Chapter Three
From Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth, Terra Novan Edition of 475 AC
The Helen (H): that amount of beauty required to launch one thousand Achaean ships of approximately eight tons empty displacement each, or approximately eight-thousand tons of shipping, and to destroy one city.
The milliHelen (mH): a more convenient measure than the Helen, that amount of beauty required to launch one ship and burn down a single house.
The Linda (L): a more up-to-date measure; that amount of beauty required to launch eight-thousand tons of shipping in a single ship and destroy a city.
Dos Lindas: (ex-Venganza) an antique aircraft carrier of sixteen- thousand tons unladen displacement, restored and recommissioned to take part in the war waged against Salafi terrorists and their supporters by the Legion del Cid (qv). Destroyed cities: TBA.
Academia Militar Sargento Juan Malvegui, Puerto Lindo, Balboa, 1/10/466 AC,
The original port had been raided and burned by pirates almost three centuries before. Its crumbling walls, what remained of them, huddled at one corner of the rectangular bay, held up in places by nothing but friction, gravity and the binding, green and brown tendrils of jungle that interwove among the stones. Shacks, too, sat within the ruins, sometimes surrounded on three sides by the chewed walls.
Outside that original town, or the ruins and shacks that remained of it, a certain amount of newfound prosperity could be seen; new houses, some few stores with bright glass windows, paved streets. This was to be expected when one trebled the population of a not very populous place, and considerably more than quadrupled the average income of an otherwise rather impoverished place. The new population and the new money had come from two sources. The first of these was the Academy, especially its fairly well paid (by local standards) professors and military cadre. The second was the shipyard built to refit the old aircraft carrier—the ex-HAMS Venganza—the legion had purchased for a song, albeit at three and a half million FSD a rather pricey jingle, one step ahead of the breakers. There were other ships in port waiting for the shipyard's attentions.
Carrera had made some efforts to keep the old town as it was, buying up properties to fix and preserve the ruins. He'd wanted the boys of this first military school to have the lesson always before them: This is defeat; avoid it. (Another school sat on the other side of Balboa, right next to the equally ruined Balboa Antiguo, also sacked and burned but by Old Earth's UN. That one, the Academia Militar Belisario Carrera, was sited by the ruins for much the same reason as was the Juan Malvegui.)
The school itself was on the other side of the bay from the town, near the bay's mouth. When the fog was not heavy or the rain was light, the boys could see the ruins from the battlements of the old stone fortress—Fortaleza San Filipe—that dominated the bay, the school, and the old town.
There was no rain and only a very light fog as Carrera's staff car wound through the street. It was both preceded and followed by armed and armored vehicles. There was a battalion of Castilian troops at Fort Williams, not so far away. Relations between the legion, on the one hand, and the government of Balboa and the Tauran brigade of which the Castilians were a part, on the other, were, at best, strained. Moreover, the Tauran dominated Cosmopolitan Criminal Court had a standing warrant for the arrest of Carrera and his nominal chief, Raul Parilla, for various alleged crimes committed by the Legion during the initial campaign in Sumer.
I know we're going to have to fight them, eventually, Carrera admitted to himself. But I want that fight to be on our terms, not brought on by well-meaning troops trying to save Parilla or myself from incarceration. So . . . best not to tempt the Taurans . . . yet.
Though no one but Carrera knew it for a fact, the boys of the Brigade of Cadets were part and parcel of the plan for meeting and defeating the Taurans when the day came. Some others had guessed some of that plan. Aleksandr Sitnikov, in particular, was, as commander of the cadets, well aware that the boys spent two days a week training on strictly military subjects, that the three schools thus far built had their buildings connected by tunnels, and that those tunnels led off the school grounds to well-concealed spots in the jungle. Sitnikov knew, too, that the three schools still building shared these features. Lastly, any fool with a map could see that four of the six schools were well sited to serve as springboards to attack into the Taurans' base area, the ten-mile wide strip through the country that contained the Balboa Transitway, an above sea-level canal. Of the other two, one was in excellent position to defend the country's main airport, west of the capital, from ground or airborne attack, while the last was near enough to the former—and future—military base at Lago Sombrero to effect the same purpose.
Sitnikov kept his insights to himself. He had few qualms about using fourteen-year-olds as soldiers, and none whatsoever to using fifteen- through eighteen-year-olds.
Formerly a colonel of armor in the army of the Volgan Republic, and before that in the Red Tsar's Guards, Sitnikov had been sent to Balboa early on, to train the new legionaries in the complexities and nuances of Volgan-built tanks, as well as their techniques and tactics. He'd come over, liked what he'd seen, liked the larger paycheck on offer for switching nationalities, and so had elected to stay. That had been more than five years ago.
He'd been as bald then as he was now. Nor had he aged otherwise. Everything in Balboa agreed with Sitnikov, from the weather to the work to his new Balboan wife, a smoky beauty from this very town. The work especially agreed with him. His lifetime's ambition had been to command a division—tank or motorized rifle; it mattered not—in war. He was reasonably certain that, under the table, Carrera had given him the first half of that ambition, the division in the form of what was soon to be nearly thirteen thousand cadets. The other half, the war, was almost certainly coming.
Sitnikov and his key staff met Carrera at the base of the terreplein over which had been erected a reviewing stand. Behind the reviewing stand stood the fort's massive stone walls.
"At ease," Carrera ordered, after casually returning the mass salute.
Sitnikov led the group up a smooth granite stairway, then along the grassy terreplein to the stand. There were already some dozens of spectators; one of them, Carrera was surprised to see, the Castilian colonel commanding the Tauran battalion at Fort Williams.
Idly, Carrera wondered if Colonel Muñoz-Infantes was here as a spy or perhaps in sympathy. He didn't know enough about the man.
Note to self: Muñoz-Infantes, check into, task for Fernandez.
Slowly Carrera walked the line, shaking hands, patting shoulders, smiling. When he reached Muñoz-Infantes he was somewhat surprised to see the Castilian colonel brace to a stiff attention, click his heels, and announce, "Legate Fernandez intervened with Legate Sitnikov to invite me to this ceremony, Duque."
"Did he indeed?" Carrera searched into the man's face for some insight. No use, it was as blank as a stone slab. "Well . . . welcome, Colonel. Enjoy the show."
"Fernandez thinks he can be turned," Sitnikov whispered later, once he and Carrera were seated. "Muñoz-Infantes is a Falangist. He hates the Tauran Union, hates the wogs, hates the Gauls, hates the World League, hates United Earth, hates cosmopolitan progressivism, hates—"
At that point Sitnikov was interrupted by a fanfare of trumpets, emanating from both sides of the reviewing stand. This was joined a few moments later by massed drums on the fort's parade, below the terreplain.
Then came the singing. From three gates to the northeast the six thousand—soon to be over twelve thousand—boys, aged at this point fourteen to seventeen, marched onto the parade singing the theme song chosen for the youth:
"Think, boys, think on all that matters most:
Your homeland, the Legion, your flag and your faith.
Hold them holy, holy in your hearts
Pure as the morning light.
Juventud adelante, cantando feliz
Si hay sol o si llueve
Juventud adelante, cantando feliz
A muerte o victoria
Assaltamos el mundo con pasos fuertes . . ."
"Is there anything he likes?" Carrera asked.
"Huh?" Sitnikov looked puzzled.
"Muñoz-Infantes; is there anything he likes?"
"Ah. Yes . . . according to Fernandez. They include Castille, the Spanish language, the Catholic Church, the Castilian Army . . . and, apparently . . . us."
The ceremony concluded, the boys were still singing as they marched off the field.
"Juventud adelante,
No camino tan duro.
Gritamos "Ave Victoria!"
"We've laid on a little reception, partly for ourselves but mostly for guests and the families of the boys transitioning to senior status next year," Sitnikov announced. "Perhaps you might want to chat with Colonel Muñoz-Infantes . . ."
Carrera thought on it briefly before answering, "No . . . I would if I could but I can't. The Dos Lindas is supposed to be recommissioned tomorrow morning and I have another speech to rehearse in my mind. You feel free to feel him out, though, Sasha. Just don't commit to anything and don't let him send anyone to snoop around our facilities."
"I understand, Patricio," Sitnikov answered.
Carrera was reasonably sure that the Volgan understood perfectly.
Most of the tonnage of the legion's not-so-very-small fleet was, for the time being, here at Puerto Lindo. Besides the aircraft carrier, which dominated all the others, there were five ex-Volgan Suvarov- class cruisers, purchased from a scrap dealer for a total of eleven million FSD, along with thirteen more former Volgan ships, one destroyer, two submarines, six obsolete frigates, one mine-countermeasures ship, and three corvettes.
The Suvarovs had been out of commission and slated for scrapping for over a decade but, in the confusion attendant on the collapse of the Volgan Empire, no one had ever gotten around to actually scrapping these last five. They were virtually scrap anyway, all but one of them, or possibly two. That best one had been kept up longer than the rest to serve as a flagship. Carrera thought that still something might be done with the rest. The one that was in fair shape was being restored in a somewhat desultory fashion. The others? Even if scrapped for their steel, the gun turrets, five dual six-inch mountings each, might be emplaced on concrete pads around the Isla Real's perimeter.
The other warships were newer and in better shape. Among these were even two titanium-hulled submarines, formerly nuclear but in fact as dead as chivalry with the reactors and anything to do with them torn out. Carrera didn't actually know to a certainty what he would do with any of them, but the price had been right. Nobody wanted Volgan ships, not even Volga.
There was a second carrier out there, also an ex-His Anglic Majesty's Ship, the Perseus, the legion had an option on. It was in truly awful shape though, since some light scrapping had actually commenced before the legion bought its option. It might, at best, serve as a stationary training ship. It was certainly never going to sail again; it would have to be towed to Balboa to be any use at all.
Though Carrera didn't know what he was going to do with most of the hulls he'd bought; he did know what he was going to do with the Venganza.
We're going to commission it.
The ship had started out as a bargain. Purchased for three and a half million FSD, and needing about twelve times that in overhaul, it had seemed like a relatively cheap, and potentially highly profitable, way of transporting aircraft to the war zone and perhaps even suppressing Salafi piracy in various areas of the globe that had fallen under it. Then the cost of Yithrabi crude had hit eighty FSD a barrel and an oil powered ship had seemed rather less of a bargain. Just moving the ship, slowly, halfway around the globe used about six and a half million FSD worth of diesel. And there was no guarantee that the price wouldn't go up. There wasn't even a guarantee of an adequate supply. Nor were the thermal deploymerization plants—built or building—so far in Balboa really up to more than domestic consumption. Indeed, they didn't even cover most that, yet.
Someone suggested nuclear. But it was not that big a ship, at about two hundred and twelve meters in length and twenty-four in beam, measured at the waterline. Oh, sure, this was much larger than some of the nuclear submarines in use by the Federated States, Volga, Zhong Guo, Anglia and Gaul. But the submarines didn't have to account for a flight deck, or fuel for aircraft. In any case, no one except the Volgans was willing to sell a militarily capable nuclear reactor to a private military organization for an essentially private warship. It just wasn't going to happen. As far as the Volgans went, they had lots of redundant reactors from their rusting fleet, but nobody really trusted their reactors.
I wonder if the FSC or Anglia would have been more cooperative if they'd known the legion was already a nuclear power, mused Carrera, standing by the dock.
Enter the Republic of Northern Uhuru, which had a new design for which they needed money. This design used tennis ball-sized spheres of mixed graphite and uranium instead of the more dangerous, expensive and difficult to dispose of uranium fuel rods used by others. The RNU was willing to sell. Even better, since the reactor design was modular, and not all that large, it could be constructed inside the ship. Hooray!
Except that even one miserable module provided more than five times the power the ship needed. Worse, each module cost about one hundred and twenty-five million FSD. Talk about cost overruns. The RNU went back to the drawing board, coming back some months later with a much smaller design, costing about seventy-five million, and producing only twice the power actually needed. Carrera had been offered two of the things for one hundred and thirty million so perhaps that one Suvarov-class cruiser might someday sail again, after all.
"But that's still twice as much as we need," Carrera had railed at the design team.
"Yeah, Duque . . . but . . . see . . . there are things we can do with the extra power. Lasers."
"Laaasssers . . ." the ship's redesign team had echoed when their chief said that.
"Lasers?"
"Oh, yes. Lasers. Shoot down incoming missiles . . . aircraft . . . cruise missiles . . . even shells. Lasers."
And so the ship had been fitted with three high-energy lasers; one each bow and stern on projecting mounts, plus one over the superstructure, or island. Add another seventy-five million to the cost. Then, once one has a ship into which one has sunk some hundreds of millions of dollars, one starts to give a lot of thought to protecting one's investment. Guns it had. The lasers helped, too. Armor was right out. That left maneuverability.
"You want me to spend what on this new drive?"
"But it only makes sense, Duque. The electric, podded, variable azimuth drive would make the ship turn within its own length. And we can get substantially increased speed, too."
After that, the twenty thousand spent for a bronze figurehead of his lost Linda, with her breasts demurely covered, had seemed pretty cheap to Carrera. In the end the thing had cost just over a quarter of a billion, not counting aircraft. All that just to get eighteen helicopters (three of them equipped for anti-submarine warfare), twelve light attack aircraft modified from crop dusters, eighteen slightly lengthened and widened, and substantially upengined, Cricket light recon birds, eight remotely piloted aircraft, and a demi-battalion of light infantry into some littoral area where they could raid.
Even with that light an aircraft load there had been problems. None of the older Volgan helicopters that were suitable, available, and affordable fit both the hangar deck's 5.3 meters of height and the dimensions of the elevators. Conversely, none of the more modern helicopters produced by the FSC or Tauran Union were capable enough or affordable enough, although they fit the hangar nicely. In the end, they'd decided—rather, the legate of the classis, Roderigo Fosa, had decided, since Carrera had simply given him a budget and said, "You figure it out"—on a newer Volgan helicopter, the Yakamov YA- 72 that was offered for sale for surprisingly little.
Little was not, however, nothing. The twenty-two YA-6s purchased had still run nearly fifty million FSD, with spares.
It is a fine chopper, Carrera thought. But still; fifty million . . . And it doesn't mesh logistically with the IMs we already have . . .
Sighing at the cost, Carrera approached the ship's bow. Fosa, as the legate commanding the classis, or fleet, followed, leading Mrs. Parilla, who had been selected to do the honors for the rechristening.
Let's hope somebody hires us to use it.
UEPF Spirit of Peace, 2/10/466 AC (Old Earth Year 2521)
One might have thought that a figurehead on a starship would have made little sense. Nonetheless, United Earth had for centuries had hundreds of thousands of otherwise unemployed and unemployable "artists." Some of them were even capable of more than flinging dung onto a canvas and calling it "art." Of those, some numbers had been commissioned to create figureheads for the Spirit-class of UE starships.
Spirit of Peace had been assumed to be a representative of all Earth's peoples, for only a joining of all the people could hope to bring peace. Thus, her figurehead had been a mixed race beauty. It looked quite a bit like the figurehead for the Dos Lindas, for that matter.
Which is decidedly ironic, thought High Admiral Robinson, sitting in his quarters, half turned from his desk. His uniform trousers were partly undone since he was being fellated by his fleet sociologist, Lieutenant Commander Iris Khan.
Khan, despite having one distant ancestor from the region of Pakistan on Old Earth, was blonde and blue-eyed. Kneeling between Robinson's legs, her eyes stayed upturned, intent on the high admiral's face, even as her mouth worked diligently to give the high admiral the quality of service to which his position entitled him.
Normally Robinson used the captain of Peace, Marguerite Wallenstein, for his physical needs. The captain, however, had duty at the moment and Khan had been otherwise unemployed. She would do.
Indeed, she does very well, Robinson thought as he reached out a hand to force Khan's head down and his penis into her throat moments before ejaculation. She stayed that way, her lips against the root of the high admiral's penis, even when a yeoman entered the quarters with the fleet's morning report. In the UEPF there was no shame in servicing one's betters. Only after the yeoman had left did Khan back off to lick away the still leaking residue. By that time the high admiral's face was blocked by the report.
"That will be all, thank you, Iris. I'll call you if I need you," was all Robinson had to say.
A few last licks and Khan closed the admiral's trousers, refastened his belt, stood and turned to go.
Just before she exited the cabin, Robinson ordered, "Send your husband to me. I want to go over some developments down below with him. It seems the local mercenary chief isn't content with merely having a ground army. He's got a major warship now. I wonder what's next."
Obras Zorrilleras, Cuidad Balboa, Republic of Balboa, 3/10/466 AC,
Cheapness was a watchword for the legion. Let others pay the expense of being on the cutting edge of military and scientific research; the Legion didn't need that. Instead, the Obras Zorrilleras, the research and development arm of the Legion del Cid, concentrated on stealing, reverse engineering, modifying, and occasionally—after evaluation—outright purchasing of technology. Even so, they did some original work, too.
They'd had some successes. The modifications for the Dos Lindas had come from OZ's naval bureau. They'd had a strong hand in the remanufacture of several smallish nuclear weapons captured in Sumer half a decade before. The small unit tactical communications system, or comsys, was likewise their design, modified from a wireless cell phone system in broad use around Terra Nova.
The big projects now were stealth, something the Federated States had a near monopoly on and which they would not share even with very close allies like Anglia.
Carrera had some potential uses for stealth, in the air, at sea and under the sea. That made it an OZ priority.
"We've got three things for you, Duque," the chief of OZ, an immigrant named Pislowski from the Jagielonian Commonwealth, said. "Two of these are the same basic technique but applied differently."
Carrera, Pislowski, and three others sat at a cheap conference table deep inside the main building for OZ. The researchers hadn't thought to provide refreshments. Instead, three models stood atop the table.
How refreshing, Carrera thought. He loathed briefings, meetings, and all the rest of the modern world's bureaucratic time-sinks. Refreshments tended to make it worse, not better, since they invited people to stay too long and talk too much. On occasion, Carrera thought of enacting a regulation requiring all meetings and briefings in the legion to be conducted standing and in the rain.
Pislowski smiled, pointing a finger. "It was that bloody Volgan's idea."
The Volgan—his given name was Pyotr—smiled back. He then picked up one of the models, a strangely proportioned aircraft. "As my friend has said, it was my idea. Technically. Better to say I was the one who pulled together some things I'd seen and read over the years. Some of that came from Jagielonia. This is a glider we've nicknamed the Condor.
"They build many gliders in Jagielonia," Pyotr continued. "Their interest goes back many decades. Even when I was doing design work for the Volgan Empire, it occurred to me that a glider has many advantages over an aircraft, even for combat purposes. It is fuel efficient. It is easy and cheap to maintain, even if it has an engine, as some do. It is quite easy and cheap to train people to fly a glider. Because a glider is so cheap and easy to fly, there is no great reason to require that the highest caliber men be chosen as pilots. Ground support requirements are only a tiny fraction of what is needed for a high performance aircraft. A glider is also relatively difficult to pick up on radar.
"Still there are disadvantages," Pyotr admitted. "A glider cannot carry much of a load. It is slow and not very maneuverable. It must be raised to a considerable height by some means, most commonly another aircraft. It depends upon natural updrafts in the air to keep going. With an auxiliary engine many of these disadvantages can be at least partially overcome. But with an engine, the glider becomes much easier to acquire, either on radar or by infrared from the heat of the engine and exhaust. Georgi and I have an answer to that."
Georgi, the senior of the two Volgan designers, spoke up. "Sir, do you know anything about radar?"
Carrera answered, "Assume not."
"Yes, sir. Radar is microwave energy, traveling through the air. It can also travel through other things, ground and water, for example, but with less range and accuracy. When the energy reaches something with a density different from air, it reacts. In effect, it radiates back from whatever it hit that was different from air, if the material it hits is capable of radiating back. Some materials radiate back poorly or not at all. These change the microwave energy into heat. Is the Duque familiar with the Federated States Air Force's P-71?"
"I know of it as a name. I've seen pictures."
"Here's a picture you didn't see," Georgi said, handing over an eight-by-ten black and white of a remarkably odd-looking aircraft.
Carrera took it and looked at it carefully. He asked, "What's that dark ring around it?"
"Bats," Georgi answered. "Hundreds and thousands of stunned, crippled or dead bats. They couldn't see the plane and flew into it, usually killing themselves. You see, bats use sonar which is, in some ways, similar to radar. The P-71 presented no surfaces to bounce back the sonar signals to the bats. So they couldn't 'see' it and flew into the plane. The P-71 presents a very small radar, or sonar, cross section. Too small for bats to see."
Pyotr took up the briefing, once again. "There are three primary factors that affect an aircraft's radar cross section. These are size, materials, and shape. Although it is the least important factor, if two aircraft have exactly the same materials and shape, but are of different size, the larger will have a greater radar cross section. These gliders will be quite small. For shape, the important things are to have no sharp edges, no flat surfaces pointed toward the radar. For materials, there are two . . . .oh, tricks, that we can use. The first is, construction wise, the tougher. Radar notices the change in density of an object in the air. To the extent that that difference is tiny, radar is apt not to notice. We plan to build gliders based on a spun carbon monofilament and resin shell. The shell itself can be made 'lossy'—"
"Glossy?" Carrera interrupted.
"No, sir. Lossy. It's a chemical property that refers to the conductivity of a material. Simply put, we can make the shell to absorb much radar energy and convert it to heat."
Carrera sat up. "Won't that give the glider away?"
"No, sir. The radar energy is small so the amount of heat produced in the shell is quite small and the polyurethane outside of it is almost the best insulator known. A plane might pick up the heat; a missile will not lock on very well.
"But we were discussing radar. By itself, the lossiness of the carbon monofilament is not enough. So outside of that, we shall build up polyurethane foam of decreasing density. The dielectric constant of the outermost polyurethane will be—"
Interrupting, Carrera asked "Dielectric constant?"
Pyotr reminded himself that he was dealing with a soldier, not a scientist. "Air has a dielectric constant of 1. The outermost polyurethane will have a DC of 1.01, near enough. At that difference, only an immeasurable amount of radar energy will radiate back. Not enough for a receiver to notice. As the radar penetrates the polyurethane, each increasingly dense layer will also radiate back a small amount; again, not enough to notice.
"The polyurethane itself will be reinforced by carbon fibers in the mix, which tend also to absorb radar energy. Inside it will be suspended a great many tiny metalicized chips. The chips will be curved to disperse radar energy outward on one side, or focus, and then disperse it, on the other."
Seeing Carrera's lack of comprehension, Pyotr explained. "The mix being sprayed on, the chips will be in random positions within the polyurethane. In almost all cases radar that hits them will be bounced away from the radar source. For those chips—and remember; they'll be tiny—that point directly toward the source, the radar will hit the convex or concave curves and be scattered so only a small portion of the energy is returned. These chips will also decrease in size as they near the outer surface. Where the P-71 has precisely calculated facets to insure the smallest possible surface pointed toward a radar, we will let random nature do much the same thing for us. Being random, it is possible that more than a desirable number of chips may reflect in the same direction. But the mathematical odds are plainly on our side. We can ground test each glider for particularly vulnerable areas, and use those with unsatisfactory chip alignment as something like a throwaway cruise missile, or as drones on recon missions. I believe you mentioned an interest in throwaways?"
"Yes." Carrera gestured for the Volgan to continue.
Pyotr nodded vigorously. "However, we cannot count on the plastics—the polyurethane and the carbon monofilament—to completely defeat the radar. Even the chips will only do so much. Inside the glider will be several objects that could give back quite a large radar cross section. The engine and the control package are problems. Even the pilot's skull will give back some radar energy. We plan on encasing the engine and control package in small, faceted, flattened domes of highly lossy material. These are much cheaper and easier to design and build than a full airframe like the P-71. They will reflect radar either down or straight up, and away from the radar source. The pilot, too, will be similarly covered although only on five sides, plus a partial—he has to see, after all.
"We have still to determine the best materials and composition for the propeller and wings. We might even go to a small jet engine. Likewise, we are arguing about the pilot's canopy. Neither of these problems appears insurmountable. For a guidance package for use as a drone we think it is possible to use a fairly simple computer and cheap, civilian model, global locating system. We would have to subcontract that out, however."
Carrera stopped writing in his notebook. "Range?"
Georgi answered, "Up to thirty-seven hundred kilometers, about twenty-three hundred miles, without a pilot, with maximum fuel, and a payload of over one hundred kilos. That is, if it doesn't have to expend fuel getting airborne."
"Maximum payload?"
"At twelve hundred kilometers, three hundred kilograms with pilot. Self lifting. These are approximations."
"Cost?"
"Under three hundred thousand FSD per copy. Possibly as little as two hundred and fifty. That doesn't count R and D costs. We will need thirty or, better, forty million to begin real development."
"Thirty days. Present me a budget." Carrera paused, then continued. "What's the rest?"
Pislowski pointed at the largest of the models on the table. It looked to Carrera much like the Dos Lindas, but with somewhat different lines.
"The same basic idea for stealthing the gliders can be used to stealth a ship. That is the aircraft carrier you have been restoring. We can create slabs of the polyurethane, carbon fiber, chip composite and—"
"No," Carrera interjected, holding up a restraining hand. He was already frustrated beyond belief with the cost of the carrier. "I've spent enough on that bitch. It's not intended to stand in line of battle against anyone who really counts. At this point, stealthing it is not necessary."
Shrugging, Pislowski pointed toward the third model, this one midway in size between the aircraft carrier and the glider. "We've taken to calling this a Megalodon. It has nothing like the stealthing features of the gliders; the material would not survive the pressure. Instead, we stole the idea from someone down in the Federated States."
Carrera noted mentally that the Megalodon model was facetted, just as had been the P-71 in the picture shown him by Georgi.
"Bounces sonar instead of radar, doesn't it; just like the bats in that photo?"
"Correct, Duque. The submarine itself is plastic . . . acrylic, actually." Pislowski removed the top of outer facetted fairing with his hands. "Inside, it would use either a hydrogen peroxide system, or some other air independent system, for propulsion. Extremely quiet."
Carrera looked long and hard at the model. Under the fairing was a cylinder that bulged out to a larger cylinder in the middle. Noticing his finger edging toward the bulge, Pislowski said, "That's where the torpedoes will be housed, in a rotating carousel turned, probably, by hand. It's only a thought, though."
The diving planes on the model were outsized, almost like wings. Pislowski explained, "The ship can glide forward as it rises or sinks. We have an idea for pumping out the ballast tanks by heating and cooling ammonia inside a flexible, condomlike, sheath. The ammonia would expand, displacing water from the tanks, or contract, allowing it in, and all fairly silently."
"Costs?"
"We have no idea, Legate. It depends on too many things that are out of our control. Will the Sachsens sell us peroxide systems? We don't know. Will the Anglics sell us the machinery to make thick acrylic cast tubes seven meters in diameter? Not if they know what we want it for. We can assume these will be expensive, though, especially if we have to develop them for ourselves. I am guessing here; maybe two hundred million each."
"All right," Carrera conceded. "That's a bit high for us. But I do like the idea. Send us a budget request for R and D only."
Pislowski nodded. "There is one other thing, Duque. We are getting into the realm of things which countries might classify as top secret. I . . ."
"You think you need a more secure location than the city," Carrera supplied. "I agree. It will take about a month to prepare things but at the end of that time I want those working on your more . . . mmm . . . let us say your more clandestine projects to move to the Isla Real."
Isla Real, Quarters #1, 4/10/466 AC,
The evening breeze cooled even as it kept off the mosquitoes. In the distance could be seen the lights of half a dozen merchant ships plying their trade between the Federated States, Atzlan, and Secordia, at one end, and the various republics-in-name-only, at the other. Still other ships pulled into and out of the Transitway.
"You really think it's going to come to a fight with the Tauran Union, Patricio?"
Carrera sighed and looked at his host. Parilla was short, stocky and dark. Pushing seventy, his hair was still mostly the jet black of the indians and mestizos who made up much of his ancestry. Only a distinguished frosting of gray at the temples betrayed his age.
"Eventually, yes, Raul," he answered. "We might be able to hold it off for a few years. But, in the long run, they're here for the purpose of confronting us, of supporting the civil government in confronting us."
"But why? I don't understand. We're fighting the fight they should be fighting. We're protecting them. It doesn't make any sense."
Carrera reached for the bottle of scotch sitting on the table between the two as he answered, "That's an interesting question. I thought for a while that it was the Gauls. After all, they've never quite forgiven the FSC for building the Transitway after they, themselves, failed to. And the Gauls are vindictive, make no mistake about it. But that vindictive?"
Parilla held his own tumbler out to be filled. "Okay, maybe not the Gauls. But they did send their troops here. They did entice the rest of the TU into sending their troops here."
"All true," Carrera conceded. "But think about the TU; how do they see themselves except as an organ of the World League. And what is the World League an organ of? What do they see as their spiritual foundation?"
Both men looked skyward to where the United Earth Peace Fleet mixed its lights with the stars beyond.
UEPF Spirit of Peace, 4/10/466 AC (Old Earth Year 2521)
High Admiral Robinson looked drearily from the window of his cabin at the green and blue planet spinning below. The planet spun in both senses, objectively, around its own axis, and subjectively, from the spinning of the ship around its axis to produce a practical artificial gravity. On the whole, the image would have made Robinson ill even if what went on, what had gone on, below hadn't already sufficed to do so.
So frustrating that I've lost in Sumer. Ah, well. At least I haven't lost the war, Robinson thought. He then amended the thought, Yet.
Robinson turned from the window onto space and looked instead at a map projected on the main screen of his cabin, a local product that—maddeningly, infuriatingly—came from a factory in Yamato, down below. "Kurosawa Vision Solutions," was written in small letters across the silvery frame of the screen.
The map was of Sumer, one of the many wretched, little nation- pustules that dominated the globe below. Once again Robinson played out in his mind the reasons he had decided to assist a group of radical barbarians to confront the major power—some below said the "hyperpower"—of Terra Nova.
We are stagnant on Earth. In one hundred years, or maybe as few as twenty years if Peace's engineering officer is to be believed, the Novans will be able to launch ships and do to Earth what Earth did to Terra Nova; colonize it. The big difference being that TN wasn't occupied by people and Earth is. Our system couldn't resist and won't survive. I could nuke them now; we still have some capability. And that knocks Terra Nova back five hundred years so that when they come looking for us in five hundred and twenty they'll have blood in their eye. And this fleet won't be here to stop them because if I nuke Terra Nova the Federated States of Columbia will nuke this fleet to ash. But Earth's Consensus won't build another fleet to replace the one lost here. They won't even pay to keep up what we have; for that I am reduced to selling art and, sometimes, slaves.
Robinson sighed deeply and wearily. He had upon his shoulders the whole burden of protecting his civilization and the class, his own class, which ran it. It was a crushing load.
We sell art. We sell slaves, the refuse of Earth's sixth class. And that just to keep my ships running and my crews and their families fed, paid and clothed. Must I run drugs next?
I had hoped to wear down the hyperpower below with a series of costly and indecisive wars. The problem with that is that they appear to be winning. Who would have imagined a single nation-state with that kind of sheer . . . ooomph? Formidable swine. What they lack themselves they can buy.
At the thought of the Federated States being able to buy what it needed, Robinson's thoughts turned to the soldiers the FSC had bought. Most were wretched, of course, or, if not, banned by their government from doing anything that might lead to casualties. The FSC paid for the upkeep and deployment costs of these, but nothing more. It got about what it paid for, or perhaps a bit less.
But then there are the others, those little brown Latin mercenaries. Those the FSC pays top drachma for and gets full value, too. I wonder how the war in Sumer would have turned out without that ruthless mercenary legion. Better; of that much I am sure.
Robinson thought back on the extraordinarily clever scheme Captain Wallenstein had come up with whereby sympathetic citizens of Tauran states had given themselves up as hostages to force their governments to pay ransoms to the insurgents in Sumer. It had been clever, but it had ended when someone started kidnapping Taurans for ransom and then feeding them feet first into wood chippers for the nightly news, even after the ransoms had been paid. The supply of volunteers had dried up very quickly after that and even real hostages had not been bargained for anymore. He was reasonably certain that the mercenary legion had been involved in all that.
But there's never any proof. Bastards.
And then there was the humiliation inflicted on the cosmopolitan progressives of Terra Nova by the legion, from torture stings to simply ignoring the Kosmo press no matter how loudly it howled.
Never mind, I must think to the future.
"Computer, change display," Robinson commanded.
"To what, High Admiral?" the artificial and vaguely feminine voice answered.
"World view. Show me incidents over the last thirty-five local days."
The image changed. Robinson studied.
Nice to see that things are taking a turn for the worse for the FSC in Pashtia. And the piracy along the western coast of Uruhu is encouraging . . .
"Computer, connect me with the intelligence office."
A male face appeared in one corner of the screen. A male voice answered. "Lieutenant Commander Khan here, High Admiral. Did you want me, sir, or my wife?" Iris Khan's husband meant, do you need another blow job or do you actually require intelligence support? He wasn't offended or judgmental about the matter, either way. The UE was very casual about both sex and marital relations. Moreover, it was considered bad form to use someone's wife for sex and not at the same time watch out for the husband's career.
"Khan, tell me about piracy on Terra Nova."
"Yes, High Admiral." Khan played with his computer to bring up some data. "Though piracy exists all over Terra Nova, there are four main nexus for piracy down below. One is the islands and coasts on both sides of the Republic of Balboa. This is mainly concerned with retail robbery of yachts and then reusing those yachts for drug smuggling, along with occasional kidnapping for ransom. A second is the eastern shore of Uhuru which, because of the nature of the trade there, tends to take entire ships and cargo. Ships plying that trade are smallish. A third is the Straits of Nicobar, which is not generally concerned with drug smuggling or theft of cargo but more with ship's safe robbery and kidnapping for ransom. There is some religious element to the Nicobar piracy, at least in the sense that a bare majority of the pirates are Islamic and seem to use Islam as a justification for piracy. They would still be pirates if they worshipped Odin. The last nexus is around the area of Xamar, on Uruhu's western coast. This is not new but has grown substantially over the last several years. Xamar piracy is also, officially, Islamic in intent though, once again, they would be pirates even if they were pagans."
Khan, the husband, pulled up more data from his screen. "Officially, piracy costs the economy down below about twelve to sixteen billion FSD annually. It is believed, however, that the actual incidence of piracy is understated by a factor of about twenty . . . though it is doubtful that the costs are quite that understated."
Robinson scratched his head. "Interesting. Thank you, Khan. Tell me, did your wife enjoy our session?"
"She says she did, Admiral, but wishes you had pinched her nipples more and come in her mouth rather than her throat. She likes that sort of thing."
"I'll remember that for next time. In the interim, I want both you and her to look into the long-term potential for both squeezing funds from and ruining a large-scale economy through unchecked piracy. Robinson, out."
Xamar Coast, Western Uhuru, 5/10/466 AC
"This is becoming tedious, sayidi," said the Helvetian banker representing a Tauran shipping firm, the Red Star Line. The banker looked rather like a gnome, short and stout and bearded. It was his job to negotiate the release of a dozen merchant sailors taken from a Red Star Line refrigerator ship two weeks prior. The sailors, bound and filthy, lined one corner of the sparsely furnished office near the center of the city.
Within the office tea and dates were served by tall, slender women with amazingly large, dark eyes. The women, some of them slave girls, likewise set out a tray of thin bread made from the flour of the chorley, a non-Old Earth species that resembled a sunflower that grew just above ground level, accompanied by local shoug, a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit" to "Joan of Arc," with a very small admixture of "Satan Triumphant."
Of the women, the eyes were all that could be seen, that, and the seductive swaying even their robes could not conceal. They didn't matter though; the gnome had little use for women.
"Indeed," agreed the formidable, even fierce, looking Hawiye tribe chief seated on a cushion opposite the banker. Like the women, the chief was tall and quite slender, despite his years. "As I have told you many times, retrieving your people from these thugs costs me. It costs in money; it costs in arms; it costs in favors and in influence. I would prefer to put our relationship on a more formal and regular basis. But you people . . ."
It was all a polite fiction. The Hawiye chief, Abdulahi was his name, didn't actually ransom anyone himself, nor did he have the slightest objection to groups of his underlings seizing infidel shipping. In fact, he sent them out to do so and then maintained, for form's sake, that he was only acting as an intermediary for the return of the crews. This face-saving arrangement was workable, but far from ideal.
"I know, sayidi. And I have spoken to my superiors at length on the subject. They've finally agreed to a more . . . regularized, arrangement."
At last, thought Abdulahi. Protection money. Or "Danegeld," as my instructors in Anglia would have called it.
"Here is what I propose," said Abdulahi. "Your firm will inform me in advance of when it will have a ship passing within this area. You will pay me an amount based on cargo—"
"The displacement," interjected the Helvetian. "My principals are not going to accept allowing your people aboard to inspect cargos. Besides, we could not really be sure they even were your people without you meeting every ship."
"Fair enough," Abdulahi agreed. "Displacement. That can be checked objectively. Moreover, it has a direct, if uneven, relationship to crew size, and therefore ransom potential, as well as docking fees, which likewise bears on money carried in the ship's safe. This is fair and simple enough."
"In any case," the Hawiye pirate lord continued, "You will pay a reasonable fee—yes, we will have to agree on what constitutes 'reasonable'—in advance. I will use the money to pay off the pirates who infest our coast."
"They will, of course, be free to attack the ships of other firms," added the Helvetian. Which is absolutely necessary to us or those firms will be able to ship cheaper than we can.
"Naturally."
"The question remains, however, can you control the pirates?"
Abdulahi simply laughed.
Zioni Embassy, Ciudad Balboa, 6/10/466 AC,
The Jewish Brigadier, Yonatan Bar El, laughed aloud. "Yes, Duque," he answered. "I do rather understand the problems inherent in the legion using Zioni equipment in Arab lands. Even your friends—and we in Zion are amazed at some of the friends you've made—wouldn't, just as you say, know whether to support you or shoot at you. Still, you must admit, our Chariot is a tank infinitely superior to the Volgan dreck you've been using."
"The Volgan stuff is better than you admit, Yoni," Carrera replied. "After all, don't you use every piece of Volgan equipment you can get your hands on, after a quality rebuild?"
"We do," the Jew admitted.
"Well, we have a substantial, if not quite controlling interest, in the Kirov tank factory. They do a quality initial build. We're pretty happy with our equipment, with a few exceptions."
"Which exceptions?" the Zioni inquired. Maybe there was a sale to be made after all.
"Lighter but longer-ranged artillery would be nice. Small arms are acceptable but . . ." Carrera shrugged eloquently.
"But the Volgan Bakanovas don't really have the range you would like."
"They lack range," Carrera admitted. "They lack penetration—"
Lourdes, wearing a long, silk sheath dress interrupted. "Patricio, Mrs. Bar El asked me to her family quarters. Do you mind if I slip out for a few minutes?"
The other half of the sales team, Carrera thought, answering, "Not at all, miel. I'll still be here when you return."
Lourdes pecked chastely at Carrera's cheek before turning to sway away. Yoni Bar El's eyes followed for just as long as politeness permitted, while thinking, Yum.
"We have a new small arms system in Zion . . ." he said, once he could tear his eyes away from Lourdes' seductively swaying posterior.
"I know. We've looked at the SAR-47. Not interested."
"Yeah . . . our troops don't like it either." It was Bar El's turn to shrug. "Though I expected them to like the grenade system that goes with it."
"Now that looked to have promise," Carrera agreed. "But what we really want is something that takes advantage of all the recent developments in small arms: super fast burst rates to make burst fire practical—the Bakanova has that, but only for two rounds—a cartridge firing a bullet with really superior ballistics, combustible casings, electronic ignition, integral limited visibility sights."
"It's funny, isn't it?" the Zioni observed. "There really are a number of major . . . oh . . . possibilities out there, and nobody seems interested in pursuing them. You would think that the FSC—"
"That much I don't really understand myself," Carrera said. "I served in the FS Army for quite a long time. The rifle my troops were last issued wasn't any better, really, than the rifle I'd been first issued. And it was a twenty-year-old design then. But they don't seem able to come up with a new one. This would be fine if the old one were great. But it wasn't."
"In any case," Bar El said, "we've blown our small arms design budget on the SAR-47 and we're stuck with it. And it's not a bad weapon, really. But now, we've got our designers reduced to making oversized pistols for Columbians with penis envy."
It was Carrera's turn to snicker. Then he turned serious. "You know, Yoni, I still do have money for small arms development. Maybe we could arrange something."
The Base, Kashmir, Tribal Trust Territories, 15/10/466 AC
"A superb arrangement, Abdulahi," said Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana. The news was enough to launch Mustafa up from his usual misery to something like hope, maybe even happiness.
The years had been unkind to Mustafa. Naturally tall and vigorous, disaster heaped upon disaster had shrunk him, even as a lingering illness weakened him. With good news so hard to come by, the news brought by Abdulahi was welcome indeed.
Communications for the movement were never secure. The only way to be certain of a secret was to carry it in person. Even the infidel press could not balance out that inferiority, though they tried. And using couriers, too, had its problems, as any number of mujahadin grabbed without cause or warrant from airplanes and airports around the globe could have testified. It was infuriating, and—Mustafa had to admit—unexpected, for the infidels to fail to follow their own rules. It was worse when the Kosmos weren't able to shriek, scream and nag their own governments into compliance in their own suicide.
"It is superb, Sheik. And it can only get better. This one heathen shipping company will be off limits, for a good price. But that doesn't reduce our righteous plundering. It only means we can concentrate on those who have not yet agreed to pay this maritime yizyah. This will increase the pressure on them to come to an arrangement with us. And each one that does submit increases the pressure on those who have not. One by one they will bow."
Abdulahi laid down a thick briefcase and opened it. Inside, Mustafa could see, were stacks of large denomination bills; Tauran lira, Federated States drachma, masu of Yamato, Volgan gold rubles, Helvetian escudi . . .
Mustafa felt tears begin to form. Abdulahi turned away, feigning not to notice.
"When here, in our darkest hour, you come to our rescue . . ." Mustafa began.
"Sheik, when my homeland was torn and my tribe starving, who came to our aid? You did. When the infidels occupied our land, who gave us the means and the encouragement to resist them? You did. Who built for us schools and hospitals? You did. This is a small repayment . . . with the promise of much more to come."
Later—after Abdulahi had been presented with a recently captured Tauran slave girl to take back with him to Xamar; a small token of Mustafa's appreciation and esteem—Mustafa had sat in his quarters for a long time stroking his beard and looking at the case of money while thinking upon the uses to which it could be put.
It's not that much really, a few million, five at most. I could almost weep for the days when the Ikhwan commanded hundreds of millions of FSD and thousands upon thousands of fighters.
This money is a start. It is also a suggestion. Along with the Xamari, I must think upon how to direct the seaborne mujahadin of Nicobar. Then again, they do not owe me as did Abdulahi and his people. Is it worth my time and effort to try to direct the Nicobars? Perhaps not. Can I make it worth their time and effort to support me? Perhaps so. It must be thought upon.
For now, I have the fight in Pashtia to worry about. And, even though I am a son of the Prophet, peace be upon him, I find I must worry, that I must not leave everything to Allah.
What a strange thought that is. The filthy Nazrani say that "God helps those who help themselves." How odd that this seemingly impious notion should infect me, and yet it may be so. I must set the mullahs to searching the Holy Koran and the Sacred Hadiths to see if this idea may be religiously supportable.
In any case, if it is not supportable, I do not know what is. Allah has turned his face from us everywhere we relied upon him too heavily. In Pashtia we were slaughtered in weeks. In Sumer, the holy warriors could not face the infidels. Millions have gone over to them, keeping only the shell and shadow of the Faith and none of its meat and drink. Perhaps Allah . . .
Mustafa sipped at qahwa, unsweetened coffee brewed from beans still green, and filtered through a piece of hemp rope stuck in the spout. There was a thought there, an important thought that had gone skittering away. Perhaps Allah . . . what?
Perhaps this is another test of our faith in him? Perhaps. But . . . Aha! There is the thought. What if it is as much a test of His faith in us?
A serving boy, a slave but not a Tauran, bent to refill Mustafa's cup. The emir of the Ikhwan stopped the boy by covering the cup with his hand.
"Go," he said. "Find and bring me Nur al Din, the Misrani, and Abdul Aziz who helps manage the accounts. Bring me, too, Mullah al Kareem, that we might use his insight into the holy words. When that is done, brew more qahwa. It will be a long night."
Training Area Thirty-Five, Isla Real, 16/10/466 AC
Leave was never quite "leave" when Carrera returned from the war. Rather, it was his opportunity to observe, direct and correct the training and administration taking place behind him.
There was only one moon up this evening, Eris, but she was full, casting sharp shadows on the ground. At that, Eris only provided perhaps twenty percent of the maximum illumination possible from Terra Nova's three moons.
Under that moonlight, battle-dressed and wearing night vision goggles, Carrera watched an infantry platoon from Fourth Tercio going through their paces in setting up a night ambush. It looked professional; it looked well-oiled. Yet something bothered him about it and he wasn't sure quite what.
"What's wrong with this, Jamey?" he asked Soult.
Soult shrugged. "No clue, boss. It looks fine by me."
"Yeah . . . yeah, that's it. It looks fine. How does something look that fine? When does real war ever look that fine? Let's go trip into the objective rally point, shall we?"
The two were challenged by the team left behind at the objective rally point, or ORP, with the platoon's rucksacks. That was fine, too, but not in a way that bothered Carrera.
"Don't tell anyone I'm here," he told the sergeant in charge. "I just want to watch for a bit."
The sergeant was obviously not happy about that. If his tribune, Cano, came back and found Duque Carrera waiting for him without his having been warned, there'd be hell to pay later on.
Carrera understood that. "Jamey," he said, "stick with the sergeant so that when his tribune comes to rip his balls off he can plead superior orders and no opportunity." Soult went and stood next to the sergeant while Carrera walked to the side of the ORP nearest the ambush and waited. With his goggles on, he could just make out the ambush position, though not the men in it who had all gone prone. He continued forward until he could make out the waiting legionaries, then stopped and went to one knee to watch.
Mannequins joined to each other and suspended from a cable strung tightly between two trees began to enter the kill zone, in single file, pulled by someone off to the right, somewhere. Carrera saw them move across at a walking pace, a pace a group of Salafis might well take up when they thought they were safe but had to get somewhere.
The target mannequins—there were twelve of so of them, Carrera thought—were fully in the target area when the entire scene was brightly, if momentarily, lit by the flashes of two directional mines. Carrera ducked his chin onto his chest against the backblast and the fragments.
There followed rifle and machine gun fire; dozens of weapons sending out streams of tracers into the jungle downrange. Mannequins began to drop to the ground as bullets found the inflated balloons within sandbags that held them to the cable overhead. The bullets pierced the balloons, collapsing them and letting them and their sandbags flow through the harnesses, detaching them from the overhead cable.
This continued for a minute before there was a whoosh as a star cluster launched into the sky. The ground was suddenly lit in a bright magnesium light. Carrera heard a whistle and then voice commands. Men began to move rapidly across the kill zone, shooting every mannequin once more in the head as it lay on the ground. Special teams searched the "bodies," collecting documents of intelligence value, communications devices, and weapons. The documents, cell phones and one radio were turned over to the platoon leader. A pile was made of the captured weapons, which pile a two-man team prepared for demolition.
At some point—Carrera presumed it was when the intel collection team reported to the platoon leader that the bodies were clear— another star cluster was launched. Men began to scurry back to the ambush line, even as the demo team shouted "Fire in the hole" and pulled the igniters that led to the charges they'd placed on the arms.
Once the demo team had cleared away, there was another whistle blast and, once again, the rifles and machine guns poured lines of death into the jungle opposite the ambush line. Voice commands followed and, by ones and twos the ambushing platoon began to form up to fall back to the ORP.
"It's too smooth," Carrera whispered.
Cano was pissed. Being taken by surprise, ambushed himself by the Duque, was just too fucking much. Bad enough that—
"Relax, Tribune," Carrera said, not ungently. He was actually impressed with the kid. "I just have some questions. It was a good ambush. Really. What bothers me was that maybe it was too good. Why do you think it was so good?"
Cano didn't relax. Sure, he wasn't a signifer anymore; he was entitled to tie his boots in the morning without tying the left one to the right one. Even so, this was the bloody Duque. He was a bastard; everyone knew it. Cano could just see his career flying off to parts unknown and unknowable. He could—
"I asked a question, Tribune," Carrera reminded.
"Oh . . . sorry, sir. I was . . . I just wasn't expecting you to—"
"I asked a question, Tribune."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well . . . sir . . . we've done this ambush here maybe a dozen times just since I've been leading the platoon. The boys know what to do and, then again, we drill the shit out of it . . ."
Aha.
"Jamey! Call the Chief of Staff, the I and the Ia. I don't give a shit if they're asleep. Get 'em up."
Main Officers' Club, Isla Real, 17/10/466 AC
Normally, in every day life, Carrera was a surprisingly gentle sort. He wasn't particularly aggressive, or vicious. He'd probably never done a deliberately cruel thing, outside of line of duty, in his life.
In line of duty, however, or especially in action, he changed. The change wasn't like that of a man turning into a wolf; that kind of transition, even in myth, took time. Instead, for Carerra, there simply came a moment when stress impended and he changed.
It was something like a click.
"I'm so glad you could all make it," Carrera hissed to the assembled senior officers and centurions of the legion.
As a single man, they thought, Oh, shit, we're in trouble.
"You people suck mastodon cock," Carrera began, with his usual fine sense of tact. "Where the fuck did you get the idea that your job is to train people to follow formulae, rather than training them, mentally and morally, as individuals and as units, to solve unique problems? You've been fighting for five fucking years now. When did you all forget that war is always different?"
His face was livid as he continued, "Can anyone answer me; when did Cazador School begin training leaders to be robots? Hmmm? No takers? I see. Did it creep in in OCS or CCS? No?
"I watched an ambush the other night. Good unit, good leaders, conducting a good ambush. But you know what? They'd been doing the same thing in the same way in the same place for fucking years." With this he spared a glare for Kuralski and the staff. "Why have we had our soldiers doing the same fucking thing in the same fucking place in the same fucking way for years? Why didn't we give them different problems, in different places, with different circumstances? Why, you assholes? Why?"
It had taken Carrera thirty-six hours of brooding to become as angry as he was. He'd nurtured the anger, cultivated it, so that he could release it on his subordinates. Once released, though, it ebbed quickly enough.
"Now listen," he said, more calmly. "I'm going to explain something.
"Battle drills—preset solutions, well rehearsed, for common battlefield circumstances—are an interesting subject. Likewise for Standard Operating Procedures, individual tasks done to perfection, crew drills, and formations. There are some very good armies that depend on them. The Federated States and Volgan Republic do; and maybe the Foreign Military Training Group is where we were contaminated from. There are also some very good armies that loathe them, the Sachsen and Zionis, for example.
"Generally speaking, I don't like them. There are a number of reasons for that. Listen, carefully."
The assembled leaders did listen carefully. They also relaxed to a degree; when Carrera went into teaching mode, they knew, he was unlikely to shoot someone on the spot. They knew he was going into teaching mode when he pulled some index cards out of his right breast pocket. When did Carrera need prompt cards to chew someone's ass?
"Number one, remember that drills, if they're going to be reliable, must be conditioned into troops, almost as if the troops were Pavlov's dogs. So if you can't really condition something well enough to rely on it, don't make a drill of it.
"Two, conditioning takes a lot of time, time you probably won't have. So even if something can, in theory, be conditioned, if you don't have the time to condition it, don't waste what time you have on the impossible.
"Three, drills—like everything else—take place under certain conditions. If those conditions are subject to radical differences such that no amount of practical drilling can condition them all, do not train as a drill something that will only be true infrequently.
"Four, military units suffer losses. They are almost never at full strength. If a drill requires a particular level of manpower or equipment, and you can reasonably predict that that particular level of strength will rarely be met, I would suggest you don't bother.
"Three and four are related in a way. We use crew drill for the tank and Ocelot crews, don't we? One thing about the inside of a turret; it doesn't change. The crewmen have seats they stay in. The gun doesn't move relative to the crew. The internal communications gear typically works. And the crew of an armored vehicle generally lives or dies together, no attrition that matters in the short term. So a drill for a crew like that makes sense. The same holds true for much that the mortars and artillery do. Their positions may change from place to place, but the important thing, the gun, is always the same. The positions they build to protect the gun and themselves are always the same, too. The casualties they take, mostly to other mortars and artillery, or air, tend to be either catastrophic or insignificant—the crew lives or dies together."
Carrera became reflective. "Actually towed artillery is a funny case. They don't usually come under small arms fire. Mines are only rarely a problem for them. For the most part they lose men to aerial attack and counterbattery fire from enemy artillery. That fire either is close enough to emulsify the crew, or it's far enough away, when it explodes, to do only limited damage to the crew, or it is so far away it is irrelevant to the crew. In cases one and three, that the artillery crew was drilled numb doesn't hurt matters. It can still either do the job or it is dead. In the middle case, because gun crews are much larger than the bare minimum needed to load and fire the gun, and because artillery crew drill is so simple that everyone can be, and in a good crew is, trained to do all the jobs, even with some losses the gun can still fill the important jobs with adequately trained troops and function at a reduced rate of fire.
"However, compare the problem at the crew level to a platoon of mortars, tanks or tracks, or a battery of guns. They always have to adjust: to terrain, to the enemy situation, to their own strength. The variables for infantry are infinite, a few drills won't do and the number that might do is impossible. So, before you decide to train something as a drill, ask yourself also whether the conditions—to include your own strength—are likely to be the same in war. I'll give you a hint; a line remains a line, even when you erase some portion of it. If you plan on doing a drill or formation with any unit above the crew level, you had best consider making it some variable on a line...wedges and echelons count as lines. Only that kind of formation or drill is sustainable after losses.
"In a similar vein: formations. If you've ever seen a platoon, normally of four vehicles, trying to bound forward by sections of two vehicles, when the platoon is down to only three vehicles, you'll know what I mean. It just doesn't work the same way. You end up with either an inadequate covering force—one vehicle—or the covering force is two vehicles and the single track sent ahead to bound feels alone and abandoned and advances most reluctantly. So under normal combat conditions the bounding drill has less benefit than you expect and need and all the time spent on drilling such movement tends to be wasted. On the other hand, a company bounding forward by alternating its platoons can work because even if a bounding platoon has taken some losses, it is still capable of covering its own front and has enough sub units left to give each other moral support to go forward. That, by the way, is the single most important reason legion tank platoons have six tanks instead of the usual four other armies have; so they can take losses and still have two sections capable of forming some variant on a line to cover themselves while they move forward by bounds."
Carrera flipped one of his prompt cards over. "Back to the main subject: Fifth, time to execute the drill in battle is another consideration. Some things don't have to be conditioned to be done. Even in battle there is often time to give more than one-word drill commands. So ask yourselves, before deciding to do something as a drill, if there would normally be time to give orders to have your troops act more appropriately than a drill would allow.
"Sixth, is the drill a matter of life and death for an individual, victory or defeat for a higher unit? I don't mean simply that under some rare circumstances a well-executed drill might be life or death for us or the enemy. I mean is a precise response virtually always that important. Reaction to a near ambush is that kind of circumstance. So is using a bangalore torpedo to breach an obstacle, especially when attacking a position held by an enemy with a very responsive artillery support network... if surprise fails you and you must clear a path quickly. In those circumstances a simple, on line rush, drilled in advance, may be your best bet.
"At a lower level, the individual level, there are also a few tasks like that. The whole field of combat demolitions is dangerous enough to justify drilling troops to do it perfectly every time. The time to put on a gas mask is about that critical, too. Although, if you want to see an interesting show, sometime have your troops come under a chemical attack when they are advancing at a crawl under fire, with inadequate cover and concealment. Our boys are already well drilled on immediate action for a chemical attack. I'd give odds that most of them stand up in direct fire to put on their masks. Hmmm. Maybe that's not such a good drill after all. See my point?"
Whether they really saw it or not, the officers and centurions nodded vigorously.
"Seven, 'only the very simple can work in war.' Clausewitz, as I'm sure you recognize. Complex drills simply won't work. Something will fail if a drill is too complex.
"Eighth, your enemy will adapt to your drills very quickly.
"Ninth and last, and why I'm not a drill enthusiast, is this: There is a mindset, common in many armies, which has no understanding of war as the chaos it is. To these people, everything is controllable, everything is predictable. They will forget that war is about prevailing against an armed enemy, who does not think about himself as a target set up to give you the best possible chance of success, but instead will do everything he can to thwart and destroy you. In peacetime maneuvers, these people and their units often do well, even better than those who see war more clearly. They then stretch the idea of drill beyond the legitimate limits it has, and try to make everything a drill, everything precise. Skills and purely measurable factors assume an unmerited importance. Leaders and troops are not trained to think. Their moral faculties are not developed.
"Let me give you an example from Old Earth history. After the First World War there, the victorious French Army developed some very standardized drills for higher formations. The German Army examined these division level drills in wargames on maps and came to the conclusion that they were, most of the time, more effective than the more chaotic approach the Germans had favored. Nonetheless, the Germans didn't adopt the French methods. The French continued to drill; the Germans continued to treat war as uncontrollable chaos and trained their army accordingly. France fell in six weeks in 1940. So much for the efficacy of drill."
Carrera's voice grew hard again, where it had softened as he lectured. "Here are my orders. To the staff and especially the operations and training staff: I want you to redivide up the training areas, and especially the live-fire training areas, such that no unit ever has to train the same problem on the same spot of ground within a year. Dan, I also want you to monitor that no unit does train the same problem in the same way on the same spot within a year. I want you to relook the non-crew drills we may already have instituted and get rid of any that do not meet the nine points of guidance I just gave you."
Carrera glanced around for his Inspector General. "You," he pointed, "are to change your orientation partly away from administrative inspections and more toward inspection of training, in accordance with my guidance.
"Remember this, IG: There are five functions to training; only five things we can expect out of training. One: Skill training, the individual, leader, and collective tasks that soldiers and units should be able to perform. Two: Conditioning of individual nonconscious characteristics, attitudes and the physical body. Three: Development of conscious characteristics, judgment, determination, dedication, and so forth. Four: Testing of doctrine and equipment. Five: Selection of leaders, of people for special or advanced training, of people to keep and of people to eliminate from the legion.
"IG, there are no other reasons to train; everything we do in training must advance these causes.
"To the rest of you: if I discover you have not listened carefully, if I discover that you are not developing the mental and moral faculties of your units and your men, if I discover that you ever let training become routine, standardized and, in a phrase, mentally dulling, I will not only fire you, I will set you to turning large rocks into small ones, until you are old and gray."
"That's all."