Free The Rods and the Axe - eARC by Tom Kratman Page A

trade and transportation. Cutting off the Transitway completely would be economic death. Instead, they were ensuring that the heavily defended Isla Real and its largish near neighbors couldn’t be bypassed, hence that no invasion of the coast by the capital could succeed until the islands were taken. They were leaving unmined two gaps almost a kilometer wide to the main island’s east and west. Thus, at their discretion, ships and trade could continue to flow until the legion elected to shut them down.

    Three men stood on the northern slope of Hill 287, not far from the ground-laid portion of the chimney for the archipelago’s solar power system. These were Carrera and Fosa, the chief of the naval arm, plus Legate Rigoberto Puercel, the chief of the corps responsible for the defense of Balboa’s northern coast. Puercel commanded the Fifth Corps, built around the Eighth Training Legion, now the Eighth Infantry Legion, the School Brigade, and certain other units, some of which had been part of the “hidden reserve” but most of which were simply normal organizations, the members of which wore second hats. The Fifth Corps consisted of that same Eighth Infantry Legion, Eleventh Infantry Legion, which was newly constituted from preexisting tercios and allies come to help, Twelfth Coastal Defense Artillery Brigade, Twenty-fifth Combat Support Brigade, plus sundry other specialist and support organizations.
    The Eighth Infantry Legion was more of a fortress legion. Moreover, since it was built around Puercel’s previous command, the Eighth Training, and since his exec in that command was the legion commander, and since Puercel was absolutely going to stay on the island, in the real world command remained his.
    Instead of the normal three maneuver regiments, the Eighth had four infantry tercios, two of which were foreign allied (both of which were on the way but had not yet arrived), and one regiment of disabled or handicapped static troops, the Tercio Santa Cecilia. These were also known by their unofficial motto, Adios Patria.
    Instead of having an artillery tercio with three light or medium cannon cohorts, a heavier cannon cohort, and a multiple rocket launcher cohort, the Eighth had one cohort of man-portable (if barely) wheeled multiple rocket launchers, one of super heavy 240mm breech-loading mortars, and three of heavy 160mm mortars. Both types of mortars had more or less elaborate fixed positions, those for the 160mm guns being turreted with redundant, modified tank turrets. It also had a larger than normal complement of tanks, mostly hidden in fairly strong and well camouflaged positions. The legion’s service support tail, and its headquarters, generally, occupied some portion of one or another of the Isla Real ’s thirteen deeply dug fortress complexes, arrayed mostly in an irregular ring about Hill 287. Two of the thirteen were dug in under lesser heights.
    The different casernes and areas of the island were connected by two transportation systems, running in parallel. One of these was an asphalted two lane highway, laid in a ring a couple of kilometers inland from the coast. The other was a 600mm rail system, open to the sky but dug in and protected by concrete revetments, a half a kilometer or so even farther inland.
    The Twelfth Coastal Artillery Brigade was based on the island, though it had reduced strength cohorts of heavy artillery at both PuntaGorgona and Chimaneca. These were at reduced strength because they weren’t expected to last very long, anyway, nor to do much good if they did. They existed, for the most part, for no higher purpose than to keep a potential enemy from wondering why the far ends of a future naval mine barrage were not covered by direct and indirect fire.
    Similar were the sixteen former naval turrets, triple 152mm jobs, ringing the island. The Twelfth Brigade had a single maniple whose job it was to make those look active and threatening, even to the point of firing them on