The Amazon Legion by Tom Kratman

Author:Tom Kratman [Kratman, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Military, General, Adventure, Space Warfare
ISBN: 9781439134269
Google: 3CpBbwAACAAJ
Amazon: 143913426X
Barnesnoble: 143913426X
Goodreads: 9079753
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Interlude

Once upon a time, and not so very far in the past, the president of “the legitimate, democratic, popularly-elected government of Balboa”—which was precisely none of those things—would have stood in respect and fear as the Gallic commander of Tauran Union forces in Balboa, General Janier, entered the conference room. That president, and his entire government of self-interested and corrupt oligarchs, was dead. Now Janier, without any deeply felt respect and certainly with no fear, stood for the ambassador of United Earth and the Tauran Union’s commissioner for the Balboa Transitway.

Rather, Janier felt no respect or fear for the one man, the Earther, and one woman, the Tauran, he was there to meet. He had fears, though. As if to punctuate those, a brace of jet fighters, old, rebuilt but obsolescent, from Balboa’s Legion Jan Sobieski screamed over the building, causing not only the windows to rattle but the very glasses on the conference table to shake and move.

“Can’t you do something about that?” the commissioner asked. She was named Unni Wiglan, and was a leggy blonde well into middle age, but looking younger. Like most of the Tauran Union’s semi-hereditary aristocracy, she rotated from job to job, each a sinecure where the holder was expected to produce little but high-sounding statements and expansive budgets. Though she was the commissioner for the Balboa Transitway, she had come in on the morning’s airship from her home near Pousse, one of the capitals of the Tauran Union. Certainly she had little interest in actually living in the austere Transitway Zone, a roughly one thousand three hundred square kilometer strip, eighty by sixteen, carved out of the surrounding jungle, a place of little enlightenment and no culture, and surrounded by a virulent military dictatorship.

“No,” Janier answered, simply, shaking his head. “I can’t do a damned thing about them. And they do this every day, at this time, daring us to try and exposing our impotence. I chose this time and this place to show you.”

“To show us what?” asked the ambassador from United Earth.

Janier snorted, taking a seat. Formalities were one thing and, as a soldier, he tended to live by them. But actually continuing to stand? That might have given these bureaucrats the very false impression that he held them in any personal regard whatsoever.

Snorting again, he said, “To show you just how willing the other side is, how eager to drive us into the Transitway and the sea. Seas, rather.”

Janier smiled mirthlessly, asking, “And do you know what the worst part is?”

Wiglan shook her head. The Earth ambassador didn’t answer at all, but then he paid attention to his morning briefings.

“The worst part is that my army here is unreliable. The Castilian battalion, under that greasy wretch, Muñoz-Infantes, has all but officially defected. They train with the Balboans. They have an officer exchange going. They feed the Balboans intelligence, or did before I cut the Castilians off.

“And, while I have my doubts that the Balboans have let them in on their

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