“What is the status on the bridges?”
“They’re cored, mined and ready to drop, General,” said the Ninety-Fifth ID Assistant Division Engineer, a major-promotable. As the most senior noncommanding engineer left in the corps, he had been seconded to act as engineering liaison to replace the absent corps engineer. “They will drop them when the last of the units are south and the refugees are north or when the Posleen come into close-contact range.”
“Well, we’ll just have to try and make sure that doesn’t happen. Okay, get to shuffling units. We still have time to straighten this out, people; we just have to keep our heads on straight.”
CHAPTER 43
Near Ladysmith, VA, United States of America, Sol III
0912 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
The Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division artillery fire was like a slight tap against a hornet’s nest. Slowly at first, practically one at a time, the hornets began to wander out, looking around for whatever had kicked their home.
Ersin held onto the ceiling grab bar and the seat in front of him as the Humvee left the ground for the fifth time, this time striking a streambed with a tremendous splash that threw water over the hood of the all-terrain vehicle. Above him the twenty-five-millimeter chain gun burped. How anyone could expect to hit anything while airborne was beyond him but the gunner in the seat next to him grunted in satisfaction.
“Better get us hull-down, Tom,” the gunner shouted over the howl of the engine as the vehicle dug itself out of the stream. “I got the God King.”
He turned to look at the Special Forces master sergeant on the seat next to him and laughed. “I knew all that time playing Death World was going to come in handy someday!”
Ersin glanced out in time to see the trees behind them begin coming apart under the hammer of Posleen guns. In response the Humvee cornered so hard his clamped hand came loose and he slid across the compartment and slammed into the gunner. The wide stance and advanced traction of the combat vehicle permitted maneuvers that would roll any normal off-road vehicle.
“Sorry!” he yelled to the gunner as he forced himself back across the seat.
“No problem, Sarge.” The gunner tapped the four-point harness holding him in place. “That’s why we changed out the belts in this thing.” He glanced at his monitor and shook his head. “Nothing in sight.”
“Another klick to the interstate!” shouted the vehicle commander over the howl of the diesel engine. “I told them we’re coming in!”
“Just make damn sure they’re ready to pass us through the lines!” Ersin tapped his AID. “AID, get me Sergeant Mueller.”
“He is standing by, Master Sergeant Ersin.”
“Mueller?”
“Yeah, Ersin. I understand we got company.”
“How’s it coming?”
“We’re hooking up the blasting caps as fast as we can.”
“Well, you got hostiles at about a klick, klick and a half from the IP. Hurry.”
“Roger. We need to keep them from coming down U.S. 1, they’re not as far along.”
“How the hell do we do that?” snapped Ersin.
“Do you know how to lead a pig?” asked Mueller.
“No.”
Mueller explained.
The master sergeant gave a feral smile in return and spared a glance out the back window. The Posleen were not to going to like their reception by Twelfth Corps.
“You sure about this, Sergeant?” asked the Bradley gunner, as the TOW launcher rotated outward.
“No, but it’s the orders. Edwards,” he continued to the driver, “you be ready to put your foot in it as soon as you get the word.”
“Okee-dokee, Sarge,” said the driver of the Bradley. In sheer nervousness she gunned the throttle.
“Now, Irvine, you gotta…”
“… launch the rocket off-axis. I got it.”
“Hopefully, that way the lander won’t fire right at us. When the Posleen turn this way, we’ll lead them down 632.”
“What happens if they do take us out, right away, that is?”
“Four track will wait for the ground response and take it under fire. Not that we’ll care,” he ended, parenthetically.
“I got family in Richmond,” responded the gunner. “Target,” he said, indicating that the target was in sight in his scope.
“Right.” The vehicle commander looked through his repeater. The missile launcher was pointed into a tobacco field. With any luck the gunner would be able to turn the wire-guided missile and get it on a course to hit the Posleen landing ship before it was destroyed by counterfire. The alternative, firing directly at the lander, had been determined to be suicide on Barwhon. At that point, the thinking went, the Posleen would send their forces towards the launcher. Towards them, that was, as they retreated down the country road.
Since their vehicle was nearly three thousand yards from the lander, the only Posleen weapons they had to worry about immediately were the automatic weapons on the God King saucers and the defensive fire of the lander itself. Not that either system was very survivable for a tin can on tracks like a Bradley.
If the plan worked, the Posleen would be exposed to sniping flank attacks by cavalry units scattered throughout the woods and fields and it would give the ambush sites more time to prepare. “Confirm, target identified. Fire.”
“Man,” whispered the gunner as he closed the firing circuit, “I really wish they’d used an Abrams.”
The United States Ground Forces were in the unusual situation of having incomplete battlefield intelligence. Knowledge of an enemy’s abilities and intentions is better than half a battle won or lost. For years the pre-Posleen Army had worked on systems to insure that future commanders would have an almost Godlike view of the physical and electronic battlefield. Satellites would look down from their Olympian orbits while closer pilotless drones and deep-viewing reconnaissance planes with sophisticated radar and visual systems gave precise moment-to-moment information on enemy movements.
The coming of the Posleen had ended for all time the concept of “sundering the fog of war.”
The satellites were already gone. Most of them had been destroyed during the ponderous atmospheric entry of the Posleen battleglobes and the rest were picked off at leisure by the automated sky defense systems of the landers. The same defense system created a virtually impregnable information bubble around the Posleen forces. To find the Posleen, small units were forced to maneuver forward until they made contact. It was a return to the bad old days of information warfare; the days of skirmishers and scouting parties. The term “Dark Ages” was used frequently.
Given Posleen psychology, if they saw a target, it would be taken under fire. Once taken under fire, if there were any survivors the Posleen would give chase. If they gave chase they were bound to run into defenses, defenses which were still not prepared. The whole concept of the defense and the information war had been predicated on cavalry or infantry patrols making contact but not being seen.
Now those slowly probing patrols were converting to skirmishers. In most cases the results were poor. On the north edge of the Posleen bubble, in the Tenth Corps area of operations, a reconnaissance platoon of the Twenty-First Cavalry found out the hard way that Posleen can be fast and brutal in movement-to-contact.
Probing forward on U.S. 1, the two Humvees and two Bradleys would bound forward in echelons. First a Humvee would move, then a Bradley. When they were in place with troops deployed, the next echelon would dart forward, twenty-five-millimeter chain guns constantly questing for heat signatures.