Free Come and Take Them-eARC by Tom Kratman Page B

hidden within. And, after that, when one thought about how that power had gotten inside, without it being obvious, one became very impressed.
    “It was a labor of love,” said Terry’s Cochinese guide, Commander Nguyen. “We hate the fucking Gauls and figure you’ll use this against them.”
    Terrence Johnson had met Nguyen on his arrival in Cochin two weeks prior. Since that time, besides dealing with some bureaucratic intricacies peculiar to paranoid and quasi-communist states, he had inspected the ship known so far only as the ALTA ( Armada Legionario, Transporte de Assalto ). He had acquired some understanding of ship-to-shore attacks during the counter-drug war in La Palma Province. Since that time he had studied more on the subject.
    Johnson was extremely impressed by the amount of thought that had gone into modifying the ships, and said so.
    “Labor of love,” Nguyen had repeated, lifting his breathing mask to speak. The mask was necessary as the entire deck was flooded with nitrogen gas to preserve both the launchers and their rockets.
    Walking Terry through the missile deck of the modified Ro-Ro, Nguyen pointed out blast shields, controls, and back up controls. On that missile deck seventy-three thirty centimeter multi-barreled rocket launchers, minus the heavy trucks that normally carried them, had been mounted with their tops flush with the top deck. In this form, though the rockets were pricey, the elevating and traversing mechanisms were not all that expensive while the launch tubes were almost frightfully cheap.
    Nguyen’s finger traced the tell-tale lines above each launcher. “We’ve got shipping containers above to hide the marks in the deck that show where the launchers will rise to fire. They’re empty and will rise up with the launcher covers, then fold down onto them.”
    The mechanisms that would raise the launchers and move them through their limited traverse were protected behind armor plating. Also at the missile deck level the starboard side of the ship had been cut away and replaced with blow-out panels to vent away the explosive power of the rockets that drove the missiles to a range of over ninety kilometers. Likewise the decks above and below had been reinforced. Johnson noted that the ship could only fire to the port, or left.
    Nguyen then led Johnson to the deck just below the missile deck. There he removed his mask and said Terry could do the same.
    Johnson saw twenty-eight helicopters, three-quarters troop carriers and one quarter gunships. Those were all contained in plastic sheeting. He suspected, even before Nguyen confirmed it, that the helicopters had had their air replaced with nitrogen under their plastic covers.
    A long ramp led up from the hangar deck to the top deck, which was covered by hydraulically moved decking. There were vehicles on the hangar deck to pull the helicopters up the ramp. Along both sides were elevators for moving ordnance from the magazine to the hangar deck.
    The next two decks down had living quarters for a small tercio of infantry and their supporting troops, some space being taken up by containers. Nguyen had some Cochinese open several of the containers, chosen by Terry at random, to insure they held what their labeling said.
    In the rear of the ship was a closed ramp, not too different from the bow of an Old Earth style LST, except for being in the rear where it would not be subject to the full force of an angry sea.
    Behind the ramp sat six Volgan-built hovercraft, each capable of carrying upwards of fifty men with their supplies and equipment. These, too, were protected from the salt and water by sheeting and nitrogen gas. They would be able to leave their deck and make for the sea along the ramp once it was lowered to the water.
    Impressed as he was, Terry still had his doubts. “How the hell did you manage to do this without anyone the wiser?” Johnson was, in fact, sure that no one outside the legion and Cochin knew about the ALTA, if only