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  “Sir,” said Sergeant Mueller, “they could do more than that. We can hit back.”

  “Oh?” commented an Intel/Planning officer, looking askance at an NCO devising strategy. “The Cav is in Bradleys and Humvees. The Posleen open those like tin cans.”

  “Yes, ma’am, if you put them out in the open. But I went out on 95 north and south last month, just nosing around. Coming down from Fredericksburg it’s pretty darn flat but there are a few areas where, with improvement, they could fire hull-down. Get them hull-down, fire at max engagement range, which with those twenty-five millimeters is, what two thousand meters?” he asked the Cav commander.

  “About that,” agreed the Cav officer with a nod at the NCO.

  “Call for a volley of fire and boogie out,” continued Mueller. “It will require some engineering support but just a couple of bulldozers. That way we both keep the enemy in view and slow them down.”

  “You’ll take casualties,” said the corps commander, turning to the battalion commander, “and the few Posleen you kill will be a tithe of a tithe of their main force. Are you for it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the cavalry officer with understated enthusiasm. “That is a straightforward Cav mission. My boys are cocked, locked and ready to roll.”

  “Very well. Sergeant Mueller, you and Master Sergeant Ersin head up the road,” said the corps commander. “Get with the corps engineer before you leave. Tell him to assign you some civilian construction equipment. Make a list.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ersin quietly.

  “Colonel Abrahamson,” said the corps commander, “we have a battery of mobile one hundred fifty-five millimeter available. They’re the new Reaver model. Take it with you. As more come on-line, we’ll send the mobile units out to support you; the others we’ll be digging into Mosby and Libby Hills. Have your fire-support chief coordinate through corps artillery, since you’re effectively cut off from the rest of the Twenty-Second.”

  The Lieutenant General smiled grimly. “Last, Colonel, I hope I don’t have to say this. You are not to become decisively engaged, not for any reason. Understand?”

  “With upwards of four million Posleen?” The cavalry colonel chuckled dryly, with a rub of his thick, black hair. “General, my name’s Walter Jacob Abrahamson, not George Armstrong Custer.” The infamous cavalry general had been both blond and balding.

  “And remind your men not to try to enter abandoned homes and businesses,” the corps commander commented, sadly. “It looks like the ‘Scorched Earth’ program is going to get an early test.”

  * * *

  Parker Williamson closed the front door, blotting out the sight of the Posleen lander that had crushed the Hawkes’s house at the end of Bourne Street. He had already closed the curtains on the unpleasant view out the back. He turned to face his wife, down whose face tears cascaded.

  “Well,” he sighed, “I guess we drew the short straw.”

  She nodded, unable to speak, as their oldest daughter entered the room.

  “Is it gonna boom anymore, Mommy?” the four-year-old asked, dabbing at the passing tears.

  “No, sweetie.” Jan Williamson gathered her composure, picking up the two-year-old as he toddled into the room, still crying from the painful sonic booms. “Not that we’ll notice.”

  Parker locked the door and turned to a red panel by the standard home security system. The door swung open to reveal a key pad. A yellow light flashed above the pad and a beeping tone started.

  “Federally Authorized Home Destruction System Mod One is activated. Posleen emanations detected, predestruct sequencing authorized. Enter code for command authorization.”

  Parker punched in a code and hit set.

  “State your name.”

  “Parker Williamson.”

  “Parker Williamson, are you at this moment in your right mind?” the box asked, beginning the federally mandated litany.

  “Emergency bypass authorization.”

  “Please key in second authorization as required by federal law.”

  Jan walked over and keyed in a second sequence.

  “What is your name?”

  “Jan Williamson.”

  “Jan Williamson, do you concur in setting the Federally Authorized Home Destruction System Mod One into function? Be aware that the system is monitoring Posleen emanations in the near area.”

  “I do.”

  The panel chuckled for a moment, checking that their voice prints were correct and then the light went red. At the same time the home security system turned on.

  “Intruder detection system activated, autodestruct sequence activated.” In the basement of the house, two chemicals, harmless when separated, began to mix. “Destruct sequence will auto-activate upon unauthorized entry… may God protect and keep you.”

  “Come on, honey,” said Jan Williamson, picking up their daughter in a big hug, “let’s go read Peter Rabbit…”

  * * *

  Lieutenant General Arkady Simosin, Tenth Corps Commander, the corps tasked with the defense of Northern Virginia and Maryland, humorously called “The Army of the Potomac,” looked at the giant blotch of red on his southern flank and wiped his mouth.

  “Tell the Twenty-Ninth to pull his armored battalions back,” he told his G-3, pointing at the tactical display. “They’re too far forward. Empty Belvoir and Quantico, get them headed north of the Potomac. That’s going to be our defensive line.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, I called General Bernard. He said that he would only take that order from you directly and that he intended to drive into the Posleen flank to pull them off of Fredericksburg.”

  “What?” the general asked incredulously.

  “I just got off the horn with him.”

  “Get him back.” The general fumed as contact was made with the subordinate commander.

  “General Bernard?” he asked on speaker phone.

  “Yes, General?”

  “I believe the G-3 told you to pull your battalions back. I would like to know why you have refused.”

  “I believe that I can put enough pressure on the Posleen to pull some of them off of Fredericksburg, possibly give the Two-Twenty-Ninth some time to organize a breakout.”

  General Simosin considered General Bernard the epitome of the one officer you could do nothing with: active/stupid. A consummate politician, General Bernard had expended sweat and blood to become the Virginia Adjutant General — the senior military commander in the Virginia National Guard — in the days before the Posleen threat. With the rejuvenation of so many senior officers, such as Simosin, advancement had effectively stopped. General Bernard naturally blamed the rejuvenation program for his inability to advance to Lieutenant General.

  In fact, the general had been strongly considered for relief for cause. He was chronically insubordinate, jumped the chain of command at every opportunity, was tactically unsound and refused to subordinate his units to either Tenth or Twelfth Corps. Instead he insisted that they remained distributed in penny packets throughout the state.

  Now he held true to every negative in his history and it was about to get his troops slaughtered. Unfortunately, General Simosin knew that if he put pressure on him the idiot would just jump to the First Army commander and get the order countermanded. It was worse than the damn Confederates! Well, too bad.

  “General, you are ordered to round up your units and pull them across the Potomac. We cannot stop the Posleen short of that natural obstacle and I will not throw units away in a pointless gesture. That is an order, failure to follow it will result in your arrest.”

  “Dammit, General, do you realize that that will throw away Alexandria, the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery? Not to mention thousands of American citizens in Fredericksburg!”

  “And Washington National Airport and Fort Belvoir. I can read a map. And I’m in that area at the moment, I might add. I am fully aware of those facts as is the Continental Army commander. He is evacuating the area even as we speak.”

 
“We can stop them! This isn’t Barwhon or Diess; common people are standing up to them everywhere and wearing them away. We can stop them at any point on the map! Just give me one brigade of the Forty-First Division, and we can stop them before Quantico.”

  “Since I just ordered you to retreat, I could scarcely authorize a forlorn hope with someone else’s troops. General, pull your battalions back and do it now. Failure to do so will constitute violation of a direct order in combat. That is my final word.”

  Simosin squeezed the tabletop, trying to keep the tension from coming through in his voice. Now, if the First Army commander would only have the sense to see reality. Even if he did not, CONARC was one hundred percent behind pulling across the Potomac.

  “If that is your final word, General, very well.”

  “Then you will pull your troops back? Let me be clear, both General Keeton and I agree that contact should be held until all necessary measures have been emplaced. Do not contact the Posleen without direct and clear orders to do so by either myself or General Keeton. Is that clear?”

  “Yes. I will contact you when that withdrawal has been effected.”

  “Very well, start them back immediately. Out here.” He turned back to the assembled staff that had listened to the call.

  “And in the real world… how is the evacuation going?” General Simosin asked, taking a deep breath and turning to the Federal Emergency Management Agency representative.

  “Fairly well, all things considered,” the FEMA rep replied. “We’ve opened up the HOV lanes into Washington and we’re routing the refugees through and out of town. It’s moving slow, but we should have most of northern Virginia evacuated by morning. It would help if we could open up a few of the lanes the military isn’t using.

  “I know they are designated for defense use, but they’re being underutilized by your military forces. We could maintain one lane and an emergency lane for the military forces and it would more than handle what is moving currently.”

  He turned to the G-3. “Are we going to have a big increase?”

  “No, the convoys are pulling out of Belvoir and Quantico in a steady stream. We planned it that way and it’s taking about an hour per battalion to cycle them through beans and bullets. They shouldn’t pulse much. Most of them are headed towards D.C. also, but a few are being sent up the Prince William Parkway to Manassas. But I’m worried about civilian vehicles intruding on troop lanes.”

  “Issue orders to disable any civilian vehicle in a military lane with all appropriate force. Have the order broadcast and displayed on those overhead signs, then turn over unutilized lanes to FEMA. Anything else?”

  “No, we’re cutting all the corners we can,” replied the FEMA rep. “But when the Posleen start coming close, into contact, things could get out of hand.”

  “Do you need troops?”

  “We could use a few. MPs by preference.”

  “G-3?”

  “Three-Twenty-Fifth MP Battalion at your service, Madame.”

  “Thank you,” the FEMA rep said. “That should cover it.”

  “Get those civilians out of harm’s way; we’ll try to slow the centaur bastards down.” General Simonsin wiped his face and looked at the map projection.

  “Now as to that. I don’t want to have even cavalry in contact; the Posleen move too fast and hit too hard. We will follow the Reticulan Defense Plan to the letter and pull fully across the Potomac. I have so informed First Army and CONARC. So, to slow them down, what do we do for engineers?” The corps engineering brigade was at Fort Leonard Wood going through a large-scale engineering exercise. The timing of the exercise was exquisite. Exquisitely lousy.

  “The engineering companies of the Forty-First and Ninety-Fifth Divisions probably should accompany them, since they’ll have to dig in,” said the G-3.

  “So, what do we use?” the commander asked again.

  “Sir,” said one of the operations officers. “I called Fort Belvoir and, since they’ve reactivated the Fifty-Two Echo program there, they have plenty of combat engineering instructors and trainees. And there are the officers going through basic and advanced courses…”

  “ ‘And to the strains of Dixie, the cadets marched off the field to war,’ ” Simosin quoted. “Well, that’s a start. Where do we deploy them?”

  “The first real terrain obstacle the Posleen will encounter is at the Occoquan Estuary…” said the corps intelligence officer.

  * * *

  Second Lieutenant William P. Ryan — being a not quite graduate of the Basic Combat Engineers Officers’ course — did not know much about combat engineering. And he knew even less about combat in general. But he was willing to learn, even if this kind of makee-learnee was not particularly survivable. One look at the pitiable stream of refugees headed north on Interstate 95 was enough to make him determined to do his best.

  Most of his classmates were rigging the I-95 and U.S. 1 bridges over the Occoquan River under the expert tutelage of their instructors. The senior instructor had decided that Ryan was a good-enough prospect that he was sent to destroy a bridge all on his own, and his “platoon” was rigging the 123 bridge under the guidance of an experienced instructor-sergeant. The platoon was a group of trainees from the enlisted combat engineers course along with their drill instructors and junior technical instructors. The interesting challenge in concrete cutting posed by the bridge he had left up to the much more experienced NCO instructors.

  He crossed the river and walked down through the charming little town of Occoquan to get a better look at the far ridge from the Posleen’s perspective. The town was nestled along the south side of the river where it passed between two high ridges. The subsurface geology of the ridges created the falls that gave birth to the town and that were integrated into the Occoquan dam. That dam, in turn, created the reservoir that stretched from his location nearly to Manassas, twenty miles away.

  As he stood just below Rockledge Manor he noticed a small footbridge crossing over the river just below the waterworks. He made a note to have a squad come over and rig it for demolition as well. The dam, on the other hand, was another matter.

  If they dropped the dam, God only knew where the Posleen might be able to cross the Occoquan. After checking his map he guessed it would be somewhere around Yates Ford Road, half the distance they might otherwise have to travel. On the other hand, the Posleen could push forces across the dam itself. Not many or in great force, but any intrusion was to be dissuaded. And there was an older, partially submerged dam as well. He was unsure how to handle that tactical problem and decided to pass it up the line.

  Walking rapidly back through the deserted town he got a strange feeling of sadness. He could remember the days before the Posleen were a word, before Earth knew it was in the path of an invasion. Even as America prepared, as more and more shortages occurred and liberties fell by the wayside in the race to get ready, the world was more or less the same as it had always been.

  At that moment, striding rapidly back to where engineers under his command were preparing to destroy a major civil structure, he knew that this was truly the end of the golden age. That from now until an unforeseeable future man would be a hunted animal on his own world and that only God knew what the outcome would be.

  * * *

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the loudspeaker boomed, “we need you to remain calm.” The crowd gathered behind the Fredericksburg Public Safety Building was mostly women and children. They had run from their homes in fear and fled to the only refuge they knew. There was plenty of room with all of the ambulances and police cars dispatched. The group huddled in the gathering dark, most of them knowing that by coming here they were only delaying the inevitable.

  “We are working on a way to get you out,” continued the speaker, one of the remaining fire fighters, “and we just need you to remain calm.”

  “He’s dreamin’,” said Little Tom Sunday in a monotone. Then, “Hiya, Wendy.”

  Wendy Cummings spun around.
Little Tom stood behind her with a pack on his back and duffel bag at his feet. He was wearing some sort of weird black padding that stretched almost to his knees, a black helmet like the soldiers wore and a pair of sporty sunglasses. Inside she sighed in exasperation. If there was one person she did not want to spend her last hours with, it was Little Tommy Sunday. But she might as well be polite.

  “Hi, Tommy. What’s that stuff?” she asked out of curiosity, gesturing at the padding.

  “Body armor,” he answered in a disinterested tone. “It won’t stop one of their railguns, but it’ll stop the shotgun rounds and spalling.”

  Her eyes widened as she recognized it from “Real Police” shows. Officers had been shot at point-blank range wearing similar suits and survived. “Do you have any more?” she asked, hopefully.

  “Well,” he answered, bending down stiffly to rummage in his duffel bag, “I don’t have any more Class One, but I’ve got a Safe-Tee, some T-shirt Kevlar.” He pulled the body armor out of the bag, revealing the contents. He glanced at her chest. “It might fit,” he ended doubtfully.

  “Holy shit,” she gasped, “what-all do you have in there?” The bag gleamed with the bluing of lethal purpose. She recognized the shape of some sort of machine gun and other things she thought were grenades.

  She had taken the school survival course, but only because it was required. But, since you didn’t have to pass, she had spent most of her time doing homework from other classes and passing notes to her friends. She barely recognized the items in the bag from familiarization.

  “A few odds and ends,” he answered, zipping the bag shut.

  “Do you… Could I borrow a gun or something?” she asked, trying to figure out the connections on the body armor.

  “What would you do with it?” he asked, disgustedly, grabbing the Velcro and efficiently connecting first one underarm strap then the other.

  “Try?” she asked, looking him in the eye for the first time in years. She suddenly realized that he was far taller than she thought; much taller than she was, which was a surprise. Everyone just thought of him as Little Tommy. He had been self-effacing for so long, it had made him appear short.