A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  They were normally half mobile, that battery, with one truck for every other gun, another for ammunition, a smaller one for battery headquarters, and one for the FDC. With one vehicle having streamered in—ouch!—they were down to five sets of wheels, one of them light. The FDC was sitting in the dirt, ear glued to a radio handset, while the two junior men in that section furiously scooped out a shelter; the battery commander was standing on his own feet, while those five trucks scoured the drop zone for the pallets of ammunition that had been dropped just before the troops and guns came down.

  Every now and again one of the trucks would return to the firing position. Then there would be a mad scramble to get the ammunition off and to the guns. For a while thereafter, the pace of the supporting fire would increase, before tapering off until the next batch of shells showed up.

  The battery had one serious problem. It was a problem that plagued the Taurans any time any substantial numbers of different nationalities worked together. This was that its primary mission was to support the Anglian Marines cutting out a beachhead to the east of Cristobal, at Pernambuco Beach, a sandy, shoal- and reefless stretch of white sand, east of the mouth of the Rio Gamboa. Of course, the Anglian Marines spoke English—though there were well-educated Sachsens who disputed this—while the Sachsens spoke something quite recognizably German.

  There had already been one unfortunate incident that had caused the commander of the Marines to enquire of the Sachsens, by radio, “Have we offended you in some way?” Understanding of the radio transmission had not actually been improved by the fact that the speaker on the other end was having to shout to be heard over the sound of incoming Sachsen 105s.

  Both the Anglians at Pernambuco and the larger but mixed Gallic and Tuscan Marine brigade to the west, storming ashore at Puerto Lindo and points east of that, were dependent on the Sachsens for artillery support until the shore was cleared enough for their own batteries to set up for business. And with both, as was only to be expected, there were language issues.

  Though the Anglian landing was necessary fully to invest the town, the Gallic and Tuscan assault was the more important. This was because, until Cristobal surrendered or fell, the only practical route of supply would be aerial drop (always limited), helicopter (often even more problematic), over the shore (and the Taurans didn’t have the kind of capability for that that, say, the Federated States Navy and Marine Corps did), air landing (except that they’d either have to capture or build a decent airfield, which was in the plan, but not for today), and through a port.

  Puerto Lindo, though—as the name suggested—a beautiful port, was quite small and not fully developed. Indeed, the port served mainly as a naval and maritime scrapyard, although it was also the factory for the Megalodon Class Coastal Defense Submarines. The town hosted the Military Academy Sergeant Juan Malvegui, though the school was abandoned.

  In any event, the Taurans needed a port. Hence, even before the Gauls and Tuscans brought in their own batteries, they would be offloading a mixed port construction battalion.

  Both landings were too far away for most of Jimenez’s heavy mortars to do much about. He had a limited artillery pack, but that he’d been told to preserve as long as possible. Some of the nearer mortar platoons and batteries had tried, on their own, but the Tauran air forces had soon put paid to their pitiful efforts.

  HAMS Typhoon, South of Cristobal, Shimmering Sea

  The thrum of helicopters refueling topside seemed to reach down deep into the ship, punctuated by the hydraulic whine and metallic clang of one of the lifts, bringing supplies up on deck.

  There, deep in those steel nautical bowels, General Janier fumed. It grated on him, though he tried not to let it show, that the only ship suitable for a command vessel for the invasion was Anglian. Oh, Gaul’s fleet had more surface combatants, to be sure, accounting by sheer numbers. But the experience, the balance, the intuitive grasp? Those were all in Anglia’s corner. Even outnumbered, no English-speaking people had ever lost a naval war except to another English-speaking people. Their officers, ships, and crews, on average, simply turned out better suited for their tasks, that being driven by an institutional memory that spanned two worlds.

  The Typhoon, an assault helicopter carrier, was also fully equipped to serve as the headquarters for even a multi-corps landing. Indeed, though it carried a fair complement of medium and heavy helicopters, this voyage, almost none of the lift had been used for the troops carried. Instead, other than a small headquarters cell Janier had launched in behind the mixed Gallic-Tuscan brigade of marines, the other seven hundred and fifty or so ground troops carried by the ship would stay there until Janier, himself, went ashore to take charge. The helicopters, conversely, returned to the ship only for fuel, as they ferried combat troops in from other ships, to include impressed merchantmen with hastily designed and erected helicopter platforms.

  “You look concerned, General,” said the Anglian admiral commanding the combined fleet, in the Gaul’s bowel-deep command center.

  That raised a scowl from the Gaul, though the scowl didn’t seem to be directed at the speaker.

  Admiral Pellew had descended to Janier’s command center to inform the Gaul in person that, with the reinforcing paras dropping in from Cienfuegos and Santa Josefina, there was now more combat power ashore than at sea. This, by present agreement backed up by at least one interpretation of longstanding doctrine, marked the point at which the naval commander became de jure subordinate to the ground commander.

  “Pity they didn’t take the bait,” observed Pellew. The bait, in this case, had been the invasion fleet demonstrating near the port of Capitano, very far to the east, near the border with Santa Josefina, coupled with the landing of about a brigade of mixed troops, mostly second line.

  “I am concerned,” the Gaul admitted, somewhat nervously chewing at his lip.

  “But everything’s going well, is it not?” asked the Anglian.

  “Et dona ferentes,” answered the Gaul.

  “Ah.”

  “I have seen things start well before here,” Janier elaborated. “It was always a ruse. When things are going well now? I have to assume that it at least might be a ruse.”

  “You know what his best weapon is, this Carrera person?” the Anglian asked.

  The Gaul answered, “That he started ahead of us and is so far ahead of us in the decision cycle we’ve never had a chance to catch up . . . .at least until now . . . at least maybe until now.”

  “That’s something,” the Anglian agreed, “if one buys into decision-cycle theory. But that’s not his best weapon or chief advantage.”

  “Which is?” asked Janier.

  “He’s free to fight a war, without having to restrict himself only to those actions which can be justified even to the most militarily ignorant mommy in the land.”

  “Point,” conceded the Gaul.

  Janier was about to say something further when an enlisted man handed him an annotated map, of the old-fashioned variety, covered with old-fashioned acetate. The staff, he thought, simply assumes that using a paper map, rather than a computer screen, is just one of my personal quirks. It is that, of course, but it is also a better and less obvious way for me to record the intelligence I get passed on from the High Admiral, from the Peace Fleet overhead. Makes me look brilliant . . . to everybody but me.

  “I’ll be in my quarters briefly,” the general announced.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill.’”

  —Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

  IV Corps Headquarters, Magdalena, Cristobal Province, Balboa

  The irregular crump-crump-crumb of bombs—filtering through the earth and then to and through the thick-walled concrete shelter—was frequent enough now that nobody really paid it much mind. The people in the shelter
knew, too, that they’d never hear the one that came for them, so why worry about it? They went about their chores and duties, thus, with fairly light hearts . . . or, at least, they were able to put on a good enough show of it, even though, however carefully they hid it, they did worry.

  Fourth Corps was something of an ethnic mishmash. In and around the city of Cristobal, the bulk of the populace was more or less black; “more or less” because, after centuries of crossbreeding on Old Earth, followed by more centuries of crossbreeding on Terra Nova, nobody was pure. The most that could really be said was that someone tended black or white or brown or yellow or red. Thus, for example, Legate Arocha, Jimenez’s Ia, or operations officer, was black, like Jimenez, himself. Conversely, his Ic, or Intelligence Officer, was almost pale and bore the surname of Standish, even though almost no one in the area with an English-sounding name was white.

  The two glared across the map at each other.

  Other armies used most advanced computers for this, but Balboa not only didn’t have money to waste on such luxuries, it had an active prejudice against anything that could be hacked. As such, Jimenez’s operations and intelligence staff plotted known and suspected enemy positions on a huge map, set up on moveable tables at the center of the ops room. Those positions looked like a series of spreading stains on the map. Some of them already leaked tendrils toward each other. In places, the stains had merged into ominous blobs.

  The corps logistician, the Ib, black and named Harris, didn’t plot anything, but took notes for places and units of the IVth Corps he thought might need a tad of logistic succor, as well as trying to pierce the enemy’s logistic plan, the knowledge of which would be the surest possible guide to his intentions. That was one of the reasons for the staff arrangements in the legions, actually, with operations, logistics, and intel all in the same section, that intelligence types were not usually as good at analyzing logistics as logisticians were, while nothing was quite as good a predictor of enemy actions as were logistic realities.

  The Ia, Arocha, looked at a several recent plots on the map, then announced in a loud voice, “It’s not fucking possible; somebody’s full of shit.” His accusing glare was directed at the intelligence officer.

  “What’s not possible?” asked Jimenez.

  “Sir,” said Intelligence, “Operations has a point. We know what the Taurans had for airborne forces. We know—we know beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt—that we destroyed two of the four brigades they had, the Gauls’ and the Anglians’. We are certain that the defection of Colonel Muñoz-Infantes is keeping Castile, which has one of the two remaining brigades, out of the war in any serious way. I am seeing, we are seeing, impossible numbers of paratroopers, coming into the airheads established by their helicopter-borne troops. I can’t tell you where they’re coming from. They ought not exist, not in the numbers we’re seeing.”

  “Show me,” ordered Jimenez.

  The Ic grabbed a wooden pointer from an underling. Moving it from east to west, tapping the map as he went, he explained, “The Tauran paras all came in on airheads previously grabbed by airmobile forces. They are reinforcing by parachute, not doing parachute assaults.”

  “That’s a lot safer,” Jimenez observed.

  “Yes, sir,” Standish agreed. “Also, much more reliable, certain, practical . . . sir, we need to adjust our opinion of Tauran arms upward . . . way the fuck upward.

  “Reports are that the Sachsens—they have a very distinctive field uniform so we are quite certain who they are—came in here”—the pointer went tap—“and here”—tap; the taps indicating drop zones northeast of Cristobal and northwest of Puerto Lindo.

  “That’s all perfectly understandable,” the Ic continued, “Sachsens reinforcing the perimeter and supporting the marine forces while the latter clear their beachheads. It’s working for them, too.”

  Jimenez scowled but then said, “I follow so far. Continue.”

  The pointer went tap, tap, tap across the map in rapid succession. “But we are seeing more than that. Each of those places has something like a brigade or a short brigade landed or landing. That’s not counting the reports of smaller teams coming in outside the area of their major drops.

  “There seems to be a brigade of Gauls, another of Anglians, and a mixed group of I don’t know what, but they’re probably Tuscans, Haarlemers, and maybe Leopolders. They might be Hordalanders and Cimbrians in there, too, since the Cimbrians have two companies, and only one is in Santa Josefina.

  “That last group is predictable but . . . well, sir . . . where did the Anglians and Gauls come up with more?”

  “I don’t know how they did,” Jimenez said, “but I can tell you how I would have. I’d have called up reservists, especially if I had a formed unit. I’d have used my special operations people as cadres for new battalions. And I’d have raped the school system as completely as possible for more cadres. In all, if you tally it up, that may account for both the Anglians and the Gauls’ newfound airborne capability.

  “We may find, too, if we ever manage to get a prisoner, that for some of those jumpers it’s their first jump.

  “Note, too, gentlemen, that we didn’t, in principle, do anything much different in using the training brigade cadres to form forty-sixth through fifty-first tercios.”

  Standish still looked a little skeptical. “Yes, sir . . . maybe, sir, but we didn’t use any of those to parachute into a hot drop zone, either.”

  “Is it working for them?” Jimenez asked.

  “Well . . . yes, sir.”

  “If it looks stupid but works then it isn’t stupid.”

  “All right, sir,” Standish agreed. “But I can’t help but wonder why Fernandez’s organization didn’t warn us of this. It’s his job, after all. But, yeah, sure; we’ll assume that those paras are not figments of our imagination, but were reconstituted somehow.” Grimly, the operations officer nodded agreement.

  “Do that,” Jimenez said, “and make a mental note that, as they’re reconstituted, which is to say, kind of new, those formations may also be kind of fragile . . . .hmmm . . . speaking of which . . .”

  Jimenez turned away and walked to the artillery desk, where his chief of artillery, Legate Arosamena, looked ready to weep. Arosamena had once been acting chief of staff for the entire Legion. Fired by Carrera for incompetence in that role, Jimenez had taken him on as, first, an artillery tercio commander, and later as chief of IVth Corps Artillery.

  “Every time I allow somebody to fire,” Arosamena told Jimenez, “that firing battery’s life is measurable in minutes. I never saw or anticipated what that kind of air superiority could do. I’m sorry . . .”

  “Not your fault,” Jimenez assured the gunner, adding a hearty slap on the back. “You would be doing better, Legate, if we were allowed to use our air defense and if we could use everything at once. Since we’re not, and we can’t, you just have to mark time and wait for a target that’s worth losing a battery or platoon over.”

  “I don’t know that I’ve seen anything worth losing a battery over,” Arosamena said.

  Jimenez shook his head. “It’s not really the damage to the target we care about, but the overall threat and the friction we inflict on the enemy by making that threat credible.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what doctrine says, sir.” Arosamena didn’t sound like he had a lot of faith in doctrine.

  I’m not too sanguine about doctrine, either, Jimenez thought. And, just like Standish, I wonder why Fernandez didn’t find out and let us know about the reconstituted para brigades. And I wonder what else he’s let us down on.

  Estado Mayor, Sub camp C, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa

  The General Staff building, Estado Mayor in Spanish, was, if anything, even more thoroughly wrecked than Jimenez’s brownstone headquarters in Cristobal. That was to be anticipated. Moreover, it had been anticipated, with widely scattered concrete fortified camps having been constructed long since, to hold and shelter evacuees from the main building. Sub-c
amp C held about half of Legate Omar Fernandez’s organization, to include the hard interrogation section headed up by Chief Warrant Officer Achmed al Mahamda. He was a Sumeri immigrant to Balboa, expressly recruited for his peculiar expertise more than a decade prior, and sheltered from paying for his crimes on behalf of the old Sumeri regime ever since. It was said of Mahamda that he could make a rock weep and, given two rocks, could extract the ultimate truth from both.

  If this was an exaggeration, it was not much of one.

  The screams coming from a chamber to the south of Mahamda’s office seemed to make the underground, concrete lined tunnels reverberate. Fernandez shuddered with sympathy. Not that he didn’t detest the men undergoing interrogation; he did, just as he’d detest any native-born Balboan caught spying for the enemy. This detestation, though, was coupled with a measure of admiration for how long this particular set of captives had held out.

  Even at that, Mahamda hadn’t gotten everything. Fernandez knew, and took considerable personal satisfaction in knowing, that between seven and twelve spies from the Rocaberti camp had been reintroduced to Balboa. He’d be more sure of the numbers except that the prisoners were still lying about them. He knew some of the methods of reintroduction, ranging from parachute drop, to submarine, to simply walking across the border or, in one case, coming in via a Castilian diplomatic passport and, in another, as a notional member of a news organization. He also knew their mission hadn’t been either espionage or direct action, but to re-establish contact with sundry spies already in country.

  But I don’t know who is still at large. With names, real names, I could come up with pictures. With pictures we’d have the last of them rounded up within the week. But those miserable bastards simply won’t give up the same stories on the names. Fucking . . .