“All I ask is time.”
Mike walked out the hole where the back wall of his office used to be and didn’t look back; he was pretty sure he’d never see it again.
The battalion was drawn up in “chalks” before their shuttles. All twenty-two shuttles had landed on the parade field and had been loaded with weapons and equipment, including the critical power packs and antimatter Lances. All that was left to do was load the troops and maybe give a little speech.
The problem with that was that even the “newbies” knew they were going on a suicide mission. It was an important suicide mission, one that couldn’t be more vital. But if any of them survived it would be fairly remarkable.
There was also the fact that even the newbies had been on darned near continuous combat operations for between two and five years. These were troops that had walked into the fire, eyes open, over and over and over again. And most of them had heard his speeches before.
But it was a little tradition.
Mike removed his helmet, but set the AID to amplify his voice and faced the assembled battalion.
“On October 25, 1415, near Calais, France, a small band of Englishmen under the English king Henry the Fifth faced the entire French army. This battle was called ‘Agincourt’ and it occurred upon St. Crispin’s Day.
“Although outnumbered by five to one odds, they inflicted terrific casualties upon the better armed and armored French, thereby winning the day.
“An offhand remark of King Henry was later modified by William Shakespeare into the famous ‘St. Crispin’s Day Speech.’
“Throughout the history of man, small forces facing overwhelming odds have been remembered in storied song. The small Greek force at Marathon that defeated a Persian force that outnumbered it a hundred to one. The Rhodesian SAS team that accidentally ran onto a regimental review of guerrillas and wiped them out. The Heroes of Thermopylae. The Alamo. The Seventh Cavalry.”
He paused and looked around at the silent, blank-faced suits. He knew from experience that better than half of them were composing an e-mail or listening to music or looking for some new and better porn. But what the hell.
“Given our situation, I think the last three are most significant,” he continued, pulling out a dip and putting it in. Spitting to clear his mouth, he looked at the sky. “Today we fly to take and hold a pass. We will do so until we are out of bodies or power or ammo. I’m not sure which we’ll run out of first. All things considered, probably bodies.
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. In years to come, men at home now in their beds will think of this day and do you know what they will say? ‘Jesus, I’m glad I wasn’t with those poor doomed ACS assholes or right now I’d be dead.’
“But what the hell; that’s why they pay us the big bucks. Board ships.”
Author’s Afterword
There was supposed to be, there originally was, a long, mildly humorous acknowledgments section here. Of course, I was working on this novel on 9/11. And then, as “they” say, the world changed.
Well, “they” are wrong. “The world” did not change on 9/11, our country did. In the author’s afterword to Gust Front I commented that “we are living in a Golden Age, with all its strengths and ills.” That Golden Age met a distinct reality check on 9/11. The event, more than anything, woke many of us up.
It didn’t wake me up, I was already awake. I’d been awake since I was eleven or twelve and an ammunition ship blew up in Beirut harbor. Of course, I was about ten blocks away at the time, so it was… rather noticeable. “Loud” doesn’t cover it. The world has always been a very hostile place, more so for Americans in the latter half of the twentieth century than for any other group (with the possible exception of Jews). People in the developing nations come in two distinct brands: they love America or they hate it. I never, in all my travels, met one person who was just flat ambivalent. Being awake was one of the reasons I gave my body to Uncle Sammy. I knew there were barbarians at the gates, even if nobody else heard the thumping.
What has always seemed distant to many Americans has always been real and close to me. I have had to wonder how many of my schoolmates were in the crowd that stormed the embassy in Teheran. I’ve had to wonder if my best friend from fifth grade died in the Bosnian conflict. And I’ve always wondered what “it” was going to be. What “it” was that was going to sufficiently shock my fellow countrymen out of their complacency. Was “it” going to be a nuke in Washington? Or smallpox? Or anthrax?
As things turned out, “it” was destroying the Twin Towers.
In WWII, for the British, “it” was the invasion of Poland, and even more so the invasion of France. For the U.S. “it” was Pearl Harbor. Democracies require an “it,” a defining moment when the call to arms is so clear that the most complacent hear the trumpets.
Where we are going in the future is uncertain. We may yet descend into cataclysmic warfare to dwarf my books. Or we may “change the paradigm” and hammer through on the backs of our elite. I don’t know what we shall find in the tunnel ahead. I do know this, though. That is all that it is. A dark tunnel. There is a light at the end; it is not another train, it is the future. We will create that future as Americans always have: a better, brighter future.