Chapter Sixteen
No society can truly be called civilized which is unable to deal with barbarians, of both the external and the home-grown varieties. This is so unless one cares implicitly to define "civilized" as "that which is comfortable but weak, unwilling to defend itself, and in the last stages of life before descending into barbarism."
Of course, since good and evil must be measured by duration as well as scope and intensity, and since such a "civilization" has no prospect of having much more duration, that "civilization" is hardly worth defending anyway. That said, should the people of such a civilization choose to defend it, its probable duration and thus its intrinsic value will increase in proportion, just as those decrease when the people reach a consensus not to defend their society.
But what then is civilization? Arts and letters? Education? Public Order? Rule in accordance with law? Trade? Specialization of function? Urbanization? Public works and roads? Ports?
Civilization shows all of those things, yet it is more than any of them, singly or in combination. At core, civilization is a system of society which permits something near the maximum number of people, for any given geographic area, to enjoy the maximum feasible quality of life, for the longest possible societal duration.
—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza, Historia y Filosofia Moral, Legionary Press, Balboa, Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468
Anno Condita 471 Belalcázar Air Force Base, Santander, Terra Nova
In his headphones Pavlov heard, "Unidentified aircraft! Unidentified aircraft! Move away from the flight line and parking areas or you will be engaged!"
Pavlov ignored the calls except to mutter, "With what?" Reducing power to the main rotor, he allowed the chopper to descend to only one hundred and twenty feet above the ground. That was high enough to provide enough fall to arm the mines his bird carried, and also high enough not to worry about sucking any trash that might be blown skyward into the engine.
Pavlov looked left and saw that his wingman had likewise descended and was even now slowly moving along and above the taxiway. From the rear of the wing helicopter, through the open clamshell doors, a deluge of little mines, some of them glowing, descended to the concrete.
It was seeing the glowing mines hit and then bounce up off of the concrete that made Pavlov think, I have entered the world of the surreal.
Pavlov, himself, went for the one of the aircraft parking areas showing plain in his goggles. A lone guard below fired his rifle at the bird, the muzzle flash plain in the gloom.
"Ignore that," the pilot cautioned his door gunner. He pretended he hadn't heard the gunner's return comment. At the fighter jet parking area, Pavlov swung stick and played with his pedals to produce a sort of aerial ballet overhead, the chopper twirling and swinging and shifting from side to side. The Santandern jet below was deluged with toe popping mines. The helicopter moved on to the next. Unheard by the crew, sirens wailed out a warning, rousing the base from its slumbers. More rifles were fired at the IM-71s. These, too, were ignored as the choppers continued their work of making the only nearby Santandern air base temporarily unusable. As each HIP finished its mining, it turned its attention to the radar dishes, several civil and one military. Machine guns sparked, colanderizing the radar dishes with fire.
Well, thought the crew chief, we weren't told a thing about not shooting up the radar.
Federated States Airborne Command and Control Ship (ACCS), 205 miles east of Santander, Terra Nova
The radar officer cursed with surprise. "Motherfucker! Sir, three pairs of fast movers just popped over the mountains east of Balboa City. No identification." The lieutenant made a quick speed check. "Yes, sir. Definitely jets. Course suggests they came from somewhere in the Shimmering Sea."
The lieutenant colonel stifled a curse of his own. Goddamned Navy. By what right do they cut us out?
"And, sir? That recon skimmer—at least I think it's a recon skimmer—from the UEPF will be in range in twelve minutes."
Weapons added, "I'm tracking it, sir. We can down it on your command."
The colonel thought, This operation has to originate at echelons above God. No way I can get permission to fire in any timely fashion. Well . . . I'm an officer of the Federated States. I see my countrymen in action. I see a threat. I am duty bound to take out that threat, if it's within my capabilities.
That will sound great at my court-martial, won't it? Ah, screw the court-martial.
"Fire as soon as they're in range, Mister."
Hacienda of Señor Estevez, Belalcázar, Santander, Terra Nova
Unable to sleep for all his worries, Estevez tossed and turned on his king-sized mattress. His wife, plump beyond her years, snored softly beside him. I would so much rather be in bed with Gabriela, or—better still—Isabel. But domestic peace was important. He couldn't sleep with either of his mistresses in his own home.
An unusual sound roused Estevez. He rolled to his back and sat straight up. Helicopters? Police come to arrest me? But what's that screech?
Whatever the sounds were, they couldn't be good. Estevez roused his plump wife. "Marta," he insisted, "get up and gather the children! Quickly, woman! Go! Get to the basement. I'll join you when I can." As the wife rose and began to rub the sleep from her eyes, Estevez ran out of the bedroom, pulling on a robe and shouting for his guards.
* * *
From five thousand feet overhead, Montoya turned on his siren, banked his plane over and began a dive. He felt himself pushed back into his seat so hard that he thought he could feel the stitching through his flight suit.
Flicking on the radio he announced his call sign for the mission and, "Diving to the attack." A voice answered, "Roger," with a strong Volgan accent.
Montoya saw the target hacienda and his personal target, a large barnlike structure a few hundred meters from the main building. Intelligence had identified this as a barracks for guards.
At twenty-one hundred feet, two blackish ovoid shapes, each a two hundred and fifty pound bomb, fell away from beneath Montoya's aircraft. He felt the Finch balloon slightly as its load was reduced.
"Bombs away." he announced to himself, pulling the stick back into the pit of his stomach. Whatever pressure he'd felt in the dive was nothing compared to the force pulling him down into his seat as he fought to pull out of the dive.
Far below, the helicopters began very slowly to approach the lawn around the hacienda.
* * *
The shriek coming from somewhere above wouldn't have been so bad if Francisco Estevez had ever heard it's like before. He hadn't. It might have been tolerable if some of his comrades had, and they'd been able to reassure him. They were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It might have been acceptable if he'd been a trained soldier. He was a tyro, recruited to his cousin's guard force to provide a sinecure to a relative. In short, Francisco was completely unprepared for the attack, mentally, morally, and as a matter of training. It was about the limit of his ability to join the dozens of other armed men racing from their barnlike barracks to the main house.
As Francisco fumbled with loading a magazine into his rifle while trying to run across the manicured lawn to his assigned position, he saw his elder brother. "What's going on?" he shouted out.