by Tom Kratman
Still the Tauran fire continued. In action already and with a deadlier action fast approaching, the Taurans were far too keyed up to cease fire, except to change magazines. Finally, with flames from the bus beginning to rise dangerously, the Taurans withdrew a short distance to a safe position. The footsteps were followed for several minutes by a lone Balboan’s screaming. The cries didn’t stop until the bus blew up.
The Tunnel, Cerro Mina, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa Terra Nova
De Villepin swore as the report of the “fight” at Brooking’s back gate came in over the radio. Then, thinking how little good a mere fifteen minutes’ warning was likely to do the legion, he relaxed, shrugging the incident off as a mere matter of timing.
* * *
In the Operations Room, in an even deeper part of the Tunnel under the hill, the chief of staff paced nervously from wall to wall. While he paced, staff officers and noncoms posted the latest reports of the troop movements that were expected to catch the legion largely unmobilized and unprepared for the invasion. Radios crackled with reports of helicopter lifts taking off, flights of medium and heavy cargo aircraft reaching checkpoints in the air or landing at Tauran Union controlled air fields, armored vehicle convoys reaching their release points and lines of departure. At this point in the Tauran Union’s invasion of Balboa the chief had little to do but fret. The intricate planning had been done months and years before. Every known legionary mobilization point and headquarters had been assigned a force adequate to either overrun it or, at least, keep it from mobilizing before an adequate force could descend to take it out. The chief of staff, Moncey, stopped pacing from time to time to look over the chart that tracked the movement of troops to their assault positions. Of the ninety-seven legionary targets listed for action by Tauran forces at H Hour, each a distinct operation in the plan, virtually all were moving on schedule. None were off schedule by more than a few minutes.
The chief strode to the main operations map and asked to be briefed.
“Sir,” said the watch officer, a rather bored seeming Sachsen Oberst, “the friendly situation is as follows: the fighters are about two minutes out from their main targets at Lago Sombrero and Herrera Airport. Those are eight sorties each of fighter-attack aircraft plus the usual support. Other, smaller, packages are aimed at the following legionary dispersal sites.” The Oberst’s pointer tapped a number of locations about the large, horizontally laid, map.
“The Anglian Paras are in the air less than eighty kilometers miles from Lago Sombrero, south of it. The Gallic Parachute brigade is closing on Herrera, also from the south. The Sachsen Panzer Battalion is moving up the InterColumbian highway toward Nuevo Arraijan. They should reach the town in about twelve or fourteen minutes. They’ll cross the border in two. The highway into Cristobal has already been cut. The Four Hundred and Tenth Infantry and Four Hundred Seventeenth are in their positions to take out the Castilian Battalion plus the legionary tercios at Fort Melia and Lone Palm. The jungle school is guarding the locks and dam on the Shimmering Sea side already. The Four Twentieth Dragoon, plus one company of Sachsen Panzers, are in their assembly areas ready to roll down on the legion’s Second Corps headquarters. The Thirty-fifth Commandos are already seventy percent on the ground around Fort Guerrero and their other jump off points…”
The Sachsen continued for some time in that vein. Eventually, the chief was satisfied. From the operations room, he strode to the C-1/C-4 sections—Combined Admin and Combined Logistics. From the latter’s charts, all supply categories looked adequate.
The J-1’s wall charts held the chief’s eyes for some time, especially the anticipated casualty chart. To the chief, four hundred and seventy-five to five hundred and fifty dead—most of whom were going to be Gauls—seemed a very high price to pay.
Balboa Railroad, Isla Repressa, Balboa, Terra Nova
Railroads, Pililak discovered, have their crossbeams set the distance apart they are not for any reasons of strength, or economy, or anything remotely like that. Oh, no; they’re set the distance apart they are because that distance is shrewdly calculated to make it as painful as possible for a human being to walk on them. Bastards. No good rotten motherfuckers. Stinking shits. Why, why, WHY did you old time railroad builders have to make the things just that far apart? They make everything hurt. You didn’t even know me; why did you hate me already?
The rain that had been beating down on the girl let up momentarily. She didn’t expect the respite to last, of course. In the last few days since crossing the water and nearly being killed she’d seen more rain that she had in her entire life back home in Pashtia.
How do the people here stand it? she wondered. That and the heat…always the heat…always the rain…they must be very fierce. But of course they are or my lord would not have chosen one of them to be his mother.
And what’s more…
The girl stopped her wretchedly uncomfortable walking on the hateful tracks. There was something, a motor sound, off to her left, in the water, where it ought not be. And it was more than one. She concentrated hard to separate out the motor sounds and finally decided, Four of them. Big. Powerful. But not straining hard…at least as far as I can tell.
She was almost at the point where the train tracks left the edge of the island. She didn’t know if the boats—They must be boats—could pass under the tracks. If not, they were going to land on her island and probably capture her. That wicked, evil tyrant whom my lord calls “Father.” Even here he sends his hounds to pursue me and keep me from my duty. I must hide. Maybe they’ll miss me.
Trawler Pericles, Puerto de Balboa, Terra Nova
TUSF-B made a habit of changing the frequency hopping codes of its radios precisely at midnight. Being an orderly people, much given to routine, this day was to be no different. In truth, the Taurans had much reason on their side. Every change to radio frequencies or codes meant a period of confusion and delay while every station—and TUSF-B as a whole had literally thousands of stations—reestablished contact with its higher headquarters and supporting units. Had it not been for a persistent nagging feeling that the legion just might have some electronic warfare capability, the Taurans would probably have made the change much earlier than the usual midnight switch.
Still, the trawler Pericles—not at sea but gaining the protection of being in port, one among dozens—was not one’s average, everyday catcher of fish. Despite appearances, the Pericles was an electronic warfare vessel. Its job, and that of its mixed Balboan and Volgan crew, was to capture the codes used by TUSF-B’s radios, then interfere with that radio traffic. It was equipped with the best radio intercept and decoding capability available from Volgan arsenals.
Long before midnight, the Pericles had acquired a complete frequency hopping code for the TUSF-B. That old code became obsolete exactly at midnight when every unit in TUSF-B changed to the new.
Of course older transmissions were not worthless. The Pericles had a whole library of voice tapes from almost every important sender in TUSF-B, as well as simple radio operators.
None of that would be of any use until today’s code was broken.
Fortunately, in the rush to reestablish communications after the daily changeover, TUSF-B was providing a great rush of data for the Pericles’ decoders.
Fire Base Eagle, Imperial Base Camp, Balboa, Terra Nova
There was none of the normal semi-confused hustle and bustle around the guns. The firing platoons and batteries were already and long-since laid on their primary targets. Fuses were set; charges cut. Each gun was loaded with the first of some hundreds of preplanned shells it would soon begin firing at Carrera’s legions.
That there was no “hustle and bustle” did not mean that the crews were bored; far from it. Each gunner was, understandably enough, scared silly. They were confident, of course, that their side would prevail. Their confidence in personal survival was rather less absolute.
The gun positions were well dug in for towed artillery pieces. A thick berm�
�a wall of earth—surrounded each gun, the berm being substantially cut only for the entrance to the position. Also well dug in, better, in fact, was a headquarters to which each battery of guns reported. At those headquarters, which were also the fire direction centers, noncoms and officers scanned their watches as the minutes and seconds ticked down. The crews around the guns likewise kept track, and also fidgeted continuously with bad cases of nerves. The gun chiefs kept field telephones glued to their ears, waiting…waiting…waiting…
“Fire!”
Herrera International Airport, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
A frantic warning sounded in the ears of the Mosaic-D pilots waiting on the airstrip. Radar had picked up incoming hostile aircraft. The pilots quickly engaged their engines to taxi down the runway. They made it less than a quarter of the distance before one of the two planes blossomed into a fireball in the night. The other pilot scarcely had time to utter a short prayer before he too was blown into the next kingdom.
Two Tauran fighters then spent several minutes bombing likely targets. They couldn’t cut the runway, because the plans required capturing the runway intact to facilitate further reinforcement. With flames and smoke rising behind them, weapons exhausted, the Tauran planes turned toward home. The pilots’ radios chattered with reports of other missions successfully completed all over the country, many of which did include cutting airfields. Balboa’s tiny air force was out of the picture for the time being.
Fort Melia, Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova
The Shimmering Sea side of the Transitway Area, the part near Cristobal, Balboa, was just a side show to the main effort taking place on the Mar Furioso side. While thousands of paratroopers descended upon the presumably sleeping Balboans and hundreds of aircraft and helicopters ferried and dropped other troops, while scores of combat aircraft from four huge nuclear carriers and scores more from bases in the Tauran Union and Santa Josefina bombed and strafed legion installations, the job of taking out the cadres of the tercios of Jimenez’s Fourth Corps, or most of it, fell upon the men of the Fourteenth Anglian and Four Hundred and Seventeenth Gallic Infantries, Thirty-seventh Gallic Commando, the Nine-forty-fifth Tuscan Military Police, a battalion of Tuscan light guns based at Fort Tecumseh, the cadres of Tecumseh’s jungle school, and a company of Sachsen engineers flown in the day before. Little helicopter, and no air support, were made available to this purely secondary operation. Only one company of landing craft, the Nine-seventy-first Medium Boat, from Cimbria, some trucks, and a couple of dozen helicopters had been allocated to Task Force Shimmering Sea for the upcoming attack.
The units on the Shimmering Sea side, for all they were treated as bastard stepchildren, still had one huge, and not unrelated advantage. While everyone on the Mar Furioso side had had to rehearse every move under the watchful eyes of the TUSF-B staff, Task Force Shimmering Sea had been able to rehearse one approach, while planning something completely different.
Thus, while this battalion had repeatedly demonstrated before that it would come over land, most of the battalion was actually currently loading landing craft. The rest were boarding helicopters. This was, in fact, the only area of general surprise anyone on the Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa had managed to spring on the Balboans. This was also probably not the first time in human history that a military organization had gained a distinct advantage because of its distance from headquarters. Moreover, the one battalion due to fly in from the Mar Furioso side had never at all rehearsed its assault, in conjunction with the Fourteenth Anglian, on Muñoz-Infantes Castilian battalion on Fort Williams, so surprise there could be expected to be fairly complete as well.
The Fourteenth Anglian left one company, “Mad Dog” Alpha, on the Fort Melia Pickup Zone, or PZ, to move by helicopter to assault the Fourth Corps headquarters in Cristobal. The better part of the battalion headquarters company was left to guard the fort. The remainder, two rifle companies, the battalion tactical operations center, or TOC, and the scout, mortar, and antitank platoons had moved, well before H Hour, by foot and truck to the western edge of post, to where the water touched, right behind the dental clinic. There, the landing craft were waiting, which took those companies and platoons to the back side of Fort Williams. Rain, not unexpectedly, began to drive down into the open topped boats once they were out in the lake.
The boats dropped off the troops in waist deep water about a mile from the main trapezoidal barracks for the post. Fifty caliber machine gunners on the boats trained their guns on the shore, just visible through the driving rain. This was the tensest moment. If the Castilians were waiting for them there would be a terrible massacre.
Each man who could see breathed a sigh of relief as the point man from each of the four boats reached shore without incident. The Castilians, like the legion, seemed to have bought the previous month’s demonstrations. Quickly the rest of the men were landed ashore, soaking and bug eaten but otherwise fresh and unbloodied. The Scout Platoon raced along the open area between the locks that faced the Shimmering Sea and the jungle. Behind them, the rest of the battalion, minus Mad Dog, assumed a widely spaced tactical column and began the march to the trapezoid to the south.
A thousand meters in, the jungle fell off, opening up to the post golf course, a relic of days when the FSC had owned this ground. Here the column turned south by southwest, even as Company B turned further out, pushing the pace harder, as well, to bring the two rifle companies’ points on line. Both companies used the railroad tracks they’d just passed over as reference points.
The post seemed nearly deserted. It was, in any case, as quiet as a cemetery. Without opposition, the soldiers of the Fourteenth Infantry glided noiselessly through the tree-darkened and night-shaded streets and alleys, between the bungalows of the family housing area on the edge of the golf course, and right up to the long building that marked the northern limit of the quadrangle. If they made a noise it was covered by the heavy rain pelting them and everything around them.
To the south, on the sharp-sided hill overlooking the fort, lights shone from the Castilian battalion’s headquarters. That was the scout platoon’s target, theirs and the antitank platoon’s. Those two passed west of the post’s octagonal theater, heading almost due south.
There was yet one more way in which the Anglians benefitted from lack of close supervision from higher. Because Castile was part of the Tauran Union, even if their battalion in Balboa was in a state of mutiny, the roles of engagement said that Muñoz-Infantes’ men were to be given the chance to surrender before they could be engaged. The Anglian commander had read those orders, smiled, and said, “Fuck that shit.”
Only two minutes after H hour a green star cluster, the signal to begin the attack, streaked overhead. The clouds glowed green above as red tracers lanced out, smashing windows and walls, and bowling over such Castilians as began pouring out of their barracks.
Clay Dairy Farm, Southwest of Fort Melia, Balboa, Terra Nova
The boys in the warehouses around Clay Farm and at other points on the Shimmering Sea side didn’t, really couldn’t, know if the ruse had been successful. They could only know that they were still alive, and draw what limited conclusions could be inferred from that. So they waited, not knowing if the next few minutes or hours would bring a rain of Tauran bombs to send them to eternity.
One entire maniple, of seven organized by the Academy at Puerto Lindo, was situated in a largish warehouse south of Avenida Scott. Inside that warehouse was a small office set aside for the commander of the Academy, Legate Chapayev. The phone in that warehouse rang, causing every cadet in the warehouse to tense at the sound. No one would call such a place at this hour unless it was to call them to action or send them back to school. However much they may have hoped, none believed they would be returned to their academy soon. The maniple commanders and academy staff, regular Balboan and Volgan officers, stood up as Chapayev’s door opened.
“We have firm word. The Taurans are on the move all over the country. Ma
ny more are flying in from the Tauran Union. Based on flight times they are expected to hit within fifteen to twenty minutes. The plan is unchanged. While they are hitting Fourth Corps, we march to Melia and Lone Palm and kick them in the ass. Only then, when they’re reeling from the loss of their base, do we march to relieve Fourth Corps in Cristobal and its subordinate units. Fourth Maniple—”
Chapayev stopped speaking as the phone rang again. Not having bothered to close his office door, his voice reverberated off of the walls of the warehouse—“What? Fuck! By boat? Shit… All right…we’ll handle it. Yes, Suegro, I won’t let you down or Maria wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace for the rest of my life. Just hang on, it’s a longer march. But we’ll be there as soon as possible.”
However he’d sounded in semi-private, when he stepped out of the office Chapayev looked the very soul of calm. His eyes hunted for his Fourth Maniple commander. Seeing him, Chapayev said, “Koniev?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Taurans are hitting the Castilians at Fort Williams. It’s odd, since they didn’t rehearse that. No matter. The tanks and Ocelots are yours and your maniple’s. Load up and fight your way to Williams, relieve the Castilians under attack there. Once they are relieved put yourself under the command of Colonel Muñoz-Infantes. He will have further orders by then. I hope.
“Everybody, ready to march within ten minutes. Mortar and rocket launcher batteries can unmask now. Air defense can unmask now, weapons free, engage anything that flies and is in range. Tanks and Ocelots can start engines now. Recon maniple move out as soon as you’re ready. You had better already be ready. Report when your tail is out of the buildings. Now, all of you, go!”
