A Hymn Before Battle lota-1

by John Ringo

  “That’s the way the President made it sound.”

  “… I must, unfortunately, report that the loss of human life has already begun…”

  “What? Sorry, honey, I’ll call you back.” He squeezed the AID, breaking the connection, and slapped it back around his wrist. He hoped Sharon would understand.

  “… in the press pool was the internationally famous reporter, Shari Mahasti. She, her cameraman Marc Renard, soundman Jean Carron and producer Sharon Levy, along with Marshals Sergey Levorst of Russia and Chu Feng of China, Generals Erton of France, Trayner of the United States and a French paratrooper security detail were all lost on Barwhon 5…”

  “Good God,” said the fighter jock. “How the hell did that happen?” The various personnel in the room, one and all cleared for any information related to the coming war, reacted with shock to the surprise announcement. The buzzing got loud enough that a senior officer finally had to shout for quiet.

  “… explain what happened and show you the face of the enemy in my office, the senior editors at CNN and the DOD press office have prepared the following tape. It serves as the final work of that fine journalist and shows, as no words can, the true face of the devil. This transmission was the last set picked up by the supporting Federation stealth ships. Parents should ask small children to leave the room.”

  * * *

  “General Trayner, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity…” The dark-haired female reporter speaking had serious eyes, deeply troubled. She was in a clearing in apparently unbroken forests of looming purple. Twisty blue and green edifices could be seen on the edge of the camera view, thin and sinuous; they seemed too delicate to withstand normal gravity. A low crab shape scuttled across the background, a Tchpth on some unknown errand, forever impressed into immortality. “What is your impression so far of the Posleen forces and the security of our position here? We seem to be more or less surrounded by fighting.” There was a distant crackling, like a thousand lightnings and the sky in the background lit in actinic fire.

  The general smiled confidently. “Well, Shari, as you know, the Posleen are generally unable to cross rivers and mountains if they are under fire. Although the Galactics have a lot of problems fighting the Posleen effectively, they are holding this area with a fair degree of confidence. The region is bounded on two sides by large rivers that stretch for some distance away from the primary Posleen infestation. As long as the enemy doesn’t flank the rivers upstream, and with the support of our Legionnaire forces,” he gestured at the French Legionnaires on security, “we should be fine.”

  “General Erton,” she swung the microphone to the American’s counterpart, “do you agree?”

  “Oh, oui.” The tall aristocratic Frenchman wore dark gray camouflage that somehow blended well with the overall purples of the background. He also gave the reporter a blinding smile as the Chinese and Russian marshals waited for their opportunity to reassure the nervous reporter. What none of them considered was that the reporter had more time in combat zones than all of them combined, and had developed a certain nose for trouble. “The Posleen so far have shown no ability to force a crossing of these rivers. In addition, according to the intelligence we have been given, they do not seem to use their landing craft after the initial invasion as would humans for ‘airmobile’ purposes—”

  “Mon Général!” shouted a voice in the background, “Le ciel!”

  The camera swung wildly then settled down with a wonderful view of the soaring Tchpth towers against a setting violet sun. Looming over the purple forest giants and the towers of the town was a monolithic block of darkness, silver lightnings stabbing downward at the defiant Darhel and human defenders. In response to a lazy lift of tracers toward the distant Posleen lander, a silver bar of steel lightning slammed down, picked up the camera on a shock wave of air exploding away from the beam of plasma and tossed it into the air like a child’s toy.

  Now, the camera view was sideways. Something, a button or a scrap of cloth from the body it leaned against, blocked the lower part of the screen. An American jump boot was propped limply on a gray set of rags, the torn body of a former enemy. The single living human in view, a French paratrooper, removed his empty magazine and stared at the feed in stupefaction. Tossing it over his shoulder he reached down to his belt and drew his bayonet. Fixing it he leapt out of view with a cry of “Camerone!”

  Moments later leprous yellow-scaled legs with eaglelike talons entered the view. The camera tumbled for a moment, losing focus, and the screen exploded in a cloud of red. There had never been a clear view of the enemy.

  “My fellow Americans,” said the President as the view returned to the podium, “we face a storm unlike any in our history. But, like the majestic oaks of our land, our roots are deep, our Union strong. Before this storm we will lose leaves, we will lose branches. But this Union under God will weather the storm and in the spring we shall bloom anew.” There was a moment of silence, a hush, then a single member began to clap. The applause spread and caught until there was a thunderous roar, an affirmation. For one brief moment the nominal leaders of the strongest republic on earth were joined in a single vision, a vision of survival and a future beyond the darkness. For that one brief moment there was unity against the storm.

  8

  Ft. Bragg, NC Sol III

  1648 November 19th, 2001 ad

  Staff Sergeant Bob Duncan, Chief Fire Direction Controller for the 2nd Battalion 325th Infantry Heavy Mortar section, was occasionally a problem for his chain of command, what is euphemistically called a leadership challenge. For his entire career in the Army he never quite fit in. He had all the merit badges expected of a ten-year veteran of the 82nd Airborne, the Ranger tab, the jumpmaster’s wings, staff sergeant’s stripes, but despite these he was never quite trusted by his first sergeants and platoon sergeants. Part of this was the nature of his career. For whatever reasons, and they had varied, he had never been cycled to another unit. He’d arrived fresh from Infantry Individual Training and Airborne school as a private, was promptly assigned to D company (then CSC Company) of the 2nd Battalion 325th PIR and there he stayed. Not for him the rotations to Korea, or Germany. No tours to the Airborne units in Italy, Alaska and Panama. Instead, during his term it seemed he had done every job in the company. Need a scout to round out the platoon? Sergeant Duncan’s been a scout. Need a TOW HUMVEE commander? Sergeant Duncan. Need a head for your Fire Direction Center? A mortar squad leader? Call Sergeant Duncan. Operations sergeant? He was a fixture of D company more immutable than the barracks, far more fixed than the command groups, the constantly cycling first sergeants, lieutenants and commanders. Whenever the new first sergeants, lieutenants and commanders had a question, the finger was inevitably pointed at Sergeant Duncan.

  It would seem that, in any fair world, such omnipotence about the function of the company, from the supply room (supply clerk, nine months, year three) to the function of the antitank platoon (acting platoon sergeant, nearly a year, gunner, jeep commander, motor pool sergeant) would lead to steady acclaim and rapid promotion. Any job dangerous and dirty, any job difficult, dusty and dry give it to Sergeant Duncan.

  But that led to another problem with Sergeant Duncan. How could anyone give the same lecture, teach the same lessons over and over, not to subordinates but to superiors, and not develop a faint aura of scorn? When the company commander constantly had to ask you questions, it inevitably led to invidious comparisons. When twice in your career you ended up leading the (notional) remnants of the company in graded field maneuvers, once getting a far higher grade than the current commander, when the most trying task became routine, when you were always chosen first for any difficult and tedious job because you were just so blamed good at it and coincidentally it got you out of the first sergeant’s remaining hair, an ennui exceeding all normal course begins to wear away at the soul. This ennui, in the case of the Sergeant Duncans of the world, leads to tinkering. Would it be better if the wires went this way? W
hat would happen if we did it that way? Could we use these civilian fireworks for booby traps? The repercussions from that particular experiment were still occurring.

  It would have been far better for Sergeant Duncan, for the Army, if not for D company, were he cycled out to fresh pastures and new challenges. But, nonetheless, for many reasons he stayed a fixture of the company, of the battalion, and, in an exceedingly Airborne way, festered.

  As fate would have it, the change came to him instead of the other way around. He twisted the black box around as he sat on his bunk across from his current detested roommate. He had noted the phenomenon that he apparently had three roommates he detested for every one he got along with. This one was about due for a refund; a scout sergeant, he thought scouts shit gold. Well, Duncan had been a scout when this little turd was in middle school and had already outshot him on the Known Distance range, so as far as Bob Duncan was concerned this scout could just pack his ego back in his fuckin’ duffel bag and march on out any time. The stupid bastard was carefully stropping a dagger about as long as his forearm on a diamond sharpener, as if he was going to be using it on Posleen the next day. As far as Sergeant Duncan had been able to ascertain, the Posleen had, like, nowhere you could plant a knife and do vital damage. Furthermore, how did he think he was going to use it in a combat suit? The constant stropping was beginning to be more irritating than the scratch of the wool blanket on his bed. Jeez Louise! For godsakes Top get this guy out of my room!

  To take his mind off of the stupid bastard as he waited for last formation to be called, Duncan studied the latest black box they had been issued. It was about the size of the pack of Marlboros in his left breast pocket and flat, absorbent black, very similar in appearance to their AIDs. Black as an ace of spades. And, somehow, it projected a field you could not put a .308 round through. He’d already tried. Several times, just to be sure. And it didn’t even move the box when the shells ricocheted off; that was freaky. Mind you, the guys around him moved prrrretty damned fast when those .308 rounds came back up range at the Fort Bragg Rod and Gun club. Fortunately there weren’t any jerks around. The other shooters just laughed and went back to jacking rounds downrange from an amazing variety of weapons.

  Okay, so it stopped bullets. But the field only extended out about seven feet in either direction and it stopped when it touched an obstacle. Stopped. It didn’t wrap around the obstacle. Just stopped, which sucked if you thought about it. And you should be able to brace it into something, not just depend on whatever it was that kept it in place. He’d had a little talk with his AID and it turned out the damn thing had some sort of safety lock. So he’d talked with his AID a little more and convinced it that since they were an experimental battalion, with experimental equipment, they had the responsibility to experiment. The AID checked its protocols and apparently agreed because it had just released the safety interlocks on the device. Ensuring that it was at arm’s length, Duncan activated the unit.

  The Personal Force Field unit functioned by generating a focused reversal plane of weak force energy as analogous to a laser beam as a line is to a plane, meaning not. The unit was designed to produce a circle 12 meters in area for 45 minutes. Given the option of maximum generation, it generated a circle 1250 meters square for 3 milliseconds before failing. The plane was effectively two-dimensional. It extended outwards 20 meters in every direction, sliding through the interstices between atoms and occasionally disrupting the odd proton or electron.

  The plane sliced as effectively as a katana in air through all the surrounding material, severing I-beams, bed structures, wall lockers and, in the unfortunate case of Sergeant Duncan’s roommate, limbs. The slice, thinner than a hair, reached from the basement supply room, where it, among other things, sliced through an entire box of Bic pens causing a tremendous mess, to the roof, where it created a leak that was never completely fixed. However, once the entire base was overrun by the Posleen the leak became moot. In addition, the throughput on the unit exceeded the parameters of the superconductive circuitry, and waste heat raised the case temperature to over two hundred degrees Celsius.

  “Jesus!” screamed Sergeant Duncan and dropped the suddenly red-hot case as his bunk dropped to the floor. As the floor began to settle, he slid forward as did his roommate on the other bunk. His roommate let out a bloodcurdling scream as his legs, from just below the knees, suddenly slid sideways away from his descending body and arterial blood spurted bright red to blacken the army blanket.

  In his time Sergeant Duncan had seen more than any man’s share of ugly accidents and he reacted without thought. He rapidly wound parachute cord around the stumps. The knife made an effective tightener for the first tourniquet; placed right it did not even cut the cord. The second tourniquet slowed the blood loss through the simple expedient of using a self-tightening hitch, very common when preparing vehicles for heavy drop or certain kinds of girls for bed. The unfortunate roommate screamed imprecations and began to cry; to such a man the loss of his legs might as well be death.

  “Forget it,” Sergeant Duncan snarled as he slid a screwdriver under the second tourniquet and tightened it until the blood flow stopped. “They can regrow them now.” The soon-to-be ex-roommate was going glassy eyed as the blood loss began to affect him, but he caught the central idea and nodded as he passed out. “I’m the one who’s fucked,” Duncan whispered at last and cradled his burned hand to his chest as he crawled up the incline to the door. “Medic!” He yelled into the hallway and slumped back against the doorframe staring blank-eyed at the floor sloping towards the mirror-bright cut.

  * * *

  Sergeant First Class Black entered the battalion commander’s office, did a precise right-face and rendered a hand salute. Staff Sergeant Duncan followed him in lock step and stood at attention.

  “Sergeant First Class Black, reporting as ordered with a party of one,” said Sergeant Black crisply, but with a hush to his voice.

  “Stand at ease, Sergeant Black,” Lieutenant Colonel Youngman said. He stared at Sergeant Duncan for a full minute. Sergeant Duncan stood at attention and sweated, reading the officer’s commissioning document on the opposite wall; his mind had otherwise retreated to a safe place that did not include the probability of a court-martial. He had the intense feeling that the recent events had to be a dream, a nightmare. Nothing this awful could be real.

  “Sergeant Duncan, and this question is purely rhetorical, what am I to do with you? You are tremendously competent, except when you fuck up, and you apparently do that by the numbers. I have had a chat with the sergeant major, your company commander, your platoon sergeant and, ignoring protocol, your former first sergeant. I have already officially heard several opinions of you from your current first sergeant.”

  Youngman paused and his face worked. “I will admit to being at a loss. We are certainly expecting combat in the very near future, and we need every damn trained NCO we can put our hands on, so a trip to Leavenworth,” at that word both NCOs flinched, “which is the least you damn well deserve, is nearly out of the question. However, if I put you before a court, that’s where you’re going. Do you realize that?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Duncan answered quietly.

  “You caused fifty-three thousand dollars worth of structural damage and cut your roommate’s legs off. If it weren’t for this new Galactic,” the term was practically spit, “medical technology he would be a cripple for the rest of his life and as it is I’m out a superior NCO. He is being detached to patient’s status and then to general replacement. They tell me it will take at least ninety days to grow him new legs which means we likely as not will not get him back. So, as I said, what am I to do with you? This is an official question, do you wish administrative or judicial punishment? That is, do you want to take whatever I order as your punishment or do you want to face a court-martial?”

  “Administrative, sir.” Duncan breathed an internal sigh of relief at being given the opportunity.

  “Very smart of you, Se
rgeant, but it’s well known that you’re smart. Very well, sixty days’ restriction, forty-five days’ extra duty, one month’s pay over sixty days and one stripe.” The colonel had effectively thrown the book at him. “Oh, and Sergeant, I understand you were up for sergeant first class.” The officer paused. “It will be a cold day in hell. Dismissed.”

  Sergeant Black snapped to attention, barked “Right face!” and marched Sergeant Duncan out of the office.

  “Sergeant Major!”

  The sergeant major entered the office after escorting the NCOs from the building. “Yes, sir.”

  “Get with the first sergeants and the S-4. We don’t understand this equipment and we don’t have time to mess with the booby traps in it right now. With Expert Infantry Boards coming up we need to concentrate on basic infantry skills; the scores on the latest round of core training processes were abysmal.

  “I want every bit of GalTech equipment locked down, right now. Put all that will fit in the armories and the rest under lock and key in the supply rooms, especially those damn helmets and AIDs. And as for Duncan, I think he’s been in the battalion too long, but we’re critically short on NCOs so I can’t rotate him out. What do you think?”

  The stocky blond sergeant major worked his protuberant lips in and out as he thought. “Bravo could use a good squad leader in their third platoon. The platoon sergeant is experienced but he’s spent most of his career in leg units. I think Duncan would be a real asset and Sergeant Green should know how to handle problem children.”

  “Do it. Do it today,” the officer snapped, washing his hands of the matter.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And get that crap under lock and key.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, when do you anticipate an ACS training cycle? I’ll be asked.” He had been asked already and repeatedly by the company first sergeants. Bravo company’s first sergeant, in particular, was crawling all over his ass on a daily basis.