Read Online Come and Take Them-eARC by Tom Kratman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tom Kratman
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piece of intelligence passed on by the fleet orbiting overhead.
“No film,” Hendryksen said, “just a synopsis. And that says bad things about Balboan cannon gunnery. Or, at least, whoever wrote it thinks it does.”
Jan Campbell asked, “Does it make sense, the synopsis?”
“No,” said the Cimbrian, “not entirely. Maybe not at all. It’s…what you would expect from someone who doesn’t really understand warfare on the ground—or maybe any warfare—and is unaware of the failing.
“For example, the Balboans fired sixty rounds of what we’re taking to be 180mm. About ten percent of those didn’t explode. Bad fuses? Incompetent gunners? Maybe some of both. The table says the first five rounds fired from one battery—or one gun; they’re not too clear on the difference—failed to detonate, but then the next seven did.
“Now what would cause that?”
“Ma guess,” said Campbell, in a softer version of her native accent, “is that somebody who was supposed to pull a safety pin from a super quick fuse got nervous and didna. Then his sergeant beat him about the ears and he didna make the same mistake agin.”
“Which could speak well of his sergeant,” said Hendryksen.
“Aye.”
“And it’s as likely a guess as any.”
“Aye tae that, too,” the blond captain agreed.
“Which doesn’t explain to me,” said Hendryksen, “why they bothered at all. The ammunition’s not that cheap.”
“Ohhh. Weel, I think I found the answer to that,” she said, “and to a lot of what else makes no sense to us. I dug through one of their manuals. They do damned near everything they do for one or more of five reasons. In this case, it was probably reason five: test the doctrine and equipment. And they’d do that, from what I can tell, just for its own sake.”
Hendryksen nodded. “All right, I could buy that. The short version is that, so far as anyone can tell, the firing meant nothing and proved nothing.”
“Correct,” Jan said.
“Any—you should pardon the expression—nibbles on the bait you provided?”
Campbell looked down at her chest and said, “No, and as magnificent as these girls are, I canna hardly understand it.”
Chapter Five
The persistence with which social scientists have confused war with the tools of war would be no less astounding did their writing not reveal…complete ignorance of the simpler aspects of military history. It would be hard to find a noncommissioned officer in the professional armies of the second rate powers who has been as confused as most analysts of human society.
Harry Turney-High, Primitive War
Estado Mayor , Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova
It had taken Fernandez about two days to find out who the new Anglian Army captain was, the one who had put on a minor show for Carrera and his boy. He’d just now found the time to think on it, what with having to find a way to get an operative into Cerro Mina ’s Quarters 16.
“But the question,” he said to an empty office, “is why she bothered. And the possible reasons for that range from the sordid to the sublime.”
It was actually frustrating that, while both armed forces had the other infiltrated, the retrieval of personal information was uneven. Fernandez had a senior clerk in the Tauran Union Security Force on his payroll but, since the genuine records were maintained by any of the twenty-seven-odd departments of defense and defence in the TU, and since the local force had little power over the personnel of those armed forces, only synopses of personnel records were available. Fernandez could get a synopsis quickly, but it remained just a broad brush, with none of the details that normally made his job so fascinating.
Conversely, so far as he could tell, the one private and one corporal on the Tauran Union’s payroll, one of whom had been turned and the other of whom was already slated to be shot on the outbreak of hostilities, could produce for the enemy a complete record on most people
“No film,” Hendryksen said, “just a synopsis. And that says bad things about Balboan cannon gunnery. Or, at least, whoever wrote it thinks it does.”
Jan Campbell asked, “Does it make sense, the synopsis?”
“No,” said the Cimbrian, “not entirely. Maybe not at all. It’s…what you would expect from someone who doesn’t really understand warfare on the ground—or maybe any warfare—and is unaware of the failing.
“For example, the Balboans fired sixty rounds of what we’re taking to be 180mm. About ten percent of those didn’t explode. Bad fuses? Incompetent gunners? Maybe some of both. The table says the first five rounds fired from one battery—or one gun; they’re not too clear on the difference—failed to detonate, but then the next seven did.
“Now what would cause that?”
“Ma guess,” said Campbell, in a softer version of her native accent, “is that somebody who was supposed to pull a safety pin from a super quick fuse got nervous and didna. Then his sergeant beat him about the ears and he didna make the same mistake agin.”
“Which could speak well of his sergeant,” said Hendryksen.
“Aye.”
“And it’s as likely a guess as any.”
“Aye tae that, too,” the blond captain agreed.
“Which doesn’t explain to me,” said Hendryksen, “why they bothered at all. The ammunition’s not that cheap.”
“Ohhh. Weel, I think I found the answer to that,” she said, “and to a lot of what else makes no sense to us. I dug through one of their manuals. They do damned near everything they do for one or more of five reasons. In this case, it was probably reason five: test the doctrine and equipment. And they’d do that, from what I can tell, just for its own sake.”
Hendryksen nodded. “All right, I could buy that. The short version is that, so far as anyone can tell, the firing meant nothing and proved nothing.”
“Correct,” Jan said.
“Any—you should pardon the expression—nibbles on the bait you provided?”
Campbell looked down at her chest and said, “No, and as magnificent as these girls are, I canna hardly understand it.”
Chapter Five
The persistence with which social scientists have confused war with the tools of war would be no less astounding did their writing not reveal…complete ignorance of the simpler aspects of military history. It would be hard to find a noncommissioned officer in the professional armies of the second rate powers who has been as confused as most analysts of human society.
Harry Turney-High, Primitive War
Estado Mayor , Balboa City, Balboa, Terra Nova
It had taken Fernandez about two days to find out who the new Anglian Army captain was, the one who had put on a minor show for Carrera and his boy. He’d just now found the time to think on it, what with having to find a way to get an operative into Cerro Mina ’s Quarters 16.
“But the question,” he said to an empty office, “is why she bothered. And the possible reasons for that range from the sordid to the sublime.”
It was actually frustrating that, while both armed forces had the other infiltrated, the retrieval of personal information was uneven. Fernandez had a senior clerk in the Tauran Union Security Force on his payroll but, since the genuine records were maintained by any of the twenty-seven-odd departments of defense and defence in the TU, and since the local force had little power over the personnel of those armed forces, only synopses of personnel records were available. Fernandez could get a synopsis quickly, but it remained just a broad brush, with none of the details that normally made his job so fascinating.
Conversely, so far as he could tell, the one private and one corporal on the Tauran Union’s payroll, one of whom had been turned and the other of whom was already slated to be shot on the outbreak of hostilities, could produce for the enemy a complete record on most people
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