Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  Carrera looked in the direction of Cerro Mina and sneered, saying, “To the south of here, the Taurans are rolling out. They think they’re better men than we are. They think we’re afraid to meet them, man to man and tank to tank.

  “I want you to give them a very rude awakening. Meet them. Pin them. Trap them. Destroy them. Let none escape. Prove to them that this is our land, our country, our sacred soil and sacred trust, and that none may profane it except at the cost of their lives.

  “Now don’t cheer. And no pipes until you make contact. No need letting the enemy know what’s coming for them. Just go do your duty. And God go with you.”

  Carrera then trotted off, calling, “Legate, take charge of your cohort and move them to battle.”

  * * *

  “I’m a little surprised,” said Cruz to Signifer Porras. “He normally hates speeches and doesn’t do a great job with them. But that one wasn’t bad.”

  Porras nodded. “I know what you mean. But never mind that. The legate’s making the signal to get the boys moving. We’d better do our parts.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A quiver in Porras’s voice caused Cruz to study the young officer’s face. The boy looked grim and, under the fixed lights outside the headquarters, visibly pale.

  “Nervous, sir?” the sergeant major asked.

  “Not for myself, Sergeant Major, and that’s the truth.”

  “I believe you, sir.” For the most part, Cruz did believe the boy.

  Porras continued, “I’m just afraid of letting the men down. Or rather, I’m afraid of being afraid of letting the men down.”

  “Well, duh, sir,” the sergeant major said. “That’s all any good soldier worries about. But don’t you worry much; you’re going to be all right, sir, and you’re going to do just fine. We have a good group. You won’t really even have to do much.”

  “‘But the simplest things are very difficult,’” Porras quoted from a book both he and the sergeant major had studied.

  “Tsk, sir. Pulling a Clausewitz on me? For shame. But even so, I understand, sir. Trust me, you’ll do fine. There’s nothing worse going to happen than what you did in Cazador School.”

  “Intellectually,” said the signifer, “I know that. Emotionally? I’m not convinced.”

  The conversation was cut off as the platoon leader for one of the infantry platoons, Senior Centurion Figueroa, motioned to request that the two come to his side.

  Avenida Ascanio Arosemena, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Bored Gallic dragoons—calld mechanized infantrymen in other armies—stood around their fighting vehicles casually and unworriedly. Some of the dragoons smoked cigarettes. Others slept inside the cramped vehicles, their bodies twisted unnaturally to fit as well as possible against or around the ARE-12Ps’ various sharp and unyielding projections. Turret crews scanned their sectors—when they did—idly, without interest.

  “Why the hell did they have to start this shit again?” asked a nineteen-year-old private of no one in particular. “I had a date with a really hot local girl. Who knows when I’ll get a chance to see her again?”

  Some of the men remounted the tracks as a heavy rain began to fall, ignoring the protests and curses of the men inside who were rudely awakened. Others just stood, bored, in the rain. Balboa was so warm that rain was no discomfort.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.

  —Stonewall Jackson

  Old Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The neighborhood, which also held Second Corps Headquarters, had once been an eclectic mix of ritzy, once ritzy but now run down, and outright stinking slum. The first two still existed, though ritzy had taken a lead on run-down. More important, for more people, most of the slum had been cleared, and nearly all of the people who’d made it such an unpleasant place to live were now dead and, generally speaking, buried in unmarked graves or dissolved in lime. A healthy population of trixies, too, had been encouraged to settle, which had done for most, if not all, of the former antaniae problem. And the new sewer system the legion had put it hadn’t hurt matters any.

  There’d also been a fair amount of demolition and rebuilding. Oddly, some of the rebuilding had been to standards that nobody but the legions really understood.

  * * *

  Cruz, Porras, and the platoon leader, Senior Centurion Figueroa, arrived at the safe house where the regulars, reservists and militia of the platoon had gathered. Although its authorized strength was forty-eight, at eighty-one percent present for duty, the platoon had only forty men of its own. It was, however, reinforced with two medics, an engineer squad, a forward observer team, and half the fully mobilized cohort’s antitank platoon. The strength present was seventy-seven, which made the safe house cum ammunition cache a very tight fit. Fortunately, that number included Porras, Cruz, and an RTO, a radio telephone operator, from the cohort signal platoon.

  Figueroa quickly briefed the men. They listened, hoping that their mission had been called off. When told that it was going forward, they stopped paying attention for a moment, lost in individual thoughts. Most of which corresponded roughly to, Oh, fuck.

  No matter, they had been given the essentials of the plan long ago. It was just luck that fate had chosen that particular Tauran unit to restart the harassment. Damned bad luck.

  A Balboan trooper muttered, “Christ, why us?”

  The boy thought his question had been too low to hear, but Cruz had heard it. “Because it’s our job, boy, and no one else’s,” he answered.

  Consulting his watch, Figueroa gave the order to move out. Silently, columns of men padded from the safe house and began to move up the tiny back streets and alleys of one of Ciudad Balboa’s less desirable neighborhoods.

  The legionaries were stripped down for fighting—no rucksacks, just weapons, armor, ammunition, and a single meal per man. Some of the soldiers looked at where areas that were burned out in the Federated States invasion, decades before, had been rebuilt. Some had participated in the rebuilding. To the west, unheard and unnoticed amidst the rain, other columns moved forward to Avenida de la Santa Maria.

  Leading from the front—only he, Porras, and Cruz had ever followed this route—Figueroa opened a door and moved through the hallway of an apartment building. The platoon emerged from the hallway into a fenced yard. Passing through an unlatched gate, they walked up a very dark and narrow alley between two buildings. In the alley they were almost completely sheltered from the rain and partially sheltered from its sound. From overhead came the sound of a serious domestic quarrel. A slap was followed by a woman’s cry. Hands tightened on rifles, but there was more important work to be done this morning.

  Halting the platoon inside yet another fenced-in area, the platoon leader spoke into his radio. “Bloodhound,” he said. In position and awaiting orders. The men waited in the rain. They heard the distinctive sound of cars passing by a few feet away on the wet pavement of Avenida Ascanio Arosemena, near where it joined Avenida de la Santa Maria.

  The answering call came back. “Wait, Out.” Other platoons were still moving into position, onto the roofs and into buildings opposite the Tauran company across the broad avenue. Other leaders’ and commanders’ voices broke radio silence to inform headquarters they were ready. At length the encrypted radio came to life again. It was the cohort commander’s voice.

  “To all officers, centurions and men of the Second Cohort, Second Tercio. This is Velasquez. Begin Phase Two…and God bless you on this day. Velasquez…out.”

  Headquarters, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Oh, shit, thought Campbell as she replaced the phone’s receiver in its cradle. Then she said it, loud enough for Hendryksen to hear, “Oh, shit.”

  “What is it?” asked Hendryksen.

  “The radio intercept people…there is a huge surge in Balboan radio traffic. T
hey say they’ve never seen anything like it before.… It’s coming from everywhere. Mostly encrypted and the little that isn’t sounds worrisome, too.”

  “Where are we doing a Mosquito?” he asked. “Is it just down on Avenida de la Santa Maria?”

  “That’s all I know about,” she replied.

  “Then the Balboans are seriously overreacting,” said the sergeant major.

  “That or they intend to drive us into the sea.”

  “Shall we?” he asked.

  “Maybe we’d better,” she answered. “I’ll go get our weapons. You draw the vehicle.”

  “We’d better hurry,” said Hendryksen.

  Old Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova

  “That’s our cue,” announced the platoon leader. “Let’s go.”

  Getting to his belly, the platoon leader began to lead his men in a long crawl across the potentially deadly wide open space of the street. A half mile or so to the east and west small teams of military police stopped traffic on the otherwise busy avenue. It wouldn’t do to have a too fast driven car take out half of a squad. Cars quickly built up all the way to the Bridge of the Columbias. With luck, Figueroa’s platoon would be across before the Taurans got the message.

  It was fortunate that the police had long since taken to blocking off the sites of Mosquitoes, in the interests of preventing the kind of accident normal when civilian cars and heavy armored vehicles try to use the same road.

  Unseen by anyone, a lone man in civilian attire made a tape of the scene with a video camera. He was so engrossed with the ARE-12Ps that he didn’t notice the legionary infantry crawling twenty feet below his window.

  The Tunnel, Cerro Mina, Balboa, Terra Nova

  As often as not, during Mosquitoes and Green Monsoons, Janier slept in his office in the Tunnel. Since this was the first one in a while, he especially wanted to be there.

  Malcoeur, Janier’s aide de camp, shook the general awake. The aide was already in uniform. “Sir, we have indicators that the legion is calling up their reservists and militia.”

  Groggily, Janier sat up, then spent a few moments rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Funny,” he said, “they’ve never called up the militia before. How many? Who?”

  “It looks like everybody, General. Sir, they’ve even got about eight Mosaic fighters in the air. Eight the air element have detected anyway. Could be more.”

  “Call C-3. Alert all three brigades…and the battalion going through the Jungle School.” Janier considered a moment. “And the Air Force.”

  Alert them, yes, we’ll alert them all. But I hope my opposite number understands the concept of human sacrifice.

  Parade Field, Fuerte Guerrero, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Nine drivers in three groups turned their steering wheels violently, chewing up the neatly manicured turf. Behind the trucks, towed 85mm artillery pieces swung to point to the southwest. The trucks stopped suddenly, almost as a single man, then began disgorging seven or eight men each. Some of the gunners frantically disengaged the guns’ towing pintles while others turned elevation cranks. Gunners slid sights into slots, then looked through the lenses.

  “Aiming point this instrument,” announced one soldier standing behind a tripod with an optical device mounted atop it. Gunners swiveled their sights and announced, one after the other, “Aiming point identified!”

  Behind each group of three guns another truck pulled up. From it artillerymen began running wire to the guns, while the fire direction center personnel unzipped plotting boards and prepared their game of charts and darts. Two other trucks began rolling from the flanks inward, dropping off loads of 85mm ammunition at each position.

  A few towed antiaircraft guns took up positions to defend the artillery pieces. A column of four Ocelots, three Puma tanks, and six SPATHA tank destroyers rolled up the street. This was Third Cohort’s slice of tercio and legion armor. Eight trucks carrying six heavy mortars and their Fire Direction Centers followed the armor. A bronze statue of Belisario Carrera stood calmly by. The tank commanders, standing in their hatches, saluted the statue as they passed.

  Behind the guns, to the left of the tanks, the rest of the tercio’s men, the stragglers who got the word late, who lived farther out, who were stuck on the wrong side of the bridge—and twelve of those landed by the yacht club on a commandeered boat—or who had had to struggle with their fears, before overcoming those fears, were reporting in.

  Avenida Ascanio Arosemena, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova

  “Sergeant!” exclaimed the Gallic gunner into his microphone. “Sergeant! I have movement in the street.”

  Suddenly jerked to alertness, the gunner traversed his turret to sweep his sight over the prone figures crawling through the night. The movement of the vehicle’s 25mm cannon did not go unnoticed by the Balboans. One of them, who didn’t bother to announce why, simply took the initiative. Raising himself to a kneeling position, bringing an RGL to his shoulder, he took aim.

  The Gallic gunner was just that little bit faster. Reacting to the threat, he made a slight aiming adjustment and pressed the firing button for his coaxial machine gun and, in his fear, held it for nearly two seconds.

  As half a dozen bullets, of the twenty-one launched, tore through his body, the Balboan screamed and threw his arms to the sky. The finger on the trigger of the antitank weapon twitched enough to fire it. The RGL’s rocket motor burned almost straight down, gouging a dent in the street, as the warhead shot upward, uselessly.

  The gunner’s body twisted back to fall in the street. Blood welled from his wounds and ran across the bow of the asphalt into the gutter. The single long burst also hit two other men, one fatally. The wounded soldier writhed in anguish, crying aloud for his mother…for a medic…for any help at all. One of the platoon’s medics pushed himself to his feet and ran to the wounded soldier’s side, aid bag slapping at his back. Unable to tell the difference between a medic and a machine gunner, even with a thermal sight, the Gaul fired again, with another too long burst. His fire nearly cut the medic in two.

  Almost as quickly as the Gaul had let loose with his second burst, the opposite side of the street erupted in fire. An RGL flashed on a rooftop, its missile lancing down to strike the vehicle on the glacis. The hot jet of gas and molten metal burned through the armor, then melted the driver’s face as it slashed into his brain. The driver died instantly, without even the chance to scream. His death immobilized his vehicle until his body could be removed. A few Taurans, caught outside their armored protection, were cut down by rifle and machine gun fire, much of it coming from the Cerro Mina Inn—a notorious prostitute bar, much favored by the staff of the Tunnel for the odd afternoon quickie. Other Taurans took whatever cover was available, remounting the tracks if possible.

  The on-line ARE-12Ps returned fire, knocking chunks from the walls, shattering windows, and in the process killing some of the Balboans. Still, they could not suppress everyone engaging them. Lone infantrymen, carrying RGLs, popped from cover to fire at the tracked vehicles. Sometimes they hit; mostly—too frightened to aim properly—they missed. Still, with each effective hit on a Gallic infantry fighting vehicle the amount of fire the Balboans had to brave decreased. Correspondingly, the amount of fire directed against the Taurans increased. It also grew more effective.

  The Tauran company commander, Captain Bruguière, frantically worked his radio. What had happened, he wanted to know. Who had shot first? Why? Who was hit? His platoon leaders, such as were still unhurt, passed what information they could. In the surprise and confusion, this was not usually much.

  * * *

  The immobilized ARE-12P that had first opened fire swept its machine gun over the prone figures caught in the street. A half dozen were hit, including the Balboan platoon leader, Figueroa. On the far side another RGL gunner took aim and fired. The rocket propelled grenade sailed across the street, exploding against the turret. A thin stream of superheated gas and metal burned through the light armor. The gunner and squad leade
r were killed instantly. The infantry, sitting in the compartment below the turret, were stunned by the sudden overpressure, eardrums bursting. Outside, two guided antitank missiles exploded in sympathetic detonation. A third RGL hit, then a fourth. The vehicle began to burn. Over the flames screams could be heard, as if from a great distance, as some of the men in the back began to burn alive.

  Some dragoons, even some whose uniforms had caught fire, tried to abandon their vehicle. However, when they opened the small combat door and tried to leave, a machine gunner who had taken position on the hill behind opened up on them. Bullets ricocheted menacingly off the door, but couldn’t prevent the men from getting to the ground and behind the cover of the road wheel.

  They had just barely escaped the track but could not leave the area. Pinned to the protection still afforded by the hulk, they waited for either the Balboans to cease fire, or be destroyed…or for the flames to set off the internally carried ammunition. They were too badly shocked and stunned to even think about returning the fire.

  Suddenly one of the Taurans clutched at his throat and began to convulse. His feet began to beat a tattoo on the asphalt as he began to die in misery.

  “What happened?” asked one of the dragoons of his corporal.

  “He’d probably been inhaling when one of the enemy weapons hit,” said the corporal, as he pulled a pen from his pocket. He removed the ink cartridge, leaving just a clear plastic tube. Speaking as he worked, he said, “The hot gas entered and seared his throat. He might not even have noticed right away.” The corporal used his fingers to find the spot on the front of the man’s throat, then he used the point of his bayonet to cut that open. He continued talking, “Then the damaged tissue swelled up to the point of cutting off his airway. But…” the corporal inserted the tube through the slice he’d made. Instantly, the thing whistled as the formerly strangling trooper sucked in air at a furious rate.