Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship

by Jean Johnson

  Her nose itched. She couldn’t take a moment to rub at it, as that would spoil the tough, confident image she was trying to project in her newly issued Dress Blacks, with her half glittery gleaming down her chest on both sides of a medal apiece for each type, and a veritable rainbow of service-zone pins. She and her previous ship, the Hellfire, had pretty much covered all the Terran and jointly Terran-V’Dan star systems, along with many of the systems among their alien allies, in the first few years of the war before winding up on this world. She wanted the soldiers watching her to see that glittery and believe she had more than enough experience to back up her commands.

  “For those of you doubting my claims, particularly when my predecessor made similar ones which did not come true, I would like to speak of some of the tactical plans I have enacted. Plans which you will now use. Listen carefully:

  “Water Buffalo. Pitchfork. Cone. Cloud . . .” She enunciated each one calmly and levelly.

  The important points of her speech were buried in plain, open Terranglo. The genius of her orders lay in the fact the Salik wouldn’t understand the images she was evoking, because they didn’t use any of these images in their battle-training simulations. Cryptography was easy enough to crack if one had time and a powerful enough computer, but a stenographic message always depended on knowing what each word secretly stood for.

  She continued calmly, reciting words with images and associated meanings that each soldier, male and female, would remember very clearly from their months of training. “Clapboard. Triple-C. Chevron. Chevronelle. Drawbridge. Racetrack. And finally . . . Guerilla, Mobile, Positional.”

  Save for those last three terms, the definitions for which the Salik would understand, each of the previous words in her list was a mnemonic: simple words defining the images of complex sets of instructions every recruit and cadet learned in Basic, regardless of Branch, all of which she wanted to evoke in each soldier’s mind.

  The Water Buffalo was a slowly building central front of attack, the bulge in the middle distracting the enemy from the two “horns” which would attempt to encircle and flank their foe for a three-pronged pincer. The Pitchfork was for parallel thrusts through cluttered terrain, such as a heavy forest or an urban jungle, necessary since there was more than one town that had been captured and occupied by the enemy. The Triple-C was a series of nested firesacks, layered regions where the enemy would be forced to go through heavy defensive crossfire when attacking.

  The others were similar memes, each one an image etched on a display screen during the many tactical lectures of Basic Training, each a combat maneuver that had been practiced and practiced and practiced back in their earliest days. Such things were learned purely by rote, doing them over and over and over until it was as much a soldier’s reflex to think along those lines as it was to block and throw a punch. More than that, throughout a combat soldier’s entire career, every single post-action report had to include a tactical analysis of what happened, what went right, what went wrong, and what could have been done to improve upon that action. It was a highly flexible, incredibly skilled method of continually training the soldiers of the Space Force across its four Branches, a training method very few militaries could match.

  Her last three words were stated plainly to place these mnemonics in their context as small-unit tactical maneuvers . . . and as a reminder of the Space Force’s normal, bottom-up way of organizing any fighting force.

  “Cast your minds back to when you first learned these things, and all the times in which you analyzed and improved them,” Ia urged in a calm, confident tone. “These are the parts of your training that required you to exercise and utilize all six of your senses and your minds, not just your muscles or your machines. I know that these things are the exact same as what I myself learned in the Marines as a recruit, and learned again as a cadet in the Navy. I know you will remember them, and execute them as well as any soldier I have been privileged to fight alongside.”

  Again, a small lie; Marines training was far more intense, more focused on ship-to-ship or ship-to-station battles. It was very much more focused on small-unit tactics than the far larger movements and maneuvers of an army the size of this one. But she knew that in the Navy and the Special Forces, where such things weren’t strictly necessary to learn for certain jobs, the crewmen and service personnel all had to train in the same set of tactical understanding before anyone was allowed to leave either enlisted Basic or an officer’s Academy. In a pinch, even the Chaplain Corps would know what to do, provided they could remember it under pressure.

  But aside from some of the focus and the intensity level, the Army was no different than the Marines, and far better trained than the auxiliary forces. The trick was to remind the unseen men and women watching her of these things. Ia nodded slowly as she stared into the hovering cameras, confirming the understanding dawning in most of the men and women listening to her words.

  “That’s right,” she urged, knowing via the timestreams that they were indeed beginning to understand. “You know exactly what sort of commands I am giving you. Commands very different from the brigadier general’s. With that said, here are your strategic objectives:

  “The Salik are building wasp nests in the ground and in the trees. Break them up and drive their occupants into the open. Work in coordination with your nearest brothers and sisters so that you do not step on each other’s toes or attempt to throw a rock at a nest in the wrong direction at the wrong moment of time . . . but break those nests wide open.

  “Go for a walk, meioas,” she urged the unseen men and women watching her broadcast. “Take a stroll through these Dabinian woods and smack down every hive you meet. I took a similar walk past an enemy nest a few days ago, and did just that. Now it is your turn. Focus on my words and understand their meaning. Those are your strategic objectives,” she repeated, wanting them to understand that her command structure was very much not going to be top-down. She was not going to dictate anything tactical, save for those hand-delivered, temporally vital messages that had already gone out. “For the rest of it . . . you already know what you need to do. I am ordering you to go do it.

  “One more thing. Do not feel anger for the enemy, though as you fight deeper and deeper into their territories, you will see the atrocities which they will use against you, too, if they catch you,” she stated, meeting each camera pickup in turn to give the impression she was meeting everyone’s gaze. “Do not waste your energies on hatred. Anger clouds the mind, wrecks the judgment, and pulls all your plans out of alignment. Instead, if you must feel anything toward them, then just pity them. Because of their arrogance and their species-centric blindness, they are a dying race. Their time is drawing to an end. Crack open their nests, shake them loose from the soil of Dabin, and brush them away. That is all you can do, and all you need to do.

  “I am the Prophet of a Thousand Years, and your duly appointed Commanding Officer for this fight . . . but while I can see what needs to be done for us to succeed, I am just one person. I can only tell you what needs to be done; the rest is up to you to carry through.” Squaring her shoulders, she gave the center camera a level look. “You have your orders, soldiers. You also have my trust. Get to it, and get it done as soon as you can. General Ia out.”

  The technician touched a control on his portable workpad. Tiny red lights on the cameras blinked off. He nodded, confirming the transmission was done.

  “. . . We’re off-line now, sir. Begging pardon, General, but . . . that’s a very strange set of orders. In fact, it didn’t even sound like a set of orders. Not like . . . ah . . .” He trailed off, blushing a little.

  “Not like what the brigadier general loved to give, no,” Ia agreed. She removed her cap and unbuttoned her jacket, relaxing from her formal stance. “I have a degree in military history, Sergeant. Mattox’s strategies were used by Western commanders in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Very heavy on the top-d
own command structure, with the generals making all the decisions from hundreds and thousands of kilometers away and not allowing for a lot of the flexibility needed to adapt to the actual situations found on the smaller scales, at the Company, Platoon, Squad, and individual team units.

  “You can look at a bunch of trees, and say, ‘Hey, that’s a forest; have everyone in the Legion climb the nearest trees right now,’ but without knowing exactly which tree each Squad will face in that forest, some of your soldiers will end up facing a stingersap tree,” she told him, setting cap and jacket on the end of the table. Lifting her chin at the freckled man, who was catching and shutting down the hovercams to conserve power, Ia asked, “You’re a native of Dabin. Would you climb a stingersap?”

  “Hell no, sir,” the sergeant agreed, catching another machine and stacking it with the rest on the table at the back of the small broadcast room. “Not without full protection. Not unless I wanted my hands to swell up and split open. Not even the jungen virus can stop that kind of an anaphylactic reaction.”

  “That’s why the Space Force chose to emphasize more of the Eastern tactics of that same era, planning for flexibility at the local level. In a military two billion strong spread out across countless light-years and covering dozens of different colonyworlds, you cannot hope to give an order at the Command Staff level and expect the Squadron level to know exactly what to do to carry it out under the conditions at hand unless they are trained to understand and given leave to implement a broad range of independent, easily tailored maneuvers,” Ia said.

  She stepped forward and caught one of the higher machines, finding and pressing its off button to help him shut everything down. He gave her a surprised look, but Ia didn’t stop speaking. This conversation would be repeated among the lower ranks here at Headquarters and would eventually spread outward. She wanted everyone here in the Army on Dabin to understand why she was so completely changing the way Mattox had run things.

  “Mattox had an ego problem he was desperate to feed, and the Army here on Dabin suffered from it. I have a desperate need to get the job done, period, by the most legal and expedient means available. My ego is not allowed to stand in the way, not when others have the time to spare and the brains to do all the planning they need.” Catching the third hovercam, she shut it off, set it on the table, and nodded to him as she spoke. “The next broadcast will be in two days, forty-one minutes local. I can foresee you’ll do an equally good job at that time, but until then, you’re dismissed to return to your normal duties, soldier.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” he said, his expression thoughtful.

  Hundreds of thousands of soldiers all at once . . . and one soldier at a time, she thought, sighing. Eventually, I’ll get the full job done.

  JULY 8, 2498 T.S.

  . . . AND MARCH 19, 2497, AMONG OTHER DATES

  (Don’t exhaust yourself,) October Ia admonished one of the other versions. Once again, she sat on the embankment of the future stream, projecting an air of normalcy over everything seen from any other point in time. (Pace it out over several of us.)

  (You’re not the one trying to sneak in an extra ten minutes’ help between enemy engagements,) Mid August Ia stated. (And this is me pacing it out over several of us.)

  The one from early July stooped and trailed her fingers through the stream of a lieutenant colonel, altering the words on his workstation so that he received a direct communication from General Ia, replete with security codes. There were far too many battles for just one Ia—the youngest Ia—to keep track of at the moment, not on her own. The battle with the Feyori had taught her something about herself, that she could use Time itself to alter time. She was therefore going to use it. To run with the bit firmly caught in her teeth, as she had told the Admiral-General.

  Hopping over a cluster of thread-like rivulets, she enlarged another and touched it. This time, the headset of a private caught behind enemy lines snapped to life. Ia projected her voice—gently, ever so gently—into his life. “Sandusky, there will be a ten-second window thirty-six seconds from the end of this transmission. You will have just enough time to grab Dostoyer and bolt for the tree line while the enemy reloads, but you both have to be ready. Thirty-six seconds from mark.”

  The image in the stream showed the wide-eyed private babbling something to his teammate. If they didn’t move, they’d both be stunned and eaten, and several minor but still-influential sets of descendants would have their lives altered in the wrong ways. The little stream shifted as soon as she withdrew her fingers, realigning itself to correct the damages wrought to its original channel from Mattox’s efforts. She didn’t stay to see if Sandusky would move; the shifted streambed told her he would, and had.

  (Could be worse,) December Ia offered. Like August and October, she was on a ship sic transit, headed from one engagement to the next. (We could be wasting our youngest self’s breath trying to convince these people well in advance of what to do, instead.)

  (This is only working because I used up all the time I would’ve spent fighting, verbally and physically, on writing prophecies while waiting for that verdict,) Late July Ia stated, moving to yet another stream, this time a yeoman pressed into corpsman service, driving the wounded back from the front lines in a civilian flatbed hovertruck for lack of anything better.

  (You’re all welcome,) Early July quipped. December, the most relaxed of the lot, stuck out her tongue. October Ia tsked.

  Physically, their youngest self sat in a recliner chair hauled into the Olympic Ballroom by the hotel staff, wearing plain camouflage Grays, no sign of her new rank on her person. Her physical ears could hear Bennie and Ramasa coordinating things with Army Headquarters, and faintly in the distance, very faintly, they all heard the cha-whomp of the city’s defensive cannons firing, plus the hissing tzzzzng of building shields repelling projectiles that exploded like the crack-and-rumble of thunder.

  The Salik were trying to press all the way to Army HQ to take out the new commander, convinced that if they cut off the head of this Human serpent, the waters of their tactical plans would be safer to swim in once again, as they had been under Mattox. The Loxana was halfway across the city from the office building occupied by the Army, on the far side of town from the enemy engagements, but she could still hear the sounds of all that battle. Thankfully, most of the citizens were safe in bunkers and cellars underground.

  Army Headquarters itself had been evacuated by two-thirds, with the various departments and their equipment broken down into subunits and spread out among several other hotels. Her preferred choice was not only to decentralize the tactical command structure, but the entire chain of command. Certain towns and homesteads had been alerted in advance and evacuated, most of them along a path that was designed to let the Salik advance toward Landing City. Many buildings in the capital itself lay empty for the day, including the restaurant and grocery store across from Army HQ.

  It had not been easy to get people to shut down businesses and hide elsewhere while their homes and shops were bombarded and besieged. But for those who would not go, Ia’s orders had been straightforward. Stun them all, drag them off to the shelters, and let them sort through the wreckage when it’s all over and done. Homes can be rebuilt, and in worst-case scenarios, food can usually be foraged for on an M-class world, but their irreplaceable lives must be saved.

  She had ordered, the Army had obeyed, and the civilians were safe in those shelters which she knew precognitively would not be hit. In the physical world, she was supposed to be lining up supply manifests, anticipating needs based upon the fallout from the combat taking place right at that moment in time. In the realm of the timeplains, she was doing so much more.

  (Hey, Early July,) Mid October called out. (It’s about time for you to go meet your March mad self.)

  (I’m aware.) One last trail of her fingers through a stream, and she straightened.

  She staggered a little, too. Touching
so many lives, altering so many streams and strands in high speed, had a mental as well as a physical cost. Righting herself, the youngest Ia headed downstream to October and twisted across the curtain just in time to feel a rippling snap from her younger self. Dipping down into her own life, she inhaled deeply to center herself briefly in her physical body, sipped from the energy drink Jjones had left for her, listened to her chaplain explaining something to one of the tactical officers visiting from the Army, and flipped back onto the timeplains when nothing needed her attention in the real world.

  She could sense her younger self—March from the year before—about to dip into her own point in time, and spoke. Or rather, projected into her other mind. (About time you showed up.)

  For a moment, she saw her younger self, still on board the Hellfire and startled beyond words. Waiting patiently for the younger version to return, Ia addressed herself again.

  (Don’t freak again. You really are hearing me,) she added dryly. (Your future me, talking to you.)

  Feeling the press of her own curiosity, Ia—the July Ia—pushed up out of the water and onto the grassy bank of their own stream. Seeing her own jaw drop, those amber eyes opening so wide that the whites could be seen all the way around . . . well, it was funny. She grinned at her younger self and remembered what she had said.

  (Don’t you look shocked . . . wait until you can see your expression from this side of things,) she added. Part of the elder Ia was amused by her own earlier amazement, reliving things from the other side. It really was funny, seeing her more innocent self being flabbergasted by this new trick. But they didn’t have a lot of time. They never did. So she held out her hand. (Come on. Sit up. I’m going to share with you the list of things you’ll need them to buy and stash, and a couple extra places to stash them.)