PROLOGUE
High Admiral’s Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Peace,
in orbit over Terra Nova
Wallenstein sat at one end of a conference table crowded with computer terminals manned by intelligence and communications personnel. Behind them sat the Zhong empress, aboard ship officially as a courtesy. Still other Old Earth spacefarers updated old-fashioned maps and charts temporarily affixed to the conference room’s walls. Between the latter, and above the screens and heads of the former, a wide screen Kurosawa television, purchased below and mounted here as better than anything Old Earth was likely to produce, showed split images of the action taking place below.
Tall, slender, blond, blue-eyed, and rather pretty, Wallenstein looked maybe a sixth of her roughly two centuries of life. She’d have looked younger still, except that sleep had come hard of late; hard, light, and often interrupted. There was just too much to fear.
One of the images of the planet below was relayed by the UEPF ship, Spirit of Harmony, a sister to Spirit of Peace, and one of only four in the Spirit class of starships. This image was of the waters and islands off the northern coast of Balboa.
Wallenstein concentrated on a ray-shaped island, the centermost and largest of the group, the Isla Real. It was swathed in smoke, some of it from explosions though more of it came from the smoldering, splintered trees and ruined, charred buildings of the island fortress. Some, too, came from the flickering wrecks of vehicles, many of which had been identified and destroyed despite the defenders’ best efforts at concealing them. There were also two freighters, small ones, sunk in the island’s shallow coastal waters, where they’d been delivering defensive materiel. The fires in these had burned out, or, rather, been put out by the Balboans as they recovered most of the materiel the freighters had been carrying and ferried it to shore.
Though Marguerite Wallenstein could not, of course, smell it, much of that smoke carried with it the aroma of long pig, done to a turn.
The Zhong, whose invasion fleet was massed to the north, had quite limited ability to launch airstrikes against the fortress, amounting to no more than two and a half sorties per plane, per day, from their two small carriers’ compliment of eighteen, each, Sergeyevich-83s. Even that was reduced by the three dozen’s ready rate of about sixty-six percent. A mere fifty tons a day was all the Zhong could deliver to the target.
Wallenstein knew for a fact that the Zhong had enquired with the Federated States as to buying one of their old mothballed battleships, the last in the world. “It’ll make a great tourist attraction and hotel,” the Zhong had insisted. The FSC hadn’t bought a syllable of that, but had instead pointed out that restoring one of the old behemoths to active duty was a matter of years, not weeks, while training crews from scratch could take years more, given that no Zhong in history had ever even sailed in one. “No, having had some long deceased old man on deck for the surrender of Yamato doesn’t count.”
Beyond the Zhong’s meager fifty tons a day, more, much more, came from the Tauran Union. Their combined air forces had flown several hundred of the most modern combat aircraft out of Santa Josefina, to the east of Balboa. About two hundred sorties a day, each carrying nearly a thousand tons, had been devoted to reducing the island over the last six weeks.
Wallenstein had her doubts about the effectiveness of either Zhong or Tauran efforts. Yes, they’d managed to do some damage, she conceded. But . . .
But that island is like they took Old Earth’s Maginot line, anchored one end on Hill 287, then wrapped the entire line around the island in a spiral.
Still, the aerial attack wasn’t a complete waste. She could see the tilted or peeled-open wreckage of eleven of the sixteen triple gun turrets that had come under attack. These turrets, mounting three 152mm guns each, had been salvaged from mostly worn-out Volgan heavy cruisers, then mounted atop a series of concrete positions ringing the island on all sides. Three to four ammunition bunkers, connected to the guns by light rail, complimented each turret. The rails, in turn, connected to the island’s light railway, a 600mm gauge system that had originally been thought to be merely a cheap way to move troops to training, but had proven its worth in other respects as it contributed to final preparations to defend the island. The rail was a twisted ruin now, too, marked by shattered ties, cratered substrate, and the rusting wrecks of steel bridging. That said, the rail had run through a concrete revetted trench protecting it. This had made wrecking it several times harder than it would have otherwise been.
The son of a bitch built it, fumed Marguerite, intending that it be used to beef up a defense. He was preparing for this all along, for at least ten years. He wanted this war, or needed it, more even than I did. And that preparation, as ruthless as any in human history, has us behind the power curve. I’d say he’s been out-decision cycling us except that I know that he sneers at the concept. No . . . he’s just had the initiative, even when it looked like we had it. And that’s not quite the same thing.
Again Marguerite turned her attention to the wrecked triple gun turrets. There was no doubt that they were out of the fight. Nor was there any doubt about targeting them. The only real question had been whether or not they should have taken out the five facing the city.
Janier, in Gaul, had explained it thusly: “In fact, while there is no doubt a fire direction center for each of those turrets, the turrets don’t need one; they can always direct lay. Second, even if they did need it, it’s either under the guns or out in one of the bunkers, or hidden somewhere completely different. In short, we cannot with certainty render the guns useless by going after their FDCs.
“Another option is to go after the ammunition bunkers. The problem there is that the guns almost certainly have some ready ammunition in well-protected magazines below them. Then, too, the ammunition bunkers are camouflaged, hence harder to see and harder to hit. Worse, they are better protected than the turrets, which are only well armored to their fronts. Yes, the Balboans poured some concrete on top. Trust me here; it’s not enough. Finally, there are more of the ammunition bunkers. You can waste four sorties to get all the bunkers with individual deep penetrators, or one to get the guns.
“Go for the guns.”
Which is all well and good and logical, thought Wallenstein. But in dealing with Carrera we have always done the well and good and logical. And it never worked out. I do not think that’s because he is a genius, exactly, so much as he’s a ruthless son of a bitch with some foresight, while we are idiots. We just don’t think the same way, not even Janier who is part of the same general culture as Carrera. So we cannot predict him well, while he seems incapable of not predicting us. Why? Because we are predictable. That, and because we are manipulable.
Or perhaps it is just something in the nature of war that a barbarian warrior understands instinctively, but which we cannot quite grasp.
I wish I felt better about all this. But I don’t; I can’t, because I cannot see or even guess at what the enemy is doing or has planned. All I know is that there will be something and we will not like it. Like the fucking “five minute bombs.” The TU really didn’t like those.
The left side of the screen showed a much larger scale view of the Mar Furioso, the ocean off Balboa’s northern coast. It was in large enough scale, and a small enough section of the screen, that the Zhong fleet was invisible but for computer-drawn circles around its ships, battlegroups, and amphibious and support flotillas.
One skimmer—reusable, stealthy recon drones used by the Peace Fleet—off of Harmony was engaged in following the Zhong fleet. Thus, Wallenstein could, at need, get a close up of the main fleet or, within a short span, any of its subordinates. Another, flown from the same source, kept a close watch on the island. That latter was a tougher job, since the Balboans had lofted to one thousand meters above ground some seventy-six quite large barrage balloons. There were on steel cables to make a pilot’s life exciting and difficult; also—should said pilot come too low—short.
The Taurans had tried taking those down. It hadn’t worked. Each was anchored at three widely separated spots. Get one anchor point and the severed cable trailed the ground until it was recovered, mended, had a new piece grafted on where needed, and was then dragged right back to its anchor point. They’d shot down several balloons, which was an easy trick. Then the Balboans had promptly carted another balloon to the apex junction, attached it, filled it, and lifted it. They seemed to have no real shortage, either. Some of the balloons seemed also to carry cameras. Khan the husband assured her that said cameras could not have given Balboa more than one hundred and thirteen kilometers of vision across the sea, except for the one atop Hill 287, which would give fifteen kilometers more than that. In fact, it was a little more than that, still, since the ships had height as well. In any case, as the intel chief said, “What can they do with the knowledge?”
What indeed? wondered the high admiral, with a knot in her stomach.
The risk came in not only from the cables, but from the antiaircraft mines that some of them carried, those that were not carrying cameras. These were light antiaircraft missiles, IR guided, that were mounted to boxes containing acoustic sensors. At least once, a Tauran fighter, going for a balloon, had had the bad luck of being tracked acoustically, which is to say passively, and then gotten an explosion not far behind, followed by a continuous rod ripping through one wing. The pilot hadn’t survived, so far as was known, though she’d been seen to eject.
That, given that the Tauran Union had—amidst the enthusiastic popping of champagne corks and much hand-clapping—previously declared absolute air supremacy, twice, had proved most humiliating.
Eventually, in part to avoid further humiliation, they’d given up the antiballoon effort as a waste of time, money, and effort.
“Lead elements of the Zhong fleet coming close enough to show on the main screen, if we pan out, High Admiral,” announced one of the Class Four petty officers manning the computer that controlled the main screen.
“No,” said Wallenstein, “wait. The Zhong Fleet will do whatever they’ll do. I want to keep a close watch on the island.”
Marguerite was dozing sitting up when Khan nudged her. Placing a cup of coffee, sweet but black, in her hand, he bent down and whispered, “The Zhong are filling the landing boats now.”
She gulped then, suddenly awake, half from the coffee and half from a mix of anticipation and fear, Marguerite spent a few seconds blinking away the residue of sleep. Then she looked at the left-hand screen where, yes, landing craft were beginning to form in moving circles and ovals, the circles and ovals themselves part of a larger pattern of formations. She saw that Xingzhen, the Zhong empress, was watching the proceedings intently.
At the push of a button by Khan, the left and center sections of the main screen joined, even as the island and fleet swam away. Now she could see the whole thing unfolding. Khan added in the graphics, turned over to the Taurans by the Zhong, that made a great deal more sense of the formations into which the Zhong were shaking themselves. They looked to be about thirty kilometers from land.
The normally secretive to the point of paranoid Zhong had given up the operational graphics only because they needed Tauran air support and didn’t want a friendly fire incident with their allies of the moment.
While the Zhong didn’t have much in the way of naval aviation, they did have a fair amount of naval gunfire to throw in in support of their landing force, including a decent light cruiser. No doubt other nations had sneered at them for decades for it, too, since naval gunfire just wasn’t sexy like the missiles and carrier aircraft of other first rate nations’ navies. In this particular case, though, NGS was just what the doctor ordered. Of the eighty-odd destroyers and frigates in the Zhong Navy, sixty were with the expedition. Of those, thirty-seven remained behind to screen the fleet against the nasty little submarines Balboa was known to have, while twenty-three steamed to within range of the shore defenses. Range, for the 100mm guns that were the almost universal standard for the Zhong Navy, was a theoretical seventeen kilometers, but a practical dozen.
This wasn’t the first time the Zhong had used naval gunfire; they’d been intermittently pounding away for weeks. But this was the largest show to date, with fire blossoming over the azure sea from dozens of guns, and the target beaches being even more enveloped in smoke than they had been.
The Zhong, unbeknownst to Wallenstein and the Taurans, had seriously considered using chemical agents on the beaches. They’d given up the notion on the presumption that Balboa’s elaborate fixed defenses would probably provide better defense than anything the Imperial Marines could carry on their backs, while the Balboans just might be able to retaliate. Chemicals were, after all, some of the easiest war materials to produce.
The Taurans had dedicated three hundred sorties to a pre-landing preparation of the island. That was not small change, those roughly two thousand tons. But, it was generally agreed, the Taurans had to do their business and leave before the Zhong reached within two kilometers of the beaches. Otherwise, the world, fate, God, Murphy (who, it was well known, had emigrated to Terra Nova in the first wave), or the emperor Mong, whom the Zhong and Anglians both disowned, would fuck somebody.
With the ovals and circles at sea straightening now into deadly arrows, pointed not-quite-straight at the beaches, the Taurans half darkened the sky. They lashed down not only at the landing beaches, but at half a dozen others as heavily, and eleven more a bit more lightly, for the deception value. Known, or believed to be known, artillery positions got a special pasting.
Generally speaking, Wallenstein was surprised at the fury of the Tauran assault.
My cousins have apparently got a few grudges from the five minute bomber raids.
The Zhong and Taurans had, if anything, been overly cautious about the use of the latter’s airpower in proximity to the former’s unarmored Marines. While the first wave of landing craft was eight hundred meters offshore, the last of the Tauran strikers was flying east toward their bases in Santa Josefina.
To smoke was now added a considerable cloud of dust raised by the bombs. Most of the island could not be seen with the naked eye or unaided camera.
“Switching to thermal imaging,” Khan announced. The screen went blank, then red, then to a mix of stark black and red. It took a bit of time for both mind and eyes to adjust.
“Narrow focus on the island and the leading wave,” Wallenstein commanded. “Order Harmony to bring the skimmer in lower, and have them prep another in case we lose this one.”
“Aye, aye, High Admiral,” said one of the communications boffins. Communication was nearly instantaneous, while the skimmer was close in any case. The focus of the crew and their commander narrowed considerably as the first waves of the Zhong Marines splashed ashore.
“What’s that?” Wallenstein asked, as the skimmer approached a tilted triple turret.
“We’ve got lasing!” a petty officer announced. “Lasing from the whole northern coast. Lasing from the balloons. Lasing from Hill 287. Lasing . . .”
The room shook with an inarticulate cry of despair from the Zhong empress. She saw what Khan saw, and had divined the meaning just as quickly.
“It’s a gun; I’d guess an eighteen-centimeter gun,” Khan said, his voice heavy with defeat. “On a railway carriage. It came from one of the ammunition bunkers we didn’t attack. I think . . . I think there are going to be a lot of them. And they’re not lasing for its own sake.” Tonelessly, hopelessly, he added, “Empress, you should tell the Zhong Fleet to retreat . . . High Admiral, tell her.” Khan’s chin sank onto his chest. “But, of course, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?”