“Get those civilians out of harm’s way; we’ll try to slow the centaur bastards down.” General Simonsin wiped his face and looked at the map projection.
“Now as to that. I don’t want to have even cavalry in contact; the Posleen move too fast and hit too hard. We will follow the Reticulan Defense Plan to the letter and pull fully across the Potomac. I have so informed First Army and CONARC. So, to slow them down, what do we do for engineers?” The corps engineering brigade was at Fort Leonard Wood going through a large-scale engineering exercise. The timing of the exercise was exquisite. Exquisitely lousy.
“The engineering companies of the Forty-First and Ninety-Fifth Divisions probably should accompany them, since they’ll have to dig in,” said the G-3.
“So, what do we use?” the commander asked again.
“Sir,” said one of the operations officers. “I called Fort Belvoir and, since they’ve reactivated the Fifty-Two Echo program there, they have plenty of combat engineering instructors and trainees. And there are the officers going through basic and advanced courses…”
“ ‘And to the strains of Dixie, the cadets marched off the field to war,’ ” Simosin quoted. “Well, that’s a start. Where do we deploy them?”
“The first real terrain obstacle the Posleen will encounter is at the Occoquan Estuary…” said the corps intelligence officer.
Second Lieutenant William P. Ryan — being a not quite graduate of the Basic Combat Engineers Officers’ course — did not know much about combat engineering. And he knew even less about combat in general. But he was willing to learn, even if this kind of makee-learnee was not particularly survivable. One look at the pitiable stream of refugees headed north on Interstate 95 was enough to make him determined to do his best.
Most of his classmates were rigging the I-95 and U.S. 1 bridges over the Occoquan River under the expert tutelage of their instructors. The senior instructor had decided that Ryan was a good-enough prospect that he was sent to destroy a bridge all on his own, and his “platoon” was rigging the 123 bridge under the guidance of an experienced instructor-sergeant. The platoon was a group of trainees from the enlisted combat engineers course along with their drill instructors and junior technical instructors. The interesting challenge in concrete cutting posed by the bridge he had left up to the much more experienced NCO instructors.
He crossed the river and walked down through the charming little town of Occoquan to get a better look at the far ridge from the Posleen’s perspective. The town was nestled along the south side of the river where it passed between two high ridges. The subsurface geology of the ridges created the falls that gave birth to the town and that were integrated into the Occoquan dam. That dam, in turn, created the reservoir that stretched from his location nearly to Manassas, twenty miles away.
As he stood just below Rockledge Manor he noticed a small footbridge crossing over the river just below the waterworks. He made a note to have a squad come over and rig it for demolition as well. The dam, on the other hand, was another matter.
If they dropped the dam, God only knew where the Posleen might be able to cross the Occoquan. After checking his map he guessed it would be somewhere around Yates Ford Road, half the distance they might otherwise have to travel. On the other hand, the Posleen could push forces across the dam itself. Not many or in great force, but any intrusion was to be dissuaded. And there was an older, partially submerged dam as well. He was unsure how to handle that tactical problem and decided to pass it up the line.
Walking rapidly back through the deserted town he got a strange feeling of sadness. He could remember the days before the Posleen were a word, before Earth knew it was in the path of an invasion. Even as America prepared, as more and more shortages occurred and liberties fell by the wayside in the race to get ready, the world was more or less the same as it had always been.
At that moment, striding rapidly back to where engineers under his command were preparing to destroy a major civil structure, he knew that this was truly the end of the golden age. That from now until an unforeseeable future man would be a hunted animal on his own world and that only God knew what the outcome would be.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the loudspeaker boomed, “we need you to remain calm.” The crowd gathered behind the Fredericksburg Public Safety Building was mostly women and children. They had run from their homes in fear and fled to the only refuge they knew. There was plenty of room with all of the ambulances and police cars dispatched. The group huddled in the gathering dark, most of them knowing that by coming here they were only delaying the inevitable.
“We are working on a way to get you out,” continued the speaker, one of the remaining fire fighters, “and we just need you to remain calm.”
“He’s dreamin’,” said Little Tom Sunday in a monotone. Then, “Hiya, Wendy.”
Wendy Cummings spun around. Little Tom stood behind her with a pack on his back and duffel bag at his feet. He was wearing some sort of weird black padding that stretched almost to his knees, a black helmet like the soldiers wore and a pair of sporty sunglasses. Inside she sighed in exasperation. If there was one person she did not want to spend her last hours with, it was Little Tommy Sunday. But she might as well be polite.
“Hi, Tommy. What’s that stuff?” she asked out of curiosity, gesturing at the padding.
“Body armor,” he answered in a disinterested tone. “It won’t stop one of their railguns, but it’ll stop the shotgun rounds and spalling.”
Her eyes widened as she recognized it from “Real Police” shows. Officers had been shot at point-blank range wearing similar suits and survived. “Do you have any more?” she asked, hopefully.
“Well,” he answered, bending down stiffly to rummage in his duffel bag, “I don’t have any more Class One, but I’ve got a Safe-Tee, some T-shirt Kevlar.” He pulled the body armor out of the bag, revealing the contents. He glanced at her chest. “It might fit,” he ended doubtfully.
“Holy shit,” she gasped, “what-all do you have in there?” The bag gleamed with the bluing of lethal purpose. She recognized the shape of some sort of machine gun and other things she thought were grenades.
She had taken the school survival course, but only because it was required. But, since you didn’t have to pass, she had spent most of her time doing homework from other classes and passing notes to her friends. She barely recognized the items in the bag from familiarization.
“A few odds and ends,” he answered, zipping the bag shut.
“Do you… Could I borrow a gun or something?” she asked, trying to figure out the connections on the body armor.
“What would you do with it?” he asked, disgustedly, grabbing the Velcro and efficiently connecting first one underarm strap then the other.
“Try?” she asked, looking him in the eye for the first time in years. She suddenly realized that he was far taller than she thought; much taller than she was, which was a surprise. Everyone just thought of him as Little Tommy. He had been self-effacing for so long, it had made him appear short.
“You should have tried years ago,” he answered. He reached back into the duffel and brought out a short black pistol in a shoulder holster.
“You ever use one of these things before?” he asked rhetorically, dropping out the magazine and yanking back the slide to eject the round up the spout. He caught the 9mm round in the air like a trout after a fly.
“No,” she answered, intimidated by his suddenly revealed expertise.
“Okay.” He lifted up the magazine. “This is the gas, you fuel it like this.” He slid the magazine back into the well. “It’s fueled when you hear the click. You start it like this.” He jacked back the slide. “And,” he said, laying one finger lightly on the trigger as he pointed the weapon skyward and across the river, “this is the accelerator. You drive it by looking through the rear sights while focusing on the front sights. Place the white dot on the front sight across the V of the rear sights and pull on the accelerator real slow. There, the Tom Sunday School of Glock Driving.”