by Tom Kratman
With the Shimmering Sea side of Balboa’s Transitway area fallen to the combined forces of the Tauran Union, the country’s second city, Cristobal, was cut off and besieged. Legate Xavier Jimenez’s Fourth Corps defended the city and its environs stoutly, hanging on sometimes by the skin of their teeth.
Meanwhile, barring only a number of deliberate, well-hidden stay-behinds, the scattered forces in the area under Tauran attack headed for the presumed safety of the Parilla Line. Some of them made it; others were killed or captured.
Gallic General Bertrand Janier, already humiliated by the Balboans several times, suspecting that every gain he made was a trap, was almost persuaded by his own staff and the high admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, Marguerite Wallenstein, that this time he really had outwitted his enemy. Still doubting, however, Janier launches a bloody, but necessary, reconnaissance in force against the Parilla Line, determining that, after all, it is facing the wrong way, that he really did outwit Carrera, and that, hence, no trap was possible.
Meanwhile, Khalid, Fernandez’s tame Druze, is one of several agents funneling arms and equipment to disgruntled Moslems within the Tauran Union, even while clandestine drone launches vault high explosives into Tauran cities.
In the other local theater of war, Santa Josefina, where a guerrilla war already raged, a second Balboan regiment, made up of Santa Josefinans and masquerading as another local regiment of guerillas, has assaulted the Tuscan populated town of San Jaba, removing its airstrip from play and executing most of the town’s governing body as collaborators with the Tauran occupation and enemies of the people. A similar assault saw the bulk of the United Earth embassy staff likewise stood against a wall and shot. The local fortunes of war wax and wane with whoever has sent or withdrawn reinforcements lately, as well as with which silly injunctions from the Global Court of Justice are in force, and how willing the Tauran military is to ignore them. Still, for Claudio Marciano, the Tauran Commander in Santa Josefina, those fortunes mostly wane until he finds himself in retreat to a corner of the country where he and his small force have a chance to defend themselves.
Esmeralda Miranda, who serves as High Admiral Wallenstein’s aide, her liaison officer to Marciano, and Fernandez’s most prized intelligence asset, after losing a friend to the Santa Josefinan guerillas, began to doubt the morality of her aiding Balboa. Even a clandestine visit by Carrera to try to persuade her was not quite enough to keep that aid—spying—going. Later, Esma discovers that murder in revenge or self-defense isn’t as hard as all that. Where that understanding may lead her even she, herself, doesn’t know.
Under guard, deposed former Earther High Admiral Robinson and the marchioness of Amnesty, Lucretia Arbeit, languish in durance vile, kept out of the sun, exercised just enough to keep them from going completely to fat, and threatened with crucifixion for any failure to cooperate fully. They’re still not quite sure why they’ve been spared, nor if they’ll continue to be spared if their usefulness ever ends.
Beyond the aerial front, and the Santa Josefinan Front, past the intelligence effort and beyond even the bombardment of the Tauran Union, Carrera has opened up yet another front. Indeed, he has hired a Tauran human rights-oriented law firm and, through them, started a campaign of “Lawfare,” the waging of war by judicial means. He did this more to demoralize the enemy forces than to gain any advantage over them. As it turned out, though, he achieved both effects, along with the higher and more important effect of delegitimizing lawfare, even as lawfare sought to delegitimize warfare.
A penultimate front remains to be opened; Carrera’s son, Hamilcar, a key player in the operation for which Robinson is earmarked, has been afloat on the converted freighter, the MV ALTA, which has also picked up over a thousand more cadets from the refugee camps in Valdivia. Hamilcar’s target is unannounced, but he knows what it is.
Finally, with the Tauran Union’s forces well emplaced, deep into Balboan national territory, the beginning of the end played out. Starting with a bombardment using approximately three thousand guns, mortars, and rocket launchers, supplemented by enormously powerful fuel-air-explosive mines, Carrera launched his counterattack. Faced with near nuclear levels of bombardment, and that intense enough to crush morale and even send Tauran soldiers into catatonia or suicide, his infantry divisions lunged forward from the Parilla Line which was, after all, facing in the wrong direction to defend against the Tauran Union, but in a perfect direction to provide sheltered assembly areas for the initial elements of a multi-corps assault.
Though the Tauran commander, Bertrand Janier, has ordered a surrender, mopping up continues . . .
DAYS OF BURNING,
DAYS OF WRATH
CHAPTER ONE
“Die hard, Fifty-seventh, die hard!”
—Lieutenant Colonel William Inglis,
Battle of Albuera, 1811
Cristobal Province, Balboa
But for the blasted skeletons of dead trees, the landscape resembled something of a moonscape. Fully half of the visible ground, and quite possibly more than that, was composed of craters, themselves now filling with poisoned water, seeping from traumatized soil. Repeated concussion from still impacting artillery sent ripples from the edges of the craters, across the water, to meet in the rough center and then roll back again.
Bodies and parts of bodies lay in every manner of undignified death and ruin. Some of those bodies were small, reptilian, and winged.
Carrera, standing on the lip of a large crater, closed his heart to the presence of so many destroyed bodies. At least, he tried to. They were just things, he told himself, from which all value had been taken, except for the memories stored in the hearts of their loved ones. He closed his own heart, too, to the future wailing of mothers, once the Tauran casualty lists had been collected and sent onward. He really didn’t want to think about the wailing of his own country’s mothers. Instead, he summed it up, indirectly, with a well-remembered quote from a king of Old Earth: An assegai has been thrust into the belly of the nation. There are not tears enough to mourn the dead.
Staring down into the reeking water, he mentally measured and thought, A one-eighty, if I had to guess. Then he looked up at the source of the water’s rippling, watching a battery of eighty-fives pounding away at some group of Taurans who simply refused to surrender, despite Janier’s orders. Several large piles of expended casings grew behind the guns, far more than they had managed to carry forward with them. Streams of gunners trotted between holes in the ground and their guns, carrying at least one shell under each arm.
Awfully decent, really, for the Taurans to stand guard on the fifty or so thousand shells we left behind against this day. And I have to give Fernandez’s crew credit, too, for digging into the Tauran manuals and figuring out how much “net explosive weight” we’d have to put in each dump to make it against their rules to simply blow them in place without having shelters dug for everyone. And then, after a while, I suppose they must have just forgotten about the shells, what with more pressing concerns at hand.
The gunners’ ballet grew old after a time. Carrera signaled for his vehicle, an Ocelot Infantry Fighting Vehicle, driven by Jamey Soult, to come pick him up. The driver swung around the crater slowly, careful to avoid the uncertain lips of the larger hole, though he could not avoid the stinking muck of the smaller ones.
“Where to, boss?” Soult shouted, over the roar of the engine, slowing down then to avoid covering his chief in muck.
Climbing on top, then beating his boot heels against the side of the Ocelot’s turret to remove the caked-on mud, Carrera had a sudden idea. He eased himself, feet first, down into the turret, put on his own combat vehicle crewman’s helmet, and said, “Take me to the FDC for that battery,” pointing index and middle finger in the direction of the firing.
“Roger,” Soult said, taking off gently to avoid spinning his treads and maybe becoming stuck. The Ocelot was amphibious, but not, as they said, “Mud-phibious.” About one hundred and fifty meter
s shy of what looked to be the battery’s fire direction center, the craters mostly gave out, leaving relatively smooth and firm soil for the vehicle to negotiate.
At the battery, one officer—a Tribune named Ramirez—rushed over while pulling a protective—most would say “gas”—mask away from his face. Saluting, he reported in with his own name and his battery nomenclature.
Carrera jumped from the vehicle to the ground, then asked, “Why the mask, Tribune?”
“The fumes will get to you eventually, sir. And this area”—Ramirez gestured around with a circling finger—“is already about as thick with fumes as a man can stand.”
“Fair enough,” Carrera said, agreeably. “What are you firing at and for whom?”
“It’s a maniple-sized group of Anglians, we think, Duque. They’re pretty well dug in and disinclined to surrender. We’re shooting on behalf of a cohort from Second Tercio, Second Cohort.”
“Hmmm . . . Jamey?”
“Velasquez’s Cohort, boss,” Soult answered immediately. “Want I should get them on the line?”
“Yeah, do.”
It took Soult perhaps seven minutes to find and set the radio on the pertinent set of frequencies and then get himself into the radio net.
“What’s the holdup, Jamey?” asked Carrera.
Frigging war on and better things for them to be doing, Soult thought. Rather than his having to answer Carrera, the Second of the Second answered him.
“Who do you want to speak to, boss?” Soult asked.
“Velasquez or his exec or his sergeant major.”
Fifteen seconds after that, Soult announced, “Sergeant Major Cruz, sir. You’re in the green.” That last was a standard phrase for, your communication is encrypted so you can presume to speak freely. The warning really wasn’t necessary; the encrypted radios gave off a notice that one could speak freely in the form of a beepbeepbeep.
Beepbeepbeep. “Cruz?” Carrera asked into the microphone, following several distinctive beeps that confirmed the encryption.
Beepbeepbeep. “Yes, Duque.”
Beepbeepbeep. “Who are you fighting and why won’t they surrender?”
Beepbeepbeep. “Anglians, sir, and some mixed-in Cimbrians and Hordalanders, we think. Tough bastards, don’t know when they’re beaten.”
Beepbeepbeep. “How many are there and what are you doing to deal with them?”
Beepbeepbeep. “We’ve got them pretty well pinned in their position with artillery and mortars. While their heads are being kept down, we’re working our way around their flanks.”
Beepbeepbeep. “What kind of artillery and mortar support do you have?”
Beepbeepbeep. “A battery of eighty-fives and another of one-five-twos, five sections of mortars from the cohort and another battery of heavy mortars Fourth Corps has loaned us the support of.”
Beepbeepbeep. “Okay, I understand. But I put it in the order that we need prisoners, a lot of prisoners. Have you or anyone tried to explain to these guys that the battle is effectively over?”
Beepbeepbeep. “Yes, sir. They didn’t seem interested in listening, where disinterested is defined as fired a volley over the heads of the parlimentaires we sent to talk to them.”
Beepbeepbeep. “Right. Okay, tell your boss to pull your companies back and, as soon as they’re back, lift the artillery and mortars. I’m heading your way directly.”
Soult scowled while staring straight ahead through the windshield of the Second Cohort four-by-four he’d temporarily exchanged for the Ocelot. He muttered something unintelligible.
“What was that, Jamey?” Carrera asked, while tying a white cloth to a bark-covered pole picked up from the ground, likely the victim of some fast-moving steel shard.
Changing neither his scowl nor his focus, Soult snorted angrily and said, more distinctly, “I’ve seen you do some boneheaded things over the years, but this is just that one step beyond stupid all the way to insanity.”
“Oh, come on; I’ve done dumber shit that this.”
“Name one,” Soult demanded.
“Flew to enemy-occupied territory to meet a girl?”
“That was defensible,” Soult countered. “This is just fucking ridiculous.”
Carrera finished the white flag, then stood silently for a long minute. Finally, he wiped one hand across his face, sighed and said, “This is defensible, too, Jamey. Maybe more importantly, it’s for the good of my soul.”
Soult shook his head, resignedly, the scowl disappearing. “Still stupid,” he insisted, chin down and mind expecting the worst.
Velasquez and Cruz, standing not far away, simply shook their heads, faces kept carefully blank.
Carrera pretended not to notice. Instead, he demanded, “Now tell me again what your orders are.”
Velasquez, being senior and in command, replied. “If they kill you, we butcher them to a man, hacking the wounded into spareribs and tossing survivors on the points of our bayonets. If you’re not back in an hour, same thing. But if they give up, you want us to stand and cheer, salute and give them an honor guard to the POW camp.”
“Very good. Now have you got those half-dozen each cans of legionary rum and cigarettes I asked for?”
Passing over a satchel that looked about the right size and bulged in about the right way to be holding two hundred and forty disgustingly strong cigarettes and forty-eight ounces of preposterously strong rum, Cruz said, “The pogues I confiscated these from are not happy campers, but fuck ’em. I put in a couple of can openers, too.”
“With luck, Sergeant Major, I’ll be able to make it up to them.” Turning to the cohort commander, Carrera asked, “Now, your boys are all under cease-fire?”
“Yes, sir,” Velasquez answered. “But the number of guns and mortars we have to support us is going up by the minute.”
“I’m sure. Jamey, how many Cruz de Corajes are in the case?”
“Twenty-one,” Soult answered.
“That’s good enough. Get about a dozen of them ready. And see if we can’t get another few gallons of rum, will you?” Carrera twisted to take his pistol from its usual holster, then tossed that underhanded to Soult. “And away we go.”
This is possibly even dumber than Jamey knew, Carrera thought, inching his way over the broken, chewed-up ground and shattered, fallen trees. He had to work his way around some progressivines, torn up by the barrage as was everything else, but remarkably resilient and thick.
With all the fires having lifted, those guys have got to be primed to fight off an assault. And with all the crap in the air they probably can’t.
“’Alt!” said someone in some variety of an Anglian accent, “Oo goes there, friend o’ foe?”
“A foe who means you well,” Carrera answered. His eyes strained to make out where the voice was coming from. But whoever and wherever the speaker was, he was damned well camouflaged, indeed. “Can you take me to your commander?”
“Nao; all th’ officers is dead, bu’ one, and ee’s bloody useless. We go’ a sarn’ major oo migh’ wan’ to talk with ya.”
“Bring me to him, then, please.”
“Wha’s in that bag yer carryin’?”
“A gift, but it has to go to your sergeant major. You can carry it if you like.”
“Roight. Ease i’ off yer shoulder and pu’ i’ on th’ ground. Gen’ly!”
“I’ll do that,” Carrera agreed, “and gently.”
First driving the pole bearing the white flag into the dirt, Carrera hooked his now freed right thumb under the carrying strap that ran over his left shoulder, then slid it off. He clutched the strap tightly with all fingers, then lowered the satchel to the ground.
His right hand then curled around the pole. “Now can one or more of you come take charge of me?”
Two armed men in battle dress stood up warily, both keeping their rifles’ muzzles pointed in Carrera’s general direction.
Oh, they’re good all right; I still can’t see where they were hidden. He looked
again, taking in bandages, one of them leaking a spot of red. Both wounded, too. Tough bastards; I can hardly wait to send them home.
The smaller of the two came forward, even as the larger trained his rifle more precisely on Carrera’s head.
“’Oly shi’! Are you really . . . ?”
Carrera nodded solemnly. “Patricio Carrera, Dux Bellorum of the Timocratic Republic of Balboa. And we really don’t have that much time. Please take the satchel—that, or let me carry it—and get me to your sergeant major.
“I’m not armed, but you can take the time to search me if you insist. However, if you’re willing to skip the formalities, you and your regiment have my parole for as long as I’m here. By the way, what regiment is it, if I can ask?”
“Die ’ards, sir.”
“Ah, the old Fifty-Seventh. I might have guessed.”
“I think we’ll accep’ yer parole, sir. But I ’ave ta blindfold you.”
“That’s fine, go ahead. Who are you, by the way?”
“Corporal Cleric, sir,” the Anglian answered, tying a thick-folded cravat-type bandage around Carrera’s eyes. When he was done, he placed his rifle in his right hand, reached down to pick up and sling Carrera’s satchel crossways, and then put his left around Carrera’s bicep to lead him into the interior of the perimeter. “Thus way, sir,” Cleric said. “Carruthers, you stay ’ere.”
“Roight, Corp.”
Someone was weeping, intermittently, not far away, and with the sound of heartbroken agony. A deeper voice said, “If you must die, Smithers, at least die like a man. Quietly.” The weeping stopped.
