A Hymn Before Battle, page 19
"I have not spoken directly to any officer about training, sir. That was in fact my order. Nor have I entered the battalion area, nor have I entered any training area. I have, in fact, obeyed the letter of the order."
"I see." The general smiled. "I suppose there is a reason that the NCOs and enlisted in the companies are doing better, overall, than the officers?"
"Possibly, sir."
"Related to your influence?"
"Possibly, sir. Then again, to be honest, it might have something to do with the officers spending more time in the `club' than they do in suits."
"But you have influenced training," the general pointed out.
"Yes, sir."
"Despite the training schedule authorized by the Battalion S-3?"
"Yes, sir."
"Were you aware of the published training schedule?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. I'm glad you didn't turn a blind eye to your misdeeds." The general shook his head, looking suddenly harried.
"Son, I'm going to tell you this by way of an apology. The battalion is an attachment as opposed to one of `my' units, a III Corp unit that is. Therefore, it would be damned difficult for me to relieve Lieutenant Colonel Youngman, much as I would currently like to." He raised an eyebrow inviting comment, but Mike remained silent. He shook his head again and went on.
"It's a hell of a fix to take a unit into battle where I distrust the entire command team. So I've done what I can. Disregarding my long-standing rule against micromanaging my subordinate units, a rule the colonel has apparently never heard of, I gave Lieutenant Colonel Youngman a written order to initiate a vigorous training program in ACS combat. It states that, given his failure to date to train in vital areas, if the battalion fails to score eighty percent or better in ACS training norms by the date of our landing it will give me no choice but to relieve him for cause. He did not take it well at all. He seems to feel that since there is no way to prepare adequately because of `grossly inadequate preparation time' on Earth, the battalion should be reissued standard weaponry and deployed as regular airborne infantry."
"Good God," Mike whispered. The upcoming battle was sure to be a bloodbath for ACS, going in as lightly weaponed airborne infantry would be suicide.
The general smiled coldly again. "I cannot tell you how much I agree. Trust me: I had disabused the colonel of that concept by the time I was done.
"Before some of this came up I sent a personal e-mail to Jack Horner. He said that your only problem was that you needed someone holding your leash. If there is a problem that requires a juggernaut all I should do is release the leash. That is why we are having this conversation.
"Now, I've given Colonel Youngman all the guidance I think he needs; I did not order him to use you as a training asset. So, if he doesn't contact you within a week, leave a message with my AID. I'll make an unannounced visit and drop a question about `that GalTech expert, whatsisname?' Clear?"
"As crystal, sir."
"If I feel it necessary, I will tell you that you have carte blanche. At that point I will have to relieve the colonel. I don't have a replacement for him I trust that has any ACS time. You do understand the implications of having to place a captain like, for example, Brandon, in command of a battalion."
"Yes, sir," Mike was feeling weak in the knees. The personnel and policy wonkers in Washington would go ballistic. The repercussions for GalTech, which already had a bad reputation for ramming through conventions, might be worse than losing the battalion. The entrenched bureaucracy could throw up the damnedest obstacles when they felt threatened and did not seem to give a damn that there was a war on.
"Thank you for coming, Lieutenant. We did not have this conversation. This compartment will self-destruct in thirty seconds. Get lost."
"Yes, sir. Where am I?"
21
Camp McCall, NC Sol III
0917 July 25th, 2002 AD
"Afternoon, Gunny, siddown." Like many of the buildings springing up to support the expanding war effort, the company commander's combined office and quarters was a sixty-six-foot trailer. The office occupied one end, with the living quarters on the other. Among other things, this arrangement meant one less piece of housing that had to be allocated for the burgeoning officer corps. The company commander was a recycled second lieutenant and the only officer in the training company.
With the new-old disciplinary techniques and the paucity of officers on the training base, the gaps that had been closing between officer and enlisted corps in the past decade were beginning to widen again. Despite the fact that their CO was a basically nice if stupid second john, the recruits looked upon him as sitting at the right hand of God; the battalion commander was, of course, God.
Gunnery Sergeant Pappas and the other NCOs encouraged this attitude; keeping the trainees in line was becoming more and more difficult. Not only was it necessary to learn radically new technologies, but the threat bearing down on Earth was causing ripples of disruption at every level. Although the prestige of being Strike Troopers was high, the stress of not knowing your eventual duty assignment, not knowing, as the Guard troops did, that you would be directly defending home and family, was causing a rise in desertions among the Strike training companies.
Desertions were a problem that the United States military had not had to deal with in years. Pappas had heard rumor that it was even worse among the formed units. Soldiers there would desert, taking their weapons and equipment, and return home to defend their families. The families would in turn hide them and their stolen equipment from the authorities. What the long-term solution would be no one knew.
Thus, creating a solemn figurehead out of this amiable cretin became a necessity. Sometimes, as a miracle of that strange art called leadership, a simple pat on the back or stern look from the briefly-glimpsed company commander would keep a recruit from bolting. Once they graduated they became somebody else's responsibility.
"Gunny," the lieutenant continued as the gigantic Pappas settled carefully into the rickety swivel chair, "there's been another change in midstream. Now all the units, as they complete basic training, are to be shipped as units to their permanent posting. They will complete individual training and unit training there. And that is where the suits will be going."
"Okay, sir. I'll tell the troops." Pappas waited patiently. Sometimes the commander would have to think for some time to remember what the next item was. This time he seemed to have made notes.
"Yes, well, further," the lieutenant continued, looking at his notes with a sniff, "we are being levied to provide cadre. You are, personally, being levied as a first sergeant to a former Airborne unit that is to be converted to an Armored Combat Suit unit.
"You will be taking your platoon to Indiantown Gap to ramp up to readiness. That will be your permanent post, of course. I guess you'll be joined by other troops there."
Shit. This platoon? thought Pappas, mentally categorizing the characters he had just become "Top" to. "Yes, sir. Are you continuing as CO?" No, no, no, no, no, no!
"No, I've been designated as critical here, dammit. God knows when I'll get a combat command," said the portly officer, tugging at his uniform nervously.
Never if the battalion commander has his way. "Will that be all?"
"Not quite. Ground Forces training command has decided to cut short the training cycle, so the cycle will be ending in two weeks instead of four and final testing has been canceled. The unit will start clearing post next week and you will join them. Transportation is being arranged but they don't know when you'll receive the rest of your NCO cadre. Of course, your officers should be waiting for you."
"Yes, sir, I understand," Pappas said, thinking ominously of the phrases "should" and "of course." "Will there be movement orders soon?"
"Well, right now I'm passing on verbal orders to prepare your platoon and the company as a whole to ship out. Get with the first sergeant to arrange the details."
"Yes, sir."
"Dismissed."
22
Orbit, Diess IV
2233 GMT April 23rd, 2002 AD
Diess was a hot dry world, proof to Lieutenant O'Neal that the Galactics had an overpopulation problem. It had three extremely large continents; about sixty percent of its surface was land, with coastlines that received a limited amount of rain, about as much as the Sahara, and vast mountainous inlands drier than Death Valley.
Although the ecology of the seas was extremely complex, the dominant family was vaguely polychaetan with a complex structurally resilient polymer replacing chitin. There was virtually no terrestrial ecology. Instead the shores were packed with Indowy and Darhel megalopoli, their fingers jutting inland from the life-giving sea. Galactic technology easily extracted pure water and edible food from the plankton-rich seawater. It was obvious that a little food, a little water and raw materials were all the Indowy needed for life.
Worlds like this were the factories of the peaceful, loving Galactic Federation. Billions of Indowy slaving away day in and out with the fraction of Darhel skimming the cream. The peaceful worlds of the democratic Galactic Federation filled with peaceful little boggles whose only need was to serve. Dem dakkies a singin' in the field and the Darhel masters they's a lubbin' evy one of 'em. Galactic politics made Mike want to puke; but not as hard as what the Posleen were doing.
Galactic technology, high reproductive rates and the minuscule wants of the Indowy had permitted a population of twelve billion and booming before the Posleen arrived. The population was now five billion and dropping. One continent was wholly lost; one continent was still unscathed. The third had been lost except for a pie-piece shaped wedge in the northwest corner; the Posleen were as uninterested in the interior as the Galactics.
Mike stood on a virtual ridge inland of that pie-piece watching the floor of the valley hump and ripple like wind-wracked canvas. The Posleen were coming and 2nd Battalion 325th Mobile Infantry Regiment was preparing to meet them.
The first unit to engage was the battalion scout platoon, popping up from a conveniently perpendicular gully and opening fire with grav rifles. As lines of silver lightning connected them with the Posleen mass the front ranks began to explode. The teardrops burned through the air followed by lines of silver plasma. When they impacted they began to impart their kinetic energy to the flesh and liquid of the Posleen. The impact caused the bodies of the Posleen front rank to become their own bombs as blood flashed to steam and hydrostatic shock flashed the surroundings to ions. The fractional c depleted-uranium rounds impacted like hypervelocity grenades.
The scouts were difficult for Mike to see. By order of the battalion commander the armor had been spray painted a mottled brown to match the landscape. However, when Mike dialed his sensors to wavelengths visible to the Posleen, the chemicals in the off-the-shelf paint caused it to fluoresce under the energetic output of Diess' F-2 primary. He slugged this sensor adjustment to some of the other observers just as the Posleen returned fire.
Since the scouts had waited until the Posleen were under five hundred meters to engage, since they stood out like light bulbs in a dark room under UV-C, since they bounded completely into the open instead of firing from cover and since there were four thousand Posleen in the front rank firing at thirty targets it was a miracle of armor design that only nine scouts were killed in the first volley. The rest were thrown bodily backwards by the sheer mass of hypervelocity flechettes and flipped head over heels into the gully.
The fire thus suppressed, the Posleen rushed forward, as fast as lions for that short sprint, and were within two hundred meters before unconcerted fire resumed. At that range, despite full output from the few remaining functional scouts, the fire was beaten down and the position overrun in seconds.
Farther up the valley, Charlie company began long rifle and machine gun fire from over a thousand meters. Suit grenades and company 100mm mortars started to fall on the Posleen mass. The grenades and mortars would open wide holes like rainfall in a pond then the press of other Posleen would close over the fallen and the whole mass would press on. The lines of silver fire would drive two or three deep into the mass, but the pressure of the whole horde drove the horde forward against the fans of fire and spread it out to flank the extended company line. As the fire was redirected to engage the flankers it reduced the overall fire pressure and the horde drove forward at a swifter pace over windrows of its own dead. But the Posleen firmly believed in "waste not want not"; these bodies disappeared as the following ranks dismembered and processed them, rations for today and days to come.
Without a pause or waver the indefatigable enemy trotted towards the beleaguered company. Occasionally a mortar or grenade would, by chance, kill a God King. The mass around him would falter, momentarily, in its advance, then, as the individual normals of the fief shifted allegiance to other local God Kings, it would drive forward again.
Eventually the reduced mass, originally about three hundred thousand individuals, reached a range where their inaccurate fire began to affect the company. According to plan the company began to leapfrog back by platoon sections, two platoons maintaining cover fire as one withdrew. At this point another problem arose.
First, as a platoon stopped firing to withdraw, the retreat and reduced fire pressure caused the remaining mass to rush forward; the sight of the retreating platoon created a chase reaction in the normals and Posleen had apparently never heard of taking cover from fire. Second, the stop and bound nature of the maneuver was slow and difficult to coordinate. The combination caused 3rd platoon to be overrun in the second withdrawal as it made an out of position halt trying to cover 1st platoon.
At this point the original plan, a Cannae-like envelopment, went straight out the old air lock and Alpha and Bravo were ordered to leave their positions on the ridge, get down in the valley and prepare a defense for Charlie to pass through. Battalion weapons company was ordered to ascend the ridge and get plunging fire with their terawatt lasers.
A bright rear-rank God King, noticing the struggling troopers dragging the bulky lasers up the ridge slope, had his fief take the group under mass fire, destroying the battalion laser platoon. When Captain Wright of Alpha company was killed, the momentary confusion let a group of pursuing Posleen slip through with Charlie company. The flanking fire from this group, about two hundred and a God King, destroyed the Alpha second platoon and the whole Posleen mass poured through the breach, rolling up the battalion from its center. The centaurs poured over the troopers, stripping them out of their refractory suits and butchering them for a celebratory barbecue. Their hoots and cries of victory could be clearly heard on the ridge.
"Well," said General Houseman, on the observer channel, "that was . . . words fail me."
"A really quick way to lose a billion credits, sir?" Mike quipped.
"The worst defeat since Cumberland College versus Georgia Tech?" asked his chief of staff, General Bridges.
"Huh?" said two or three voices, General Houseman's among them.
"222 to 0, Tech," said the Rambling Wreck.
"Clear VR," they heard Lieutenant Colonel Youngman say on the command channel.
The visions of drifting uranium residue, smoke, dust and feasting Posleen cleared to reveal a large cargo bay scattered with fully intact combat suits in various states of immobility.
"AID, cut Lieutenant Colonel Youngman and Major Norton into this channel," ordered General Houseman. "Colonel Youngman, Major Norton, listen up. I want first reports on the G-3's desk at 1200 hours tomorrow. Hot wash on the exercise will be at 1630. Okay, you got your asses kicked, but you're improving. We'll do it again day after tomorrow, urban scenario. Get to work. Clear circuit.
"Christ," he continued on the local circuit, "I hope they're doing better on Barwhon."
23
Ttckpt Province, Barwhon V
1228 GMT February 25th, 2002 AD
"Sarge, you got any nine millimeter?" asked Trapp, taking a careful bead on a shotgun-toting Posleen slogging through the swamp. A massive forest giant had fallen and been consumed save for the root ball; in its lee the two human warriors crouched awaiting the centaurs.
"Sorry," grunted Mosovich, tying a bandage on his upper arm with his teeth. The shotgun flechettes had come within a hair of taking his left arm off and had torn away the transceiver on his hip, but close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.
The MP-5 phuted and the Posleen point slumped into the purple muck. "Well, guess it's time to get down to hand-to-hand."
"I hope not, I've only got one. Here," Jake said, tossing Trapp his .45. "It's not much . . ." The .50 caliber ammunition was long gone, but it had been put to good use. The Five-O was the only weapon they had that could stop the God King's saucers. After the first week the God Kings had discovered not to follow too close to the chase.
Trapp and Mosovich had left a trail of Posleen bodies in their wake. The two master killers had used every bit of resource they possessed over the past month as they fled the vengeful residents of Site B but it was starting to look like the last morning at the Alamo.
"Fuck it, it's bullets," the SEAL said philosophically. "Can you handle that Street Sweeper with one hand?"
"I can kinda use the left, and it's only for steadying." Jake studied the back trail for a moment and rested the shotgun on a gnarled root. He did a quick check to ensure the barrel was clear.
"I'll pop the next one that comes through, then when they spread out we'll move back. Got any demo left?"
"Only grenades," said Trapp. "And I wanna keep 'em."
"Fer what? Okay, get ready." There was movement in the bushes across the open area.
"With what?" muttered Trapp, slinging the MP-5 and pulling out a set of concussion grenades. Although there was minimal shrapnel effect because of the mud, the liquid transmitted the shock wave with great effectiveness. "Oh, well."
