The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  Better than a mere gun chief, Admiral Wanyan had a very good idea of the state of his fleet. A third of my destroyers and frigates sunk. A preposterous percentage of my actual combat landing capability sunk or is in such bad shape that only a major overhaul will render them fit for duty again. In some cases, of course, they’re fit only for scrapping.

  The empress is a silly spoiled bitch. Easy for her to say, “Let none come back alive.” Cunt knows no better. But it’s on my soul if, in fact, we are utterly destroyed here.

  How many decades has it taken for us to build up a fleet able to defend our own waters? Five? Six? No, seven full decades. Throw it all away on a whore’s whim? I don’t think so. We’ve tried hard enough, done all that men can be expected to do. And, after all, ninety percent of the Marine Corps, maybe more by now, are ashore as the bitch demanded.

  Wanyan felt like weeping for his doomed Marines. I can’t even support them. Fucking useless little three-inch popguns the bureaucrats and designer-fools insisted on arming us with? And even the five-inchers aren’t much.

  Ah, what a pity the Federated States wouldn’t sell us a couple of their remaining battleships . . . not that we could have returned them to service in less than several years, of course.

  What to do; what to do? My life is forfeit if I order a withdrawal in defiance of the empress and tell the Marines to surrender at their own discretion. Worse, my end would be very trying, indeed.

  Fixed Turret 177, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  For quite a while, de la Mesa had been able to sense small-arms fire coming from the infantry maniple to his rear. It had never been quite as ferocious as he’d expected, largely, he believed, because the infantry had taken serious losses during the preliminary aerial bombardment. Still, it had been enough to keep the Zhong Marines at bay, even as the turret, sited as it was, had been key to filtering them down to a rate of entry into the area no greater than the infantry could handle.

  For a while, anyway, though de la Mesa. Give the Zhong their due; they’re tough and they’re brave and they’re resourceful and determined. If someone’s willing to pay the price, and competent Marines of whatever nationality are always willing to pay the price, you can break machine guns by throwing bodies at them.

  Now, sadly, there was no fire coming from the supporting and support infantry behind de la Mesa’s turret. He still had communication with the rear, via radio. Something, likely an artillery shell, had cut the land line. And even the radio was spotty; de la Mesa suspected a half-cut antenna, blowing with the breeze, sometimes with a good connection and sometimes not.

  He asked Julio, “Is the carousel full?” and on being told, “Yes, Sergeant,” said, “Juan, forget gunning. I can gun alone. Go man the machine gun covering the door. Pablo? Julio?”

  “Yes, Sergeant . . . yes, Sergeant?”

  “Go man the other two guns. We’re on our own, I think, but we’ve got to hang on until the counterattack drives the Zhong into the sea.”

  That last was, so far as de la Mesa knew, a pure fabrication. There wasn’t going to be a counterattack, at least as far as he knew. But they did need to buy time for the grunts to reestablish the defense, farther inland.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It is better to be wise after the event than not wise at all, and wisdom after one event may lead to wisdom before another.

  —Air Marshal John C. Slessor, Air Power and Armies

  Near the juncture, Beach Green One and Orange Two

  (the base of the Tadpole’s Tail), Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Three dozen very tough and fit-looking Zhong Marines were hunkered down in a trench with the major who had ended up in command of the entire regiment. That they were dirty, and tired, perhaps a bit wired from adrenaline, and a few of them lightly wounded, did not detract in the slightest from the impression of sheer toughness. Their commander, a senior sergeant, Li, had taken a look at some of the Balboan positions already captured or found destroyed. He had some insights into them, though he wasn’t sure he’d seen anything like the major had described.

  It’s not much, thought Major Wu, looking the “company” over, but it’s all I can assemble on short notice. And Sergeant Li is worth forty men alone.

  It seemed to Major Wu that the enemy mortar fire had slackened somewhat, maybe even quite a bit. Whether that was because the mortars were running low on ammunition, because they had been taken out by the Tauran aircraft that were beginning to reappear in some small numbers, because the guns had grown too hot to fire for the nonce, or for some other reason, Wu couldn’t begin to guess. He was happy enough for the nonce just to be able to stick his head above ground without the substantial risk of it being torn raggedly from his shoulders.

  That’s how Wu’s late commander had bought it, sticking his head up from a captured Balboan trench; a flying steel shard had simply sliced that head away, leaving a ragged stump of a neck gushing blood for a few moments like an obscene bottle of sparkling red wine.

  Named Zixu, after a famous presumed ancestor, the major stood fairly tall for a Zhong, at about five feet, ten inches. This, in his view, made it all the more surprising that he was still alive. Big targets die soonest.

  The sound of helicopters, not en mass but continuous, sounded from the north. In the eye of the shell storm, more Imperial Marines were being fed into the grinder. As the helicopters unloaded, medical teams led or carried or simply prodded the wounded in the direction of safety. Each one that came in left almost as full.

  I hope Private Fa makes it, thought Wu. He’d found the private wandering alone, missing an arm which someone had crudely tournequetted off, and holding in his “good” hand, by his thumb and one remaining finger, a radio handset from which ran some severed wire. The private had kept apologizing into the handset, unaware that it was no longer connected to the radio. Wu had detailed a man to lead Fa to the airfield. Fa had initially refused, until Wu told him his radio needed repair. That had seemed adequate reason to the RTO, where the loss of an arm and three fingers had not.

  Even now Wu shook his head, musing, Where do we get them, these kids who’ll give every ounce or everything they have for the country? The Imperial family has done nothing I can see to deserve it. But . . . perhaps the merit is in the innate virtue of our common folks.

  A single heavy mortar shell sailed over head. The major first heard its rattling passage, then looked up and actually saw the malevolent thing, arcing slowly across the azure sky. Big bastard, thought the major. Fortunately, they’ve stopped being so lavish in expending them.

  One nice thing about the enemy running out of mortar shells, or whatever is slowing down their pounding of us, thought Wu, looking north toward the airfield, is that at least we can bring in some troops by air and evacuate our wounded the same way.

  A salvo of shells flying overhead with the sound of a passing freight train reminded Wu that evacuation did not mean safety. As long as the Zhong were trying to use helicopters to land troops, or ships to disgorge supplies or men, the ships and helicopters remained legitimate targets, no matter how many wounded might be aboard.

  Hmmph! Maybe when every bunk for a given ship is filled with a bleeding man they’ll get the idea and fucking leave.

  Wu pulled his dripping but acetated map from a cargo pocket and looked it over. Sometime the map, itself, suggests a solution. He’d passed through most of the area of the Tail since landing, moving north to south through a maze of cratered runway, wrecked buildings, fire, smoke, bodies, and whatnot. There were even a few buildings standing, though no one was quite brave enough to occupy them. The Balboans had a nasty tendency to booby-trap everything they didn’t intend to physically hold.

  Wu was situated on the western side of the Tail, more or less facing the ruined ship and the small island the map called “Saint Elmo’s.” Between him and those features bobbed more Zhong dead than he cared to think about. The carpet of floating bodies wasn’t quite solid—Well, in spots it is—but, had the bodi
es been unsinkable, it wouldn’t have been hard to have walked and jumped from one to the other to reach the distant island from the Tail. The ship was still there, and still in enemy hands, too. They’d tried blasting it, to no noticeable effect, and tried storming it. The latter effort had fizzled out amidst a hurricane of heavy shellfire, called in by the wreck’s defenders on themselves.

  Which, too, thought the major, is an indicator that they are very well protected, indeed. Bastards.

  There was firing to Wu’s right front, at Beach Red. He thought he heard more of the enemy’s frightfully rapid firing rifles and light machine guns than he did of his own side’s more moderately paced weapons.

  Counterattack, thought Wu, correctly assessing the fire. He looked over the literally thousands of bodies in the bay formed by the Tail and Beach Red and added the thought, No way they can hold. No way at all. Which means Red is as good as lost. There is only Orange, to my left, and my own boys, here. And I cannot support Orange, nor it me, because there is a position between us that simply refuses to give in.

  Wu turned to the senior sergeant in command of the group he’d assembled. “Now,” said Wu to Li. “Now, while the shell storm’s eye passes over us. Go eliminate that position between us and Beach Orange.”

  Turret 177, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The position had been very strongly built. It was essentially invulnerable to any practical amount of high explosive that the Zhong could deliver, to include in the form of HEAT. A main battle tank’s long rod penetrator could have gotten through the dirt and concrete, but so far the Zhong hadn’t been able to bring one up. It’s possible, thought Sergeant de la Mesa, that their Marines don’t have anything but light tanks. Oh, and a shitpot of very tough infantry.

  Though strongly built and, to a degree, protected even against a chemical attack, the position did have its weaknesses. It wasn’t a submarine, nor even one of the very elaborate deep shelters. It could not produce its own air. Filter and purify? Yes. Produce? No. It also had the ability to draw air very locally, essentially from a vent in the roof. That, however, had been foreseen as not quite enough, a bit of foresight de la Mesa particularly appreciated when the Zhong had used flamethrowers against every exposed bit of surface or pipe. There was also a pipe that went underground back to behind the now lost infantry position. When the possibility of gaining oxygen through the roof vent was cut off, the filters automatically began sucking in air from elsewhere. As a third backup, there were also oxygen candles, though those did, in fact, create so much heat that they were a very last resort.

  The secondary weakness was related. The turret traversed primarily by electric power provided by the local generator. That required oxygen. Cut off the air, and the generator would stop. There were batteries, but they were not up to traversing the turret for very long, or very quickly at all.

  De la Mesa swung the turret around in a great three-sixty circle, seeing nothing distinctly. That would have been fine, except that he had the impression of things, men, he supposed, dropping out of his vision just as the gun and sight reached them.

  “And if it came to a fucking race,” he muttered, “a sharp Zhong sprinter could run around the turret faster, a lot faster, than I can traverse it.”

  De la Mesa released his grip on the sight, then reached for the wheel that raised and lowered his own chair. He began spinning it with an arm that had grown terribly strong from long practice. Also by long practice, he knew when to stop. About a quarter of an inch before his helmet would have hit the inside of the commander’s hatch, he stopped the spinning crank dead.

  Up there de la Mesa could see through the five cupola-mounted periscopic vision blocks, one of which was infrared capable. Those had dead zones, too, but with the flip of a retaining latch, the cupola itself could be rotated. De la Mesa flipped, rotated, and—

  “Oh, shit!” There, right in front of the side periscope, the sergeant saw two boots standing next to his turret. The vision of the boots was replaced first by a camouflage-clothed ass and then by what looked for all the world like a shaped charge, pointed down onto the gun mantlet. He saw a hand reach for the charge, then pull something. A stream of smoke began to rise.

  Crap! No way to be sure to get rid of it except to remove it by hand. No way in time, anyway!

  “Boys!” screamed de la Mesa. “Drop the machine guns, go below, and lock the access hatch!” He gave Juan, Julio, and Pablo a few seconds to comply. Then he bent down and took an antipersonnel grenade from a basket inside the turret that held several. Holding the grenade in his left hand, he pulled the pin with his right. The ring was still around his forefinger as de la Mesa popped the hatch and tossed the grenade outside, generally in the direction of the gun’s muzzle. Before the grenade could explode—if it had been possible I’d have cooked it off—de la Mesa had his pistol out of his shoulder rig and transferred to his left hand. Then he began cranking the chair wheel again, pushing himself up through the hatch. The first thing he saw was a blue-camouflage-clad Zhong Marine, reaching for his own rifle. He shot at the Marine, missed—Damned left hand—shot, missed—motherfucker—shot and this time hit. The Marine flipped backwards, landing on the slope of earth in front of the mantlet.

  Stunned, shocked, and badly hurt, the Zhong looked left and saw something green and roughly egg-shaped. Oh, shit, thought the Zhong, just as the grenade exploded next to him.

  De la Mesa pushed the chair as high as it would go. High enough that he took some like fragments of wire from his own grenade when it went off. That was as nothing, though, compared to the danger represented by the charge getting ready to go boom sitting over the gun mantlet. Lose that and we are not only useless; we’re indefensible. Fuck!

  A burst of bullets whined by, two of them singing off the armor. They were close enough for de la Mesa to feel the passage on his exposed neck. He bent over, putting as much of the angle of the turret between him and his assailants as possible. Using arms that were unusually strong, for having to do so much of the work of legs, de la Mesa hauled himself out of the hatch and across the turret’s top.

  Being insensate below the waste, the sergeant didn’t actually notice when his right foot caught on something. By main force, he pulled himself free, breaking his own foot in the process. In the breaking free, that leg below the knee shot up vertically. A Zhong machine gunner promptly blew it off, from about mid-calf down. De la Mesa felt that as a series of blows, transmitted up his body, but without pain. On the other hand, he did feel suddenly vastly weak, as blood gushed from his stump.

  De la Mesa continued slithering forth on his rapidly failing body.

  Sergeant Li saw it.

  I saw the goddamned leg fly off. The fucking Balboan acted like he didn’t even feel it or care if he did. Whatever these fuckers use for drugs I want some . . . didn’t even care. Shit, these boys are too tough for Mrs. Li’s son.

  The most galling part, to de la Mesa, once he reached the shaped charge, was how easily he could have dislodged it and the sapper who’d set it without exposing himself to—let us be honest here; I am a dead man—the enemy’s fire. Basically, with his fast-fading strength, his simply brushed the charge away. It fell over, and rolled down to where lay the much-perforated body of the sapper who set it. Boom. Arms and legs and flying guts everywhere.

  Some of the body pieces landed across de la Mesa. He was distantly aware of them, but really didn’t much care. The blood flowing from his leg had slowed, but not so much from coagulation as sheer drop in volume and blood pressure. He wasn’t dead, not quite, but the end couldn’t be too far off. In any case, as his consciousness faded and he dreamed the dream of having the use of his lower body back, his enemy, Sergeant Li of the Imperial Marine Corps’ stormed forward with two other men.

  The Zhong pulled a grenade from his load-carrying equipment, then flicked off the safety clip and pulled the pin. He was about to drop it down the open hatch when his eye came to rest on the wounded Balboan.

  “Take him,
” he told the two men with him. “Get him to shelter; tourniquet his leg, and get him to the medics. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Li waited until the Balboan and his own men were clear, then let the grenade’s spoon fly off, counting, “One thousand . . . two thousand,” before slamming the grenade in and rolling down the slope.

  The blast, when it came, was quite muffled. Li crawled up to the hatch and repeated his attack. Again, the blast was muffled.

  Hmmm . . . while it might be emotionally satisfying to blow the fucking thing sky high, it just might take me with it. Then, too . . .

  Li looked back in the direction of the island’s interior. Then, too, pretty good fields of fire all around. And while that enemy position back there has its gun ports facing the wrong way, it’s still fine shelter from their shells. And we can fix the collapsed trenches back good as new.

  I need to make a suggestion to the major . . .

  Zhong Destroyer Yiyang, Mar Furioso, Terra Nova

  Why is it, mused the admiral, that every time I’ve just about resolved to give up this mess and sacrifice myself to preserve my command and my subordinates, somebody like Wu comes along and makes sticking it out that much more reasonable a prospect? Life is just so unfair, especially unfair if that high-born whore of an empress was right. Ah, well, and they say that the stopped clock . . . oh, to hell with it.

  Wu says he’s managed to scrape together about five thousand men, hale and otherwise, more support than combat, but willing to try. He’s says there are a lot more around, but they’re so disorganized it’s going to be a while before he can round them up and get some use out of them. He tells me the reason Beach Red doesn’t answer is that Red Two was obliterated and Red One retreated into his area. He says there’s a brigadier general there and two colonels, but one of the colonels is a loggie, the other is badly wounded, and the brigadier is essentially catatonic, except for screaming fits at random intervals. Note to self, on my own authority relieve the brigadier general and brevet Wu to colonel with date of rank to about four hundred years ago.