smoke suddenly bloomed to Kotek's right flank.
Even so, the best surprise was the. 57 caliber ball that smashed into Kotek's right thigh, rending the flesh and smashing the bone. It also nicked the femoral artery but not so badly that Kotek didn't have the chance to see a hard, hate-filled face, lighter than his own but still quite dark, that came up to glare down at him. The face spoke some words in a language Kotek didn't understand.
Belisario was no soldier. Still, he had three great assets, common sense, knowledge of the lay of the land, and the sure knowledge that he had to kill these raiders or see-or rather more likely not live to see-his wife and daughters dragged off to serve foreign masters. This much he had learned on Old Earth; the progressives who said they came to do good only came to do well.
It also didn't hurt that his enemies were clumsy, being unused to genuine field work. He heard their twin columns, even as small as they were, before he ever saw them.
'One coming from the north, one from the south. They won't attack from two directions at once; that might cause them to shoot each other. So… one's a driving force, the other's a net. We hunt that way, sometimes, after all. But which is the net? South, I think, on the other side of the river.'
South of the town there was a river that ran east to west. It was down this Belisario had sent his wife and the other women, girls and very small boys. His wife had carried her own escopeta, or shotgun, as had some of the others. The town itself was a mere twenty-three huts holding perhaps one hundred and fifty people of all ages.
Belisario counted heads at the people assembled around him, their faces looking frightened but determined. Sixty-one men and older boys with rifles, another dozen with homemade bows and arrows. All right. The raiders are… not many, based on little Pablo's report, but they'll be better armed.
Dividing his men into three groups, Belisario explained his plan quickly. No one interposed a better one. Leaving one group-about a quarter of the total-behind at the village, he sent another quarter downstream to cross the river at a ford he knew and which the raiders were unlikely to. The others he, himself, led to a tree line to the northeast.
'Keep low, dammit,' he whispered. 'For your lives, your wives and your children, for God's sake keep low.'
The men following Belisario through the woods lay down along the edge and waited. Surely enough, ten men, nine of them armored and all of them armed, emerged into the open and began firing generally at the village. The group that had been left there went low and returned fire, generally ineffectively.
That doesn't matter, Belisario thought. I don't want you to be effective. I want you to be enticing.
The skirmish line advanced toward the village, their own rifles firing low now to suppress the defenders. Belisario waited… waited… waited… 'READY… Fire!'
Over the sound of their own fusillades, the raiders didn't hear him. Thus, it was with considerable shock that the heavy bullets slammed into them, knocking half down immediately. Some of the villagers had climbed into trees to fire down on their enemies. Soon enough, there was not a single man left unhurt among the UN Marines.
'Reload,' Belisario ordered before leading the men with him out. 'Kill them all, then we'll go after the other group.' Desultory firing to the south told him that the cordon, too, was being engaged.
One man, differently clothed from the Marines and less well armored, lay on his back trying to staunch the flow of blood that poured from a shattered thigh. Belisario walked up to him, kicking the man's expensive looking rifle away from his reach. The man put one arm up, either begging for mercy or trying to fend off the machete Belisario drew from a scabbard at his waist.
'I should burn you alive,' Belisario said. 'I should burn you alive, you bastard, but there isn't time. Still, you won't live to gain revenge for this.' He raised his machete high.
Four hundred and fourteen local years later all that remained of a very beautiful woman, one of Belisario's many multi-great grandchildren, would be interred very close to the spot where High Admiral Kotek Annan's hand and head rolled free of his body.
(And that, boys and girls, was how the office of High Admiral of the UN Space Fleet and its successor, the UEPF, was rendered nonhereditary.)
Chapter Twenty-Eight My troops are just poor… boys in rude shirts, but they're good soldiers, and they'll soon have better shirts. -Charles XII, of Sweden
The new year saw some material things change while many remained the same. Desert uniforms changed to a new tiger-striped and pixilated pattern Carrera had ordered from a company in the FSC. Another pattern was created for the radically different jungles of Balboa, Carrera believing that any pattern which tried to do both would do each only half as well, if that. The loricae, the silk and glassy metal vests the legion used for body armor remained the same. The basic design of their Helvetian helmets didn't change, but they grew lighter as a new model, likewise manufactured from glassy metal, made its appearance.
Two new rifles were in development. Both were in 6.5mm. The nearer to perfection was a Volgan design, the Bakanova, superficially similar to the Samsonov already in use. The Bakanova inside was radically different, however, having a rammer to half feed a fresh cartridge during the extraction process and thus increase the rate of fire to eighteen hundred rounds per minute, for two rounds anyway. This made burst fire a practical and useful capability for the first time in a general issue rifle on Terra Nova. To take full advantage of the burst fire capability, the Bakanovas were to be modified to fire a Montgomery Arsenal 6.5mm Jotun cartridge. The barrels were also modified-increased by four inches-to take full advantage of the more powerful round. The Bakanovas, however, had not yet been perfected.
Even there, an improved rifle was only considered to be a stopgap. Carrera wanted something new and had formed a group under Terry Johnson to investigate possibilities. Among the possibilities being looked at were combustible casings, semicombustible casings, electronic priming with the rate of fire controlled by a computer chip in the rifle, near simultaneous feeding and extraction to bring the rate of fire up to two thousand rounds per minute, and carbon fiber wrapped thin steel barrels to reduce weight and improve cooling.
There were some new rifles issued, but only for the snipers. These came in three calibers,. 34,. 41 and a reduced charge. 510 that, with a silencer attached, was extremely quiet. For these rifles, frightfully expensive in themselves but with money no longer being so much of a limiting factor, thermals sights were obtained.
Two new machine guns, a heavy in. 41 and a general purpose MG in . 34 were likewise under slow development.
Mortars and MRLs remained unchanged: 60mm, 120mm and 160mm mortars, and 300mm rocket launchers. Artillery was being switched from 122mm to a 155mm lightweight gun pirated by the Volgans from an Anglian design. The numbers grew, too, from the seventy-eight systems the legion had first gone to war with, inching upward to the one hundred and fifty-two it would need to field when it reached the equivalent field strength of a full division.
Helicopters and fixed wing aircraft had, so far, proven mostly satisfactory. The Turbo-Finches were retained, but modified for additional armor protection for the pilots and with a semiactive defense system against shoulder- fired surface-to-air missiles added. This came at a small cost in ordnance carried but, in the circumstances of a guerilla war against small, scattered, and for the most part poorly armed irregulars, Carrera considered it a fair trade off. The IM helicopters and NA cargo aircraft likewise had done good work and were retained. Some of the NA-23 Dodos were converted to aerial gunships firing a mix of ordnance,. 50 caliber, 23mm and 40mm. Like the artillery, the numbers of aircraft increased towards the final goal of one hundred and thirty-two deployed systems, exclusive of aerial medical evacuation.
Heavy armor had proven mostly good enough during the invasion and the subsequent occupation. Contracts were let, therefore, for an additional six hundred and ninety combat systems, mixed tanks and Ocelots, exclusive of simple armored personnel carriers, to be delivered over four years. This was enough, if barely, to keep Khudenko's factory in Kirov employed. Some of his workers were invited to Balboa to set up a depot for heavy maintenance on the armor.
One of the legion's larger purchases, in every sense, was in the form of an old light aircraft carrier, once called Her Anglic Majesty's Ship Revenge, and more recently known as the Amazonia. This had been offered for a price not much above its value as scrap metal or about the cost of three Jaguar tanks. It needed work, of course, before it would be fit to fight, but its engines were good and it could already sail. It also needed a trained crew, for which purpose Abogado's FMTGRB added another subdivision. Other ships for the naval classis of the legion were manned and, approximately, ready sooner.
The legion was growing. It had to; the insurgency around it was growing even faster. Worse, it had
