Kratman Snippets
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 25
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 25 This morning, a two-man Condor sat on the deck, with eleven more resting behind it. The gliders sat on lightweight rolling frames. The frames might be recovered, when the gliders launched, but they were just as likely to go into the sea. No matter; they were cheap and easily replaced. The Condors were highly stealthy auxiliary propelled gliders developed by the Legion's Obras Zorilleras. Stealthiness, in this case, was not achieved with precision manufacture, based on advanced...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 24
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 24 "It would be hard to call them 'happy circumstances,' now wouldn't it?" was Khalid's retort. "You can dwell on that to your heart's content, Alix, but, longer term, if we don't get you your army back, there are going to be a lot more Sachsen girls experiencing the same thing you did. Indeed, it will be the rare one who doesn't experience it – no pun intended – in full. "Take your pick of what you want. But do it quickly because once we're assembled, we're going after your Minister...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 23
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 23 Chapter Eight Whoever makes me unhappy for a day, I will make suffer a lifetime. --Empress Dowager Cixi Task Force Macera, surrounding Task Force Jesuit He'd given it his best shot, Macera had, but his best hadn't been good enough. Oh, he and his tercio-sized, reinforced cohort had pursued long, fast, and hard. They'd gone hungry as many days as not, and still kept it up. Through darkest, slipperiest night and hottest, muggiest day, through rain and high winds, shedding weight with...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 22
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 22 SdL Megalodon, off Santa Catalina Island Extremely low frequency communications had never been on Balboa's wish list, even though it might have allowed communications down to hundreds of meters of depth. The problem was just too hard, and the soil of the republic too conductive; never mind the unfortunate side effects. Instead, the classis had opted for a very low frequency system, supplemented by an acoustic system and some prearranged codes. The very low frequency system, or VLF,...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 21
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 21 Chapter Seven All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. --Clausewitz, On War Santa Cruz, Santa Josefina, by the Cordoban Border "Sir…sir…I think they're gone." The speaker was Oberst Rall, gently nudging the body of his napping commander, Claudio Marciano, with the toe of his boot. Some generals might have taken offense at that. Marciano was, Rall thought, as...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 20
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 20 Aguilar led the way to a set of weapons racks. Inside them, secured with chains and a rotating irregular bar, were more than a score of shotguns. "The trick," Aguilar said, "is in the ammunition. We don't really know what the hull can take, up there, so we figured lighter weight projectiles were inherently better. Not good at range but the range is going to be measured in mere meters, and not many of those. So these are underpowered, can carry a double load of shortened...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 19
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 19 The young Balboan tribune – short, brown, and stocky – answered through a Zhong-descended Balboan interpreter. He was as level-voiced as possible given the stresses inherent in his very vulnerable position. "A very important person – no, sir; they didn't tell me who but my guess would be the corps commander – wants to talk with you under a flag of truce with an eye to negotiating an end to this battle." "We will not surrender." That was a surprise to Wu, himself, because he had...
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath – Snippet 18
Days of Burning, Days of Wrath - Snippet 18 It was also crawling with antaniae, the septic-mouthed winged quasi-reptiles that fed on the young and the weakened and the foolish. Though they looked reptilian, the Mandarin name for them translated out to, "Genetically engineered murder pigeons." Maybe worse, the air was alive with mosquitoes, their numbers swollen beyond reason by the stagnant water collected in innumerable shell craters. While there hadn't been an outbreak of the worst Terra Novan jungle diseases, a good...