Starfist - 12 - Firestorm

by Dan Cragg

  “What? I thought—” Cazombi consulted his chronometer. It was 1020; they’d have plenty of time to get to Quadrant 54G. “Probably having a cigar smoke-in,” Cazombi said to Sturgeon. “Who’s he with, Chief?”

  The chief consulted his vid screen again. “Says here G1 and some other staff members, sir. Something about Morale and Welfare, it says.”

  “What time did the conference start?” Cazombi asked.

  “Zero eight forty-five, sir.”

  Cazombi and Sturgeon exchanged glances. That was where Billie had been when Cazombi called him from Phelps to announce the breakthrough and he’d put him off to talk about “morale and welfare” matters when the fate of the army hung in the balance? “I don’t remember this on the goddamned schedule Sorca sent us last night,” he said to Sturgeon.

  “Sez here it was changed first thing this morning, sir.”

  “And we weren’t informed,” Sturgeon added, exchanging a significant glance with Cazombi.

  “Chief, where, exactly, is Quadrant 54G?” The chief swiveled his display around so Cazombi could see it. “Jesus.” Cazombi sighed. “Way the hell down in the bowels of this place. Thanks, Chief! Ted, let’s get started.”

  But when they got to Quadrant 54G they found that Billie had left early for the command center. They were both perspiring heavily when they finally reached him. General Billie, sitting at a console in the middle of the room, was in the middle of a meeting with what looked like his full staff variously sitting and standing around him.

  “Sir, you’ve got to attack now!” Cazombi shouted, barging through the door, followed closely by Brigadier Sturgeon. Heads swiveled in surprise. General Billie’s head snapped up from a display as if he’d seen Banquo’s ghost.

  Wh-What the hell?” General Jason Billie, face instantly flushing a bright red, shouted. “General, what are you doing here?” The staff officers and commanders sitting around Billie shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. Personnel elsewhere in the army’s command center, startled by the outburst, and Cazombi’s unexpected entry into the room, stopped what they were doing to eavesdrop on the argument.

  “Sir.” Cazombi leaned over Billie’s console. “You’ve got your hammer and anvil, Task Force Cazombi is pushing up the Ashburtonville road. You’ve got to attack now, before Lyons moves his army!” he pleaded. “You’ve got to pin him in place. Sir!”

  “General, is that why you deserted your post?” Billie responded calmly, “Return at once to your men and I will not charge you with desertion! The time is not yet ripe for us to mount our breakout. We have to wait until the Marines get farther along the road—”

  “You goddamned fool!” Cazombi yelled, having lost every shred of his famous self-control. “The son of a bitch has taken out the string-of-pearls so the fleet can’t follow his movements! If you sit there on your ass and let Lyons get away, this’ll turn into a war of maneuver and you’ll have lost whatever chance you ever had to crush him here! If he gets away we’ll have to go after him and fight him on his own ground. The dumbest private soldier in this army knows that, General. So what’s your excuse?”

  General Billie’s chair went clattering to the floor as he leaped to his feet. “You black bastard! You have opposed me ever since I took command here! You are a scheming, disloyal officer,” he screamed. “I’ll have no more of this! You are relieved, General!” he thundered.

  Cazombi moved swiftly. He reached across the desk, grabbed Billie by the front of his well-tailored uniform blouse, pulled him off his feet and partly over his desk. “Now you listen to me for a change,” he said. “I am relieving you of command of this army. You have done nothing but screw up this war and get our boys killed, and I am officially taking over. Sergeant”—he turned to the military-police sergeant in charge of the security detail who was standing by, gaping at what was happening—“escort General Billie to his quarters and stand guard over him there until you are properly relieved.”

  “Yes, sir!” The sergeant snapped to attention.

  “Cazombi, what are you doing?” Billie shrieked, “This is mutiny! Sergeant! Stand fast! No, no! Do something, man! Arrest this officer! I order you to arrest this traitor! Do it! Do it now!” he screamed. The other officers in the staff meeting had jumped to their feet and were now standing nervously around the room, as if afraid they’d catch something if they interfered in any way. All except Brigadier Ted Sturgeon, who took up a stance beside the MP sergeant.

  “Sir, what do I do?” the MP whispered to Sturgeon.

  “Sergeant, you’re the cop, it’s your decision,” Sturgeon whispered back, “but if I were you, I’d arrest the bastard!” Those words penetrated into every corner of the command center, burning into the memory of every man present.

  Billie and Cazombi stood in a frozen tableau in the center of the room. “Balca! Balca!” Billie screamed at his chief of staff. “Do something! Don’t just stand there, do something!” he demanded.

  General Balca Sorca shifted nervously from one foot to the other and looked at the floor.

  The MP sergeant glanced first at one officer and then at the other, not sure which one to obey, but sure he knew who the “bastard” was. Already two of his men were standing by, looking to him for orders. Suddenly he felt a sickening weakness in his colon. After weeks of twiddling his thumbs on this deadly boring security detail, he had to make a decision. Often in the affair of war chance decrees that the action of one man makes the difference between victory or defeat. Now the entire outcome of the war against the secessionists depended on what Sergeant Maximilian Heck, 716th Military Police Company, would do next.

  Sergeant Heck stepped forward to where the two generals stood, came to attention, and saluted smartly. All eyes were on him at that moment. “General Ca-Cazombi,” he stuttered, “uh, I mean, General Billie, sir, would you please come with me?”

  Billie screamed threats all the way to his quarters.

  “Sir.” Brigadier Ted Sturgeon stood at attention, facing General Cazombi. “What are your orders?” From somewhere in the back of the command post someone started a cheer.

  “Unmask the laser batteries!” General Davis Lyons ordered. “And give me a 1:25,000 of this grid.” He zoomed in on the northwestern portion of the huge topographical vid that covered one wall of his command post. “Here.” He pointed to a small village at the foot of the Cumber Mountain Range about 150 kilometers northwest of Ashburtonville. “Here’s where I want to set up my command post. Rene,” he said, turning to Colonel Raggel, “start packing for the move!”

  The shock that had frozen Lyons’s commanders and staff into statuary at the news that the enemy had landed on the coast and taken Phelps vanished instantly at the sound of his voice. “General,” he said to the army’s artillery commander, “I want your laser batteries trained on those satellites. Take them out! We can’t have their fleet observing our movements.” Acknowledging the command, the artilleryman saluted perfunctorily and departed for his post. Lyons had wisely kept several powerful batteries of antisatellite lasers hidden around Ashburtonville just in case he needed them to take out the string-of-pearls that were the Confederation’s eyes on his army.

  “Ops?” Lyons turned to his operations officer.

  “The 4th Division is retreating up the Ashburtonville road, sir. General Sneed reports the enemy is hard on his rear and pressing him vigorously.”

  “Can he hold them at all?”

  “No, sir.”

  Lyons thought for a moment. “You”—he gestured at one of his mechanized infantry division commanders—“take your division down the road toward Phelps and reinforce Sneed’s troops, or what’s left of them. You must delay the enemy advance, if only for an hour or two.” Lyons regarded his commanders. With this attack on their rear, the entire war had suddenly turned against the Coalition forces. Suddenly the air was broken by the unique cra-a-a-ak of the laser cannon. Lyons smiled. He might just pull this off. “Gentlemen, I want the 24th Embata and the 3rd Sagunto divisions to
remain in place here. Raise as much hell with Billie’s defenses as you can. He must be convinced this army is intact and ready to oppose him when he tries to break out.

  “Everyone else”—he pointed again to the map—“the Coalition government has already removed to the Cumbers from Gilbert’s Corners. They’ve made considerable improvement to the limestone caverns out there. We’ll fortify ourselves up there and make the Confederation come to us and we’ll cut them to ribbons. Engineers?” He turned to his G4 officer. “Get them out there now! Deepen and improve the fortifications. They have their work cut out for them.” The grim-faced army logistics officer hurried off to get his engineers moving. “Gentlemen,” Lyons said to his remaining commanders, “return to your commands and get ready to move to, to”—he turned back to the map and located the village at the foot of the Cumber massif—“Austen. Oh, G5,” he said to his civil affairs officer, “you’d better get on out there and evacuate the civilians, everyone but the government officials holed up in the caves. The residents don’t need to be involved in this, and since the Coalition wanted this war, set the damned thing up on us, they can stand with my army. Take an MP battalion with you; we’ll need them in place when the traffic picks up.” Lyons clapped his hands together. “I’ll have a movement order to you in a little while, gentlemen. Now get moving and good luck!” With a scraping of chairs and a gathering up of equipment, General Lyons’s commanders departed the CP in a rush.

  “Sir? What about the government out in the Cumbers? Should we let them know we’re coming?” Colonel Raggel asked.

  Lyons stuck the stub of a Davidoff between his teeth and regarded his aide out of one eye. “Fuck ’em. They’ll know when the MPs get there. If this maneuver doesn’t work, Rene, it’s not them we’ll have to worry about, it’s them!” He nodded toward General Jason Billie’s fortifications on Bataan—unaware General Jason Billie was no longer in command there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  General Billie’s screams of protest could still be heard clearly, receding down the corridor, when General Cazombi slapped his thigh with one hand and said to the assembled officers who still stood, frozen at the recently concluded spectacle, “Okay, people, let’s get this show on the road!”

  As if brought out of a spell, the staff came back to life and crowded around Cazombi. “I’m making some changes in the army’s organization,” Cazombi announced. “First, Brigadier Sturgeon, you will immediately assume duty as my chief of staff. Get a message to Colonel Ramadan that 34th FIST is his until further notice. General Sorca,” he said grimly to Balca Sorca, formerly General Billie’s chief of staff, who had stood by silently relieved that Billie had been removed from command, but now anticipated his own disgrace, “you are now the deputy commander of this Army.” Cazombi permitted himself an amused grin at the expression of surprise that now crossed Sorca’s face.

  “Th-Thank you, sir,” Sorca stuttered. Sorca knew very well that the position of deputy commander was essentially a dead end, that it was the chief of staff who really controlled an army, but he was thankful Cazombi hadn’t had him dragged off to a detention cell along with Billie. For his part, Cazombi had not forgotten how Sorca had come to him and advised him to relieve Billie, an act of considerable moral courage.

  “Ted, a message to General Koval.” Cazombi turned to Brigadier Sturgeon. “He is now in command of Task Force Cazombi, which we will now rename Task Force Koval.” Cazombi actually smiled when he said this. “He is to push on up the Ashburtonville road with all possible speed. We will break out and link up with him on the outskirts of the city—”

  “Sir!” It was Captain Bulldog Bukok, the Task Force 79 liaison officer. “Word just in from Admiral Wang: Lyons has taken out the string-of-pearls again. He must have kept antisatellite batteries masked around Ashburtonville for an emergency. The fleet won’t be able to track him if he tries to regroup outside the current area of operations.”

  “Map, 1:50,000,” Sturgeon ordered, and a tactical map of the Ashburtonville area of operations sprang onto the vid screen. “Captain, didn’t Fleet inform General Billie that an interrogation had revealed a plan to move the Coalition government to…?” He glanced at Bukok, who nodded at Brigadier General Wyllyums, the army’s intelligence officer.

  “That’s true, sir. They were moved to the town of Austen in the Cumber Mountains. Zoom in on that section, please,” Wyllyums said to the operations sergeant running the display.

  The staff studied the overlay silently for a moment and then General Cazombi whistled. “That’s where the old fox is headed, gentlemen!” He slammed a fist on the table. “I’ll bet he’s long ago sent an advance party out there to fortify the place. Used to be an old salt mine in those foothills, right, General Wyllyums?” Wyllyums nodded. “It’s a great place for a last stand, gentlemen.” Everyone fell into another moment of silent contemplation. “That’s why Lyons kept those batteries in hiding around Ashburtonville and that’s why he used them to take out the string-of-pearls. He’s going to retreat to the Cumbers!”

  “Sir,” said Brigadier Wyllyums, “please note the road network between here and Austen. It runs mostly through a very dense forest populated with some enormous trees, some of them a hundred meters in height or more. They’ll use those forests to screen their movements.”

  “Makes good sense. General Thayer.” He turned to his operations officer. “I want everything that can fly in the air over the route to Austen, everything. Attack every target along the way, I don’t care of it’s a shithouse, put ordnance on everything including bridges and the roads themselves. Crater them and knock down the bridges.”

  “We’ll lose aircraft and pilots, sir. Lyons has a very strong air-defense capability.”

  “I know, I know, but it’s got to be done. We’ve got to hurt Lyons as much as we can before he can consolidate his forces in those mountains. If he gets there unscathed this war could drag on forever, and frankly I don’t relish the thought of an assault on the Cumbers. Meanwhile, gentlemen”—Cazombi turned to the rest of the staff—“goose your subordinate commanders to stand by and prepare for action. Billie never prepared an operations order for a breakout, so we’re going to have to do that right now. And somebody take out those goddamned antisatellite batteries! All right, let’s move! We’re already a day late and a dollar short.”

  The officer commanding General Davis Lyons’s antisatellite laser batteries and all of his men bravely volunteered to stay behind to cover the army’s withdrawal to the relative safety of the mines in the Cumber Mountains. That one act of heroism was probably what saved the bulk of the Coalition’s forces from utter destruction.

  Wellford Brack, now a sergeant in the Mylex Provisional Infantry Brigade, sat in the lead vehicle of his company convoy, Private Amitus Sparks driving. Normally an officer would’ve had that honor but casualties had been high among the brigade’s officers and now sergeants performed many of their duties. Their orders were not to use the main highway but to travel offroad as much as possible, keep their stealth suites in a high state of performance, and maintain a sharp lookout for Confederation Raptors which everyone was sure would pounce on them as soon as the army on Bataan realized Lyons was withdrawing his forces.

  “Hunnert klicks to go in this shit,” Sparks muttered as their tactical vehicle bounced over the rough ground. A lighted Capricorn hung from one side of his mouth as he drove.

  “Put that gawdam thing out!” Brack ordered, reaching over and snatching the cigarette. “Damned things’ll kill you, Amie.”

  “Sarge!” Sparks protested.

  “Amie, you dumb shit, you can’t drive this thing ’n’ smoke at the same time! Keep your eyes on the terrain!”

  “Geez, Wellers, we’re in a friggin’ combat zone, might die any minute, ’n’ you worry about me dying of cancer from these cigarettes?”

  “I ain’t worried about you, Einstein. You lower-ranking enlisted swine are expendable. I jus’ don’t wanna get ashes on my clean uniform. You ought
a take up a clean habit, like chewing.” Brack spit tobacco juice into a small, splashproof container.

  “Clean?” Sparks grimaced. “That gawdam Deadman weed you chew?”

  “It’s called Redman, you ignoramus.”

  “We hit another bump like the last one ’n’ that shit’ll fly all over the inside of this vehicle. When the Raptors get us we’ll be parboiled in your friggin’ tobacco juices! Raptors ain’t got no respect even fer you higher-ranking noncommissioned swine. Yeah,” Sparks said, suddenly hit by another thought. “They calls it Deadman ’cause you’ll die of cancer of the mouth, you chew enough of that shit. Well, mebbe not, they kin always do a mouth transplant on ya. Be a big improvement over the piehole you was born with.”

  “Amie, why don’t you shut yer yap ’n’ kiss the opposite end of my alimentary canal?” Brack chuckled. The banter relieved somewhat the tension he was under, but his uniform was still soaked with nervous perspiration.

  They were plowing through scrub where the ground was particularly uneven, probably from the furrows of an old crop field, and driving over it was extremely difficult in the pitch darkness even with the vehicle’s night-vision optics at full power. “Watch for them trees, Amie,” he warned. There weren’t many of them but they were big. “Be my ass if I let you run this convoy into a friggin’ tree.”

  “Yeah? You got enough ass to go ’round for everybody, Mr. Tons of Fun,” Sparks muttered. For some reason he thought of Suey Ruston, the third member of their original fire team, killed some weeks before. He was having difficulty remembering what Suey looked like.