A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  I suppose I was asking too much when I told my people to go out of their way to make sure no paint went in there? It was a silly cover, anyway, like someone was going to be able to paint a sign that could be seen from the air, through triple canopy jungle. And, anyway, who would have predicted that, in the absence of paint, someone would sit an artistically inclined private down, with a one- by two-meter piece of clear plastic and a shitload of alcohol pens, and have that private spend two weeks drawing a sign . . . with pens? Jesus. Just Jesus.

  And what do I do about it if someone, say, one of those spies I haven’t been able to catch the trail of, saw it? I suppose there’s nothing I can do.

  Maybe a little disinformation? Provide enough paint for everyone to make a sign, but have them all advertise themselves as something very rear echelon? No . . . that’s suspicious in itself.

  Ignore it, let them go with an ass chewing, and hope for the best? That might actually be best.

  “You didn’t . . .”

  Mahamda shook his head vigorously. “No, sir. With people you think might be innocent and are your own? Terrible idea to put them to the question. Ruins them forever and makes even the most loyal men turn.

  “No, I just interrogated them separately. Didn’t even give them the guided tour of the instruments and techniques. Well . . . really didn’t need to; just about every custodial interrogation has torture somewhere in the background, working on the mind of the man to be interrogated. It’s only the really dumb ones who actually need the tour; them, and the ones who believe the propaganda about, ‘Who? Us? We never use torture.’”

  “Good . . . good. You did right, Achmed.”

  The Sumeri immigrant beamed. “Thank you, sir. Every now and then even my job allows a little charity.”

  Fernandez nodded, as if he mostly agreed. “Send them to my office in half an hour. I’ll put the fear of God in them and send them on their way.”

  “Yes, sir. Half an hour.”

  Fortress Cristobal, Passage Point #2

  At this portion of the perimeter, there were three gaps in the wire and mines. Other sections had other gaps, some more than three, some less. There wasn’t a lot that could be done about the wire, though more wire was stockpiled nearby, along with caltrop projectors. Scatterable mine packs were emplaced to close the gaps in the minefield.

  At two of the gaps, shells were falling with whistles and shrieks. At or above the ground, they blossomed into flowers of fire and smoke and whizzing shards of razor sharp steel. The third gap, covered by smoke, the enemy seemed not to have discovered yet.

  By that third gap, half sheltered in a trench, Xavier Jimenez took his chances. Ashamed to take cover in one of the concrete bunkers, while men of his command tried to get to safety, Jimenez had to, just had to, share the risk. With him were a couple of secondary members of his staff and, for a radio bearer, the female signaler, Sarita Asilos.

  Hmmmph, thought the Fourth Corps commander, I can take the risk by my own choice, but the people with me didn’t get a lot of choice, did they.

  He turned to the female soldier carrying his radio, Sarita Asilos, saying, “Leave the radio with me, Sarita. You get back to the bunker.”

  “No, sir,” she answered. “You’re out here; it’s my job and my duty to be out here, too.”

  Jimenez took a deep breath, preparatory to emitting a bellow. Then he looked at the plea written on the girl’s face: I may not be an officer but I’m as good a human being as you are, so don’t shame me by sending me to shelter.

  Sighing, Jimenez nodded. The thought of that beautiful face being mashed into so much strawberry jam was difficult, but . . .

  “Okay . . . okay, you can stay. Just keep low, will you?”

  “Thank you, sir,” the woman answered. “I will.”

  Jimenez alternated between shouting out encouragement to the men entering the fortress and talking over the field phone to his artillery commander, Arosamena, the latter struggling to keep a smoke screen up while preserving his command.

  The men trying to get in also had to try to squeeze their way between the incoming shells, the churned-up ground, and the bullets, only one in five a tracer, that scored the air overhead. This crew were La Platans, part of the newly designated Thirty-ninth Tercio, Marines, hence somewhat elite. At least they were doing about as well as could be expected in dealing with something—artillery shells—that they had no hope of fighting.

  Jimenez suddenly became aware of a pale soldier, young, and about as tall as himself, standing in the open trench with him. In the cover of the trench, the soldier saluted. Jimenez returned it.

  “Sir,” the newcomer said, speaking in that La Platan Spanish that might as well have been Old Earth Italian, “Lieute . . . I mean Tribune Pereyra, reporting, sir. These are my compa . . . .maniple’s men coming in.”

  “Are you the commander?” Jimenez asked, suspicious that a commander might seek shelter before his men.

  He relaxed when the La Platan answered, “No, sir; I’m the exec. My commander’s out with them. He’ll be the last in, I think . . . assuming . . .”

  Estado Mayor, Sub camp C, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa

  Carrera stood up from his camp stool, took the couple of steps off the dais, and exited the operations room. Warrant Officer Jamey Soult, his driver, was waiting, not far from the entrance to the thick-walled concrete shelter.

  “Need a lift, Boss?” Soult asked.

  “Yeah, Jamey,” Carrera answered, climbing into the unremarkable staff car. “Take me to Fifty-second Deception Tercio, in Subcamp D.”

  “Wilco,” Soult replied, starting the vehicle and easing out from under the camouflage and radar scattering screen overhead. “What, if it’s okay to ask, is your business with the Fifty-second?”

  “Nothing specific,” Carrera replied. “I just want to get a general feel for how much bait the enemy might be taking.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Therefore, the best warfare strategy is to attack the enemy’s plans, next is to attack alliances, next is to attack the army, and the worst is to attack a walled city.

  Laying siege to a city is only done when other options are not available.”

  —Sun Tzu

  Academia Sergento Juan Malvegui,

  Puerto Lindo, Cristobal Province, Balboa

  The general’s helicopter came skipping in, just above the waves. Sure, the locals hadn’t been using their air defense much, but they’d already demonstrated that they could at any time, and that when they did it could be in devastating mass.

  So why take the chance? thought Janier. What profit to it? The pilot of this crate can try to nab a fish with his skids; it’s all fine by me. Well . . . unless it’s a meg he tries for. Hmmm . . .

  A meg, or megalodon, was one of the species transported by the Noahs to Terra Nova. To say they resembled great whites on steroids would be a serious understatement; the largest great white ever recorded on Old Earth wouldn’t have fed a meg for much past a day. At the thought of a meg, Janier unconsciously leaned out to check the water. He felt foolish as he did so. Then he thought about it a bit more and looked again, feeling not at all foolish.

  At nearly the last second, the pilot pulled pitch, lifting his bird over the stone wall surrounding the old fort’s terreplein, then reversing that motion to come in fairly hard on the grass. Janier’s stomach tried to crawl out his anus, first, then out of his mouth.

  Beats taking a missile up the ass.

  With the chopper firmly on the ground, vibrating with the turn of the motor and the rotors it drove, Janier took off his soft cap and stuffed it into the same pocket into which he’d stashed the communicator given to him by High Admiral Wallenstein.

  Would never do to get it sucked into the engine.

  Janier’s Aide de camp, Malcoeur, toted his chief’s helmet in a nylon bag, thereby allowing Janier to look ever-so-casual and unconcerned, while having at least that much measure of safety, safely hidden, nearby.

  Head ducke
d perhaps a little lower than strictly necessary to avoid the blades churning overhead, Janier stepped to the ground and strode out to where his chief of staff, the newly promoted, rather short, stout, and fiercely intelligent looking Major General Francois D’Espérey, awaited. Breaking with custom and policy, Janier, which is to say the new and improved Janier, had reached down all the way to the, in his opinion, mostly no account-colonels of the Gallic Army to find a chief of staff he could have confidence in. D’Espérey was that man.

  “The command post is all set,” announced the chief, as soon as Janier got close enough. Even at that, he had to lean in and shout to be heard over the helicopter’s steady beat. “Care for the tour, sir? It’s an interesting facility here, where Carrera trained some of the children he surprised us with.”

  “Not yet,” Janier shouted back, also having to lean in to be heard. “Show me the port; that’s more important than any map or battery of radios and phones.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed the chief, leading the way across the terreplein to the gate that led out from the school. Malcoeur followed at a respectful distance.

  D’Espérey continued, “We’ve got it pretty much intact. Even captured the facility where they built . . . maybe better said, molded . . . their coastal subs. And the scrapyard where they’ve been cutting up old warships.”

  “Learn anything useful?” the general asked.

  “Not much,” the chief admitted. “We came on too fast for them to destroy the facilities, but they had burn barrels running full steam to destroy the paper. Well, there was one thing.”

  “That being?”

  “If the Anglians prove difficult, the machine on which they molded the sections of their acrylic submarines has ‘Made in Anglia’ written all over it. And I mean really written, not figuratively.”

  Janier laughed, then grew sober. You know, it just might be a useful stick to beat the Anglians with.

  “There is one other thing, sir . . . but . . .”

  “Yes, D’Espérey?”

  D’Espérey took a deep breath, then continued, “But, sir, this is just a big damned trap. Or, at least, it’s intended to be.”

  “Your reasoning?”

  “It’s too easy,” the chief said. “It’s been impossibly easy. The army that ran us out of the country with our tails between our legs doesn’t neglect the danger we posed. I mean, they had to have known we were out there, with a base on Cienfuegos, another one in Santa Josefina, and an invasion fleet. The army that defeated the Zhong invasion fleet doesn’t forget about the threat elsewhere. The air force that dictated to us that we shall not send in our fighter-bombers in little penny packets does not forget to keep tabs. The navy that trashed the Zhong nuclear submarine fleet—and did no little damage to us, either—does not simply retire and get itself interned.”

  “No chance they took the bait we set by the secondary effort at the port of Capitano?” Janier asked.

  “A chance, sir? Maybe a chance. But I don’t believe it. As for bait, ‘Under fragrant bait,’ as the Zhong might say, ‘there is certain to be a hooked fish.’ We’ve been presented with just too much fragrant bait!”

  Janier looked around and spotted a great stone slab, half sunk into the earth. He made a beeline for it, directing D’Espérey to follow. “Sit,” he ordered, when they reached the slab. “Sit, and I shall join you.”

  “I go round and round on this myself, Francois,” Janier admitted. “When I talk to”—he pointed a finger skyward—“they can usually convince me that this is all just good generalship on my part, with maybe a little luck, and a lot of mistake on the part of the enemy. When I am alone with my thoughts, though, I tremble.”

  “Me, too,” D’Espérey admitted. “Especially when I look at the logistic situation. Sir, we have to get Cristobal. I think that’s not just the key to the campaign, but the key to the enemy’s thinking.

  “Fragrant bait, yes; that’s here. But he is probably assuming we can’t go anywhere much, or do anything much, until we take the port, the big port. It’s a fair assumption, too,” D’Espérey continued, “because to take the big port we need a lot of firepower and a lot of infantry. Which we cannot support—”

  “—because,” Janier interrupted, “we can’t supply a big enough force to take Cristobal quickly through this little bay, however pretty and well-shaped it is.” Janier raised an eyebrow, saying sardonically. “Yes, all that I’ve figured out on my own.”

  “And taking the other ports further west,” said the chief, ignoring the eyebrow and the tone, both, “doesn’t really help because they add more to our defense problems than they solve for our offensive problems. And they’re tiny and primitive, to boot.”

  Janier’s eyes rolled. “Yes, D’Espérey, I figured that one out on my own, too.”

  The chief ignored that, too, saying, “But we don’t need them anyway. I think the mistake the enemy made was in not figuring out how quickly we can turn this little bay, which, at more than half a square kilometer is not so little as all that, into a big port. And we needn’t necessarily go to those far western ports, anyway.”

  D’Espérey gestured expansively. “The sheer beauty and convenience of this port stymied the development of at least two more sheltered deep-water anchorages. One, the smaller one, is about a kilometer and a half northeast of here. It will do, with a little work, for lighters and landing craft. The other is barely connected to civilization by a remarkably shitty road, about eight kilometers southwest of here. We can improve that road, and we can make that bay a useful port. There’s a civilian marina there, already, though it’s abandoned for now. And there are about five more little bays that just might do with some work.

  “As to how we’re going to do that, sir, let me show you the port as you’ve said, and then let me lead you to the engineer. He’s shown me how.”

  “Anglian, right?”

  “Yes, sir, but they’re very good engineers, you know. Different from us, yes. Less elegant? Yes, that too. But quite good in their simple-minded and inelegant way.”

  “What’s all this do to our security requirements?” Janier asked.

  “Maybe need a brigade patrolling to the west, sir. Just a brigade. We’d need a lot more if we tried to use the port at Nicuesa, which is maybe eighty kilometers out and completely indefensible at any distance from the port.”

  “Fine,” said Janier. “But instead of showing me the port and then bringing me to the engineer, have the engineer meet us at the port.”

  “Sir? But all his charts and plans are down below, where I’ve set up the command post.”

  “No matter,” said Janier. “With these Anglians you have to show them right away who’s boss or there’ll never be a moment’s peace or cooperation.”

  And I say that, even in my newer, kinder, and gentler self, because it’s true. Of course, it’s true of both of us in about equal measure.

  Isla Santa Catalina, Mar Furioso, off the coast of Balboa

  Somehow, the island exuded a sense of despair that the overwhelming scent of flowers did nothing to dissipate. Why that should be so the Zhong commander, Fleet Admiral Wanyan Liang, didn’t know. But it was so, everyone seemed to feel it. Perhaps it came, subconsciously, from the knowledge that this was a former prison island, reputed to have been an absolute hell.

  Maybe, though, thought Wanyan, it’s left over from the whipping we received from their Isla Real.

  That whipping had been administered not only by the well-entrenched defenders on the ground, facing Zhong Marines across the surf, but also by a massive hidden park of heavy artillery, previously not even hinted at, firing very long-range laser-guided shells, that had gutted the Zhong fleet. In the wake of it, to save what he could, and to at least try to save face and perhaps even contribute to the war, Wanyan had led the remnants of his fleet, and the two corps of infantry it still carried, to this place, here to establish a base to support a ground invasion of the mainland. That mainland, already being occupied by Wanyan’s two ar
my corps, was only about ten miles away from this island. The locals hadn’t even tried to defend it. The Zhong had also grabbed a smaller, equally undefended, island about fifteen miles to the west, Isla Montijo, for its proximity to a good hard surfaced road on the mainland.

  And I don’t understand why these two islands, nor any of the islands, nor the coasts, failed to put up even a symbolic defense. Well . . . there were those few platoons of commandos that went to contest some of the first helicopter insertions, but those hardly even arose to the level of a symbol. Did they expect to utterly destroy us at the big island? If so, I am ever so pleased they failed.

  Are they just being sensible, not trying to defend everything? Do they have a different plan, one I am not seeing? I think the former is true . . . but I need to be on guard against the latter. Then, too, they can calculate logistic needs, too, and maybe better than we can, since they can know if they’re going to do something that will drive up our requirements. So maybe they just know already that we can’t do a damned thing except occupy a chunk of their country, and sit there, while feeding those half million refugees they put in our way.

  Bastards, Wanyan scowled at the mainland. Ruthless bastards.

  Looking out to sea, where engineers and divers in their hundreds and thousands worked, supplemented by impressed laborers—Oh, may as well be honest with myself and call them what they are, namely “slaves”—Wanyan scowled even more deeply. He thought, This better frigging work or the empress is going to have my balls for earrings.

  The “this” in question was an ad hoc, emergency, oh, we are so screwed otherwise, plan to support the landing of the still substantial Zhong Expeditionary Force against the Balboan mainland, east of the capital. In other words, “this” was going to be an attempt to create a port, on the fly, ad hoc, where none had been before.