Read Come and Take Them-eARC Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
Tags: #Military, #Science Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction
“Because it will keep the Balboans focused on defense rather than on an invasion of Santa Josefina?”
“Precisely. And our provocations will keep the Balboans half mobilized, hence more threatening looking than ever. And that, too, will mean firmer grounds for me to demand more troops.
“Eventually, the need to keep mobilized, plus the threats from our provocations, plus fear and fatigue, will have them—rather, their ill-disciplined troops—do something to justify an invasion.”
“How soon do you think the force for Santa Josefina will be ready to move?” she asked.
“I talked to a friend,” he answered. “The two Gallic infantry battalions and a temporary command element can move in three days. That’s important because, once we move, the others will have to follow along quickly. Three airships are loading now, as a matter of fact. Everyone else will be rather slower, of course.”
“Speaking of faster and slower,” asked Wallenstein, “do I need to restate how key timing is going to be to all this? The troops must be in the air and ready to land within just a few hours of Calderón’s request.”
“Yes, I know,” agreed Janier, adding with a smile, “But timing, in love or war, is a Gallic strong suit.”
Wallenstein mentally sighed.
Dammit, I could enjoy bedding this man in any other circumstances. Rather, being bedded by him. He’s just the sort to take me away from responsibility and put me in my place. Damn duty.
Southeast corner of Santa Josefina, above the Chelonia National Park, Terra Nova
Though the Noahs had transplanted nearly every kind of animal found on Old Earth, half a million to five million years prior, to Terra Nova, and done whatever could reasonably be done to prevent intelligent, hence dangerous, life from arising on the new world, once man had shown up a great many of those salvaged species went into precipitous decline. Sabretooths? Some species still lived. Others existed only as trophies on walls or rugs in stately homes and palaces. The phorusrhacids, the giant terror birds of Colombia del Norte? Some lived in zoos, but none were believed left in the wild. Megs still roamed the seas, but it was believed that their numbers had dwindled almost to the vanishing point as their food supplies were hunted out by man.
The giant turtles and tortoises, however, if not precisely thriving still were a ways from extinction. For one thing because they lived a long time, this could, food permitting and a mate being available, fill up their ecological niches even after a severe period of being hunted. For another, they were rather magnificent, where magnificence equaled tourism, tourism equaled money, and money meant someone thought them worth protecting.
Santa Josefina’s major industries included the production of “oohs” and “aahs” from the environmentally conscious. Thus, despite being slow prey, the giants of the Chelonia National Park, after a fashion, thrived.
Several of them, at least two engaged in copulation, looked up at a strange thrumming sound never before heard above their little protected homeland. Since terrestrial chelenoids tended to have their eyes set downward, the better to find food on land, they—all but the male engaged in copulation—had to really strain to look up.
Had the tortoises been of a religious bent, they might have bowed in awe and wonder, and maybe even a little shock, too, at the spectacle of three huge forms, as turtlelike as made, to them, no difference, flying through the air.
For good or ill, however, the shellbacks were not noted for their religious sentiment.
* * *
Like turtles, the airships were slow, no doubt about it. The early ones were also far too dependent on ground support. The newer versions, though, hybrids that obtained about three fifths to two thirds of their lift from gas and the rest aerodynamically, didn’t need a lot of ground support. Better, they were cheap to run. Better still, they could carry loads that airplanes couldn’t really hope to; eighteen or twenty tanks, say, or a battalion of foot infantry with its forty or so vehicles, say.
There were three of them, cross loaded so that about a third of each of two Gallic infantry battalion rode in each, with the remaining lift devoted to necessary supplies until arrangements could be made for local purchase. There was, of course, no known reason to take the precaution of cross loading. Even so, and even without enemy help, airships had been known to go down. And the Gauls, whatever their other failings, still planned for the unlikely but potentially disastrous.
With tortoises, huge ones, visible below—“Hey, Jacques, look at those two monsters screwing!”—the three airships from the Republic of Gaul Air Force crossed the shore at modest speed and low elevation, then lifted their noses and applied power to their under-mounted fans, to fight their way over the central cordillera common to all the states of Colombia Central. The spot they were to cross had been carefully worked out prior. Near that spot, Lieutenant Blanco of Santa Josefina’s Public Force watched the three pass. Then, reasonably confident that they represented the Taurans upholding their side of the bargain, he called his president to say that the cavalry was riding over the hill in the nick of time.
Chapter Seventeen
In war, an approximation of the truth may best be reached by a comparison of the lies.
—Leon Trotsky
Range 4, Imperial Range Complex, Balboa, Terra Nova
The shell had come down without warning. Where it hit and blossomed into an angry black flower, men, several of them, were scythed down, screaming in pain. Jan had seen it hit, and had seen the maniple’s reaction to it, too.
She shook her head now, half with disgust. A medical Cricket was taking off, laden with two wounded, one of them seriously. The Crickets were the legion’s light STOL aircraft, used for many things that other armies used more expensive helicopters for. The Cricket couldn’t get in as many spots as a helicopter could, but it was more likely to be ready to go in those spots it could get into. As that one took off with its bleeding cargo, another one was settling down a few score meters from where the first had been. Immediately three medics, one holding an IV bag above his head, began loading another wounded man into the back of the thing through a lowered ramp.
It was one of those things; a defective mortar round had landed where it should not have, right by an infantry squad. The remainder of that squad, and the rest of its platoon and maniple, were continuing on with the attack, as if there hadn’t even been an accident.
Jan found that disgusting, too.
“Why do they put up with this, Sergeant Major?” she asked of Cruz. “Our reservists never would. Maybe not our regulars anymore either.”
Nor should they,
she thought.
Cruz shrugged just as if he didn’t understand the question. “Why shouldn’t they put up with it, ma’am? They’re soldiers, and well-paid ones, too, by my poor country’s standards. And most of them work in jobs
Duque
Carrera and
Presidente
Parilla created for them. Or they have businesses they set up or farms they bought with loans from the legion. Or they are going to school on the legion ticket.”
Cruz continued, “And we are a close group, you know. Even when we’re not training together. That corporal that León was, ah…counseling the other night? He’s León’s little brother. And the reserves and militia are full members of the tercio, even if they’re only on duty less than a month a year. Or about two and a half months for the reserves. They’re welcome at our troops’ clubs, and they come because girls come…soldiers are very popular in Balboa now. The soldiers are bigger, stronger, and they have more money to spend—on a good time…or on a home, food, cradles, and diapers. Because of that, and—frankly—in some cases, because the booze is cheaper. If they’re married, their wives can shop at the tercio commissary and exchange. Most attend our chapel quite often. A lot of them are allowed to live in the barracks free of charge if they wish, and if we have room. That lets them save money while going to school or getting established in their civilian jobs. They can pay to eat in the tercio mess to save money too, if they want to. It gives our cooks training without costing the government much.
“Even when they are not so involved in the tercio their friends tend to come from the tercio. They hang out at bars off of the post that men of the tercio frequent. If you ask one of them who or what he is, the likely first answer is something like ‘I’m a soldier in Second Tercio.’ Although the Tenth Tercio men would say ‘Caesar’s Tenth,’ the arrogant bastards.
“This is true even if they manage a bank, as at least one of our Reserve centurions does. Although
he
is in Number Three Company. And the boys are proud, very proud, of themselves. So are their families. When we have the full Tercio parade, there are usually ten or eleven thousand family members and well-wishers who come to watch. Sometimes—even—we actually bring some of the wives and girlfriends to watch the training, if the ‘Old Man’ thinks it will be exciting enough for them to want to see.”
The second Cricket took off in a cloud of dust and with its engine roaring…insofar as such a small engine, less than one hundred and twenty horsepower, could be said to “roar.” Cmpbell went silent for a few minutes, which silence Cruz chose not to break.
Once the Cricket was out of earshot, Campbell heard a maniple swinging by on the road, maybe two hundred meters to the rear. They were singing a very sad sounding song. She listened long enough, long enough to determine that the lyrics weren’t all that sad, but rather uplifting.
“I see,” she said. “Then you get most of the benefits of having men serve together as regulars, at a fraction of the price.”
“That’s about it, ma’am. Then, too, these men will be the future rulers of this country. They will
never
have to share their votes with people less worthy. They probably could not articulate it, most of them. But it means something that their sacrifices are recognized and rewarded.”
“And yourself? Doesn’t it bother you that you will be old and gray before you can vote?”
“Me?” Cruz laughed hard enough he had to stop to catch his breath. “Me? Why should
I
be allowed to vote? At least until I’m so old I can’t screw things up for long. I’ve made no sacrifices. I
like
this shit. It’s the life for me. But I will be confident for our future…for the future of my wife and children…when the country is run by those who absolutely did
not
like this shit…but did it anyway. Because they cared more for the
Patria
than for themselves.”
“How have you come so far? Why fifteen years ago you didn’t even
have
an army.”
Cruz answered with a single word. “Carrera.”
“You think a lot of him, don’t you?”
“Ma’am…I’d make the fucker king if I could; if I thought he’d accept. Most of us would.”
“King? I don’t think you mean that.”
Cruz gave Campbell a look that said,
Oh, yes, I do
.
Cruz jerked his head in the direct of rustling leaves and branches. Tribune Porras stepped out of the shadows. “Sergeant Major? The ‘Old Man’ wants to see you at the command post.”
Cruz nodded and took his leave of Campbell, leaving Porras to take his place.
* * *
The command post was about half a kilometer away, mostly hidden under a spreading tranzitree, and mostly surrounded by thick reedlike grass with tufts at the end, the technical name for which was
Saccharum spontaneum
.
Legate Velasquez was seated on a folding wooden campstool, just outside of the small hexagonal tent that served as the cohort command post. From the look on his face, Cruz was pretty sure what the news was, even if he didn’t have a name to attach to the news.
“That medevac included Corporal León, Sergeant Major. He didn’t make it. They pronounced him dead on arrival.”
“Shit!” Cruz exclaimed, stomach lurching and heart sinking. “But how? I mean specifically how, sir.”
Velasquez shook his head, saying, “That awaits an autopsy. To be sure, it does, anyway. But what difference does it make, really? We know what killed him, one or more fragments from a 120mm mortar.”
“Do we know what caused the short round?” the sergeant major asked.
Again Velasquez shook his head. “No. I’ve got the platoon leader counting charges, to see if they took off one too many. But my guess is a bad charge, not a short one.”
“Most likely,” Cruz agreed. “Does his brother know yet?”
“No. That’s why I called you.”
Cruz nodded. “I’ll tell him, sir.”
“No, you don’t understand. Gonna be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’ll tell him. I just want you there for morale support.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Porras said nothing to Campbell; he was far too young and far too shy to initiate a conversation with a foreign officer. That she was an extremely well put together and attractive woman made this worse. Thus, if anyone was going to break the ice, it fell to her.
“Tribune Porras,” she asked of the boy who wasn’t a lot more than half her age, “aren’t you a little young to be a commissioned officer?”
Startled at first, but pleased that someone had had the courage to break the ice when he lacked it, Porras answered, “Maybe, ma’am. I’m a month shy of nineteen. It makes me feel pretty young sometimes.”
Jan was aware of Carrera’s junior military academies. She asked, “And were you commissioned out of one of the new schools?”
“Ma’am? Oh,
no,
ma’am. We
never
commission anyone straight out of school. I graduated at seventeen after almost four years, then enlisted like everyone else. All my classmates who made it through four years did, except for one. No, ma’am, all the schools do for you is give you a little leg up on the others. You know how to march in step, for example.”
Porras was quibbling here, as he’d been ordered to do with anyone not in the legion, or in the legion but below the rank of Centurion, J.G. Anyone who had been through the academies knew they taught a lot more than just marching in step.
Porras continued, “You still have to enlist, get picked for the Reserves in basic training, then impress your tercio
cadre in your advanced training and utilization tour. Then it’s the basic Noncom Course, Cazador School, and Officer Candidate School. That…or real combat sometimes, though even there you don’t get out of much.”
Jan, who had risen to senior noncom rank in the Anglian army before being commissioned answered, “I can see merit in that.”
“Ah, yes…ma’am. So do we. There are also two other advantages to having been a cadet. Some of the time at the junior military schools counts against the time you would normally have to wait for a school. So, while most of the soldiers might have to wait as much as three or four years for Cazador School and OCS, I was able to do them one right after the other…almost. But, no, ma’am. No one gets commissioned in the legion without following the same road as the soldiers must. You
do
get paid at a slightly higher rate for longevity; the last two years in school count as years of service for pay.”
Per prior instructions for dealing with inquisitive gringos Porras added, lying outright, “We don’t really get all that much tactical training at the academies.”
“But what about the university? Don’t you need a degree to become an officer?”
That gave Porras a laugh, which laugh caused Campbell to wonder,
Why do so many of my questions seem so funny to them? Hmmm…think about this possibility, woman, they are even more ignorant of us than we were of them.
Once recovered, Porras continued, “No, ma’am. About the time you make tribune II—you would say, ‘captain’—the legion will pay for you go to school, at least part time. But civil education is not so important to us. A legion officer is expected to have a baccalaureate by the time he makes legate I, the equivalent of lieutenant colonel. But it is not an absolute requirement. Of course we
do
read a lot…and both Legates Chin and Suarez have very time consuming programs for Officer Professional Development.
“But, for those of us in the regulars, since we spend only about a hundred days a year training troops there is a
lot
of time for OPD. But nobody really cares about having a
degree
.”
Porras paused. “There is one exception I can think of. The engineers have to have at least a four year degree in—usually—civil engineering to be commissioned. But that’s it.”
“But what about doctors, medical doctors, and such?” she asked.
“They don’t even become officers unless they go through Cazador School and OCS. In any event, we don’t have enough doctors to waste their time making them leaders and commanders. Although that situation is improving, I understand. The force has hired enough Volgan doctors to start a legionary medical school.”
“Why not just send them to the Federated States for medical school?”
Again, Porras laughed out loud. “Because we’d probably never get more than a fraction of them back. There’s just too much money for a doctor in the Federated States. Or the Tauran Union. Or in the Islamic parts of the world, some of them. Carrera won’t even let someone go to medical school who so much as speaks English. Why, did you know—”
Campbell lifted a gentle finger to silence Porras. As they’d been talking the sun had gradually slipped down the arc of day, and was about to touch the far ends of the earth with fire. Already it seemed to be setting afire the thick stands of
Saccharum spontaneum
that grew pretty much everywhere not covered by building, road, or thick jungle canopy. With the setting of the sun, the angels’ candlelight vigil in memory of the dying day, a lone piper, unseen but not so distant, had begun to play a soft and sad—painfully sad—melody while standing on a low pile of earth on the range. Even the birds stopped their nighttime calls, as if to listen.
“Very beautiful,” said Campbell. “I love the pipes.”
“So do we, ma’am. So do we. Is there a soldier anywhere who does not?”
“Pity his soul, if so,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am, I agree. But it also means that I’d better get to sleep now, since I have the evening watch. Good night, ma’am.”
After Porras left, Campbell stayed awake for a while, waiting for Hendryksen to return from his ventures with the cohort’s scout platoon. She hadn’t been invited to dinner again and so dug through her pack for one of Gaul’s finest canned bits of culinary artistry.
“Shit. I despise
escargot
.”
“Upset that their cuisine didn’t start on a dare?” asked Hendryksen from the shadows.
“No one can tell me
escargot
didn’t start on a dare,” she replied, pulling the ring that let her peel back the top of the flattened, squarish can.
“Well…per—”
Hendryksen was interrupted by a wail of unspeakable anguish, so profound that neither the jungle nor the thick grass could muffle it.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
“I heard over the radio,” he said; “that mortar accident? It killed somebody.”
“Dreadful,” she said. The tone of her voice said she meant it, too. “I saw the accident, from a distance. They didn’t even stop training.”
“No, they wouldn’t, would they?” Hendryksen looked around, then closed his eyed and seemed to be listening carefully. Finally, apparently satisfied that none of the Balboans were around, he said, “These people have to be stopped.”