A Hymn Before Battle lota-1 Read online

  The current Sergeant Major of the Army was Command Sergeant Major Robert McCarmen. Sergeant Major McCarmen was a contemporary of Sergeant Major Mosovich and they had both come up through Special Forces. But, whereas Sergeant Major Mosovich was always somewhere overseas doing something odd or unmentionable, with few exceptions Sergeant Major McCarmen had been at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (5th and 7th Groups), Fort Lewis, Washington (1st Group) or Fort Carson, Colorado (10th Group) except for training missions. He had, however, deployed for Grenada, Panama and Desert Storm. Somehow, despite the fact that these operations had involved minimal real combat for special operations personnel, with a few glaring exceptions, Sergeant Major McCarmen had amassed an impressive set of medals. Silver Star, Bronze Star with V device for valor in combat, and even the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for courage in the military pantheon. Each medal was fully authorized and if the citations were a little vague, well, what could be expected for a “Black Warrior.” The fact that the citations were all written by commanders with whom the sergeant major had a close and warm relationship was beside the point: it had to be your commander who made the commendation and McCarmen always interacted well with his officers.

  His many citations and his ability to interact smoothly with senior officers and politicians had garnered him the most coveted position of any Army NCO: Sergeant Major of the Army, Top Dog of the whole Big Green Machine.

  At the previous year’s convention, Sergeant Major Mosovich, Command Sergeant Major of Fifth Special Forces Group in a virtually unadorned Dress Green Uniform and Sergeant Major McCarmen, Command Sergeant Major of the Army, in a medal-bedecked army-blue Dress Uniform, had happened to enter an empty elevator together, both somewhat in their cups. When it reached the ground floor, the Sergeant Major of the Army, some eighty pounds heavier than Jake Mosovich, was unconscious and bleeding on the floor and Sergeant Major Mosovich was seen to exit the elevator shaking his right hand as if it hurt.

  “Yeah, I guess I told him that, Jake,” said General Trayner, mollified, “but I told building security to inform me when you arrived.”

  “Well, General, General Taylor indicated that it was pretty important and the way he said it made it sound like maybe this conversation never happened. So, since building security logs entry and exit…” The scarred NCO shrugged.

  “You slipped the Pentagon security net?” asked the Vice Chief of Staff, storm clouds building in his eyes.

  “Well, you did say it was black,” said Mosovich, stretching out the kinks. He had been sitting totally motionless for the last three hours. If he had been a spy, it would have been tedious but fruitful. It was amazing what generals would discuss, assuming their words were not being overheard. Jake was not sure what the bottom line was, the general had not talked about that directly, but the conversations clearly indicated that something large was afoot.

  “Not that fucking black,” the general growled. “God dammit Jake, this is too fucking much. I covered for you last year, but watch your fucking step.”

  “Roger, General, sir.” The NCO continued to smile slightly, obviously unrepentant.

  The general dropped his anger as ill-spent and laughed. “You always were impossible to discipline, you little fuck.” He rubbed the tip of his nose and shook his head.

  “Yeah, and you were impossible to train, even as a snot-nosed LT.” The NCO smiled again and got up to make himself a cup of coffee. The general invariably had the best coffee in the Army, a result of having spent a year doing cross duty with the Navy. Jake poured himself a cup of the excellent concoction and took a deep and satisfying whiff of the aroma. A sip confirmed that it was the general’s usual excellent brew.

  “So, what’s up?” he asked cocking an eyebrow and recapturing his seat on the couch.

  “Well, the shit has well and truly hit the fan, Jake. Have you ever gotten wind of the ULF projects? They ever rope you in?” asked the general, taking a sip of his own java.

  “Unidentified Life Forms? Yeah, they were nosing around for a special unit back in, what? ’93 or ’94? Some dumb fuck gave ’em my name and I went through the stupidest series of psychological evals in history. I get paid a hundred fifty bucks a month extra to jump out of airplanes so naturally one of the questions is ‘would you jump from a high place.’ Jesus.” He sighed in exasperation. “Shrinks.”

  “Where do you stand? Do you think they’re out there or not?” The general might have thought he had a poker face in place, but Jake had played too many poker games with him not to see the signs.

  “You must know something, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” said the NCO, not rising to the bait.

  “Yeah, well, we need a special team. You won’t necessarily lead it; that will be decided later.” Trayner pulled out a purple file folder, elaborately enwrapped in Top Secret tape. “About seven to ten, various specialties, to perform a covert insertion in a hostile environment with hostile indigenous forces to do order of battle and terrain assessments.”

  “You can’t get that with overhead, boss? And where in the hell are we going to send a team against ‘hostile forces’? We’re currently at peace, miracle of miracles.” He wiggled his finger, indicating that the general, sir, should stop being coy and hand over the file. He could smell the mission and it smelled dangerous and interesting, two attributes that always caught him. For all his bitching about running open-eyed towards danger, if he could have walked away from an adrenaline rush he would have gotten out of this business a long time ago.

  “We… can’t get overhead. There’s coverage. And the where is in this folder,” Trayner said, waving it back and forth as if to waft it under Jake’s nose. Trayner knew Jake’s weakness of old.

  “Okay, drop the other shoe, General. What’s it got to do with ULFs?” Jake sometimes felt that he was the proverbial terminated cat; curiosity was definitely going to kill him someday.

  “Ahem, let’s just say you’re not the sneakiest son of a bitch in town anymore.” The normally somber general smiled. “Himmit Rigas, now might be a good time.” With those words, the wall to the right of the general’s desk unfolded into a four-limbed being, its skin color rippling from the thin green stripes of the wallpaper to a uniform purple gray. The arms that had been stretched upward to the ceiling slowly slipped to the floor until it was in a quadrupedal stance. It now appeared to be an equi-limbed frog with four eyes, one set on either end, and two mouths, one on either end. There was a complex honeycomb formation above the mouths and between wide-set eyes; it could have been an ear or a nose. The skin continued to ripple as the being flowed forward and raised one of its paw/hands in an obvious invitation to shake. A box strapped to the wrist/ankle began to speak in a high tenor.

  “You are remarkably still for a human. Do you know any good stories?” it said.

  This moment would come to many people over the next few years. Each would deal with it in a defining way. For the first time in the history of mankind, people would know without doubt that man was not alone in the universe, that there was other intelligent life in the galaxy, and would look on the face of an alien being. Some would react with fear, some with friendship, some with love, each response as diverse as mankind. Sergeant Major Mosovich simply stretched out his hand in return. At the touch of the alien paw, his adrenaline gland shot a leemer, defined by the military as a cold shot of urine to the heart, into his system. The proffered appendage was cool and smooth, covered with a fine coating of silken feathers. Jake carefully controlled his breathing and voice. “Thanks. You’re not half bad yourself. How long have you been there?”

  “Since yesterday in the day. After the second meal you take, but before the general’s afternoon briefing. I entered from the ceiling through the door while the guard directed a visitor. The lock was insignificant. It was, as you discovered, readily manipulated through a magnetic pick. The general has had fifteen visitors and seventy-eight phone calls in the last eighteen hours. He has been present for fifteen o
f those eighteen hours. His visitors were, in order, his aide, Lieutenant Colonel William Jackson, on the subject of his canceling a previously scheduled social engagement. The second visitor—”

  “Excuse me, Himmit Rigas, but I need to hold an initial briefing for Sergeant Major Mosovich.” The general smiled politely, having already become used to the Himmit’s characteristic volubility. His smile carefully did not reveal teeth.

  “Certainly, General. My tale can wait to fully unfold.”

  Jake slowly turned back to the general and collapsed onto the couch. He refused to watch as the Himmit flowed back into camouflage against the wall.

  “The background brief is in here.” Trayner finally tossed Jake the purple file. “Read it here; it doesn’t leave this room. Then start thinking about a team to take off-planet for a reconnaissance mission. The world will be Earth-like, swampy and cool. You’ll be preparing here and there extensively with the Himmit. When we get done with the initial operations order I’ll send you back to Bragg. Set up a team, but you don’t brief them until you’ve decided on the final group. After that they go on lock down, that’s from NCA too.”

  “How did the Pres. become involved?” asked Mosovich, not yet opening the file.

  “They called him on the phone,” answered the VCA.

  “Really?”

  “Really.” The officer shook his head. “They just called him from orbit on his direct line, along with the heads of the G-7, China and Russia. That was three days ago.”

  “Fast work for Washington.” Jake took another sip of his coffee, opening the file as he did so. As he did he noticed that the whole file was constructed of slick flash paper. This was being held awfully close to the vest if the VCA was handling a flash file. The file felt greasy and cold in his hands and he had a premonition that the mission was going to feel the same way. “Okay, but I’ll need one other person to help recruit the team.”

  “Who?” asked the general, suspiciously.

  “A sergeant first class named Ersin.”

  The general thought about it briefly then nodded. “Okay, you can brief him in on my authority. Understand, right now this is as closely held as anything I’ve ever heard; it’s all on the old boy network. Do not reveal anything to anybody else.”

  “I don’t even tell myself half the things I do.” Jake said with a smile and, with one last glance at the Himmit retracting into camouflage, he began to read the file.

  3

  Ft. McPherson, GA Sol III

  0931 EDT March 18th, 2001 ad

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Admiral Daniel Cleburne and for those of you who don’t recognize me, I’m the Chief of Naval Operations.” The secure auditorium was about half filled with a mixture of uniformed and civilian personnel, mostly male. Something about most of the civilians made Mike suspect they had once worn blue or green. Apparently others besides General Horner had dipped into former commands.

  “I was chosen to deliver this address to communicate the gravity of the information and because I could disappear more easily than the other Joint Chiefs. For the record I am currently sailing in the Bahamas.

  “As covered in your agreements, each of you should have already contacted next of kin and informed them that you agreed to be locked in for a period of two to four months. You are working with a former colleague on a secret project and you will be home soon. Please, in your future communications, downplay the severity of this situation as much as possible. That a project has shanghaied a number of civilians will, inevitably, come to the ears of the press, but the longer we can stonewall the core information, the better for the nation and the world. We prefer to release it timed with other countries and in such a way as to minimize… uncontrolled reactions.

  “My wife hates the old ‘good-news-bad-news’ routine but here goes:

  “The good news, for most of you science fiction buffs anyway, is that first contact has been made with a friendly alien species.”

  He waited for the muted reaction to die down. Most of the people had been playing the “what’s-this-all-about” game and had reached at least that side of the answer. A few had guessed the rest. Now time for the other shoe.

  “Bad news: they’re in the midst of a multiplanet war.”

  This time the buzz of conversation went on for some time before he raised his hands.

  “Please, we have a lot of ground to cover and not much time, so I’m going to make this fast and dirty. I want everyone to have a general feel for our goals and constraints. You will all be issued briefing papers,” he gestured to a number of officers moving down the aisles and passing out files, “and there will be alien advisors,” a stir started, “and technologies,” and grew, “to draw on. At ease! We don’t have time for this, people.”

  He referred to the papers before him. “First a little background. For the last hundred thousand years or so there has been a political entity, for purposes of translation we are referring to it as a federation, occupying the habitable planets surrounding Earth. They’re all peaceful races, apparently, because all the warlike races had wiped themselves out before they discovered deep space flight. For those of you Sci-Fiers,” he grimaced, “who have been pondering over the ‘Drake Equation,’ whatever that is, they’re the reason we haven’t been getting any mail. Until now, at least.

  “About one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy-five years ago the periphery of the Federation experienced an invasion by a new race called the Posleen. This species is about as vile as anything you SF guys ever came up with. Basic information on them is included in the briefing papers and more detailed information will be on the planning team net. In general they are four-legged sort of centaur-looking omnivores that lay eggs. Their technology is about equivalent to the Federation’s and generally similar in scope, but they don’t seem to use it very effectively.

  “However, being totally nonviolent, none of the Federation races have any history of conflict. In addition, they have some difficulties with engaging in or even discussing violence, even after having been in a war for nearly two centuries. They have only two races that are able to ‘pull the trigger’ so to speak and those races have some problems with it. Because of their problems, they have been unable to slow the advance of the enemy. They’ve tried to create artificial intelligence devices — self-willed combat robots — to handle the problem but after one disastrous experience when the robots tried to take over they outlawed that approach.”

  With the exception of the rustle of paper, the large room was now totally silent as hard-faced men and women started flipping though the explosive documents in their hands. Mike smiled grimly at the layout. The document was subdivided into categories: Introduction, Threat, Friendly Forces, Mission and Appendix. It was the most succinct document of its kind he had ever seen.

  “The main friendly race involved in actual conflict, the Himmit, are cowards. That’s not an insult, it’s just the way they are as a species. If they think they’ve been detected, even suspect it, they break contact. The other race, the one we have had most contact with, the Darhel, are only able to fire once as individuals. Then they are turned into some sort of automaton by the very action of taking a life. The other two races, the Indowy and the Tchpth, are so totally nonviolent they have no capacity at all for violence.” Mike flipped past the threat portion and looked over the information on the first alien races ever encountered. Whatever happened over the next few months, this conference was going to be interesting.

  “So now, basically, the Galactics let AIs do the driving, push a button, automatically lose the button pusher and hope for the best.

  “The best has not happened. They have lost over seventy worlds and the rate of loss is growing. They have some, really very little, success in space but are totally lost in ground warfare.

  “There has apparently been a faction that has wanted to enlist the aid of humans for practically the whole war. The plan of this faction was to get the help of humans not only as fighters, but as weapons
and tactics designers. Because of their lack of experience at war, the Federation has been copying the enemy when it comes to those areas, but the enemy is not exactly the most efficient group at either one.

  “They, the Posleen that is, have one thinking leader to control around four hundred ‘troops’ that are not much more intelligent than chimpanzees. Their weapons do not have sights so they depend on mass fire, somewhat like a Napoleonic war broadside. And their ships are laughable, from a real war perspective.

  “Since that is all the Federation had to work with for ideas, they use a tank that fires a sort of broad-area energy mine for ground combat. Their ‘warships’ are converted freighters.” He snorted in disgust and looked over toward the mass of black uniforms. “I think we can come up with better, and so do the world’s leaders. You’d damn well better, or I’ll have your commissions.” There was some grim laughter but most of the attendees were listening with half an ear and flipping rapidly through their briefing papers.

  “The idea of this conference, therefore, is for each team to determine the sort of weapons and tactics that they envision their country using for this war.

  “Now for more bad news. The upper level commanders, that is myself and some of the ‘type’ commanders, are going to have to hash out a few things. But there are some political and budgetary constraints that the Federation has on its military. Those constraints are going to cause most of the Navy, Air Force, Marines and elite Army to be absorbed by the Federation forces.” At that a buzz of conversation filled the previously silent room. Cleburne motioned them to quiet down and kept talking.

  “In some cases we will interact with other countries’ militaries that are going through the same thing, especially allied militaries. And the final plans for spaceships, comsat shuttles and space fighters, things related to the Federation fleet, will have to be agreed upon through a joint committee. On the other hand, because America is such a predominant power in those areas, we will have primary position on the committee. Let me be clear about the bottom line here: the people who are coming up with the concepts for warships and infantry forces had better get it right. There won’t be a hell of a lot of review and they’re likely to be what we’re fighting for our lives with. Because that is the last bad news.