The monitor picked up the gavel and banged it several times. “You are under investigation, not us.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about,” Jake said, as his fingers curled around the fabric of his trousers. Why had them given him such baggy pants? “I’m fighting my heart out on the front lines and you three are hiding back here stealing my freedoms. What a joke.”
“I do not care for your tone or for your treasonous words, young man,” the woman said.
“I bet you don’t,” Jake said. “Tyrants hate an honest man.”
The woman banged the gavel. “I do not need to hear any more. You are hereby sentenced to a penal battalion.”
“Is that another detention battalion?” Jake asked.
“I thought I was clear,” the woman said. “You are headed to a penal battalion.”
“Is that a labor—?”
“You have lost your right to question me,” the woman said. “Perhaps if you fight hard enough, you can regain your American citizenship someday. These seditious acts and words—” She shook her head, making her short bangs swish over her forehead. “I believe one such as you would better serve us as fish food. But the hour is dark and America uses everyone, even you disloyalists.”
While clutching his pants, Jake looked up at her. He felt helpless, and he despised the feeling. He should have stayed with his friends in the bar. If he had… He’d needed to drown his thoughts about killing, and he had those bitter emotions because he’d already fought hard to defend his country. This was wrong, just dead wrong. His stomach churned. He didn’t know what to do. This was just so wrong.
“You’re leaving for New England this evening,” the woman was saying. “There, you will join a penal battalion. Fight hard, Mr. Higgins, and perhaps you can gain your country’s forgiveness.”
“How about the country gains my forgiveness for what it’s done to me?” he said under his breath.
“What was that?” the monitor asked. “Do you have some final word for the court?”
Jake had some words all right, but he refrained from saying them. He was in deep enough. A penal battalion…that sounded ominous.
-4-
Annihilation
From Tank Wars, by B.K. Laumer III:
In the opening days and weeks of the war, the German Dominion had a decisive advantage in EW equipment and practice. The heavy GD dependence on drones, UAVs and droids, and on the AI-run Kaisers, demanded a superior communication network. The GD military needed the electronic link so their operators could control their vehicles and so the commanders could order and monitor what the semi-independent AI tanks were doing.
GD High Command believed in the old adage: a good offense was a good defense. Therefore, they practiced intense ESM (electronic surveillance measures). The critical component to this was keeping track of the Canadian and American electronic devices on and near the battlefield. Because of this, the GD EW services kept a continuously updated common operating picture of Allied aircraft, ships, army units and ground vehicles. Every vehicle possessed a particular electronic signature. These signatures the GD specialists found and watched better than their Allied counterparts did theirs. ESM warfare included picking up enemy transmissions. The key advantage lay in the obvious truism: once one knew how the enemy equipment operated, one could jam or deceive that equipment.
The GD Expeditionary Force had more and better active and passive sensors and smarter and quicker ECD (electronic control devices). An example of the latter was the GD Sleeper mine, artillery-fired before advancing or behind retreating enemy vehicles. The Sleeper mine was sensor-controlled and contained powerful microprocessors. Depending on the setting, the Sleeper mine waited until a certain number of vehicles passed before popping up to attack. The GD automated devices worked with greater precision and reliability than American automated devices of similar types.
Lastly, GD ECM (electronic countermeasures) were better and more powerful than the American measures. Jamming enemy equipment at the right frequency was the most obvious form of ECM.
Both sides also used ECCM (electronic counter countermeasures) and EDM (electronic deception measures). One form of ECCM was to crank up the transmitter and burn through enemy jamming. The last, EDM, could involve setting up a transmitter to fool the enemy by simulating the presence of a unit of where it was not.
All together, these advantages proved decisive for the GD in the race to the Great Lakes. German Dominion EW specialists gained target acquisition through sensors, ESM and signal processing identity, pinpointing the activity, strength and position of enemy units. This gave the GD military the most lucrative targets at the earliest opportunity.
The GD EW specialists worked hard to disrupt enemy command, control and communication, causing American and Canadian commanders to lose track and control of their vehicles or men.
The last offensive component to electronic warfare came from deception. Particularly in the first weeks, EDM helped to deceive the North American soldiers about true GD intentions. When the GD hammer fell, it often came as a grim surprise and shock to the Allied forces.
There were voices. Then metal clacked from outside, a latch probably. The railroad car’s side door squealed open on rusty sprockets.
Jake Higgins blinked at the bright light. He sat up, pushing aside the worn Army jacket he’d used as a blanket. A rolled up shirt had been his pillow and the hard railroad car floor his bed. Other Militia detainees raised their heads or rolled onto one of their elbows to see what was going on. Thirty of them were in here with Jake: dirty, tired and hungry men.
It stank in the railroad car and several buckets to the sides held last night’s feces. None of them had been out of the car for over twenty-four hours.
“Outside!” a muscled, Militia Detention Guard, or MDG, sergeant shouted.
The man must have used steroids just as Jake’s friend in Denver, the lieutenant, once had. The sergeant had an extraordinarily thick neck and sloping shoulders. He wore a white helmet with the letters “MDG” stamped on the front. The man had heavy features to match his neck, making him a bull with flaring nostrils. Jake wouldn’t have been surprised to see a ring in the nose. The sergeant had a carbine slung on his left shoulder and a nightstick dangling from a thick black police belt. Other MDG personnel waited for the threadbare detainees. The white-helmeted men fanned out in a semicircle behind the first sergeant.
He eyed the detainees with distain, with a sneer twisting his practically lipless mouth. Then he said in a loud voice, “Get your sorry asses out here before we drag them out.”
The detainees stood, as did Jake, and they moved toward the door. Jake put on his coat and waited his turn. He’d been traveling by railroad car like an old-time hobo. At each stop, another political detainee or two joined the growing throng. They ate crusts of bread, drank bottled water and used the outdoors when they could to relieve themselves. This was unbelievable treatment, as if they were Russian POWs during WWII.
“Get out,” another MDG snarled at Jake.
“Out!” the muscled sergeant shouted.
Jake jumped down, and he landed hard on gravel. There must have been hundreds of various railroad tracks here. There were hundreds of railroad cars and engines waiting or being loaded or unloaded, and there were long sheds everywhere and sounds of busy forklifts revving.
Jake felt a hand grab his collar, heave, and he faced the sergeant with the thick neck.