A Desert Called Peace-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  Nation: This entry has been ordered expunged by decree of the International Criminal Court and legislatively confirmed by the General Assembly of United Earth. Further, this word has been declared obsolete and ordered removed and expunged from all public references, dictionaries, encyclopediae, textbooks, literary works, monuments, buildings, archeological sites, public records . . .

  Weapons: This entry had been restricted to members of the UE Peace Force and holders of informational clearances above the Deputy Assistant Directorial level.

  Liberty, Human concepts of: This entry has been ordered expunged as redundant. See instead the entries on Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear.

  Electricity Production: This entry has been ordered restricted to members of the United Earth Organization, Class Three and above.

  Artificial Intelligence and Computers: The entry has been ordered restricted to members of the United Earth Organization, Class Three and above.

  Ownership and property, concepts of: This entry has been declared obsolete and ordered expunged. See instead the entry on "Socialism and Justice".

  Sovereignty: The entry has been ordered expunged by the High Commission for Semantics and Decency.

  Taxation: This entry has become obsolete with the passage of the Act for the Creation of a Rational Economy, also known as the Collectivization Act of 2257

  * * *

  Great Global War (Also known as 'the Long Night'), History of:

  An eleven year (399-410 AC) world conflict on the planet of Terra Nova that began with the use of extensive formations of horse cavalry and ended with significant usage of nuclear weapons.

  By the year 399 AC, Terra Novan military technology, along with broader industrialization, corresponded roughly to that of Old Earth in the years 1920-1929. With industrialization came considerable social turmoil, along with hardship as older, more established states found themselves in mercantile competition with newer, more aggressive powers.

  There was no one spark that can definitively be said to have begun the GGW. Fighting among the powers of that world, especially those of the continent of Taurus, had been endemic since at least the beginning of the 3rd Century, AC. While naval conflict had spread across the planet by roughly the middle of that century, in the 4th Century, ground combat moved from the continent of Taurus, itself, out to the colonies, spheres of influence, and trading blocks that had been established across the world by the Taurans, the Yamato, the Zhong Guo and the Federated States of Columbia. Thus, when the Gallic Republic declared war on Sachsen in 399, it was merely the last step in a series of smaller conflicts and battles that had been waged between these two from approximately 250 AC onwards.

  What made the war such a bloodbath – indeed total deaths from all causes approached the two hundred million mark before the war closed – were the systems of alliances, some of them secret and a few mutually exclusive and contradictory, which the major Tauran powers had bound themselves to in the preceding fifty years. Hence, in initiating its abortive invasion of Sachsen in 399, the Gallic Republic also immediately found itself at war with the Kingdom of Anglia. This relieved pressure on the Sachsens, but at the cost of the Gauls invoking their treaty with the Volgan Empire, which set in motion a Volgan invasion of Sachsen and its ally, Karinthia. Yamato, at that time an ally of the Volgans, likewise launched an attack in conjunction with Gaul upon the Sachsen and Anglian enclaves along the Zhong coast.

  This early, strategically and tactically mobile, phase ended within two months as a combination of defensive technology – ranging from shovels and barbed wire at one end to artillery and machine guns on the other – combined with limitations in offensive technology, such as communications and transportation, and severe limits in logistics, bogged virtually every major combatant down in what would eventually become very extensive systems of field fortifications. Of course, as the fortifications became more extensive, the logistic requirements of breaking them grew still further. Moreover, those requirements grew much faster, initially, than did the means of meeting them. This phase lasted approximately two years.

  The next phase, also lasting two years, found the Gauls defeated and occupied by a combination of Anglian naval blockade and amphibious invasion with Sachsen ground attack. This left Sachsen to turn its land power against the Volgans while the Kingdom of Anglia moved at sea against Yamato.

  Both the Volgans and the Imperial Yamato Fleet proved much tougher customers than had been expected. The first Anglian Fleet met, and was essentially destroyed by, the IYN in the Battle of the Shujimo Straits in 403. The Sachsens, on the other hand, while initially successful against Volga, soon found that the sheer strategic depth of that empire was more than their slender logistic arrangements could well deal with. Worse, as a Sachsen general of the day observed, "What matter that we kill three or four Volgans for one of ours when there are five Volgans for every one of ours?" By 405 the Sachsens were stymied and Volga on the counterattack.

  It was at this time that Tsar Vladimir Ilyich III dusted off an old and discredited political and economic philosophy from Earth and imposed it on his people in the interests of furthering the war effort. Peasants, previously freed by the Tsar's grandfather, found themselves once again bound to the land as de facto serfs. Industrial workers likewise were organized and a vast array of repressive measures, backed up by an extensive secret police apparatus, were imposed.

  The destruction of the Anglian power at Shujimo Straits had the side effect of radically transforming the balance of naval power in the Mar Furioso. Moreover, with both the Gallic and Anglian fleets out of business the Federated States was able to gather its not inconsiderable fleet in from the two oceans into which it had previously been split and concentrate it to face Yamato. This was eased by the possession, on the part of the FSC, of the Balboa Transitway, which linked the two oceans and allowed rapid redeployment. Potential threat led to tensions; tensions led to war between Yamato and the Federated States.

  In this Yamato was initially frightfully successful, dealing as harshly with the FSN as they had earlier with the Anglians. Where Yamato miscalculated, however, was in confusing another island state, Anglia, which could not readily replace its fleet, with a continent-spanning empire like the FSC, which could. By 406 the Federated States was on the attack as much as were the Volgans.

  The final phase of the war saw Sachsen, Anglian and Federated States troops holding a line against the Volgans across central Sachsen while the FSN approached the home islands of the Empire of Yamato. Two nuclear weapons, newly developed, were used against Yamato in an attempt to compel its surrender. The United Earth Peace Fleet likewise bombed – using rather larger, albeit much cleaner, nuclear weapons – two cities in the Federated States, San Fernando and Botulph, and threatened further bombings if nuclear weapons were again used.

  Fearing nuclear destruction, the Federated States instead imposed a complete naval blockade against Yamato, while continuing mass bombing with conventional high explosives and incendiaries. It is estimated that thirty million civilians either were killed by the bombing, or starved to death, or died to disease or weather as a result of starvation-induced weakness, before that empire agreed to unconditional surrender.

  Following the surrender of the Empire of Yamato, a peace treaty was negotiated between the Volgan Empire and the allied states of Sachsen, Anglia and the FSC. This peace treaty left in place the military lines existing as of 410 AC.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Artillery conquers and infantry occupies.

  —J.F.C. Fuller

  Drop Zone Hotel, southern Sumer, 0111 hours, 13/2/461 AC

  Three times the green light had come on and three times a stick of seven to nine men had stood up, hooked up, and shuffled out the door of the stealthy Dodo. With each lightening of the plane Sergeant Robles had felt a corresponding sinking of his spirits.

  As the others had jumped, Robles' squad had slid their posteriors down the folding troop seats lining both sides of the plane
to get nearer the single, left side door. The Dodo had a ramp which could have been used but lowering it tended to destroy the stealthy characteristics added by Zion.

  Robles and his Cazadors held their static lines carefully in their right hands as they slid. They hadn't bothered with reserve chutes. The jump was going to be at three hundred and fifty feet above ground level. By the time a trooper realized his main had failed and pulled the ripcord for the reserve he would already have joined molecules in a sort of disassociated way with the snow, dirt, grass and rocks below.

  At the rear of the cargo compartment the crew chief ordered, "Stand up!" No one heard a thing, of course, over the roar of the engines. It didn't matter; the chief made a hand and arm motion that the men could see well enough and that got them to their feet.

  "Hook up!" They didn't hear that either but saw the chief making the hook up motion with his right hand. They followed along.

  "Stand in the door," the chief mouthed before using his hands to show the first jumper exactly where he wanted him. The men shuffled forward. Robles, in the lead, let go his static line and stood, left foot forward, with hands grasping either side of the door that was left open to the air.

  Robles almost lost his footing as the plane lurched upward to crest a ridgeline and then dove downward several hundred feet.

  The red light at the rear turned green. The crew chief slapped Robles' butt. The sergeant used his bent legs to propel him up and out. Once outside and past the plane's slipstream he fell and fell. There was a minor shock as the static line deployed the chute followed by a major one as the chute filled with air. In the dim and diffuse moonlight that filtered through the cloud cover overhead Robles saw other chutes deploying.

  Then he saw tracers rising from the ground to try to meet the aircraft.

  "Chingada," he whispered to himself. Something tipped them off that we were coming.

  Command Post, Mangesh, 0121 hours, 13/2/461 AC

  "Dodos A and B both report that their teams are inserted, sirs. Dodo B says it took fire on its last drop and that we must assume the team is compromised."

  "What can we do, Patricio?" Parilla asked.

  "Not a goddamned thing! Son of a bitch, Thomas."

  "Do we have radio contact with the last team," Carrera demanded of Soult, hovering over the bank of radios in the command post.

  "Nothing, sir."

  "What would you do if we did have radio contact?" Parilla enquired.

  "Give them some artillery," Carrera answered. "Send in four of the Crickets to try to extract them. Air support. Whatever it took."

  "Can we move up the attack?"

  "No. Rather, we could, and then lose half the effect of the artillery – which depends on timing – and lose fifty more men, or five hundred, assaulting up the ridge."

  "Chingada. So they're really on their own. Shit."

  Hill 1647, 0337 hours, 13/2/461 AC

  Robles cursed his luck, cursed the Sumeris, and cursed Parilla and Carrera, too. His ribs hurt; he thought some of them were broken. The rope tied around his neck burned where the Sumeris had pulled to lead him and his men from the spot where his team had been ambushed, pinned and forced to surrender. A truck had driven the five remaining – two had been killed to Robles' certain knowledge and another man was missing and likely dead – to the top of the fortress on Hill 1647.

  Then the beatings began. First just a beating, no questions. The more beatings, interspersed with what sounded like questions. Robles' tongue poked at the places where the Sumeris had knocked some of his teeth out. Shock and endorphins kept the pain to a barely tolerable level.

  Mukkaddam Ali al Tikriti cursed as well as he punched the current object of his attention for perhaps the fortieth time. He had no Spanish; neither did any of his men. All he could manage was a little English and none of his prisoners seemed to have any or were willing to admit it if they did. Still, useless effort or not, it felt good to strike at some of the men who were part of the attack to overthrow his clan and the country they ruled.

  Fiends!

  The Sumeri lieutenant colonel also cursed his lack of information. He knew that the attack, by air at least, had already begun in the south. Here, though, the enemy were generally quiet, even more so than usual. He knew from the Yezidi that they had earlier moved tanks to within a couple of kilometers of Hill 1647. Was it a show of force? A demonstration? Preparations for an attack? Ali didn't know. And he had to know. The brigade commander, who was also his uncle, had told him that higher headquarters had promised reinforcements and artillery support but only if the Balboan troops attacked or he had positive information that they would attack.

  Ali reached down to pull Robles up by his hair. "You tell!" he screamed at the young Balboan. In answer, Robles spit a bloody wad onto the Sumeri's uniform.

  The enraged Sumeri pushed Robles back into the grasp of a guard. "Kill the bastard. Slowly."

  The guard pushed a stick into the loop of rope around Robles' neck. Then he began to twist the stick, tightening the rope. As his air was cut off by the tightening, strangling cord Robles thrashed and twisted. His struggles were in vain. Tongue bloated and protruding, eyes bugging from his head, fingernails broken and bleeding where he had scratched at the earth and rocks in his last moments, Robles died.

  Ali pulled another Balboan to the fire step and pointed to the south. "Tell me," he screamed again. Since this soldier had no more Arabic or English than had Robles . . .

  Command Post, Mangesh, 0427 hours, 13/2/461 AC

  CLICK.

  As the time of action neared Carrera grew cold and calm. Parilla, on the other hand, and despite the Chaldean brandy, only grew more nervous. Now he paced from one side of the small basement room in the Mangesh police fort to another.

  Carrera looked up at him from the table he sat behind. "Relax, Raul, it won't be too long now."

  "How can you be so damn complacent, Patricio? This is a complex operation. A million and one things could go wrong."

  Carrera stubbed out a cigarette. "You are confusing detailed planning with a complex problem, Raul. Really, the problem is very simple. We pound them silly with artillery and mortars, teaching them to stay under cover and moving up and breaching their obstacles while their heads are still down. Then we assault like ten thousand screaming maniacs across the top. The Cazador teams and RPVs spot for and call in artillery to seal off the fortresses on their far sides while the rifle cohorts do a detailed clearing of the hilltops. By the time they can put in a serious counterattack, if they ever can, we are dug in and ready to beat them bloody. It's really quite simple. Relax."

  Parilla just shook his head and resumed his pacing, sipping occasionally at a cup filled with brandy.

  "I want to go first, with the lead elements," Parilla announced.

  "We've been over this before, Raul. Your place is here. I am going with the lead forces."

  "No, Patricio. I am either in command or I am not. Oh, yes, yes, I know that practical command is yours. And I've been fine with that. Really, I have. You know what you are doing and I am a comparative amateur. But for this, precisely because you know what you are doing and the real doing of the thing will be here, you should stay here, or in the forward command post.

  "On the other hand, I am able enough to do one thing. And that is to set the example by leading from in front. So no, my sometimes subordinate, this time I make the rule and my ruling is that I go first."

  Parilla's face looked very determined. Carrera measured it and . . .

  "You're sixty years old, Raul. Can you lead from in front?"

  "I'm as fit as I ever was," Parilla insisted, then smiled wickedly. "And if you don't believe me just call home and ask my wife. Yes, friend, I am fit enough for this."

  "Oh, all right then, you old fool," Carrera agreed with seeming bad grace. He lightened and smiled after a moment's reflection. "And I understand the need. You can lead. I'll stay with the forward CP at Stollen Number Three."

  "And on that h
appy note . . . Jamey, bring around the vehicle. We're moving forward."

  Stollen Number Two, 0458 hours, 13/2/461 AC

  It was almost time for the artillery to let fly when Parilla and Carrera reached the line of Stollen. They separated, Parilla going to the first and second Stollen while Carrera went to give a few words of encouragement to the men sheltering in the third and fourth.

  Parilla could smell the excitement, overlaid with fear, in the close confines of the Stollen. He could smell it even over the buckets filled with shit and piss that the men had used to relieve themselves for days on end, only venturing out to empty them when the sun was down and clouds covered the moons and the stars.

  Parilla exuded confidence, as well he should have since he had – reluctantly – spent most of his adult life as a politician, albeit a uniformed one. He walked around the Stollen easily enough as the men had cleared spaces when they'd stowed their personal gear away for the coming assault.