"My fellow Americans," said the President as the view returned to the podium, "we face a storm unlike any in our history. But, like the majestic oaks of our land, our roots are deep, our Union strong. Before this storm we will lose leaves, we will lose branches. But this Union under God will weather the storm and in the spring we shall bloom anew." There was a moment of silence, a hush, then a single member began to clap. The applause spread and caught until there was a thunderous roar, an affirmation. For one brief moment the nominal leaders of the strongest republic on earth were joined in a single vision, a vision of survival and a future beyond the darkness. For that one brief moment there was unity against the storm.
8
Ft. Bragg, NC Sol III
1648 November 19th, 2001 AD
Staff Sergeant Bob Duncan, Chief Fire Direction Controller for the 2nd Battalion 325th Infantry Heavy Mortar section, was occasionally a problem for his chain of command, what is euphemistically called a leadership challenge. For his entire career in the Army he never quite fit in. He had all the merit badges expected of a ten-year veteran of the 82nd Airborne, the Ranger tab, the jumpmaster's wings, staff sergeant's stripes, but despite these he was never quite trusted by his first sergeants and platoon sergeants. Part of this was the nature of his career. For whatever reasons, and they had varied, he had never been cycled to another unit. He'd arrived fresh from Infantry Individual Training and Airborne school as a private, was promptly assigned to D company (then CSC Company) of the 2nd Battalion 325th PIR and there he stayed. Not for him the rotations to Korea, or Germany. No tours to the Airborne units in Italy, Alaska and Panama. Instead, during his term it seemed he had done every job in the company. Need a scout to round out the platoon? Sergeant Duncan's been a scout. Need a TOW HUMVEE commander? Sergeant Duncan. Need a head for your Fire Direction Center? A mortar squad leader? Call Sergeant Duncan. Operations sergeant? He was a fixture of D company more immutable than the barracks, far more fixed than the command groups, the constantly cycling first sergeants, lieutenants and commanders. Whenever the new first sergeants, lieutenants and commanders had a question, the finger was inevitably pointed at Sergeant Duncan.
It would seem that, in any fair world, such omnipotence about the function of the company, from the supply room (supply clerk, nine months, year three) to the function of the antitank platoon (acting platoon sergeant, nearly a year, gunner, jeep commander, motor pool sergeant) would lead to steady acclaim and rapid promotion. Any job dangerous and dirty, any job difficult, dusty and dry give it to Sergeant Duncan.
But that led to another problem with Sergeant Duncan. How could anyone give the same lecture, teach the same lessons over and over, not to subordinates but to superiors, and not develop a faint aura of scorn? When the company commander constantly had to ask you questions, it inevitably led to invidious comparisons. When twice in your career you ended up leading the (notional) remnants of the company in graded field maneuvers, once getting a far higher grade than the current commander, when the most trying task became routine, when you were always chosen first for any difficult and tedious job because you were just so blamed good at it and coincidentally it got you out of the first sergeant's remaining hair, an ennui exceeding all normal course begins to wear away at the soul. This ennui, in the case of the Sergeant Duncans of the world, leads to tinkering. Would it be better if the wires went this way? What would happen if we did it that way? Could we use these civilian fireworks for booby traps? The repercussions from that particular experiment were still occurring.
It would have been far better for Sergeant Duncan, for the Army, if not for D company, were he cycled out to fresh pastures and new challenges. But, nonetheless, for many reasons he stayed a fixture of the company, of the battalion, and, in an exceedingly Airborne way, festered.
As fate would have it, the change came to him instead of the other way around. He twisted the black box around as he sat on his bunk across from his current detested roommate. He had noted the phenomenon that he apparently had three roommates he detested for every one he got along with. This one was about due for a refund; a scout sergeant, he thought scouts shit gold. Well, Duncan had been a scout when this little turd was in middle school and had already outshot him on the Known Distance range, so as far as Bob Duncan was concerned this scout could just pack his ego back in his fuckin' duffel bag and march on out any time. The stupid bastard was carefully stropping a dagger about as long as his forearm on a diamond sharpener, as if he was going to be using it on Posleen the next day. As far as Sergeant Duncan had been able to ascertain, the Posleen had, like, nowhere you could plant a knife and do vital damage. Furthermore, how did he think he was going to use it in a combat suit? The constant stropping was beginning to be more irritating than the scratch of the wool blanket on his bed. Jeez Louise! For godsakes Top get this guy out of my room!
To take his mind off of the stupid bastard as he waited for last formation to be called, Duncan studied the latest black box they had been issued. It was about the size of the pack of Marlboros in his left breast pocket and flat, absorbent black, very similar in appearance to their AIDs. Black as an ace of spades. And, somehow, it projected a field you could not put a .308 round through. He'd already tried. Several times, just to be sure. And it didn't even move the box when the shells ricocheted off; that was freaky. Mind you, the guys around him moved prrrretty damned fast when those .308 rounds came back up range at the Fort Bragg Rod and Gun club. Fortunately there weren't any jerks around. The other shooters just laughed and went back to jacking rounds downrange from an amazing variety of weapons.
Okay, so it stopped bullets. But the field only extended out about seven feet in either direction and it stopped when it touched an obstacle. Stopped. It didn't wrap around the obstacle. Just stopped, which sucked if you thought about it. And you should be able to brace it into something, not just depend on whatever it was that kept it in place. He'd had a little talk with his AID and it turned out the damn thing had some sort of safety lock. So he'd talked with his AID a little more and convinced it that since they were an experimental battalion, with experimental equipment, they had the responsibility to experiment. The AID checked its protocols and apparently agreed because it had just released the safety interlocks on the device. Ensuring that it was at arm's length, Duncan activated the unit.
The Personal Force Field unit functioned by generating a focused reversal plane of weak force energy as analogous to a laser beam as a line is to a plane, meaning not. The unit was designed to produce a circle 12 meters in area for 45 minutes. Given the option of maximum generation, it generated a circle 1250 meters square for 3 milliseconds before failing. The plane was effectively two-dimensional. It extended outwards 20 meters in every direction, sliding through the interstices between atoms and occasionally disrupting the odd proton or electron.
The plane sliced as effectively as a katana in air through all the surrounding material, severing I-beams, bed structures, wall lockers and, in the unfortunate case of Sergeant Duncan's roommate, limbs. The slice, thinner than a hair, reached from the basement supply room, where it, among other things, sliced through an entire box of Bic pens causing a tremendous mess, to the roof, where it created a leak that was never completely fixed. However, once the entire base was overrun by the Posleen the leak became moot. In addition, the throughput on the unit exceeded the parameters of the superconductive circuitry, and waste heat raised the case temperature to over two hundred degrees Celsius.