Read The Rods and the Axe - eARC Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #military
Marciano counted aloud, “Twenty-four jets in the air for cover. Pilot?”
“Concur, sir, though it’s not clear how many are staying and how many are relieving. Or who by whom.”
“Good point, but if I order the fighters in, twenty-four appears to be a likely—or at least possible—number of opponents.”
“Good point, sir,” the Tuscan pilot agreed. “But that doesn’t account for the other ones the Balboans might send in.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” snarled Marciano. “We can take some pounding on the ground, if full-fledged war breaks out. We can’t survive if they smash the port. Speaking of which . . .”
Marciano continued calling off the ships as he identified them. Some he was questionable about. Were the Lycosa-class corvettes better classified as large patrol boats? There were enough small ones, after all. Why was a forty-four hundred ton frigate a frigate while a thirty-eight hundred ton destroyer was a destroyer?
Makes not a bit of sense to me.
About two ships he had absolutely no doubt; the seventeen thousand ton
Tadeo Kurita
, with its dozen six-inch guns, was a cruiser by anyone’s standards, while no one could mistake the
Dos Lindas
as being anything but a carrier.
He remembered reading an after action report of some of the mayhem inflicted by
Kurita
on the Nicobar pirates.
They’re
so
going to trash my supply port
, fretted Marciano,
And outside of some pretty good but badly outnumbered aircraft I have not a thing to stop them with. If I had my artillery battalion overlooking the port but, no, the 152mm guns outrange the hell out of my 105s. And the 100mm guns the cruiser mounts are almost as bad, and fire faster.
So . . . no, the artillery wouldn’t do me much good, even if I pulled it out of supporting the troops along the border and the ones at and around Pelirojo. I wonder if that’s what Brother Patricio had in mind; sortie his fleet to pull my artillery out of position so his guerillas—and no one but the stinking press believes the guerillas on the Shimmering Sea side are anything but his—can attack.
And they’ll be in range of the port in nine hours, give or take. Well . . . that little bit of grace is something, at least.
“I’ve seen enough,” said the Tuscan. “Take us back to
Rio Clara
.”
FSS
Oliver Rogers, Mar Furioso
, Terra Nova
The skipper was, everyone agreed, cutting it a little fine. He’d already reported in to Hamilton, the capital of the Federated States, that the shooting had started at sea and the Zhong had started it. This had started something of a row between the Navy and War Departments, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Department of State, which loved the Zhong Empire with a deep and abiding adoration, and wanted the Federated States to come into the war on the side of the TU, which they loved even more than they did the Zhong.
The boat’s captain wasn’t privy to any of that, in any detail, it was easy enough to guess at, though. The loathing between the military and the diplomatic corps was as abiding as was the diplomats’ love for all things elitist.
The tougher problem—“and one way above my pay grade,” as Meredith had said, while waltzing the one eyed widow—was that the Federated States had made a tacit pledge to Santa Josefina to allow them to continue with their experiment in moral welfare and to defend them while they did so from all foreign threats.
From the FSC’s point of view this made perfect sense. The average army of
Colombia Latina
was, and had been for over a century, just a junta on the hoof, awaiting only the moment and the opportunity to kick out the latest bunch of Tsarist Marxists, Anarchists, Socialists, Fascists, or corrupt oligarchs, and at the same time creating civil wars that the FSC wasn’t always able to stay completely out of. As far as the FSC was concerned, since they had to maintain a navy able to dominate two oceans and engage a star fleet, overhead, anyway, it was cheaper by far to promise to defend
Colombia del Norte
from anyone else than to have to continually get involved in the petty domestic squabbles their own armies typically caused. And this didn’t even address the poverty that maintenance of large military forces in the area tended to exacerbate, which poverty led to or magnified all the other problems the
Colombianos
faced.
What that meant, however, was that with a potentially hostile fleet bearing down on one of Santa Josefina’s principle ports, the
Oliver Rogers
just might have to get involved directly in stopping that fleet lest the country remilitarize, with all the predictable problems that would entail for both Santa Josefina and the Federated States.
Rogers’
skipper had a communications buoy up on a wire. He hadn’t flooded tubes yet, but he was prepared to. So far, though, the only message from Hamilton, FD, on the subject of the Balboan fleet was, “Wait.”
And so
, thought the captain,
I wait for . . . well, for what?
“Skipper?” said Communications. “I’ve got something on GNN . . . you know we check that, too, because . . .”
Meredith made a
can it and get to the point
gesture.
“Yes, sir. Sir, my Spanish is not of the best . . .”
“Mine is,” said the captain, walking across the deck to take over the headphones. He listed a couple of minutes, then said, “Holy shit. Why the hell . . .”
BdL
Dos Lindas,
mouth of the Paquera Gulf,
Santa Josefina, Terra Nova
Dos Lindas
had offered to make its own facilities available to GNN and the
First Landing Times
. The newscaster and the writer had both tried to be polite in their refusal. Even so, the unvarnished fact was that they carried better comms in a suitcase than the
classis’
flagship ported in several cabins. Only in terms of redundancy and encryption did the carrier have anything on the civilians’ packages.
Fosa had led them on a small tour, himself. It began on the hangar deck where the Turbo-finches were being disarmed and rendered inoperative. Much the same thing was happening with most of the Yakamov helicopters, though the three on antisubmarine duty at the moment were still out and active. The ordnance the planes and helicopters had carried were carted off, some of it literally on carts, to the storage sections set aside for them.
From the hangar deck Fosa had taken the pressies on deck where a crew from Intelligence had two honest-to-God burn barrels going, with flames lancing up from them, the plastic-scented smoke from code books and maps rising to the sky in a trail behind the ship. Their cameras had busily recorded everything, sending it live to their home’s base, in the case of GNN, and in the form of photos and short blurbs, for the
First Landing Times
.
Then Fosa had brought them to his day cabin via the bridge, letting the cameras sweep around to see walls bare of maps. One of the radio men was broadcasting something in the clear to the Port Authority at
Puerto
Bruselas
. The newsmen spoke Spanish well enough, of course; that’s how they’d gotten assigned to this gig. But they had a hard time crediting what they were hearing. Thus, in Fosa’s day cabin, the one from GNN asked, incredulously, “You’re really having your fleet interned? On your own initiative? I can’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“There’s no sense in wasting men’s lives fruitlessly,” said Fosa, for the camera. “The corrupt Zhong Empire and even more corrupt and hypocritical Tauran Union are in cahoots as only the worst conspiratorial thieves can be. I can handle the Zhong. But my fleet has no chance against the four carriers the Taurans are bringing against us, each of them four times the size of mine.
“So, yes, my fleet is turning itself in for internment, voluntarily, in officially neutral Santa Josefina.
“You might make a note for your viewers and readers, gentlemen, that Santa Josefina, whose claim that we were a threat to them brought the Taurans into their country in the first place, giving rise to the guerilla war that has arisen there, will, upon internment, have complete control of the only way we could have logistically supported an invasion such as they feared. Let us see if they see sense from that and send the Taurans home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones,
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones.
—Lord Byron,
Age of Bronze
Headquarters,
Tercio la Negrita,
Matama,
Santa Josefina, Terra Nova
The few antennas for the headquarters’ radios sprouted up from a school building in town. The headquarters, itself, was a good mile away, connected to those antennas by wire, as it was connected to the generators that provided power to the headquarters by wire. The building chosen was three stories, though the top two stories were empty barring only a set of quarters for Legate Salas and a few key staff. Admission was highly restrictive, though, in truth, Salas thought the restrictions silly.
Everyone in the goddamned town knows we’re here.
Surely
the Taurans have at least
one
spy. Or maybe the spy’s reporting the air defense, too. It’s possible, I suppose, that when you’re flying two hundred million drachma airplanes, and hundred million drachma helicopter gunships that the prospect of losing one to a infantryman’s bottle rocket or even a twin heavy machine gun is just more embarrassing than you can stand.
Legate Salas really didn’t understand any of it. He didn’t understand why his headquarters hadn’t been bombed and he didn’t understand why any of them were alive and at large, nor why the port was still in his hands.
They had us dead to rights. The cohort at Pelirojo was routed, broken. The
Casement
wasn’t unloaded, and of what was unloaded, most was still somewhere around the port. They could have
crushed
us, totally and utterly. What in the name of God stopped them? Well . . . I suppose it wasn’t anything to do with the name of
God.
That headquarters in town, though, was more of a planning headquarters. Salas’s real command post was in a deep draw in the hills south of Highway Twenty-three, connected with the rear and the forward trace by radio and wire. Though it was reachable from the highway, he’d had his engineers cut a couple of smaller trails through the jungle, to avoid the command post’s being spotted.
Salas’s central position was stronger now than it had been, but not as useful for anything except guarding the port. He had two cohorts, one of them admittedly understrength after the drubbing it had received at Pelirojo. These were, minus one maniple in reserve, dug in along the western side of the broad river that ran to the Shimmering Sea almost precisely halfway between the Port of Matama and the town of Pelirojo. He had swamps to the south side of his defensive position and rugged mountain to the north. He might be outflanked by infantry here, but not by armor again.
And I can deal with infantry that moves no faster than my own men do and carries no more firepower.
And supposedly I’m getting some replacement firepower. Though I’m still on my own for men and, since getting run out of Pelirojo, the volunteers haven’t been forthcoming. And we’re not quite in position to declare even a symbolic conscription.
Campo de los Sapos
, Cristobal Province, Balboa, Terra Nova
Carrera watched one of Air Balboa’s airships, the
Casamara
, being loaded with some containers—thirty of them, all told—out of Arraijan and a few dozen pallets that had been assembled on the spot and rigged for an amphibious parachute drop, one where the containers were waterproofed and floatation devices would kick in just after the parachutes opened. Inside the airship the overwhelming bulk of the seats, bunks, and cubicles had been knocked down and stashed along the flanks and forward, leaving a large cargo compartment in the center and forward of the broad loading ramp.
No one but the workers assembling the pallets and the loadmasters for the airship paid much attention to them. The guard around the containers, on the other hand, was fairly heavy. Most such were gone already, but these four had been held back for the day.
And it is about time for “the day,”
thought Carrera.
No sense in dawdling about it anymore. Indeed, Fernandez tells me that he senses the enemy getting close to some things they cannot be allowed to know. So . . . it’s time to commence the war again. “The villainy they have taught me . . .”
Pity, about the
classis
of course, but what must be must be.
So what, if anything, are we missing? There must be something I have overlooked. If I were a better man I might be able to at least think of what. Ah, well; the staff tells me everything is in reasonable readiness. The ALTA is loaded and standing by. The shuttle flies. Robinson is suitably cowed. They shall bomb us, but we are prepared to counterbomb as needed. The TU may, when I order it, explode in ethnic violence. The legions and tercios
are in place. Our rather large human minefield to the east is in position. Supplies are distributed, so they tell me. All is ready, so they tell me. And who am I to argue with them?
And they say too that the Zhong fleet is halfway across the sea, and the Taurans can sail any time. That built-in timing suits me well enough. Perfectly? No. Perfection in matters of war is the bugaboo of simple minds, and small ones. Lack of perfection costs lives, of course, but a fruitless attempt at an impossible perfection costs wars, which makes all the loss of life more fruitless still.
So today we cast the dice. In about four they will land. Such gentle dice, too . . . relatively speaking.
And let us hope that Lourdes, clever girl that she is, understands the full import of the message Raul and I sent her and her team.
I wish I could be sure the idea moving the nukes out of the island’s bunkers and putting them on the bombardment freighters at sea was the right one. But I just don’t know. The captains of those two would have five city-busters, each, which they would be instructed to launch on warning. And I am going to have to tell the TU that, if they attack the freighters after the freighters launch their conventional warheads, nukes will follow. I think I am, anyway. But, once they know about the gliders, how long until they figure out how to spot them? It’s not like they don’t have a metric shitpot of technological capability. Hmmm . . . no, I think the nukes do not go to the ships. So where? Hmmm . . . there’s one fair safe place. How about if I send them, their condors, and their launch crews to Sada? Yes, that might work.
Seeing that loading was nearly finished, and having other people to see, Carrera went aboard the
Casamara
for a word with her captain, Reserve Tribune Emilio Soliz.
As he walked he reminded himself,
Parted out Mosaics, fueled and armed, on the airfield at Herrera International, soonest. With arrows.
Hotel
Cielo Dorado
, Aserri, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova
I hope Patricio and Raul know what the hell they’re doing,
thought Lourdes, as she, Triste, and Esterhazy stood. She’d made sure there were press in attendance, to include the two that had sailed with the
Dos Lindas.
She would be leaving the country today, along with Triste. The woman Triste had brought with him, Warrant Officer Aragon, would be staying behind. So would Esterhazy. The latter had pointed out that, with a war in the offing that almost nobody expected Balboa to be able to win, the value of precious metal certificates and legionary drachma would be going through the floor. This would give him a change to recover them for the legion, at
centavos
on the drachma.
“There is nothing further to talk about,” said Lourdes, seemingly out of the blue. “There will be no more return of prisoners, though all of your civilians still in our hands will be dropped off at the border over the next couple of days.
“Why no more?” she asked rhetorically. “The Zhong fleet has sailed. Zhong submarines have attacked our ships.” Lourdes took a moment to glare in righteous indignation at the empress, who glared right back.
Not as if I can blame you
, thought Lourdes.
In your circumstance, my people killed while trying to do a good deed . . . well . . . mistake or not I’d be more than a little angry. On the other hand, tough shit about your submarines.
“The Tauran Union abets them in these crimes. The Tauran Unions’ national fleets stand on the other side of Cienfuegos, ready to pounce. They, too, have assembled an invasion fleet. Innocent citizens of our neighbor, Santa Josefina, have been wantonly slain by Tauran forces.”
And I know that’s bullshit. If ever anyone took care to keep from “wantonly” killing noncombatants, it was the TU. Screw that, though; when the survival of the country is at stake, well . . . truth is always the first casualty of war.
Lourdes looked left and right at her two companions, saying, “Gentlemen, let us get away from this place, out where free men and free women can breathe without the stench of Tauran and Zhong corruption.”
To exasperated grunts, angry mutters, shocked gasps, and a large number of flashes, the three stormed out of the conference room without another word.
For long minutes, the other delegates had sat, stunned. Then, gradually, they’d dispersed to their various sections of the hotel. In the office suite set up in the Tauran, Zhong, and UEPF wing of the hotel, the major players from those groupings had gathered.
“Teach them a lesson,” said Xingzhen. “Upstarts. Little arrogant beasts. Bomb them.”
“Why don’t
you
bomb them,” said Janier. “You’re the one whose ships and subs they sank.”
“I would if I could,” hissed the empress. “But my carriers can’t do much. And what they can do is needed for the island. You, on the other hand, started all of this, you and your bureaucrats. And, besides, they sank yours, too, didn’t they? You owe it to us to bomb them and you owe it to yourselves!”
“Hush, Empress,” said Wallenstein. Looking away from Xingzhen and directly at Janier, she said, “You could bomb them. The question is, should you?”
“I should not,” said Janier. “They are too damned dangerous.”
Marguerite nodded, though not exactly in agreement. “They are dangerous, General, yes. But their power is quite limited and they know it. Think a moment upon the sequence of their actions. They introduce a small force into the southern part of this country. They leave this conference. Tauran troops inflict a defeat upon the troops of this clandestine incursion. They return to the conference, tails between their legs. The Zhong post submarines to watch their fleet. They attack those—yes, I am certain they attacked first, even if I don’t know how—then, panicking at what it has done, their fleet defects and interns itself. Worse, from their perspective, an entire battalion of the Santa Josefinan allies defects and crosses the border to go home.
“Don’t you see the pattern?
“You don’t want a war, General. All right, I can sympathize with that. But that war is probably inevitable unless we can cause the Balboans to back down in some substantial way. Based on how the Balboans act when pressed, you might well best avoid a war by being heavy handed, as we were here, in the town of Pelirojo.”
“Even if that’s true,” said Janier, “how do we tell if they’re really backing down or just manipulating us?”
“Still you take counsel of your fears,” said Xingzhen. “Still you doubt even your doubts. These people are not supermen. Cut them and they bleed. Poison them and they die—”
“Wrong them,” interjected Janier, to the surprise of both high admiral and empress, “and they shall revenge.”
Marguerite played her ace. “They said no more prisoner return, General. This time, if I read the woman, Carrera’s wife, well—
“You read women very well,” said the empress, with a subtle smile.
“Yes, I suppose,” Marguerite nodded, not quite getting the joke. Janier understood it, but only let a smile, not quite so subtle as the empress’s, play across his lips.
“In any case, if I read
her
well, this time she’s serious . . . or she takes her instructions seriously. She knows her husband, if anyone does. If she believes he is giving back no more of your captives, we can take it as given that no more will be returned without some change in motivators.
“
That
, General, means you will be ordered to attack at some point, a point where the political pressure back in Taurus builds. Have the Balboans not already shown the ability to manipulate your press?”
“They have,” conceded Janier. “And the bit with the death payments was especially wicked, giving us false casualty returns, just so they could pay a little money to some families, making us look cruel, heartless, and incompetent . . .”
And push that down, NOW
, the general commanded himself.
That was the old you, vainglorious and foolish. Forget the personal hurts. Remember your duty to your country and the men who followed and follow your command.
“What can they do to you in return?” the empress asked. “Here, in Santa Josefina, you have their measure. Here, you have proven you can beat them. They might be able to get at your fleets on the near side of Cienfuegos. They would have a hard time, noisy as their submarines are, at getting to them on the far side. You can bomb with impunity. If you do, they will be true to form and back down like whipped dogs . . .”
“What about my political masters?” Janier asked.
“Don’t worry about them,” said Marguerite. “They still do as commanded, pending my granting them the rejuvenation I’ve promised.
“Speaking of which, General,” said the high admiral, “I am taking the empress with me to my ship for a few days, to strip a dozen or so years of off her. Why don’t you come along . . .”
“For?”
“For the same.”
“No,” Janier shook his head. “Or not yet, anyway. Not while my men languish in captivity. Not while I am still in shame at my failures. Maybe someday, yes. Not yet, no.”
“As you prefer. But you still need to prod the Balboans back to the peace conference.”
“Let me think upon it.”
“Don’t think overlong, General,” Marguerite said. “The orders will be coming from your political superiors shortly.”
As in, once the swine see the rejuvenated empress.