by David Weber
“I rather suspect—” his thin smile was remarkably unpleasant “—that they eventually began to realize that the cartels’ ‘submission’ was just a bit less genuine than they’d thought, but it did mitigate the death toll. And while conditions in Mexico are pretty horrible just now, at least there are still a lot of people living there. We estimate there are around sixty or seventy million Mexican citizens, and they took over half their total casualties in the initial kinetic strike. So once we can … neutralize the cartels, we should be able to find Mexican partners who can help us both reconstitute their country and turn it into another South American candidate for the Continental Union.”
“No one could be happier than I if that were to prove possible, Mister Dvorak,” Garçāo said, but his expression was profoundly doubtful. “Unfortunately, the one thing the cartels and the traficantes have proven over the years is how extraordinarily difficult to ‘neutralize’ they are.”
“You’re quite right about that, Mister President,” Dvorak agreed, but his smile had turned even thinner and more unpleasant. “On the other hand, no one else ever sent them a … negotiating team quite like the one we’re planning to send.”
. XXI .
GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA,
UNITED STATES
Longbow walked into the conference room and sighed as he looked around, then took a seat at the very back of the room. Several generals already sat around the main table at the front, and he avoided making eye contact with any of them. Having already spoken with some of the staffers, he knew what the meeting was about; he also knew there were things he would probably be asked to do that he wouldn’t—no, that he couldn’t—do. He expected the meeting to be contentious, at least from his perspective, and he would have skipped it … if President Howell hadn’t asked him to be there.
A minor clamor announced the arrival of the official party, and everyone stood as the President and General Landers entered and were seated at the table.
“Seats, please, everyone,” President Howell said, and Longbow fell back into his chair. The President waved for the young lieutenant at the podium to begin, and the man pressed a button on his panel.
A tridee hologram illuminated, displaying his presentation, and the lieutenant cleared his throat before beginning.
“Good morning, Mister President. This presentation will cover our recommendations for the creation of the Continental Union Armed Forces. Despite the plural noun ‘forces,’ what we’re actually recommending is a single, unified force structure. Unlike the separate services we had in the past, a single chain of command will administrate all of our military efforts. We simply don’t have the time, resources, or even the personnel to waste on internecine arguments. A single decision-maker—the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces—will oversee the operations of this unified force structure, and he or she will ensure the effective and efficient allocation of resources across the entire force.
“Underneath the Chief of Staff, there will be a number of components, each of which will oversee their respective domains. The combat components will be: the Continental Union Ground Force, Continental Union Air Force, and Continental Union Navy.
“The Ground Force, led by the Commanding General of the Ground Force, will be responsible for sustained combat on planetary bodies,” the lieutenant said. “Obviously, at the moment that means Earth, but eventually it will extend to other system bodies, such as Mars, or the Moon. Essentially, wherever a piece of ground needs to be defended, it will be Ground Force’s responsibility.”
He flipped a slide.
“The next component,” he continued, “the Air Force, led by the Commanding General of the Air Force, will fly and fix fighters and bombers. Period. Unlike the Air Force of old, it will no longer have to transport people or worry about ground-based combat systems, like the old ICBMs. It just flies combat aircraft, whether those are air-breathing, operating from planets, or exo-atmospheric, operating from bases or ships in space.”
He flipped another slide.
“Those exo-atmospheric ships will be operated by the Continental Union Navy, under the Commanding General of the Navy, with the missions of controlling space and transporting the other services through space to where they’re needed. It hasn’t yet been determined whether the command of orbital or deep space defensive installations will fall under the Navy or the Ground Force. There are arguments in favor of either, but the critical point is that the Navy no longer has aircraft or terrestrial ships; it has spaceships.”
The lieutenant paused, looking at the President, and Howell nodded in understanding of the distinction.
“You’ll notice I said, ‘Commanding General of the Navy,’ Mister President,” the lieutenant said then. “In the interests of standardization and harmonization with other nations’ militaries, we’ve done away with the previous naval-based rank names. There will be a single set of ranks, from the highest ‘General’ to the lowest ‘Private.’ That also lets us standardize a variety of uniform devices and insignias. The fewer things we have to print, the faster we can get them into operation so we can concentrate our energies on the things that really matter—protecting our new nation and, ultimately, our entire world.”
“Makes sense,” the President said with another nod.
“Within the Ground Force, there will be two subcomponents,” the lieutenant went on. “We considered separating them completely, but decided that they would require commonality of equipment and basic training doctrine, although with rather different emphases. The first, the Defense Force, is exactly what its name implies: the defensive component, oriented towards protecting our own territory, possessions, and populations. The second is the expeditionary force. In fact, that was its original designation, but after a certain amount of internal discussion, we are provisionally suggesting that it be called the Space Marines, instead.”
The lieutenant looked less than delighted by that, for some reason, Dave Dvorak reflected, managing—with difficulty—to hide his glee behind an attentive, focused expression. Damn. He’d always known Rob was stubborn, but still.…
“The Space Marines,” the lieutenant continued, with only the slightest grimace, “are the subcomponent that takes things from our enemies, whether those are bases on their planets or ships in space. They will form an aggressive, expeditionary assault force that operates its own combat assault shuttles. If we want to hold on to an enemy’s territory afterward, that will be a job for the Defense Force, which will operate bases that control territory. While the Defense Force can also capture territory, its primary mission isn’t forced entry; that falls to the Marines. Both the Defense Force and the Marines operate under the orders of the Commanding General of the Ground Force—again, to ensure commonality of training and equipment—but each will have its own commanding general, reporting to the Commanding General of the Ground Force.
“The glue that holds all this together is the first of two new support services: Supply. The Commanding General of Supply is responsible for the effective utilization of resources in our printers and the distribution of products and personnel throughout the other services. Supply also operates the shuttles that carry those things—exclusive of the Expeditionary Force’s assault shuttles—which removes the logistics missions of both the Air Force and the Navy by combining them into one.”
“What about the wet-navy?” the President asked. “You said the Navy controls the ships in space. Who controls the terrestrial ships?”
“No one,” General Landers replied. “Quite simply, they aren’t needed. As the Puppies demonstrated, they’re a concept that’s out of date. When the Shongairi arrived, they destroyed every warship operating at sea. Every single one. Submarines lasted longer, but eventually they had to surface, and then they were targeted by KEWs. The subs that attempted to launch nuclear missiles were the first to be destroyed, right after the missiles they’d launched. If you hold the planet’s orbitals, you can control their seaborne forces. There’s no need to go down to t
heir oceans to do battle with them.”
The lieutenant giving the presentation held up a hand, and the general acknowledged him.
“We foresee that there will still be a need for a small, planet-based Coast Guard that does customs enforcement and antipiracy, but we’re envisioning that as primarily a law enforcement function. Anytime they need a big stick, they can call it down from the forces in orbit; they won’t have to provide it themselves.”
The President nodded, and the lieutenant continued.
“The other new support service, Training, will be responsible for the indoctrination of new personnel. There won’t be a need for huge training bases as in the past; with the Puppies’ neural educators, it will be more a matter of finding and selecting the appropriate training modules, and then applying them during the indoctrination process.
“In order to make this work, ensuring a recruit’s ability to be neurally educated will be a large part of the recruitment process. In the past, some personnel were excluded from military service due to physical limitations like being color blind; part of the new physical will be to ensure recruits are able to use the neural educators. Those recruits who aren’t able to be neurally educated will be excluded from military service.”
The President turned to General Landers. “Is it wise to exclude people who want to serve, simply because they aren’t able to use neural educators?”
“We may, in the future, relax that requirement somewhat,” Landers replied, “since there are some tasks that don’t require a high level of technical knowledge; however, we feel it’s important to implement that restriction at least for the time being. It’s a simple matter of expediency—there aren’t many pre-invasion military people left, and we need new personnel who are quickly trainable, and who can be quickly retrained to fill new positions that come up unexpectedly. One of our biggest needs right now is pilots, and using a traditional training approach is infeasible—we don’t have the time, personnel, or resources required. We need them now, without having to spend two years instructing them on trainer aircraft we’d have to divert resources to build, using flight instructors who currently don’t exist. Using the educators, we can also give our recruits training in secondary skills they may need to better fulfill their primary mission areas.”
“That makes sense,” the President replied. He nodded to the lieutenant. “Please continue.”
“That leaves the final service,” the lieutenant said, “the Special Forces.”
Longbow sighed. This was the topic he’d been dreading.
The lieutenant continued, “This service will have the missions of doing the things the other forces can’t, and assisting in the assault of enemy positions, ships, and planets. While there will be normal personnel operating within this component, Major Torino and his … forces will be a second branch within it.”
“No,” Longbow said, shaking his head. He didn’t raise his voice, particularly, but somehow it sounded very, very loud. He didn’t much like what he knew was coming, but he simply couldn’t force himself to accept that tasking, no matter how much he tried, and he had tried. But despite his dedication to the U.S. Air Force and to his country, despite the fact that he knew he ought to accept it, he couldn’t. Not anymore. Just being inside a formal command structure raised his hackles, and that bothered him, because he didn’t understand why. In the end, though, “why” mattered a lot less than “what.”
“We’ve been through this,” he added as all heads turned in his direction. “The vampires won’t be part of this. Vlad left us here to assist the President, not to be subsumed into the military.”
“While the Jones girls aren’t military, per se,” General Landers said, turning to stare pointedly at Longbow, “you and Captain Ushakov quite specifically are military members, Major. For that matter, so is Petty Officer Sherman. Are you saying your oath is no longer valid, and that you’ll no longer follow the orders of the officers appointed over you?”
While some part of Longbow’s psyche wanted to follow those orders, that part seemed a distant memory—something ephemeral—while the rest of him wanted—no, the rest of him needed—to protect and do the bidding of the President.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” he said after a moment of introspection, “but what I’m saying is that my loyalties are directly to the President, not to the military chain of command, and I need to follow his direction.”
The President looked at Longbow, his brows knitting.
“While that’s nice,” he said after a moment, “and it certainly makes me feel secure, the military needs your services more than I do.” He held up a hand to forestall Longbow when he started to speak. “I’m not saying I won’t need them in the future, but for now, you’re one of the few surviving military officers on this planet. I need you to help rebuild and realign the military.”
The President waved towards the presentation, then continued, “There will be people who are … reluctant to make the changes the Lieutenant just briefed, and you’ll carry a lot of weight with folks like that. I imagine any vampire would be … a fairly convincing spokesman, but you’re also the guy who made ace in a single afternoon shooting down Puppies in air-to-air combat. You think that won’t weigh on a few minds if you sign off on all this?”
Longbow frowned. He always felt ambivalent when someone brought up what the resurgent news services had dubbed “the Battle of Virginia.” Especially when they gave him all the credit for it, as if none of his other three pilots had even been there! Damn it, they were the ones who’d died, and—
“I need you to rejoin the military and help General Landers implement these changes,” the President continued. “You’ve proven your worth time and again, and I know that if I need you, I only have to call.” He held up one of the new phones. “With this, I can reach you at a moment’s notice, and with the new Shongair landers we’re building, you can be anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours to take care of whatever needs to be handled. Until that time, though, my orders are for you to assist the General in implementing the new service.”
Longbow suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from his heart—as if the restraints keeping him from doing what he thought right had been suddenly removed.
“Okay,” he agreed. “In that case, I guess I’m able to participate in the new Special Forces. I’ll warn you, though—I may have been on the ground during most of the war, but my experience is primarily in flying fighter aircraft, not conducting Special Forces missions.”
“That won’t be a problem,” the general said, tapping his forehead. “We have some of the finest neural educators around that can get you up to speed in a number of areas, very quickly. You’ll also have a staff of experts who can give you advice going forward and help you adjust to your new duties.”
“Staff?” Longbow asked, sensing a trap.
“Of course,” General Landers replied. “Didn’t anyone tell you? I’m recommending you for promotion and then to fill the position of Commanding General of the Special Forces. It will only be a brigadier general’s position, at first, but there will be an opportunity to expand the position once we begin to fill out the ranks.”
“Commanding General?” Longbow asked. His shoulders slumped at the number of meetings and presentations implicit in that tasking and the hundreds—no, the thousands—of hours of paperwork entailed. All he could hope for was that something, somewhere—anywhere!—would get out of hand so he could get out of the office for some fieldwork. Although he didn’t particularly feel any great urge to kill people, despite what the vampire legends said, after that much paperwork, he might be willing to make an exception. “I’m just a fighter pilot, Sir…”
“Oh, don’t worry, General,” Landers replied, “It won’t be as bad as all that.”
“It won’t?”
“No,” Landers said with an evil grin. “It will probably be worse.”
“Ugh.”
“Still…” The general’s smile warmed slightly as he took pity on t
he younger officer. “There will be opportunities to try out the new space fighters we’ll be implementing…”
“Fighters?” Longbow’s head popped up and his eyes brightened. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one of those.”
The general nodded. “Yes, we’ll need space fighters … eventually. We really don’t need fighters—or bombers, by the way—at the moment, though; we need transports, and as many of them as we can print.”
“Oh,” Longbow said, sighing as his gaze fell to the floor.
“That said,” General Landers noted, his smile widening, “we will have to print out a few of the models to see what works best for us, and we’re going to need some test pilots to run them through their paces. Since test pilots are in short supply right now—especially ones who’re nearly indestructible—there just might be some additional work for an enterprising former fighter pilot in the days ahead.…”
Longbow squared his shoulders and sat up straight. “Okay, Sir, I’m in.”
“Now that that’s settled,” President Howell said, “who are the Jones girls you mentioned?”
“They’re one of the … intervention teams,” Longbow said, reluctant to discuss them in front of the group. “They were brought over by Vlad in the final days of the war. They were … dancers, shall we say, in Las Vegas before the war. When the KEWs started falling, they tried to work their way east, but got picked up by a Puppy patrol and incarcerated. They were used for some experimentation by the Puppies and were slated for extermination, but Vlad got there first. And since Vlad is big on redemption, he brought them over.”
