The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  The Zhong weren’t taking their lumps without dishing out a few, too. Pham was down to six guns, here at Battery Pedro, and four guns at Battery Mkhize. He’d lost enough men wounded that he’d had to ask for backup support from the legionary medical cohort, itself being overwhelmed by the number of casualties among the gunners of the Twelfth Brigade. The tribune didn’t have any idea as to whether his two batteries were having it harder or easier than the other six, around the island.

  Plenty of hard to go around, he thought, enough hard for everybody to have their share.

  And the dead? Each was a little piece torn out of Pham’s soul. So much we went through together, old friends, thought the tribune. The old war . . . the slave labor camp they called a reeducation center . . . the starvation, the beatings. Now to have you die here, in this place so far from the country of our birth . . .

  An ambulance’s siren sounded, indistinct through what remained of the jungle, after distortion by the hills, and amidst the general pounding of both outgoing and incoming shells. Be a wonder if the ride over what remains of the roads doesn’t kill them, thought the tribune.

  He turned his attention to the loading, as an ammunition carrier trundled behind gun three, lifting by crane a one-hundred-and-eighty pound arrow shell from its rack and feeding it onto a ramp on the railway carriage. Two powder bags followed. Two ammunition bearers first struggled to hold the shell and bags in place, then rolled them to an indentation in the center of the ammunition ramp. They left a gap between the shell and the bags.

  The crew waited until the gun was depressed to the angle required for loading, then one of the ammo haulers pushed a lever. A round steel cylinder lifted from the ammunition rack, then swept forward, pushing the shell up the loading ramp and into the chamber. After the shell was chambered, and the rammer returned to its hidden position, the ammo rats moved the powder bags up to the position the shell had just vacated. The powder then followed the shell into the gun.

  The whole time the gun chief, Sergeant Loi, one of the few men in Pham’s two batteries who had actually begun military life as a gun bunny, kept up a steady stream of chatter. This served to keep up the crew’s morale even as it effectively kept them in time with the dance of the guns, which in this case included a moving dance floor, as the shunters pulled them back into position for their next salvo.

  Not for the first time since opening fire, not for the first time since being assigned here by Tercio Socrates, Pham wondered whether they shouldn’t be shooting and scooting, returning to the shelter of the bunkers during reloading and only emerging to fire.

  It would sure reduce our vulnerability in any given piece of time, he thought. Would the cost in time be so high we’d lose the battle? Fail to sink enough ships to lose? Not my decision, anyway; the powers that be decided that we’d be better off firing more, faster, than living longer. Oh, well, what the fuck? It’s not like we’re not all old men anyway.

  With a synchronized whine—at least it seemed synchronized to Pham—all four barrels he could see began to rise as the crewmen spun elevating wheels. Sergeant Loi bent over a gunner’s sight, the gunner leaning away, and nodded satisfaction. Loi faced Pham, raising one arm to signify ready to fire. One by one, the other three did the same, even as the two he could not see reported in via field telephone.

  “Fire!”

  Forward Observer Position Twenty-six, ruins of Solar Chimney, Hill 287, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In one of those little flukes that so bedevil a rational approach to war, Corporal Leon’s bunker was still perfectly fine. It was also, as an observation position, perfectly useless, since its view of sea and shore was entirely blocked off by a cylindrical section of concrete, blown from the tower and embedded in the ground all around the bunker. The concrete had cracked, too, and there were a few gaps. Unfortunately, those gaps faced uphill, away from the enemy, not downhill, toward him.

  “God hates me,” said Leon, standing on a pile of dirt thrown up against the inner face of the concrete cylinder, aiming downrange with his laser designator. He never took his cheek away from the stock of his laser.

  “Oh, knock it off, Corporal,” said Leon’s radio-telephone operator, who was also Sergeant Loi’s grandson, as good a Catholic as his grandfather, and a better one than Leon. “If God hated you, you would be dead and in Hell already.”

  “Don’t try to cheer me up, Loi,” said the corporal. “God’s just saving me for a worse death. You, too, for that matter.”

  “You need a break, Corporal?” the Cochinese-Balboan asked. It was true that, standing up with his head exposed was riskier for Leon than manning a radio in the lee of the shrapnel storm for Loi the younger.

  “Nah,” answered the corporal. “You just keep your ear glued to the radio and tell me when to lase.”

  The laser, perched atop the chewed concrete wall of the sundered cylinder, looked approximately like a rifle pregnant with triplets. It had an optical scope atop, just like the legion’s standard F-26, too. Through that, Leon kept his crosshairs on the target.

  There were any number of ways to organize and task organize forward observers, most of which had been tried at one time or another, on both of the planets that knew Man. Generally the issue was a trade off, never an entirely satisfactory one, between quality of training, moral integration with the units supported, making sure there were always enough observers to support the training of the guns, administrative depth, redundancy. All of those factors had some weight, but ability to mass fires was usually the biggie.

  In the case of the Twelfth Coastal Defense Artillery Brigade’s heavy railway guns, these factors were of little import. Especially was massing fires irrelevant; the guns were arranged in a circle, with limited ability to traverse, such that real massing of fires was not really possible.

  Instead, the batteries had two sections of sea to cover. The forward observers were allocated to the guns to cover those sections of sea. And they trained only with their own guns. The waste came in with the FOs who happened to be facing the wrong way, but that waste was also a measure of militarily critical redundancy, so . . .

  There were also separate units of observers, with special skills, such as the few tiny teams out on the smaller islands of the archipelago of which the Isla Real was a part, the ones controlling the laser designators mounted to the barrage balloons, and the PRV crews.

  Each of the eight batteries had, by now, over the last forty-five minutes, engaged seven to twelve targets. In one case, two batteries had gone after one target, but those two batteries were now allocating their fires to different ships. In no case had any battery stopped firing until its target was obviously out of the war. No ship, once targeted, had managed to escape out of range. From where Leon stood, he could shift his scope a few degrees left or right and see anywhere from two to four ships dead in the water, and another two burning oil slicks spreading out atop the waves. Leon had the sense, if not a precise image, of living men burning in or drowning under those slicks. God help the poor bastards, was his thought.

  “Time of flight three minutes, forty-six seconds, Corporal,” announced Loi. “They will give a one-minute warning and a splash thirty seconds out.”

  “Roger,” answered Leon, tightening his grip on his designator and aiming directly at the target he’d been, in an obverse twist of normal procedure, directed to. It was an assault transport, a Landing Platform Dock, still belching forth cargoes and men via landing craft and air cushioned vehicles from its hidden well deck. Helicopters sat on the one third-length flight deck, rotors churning, troops filing up from below to board. The LPD’s single three-inch gun, mounted forward, was still gamely tossing its pitiful shells forward in support of the Marines bleeding their way forward, ashore.

  “Shot, Corporal.”

  “Roger.”

  More impressive than the single gun were the four multibarreled rocket launchers. They’d used them against the railway guns, not without effect, but seemed to have run out of or
run low on ammunition for them.

  “One minute, Corporal . . . splash in thirty, Corporal.”

  Leon depressed the laser’s trigger. If it was strong enough when it reached the target to bother anyone’s eyes, he couldn’t tell. Besides, with all the smoke in the air I’m not sure they could tell if it was a laser bringing forth tears or all the nasty shit in the air.

  A part of Leon was gratified to see one of the helicopters finish loading and take off. Its place was immediately taken by another, with yet more troops shuffling out to board. Wounded were taken from the second one, some on stretchers, some ambulatory with help, and taken below. Sorry, guys.

  “Splash,” said Loi, prompting Leon to begin painting the ship, stern to stem.

  Zhong LPD Qin Shan, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  The LPD had no armor. There was steel enough to keep the water out, steel enough to keep the hull from buckling, but of actual armor there was none. The ship was also much bigger, at nearly twenty-thousand tons, than the light cruiser, somewhat longer but much higher and broader in beam. That meant bigger targets for the laser-guided shells which were, at best, competent rather than brilliant. Six shells had been launched from Battery Pedro el Cholo. Two hit close by the hull, causing leaks when they exploded. Four went right into the ship.

  Shell number one wasn’t so bad. It hit just under the open compartment in which one of the ship’s two pinnaces normally rested. Fortunately, both of those were off on beach control duty, guiding in the air cushion vehicles, landing craft, and amphibious armored vehicles as they struggled with surf, smoke, confusion, and fear. That shell punched right through the thin hull, leaving a ragged ellipse behind it, then detonated in an empty section of corridor. Not that there were no casualties; the high-explosive filler shattered the sturdy steel of the shell, sending pieces large and small flying and ricocheting down the corridor until they either ran out of energy, which took a while, or buried themselves in something soft, yielding, screaming and leaky.

  Shell two hit close by the hull, plunged in about thirty feet, then detonated. The resultant gas bubble, when it tried to push through the hull, wasn’t up to the full rigors of the job. But it did cause a welded juncture to buckle and twist, letting water bubble in.

  Number three hit the flight deck, but penetrated it without exploding. Instead, it went off just off to the side and slightly over an air cushioned vehicle, as it was loading a fresh platoon of Marines. Eardrums were blasted, arms and legs torn off, eyes gouged, entrails spilled, and skulls shattered. It seemed as if forty men, including the crew of the hovercraft, screamed as one man or, rather, one huge-lunged little girl. Even the ones who weren’t hit shrieked in horror at being covered in the gore of their comrades.

  One steel shard penetrated the unarmored hovercraft’s engine compartment for the impeller, killing that engine and letting the whole contraption settle into the water underneath. The lost noise of the engine was approximately replaced by that from the wounded and terrorized.

  Number four hit the flight deck and, rather than penetrating, malfunctioned and exploded without delay. Seven Zhong Marines were bowled over, suffering anything from minor flesh wounds to dismemberment to disembowelment. The blast was enough to tip the nearest helicopter halfway over, causing the blade to decapitate one Marine before it, too, shattered, sending shards into the bodies of still others.

  Shell five was another water strike, though far enough out as not to do any serious damage of its own. It did serve to worsen the leak from two, albeit only slightly.

  Six, a truly aberrant one, hit forward of the 76mm turret, penetrated, exploded, but did no serious damage. It was so insignificant that damage control didn’t even bother sending a team but only one evaluator who said, in effect, “Fuck it.”

  Qin Shan was a big ship. The detonation of just a bit over a hundred pounds of explosive was not going to take it down, barring a serious fluke.

  Forward Observer Position Twenty-six, ruins of Solar Chimney, Hill 287, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  You’ll get that on a big bitch like that, fumed Leon. He might feel sorry for his targets, but that wasn’t enough to make him forget that they were targets.

  “Repeat,” he told Loi to pass on. “Continuous repeat until I say stop. Tell the guns their shooting’s good, it’s just a big son of a bitch and is going to take some killing.”

  “Roger.” The RTO passed the word onto Batería Pedro el Cholo, whose own FDC simply answered, “Roger . . . shot over . . .”

  “Shot, out,” answered Loi. Three and a quarter minutes passed before Pedro announced, “Splash, over.”

  “Shot over.” The battery was actually firing faster than the time of flight.

  “Splash, out.”

  Still standing on the ad hoc parapet formed from the solar tower’s fragment of chimney, Leon began painting the enemy ship with his laser as soon as he heard the “splash.” He mentally counted down from thirty, whereupon he saw two black flowers bloom atop the superstructure, and three more narrow plumes of fire and smoke shoot up through newly made holes in the exterior decking. He suspected the sixth shell had overshot, coming down on the far side of the ship, and probably too far away to do a bit of good.

  “Shot over . . . splash . . .”

  “Tell them to stop giving me the shots,” said Leon. “It’s more confusing than it’s worth . . . it’s nothing but confusing, as a matter of fact. Just give me the splashes.”

  “Splash,” said Loi.

  Over four shells hit aboard, as far as Corporal Leon could see. They all hit, for whatever reason, on the short flight deck over the well deck. There must have been a fuel line there, or maybe a fuel tank. Whatever it was, a brilliant fire, red and orange, punctuated by black, grew up, covering the entire flight deck.

  I’d be very surprised, thought Leon, if that doesn’t make the well deck inoperable, too. “Call higher and report we’ve got a major fire on our target. Ask if they want us to switch to a new target.”

  Loi answered after a few moments’ consultation with his radio, “They say, ‘Pound the cunt until she sinks.’ They’re very definite about it.”

  Thought Leon, Of course the fucking rear echelon cunts who don’t have to see the work can be ruthless. But those men down there and their ship are not “cunts,” they’re just regular guys like me, caught up in something fucked up by their higher. He sighed, Oh, well . . . since I am caught up in it.

  “Splash . . .”

  Zhong LPD Qin Shan, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  Qin Shan’s captain had a serious problem. Almost all the Marines were offloaded, true, but an absolutely huge proportion of his ship’s cube was devoted to supplies. That, with the well deck blocked by a wrecked hovercraft, he couldn’t unload in anything like the needed fashion. He’d, in fact, stopped offloading supplies completely. He‘d had to, even before the well deck became an inferno of dripping, burning fuel, because the far worse problem was, with a crew of a mere one hundred and twenty: Damage control. What in the name of Heaven were the idiots thinking, that a crew of one hundred and twenty could handle this kind of accumulating damage to a ship this size? Fucking morons; I can hear them now: “Oh, nothing will get through to damage the ship,” and “Oh, you’ve got all those Marines aboard; use them.” Fuckheads. Cocksuckers. The Marines are supposed to be fucking gone at the precise time they’re mostly likely to be needed. Not that they’d be any fucking use because it’s not their fucking job.

  Shells were still coming in in salvoes, some exploding inside the well deck, sending their shards flying and ricocheting in all directions. From a sheltered position forward of the well deck the skipper looked over the damage, his number two standing beside and behind him. It wasn’t all a horror story. Besides the bodies, crisped and bent into fetal positions, the ruins of the hovercraft, and the bent and jagged tears in the fabric of the ship, damage control parties were trying to wash the burning fuel out the back of the well deck. They had managed to get the flow of fuel
cut.

  “Go back to the bridge,” the captain ordered. “Call fleet and tell them I am pulling out of here. They can shoot or hang me later if they want. With luck, we might even make it for them to wreak vengeance upon my body. As is, we’re nothing but a highly lucrative target. Tell them that, if we make it, I’ll come back when I can still do my job.”

  The 76mm gun, mounted in its own turret, on its own little plinth, well forward, was silent for the moment. It was perfectly healthy; the reason for cessation of fire was that the thing was overheated, after firing its last seventy-five-round burst in support of the ship’s own Marines. It would be a full thirty minutes before it cooled enough to fire. At least, that’s what the book said. The gun’s chief was skeptical. Thirty minutes to cool after firing one such burst, yes. But that was our third. And the gun had hardly cooled enough after we finished our second. It’s not going to be in action again for a full hour, possibly longer.

  Since he had the time, the gun cooling to its own schedule and he not being dragged off yet for damage control, the chief stepped out on the deck and listened. He could hear the distinctive whine of numerous incoming heavy shells, along with frequent largish explosions as those found targets. What he didn’t hear was a whole hell of a lot of outgoing fire.

  We’re so fucked! Fucked! Someone’s going to pay for this.

  Zhong Destroyer Yiyang, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  The senior man left at Orange seemed to be a major who had started out as the executive officer of a battalion but was now elevated to the command of a regiment. The major was an honest man and, if he lived, if they both lived, Wanyan was determined to raise him to the rank suitable to the command he’d inherited. Or higher. “Whatever mortal man can do,” said Major Wu, “our men are doing. We have corporals commanding companies and a lieutenant leading a battalion, magnificently. But I don’t know if we can do this.”