Table Of ContentThe Amazon Legion - ARC
Tom Kratman
Advance Reader Copy
Unproofed
Baen
Baen Books by Tom Kratman
A State of Disobedience
A Desert Called Peace
Carnifex
The Lotus Eaters
The Amazon Legion
Caliphate
Countdown: The Liberators
Countdown: M Day (forthcoming)
with John Ringo:
Watch on the Rhine
Yellow Eyes
The Tuloriad
The Amazon Legion
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are
fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Tom Kratman
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3426-9
Cover art by Kurt Miller
First printing, April 2011
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to
Kat and Kelly and Sergeant Hester...and all the other Amazonas, past and
potential
What has gone before (5,000,000 BC through Anno
Condita (AC) 472):
Long ago, long before the appearance of man, came to Earth the aliens known to
us only as the “Noahs.” About them, as a species, nothing is known. Their very
existence can only be surmised by the project they left behind. Somewhat like
the biblical Noah, these aliens transported from Earth to another planet samples
of virtually every species existing in the time period approximately five hundred
thousand to five million years ago. There is considerable controversy about these
dates as species are found that are believed to have appeared on Old Earth less
than half a million years ago, as well as some believed to have gone extinct more
than five million years ago. The common explanation for these anomalies is that
the species believed to have been extinct were, in fact, not, while other species
evolved from those brought by the Noahs.
Whatever the case, having transported these species, and having left behind
various other, typically genengineered species, some of them apparently to
inhibit the development of intelligent life on the new world, the Noahs
disappeared, leaving no other trace beyond a few incomprehensible and inert
artifacts, and possibly the rift through which they moved between Earth and the
new world.
In the Old Earth year 2037 AD a robotic interstellar probe, the Cristobal Colon,
driven by lightsail, disappeared en route to Alpha Centauri. Three years later it
returned, under automated guidance, through the same rift in space into which it
had disappeared. The Colon brought with it wonderful news of another Earthlike
planet, orbiting another star. (Note, here, that not only is the other star not Alpha
Centauri, it’s not so far been proved that it is even in the same galaxy, or
universe for that matter, as ours.) Moreover, implicit in its disappearance and
return was the news that here, finally, was a relatively cheap means to colonize
another planet.
The first colonization effort was an utter disaster, with the ship, the Cheng Ho,
breaking down into ethnic and religious strife that annihilated almost every
crewman and colonist aboard her. Thereafter, rather than risk further bloodshed
by mixing colonies, the colonization effort would be run by regional
supranationals such as NAFTA, the European Union, the Organization of
African Unity, MERCOSUR, the Russian Empire and the Chinese Hegemony.
Each of these groups were given colonization rights to specific areas on the new
world, which was named—with a stunning lack of originality—“Terra Nova,” or
something in another tongue that meant the same thing. Most groups elected to
establish national colonies within their respective mandates, some of them under
United Nations’ “guidance.”
With the removal from Earth of substantial numbers of the most difficult and
intransigent portions of the populations of Earth’s various nations, the power and
influence of trans-and supranational organizations such as the UN and EU
increased dramatically. With the increase of transnational power, often enough
expressed in corruption, even more of Earth’s more difficult, ethnocentric, and
traditionalist population volunteered to leave. Still others were deported forcibly.
Within not much more than a century and a quarter, and much less in many
cases, nations had ceased to have much meaning or importance on Earth. On the
other hand, and over about the same time scale, nations had become preeminent
on Terra Nova. Moreover, because of the way the surface of the new world had
been divided, these nations tended to reflect—if only generally—the nations of
Old Earth.
Warfare was endemic, beginning with the wars of liberation by many of the
weaker colonies to throw off the yoke of Earth’s Uni ted Nations and continuing,
most recently, with a terrorist and counterterrorist war between the Salafi
Ikhwan, an Islamic terrorist group, various states that supported them, and—
surreptitiously—the United Earth Peace Fleet, on the one hand, and a coalition
led by the Federated States of Columbia, on the other.
This eleven year bloodletting began in earnest with the destruction of several
buildings in the Federated States of Columbia and ended in fire with the nuclear
destruction of the city of Hajar in the unofficially terrorist-sponsoring state of
Yithrab.
Prominent in that war, and single-handedly responsible for the destruction of
Hajar, was Patrick Hennessey, more commonly known as Patricio Carrera, and
the rather large and effective force of Spanish-speaking mercenaries he
personally raised, the Legion del Cid, based in and recruiting largely from la
Republica de Balboa, a small nation straddling the isthmus between Southern
Columbia and Colombia del Norte.
Balboa’s geographic position, well-suited not only to dominate trade north and
south but also, because of the Balboa Transitway, an above-sea-level canal
linking Terra Nova’s Shimmering Sea and Mar Furioso, key to commerce across
the globe, was in many ways ideal. It should have been a happy state, peaceful
and prosperous.
It was also, unfortunately, ideal as a conduit for Terra Nova’s international
drug trade. Worse, its political history, barring only a short stint as a truly
representative republic following the war of liberation against United Earth some
centuries prior, was one of unmixed oligarchy, said oligarchy being venal,
lawless, and competent only in corruption. Perhaps still worse, during the war
against the terrorists, the security needs of the country had been filled by the
introduction of troops from the Tauran Union to secure the Transitway and its
immediate surrounds.
Carrera had learned well from the Salafi Ikhwan, however. The drug trade
through Balboa was ended by war and terroristic reprisal to a degree that left the
surviving drug lords quaking in their beds at night. The oligarchy was beaten
through the electoral process and the final nails driven into its coffin—and into
the heels of the oligarchs—when it attempted to stage a comeback in the form of
a coup against the elected government and Carrera, its firm supporter. Carrera’s
second wife, Lourdes—Balboan as had been his first, Linda, murdered with her
children by the Salafi Ikhwan—figured prominently in the suppression of the
coup.
The problem of the Tauran Union’s control of the Transitway remains, as does
the problem of the nuclear armed United Earth Peace Fleet, orbiting above the
planet. The Taurans will not leave, and the Balboans—a proud people, with
much recent success in war—will not tolerate that they should remain.
And yet, with one hundred times the population and three or four hundred
times the wealth, the Tauran Union outclasses little Balboa in almost every way,
even without the support of Old Earth. Sadly, they have that support. Everything,
everyone, will have to be used to finish the job of freeing the country and, if
possible, the planet. The children must fight. The old must serve, too. And the
women?
This is their story, the story of Balboa’s Tercio Amazona, the Amazon
Regiment.
Chapter One
…a failure, but not a waste.
—LTC (Ret.) John Baynes, Morale
A phone was ringing somewhere. People—women and children mostly—
screamed. Others, men and women, both, shouted. Their voices were distant, as
if they came from the mouth of a tunnel. Runaway freight trains, having jumped
their tracks and taken off into low ballistic flight, crashed into scrap metal yards,
one after another. Over that was the sound of jet engines straining and helicopter
rotors beating at the air.
With a barely suppressed shriek of her own, Maria Fuentes sat bolt upright in
her trembling bed, her hand going automatically to her mouth to stifle the sound.
As her eyes adjusted to the small light streaming in through her bedroom
window, she realized that she wasn’t asleep any longer.
“It was a…” she began to say. She stopped, mid-sentence, when she realized
that she could still hear the trains, the crashes, the screams.
“Mierda!” she exclaimed, as she threw off the light covers. “Not a nightmare.
Shit. Oh, shit.” Maria felt nausea rising, mostly fed by sudden unexpected fear.
The phone, which had stopped ringing, began again as Maria raced for her
baby’s—Alma’s—room. She stopped and picked it up.
“Sergeant Fuentes.”
“Maria? Cristina.” Centurion Cristina Zamora was Maria’s reserve platoon
leader. “Alert posture Henrique. No drill.” Zamora’s voice was strained,
nervous. Maria couldn’t remember ever having heard Cristina’s voice as
anything but perfectly calm before. Not ever. She felt a fluttering in the pit of her
stomach. Zamora’s upset? We’re so fucked.
“Not a drill?” she asked, pointlessly.
“No, Maria, not a drill. Alert posture Henrique.”
“Henrique? Okay, I understand.” “Henrique.” Call up all the reservists, but
only those militia who can be quickly and conveniently assembled. “I guess
time’s more important than numbers, huh?”
“They don’t tell me these things, Maria. Later.”
The phone’s tone changed, telling Maria that Zamora had hung up.
Maria’s phone was already programmed with the necessary numbers to
Maria’s phone was already programmed with the necessary numbers to
conduct an alert. She scanned through until she found the number for her
assistant, Marta Bugatti. She pressed that button, then the button for “speaker.”
She placed the phone on her bed and, while the phone was ringing, pulled out
her legion-issue foot locker. A couple of flicks of the retainers and the top
popped open. She was pulling her tiger-striped, pixilated battle dress trousers on
when the ringing stopped and a deep voice—deep for a woman, anyway—
answered, “Bugatti here, Maria.”
“Marta. Alert. ‘Henrique.’ No shit.”
“Oh, really? I would never have guessed!”
Unseen by Maria, a mile and a half from Maria’s small apartment, Bugatti
shook her head in general disgust and then held her own telephone receiver
towards the nearest window. On her own end, Maria could easily make out the
sound of chattering machine guns.
Marta’s voice returned in a moment. “So what fucking else is fucking new? I’ll
take care of it. I’ll—” Marta’s phone went dead.
“Marta? Marta?” Maria pounded her own phone on the foot locker’s plastic
edge in frustration mixed with fear. “Shit. Dead.” She closed the cell and tossed
it on the bed. She thought, Okay, Marta. You’re a bitch…sometimes. But you’re
a lovable bitch and you’re my bitch besides. I’ll trust you.
Maria pulled on her boots, green nylon and black leather, tucked her trousers
into them, and then speed laced them shut. She wound the ends of the laces
around her legs and tied them to hold the trousers in place. From her locker she
took her battle dress jacket. She was buttoning this as she started again for her
daughter’s bedroom.
She started, then stopped short at Alma’s door. My God, I am going to have to
leave her, then fight; maybe die, too, and leave her forever.
Suddenly Maria felt even more ill. How can I leave my baby? Just as suddenly,
she felt even worse. How can I abandon my friends, my sisters, my troops?
Bad mother; bad friend. Responsible parent; irresponsible soldier? Hero?
Coward? None of those words mean a damn thing. Whatever I do, it’s going to
be because I’m more afraid of not doing it than of not doing the other. I’m going
to be a coward in some way, no matter what.
Had she been a different person, any different person, she might just have stood
there, indecisive, until it was all over. But Maria wasn’t just anybody. The
powers that be had selected her very carefully, then trained her more carefully
still. They had even organized her unit very carefully, paying more than usual
attention to the needs of single military mothers. With or without Maria, Alma
would be all right. She knew that. But without her, her troops—her friends—
might not. She had no choice, really. She’d made the decision years before.
I have to go.
Alma was still sleeping soundly in her little bed when her mother entered.
Maria smiled as her sight took in her daughter’s few dozen pounds and few little
feet of soft lines, dark lashes and curly hair. Maria marveled that not only was
Alma hers, but that the baby wasn’t awake and screaming.
I could never hope to sleep with artillery flying anywhere nearby, not even in
training. What makes it so easy for a kid?
Maria looked out the window from Alma’s bedroom. She couldn’t see much
but the street they lived on, and not all of that. Streetlights illuminated the scene.
So far as she could see none of Terra Nova’s moons had any noticeable part in
that. Then the streetlights began to flicker out, leaving nothing but the moons’
light.
Below the apartment, people were running in the streets, most of them tugging
on uniforms. Just about everybody was carrying a rifle, machine gun, or rocket
launcher. A number of those who weren’t armed seemed to be trying to hold
back someone who was. Somebody’s mother, wife, or maybe girlfriend was
crying for him to come back. Maria couldn’t see where anyone did turn back
though.
Returning to her own room, Maria continued pulling gear from the locker. Out
came load-bearing equipment, her helmet, her silk and liquid-metal lorica, the
legion’s standard body armor. Her centurion’s baton she picked up for a
moment, then replaced it in the locker. Last came her modified F-26 “Zion” rifle.
She held the rifle in her hands for a moment, drawing some small comfort from
its heft and weight. Then she slapped a drum magazine in, turned the key on the
back to put pressure on the spring, and jacked a round home.
I hope Alma stays asleep. She hates to see me in helmet and body armor.
Fully clothed and armed, Maria slung her rifle across her back, walked back to
the baby’s bedroom, then picked her up in her arms.
Alma almost woke up then, sucking air in with three gasping “uh…uh…uhs.”
The mother waited a minute or two, holding her, stroking her hair and saying,
“Don’t worry, baby. Everything will be all right, baby. Don’t worry, love.
Mama’s here.” The child snuggled her soft hair into an armored shoulder and fell
back, sound asleep.
Once Alma had fallen asleep again, it was out the door and down three flights
of stairs. Maria didn’t bother with locking the door behind her; crime hadn’t
