“What do you want, O’Neal?” he snapped shortly.
“I can pull this out, sir.”
“What?”
“We can still win this one, sir. I’m behind the lines with a half company of troops. We don’t have any weapons but we have antimatter out the ying-yang.” O’Neal was talking fast because he knew what he was about to suggest was not the way America played the game. But he also knew that if General Houseman thought about it he would see the truth of the battleplan.
“We can move to the area of the encirclement and drop the megascrapers right on the Posleen. All it requires is taking out about thirty critical supports and these buildings will fall. We can drop them on the Posleen and at the same time clear the way for the MLR. Probably we could cut a swath to the primary line and break the cav out, but at the least we could protect the cav units until they can be withdrawn by sea.”
“You want to blow up more of these buildings? The Darhel are already screaming about Qualtren and Qualtrev!”
“Sir, with all due respect, two items, three really. One, the buildings are going to be lost anyway unless we go nuclear. Then it will be centuries before they can use the real estate. Two, it is not a political decision, it is an operational one. The Darhel have already agreed that we decide how to wage war. And, whereas I know that the United States Army prefers to limit collateral damage, sometimes it’s time to just get down and do the dance, sir, hang the consequences. Any friendlies in there are dead anyway.”
“Give me a few minutes to consider it, Lieutenant. How long to get from your present location to there?”
“About an hour, sir, the way I’m going to go.”
“All right. I’ll be back in no more than five minutes. Would the support of the ACS units in the reserve be useful, critical, or unnecessary.”
“I need weapons more than troops, sir. If you can get me weapons and detonators, I don’t need more than another fifty troops.”
General Houseman felt energy moving back into him, the crushing depression of the defeat evaporating. Whether he went with the option or not, whether they won or not, the Posleen were going to end up knowing they had been kissed, or his name wasn’t Lucius Clay Houseman.
Three minutes and forty seconds later General Houseman was back on the line.
“I concur with your plan, Lieutenant. Your mission is to move with your unit into the area of the Dantren encirclement and to begin demolition of megascrapers in and around the encirclement with the primary purpose of reducing the pressure on the encircled units and secondary purpose of creating a window for the encircled units to withdraw to friendly lines.
“You may use any method and any level of force up to and including the use of significant quantities of antimatter. You are specifically charged to break the encirclement at any cost. I will call for volunteers from the ACS units in the reserve and will detach thirty-six troops in nine combat shuttles to attempt to make up a forlorn hope resupply run. I cannot at this time offer more personnel or equipment support than that.”
“Thank you, sir,” said O’Neal, his voice firm. “We’ll move out as soon as I wake my troops up and give a frag order.”
“Good luck, son, good hunting.”
“Gary Owen, sir.”
“Why you damn wind dummy! Only cavalrymen get to say that!”
“I can run faster than an M-1 and shoot an Apache out of the sky,” said the lieutenant, quietly. “I am not infantry or cavalry, neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat, sir.”
“What are you then?” asked the general humorously.
“I’m just the damn MI, sir.”
“Well then, ‘Footsack, you damn MI.’ ”
“Yes, sir. Out here. Michelle, platoon freq. Sergeant Green, start wakin’ ’em up.”
“Ah, Jesus, sir. We just stopped!” the sergeant complained.
“Sometimes you eat the bear, Sergeant, and sometimes…” He squeezed gritty eyes together and sipped stale suit water. They had been up since before dawn, fought a “murthering great battle,” been blown up by a catastrophic explosion, tunneled out of hell, swum the Stygian depths and now had to go on after a ten minute stop. Well, that was what technology was for. “Michelle, order all the AIDs to administer Provigil-C.”
The drug was a combination of a Terran antinarcolepsy drug and a Galactic stimulant. The Terran drug prevented sleep from forming. However it was believed that the stresses of combat were such that more than an antinarcotic was necessary.
When the powerful and persistent Galactic stimulant started coursing through their veins, the troops started to move. Some of them popped their visors to wipe gritty eyes and sniff uncanned air, but they were mildly surprised to find that the storeroom they had occupied was black as night. The AIDs had automatically been enhancing ambient light or using the ultraviolet suit lights for so long the troops had lost all sense of light or dark outside their private environments. The few troops who had sustained noncritical injuries, including the luckless trooper with only one hand and Private Slattery, now forever immortalized in combat suit statistics, were visited by the medic, more for human reassurance than because he could do anything the suits could not do.
Meanwhile Mike gathered the NCOs around and sketched out an initial order of movement. The engineers suddenly became critical to the success of the mission. Withal they could move nearly as fast as the infantry they supported, their armor was so bulged with storage they looked like walking grapes. Most of the storage was detonators and triggering devices. When it came down to it, there were lots of things that one could convince to explode, if one had a detonator and, although there were a number of ways to convince a detonator to explode, the best ways involved being far away at the time. So, rather than load up on explosives and light on detonators, they went the other way. They did carry twenty kilos of C-9, reduced somewhat from the tunneling, but it was a minor chunk of their storage.
The armor was circled with storage compartments, each designed precisely for explosives storage. The store points had blow-out panels and two of them had blown out on one of the engineers during the explosion under Qualtren; it gave him a lopsided look. Now they opened the compartments and started distributing their packages of good cheer. Every troop took fifty detonators and triggering devices. The triggering devices were fairly intelligent receivers that could be set to detonate by time or on receipt of a signal. In addition, the platoon redistributed their own C-9 so that each of them had at least a half kilo; that would be enough for their purposes.
The trickiest part was that they needed to move on the surface to the encirclement. There was not enough time to use the water mains. If they went that way the units would be dead and digested by the time they reached the area. Mike had a plan and he would have to overcome vocal and severe objections when he told them about it. His stock, however, had gone up since the first bound in the tunnels and especially when he led them to relative safety. Now they had to go back into the fire, but like troopers immemorial they faced that each as he needed to and got up and danced.
31
Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA Sol III
0243 August 5th, 2002 ad
“Sergeant,” said Pappas patiently, “I have had a long goddamn day. And I am not in the best fuckin’ mood to handle bullshit. I have got a platoon spread to hell and gone and I need somewhere to put them up. I need transportation and quarters. What I don’t need is bullshit from you.”