by Tom Kratman
Only the Tenth Artillery Legion had a substantial counterbattery radar capability, radar that could trace incoming enemy shells back to their point of origin. The artillery tercios in the ground combat brigades had less of it, and far less sophisticated models. This was a cost saving measure on Carrera’s part, one that he later came to regret.
The Tenth’s legate, however, didn’t really need his counterbattery radar just yet. Certainly he didn’t want to use it while the Tauran artillery could trace it back and knock it out. Besides, he knew with a fair degree of surety the four square kilometers around Imperial Base from which the Tauran guns were supporting their ground troops.
“Four klicks square, four klicks square?” he mused. “Tell me, XO, do we have enough to crush four square kilometers?”
The XO of the Tenth Legion did a few quick and rough calculations in his head. “Our first minute of firing on Empire we can throw . . . mmm . . . four thousand rounds of 122mm rocket, about one hundred and twenty rounds of 180mm . . . oh . . . maybe three hundred, at least two-fifty, rounds of 300mm. Call it . . . ah . . . two hundred and fifty tons. The first minute.” He continued, “The last intel update we had before they hit us the Taurans weren’t all that well dug in there.”
“Fine,” said the legate. “Except for what we’re giving Third Corps, have the batteries hold their fire until the last of them is in position or in ten minutes, whichever is sooner. Then give those motherfuckers twenty good minutes of everything we can throw. Then we’ll light up the counterbattery radar to catch whatever we may have missed.”
The exec nodded agreement, then asked, “They’ll have a lot of ammunition around their guns, sir. Vehicles with full fuel tanks too, I’d imagine. Shake and Bake?” That meant throw mixed high explosive and white phosphorus.
“Yes, by all means, Shake and Bake the sons of bitches. Let’s see how they like being on the receiving end for a change.”
The XO ran into the Brigade Fire Direction Center to give the necessary orders.
Fire Base Eagle, Imperial Range Base Camp, Balboa, Terra Nova
Reality often, even usually, frustrates theory. The apparent exception to this, academia, isn’t really an exception as reality is rarely allowed to penetrate to frustrate academic theories. In any case, there had really not been time for the Tenth Artillery Legion to do the calculations that would have made the first volleys fall on time, simultaneously. Thus the first rounds—they were thirty-two 180mm shells—landed rather raggedly over the entire area. Few men were hurt by them, although there were a few cries for medics immediately thereafter. A rather larger number had more brown stains on their uniforms than red.
In a way, the early shots helped the Taurans rather than hurt them. Given the warning, most men—all who could—scrambled for the safety of bunkers and firing positions. The firing of the big guns stopped as legionary gun crews went through the laborious process of reloading the heavy shells.
Few if any of the Tauran gunners had ever heard of the Birkenhead Drill. No more did they know of the spirit behind it. Their civilian lives had trained them to think their individual lives to be rather more important than perhaps would be true under all foreseeable circumstances. Their military experience had not perhaps done all that was possible to change that.
Even though the Balboan fire stopped, the Taurans remained in their shelters rather than manning their guns to return fire.
Then came the flood. They heard it first from a distance, a muffled continuous . . . fooshing. This was followed by a sort of a moaning wail. Then over four thousand rockets, each with a hundred-pound warhead, slammed down on them at a rate of just over twenty per second.
The rockets had no particular accuracy. They didn’t need it. They landed everywhere. No place above ground was safe. Few were safe below it, if a rocket fell near enough.
Men cowering behind the earth walls of their guns’ firing positions were stunned, sometimes killed, by concussion alone. Others, those unfortunate enough to have a white phosphorus rocket land nearby, were driven mad by the pain of chunks of the awful stuff burning into their flesh. These ran screaming until cut down by a later falling round.
Near one battery a fuel tanker was first ruptured by high explosive then set afire by the white phosphorus. Burning fuel leaked along the ground to where it touched upon some of the charges that launched the Taurans’ shells. These began to burn, then exploded. A nearby store of ammunition soon joined the conflagration. A soldier who survived later reported seeing a big 155mm gun sailing end over end though the air from the blast.
Other fuel tankers were burst. In places the raging fuel leaked into bunkers, driving their occupants out into the steel-shredded air. Not everyone had the choice of burning or shredding. In places the flames made exit impossible. Those men died very badly indeed.
Still, making sure, the legionary fire continued to fall until the full twenty minutes were up. Then, ignorant and uncaring—should they have cared?—of the human damage done, the legion’s guns and launchers shifted fire to other, still living, targets.
They left seven wrecked batteries behind them.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
He will meet no suave discussion,
but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species
warring as for spouse and child.
—Kipling,
“The Female of the Species”
Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.
—Plutarch, Pelopidas
Between the old Comandancia and Cerro Mina, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
Legate Suarez took his binoculars from his eyes. He held them in his left hand, his right arm and shoulder being tightly bandaged to his chest. He could not see much anyway, what with the shell smoke still hugging Cerro Mina. His eyes were also blurred, perhaps from the smoke of the fires razing the neighborhood, perhaps from having seen some of his wounded.
Suarez had been in the briefest of radio contacts with Carrera, still directing the First Corps and Sitnikov’s half-brigade of cadets, east of the Transitway.
“I’m up to my eyebrows, Suarez,” Carrera had said. “I want you to take Cerro Mina at any and all costs, as soon as possible . . . except quicker than that.”
“Take it with what?” he asked himself, for the dozenth time. “Second Tercio won’t be near mobilized for another hour and a half. Tenth Infantry’s fought out for now. Fifth Legion’s over with Carrera and he damn well knows it, too. All I can do is pound the bastards with artillery until I get more force.”
Suarez’s Ia, his operations officer, walked near his chief and coughed slightly.
“What is it, DeSantis?”
“Sir . . . I’ve got a tribune . . . name of Avila, outside. He says he has two fully mobilized infantry maniples for you.”
“Avila? Avila? Where have I heard that name?”
“Tercio Gorgidas, sir.”
“The queers?” Suarez’s eyes rolled. “What the hell do I need with them.”
DeSantis framed his answer with some care. “Sir, we may not like them. We may not want them mixed in our units. And we’re probably right in that. But by themselves? Why not? Besides, they may just take the fucking hill.”
Well, I have no better ideas, thought Suarez. “Okay, fine, bring the cocksucker up.”
“Sir.”
A few minutes later a tribune reported to Suarez, with his executive officer, who was also his partner, at his side. They had a female tribune in tow.
Adorable little thing, thought Suarez. What a fucking waste what I’m going to use her for.
Suarez tried had to keep the contempt from his voice. Mostly, he succeeded. “I’m told you have two infantry maniples, Tribune.”
“Yes, sir. One from my own tercio and one of the Amazon maniples.”
“So . . . what brings you here?”
“It seemed obvious, sir. You need to take that hill. We’re here to do it.�
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“Yeah, well . . . with all respect, Tribune, I don’t think you can.”
“Perhaps more important, sir . . . we do.”
Suarez looked at the legionary in front of him. Who knows? Maybe they can. Certainly they’ve at least got more of a chance of taking it soon than my boys do . . . because we can’t yet.
“All right, Avila. We’ll see what your queers and your cunts can do. Come over by the map.”
Avenida de la Victoria, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
It was appropriate to use the old name, Avenida de la Victoria, the name Belisario Carrera had given it in centuries long past. Whether the talismanic use would grant the victory remained to be seen.
Not far from where the Second Tercio had fought the Gallic Dragoons a few years past, Number One Maniple of the Tercio Amazona waited with heaving breasts and wide eyes. To their east, but out of sight, was Avila’s maniple. No bullets cracked around them. Perhaps the Taurans on the hill were short on ammunition. The maniple was clustered so close together that they had to hope it was true.
The Amazon tribune—she was the maniple commander—listened intently into the radio. Avila had been given all the support Suarez could muster. The female tribune overheard him controlling and correcting artillery fire.
Sergeant Maria Fuentes, she whose daughter had once given Carrera flowers near where an Tauran helicopter had been shot down, lay on the ground nearby. She was simply scared to death. Lying down let her control her shaking a bit better. She didn’t want the others to see.
On the hill ahead of Maria the tempo of artillery fire picked up noticeably. Cerro Mina seemed to shake with the impact of hundreds of high explosive rounds falling in rapid succession. Please kill them or make them run away, she thought. I don’t want to fight anybody.
“Fix . . . bayonets!” the Amazon tribune commanded. Down the line the word was passed. “Fix bayonets . . . fix bayonets.” Maria’s shaking hands reached toward her belt, unsnapping the large-handled knife and fixing it at the end of her rifle. A steady click-click-click told her the rest of her company was doing the same.
Other sounds assailed her ears: magazines being inserted into rifles, bolts being drawn back and released to slam home. One woman of her squad was praying on her knees, there on the hard pavement. Maria heard her include the Taurans in her prayers.
Another girl was crying; Maria didn’t know what or who for.
On the hill above, the artillery seemed to redouble its fury. Maria noticed that her internal organs rippled with the blasts. It was a sickening sensation. She felt like throwing up.
The tribune handed the microphone back to her radio operator, who held it to her own ear, listening. She looked at her F-26 rifle, then shook her head and slung it across her back. The tribune then took the maniple’s eagle from its bearer, crossing herself as she did so. She had discussed what she was going to do with Avila. He had agreed and decided to emulate her.
She cast her voice wide, “On your feet, Amazonas!” The tribune waited for her girls to rise. “Now . . . for your old parents and grandparents back in the City; for the children you have or hope to have; for our country . . . for OURSELVES! The Future is at the top of that hill! Follow me, you cunts!”
Holding the eagle high, the tribune raced out into the street. She had almost made it halfway across before three things happened: the artillery stopped falling on Cerro Mina, the rest of her women realized what she had done, and two Tauran machine gunners on the slope simply shot her to pieces.
The tribune was dead, very dead, even before her body hit the ground. Broken staffed, the eagle fell to the pavement. The rest of the Amazons—those who were in a position to see—looked on, speechless, for a moment. Their reactions told the others what had happened.
It took some moments for it all to register, for their anger to build. Then with hate-filled cries they swarmed en masse across the street.
Maria ran with the others. More machine guns joined those that had killed their leader. A long sweeping burst cut down the woman—more of a girl really, she was no more than eighteen—beside Maria and three more Amazons past her. They fell to the pavement with cries and screams.
Maria continued on. Half of those who had begun the charge fell before the other side of the street was reached. The rest reached the wooded slope and, firing from the hip, began the slow ascent. They reached a line of triple concertina and went to ground or one knee until it could be cleared, available cover depending. Some girls detached their bayonets to use with the scabbards to cut their way through. The enemy concentrated their fire on those trying to cut through. They were hit, wounded or dead.
The assault broke down, and not for anything the Amazons did or failed to do. A few pockets of women tried to move forward or even back. The Taurans were having none of it. Still those survivors might have been safe enough but that some of the wounded raised their rifles to their shoulders to fire—at a Tauran or perhaps merely where one might be. They couldn’t know if they had hit anything.
Half a kilometer to the east the company from Tercio Gorgidas had, ultimately, found no greater success. Avila—bearing the eagle—succeeded in reaching the far side of the street unscathed. Still, the avenue was liberally littered with bodies.
Looking around him, Avila saw something unexpected. Where neither man in a pairing was hit they behaved as normally as one could hope for under the circumstances. But where one member was hit . . . or killed . . . the survivor tended to act in one of two ways. Either he stopped completely, broken-hearted, or he charged mindlessly to attack those who had shattered his life.
Avila saw one such soldier actually succeed in reaching a Tauran position. The soldier had there gone into a frenzy of killing and mutilation, slashing with his rifle and baronet until it was broken, then pulling an entrenching tool from his harness to continue the mayhem. He was still standing, defiant, over three or four butchered Taurans when he, in turn, was cut down.
Thought Avila, Carrera made a mistake with us. We should not have been formed as infantry. We should have been grouped as pairs of pairs in tanks, where we could live or die together.
The maniple XO took one knee beside Avila and reported, “The Amazons are fucked. It’s up to us if this hill is going to fall now.”
“What happened to them?” Avila asked. “The Amazons, I mean.”
“Just shitty fucking luck,” said the exec. “I never saw anything braver in my life.”
Avila affectionately patted his partner’s helmet and said, “Then let’s get a move on, Juan. We’ve still got most of a maniple.” He adjusted his grip on the eagle and began to move forward, shouting encouragement to his men. His shouts were cut short as a 40mm grenade exploded beside him. Sections of serrated wire ripped his lungs and a number of important blood vessels. Avila fell.
Juan, his XO, rushed to Avila’s side, calling for a medic. When the medic arrived, the XO grabbed the eagle’s staff and began his own charge. It didn’t last long.
Northern Slope, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
Captain Bernoulli looked out over the scene, what he could see of it, with some satisfaction. After being left hanging out to dry at Guerrero, he and his men had escaped through Balboa, held in position for a while, then moved again to this slope. There they were told to occupy the defensive positions . . . fast. His men had done well. A full assault, in nearly battalion strength, had been broken.
Bernoulli looked at one of the Balboan bodies. It hung on the barbed wire to his front. The corpse—no it wasn’t a corpse, was it—twisted to try to free himself—no, no . . . the long hair said it was a woman. She cried to herself, softly and piteously, sobbing at times. She did succeed in freeing an arm briefly before it was caught again on the wire. In the brief time it had been free she had tried to gather her intestines from the ground to put them back into her torn belly.
Sergeant Tom Gilbert came up behind his commander. His wife was Balboan. “Let me go to her, sir. Please?”
Crouching, Bernoulli stepped toward the dying girl. A shot rang out, from where exactly, none but the firer could tell. The bullet passed through Bernoulli’s nose, out the back of his skull, bounced from the inside of his helmet, then lodged in his already destroyed brain. He fell without a sound.
Gilbert was by Bernoulli’s side in an instant. Not bothering to check for wounds or cover himself, he dragged the corpse back to the company’s line. A medic pronounced the captain dead.
“Where did the shot come from? Where did the fucking shot come from?” Gilbert demanded.
No one knew. Some soldier ventured, “Down there somewhere. One of the ones we hit, maybe.”
Roughly, Gilbert pushed a machine gunner aside. “They want to play that fucking game, do they? Well . . . we’ll see how they like the payback.” Then, slowly and methodically, Gilbert proceeded to put a burst of fire into each body, dead and wounded alike, in his field of view. The first one he shot was the girl hanging on the barbed wire, though that was done as much in mercy as in anger. As word spread down the company line that their beloved CO was dead, and how he had been killed, the other men of the company joined in. A few, like Gilbert, knew they were shooting women and didn’t care anymore. Most didn’t know.
Perhaps a hundred meters down slope from where Bernoulli had died, Maria Fuentes—bullet hole through her abdomen—hid in a small shell crater. She wasn’t in much pain. That, she supposed, would come soon enough.
Several others had joined her there in the muddy pit. All but one were hurt. For some reason, the gringos were still firing like mad. Maria didn’t know why until she heard a friend call for help, that the Taurans were killing the wounded. A short burst of firing and her friend made no more sound. Maria began to cry too. Then the pain began in earnest. She soon lost consciousness.
There hadn’t been any more intel to gather, nor much point in trying to gather any. This fight was as good as over, Jan Campbell knew. So she and Hendryksen had gone topside, ducking the incoming shells as best they could, until they found an empty fighting position they could occupy.