Read Online The Rods and the Axe - eARC by Tom Kratman - Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Kratman
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guerilla wars and they are always nasty.
“Of course,” added Marciano, “you and your family will be prime targets, so on behalf of the Tauran Union I’ll extend an offer of sanctuary with my men . . . for your entire government and their families, for that matter. That will, also of course, mean the rapid collapse of your country and the ascension of the pro-Balboan guerillas to power. That, and again, ‘of course,’ will not mean peace since Santa Josefina will in that case become an enemy of a Tauran Union that will certainly be at war with the—
“Are you all right, Mr. President?” the Tuscan asked of a Calderón rapidly turning pale with a slight tinge of green.
Tauran Defense Agency, Lumiére, Gaul, Terra Nova
Janier didn’t have anything else to do, really, other than go home to his wife. A fate surely best to be avoided , he thought. Instead, with the half bottle of brandy left over after he and his aide had put away a few, he continued pouring over the intel reports from Wallenstein. Ah, now there’s a woman I’d like to bed. Politically impossible, I suppose. He sighed, thinking, There is no justice.
Janier read one of the files—it wasn’t especially thick—concerning the big logistic base the Balboans were setting up
Interesting that the lidar isn’t too useful. Once you have lasers and computers it’s not a big step to light ranging and detection. The big problem is processing power and consistency. I’m surprised that they don’t have enough processing power to get more precise readings through the jungle canopy. We don’t, of course, and wouldn’t even if we were overflying Balboa. But I would have thought the UEPF could.
Reluctantly, Janier closed the file and went to the next. This one covered the base, if it was a base, the Balboans were setting up east of the city. Whoever the UEPF intelligence officer who prepared the file was, he was plainly perplexed. Janier took one look at the map, glanced briefly at the figures for presumed future occupancy, then went to his own bookshelves for an unclassified estimate of the port capacity of all the minor Mar Furioso ports from Valle de las Lunas Province to Punta Gorgona, near the city.
He was an old-fashioned sort, in many ways. Instead of pulling up a computer spreadsheet and having it do the sums, he simply pencil drilled the total possible tonnage.
Then he pronounced his judgment, though his office was empty. “Minefield, not yet laid, with logistic black hole attached, and war crimes trials pending.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Good is better than evil because it’s nicer.”
—Mammy Yokum, in Al Capp’s Lil Abner
Quarters Twenty, Fort Guerrero, Balboa, Terra Nova
The woman sat on the back porch to her quarters, staring out across the water to the space between barracks that showed the docks of the port of Balboa. She’d been here on the porch many times, yet never had she seen anything like the swirl of activity she had been seeing for the last couple of weeks.
At least my Mike’s alive, thought Judy Tipton, living now under a kind of loose house arrest here in the former Tauran Union housing area on post, now designated as a guarded holding area for the families of prisoners of war and families of the dead. There had been a lot of dead, though rather less, as a percentage, for the regular Tauran forces in the Transitway Area than for the poor Anglian and Gallic paras who’d jumped en masse into the briar patches of Lago Sombrero and Herrera International.
She had to share her house now with another family, but since that consisted of one young lieutenant’s widow and her three-year-old child, Judy thought she could put up with it. Poor thing , she thought of young Mrs. Lydia Gordon. And, if she cries a lot? Well, I’d cry, too.
Even there, the Balboans had tried to be civil about it. “We can only guard so many places,” said the elderly warrant officer who’d come with the widow. “So we have to cram you all
“Of course,” added Marciano, “you and your family will be prime targets, so on behalf of the Tauran Union I’ll extend an offer of sanctuary with my men . . . for your entire government and their families, for that matter. That will, also of course, mean the rapid collapse of your country and the ascension of the pro-Balboan guerillas to power. That, and again, ‘of course,’ will not mean peace since Santa Josefina will in that case become an enemy of a Tauran Union that will certainly be at war with the—
“Are you all right, Mr. President?” the Tuscan asked of a Calderón rapidly turning pale with a slight tinge of green.
Tauran Defense Agency, Lumiére, Gaul, Terra Nova
Janier didn’t have anything else to do, really, other than go home to his wife. A fate surely best to be avoided , he thought. Instead, with the half bottle of brandy left over after he and his aide had put away a few, he continued pouring over the intel reports from Wallenstein. Ah, now there’s a woman I’d like to bed. Politically impossible, I suppose. He sighed, thinking, There is no justice.
Janier read one of the files—it wasn’t especially thick—concerning the big logistic base the Balboans were setting up
Interesting that the lidar isn’t too useful. Once you have lasers and computers it’s not a big step to light ranging and detection. The big problem is processing power and consistency. I’m surprised that they don’t have enough processing power to get more precise readings through the jungle canopy. We don’t, of course, and wouldn’t even if we were overflying Balboa. But I would have thought the UEPF could.
Reluctantly, Janier closed the file and went to the next. This one covered the base, if it was a base, the Balboans were setting up east of the city. Whoever the UEPF intelligence officer who prepared the file was, he was plainly perplexed. Janier took one look at the map, glanced briefly at the figures for presumed future occupancy, then went to his own bookshelves for an unclassified estimate of the port capacity of all the minor Mar Furioso ports from Valle de las Lunas Province to Punta Gorgona, near the city.
He was an old-fashioned sort, in many ways. Instead of pulling up a computer spreadsheet and having it do the sums, he simply pencil drilled the total possible tonnage.
Then he pronounced his judgment, though his office was empty. “Minefield, not yet laid, with logistic black hole attached, and war crimes trials pending.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Good is better than evil because it’s nicer.”
—Mammy Yokum, in Al Capp’s Lil Abner
Quarters Twenty, Fort Guerrero, Balboa, Terra Nova
The woman sat on the back porch to her quarters, staring out across the water to the space between barracks that showed the docks of the port of Balboa. She’d been here on the porch many times, yet never had she seen anything like the swirl of activity she had been seeing for the last couple of weeks.
At least my Mike’s alive, thought Judy Tipton, living now under a kind of loose house arrest here in the former Tauran Union housing area on post, now designated as a guarded holding area for the families of prisoners of war and families of the dead. There had been a lot of dead, though rather less, as a percentage, for the regular Tauran forces in the Transitway Area than for the poor Anglian and Gallic paras who’d jumped en masse into the briar patches of Lago Sombrero and Herrera International.
She had to share her house now with another family, but since that consisted of one young lieutenant’s widow and her three-year-old child, Judy thought she could put up with it. Poor thing , she thought of young Mrs. Lydia Gordon. And, if she cries a lot? Well, I’d cry, too.
Even there, the Balboans had tried to be civil about it. “We can only guard so many places,” said the elderly warrant officer who’d come with the widow. “So we have to cram you all
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