Libby Hill, Mosby Hill and Montrose Heights were a seething fortress of artillery, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the centaurs. Troops in the open are the artilleryman’s meat and drink.
While there were heavy defenses along the north and east, the west side of the city was virtually undefended; only scattered cavalry units were there as sentries. The defense plan depended on the Posleen turning towards the east and Schockoe Bottom. Barriers were being erected along the I-95/U.S. 1 corridor, designed to physically and visually distract the Posleen away from the westerly route. And when the Posleen approached, all of the roads to the west would be cratered by the heavy charges being emplaced. General Keeton was prepared to move the Seventy-Fifth Armored up in defense if small numbers moved in that direction, otherwise — if the Posleen did turn westward en masse — the “good” plan would have to be scrapped.
The alternative plan was to use the Libby Hill defenses to create a curtain barrage along the Posleen axis of assault. While the barrage would kill many Posleen, it would not be nearly as effective as the slaughter possible in the fire-trap. Deception and luring plans, some of them wild, others reasonable, were being designed to draw the Posleen in the more favorable direction.
For the inevitable moment when the north or west flank was turned, the Corps had worked out precise and simple retreat routes to the south side of the James. The heavy road infrastructure and plethora of bridges helped. Each unit had a designated route which was color-coded; city road crews had worked through the night putting up the new signs.
As the primary defense points came on-line, the freed construction crews hurried to the south side of the James and began construction of fighting positions designed to maintain a permanent assault on Posleen in the Richmond area. Craters and trenches began sprouting throughout the south Richmond area as many of the people in the refugee enclaves came forward to help.
Ramps and scaffolds began to sprout behind the south floodwall for direct fire from infantry and even tanks. At the same time pits for mortars and larger positions for artillery began to form throughout the city, wherever there was any sort of angle of fire. In many cases abandoned buildings were demolished to both improve angle of fire and donate their material for the defenses.
There were three tiers of defense, and every one had written its signature on the skyline of the city. As Keene had said, the city was writing a new chapter in her history. But she was also getting a facelift.
“I can’t believe it is going as well as it is,” said the corps commander.
“Well,” said Colonel Abrahamson, scratching his head before redonning his Kevlar. “I don’t know exactly how to put this. It’s complex but not complicated. Every individual action either is something the military has trained for or is being done by civilians who are experienced and highly motivated. With the exception of my battalion’s job, it should be a simple, set-piece siege. It’s the poor bastards in Tenth Corps I feel sorry for, sir.”
“Yes, I would have liked a little longer to prepare, you’re never prepared enough. But this is effectively a World War I scenario. Easier really, there’s no artillery for us to worry about. But General Simosin’s divisions are about to get hit by a blitzkrieg, and they have no time to prepare.”
“The President shouldn’t have ordered them so far forward, General,” the cavalry commander commented in a voice so neutral it was gray.
The corps commander nodded his head. It was the first overt comment he had heard in the negative about the President’s decision. “Possibly. I suppose ordering them to defend before Alexandria made sense, some sense, but he should not have ordered them to set up almost on the Posleen’s door.” He shook his head again. “God save their poor brave souls.”
CHAPTER 46
Near Dale City, VA, United States of America, Sol III
1258 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
It started with a crackle of manjacks. The observation post was a regulation one-hundred meters out from the company and in view of the Second platoon but, being barely in view and after the stresses of the night with multiple moves and digging in not once but a total of four times, as the division moved again and again and the battalion adjusted lines, reassigned areas of responsibility, moved the company forward and back, the two-man team had fallen asleep. They awoke to the rattling burp from the manjack set up beside their foxhole and the cracking whistle of railgun rounds in return.
In his foxhole, Captain Brantley dropped the half-eaten remains of a hotdog loaded with chili, onions and relish, and rotated his shoulders. To the captain’s amazement the first sergeant had made it back. And although he had not found an open restaurant, he had found enough supplies and cookware to feed the entire company on hotdogs, hamburgers and a really horrible concoction of canned baked beans and chili. After nearly two days on MREs, the troops consumed it so fast that the first sergeant’s party had to make seconds and even thirds in the ten-gallon pots hung over sooty fires.
The commander had been a history major in college. To him, the scene was reminiscent of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War Years. The same scene was replicated over and over in the woods and fields around his position. The soldiers digging their foxholes had turned up Civil War era “Minié” balls as they dug and the ghosts in their tattered gray and blue seemed to hover around them, urging them into battle. He heard them now, rattling their ramrods and whispering in his ear of the terrible sights to come and he wrapped the whispers around himself like armor.
He looked at his thin line of troops — the few in view in the thick pine scrub — and knew despair. What the situation called for was defense in depth, pillboxes and wire, trenches and no-man’s-land. What it had was a thin screen of infantry, dug-in deep, with a few mines and claymores out front, hoping against hope for the strength to stop a force a hundred times their size.
The one bright spot was artillery support. With the shift in emphasis from human-human to human-Posleen combat, the Army had radically changed its approach to artillery equipment. Although the bulk of the Army would remain mechanized infantry, the lack of counterbattery ability — the ability of one artillery unit to fire on another — by the Posleen meant that the division and corps artillery did not need to be armored. Thus the M-222 “Reaver” was born.
Modified from a South African mobile artillery piece, the Reaver was a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle mounting a 155mm howitzer. It had the speed to keep up with mechanized forces and the ammunition capacity to support them effectively.
Three full batteries of these artillery behemoths were in places to support the division and the resultant firepower exceeded the artillery of three divisions of the latter twentieth century. The Posleen might succeed in overrunning them, but they should take massive casualties in the process.
The captain had previously ensured that he was authenticated on the automated central firing network, so he calmly picked up the microphone and called in his first ever real-world call for fire.
“Central, Central, this is Echo-Three-Five, fire mission, over.”
He paused and waited a moment for a response. Usually, the newly fielded Central Artificial Intelligence Targeting Artillery Fire Remote Command and Control System, or Central for short (the military, for once, had universally decided not to use the acronym), came back practically before you could unkey the microphone. In this case it seemed to either not receive the call or be overloaded.