The senator considered this, then went back to his notes. “That’s a very high rate,” he said. The people in the gallery laughed.
“We sent you out with our finest equipment,” MacKay mumbled as he ran through his notes. “Didn’t you have Limbaugh Attack Helicopters? Was there an equipment failure? Would you have been more effective with Cobra Attack Helicopters?”
“No, sir,” Newcastle said. “The Limbaughs worked just fine. The problem wasn’t the equipment.”
“So attack helicopters were more vulnerable than jets?” another senator asked. He sounded confused.
“Helicopters make easier targets than jets. They fly slower and closer to the ground,” Newcastle said. He and General Smith traded glares. “But I would not say that was the problem.”
“You wouldn’t?” asked MacKay.
“No, sir. We lost most of our gunships during the first battle outside Valhalla, but they were extremely effective …too effective. The enemy made them their chief target.” Newcastle sat back as if satisfied with his answer, then mumbled, “At least our pilots went out.”
“What was that?” a congresswoman asked. “What did you say?”
“I said that our gunships entered the fight,” Newcastle answered.
“Entered the fight?” MacKay asked.
“Yes, sir, our pilots showed up for the fight. General Hill determined that the situation was unsafe and refused to launch his fighters.” General James Hill was the Air Force commander on New Copenhagen.
“What do you mean he refused to launch?” the congresswoman asked. She sounded incredulous.
“The Air Force was grounded,” Newcastle repeated.
“How can that be?” Senator MacKay asked the question first, but several politicians echoed him. Every man and woman behind the bar now stared in Smith’s direction.
General Smith launched into damage control. “We couldn’t fly our jets under those conditions. The alien army had the planet surrounded with some sort of ion sleeve …”
“I believe you referred to it as the ‘ion curtain’ in your report,” MacKay said.
“Yes, sir. The ion curtain shut down the electronics in our jets before my pilots could reach a safe altitude.”
“But that sleeve did not affect your attack helicopters?” MacKay asked.
“Our pilots had to fly low. They kept to a couple of hundred feet. Flying that low made them sitting ducks, but at least they went up,” Newcastle said.
Newcastle and Smith whispered fierce messages to each other which the camera could not record. Smith said something, and Newcastle smiled and nodded.
“How much …” MacKay began, trying to retake control of the meeting. “Excuse me. How much …” He banged his gavel five times, and the noise in the chamber faded. Finally, he asked, “In your opinion, General Newcastle, how much of a difference would the fighters have made?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Newcastle said.
“General, what I’m asking you is, if the Air Force had sent out its fighters, how much of a difference could they have made?”
“Flying low? You mean if they had to fly low like my chopper pilots?”
“Yes, General. If they had entered the battle flying low, would you have taken fewer casualties?”
Newcastle did not even pause to consider the idea. “They would not have made a bit of difference, Senator. The enemy would have shot them out of the sky.”
“I see,” said MacKay. He was not on a witch hunt, not Senator Evan MacKay. The politicians on either side of him would have liked nothing more than to further their careers at the expense of Al Smith or any other sacrificial goat, but not MacKay. “I’ve read your report, General. You stated that your missile defenses were effective. You said you had more than enough equipment. What went wrong, General? Why did we lose so many planets? Why did our military come so close to losing the war on New Copenhagen?”
“It was the first time we encountered an alien army,” explained Alexander Smith. “We never experienced anything like that before. They did not use spacecraft to travel, so we could not attack them until they reached our planets. Then they spread that ion screen around our planets, obliterating any chance of naval support.” He sounded anxious as he spewed a stream of reasons why his military was so badly outgunned.
Newcastle shot Smith a fleeting, mysterious smile that faded quickly as he turned toward the bar, and said, “The problem was lack of discipline.” He paused, and added, “Cowardice.”
“Are you referring to the pilots not flying their fighters?” the congresswoman asked.
“No, ma’am,” Newcastle said. “I am referring to our enlisted men.”
“The cloned soldiers?” MacKay asked. He sounded surprised.
“Yes, sir,” said Newcastle.
“Are you saying you had a problem with the clones?” MacKay repeated.
“Yes, sir. They did not perform well in battle,” said Newcastle.
“As I understand it, clones are programmed to follow orders without question,” MacKay said.
“That is correct, sir,” Newcastle admitted.
“What are you saying, General? Are you telling us that their programming failed?” MacKay asked.
“Senator, their programming broke down under stress. We saw vandalism …graffiti …men disobeying orders. I’m not sure this was in the report, but one of our clones attacked and killed a superior officer.”
“Are you talking about something that happened on the battlefield? Was it friendly fire?” MacKay asked.
“No, sir, it was not friendly fire. Both men were off duty and we were not under attack, and the clone in question was a Liberator. He attacked and killed his superior away from the battlefield.”
Arguments and confusion broke out through the chamber. Senator MacKay banged his gavel and tried to regain order.
As the room quieted, Newcastle continued, “Senator, if you want to know what went wrong on New Copenhagen, we crumbled from the bottom up. Our enlisted men proved ineffective, undisciplined, and unreliable in battle. What went wrong was that we entrusted our future in the hands of clones.”
CHAPTER THREE
Every restaurant in Washington, DC, had the hearings playing for the lunch crowd. This was a town in which the favorite sport was politics, and congressional hearings were the Super Bowl.
I glanced up at the screen as I pulled up to the counter at my favorite diner.
“Corned beef on rye?” the waitress asked as I approached the counter. She looked like she was in her sixties, a stubby woman with badly dyed red hair and a waxy complexion.
“Same as always, Helen,” I told her. Having eaten lunch at her counter at least once a week for over a year, I knew Helen better than any woman alive.
She placed an empty mug on the counter and grabbed a pot of coffee. As she poured, I asked, “Quiet day?”
“You’re early; it’s only eleven,” she said. “We just finished with breakfast.”
The clock on the wall said 10:46.
“Yeah, I was in the neighborhood,” I said. The diner was near Union Station, not far from Capitol Hill. It was a long way to go for lunch, but they made a good sandwich, so I manufactured excuses to come to the area.