The Rods and the Axe - eARC Read online

  Meanwhile, given the war she had tried to foment, High Admiral Wallenstein was doing her not inconsiderable best to bring the Zhong into it on behalf of the Tauran Union. Inexplicably, the commander of the Balboan Legion del Cid, Patricio Carrera, seemed intent on helping her.

  MAJOR DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  in order of appearance:

  Marguerite Wallenstein. High Admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, a fleet of observation in orbit above the Planet of Terra Nova. She acquired her position largely through the actions and intervention of Patricio Carrera. The high admiral is Reformed Druidic Faith, repentant for her previous (“and they were many, oh, many”) sins. Still, she has a duty to her home planet to keep the barbarians of Terra Nova from breaking into space and trashing her system of government, even though she detests that system.

  Omar Fernandez. Legate in the Legion del Cid. Chief of Intelligence, which includes counterintelligence. Crippled and wheel chair bound by a would-be assassin’s bullet. A widower, Fernandez’s only child, a daughter, was killed in a terrorist attack. Utterly ruthless and utterly loyal to his country and its war chief.

  Patricio Carrera, Born Patrick Hennessey. Former officer in the Federated States Army, retired, moved to his late wife’s—Linda Carrera de Hennessey’s—native country of Balboa, raised an army to avenge the death of her and their children at the hands of Salafi terrorists. Currently commander, or Dux Bellorum, Legion del Cid, a former private military corporation, now the armed forces of the Timocratic Republic of Balboa

  Jan Campbell. Captain, intelligence officer from the Anglian Army. Female, and highly decorative. Female, and “more deady than the male.” Campbell authored a report, the Campbell Report, which advised, correctly, that the legion was dangerously tough and large. Ignored then, her star is likely to rise with the perceived accuracy of her report. Rather, it would except that Campbell is currently a prisoner of war along with—

  Kris Hendryksen. Cymbrian Sergeant Major, intelligence, seconded to the Tauran Union, and captured during the last battle in Balboa.

  Ricardo Cruz. Sergeant Major, Second Cohort, Second Infantry Tercio, Legion del Cid. Highly decorated. Battle hardened. Rather young.

  Khalid. Druze assassin and spy working for Fernandez, on assignment to the Tauran Union. Like Druze, generally, Khalid is loyal to his adopted homeland or Balboa. Pretends to be a Moslem, most of the time. Good friend of Ricardo Cruz and Rafael Montoya.

  Achmed Qabaash. Sumeri, Brigadier, Army of Sumer. Legate, Pro Tem, Legion del Cid. Qabaash commands a brigade in the Presidential Guard of the Republic of Sumer, which brigade, sent to help Sumer’s ally, Balboa, is appointed Forty-third Tercio, Legion del Cid. Most Balboans who know him would agree, “Qabaash . . . mean motherfucker . . . glad he’s on our side.”

  Bertrand Janier. Chief of Staff, Tauran Union Combined Staff. Effective commander, Tauran Defense Agency. Former commander, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa. Janier was once rather overbearing and arrogant. Events have muted those defects, leaving a superior general officer in their wake. Why, he’s even begun to treat almost like a human being, his long suffering aide de camp.

  The Khans, referred to as Khan, the husband, and Khan, the wife. They are members of Wallenstein’s staff, highly valued, very capable. They have some rather odd views of marriage and sex, by Terra Novan lights, but quite within the mainstream culture of Old Earth and not all that far out of some subcultures of twenty-first century Earth.

  Blanco. A black lieutenant of the police in Balboa’s neighbor, Santa Josefina. Educated at the military academy of another central Columbian petty state, Blanco is about as military as it gets in demilitarized Santa Josefina. Serves occasionally as a military advisor to his president—

  Angel Calderón. President of Santa Josefina, Balboa’s eastern neighbor. Having no particular vices or virtues, being neither perfectly honest nor unutterably corrupt, he was probably as good a choice for president as had been on offer, for normal times. Sadly for the president, the times are not normal.

  Claudio Marciano. Tuscan general officer, retired but called back to duty as a compromise candidate to command the Tauran Union Security Force in Santa Josefina. Capable and cynical, he detests most things about demilitarized Santa Josefina and rather admires his official enemy, Balboa. Much loved by the soldiers of the multinational TUSF-SJ, his task is a forlorn one.

  Judy Tipton. Anglian military wife. Her husband is a prisoner of Balboa. She is, perhaps unwittingly, an asset in the propaganda war between Balboa and the Tauran Union.

  Lydia Gordon. Anglian military widow. A definite asset in the propaganda war between Balboa and the Tauran Union.

  Rigoberto Puercel. Legate, commanding Eighth Legion and the Isla Real.

  Roderigo Fosa. Legate and admiral, commanding the classis, or fleet, of the legion.

  Rafael de a Mesa. Sergeant. Tercio Santa Cecilia. De le Mesa is crippled and wheelchair bound, and leads a small team of Down’s Syndrome affected troops on what is essentially a suicide task, to man a fixed tank turret, defending a portion of a beach, on the Isla Real.

  Esmeralda Miranda. Freed slave from Old Earth. Admiral Wallenstein’s cabin girl and stand-in daughter. Very young. Lover of Richard, earl of Care and captain of the UEPF Spirit of Peace. Likes Richard. Loves her high admiral as a mother and more. Hates the Consensus that rules her planet and hates the clan that rules her home province.

  Xingzhen. Of indeterminate age but painfully beautiful. Empress of Xing Zhong Guo, or New Middle Kingdom. Real ruler of the Kingdom. Rather despises most men.

  Raul Parilla. Old soldier, retired. Former figurehead commander of the Legion del Cid. Now the genuine president of the Timocratic Republic of Balboa.

  Marqueli Mendoza. Wife of Warrant Officer Jorge Mendoza. Ph.D. Author and philosopher in her own right, and, with her husband, one of the two main intellectual architects of the Timocratic Republic. Seconded to the propaganda ministry for some educational work in support of the war effort. The essence of pure feminine charm in a very compact package.

  Richard, earl of Care. Captain of the UEPF Spirit of Peace. Foisted on Wallenstein as a sop to the ruling class of Old Earth. Fairly competent but advanced too young and knows it. In love with the ex-slave girl, Esmeralda. Much cared for by Wallenstein, because fundamentally decent despite the class that bore him and raised him.

  Cass Aragon. Warrant Officer, intelligence, assigned to Santa Josefina. Female, tall, slender, and light skinned, she blends in perfectly with the Santa Josefinan norm.

  Hamilcar Carrera. Cadet, Twenty-ninth Cadet Infantry Tercio. Seconded to Thirty-seventh Cadet Cazador Tercio. Son of Patricio Carrera and Lourdes, Patricio’s second wife. Worshipped by a tribe of pagan Pashtun as “Iskandr,” the reincarnation of Alexander and a god in his own right. He has already fought and bled for the cause, though quite young. “I am not a god, Pili . . . I’m just a boy.”

  Pililak. Also called, “Ant.” One of Hamilcar’s twelve Pashtun wives. Very gutsy girl, defiant to a fault, but dedicated to her god.

  Victor Chapayev. Legate, commanding the Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui (now become the Twenty-ninth Cadet Infantry Tercio). Ex-Volgan para, who came over with Colonel Samsonov and the Three-fifty-first Tsarist-Marxist Guards Airborne (now Twenty-second Paracaidista Tercio, Legion del Cid). Fought with Carrera in Santander. Son in law to—

  Muñoz-Infantes. Commander of the Castilian contingent of the old Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa. Defected, with his battalion, to Balboa.

  Lourdes Nuñez de Carrera. Carrera’s second wife. Tall, slender, huge eyed, multi-lingual. An independent thinker and brave; she is a she bear in defense of her family. She, personally, foiled a coup against her husband and Parilla.

  Alena Cano, AKA, “Alena the Witch.” First Pashtian of her tribe to recognize Hamilcar as Iskandr. Married into the legion at a young age. Husband is Tribune David Cano. No one, least of all she, knows if she’s a witch or just supremely insightful. Dedicated
to her Iskandr.

  Ignacio Macera. Tribune, Legio del Cid. Serving in Tercio la Negrita.

  Ricardo Salas. Legate, commanding Tercio la Negrita.

  Matthias Esterhazy. Legate at large. Former Sachsen Fallschirmstuermpioniere. Signed on with the legion early. Has a very full plate; alternates between diplomatic duties, comptrolling, investing for the legion, and doing occasional engineering work.

  Larry Triste. Senior Balboan intelligence operative. Legionary rank unknown.

  Wu Zixu. Major. Imperial Marines, Xing Zhong Guo.

  Liu. Captain (Naval). Commanding Xing Zhong Guo Dynasty class attack submarine, Mao Zedong.

  PROLOGUE

  High Admiral’s Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Peace,

  in orbit over Terra Nova

  Wallenstein sat at one end of a conference table crowded with computer terminals manned by intelligence and communications personnel. Behind them sat the Zhong empress, aboard ship officially as a courtesy. Still other Old Earth spacefarers updated old-fashioned maps and charts temporarily affixed to the conference room’s walls. Between the latter, and above the screens and heads of the former, a wide screen Kurosawa television, purchased below and mounted here as better than anything Old Earth was likely to produce, showed split images of the action taking place below.

  Tall, slender, blond, blue-eyed, and rather pretty, Wallenstein looked maybe a sixth of her roughly two centuries of life. She’d have looked younger still, except that sleep had come hard of late; hard, light, and often interrupted. There was just too much to fear.

  One of the images of the planet below was relayed by the UEPF ship, Spirit of Harmony, a sister to Spirit of Peace, and one of only four in the Spirit class of starships. This image was of the waters and islands off the northern coast of Balboa.

  Wallenstein concentrated on a ray-shaped island, the centermost and largest of the group, the Isla Real. It was swathed in smoke, some of it from explosions though more of it came from the smoldering, splintered trees and ruined, charred buildings of the island fortress. Some, too, came from the flickering wrecks of vehicles, many of which had been identified and destroyed despite the defenders’ best efforts at concealing them. There were also two freighters, small ones, sunk in the island’s shallow coastal waters, where they’d been delivering defensive materiel. The fires in these had burned out, or, rather, been put out by the Balboans as they recovered most of the materiel the freighters had been carrying and ferried it to shore.

  Though Marguerite Wallenstein could not, of course, smell it, much of that smoke carried with it the aroma of long pig, done to a turn.

  The Zhong, whose invasion fleet was massed to the north, had quite limited ability to launch airstrikes against the fortress, amounting to no more than two and a half sorties per plane, per day, from their two small carriers’ compliment of eighteen, each, Sergeyevich-83s. Even that was reduced by the three dozen’s ready rate of about sixty-six percent. A mere fifty tons a day was all the Zhong could deliver to the target.

  Wallenstein knew for a fact that the Zhong had enquired with the Federated States as to buying one of their old mothballed battleships, the last in the world. “It’ll make a great tourist attraction and hotel,” the Zhong had insisted. The FSC hadn’t bought a syllable of that, but had instead pointed out that restoring one of the old behemoths to active duty was a matter of years, not weeks, while training crews from scratch could take years more, given that no Zhong in history had ever even sailed in one. “No, having had some long deceased old man on deck for the surrender of Yamato doesn’t count.”

  Beyond the Zhong’s meager fifty tons a day, more, much more, came from the Tauran Union. Their combined air forces had flown several hundred of the most modern combat aircraft out of Santa Josefina, to the east of Balboa. About two hundred sorties a day, each carrying nearly a thousand tons, had been devoted to reducing the island over the last six weeks.

  Wallenstein had her doubts about the effectiveness of either Zhong or Tauran efforts. Yes, they’d managed to do some damage, she conceded. But . . .

  But that island is like they took Old Earth’s Maginot line, anchored one end on Hill 287, then wrapped the entire line around the island in a spiral.

  Still, the aerial attack wasn’t a complete waste. She could see the tilted or peeled-open wreckage of eleven of the sixteen triple gun turrets that had come under attack. These turrets, mounting three 152mm guns each, had been salvaged from mostly worn-out Volgan heavy cruisers, then mounted atop a series of concrete positions ringing the island on all sides. Three to four ammunition bunkers, connected to the guns by light rail, complimented each turret. The rails, in turn, connected to the island’s light railway, a 600mm gauge system that had originally been thought to be merely a cheap way to move troops to training, but had proven its worth in other respects as it contributed to final preparations to defend the island. The rail was a twisted ruin now, too, marked by shattered ties, cratered substrate, and the rusting wrecks of steel bridging. That said, the rail had run through a concrete revetted trench protecting it. This had made wrecking it several times harder than it would have otherwise been.

  The son of a bitch built it, fumed Marguerite, intending that it be used to beef up a defense. He was preparing for this all along, for at least ten years. He wanted this war, or needed it, more even than I did. And that preparation, as ruthless as any in human history, has us behind the power curve. I’d say he’s been out-decision cycling us except that I know that he sneers at the concept. No . . . he’s just had the initiative, even when it looked like we had it. And that’s not quite the same thing.

  Again Marguerite turned her attention to the wrecked triple gun turrets. There was no doubt that they were out of the fight. Nor was there any doubt about targeting them. The only real question had been whether or not they should have taken out the five facing the city.

  Janier, in Gaul, had explained it thusly: “In fact, while there is no doubt a fire direction center for each of those turrets, the turrets don’t need one; they can always direct lay. Second, even if they did need it, it’s either under the guns or out in one of the bunkers, or hidden somewhere completely different. In short, we cannot with certainty render the guns useless by going after their FDCs.

  “Another option is to go after the ammunition bunkers. The problem there is that the guns almost certainly have some ready ammunition in well-protected magazines below them. Then, too, the ammunition bunkers are camouflaged, hence harder to see and harder to hit. Worse, they are better protected than the turrets, which are only well armored to their fronts. Yes, the Balboans poured some concrete on top. Trust me here; it’s not enough. Finally, there are more of the ammunition bunkers. You can waste four sorties to get all the bunkers with individual deep penetrators, or one to get the guns.

  “Go for the guns.”

  Which is all well and good and logical, thought Wallenstein. But in dealing with Carrera we have always done the well and good and logical. And it never worked out. I do not think that’s because he is a genius, exactly, so much as he’s a ruthless son of a bitch with some foresight, while we are idiots. We just don’t think the same way, not even Janier who is part of the same general culture as Carrera. So we cannot predict him well, while he seems incapable of not predicting us. Why? Because we are predictable. That, and because we are manipulable.

  Or perhaps it is just something in the nature of war that a barbarian warrior understands instinctively, but which we cannot quite grasp.

  I wish I felt better about all this. But I don’t; I can’t, because I cannot see or even guess at what the enemy is doing or has planned. All I know is that there will be something and we will not like it. Like the fucking “five minute bombs.” The TU really didn’t like those.

  The left side of the screen showed a much larger scale view of the Mar Furioso, the ocean off Balboa’s northern coast. It was in large enough scale, and a small enough section of the screen, that the Zhong fleet was invisible but for
computer-drawn circles around its ships, battlegroups, and amphibious and support flotillas.

  One skimmer—reusable, stealthy recon drones used by the Peace Fleet—off of Harmony was engaged in following the Zhong fleet. Thus, Wallenstein could, at need, get a close up of the main fleet or, within a short span, any of its subordinates. Another, flown from the same source, kept a close watch on the island. That latter was a tougher job, since the Balboans had lofted to one thousand meters above ground some seventy-six quite large barrage balloons. There were on steel cables to make a pilot’s life exciting and difficult; also—should said pilot come too low—short.