by Tom Kratman
The MP gate had fallen quickly, of course. With it out of the way the tercio had smashed right through the Air Force Security Police gate at the back entrance to Brookings. Then it had been a running fight through and around the buildings of the Air Force Base. The gunner hadn’t had to fight on Brookings, there really hadn’t been all that much resistance. In a mental fog, that was how little he remembered of the attack, he and his platoon had moved northwest until they had come to a high chain link fence. The platoon leader, normally a first classman at the school, had held them up and set up a hasty defense while he tried to get orders for his next mission. The cadets had known in advance about the jamming that would be aimed at the Taurans and hadn’t really been able to come up with a good way to make themselves immune. Without radios it had taken hours for the cohort to pull itself together enough to accomplish the rest of its mission.
When order had been partly restored the cadets had begun moving toward Fort Muddville. They were as silent as possible. Still, it seemed to the gunner, the Taurans had to have heard them coming. Thus it came as a great surprise to him to discover that the platoon had gotten within range without being detected. To either side of the gunner the cadets of his platoon crept on line to attack.
Lieutenant Allison Peters had just decided to put her foot down to make the irresponsible trooper put out his cigarette when she heard a rifle or machine gun bolt slam home. She stopped and turned toward the sound. As she turned, she realized that it had not come from her platoon’s position. Before her mouth could open to shout a warning to her soldiers a long burst of fire cut through the jungle to her right. Before that burst was half completed it was joined by fire from a line stretching out to either side. Four bullets, beginning at her right thigh and ending at her left shoulder spun Peters around before depositing her, face first, on the ground. She felt no pain at first. Then the pain came, worse than she had ever imagined possible. No return fire came from her platoon. They couldn’t all be dead, she thought. She tried to rise and found she couldn’t. Neither could she make a sound to give an order. She could still hear well enough to realize when the firing stopped and also to hear someone shouting for bayonets. Then came the screaming of dozens of men—no . . . not men . . . voices too high . . . just boys . . . —and the breaking of trees and bushes. Peters heard more screaming, this from her own people as they were bayoneted. Peters began to cry, without sound. She cried only briefly before a long, narrow bayonet entered her back. Then she died.
The sixteen-year-old bayoneter never realized that he had killed a woman.
Fort Williams, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
In two hours of action the Fourteenth Anglian Foot had succeeded in driving the Castilians out of most of their buildings to either take shelter in the few structures remaining in their hands or to melt into the surrounding jungle. Many, being dead or too badly wounded to move, could do neither. The long support building had fallen, as had five of the barracks. The remnants of the cadre still in the fight were mainly holed up in one half of one of the long, two company, billets, and in the three buildings up on the hill overlooking the post.
A number of buildings could be held by neither side; they’d either been burnt or were still burning. This was no mean feat in the rainy season on the Shimmering Sea side.
That it was the rainy season had other implications. Koniev’s maniple of heavies had started off making good progress toward Williams. Unfortunately, the roads were narrow, the jungle thick, and the ground watery. Just a mile or so past the town of Magdalena, they’d run into a—Company? Battalion? I don’t fucking know, sir. All I know is they toasted one tank and two Ocelots, totally blocking the road from drainage ditch to drainage ditch. What’s that, sir? You’re shitting me. Didn’t you ever look at how fucking wide and deep the drainage ditches are on this side?—something Koniev wasn’t willing to pay a higher price to find out what.
Faced with a nasty case of reality, Chapayev had ordered the armor to leave one platoon to guard the road and then go relieve the legionaries still holding out at Lone Palm. Then he’d ordered his foot cadets to make a quick job of trashing the Tauran rear at Fort Melia and strike out for Williams as soon as they’d finished it. One of the maniple commanders—it was Ham’s commander, Ustinov—suggested instead taking their time with Melia, but cutting one maniple loose to drive on to Williams.
“Do it,” Chapayev ordered.
The cadets of the Academy Sergeant Juan Malvegui navigated toward Williams by the light cast by the burning barracks. As far as could be told their movement had not been discovered yet. Guiding on a trail they’d reconnoitered months before, the cadets marched with a long snaking column of infantry on either side of it.
There were, besides the tanks and Ocelots of Koniev’s maniple, a half dozen in the assault gun platoon of the combat support maniple. Three of these went with Ustinov, though getting the ten-and-a-half-foot-wide vehicles through the narrow gaps between trees was difficult, time consuming, and highly frustrating.
Behind the command section, wire laid by the communications section led back to the tercio’s start point around Clay Farm.
The cadets were not precisely quiet in their movement, the light tanks still less so, but over the sound of the small arms fire mixed with the pounding rain, no one fighting at Williams could hear them.
Ham was up ahead with the point squad. They were separated from the maniple’s main body by about a quarter of a mile. When they broke out into the open Ham spent a few minutes looking, then told the squad leader to sit tight and wait for the rest of the company. Ham then raced back to report to Ustinov. He had to shout to make himself heard over a suddenly redoubled downpour.
The maniple commander, Ustinov, paused only a moment to consider before he started issuing orders. He held up the Ocelots and the two columns of infantry, then ordered to point of each column to take a ninety-degree turn to form a single straight line perpendicular to the trail. While this movement was being executed, a matter of about twenty minutes, he spoke over the telephone line to his fire support officer, or FSO, back at Clay Farms to confirm that the mortars and rocket launchers were ready to fire on command. He told the FSO to cancel any targets he had preplanned for the approach march, to prepare to put everything onto the fort. He also told the FSO to try to contact the Castilians’ headquarters to do the initial adjusting of fire. Lastly he asked for an updated report from the Muñoz-Infantes.
By the time Ustinov knew everything that could be known about the situation ahead, the cadets were on line. The Volgan then passed the word down the line to begin to move forward when the artillery fired. After a suitable interval to allow the order to be passed, he ordered the FSO to commence firing.
From Sabinita Maintenance Facility and Clay Farms a half-dozen 122mm multibarreled rocket launchers, along with eight 120mm and twelve 81mm mortars began to throw tons of high explosive at Fort Williams. In just under thirty seconds the first shells landed. Within the next half minute, three hundred ninety-eighty high-explosive shells had rained down upon the fort. This rate of fire continued, with pauses to reload the rocket launchers, for the fifteen minutes it took the cadets to almost reach the open areas of the post. In all, three hundred eighty-four 122mm rockets, a like number of 120s, and hundreds and hundreds of 81mm shells pounded the Fourteenth Anglian Foot and the Castilians alike. The difference was that, while all of the Castilians were under some degree of shelter, the Taurans were, many of them, caught out in the open. The attack on the buildings still in Castilian hands halted abruptly as men sought shelter from the steel splinters shredding air, wood, and flesh. Fires lifted and shifted onto other targets as the FSO judged an area sufficiently prepared or when the Muñoz-Infantes requested over the telephone that the fires be shifted.
The first cadet unit to break out of the jungle was the assault gun platoon’s two Ocelots. These moved slowly then, turrets traversing and machine guns chattering as they swept over any Taurans caught in the ope
n.
More than a few of the Anglians so engaged had been caught by the barrage fired from Clay Farms. These lay on the ground, some dead and some wounded, rapidly being hurled into death by the cadets’ light armor. Taught in the armor club to make full use of terror, the Ocelots ground over dead and wounded with equal impartiality. Other Tauran soldiers, unhurt or, at least, still able to fight, shot at the tanks with whatever they had available. Machine guns from the tanks shot these down almost as quickly as they showed themselves. Cadets emerging from the jungle joined their fires to those of the tanks. The area around the hill below headquarters was soon cleared.
At first the regular Castilian troops defending from the lower floor of the headquarters didn’t realize that someone had come to rescue them. When they did realize that they had been saved they began to cheer. Cadets sweeping forward to finish off the remaining Taurans were heartened by the cheer, though it came from only a dozen throats.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
If we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.
—Theodore Roosevelt,
President of the United States
Dahlgren Naval Station, Balboa, Terra Nova
Unlike the bulk of the TU forces engaged in invading Balboa that morning, the Haarlem Marines defending Dahlgren had never entirely lost communications with their higher headquarters. Radio was right out, of course, but they had their barracks and their barracks had telephones.
Warned by the fires descending upon Arnold Air Force Base, the Marine commander had, on his own initiative, canceled the planned move on the town of Nuevo Arraijan, pulled his unit back to a hasty defense of the Naval Station and the Arnold AFB tank farm, and then requested further orders via telephone. Told by TUSF-B to split his unit to defend both Dahlgren and the Bridge of the Columbias, the marine lieutenant colonel had complied. So far it looked like the decision to pull back had been a sound one. Scattered probing of his defensive line indicated that the Balboans had little or no idea where the Marines had fallen back to. No indirect fires, except for a few random harassment rounds, had fallen anywhere near the Marine positions.
Now the Marine battalion straddled the highway, with its right flank anchored deep in the jungle and its left hanging out in the thin, mostly open, air of the Arnold Tank Farm, which was a very large fuel storage facility. The battalion reserve guarded the Bridge of the Columbias. Despite TUSF-B’s instructions not to send aid to the air force under attack at Arnold, the Marines had sent a single squad-sized patrol to find out what had happened to the left. Moving up a well-beaten trail that paralleled the road the squad had discovered the debacle overtaking the base. Upon their return they reported that the army troops stationed on Fort Nelson were still fighting back, though they couldn’t offer an opinion on how long that resistance could last.
Fort Nelson, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
Sergeant Guilbeault, an infantryman crippled in a training accident months before, had been left behind when the rest of his company had airlifted over to Fort Guerrero on the other side of the bay. Standing there by the ground floor door of Fort Nelson’s Building 804, while the rest of the company moved to the helicopter pick-up zone to be lifted to Guerrero, had been a gut wrenching experience for Guilbeault. He didn’t want to go to war, exactly, but neither did he want to be left behind when his friends moved off to war. He felt cut off, left out, and angry. Worse, there was no one really to be angry at except himself for getting hurt in a stupid training accident.
The men going on the attack had felt a sympathy for Guilbeault’s being left behind as great as Guilbeault’s anger at not going along. When the first sounds of firing at Guerrero announced the beginning of the assault, Guilbeault had felt as low and useless as a man can. That was how it came to pass that, when the rockets and mortars started pummeling Arnold Air Force Base, Guilbeault was sitting on the curb outside the barracks, smoking a cigarette dejectedly. He stared a few moments at the fireworks display before understanding had him running inside the barracks to gather up whatever force he could. This turned out to be three soldiers; all, like Guilbeault, too badly hurt to go along with the rest of the company.
Guilbeault told the senior of the three, a caporal from the antiarmor section, to take one of the privates down to the edge of the big drainage ditch that divided the battalion street in two along its length. He told another of the privates to call, in order, battalion, brigade, and TUSF-B headquarters until he reached someone he could report to. Then Guilbeault ran to the mess hall to round up any of the cooks who might be on hand.
By the time Guilbeault had gone through the mess hall, each of the battalion’s company barracks, plus the engineer barracks, he had found a total of twenty-three soldiers. When he arrived at the west end of the drainage ditch with the last of them in tow, he discovered that a few others had joined from the artillery unit whose building was just north of the ditch’s opposite end. In all, Sergeant Guilbeault then had thirty-two soldiers, including himself. He set about organizing his little command.
“Until someone comes along to tell us what to do, our mission is to defend Fort Nelson. Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, those air force pukes are going to bug out. Then, whoever is attacking them is probably going to turn on us. We can’t let them have the post. Number Two Company?”
“Here, Sergeant,” answered a young, frightened looking man with unlaced boots. “I’m Superior Private Seton. I’m senior. Three men with me.”
“Seton . . . good. Take your guys and set up to defend Building 801.” Guilbeault pointed to the building just north of where the soldiers stood. “Orient your fires north and south along the main drag to Arnold and toward Fort Nelson Beach. Don’t let the bad guys get a foothold on the artillery barracks. What’s your ammo?”
“We ain’t got shit, Sergeant. Twenty-eight rounds per man.”
“Right. Figures.” The sergeant turned to one of the cooks. Pointing into building 804, he said, “Jennette, there’s a case of rifle ammunition and about half a dozen antitank rockets first platoon left behind in their CP. Go get ’em and anything else you can find.
“Take off now, Seton. I’ll get you topped off for rounds as soon as I can. Artillery?”
The soldier in charge of the remnants of the artillery spoke up. “Here Sergeant. Caporal Maillard, with four gunners.”
“Maillard, take your men and go back to your own barracks. Orient your fire northeast across the road toward Radar Hill . . .”
Guilbeault continued on, assigning small teams of men to defensive positions, layering his deployment to have at least a little depth, with the troops in one building covering the approach to others. As he spoke, the sound of firing from Arnold rose to a crescendo and then dropped off. Before he finished issuing instructions to the last of his men he heard the sound of feet hitting pavement. Others, too, heard the sounds. Bolts of rifles slammed home as rounds were stripped from the magazines and chambered.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The troopers clustered around Guilbeault held their fire until seven aviation maintenance personnel stood in front of them, bent over with exertion and fear. They were weaponless, unhelmeted, and unkempt, as broken men often are.
“Who are you?” asked Guilbeault.
“Maintenance Squadron . . .” answered one, breathlessly. “We were on the base perimeter when the locals attacked. They had tanks, man. No shit, tanks! We hightailed it. Where did they get tanks?” The wrench turner sounded almost offended by the injustice of it.
Guilbeault’s lip curled with distaste. “Get in the ditch.”
“No way, man. We can’t fight tanks.”
Guilbeault flicked off the safety of his rifle and repeated himself. “I said, ‘get in the fucking ditch.’” The SPs hesitated a m
oment until they saw that Guilbeault’s rifle was pointed at them, backed up by the rifles of several more. Then they climbed down.
No sooner had they climbed into the ditch than a tank gun fired from vicinity of the airfield, about a third of a mile to the east. A shell screamed over Guilbeault’s head to impact on a wall behind him. Then another shell, from a different tank, followed. Machine gun fire tore at the grass that grew thick around the sides of the ditch. Risking having the top of his head blown off, Guilbeault peered through the grass at the pair of tanks. They were moving forward slowly. Behind the tanks Balboan infantry walked. Soon their fire was joining that of the tanks. The east-facing walls of buildings 801 and 802 were splattered with lead.
Guilbeault had never before heard the cloth-ripping sound of standard Balboan rifles and light machine guns. It was . . . a little frightening.
Despite the splattering, shots from the defenders answered back. Guilbeault saw several Balboans fall. Still they kept coming.
“Sarge, I’m coming with the ammo!” Guilbeault looked to see Private Jennette, antitank rockets slung across his back, with a box of rifle ammunition in each hand, running from Building 804 toward the ditch. He had almost made it when something, a bullet no doubt, sent him flying. The ammunition he had been carrying hit the ground along with Jennette’s body.
Davout, a boy from Guilbeault’s own company, ran back to where Jennette lay. He took the cartridge boxes from the lifeless hands and threw them to the floor of the ditch. Then he pulled Jennette’s body in as well and stripped it of the antitank weapons. These were one-shot, disposable rocket launchers, the basic design of which had become ubiquitous across Terra Nova. Gathering up all of the ammunition, Davout ran to where Guilbeault lay against the edge of the ditch.