Chapter Four
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
—Benjamin Franklin
Everyone’s a pacifist between wars. It’s like being a vegetarian between meals.
—Colman McCarthy
Palacio de las Trixies, Ciudad Balboa, Republic of Balboa
Since the defeat of Pigna’s coup and the extinction of the rival regime, Presidente, and former Duque, Raul Parilla had moved into the official and traditional executive mansion, an open-courted “Palazzo” in the Venetian style. It even had, per the name, a dozen or so trixies, colorful archaeopteryxes brought to Terra Nova by the Noahs. Under recent administrations, the trixies had been effective captives. Now the wire over the courtyard was mechanized, to roll back during the day. That was Carrera’s doing, as part of his trixie breeding and antaniae reduction programs.
Most trixies did, in fact, leave while the sun was up. Usually they returned by nightfall—when the wire rolled back over the open top—for their free meal.
The style of the palace, a carryover from early days of colonization, was extremely appropriate. No less than one once could have in Old Earth’s Venice—now sadly landlocked as a result of falling seas from global cooling—from his bedroom balcony Parilla could hit the waves of the sea with a hand-tossed rock.
Antaniae lived in the neighborhood, of course, that was the original point of keeping trixies there. Even now, the area was very old, very built up, with hidden spots, nooks, and crannies sufficient to shelter the antaniae from the day’s harsh sunlight. No extermination program had ever proven quite thorough enough.
Though the exterior of the palace was Venetian, the interior courtyard was very Arabesque, with sparkling columns in the Moorish style, a simple but elegant central fountain, sixteen symmetric but nonuniform arches, and a long staircase that arose in the back to lead to the second floor. Someone had probably had coup prevention in mind when that staircase had been designed; it was the only way up that led to the presidential quarters.
Parilla—short, stocky, swarthy, and with steel gray hair—was waiting at the top of the stairs, hand on a railing, as Carrera walked through the courtyard, skirting the central fountain. A gray, emerald green, and red trixie, bent over and drinking at the fountain, ignored him entirely.
He looks so old now¸ Carrera thought, looking up the staircase. And, well…I suppose he is.
“It’s not the years,” said Parilla, as if reading his chief soldier’s mind, “it’s the mileage.”
Carrera nodded, answering, “A year ago, Raul, you didn’t need a railing to hold yourself up.”
“Cascading failure,” Parilla said. “When things start to go wrong they all go wrong together…and fast. Come on, let’s go chat in my office.”
I don’t like the sound of that word, “chat,” Carrera thought. Maybe he was always more politician than soldier, but the old man was a pretty fair soldier too. A “chat” could be unpleasant.
* * *
The silverwood paneling in the presidential office was considerably older than that on the walls of Spirit of Peace’s conference room. It was also reflective enough that the light spilling in from the window was more than sufficient.
“Fernandez’s boys and girls swept the place two days ago,” Parilla said, as Carrera took a leather seat. “We can speak freely here.” Then the president went to a liquor cabinet and pulled out two glasses. These he filled with ice, then took a bottle of ancient rum and poured several generous fingers in each.
Carrera stood up, took one glass and set it down, then took the other, which he placed on Parilla’s desk. Only then did he retrieve his own glass and resume his seat.
“I have a sense of the Senate,” Parilla said.
I like the sound of that even less.
“There is a sufficient consensus that we should avert a war with the Tauran Union if at all possible. If I asked for a declaration of war today, I would not get it.”
“Even though they’re sitting in the Transitway like a rope around the country’s neck?” Carrera asked.
“Even though,” the president confirmed.
“They don’t have faith I can win it?”
Parilla shook his head. “No, they believe you can win it. They don’t believe you or anyone alive or anyone who has ever lived could win it without getting ten or fifteen percent of the country killed.”
And I could not gainsay that with a straight face or clear conscience. It just might cost that much.
“So what do they want…what do you want, Mr. President?”
Parilla frowned. “Don’t you get formal with me, Patricio. I’m still Raul. And don’t get your back up over the Senate, either. They’re your creation, not your creature, and you set them up that way.
“As to what I want…I want us to back off from provoking the Taurans. I want us to…let’s say…give peace a chance.”
“I think that’s a mistake,” said Carrera.
Parilla shook his head. “It’s not a mistake; it’s a gamble. It’s gambling a somewhat less advantageous position should war come against the chance of avoiding war altogether. Are you trying to tell me that that is always a losing bet?”
“I’m…no.” Patricio likewise shook his head. “No; Machiavellianism notwithstanding, human history is replete with instances where a little restraint might have avoided endless grief. It’s just that in this case, in our circumstances, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
“You knew the new high admiral of the Peace Fleet visited the Taurans, here, recently?” Carrera asked.
“Yes,” the president agreed, “my aide de camp got the briefing from Fernandez and briefed me.”
“You don’t agree it’s a bad sign?”
“Could be,” Parilla conceded. “Equally, it could be a good sign. We just don’t know.”
“I can contact her, you know,” Carrera said. “I haven’t because I don’t trust the bitch as far as I could throw one of her starships.”
“Yes, I knew. Maybe you should.”
Carrera shrugged his shoulders. He really didn’t know if he should or shouldn’t.
“So what say you?” the president asked.
“I don’t want to stop preparations for a war I consider inevitable.”
“Can you break those preparations into nice to have and necessary?” asked Parilla. “Into those that you can keep hidden from those you can’t? From the innocuous to the provocational?”
“Maybe, maybe, and maybe.”
“Try. Try. Try.”
Carrera smirked at the retort. “And when they sense weakness and start to provoke us?”
“Restraint. Restraint. Restraint.”
It was Parilla’s turn then to smirk at Carrera’s scowl. “You’ve recently put your son into one of the military schools, haven’t you?”
“It’s common knowledge,” Carrera answered.
“When you’re weighing this gamble I want you to take, don’t forget to weigh the life of your son if we go to war with someone a hundred times bigger and a thousand times wealthier.”
“I suppose there is that… Okay, Raul, I’ll try; I’ll lay off harassing the Taurans. But I’m still going to keep preparing in everything that’s key.”
And the only reason I’m not throwing a shit fit is because I can ignore most of what you’ve ordered—as you fully expect me to.
Batteria McNamara (former Battery Ranald, FS Army), Cristobal Province, Balboa, Terra Nova
There was information that was open. Then there were secrets, deeper secrets, and deepest, top secrets. It was, for example, no secret that the legion had bought an impressive number of 180mm guns from the Volgans. The exact number, though, was secret. It was no secret that some dozens of these had been mounted in old Federated States-built coastal artillery batteries along both the Shimmering Sea and Mar Furioso coasts. That an additional fifty-four had been hidden out on the Isla Real was very secret. It was not a secret that the legion had laser-homing shells for many of their heavier artillery pieces and mortars; they’d used some of those during the campaigns in both Sumer and Pashtia. That they had developed lengthened, sub-caliber, laser-guided shells for the 180mm guns, which shells could range over eighty kilometers, was almost the deepest secret in Balboa.
* * *
The battery—then named “Iglesias Point Battery”—had once housed two twelve-inch rifles on barbette carriages, which is to say carriages that allowed a gun to be fired over a parapet. Other batteries, up and down the coast, had housed twelve-inch mortars, fourteen- and sixteen-inch rifles, and an assortment of lesser pieces. None of those were required anymore, since ships no longer mounted the armor such beasts were designed and built to punch through. The gun about to be fired, at just over seven inches, was more, much more, than required to punch through the thin metal of a modern warship, if punching though armor at longish range had been the objective.
Near this two-gun, open but parapeted firing pad, itself sitting atop a deep bunker for both ready ammunition and fire control, Carrera watched as the crew of one 180mm gun went through the drill of loading and laying. Trap doors opened to the rear of the position, as a reconditioned ammunition elevator pushed up one of the long shells. Longer than the previous twelve-inch shells, this one came up on a frame that held it at an angle. The projectile in its sabot was, to say the least, oddly shaped for an artillery round. The lengthy fuse with the high-strength golden glass nose made it appear odder still.
The propellant popped up from a different elevator, fed by a different compartment.
The crew was not the gun’s normal complement. Oh, no, the regular crew were reservists and militia and weren’t even mobilized. Instead, for now, the gun was manned by a special test crew, specially vetted for reliable closed-mouthedness, from Obras Zorilleras, or OZ, the legion’s research and development division. Their chief had drilled them numb over the preceding week on a sister gun, though that one was held underground in a different battery, about twenty-four hundred meters to the southwest.
They were only going to get one chance at the test, though the test would involve twelve shots. These were five of the special shells, that being the number on hand at Battery McNamara, and seven normal high explosive shells to mask the specials. The special shells were inert, the normal explosive filler replaced by a mostly plastic mix of the same density. Four other gun positions, three to the west and one to the east, were manned by reservists and militia mobilized for training. These were also along the Shimmering Sea coast and on both sides of the Transitway’s mouth. They would also be firing for this exercise, mostly to divert attention from the test firing of the special shells. Their ammunition was limited to standard 180mm High Explosive. Five forward observer stations, as heavily fortified as the gun positions, held FO teams with laser range finders indistinguishable from the laser that would be used to mark the target for the special shells.
Carrera turned away from the gun crew, walking into a dark, open rectangle in the concrete wall. Once past the edges of the entrance, red lights in metal cages set high on the walls marked his way to the fire direction center. Before anyone could notice his presence, he ordered, “As you were,” code for, “keep doing what you were doing.”
There were a half dozen closed circuit television sets to one side of the bunker. One of these was large. It gave Carrera the same view as the forward observation and lasing team for Battery McNamara had. That team sat inside a concrete position high atop a cliff facing the sea. The image, enhanced both for light and magnification showed him a radio controlled ship—more of a barge, really—twenty miles out to sea. This was nothing like the shells’ maximum range.
It had been a matter of considerable discussion. The short, balding, Volgan-descended Kuralski, also there for the test, had wanted to fire at near maximum range. Carrera had overridden that—he didn’t want anyone to know how far the guns could shoot the new ammunition. There were other barges out to sea as targets, as many as there were batteries firing for the day.
The job was not without its risks, but risks or not, a screen of patrol boats insured no other ships came close to the barge targets to see what was happening. The crews of those boats wore laser protective goggles.
Carrera was reasonably certain that the UEPF was taking considerable interest in goings on in the Republic of Balboa. He didn’t know the precise capabilities of their remote sensing, but assumed it was at least on a par with that of the planet’s premier power, the Federated States. Thus, he didn’t hope to hide that he was firing a certain kind of gun at a certain range. All he could do—and he hoped it was enough—was misdirect the Peace Fleet as to the real nature of the firing.
The other five televisions, all smaller, showed the barge itself, from a camera housed near the stern, as well as its nearby waters. Those cameras were mounted in an armored casing, sternward. Those televisions’ signals were encrypted to prevent anyone else from receiving them. Again, though, Carrera doubted that the UEPF couldn’t break the encryption. He had to assume they could.
There was a seventh camera in operation, though it wasn’t transmitting. Instead, that one took video showing a remote and distant view of the test firing. The camera was carried in a Cricket light aircraft.
* * *
The data from the fire direction center was on the sight, the gun loaded and laid. The special fuse that made the shell special was keyed to the laser frequency of the forward observer team that would lase its target. With his left hand, the gun chief stretched the firing lanyard taut. On command from the FDC, he struck the stretched lanyard with his right fist.
Kaboommm! Ahead, muzzle blast ripped leaves from jungle trees as concussion caused the crew’s inner organs to ripple and pulse in a sickening manner. Shortly after reaching the muzzle, the twelve sections of sabot that had held the shell steady in its travel down the tube split away. Much lighter than the shell, and of deliberately nonaerodynamic cross-section, the pieces of the sabot lost velocity rapidly, careening off into the jungle in a random pattern.
“Reload!” shouted the gun chief, as another long and oddly shaped shell arose through the elevator doors. A split second later another three bags of propellant arose from the other elevator.
* * *
The entire crew of the FDC groaned as a single man. The incredibly expensive and supremely secret shell had missed. It missed despite laser guidance. It missed despite the select crew and forward observer team. Admittedly, it didn’t miss by much, no more than a dozen feet. But still…
The TV showed the barge twisting in the water, just as would a ship that knew it was under fire. A second great splash, the mark of a missed shell, flew up about five meters off the port side. Kuralski exclaimed, “Damn it!”
The third shell came in, causing a splash even farther away, at perhaps nine meters, or about thirty feet. The fourth? No one in the FDC had a clue where that had gone. The fifth landed about as far away as the first had.
“It’s perfect,” Carrera said, and started to laugh. “Fucking perfect!”
In a pure fluke, the barge was actually struck by the third normal shell which, since it contained high explosive and a normal fuse, duly detonated, shredding the barge like tissue.
* * *
Kuralski’s chin hung on his chest. “Every one of them, every goddamned one of them…”
“Yeah, so?”
“Twelve thousand drachma a shot! Useless.”
“Oh, bullshit,” Carrera said.
“Huh?”
“Oh, c’mon, Dan! How wide is a fucking warship?”
“Oh. Well…yeah…I guess so.”
“Order more shells, Dan,” Carrera said. “Order at least fourteen hundred of them. We’ve got or will soon have fifty-four guns just like these on this island, plus several dozen more at other spots. Not counting the ones in the Tenth Artillery Legion. I want each, barring the Tenth’s, to have at least twenty shells. If there’s a significantly reduced unit price in ordering more, you can go up to twenty-five million drachma, total.”
Kuralski nodded. “There’s something else, Pat. We’ve used Volgan laser-guided heavy mortar shells since Sumer. They’ve got a new one—well, a completely new system, actually—called ‘Trapeze.’ No, I have no clue why they chose that name. Anyway, it’s a 240mm mortar, special laser designator, special shell with—”
“Nah.”
“But…I thought, with these twelve-inch mortar positions on both sides, all four sides, rather, of the Transitway…”
“They won’t last days if it comes to war. No, the 122/180s make sense, because we can protect and hide them and their guns. But 240mm mortars in open pits? With us conceding to the enemy air supremacy ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths percent of the time? I don’t think so.”
With a shrug, Kuralski said, “Just a thought.”
UEPF Spirit of Peace, High Orbit over Atlantis Island, Terra Nova
“So what was that all about?” asked the fleet watch officer, a few moments after the last of sixty shells splashed into the water or blew up. The images had been forwarded by the Spirit of Harmony, in orbit over Balboa.
The fleet’s surface reconnaissance officer shook her short-cropped, blond head. “We don’t have access to any of their internal communications, since that was apparently all done by land line. It will be a few hours before we can break the encryption on their television signals. But, just on the face of it, it looked to me like they were exercising their coastal artillery’s capabilities on landing craft and that the exercise failed.”
“One hit out of sixty rounds?” mused the watch officer. “Yes, I’d call that a failure. Even so, run it by the Analysis Office before passing it on to the high admiral as a briefing. She can decide if she wants to let our allies down below know about it.”
Intel Office, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa Transitway Area, Terra Nova
To the relief of everyone who worked there in Building 59, and every man, woman, child, dog, cat, trixie, antaniae, snake and coatimundi who lived on Fort Muddville, the recoilless range, Range 18, was silent. No Chinese water torture of boom…boom…boomboomboom…boom was ongoing. Several people, in gratitude, were currently on their knees at the post chapel, thanking God that the Balboans had let off for a while.
For that matter, some noticed, the almost daily sonic booms from the Mosaic-Ds hadn’t been heard for a week or so now.
In the office fronted by the balcony that lay toward the Florida Locks and the range beyond that, Sergeant Major Hendryksen and Captain Campbell puzzled over the short and seemingly unimportant piece of intelligence passed on by the fleet orbiting overhead.
“No film,” Hendryksen said, “just a synopsis. And that says bad things about Balboan cannon gunnery. Or, at least, whoever wrote it thinks it does.”
Jan Campbell asked, “Does it make sense, the synopsis?”
“No,” said the Cimbrian, “not entirely. Maybe not at all. It’s…what you would expect from someone who doesn’t really understand warfare on the ground—or maybe any warfare—and is unaware of the failing.
“For example, the Balboans fired sixty rounds of what we’re taking to be 180mm. About ten percent of those didn’t explode. Bad fuses? Incompetent gunners? Maybe some of both. The table says the first five rounds fired from one battery—or one gun; they’re not too clear on the difference—failed to detonate, but then the next seven did.
“Now what would cause that?”
“Ma guess,” said Campbell, in a softer version of her native accent, “is that somebody who was supposed to pull a safety pin from a super quick fuse got nervous and didna. Then his sergeant beat him about the ears and he didna make the same mistake agin.”
“Which could speak well of his sergeant,” said Hendryksen.
“Aye.”
“And it’s as likely a guess as any.”
“Aye tae that, too,” the blond captain agreed.
“Which doesn’t explain to me,” said Hendryksen, “why they bothered at all. The ammunition’s not that cheap.”
“Ohhh. Weel, I think I found the answer to that,” she said, “and to a lot of what else makes no sense to us. I dug through one of their manuals. They do damned near everything they do for one or more of five reasons. In this case, it was probably reason five: test the doctrine and equipment. And they’d do that, from what I can tell, just for its own sake.”
Hendryksen nodded. “All right, I could buy that. The short version is that, so far as anyone can tell, the firing meant nothing and proved nothing.”
“Correct,” Jan said.
“Any—you should pardon the expression—nibbles on the bait you provided?”
Campbell looked down at her chest and said, “No, and as magnificent as these girls are, I canna hardly understand it.”