Come and Take Them-eARC (40 page)

The formation was somewhat more dispersed than sound doctrine would have called for. This was because both the Royal Anglican Navy and the Navy of the Republic of Gaul totally and thoroughly detested and distrusted each other. Neither wanted to give the other an excuse for an “accident.”

Around the carriers, in a complex defensive formation, were some twenty-six visible escorts, destroyers, frigates, and four cruisers. Between the Anglian contingent, and the Gallic, in two columns, sailed the seven fuelers, reefers, ammunition haulers, and grand parts bins for the rest. Unseen, but presumptively below and far out to the fore and flanks, were four nuclear powered submarines, keeping their own distance from the TU’s task force and its noise. The other reason to keep the subs out was that, with the credible Balboan submarine threat, the area closer in to what amounted to the core of the Gallic and Anglian navies was a free fire zone.

Also unseen, in the seventeen-hundred-meter depths of the sea bottom around Guano Island, rested another of Balboa’s thick-walled, deep-diving, virtually coastal defense submarines. The
Orca II
, named for a submarine lost in action against the Gauls some years before, was, like
Meg
, under orders to fire only if fired upon or on unambiguous evidence that war had broken out. And then, it was expressly not to go after warships, if it could be avoided, but to close the straits by threatening and sinking freighters and support ships that might move through them to resupply the combatants. Other passages were covered by other subs. Their rules of engagement were driven only in part by the strategic value of targets and more by concerns that the limited experience of Balboan sub crews was not up to going after major surface combatants without a massive element of surprise in their favor.

The captain, Warrant Officer Ibarra, formerly Chu’s exec aboard
Megalodon,
didn’t need sonar to tell him anything. He could
hear
the passage, even through the layers of thirty-seven surface vessels, especially with their supply ships straining at maximum speed just to barely keep up. The constant pinging in the audible frequencies of twenty-six medium frequency sonars in the escorts gave Ibarra no little discomfort, despite the stealthy characteristings of his boat’s hull. After all, enough Gauls, pinging constantly, had done his command’s namesake to death. The lower frequency pings of the Variable Depth sonars added a measure of poignancy, where that was defined as terror-induced sweat.

These were mostly known signatures. As sonar identified them and gave them classifications and target names on the big screen, forward, Ibarra whistled softly.
We’re quiet, as quiet as anything on or under the sea. And our target strength for active sonar is minuscule. Even so, I wouldn’t want to try to break through
that
screen, less still to try to break away after launching on one of the carriers while their helicopters track us like bloodhounds.

Military Police Cohort Guard House, First Corps,
Lago Sombrero,
Balboa, Terra Nova

The base, itself, was built around the intersection of a substantial, north-south running airfield, and the InterColombian Highway. It had once been a small Federated States base of about a dozen significant buildings, hosting air, infantry, and light coastal artillery assets. Later it had been turned over to the then Balboa Defense Force. Stormed by the Federated States during its invasion of Balboa, its ruins had lain abandoned for over a decade, until Carrera had begun the creation of the
Legion del Cid
.

Since then the place had expanded enormously. It wasn’t really capable of comfortably housing the entire First Corps, but it could provide headquarters down to maniple level, billeting for all the officers, warrants, centurions, and noncoms, space for all necessary medical facilities, plus motor pools for the bulk of the Corps’ vehicles, five or six thousand of them. The other facilities were adequate to the regular cadre of about two thousand, plus a thousand new troops going through their assimilation tour, but not more than that.

* * *

Medics had been called to the barred cells to dress the Tauran captives’ wounds. For two of those the medics asked, “Why bother? Outside of a major hospital they’re going to die anyway,” but did what they could even so. The other four, who were conscious, were likewise treated, though given no pain medication. Whether this was a violation of any convention against torture was a case, in Balboan terms, of, “Who gives a shit?”

The other dozen men of the Gallic recon team were, oh, very dead indeed. They lay under tarps, outside of the guard house, pending a team from Graves Registration showing up to deal with them. Since “Graves Reg” was a very low priority call up, the bodies were likely to begin rotting and stinking long before anything was done.

The intelligence officer, or 1c, First Corps glanced over the four surviving Tauran—he assumed they were Tauran—soldiers as they were being treated for their wounds. He noted that two were in civilian dress while two others wore unmarked uniforms that could easily be mistaken for legionary battle dress in a dim light. He’d also seen geuine legionary battle dress on a couple of corpses, outside.

“So what happens to us now?” asked Tréville, in Spanish. The
adjudant
’s voice was strained with pain from his wounds.

The 1c answered in fairly colloquial French. To speak some French had become almost
de rigeur
to be assigned as an intelligence officer in the legion, though English was more common. In any case, the 1c spoke better French than most.

“Kind of depends. A court-martial for spying, of course. Punishment? If there’s no attack by the Tauran Union, I imagine you might get off with something relatively minor. Or perhaps Carrera will exchange you for something. Who knows? Not my style of prophecy. On the other hand, if your boys attack…and don’t win…well, I expect you’ll be shot…for spying. Our Articles of War are pretty traditional. That is the specified penalty for spying.”

“But we were just doing a recon, keeping an eye on you!” exclaimed Tréville. “That’s nothing to shoot a man for!”

The 1c smiled, coldly. “In civilian clothes? Or not wearing your own country’s uniforms but ours? With our type weapons? Shooting up our soldiers? Near a vital military center? C’mon. You’ll only be shot because the crime doesn’t call for hanging.”

Suddenly, as if it were a new thought, the intel officer looked upward. “Although we could hang you, I suppose; for murder. Four of our men are dead…and we are
not
at war. On the other hand, the penalty for murder is crucifixion.” He shuddered, adding, “And let me tell you, that is one shitty way to go. I’ve seen it.” The 1c left a pregnant pause in the conversation, then continued. “Of course, you could always turn state’s evidence, so to speak.”

Tréville said nothing. Seeing that he wouldn’t, the 1c said, “Your funeral,” and left.

The 1c immediately went to an office off the block of cells to listen to whatever the microphone planted in the cell might pick up.

* * *

“Are they serious,
Adjudant
?” asked
Caporal
Moreau, one of those in Balboan battle dress. The corporal was still in serious pain, a searing agony in his shoulder from a gunshot wound, so was perhaps not thinking clearly. “
Shoot
us? For what?
Crucify us?!
What kind of maniacs are these people?”

“Relax,” answered Tréville, not so badly hurt and thinking more clearly. “And stop talking before you say something you should not.”

In the office, eavesdropping, the 1c told the MP in charge of the desk, “I want six men with rifles, one with a pistol, and several shovels. Take them out and have them start digging, the ones that can. Start to go through the motions of shooting them, but assume I’ll come and stop you before it’s too late. Do NOT shoot them.”

The Tunnel,
Cerro Mina
, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

As it had been almost since the disappearance of Patricia Britain and her women, the Taurans’ headquarters was a flurry of activity, most of it with a point. Staff officers consulted over maps while drawing operational overlays with alcohol pens. Messengers hurried frantically from one officer’s desk to another. A team of wiremen checked connections between the field telephones strung between staff sections.

Walking calmly from place to place, McQueeg-Gordon’s chief of staff, Moncey, who was for all practical purposes still Janier’s chief of staff, inspected maps and charts to ensure integration and coordination between the various sections and subordinate commands. Given the sheer number of languages, it was a toughie.

Moncey stopped for a conversation with the C-2, de Villepin. Before speaking, he looked over the Intelligence overlay on the map on de Villepin’s wall. Even as he watched the famously large-breasted Anglian captain used an alcohol wipe to erase something from the area of the map labeled, “
Lago Sombrero
.”

That, he had heard already, was the disappeared reconnaissance team.

In other places on the map, arrows pointed to the Transitway Area, and then away. They described a maneuver, rather, a series of them, that the operational graphics didn’t quite cover. Whoever had done them, though, appeared to have decided that the lunges were mere feints.

“De Villepin,” asked the chief, “just what the hell are the Balboans doing?”

As he searched the top of his desk for the pointer he knew had been there just a few minutes ago, de Villepin said, “Trying to keep us off balance, I think, while they try to find the men who murdered those women. I don’t think they realize that that doesn’t matter anymore. The planes and airships are in the air, with the former very close. The carriers start launching shortly. We couldn’t call this off if we wanted to… Aha, there you are.” He held up the pointer, triumphantly, extended it, then walked to the map.

The end of the pointer touched on a twisted arrow drawn on the map between the nearby towns of Las Mesas and San Juan Bautista, homes of two regiments of legionary infantry, and the
Isla Real
.

“Nothing surprising in this,” said the C2, “and it works to our advantage. These two tercios, in battalion strength only, are moving by hovercraft and helicopter, some small boats too, to the big island and these two smaller ones.” The pointed end touched briefly on a couple of the larger islands around the
Isla Real
, then returned to the big island. “The trainees here—most of them—on the island are also taking up defensive positions. They’ve no effect on our plans and can be expected to surrender after the country falls.”

De Villepin’s pointer tapped lightly on a dozen spots on the island, as he explained, “And we’ve seen, by air and satellite, a literal shitload of trucks moving troops and equipment from place to place.”

“What kind of equipment?” asked the chief.

“About what you’d expect, sir. Artillery, mortars, some armor—mostly light armor—and general supplies.”

“Numbers of troops?”

“Hard to say, sir. There are maybe ten thousand trainees and students on the island, plus a couple of thousand instructors. Between what we’ve seen moving to the island, what’s still waiting at the casernes, and what’s on the road to Las Mesas and San Juan Bautista, I estimate another fourteen or fifteen soldiers beyond that. Which is all to the good. They may as well put up ‘prisoner of war camp’ signs, because they’ll be surrendering after their state goes down.

“Note, though, that the islands are…well, to say ‘heavily fortified’ would be a considerable understatement. National assets”—spy satellites and spy planes, also, though they were not “national assets,” info fed to them by the UEPF—“have identified over thirty-thousand bunkers and other positions, something over one hundred per square kilometer. There is probably nearly as much concrete on that island as there was in the entire Maginot Line, back on Old Earth. I’m pretty sure many of them, maybe most, are fakes. But the Intelligence and Security Agency can’t tell us yet which is which. They are
very
good fakes.”

“What about the Second and Fourth Corps?” the chief asked.

“They’ve stopped moving towards the Transitway and appear to be dispersing or retreating. Frightened of us or our reaction? As I said before, Chief, I think they’re trying to disconcert us to buy time.”

“Artillery?”

“The mobilized units have brought theirs out with them. Tenth Artillery Legion’s guns are still in their parking spots.”

The chief wiped a sweaty hand across a sweatier brow; the tunnel was an oven in Balboa’s heat, even at night, even with the air conditioning going. There were just too many people in too small a space for it to be otherwise.

He asked, “Do you believe all of it, de Villepin? Do you believe everything they’re showing us?”

“No, sir.” The C2 shook his head. “No, I don’t. I think we’re being painted a picture…or maybe a kaleidoscope is a better way to put it. They’ve got so many troops on the ground right now that they could be hiding anything, doing anything, without our knowing about it.”

“So what
are
they doing…or hiding?”

De Villepin turned to his map again. “Sir, I just don’t know. And that worries me.”

“You think the Balboans are going to attack?” The chief’s voice was strained with the immediate worry.

“No…not exactly. But I do think that these maneuvers are a ballet, something to keep our minds occupied with while something else is planned.”

The chief considered. “Can you articulate your suspicions to Janier?” Neither Gaul really cared about the opinions of McQueeg-Gordon.

“Sir, I can tell him what I suspect. I probably can’t make him believe me since I can’t produce any hard data to back it up. He’s the type who really needs hard, understandable, manageable data.”

“Call him and try. Do the best you can. Now tell me what happened with that SF recon team.”

“Sir, all I know is what the chopper pilots reported. The team was compromised and tried to fight their way out. They were shot up pretty badly. Some may have been captured.”

“Have the Balboans said anything?”