As the Bradley of the second echelon was bounding forward, without warning a company of Posleen came out of a side road at a trot. Before the standing echelon could even call in the sighting, all four hundred normals opened fire at under five hundred meters.
The moving Bradley was the first to be hit, as a three-millimeter railgun tracked across the personnel compartment. The tungsten rounds penetrated the thin magnesium armor and began tumbling through the compartment, chewing up the troops within. Their moment of horror was brief, however, for within seconds of one another, four of the twenty hypervelocity missile launchers in the Posleen company found the armored cavalry vehicle. When the slugs of gadolinium traveling at .3c struck the vehicle with near simultaneity, there was not enough left to do a chemical analysis.
The forward Humvee was gone seconds later, victim of massed fire from 1mm railguns and shotguns, and the rear echelon, taking fire from nearly a hundred 3mm railguns and HVM launchers, lasted only moments longer. The entire battle was over before the standing unit could send out a sighting report, before they could even move out of their positions.
The dense smoke and crack of HVMs from the skirmish, however, was not lost on the next echelon of scouts. The backup company a thousand meters behind the point went into a hasty defense and called in a sighting report. Their platoon of Abrams main battle tanks turned to the rear of a nearby strip mall. With a brief, almost unnoticed, crash 120mm cannons shivered the remaining display glass from the inside. The shadows of the buildings effectively hid the massive combat vehicles within.
Arkady Simosin watched the main IVIS display start to light up with Posleen sightings and knew they were doomed. The Fiftieth Infantry Division had just reached its defense points and started digging in. The slower Forty-First was not even completely in place. One look at the number of sightings, and the rapidly blunting blue arrows as cavalry forces were pushed back, told him that the Posleen were coming to dinner and they would not be denied. He punched a button on his command panel and an officer in helmet and LCE answered.
“Corps Arty,” the officer started to say and stopped when he saw who the caller was. “Yes, sir.”
“I want you to target those sighting reports at will, just as if they were valid calls for fire,” he told the artillery officer abruptly.
“They’re only guesses, General,” protested the colonel.
“Yeah, but by the time they fire on them, every single one of those roads will be packed with Posleen. Can the battleships range to here?”
The officer looked off-screen at another display. “Yes, sir. It can easily range to the interstate points, and all the way along the cav’s front. Right now we only have the Missouri; the Massachusetts is on the way. But they’re not linked into the tac net; we have to give them vocal calls for fire.”
“That’ll do. Feed them those coordinates. I want to pound the follow-on forces as hard as possible. Do it.”
“Yes, sir.” The officer punched a series of keys. “So ordered.”
“Out here.” The general cut the display and leaned back. He zoomed the IVIS out to cover all of northern Virginia, punched in another series of commands and grunted. At current rate of advance, the ACS battalion was still six hours away. And he was fairly certain that one battalion was not going to be able to make a difference. The Eleventh Mobile Infantry Division was getting closer, barely ten hours away, but it was a division in name only, with a brigade and a half of troops fully suited and only partially trained.
He punched another button and called up the Chief of Staff.
“Okay, I’ve had a really bad idea.”
“Yes, sir?”
“So far we have failed miserably at every movement we have tried to make, but I think we need to get ready to make another one.”
“What, now, sir?” asked the COS, upset and startled. The corps was barely getting into its positions and he could not believe the general was preparing to move.
“Not now. I said prepare for one. With the way they are boiling out of there, we might have to turn this into a battle of maneuver. If so, I want to be as prepared as we can. This battle is in play mode; it’s up to company commanders now. So get the staff working on a plan to pivot the corps to a north-south axis, anchored on the north by the Occoquan. Start the Nineteenth towards the west; they’ll anchor the left flank. If we find ourselves being pushed out of position we’ll need to pivot towards Manassas and slow their rate of advance towards Ninth Corps.”
“What about the Forty-First, General? They’ll be swinging in the breeze.”
“Plan it with them on the north flank, but I agree that they will have problems completing the maneuver. However, they can retreat towards the Occoquan bridges or, barring that, they can move down to the Potomac and be Dunkirked under the cover of the battleships.”
“You’re assuming that we won’t be able to stop them, sir.”
“You are correct. At a tactical level we cannot maintain visual contact with them long enough to get good calls for fire, at least not so far. We will have to see what happens when they come into contact with the prepared positions. If we had had more time, more room to trade for time, we might have been able to pull this off. But without good trenches, wire and bunkers, I think they’ll overrun us. We’ll see.”
“Aiming point this instrument!”
“Aiming point identified!”
The missing platoon sergeant and One Gun had linked back up during the move and Keren was back where he preferred to be. The L-T had handled the sudden move — and the linkup with the missing tracks — with remarkable smoothness. As the hammer came down the lieutenant seemed to be getting more and more into harness, like a young horse that never really shines until up against a competitor. He was laying in the section under Staff Sergeant Simmons’s direction and doing it well. The guns were up almost before anyone knew it and almost simultaneously the released troops dove into their tracks to check the IVIS displays.
Red enemy marks sprinkled the entire front of the Twenty-First Cav, only six miles down the road, and the hammer of missiles and artillery could be heard from the distance.
“Look,” said Keren, scrolling the display to the west, “it’s solid along their front all the way to the edge of the division.”
“So?” asked Sheila.
“I doubt that they just end there because the divisional front does,” snorted Riley.
“Huh?” The ammo bearer was only seventeen and straight out of basic training. Most of the symbols on the display were still foreign to her.
“The Posleen are probably out around the cav’s flank,” explained Sergeant Herd. “And there,” he continued, pointing to a unit marker in movement down Gun Truck Road, “is the response.”
“Only a company,” muttered Keren.
“They’re stretched thin covering a three-division front,” pointed out Herd. “Besides,” he pointed to a mass on the primary roads, centered on the cavalry division’s forward units, “that’s the main thrust. If the Posleen are off the roads, they’re slowed down.” He turned towards the front of the track and began a fuel and maintenance report.
As the rest of the squad began maintenance or personal activities, Keren stayed to track the scout company as it rushed down the twisting backroads towards the threatened flank of the division. Before it was halfway there it flashed the purple of in-contact then dropped off the screen.