by Tom Kratman
The Balboan defenders of the Second Cohort, Second Tercio didn’t know why the assault they were expecting to continue suddenly stopped. Most figured it could only be a good sign.
Can’t be a bad sign, anyway, thought Sergeant Major Cruz, turning his back to the wall and sliding down the bare concrete to the floor. He wasn’t wounded, just exhausted.
Fort Melia, Balboa, Terra Nova
On the other side of the Transitway, at Fort Melia, near the Shimmering Sea, there was no communication between the TOC, located on the hill overlooking the post, and the companies currently clearing Fort Williams and the barracks at Lone Palm. From Fort Melia a Sochaux S4 set out carrying a message for the forward companies. The Sochaux raced at breakneck pace up the jungle bordered road until a well-laid ambush near the old Transitway Area dairy farm between Forts William and Melia opened up on the vehicle, killing both driver and messenger.
Headquarters, One Hundred and First Air Defense Tercio, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa Terra Nova
With the clouds having cleared for the nonce, and all three moons glowing above, the rooftop was bathed in light. There were few shadows on the ground either. The last of the troops-carrying helicopters that had brought Captain Guillaume Le Blanc’s commando company to the roof of the caserne’s armory had long since departed to complete other missions. Le Blanc, CO of Number Two Company, Thirty-seventh Commando, didn’t mind in the slightest. The “truck drivers” were a nuisance anyway.
Beneath le Blanc, who was crouched on the roof of the armory, the commandos were methodically clearing the building, top to bottom. From around the meter-high wall that surrounded the roof others were keeping a watchful eye on the low buildings in the vicinity. The men were especially careful to cover the legion’s heavy surface-to-air missile launchers that were parked on line in the motor pool area.
The leader of one of le Blanc’s platoons popped up through the access way, then scampered across the roof to report. “Sir, the building’s just about clear. No friendly casualties. Two Balboan dead. No civilians.”
“What about POWs?” asked le Blanc.
“None, sir. That was it, those two guys at the front desk. They went for their guns. The boys had to take them out.”
“Fine. Report it to headquarters. I wonder where the hell everyone was.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
—Mike Tyson
UEPF Spirit of Peace, in orbit over Terra Nova
Alone in the main conference room, watching events unfold on the big Yamatan screen, Marguerite wanted to scream. She had seen it as soon as the armored vehicles had begun to debouch from their thick-roofed, concrete bunker at Lago Sombrero. As soon as she’d seen those, and realized where they had to have come from, who they had to have been, she’d immediately seen also that the Tauran plan was going to unfold in disaster. And there was no one useful she could tell. Janier in Gaul had a communicator, and she’d advised him through it. But she’d advised him about the time that communications between Taurus and Balboa had been cut.
And she could see where the communications had been cut. On her screen, set to detect electromagnetic radiation at high power, all indicators pointed to the largish trawler pulled up to a dock. And she couldn’t tell anyone in a position to do anything.
She could have served as a first rate—or a better than first rate—artillery spotter, too. She could see every Balboan firing position, down to the glowing tubes of what Kahn, male, told her were 81 or 82mm mortars.
And there’s no one, NO ONE, I can tell about it in a position to do anything.
I could just weep.
Oh, well; there’s this much solace. Obviously Carrera planned this from the beginning. And the Taurans are using the same basic plan they intended to when I was pushing them to war. But I didn’t push them to this war; this one they did on their own, albeit because somebody—Elder Gods You know it wasn’t me—butchered some Tauran women.
I wonder who did that. If I ever find out, I’ll give that information, at least, to Carrera and he can make them scream for a while.
TUSF-B Headquarters, The Tunnel, Cerro Mina, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
Moncey wanted to scream. He couldn’t raise Arnold AFB on the phone. Brookings had stopped answering as well. The glow reflecting off whatever clouds hovered over the buildings suggested why.
Though originally scheduled to attack into Balboa, with an objective of the area around the Arraijan Ordnance Works, the Haarlem Marines had shifted to covering Dahlgren Naval Station as soon as they saw strong indicators that things were beginning to unravel. They were now, their commander reported, under attack, but holding on well. They offered to break a company loose to investigate what was happening to Arnold. The general told them not to, to hang on to Dahlgren and secure the Bridge of the Columbias until it could be reinforced. He was quite sure there was little they could do to help Arnold Air Force Base, Fort Nelson, or the naval station that was an annex to Arnold. Observers on top of Cerro Mina had reported that it appeared many buildings and aircraft were burning. They had also seen that the Balboan rocket and mortar fire had shifted off the base and onto Fort Nelson.
Moncey was having a little more luck at getting a coherent defense of the west bank of the Transitway set up. The Thirty-fifth had broken off from Guerrero and was sending two commando companies to keep anyone from crossing the bridge. Unfortunately, the bulk of Tauran combat forces were out of touch with their own headquarters which had, in any case, little to do since the Tunnel was exercising command and control down to platoon level. Those Moncey hadn’t been able to pull back were slugging it out with whatever defenders the legions had on hand, seemingly oblivious to the disasters around them.
An aide de camp came over to the chief of staff’s side. “Sir,” whispered the aide, “the SF reported over SATCOM that the local Balboan Air Defense Battalion headquarters has been neutralized. They also report that almost no one was there. Fortunately, all the launchers are there that were supposed to be.
“Another thing, sir; it looks like things are going badly for the Mech down by the Comandancia. I had Hauptmann Lang take a few MPs down to investigate but they haven’t come back yet. That’s not a good sign either.”
Moncey nodded. Initiative in an aide de camp was a wonderful thing. He asked, “Do we have a fix yet on where the jamming’s coming from?”
“No, sir. The RF people have only pinpointed it to one of the ships docked at Balboa. They’re all docked close together.”
“Any ID of the flag of those ships?”
“No, sir. We could sink ’em all, but what happens later when we’ve sunk a half-dozen neutrals? I called about getting a patrol boat to investigate but they’re all supporting something else and are all just as much out of communication as the rest of us. They wouldn’t do any good anyway. They don’t carry the manpower to search a bunch of ships.”
“Here’s what I want you to do. Get the grids on the likely culprits. Have the C-3 call the First Airmobile Brigade. I want them to hold the first fourteen troop carriers they can get their hands on. Then I want them to airlift troops—cooks and truck drivers will do if that’s all they have—onto the decks of those ships. I want my units to be able to talk again!”
Three hundred meters southeast of Second Corps Headquarters, at the Comandancia, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
A Roland tank rested in the street with its turret ajar. It wasn’t burning yet, though the thin smell of smoke around it might have meant it was about to. On the opposite side of the street lay the Balboan who had destroyed it by wedging a satchel charge under the turret. Behind him, in a ragged line leading to the alley from which he and his squad had charged, lay a half-dozen of his comrades, also dead, shot while trying to get at the tank.
A Tauran soldier who had helped shoot them shook his head in wonder. Gutsy bastards, weren’t you. You might be the enemy, but you were still gutsy as all h
ell. I hope to fuck they’re not all like you. And good luck to you all, wherever you are.
At his squad leader’s order, the Tauran soldier rushed with a friend to the other side of the street to make sure no more Balboans were waiting. Lying on shards of shattered glass next to a store front, he heard voices coming from inside the store. Reaching for a grenade, he signaled his squad mate to do the same. “On three. One. Two. Three.”
After the grenades blew what little glass remained out into the street the two rushed in through the storefront window. Three Balboans lay on the floor, two of them very dead indeed. The two Taurans began to move toward the back room of the store when they were met by a heavy fire. Both were hit instantly.
Crawling to where his friend lay, the less badly wounded of the pair returned fire at the Balboan muzzle flashes. Using his last grenade to drive back the legionaries, he grabbed hold of his unconscious buddy’s harness and began to drag him back out of the store. Badly wounded as he was, he could not move quickly enough. A rifle bolt slammed home. He threw his friend out onto the street and turned to fire at the sound. A half-dozen bullets found his body before his finger could tighten on the trigger.
Moving up to the side of the window opening, a sergeant of the Tenth Infantry Tercio looked around at the dead and wounded Balboans and Taurans. Buen’ viaje, compadres. You fought well. “Gomez, set the M-26 up here. And get a medic to check out the wounded. While you’re at it, have him check the Taurans. Maybe one of them’s still alive.”
Fifteenth Cadet Tercio Command Post, Lago Sombrero, Balboa, Terra Nova
Cadet Sergeant Miguel Cordoba stole a quick peek from the smashed window that looked over the last few buildings in which the Paras had rallied. What few street lights remained working cast an uneven glow over the main cantonment area at Lago Sombrero. Tracers leapt back and forth between what was left of the Anglian Paras Infantry and the cadets surrounding them. Often enough, when the Paras fired their rifles at the Balboans, the return fire was high explosive from a tank or Ocelot. Few antitank weapons seemed to remain in Para hands. At least they were being very frugal with whatever they had.
Cordoba’s vision was aided by an Ocelot that burned brightly near one of the buildings held by the Taurans. He didn’t see any good reason to assume the Taurans were out of effective antitank munitions. Four of the cadets that had not been killed outright when their track was hit had been shot down near it. Cordoba was looking forward to getting even for them.
Behind Cordoba, in the same room as the rest of his squad. They had not lost anybody yet. As part of the tercio’s Combat Engineer Club, reformed as the Combat Engineer Platoon, they had been held out of action until now. At the call from the commander of the company they supported, they had rushed up in their armored personnel carrier, checked their weapons and moved to an assault position. Now they waited for Cordoba to lead them into the assault. Cordoba himself was waiting for the order to move from the commander. The plan, as he understood it, was for one of the rifle platoons to fire to keep the Paras’ heads down, while the engineer squad moved up to flamethrower range and roasted the Taurans out.
Consulting his watch, Cordoba thought, Ought be right about—
Although he knew what was coming, Cordoba still jumped at the sudden and vicious volume of fire that poured over onto the Tauran-held building. Tribune Rogachev shouted through the door for the engineers to move out.
Screaming “Follow me!” Cordoba leapt out of the window and rushed for the building opposite. One by one, the squad followed. The last boy out had no luck, however, as a random shot from a Para spun him around and left him spread-eagled on the ground.
On reaching the building wall, a cadet engineer pulled the igniter on a ten kilogram satchel charge. He waited for the fuse to burn nearly to the blasting cap. Then, using the charge’s strap for leverage, the cadet hurled it through a window. Shouting and the sound of people scrambling to get through a narrow passage followed. The explosion blew debris from the window.
A two-second burst of jellied gasoline from a flamethrower, followed by another, set the interior of the room on fire. A man screamed heartrendingly from inside.
The engineer squad moved on to the next window. Taking a chance that whoever might be occupying that room was stunned by the satchel charge’s blast, Cordoba tossed a grenade through the window. His boys carried few satchel charges. Flame followed the grenade. The cadet engineers moved on.
Before the cadets reached the next window, a hand grenade fell on the ground to their front. Most of the boys hit the ground. Cordoba fell only to one knee and bent his head over to shield it with his helmet. The explosion sent serrated wire through his thigh and shin. He gasped with the tearing pain.
Even as he gasped, Cordoba popped back up in bare time to fire a full magazine at the shadow of a man—a Para who tried to follow up the grenade with rifle fire. Blood from a roughly torn leg dripped to the ground at Cordoba’s feet. Damn, they catch on quick, he thought through the red agony.
Grabbing one of his three flamethrower men by his combat harness, Cordoba pulled him into position and ordered, “Bounce it off the inside of the window into the room. Give ’em three seconds of it.” The bright tongue lanced out, drawing agonized screams from inside the building. The screams went on and on. Arm thrown over the shoulder of one of his men, Cordoba shouted the others into further action as he was carried to the rear.
A kilometer to Cordoba’s north, the first truck and car loads of reservists were arriving at Lago Sombrero.
Third Corps Headquarters, near Herrera Airport, Balboa, Terra Nova
In the Operations Center, located in the basement of the headquarters building, telephone operators received reports of the assembly and mobilization status of the Corps’ two infantry legions, one infantry brigade, one combat support legion, and one service support brigade.
Though in theory the corps should have had eight maneuver tercios, in fact there were five, plus one of First Corps’ mechanized tercios, the Fourth, that was based in the City and under the operational control of Third Corps until First should make it across the Bridge of the Columbias.
There was a substantial artillery park, consisting of Seventy-third and Seventy-sixth Artillery Tercios, with full manpower if all were called up but only about three-eighths a full level of guns and rocket launchers, at fifty-four of the former and eighteen of the latter. There were also tercios of engineers, the Ninety-third, and Air Defense, the One Hundred-third. Their reports were posted on a status chart that hung on the wall next to the operations map.
Legate Hannibal Padilla read the status of his units while himself being briefed via telephone by the Eighteenth Cadet Tercio, the defenders of the airport. From what he could gather, the Gallic paratroopers were still contained, albeit not easily, inside the airport’s environs. The cadets were also paying a terrible price to hold that outside perimeter. Inside the airhead, in and around the airport terminal, the cadets defending were just barely hanging on. From that spot, however, they were in position to call in devastating indirect fires on any assembly of the Tauran troops that was large enough to have a chance of breaking out.
An orderly made a change to the chart in grease pencil. The chart on the wall now told Padilla that his Third and Eleventh Infantry Tercios were almost fully assembled and ready to move. The Fourth Mechanized, on the other hand, was under more or less continuous air attack. They were effectively pinned for now. Padilla handed the phone he had been using and took another from one of the staff. This one was tied to the Third Infantry Tercio.
“Rodriguez? Padilla here. Look, the Fourth Mech’s being shot up pretty badly and the Eleventh won’t get here for a couple of hours. They’ve got too far to move. I’d rather wait until they did get here and have you attack together but I don’t think the cadets can hold that long. What’s your assembly level now? . . . Eighty-four percent . . . Good, that’s enough. Move out now and hit the southern tip of the airport, then strike north. You’re
the main effort. Everything I can scrape together will go to you. Good luck. Oh, and Rodriguez, we can win this. But you must move fast.” Padilla gave over the phone.
“Get me the Seventy-third and Seventy-sixth Artillery on the line. Now!”
Fort Muddville, on the boundary with Brookings Air Force Station, Balboa, Terra Nova
The rockets and mortars hitting Brookings had stopped firing an hour ago or more. Lieutenant Allison Peters of the Anglian Army didn’t know if that was good or bad. She had been ordered, along with her platoon of military police, to stop their movement on the old dog kennel area behind Brookings and take up a position to guard the boundary. When the order had come her platoon had already stopped moving while she tried to figure out what to do about the fighting she could hear ahead. Her questions about the reasons for the change, as well as about what was going on at Brookings, were cut off. She thought her company commander didn’t tell because he, himself, didn’t know.
The MP platoon had moved back to the Fort Muddville NCO Club, then north as far as the road would take them. They had then dismounted and moved on foot to their current position. The MPs had been waiting there since before the heavy firing at Brookings had stopped. Already the troops were slackening. To her right she could see a cigarette being lit. Like many second lieutenants, Peters was none too sure of herself. That she was a woman in what was still, unofficially, a man’s world didn’t help her when it came to imposing her will on someone. So she hesitated to order the cigarette put out.
A hundred meters or so from Peters’ position, a light machine gunner of the Nineteenth Cadet Tercio tracked the cigarette in his Volgan-made starlight scope. The cadet hadn’t been able to properly zero his M-26 light machine gun while he had waited in a warehouse by Alfaro’s Tomb, pending the order to attack. A mechanical zero, just putting the sight on a certain setting by manipulating its knobs, had had to do. Still, it had worked well enough so far. When the cadet had fired up the Tauran MP gate at Fort Muddville’s back door in the first part of the attack on Brookings, his tracers, bright in the scope, had showed he was close enough.