Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Fifteen

The soldiers like training provided it is carried out sensibly.

—Alexander Suvarov

Casa Linda, 7/7/460 AC

Carrera coolly regarded the Federated States Army officer standing in front of his desk, wearing the battle dress of the FSA. The officer was so incredibly average looking as to nearly defy description: average height, average build, average hair loss for a man of about forty. He wore his glasses averagely and his uniform bore an average number of the merit badges the FSA had always seemed addicted to.

 

"Virgil Rivers sends his best, Legate," the officer, John Ridenhour, said.

That brought a smile to Carrera's face. "How is old Virg?"

"He's fine," Ridenhour answered. "He's been selected for his first star, you know. He said to remind you, 'Who needs nukes?' If you don't mind my asking, and it seemed a damned odd thing to say, what the hell does that mean?"

"You had to be there," Carrera answered.

"He also said to tell you that I am the 'Imperial Spy,' and that you should take very good care of me." It was Ridenhour's turn to smile.

"You look the part," Carrera answered. "John, I'd set you up in a penthouse or mansion, with hot and cold running bimbos, a fast convertible and a big fishing boat with a perpetually full beer cooler if that would get me the recommendation I need from you to get my legion to the war," Carrera admitted. "On the other hand, that would be a pretty serious insult so I am not offering those things. Even so, do you have a place to stay?"

"The Julio Caesare," Ridenhour answered.

Carrera considered. "That's a good choice. If you're not married check out the Disco Stelaris down by the casino. If you are married then take my advice and don't check out the disco. How about a—"

From the next room Lourdes piped in, "Sergeant major has already assigned Mitchell to drive for Coronel Ridenhour, Patricio."

God, she's such a treasure.

"Okay," Carrera said. "That settles that. Mitchell has pretty decent Spanish, too, now. And he'll be armed so you needn't worry overmuch about personal security."

"I'm sure he'll be fine," Ridenhour agreed. "Besides, my Spanish is actually fairly good."

"All right then. Basically you can go anywhere, look at anything, and talk to anybody. No restrictions. Mitchell will have copies of the master training schedule and map overlay with him at all times. You need a helicopter lift somewhere, let him know in advance. I don't really recommend using our helicopters, though, because the pilots are damned near brand new and really won't be ready until just before we deploy, if we do."

"Ground trans should be fine," Ridenhour answered. "If I really need a chopper my budget can cover hiring a civilian one. I'll pass it through your man Mitchell to clear it with you if I have to do that."

"That's fair," Carrera agreed. "All I can tell you is have fun and that I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

 

Guarasi "Desert" Training Area,
Republic of Balboa,
7/10/460 AC

Money was less of a problem now; Campos' offer—while less than generous—had helped a lot. Moreover, the interest payments on the loan Carrera had personally made to the legion were being rolled into the operating cost, multiplied by the cost-plus factor, and charged to the Federated States. Thus, Carrera still retained control of the thing, notionally and nominally under Parilla, and would for the foreseeable future. While he had that control, he trained the men.

 

One major problem was that they were heading to the northern Sumerian desert: dusty, almost treeless, waterless away from the River Buranun, and open outside the cities. Balboa, on the other hand, was about two thirds jungle, much of that being mountainous, and most of the rest either city or valuable farm and ranch land. He could hardly use good farmland for maneuvers or, at least, not for serious ones.

Fort Cameron was about used up. It had never been large enough to train anything as large as the LdC for any purpose higher than initial training for individuals. The Imperial Range Complex, too, was overstrained as were the local training areas attached to the old Federated States military installations, most of which the legion had no access to anyway.

There was a useful open training area at the Lago Sombrero, about fifty miles down the coastal highway east of Ciudad Balboa. This was an old Federated States military base built to defend Balboa from attack during the Great Global War. In time, it had been returned to the Republic. Architecturally it wasn't much, a dozen barracks suitable for housing perhaps one thousand officers, centurions and men, and a large ammunition storage facility. More important was the airstrip that sat astride the main highway that paralleled the northern coast and connected Balboa with Atzlan and the Federated States to the south and east. Most important were the fifteen square kilometers of training land. Even this wasn't really enough though. Neither did it match well enough the damned desert the legion was going to fight in, Inshallah.

There was also a patch of ground, the Guarasi "Desert," just a bit inland from the northern coast and rather past Lago Sombrero. It was . . . sort of . . . kind of . . . almost . . . a desert. At least it looked something like a desert, having roughly 19,000 dusty acres of various kinds of cactus (and the odd breadfruit tree and tranzitree) amidst a barren landscape of erosion, loss of topsoil, overgrazing and general environmental devastation. It still received forty inches of rain a year so the desert analogy could sometimes seem very strained.

Carrera was—discreetly—looking into buying it permanently for the legion for a desert training area. For the nonce he was able to lease it for a low price from the government of the Republic, which owned it and had turned it into the kind of national park virtually no one ever wanted to visit except for the occasional environmentally conscious gringo or Tauran who went there to reconfirm his view that human beings just sucked and the planet would be better off without them.

On the Guarasi's eighty-one square kilometers Carrera had set Abogado's Foreign Military Training Group to running desert combat training courses for century and cohort sized units. The land had been modified to the extent of constructing several fortified areas for the troops to train on the attack. The type of fortifications differed. There were "pita" types, round raised-berm forts with trenches dug into the berms and firing positions and ramps for armored vehicles inside. There were also the more classic trench systems that the Sumerians were known to use, heavily bunkered and fronted by broad belts of barbed wire and simulated minefields. In addition, Carrera had bought about half the used tires in Colombia Central (and apparently every used tire in Balboa) and had them stacked, wired together, and filled with dirt to create buildings suitable for live fire training in city fighting. Only some of the fortifications, and all the tire houses, were sighted in places where live ammunition could be used to train. They were all, however, sighted to present a fairly coherent picture of a broad fortified zone suitable as an objective for a brigade—or legion—level attack provided, at least, that no tank or Ocelot main gun ammunition was used.

Ah, well, thought Carrera, watching a century-level (roughly eighty men including the forward observer team and the medic) attack on a "pita." The attack was at night, without artillery or mortar illumination and only about twenty-five percent of the maximum illumination possible from one of Terra Nova's three moons.

It was not quite as dark as three feet up a welldigger's ass.

From his vantage point, and looking through a large thermal imager mounted on a tripod, Carrera observed as three machine-gun teams one hundred meters apart slithered into position in a muddy canal that crossed in front of the "pita." To the right side of the machine guns, in the same muddy ditch, a two-man rocket grenade launcher—RGL—team set up, bowed down under a double or perhaps triple load of ammunition.

Unseen, Carrera smiled. I know it must have been a bitch lowcrawling the better part of a kilometer with that on their backs. Good boys. Tough boys. He felt a sudden warm glow of affection for his legion.

He saw one man, hunched under a backpack radio, walk bent over extremely low from one team to another, stopping briefly at each. Three other men followed that one. He knew that was the sniper team by profile of the long-barreled Draco rifles they carried. Those four disappeared into the ditch. Behind the ditch, stretched out in wedges about fifty meters deep and as many across, Carrera could make out, just barely, three groups of perhaps seventeen to nineteen men, waiting silently.

Jamey Soult handed Carrera a set of headphones linked to a radio tuned to the frequency of the attacking century. He whispered, "Be only a few minutes, sir. The centurion with that century just reported to the commander that the support is in position. Now, I think, they're just waiting for an 'up' from the mortar section."

Which should long since have been up, Carrera fumed as he slipped the headphones over his ears. Calm . . . calm, he ordered himself. People make mistakes. That's why they're out here; to learn.

To help them learn, five of the FMTG's evaluator-trainers—not "safeties," Carrera despised the idea of special safety NCOs or officers in training for combat—stood more or less among or behind the groups along with another man that Carrera thought might be the FSA officer, Ridenhour. It was hard to tell in the fuzzy green image provided by the thermal sight.

It wasn't too much longer before he heard one long pop coming from two kilometers or so behind him. This repeated several times; the two mortars of the century's light mortar section beginning a preparation to drive the notional enemy into their bunkers.

With only a few seconds' delay from when he first heard the crump of the mortars, the machine guns and RGLs opened up across a front of about two hundred meters. The overall effect of the machine guns' tracers was strangely beautiful and quite surreal.

What sounded like three of the four-shot, tube-fed, pump action 43mm grenade launchers carried by an infantry century joined in with a foofoofoompwhawhawham. Smallish explosions began blossoming along the front and top of the berm. A few overshot to explode inside.

Instead of one round in five, the machine guns were firing pure tracer, the glowing rounds making actinic lines through the air. This would help keep the assault teams, just now beginning to rise to their feet, from walking inadvertently into machine gun fire.

The first mortar shells fell inside the pita, their high explosive outlining the top edge of the berm in sudden harsh light as they detonated.

Behind the ditch the assault teams finished forming. Carrera thought he heard, dimly and distantly over the pounding of mortar shells and the nearer staccato bursts of machine gun fire, a young voice shouting, "Legionarios, a pie . . . al asalto . . . adelante!"

 

To add to the night's misery, Cruz and the rest of the century wore super-heavy, Federated States surplus, armored vests. These were not the obsolete ballistic nylon that might stop shrapnel but would not stop a bullet. Neither were they the roughly twenty-five pound aramid fiber vests with ceramic inserts. No, no; that would have been too easy. These vests were surplus from the time of the old Cochin war and had been intended for helicopter door gunners who were never expected to walk any farther than from the helicopter pad to the NCO club for a beer. They were ceramic, over an inch thick, weighed fifty-four pounds and would stop anything less than a heavy machine gun's bullet.

One would have thought the protection afforded by the vests would have been a comfort to Cruz. After all, there were only a couple of hundred of them, apparently, and it should have been reassuring to be given them to wear.

Not a chance. True, there were only a couple of hundred of them in the entire legion. Thus, they were only used for live fire problems, such as this one, where the chance of death or serious wounds for somebody was very high. Despite the fatigue of lugging himself, his weapons and equipment, two sections of live bangalore torpedo plus a blank, and the bloody-damned fifty-four pound vest, belly to the dirt, across nearly a kilometer of open space fast enough to make muscles scream in protest, Cruz trembled.

This is so going to suck mastodon cock. Cara, I want to come home!

Cruz, like the others, had learned very quickly that words in the military did not always mean what one thought they ought to mean. "Good training," for example, clearly meant, "Gonna suck." "Really good training," indicated, "Oh, shit, is this gonna suck." "Superb training," suggested something like, "This is gonna suck so hard every whore in Balboa will be unemployed for a week."

Cruz was an acting team leader for the exercise and had the responsibility for breaching the wire ahead. The section leader, Sergeant del Valle (who had gradually become a surprisingly friendly and even gentle sort once basic training was done with), had hinted that there was a good chance, unless of course Cruz screwed everything up badly, that the position might be made permanent. Since this would be a roughly twenty percent pay raise, and since he'd decided he really did want to marry Cara and the extra money would be useful, it was just possible that the legionary was as concerned about his performance as he was about being shot.

Well, I'd like to tell myself that anyway. Fact is, though, I am scared to death. Fucking demo. And I thought hand grenades were bad. Jesus! And a fat lot of good this vest will do me if a the bangalore goes off early. No shrapnel or bullets in me, maybe, but also no arms, legs or head. Probably no dick, either, for that matter.

The two sections of live bangalore—basically connectable pipes filled with a cyclonite-trinitrotoluene mix and weighing nineteen pounds each—lay clutched in Cruz's arms along with the one blank section. The blank was there so that if one did set off a mine or booby trap in the course of pushing the torpedo through the obstacle the explosion would not be carried back through the rest to prematurely detonate the torpedo and, infinitely worse, one's mortal and all too easily disintegrated body.

Two men had been hurt, one slightly and one badly, and another killed on this range about a week earlier. Cruz considered that and again shivered. Rumor was that the gringos running the training area, the FMTG, had started to add more artificial controls to keep such a thing from happening again when THE Gringo had shown up and nixed the idea.

 

What Carrera had, in fact, said was, "There's nothing wrong with the exercise as set up. It was a reasonable problem for the stage of training of the troops concerned, the control was generally adequate. It was a realistic simulation of what the legion will soon face. Some men were hurt because they fucked up, not because the exercise was. Men get hurt in training; it's the cost of doing business. And besides, Abogado, what the fuck do you expect them to learn if someone's doing their jobs for them? You know better. I know you know better."

What had happened was this: the previous week a three man breach team from Third Century, 4th Cohort had assembled their bangalore and pushed it through the wire. They had then sprinted back towards the relative cover of a small depression in the ground in which the rest of the section waited. Unfortunately, because the range had been used several times before, there were sections of barbed wire embedded in the ground and sticking up above it. One of the men of the breach team had caught his foot on the wire and fallen face down. Then, with the fuse to the bangalore burning fast, the other two had gone back to free their comrade from the wire. They were still trying when the fuse reached the blasting cap and the assembly detonated, sending dozens of pieces of serrated barbed wire through their bodies.

One of the would-be rescuers was killed outright with twenty-two pieces of barbed wire in him. The other would be in hospital for quite some time. The one who had had his foot caught got away with little more damage than a few light scratches and one piece of wire embedded in his ham.

Carrera had driven to the 4th Cohort that afternoon, linked up with Jimenez, and presented the almost unhurt soldier with a wound badge in front of his peers.

"There is no moral difference between a wound received in training and a wound received in action," he had told the assembled troops.

He had then gone to the hospital in Ciudad Balboa and waited for the badly wounded legionary to come out of surgery and recover consciousness. To this man he also presented a wound badge, plus the lowest step of the six awards for valor—a Cruz de Coraje, in Steel—for the attempt at saving his comrade. More quietly, Carrera had whispered in the soldier's ear, "You should have simply got him and yourselves low, with your helmets facing the explosion. Don't fuck it up again. Now get well and come back to us."

He had not gone immediately to see the family of the dead man, leaving that for a Survivors' Assistance NCO from Christian's II shop. Instead, he had gone to the funeral and presented the same awards he had to the wounded man to the dead legionary's family.

The civilian life insurance company that covered the men of the LdC had shortly thereafter done a few calculations, this being the thirty-seventh man killed in training so far for whom they had had to pay 100,000 FSD, and cancelled the group life insurance policy.

Which was how the Legio del Cid became a self-insurer.

 

Cara . . . Mom . . . I hope you don't end up collecting my insurance, thought Cruz, as mortar and machine gun fire began to strike the pita ahead. He heard the century commander, a signifer, shout, "Legionarios, a pie . . . al asalto . . . adelante!" Legionaires, on your feet . . . into the assault . . . forward!

Rifles slung across their backs, Cruz and his breach team stood up. As he stood, finally able to do something, he felt fear melt away. He slung the three sections of bangalore across his right shoulder. Then, machine-gun tracers marking the path to either side and the steady flash of exploding mortar rounds outlining the objective, he confidently called, "Follow me."

Cruz and his men began to trot forward, followed by the century commander, his radio-telephone operator, and the forward observer team. When Cruz spotted the wire obstacle he was to breach—nasty looking thing!—he shouted to his team, "Down. Cover." Then he raced forward and flung himself onto the ground on his side of the wire. He felt some scraps of that wire, previously torn apart, dig into his legs as he did so.

Cruz took the blank bangalore section in both hands and began to feed it forward through the tangle. The blank piece had a rounded cap to it, which helped it slither between the strands. When he reached the last foot of that blank section he stopped and grabbed one of the two live sections, feeling first to make sure that he was not about to feed in the section that had been primed. Having made sure of that, he attached the unprimed live section to the blank and forced it through. Then he shouted, "Number two, on me."

Another soldier, Private Sanchez, wielding two more of the explosive pipes, trotted up and flopped beside Cruz. They attached one section, then the other, continuing to feed them forward as they did so. About half-way down the third live section of pipe Cruz told Sanchez, "Scram," before calling out, "Number three, on me." Sanchez disappeared into the night, his place being taken by another troop.

With the fourth and then the fifth live sections attached, the bangalore was too heavy, at about one hundred pounds, for one man to push forward easily. Cruz and the other legionary strained the assembly forward until they reached the end, whereupon Cruz attached his own final live section, the one that had been primed with cap, fuse and pull-igniter.

Again, Cruz ordered, "Scram." The other legionary took off, low and running.

First whispering a very short and eloquent prayer, more or less "Oh, God," Cruz screamed out, "Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!" He then pulled on the igniter. He spent a second making sure the fuse, which had been cut to twelve seconds, had caught properly before turning himself to sprint to relative safety. As he sprinted he counted aloud, "Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . ."

Then, in the dim light of the moon, Bellona, his eye caught sight of the second man in the breach team, the one after Sanchez, on one knee apparently struggling to free himself from another grasping piece of the goddamned wire.

"Five . . . four . . . three . . ."

There was no time to free the entangled legionary. Without much thinking about it Cruz simply changed direction slightly and dove at him.

"Two . . . one . . ." Khawhoomf!

The explosion seemed to pick the two off of the ground where they sprawled, shake them like rats caught in a terrier's mouth, then slam them down again. Hard. Very dammed hard. The shattered wire whined dangerously overhead or, in the case of pieces thrown high by the blast, lost velocity and pattered harmlessly down.

The century commander blew a whistle. At least Cruz thought it must be the whistle. It was hard to tell at first; his ears were ringing. Ah, yep, he thought dully, must have been the whistle for the assault because everyone is running past me.

Everyone is running past me?

"Bravo team, Second Squad! Assemble on me!"

 

Ridenhour had thought those two kids were goners when he saw the one caught fast and the other dive for him. He saw them only briefly as he took what little cover was available and tried to make himself very small. But no, once the danger from bits of jagged, flying metal had passed he saw the two sitting up, looking rather dazed and confused. He jogged over as three others likewise moved to join the pair, one of whom—the kid who'd been chosen to lead the team to execute the breach, Ridenhour assumed—began shouting in Spanish. By the time Ridenhour reached the little group they were already following the trail elements of the assault party through the wire, across the open area, and up the steep slope of the pita's berm.

This is just so fucking unsafe. Don't they even care if they kill somebody?

Apparently, they did not. At the point of the assault on the berm's outer edge Ridenhour found a young signifer, the century commander, directing his sections left and right to begin clearing the trenches that zig-zagged along the top. He noticed the mortars were still firing, but at the far side of the pita, while the machine guns had switched from the open center to the left and right edges.

Ridenhour heard someone shout, in Spanish, "Backblast area clear!" It took him half a second to translate and remember what that implied. This gave him about one quarter of a second to throw himself to one side as an RGL gunner let fly down into what must have been a hard target in the center of the pita. Another shout, another buffeting by the backblast, and the RGL team arose to a low hunch and moved on.

There was firing, a lot of firing, from the attacking sections' assault rifles and LMGs as they cleared the trench from the center to the left and right. The firing was supplemented by blasts; simulators, small demo charges, or live grenades, Ridenhour didn't know which. He crawled up the side of the berm to lay beside the century commander and peer, like the latter, over the lip of the berm in order to see the action.

Wow.

The interior of the place was lit up like Christmas by flames. One section moved in either direction around the perimeter, shooting and blasting as they cleared each bay of what looked to be an octagonal trace trench. They raced on at a speed Ridenhour thought downright foolhardy. What the hell do they do if they run into each other? Well, at least they've lifted the mortar fire off the objective.

The signifer commanding apparently had thought of that problem. He got on his radio and ordered one section to halt in position and guard. Then he told the other section to clear almost to the halted one.

"All right," said the signifer to the action section. "Now back up fifty meters . . . fast." He gave them half a minute to finish that move before ordering the second section to clear forward fifty meters. One way or another, the entire thing was gone over at least once.

The centurion for the century arrived and reported. "Signifer, I have all three machine-gun teams, the other RGL team, the breach team, and the scout-snipers. Where do you want them." The century commander began bellowing orders.

Ridenhour shook his head and slithered down the berm. He had seen enough for one night.

 

Cruz's ears were still ringing. Moreover, he was pretty sure he had taken at least one piece of serrated barbed wire across the butt. But . . . you know . . . and then he started to laugh, lightly at first. Sanchez and the other man looked at Cruz, questioningly. Then they, too, started to laugh, sheepishly at first but with a growing mirth.

Sanchez was the first to put feelings into words. "Goddamn, Cruz, that was fun. Jesus, I love this shit."

 

Ridenhour and Mitchell joined Carrera and Soult shortly after sunrise. Soult was taking down the tripod with the thermal imager and stowing them in a trailer towed behind his vehicle.

Mitchell spoke first. "Sir, that was just too fucking cool."

"It wasn't bad," Carrera agreed. "Didn't lose anybody, at least."

"Not there, sir, no," Soult said. "But while you were sleeping I got the word—sorry, I should have told you before but it slipped my mind—that we lost another one, plus four wounded, on the Cohort Deliberate Attack Course at Ranges Eight and Ten at the Imperial Range complex."

"Hmmm, that would make . . . ummm . . . thirty-eight, so far. What happened?" Carrera asked. He didn't seem overly concerned.

"Half a dozen mortar rounds fell short," Soult answered simply. Carrera shrugged. "Appears to have been an ammunition problem rather than a fire direction error. Harrington already directed that that lot be pulled out of training stocks and examined."

Carrera shrugged. You had to expect ammunition quality control problems when you bought cheap.

"You're taking this awfully calmly," Ridenhour observed. "Don't you think you're maybe pushing these units a little hard?"

"No," Carrera answered, then elaborated, "Look, John, when somebody says, "There's never an excuse for getting someone killed in training," what they really mean is, "I don't care if someone gets killed in combat later because they're not well trained enough, because that won't affect my career, now." It's just a damned immoral way of looking at things. And I won't permit it in the legion."

"But how the hell do you explain to a young kid's parents that he got killed for something that wasn't even battle?"

"How do I explain to a bunch of young kids' parents that they got killed in a battle we lost because their units weren't well trained enough?" Carrera countered.

"Are you going to have a unit left when you're done training them?"

Carrera hesitated briefly, pulling up some mental data. "I planned on one percent deaths—call it forty-nine or fifty men—in basic training and advanced individual training. We actually lost about half that. I assumed we'd lose another dozen in the Cazador, you would say 'Ranger,' School I had FMTG run early on for the selection process for Officer Candidate School and Centurion Candidate School. We lost seven. The unit training I anticipated would cost us another fifty and we are at eight dead so far. We probably will lose another thirty but we recruited enough to make up for those losses plus another couple of hundred more for the badly wounded."

"But what about the men's morale?" Ridenhour continued to object.

Carrera yawned. "They don't know any better. We act like it's normal and routine and so they tend not to question it. It's just not an issue. You can ask if you want, but do me a favor and don't act like the bleeding heart press when you do, less still like some hypocrite congresscritter with never a day in uniform. And please don't try to convince the troops that there is something wrong with training that sometimes kills.

"Remember, too, that you're trying to compare apples and oranges. The Federated States has a military tradition and a tradition of victory. There are any number of the right attitudes your young men take in more or less with mother's milk. These boys don't get the same conditioning. They need extreme training measures to make up for what they never got as children."

"Maybe," Ridenhour admitted reluctantly.

"Also, John, for your purpose in being here ask yourself, after what you saw last night, if you think my cohorts and centuries will be able to fight. That's really all you have to decide upon."

Soult interrupted. "Sir, it's the 11th. I think you had an appointment in Cochea."

Carrera sighed, sadly. "I didn't forget, Jamey. Thanks, though."

 

Cochea, 11/7/460 AC

Soult didn't even think about driving anywhere near the grave marker. He could pay his respects on foot. Instead he pulled up next to Carrera's in-law's house and, while his boss went inside to see the family, unloaded Carrera's gear and two liters of scotch and carried the lot by hand to the grave marker. There he erected a small shelter, a poncho hooch, and draped a mosquito net three quarters around it with enough slack to make a complete bar. Then he laid out a sleeping roll inside the shelter, erected a folding chair outside of it, and placed both liters of scotch and a metal drinking vessel next to it. He took half a dozen antimosquito torches and stuck them into the ground in a circle around the little encampment. Then he retired to the house where, since he and Carrera had been expected, Linda's family had set aside a room for him.

 

"Tomorrow morning, Boss?" he'd asked.

"Yes, Jamie, though probably mid-morning."

Then Carrera walked to Linda's grave, sat in the folding chair, and began to explain how things were going to the shades of his family. He drank as he talked, drank deeply and quickly.

The screaming and sobbing didn't begin until nearly midnight.

 

UEPF Spirit of Peace, 15 August, 2514

"Admiral," said Khan, the wife, over the intercom, "you asked me to keep track of that new force growing in the Republic of Balboa. My husband sent down a high altitude skimmer to look things over yesterday at the third watch. We've just finished looking over the recording and we think you ought to look at it. Actually, we have two we think you need to look at."

 

"What's the specific subject matter?" Robinson asked.

"The one we think you should look at first is of the Federated States Army conducting combat training. Once you have seen that, you should look at this new force and see how they do the same. My husband and I find it very worrisome."

Robinson sighed. "Very well, send them."

"Sending now, High Admiral."

Robinson turned to face the large Kurosawa. A small light below it, an original part of the Peace, blinked urgently.

"You have a message, High Admiral," the computer announced.

"Show me."

Immediately, the large screen began to show a top down view of what looked to be about one hundred soldiers from down below in the process of conducting some kind of attack. There was no sound— high altitude skimmers weren't even equipped for sound—but the visual was quite clear and distinct.

Robinson watched with boredom as men got up, moved, flopped to the ground, and used their weapons. All in all, it was rather unexciting, even dull. He yawned.

The images froze and the computer announced, "Ready to show second recording, High Admiral."

"Go ahead." Robinson yawned again.

Instantly, the previous, placid scene was replaced by one of smoke and fire. Other soldiers, differently uniformed, got up, ran, and used their own weapons, just as in the first recording. That much they shared.

In other particulars, however, they couldn't have been more different. Instead of being placid, this recording fairly exuded aggression and violence. Shells exploded, dangerously close to troops. Robinson could see that.

The thing that really caught his attention, though, was when a small group was apparently scythed down by a too-close shell. Dead or wounded, Robinson couldn't tell. But he could see, in full detail, that those unhit didn't even stop training.

My Annan, these people care nothing for their own lives.

"Computer, connect me to Khan."

"Have you seen, High Admiral?" she said, as soon as she came on.

"Are they always like that?"

"Pretty much, sir. You may also recall that I mentioned the possibility that this group would be even less constrained by the rules we have thrown around armed forces down below than the FS is?"

"I recall, Khan."

"Well, we've acquired another bit of intelligence. The second in command of that force, possibly the effective first in command, had his family in the Terra Novan Trade Organization headquarters on the day of the attack. They were killed."

Robinson closed his eyes and said, "Uh, oh."

Interlude

From Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth,
Edition of 442 AC

 

The following entries are not to appear in the Old Earth edition of the Encyclopedia

 

Terra Nova, Geography and Settlement of:

The major land mass of Terra Nova, Taurania, lies on its east-west axis approximately midway between the magnetic southern pole of the planet and the equator. The split between the Taurus end of Taurania, in the east, and Urania, in the west occurs arbitrarily along the Volkosk mountains and culturally and ethnically somewhat to the west of that.

Taurus, so called because it resembles an upside down male bovine with an erection, was the award of the old European Union on Old Earth. There being no equivalent supranational organization for Asia at that time, Urania was parceled out amongst various sub-supranational entities, roughly in accordance with their population, wealth, terrestrial patrimony, clout, and willingness and ability to bribe members of the old United Nations Interplanetary Settlement and Boundary Committee, or UNISBC.

To the west of Urania and the east of Taurus, and lying approximately equidistant between the two, lie the Columbias, or—for Spanish speaking areas—the Colombias. These are two continents, joined by a narrow isthmus (of Balboa, q.v.), that run north to south- southeast. The larger of these, called Southern Columbia, was awarded to the old North American Free Trade Area which further subdivided the bulk of the continent almost exactly according to the wishes of the former United States of America. The two Canadas, Mexico and the Central American petty states fell into line fairly readily. Cuba was denied any colony on the new world, which denial it took with very good grace as it was believed that the entire country would depopulate itself if its people were given the chance to escape. (The government of His Revolutionary Highness, Alejandro I, son of Raul Castro, is believed to have been one of only two governments on Earth, the other being that of North Korea, that had to bribe UNISBC not to make any grant of land on the new world. This is unconfirmed and investigations into the matter were squelched by the then UN Secretary General, Kojo Annan.)

The other eastern continent, called Northern Colombia, was awarded to the former Mercosur, the Latin American version of NAFTA. Mercosur attempted to form a unitary colony. This, however, broke apart in a series of wars, the results of which plague Northern Colombia to this day.

Uhuru, which lies to the north of Taurania, was given to the Organization of African States. This organization attempted a colonization project much the same as Mercosur, but with even more hideous results. (See Republic of Northern Uhuru, History of, for example. See the Mutara-Kegeli Genocide, for example.)

The Arab League parcel was not made the award of any given state. Rather, the area settled by the Arabs was unitary and later broke up or developed, depending, into something like nation states. A peculiarity of the Arab League Mandate is that a portion of it was given by the Arab League to Israel. Much was made of it, on Earth and at the time, as showing a spirit of conciliation and peacemaking. This was not the case, however. All the Arab League wanted was for some place of settlement to attract out as many Jews from Israel as possible. Arab colonists were not consulted in the matter.

For various reasons having to do with Old Earth politics, Australia was given no award on the new world though New Zealand was. The population of Australia, such as wished to settle elsewhere, tended to gravitate either to Anglia, New Wellington, the Federated States, the Republic of Northern Uhuru, or—as a distant last choice—Secordia in South Columbia.

A final subcontinental sized island, dubbed Atlantis, lies in the Mar Furioso, midway between the Columbias and Taurania. This is the enclave of United Earth . . . 

 

Chronology, History of, Part VII:

Time on Terra Nova, on the other hand, is measured since Anno Condita, "the year of the founding." This would not be 2037, the year in which the robotic exploratory vessel, Cristobal Colon, actually found the rift and the planet. Rather, AC is the year in which the first, sadly failed, colonization attempt was made from Earth, in the Old Earth year, 2060.

Establishment of a local calendar spelt a considerable problem for those early settlers who followed after the Cheng Ho disaster (qv). The Terra Novan year corresponded very closely to the Terran year, there being 31,556,926 seconds to an Old Earth year and 31,209,799 seconds in each orbit of the new world about its sun.

For the Salafi settlers this presented even more of a problem, one made worse by the fact that, rather than the one moon of Earth by which the Islamic calendar ran, Terra Nova had three, none of which quite ran to any schedule that suited the traditional Islamic calendar. The Islamics settled this more or less mathematically, by adding a fourteenth month, to commemorate the "Second Hejira," or Pilgrimage, adding days to some months, and creating a complex set of calculations to keep this calendar in synchronization.

One advantage to the new Islamic calendar was that now, at least, it matched the actual year for the world on which it was practiced.

From all parties—Secular, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, etc—there was strong pressure to maintain the twenty-four hour day, of which Terra Nova had three hundred and fifty-five, and the sixty minute hour. This was done by increasing the length of the Terra Novan second to 1.017533901 Earth seconds. Ten months (basically the original months of the Roman Republic) of five weeks each were established, with an intercalary period of five or, rarely, six days between 35 December and 1 Martius.

It has worked about as well as any calendar system ever has, and perhaps a bit better than most.

Back | Next
Framed