by Tom Kratman
Guilbeault took the ammunition boxes from Davout, opened them both, and pulled out two-thirds of the ammunition from each, eight bandoleers or eleven hundred and twenty rounds. Handing one back to Davout he said, “Take this over to 801 and give it to Number Two Company’s people. Drop off four of the antitank rockets. Crawl over. Crawl low.” He detailed another troop to carry the other box, and two antitank weapons, to the men in Building 802.
By this time the Balboan tanks and infantry were only 150 meters away, still advancing at a walk, as their large Volgan instructors had trained them to. Risking the bullets that lashed the area, Guilbeault extended one of the antitank rocket launchers, took aim and fired at one of the tanks.
“Fuck, I missed!” he exclaimed as he ducked back down into the ditch. The return fire from the tanks plastered the area around him as the tanks concentrated on the greatest apparent threat.
While the tanks, and their accompanying infantry, concentrated on Guilbeault’s position, Davout reached the east side of Building 801, crawled through a window, and ran toward the rooms from which he could hear gunfire.
“Here, take this,” he said as he threw a rocket to Seton. Davout tossed the box of ammunition to another of A Company’s stay behinds. Then he joined Seton in extending the launchers.
There wasn’t time to take the ammunition and load it into magazines immediately. Still, knowing that they had more was reassuring enough to cause the men in the building to increase their rate of fire greatly. This fire was joined, moments later, by fire from the artillerymen in Building 802 on the other side of the ditch. A rocket lanced out from the Tauran positions. It missed but was followed by another that hit. One Balboan tank stopped dead and began to burn. Faced with this sudden reversal of fortunes, the Balboan cadets, and their remaining tank, elected to pull back out of range of the LAWs until they could hit again with overwhelming force. They retreated, bounding back by squads, and still firing.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Guilbeault had the remaining ammunition distributed to the other positions on Fort Nelson. He noticed, for the first time, that the seven Air Force wrenches were no longer in the area. Good riddance, he thought. But I’d still like to shoot the bastards . . . personally.
A soldier clapped Guilbeault on the back, then asked if they could hold the Balboans again.
“Sure we can,” Guilbeault answered, while thinking: For a while. Then we’re dead.
Alcalde Flores Township, Headquarters, Tenth Artillery Legion, Balboa, Terra Nova
Of all the reserve units in the legion, only one had been given major command permission to mobilize above Mobilization Level Two (excepting the Third Legion which had been fully mobilized to hunt for the killers of the Tauran women but was also scattered because of that hunt). That unit was the Tenth Artillery Legion. Consisting of eight tercios, two each of eighteen 180mm cannon, one of eighteen super heavy multibarreled rocket launchers, three of thirty-six each 122mm multiple rocket launchers, one of super heavy mortars, and one of antishipping missile crews without missiles; the Tenth Artillery was at about forty percent manning, its six percent regular cadre, an additional eighteen percent reservists called up and another sixteen or so percent of the militia. Thus, of the Artillery Legion’s full mobilization strength of over eleven thousand, fully four thousand were waiting for the Gallic Airmobile Brigade when it arrived.
A few days before, when doing the final planning and coordination of the semi-mobilization and demobilization that would, with other factors, cause the Tauran Union to invade at the desired time, in the desired way, with the right force, the Tenth Legion’s commander had questioned Carrera on the limitation of forty percent. It did not seem prudent to do less than mobilize fully.
“Legate,” Carrera had answered, “you can’t even let them so much as suspect I’m letting you go to forty percent. If they thought you had mobilized completely, the first news you would get of an invasion is when they carpet bombed your ass from miles up and to hell with civilian casualties in the town.
“The idea is to make a threat they think they can deal with using less force than bombing you to obliteration, but still be strong enough to hold out for several hours until you can be relieved. Twenty percent is my best estimate of what that force is, but I’m going to let you o forty, anyway. Live with it.”
The mobilization had indeed drawn TUSF-B’s attention, enough so that, when it became known that the artillery brigade was already so heavily manned, the Airmobile Brigade of infantry was assigned to the attack. The brigade’s attached aviation battalion, direct support battalion of 105mm guns, and all of their air force support were also committed to the effort. This was a measure of how seriously the TUSF-B chief of staff took the threat posed by the Tenth Artillery Legion. The entire Tauran Union’s operation and presence in Balboa would be jeopardized if the guns, mortars, and rocket launchers of the Tenth were freed to support their brother defenders.
Although there had been no real surprise in the fact that so many Taurans would assault the Tenth, the legion had been shocked at the timing of the attack. More shocking still was the aggressiveness and élan brought to the action by the Gauls, who retained the spirit of their Para ancestors. They had also been deployed away from the Tauran Union, and out from under the malign influence of the late Marine Mors du Char, long enough to become real soldiers again.
In the first minutes after H Hour, dozens of troop-carrying helicopters had deposited troops at every major legion facility in and around the township of Alcalde Flores. Fighting had erupted instantaneously and brutally over virtually the entire area. Still, few were the legion casernes in which the Taurans did not gain at least a foothold. A steady stream of helicopters brought more men to the scene. Where the fighting was particularly fierce, Tauran helicopter gunships and artillery intervened. Although some of the Balboan gunners tried to man their pieces to help hold out against the attack, radar-directed counterbattery fires from the 105s across the canal quickly put them out of action with appalling and grotesque losses. From there the fight had degenerated into a slug fest, with rifle and grenade predominating. House by house, room by room the Balboans were driven back, killed, or forced to surrender. By four AM perhaps two-thirds of those men of the Tenth Artillery Legion already mobilized were still in the fight.
Cerro Mina, overlooking the fight around Second Corps Headquarters, Balboa, Terra Nova
From where he stood looking down onto the fight around the Comandancia, Moncey could not make out how his men below were doing. Tracers, red and green, crisscrossed through the night. The occasional major explosion told little. Was it an Tauran tank firing? A legionary antitank weapon or satchel charge? A civilian automobile blowing up? No one not on the scene could have said.
Many of that area’s older, woodbuilt structures had burned in the Federated States’ invasion. They’d been rebuilt in brick and concrete. No fires could be seen in those areas. Other areas, spared during the earlier attack, were burning now. The Gallic chief of staff said a brief prayer that the civilians would have more luck getting away now than they had had then. He doubted they would, though. The fighting this time was more intense. Any civilian who took to the streets was risking being shot as he ran.
Moncey gave an involuntary shudder. Better to be shot than burned. Like most people, he had a great fear of being burned to death, great enough he would prefer never to see even an enemy burn.
The chief’s field of view shifted a bit, to where he could observe a helicopter gunship firing down at something, or rather someone, on the ground. The possibility of casualties from friendly fire wasn’t high on the Gaul’s list of concerns in the II Corps area. All of the Tauran troopers had patches of infrared reflecting tape sewn to the tops of their helmet covers, which the legionaries did not. Nor did the tercio from the Ciudad Antigua area have any armored vehicles in immediate support to confuse the helicopter gunners.
Moncey was startled as a streak of light and smoke tore up toward the gunship. The he
licopter began to smoke after the rocket exploded beneath it, sending a continuous rod of steel flying up. The helicopter started to twist and turn violently. Then it dropped below the line of buildings. A bright flash, followed by a sound like distant thunder, indicated to the chief what at least one of the explosions he heard was. “Shit,” was all he could say at the death of the helicopter and, most likely, its crew.
The general still stared at where the gunship had gone down when his aide found him on the side of the hill. “Sir, the Airmobile Brigade has lifted off a platoon of cooks to take out whatever’s been jamming us. They should be touching down on the docks right about now.”
Nodding, still saddened at the fate of the helicopter, the general walked to the entrance to the Ops bunker.
Haarlem Marine lines, a few hundred meters east of Dahlgren Naval Station, Balboa Transitway Area, Balboa, Terra Nova
Little had gone quite right for the Sixteenth Cadet Tercio so far this morning. First they had had trouble getting into position to ambush the Haarlem Marines that were expected to come up the road toward the Arraijan Ordnance Works. Then, after the Marines had passed the forward observation post and were almost in the kill zone east of the town, the Seventeenth Cadet Tercio had begun its attack on Arnold to the south. Sure as hell the Marines had sensed something was wrong greater than a mere barrage on the airbase and turned around. Then the jamming had started, cutting communications, so that the commander of the cadets, Legate Olveira, couldn’t get his boys reoriented quickly. It had taken over an hour to get them up and moving, south of and parallel to the InterColombiana, to go after Dahlgren. Even so Olveira had no idea of what was happening with his tank platoon and motorized rifle company. They hadn’t been put into the ambush position, but had been left behind to move up into the attack on Dahlgren after the ambush had gone off.
It’s bad enough that no plan survives contact with the enemy, Olveira fumed. Ours hasn’t even survived without contacting the enemy.
Ahead of Olveira grew the sound of a rapidly developing firefight. Red tracers whipped through the leaves overhead. This was somewhat disconcerting to the legate. All of his life, in training and in combat against the Sumeris and Pashtians, the enemy tracers had always been green and his own red. Now it was reversed and the red streaks struck him as somehow more malevolent.
On the Balboan firing line, mere meters from where the Haarlemers were sending tracers toward Olveira, a terrible fight was in progress. Eighteen- and nineteen-year-old Tauran kids traded shots, grenades, and sometimes bayonet thrusts with sixteen- and seventeen-year-old Balboan kids. Screams of pain, fear, and anger resounded in the dense jungle. Under the pressure of nearly three-to-one odds the Haarlemers were being driven back.
Olveira advanced with his small group of staff and currently useless radio operators. By the light of the moon filtering through the trees Olveira saw terrible scenes the fight had left behind. Here a Balboan cadet, sixteen but looking younger still, clutched at his belly and moaned. A closer look showed that he was trying to hold his intestines in where a bullet or fragment had ripped open his abdomen. There a somewhat older Haarlemer lay dead, bayonet in the gut and his hands still gripping the knife he had shoved into the boy whose bayonet had pierced him. Olveira almost tripped over a helmet that lay on the ground, then again over the boy—Tauran or Balboan, he couldn’t tell—whose smashed skull the helmet had failed to protect . . . brains in the helmet, brains on the ground.
Still the cadets, and Olveira, advanced. The Marines contested every foot gained bitterly. In places one side or the other ran low on ammunition. There the fight became very intimate.
Olveira heard a sound behind him and to his right. About time, he thought. The tanks and BTRs were coming up the road from Nuevo Arraijan. Now we can get moving.
Trawler Pericles, Puerto de Balboa, Terra Nova
“Captain,” announced a lookout, quite unnecessarily, “we’ve got Tauran helicopters coming in on the dock!”
The Volgan-born captain nodded, then directed his boat to cease jamming, to reverse engines, and to back out into the waters of the Bay of Balboa.
No way those people can land on top of us, what with all the cranes and such sticking up. We’ll find another position and see if the Balboans want us to keep jamming or not.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
For the old Roman Valor is not dead . . .
—Machiavelli, The Prince
Carrera’s Command Post, Arraijan Ordnance Works, Balboa, Terra Nova
Carrera had a sneaking suspicion that the Ordnance Works—once it had been a mere rifle factory but there had been quite a bit of expansion—was on the Tauran Union’s “Do Not Destroy” list. For one thing, it made one of the finest and most advanced infantry rifles on the planet. For another, they didn’t want to be saddled with the cost of rebuilding Balboa after the war, while the works could be modified to producing civilian goods, keeping people employed, and cutting down on the amount of future revolutionary activity thereby.
The CP, itself, was in an alcove that had been built into the works for no other reason than to be a command post at some future date.
Carrera wasn’t in the CP at the moment, though, he was on foot up by the main highway, accompanied by Soult carrying a radio. That was where he flagged down the Armored Cavalry Troop—which is to say the “Armored Cavalry Club”—of the Fifteenth Cadet Tercio. The troops were now halted along the road where Carrera flagged them down, the vehicles spaced out in a herringbone pattern and hidden under trees. The Fifteenth was a little unusual among the cadet formations in having, in its clubs, the nuclei for two heavy units. Their “clubs” likewise provided for two batteries of 122mm self-propelled guns rather than the single one even the legions’ mechanized tercios were given.
The head of the cavalry troop, an ex-officer of the Jagelonian Army, jumped down from his Ocelot to stand beside Carrera. Saluting, the Jagelonian announced that he was the lead element of the Fifteenth, that the rest of the tercio was strung out over about the next twenty kilometers back. He also told Carrera that they had been attacked by Tauran aircraft on the way, with some losses to themselves and none, so far as they knew, to the Tauran Union.
“We might have gotten one, maybe more, if this goddamned jamming hadn’t kept us from spreading the word that the aircraft were around.”
Carrera nodded. “I know. It’s part of the price to pay to beat the Taurans. Did you think it would be cheap? We’ve lost some men from it, even a few opportunities and some time. But they’ve lost control of themselves and of the battle. It’s a better than fair trade. Besides, Tribune, it won’t last much longer now.
“Now here’s the situation. The Seventeenth Cadets took Arnold and are taking Nelson and the navy annex. The Sixteenth Cadet Tercio is out of communications but we know they’re attacking Dahlgren. I don’t have any idea about how that one’s going. You, go now, as fast as you can drive, and get me the Bridge. I’ll tell your boss what you’re doing when he gets here.”
At that moment, Carrera’s radio crackled back to life. He picked up the microphone and called his Military Intelligence Tercio.
Cerro Gaital, Balboa, Terra Nova
Sergeant Valdez took the message and issued a simple command to his men. A few switches were thrown, a few buttons pushed.
High, high overhead, eight satellites in geosynchronous orbit sent a continuous stream of encrypted data. The data, however, said little more than “at the tone, the time will be . . .” Valdez’s men could not read the data.
It didn’t matter. They knew what the data had to say: “at the tone, the time will be . . .” The eight satellite dishes around Valdez took that interpretable data—and the unencrypted time data—delayed them ever so slightly, then fed them to an amplifier. The amplifier, in turn, sent all eight streams to several directional antennas. The antennas sent fairly narrow—and immensely powerful—radio signals in the directions of the fire base at Imperial Range Base Camp, Herrera Airport, Balboa City
, and Cristobal.
Taken collectively, each directional antenna’s retransmission said “at the tone, the time will have been . . .” Any Global Locating System that did not use the encrypted signal and was within the arc of that powerful directed signal containing the stream of eight satellite messages would interpret them perfectly. By comparing the minor—fractions of nanoseconds—variances in the time from the eight satellite signals, the GPS could calculate nearly exactly the receiver’s position. Unfortunately, without the delay in the signals the position the GPS would calculate would be the position of the PDF receivers on Cerro Gaital, not its own. The delay not only ruined the data, it made it very difficult and maybe impossible for a GLS operator to destroy the jammers by calling in artillery or air power to attack the grid on his receiver.
For the more sophisticated GLS, the stream of data would be ignored because it did not, could not, mesh with the data being received from the other satellites. That is, it would be ignored until the other sections of the Anti-Navigation Company overpowered the true signals of the other satellites with their own overpowering jamming.
Electronic barrage being fired, Valdez cleared his men away from the hill. He took with him a remote switch to start and stop the electronic barrage as his future orders might dictate.
Fort Guerrero, Balboa, Terra Nova
The Commander of the Second Tercio, Legate Chin, was surprised to hear his radios come to life after so much static, music, and false traffic. Unlike some of the other places the Taurans had attacked, at Guerrero they’d seen to cutting the telephone lines beforehand. Therefore, the Second’s headquarters had been out of touch with anyone since a few minutes prior to the attack.
“Chin, Chin. This is Carrera. Do you read me? Over. Chin, this is Carrera . . .”
