by Tom Kratman
There was nothing especially unusual about mufti-clad senior cadets sauntering out the main gate of the academy when their training day was done. A few girls made moon eyes, which the boys returned. The boys then continued on their way to a house with a vault overlooking Herrera Airport.
On the airstrip, itself, large and apparently heavy concrete-filled drums were being placed just off of the runways, where they could be rolled into position to prevent an assault landing.
Meanwhile, back at the school, as most of the older boys filtered out, a few, along with some adult cadre, were left behind in charge of the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. These were employed in being run through approximately twice as much as the normal amount of formation attending, mess hall line standing, physical training, and just plain choreographed walking about, to simulate the full complement of cadets.
San Miguelito Military Academy, Balboa, Terra Nova
Across town, the eldest half of the San Miguelito Military Academy were doing the same thing as at Pedregal, but in the opposite direction. Instead of forming up in a defensive position around the main airport, the San Miguelitos moved in dribs and drabs toward some warehouses a few miles from Fort Muddville and Brookings Air Force Station. As with all the other schools, the remaining half of the cadets, mostly the younger half, would be left behind to simulate, through well-scripted formations, marches, and other formal and informal assemblies, that the full eighteen hundred and twenty-seven cadets were present for instruction.
Carrera’s great fear was still that the academies would look too normal to prying eyes. For this reason some semi-public anti-Tauran protests by the remaining cadets, complete with banners, drums, and pipes, were scheduled for different times over the next few days.
Penonome Military Academy, Balboa, Terra Nova
The Penonome Military Academy was built in the form of a large quadrangle. In honor of what the boys felt were their spiritual antecedents the school had been nicknamed by its denizens as the “Kurt Meyer School for Bad Little Boys” (La Escuela por Chicillos Malos, Kurt Meyer), Kurt Meyer having been the former commander of the 12th SS Panzer Division—Hitler Jugend—on Old Earth.
It had been in existence long enough that no one anymore gave a lot of thought to the nuances of its construction. Still, during the construction culverts, tunnels, and covered walkways had been built—even then generating little suspicion amidst all the other innocent construction—to connect the barracks, classrooms, and headquarters. A tunnel also led from the cadet mess hall to a large covered shed. Beginning the night before, the school’s cooks had set up in the shed a rest stop for trucks; trucks that were carrying loads of ammunition in semis from Lago Sombrero’s Ammunition Supply Point to the Sixty-first Artillery Tercio at Santiago. The loads of all but the first six trucks were considerably less than either the full capacity of the trucks or the amount of time they had spent at Lago Sombrero loading ammunition would indicate.
Still, to an overworked imagery analyst aboard the Spirit of Harmony, in orbit over Balboa, having seen, via ship’s camera and the one skimmer sent down, the growing piles of ammunition in the artillery park in Santiago, not having been alerted by anything that would suggest other than a movement of artillery ammunition to a distant post, nothing seemed amiss. She had checked the first few trucks with the full spectrum of capabilities of the satellites and computers at her command. Heat and magnetic signatures had been consistent with loads of ammunition. Radar, she hadn’t tried, since that was useless against the metal-walled trailers. And visual, to include IR, had been badly degraded by the rain at times. The stopover near what her maps said was a school for young boys did not alert her. It was SOP, standard operating procedure, around the planet to provide such rest stops for vehicle convoys, using whatever assets were available.
By the time the later trucks—each carrying forty-five to fifty cadets, aged fourteen or fifteen to, in a few cases, eighteen, along with some of their more adult leadership—had turned back from Santiago to Lago Sombrero ASP for a second load the analyst had turned her attention elsewhere.
Isla Picaron, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
The “Isla” wasn’t actually an island, though it could become one if the water levels of the lake happened to rise. In the current downpour, Pililak wondered if they wouldn’t. No matter, a little water wasn’t going to stop her where snakes and bugs, antaniae, caimen, black palm, and one altogether too inquisitive and now thoroughly dead juvenile smilodon could not.
Unfortunately, she was starting to run a little low on food. This had the benefit of lightening her pack, but carried the downside of possible starvation in the not too distant future. She’d been sure she’d brought enough, yet every leg of her journey had taken two or three times longer than she’d expected. Getting lost once hadn’t helped a bit. And having to crawl for four hours on her belly to avoid the thin line of soldiers who were out in the jungle looking for her had been a little rough, too. She’d known they were there for her because they’d called out her name in both languages.
“To hell with that,” she muttered, wading ankle deep through the mud to the “island” that sat closest to her next point.
Realizing that she really didn’t have the food to continue with her original plan, Ant had modified it. She was going to cut across the narrow part of the Transitway, taking her chances with the passing ships. That way, she’d be certain to find the railroad that nearly touched the water there. With the rail line to guide her there’d be no question of getting lost, no question of having to slash her way through secondary growth, and best of all, “No more fucking black palm.”
By the time she’d struggled across the mud to the barely less muddy “island,” then gotten her air mattress blown up, it was pouring down in a deluge, the rain hard and cool enough to make her shiver.
Visibility dropped to maybe twenty feet, if that. That was a serious danger. She’d counted on crossing to the rail line at night, when no one would be likely to see her but she would be able to see the running lights of the ships. She could wait, of course, for night but there was no guarantee that the rain would stop. She’d seen it rain for as much as seventeen days straight without the slightest let up since she’d come to Balboa from her native, and rather dry, Pashtia. She’d heard it was worse in towards the center of the country, where she was.
“No,” she insisted to herself. “I’m going. Nothing will keep me from my lord, Iskandr.”
Lumière, Gaul, Terra Nova
After being up and down, then up and down again, on the subject of invading Balboa, Janier found that this time it was easier, with most of his doubts dispelled. Partly, this was because he was being told to do it rather than plotting to make it so he would be told to do it. Partly it was the steady report of increased Balboan preparations, that made it seem inevitable anyway. But the real factor was that, in the current emotional overload, he was being given everything he asked for.
And when has that ever happened?
Still, it wasn’t all sweetness. There were questionable spots, driven in good part by areas of uncertainty. For example, given the sheer intensity of the threat represented by the Balboans First Corps (Mechanized), it was understandable that Janier, back in Taurus, was not content with either intelligence reports from the Tauran Union Intelligence and Security Agency, nor the reports filtered down to him by High Admiral Wallenstein’s flagship.
“Everything they send,” he’d fumed, starting about an hour after the commencement of the present crisis, “everything, gets analyzed for deeper meaning and then sanitized to follow whatever party line is important to the TUISA leadership, today. Just as was that report from that charmingly female Anglian captain, back in Balboa.
“Well, fuck it. This is why military organizations insist on keeping their own intelligence gathering ability, no matter what notional benefits there may be in consolidation.” Janier then called his aide, Malcoeur, and said, “Get me through to de Villepin, in Balboa, on the secure li
ne.”
And why not? Admittedly, no one has ever authorized me to send reconnaissance parties into Balboa, but no one has ever denied me the authority either. And we’d planned on it, back in the day. Let’s see if de Villepin has been able to preserve that part of the plan from that butterfingered oaf, McQueeg-Gordon.
And, if not? Then we simply tell him to put it back in, since the limey reports to me.
Lago Sombrero, Balboa, Terra Nova
It had seemed natural, too, to de Villepin to put eyes on the ground to see and report on the legion’s First Corps. Moreover, there was still an MC-61 available at Brookings to insert them. That was the relatively stealthy version of the old standby transport, the C-61. Moreover, it was flown by the best pilots in the Gallic Air Force. Knowing that, knowing the plane was available, de Villepin hadn’t waited for authorization the dithering Anglian probably wouldn’t have given. Instead, he’d sent the plane, with an eighteen-man commando section, on a flight toward Santa Josefina, with a brief fly-by of an area not too far from Lago Sombrero.
The aircraft had lifted off with its doors and ramps sealed. Not long after, it had dropped pressure and lowered the ramp. This set the commandos to using the bottled oxygen that came with their kit.
An amusing feature of their equipment, for certain constrained values of “amusing,” was that the complete set for a high altitude-high opening jump was possibly the only one the manual for which mentioned, not less than a dozen times, that failure to do X (1 through 12) would cause Y (1 through 12), “resulting in the DEATH of the parachutist.”
At a normal, nonsuspicious flying height for this distance from Brookings, which was fourteen thousand two hundred feet, the eighteen commandos had jumped. The jumpmaster had calculated in a dispersal of four hundred and fifty meters between when the first jumper exited the aircraft and when the eighteenth did. He’d also factored in a three-hundred-meter early release to account for forward throw, which is to say retained velocity from the aircraft. The eighteen commandos had come spilling out, then opened their canopies almost immediately. The meticulously packed steerable, gliding parachutes had opened heroically. Then, by night vision goggle-enhanced sight, with a single, not too visible, infrared chemlight on the central jumper, they’d assembled into a loose staggered trail formation. They’d then used their highly glidable parachutes to navigate to a lonesome farmer’s field, about fifteen kilometers from Lago Sombrero.
The aircraft had continued on its innocent way to Aserri.
The Gallic commandos were genuine professionals, well trained, well led, well equipped, and highly experienced. Among their equipment was included one Balboan F-26 rifle. The Gauls had managed to purchase two of those, from disgruntled legionaries, but the other one had been sent back to Taurus for testing and evaluation. Most of them were accoutered in the pixelated tiger-striped camouflage of the legion, plus a close copy of the legion’s standard helmet. The team had two relatively dark-skinned Spanish speakers. One of those carried the F-26, on point, while the other in the rear, more mufti, in case it was useful to appear to be a local civilian to gather their intelligence. All were highly briefed on Balboan military culture, acronyms, ranks, slang, etc.
After dumping their parachutists’ equipment in a hastily excavated hole, they’d immediately taken up a standard formation and begun the move to the general vicinity of Lago Sombrero.
The commandos moved fast, as one would expect of pros. Arriving before dawn, they’d set up an observation post without incident. They saw three maniples report in at about the same time. Had they looked at the ASP it was just barely possible they might have seen the cadets; there was enough moonlight, if barely, for that, at least if looking from a point nearer the ASP. But their mission was to look at the base, not a bunch of ammunition bunkers. The cadets falling in on their equipment in the bowels of the earth remained undetected.
In an earlier time the Taurans might have been safe enough once they had found a reasonably secure position. Piña’s old Balboan Defense Force had not been so very well trained. The tercios of Carrera’s legion, however, had in years earlier and recent been humiliated often enough, badly enough, at the training center at Fuerte Cameron—often by closely placed and undetected recon parties—that counter-reconnaissance had become something of an automatic action, if not even a fetish.
Three mobilized maniples of regular and reservists began to sweep the exterior of the base for infiltrators and spies some time around midnight. While most of the mobilized legions and cohorts units had very restrictive rules of engagement, the First Corps, and a few others who were in position to safeguard the secret of the hidden cadets, were under orders to shoot on sight.
The commando—arguably over-officered in comparison to most Gallic units—had a lieutenant in charge, assisted by an adjudant as his second in command. They carried their own radio, occasionally trading off. Each of the four teams, of four men each, consisted of a sergeant, a caporal, and two privates, except for one of the teams which was led by a sergent-chef, a senior sergeant.
Since they expected to be here for a while, three days at a minimum, before extraction, the troops split up their duties, watch on, watch off. Thus, it was the second in command, Adjudant Tréville, who was watching when the first Balboans were glimpsed through the jungle trees.
“Lieutenant,” whispered the adjudant, “we’ve got people behind us and I’m sure they’re not ours.” When that didn’t work Tréville placed a hand over his officer’s mouth, shook him slightly, and repeated the warning.
The lieutenant’s eyes came open. He nodded for the sergeant to remove his hand, and asked, “Where?”
Wordlessly, Tréville pointed to the barely silhouetted figures of men—the shadows told of rifles in their hands—less than one hundred and fifty meters away, to the northeast.
“Get the rest of the men up,” said the lieutenant. “It’s time to get out of here.”
“Sir.”
“Did you hear that?” asked a Balboan sergeant in a low whisper.
“Hear what, Sarge?” answered his corporal.
“I don’t know what it was. A rustle of grass maybe. Then again”—the Balboan sergeant shook his head—“then again, maybe not.” The sergeant motioned for his squad to halt while he listened with more care and attention.
“Shit. I think they’ve spotted us.” Tréville moved a thumb slowly and silently took his rifle off of safe.
The lieutenant gave the hand and arm signal for his section to take up hasty ambush positions. There was some unavoidable sound from that, rifles being propped up, knees scraping the ground, the little creaks of stiffened joints.
“I heard that,” quietly agreed the Balboan corporal. “An animal, maybe?”
The squad leader shook his head. Placing his radio’s microphone to his lips, he reported a possible contact and asked for assistance. “Wait,” was the reply. “We’ll mount a platoon and have them there in about ten minutes. Out.”
“Oh, shit. They’ve called for help,” announced Tréville, still in hushed tones. He had heard, faintly, the sound of the Balboan radio breaking “squelch.”
The Gallic lieutenant immediately called for evacuation at a precoordinated point some twelve hundred meters away. To Tréville he said, “We’ve got to break contact and get out of here. Get ready to take out these guys and move like hell to the PZ.” The “PZ” was the pickup zone where they would be met by the recovering helicopter. “But . . . no helicopter’s going to be here in less than an hour. I think we have to fight.”
Tréville crawled from man to man, giving the order to prepare to fight or to run, at command.
The Balboan sergeant cursed the slowness of the reinforcing platoon. Impatiently, he lifted his head, keeping as close as possible to a tree trunk, for a better view and, more importantly, a better listen.
Just raise your head a little more, old son, thought Tréville as he took careful aim through his rifle’s starlight scope. In the grainy, greenish light
of the scope’s viewing lens he saw the Balboan sweep his helmeted head from side to side, obviously looking for something. Tréville began to squeeze the trigger.
“I can’t see or hear shit,” said the Balboan sergeant to the corporal, still keeping his voice in a whisper. “If there’s . . .”
A single shot rang out, followed by a fusillade from the Taurans. The sergeant heard none of it, however, as the first bullet had entered his right temple, blowing his brains out the left rear of his skull.
Initially paralyzed, the Balboans were slow to return fire, trying desperately to find some cover from the storm of copper-covered lead that assailed them. The corporal was the first to gather his wits, which was the more surprising in that the late sergeant’s brains had fallen across the corporal’s face and body. Other rifles, and a few moments later a machine gun, joined in as their bearers found discipline and duty a greater factor than fear. Within a minute, both sides were thoroughly pinned by each other’s wild fire.
Not that the Balboans were hitting anything. Only their machine gunner had a night vision scope, and he was not in position to see much with it. The other Balboans couldn’t see anything but muzzle flashes, which were notoriously difficult points of aim at night. Instead, they just sprayed the general area to their front, counting on chance to at least hold the Taurans until help arrived. Once the rest of his men had joined the fight, the corporal patted the ground for the microphone. His first call was not to the reinforcing platoon, but to the on call mortar section. As he spoke to the mortars, the corporal became aware of anguished cries from his own side.
A few miles away, in the 1st Mechanized Tercio motor pool, a complete mechanized platoon looked up almost as a single man. Suddenly a flood of tracers arced through the sky. The reports of heavy automatic fire followed. A lackadaisical preparation quickly became frenzied. The platoon’s four Ocelots, and forty odd soldiers, were heading for the post gate in less than two minutes. On the post parade field, a mortar section began to fall in on their guns.
