Come and Take Them-eARC

by Tom Kratman

  On reaching the building wall, a cadet engineer pulled the igniter on a ten kilogram satchel charge. He waited for the fuse to burn nearly to the blasting cap. Then, using the charge’s strap for leverage, the cadet hurled it through a window. Shouting and the sound of people scrambling to get through a narrow passage followed. The explosion blew debris from the window.

  A two-second burst of jellied gasoline from a flamethrower, followed by another, set the interior of the room on fire. A man screamed heartrendingly from inside.

  The engineer squad moved on to the next window. Taking a chance that whoever might be occupying that room was stunned by the satchel charge’s blast, Cordoba tossed a grenade through the window. His boys carried few satchel charges. Flame followed the grenade. The cadet engineers moved on.

  Before the cadets reached the next window, a hand grenade fell on the ground to their front. Most of the boys hit the ground. Cordoba fell only to one knee and bent his head over to shield it with his helmet. The explosion sent serrated wire through his thigh and shin. He gasped with the tearing pain.

  Even as he gasped, Cordoba popped back up in bare time to fire a full magazine at the shadow of a man—a Para who tried to follow up the grenade with rifle fire. Blood from a roughly torn leg dripped to the ground at Cordoba’s feet. Damn, they catch on quick, he thought through the red agony.

  Grabbing one of his three flamethrower men by his combat harness, Cordoba pulled him into position and ordered, “Bounce it off the inside of the window into the room. Give ’em three seconds of it.” The bright tongue lanced out, drawing agonized screams from inside the building. The screams went on and on. Arm thrown over the shoulder of one of his men, Cordoba shouted the others into further action as he was carried to the rear.

  A kilometer to Cordoba’s north, the first truck and car loads of reservists were arriving at Lago Sombrero.

  Third Corps Headquarters, near Herrera Airport, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In the Operations Center, located in the basement of the headquarters building, telephone operators received reports of the assembly and mobilization status of the Corps’ two infantry legions, one infantry brigade, one combat support legion, and one service support brigade.

  Though in theory the corps should have had eight maneuver tercios, in fact there were five, plus one of First Corps’ mechanized tercios, the Fourth, that was based in the City and under the operational control of Third Corps until First should make it across the Bridge of the Columbias.

  There was a substantial artillery park, consisting of Seventy-third and Seventy-sixth Artillery Tercios, with full manpower if all were called up but only about three-eighths a full level of guns and rocket launchers, at fifty-four of the former and eighteen of the latter. There were also tercios of engineers, the Ninety-third, and Air Defense, the One Hundred-third. Their reports were posted on a status chart that hung on the wall next to the operations map.

  Legate Hannibal Padilla read the status of his units while himself being briefed via telephone by the Eighteenth Cadet Tercio, the defenders of the airport. From what he could gather, the Gallic paratroopers were still contained, albeit not easily, inside the airport’s environs. The cadets were also paying a terrible price to hold that outside perimeter. Inside the airhead, in and around the airport terminal, the cadets defending were just barely hanging on. From that spot, however, they were in position to call in devastating indirect fires on any assembly of the Tauran troops that was large enough to have a chance of breaking out.

  An orderly made a change to the chart in grease pencil. The chart on the wall now told Padilla that his Third and Eleventh Infantry Tercios were almost fully assembled and ready to move. The Fourth Mechanized, on the other hand, was under more or less continuous air attack. They were effectively pinned for now. Padilla handed the phone he had been using and took another from one of the staff. This one was tied to the Third Infantry Tercio.

  “Rodriguez? Padilla here. Look, the Fourth Mech’s being shot up pretty badly and the Eleventh won’t get here for a couple of hours. They’ve got too far to move. I’d rather wait until they did get here and have you attack together but I don’t think the cadets can hold that long. What’s your assembly level now?…Eighty-four percent…Good, that’s enough. Move out now and hit the southern tip of the airport, then strike north. You’re the main effort. Everything I can scrape together will go to you. Good luck. Oh, and Rodriguez, we can win this. But you must move fast.” Padilla gave over the phone.

  “Get me the Seventy-third and Seventy-sixth Artillery on the line. Now!”

  Fort Muddville, on the boundary with Brookings Air Force Station, Balboa, Terra Nova

  The rockets and mortars hitting Brookings had stopped firing an hour ago or more. Lieutenant Allison Peters of the Anglian Army didn’t know if that was good or bad. She had been ordered, along with her platoon of military police, to stop their movement on the old dog kennel area behind Brookings and take up a position to guard the boundary. When the order had come her platoon had already stopped moving while she tried to figure out what to do about the fighting she could hear ahead. Her questions about the reasons for the change, as well as about what was going on at Brookings, were cut off. She thought her company commander didn’t tell because he, himself, didn’t know.

  The MP platoon had moved back to the Fort Muddville NCO Club, then north as far as the road would take them. They had then dismounted and moved on foot to their current position. The MPs had been waiting there since before the heavy firing at Brookings had stopped. Already the troops were slackening. To her right she could see a cigarette being lit. Like many second lieutenants, Peters was none too sure of herself. That she was a woman in what was still, unofficially, a man’s world didn’t help her when it came to imposing her will on someone. So she hesitated to order the cigarette put out.

  * * *

  A hundred meters or so from Peters’ position, a light machine gunner of the Nineteenth Cadet Tercio tracked the cigarette in his Volgan-made starlight scope. The cadet hadn’t been able to properly zero his M-26 light machine gun while he had waited in a warehouse by Alfaro’s Tomb, pending the order to attack. A mechanical zero, just putting the sight on a certain setting by manipulating its knobs, had had to do. Still, it had worked well enough so far. When the cadet had fired up the Tauran MP gate at Fort Muddville’s back door in the first part of the attack on Brookings, his tracers, bright in the scope, had showed he was close enough.

  The MP gate had fallen quickly, of course. With it out of the way the tercio had smashed right through the Air Force Security Police gate at the back entrance to Brookings. Then it had been a running fight through and around the buildings of the Air Force Base. The gunner hadn’t had to fight on Brookings, there really hadn’t been all that much resistance. In a mental fog, that was how little he remembered of the attack, he and his platoon had moved northwest until they had come to a high chain link fence. The platoon leader, normally a first classman at the school, had held them up and set up a hasty defense while he tried to get orders for his next mission. The cadets had known in advance about the jamming that would be aimed at the Taurans and hadn’t really been able to come up with a good way to make themselves immune. Without radios it had taken hours for the cohort to pull itself together enough to accomplish the rest of its mission.

  When order had been partly restored the cadets had begun moving toward Fort Muddville. They were as silent as possible. Still, it seemed to the gunner, the Taurans had to have heard them coming. Thus it came as a great surprise to him to discover that the platoon had gotten within range without being detected. To either side of the gunner the cadets of his platoon crept on line to attack.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Allison Peters had just decided to put her foot down to make the irresponsible trooper put out his cigarette when she heard a rifle or machine gun bolt slam home. She stopped and turned toward the sound. As she turned, she realized that it had not come from her platoon’s positio
n. Before her mouth could open to shout a warning to her soldiers a long burst of fire cut through the jungle to her right. Before that burst was half completed it was joined by fire from a line stretching out to either side. Four bullets, beginning at her right thigh and ending at her left shoulder spun Peters around before depositing her, face first, on the ground. She felt no pain at first. Then the pain came, worse than she had ever imagined possible. No return fire came from her platoon. They couldn’t all be dead, she thought. She tried to rise and found she couldn’t. Neither could she make a sound to give an order. She could still hear well enough to realize when the firing stopped and also to hear someone shouting for bayonets. Then came the screaming of dozens of men—no…not men…voices too high…just boys…—and the breaking of trees and bushes. Peters heard more screaming, this from her own people as they were bayoneted. Peters began to cry, without sound. She cried only briefly before a long, narrow bayonet entered her back. Then she died.

  The sixteen year old bayoneter never realized that he had killed a woman.

  Fort Williams, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova

  In two hours of action the Fourteenth Anglian Foot had succeeded in driving the Castilians out of most of their buildings to either take shelter in the few structures remaining in their hands or to melt into the surrounding jungle. Many, being dead or too badly wounded to move, could do neither. The long support building had fallen, as had five of the barracks. The remnants of the cadre still in the fight were mainly holed up in one half of one of the long, two company, billets, and in the three buildings up on the hill overlooking the post.

  A number of buildings could be held by neither side; they’d either been burnt or were still burning. This was no mean feat in the rainy season on the Shimmering Sea side.

  That it was the rainy season had other implications. Koniev’s maniple of heavies had started off making good progress toward Williams. Unfortunately, the roads were narrow, the jungle thick, and the ground watery. Just a mile or so past the town of Magdalena, they’d run into a—Company? Battalion? I don’t fucking know, sir. All I know is they toasted one tank and two Ocelots, totally blocking the road from drainage ditch to drainage ditch? What’s that, sir? You’re shitting me. Didn’t you ever look at how fucking wide and deep the drainage ditches are on this side?—something Koniev wasn’t willing to pay a higher price to find out what.

  Faced with a nasty case of reality, Chapayev had ordered the armor to leave one platoon to guard the road and then go relieve the legionaries still holding out at Lone Palm. Then he’d ordered his foot cadets to make a quick job of trashing the Tauran rear at Fort Melia and strike out for Williams as soon as they’d finished it. One of the maniple commanders—it was Ham’s commander, Ustinov—suggested instead taking their time with Melia, but cutting one maniple loose to drive on to Williams.

  “Do it,” Chapayev ordered.

  The cadets of the Academy Sergeant Juan Malvegui navigated toward Williams by the light cast by the burning barracks. As far as could be told their movement had not been discovered yet. Guiding on a trail they’d reconnoitered months before, the cadets marched with a long snaking column of infantry on either side of it.

  There were, besides the tanks and Ocelots of Koniev’s maniple, a half dozen in the assault gun platoon of the combat support maniple. Three of these went with Ustinov, though getting the ten-and-a-half-foot-wide vehicles through the narrow gaps between trees was difficult, time consuming, and highly frustrating.

  Behind the command section, wire laid by the communications section led back to the tercio’s start point around Clay Farm.

  The cadets were not precisely quiet in their movement, the light tanks still less so, but over the sound of the small arms fire mixed with the pounding rain, no one fighting at Williams could hear them.

  Ham was up ahead with the point squad. They were separated from the maniple’s main body by about a quarter of a mile. When they broke out into the open Ham spent a few minutes looking, then told the squad leader to sit tight and wait for the rest of the company. Ham then raced back to report to Ustinov. He had to shout to make himself heard over a suddenly redoubled downpour.

  The maniple commander, Ustinov, paused only a moment to consider before he started issuing orders. He held up the Ocelots and the two columns of infantry, then ordered to point of each column to take a ninety-degree turn to form a single straight line perpendicular to the trail. While this movement was being executed, a matter of about twenty minutes, he spoke over the telephone line to his fire support officer, or FSO, back at Clay Farms to confirm that the mortars and rocket launchers were ready to fire on command. He told the FSO to cancel any targets he had preplanned for the approach march, to prepare to put everything onto the fort. He also told the FSO to try to contact the Castilians’ headquarters to do the initial adjusting of fire. Lastly he asked for an updated report from the Muñoz-Infantes.

  By the time Ustinov knew everything that could be known about the situation ahead, the cadets were on line. The Volgan then passed the word down the line to begin to move forward when the artillery fired. After a suitable interval to allow the order to be passed, he ordered the FSO to commence firing.

  From Sabinita Maintenance Facility and Clay Farms a half dozen 122mm multibarreled rocket launchers, along with eight 120mm and twelve 81mm mortars began to throw tons of high explosive at Fort Williams. In just under thirty seconds the first shells landed. Within the next half minute, three hundred and ninety-eighty high explosive shells had rained down upon the fort. This rate of fire continued, with pauses to reload the rocket launchers, for the fifteen minutes it took the cadets to almost reach the open areas of the post. In all, three hundred and eighty-four 122mm rockets, a like number of 120s, and hundreds and hundreds of 81mm shells pounded the Fourteenth Anglian Foot and the Castilians alike. The difference was that, while all of the Castilians were under some degree of shelter, the Taurans were, many of them, caught out in the open. The attack on the buildings still in Castilian hands halted abruptly as men sought shelter from the steel splinters shredding air, wood, and flesh. Fires lifted and shifted onto other targets as the FSO judged an area sufficiently prepared or when the Muñoz-Infantes requested over the telephone that the fires be shifted.

  The first cadet unit to break out of the jungle was the assault gun platoon’s two Ocelots. These moved slowly then, turrets traversing and machine guns chattering as they swept over any Taurans caught in the open.

  More than a few of the Anglians so engaged had been caught by the barrage fired from Clay Farms. These lay on the ground, some dead and some wounded, rapidly being hurled into death by the cadets’ light armor. Taught in the armor club to make full use of terror, the Ocelots ground over dead and wounded with equal impartiality. Other Tauran soldiers, unhurt or, at least, still able to fight, shot at the tanks with whatever they had available. Machine guns from the tanks shot these down almost as quickly as they showed themselves. Cadets emerging from the jungle joined their fires to those of the tanks. The area around the hill below headquarters was soon cleared.

  At first the regular Castilian troops defending from the lower floor of the headquarters didn’t realize that someone had come to rescue them. When they did realize that they had been saved they began to cheer. Cadets sweeping forward to finish off the remaining Taurans were heartened by the cheer, though it came from only a dozen throats.

  Chapter Forty-five

  If we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.

  —Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States

  Dahlgren Naval Station, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Unlike the bulk of the TU forces engaged in invading Balboa that morning, the Haarlem Marines defending Dahlgren had never entirely lost communications
with their higher headquarters. Radio was right out, of course, but they had their barracks and their barracks had telephones.

  Warned by the fires descending upon Arnold Air Force Base, the Marine commander had, on his own initiative, canceled the planned move on the town of Nuevo Arraijan, pulled his unit back to a hasty defense of the Naval Station and the Arnold AFB tank farm, and then requested further orders via telephone. Told by TUSF-B to split his unit to defend both Dahlgren and the Bridge of the Columbias, the marine lieutenant colonel had complied. So far it looked like the decision to pull back had been a sound one. Scattered probing of his defensive line indicated that the Balboans had little or no idea where the Marines had fallen back to. No indirect fires, except for a few random harassment rounds, had fallen anywhere near the Marine positions.

  Now the Marine battalion straddled the highway, with its right flank anchored deep in the jungle and its left hanging out in the thin, mostly open, air of the Arnold Tank Farm, which was a very large fuel storage facility. The battalion reserve guarded the Bridge of the Columbias. Despite TUSF-B’s instructions not to send aid to the air force under attack at Arnold, the Marines had sent a single squad-sized patrol to find out what had happened to the left. Moving up a well-beaten trail that paralleled the road the squad had discovered the debacle overtaking the base. Upon their return they reported that the army troops stationed on Fort Nelson were still fighting back, though they couldn’t offer an opinion on how long that resistance could last.

  Fort Nelson, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova