Gust Front lota-2 Page 13

  “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.

  “This gear creates a video game environment and the wargames are based on a number of video game archetypes,” Mike continued. “If they would spend less time doing the work of their first sergeants and pushing hardcopy and more time in the VR environment they would do better in notional battles.”

  “Well,” said General Horner, “we, and by that I mean General Taylor and myself and to a lesser extent you, need to decide what that battle is going to be and how it is going to be fought. I am going to outline for you, in broad strokes, what the strategic and operational mission of the ACS should be and, over the next two weeks, you suggest how we should do it, in as much detail as possible given the time. Got it?”

  “Got it,” answered Mike, leaning back in the chair. After a moment he leaned forward again. The comfortable armchair was a surefire way to put him to sleep. If he was going to keep from making an ass of himself in front of these officers, he was going to have to stay on his toes.

  “Okay.” General Horner looked up at the ceiling as if drawing thoughts from the pooling cigar smoke. “We are required, by order, to do as much as humanly possible not to lose the cities to the Posleen. First we have to define what a city is. We have arbitrarily decided to defend only the city core, because, quite frankly, we don’t see any way to defend into suburbs. Oh, we’ll have some depth, and some outer defenders, besides the parasite forts I’ll talk about in a minute, but basically we’re just going to try to hold ‘downtown,’ the part with the skyscrapers that Posleen shy away from landing on anyway.

  “Outside the cities, near the beltway that is around most of them, now, we are going to construct modern fortresses. They won’t be ‘state-of-the-art’ like the planetary defense centers, but they’ll have some sort of curtain wall and moat system along with massive conventional firepower. We are going to give the fort commanders pretty wide leeway on how they want to arm their walls. The idea of these forts, and the central city fortifications, is to catch the Posleen between two fires. We call the outer forts ‘coral forts’ because they are like a spreading coral.

  “The cities and the coral forts will have enough supplies to hold out for five years, if necessary. Each of them will also be just out of line of sight of a planetary defense center; that was already in the PDC plans, so we don’t have to worry overmuch about them being directly assaulted by landers or command ships. If landers or command ships take to the air less than en masse, the planetary defense centers should be able to sweep them out of the sky.

  “If the situation becomes completely untenable for a city’s forces, they may attempt to flee to refuge. For the purely coastal cities, we are coming up with plans to evacuate them by sea.”<
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  “How, sir?” Mike interrupted. If he had one weakness it was sleep. Without regular doses his brain turned to mush. It had pretty much gone south sometime around the landing in D.C. He was currently well beyond playing guessing games. He took another hit of the nicotine hoping it would clear some cobwebs.

  “Partially by subs. We’re reactivating a bunch of the nuclear launch boats, boomers, that haven’t been scrapped. We’re ripping out all the weaponry and upgrading the environmental systems. We figure we can pack nearly a battalion into the missile section alone, more in the torpedo rooms, and so on. We’re substituting the nuclear kettle with power crystals to appease the environmentalists.”

  “Like there’s going to be an environment left,” snorted General Taylor. He walked over to a sideboard and poured a measure of scotch. “Anyone care to join me in a snort?”

  “I’ll take a vodka, straight,” said General Horner.

  “Bourbon on ice, sir, thank you, sir. Much ice, sir.”

  “Don’t be so uptight, Captain. We’re all old soldiers here,” said the High Commander.

  “Yes, sir,” Mike answered with a wink. He would rather have asked for coffee, but when the High Commander offers drinks you don’t refuse.

  General Horner snorted and went on. “The Navy is also reactivating all the battleships that haven’t been turned into razor blades. Since there were a bunch of them that have become museums and since there were howls of protest over scrapping the last two of the Iowa class that weren’t, it turns out we have eight.”

  “I heard about that, sir,” said Mike. “Can they stand up to Posleen weapons?”

  “Well, their belt — that is, the portion of their hull that is above the waterline, and most of their bridge armor — is twelve to fourteen inches of homogenous steel. That would normally be light to stand up to plasma cannons, but the steel that they are made of turned out to be surprisingly resistant. Also they’re adding on some lightweight ceramet enhancements that increase their resistance to laser and plasma fire by about twenty-five percent. They’ll be able to hold their own, even at short range, and think about the firepower! Each of those things has nine guns, either fourteen or sixteen-inchers.”

  “Didn’t the Iowa lose one in an accident?” asked Mike, rubbing his chin and thinking about having a battleship broadside at his beck and call.

  “Yes,” said General Taylor. “But they are building a new breech at Granite City Steel in St. Louis. It’ll be ready in about ten months.”

  “However, for those cities which cannot be evacuated by sea,” continued General Horner, “there must be some alternative means.”

  “If you mean fighting their way out through the investing Posleen, sir,” interrupted Mike, “I don’t see any. Are we talking about light infantry, sir?” He hid a yawn and took a deep breath to drive some oxygen into his flagging brain.

  “Some, but with enough transport organic to the division to move the whole thing. Basically a motorized infantry regiment. Most will actually be mechanized infantry, Armor or Armored Cav. The tanks and AFVs will be positioned in forward revetments or ready to sally and the troops will be in bunkers. If they have to retreat or sally there will be trucks and other transports to move the entire force and any civilians who’ve stayed behind. In one sortie.”

  “Okay, let me give you a situation and a city, sir,” said O’Neal, rubbing his chin in thought, flogging his brain. “Let me see if I understand this plan. Let’s talk about… Sacramento.”

  “Good choice,” said General Horner, leaning back.

  “Okay, sir.” Mike tapped his AID. “Map menu.” He tapped the icons on the hologram until he had the map he wanted and yawned again. “It looks like about a two-hour drive from Sacramento to Placerville, where, I would guess, the first of the mountain defenses would be placed. How am I so far?”

  “About right,” said General Horner after a moment’s thought.

  “Okay, sirs. That means about six to ten hours of battle to reach the first defense lines,” Mike said, taking another pull on the cigar. He looked at the ceiling and flicked an ash.

  “About that,” agreed Taylor from the bar.

  “Through a Posleen swarm,” said Mike, still contemplating the ceiling.

  “Yes,” the generals chorused.

  “Nope,” said Mike, shaking his head definitively. “Sirs.”

  “Really?” asked General Taylor, handing out the drinks.

  “Really, sir. Look at Diess or Barwhon. Remember that French armored division on Barwhon that got caught out of prepared positions during a movement?”

  “Right, Third Armored Cav,” said General Taylor.

  “Troisieme Armore Chevalier,” Mike corrected. “They lasted, what? thirty minutes?”

  “There had just been a landing, Mike,” pointed out General Horner, “the Posleen numbers were at their maximum.”

  “We have to assume an outside influence to force the evacuation, sir,” O’Neal pointed out and took a sip of the bourbon. He raised an eyebrow at the quality of the sourmash. It had been in an unlabeled decanter, but it was a nice Kentucky distillery, probably an “estate” brand. Obviously being High Commander had a few perks even in these days of universal rationing.

  “Okay, I’ll give you that,” admitted the CONARC. “Now, assume MI support for the retreat and reconfigured roadways to maximize terrain cover. How much MI support would you want to evacuate the remains of a corps out of Sacramento?”

  “Oh. You’re talking about covering three or four divisions?”

  “Yes, or five. I think Sacramento is detailed for five divisions.”

  “Jesus, sir.” Mike shook his head. “I don’t think you could lead five of the current standing divisions to a whorehouse on a Sunday morning much less through five hours of battle with the Posleen in open field combat.”

  General Horner looked at Taylor and raised an eyebrow. “You wanna take that one, General?”

  General Taylor smiled and shook his head. “We hope to get that under control, Captain.”

  Mike snorted. “Better you than me, General. Which particular magic wand are you planning on waving?”

  “Mike,” said Horner, warningly.

  “No,” said General Taylor, holding up a hand. “He’s right. Things on the ground are totally fucked-up. Every fucking report we get from the IGs says the same thing.” He turned to the frowning and bleary-eyed captain. It was always hard to tell if O’Neal was pissed off or not, however, because the frown was plastered on his face at all times. “There’s no magic wand. We’re getting more and more rejuvs in the pipeline. As we get people into their positions, most of the major problems will correct themselves. When there are officers and NCOs available to lead and be held responsible the directives that are already in place will start to take effect.

  “We’ve got the better part of a year to fix things. And most of the divisions, especially the really bad ones, will be fighting in fixed positions. So even if they crack in places it should be controllable. But we do have one trick left.”

  “Mike,” interjected Horner, “remember back when we were with GalTech we discussed who was going to be called up in what order?”

  “Sure,” said Mike, thinking back. “Combat background personnel first. Start from the highest ranks and work down. Noncombat experienced last.” He thought about it a bit more and smiled faintly. That was in the days before the Galactics’ problems with supply became evident. When everything was going to be pure Tech as a salvation. When the plans were perfect and the future was rosy. “Good days,” he added.

  “Well.” General Taylor nodded, with an understanding smile. “That was the plan. But somewhere along the line the plan and the process went astray.”

  “One of my ‘computer geeks,’ ” said Horner, with a wry aside to General Taylor, “finally got a look at the algorithm the personnel department was using for the call-up. It was based on Officer and Enlisted Evaluation Reports.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Mike
, with a chuckle. Although good soldiers generally came out fine on the Army’s evaluations, the reports tended to miss the difference between a good leader and a “Lifer.” The original plan had been to call up warriors as the first wave, setting a tone for the forces to follow. That had obviously not happened.

  “So,” said General Taylor, “we’ve had the software rewritten…”

  “By my people,” General Horner interjected.

  “Right,” continued Taylor. “From now on combat experience will have a high multiplier along with medals for valor. We’re calling it ‘The Old Soldier’ program.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Mike with a grim chuckle. “No modifier for age, right?” Most of the files that a program like that would spit out would have been formed in the caldrons of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Old soldiers indeed.

  “Right,” said Horner. “The program has been in place for a couple of weeks getting the bugs out, but the really big call-up will be during the conference.”

  There was an unexpected bark of laughter from Taylor. Both of the officers looked at him in puzzlement. Then Horner realized what he was thinking about and frowned in humor.

  “What?” said Mike. The fact that something had discomfited his former mentor was obvious even through his fatigue.

  “There were…” said General Horner, carefully.

  “A few bugs,” completed Taylor with a laugh. “His computer super geeks forgot that there are certain persons who, shall we say, are unavailable for recall.” The senior commander laughed again, uproariously. “Oh, Jesus, the look on his face!”

  Horner frowned. Hard. A sure sign he was about to burst out laughing. “The computer was searching for high-ranking officers who were still alive and had combat experience. We felt that if there were bugs, it would be better to make the mistake with senior officers than junior. The program had been deliberately set to ignore whether their experience was as the rank they ‘retired’ at.”

  “Although in one case it wouldn’t have mattered,” pointed out Taylor helpfully.

  “I still don’t get it,” said Mike, looking from face to face.