The Lotus Eaters

Ammunition Supply Point, Legionary Base Lago Sombrero, Balboa, Terra Nova

All three moons were up, Bellona, Hecate, and Eris. They bathed the world beneath them in a bright and, because of their spacing, virtually shadowless light.

Under those moons, just outside the door of bunker number twenty-three, a huge meter-thick assemblage of old and very, very strong concrete, Duque Patricio Carrera gazed up into the night sky. Though trees blocked his view of the ground to the south, he knew he could see the airstrip if he wanted by just climbing to the earthen, treed roof of the bunker. He didn't bother; he already knew exactly what it looked like.

Carrera's title, Duque, was a military title rather than a title of nobility. It signified that he was the commander of the Legion del Cid, the originally mercenary, or more technically auxiliary, force that had been raised in the Republic of Balboa, adopted by Balboa, and which had adopted Balboa in return. Ultimately, the title derived from the Latin "Dux Bellorum," Commander of Wars. The Legion took many of its traditions from ancient Rome on Old Earth.

A set of night vision goggles hung by their straps from Carrera's neck. The goggles rested high on his chest, itself covered with the peculiar custom-made, slant-pocketed, pixilated tiger-striped camouflage that the duque had selected for his legions' jungle wear. Between the two was the Legions silk and liquid metal lorica.

Above goggles, lorica, uniform, and chest was a salt-and-pepper haired, deeply tanned face, with striking eyes, a narrow, aquiline nose, and more wrinkles than Carrera's years should have accounted for.

The sky was clear, unusually for Balboa's wet season. Mosquitoes droned in Carrera's ears. From further off the nighttime cries of the antaniae, Terra Nova's winged, septic-mouthed reptiles, came softly, muffled by the surrounding jungle. Mnnbt . . . mnnbt . . . mnnbt. As with the mosquitoes, Carrera likewise ignored the moonbats. Besides, they were fairly harmless except to children, the physically disabled, and the feeble minded. Cowardly creatures, they were.

Carrera stole a quick glance at his watch—forty minutes past midnight. He stood in the small area defined by the bunker's door, the berm of concrete-revetted earth that was designed to protect the contents of the bunker from either an accidental explosion or a near miss from a deliberate attack, and the two angled projections from the door to the access road. In this little trapezoid, hands clenched behind his back, Carrera paced out his frustrations and anxieties.

"Duque?"

Carrera turned to his driver, just emerging from the shelter of the bunker. Without another word Warrant Officer Jamie Soult handed his commander a cup of coffee, black and bitter. It was an old routine. "Sir, how do you know they're coming?" Soult asked.

Soult, tall, slender, and rather large-nosed, had been with Carrera in two armies, over as many decades. He was more a son or a younger brother than a subordinate. Even so, the term that best described the relationship was probably "friend."

The corners of Carrera's mouth twitched in something that vaguely resembled a smile. "Jamie, I know they're coming," he said, "even if I don't know which units or in what precise strength, because they think they've no choice. I made them think they have no choice."

In point of fact, Carrera actually did have a pretty good idea of who was coming, the units and the strength. After all, his enemies in the Tauran Union only had so many airborne units of the requisite quality.

Anglian paras or Gallic, he thought. Sachsen, just possibly. But I don't think so. Probably Gauls.

Over the hill that separated the Ammunition Supply Point, or ASP, from the rest of the base, blocked from Carrera's view by the thick, intervening trees, was the bulk of the cadre of the First Legion. At current mobilization levels, this amounted to the cadres, the very senior cadres, of two of the mechanized tercios, or regiments, of the legion, supplemented by a small number of select reservists. In terms of strength, these made up roughly the equivalent of six fairly small companies.

Mostly dug-in in a ring around the base; the reinforced cadres were there as bait. Good bait, however, ought not resemble bait too much. Therefore, some of them actively patrolled the perimeter. This patrolling had an additional, and vital, purpose. The one thing Carrera feared—not just here but in half a dozen places around the republic—was that the Taurans would find out that something beyond the obvious was waiting for them at Lago Sombrero . . . or at the airport . . . or at Fort Williams . . . or at any of half a dozen spots where, in fact, a major ambush or surprise attack was waiting for them.

Aerial reconnaissance wouldn't tell them enough. He had flown over the base himself that very day and there wasn't a sign of any special reception. Even the United Earth Peace Fleet, orbiting overhead and de facto allied with the Tauran Union, was unlikely to see what Carrera wanted to remain unseen and unsuspected. He had some measure of the capabilities of the UEPF. In this case, though, he believed he'd met and matched those capabilities.

Still, the Taurans might send in a ground team, scouts or pathfinders, to check things out before their main invasion force dropped down on the Balboans. That ground team might just stumble onto something Carrera wanted kept secret. Hence, the patrols.

Carrera didn't expect the patrols to necessarily catch or stop a ground recon team. Rather, he thought that they should make one as concerned with personal survival as with finding out anything important.

"Nothing's perfect," the Duque said, sotto voce.

* * *

Around the airfield proper, four Volgan-built self propelled air defense guns stood; one at each end of the strip and two to the sides where the Inter-Colombian Highway bisected the strip. Sandbagged in on three sides, the guns were unmanned. Still their radar was turned on. Other, simpler, air defense guns stood manned by solitary Balboan soldiers. These were in the open; they had to be manned to be credible. More bait.

Within a radius of fifty or sixty miles of the base more than twelve thousand reservists and militia of the First Legion (Mechanized) waited in their homes or clubs with pounding hearts and with their issue rifles at hand for the call to report to their units at Lago Sombrero. Some of the legion's wheeled vehicles had already been dispersed to pickup points to bring the reservists in a hurry when called. Still others had their private vehicles and pickup rosters. Some would go to pre-planned pickup zones to await helicopters, assuming any survived the initial Tauran onslaught. Busses from what Carrera liked to think of, and hoped was the case, as the "hidden reserve" would take still more.

All this was known to both the Taurans and the UEPF. Indeed, it was knowable, in broad terms, to anyone who cared to study. Without the threat of those reservists, and hundreds of thousands more like them, waiting for the trumpet's call, the Taurans would probably never have jumped.

Not everything was known though. Carrera would have bet—in fact was betting—that six secrets had been kept. Inside the ammunition bunkers was one of those six real secrets. Hidden away, as they had been for the last three days, roughly eleven hundred young Balboan troops waited, unknown to anyone outside of a very small circle. They were little more than boys, most of them; the average age was just under sixteen.

The boys had been painstakingly smuggled in from their military academy just after the most recent outbreak of tension between the Tauran Union and Balboa. They had found in the bunkers a complete set of all the equipment needed for them to form a mechanized cohort, a very big cohort.

* * *

"But it's as perfect as I can make it." Carrera turned and left his post outside the bunker, going inside to speak with the commander of the hidden force.

Once out of possible observation, Carrera lit a cigarette. The smoke drifted up and hovered about the ceiling of the bunker. "Rogachev, are you ready?"

Unseen by the light-blinded Carrera, former Volgan Army Major, and current legionary Tribune III, Constantine Rogachev nodded in the affirmative. Rogachev was a typical, even a stereotypical Volgan; a short, stocky, hairy bear. Above his round head and light blue eyes, was a thatch of blond bright enough to gleam in the flash from Carrera's lighter.

"We're as ready as we're going to be, sir," the Volgan answered. All of the vehicles that are going to start are topped off with full fuel tanks. The ammo is loaded. My cadre knows its mission . . . well, the mission is simple enough. Let the Taurans land. Pop out of these shitty bunkers. Get in formation. Drive off their close air support, and crush them with armor.

"The only thing that has me worried is the traffic jam we'll have trying to get out of this place and into formation." Rogachev shrugged, ruefully. "Couldn't really rehearse that. If the Taurans notice us, or the UEPF does, and a couple of thousand tons of steel moving is very noticeable, sir, they could destroy us before we're properly deployed."

"I know the risk, Legate. There is nothing to be done about it, except get your air defense systems out first, before anyone really notices."

Rogachev nodded, briskly. "Yes, sir. We know that's the plan." He chuckled, apparently at himself. "Maybe I'm nervous about it because that's all that could go wrong. A soldier has to worry about something after all."

Carrera laughed a little. "Indeed we do. Fine. I'm going back out. I suggest you get your boys into their tracks now. It can't be too much longer." Carrera threw his cigarette to the ground and stepped on the glowing ash.

* * *

Outside again in Balboa's thick, even stifling, air, Carrera did climb to the top of the earth-covered bunker. He lifted his night vision goggles to his face before turning them on, lest their green glow betray him to a possible sniper. He then scanned the sky through the grainy, green image.

Was that a flash? he wondered, looking toward the west. Maybe.

From this position he could even see part of the airstrip itself, one spot where an air defense gun's radar dish spun on its axis. Even if its radar picked up something, there was no one on board to see and report it.

Carrera's question of a moment before was answered. He saw the first impact of a homing missile—Radar Homing? Contrast Imaging? Terminally guided? Who knows?—as the SP air defense gun disappeared in a great flash. The echoes of other explosions told of similar bombs hitting elsewhere around the field. Each concussive blast was felt in the form of rippling internal organs at least as far away as the bunker.

Carrera hated that feeling. Even so, he looked up and smiled. If you were planning a long war, he mused, these bunkers would be the better target. But you're not; you're planning for a very short one. Amazing how often such plans fail to quite work out.

Overhead the screech and sonic crack of the jets was nearly loud enough to drown out rational thought. In Carrera's view, one of the barracks expanded and crumpled from a direct hit by an aerially delivered bomb. Vainly, a lone and very brave Balboan gunner fired his air defense gun into the sky. Carrera could see his tracers rising in the black night and then more as another gun joined him. He made a mental note to check the boys' names for later—Carrera assumed they would be posthumous—awards.

The Balboans' tracers didn't rise for long. What Carrera had almost seen a few moments before was the shadow of a Federated States of Columbia-built aerial side-firing gunship. This now poured down a stream of fire.

Like something from a science fiction movie, thought Carrera. The defenders' guns went silent, both of them. And gunships. Hmmm. So it'll be the Anglian paras, not the Gauls'. They're the only ones outside of the FSC that has gunships. That's a pity, he thought, and meant it. I'd hoped they'd stay out of this.

The air shook as more fighter-bombers raked over the legionary base. Down came regular unguided—dumb—bombs, twenty millimeter cannon shells, rockets, cluster bombs. Had there been any serious opposition on the ground around the airstrip these might well have broken it, even though well dug in troops were not terribly vulnerable to air attack.

Joining the air armada now came a flight of half a dozen helicopter gunships, presumably flying out of the Tauran-held Transitway Area, or perhaps even from something at sea.

Hmmm . . . more proof of Anglians.

The helicopter gunships didn't carry anything like the airplanes' firepower. They made up for that lack, however, in the attention to detail they could apply to a mission. By the glow of the burning buildings, Carrera could make out the gunships' track as they shot down legionaries attempting to flee from them.

Holding a fist in front of his chest, Carrera spoke out loud to himself. "Now" he commanded to no one who could hear. "Now! Report that the area is clear enough to jump."

Carrera's order, or prayer, or wish, was quickly rewarded. Under the bright moonlight, he saw the outlines of the first of twenty-four medium and fourteen large cargo transports and troop carriers, approaching the Lago Sombrero airfield. Coming in low, Carrera thought maybe just over one hundred and twenty meters, these planes began disgorging their loads—over fifteen hundred Paras of the Royal Anglian Airborne Regiment. At that altitude the Paras didn't even bother with reserve chutes. If their main parachutes failed there wouldn't be time to open the reserves anyway.

I wonder what friends I have up there, jumping to their deaths.

The first of the medium transports made its pass over the airfield and surrounding cleared area in about forty seconds. Then, duty discharged, it turned to head for home. Others, in a long double trail behind it, were still dropping troops. Hundreds of these were already on the ground struggling to free themselves from their parachutes and harnesses. When Carrera was sure that enough had landed to guarantee the others would also land despite any danger he shouted down to Soult, "Jamey, radio silence off. Get on the horn to fire the caltrops. Tell Rogachev to roll."

The boys must have felt the shuddering bombs even deep down in their concrete hides. Carrera heard song, boyish voices supplemented by older ones, coming from the now opening vault doors:

"A young tribe stands up, ready to fight.

Raise the eagles higher, mis compadres.

We feel inside the time is right,

La época de los soldados jóvenes.

High, from His Heaven, the God of battles calls us.

Ahead, in ranks, march the ghosts of our slain.

And in our hearts no fear of falling.

Legion, Patria, through the steel rain!"

Carrera looked skyward, past the incoming transports, and whispered, "Enjoy the show, Marguerite."