This is part two of my post about how comedians and entertainers don’t seem to have a clue about how the military functions in the real world, and how they don’t understand how armed civilians can fight that military. They seem to feel that any advanced weapon that the military possesses is powerful in all situations. I discussed the use of Drones, Aircraft and Artillery, and how they are of limited use against an insurgent force, and also have their own weaknesses. And how the use of weapons of mass destruction might backfire on those who use them, not only driving more people to revolt, but also probably many regulars and guardsmen as well. Maybe even whole units of them. But let’s say that the government can keep most of the troops in line. The strength of our Army and Marine Corps is in their discipline and ability to proficiently use weapons. Now the strength of the civilian gun owners, especially the hunters, is their knowledge of the area they are operating in, and the ability to proficiently use weapons. Most hunters, and many of those who aren’t, can consistently hit a target within the effective range of their weapon, whether it is a pistol or a scope mounted deer rifle. Many civilians are also veterans, who with a minimal amount of retraining, could effectively use machine guns, mortars, rocket launchers, etc. Where would they get these weapons? From the people that are using them against the populace. Supply convoys, warehouses, trains, all kinds of places. Whenever a military unit loses a firefight there will be weapons to pick up.
The strength of the rebels is their familiarity with their area of operations. A soldier from New York State may also have been a hunter, but he is not going to be as familiar with the Ozarks as someone raised in Arkansas. The rebels will be able to choose where they fight. As a relative of mine pointed out to me, this will not be a recreation of the civil war, where regiment fought regiment in open battle. Rebels will strike at the best place and time for them to strike, bringing their forces together to hit a smaller and weaker Federal force. Sure, there will be times when the soldiers gain the advantage, moving troops into position by APC or helicopter. Even if they win a thousand of these battles they will still lose the war. In a battle of attrition the side with the most troops is almost sure to win. And the strength of the military, its discipline, will become diluted as they lose well trained men and have to replace them with new conscripts who may not be the most motivated to put their lives on the line for the government against their friends and neighbors. I figure the desertion rate would continue to grow throughout the fighting. In John Ringo’s book Live Free or Die, the US sends troops into Vermont to take away the maple syrup that aliens want because it acts as a valuable intoxicant for other aliens. The men of Vermont don’t want to give up their syrup, which can eventually be sold to the aliens that really want it for the technology to raise the Earth up to a status where they can defend themselves. The soldiers don’t fair too well in the woods of Vermont against experienced deer hunters, many of whom are good enough shots to wound instead of kill. I think Ringo was spot on in developing this scenario. Sure, hunters would die, but the soldeirs wouild also be run through a meat grinder.
The strength of the rebels will be in their anonimity. When not on operations they will be indistinguishable from the rest of the population, while a soldier will look like a soldier, whether while in battle or in garrison at a base. The rebels could not be found while they were not pursuing their non-rebel tasks. Leaving the military to either depend on catching enough of them, or on using reprisals to stop people from fighting as rebels or supporting the rebel cause. History has shown that such a tactic is unlikely to work. Rounding up and hanging innocent civilians might cause some people to give up their neighbors, but most would become really pissed, and the ranks of the rebellion would swell. History has also shown that colaborators normally don’t last very long either. And again, except in limited situations, the rebels will be dictating the time and place of battle, and many of them will be men and women with military experience, some with a great deal of experience. They will know how to cammoflauge and use terrain to their advantage. What about the militias, said to be the target of the government forces? Coming to target the militias would also mean that the militias would target them. I doubt these paranoid people would just hand over their weapons and allow themselves to be led to detainment centers, which would also become targets of the rebels.
The military has tanks and armored vehicles, you might say. Yes, they do, and such weapon systems are formidable. They are also very vulnerable in a number of ways, especiaily when deployed in urban or forested terrain. Modern tanks are very hard to kill, but fire can still do the job, and insurgents have been using fire against tanks since WW2 and the Molotov Cocktail. Most verterans know how to make jellied gasoline that sticks to tanks (and people). Many Americans have some expertise with explosives, either from military training or civilian demolitions work. A seventy ton tank dropped into the river is dead. Tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters will still inflict severe casualties in some fights, In others they will helplessly patrol the edge of a battlefield in frustration. My brother told me of a situation in Vietnam where paratroopers on a training jump were trapped in a swamp. Their armored cav company was called in to bail them out, and after the one culverted bridge into the area was taken out by a rocket, all they could do was fire their cannon on a high arc and hope they hit something. They weren’t very successful. The Afghanies learned how to shoot down heavily armored Soviet helicopters with fifty caliber machine guns fired down from the heights. There are quite a number of fifty caliber rifles out there, with more to be gathered by the rebels after a battle.
Another area in which the rebels might have some success is in the world of industry. Weapons need to be built and transported to where they are going to be used. This includes spare parts, ammunition and fuel. The rebels can interdict these in the factory through sabatoge of production lines, then stop the transport by rail or truck on the transportation arteries. The military could try to compensate for this by transporting equipment by air, an expensive propostion in fuel and time. And of course the airbases themselves could be attacked. Any way you look at it, the US Military would face a daunting task trying to supress a population in revolt. Just about anything they do would just cause the revolt to widen and the rebel forces to increase, while their own strength was whittled away. I believe that not only could the American civilian population stand up to an attempt at military control, they would eat the military alive within a very short time. A year on the outside. Even if they achieve a nine to one kill rate they lose. So all the rhetoric about how civilians don’t have a chance against the military is a bunch of crap. If their firearms are taken away their chances are really reduced. This is waht happened in the Soviet Union and NAzi Germany, where only the authorities had weapons. That is not the America I want to see.
I have been watching Bill Maher recently on HBO. Now I really like the guy, and find his New Rules segments really funny, though I realize many people do not like him. And like most entertainers, he has no idea of what real world military operations are like. Don’t get me wrong by reading too much into this little rant. I really do not want to see a revolution or insurrection in the United States. That would really ruin my plans for the future. However, saying that the revolution would not have a chance because it would be staged against a government that controls the most awesome military on Earth. And the words Drones and Nuclear Weapons are mentioned a lot in all of these rants about the hopelessness of any kind of insurrection. First of all, the numbers would be with the revolutionaries, as long as the reasons to revolt are clear enough. I really believe that if the government was foolish enough to try and take all firearms away from Americans there would be a fight. I don’t believe this would occur over background checks, or banning high capacity magazines. The last one is kind of stupid as well. There are a lot of high capacity magazines out there, and only a grab would get rid of most of them, precipitating the very revolt the government doesn’t want. Now, just how many gun owners are there? Another point of contention. I have heard estimates that there are over thirty million deer hunters out there, most of them possessing bolt action high velocity weapons with scopes. In other words, Sniper Rifles. I firmly believe that in any kind of long range fight these hunters hold the advantage over regular infantry. I have also seen figures that over twenty million AR-15s, the semiauto version of the M16, are in the hands of US gun owners. No, they are not full automatic assault rifles, but the advantages of the full auto have been overstated. They are great when you are spraying a bunch of grouped targets at close range (the Spray and Pray method of engagement). At medium to long ranges the AR15 is just as effective. So now we have fifty million servicable infantry weapons in the hands of the public. Probably a lot more than that, but just for argument’s sake, let’s say fifty. And if half of those weapons are used in an insurrection, that’s twenty-five million weapons. Now I know that at the peak of the cold war we had three million regulars in uniform, most of them in noncombatant support roles, and maybe two million in the reserves, with a higher percentage of trained combatants. So even at their best the military was heavily outnumbered, and that is if all of them lock step and just do what they’re told, never a sure thing with citizen soldiers. Same with the police. Maybe the FBI and Homeland Security will just do as they’re told, but I doubt the police and sheriff’s of the country will just go and take the guns away from all of their friends and neighbors. The opinions I have heard and read seem to indicate that many of them are strong Second Amendment people. So the numbers game favors the people.
But the military has drones, you say. Like drones are some magical weapon that defeats all opponents. Actually manned aircraft, in my opinion, are more effective, able to drop large weights of weapons on a target and switch targets at will. Still not a match for the enormous fleets of bombers we deployed in WW2. Drone are very effective at making surgical strikes, like taking out the so called bad guys. So let’s say you have a meeting taking place at a restaraunt that you want to take out, knowing that they will see ground forces coming. So you fly your drone over, see what looks like the targets (to the drone operator looking through the vehicle’s camera) and you hit the target. If it isn’t your target you’ve just caused a bit of colateral damage (to be talked about in a future post on how to piss the civilian population off). Even if it is your target, say Dr. Smith, the leader of the resistence in Houston, is it really to be expected that killing him will cause the movement to come unravelled? Not really. Smith’s second in command may be an idiot, and will soon be forced from command by the irregulars he leads. Or he could be a genius, in which case the drone strike has caused more problems than it has solved. But even in the best case, if Houston had twenty thousand rebels, you have at most killed off one tenth of one percent of their manpower. So if you do a drone strike a day in Houston you may kill a couple of percent of the rebels, unlikely, since they are probably going to come up with ways where you won’t find their meeting places. Aircraft could do a better job on taking out more of the rebels, even without carpet bombing the city and killing a good percentage of the population. Again, you only have so many aircraft, even if it numbers in the thousands, and there are sure to be some pilots who balk at dropping bombs in their hometown, or any American city for that matter. Or, if the objective is just to kill a lot of people, use that greatest of all historical killers, artillery, something the rebels are sure to have a dearth of. But being rebels they will never conveniently congregate for you to mow them down. And now we come to the weakness of these weapons. All weapons, no matter how strong, have a weakness. With Drones, Aircraft and Artillery the weakness is in the supply system and in deploying them where they can be taken out by ground attack. Aircraft need fuel and spare parts, which must be transported to their base, and therefor can be interdicted. Aircraft also need runways, which must be protected, unless they are VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing). That brings up another problem. Troublemakers must be kept off those runways and away from the hangers. In peacetime airbases are protected by manned gates and a few roving patrols. If you think that will suffice during a rebellion you are sadly mistaken. Protecting an airbase requires fortified positions all around the perimeter of the base. And being a perimeter it is vulnerable to a concentrated attack on any one point. Not to mention the waste of manpower that could be used for infantry patrols to fight the rebels elsewhere. Drones and VTOLs, not to mention artillery, don’t need such a large area to deploy, but still require a large perimeter to protect them, otherwise the operators will come under fire from all those scoped deer rifles. So the perimeter is expanded and reinforced by the troops who can’t be used for other duties. So in a rebellion, where the enemy is dispersed and only comes together at the time and place of their choosing, these are not super weapons. Useful, yes. But not war winning in and of themselves.
So the government has nukes, chemicals, even biological weapons, and surely they could be used to crush a rebellion. Only if the government was willing to burn down the country it rules. The rebels will never gather in sufficient numbers to warrant the use of a nuke, and dropping one on a city will probably result in a revolt by the military. The weapon might not even be deployed, and entire divisions are likely to come over to the rebel side to fight against a government that they see as insane. The same with chemical and biological weapons. Too many innocents would be killed, and from my time in the Army and National Guard, that would not be tolerated. And good luck to you on getting the police to go along with the wholesale destruction of the people they are sworn to protect. The government using these weapons on its own citizenry suddenly becomes the enemy domestic that all take an oath to oppose.
I had orginally planned to do only a one post rant on this topic, but the more I think about it the more the response has expanded. The one thing most non-military people don’t seem to realize is that there is no such thing as a supreme weapon that is equally suitable for all occasions. Battleships were great, with their superior fiorepower, but also made huge targts for aircraft. The King Tiger was a match for anything in WW2, but its own size made it impossible to deploy in areas that didn’t have major highway bridges, and it suffered from many mechanical failures as well. A great book to read to learn how to think about these things is Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace by Edward Luttwak, in which he gives many examples of how weapons that seem unstoppable or wise fail in the strategic situation in which they are deployed.
In the next post on this topic I will talk about how collateral damage and strategies intended to cow populations actual backfire, as shown in many historical precidents.
The light is finally apearing at the end of the tunnel for Exodus 3. Many people have asked me when the next in the series is coming out, and now I can say it will be out by either next weekend or the weekend after. A fan graciously proofread it for me, and didn’t find that much to be corrected. There was some, and it still surprises me how many things escape my eyes. I will be going over the document one more time, and will be adding quotes at the beginning of each chapter, as well as date/time stamps for each major section, at least at the chapter level. The novel is twice as long as either of the previous books, as recommended by several of my readers. The main storyline continues, with all of the characters introduced in the first two books. Not everyone makes it out alive. This is a story of a drag out no holds bared winner takes all war. Even the really cool people sometimes die. Sometimes innocent people die as well. Children, babies, people who just want to be left alone. Others find themselves in the war, discovering that they are natural born killers who just needed to opportunity to express their talents.
If you like the first two books I am sure that you will like this one. So far over eighteen thousand copies of Books 1 & 2 have been sold, over ten thousand of Book 1 alone. I have hopes that it will catch on even more. If you like books that have lots of characters and cover a great scope of territory, this is probably one you will like. If that style is confusing, then you might want to pass. It’s not for everyone, but about sixty-five percent of the reviews have been five stars, while almost ninety percent have been four or five. Some reviewers have compared the books to those written by David Weber and John Ringo. Don’t know about that, but I love the work of those authors and feel flattered by the comparison. I try to produce the kind of book that I would want to read. And for my critics who thought the battles were too detailed, that detail was expressed to set the ground rules of the combat. The need is no longer there, so some of the detail has been toned back. Not completely, but somewhat. An now for the excerpt:
The earth had stopped rumbling under foot for almost fifteen minutes. Cornelius Walborski lifted his head above the edge of the trench he was dug into and looked out over the smoke and dust filled terrain. No rumbling meant no kinetic weapons dropped for a while, no sympathetic tremors, no balls of fire reaching into the air.
“There they are,” came a voice over the com circuit.
Cornelius looked up to see a trio of assault shuttles moving across the sky. Shuttles of an alien design, still under the constraints of the laws of physics and aerodynamics. Cornelius felt the sick center of fear in his guts as he watched them heading for the main landing field in the city of Frederick, not twenty kilometers from his position. Fear for himself, having to face whatever those shuttles contained with outdated equipment. Fear for his wife and unborn child, hiding out in the shelter under his house. Shelter that seemed very inadequate while facing an invasion of who knew what.
An autocannon opened up nearby, its swift burping sound cutting through the air. A moment later a couple of missiles swooshed from the antiaircraft vehicle that was hidden from the eye. The missiles climbed toward the shuttles while the cannon continued to fire.
The shuttles juked and jinked in the sky. The missiles exploded as they ran into the defensive fire from the shuttles, the craft unloading a wave of spreading steel. Most of the cannon rounds also exploded in that field, though the explosions on the nose of the nearest aircraft showed that not all were intercepted. That shuttle nosed down, trailing smoke, to pull up at the last moment and slam in a skidding landing into the ground. The other two shuttles moved away, getting out of range of the antiaircraft vehicle.
A wooshing sound filled the air and that vehicle, well camouflaged as it was, exploded into an incandescent ball, targeted by the ships in orbit for a kinetic barrage. Cornelius ducked low, hoping that his position wouldn’t be next. They hadn’t given the enemy any reason to target them yet, but spotting them would be enough.
There was another bright flare. Walborski shielded his eyes as he stood up in the trench, looking for the source. A small hill a couple of kilometers away had shed some of its hardened foam covering, revealing the turret of a multi thousand ton mobile shore defense gun. A bright beam of light rose from the long laser barrel, highlighted through the dust and smoke. Twin barrels alongside the laser recoiled back at three second intervals, sending kinetic rounds at the target. Over the horizon another beam lanced into the sky, another unit of the mobile battery firing on the ships in orbit.
Something flashed in the sky. Cornelius looked up, his visor polarizing against the glare. Something had exploded well above the atmosphere, a bright pin point of light. Then came the dread wooshing sounds of kinetic projectiles, coming down on the now revealed battery. The private looked over at the closest gun, still blazing away with laser and rail guns. Something struck the earth nearby, sending up a cloud of dust as the earth rumbled underfoot. The four turrets of the close in defense system on the huge track opened up, each with several multiple barrel weapons putting up a cloud of metal, while metal storm barrels along the turret added their fire.
Several objects exploded above the track, maybe a kilometer high. As soon as they flashed smaller objects hit the turret and hull of the massive vehicle, pieces of the projectiles that had been shattered higher up. The turret clanged like a struck bell, but the weapons continued to track and fire into space. Hundreds of small particles raised spurts of dirt around the vehicle.
“I just wish they weren’t so close to us,” said Jacob Bennett, Walborski’s only friend in the platoon, standing next to him in the trench.
Walborski looked over and gave his friend a quick grin. “I agree. And you know another thing I wish?” His friend shook his head negative and Cornelius’ smile widened. “I wish we had a lot more of them.”
“Hell,” said Jacob. “I wish we had a battle fleet in system that could have kept these assholes away from us. That’s what I wish.”
Walborski nodded his head, then turned back to watch the slugging match between shore defenses and invading ships. A deafening blast filled the air, and a flash of fire followed by a mushroom cloud came over the horizon. They must have gotten one through, thought Walborski as he looked at where the other gun had been stationed. Beams of light came down on the nearest gun, splashing and widening as they hit the massive weapon’s electromag field. Another kinetic struck nearby, sending a mushroom into the air as the ground groaned underneath.
“Look at that,” yelled another squad member. Walborski looked up to see several distant objects smoking through the sky. They were coming down at an angle and looked to hit dozens of kilometers from where the militiamen covered, if not further.
“I guess that will teach them,” said one of the other men. A loud clanging sound brought them all back to reality, and Cornelius looked back at the nearest mobile gun. Something had struck the turret hard, and one of the kinetic cannon was out of action. The rest of the hill shook for a second, then crumbled as the huge vehicle pulled forward and started to move away. Its laser rotated down and it was obviously running for another position. Kinetic rounds continued to come down but were knocked from the sky by the vehicle’s defensive systems. The air shimmered over the mobile gun. Cornelius had talked with the crew of one of the machines, so he understood that the weapon was using most of its generated energy to produce a distortion field over it. One that the enemy would have trouble seeing through with visual, radar or any other spectrums. To them the gun would always appear to be shimmering from place to place, displacing by hundreds of meters, never giving a firm target. “What about a nuke or AM warhead,” he had asked the crew chief of that gun, while the smiling officer looked on. “I guess we’re fried then,” said the chief. “We can just hope they don’t think we’re worth the effort.” Obviously the enemy didn’t think they were worth the effort, or just weren’t thinking, because only kinetic rounds and light amp weapons continued to fall, and the vehicle lumbered away.
As soon as the mobile gun was over the horizon booming sounds started coming from the distant city. Walborski looked at his fellow troopers, then back at the city, where new clouds of smoke and dust were rising.
“It will be our turn soon,” he said to himself. “May heaven help us.”
* * *
“Crap,” yelled Captain Glen McKinnon, zooming in on the landing field with his suit systems. “As if we didn’t have enough problems.” A trio of large landing shuttles were on approach to the field, a strip near the edge of Frederick that was already swarming with Ca’cadasan troops, huge figures in battle armor that looked formidable as hell. Colonel Baggett had set him the mission of interdicting the shuttle field, but it didn’t look too promising with all those big bodies down there, some setting a perimeter to keep the field, others starting to form up and move off the tarmac and into the city. One of the shuttles slowed to a stop and lowered itself to the field. Moments later a vehicle began to disembark, something that looked much like a light tank. The other two came down on either side and started to disembark their own vehicles.
But then again that’s the enemy’s job, to make things difficult for us. I wonder why they tend to cluster so close together, thought the Captain, a plan coming to mind. He linked into the tactical net, looking at what assets were available. That looks like something I can use, he thought, sending his request up the line, then sending orders to his own company while waiting for acknowledgement. When it came the three shuttles had unloaded and were getting ready to take off, while another trio came through the clouds and started on their approach.
Approval came back from command, and McKinnon quickly set his plan in motion. Within moments the roar of incoming rounds filled the air, and the Imperial Marines moved forward.
My fantasy genre bender Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 reached two thousand ebook sales this morning. Add to that the almost 1,700 for book 2 and 866 for Doppleganger and the series had sold over 4,500 copies. Compared to the over 18,000 sales for the two Exodus books and it isn’t even in the same ballpark. But still doing well enough to continue the series and hope that its popularity grows. I have been developing the world of Refuge for fifteen years, soon after I started putting fiction to hard drive. I call it a genre bender because it mixes military fiction and fantasy.
The story of Refuge revolves around the coming of Earth people to a world made up of our fantasies, and world in with Elves, Dwarves and Dragons exist, and great armies and mighty magics have raised empires, good and evil. A nuclear war on Earth opens wide the gates between the dimensions, and millions of Earth humans find themselves in a world of dreams and nightmares. The enemies they face are strong, and the ruler of the evil empire of the Ellala elves see the humans as nothing more than life energy to further his dreams of immortality. The humans have also brought fighting men, and tanks, artillery and attack helicopters. And three nukes, which rival the powers of the gods of this world. The technology is destined to stop functioning as the physical laws of the planet exert themselves. So it’s use it or lose it, and the humans use it with a vengeance to win enough great victories to gain breathing room.
In Book 3, the human tech no longer works, which does not mean the humans, who were also much more advanced in the muscled powered technologies than the natives of the planet, must now fight with weapons centuries behind those they are used to using. They still have a lot of surprises in store for the evil empire. Below is a first daraft excerpt from the current work in progress. An airborne assault on a fortress, shades of Eben-Emael.
Paul wasn’t really sure how he felt about the dragons. They were beautiful creatures to be sure, in their gold and silver scales. And damned intimidating as well. There were only a few ways to kill his kind, and he wanted to live a long time. Dragons possessed two of the killing methods. They could burn his body to ash, and they could eat him. Both methods would destroy his body, and that would be the end of his immortality on this mortal plane.
The big Gold looked him over as he approached, with calm golden brown eyes. The woman seated on its back rendered a salute, her long reddish brown hair coming under her helmet and blowing in the wind. If she can bloody well get used to the things, then so can I, thought the Brit. Can’t let a bird show me up.
Paul moved into place, standing about five meters from the Polish woman, the immortal Izabella Kozlowski. She was also in full armor, though of lighter construction of his own, a long sword and shield attached to her back. Now she’s a right good looking one, he thought of the blond hair, blue eyed woman who was said to be almost four hundred years old. But I like an older woman, he thought with a smile, knowing that she would be young and beautiful for centuries to come, as long as she didn’t get eaten by a dragon as well, or burned to death.
Oh, crap, he thought as the dragon flapped its wings and reared up on its hind feet. Two human troopers were holding on to the rear legs, some of the paratrooper contingent from Earth who were along for what could amount to a suicide mission. They were doing this kind of thing on Earth, thought the big Brit, who had been too large for the para regiment, and had never learned to jump. Until coming here, and training over the winter for just such a contingency. Well, maybe not this exact thing, he thought. The paratroopers, mostly Americans, with a smattering of Germans and a few Brits, had not jumped from dragon or battlehawk during their training on Earth. Their transport was more staid and stable, aircraft that all were familiar with.
The dragon grabbed him with it right claw, the woman with its left. It tensed its rear legs and jumped into the air, wings flapping with a booming sound. In moments it was high in the sky, heading toward the fortress. Other dragons rose along with it, thirty of the beasts. The larger carried four warriors each, the smaller two, for a total strength eighty-four paratroopers, about what one drop plane would have transported on Earth. Eighty battlehawks would also be in the air, each hauling one trooper into the air. It would be up to them to take the gates to the fortress and its keep, along with one follow up stick of another eighty, if all the hawks made it back from the first wave.
The ground passed below, visible in the faint light of the largest moon, a quarter full, but still brighter than a full Luna on Earth. The camp fires of the legion were visible in the distance, surrounding the fortress, which was lit with torch light and glow globes. It seemed to come toward them slowly, or really they toward it. But also too fast. Paul would have preferred it take longer, so he could gather his thoughts before jumping into what could be hell.
[Go] yelled the voice in his mind as they were almost over the fortress. Too far away as far as Paul was concerned, but he also knew that was the illusion of the jump. He took the order seriously and let the dragon drop him from its claws, looking back to see the two human paratroopers let go of their claws and fall. He turned his attention back to his own drop, counting to five, then pulling his rip cord. The US Army issue parachute opened above him, and in a second he was jerked into the sky, then floated. It was a steerable chute, the latest of airborne technologies, and he could control his drop and fly where he wanted, even pulling into a hover when needed. Some of the human commanders had wanted to use the levitation of magic, but the Elves had pointed out that levitation could be picked up and tracked by a skilled mage, and there were many such mages in the fortress.
The Brit watched the fort get closer, his eyes focused on the outer walls where sentries walked their posts. Those sentries should have been watching the skies as well as the ground outside the fort. A demonstration was in progress that attracted their attention, as ranks of legionaries formed up and marched, as if they were about to attack the walls. Engineers worked at engines, while pots of projectiles flamed behind them. The Ellala in the fort had to feel secure in their ability to repel any such attack, but they also had to know that the Earth people could pull tricks on them that they had never heard of. Like they were about to do at this moment.
The outer wall of the fort passed beneath Paul’s boots, and he pulled on his cord to change his trajectory toward the inner keep, where the garrison could shelter if the outer fort fell. Taking the courtyard meant nothing if the keep held out. So it had been decided to take them both at the same time. The four immortals and twenty troopers would try to take the gate to the keep, while a full company of paratroops would take the outer courtyard and open that gate. Or at least that was the way it was hoped it would go.
The Brit pulled his right riser, then his left, and aimed for the top of the tower to the left of the gate. The roof came up fast. Paul was wishing it would come fast as two Ellala looked his way. The one with the pike shouted, then set the spear to take the Immortal when he landed. The one with the bow pulled an arrow to his ear and released. The shaft sped into Paul’s chest and bounced from the armor. The immortal pulled on both risers and slowed, then dropped straight down, while the pikeman screamed and charged forward.
Paul’s feet hit the roof and he pulled the quick release tabs that attached his parachute pack to him. His next move was to pull the bastard sword from the sheath on his back, while his left hand grabbed at the ax haft that was attached to his left side. The pike head hit his chest and slid away. The immortals were all encased in the best armor that could be found, it thought to be more important to protect them so they could do what they did best, fight. It actually saved more lives to protect those with the best ability to take damage.
Another arrow hit his shoulder, and Paul roared as he struck the pike away with his sword, then swung the ax in to cave in the shoulder of the spearman. The archer was drawing another arrow when Levine landed behind him. A swing of the ancient immortal’s sword and the archer was headed for his afterlife, to reward or punishment. More paratroopers came in to land, while Izabella Kozlowski came down on the other tower with a dozen more paratroops. Gregor Babich yelled in frustration as he missed the roof of that tower and fell onto the roof of the keep, forty meters below the tops of the towers.
Guess we’ll have to do without him, thought Paul as he ran toward the stairway coming up from the wall, where dozens of Ellala swordsmen were swarming up. Just hope he makes it OK. Then he was standing over the landing to the stairway, and his sword and ax rose and fell in a rhythm of destruction that dropped and Elf every couple of seconds to his death.
He glanced to the side, looking down into the outer court, where the other paratroopers had landed. There were bodies on the ground, both human and Elf. The humans were getting the worst of it in the melee, men who had only been practicing the sword for less than a year, against beings who had been using a blade for centuries. Arrows were coming down from the walls to take more of the humans. But even as he watched the humans were clumping together into groups of a half dozen, then a dozen, then fifty, sixty, forming a tortoise formation. Now the arrows were glancing from the shields or sticking to them, while the men under the protection of that cover thrust with their short swords and killed all the Elves that came at them.
Then his attention was captured by the Ellala who continued to swarm up toward him. A quartet of paratroopers had by now put together short pikes from sections they had carried and were thrusting into the enemy, while others were firing heavy crossbows into the Ellala on the walls and in the courtyard. And then the Ellala on the wall backed away, and Paul wondered what was going on. The glowing staffs of mages appeared among the press and moved forward, and the Brit knew another deadly aspect had been added to the fight.
* * *
The Archduke had been walking the wall when the attack came, though it took him a few moments to realize that it was an attack. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing as the soldiers dropped from the sky underneath the fabric canopies that slowed them. There was no magical emanations, nothing to set off the alarms that would normally be triggered by an attack from above. But there was no levitation at work here, only more of the inventive technologies of the Earthers. And we were told that their technology would no longer work. Maybe that was true where the machines were concerned, but obviously not all of it.
Still, when the humans landed in the courtyard, they were at a disadvantage. They were not as capable as the Ellala who sorted from their barracks in the outer wall and the keep, and proved easy marks for the blades of trained swordsmen, despite their strange but well-designed armor. A dozen were down, then a score. And then the damnable humans grouped, and the strength of their tactical doctrine rose to the fore. A dozen of them got together and held their own against a dozen or more Ellala. Then a dozen became a score, then more, and what had been a slaughter from one side was now going the other way. Arrows fired into the courtyard bounced from the rectangular shields or stuck into the surface of them. No humans dropped, so the Archduke could tell that even the arrows that sank into the material of the shield was not harming them. And then that damnable rectangle, protected on all sides and above, started to move toward the gate.
Another group of soldiers dropped into the courtyard. The Archduke didn’t get a good count, but knew it had to be three score or more. They did the same thing as the other group, and soon there were about three score formed into another rectangle that moved toward the gate to the keep. Not all of those dropped made it, but the majority did, and they were nigh invulnerable in their formation.
“We must get more men into that courtyard,” yelled the Archduke to a nearby officer. “We must get mages there, or the humans will take the gate.”
“The keep will still be secure,” yelled back the officer, motioning for several of his men to run and direct reinforcements.
“I wouldn’t count on that,” screamed the Archduke, gesturing toward the gate towers above the keep, where several heavily armored warriors were slaughtering the defenders while more of the other humans were firing crossbows into the courtyard. “We have to keep them from opening this gate, so we can keep them from opening the keep as well.”
The officer gave a gesture of accent, then yelled and pointed to the courtyard, indicating to the archers to keep pouring on the arrows.
The Archduke turned and looked at to where the besiegers were gathered, and his breath caught in his throat as he saw a half dozen of the rectangles running in formation toward the wall. That was well over a thousand troops, and he had no illusions as to what would happen should a thousand of those well-disciplined troops enter the fort in those deadly formations. “Archers,” he yelled, pointing toward the oncoming humans, and several dozen bowmen turned and fired. As soon as the first arrows arched out the human formations shifted into more of those invulnerable walking fortresses. “Mages.” yelled the Archduke, and the half dozen magic users fired balls of flame or bolts of lightning at the formations.
In the past history of warfare on this world such a magical attack would have broken up the formations, one reason why armies did not march into battle, but charged in a mass of running, dodging individual fighters. But the fire or lightning that struck these formations either bounced from shields of magical energy, or simply flowed through the humans without effect. He couldn’t understand what was happening, even having seen it himself in the past. Some of the humans were simply immune to magic, following some over-god that protected them from such. The others were obviously using their own magic to protect themselves. That he did not understand at all. It took decades to learn how to use that kind of magic, and these creatures had been here less than a year. Some more technology we know nothing about. Will we ever figure them out, or will they march into the capital, unstoppable by anything we can do.
A crash and a crackle turned the noble’s attention back to the keep towers, where other mages were trying to drive the humans from the heights, and were seeming to not be having much success. That lack of success was apparent in the sight of the huge human in full armor moving down the stairs with a bastard sword in one hand and an ax in the other. At each strike an Ellala died, and the Archduke was sure that the fort was going to fall. His next thought was on how he was going to escape this mess.
I took a trip to my home town of Venice Florida this weekend, a place I hadn’t been since 1995, and a place I hadn’t lived at since 1975. I met with old friends, gave away signed books, and general went around the area and reminisced. And thoroughly enjoyed myself. I left there like so many to see the wider world. And I did, first Germany and much of Europe, then North Florida and Alabama. Kind of got sidetracked after Europe I guess. Anyway, the quiet of the place was unbelievable. Seeing the old houses that friends used to live in, at least one of them housing for the poor that are now historical sites and probably worth a small fortune. Hearing the coo of a Mourning Dove, and the sounds of the wind whispering through the Australian pines of a local park. The sight and sound of breakers on the beach. All in all it was a wonderful experience, and one I hope to become more common. I will try to move back there next year, to the old home. It is not the same place it was, but is still a very nice place, with great beaches, restaurants and other activities, but without the hustle and bustle of places like Panama City Beach or Daytona Beach or Ft. Lauderdale. I don’t need a big house down there, just enough room for me and my cats, where I can write in a quiet neighborhood.
Working hard on the next installment of Refuge, which follow the war between the Earth people and the natives. The Earthlings have lost their technology, at least anything depending on explosives or internal combustion engines. But they have other tricks up their sleeves, centuries of improvements in transportation and shipping that didn’t depend on engines. And strategy and tactics totally unheard of to the residents of Refuge. They also bring the scientific method to the study of science, and make great strides there as well. Meanwhile, Exodus is being proofread, and will be coming soon.
I went out of town on a trip this weekend to a yearly event I always attend. Brought my new laptop with me, hoping to get at least a couple of hours of work a day in while I was at Panama City Beach. Rode the motorcycle down, the first long trip on the bike, and the first other than local ride I have taken in many years. Unfortunately, the wifi at the hotel was awful, and my new installation of word didn’t work on my laptop. Was still able to post my tweets for the Aura promo to Hootsuite, and check up on the sales and giveaways on the KDP Report site. I did not have my spreadsheet on the laptop, and so had no firm numbers, but when I got back to my house in Tallahassee today, and pulled up all the numbers on my desktop, I was delighted to see that Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1 has now sold over ten thousand ebooks. Now to me this is a very big deal. Not Stephen King numbers, but still very respectable. And Book 2 of the same series is getting close to eight thousand sales, with book 3 coming out toward the end of May. Books 1 & 2 sold for $2.99 each. Book 3 will sell for $5.99, twice as much as the others, but it is also twice the book. Some of the reviews I received on books 1 & 2 stated that the books were not long enough, though they were the normal 110,000 words novels, about what most novels are if you’re not buying Wheel of Time or some others. Another strange thing about the numbers is I am now selling more of the Exodus series in the United Kingdom than in the United States. That’s cool. I can live with that, developing a fan base in another country. Sales are also pretty good in Canada and Germany, with some sales in Spain, France and Italy as well, and three books to Brazil. Need to figure out how to crack that Japanese market though, LOL.
Received a review on Exodus: Books 1 and 2 that really blew my mind, especially coming from a reader of speculative fiction. It really was the same review, two stars and the same complaints, but posted for both books. Basically, there were three complaints, after the praise for the descriptions and battle scenes. 1.) I had too many women in positions of military authority, and since men and women are really so different (his words, not mine) this was just liberal nonsense. 2.) I had portrayed sex between military superiors and subordinates, which is bad for discipline and is not tolerated. So I guess my own experiences in the Army, seeing a Sergeant Major have an affair with a female 2nd Lieutenant, or a Sergeant receiving oral sex from a female private, were just illusions. Not to say that all the historical precedents of this kind of activity. 3.) I had Muslims, Christians, Wiccans, Jews, Hindus and Atheists all working together for the common good. He did not believe this was possible. The reader finished the review by stating that he would not be buying any more of my books. I wish I could have written him a thank you for that last statement. You see, the way I view the future we will be able to get past our religious and gender issues and work together. And if there is some other, alien or otherwise, that we may have to unite against, our own differences will not seem so vast after all. But we will still be human, and humans don’t always follow the rules, no matter how reasonable they may be from an intellectual stance. If that makes me a liberal, no problem. I think it puts me into the mainstream of science fiction writers who portray the same principles in their books.
Aura, my high fantasy novel about three siblings, fraternal triplets, fighting for survival in an evil land, will be free on Amazon from Friday, 4/26/2013 to Monday, 4/29/2013. In this land the Aura determines ones future. A strong aura will lead to a priest or mage, a normal aura a normal farmer or store keep, or a soldier. A weak aura will become a slave or laborer, while one with no aura is considered an abomination, one who cannot be controlled by magic, and the ultimate threat to the hierarchy. Into this land are born the triplets, one with a supreme aura that makes her the target of the Dragon God, who is in search of a new avatar to hold his essence on Earth. It will give her great power, at the cost of the destruction of her soul. One of her brothers is born with a weak aura and is sold into slavery, to eventually become a gladiator in the arena. The third is born without an aura, and is rescued from death by an order of assassins who kill magic users who abuse their power. The girl grows past puberty, and she is about to become the avatar of the Dragon God. It is up to her brothers to rescue her from a fate that is truly worse than death. Four reviews so far, with a 4.8 average. And one that I believe lovers of high fantasy will like.
Tomorrow I am going to attempt to put out my first news letter. I put the link to the mailchimp newsletter in my books in January. Since then I have sold over ten thousand books, but only forty-three people have so far signed up for it. It will be an experiment. Hopefully the subscription list will grow as I add content. Nothing I can do on my end, but put it out and publicize it.
I am halfway through the first revision of Exodus: Book 3. Should be finished this week, then will do the grammar and spelling checks, then off to the fan who has agreed to proofread it. Hopefully still out by the middle to end of May.
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