Come and Take Them-eARC (11 page)

Chapter Ten

Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful.

—Lao Tzu,
Tao Teh Ching

Nyen, Volgan Republic

Kuralski, sometime chief of staff for the combined legions, but more often more valuable as arms purchaser in Volga, walked around some dozens of heavy duty shipping containers and crates, checking off items on an old fashioned clipboard. The weather was typical Volgan winter, bitter, miserable, and more miserable still for Nyen’s proximity to a cold sea. Had it just been snow, Kuralski might have enjoyed the weather. But no, it was a winter mix of snow, rain, and sleet.

Open the dictionary
, thought Carrera’s legate,
to the word “shitty” and there will be a two-by-three color glossy of Nyen in the winter.

In this fortress town by the Ancylus Sea, site of the first colonization party—monarchistic dissidents all—sent out from Old Russia, a major arms shipment sat in unwalled sheds near the docks awaiting their transportation. These included, crated up for shipment, twenty-four one-seat and seven two-seat Artem-Mikhail-23-465 Gaur jet fighters, heavily modernized but still cheap since they were such old basic designs, plus fifty-two cargo helicopters, IM-71s or some variant thereto, likewise crated. The helicopter would be going straight to Balboa, but the fighters had a lengthy stop off scheduled in Zion for further upgrades.

Obsolete by Columbian, Tauran, and Volgan standards, the Gaur were still perfectly adequate to serve as training aids. Moreover, by Northern Colombian standards, they were almost top of the line aircraft. The Volgans had originally asked for over four million drachma, each, for them, on the theory that this was still cheaper than anything from the TU or Federated States. By showing the arms dealer a copy of a civilian publication dedicated to the sale of small arms, in which Gaur were being offered for sale to private individuals at just over two million Federated States Drachma, each, Kuralski had gotten the price, with shipping, reduced to just over two million each, with avionics.

The outsides of each of twenty-six shipping containers were marked FMTG, Inc., the wholly legion-owned, but largely Southern Columbian manned, corporation that provided a certain amount of training support for Balboa, especially in areas, air and naval, where the foreigners had greater expertise.

The helicopters were similarly marked. Some months earlier, though, a totally unmarked set of twenty-two cargo choppers and eight gunships had gone by rail to Cochin. Further, eight hovercraft had gone by sea to Cochin, sailing from a different port. From there, the criminal organization that had sold them to Kuralski had no clue and less interest.

Expecting that United Earth Peace Fleet’s satellite reconnaissance would see the crates containing the aircraft sitting at the dock, Carrera had had FMTG try to defuse the matter by bringing it up first. Since the aircraft were alleged to be essentially unarmed—which was true; the armaments were to be shipped separately—and were the theoretical property of a foreign defense contractor, there was no Federated States reaction to the shipments. For their own purposes, though, the FSC confirmed their existence through satellite photography.

The UEPF and Tauran Union were another story. Their reaction was to demand that the crates not be shipped anywhere. So far, the problem was being kept low key. That might change as the shipments got closer to Balboan hands.

It is possible that Carrera had another purpose is having FMTG bring the aircraft up first. After all, when someone is concentrating their remote sensing capability at one port, they’re more likely to miss another, and quite likely to miss movement by rail.

The crates of the other twenty-six helicopters were instead marked
Servicio Helicoptores Balboenses, S.A.,
SHEBSA for short. These were newer than the other group, configured as civilian choppers, and distinguishable by their more comfortable seats and large rectangular, rather than small and round, windows. Also, they had their tail rotors on the left, rather than the right, side of the tail boom. SHEBSA, Kuralski knew, was a part of the “hidden” reserve, much like the five merchant shipping corporations and the two construction companies. Though how hidden they actually were was a matter of some speculation.

Having made his last minute check of the shipment, Kuralski left the dock area for a meeting with a retired Volgan pilot who needed a job.

UEPF
Spirit of Peace,
in orbit over Taurus, Terra Nova

There were two Khans on the high admiral’s staff, husband and wife, to the extent those terms had meaning within Old Earth’s ruling classes. They did, of course, though the meaning was not necessarily one that would have been accepted on most of Terra Nova.

Both Khans were concerned with intelligence. The wife, Iris, who despite being quite blond and blue eyed had had a much darker ancestress among the hereditary bureaucrats who had eventually risen to rule of mankind’s home planet, was concerned with political and social intelligence gathering and analysis. Her husband, conversely, was more involved in operational and strategic intelligence, to include such aspects of technological intelligence as might impact on those.

They both sat with High Admiral Marguerite Wallenstein in her private office, just abutting her own quarters. The office sat in the mid gravity area, halfway between the ship’s central spine and the spinning outer hull. Rather than the ostentatious locally harvested silverwood of the conference room, Wallenstein’s private office was more subdued, without wood on the walls—beyond picture frames—and with only the built-in carbon fiber desk.

Iris Khan was speaking.

“I just don’t detect a lot of disunity within Balboa, and I don’t sense a lot of unity in the Tauran Union. The TU certainly doesn’t show the will to engage in major war.”

She’s really quite pretty,
thought Marguerite, wistfully, as Khan the wife briefed her on developments below.
If only she were not a submissive, I wouldn’t be half so lonely and not at all frustrated. It’s funny how in matters sexual and romantic most of us need whatever real life can’t provide. I have to be the bull dyke bitch of the fleet in my public persona but in my private life I want the exact opposite. And can’t have it. Dammit.

She sighed, raising an inquisitive cough from Khan the wife.

“Nothing, Commander,” Marguerite said. “Continue.”

“There’s not much else, High Admiral,” she said. “Janier was supposed to start provoking the Balboans over a week ago. He hasn’t because he can’t get the political authorization, which we were supposed to deliver. We simply haven’t been able to.”

“Even though we’ve offered their ruling classes another quarter century of life, youth, and health?” Wallenstein asked.

“Not that simple, High Admiral. Some are willing, sure. Many of them are. But some are idealistic, transcendentally motivated; they really believe in whatever their pet philosophy is—from pacifism to cosmopolitanism to Tsarist Marxism—and won’t trade away their political faiths for mere personal gain.

“Fortunately, there are few of those. Unfortunately, they carry weight over and above their numbers.”

“The personal gain isn’t so very ‘mere,’ you know,” said Marguerite. “An extra twenty-five years of youth and health? They should be begging us.”

“Most of them would,” agreed Iris. “But those others? The fanatics? They are dangerous to the more reasonable types. Well…except for the pacifists, of course. They’re only dangerous to themselves and their own.”

“You wouldn’t have brought this to me if you didn’t have a solution,” the high admiral said.

“Not me,” replied Iris, “but my husband may have one.”

Wallenstein turned her attention, perhaps a little reluctantly, away from the pretty wife and toward the—
let’s be honest, not bad himself
—husband.

“The key word there is ‘may,’ High Admiral,” began Commander Khan, husband. “That is to say,
maybe
the Balboans have given us something to work with. I confess, I am not precisely full of confidence. And, for that matter, I’ve had the glimmering of an idea. My lovely wife is the one who figured out—”

“But it was you—” began Iris, before Wallenstein cut her off with, “Shut up. I don’t care whose idea it is, if it has a chance of working.”

“It revolves around two things,” said Khan the husband. “One is the Balboan military threat to Colombia Latina as a whole, though more specifically the threat to their eastern neighbor, Santa Josefina.”

“Santa Josefina got rid of its army decades ago,” said Iris. “The cosmopolitans love that, while the pacifists approve enough that their resistance to knocking out a threat to Santa Josefina will be muted.”

“Yes,” agreed her husband, “while the second item is that the Balboans have played into our hands by engaging in an arms buildup the likes of which Colombia Latina has
never
seen.

“Mind you, High Admiral, they don’t have the logistical wherewithal to support more than a small fraction of their army at any distance from home…well, except if they can support it by sea. But the common ruck and muck of the Tauran Union see tanks and guns and aren’t bright enough to realize that those go nowhere without sufficient trucks and rail.”

Marguerite considered all that. “You think, you really think, Balboa is a threat to Santa Josefina?”

Khan the husband shrugged. “I think they could be if they wanted to be. They don’t want to because they get everything they want from Santa Josefina—namely volunteers to be cannon fodder—already, without having to worry about the costs of administering the country.”

“It might help,” said Iris, “if we used the longevity treatments to bribe the Santa Josefinan politicos to ask for Tauran Union protection. Might even throw the Federated States off guard, come to think of it.”

“Tangled web-wise,” said Marguerite, “I kind of like that.”

Classroom Shed 47,
Isla Real
, Balboa, Terra Nova

Carrera had a lot more things to hide than just some aircraft, some hovercraft, or some ships. Some were hidden on the island, the
Isla Real,
that served as the legion’s primary training base and was already most of the way there to becoming the strongest fortress in the history of two worlds.

On the northwest quarter of the island, not too far from the solar chimney that provided power to the place, a slender, aesthetic and intelligent looking warrant named Saenz taught a portion of a course under a metal shed, without walls but screened against insects. Outside the shed four three-ton trucks waited, their engines shut off. Saenz was seconded from Fernandez’s department to teach a portion of the course for a few months a year.

The course was top secret, forbidden even to discuss. Of course the techniques taught there were to be passed on to the units that sent men to the course. It was the existence of the course, itself, that was top secret. Indeed, although it was largely about deceiving and defeating the most high tech means of reconnaissance, the course was billed as, “Advanced Field Fortifications.”

Some of it actually took place around fortified areas. Other portions, like this one, were under cover. Some, the deepest secrets, were passed on underground.

Exactly on time the instructor, Warrant Officer Saenz, began to speak from a rostrum sitting centered on a low podium.

“Gentlemen,” said the instructor, “today we will continue with the discussion of tactical deception on the battlefield. I remind you that this is key, because deception is the handmaiden of surprise. Further, it is also simply a great way to reduce the effectiveness of extremely high technology weapons and sensors.”

Saenz looked over the students for the one who had likely failed to study. Not finding one, at least from a facial expression, he asked, “Now who has studied for today’s lesson? Yes…you over there in the third row. Tell me? How many types of remote sensing are there? Name one of them and state briefly how it works.”

The corporal chosen stood up from his desk and answered “That we know of, there are several. The simplest, but not the easiest to defeat, is aerial photography. Aerial photography, whether from satellites or from aircraft, can take extremely detailed pictures. In days past the preferred technique for defeating aerial photography was by camouflage, natural or artificial…or both. Special films, however, can tell whether camouflage, say vegetation or something that looks like vegetation, is alive…or even real. Computer programs and spectral analysis do the same things, only quicker. So it is possible to make yourself more obvious with camouflage than without it.”

“Very good,” the warrant complimented. “Take a seat, please. The man next to you…yes, you, Rudolfo. Give the group another, please.”

“Sir,” the legionary answered. “Heat is another method of detecting even carefully hidden targets. Our weapons are mostly steel; they cool at different rates than the air or soil around and under them…even over them. And vehicles’ engines put out enough heat that they will show up like a spotlight even through many feet of dirt or concrete.”

“Good. Who’s next? Ah, good. Another, son?”

“Sir. Radar can be used to find out where we are if we are above the surface of the planet. Then, too, there’s ground penetrating radar. It is like other radars but on a different wavelength; one that will see right through the earth…or water. The limitation is how far down it will see; and with what detail. Also trees tend to absorb the radar energy.”

“Do we know how far down those radars will see, son?”

“Not precisely, sir,” the soldier answered. “Depending on the type of system and its computer power—computers to make sense out of the jumbled image—anywhere from three to fifteen meters. Possibly more, we just don’t know.”

“Possibly,” Saenz agreed. “And we may never know. And if we ever find out, we may not like the reason why or the manner how for beans.”

Pointing to the other side of the classroom, Saenz said, “Next man.”