A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Tom Kratman

  Even so, the shell had waited patiently; if incapable of pride, artillery shells are still perfectly capable of patience. It had waited and waited and waited. Then, finally, it had been fed into the breech of its one true love, the gun, and followed up with bagged charges. Again, had an artillery shell been capable of excitement, this one would have said, “Ohboyohboyohboy!” But, of course, being a shell, it said not a word.

  A loud alarm sounded for about five seconds, sending the crew and anyone else nearby scurrying for shelter from the organ ripping, brain ping-ponging blast. And then the gun spoke.

  Down the tube the shell flew, kicked in the ass by a preposterously large propellant charge. Engaging the rifling, it began to spin. Spinning for the roughly forty feet of the barrel’s length, it emerged past the pepperpot muzzle brake and into the open air.

  Through the air it flew, kilometer after kilometer, rising and rising until, beginning to be overcome by gravity, it began its descent. Descending, the shell also slowed, thus making the arc of its fall steeper than that of its rise. It was still at a fairly steep angle, though, when it struck the earth near Volcano number nine and buried itself several meters deep. At that point the shell exploded, instantly excavating a large hole and sending a considerable shock wave through the ground.

  Magdalena, Balboa

  On a hill overlooking the town, and also high enough to see over the jungle, a single Tauran counterbattery radar detachment came back to life as the crew finished repairing the damage taken since the enemy barrage had opened up.

  The radar set owed its continued existence to being closer to Cristobal and Fourth Corps than the Parilla Line and the preparatory bombardment south of it. It had, in any case, proven quite useless at backtracking incoming shells to firing batteries, owing to a volume of flying shell its onboard computer was simply unable to deal with.

  Now that the bulk of the shelling had stopped, though, the battery could make out both some specific firing batteries as well as the probable target grids. They couldn’t exactly tell shell weight or caliber, but the range and track of a shell could often suggest a type of system, which amounted to the same thing.

  “That’s a long-range bitch, isn’t it?” commented the sergeant in charge, watching one shell, in particular, trace across the screen.

  “Only thing it matches is a Volgan two-o-three,” judged the operator. “I didn’t know the enemy had . . . ooops . . . there’s another . . . then another. Another . . . another . . . shit . . . thirteen of them, all from separate locations.”

  “What’s that suggest to you?” asked the sergeant. Both men’s eyes grew very wide. There was only one type of attack for which that made sense.

  “Fuck. Nukes. Get the warning out! Nukes!”

  Volcano Number Nine

  The fuse package had turned the seismic detector on a scant few minutes before. This sensed the nearby underground blast, determined that it was sufficient for its detonation parameters, and sent a strong electrical charge down the wire. The charge did three things. Firstly, it set off the elevation charge under the Volcano. This fairly well destroyed the outer casing in the course of pushing it up through the ground, but that didn’t matter at this point. Secondly—though, in fact, simultaneously—it blew apart the tanks holding the liquid oxygen. Thirdly, after a very short delay, it set off the central explosive charge. This, itself, also did three things; it began the dispersal of the fuel, set off the sparklers that would begin the reaction, and, with the fuel, dispersed the magnesium dust that would add brightness to the flash.

  Janier reached over and ground the driver’s upraised head to the dirt, then ducked his own and covered his eyes as best he could in the crook of one arm. What happened then, those seven events from impact to flash, were too close together for the human brain to tell the difference. There was a flash, a blast, a roar, a fireball, and a rising mushroom cloud. It was, under the circumstances, indistinguishable from a nuclear explosion both for those similarities and because no living human being in the universe had ever been close enough to one to be able to tell the difference, anyway.

  Janier felt heat on his shoulders, back, and arms. It was less than he might have expected, if he’d been in a position to expect anything but death. He had the impression of being picked up by an invisible hand and tossed a goodly distance. Somewhere in there his eyes opened up and he saw the driver, arms and legs outstretched, sailing and spinning like a top through the air. He thought, but couldn’t be sure, that he saw his staff car likewise rolling end over end across the ground, trailing smoke and flame. Of the brave sergeant who had run toward the blast to try to warn the Sachsens up there, there was no sign. He also saw that his own uniform had caught fire. He couldn’t feel the flames though, which he found odd.

  If I live, that’s really going to hurt. Of course, the odds of that are exceptionally poor, so . . .

  Janier was on the edge of the blast wave. When the blast collapsed and air began to rush in to fill the vacuum, it was relatively mild where he was. Instead of detaching his lungs, it blew out the flames of his uniform. It also twisted his upper body toward the blast, while not actually stopping, or even much slowing, his flight. That was just another form of death, too, of course, because when he hit the ground, his body was going to be pulverized . . .

  Except for that lake and the angle of his flight. He hit water, feet first but at a very shallow angle, then more or less skipped across the water like a stone, except that stones don’t scream anymore than artillery shells feel pride.

  When he reached the other side of the narrow lake, the ground also was fairly smooth. Oh, it still broke both legs, one of them in three places, partially collapsed one vertebra, and gave him a miserable concussion, but, at least for the moment, General Bertrand Janier lived. Lifting his head and looking toward the hill, the slope of which he’d just been blasted off of, he saw a fuzzy, shimmering, shaking steel rain descend on the armor there. The raindrops hit with black expanding splashes.

  “Why,” he wondered aloud, “would they need to drench the thing in DPICM if they’ve just used a nuke? Wasteful . . . wasteful. I shall make a negative comment on Carrera’s annual efficiency report, when I have Malcoeur draft it . . .”

  The infantry that had been dispatched to flank the hill disappeared into a draw shaded by some dense smoke.

  Sancho Panzer’s own tank was in defilade as he watched three of his SPATHAs duke it out with a pair of Sachsen tanks. He saw one of the SPATHAs take a hit, the front of the hull more or less exploding with a mix of smallish steel hexagons, ceramic plates, polyurethane mesh, and other odd bits and pieces. The tank’s projectile apparently failed to penetrate, since the SPATHA, a half a second later, fired its stubby gun at the Tauran. At these ranges armor and numbers were all. Nobody was missing who kept his cool and had a target.

  There was a great explosion on the front of the Sachsen tank, temporarily hiding it behind a sudden cloud of dense smoke.

  The other tank took a shot and this time the projectile was enough to get through. The SPATHA simply blew apart from its own internally stowed ammunition.

  Setting off the propellant is one thing, thought Brown. Setting off more than half a ton of plastic explosive in a small place is something else entirely.

  The Sachsen didn’t last long, though. The two remaining SPATHAs of that section each hit it with a HEP round within a few seconds of each other. It went dead and silent then, though like the other one now being revealed behind the dissipating smoke cloud, it didn’t burn.

  Brown wasn’t following the internal communications nets of his subordinate tercios and cohorts, though he did keep lines open and one ear focused on his three legions. Thus, he didn’t actually hear the chat between the SPATHAs, their commander, or the infantry Brown had seen trying for the flank. But then, suddenly, the infantry were on the hill, shooting very little but jumping up and down with glee while beckoning the entire force forward.

  Above the distinctive smell of solvent
that went along with most plastic explosives, the air around the tank was thick with the coppery smell of blood, spilled in copious quantities.

  Brown climbed aboard the second of the Tauran tanks he’d seen hit, the one that had taken two forty-pound charges of plastic explosive. On this tank, the gun was noticeably bent and the turret deranged. Still, it wasn’t burning, so he thought it safe enough to climb aboard.

  The crew seemed most sincerely dead, the driver having had his head more or less pulverized by the blast, while the tank commander, probably fighting unbuttoned, as was Sachsen doctrine, simply didn’t have a head anymore.

  Must have blown it clean off. Well. At least it was quick.

  The interesting one was the gunner. He had had the tank’s coaxial machine gun blown out of its cradle and driven, butt-first, through his chest. The gunner, though dead, had his hands rigidly fixed to the machine gun, indicating that he, unfortunately, had not been as lucky as his chief.

  Poor bastard.

  Assuming the loader hadn’t had any better chance than the other three crew members, Sancho Panzer turned to jump off the tank and continue to follow the attack as closely as he could without actually getting in the way. And then he heard a low moan, followed by a few words that sounded vaguely familiar.

  Taking a flashlight from his combat harness, Brown shone it down into the tank, scanning for the loader. He found the man, prone on the floor amidst some of the detritus of war, as found in a wrecked tank. There was another moan and then an arm arose and waved as if searching for something by feel.

  “Son, relax. I’ll try to get you some aid.”

  Standing up on the tank’s hull, Brown cupped his hands and shouted, “Get me a medical team over here! Now!”

  Not all that far from Brown, riding his personal Ocelot and followed by a representative crew from the staff, Carrera paralleled the westernmost of the two highways, keeping low in the valleys and draws between the mostly scoured of life hills.

  Brown had five radios in his command vehicle; Carrera had nine, all squawking more or less continuously. It was something one learned, over time, the ability to have all that chatter going on and still be able to key on what was important: “India Three Five . . . Past Phase Line One . . . Romeo Two Seven . . . break . . . Resistance continuing, intermediate objective two . . . request . . . never mind, lower reports they’ve broken in and the enemy are folding . . . Duck, this is Hussar Six, weapons free, weapons free . . . all ours are down . . .”

  That last caused Carrera to duck down into the passenger compartment and break into the conversation. “Define ‘down.’”

  “Just refueling, Duque,” answered Miguel Lanza. “So far enemy air has not been able to cut the runways again so we’re bringing them in to refuel and rearm.”

  “Roger, in broad terms, what have the Sixteenth’s losses been like?”

  Lanza hesitated a moment, before answering, “Really bad, above forty percent lost or damaged enough to need repair, though the exchange rate has been better than we expected.”

  “Roger, keep me posted.”

  “Wilco.”

  When Carrera re-emerged into the sunlight, the first thing he saw was a large column of disarmed, dirty, shuffling men in foreign uniforms. They were being guarded, albeit a bit loosely, by a mix of Balboan support troops and walking wounded. He made a guess that there were about two thousand of them.

  “Pull over there, Jamey,” he told Soult through the intercom.

  “The prisoners?” Soult asked.

  “That’s what I suppose they are.”

  As the Ocelot moved closer, more detail could be made out. There were men blinded and without bandages being led by the hand by men limping on blood-oozing legs. Others were carried on stretchers, a few with a mix of Taurans and Balboans straining on the poles or straps.

  Still, for all the wounded, most of the Taurans, Balboans too, for that matter, looked simply exhausted, helpless, hopeless, and defeated.

  Reaching down to flip the switch on the intercom system to talk to his staff, Carrera keyed his boom mike and said, “I want three things. I want the medical brigade to start displacing forward along the highways as quickly as possible. Tell them to be prepared for a humanitarian crisis like they’ve never seen. Second, have the MPs call for volunteers from the Tauran POW collection at Herrera International for volunteer stretcher bearers and for any medical personnel, generally. Have the MPs explain the situation and get the Taurans’ parole. The MPs can also draw from any assets they can pin down for trucks. Thirdly, get the news and diplomatic people—yes, I know diplomacy isn’t your job. So?—to start transmitting to the Taurans that we are going to be evacuating their prisoners, in fairly ridiculous numbers, a couple of hundred meters to either side of the highways. Bombing and loss to their own is on them. Carrera, out.”

  Switching the mike to pure intercom, he told Soult, “Jamey, pull us right up in front of that column and turn as if to bar the way.”

  “Roger.”

  The column recoiled as Soult pulled a flashy turn directly in front of it. Without being told, one way or the other, he dropped the ramp so Carrera could exit like a gentleman in front of these foreigners. This Carrera did, pulling off and tossing his helmet on the side bench, then running his hand through sweaty hair.

  “Does anyone speak English or Spanish?” he asked aloud. “German, maybe?”

  “We are Sachsens, yes?” replied one of the lead men in the prisoner column, a tall and slender sort, with blue eyes and brown hair. He had an accent though he spoke in English. “Well, mostly Sachsens. There are a couple of hundred each Dacians and Gauls.”

  “Who’s senior?” Carrera asked.

  “Among the healthy?” asked Sachsen, “I am. Oberst Kausch, sir.”

  “Very good, Kausch. I’ll give the chief of your guards instructions in Spanish. Here’s what I want. Have your medical people triage those who will probably die if they move much further. They stay here. Leave with them enough medical and non-medical personnel to keep as many of them alive as possible. You can leave your less . . . what’s that term? The people you expect to . . . oh, that’s it . . . leave your less expectant non-walking wounded here, too. The rest move forward to Herrera Airport.”

  Kausch nodded his understanding but then added, “Sir, we haven’t had any . . .”

  “Food and water since the bombardment started? I’m sure. I’ll issue the orders.” He thought on that briefly, then asked, “Will there be a problem if the rations include a decent increment of high-proof rum?”

  Kausch, very briefly, looked as if he could cry. “God, no, sir. I could use a drink. We all could.”

  “Standard legionary, then,” Carrera said. “It might be a little off to you but it’s all wholesome fuel. And booze. Oh, and cigarettes.”

  “Cigarettes? Cigarettes? Dear God, there’s an army that still understands that soldiers are only human and so still issues cigarettes?”

  “Well,” Carrera replied, “less than a pack per man per day. Most of my soldiers don’t smoke, actually.”

  The Sachsen asked, “Your soldiers, sir?”

  “Oh,” Carrera asked, shamefacedly, “didn’t I introduce myself? I’m Carrera.”

  “Ah,” Kausch said. “Then, sir, there’s something, someone, you ought to see, a little further back in the column.”

  Janier, lying on a stretcher on the ground, was a ghastly pale. The Gaul was obviously in tremendous pain, so much so he could barely speak and with his eyelids scrunched together.

  “Can’t you give him something?” Carrera asked Kausch.

  “He refused and said to give it, if we had it, to the men.”

  Janier forced his eyes open. “Is that you, Patricio? I keep seeing and hearing things that are not there.”

  Carrera took one knee by the stretcher. “It’s me, Bertrand. To prove it, didn’t that Scot captain you had for an aide de camp have a disconcertingly fine rack?”

  The tiniest trace of a smile c
ame to the Gaul’s lips. “She did, didn’t she?” The Gaul was interrupted by a vicious bout of coughing, which can’t have done any good to his roughly set broken legs. “I think maybe a little pneumonia coming on. Tell me, Patricio, how bad is it?”

  “Well, your legs look . . .”

  “No, not me! My army. How fares my army?”

  “Crushed,” Carrera said. “There’s no other word. I’d tell you I’m sorry but, of course, I am really not. The legions are advancing essentially as quickly as the terrain allows. You’ve been almost split in two at the town of Magdalena. Linkup between my Fourth Corps and First Corps will happen within a few hours. The Anglians, what there is of them, are falling back to the east through the jungle, and away from Fort Tecumseh. We are nipping around the edges of Puerto Lindo. Your infantry formations—no shame to them, mine would not have withstood that barrage any better—are surrendering en masse. And a lot of them are running in sheer panic, thinking they’ve taken a massive dose of radiation from nuclear weapons.”

  “Not nuclear?” Janier asked.

  “No, just big FAEs. Really big.”

  “So, it really is over then?” Janier asked. “Your word of honor?”

  “It’s over, here. I still have to round up the Anglians and drive the Zhong into the sea, but there isn’t much left of the Tauran Expeditionary Force.”

  “Can you get me to a radio or maybe a radio to me?”

  “Yes, surely, but why?”

  “I wish to order my forces to surrender.”

  Northeast of Puerto Lindo

  The artillery fire had dwindled to almost nothing. This did not, however, mean there was any shortage of ear-splitting booms. Nearby, for one thing, Sancho Panzer was privileged to see something he wasn’t sure had ever happened before.