A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  He was a little surprised to see so few soldiers running for the bunkers and trenches from the buildings they’d taken over as barracks. I doubt it’s because they’re quite that afraid of the mortars. No, they’re already in the positions. This is going to suck.

  Taking the radio handset back from Billy, Macera contacted his fire-support officer and told him to cut short the preparatory barrage and, instead, put a smoke screen just on the outside of the southeastern section of the Gaul trenches.

  “Already on it, Boss,” the FSO said. “As the observers report ‘target destroyed,’ unless they’ve got another key mission, I’m ordering the guns responsible out of action and to their secondary positions. I’ve got a lot of white phosphorus stockpiled at the secondaries.”

  “Roger; good thinking; out.”

  At that, Macera heard shells flying overhead that didn’t sound remotely like mortar shells. Those freight train rattles were incoming one-o-fives, courtesy of the one Tauran battery assigned to the southern sector.

  Slow, he thought. They should have been on us sooner. Language issues, maybe. I suppose you’ll get that with almost any multinational force. He remembered back for a bit. Ah, yes, the reports were that the artillery was Haarlemer, where young Haarlemers learn English or German, not French, as a second language.

  Salas called. In the background there was a repetitive blasting as from a machine gun firing on a slow sustained rate. “Ignacio, those Tauran guns are in range, as it turns out. We don’t have eyes on them yet—twenty minutes for that, I think, or maybe half an hour—but we can triangulate on the sound to pin them to about a five or six-hundred-meter square. Basically, for the moment, we’re just tossing out harassing fire. Might help.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  Billy, who had taken to his duties with some obvious talent, updated Macera’s map with an alcohol pen and thrust it in front of him. The tactical symbols and markings weren’t standard—nobody had had time for the finer points in schooling the new troops—but were understandable, still. Macera shifted his binoculars to the river southwest of the town. The screen hadn’t started building yet though he could already see a few rising plumes of white between the river and the Gallic line edging that side of the town. One of his maniples, that had crossed the river some distance to the southwest, moved in single file, hugging the far bank. Someone in that maniple must have been spotted because machine-gun tracers lanced out from the Gallic lines to skip over their heads. The maniple was nearly cohort-sized, and operating fairly simply for lack of trained cadre.

  Macera made a call to that cohort in-all-but-name. The commander was a twenty-five-year-old junior tribune—a first lieutenant in most armies—named Henry Morgan, “for family historical reasons,” he would explain. How a Welsh pirate would have had a connection to a black family on another planet he never explained.

  “Henrique, you heard me order a screen in, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you’ve got everyone lined up along the river bank—and you need to time it pretty closely to get out of there before the Taurans can bring in much artillery on you—wait for the screen to be established. You don’t want to be there amidst a hellstorm of willie peter.”

  “No, sir . . . oh, shit . . . sir, kill the screen. Kill it now. That’s incoming. I have about two minutes to go in with what I have!” Macera heard what was probably an ear-splitting blast through the radio.

  “Right. Go for it . . . Billy, get me the fire-support officer . . . yeah, this is Macera. Kill the screen. High explosive or anything you can find to throw at the Gauls’ trench line and bunkers.”

  By the time Macera turned his binoculars back to the scene, two things had happened. One was that a partial smoke screen had gone in. In places it was fairly thick and effective. In other places it wasn’t much.

  The other thing was that Morgan’s men and boys had started coming up out of the river. Macera saw a dozen or so, in as many seconds, leap up only to be shot back—arms flying—into the flowing stream. Others had better luck, making it into a position from which they could direct fire and leap forward in small bounds. They were doing that, too. Taking stock of the distance and the loss rate, Macera thought, Close; it’s going to be close.

  “Where’s my fire on the Gauls’ defenses?”

  Came the answer, “Splash, over.”

  Macera went back to his binoculars to see that, indeed, a mix of high explosive and smoke was falling along the defenders. Morgan’s boys must have sensed a reduction in the fire they were taking, because they began pouring out of the river in a kind of uphill flood, even as the ones on dry ground seemed to be moving faster and making their bounds longer.

  That is, they were moving more and faster until what Macera took to be Tauran artillery began landing in their midst, some of it, and exploding overhead, the rest.

  Not a final protective fire, judged Macera, from the spacing between bursts. It’s trying to cover three times the ground of a normal battery, and firing slowly, to boot. You can’t cover that much ground with a single battery, you just can’t. And that makes me think . . .

  He called his FSO again. “Look, in five minutes I want you to deluge the Gallic position closest to the river for a good ten minutes. Use the one-sixties, if they’re available and alive. And as many of the one-twenties as you can get to range.”

  “Roger,” came the answer, “we can keep up the H and I”—harassment and interdiction—“with the eighty-twos.”

  “Good, do it . . . break, break . . . Morgan?”

  “Sir.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes, sir. You want me to break in on the right and roll them up?”

  “You have grasped the very platonic essence of my intent, son. Now, can you?”

  “Maybe. The maniple, so-called, on my right never made it out of the river, too much direct fire. That means they’re fresh where the others are scared shitless and, by now, tired. Let me go there and take charge, myself.”

  “Do it. You have ten minutes. Is that enough?”

  “Plenty, sir, or my miscegenating, city-burning, loot-gathering, multi-great-great-grandfather never raped a captive slave girl.”

  Oh, so that’s what it was.

  There was enough smoke covering the field that Macera couldn’t make out much detail on the ground. The extra wallop of the one-sixties, though, was distinctive. Mortars were relatively high in explosive filler, as a percentage of body weight, anyway, but the percentage also went up as the size of the shell went up. In a sixty-millimeter mortar, for example, weighing three or four pounds, there might be half to three quarters of a pound of explosive. In an eighty-one, weighing nine pounds, it might be close to a fourth high explosive, or about two pounds and change.

  The one-hundred-and-sixty-meter shell went off with a weight of about twenty-four pounds, or two-thirds again more than a medium howitzer. When it buried itself in the earth next to a bunker or trench, not only did the target disintegrate, but an enormous column of dirt and rock was propelled skyward, too.

  That column, and the accompanying gut-churning shock of the blast, was as uplifting for the attackers as it was for the defenders.

  Billy tapped Macera on the shoulder. “Sir, it’s Tribune Morgan.”

  “Yes, Henrique.”

  “Sir, if you didn’t notice, the artillery has stopped playing across the entire field. I think they know what we’re doing and are going to drop a genuine final protective fire here on me. I’d rather not be here for it. We’ve blown a couple of breaches in the wire. I request that you lift fires, please; I am going to do a wild, screaming, fixed bayonets and firing from the hip charge. Probably no choice.”

  Macera ordered that to the fire support officer, then told Morgan, “Last rounds pure white phosphorus. Last rounds splash in . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . splash.

  “Go, son! Go! Go! Go!”

  Henrique? I am not an “Henrique,” but a Henry. Prob
ably says it to piss me off. Which, come to think of it, it does . . . and at a time when it’s probably all to the good to be pissed off.

  There was a lot of lead flying about, but little or none of it, on either side, seemed to be aimed. From where he’d taken shelter, behind some farmer’s stone wall, Morgan stood straight up. Over the roar of the incoming shells, he shouted out to the troops around him. “Nobody staying here but the dead and those who are going to die. We’ve got just a few minutes. When the fire lifts, and on my command, we need to charge. So fix bayonets, motherfuckers! Fix bayonets!”

  Where the shout only carried so far, the images and the clicks of bayonets being fixed passed all along the line, in both directions from the tribune. He ducked down again, enough to cover his body, while watching that section of the Gallic line take its pounding.

  “Macera, sir,” said Morgan’s radio bearer.

  “Morgan.”

  “That’s your willie peter. Go!”

  Morgan saw maybe two dozen white phosphorus shells, big ones for this caliber, blossom over the Gaul’s line. He stood up atop the stone wall, almost losing his balance to a couple of loose rocks, then screamed, “Chaaarrrggge!”

  Pistol drawn, Morgan began to run forward. The sounds coming from both sides and behind said that the men were following. I wasn’t sure until I started if they would. You never really know.

  For all the smoke nobody could much see anything, but Morgan did note a stream of tracers passing about fifteen feet to his front. Some screams from the right rear said somebody had run into them.

  He flopped to the ground, crawling under the bracbrac-

  bracbracbrack of the passing bullets. They’re firing blind. No clue where we are.

  Morgan almost ran into the Gauls’ tactical wire. Which would tend to explain why the machine gun was firing along it. He stood up when just past the flight of the tracers and, lo, there it was, triple standard concertina.

  I saw us blow gaps. There has to be one to my . . . ummm . . . right, I think.

  He headed that way, still wary of the machine gun that lashed the air to his left a few times a minute. Eventually he came to a gap through which a steady stream of his own men poured.

  “Into the trenches! Into the trenches! Clear ’em out!”

  The Tauran artillery, delayed for some reason or another, began falling heavily between the town and the river. Some men were caught in it, to live or to die as the dangling dong of destiny chose.

  Morgan turned for his radio telephone operator and then realized he hadn’t seen the kid in a couple of minutes. Somebody new, meaning a fairly new recruit, in this case, came trotting up with a radio slung over one shoulder and his rifle carried in the other hand.

  “He bought it, sir,” the new man said to Morgan. “But I checked and the radio works. Tribune Macera personally told me to carry it to you.”

  “Okay, come on, follow me to the trench line.”

  Past the wire there were no more lines of machine-gun fire. There were, though, a determined band of Gauls, badly outnumbered, trying to fight off as many as four or five Santa Josefinans each. The odds against the Gauls kept growing as more of Morgan’s men passed a gap and joined the fray. They were coming quicker, now, too, because the machine guns had been silenced.

  Morgan didn’t know the word for surrender in French. He suspected these guys didn’t either. Simply swarmed by numbers they’d all gone down to bullet, bayonet, or rifle butt with none of them raising his hands in defeat.

  “Take prisoners, goddammit,” Morgan shouted to anyone who was paying attention. He wasn’t sure anyone was. From their glassy eyes and slack expressions, he judged that the men in the newly captured trench line were pretty much spent.

  And they’ll be that way for a while, no hurrying any recovery.

  Morgan grabbed about as senior a non-com as was likely to be found, a corporal. “Until you find a higher-ranking man, Corporal, you’re in charge. Get these men off their asses and into some semblance of a defense. Now!”

  Then the tribune, followed by his new RTO, turned to the rear, scanning for a new unit. The artillery, maybe uncertain about continuing a mission so close to friendlies without an observer, ceased fire. Or maybe the cazadores found them.

  Through the thin smoke, Morgan saw what looked to be a maniple-sized “platoon” emerging from the river bank, he recognized one of his own. Cupping his hands, the tribune shouted, “To me. To me,” then began a slow trot to join them.

  The “platoon leader,” Junior Centurion Orrellana, reported in with his name and, “one hundred and twelve men, present or accounted for, sir.”

  “Good,” said Morgan. He listened for few second. Yes, there’s still some fighting to the southwest. Briefly he outlined the situation as best he understood it, then told Orellana, “Strike for the railway station in the middle of town.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing.”

  —Napoleon

  Estado Mayor, Sub-camp C, Ciudad Balboa

  Carrera read the short but eloquent message Soult brought him. It read: “Town of Peliroja taken. Many Gallic prisoners in hand. Gallic mortars and artillery captured to the tune of eighteen tubes. Also, two tanks we might make serviceable again once we hose out what’s left of the crews. Casualties heavy but not crippling. All praise to Tribune Macera and his men. Viva la Revolución!”

  “There’s a list of requests for promotion, too,” said Soult, “along with awards given by Salas or kicked up to us. Didn’t want to bother you with those, boss.”

  “You see anything weird in them, or questionable?”

  “Nah, it all looked reasonable. The Ops folks have the map for Santa Josefina updated, if you want to see it.”

  “Yeah, let’s. I’ve got a decision to make and it isn’t a small one.”

  Carrera and Soult walked the tunnel to the operations office. The heavy concrete shrouded and steel reinforced office complex went to a hush when he was seen. Someone called, “At ease,” but Carrera waved a hand and ordered, “Carry on.”

  He went to a side office, the desk, as it were, for operations in Santa Josefina. His chief of staff, Dan Kuralski, met him there with the operations officer in town.

  “I take it you’ve heard about Peliroja,” Dan said.

  “Yes, and the question is ‘Now what?’”

  “It’s a sideshow,” Kuralski said. “More of the same strikes me as fine.”

  “Actually,” corrected Carrera, “it’s not just a sideshow.” He studied the map intently for several long minutes, noting the apparent open path to the capital from Peliroja, and the long sweep of the Tauran line from Cerro Presinger to the north.

  “He’ll fill that as best he can, poor Claudio,” Carrera said. “And there goes his reserve.”

  “Why ‘poor’?” Kuralski asked.

  His smile was sad as Carrera explained, “Marciano and ourselves, depending on how someone looks at it, could, either of us, look to be overmatched in sheer power. That’s not how the history books will read it. He really is overmatched, and won’t get credit for fighting a damned fine campaign, under constraints that would have me shooting politicians and lawyers right and left. On the other hand, we, in Santa Josefina—at least in the term we’re fighting—really are not overmatched, and will get all the credit there is to give. It’s just not fair.”

  “Put that way, maybe not.”

  Eyes still on the map, as if reviewing a future history he was certain would happen, Carrera said, “Send orders to De Lagazpi of Fifth Mountain Tercio, via Sixth Corps. He’s brevetted upward one rank. He’s to take one cohort of ‘volunteers,’ along with Tercio headquarters and whatever they think they need to support them, and leave a command cell behind to oversee the two remaining cohorts of their own plus the Lempiran and Valparaisan mountain battalions, to guard the highway from Almirante to Cervantes and to go after
the ports north and south.

  “I want that cohort of the tercio to ‘desert’ en masse, cut their insignia off their uniforms, except for rank, then volunteer to help their Santa Josefinan brothers. They will cross the border, as soon as practical. Maximum emphasis on not being spotted by our friends in space. Their mission is to take Cerro Presinger.”

  “Be two or three weeks before they get there,” Kuralski observed.

  “That will be fine.”

  “The Zhong and Taurans may move together to clear the highway.”

  Carrera sighed. “Decision Cycle Theory is almost entirely bullshit. One of the reasons why is that it presumes more or less instantaneous translation of decision into action. But sometimes—and this is one of them—when you do account for the time of translation, it has a sliver of truth. The Taurans and Zhong will never be able to change plans and reorient their effort to clear the road in enough time to matter. Friction, the sheer resistance and inertia of their own organizations, will stop it.”

  “Why the promotion for De Lagazpi?” someone asked.

  “He’s to take charge of the whole effort as if a legion commander. Put that in his orders, too.”

  Kuralski didn’t say anything but thought, You’re right often enough to rate a pass when it looks like you’re sticking your dick in the garbage disposal.

  “One last thing; give Fosa the code to be ready to sail within three weeks.”

  BdL Dos Lindas, Puerto Bruselas, Santa Josefina

  Covered with polycarbonate, there was a sword welded to the hull of the aircraft carrier, and the shadowy outline of a very small man. Fosa visited the site, regularly, as did many of the sailors of not just the flagship, but the entire Classis. A little brass plaque, also affixed to the hull, told the story.

  The old gun tub was gone from the same super explosion that had burned an old man into the hull and welded his sword in place. The new one was the same basic design as the old had been, and solid as . . . well . . . .as steel.