Come and Take Them-eARC by Tom Kratman Page B

everything that’s key.”
    And the only reason I’m not throwing a shit fit is because I can ignore most of what you’ve ordered—as you fully expect me to.

    Batteria McNamara (former Battery Ranald, FS Army), Cristobal Province, Balboa, Terra Nova

    There was information that was open. Then there were secrets, deeper secrets, and deepest, top secrets. It was, for example, no secret that the legion had bought an impressive number of 180mm guns from the Volgans. The exact number, though, was secret. It was no secret that some dozens of these had been mounted in old Federated States-built coastal artillery batteries along both the Shimmering Sea and Mar Furioso coasts. That an additional fifty-four had been hidden out on the Isla Real was very secret. It was not a secret that the legion had laser-homing shells for many of their heavier artillery pieces and mortars; they’d used some of those during the campaigns in both Sumer and Pashtia. That they had developed lengthened, sub-caliber, laser-guided shells for the 180mm guns, which shells could range over eighty kilometers, was almost the deepest secret in Balboa.
    * * *
    The battery—then named “ Iglesias Point Battery”—had once housed two twelve-inch rifles on barbette carriages, which is to say carriages that allowed a gun to be fired over a parapet. Other batteries, up and down the coast, had housed twelve-inch mortars, fourteen- and sixteen-inch rifles, and an assortment of lesser pieces. None of those were required anymore, since ships no longer mounted the armor such beasts were designed and built to punch through. The gun about to be fired, at just over seven inches, was more, much more, than required to punch through the thin metal of a modern warship, if punching though armor at longish range had been the objective.
    Near this two-gun, open but parapeted firing pad, itself sitting atop a deep bunker for both ready ammunition and fire control, Carrera watched as the crew of one 180mm gun went through the drill of loading and laying. Trap doors opened to the rear of the position, as a reconditioned ammunition elevator pushed up one of the long shells. Longer than the previous twelve-inch shells, this one came up on a frame that held it at an angle. The projectile in its sabot was, to say the least, oddly shaped for an artillery round. The lengthy fuse with the high-strength golden glass nose made it appear odder still.
    The propellant popped up from a different elevator, fed by a different compartment.
    The crew was not the gun’s normal complement. Oh, no, the regular crew were reservists and militia and weren’t even mobilized. Instead, for now, the gun was manned by a special test crew, specially vetted for reliable closed-mouthedness, from Obras Zorilleras , or OZ, the legion’s research and development division. Their chief had drilled them numb over the preceding week on a sister gun, though that one was held underground in a different battery, about twenty-four hundred meters to the southwest.
    They were only going to get one chance at the test, though the test would involve twelve shots. These were five of the special shells, that being the number on hand at Battery McNamara, and seven normal high explosive shells to mask the specials. The special shells were inert, the normal explosive filler replaced by a mostly plastic mix of the same density. Four other gun positions, three to the west and one to the east, were manned by reservists and militia mobilized for training. These were also along the Shimmering Sea coast and on both sides of the Transitway’s mouth. They would also be firing for this exercise, mostly to divert attention from the test firing of the special shells. Their ammunition was limited to standard 180mm High Explosive. Five forward observer stations, as heavily fortified as the gun positions, held FO teams with laser range finders indistinguishable from the laser that would be used to mark the target for the special