Although Shelly could have led him through the labyrinth to the HC’s office, Mike was just as glad to have the sergeant along. The slightly smiling noncom led him first to a secondary guard room to get him a temporary pass, which was, miraculously, already cleared for him, then to the area formerly dedicated to the Joint Chiefs.
They walked in through the clerks, still hard at work, and up to the desk of the final keeper of the portal, an aged black warrant officer who looked like he ate nails for breakfast. Mike had heard of Warrant Officer Kidd, an SF legend who apparently had decided that General Taylor needed a keeper at all times. He and the general went way back, so it was said, to an unlikely incident involving an annoyed alligator and two bottles of Jack Daniels. The sergeant stopped at the final keeper and saluted. “Chief Kidd, Sergeant Wilson reporting with Captain Michael O’Neal, who is here to see the High Commander.”
Warrant Office Fourth Class Kidd returned the salute. “Thank you, Sergeant. Return to your post.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, did a perfect about-face and marched out.
“I think I ruined his whole day,” said Captain O’Neal.
“Naw. Made it maybe. But you sure as hell ruined that L-T’s. Or so I heard,” said Kidd with a cruel chuckle. “Did you really call CONARC ‘Jack’ to his face?”
“And you’ve never called General Taylor ‘Jim’?” Mike answered with a smile.
“Well, not where anyone could hear.” The warrant officer stood up and towered over the dwarfish captain. “Damn, you are short,” he said and held out his hand. “Warrant Officer Kidd. You can call me Mister Kidd.”
“Captain Michael O’Neal,” said Mike as Kidd’s hand engulfed his. Kidd went immediately for a crusher grip which Mike deflected through superior gripping power, although it was hard with the size of Kidd’s hands. They wrestled for a moment until a look of pain flashed across the warrant’s face. “As a special favor, you can call me Mighty Mite,” said Mike as he let up, slowly.
“Okay,” Kidd gasped.
“Can I go in now?” asked Mike, maintaining a grip.
“Will you let go if I say, ‘Yes’?”
“Mike!” said the CONARC, striding across the office with his hand outstretched, “it’s good to see you. You look a hell of a lot better than the last time.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Mike after a perfunctory salute, shaking General Horner’s hand. “Belated congratulations on the fourth star. It is well deserved. Sorry, I didn’t bring any cigars, I’m flat out.”
“Good cigars are getting hard to find,” said General Horner, leading him across the office to a sofa set. General Taylor stood up and walked to his desk to retrieve a cigar box.
“Here,” the High Commander said, proffering the box to Mike, “on the house. There’s a guy in Readiness that flies down to Guantánamo about once a month. What with the warm relations we’re developing with Cuba, cigars are no problem. He always brings me a couple of boxes.”
Mike extracted one of the long black panatelas. “Thank you, sir.”
“Take a handful. I’ll get a box sent over to your company next trip.”
“ ‘He said to the captain, just before the axe fell,’ ” said Mike.
“What gives you that impression?” asked Horner.
“Well, both of you gentlemen are nice guys, but there has to be a reason you’re up until after midnight plying me with tobacco,” Mike said with a smile.
“Not really,” said General Taylor, chuckling as he lit one of the long, black cigars. “We were going to be up anyway and now was as good a time as any to brief you on your temporary mission.”
“Which is?” asked Mike as he extracted his Zippo and began to puff.
“Mike,” started General Horner, “as you know, as everyone knows, the defense plan that everyone was calling ‘The Mountain Plan’ has been scrapped. The President and the Congress will not stand for the Armed Forces not defending the coastal plains, especially the coastal plain cities. The President accepts that we cannot fight for every piece of ground, but he insists that we defend every major city. You with me so far?”
“Airborne,” said Mike, carefully judging the flame on the end of the cigar. When it was drawing just right he took a deep puff. Good cigar, he thought. “Okay, boss, it’s a given: The cities will be fought for. Does the President realize that that will probably inflict more damage than if we can come back in two-three years’ time with full Fleet backing and kick them out?”
“Yes,” said Taylor.
“Oh.”
“That has actually been the subject of a series of news magazine reports,” said General Taylor, dryly. “I gather you haven’t been keeping up with current events.”
“No, sir, I haven’t,” said Mike. “Not even Net news. I’ve been getting my company as ready as it can be.”
“Apparently you succeeded,” said General Taylor, chuckling. “I got a rather snippy e-mail to the effect that there must be a bug in the software for your engagement. You were able to score one hundred percent on a no-win situation. There is some question whether you diddled the software.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” said O’Neal with a smile. “It is a well-known fact that only SFers cheat. We happened to luck out and the God King assigned by the software on the final engagement was a wuss and routed. But mostly, it helps to have done the same exercise a couple of hundred times in VR and Tactical Exercises Without Troops. I play those scenarios in my spare time for recreation, sir, something that other leaders need to learn to do. I mean, most of them don’t even play Mario Brothers with their kids.”
“Are you saying they need to play video games more?” asked the High Commander, surprised at the frivolous approach.
“Basically, sir,” said Mike, peering at the cigar blearily. The fatigue from the long day and the days of preparation beforehand had him saying more than he intended at a first meeting with the generals. He still was not too sure of himself.
Preparing his company was at a level he understood. This “strategic” level was something else. But if being in the game had taught him one thing, it was never lose the image of confidence. Sometimes rep was the only thing that would carry your men through. And sometimes the definition of “your men” could get awfully broad.
“This gear creates a video game environment and the wargames are based on a number of video game archetypes,” Mike continued. “If they would spend less time doing the work of their first sergeants and pushing hardcopy and more time in the VR environment they would do better in notional battles.”
“Well,” said General Horner, “we, and by that I mean General Taylor and myself and to a lesser extent you, need to decide what that battle is going to be and how it is going to be fought. I am going to outline for you, in broad strokes, what the strategic and operational mission of the ACS should be and, over the next two weeks, you suggest how we should do it, in as much detail as possible given the time. Got it?”
“Got it,” answered Mike, leaning back in the chair. After a moment he leaned forward again. The comfortable armchair was a surefire way to put him to sleep. If he was going to keep from making an ass of himself in front of these officers, he was going to have to stay on his toes.
“Okay.” General Horner looked up at the ceiling as if drawing thoughts from the pooling cigar smoke. “We are required, by order, to do as much as humanly possible not to lose the cities to the Posleen. First we have to define what a city is. We have arbitrarily decided to defend only the city core, because, quite frankly, we don’t see any way to defend into suburbs. Oh, we’ll have some depth, and some outer defenders, besides the parasite forts I’ll talk about in a minute, but basically we’re just going to try to hold ‘downtown,’ the part with the skyscrapers that Posleen shy away from landing on anyway.