The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  The centurion in charge of the platoon was knocked half-silly by the blast. The concussion might have done more serious damage, except that the mortar pit, itself, tended to direct the blast up, while its walls soaked up the fragments. When the centurion looked up to see a head fly one way, while three-quarters of an arm went the other, he ordered, “Into the bunkers! Leave the guns alone for now; there’s nothing we can do without a target we can range to!”

  Still, the shelling continued.

  Pelirojo, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  Salas was probably saved by the Cimbrian bodies. At least, the first salvo landed on the far side, with the bodies between him and it. One of the shells was sufficiently close to shred the body, and throw another one right next to Salas, where it formed a sort of low and leaky berm.

  Those first rounds were it, though, for that part of the town. The second battery then shifted their fires to a position identified by the Cimbrian Jaegers as a key antiarmor battle position.

  As soon as Salas sensed that the fire had lifted from him, he stood and scanned around for his driver. Where is that no good . . .

  The legate was shocked by the sound of a horn, coming from right behind him. Turning, he saw his driver in his commandeered vehicle, the driver’s face split by a broad grin. “You rang, sir?”

  “Yeah,” said the legate, jumping in on the passenger side, “take me to the cohort commander. Fast.”

  Cerveza, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  The Hordalander company commander had reorganized his truncated company, thirteen tanks, into a more normal configuration: three platoons of four, with his exec taking the third platoon.

  The area they had to pass through was typical, some remnants of old tropical rain forest, with exceedingly thickly grown fringes, a lot of open farmland, the occasional hacienda, and some streams. The ground was rugged enough to be “interesting,” but little of it, on its own, was impassable to tanks. “Interesting,” is this case, meant something like, “We tankers are very interested in getting home alive, so you Sachsen ground pounders and Tuscan ditch diggers, get out of your bloody trucks and clear that wood line.”

  Since that was the infantrymen’s job—engineers, too, to a point—the Sachsen battalion commander, Oberstleutnant Barkhorn, actually agreed with this approach.

  First contact came about three kilometers northeast of Pelirojo, along an east-west-running escarpment through which Highway One ran at near right angles. Pretty plainly intended to be an antiarmor ambush, the Sachsens tripped it well before the tanks entered the planned kill zone. Dismounting, themselves, well out of range, the Sachsen company formed up, then moved west toward the escarpment.

  The guerillas waited until the better part of a platoon of Sachsens was in the river between the escarpment and the road before opening up. Some of their fire went high, some low, but enough was on target to set nine of the Taurans floating, mostly face down, down the river.

  By that time, though, the Sachsen battalion’s own 120mm mortars were set up, in range, and ready. They dropped a deluge of shells on the Santa Josefinans, long enough and heavy enough for the rest of the Sachsen company to get across the stream. The Santa Josefinans pulled out in good order, but had to leave several bodies behind.

  Just past the escarpment, and partially, at least, because of the availability of water from the river, the first houses began. These were nothing much, mostly the scrap wood shacks of the very poor, occasionally interspersed with better houses, of concrete block or adobe. These, Salas’s tercio had entirely left alone. Even so, at the first sound of firing the Santa Josefinan civilians head streamed off, east and west, into the fields and forests. Their houses, poor and pathetic things, were left abandoned.

  There had been however, one concrete block-built government building that Salas’s men had taken over and fortified.

  Barkhorn found considerable comfort in the sound of shells flying overhead, not least because he knew they were keeping the guerilla’s heavy mortars pretty much out of play.

  In range and accuracy, his own task force’s 105s beat the heavy mortars six ways from Sunday, as the phrase went. But, and it was a big “but,” once in range, the 160mm mortars the Cimbrians had identified outclassed the 105s in weight of shell, in effectiveness of shell—by a factor of three or four or so—and in rate of fire. In particular, were the mortars’ shells nasty. Since the stresses of being fired at low velocity inside the smoothbore tube were not nearly as bad as those from being fired at high velocity from a rifled gun, the mortar shells could be made of iron, which fragmented better than steel did. Since they tended to come down almost vertically, they spread those fragments better. And they simply packed a lot more explosive. Being on the receiving end of a barrage from 160s was an experience no one wanted twice.

  Still, so far, so good, thought Barkhorn. Then he heard an explosion that did not sound like either the Hordalander tanks’ cannon, the 105s, the 120 mortars, or anything much but a mine. The radio calls for medevac confirmed it; one Hordalander tank had taken a mine right through the driver’s seat. He was dead, said the radio, and the three in the turret in poor shape.

  Barkhorn was in the process of ordering, “Evacuate them by ground to a covered position, don’t risk—” when there came several more blasts, these ones doubled.

  “Fuck!” exclaimed the radio, in the voice of the Hordalander tank company commander, speaking German. “They’re dug into one of the bigger buildings. Recoilless rifles or those Volgan things that might as well be. Get me some infantry here; I lost another tank! And a fucking ambulance!”

  A Santa Josefinan sergeant lay beside one of the Volgan heavy smoothbore rocket launchers that had come in on the Casement. These were effectively recoilless muskets, since the rockets burned out completely before the round left the tube. Effective to a range of five hundred meters, more with an exceptional gunner in windless conditions, they had a tandem warhead. The major charge could penetrate as much as thirty inches of steel, plus there was a smaller charge on a prod, to defeat reactive armor.

  The sergeant—he went by “Segura”—told the gunner to hold fire as the Tauran tank eased into the thin minefield between the building and the highway. He was about to give up on the mines and order the gunner to fire when suddenly the ground erupted under the tank, and an armless and legless body was propelled upward through the driver’s hatch. The tank commander had been standing in his hatch, but shortly after the explosion he sank down into the tank.

  A smaller armored vehicle followed the tracks engraved by the tank in the dirt. “Track that one,” said Sergeant Segura. The gunner wordlessly nodded. “Fire when you have a clear shot,” the sergeant amended, then crawled off to the other rocket launcher. By the time he got there, another Tauran tank had shown up and had taken up an overwatching position, out of the minefield.

  The sergeant felt the first rocket launcher fire, then saw through the loophole of the second as the small armored personnel carrier stopped and burst into flame. The overwatching tank turned its turret, slightly, then fired at the building. It wasn’t entirely clear the tank had seen where the rocket had come from, since it missed at a range it should not have missed at. Even so, a chunk came off of the building. The turret turned just a bit . . . just enough . . . just . . .

  “Fire!” ordered Segura.

  The government building into which the Santa Josefinans were dug started coming apart as the hurricane of 120mm tank shells rained down upon it. Eventually, the wooden and plastic and cloth parts caught fire, the heat and smoke driving the defenders to try to escape to the next building. The tanks, though, saw through the smoke and dust easily. One of them, machine gun chattering, swept across the group of scuttling Santa Josefinan guerillas, knocking down several and driving the rest back to the burning building.

  With fire racing along the beams holding up the tile roof, the defenders’ options narrowed drastically. They tried sticking white flags out the windows but these simply drew fire. The p
roblem was that ambulance. They hadn’t intended to destroy an ambulance but, what with all the smoke, fire, sound, and confusion, it had just sort of gotten in the way. They still didn’t even know that they had taken out an ambulance.

  Conversely, the Taurans did know, and were most annoyed by it. Briefly, Barkhorn considered telling him men to let the guerillas surrender then decided, Fuck ’em. You don’t get to shoot up an ambulance and then surrender all nice and sweet. Instead, you just die.

  “What the fuck, Sarge?” asked one of the younger legionaries of his squad leader, Sergeant Segura. They’d both been driven back, back where the heat and smoke weren’t so bad. Still, the troop was gasping from a combination of exertion, fear, and smoke. “Why won’t they take a surrender?”

  “Dunno, Private,” answered the sergeant. “But we need to get word out that they’re not taking prisoners.”

  “How?”

  “Fucked if I know, son.”

  It was a damned good thing that the Santa Josefinan civilians had scampered off, given the approach being taken by the Taurans to buildings, now that they’d lost some of their own to defenders inside them. That approach was simple; concrete and adobe homes were smashed from a distance with cannon fire. Wooden ones were set alight with tracers from the machine guns. In cases of doubt, Tuscan sappers with demolition charges disintegrated still others.

  In the space of half an hour, the one government building and fifty-odd personal homes lining both sides of the highway were either smashed to dust or burning merrily.

  At the far end of that little linear monument to free fire zones, the Tauran task force stopped briefly, to reorganize for the assault on the town and to spread out across the rivers that had channeled them into what could have been a disastrously tight kill zone. While they were doing so, the first couple of sorties of air support came in. These weren’t directed at the town of Pelirojo, nor at the troops immediately defending it. Instead, the flight of eight Anglian-flown. Tauravia-built, Hurricane fighter-bombers split up, with four circling like vultures overhead, while four more split off and went for the 160mm mortar position, now clearly marked by smoke and dust.

  Salas watched from a distance as the four enemy aircraft swooped low over the one platoon of 160s he’d put out. He was not so far away that he couldn’t see the eight silvery canisters come tumbling off the planes. And the mixed orange, red, and black fireballs that arose from those left him in no doubt about the fate of his platoon.

  Shit. I thought that by taking a disadvantageous position or a less advantageous one, anyway, I’d be able to preserve the guns until they could be of use. Didn’t count on how good the enemy’s recon would be. Damn me to hell. What’s it going to do to the cause when we lose this battle? Because we are going to lose it. Shit.

  Ah, well; the Nguyens said that the battle doesn’t matter; the war is what matters.

  Pelirojo, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  There was a minefield east of the town, anchored on two of the three rivers. So much the Cimbrian Jaegers had reported. Oberstleutnant Barkhorn had intended that the Tuscan sappers would clear lanes through the minefield under cover of the artillery, while he swung the bulk of his force south, across the broader river, to take the town in flank.

  As it turned out, that river was a bit too deep for wading. Nor did the Tuscan sappers have the ability to bridge it. They could, so they reported, bridge the faster flowing but much narrower stream to the north.

  “Do it,” Barkhorn ordered through his Tuscan translator. Then, leaving one of his infantry companies to support the Tuscans at the minefield, Barkhorn led the other two across the scissor bridge erected by the Tuscans across the northern stream, the Rio Pelirojo.

  “You want us to follow?” the Hordalander commander had asked.

  “Yes, but not yet,” Barkhorn responded calmly. “While the enemy is watching the minefield, my infantry will get an assault position for a drive into the town. You mill about and make it look like you’re going to burst through the lanes the Tuscans cut in the minefield. When I’m ready, I’ll call you. Then load up the engineer company that’s clearing the lanes and come running.”

  “Wilco,” replied the Hordalander.

  Legionaries Herrera and Madrigal, on observation post north of the town, were just possibly a little too junior for the decision that faced them. It would have been better for them if they’d had a radio to report to maniple headquarters about the several hundred enemy infantry practically racing through the woods toward the town. But radios were in somewhat short supply and besides, they had a field telephone. Legionary Madrigal was currently squeezing the little black rubber-covered button that should have made someone on the other end answer, and so far had failed—pardon the expression—signally.

  Madrigal let the phone drop from his hand. “Mierde, Herrera, nothing. No motherfucking answer.”

  “Shit,” agreed Herrera, “what the fuck are we going to do, Mad? What the hell happened?”

  “My guess would be artillery cut the wire . . . yes, even though we buried it. Shit happens. As to what we’re going to do . . . how long you been in?”

  “Two years and about a month,” Herrera answered. “Why?”

  “Because that makes me senior. That means I get to cover you. You keep low but get back as fast as you can and tell the tribune that we got company, a lot of company, coming from the north.”

  “Man . . . Mad . . . I can’t leave you here alone.”

  “Just go before I change my mind, Herrera. This sucks enough without being reminded of how much.” Madrigal jerked a thumb rearwards. “Now GO!”

  Herrera froze for a couple of seconds, no more, then, with a nod, turned and crawled out the scrape hole he’d shared with Madrigal. He crawled another fifty feet or so, at which point he was in a low draw. Instead of standing upright, the legionary got to his feet but stayed bent over. In that position, he began to trudge for the town.

  Madrigal looked at his rifle with distaste. A Tauran bullpup design, captured in Balboa, he’d never so much as fired one. Supposedly the things were zeroed, but he had his doubts.

  Oh, well, he thought, moving the stock to his shoulder, I’m probably more likely to hit with an unzeroed unfamiliar rifle than I am with a zeroed one. He took aim at someone talking on a radio, a few hundred meters to his front—at least the sights are simple—then began slowly squeezing the trigger.

  Oberstleutnant Barkhorn was moving forward quickly, approximately at the juncture of the two companies he had with him. He’d already had his own battalion’s 120mm mortars cease fire, to let the tubes cool for when he’d really need them. He could hear and feel the Haarlemer artillery flying overhead and pounding the guerillas that were supposed to be keeping the minefield from being breached. He’d had a report from his intel officer, back at Cerveza, that the enemy were, in fact, moving toward the northeast and the minefield. With a little luck, he’d charge into a vacuum, and route them out of the town at a single go.

  Satisfied with progress, Barkhorn turned to give the handset back to his radio bearer, when that young soldier’s head disappeared in a spray of blood, brains, and fragments of bone.

  “Scheisse!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment—that which they cannot anticipate.

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  Pelirojo, Santa Josefina, Terra Nova

  Herrera’s careful jaunt turned into a dead run for the town once the firing commenced behind him. Bullets sang by, knocking off bark from the trees or impacting more solidly upon them with deadened thunks.

  Whatever Madrigal did, Herrera thought, it must have been something impressive to get himself that much attention. Hope he makes it; got my doubts.

  Shouting the running password, past the last of the trees the legiona
ry ran, across the open field of recently planted corn, then past the first couple of buildings and toward the school building that maniple had picked for its headquarters. Only to find . . .

  “Jesus, where the fuck is everybody?” Herrera asked of the company clerk, currently bundling up some files into a cloth bag.

  “They all headed east,” said the clerk. “Cohort commander’s orders. Why?”

  “Why? WHY? Because the fucking Taurans are coming from the north, that’s WHY! I saw them, hundreds of them, myself.”

  The clerk turned white. Reaching for a field telephone he held it towards Herrera. “Tell cohort. They won’t believe me. Tell them!”

  Salas was watching as the cohort commander, Legate Rodriguez’s, eyes widened and his skin turned pale. The cohort commander was facing west, more or less instinctively. That was where the enemy sappers were reported to be chewing through the minefield. It was also where the bulk of his artillery was landing, albeit at a slow rate of fire. Rodriguez listened for a few moments, said, “Buy me whatever time you can,” then dropped the field phone and reached for the radio handset offered him by one of the headquarters RTOs.