Both Heaven and Hell are absolute dictatorships; the only difference is the being in charge. A similar rule applies to human government. A democratic government over a society composed of decent, law abiding, civic-minded and civically virtuous people can bring prosperity, security, all the good things in life. Conversely, a democratic government in a society gone rotten, or one where only family and blood count, or where it is every man for himself, can create a Hell on Earth. A monarchy may be decent and stable, as Anglia's was for many centuries, or it can be the nightmare of work-to-death camps in Volga under the Red Tsars. Indeed, people may be freest of all under a monarchy like Anglia's or they may be utter slaves to the whims of Volga's autocrats. An aristocracy may rule well, and provide great benefit to everyone, aristocrat and common, alike. Equally, it may be a corrupt oligarchy that loots the society for its own benefit. The questions then, always, and for every possible form of government, are: "What is the quality of those in charge and how can we select them for virtue and maintain them in virtue?"
—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468
The plane was a high winged monoplane with a great deal of glass to it. Called a "Cricket," it performed, more cheaply, a number of tasks within the Legion that most armies used helicopters for. The scout/command and control plane's engine droned loudly as it made a steep descent to the parade field fronting Quarters One. Looking down, Carrera shook his head, ruefully. He put his mouth to Lourdes' ear and said, "I'm getting old."
"How's that, Patricio?" the woman asked.
In answer, he grimaced and put his right index finger near the window, jabbing it downward three times. Lourdes looked out and saw a sea of humanity, partially pixel-clad and in at least equal measure in civilian, dry season white, packing the parade field. The troops and their families had thoughtfully left a rectangular open area, just slightly larger than required to land a Cricket. She looked and smiled, pleased that the people still loved her husband as she did.
"So much for coming here unannounced," Carrera said.
"But how . . . I mean, you told hardly anyone. We didn't even bring any bags." Which wasn't strictly true. Carrera had a carry-on and Lourdes a small trunk. But from her point of view that was no baggage.
He shook his head. "Grapevine. Rumor control. One of the centurions at the Casa paying back a favor to an old friend on the island. Or, most probably, all three."
Which is why "secret, unannounced Annual General Inspections" are never secret or unannounced.
"It's very hard to keep a secret these days," he added, "if people don't think it should be kept or owe favors to or need favors from people who don't want it kept."
Lourdes looked suddenly guilty. "Well . . . I did tell Artemisia that we were coming. Someone, after all, had to make sure Quarters One was ready."
Again, Carrera shook his head. "She didn't spread the word. Arti can keep a secret."
Lourdes briefly considered nukes and destroyed cities and mass murder and thought, Lord, I hope so, her and Alena . . . well, about Alena, at least, I have no doubts whatsoever. I'd be jealous of her, I think, and her relationship to Hamilcar, if I weren't so completely sure that if a meg were coming for Ham, the fish would have to eat through Alena to get to my boy . . . and she'd be prying its teeth loose from the inside while kicking its gut into jelly the whole time it was swimming.
As the plane practically auto-hovered over the landing spot—there was enough of a head wind for the thing almost to take off on its own—Carrera glanced over the assembly. He saw that it was not just people, soldiers and their families, but that someone had arranged an honor guard in legionary dress whites, set up a public address system, and had a limousine on station. He turned his head slowly, looking for someone senior he could tear a new asshole in for ruining his planned, private landing.
But, No, no one above a junior centurion that I can see. And I'm not going to chew one of them out for being . . . well . . . for being polite, I suppose. And it is kind of thoughtful.
I hope to Hell they aren't really expecting a speech.
* * *
"That was a very nice little speech," Lourdes said, as the two walked from the limousine to the open doorway of Quarters One. Artemisia stood in the doorway. "Especially since you weren't planning on giving one."
"I didn't say a word to anyone except my uncle Xavier and Mac," Arti announced, loudly. "And they wouldn't have told."
Xavier wouldn't, Carrera silently agreed. Mac? I'm not so sure. Though I am sure that if it was the Sergeant Major he'd have covered his tracks well enough that I'd never find out even if I tried. So why bother? Hell with it.
As Carrera and Lourdes began to ascend the steps to the wide, columned wrap-around porch, they heard a hellish screech, which screech was soon followed by a brightly feathered head bearing remarkably intelligent eyes.
"Jinfeng!" Carrera exclaimed, stopping and bending down to skritch the blue, green, red and gold reptilian bird atop its head. This particular bird had been the pet of—though perhaps companion to was closer to correct—Carrera's late wife, Linda.
The bird pulled its head back as if to say, You don't visit in years. You don't write. You don't call. Harrumph!
"I'm sorry, Jinfeng," Carrera said, apologetically. He kept his hand outstretched while saying, "I wasn't well for a while."
Bright the bird may have been, about as much so as a gray parrot. Still, it wasn't bright enough to understand the words. It understood the tone well enough, though . . . well enough to give one last indignant screech and a half-hearted snap that deliberately missed the fingers before moving its head into Carrera's reach.
"I've been feeding them," Artemisia said.
"Them?" Carrera asked.
Arti didn't have to answer. While Jinfeng was being well skritched, three more heads suddenly popped out of the bushes and offered their own screeches.
"Jinfeng! You're a mother!"
* * *
The very existence of the Noahs was surmised from three factors, a handful of artifacts, the Rift itself, and the very strange variety of life on Terra Nova.
That life came, broadly speaking, from several sources. One source was Terra Nova itself, though little of the planet's naturally evolved life had survived the introduction of other, more highly evolved life. Little of it, too, was commercially valuable, though Terra Novan olives—a gray, wrinkled skin, plum sized, and highly astringent stoned fruit—were. Likewise, chorley was a native grain obtained from a low, sunflower-like plant, that made an excellent, buttery bread. Too, there were various forms of peppers, from Joan of Arc to Holy Shit to Satan Triumphant, which spiced up, literally, Terra Novan cuisine.
(Actually, no one could really eat Satan Triumphant in anything except the most dilute trace amounts, but it had found commercial value as a vesicant, a blister agent, during the planet's Great Global War which had ended sixty-one years before. It was also used occasionally as a food preservative. This was touchy, though, as the slightest trace too much of Satan Triumphant and the food would be completely preserved. Not only would bugs not touch it, neither would people.)
Then there was the alien, and possibly genengineered, life. Almost all of that was dangerous. There were the septic mouthed, nocturnally predatory, winged reptiles called "antaniae," with their nightly cries of "mnnbt, mnnbt, mnnbt." Among humans, these were dangerous mostly to children, especially small children, and the old and weak. The moonbats were predators of a particularly nasty sort. Venomless, their bite would begin an infection that only heroic measures could defeat, and then only if caught in time. Otherwise, the victim would succumb to the infection, more moonbats gathering as it weakened, until the combination of numbers and weakness allowed the vile creatures to descend and feed on the still living victim. Antaniae were especially fond of eating the eyes and brains of the very young.
Besides the antaniae, there were at least three species of plant life deadly to man, the Tranzitrees, the Progressivines, and the Bolshiberries. All of these, pleasant to gaze upon and sweet to eat, produced a toxin not dissimilar in its effects to C. Botulinum. This toxin was particularly insidious in that it affected only higher forms of life. Thus, domestic herd animals could, if not carefully kept from doing so, consume the fruit of those plants, build up the toxin in their systems, and deliver highly fatal doses to man.
It was surmised that both the antaniae and the deadly plants had been genengineered expressly to be dangerous to intelligent life. Certainly, casualties among early settlers to the planet had been horrific enough, as evidenced by such place names as Desperation Bay, in Lansing State, in the Federated States, "Gagandie," in Wellington (a city founded and christened by Australian thought-criminals whose country on Old Earth had not been given a settlement area of its own), and "Ni Hoi Thlee," in Zhong Guo.
With the arrival of man had come all of man's domestic animals and food crops, from horses to goats and from wheat to blueberries. Additionally, many species endangered on Old Earth had found, or been given, a home and a new lease on life on Terra Nova.
However, when man had first come they had discovered that Terra Nova had already had an abundance of life so endangered that it had already become extinct on Old Earth. This accounted for the presence of Jinfeng's subspecies of archaeopteryx, or "trixies," as well as beasts of land and sea from saber tooth tiger to carcharodon megalodon.
* * *
"What happened to the father?" Carrera asked. Breeding Jinfeng had been a pet project for some years, he'd even imported several males to the Isla Real for her to choose from.
"You know males," Arti said, sardonically. "Once he'd had his fun he bugged off. I think he hangs around the solar tower. At least, I've seen Jinfeng winging it in that direction, from time to time, the shameless little hussy."
And did you get the holes in the wall fixed that you and Mac made, thumping the bed against it? Carrera wondered, raising one eyebrow and grinning. Arti knew well enough what he was thinking and ignored grin and quizzical eyebrow, both.
The solar tower, more properly the solar chimney, was an extremely tall reinforced concrete structure, with an enormous circular greenhouse off center and down slope from its base, towering three-quarters of a kilometer above the island's dominant terrain feature, Hill 287. An enormous circular concrete tunnel running up the slope of the hill connected the greenhouse with the base of the tower. Heated air running through the thing turned turbines that provided all the island's power needs, and to excess, for the fifty-thousand men and women of the Legion plus the families. The top of the tower was perpetually shrouded in mist.
There were several others in the Republic of Balboa, all built at Legion expense and to Legion profit, that provided whatever of the nation's electric needs the hydroelectric dams did not. Moreover, the towers sold their electricity eastwards towards neighboring Santa Josefina. Carrera had never given orders to cut electric power either to the Tauran occupied Transitway or the rump government in Old Balboa City. Though he'd never explained it to anyone, his rationale had been, If I cut them off now, it will inconvenience them for a while and at the same time cause them to make themselves invulnerable to my cutting the electricity off at a later, more critical date.
"He also comes by here, sometimes," Arti continued, "mostly for free eats. At least, I think the one that comes by here is the father."
Two turbaned guards stood outside the conference room. Two others were within. There were always that many, or more, for when the boy slept two of them slept on thin cushions to either side of his bed while two more stood awake and watching, arms in hand, their pale green, gray, and blue eyes barely blinking.
They did other things, too, those guards. Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez, eldest child of Patricio and Lourdes, was already a crack shot, could fight with fist, dagger or lance, at least within his weight class, or even a bit above it, and could ride like the wind. The guards seemed to take a personal pride in passing on the lessons learned by their tribe of nearly three thousand years of combat on two planets.
Despite the guards' surpassing paranoia where his safety was concerned, Hamilcar was not in the conference room for safety's sake. Rather, he had learned to hijack the computer to play wargames from the Legion's educational programs on the conference room's big Kurosawa screen. On that screen now, thousands of electronic shadows were dying as a young student of the art of war swung in his flanks onto the opposing exposed flanks and smashed his cavalry into the computer enemy's rear.
It's a lot better, now, thought Hamilcar. Much, much better since dad snapped out of it. Mmm . . . mostly snapped out of it, the boy corrected. I can hear when he screams at night no less than mom can. And she doesn't really know, not the way I do, why he screams. After all, I was there.
Poor dad; when I'm a little older I'll be able to take some of the burden away.
Hamilcar knew, because his father had discussed it with him, that within a year, a year and a half at most, he would be going to Pashtia on his own—or, rather, with his company of guards—to grow some in ways the local schools could never teach. He suspected that it had more to do with getting him someplace comparatively safe than it did with furthering his education. Not that Pashtia was precisely safe, or perhaps ever would be. But there he would be guarded by hundreds, really thousands, of fanatics, every one of whom from the chief down to the least little girl milking a goat would eagerly die to prevent anything from happening to "Iskandr, avatar of God."
"Which is nonsense," the boy muttered aloud, his fingers sending a recall command to his light cavalry. "I'm not an avatar of any god. I'm just eight years old. With maybe some skills and knacks. And a slight resemblance to a nearly three thousand year old image on a gold plate in a dusty cave somewhere in Pashtia."
On the big screen, trapped shadows, nearly eighty thousand of them, continued to die.
From the island, the sea today might as well have been an expanse of blue painted glass, with waves drawn on. Close in, one could see that the waves were real enough, but very gentle. They rolled in to a smooth sandy beach, dominated by a hill with a couple of natural caves in its face.
"We could butcher them down there," said Alexandr Sitnikov, late of the Red Tsar's Fifth Guards Tank Regiment, as he pointed from the shallow cave mouth down to the beaches to the north, northeast, and northwest.
Carrera nodded but said, looking around the shallow cave, "I expected you would have made more progress than you have, Alexandr."
The short and balding Volgan looked sheepish. (All Volgan tankers were short, though baldness was optional.) "I know," he said. "And I'm sorry. But I ran out of money last year and Esterhazy"—the Legion's Sachsen-born comptroller—"wouldn't shit me any more money without your express order."
Carrera thought, Query to self: Despite what was intended to be a training program that developed vast individual initiative, did my behavior the last couple of years before I cracked make people defensive and rob them of initiative? Ask Mac and Xavier; no one else will answer honestly. If so, how do I fix it?
He nodded his understanding, agreeing, "Fair enough. Not your fault. The money will be forthcoming. Can you finish preparing the island for defense within three years?"
Sitnikov could remember a time when Carrera had been so worn out with the struggle, so tired, that he'd have lashed out viciously over any failing. The rest did him good, I think. Which is good for me, too.
"It will cost more," the Volgan answered. "The old rule still applies: You can have it quick or good or cheap; pick any two. And, of course, some preparations cannot be completed, per your guidance, until war is impending or has already begun.
Sitnikov's face took on an uncharacteristically mulish cast. "And besides that, I've got the problem of running the cadets. They're a goddamned division all on their own, Patricio. I've been juggling the two for years, probably to the detriment of both. You really need someone to do both, separately."
"I know," Carrera agreed. "And I am sorely tempted to make that someone Esterhazy, who is not only a trained engineer but also the fucker who should have taken the initiative and given you the money." He sighed. "But if I did, who would be comptroller?"
"That, happily, is your problem. I didn't sign on with you to specialize in personnel management."
"You didn't sign on to run herd on teenagers or design a system of fortifications, either," Carrera answered, drily, "but you never bitched about either one."
"Actually," Sitnikov corrected, "I signed on to teach your first troops to operate White Eagle tanks. You just bribed me into staying on for the cadets and this island."
"Mere details."
"Hmmm . . . details . . . tanks . . . I've got a demonstration for you, if you're up to it."
"Demonstration of what?" Carrera asked.
"Bunkers, actually," the Volgan answered. "If I didn't have the money to build them all, I did have enough to build some of the prototypes we first discussed and to test a few of the designs."
* * *
"Best put these in," Sitnikov said, taking a pair of earplugs from a pocket and handing them to Carrera. He took another set out, rolled them in his fingers to collapse them to narrow cylinders then stuck those in his own ear canals. Carrera did similarly.
In front of them a Jaguar II (formerly "White Eagle") tank sat with the tank commander's upper torso sticking out of the turret. Sitnikov gave the tank commander, or TC, a thumbs up. Immediately the tank commander dropped down into the turret, hurriedly closing the hatch behind him.
Sitnikov shouted, "This is going to—"
KABOOMMM!
"—sting."
Before the last word was out, indeed, before the concussion from the muzzle had dissipated, a concrete bunker downrange was blocked from view by the evil, black smoke of a good-sized explosion. Eight seconds later, after the turret had traversed a few degrees, the same thing happened to a second bunker, then, another eight seconds later, a third . . . a fourth . . . a fifth . . . a sixth.
"Jesus, I hate those things," Carrera muttered, completely unheard by anyone but himself. "Sting," was something of an understatement. The Volgans made great guns, of tremendous power and range for their weight and complexity. A major downside, however, was that the muzzle blast from those guns was somewhat incompatible with maintaining human health.
The TC of the tank emerged and made an all clear signal. Sitnikov nudged Carrera's arm, even as he dug into his own ears to pull out the plugs. "Come, let me show you." The Volgan picked up a box and began to walk toward the still smoke obscured bunkers.
"The concrete we use," Sitnikov explained, "is special. For fill we use coral we blast out of the reefs around the islands. Remarkably strong stuff, that is. Plus the cement is very high quality, as good as made anywhere on the planet."
Carrera nodded. It was no legend that, during the Great Global War, bunkers made of such material had taken direct hits from sixteen inch naval guns and very large aerially delivered bombs and survived intact.
The Volgan continued, "While we may have to face a substantial aerial bombardment, heavy weight naval gunfire is a thing of the past. I think we carry the largest naval guns on Terra Nova today, in our Kurita class cruiser, and they're only six inchers. Still, what will resist a sixteen inch shell is likely to resist a thousand kilogram bomb, as well."
"Not a deep penetrator," Carrera pointed out.
"A penetrator of any size," Sitnikov countered, "would rarely or never be used on a bunker containing at most three men and a machine gun or light cannon."
Carrera nodded. "True enough."
"And after I show you these I have something else to show you in reference to bunkers a deep penetrator might be worth expending on."
"What's in the box?" Carrera asked.
"Toys and garbage," Sitnikov answered, cryptically.
* * *
The range had been short. Thus, each of the six bunkers had taken a direct and well placed hit from the tank's main gun. The hits were, however well placed, off center.
"There's no point in testing for what happens if a major round hits the firing aperture," Sitnikov explained. "In that case the crew dies. We're more interested in what happens when a gun hits any other part of the bunker."
The Volgan led the way around to the back of the bunker, to its entrance.
"This first one shows what happens when a tungsten or depleted uranium long rod penetrator hits anything but the firing aperture or hits at an angle that drives it through the bulk of the shelter. And it's . . . ugly."
Carrera looked through the entrance. Inside, lit only by daylight, the butchered carcasses of three pigs lay on the concrete floor. No, Carrera thought, they're not all dead.
One of the pigs, still breathing, lifted its head and looked at Carrera hopelessly before laying its head down again and expiring. Air escaping from punctured lungs turned pig's blood into a red froth.
Ignoring the iron-coppery stench of porcine blood, Carrera looked at one wall, where a long deep furrow of concrete had been blasted out, leaving the rebar exposed. He nodded, not needing an explanation for what had happened. The penetrator, when passing through the concrete, simply forced displaced concrete out the most convenient side, explosively.
"The next one," Sitnikov said, pointing and leading the way, "is a high explosive plastic, or HEP, hit."
Here, Carrera saw, the outside surface of the bunker was deeply pitted and cratered over an area of about a foot and a half in diameter. Walking to the back and, again, peering through the entrance, he saw something similar to what had been in the interior of the first bunker. This included three dead pigs—mercifully they were dead by this time—as well as a large, fairly round gap of exposed rebar.
"The exterior explosion sends a shockwave through the concrete. As the shockwave bounces back from the inner face, that face detaches . . . explosively."
"I understand."
"The next," the Volgan said, walking on, still carrying his box of toys and garbage, "was a simple high explosive round on a superquick fuse." At the bunker Sitnikov opened a steel door. "We only closed it for this one and the last," the Volgan explained, "to get a good simulation of concussion. It didn't matter for the others."
Carrera said nothing but looked through the open portal and saw three . . . living pigs.
"Straight concrete," Sitnikov said, "and the concussion gets transmitted pretty much in full. This stuff . . . well, what we've done to it, plus the peculiar qualities of the coral fill, and . . . well, you can see for yourself."
Carrera face grew mildly contemplative as he considered the stunned, staggering, but still living pigs. "What were you planning on doing with our porcine brothers?" he asked.
"Back to the farm?"
"No," Carrera shook head. "Seems kind of cruel . . . maybe even double jeopardy. I think they ought be retired for 'service to the Legion.' "
"Your pigs," Sitnikov shrugged. He walked to the next bunker. "Now it gets interesting. Look for yourself."
Carrera saw that, curiously, there was a wire mesh over the open portal and that behind the mesh were stunned but otherwise healthy porkers. He looked inside and saw no exposed rebar. He walked around front and confirmed that, yes, there was a pitted crater about where there had been one on the first bunker. For the moment, he withheld comment.
"This next one," Sitnikov said, pointing, "was another tungsten penetrator. You'll find the pigs are mostly healthy enough."
Carrera walked over and looked again through wire mesh. As the Volgan had predicted, those pigs weren't even stunned.
"All right, what's the trick?"
Now Sitnikov placed his box on the ground and opened it. From it he withdrew a number of two to three inch colored plastic shapes, a tetrahedron, a square, a pyramid, a cube, a sphere. These he placed on the ground, then reached in again and set beside them a small, plastic soft drink bottle.
"Those are the tricks," he said. "For the last two bunkers, plus the one you haven't seen yet, we placed these more or less randomly in with the concrete as we poured. They have the effect of breaking up the shock wave from HEP, of providing space where concrete can go when displaced by a penetrator, and of muting the concussion from a hit or near miss with high explosive."
Carrera mused on the concept for a half a minute, then pronounced, "Clever . . . but I've got some questions," Carrera said.
"Shoot, boss."
"What the hell are these projections of concrete all around the base of the bunkers?"
"The technical term is 'rafts.' Basically, they help keep the bunker from flipping over from a near miss from a big shell or bomb."
"Are the plastic fillers expensive?"
Sitnikov shook his head. "Cheaper than the concrete they displace."
"What's the cost of a bunker?" Carrera asked.
"About five hundred legionary drachma for the base structure, exclusive of NBC filters, electrification, labor for camouflaging, and such."
"And you want to put how many up?"
"We still haven't finished completely surveying the island for defense. Right now, my best guess is that we need about fifty-four hundred of these, plus maybe another six hundred that will cost several times more to house redundant tank turrets, plus thirteen—twelve more, plus one we've already built—underground shelters of very large size that will cost considerably more than the other six thousand, together, plus . . ."
"Show me."
* * *
The elevator fell and fell, lifting stomachs mouthward. To reach it, Sitnikov had driven into a tunnel that led right into the side of Hill 287.
"We put up the first one," he explained, "in part by using the budget you gave McNamara to build a secure facility for the precious metal. He and I had a little chat and agreed that we could kill two birds with one stone. So you have your secure vault, and you also have a very deep and strong fortification."
How many floors down is it?" Carrera asked.
"It's more than fifty meters from the surface, though still above sea level. There are twelve floors, each with about four hundred square meters of working and living space. You could house a cohort in it, more or less comfortably. Though this one is modified from the base design in order to serve as a command and control station, with service support and a small infirmary.
"We can put up to six, including this one, under this hill," Sitnikov continued, as the elevator slowed to a stop. "Here, they'll be safe enough from a direct hit even from the really deep penetrators the FSC is developing. Well . . . provided it's not a nuke, anyway.
"Should some enemy try the other approach, an offset hit to create a camouflet, a large hole beside the bunker to collapse the foundation, we've left a considerable space between the bunker and the rock of the hill and reinforced that space. The other locations, and those are driven by tactical considerations that we can't do a lot to change, need something else."
As the elevator doors opened to a sparse, Spartan, concrete-walled emptiness, Sitnikov took a one drachma coin from a pants pocket, and a pen from his breast pocket. He held the coin out between thumb and forefinger, parallel to the floor.
"Imagine," the Volgan said, "that this is a steel, about two inches thick and a bit less than two feet around. Call it a 'shield.' " He showed his pen held in the fingers of the other hand. "Now imagine this is a deep penetrator." He moved the point of the pen to the coin. "When the penetrator hits the shield, it will either hit it so near the edge it simply rips through, or it will hit further in and pick up the shield, or it will hit more or less in the center. In the latter case, the shield, being bigger than the penetrator, will have more resistance to the rock or concrete and so reduce the depth of penetration. In the middle case, where it hits between the edge and the center, it will cause the penetrator to . . . tack, basically . . . to shift from coming straight down to coming in partially on its side. This, too, will change the cross section and reduce penetration. For the first case, where it just rips through, we need to have more than one layer of shields."
"I recall Obras Zorilleras sending me a message telling me something about this technique," Carrera said. "Cost?"
"Not cheap, particularly," Sitnikov answered, with a shrug. "Though we are looking into using reformed and re-alloyed scrap to cut costs.
"In any case, that is how we're planning on securing the big shelters that have to go someplace else."
"Won't work," Carrera said. "the explosion will rip off the layer of shields and the next bomb that comes in will go right through."
"Might not work," the Volgan conceded. "But we'll have a couple of things working for us."
"Such as?"
"Bombs like that are expensive and rare. Nobody has an excess. They're also expensive in terms of operational costs; planes, because they're doing that, can't do anything else for a while. People also have acquired a lot of faith in them, such that they're disinclined to question whether or not a hit was a kill.
"Somebody drops one of those bombs on a shelter, they're going to get all the signature, smoke, and debris that would indicate a kill. Why should they question that?"
"They still might," Carrera insisted.
"Yes, they might," Sitnikov conceded. "But we can't do anything about that and this is our best shot."
"Fair enough, then."
"And besides, we might have some chance of replacing the shields in between a strike and a repeat." Seeing that Carrera looked highly dubious of that, Sitnikov amended, "Well . . . a chance, as I said.
"And I've something else to show you."
* * *
Carrera whistled. It really was a lovely thing Sitnikov had wanted him to see.
"My boys made it in sections," Sitnikov said, explaining the fifteen by twenty-five meter terrain model that filled up over half of the shelter's bottom deck. "Then we moved it here and modified it."
The model showed the rough curved-tail, tadpole shape of the Isla Real, plus a fair amount of the surrounding water. From each side two strips of blue-painted "water" leading almost to the island were marked "Mined." There were crude wooden ship models on each side of each strip. In addition, arcs were drawn in the blue and marked with artillery calibers: "122mm . . . 152mm . . . 160mm . . . 180mm . . . 180mm ERRB."
"It isn't my job," Sitnikov said, "to worry about the geostrategic endgame. That's your problem. Mine—half of mine, anyway—has been to design the defense of this island and the closure of the Transitway."
Sitnikov walked to a corner and picked up a very long pointer. When he returned, he set the edge of the pointer on the gap between the naval minefields and the island. "These minefields, as long as they're not cleared, close the Transitway. Note we left gaps within artillery range so that we can let through whomever we might wish to." The pointer moved to the wooden ships models. "We don't need anything too very special to lay the mines. Any old ships will do. They simply need to have the mines on board, a means for hauling them to the top deck, a crew to arm them and push them over the side, and maybe someone to record where they were dropped. The mines will have to be on activation timers. There are four ship models because we think we can lay these barrages in about three days, using four.
"The mines can conceivably be cleared, of course. No obstacle is worth much unless covered by observation and fire." The pointer began to touch on various turreted fixtures, all around the perimeter of the model. "These are to be taken from the turrets of the Suvarov Class cruisers you never restored."
"Those are only six inch guns," Carrera objected. "They won't range the extremes of the minefields and any fortifications to cover those extremes, being landbound or close to land, are vulnerable."
Sitnikov gave an evil grin. "They don't have to cover them. The things won't even be manned, except for skeleton crews to traverse the turrets and look threatening. Instead,"—the pointer shifted to a set of what were obviously models of ammunition bunkers behind the turrets—"each of these will hold an eighteen centimeter gun which will fire reduced bore, sabot shells, with laser guidance packages, the laser beams doing the painting coming from"—the pointer made a circular motion around the top of Hill 287—"here and a few dozen other likely spots. OZ ran the math and a lengthened 122mm shell, surrounded by a sabot, fired from a 180mm gun will range over eighty kilometers. This will allow coverage of both mine barrages as well as, by the way, any amphib ships or combatants engaged in trying to take the island."
"Those guns will only unmask, though, for a major push. For individual mineclearers, we'll put in some fixed torpedo firing installations, spaced around the island." The evil grim returned. "Mineclearers are notoriously slow."
Carrera nodded his head up and down, slowly. "And so to clear the Transitway the enemy would have to clear the mines. To clear the mines he needs to get rid of our guns and torpedoes. To do that he has to clear the island . . ."
"And to do that," Sitnikov finished, "he must land. If he lands, he bleeds. He bleeds oceans."
Carrera noticed several other ship models around the island. "What are those for?" he asked.
"Those are derelicts," Sitnikov answered. "We'll take older freighters and outfit them for fighting positions. Then we'll anchor them, unmanned, around the island, in shallow water, at all the best beaches. We'll make them look as if they're carrying supplies for the defense. Maybe, even, they will. An enemy, if he attacks them will sink them, but in shallow water. If he doesn't attack them, we'll sink them during an attack. Then we can shunt infantry out to take up the fighting positions. They'll make a landing a bloody endeavor."
Carrera had a sudden image of infantry, wading through the water to get to a beach while an unseen machine gun behind them chopped them down. "Good thought," he agreed. "Best for the people in the derelict ships not to use tracer, though."
"Well, of course," Sitnikov said.
"Have you worked up a table of organization and equipment for the defense?" Carrera asked.
"Yes. In broad terms it will take a standard infantry legion—new form, not the old hexagonal counter guerilla organization—reinforced with another infantry tercio, a coastal artillery tercio, a fixed fortified defense tercio, some extra air defense, engineer and other support troops. In all, about twenty-four thousand men. If we have to defend the island from an invasion emanating from the mainland you would have to add quite a bit to that."
"Doable," was Carrera's judgment. He thought for a while, then said, "Leave me here and go round up the commander of the Training Legion. Bring him to me."
"Any particular reason you want him?"
"Two of them," Carrera answered. "It's a good news-bad news kind of thing. First, I'm going to promote him to Legate III. Then, we're going to show him this model, you're going to brief him, I'm going to brief him on how to turn the Eighth Training Legion into the Eighth Infantry Legion, quickly, at need. And then I'm going to send you back to the cadets and stick him with preparing this defense.
"And Sitnikov? Hurry, please. I have to meet Siegel after dinner at the Casa. After that, later this evening, I am meeting with select committees from the new Senate and from the Legislative Assembly."