A Hymn Before Battle lota-1

by John Ringo

  “From whom?” asked the general, surprised.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Youngman, sir.”

  “Direct orders?” asked the astounded officer.

  “Michelle?” Mike prompted.

  “Yes, Lieutenant O’Neal,” she said. The experienced machine knew when to be on her best behavior.

  “Run the applicable conversation.”

  “Now, I don’t care what you think your mission is, or who you think you are. What I want you to do is go to your cabin and stay there for the rest of the trip. You’re not confined to quarters or anything but I decide how my battalion is run, how it trains, what its tactics are. Not any former E-5 with a shiny silver bar that thinks he’s hot shit. If I find you in the battalion area without my direct permission, in the training areas, or talking to my officers about tactics or training I will personally hang you up, shake you out and strip you of commission, rank, honor and possibly life. Do I make myself clear?” the AID played back.

  “I confess, sir, that I did not handle the conversation very well on my side,” Mike allowed, to stunned silence. “I let the colonel get my goat, to be frank and I was already upset with the posted training schedule when I arrived.”

  “Did you tell the AID to record that conversation?” the general asked, with a neutral expression once he had gotten over his shock.

  “You didn’t know, sir?” asked Mike, with an uneasy voice and a glance at the general’s AID, sitting conspicuously on top of his desk. This was a turn he was not particularly happy about.

  “Know what?”

  “They record everything, sir.”

  “What?”

  “We found out at GalTech, sir. Sight, sound, everything. It can be played back at any time in the future.”

  “By whom?”

  “Currently they are designed solely for user-authorized playback, sir, with some caveats. Some of the countries wanted to make it anyone of a higher rank, but we, the Americans, and a few others, the British and Germans notably, refused. If our soldiers found out that their AIDs would rat on them at any opportunity, they’d ‘lose’ them all the time. However, the records are generally accessible in times of combat or by anyone interacting with the owning individual during the applicable moment.”

  “Okay. Damn, maybe you should be my ACS advisor. So, the colonel told you to remain in your cabin. Effectively under arrest. Have you?”

  “No, sir. I’ve been keeping in training, physical and tactical. I also construed that I should not develop social contact with the members of the ACS battalion, so I’ve avoided the club, etc.”

  “So, you’ve been working out in a gym for the past month?”

  “And with my suit, yes, sir.”

  “Have you been working with any units of the 325?”

  “Sir?”

  “Do you realize that you always respond the same way when avoiding a question? Among other interesting anomalies, it appears that Bravo company of the battalion is the only company in the ACS battalion that is hitting the expected milestones for suit training time. And, according to the Herr Oberst, Bravo has made a remarkable advancement in the last month. The Oberst seems to feel that the only part of my ACS unit that is worth wiping a nose with is Bravo company. Not actually up to where they should be, but not completely useless.

  “Then it came to my attention that Lieutenant Colonel Youngman wrote an Officer Evaluation Report for his Bravo company commander that accused him of everything but sleeping with my daughter. According to the OER it seems that Bravo company is ‘wholly unprepared for combat.’ In a recent internal battalion EIB evaluation none of the company’s personnel managed to pass,” said the general with a thin smile.

  “Sir, one of the EIB standards is a thousand-meter land navigation course. Where’d they do it?” For the first time in the conversation the general was beginning to remind Mike of General Horner.

  “Good question. More to the point, since the EIB hasn’t been upgraded for ACS standards, what’s the point of training for it?” asked the general. The affable expression had turned to something very like a snarl.

  “Ummh, his people… need to maintain proficiency for when they transfer to non-ACS units, sir?”

  “Very good,” smiled the general with a rueful shake of his head. “You make a wonderful devil’s advocate, Lieutenant. Unfortunately, regulations currently call for permanent retention of ACS qualified personnel in ACS units. There goes that argument right out the window. Actually, the only line commander he’s satisfied with is Charlie. Alpha also performed abysmally. However I also happened to notice that although the majority of the battalion is less than ten percent ACS proficient, Alpha and Bravo are at twenty and thirty percent, respectively. Comments, Lieutenant?”

  “I suspect that Alpha and Bravo’s brass is unshined and they haven’t met their PT norms, sir.”

  “Sarcasm, Lieutenant?”

  “Sorry, sir. Maybe a little.”

  “As a matter of fact, when I asked Lieutenant Colonel Youngman about Bravo company, he commented that he was considering relieving his Bravo company commander.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Do you normally interrupt generals, Lieutenant?” the general asked, dryly.

  “No, sir. No excuse, sir,” said Mike. He took a deep breath and tried to get hold of his temper. Relieving Captain Brandon would cut the entire pipeline he had been using to get the battalion any decent training.

  Infantrymen were past masters at disappearing. Partially it was a matter of their mission; being “ghosts” was half of what being infantry was all about. Another part of it was that without a war or heavy-duty training schedule, they were always first to be handed the worst details. So experienced individuals in infantry units learned to become functionally invisible outside of real training times.

  Mike and Wiznowski had used this ability to the fullest. The companies were holding regular morning, early afternoon and recall formations, per battalion orders. However, some of the empty holds were practically right next door to the battalion area. Every day NCOs from Bravo and later Alpha company had slipped out of the battalion area and into the abandoned holds. There they had begun to master the myriad facets of their new specialty, the better to pass it on to their juniors. One of the ironic items was the fact that they bitched and moaned about not having the “GalTech expert” available to help them. Mike meanwhile was monitoring the entire process through his Milspecs or armor, down to listening to the bitching. Whenever he felt that the situation needed something pointed out he filtered it through Wiznowski. As far as anyone knew, Wiz was running the whole training program.

  If Captain Brandon were relieved, the entire masquerade would go down the tubes.

  “I was informed of your habitual frown,” General Houseman continued quietly, “but you are currently turning red and smoking at the ears. And would you kindly avoid drilling holes through the wall with your stare?”

  “Bulkhead, sir. On a ship it’s a bulkhead.”

  “Whatever. Now to return to my original question, did you in fact violate direct and indirect orders by interfering in the tactical training of one of Lieutenant Colonel Youngman’s subunits?”

  “Partially, sir,” Mike equivocated. He was thinking furiously.

  “By helping Captains Brandon and Wright with ACS training?”

  “Sir, I have not discussed training or Galactic technologies with any officer of the battalion.”

  “Would you care to explain that?” asked the general with a raised eyebrow.

  “I have not spoken directly to any officer about training, sir. That was in fact my order. Nor have I entered the battalion area, nor have I entered any training area. I have, in fact, obeyed the letter of the order.”

  “I see.” The general smiled. “I suppose there is a reason that the NCOs and enlisted in the companies are doing better, overall, than the officers?”

  “Possibly, sir.”

  “Related to your influence?”

  “Pos
sibly, sir. Then again, to be honest, it might have something to do with the officers spending more time in the ‘club’ than they do in suits.”

  “But you have influenced training,” the general pointed out.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Despite the training schedule authorized by the Battalion S-3?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were you aware of the published training schedule?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I’m glad you didn’t turn a blind eye to your misdeeds.” The general shook his head, looking suddenly harried.

  “Son, I’m going to tell you this by way of an apology. The battalion is an attachment as opposed to one of ‘my’ units, a III Corp unit that is. Therefore, it would be damned difficult for me to relieve Lieutenant Colonel Youngman, much as I would currently like to.” He raised an eyebrow inviting comment, but Mike remained silent. He shook his head again and went on.

  “It’s a hell of a fix to take a unit into battle where I distrust the entire command team. So I’ve done what I can. Disregarding my long-standing rule against micromanaging my subordinate units, a rule the colonel has apparently never heard of, I gave Lieutenant Colonel Youngman a written order to initiate a vigorous training program in ACS combat. It states that, given his failure to date to train in vital areas, if the battalion fails to score eighty percent or better in ACS training norms by the date of our landing it will give me no choice but to relieve him for cause. He did not take it well at all. He seems to feel that since there is no way to prepare adequately because of ‘grossly inadequate preparation time’ on Earth, the battalion should be reissued standard weaponry and deployed as regular airborne infantry.”

  “Good God,” Mike whispered. The upcoming battle was sure to be a bloodbath for ACS, going in as lightly weaponed airborne infantry would be suicide.

  The general smiled coldly again. “I cannot tell you how much I agree. Trust me: I had disabused the colonel of that concept by the time I was done.

  “Before some of this came up I sent a personal e-mail to Jack Horner. He said that your only problem was that you needed someone holding your leash. If there is a problem that requires a juggernaut all I should do is release the leash. That is why we are having this conversation.

  “Now, I’ve given Colonel Youngman all the guidance I think he needs; I did not order him to use you as a training asset. So, if he doesn’t contact you within a week, leave a message with my AID. I’ll make an unannounced visit and drop a question about ‘that GalTech expert, whatsisname?’ Clear?”

  “As crystal, sir.”

  “If I feel it necessary, I will tell you that you have carte blanche. At that point I will have to relieve the colonel. I don’t have a replacement for him I trust that has any ACS time. You do understand the implications of having to place a captain like, for example, Brandon, in command of a battalion.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mike was feeling weak in the knees. The personnel and policy wonkers in Washington would go ballistic. The repercussions for GalTech, which already had a bad reputation for ramming through conventions, might be worse than losing the battalion. The entrenched bureaucracy could throw up the damnedest obstacles when they felt threatened and did not seem to give a damn that there was a war on.

  “Thank you for coming, Lieutenant. We did not have this conversation. This compartment will self-destruct in thirty seconds. Get lost.”

  “Yes, sir. Where am I?”

  21

  Camp McCall, NC Sol III

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  “Afternoon, Gunny, siddown.” Like many of the buildings springing up to support the expanding war effort, the company commander’s combined office and quarters was a sixty-six-foot trailer. The office occupied one end, with the living quarters on the other. Among other things, this arrangement meant one less piece of housing that had to be allocated for the burgeoning officer corps. The company commander was a recycled second lieutenant and the only officer in the training company.

  With the new-old disciplinary techniques and the paucity of officers on the training base, the gaps that had been closing between officer and enlisted corps in the past decade were beginning to widen again. Despite the fact that their CO was a basically nice if stupid second john, the recruits looked upon him as sitting at the right hand of God; the battalion commander was, of course, God.

  Gunnery Sergeant Pappas and the other NCOs encouraged this attitude; keeping the trainees in line was becoming more and more difficult. Not only was it necessary to learn radically new technologies, but the threat bearing down on Earth was causing ripples of disruption at every level. Although the prestige of being Strike Troopers was high, the stress of not knowing your eventual duty assignment, not knowing, as the Guard troops did, that you would be directly defending home and family, was causing a rise in desertions among the Strike training companies.

  Desertions were a problem that the United States military had not had to deal with in years. Pappas had heard rumor that it was even worse among the formed units. Soldiers there would desert, taking their weapons and equipment, and return home to defend their families. The families would in turn hide them and their stolen equipment from the authorities. What the long-term solution would be no one knew.

  Thus, creating a solemn figurehead out of this amiable cretin became a necessity. Sometimes, as a miracle of that strange art called leadership, a simple pat on the back or stern look from the briefly-glimpsed company commander would keep a recruit from bolting. Once they graduated they became somebody else’s responsibility.

  “Gunny,” the lieutenant continued as the gigantic Pappas settled carefully into the rickety swivel chair, “there’s been another change in midstream. Now all the units, as they complete basic training, are to be shipped as units to their permanent posting. They will complete individual training and unit training there. And that is where the suits will be going.”

  “Okay, sir. I’ll tell the troops.” Pappas waited patiently. Sometimes the commander would have to think for some time to remember what the next item was. This time he seemed to have made notes.

  “Yes, well, further,” the lieutenant continued, looking at his notes with a sniff, “we are being levied to provide cadre. You are, personally, being levied as a first sergeant to a former Airborne unit that is to be converted to an Armored Combat Suit unit.

  “You will be taking your platoon to Indiantown Gap to ramp up to readiness. That will be your permanent post, of course. I guess you’ll be joined by other troops there.”

  Shit. This platoon? thought Pappas, mentally categorizing the characters he had just become “Top” to. “Yes, sir. Are you continuing as CO?” No, no, no, no, no, no!

  “No, I’ve been designated as critical here, dammit. God knows when I’ll get a combat command,” said the portly officer, tugging at his uniform nervously.

  Never if the battalion commander has his way. “Will that be all?”

  “Not quite. Ground Forces training command has decided to cut short the training cycle, so the cycle will be ending in two weeks instead of four and final testing has been canceled. The unit will start clearing post next week and you will join them. Transportation is being arranged but they don’t know when you’ll receive the rest of your NCO cadre. Of course, your officers should be waiting for you.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand,” Pappas said, thinking ominously of the phrases “should” and “of course.” “Will there be movement orders soon?”

  “Well, right now I’m passing on verbal orders to prepare your platoon and the company as a whole to ship out. Get with the first sergeant to arrange the details.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  22

  Orbit, Diess IV

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  Diess was a hot dry world, proof to Lieutenant O’Neal that the Galactics had an overpopulation problem. It had three extremely large continents; about sixty percent of its surface was land,
with coastlines that received a limited amount of rain, about as much as the Sahara, and vast mountainous inlands drier than Death Valley.

  Although the ecology of the seas was extremely complex, the dominant family was vaguely polychaetan with a complex structurally resilient polymer replacing chitin. There was virtually no terrestrial ecology. Instead the shores were packed with Indowy and Darhel megalopoli, their fingers jutting inland from the life-giving sea. Galactic technology easily extracted pure water and edible food from the plankton-rich seawater. It was obvious that a little food, a little water and raw materials were all the Indowy needed for life.

  Worlds like this were the factories of the peaceful, loving Galactic Federation. Billions of Indowy slaving away day in and out with the fraction of Darhel skimming the cream. The peaceful worlds of the democratic Galactic Federation filled with peaceful little boggles whose only need was to serve. Dem dakkies a singin’ in the field and the Darhel masters they’s a lubbin’ evy one of ’em. Galactic politics made Mike want to puke; but not as hard as what the Posleen were doing.

  Galactic technology, high reproductive rates and the minuscule wants of the Indowy had permitted a population of twelve billion and booming before the Posleen arrived. The population was now five billion and dropping. One continent was wholly lost; one continent was still unscathed. The third had been lost except for a pie-piece shaped wedge in the northwest corner; the Posleen were as uninterested in the interior as the Galactics.

  Mike stood on a virtual ridge inland of that pie-piece watching the floor of the valley hump and ripple like wind-wracked canvas. The Posleen were coming and 2nd Battalion 325th Mobile Infantry Regiment was preparing to meet them.

  The first unit to engage was the battalion scout platoon, popping up from a conveniently perpendicular gully and opening fire with grav rifles. As lines of silver lightning connected them with the Posleen mass the front ranks began to explode. The teardrops burned through the air followed by lines of silver plasma. When they impacted they began to impart their kinetic energy to the flesh and liquid of the Posleen. The impact caused the bodies of the Posleen front rank to become their own bombs as blood flashed to steam and hydrostatic shock flashed the surroundings to ions. The fractional c depleted-uranium rounds impacted like hypervelocity grenades.