Come and Take Them-eARC (6 page)

Chapter Five

The persistence with which social scientists have confused war with the tools of war would be no less astounding did their writing not reveal…complete ignorance of the simpler aspects of military history. It would be hard to find a noncommissioned officer in the professional armies of the second rate powers who has been as confused as most analysts of human society.

Harry Turney-High,
Primitive War

Estado Mayor
, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

It had taken Fernandez about two days to find out who the new Anglian Army captain was, the one who had put on a minor show for Carrera and his boy. He’d just now found the time to think on it, what with having to find a way to get an operative into
Cerro Mina
’s Quarters 16.

“But the question,” he said to an empty office, “is
why
she bothered. And the possible reasons for that range from the sordid to the sublime.”

It was actually frustrating that, while both armed forces had the other infiltrated, the retrieval of personal information was uneven. Fernandez had a senior clerk in the Tauran Union Security Force on his payroll but, since the genuine records were maintained by any of the twenty-seven-odd departments of defense and defence in the TU, and since the local force had little power over the personnel of those armed forces, only synopses of personnel records were available. Fernandez could get a synopsis quickly, but it remained just a broad brush, with none of the details that normally made his job so fascinating.

Conversely, so far as he could tell, the one private and one corporal on the Tauran Union’s payroll, one of whom had been turned and the other of whom was already slated to be shot on the outbreak of hostilities, could produce for the enemy a complete record on most people in the legion in a matter of a few days or weeks. But those two were overwhelmed with personnel information requests and, as suggested, fifty percent of what they sent the TU intel office had serious disinformation contained therein.

Fernandez looked down once again at the almost bare file, the synopsis, on Anglian Army Captain Jan Campbell and cursed.

Still, I can tell some things. What can I infer from the fact that she was a late entry officer, taking a commission after a long career as an enlisted woman?

Hmmm; I’ve met a fair number of Anglian officers. Some are fine. Others are the kind of human material that has one clicking one’s knitting needles and muttering, “Aha, guillotine!” She surely saw enough of both types, but probably put up with all too many of the guillotine bait.

Or maybe she was one of those women attracted by power. In many ways that would be ideal.

“Ah,” Fernandez mused, “what a coup it would be to turn an officer in their intel office! What a solid coup!”

Ah, well, for now we’ll leave the ball in the blonde’s court. If she really wants to turn, she’ll find a way.
That
much, at least, I can glean from the synopsis.

Still, might be useful to offer her some way to get in contact with us. Hmmm…I think maybe I’ll buck this one up to Carrera.

Reluctantly, Fernandez folded the thin copy of Campbell’s file and turned to more pressing matters.
So, Patricio’s being forced to back off from the Taurans. Already, he’s cancelled overflights and explosions. How very dull that will be. So what can I do to openly support what he’s been ordered to do, while still setting us up the better to prosecute a war…?

Training Area C,
Academia Militar Sergento
Juan Malvegui, west of
Puerto Lindo
, Balboa, Terra Nova

More so than in the Federated States or Secordia, somewhat more so than in the Tauran Union, fast going amorally familistic, life in Balboa tended to run informally and as much by connections as by rules. Thus, for example, Lourdes Nuñez-Cordoba de Carrera and Caridad Morales-Herrera de Cruz were good friends and had been since the day both their men had boarded aircraft for the war with Sumer. When Caridad, with a troublesome pregnancy about five years back, had needed an arrogant doctor browbeaten, Lourdes had made a call and had a long chat with a very humbled doctor. Now, when Lourdes had a son in a military school where Ricardo Cruz was temporarily instructing, Cara had made a call. Following that, Cruz had had a long chat with Lourdes’ son.

* * *

His father tended to treat all legionaries as moral equals, but centurions as social equals, as well. This made them minor gods to damned near everybody. Even Ham, who had grown up around them, tended to treat the centurions with vast respect and no little deference.

“Relax,” said First Centurion Ricardo Cruz to the boy standing at attention in front of his desk. Seeing that “relax” had only gotten the boy to parade rest, he pointed at a camp chair and ordered, “Sit.”

“Yes, Centurion.” The boy more or less jumped into the camp chair and sat. At attention.

Cruz was tempted to pick up his badge of office, his stick, and wave it in the boy’s face until he, in
fact,
relaxed.
Ah…no, that won’t work. Hmm…what will? Ah.

Leaning back in his chair, Cruz plopped his booted feet on the desk. “I said, ‘relax,’ cadet, and I meant, ‘relax.’ So relax.”

“Yes, Centurion,” Ham answered. He managed, at least, to slouch a little in the chair.

“The first peer reviews have been tabulated,” Cruz announced formally. It was a silly statement and he knew it was a silly statement.
Everyone
knew the peers were done.

At the words, though, Ham went from slouching in his chair to sinking into it. He seemed nearly to melt.

“I’m at the bottom of my section, right?”

Cruz nodded.

“So, father or not, I’m going to get the boot, right.”

“Wrong,” the centurion answered. “Peers are for the information of the leadership cadre and are nonbinding on them. Or didn’t you know that?”

Shaking his head, Ham said, “No…I…all of us thought they were binding.”

“Puhleeze!” said the centurion. “Like we’re going to let thirteen-year-olds decide the futures of honest to God, actual human beings? Your father and I may look stupid, boy, but only when we drink and even that takes a while.”

“Oh.”

“But we do use them, and not always in ways that are obvious.” He decided to leave that last as a mystery.

“For example, without attribution, let me read you a few comments from your fellow cadets: ‘When I needed help, where was he?’ ‘Pushy; tries to do too much.’ ‘Too good to talk to the rest of us.’ ‘Talks down to us.’ Worst of all, this one: ‘I can’t believe this snob is the child of our
Dux Bellorum
.’”

With each sentence, Ham sank a little deeper into the chair. “But…but…”

Cruz sighed. “But they’re all bullshit, son. I’ve watched you for the last couple of weeks closely. The
only
one of those that has any relationship to reality was the ‘too good to talk to the rest of us’ one. And that wasn’t because you think you’re too good, was it?”

The boy’s voice was breaking as he answered, “No. It’s because I don’t know what to say. I never had to talk to regular kids before…not as one of them. That’s why the old man sent me here.”

“That’s one of the reasons, yes,” Cruz concurred. “There are others. Tell me, Ham, do you like the other kids in your section?”

“Some yes, some no. Mostly I don’t really know them.”

“They don’t know you, either.”

“I suppose not. They only know about me.”

“No,” Cruz countered. “They don’t know a damned thing about you past your name. They know what they
imagine
about you: rich boy, powerful family, never had to do anything for himself, spoiled, soft…”

And that last was about all Ham could take. His eyes flashed. “Soft? Soft?! Jesus Christ, Centurion, I was in my first firefight when I was nine years old! And I
won,
too. I was living in a camp at the war, getting mortared about every third day, when I was three! And you think it’s easy growing up under a father who’s never happy, never content, who always expects more?”

“Yes,” Cruz said, “I knew all that. I was in the same camp, son. Or camps. But
they
don’t, and you can’t just tell them.”

Again, the boy deflated, anger spent. “What am I going to do, Centurion?”

“Mostly,” Cruz replied, “you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself, with a different approach for everyone or, at least, everyone that matters. But for the group and in the main, I want you to try three things. Number one, don’t talk about yourself, ask them about themselves. Number two, help them when they need help. Once. Don’t worry about offending them. If they don’t object, you can keep helping. If they do, fuck ’em; don’t help anymore. And number three, if you need to, pick one and beat his ass.

“You would be surprised how often getting along depends on the willingness to beat someone’s ass.”

Prey Nokor, Cochin, Terra Nova

Cochin was important to Balboan defense. It had a place in research and development. It was involved in a certain amount of arms funneling, manufacture of sundry odd items of military utility, and provision of training. That latter included both advisors to the legion and in training for the legion—pilots and sappers, especially—within Cochin. It was also creating a few important systems from plans drawn up by
Obras Zorilleras
. Since the legion had money while Cochin aspired to rise
to
poverty someday, they’d have been willing to do still more. The limit was in how much could be done there without attracting unwanted attention.

On the surface, the ship looked like just another Ro-Ro. It was only when one went inside and looked that one became impressed with the power hidden within. And, after that, when one thought about how that power had gotten inside, without it being obvious, one became very impressed.

“It was a labor of love,” said Terry’s Cochinese guide, Commander Nguyen. “We hate the fucking Gauls and figure you’ll use this against them.”

Terrence Johnson had met Nguyen on his arrival in Cochin two weeks prior. Since that time, besides dealing with some bureaucratic intricacies peculiar to paranoid and quasi-communist states, he had inspected the ship known so far only as the ALTA (
Armada Legionario, Transporte de Assalto
). He had acquired some understanding of ship-to-shore attacks during the counter-drug war in La Palma Province. Since that time he had studied more on the subject.

Johnson was extremely impressed by the amount of thought that had gone into modifying the ships, and said so.

“Labor of love,” Nguyen had repeated, lifting his breathing mask to speak. The mask was necessary as the entire deck was flooded with nitrogen gas to preserve both the launchers and their rockets.

Walking Terry through the missile deck of the modified Ro-Ro, Nguyen pointed out blast shields, controls, and back up controls. On that missile deck seventy-three thirty centimeter multi-barreled rocket launchers, minus the heavy trucks that normally carried them, had been mounted with their tops flush with the top deck. In this form, though the rockets were pricey, the elevating and traversing mechanisms were not all that expensive while the launch tubes were almost frightfully cheap.

Nguyen’s finger traced the tell-tale lines above each launcher. “We’ve got shipping containers above to hide the marks in the deck that show where the launchers will rise to fire. They’re empty and will rise up with the launcher covers, then fold down onto them.”

The mechanisms that would raise the launchers and move them through their limited traverse were protected behind armor plating. Also at the missile deck level the starboard side of the ship had been cut away and replaced with blow-out panels to vent away the explosive power of the rockets that drove the missiles to a range of over ninety kilometers. Likewise the decks above and below had been reinforced. Johnson noted that the ship could only fire to the port, or left.

Nguyen then led Johnson to the deck just below the missile deck. There he removed his mask and said Terry could do the same.

Johnson saw twenty-eight helicopters, three-quarters troop carriers and one quarter gunships. Those were all contained in plastic sheeting. He suspected, even before Nguyen confirmed it, that the helicopters had had their air replaced with nitrogen under their plastic covers.

A long ramp led up from the hangar deck to the top deck, which was covered by hydraulically moved decking. There were vehicles on the hangar deck to pull the helicopters up the ramp. Along both sides were elevators for moving ordnance from the magazine to the hangar deck.

The next two decks down had living quarters for a small tercio of infantry and their supporting troops, some space being taken up by containers. Nguyen had some Cochinese open several of the containers, chosen by Terry at random, to insure they held what their labeling said.

In the rear of the ship was a closed ramp, not too different from the bow of an Old Earth style LST, except for being in the rear where it would not be subject to the full force of an angry sea.

Behind the ramp sat six Volgan-built hovercraft, each capable of carrying upwards of fifty men with their supplies and equipment. These, too, were protected from the salt and water by sheeting and nitrogen gas. They would be able to leave their deck and make for the sea along the ramp once it was lowered to the water.

Impressed as he was, Terry still had his doubts. “How the hell did you manage to do this without anyone the wiser?” Johnson was, in fact, sure that no one outside the legion and Cochin knew about the ALTA, if only because the assembly of such awesome raiding power would have meant an international, if not indeed interplanetary, shit storm. And that hadn’t happened.

Nguyen smiled wickedly. “Trade secret. But consider how good we were at hiding things from your native country’s best efforts during your war here.”

Terry nodded soberly. It was true enough, the Cochinese had driven the Federated States armed forces batshit insane for better than a decade. “How about the other three?” he asked.

“Those are easier, so they are a lower priority,” Nguyen replied. “They’re almost ready, even so.”