The Rods and the Axe - eARC (16 page)
Read The Rods and the Axe - eARC Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Action & Adventure, #military
Finding that had taken recourse to Belisario’s personal diaries—a Carrera clan treasure—plus thousands of man hours hunting through old probate records, before the control box for that old shuttle had been found, stashed away in the bowels of a museum, under the care of its curator, Professor Alfredo Figueredo. The museum really had no clue of the importance of what they’d had and mostly forgotten they’d even had it. Only Figueredo had been able to remember where the damned black box was hidden.
And, to Fernandez’s near surprise, the old control box had fit, fit perfectly. Better, it had still worked. Matched to the shuttle, and the latter powered up in its Faraday-Cage-writ-large of a hangar, and suddenly Balboa had become not only a nuclear power, but, in whatever tiny a sense, a space power.
And, within a few years, the legion even had pilots trained by no less a personage than the captive former high admiral and inspector general of the Peace Fleet.
Which children of whores
, fumed Fernandez,
neglected to mention to us that the fucking Peace Fleet had
no
nukes.
Fernandez’s wheelchair stopped. Four of Mahamda’s men continued on, into the depths of the shelter, while the rest dumped their loads to the concrete floor of the top deck. The stuffed pack clanged even more metallically when tossed to the concrete. Under Mahamda’s supervision, the remaining men began assembling the wooden beams into two large crosses.
The last trace of the ghostly smile had flitted away by the time Robinson and Arbeit were dragged to the top deck. They were tossed to their knees on the concrete at Fernandez’s feet, their hands bound. Head inclined, Fernandez stared first at Robinson, then at Arbeit.
“Refresh my memory,” he said. “When I spared your lives rather than leaving you aboard the
Hildegard von Mises
as it sunk, it was on the condition that you would cooperate actively and eagerly with us, was it not? That you would withhold nothing, would volunteer everything?”
“Yyyeesssss . . .” Both of the Old Earthers hissed their answers out together.
“Ah, good,” said the intel chief. “And so I want to know the complete status of the fucking Peace Fleet’s nuclear arsenal.”
“No one really knows,” said Arbeit, licking her lips nervously as her eyes flitted from Fernandez’s feet to the twin crosses, “least of all, since we haven’t been aboard ship in years, us. But he can tell you more than I can.”
The former high admiral gulped, then said, “I
told
you, sir, why I had to borrow nukes from Kashmir and other places to give to the Salafi
Ikhwan
. Because I couldn’t be sure.”
“So if someone said that the Peace Fleet has not a single, functioning nuke aboard any of its ships?” Fernandez asked.
“Legate Fernandez,” Robinson continued, “please believe me.
Please
. I don’t know if there are no functioning nuclear weapons in the fleet. I only know that the ones we had were questionable. I told you about why I obtained the Volgan, Kashmiri, and Hangkuk bombs.”
“Is it plausible,” asked Fernandez, “that every last one of them is defunct? Think carefully on your answer, because if I don’t believe you, if I think you’re trying to withhold information, if I think you’ve broken your word to us . . . to me . . . then you and this psychotic bitch of an ex-marchioness are going up on crosses. In two days we’ll start asking questions again. If then you’ve answered everything in exactly the same way, even though you’ll be hanging separately, then on the third day I’ll let you down. If you have not, you stay there another day, and your legs get broken.”
“No nails?” asked Mahamda innocently.
“Oh, no,” replied Fernandez, “we’ll just tie them up. It hurts more that way, you know.”
“Yes, sir . . . but what about tradition?”
“Trust me, it’s traditional. Robinson?”
“You have another source somewhere aboard the fleet, don’t you?” asked the ex-high admiral. He was trying his best to remain calm and helpful, but Fernandez was pretty sure he was inches from gibbering.
“Yes,” Fernandez agreed. “The cabin girl to High Admiral Wallenstein, your replacement.”
Mention of Wallenstein’s name converted some of Robinson’s terror into hate in an instant. He was a lot easier to deal with that way.
“Okay,” Robinson said, “ . . . what we’re talking about is, to a degree, semantic. You said ‘cabin girl,’ so probably a lower caste girl, not well educated and unlikely to pick up fine nuances. But consider, Legate, that a nuke that cannot be relied on is
not
, in fact, useable. Try to use one on, say, the Federated States, or even one of its allies, and let them discover that the bombs don’t work, and the Peace Fleet becomes radioactive debris in orbit.
Fast!
That would be true even if that were the only defective one and all the others were good.
“When I was in command, I had hundreds of nukes. Statistically, based on records of old testing, over a hundred should have worked. In practice, I could not tell which ones would and which would not. I couldn’t even rely on the test sets to tell me, since they were older than even the fleet was.”
“So how many,” asked Fernandez, “could be expected to work now?”
Estado Mayor
, Balboa, Terra Nova
“He doesn’t know,” said Fernandez to Carrera. “He says he doesn’t and I am inclined to believe him.
“That said . . . I am not entirely sure I trust what I believe,” Fernandez admitted. “The way I went about it was nonstandard . . . and a mistake in procedure. It may be, sir, that you need to replace me.”
“Fuck off and die,” answered Carrera, “but not until the war’s over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the cabin girl?” Carrera asked. “You said she’d seemed positive.”
“Robinson had a good point there; the girl is unlikely to know the difference between unserviceable and unusable.”
“Any chance she’s a double agent?” Carrera asked. “Any chance she’s feeding us a series of lines that the high admiral wants us to swallow?”
Fernandez nodded slowly, not in agreement but in recognition of the question. “I’ve asked myself that,
Duque
, then rejected it. There’s no possible benefit to the UEPF in us believing their nuclear teeth are just dentures. Less still if, believing it, we went running to the Federated States and got
them
to believe it.
“So . . . much as it pains me, I’ve got to go with the common denominator of what the cabin girl and the ex-high admiral have told us. There are nukes up there. Some work. Some don’t. And they’re not useable because the Earthpigs don’t know which ones work and which ones don’t. But . . . what’s it do to our plans?”
“I’m not sure,” Carrera answered. “It will take some thought. There are a couple of things I’m sure of, though.”
“What are those, sir?”
“I am sure that we and the UEPF have a common interest in keeping the status of their nuclear weapons secret. And I am sure the Yamatans or their ‘special source’ are not being forthright, or we’d have heard more about this.”
Fernandez considered those for a moment, then said, “I’m sure enough about the first one, but the second? Well . . . maybe not. The Yamatans seem to just shut down whenever the subject of nukes comes up. They can be so detached and logical about everything else, even when they’re being loons they’re logical loons, consistent with their preconceptions and assumptions. But with nukes the subject seems to drop a hundred points of their national average IQ.”
“What did you end up doing with Robinson and Arbeit?” Carrera asked.
“Well, you said you needed him for the project. So I just told them I’d do some checking on my own, then get back to them about the crosses. I had the assembled crosses left outside of their cells, to spur their memories in case there’s anything they forgot to tell us.”
“
You
, Legate, are a wicked man.”
“Somewhat,” Fernandez admitted. “But, sir, when the time comes, I want to try that evil cunt Arbeit for murder of a slave, then nail her up.”
“Have to be an
in camera
trial,” Carrera said. “But . . . maybe.
“That said, though Robinson owes me in proportion for five or maybe six lives, depending on how much truth may be in a nightmare, I am sure my Linda would have wanted me to keep my word. So as long as he cooperates, he lives.”
There’s something else,” Fernandez said, “something you need to know about.”
“And that would be?”
The legate shook his head, not in negation but in puzzlement. “The Taurans are trying to reactivate their network of spies and informers here. At least to some extent they are. “
“How do you know?”
“Double agent. Female. They contacted her via her cell and she reported to us via the old drop we had set up, pre-war.
“Problem is,” said Fernandez, “that I never had a good handle on their network. I could estimate that there were X or so spies, of which I had turned Y, knew about Z, and had no clue about W. But it wasn’t more than a guess.”
“What did you do with the Zs?”
Fernandez gave one his rare grins. “The ones I did know about? Didn’t round them up for questioning, followed by execution, which was my first instinct. Mostly I took a couple of hostages from each, wives, children, lovers, and left them in place but watched. There was also a small number—precisely three—who, once they saw which way the wind was blowing, after we booted the TU out, came over to us, giving up whatever they knew. Since the Taurans hadn’t, at that time, had a chance to try to reestablish their network, those I just took into custody. They’re still alive and healthy, and have all their organs and fingernails. None of those were in the legion, by the way, or I would have nailed them up, no matter what.”
“Who were they?” Carrera asked.
“One professor at the university, one student—no, they didn’t know about each other—and the wife of one of our tribunes. Seemed she was having an affair with one of the Tauran officers. All she wanted was immunity from prosecution and not to tell her husband.”
“Did you give your word?” Carrera asked.
With a sigh, Fernandez said, “I did.”
“Pity,” said Carrera. “I’d love to let the husband have first crack at the bitch.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How are you planning on fighting this?” Carrera asked.
“It’s tough, really,” Fernandez replied. “If I’d gotten to their files before they burned, we’d be sitting pretty. As is, I’ve got to treat the ones we know about as bait to try to get at whoever they introduce into the country to reestablish their net. In the long run, though, they will reestablish that net.”
“Give me six months of Tauran, Zhong, and UEPF ignorance and I’ll be happy.”
“I’ll surely try,
Duque
.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
You and I were born in a period of troubles and have grown up at a time when the Fatherland is in danger.
—Tran Hung Dao,
Fourteenth Century Vietnamese General,
“Proclamation to the Officers”
BdL
Dos Lindas,
at sea,
Mar Furioso
,
one hundred and thirty-seven kilometers north of the
Isla Real
There was only a double handful of nations on Terra Nova that maintained aircraft carriers at all. The Federated States had a dozen huge ones, plus another ten amphibious carriers that would do in a pinch. Yamato had four that collectively were not as large as any single version of the smaller Federated States amphibious jobs. Volga had one that couldn’t put to sea. Bharat had two old ones they’d bought from elsewhere and was building a new one of their own.
Xing Zhong Guo
had two small ones, though they once, recently, had had a third, larger one. Gaul and Anglia maintained a couple each, mid-sized. Tuscany had two that were more in the nature of helicopter carriers. The few others were old, or small, or not fit for sea, or some combination of those.
And then there was Balboa, which had, in theory, two. One of these, the
Dos Lindas
, was old and not particularly large, seaworthy but not fit for duty in line of battle against any threat greater than a megalodon . . . the fish, not the submarine. She had done good service in the campaigns against the Xamari and Nicobar pirates, though she’d come far too close to destruction in the latter.
Dos Lindas
remained useful against minor threats—or what would once have been called, on different seas on a different planet, “teaching the wogs a lesson”—and it had fair antisubmarine capability.
The other Balboan carrier was more than a hulk, but not all that much more. It didn’t even have a name, but only a code: BdEL1 (
Barco del Entrenamiento Legionario Numero Uno
). It rode at anchor in the bay formed by the tadpole’s tail on the northern point of the
Isla Real.
It couldn’t move. It had only one elevator, the other having been taken for repairs to the
Dos Lindas
. Instead of three laser for air and missile defense, it had only one, and that for training gunners and maintenance crewmen.
Its chief virtues were that it cost almost nothing to keep anchored and in use as the
classis’
—the legion’s naval arm’s—chief training facility. Aboard the BdEL1, everything having to do with the surface fleet, from carrier take offs and landings, to servicing aircraft aboard, to antiaircraft gunnery, to cooking in narrow rolling spaces, to damage control could be trained on the cheap and well.
Thus, if nothing else, the
Dos Lindas
had a well-trained crew. And, while obsolete compared to any carrier of any other navy, that didn’t mean it was useless, even in the current contretemps. It served as a command control platform for the fleet, currently strung out on picket duty from near the border with Santa Josefina to near the border with Santander. It was a fair anti-submarine platform, especially against Zhong Guo’s more primitive and noisier subs. And its aircraft served well as scouts further out to sea for the more potent land-based aircraft of the
alae
—wings—of the Sixteenth Aviation Legion.
But we’re so old,
lamented the admiral of the classis and former captain of the
Dos Lindas
, Legate Roderigo Fosa,
and the old girl’s so
weary.
Time for her to become a museum ship or something, and for us to buy a new carrier.
What caused that train of thought in Fosa was his maintenance officer going down the list of problems—new problems, not old ones on deferred maintenance—cropping up.
“In short, Legate,” said the maintenance chief, in unconscious imitation of his commander’s thoughts, “the old girl needs a long rest. Or retirement.”
Kiaochow,
Xing Zhong Guo,
Terra Nova
Major Wu Zixu,
Xing Zhong Guo
Imperial Marine Corps, tugged his wife around a warehouse corner by her dainty hand. He was large, for a Zhong, and besides, she was willing. It was an easy job to get themselves hidden. And it wouldn’t do to let the troops lining the deck of the LPD,
Qin Shan
, and the dock to which it was tied, to see them kissing.
His wife, Jiao, lived up to her name, Dainty and Lovely. A tiny little thing, except for her swollen abdomen, Wu’s family had paid a bride price for Jiao that had nearly beggared them, the family being military and the military being rather underpaid and, unlike some, scrupulously honest.
Not all arranged marriages worked. Some, however, worked so well that one had to wonder why anyone tried the other way. This one had worked very well. Husband lived for lovely wife; wife for heroic husband, and both for the child whom the wife bore in her belly.
Jiao sniffled, tried to control it, failed, and lay her head on her husband’s chest, weeping openly. “I am so afraid,” she said, through her tears. “I am so afraid you will never return.”
Wu turned his head and bent his neck to rest his cheek atop the woman’s shining, blue-black hair. He rubbed the cheek back and forth, while keeping one arm around Jiao’s expanded waist, with the hand of the other stroking her hair as well. It was an impending agony to leave her, the two having grown so close since their arranged marriage.
“Don’t be silly, wife. Of course I’ll come back. That is, I will if the cooks don’t poison me.” At that, he sighed. “I shall miss your cooking woman.”
I shall miss a lot more than that.
“I will not be able to write every day,” said Wu. “I may not be able to write at all, depending on what Admiral Wanyan orders. But do not doubt, do not doubt for a minute, that you will never be far from my thoughts.”
She couldn’t answer the sentiment in words. If she’d tried she’d have broken down completely. Instead, Jiao held her departing husband tightly, nodding into his chest.
Wu heard a loudspeaker blaring from the ship, calling all the tardy to board. At that, Jiao did break down completely, her enveloping arms crushing him to her.
“Careful,” he said, “or you’ll be expelling the baby before it’s ready.”
That earned him a small laugh and a somewhat larger decrease in the flow of tears.
“You
must
come back to me,” said Jiao. “Promise!”
“I . . . I can’t promise. Except to try.”
Kiaochow was one of four major bases of the Zhong fleet. It was also the most centrally located of three of the four. The fourth, Liaoxi, which was more centrally located, was completely unsuitable for the assembly of a fleet, since it largely consisted of submarine pens, carved out of a mountain overlooking the port.
As the most centrally located of the three suitable bases, Kiaochow now saw the assemblage of the greatest Mandarin-speaking fleet since the eunuch admiral, Cheng Ho, on Old Earth, had returned from his last voyage to India in 1433 AD. Kiaochow was also the port from which the aircraft carrier
Anshan
had sailed on its final, humanitarian mission to Balboa, from which mission, of course, it had not returned.
Anshan
’s old berth remained empty. Indeed, the Celestial Throne had decreed it would remain empty in perpetuity. Like other imperial promises, that really depended on the will of future emperors.
Conversely, the promise of the fleet assembling was immense.
Originally, the Zhong Navy had intended to send half of its frigates and destroyers, and both of its light carriers, to the coming war against the Balboans. This plan had presupposed the Balboan fleet, such as it was, would split itself between
Mar Furioso
and Shimmering Sea. In the event, the Balboans—apparently, and insultingly, believing they could do nothing against the Tauran fleets, but could at least hurt the Zhong—had simply abandoned forward defense in the Shimmering Sea, concentrating their meager fleet against
Xing Zhong Guo
.
The fleet already assembling would surely have been adequate to simply brush aside half of the Balboan
classis.
It was clearly adequate to defeat the entire
classis.
But mere victory was not enough for the Celestial Throne, which is to say Empress Xingzhen. It had to be an awe inspiring victory, a stomping of the Balboans as if they were mice, to suit not only her ego, but the majesty and honor of the empire she (unofficially) commanded.
That necessitated delay while another quarter of the Zhong surface combatant arsenal, and more submarines, assembled. It also necessitated confusion and discomfort, as two divisions of Imperial Marines and another half dozen of infantry, plus support, waited in their miserable, cramped, smelly holds. Some of those holds were officially and thoroughly naval, four Landing Platform Docks, twenty-nine Landing Ship Tanks, forty-eight serviceable Landing Ship Mediums, which really weren’t suitable for carrying their normal combat loads of troops on long voyages, nearly four hundred landing craft, scattered among the ships, and thirty-three large freighters, commandeered and converted for the war.
All the troops were miserable, but none so miserable as the ones in the civilian freighters. Those holds weren’t just miserable, cramped and smelly. Oh, no, they were also noisy, as crews welded helicopter platforms and pairs of heavy duty davits, above, and loaded critical cargoes on deck and below.
Why such a huge force for landing? For much the same reason as the huge number of surface combatants. The Zhong intended to brush aside resistance contemptuously.
Liaoxi,
Xing Zhong Guo,
Terra Nova
The Zhong Navy’s submarine force had a number of components, of wildly differing capabilities. There were, for example, half a dozen nuclear powered ballistic missile carrying submarines, and a few cruise missile carrying submarines, for deterrence. These were far too few and far too precious to risk on Balboa, or anywhere near Balboa. Nor would they have added much to combat capabilities. Of course, they carried torpedoes and tubes but, as with other navies’ strategic submarines, their captains were chosen, if not for timidity, than certainly for absence of temerity. The things were just too important to risk on anything less than the existential.
There was also a large number of diesel powered coastal defense submarine, none of which had range to reach Balboan waters on their own, across the vast expanse of the
Mar Furioso
. Oh, they could range, some of them, if barely, and they carried enough consumables for the trip, but only that. Still, there wasn’t a lot of sense in sending them to confront Balboa, only to have them have surface to beg for food. Still, some—quite a few, actually—would be used, but they would be used in company with the main fleet, and would feed off of the same service support that would be fueling, feeding, and arming the surface fleet.
The final significant component of the Zhong submarine force was made up of the eleven nuclear attack submarines. Six of these were required as escorts for the strategic subs. One was in dry-dock and wouldn’t be out any time soon. The remaining four were ordered out early, to take position to dominate Balboan waters, should the call to battle be sounded.
Noisy machinery and the stench of diesel overrode the sound and smell of the sea that reached into the man-made cavern. Green safety nets, normally stretched out over the gap between platform and water, were pulled up, out of the way. Normally, set on moveable frames in the horizontal plane, they prevented crew and loading personnel from falling down where the boats could pin them between hull and rock, crushing the life from their fragile and weak bodies. Behind the now vertical nets, hundreds of well-wishing shore monkeys waved goodbye as the Dynasty
-
class hunter-killer submarine,
Mao Zedong
, cast off from the dock.
Captain Liu, standing in little open compartment, atop the sail, that went by the name of “bridge,” watched carefully as his boat pulled out of the underground pen. The captain was remarkably white skinned, a result of spending so much time not merely at sea, but under it. He waved back at the shore monkeys until the bridge passed the western edge of the pen and entered the long tunnel.
Why not? I expect to return someday and will need them then as I have since taking command.
The speed of exit was a bare crawl, and, thought Liu, could perhaps have been better done by towing machines—perhaps on rails—than by the sub’s own power. In any case, the bare and rough rock walls sliding by at less than a slow walking pace were a necessary frustration; it was a dangerously tight fit.
Looking ahead, Liu saw the hint of a wider area, though still not very wide. This was where the half water filled tunnels that led to four other pens joined up to form the main exit—the only exit for submarines—to the sea.
Maneuvering through that bend in the otherwise straight tunnel system took some finesse. Again, Liu mused on the possibility of using some kind of automated system, perhaps if they ever got the alternate entrance and exit tunnel carved out. At thought of that, the captain scowled. Supposedly that alternate exit would be dug; the beginnings of it already had been. Liu would believe it when he could take his sub out through it. As it was, it appeared to be yet another boondoggle, full of sound and fury, and being dug . . . or not . . . by a well-known idiot with impeccable connections to the imperial palace.
Corruption will be the ruin of us
, the skipper thought.
Already our trade is being crippled by the foul and contaminated, sometimes murderously contaminated, products put into the stream of commerce by those pirates masquerading as the guardians of the people. “To each according to his ability to steal, from each according to his inability to get at decent goods.”
What has become of the revolution my ancestors thought they were fighting for?
Liu, who loved his work, was always careful to keep such thoughts purely private.
In the deep interior, the lights above the sub had been quite bright fluorescents, bright enough not to be able to see the small guide lights along each side of the tunnel. As it neared the exit, the tunnel’s bright overheads gave way to diffuse normal daylight from the tunnel’s mouth and the minor red guide lights. For a nighttime exit, it would be all on the little guide lights, those, and night vision devices, to get the sub to sea.
