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  "So you're really going to be telling General Taylor how to run the war?" she said with a chuckle.

  "I suspect I might be, ma'am, at least from an ACS standpoint. The CONARC commander and I have a long-term acquaintance. The orders came from CONARC at Fort Myer, but I'm supposed to report directly to the Pentagon. Go figure."

  "I think you should be happy about a chance for input," she said, puzzled.

  "Well, ma'am, the other problem is the difference between tactical and strategic. Although I will admit to being one of the experts at tactical employment of ACS, I won't bet dollars to donuts about strategic employment."

  "Just remember," she said, " 'an Army travels on its stomach.' Strategic and operational art are better than eighty percent logistics. Approach it from a logistical standpoint and you'll have them eating out of your hands."

  "Logistics."

  "Logistics."

  "Okay, thanks, ma'am," he said with a smile.

  "Don't mention it." She laughed.

  "Captain Michael O'Neal," said Mike holding out his hand, "Fleet Strike."

  "Captain April Weston," said the gray-haired battleaxe, "Fleet Line. Command." The period was easy to hear.

  "Oh, you have a ship?" asked Mike, interested. Very few of the ships being built for the defense were on-line or would be before the first few waves of the invasion. It was what would make the coming years such a difficult prospect.

  "If you can call it that," she said, with a sour grimace. "It's a converted Galactic frigate."

  "Ouch," said Mike, with a grimace of his own. "I saw the specs when I was at GalTech. No armor . . ."

  "Light weapons . . ."

  "No redundant systems . . ."

  "Limited targeting ability . . ."

  "Well," said Mike, with another grimace, "at least you'll have Combat Environment space suits."

  "Great," she said with a snort. "I spend a career fighting my way up through bloody-mindedness and knowledge of the sea, and now I have to learn to breathe vacuum."

  "You're a regular?" Mike said, surprised.

  "Actually, I was Royal Navy reserve until I made captain when they finally succumbed to the bloody inevitable and switched me to regular. My last command was the Sea Sprite, which, for your general fund of knowledge, is a cruiser. Now I'm off to the boundless depths of space and classes in astrogation. At my age," she concluded, throwing up her hands.

  "Well," Mike smiled, "good luck."

  "Yes, we'll all need it."

  CHAPTER 13

  The Sons of Mary seldom bother,

  for they have inherited that good part;

  But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother

  of the careful soul and the troubled heart.

  And because she lost her temper once,

  and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,

  Her Sons must wait on Mary's Sons,

  world without end, reprieve or rest.

  —"The Sons of Martha"

  Rudyard Kipling, 1907

  Washington, DC, United States of America, Sol III

  2317 EDT September 5th, 2004 ad

  Except for the profusion of uniforms, the nation's capital was virtually unchanged. Mike had taken the shuttle bus from Washington National and it went all over town before heading to the relatively nearby Pentagon. He caught brief glimpses of the Mall, and the streets of Georgetown were surprisingly crowded with partyers. Mike finally saw males out of uniform, persons with jobs so vital that they could not be spared as cannon fodder for the war effort. From their suits, age and haircuts, they were mostly attorneys or congressional aides. Probably for the best, thought Mike. God knows what they would be like in uniform.

  In the previous year, while on tour after the Diess victories, Mike had had his fill of politicians, political aides, political military officers and everything else spin-related. Diess had given him such a clear and uncompromising view of the coming storm that he sometimes felt like the one-eyed man in the country of the blind. There had also been much more exposure to the upper echelons of the military than he had been used to and it had not been a successful exposure.

  Mike's idea of subtle was to not tell the person, word for word, that they could not find their ass with both hands. Nonetheless the message came across. When a lieutenant, as he had been then, even a lieutenant with The Medal, takes an attitude like that towards officers thirty or more years his senior the lieutenant comes out of the contest the loser.

  The problem, from O'Neal's point of view, was that although many of the senior military officers he had met were quite prepared for and capable of, even brilliant at, fighting humans, they still could not get their minds around the Posleen. Despite the ongoing stalemate on Barwhon and the horrendous daily losses it inflicted, they insisted on thinking of the Posleen as simply suicidal humans, something like the Japanese in World War II. And the numbers were not real to them. They thought in terms of weapons systems, tanks and armored personnel carriers, then troops, because waves of humans simply could not stand up to a modern army.

  But the Posleen not only boasted incredible masses of troops so fanatical they would happily take any ordered loss to achieve any ordered objective, they also had weapons capable of negating the utility of tanks and armored personnel carriers. Although the weapons of the normal Posleen were unaimed, fired "from the hip" without careful sighting, many Posleen carried heavy railguns, capable of penetrating side armor on an M-1 tank, or hypervelocity missile launchers capable of penetrating frontal armor. And the God King leader caste carried either automatic HVMs, laser cannons or plasma cannons. A plasma cannon, even if it struck a modern tank with a glancing blow, raised the interior temperature so high it cooked the crew to death.

  But all that senior officers heard was "wave charges" and "unaimed weaponry" and they assumed it would be like fighting Napoleonic-era human troops. It might even have been true were it not for the God Kings and their systems. It seemed to those senior commanders as if a modern, well-trained and equipped force should be able to slaughter them.

  On that point Michael agreed; the Posleen were going to be slaughtered. What he could not get across to the senior leadership was that the Posleen couldn't care less how many they lost. They came in such masses that reducing their numbers by ninety percent often left them still outnumbering defenders, and with superior weaponry. Well, the powers-that-be would discover the error of their ways soon enough. Unfortunately Mike expected blood baths aplenty in the near future.

  The bus finally pulled up to the side entrance of the Pentagon, disgorged a mass of uniformed personnel and prepared to take on another mass headed back to the airport. Mike stared at the busy, scurrying officers, so intent on superior performance of their little niches, and wondered what they all did. What in the world were thirty captains, majors and colonels, most of whom wore the Military District of Washington shoulder patch, doing flying out to distant places at ten o'clock at night?

  "Their contribution to the war effort, I guess," he muttered as he stomped wearily over to the MP-guarded entrance. His day had begun at 3 a.m. and had included a prepared attack, a hasty defense and a prepared defense. He had fought three virtual "murthering great battles" and it was, in his opinion, getting nigh on to bedtime.

  "Can I help you, Captain?" asked the MP lieutenant in an oddly supercilious tone, as he stepped in Mike's way. Mike recognized the symptoms. Many Army and Navy personnel resented the whole concept of Fleet Strike, effectively American units being put under a broader command, some of them removed from America and not directly defending it. And the difference in pay scale did not help matters.

  Since Fleet and Fleet Strike were paid by the Federation, as opposed to Terran governments, they were paid in Federation credits. The Federation had a fixed payment scale for every level of worker throughout the Federation and the soldiers and spacemen of Fleet and Fleet Strike were given positions in that hierarchy.

  Through one of those quirks of Federation law that was so be
neficial to humans, military personnel had an automatically advanced caste position. Federation law legitimized differing legal structures for differing societal rank; what was illegal for a lower-rank Galactic might be legal for a higher-rank Galactic.

  Since the Galactics did not recognize the difference between the legality of things civilian and military, most military activities, such as terminating sentient life, required special permissions. These, in turn, required a higher "caste." That being the case, the lowest ranked soldier or spaceman was ranked the same as an Indowy junior master craftsman. The higher ranks were thus extremely advanced in the overall Galactic hierarchy.

  Given these advanced ranks, the Galactic pay scales were equivalent. A Fleet Strike captain made as much as a junior Darhel coordinator–nearly as much as an Army major general. On the other hand, with the tax increases for the war he was being taxed at almost eighty-seven percent of his income. It was a reasonable contribution to the war fund by anyone's estimation. Mike had also heard something about a Federation-mandated bonus from the Diess action. That would further add to the disparity in pay scales. Whatever the case there was extreme prejudice over the pay structure.

  It was an attitude that would slowly dissipate after the war, if anyone survived, as Army units were subsumed into Fleet Strike. In the meantime it was just another hassle to be shrugged off.

  "Yes, you can, Lieutenant. You can check me in. I'm supposed to report to CONARC."

  "I'm sorry, Captain, you seem to be in the wrong place. CONARC is based at Fort Myer. There will be a shuttle in about forty-five minutes."

  Mike handed over his copy of the e-mail and fingered the AID wrapped around his wrist. "As you can see, the orders clearly state to report to the CONARC commander at the Pentagon, not Fort Myer. So, where am I supposed to go?"

  "I don't know, Captain, I'm just the gatekeeper. But these aren't authority for Pentagon entry." He did not seem a bit displeased by the problem. "And in case no one ever explained this sort of thing to you, when it says report to the commander, it actually means report to someone at the command who will report you as arrived." The lieutenant proffered another smug smile, having to explain such a simple item to one of the lords of the Fleet.

  Mike fingered the AID for a moment. "Would you care to try to find out?"

  "I wouldn't know where to start, Captain. I suppose you could call CONARC," he finished, pointing to a rank of pay phones outside the entrance.

  "Okee-dokee." Mike slipped the AID off his wrist and set it on his head. It automatically conformed into a headset/microphone array. "Shelly, get Jack, please."

  "Yes, sir," the AID chirped. There was a brief pause, then, "General Horner on the line."

  "Mike?" came the clipped tones.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Where are you?" asked General Horner.

  "At the side entrance."

  "Tell the MP to clear you through to the High Commander's office, ASAP."

  "Yes, sir." He looked at the MP. "Okay, Lieutenant, the Continental Army Commander say, go to dee High Commander's office, ASAP. Whadda you say?"

  "I have to have an authorized clearance to permit you entry to the building, sir," said the MP, obviously calling the snotty Fleet jerk's bluff.

  "Jack, he says he has to have clearance."

  When Mike used the Continental Army Commander's first name, without being rebuked, the MP's face turned as white as milk. It was obviously not a bluff.

  "Give him the phone," General Horner said, icily.

  Mike handed over the AID, which the MP accepted gingerly, and watched as the lieutenant basically melted into the concrete. After three "yes, sirs" and a "no, sir" he handed the AID back and waved over one of the guards.

  "Sergeant Wilson, take the captain directly to the High Commander's office," he said quietly.

  "Have a nice day." Mike waved airily as he snapped the shiny, black AID back around his wrist.

  "Yes, sir."

  REMF, thought Mike.

  * * *

  Although Shelly could have led him through the labyrinth to the HC's office, Mike was just as glad to have the sergeant along. The slightly smiling noncom led him first to a secondary guard room to get him a temporary pass, which was, miraculously, already cleared for him, then to the area formerly dedicated to the Joint Chiefs.

  They walked in through the clerks, still hard at work, and up to the desk of the final keeper of the portal, an aged black warrant officer who looked like he ate nails for breakfast. Mike had heard of Warrant Officer Kidd, an SF legend who apparently had decided that General Taylor needed a keeper at all times. He and the general went way back, so it was said, to an unlikely incident involving an annoyed alligator and two bottles of Jack Daniels. The sergeant stopped at the final keeper and saluted. "Chief Kidd, Sergeant Wilson reporting with Captain Michael O'Neal, who is here to see the High Commander."

  Warrant Office Fourth Class Kidd returned the salute. "Thank you, Sergeant. Return to your post."

  "Yes, sir," said the sergeant, did a perfect about-face and marched out.

  "I think I ruined his whole day," said Captain O'Neal.

  "Naw. Made it maybe. But you sure as hell ruined that L-T's. Or so I heard," said Kidd with a cruel chuckle. "Did you really call CONARC 'Jack' to his face?"

  "And you've never called General Taylor 'Jim'?" Mike answered with a smile.

  "Well, not where anyone could hear." The warrant officer stood up and towered over the dwarfish captain. "Damn, you are short," he said and held out his hand. "Warrant Officer Kidd. You can call me Mister Kidd."

  "Captain Michael O'Neal," said Mike as Kidd's hand engulfed his. Kidd went immediately for a crusher grip which Mike deflected through superior gripping power, although it was hard with the size of Kidd's hands. They wrestled for a moment until a look of pain flashed across the warrant's face. "As a special favor, you can call me Mighty Mite," said Mike as he let up, slowly.

  "Okay," Kidd gasped.

  "Can I go in now?" asked Mike, maintaining a grip.

  "Will you let go if I say, 'Yes'?"

  * * *

  "Mike!" said the CONARC, striding across the office with his hand outstretched, "it's good to see you. You look a hell of a lot better than the last time."

  "Thank you, sir," said Mike after a perfunctory salute, shaking General Horner's hand. "Belated congratulations on the fourth star. It is well deserved. Sorry, I didn't bring any cigars, I'm flat out."

  "Good cigars are getting hard to find," said General Horner, leading him across the office to a sofa set. General Taylor stood up and walked to his desk to retrieve a cigar box.

  "Here," the High Commander said, proffering the box to Mike, "on the house. There's a guy in Readiness that flies down to Guantánamo about once a month. What with the warm relations we're developing with Cuba, cigars are no problem. He always brings me a couple of boxes."

  Mike extracted one of the long black panatelas. "Thank you, sir."

  "Take a handful. I'll get a box sent over to your company next trip."

  " 'He said to the captain, just before the axe fell,' " said Mike.

  "What gives you that impression?" asked Horner.

  "Well, both of you gentlemen are nice guys, but there has to be a reason you're up until after midnight plying me with tobacco," Mike said with a smile.

  "Not really," said General Taylor, chuckling as he lit one of the long, black cigars. "We were going to be up anyway and now was as good a time as any to brief you on your temporary mission."

  "Which is?" asked Mike as he extracted his Zippo and began to puff.

  "Mike," started General Horner, "as you know, as everyone knows, the defense plan that everyone was calling 'The Mountain Plan' has been scrapped. The President and the Congress will not stand for the Armed Forces not defending the coastal plains, especially the coastal plain cities. The President accepts that we cannot fight for every piece of ground, but he insists that we defend every major city. You with me so far?"


  "Airborne," said Mike, carefully judging the flame on the end of the cigar. When it was drawing just right he took a deep puff. Good cigar, he thought. "Okay, boss, it's a given: The cities will be fought for. Does the President realize that that will probably inflict more damage than if we can come back in two–three years' time with full Fleet backing and kick them out?"

  "Yes," said Taylor.

  "Oh."

  "That has actually been the subject of a series of news magazine reports," said General Taylor, dryly. "I gather you haven't been keeping up with current events."

  "No, sir, I haven't," said Mike. "Not even Net news. I've been getting my company as ready as it can be."

  "Apparently you succeeded," said General Taylor, chuckling. "I got a rather snippy e-mail to the effect that there must be a bug in the software for your engagement. You were able to score one hundred percent on a no-win situation. There is some question whether you diddled the software."

  "I don't think so, sir," said O'Neal with a smile. "It is a well-known fact that only SFers cheat. We happened to luck out and the God King assigned by the software on the final engagement was a wuss and routed. But mostly, it helps to have done the same exercise a couple of hundred times in VR and Tactical Exercises Without Troops. I play those scenarios in my spare time for recreation, sir, something that other leaders need to learn to do. I mean, most of them don't even play Mario Brothers with their kids."

  "Are you saying they need to play video games more?" asked the High Commander, surprised at the frivolous approach.

  "Basically, sir," said Mike, peering at the cigar blearily. The fatigue from the long day and the days of preparation beforehand had him saying more than he intended at a first meeting with the generals. He still was not too sure of himself.

  Preparing his company was at a level he understood. This "strategic" level was something else. But if being in the game had taught him one thing, it was never lose the image of confidence. Sometimes rep was the only thing that would carry your men through. And sometimes the definition of "your men" could get awfully broad.