”

  “Sergeant Miller,” announced a communications sergeant, “out on Guano Island, reports refuelers passing by heading north.”

  “Okay,” said Lanza, “so light on fuel, heavy on ordnance. I wish we could sneak someone in to fuck with their tankers. Be a blast, Duque, to have the Taurans have to ditch in the sea, no?”

  “The Condors?”

  Lanza shook his head. “Nah. The aerial tankers never get out of range of the ground-based fighters on Cienfuegos. We’d just be asking to have the Condors hunted down and destroyed. Remember, they can’t even take a close fly-by from a high-performance jet.”

  “Okay,” Carrera shrugged. “just a thought.”

  Lanza rubbed at his chin, thinking. “On the other hand . . . well . . . you know, just pushing the tankers so far back that the planes hitting us couldn’t reach them might be worth it.”

  “If you come up with a good proposal, I’ll authorize it.”

  “Maybe for next time,” Lanza said. “Anyway, the air defense—well, most of it; we couldn’t rehearse that much without giving the game away—will be up in a few minutes. Everything active is coming on line, missiles, guns, and lasers. As soon as the Taurans cross the shore of the Shimmering Sea, I’ll know whether they’re going after Cristobal and Jimenez’s boys, or either us, here, or Firebase Alpha, or the Island.”

  “What’s most likely?” Carrera asked.

  “Firebase Alpha or the Island,” answered Lanza.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where the Anglians nonnaval air usually hits. The naval air, Anglians and Frogs, plus Frog and Sachsen nonnaval air, typically go after Cristobal or us, and usually not together. No, I don’t think I fully understand the logic of that. It might be nothing more than keeping apart people who don’t speak the same language and don’t necessarily like each other. Anyway . . . Oh, excuse me a moment, Duque.”

  Lanza went and consulted with the chief of staff of the Eighteenth, then came back. “They’re ready, the duckhunters, I mean. Just waiting for the word . . . and . . .”—Lanza again made a quick glance at the screen—“Eighteenth, you are weapons free! Excuse me, again, Duque.”

  Lanza hurried down to the operating floor, so to speak, and picked up a microphone himself. Carrera could not, over the general hubbub, hear what the aviator was saying. It became obvious, though, as new markers appeared on the map table, then moved at super high speed out to the city’s east and west flanks. Some curled around to move south, too, to take up a position between the enemy aerial armada and its bases on Cienfuegos.

  “Someone’s been paying attention to the battle tactics of the Nguni,” Carrera muttered. “I see the horns of the buffalo growing out.”

  Santa Cruz, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Ordoñez sat, flight-suited and helmeted, under the closed canopy, within the exceedingly cramped space of his plane’s cockpit. In such a simple, even primitive craft, there was no air conditioning. Sweat beaded up and rolled down the tribune’s body.

  The trucks were
lined up in two rows of three, engines already idling. The jet engines were not on yet, and would not be truly engaged until the aircraft had received its great, four-second, kick in the ass to get airborne. At that point, they would either work or not. And, thought Ordoñez, if not, I have a very small time to decide whether to try to start them or to punch out. I think, though, that no matter what, I try to start them. I’ve been preparing for this moment for years. I’d rather die than—

  The tribune felt the truck shudder, then start a jerky roll out of the wide warehouse doors, through the asphalt parking lot, then down the winding road to the beach. Ground crew hung along the sides by railings. Ahead, only the upper fraction of his body seen, the truck’s co-driver manned a heavy machine gun, hands resting on spade grips while his eyes scanned the skies.

  The truck came to a stop at a flat spot in the road a quarter of a mile or so from the off-white sands of the beach. As soon as it did the ground crew sprang into action, disconnecting cables from the airplane and engaging the small electric motor to elevate the launch rail. Looking left, to the other side of the road, Ordoñez saw a different crew spinning a couple of large cranks to manually elevate the rail.

  You can rehearse and test and test and rehearse, but when it comes down to it something always goes wrong. Always.

  With the elevation of his rail, Ordoñez lost sight of the ground crewman who would give the final order to send the Mosaics aloft. He couldn’t even see the man whose finger was on the button, waiting to engage the rocket.

  Ordoñez felt a sudden pain in his eyes, not too bad but enough to have him seeing spots and blinking for a few seconds. He was cleared to know about the SPLADs, the Self-Propelled Laser Air Defense systems. He also knew that they were dangerous to the eyes of everyone for miles around anywhere they were used. He had to trust—and did trust—his legate to know that, once the aircraft were airborne, the lasers had to cease fire.

  “Five,” sounded in the pilot’s helmet. “Four.”

  They wouldn’t have fired those for no reason, thought the tribune. He began scanning the skies for . . . Ah, there he is, the poor bastard. What elicited the sympathy was a single Tauran fighter-bomber, a Goshawk, Ordoñez thought, doing the mamba across the bright blue Balboan sky, probably because its agonized pilot was too busy scratching his own eyeballs out to control his plane or even to set an autopilot.

  “Three.” Ordoñez braced himself for what promised to be quite an experience. I’ve only done this once before. “Two.” Oh, shit! “One!”

  Suddenly, the pilot felt himself pressed back into his seat, while the skin of his face rippled from the acceleration. He counted, mentally, One . . . two . . . there goes the jet . . . three . . . thank God . . . four . . .

  And then, having felt the jar of the rocket being jettisoned, Ordoñez was on his own, fighting to gain altitude while scanning around frantically for enemy aircraft. In his helmet he heard his five subordinate pilots reporting in one by one as they, too, achieved launch.

  Odds were, thought the flight leader, that we’d lose one in the launch phase. I wonder if that means that, because I didn’t, someone else had to fail. God will have His little jokes.

  The six Mosaics of Ordoñez’s little command assumed a loose formation, three pairs of two, each pair with one forward and one well staggered back and to the flank, with the three pairs forming a loose triangle in the sky. A quick scan in his long-range television told the tribune that there were maybe thirty-eight to forty enemy aircraft ahead, scattered to the winds as they scrambled to make a less tempting target for the ground-based air defense. He didn’t have the impression that they’d yet figured out that just shy of two hundred fighters either were or soon would be airborne.

  Ordoñez flicked a switch to arm the two missiles his Mosaic carried, both heat-seeking V-37s. These were not of the best or latest Volgan design, by any means, but they were highly upgraded versions of a competent design, very maneuverable and capable of seeing a target up to forty degrees off of the center line. This made it both easier to acquire a target and harder for the target to shake the missile once acquired. Being cryogenically cooled, the missile had a very good chance of acquiring even a fairly distant target, even from some angle other than behind.

  A particular buzzer in his ears informed the tribune that his right missile had a lock. Flicking off a red safety, he depressed a button, sending the V-37 heat seeker off to glory. Other smoking lances from above and behind him told the flight leader that the rest of his flight’s Mosaics had likewise launched.

  Maybe they’ll hit something, eh, God?

  Of the six missiles launched, though, Ordoñez couldn’t tell if a single one connected with a target. He did see a couple of what looked to be aerial explosions larger than the fifteen-pound warheads could account for, but whether that was his boys, some other unit, or ground-based air defense or their much larger warheads was just impossible to determine.

  No matter; the tribune still had one missile, three cannon, and two hundred and forty rounds for the latter. He bore in.

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

  “Weapons hold on the lasers!” Lanza ordered. “Weapons tight on everything else. We’ve got our own folks mixing it up in the air with the enemy now, people; let’s not shoot any of them down, eh?”

  “What’s going on?” Carrera demanded.

  “Well . . . reports always lie, but even discounting them, it looks like we got eight or nine of them, about half with the lasers, and the others from a mix of cannon and missile fire, aerial and ground. No real way for me to tell who’s getting what; we’re relying on ground observers who can see big explosions easier than fading smoke trails. There are so many radars operating, both in the air and from the ground, that it’s become just a hash. That’s even with identification friend or foe operating.

  “One thing I can say, though,” Lanza continued, “is that the enemy dropped all their ordnance pretty much anywhere they happened to be. Some of it will still do some harm, but whatever they intended to harm will probably get off scot-free.”

  Carrera looked past Lanza at the map board. He had the distinct impression, from the frantic way the crew was trying to move around the little markers, that this system was not really up to the demands of modern war. He wondered if anything could be, or if it was just going to be anarchy in the air from now on.

  If so, he thought, that will probably work to our advantage, since we do a better job than most in tolerating individuality. Well . . . slightly better, anyway.

  Over Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The Goshawk ahead of Ordoñez outclassed his aircraft, ordinarily, in every particular but three. His Mosaic was so cheap that the cost would barely have paid for the tires on the Goshawk. The Mosaic could outturn a Goshawk, though not by much. The Mosaic carried a heavier cannon. Otherwise, the Goshawk could engage with missiles from almost any angle, provided it carried air-to-air missiles. If this one did, he’d already expended it or them. The Goshawk was almost twice as fast in straight and level flight, about nineteen hundred kilometers per hour to the Mosaic’s mere eleven hundred. Ordinarily those differences would have been dispositive, the Goshawk would have raced ahead, leaving the Mosaic in its figurative dust, then donated Ordoñez a missile better than anything his plane could carry, let alone use. This would, eventually, have led to Mrs. Ordoñez receiving a “We deeply regret to inform you” letter.

  Unless the ground-based air defense had done for them, somewhere overhead there were one or two Goshawks, configured for air-to-air, doing just that with any number of Balboan planes.

  The plane Ordoñez had targeted, however, could not do that. He might or might not have had that missile. He couldn’t use it now, not darting among the towers of the city. He might have been able to race away in the open sky. Down in the figurative weeds, where the screams of “My eyes! My eyes!” and “Missile! Missile!” had driven him, tha
t was an excellent way to end up a part of something that couldn’t fly at all. Worse, from the Tauran’s point of view, the superior maneuverability of the Mosaic, coupled with Balboa’s standard barbaric approach to the prospect of casualties in training, meant that Ordoñez was better equipped, psychologically, to push the limits of his aircraft than the Tauran was to push the limits of his.

  Or, I suppose, hers, thought the tribune, nudging his stick just slightly to line up his cannon on the Tauran’s tail. Well, if so, fuck the bitch.

  The shattered windows of a skyscraper flashed by the tribune’s cockpit. He paid it no mind, having eyes only for the Tauran ahead of him. Brrrrp. There went thirty rounds, every one of which missed. Brrrrp. Ordoñez was gratified to see some bits and pieces flying off the enemy aircraft. Brrrp . . . brrrp. . . . brrrbrrrbrrrp. Smoke began to pour out. Lazily, the Tauran Goshawk began to turn over, before diving down to smack into a parking lot at the base of a glass tower. Most of the plane dug a hole into the asphalt, but a portion drove through part of the ground floor of the same, dragging a tail of fire behind it and out the other side.

  Yessss!

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

  There had been two more markers on the plotting table, one showing a Tauran strike package assembling near Cienfuegos, the other showing one halfway to Balboa. The attack already inbound turned around, returning to its bases. Closer to home, aircraft were being landed, refueled, rearmed, and sent aloft again. The message to the Taurans was, “Yeah, that’s right. We kicked your asses. You want some more?”