by John Ringo
“Pull forward slowly a hundred meters,” he said over the intercom. “Then stop and wait for the squadron to get on line.”
“Yea, though I ride through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil,” said Private First-Class Mills, the tank’s gunner.
“For I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley,” laughed the colonel, ending the military version of the psalm.
“Amen,” whispered Private Hulm, the driver. The young private was as stunned as everyone else by the grounds-eye view of the devastation, but he gunned the big tank and pulled it slowly forward into the devastation.
The surface of Fourteenth Street was coated in a layer of slime and the rubbercoated tracks of the behemoth threw up a fine spray that looked like orange mud. With the exception of the occasional shattered carcasses of God King saucers, there were no obstacles. The occasional nearly intact Posleen corpse was ground beneath the treads of the tank without notice or comment. The seventy-ton armored juggernaut didn’t even lurch.
PFC Mills swung the turret to the side. “Target. Moving saucer.”
The colonel checked his repeater display by reflex. The saucer was skewed to one side, crabbing to the north and out of the firesack. As soon as it left the overwhelming haze it would be a target for the snipers dotting the towers, but it also could be a threat.
“Confirmed,” said the colonel. “Engage co-ax.”
“Roger, co-ax,” responded the gunner, switching to coaxial fire instead of main gun. “On the way.”
The M-1E was a modification of the venerable Abrams main battle tank. Designed for fighting the Posleen, it had improved frontal armor and thermal damping to make it more survivable when hit by hypervelocity missiles and plasma cannons. It also took a leaf out of the Russian Army’s book.
The Russians, their tank markets faced by overwhelming air threats, had modified their tanks to double as antiaircraft platforms. They had mounted a twenty-three millimeter cannon on each side of the turret and slaved the fire control to the tank gunner. With a little luck, the mass fire from a battalion of tanks might take down an attacking aircraft.
The Americans had looked at the idea and scoffed. Until the coming of the Galactics. The Posleen depended on mass assaults, but their weapons were also phenomenal. A conventional platform to combat them would have to be able to survive plasma and hypervelocity missiles but still be able to kill large numbers of troops. Rather than try to develop an entirely new platform, the army had taken the Russian idea and improved it.
On each side of the turret of the M-1E was a pod of four 25mm Bushmaster cannons. The cannons turned with the turret and could swivel up and down for targeting. The targeting computer of the Abrams, still the most advanced and capable of any tank made by man, was modified to accommodate the new weapon, making it incredibly accurate. But it really wasn’t about accuracy. It was about massive firepower.
The gunner chose “HE” from a menu of ammunition options. Then he stroked the trigger.
The Bushmaster cannon had a maximum fire rate of twenty-five hundred rounds per minute. There were eight cannons targeted on the lone God King. The single stroke of the trigger fired a burst of seven from each cannon. The fifty-six rounds, each with nearly a pound of explosives and notched wire for shrapnel, exploded across the saucer, shredding it and the riding God King.
“Target eliminated.”
* * *
The gunner continued to search, but with the exception of the sole God King, no targets showed themselves. The tank moved through the lifting cloud of dust and smoke as the stench of the dead Posleen became thicker and thicker and the other tanks of the squadron spread to either side.
The artillery had stopped as promised and Colonel Abrahamson decided to pop the hatch and look around. The alternative was staying inside, and the atmosphere couldn’t be any worse outside.
It was. The stench of the Posleen increased five-fold as he raised himself out the hatch, but he controlled his desire to heave and looked around. The squadron was spreading out and he was happy that he had talked the colonel into the earlier reconnaissance mission. The squadron was fairly well trained, for this day and age, but the battles to the north, small-scale as they were, had helped immeasurably to put some polish on it. And it had gotten rid of some deadwood.
Now the unaccompanied tanks spread out into an extended V formation without a hitch, aligning on their pennon-flapping company commanders and platoon leaders. He had decided not to bring any of the Bradleys or Humvees for this mission. They knew, generally, where the enemy was and he did not intend to press home an attack. The Bradleys were slower than the Abrams and more vulnerable, while the Humvees were completely unsurvivable.
No, this was a straightforward heavy cavalry charge: Run out, lower lances, hit the barbarians and charge back through the gates. The barbarians always chased after you. But the general had better have everybody off the Mayo Bridge when they came back. Anybody in Walter Abrahamson’s way was going to be paste.
The radio crackled. “Bravo troop, in position.”
“Charlie troop in position.”
“Alpha, rrready to rock-and-rolll.”
He smiled. The Alpha commander was a bit of a personality, but he knew his business. Abrahamson stopped noticing the stench as the moment came upon him. He looked through the haze towards the distant and unseen enemy and nodded his head. “Roger,” he said over the radio. “Move forward to phase-line Shenandoah. And may God defend the right.”
CHAPTER 51
Ravenwood, VA, United States of America, Sol III
1923 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
“Mortars, throw some rounds on the other side of that bridge we just passed over.”
So much for fire control procedure, thought Keren bouncing along in the back of the commandeered Suburban.
Military equipment has a life of its own. The military spends billions of dollars every year not on procurement of new equipment, but on maintaining the equipment they have. Armored fighting vehicles, next to helicopters, have to be the worst. They have thousands of moving parts, none of which, it seems, have sealed bearings. The tracks of an AFV are only good for a few hundred miles, a fraction of the life of a tire and a thousand times as expensive. Maintenance is not a haphazard requirement, but a vital necessity.
Unfortunately, the divisions committed to the defense of northern Virginia had only begun to become coherent when the Posleen landed. Training had been sorely lacking. Maintenance had been worse.
Of the four armored mortar carriers the platoon had possessed at the start of the bugout, only two remained. The Fire Direction Center track had been the first to succumb, dying of a failed track bearing before they were five miles down the road. But the Three Gun track had been destroyed soon after, casualty of their one close brush with the Posleen.
The FDC section had packed into the Two Gun track, still humming along like a top, thanks in no small part to Keren’s efforts before the battle, until they found the diesel Suburban by the side of Prince William Parkway. The SUV had turned out to be victim of simple lack of fuel, and a few five-gallon cans of premium military diesel fixed that.
But hundreds of other tracked vehicles had failed to survive, and the troops from those Bradleys and M-113s were strung along both sides of the road, marching as fast as they could to try to outrun the oncoming horde. Both gun tracks were covered with personnel, and wounded were packed all around him in the Suburban. This really is “Needs must when devils drive,” Keren thought.
But the problem of friendly-fire was on his mind with the last call for fire. He looked out the window. If there were this many personnel along the road here, the roads had to be packed back there.
“Boss, are there friendly troops in the area, over?”
Their mortar platoon leader was the last officer in the battalion and had taken command of all the line tracks he could find. A few tracks had bugged out, others had died from mechanical failure, but seven remained from the battal
ion, with about half the crews for them, and the lieutenant had picked up replacement personnel as he went. The deal was simple, you could ride if you would fight. If you wouldn’t fight, you could walk. After the last Nineteenth Armored Division unit was destroyed, the scratch unit continued a nearly single-handed rear-guard throughout the afternoon and simultaneously replaced all its casualties. Along the way, “Puppy-Dog” Leper had been forever changed.
“Not any more. Engineers just blew the bridge with the last few stragglers on it. The horses are bunching up on the other side. Fire ’em up, Keren, ten rounds per gun then move on back.”
“Roger.” He popped up through the sunroof and waved to the gun tracks on either side. “Fire mission, hip shoot!” As he did he noticed a Humvee in the woods to one side, with a soldier leaning against the hood. Well, if the stupid bastard can’t figure out to run like hell, that’s his problem.
* * *
Arkady Simosin silently watched the last unit crossing the Davis Ford bridge. Whoever it was had fought a hell of a rearguard action after the last of the Nineteenth Armored expended itself. “The Last Charge” would probably be forgotten in the throes, but the final company of the armored unit had shattered a flanking movement that would have cut off half the survivors of the corps. It had been a heroic and ultimately suicidal charge.
He had come to the conclusion that military disasters follow certain prepared scripts. There is ample warning of the danger. There are critical moments, even after the disaster is clear, where proper orders and actions can correct the situation. And there is a reactionary political response in aftermath.
Given the modern speed of information transfer and decision making, it appeared that the reactionary aftermath was not even going to await the end of the battle. He looked again at the bald prose ordering him to turn over his command to his chief of staff and report to First Army Headquarters in New York. The e-mail continued with the comment that a replacement was on the way. He knew the general, a crony of General Olds; Olds would have done better to leave the COS in charge.
So, he thought, this is what a thirty-year career comes to. Better than the poor bastards caught in the political-correctness witchhunts of the ’90s.
He crumpled up the flashpaper and dropped it on the ground, adding one last bit of litter to the battlefield. He turned and climbed in the Humvee as the first crump of departing mortar rounds filled the air.
CHAPTER 52
The White House, Washington, DC,
United States of America, Sol III
2045 EDT October 10th, 2004 ad
“That’s it,” said General Taylor, glancing at the e-mail brought in by a communications technician. He looked over to where the President was hunched into his chair. “All the remaining units of Tenth Corps are through the Ninth Corps lines.”
“How many are left?” asked the Secretary of Defense, staring at the electronic map on the wall.
“Of infantry, armor, engineers and other front-line units, there are less than two thousand accounted for.”
“Okay,” said the President, in a harsh voice, “put another way, how many did we lose?”
“Over twenty-five thousand…”
“Twenty-five — ?”
“We sent in a heavy corps, Mister President,” said the general, in tones to bend metal. “Five heavy divisions with full support. Of front-line troops we’ve gotten back less than one battered brigade! We lost half the total number of casualties in Vietnam; five times the estimate for the first day of the Normandy invasion. We killed approximately nine thousand Posleen, according to the last and only reports we received. All that did was add to their goddamn supplies.”
“If it hadn’t been for the hacking…” said the secretary.
“If it hadn’t been for the hacking,” interrupted the general, “we would have killed more Posleen. We still would have taken these losses.”
“We’ll never know,” said the secretary.
“Yes… we… will, Mr. Secretary,” responded the general, suddenly tired of the whole game. “There’s Ninth Corps.” He gestured towards the screen. “It’s had hours to dig in, lay wire and mines, which Tenth didn’t, and it has nearly secure flanks, which Tenth didn’t, and it is not being hacked, which Tenth was, and it is not going to be pasted by its own artillery and mortars, which Tenth was, and we are going to lose them, too! Oh, they’ll kill more Posleen, but it doesn’t damn well matter, Mr. Secretary, sir, because the Posleen can afford to lose a million troops to destroy one of our corps! This is just the start of the damn war! The only way we could win it from the beginning was to kill over a hundred Posleen for every guy assigned to a gun! And we just took about twenty casualties for every Posleen killed! At that rate we’ll lose every goddamn soldier in the eastern United States to this single landing!”
The High Commander suddenly realized that he was shouting at the secretary of defense. On the other hand, no one seemed to care if he was. He also realized that the secretary was not the one to be shouting at.
“What if we recall Ninth Corps?” croaked the President, looking up at the map for the first time in nearly an hour. His eyes burned. He had spent twenty years trying to get into this chair. It had cost him most of a stomach, a marriage and his children. And one mistake was all it took.
The general shook his head in resignation. “Too late.” He looked down at the briefing papers. The critical information on maintenance was damning. “The Posleen can move faster than those units.”
“Tactical mobility is one of the American Army’s strong suits,” said the secretary, his tone resounding with surety.
“It is when you have well-trained, experienced units,” said the High Commander, raised back into fury by the fatuousness of the remark. “It is not a strong suit when you have undertrained, inexperienced, unsure units. Patton’s Third Army could have done it easily. Waffen SS? No problem. The Allied troops in Desert Storm? Fuck, yeah. Give an order, pull out, run to the next position, be it a mile or a hundred miles, reassemble. No problem, Can Do.
“Here we have troops that have only had a filled chain of command for five months. Units that were rioting three months ago. Units that are a year behind on scheduled maintenance, almost two years behind on training. Units where half the vehicles break down in the first fifteen miles. Units that will have a hard time holding fixed positions, much less maneuvering.
“No, sir,” he continued, looking the President square in the eye. “The best we can hope is that Ninth Corps does more damage to the enemy than Tenth did, before the bastards pull them down.”
“And Richmond?” asked the secretary of defense.
“Well, sir,” said the general, “if we could only get them to turn around and attack Twelfth Corps.”
* * *
“How’s it coming?” asked General Keeton.
John Keene spun around in his swivel chair and stared at the commander with a blank, distant expression for a moment. Then he shook his head and focused on the reality of the moment.
“Sorry,” he said, ruefully, “I was elsewhere.”
“I could see that. How’s it going?”
“Remarkably well. Good news: by the end of this battle, we’ll hardly have to do a thing to prepare Richmond for the long-term projects.” That was good for a weary chuckle.
“And what about being prepared for this particular set of visitors?”
“Well, the weakest points are still there. If they turn to the west, we are screwed and if they turn to the east we have great difficulty. But we think we have a good plan for centering their focus.”
“What’s that?”
“Gold.”
“Gold?”
“Yep. The Posleen are notorious looters and they seem to be particularly interested in heavy metals and gems. It seems crazy, because you can get gold and diamonds much more easily from an asteroid belt than you can from a hostile city. But they really seem to crave it. Anyway, the Federal Reserve Bank here had a rather large supply o
f it. We… came up with a designation for Fourteenth Street as ‘Gold Avenue’ so to speak and have put what looks like some sort of ornamentation, made out of pure gold, on the street every fifty yards.”
“Oh, joy…”
“Yep. So, there will be a line of ornaments, on little stands, every fifty yards all the way up to the floodwall gates.”
“And that means that they’ll follow the yellow brick road and want to keep following it.”
“Right. And just to add a little fun to it, we had a choice of five different sizes, so the first twenty were small, the second twenty were larger, and so on. By the time the front rank gets to the wall and the word gets around among them, we hope they’re in a frenzy. We had quite a bit left over, so as an added bonus we put out larger ornaments from time to time. But only along Fourteenth Street. If they use the logic…”
“They will really want to cross that bridge when they come to it.”
“Yes, sir. And if the word gets around, most of them should head for Schockoe Bottom.”
Something about the facile explanation started to bother the corps commander. The general looked a little questioning for a moment. “How did you get the ornaments made so quickly?”
“Well, there is quite a bit of industry in the area,” Keene temporized.
“Or perhaps I should be asking what kind of ornaments they are?” asked the general, his suspicions now fully aroused.
“Well, we didn’t have much of a choice…”
“What are they, Keene?” asked General Keeton.
“Well, you ever been behind a tractor-trailer, and noticed how on some of them, on the mudflaps, there are these shiny silhouettes… ?”
