by Tom Kratman
Near this two-gun, open but parapeted firing pad, itself sitting atop a deep bunker for both ready ammunition and fire control, Carrera watched as the crew of one 180mm gun went through the drill of loading and laying. Trap doors opened to the rear of the position, as a reconditioned ammunition elevator pushed up one of the long shells. Longer than the previous twelve-inch shells, this one came up on a frame that held it at an angle. The projectile in its sabot was, to say the least, oddly shaped for an artillery round. The lengthy fuse with the high-strength golden glass nose made it appear odder still.
The propellant popped up from a different elevator, fed by a different compartment.
The crew was not the gun’s normal complement. Oh, no, the regular crew were reservists and militia and weren’t even mobilized. Instead, for now, the gun was manned by a special test crew, specially vetted for reliable closed-mouthedness, from Obras Zorilleras, or OZ, the legion’s research and development division. Their chief had drilled them numb over the preceding week on a sister gun, though that one was held underground in a different battery, about twenty-four hundred meters to the southwest.
They were only going to get one chance at the test, though the test would involve twelve shots. These were five of the special shells, that being the number on hand at Battery McNamara, and seven normal high explosive shells to mask the specials. The special shells were inert, the normal explosive filler replaced by a mostly plastic mix of the same density. Four other gun positions, three to the west and one to the east, were manned by reservists and militia mobilized for training. These were also along the Shimmering Sea coast and on both sides of the Transitway’s mouth. They would also be firing for this exercise, mostly to divert attention from the test firing of the special shells. Their ammunition was limited to standard 180mm High Explosive. Five forward observer stations, as heavily fortified as the gun positions, held FO teams with laser range finders indistinguishable from the laser that would be used to mark the target for the special shells.
Carrera turned away from the gun crew, walking into a dark, open rectangle in the concrete wall. Once past the edges of the entrance, red lights in metal cages set high on the walls marked his way to the fire direction center. Before anyone could notice his presence, he ordered, “As you were,” code for, “keep doing what you were doing.”
There were a half-dozen closed-circuit television sets to one side of the bunker. One of these was large. It gave Carrera the same view as the forward observation and lasing team for Battery McNamara had. That team sat inside a concrete position high atop a cliff facing the sea. The image, enhanced both for light and magnification showed him a radio controlled ship—more of a barge, really—twenty miles out to sea. This was nothing like the shells’ maximum range.
It had been a matter of considerable discussion. The short, balding, Volgan-descended Kuralski, also there for the test, had wanted to fire at near maximum range. Carrera had overridden that—he didn’t want anyone to know how far the guns could shoot the new ammunition. There were other barges out to sea as targets, as many as there were batteries firing for the day.
The job was not without its risks, but risks or not, a screen of patrol boats insured no other ships came close to the barge targets to see what was happening. The crews of those boats wore laser protective goggles.
Carrera was reasonably certain that the UEPF was taking considerable interest in goings on in the Republic of Balboa. He didn’t know the precise capabilities of their remote sensing, but assumed it was at least on a par with that of the planet’s premier power, the Federated States. Thus, he didn’t hope to hide that he was firing a certain kind of gun at a certain range. All he could do—and he hoped it was enough—was misdirect the Peace Fleet as to the real nature of the firing.
The other five televisions, all smaller, showed the barge itself, from a camera housed near the stern, as well as its nearby waters. Those cameras were mounted in an armored casing, sternward. Those televisions’ signals were encrypted to prevent anyone else from receiving them. Again, though, Carrera doubted that the UEPF couldn’t break the encryption. He had to assume they could.
There was a seventh camera in operation, though it wasn’t transmitting. Instead, that one took video showing a remote and distant view of the test firing. The camera was carried in a Cricket light aircraft.
The data from the fire direction center was on the sight, the gun loaded and laid. The special fuse that made the shell special was keyed to the laser frequency of the forward observer team that would lase its target. With his left hand, the gun chief stretched the firing lanyard taut. On command from the FDC, he struck the stretched lanyard with his right fist.
Kaboommm! Ahead, muzzle blast ripped leaves from jungle trees as concussion caused the crew’s inner organs to ripple and pulse in a sickening manner. Shortly after reaching the muzzle, the twelve sections of sabot that had held the shell steady in its travel down the tube split away. Much lighter than the shell, and of deliberately nonaerodynamic cross-section, the pieces of the sabot lost velocity rapidly, careening off into the jungle in a random pattern.
“Reload!” shouted the gun chief, as another long and oddly shaped shell arose through the elevator doors. A split second later another three bags of propellant arose from the other elevator.
The entire crew of the FDC groaned as a single man. The incredibly expensive and supremely secret shell had missed. It missed despite laser guidance. It missed despite the select crew and forward observer team. Admittedly, it didn’t miss by much, no more than a dozen feet. But still . . .
The TV showed the barge twisting in the water, just as would a ship that knew it was under fire. A second great splash, the mark of a missed shell, flew up about five meters off the port side. Kuralski exclaimed, “Damn it!”
The third shell came in, causing a splash even farther away, at perhaps nine meters, or about thirty feet. The fourth? No one in the FDC had a clue where that had gone. The fifth landed about as far away as the first had.
“It’s perfect,” Carrera said, and started to laugh. “Fucking perfect!”
In a pure fluke, the barge was actually struck by the third normal shell which, since it contained high explosive and a normal fuse, duly detonated, shredding the barge like tissue.
Kuralski’s chin hung on his chest. “Every one of them, every goddamned one of them . . .”
“Yeah, so?”
“Twelve thousand drachma a shot! Useless.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Carrera said.
“Huh?”
“Oh, c’mon, Dan! How wide is a fucking warship?”
“Oh. Well . . . yeah . . . I guess so.”
“Order more shells, Dan,” Carrera said. “Order at least fourteen hundred of them. We’ve got or will soon have fifty-four guns just like these on this island, plus several dozen more at other spots. Not counting the ones in the Tenth Artillery Legion. I want each, barring the Tenth’s, to have at least twenty shells. If there’s a significantly reduced unit price in ordering more, you can go up to twenty-five million drachma, total.”
Kuralski nodded. “There’s something else, Pat. We’ve used Volgan laser-guided heavy mortar shells since Sumer. They’ve got a new one—well, a completely new system, actually—called ‘Trapeze.’ No, I have no clue why they chose that name. Anyway, it’s a 240mm mortar, special laser designator, special shell with—”
“Nah.”
“But . . . I thought, with these twelve-inch mortar positions on both sides, all four sides, rather, of the Transitway . . .”
“They won’t last days if it comes to war. No, the 122/180s make sense, because we can protect and hide them and their guns. But 240mm mortars in open pits? With us conceding to the enemy air supremacy ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent of the time? I don’t think so.”
With a shrug, Kuralski said, “Just a thought.”
UEPF Spirit of Peace, High Orbit over Atlantis Island, Terra Nova
“So what was th
at all about?” asked the fleet watch officer, a few moments after the last of sixty shells splashed into the water or blew up. The images had been forwarded by the Spirit of Harmony, in orbit over Balboa.
The fleet’s surface reconnaissance officer shook her short-cropped, blond head. “We don’t have access to any of their internal communications, since that was apparently all done by land line. It will be a few hours before we can break the encryption on their television signals. But, just on the face of it, it looked to me like they were exercising their coastal artillery’s capabilities on landing craft and that the exercise failed.”
“One hit out of sixty rounds?” mused the watch officer. “Yes, I’d call that a failure. Even so, run it by the Analysis Office before passing it on to the high admiral as a briefing. She can decide if she wants to let our allies down below know about it.”
Intel Office, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa Transitway Area, Terra Nova
To the relief of everyone who worked there in Building 59, and every man, woman, child, dog, cat, trixie, antaniae, snake and coatimundi who lived on Fort Muddville, the recoilless range, Range 18, was silent. No Chinese water torture of boom . . . boom . . . boomboomboom . . . boom was ongoing. Several people, in gratitude, were currently on their knees at the post chapel, thanking God that the Balboans had let off for a while.
For that matter, some noticed, the almost daily sonic booms from the Mosaic-Ds hadn’t been heard for a week or so now.
In the office fronted by the balcony that lay toward the Florida Locks and the range beyond that, Sergeant Major Hendryksen and Captain Campbell puzzled over the short and seemingly unimportant piece of intelligence passed on by the fleet orbiting overhead.
“No film,” Hendryksen said, “just a synopsis. And that says bad things about Balboan cannon gunnery. Or, at least, whoever wrote it thinks it does.”
Jan Campbell asked, “Does it make sense, the synopsis?”
“No,” said the Cimbrian, “not entirely. Maybe not at all. It’s . . . what you would expect from someone who doesn’t really understand warfare on the ground—or maybe any warfare—and is unaware of the failing.
“For example, the Balboans fired sixty rounds of what we’re taking to be 180mm. About ten percent of those didn’t explode. Bad fuses? Incompetent gunners? Maybe some of both. The table says the first five rounds fired from one battery—or one gun; they’re not too clear on the difference—failed to detonate, but then the next seven did.
“Now what would cause that?”
“Ma guess,” said Campbell, in a softer version of her native accent, “is that somebody who was supposed to pull a safety pin from a super quick fuse got nervous and didna. Then his sergeant beat him about the ears and he didna make the same mistake agin.”
“Which could speak well of his sergeant,” said Hendryksen.
“Aye.”
“And it’s as likely a guess as any.”
“Aye tae that, too,” the blond captain agreed.
“Which doesn’t explain to me,” said Hendryksen, “why they bothered at all. The ammunition’s not that cheap.”
“Ohhh. Weel, I think I found the answer to that,” she said, “and to a lot of what else makes no sense to us. I dug through one of their manuals. They do damned near everything they do for one or more of five reasons. In this case, it was probably reason five: test the doctrine and equipment. And they’d do that, from what I can tell, just for its own sake.”
Hendryksen nodded. “All right, I could buy that. The short version is that, so far as anyone can tell, the firing meant nothing and proved nothing.”
“Correct,” Jan said.
“Any—you should pardon the expression—nibbles on the bait you provided?”
Campbell looked down at her chest and said, “No, and as magnificent as these girls are, I canna hardly understand it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The persistence with which social scientists have confused war with the tools of war would be no less astounding did their writing not reveal . . . complete ignorance of the simpler aspects of military history. It would be hard to find a noncommissioned officer in the professional armies of the second rate powers who has been as confused as most analysts of human society.
—Harry Turney-High,
Primitive War
Estado Mayor, Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova
It had taken Fernandez about two days to find out who the new Anglian Army captain was, the one who had put on a minor show for Carrera and his boy. He’d just now found the time to think on it, what with having to find a way to get an operative into Cerro Mina’s Quarters 16.
“But the question,” he said to an empty office, “is why she bothered. And the possible reasons for that range from the sordid to the sublime.”
It was actually frustrating that, while both armed forces had the other infiltrated, the retrieval of personal information was uneven. Fernandez had a senior clerk in the Tauran Union Security Force on his payroll but, since the genuine records were maintained by any of the twenty-seven-odd departments of defense and defence in the TU, and since the local force had little power over the personnel of those armed forces, only synopses of personnel records were available. Fernandez could get a synopsis quickly, but it remained just a broad brush, with none of the details that normally made his job so fascinating.
Conversely, so far as he could tell, the one private and one corporal on the Tauran Union’s payroll, one of whom had been turned and the other of whom was already slated to be shot on the outbreak of hostilities, could produce for the enemy a complete record on most people in the legion in a matter of a few days or weeks. But those two were overwhelmed with personnel information requests and, as suggested, fifty percent of what they sent the TU intel office had serious disinformation contained therein.
Fernandez looked down once again at the almost bare file, the synopsis, on Anglian Army Captain Jan Campbell and cursed.
Still, I can tell some things. What can I infer from the fact that she was a late entry officer, taking a commission after a long career as an enlisted woman?
Hmmm; I’ve met a fair number of Anglian officers. Some are fine. Others are the kind of human material that has one clicking one’s knitting needles and muttering, “Aha, guillotine!” She surely saw enough of both types, but probably put up with all too many of the guillotine bait.
Or maybe she was one of those women attracted by power. In many ways that would be ideal.
“Ah,” Fernandez mused, “what a coup it would be to turn an officer in their intel office! What a solid coup!”
Ah, well, for now we’ll leave the ball in the blonde’s court. If she really wants to turn, she’ll find a way. That much, at least, I can glean from the synopsis.
Still, might be useful to offer her some way to get in contact with us. Hmmm . . . I think maybe I’ll buck this one up to Carrera.
Reluctantly, Fernandez folded the thin copy of Campbell’s file and turned to more pressing matters. So, Patricio’s being forced to back off from the Taurans. Already, he’s cancelled overflights and explosions. How very dull that will be. So what can I do to openly support what he’s been ordered to do, while still setting us up the better to prosecute a war . . . ?
Training Area C, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
More so than in the Federated States or Secordia, somewhat more so than in the Tauran Union, fast going amorally familistic, life in Balboa tended to run informally and as much by connections as by rules. Thus, for example, Lourdes Nuñez-Cordoba de Carrera and Caridad Morales-Herrera de Cruz were good friends and had been since the day both their men had boarded aircraft for the war with Sumer. When Caridad, with a troublesome pregnancy about five years back, had needed an arrogant doctor browbeaten, Lourdes had made a call and had a long chat with a very humbled doctor. Now, when Lourdes had a son in a military school where Ricardo Cruz was temporarily instruct
ing, Cara had made a call. Following that, Cruz had had a long chat with Lourdes’ son.
His father tended to treat all legionaries as moral equals, but centurions as social equals, as well. This made them minor gods to damned near everybody. Even Ham, who had grown up around them, tended to treat the centurions with vast respect and no little deference.
“Relax,” said First Centurion Ricardo Cruz to the boy standing at attention in front of his desk. Seeing that “relax” had only gotten the boy to parade rest, he pointed at a camp chair and ordered, “Sit.”
“Yes, Centurion.” The boy more or less jumped into the camp chair and sat. At attention.
Cruz was tempted to pick up his badge of office, his stick, and wave it in the boy’s face until he, in fact, relaxed. Ah . . . no, that won’t work. Hmm . . . what will? Ah.
Leaning back in his chair, Cruz plopped his booted feet on the desk. “I said, ‘relax,’ cadet, and I meant, ‘relax.’ So relax.”
“Yes, Centurion,” Ham answered. He managed, at least, to slouch a little in the chair.
“The first peer reviews have been tabulated,” Cruz announced formally. It was a silly statement and he knew it was a silly statement. Everyone knew the peers were done.
At the words, though, Ham went from slouching in his chair to sinking into it. He seemed nearly to melt.
“I’m at the bottom of my section, right?”
Cruz nodded.
“So, father or not, I’m going to get the boot, right.”
“Wrong,” the centurion answered. “Peers are for the information of the leadership cadre and are nonbinding on them. Or didn’t you know that?”
