The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  Everyone, not least the Cochinese, agreed that it was a mighty fine deal, and worth fighting to keep. And they intended to fight to keep it. After all, their wives, children, and grandchildren, though evacuated from the island with the rest of the civilians, still had their houses in the town Carrera had built for them on the island’s southern side, from which they had, when not militarily employed, made a living fishing and selling the fish to the training brigade on the island.

  The Cochinese, on the other hand, had never quite taken to Spanish. Rather, the elder ones who made up the heavy gun crews hadn’t; the younger ones had adopted it just fine. That was where Han Siegel, who had a gift for languages, came in.

  Sort of. Kind of. With some allowances being made.

  “You faggots!” said the almost vanishingly tiny Cochinese girl, standing under artificial light atop an eighteen-centimeter gun. “You limp-wristed suckers of leprous cock! My husband’s boss, which is to say our boss, is coming from the mainland for a visit and you think you can sleep?! Tribune Pham?!”

  The tribune, a former air force pilot no longer really up to combat flying, sighed. Technically and legally, of course, he outranked the ever loving shit out of a warrant officer. In the real world, and especially the real world he’d grown up in, rank was a much more amorphous concept than that. Perhaps he outranked Han. Perhaps he outranked her husband. But her husband had the highest contacts imaginable in this context, old friendship with Carrera. Nobody for several countries around outranked Carrera, not even the presidents. At least that was Pham’s reading of it. So, in practice, the bitch outranked him and he had to put up with her foul mouth.

  “Here, Warrant Officer Siegel,” the tribune answered.

  “You need to get your take-it-up-the-ass-from-water-buffalo-and-donkeys crew of whores together and . . .”

  Estado Mayor, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In two large places, the otherwise modern-looking, concrete and stone aedifice, was now blasted flat. The upper walls of most quadrants still looked to have been chewed by dinosaurs, by the dinos had grazed down a bit more. Some large sections were still perfectly useable, though most of the key functions had been moved underground and away. They were useable, but not safe to use.

  Where spoil from the demolition had been thrown onto the asphalt and grass around the building, that had mostly been cleared into piles. Even in the piles, though, was a pattern, where a rather broad strip had been cleared to allow launching of Condors and Crickets, and several wide squares were open for helicopter landings. A glider sat on the strip, with a tow cable running from its nose to a winch some hundreds of feet away. Those winches existed all over the country, too, and were barely noticeable. A suspicious man might have thought they were there for a reason.

  “Not a sub?” asked Carrera. The commander of the legion looked inexpressibly tired to both his chief of staff, Kuralski, who was worried about it, and Warrant Officer Rafael Montoya, who was not.

  “Too dangerous,” said Kuralski. “They’ve been targeting the sub pens and the water’s too shallow for true stealth between here and the island.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  “Don’t ‘yeah, but’ me, Patrick,” said the chief of staff. “You’re the one who decided you just had to visit the Isla Real. This is the only safe way we’ve got to get you there. And it’s not all that safe.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Montoya, lightly tapping the sea-blue top of the glider resting atop the asphalt of the general staff building’s parking lot. “We run a courier out to the island twice a day, me in the morning, just after daybreak and Casavetes just before nightfall. Less chance of showing up in a thermal that way. We think. There’s precisely nothing unusual about this, that would key the Taurans to target the Duque.

  “Moreover, since we’ve got the enemy back to having to assemble large strike packages, and given that the facilities—airfields terrestrial or naval, supplemented by aerial tankers—are limited, that means we know when they’re coming, since it takes them so long to assemble. They won’t be coming in the hour I’ll have the Duque in the air.

  “Duque,” said Montoya, “trust me; I’ll get you there safely enough and then I or Casavetes, depending on how long you decide to stay, will get you back.”

  There were four methods of launching a Condor, five if one counted dumping them out the loading ramp of an airship. The other four, the four available to Carrera and Montoya, were over the edge of a cliff, via the balloon launch system, self-launching with the on-board propeller (or jet, a few Condors had small jet engines), and the winch. The winch had all kinds of disadvantages. But it had, for the present purposes, two big advantages.

  “I don’t have to carry fuel so I can carry you, Duque,” explained Montoya from the pilot’s seat to Carrera, scrunched in the back. “It’s not as noticeable as a big-assed balloon. And it doesn’t put out any heat, like using the auxiliary motor would, so it’s unlikely to get picked up on the thermal imager.”

  “Works for me,” said the big—compared to Montoya he was big—ex-gringo in the back. “Let’s go.”

  “Roger.” Montoya looked out the port side, raising a single inquisitive thumb. The ground controller held up a palm—hold on a sec—while he checked with intel to ensure the air was free overhead. When he pulled his right hand away from his headset he gave the pilot an answering thumbs up, then aimed a knife-hand at the winch operator, a few dozen meters away. Ground control also shouted something to the winch operator at the same time, but Montoya couldn’t make out what it was.

  The cable leading from a recessed fixture in the nose of the Condor went taut in a small fraction of a second. The glider immediately began to move towards the winch, though in a matter of mere yards it became airborne, leaving the wheeled cradle on which it had rested behind and below. The winch continued to pull until Montoya decided he had enough altitude, whereupon he cut the tow rope, which fell with a gently curving grace, below.

  “Wow,” said Carrera, “that was smooth.”

  “It’s even smoother off a ship,” said Montoya. Then he added, “Oh . . . I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

  Carrera gave a small chuckle. “And just what, Warrant Officer Montoya, do you think there is about your recon flights to Atlantis Base that I am not privy to?”

  “Ah . . . good point, Duque. Even so . . .”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it. Just get me to the island. In the interim, and as a demonstration of the boundless trust I have in you”—Carrera chuckled again—“I’m taking a nap.”

  “Duque! Duque, wake up! We have a problem.”

  From the back seat came a barely intelligible, “I wasn’t sleeping Sergeant,” followed in a few moments by a, “What the fuck?”

  Montoya, who had had his own “I wasn’t sleeping, Sergeant” moments in the past, tactfully ignored that, keying on the, “What the fuck?”

  “Air raid in progress on the island. It’s light, maybe twenty-five or thirty planes, but that’s still twenty-five or thirty planes more than I can take on in this.”

  “How? I thought you checked . . .”

  “Did. But we’ve only got good advanced warning to the south and east. These came from the north.”

  “Zhong?”

  “Eighth Legion Headquarters says so,” the pilot replied. “I asked them about putting up the air defense umbrella to see us safely in but they say they’re not even on weapons tight but on a ‘do not shoot’ order and only you can lift it.”

  Carrera considered that, then said, “Yeah . . . I could, but . . . no . . . we can’t.” At Montoya’s questioning cough, he explained, “The Taurans must land and be defeated to win and end the war, Montoya. They need the Zhong to have landed to feel they’d got a fair chance of success. The Zhong need—or may need and so I have to bet it this way—the confidence they’ll get from having their own air component in the war or they won’t—at least might not—land. If we lift and unmask against the Zhong, and we could,
we’ll smash their carrier aviation capability. Then they don’t land. Or we look like we could have smashed them but didn’t for, no doubt, nefarious reasons of our own. Then the Zhong don’t land either. Then the Taurans don’t land. Then the bombing and embargoes—blockade, too—continue until we’re in the economic stone age. We have to entice them to a fight to the finish, then fight them to a finish, beat them, and break them, before that happens.

  “Can you get us in with the air raid ongoing? Failing that, can you get us back to the mainland? Failing even that, can you get us onto one of the other islands?”

  “Maybe, no, and maybe, Duque, in exactly that order. We’re too low and too far from the mainland, and I’m not likely to find any good updrafts out here. So forget that. I’m not carrying enough fuel to make it back under our own power so forget that, too.

  “As for the main island or one of the others? It’s possible. It’s also risky. Duque, they don’t have to shoot us down. These things are fairly fragile; just flying close could tear our wings off.”

  “Try for the main island, then. Or Isla San Juan or Santa Paloma. Puercel could retrieve us from either of those.”

  “Si, Duque.”

  “Could have sworn someone said, ‘safe,’ ” said Carrera.

  “What? You’ve never been wrong, sir?”

  Flying above the island, Zhao Hai and Fan Shenlu, flying Serg-83s configured for air-to-air combat, overwatched their comrades below, bombing and strafing, The senior, Zhao, took the lead with his wingman, Fan, behind and to the left. Both were nervous since, should the Balboans decide to surge—presuming they were able still to surge; something the Tauran pigs vehemently denied—they would be toast. They could fight off equal numbers. But their aircraft were really not a whit more capable than the Balboans’ ancient Mosaic-Ds. A big surge?

  We’d be dead, thought Zhao. On the other hand, no guts, no glory . . . no kills, no glory . . . and I see an easy kill down below.

  The senior pilot ordered Fan, “Stay here. I’m going down to knock off that courier. Be back in a few.”

  “Roger.”

  “Oh, shit,” muttered Montoya. He’d been keeping half an eye’s worth of attention on the two circling Zhong planes ahead and above, hoping like hell they wouldn’t notice him and his slender, blue-topped glider.

  “What is it?” Carrera asked, then agreed, “Shit!” when Montoya told him. “What do we do?”

  “I don’t think he can get a lock on us,” Montoya said. “We’re basically radar invisible and within a fraction of a degree of ambient temperature. If he could have locked on us he would have already; it’s not like he’s in any doubt about whose side we are. So if he’s coming, he’s coming with eyeballs and guns. I can—well, maybe I can—outmaneuver him.

  “You feel ballsy, Duque?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then I feel ballsy as hell. Do your job, Warrant Officer Montoya.”

  Zhao had missiles. No good. The thing might as well not even be there. Zhao had a gunsight/fire computer integral to his heads up display, but it was a generation too advanced to deal with the radar invisible glider at ambient temperature. It was almost like a tyrannosaur . . . hunting a mouse. They just lived in different worlds.

  What Zhao had that might work were a Mark One calibrated eyeball, plus two hundred and fifty rounds of 23mm, feeding to a dual cannon in a pod slung underwing.

  Adjusting his throttle down to bring him to just a bit above stall speed, Zhao lined up his Serg-83 on a point ahead of the glider, then tapped off a long burst from his cannon . . .

  Only to discover that the frigging glider had veered off before the rounds reached the chosen spot. Which was fucking wrong anyway, since I’m trained to aim at something more high performance. Zhao pulled up, nearly skimming the crests of the waves, while looking about frantically for his quarry.

  “Nicely done,” said Carrera, with a calm he in no way felt. Trying to be helpful, Carrera scanned the sky for their pursuer. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Level.”

  “Ooo . . . level,” echoed Montoya. “Not good. With the sea to guide him and restrict us, he only has to aim in one dimension. Soooo . . .” The pilot yanked back on the stick, turning energy into altitude, then jammed the stick forward, plunging at a sharp angle toward the sea. Carrera didn’t even notice his stomach attempting to crawl out of his mouth at the image of dozens of fist-sized balls of fire passing overhead. The enemy jet passed close enough to see the whites of the pilot’s narrowed eyes. In the turbulence the glider bucked. Carrera thought he felt something inside it give way.

  Montoya yanked back on his stick, pulling into level flight a short distance above the waves. “How well can you swim, Duque?”

  “So, so. Why?”

  “What you just felt was some carbon fibers and polyurethane in the wing . . . right wing, I think . . . giving way. Take a look.”

  Carrera looked to starboard, then to port, and then to starboard again. No doubt about it, the right wing was fluttering in a way the left one was not.

  “One more close pass and it’s coming off,” Montoya said. “The beach is about two hundred meters to our front. There’s a small encampment there so we can probably get some help if we need it. We need to dunk and swim for it.”

  “But why?”

  Montoya snorted. “Because the enemy will probably be happy with the confirmed kill and will leave us alone if he’s got that. Pilots are weird about things like that.”

  “Okay . . . do it.”

  “Gotta make it look flashy,” announced Montoya. “Hang on! Gonna be rough!”

  To confirm that, he put his damaged wing down into the water. It duly ripped off, just at the juncture between wing and body. The glider spun like a pinwheel, tail over nose over tail, until the outside half of the port-side wing likewise dipped into the water and tore off, letting the thing plunge into the sea. It didn’t even quite sink, but settled, then bobbed a few inches up and down, with the waves and its own bounce.

  Montoya unbuckled himself, then popped the canopy off, knelt on his own seat, and turned around to help Carrera. That was dutiful, but unnecessary. Carrera was climbing out onto the remnants of the port wing before Montoya could so much as ask, “Duque, are you all right?”

  “Swim for it, goddamnit!” said Carrera, over his shoulder. “The motherfucker’s coming back!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

  —Theodore Roosevelt

  Camp Penthesileia, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The Zhong aircraft had departed even more suddenly than Carrera and Montoya had become aware of them. Now, more or less peacefully and safely, the two sat on fine white sand, just a few dozen meters away from the edge of the surf. Peaceful and safe or not, their lungs still strained to pull in enough air to make up for their exertion.

  Behind them were abandoned tiki torches stuck in the sand in a circle around a fire pit. Farther inland, though not far inland, were a fair number of houses, some of them now bombed-out wrecks, that Carrera recognized as, “Housing, Tribune level, two or three children, Type C.” He pulled up in his mind the best recollection of the map of the island, then matched that to where he thought they’d been when they’d splashed in.

  “This is where we put the Amazons while they were between courses,” Carrera announced. “I wanted them to have someplace nice to call home, after what we put the poor things through.”

  Montoya just accepted that without any real question or interest. If the women had still been there, he’d have been a lot more interested.

  For reasons not entirely comprehensible to Carrera, the Zhong pilot did let them swim away, though he made sure to put a couple of bursts into the general vicinity of the drifting Condor.

  “Gun cameras,” said Montoya. “Bet you it was hi
s gun cameras.”

  “Huh?” asked Carrera, after a bout of coughing up some of the water he’d gotten in his lungs.

  “The cameras probably only activate when the guns are actually firing. He needs proof of the kill, so he fires at the hulk. The firing activates the camera so he can prove to his unit that there was a hulk.”

  “Why do you suppose he didn’t go after us?”

  Montoya shook his head. “Knights of the air syndrome would be my best guess,” said the warrant, “but it’s not a guess I’ve got a lot of confidence in, Duque.”

  They heard a cough from behind them, then turned and saw a legionary in battle dress but with a mess hat on. The cook or KP, whichever he was, had a rifle slung across his back.

  “We’ve still got some leftovers from breakfast, if you gentlemen are . . .” The man took a double take, then snapped to attention. “We can make you something special, Duque.”

  “No need,” said Carrera. “But if you guys—what unit, by the way?”

  “Second Cohort, Twelfth Infantry Tercio, Duque. Mess Corporal Alvarez, at your service, Duque!”

  “Great, Corporal Alvarez. I’m not actually hungry, but if you guys have a tin of ration rum, I could use a fucking drink.” Carrera held out one hand to demonstrate. The hand trembled slightly. “Montoya?”